running around in circles
In 2013 I produced my first video/timelapse here. It was the first work where not the drawing/painting but the film became the work. With no budget and a lack of good equipment and technical knowledge but from a healthy ‘do it your self’ mentality it succeeded. Originating from an autobiographical fact, the work has also been a turning point in my development regarding my position as an artist in society. Feeling trapped and stuck in your studio as an artist was the basis for the creation of this work. The video, set to the music of the Beasty Boys, is a recording of the artist locked in his studio, his ivory tower, painting a three-meter-high megalomaniac self-portrait on a 4-by-8-meter wall of his studio only to paint it white again the moment it is completed. The title ‘ Running Around In Circles’ covers that fact.
Braspenning creates a sense of temporality. And that is no coincidence. He draws with chalk on blackboard. As if you could erase the faces easily. In a stop-motion movie, you can see how he erases a 4-meter high self-portrait with latex after he has finished it. The art of painting comes from the desire to live forever. But fame fades away. And life stays transitory – despite all the images.