An interview by
Dr. Ellen Andrea Seehusen
Arne Quinze regards creating as a constant confrontation with the self, which is subject to the personal evolution that you go through as human being. A conversation about inspiration and life.
Let us discuss your art My Secret Garden, My Safe Garden. What made you do this kind of work? How do you let yourself be absorbed in this Safe Garden?
AQ: When I stand in front of a painting or a sculpture that I am working on it first and foremost is not only a challenge but also a confrontation with myself. Because you work on that same piece of art for hours and hours, you lose yourself in it entirely. It is almost like a trance, during which you are completely plunged in thought. You reach the core of your inner self and discover what lives inside of your mind. Thanks to this you learn so much about yourself and it is because of that that I sometimes feel as if I am standing before my work of art without having any clothes on. Working in this self-conscious way made me discover my gardens too, My Secret Garden, My Safe Garden.
What do they represent exactly?
AQ: Everyone has their secrets and personal way of organizing life. In general a lot of people have become afraid to say what they really think and to share this with others. Although some do not realize it, everyone needs something of their own that is not shared with others, a personal imagination and fantasy that is protected. These works of art have relations with the things that I make with regards to My Home My House My Stilthouse. This forms part of My Safe Garden, a secure garden in which I place my home. When I was a child I already created worlds in my head that I formed part of. I either constructed those entirely new worlds in shoe boxes or I saw them in the big moss beds in the woods.
Is it a kind of escape from this world to another universe?
AQ: Escaping the day-to-day reality is not the aim of visiting My Secret Garden. Everything that I have experienced or seen is assembled here. It is the result of everything that I absorbed up until that moment. I am very realistic. The more you understand how life is organized, the more conscious you deal with it and the more space becomes available in your head in order to dream.
Indeed, it stands beyond doubt that by being calm about reality space is created to reflect on other things. It is a given, you are not looking for reality or trying to interpret it, you already know what it is. From there on you can start dreaming about things again. Are you sometimes surprised by what you experience when looking at a work of art from a distance a couple of days after you finished it and completely lost yourself in it? Do you still discover elements in your work or about yourself that surprise you?
AQ: Absolutely, none of my works are based on coincidence. Every piece of art has a long history before I concretize it in reality. Ev- erything needs to mature in my head first.
Does that mean that you create consciously or unconsciously?
AQ: Consciously.
But before that, you probably go through an unconscious process.
AQ: Before I make something, I really think about what it should be. Once I am convinced of the how and why, I set the idea free and it is converted in concrete works of art. It is a kind of unstop- pable creative trance – although trance is not the perfect word here – it is more like a flow that takes you along. The creation comes from the core of the inner self, you feel so related to what you are making at that time. What is more, after finishing a work of art you either like it or you hate it. The things that I hate are removed im- mediately, until the things that I like remain. I am then able to en- joy those works and feel good about it, and I always discover new parts of myself. Here in my workshop I am surrounded by different pieces of art that I made for clients or institutions. I like to leave them here for a while or even keep hold of them forever. They act as a kind of television to me.
That is what I meant with the question whether you can still be surprised about what you discover in your own paintings. We are sitting here on your sofa, placed in the centre of your living room. Unlike with most people, there is no a television in front of us but a painting with a height of 2 meters and a width of 3.5 meters. In that paining, I can see a Stilthouse, a garden, numbers on houses and a fence.
AQ: I spend a lot of nights in front of this painting holding a glass of wine. Hours pass without me realizing what time it is. I just get caught up in the details that I keep on discovering. When I am creating, I feel as if I am naked in front of the canvas. I do not come upon any boundaries. I feel completely free. No fuss, only the creation process, only purity. At the same time it also entails a direct confrontation with yourself, as you afterwards see what you actually created. I am constantly competing with myself. After all, the biggest challenge in life is trying to understand yourself. Once you have reached that moment, you look at life from an entirely different point of view. It stimulates me every day to keep on in- vestigating who I am. That is how I discovered my works based on my gardens. They are the basis of my personal world.
That is the basis of philosophy, first recognizing and understanding yourself, which of course is not easy. Shallow people think that it is simple, but it is not. You are not aware of everything that is going on in the subconscious, unless it can be expressed artistically by writing, sculpturing or painting for instance. Did you finish this entire painting that you are looking at now in one single session?
AQ: A lot of my paintings act as studies. In the beginning I as- sume they will be finished in one session, but it might as well last hours or days. You also have to take into account the preparatory phase, during which the frames are handmade and the wooden panels are carefully prepared. I only work on wooden panels because I have to make scratches in the panels, a process that wouldn't work on a softer canvas. This preference for wooden pan- els probably dates back from my period as a graffiti artist, when I only had hard walls to spray. In a certain sense I like the rough- ness of this art form. Music influences me the most, but I also look at the works of other artists and sometimes I'm totally blown away by the intensity, by the world created by them, for example by Paul McCarthy or Anselm Kiefer. They allow you to feel as if you form part of their living environment, no matter how grotesque or dark it may be... they fascinate.
Do you like to explore the creative process taking place before them achieving a suchlike result?
AQ: I like the end product. But I have to say that I am not really influenced by it, the Asian culture inspires me a lot more. From childhood on I have been crazy about Asian movies, even though I did not understand any of it back then.
Were you touched by symbolism?
