INTERVIEW WITH BENNY DRÖSCHER
Questions by curator Anni Nørskov MA Museum Trapholt, answered by e-mail by Benny Dröscher on 23 March 2006, in connection with the exhibition Krydsfelt natur-ligt and the subsequent re-hanging Samlings....... , which included BD's Abducted By UFOs - Purged With Hyssop, 2005 and With My Head Bent Auspiciously Over The Centre, 2005.What references, layers of meaning or sources of inspiration have you consciously included or considered in "Abducted..." and "With My Head..."?
My goodness, in the first one they were practically endless. In this instance it definitely wasn't a case of practising the Lutheran principle of "less is more" – more like the Catholic "more is more". OK, let's start with the title of the work: "Abducted By UFOs - Purged with Hyssop". Here we are moving into the area of religion or superstition. In the Book of Psalms, chapter 51, verse 7, it says: "Cleanse me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow." This refers to the old belief that you could cleanse yourself of sin with a branch of the hyssop bush. I have no idea how, but it probably involved something like our modern aura cleansing, using a suitable object. More specifically, it was believed that a branch of the bush could buy a night of innocence for a bride – should she have lost it under unfortunate circumstances!
If we examine the work more closely, we find that it is composed of a wealth of references. At ground level, we start with the primitive sculpture. Stones placed in a circle – one of humankind's first primitive ways of organising materials. The branches, bound together with cloths and shaped into an upward-striving posture, represent the first attempts to give things a more spatial form. Note that the tip of the branch is covered with leaf silver, and that it is attempting to reach up to the silver-leafed branches spreading above it. We recognise the pose in which the two branches are attempting to touch each other from the fresco in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel, but it is also a posture that is familiar from the Steven Spielberg film, E.T. The silvered branches are anchored in a radiance which bursts forth through the clouds – a heavenly light of the kind with which we are familiar from the Romantic paintings, Catholic altarpieces, and cartoons.
To continue the idea of the altarpiece, the radiance pours out of a cloud in which a UFO has taken the place of the dove of the Holy Spirit as the alien element. If we regard the UFO as a reality, this picture is about a superior organisation of materials. The actual sculpture thus lies along a linear time sequence from the primitive to the futuristically technological. You could say that it attempts to bring together a plethora of styles, expressions and working methods. I have done this quite consciously as an attempt to introduce the idea of a new kind of sculpture into my profession. Perhaps it has succeeded – the work at any rate presents certain problems to those who attempt to define it.
Both of these sculptures formed part of what I provocatively called my religious exhibition. The exhibition was not about distinguishing between one religion and another, or about whether what I believe is more correct than what you believe, and that I am therefore obliged to preach to you, convert you or kill you. On the contrary, it was about the kind of personal conviction that provides meaning, content and ritual for the individual – more in the direction of superstition.
In that context, " With My Head..." provides an image of the conviction that we are controlled by someone or something greater than ourselves. Like puppets, the skins on the floor become almost living – and without free will, they must accept being told what to do. Some people have said to me that they find the work creepy – and in accordance with what I've just said, they are quite right. At the same time, there is also something cheerful about it – a bit like the scene with the puppets in the Sound of Music – can you hear the melody? I found I suddenly could.
"With My Head..." is an impressive illusion, the nature of which you reveal by exposing the insides and the underlying materials. What is it that you wish to show by turning the illusion of the picture inside out?
Oscar Wilde said: Illusion is the first of all pleasures.
My works attempt in every possible way to seduce the audience into believing in them as "reality" – but you are right, it is a trick. An illusion is in the final analysis a construct, no matter whether it takes the form of an idea or, as here, a physical creation. By revealing what the work consists of, I point out its constructed nature. The interesting thing, however, is that the eye simply chooses to reject this reality quite quickly – and flees back into the illusion, the work's motif and symbolism. There is a lot of psychology involved here.
As I see the instruments of "With My Head...", they are more closely related to drama and theatre than to sculptural relief. The tension in the work brings about the animation of the flat skins, which are lifted up to the point at which they become living and sculptural. Have the spatial staging possibilities of the theatre been a conscious source of inspiration for you?
You could naturally describe the work as being related to theatre, but the work was first and foremost created as a sculpture: a three-dimensional organisation of materials. I suppose the confusion surrounding the categorisation of the work derives from the work's rather unusual location, and from the space in the room that it activates due to that location. As a spatial object, connected to the wall and, via the space it occupies, to a point on the floor, the sculpture is very much linked to the architecture of the location. In your encounter with the work, you can be surprised by just how far the work reaches out from the wall (i.e. the architecture) – but on the other hand, if you are familiar with such works as the Trevi fountain in Rome, then this is a small affair.
The skins have a past, in that they were once rather more three-dimensional – i.e. they once walked around in the world in the form of living sheep. Since then, they have lost this ability and have become rather flat, so to speak. Here, with the puppet strings, I attempt in an almost childlike way to give them form or, if you like, life again. My sister Lone, at her centre on the island of Borneo in Indonesia, is attempting to save the world's population of orang-utans from extinction. We have often talked about whether her idealism is a form of childish stubbornness or a naive belief that it is possible. You might say that it is this image that I communicate with the skins, which I try to help along – just as, in an earlier work entitled "To Repair A Thing That Has Been Broken", I attempted to recreate a tree from pinewood chips by gluing them together again.
What determines your choice of materials?
That is of course decided by their ability to express my intention. There is nothing very strange about it.
Why the long, strange titles?
The titles are often the place where the audience seeks help in decoding the work. We like to think that we are far more familiar with words than with images – we attempt to communicate with and understand each other via language. A work of art is a difficult and even an absurd way to communicate, but it is not always one which is best decoded by words. My titles often result in a total short-circuit for the observer, forcing him or her to start again – often visibly relieved because the entire situation had started to become grotesque.
Francis Bacon said: The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.
My secret is that the title is usually a large part of the conversation that the work and I have engaged in during the process of creation.
Do you imagine an audience during your working process? Do you consider how the average gallery visitor may be affected by your works – or do your works express more personal explorations of materials and images?
Both. As my works partly aim at seduction, there must necessarily be an object – that which is seduced. Art is also about communication, which again requires an object – someone to communicate with.
The ability of the work to seduce and communicate depends very much on the degree of openness on the part of the spectator. But fundamentally, we are all influenced by size and location. A sculpture is after all an object in the room which is competing with our bodies for the space. If it is larger than us, we feel small – if it is hung high, we must look up to it, and so on.
With respect to the content of the work, I am an absolute monarch – I choose the subject. Obviously, though, I cannot control the course of the dialogue.
Your work seems to be both conscious of tradition and innovative, symbolically narrative and formally experimental. Do you ever consider the cross-over concept? Do you have a political agenda in your art?
It is hard for me to profess a single truth – which may be the reason for this confluence or cross-over that you mention. It could be a boring display of methods and styles, but it is intended to be an inclusive and egalitarian way of being in the world. Even a work of art can be too pure-bred.
Does your art, across the boundaries of genres, have any common theme or recurrent question to which you seek an answer?
I use the possible (i.e. the materials) to try to approach the impossible. I don't know if I will find an answer, but I like to think that I am becoming wiser.