Texst publich in the dutch magazin Textil Plus by:
Edith Rijnja
Amsterdam, summer 2020
The motives of Neil Fortune.
Always in dialogue
"Everyone looks at reality in their own way. Think of it as a diamond.
By discussing each other's divergent points of view, you can come to new insights together". It is a philosophy of life that runs like a thread through the work of visual artist Neil Fortune.
It's not surprising that Neil Fortune realized one day that he couldn't tell his whole story by painting alone. He started making large floor installations out of white and later black and white textile cylindrical shapes in order to create a stage for dialogue with his exhibition audience: 'social sculptures'. It had to be work you can stumble over "My art is like a hook, an insertion to make you think about things for a moment".
About three years ago he wanted to apply the cylindrical shapes differently and the wall objects came into being. It felt to him as if he took the ribs out of his social sculpture, to create something else with it. He gave the exhibition with this new series in 2019 the title "Colorful ribs and guts of Adam", a biblical title, in order to emphasize the new phase in his work. In this series he is mainly concerned with how the viewer experiences the work, although here too there are social and political references.
Tactility & materiality
Neil Fortune was born in Guyana (1983). At the age of six he left with his parents for Suriname. Since he started studying at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 2007, he lives in the Netherlands. In Suriname he drew and painted a lot. At the Rietveld he made spatial works with different materials. In 2017 he started translating the colors from his paintings, abstract works of architectural spaces, into hanging sculptures. Since 2010 he started working with textiles. From Suriname, or actually from every country he visits, he takes pieces of textile with him, rags of 1 - 1,5 meters. There is a small spaghetti work, as he calls it himself, in which he has processed the typical Surinamese pangi fabric, checkered textile intended for traditional Surinamese clothing. He dipped the ends of his cylinder objects in the paint. Once dried, they look like ceramics. Although he often uses textiles, he likes to combine them with materials from the art of painting. In the hanging objects he is concerned with the game of illusion and reality. "Textiles are pre-eminently suited for this purpose. It invites to touch. Your senses want to be part of looking and the texture triggers curiosity".
Titles
For Fortune titles are almost the second work. Normally a title refers directly to the content. He finds that too interpretive. Listening to music in his studio sometimes results in an association with what he is doing, or with his thoughts at that moment. That's why he gave the 'spaghetti works' music titles. And sometimes the title is born before the work is even there, like 'Colorful ribs and guts of Adam'.
Black Lives Matter
This summer Neil participated in the group exhibition 'Matter' in Houston (USA), of which part of the proceeds went to the Black Lives Matter Global Network. "There will have to be more talk about the pain that the black community has experienced and the discrimination that still takes place today. I am happy that now, all over the world, the support is coming from outside the black community as well. We have all created the culture, with all its traditions. We can also change it together".
Together' is also an important word in his latest series of textile objects'.
Traces of a Conversation'. He sees them as the result of a performance. Fortune sewed two pieces of cloth in vertical stripes on top of each other and invited a conversation partner, interested in what the conversation would yield in terms of images. This turned out to range from monotonous color planes and abstraction to figurative in which Fortune remained the director of the end result. After the session he filled the strips with polyester and stitched them closed. "What you see is actually a remnant of a ritual.
Edith Rijnja
Amsterdam, summer 2020
The motives of Neil Fortune.
Always in dialogue
"Everyone looks at reality in their own way. Think of it as a diamond.
By discussing each other's divergent points of view, you can come to new insights together". It is a philosophy of life that runs like a thread through the work of visual artist Neil Fortune.
It's not surprising that Neil Fortune realized one day that he couldn't tell his whole story by painting alone. He started making large floor installations out of white and later black and white textile cylindrical shapes in order to create a stage for dialogue with his exhibition audience: 'social sculptures'. It had to be work you can stumble over "My art is like a hook, an insertion to make you think about things for a moment".