AQ: Yes I was and especially by the way they view life and the balance that they are trying to find. In their age-old architecture this search for balance is also noticeable. And when you see how fragilely that they can paint landscapes... I would not say 'less is more' but it is just very subtle and cautious.
This aesthetics, fragile, simple art focuses on the essential ele- ments. In one line you can read the entire meaning.
AQ: Next to this strong image of the old Asian culture which has already influenced a lot of artists, I am enormously fascinated by the evolution that is currently going on in China as well as in Asia.
The old Zen philosophy focuses on what is important, pushes aside everything which is not essential and in this way renders uninter- esting details insignificant. The meaning lies in the things them- selves and is so simple yet has a deeper significance. That is what is so fascinating.
AQ: With one single drawing they can tell an entire story, if you really understand what the creation means. It contains a complex world, just like how I see my boxes and gardens as part of my existence, my world. The mirrors that I integrate in these works are an important element to create depth – not in the literal sense of the word – but to draw people into my world and let them be part of it.
Do you let them into your world? To which extent do you allow them to enter? Can they decide themselves or do you say how far that they can go?
AQ: I share my world with them. My work forms part of my world and I give people access to that part of my world, which is an extension of my existence. You will also discover a certain evolution in my work. My last boxes are far more fragile than the first ones that I made. It is proof of the evolution that one goes through as human being. When you are young you want to change the entire world and you play the rebel, but at a certain moment you come to the conclusion that you are asking yourself who you really are and what is important in your life.
You first build your house and only afterwards you grow a garden around it, which is interesting to see. Or has the garden always felt like a part of the whole to you?
AQ: I think that the garden was there all along but I just needed some time to fully discover it and to be able to really go there. Maybe it was a part of my existence which was restricted at first. This is what is so typical of human beings: putting up fences around us. That is actually the essence of My Safe Garden.
Indeed, we first put up fences around our house or even in our own thoughts, but in your work you can pass through the fences. What does that allude to?
AQ: Fences can have a symbolic meaning. They exist in your head and I believe that everyone has them. Some people even fail to see the world through those fences. They have lost complete sense of reality. Sometimes however, you need to break these barriers. Not only do I regard my work as a reflection on who I am but also as a large-scale study about how people are and how they behave. Dif- ferent cultures show that there are various patterns with regards to how we live. Every culture has its own traditions and interacts in a different way. After observing these kinds of human variation I am always surprised, but at the same time I understand myself better because I incorporate all these elements into my own living environment.
That is only true for people who open up to the world. I find your views on the Asian culture, a culture which is based on Zen and the teachings of Lao-Tze and Confucius which is going through a high-speed economic growth at the moment, extremely fascinat- ing. Although the Asians are currently experiencing an evolution, they still hold on to certain sociological traditions. Nowadays they travel, they fly from here to there, they build enormous towers but they simply hold on to simple traditions in daily life. In the past they needed to cut themselves off from the self-conscious for a very long time.
AQ: The fact that the evolution towards a more western model keeps on going still amazes me. How is this possible? This has never happened before, not in any era. This evolution has both positive and negative aspects, which is perfectly normal in a country with one trillion inhabitants. We cannot image what it feels like to be part of such a country, but we should not fear it. I really think it is a pity that I will not be alive for another 250 years in order to see what this has all lead to.
We have to open up our minds in order to learn from this change. It is a mutual event during which we can exchange our knowledge. This brings me back to your work. What do you learn from people looking at your work? I am sure that you talk to them about what they see in My Secret Garden. You no doubt find it intriguing to find out what they see in your work, especially if it is something that you yourself had never noticed before. Or is this not the case; do the things that people deduct from your work perhaps tell us more about their own characteristics?
AQ: In any case, it says more about them than it says about me. After all, my work is done for me once I finish it. Going public with your work is a lot like a stage play. The public has its own opinion about what you do. For them, it all needs to start at that moment, but for me, the whole process is already finished. Only one thing is sure: they love it or they hate it. When people start looking for connections in my work with their own lives it fills me with a sense of satisfaction. It means that they are opening up their hearts. But whether they like it or not, everyone will see some- thing in it because I base myself on people and their behaviour. It means that my work acts as a confrontation for everyone who takes a look at it. This creation process is a compulsion to me, an inner need to express myself.
This is extremely important. A lot of people do not dare to express themselves or have the feeling that they are not able to, but we all have our thoughts and sensitivity about nature, our house, our sur- roundings... Do the numbers that can often be seen on your works of art actually mean something?
AQ: It is my more or less voyeuristic view on people. If you are walking around on the street and you catch a glimpse of the interior behind a curtain, you immediately start creating a whole fictitious universe of the people living there. If I lived in the city, a spyglass is the first thing that I would buy in order to watch the home of my neighbours. These numbers feed the imagination in order to create a story about a certain place.
Numbers are also a way of categorizing; they give the house a name. They also form a community that is arranged on the basis of the order of the numbers. But it is just as well a story of being together and interaction or connection between human beings. Numbers connect us. After all, when somebody asks you where you live, you give that person your house number.
AQ: A house without a number is like a child without a name. A number provides a house with an identity.
You sometimes even cross out numbers.
AQ: That means that the people no longer live there, that the house is empty. I sometimes cross out my own name or certain elements. In life you have to put things into perspective in order to be able to move forward. A lot of people forget where they come from and who they really are.
