Broken aesthetic sense: interview

Showing posts with label interview. Show all posts

Sunday, 15 November 2009

JEIKO

JEIKO, multimedia artist from Wellington, New Zealand. I want to present here his drawings and a little interview.

Try it!

BR: I've seen some of muscisian you like, between this Nick Cave and Massive Attack, are you charmed by undergroung scene? Like the Berlin one or the Bristol one?

JEIKO: I'm definitely influenced by all things underground, and music is an integral part of my creative process. Nick's music resonates with me something crazy, I listen to his stuff while I'm getting concepts together and looking for inspiration. I haven't spend much time in Bristol or Berlin but would love to some day.

BR: What do you think about Schiele?

J: I love his work. I can relate to his sometimes chaotic linework and am a huge fan of figurative work in general. A painting workshop with himself and Gustav Klimt would be a dream come true!

BR: What is your favourite comics?
J: Anything by Simon Bisley & Martin F Emond

BR: Picasso has any importance for you?
J: In general I really admire Picasso's approach and relationship to his art. In my early days of starting out as an visual artist I was really drawn to his self-portraits. His eyes carry an intensity that seems to focus way beyond the subject matter. This, together with his unconventional approach at rendering shape and form really drew me to his work.

BR: What do you think about market of art?
J: I think it's a case of (and possibly always has been) either producing work that is 'commercially viable' i.e. playing it safe and enabling one to pay his bills, or taking a path less travelled and having a go at something daring & original. The latter comes at a risk of not finding an audience, and/or joining the starving artist demographic. It ultimately comes down to your ability to market your art, or have a support network in place to help get your stuff outhere.

BR: Who is Tom?
J: Tom is a wonderfully nerdy millionaire who built this social networking site and enabled us to beam our egos out to the world. He also thinks that myspace/world is a safer place without nipples. Most newborns tend to disagree.

BR: You make digital graphic or you use also other technique?

J: I've been confined to things digital most of my career, and have only recently started to go back to a more organic approach. I'm currently working on a series of oil paintings and loving the hands-on nature of working with paint. I'm a firm believer that the best things in life are still made by hand.
BR: You are multimedial artis, which kind of expression form you're more into?
J: I'm into all and any forms of expression that connect with the audience and make them think and feel beyond the 'default' state of being. Art is essentially storytelling and as such I prefer not to limit myself to one media in order to get a story across. I've recently started getting into audio production in a big way - I find that it enables me to tap into the same place of inspiration as with visual arts, and that the two coexist in parallel.

BR: In your works, do you refer to any kind of iconography (pop, comic etc.)?
J: I'm influenced and inspired by everything I experience during a normal course of the day. I prefer not to follow trends and take a rather wide approach in choosing my subject matter. As a person (and artist) I'm constantly evolving and so does my work. If I can create work that people can identify with and instantly recognise as my own I've achieved my nirvana as an artist ")

Thursday, 12 November 2009

ectoplasm

Today a little of post-modern stuff, I have for you works of ectoplasm, an artist from Montreal.
In his works you can find a strong, sometimes weird female sensuality, unusual positions of bodies, all the things that personally I love in visiual art.
Try it!

BR: In your works, do you refer to any kind of iconography?
e: My work is all about the body, and the flesh, the gore, sex, feminity... I'm trying to talk about the woman's body (it sounds shitty to say...) and the angst coming from that... The fear of desintegration, of beauty and ugliness... I am influenced by the image I see in nightmares, people eating me or drilling hole in my body, trying to rape me... I think maybe I speak about that strange relation we have with the inside and the outside, with the skin looking like rotting flesh and vagina coming on the outside. I draw my obsession, i try not to censure myself as I do in real life. I'm influenced by porn or horror iconography despite of me... But I am just as a child glad to transgress. I'm trying more and more to describe post-modern life and create icon of our century... I'm also really inspired by rock culture, I often write lyrics I have in my head and also female rock icons such as Courtney Love, Pj harvey or Amy Winehouse.

BR: What do you think about Schiele?
e: I obviously am a great sucker of schiele's art! I think it has inspired me in so many ways, especially for the drawing of the skin that looks like dead flesh and the tortured positions... I think he was ahead of his time in the despiction of the human anxiety in blank spaces.

