I started out with the experiments with white-out, they formed firm and thick pieces amid almost immaterial swirls of colours. The white-out reminded me of cement, which was crumbling and constantly reconstructed through its mixing with the oil paint. 

It reminded me of cities throughout history, crumbling beneath time or war. Dust from debris floats in the air. But what made these constructs of humanity, and its inhabitants disappear or resist? How can we process information about a war-torn place when even the information-flow is disrupted and manipulated? Where does the myth and reality begin?

The work and information is rendered almost unrecognizable and abstract, but yet retain some breaks where the reality breaks through the aestheticization. 

Eppela - The Missing Piece

History can be used to make sure mistakes aren’t repeated.

In “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, Edward Gibbon describes in 7 books how the Roman Empire met its ultimate demise. Political, economical, social and environmental reasons contributed to the fall of the greatest empire of ancient times.

Surely, the Empire was convinced of its stability, and sure that it could never fall. The short-sightedness of its leaders led to problems piling up, and the entire Empire didn’t realize its life was crumbling around itself.


Dys.Ut.

In the installation “Aphroditae”, I explore the notions of “love” and “lust”: concepts that are very familiar to our contemporary society, yet remain elusive and conflicting. While we have been influenced by the “Eros” for as long as we have existed, our relationship to it has shifted throughout cultural and religious influence. 

To create the installation, I used references to Aphrodite’s history and erotic images to create a mix of attraction, impersonality and repulsion. 

Aphroditae

In metaphysics, a Universalia is what particular things have in common, namely characteristics or qualities. In other words, Universalia are repeatable or recurrent entities that can be instantiated or exemplified by many particular things.

They are the universal ideas of everything that exists in the universe. They are the abstracts of our objects. There are multiple philosophies about these concepts, but the core question remains “Are we able to mentally conceive of these ideas?”. What is THE Universalia, where did they come from, and how can we think about them?

Universalia

We are all connected through birth, death, and our fate in between.

The Moirai were the Fates in Greek mythology. Klotho, the "the Spinner”, who spun the thread of life, Lakhesis, "the Apportioner of Lots", who measured it, and Atropos, "She who cannot be turned," who cut it short. They are good nor evil, simply allotting to everybody what is their due.

When I was nearing my 26th birthday, I got the sensation that my life was running out. That the Fates had decided my time on earth was coming to a close. I became continually aware of my own life, like the sensation I get when I think about my inevitable death. The Moirai became my companions, and I became at peace with their decision.

——————

La Condition Humaine & Humain

After consolidating myself with my own mortality, the paintings of the Moirai were transformed into an installation and required further paintings. These paintings focus on the human dimension to contrast with the mortal. 

The diptych shows, on the right, a collage of images, expressive pencil lines, and painted marks that merge with a collection of questions that show our human condition: a constant stream of questions about the world, whose potential answers allow us to create meaning and position ourselves in the world and our life. 
The left Sid shows another perspective: a simple state of "being". While our existence is burdened by the steam of questions that might not always have an answer, we also known of an existence without thinking, without questions and answers. Zenbuddhists focus on this existence, bu rejecting the meaning of the world and live as nature: by simply being, without thinking. 

Yet, there is no exclusivity: our existence is bout. The figure that simply exists is still burdened with the human condition. The questions, images, references and links lead to nothing, and have no one answer.

Ilse

The spider is the keeper of the house, a symbol of a healthy home. The wasp is the defender of the home, eating and stinging intruders. Contradictory, since a spider kills for food while wasps sting in self-defense. 
Both are terrifying to me, but perpetual inhabitants of my home.

The small paintings “Familias” were created as a commission for a pair of loving parents, taking inspiration from religious Icons and laden with symbology only accessible to the couple owning the paintings. 

Familias

We are all connected through birth, death, and our fate in between.

When I was nearing my 26th birthday, I got the sensation that my life was running out. That the Fates had decided my time on earth was coming to a close. I became continually aware of my own life, like the sensation I get when I think about my inevitable death. The Moirai became my companions, and I became at peace with their decision. 

The Moirai were the Fates in Greek mythology. Klotho, the "the Spinner”, who spun the thread of life, Lakhesis, "the Apportioner of Lots", who measured it, and Atropos, "She who cannot be turned," who cut it short. They are good nor evil, simply allotting to everybody what is their due. It is, namely, what connects us all in our human condition: birth, life, death.

During the spring of 2018, I started wandering through forests and wondered what attracted me to the silence and feeling of the woods. It feels alive with spirit and secret, shifting all the time yet retaining a sense of calm and security. It is an ethereal space where time and history stands still while at the same time captures it.

