03 april 2023, Wouter van den Eijkel
The studio of... Daan den Houter
Making wigs from your own hair to impersonate yourself, having a canvas repainted every month by a different artist or paintings that melt right in front of you. Daan den Houter plays with our 'assumed perceptions'. Unseen, you might immediately consider Den Houter a conceptual artist, but nothing could be further from the truth. “An idea is the starting point, but the result must ultimately be good. The idea alone is not enough.” Daan den Houter's work is currently on display in Rotterdam at Frank Taal Galerie in Three Times Solo in One Line, together with the work of Saminte Ekeland and Jan ten Have. A solo exhibition at Frank Taal will follow later this spring.
Where is your studio located?
At the moment, I have two studios. My old studio is in northern Rotterdam and my new studio is on the street where I live on the westside. I am very happy with my new studio, but for practical reasons, I have been working a lot in my old studio in recent months. I look forward to getting started in the new one in the summer.
When I ask painters what is most important for a good studio space, they invariably respond ‘natural light’. I imagine that is a less important requirement for you. What criteria should your studio meet?
My studio has to be multifunctional: a clean place to paint or make paintings out of ice and an area that can get dusty where I can saw and sand, some storage space and then another area to work at the computer, sketch and read. Light is important, but nowadays, artificial light can suffice. For me, ambience and location are more important. I like having my own place where I can close the door and work in pace, but I also enjoy discussing ideas with colleagues who are nearby.
You are a multidisciplinary artist: you make paintings out of ice, have one canvas repainted every month by a different artist and make wigs out of your own hair. Is the idea more important to you than the result?
No, not at all. An idea serves as a starting point, but the final result must be good. An idea alone is not enough. An ice painting that also melts in a fascinating way, therefore expressing beauty, makes the transience and transformation better and ultimately, reinforces the concept. The Overpainted Painting largely derives its significance from the quality of the paintings on it. This effort and dedication make the work good, something that goes beyond the concept.
Daan den Houter, IJsschilderij, 2021
Before attending art school, you studied artificial intelligence (AI). Does that background affect your work? If so, can you explain how, for example, in the ice paintings?
When I studied AI, it was still in its infancy and much less prominent in society than today, with all our smartphones, apps, etc. In addition to research into how you can put intelligence into a computer, AI also entails research into what intelligence actually is. Something we still can't pinpoint today. Our head automatically fills with everything from our environment, so that it is manageable and logical to us. If you magnify that, it often turns out not to be very logical at all. In my work, I explore those 'assumed perceptions' in different ways. How can you undermine them or illuminate them from a different angle? The Overpainted Painting, for example, lacks the essence of a painting as 'a silent moment in time that you can always return to', yet no one will deny that it is a painting. The same goes for the ice paintings: they refute the view of a painting and reduce it to a moment. Something that probably happens very often, because you only see works of art once in your lifetime in museums or galleries. The idea that you can go back to it exists, but you don't really think about the fact that this will never happen and that you will never see that work again. With the Overpainted Painting or the Ice Paintings, you are immediately confronted with this fact, in addition to the image in front of you.
Your work is currently on display at Frank Taal in Three Times Solo in One Line, three solo presentations at the same time. One of the series that can be seen there is called Wigs and consists of wigs and moustaches made from your own hair. You have made four so far. How long does it take before your hair is long enough to make a wig?
After about four years, I can make such a wig from my own hair (Wig 1 - 2009, Wig 2 - 2014, Wig 3 - 2018, Wig 4 - 2022). My hair grows about one centimetre a month on average and if I don't cut it or only a little, you can have this size wig made after about four years. You still need 5-10 cm of extra hair to tie the wig. So, my actual hair was even longer than the wigs.
Daan with hair, Daan without hair, 2022, photo by Anique Weve
Humour and cynicism are never far away in your work. I read that by putting on such a wig, you can caricature yourself. Why would you want to do that?
On the one hand, the wig is an interesting self-portrait in terms of image and the fact that it’s the DNA of my hair. By wearing the wig, I am dressing up as myself and making a parody of myself. There's a strange twist in that that appeals to me, a kind of ridiculousness that also resonates in the identity that I (and all other) people today derive from appearance. The first time I put the wig on after being completely bald for about two months, most people hardly notice. Apparently, they have invariably memorised my image with long hair and a moustache.
8-hour drawing made on 09-10-2017, 50cm x 60cm pencil on paper, Los Angeles, 2017
Your work is characterised by the fact that it often combines contradictory ideas in a single work. You often reflect on the art world and its key concepts: creativity, originality and market forces. A good example of this can now be seen at Frank Taal in the documentary about the eight-hour drawing factory, for which you hired six people to draw exactly eight lines over the course of eight hours. At the end of the day, you have six identical drawings, to which you have not contributed. How did you get the idea to start such a factory?
I've been making my own eight-hour drawings for a long time. These are drawings in which time is converted directly into images: eight lines of approximately 35 cm each. Each line is drawn in exactly one hour without lifting the pencil from the paper and without stopping. Due to the distance of the line and the time it takes, you are constantly balancing on the point of moving and standing still. The drawing is created by doing almost nothing, yet still making an effort that is quite challenging both mentally and physically. The result is a drawing that literally presents eight hours of my life and a Western European workday. My goal is to eventually have 365 of these drawings: one made every day of the year.
8-hour drawing factory, Acht Uur / Eight Hour, solo exhibition Corrosia Expo, 2018
Making these drawings entails a strange duality: you are not really doing anything, yet still have to stay focused. It seems easy, but is actually quite tricky to pull off. The result also incorporates this fact. It is highly fascinating, philosophically interesting, yet merely eight silly, simple lines that in terms of image, you could have drawn in seconds.
I was curious how other people would experience making such a drawing. Would it work? Would they find it easy or difficult? I also wanted it to be a paid assignment. In general, people will do anything for money, so that would be an added incentive. In addition, I also wanted to employ 'real' employees as artists. Because the works were commissioned by and made for me, I could also claim the drawings as my own work afterwards.
I can imagine that people who see your work for the first time may not immediately know what to think of it. What is the greatest misunderstanding about your work?
People sometimes ask if I actually did the work. In conceptual art, the idea is more important than the actual execution. For my work, I disagree. The work Keep On Dreaming 2018! is about the dream of winning 10,000 euros. Apart from the fact that you may never destroy the work and no one can ever claim the money, I think that the money should actually be part of the work. The same goes for the eight-hour drawings. As a concept, you might say that 'the idea' that the eight lines represent eight working hours might be enough. For me, time and energy must actually be put into the drawings. So, I'm going to sit at a table for eight hours and draw lines, no matter how irritating I might find that.
Detail Keep On Dreaming 2018! 17 concrete cubes with €10,000 in 1 cube
What are you currently working on?
Right now, I am working on my next solo exhibition, which entails a new series of stripe paintings. These are paintings in which the energy and order of construction are literally pressed together. Beginning and end, and consequently time, are equalised and therefore disabled in a sense. In the 'stripe' paintings, slots are manually milled out of the wood and then filled with coloured epoxy. Once the epoxy is dry, the surface is sanded and a new slot can be milled and filled. This action is repeated over and over again until the image is 'finished'. The result is then sanded completely smooth, but in such a way that the colours become matte and do not reflect. Ultimately, this image is so flat that it is unclear what was added first and what later. For many viewers, it is even unclear what they are looking at.
Untitled sticks 2023, Ca 50cm x 60cm Epoxy in Mahony wood, 2023
