EXPLAINING THE WORLD TO A CHILD - Holst Henckel · er’s opposites. On the con-trary, they are integrated in a visually captivating and thought-provoking unified expression. Even

PETER HOLST HENCKEL / Expla ining the World to a Chi ld

EXPLAININGTHE WORLD TO A

CHILD

2005-2009

Peter Holst Henckel

Tekst af / text by

Andreas Brøgger


Explaining the World to a Child2005-09

Serien består af knap 100 digitalt producerede fotocolla-ger i skiftende formater. Udgangspunktet for Explaining-serien spiller, enkeltvis og som samlet serie, på modsæt-ningen mellem det simple og det komplekse. Enkeltvis og som samlet serie fremstår de som en form for rekonfigure-ring af den medierede billedverden, vi til stadighed ser og forstår verden igennem. Som titlen antyder, forsøger Ex-plaining-serien, på en umiddelbar simpel måde, at ”for-klare” verden i al sin kompleksitet. Pointen er, at billederne ikke helt kan leve op til rollen som visuelle forklaringsmo-deller. Det enkle udtryk stiller flere spørgsmål end svar og lægger dermed mere op til beskuerens betydningsskaben-de meddelagtighed end simple pædagogiske svar på kom-plekse spørgsmål.

The series consists of just under 100 digitally-produced photo collages in various formats. The Explaining series takes as its starting-point a play on the contradiction be-tween the simple and the complex. Both individually, and as a series, the images represent a kind of reconfiguration of the mediated pictorial universe through which we con-tinually view and understand the world. As the title im-plies, the Explaining series attempts, in an apparently sim-ple way, to ‘explain’ the world in all its complexity. The point, however, is that the images cannot quite live up to their role as visual explanatory models. The simple form of expression thus produces more questions than answers, thereby stimulating the observer’s participation in the di-rection of meaning production, rather than merely provid-ing simple pedagogical answers to complex questions.


Explaining Tabula Rasa to a Child

2008

87,5 × 70 cm

lambda fotografi / lambda photography


Betydningsdannelse. Om Peter Holst Henckels Explaining the World to a ChildAf Andreas Brøgger

At forenkle verden så selv et barn kan forstå den — er det en billedkunstners ansvar, eller er det snarere en opgave for en illustrator? Det er nok en opgave, man ikke umid-delbart ville forbinde med Peter Holst Henckel, hvis prak-sis snarere stræber i den modsatte retning, nemlig mod at give et nuanceret og komplekst billede af verden som modvægt til den forsimplede virkelighed, som medierne fremstiller ud fra den laveste fællesnævner, eller som mod-spil til den omsiggribende politiske spin, der regerer hen over realiteterne. Hvorfor har Holst Henckel valgt dette udgangspunkt — at forklare verden for et barn — i den se-rie af værker, han under overskriften Explaining the World to a Child har skabt i perioden 2005-20081. Seriens tidlige værker fra 2005 og 2006 forsøger at sætte billeder på begreber som kærlighed, magt, tid, tu-risme, energi, monarki, konsensus, forhandling, fodnote-politik, flower power, maskulinitet, velfærd, solidaritet, masseproduktion, tid, hygge og poesi. At kunstnerens ver-densbillede er præget af aktuelle begivenheder viser ind-lemmelsen af værker med landenavne i titlerne, såsom Explaining Afghanistan to a Child (foruden eksempelvis Irak og USA), ligesom man aner et dansk filter med forekom-sten af en TV2-mikrofon og en Carlsberg Hof sine steder. Seriens seneste værker fra 2008 beskæftiger sig primært med den menneskelige natur, herunder begreber som de-terminisme, den frie vilje, arv og miljø, evolution, social og biologisk udvælgelse, samt hvad deraf følger af både na-turlig og menneskelig skønhed og gru og ikke mindst poli-

Creating Meaning.On Peter Holst Henckel’s Explaining the World to a ChildBy Andreas Brøgger

