Roger Hiorns, Pathways - Photo © Léonard Pongo
In conversation with the artist
More about this work
When a performer turns up, the sculpture Pathways (2024) is transformed into a performance. At other moments it remains a strange kind of engine.
Pathways (2024) comprises a series of cold, machine objects that you would more likely expect in a factory or garage. Not in an art park. Why did Roger Hiorns bring this industrial material here? Does this actually belong in a museum? He doesn’t’ tell us, the artist remains expressly absent. The sculpture keeps us at a distance.
However, during performances you get closer. Then a real-live naked young man begins interacting with the work. You sense the poetic powers of attraction of the naked young adult body. Who is the boy? You don’t find out. A self-portrait of the artist perhaps? We can only imagine.
In this way the work immerses us in the paradox between life, youth and fantasy on the one hand, and the strict, rational mechanisms with which our lives are organised. The lustful, physical life versus passivity and sterility.
Number 3 on the map.
Park map and walking route