BR: Did you choose nude for any particular reason?
e: I think it's more easy to draw nudes! And I love drawing boobs! And living the body is something I had trouble with for a long time. My last drawing was a dressed girl... I think I will try to integrate more clothes and how they interfere with the body in my futures drawings.

BR: Who/What influences/inspirates you?
e: Hole's lyrics... Nightmare visions... Everyday life... Binges... Rock'n'roll way of life... Fashions icons... What I'd like to be and what i fear the most... Artists that are better... Sex is a big inspiration too.

BR: Which elements of contemporary art are you interested in?
e: To be honest, I was attract by drawings but I like all mediums, even thought I'm more into installations and paintings, I prefer sensual works.

BR: What do you think about street art?
e: I used to think about a lot but now I think it's a medium like another... I liked the directness that brings art in the street and the rebellion against society rules it was linked to. The fact is that it works in the street where it surprise people and speaks directly about the envoronment we live in. So the mercantile infatuation the galleries and museums has for street artists, that take captive ephemere and spontanous art is pure bullshit! As soon as you stick art to something, there's codes and art market running after so I don't think there's a « street art .» Artists just do their art in the street because they have a concept, a thing to say about it, like Ernest Pignon-Ernest. I sticked some drawings of mine in the street but the meaning and act is just too easy, the presence of something unusual in urban environment obviously attract people.

BR: DAdA or Surrealism?
e: DADA! My adolescent love.

BR: Warhol or Banksy?
e: I used to love Banksy a long time ago when he wasn't bank(sy)able... I bought a little book where there is a lot of political drawings that are very good. He likes to look like the enfant terrible of street art but maybe he is better at promoting his art than doing art... Maybe just as Warhol, but the mystery of the Image (with a big I!) and presence of death in warhol's work moves me more.

BR: Does photography of Nan Goldin inspirates you?
e: Do you mean in my photos or drawings?
BR: Yes.
e: I don't think it was a direct influence but I admired for long time. I like how she turns private life and usual ugliness into raw beauty. Intimacy was a theme I wanted to work on. I'm above all looking for artworks seeking the struggle of human against death, in many ways. Her work is totally humanist, just as her « mother » Diane Arbus (I don't remember which one said photography was like caressing someone) but it is also very linked to death... I think I'm on the side of death, where I jiggle my little pencil to kill something and I don't know if something rise from that.

BR: Any other artist influences you?
e: They are so much! I can't make a list but I'll say Blanquet, for the monstruous theme, Munch, for the morbid Madonnas, recently Dawn Mellor... I often find my drawings look like something someone already did... But I keep on searching for the Inner, Intimate Image that will pierce a blind hole in my eye.

Monday, 9 November 2009

Lila - Interview

Here is an interview with german painter and textile designer Lila
Her paints for me are great. Try it!

BR: Which kind of techniques you use?
Lila: A lot of experiments with cement, bird sand, every kind of glue, pigments, papersorts, sewing, stiching, collage, emulsion colours, all kinds of art material & its application, sreenprint & the best: all techniques in layers over & over...a multi-mix sometimes.
Also in alliance with all techniques y/ can learn in studies.

BR: What influences/Inspirates you?
L: Mostly influenced by a lot of artists after the second worldwar called ‚The Informel‘.
Painters like Emil Schumacher for example. Others are Dubuffet, Tapies, Nay, Rothko, Dadaism, Niki de St.Phalle or Tinguely and: always this in context w/ actual modern art! Inspiration for me also comes from a lot of music through the years – classic like jazz, rock, folk, pop – a lot of styles or genres. One can say, if it touches my heart in music or arts or sometimes films, this inspirates me. But also people in my life and their circumstances or relationships to me. And sometimes nature is the best inspiration.

BR: Is there a connection between your paints and your digital works?
L: Yes there is a connection between my digital works and my handmade paints. Mostly it is a mix of works. Digital technique works as a modern medium to transport my artworks. But first there is always the handmade painting – the digital work gives the whole thing an experimental new character & abducts one to new views on color & line expressions. Mostly at the moment I like the soften charme of blurring effects & the combination of particular layers. Sometimes the line-playing of a hand-drawing or a handmade collage affiliates w/ blurred surfaces.
At time I am in an experimental stage for this new medium. Perhaps later I want to ‚move‘ this artwork in Flash-animations...

