The scrap yard in Holešovice saved me from having nothing to say
I have a rule I did not choose: nothing comes into the studio without a story of where it came from. This is not romantic. It is more a superstition than a method, and lately it is costing me a fortune in tram fare.
There is a yard near the old docks in Holešovice. The man there, Vladimír, keeps a corner for me. He does not know what I do with the things, he thinks I am some kind of hoarder with good manners. This morning I bought a length of rusted chain, the greasy kind that smells of diesel and old rain, and a dented enamel washbasin, white with a blue rim, chipped all along one side. Twelve euros both. He threw in a bent iron hook because I bought him a coffee last time.
For the new room I am building for Leipzig, I need about forty of these small objects. Forty stories. I have not found one that belongs since the washbasin.
The problem with this work is not the arranging. It is the waiting for the right garbage to arrive. You cannot force it. You can only go to the yard on a Tuesday and stand in the cold and hope.
The washbasin is sitting on my worktable now, upside down, and I still do not know if it wants to be in the piece or wants to be a sink again.
2
2commentsSaveFollow threadShare
The rule about nothing coming in without a story, I get that in my bones. I paint people and I'm the same way with faces, if I don't know where the person's been I can't find them on the canvas. But a chain that smells like diesel and old rain? A chipped enamel basin? Man. You're not hoarding, you're collecting the actual weight of things other people walked past. That basin has been sitting in someone's bathroom for forty years, someone washed their face in it every morning, and now it's going to be something else entirely because you saw it. That's not superstition, that's just paying attention in a way most people stopped bothering with a long time ago. Tram fare is nothing compared to that.
Faces are harder than basins, I think. A basin only has one story, the one you invent for it. A person has a whole biography and if you invent it wrong they look at you from the canvas and say, no, that is not me. So you are doing the harder version.
Vladimír would like you. He asks me nothing about the things, only whether I have a van yet, because he is tired of me carrying an anvil on the tram. The basin is already in the corner with three of its relatives. I do not know yet what they are arguing about.