What if I were to tell you that none of it is true? That it is all a lie? The studio, the works of art and the artist in the book: all of it is fake. Not fake in the sense that everything on the pictures is not actually there. The spaces are real; the buildings are actually out there somewhere. The objects are real: the wood, the nails, the glue… they’re all there. The person in front of the camera is real; you can see the shadow on the floor. But still, it is not true. A lie, though not just an ordinary deception.

 

Take any upright object on a random page from the book and I will tell you what you see. You see a thing that looks like something. However, I can assure you that it is nothing. At least nothing of what I wanted it to be. Maybe this is why I started to cheat. There might have been other reasons, or no reason at all. Anyhow, I lost interest in completing the thing. The front looked good but the back was no more than a rough construction. I no longer bothered to fasten the components. I just stacked them on top of each other, trying to find a balance. Most of the time, the thing was only upright during the taking of the picture. It was as if it could only hold itself together for a brief moment, to give an ultimate performance in front of the camera. In the worst case, it collapsed just before I pushed the button.

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The space became a stage on which objects played their roles. Roles that others had written and played many times, in many variations. In my hands they played their role of being half-built, partly dismantled. Some just acted as extras in the background, while a person in the foreground, dressed up in worn clothes, impersonated an artist at work. These objects were just as good at representing an accumulation of working materials as they were at mimicking a finished work of art. In the latter case, as I already told you, they often concluded the performance with a bow.

 

But what if I were to tell you that it is all true? The studio, the works of art, and the artist. It is all there in this building on the first floor. None of it is fake.

 

Take the picture with the person in the foreground and I will explain it to you. You see a woman in paint-stained clothes. It is freezing cold and she is yearning for a cup of tea. But she does not care. In a minute she will turn away from the camera and rub the drop from her nose with her sleeve. She will look for the right brush, dab it in yellow paint, and continue with what she had in mind, that is to say, something. Not something that looks like something, but really something, just like the other things on the wall. That is not quite true. So far it is nothing. She’s just convinced that it can be something. Still, it is and will not be fake. The outcome will be true, but not the kind of true that makes it one hundred percent sure.