over the last decade and was doing a sauna everyday. "So at least you don't stink," was Dokoupil's comment. Follows our ritual embrace. He lifts me up. I try to lift him up. Impossible. It is clear. Something has changed. We must talk. Right now. Immediately. "I have nothing to say," says Jiri as we walk through the front door. I know. Dokoupil's nickname, for a long time has been: the sfinx, the enigmatic creation half lion and half pharaoh, whose existence is based on myths, riddles, secrets, hidden geometry, erotic allusions and the folklore of ancient perfection. But the sfinx is just a another pose to shrug off the vulgar blahblah of the tourist critics and journalists, working for sleazy magazines that live off scandals, rumors, hearsay babble about day by day madness. Once we enter the studio Jiri starts to make sense. "We should talk about art like Andy Warhol and Truman Capote did in a famous book from the sixties. Conversation one afternoon in New York. [4] Remember my show at the Robert Miller Gallery, September 1989? I showed the first candle paintings there. The auction at Christie's. The traffic jam. The first after nature models. You know, I will always be doing them sooth paintings. It's my radical ecological statement on the crazy carbon dioxide emission hype of the last century and all the plastic people it produced." I remembered very well. I was performing on bare feet, dressed in Greek tunica embroidered in gold thread, a green laurel crown on my fair head, holding an oversized lyre, tuned to a repertoire of beggar love songs. We were lodging at the Gramercy Park Hotel in Chelsea and got hit by hurricane Hugo, that destroyed the roof of a mansion next door. It turned out that the whole building was stuffed with asbestos. In no time the whole neighborhood was wrapped in plastic^not only the buildings surrounding Gramercy Park, but the complete park itself, the trees, bushes, fountains, street, pavement, parked cars, street signs. Overnight the scenery had turned into a gigantic Christo artwork. Dokoupil was flabbergasted and wanted to live in the Big Apple. He seriously considered buying real estate on Gramercy park. A complete building for 300.000 dollars. Then rumors spread about the beginning of the first Iraqui war, the art market crashed and people vigorously advised Jiri not to buy any real estate at all. "Areyou crazy? Terrible! Don't buy it. You will lose all your money," Jiri mimes as we are walking the ground floor and inspect all the paintings laying around on the clean and shiny floor, bathing in the white floodlight streaming down from the high ceiling. Like always Dokoupil's studio is warm and soberly decorated with a fridge filled with bottles of ice tea. First Jiri shows me a familiar sooth painting of two stoned friends laughing their heads off. There is a lot of new work laying around that I have never seen before. Potato paintings in a rough Arrogadismo style reminiscent of Polke. [5] A dog under the sun. Follows a series of whip paintings with a sole splash line on white surface, that vaguely bring back a memory to the monochromatic cuts on canvas by Fontana. Then new nothing paintings with curious scribbling, bleak color field and erasing. On a wall hangs a large size image of Buddha, large ripples over bleached pastel colors. As Jiri catches my eye, he says: "I stone washed the canvas in the washing machine, like a pair of old jeans." If anything Dokoupil has proven to be an experimental painter, making inventions, using unorthodox methods to bring an image onto a surface. In a adjacent dark room hangs an enormous movie painting. Jiri turns on the light. I walk towards the canvas. Lots of yellow. At close inspection I see a nude golden woman. "Goldfinger," Jiri says. Amazing. The movie paintings contain the complete number of frames of a motion picture brought onto the canvas by some kind of silkscreen procedure "On the first floor there is more movie paintings of art films done by Bunuel in the thirties. You will see Marcel Duchamp, André Breton, Man Ray,says Jiri. decreet 03 juni 20101061 I ask how the New York story ended. "Wellyou know, all my objections to these people in panic 1990-1991 were confronted with misunderstanding. They were bringing down catastro phe onto themselves. So I shut up and bought an apartment of 100 square meters on second avenue and 10th street with a view of the Empire State Building for 150.000 dollars in 1992 and sold it five years later for 500.000 dollars." So much dealing in real es tate. It's time to move up to the first floor. We take the staircase, because the elevator is broken. The day before, a Monday, had been was bad luck. In my hotel at Prenslauerberg had looked up the address of the new studio, Dokoupil had given me: Lückenwalderstrasse 4/6. On the Berlin city map and after a one hour trip by U-Bahn, S-bahn, bus and tram, I landed on the outskirts of East Berlin, at the borough of Marzahn in the dull suburbia Plattenbau on a new secondary school, where kids were playing indoor basketball at the gym. This was not exactly looking like Potz- dammer Platz, but I assumed Dokoupil was living in the center and drove to his studio every day. On the phone he had told me his new studio project could best be described as "elementary school for artists." So I gave it a chance and rang the artist. He was stuck in the elevator and waiting for his assistant Holger to set him free. "Sorry, but you are wrong. I would never have my studio on the outskirts of East Berlin." As we move around the first floor, and peep into the various spaces along the corridors, Dokoupil explains his recent biography.Three years ago I bought an apartment in Charlottenburg. First at Herderstrasse 26 and later Goethestrasse 19, around the corner. There I dis my first movie paintings: Der Bettwurst by Rosa von Praunheim and Seven samoerai bii Kurasawa. That is also where I started to do the leopard candle paintings, you see. Also I did more bubble paintings and started the movie paintings. But I was not satisfied. I am looking for a major break. I wanted to break through my limits again. So I bought a house at Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro. But I can only stay there during the winter, which is during the summer in Europe. So one year ago, I bought this building. It took my handyman Ali a whole year to redo the place and he is still not ready. But I packed all my books and will move from Charlottenburg to Schöneberg this week." Dokoupil's mobile phone rings. It's the Russian table tennis champion, ready for the game. We move to the room where the session will take place. Art is a top sport. Blood, sweat and tears it took, takes and will take in ever increasing quantities. When the trainer arrives, he immediately inspects the badges. They are no good anymore. Not good for the top level Jiri should be playing on. This will be the last time he uses them. The balls are ok. Then the training begins. TiccetacticcetacticcetacticcetacOne hour long. The sound of the rebouncing ball. Endless repetition, interrupted by numerous breaks. The essence of conversation. Jiri shouts and screams like a little child, as if he loses a ball. A deep shrieking growl of satisfaction, when he gains a point by a smart smash. With his enormous body he moves around like the giant goliath, jumping up and down continuously, provoking the opponent, playing on his next move at the game switch, then serving the ball like a true David. It is the timing that defines the master, slowing down the game and speeding it up to his own advantage, trying to get control of the game. Yoga, breathing, driving the opponent towards exhaustion, staying in shape, losing weight, dripping with sweat. When the game is done, we move up to the second floor. Dokoupil explains to his teacher: "these four guest apartments are meant for my artist friends. They will come to stay and play with me for a month. There will be training sessions in yoga, tea ceremony, vegetarian food, sauna and table tennis every day. In the afternoon we will have exclusions into the city and lectures and discussions. There will be presentations and readings. But first it will take another season for Ali to install all the bathrooms. I have to be ready somewhere during the summer." decreet 031 juni 20101071

Tijdschriftenbank Zeeland

Decreet | 2010 | | pagina 28