Raoul Teulings is an Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
based artist and is raised in an artists family.
His father was a sculptor who studied at Ossip
Zadkine's studio in Paris and his mother is a
photographer. That means that art and culture in
general always have a special function and meaning
in his live. Being raised in such an environment
also created an ambiguous relation to art and
culture: its common isolated status as value is not
primarily being privileged. Raoul Teulings sees the
function of art in a wider perspective: following
certain contemporary thinkers art can also
contribute to the field of knowledgeproduction.
But with one exception: it does not have to conform itself to the typical selfreferential structure as most sciences do. On the contrary, the interdisciplinarity of the arts from the 20th century is appealing to Raoul Teulings approach. His work can be regarded as a bricolage which means it is more than an ars combinatoria. That produces a critical layer in his work. The conventional opinion is that art since the famous 'Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes' (1788) has to be seen as mediating sensibility and is therefore lacking any room for intellectual and philosophical reflection. It took until the appearance of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) to bring out for art its former status as intellectual labour back upfront. For many centuries (from Plato on) art has been degraded in that sense: all reflection was only due to philosophical or scientific endeavor and not by art. For Raoul Teulings - living in the postDuchamp era- that is no more the case: art can perform an inbetween for sensibility and intelligibility and is highy adequate for that purpose.
But with one exception: it does not have to conform itself to the typical selfreferential structure as most sciences do. On the contrary, the interdisciplinarity of the arts from the 20th century is appealing to Raoul Teulings approach. His work can be regarded as a bricolage which means it is more than an ars combinatoria. That produces a critical layer in his work. The conventional opinion is that art since the famous 'Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes' (1788) has to be seen as mediating sensibility and is therefore lacking any room for intellectual and philosophical reflection. It took until the appearance of Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) to bring out for art its former status as intellectual labour back upfront. For many centuries (from Plato on) art has been degraded in that sense: all reflection was only due to philosophical or scientific endeavor and not by art. For Raoul Teulings - living in the postDuchamp era- that is no more the case: art can perform an inbetween for sensibility and intelligibility and is highy adequate for that purpose.
That means he had to leave the closed circularity
of the traditional artististic and esthetical
discourses and their monodisciplinary thinking and
step into a much more interrelated context to
produce and understand art as being also
intermedial. This also concerns that the artist can
get into relation with other worldimageconstituting
discourses. It is exactly that what makes that why
Raoul Teulings has a huge interest in philosophical
matters and that of certain scientific
developments.
That does not mean that he presumes that these disciplines have a priori a lot in common and therefore only produce an coherent image of our contemporary notions of knowledge and culture. On the contrary: their differences are the highest stake in the debates around them. That does not also mean that Raoul Teulings thinks that art can overcome these differences; their 'inbetweenness' that is being constituted between these different discourses and beyond any pregiven hierarchy can be very fruitful to understand our contemporary condition. In this inermedial field can art play a very significant role. The current development in more assembled heterogenising (bricolant) than homogenising 'imagery of subjectivity and the world' contributes to that presumption. Its heteroglossia and ‘intermedial thinking ' changes our perception and given functions of art and culture profoundly. It is up to us to support this interesting 21th century development from which Raoul Teulings hopes to be part of. And although it may look like if the authority of art in this regard might have changed, it hasn’t vanished yet…...
Raoul Teulings is beside an artist also a cultural theory teacher, writer and curator of several exhibitions. Currently he is working on two arttheoretical publications.
That does not mean that he presumes that these disciplines have a priori a lot in common and therefore only produce an coherent image of our contemporary notions of knowledge and culture. On the contrary: their differences are the highest stake in the debates around them. That does not also mean that Raoul Teulings thinks that art can overcome these differences; their 'inbetweenness' that is being constituted between these different discourses and beyond any pregiven hierarchy can be very fruitful to understand our contemporary condition. In this inermedial field can art play a very significant role. The current development in more assembled heterogenising (bricolant) than homogenising 'imagery of subjectivity and the world' contributes to that presumption. Its heteroglossia and ‘intermedial thinking ' changes our perception and given functions of art and culture profoundly. It is up to us to support this interesting 21th century development from which Raoul Teulings hopes to be part of. And although it may look like if the authority of art in this regard might have changed, it hasn’t vanished yet…...
Raoul Teulings is beside an artist also a cultural theory teacher, writer and curator of several exhibitions. Currently he is working on two arttheoretical publications.
