Author of 'En Passant', one of the texts included in the catalogue of crox 18, En Passant 25 installation windows. The other text is by Hugo De Boom.
In 1913 a painter, and not a minor one at that, introduced his exhibition in this way: 'Because it is bound to the body, the soul is touched by the senses - the experience. Whatever is felt is also a bridge between the material and the immaterial. And it is a bridge between the immaterial and the material. So each work of art has two sides: the inner and the outer side.'
So have all introductions: knit one, purl one.
Another Russian, in the same year:
'The representation of an object - objectivity as goal of representation - is of no matter to art. Though the fact of representing anything doesn't exclude the artwork being of the highest order.'
These statements are surely worth of careful consideration and testify to an uncommon insight in the fragile proces of communication between the artist, his medium and the public even though it isn't quite this kind of communication which is aimed at in this exhibition.
In search of the right type of communication one should rather start from the following proposition: During a surge of diligence, the marketing department at Popla's has figured out that a person spends a year and a half on the toilet during a lifetime.
This was used as an argument to promote better toilet paper.
A year and a half, it takes a better man to ignore it.
In the same vain, a person spends about eight yeas out in the street. And only modest paths have been followed to make life moe agreeable for him in that respect: broader pavements left and right, dogs refraining from dropping it on the cobbles and a sudden shop window worthy of being glanced into.
Among other needs, this is what this initiative is catering for.
In Schepenhuisstraat, an alley between Hoogpoort and Onderstraat, at number 33 as I recall, one of the first installation windows was created. (Later on, a second one was to be found in Perkamentstraat - it is still there - but we are only concerned about the first one here.)
One day, seven or eight years ago, a fifty-ish woman walked down the street to Onderstraat, and so she passed that spot. In her left hand she was carrying a Big Shopper bag, and in her right she had a bicycle wheel. She glanced to the left into the window where a large number of elephants were arragend in military fashion. Her pace slowed and she thought: 'tiens'. A hesitant sun illuminated the spot where a four star hotel would soon be built. It glittered in the puddles. The ladu blinked, in two minds whether to stand still and follow her impulse to watch what had caught her eye.
It happened: the window took her over. She switched the Big Shopper from left to right and leaned on the bicycle wheel. Her eyes grew bigger and her facial muscles distracted, a quarter of a smile appeared.
So that's it, erm, that's it entirely. Though the fact of representing anything doesn't exclude the artwork being of the highest order.
Footnotes:
Wassili Kandinsky, as cited by H. Read, 'Der Sturm', 11 Aug. 1913. Read has the pluck to comment on this with: 'a clear though somewhat clumsy definition.'
Kasimir Malevich, 'Suprematisme', 1913.
Michael Ogilvy, Essay about marketing, no title, 1990.