Conflict and balance

Conflict and Balance presents selected works by the Danish artist Henrik Capetillo from 1992 - 2010. As the title indicates the concept of conflict and balance is the recurring interests which have followed the artist, since he in the mid-1990’s traveled to Minnesota in the US, to look at the ways the decendants of Scandinavian emigrants preserved their cultural identity and traditions. Henrik Capetillo’s own background, being Danish with Swedish and Chilean parents, is the point of origin for his interest in the powers that opposite directed forces can generate. Capetillo works with sculptures, photography, video and text, and in recent years he has turned his work in more abstract and formal ways, investigating common existential balances and conflicts. Conflicts grounded in defining ’the real’ as part of our attempt to experience and understand life the best we can. In the introduction to the book, the artist gives us an entry to his works, pointing at the real and representation, conflict and balance, and identity and existence, as the central points from where his works can be experienced. In the work Dreamchaser, included in the book, the chapter Deconstructed piece encapsulates some fundamental questions relating to Capetillo’s works: “The piece is a project which tries to address questions like: What is distance; How does intention result in action; What is history; What is motivation; Do landscapes represent different human mental conditions; What is possible for one man to do; Which voice am I listening to. Why was never a question I used. It is what all the other words are built on.”