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Jan Freuchen Retreat Center
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Desire Lines Beyond main roads, there are often eroded, narrow paths that have been made by the passing feet of animal or humans. One sees them in parks, detouring from the roads planned by the landscape architects. The routes provide a quicker or more pleasant walk, and are known simply as ‘desire lines’. This is also how roads in ancient cities emerged, having carved out an infrastructure in a collective pattern of pedestrian movement. On carpets in old bureaucratic buildings one can sometimes observe the same phenomenon, a trace of the circular walks between the counter, the photocopier and the lunchroom. Somewhere along the line the desire seems to wither and the routine becomes obvious. Through spatial constraint, boredom and repetition, the caged lion walks around in an eight-shaped pattern. The line shows a direction, an intentionality. There is a parallel between the meanderings of a walk in the park and a brush stroke on canvas. The open terrain and blank canvas both represent a freedom that is only restrained by the inability to break out of one’s own patterns. The aim of the Abstract ExMap of an Arawete village pressionists was to remove the cultural filters suppressing the free movement of the line, embracing a more expressive, immediate approach. At the height of Abstract Expressionism there was new and considerable interest for animal paintings, and in 1957 Desmond Morris organized an exhibition of paintings by apes at the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London. The different monkeys clearly showed unique tempera5
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ments and styles, providing a glimpse into the preoccupation with pattern-making that has been prominent in almost every early human culture over the globe. Whereas the Painting by the chimpan- male orangutan Alexander worked zee Congo in a slow and deliberate manner, the chimpanzee Congo became bored by regular painting and started to obliterate the sheets of paper with large masses of paint. Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró and Roland Penrose are known to be among the many who acquired works from the show. The Belgian art historian Thierry Lenain later revealed in his book Monkey Painting (1997) that the primates had in fact been isolated and confined in chairs, with paper and paint put in front of them and a wet brush placed in their hands. The desire to produce paintings for the exhibition apparently exceeded Jackson Pollock in the studio the interest in animal behavior. Lenain later recounted several sessions with the Austrian painter Arnulf Rainer, who tried to copy the brush strokes of these painting monkeys for his own works. Squatting next to the ape, he hoped to produce works of a similar clarity and intensity. It quickly became clear that the human interpretation of the primate-artist was exaggerated and unrefined: ‘We see [Rainer] in the grip of a kind of trance, banging the paper, spitting on it, waving his brush nervously, throwing it down. The chimpanzee, by contrast, paints peacefully to start with, but is gradually influenced by the agitation of its imitator. It stops drawing, starts jumping about energetically and chases Rainer 6
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across the room. (...) Painting is not a violent activity for chimpanzees.’ While the ICA were showing monkey paintings, the CIA was engaged in another branch of visual culture. Through the American Committee for Cultural Freedom the CIA supported Abstract Expressionist exhibitions abroad and proFrom ‘The Bodysnatchers’ (1992) moted the purchasing of these works by various private collections. With the renowned theorist Clement Greenberg amongst their associates, the committee was able to provide a credible argument of Abstract Expressionism’s superiority over the Socialist Realism produced by Soviet states. The implication: the free and unrestrained line can only be drawn in a free country. But the repeated gesture can also become a style, bridging the brush stroke with the Nike swoosh. The unsteady freshness of a child’s painting stands in stark contrast to the repetitive gestures of scribbles while on the telephone or other random doodling by a hand that can also write. The letter-like shapes have taken possession of the hand and cannot be unlearned. The body remembers the familiar forms of the letters and any doodle eventually ends up resembling an alphabet, albeit a strange, unknown 7
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one. In the works of Cy Twombly the brush or pencil strokes do nothing to hide the insidious effect that writing has on the painter’s hand. Instead of attempting (like many of his contemporaries) to remove the ‘cultural veil’ in favor of a more primitive and ‘truer’ artistic gesture, Child in an orphanage, 1948, by David Seymour Twombly immerses himself in the obsessive pattern-making of a modern, literate hand. As in W.S. Burrough’s writing, the word reveals itself as a virus infecting our bodies through subliminal messages, repeated orders or written letters. In asemic writing, in which words are apparently shaped but have no semantic content, a line is drawn between the crooked humanoid finger carving in the dirt and the verbally infected contemporary man and woman. Doodles, patterns and figures have a hypnotic effect on the writing primate. Inside a house there are muted sounds from the household machines, water tubes and electrical systems. On quiet afternoons, these sounds blend with the sounds of one’s own body organs, creating an ambient composition in time with Gamma, Beta, Alpha, Theta and Delta brain the rhythm of one’s heartbeat. As waves one slowly slips away from selfawareness, eyes fixed on a insignificant point on the white wall, thoughts and time disappear. Or outside, running: feet tapping, heart hammering and breath falling into rhythmical patterns. The mind wanders while the body runs. A sense of ‘floating’ accompanies the low frequency 8
