I am an artist from the little scandinavian country called Finland and from a little town there (not even the capital) called Turku. I like to send you this information about my works so you can se one way in wich Marcel Duchamp has had influence also in this part of the world.

I started out as a chemist with six years of studies in the university of Turku, but quitted, 25 years old, after three months of work in 1979 to see if art could save my life.I have been playing in the artworld for my own fun and with hard work since that. Mainly I have been doing commenting works about other artists lives and ideas connecting them to my own life. They are not cold, analytical, deconstructive works, rather a kind of warm love-monuments.

After having my Babyretrospective-exhibition in the Pori artmuseum in 1990 I thought of withdrawing from the artworld doing my last commenting work on Marcel, the father of most of the art of this century including my own way of thinking. I thought going through him would send me out for a big trip into something new outside the artworld (in fact I was rather bored with the artworld at that time, and still is, but as you can see I'm still hanging on!)

As a part of the process I went to your museum in Philadelphia to see the original Large Glass and Etant Donnes and bought books and other materials (for example Richard Hamilton's article about the Large Glass I found very exciting).

I wanted to make my own" gametable"so I started out to make a standing gameboard in the form of Marcels profile on one side and an imaginary profile of Mona Lisa on the other. The forward leaning form of the whole thing goes back to Nike of Samothrake. The game can be played with small "energies", objects chosen from different shops. You can choose your main tambourine according to your sex (or how you feel;more male or more female) and then surround it with different energies ; aggressive, seductive or defensive . The game has no definite rules, you make them up during the game but the aim is to reach the other persons main tambourine. In front of the sculpture there is a red round floor,"The killing floor" on wich you can put a bottle of wine for example, to cheer up the game .You can also put the energies on this floor and they either get or loose energy.

The sculpture-installation is called Marcel Duchamp dans la douche.On the killing floor you can find Marcels bathtowels filled with pictures of me playing with the Large Glass . Marcel himself is air but you can find his swimming-cap on his imaginary head and a pair of binoculars before his imaginary eyes. So he is stearing out against a notestand in front of the mainsculpture. On the notestand there is an Opera ,"Marcel Duchamp dans la douce in full score", wich I have made on the faximil-edition of the book about Etant Donnes. The opera has keys to the work and states some main rules for how the game is to be played.

Huh, sounds a little bit messy i guess, but that has been one of my working methods. Starting out from clean abstract simple structures I put on details and different stories until I reach a certain ordered chaos bringing the work closer to everyday urban human life (as someone said; from spirituality towards the shopping center)

I almost forgot! The sculpture has a back side also, where I have made pictures in different materials of the most important animals in the evolution history. There is also a two-dimensional description of the black hole; the Einstein-Rosen-bridge and an oval made out of the tree-silhuett from Leonardos painting turned into modern materials. The dirtybrown watertube is called the Milan Kundera-pipe. Kundera brought my attention to the fact that whatever we do to try to hide the shit, it is always present for example hidden in the pipes in our own walls. And usually the roses wich are given to humanity as undisturbed good energies are turned out into destructive knives(or as you also could read it more positively: into sharpened, active arguments) .

That was a nothing but complete description of this aggregation of things and thoughts or sculpture-installation or whatever you could call it, but you perhaps get an idea of what it is about if you compare it to the pictures I have added.

The work was exhibited in 1990 in the Water-exhibition arranged by the finnish (lutherian)chuch. Perhaps I also would tell you about its future adventures because they are more international. In 1992 I was invited to make a work in Milles-garden in Stockholm, Sweden, and found out about Carl Milles' works in Philadelphia. When I was offered Milles old studio I immediately thought about arranging a meeting between Duchamp and Milles . So between Milles originalplasters of Europa and the Bull and Orfeus I placed my sculpture( as you can see on one dia-positive). The binoculars point towards Europa and I lit her with three halogen lights in the primary colours red,green and blue on the "important spots". I also searched for a material wich could comment plaster and came to think about sugarcubes and made a portrait of Carl Milles in sugarcubes, also in that way connecting it to Marcels cubes made in marble. I also made a video together with Marjatta Oja where we made to reality Carl Milles unrealised dream about doing a sculpture on a far island in the archipelago of Stockholm so that only God and the people who occasionally came to the island would see it. I played Milles and Marjatta his wife Olga and the beautiful summerday trip in the video is accompanied with rough technomusic.

In spring1994 I was asked to participate in the exhibition wich Pori Art Museum made to Museu deArte Contemporanea in Sao Paulo, Brazil, with my Duchamp work. I thought OK. , I will travel to Brazil and make a part of the installation there and try to find some link , real or imaginary,between Brazil and Duchamp. I spent four weeks in Sao Paulo. In the beginning my research could find no connectionpoint but then somebody said that the brazilian sculptress Maria Martins had lived in New York and that there were rumours that they had some (platonic?) love affair, at least she seemed to be the muse for the Etant Donnes-work! Wow I thought. Then I will make the ass of Maria Martins in coffeebeans and place it in a barrucha made of materials I either collected or bought or had made in Sao Paulo. I will send you pictures of this installation also.

So Marcel has been with me on many trips and adventures ...

I dont know in what directions my art will take me. At the moment I am doing big tablesculptures, the latest was the coffeelovers supertable; a monument for the coffeebean and the coffeeculture where you can drink coffee and eat primary-coloured triangle- circle- and squarecaces.Next year I will participate in an exhibition with finnish art in the Wichita Art Museum so I think I will do something on the place but I think I will leave Marcel out of that, but who knows...

Good luck with your future work.

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• ©Jan-Erik Andersson