Lang verwacht en uiteindelijk ook gekomen: de openingstoespraak van Dr. Ben Schomakers bij On a Clear Day.

Ik had de tekst al lang, maar door computer-problemen nu pas op het net!

Maar het wachten is niet voor niets geweest: lees die tekst!

Transcendence towards authenticity
Opening address to the group exhibition On a clear day, I can see forever
@BCM, Tilburg
May 16th, 2009

1.
It is by no means an easy task to speak some general introductory words to this exhibition, firstly because of the horrific acoustics, and secondly, and more importantly because the works of art on display, as you already may have glimpsed, are incredibly heterogeneous. In this beautiful but still rather limited space, formerly a chapel, you will find paintings, water colours, prints, collages, sculptures, installations, even textile art, which are in their own genres again conspicuously diverse in style and technique. At first sight it may not be clear what they have in common, not even whether they have something in common at all. But they do....

... Let me, in preparing to see and understand the common denominator, first mention some exterior circumstances, such as that the artists represented here belong to the same generation, roughly, though not exactly, for the senior of them is 45 years old, while the younger are nearing the end of their twenties. That is to say they share the same period in history, in historical history - the period in which they live, in which and in relation to which they have been defining their art - and in personal history, for they have left behind the groping years of their development and found an attitude and an idiom which in a way works and has reached some stability. But this, of course is not particular to them.
 Which is not true for the fact that most of the artists are Berlin-based, while the others, though living and working in Tilburg, from a certain distance seem to share in the atmosphere that city offers, in which past and future are re-united in a present, in which ideologies and closed worlds did melt down, did melt down too quickly perhaps, while the new openness tends to forget the past and to think the future with indetermination, and is under threat to be seized by the expansion of the economic system which replaces the anticipation of the future everywhere, assisted by its utilitarian definition of man. Berlin may be symbolical in this respect, a looking glass which incisively shows what happens at many other places as well.
 And obviously the artists have a strong sense of mutual affinity, of belonging together, most of them seem to know each other and their works quite well, they often operate in small groups, or in bigger ones, as during the manifestation Der Niveaualarm, of which this exhibition, Der kleine Niveaualarm as one of its many subtitles has it, is in a way a continuation. There is no manifesto, no official membership, but there is a community, bound together by a similar inspiration and the critical awareness of a social and artistic problem and challenge familiar to all. Consequently all of them seemed to understand what was expected from them and what work to contribute, on being invited to this exhibition with no clue but that puzzling and intriguing phrase On a clear day, I can see forever. None of them asked for any further comment or explanation, its gist was evident.

2.
Understanding what these works have in common thus presupposes catching the idea and the associations they experienced responding to these words. Which is a perfect pretext for giving here the reins to one of my favorite occupations, meditating on words, be it quickly for we are attending an art exhibition and not a reading-class. On a clear day, I can see forever. At least three details are fascinating. For firstly the prospect to see forever is not realized always and in all circumstances, but only on clear days. As we know, it is not the case that all days are clear. Clear days are exceptional and it is impossible to create clearness entirely at our own initiative. We do depend on what happens, though of course, if we stay inside, don't look at the skies and seek for a berth in areas where the sky never clears we will not experience clear days, just as we can look for spots on the earth where clear skies are more a rule than an exception, for instance, taking that sky literally, the Atacame desert in Northern Chile, which for that reason is home to the world's biggest telescopes.
 The nature of the clear skies may become transparant to some extent, by focussing on a second detail. On a clear day, you can see forever is the title of a well-known Broadway musical and of a movie based on it, starring among others Barbara Streisand, Yves Montand as well as Jack Nicholson. Doesn't matter, or not too much. What counts is that in the title the you, promised to see forever, has been replaced by an I. If this change is not a lapsus or a coincidence, as may be assumed, it has to be interpreted. We are at an art exhibition, and written on its entrance door we find the message that on clear days, a certain I is capable of seeing forever. Behind the entrance door - works and lives the artist, and he is alluring us, spectators, to enter that very space. Primarily thus the I who at times sees forever is the artist who announces by means of the poster on the door, that after some struggle perhaps, in the run of a process of coming to terms with the question what after all it is that must find a way into his art, something is working, something has become lucid. On that clear day art realizes the initial, probably unconscious expectations and makes the artist see something. At the same time of course, by announcing this experience on the door of this chapel and inviting you to enter the same space and share the clearness, the I includes you, the spectators, secondarily, by sharing his art. Art than may help you in arriving at the clearness the artist has means to achieve, has means to express.
 Good. But more intriguing perhaps is that nicely formulated prospect of seeing forever. In a musical context it may pass unnoticed, but in that of an artistic environment that has chosen this sentence as its title and dedication, it may not. For seeing, at least in its primary sense, the sense which is the point of departure for artists, has first and foremost a spatial dimension. We see something physically outside us from a certain distance and at a certain location. Fine. But this means that the superlative of seeing mentioned in the title, that exceptional and very intense seeing which may happen on clear days, in principle ought to be expressed in spatial terms too: on clear day I can see for miles, for indefinite distances, infinitely or whatever. But not forever, as this word has primarily a temporal meaning, and is a superlative of temporality.
 A leap takes place, from the normal spatial dimension of the object which is a material work of art, of the spatial dimension which separates and eventually connects the seer and the seen, to the dimension of time, of extreme time even, not yet that of eternity, for forever still falls short of eternity, but surely that of an uncommon time which is in its literal sense not familiar to man. Forever may be the object of the act of seeing, admittedly a stunning object in that case, or it may be an adverbial qualification which indicates a special, uninterrupted, permanent vision, in both interpretations the limits of spatial seeing are distended until they break and open a remarkable temporality. This opening up, which the artists proclaim to happen on clear days, days on which they realize what they are aiming at, and what they are prepared to share by means of their works of art with their audience, this opening up is a going beyond, beyond the material work of art, beyond the process of intensive seeing, and thus may for that sake be called a form of transcendence.
 And this is a word I am not afraid to use, on the proviso that it is not exclusively identified with a philosophical tradition in which a metaphysical perfection and a secular imperfect representation are contrasted and connected. Plato and Hegel, to mention only two, don't own transcendence, and in the context of art transcendence does not merely describe the transition from a simulacrum to its paradigm. Other forms of transcendence, including that leap from one dimension to the other, from normal space to an extraordinary temporality, happen as well.

