… traces of reality. The collages say: There were battles and enemies, illustrious deeds and breathtaking scenes, criminals and their judges. That was that day. And now there is a new one, to do it all differently, again, the same, or elsewhere. And tomorrow (and the day after tomorrow…). As news, a newspaper photo will not retain its appeal, it has served its purpose. After the images have lost their news value, the collages remain. The news facts have become material.
Summaries of a day in the world, of places and events and the people who played a role in it. Memento Mori too. A firm decision becomes a law. A disaster is pushed aside by another. Sadness gives way to resignation. A majestic performance falls into oblivion. And the newspaper, it appears every day. Imagination and reporting fight for priority. There are snippets of news facts. Or not even that. Those fragments, and the hashtags that summarize them, let us experience how our brain deals with memories. Why do certain events stay with us, do we remember a specific name or image and so many others we don’t?
In the collage, the photos form the image of the day, with the magisterial header chosen for the bright green of the turf and the earthquake for the texture and color of the mud. It is no longer about truth or media manipulation. The choices in the creation of images are based on color, pattern, form, and the connection of lines with each other. More formal considerations determine the construction of the image, and not meaning. If the collages assume new meaning, that is a nice bonus, but not a necessity.
“Art is not a means of communication. It is meaningless raw material used in open-ended processes or aesthetic reflection by a diverse audience, whose interpretations are totally arbitrary. There are no serious reasons for making one particular artwork rather than another.” (Mediamatic 01-1991)
Hein Eberson (1962) in collaboration with his editorial board TrademarkTM had clients describe a work of art with the art order form Art on Request. With U-Frame, the public could compile a work of art with a database of collage parts. Together with Remko Scha, he worked on Artificial, a computer program that generated an infinite amount of random images. For each his own; his conceptual approach focuses on the creation of art instead of presentable and sellable objects.
Together, the collages form an infinite story, day by day, just as Eberson previously worked on infinite stories. The daily walk to the letterbox, the tearing of the paper, the search for possible image combinations in the stack of pages; those acts are limited. Although the work can be seen as meaningless raw material, the realization of the work is not. Concentration. Faithfulness. Boredom and wandering. Happiness and misfortune. Till death?
HE – 2020
eberson werk work 