Quantcast
Channel: Artist Interviews - REDEFINE magazine - music art film journalism - reviews, interviews, features
Viewing all 81 articles
Browse latest View live

Compare & Contrast: Mao Zedong, Then And Now

0
0

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Compare & Contrast: Mao Zedong, Then And Now

Dictators! Love them or hate them (philosophically-speaking), it’s hard to argue that a Communist aesthetic a la Mao Zedong or Joseph Stalin doesn’t have a compelling color palette and welcome vintage grain associated with it. Perhaps in spite of themselves — or perhaps not — illustrators and artists the world over are constantly reinventing these iconic images of humanity’s most well-known leaders; the question is why.

Andy Warhol included Mao in his collection of silkscreened works in 1972. Since then, many artists have followed in his footsteps to reimagine the dictator’s face and place. In this post is a mix of classic images of China’s Mao Zedong, alongside new interpretations of his distinguished mug and some philosophical ramblings.

OLD _ a paper-cut propaganda poster discovered by the University of Michigan’s Center for Chinese Studies. SEE MORE IN HI-RES

NEW _ Mao Money 8 by David Foox. SEE LARGER IMAGE

David Foox

David Foox might envision a future where economic differences between the United States and China might be settled by an international currency. About Mao Money 8 and Mao’s influence, he states: “It is clear to me that Chairman Mao was a truly iconic leader and his image is a larger than life representation of forces and factors that have helped shape the modern era. My artwork titled “Mao Money 8″ was a re-visualization of future US Currency and as part of that notion, I included both the concept of a world currency and a US currency backed by Chairman Mao. It is a commentary on the ever changing notion of money – and who knows we may all see the day where there is an international currency based entirely in the digital world.” You can learn about the full symbolism behind the piece HERE.

OLD _ Portrait of Portrait of Mao Zedong at Tiananmen Gate

NEW

Marko

Marko Koeppe is one artist who became interested in Mao Zedong after seeing Warhol’s Mao.

As a German artist, Koeppe holds strong opinions about borders and walls; he hopes that his art, including his incorporation of Mao’s image, can transcend those boundaries.

“The [Berlin] Wall is standing (for me) as a border, not to think outside your world view. To be limited [by] your horizon… is something that is all the same with dictators and similar systems. If you wanna go deeper, it’s the same with all human beings here,” Koeppe says. “Everyone has got his own horizon, and most of us do not want to be disturbed [by outside influences]… I’m making pictures for the ones that want to be disturbed, that want to extend their horizon. Everything develops in the eyes of the viewer – (so open your mind).”

OLD

NEW _ Representation of an Idea to the Outside by Ever

Ever

Argentinian street artist Ever works a great amount with Mao’s image and has thought quite deeply and extensively about the subject. At the very heart of his work is his desire to talk about what he calls the “human contradiction.”

“In a capitalist society, the volume of information available to us affords us an incredible degree of choice in what we want to consume. However, when faced with the sheer number of options, we often end up overwhelmed and unsure about our own objectives. So, though happy to buy into the appealing illusion of freedom offered by capitalism, we ironically find ourselves frequently plagued with the paralysis of indecision and distracted from our own ideological desires with constant material craving[s]. To illustrate this contradiction we have only to consider the current youth generations in the western world. They find themselves at their peak and with the whole world within reach, but paradoxically they often feel stagnant and impotent, temporarily satiating themselves with a new iPod or car while battling disillusionment in a failing system which can no longer fulfill the promise of a bright future. Despite this dilemma, Western society defends its system with conviction when faced with other options, like that of Communism. China is a country long exposed to Communism while Western society [has] demonized it, but all are now involved in the same economic system. China gave up true Communism long ago and is now the creator of the majority of the products used in modern day capitalism to satisfy our most immediate and shallow needs.

Often when we defend our systems against those that we think threaten them, in reality we are only defending outdated ideologies which are no longer truly embodied by our current political systems. To reveal these contradictions, I have chosen to utilize the images of Chineses Posters for describe Mao Tse Tung and the Chinese culture. When I see [those] posters, you see [the] progress of an idea, but on the facts at this time, you see a bad ending.”

OLD

NEW

David Szauder

When glitch artist David Szauder decided to explore how glitch art could be combined with iconic imagery, his mind went directly to Mao — an individual that, for him, provided “direct connection to pop art.” Perhaps it as the callback to Warhol that made this connection, but working with Mao has led Szauder one step further, to contemplate the relationship between pop art and glitch art. Nonetheless, despite the bright colors and fanfare, Szauder’s impressions of Mao are less than positive. “I am coming from an ex-Communist country. I have total bad feelings about Mao, because the blood [is] on his hand[s], but visually… I [see how] the idealistic images from that era [are] totally [controversial],” he says.

 

Read David Szauder’s complete statement

OLD _ Urgently Forge Ahead and Bravely Advance with Great Leader Chairman Mao (Jin gen weida lingxiu Mao Zhuxi fenyong qianjin!), 1971

NEW _ Long Live Chairman Mao

Hongtu Zhang

On Long Live Chairman Mao and about his Mao-related series, Material Mao, Zhang bluntly says, “I believe in the power of the image, but I don’t believe in the authority of the image. If you stare at a red shape for a long time, when you turn away, your retina will hold the image but you will see a green version of the same shape. In the same way, when I lived in China, I saw the positive image of Mao so many times that my mind now holds a negative image of Mao. In my art I am transferring this psychological feeling to a physical object.”

In a sarcastic and joking tone, Zhang downplays the importance of his ethnic heritage by continuing, “Sometimes the hole in my work might remind you of the Nothingness of Taoism or the negative space of traditional Chinese ink painting, but the visual inspiration of my work comes directly from a bagel.”

In reality, though, China’s influence — and subsequently Mao’s influence — continue to have an impact upon his life. In a public talk, he was quoted with the following:

“Mao followed what Karl Marx said: “Religion is the opium of the people”. After he took power, all religions were banned in China. During the Cultural Revolution, anything that had any religious meaning, such as books, statues, portraits… were destroyed. As a result, Mao created a huge vacuum of belief, and at the same time, he used his power and all the propaganda tools including literature, art, music… to make himself a new religious icon.

It was a hot late summer day in 1966, when I went to a rally at the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing. Around a thousand students sat on the ground of a sports field. Suddenly, I heard someone yell: ” Beat, beat this counterrevolutionary, he dares to sit on our great leader Chairman Mao’s portrait!” That student was beat-up by at least 10 people, and blood was all over his body. In reality, he was only sitting on a newspaper. But Mao’s portrait was printed on every single newspaper, every single day.

It was a lesson that showed me how powerful and how terrifying an image can be when it becomes a religious icon.

Like everyone in my generation, at the beginning of the Culture Revolution, I had complete trust in Mao. Some writings in his Red Book were so romantic, so idealistic. But ironically, the CR and Mao himself made me change my mind. I saw people dividing into different groups, fighting and killing each other, but everyone including the killers and the victims declared they were on the side of Mao’s revolution. I felt that all of the young people, including myself were fooled and used by Mao.

After I left China and moved to the States in 1982, I tried to forget everything that happened in China by doing so called “pure art”. I hated any political content in art. But I just couldn’t erase Mao’s image from my mind.”

END.

Related posts:

  1. Bask In Your Thoughtcrimes Artist Interview
  2. Chris Crites Artist Interview : Deviant Details
  3. Mandy Greer Artist Interview : Timeless Textile Landscapes

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Compare & Contrast: Mao Zedong, Then And Now


Jacob Van Loon Artist Interview : Layering Upon A Tangible Aesthetic

0
0

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Jacob Van Loon Artist Interview : Layering Upon A Tangible Aesthetic

Chicago-based illustrator and artist Jacob Van Loon has recently taken inspiration from the films of Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky. Two of Van Loon’s latest pieces, The Moguls (Stalker) and Let Alone A Planet (Solaris) — named after two Tarkovsky films of the same name — are chaotic and multi-layered mixed media works inspired by the content, moods, and color palettes of those films.

“I can’t think of a director who has done more with film as a medium,” says Van Loon of Tarkovsky. “I was dealing with the assignment of dense conceptual material during the painting process. I found it easier to speculate on the latent aspects of both films; the psychological confrontations posed by the pace, sound, and color.”

Though Van Loon readily admits that both films felt initially inaccessible to him, the Q&A below will show how repeat viewings led to the gelling of his artistic style with philosophical and psychological interpretations of Tarkovsky’s themes.


(TOP) The Moguls (Stalker) Diptych 24″x40″; (BOTTOM) The Moguls (Stalker) Detail – Watercolor, graphite

View entire Stalker Series On Jacob Van Loon’s Website

 

The Moguls (Stalker) & Let Alone A Planet (Solaris)

Did you watch the films while creating these pieces?

I had to step back from both films, sort of like stepping back from a large painting after inspecting the surface detail. I came back to both films when I initially received the commission from Mitch/Mondo, but after watching them again, I put them away before I began painting. It took some time for my thoughts to congeal before I was ready to begin translating them onto the panels. It was also to attempt to let my mind naturally recall the colors and forms I recognized in both films, instead of referencing them directly from screencaps. Tarkovsky felt strongly about the use of color in film, and I felt like a direct replication of his choices would be contrived.

 

On a more technical level, these pieces seem to differ from your other series. What is it about those films that led to the creation of this new style of work?

I’m a new painter, and still in the process of building a technique that coincides with a concept. The fact that The Moguls (Stalker) and Let Alone A Planet (Solaris) have a basis of specificity is where they differ from the rest of my work. I had not previously painted under the direct influence of a single film or artist. I have yet to conclude if it’s coincidental, but my work in the Arbor series (Editor’s Note: see below) is heavily influenced by the Russian Futurists and Constructivists from the earlier 1900s. That basis for aesthetic felt very natural when applied to the work of Tarkovsky.

 


(LEFT) Nate, 2011; (RIGHT) Anais, 2011 – Watercolor, digital media

View entire Arbor Series On Jacob Van Loon’s Website

 

Can you tell a little bit more about your technical process with these paintings? They look as though they may have taken many steps over a course of time.

Layering and obliteration is a functional component of the concept in this set. It’s important that some of each step in the process shows through in the final composition, but it tends not to be delineated. I don’t build up volume from a center point and move outwards; the distribution of progress is staggered and dynamic. In these paintings, there’s several layers of graphite between coats of primer, and the markmaking muddies the white of the primer. I also let the primer gum up a little bit in the open air, and run a dry brush through each layer to give the surface volume. Even before [any] pigment is down, light [hits] the surface of that panel in an active way, over a whitewashed, sanded panel. Building color is something I still experiment with in each new painting.

 

As you mentioned, your color choices are somewhat representative of those used in Tarkovsky’s films. What are they psychologies in Stalker and Solaris that you were most interested in capturing?

Both films center around protagonists who are fundamentally terrified of knowing themselves. The loose connection is that both characters enter a place with varying levels of indiscernible characteristics. As they attempt to define the parameters of these worlds, you begin to realize that they are attempting to define themselves. The guarded journey becomes an uncontrollable plummet into the depths of their own consciousness.

There were small handfuls of major influential aspects from both films. The important characteristic of Stalker is that none of the main characters had actual names. They functioned as misfiring hemispheres, who, on some loose mechanical cycle, tried to pull together and gain an understanding of The Zone (Editor’s Note: The Zone is a fantastical place within Stalker, in which a person’s innermost desires are rumored to be fulfilled). The film switches from sepia to full color, which gave Tarkovsky’s worlds great impact. In Solaris, Henri Burton appears before a committee and, with great detail, recollects his experience with the invasive, organic surface of the planet. The tension built during that monologue still resonates with me.

Superimposing uncharacteristically bright, organic colors on top of and underneath more subdued blues and browns in The Moguls (Stalker) seemed to be the best way to address that aesthetic distinction in Stalker. Living and dying tissue was the main inspiration behind the colors in Let Alone A Planet (Solaris), outside of the imagery Tarkovsky designed when showing the surface of the planet in Solaris.

 



(TOP) Montage of clips from Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker; (BOTTOM) Theatrical trailer for Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris

 


(TOP) Let Alone A Planet (Solaris) Diptych – 24″x40″; (BOTTOM) Let Alone A Planet (Solaris) Detail – Watercolor, graphite

View Entire Solaris Series On Jacob Van Loon’s Website

 

Are the geometric arrangements you’ve chosen also related to the mood and psychologies of the films? If so, how? If not, what informed them?

The geometric motif was established in my work prior to this set of paintings, based on unrelated research. It may go generally unnoticed, but The Moguls (Stalker) and Let Alone A Planet (Solaris) are different from the rest of my work aesthetically, because of how I designed the intersections of detail. I was using a lot of angle and counterweight that I had never used, which, in my mind, emphasized the confrontations offered by either film.

I originally started dealing with this motif based on inspiration garnered from the Russian Avant Garde, and research I had been compiling on the development of commerce in the United States at the turn of the 20th century.

 

While working, did you attempt to put yourself in the same mental space as that which you gleaned from the films? If so, was there certain music you used or anything that otherwise aided the process?

I think removing myself from the films before painting was sort of like muscle memory; I was able to act quickly on impulses and the process seemed automatic, after some initial hurdles. I listen to a lot of Tim Hecker, William Basinski, Library Tapes, and Max Richter while painting. I find William Basinski’s approach to sound relatable, so it enforces my train of thought about painting in some ways.

 


(LEFT) Preliminary sketch for The Moguls (Stalker); (RIGHT) Preliminary sketch for Let Alone A Planet (Solaris)

 

“Touched by a masterpiece, a person begins to hear in himself that same call of truth which prompted the artist to his creative act. When a link is established between the work and its beholder, the latter experiences a sublime, purging trauma. Within that aura which unites masterpieces and audience, the best sides of our souls are made known, and we long for them to be freed. In those moments we recognize and discover ourselves, the unfathomable depths of our own potential, and the furthest reaches of our emotions.”
– Andrei Tarkovsky, from Sculpting In Time

 

See all artists influenced by Andrei Tarkovsky

 

Flora/Fauna

“The training I received as as an illustrator emphasized the importance of aesthetic versatility. The way something is illustrated can have a big impact on the narrative. A lot of my technical work focuses on the tangibility of aesthetic. In the case of Flora/Fauna, it also touches on interchangeability. I built associations between different types of organic forms. Both panels have a distinct look. The text may point the view in a particular direction with the piece, but while designing the final images, I switched the words between each panel a lot. I used a variety of items to influence the structures — chard, tobacco plants, cabbage, cured meat, the human figure, and in more extreme cases, police investigation photos taken from scenes where gun-related suicides had occurred. The colors chosen in the print runs were meant to exploit the forms, not to lead the viewer to an unwavering conclusion about the scale or context of the set.” – Jacob Van Loon


(TOP) Roman Ring, an earlier rendition of the Flora/Fauna Series; (BOTTOM) Roman Ring Detail

Triptych


(TOP) Triptych; (RIGHT) Triptych Detail – Watercolor, acrylic, graphite

“I attended Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, which is about seventy miles west of Chicago. Several local highways intersect within the town, but the core of the university is based off Route 38 — part of what is known nationally as the Lincoln Highway. That road was the first national highway that existed in a more finished (paved) state, running from New York to California. Eventually, I toured a small section of the road, all the way out to central Iowa. Small towns like DeKalb abbreviate the highway every so often, representing a paradox between distinction and anonymity, [as they are] stuck at an uncomfortable place in history, stifled by the current economic climate. The idea of the Lincoln Highway was birthed from Midwestern minds, and it planted the seed for greater structures of commerce. Starting in 2010, I started to address a range a stories and research of the highway in my work.”
– Jacob Van Loon

Ω

www.jvlendnote.com + www.jacobvanloon.com

Related posts:

  1. Christopher Davison Artist Interview : Beyond Black And White Disaster
  2. Nicholas Bohac Artist Interview : Rearranging Oneself
  3. Bette Burgoyne Artist Interview: Cobwebs Of Pattern And Form

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Jacob Van Loon Artist Interview : Layering Upon A Tangible Aesthetic

Joey Bates Artist Interview: Competence Over Concept

0
0

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Joey Bates Artist Interview: Competence Over Concept

Seattle artist Joey Bates has spent the last handful of years adhering to a breakneck schedule of shows, and he’s ready to slow down.I caught up with Joey during a self-imposed hiatus; he has decided to take a break from showing and spend more time exploring new directions in his work.

“I’m actually feeling really lost with what I’m doing art wise,” he happily admits, “and there’s something invigorating about that.”

For all his professed uncertainty, Bates does not come across as someone who is feeling creatively lost, and the works in progress that adorn the walls of his workspace in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood are testaments to his steady productivity.