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Theta brain waves, and dreamlike imagery, inspiration and unexpected solutions to complex problems sometimes appear. The dissipation of self-awareness is often accompanied by music. Rhythms mesmerize on both treadThe Gymnasticon mills and dance floors, as the mind forgets itself. On exercise machines, the fixation with bodily appearance merges with the dissolution of the self. Through gym windows one can see rows of people on treadmills, trundling towards reruns of old sitcoms on the TV screens hanging from the ceiling in front of them. Like the conveyor belts in Fordian assembly lines or the escalators of shopping malls, treadmills have a history of dicipline, having been once used as a method of reforming offenders in prison. Another, similar device, called a Gymnasticon, was used to train physically disabled persons – becoming an antithesis of the numerous ancient torture apparatuses that most closely resemble its creative construction. Indeed, the wheel, the whirligig and the Turkish twister all have linguistic and visual counterparts in exercise equipment like the arm curl, the leg extension and the rotary calf.
Detail from Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Large Glass’
These bachelor machines blend mechanical repetition with desire – mending the Cartesian rift, while at the same time cultivating a physical ideal that is obsessed with shape and representation. When Rocky Balboa runs up the stairs of the Philadelphia Art Museum, he could continue into the neoclassical
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building and discover Marcel Duchamp’s Large Glass (1915–23). In the lower part of this sculpture, there is an image of a chocolate grinder – recalling the sophisticated machines his opponent uses to train and discipline his body in Rocky IV (1985). Franz Kafka’s short story In the Penal Colony (1914) tells of a convict who only learns his sentence through deciphering the words inscribed onto his body by the torturous machine to which he has been sentenced. In other words, he has to become one with the apparatus Drawing by Henri in order to comprehend its meaning. Michaux under the A few decades later, Henri Michaux influence of mescaline made mescaline-impaired drawings that resemble seismographic renderings, recorded through the vibrating hand of the artist. Insistently translating the ravaging of the chemical, the perspective has shifted: the drawings are enclosed in a feedback loop with the body and the drug, where it is unclear who is actually in charge of the experiment.
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Amorphous Beings The Precambrian stromatolites in the Siyeh rock formation are believed to contain fossils of the oldest known microbe-like objects. This terrain of frozen primordial soup can perhaps tell us something about the two fundamental aspects of life – replication and metabolism – and about how the building blocks of life can form from inanimate matter.
Stromatolites in the Siyeh Formation
Star jelly
A gelatinous substance allegedly found on the ground after meteor showers is sometimes referred to as star jelly. One early report of the compound was provided by John of Gaddesen around 1350, who called it ‘a certain mucilaginous substance lying upon the earth’. Whether it really is a material carried by rocky interstellar travelers is not known, but the possible answers have inspired numerous authors and filmmakers: Could it contain some form of extraterrestrial life? In the theory of panspermia, life exists all over the universe, frozen inside the meteors, raining down on the planets.
In The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers (1956 & 78) a slimy substance falls from the sky and clings to bushes, which grow a spore that then takes residence in human bodThe Blob ies. When the infected person is overpowered by sleep, the spore develops into a exact replica of its host, leaving the original body dead and shape115
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less. In The Blob (1958 & 88), similarly, a slime is concealed in a crashing meteor, aggressively merging with the curious, unlucky discoverer of the impact crater. As it moves around it swallows the bodies in its way, growing bigger in the process. Caltiki the Immortal Monster (1959) shows comparable behavior, while The Thing (1982) has the ability to morph into the shape of the animals it has devoured, making it into a veritable gene bank – and not always restraining itself to the representation of one creature at a time. These shapeless metaphors from outer space are biological composites containing every imaginable shape. As some sort of proto-capitalistic monster, they are able to incorporate every expression into the same container. Like a corporate art collection, critical attacks are swallowed and displayed as sound self-criticism. The horrible, liquid creatures are usually impossible to kill. They can, however, often be frozen. The Blob is immobilised when it is dropped from an airplane over the Antarctic wasteland and The Thing is harmless before it is dug up and thawed by curious Norwegian explorers. The Antarctic is the fontanelle of the earth, where a fragile membrane conceals an ancient, alien Pandora’s box. With the lurking meteorological powers of the melting ice-caps or secrets of the sub-glacial Lake Vostock kept hidden, the continent holds on to its legacy of mystery and danger. The films’ sci-fi fantasies of a potent and powerful slime seem boyish, merging dreams of interstellar travels with sexual reveries. In the typical portrait of a polar explorer, he poses proudly with a blobby, frozen beard - suggesting a strange, eternal connection between the blob, the colonist and the cooling effect Antarctica has on both.
