Extracts from the text “Jan Fabre. Facing time” by Joanna de Vos, that was published in the catalogue of a large scale project for the city of Namur that she has curated in 2015: ‘Facing time. Rops/ Fabre’

Jan Fabre lives in the “romantic” time of Octavio Paz. The Mexican writer, diplomat, and poet used this term for an existence that follows the hands of an inner clock, without rules and laws imposed from outside. For Fabre this is more than romanticism; he calls it the ultimate form of the avant-garde. In his view, the true avant-garde develops out of inspiration, at the place where a physical and spiritual sanctuary arises. It is a matter of remaining faithful to the time imagined for oneself.

“I shall not flinch, but will dub myself a knight”: is this the promise the young Fabre made and fulfilled to himself? Is this the romantic time he was referring to when he drew on the Tivoli Castle in Mechelen with blue Bic ballpen [Jan Fabre, Tivoli, 1990] or when he retreats to the Wolfskerke Castle at the summit of a hill 110 meters high in the rolling landscape of the Flemish Ardennes [Jan Fabre, Wolfskerke Castle, 1997]? The color photos reworked using the Bic ballpen depict the interior and exterior of a place especially dear to him.

The drive penned in blue represents The way of the art and The way of the beauty. The blue of the sky and the blue stained-glass windows in the chapel suggest the pursuit of spirituality. The blue of the outer walls of the building and the blue walls of the living room are the canvas of free imagination and dreams. But he also colored another room with a red Bic as an indication of his radical intransigence: “Strike until you disappear and there is only blood left,” as he declared in blood in one of the drawings in his series My Blooddrops, My Bloodprints (1978–1982). The artist goes a long way in the construction and protection of his universe. Castles in the air, paper castles, dream-castles, an existing castle . . . Jan Fabre lives loyally and royally as Lancelot (2004) in a violent fairy tale.”

Joanna De Vos, “Jan Fabre. Facing time”, 2015

Jan Fabre’s favorite realm is nighttime, a solitary zone where he builds his house. In La Maison de J.F. (1977), a metal viewing box, he declaimed: “I have chosen the domain of pain and shadow, just as others choose that of radiance and the accumulation of material. I do not work in the expanse of just any domain. I work solely in duration.”

Joanna De Vos,

Rops | Fabre: Facing Time / ed. V. Carpiaux & J. de Vos, photography by Attilio Maranzano Paris, Somogy éditions d’art, 2015. 280 p., 170 ill.