Friday, March 26, 2004
Question of the day?
”If you don´t go to extremities - is it worth going at all?” – Asger Jorn
As reported in CBC News Online
COPENHAGEN - A controversial Danish artist has put his vibrant red mark on Mother Nature by painting an iceberg with the same dye used to "highlight meat."
Chilean-born artist Marco Evaristti mixed 3,000 litres of the red dye with sea water and used three firehoses, two icebreakers and a 20-person crew to spray a floating, 900-metre-square chunk of ice, located off the coast of western Greenland.
"We all have a need to decorate Mother Nature because it belongs to all," the 40-year-old Evaristti told The Associated Press in a Thursday interview from Ilullissat, Greenland.
"This is my iceberg, it belongs to me."
Ilullissat, or "iceberg" in Greenlandic, is a tourist destination because of its scenery, but there was no immediate reaction from locals -- generally quite protective of their surroundings -- about the blood-red work.
Evaristti sailed for about 30 minutes with his crew before finding the right canvas in a fjord filled with hundreds of icebergs. He spent about two hours in - 23 C weather painting the iceberg's exposed tip.
The visual and performance artist, whose website calls him "preoccupied with blood," drew both attention and disdain in 2000 with a gallery exhibit featuring 10 working blenders filled with goldfish. A patron took up Evaristti's invitation to turn the devices on and ground up a pair of fish. The gallery's director was charged with animal cruelty but was later acquitted.
“Thematically Marco Evaristti has continually placed his audience in mental dillemmas, such as placing loose parts for lethal bombs -inoccently presented as single components in a travelbag. When he let the quality of sports shoes be evaluated by the marks they made on a prostitutes behind. Or when he let decorative goldfish peacefully swim behind the protective aquarium glasswall of a blender bowl.
What´s next?
Now that the artist has decided to loosen the laces of his wornout military boots and on his barefeet move into areas of Non penetration.
Will we choose to raise our voices and shout somebodys head off? Or will we watch in amazement as we encounter the beauty that can be added to beauty - if we dare.
-- Lars-Ole Hedegaard Art Attack ApS on Marco Evaristti’s website.
