Der Fetischismus des Künstlers
Aimé Fierens
About
My work departs from the interplay between seeing and not-seeing, showing and not-showing, the 'censoring' of images. In this way, a play emerges between the conceptual framework of visual art and the contemporary condition, in which laden notions such as the pedestal or the frame exist alongside a smartphone camera or commercial prints. This produces, for example, prints that are defective, yet simultaneously possess their own and new visual language. A method that can be described as destructive creation or, vice versa, creative destruction. The technical and material sensitivity of this work presupposes an orchestrated chaos, which allows contingencies and in doing so enables new work. Not only do my installations and sculptures bear traces of the creative process itself, the transport and assembly of the work also manifests anew in the presentation. The work shows a process that does not conclude in the studio, but in the gallery or museum. In this way it also reflects on the art world and the relationships at stake there. With my work, I thus attempt to explore the behind-the-scenes of the art world, much as a film can suggest off-screen elements without making them explicit. These working methods form for me a methodology to interpret references and forge a path through the monolith of images with which we are flooded today.
Project
The tendency concerning the archiving and representation of artworks within the visual arts should be examined more closely. In particular, I wish to focus on how the artwork can be fetishized through its relationship to the archive and the artist. The central questions in this research are as follows: Is it possible that an artwork is reduced to a fetish object because it stands in a particular relationship to the artist? Moreover, is it possible that the reduction of an artwork to merely a substitute object of desire occurs through its presentation, context and/or appropriation? In the installation that served as the catalyst for this research, I attempt to approach the matter of the archive and the artist's collection sculpturally. I analyze the various possibilities concerning the presentation and representation of objects and artworks. In this, 'fetishization' plays an important role, since my argument posits that the artwork has the possibility of becoming a fetish object in this representation (within an archive, artist's collection, or exhibition), whereby the position of the artwork shifts to that of a substitute object of desire and the artist themselves becomes fetishized. Up until now, this installation has had a dynamic existence, by which I mean that—like a traditional archive—the installation was never static, and things were continuously added and filtered out. Nevertheless, I am directing this project—at least temporarily—toward a final presentation, in which the work forms a definitive whole. I naturally foresee proper attention to the various stages the installation has gone through. However, the idea is that in the future I will present new interpretations of this, based on new insights, references, influences or discoveries. In my paper, I emphasize the importance (for my own practice) of other artists such as, for example, Marcel Broodthaers. These references also provide me with a foothold to position my own work, both art-historically and contemporaneously.