Clouds (Finnegans wake)
Willem Kuipers saw my work during a period when I was reading James Joyce's Finnegans Wake and Willem was writing a review for the Volkskrant of the Dutch-language version of this book, translated by Erik Bindervoet and Robbert-Jan Henkes and published in the summer of 2002. He asked me to make a colour pencil drawing on the ceiling of his work room cum library and thought it would be nice if it had some connection with Finnegans Wake.
During that summer, I worked on drawings from projected series of slides of moving cloud masses, and used colour pencils to describe these movements. I proposed drawing one of these series on Willem's ceiling, and instead of trying to find words to describe these movements myself, I would use words and phrases that I had jotted down while reading Finnegans Wake. I used a mirror to project the series of slides onto the ceiling, and wrote down words and phrases on all non-white cloud mass areas in the right colour, at the exact position, size and direction. I did this with all 23 slides in the series, one over the other.
Because it is text that matters here, rather than terms per se, I wrote down the lines in each passage in parallel as much as possible. The resultant multidirectional 'shading' overlay gives the drawing a classic aesthetic character.
year | 2002 |
location | Willem Kuipers' library in his residence in Amsterdam |
photography | Hans Wilschut |
materials | colour pencils |
size | 120 x 180 cm |