SPACE

Dutch artist Thomas Raat completed his residency at Space  from July - September 2008. Here he speaks about his exhibition at SPACE, the London work ethic and painting with tape...

You said yesterday that you were sick of looking at your work?
Well the way this show has been built up is quite different from all the shows I do in general. Being so close to the coming together of the show is quite new to me because I normally I make the work in the studio.  I do have the same problems though and its kind of the same feeling. I always cover the works up when I leave, as I like the idea that when I am not there they are not exposed, they are only exposed when I need to work on them or when they are in function in a show. 

So has your experience of working within the space you are exhibiting been different working in the studio?
Yes definitely - you are constantly aware of the fact that this is the environment in which the work is going to be presented. You really observe the walls and you project how things will look. Of course it helps, and if I was able to have two months to put up every show I would be quite successful.

But in terms of working in the space do you think it influences the way you are working?
It does have an effect, but because I know I was going to work here, the coming together of the work was different too. I planned it all before hand and I knew what I was going to do and what I was going to make.

So the exhibition has become the ‘work’?
Yes which is quite different to the normal use of a studio. Having a studio is a reason to get out of bed, take a train and go to work like going to the office. It’s a room which gives body to my work and gives it a place, which is different from being on the edge of an exhibition. In the studio you can mess about, play around and you can throw things out there and it’s more private. I don’t allow other people in the studio really, but here you can’t say no to people walking through the gallery.

You’ve talked in the past about losing control of the work once it leaves the studio – is this true of your own work?
The work I do is never mine, I don’t consider myself to be part of the work and I don’t think I am emotionally attached to it – the works are not my children! I try to avoid handwriting and personal issues; I operate as an observer.

So would you say that work is about your relationship to art and the making of art?
It’s got two sides. On one hand it’s all based on my concerns, but I’m not dictating. Everything I do already exists in a way and by changing the content and the context in which it operates, it becomes my work. I’m not just interested from a painting perspective, to have an empty canvas and to create a new work. I am much more interested in trying to understand what I already know and how I grew up with art and the rules surrounding art. So what I do in this show is take two opposites like hardcore modernism and try and put it against the outskirts of post-modernism which is the sculpture and the pamphlet. The pamphlet is from an internet site about Neoism.

Do you think their attitudes are comparable?
The beautiful thing about modernism is that it’s based on belief and salvation and that the artists had a real goal in the making the work. It was about the idea that you are doing something valuable, aiming for something and trying try to reach a level of purity and something which is real. It’s like religion: everyday I wish I was a religious person. I think it’s the most beautiful thing in the world that whatever happens you still have god and he gives you salvation, but it just doesn’t work for me. Its the same with modernism; I wish I had that ability to create work from a real modernist perspective, but I can’t. My only way out is to deconstruct the rules, regulations and structures of art.  

There is a sacrilegious aspect to what you’re doing, is that a dialogue regarding the crisis you have with religion?
The religious aspect of my work has got to do with wanting to believe in it, but its pretty hard. My work has never been about politics, or about the world, it’s really dealing with problems in art itself and that’s more than enough. From a wider perspective it’s pretty difficult to believe in something now. So even as an artist, its such slippery ground you are on. I can't ever make paintings out of the blue which is purely based on a gesture or on expressing your thoughts - it would never work for me. I am just too skeptical, but it doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate that perspective. There are lots of really interesting painters who are not concerned with my concepts or my starting points, but I consider an artist as someone with a good working brain and the technical physical aspects of the work is less interesting, it doesn’t mean you have to be smart but I think that as an artist you should try and sculpt your brain before you try to make work, instead of just diving in.

KLF feature heavily in this show, is Bill Drummond an influence?
Well for one he doesn’t consider himself an artist, and two I completely disagree with what he does. I just need to work with them (KLF) as a good example to put against modernism as they are working in the dark and they don’t see what they are doing. They are aiming for something without knowing what it is. I think an artist should know what their aim is and I am not trying to dictate and say that art is this and that, but it’s just my attempt to understand it and to get a hold of imagery and language. The speaker sculpture came from re-doing an existing KLF album cover and playing the album in reverse through those speakers. It’s mainly all about the disability of a proper communication of art and the problem of representation.  

Have you ever been tempted to commit an art crime like the ones you reference in your work?
No and I want to stress that I am not interested in art crimes or why people commit them. I am more concerned about how people treat the art work afterwards and how it changes. In a poetic sense it loses its virginity and vulnerability.  Its similar to finding out something is a forgery - how the image stays the same but the valuation changes. I am interested in how the people involved and the change of context effects how we look at art.

So it’s about the authenticity of the artwork?
I think that is of huge importance if you decide to make art. I think that the value of art must be in its own reflection. It cannot just be in the physique of it: a good work of art has both content and form going hand in hand. What I said about it being based on an intellectual process doesn’t mean that it can only be verbal. I do believe in the visual and there should be a delicate, well-executed form to give it some life and existence.

Do you think it’s important to go to private views?
It’s crazy to say that it’s not! I lived in London for two years around 2006 - 2007 and I made a lot of contacts. I know quite a lot of artists and bumping into people is nice. The few months I've spent here have felt very supportive. It does give you a really comfortable feeling and you operate best if you feel comfortable.

I really liked the working ethos in London, its quite different from Amsterdam. If you want to keep your head above the water its hard work. There are so many artists in London and if you choose to be an artist its quite a risk and a responsibility towards yourself. One of the results of that is that a lot of people are working a lot harder. I like that because the work just gets better the more you do, like training. I wasn’t born with talent - you have to work at it. I was fascinated by painting from an early age and I painted, read and looked at art and I still do, but I am creatively crippled.

