Section Artists of the Gallery - Karel Sirag
| (This catalogue has been published at the occasion of Karel Sirag's solo
exhibition, March 4 - April 1, 2000, and is written and compiled by Koen
Nieuwendijk) The Sirag Calendar It's true that Karel Sirag's latest miniatures are dated 2000, but that is something the world he depicts is blissfully unaware of - which is not to say that his world is frozen in time. Things have been invented for practical reasons, even if it seems as if the population fails to appreciate the true meaning of many an act, as if they have forgotten how it could possibly have come to this. With due respect I would refer to the mysterious strips of land in South America that resemble runways, imagining a group of abandoned space travellers who after a couple of centuries had somehow lost track of what these structures had been all about but who nevertheless, by way of a ritual, poured their heart and soul into works destined never to serve any useful purpose ever again. Sirag's world population seems to be condemned to a similar fate - except that we, the spectators, are very much aware of where it all began. Even so, would we really want to be aware of our perspective in a situation where a lonely soft drink can - monument to our consumer society - turns out to operate as a huge water well? McGregor Tries Again The past has taught us in no uncertain terms that everything we once opposed, everything we once regarded as disgraceful or unfeasible, ceases to raise even a single eyebrow once a couple of decades have gone by. This is to Sirag's advantage. His holding a mirror up to our faces in his depiction of the trials and tribulations of McGregor, his personal pastiche of Icarus (incidentally, I have always insisted that Sirag is not a moralist. True, he will use mankind's carryings-on for his own amusement, but that's definitely not the same thing), inevitably prompts a choice to be made: either lift-off is achieved and we'll soon become jaded, or it isn't and we'll happily settle for a spot of cynical I-told-you-so-ing. With all due respect, I would however remind you of the proper sequence of events: it is not until we have mastered the art of stomaching both alternatives by way of human perspective that we are ready for Karel Sirag's work. Genetic Engineering Any attempt to classify Sirag's work is provisional. I don't mean to depress you with this hypothesis - please bear in mind that virtually every scientific insight that was proudly won at one time or another has since been superseded by another, so what is actually true of what we think we know? And before you get the wrong idea, let me assure you that Karel Sirag is definitely not a pessimist, nor am I. In fact, both he and I are avid readers of the scientific section of NRC Handelsblad, the Netherlands' most respectable broadsheet, which after all owes its existence to the very fact that things will invariably turn out to be different than we originally thought. Take genetic modification, for example. Mankind has learned to be wary of anything we are told will make our lives infinitely better, and we know right now that some things will inevitably turn out wrong with GM (although I hasten to add that other things will inevitably turn out right). Be this as it may, the people inhabiting Sirag's miniatures have had to deal with the gigantic dimensions of strawberries, cherries, onions and apples for many decades, and yet they don't give the impression of putting up any sort of fight. Of course there are harvesting and transport issues to be thrashed out, and we don't get to see exactly how they deal with selling and consuming the stuff, but they don't give the impression of letting any of this faze them. If there is a lesson to be learned from this, it's that although we have spent the last hundred years in the unshakeable belief that we are oh so knowledgeable, with the drive for bigger and better powered by a different mechanism altogether, how come the strawberry is of such utterly consumable dimensions, such a perfect fit for the human mouth? Isn't it because all those edibles snugly fitted into paper bags, boxes and puns long before genetic modification was even invented? Hole in One And so Sirag, scouring the social landscape, hones in many a human idiosyncrasy. No-one will blame me for noting with due reserve that he is quite extraordinarily surprised at mankind's proclivity for pitching large and small spherical objects into all kinds of holes, pens, cages, nets, baskets and pits. Of course one needs to find some way or other to keep oneself amused, and someone else might find it quite easy to make fun of the opposite: by ensuring that all those holes, pits, pens and other openings are big enough, one turns it into a kind of challenge to miss them when pitching the ball. The winner is he who misses, and there can only be one winner. Of what, I'm not sure, though. A Day in the Life of a... The series of miniatures entitled "A Day in the Life of ?" is most endearing. The title plays a prominent role in many of Sirag's miniatures. There is an unbreakable connection between phrasing and imagery, and attempt at translating the titles soon prove how crucial this can be: sometimes the only way out is by including a lengthy discourse on the subtleties of the Dutch language and Dutch folklore, which inevitably means that the concise point is lost. I can hear you argue that this can be achieved in other languages with equal ease, but I'm not so sure. The tolerance of the average Dutchman or woman (whoever that may be) is considered a much-loved national achievement. Although I would personally rather cite self-mockery as a national characteristic - soon to become regional in nature due to the steady advance of the European Union - we are allowed to put whatever we want on our euros, so Sirag will come in quite handy there. Just think of "A Day in the Life of a Shelf Stocker", or take "A Day in the Life of a Launderer" - by spending lots of our euros elsewhere, we'll finally be able to show our true colours. Wary Epilogue Interpretation will always be a risky business. Let's assume that Karel Sirag is a solemn creature who above all wants to draw the world's attention to this abundance of ineradicable excesses. But he's a sensible man at the same time, and so he shrouds his warnings in tiny miniatures, thus lulling his audience into a false sense of resignation. As I said earlier, the size of a scene tends to delude people as to the gravity of what is depicted. This implies that the size of the message needs to be controlled if one is to achieve anything. I wonder in all honesty how far a painter should take this. How else should I interpret the question as to whether Sirag paints using a magnifying glass than as an attempt on the part of the spectators, in their turn and in their own way, to ward off the risk that Sirag might just hit a nerve, as a kind of built-in hope that our extravagances are not such a shocker after all, to the point where they cannot even be spotted with the naked eye, and as an upstanding fellow member of the community one is obviously not going to portray them any bigger than they really are, which implies that one will be needing a magnifying glass to get the job done? |