Seeing Bates’ home studio is like opening a brand new pack of colored pencils: everything is satisfyingly uniform and perfectly laid out by color, and his drafting table seems too meticulously organized to be in actual use. But Bates in person is as precise as his paintings, and he keeps his studio organized to an extent that, like the photo shoot of a sparsely furnished modernist home, elicits a twinge of envy for a level of immaculate attention to detail that most of us will never be able to sustain.

Bates works in graphite and gouache to segment the planes of the face and figure into a series of nestled curves, creating portraits that read almost as topographic maps. He reduces the arcs of the human form into shapes that draw the eye into a constant sense of movement, and the meticulous detail of his linework is so thoroughly exacted that it gives the deceptive impression of being effortless.

His first pieces concentrated almost entirely on faces, and by honing his focus in on the minutia of his models’ features, he shifted the emphasis away from his subjects as individuals and instead created psychological studies of specific expressions. Bates originally began observing the human face because of an interest in capturing variations in non-verbal communication, and his compositions are meditations on the myriad small parts that comprise the whole. His interest in expression arose from observing the ways that people communicate. “There’s something universal in expressions,” Bates tells me, “but there’s something very much not universal in how we read them, in the way we empathize and connect with each other.”

There’s something universal in expressions, but there’s something very much not universal in how we read them, in the way we empathize and connect with each other.” – Joey Bates


(L) Jillian, in collaboration with Shaun Kardinal; Helga, in collaboration with Amanda Fiebing

 

 


After a series of works that explored the face, Bates’ interests shifted, and he began a series of paintings in which the heads of his subjects were replaced by explosions. This change in focus partially arose from things that were going on in his personal life, and he feels there was an element of cathartic crossover in his work.

 

“I was having a bit of a rough year,” he tells me, going on to mention that viewers who didn’t know him personally seemed able to pick up on this from his work. “People would look at it and say, ‘There’s something wrong with him, there’s something going on.’”

Bates has taken this departure from portraiture even further and has recently begun painting mountains. Like his figures, Bates’ mountains focus on the detailed accumulation of sinuous folds and furrows, and he is more concerned with deconstructing the concept of a mountain than with representing any particular peak.

Viewed sequentially, these three distinct phases of Bates’ career reveal a clear developmental thread. His treatment of faces reduced expressions to their geometric components and his explosion series acknowledged that the face was never truly the emotional focus of his work. With his mountains, he is simply culling everything that furthers an underlying fascination with line and texture. Bates’ mountains seem like a natural progression — a concession that his work has always been about making portraits that are not necessarily about people.

Bates is an artist who holds himself to high standards, and he has never shied away from criticism. He isn’t afraid to be hard on himself, and he expresses frustration over what he sees as Seattle’s hesitation to engage in actual critique. There’s a fine line between expressing support for one’s peers and creating a comfortable bubble of self-congratulation, and Bates is not afraid to speak up when he feels like people have become too polite to criticize.

“I’ll admit,” he tells me unapologetically, “I’ve been that asshole who is at a show and says, ‘This is shit.’ And I’ll say it out loud to whomever I’m with, and the artist will be right next to me. And then I’ll say, ‘Well, here’s why it’s not working.’ As long as you can back yourself up, I think you should be able to say what you think.”


Bloom, gouache on black paper, 20″ x 30″

As long as you can back yourself up, I think you should be able to say what you think.” – Joey Bates

 

Part of Bates’ irritation with work that can’t stand on its own visual merits comes from the craft-based element of his own practice. From the onset, Bates has been concerned with the corporeal, aesthetic presence of what he creates, and he believes that work should be able to speak for itself without the need for an explanation or artist statement.

 

Explanation should be used to augment work, not justify it, Bates explains, and many of his pieces contain hidden nuances that only come up in conversation. In his piece Wind, Bates tells me that the seemingly random snippets of letters hanging in the sky of the painting are, in fact, the sound of wind transcribed phonetically on a typewriter. And the amorphous bushes? Those are patches of TV static caused by wind, printed out and covered in a green wash.

“The artist shouldn’t have to be there,” he emphasizes, though he also concedes that his own insistence on a strong technical base colors the way he looks at art, and that he has yet to find a way to be engaged by art that is more heavily weighted towards theory than practice. He doesn’t discount the possibility of there being a proper context for work that is predominantly concept-driven, but his own criteria demands a high level of technical competence.

“It’s hard when people are trying to do a concept but don’t have the facilities to execute it properly,” he tells me. “A lot of times [the work] falls flat because the foundation’s just not there.”

 

“I always try to make my [non-artist] friends draw,” he adds, “and they end up really enjoying it. I think everyone should make things. But I don’t think everyone should show things.” – Joey Bates

 

Bates believe that everyone can find value in the act of making things and that creative practice doesn’t need to be limited solely to people who call themselves artists, but he still struggles to find a balance between accessibility and quality.

“I always try to make my [non-artist] friends draw,” he adds, “and they end up really enjoying it.” Bates then pauses and laughingly adds, “I think everyone should make things. But I don’t think everyone should show things.”

His professional goals involve securing gallery representation, and he plans to spend the next year working on expanding the reach of his art outside of Seattle. As much as Bates loves Seattle and couldn’t call any other city home, he feels like there are places with better markets for his work, and he would like to get a point where he can focus solely on the act of painting. Like all working artists, Bates has had to make his peace with learning to be part businessman, and he would like to move away from the pressures of such things as marketing and promotion.

“I want to make work. And just make work,” he tells me.


(L and R) Untitled, gouache on toned paper, 9″ x 12″; (Below) Glacial Heart, cut paper and gouache, 8″ x 10″

For the past six years, Bates has been a preschool teacher. He values the counterpoint that a herd of rambunctious children brings to his ordered and solitary studio practice.

“It’s one of the most rewarding jobs I’ve ever had,” he says without reservation, but he emphasizes that he would like to get to a point where it is not necessary.

While his current goals follow a fairly traditional artistic trajectory, Bates got his first start in an entirely atypical fashion, and it’s only by virtue of a series of tangents that the topic even comes up. Ready?

Because of the delicate, graceful nature of his work and the fact that he sometimes works in cut paper, viewers at times assume that Bates is female. Bates welcomes this confusion, and elaborates by saying that he feels like work should be judged on its own merits, not on any assumptions about the person who made it. From here our conversation jumps from the inherent perception of femininity in certain mediums to the relationship between work and persona, and this somehow segues into the idea of hiring a proxy to play the role of The Artist at openings, which in turn prompts a discussion of pseudonyms, which then leads to graffiti (“I appreciate the typography,” is the most flattering thing Bates has to say on the matter) and eventually ends up revealing the fact that Bates was once arrested for trespassing.

While his arrest happened in Seattle, he was moving to Michigan to attend the Kendall College of Art and Design, and was able to fulfill his community service working at Michigan’s Urban Institute of Contemporary Art. Bates speaks highly of UICA, particularly emphasizing their commitment to championing new artists, and he walked away from his community service with very practical skills. “I was able to learn about installing and deinstalling shows and all this stuff I wouldn’t have done otherwise if I hadn’t gotten arrested,” he laughs. “It was wonderful.”

Three years later, Bates, along with some of his other friends from art school, applied to do shows at UICA. “We all decided we should apply so we could get used to the idea of rejection,” he explains with an air of self-deprecation. But Bates’ show was accepted, and so he had his first exhibit at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art. Bates jokes that he started strong and has only gone downhill from there, but he hopes to show at UICA again in the future.

For the time being, Bates is happy to keep his plans loose. He is relishing the freedom of his self-imposed retreat from the pressures of showing and constantly engaging with the arts community, and is looking forward to seeing where his creative meandering will take him.

www.joeybates.com

Ω

Related posts:

  1. Paper Cut Portraits From Joey Bates
  2. Christopher Davison Artist Interview : Beyond Black And White Disaster
  3. Chris Crites Artist Interview : Deviant Details

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Joey Bates Artist Interview: Competence Over Concept

Ian Michael Anderson Artist Interview: Gently Organizing Organisms

0
0

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Ian Michael Anderson Artist Interview: Gently Organizing Organisms

Portland artist Ian Michael Anderson’s latest collection of gouache paintings contrast earth tones and light pink hues with symbolic imagery, to powerful and striking visual effect.

In Anderson’s own words, his paintings aim to address chaos and conflicts in life as well as order, to help him gain insight into their distinct natures. He explains by saying, “… Dualistic narratives take shape [and] opposing forces are typically revealed: Life and death, good and evil, man and beast, predator and prey, war and peace. These dreamlike and often nightmarish fables reflect an outward and subconscious view of man and his destructive role in this world. Through this lens, my own place in these mostly impossible scenarios can be triangulated, and I am on my way to resolving the confrontation and understanding the need for such destruction.”

You can see these pieces in person on First Thursday, May 3rd, at Backspace Gallery and Cafe (115 NW 5th Ave) in Portland, and read a brief Q&A with Anderson below.

 

Do you storyboard your images before you create them? How long does a piece like The Thread Inside take from start to finish, contrasting with Cock And Cobra?

The ideas for my paintings usually come to me slowly and build on themselves in my mind’s eye, sometimes for years, before I begin illustrating them. For instance, the idea for Cock and Cobra came from a leaping rooster figurine at an antique shop. The form of it really intrigued me but also made me wonder what it might be leaping from. A snake seemed like the most logical and interesting conclusion. The two masculine symbols needed a reason for such conflict, and I figured that the femininely-charged roses would make a great context. This painting took about a month with many hours put into it, whereas Vulture King took several months, mostly because I periodically put it on the back burner due to uncertainty about how exactly to finish it. For me, sometimes ideas need a little time to incubate.

False Eyes [below] and The Thread Inside [first image] took about a week each and tie into other paintings in the series. I will usually do many rough sketches to compose the elements in a dynamic fashion. This can sometimes be the hardest part of the process because it is nearly impossible to find reference for something the way it appears in your head. Cock and Cobra is again a good example of this. I had to composite many different source pictures to put the rooster at the angle I wanted him while maintaining that slight realistic spark. Of course, my imagination has to fill in many of the gaps, creating that other-worldly feel which I suppose is a key element to my style.

Your work stresses organic matter a lot, be that in the form of feathers, hair, sinews, bones, etc. What is it about these elements that draw you to them, and do you, in perhaps a [David] Cronenbergian way, ever see organic stylings in non-organic materials?

I suppose there is a part of me that does not like technology very much. The constant sound of traffic and jets flying over head, buzzing power lines, and unending construction. There are ongoing themes in my art that involve the clash of technology with the natural world as well as my own human guilt for being a part of that encroachment by default. The marriage of the organic and inorganic is a way of addressing the seemingly irreversible state of the environment. We have become a part of our environment only in a way that a cancer relates to our own bodies.

 

This current body of work stands in stark contrast to your previous pieces. It seems like a very big leap in a positive direction, both in terms of conceptualizing your works and in terms of the actual technical skill involved. Do you think this is true, and if so, did this change of inspiration and style come from a particular place?

Yes, looking back I do find that I have made vast improvements, stylistically, and skill-wise, but I still feel like a novice in many respects. I suppose it is just experience that comes with age. When I’m not making art and just going about my day, and even in sleep, I feel I am putting puzzle pieces together and building on ideas and perceptions. I try to keep my art fairly honest and don’t have much of a pop sensibility. Through osmosis, I’m sure I absorb the shifts going on in the art world around me, but I don’t let it dictate the directions I take. Mostly I feel like I am trying to translate ideas from my subconscious into a narrative that I may decipher just as any other observer of the art might. There is not usually a predetermined symbolism going on. The art is open to the interpretations that any individual might read into it.

 

What’s next for you? Are there themes or styles of art that you are looking forward to exploring more?

I want to get back into oil paining and also going much bigger at some point, possibly even doing murals. Over the years I have done a fair amount of figure drawing and painting but have not brought it too extensively into my personal work. In the future I hope to incorporate the figure more often, working from models and perhaps gaining some classical sensibilities.

Ω

Related posts:

  1. Michael Michael Motorcycle Artist Interview : Multi-Colored World Of Poster Art
  2. Jacob Van Loon Artist Interview : Layering Upon A Tangible Aesthetic
  3. Christopher Davison Artist Interview : Beyond Black And White Disaster

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Ian Michael Anderson Artist Interview: Gently Organizing Organisms

Binary Fluidity: A Short Interview With Belgium Artist Arn Gyssels

0
0

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Binary Fluidity: A Short Interview With Belgium Artist Arn Gyssels

I discovered the work of Belgian artist Arn Gyssels years ago, thanks to Flickr. At that point, he seemed like he was just beginning to hone in on a tripped out collage style full of decay, glitches, and geometries, and I was instantly captivated. Now, on May 25th, 2012, Gyssels has a solo show in Antwerp, at the H.O.T.F.O.X gallery. Binary Fluidity will showcase “a series of contrasting fluidic forms that are believed to represent, within our own streams of consciousness, certain aspects of reality. It is exactly this content of experience and discovery in all its simplicity that will give the observer a visual tour on the border of an ectoplasmic experience.”

Gyssels has come a long way in defining his style, and in working his worldview more and more into his visual style. Below is a short Q&A — just an introductory preview of the artist before a more in-depth collaborative feature with Gyssels and his girlfriend, Line Oshin.

 


(R) “This is one of the creatures that came out of putting black and white acrylic paint on a paper, scanning it in, and mirroring it from one side. You can see some form of underwater intelligent entity.”

 

“Love and light. Everything should be treated with the utmost respect and understanding.”

 


“The green in the background was a something weird I made with acrylic paint — nothing special actually. The orange was a picture of a creature from under the microscope; I just cut it up and made it more geometric in a abstract way.”


“This one is actually several layers of faces and teeth put in a order [so that they] almost match. [I] ripped of some pieces to give it a good composition.”


“It’s acrylic on paper. [It's] a piece of blue Photoshopped image and a piece of carved rock that I copied and made some sort of geometric form [with].”

Recently, I thought back to when I was a really young kid, and I would make overlapping squares and circles in MS Paint and then fill each overlapping shape with alternating colors. That was my first memorable connection to geometry, and I was wondering if you can recall back to an early time in your life that stands out as a precursor to the artist you are today?

Well to be honest, I actually can’t recall any geometry-related memories, but I do know I have always been in touch with nature and the animal world, and used to catch bugs all day long when I was little. Now, I’m obsessed with animals and plants; it’s more like a starting point to a unfolding universal knowledge that expands with the years of working, thinking, and experience around that essential area.

 

Did you ever struggle with your aesthetic being ‘unpopular’ and people not understanding what you were all about?

No, I grew up more like a silent yet popular type of guy.

 

The internet has made it easier than ever for people to find other artists and musicians who are doing similarly esoteric things. People who would otherwise not know each other whatsoever are finding parallels in their music and art, thanks to the internet, though they might otherwise known each other. What do you make of this? Do you think there is any bigger picture significance to be had in all this?

Definitely. The big picture is actually that we are all evolving in a rapid way on the consciousness level. We have been so disconnected from our primordial source for a long time, and the reason why there is a massive revival of the occult and shamanism is because these are sciences that brings us closer to nature and closer to the nature of our own species; it’s a natural movement of the big picture.

 

What appeals to you about duality, in your personal life, or in concept? What are some dualities which are particularly interesting to you?

Well, I do love to work with duality because it holds everything in our universe. There is no one without the other, therefore all is equal, and I think the key ingredient is balancing the two. As for a visual point of view, I like to work with it because our brains automatically recognize natural physical aspects of it; for example, with black and white forms, you get a a lot of weird-looking creatures that have a strong human look.

 

Do your pieces follow a theme from the very beginning or is that something that evolves as you create?

It really evolves; I look at pictures and search by feeling, color, and atmosphere. That’s why some pieces become abstract.

 

Galactic Geometry is a great name for a website. How did you come up with it?

That’s a good question. When I had to type in my name for the website, I didn’t have anything in mind; it actually just popped up in the place I should’ve been typing. I think I used to type it in there a long time ago when I was planning on making one — but I couldn’t recall when that was. Weird.

 

Do you have any life philosophies you live by?

Love and light. Everything should be treated with the utmost respect and understanding.

 

www.galacticgeometry.be

Ω

Related posts:

  1. Matt Leavitt Artist Interview : When Engineering And Zen Join To Inspire Art
  2. Christopher Davison Artist Interview : Beyond Black And White Disaster
  3. Gala Bent Artist Interview : Capturing The Graceful Failure Of Enforced Order

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Binary Fluidity: A Short Interview With Belgium Artist Arn Gyssels

Stacey Page Artist Interview: Using Thread To Explore Ego & Avatar

0
0

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Stacey Page Artist Interview: Using Thread To Explore Ego & Avatar

Stacey Page takes found photographs and adorns their subjects with elaborate thread headdresses and masks. Delving into notions of ego and avatar, Page creates a seamless melding of antiquated strangers and vague, archetypical monsters that stare out at the viewer with some understated promise of wisdom and secrecy.

