Manifest
Position
As an artist, my overall position is that, which I call "Maestro position".
Maestro position is open to artistic initiatives in omni-artistic expressions, and assumes the position, embedded deep within the experiential aspect of personal art.
Part manifesto
“Freedom of action is an indispensable requirement. Meanwhile, the freedom to choose the space of activity, which satisfies my mentality and my artistic ambition, allows sovereignty as person and artist.”
From "Manifesto on the artistic point of departure", Jens Otto Hansen, Copenhagen, October 1979
Artistic formal basis
My art is based on attitudes to the formal and the awareness created in the classic art of constructivism and the concrete arts.
The kernel of my personal art
After considerable discussion in the nineteen eighties about the work's position in the contemporary, with its speed and sensibility, I chose - for artistic and psychological reasons that go against the general rapid tendency - to create highly complex and slow work. At the same time I wished to strengthen the works at the expense of their ability to be interpreted accurately through photography. I enhanced the works complexity and introduced three-dimensional aesthetics, which depend on light in such a way that they become dependent on the specific requirements for light sources, thereby enabling the works to be suspended. This allowed for the evolution of light throughout the day as well as varying conditions such as overcast to bright sun, to affect the viewing experience from moment to moment. This artistic path I set in the nineteen eighties, is still the core of my personal art.
My relationship with creative processes, work content and titles
I exclude no creative processes, but shift between them, as needed, however there are some methods I use more than others.
Content is each artist's sovereign choice. My usage of content depends on the artistic situation.
The use of titles deals with the artistic points that shall be made; hence my choosing of a title is extremely complex.
In practice I usually use five different artistic principles. The first is the concrete. The specific means of art to composition, shape, color content, which in turn means that a dot is a dot and a dash is a dash. The title scenario covers the actual content without extra consideration. The concrete work scenario for me is a strong desire to work with the conveyed in a pure quest for knowledge.
The next principle is the constructive. The constructive presupposes that there is a conceived consciousness that can be constructed from. I seek constructive awareness among other means, willingness to use knowledge in work and artistic circumstance in general.
The constructive title scenario resembles the concrete, and the process of working with and against the constructive principle in the abstract situation.
The third principle is the abstract. The abstract requires experience and desire to express the experience while giving the abstract an infinite action space that invites life and wild momentum into the work's content situation. The title scenario in the abstract is of course completely free.
The fourth principle is the fusionist. Fusionism is a starting point I had to create to explain a type of artistic creation process that is widely accepted among artists, but alien to certain groups of art theorist and art historians. Fusionism is a process situation starting in concrete actions without other content than form, and at some point changing the artworks content itself by the introduction of the concrete, for example, to be abstract. The title scenario is open.
The last principle is the parallel artwork. The idea of parallel artwork is to enable parallel identities within the same work. Multiple identities make it necessary to use multiple titles in the same work of art, while creating the volume of identities and titles in the same work making it an unfathomable deep, dynamic workspace.
About the Art graduate study
The art graduate study, from its inception in 1997, is conceived with a research component, a political part, a media section and an artistic part.
The idea was to create a nineties New York avant-garde art project in three artistic phases in order to awaken politicians and bring attention to artists' lack of integration into society, through the work of art exhibitions and media operations.
The first phase, 'Research Body' was achieved by the publication of the research project. The following year in Denmark, the law on deductions for the purchase of art from contemporary Danish artists was passed. One can rightly determine that the project had political clout and gained media attention.
The next phase, "Number and size meets matter" is only created in outline form. The idea behind this phase is to create distance from the original research project in order to transform numbers and sizes into wall and floor sculptures in such a way that the works could stand artistically independent of the research project. Simultaneously, the colors symbolizing the nine income levels from the original research project continue to be part of the artistic experience.
The last phase, "Artists meet society" is created as a provocative project in a series of artworks confronting politicians and society about their prejudices regarding art and artists, as well as the lack of integration of artists in society.
The artwork is also meant to address freedom of expression, censorship and nepotism in the art world as well as exemplify through case studies and video footage, the difficult path from aspiring artist to professional artist.
The works will be created from recognizable concepts that are used to illustrate the various issues, e.g., a ladder without the lower step, a football goal without the possibility to score or a coin held in a hand with an arm that outstretches several meters.
These three art exhibitions should have originally been conducted with three to four year intervals, but due to the exhibition’s budget only "research body" was realized.
By any designation of the three phases for Venice Biennial, there is a great opportunity for various combinations of the three phases, however I prefer to either exhibit the three phases in separate installation areas, or combine “Research Body” and “Artists meet Society” in one area, and “Number and size” in another area.