Le Marteau Sans Maître (Hammer Without Master)

The sculpture entitled Le Marteau sans Maître, is named after the 1930’s Surrealist poem by René Char and the subsequent 1955 composition by Pierre Boulez. This sculpture is another interpretation, but the title also seeks to re-establish some of the expectations of this particular found object, and the incident of the hammer with master. Created from a dilapidated stand-up piano, which was disassembled, deconstructed/ reconstructed, the artist/viewer puts parts of information together during the act of art making/viewing, resulting in temporary disjunction between whole - or part, and is dependent on either association or recognition, signification and re-signification, an alternative sum of all the piano’s parts, including the expected sound. The result disarms the viewer of their expectations of the piano as object and cultural signifier, and provides them with clues to re-evaluate the object. Simultaneously the parts have dictated their new employment. Le Marteau sans Maître is now a kinetic system of particular parts, a "machine“ of the absurd.