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The Crowd
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If we are ever to travel to distant stars it will not be as people, but as an evolutionary sketch in an infectious signal or virus, going behind the vast vacuums of space without the curse of the short human lifeThe flu virus span. The selfish gene says farewell to its bipedal hosts and heads out towards new carriers. In fact, the human body is a vehicle not only for its own genes, but also for a wide range of other tiny organisms, like the good old rhinovirus that causes a slight cold. Not too aggressive, it is able to transport itself from human to human, throughout generations. The Black Death was clumsy and killed its host. A successful disease relies on a gradual synchronisation of host and invader, unlike the disappointing ending in H.G. Wells The War of the Worlds (1898), where Armageddon is canceled after the aliens catch the flu. In Arthur C. Clarke’s Before Eden (1961) a Venusian organism steers inevitably towards its own extinction after consuming cigarette butts (!) and canned food with a lethal bacterial flora, left behind by the human astronauts. Similarly, the indigenous people of America were not killed with conventional weapons, but by an invading army of bacterial conquistadors. All cells contain large amounts of noncoding material with no apparent use in the life of the organism. This junk DNA might have had a ‘Slime’, manufactured function at an earlier evolutionary by Mattel stage, or perhaps its present functions are hidden to us. Much of this sleeping genetic material contain switches, which decide whether its properties should be expressed or not. In the emergent theory of epigenetics, these switches are directly influenced by envi119
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ronmental forces: the genes we pass on bear an imprint of our life and times. Another version of the blob creature is the nanotechnological horror scenario of the grey goo, where tiny selfreplicating machines transform all matter into copies of itself, leaving behind a uniform and shapeless mass. This is technology degenerating into its distant forefather, the self-replicating building blocks of life in the primordial soup. This liquid nightmare represents ontological fear (of the universe loosing its structure), as well as social fear (of disappearing into the mass). Every singular characteristic is lost inside The Blob, as in Elias Canetti’s disquieting description of the mass: ‘It suddenly becomes black with people’. The Latin expression for the crowd, belua multorum es capitum – the many-headed monster – reflects a more potent trait of the crowd: like The Thing, individuals are woven into one creature, without losing their attributes. The difference between accumulation and entropy can be blurry.
‘Eye idol’ from the area around Euphrates, 3300 B.C.
When asleep we process experiences and rehearse possible scenarios; we synthesise and reconsider on autopilot, and it is not uncommon to dream of composite persons: a familiar face with another’s identity. In The Bodysnatchers humans transform into aliens in their sleep. In Solaris (1972 & 2002) the intelligent sea feeds on the imagination and memories of the sleeping astronaut orbiting above it, rendering his deceased wife material within the sterile whiteness of the space sta-
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tion. The dream seeps into reality. In a similar way the vivid dream world of prehistoric man must have been experienced as equally real and infinitely more threatening than the waking world. As artifacts found within archeological strata testify, prehistoric man and woman made idol before tool. In other words, they had to establish a cosmic order and a truce with the haunting demons and voices before there was time to think about pottery and weapons. In ancient times, gods were much more numerous and anthropomorphic than in modern times. According to Julian Jaynes’s theories of the bicameral mind, each ancient man had his own personal god, reflecting his desires and necessities. With an imagined voice (similar to the reports of schizophrenics) the god dictated the actions of the person, who would walk around in a pre-conscious and dream-like state. Today the old pandemonium has been silenced and replaced by an ecology of voices reflecting or creating our desires and actions: our doctors, politicians, consultants and performers. From the clay idols to pottery, objects are used as artifacts to control the chaos of the imagination and of physical surroundings. The history of sculpture, then, is close to the history of technology. We can trace a line from the manual sculpting of a natural plastic into objects to the parts assembled into a machine. As complexity increases, it becomes difficult to decide who is shaping whom.
