#vangoal / 2017
Was a performance related gesture, created for the exhibition On Performance - Social Aesthetics Obscured at TRANEN /contemporary art space.
Social Aesthetics Obscured was a series of exhibitions that explored the boundaries between art and life. Exhibitons that migrated the social space into the art field and the art into reality.
The title of the installation #vangoal, the red hair of the figure and the huge wall poster and the wooden bed, was to remind the visitor of Vincent van Gogh. A historic painter which art has been reproduced in near infinity and like football, characterized by mass culture and everyday life. Who has not been in a waiting room and gazed at the Starry Night? Who hasn't been to a stadium and stared into the big starry spotlights.
During the exhibition people could challenge this Van Goal character to a duel, a 1 vs 1 battle, in a game called "panna", a streetfootball game derived from the Netherlands. The character only spoke 5 different sentences in Dutch and gave no clue to the game, the duel and the exhibition in general. He only cheered if he won, and slept if he lost.
Art historian Gregory White Smith (October 4, 1951 – April 10, 2014) on Van Gogh: "He did not actively seek death but that when it came to him, or when it presented itself as a possibility, he embraced it". Rumors in the 1930s tells that Van Gogh had been shot accidentally by two boys, theorize that Secretan and a friend shot Van Gogh — perhaps the hot-tempered artist lunged at him while being taunted, or maybe it was just a cowboy game gone awry.
photos: Niels Plenge
