![]() ![]() The point of both departure and ultimate arrival was Amsterdam and the stopping places were the Dutch islands of Texel, Vlieland, Terschelling, Ameland and Schiermonnikoog. Flattened into irreducible two-dimensionality, the horizon for the young Dibbets was the harbinger of the plane, linear conception of things he would make his own in works first embarked on in 1969.ġ969: Invited to take part in conceptual art promoter Seth Siegelaub’s Summer Show, Dibbets devised and implemented his Five Island Trip project, a journey spread over four consecutive days. ![]() None of this was apprehended by the child at Scheveningen. Rather than being a line or a static apparition, it indicates the transitional point where bodies become visible and disappear. ‘The horizon,’ Flécheux continues, ‘reveals not only that which ceases to exist, but also that which does not cease to exist, for it functions fugitively as a boundary it is the locus of the appearance and disappearance of things in my visual field. Whence the disturbing aspect of Dibbets’s recollection: neither the horizon nor the perception of it – they come to the same thing, given that the former depends on the latter for its existence – is associated with a potential for transcendence. ‘Without a horizon,’ Céline Flécheux has written, ‘how can I have the feeling of being the starting point for the space spread out before me? How can I believe that the boundaries I experience are those that shape my activity as a sentient, speaking subject? And how am I to determine my position in a space that no longer provides any bearings? In its permanence the horizon reassures us of a certain stability in the world… As long as our consciousness discerns a horizon – a beyond-perception – it knows it will not be faced with arbitrary gaps: this coherence gives landscape substance, and preserves consciousness from leaps into the unknown, from distortions and from the upsurge of the void. In its sheer singularity this experience went diametrically counter to the notion of a perceptual act intended to stabilise both the world and our position in relation to it. Aged eight or nine, Jan accompanied his teacher father on an outing to Scheveningen – a first for a child who had never seen the sea – and as he left the bus and climbed the dike he was overwhelmed by the sight that lay before him, one whose visibility he seems to have been unable to cope with: water extending as far as the eye could see, meeting the sky and perceived as an impassable wall. There is, however, a childhood memory the artist likes to recall, rightly seeing in it a portent, a clearly identifiable symptom of concerns to come. And while sometimes, in the course of a discussion, he moves from one to the other, it is rare indeed that one and the other merge or match up. Jan Dibbets, whatever his (conflictual) relationship with this branch of art history, is no exception to the rule: in his case the art and the life are considered as two quite separate trajectories. Through clouded covered judgement, into denial of cause and effect takes a turn for better or worse.As a rule artists involved in the history of conceptual art do not justify or legitimise their practice with autobiographical data. Let's hope tomorrow proves both of us wrong. Let's lie with Pan tonight to rise on phoenix' ashes. Yet all the while chasing our tails into a new unknown. Four eyes fixed on a new horizon, a common dream, or so it would seem. Unreal, unravelled, we've shown ourselves out and take to the back roads, with pillars of dust in our fiery trail. We stepped out of line and changed our bearings, all and everything by the wayside and all the while chasing our dreams into a new unknown. Our minds a vacuum as time went blank and moved aside. ![]()
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