download catalogue high resolution pdf (22.3 mb) - Jens Haaning
download catalogue high resolution pdf (22.3 mb) - Jens Haaning
download catalogue high resolution pdf (22.3 mb) - Jens Haaning
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018, 019<br />
NBP<br />
P.102<br />
Nicolas Bourriaud, Paris<br />
JENS HAANING : ILLEGAL WORKER<br />
Style once used to be enough to define the identity of an artist. But in the<br />
contemporary world, identity is never much more than an access code, a logo (at<br />
best) or a sales pitch (at worst). Surveying a formal territory understood as a<br />
private property thus isn’t the issue anymore. The work of many artists today is<br />
carried out in a succession of aesthetic "moves" apparently isolated from one another.<br />
These operators produce exhibitions which are often very disparate formally, since<br />
they only consider forms as a tool, rather than an end for their work. Among them,<br />
one could name Maurizio Cattelan or Gianni Motti, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen,<br />
Kendell Geers, Matthieu Laurette, Christian Jankowski, Wim Delvoye and finally,<br />
<strong>Jens</strong> <strong>Haaning</strong>. Neither can their practice be described as "experimental" (i.e. this is<br />
not what makes it particular) since it is not rooted in the image of a studiocum-laboratory.<br />
Rather than investigating a given issue (through a vertical, drilling<br />
process), this type of practice unfolds on a horizontal line where recurring elements<br />
end up defining a personal universe, in other words a specific toolbox designed to process<br />
a similarly specific mass of information.<br />
With respect to this re-centering of aesthetics towards a mode where forms are<br />
instrumental, how can the quality of the works thus produced be measured? It is of<br />
course understood that the issue isn’t only whether a work functions or not; a lot of<br />
art that "functions well" turns out to be disastrous, or simply boring. The concept<br />
of "accuracy" seems more convincing. What, for want of a better word, one often<br />
calls the "beauty" of an artwork is only in most cases the translation in everyday<br />
language of a feeling of accuracy which strikes us: the adequate form to convey a<br />
singular vision of the world, a precise handling of one’s tools. Relevance in the current<br />
aesthetics debate, relevance in the period in which it arises. And potentially<br />
sustainable as well, if the various elements which "hold" it together persist in their<br />
association, which is not always the case, as the perusal of any <strong>catalogue</strong> from the<br />
‘80s would easily demonstrate.<br />
<strong>Jens</strong> <strong>Haaning</strong>’s artworks function, in real time moreover. They demand our<br />
participation, not from a theoretical point of view (as the notion of "participation"<br />
implied in 50s happenings), but in order to verify the concrete hypothesis they<br />
materialize. The travel agency he set up at the Chouakri gallery in Berlin delivered