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Guy Rombouts (Leuven BE 1949) lives and works in Antwerp.

 

Since the early 1980s, Rombouts has blurred the existing boundaries between words and objects. The idea of having objects speak for themselves, acts as a drive and utopic horizon behind his artistic practice. The result is a body of work that is idiosyncratic, poetic as well as conceptual. The artist’s very own bounded set of ideas has become a kind of art-producing machine: his ‘concepts’ make his works come about more or less automatically. The result is never egotistic, but invariably particular and tactile.Rombouts’ work — he is the son of a
printer and trained to be a typographer — is rooted in a fascination with the shapes and the stuff language is made of. In the early ‘80s, when he made what could be viewed as his ‘primal’ work, he collected objects whose names consisted of three letters, and exhibited them in alphabetical order. Rombouts is probably best known for his Azart alphabet, which he developed in 1984 with his partner Monica Droste (1958-1998). The line-based alphabet allows words to take on an endless array of two/three-dimensional shapes.

Ever since it was first designed, it has served as a deliberately coincidental procedure for creating objects, sculptures, paintings etc.

Inspired by Azart, Rombouts has recently created new, graphic ways of translating words into images. Using the website www.azart.be, everyone can generate images in Azart.Guy Rombouts, (1949-, Geel, Belgium) seems to make a comment on how the flatness of letters and words can create a reality and make that reality non- existing without the words, in line with what the “linguistic relativity principle” suggests. Rombouts does this by inventing a new alphabet; the Azart, a name that refers to A-Z art, but also to the French word “hasard” meaning coincidence. In Azart each letter is translated by a corresponding line, on the basis of the first letter of the word which describes the line. A is angular, B is barred, C is curve, D is deviation and Z is a zigzag line. When the lines are linked together closed forms or word-images appear. What is going on quite literally on the paper when forming Azart words, goes on in our mind when forming realities of alphabetic words. The arbitrary letters of the alphabet also obtain meaning in our mind. Words written in Azart visually define them selves, forming isles of meanings, while words of the alphabet is defined by means of other words. These words, however, are formed by the same letters as the word they define. A circle of definitions are formed, referring again literally to the Azart circled words.

http://www.azart.be/azartstart.html


Translation:
www.buitenbeeldinbeeld.nl: 
Nine letter- or Word-bridges by artist couple, 1994. The Belgian artists designed a whole new alphabet, ' the regulation ', an image in which each letter Azart is replaced by a line. The squiggly figures in the bridge railings forms a Word. The name refers to AZ-art but also to the French ' hazard '. The Azart is Russian for inspiration or passion in the game. The bridges: Idea, Word, and Conscience. 
Rahaman is raised on the pass in yellow. The News Journal of Yellow plays an important role during his childhood and early adulthood. Up to the age of thirty he worked just like his mother and father at this newspaper. "I've always had something with letters and language. How the alphabet is taught, is a total abstraction of reality. Language is learned behavior and that excites me greatly ". He worked a dozen years together with his now deceased wife Monica Droste. 
Rombouts and Droste do blur the boundary between art and language and develop a own picture alphabet, the so-called Azart. Each letter is symbolized by a line and a color (e.g.: C curve and lemon yellow). This alphabet is still a fixture in the work of Raghu. 

www.architectuuramsterdam.nl: 
Written in a language Interconnecting bridges, bridges. This applies to the nine foot/bike bridges on the Java island. They are thus ' language bridges ' and not without reason, because language is metaphorically a bridge between people. The district is firmly a bit less anonymous by.
Is not a sober Dutchman slightly nervous of such a concept? Enjoy the impressive bridges that falls a lot, much appreciated. They are designed by the Belgian artists Monika Guy Rombouts and Droste. They worked together with the architect Paul Wallace. Guy Rombouts explains.

www.wikipedia.org: 
The alphabet is an alphabet: Azart-designed by the artists Guy Rombouts and Monica Droste. The name of the alphabet refers to AZ-art (A-Z for alphabet and art for art) and for the word hazard (happiness, fate). Azart is Russian for inspiration or passion in the game.
each letter of the alphabet consists of: 
a line with a shape (for example: "in proportion, Ingots steel), a color (Aquamarine, Burgundy), a sound (" Aha ", call-sound). 
the alphabet is by Rombouts and Droste, among other things, the following works of art applied: on nine Letter bridges (also called: Word bridges) on the Java island in Amsterdam (1994). Azart is also the name of a ship and of a theatre company that uses them, and that in the Java island had fixed landing point, the spot at the dock is called Azartplein [5] Accordingly, in the building of SD Worx in Antwerp (1995), 2 sculptures in the Central median of the Koning Albert II-laan in Brussels (Brussels-North) (1997), lines and figures on the walls of the Brussels metro station Tomberg (1998), the Letter garden in Burcht (Zwijndrecht) aan de Schelde (2006).

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