Onno Dirker

Date: 20 February 1998 - 4 April 1998

Ceci n'est pas une exposition

"Onno Dirker has created an exhibition, but what is actually being exhibited? What are the artworks that are presented and supposed to attract attention? Are they the bull’s heads on the wall? Perhaps the rose logos covering the walls, or maybe the freshly bricked-up room in the center of the space?

None of these elements offer a definitive clue about the composition as a whole. The whole is a constellation of signs, with the logic of a labyrinth. A labyrinth in which the Minotaur has indeed been slain, but whose exit remains hidden for now. For countless questions are posed to us, and every answer is merely an attempt not to completely lose our way.

What do the roses on the walls refer to (or are they in fact clenched fists)? Are they symbols of sorrow or of love? Beauty or pain? Are they thornless roses as signs of innocence, or do they in their blood-red color symbolize martyrdom? Perhaps the roses here are a tribute to the sacrificed bulls; the mythical creature that has always inspired both fear and reverence, and thus had to be both worshipped and slain.

But perhaps I am already trying to explain too much, and with every word I move further away from the image. The only way out lies in the wandering itself—in the continuous stream of thoughts about what I see and what I expect. What I (re)cognize and what is at the same time entirely new. Just as I catch fragments of a conversation without following its thread, I receive a fragmented impression of an exhibition that perhaps doesn't want to be an exhibition at all."

(Text: Leo Delfgauw)