To simplify the world so that even a child can understand it — is this the responsibility of a visual artist, or rather a job for an illustrator? It is certainly not a task one would readily associate with Peter Holst Henckel whose artistic practice points in the opposite direction, i.e. towards pre-senting a nuanced, complex picture of the world that coun-terbalances the oversimplified reality served up by the me-dia, often based on the lowest common denominator, or offers an alternative to the political spin that increasingly dominates factual reality. So why has Holst Henckel cho-sen Explaining the World to a Child as the starting point for his series of works so entitled, executed in the years 2005-2008?1

The earliest works in this series, dating from 2005 and 2006, try to visualize such different concepts as love, pow-er, time, tourism, energy, monarchy, consensus, negotia-tion, footnote-politics, flower power, masculinity, welfare, solidarity, mass production, cosiness, and poetry. Works with the names of countries in their titles, such as Explaining Afghanistan to a Child (as well as Iraq and USA, among others), reveal that the artist’s picture of the world is coloured by current world events. Here and there one senses a Danish “filter”, as when a microphone with the logo of a Danish TV channel or a bottle of Carlsberg beer appears. The most recent works in this series, dating from 2008, are mainly concerned with human nature and in-clude such concepts as determinism, free will, heredity and environment, evolution, social and biological


tiske (eller måske netop naturlige) stridigheder. Alle disse begreber, der tilsammen forsøgsvis peger mod et både ak-tuelt og universelt katalog over verden, anskues æstetisk og historisk gennem lån fra forskellige historiske billed-arkiver. Serien refererer således til nyhedsmedierne, rekla-men, populærkulturen, videnskaben, ja sågar den autori-tative kommunikation, hvormed staten oplyser borgere om samfundet. En væsentlig dimension i Explaining the World to a Child er også anvendelsen af kunsthistoriske kilder, der blandt andet går tilbage til den tidlige, politisk ladede fotomon-

selection, as well as what this entails of natural and man-made beauty and horror, not least political (or perhaps we might even say natural) conflicts. By means of pictures ap-propriated from various historical image archives, all these concepts are viewed aesthetically and historically, and to-gether they suggest both a current and universal catalogue of the world. The series contains references to news me-dia, advertisements, popular culture and science, even to the authoritative form of address used by the state to in-form its citizens about their society. An important dimension of Explaining the World to a

Peter Holst Henckel, Human Nature, 2008, installationview, fotograf / photographer Anders Sune Berg


tage fra 1920erne og 1960ernes pop art og op art. Holst Henckel benytter sig også af den visuelle retoriks reper-toire af betydningsbefordrende greb, såsom silhouetter, dobbelteksponeringer, skalaforskydninger, placeringsskift og beskæringer, og ofte på en måde der lader de visuelle lag stå og arbejde i værket, længe efter at det tilsynela-dende “budskab” er leveret. I sin praksis arbejder Peter Holst Henckel med kun-stens og den øvrige virkeligheds æstetiske og politiske si-der, og som i hans œuvre i det hele taget er styrken i Ex-plaining the World to a Child, at det æstetiske og det

Child is its use of art-historical sources, dating back to the early, politically charged photomontages of the 1920s and to the Pop and Op art of the 1960s. Holst Henckel also makes use of the vast repertoire of visual rhetorical devices such as silhouetting, double exposure, changes of scale, positioning and cropping — often in a way that lets visual layers remain effective in the work long after the apparent “message” has been delivered. Peter Holst Henckel works with the aesthetic and political aspects of art and reality. As in his œuvre generally, the strong point of Explaining the World to a Child is that

Peter Holst Henckel, Human Nature, 2008, installationview, fotograf / photographer Anders Sune Berg


