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rob van beek About CVs I like to think that CV's are not important as background for seeing art, indeed, they are often misleading and sometimes fraudulent. About Artist's statements I also feel ambiguous abut 'artists' statements'. Apart from the pretensions involved, the prospect of making an artists' statement is somewhat daunting - if I were to start I might not be able to stop. I might end-up raving and frothing at the mouth. Is it really worth the risk? Artist's statement "Being an artist today appears to consist of doing work that is terribly important to the artist but has virtually no significance to anyone else. In return artists enjoy freedom and sovereignty in personal but marginalised domains ('my work' or even worse, 'my art practice') This combination (freedom with marginalisation) leads to the creation of bodies of work that are hopelessly involuted or up-their-own-arse. (This is a trait that seems to dog many contemporary cultural projects: gallery programming, art magazines, critical discussions, 'theory', as well as other creative disciplines such as poetry, contemporary classical music and jazz.) So where do we go from here? At the time of writing I feel artists should strive to be more negative. Violent, anti-social and desperate emotions seem particularly relevant to the situation of the contemporary artist. The world of institutionalised contemporary art appropriates all aspects modern art - constructive or negative - in order the conserve an organisational grip on 'art', the 'creative spirit' , 'modernity' and blah blah blah. Violent, negative, primitive
and aggravated forms of art are sometimes the only I don't want 'my work' or my life 'as an artist' to be either marginalised or institutionalised. I see the form and content of 'my work' as an increasingly desperate attempt to retain some genuine social agency."
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