Michiel Eeckhaut
Seduction and repulsion
For me, as a painter, I am enthralled by the inherent denial that is central to seduction. To be
seduced is to be disallowed immediate access and to be tantalized with the infinite
possibilities of the incomplete story. The story will always, if finally grasped, fall short to our
own imagination. Manipulation is hereby not only an aspect of the romanticised “seduction”,
it fully encompasses it. A seducer or seductress stands closer to a trickster than to a lover.
This plays well into my personal views on art and how I handle the act of creating it. The
artificial machinations of seduction are a two way street, with a seducer and a seduced; one
brings forth promises, veiled in subtext and thrill; the other brings a receptivity, he or she not
only wants to be seduced but will allow grand suspensions of disbelief to allow this seduction
to take hold.
As a painter, i try to be a seducer. My paintings as the machinations of image. They are
constructions of hollow platonian shades and are so diluted with static that no true
communication exists between me as a painter, my painting as object and the viewer as
seduced. When i paint, i try to hold myself close and the painting at arm’s length.
They are not continuations of myself, but simply an object that i have decided to fill with
paint.
The work I do is a seduction, i lift up the veils of my skirt and allow the viewer to become
tantalized by what is just barely invisible, by what the static of the image harrows. However,
were a viewer allowed to lift up the fabric higher, he would find that the leg stops at the brim
of the skirt, ending in a cauterized stump. The images i paint are meant to imply depth, to
seduce the viewer to create their own sky castles within the narrow confines of the canvas,
but they are set pieces, 2 dimensional objects that only work when filmed from the right
angle. My work is for that implication to continue to ring true, despite all the evidence to the
contrary. The audience’s job is to look and to believe, to suspend their knowledge once
more. The painting has it the easiest, it just has to hang and define where this suspension is
allowed.
This is a game, a game that has been played since we as a Western people decided that
two lines going towards each other in a triangle depicts a depth. But while this only meant
suspending our belief in the figurative sense during the classical ages (seeing depth and
perspective where there was clearly just a flat canvas); now i believe it has also come to
encompass the substantial depth, the conceptual meanings and narrative force that run
rampant in contemporary art.
As in the article you linked to us by Marc De Kesel, beauty has become a demand that only
exists onto itself, in the continuation of that I believe meaning to be hollowed out to the same
extent. It exists to those willing and receptive to its message and pops like a bubble at the
first sight of contestation.
Repulsion, for me at least, is not the flipped coin of seduction, but simply a continuation of it.
As repulsion leads into attraction, the grasped seduction also oozes into a repulsive mass in
the hand of the grabber. Once the air of mystery and thrill is filed off of the arts, what is left is
the functional, the uncouth and the absurdly dreary. The artist in pyjama pants, swearing
under his breath as he scrapes away mistakes. In contemporary times the aura of the artist
as the closest to god in his technical craft has left the zeitgeist at about the same moment
that the holy spirit left, but there is still a belief in the grander possibilities of things, in an aid
that brings us closer to ourself or to others. Art is an easy shorthand to find that grand
possibility. The repulsion that continues onto seduction is, to me, the moment you realize
that the artist has nothing to say to you. All that he does is produce an object that fools you
into talking to yourself.