This work is based on an existing 1933 painting by M. Rakowski. A Polish painter who lived in Brussels. After a trip to his homeland, he made a series of paintings as souvenirs. I’ve bought the original painting (oil on panel) at a flea market in Couvin. For me, this work is a souvenir of the 10 years I’ve lived in Wallonia. The pasty painting was molded and a replica of it cast in bronze that I’ve patinated until the image became visible again.

Souvenir / jumeaux

These sculptures consist of a bronze replica of a branch in spring, the flower/leaf buds visible. The casting channels have been preserved, these form an interpretation of the branch due to the nature of the subject, mirroring it. The branch was patinated and the channels kept untreated bronze.

These works are composed of two marble slabs leaning against each other. Both slabs have a different size so there is no symmetrical angle but one of the two slabs is more slanted than the other. The top of the work forms a horizon at my eye level. I see these works as sublimated landscapes, two tectonic plates seem to propel each other higher in an equilibrium that could be rocked at any moment. The works were first shown in Mexico (Mexican marbles) where they defied two severe earthquakes, a fourth version I showed during the exhibition Avalancha, an Italian and a Spanish marble kept each other in balance there.

These works are composed of a number of ceramic plates arranged at an angle against the wall. Each tile has a different size. At the top, they form one straight line, a horizon at my eye level of 158cm. To achieve this, the tiles lean against the wall at different angles. The tiles where made in Mexico with different type of clay (Oaxaca, Metepec)

In these works, a three-dimensional component is added to a two-dimensional photograph. The image always consists of a disordered landscape, an image of the middle of a forest, the jungle. The work is printed in two parts on brushed aluminium, both parts are attached to each other by hinges that allow the angle to be determined. The gesture ensures that they can stand autonomously in the space and form a paravane. Cole presented this type of work for the first time at the Enghien Biennale in a formal French garden. A second was placed in an Italian botanical garden; this work showed mainly pioneering plants such as nettles and birches.

These works consist of exact bronze replicas of tree branches that may or may not be attached to a brass construction strut. These works are stretched between the ceiling and the floor. As in many of his other works, Cole adds a geometric gesture to a natural element. The works become part of the architecture; he showed them for the first time at his solo exhibition “Souvenirs” at the Brussels gallery Irène Laub.

The marble “souvenirs” were created when Cole decided to move back to the city after 10 years of living in the countryside near Chimay. To remember the region, he started the souvenir works, one series consisted of photographic images, another of fragments of marble that Cole found in the woods around Chimay where Belgium’s red marble used to be extracted. Cole added a small gesture: he sawed off part of the stone and polished the surface. The works are hung on the wall with the cut at eye level. The pieces become sculptures through this action and they become landscapes because the line coincides with the horizon. In new versions Cole took Mexican Marbles and Meuse Boulders, those boulders are stones that where pushed into the Meuse valley by glaziers during the ice ages, they have no relation to the common geology.

The 1:1 sculptures are exact replicas of parts of the landscape. Cole moulds a part with a rectangular surface in places that are meaningful to him but, as with the other works, take on a universal character once they are shown to the public. The first ” recordings ” of the landscape were 2 parts of the Mont saint Victoire in Aix en Provence. He exhibited them in the Chateau de Chimay. These works were still executed in wax, since then he has only made this type of work in bronze. Other places that were reproduced were parts of the French coast in Cancale and a piece of a dry waterfall in Sautadet.