Q: Can you tell me about your background? 

I left home in Texas when I was 16 to live with extended family in Wisconsin where I began to write and read extensively. I then moved back to Houston, living just a few blocks from the Menil Collection and Rothko Chapel. I was introduced there to Robert Delford Brown, a performance artist that was friends with Allen Kaprow, among others. This was my first introduction into the art world and confirmed that I wanted to study art formally. 

Q: What was the first artwork you made?

Growing up, I was always drawing but my first attempt at making something substantial was not until I was in my early twenties. I purchased a large canvas and fluorescent acrylic paint and fused a cartoony figure with a text overlay of something I wrote in vinyl letters. The first successful work I made was a performance piece from undergrad that combined a quote from John Cage, music by Amon Tobin, video of passing clouds, and me riding my bicycle on stationary rollers in a sharkskin suit. The relationship of text and image has always been present, beginning in sketchbooks in high school. 

Q: What is most important to you:  The Process. The final visual outcome. The material? Or something else? 

Spray paint is a very compelling medium. I respond to its immediacy, directness and my inability to control it. I’m not a graffiti artist but appreciate graffiti and its history and find inspiration in some work I find around Albuquerque but feel that what I do is very different. The process is important as is the final visual outcome although I try to leave it relatively opento allow for different conceptual solutions depending on the context of the word or words and feeling within the moment. 

Q: What influences you?

Initially, memories, but sources have become increasingly diaristic over the years. It’s also important for me to have the language that I choose speak to me, my past, painting, the painting process but still be open to allow for rumination and not only be defined by my experience. Books and music are important influences and often words I choose reference book titles or lyrics or song titles that have significance to me but have a life of their own when removed from their original context. My palette is largely influenced from growing up in the 80’s, the professional cycling peloton, running shoes from the 70’s, fashion in general and other artists work, too. 

Q: In my view when one sees a painting, they only see 20%. The 80% is all the hidden parts, clues, and secrets that one has to discover.  How do you see this ,, or am I way off?

This is probably accurate. I mean, the intuitive reasons we ultimately do what we do as artists, when we can choose from so many different media, source materials, and styles is where that 80% probably lies. 

Q: The world and speed of Social media. Living and navigating as an artist within this arena.. How do you see yourself, And how does it affect your work, thoughts, way of living .. Or does it ?

I can easily live in New Mexico and keep tabs on what is happening in NYC, LA, Copehagen(!), and also see what friends are up to, where they are showing, keeping up with their successes. I’m not sure what the impact of our collective dependence on social media is having on society but trust it’s not that great. It can be a drag if you’re not feeling confident in yourself or your practice and stuck in this mode of comparing yourself to others. I like the quote from Roosevelt that “comparison is the thief of joy.” Like all good things, moderation is key. But it’s a valuable tool providing ways to get work seen and discovered. Having said this, like many artists I’m still trying to figure out my relationship to it. 

Q: Is it important for an artist to have a gallery and or a presence on social media these days?

It’s important if the artist thinks it is. Personally, I’ve really benefitted from the generous support of galleries and these relationships have become important to me. A presence on social media could lead to galleries being introduced to one’s work but a lot of incredible artists still have relatively small audiences on social media. It still comes down to the strength and relevance of the work. 

Q: Some people have the opinion that all contemporary art looks more or less the same these days. Some say it often is designed to look pretty…. Care to comment?

It seems to me there’s more variety in contemporary art then ever. To dismiss it all as “pretty” seems an injustice. In one gallery you might see incredibly strong work that is ugly, challenging, disturbing and the gallery next door might show work that is pretty and champions lightness.  I happen to like pretty, intelligent paintings. And what makes a work intelligent is that it is most likely not designed to look this way, rather, it’s a result of how the artist sees and experiences the world around them. How do we make sense of this life? I like painting that has conceptual meat on the bone but the bone itself has nutrition, too. There’s so much varied work being made concurrently it seems difficult to lump all contemporary art into one visual stratum.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

I’ve just finished up a series of Endless Summer paintings that for me were about the pandemic, memory, and addiction. I’m currently working on a series of On Any Sundaypaintings (both The Endless Summer and On Any Sunday are references to Bruce Brown documentaries from the 1960’s that have a personal significance to me) as well as a series ofSuperweek paintings- The Seven Stages of Superweek. I could see all of these paintings together in a future exhibition entitled The Great Escape, another movie that starred Steve McQueen (who was also in On Any Sunday) that also speaks to my escapist painting process/methodology.

The post John Phillip Abbott – Q&A appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Q: Can you tell me about your background?

Well there are quite a few things I could talk about, but let me go with what has shaped me in many ways.
My parents immigrated to France from the Ivory Coast. I was born in Paris and grew up in the suburbs.

That is where it all starts… Why?

