Finn Naur Petersen, Catalog Nærvær/Presence 1999.
Kineserens klangflader, Poul Erik Tøjner
Finn Naur Petersen spænder modsætninger ud til rum. Eller spænder rum ud i modsætninger. Rummene varierer fra sted til sted, det er den moderne udstillende kunstners lod, men egentlig er det heller ikke dem det kommer an på. Rummene i sig selv er blot anledning til udfoldelse, udfoldelse af een og samme impuls, der går gennem alle hans ting: fremkaldelsen af en nærværets hemmelighed, som bevidst unddrages sprog og symbol.
Modsætningerne, der danner cirkler om rummets rumlighed - altså om os, vi der optager det - har med materiale og form at gøre. Og både materiale eller stof og form har den særlige status hos Naur Petersen, at der bestandigt og allerede er peget væk fra kunstneren hen på begivenhedens, oplevelsens selvtilstrækkelighed. Materialet kan være rustspor på papir, formen kan være ornamentets.
Form og stof hos Naur Petersen bekræfter nok hans faible for håndværk, men bærer samtidig - æstetisk set - udover frembringeren. Som ornament og fysik, det vil sige dels som udtryk, der ikke viser tilbage til ophavsmandens følelsesliv eller intellekt, dels som reelt værende stof, løsriver værket sig fra kunstneren, og bliver til rum, til sted, sted for tilstedeværelse.
Det er en anden æstetik end den vi er vænnet til gennem det moderne. Der har vi to spor ad hvilke vi kan gå. En radikal subjektivering af kunsten, der konsekvent gøres til unikt program for kunstnerens singularitet - ofte bragt til udtryk som ekspressionisme. En radikal depersonalisering af kunsten, der lader værket afstøde kunstneren som noget nærmest væsensfremmed - ofte betegnet minimalisme.
Sat heroverfor må Naur Petersen svare hverken eller. Der er i hans ting en poesi på stoffets vegne, der placerer ham langt væk fra alle minimale bestræbelser, ligesom der er en undertiden næsten puristisk formvilje, som bærer ham tilsvarende bort fra det ekspressive.
Hvor er han så? Han er et forsoningens sted. Hvis vi vover at betegne det ekspressive og minimale, let karikeret, som magtstrategier - ekspressionisme: det store i den enkelte, minimalisme: det store i det enkle - , indkredser Naur Petersen afmagtens diskurs gennem sit værk. Der er tao i hans ting, han er, hvad den schweiziske forfatter Robert Walser karakteriserer som kineseren: Et menneske, for hvem alt hvad der er småt og beskedent synes smukt og elskeligt og for hvem alt hvad der er stort og krævende synes frygteligt og forfærdeligt.
Naur Petersen rum er nok store, men aldrig storladne. Han er antimonumental, selv hvor størrelsen nærmer sig, holder han igen med en poetisk gestus, der få al volumen til at svæve. Svævet indtager en vigtig rolle i hans rum. Enten som den tilstand synet hensættes i af de mange sideordnede billedformler, eller som direkte tematiseret. Som et tilbageholdt åndedræt lige før bevægelsen, som lysindfald, hvori støvet danser, eller slet og ret som ballet med degask ynde.
Svævet hører til Naur Petersens fænomenologi og dermed til hans kunsts umiddelbare kvalitet. Der er også en anden kvalitet, en tyngde i stoffet, som ikke kun har med materialets egenvægt at gøre. Man undgår således ikke at bemærke, at guldet og sølvet og de monochrome substanser, som Naur Petersen anvender igen og igen, genfindes i ikonernes kunst, i den religiøse kulturs billedverden. Og dér ofte som det nonfiguratives ikonoklastiske bolværk mod fremstillingens forbrydelse, fremstillingen af det hellige.
Denne ikonoklasme hvad angår de hellige billeder sammenholdt med Robert Walsers karakteristik af kineseren indtegner Naur Petersens rum som noget andet end simpel beskedenhed eller tilbageholdenhed. Der ligger et bevidst valg bag alt det, der vælges fra, når Naur Petersen indretter sine rum. Det der vælges i fravalget er åbenhed holdt i skak af ornamentikkens store flader.
Man finder næsten kropslig hvile mellem Naur Petersens vægge, fordi han ophæver det evindelige spil mellem nærstudium og overblik. Nok kan man gå tæt på og udforske de enkelte og lokale strukturer i fladen, men efter få gange opdager man, at det hverken gælder nærsyn eller panorama, men tilstedeværelse, en slags visuel omfavnelse.
Denne omfavnelse er af meditativ natur. Den styrker de receptive sider i det ellers fortravlede nutidsmenneske, og den befrier det ellers stærke bånd mellem receptivitet og forståelse. Det er ikke det bånd Naur Petersen binder. Receptiviteten hos ham er snarere musikkens non-informative, den rene syntaks, elementernes orden. Klangflader kunne været ordet, som samlede Naur Petersens rum til en bygning, visualiserede klangflader - og slet ikke langt fra de såkaldte chladniske klangfigurer, som vi kender fra fysikkens simple forsøg: en plade bestrøet med sand stryges med en bue og svingningerne afsætter sig som symmetriske figurer i sandet afhængig af tonen.
