Art can be many different things but you have to admit that, the more open it is to interpretation, the more sublime it can be perceived by whoever approaches it. If an artist is too clear and direct with their work and their intent, this will normally mean that they’ll lose our attention and interest. And yet, when we find ourselves in front of those types of work that are full of what we perceive to be powerful symbols that we don’t really know what they mean, it’s impossible to not let your imagination run free, and more than reflecting on what this could mean to the artist, discovering what they mean when we take them to our personal sphere.
ERIC TIMOTHY CARLSON AND ART IN THE WORLD OF BON IVER
It is impossible to understand Bon Iver’s last albums without the artistic vision of Eric Timothy Carlson. Even though, curiously enough, you can almost say that, after all, it is also impossible to understand this artist’s vision by itself. His mysterious symbols only seem to have one meaning: whichever you want to give them.
This is particularly powerful in the work of Eric Timothy Carlson, that certainly cannot be understood without Bon Iver’s last two albums. Because one thing leads to another, and, in fact, Justin Vernon has been making it clear for a while now that this musical project is not unipersonal but a type of artistic collective that goes beyond music and places special attention on the visuals. That is where Timothy Carlson comes in, he met Vernon when he did the cover of an album for Gayngs (a band that Justin also took part in) and who is in charge of the art direction of everything concerning Bon Iver, ever since the launch of 22, A Million.
In that album, many were surprised by the titles of songs like 21 M◊◊N WATER, 715 - CR∑∑KS or 10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⚄ ⚄ . But even the visual form of the titles came from the artistic vision of Eric Timothy Carlson who managed to link that album to a whole madness frenzy like the ten murals that could be seen around the world as an ad campaign. In i,i, Bon Iver’s recent new album, the artist hasn’t limited himself to making a video for each one of the songs, but he has also created innumerable collages that, on top of reinforcing merchandising and the band’s posters, they work as a thread to understand the totality of the album. The quadrature of this circle, also, will arrive this Autumn when Spotify launches an experience under the name of Viisualizer that will allow us to enjoy i,i in all of its audiovisual potential.
But we have to go back to the beginning: to that ability that Timothy Carlson has to build his work from opposed images in his collages and through the usage of symbols that appear to be syncretic and even atavistic before anyone who sees them. Because in school we were taught that Machado’s dried elm was a symbol of Spain in a crisis and that Dali’s ants were a metaphor of sexual desire, but nobody has taught us yet what the symbols of this artist mean. And that’s what’s interesting: that we don’t have the key to understand them and, for that, we can understand them however we want to.
