LIFE IS ONLY BEARABLE AS A CARRIER OF DEATH

This is a title under one of the works by Jos Deenen,   The statement is also an expression of the works by the artist Jos Deenen. He uses death to picture life.

When I came in last week just to have a quick look at his work that he’s showing here today, an old poem came to mind. I think it’s from Bloem, but please correct me if I’m wrong.
“Thinking of Death I cannot sleep
and when I cannot sleep I always think of Death”
These lines could be a summary of all the titles written beneath  his collages exposed here.
His words, mostly written down in anger, don’t need any explanation. The titles imply it can only be Jos Deenen’s work. Anger is his signature.

Anger and sarcasm are two qualities of  Jos Deenen that are pronounced in his works. Anger about the injustice in the world. Sarcasm about the attempts of those who want to put an end to the injustices. Years ago he was even more angry, now that he’s getting older, he gets more sarcastic.
Maybe that’s why his work these last few years has toned down a little. There’s less red in his work: the warm red in the collages from Jos , is always the warm red of blood. Now there’s more white in his work: white is the colour of the innocence  of angels and children, who are wading their feet in pools of blood. That’s sarcasm. Jos shows the hypocrisy that inflicts the world.

For years he shows in his work how America defends itself against weapons that they themselves have delivered and against the chemical and bacterial war-machine that they themselves have developed. The weapons they use to defend their western freedom, haven’t been developed not to use. They are developed because this is what the economy needs and because the weapons industry is the hart of the American economy. Now that there is a war again and America sees itself as the defender of our world against their self-made devils, America is using its newest, still secret weapons in Afghanistan and the American industry has the possibility again to test their new weapons. Just like in the Golf war, but we still don’t know what this war was all about, unless we say the war started to secure the American oil business in the Middle - East. Weapons are made to be sold. For years America is boycotting the free distribution of medicine in third world countries, until all of a sudden it now seems that protecting their own industry is the cause of the shortage of medicine against anthrax in their own country. Now the law is going to change in America and it is allowed to make medicine against anthrax also for countries that are not monopoly holders, also for their own people, but the aids curing medicine, were America has the monopoly in, is still not allowed to be sold cheap to Africa, therefore millions of people die unnecessarily in order to keep the profit high of the medicine multinationals in America.

It looks like this is going to be a political speech, but it’s impossible to do this any other way when you talk about Jos and his work. Exploitation for profit is one of his central theme’s. And exploitation of the mind through monolithic religious communities and their leaders, who are scaring the people about their faith and destiny.

Foto: Lé Giesen

Anyone who knows Jos, will know his sarcastic smile, especially when he talks about his favourite subjects: like power, greed and oppression. After every three sentences he smiles away the inconveniences of the world in which we live. That world which he daily scrutinises in almost every conversation with anyone he meets. Jos needs this sarcasm to exist in a world he doesn’t accept and therefore as an artist he fights his one man guerrilla war.
His work is not only expressive, it’s above all literary. Every print is a story with many side stories. Every print is a frame about the world. In every print you find many layers, and every layer opens up another story. These are not beautiful stories. It’s the reality of literature. He, who reads a lot knows, that real literature has to be read with the utmost concentration. It’s mostly about the relation between live and death. Real literature is mostly about death. In real literature, books that talk about destiny of humans, it’s mostly a mess. Kain and Abel, Sodom and Gomorra, Auschwitz and Srebrenica. There’s no humour in real literature. Literature is nothing to laugh about. If we want something to laugh about, we’ve got the bullshit of Toon Kortooms- and Jules Deelder level, the playboy and the aphorisms on toilet rolls.
With  his collages Jos writes literature, because he’s on the same level as Louis Paul Boon, Isaac Bashevis Singer, African poets and South American prose writers. The absurd tone in the books of Marquez, can be seen in his reshaped,  rearranged disorder of our world, expressed by Jos.

Actually, Jos is a romantic: he wants people to be good, people who love one another and take care of each other, instead of killing one another. You can see this in his colours: warm colours, but unfortunately the warm red in his work is usually the colour of blood and green is the colour of envy and hate. Often the softest eyes are the eyes of children on the battlefield, or from children who are nearly starved to death, children who are being saved by a helping whore from Playboy, or who’s soul is being saved with the last sacrament by a prelate of the roman catholic church.
Jos sees our society as a conspiracy against humanity.
He’s moved, affected. concerned with our world, and having pity on the “down and outs” keeps him going. This, he puts into words in his sharp analyses of the world, with his collages.

The way he works, the way he makes his collages, is because of his lifelong obsession with paper. Jos is hooked on paper. Paper as a utensil, paper as the carrier of the message.
He knows all the ins and outs of paper. He is a printer, designer, compositor, typesetter, bookbinder, paper- and envelope maker and own publisher. Because of his lifelong dealing with paper, paper that slips through his fingers starts to relive another live,  cut up and put back into a puzzle that becomes a message.  
As an artist he unravels all the pictures and reshapes thousands of fragments from the Playboy, Osservatora Romana, Esquire, National Geographic, Nieuwe Revue, Time, Newsweek, Paris Match, Stern, Geo and scientific magazines about photography, anatomy and astronomy, to new prints who show the connection between the pope and the Chilian dictator Pinochet, the Marlboro cowboy and death by nicotine, worldwide attacks invented in the brain of the capitalistic international, fraternisation between the advertising boys of Coca-Cola and starving Africa.

Jos Deenen wants you to look into your conscience. And this in specific makes him so sarcastic. He knows that we, the others, are cynical too. He knows that we know he’s right, but that we, after acknowledging this, just continue on living in this world that makes the poor even poorer, where newer and crueller weapons are being tested on people who are starving.
He knows that we buy off our conscience by donating an amount to an account for starving and dying children. 
He knows we’ve had enough of the messages on how to do it differently.
He knows we’ve all read that sentence of Louis Paul Boon:

“Hit the people until they get a conscience”

Artists have to be guerrilla’s. They should beat the people around the ears with their writing and drawings, with their prints, films and photo’s, with their story’s and poems, with their collages and installations, with their paintings and all they have. Until the world has a conscience.

Ton van Reen