Cai-Ulrich von Platen and Markus von Platen at The Tail

Artists: Cai-Ulrich von Platen, Markus von Platen

Exhibition title: CASTLE

Venue: THE TAIL, Brussels, Belgium

Date: May 1 – 30, 2021

Photography: GRAYSC / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and THE TAIL, Brussels

You probably haven’t heard of Robert Garcet. I myself had not until a few weeks ago. He was a Belgian quarry worker and an ambitious builder. He made a tower all by himself. It now stands 33 meters tall close to Liège.

It took him 15 years to finish, a period where he’d make sculptures too. He placed four of them on top of the tower: a bull, a lion, an eagle, and a beastly angel. They are really oversized, like they are about to fall off. People say they are biblical references but who knows.

When I talked to Cai-Ulrich and Markus a few weeks ago, we didn’t really discuss Garcet but we did discuss building our own towers as kids. Young boys like castles, huh?

Gone is the time of me tearing the couch apart to make barricades, yet that cocoonish feeling mmm… Look, we also mentioned severed heads. A common love for splatter still puzzles us.

Garcet built more than a castle. He got all cosy and fell down a hole. His majestic tower has a majestic basement. It is an underground area with a network of corridors as found in an old quarry. For Garcet, this area represented a 70 million-year-old village, and in his telling, its inhabitants sculpted silica stones depicting people and animals.

Not even the stone inhabitants of Pompeii, burned alive as they were, dwell underground anymore. Enter Garcet tower and you’ll face the choice of going upward or downard. I am torn myself.

Cai-Ulrich and Markus share quite some traits. Together they built a landscape, which I am not sure I’ll ever fully see. Like a self-made castle, it is intimate but like a self-made castle, it is close too. They did share it now. The verdict is in.

I am reminded of this anecdote: during an Alpine hike, my geologist mother uprooted a couple of pyrite stones to show me how hitting them together produced a sulphuric smell. The smell of hell, she said.

-Piero Bisello

Cai-Ulrich von Platen (b. 1955, Denmark) uses the media of painting, sculpture, installations, photography and video in his work. His 40-year old practice results in exhibitions, videos and books of a most peculiar and personal nature. He often works in artistic collaborations in various forms and has initiated a number of artist-run exhibition projects over the years. Cai-Ulrich von Platen lives and works in Copenhagen.

Markus von Platen (b. 1984, Denmark) works in a range of material forms and contents; as objects, reliefs, models as well as moving image and sound. Since 2020 he is also the co-director of the exhibition space Simian in Ørestad, Copenhagen. Markus von Platen lives and works in Brussels and Copenhagen.