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07/19/2007: "Beauty Deceives" by Jose Freitas Cruz
Where I am right now the world still seems whole. Or at least as whole as it might have been, or appeared to be, when I was a child. Here it is still possible to feel that life moves at a pace you can keep up with without falling out of balance. I come every year with my family to be with my in-laws and to share this ‘rhythm’ and this feeling of care-free spaciousness with my wife and daughters. Muensterland – just about half-way between the heavily industrialised Ruhrgebiet and Hannover. Farmland basically, interspersed with forests and small villages, some idyllic, some less idyllic but not too out-of-place, crisscrossed by secondary roads and paths ideal for cycling. Motorways pass through, canals with heavily laden barges, but the Germans know how to build their Autobahnen without making them overly conspicuous, and the rhythm of barge-life takes you back in time.
The scenery doesn’t really move me to paint - too flat: countless cornfields, orchards, ranches geared for horse reeding, those giant windmills that produce an alternative source of electricity and that I, counter to the popular trend, actually find beautiful, in the midlle of a field or shooting out from behind a patch of forest still, I’m not moved to paint them [yet]. But the change of setting stirs the little grey cells that had started to become numb, in a new and different way. Shaking them about, bringing them back to life without the pressure of having to come up with some idea/solution for the paintings I left behind at the studio. If painting were a business, which, for me, it is not, I would say this year’s ‘production’ targets have been reached almost doubled. The break from the studio routine is a welcome one, and yet, at the same time, the new moleskin notebook I brought along is already packed with new ideas and projects I am itching to work on as soon as I get back.A sale of a painting previous to our leaving allowed me to get a few books, and together with the long bike rides in the morning and afternoon, the ideas I’m discovering in them keep me busy while relaxing. A fantastic combination. I’ve got a copy of Twyla Tharp’s book on creativity; Deepak Chopra´s ‘Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire’ was a newspaper hand-out that synchronicity put in my way [I buy less and less newspaper’s these days], and at the airport I grabbed a hold of Jonathan Safran Foer’s ‘Everything is Illuminated’ and a book that caught my attention ‘The Great Transformation the world at the time of Buddha, Socrates, Confucius and Jeremiah’ by Karen Armstrong.
For an Artist Muenster is ideally situated, especially this year. The City itself is hosting an event that happens only every ten years the ‘Skulptur Projekte’ showing new trends in sculpture scattered throughout the City centre. I’ve been going repeatedly to capture different aspects under different natural lighting [shadows change things so dramatically!], and to try to get the people’s reactions on video. The other major event is no further than a couple of hours away by train, the ‘Dokumenta 12’ in Kassel, and I hope to make it there in the last week of July. I am neither a sculptor nor a follower of the primary trends on show at the Dokumenta, but I wouldn’t skip these opportunities for anything in the world [I look forward to seeing Gerhard Richter’s work as well as this year’s revelation Monika Baer, who in some way signifies hope for those of us still drawn to nature and some level of representation, and I also do not want to miss Thai artist Sakarin Krue-On’s ‘Rice Field’]. It would be impossible, however to see everything that is on offer this summer throughout Germany, I’ll be happy if I manage to take in these two and digest them productively. So, it’s time to get back on my bike and go check if the World is still whole I’ve picked up tell-tale signs that all that glitters is not gold, that the corn-fields are not what they seem, and that something is lurking beneath all this beauty. I close my eyes and try to forget an image my eyes missed but my camera caught scribbled in chalk on the pavement: Achtung! These are murderous fields. Transgenic Corn! I can close my eyes, but how long will I be able to shut down my conscience. [Unfortunately I won’t be able to respond to comments but I promise to do so
as soon as I am back home.]
