ART
Henrik Samuelsson: Speaking in Tongues at Shitty Hotels |
Written 30 January |
Thursday 24 November, 15:00Galerie Laurent Godin, 75003 [map]
Vernissage of Swedish artist Henrik Samuelsson's new expo at Galerie Laurent Godin. Here's a recent (and somewhat hastily translated) conversation between Donatien Grau and Jan Åman after a visit to the artist's studio...
DG: What really struck me when you invited me to visit the workshop of Henrik Samuelsson is this feeling that the world was coming to an end. In a way, it reminded me of eschatology. But there was, at the same time, the presence of a very "Swedish" element in his work, related to the place where he grew up. How do you interpret the relationship between this "Swedishness" and eschatology?
JA: I happen to know very well this part of northern Sweden because my father was born there. At that time, it was still a prosperous region, with active industries.
But today the area was deserted and is insulated. Everyone has left, with the exception of older people and those with serious problems of addiction. It's just a Siberian and a Swedish version of the general crisis in Europe. From the artistic point of view, this can be a source of energy. Marina Fokida has made the Greek crisis a collective energy alternative to Athens - it is possible in an urban context.
Here, we see the opposite: the emptiness of the rural region. This is the dark side of global urbanization. I think this is especially evident in China and in parts of Africa. I am intrigued by the artistic consequences of this crisis, what do you think?
DG: I think this idea of global crisis should be put into perspective: we feel, like Michel Houellebecq, that our age is characterized by a moral crisis, social, sexual and artistic. A human crisis, a Gesamtkrise somehow. But in this case, without even discussing the forms of this crisis, perhaps we should think about making the distinction: what is the difference between this crisis and past problems which faces the West? What difference is there in the way that art deals with this crisis? For art as we see it often finds its origin in a crisis, all major changes are the result of an artistic crisis. Of the First World War arose Dada, as the New Objectivity in Germany. The singular vision of Duchamp was born from a crisis of art in his time. Arnold Hauser has even justified its interpretation of mannerism as the first occurrence of contemporary art by the fact that it comes from a religious crisis. We must therefore ask: what is this crisis again?
JA: You may have already given the answer! "The map and the territory" of Houellebecq is a very clear description of what has been evident in recent decades.
The fact that any action against the crisis led to another crisis. And that any attempt to escape a system is immediately taken over by the same system. There is obviously a context quite different from Marcel Duchamp and Maurizio Cattelan. And maybe it illuminates the present crisis. Marcel Duchamp was "leaving" the art in 1912, saying goodbye to his peers and the rest of the cubists - to go further and work quietly "an art in the art." Today, market mechanisms are more cynical: the market likes, by definition those who want to go in the opposite direction. It will even produce! In the post-pop, it is not possible to go as an ironic reversal of the eternal return in Nietzsche.
What is interesting in 2011 is the sudden change in economic reality. It's a harsh reality. Resulting events on Wall Street and in Syntagma Square in Athens - as in this region abandoned the North of Sweden Henrik depicted. And again, Houellebecq can find an answer: art as a meditation nostalgic about the end of the industrial era. What do you think will result from this recent change, the current crisis?
DG: The best way to find an answer would be to return to the work of Michel Houellebecq. Read his books always made me think of the title of the exhibition of Damien Hirst "In the Darkest Hours There May Be Light." Of course, we can understand texts as extremely pessimistic. But we can guess the influence of science fiction that is very present in Houellebecq's writing and the strong desire to find a way out. This is a key issue for understanding his work: what is the way to escape? Escape from self, away from a personal point of view but also escape from a world whose decline is the subject of his novels. And the solution would probably be literature or, in the case of Henrik, art. You do not think that even in these very dark paintings, art seems to be an issue, or only?
JA: Yes, of course. And you make me realize that there is a direct link between Houellebecq and JG Ballard. Both are fascinated by the crisis and the relationship between the near future and the present. The last four novels depict a vision of Ballard very dark but hilarious at the same time our state of mind in Europe lately. A time when a new middle class mentality dominates. A new section of the population that has everything in such abundance that it has to invent a revolution against itself. At the end, even the Tate Modern was bombed, not bin Laden but by a group of owners siroteurs Chablis. And that's exactly what Henrik Samuelsson talks. I do not say maybe it's the only way out. But it is certainly a very exciting answer on how to survive now that even the middle class is in the process of decline, not only in Athens, but as a response to Europe's future.
| What: | Henrik Samuelsson: Speaking in Tongues at Shitty Hotels |
| When: | Thursday 24 November, 15:00 |
| Where: | Galerie Laurent Godin, 5, rue du grenier Saint-Lazare 75003 [map] |
| Transport: | Rambuteau, Arts et Metiers, Etienne Marcel |
| Cost: | EUR |
| Phone: | +33 (0)1 42 71 10 66 |
| Email: | info@laurentgodin.com |
| Web: | www.laurentgodin.com/gallery.html |
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