Page recently took the time to answer some questions for us about her work.

 

As someone who embroiders, what’s your take on the whole art vs. craft debate?

It can be a way for one group of people to alienate another. As art or craft evolve in one’s work, they eventually demand each other.

 

How do you choose to identify yourself within those worlds?

I don’t choose to identify with either world. If someone wants to place my work in a typical art setting and title the show Craft, I figure it is all entertaining. Relating craft to skill, the closer I can define a work depends on the skill and the development of that skill. The ideal situation in my work is to be able to choose to call upon a skill, and to have the talent of ignoring another.

 

How do you choose the photographs that you work with?

The photographs start as a lost, discarded, or mortal identity. They choose me as I find them attractive in some way or another. It is the beginning of a relationshi,p so naturally I want someone usually quite healthy and engaging.

 

hat’s the relationship between the people in the photographs and the creatures that you adorn them with?

It can come from naturally occurring conflicts. One example would be the inner versus outer being. This conflict entails simple observations one might have about themselves regarding fashion, status, ego, and avatar.

 

STACEY PAGE INTERVIEW CONTINUED BELOW

Do you feel like you’re creating specific characters in response to the photographs, or are you drawing from a set pantheon that already exists for you?

Ideally I prefer a direct response or conversation with each photograph, and there is evidence of this throughout my work. However, I cannot ignore my mood and truths that are created and recreated throughout bodies of works.

 

Is the scale of your work a deliberate choice, or more a natural byproduct of medium and convenience?

The scale is convenient and it is rewarding. It is difficult for me to know when to stop with a work, and so larger is a lot more time consuming. I also generally feel that smaller work travels, hangs, and moves well with the creator and collector.

&nbsp/p>

Have you ever worked on a larger scale?

I do work on a larger scale and currently it is an experiment.

 

What other mediums have you worked with?

I have worked with paint, clay, and wood.

 

Why have you settled on thread?

Thread is such an accessible medium. It isn’t too dangerous and I enjoy the portability with such little prep and clean time.

 

 

www.staceypage.com

Ω

Related posts:

  1. Embroidered Works: Shaun Kardinal, Erin Frost, Stacey Page, Jose Romussi, Peter Crawley
  2. Holy Moley, Ariana Page Russell Is Losing Face.
  3. Ehren Elizabeth Reed Is One Pro Mixed Media Artist.

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Stacey Page Artist Interview: Using Thread To Explore Ego & Avatar

David O’Brien Artist Interview: Manipulating Organism Through Art

0
0

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

David O’Brien Artist Interview: Manipulating Organism Through Art

June 2012 Interview

By taking an open and intuitive approach to creation, Los Angeles-based artist David O’Brien found himself led, by chance and circumstance, toward the subject matter and themes which would later serve to help shape his artistic style.

Without knowing anything about David O’Brien, one can seemingly infer a lot about his works. Due to their complexity, it’s quite unlikely that the pieces are carefully pre-determined. Their color schemes are bright and engaging, and they contain great composition and good use of negative space.

These are the givens.

 

What isn’t a given is how profound O’Brien’s works actually are beneath their vibrant exteriors. They might be easy to describe generically as “explorations of relationships between shape and color” — a description you could give artists in any coffee shop across the country — but they’re much more than just instantly gratifying eye candy. They’re steeped deep in concepts, ranging from the abstract documentation of explosions and fictional landscapes to more complex musings on how to visually quantify human biological processes. And with every new series O’Brien works on, his ideas are become more robust and scientifically- inspired. Organic influences, coupled with his background in architecture, result in art that is equal parts methodical calculation and natural adaptation, with underlying structures that are obvious, yet manifest themselves in extremely unpredictable ways.

O’Brien’s latest project, My Pet Doppelganger, takes thousands of personal photographs and explores the idea of digital doppelgangers via the internet and social media, by way of chaotic yet finely planned orientations. Read the two Q&A interview below for a retrospective look at a wide cross-section of O’Brien’s visual projects.

 

 

My Pet Doppelganger is themed around the idea of each of us living with multiple doppelgangers in the digital age, correct? What first led you to this idea?

The word doppelganger means “double walker”. It’s about the contemporary notion of constructed and cultivated self-images. Anyone setting up accounts or profiles online is engaging in a kind of construction of an alternate self. Most of us have developed several of these over the years. I’m interested in what all of the doubles and duplicates look like in aggregate. This photography project is a way for me to abstract and formalize that exploration. A photo is quick kind of body-double, which of course has been around for much longer than so-called social media.

 

I would expect works like this would spark much conversation and that there would be other interpretations as well. Can you tell me a bit about other interpretations you’ve heard or related conceptual or theoretical conversations you’ve had about the series?

The work is very new so these conversations are just beginning. The thing that people seem to find most surprising are the formal drivers of composition. Many just assume there is some sort of computer algorithm at work but there is not, and this is very important from a conceptual standpoint. People are placed next to each other in compositions based on things like body language, a shared glance or facial expression. They also come together based on real-world social relationships. People that are actual friends will sometimes appear floating together. These are very intuitive things, things an algorithm or generative computer program could never do, and this how the compositions grow. I literally do feel like I “grow” them, like plants. The shapes and textures you see come from millions of unique and personal and sometimes chance relationships. Simples rules are aggregated into large groups and complexity emerges.

 

You made evident in previous interviews that you’re very much interested in biology. Was that central to this work, as well? If so, what are some of the parallels you saw while working?

It is still front and center in a lot of ways. I’ve always been interested in emergent behaviour in the natural world, and the way I describe growing compositions above is classic emergence. I guess if you were going to get technical about it maybe my interests have shifted slightly from realm of biology into behavioral patterns and sociology. But I’m an artist, not a scientist. I just follow my interests.

 

 

Taking a photographic approach is quite a departure from your previous work, at least in medium, though in principle it is similar. Why the change, and will you continue to work with other pieces?

I’ve learned that as an artist it is important to be rigorously breaking your own rules on a regular basis. If you can’t do that, you’ll just stagnate and die. This is much tougher than you might think and sometimes only results in incremental change, but it is how you keep evolving. Hey, there’s biology again.

 

Did you know much about the subjects that were photographed? Other than the obvious visual relationships found in the pieces, were there any patterns that came to reveal themselves, sociologically or psychologically speaking, with relationship to the subjects and how they were arranged in the image?

My answer would be see question #2! Yes, absolutely! This is another thing that people viewing the work might have no idea about. Everyone in the work is someone I know personally or at least tangentially. Many are people who are in my life every day. I could tell you a story about every image, so it is incredibly socially driven. In some ways you could argue that it is a giant self portrait via everyone that I know. (Although I haven’t gotten everyone yet; I’m still working.) But you know, this project has opened some other possibilities as well. It doesn’t have to be just my world, I’m working on potentially going to other places and doing the same thing with totally different groups of people. How would the work change if I were documenting a small village in Bolivia, or some particular groups of kids in Tokyo or some other city? Would there be entirely different colors? Different patterns? It’s fun to dream about.

You know there is one other thing worth mentioning. Many of the people in the photographs are other artists and writers. So really what you are seeing is this huge pool of creative people, some of whom are incredibly successful if you recognize them. I haven’t really talked much about this aspect of the work, but I think it is an interesting one.

 

Philippe Halsman’s Jump Series

SEE MORE


Popcorn Nude, Dali, 1949
14 x 11″ silver print
Stamped on verso

In the actual act of photographing the subjects, what was the process like, and how much freedom of movement was encouraged or allowed?

It is totally freeform. At each photo session I encouraged everyone to just jump in the air and be free. Some were really brilliant about twisting and contorted and reacted in unpredictable ways. Some were nervous and stiff, some were just goofy. The goal was to capture some atom of identity at that moment in time. A lot is revealed about a person when you ask them to jump in the air – we owe a little to Philippe Halsman for that one. All-of-the-above works and makes this crazy swirling current of humanity.

 

Could you explain what you mean about Philippe Halsman?

Oh sure, Philippe Halsman was a photographer from the ’40s and ’50s (RIGHT). He made this whole series of photos called Jump Photos, the most famous were images of Marilyn Monroe jumping and one of Richard Nixon levitating in the air. He even worked with Salvador Dali making these really amazing photo experiments. He had this notion which he called jumpology, which was that you could instantly tell all these things about a person when you saw them jump off the ground – that their body language in the air gives all this secret information about their personality. I can say that it is definitely true. In some ways maybe I am continuing his project on a mass scale.

 

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Yes — thank you! I’ve worked so hard on this, I really appreciate your interest and questions! Also huge thanks to everyone involved so far. This work is a true collaboration and it wouldn’t exist without everyone who has come and participated. It is not about tele-presence, it is about real presence; actually being there, so thank you to everyone involved.

 

 

www.davidobrien.com

February 2010 Interview

david o'brien

What is it about organisms and the natural world that most interests you?

My work is focused on the connections between biological and cultural evolution. The questions I explore manifest in games of unfolding, simulating and diagramming living systems. Some questions I ask myself are: how do multiple individually driven entities conspire to form patterns, which we can then point to as larger singularities? What changes as the field becomes populated and complexity arises? How does the figure emerge from the field? And then, of course, how does this larger structure feed back into the desires, motivations and evolution of individuals?

 

Do you have a background in science?

Honestly, I don’t. Art is often about doing something intuitive and then trying to understand why you did it and where it can take you. So, I’ve been more or less led into science by what the work is telling me. These days, a fair amount of my time is dedicated to studying scientific literature from people like Claude Levi-Strauss or Edward O. Wilson.

 

Are there any particular ideas you’re thinking of exploring in the future?

Well, concentration on the genetic process is definitely where my work is going, but I also bounce back and forth between all of the forms I’ve created so far. So, they all continue to evolve together.

 

How long does it take you to generally complete a piece?

Anywhere from a couple weeks to 6 months.

 

How much of a perfectionist are you? Do you pay attention to the details or mostly just the big picture?

I try not to plan things too much. All of the work is based on micro growth to develop the macro form, so I focus only on the small scale and let the overall thing take care of itself. In terms of details, sometimes it just has to be perfect. It has to be absolutely razor sharp. But then sometimes I have to force myself to get loose in order to try new things. Other times I experience a sort of cathartic backlash to all the precision and I just go off on something completely fast and messy just to keep myself sane. But I always return to the more meticulous and carefully constructed work. I notice that about myself.

Current Body Of Work

O’Brien’s most recent body of work, which is currently still untitled, is a look at the basic genetic processes which happen in the body.

(ABOVE) Meiosis
“Specifically, meiosis is the process by which sex cells split all of their chromosomes in half in preparation to accept and be joined to foreign DNA after sex. It is what happens in sperm and egg cells in us and in almost every living animal. It’s an endlessly fascinating thing, for obvious reasons… “Within [Meiosis], there are exactly 23 uniquely colored strands (female) matching the 23 ‘trajectories’ (male) entering from the perimeter.”


david o'brien
(ABOVE) Flower Bomb 2

Rapid Organic Growth

By mimicking a child-like creation, O’Brien captures the frenzied growth of nature without reservations.

“Nature is sometimes creeping slowly and sometimes out of control. Too much detail can lead to decadence, and sometimes physical force is required as a sort of mental catharsis. These things happen the fastest and are often the strongest colors I have been able to achieve. But they are also the things that I understand the least. They are viscerally connected to bodily movement and action and stand for a sort of plant-life explosion.”


david o'brien
(ABOVE) Mating Dance

Labryinths

At the very heart of this piece is a maze with only one way in and one way out, yet with many possible routes one can take to reach the end.

“What the maze is really about is the ability to wander within a very rigid, linear structure… With so much non-linear thinking going on these days, it is humbling to be reminded of the fact that there are still many things in life that are incredibly linear. We eat food; it goes through a line and comes out the other end. We are born once and we die once. What happens in-between is totally variable.”


david o'brien
(ABOVE) Ring Formation

Memes

“Meme is a term coined by the biologist Richard Dawkins back in the ’70s. It is supposed to rhyme with (and relate to) the word gene, only instead of dealing with the transmission of biological information, the meme is about the replication and spread of ideas. I began drawing these large swarms of colored people purely out of intuition well before I discovered memes. I only knew that they all followed each other and developed certain behavior and patterns. When I discovered the concept of the meme and learned a more about it, it fit perfectly with what I wanted to communicate with the drawings.”


david o'brien
(ABOVE) Blood And The Magic Number

Explosions

“It’s a re-thinking of the idea of [explosions in] platonic form. Instead of the triangle or the cube, I like the explosion as archetypal form. There is also the cloud and the spiral.”

www.davidobrienartwork.com

Related posts:

  1. Matt Leavitt Artist Interview : When Engineering And Zen Join To Inspire Art
  2. Mandy Greer Artist Interview : Timeless Textile Landscapes
  3. Gala Bent Artist Interview : Capturing The Graceful Failure Of Enforced Order

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

David O’Brien Artist Interview: Manipulating Organism Through Art

Shaun Kardinal & Erin Frost Joint Artist Interview: Entangled In Embroidery

0
0

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Shaun Kardinal & Erin Frost Joint Artist Interview: Entangled In Embroidery

Before Seattle artists Shaun Kardinal and Erin Frost met one another, art and creation were relatively solitary activities. Now, as romantic partners, they find in one another both artistic confidante and critic, and another with whom to share space and explore overlapping interests in geometry, collage, embroidery, and reuse. In this joint interview, both artists discuss their personal works as well as the collaborations which tie them together, both figuratively and literally.

 


Erin Frost


Alteration No 12
Alteration No 12 was my very first piece of this nature. It was intimidating and exhilarating to “destroy” something i had made. It’s a strong signifier of recent change, play, and exploration. Its balance and pattern are one of my favorites, visually. It wasn’t mapped, but sewn free hand, each point leading to the next, and because of that it, it maintains a loose and taught path. It flows yet is contained.” – Erin Frost


Alterotations
Alterotations was made for a mobile gallery project curated by Sierra Stinson in New York in 2011. For this piece, I started with a more defined pattern (the circle) and plotted growing triangles within. I wanted to play with the radiating visual, to complement the original idea of the piece. At the time, I shot the original photograph (Black Lace), I was really trying to capture the sensation of love/lust/elation where it seems you can feel your heart expand, like it exists outside of you.” – Erin Frost

Shaun Kardinal


Connotation no. 8
“This was one of the earlier pieces made for Connotations. It has a few cut-up postcards and features the shaped-collage-behind-thread I had envisioned when first starting the series. While very satisfying when it worked, the technique proved very tricky, since each piece of imagery was first cut and then spray-mounted into place for embroidering. The outwardly radiating points that touch the white paper were placed there in attempt to make the thing look like it was held together solely with thread. It worked here, but I found it distracting in other pieces and eventually left that element behind…” – Shaun Kardinal

 


Connotation no. 15
“This was my favorite of the series which incorporated a single, full-frame image. The design of the three orbs came to me while riding the bus one afternoon, and I was fortunate to have my Moleskine and some pens with me at the time. like most of the work in this series, the image came from a LIFE magazine published in the mid-’50s.” – Shaun Kardinal

 


Intercourse
“When we were invited to have a show at Vignettes (a series of one-night exhibits, hosted in a studio apartment), we decided that in addition to a wall of our individual works, we wanted to collaborate on something that would fill the other wall. Both of us have a history of performance self-portraiture, so it was only natural that photography would mix with our newfound love of string…

One thing we really like about this set (which we call a four-part triptych), is that the whole of it was planned out in one brief conversation, where three clearly defined visuals were discussed and sketched out in about five minutes. In the end, all three were executed exactly as originally conceived. Each was challenging in its own way, but Intercourse, the panoramic photo, was probably the most so. Wearing yarn-sewn rings around the backs of our heads and shooting without assistance from a third party, we had to remain face to face, attached at all times. One of us would hold position while the other carefully sidled over to trigger the shutter timer again. then we had just a few seconds to get back into position — a tricky thing, where we each had to make many quick, small adjustments to the angles between us, in order to keep the string taught, while maintaining eye contact.” – Shaun Kardinal

“Our Intercourse collaboration has been one of the most enjoyable projects. Process, production, and execution were all satisfying. The idea was simple, quick, and well-communicated. The process of making this piece was really what it was about: the tension that bound us, literally tied together in a delicate balance, to work together intuitively. It was interesting to see this joined effort come together, not only joining us, but our photography, performance, and embroidery [as well].” – Erin Frost

Shaun Kardinal

Your new Connotations series is remarkable. Is there an abstract philosophy behind the images or shapes you layer upon certain collages or are they merely aesthetic decisions?