politiske ikke stilles op som modsætninger. Tvært-imod integreres de i en vi-suelt fængende og reflek-sionsfremmende enhed. Selv i et velmenende pro-jekt som at forklare ver-den for børn ligger der politiske lag til fri afbenyt-telse. Man kunne således vælge at opfatte den di-daktiske ramme i Explai-ning the World to a Child som en skinmanøvre. En konceptuel manøvre, der kunne have til formål at rette en ironisk eller kri-tisk kommentar til et egentlig pædagogisk pro-jekt i kunsten — ja endda til billedets kommunikati-ve potentiale i det hele ta-get. Det er en formodning, der understøttes af flere af Peter Holst Henckels tidligere værker, hvor den visuelle kommunikations anskueliggørende potentia-le — eller mangel på sam me — og de hermed forbundne magtforhold netop er væsentlige temaer (se f.eks. hans “billedtavler” fra 1992 og frem). Med den overordnede ramme står serien i relation til kunstnerens tidligere arbej-der, der på lignende vis mimer retorik og logik fra andre felter end kunstens. I Explaining the World to a Child arbejder Holst Henckel dog med en bredere vifte af anskuelsesformer, repræsen-tationssystemer og visuelle ud sagn end hidtil. Serien præ-

aesthetics and politics are not presented as each oth-er’s opposites. On the con-trary, they are integrated in a visually captivating and thought-provoking unified expression. Even a well-intentioned project such as explaining the world to children makes political layers readily avaiable to us. One could choose to see the didactic framework of Explaining the World to a Child as a pretext, a conceptual trick, the pur-pose of which might be to comment ironically or critically on an essen-tially educational project in art — even on the com-municative potential of images altogether. This presumption finds support in several of Peter Holst Henckel’s earlier works

where a central theme is the explanatory potential of visual communication — or lack of it — and the power structures linked to it (for instance, his “Picture Pa nels”, of 1992, and later). The seemingly didactic framework of Explaining the World to a Child relates it to earlier works that likewise mimic rhetorical and logical devices from areas other than art. In Explaining the World to a Child, however, Holst Henckel works with a wider range of modes of perception, systems of representation and visual statements. The

Peter Holst Henckel, Bugs, 1992, 160 × 125 cm, akryl og T-shirt tryk på lærred / acrylic and T-shirt print on cotton


ges ikke kun af kunstne-rens kritiske indstilling over for eksisterende bil-led former og billedbrug, den rummer også en ny åbenhed. På linje med kunstnerens serieværk World of Butterflies (2002) har Explaining the World to a Child en art encyklopæ-disk karakter. Sidstnævnte, den nyere serie, forekom-mer imidlertid mere vidt-rækkende hvad angår te-matikker og visuelle udtryk. Måske mindre stram og homogen i sin komposition men af samme grund i hø-jere grad i bevægelse, ja nærmest muterende. Det er symptomatisk, at seri-ens værker kan installeres i skiftende formationer på udstillingsvæggene og ofte med underliggende vægbema lin ger — såsom store sorte grene — der antyder, at her ligger mere til grund end det, vi ser inden for billed ram merne. Lad os stille det indledende spørgsmål igen. Hvorfor har Peter Holst Henckel valgt at tage denne opgave på sig — at forklare verden for børn — hvis ikke for alene at feje den af bordet og eksponere netop den didaktiske op-gaves dubiøse karakter? En sådan handling ville ikke være uden arrogance og hører — ligesom den simple poin-te — formentlig ikke til i Holst Henckels projekt. Men er det overhovedet muligt at løse en sådan opgave? Hvordan kan verden fremstilles og forklares for et barn i al dens

series is characterized by the artist’s critical attitude to existing forms of visual expression and use of images, but it is also marked by a new openness. Like the serial work World of Butterflies (2002), Explaining the World to a Child has an encyclopedic quality. The latter, however, seems more far-reaching in regard to thematic content and visual expression. It may not be as tight and homogeneous in terms of composition, but for the same reason contains more movement, seeming almost to be mutating. It is symptomatic that the individual works in the series can be installed in changing constellations and are often displayed on top of

imagery painted directly on the gallery walls — for instance black branches — suggesting that there is more to it than what we see inside the picture frames. Let us return to the initial question: Why has Peter Holst Henckel decided to take it upon him-self to explain the world to children, if it is not just to reject this didactic task and expose the dubious nature of it? Such an act would be rather arrogant and, in making too simple a point, not likely to be part of Holst Henckel’s project. But is such a task at all pos-sible to accomplish? How can the world be presented and

