#405 De Lux
64x84 cm | Filler, oak panel
About
The letters on these double works stand for Grand Lux and De Lux. Anyone who owned a Volvo in the ’70s or ’80s knows this from their models. Volvos business strategy was first to introduce an expensive model for people with money - the GL. A year later, they released a more affordable one - the DL. The GL had a more potent engine and extra luxury items, but the exterior looked the same! Except for the tiny indicators of the letters on the back.
So I decided to do two works using the same strategy. My GL has a more exclusive birch back panel and a slim new design without the supportive pine strips. But except for the letters, they look inseparable when mounted on the wall. The artistic value of the works might be the same, but the GL version is still more expensive. If something is more expensive, it also has to be worth more right?Tablet
To the mind, a word is always also an image. In that sense, understanding words function no different than normal perception. When we see, images are constructed inside the mind. We never perceive reality objectively or in itself. Perception is an interpretation and thus consist of language, in the same manner as understanding words.
However, to use language, we have to speak or write it. We have to realize it. Nothing ever communicates without being inscribed into a matter of some sort. But how words are inserted into reality affects how we perceive them. Thus reality itself seeps into language. There exists no clear or unmediated communication. Matter adds to the message. Because which matter we choose to communicate through, and how we shape it, reflects on who we are, it can reveal unconscious or hidden meanings.
Humans inscribed the first written words in stone or clay. One of the purposes was to save them for the future, to protect them from the volatility of time. To speak, or to write, is always to some extent, an act of power. The receiver must initially submit his or her attention to the message. No matter how insignificant, its meaning will always in some way change the receiver forever.There is a constant tension between language and reality as matter. The human subject is defined by an individual will, as opposed to the strict causality of nature. This will strive to be expressed through language. Maybe self-awareness is a result of language at use. Language as a way for the ego to invent itself, to inscribe itself into the world. It is no coincidence that many of the first examples of texts are curses, prayers, laws or inventories — different ways of trying to influence and master reality.
Res Ipsa
Res Ipsa is a compilation of works made by an act shaping the filler once it is prepared inside the frame. The works thus function as a recording device and give a statement of the event taking place while the filler was still wet.
Res Ipsa is Latin for "the thing itself" and is part of the juridical term "Res ipsa loquitur" (the thing speaks for itself), used when an injury or accident in itself clearly shows who is responsible, such as an instrument left inside a body after surgery.