“If it feels good, do it.” – Bart Simpson

With rare exception, it’s all an exercise in aesthetic. I’m very fond of design and can find myself lost in color. Over time, the works have begun to show a more consistent vision — the single graphical element dominating a landscape. Though that happened mostly organically, I was definitely impressed and inspired by the digital collage work of Mark Weaver, who often incorporates bright, bold circles in his work. the use of thread has a very specific limitation: one can only work in straight lines. to create a curve (like a bright, bold circle), one has to trick the mind with an organized series of lines, so these geometric patterns arise.

You mention that mandalas and radial compositions have provided long-time fascinations for you. What is it about them that draws your attention or interest?

It’s hard to say. I’ve got some obsessive-compulsive tendencies which tend to be a little myopic. For instance, the files on my computer are well organized — very well organized, indeed — but the inbox next to it on my desk is essentially an illogical junk drawer. Mandalas provide an organized, ever-centralizing focal point. Stray from the center and an equal/opposite force brings one right back. It’s comforting.

 

Erin Frost

You have long been involved with erotic photography. With your current embroidery and collage work, are you attracting new audiences? Do you find that having a nude component to your work polarizes opinions about your work?

It has been interesting shifting gears. It’s all so new and I’m sharing it as I go, so it feels raw, and just as intimate as my “erotic” photographs. So far, the response has been positive. And while it will be interesting to see where it goes from here, I honestly do not know what opinion is about my work. I’ve always made it entirely selfishly. It is all a part of the constant transformation.

 

Did your “Cut And Run” [piece] involve completely destroying original photographs? If so, is there a symbolic restart involved with that?

The “Cut And Run” piece did destroy the original photographs. It is a potent marker in time, and very much a symbolic restart.

 

Joint Q&A

Can you tell me a bit about artistic trajectories – where your artistic career has began and how it has evolved through the years to reach its current point?

Shaun Kardinal: The earliest exhibition you’ll find on my resume was a show devoted to photographs of buildings. After falling in love with photography in my teens and subsequently losing interest during my depression-riddled early twenties, those photos were definitely part of a re-emergence for me. I got my feet wet exhibiting work a few times and found a real connection to Seattle’s art community. At the time, I was also co-running an alternative space gallery, which was based in a frame shop that handled work from most of the art galleries downtown — so I was really in the thick of it!

After about a year with the buildings, I turned the camera on myself for a series examining mundane daily existence. I really enjoyed that work and people really seemed to like what I was doing. I landed some great exhibition opportunities and met some amazing people. But even as those opportunities grew, I began to feel less inspired and in need of a change. I found myself exhausted with artist statements, applications and the incessant race to get the next show. So, I stopped seeking them out. Even turned a few down.

In 2009, I participated in a few of Vital 5′s Arbitrary Art Grants, which had amazingly off-beat calls for art (such as: photograph a sculpture you make out of grocery store items while in the store or act as a wall, displaying art in an imaginary storefront), and the experience was definitely an impetus to try new things. For a short while, I was very much into making bumperstickers! I also started making small pieces that I sent to friends in the mail, undocumented. One day I received a piece from Dawn Stechschulte — a small, hand-sewn collage with painting, stickers and an old magazine clipping. In response, I cut up a few postcards and sewed them up to create a fictional landscape. I loved it, and made more. Soon I was making them for no one — just keeping my hands occupied. For three years now, I’ve been hooked on paper embroidery, and allowing it to evolve as the ideas come to me.

Erin Frost: I’m not really sure how to approach the subject of “career.” I have been very single-minded in the work I’ve made for many years — changing, transforming, manipulating myself, and the idea of self. I think I’ve been fairly fortunate in that people seem to like what I’ve made. It can be tricky, though, making intimate work and being grouped in the “erotic” category. I haven’t made work necessarily to be singularly erotic, nor do I enjoy most “erotic art.” It can be a heavy and dismissive descriptor. Maybe that’s one of the reasons these Alterations have been so enjoyable, tearing down/making new, another way to claim my work as my own.

INTERVIEW CONTINUED BELOW

Do you guys critique or offer suggestions for one another’s work, or is it generally a fairly isolated endeavor?

Shaun Kardinal: We both work in our apartment, often at the same time just a few feet from each other while we listen to music or re-watch a favorite show. We’re definitely suggestive and critica — but more importantly, perhaps, we’re also each very supportive. Every artist has the occasional fit over a project, reaching moments of doubtful frustration, but having the other near, offering words of encouragement and logic, can be even more fruitful.

Erin Frost: Before we met, I think the process of making art was a fairly isolated experience for both of us. It certainly was for me. I would create personas and construct sets, playing parts for the camera, and spend hours in the darkroom. now, however, our work shares space. it overlaps, and we are both involved with the other’s work and ideas. it’s quite liberating.

 

Your work definitely has overlapping similarities, particularly when one takes into account the medium and the geometries. Are there qualities which are shared in your work that you would say are also reflections of your shared interests or are indications of shared personal qualities?

Shaun Kardinal: With the Alterations series (the ~60 works we showed mixed together at Vignettes), there was a clear definition that we both wanted to use recycled materials. (For me, that translated to collecting vintage postcards. Since Erin has been printing her own photos for years, she already had ample supply for experimentation.) I’d say we are both pretty interested in renewal and revitalization, in general.

Erin Frost: There are certainly qualities that we share both in our creative work and personal interests. Apart from the mediums of photography and embroidery, I think that we’ve both pursued self-portraits is fairly telling. There are themes of balance, identity, and intimacy in play, both publicly in our art and in our personal experiences. It seems the embroidery can at times be seen quite literally a physical representation of that balance.

 

Do you ever find yourselves dissecting everyday objects into shapes and patterns, and if so, are there moments you can recall of that happening?

Shaun Kardinal: Not as much as when I played daily Tetris.

Erin Frost: I don’t see patterns in everything, but I’m very good at spotting cat whiskers on the floor. Shaun calls me Eagle Eye.

 

 

www.erin-frost.com + www.shaunkardinal.com

Ω

Related posts:

  1. Embroidered Works: Shaun Kardinal, Erin Frost, Stacey Page, Jose Romussi, Peter Crawley
  2. First Thursday, Pioneer Square, July 2008
  3. Artist Xchange & Dave Crosland in San Francisco

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Shaun Kardinal & Erin Frost Joint Artist Interview: Entangled In Embroidery


Bette Burgoyne Artist Interview: Cobwebs Of Pattern And Form

0
0

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Bette Burgoyne Artist Interview: Cobwebs Of Pattern And Form

Seattle artist Bette Burgoyne creates intricate colored pencil drawings that flow like the mechanizations of the universe. Inspired by geometry and pattern-based forms as well as nature, science, mathematics, and music, Burgoyne places heavy reliance on how perspectives and viewpoints shift and unfold over time. As she states simply in her personal statement, “My intention is to reveal a spectacle of wood, water, light and atmosphere; to share my enthusiasm for these processes and patterns that overlay, harmonize and echo one another.”

In the Q&A below, Burgoyne expands on this intention by describing her approach, factors that led her to her current body of work, and how music plays a significant role on her process.

PLEASE HOVER OVER ANY IMAGE TO VIEW IT HI-RES.

 

 

One who was looking at your work could easily think that certain sections were tree trunks or cobwebs or any number of other non-abstract things. Are there narratives or subjects to be found in your work, or are they simply geometric or pattern-based?

Yes, there are tree trunks and cobwebs. And they are also geometric and pattern-based. I love the perceived universe as a place where everything follows mathematical structures.

 

How much of your work is additive versus subtractive?

The drawings are 98% additive. Erasure dulls the lines and mars the paper, so I use it sparingly only to reduce occasional over-brights.

 

What kind of setting do you work in? I would imagine that work as contrasting and fine as yours would need a setting that would allow you to see well, spend a large amount of time, etc.

There is no art studio, so I work at home where it’s comfortable, chair or couch. On my lap is a pillow and on top of the pillow is a piece of foam-board supporting the drawing. I wear reading glasses and have a lamp nearby. A devoted time commitment is inevitable for these drawings. There is music on the stereo, always.

 

What is it about black and white and grayscale that most interests you? Do you ever consider working with colored paper or pencil?

Not sure why, but I flourish under the limitation of monochrome. I hope to offer an alternative to the abundance of sharp contrast and unrelenting bold colors that fill our urban situation. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the oomph of Helvetica signs and neon spandex; I just want to have another choice. There are a handful drawings I’ve made using red, gray, and brown paper with various colored pencils, but black paper is the mainstay.

 

ARTIST INTERVIEW CONTINUES BELOW

 

How do you feel about the spreading of your work upon the internet, as it
is obviously of a type which gets somewhat lost in translation?

Sometimes the internet is the only venue available. It’s nice connecting with people who appreciate what I’m up to. Without the internet exposure I wouldn’t have become acquainted with some wonderful Eastern European artists who I feel artistic kinship with.

 

I would like to talk a bit about Scroll; is that the largest piece you’ve
worked on, and how difficult was it to gain perspective on it?

Scroll was the largest before February, when I began working on Forest, a 30-foot-long drawing that is slowly building. Time makes perspective easier. When I work on a drawing for an extended period I become a lost myopic, so I hide the drawing from view for a day while I’m running errands. When I see it again portions become clear and the drawing tells me what to do next.

 

ARTIST INTERVIEW CONTINUES BELOW
Bette Burgoyne – Forest (progress photo)

Bette Burgoyne – Scroll

Zhang Zeduan – QingMing ShangHe Tu

 

What led to the decision of using video to document this particular piece?

I wanted to share Scroll with people, and a video on YouTube and Vimeo seemed a good way to do it. No actual videotaping took place. A large .tiff file was made from the drawing at Art & Soul, and it was edited andtransformed into a panning video by 4th Wall Films. There is a lovely panning video of a Chinese landscape painting by Zhang Zeduan you should see.

 

You gained permission from Animal Collective, Rough Trade Publishing, and Fat Cat Records to use the track in the video; how difficult or involved was that process?

Animal Collective received my email describing what I had in mind for their beautiful languid song “Visiting Friends”. Included was a link to my site. They emailed back, “Looks cool”, and included email addresses in order to get full clearance of “Visiting Friends” from Fat Cat and Rough Trade. It all took about 2-3 weeks.

 

The work on your website only spans back to 2009. How has your work evolved through the years?

I created sculpture and installation for several years before a series of deaths and heartbreak altered my life course. The early 2000s was a four year period of creating scherenschnitte from black paper. After the 2008 bout with cancer and chemo, I began to create drawings from a place essential, shedding the layers of cleverness that was part of the earlier work.

 

As an older artist, how do you feel about the Seattle art scene right now — how it has changed, where it is, and where you think it is going?

It is good see more women artists receiving recognition, maybe we’ll achieve balance someday? My favorite thing in the current Seattle art scene is First Thursday Art Schlock.

 

Ω

Related posts:

  1. Jason Sho Green Artist Interview
  2. Sprawling Structures Of Manmade Fantasy, By John Borowicz
  3. Eatcho Artist Interview : Buzzing Like A Fly

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Bette Burgoyne Artist Interview: Cobwebs Of Pattern And Form

Alexis Arnold Artist Interview: Crystalizing The Present

0
0

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Alexis Arnold Artist Interview: Crystalizing The Present

San Francisco artist Alexis Arnold loves to explore unpredictable three-dimensional sculptures. With previous works centered around everything from training bra nets to faux-lawn upholstered decorations, her more recent Past Of Our Future and The Crystallized Book Series sees Arnold mixing scientific experimentation with everyday objects. Combining Borax crystals with things near and dear to human hearts, like vintage furniture and weathered books, Arnold grows wonderfully organic forms out of objects both malleable and solid, invoking nostalgia all along the way.

As Arnold says herself in the following interview, “Time (and its physical/visual presence) is an ever-present concept in my work, as well as a large factor in crystal growth” — and it is this idea that adds even more importance to the past in her sculptures, as it contrasts with the present.

“Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that’s impossible, but it’s too bad anyway.” J.D. SalingerCatcher In The Rye

 

The Crystallized Book Series was prompted by continuously finding boxes of discarded books/magazines, the onset of e-books, and by the recent disappearance of bookstores.” – Alexis Arnold

 

Science Sidebar

About the Crystal-Growing Process

“I grow the crystals by creating a super-saturated solution of Borax in boiling water. When water boils, its molecules expand. I place the book in the saturated solution when hot and manipulate the book to my liking. As the saturated water cools again, the molecules shrink and any excess Borax crystallizes. Once the solution has completely cooled and the crystals have grown on the submerged objects, I drain the solution and dry the object without disturbing its shape. The objects will hold their new, transformed shape when completely dry.”

About Borax

Borax, also known as sodium borate, sodium tetraborate, or disodium tetraborate, is an important boron compound, a mineral, and a salt of boric acid. It is usually a white powder consisting of soft colorless crystals that dissolve easily in water.

Borax has a wide variety of uses. It is a component of many detergents, cosmetics, and enamel glazes. It is also used to make buffer solutions in biochemistry, as a fire retardant, as an anti-fungal compound for fiberglass, as a flux in metallurgy, neutron-capture shields for radioactive sources, a texturing agent in cooking, and as a precursor for other boron compounds.

The term borax is used for a number of closely related minerals or chemical compounds that differ in their crystal water content, but usually refers to the decahydrate. Commercially sold borax is usually partially dehydrated.
The word borax:بورق is Arabic – the Arabic is said to be from the Persian burah, a word that may have meant potassium nitrate or another fluxing agent. Another name for borax is tincal, from Sanskrit.

Borax was first discovered in dry lake beds in Tibet and was imported via the Silk Road to Arabia. Borax first came into common use in the late 19th century when Francis Marion Smith’s Pacific Coast Borax Company began to market and popularize a large variety of applications under the famous 20 Mule Team Borax trademark, named for the method by which borax was originally hauled out of the California and Nevada deserts in large enough quantities to make it cheap and commonly available.

WIKIPEDIA

Alexis Arnold Interview

What first inspired you to work with Borax crystals?

While I have had a fascination with crystals and minerals since I was little, their inclusion in my work happened somewhat by chance. About three years ago, I was force-rusting a metal sculpture using vinegar, salt, and soda ash when I noticed crystals growing on the concrete floor of my studio. Since I was working with concrete at the time, I decided to try and replicate the crystal growth with intention on the concrete and other objects. In addition to my aesthetic fascination with them, the crystals related conceptually to the project I was creating at that moment.

The conceptual and aesthetic functions of the crystals have morphed with each project since. Time (and its physical/visual presence) is an ever-present concept in my work, as well as a large factor in crystal growth. Crystals found in nature generally form over thousands of years. In my studio, I get to play with nature and adjust its time frame.

I mainly use Borax and Epsom salt crystals. This is because of their relatively cheap availability and non-toxicity.
The Crystallized Book Series was prompted by continuously finding boxes of discarded books/magazines, the onset of e-books, and by the recent disappearance of bookstores. Furthermore, I had been growing crystals on hard objects and was interested in seeing the effect of the crystal growth on malleable objects.

 

Was there a method or goal behind your choice of literature or the ways in they were presented that goes beyond the aesthetics? If so, what is it?

I try to incorporate mostly found books over buying specific titles, but select amongst them for the most conceptually and/or aesthetically appropriate. If I desire a specific title, I will buy it used. For example, the Bible and The Crystal World were purchased for particular conceptual reasons. I take titles from my own library collection as well. I choose certain books, such as The Catcher in the Rye, for the nostalgia people have for them. I have used a number of children’s books for this reason as well. One of my favorite found books for its conceptual tie to the project is a copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea published through the Classics to Grow On series. Dictionaries, encycolpedias, and phonebooks are some of the more commonly discarded books these days, hence they find their way into my work.

The series addresses the materiality of the book vs the text/content of the book. The crystals remove the text and transform the books into aesthetic, non-functional objects. The books, now frozen with heavy crystal growth, have become artifacts or geologic specimens laden with the history of time, use, and nostalgia. The stories included in books often exist in our memories while the book remains a spine on a shelf. I love how just seeing a book can conjure the story contained within. With the addition of the crystal growth, the story within the book remains in memory, but new stories can be created by viewers as well. The series also illustrates one of the things I love about books or magazines, which is the lingering presence of the reader through the bent and folded pages longer after the book has been read.

FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY‘S CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вский – Преступлéние и наказáние)

 

Was there anything you learned about the structures of the materials you used that seemed particularly noteworthy or fascinating?