Peter Holst Henckel, Explaining Friendly Fire to a Child, 2008, 150 × 120 cm, lambda fotografi / lambda photography


grufuldhed, kompleksitet, detaljering, abstraktion og for-underlige skønhed? Snarere end at garantere svar giver opstillingen af den didaktiske ramme måske netop kunst-neren — og beskueren — mu lighed for at medreflektere selve måden, hvorpå de nævnte temaer overhovedet kan diskuteres? Kan vi på nogen måde visualisere verdens for-underlighed og gru for hinanden? Kan det lade sig gøre på tværs af, ja endsige inden for een og samme kulturelle kontekst — eller blot generation? Set i et biografisk lys er det givet naturligt for Holst Henckel at ville undersøge den viden og ”Weltanschau-ung”, der kendetegner barnet, al den stund kunstneren

explained to a child in all its horror, complexity, detail, ab-straction and wondrous beauty? Rather than ensuring an-swers, the didactic framework allows the artist — and the viewer — to reflect on how these themes can be discussed at all. Can we in any way make the wonders and horrors of the world intelligible to each other via images? Can it be done across cultures, or even within the same cultural context — or generation for that matter? Viewed in a biographical perspective, it no doubt came naturally to Holst Henckel to want to examine the knowl-edge and Weltanschauung characteristic of children, since the artist has children of his own who very likely confront

Peter Holst Henckel, Explaining Fragility to a Child, 2008, 125 × 100 cm, lambda fotografi / lambda photography

Peter Holst Henckel, Explaining the West to a Child, 2005, 125 × 100 cm, lambda fotografi / lambda photography


selv har børn, som sikkert løbende konfronterer ham med alverdens spørgsmål. Man kan forestille sig, at kunstneren således privat leder efter ikke blot svar herpå, men også en meto-de hvormed disse spørgs-mål overhovedet kan gribes an. Holst Henckel har selv omtalt en iagtta-gelse hos den polske so-ciolog Zygmunt Bauman, som peger i denne retning. Bauman har påpeget, at en af nutidens store opga-ver er at “genlære evnen til at kunne oversætte in-dividuelle problemer til fælles spørgsmål”2. At for-klare verden for et barn kunne således opfattes som en øvelse i at genlære sammenhængen mellem natur og kultur, familie og samfund, propaganda og pædagogik, æstetik og poli-tik — for kunstneren såvel som for os beskuere. Uanset om der et sted i processen ligger en barnlig nys-gerrighed eller uskyld til grund for denne værkserie, så vid-ner den didaktiske ramme givet om en søgen efter et be-gyndelsessted, hvorfra det er muligt at beskæftige sig “med det hele”. Det sker i glidende overgange mellem det banale og det komplekse, det følelsesladede og det rationelle, det didaktiske og det indoktrinerende, det æstetiske og det po-litiske, som altsammen udspringer af de forlæg, der ligger til grund for Holst Henckels arbejde. Den didaktiske ramme frisætter kunstneren til at afprøve udsagn om verden, som

him with all sorts of ques-tions. One would imagine that the artist in private looks not only for answers to these questions, but also for ways of tackling them. Holst Henckel has himself mentioned an ob-servation made by the Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman suggestive of this. Bauman pointed out that one of the great tasks of the present is to “relearn the ability to translate the problems of the individual into common concerns”2 Thus to explain the world to a child could be seen as an exercise in relearning the connection between nature and culture, family and society, propaganda and education, aesthetics and politics — for the artist

as well as for us, the viewers. Regardless of whether a childlike curiosity or innocence lies hidden somewhere at the root of this series, the didactic framework clearly suggests a search for a starting point that makes it possible to consider “everything”. This is realized in seamless cross-overs from the banal to the complex, from the emotional to the rational, from the didactic to the indoctrinating, from the aesthetic to the political, all of it springing from the model on which the work is based. The didactic framework frees Holst Henckel to test statements about the world that are variously disturbing, sinister, play-ful, at times even bordering on the banal or naive, at other