Do you think that people take themselves or things too seriously?
AQ: You need to be very aware of what you do but you cannot take it too seriously. Otherwise, you will not be able to make big things. If you take yourself too seriously, you no longer function properly, you lose a part of yourself. What is more, you lose a part of your existence. It limits you to go to the core of your existence, your safe garden.
You make it seem as if it is kind of like staying in your own box without crossing any borders. One last question: with regards to your colours, or better said colour, I once read that it makes people happy, but I would like to know if it has something to do with how you feel in life as well.
AQ: The red-orange colour returns in a lot of works of art and has a myriad of meanings. The red colour can attract or repulse in nature at the same time. It is the colour of the blood that symbolizes death or life. Red fruits almost seem to beg you to eat them. In some cultures people paint red on their faces in order to express power. To me it is therefore a deeply human colour. If you would have to choose which colour could best represent the human being, it would have to be this one.
You obviously feel good about this colour. Do you not think that people feel somewhat uncomfortable when they see this intense co- lour or does it not occur that people tell you that they do not like it?
AQ: It is a given that not everyone feels comfortable with a co- lour containing so much tension. The fact that we are not all the same makes life interesting as well as the way in which people get inspired by my work or do not. I cannot stress enough that I regard my work as a study about how I experience life, how people in general experience their lives. I try to convey my findings with regards to this, inspired by everything and everyone that I meet in life, to the broad public.
So you started your study of and search for inspiration in life at a very young age?
AQ: From childhood onwards I have been passionate about life in all its aspects. Every day I tell myself: "this is only the starting point." And I will keep on saying it to myself as long as I live. This is the beginning.
That is a true artist speaking. How often do you see artists still creating once they are approaching their eighties, or are they still young at heart?
AQ: I am going to die while creating.
Dr. Ellen Andrea Seehusen is a self-employed art consultant with many years of experience and the driving force behind the Hamburg Art week.
An interview by
Kjeld Kjeldsen
The question of how people live in the city or in nature is a constant recurring theme in Arne Quinze's work. Kjeld Kjeldsen, curator at the Louisiana Museum for Modern Art, is fascinated by the way he tries to answer this question. For the Living exposition, an exhibition focusing on the theme of housing in all of its aspects, the artist built My Home My House My Stilthouse.
AQ: With My Home My House My Stilthouse I investigate what "home" really means and I try to find my own position in it. As a child you build your first house by crawling under the table and covering it up with a blanket. In this way you get access to your first very own universe nobody is allowed to enter. In the next phase you grow up and you suddenly don't want to walk around naked anymore. This is another boundary people impose on themselves. They put on clothes in order to stop feeling vulnerable. In the following phase you actually build a real house, you put up walls around you. It's fascinating to see how buildings and cities are formed and how the planning of these is subject to an evolution throughout time as well as to an evolution between different cultures. Not only do people put up walls around them for protection, but they also want to create a certain distance between themselves and others. When laying out a garden, the first thing people do is putting up a fence around it in order to mark it off. That's why I overemphasize the scale of the fences forming part of the installation than they would be in real life. As soon as people possess something the term "mine" becomes extremely important in marking the ownership of their commodities. My Home, My Garden… The letters I write on my installation form a substantial part in underlining this principle, in one single sentence I scream out what's mine and what's not yours.
I got acquainted with your work for the first time via magazines under the form of Uchronia, a sculpture you made for the Burning Man festival (a yearly festival organized in the Nevada desert, USA). Shortly after that I visited you in Rouen during the construction of Camille. Then it became clear to me that you also put big installations in an urban context, a concept that perfectly harmonizes with the Living exposition. It is an exposition dealing with themes such as housing, accommodation and creating a home with crossovers between art, architecture and anthropology. Suddenly My Home My House My Stilthouse turned out to be a metaphor for everything that the exposition comprises, it is art, it is architecture, it asks questions and makes us think about how we live and organize housing. And so the discussion about what to do in the future starts. We return to the base, young architects investigate other ways to build than say ten years ago.
AQ: Exactly this development made me start constructing Stilthouses. In a certain sense they reflect the human existence possessing long legs being very fragile but they survive every situation and adjust to the circumstances and surroundings they are exposed to. Orange-red beams are integrated in the construction on purpose giving the sculptures even more human features. The primitive finishing work is intentionally as I expect to incite people to start dreaming about their lives themselves.
That is another focus point of this exposition, the dream you can have about living. Although this colour heavily contrasts with the green surroundings, it harmonizes with it at the same time. A dialogue originates between nature and sculpture.
AQ: Normally you're not allowed to touch the art in museums, but in this case you're supposed to walk through the various parts of the installation and touch it: you have to feel it. This small Secret Garden, and actually the entire installation, forms part of My Safe Garden, my secure space I create for myself. I got inspiration for My Safe Garden when I was asked to paint a series for an exposition as an ode to impressionism. When I was young and I laid my eyes upon the paintings of Claude Monet he made in his garden in Giverny, I was already excited back then and felt as if I was blown away into another universe. The more that I worked on this series, the more I lost myself in my thoughts and that is how I discovered my inner garden. Each and every one of us has a suchlike secret garden, even though it most often exists inside the head. This forms part of my soul and my fantasy, thoughts that others don't get hold of or can't take part in. That's why I place my garden in reality on a platform: nobody can enter.
