giovedì 22 dicembre 2011

Interview with Jenny G






q) Well, first of all please tell us a little about yourself.
 
 
a)I was born in Vancouver 27 years ago, and just moved back here a few
months ago. For the past 6 years, I lived in Montreal and San Francisco.
At the moment I'm working as a fulltime artist, and I'm applying for grad
school in the U.S. for Fall 2012.
 
 
q)How would you describe your work?
 
 
a)My work takes advantage of process and material. Working on large scale,
un-evenly cut paper, my work unfolds upon a visible layered mark making.
By availing myself to the discomfort that comes with following the
intuitive thought process, I like to tread in the area between
representation and abstraction.
 
 
 
q) Did somebody encourage you to become an artist?
 
 
a)I never really thought that I would be able to be a fulltime artist and
make a living of it. That is to say, I didn't know it was even possible
until I started taking art classes in College. My plan was to pursue
Mathematics or Physics, only because I was decent at it. I completely
abandoned that once I discovered that it's very possible to make art for a
living...although not easy. It just so happens that the problem solving
approach has been transfered from my education in Math and Science into my
art practice.
 
 
 
q) What is your favorite medium?
 
 
a)I like to work on paper. Not only does it allow for direct contact, but
it also holds up to aggressive mark making. It's easy to cut or add more
surface quickly, so there's a sense of spontaneity that melds well with
my process. All my work is on some sort of paper, and I use a wide range
of mediums on top of that; oil paint, oil stick, pastels, acrylic paint,
spray paint, ink, graphite, charcoal. My newest project involves working
uniquely on a tablet in photoshop, and then printing them out as digital
c-prints. It's exciting for me to start thinking about the process of
working large scale in the physical world and living through the process,
versus creating within the perimeter of a tablet and not seeing the final
product until it's done. Both are good.
 
 
q) Generally speaking, where do your ideas come from?
 
 
a)Basically, my ideas come from my own work. I'd like to say it's completely
self perpetuating, but of course there are aspects of my life and
experiences that come through. For example, when I was living in Montreal,
I was making work with sunny-beachy imagery. And while I was living in
California, I was making images that appear more wintery-christmassy. And
now it's sort of a mix of the two. This wasn't something I was fully aware
of at the time, so I guess it was somehow intuited. I like to think of art
making like an event over time. Within the time it takes to make one
piece, within a year, 10 years, a lifetime...that way there's a sense of
failure and success built into each piece. It's the thing keeps it
exciting...to see an evolution and continuous growth.
 
 
q) How long does it take to complete a piece?
 
 
a)It varies. On average, I'd say it takes 3 months. I work on many pieces at
the same time and go back and forth. I have some pieces that I've been
working on for over a year.
 
 
q) Who are your favorite artists…and who are some artists you are
currently looking/listening to?
 
 
a)Carroll Dunham, Josh Smith, Tal R, are some of my favorite artists. Their
working method and outlook on the creation process are very inspirational.
I just came back from LA, and there I saw a collaborative exhibition by
Aaron Curry and Richard Hawkins at David Kordansky Gallery. I was blown
away!
 
 
q) Are you represented by a gallery? Do you have any upcoming exhibits?
 
 
a)I am not represented by a gallery...yet. Right now, I'm working on
applications for grad school as well as residencies in Canada and USA.
 
 
q) Do you have any 'studio rituals'? As in, do you listen to certain types
of music while working? What helps to get you in the mood for working?
 
 
a)I don't have any rituals. I find that variety serves me well in the
studio. Sometimes I work along with music or the radio, sometimes in
silence. Forcing myself to work everyday, even if I'm not in the mood, is
important. If I just  waited for inspiration, I would never make anything.
It all comes from working.
 
 
q) What is your favorite a) taste, b) sound, c) sight, d) smell, and e)
tactile sensation?
 
 
a)That's an odd question! I couldn't even start to answer it.
 
 
q) Do you have goals that you are trying to reach as an artist, what is
your 'drive'? What would you like to accomplish in your 'profession'?
 
 
a)The main goal is to be fulfilled within myself and to be constantly
challenged. Of course I can't live off of self-fulfillment, I need money!
I'm going to grad school so that I can be a fulltime artist. To be
immersed in a vibrant and inquisitive community of other artists, gain
exposure, and have opportunities to participate alongside innovative
practices....that's what I want to accomplish.
 
 
q) When have you started using the internet and what role does this form
of communication play for you, personally, for your art, and for your
business?
 
 
a)It plays a big part. I don't use the internet to help with my creation
process, but it is useful in terms of keeping up with events ;
exhibitions, openings, lectures. And of course, I'm always looking for new
opportunities to show or apply for grants. I recently got my website up
and it's nice when people contact me about my work or blog it.  It all
helps to get your work seen throughout the world.
 
