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SI MON DYBBROE MLLER

Rati onal Mysti ci sm
Moderni sm and cri me novel s, August Stri ndberg and det uned gui tar s
EICHLER, Dominic, "Rational Mysticism. Modernism and crime novels, August Strindberg and detuned
guitars", in: Frieze, Issue 89, March 2005


Simon Dybbroe Mllers working method offers a welcome alternative to thinking about art history as a
daunting public library with strict rules for readers. For him its a place to browse more like an
idiosyncratic second-hand bookshop in which the filing and cataloguing have gone a bite awry here and
there. It is in these odd corners, where mysticism can be found rubbing shoulders with volumes on
Conceptual art, Pop music and Concrete poetry, that he produces his best, most free-spirited, work.
Last year, at Art Forum Berlin, Dybbroe Mller created a gallery stand that looked like a carefully thought-
out group show and applied the Modernist dogma that the construction of anything new requires some
reciprocal act of destruction. One of the cheap partition walls was turned into the roughly sawn-through
Slap (R. Morris) (2004), while the gallerist and her visitors sat on mock trashed versions of Gerrit
Rietvelds ZigZag chair around a remake of Superstudios Quaderna table, with each piece of furniture
given a lyrical title along the lines of Because we didnt talk all day (2004). It was tempting to think these
works had been hurriedly delivered by the worlds most slapdash firm of art transporters, to judge from
the bent and twisted but surprisingly still functional Dan Flavinesque fluoro plonked on the floor, entitled
Like those sheets of paper containing absolutes once believed (crumpled together and thrown in the
corner, 21st of January, 2001) (2004). The only calm element here was the serene series Unfold your
Dreams (2004) origami photograms looking like specimens of vintage Geometric Abstraction.
All manner of references, quotations and re-creations appear in Dybbroe Mllers work, but they are
often in an unfamiliar setting, creating an effect a bit like being at a party where none of the guests knows
anyone except the host. Occurrence #2 (2004), for example, consists of the paperback crime novel
While My Pretty One Sleeps (1989), by Mary Higgins Clark, lying open on a plinth like a piece of
important evidence promising some kind of insight. The open page on one side is torn diagonally, so that
the text flows uninterruptedly on to the text on the page beneath it, and one of these hybrid paragraphs
is marked with an emphatic circle in red ink. Seemingly a coincidence, the passage makes a kind of
sense despite being made up of the beginning of one sentence and the end of a completely different
one. It reads: Although we cannot grasp the perfect harmony, the absolute equilibrium of the universe,
each and everything in the universe (every motif) is nevertheless subordinated to the laws of this
harmony. But then the words start unravelling and drift off into random nonsense: This equilibrium
watched as they spread powder thrifty along the way . The secret message contained between the
pages is in fact a piece of meticulous counterfeiting, involving the subtle insertion of a quote from Theo
van Doesburgs Principles of Neo-Plastic Art (1924).
Dybbroe Mller has a thing about the physical properties of paper the pages of a book, scribbled
notes, cardboard record sleeves and posters. Anyone on the streets of Berlin before his recent solo
exhibition might have seen his sombre black poster In Concert #1 (2004), which he subsequently tore
down and hung in the gallery, framed. It announced: Rational Mysticism we are mystics rather than
rationalists we leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach. In the complete absence of any further
information, who knows what conclusion passers-by might have reached? The quote is in fact a
combination of one of Dybbroe Mllers most important inspirational sources, the work of Swedish writer
August Strindberg, and a slightly amended line from Sol LeWitt changing the subject of his dictum from
Conceptual artists to we. The exhibitions title, ABABCB (2005), was not a dyslexic homage to ABBA
but actually referred to the basic elements of a pop song: verse, chorus and bridge. A large print,
Aarhus, Winter 1993 (2004), showed a black light rock group in what looked like carefully posed
euphoria, but by tracing the outlines of the bodies and their equipment the image spelt out the word
chance a not immediately obvious visual pun.
Dybbroe Mllers combination of popular music with Conceptual arts systematic processes and forms at
times recalls works by Stephen Prina, Jonathan Monk and Dave Allen. But he also shares with these
artists a taste for wit and formal exactitude. Untitled, Uncovered and Incomplete by Chance (in Bloom)
(2005), for instance, involved recording on vinyl a cover version of Nirvanas song In Bloom, played on a
guitar detuned in accordance with Strindbergs instructions for random tuning. With it was a faux seven-
piece open cube from Sol LeWitts Variations of Incomplete Open Cube series (1974), reduced to 7-
inches, that served as a receptacle for the record sleeve. Dybbroe Mller obviously enjoys using
apparently rational processes to achieve quietly mystifying results.