Lode TIBOS
(°1938 Edegem, Belgium)
The strange thing about Lode Tibos is the fact that, being a schooled sculptor, he was practically lost for sculpture; after his years of studying at the academies of Berchem and Antwerp, he changed course and started painting. Till 1987; in that year Lode Tibos holds an exhibition of the terracotta portraits he made over the previous years. That was the spark that lighted the slumbering sculpture-flame within him.
Right now, Tibos has found his way; he freed himself of the restraining burden of the once so attractive canvas. With an unseen enthusiasm he made his way into his artistic rebirth.
With a Celtic vigorance he goes out looking for materials; blue hard-stone, machinery parts, remains of engines, boats and never demolished entities. It looks as if twenty years of potential sculpture-energy is erupting, leaving Tibos with the trouble of materialising all of that inspiration.
Tibos gets involved in a process that hides nothing; every part brings along its soul, but only starts living in the context of the hole of the sculpture. For that he puts accents, chops away peace's, polishes, saws and cuts…; it is a life-bringing process, and with this the complete opposite of the nearly mechanicallity of other sculptures.
Tibos indeed succeeds in giving a new being to any material-form, in putting things in order, he creates a new world; enlarges his own cerebrallity to the soul of every stone, to the whole power of every material.