In terms of process?
Well I cant draw…

Can you paint?
Technically I can, but I stopped painting and the last couple of years I mainly painted with plastics, by building up layers.

So why have you substituted paint for tape?
I was painting with oils on canvas and I thought that they all looked nice but they were not working, and they were not doing anything: they were just paintings, just oils on canvas. I needed something more. 

So I had a problem - the only thing I knew about was painting, I wanted to be involved in painting and if I wanted to be an artist I should base my work around the grammar of painting, again because that’s what I know the most about.

So for a substitute for paint, to be able to still make two-dimensional imagery, what I thought I’d do was to ‘fake’ painting and to imitate it in a really literal sense. If you look at 17^th century paintings it’s really interesting to analyse them and its just layer over layer over layer. I basically copied all of those layers with film and plastics and it turned out the results were amazing and again that’s just training. There’s no talent being able to cut and paste well. I think after about fifty or sixty paintings I thought that it seemed to work.

So are these found images?
This piece is similar to the pamphlet, and if you put all the words together its difficult to read and the same goes here (referring to ‘B/W’) it’s the problem of representation and communication with imagery. These are all snapshots from Neoist post-modernist events or performances and there are a lot of steps before the final pieces are finished. The photograph, has been cropped and made black and white. I take them from the internet and they are very grainy and blurry and trace them make A4 drawings of them just with a pen, so you can’t see what it is you are tracing. I didn’t know what was top or bottom or left or right unless they are really obvious, but most the time I didn’t know what it was. Then you choose which way round it goes, get all the lines filled in, and then you get this imagery. It’s all been randomly hung by the technician who didn’t know which way up they went. It wasn’t about how he felt, he just put them up as they came out of the box. What’s really important is that this work is one piece and there are no individuals there. The problem of the representation of art is that it can never dictate itself; it is always the viewer that dictates. That’s why I thought it was interesting to have them by accident. This is a bonus of course, as initially the plan was to hang them the right way up because the idea that I made them without knowing what the images were was enough, but this takes it a step further.

Where did the idea of the candles come from?
They are replicas of Barnett Newman sculptures which are completely made out of steel. The idea of the candle itself has a religious connotation but it’s not really about the candle or the effect that it’s giving light. The most important thing is that it is burning down so it’s kind of making fun of his work. I think they are really stupid sculptures that Barnett Newman did, but I really love those base bits so I thought if I redo that as a candle holder, and then burn the other bits down. When you activate the piece by lighting it, you also destroy it so it works as a cycle, since you can refresh the candles. By celebrating it you destroy it. By destroying it you actually celebrate it. 

But are you celebrating Barnett Newman’s work or being irreverent?
It’s both, I am not dictating. It would be naive to think that the only existence of the work I do is within my gesture, because there are so many associations. Of course I would love everybody to understand what I am saying but that would be naïve. Especially with working with already recognisable imagery, it would never only be my own story which is being told. If you use candles there are plenty of references and I can say that its not about religion and its just about them burning down, but you cant avoid that.

I wished I was celebrating it, I would love to believe in all that.  And it’s a really good question but I cant answer it because I do take the piss by recreating something; its not very nice to twist a Mondrian on his side and he would probably be annoyed.  Same goes for these things (refers to ‘Corrections’) its just making fun and the large borders around these pieces stress that these are stupid little things. This is a photograph of a Malevich painting which someone attacked, so I tried to restore it and tipp-ex his graffiti back out. But its not about restoring it; it’s about the space in between.

The one next to it is a Willem De Kooning drawing which was erased by Rauschenberg, and I have gone over and emphasised the bits that you could still see. The only thing Rauschenberg said about that piece was that it is poetry. So if people asked him ‘what are you trying to do?’ and ‘what does it mean?’ that is all he would say. There are no rules in poetry, and if you call your work poetic you just wash your hands clean. 

So the artists that you reference in your work though it appears irreverent - is it more about this dialogue?
I admire Mondrian’s position on modernism and the way he developed it. Talking about religion he really thought his work was mediating between god and the masses. Because everything is based on context, what I do is actually quite simple, I have just twisted his work 45 degrees and from all of his theories that’s the worst thing that can happen to a Mondrian piece because it’s so calculated. It’s the idea of purity and he has all these rules e.g. no diagonals, because that doesn’t exist within purity. I thought it’d be interesting to use the frames as an active part of the work so that the diamond shape of the frame stresses the fact that it’s not supposed to be that way.

I noticed your particular attention to detail in the set up of the space – do you think these pieces would  work in any space? The detail to the lighting and everything feels more like you are setting up a drama stage...
I think that every time you set up a show that works together it’s always a stage, like going to the movies. You stage it and try to make the conditions as good as possible, but it’s all fake. Art doesn’t really exist does it?

But as we just talked about everything being a stage, do you want people to see the work in a particular way?
It would be nice if people understand that you can’t just cal anything art. I’ve been taught on several occasions that if you are an artist or you make a living from art, and you create something, it doesn’t necessarily mean its art. Art is only art when it works.

What are you doing after this?
I am going to do a large mural in Belgium in plastic, which will be a really good show as there are a lot of good artists involved in it. There are also a couple of group shows coming up and I will also have to dive in to the studio to make some work for art fairs.

Will you come back to London?
I’ll be around during Frieze, to direct people over here to see the show! And I will probably do a talk maybe if the catalogue happens – we are waiting for funding – then maybe we will launch that with a talk.

Thomas Raat currently lives and works in Amsterdam.