From an early age, I understood how to manage two different cultures and navigate this back-and-forth between home and what was the “outside” world at the time—in terms of cultures, languages spoken, movies, music, food, belief systems, history, etc…

And then it obviously didn’t stop there. Because my friends were also French but originally from Algeria, Cameroon, Guadeloupe, Portugal, Romania, and so many more countries. And those friends invited me to their houses, so I met their parents, listened to their music, ate their food, looked at the art they hung on the walls, understood their belief systems, listened to their stories, etc…
That resulted in me being exposed to many things that are not necessarily taught at school. I witnessed different ways of being from one house to the other, but even as a kid I could acknowledge that there were so many clear similarities.

At a young age you don’t necessarily realize it, but as an adult I can say being exposed to so much culture is a beautiful thing. You learn how to accept and appreciate differences. This is a gift, this is my background.

Q: What was the first artwork you made?

My first artwork didn’t have a title, but a few friends and I used to call it “Pandemonium” simply because I wrote it on the canvas. This word was a great representation of where I was in my life at the time, turning my back on everything I knew best. In many ways, destroying it all to build it back up—starting this new chapter of my life based on passion and [creativity?], certainly no facts.

This painting used to frustrate me so much though, because it was my favorite, and the favorite of whoever came into my studio for a year, even after I made many more artworks. Looking back, I am not talking about if it was a good or bad painting, but we all connected to the fact that it was visually and energetically different and [uninhibited?]—because I had no technique, I was free in the execution and had no clear understanding of what making art is, I was just driven by the desire to create.
I mean you live, watch, and learn. Creatively you start to take things here and there, think too technically, and want to please people you’ve never even met.  I got to the point where I realized, if I want to fulfil my definition of what an artist is,  I must put aside all I had learned to create works which were my own—visually, technically, and emotionally

Q: What is most important to you:  The Process. The final visual outcome. The material? Or something else?

Well, I believe these elements are all equally important. Without being too literal, it is like water, food, and air to the human body and what we need to live.
I attach the process to our past experiences, the material to our present, and visual outcome represents the future.
For example, an architect needs to take into consideration the soil (the past), in order to build the foundation (present), so that he can see the building come to life (the future).
Without the acknowledgment of one of those three elements, the architect won’t stand a chance—same with paintings.

Q: What influences you

Everything influences me—shout out to the internet and being a millennial. Tell me a thing we couldn’t be exposed to. And I enjoy taking it all in.
But more specifically, I’m fascinated by people, our nature, our energies, our history, our resilience, our dreams, our desires, etc…  Sometimes I feel like the world is a big soap opera on repeat from one generation to another, and I am like, when are we ever going to learn?

Even though I use abstraction to express myself, figuration and clear facts are a primary essence of my work.

Q: In my view when one sees a painting, they only see 20%. The 80% is all the hidden parts, clues, and secrets that one has to discover.  How do you see this ,, and am I way off?

I agree with you—but you and I can be looking at the same artwork and both be digging into this 80% you’re talking about, and both come out with two completely different understandings or feelings about it—and that’s also ok. And what matters to one might not matter to another. It’s important to accept that. This is freedom…
Talking about freedom, I like this sentence from Nina Simone: “Freedom is the absence of fear.” I might be off the question, but who cares, I like the sentence. It’s beautiful, and so accurate. Just wanted to throw it into the mix.
Anyway, most of the time you are looking at an artwork and you have an idea of where it started and where it finished, and there is an invisible path that you can sometimes see or sometimes just feel.
They say every road led to Rome, right? Well I try my best to make it impossible for you to find Rome. I want my work to constantly stay in a certain state of mystery and wonder so that it’s always in movement at least in our minds.

Q: The world and speed of Social media. Living and navigating as an artist within this arena.. How do you see yourself, And how does it affect your work, thoughts, way of living. Or does it?

For my personal life, not really, I couldn’t care less about it. I have never been the type to use social media to expose my private life. But it’s an amazing professional tool, and also tremendously dangerous. Again, I view it only as a professional tool.

Quoting Denzel Washington: “Ultimately, we have always wanted to be liked. What we do with social media is no different than what we used to do before it, only now that feeling is magnified. And some of us will do anything to be liked.”
This feeling of wanting to be liked for some people is on steroids nowadays. Social media taps into our primal need to connect, share, and gossip, and that’s why those platforms are successful businesses.

In terms of being an artist—and this is what I would say—the sword has two edges. One can build and one can destroy. What makes the difference is to ask ourselves first of all: where am I in my own creative development? It’s different when you are in search of your identity as an artist and figuring out the type of work you want to bring into the world and when you’ve already found what that thing is.

It can be destructive to your own creative process, and mental health, if you are exposing too much too early because you are left with people’s opinions and criticism. And criticism is necessary, but not by 20 million people you’ve never met or never will meet. But then when you know that what you are creating is something you can stand proudly next to, regardless of any type of comments, with no doubt, well businesswise social media can be very profitable to you because ultimately it means exposure.
Exposure is what an artist needs, and it’s free with social media. Some of that power can be held in our hands, without having to wait for so-and-so to show our work.

