Steel paintings
a transformational grammar of sculpture

In drawings, paintings, sculptures and installations Irène Prinsen creates a world inspired by classical and Christian myth. Its inhabitants are not ordinary people but (demi)gods, centaurs, nymphs, satyrs, angels etc. This realm of myth and magic enables us to distance ourselves from daily routine, encrusted habit and the continuous grind of the media. Mythological poetry creates worlds of its own and thereby space for the development of forms of truth and beauty beyond the limitations of 'fashionable' contemporary art.

In her steel sculpture the drawing then evolves into an autonomous three-dimensional object, determined by contour as a form created by light (coming in from behind). These installations convey an impression of multiplex imagery. As a result of the light-shadow dynamism every form exists several times: as a concrete steel object, as a contour left behind when the original form was taken out, as a patch of light and n - times as a shadow: depending on the (different) direction(s) of light.

Prinsen's approach in steel sculpture has been described in terms of painting. Cutting the lines of the drawing in the heavy steel plate (diameter 4 to 6 millimetres) Prinsen uses an oxyacetylene torch as though it were a brush or pencil. As soon as light is falling in through the lines and contours of forms that were taken out, a new dimension of meaning arises. For light introduces time into the realm of (static) matter. As a result sculpture attains a dynamic quality.

In the stream of light forms are discovering their meaning in relation to their counterpoints. Mass and volume are dissolved into a complex rhythm of transparency.

From the dark, dense and inflexible steel a parallel reality of light takes wings.