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The Island In fiction, the island is an isolated place populated by prehistorical creatures, a rocky hillside concealing the hi-tech lab of some sinister scientist, a land of noble, archaic beauty or simply an inescapable prison. From the immense horizontal planes of the oceans, a vertical cluster of stone, dust and organic material rises. When Robinson Crusoe drifts ashore on his tropical island, he brings with him ideologies, technologies and other useful remains from the shipwreck. The island gathers, letting the skills and materials seep into the otherwise closed loops of its ecosystem, unconsciously steering for prosperity or doom. Enormous stone statues were discovered deliberately tilted and damaged on the barren, treeless hills of the Easter Islands. Once an island covered with forests, the elite erected commemorative statues of themselves, demanding a huge consumption of trees in the process. At some point the last tree was cut and the riot inscribed in the vandalized sculptures is one of the few traces its people left behind. As a condensed apocalypse or eternal paradise the island floats between Statues on Easter Island the continents. In H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulu (1926) a Norwegian sailor strands on ‘a coastline of mingled mud, [and] ooze…’ in search of a mythical, alien creature. The island and the blob-like creature are curiously intertwined, making it hard to tell where one stops and the other begins. Islands have an aura of the phantasmagorical: they simultaneously do and do not exist. Most reality shows are recorded on islands. The Cayman Islands, Guernsey and Bahamas are tax-exempt havens that attract capital from all corners of the globe. Hollow stage-sets are pro-forma departments of 219
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multinational companies in inaccessible, equatorial ghost towns. Large boats and planes disappear in the Bermuda triangle. Before the bubble burst, the three Icelandic banks Glitnir, Kaupthing and Landsbanki had financial obligations equal to nine times the size of the country’s economy. Vast sums of virtual money vanished into thin air and a vote was held to decide whether the debt should be repaid or not. The reluctance is understandable, for who is responsible for the failure within the decentralized, virtual world of financial transactions? The island could also be a control room, conducting experiments on the surrounding continents from a safe distance: as the ash from the erupting volcano on Iceland spreads over northern Europe, flights are canceled and a biblical smell of sulfur covers the neighboring continent.
Bouvet island
Outside the Minoan labyrinth of Crete it is speculated that Atlantis might have been destroyed by a tsunami following the Thera eruption in the 17th century BC. In
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most fictions, the utopian islands are destroyed in the end. The impossibility or banality of the utopian story is unbearable for the writer or director, hurrying towards a Wagnerian ending sequence. Our imagination finds comfort in the obliteration of its inability to imagine real alternatives to the prevailing system. A scenario must already exist in order to seem plausible or it must die. Founding new islands is risky business. On the mid-ocean ridges, new magma constantly emerges on the ocean floor. The ancient Pangaea was broken up by the ridges, forcing the continents apart. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is world’s longest mountain ‘The World’, Dubai range, with peaks bearing names like Jan Mayen, Iceland, Azores, Bermuda and Bouvet – the most remote island in the world. Seventy kilometers northeast of Bouvet Island, Captain Norris reported sighting another island in 1825. No trace remains of Thompson Island today and it is speculated it disappeared into the sea during a volcanic eruption in the 1890s. Venice rests on a fundament of tree trunks hammered into the ground and sinks slowly under the weight of tourists and biennials. New islands emerge outside Dubai in the shapes of branching trees or miniature world maps. These artificial islands are dependent on constant maintenance in order not to dissolve into to the ocean, and thus exist in equilibrium with the stock markets, which constantly question their profitability and right to exist. In the wake of the credit crunch the construction of the Dubai archipelago ‘The World’ was halted and the owner of ‘Ireland’ committed suicide. 221