The Hamadryads, or wood nymphs, have permeated the forest for eons. They bring a calm, a mystery, a place of contemplation where time stands still. They live in it like smoke, and we breathe in their influence.

Hamadryads

Inspired by my research into the Egyptian Goddess Sekhmet, and the Greek God Comus, I decided to explore the concept and experience of contemporary drunken revelry, and the eternal connection to self-destruction that comes with it.

The installation consists of 5 paintings on paper, which are hung together. Over top of the paintings, a video is projected that interacts with the paintings and opens up the durken universe of self-destruction.

Comus

Every September, I get the same sensation. The end of summer, not yet fall.

Persephone was the daughter of Demeter, the Goddess of fertility. One day the God of the Underworld, Hades, kidnapped Persephone and made her his Queen in the first historic case of child-abduction. Demeter was devastated, and everything on Earth withered. Zeus, distressed by the humans cry for help, made an agreement. Persephone was allowed to return to her mother for half of the year, and had to spend the other half with Hades. Thus, the seasons were born: Demeter rejoices when her daughter arrives, making everything bloom. But when Persephone has to leave, everything on earth falls into winter. 

persephone's light 

In traditional story-telling, the story is used to explicate a series of events. But in Koans, Buddhistic verses, this idea is reversed. These short stories are surreal and often contradict themselves, meant to make the reader think about the inexplicability of life and the world. 
When I started out creating these theatrical 3D-environments, I had no real explanation of why I was making them. In traditional theatre, the decor has to perform a specific function: to “set the stage” for the story being told. Mine, however, focus on materiality and mystery, and might set the stage best for the staging of Koans.


Koan Theatre

The installation “ruins and fragments of an eremite” furthers on the ideas in “The Sibylline Dairy”, where meaning is created through the relationship between the audience and the images, where my random associations between the images, text and expressive swirls are lost in translation and explored independently by the viewer. 

It is like a fever dream, discovering the totally unlinked realities hidden in the connections between all the elements of the installation.

The installation links Roman ruins and light particles, general theory of relativity and Egyptian queens. The universe begins and ends with everything and nothing, as does the installation. It is a means to fill in the void left by the author, if they wish to do so.


This installation was made as a 3D-model, consisting of realized work and virtually created elements, to visualize the final result. This gives me more artistic license to push beyond what is possible within financial and spacial restrictions while still being able to be executed in real life when the possibility presents itself. 

ruins and fragments of an eremite

For a while, the interpretation of “meaning” in my works became an important aspect of my practice. When confronting this idea with an archive of images I had collected over the years, but which had no true purpose, I started arranging and interpreting meaning in them just like the sybils, or ancient oracles, would have done. 

Two notable sources left behind by the sybils were the Sibylline Books and the Sibylline Oracles. 

The Sibylline Books were a collection of oracular statements which foretold important events in the Roman Empire. They were purchased by the last king of Rome from the Cumaean Sibyl, and were consulted at great crises during the history of the Roman Empire. Only fragments have survived, the rest being lost or deliberately destroyed.
The Sibylline Oracles were similar, but related to classical mythology and early first millennium Gnostic, Hellenistic Jewish and Christian beliefs. The Sibylline Oracles in their existing form are a chaotic medley.

The series “The Sibylline Dairy” mirrors the characteristics of these books: the images, marks and scribbles form chaotic connections that cannot be reduced to a single meaning, but have to be interpreted each time, and each time the interpretation can shift. 

The Sibylline Dairy

History can be used to make sure mistakes aren’t repeated.

In “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, Edward Gibbon describes in 7 books how the Roman Empire met its ultimate demise. Political, economical, social and environmental reasons contributed to the fall of the greatest empire of ancient times.

Surely, the Empire was convinced of its stability, and sure that it could never fall. The short-sightedness of its leaders led to problems piling up, and the entire Empire didn’t realise its life was crumbling around itself.

“Pandemonium” explores the elements related to the satyr Pan, deity of shepherds, hunters, animals, meadows and forests, panic. These elements seems paradoxical on first sight, but are also share a deep relationship. A pandemonium is both frighting and deeply natural. 

The installation consists of 6 painted canvases, which are strung up in the space, balancing between tension and elegance. Two video-projections, five plaster sculptures and a sound-piece add to the environment and concept of the work.

Different tempos are layered on top of each other in the videos, creating a chaos of impressions: a naked person rotating in slow motion, and the same person who spins about like a madman. The video is glitched so that the video shows the same panicked energy. A balance between calm elagancy, erotisism and chaotic panic. 

The sound-piece is to be a combination of pan-flute and white noise, creating a kind of “musique concrète”.


This installation was made as a 3D-model , consisting of realized work and virtually created elements, to visualize the final result.

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Dilum Coppens