I dreamt of a house last night. In fact I dreamt of buying a house within a house where the floor boards were rotten, because the gigantic room had been used as a pool. As I was climbing up a ladder out from the pool to the second level I suddenly remembered that I already owned a house.
I have been known to be a somewhat sentimental soul. I often find myself living in past memories or dreams of the future. I don't even really like reading the daily newspaper, as it blurs with my visions of life, with its unforgiving present tense. I am not ethereal, but enjoy the enthralment of narratives that have been set down to be born again and again. Perhaps, this is the reason I dislike overtly political art that is intent on making its viewer feel slightly nauseated by the present. No, I enjoy the poetry of personal experiences, the rough untamed edges of humanity. All the needed politics will flow from their daily experience in to the art without resorting to the slapstick of a political statement. This doesn't mean that I am partial to overly romanticised paintings with their watery vistas and undulating undercurrents of love unfulfilled. I am, no matter how sentimental, a realist.
I am excited by ideas, all ideas no matter how “bad” or “good”. Thoughts turn me on, in a way I never could be by the statement of facts or so called current affairs. The random ramblings of the “crazy old man” in the bookshop will usually interest me more than how many people died unnecessarily this week in a war for drugs or oil. I do not in any way wish to present the notion that I don't care about such events. They are just not in my immediate vista most of the time and do not appeal to my sentimentality, or perhaps they do, but so much so, that were I to spend my days pondering famine, war, violence and cruelty I would probably jump off a bridge by next week.
HEHE, 2009, Installation: Aluminium plinth, aquarium, pumps, tubes, tank, electronics, model of a nuclear power station, water and fluoresceine dye, Unique |
I am however interested in our environment and its destruction by mankind. This I suppose is political but I think it is also a narrative of humanity. We often destroy that what we love and need most and for me nature is the closest thing to a religion I know. Today I am excited by the artistic duo HEHE (Helen Evans, 1972 and Heiko Hansen, 1970) and their current exhibition Anthroposphere at the Aeroplastics Contemporary in Brussels. Their installations look at the “conflictual rapport between a humanity that is caught up in an unbridled quest for new sources of energy (along with new ways of wasting it)”
HeHe, Prise en charge 2011, socket, smoke |
HeHe : Anthroposphere
16.01 – 15.03.14
AEROPLASTICS contemporary
32 rue Blanche
1060
Brussels
Belgium
Europe