Peter Holst Henckel, Explaining Nature versus Nurture to a Child, 2008, 150 × 120 cm, lambda fotografi / lambda photography


times humourous, didactic and stylistically perfect. In short, Holst Henckel is able to attack these questions in an open and inclusive way. Innocently, without prejudice, you might say. In Explaining Fragility to a Child (2008), a baby hand closes around a grown-up finger in an almost sweet, pink scenario where an or-chid peeps out, and a layer of bubble-plastic serves as texture. In Explaining Rhetoric to a Child (2008), a flowery figure of speech, literally as well as figu-ratively, is effectively created through digital manipulation. Explaining Camouflage to a Child (2005) combines natural and military camouflage,

conceptually and visually, in its anonymous, walking sil-houettes. Hardly any words are used at all in the image layers themselves. Taken together with the overall title of the se-ries, this suggests a “picture book”, but unfolded as an in-stallation. Thus some of the individual works lean towards pictograms. In Explaining Contradiction to a Child (2006), the silhouette of a soldier sitting with his rifle mimes the pointed beak of a hummingbird. Its beak is what enables this equilibristic bird to feed on flowers (also used by the lovely bird to peck out the eyes of a rival in order to sur-vive). The title of the work may tell us what to think, but is what we see without ambiguity? Does 1 plus 1 equal 2? And

både er foruroligende og dystre, legende, ja sine steder måske endda på grænsen til det banale el-ler naive, andre steder hu-moristiske, didaktiske og stilistisk suveræne. Holst Henckel kan kort sagt gå åbent og inkluderende til værks. For domsfrit, om man vil. I Explaining Fragi-lity to a Child (2008) knyt-ter en lille babyhånd sig om en voksen finger i et næsten sødmefyldt lyse-rødt scenarie, hvor en or-kide stikker frem og et lag bobleplast er lagt ind som struktur i billedet. En sprogblomst manipuleres effektfuldt frem i Explai-ning Rhetoric to a Child (2008), metaforisk og bog-staveligt på samme tid. Naturlig og militær camouflage kobles konceptuelt og visu-elt i de anonyme gående silhouetter i Explaining Camoufla-ge to a Child (2005). Der er næsten ikke et eneste ord på spil i selve billedla-gene, hvilket sammenholdt med seriens overordnede titel leder tankerne hen på en “billedbog”, blot foldet ud instal-latorisk. Nogle af enkeltværkerne flirter da også med det piktogram-agtige. I Explaining Contradiction to a Child (2006) mimer en silhouet af en soldat siddende med sin riffel en kolibris spidse næb, der gør det muligt for den ek-vilibristiske fugl at ernære sig ved blomsten (med samme næb hakker den yndige fugl gerne en rivals øjne ud af hen-syn til egen overlevelse). Værktitlen fortæller måske nok,

Peter Holst Henckel, Explaining the New World Order to a Child, 2005, 150 × 120 cm, lambda fotografi / lambda photography


hvad vi skal tænke, men er det entydigt, det vi ser? Er 1+1 lig med 2, og er alt sagt, når der i afstanden mellem kolibri og soldat ligger kognitive kløfter, der skal overvindes, lige-som der i de visuelle lag foregår et poetisk spil, som ikke uden videre lader sig definere. Hen over marcherende bør-nesoldater lægges et naturlignende ‘tapet’ i Explaining Na-ture versus Nurture to a Child (2008). Enklere kan det næsten ikke siges — arv og miljø — og samtidig intenst og effekt-fuldt, smukt, ja næsten for æstetisk og lækkert — hvor for vores spørgs mål til netop udsagn, hensigt og selve udsi-gelsespositionen melder sig som en boomerang. På samme måde er seriens enkeltværker både hinan-dens med- og modspillere. De sufflerer og taler hinanden imod, hvilket skaber en dynamik imellem seriens betyd-ningslag. Et andet konkret værkeksempel, der også flirter med det piktogram-agtige: Tre eller flere rutefly flyver rent visuelt ind i hinanden i en flerdobbelt “eksponering”, der betitles Explaining the New World Order to a Child (2005). Budskabet er relativt enkelt og effektivt, og alligevel for-tættet med en rest af noget usagt eller uforklarligt. Synet af et fly, der flyver opad eller er på vej ned i et fald, vækker følelser og erindringer, som ikke uden videre kan oversæt-tes til sprog endsige læresætninger. Billedet peger på stør-re sammenhænge, hvis kompleksitet er omvendt propor-tionale med billedets enkelhed. Et billede kan sige mere end tusinde ord, siger man, og det gælder i særdeleshed også her. Men på den anden side opleves det i flere af se-riens værker, som om det modsatte snarere er tilfældet. At billedlagenes vidt forgrenede betydningsstier trækker sig sammen, så værket i en vis forstand udsiger mindre end et ord. Måske forstået på den måde at vi har svært ved at forholde os til oplevelsen af netop denne omvendte pro-portionalitet. Billederne virker overskudsagtige og stum-me på en og samme tid. I sidste ende beskæftiger Explaining the World to a Child sig således med forklaringsmodeller og oversættelsesmulig-heder, både mellem kultur og natur, barn og voksen og mel-