I enjoy how malleable books become when submerged in hot water, even hard covers. This allows me to transform the books into new shapes that reference geologic specimens or artifacts.

I find the structure of crystals fascinating. Each type of crystal shares the same molecular formula that repeats in a three-dimensional pattern, yet they present themselves in a myriad of shapes and sizes depending upon impurities, rates of formation, and environment.

 

Are there by chance any quotes or passages during your creation of these borax-crystallized books that seemed appropriate to the project itself?

While no particular passages or quote come to mind, I came across the book, The Crystal World, by J.G. Ballard while creating this series. The book is about a mysterious disease that crystallizes everything in its path from plant to animal to man, and certainly holds some inspiration for me.

 

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

This may sound odd, but I wanted to let you know I am a woman. I recently had an article written for a Brazilian newspaper (O Globo) where I was referred to as a man, so I have learned it’s best to clarify this.

 

For the remainder of 2012, Alexis Arnold has work showing in various San Francisco galleries. See it at Alter Space through August 19th and Gallery Hijinks through July 28th. She will be showing collages and Salon Dehon for the month of August, as well as large crystallized book sculptures at Root Division Biblio Babel show in November.

 

ALEXIS ARNOLD’S PAST OF OUR FUTURES SERIES
The Past of Our Futures was an installation at Fort Mason as part of the San Francisco Art Institute’s 2010 MFA exhibition, Vernissage. The installation takes imagery from the domestic sphere, such as a set dinner table, to explore the human and natural process convergences and divergences through a narrative impetus tied to family, evolution, time, absence, and memory. In addition to referencing past memories, the work invokes a sense of a future post-human fall to environmental entropy.”

www.alexisarnold.com

Ω

Related posts:

  1. Ehren Elizabeth Reed Is One Pro Mixed Media Artist.
  2. Young Man – “Five” Music Video
  3. Theo Ellsworth Artist Interview : Fantastical Revival Of Comic Art

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Alexis Arnold Artist Interview: Crystalizing The Present

Dana Popa Artist Interview: Uncovering The Intimate Details of Sex Trafficking

0
0

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Dana Popa Artist Interview: Uncovering The Intimate Details of Sex Trafficking

February 14th is known to many — whether they are coupled or single, in love or without it — as a day for amorous celebration, through intimate experiences and the exchange of roses, chocolates, and kisses. But beyond the major consumer holiday of Valentine’s Day lies a global activist movement of a similar name, called V-Day. Violence against women and girls can take many forms, and V-Day draws special attention to rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation, and sex slavery through a worldwide network of regionally-supported performances, documentaries, plays, rallys, and a variety of other events.

To call attention to this cause in our own way, we have decided to use the delicate work of Romanian and United Kingdom photographer Dana Popa as a foundational point. After learning of the horrible realities of the sex trafficking trade, Popa set about to unveil the stories of its former victims, all of whom were around seventeen years of age and in various stages of recovery when Popa met them. The result of Popa’s genuine quest was a piercing series called not Natasha, “Natasha” being the generic name given to Eastern European sex slaves.

Many series about sensitive topics shock one into sympathy. Not so with not Natasha; its images are often profound in the most mundane of ways, focusing not only on the women themselves but on the things that they leave behind — while, in Popa’s own words, capturing “a glimpse of their souls”. It is beyond the photos themselves where the heart-breaking tales often lie, in the form of deception and betrayal from former lovers, neighbors, and friends, and of societies that allow women to be sacrificed to patterns of abuse and pain.

In the full Q&A interview to follow, Popa recounts incredible stories — some of which are difficult to believe — while motivating us with powerful imagery. For more details on how you can be involved in V-Day events, please visit their website, or see more of Popa’s work on her website.

(17 IMAGES TOTAL)

“This work is dedicated to Dalia and all the girls who allowed me to have a glimpse of their souls and dig up a hidden, painful past. I hope I did it in the most delicate way.”

 

What circumstances led you to the not Natasha project?

What triggered my work was purely finding out what sex trafficking really means.

At the time, there was not much visual coverage of the illegal trade. Sex trafficking is the most profitable illegal business since the 1989 fall of the Soviet Union; it’s a form of violence against women from my society. Little do people realise what this illegal trade is and how big and profitable it has become. So I decided to try and get a closer look at sex trafficking and record what it means for the women to survive sexual slavery. I chose to have a glimpse of their souls — which at the time seemed very difficult to do, but that is what I was most interested in. After having heard their stories, I wanted to look at their traces — at what women who had disappeared for years and who are believed to be trafficked and sexually enslaved leave behind. This became essential angle and part of the narrative.

After being involved with this project I realised that its beginnings might have been triggered by my interest and knowledge of the woman’s position in societies like the one I was born in. I acknowledge this story as a way of standing up against the societies that know what happens to their women and hide it without even doing anything about it.

 


“Natasha is a nickname given to prostitutes with Eastern European looks.”

 

It must have been difficult to deal with such a delicate situation. Did you have training in communicating with these woman or face any difficulty? What were some solutions that you employed, and do you have any advice for those who are hoping to speak with a woman who has undergone sexual trauma?

The most pleasant part of the learning process was when I spent time at one of the shelters that offered them psychological assistance and accommodation for a month or so. I had spent two weeks with girls that just escaped sexual slavery. They were spinning stories about their ordeals every evening. This is what actually helped me frame the story and urged me to continue it at a later stage. The women accepted me in their lives, some for three weeks, some only for a few hours, depending where I’d meet them. They all understood immediately that I was not going to harm them in any way. It was not hard to explain the reasons of my work.

I did not have an official training in communicating with the women I photographed and interviewed. I acted instinctively, seeing their dignity, their strength and delicacy at the same time, their sense of respect for other human beings even after surviving such ordeals. Also, that hidden hope that lived in each one of them. I used to share long walks in the park with the girls at the shelter. They love the Saturday morning walks when they can watch the brides of the day. They just secretly hoped one day they can return to normal life. I was both discreet and protective, respectful to their wishes, and always asking for their consent.

One of the best pieces of advice that I had received in regards to portraying survivors and which I would say in my turn was to approach them with respect, to firstly see and show their humanity and dignity through my photography. Also, to have patience, something that I needed a lot in this long-term and slow-making project.

 

“I was twelve years old. I don’t want to talk about it.’ — Alina”

 

Are there any experiences from the women that you would like to share?

The women in these photographs are among seventeen I met, interviewed and photographed them. Some of them were too fragile; some very strong, trying to leave behind a hated past while still coming to term with profound emotional distress. At the beginning, they shocked me with horrific details about the rape and violence they had survived. They talked about the Odessa boat which later on I went on, too, about the brothels or rooms they were locked in, some for weeks, other for months or even for a year, about the way they escaped.

Aurelia, a girl from Ukraine, shouted at me, “My story, do you want to hear my story? You have heard it — over and over again.” Clearly distraught, she told me how, a year after she came back from the Czech Republic, the police came to the door and started to question her. Then her husband and her mother-in-law chased her away from home. They had not known she was sold as a sex slave by a good friend. Her life was destroyed, she said.

Dalia, 20-years-old, always dragging along her two-year-old daughter, was the first one I encountered at the shelter. Dalia was sold by her husband-to-be. This was a trafficker that acted on his own in Moldova and was dating girls from different parts of the country; after a considerate amount of time, he would invite them to meet his family in Turkey and get married. Clarisa was sold by her best friend and Elena by the old lady living across the road in her village. Svetlana by a woman at the market that she thought she knew very well and some others by relatives. In many cases, the girls and women sold as cattle on the black market are approached by somebody that they know and trust. Larisa had been trafficked into Albania; on her way to Italy, she fell in love with her pimp who fathered her twins. She escaped after three years.

In London, I met Svetlana, a young Moldovan who was sex trafficked into the UK. She showed me windows of particular Soho flats: the one with a cracked window was a “stinky” place; the one with a red light was a bit trendier. I later on entered five cribs with working girls. I met two Romanians on this occasion. One was wearing tiny white socks and a pink robe thrown over a black spandex costume. She was from a city two hours from my native town.

These women did not opt to become sex workers; they were locked in all sorts of locations, from flats and houses to brothels, threatened, beaten up and raped, put on drugs and alcohol and forced into it. When I researched my subject, it was shown that women from Moldova had been sent to as many as 42 destinations.

I am still in touch with a few of the women I met in this journey and in more often contact with a couple of them. As a reaction, they were interested to see my work. One of them decided to help me continue my visual work on sex trafficking as much as she could and another one looked on the book dummy with curiosity, since she had been very much part of the project both as a survivor and a great help in translating and making the liaison with other girls at the shelter. When she reached the end of the book, she closed it and said, “Okay, from now on, we won’t be talking about this anymore.” We still keep in touch.

“My husband-to-be sold me for $2200.” — Dalia

 

How much responsibility do you feel as an artist to contribute to the world in a positive way or to bring attention to misdeeds in the world? Do you ever create without a narrative or mission in mind?

The same responsibility one feels as a person searching for virtue, which it’s probably a very innate human characteristic. But it doesn’t mean I ask myself that question when I look at one of my pictures — does it contribute to the world? It’d be a scary question and I wouldn’t know how to answer it. To answer the other question, I usually have a pretty good idea of what I want to do before start shooting — I wouldn’t call it a mission or narrative — which obviously can mutate throughout the process.

Ω

Related posts:

  1. Chris Crites Artist Interview : Deviant Details
  2. Lucas Vidana Artist Interview
  3. Drapes Like Wallpaper: Experimental Photography by Patty Carroll and Matthew Stone

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Dana Popa Artist Interview: Uncovering The Intimate Details of Sex Trafficking

Amanda Charchian Artist Interview: Saying YES To Raw Honesty

0
0

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Amanda Charchian Artist Interview: Saying YES To Raw Honesty

Whether it’s a symptom of repressive cultural conditions or a question of derivative creativity, nudity in art causes a ruckus. Rashly criticized as an easy way to draw attention to one’s art or an exhibitionist ploy for attention, bare bodies are often a point of contention for both critics and viewers alike. The fine line between artistry and exploitative eroticism is often a blurry one. Ultimately, the intentions of the artist and the emotional subtleties communicated by the work itself determine its merit or lack there of.

In the case of 23-year old Amanda Charchian’s photography, revelation is the goal. It is a desire to construct timelessness that inspires her to photograph nudes. She favors skin over clothes because of its raw honesty, the removal of clothing a path to seeing ourselves in our purest most vulnerable forms.

(18 IMAGES AND 1 VIDEO IN FULL POST)

“I appear defiant because I have something to rebel against, something to be resistant to. Every artist I admire has something to say, to instigate, a passion to ignite.” – Amanda Charchian

 


To Charchian, those who criticize the use of nudity in art for its overused “shock” factor are failing in their analysis. “People have the inability to appreciate the subtle differences between artistic nuances,” she says. “How could anyone pass our purist physical state- something you can’t pretend doesn’t exist – as ‘unnecessary’ or ‘overdone’?”

Intentionally or not, stripping the human body often presents it as something exclusively erotic, limiting it as an object of desire and a vehicle for pleasure. Nudity and eroticism are commonly joined conceptually, but Charchian cleverly asserts that clothing is often the culprit in over-sexed societies.

“If clothing truly controlled lust and other ‘sinful’ inclinations surrounding nudity,” shequestions, “would we be such a sex-crazed society? In my travels to countries like Egypt and India where women are the MOST covered, the men are also the most hostile and aggressive with their eyes. It is pretty basic psychology that restriction creates desire.”

Repression has long been considered a catalyst for desire. The inability to separate nudity from eroticism is symptomatic of societal brainwashing and forced out of likely arbitrary, social, or religious mores. “When you specifically are told you can’t have something, you want it more,” Charchian explains. “In a culturally conditioned and ultimately stunted state, one cannot separate eroticism and nudity. But in my perception of nudity through the lens of a naturist, there doesn’t always have to be a sexual tension.”

“To say that these [nudity and eroticism] always go hand-in-hand would be to ignore individual sexual idiosyncrasies or fetishes,” Charchian continues. “Some people find a lot of eroticism in the fully-clothed. Sexuality is a complicated part of our existence, and that is why it is fascinating to me.”

As stated on her website, Charchian is an investigator of “the state of alienation through realms of the physical, psycho-social, and spiritual human condition.” Although it is not her specific intent to be provocative, Charchian is a rebellious insurgent within a constrictive culture, battling for openness in an otherwise restrictive society. She says “‘YES’ in a world of No.” With art as her agent, she is, by default, a kind of creative hellion.

“I appear defiant because I have something to rebel against, something to be resistant to. Every artist I admire has something to say, to instigate, a passion to ignite.” Charchian, does not, however, take her freedom of expression for granted. Her parents escaped an oppressive Islamic regime in Iran, which affected her massively. It is perhaps the reason for the amount of “deep celebration of female freedom and sensuality” she conveys within her work. “That wouldn’t be possible if I lived in Iran,” she says.

 

Amanda Charchian Artist Interview Continues Below

 

“YES” has become more than just a word for Charchian; it is a way of life. Appearing in her work both physically and symbolically, these three letters represent an ideology that fosters positive energy and the overwhelming power that comes with it. “‘YES’ is a mantra,” she states. “It is a word, but somehow it is beyond a word. It transcends its own meaning. For example, when our brain hears the word ‘NO’, our survival instincts, stress responses and heart rate increase immediately. But when the brain hears the word ‘YES’, absolutely nothing happens. It is a very spiritual word.”

Her piece eYES, for example, is a meticulously-assembled sculpture of the letters Y-E-S made, from Swarovski Spectra crystals and nickel-plated steel. The healing nature of the materials and the profundity of the message are a testament to Charchian’s affection for nature and her interest in mysticism. Citing the “historical and philosophical interplay between surrealism and occultism” as one of her influences, Charchian composes imaginative images that are undeniably mythical. A photograph from the series entitled Sworn In Swarkestone depicts a woman wearing a glorious black cape that spreads like the wings of bat; she stands with her eyes closed towards the heavens, in front of a mysterious faded stone building. The scene is ethereal and preternatural and indeed evokes a kind of pagan charm reminiscent of the occult.

 

AMANDA CHARCHIAN ARTIST INTERVIEW CONTINUES BELOW

 

Utilizing almost exclusively analog cameras, she believes that “film captures the energy that is emitted from organic matter better than digital does.” There is something about those lustrous silver oxide bits that is pure magic. Film is tangible and therefore more natural. “Perhaps it is because it is a physical object that takes up space,” she hypothesizes. “It can record another physical object better.”

Taking this idea even further, Charchian also keeps a number of “magical items” inside of her camera bag. It is an ephemeral collection of creative aids that are ever-present and always evolving. Some items she keeps handy include prisms, crystals, glitter sticks, expired film, fresh flowers, and vintage track filters. “It is always changing depending on what I have found along the way,” she explains.

Creative tools in hand, her process as an artist involves translating pervading ideas into concrete projects. Channeling this spiritual inspiration, she is more of an instrument than an architect: “My strongest works were ones that appeared to me as a fully formed vision that seemed impossible. The planning part comes from trying to manifest that otherworldly flash on the psychical plane without losing the divine nature of the original inspiration. Sometimes an idea haunts me literally every five minutes until I make it happen. It’s like being on the verge of orgasm for a very prolonged amount of time.”

Harnessing ideas and following them through to actualization is a means of transferring what comes from the subconscious realm into objects as works of art. Where photography is concerned, it is a way to capture a very distinct moment and cement it in time. However, Charchian does not shoot photos to remember things; she shoots to create an entirely independent event — a new memory. The shutter of a camera captures only an instant revealing what is not cognitively perceivable by the human eye.

“When you freeze time for an image, it extends beyond time, thus making it timeless,” she says. Within a circular time perspective, this frozen moment is a way to make that moment last forever. It creates a sort of temporal infinity. It does, indeed, become timeless.

www.amandacharchian.com

Ω

THE ENTIRETY OF AMANDA CHARCHIAN’S I IMAGINE YES IS THE ONLY LIVING THING SERIES

Related posts:

  1. RedD & Carl Faulkner‘s Tibetan Hentai (Non-PG)
  2. Matt Leavitt Artist Interview : When Engineering And Zen Join To Inspire Art
  3. Binary Fluidity: A Short Interview With Belgium Artist Arn Gyssels

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Amanda Charchian Artist Interview: Saying YES To Raw Honesty

Saya Woolfalk Artist Interview: The Possibility Of All Kinds Of Mixing

0
0

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Saya Woolfalk Artist Interview: The Possibility Of All Kinds Of Mixing

To experience Saya Woolfalk’s work is to become immersed in a scientific folklore where biology and anthropology inform fables of utopia. In Greek, “utopia” translates literally as “no” (ou) and “place” (topos), and in a collaborative series with anthropologist Rachel Lears, entitled No Place, Woolfalk posits ways in which “no placeians” can more readily become a part of a utopian society.

