Gil Bruvel

St George and the Dragon - 216 grade stainless steel

Artist's Comment on the Design:

My piece is grounded in the idea that the artist mythologises the world in order to create a sacred space for collective participation with a timeless symbol from which we draw strength and vision, and which acts as a wellspring for imagination, reflection and spirituality.

The horse, comprised of square ribbons outlining its actual shape and hollowness, I see as a fragment of God's breath pushing St George as if he were like a sail. The horse acts more as an energy source, helping to propel St George towards his perpetual adversary, the dragon: in current vernacular, the shadowy undercurrents of our instinctual behavior. We may be hardwired for the jungle, but God has provided the software for a transformation that enables us to live on a higher plane.

The dragon I have severely abstracted in order to gain distance from the proliferation of monsters in the current media environment, transposing it into a higher key and enabling a more universal psychological reading of something like 'the recesses of the unconscious'.

The invitations to interactivity of this work infuse a new life to the ancient message. This installation will appear to visitors to be emerging from beneath their very feet to create a vivid sense of a live event that began just now as they have entered the sacred space.

I have tried to move beyond the single-object idea of sculpture to create more a sculptural environment that allows an interactive stroll through the artistic space creating opportunities for rest, reflection and social gathering, and which blurs the distinction between sacred space and everyday life.

Profile of the Artist:

Gil Bruvel describes his painting, sculpture and fantastical furniture as a response to 'the spinning phantasmagoria of our pilgrimage on earth.'

Australian born, to a family of pianists, artisans and visual artists, Gil took drawing lessons from the age of nine. When he was still a child, the family relocated to the South of France, where his father worked as a home-builder, cabinet-maker and artisan of fine furniture.

There, Gil learned the canons of European design and technique while carving stone in his free time.  By the time he was 12, his creative ideas were arriving faster than he could express them in the stolid mediums of wood and stone, and so he turned to oil painting for the rush of speed and fluidity.

At an unconventionally young age, Gil joined Laurent De Montcassin's Restoration Workshop in Château-Renard, where he was given the task of copying Old and New Masters.

He then travelled throughout Europe, Egypt, and back to Australia before participating in a five-year artistic cultural exchange in Japan. From 1986, he has lived in the United States, where he has pursued painting and sculpture.

Gil sees his work as wholly intuitive, but with a subtle subtext of 'conversation' with great influences and inspirations, including the sculptor/architect Isamu Noguchi, Francis Bacon's grotesque images, and organic forms reminiscent of Antonio Gaudi.

Nature is a central motif for Gil. All the artists that have influenced his work might be seen to have been on a path to transcend monometric human culture by studying the organic forms and curvaceous geometries of the plant world.

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