Job Koelewijn

Job Koelewijn is a Dutch artist now living in New York. In his works he seeks to minimise the distance between the work and its viewer by activating not only the viewer's sense of sight but also his/her senses of smell and touch. Besides these, an important element in Koelewijn's works is the space.

You decided to stay in New York after finishing your residency at PS1 in 1997, how has this affected you and what you do?

During the first year I reacted to the city in a totally opposite way from now I expected, instead of feeling a lot of energy and inspiration, I lacked of energy and inspiration. For the first time I had to convince myself that I was an artist. Can you imagine - you're in one of the biggest cities of the world, everything is well arranged and!!! That's one of the reasons that I stayed longer. I felt so bad that I had to give myself another chance. Sometimes I imagine that the artist is like a farmer sitting on a plough and you plough up the ground, which belongs to your world and once in a while you find treasure which you didn't know it was lying there. But every time it's having the guts to sit on that plough that makes you an artist. So, in a way I expanded the field by going to America.

You have often used poetry as part of your work, what does poetry mean to you?

Long before I got involved in the visual arts, I was interested in poetry. My mother read a lot of poetry and she taught me a lot about it. I remember as a child that I had two notebooks filled with aphorisms and poems and I learned them by heart, on the one hand because I liked them, and on the hand to make an impression. When I became older it was always poetry which kept me on the right track, and gave me a certain strength. So when I went to the art academy it was very natural for me to make connections between those two worlds. Although it took a while before I was really aware of it. And it has been one of my main sources. The main thing for me when I read a poem is that I need to have contact with the poem, and if that happens I learn the poem by heart. So that I have the feeling that it belongs to me. It is less important what's the poet's position in history is, etc. etc. I really use them for my own needs. A friend of mine said once 'you are a poetry pimp' and I admit he is right.

What kind of role does the concept of space have in your work?

I believe that nothing can exist without a context - spaces, people, animals, objects. So right from the beginning I was aware of and worked with the spatial context. And I tried to create a moment of fresh awareness of the space, or create a kind of energy. So the context of the space together goes with the intuition and of course what is ready to show is all part of finding the right interpretation. When there are so many contexts that makes interpretation a precarious situation.

Your works are often temporary events, situations and sensory experiences using non-visual senses such as smell or touch - where does this interest come from?

One of the reasons that I am employ smelling and touching is to create an extra layer to the work besides visual one and a smell can have more impact on the viewer a visual. I really like it when people can interact with the artwork or even better, if they can put it on. So, I try to minimise the distance between the art work and the public and to communicate with the public on different levels.

Paula Toppila, Curator