Timotheus Vermeulen

Hard-boiled wonderland, blue velvet and the end of postmodernism

Art, Theory / By / September 28, 2012

It has become somewhat of an axiom to associate certain artistic practices to specific discourses, and specific artists to certain sensibilities. It has become a truism, for instance, to link practices as diverse as eclecticism, parody, pastiche, detachment, flexi-narrative, and parataxis to the postmodern, and strategies like ‘optimism’, self-consciousness, formalism, functionalism, purism, and streams of …

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Sejla Kameric

Art / By / January 20, 2012

It is difficult to describe what Sejla Kameric’s work is about. It is about an international conflict (the Balkan wars). It is about the decline of a city (Sarajevo). It is about ethnic cleansing (of Bosnian-Herzegovians). It is about longing for a past that is lost (a culture’s, a city’s, the artist’s). It is about the emancipation of a young girl (the artist herself). Kameric’s work is political. But it is also personal. However, one would be mistaken to call the political personal and vice-versa.

David Thorpe

Art / By / January 20, 2012

I remember the day I was introduced to David Thorpe’s work. It was winter, but it felt like autumn. I was reading one of those pieces of writing you were supposed to read as an aspiring philosopher in the early 2000s. I think it was Lyotard’s interpretation of the sublime. So I was thinking of …

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Ragnar Kjartansson

Art / By / January 20, 2012

Although Ragnar Kjartansson’s work is often characterised by a melancholy sadder than the most postmodern pessimism, it never becomes apathetic. And while it tends to be as ecstatic as modern optimism can get, it never turns fanatic. Performances like The End(2009) and the truly inspired Sorrow Conquers Happiness (2006) are ironic, parodic and frequently pastiche. …

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