 
 
q) What do you obsess over?
 
 
a)Time.
 
 
q) Do you have prefered working hours? Do you pay attention to the time of
the day or maybe specific lighting?
 
 
a)I'm definitely a morning person. I use the daytime hours to mainly
think/write. During the night hours, I am more able to let loose. The
thinking and making states of mind are quite separate for me and things
work best when I'm capable of letting go of what seems most logical.
 
 
q) Do you do commissioned works?
 
 
a)I have in the past, but not of late.
 
 
q) Any tips for emerging artists?
 
 
a)Work work work work work
 
 
q)…Your contacts
 
 
a)www.gjennyg.com
 

 

sabato 3 dicembre 2011

Interview with Quadreria Romantico Seriale






q)Please tell us your name and where you practice.


a)Quadreria Romantico Seriale is an impersonal name: the use of the "we" is related to this choice. Our project has an european identity with deep roots in a mediaeval pilgrimage route named Via Francigena, in the apennine mountains of the north Italy.


q) Why do you make art?


a)Above all, we make art for the aesthetic pleasure to affirming our conception of being between tradition, myth and symbols. Our artworks want to be an evidence of this "act of will. Then, we make art to mark our radical, anthropological diversity from this anemic and "civilized" system of life. Each artwork by Quadreria Romantico Seriale is a relic of a re-appropriating ritual, performed among serial images and indirect perceptions generated by this immense narcotic entertainment.


q) How do you work ?


a)The oil painting is the technic more used by us. It's a discipline, a mental gymnastics, a cultural choice. We work only on pre-existent images, often taken from agencies or archives. The pics are "sampled" on computer, projected on the canvas and painted in the "obscurity", with only a directional light illuminating the surface. In these conditions, we are more concentrated on the interiority of the work. Also our progressive chromatic reduction has this same finality.


q) What´s your background?


a)We have an Indo-european backgruond, originated in Urheimat. This information is much more characterizing than to list artistic experiences, schools or academies.


q) What role does the artist have in society?


a)Usually, the artists are only entertainers. They are good citizens or "lounge rebels" perfectly functional to the actual value system: relativism, universalism, market. Maybe, the only one possibility for an artist to be more incisive is to define an integral culture. Art as social sculpture. Philosophy as spiritual strategy. Politics as aesthetic realization. Every aspect of the life is "material" to be shaped. The Doric world, as described by Gottried Benn, is an important reference.


q) What was a seminal experience for you ?


a)We don't have a "seminal experience" but we have a "seminal system", erected by ourselves day by day through actions and ideas. It creates our destiny.


q) Has your practice changed over time ?


a)Quadreria Romantico Seriale is a uniform realized for a specific mission. But sometime there are actions that require a camouflage.


q) What art do you most identify with ?


a)Where we are living it's a wasteland. Our concept is part of a perennial tradition, but our works don't identify with anything. This condition is also represented by our symbol: an hyperborean swan that cross obscure waters.


q) What´s your strongest memory of your childhood ?


a)We prefer don't talk about our private memories. We are here as artistic project: we want to be only masks.


q) What themes do you pursue ?


a)Sacredness and Oblivion. Purity and Decadence. Discipline and Apocalypse. At the end, the Quadreria Romantico Seriale pursues a form of elevation.


q) Describe a real life experience that inspired you.


a)It's our opinion that a single fact, more inspiring than others, doesn't exit. There are only different planes of perception and elaboration. Also, we believe that every kind of experience is an element of the real life.


q) What´s your most embarrassing moment ?


a)The entire modernity, with its system of relationships, is an embarrassing moment. Our daily life has become a frenetic magma where it's very difficult to find significant episodes. For many existences, often, the death is the only one moment of authentic vitality. This kind of civilization have lost the sense of Tragic, supplanted by anxiety, sense of inadequacy and "embarrassments" among an infinity of irrelevant facts. We live in a panic at low intensity.


q) What jobs have you done other than being an artist ?


a)We are all "contractors". It's curious, but this aseptic term is used also to indicate "mercenary". It's not a moral judgment, it's only an observation about the inconsistence of our language. Surely, "mercenary" is much more literary than "contractor".


q) What responses have you had to your work ?


a)We are very satisfied with the support that we receive from persons near to our activity.

