The Holarium Negeren Series 818:32
By (Author) Michael Tedja
Sternberg Press
Sternberg Press
7th April 2017
United States
Professional and Scholarly
Non Fiction
Hardback
1076
Width 171mm, Height 241mm, Spine 15mm
666g
Unlike a number of artists who have begun to use negation, detachment, and inaccessibility as tools to reflect upon and problematize the narratives mapped onto them as members of diasporic or immigrant communities, Michael Tedja plays the other extreme. His work seems to exceed and absorb the institutions that attempt to codify him one way or another, like self-proliferating grey goo. Whereas his peers may seek to transcend identity as such, Tedja's practice is hypersubjective and all-encompassing.The present publication assembles a series of drawings; 818 to be exact, divided in 32 chapters. How can we navigate through them, how can we deal with both the whole and the details Or as Tedja writes in The Holarium- "Why do we need a specific connection in order to see things as separate from one another Can a thing ever be unconnected Is the human eye even able to see the things around it as separate from each other" Tedja's art is predicated on studying the circulation and recycling of images. He is constantly introducing images in new contexts, exposing and manipulating their mutability. A specific approach of this kind, built up thematically into an oeuvre, is a new phenomenon. Tedja's oeuvre, drawing on such disciplines as draftmanship, painting, literature, and installations to produce a cohesive whole, has generated a visual language that contributes to the development of art in context of globalization. Contributors Jelle Bouwhuis, Krist Gruijthuijsen, Carl Haarnack, Edwin Jacobs, Frank Lubbers, Gean Moreno, Domeniek Ruyters, Janwillem Schrofer