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When landing on an island, one can have a feeling of interrupting the specific rhythm of the place, like the strange breach that occurs when a character in a TV series makes a Focus group room guest appearance in another, similar show: the two worlds are almost identical, but they exist in different spheres. Islands are abstractions or caricatures. Like the gallery room, they are definite, but deceitful. Everything is a mock-up or prototype, tested out in a reliable atmosphere and considered for further production elsewhere. Islands are R&D departments, proposing new modes of living and being. Strange hobbies, esoteric communities and weird health cultures are islands within the rational continents, feeding the lifestyle machinery with new modes of expression. They are focus groups, with a two-way mirror separating the observer and the observed. It is unclear, however, who is looking in and who is looking out. Both artwork and the economy follow a similar movement towards increased abstraction throughout the 20th century, culminating with immaterial artwork and finances. With their common love for abstracAn eskimo’s map of tions, signs and metaphors, a rift Disko Bay, made out of driftwood between the material and the linguistic emerges, as the density of the text or calculation increases in synchronicity with the presumed quality of the work. Like political jargon, words and numbers are used to conceal meaning, through posing as content. Following contemporary society’s obsession with profiles and presentations, the heap of language grows into a phantom island in the social sea. 222
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Title Index p1
Problem C-print on aluminum 75 x 93 cm 2010
p3
Found image
p11
Retreat Center Collage 16 x 21,5 2008
p12
(Untitled) Silicone, wire and wood 11 x 3 x 2 cm 2010
p13
p14
p15
p16
p17
p18
Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008
p38
p25
Disaster Furniture Collage 19 x 24 cm 2007
p39
(Untitled) Photocopy 21 x 30 cm 2004
p26
(Untitled) Silicone, wire and wood 11 x 3 x 2 cm 2010
p40
Seconds (detail) Mixed media Variable size 2008
p27
Tough Love Ink wash on paper 56 x 77 cm 2008
Quattro Stagioni (detail) Painted bronze 45 x 45 x 50 cm 2009
p41
(Untitled) Digital collage 2010
Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008
p28
p42
Family Jewels Wood, wax and steel 60 x 60 x 45 cm 2008
(Untitled) Digital collage 2010 Lord Jim in Anatolia Collage 16 x 20 cm 2008 (Untitled) Digital photography 2010 New Media Ink wash and oil pastel on paper 38 x 47,5 cm 2010
p19
(Untitled) Photocopy 21 x 30 cm 2004
p20
Quattro Stagioni Painted bronze and c-print on aluminum Variable sizes 2009
p23
Capgras Syndrome Wood and acrylic paint 85 x 105 cm 2007
p24
(Untitled) Photocopy 21 x 30 cm 2004
p29
Alloy Island Alloy wheel 2010
p30
(Untitled) Digital collage 2010
p31
Disaster Furniture Collage 19 x 24 cm 2007
p32
(Untitled) Digital collage 2010
p33
Void Collage 17 x 24 cm 2010
p34
p35
p36
p37
(Untitled) Digital photography 2010 (Untitled) Photocopy 21 x 30 cm 2004 Retreat Center Collage 16 x 21,5 2008 Disaster Furniture Collage 19 x 24 cm 2007
p44
Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008
(Untitled) Silicone, wire and wood 11 x 3 x 2 cm 2010
p45
Found image
p46
Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008
p47
Lord Jim in Anatolia Collage 16 x 20 cm 2008
p48
Problem C-print on aluminum 75 x 93 cm 2010
p49
p50
Retreat Center Collage 16 x 21,5 2008 (Untitled) Photocopy 21 x 30 cm 2004
p51
Alloy Island Alloy wheel 2010
p52
Lord Jim in Anatolia
Collection (detail) Mixed media Various sizes 2007
Collage 16 x 20 cm 2008 p53
p55
Dressing Room Oil stick, pencil and acrylic paint on wood 124 x 152 cm 2010 Remote Control Ink wash, pencil and oil pastels on paper 50 x 70 cm 2010