Q: Is it important for an artist to have a gallery these days?

First of all, it depends on what type of artist you want to be because there are many different ways of being an artist, even more nowadays. What’s important to me might not be important for someone else.
But I say yes, it is important. A gallerist and an artist have a specific relationship. A gallery can convey your message to a certain audience, help you get into certain places that you might not be able to get into on your own. This relationship works well for both parties in my view.

Q: Some people have the opinion that all contemporary art looks more or less the same these days. Some say it often is designed to look pretty…. Care to comment?

I would start the conversation with what the Frenchman Antoine Lavoisier said: “Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed.” Everyone is inspired by something or someone.  And I leave it there.

One of the many things that matters to me when I look at someone’s artwork is the degree of influence they are taking from someone else in what they make, and if I can easily spot it or not—the less I can, the more their work will look personal, unique, and intimate.

That being said, it’s true: many people are doing the same things. They see other artists being successful for something, so they make something similar. People want success.

On the path to originality and success, you can’t escape pain and suffering. But most people don’t want to go through that because they see a different way of life on social media for example—coming back to your question from earlier—and want that for themselves. I don’t think there is any shortcut for success, it’s not something given, it is earned.

Every artist should listen to the video on YouTube called, “James Baldwin – The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity.”

Q: Many view a show as successful if it sells out. Care to comment,,, And how do feel about the term: Placing a work compared to Selling it.

No, I don’t care to comment. l leave that conversation to the dealers and they can they can discuss true collectors and flippers.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

I have an upcoming group show in LA in July, with the gallery called The Pit. I like the title of it: “Wild Frontiers.”  I had a glimpse of who I’ll be exhibiting with, and I’m excited.

Link to artist page >> Brooklin A. Soumahoro

Link to Solo Show at SundayS Gallery Copenhagen with Brooklin A. Soumahoro 

The post Q&A with Brooklin A. Soumahoro appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

For the Duo Show at SundayS Gallery Dec. 11 – 2020 .  “Painters of the San Gabriel Mountains”

Jayme Burtis, Untitled, 2020

Q: Tell me about your background?

Jayme: I was raised by a pack of wolves (bikers, gangsters and territorial surf thugs) on the streets of Venice / CA from the 70s through the 90s.

André: I GREW UP IN STUTTGART, SOUTHWEST GERMANY, NEAR A US-MILITARY BASE.

Q: How did you two meet?

Jayme: As Brothers, Fathers and Mountain Men.

A: WE MET IN ALTADENA, CALIFORNIA IN 2018. WE HAVE BEEN CONFRONTED THERE WITH A MOUNTAIN RANGE CALLED »SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS« SINCE THEN.

Q: Jayme, I know you like to Skateboard. André, how’s your skateboarding, what’s your favorite trick?

Jayme: Skateboarding represented a form of freedom as a kid. No tricks for me, just good reliable transportation.

André: I HAVE NEVER TRIED TO SKATEBOARD. I AM TOO SHY.

Q: What was the first artwork you made?

André: MY FIRST PAINTING IN OIL I MADE IN 1994. IN HAMBURG, IN A HOSPITAL WHERE I HAD TO WORK AS A CIVIL SERVANT INSTEAD OF GOING TO THE BUNDESWEHR.

Jayme: I can remember when I was about 10 years old I did a mural at school with paint brushes. It was a brick wall with falling bricks to reveal a beach with waves and palm trees.

Jayme Burtis in his studio, Altadena, California, 2020

Q: André, I am interested to know if you are also into graffiti?

André: I HAVE NEVER TRIED IT. I ALWAYS LOOKED AT IT WHEREVER I SAW IT AND I WAS ALWAYS WONDERING WHAT IT IS.

Q: Have you done works together? If so, where and can I see them?

André: WE DID A COLLABORATIVE WORK ONCE ON A PIECE OF PAPER. IT’S GREAT, IT WILL BE IN OUR SHOW IN COPENHAGEN. BUT I CONSIDER ALL OUR WORKS AS »TOGETHER«. BECAUSE, WHAT IS IT, »WORK«? THE WORK, TO ME, IS WAY BEYOND A WORK OF ART. WE SHARE, LEARN AND INSPIRE HOW TO DO EVERYTHING WE DO IN FAVOR OF »THE WORK«.

Jayme: Yes, the process and results are equal, so it made sense to do this together.

Q: Instagram … Good, bad, waste of time or totally necessary today as an artist or gallerist?

André: I LIKE MY OWN BLOG THERE. NOW IT ´S DELETED.

Jayme: For me, I approach Instagram with only a view of celebrating the past, present and future. Beyond this, it can be tricky.

Q: The world and speed of social media … Living as an artist within this arena, how do you see yourself? Does it affect your work and way of living?

Jayme: It doesn’t at all. The work is truth and there is no truth in social media.