has all been said, when you consider the cognitive gaps to be overcome in order to cover the distance between hum-mingbird and soldier? A poetic game is going on in the visual layers, which is not readily definable. In Explaining Nature versus Nurture to a Child (2008), a seemingly natural “tapestry” is placed across marching child soldiers. Nature and nurture — it cannot be stated more simply than this, and at the same time intensely and effectfully, beautifully, in an almost too aesthetic and appealing way — which is why questions regarding statement, intention and point of view hit us like a boomerang. Similarly, the individual works in the series both play along with and against each other. They prompt and contradict each other, creating a dynamic exchange between the layers of meaning. In another work that brings pictograms to mind, Explaining the New World Order to a Child (2005), three or four passenger planes fly into each other in a multiple exposure. The message is rela-tively simple and effective, yet compressed, leaving some-thing unsaid or unexplained. The sight of an airplane flying upward, or falling down, stirs up feelings and memories that cannot easily be translated into words, much less doc-trines. The picture suggests larger contexts, the complexity of which is inversely proportional to the simplicity of the image. A picture can say more than a thousand words, it is said, and is especially true in this case. On the other hand, it feels as if the opposite is true of some of the other works — as if the ramifications of meaning in the layers of images contract, making the work somehow say less than a word. This should perhaps be understood in the way that we find it difficult to relate to the experience of this re-versed proportionality. The images seem simultaneously excessive and mute. Ultimately, Explaining the World to a Child is concerned with explanatory models and the possibilities of transla-tion, between culture and nature, child and adult, and be-tween world, language and image. If national languages


lem verden, sprog og billede. Hvis de nationale sprog rum-mer afgørende nuancer, der vanskeligt lader sig oversætte fra det ene sprog til andre, kan billedet måske træde til som en form for universelt udsagn? Næppe, historien er rig på eksempler på det modsatte. Som vi på det seneste har erfa-ret aflæses end ikke karikaturtegninger — en ellers simpel og pointefremhævende genre — ens i alle egne af verden. Uenigheden lurer i billedet. Selvom hvert eneste enkeltværk i Explaining the World to a Child har en “forklarende” titel, som tjener til at forankre billedaflæsningen — og selvom må-ske intet billede eksisterer frit af ordene, meningen og mod-tagerens kulturelle bagage — så undersøger serien måske

have nuances that are difficult to translate from one language into another, could images step in as a universal idiom? Hardly. History is rich in examples of the opposite. As we have recently witnessed, even caricature draw-ings — an otherwise simple, demonstrative genre — are not interpreted in the same way everywhere in the world. Conflict lies hidden in images. Even though each individual work in Explaining the World to a Child has an “explanatory” title, facilitating the interpretation of the image — and even though it may well be that no image exists independ-ently of language, meaning and the receiver’s cultural bagage — perhaps what this series examines is precisely

