Suspended Attention
Suspended Attention
Enrico David
History is evident in London-based Italian artist Enrico David’s work, which recently was on view in the Van Abbemuseum. Yet he himself is not concerned with the past. He approaches his work without prejudice, and with a great love for detail. Alexis Vaillant travelled to London to find out what motivates him.
When did you arrive in London?
‘Well, I had two entries in London: one in 1986 with a quick exit two months later, and one in 1988. First time, it was to learn english for an italian university literature course. I was 20. I hated London. In 1988, my best friend in Italy moved there. I came to visit her and I enjoyed the city in a completely different way. She went back to Italy and I took back her bedroom. I was working in a bar and learning english. I was interested in a kind of creative possibility but I didn’t quite know how that was going to manifest. There was a guy in that bar, he had just finished an MA at the Royal College. I hadn’t any idea of what art education was like in UK.
Do you mean questions like: ‘How royal is it?’, ‘Do I need to be a friend of the Queen?’
‘Or is it enough to be one?! I didn’t know what direction could be the best one. And I didn’t know what I was gonna do. So, I did a foundation course, the basic orientation in british art for a year. Then I applied at Saint Martins school of Art. I got a place there with a grant and I spent three years in the sculpture department. Then, I applied for a post-graduate at De Ateliers in Amsterdam.’
Why?
‘During the Saint Martin’s period, I went for eight months to New York in an exchange program. I met a guy from Amsterdam who told me about De Ateliers, how good the deal was: big studio, money for two years.’
A lot of freedom within a secret society?
‘Sounded like it. Basically, life as an artist in training, a very nice and protected playground to act as an artist with professional ones as mentors. But they didn’t take me. So, I stayed in London, got a studio here. Then went to Brussels in 1996, for a few months.’
It seems that among all these trips, you already had a studio practice.
‘Yes, my work was already based on a studio dimension. Since then, I always made sure that I can maintain a place where I can make work. And somehow I managed to. Except in 1998-99, when I worked at home.’
Were you working with a gallery at that time?
‘I was working with The Approach, a young but already established gallery. Most of the works of that period are destroyed now, burnt in a fire in an art warehouse.’
Aren’t they reproduced?
‘Yes. There’s a catalogue for a show that the Saatchi Gallery organized in 2000, of works by artists who were making references to certain traditions of applied arts and craft techniques. I guess his idea behind that show at the time was to demonstrate and promote something “NEW”, a change of attitude from the methodology and ideology of work typical of the YBAs.’
Do you think that kind of context is problematic?
‘Well, for me the connection with crafts mediums was always about possibilities, discoveries of what my work could be, negotiating with resources and economies, so to settle for that seemed just really kind of missing the point There was never a feeling of wanting to make that into a trademark or a style (ie. Enthusiasm). I became aware of the implications of being grouped like cattle into a certain context, and that produced discomfort and anxiety. So I stopped making that work. I felt doubtful, needed to consider other things. I left the gallery I was working with, I became a teacher in an art school, and started to investigate the 2-3 dimensional qualities of the works on canvas. The canvas became a support representing sculptures (wood, etc.) volumes.’
Then, you went to India for a couple of weeks…
‘Yes, the first of the two trips I made there. That was a very significant experience. and I came back with one of the five banners shown last year at Cabinet. That banner (bed spreads) I did four years before the others shows an entity on a black and red lines woven cover. When I made it, I was told that I should keep it hidden, not to show it to anyone because it felt and looked so wrong. The question was: where to put it? It felt like a very unreassuring and discomforting image. It reminded me that you can only be accountable for your own doubts, in the same way that reassurance is such an impermanent concept. At best, if you are lucky, perhaps as an artist all you can ask for is another living artist whose work has a sufficiently deep and significant connection with you. Someone you can trust in their work and in their being. That’s enough.’
On an individual scale?
‘Absolutely. The fascination and interest for the sourcing of your internal images in endless. It can come across as a slightly insular position.’
Can you tell a little bit more about the Four simultaneous penetration piece (Untitled Subjects)?
‘I did this plain wood flat sculpture (four cut up figures) in 2001, the first piece of free standing three dimensional work I had done in a long time. Four figures in a square section with interpenetrating penises and testicles through which they prop each other up and can stand up together. I was looking at children toys and the way that design solutions create motives and become part of the esthetic experience. Design provides me with guidelines for things to be practically resolved and for vision to be contained. It allows the visual impulse to be executed with an external logic. It is like a sort of alibi. Ok, they are all penetrating eachother, but it’s also a solution for the sculpture. That solution becomes a discovery, and in itself a form of poetry. Each figure is in isolation despite of the sense of collective rythm. At the same time I enjoy the prototype-like aspect for something that seems functional. This was also the first piece of work where I begun to work with text, combining found and re-edited written material or composing short narratives to associate to the image.
Let’s go back to the “scary banner”, the one some people didn’t want to see again.
‘I have learned that part of my process consists in revisiting and observing my own past work. Sometimes works don’t know when/where they will end up, and this revisiting is about finding a way to locate the work … The “scary banner” was completed by four others that I bought in India, five years after the first one. The sculpture (The Insect) appaeared in between. I felt there was a kind of significance in that piece of work that I had left unresolved – “unresolved” in term of allowing it to follow a certain linguistic pathway that seemed to be possible for it to follow. It’s my working process. If I feel that an image has possible applications other than their original imprint, then I feel inclined to leave that option open for it to grow. I don’t know what really dictates that. Each motif on the banners interacts the formal qualities of the printed elements of the banner. There was no plan.