André: IT DOESN’T. IF YOU SERVE »THE WORK«, THERE IS NO AFFECTION AND THERE WILL NEVER BE, BECAUSE YOU WILL BE READY TO RESIST ALWAYS AND FOREVER.

Q: There seems to be a trend toward Instagram and informational overload. What’s your take on this? How do you respond to it? Where do you think this will end up?

Jayme: It’s all based in how you respond to life. I can only say for me that I celebrate and rejoice what unfolds each day. So that is how it affects me.

André: WE CAN ONLY RESIST AND FOLLOW »THE WORK« INSTEAD AND WE CAN CHERISH THE LAND THAT WE WERE GIVEN AND WALK UPON IT, AMERICA, THE BEAUTIFUL.

What influences you?

André: THE MAIN INFLUENCE IS THE SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS.

Jayme: 100 % THE SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS and the circle of true Brothers I am surrounded by!!!

Q: Can you let us in on some of your future projects?

Jayme: Really looking forward to our show with you and sharing the PSGM experience.

André: WE THINK IT’S GOOD TO MAKE SHOWS AND BRING THE WORK TO THE PEOPLE.

The post Q&A André Butzer & Jayme Burtis appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Q: Can you tell me about your background?

A: I was born and raised in Kaunas, Lithuania. My hometown is famous for its impressive and extensive modernist architecture which was built during The Interwar Period, between 1919 and 1939 when Kaunas became the temporary capital of the restored Lithuanian state. It was sometimes referred to as “Little Paris” after the avant-gardist French Art Déco and even “Little Boston,” after American Art Deco. This environment definitely informed my earliest aesthetic interests.

I attended Kaunas High School of Art where they offered extra art history and art classes in addition to the regular subjects. After that I studied within the Painting department at Vilnius Academy of Art, switching to Sculpture after two years. During this time, I attended Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam on an exchange semester. After graduating in 2017, I began a two year residency at De Ateliers in Amsterdam where I have remained living since finishing there in 2019.

Q: What was the first artwork you made?

A:  The first work I can remember making was a photograph of a lightbulb hanging out of a wall on a long wire, taken in 2007. I rotated the image, so that the lightbulb defied gravity. This photograph was then exhibited in a group show in Mielno, Poland. Analogue photography was the medium I was first attracted to working with, with drawing coming in close second. To this day, the combination of photography and drawing remains the main core of my practice.

Q: What is more important to you: The Process. The final visual outcome. The material? Or something else? 

A: I don’t like to think about my process of working as having a hierarchy because each step is equally important to me. The final work is often the first thing I think about in fact, I visualise an imaginary outcome on a blank canvas, eventually arriving at it through painterly actions. I approach painting as a form of documentary so the research process, consisting of the analysis of stories and records is as significant as the end result.

As well as painting, I am simultaneously writing, reading, archiving, working with digital image-making programs, drawing on a digital drawing tablet, taking pictures and so on. It is this chain of actions and the micro-achievements in these different mediums that result in a finished work. Despite precise preparation and having had a prior idea of the outcome, I still consider my painting practice process-based – I am not strict about following any rules while painting. If accidents happen, I embrace them as it’s more likely that they enrich the visual vocabulary rather than intervene. I like that through layering, time and growth is evident – if you wipe some layers off, you find past actions, like in a cross-section of geological time.

Q: The world and speed of Social media. Living as an artist within this arena.. How do you see yourself, And how does affect your work, way of living .. Or does it ? 

A: Personally, I keep a healthy distance from social media. I have deleted all of my accounts a few times in my life for periods of 1 to 2 years. It feels like a small sacrifice compared to how much attention I can give to real life and my productivity. There are so many decisions to make once you are back on social media, and I frequently feel that decision fatigue. There is such an overwhelmingly enormous amount of data that is simply impossible to comprehend. Social media raises so many questions for me, I have no doubt that we are all profoundly affected by it. I do not want to lose my private life, but as an artist it is also a space where my work gains visibility.

I can’t help but also look at it from an economical perspective where everybody’s time spent clicking and watching becomes real currency, where every individual or brand’s posts constitutes both their private and public identities. The performative act of capturing and posting photos generates the need for reaction and validation which happens through other people. It creates a lot of problems, particularly the deterioration of the quality of communication between people. Social media shapes the way the art world operates as well. It feels like the changes are happening very fast now. Due to an increasing focus on online viewing rooms, we perceive artworks differently and documentation has become as important as the work itself.

Q: I read this quote online.. would love to hear more about your ideas in this sense..  “In times of Instagram and informational overload, I feel the need to clarify the complexity and diversity of imagery today. The visual world is so full of everything, so unstable and unpredictable. My paintings should reflect that condition.”

A: My work responds to the informational and visual overload and circulation of imagery, especially in cyberspace. Through painting I take it to a much slower, analogue realm to magnify and clarify the details that we so often miss in the mass of digital consumption. The condition I mentioned in the quote is the shift in perception of images as they become a pure sign-exchange. An image works merely as a communication unit and it is very distinct to verbal interpretation.