You already use the urban space like that, you add something to it. But here in the museum you depart from another position, as one first needs to enter the museum to see the work.
AQ: The Louisiana Museum for Modern Art demonstrates how it should work for museums. I'm amazed about the daily number of people visiting, visitors are waiting in line to enter and the museum is not even located in the centre of a big city. Of course the other context plays a role here for my work. As a visitor you already know you will be confronted with art, but on the street the surprise effect of suddenly bumping into an artwork is at play. At the start of assembling constructions some people don't like what you're doing because you disturb their daily routine. Camille (Rouen, 2010) is a classic example of this unfavourable attitude. The bridge was closed off: no traffic could pass by for several months. In normal circumstances 40 percent of the daily traffic is led over that bridge. The more the structure made progress the more positive the attitude grew towards closing off the bridge for traffic indefinite. At the end of the construction process, the citizens were really looking forward to the opening. Not only the end result, but the entire process makes it worth while to build public installations. During the official opening I no longer consider the artwork as my own, at that moment I pass it on to the people. Temporary installations offer inhabitants the opportunity to dream about their city and to see it from another point of view: a reflection of the old against the new. According to me the same effect occurs in the context of a museum. The view of the garden is changed completely for couple of months. When I built the Cityscape (Brussels, 2007) I received a letter from an old lady one day telling me she finally met her neighbours by talking about the installation. When making a suchlike installation communication is the ultimate objective, people have to talk to one another.
On this location you make your own street with oversized fences that were built a lot smaller at first. Let me call it an entrance to the core structure of the installation. It means that visitors of the park already form part of the installation without them actually realizing it.
AQ: At the starting point of the installation I didn't expect to get this insight whereby it seemed necessary to make the fences as high as possible to emphasize the perception of entering private premises. Once you're standing in between those fences, you're drawn to the Stilthouse via a boulevard that looks quite fragile in contrast with the fences.
Do you remove everything after an exposition and reuse all the material?
AQ: This installation contains wooden beams we used for projects in Lebanon and Russia. Reusing material seems evident to me, even though I have to use new wood for bigger installations from time to time. In that case we use certified wood containing a label guaranteeing for every cut tree, a new one is planted. Besides that the unusable wood is recycled in wooden panels used on construction sites or for cupboards. You have to take your responsibility, it's not just about art but also about how we live, how we communicate, how we deal with nature. We have forgotten who we are and where we come from. What we experienced in Rouen exceeded expectations. Even the strongest opponents signed a petition to keep Camille as permanent installation on the day it was deconstructed. Despite the fact some constructions only remain for a limited period of time, they still have the ability to change the atmosphere, even after removal: an emptiness remains.
Today people are living in gated cities and gates communities. Do you see a link with your work when talking about safety and demarcation?
AQ: Housing is by definition not just one fact, it consists of a myriad of visions. Everyone thinks he or she has found the optimal modus vivendi but eventually we all are rooted in specific frameworks. I'm always curious as to how others define living.
The appropriation of a personal zone returns in a lot of your projects. When you're building a city you have to take into account you have to stay within a certain zone as well.
AQ: Uchronia (Nevada, 2006), the experiment we carried out in the desert, illustrates this zoning perfectly. For miles you can't find signs of borders, only the grand desert that completely surrounds you, an unbearable openness. As soon as you take a twig and carve in the sand you limit yourself. However, the unpleasant feeling disappears immediately because you're in your own small square, your piece of land in the wide desert. People need these axioms enabling them to feel good. Even though I have an open mind, I still fence off my own property as soon as I'm the sole owner of it. I need this protection and categorization: My Home My House. Have you ever seen the movie Dogville (director Lars Von Trier)? In that movie it's pointed out which zone belongs to whom by means of white lines only. This movie harmonizes with this exposition because the basis of this theme asks within which lines, zones, ... we live.
For this exposition we also selected two architects that work together, a Norwegian and a Finn. For their project they base themselves on the Scandinavian way of viewing architecture. Basic elements such as fire, water and light determine the core of their view on architecture. These basic elements vary depending on the place where you live. In the south you need shade and water to cool down, in the north you need light and fire to get warm.
AQ: People living in nature use more basic elements than people living in the city when it comes to constructing buildings. It stands without doubt that in nature you are directly confronted with those elements of nature and once in the city, people often forget that we're surrounded different living conditions. A lot of cities around the globe look the same although they're located on different continents. You find identical buildings or uniform streets. One can no longer detect differences, people put up concrete walls around them.
Climate involves big problems as well. Wherever we live, everyone wants to have the same climate conditions in their house. If you live in a colder zone, you need the heat to warm up your house. If you live in a warmer area, then you need cooling systems. This leads to the fact that we no longer think about the differences that occur in various zones and areas. We have to go back to the way it was and ask ourselves where the differences lie. From that point we have to depart in order to build and to find out how we want to live.
AQ: We live in closed-off spaces afraid of opening our windows and doors. tain place.
Kjeld Kjeldsen is curator at the Louisiana Museum for Modern Art and the driving force behind the Living Exhibition.