Peter Holst Henckel, Explaining Denmark to a Child, 2006, installationview, fotograf / photographer Anders Sune Berg


the limits of what an image can say. In the form of an explosion as well as an implosion of meaning. Holst Henckel deliberately brings all the familiar clichés and scare-images into his story of the world — pictures of war, death and destruction, newborn babies and colourful birds — perhaps because it allows him to examine whether these images can be worked free of their moorings. We might transfer the deterministic problematics to the series itself: Do these images have a free will, or is their fate pre-determined? Can the layers of meaning in the images be made to say more than what commercial, pedagogic or political interests originally intended? Can the images, de-spite their “cultural burden”, rise and get away with new meanings? Does a loophole exist for us viewers some-where, an escape route leading to a place of recognition where meaning and purposes are not yet determined but still — as with children — in the process of being formed? Explaining the World to a Child offers no unambiguous conclusions convertible into lexical knowledge suitable for schools. On the contrary, the images make it clear that not everything can be illustrated and explained unambiguous-ly — but it is perhaps of crucial importance for us to make the attempt nevertheless.

1 Parts of this series were exhibited at Galerie MøllerWitt in Århus (Explaining the World to a Child, 2005), at Galleri Specta (OBS! Oplysning til Borgerne om Samfundet, 2006), Malmö Kunsthall (group show: Malm2 Contemporary Art from the Oresund Region, 2006) and in Holst Henckel’s exhibition Human Nature at Galleri Specta in 2008.2 Cited from the artist statement at www.holsthenckel.dk

Andreas Brøgger is curator at Vestsjællands Kunstmuseum

netop grænserne for billedets udsigelsespotentiale? Både i form af en eksplosion og en implosion af betydninger. Holst Henckel lader med vilje alle klichéerne og skræm-mebillederne indgå som en del af sin fortælling om ver-den — billeder af krig, død og ødelæggelse, nyfødte børn og farvestrålende fugle — måske fordi han dermed kan un-dersøge, om selv disse billeder kan arbejdes fri af deres forankringer? For nu at overføre den deterministiske pro-blematik på serien i sig selv: Har billederne en fri vilje eller er deres skæbne forudbestemt? Kan lagene i billederne bringes til at sige mere, end de oprindeligt ud fra kommer-cielle, pædagogiske eller politiske hensigter er blevet skabt til og brugt til? Kan billederne, trods den “kulturelle byrde” de bærer på, rejse sig og slippe afsted med nye betydnin-ger? Er der for os beskuere et smuthul et sted, en flugtvej, der fører til et erkendelsessted, hvor betydningen og mål-sætningerne endnu ikke ligger fast, men — ligesom hos barnet — kun er i færd med at dannes? Explaining the World to a Child rummer ingen entydige konklusioner, der kan omsættes i skoleegnet paratviden, tværtimod gør billederne det klart, at ikke alt kan illustre-res og forklares entydigt — men det er måske ikke desto mindre afgørende at gøre forsøget?

1 Dele af serien har været udstillet på Galerie MøllerWitt i Århus (Explaining the World to a Child, 2005), på Galleri Specta (OBS! Oplysning til Borgerne om Samfundet, 2006), Malmö Kunsthall (gruppeudstillingen Malm2 Contem-porary Art from the Oresund Region, 2006) samt Holst Henckels udstilling Human Nature på Galleri Specta i 2008.2 Citat fra artist statement på www.holsthenckel.dk

Andreas Brøgger er museumsinspektør på Vestsjællands Kunstmuseum


Explaining Camouflage to a Child

2005

120 × 150 cm



Explaining Contradiction to a Child

2006

150 × 120 cm



Explaining Mythology to a Child

2006

87,5 × 70 cm



Explaining Cosiness to a Child

2006

87,5 × 70 cm



Explaining Tabula Rasa to a Child

2008

87,5 × 70 cm



Explaining Negotiation to a Child

2006

150 × 120 cm



Explaining Arabia to a Child

2005

100 × 80 cm



Explaining Idealism to a Child

2008

150 × 120 cm



Explaining Asia to a Child

2005

87,5 × 70 cm



Explaining Distance to a Child

2006

87,5 × 70 cm


Documents

EXPLAINING THE WORLD TO A CHILD - Holst Henckel · er’s opposites. On the con-trary, they are integrated in a visually captivating and thought-provoking unified expression. Even