For us they are the fundamental reason to continue to make art. We are proud of them.


q) What do you dislike about the artworld ?


a)Directly, nothing. The artworld is only an organism generated by anemic post-ideologies, nothing else. There is a legion of promoters which producing a mass of erudite vacuities as meetings, studies, stages, exhibitions. It's the paroxysm of the empty. Everything is undifferentiated, fragmented, "without a center", as Sedlmayr wrote. This is the cultural relativism, that's all.


q) What research do you do ?


a)Our activity is not concentrated on formal questions. We are searching to realize a symbolic style without intimacies. The QRS works are devotional objects related to an Idea above them. They are "tensions", sometime obsessions, between order and nihilism.


q) What is your dream project?


a)The extinction of the actual alienating form of civil society, supplanted by territorial communities with a strong and defined cultural identity (Ferdinand Tönnies could be an important guide). The extinction of the actual meant of "art" (as "art of the artworks"), supplanted by the Art as form of existence. Each of these events is a consequence of the other.


q) What´s the best piece of advice you have been given ?


a)It doesn't exit. There is only a long process of awareness, very often with bloody spiritual battles.


q) What couldn’t you do without?


a)Light.


q) What makes you angry?


a)Nothing makes us angry. But in aesthetic field (for us an aesthetic is also an ethic), we don't like what is shapeless and slovenliness: both these features are lack of style, boldness and spiritual rank. Then, we don't like the human activities without identity and ideality; what is cynically wordily, conventionally incorrect and formally friendly. This "weak ethic", aesthetically ugly, is typical of the liberal societies.


q) What is your worst quality?


a)Anyone can decide it reading these answers.


q) Dogs or Cats ?


a)Wolfs and Lynxes.


q) Making art is a lot like being on lsd. Know what I mean ?


a)We don't know. The acid imaginary is completely different from our nature. Quadreria Romantico Seriale is influenced by the gnostic cultures. For us, making art is like to ordering a legion of obscure and luminous interior creatures. It's care and rule. About lsd question, there are important exceptions near to our sensibility, like Philip Dick and Ernst Junger: artists, mystics and soldiers who lived on superior levels of consciousness.


q) What does “copy” mean to you ?


a)This modernity is founded on the "copy". As the situationists known, this time prefers the "copy" instead the "original" and the truth is a moment of the fake. In this form of civilization, it's an illusion to create new "originals". Conceptually, also QRS artworks are fakes, deviating copies. Apart from that, the important and crucial point is to realize new senses of interpretation, new methods of diffusion, new synthesis, not "new" images.


q) What´s your favorite cuss word ?


a)Liberal.

martedì 15 novembre 2011

Interview with Kris Trappeniers






q)Let’s start with the basics; what's your full name, where do you live, and how old are you?


a)Kris Trappeniers, 40 years old, living in Belgium.


q) Do you have any formal training?


a)Phd in Chemistry. Art history, advertising art, screenprinting at the royal academy of Leuven, Belgium.


q) Did the place you grew up in influence your image making?


a)Not the place - but growing up in the eighties definitely shaped my feeling for graphic design. My passion for monochromatic design is related to the dark eighties.


q) How do you come up with your concepts?


a)They mostly fall into my mind while walking, cycling, watching a movie or during a conversation. I'm not really thinking or brainstorming about concepts, they just come and go. Usually everywhere I go I take a small sketchbook with me where I write down ideas and opinions.


q) Describe your creations in a clear, concise and understandable sentence. What do you call them?


a)Detailed photography based papercut portraits, occasionally used as stencil.


q)What other mediums would you like to explore in your image making?


a)Screenprinting, 3D street installations.


q)What is the best time in the day for you to work on a project? Is there one, or is it more about the environment -- maybe the right mood?


a)Very early in the morning, as the sunlight breaks directly into my studio. I mostly wake up very early around six in the morning and start work right away. In the evening I reserve some time for answering emails and blogging some photos.


q) What are your artistic influences?...and …generally who or what influences you the most?


a)Japanese paper crafts (Kiri-e and origami), clair-obscur paintings, calligraphy, poetry,


q) Who are some of your favourite artists/designers/photographers?


