It is the viewer who makes the artwork, Chile’s Carlos=20 Capel=FCn told Ivor Powell
IN 1974, Carlos Capel=FCn was one of a group of anti- dictatorship activists in Chile who, as the chilling=20 violation of grammar has it, “were disappeared”.=20
Somehow, this particular group managed to smuggle out a=20 piece of paper bearing the names of the disappeared.=20 And somehow the piece of paper found its way into the=20 hands of the Red Cross, restoring some official=20 existence to Capel=FCn and those kidnapped along with=20
The end result was, of course, a happy one. Faced with=20 the proof represented by the scraps of paper, the=20 Chilean authorities were forced to admit to the=20 people’s existence they had sought, in the most=20 irrevocable ways, to deny. The owners of the names were=20 released and, as regards Capel=FCn, Uruguayan by birth=20 but an activist in Chile by conviction, another=20 diaspora was spawned in Sweden.
A peculiar story but, in the jeopardising of identity,=20 one that provides a particularly apt metaphor for the=20 work that Capel=FCn began to make after his remove to=20
He peers at me over the crescent slivers of his=20 spectacles, but somehow I feel his eyes are always=20 turned the other way, inwards rather than out; the sad,=20 transcendent humanism of the vocational exile. It is=20 appropriate that, when he explains how he became=20 involved with making art, he casts himself more as the=20 object than the subject of the event.
“I was completely loaded with feelings, emotions, you=20 know, strong things that I couldn’t express through my=20 political activity. I wanted to have a more personal=20 approach to this social thinking that I had. And this=20 is why I started to make these things, and then without=20 realising it really, I started to have a career.
“And then the years of the (Chilean) dictatorship were=20 over. I stopped working in organised politics and=20 suddenly I had the responsibility of organising my=20 political knowledge in my own hands. Art has given me=20 the chance to redefine my own ethics and my own=20 political opinions, on a very personal level.”
As we talk he returns again and again to this notion of=20 art as a means of organising knowledge. “We are living=20 in a world full of objects. We have objects all around=20 us and I always feel the fear of creating a new object,=20 adding a new object to this world. So what I am trying=20 to do is reorganise these objects that already are=20 there. I rearrange them … It’s like I’m trying to=20 organise my own knowledge.”
As part of Kendell Geers’ Volatile Colonies exhibition=20 at the Johannesburg Biennale, Capel=FCn has taken over=20 two small rooms in MuseumAfrica. They are fall-out=20 spaces, architectural left-overs, one placed above the=20 other underneath the stairs and connected via floor=20 platforms that stop short of meeting the outer=20 retaining walls of the building.=20
The top room Capel=FCn has crammed with information of=20 various kinds: clocks set to different times; a=20 collection of bandanas; quotations from critic Thomas=20 McEvilley on the subject of meaning in art at the end=20 of the 20th century; various bland domestic items,=20 occasional tables, potplants, lit lamps and so on.=20 Played off against these are images suggesting=20 consciousness in fragmentation and transformation: a=20 series of blank, affectless heads, invaded by black=20 shapes a bit like leaves, a bit like tattoos, a bit=20 like musculature worn on the surface; bodies without=20 heads; hands holding books, a pile of wood that looks=20 as if it is about to be used for something.
In the lower room, Capel=FCn has followed more or less=20 the same procedure, only in quieter mode: here, the=20 “information” is sparse, the space dark, the lights=20 covered with layers of mud. If the top room is the=20 exterior, this is the interior; if the former provides=20 a sensory overload, this is its distillation.
“I used to work with the Rorschach test in psychology,=20 and its complete lack of meaning,” Capel=FCn notes. “I=20 mean, the spots didn’t have any meaning in themselves.=20 Now the reading of these spots is what gives them=20 sense. The same thing with the artwork. I don’t think=20 the artwork exists in an abstract level.”
In other words, in the artist’s conception it is the=20 viewer, the experiencer, who is really making the=20 artwork. Capel=FCn is merely providing the raw materials.=20
‘I think that art is an empty basket and you put in=20 this basket whatever you want. I want people to=20 recognise the situation in everyday life. At the same=20 time I have to transport people to a different=20 dimension, a dimension of reflecting about themselves.”
All of which, of course, makes Capel=FCn’s work=20 particularly difficult to talk about. Its meanings lie=20 in process not in statement. Yet even so, the spaces he=20 has created have an indefinable formal elegance, a=20 depth of evocation that transcends and beggars the=20 self-conscious but essentially empty cleverness of so=20 much contemporary neo-conceptualism.
Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that the=20 notion of identity — whose concretisation in the world=20 of objects and ideas is Capel=FCn’s real concern as an=20 artist — is more than just a smartass aesthetic=20 concept the way he experiences it.=20
“It’s trying to get in contact with you, your mind and=20 your body. So then, by putting in objects from everyday=20 life, I want you to recognise the situation. This is=20 not dealing with artistic objects made for a show. You=20 are dealing with objects that you recognise as your own=20 and I want you to do that, because art is not separate=20 from life.
“What we as artists are doing of late is dealing with=20 symbolic systems of meanings. This is art, this is=20 culture, a symbolic system of meaning. I always want to=20 put the abstract thought with a concrete one.”