Trapped in a crescendo of physical tension and mechanical awareness, today’s living being, more than at any other point in history, has made its relationship with time an element of the utmost existential, aesthetic and emotional definition. A time laden with obsession and fragility, a continuous oscillation between the uncertainty of the future and the glory of a past now vanished. It is precisely here, in this complex becoming, that Sly begins to create – a Belgian sculptor-artist who, with unrepeatable mastery, has managed to elevate haute horology into a new form of contemporary sculpture, in an alchemy of inspiration, poetry and madness that seems to have pulled his creations straight from the Mad Hatter’s hat.
His pieces appear as sinuous metallic evolutions, luminous and intricate, behind which vessels, armours and other incredible silhouettes are concealed, each chiselled with singular mastery, on the verge of coming to life at any moment. Jewels, dials, crowns – everything combines in a diabolically harmonious way to give us a further, even higher meaning, not of time itself but of the forms in which we long to crystallise its passing. It is a perennial sense of research and sacrifice, of measured passion that, without half measures, wins out over the most refined and powerful machine in terms of creativity, craftsmanship and beauty.
Man returns to being a creator, drawing from the world and reinterpreting it using unexplored materials and meanings to give life to a contribution of rare beauty. Sly exalts the sculptural dimension, standing halfway between celestial welder, perfect technician and untamed creative to tell us an idea of meta-time, free from the smallness of mediocrity and the torments of chaos from which, especially at this exact moment in history, an unexpected gust of courage and challenge seems to originate. Sly’s horological sculptures enchant us, alert us and call us to meditate on who the creator is today, for what centrality to fight, and in what memory to remain: Sly is the tangible proof that progress, evolution and technology will always come second in the creative act, because perhaps the true message behind his sculpture is exactly that – to rediscover what, hopelessly divine, we have found again over time and which, at the very same time, we are slowly losing.
