–
As part of the 2023 edition of the De Mains de Maîtres Luxembourg biennial, a new dialogue emerges between a recent series by Letizia Romanini (b. 1980, Esch-sur-Alzette) titled Lux Field (2023) and Sans-titre (Labours) (2006–07), a sculpture by Didier Marcel (b. 1961, Besançon) from the museum’s collection. Both deal with nature: one captures images of it suspended in time, while the other depicts a landscape fragment turned over by human hands. Through contrasts in scale and materials, they call on us to reconsider our relationship with reality.
For Lux Field, Letizia Romanini set out to walk the entire length of the Luxembourg border. On her journey, she collected various traces of nature and human activity, both tenuous and ordinary (branches, pebbles, fish hooks, metal wires). Concurrently, she also mapped the territory with her camera. From this iconographic archive emerged small-scale landscapes, produced in her studio using straw marquetry, a technique dating back to the 17th century that requires patience and meticulousness. Conversely, Didier Marcel draws the prosaic patterns present in his work from his immediate environment, in this case a plot of freshly ploughed land, reproduced at scale and made into a monumental sculpture.
Their respective gestures – assembling pieces of straw for one, making a life-size imprint for the other – were cultivated through observation and push reality to a level of stylisation which, although it eschews all human form, preserves an implicit trace of it. Indeed, while the world of suburbia and the national road are felt in Didier Marcel’s domesticated nature, Letizia Romanini’s existential landscapes also oscillate between presence and absence.