In her most recent development upon this theme, Woolfalk has incorporated a new element — that of dual consciousness and foreign beings, via the narrative of a fictional species called Empathics. Through the use of psychedelically-colored exhibits, scientific slide shows, dance performances, and a very multi-disciplinary artistic practice, Woolfalk is learning how to use art shows to create utopian worlds in and of themselves.

 


When one enters 3rd Streaming in New York City to witness Woolfalk’s current show, Chimera, one is immediately drawn to mannequins wearing felted costumes and floating on brightly-painted, patterned murals. These are Empathics, a new and fictional species in Woolfalk’s work, who contain genetic elements of both plants and humans. Their existence is a sci-fi-inspired commentary that speaks to many things — including the transformation of identities through biological hybridization — but the more important underlying vision is that of increased unity across all forms of existence. To express this singular vision through craft, Woolfalk utilizes an impressive array of mediums; murals and installations are supplemented by huge, full-color lithographs of Empathics in their costumes, as well as paintings created “by them” and displays of objects used in their fictional rituals.

Folkloric and scientific, fable-driven and meticulously chronicled, Woolfalk’s exhibits also show her as both participant and narrator. In her videos, Woolfalk narrates as a scientist, with the resolute calm found in any biology film. But her work deviates from the usual script in that the scientists describe a transformation they themselves undergo. Woolfalk and “other scientists” find evidence of Empathics in the wilderness of Upstate New York, and through exposure to their bones and spores, decide to undergo a series of changes that will lead them towards becoming chimeras themselves. Over the twinkle of atmospheric music, animations break down the ways in which spores enter the human body — but one soon finds that this is not only a biological transformation; it is also mystical. The scientists enter a ritual of guided dream therapy to learn how to embody their new state of plant-human consciousness, and through the introduction of a performance art element, the transformed beings emerge from behind the wall where the video is being projected, donning costumes that are on display.

The merging of a complete physical and digital reality is what Woolfalk says makes her utopian-driven work “real”. “When you come in[to the gallery], I want you to be in a world — but it’s our world,” she explains.

The world within the exhibit also reacts to the world outside the exhibit. Mythology dictates that Empathics create beautiful headdresses to disguise a second head which sprouts as part of their shift to dual consciousness, and such guises helps keep things from getting awkward in public or at their jobs. They also literally sell their skins; magical costumes they shed during the process help bring in extra income for their research. Regarding this very intentional detail, Woolfalk laughs and describes living in Brazil and studying folkloric performance, where “people are engaging in fantastic stories about struggle… and simultaneously selling trinkets because they need them… they actually help pay the bills.”

 

SAYA WOOLFALK ARTIST INTERVIEW CONTINUES BELOW

 

Woolfalk’s work is “becoming more of a fable” as it progresses, acting as a fantastical other reality that reflects the artist’s real-life external influences. The creation of Empathics, for example, was first inspired by the works of feminist science fiction author Octavia Butler, who discussed the idea of plant-human utopia.

“Originally, it was about physical action and ritual that would make [a] new place,” explains Woolfalk. But when conceptualizing what this transformation process would look like, Woolfalk began speaking to biologists at Tufts. Through discussions of the natural world, she began to “rethink physical adaptation and metamorphosis”.

“It’s not just that humans can just act on their environment and become whatever they chose to; the places that they are, the things that they encounter cause micro-transformations,” Woolfalk continues.

Such a statement is more than just environmental or a comment on slow changes through intuitive guidance. Woolfalk seeks to “break down categorization — not just human, animal, or interracial, but also intercultural or interbiological.” She welcomes “the possibility of all kinds of mixing”, and notes that her next iteration upon this theme “is the idea of consciousness between humans and technology.”

As Woolfalk continues to develop as an artist, she is not only incorporating the influence of anthropologists and science fiction writers, or folklore and biology. She is also growing to incorporate her audience as part of the exhibits. For her, “Audience has become part of the structure and circuit. I consider how their experiencing what I’m doing in order to feed it back more clearly.”

Woolfalk’s multi-faceted works all shrink down to a very natural process of evolution — one that welcomes the inclusive mixture of many ideas and techniques. Though each of Woolfalk’s works is fully-conceptualized prior to its creation, its final product is ultimately unpredictable, subject to flux as her ideas morph through what she consumes and how her mind processes. Each piece is “changing and emerging as it’s restructured by the logics I’ve been thinking about,” she explains. “[It is natural] to work in two dimensions — then three dimensions, then four dimensions… There’s a porous relationship between the pieces. It’s an organic process between logic and intuition.”

Come catch the last days of Woolfalk’s exhibits and your chance to feedback into collective consciousnesses.

Chimera at 3rd Streaming in NYC
Chimera runs through April 25th, 2013. A talk entitled “Brave New Land: Science Fiction in Contemporary Art” will take place on Wednesday, April 24th, 2013, featuring Saya Woolfalk, Chitra Ganesh, and Simone Leigh. Doors at 6:00; Discussion promptly at 6:30.

Space Is The Place @ Disjecta in Portland, Oregon
The group show, featuring works by Saya Woolfalk, Wendy Red Star, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and David Huffman, will end on April 27th, 2013. Admission is free, and Disjecta is open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

Ω

Related posts:

  1. Saya Woolfalk‘s Hallucinatory Chimeras: The Empathics
  2. Mandy Greer Artist Interview : Timeless Textile Landscapes
  3. Sarah Applebaum Artist Interview : Crafting Ahead Of The Curb

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Saya Woolfalk Artist Interview: The Possibility Of All Kinds Of Mixing

Rob Sato Artist Interview: Fantasy and Reality Bridged by Words and Images

0
0

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Rob Sato Artist Interview: Fantasy and Reality Bridged by Words and Images

Rob Sato Artist Interview

Los Angeles-based artist Rob Sato is more than a painter of fantastical watercolor dreamscapes. Challenging his own magnificent talent as a masterful visual creator, Sato is also a prolific consumer of culture. Profoundly influenced by historical events, dynamic music, and piles of life-changing books, he is able to channel many diverse creative explorations into colorfully horrific and disarmingly beautiful works of art; his work is an intriguing amalgam of childhood fantasies and literary consequence, adeptly bridging the gap between fantasy and reality.
"Writing feels like it comes from a separate part of the brain than where imagery generates from, so when I'm having trouble on a painting, I can turn to the writing to think about things from a different angle." -- Rob Sato

 

Bent on Literature

Initially concerned with designing engaging narratives with his painting, Sato learned to place storytelling at the center of his process. It was, as he calls it, "the stock of the semiotic soup I was trying to cook." Sato's focus on narrative, however, was at times a detriment to the organic realization of his pieces; his attempt at incorporating it into everything he painted often left him struggling to "jam narrative in where it didn't belong." To solve this problem, Sato now prefers to let the work unfold as it pleases. "The paintings tend to be better when I let the emotional impact of the visuals and the joy of the materials lead the way," he says. "That's not to say that I've abandoned narrative painting. I still do it, but only if it comes along naturally and feels right, as opposed to storytelling always being the main goal." Words have always played a significant role in Sato's life, and his penchant for storytelling may come from his interest in reading and writing. "[Writing] can be a really useful tool to clarify ideas or to break through some creative blockage," he shares. "[It] feels like it comes from a separate part of the brain than where imagery generates from, so when I'm having trouble on a painting, I can turn to the writing to think about things from a different angle." Books, too, are particularly meaningful. "There seems to have been one major world-rocking reading experience per decade in which I've been alive," he explains. "As a kid, it was From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I just read this again recently, and it's still wonderful. In my teens it was nearly everything by Kurt Vonnegut."
Particularly fascinated by Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle, Sato received the latter while he served a short jail sentence for the unlikely charge of Grand Theft Food. Sato and his friends were convicted of stealing 27 pounds of vanilla pudding and 19 boxes of bulk pasta from fraternity house kitchens in Berkeley, California – a crime serious enough to be slapped with Grand Theft – but silly enough to make the judge laugh. Ultimately, it was due to the length of his incarceration and the brevity of Cat's Cradle that Sato found both annoyance and inspiration in the book. "I ended up reading it eight times in two days, and it didn't get old. That's a combination of that book being incredibly entertaining and jail being relentlessly boring," he recalls. In his late twenties, Sato's interest veered to the unlikely lepidopterist and famed Russian novelist, Vladimir Nabokov. "I finally got around to reading Lolita," he explains. "It's probably the funniest, most disconcerting, most diabolical thing I'll ever read."

 

Freed by Restriction

Just as Sato's reverence for words allows him the freedom to think differently, his use of watercolor is liberating by virtue of its limitations. "Watercolor simply isn't as flexible as acrylic or oil," he says of the medium's limitations. "You can mix oil and acrylics with all kinds of stuff. You can correct mistakes and change your mind almost infinitely. You can also build a surface with oils and acrylics, sand them, scrape into them, beat the shit out of them. By contrast, watercolor is pretty much just water, paint and paper. It's a delicate medium. Once a mark is made it cannot really be unmade, though the paint does reactivate somewhat when you rewet it, which becomes important when planning out how you want to layer your washes or glazes or how much fussing you want to do in a particular area. You have to improvise with a ‘mistake' rather than correct or paint over it. For me, this limitation has been oddly freeing." The confluence of his varied inspiration and the liberating nature of the medium manifests in many different ways. Some pieces come together quickly while others require more thoughtful design. "Sometimes a piece is suddenly right there, ready to go, because all the elements for an explosion have come together. It's wonderful when that happens. Often, I have no idea that I've been gathering those forces, and then, without thinking, they just get unleashed," explains Sato. This creates a raw and powerful result, but Sato admits to finding joy in longer, more conscious thought processes. "Sometimes there's an idea that was just there but didn't mean that much to me before, then suddenly it jives with things that I've been reading or writing lately or seems to relate to the world in a way that it hadn't before," he says. "Sometimes I just get an emotional charge from a composition, but haven't figured out what to put into it or the right way to put it together. It's really all about getting a piece to vibrate in some way so that it becomes a presence in the world that lives and breathes, a creation that is more than the sum of its parts."

 

Inspired by the Subconscious

With elements of horror, grotesque transformations, and whimsical beauty, the images Sato creates suggest a certain subconscious meandering akin to the surrealist movement. He prefers, however, not to brandish this particular identifier. While he is fond of early surrealist theory as it is bound by imagery drawn directly from the subconscious, he feels the meaning of the term itself has been corrupted. "I feel like most of what proclaims itself to be surrealism now (even a lot of stuff then, really) is over-manipulated, utterly but feebly conscious and repetitive imagery, lazily slurped from a depressingly shallow, lifeless myth pool," says Sato, while even going as far as posturing that "the word surreal is better applied to life outside of the arts now." Finding a place where dreams and reality meet may be the ultimate objective, and this idea is perhaps most visible in Sato's Peace at Last in a Future Passed -- a painting where the reconciliation of fantasy and reality manifests as the struggle to accept the inevitable realities of adulthood. Maturity becomes the metaphorical slayer of childish aphorisms. The painting depicts a giant decaying robot speckled with dilapidated aircraft, electrical towers, and battle armaments. With one arm missing and decomposing bits falling from its massive form, the image is captivating whilst being disturbing. "Future Passed [bridges the gap between fantasy and reality] in a different, much more specific way than any of my other work," describes Sato, "by mixing my childhood fantasies of heroism and adventurism with more mature ideas and knowledge about the reality of war." While Sato's thoughtful intent is clear within the details, it is the subtlety of color and the impetuous style of the brushstrokes that reveal something raw and wonderful. It is an affectionate struggle between real and imagined, and the harmony he seeks is daftly aided by his beloved watercolors. "There's a joy in finding the balance between my controlling nature and the fluid chaos of the medium," says Sato. While armed with a headful of ideas, he is simultaneously committed to surrendering to the sublime. What makes Sato's work stand out is that he is able to balance discipline with turmoil. This interplay between intellectual design and subconscious renderings results in a uniquely Sato-esque universe where dreams are both tantalizing and terrifying, and reality is a pliable concept.

 

Ω

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Rob Sato Artist Interview: Fantasy and Reality Bridged by Words and Images

Transformational Festivals: Where Ecstatic Spirit and Sonic Celebration Unite (w/ Timeline & Preview Guide)

0
0

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Transformational Festivals: Where Ecstatic Spirit and Sonic Celebration Unite (w/ Timeline & Preview Guide)

Transformational Festivals: Feature & Timeline

"We're not just trying to give people a place to go and dance and listen to music. Instead, we're trying to inspire people to gather, celebrate and lesarn in a responsible and healthy way so they can inspire change in the world when they leave." – Dede Flemming, Lightning in a Bottle
Envision Festival
Regarding the typical music festival, Wanderlust Festival's co-founder Sean Hoess describes an environment that all of us, undoubtedly, are all-too-familiar with -- one full of "crowds, fences, mud, [and] $5 plastic water bottles." These kinds of environments invite us to socialize, party, and stand and watch performances, but rarely do they encourage us to be introspective, open, or transformed. A culture of transformational festivals, however -- ones that incorporate all the best aspects of music, yoga, art, learning, and healing -- is quickly growing to provide that very experience. In infinitely unique ways, these social, musical, and spiritual celebrations integrate a variety of multi-disciplinary offerings, while still balancing the traditional logistical aspects of funding and promotion. Despite their differences and specialties, all of these festivals share a unified goal of creating community, inspiring transformation, and spreading positivity beyond the physical limits of each festival and its participants. In this extensive feature, we talk to founders and representatives from Envision (Costa Rica), BaliSpirit (Indonesia), Bliss Beat (Italy), Wanderlust (N. America), Lightning In A Bottle (CA), Gratifly (SC), Beloved (OR), Evolvefest (PA), and Symbiosis (CA), to uncover their common goals, as well as highlight their different focuses, whether they be in environmentalism, charity work, multiculturalism, spirituality, or simply unification.
Beloved Festival - Photography by Zipporah Lomax

Grassroots Origins

Now in its ninth year, Symbiosis is one transformational festival that epitomizes the culture's emphasis on community. Bosque, one of the festival's main producers, explains that their main intention in organizing Symbiosis was to "creat[e] a container for all... different walks of life to cross paths and see that, even though they have their individuality or little clique or tribe, they also belong to a bigger collective as well." This idea inspired other festival organizers as well, and most transformational festivals are born from simple collective gatherings. Lightning in a Bottle, for example, started out as a birthday party, and Wanderlust grew out of discussions at a record label's headquarters. Evolvefest's founder David Bryson recalls that, "Evolvefest was borne from a small group of local artists, musicians, and educators who gathered for weekly potluck shared meals. We'd be tossing a frisbee, doing yoga, and sitting around a campfire talking about ways to organize a gathering for people... feeling that inward call to awaken and thrive." Elliot Rasenick, founder and producer of Tidewater, Oregon's Beloved Festival, cites many significant influences that led him to pursue the production of his own festival. After organizing underground electronic dance parties, kirtans, and other devotional or educational events, Rasenick desired to reproduce the inspiring experiences those events allowed for, such as the "profound moments of connection between people where the boundaries between us seemed to fade away" that occurred on the dance floor, the "connection with the spirit" that he felt through chanting divine names, and the chance "to share the ideas of an emerging culture" that empowered him at educational events. Since founding their gatherings, the creative souls behind these operations continue to seek to do more than just put on another festival year after year. According to Envision's founding partner, Justin Brothers, they seek to re-imagine the festival formula entirely -- to take "a blank canvas" and paint it as they wish, while still humbly acknowledging and receiving inspiration from the bits and pieces that other festivals are doing correctly. Lightning In A Bottle - Photography by Watchara Note: The last page of this feature has a comprehensive summary of the history, focuses, and offerings of each of these participating festivals.

 

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Transformational Festivals: Where Ecstatic Spirit and Sonic Celebration Unite (w/ Timeline & Preview Guide)


TOKiMONSTA –“Clean Slate” / Toki’s Monstas Animated Interactive Music Video (w/ Director & Artist Interviews)

0
0

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

TOKiMONSTA – “Clean Slate” / Toki’s Monstas Animated Interactive Music Video (w/ Director & Artist Interviews)

TOKiMONSTA ft. Gavin Turek - Toki's Monstas Music Video by fourclops ::) and Overture

In the brightly-colored music video for TOKiMONSTA's "Clean Slate", featuring Gavin Turek, adorable creatures galore get beamed down from outerspace as well as give you control over placing their sticky behinds. This HTML5 and Javascript-driven sticker book features and artwork by Overture and interactive directorial skills by fourclops ::). Here, they share with REDEFINE some of the ins and outs of their collaboration and creative process.

fourclops ::) (Directors)

fourclops ::) are an incredible duo consisting of Jeff Greco and Eli Stonberg, who create interactive music videos for unique web-browsing experiences. Their work for MNDR's "C.L.U.B." takes information from your Facebook feeds and integrates it seamlessly into a music video footage.

