René Heyvaert

René Heyvaert’s work cannot easily be classified in a particular category or period. This is no surprise considering the tension between ordinary materials and minimal forms. What is more, his formal language was quite austere. The tension arose out of the creative process between the idea and its execution.

As an architect, Heyvaert imposed a form on his material. But he intuitively sensed a discrepancy between these two poles. Architecture itself is transient, and the material that gives it this transience only retains its beauty through its functionality. In other words a building can be constructed in chipboard and corrugated cardboard. It is its functionality that elevates the aesthetic experience of the whole to a higher level. A functional body is the highest aesthetic object, which is what his illness and the limitations of his body taught him. He decided to devote himself to an art where the form was not subject to the will of a human brain but to elevate into art the corporeal and material possibilities offered.

Heyvaert’s austere formal idiom is somewhere between the Constructivism of his early days and the Minimalism that had come into vogue. The basic forms of his plywood objects and also the sterility of the sawn aluminium sheet and pieces of Perspex illustrate a desire for simplicity. The organic nature of the willow branches contrasts very sharply with the rigidity of his geometry. The ‘Bambix’ boxes are an unmistakable reference to Pop Art but they are more of a confirmation of his use of simple, readily found and ‘ready-made’ material.

He often sawed off a corner, cut a square out of the canvas, rolled up a piece of cardboard or glued empty boxes (from foodstuffs and other products) on a board. The pattern by which he revealed the space in the object or with which he appropriated the surrounding space is determined by the form. The cutlery joined together, the perforated handle of a knife, the split spoon and the tineless fork are acute reflections on the usefulness or rather the manageability of the objects. He often poked fun at the perception of everyday user-friendliness.

But it was the creative process that was the actual energy or tension between the idea and its execution, the emulsifier between idea and material on which he repeatedly focused attention. The branch (with flaxen rope), the cardboard, the plank or the bent metal told him the story of a lived reality. The experience of form lies in the material, while the austerity is the aesthetic experience. The surroundings always play a part in this that is not to be disregarded. It is only in these surroundings that the consciousness of the absence or presence of the object, or part of that object, is able to grow. It must be added that Heyvaert sought to bring about a symbiosis between nature and industry, as the two providers of materials for creation.

Heyvaert was convinced by a form when the two poles of life and art met in real space. The form was fixed when no space was left for adaption, omission or addition. Their unusual simplicity focused the attention on the material and reflected its position in life. The limits define the form, the functionality its beauty. René Heyvaert shows us where things belong.

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René Heyvaert
Rene Heyvaert
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