About three years ago he wanted to apply the cylindrical shapes differently and the wall objects came into being. It felt to him as if he took the ribs out of his social sculpture, to create something else with it. He gave the exhibition with this new series in 2019 the title "Colorful ribs and guts of Adam", a biblical title, in order to emphasize the new phase in his work. In this series he is mainly concerned with how the viewer experiences the work, although here too there are social and political references.
Tactility & materiality
Neil Fortune was born in Guyana (1983). At the age of six he left with his parents for Suriname. Since he started studying at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 2007, he lives in the Netherlands. In Suriname he drew and painted a lot. At the Rietveld he made spatial works with different materials. In 2017 he started translating the colors from his paintings, abstract works of architectural spaces, into hanging sculptures. Since 2010 he started working with textiles. From Suriname, or actually from every country he visits, he takes pieces of textile with him, rags of 1 - 1,5 meters. There is a small spaghetti work, as he calls it himself, in which he has processed the typical Surinamese pangi fabric, checkered textile intended for traditional Surinamese clothing. He dipped the ends of his cylinder objects in the paint. Once dried, they look like ceramics. Although he often uses textiles, he likes to combine them with materials from the art of painting. In the hanging objects he is concerned with the game of illusion and reality. "Textiles are pre-eminently suited for this purpose. It invites to touch. Your senses want to be part of looking and the texture triggers curiosity".
Titles
For Fortune titles are almost the second work. Normally a title refers directly to the content. He finds that too interpretive. Listening to music in his studio sometimes results in an association with what he is doing, or with his thoughts at that moment. That's why he gave the 'spaghetti works' music titles. And sometimes the title is born before the work is even there, like 'Colorful ribs and guts of Adam'.
Black Lives Matter
This summer Neil participated in the group exhibition 'Matter' in Houston (USA), of which part of the proceeds went to the Black Lives Matter Global Network. "There will have to be more talk about the pain that the black community has experienced and the discrimination that still takes place today. I am happy that now, all over the world, the support is coming from outside the black community as well. We have all created the culture, with all its traditions. We can also change it together".
Together' is also an important word in his latest series of textile objects'.
Traces of a Conversation'. He sees them as the result of a performance. Fortune sewed two pieces of cloth in vertical stripes on top of each other and invited a conversation partner, interested in what the conversation would yield in terms of images. This turned out to range from monotonous color planes and abstraction to figurative in which Fortune remained the director of the end result. After the session he filled the strips with polyester and stitched them closed. "What you see is actually a remnant of a ritual.
Review: DEPTH OVER DISTANCE
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Poster by: Karoline Wiezynski |
Both the Social Sculpture and Distorted Realities: The Stage have an aspect of sharing, as the artist does his ‘half’ of the work by making it, and the audience does another ‘half’ by using it. However, art doesn't always need the audience to be meaningful - artist's design and effort sustain the artwork enough to exist on its own - but the message put in the work is still aimed at reaching the audience, and presumably, the artist has a vision of what emotions and thoughts he wants to trigger. In this sense, Fortune’s works are ambivalent and leave enough space for the audience to find out how to interact with art. The works are not necessarily meant to be touched but they are not necessarily made only to be looked at. Depth over Distance gives an unmediated experience (but still slightly directed by the artist) and invite to communicate with art intuitively to grasp its initial message and find a meaning of your own
Review: Friction in the Space Between
Text : Eric Rutgrink
Amsterdam 2016
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There are soft echoes of the ‘happenings’ of the 1960s and 70s in Neil Fortune’s second solo show at Galerie 23 in Amsterdam. Amongst a selection of hung artworks, ‘participants’ encounter three cushioned floor installations, works that fill large sections of the exhibition’s actual physical space. They are opportune invasions into the contemplative gallery space with guests walking or sitting carefully upon the cushioned terrain like infrequent beach-goers enjoying the sensations of sand underfoot. However, unlike those earlier Fluxus experiences, there is an intentionality to these works that limits complete spontaneity or abandonment. It is rather the principle of ‘improvisation conforming to an environment’ that confronts the gallery visitor here. These works remain non-threatening, welcoming, almost playful in their approach to interactivity and space.