Overture (Animators)

A two-person animation, illustration, and live performance unit comprised of Jason and Aya Brown, Overture use intuitive and improvisational collaborative processes to "reach creative places neither could arrive at on their own." This dreamy, jiggling piece entitled "Mr. Sandman" features music by The Kleenrz.

 

"I think music videos will only become more engaging and interactive. I think the concept of a MV being only limited to video format will also be a thing of the past." - TOKiMONSTA

 

fourclops ::) (Directors)

Overture (Animators)

Toki's Monstas is obviously a play off of TOKiMONSTA's name. How was the entire piece conceptualized, and what is the idea behind it?
Eli Stonberg of fourclops: The idea of a sticker book music video has been something that Jeff and I have been kicking around for years. We had previously made an interactive coloring book music video for the band Au Revoir Simone and felt like this would be a great follow-up. Jeff Greco of fourclops: We love the idea of collaborating with the viewer to create a creative piece that they can then keep and share. Traditionally, music videos are about directors interpreting the musician's work; now the viewer can interpret, play and create along with us.
Jason & Aya Brown of Overture: The idea was already pretty formed when fourclops brought it to us, but we did do some of our own fleshing-out to create a background for developing the monstas. A floral/fungal bio-spaceship wandering the universe finds a hospitable planet and sends Toki and Gavin down to feel it out and call the wide variety of creatures housed within the ship to come populate the land. We knew there were going to be three locations in the video, so we came up with lists of creatures and plants found in these types of locations and took elements from existing creatures to create familiar but alien forms that could live on the planet.

 

With so many people involved, what was the workflow like? How long did the project take?
Eli Stonberg: The project went from January to March. We were able to work simultaneously on many of the elements and then put them all together in the end. One of the cool aspects of collaborating with so many people is that our individual choices inspired each other. For instance, Overture had begun their sticker artwork before our stylist Ellie Carey came on board, so she was able to design the wardrobe in watercolor style that would fit with the monstas. And conversely, one of the last things that Overture designed was the instruments that the monstas have in the end of the video. They modeled the squid monsta's instrument based on the instrument that Ellie made for TOKiMONSTA. Jeff Greco: Sometimes these projects can be very sequential, but like Eli said, it was really helpful to be able to do so much work in parallel. One of the first things we completed was a proof of concept sticker book demo, and I was able to start building off of that before the actual video portion had even been shot.
Jason & Aya Brown: Eli and Jeff shared with us TOKiMONSTA's song, "Clean Slate", along with their sticker book treatment, and we went and designed a bunch of creatures. We all looked over them, picked out 27, and then got to working on the animated frames. There was enough time between when we designed the monstas and their instruments and when the video was being shot, so Elaine Carey, the physical costume and instrument designer, could play off the aesthetic we were working with. We did the frames with the instruments after the shoot so we were able to then draw inspiration from Elaine's work to design the strange shapes of the different instruments. It was lovely to see such a nice creative back-and-forth happen. I think the labor on our end took about a month, with little bits and pieces added and tweaked later on.

 

What kind of programming was involved? Were there difficulties between conceptualization and execution of the idea?
Jeff Greco: This video was primarily built in HTML5 and Javascript, with a little server-side code to help with storing and sharing viewer's sticker book creations. One aspect we're particularly excited about is our integration with Twitter's new Cards functionality -- when a viewer shares a link to one of their creations, the actual image will appear in their followers' timelines. There's a lot of potential there for rich experiences in Twitter. Our goal is always to create something that feels really fresh and new -- there's never an instruction manual for what we're building so there's a lot of potential for headache, but this project didn't have too many bumps in the technological road. Keeping all the monstas in sync with the video we shot proved a little tricky.
Jason & Aya Brown: Fortunately, we had the luxury of just designing the characters, drawing the frames for the character movements, and demonstrating how long each frame ought to be held. We only had to hand over drawings and leave all of the heavy lifting to fourclops.

 

This "music video" possesses very exciting implications for the future. What expectations, if any, do you have for this realm of artistic practice? Are there any projects similar to this one that have stuck out in your mind?
Jeff Greco: My only expectation is that projects will continue to break out of traditional molds in new and surprising ways. For over thirty years, music videos had to be 4:3 audio/visual tracks under five minutes that MTV could rotate through their lineup. Now they can be experiences that utilize the full range of immersive technology available. Watch for collaborative experiences, long-form experiences, location-based experiences... the interactive video "Do Not Touch" for Light Light's "Kilo" by Moniker is a great example of showing how the web can turn a video into a super-fun collaborative experience. Eli Stonberg: Chris Milk and Vincent Morisset are the early pioneers of the genre that I look up to. If anyone is interested in checking out more interactive videos, 2Pause has a great curated channel. It's an exciting time because so few interactive music videos have been made, so there's a lot of new territory to explore. I expect to see more and more interactive videos pop up over time. As it stands, labels are a bit hesitant to try new things, but I'm optimistic.
Jason & Aya Brown: It was very exciting for us to work on a project that involved such advanced programming! We have for a long while been looking for ways to make our own work (animation) less static and certainly see this kind of interactivity as a threshold to what we want to accomplish. Either at home or in a performance, enabling the audience to get deeper into a piece and enrich it through their own decisions and involvement would be great.

 

TOKiMONSTA - "Clean Slate" (Toki's Monstas) Music Video Credits
Director: fourclops ::) Artwork by: Overture Executive Producer: Jack Richardson Producer: Judy Craig Director of Photography: Tarin Anderson Director of Technology: Jeff Greco Editor / Compositor: Andrew Hakim Asst. Editor / Colorist: Eli Stonberg Stylist / Art Director: Elie Carey 1st AC: Ian Barbella Gaffer: Patrick Hubbard Electric: Steve Mansour Key Grip: Rex Kenney Grip: Nick Lancaster Hair / Make Up: Fenex Still Photographer: Alexandra Brown Directors Assistant: Elliot O'Dea Production Assistant: Dan Meyerowitz, Katy Cain, Leah Stone Intern: Megan Niquette Special Thanks: Chuck Schwarzbeck Production Company: The Masses Director's Agency: United Talent Agency Record Label: Ultra Music Ω

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

TOKiMONSTA – “Clean Slate” / Toki’s Monstas Animated Interactive Music Video (w/ Director & Artist Interviews)

Layla Sailor Photographer Interview: A History & Reinterpretation of the Classical Russian Headress, the Kokoshnik

0
0

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Layla Sailor Photographer Interview: A History & Reinterpretation of the Classical Russian Headress, the Kokoshnik

Layla Sailor Photographer Interview - Kokoshnik Photography Series

Layla Sailor's gorgeous photo series, Kokoshnik, examines the traditional Russian headdress in a gloriously colorful and modern fashion. Historically worn by married women from the 16th to 19th centuries, the customary kokoshnik is generally characterized by a nimbus crest-like shape and decorative design. By contrast, Sailor's photos, a collaboration with designer Lisa Stannard, are an apt abstraction of the traditional headdress, incorporating lively geometric forms as well floral and animalistic elements, while honoring the intense, ornate design of the traditional pieces. The impetus for the series was to challenge how pattern is photographed, but nearing its completion, Kokoshnik took on additional meaning, as a way to show support for the members of the feminist punk rock group Pussy Riot, a feminist punk rock group who were protested the Orthodox Church's support of Vladimir Putin on the soleas of Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior and were subsequently arrested. In Sailor's photo, the phase “Let Our Sisters Go” is placed prominently and resonates as solidarity for the cause of freeing Pussy Riot. The Kokoshnik project is exemplary of Sailor's affinity for color and her talent for displaying imaginative and cinematic images.In the interview below, Sailor dishes on her dreamy style, her lifelong passion for folk art, and the distinctions between commercial and personal work.

 

 

About the Russian Headdress, the Kokoshnik

Princess Ollga K. Orlova in Masquerade Costume for the Ball of 1903. Photograph. The kokoshnik (коко́шник) is a term used for a variety of traditional Russian headdresses worn by women and girls to accompany a traditional jumper dress called the sarafan (сарафа́). Each of the headdresses shown in this column are a variety of kokoshnik, which include everything from cylindrical hats to two-pointed nimbus-shaped or triangular "kika"s, as well as small pearl hats. Most commonly, however, kokoshniks are associated with the tall and nimbus-shaped headdress which is tied at the back of the head with thick ribbons and a large bow. Crests are usually adorned with pearls, gold, or plant and flower motifs, and the forehead area often decorated with pearl netting. Kokoshniks were primarily worn in the northern regions of Russia in the 16th to 19th centuries by married women, though non-married women wore a similar headdress called the povyazka. Today, they are primarily worn by girls and women in Russian folk ensembles. A little Grand Duchess Alexandra Pavlovna in kokoshnik and sarafan, 1790s. Boyaryshnya by Viktor Vasnetsov (the portrait of V. S. Mamontova), 1884. The portrait of an unknown girl in the Russian costume by Ivan Argunov, 1784.

 

How would you describe your work? It's hard to explain, because I shoot in two different styles - natural, lo-fi and dreamy.  And then the other part of my work is very colourful, surrealist and a little bit dark.  Probably cinematic and graphic would describe both styles well.  I base a lot of my work on film stills and childhood memories.

 

What do you love most about photography? The immediacy of it. The fact that even the mistakes are generally good. I love to play with light' I think a lot of people don't realize that the light is the "beauty" in an image, and this is what creates an emotional resonance.  You can manipulate and control light, and experiment in so many different ways to create something. I used to use a 5x4 camera, and I sometimes miss having that massive barrier between the model and me.  It's generally a good barrier; it slows everything down and creates an awkwardness within your subject that comes across really well on film.

 

 

Can you tell me a little bit about the Kokoshnik project? Its purpose, inspiration, and process? Kokoshnik started as a lookbook shoot for my friend illustrator & pattern designer Lisa Stannard. It was just a simple way to subvert how pattern is photographed.  I'd always loved Russian heritage and grown up with a love of folk art, so the kokoshnik fascinated me, and I've been making artworks based on religious iconography since I was at college, so I decided to merge the two. The more I planned and researched the idea, it became something I wanted to keep exploring over time.  Around the time I was finishing the pieces, my friend introduced me to Pussy Riot, and it all fit together.

 

How did the collaboration with Lisa Stannard come about? We met when we were working together years ago, but we didn't really know each other well.  I loved her work when she was at uni, and then in 2009 she got in touch and asked me to photograph her graduate collection.  After that we worked on projects all the time together, and we have desks next to each other so we are always planning collaborations, and showing each other our inspirations.

 

What do you hope to accomplish with these collaborative projects? For me, I love them because I get free reign over the concepts and I get to hire the teams in; its always a labor of love for everyone involved, but most of us are doing client work 90% of the time so we all get to be creative and not have any boundaries.  There is freedom, but there is also a pressure to do your very best, as it can't really be re-shot (because if the amount of people involved). Unlike personal projects, you need to make sure everyone, from the models to the makeup artists, stylists and us, are getting the best out of it.

 

How do you approach your "personal projects" differently than your fashion editorial work? The fashion editorial is usually arranged with the stylist or makeup artist (or magazine) first, so they might come to me with something they need for their book, and we will work a story into it.  So if someone wants a '20s beauty or fashion story, I'll go off and research films, makeup, models, people, and start to think how I will light it.  Generally with tests, I will try and put my look onto it; otherwise I get bored, but I love doing just straight portraits too.

 

Do you prefer one type of work over another, as far as commercial or more personally-driven? I love the personally-driven work the best, as I get to art direct it more, and spend more time on the research and finishing. I definitely don't do my job for the money, so this part is what keeps me going. I approach both in a similar way -- the difference being that I don't art direct the client work unless it's requested.  It's great to have a brief; when I do too much personal work all at once, I get overwhelmed with all the concepts and research, so the client work keeps me sane.

 

www.laylasailor.com

Ω

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Layla Sailor Photographer Interview: A History & Reinterpretation of the Classical Russian Headress, the Kokoshnik

Butoh Dancing (舞踏): Discovering Emptiness, Embodiment & Environment in an Archeology of Body

0
0

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Butoh Dancing (舞踏): Discovering Emptiness, Embodiment & Environment in an Archeology of Body

International Butoh Dancing Feature

The mythological quest to express the sublime through the human body can be the great mystery and significance of dance. The grace and emotive gravity of dance inspire us to explore shared resonance and to comprehend our substance through a most intimate artistry. Yet we are ever limited by our human bodies, those endlessly elusive entities that enrobe our vocabularies and begin and end our extraordinary worlds. Butoh dancing (舞踏) is an expression of body that has found relevance outside of its roots in Japan, across cultures and generations.
Originally known only as the "dance of darkness" or "dance of death", Butoh has evolved into an encompassing expression of every element to be found through the human body. It does not transcend the human form or express a superhuman consciousness, but challenges us to comprehend ourselves through a different mentality. Despite the fairly recent origination of this dance form, it has quickly appealed and demonstrated that it speaks to something common within us, however we may allow our cultural and geographic borders to define us.

A Background on Butoh

tatsumi-hijikata Kazuo Ohno ©  H. Tsukamoto Dance is a corporeal poetry that speaks to us through sensual body memory and intangible thought, thus communicating experience and expressing ideals. We may, for instance, find the most exquisite aspirations to perfection in the sculptural forms of ballet and the etiquettes of ballroom dance -- but what dance is there to speak of anguish and terror? What of the uncontainable spirit that seeps from our grotesque beings in spite of vigilant taboo? Would it not be deceptive to express the most visceral of human experience through only forms of chiseled beauty? Dance that declares itself as an encompassing language for human experience yet speaks from under a veneer of piety for conventional aesthetics is fundamentally dishonest. With passionate protest to the void in integrity of expression and against standards of superficiality, Butoh emerged at the end of the 20th century. It was in the shadow of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that Butoh's first breaths were drawn, already shuddering naked and borne by true darkness. Shaped into its ghostly form by dancers Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata, Butoh came to define Japanese avant-garde dance in its embrace of the totality of emotional experience and the absurdity found in the raw body. Ohno and Hijikata composed a new lyric for the human body where nothing was forbidden to experience. The revolutionary spirit of Butoh explored morbidity and sexuality in its most explicit forms. By doing so, it not only transformed the Japanese stage but connected with international audiences and dancers, tantalizing a universal desire for this same purity of expression. Until the '60s, there had been no such dance within Japan that allowed for the communication of the uninhibited body and, as far as technical form, there still exist few such parallels.

Kazuo Ohno & Tatsumi Hijikata

    
"Butoh, as [with] so many true arts, contains the beautiful spectrum of being. Often these first looks at Butoh are early works of suffering individuals. I have found that once the repressed or taboo aspects of life and the soul are allowed to naturally surface through the body and art, the lightness and loving joy must also be revealed." - Maureen Freehill (Seattle-based Butoh dancer, Artistic Director of "Butopia")
As Butoh has grown in popularity, its essence has evolved into as many forms as there are dancers. "In general," says Katsura Kan, a Kyoto-based Butoh dancer and choreographer, "if we have five Butoh dancers, we have six different philosophies." Despite this fluidity, there remain some elements that unify familiar aesthetics and practices within Butoh. In a celebration of the unmediated experience, Butoh often disregards the use of particular choreography. Themes of the absurd, tragic and grotesque continue to dominate, although this has increasingly evolved as dancers accept the anti-aesthetic essence of Butoh form. Butoh invites unlimited possibility for exploration of self and of environment. The continued progress made in sharing this revolutionary dance is sure to open a greater medium of expression and of engaging with every aspect of our realities.

