Art and the Obscene

Drawing On Paper, 2009

I use the word obscene in the sense that the question in itself is obscene, in its form. The urge to see what is hidden, what we are not allowed to see. That what we are not allowed to see is sometimes covered in our fantasies about it which gives it a meaning that it didn’t originally have, and that’s when our interest for the object has become obscene. Transgression of borders and provocations tickle us because they remind us of the most fundamental border that we can never fully cross or understand, the one between inside and outside, the one that devides the subject from it’s environment, its object. But sometimes we get a glimpse of the impossible and the fascinating thing is that it is enough to continue. The drawings describe situations that friends of mine have experienced in their art practice and told me about. You might say that they describe their obscene urges seen through my own obscene fantasies about their activities.