ROGER VILDER : THE GEOMETRY OF THE VITAL INSTINCT

Departing from the classical constructivist’s morphology and syntax, Roger Vilder’s vision has developed without complex nor contraints to the liking of an all oriental sensuality. It is through the temporary terms of the geometrical langage that he undertakes to shout out his love of life and communicating this to us. « I am a powerless god because I do not accept my own weaknesses » he tells us in a text written in Montreal in February 1970.
This recognition is a whole program in itself. This « son of the mediterranean sea and sun » has gone to live the great northern experience and the wide open spaces. Without emphasizing the sentimental side of all biographical reference, there is something else than a simple hazard to his personal migration though time and space in geography and history.
If Vilder resorts to geometric forms, it is because he intends to reach depths, to express the essence of life through its constant metamorphosis. His animated reliefs showing the relentless crossing of two perpendicular lines expresses one Mondrian and all the Mondrian of the world. Life is the squaring of the circle and Vilder knows well that computer design has solved the problem. On the formal plan, and uniquely on this one of course, because the secret of life, which is also that of the magical wand, is the eternal comeback, eternal beginning, eternal starting over ‘ab ovo’.
This eternal starting over of life is not a miracle but a reason to live. In a recent film scenario (October 1972) Roger Vilder describes the extreme amplitude of an elementary metamorphosis. A cluster of dots inscribed in a perfect square, becomes birds flying in an amboid cloud shape, which becomes a school of fish swimming, becoming a herd of sheep running around, seen from above, which turns back to the initial dots within the square. Here, the spirit of geometry identifies itself with a deep instinct apprehending primary elements of existence.

My meeting with Roger Vilder was quick, simple, decisive. I believe in the simple tenacity of this sorcerer without miracles, at his crazy love of life, at his mystical realism and all that he bears within him of instinct that he expresses spontaneously : the kind of people are rare, they do not bother themselves with formal contingencies of the already seen or done and obstinately look at the world with constantly renewed eyes.