Peter Buggenhout: The Blind Leading the Blind

Peter Buggenhout’s “The Blind Leading the Blind” presents works from four different series—Mont Ventoux, The Blind Leading the Blind, Gorgo and Mute Witness— and represents various fundamental aspects of his sculptural practice while at the same time addressing recent developments.
“The Blind Leading the Blind” is Buggenhout’s most prominent group of works and is often referred to as the ‘dust sculptures.’ Begun in 2004, these works are contourless stacks of wreckage concealed under a layer of dust, rendering the physical and formal properties of their components illegible, obscure, forgotten.
“The Blind Leading the Blind” is also the title of a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder from 1568. Symbolising the consequences of a life that lacks faith, the painting depicts a trembling procession of blind men being led by the one at the head of the line into a ditch. In Buggenhout’s universe, however, the title serves a different purpose, stressing the fact that the dust sculptures do not depict anything and do not suggest any verbal or visual equivalent by which they can be described or emerge as a distinct image. Excluding representation and signification, the dust sculptures elude outside language, outside recognisability, and therefore outside reason.