Interview with Otto Boll - Axel Vervoordt

Interview with Otto Boll
by Jenke Van den Akkerveken
Antwerp, 11.12.2012
Otto Boll’s installations cut through emptiness. His fine, steal sculptures are like immaterial lines drawn in
space. They balance on the thin line between the visible and what cannot be seen. Boll creates sculptural
experiences that destabilize the spectators’ position and challenge them to experience their surroundings
in a totally new way.
On the occasion of Otto Boll’s exhibition at Axel Vervoordt Gallery (6 December 2012 – 26 January
2013), Jenke Van den Akkerveken interviewed the artist, confronting him with the way the sculptures he
installed at the gallery can influence the viewer's experience of space.
JVA: The questions I am going to ask you are experiential. They come from a personal experience of
your work. To me your floating sculptures are like lines, immaterial lines, that are drawn into space. It
seems like they are cutting through emptiness. Like they are holes in space. What does the concept of
the void mean to you and how do your sculptures relate to it?
OB: A void for me is a beginning. There is nothing and from this point you have to start anew. And to
have the feeling of the void in the back of your mind, it’s just like looking for another country. It has
something to do with possibility. A sense of the known possibility is necessary in combination with the
void. On the one hand there is nothing, but from this point onwards I start to build something, and it has to
fill the nothing with something I do by myself.

JVA: So in a way the void is a fullness as well: a plenitude of possibilities.
OB: Yes. It sounds paradoxical but it is the same. Fullness and nothingness come together.
JVA: And how do your sculptures relate to this? Can we see them as possibilities in this void, are they
revealing a part of the void? How would you see this?
OB: I like to see my sculptures – especially the suspended ones, but also the other ones – as tools, as
tools for looking. They are a kind of… they help me to open my eyes. So to live with these sculptures can
lead to an opening of the eyes, to an opening of the view you have on your surroundings, on your own
life, and they bring you in the “possibility”, into the tension to see things which you possibly could not have
seen without these sculptures. It makes you… aware. A great deal of awareness is involved in my
sculptures.
JVA: This perfectly brings me to my next question, because when I look at your work, be it the floating
sculptures, or the steles, I feel that my gaze is slowed down. You have to look closer in order to see the
sculptures, only to find that your eye can never fix them. Would you say that your work focuses on a
visual experience?
OB: Yes, I think the visual experience is necessary, for me it is necessary as a way of thinking, already. I
cannot really describe how it happened with the first suspended sculptures, but I believe that it had
nothing to do with just rational thought at all. Suddenly this form of sculpture was there and I think it had
something to do with what I was thinking of visually when it happened.
Sometimes you find yourself in a ordinary situation, for example, you are reading a book, you are
concentrated and then suddenly you think you have got it. You have found the right solution for
something, or you have understood something. This was the situation with the beginning of these
sculptures, but I think they were already prepared for by other things I had done before. In my workshop I
was constructing a piece which had to hang on the wall. The construction of this piece was interesting for
me. I looked at it as I was constructing it, piece by piece. I had a view on it on a daily basis and so this
picture I got from the construction of this thing was in my mind. It was one piece of the visual
development of these suspended sculptures.
So often I say it is necessary for me to be by myself in a workshop, to do a lot of things by myself
because you have a lot of these pictures in your mind when you are working with different materials and
so on. These pictures you have in your mind are combined with thinking, for me. So I’m working with my
hands and the pictures in my head. Hands and head belong together.
JVA: So the process of making a work is important for you?
OB: Yes, it is very important.

JVA: And what about the visual experience of the viewer? Because now you have talked about the
beginning, how your works are created, and about the importance of the visual experience for you, as an
artist; but is it important for the viewer as well?
OB: Yes, I think if a spectator is interested in looking at the work and takes his time to look at it, I say he
should also come into contact with my idea about looking.
My idea of when a sculpture or an art work is really perfect for me, is when I feel that what is outside fits
with what is inside…
JVA: Is this inside the visual image you were talking about?
OB: Yes. Outside – inside. When this happens to me, then I think I’m also a little bit critical with my view
on the things I do. If it is this way for me, it can also be so for another person. That is my point of view.
What I often like to say is that you have the imagination of the thing and you know and feel how it has to
be – this is one point, but you have to do it, you have to make it.
JVA: It has to converge, to come together…
OB: Indeed, and when it happens, it is real. First it is in your mind and then you can see it. Then there is
another feeling in your breathing and your heart … and you see…
JVA: Your body feels it is right.
OB: Yes, that’s the best situation. It does not happen very often.
JVA: Is that why you like to be in control as well, of the hanging, and everything? To make it fit?
OB: Yes.
JVA: I am fascinated by the fine endings of your floating sculptures, especially by the point where they
almost seem to dissolve into nothingness. To me those points are like thresholds, they are like inbetweens.
How do you feel about this idea, could you elaborate on that?
OB: If you try to imagine that this is just a round stick without fine endings, it is just a flying stick in the air.
This Auflösung, this dissolution, is necessary, it’s just a moment from no-thing to thing. The sculpture
becomes a strange, uncanny object. This is not a thing hung from the ceiling. It is weightless, so if you
see the black small peak against a white wall, the white is ‘overblending’, it folds over, and so you get the
impression that you do not know where the end is.
JVA: And you don’t have the depth.

OB: You cannot do the same with a white line in front of black. It’s not possible. And that is why the
sculptures are mostly black in front of a white wall.
JVA: Otto, one last question, following on from our discussion about the experiential nature of your work.
How does your work relate to time?
OB: Well, I would like to say my work is timeless. Less time. As it is in-between, it is also less time. You
have your own time with the sculptures.
JVA: Your own time out of time…
OB: For me especially the sculptures are something you are with in a space, which means the sculpture
is just like a person you are with…
JVA: A person with whom you share the same dimension of time...
OB: Exactly. If a person, who does not know what kind of sculptures I make, would ask me about my
sculptures, I would like to be together with this person with only my sculptures in a space and I would say
nothing.
One can only experience my work. It is a prime experience, so you cannot imagine what this sculpture is
like when you see a photograph. It has… I don’t know what kind of word I could use, in German it’s
primärer Erfahrungswert.
JVA: You have to experience your work in a certain time and space in order to fully understand it.
OB: Yes, I had the same experience with this interview (laughter).