Installations from the Wood Carver Paul Kaptein
Paul Kaptein is one of only a few artists I know that has been in Hatched (the national survey of recent graduates held annually at PICA) twice (1999 and 2000). He was in it both as a TAFE graduate and as a Curtin graduate. I mention this only in passing, as it seems appropriate to an artist whose work evolves around a ‘remixed present’. Replaying the moment – graduating twice in two years and reliving Hatched - seems pretty apt (and all very Donny Darko to me). In Paul’s case perhaps this déjà vu becomes the artwork – a shameless and blatant example of disrupting the natural progression of time. Of course this is a simplistic notion – the progression of time that is – in the face of the en-clouding nature of the fabric of this universe. But the constant tension that creates ebbs and flows, springs and strings and the enfolding of material and energetic collapsing that we call time – is just that – a simplistic notion – and the overlapping nature of events, the bizarre consequence of an artist concerned with the materiality of time being in the same place for the same occasion on two different days – suggests that the universe has more than growth and collapse, birth and rebirth to drive it – it also has a wicked sense of humour. This is of course all laid out in the hitchhikers companion to galaxy travel.
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