DENNIS TYFUS
Name: Dennis Tyfus
Age: 44
Birthplace: Pekwachnamaykoskwaskwaypinwanik, Finland
Home: Antwerp, Belgium
Discipline: Epibration
I’m in The Middle Of Something Really Important Here, 2023, colored pencil and pigment on paper, courtesy of Tim Van Laere Gallery, Antwerp-Rome
What are the main topics you deal with in your practice?
Amnesia, boredom, collaboration, dreams, exaggeration, folklore, gigs, hatred, improvisation, joy, King Kong, Lard, music, no choice, oral histories, pranks, real estate, questions, students, torture, unconsciousness, violence, walking, xenophobia and Zyklome A.
How do you define your artistic research in three words?
Read more fanzines.
What images and spaces do you want to create through your work?
Ideally, a space that brings together everyone but the authorities.
Where and how do you find poetry?
The first thing I ask my partner in the morning, while she is still half asleep, is “What did you dream?”, which results in sleep-drunk ramblings of the strangest kind. I have to be early enough, my question basically needs to interfere with her sleep, as the unconscious state brings out the strangest lines. I have been writing these unconscious poems down for a few years now and I read them to her when she asks in the afternoon. That’s one way, though it’s everywhere.
In your view, what does being an artist mean in today’s world?
To me, the most interesting thing about art or being an artist in today’s world is that art can be anything and it deforms daily into something else, art is true science fiction, a both abstract and concrete, ever-changing entity that can appear in any form and can be anything at any moment. There’s truly nothing else like it. Making art or being an artist of any kind means being part of this gigantic outlaw movement, artists are modern jesters, that, at best, dance through a burning hoop and always land on their feet while turning everything they danced through, upside down and on fire.