3.
Authenticity, a way of being which avoids clichés, shuns naïvity, escapes systems and looks for values which are rather imposed or perhaps suggested by nature than by a self-contained society, authenticity which is not a model to be described definitely but rather a sphere, a perspective perhaps, never to be attained and realized fully, authenticity seems to be the dimension to which the works of art collected at this exhibition, point a way, and the transcendence at stake here is a transcendence towards authenticity, authenticity of the work of art, authenticity of the artist and also authenticity of existence. Transcendence towards authenticity is the common denominator of the works present here, which as well share a strategy or better an attitude fit for triggering that going beyond which transcendence is. Of course, authenticity cannot be depicted in itself and thus is to be conferred and communicated differently, indirectly.
 In order to avoid the misunderstanding that I take these works of arts as a possible vehicle for a philosophical message, let me stress that this is not the case, that it cannot be the case, as all appeal in first instance, and in second and third instance, to the senses, exert a kind of aesthetic fascination, offer in some cases even the experience of an intense aesthetic beauty and yield a huge aesthetic satisfaction. They invite our eyes to feast on them, and never withdraw the invitation. On the other hand though, this beauty obviously is not the end of their experience but its beginning and in a way the condition for a further, deeper experience. It is worthwhile to look at them, carefully, as they seem to hide something, as they seem to lead somewhere. This inkling is there from the beginning onward. Hence we are seduced into a process in which we are expected to analyze the layers which are underneath, beyond the beauty and of course in the other direction result in the beauty. In this process concepts and aesthetic recognition have a role, supporting each other, alternating, until they arrive at a kind of reintegration, manifesting the domain of authenticity.
 To concretize these very abstract words, I will single out two or three aspects of these artworks which may function as means in actuating and guiding that motion of the transcendence towards authenticity.
 1. Firstly many works contain ironic or humorous or simply playful elements, which in some cases even do prevail. Yet we are not dealing here with irony or humour which doesn't take anything seriously, except perhaps for itself, that negative, superior gesture characteristic for post-modernism, discarding anything held to be of some value by somebody. To the contrary, irony is now a means of conveying something which is serious but is too fragile, given the circumstances, to be denuded, exhibited and exposed directly. One example only standing for others.
 Andreas Hofer, very much alive and working at his moment, signs his work with Andy Hope, and antedates it consistently as made in 1930. Good, very funny, the artist disappears, nobody has made the work and so on. But this is not the idea. Hofer, Hope, does not confront us with a meaningless travesty but in secrete, virtually silently, tells a story, gives a clue how to see, to read his work. Andy of course mirrors Andreas, and Hope is a translation, a bad and incorrect translation to be sure, of Hofer, as if Hofer realized that his name in German was close to what he wished it to express though literally it didn't. His assuming the name Hope is a message, a sort of  confession and a clue. Which is true as well for the antedating 1930. Looking at his work you will notice easily that Hofer has woven some episodes of the history of Germany into it, for instance by stitching the American Superman on display here a Star of David on the breast. In German history 1930 more or less marks a turning point: it is a symbol for the persecution and the destruction of the Jews which changed the face of Germany and its consciousness for good. By signing his work Andy Hope, 1930, Hofer returns to a point in history where hope was alive and where things could have gone differently, though all of us know they didn't, and we will know it forever. And thus he provides a clue to recognize in the caricature persons he draws these tragic layers, strangled hope, relentless history, and invites us to approach them with an eye for their history and tragedy and hidden authenticity.
 A second aspect present in many works is that of suggestion. Again creating a suggestion here is not the ultimate statement as if art is a repetition of a reality which is interpreted as an illusion, let's say dependent on the projection of an individual or already better of a culture. Suggestion, similarly to irony, works as an impetus to an aesthetic process which rather than taking the suggestive character in an absolute sense is prepared to investigate it, to analyse it and thus to consider it as the ambiguous starting point for, as by now is to be expected, a road to authenticity. It is prominently present in the painting of Zipp, in the sculptures of Flad, the constructions of Dahlem, in the print of van Liefhout, among others. But I will quickly discuss two examples.
 Bas van den Hurk produces paintings which at first sight look like paintings and are paintings, but on second sight by means of various kinds of attributes, such as necklaces attached to them, emphasizing gravity, pieces of textile glued upon them, and by their positions turn out not to be paintings in a common sense of the word but become elements of their real, heavy, massive environment, aesthetically pleasing but just as material as the reality of which they appear to be a part. At the same time they don't stop being paintings, thought they lost the illusory character by which they detached themselves from reality, and now show to possess a substantial, material nature.
 A second example. The highly abstract paintings of Koen Delaere exert an incredible aesthetic appeal, they are mesmerizing, and suggest to represent we do not know exactly what, we expect to find something palpable there. Which is not there. They are no depictions, no distortions, it is not the sublime, whatever it may be, that they are expressing, there is not even a concept. But we are tempted to look with attention beyond that attractive surface and search for the source of the beauty, and we will find out that there is no such thing as an object behind it. The beauty is rather one that, given certain techniques, partly developed in polemics with those of other artists, has roots in the unconscious of the artist, who attempts and attempts and attempts painting after painting, but destroys most of them and surely without using explicit criteria but trusting his experience approves only few, in which he recognizes something very much his own, something very much authentic.
 These two, irony and humour, ands suggestion, are not the only means which set into motion a process leading ultimately to the transcendence which arrives at an experience of authenticity. For instance the play with citations of and allusions to other artists and works of art, a meaningful play in this case, is omnipresent too, not only in the paintings, the along-paintings of Schmidt in der Beek which are named after Magritte. But I cannot and do not want to do justice to all of them here, in the same way as I cannot mention and comment on all artists present. All are fascinating and each offers an individual entrance to the domain of authenticity.

