change my way of seeing

PART II

10.02.11 – 26.02.11

For details and visitor info see: Galleri MGM

For PART I, see:
http://www.akdolven.com/changemywayofseeingI.html

“I become a transparent eyeball / I am nothing / I see all”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

Three weeks have passed since the opening of change my way of seeing, part I, and the memories of experiencing the first installment will ideally flavour the viewer’s mental disposition now - as will his own altered circumstances: Seen through the eyes of Marcel Proust, we all are affected by the unsettling force of time, which, according to the sensitive observer, constantly disturbs the unity of self. A K Dolven subtly draws from the mental energy set free in this process, first by making the change of points of view her artistic target, and then by relying on the visitor’s experience of his own shifting perception.

change my way of seeing, part I, exposed the audience to A K Dolven’s eye as “the thing alone, isolated by the […] need to see”, as Samuel Beckett once described his friend, the painter Bram van Velde, who then, in turn, spoke of himself as a personified glance: “the painter is a blinded eye, that can still see and sees what is blinding it”.

So what, the visitor might ask, was it that Dolven’s eye saw while it was being blinded by the sun? It is tempting to imagine, for a moment, the 140 small format oil paintings as a reflecion of the artist’s field of vision during her three minutes’ blinking at the blaze. This is, of course, a mere assumption, but an appealing one to me, as all the paintings seem to resonate with the sunlight transmitted through the painter’s eye onto the sensitive plate of the work itself. It is a hazy, misty, lively light, caught here in one hundred and forty different ways of seeing it. Just as the mood of the day or that of the viewer himself are in a constant state of change. Dolven transfers this knowledge to the vividly tactile surface of her paintings, preparing the ground for the visitor’s groping eye, so that, while looking, he feels like “a mobile subject before an evanescent object” (Beckett again).

Like film stills the rows of oil paintings float in five parallel rows along the white gallery walls, and, as if conditioned by the artistic medium of part I, the viewer might experience the paintings as small screens which show him different aspects of one moment, arrested for a short time and looking back at him. In this way the interplay of glances is continued in the mind’s eye, one of the leitmotifs weaving together the two parts of change my way of seeing.

Attempting to see life from different angles was one of the main accomplishments of the Enlightenment: Perspectivism prompted an ethical debate by questioning monolithic points of view such as the hitherto cherished eurocentric and christianity-focussed Weltbild. Witness the sharp-witted 18th century scholar Georg Friedrich Lichtenberg, who challenged his contemporaries by reversing points of view: “the American who first discovered Columbus made a foul discovery”. Lichtenberg was right to stress this prerequisite in cultured modern life: to change perspectives. This is a standpoint which was voiced again two centuries later by the Coen Brothers in their philosophical film noir The man who wasn’t there. Here, a lawyer muses on a complex case and relieves his confusion at the relativity of human motives by summoning up Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle: “looking at things changes them,” in the lawyer’s words.

change my way of seeing, part II, seems at first glance, to be a silent show, as no technically redirected ambient sounds are to be heard. But on spending time with the individual works arranged on the wall like a musical score, one feels that they have a music of their own. A rythymn, softly humming to itself.

Gaby Hartel, February 2011