This is so apparent in advertising, brands are constantly adapting to the changing world, to stay desirable. Images become more desirable than the products themselves. Trend forecasting platforms predict what is the next wave in the visual field, what people will be interested in the near future as well as which colours will dominate. All this is informed by political scenarios and movements, technological advancements and so on.

I am interested in creating a complex representation of reality which is itself an unsolvable puzzle. I do not believe in originality or a singular narrative. Through collaging digital and physical matter together, I am emphasising the culture of snippets, clicks, bits, glitches, screenshots, numbers of opened windows, various screens, perception of scale and matter and it’s contradictions.

Q: What influences you?

A: I am influenced by material human collections of knowledge and public/private archives around the world. Archives and the loss of their materiality has been a huge interest of mine for years. The source material I consistently have around me includes medical imagery, scientific diagrams and nano photography, maps, scanography, xerox, encyclopaedias.

Q: Some people have the opinion that all contemporary art looks the same these days… Care to comment?

A: If there are any visual tendencies, it is likely to be triggered by something outside of contemporary art. Instead of these generalisations, I find it more interesting to think about how artists are affected by politics, economy, technological advancement, mass production, capitalism, overconsumption, climate change and so on.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

A: In the winter I spent two months on a research residency at Rupert in Vilnius, Lithuania. I collected material about an amateur archivist who documents the remains of the Soviet period in Lithuania, mostly through the lens of transport vehicles and analogue devices. My semi-anthropological notes about his archive and my experience from a visit to the museum in his house, where he has frozen time in 1982 has informed my upcoming series of works.

Link to artist page >>

Photo Credit : Franz Mueller Schmidt

The post Q&A Gabrielė Adomaitytė appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Q: Can you tell me about your background?

A: I was born in Heidelberg, a small city on the river Neckar in the southwest of Germany. I left Heidelberg after I graduated from school.

Q: What was the first artwork you made?

A: What I remember was a small drawing of a cocktail glass and a bottle. My parents must still have it in a drawer.

Q: What is more important to you: The Process. Ideas, The final visual outcome. The material? Or something else?

A: All together lead to a result, which is judged. Then the question arises whether the path was the right one. In the end it’s all about survival.

Q: The world and speed of Social media. Living as an artist within this arena.. How do you see yourself, And how does affect your work, way of living .. Or does it ?

A: I keep the pictures and myself away from it as much as I can. Social media has undergone a transformation from its beginnings til today. And it will always change. Many examples have shown that you cannot conquer social media. It only makes the world smaller.

Q: It seems like there is trend towards. Instagram and informational overload how do you see this,, and do you respond.. use it.. and if so.. where do you see this ending up.

A: One must never underestimate the power of images. You can’t really avoid all this, so you should turn on your own filter and focus.

Q: I have read this text about your work: The concealing part ,, Could you tell me more about it ?

A: In these paintings the speed of the information flow is reduced, it is decelerated. This creates a sensitization for the reception of a motif.
In previous paintings, I have resorted to a collection of photographs to find a motif. I have discarded this way of working since, painting habits always change.

Q: I have read the following.. And would love to hear more about the reduced part, and how this began. “Adrian Altintas shows very, very, very, no but: very, reduced paintings”

A: The reduction is a circumstance that occurred over the course of time of doing paintings. The reduction is a process instead of a pre-considered effect.

Q: What influences you?

A: Things I don’t understand. We all have a different reality depending on how we look at things, how we perceive them and how we can continue to talk about them.

Q: Some people have the opinion that all contemporary art looks the same these days… Care to comment

A: I dont think that everything looks the same, but many look as if they are having to do with fear, but unfortunately they are not dealing with it.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

A: I’m currently working on some new Maquettas and their question/habit of scale, framing and dependency.

photo credit : Roman Maerz

The post Q&A Adrian Altintas appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Q: Can you tell me about your background? 

I was born in Hull in the North Of England into a loving working class family. I was super close to my Mother.

I was not really exposed to any art growing up. I was however installed with an inner confidence that I could be or do what ever I wanted to. Education and School etc. was not forced on me. I loved school but not for learning reasons. I left School with no qualifications and for a job straight away in a Factory making Caravans.

Q: What was the first artwork you made?

At School I guess was the first pieces I made. Designing Football kits etc. But as an actual work. When I was living in New York. I started making collages from cutouts and adding text.

Q: What is more important to you:  The Process. Ideas, The final visual outcome. The material? Or something else? 

I would have to say… the process and the visual outcome are pretty important to me… Also the destruction of a work. I destroy much of what I do. The process of destroying a work is a sensation that is hard to describe. Especially if it’s a work I liked.

