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018, 019
NBP
P.102
Nicolas Bourriaud, Paris
JENS HAANING : ILLEGAL WORKER
Style once used to be enough to define the identity of an artist. But in the
contemporary world, identity is never much more than an access code, a logo (at
best) or a sales pitch (at worst). Surveying a formal territory understood as a
private property thus isn’t the issue anymore. The work of many artists today is
carried out in a succession of aesthetic "moves" apparently isolated from one another.
These operators produce exhibitions which are often very disparate formally, since
they only consider forms as a tool, rather than an end for their work. Among them,
one could name Maurizio Cattelan or Gianni Motti, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen,
Kendell Geers, Matthieu Laurette, Christian Jankowski, Wim Delvoye and finally,
Jens Haaning. Neither can their practice be described as "experimental" (i.e. this is
not what makes it particular) since it is not rooted in the image of a studiocum-laboratory.
Rather than investigating a given issue (through a vertical, drilling
process), this type of practice unfolds on a horizontal line where recurring elements
end up defining a personal universe, in other words a specific toolbox designed to process
a similarly specific mass of information.
With respect to this re-centering of aesthetics towards a mode where forms are
instrumental, how can the quality of the works thus produced be measured? It is of
course understood that the issue isn’t only whether a work functions or not; a lot of
art that "functions well" turns out to be disastrous, or simply boring. The concept
of "accuracy" seems more convincing. What, for want of a better word, one often
calls the "beauty" of an artwork is only in most cases the translation in everyday
language of a feeling of accuracy which strikes us: the adequate form to convey a
singular vision of the world, a precise handling of one’s tools. Relevance in the current
aesthetics debate, relevance in the period in which it arises. And potentially
sustainable as well, if the various elements which "hold" it together persist in their
association, which is not always the case, as the perusal of any catalogue from the
‘80s would easily demonstrate.
Jens Haaning’s artworks function, in real time moreover. They demand our
participation, not from a theoretical point of view (as the notion of "participation"
implied in 50s happenings), but in order to verify the concrete hypothesis they
materialize. The travel agency he set up at the Chouakri gallery in Berlin delivered