Både umiddelbart og for refleksionen har Naur Petersens rum et slægtskab med dette eksperiment: Hans form synes at være overladt til kræfter og lovmæssigheder i stoffet selv, og dog redegør dette ikke fuldt ud for magien i det samlede syn. Ligesom musikken ej heller er forklaret med klangfigurenes aftegninger. Kunstværkets væsen forbliver dette uvæsen: en uudgrundelig rinden over.
Poul Erik Tøjner
The Chinaman’s Sounding Surfaces
Finn Naur Petersen stretches oppositions out into space. Or, one could also say, he stretches space out in oppositions. The spaces do vary from the one place to the other - that is the lot of the present-day’s exhibiting artist. But, really, it is not that which is the matter. The spaces, in themselves, are merely the occasion for an unfolding, the unfolding of one and the same impulse that runs continuously through all of his things: the development of a presencing’s secret that is deliberately evaded by language and symbol.
The oppositions, which form circles around the space’s spatiality - and accordingly around us, those of us who do discover this - have to do with material and form. And in Naur Petersen’s production, both material, or substance, and form do possess a peculiar status insofar as they point, constantly and already, away from the artist and toward the self-sufficiency of the event, of the experience. The material could just as well be traces of rust upon a piece of paper, the form might be that of the ornament’s. In the work of Naur Petersen, form and substance certainly confirm the artist’s penchant for handicraft. At the same time, however - aesthetically speaking, they endure above and beyond their progenitor. As ornament and physic, which means to say partly as expression that does not indicate its way back towards the emotional life, or towards the intellect, of their originator, and partly as real, existent substance, the work detaches itself from the artist and becomes space. It turns into place, place for presencing.
It is another aesthetic than that to which we have become accustomed through the modern. There, we have two footpaths that we can tread along. A radical subjectification of art, which consequently can be rendered into a unique program for the singularity of the artist - often brought to its manifestation as expressionism. A radical depersonalization of art, which allows the work to shed the artist as something almost alien - most often designated as minimalism. Confronted with this to choose from, Naur Petersen must answer “neither, nor”. In his things, there is a poetry that speaks about substance which situates him far away from all minimalistic efforts, just as there is a sometimes almost puristic propensity toward form which carries him, correspondingly, away from the expressive. But then, where is he? He is at a place of reconciliation. If we venture to designate the expressive and the minimal, lightly caricatured, as being power strategies - expressionism as greatness in the single individual, minimalism as greatness in the simple - then Naur Petersen, throughout his production, can be said to be encircling the discourse of powerlessness. There is a Taoism in his things. He is what the Swiss author Robert Walser characterizes as The Chinaman - a human being for whom everything small and modest seems to be beautiful and lovely and for whom everything great and exacting seems to be frightful and terrible.
Naur Petersen’s space is certainly great, but it is never grandiose. He is anti-monumental, and even when vastness might begin to make its approach, he refrains, again, with a poetic gesture that gets all of the volume to float. Floating takes on an important role within his space. Either as that condition into which the sight is transported, through the means of a variety of co-ordinating pictorial forms, or in other instances when this floating is thematicized, directly. As a breath that is restrained just prior to the movement, as a caprice made by the light, within which dust is dancing, or, quite purely and simply, as a ballet possessing the graciousness of Degas.
This floating is a part of Naur Petersen’s phenomenology and concomitantly, it is a part of the immediate quality of his art. There is also another quality, a heaviness in the material, that involves more than the net weight of the material. Tracing this line of thought further, one cannot help noticing that the gold and the silver, as well as the two monochromatic substances which Naur Petersen utilizes over and over, can also be found in the icons, in the picture-world of religios culture. And there, they often appear as the non-figurative’s iconoclastic bulwark against that certain crime of representation, the presentation of the holy. This iconoclasm, as regards the sacred pictures, together with Robert Walser’s characteristic of The Chinaman, sketches in Naur Petersen’s space as something other than simple modesty or reticence. When Naur Petersen arranges his space, there is a calculated choice which dwells behind all of that which is cast aside. That which is eventually selected through the process of elimination is openness, held in check by the large surfaces of the ornamentation.
One finds an almost bodily repose in between Naur Petersen’s walls, because he discontinues the perpetual play between close-up study and overview. Of course, one can go up close and carefully examine the singular and local structures in the surface. But after a few times, one begins to discover that what is aimed at here is neither near-sightedness nor panorama. It is rather a matter of presence, a kind of visual embrace. This embrace is of a meditative nature. It stregthens the receptive sides in an otherwise over-stressed human being of the present day and it liberates the otherwise strong tie between receptivity and understanding. It is not this cord which Naur Petersen is tying. Throughout his production, his kind of receptivity is rather that non-informative one that we are familiar with through music. It is the pure syntax, the order of the elements. The sounding surfaces might have been the very word which gathered Naur Petersen’s space into a building. They are visualized sounding surfaces - and not far away at all from the so-called Chladni figures, familiar to us from the basic experiments of physics, in which a bow is drawn along the edge of a plate sprinkled with sand. The oscillations then displace and deposit themselves as a symmetric figure in the sand which is inextricably related to the tone sounded by the bow. Both immediately and prior to reflection, Naur Petersen’s space bears a kinship with this experiment: His form seems to be entrusted to powers and regulations which are inherent in the material itself and yet this does not fully explain the magic of the work as a whole. Just as music cannot be fully explained by the delineations of the sound figure. The being of the art work thus becomes this non-being: an unfathomable emergence.
Poul Erik Tøjner