It’s a similar process to life and death really. I recently read The Snowman to my son. When we got to the end it dawned on me .. wow,  the Snowman dies.. abandoning the child.  I never have really thought about it in that way growing up as I watched it. It made me think.. When is a good time to explain to a 3 year I do about death?

My work is the same. It has a shelf life with me. Often the debris of destroyed works makes It’s way into other sculptural works.

Sometimes I destroy them simply because i can. It’s the one thing in my life I feel I have 100% control of.

Q: The world and speed of Social media. Living as an artist within this arena.. How do you see yourself, And how does affect your work, way of living .. Or does it ?

I use Social media (Instagram) as a medium in which to work. Of course I show work / process etc. but for me it is a medium. I have made a book and plan on making another one from comments about my work after destroying the work.
Primarily A book of comments about a work that no longer exists. It does however live on online and in my memory yet the physical object lives on as a book.

It’s a really interesting place for me to monitor behaviour / mental health / opinions in the art world. It’s super fascinating. The book itself is actually quite dark in places. But a “comments” section naturally is a place for comments.. Give your opinion.

I realise Instagram will not be around forever. It’s a no brainer for me to use it as a conceptual tool.

Q: It seems like there is trend towards. Instagram and informational overload how do you see this,, and do you respond.. use it.. and if so.. where do you see this ending up.

I have a love hate relationship with it. If I’m not working with it. I find social media a very unhealthy place. I would much rather read a book. I feel it’s destroying society and human interactions are on a serious decline. My sons will not be exposed to phones / social media for a long time. Of course we need it and my career has gained much from it. But I see it as a negative in general for the human race.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

A solo with Annka Kultys in London. A group show at L21 in Palma who are also showing some work of mine at ARCO Madrid. And a solo with Sunday’s CPH that’s it for this year.

The post Q&A Richie Culver appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

What’s your background?
I’m a trained gymnast. Thus, my greatest pleasures have always come from empty spaces, floor exercises, beams, and high bars. And even today in my sculpture, I’m rapt away by physical experiences, run-ups, jumps, full stands, the balance between expansion and concentration.

What was the first work of art you’ve ever made?
Funny, you’re asking, just recently, I was browsing an old family album and, to all appearances, I was seven, or rather six, and loved to cut out paper-furniture. My playroom was utterly crammed with it.

Do you remember the particular moment or event when you decided to become an artist?
I can’t really say. I’ve always been curious and I have always been building stuff. Actually, it was never a question to me of doing anything else.

What are your influences?
As I crave for distance, I travel a lot and read a lot and look at a lot of other different things I did not know before. Be it literature, music, or architecture, I adore spatial relations.

Can you describe your process or your practice?
First there were lines and found materials with a gestalt-like appearance. These ›figures‹ formed ensembles and consequently vivid relations throughout their surroundings always involving us. Eventually, these linear constructs turned into bold planar bodies. Anyhow, the interactions of colour and the spatial relationships between space, the work itself and the beholders still form the core of my practice.

What’s the most important aspect of your work?
Without context one has no stance. It’s not just about physics, ethical questions are equally important. How is it even possible to come together? How to live together? Every work of art embodies a sense of place or position so as to guide us.

Do you have certain routines or daily rituals?
It’s all interrelated … my work is my life and my life is my work.

What is it with the different shapes and forms of your works?
Any given location is a decisive factor, a minimal change in angle changes everything. In the 1960s, when Bruce Nauman paced out his studio along precise rectangles, it was certainly a physical experience but also a profound affirmation of his own existence, and in doing so of ours, too.

And what does the future hold?
Quite some surprises, I’d hope – for you but for me as well. All remains the same and, at the same time, constantly changes.

The post Q&A Madeleine Boschan appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

I was born in a small town close to the Baltic Sea in Germany. Later on, my parents and I moved to an even smaller village on the outskirts of the small town. I have 8 siblings and my father is a police sergeant. So, growing up in this village made me restless for something different, something more exciting…. My closest option was the city Schwerin where I instinctively began to make contact with people working in the theatre and art scene. I worked in the theatre which led me to a Studio Collective where I had my first my first experiences of the art world. After a gap year of adventure and discovery in South Africa I returned to Germany and took on random jobs as cashier, working in copy shop, moving from city to city until eventually landing in Leipzig… constantly exploring and looking……. This was when I made the decision to study Art in Munich.

Q: Do you remember the first artwork you made, and can you tell me about it?
 
No, not really. I remember finding some old sketches of my fathers in the attic. I remember they had figures that fascinated me. I became obsessed with reproducing these drawings and I scribbled and practiced on anysurface I could find. I wouldn’t say these were artworks but maybe there is defiantly anessence of that obsessive mark making still present in my work today.

Q: Was there a particular moment or event where you decided to become an artist?

It was when I began to work in the Studio Collective in Schwerin. I was surrounded by such colourful characters and I wanted to be one of them. I was spending more time within the studio than at school. That made me realize that I wanted to become an artist.

Q: What influences you? And are there any special artists that you feel inspired by?