AQ: When I stand in front of a painting or a sculpture that I am working on it first and foremost is not only a challenge but also a confrontation with myself. Because you work on that same piece of art for hours and hours, you lose yourself in it entirely. It is almost like a trance, during which you are completely plunged in thought. You reach the core of your inner self and discover what lives inside of your mind. Thanks to this you learn so much about yourself and it is because of that that I sometimes feel as if I am standing before my work of art without having any clothes on. Working in this self-conscious way made me discover my gardens too, My Secret Garden, My Safe Garden.
What do they represent exactly?
AQ: Everyone has their secrets and personal way of organizing life. In general a lot of people have become afraid to say what they really think and to share this with others. Although some do not realize it, everyone needs something of their own that is not shared with others, a personal imagination and fantasy that is protected. These works of art have relations with the things that I make with regards to My Home My House My Stilthouse. This forms part of My Safe Garden, a secure garden in which I place my home. When I was a child I already created worlds in my head that I formed part of. I either constructed those entirely new worlds in shoe boxes or I saw them in the big moss beds in the woods.
Is it a kind of escape from this world to another universe?
AQ: Escaping the day-to-day reality is not the aim of visiting My Secret Garden. Everything that I have experienced or seen is assembled here. It is the result of everything that I absorbed up until that moment. I am very realistic. The more you understand how life is organized, the more conscious you deal with it and the more space becomes available in your head in order to dream.
Indeed, it stands beyond doubt that by being calm about reality space is created to reflect on other things. It is a given, you are not looking for reality or trying to interpret it, you already know what it is. From there on you can start dreaming about things again. Are you sometimes surprised by what you experience when looking at a work of art from a distance a couple of days after you finished it and completely lost yourself in it? Do you still discover elements in your work or about yourself that surprise you?
AQ: Absolutely, none of my works are based on coincidence. Every piece of art has a long history before I concretize it in reality. Ev- erything needs to mature in my head first.
Does that mean that you create consciously or unconsciously?
AQ: Consciously.
But before that, you probably go through an unconscious process.
AQ: Before I make something, I really think about what it should be. Once I am convinced of the how and why, I set the idea free and it is converted in concrete works of art. It is a kind of unstop- pable creative trance – although trance is not the perfect word here – it is more like a flow that takes you along. The creation comes from the core of the inner self, you feel so related to what you are making at that time. What is more, after finishing a work of art you either like it or you hate it. The things that I hate are removed im- mediately, until the things that I like remain. I am then able to en- joy those works and feel good about it, and I always discover new parts of myself. Here in my workshop I am surrounded by different pieces of art that I made for clients or institutions. I like to leave them here for a while or even keep hold of them forever. They act as a kind of television to me.
That is what I meant with the question whether you can still be surprised about what you discover in your own paintings. We are sitting here on your sofa, placed in the centre of your living room. Unlike with most people, there is no a television in front of us but a painting with a height of 2 meters and a width of 3.5 meters. In that paining, I can see a Stilthouse, a garden, numbers on houses and a fence.
AQ: I spend a lot of nights in front of this painting holding a glass of wine. Hours pass without me realizing what time it is. I just get caught up in the details that I keep on discovering. When I am creating, I feel as if I am naked in front of the canvas. I do not come upon any boundaries. I feel completely free. No fuss, only the creation process, only purity. At the same time it also entails a direct confrontation with yourself, as you afterwards see what you actually created. I am constantly competing with myself. After all, the biggest challenge in life is trying to understand yourself. Once you have reached that moment, you look at life from an entirely different point of view. It stimulates me every day to keep on in- vestigating who I am. That is how I discovered my works based on my gardens. They are the basis of my personal world.
That is the basis of philosophy, first recognizing and understanding yourself, which of course is not easy. Shallow people think that it is simple, but it is not. You are not aware of everything that is going on in the subconscious, unless it can be expressed artistically by writing, sculpturing or painting for instance. Did you finish this entire painting that you are looking at now in one single session?
AQ: A lot of my paintings act as studies. In the beginning I as- sume they will be finished in one session, but it might as well last hours or days. You also have to take into account the preparatory phase, during which the frames are handmade and the wooden panels are carefully prepared. I only work on wooden panels because I have to make scratches in the panels, a process that wouldn't work on a softer canvas. This preference for wooden pan- els probably dates back from my period as a graffiti artist, when I only had hard walls to spray. In a certain sense I like the rough- ness of this art form. Music influences me the most, but I also look at the works of other artists and sometimes I'm totally blown away by the intensity, by the world created by them, for example by Paul McCarthy or Anselm Kiefer. They allow you to feel as if you form part of their living environment, no matter how grotesque or dark it may be... they fascinate.
Do you like to explore the creative process taking place before them achieving a suchlike result?
AQ: I like the end product. But I have to say that I am not really influenced by it, the Asian culture inspires me a lot more. From childhood on I have been crazy about Asian movies, even though I did not understand any of it back then.
Were you touched by symbolism?
AQ: Yes I was and especially by the way they view life and the balance that they are trying to find. In their age-old architecture this search for balance is also noticeable. And when you see how fragilely that they can paint landscapes... I would not say 'less is more' but it is just very subtle and cautious.
This aesthetics, fragile, simple art focuses on the essential ele- ments. In one line you can read the entire meaning.
AQ: Next to this strong image of the old Asian culture which has already influenced a lot of artists, I am enormously fascinated by the evolution that is currently going on in China as well as in Asia.
The old Zen philosophy focuses on what is important, pushes aside everything which is not essential and in this way renders uninter- esting details insignificant. The meaning lies in the things them- selves and is so simple yet has a deeper significance. That is what is so fascinating.
