THE ADVENTURES OF BULUL & GASTON DAMAG

The story begins as follows:

A man (Gaston Damag) discovers one day that he is the subject of studies, conferences and scholarly dissertations; that his life and the way of living of his family and his ancestors are interesting to researchers who discuss and analyze the tiniest details and who display documents in the American Museum of Natural History in New York in an exhibition devoted to the civilizations of the Pacific in which he discovers a photograph of his uncles. Here he is, both a man and a museum piece.

And the god of rice (Bulul), revered by his uncles, himself and all the people around him; the god of the crops who intervenes when he is called upon, who changes the course of events, who makes the earth rich and the women fertile, who wards off diseases and daily worries, to whom cows, pigs, chickens are sacrificed, Bulul too is a subject of science. O God Bulul, you too are a museum piece, a wooden statuette whose beauty, proportions, and craftsmanship are observed. The brave navigators and clairvoyant archaeologists who have brought you to the gates of the museum are praised and we congratulate the wise curators.

You're both exotic; Gaston and Bulul.

But the man (the artist) knows that the domestic god is not locked in a piece of wood, that his people are not reduced to a few old photographs, that one can be one thing and another at the same time: a curiosity for some and a brotherhood of life for others. So, in joyful exuberance, quickly, pressed by urgency, he mixes the figures in rapid, scattered and multiple images. It is necessary to mix everything, to shake things up, to turn everything upside down, to copulate, to have pleasures in all possible ways, outside the norms and restrictions.

The only solution, the only truth: life, energy, pleasure… and to see – as if in a mirror – the one that we love.

Laurent Busine

Laurent Busine is a belgian historian of art, born in 1951. He directed since 1978 Charleroi's Palais des Beaux-Arts 'exhibitions, and MAC's in 2002. Laurent Busine published the monography of Giuseppe Penone in 2013.