Their title of the piece, Evenly Suspended Attention), is based on a quote by Irvin Yalom, an american psychotherapist. In one of his books about some of his case studies, he describes “the event”, when the therapist is interacting with the patient and has a personal disliking of him. Yalom describes a workshop with other psychotherapists to analyse that set up. And a leading older therapist comes up with the term “evenly suspended attention” meaning that you should distribute your attention and emotional response indiscriminently, regardless of your feelings and judgment for the patient. In that context, therapists don’t put any emphasis or any particular feeling that they might experience in relationship to the patient. They should just try to observe, neutral witnesses. Their title of the piece, Evenly Suspended Attention), is based on a quote by Irvin Yalom, an american psychotherapist. In one of his books about some of his case studies, he describes “the event”, when the therapist is interacting with the patient and has a personal disliking of him. Yalom describes a workshop with other psychotherapists to analyse that set up. And a leading older therapist comes up with the term “evenly suspended attention” meaning that you should distribute your attention and emotional response indiscriminently, regardless of your feelings and judgment for the patient. In that context, therapists don’t put any emphasis or any particular feeling that they might experience in relationship to the patient. They should just try to observe, neutral witnesses.
I thought that expression – “evenly suspended attention” – responded to my desire not to interfere with the potential formal qualities that were emerging from the printed bed spreads and how these bed spreads could have interacted through my intervention. So I made them automatically, like doodles. There was roughly little thought in a way and not a choice to impose. I was trying to imagine to be in a position where I was restraining my choices other than just witnessing the encounter between this pre-given structures (the printed fabrics), that kind of more or less modernist field (the mondrian pattern or the target, for example) and see how organically something could have grown out of these motives. That process was interesting because it also allowed these images to leave an open potential for themselves, in terms of becoming something else. And that became a sculpture somehow. Another one became the gong I made at the Tate Britain last year (Chicken Man Gong)?’ I thought that expression – “evenly suspended attention” – responded to my desire not to interfere with the potential formal qualities that were emerging from the printed bed spreads and how these bed spreads could have interacted through my intervention. So I made them automatically, like doodles. There was roughly little thought in a way and not a choice to impose. I was trying to imagine to be in a position where I was restraining my choices other than just witnessing the encounter between this pre-given structures (the printed fabrics), that kind of more or less modernist field (the mondrian pattern or the target, for example) and see how organically something could have grown out of these motives. That process was interesting because it also allowed these images to leave an open potential for themselves, in terms of becoming something else. And that became a sculpture somehow. Another one became the gong I made at the Tate Britain last year (Chicken Man Gong)?’
Recognisable references like Mondrian and the target become patterns. They seem to work unconsciously / unintentionnaly, far from cultural recycling processes. A bit, like disactivated raw materials. How would you see that issue in terms of revival, appropriationism and post-appropriationism?
‘Work generates its own target. There’s no audience until an audience gets a grip on how the work works, and I include myself in that audience. So what is increasingly clear to me about the nature of my work is actually the idea of meaning. There is a lot of work which has a very recognisable external meaning, subordinated to cultural, social or political signs. Inevitably, every work reflects a historical, social, or esthetic parameter with different degrees of intention. But I feel that the superimposition of such overtly external meanings, even when they are just a pretext to highlight something completely different, creates an obstruction to the potential, intrinsic intention or purpose, of an image. I am drawn towards images which seem to hover between specific and generic, precise and vague.’
Don’t you think we are approaching the idea of an “Art brut” territory understood from a contemporary (art) point of view?
‘I am aware of what effects signs have upon the world today. And I am aware of the economic dimension of signs, and the element of reassurance that a clear meaning provides to people. When you look at a work of art that invites you to interpret its meaning via externally recognisable signs, you can find refuge in that meaning. You don’t feel challenged to explore your internal anxieties and meanings. It’s a comforting position to be in.’
Why? Because it produces illustrations?
‘Yes. It confirms things that are potentially already available to everyone in this world. And from an economic or social point of view, it seems that art provides a ground for that to be exploited. I believe that art can provide an opportunity for growth and evolution, beyond the apparent meaning of the work. And the less obstruction the better. It’s a very exciting thing, an inspiration for me to make works. We are all very alert of what things mean externally but I think that we actually have a very suppressed and inhibited response to what they might mean internally for us. The “poor work”, like Marlene Dumas said, is burdened by the significance which is attached to it, and looks like an old granny carrying a too big suitcase. Work should travel light. If people are curious about art, it’s not really fair to say “art is about this, about that, etc.” Work can be about finding way to integrate cultural understanding of the world (which is un-doable) and personal experience of it. We look for meaning because we are afraid of our meaningless nature, and I am not immune to that. But meaning seems more hidden only if I have expectations of what meaning is. In front of an unclear meaning, it’s inspiring, challenging and appropriate to ask myself: “what do I mean?” instead of “what does it mean?” It leads to an opportunity to see what/who “I am”, and what could you be.’
Do you think that in the “formatted” context where cultural industry operates, that type of “statement” must be understood as a way of resistance to culture as communication?
‘I think there’s a kind of fundamental element of resistance in accepting the possibility of works operating on that level. In that sense, decoration can be a way of resistance. I’d like not to undermine or neglect the potential esthetic value and pleasure of things. I want to observe, and to be visually stimulated. Stylization is for me about exploring the assumptions connected to information and knowledge and celebrate their potentials. This can lead to a feeling of inconsistency, and through this again, have the chance to test my sense of trust. That’s what I find fundamental about otherness, and the beauty of everything I know I am not.’
Alexis Vaillant
