Artistic collaboration can be a highly risky enterprise and often enough the outcome seems nothing more than what can be described in the simple formula 1+1 = 2. On the other hand there are, of course, well known cases of particular bonds and close artistic partnerships and (sometimes even real life) couples which have been highly successful in their co-operational modus. Their long term collaboration has proved to be an effective symbiothique working process. Gilbert and George, Fischli and Weiss, Eva and Adele, Elmgren and Dragset, the Chapman brothers, just to name a few.
Dutch artist Hans Lemmen and US artist, Roger Ballen, based in South Africa, don’t belong in this category. They have known each other for a long time and have developed an ever growing interest in the work of the other and have consequently built – over time and distance – a friendship which now – after discussing the idea for some years already – has come to a point where they both feel ready to embark upon new territory, stepping outside the circle of routine and safety and work together on a joint project.
Each of them made decisively clear they did not intend to do the usual juxtaposition of individual works, but to completely dive into an unmarked field to explore and mutually discuss the process of their collaboration.
Lemmen coming from a drawing and sculpture practice of intense figurative image making finds his motives in the realms of natural history, archaeology, paleontology and in the deep and hidden parts of the human being in a state of mythological proto-civilization where instinct, humor and the grotesque are the elements to shape our existence.
Roger Ballen who has been famous for his black and white photographs depicting a dark theatre of the subconscious and the absurd. More and more in his Oeuvre he moved from what could be described as form of „staged documentary“ photography of people living on the edge of society to a new kind of image production – absolutely radical and free of any self imposed limitations or public decorum – in order to create artworks that undoubtedly hit the viewer hard as they bring discomforting and irritating tableau to the audience’s awareness mixing abstract elements like lines and marks with the corporeality of his protagonists. To call Ballen’s practice „photographic“ would be just half the truth as he pushes the boundaries of the medium to the limits.
Lemmen and Ballen are somewhat soulmates in terms of their interest in the uncanny, the absurd and the undebatable essence of the conditio humana. Their worlds are filled with the power of mythological creatures, various symbolic and non-symbolic animals to mirror our fragile and barely disguised civilization, covering raw and strange forces which guide us.
So for this exhibition for the first time both artists have decided to leave their well protected comfort zones and to engage in an experimental collaborative working process. Drawing and photography will merge, technical boundaries will be blurred, the pieces will evolve in a back and forth dialogue, where the artists experiment with new techniques, textures, ways of composing and arranging the given material. in a time of ego driven celebrity art, Ballen an Lemmen are willing to step back and devote their creativity in a way that challenges the usual politics of authorship.
The exhibition will present this completely new body of work created by the two artists employing the partner’s art as raw material. Also both artists agreed to build together a three-dimensional structure – a sculpture, which underlines the theatrical quality of both artist’s work – using the given space of each of the participating museums in a particular way. And in addition to the collaborative pieces a few works done individually will complement the exhibition.
