I am a one man movement
bic blue ink, lead-free crystal glass
487.3 cm x 35.5 cm
2011
The original work was created in 1983 in the Flemish language and could most closely be translated as “I am a one man movement”. For the needs of the 52nd October Salon, Jan Fabre produced his work in English and donated it to the Cultural Centre of Belgrade, the organizer of the exhibition. With this act, he encouraged not only other artists who exhibited at the October Salon to do the same, but also the abovementioned institution to establish a collection of works of art – the October Salon Collection.
Although interpretations of the work in Fabre’s oeuvre may have multiple levels of reading, this sentence indicates the relationship of the artist and his environment, as well as the idea of creating his own reality. Almost all the elements recognizable for Jan Fabre’s art practice permeate in it. On the one hand, the use of Bic blue ink is associated with the “hour blue”, the periods just before sunrise and after sunset – when the artist works the most. This is the moment when nocturnal animals go to sleep, and the diurnal wake up (remember Fabre’s project Nose Laboratory, a nose tent in which, as a 20-year-old, he followed and studied the world of arthropods), the period of heightened creative energy. That mysterious blue twilight is a suggestive metaphor for the realm of imagination, interpreted as the liberating potentiality of true experience during which, among other things, Jan Fabre writes his Night Diaries. Fabre finds the same magic and power in glass, too, which is a symbol of hardness and fragility, as is the artist himself.
© Cultural Centre of Belgrade, October Salon Collection and the artist
Production: Angelos bvba Antwerp
Gift Contract No. III-52-4053/13.12.2011.
Inventory No. 1371
Photo: Milan Kralj
Selected Bibliography:
52nd October Salon, It’s Time We Met Each Other. Cultural Centre of Belgrade, 2011
Jan Fabre, Die Jahre Blauen Stunde – The Years of the Hour Blue, edited by Sabine Haag, Kunsthistorishe Museum 4.5 – 28.8.2011, Kunsthistorishe Museum, Wien, 2011
Facing Time, Rops/Fabre, Somogy Editions d’art, Paris, 2015
Jan Fabre, Glass and Bone Sculptures 1977–2017, Abazzia di San Gregorio, Venezia, 13.5 – 26.11.2017, Forma Edizioni, 2017
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jan Fabre (1958, Antwerp, Belgium) is considered one of the most innovative and versatile figures in the contemporary international art scene, where he has distinguished himself as a visual and theatre artist and writer. He describes himself as a consilience artist, someone who is constantly searching for bridges between different disciplines. Thanks to this undertaking, he gives fresh interpretations to the world of visual art, theatre and literature.
Jan Fabre has exhibited his works at major international exhibitions and museums such as the Venice Biennale, Documenta in Kassel, the São Paulo Biennial, the Louvre Museum in Paris, the St. Petersburg State Hermitage Museum, and others. More information at https://www.janfabre.be/