Cologne, Thursday 15th. Cold wind. I leave the Chelsea Hotel where apparently, Martin Kippenberger & co used to go drinking in its bar. Nearly run over by a man in a suit on a bicycle. He seemed to think it was my fault and maybe he was right. “Curried sausage with french fries covered in mayonnaise” standing at a bar table in a small cafe – could only eat a quarter of it. The day is bright -clear blue sky... but the shadows do not lose their impenetrable blackness throughout the day mirrowing the blackened towering forms of the Dom as it reaches into the heavens. Early afternoon inKolumba. I was somewhat sceptical before my visit (the initial hype) but was quite moved, especially in the space where the wooden walkway zigzags over the archaeological remains of the gothic church. The perforations in the exterior walls (distorting and fragmenting the internal and external sound in a beautiful way). A lot to reflect on – the dialogue with the art of the past, exhibiting contemporary art alongside other artefacts, all the problems this might embody, the building itself…how does one define it? It is not a conventional museum and in ways I have not yet assimilated it seems to be imbued with Catholicism: the almost fetishistic treatment of objects and details adhering to a certain idea of beauty. The question is, whether new unexpected meanings can be generated in these contexts and whether the divergence from conventional critical/historical presentations can throw new light on the nature of artefacts and their meanings. I accept the historical aspect of everything we do - but maybe what is most valuable about art is its non-historical qualities (not necessarily universal qualities)...those aspects which allow the work to have a different resonance at different times and places.
Peter Zumthor’s building itself does not leave one indifferent. Here are a few images I took, the perforations in the exterior walls, the zigzag walkway, a display of relics, shadows on the floor made by a display case and some trees in an exterior area:
Off to Köln for a few days tomorrow. Hope to report from there and post some images of the ALPHA group show. In the meantime, two fragments...an image taken the other day: an older painting (slightly reworked) and a very new painting (reds and magenta)...
A group of new paintings is slowly emerging from a difficult, introverted and distracted couple of months. Paintings which are made of small components and elements but which (hopefully) fuse together as one entity. Each painting projected as a unified whole...
Here are a number of number paintings...mostly 46x38cm and oil on canvas (with the occasional collaged element). All these works obviously have there origins in the drawings and works on paper I made at the CCA in Andratx.
"Everything is one. Space and time, color, sound, and form are just ways of perception which originate from the mortal structure of our minds….The dead man does not know space and time and color,or he knows them only to the extent that he still ‘lives’ in the memory of the living. He himself has been delivered from all partial sensations. With death there begins that kind of being properly speaking, around which we, the living, restlessly swarm, like the moth swarms around the light.”
'"I think they (painters) always just hope that they will be able to unlock the valves of sensation which just open out the whole appearance. " Francis Bacon, in an interview. (artpress 215 Juillet/Aout 98 p.22).
"I think we live in a period in which we clearly cannot say what things are, we can say what things are not. The paradox in architecture resides precisely in that showing us how things are not, it shows us how things are. Only indirectly do we come to know how the world is like. In that sense, I think concepts are true in what they deny, and false in what they assert. This via negativa is a difficult one, but perhaps the only one that we can reliably travel on. That is, we cannot assert directly what things are, but we can provide some kind of Insertion, that is, something that polarizes, something that reflects, something that, in its refraction, allows us to see what the world is like. Indirectly, it could be through a dark glass…"
Yehuda Safran, from an interview with Pedro Barreto, source here.
Only one week left in Andratx. The drawings and works on paper I have made here are made up of small components, details and fragments. Although they are very dense I feel that each drawing functions as a unified entity. The view from my window. Summer heat. A rocky mountain, olive trees, dense vegetation and a dense sky...the constant hum of millions of insects. The changing light...night slowly descends. The immense dark mass over which the moon rises, luminous amidst the shifting nocturnal clouds.
The Centro Cultural Andratx is just outside the town of Andratx in a village called Sa Como. Here between houses, behind a wire fence is some overgrown waste ground...though one cannot appreciate here the constant chorus of birds and insects in the afternoon heat, I like these images of a kind of place that's usually overlooked...