AQ: With one single drawing they can tell an entire story, if you really understand what the creation means. It contains a complex world, just like how I see my boxes and gardens as part of my existence, my world. The mirrors that I integrate in these works are an important element to create depth – not in the literal sense of the word – but to draw people into my world and let them be part of it.
Do you let them into your world? To which extent do you allow them to enter? Can they decide themselves or do you say how far that they can go?
AQ: I share my world with them. My work forms part of my world and I give people access to that part of my world, which is an extension of my existence. You will also discover a certain evolution in my work. My last boxes are far more fragile than the first ones that I made. It is proof of the evolution that one goes through as human being. When you are young you want to change the entire world and you play the rebel, but at a certain moment you come to the conclusion that you are asking yourself who you really are and what is important in your life.
You first build your house and only afterwards you grow a garden around it, which is interesting to see. Or has the garden always felt like a part of the whole to you?
AQ: I think that the garden was there all along but I just needed some time to fully discover it and to be able to really go there. Maybe it was a part of my existence which was restricted at first. This is what is so typical of human beings: putting up fences around us. That is actually the essence of My Safe Garden.
Indeed, we first put up fences around our house or even in our own thoughts, but in your work you can pass through the fences. What does that allude to?
AQ: Fences can have a symbolic meaning. They exist in your head and I believe that everyone has them. Some people even fail to see the world through those fences. They have lost complete sense of reality. Sometimes however, you need to break these barriers. Not only do I regard my work as a reflection on who I am but also as a large-scale study about how people are and how they behave. Dif- ferent cultures show that there are various patterns with regards to how we live. Every culture has its own traditions and interacts in a different way. After observing these kinds of human variation I am always surprised, but at the same time I understand myself better because I incorporate all these elements into my own living environment.
That is only true for people who open up to the world. I find your views on the Asian culture, a culture which is based on Zen and the teachings of Lao-Tze and Confucius which is going through a high-speed economic growth at the moment, extremely fascinat- ing. Although the Asians are currently experiencing an evolution, they still hold on to certain sociological traditions. Nowadays they travel, they fly from here to there, they build enormous towers but they simply hold on to simple traditions in daily life. In the past they needed to cut themselves off from the self-conscious for a very long time.
AQ: The fact that the evolution towards a more western model keeps on going still amazes me. How is this possible? This has never happened before, not in any era. This evolution has both positive and negative aspects, which is perfectly normal in a country with one trillion inhabitants. We cannot image what it feels like to be part of such a country, but we should not fear it. I really think it is a pity that I will not be alive for another 250 years in order to see what this has all lead to.
We have to open up our minds in order to learn from this change. It is a mutual event during which we can exchange our knowledge. This brings me back to your work. What do you learn from people looking at your work? I am sure that you talk to them about what they see in My Secret Garden. You no doubt find it intriguing to find out what they see in your work, especially if it is something that you yourself had never noticed before. Or is this not the case; do the things that people deduct from your work perhaps tell us more about their own characteristics?
AQ: In any case, it says more about them than it says about me. After all, my work is done for me once I finish it. Going public with your work is a lot like a stage play. The public has its own opinion about what you do. For them, it all needs to start at that moment, but for me, the whole process is already finished. Only one thing is sure: they love it or they hate it. When people start looking for connections in my work with their own lives it fills me with a sense of satisfaction. It means that they are opening up their hearts. But whether they like it or not, everyone will see some- thing in it because I base myself on people and their behaviour. It means that my work acts as a confrontation for everyone who takes a look at it. This creation process is a compulsion to me, an inner need to express myself.
This is extremely important. A lot of people do not dare to express themselves or have the feeling that they are not able to, but we all have our thoughts and sensitivity about nature, our house, our sur- roundings... Do the numbers that can often be seen on your works of art actually mean something?
AQ: It is my more or less voyeuristic view on people. If you are walking around on the street and you catch a glimpse of the interior behind a curtain, you immediately start creating a whole fictitious universe of the people living there. If I lived in the city, a spyglass is the first thing that I would buy in order to watch the home of my neighbours. These numbers feed the imagination in order to create a story about a certain place.
Numbers are also a way of categorizing; they give the house a name. They also form a community that is arranged on the basis of the order of the numbers. But it is just as well a story of being together and interaction or connection between human beings. Numbers connect us. After all, when somebody asks you where you live, you give that person your house number.
AQ: A house without a number is like a child without a name. A number provides a house with an identity.
You sometimes even cross out numbers.
AQ: That means that the people no longer live there, that the house is empty. I sometimes cross out my own name or certain elements. In life you have to put things into perspective in order to be able to move forward. A lot of people forget where they come from and who they really are.
Do you think that people take themselves or things too seriously?
AQ: You need to be very aware of what you do but you cannot take it too seriously. Otherwise, you will not be able to make big things. If you take yourself too seriously, you no longer function properly, you lose a part of yourself. What is more, you lose a part of your existence. It limits you to go to the core of your existence, your safe garden.
You make it seem as if it is kind of like staying in your own box without crossing any borders. One last question: with regards to your colours, or better said colour, I once read that it makes people happy, but I would like to know if it has something to do with how you feel in life as well.
