SIGNAL
058
Many people think you are being consistent,
while on the inside it often feels like repetition.
We probably all know this pressure: the wish to change things so they do not feel old or repetitive.
We change the colors, the forms and the direction. But constant reinvention can also become a system and therefore predictable.
So do we need recognizability?
People want to connect with something, and that becomes easier when certain elements remain familiar. Recognition creates a sense of identity and gives people something they can return to.
Yayoi Kusama has worked with dots for decades. KAWS keeps releasing the same figures in new materials and sizes. Baselitz repeatedly painted his images upside down.
Does this mean there is a lack of ideas? Or is this exactly how a language of your own begins? And are we perhaps too afraid to repeat things?
We know from many other areas that success comes through repetition. In sports, for example. So why should it be different in the creative world?
Or is it only a barrier in our own heads? The imagined judgement of viewers who might think: Now they are doing the same thing again.
But do we think that about a runner who follows the same route every other day?
Language works in a similar way. We do not invent new words every time we speak, and yet we form new sentences and express completely new ideas.
Sometimes a small change only becomes visible when everything else stays the same.
From the studio,
Nastassja & Christian
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