WAR ON CANVAS

Documented by Matthias Drobeck

What connects artists and warriors? What do war and art have in common? How can inherently destructive processes be transformed into prosperity and construction through creative expression?

In a collaborative art performance, Hasan Hüseyin Deveci and John Herman intend to explore these questions and others in order to challenge the established boundaries between performance art and fine art. In this provocative piece, the studio artist (Hasan Hüseyin Deveci) and the performance artist (John Herman) search for a common ground between these creative practices, and in effect they bring to light the contractionary relationship between permanence and ephemerality in art.

The body of a war veteran becomes an instrument of art as John Herman gives himself to the hands of Hasan Hüseyin Deveci. Hasan Hüseyin Deveci then implements this body into his art work, creating new structures and expressing new potentials with this organic material. In the process, the two transform the soldier’s body—a tool of destruction and power—using an emergent constructive context. This interaction between organic material, movement, and colour intends to open a new space, where normally hidden processes of transformation are made visible, inspiring individual reflection on the complexity of processes of transition themselves.

The artists worked with materials like ripped canvas stripes, canvas, paper, card, acrylic paint and textile. The performance ended after 1 hour.