AQ: The red-orange colour returns in a lot of works of art and has a myriad of meanings. The red colour can attract or repulse in nature at the same time. It is the colour of the blood that symbolizes death or life. Red fruits almost seem to beg you to eat them. In some cultures people paint red on their faces in order to express power. To me it is therefore a deeply human colour. If you would have to choose which colour could best represent the human being, it would have to be this one.
You obviously feel good about this colour. Do you not think that people feel somewhat uncomfortable when they see this intense co- lour or does it not occur that people tell you that they do not like it?
AQ: It is a given that not everyone feels comfortable with a co- lour containing so much tension. The fact that we are not all the same makes life interesting as well as the way in which people get inspired by my work or do not. I cannot stress enough that I regard my work as a study about how I experience life, how people in general experience their lives. I try to convey my findings with regards to this, inspired by everything and everyone that I meet in life, to the broad public.
So you started your study of and search for inspiration in life at a very young age?
AQ: From childhood onwards I have been passionate about life in all its aspects. Every day I tell myself: "this is only the starting point." And I will keep on saying it to myself as long as I live. This is the beginning.
That is a true artist speaking. How often do you see artists still creating once they are approaching their eighties, or are they still young at heart?
AQ: I am going to die while creating.
Kjeld Kjeldsen
The question of how people live in the city or in nature is a constant recurring theme in Arne Quinze's work. Kjeld Kjeldsen, curator at the Louisiana Museum for Modern Art, is fascinated by the way he tries to answer this question. For the Living exposition, an exhibition focusing on the theme of housing in all of its aspects, the artist built My Home My House My Stilthouse.
AQ: With My Home My House My Stilthouse I investigate what "home" really means and I try to find my own position in it. As a child you build your first house by crawling under the table and covering it up with a blanket. In this way you get access to your first very own universe nobody is allowed to enter. In the next phase you grow up and you suddenly don't want to walk around naked anymore. This is another boundary people impose on themselves. They put on clothes in order to stop feeling vulnerable. In the following phase you actually build a real house, you put up walls around you. It's fascinating to see how buildings and cities are formed and how the planning of these is subject to an evolution throughout time as well as to an evolution between different cultures. Not only do people put up walls around them for protection, but they also want to create a certain distance between themselves and others. When laying out a garden, the first thing people do is putting up a fence around it in order to mark it off. That's why I overemphasize the scale of the fences forming part of the installation than they would be in real life. As soon as people possess something the term "mine" becomes extremely important in marking the ownership of their commodities. My Home, My Garden… The letters I write on my installation form a substantial part in underlining this principle, in one single sentence I scream out what's mine and what's not yours.
I got acquainted with your work for the first time via magazines under the form of Uchronia, a sculpture you made for the Burning Man festival (a yearly festival organized in the Nevada desert, USA). Shortly after that I visited you in Rouen during the construction of Camille. Then it became clear to me that you also put big installations in an urban context, a concept that perfectly harmonizes with the Living exposition. It is an exposition dealing with themes such as housing, accommodation and creating a home with crossovers between art, architecture and anthropology. Suddenly My Home My House My Stilthouse turned out to be a metaphor for everything that the exposition comprises, it is art, it is architecture, it asks questions and makes us think about how we live and organize housing. And so the discussion about what to do in the future starts. We return to the base, young architects investigate other ways to build than say ten years ago.
AQ: Exactly this development made me start constructing Stilthouses. In a certain sense they reflect the human existence possessing long legs being very fragile but they survive every situation and adjust to the circumstances and surroundings they are exposed to. Orange-red beams are integrated in the construction on purpose giving the sculptures even more human features. The primitive finishing work is intentionally as I expect to incite people to start dreaming about their lives themselves.
That is another focus point of this exposition, the dream you can have about living. Although this colour heavily contrasts with the green surroundings, it harmonizes with it at the same time. A dialogue originates between nature and sculpture.
AQ: Normally you're not allowed to touch the art in museums, but in this case you're supposed to walk through the various parts of the installation and touch it: you have to feel it. This small Secret Garden, and actually the entire installation, forms part of My Safe Garden, my secure space I create for myself. I got inspiration for My Safe Garden when I was asked to paint a series for an exposition as an ode to impressionism. When I was young and I laid my eyes upon the paintings of Claude Monet he made in his garden in Giverny, I was already excited back then and felt as if I was blown away into another universe. The more that I worked on this series, the more I lost myself in my thoughts and that is how I discovered my inner garden. Each and every one of us has a suchlike secret garden, even though it most often exists inside the head. This forms part of my soul and my fantasy, thoughts that others don't get hold of or can't take part in. That's why I place my garden in reality on a platform: nobody can enter.
You already use the urban space like that, you add something to it. But here in the museum you depart from another position, as one first needs to enter the museum to see the work.
