Imperméables
extract from the exhibition catalogue by Stine
Høholt ARKEN Museum of Modern Art
at the occassion ot Thierry Geoffroy participation in CLOCKWISE –
NEW NORDIC CONTEMPORARY ART , exhibition Vejle museum 2002
L’imperméable (1988-2000). Colonel is an exponent of a distinctly
process-oriented and dialogical art that does not kowtow to
art-historical requirements for beauty and genre divisions, but
instead offers the viewer new forms of communication by moving into
the social sphere through long-term activities. His L’imperméable
project exemplifies this practice. It consists of a number of coats
printed with text and images, coats the artist has worn in various
art contexts: walking around Paris, at biennials around the world or
in videos such as Invisibility in this exhibition. L’imperméable is
part of Moving Exhibitions, an unfinishable mobile project, critical
of institutions, which has both a conceptual aim: it is about
creating new strategies for the artwork and the exhibition
situation, and an existential aim: in these works, Colonel creates
his own personal “cabinet of wonders” of internally connected
stories about himself, his art and the world around him which, it is
likely, no one but the artist himself can connect with respect to
all interfaces and historics. Colonel’s practice is manifested as a
type of transcategorical art that gathers inspiration from
ethnography, anthropology, journalism and cultural theory. It points
out that, although art may not be the best didactic tool,
humorous-artistic language still holds a potential for penetrating
into cracks that are beyond the reach of didactic statements. His is
an art that, apart from its fragmentary nature, its many piled-on
details, its humor and irony, follows a clear, productive strategy,
centered as it is on an interest in charting various forms of
ideological, cultural and social representation.
Installation vieuw from the Vejle Art Museum 2002