you can only
take what you
already have:
jan vercruysse
by Michael Brennan
with Bill Sullivan
Jan Vercruysse has exhibited widely in
Europe, notably at the 1993 Venice Biennale
(in the Belgian Pavilion) and at Documenta
VIII. In New York he showed at the
Christine Burgin Gallery, now closed, in
1990 and `91, and more recently at Brooke
Alexander, Sept. 19-Nov. 2, 1996. On view
at Alexander were works from three
sculpture series and a portfolio of prints.
Vercruysse is a conceptual artist who makes
extremely discrete objects. He began his
artistic career as a poet and it is his
poetic impulse that gives Vercruysse's
works their oblique charm. His objects are
thoughtfully constructed in a space that
really only exists for the objects
themselves, in an ever-lingering present
that is both familiar and foreign, so
slippery that images can resist any
immediate disclosure along this cunning and
silent plane.
In the entrance gallery were 35 brass
plates dipped in crimson sealing wax, works
from the artist's "Tombeaux" series that he
began in 1987. The title suggests a
meditation on melancholy, and refers to
proto-modernist Stephane Mallarme's famous
poems Tomb for Poe, Tomb for Baudelaire,
Tomb for Verlaine, etc. The exact meaning
and origin of "Tombeaux" is sealed too.
Vercruysse's group of eight color
lithographs, called "Labyrinth and Pleasure
Gardens," depict fanciful garden designs.
In the main gallery were "Les Paroles." In
one variation, a minimally styled wooden
high chair is suspended above leaden table-
tops that hold small recessed mirrors. In
another, a glass high chair stands on a
bed-like platform filled with multi-colored
glass marbles. Each chair is a precarious
construction put together in a peg-to-peg
manner that seems likely to tilt or shatter
under weight of any kind, like some
breakaway Rietveld chair shaved out of ice.
"Les Paroles" offer strange and slow
uncertain commentary on the personal and
the spatial, and how these issues of
presence relate to similarly elusive
concepts such as negation and limit.
The final room contained A.,A.,B., an
installation of framed works that is
immediately more familiar. All black
frames: two large ones bracing the corner
of the gallery, three smaller containing
photographs of marble finish, and two small
frames forming an erotic diptych of the
same mirror-reversed image. A.,A.,B., is
more comfortable only because it falls in
line with more obvious themes the artist
has been repeating and developing for some
time now. I can only describe the
experience as some kind of Cartesian
double-negative, in that what you are
seeing appears empty, only when you are
seeing it, but not when you're thinking of
it.
I had the opportunity to meet Jan
Vercruysse at his opening, where he proved
to be as reticent as his work. It was too
difficult to have a real discussion at that
time, so we scheduled an interview for the
following morning. I was unable to make
that appointment so I sent a surrogate for
the interview, my friend Bill Sullivan.
Bill is a conceptual artist, and he is
fascinated with all things Belgian. Five
years ago, over bottles of Belgian monk
beer, he first turned me on to Vercruysse's
work from two Flash Art articles. Bill had
the enthusiasm and the knowledge of
Vercruysse's work needed for a good
interview, and is a persistent questioner,
which is important since Vercruysse seems
reluctant to comment on his own work and
has given few interviews in the past.
Jan Vercruysse at Brooke Alexander, Sept.
19-Nov. 2, 1996, 59 Wooster St., New York,
N.Y. 10012.
MICHAEL BRENNAN is a New York painter who
writes on art.Interview with Jan Vercruysse by Bill Sullivan
The interview is formatted in Text only, easy to print out
 for the Esprit House.jpg)
