BeBoz (english)

With his article "The Artist and his Universe", Philipp Württemberg introduces the readers of Sotheby’s magazine Preview (January issue) to "the eclectic and iconoclastic work of Julien Friedler". He writes about the course and the influences of the artist, the Book of Boz and "Around the Boz in 80 Years".

"It is not easy to draw Julien Friedler’s portrait in a few words. A complex, intellectual, creative mind, and artist and writer, a psychoanalyst, ethnologist and philosopher, he has created a rich body of works. Deploying highly diverse media from paintings and sculpture to installations and photography, Friedler has exhibited works all over Europe, culminating in his current project, an entire imaginary universe entitled The Spirit of Boz.

This project has two elements : the first, a 600-page book The Book of Boz, which features a complex discussion between three clowns and their epic metaphysical journey. Visual works interact within the book, transforming it so that, as Friedler says, ‘it consists of many things you can’t see of feel, which are important for our entire history and development.’ To my questions of where the title ‘BOZ’ originates, he answers : ‘I do not know. The principle idea is that different thoughts can construct a greater ‘BOZ World’ across cultural borders, languages, religions and creeds.’
Involvement is an essential aspect of Friedler’s artistic world. Everyone is invited to participate at www.spiritofboz.org, not to simply add comments, but to interact. Friedler recently enlarged his world with a vast collective project based on responses from across the world to six questions, offering insight, in the words of the artist, into ‘the soul of the world’. Printed copies of the questionnaires will be sealed, 500 at a time, into metal boxes, which, when stacked in columns of ten, will create a ‘forest of souls’.
With an 80-year lifespan, this ambitious project will no doubt develop other, currently unforeseen, initiatives, expanding and adapting Friedler’s universe. The artist has created a foundation - Friedler for Contemporary Art - to supervise its conclusion, preserving all works of arts created around the World of Boz. The foundation will organise exhibitions, promote artistic research and, working on Marcel Duchamp’s theory that "all is art’, follow the objective to accept all works by both artists and non-artists.
The art of Duchamp, Wassily Kandinsky, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Joseph Beuys have inspired The Spirit of Boz as they are the works that Friedler has in his own collection. In taking these influences and combining his own particular vision, Julien Friedler is indeed an artistic entrepreneur."

Philipp Württemberg is vice chairman, Sotheby’s Europe.

BE ART can be defined as an endeavor to transcend art field so as to project it in the social field.

Unlike POP ART, which brought popular icons into a privileged circle, Be Art will intend to reach people to transform them in artist’s avatars. Here, people will thus produce works, through the individuals who compose it. So, you’ll only need to be part of it to become one; following this axiom : in everyone sleeps an artist.

In this intent, different strategies will be used :

A profit making company designed in its whole as an esthetic performance (Boz Company).

Nights of Boz, displayed through three years.

The first one took place in Brussels, on December 2nd 2006. Electronic music, laser projections, light inscriptions on the dancers : this night was essentially the starting point of another adventure : “Around the Boz in 80 Years” (see later).

Simultaneously, three works will have been started. They will be conceived as an art for the masses, created by the masses, on the basis of a minimal support.

1 “Around The Boz In 80 Years” will be centered around a simple questionnaire. Having started on December 2nd 2006 with the diffusion of the above mentioned questionnaire, the work will end on December 2nd 2086. So it’s a Vanity, in the classic sense, which will be perpetuated by a “Forest of Souls”.

2 “Give Up” will be built from an usual object given by anyone. Based on free association and the “transitional object” concept, this work will work around a collective imagination. Conceived for a period of 10 years, its ultimate meaning will be something of a chimera.

3 “The Celestial Tramp” will collect sketches, sometimes very minimal (a line, some points aligned, the uneasy drawning of a curve,…). This work will be conceived as ascetism dedicated to despair. Confronting it, one will discover the intimate coherence of the world we try to invent.

Its focal point will always be the same : to produce a supplement of soul where pain only rules.