May 24
‘May 24, 5 hours ago, 2004’
‘May 24, 8 minutes ago, 2004’
‘May 24, 40 minutes ago, 2004’
Text by Wilma Sütö, “Delay- Old and New Europe: artists investigate the transit zone”. Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, 2004.
‘Reality creates obligations, in Hondius’s opinion, and in art too. With his work he rips open a world-view of safety, harmony and solidarity. His photos are fantasies based on facts- but facts made up of complex relations. Take the answer to the question of where Europe starts and ends: the edges can be delineated, but are not enough to go by. When the alliance is part of transnational networks it oversteps the boundaries. Europe is also present in the Middle East, where Dutch military personnel are part of occupation force in Iraq until the end of January 2005.
‘Europe is in a state of war and its denial’, Hondius observes. In his recent photos of billowing clouds of smoke, he brings a spirit nearer which we would have preferred to leave to haunt at a distance. The photos are painterly, black-grey marbled monochromes, in which tongues of orange flames flash, though otherwise smoke smothers the entire view. ‘
The triptych’ three titles refer to the endless stream of images that reach us 24/7 through the media. The ‘age’ of the images seems to indicate the degree of relevance. The background – the so-called backdrop of the events in the current news – sometimes takes over the actual news.
Shot on location in Southern Flevoland