|
�Ma seule ambition a �t�
de voir. Voir n�est-ce pas savoir? Oh! savoir, jeune homme, n�est-ce
pas jouir intuitivement, n�est-ce pas d�couvrir la substance m�me du
fait et s�en emparer essentiellement? Que reste-t-il d�une possession
mat�rielle? Une id�e. Jugez alors combien doit �tre belle la vie d�un
homme qui, pouvant empreindre toutes les r�alit�s dans sa pens�e,
transporte en son �me les sources du bonheur, en extrait mille volupt�s
id�ales d�pouill�s des souillures terrestres. La pens�e est la clef de
tous les tr�sors, elle procure les joies de l�avare sans donner ses
soucis. Aussi ai-je plan� sur le monde o� mes plaisirs ont toujours �t�
des jouissances intellectuelles. Mes debauches �taient la contemplation
des mers, des peuples, des for�ts, des montagnes! J�ai tout vu, mais
tranquillement, sans fadigue; je n�ai jamais rien d�sir�, j�ai tout
attendu, je me suis promen� dans l�univers comme dans le jardin d�une
habitation qui m�appartenait. Ce que les hommes appellent chagrins,
amours, ambition, revers, tristesse, sont pour moi des id�es que je
change en r�veries; au lieu de les sentir, je les exprime, je les
traduis; au lieu de leur laisser d�vorer ma vie, je les dramatise, je
les d�veloppe, je m�en amuse comme de romans que je lirais par une
vision int�rieure.�
Balzac, �La peau de Chagrin�
Thought
has intrinsic forms, colours and sounds, delimited by the brain and by
all information retained. On Werner Hornung�s pictures we feel a
creative power of reasoning that sucks images of mass-media imaginary
(comics, cinema, etc.) to obtain a kind of delirious assemblage, a kind
of visual dyspepsia, a kind of poetical nausea of images. A whirlwind
between the irony and satire of a self-consuming capitalistic society
addressed towards indifference (no differences to sell more) and a
sense of sublime, between the exhaustion by multiple trivialized
incitation and the power to aggrandize vulgarity with absurd
associations, with mysterious motivations. The obstinacy to dream when
nothing seems to make us dream.
Something pleasingly heroic and
prodigious in all this profusion of incitation, in all this urge for
expansiveness and permeability, in this explosions of articulated
incidents, in this emotional assault of complexity and subtlety.
Vigorous visual stimulation that pulverizes direct meaning. An eclectic
energy conciliating creative will concerns to poetic, reveric, absurd
allusions and sometimes comical alienation of reference. In Hornung�s
apparent spontaneous manifestations of unexpected combinatorial order
there is this exquisite sense of humour that deals with an idea of self
exploration beyond control of events and shapes.
Disparate forms
meet, clash and grapple in an impenetrable poetic obfuscation.
Polysemous evocations react as integrators of thought. An ineffable
mass of things is undifferentiated by continuous fusion, by continuous
intoxication. Each form might be a fulfilment of all forms around and
all compositional forms might be a fulfilment of each single form. Each
form might be an unconstraint cosmic spontaneity of accidents happening
within it. As if parts in interaction/exchange were disquietly and
irreversibly consumed by the effort of preservation. As if the act of
emerging from each other was a prevailing triumph, a temporary
dominance over their undistinguishable masses in irrigation.
As if
he was scratching, stripping, digging human behaviour, trying to find
out what's inside and suddenly find out that humanity was gone. The
only remains were the marks of his effort to understand: his collages,
a dispersion of details on speechless holistic feelings of surprise.
Awareness in delight. Like seeking himself in terms of amazement.
Subjective artistic experiences like a revelation of meaningful
emotions to a mind that wants to echo in everything, that wants to know
beyond what can possibly be expressed.
Looking at Hornung�s
sumptuous inconceivable occurrences, flashes of great paintings occur
in my mind. I see an explosive and profitable mixture of baroque
frescoes of Andrea Pozzo, Giovanni Battista Galli and Pietro da
Cortona, with paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, John Martin and perhaps
the dramatic body contortions of Matthias Gr�newald advancing against
modern parameters of visibleness. A magnificent crystallization of
thoughts that seem somehow close a circle. In a certain way, I dare to
say that his work is unstably conservative and apocalyptically
equilibrate.
The impression of a surrounding sweep of a torrent
where humans are a wreckful mass, delineated in a vast intriguing
pantomime of destruction. A pandemonium of bodies and the astonishing
grandeur of their eager decadence. The wicked and the good in the
vortex of their burlesque and tragic ruin. Interacted motilities,
dynamic interchanges, fluctuant movements of form reciprocally excited
from peripheries to centre. A chain if hybrid and sprawling
combinations and permutations. Action is dissolution. More is less.
Bodies receptive to simultaneous existences, to interchange,
interaction, friction, infiltration. Bodies triggering desire of
transformation, extending contact throughout multiplicity, overcoming
limitations. Identity as an assemblage, an orgiastic mixture, a fusion
of couplings and slippages, a multifaceted, parasitic, hybrid fruit of
encounter, an erratic and absurd permanence beyond the boundaries of
clear contexts, trying to embrace, infiltrate and absorb everything.
On
Hornung�s work, accident is the nucleus of a visual propagation with
multidirectional trajectories. Like an unpredictable game where each
random move generates a new relational order and a new sub context on
the whole. The game only ends when you don�t surprise anymore playing
it. Nobody looses, because involves no losses, only requires tactical
orientation and enjoyment of adventuring in it.
In Hornung�s
pictures, accordance and discordance of things surpass understanding. A
nervous connection between the visible and the suggestible allows a
complicity of dynamic reactive intrusions, equilibrium of multiple
attractions and an uncertain consensus of displacement. Coherence of
changes, uncertainty of definition. Amalgamated elements from different
proveniences, random eclectic energies spreading and collapsing consent
the idea that meaning is limit and every limit a paradox.
On his
cataclysmic discharges of events we feel l��loquence d�une mimique,
d�une �tonnante acrobatie de incitation, d�une particuli�re syntaxe
expressive de formes tourment�es par les caprices d�une imagination
naufrageuse. Le spectacle minutieuse de l�inteligence au proscenium
d�une volont� sans direction pr�cise.
Drove by frenzy everything
is a blur. Refusing the obedience of understandability these images
stir up a mood of forgetfulness. Excess is guided by a propension to
inaccessibleness. Undifferentiation is the absolute consequence of
expressivity enlargement, is a completeness of probabilities. Towards a
dream of formless osmosis in which image is no more a decoy to meaning
but a trail to oblivious. Perhaps a meditation on human conduct,
bringing forward a civilization exhausted by the upsurge of the turbid
elements of its corrupted condition, its depraved deeds and demands.
Underneath lucidity spreads the notion of a primordial disconcerting
order that, like a strong wind, sweeps or bursts forth all
crystallizations of our minds. An impatient relativism where drifting
things coagulate in a raving fertile state of disintegration. The
delirious and the excessive denouncing human constrictions, accusing
unconformity with bright rational elucidation. Perceiving clearness as
an impediment to comprehension. Figures dance a choreography of
disaster, a convulsive ballet of which a predominant delight seems to
vouch: the splendour of their impetuous collisions and turbulent
transfigurations, unpredictable effects of aleatory causes.
|