Van Damme, 2010
Installation of a painting and text
Dimensions vary

 

I went to bed very early that night. I had been away from home for 3 weeks working on my projects in Germany and France and I was really looking forward to having sex with my wife after so many days sleeping alone.

I was laying in bed waiting for my wife, and I was very excited.
My wife went to take a bath. She always takes a bath before coming to bed with me.
I kept waiting but eventually I nodded off to sleep and dozed for a while...
When I woke up, my wife was still in the bathroom.
I dozed off again...

I woke up  suddenly at 1 o’clock in the morning to the sound of explosions and shooting coming from the next room. I got out of bed and went to the other room. My wife was sitting on the sofa watching some  kind of Van Damme action film. I asked her if she would like to come to bed but she didn`t pay any attention to me and just kept watching the film. I asked again if she would like to come to bed, and she just said „no” without even turning her eyes away from the film.
I didn`t know what to make of it. I never knew she liked Van Damme films, she had never watched them before.     
„I’ll go back to bed then...,” I said. She didn`t answer. It was as though she couldn`t even hear me.

I didn´t fall asleep for some time. I lay in bed thinking of Van Damme. And then I was thinking of my wife. And I was listening to all this screaming and shouting and explosions coming from the other room. Then I was thinking of Van Damme again. Then I tried to imagine myself being in that film doing all these things like Van Damme, but although I kept trying I found I couldn`t really imagine it very well at all.
Then, by and by, I fell asleep.