Work 6) View Across The Ice at Lommarbadet.
Today we continue our restart with a simple view across the ice at a fine location that I believe you refer to as Lommarbadet. Look here, this fair town of yours keeps me guessing! Just when I feel like the place has revealed itself I turn the wheel and find a new pocket of gems and such was the case today as quite on impulse I hung a hard right off Estunavagan just past the Preem petroleum grocer and onto Lommarvagan. I know not how many times I have toured past this particular road on the way to the centre but for some fateful reason today I veered off the familiar track and it came up trumps. My decision was indeed sudden and I am afraid I rather startled an fine old couple as I skidded round the corner so perhaps you could send my apologies.
Following the road round and beaderly sniffing for a motif I eventually emerged into a generous car parking facility by the waters edge and it was crystal clear that I had chanced upon a diamond location. From the drivers seat I could see a lakeside path winding into the distance and to its left a glorious expanse of water the likes of which, had it been in England, one would need to purchase a ticket to view. On closer inspection I found that the path continued for some 500 meters next to the water before looping back on itself around a small hill forest. It seems the good people exercise their hounds in this area and I even managed to catch someones eye but we had no exchange other than the standard self conscious nod of acknowledgement I have become accustomed to. Its understandable as my appearance is unorthodox and I was purring with pleasure at scenery and bounding about in an animated fashion, not to mention the temperature was minus six and I was without coat or hat. I perhaps would not risk an exchange with myself either.
In any case I returned to the vehicle for my necessaries and took a view across the ice while I had the chance. It is a spare treatment with a hint of the tentative but it still feels like I am shaking off the rust gathered during my hiatus so I remain positive. Generally speaking the sub zero conditions have the welcome effect of cancelling out the possibility of dithering but on the other hand when its so bastard freezing one can barley make a fist then it gets difficult. The challenge with the ice I feel is to differentiate it from water which is not as easy as it sounds and indeed last year I struggled with an SAS view that I took in February of the ice at Norrby Gård1 and this was incidentally the last painting before visiting the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam that my fine Sambo arranged as a birthday present. I must tell you about that in more detail on another occasion but suffice to say I had a ball and I even dashed off a few studies of the institutional setting much to the amusement of the local guards. That is for another occasion, as is the wealth of experiences I have gathered painting in Bergby over the years but there just is no time.
As I was painting I watched a woman sledging across the ice on her spark cycle. She moved silently and swiftly to the far side then stopped, took out a stool and sat down. She began drilling a hole in the ice then fished through it for the next hour before returning. It was just me and her out there and as I worked I kept glancing over to her and I began to imagine a fanciful scene indeed, a vision for transcending ourselves and this post truth farce. Picture a frozen lake out of which climbs an individual breaking through and standing on the ice. Below the frozen water imagine the chaos of the post truth era, visible in all its bells and whistles. In the distance another individual breaks through the ice and then another. Everywhere people pop up to a new frontier of the imagination, looking for a fresh beginning and no longer playing the game of algorithmic propaganda and online memery.
Lovely but a few asterixes. No Ann rand shite above the ice. Those breaking through the ice do not shed their own past and identity but only want to move past the chaos in recognition that to continue in this way is no life. The only thing in common that the ice breakers may have is the wish to break free of the chaos and that is enough. People must realize their own desire to break through and not be convinced by those above and as in a perfect fairy tale, they must be pure of heart or the ice will not break. Above the ice is not necessarily a superior or enlightened position just a space for reconciliation and certainly not some accelerationist wonderland. Why bore you with this? Well I connect it with a growing belief in the coming importance of a new, invigorated and emancipatary individuality. This is something that would be scorned on in the past decades and impossible to propose in a critical context because of the relationship between individuals and capitalism and it’s detrimental effect on collectivity however in today’s context a new type of expressionism may be a genuine critical strategy...perhaps in the context of freeing oneself from the algorythm matrix? Well no, or rather only if this individuality can merge into a collectivity in some way...?
You know the sky in today's 'doing' betrays a hint of the piecing together approach or rather the 'painting in patches' approach that I drifted into via Cezanne but look here, there are so many things I want to say regards painting that only now whilst writing spring to mind again but I must refrain from indulging myself too much lest my correspondence dragon.2 But let me just say that since I became bewitched by the work of Old Cezanne about a year ago after reading the Danchev3 biography I have since wrangled between the contrasting approaches of himself and the Dutchman4. I settled on a fudge, but look here, I enjoy an artistic problem as much as the next hen5 and I am well aware that trying to combine Van Gogh and Cezanne is perhaps an even more batty proposition than picking up the gauntlet of plein air painting as radical anti capitalist art practice in the first place6. It is absurd from the get go! The Dutchman attacks the canvas in a barley restrained frenzy, finishing often in one day (the approach I generally take) while the Frenchman can keep a work alive for literally years on end without even covering it!?
It is due to his painting of sensations rather than the motif proper, a curious idea to be sure and something I have tried and to tell the truth I have even rather fallen for this approach and believe it to be the best way to develop a truly personal style but ultimately I am suited to speed, urgency and the connection to place that one feels through regular realisation. You know I think of them both as killers; Van Gogh a frenzied butcher while Cezanne a detached sociopathic torturer, (forgive me, perhaps I should stick to the sporting analogies)7. But absurd as it is I feel there is definitely something to be gained from tackling these impossible problems. After all it was in that spirit I took on the TAS residency in the first instance all those years ago and if I may be so bold your own residency goals seem a little eccentric8....Anyway, enough of this!
You asked about the SAS and all I can say is that in a nutshell I was shamelessly attempting to ingratiate myself to the SAS residency project by signing my works 'SAS' prior to securing the position. You say that you can find no trace of the SAS residency, well that is it exactly, it is very exclusive and I only heard about it through a contact at the Goldsmiths University. But it failed and I am still trying to wipe the egg from my face but if you would like I can offer you a catalogue of my ill fated SAS work if that would be of interest to you? Perhaps you could send an assistant to take some reproductions?9
Bests for the new year,
John
P.S - The most significant development for me during my SAS period was the decision to date my works 'post crisis': PC 6 or PC 06 - 02 to include both year and month. Ill leave it to you to work out the what and when of the crisis...10
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1. We are currently working with John to catalogue his SAS work.
2. Almost certainly a typo error. 'Dragon' should read 'drag on'. We are not aware of any relevant slang that would account for 'dragon' to be used in this context.
3. Cézanne: A Life by Alex Danchev
4. Refers to 19th century post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh.
5. Here John appears to be using the gender neutral Swedish word 'hen'.
6. See John's residency work with the Torpoint Art Service
7. See Dignity Scholarship Work 3, paragraph 5 and Torpoint Art Service Work 26, paragraph 3, line 9
8. We prefer to think of our 5 themes as ambitious.
9. We have contacted Kommune Norrtälje regarding the possibility of an assistant visiting John in Bergby to photograph the SAS work and are currently waiting for a response.
10. Based on a review of John's Torpoint Art Service writing we believe that the 'post crisis period begins in 2011. In TAS Work 8, paragraph 3, John writes:
"What I am driving at is this, I have a foothold on the practice and now my mind is turning back to more theoretical matters, chiefly our rationale of 'breakage'. We say we will not go on as before! We do not accept austerity! It is our duty to refuse to continue as if this robbery and injustice has not occurred! To continue with what was before is to accept it. They will say 'go on as before what precisely'? To that we must be clear - 2011! The political golden spike...."