http://www.emergencyrooms.org/formats.html

1. TENTS ARTWORKS
by Thierry Geoffroy/ COLONEL

62. Tent on the roof,
Nancy 1978
TENTS AS ARTISTIC EXPRESSION
Thierry Geoffroy/COLONEL has been using tents as a
form of artistic expression since 1991. His tents can
be perceived as both paintings and sculptures, and
can also be employed in performative interventions,
created to stimulate debate.
The artist uses the sides of each tent as canvases, on
which he paints statements. He generally uses spray
paint, and the aesthetic of the written text expresses
the artist’s impatient, disconcerting nervous energy
at the moment of action. The shaky style of the text
and uncorrected grammatical or spelling mistakes are
intrinsic to the artistic intention, illustrating tension
and speed. There is an authentic spirit of emergency
captured in the tent artworks.
After the action part of the production, the tents be-
come mobile sculptural objects. Each tent is placed
according to its surroundings, so that the context of
the place and the written statement on the tent be-
come connected conceptually. Photos of the tents are
thus not only documentation images, but can also be
considered as visual artworks in themselves.
A tent structure inevitably recalls the state of emer-
gency the world is facing, bringing to mind refugee
tents, military tents, and tents as temporary shelters
or protection from unforeseen disasters. The tent has
become a globally recognized symbol for emergency
and precarious living conditions.
Thierry Geoffroy/COLONEL’s tent artworks have been
exhibited worldwide, in The Maldives Pavilion, Venice
Biennale, IT; The ZKM Museum, Karlsruhe, DE; Marta
Herford - Museum für moderne Kunst, Herford, DE;
Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Osnabrück, DE. The tents are
also in the collection of the Danish Museum of Con-
temporary Art, as well as in private collections in Paris,
Copenhagen, Cape Town and São Paulo.

63. Thierry Geoffroy/COLONEL’s artistic praxis is driven
by the vision of creating awareness about dysfunc-
tion in the world, through art. Since 1988, he has been
working with art formats that support the production
and presentation of artworks produced “in the now”.
One of the earliest formats, ULTRAFAST, provided the
setting for a series of exhibitions that were constantly
changing in different ways. Either they were moving in
space, for example exhibitions on the clothing of peo-
ple moving around within an exhibition space or out-
side in a public space, or they took place in the same
location, but new artworks replaced the older ones
each day.
The ULTRAFAST, pulsing way of working has not only
to do with speed, but also with time. This is why the
artist later introduced another term, ULTRACONTEM-
PORARY, linked more closely to the notion of time, and
continuing his critical positioning towards the estab-
lished understanding of contemporary art. Contem-
poraneity is an interesting phenomenon, because it
ULTRAFAST, ULTRACONTEMPORARY and EMERGENCY ART
forces us to make a connection between the self and
time. Con + tempo (with time) alludes to some kind of
togetherness or closeness to the present moment.
To express with time (Con + tempo) would therefore
mean to express something while you are still within
it. Today’s understanding of “contemporary” has be-
come so open that it incorporates all kinds of art made
during or after the 20th century, or any art created by
artists living today, independently of its pertinence for
the present moment. By using the word Ultra and cre-
ating a new term, ULTRACONTEMPORARY, the artist
brings the focus back to the time aspect and insists on
contemporary signifying “in the now”.
The aspect of time is present not only in the artist’s
decisions regarding methods and form, but also in the
content of the artworks, which also has to be in the
now, relating to what is happening in the world at the
moment. Many burning topics need to be addressed
urgently, before it is too late. The artist calls this kind
of art “EMERGENCY ART”. This is art produced by art

64. ists who are constantly on the alert, recognizing dys-
function and homing in on the most pressing global
issues. This way of working includes the ranking of
emergencies, as with a real hospital situation, when
a doctor has to prioritise between different patients
based on the level of urgency, using a triage system.
Thierry Geoffroy/COLONEL’s questioning of the
contemporary art structure
Since 1988, Thierry Geoffroy/COLONEL has continu-
ally questioned large staged art events such as bien-
nales, art fairs, and Documenta, through critical art
formats such as BIENNALIST – a format that responds
to and questions, through artworks, the motivations
of biennials and other global art events.
He looks into these art events and their motivations,
asking questions such as:
Could 860,000 visitors have been intoxicated by an
apathetic gas that keeps them from reacting?, Are
global art events designed to make people cry about
something in order not to make them see something
else?, Is there a strategy for being delayed in order
to create a distraction from the present and avoid
debating the important topics of today?, If the most
important contemporary exhibitions in the world,
such as Documenta, focus solely on past issues or
a few in the present, contextualized by curators
or art historians, how can we then expect art to be
avant-garde?
For decades, artists have questioned the canvas and
the pigment, and since the1960s-70s, conceptual
artists like Marcel Broodthaers have questioned the
structure of the museum, leading to the art move-
ment known as Institutional Critique, associated
with artists such as Daniel Buren, Andrea Fraser, and
Hans Haacke. With his art format BIENNALIST, Thierry
Geoffroy/COLONEL questions global art events. He
takes the theme of each biennial seriously, studying
it in order to contribute to the debate the biennales
want to generate. With this format, the artist is often
on location, testing the pertinence of the biennales.
In 2007, the artist produced projects called “The next
dOCUMENTA should be curated by a car” and “The
protest school”.
In 2012, The BIENNALIST project was supported re-
spectively by the ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art
for conducting operations at the Athens Biennale cu-
rated by Nicolas Bourriaud, and by the Sprengel Muse-
um, for operations carried out at the Venice Biennale.

65. Thierry Geoffroy/COLONEL, born 1961.
www.colonel.dk
Thierry Geoffroy, also known as COLONEL, is a French artist,
living in Copenhagen, Denmark. He is a format artist devel-
oping art formats, the best-known being EMERGENCY ROOM,
BIENNALIST and CRITICAL RUN.
Thierry Geoffroy/COLONEL has published six books and his
artworks are included in international museum collections.
He is Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
SELECTED GROUP AND ONE-MAN SHOWS:
P.S.1/ MOMA New York, USA; ZKM Museum Karlsruhe, DE;
Sprengel Museum, Hannover, DE; Moderna Museet, the Mu-
seum of Modern Art, Stockholm, SE; HEART- Herning Muse-
um of Contemporary Art Denmark, Herning, DK; Plazzo Delle
Arti Napoli, IT; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde,
DK; Galerie Asbaek Copenhagen, DK; The Maldives Pavilion,
Venice Biennale, Venice, IT; Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool,
UK, Manifesta, The European Biennial of Contemporary Art,
Murcia, ES; National Museum Reykjavik, FI; Galerie Olaf Stü-
ber, Berlin, DE; IKM Museum, Oslo, NO; Fries Museum, Le-
euwarden, NL; Deveron Arts, Huntly, Aberdeenshire, SCO;
The Model, Sligo, IR; Fotografisk Center, Copenhagen, DK;
Cairo Biennale, Cairo, EG; Blackwood Gallery Toronto, CAN;
Galerie Ileana Tounta, Athens, GR; Kunsthalle Osnabrück,
Osnabrück, DE.

66. Contact information:
Thierry Geoffroy/ COLONEL
1@colonel.dk
www.colonel.dk
Draft / test book
© Thierry Geoffroy/ COLONEL