While seated or standing on the floor installations, the gallery walls again become the focus. A number of paintings are included that depict white empty spaces with dark voids beyond, like white cube galleries or stage, sets waiting for a show. They are self-reflective, mimicking the very spaces we find ourselves in. Other paintings – including a central group of 18 canvases – show irregular compositions of rough wooden structural beams with open or filled housing joints. Like skeletons, these show an inverted reality – revelations of the concealed architectural structures that define our own built environments. The posts and beams, however, do not retain our focus for long as we are drawn to the alternating spaces behind them. These spaces vary from those that shimmer with organic strokes of colour to those left as empty fields of tone. |
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Along with these more formalist artworks is a single light-box work that illuminates the text, ‘I don’t understand much about you. Just enough to know that we don’t see the universe the same way’. While this work may appear an unusual addition, it could be the key to approaching Fortune’s latest show. It suggests that Fortune intends for these works to be ‘read’ as a narrative rather than a medial exploration or neo-fluxist happening. It prevents us from viewing them as minimalist or formalist studies on space, alerting us to an underlying textualisation for the exhibition. When considering the roughness of his timber beam paintings, they become revealing and nuanced. They are neither accurately drawn nor abstractly simplified but rather liberal with conventions. The forms are unmistakably representations of a reality while simultaneously physically unconvincing. They taunt us as we try to complete them. They are appealing as well as perplexing.
While not distorting reality they neither accurately represent it. This is a point that Fortune claims as unimportant, yet is revealing for this reading. He could, for example, have used photography, or digital media, or line drawings. The friction here is in the space between realities and illusions. We are being made aware that representations are flawed, that by painting a space it no longer exists. The organic strokes of colour or specks of light in the background suggest a delight rather in the existential idea of space, of the universe as he sees it. That what is substance is rough and unconvincing while what is beyond is free, if only able to be grasped at certain moments.
Neil Fortune’s latest exhibition asks us to engage with a narrative within space. It invites us to delve into an existential ideology expounded through traditional conceptualism and modernist media. While walking over Fortune’s judiciously cushioned textile strips, we are made to consider how real illusions in art are. The physicality of the experience reveals Fortune’s determination to solidify space – to make it real. To convince us, and possibly himself, that there is substance to our reality. Rob Perrée writes ‘He wants the viewer to experience his works’, but isn’t all art, in any media, experienced? Fortune is rather asking us to engage with his ideas while we experience his work. This is what makes his work stimulating and at the same time difficult to comprehend, just as the universe really is.
While not distorting reality they neither accurately represent it. This is a point that Fortune claims as unimportant, yet is revealing for this reading. He could, for example, have used photography, or digital media, or line drawings. The friction here is in the space between realities and illusions. We are being made aware that representations are flawed, that by painting a space it no longer exists. The organic strokes of colour or specks of light in the background suggest a delight rather in the existential idea of space, of the universe as he sees it. That what is substance is rough and unconvincing while what is beyond is free, if only able to be grasped at certain moments.
Neil Fortune’s latest exhibition asks us to engage with a narrative within space. It invites us to delve into an existential ideology expounded through traditional conceptualism and modernist media. While walking over Fortune’s judiciously cushioned textile strips, we are made to consider how real illusions in art are. The physicality of the experience reveals Fortune’s determination to solidify space – to make it real. To convince us, and possibly himself, that there is substance to our reality. Rob Perrée writes ‘He wants the viewer to experience his works’, but isn’t all art, in any media, experienced? Fortune is rather asking us to engage with his ideas while we experience his work. This is what makes his work stimulating and at the same time difficult to comprehend, just as the universe really is.
What is on the other side of the moon?