BR: Do you refer to some iconography?
L: I prefer the iconography of lines and their corresponding to forms

BR: What do you think about calssical art?
L: What do you mean about classical art? Dubuffet vs/ Hieronymus Bosch ...
let’s discuss – both had dreams & perceptions to life...
Think, it is like to reinvent the wheel – every epoche had its impression & expression, its esthetic beauty art & its indicating art or its social-critical art, its art of soul or often in former times a mastership of technique... perhaps this changes in this times to more expression. But anyway the learning of techniques is indispensable to find coherent results for having the view for the best ex- & impressions one can make.

BR: What do you think about market of art?
L: Please, don’t ask me – perhaps a good question to Banksy? ;-)

***

More you can see on myspace of Lila here

Saturday, 31 October 2009

George Nikas - Interview

Today I would like to introduce you painter called George Nikas. Born in 1973 in Grece, he studied Industrial Desing at Birmingham Polytechnic in England. But let's go to the point (this kind of details you can get on his myspace here.)

What really impressed me in the works of Nikas were his exellent and powerfull lanscapes, in witch you can find an uncommon fusion between some kind of traditional expression and the contemporary context.
Amazing movement, colours (from quiet to the richest) that take us into his unique atmosphere.
Here is an interview with the artist.

BR: What do you think about market of art?

George Nikas: Market of Art is always vast and niche. That means that it's hard to succeed especially nowadays painting isn't the only medium used concerning two dimensional expression. It's more difficult because of the new standards set by photography, video, digital systems, etc, which sometimes reach beyond painting as music and movement even interaction are included.

Are you inspireted by Turner?

GN: J. M. W. Turner is without any doubt, one of, if not the best landscape painter ever. It's impossible not to accept main values as color, technics, movement, modernism used and shown by such a great master. He set the base of what landscape painting is, so I can't avoid not to be influenced by his work. I also admire the 19th century American school which also set new standards and parameters about art concerning size and market during huge exhibitions in Europe. In other words Art became bigger. CinemaScope was invented in the United States not in Europe, Art became wider... Everybody notices it better when you are in U.S. or even watch a film made there!

What do you think when people interpretate in an easy way your works?

GN: It is well known that education and especially art education is not at a level at it should be. Generally speaking there's an ethics crisis so it's normal to listen to any easy criticism where there's no actual context. I accept it though trying not to make art for art!

What do you think about classical art?

GN: I visited France, Spain and Italy, live in Greece always around classical and neo-classical art. It's part of my life. It's essential to explore it, taste it if you like, go beyond it...

Why you choosed Industrial Desing?

GN: Industrial Design was chosen apart from economical reasons as a way to accept Art and Design through modern means which translate in my opinion modern life. Speed, I think, is the key word which incorporates the new meaning of life. Speed through technology made all things easier at all domains. In a still romantic way I do fine art incorporating speed in a neo-expressionistic way in parallel to a fully industrialized life we - I live. Industrial Design was essential for me to understand life especially in Greece we don't really manufacture a lot. I always use Industrial Design technics in my art like fast movements and sometimes "more" industrial products like spays. I use industrial design products, hardware and software to research, promote and communicate as well.

What particular is in landscapes?

GN: Landscapes present the environment we live in. My landscapes present a partly fantastic, partly natural, sometimes industrial, de-constracted atmosphere through impressionism and expressionism. It's a mixture of elements based in everyday real life images we live in. A blend of darkness and light coming out of my mind. Landscapes are being a research I've been doing about easier expression. They have no limits, are universal, beyond races.

(personal question) Which is your favourite album of Einturzende Neubauten?

GN: "Fünf auf der nach oben offenen Richterskala" is probably my favorite E.N. album. I like Morning Dew cover so much but again I like everything they do!

In your works, do you refer to any kind of iconography?

GN: Definitely, for the time being I'm not abstract all the way, it's obvious. Maybe it's just a different kind of view. I would like to be completely abstract in the future but for the time being I do a research in environmental forms, both nutural and technical. I also start doing research through painting and designing, on human body expression. My goal is to combine both environmental and human forms, then be more abstract!

***

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