AQ: The Louisiana Museum for Modern Art demonstrates how it should work for museums. I'm amazed about the daily number of people visiting, visitors are waiting in line to enter and the museum is not even located in the centre of a big city. Of course the other context plays a role here for my work. As a visitor you already know you will be confronted with art, but on the street the surprise effect of suddenly bumping into an artwork is at play. At the start of assembling constructions some people don't like what you're doing because you disturb their daily routine. Camille (Rouen, 2010) is a classic example of this unfavourable attitude. The bridge was closed off: no traffic could pass by for several months. In normal circumstances 40 percent of the daily traffic is led over that bridge. The more the structure made progress the more positive the attitude grew towards closing off the bridge for traffic indefinite. At the end of the construction process, the citizens were really looking forward to the opening. Not only the end result, but the entire process makes it worth while to build public installations. During the official opening I no longer consider the artwork as my own, at that moment I pass it on to the people. Temporary installations offer inhabitants the opportunity to dream about their city and to see it from another point of view: a reflection of the old against the new. According to me the same effect occurs in the context of a museum. The view of the garden is changed completely for couple of months. When I built the Cityscape (Brussels, 2007) I received a letter from an old lady one day telling me she finally met her neighbours by talking about the installation. When making a suchlike installation communication is the ultimate objective, people have to talk to one another.
On this location you make your own street with oversized fences that were built a lot smaller at first. Let me call it an entrance to the core structure of the installation. It means that visitors of the park already form part of the installation without them actually realizing it.
AQ: At the starting point of the installation I didn't expect to get this insight whereby it seemed necessary to make the fences as high as possible to emphasize the perception of entering private premises. Once you're standing in between those fences, you're drawn to the Stilthouse via a boulevard that looks quite fragile in contrast with the fences.
Do you remove everything after an exposition and reuse all the material?
AQ: This installation contains wooden beams we used for projects in Lebanon and Russia. Reusing material seems evident to me, even though I have to use new wood for bigger installations from time to time. In that case we use certified wood containing a label guaranteeing for every cut tree, a new one is planted. Besides that the unusable wood is recycled in wooden panels used on construction sites or for cupboards. You have to take your responsibility, it's not just about art but also about how we live, how we communicate, how we deal with nature. We have forgotten who we are and where we come from. What we experienced in Rouen exceeded expectations. Even the strongest opponents signed a petition to keep Camille as permanent installation on the day it was deconstructed. Despite the fact some constructions only remain for a limited period of time, they still have the ability to change the atmosphere, even after removal: an emptiness remains.
Today people are living in gated cities and gates communities. Do you see a link with your work when talking about safety and demarcation?
AQ: Housing is by definition not just one fact, it consists of a myriad of visions. Everyone thinks he or she has found the optimal modus vivendi but eventually we all are rooted in specific frameworks. I'm always curious as to how others define living.
The appropriation of a personal zone returns in a lot of your projects. When you're building a city you have to take into account you have to stay within a certain zone as well.
AQ: Uchronia (Nevada, 2006), the experiment we carried out in the desert, illustrates this zoning perfectly. For miles you can't find signs of borders, only the grand desert that completely surrounds you, an unbearable openness. As soon as you take a twig and carve in the sand you limit yourself. However, the unpleasant feeling disappears immediately because you're in your own small square, your piece of land in the wide desert. People need these axioms enabling them to feel good. Even though I have an open mind, I still fence off my own property as soon as I'm the sole owner of it. I need this protection and categorization: My Home My House. Have you ever seen the movie Dogville (director Lars Von Trier)? In that movie it's pointed out which zone belongs to whom by means of white lines only. This movie harmonizes with this exposition because the basis of this theme asks within which lines, zones, ... we live.
For this exposition we also selected two architects that work together, a Norwegian and a Finn. For their project they base themselves on the Scandinavian way of viewing architecture. Basic elements such as fire, water and light determine the core of their view on architecture. These basic elements vary depending on the place where you live. In the south you need shade and water to cool down, in the north you need light and fire to get warm.
AQ: People living in nature use more basic elements than people living in the city when it comes to constructing buildings. It stands without doubt that in nature you are directly confronted with those elements of nature and once in the city, people often forget that we're surrounded different living conditions. A lot of cities around the globe look the same although they're located on different continents. You find identical buildings or uniform streets. One can no longer detect differences, people put up concrete walls around them.
Climate involves big problems as well. Wherever we live, everyone wants to have the same climate conditions in their house. If you live in a colder zone, you need the heat to warm up your house. If you live in a warmer area, then you need cooling systems. This leads to the fact that we no longer think about the differences that occur in various zones and areas. We have to go back to the way it was and ask ourselves where the differences lie. From that point we have to depart in order to build and to find out how we want to live.
AQ: We live in closed-off spaces afraid of opening our windows and doors. tain place.
Kjeld Kjeldsen is curator at the Louisiana Museum for Modern Art and the driving force behind the Living Exhibition.
Arne working on a My Home My House My Sculpture study.
Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium. 2011
Abstract from a My Home My House My Stilthouse Study in process
My Home My House My Stilthouse My Garden study 120111, 2011
H 79 x W 74,5 x D 25 cm. wood, plaster, paint, paper, plaster, crayon
Tokyo Art Talk, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France, 3 May 2011
Organised by Susanne Van Hagen
Talk with Alexandre Allard, Yves Carcelle,
Valérie Duponchelle, Arne Quinze and Armand Hadida
Clay figure made by Arne as a child. 1974
My Safe Garden signature painted on a plastic lid
Arne working on the installation in the garden of
the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Humlebeak, Denmark 2011
Series of 3 My Home My House My Stilthouse paintings presented at
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.
Humlebeak, Denmark 2011
Arne Quinze interviewed by Kjeld Kjeldsen
Humlebeak, Denmark, 2011
© 2011 Arne Quinze — All images and texts used on this website are copyrighted.