p56
Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008
p57
Disaster Furniture Collage 19 x 24 cm 2007
p58
Charles Darwin’s notebook
p59
(Untitled) Silicone, wire and wood 11 x 3 x 2 cm 2010
p60
Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008
p61
(Untitled) Digital photography 2010
p62
Retreat Center Collage 16 x 21,5 2008
p66
New Media Ink wash and oil pastel on paper 38 x 47,5 cm 2010
p67
(Untitled) Plaster and wire 11 x 5 x 6 cm 2010
p68
Disaster Furniture #1-10” Collages Each 19 x 24 cm 2007 Suicide Seeds 100 vinyl records, strap 31 x 31 x 31 cm 2007
p70
(Untitled) Digital photography 2010
p71
Disaster Furniture Collage 19 x 24 cm 2007
p72
(Untitled) Photocopy 21 x 30 cm 2004
p73
Lord Jim in Anatolia Collage 16 x 20 cm 2008
p74
Excerpt from “Seconds” (1966)
P75
Alloy Island Alloy wheel 2010
p63
(Untitled) Photocopy 21 x 30 cm 2004
p76
(Untitled) Digital photography 2010
p64
Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008
p77
Excerpt from “Seconds” (1966)
p78
(Untitled) Digital collage 2010
p65
(Works from the) Capgras
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p79
p80
p81
p82
p83
p84
p85
p87
Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008 New Media Ink wash and oil pastel on paper 38 x 47,5 cm 2010 (Untitled) Digital collage 2010 (Untitled) Digital collage 2010 Quattro Stagioni (detail) C-print on aluminum 115 x 90 cm 2009 New Media Ink wash and oil pastel on paper 38 x 47,5 cm 2010 Seconds Production still Photo: Monica Larsen 2008 Adriane’s Thread Oil stick and acrylic paint on wood 79,5 x 97 cm 2010
p88
Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008
p89
(Untitled) Digital collage 2010
p90
Tough Love Ink wash on paper 56 x 77 cm 2008
p91
Disaster Furniture Collage 19 x 24 cm 2007
p92
Seconds
Production still Photo: Monica Larsen 2008 p93
Letter #1 Acrylic and oil on canvas 79 x 96 cm 2010
p94
Found image
p95
New Media Ink wash and oil pastel on paper 38 x 47,5 cm 2010
p96
Found image
p97
(Untitled) Digital collage 2010
p98
Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008
p99
(Untitled) Photocopy 21 x 30 cm 2004
p100
(Untitled) Silicone, wire and wood 2010
p101
p102
Heap of Language Digital photography 2010 Alloy Island Alloy wheel 2010
p103
Retreat Center Collage 16 x 21,5 2008
p104
Retreat Center Collage 16 x 21,5 2008
p105
p106
Seconds Production still Photo: Monica Larsen 2008 Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper
44 x 62 cm 2008 p107
Retreat Center Collage 16 x 21,5 2008
p108
Framework Ink wash on paper 55 x 76 cm 2007
p109
(Untitled) Photocopy 21 x 30 cm 2004
p110
p112
p113
p114
p123
Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper Each 44 x 62 cm 2008 (Untitled) Photocopy 21 x 30 cm 2004 Seconds Production still Photo: Monica Larsen 2008 Disaster Furniture Collage 19 x 24 cm 2007 Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008
p124
Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008
p125
New Media Ink wash and oil pastel on paper 38 x 47,5 cm 2010
p126
p128
Vicious Circle Pencil on print 20 x 24,5 cm 2010 Retreat Center Collage 16 x 21,5 2008
p129
p130
Lord Jim in Anatolia Collage 16 x 20 cm 2008 Intelligent Design Plaster, office chairs and wood 55 x 55 x 120 cm 2010
p131
Found image
p132
Seconds Production still Photo: Monica Larsen 2008
p133
(Untitled) Photocopy 21 x 30 cm 2004
p134
Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008
p135
p136
Spontaneous Combustion Collage 16 x 21,5 cm 2008 Disaster Furniture Collage 19 x 24 cm 2007
2010 p143
Disaster Furniture Collage 19 x 24 cm 2007
p144
Twister Digital collage 2010
p145
(Untitled) Digital photography 2010
p146
Void Collage 17 x 24 cm 2010
p147
Wilson Variations Collage 23 x 27 cm 2008
p148
Spontaneous Combustion Collage 16 x 21,5 cm 2008
p149
(Untitled) Photocopy 21 x 30 cm 2004
p150
Wilson Variations Collage 21 x 25 cm 2008
p151
New Media Ink wash and oil pastel on paper 38 x 47,5 cm 2010
p137
Alloy Island Alloy wheel 2010
p138
Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008
p152
Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008
p139
New Media Ink wash and oil pastel on paper 38 x 47,5 cm 2010