I think I am most influenced by the rhythms and cycles of daily life and the interactions with those around me. These banal habits and decisions that consume our daily reality become ingrained in the philosophical explorations of my work. I’m an avid listener of stories and enjoy hearing how others mange to structure their lives into their own neat reality. This inspires me. Accomplished artists whom are respect are many; to list a few: On Kawara, Christian Boltanski, Roman Opalka, Carl Andre, Blinky Palermo and Sigmar Polke. They share a common fascination with order and pattern: some visual, others more conceptual, but each in their own way which have helpedme finding my own pattern.

Q: The Idea/concept surrounding your work, can you tell us more?
 
My work usually starts with looking for some kind of time-related concept. I am really interested in topics that pertain to help us structure our lives or more specifically, how we manage our day-to-day moments and measure time. I have a secret love for diagrams, statistics, analyses, data and all the traces of our chaotic “footprints” we leave behind.

Q: Can you tell me more about the process in your works?
 
Generally, I start by preparing the canvas with special acrylic layers and rabbit skin glue to achieve an elastic and durable dark foundation. Then I apply tape to the surface, measure and cut every string to the right length. Then I work into this with transparent layers, creating clear edges. The final step is to paint in oil on the last two to four layers, which creates a subtle depth and also serves as a pleasant contrast. Mostly my work seems monotone but the shades of white and black are build up by using various colours. My signature colour is called “Fleischfarbe” (flesh colour), which stands in relation to these starkly contrasted shades of white and black.

Q: What is most important to you regarding your work?
 
The conceptual framework before adding the oil paint to my work is always my starting point. The more I work on the surface the more it makes me feel like I systematically breakdown the structure and ultimately all there is left is just the paint. Every layer and every mark need to resonate with me. I have to feel it. If I don’t, I can’t bring the painting to life. The different stages in the process integrates into the whole.

The viewer may only see the end result but the process and the experience of casting off these lost layers to build and rebuild the surface contains the whole story of the piece.

Q: Can you tell me more about your routines and rituals in your daily practice?
 
I would love to say that I have a structured life with clear routines and diagrams and schedules, but I don’t. … I get up when I do, I drink my coffee and set myself the challenge to get through the everyday tasks as quickly as possible, so I can spend as much time in the studio as possible.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?
 
I will be working on new work for an upcoming exhibition in Munich. I am exploring a new idea and I am really looking forward to see how it works

Link to Sunday-S Feature with Frank Moll

The post Q&A With Frank Moll appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Q: Tell me about your background?

Cool, so I was born in Albany ,Ga. From there I moved to Atlanta with my mom when I was about 3 years old. I was originally interested in fashion design before painting and created a few brands that had minor success. In the long run it became too stressful to pursue fashion head on  so I gravitated towards painting and never looked back. Somewhere down the line I’d like to revisit fashion design as it is still a passion of mine.

Q: Do you remember the first artwork you made, and can you tell me about it?

It’s hard to categorize my first work created. I will say the first piece that made me feel like painting  was what I wanted to dedicate my life to was “A Georgia Boy’s Lucid Dream”. It was the first work of art  where I felt I was being completely honest with myself. This is the piece where I realized how I’d  like to approach creating art for the rest of my life.

Q: Was there a particular moment or event where you decided to become an artist?

There was a moment during undergrad right after I had given up fashion design where I was conflicted in which direction I would like to take my life. I plotted on changing my major to something involving Computer Science for job security but I felt it would be too much of a cop out. My entire life I’ve been against the grain and I couldn’t see myself becoming a part of the monotonous lifestyle that comes with that. Being an artist is free. Nothing is guaranteed but I do believe hard work and perseverance will reward you in the end. So here I am with no regrets pursuing my dream.

Q: What influences you? And are there any special artists that you feel inspired by?

My work is influenced purely on my life and experiences. Taking where I’ve been and cross examining these situations with ideals/concepts that have been historically pondered upon sway how I approach a new work of art. As for artists that influence me I’d have to say? I’d have to say the work of the artists involved in the Surrealist and Dada movements is where it starts for me. Those guys didn’t give a fuck but with good reason. Viewing their work showed me there were no boundaries in creation. Beauty can not be defined as it is only an interpretation. After being introduced to their work I understood how limitless creating art can be.

Q: Can you tell me more about the process in your works?

My process is pretty simple. I’ll start with either nailing a new canvas to the wall or laying it on the floor. Sometimes there is a goal in mind but often not for visual completion but a message to convey or a question to answer. Pieces can take 4-6 months or 3 minutes. When I feel there is nothing else to say it can be deemed complete.

Q: What is most important to you regarding your work?

To influence coming generations to continue to pursue art as a means of education, entertainment, and career choice. Growing up I had no idea what being an artist truly meant. I see now not only the importance of the art but also the artist himself. Which is extremely important to human experience and should not be forgotten.

