It started with an email out of the blue. Artist Joncquil had Googled my website and was struck by the name. I myself had almost forgotten how I had ever come up with the name, Joy of Irony: a song by the legendary, highly underrated English noise/metal band Fudge Tunnel. Joncquil came to my site because of his expo at the time, Himmel und Joy. He had read some of my pieces and introduced himself. Maybe one day we could have coffee to talk a bit about art.
Thus it happened. A considerable time later, we met in The Hague. There Joncquil, under the name CQ Mutiny Gallery for a month the space of Galerie Ramakers annexed - in the owner's absence - and played gallery owner there. Joncquil showed art by kindred spirits Avner Ben-Gal, Bas de Wit, Julie Cockburn and Thomas van Lingen. Besides his own work - disruptive, dark paintings of skulls, animals, ghosts and clowns, sometimes almost with fluorescent colours - to hilarious sculptures such as Self-portrait as archaeological find, a cardboard box stuffed with a complete skeleton (soon on display at the Museum Boymans van Beuningen).
We drank coffee and chatted about art.
I do that more often, but usually it immediately results in some article or interview. Not now. Because I didn't have time to write anything about our rendezvous. We mostly talked about the absurdity of the gallery practice of art and turned out to have a similar sense of humour. Because: how strange it is, entering a nondescript white space to marvel at the stirrings of suffering souls. While being silently watched by the gallery owner with euro signs in his eyes, or sometimes looked away disdainfully. Couldn't that be different? wondered Joncquil. That is why he had invited artists he himself greatly admired. Purely because of the quality of their work, not the saleable value (incidentally, the two tiny canvases by Avner Ben-Gal did hang for an astronomical amount).
During Art Rotterdam, Joncquil participated in Re:Rotterdam, an alternative and subversive version of the art fair. Along with some 180 artists, he moved into an empty office building. At the 11e floor, he was given a small room at his disposal, furnished it in minute detail like a regular, nondescript office room and hung some of his canvases. And he invited his own writers, art critics and historians. During the exhibition period from 6 to 10 February, a writer took a seat in this office space every day. As part of an overall installation: CQ Holding. In this setting, basically nothing is for sale except a series of framed post-it notes with the cry "HAHA".
There we are now sitting together on the last day of the exhibition. I am writing this piece. He chats with visitors and makes a few drawings. At the end of the exhibition period, Joncquil will have a bunch of texts about his work that will be compiled in a publication, and the writers will each receive a drawing.
From the canvas opposite me, a Ku Klux Klan-like figure shows a bunch of grimly painted animals, like a macabre state portrait. It is a dark scene, not least because of the use of colour. Poison yellow and green against a pitch-black background. Almost nauseating, but fascinating. For two hours I sit at a table and see people staring, nodding approvingly, and almost shudderingly walking away. "A lot of art is too much about the pleas," says Joncquil. "It should only be fun, especially in these uncertain times. It is almost as if we have forgotten that in art there is also a dark side."
'What does that cost?" a visitor asks, pointing to three small paintings. All black with two white magician's hands, performing a mysterious trick with a string. Or is it a snake?
Joncquil grins: 'Has been sold already. Is part of a bigger series.'
'But loose too?' she tries again. He shakes his head. 'No, that all goes through the gallery.'
After she left, Joncquil turns around. A sardonic grin. "It is so liberating to NOT have to play shop for once as an artist."
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