Text: Rob Perrée
Amsterdam 2013
The first time I saw work of Neil Fortune (1983, Georgetown, Guyana) was at the exchange exhibition Paramaribo Perspectives (2010) in TENT in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. A group exhibition as a result of an exchange between artists from Rotterdam and Suriname. Fortune was then still studying at the Rietveld Academie and in fact did not belong in that exhibition at all. He was, for reasons unclear to me, added later on. However, his installation which was without title, turned out to be an added value. He had painted the names of artists he admires on canvases of varying sizes. In a variety of colors and fonts. Some of these artists were Surinamese and were included in the exhibition (Remy Jungerman, Kurt Nahar, Iris Kensmil), and others were international (Lawrence Weiner,Richard Prince, Tracey Emin). The work functioned simultaneously as part of and as commentary on the exhibition.
The exhibition drew boundaries, while the work of Fortune especially underlined the borderless nature of the art.
That the work could be interpreted in many ways – it could for example also be read as the ‘selling’ of other artists – , proved to be no coincidence. That aspect would become the point of departure of the works that were to follow.Fortune makes installations which you could qualify as rough decors to which the viewer has to give his or her own interpretation. They are a kind of set pieces which are being brought to life by the presence and the activities of the ‘actor’. The invitation to the viewer can be hidden in a provocative banner, a text board or a light box (‘What is on the other side of the moon?’ and ‘I don’t understand much about you, just enough to know we don’t see the universe the same way.’), a title of an installation, the way in which the work is lit, the soft sitting mats which have been laid on the floor, or the pronounced incomplete finish. He himself describes those works as models, as phases of a study which is awaiting interpretation or completion. Most of his drawings can, as a result thereof, hardly be seen as anything but sketches.Lately Neil Fortune paints. Paintings which can be characterized as architectural imaginations. Bare inner- and outer walls, openings in walls, corners, connecting beams etc. He paints them dry, as though it should not cost too much in paint. The linen shows through. His color range is very limited. He makes no effort to bring drops to a halt. They are in fact, two-dimensional variants of his installations. They have no content, they are open to content. They have no fixed meaning; Fortune provokes to give meaning to it. Texts can at times give the incentive thereto, but not necessarily. On one canvas he has even invited visitors at his studio to apply short texts or a catchy word.
The work of Fortune is a variation of the conceptual art of the sixties and seventies of the past century. For the conceptualists it was not about the outward appearance of a work, but about the underlying concept. That is why John Baldessari wrote provocative texts on a piece of wood, why Bruce Nauman recorded his movements in his studio on video and why Stanley Brouwn documented the distances he traveled in Amsterdam. They especially chose for this formless form, because they wanted to make their work ‘unattractive’ for the mighty museum world and for the, in their eyes, too commercial art market.Neil Fortune also presents a concept. To him it does not matter whether his work has an aesthetic or attractive look to it. Contrary to his predecessors he turns to his viewers to give, and determine how to give, content and meaning to his concept. He puts his own authorship up for discussion.Many viewers will feel rather uncomfortable about that.
They are used to looking at finished works which often give clear guidelines on how to interpret them. With Fortune they are activated to do something. To use their creativity and fantasy (‘What is there on the other side of the moon?’) or occasionally even to literally deliver their own personal input to the work. If they don’t, if in thinking and doing they continue keep their distance, then they will have to make do with the framework of an artwork.
Text: Rob Perrée, Amsterdam 2013
Text: Rob Perrée
Amsterdam 2013
The first time I saw work of Neil Fortune (1983, Georgetown, Guyana) was at the exchange exhibition Paramaribo Perspectives (2010) in TENT in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. A group exhibition as a result of an exchange between artists from Rotterdam and Suriname. Fortune was then still studying at the Rietveld Academie and in fact did not belong in that exhibition at all. He was, for reasons unclear to me, added later on. However, his installation which was without title, turned out to be an added value. He had painted the names of artists he admires on canvases of varying sizes. In a variety of colors and fonts. Some of these artists were Surinamese and were included in the exhibition (Remy Jungerman, Kurt Nahar, Iris Kensmil), and others were international (Lawrence Weiner,Richard Prince, Tracey Emin). The work functioned simultaneously as part of and as commentary on the exhibition.
The exhibition drew boundaries, while the work of Fortune especially underlined the borderless nature of the art.
