Hello, this is your virtual road assistance guide: when taking turns and determining your goal, you may ask: “is it possible that two sources form one stream?“
“Source”, mixed media of monoprint and etching, DM, 2023
Catherin Pascal Dunk and Drager Meurtant attempted to create two poems by sequential and mutual interactive exchange of lines / stanzas, and composing a joint stream of words or lyric.
The idea was to make a short trip to Paris by bus at the end of November 2023. Calculated time of departure 9.30 hours, which became 9.50 hours.
This seems like a dull road trip, at 2 hours 30 minutes on the way, N BelgiumA17 in N France, 4 hours on the wayAbout 4 hours and one minute on the way, now in N FranceHigh way in N France, 5 hours and a minute on the way
On this road hoping for good or better / while seated on the front row in a bus / heading for La Ville Lumière (the City of Light) / rain came pouring, slashing the windows / and changing the experience into murk and flashing screen scenes / of viaducts crossing the motor road.
At the entry of the ‘Peage’ (Toll road), time 14.47 hrsAt the exit of the ‘Peage’ (Toll road) at 16.07 hrs
The driver from Eastern Europe / talking to another driver crossing / the content in a different direction / in their own language / endlessly.
In the tunnel (1)In the tunnel (2)At about 6.5 hours drive, Paris is near.
Still, the driver paid attention to the traffic on the road, the lights / and he drove peacefully to the terminus / at Gare de Bercy.
Getting close to the ‘Peripherique’Readiness to remove our rubbishKeep left for the Peripherique (at 16.39 hrs)We are very near now, at 17.19 hoursExit to Gare de Paris: Gare de Bercy.
Will there be room for improvement, or have all options be exploited to great depth, leaving just a void.
Let us look at mixed-media painting “Room with a view”, conceived and created in 2019.
In subsequent years, doubt gradually did arise, and early July 2024 this work was completely painted over with white gesso, and then created anew. The structure (cut-out in carton) remained, but colored differently. Minor elements were added as collage material.
“Outside in the meadows”
The text made vague by superposition of thin paper, came from book by Florence Montgomery – Misunderstood (1910)
At the age of one year, the artist Drager Meurtant (b. 2012) wanted to create a vision of the world in it’s infancy.
With mountains, a lake and mystical homonoid figures standing idle.
“With a few”
“The mountains that I encountered, the swamps and gadflies: for milennia remained nearly unchanged: One time the first people came, or were Neanderthals earlier? People won, but whether that was the best outcome? “
In the years that followed, the increased tendency in our world to strengthen frontiers, raise walls, and push back ‘illegal’ immigrants, became a worry and cause to doubt progression of human society.
This did in 2023 lead to transformation of the above sculpture – assemblage, into “Borders and Fences”
The lake became a place for a small city with skyscrapers.
“Borders and fences – 1”
A high gate was raised, on a scale that in real life would be 10 m high, and that makes existing roads and path dead-ends. And a refugee camp was created on the other side of the fence.
“Borders and fences – 2”
Two societies come into existence, populated by the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’.
“Borders and Fences – 3”
After the ‘Chinese Wall’ and the ‘Hardrian’s Wall’, modern society got to know the ‘Iron Curtain’, and became aware of the fences that separate Northern and Southern Korea. However, in 2024 the length of walls and fences that separate Israel from Palestine, the (U)SA from Mexico, and in several countries in Europe to impair crossing the borders for immigrants impossible stretch of thousands of kilometers…
“Borders and fences – 4”
All images and texts by Drager Meurtant, 2013 – 2024.
A visit to old leather factory in Oisterwijk (NL) May 8, 2014, combined with a view of paintings by WOLS in Museo Sofia Reina in the same year, Madrid (E) made me create assemblage.
old leather factory in Oisterwijk
With group of 12 photographers, we were allowed to search for good places to photograph.
One Way Out
One way out
“So, there is only one way out. // But there are no stairs. // There is no rope, no trampoline. // You have no wings even. // Knowing that the heat will become intolerable / how do you get out?!”
Concrete benches for machinesCrypt in the “church” named Leather Factory Oisterwijk, NL
Not to be seated
“Here one stands in awe / and one’s mind lingers / about those, who once were sitting on the benches. // But after what happened / the holiness of this sacred site / does not allow anyone to be seated here / anymore.”
Three Trestles under the Hatch
“Three trestles under the hatch: Even, / if the memory / of an empty room / with stone trestles, that once
all photos, texts & art (c) Drager Meurtant, 2014 – 2024