4.
1. This authenticity now has at least three aspects, intricately related, of which the first is to be found in the form and the idiom of the art itself. Those hoping and waiting for a clear day consciously and firmly get rid of clichés and forms and idioms which in their eyes appear as naive and no longer effective, and liberate themselves. At a certain moment adopting a form may become an imitation, a repetition, a joining of a sphere not in dynamic motion anymore. Thus one has to look for alternative forms, taking into consideration what has been become fossile and artificial and struggle for new authenticity.
 2. A second aspect is that of the authenticity of the artists themselves. As already mentioned, they find themselves more or less in the same stage of their careers and they seem to have shed off the tempestuous and adventurous, hot-headed and precipitate attempts of their younger years, nourished perhaps by anger, or by irreal wishes to directly and fundamentally influence reality. All artists, whether their works are exuberant or intimate, clearly show a strong sense of self-reflection, inversion and even intimacy. They have been finding not only in a more general sense an artistic idiom but also their individual foundation and stance.
 3. And of course, thirdly, authenticity, experienced in a work of art, recognized in an artist, sets an example, spreads a sense of a kind of life which is authentic in itself, not the life of the artist or the work of art anymore, but the life of society, of some individuals in society, of some individuals in society on a clear day at least. Thus they open the space for what they themselves are fond of calling a new sentimentality, or, as I would prefer to pronounce the word, a new senti-mentality. These artists, romantics in their way, are not so much interested in sentimental experiences as in the possibility to experience again, to sense again, reality, valuable things in reality, valuable relations of man with himself, and of one man with an other. They are looking for a new mentality to sense.

5.
On a clear day, I can see forever. Regardless of the weather outside, the lights inside function well, the space is clear, the guides are here, the works of art and their artists. Seize the opportunity and look for authenticity, see whether this afternoon is clear enough to see forever, even if this forever may last only for today, only for these few hours here. The exhibition waits for you and is opened.