Work in progress
Work in progress
– an interview with Honoré d’O right in the middle of the preparations for Moderna Museet Project
The works of Belgian artist Honoré d’O gradually evolve during a four-week stay in a dreary cold Stockholm. The hub of the project is the small boarding-house room where he stays, and the surrounding neighbourhoods in central Stockholm. The raw material is made up of videotaped events, situations, and things, which Honoré d’O either observes or stages. They are subsequently joined together to form a new, odd, unexpected composition. His take on Moderna Museet is in the same vein; empty spaces and anonymous corners are transformed into places for reflection and encountering. Honoré d’O wants to offer alternatives to the order we usually take for granted in art as well as in everyday life.
Honoré d’O describes his work as being organic; every new day in the foreign city sets the direction for the work of art. At the time of our interview there are still 14 days left to work in, and even Honoré d’O himself can’t predict what the project will look like when it’s finished. The experiences from the day are addressed at night, and no-one knows what will happen the next morning.
Even so, chance or coincidence do not determine what the viewers will eventually see; rather, it’s the result of a conscious effort on the part of Honoré d’O to put himself in a creative situation. His preparations for the visit to Stockholm consisted of attempts at trying to “clean” out conceptions of the city and the stay there from his mind. And in keeping with that, an important aspect of his work is focused on not thoughtlessly accepting certain conditions in life; or, better said, on trying out other ways of viewing ourselves and the world surrounding us.
Honoré d’O’s project takes place inside Moderna Museet, and outside of it. He offers a new use for the museum, and works simultaneously with and against the norms placed on exhibitions by the architecture. Once again, then, it’s about finding alternatives to the prevailing order. Honoré d’O makes use of the museum’s “non-places” – spaces not intended for experiencing art or for any other kind of reflection. This involves empty spaces such as hallways and other similar passages as well as corners behind doors and below stairways.
The endeavour to find other possibilities, other options, is symbolised additionally in this project by a small paper plane that appears here and there. The plane – which the visitors themselves can fold – in turn embodies the “Siamese paradox”. Briefly, the paradox says that many inherent possibilities and states are simultaneously both each other’s opposite and prerequisite.
Known as an artist reluctant to put words to his work, Honoré d’O is unusually precise in his description. He characterises his work as “total communication”, the goal being to get every viewer to the highest possible level of understanding when experiencing art. That is to say that each and every one should be able to gain something from his works, regardless of your being a newcomer to art or a full-fledged art critic. He also claims that his works – as well as art in general – at best demonstrates the possibility to see life from many different perspectives. And that attitude seems to be an excellent way to start a new year with Moderna Museet Projekt.