p153
Void Collage 17 x 24 cm 2010
p154
Retreat Center Collage 16 x 21,5 2008
p155
(Untitled) Pencil on digital print 21 x 30 cm 2008
p156
New Media Ink wash and oil pastel on
p140
Untitled Photocopy 21 x 30 cm 2004
p141
Film still from Seconds (1966)
p142
Ghost Digital print 21 x 30 cm
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paper 38 x 47,5 cm 2010 p157
Film still from “Seconds” (1966)
P158
Wilson Variations Collage 21 x 25 cm 2008
p159
p161
p162
p163
p164
p165
p166
p168
p170
p171
p172
Void Collage 17 x 24 cm 2010 New Media Ink wash and oil pastel on paper 38 x 47,5 cm 2010 Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008 (Untitled) Photocopy 21 x 30 cm 2004 Home Digital photography 2010 Disaster Furniture Collage 19 x 24 cm 2007 Code Photocopies and glue 90 x 21 cm 2007
p173
p174
p175
p176
p177
p178
(Untitled) Photocopy 21 x 30 cm 2004 Lord Jim in Anatolia Collage 16 x 20 cm 2008 Edible Oil stick and acrylic paint on wood 79,5 x 97 cm 2010 Bird Ink wash on paper 56 x 77 cm 2008 Spontaneous Combustion Collage 16 x 21,5 cm 2008 Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008
p179
(Untitled) Digital photography 2010
p180
Letter #2 Acrylic and oil on canvas 79 x 96 cm 2010
p181
(Untitled) Photocopy 21 x 30 cm 2004
p190
p215
p204
Retreat Center Collage 16 x 21,5 2008
Retreat Center Collage 16 x 21,5 2008
Dog Proposal #1 Pen on paper 20 x 30 cm 2009
p216
p205
Dog Proposal #1 Performance 2009
Suicide Seeds 100 vinyl records, strap 31 x 31 x 31 cm 2007
p218
p206
Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008
(Untitled) Digital rendering 2010
p207
Retreat Center Collage 16 x 21,5 2008
p208
Forward Looking Statement Digital print and marker 21 x 16 cm 2009
p209
Stretcher Tennis grip on canvas 79 x 96 cm 2010
p210
Retreat Center Collage 16 x 21,5 2008
p211
New Media Ink wash and oil pastel on paper 38 x 47,5 cm 2010
p212
Intelligent Design Office chairs, wood, plaster 60 x 60 x 120 cm
(Untitled) Digital rendering 2010
p192
Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008 (Untitled) Photocopy 21 x 30 cm 2004
New Media Ink wash and oil pastel on paper 38 x 47,5 cm 2010
(Untitled) Digital photography 2010
p186
Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008 Any sign (...)
Oil on Canvas Lacquer and plaster on canvas 120 x 80 cm 2006
Retreat Center Collage 16 x 21,5 2008
p196
p185
p213
Big Stealth (detail) Wood, plaster and paint 700 x 550 x 650 cm 2007
M Aluminum 35 x 40 x 130 cm 2007
Film still from “Seconds” (1966)
Letter #1-2” Acrylic and oil on canvas 79 x 96 cm 2010
p214
p195
p184
Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008
Letters of Resignation Oil and acrylic paint on wood 100 x 370 cm 2007
p191
p193
p200
2010
p202
We’re not doing this because it’s easy Woven carpet 13 x 19 cm 2004
Signature Work Ink wash and acrylic paint on paper 54 x 76 cm 2010
Echo Chamber Charcoal on paper 44 x 62 cm 2008
p187
p189
Film still from “Seconds” (1966)
Retreat Center Collage 16 x 21,5 2008
Retreat Center Collage 16 x 21,5 2008
p183
Retreat Center Collage 16 x 21,5
p188
p199
p201
p194
Signature Work Ink wash and acrylic paint on paper 54 x 76 cm 2010
Wilson Variations Collage 21 x 25 cm 2008
capable of distinguishing the goods or services of one undertaking from those of other undertakings Earphones and sound Dimensions variable 2006
2008
p197
Alloy Island Alloy wheel 2010
p198
Tough Love Ink wash on paper 56 x 77 cm 2008
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Colophon Jan Freuchen ‘Retreat Center’ All images and texts by Jan Freuchen Text edited by Melissa Gronlund Published by Lord Jim Publishing ©2010 In collaboration with Erik Steen Gallery www.eriksteen.no Graphic design by NODE Oslo www.nodeoslo.com Printed by UAB BALTO Print, Lithuania 228 pages Edition: 700 Distributed by Torpedo Press kontakt@torpedobok.no www.torpedobok.no Repro by Løvaas Lito ISBN 978-82-997318-2-9 Thanks to Linn Pedersen, Oddvar Garlie, Erik Steen, NODE, Torpedo, Ole Martin Lund Bø, Nina Paus, Melissa Gronlund, Monica Larsen, Frode Markhus, Sverre Gullesen, Henrik Mykland og Kåre Magnus Bergh
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