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To title an exhibition Jet
Lag Mambo is to invite a reading of it as something special
Travelling is special and having this jet lag feeling is also a
special feeling of de-location. Mambo is an invitation to dance.
This is not Tango, Hambo, or Hip-Hop. I want my audience to dance
the Mambo with me while having this jet lag feeling.
Mambo is danced with a partner leading. Who
leads this dance?
Under such conditions, with a jet lag feeling there will be no leader.
We just make the best of the situation. When you have this feeling
your body is displaced, yet you know there is a centre to yourself.
Putting the audience in the centre of the piece of work is to allow
them to follow their own experience, their own way of perceiving
the work.
What will the viewer's experience be?
This will depend on each individual. There is an open structure
to this new work and I do not control the final reading of the piece.
I hope viewers will recognise this displaced jet lag feeling which
is there in our daily experience. We have just begun the new millenium.
But we are still concerned with the last century in many ways. So
just over the past weeks we have experienced this jet lag feeling.
But once you enter the space you are confronted with
a very large drawing. The viewer perceives that there is a representational
aspect to this drawing only after he or she has passed the work.
The perception is after the fact. It is only on looking at it from
the second gallery space, from the future so to speak, that one
realises the drawing is a head. From one view this drawing is abstract,
it looks like wood grain or some organic form. Yet from another
view it is a figurative work. So where you situate yourself in the
room is key. Each individual chooses where to stand and from each
view the context changes, because you see different things and /or
feel different things. Displacement allows one to see from another
perspective, to also see from another viewpoint. Things look and
feel different from another point of view. The experience has to
do with self and other. Displacement allows one to find oneself
by being aware of the view of the other.
The installation employs a number of strategies
and methods. You have framed paintings and drawings and bronze sculptures.
But there are also ephemeral works, found objects and work done
directly on the gallery walls. Why are you using all of this?
Well, you see... I am not a modernist. I'm not leaving the past
and escaping into the future at all. So I don't see any complication
between body and soul, nature and culture, conscious and unconscious
processes. Traditionally an artist dealing with art based on ideas
and concepts is not supposed to deal with craftmanship. And artists
dealing with general notions of history cannot personalise it, otherwise
they land up with psychology and expressionism. I like to work with
these tensions and have them present in my work. I am concerned
with pointing to new contexts and transforming concepts into material
objects. There is a visual as much as a conceptual dimension in
the work I do, and I love dealing with both. I love this complexity.
Text information
Gavin Jantjes in conversation with Carlos Capelán,
in Carlos Capelán - Jet Lag
Mambo, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Hovikodden 2000. Exhibition
catalogue (back
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