a)Ernest Pignon Ernest, C215, Velasquez, Pollock, Swoon, Richter, Blek le Rat


q) What is your next project?Exhibition?Collaboration?


a)In 2001 I have two solo exhibs coming up in Louvain and Cologne and group shows in Bern and Paris. I'm looking forward to collaborate with a body painter (Fluxser Manser).


q)What are your plans for the future?


a)None, I don't make plans on a long term, I'm already glad to have my day planned.


q)Are there some web sites that You would like to recomend? Artists, art communities, xxx,...!?


a)http://www.dudecraft.com/

http://www.stencilhistoryx.com/

http://www.souljazzrecords.co.uk/

http://www.veggiebelly.com/

http://www.carhartt-wip.com/


q)What sort of music do you listen to?


a)Jazz-funk, hip hop and deep house. While I work some modern classical music does the job.


q)Do you collect anything?If so what?


a)Magazines and newspapers from the fifties and sixties, preferably National Geographic and Photo Magazine


q)What do you do for fun?


a)Surfing, visiting flee markets and city trips


q)Any advice you can pass onto aspiring artists/designers?


a)Be patient .. Blek Le Rat and Jef Aerosol have been spraying stencils for 35 years and have just recently been recognized as founders of stencil graffiti. If you would like your art to be noticed you need to develop step by step until you have something unique to show. But if you work with full passion, it doesn't really matter how long it takes before getting recognized.

venerdì 11 novembre 2011

Interview with Christine Morren






1)Let’s start with the basics; what's your full name, where do you live, and how old are you?


1)My full name is Christine Morren. I live in Belgium and i am 45.


2) Do you have any formal training?


2)+/- 7 years ago, I have been painting during one year at the atelier of Maarten Boffé to learn the oilpainting techniques. After that i started discovering my own language and later collaboration/study in Jef Bertels' atelier, refined my vision.


3) Did the place you grew up in influence your image making?


3)I don't think so.


4) How do you come up with your concepts?


4)It just didn't come up at once. It is searching and searching... It's a process that is taking years and once it feels good, it grows..


5) Describe your creations in a clear, concise and understandable sentence. What do you call them?


5)My world is full of creatures. They vary in intensity, emotion and dimensions. They live everywhere and it looks like they come out of a dream. So you can call my work visionary.


6)What other mediums would you like to explore in your image making?


6)I would like to try out the watermixable oils. I did a little test and i think it will do fine :)


7)What is the best time in the day for you to work on a project? Is there one, or is it more about the environment -- maybe the right mood?


7)It can be any moment, as long as i have the time to concentrate. I need to be relaxed. Most of the time i'm painting in the evening (with a daylight lamp ;) )

Stress or very busy moments are no good for me when i want to paint.


8) What are your artistic influences?...and …generally who or what influences you the most?


8)Nature, people, emotions, ... are inspiring to me.

And the paint itself, the abstract first layer is very important.


9) Who are some of your favourite artists/designers/photographers?


9)I love the work of Octaaf Landuyt, Beksinski, Chris Mars, Joe Sorren, Marc Janssens, Kalvis Zuters, Chris Berens.. Oh so many !! :)


10) What is your next project?Exhibition?Collaboration?


10)I participate the Sketchbook project http://www.arthousecoop.com/projects/sketchbookproject

There are a few groupshows planned at Gallery NovaBelgica http://www.novabelgica.com/

And i will participate the Freak Show at Denmark in march 2012.


11)What are your plans for the future?


11)The only thing i know for sure is that i always will be painting. :-)


12)Are there some web sites that You would like to recomend? Artists, art communities, xxx,...!?


12)www.deviantart.com

http://visionaryartgallery.weebly.com/

http://www.projectmailartbooks.com/index.html

http://dev.openartcollection.com/

http://santiagoribeiro.ning.com/


13)What sort of music do you listen to?


13)I like different kinds of music. I like lounge music, rock music, ..


14)Do you collect anything?If so what?


14)I have a very little collection old doll heads. And some little antique dolls. Very tiny ones.


15)What do you do for fun?


15)I like visiting exhibitions, spending time with friends and having fun with friends and family, .. And painting of course. :)


16)Any advice you can pass onto aspiring artists/designers?


16)Never give up and always be yourself!


17)Your contacts…


17) www.christinemorren.com