EPKER press

Paradise lost/regained*
by Mischa Andriessen

About B.C. Epker

When I had been taking Italian lessons for a year, my teacher, an Italian who had studied Dutch, mentioned that he had to memorize three hundred Dutch proverbs to complete his first university degree. He still knew them by heart, although he had never really understood their meaning. ‘Having a windfall,’ he said, ‘is that good or bad?’
    This anecdote reveals that language basically encompasses a particular universe that clashes with conventions over and over again. Every word has a denotation, which is the established significance or significances appearing in the dictionary, as well as a connotation, the individual interpretation of a concept. If you detest wind, having a fall of it is likely to be repulsive, but the experience is considered to be a stroke of luck.
    In B.C. Epker’s work, language and images are deliberately disobedient. Knowingly unruly. He flouts spelling and anatomy rules and uses these deliberate slips of the pen and distortions to construct a private universe, governed by its own laws, namely those of his alter ego St. Bastian. Epker’s world is the bulwark of a playful, rebellious spirit. Mild anarchy prevails, like in a boys’ novel. Not the type of boys’ novel in which the world is a pristine Garden of Eden, but one where the young hero resists the planned course of events, the everyday distortions and the major and minor setbacks that lie in store for him.
    Each artistic expression compensates for a shortcoming, an adjustment
to Creation or the reconquest of a lost world. In some cases both at once. The Russian poet Velimir Chlebnikov, for example, believed in a primal language. The new language he designed, which he named Zaoem (meaning ‘beyond speech’ in English), was both an effort to restore the heavenly language and the creation of a language for the future. Like poets, visual artists try to convey their impression of the world and to depict an ideal.
Not along the lines of perfection but as a way of making other worlds possible. In philosophy, such a person is known as an idealist: somebody who believes that another world is possible. All visual artists thus face the basic challenge of making their constructs appear realistic.
    In his woodcut (Not) in Paradise..., B.C. Epker aptly demonstrates a very fine depiction of the possibility or impossibility of such a world conquered through the imagination. In the background are Adam and Eve, both nude, intertwined. They must have just shared the apple, as what we see looks like the beginning of foreplay. In front to the left, the snake has wrapped itself around the tree. So far the scene corresponds with the story from the Bible. But at the foreground to the right Epker has placed a hunter. Not just any human has entered Paradise here (which thereby ceases to be Paradise) but more specifically a twenty-first century human. Behold the dress and hairstyle of the hunter, and how calmly he presents his rifle. Is he indeed a hunter, or is he in fact an actor or model? This print is amazing in that in addition to depicting a classical story, it could just as easily be a commercial for cigarettes, perfume or sportswear. The artist brilliantly uses the anachronisms that advertising chaps cleverly invoke as a sales strategy to restore the scene’s original allegorical meaning. As the option in the title indicates, we are and are not in Paradise.
    The print also unveils another important component of B.C. Epker’s work, an element that has become increasingly pronounced in recent years, namely the obscene. This depiction of the fall from grace by the first human is very sensual indeed. Epker inserts pornographic images in both his graphic art and his drawings. He provides a contrast to his seemingly naïve realm of boys’ novels populated by tough sailors and Frisian folk heroes. He has added several layers of meaning without corrupting the intractability of his previous work.
    A request for interpretation. Zerstörte Traumorte was the title of Epker’s exhibition at Buro Leeuwarden several years ago. Shattered dream worlds. His new work suggests that a fierce battle went on inside the artist’s head. Sustaining the strictly personal mythology that made his work so intriguing from the outset has proven difficult. As if somebody left a window open, allowing the cursed, villainous and vulgar outside world a chance to penetrate the rooms of the imagination and stay there permanently. This battle drags on. While the characters have remained the same, several extras have been added and threaten to take the lead. Consider the print Car Struck Girls. We see the sailor, an adapted version of St. Bastian, whom we encountered in Epker’s previous work. Beside this naval officer stand modern Liliths. Born seductresses who neutralize the hero through their sexuality by convincing the little boy to become a man. The title Car Struck Girls, meaning girls with car trouble, is a clear reference to erotic movies, where wenches in short skirts whose cars have broken down and courageous men are always the prelude to a sensual adventure. Perhaps these women represent Paradise, perhaps they are the modern heirs of Eve, who, after succumbing to temptation, became a temptress herself. At any rate, these heavenly temptations are a continuous threat to the individual world, ruled by its own logic.
    Much has changed, much has happened in recent years, and it would be grossly insensitive if the artist failed to tackle these atrocities (in the Netherlands and elsewhere). ‘Major events are disastrous for an author,’ the German poet and novelist Michael Krüger has one of his protagonists say, ‘as they change his personality, which is all he has.’ Precisely the same situation applies with visual artists: Epker’s recent works depict the immense pressure of global chaos and disruption of personal perception. His most recent prints and drawings express the debilitating battle that is waged to preserve what is strictly personal. Because of his effort to withstand this confusing crisis, the work unexpectedly ties in seamlessly – without granting a single concession – with the largely diffuse debate about cultural identity now being waged on several fronts.
    Epker takes substance and morphology to the crossroads of fantasy and reality. The intersection of the two domains sparks friction. Obscenity might be interpreted as an opportunity to manifest fantasy, which necessarily entails disillusionment. In his essay about the paradox of obscenity, the Belgian author Stefan Hertmans uses the peepshow to illustrate his point.
By showing voyeurs what stimulates their fantasy most (i.e. her most intimate private parts), a stripteaser conceals who she really is. In addition, by turning the dream into reality, she destroys the dream itself, which is now at best a cherished memory.
    Conversely, fantasy sublimates reality that is not yet fully accepted,
such as unmanifested feelings of fear and lust, to a representation that is unrealistic and will never become realistic either. Epker has always explicitly depicted the obscene and the sublime but never so clearly simultaneously. This is basically logical, as these two can never actually coincide. After all, the obscene is the ismantlement of the imagined, whereas fantasy is the encapsulation of the obscenity of what is real.
    Back to the Car Struck Girls print. The naval officer appears with the alluring woman at his feet. She will bare all at his say so. He need not even ask politely. This tightly suited incarnation of St. Bastian, however, has a surly look and the uncompromising gaze of one who refuses to surrender. The result is a curious status quo. The woman is comfortably ensconced as a seductress, and the captain has assumed his role: the paragon of intransigence. Precisely when the tension peaks, the artist reveals a glimpse of the scene without letting us know more. Imagine how awkward the situation will be, if the sea hero does not in fact succumb to her charms, and the seductress retreats mission unaccomplished. In reality. But this is the world of B.C. Epker. Welcome!

Mischa Andriessen