Highlight Question

What are some of the most important differences and challenges in adapting Butoh around the world? How do you think Butoh will change to become more relevant to a younger generation, and adapt across cultures? "Butoh needs more time, and let's see the future as a new vocabulary to discover the human that you are." – Katsura Kan (Kyoto-based Butoh dancer, Director of "Katsura Kan & Saltimbanques")  "The seed of Butoh is flowing all over the world and a lot of different flowers are growing - Butoh flowers - but I don't know how Butoh will develop." – Tadashi Endo (Göttingen-based Butoh dancer, Director of  Butoh-Center MAMU and Butoh-Festivals MAMU) "I think the most important way to adapt Butoh around the world is to stop constraining our Japanese way to foreigners [...] The definition of Butoh is just "a step from within": this concept is very simple -- out of [the] Japanese way, more universal way -- [a] so everybody can try it around the world." – Tetsuro Fukuhara (Tokyo-based Butoh dancer, Director of Tokyo Space Dance) "I think it's extremely important to always refer back to Hijikata, Ohno, Tanaka and Kasai, and Nakajima. If we lose the original drives and aspirations completely, then we will also dilute and destroy the original promise of Butoh. It has to be radical, alive, relevant, and this is the power for a younger generation." - Marie-Gabrielle Rotie (London-based Butoh dancer, Butoh workshop director)
 

Butoh Dancer Spotlight: Florencia Guerberof (Argentina/U.K.)

florencia-guerberof"I come from Buenos Aires, Argentina. I was exposed to dance, theater and cinema since my childhood. My parents worked in the theater, so the theater where they used to work was like my second home… I was fascinated by the Lindsay Kemp company. I also remember Moses Pendleton (creator of the MOMIX company). My mother took me to see many incredible performances by the Argentinean choreographer Oscar Araiz and the wonderful French artist Jean Francois Casanovas. I was also struck by Laurie Anderson's work: her strength and manly appearance.  Peter Brook's play Peter Brook's play The Man Who... based on clinical tales by Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat (1985). In 2011, I  created a piece called My Hometown Is In My Shoes. This dance theater work focuses mainly on the feet. The shoes are seen as a home, and this responds to my condition as a foreigner living abroad for many years, not grounded or rooted to any particular place. I always try to make work using very basic means. My aim is to be able to create something powerful out of very simple and immediate things. This idea comes from my origin. I studied art in Argentina... I remember with admiration how the art students in Buenos Aires used to make amazing work out of nothing. They worked with very basic means, as we didn't count with high technology and all the facilities, but with brilliant minds.  The lack of resources makes you more creative. This is what has influenced me the most about my country."

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Butoh Dancing (舞踏): Discovering Emptiness, Embodiment & Environment in an Archeology of Body

Top Vintage Polish Film Posters: A Comparative Interview w/ Eye Sea Posters & The Affiche Studio

0
0

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Top Vintage Polish Film Posters: A Comparative Interview w/ Eye Sea Posters & The Affiche Studio

Top Vintage Polish Posters - Eye Sea Posters + Affiche Studios Interview

Jerzy Flisak - "Gang Olsena Na Szlaku (The Olsen Gang)" (1976)
Generally brightly-colored and psychedelic in nature, Polish film, theatre, and circus posters from the mid-1940s through the 1980s have played a major role on inspiring modern poster art and graphic design. Supported at the time by the Polish government and arguably transformed into the prime form of art in the nation, Polish posters are known for their ability to hint at deeper meanings and personalities through allusion and metaphor, initially seen only as bold strokes of visual fancy. Their history is a complex and dynamic one worthy of many more words, influenced equally by Communism and politics as the state of the international arts scene of the time. In this comparative interview, we speak with two creative studios -- Eye Sea Posters, based in the United Kingdom and dedicated to poster archiving and reselling, and The Affiche Studio, which is based in the United States and dedicated to poster restoration -- on just what makes Polish posters so compelling.
Jacek Neugebauer - "Gwiazdy Egeru" (1969)
James Dyer of Eye Sea Posters
Eye Sea Posters is a graphic archive and online shop specializing in Polish film, theatre and circus posters from the '60s and '70s. Based in the United Kingdom, they feature a hand-picked collection of artist, including Wiktor Gorka, Waldemar Swierzy, Franciszek Starowieyski, Andrzej Krajewski and Jerzy Flisak.
Jason Leonard of The Affiche Studio
Located in Portland, Oregon, The Affiche Studio is a poster restoration company working with a large range of poster styles and types, well beyond vintage Polish works. Jason Leonard is the studio's owner and Curator of Restoration. An impressive array of before and after samples of their restorations can be seen on their website.
What initially drew your company to these posters?
James Dyer (Eye Sea Posters): Polish posters produced under Communism are really distinctive because during that time the film industry was controlled by the state and most foreign promotional material was rejected and replacements were commissioned. Established Polish artists were asked to convey the essence of the film in their poster designs and unlike their Western counterparts, the use of film stills or photos of the film's stars wasn't necessary, and this lead to some amazing and often abstract art being pasted on the streets of Poland. I've been collecting these posters for a while now, and started selling a few here and there to help fund the collection. Eye Sea grew out of that, and I started the website in 2011.
Jason Leonard (The Affiche Studio): When I first started doing poster restoration, the Polish images that were coming in always stood out to me. Over time, I started collecting them on my own. I'm really drawn to the surrealist imagery, design, and historical significance of the Polish poster.

 

Can you recall a specific or initial moment when viewing these works made a memorable impact on you?
James Dyer (Eye Sea Posters): Around 10 years ago, someone sent me a postcard with a Polish poster on it. It was the "Seksolatki" poster by Maciej Zbikowski; I was instantly hooked and I've been a fan ever since.
Jason Leonard (The Affiche Studio): I remember unrolling a package from a client which had a bunch of newer posters by the artist Wieslaw Walkuski, and I was immediately drawn in.

 

How do you locate the posters for sale?
James Dyer (Eye Sea Posters): They come from various sources: old cinemas, flea markets, auctions etc. We hunt high and low for them. I've got a good friend in Poland who helps me out, and without him it would be very difficult.
Jason Leonard (The Affiche Studio): I've collected through various avenues, sometimes finding things online and sometimes through clients.

 

Given that some of your posters are no doubt gone once you sell them, how does that change the way you value or appreciate them?
James Dyer (Eye Sea Posters): As they become increasingly hard to find, it becomes harder to put a price on them and harder to part with them. It can take a long time to find a poster so sometimes I'm reluctant to sell one because I might not find another one. There's a few I regret selling but I have to remind myself I don't have much wallspace and there's no point in them sitting in a box gathering dust where nobody can see them.
Jason Leonard (The Affiche Studio): I've been collecting for years now, occasionally selling things here and there. It's interesting, because when I search for things to collect, I'm generally buying things I really admire. So sometimes selling is rough when I get attached to a certain poster. Sometimes I'll look for multiple copies of things I really love so I can keep one!

 

Is there a particular reason you avoid reproductions? What do you think of poster outlets that look to "fix up" vintage posters for resale? James Dyer (Eye Sea Posters): As well as the artwork it's the quality of the printing, the paper stock and the natural aging process that makes these posters great and that's not something easily reproduced. Poster restorers do an important job because they help to preserve a piece of history.
Can you tell us a bit about the restorative process? How long does it generally take for a singular piece and what technologies are necessary? Jason Leonard (The Affiche Studio): Linen-backing is an archival mounting of a poster. After the mounting, we go in and do restoration, which could be patching in missing sections and color restoration. Depending on the work needed, it takes usually a couple weeks in the studio, as we work on many pieces at the same time. The process is an old one, but was transformed a bit in the '70s. There are many steps along the way that have to be performed with a detailed artistic eye. It's a very hands-on procedure, preserving the original poster.

 

How does one go about identifying a particular work or artist? How easy or difficult is this process, and what resources do you use?
James Dyer (Eye Sea Posters): There's various ways to identify a poster. The serial number and logos on it. The artist's signature is usually printed on it. I also use various books, catalogues and the internet, and if all else fails, I phone a friend in Poland.
Jason Leonard (The Affiche Studio): We have a couple clients with great websites, www.theartofposter.com and www.contemporaryposters.com

Related: Articles on Polish Artists & Musicians

Top Ten Polish Posters, Curated by James Dyer

Maciej Zbikowski - "Seksolatki" - 1978
Genre: Drama/Romance The first Polish poster I saw (on a postcard). It took me a long time to find a decent copy, and when I did, it looked even better in the flesh.
Maciej Zbikowski - "Zimorodek" - 1978
He's the first designer I started collecting. There's not much information online about Mr. Zbikowski. I tried to track him down once. A friend of mine found an address for him in Warsaw and we sent him a letter but didn't get a reply.
Franciszek Starowieyski - "Oni" - 1973
Genre: TBC In contrast to the bold, colorful and cartoon-like work of Zbikowski is an intricate, dark illustration by Franciszek Starowieyski, who was part of the "Polish School of Posters" and a master of poster design. This is one of the first posters I bought.
Andrzej Krajewski - "Czarny Wiatr" - 1970
Genre: TBC I've managed to find quite a few Krajewski posters over the years but he's a prolific artist and I'm still missing some, the hunt continues...
Ryszard Kiwerski - "Czarownica Z Bagien" - 1972
Genre: TBC If I walked past this in the street, I'd have to go and see the film. Nicely psychedelic.
Jerzy Flisak - "The Conversation" - 1975
Genre: Drama Mystery Thriller This was on my wanted list for a long time and I finally found it a few months back. It's a nice simple design with a good film to match.
La Boca - "Iluzjon" - 2012
Genre: Exhibition This is a poster we created for our first exhibition at the Protein gallery in London last year. It was designed by my friend Scot at La Boca, he also designed our logo.
Waldemar Swierzy - "Budowniczy Solness" - 1971
Genre: Theatre One of the few artists of the 'Polish School of Posters' that is still alive and one of the most prolific.
Hubert Hilscher - "Cyrk" (Tiger Handstand) - 1970
Genre: Circus A super vibrant Polish circus poster that is featured in the Victoria & Albert museum collection.
Jerzy Flisak - "Gracz (The Player)" - 1973
Genre: Crime Drama This is one I regret selling because try as I might, I can't find another one.

Additional Posters Selected by REDEFINE

Jan Sawka - "Cyrk (Pyramid)" (1975) Waldemar Swierzy - "Horsztynski" (1968) Jacek Neugebauer - "Przygody Tomka Sawyera (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer)" (1969) Jerzy Flisa - "Zwiadowca (The Scout)" (1969) Daniel Mroz - "Babcia Wnuczek" (1986) Ω

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Top Vintage Polish Film Posters: A Comparative Interview w/ Eye Sea Posters & The Affiche Studio

Bryan Olson Collage Artist Interview: Ultrastructures & Human Placement in Space

0
0

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Bryan Olson Collage Artist Interview: Ultrastructures & Human Placement in Space

Bryan Olson Collage Artist Interview

To express questions of context, displacement and fragmented identity, what better medium could there be than the nature of assemblage in collage? Image artifacts are laid bare while hypothetical situations construct parallel universes. The familiar falls in rhythm with the bizarre. Framed in conscious composition, such vivid and dreamlike landscapes are manipulated at the hands of North Carolina-based collage artist Bryan Olson. Bryan Olson Collage Artist InterviewBryan Olson Collage Artist Interview Olson interprets the remains of vintage magazines and other paper paraphernalia to illustrate a recreated mythology. Exaggerated idols can be found in the most unassuming of inanimate objects, as in the towering pink liquids of Delicious Land; humans are translated into curious anomalies within environments never to be encountered. Even the simplest geometric shapes are given new context. The glory that saturates symbolism in his ordered universe recalls, with little effort, the naivety of space exploration and human pursuit of knowledge. Every image by Olson is characterized by the familiar presence of the Earth or objects of earthly origin, yet deliberate fragmentation makes them feel extraterrestrial. In further emphasis to this refrain, overt images of astronomy intensify Olson's dialogues with people, places and structures. Yet, by maintaining a rooted sense of natural flow within his collage, Bryan Olson engages with the absurdity of human behavior and the scope of the massive cosmic entities without, on the most part, seeming psychedelic.
Positioning archaeological and behavioural semblances of our history against vast spaces, be they the cosmos or limestone canyons, Olson's power lies in his surrealistic control of size. Despite the human body visualized in tandem with geological elements that are engorged out of their natural proportions or starkly placed against geometric forms, these human figures never feel out of place. They comfortably inhabit the environments within Bryan Olson's compositions, fulfilling their granted space and even seeming to dilute the enormity of their accompanying entities. People of Titan (below) does this exceptionally well, using the comic combination of beach-goers against the colossus of Saturn and its moon Titan, responding to theories of discovering life on Titan and our expectations of what constitutes life in our principles.
As a continuation of this narrative, Bryan Olson demonstrates the perceived massivity of human history by repositioning perspective in Post Oscillation (above) to exalt an artifact -- a human jaw bone, not even a complete skull -- extended in pointed demonstration. Divested from any realistic context and even more compelling due to the grip of the disembodied, white, and masculine hand, this fractured relic still lessens the grandeur of the encompassing geology that we know to be formidable.
 

Highlight Questions

Given that your arrangements use the medium of collage as a way to express surreal and science-fiction influences, in what ways do you explore dreams or the subconscious in your work? In most cases, our dreams are bizarre scenes or half-thoughts. They are incomplete storylines that zip off into different directions. My creative process starts like a dream; I never really know what I'm going for or what pieces will be used to complete the collage. It's a very subconscious adventure at first, but then I wake up and reality sets in. The reality is making sure I glue everything down correctly.   A few of your collages feature crowds of people, and a few individuals, set against the backdrop of the cosmos. What kind of meaning do you find, or did you intend, in placing humans against space? We as a human race are always searching for an answer to the unknown. We have broken down impossible barriers in the fields of science, technology and biology, yet we are still not satisfied. The universe contradicts us in so many ways. We know so little about it and may never truly understand it. It's a fascinating thing to go outside on a starry night, look up, and ask yourself: "what is out there? How did I get here?"
 
When humans are not present within the collage of Bryan Olson, the prominent entities are usually modernist architectural structures. They do not confess to serve any purpose beyond imposing a presence onto their environments -- existence only for its own sake. The shapes are familiar and reflect elements of humanity, making each of these ultrastructures, as Olson refers to them, slices of consciousness against the vacuum of space. Architecture serves as character, while Olson claims to "imagine how nature sees man". True enough, the vigilant eye of ultrastructures #8 (above) reminds of the inability to divest judgement from the human reality.
 

Highlight Questions

Some of your images explore strong geometric shapes: they command a presence in a landscape like statues or they seem to represent suspended structures. What role does "structure" and "place" hold in your images? I try to incorporate architecture into my work as much as possible, whether it's an actual building or monolithic design. I am inspired by Mies Van Der Rohe's approach, using raw materials such as glass, steel and concrete to exhibit a strong structural presence through simplicity. I am also inspired by the abandoned Spomenik monuments of Yugoslavia. They have a strange polarizing presence, and I try to portray that feeling in my work.   Given that the arrangements of geometric shapes in your images appear very purposeful, what kind of symbolism lies behind the shapes you chose? Is there significance to their placement in your compositions? Most of my collages display landscapes, natural subjects and man made subjects together in the same setting. I try to imagine how nature sees man. If nature had human emotion, how would it perceive us? What would we look like? What does the pain of our ignorance and over consumption feel like? The piece ultrastructures #8 is an example of that idea.   Geology and geographic themes are very dominant in your series: what role do places have in your composition, and is there an overarching relationship with the Earth or environment that you hope to convey? Pulling from the previous answer to the question of symbolism, the overarching relationship is that of man and nature. I, however, am not specific in my choices of geographical places for most of the images I choose are from a vast culmination of source material and are selected by visual appeal.   Adapting Fields (below) features the golden spiral. How did you discover this symbol and what significance do you attribute to it, in both the image and on a personal level? I think I stumbled upon the "golden spiral" when browsing through in old physics book for images to use for a collage. I was very inspired by the fact that the spiral shows up in nature all of the time. From a nautilus shell to distant galaxies, this spiral appears. It is almost like the spiral defines our existence. We are born, we live our lives and then we die. We continue to spiral, forever. Something magical is definitely happening there.

Bryan Olson's Top Three

Talk Sheep

"This piece was dedicated to a fellow collage artist (Jesse Treece) after a brief discussion about using sheep in our collages. The image portrays passersby stopping to gaze at a herd of sheep below. In the background, a mechanical wall of buttons and dials with an eye in the middle gazes upon the passersby. It's a portrayal of how politicians have overall say and control over the government and the people. From the eye of the machine, we are just sheep."

Talk-Sheep-Bryan-Olson  
Fragility

"I was inspired to make this piece after reading an astronaut's take of seeing earth from space and how fragile it looked. He described it as being 'a fragile oasis on the backdrop of infinity'."

Fragility-Bryan-Olson
"5th Density"

"My brother and I have had lengthy discussions about the afterlife and densities.  We can get into some interesting topics regarding extraterrestrials as well.  This piece was inspired by those conversations."

5th-Density-Bryan-Olson Ω

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Bryan Olson Collage Artist Interview: Ultrastructures & Human Placement in Space

Viewing all 81 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images