That the work could be interpreted in many ways – it could for example also be read as the ‘selling’ of other artists – , proved to be no coincidence. That aspect would become the point of departure of the works that were to follow.Fortune makes installations which you could qualify as rough decors to which the viewer has to give his or her own interpretation. They are a kind of set pieces which are being brought to life by the presence and the activities of the ‘actor’. The invitation to the viewer can be hidden in a provocative banner, a text board or a light box (‘What is on the other side of the moon?’ and ‘I don’t understand much about you, just enough to know we don’t see the universe the same way.’), a title of an installation, the way in which the work is lit, the soft sitting mats which have been laid on the floor, or the pronounced incomplete finish. He himself describes those works as models, as phases of a study which is awaiting interpretation or completion. Most of his drawings can, as a result thereof, hardly be seen as anything but sketches.Lately Neil Fortune paints. Paintings which can be characterized as architectural imaginations. Bare inner- and outer walls, openings in walls, corners, connecting beams etc. He paints them dry, as though it should not cost too much in paint. The linen shows through. His color range is very limited. He makes no effort to bring drops to a halt. They are in fact, two-dimensional variants of his installations. They have no content, they are open to content. They have no fixed meaning; Fortune provokes to give meaning to it. Texts can at times give the incentive thereto, but not necessarily. On one canvas he has even invited visitors at his studio to apply short texts or a catchy word.
The work of Fortune is a variation of the conceptual art of the sixties and seventies of the past century. For the conceptualists it was not about the outward appearance of a work, but about the underlying concept. That is why John Baldessari wrote provocative texts on a piece of wood, why Bruce Nauman recorded his movements in his studio on video and why Stanley Brouwn documented the distances he traveled in Amsterdam. They especially chose for this formless form, because they wanted to make their work ‘unattractive’ for the mighty museum world and for the, in their eyes, too commercial art market.Neil Fortune also presents a concept. To him it does not matter whether his work has an aesthetic or attractive look to it. Contrary to his predecessors he turns to his viewers to give, and determine how to give, content and meaning to his concept. He puts his own authorship up for discussion.Many viewers will feel rather uncomfortable about that.
They are used to looking at finished works which often give clear guidelines on how to interpret them. With Fortune they are activated to do something. To use their creativity and fantasy (‘What is there on the other side of the moon?’) or occasionally even to literally deliver their own personal input to the work. If they don’t, if in thinking and doing they continue keep their distance, then they will have to make do with the framework of an artwork.
Text: Rob Perrée, Amsterdam 2013
Sophia Holst -Neil Fortune- Ian Carr
In a bare white apartment, owned by Hercules Goulart Martins, Neil Fortune, Ian Carr, and Sophia Holst are redefining and inventing their works in relation to both the domestic space and the exhibition context. Though in this exhibition it is not so clear if it is their work that encroaches the house or the other way around. Neil Fortune's sculpture is made as an extension of the space and reminds us of a comfort zone in the house. It is like a temporary private territory, marked by the soft material which shows the potential to be reconfigured to the needs and wishes of the user. Fortune's work often deals with interventions and reactions to the immediate environment. He re-sculpts it with materials that are raw, sometimes rough and have the quality to, either by color, context or shape, be a reflection of the space. In contrast to Fortune's work, Ian Carr's sculptures and drawings are radically present. They do not in any way mirror the space, but they show a space on their own. Untitled (GFO) recalls the form of a futuristic building with bulky steel and forward position. It carries a nostalgia of a past representing the future. Ian's work is more likely showing excerpts of exterior spaces, like cityscapes, rather than relations to the interior spaces. It proudly states and remains what it is even in the domestic ambience. Sophia Holst introduces a few objects in the apartment, including a lamp or at least the appearance of a lamp. With her interest in modernism and the modern interior, she investigates the relation between the functional and sculptural object. By doing so she uses raw materials in order to make plain configurations. The objects she makes seem to show an in-between stage of being, a point of balance, a rotated construction which appear to be accidental.
Text: Sophia Holst, Neil Fortune, Ian Carr 2012
