La Trace Romaine

Markus Schlee has been working on the project LA TRACE ROMAINE, dealing with the topograpical and architectural realities of three roman buildings which have a functional and historical relationship with each other: Traces of canals of the EURE, the source of UZÈS, whose water was led to the aqueduct of PONT DU GARD at the distance of about 30 kilometers, overpassing impressive arches of support, and finally led to NÎMES and his CASTELLUM DIVISORIUM, the circular roman waterbasin, from which the different districts of the city and numerous thermal baths and basins of NÎMES were fed. MARKUS SCHLEE was interested in these archeological buildings for their geometrical hollow spaces into which he inserted slabs of fiberboards, covered with a layer of granuar ochre sands, thus transforming the empty volumes found into closed bodies. Thus a series of INSERTIONS was born, objects, which, through their formal precision are adapting the authentic openings, dictated by their function, but creating autonomic composition in communication with the context. So the being of the gallo-roman construction becomes a finality in aesthetic therms of contemporary art.

In the conceptual sculpture of MARKUS SCHLEE the historical found is developed with non-authentic and fictional elements into a contemporary object, always coherent with the contextual aspects.

WALTER AUE

Berlin

curator of the international project LA TRACE ROMAINE