Artist Arne Quinze's obsession with chaos

This duality is clearly visible wandering through Chaos in Motion, his new exhibition at At The Gallery in Antwerp (pictured), which offers an overview of recent and future projects. It becomes even more obvious when you see his work space in Sint-Martens-Latem, near Ghent, where everything is so neat and tidy, that the 41-year-old’s obsession with chaos in his latest works is rather twisted – and intriguing.

“I don’t like oblique things,” he says. Yes, this is the same man who makes the most intricate installations with wooden sticks and metal wires going in all possible directions, the same artist who claims we have to leave our rectangular structured lives behind. “I’m aware of that duality,” he says. “I’m telling everyone to move out of their boxes, step outside the four protective walls surrounding them. But myself, I need those walls. It’s a never-ending internal struggle.”

He tells us you will not be able to find the slightest piece of litter in his working environment. “Even at building sites, all our fork-lift trucks stand in a straight line at the end of the day. It’s the absence of mess that gives me the freedom and the space to think chaotically. I can only permit the chaos if everything around me is orderly.”

Trying to explain this, he says all his work is about human beings: “How they develop and grow, how they adapt and fail to adapt.” It’s also the reason why red and orange are the most dominant colours in his sculptures, “being the most human colours because they are full of contradictions. Red stands for our blood, symbolising life and death. It stands for fire, warming you up or burning you. It’s similarly attracting and repelling.”

Confrontation

Becoming an artist was for Quinze a return to his childhood fantasies. “As a young boy, I had this vivid fantasy about how the world would be: open and diverse. But ever since I started to travel – to America, to Russia, to China – I noticed my imagination was wrong.”

On his travels he began to take photos of apartment buildings, but they all looked the same. The quality of life may have varied in different places, but everywhere you saw these four walls. “If you had to depict this world, you could as well show a square,” he says. This major deception became the starting point for his career. He wanted people to think about this self-imposed limitation.

“I’m also a human being, so I need these walls that protect us, too; they return in my projects about stilt-houses and in the installation “My Secret Garden”. But at the same time, I want to break out and focus on diversity, which is omnipresent in our nature – but clearly missing in our urban landscapes.”

This is the basic idea behind his architectural interventions in our cities. His giant sculptures – like “Rock Strangers” and “The Sequence” as well as the demolished “Cityscape” in Brussels – are erected to evoke a discussion with the outside world.

“It always bothered me that only 1 to 2% of the population goes to the opera or a museum, because I know people who do that lead better lives,” he says. “They can put things into perspective, maintain a higher standard of living, etc. So from the 1980s onwards, when I started as a graffiti artist, I wanted to share this closed world of the arts with as many people as possible. In my eyes, art is not about beauty but about confrontation. Meanwhile I’m looking for ways to lower the threshold for the general audience to go to a ‘closed’ theatre or exhibition.”

Estrangement

He tells us you will not be able to find the slightest piece of litter in his working environment. “Even at building sites, all our fork-lift trucks stand in a straight line at the end of the day. It’s the absence of mess that gives me the freedom and the space to think chaotically. I can only permit the chaos if everything around me is orderly.”

Trying to explain this, he says all his work is about human beings: “How they develop and grow, how they adapt and fail to adapt.” It’s also the reason why red and orange are the most dominant colours in his sculptures, “being the most human colours because they are full of contradictions. Red stands for our blood, symbolising life and death. It stands for fire, warming you up or burning you. It’s similarly attracting and repelling.”

As a result, his sculptures are innately controversial. Consider the apartment owner at Heldenplein in Ostend, where Quinze’s “Rock Strangers” were erected. He was outraged at losing his seaside view, and the media coverage of his complaints was equally strong. “I was so happy,” says Quinze. “It gave my installation a place in the public space. All at once we became a political actor. That’s as relevant as a sculpture about estrangement can be.”

The question for Quinze, he says, became: “What do you do when you get up in the morning and you notice a strange object in your garden? This guy clearly rejected it because he can’t live with estrangement. But his complaints encouraged thousands of others to come to see the sculpture.”

During these 15-plus years, Quinze and his team have invaded many cities with these monumental sculptures. In urban China (they have an operating base in Shanghai), they know what to expect. “The same stereotypes return everywhere,” he explains. “But art needs controversy. Art that’s not contested disappears quickly. James Ensor was barely accepted by the people of Ostend; now he’s a hero. Monet was rejected by his contemporaries, who never liked his water lilies and gardens. Try buying one of his paintings today.”

“The Sequence”, his installation near the Flemish Parliament in Brussels, grabbed the attention of the media again recently. Questions were raised about the demolition of the construction worth €438,000, which is planned for next year.

“But just like “Cityscape” in the Guldenvlieslaan, it was meant to be temporary. In fact, this was an integral part of the installation – originally made of wood from controlled stock to be recycled in the building industry. “I hope that by taking it away, there will be an even bigger empty space than before. Often it’s by taking things away that people start to really question their environment.”

Social interaction

And then he tells the story about a woman in her 70s who sent him a thank you note. “Thanks to “Cityscape”, she finally got to know her neighbour. I was the happiest man in the world. I really believe open-air art can be an antidote for the loss of social interaction in our cities.”

So Quinze’s plea for cities as open-air museums is not surprising. “It will not only improve our social network, it can also stir up the economy. Look what Christo instigated in Central Park with “The Gates”, pumping an estimated $254 million into New York’s economy. And the contract he signed with the city indicated that the extra revenue had to be invested in social housing.”

While he waits for the moment our politicians see the potential of city installations, Quinze is busy travelling the world. The near future will see the rise of a dozen complex metal structures, up to 100 metres high, focusing on his recent preoccupation with chaos. Most of these will be in China, but there will also be works in the US, France and Belgium. Chaos in Motion offers an inside look at how Quinze’s ideas start small, but eventually become enormous.

Arne Quinze: Chaos in Motion
Until 30 December
At The Gallery
Leopoldstraat 57, Antwerp
www.atthegallery.be

More exhibitions this week

So Far So Good - Jos Swinnen
It’s the absence of fashion that makes the work of the Brussels-born painter idiosyncratic and relevant. Look through his naive, understated images from the 1980s until now and discover an inner, almost philosophical stand. Until 26 January, Wiels, Brussels
www.wiels.org

The Fluxus Wall - Jonas Mekas
In addition to the retrospective of the great American-Lithuanian avant-garde filmmaker at Cinematek, this exhibition mixes haunting street photography, dating back to his arrival in post-war Brooklyn, a personal video diary and souvenirs from his pioneering Fluxus friends. Until 26 January, Bozar, Brussels
www.bozar.be

Black is the Drawing - Richard Serra
The dense, minimalistic drawings of the American artist, known for his large-scale metal sculptures, are non-referential in nature. Using a “non-colour” and referring to anything but themselves, they are for Serra the ultimate attempt to restructure our space. Until 1 December, Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Antwerp
www.axel-vervoordt.com

This article was first published in Flanders Today, October 29, 2013