Q: Can you tell me more about your routines and rituals in your daily practice?

Well my daily ritual starts with a couple hits of a joint and a few sips of water. As it pertains to my practice I would say making art isn’t something I do everyday. I like to work when influenced. There is no rush to  complete a work of art. I believe the best work is done when it flows naturally. The last thing I want for my practice is for it to feel like there is a deadline.

Q: It seems like you never stretch the canvas on a stretcher, how and why did this come to life?

Yes, the reason why my canvases are not stretched is simply because I was never able to afford it. Also storage for such large works begins to get pretty complicated. I thought about stretching them since things have become more affordable but there’s a rawness in the unstrecthed work that I would like to keep. In my next presentation you will see them displayed in a new way but I don’t want to spoil the surprise.

Q: Can you tell us more about the forms and “symbols” in your works?

The only forms and symbols that are consistent across my aesthetic are the use of 7’s and 6’s. These numbers are signifiers of the duality of man. In many of my works I call to this theory to question why we are the way we are as human beings. All other forms and organic to each piece. Often iterations of actual objects like trees or the Sun. My work is a preservation of a moment in time. Using a combination of automatic drawing with these other symbols gives life to what you see on canvas.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

I’ve been very interested in expanding on sculpture pieces. I will definitely continue to paint but be on the look out for more sculptural works in the near future.

Link to Feature at Sunday S Gallery >>

The post Q&A With Jaymerson Payton appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Q: Tell me about your background?
I was born and raised in the Ruhr area. My mother’s parents ran a pub in Dortmund. On my father’s side, my family is rooted in the coal and steel industry. While my grandfather still worked the coal seams underground, his son preferred the offce of a steel company. Both of them were pigeon breeders, of course. After school, I, too, worked for Thyssen-Krupp in the fnishing shop, but when my face started to resemble an eighty year old’s, I decided to choose the side of the cooks.

Q: Do you remember the frst artwork you made, and can you tell me about it?

Following scenario: a cadmium red-and-white traffc cone stands on a green plane in front of a prussian blue background, on which the perfect amount of white specks is dispersed. No colour had mixed with the other, and yet this large format, pastose oil painting had an extremely painterly gesture. I sat in my studio for weeks and did nothing else but look at it.

Q: Was there a particular moment or event where you decided to become an artist?

I was seventeen years old and read the love letters between Beckmann and Quappi.

Q: What infuences you? And are there any special artists that you feel inspired by?

Just before I started studying Fine Arts, I fnished reading the Scandinavian Misanthropy by Matias Faldbakken. Back then I liked how the characters in his trilogy dished out in every imaginable direction, that they did not respect any authority. Initially though, I couldn’t make much out of his visual works, that is, until I realised that they transported the attitude that seemed so very much without alternative to me much more radically and at the same time with much more subtlety. Today, I feel similarly when I move through the Ruhr area by train: Where I, as a teenager, would initially and primarily recognise the subcultural signifers, they are now only one part of the whole thing for me. Now I understand better how the material yet to be found comes to its expression.

Q: The Idea/concept surrounding your work, can you tell us more?

It’s the same old story, if you know somebody who’s pregnant, you see pregnant women everywhere, cognitive bias, something like that. My very own cognitive bias (that – as I’ve implied – had to be nurtured by the qualities of a Black Country) asks again and again for the supposedly banal, imperfect. Oh, and then there are those 2000 years of occidental art history. One shouldn’t forget that, that is: high and low, the MoMA as well as the corner kiosk. My work is a hydra, more Baroque than Minimal.

Q: Can you tell me more about the process in your works?

For my current works I am using plastic plaques that I prime with car paint. Then the frst painterly process takes effect. I follow that until the material is eviscerated. For me, the single plaques need to already work in their wholeness as a dystopian visual world. Only when every one of them has gained its entitlement I start to further destroy them. In that way my paintings become venues in which I go on a rampage until the necessary forms materialise. In this, the methods of sampling and re-arrangement mark the cornerstones of those resonating cavities I want to shout into.

Q: What is most important to you regarding your work?

In a way every work demands its own archaeology. A number of layers of plastic and colour are hidden in the frontal view, they can only be seen at the edges, just as if one were watching the transver- se section of a sediment. And it’s exactly this sediment in which the narratives are encased, in same way in which mineral oil always tells something about the seismosaurus, or the coal about the psilo- phytopsida. Apart from that it’s of course also about the fact that each work takes on its one topography, that it can make eye contact and look back onto the viewer. On top of the sediments must lie a self-conscious confdence.

Q: Can you tell me more about your routines and rituals in your daily practice?

I’m quite a square and totally love routine procedures. Getting up at six a.m., drinking a coffee at the kiosk, taking the dog out for a shit, buying fowers and chocolates for the wife, morning shift, evening shift, feierabend beer. That’s all a pretty good compensation for the fact that the acts of failing and relinquishing control at the spray gun are pivotal elements of my work.

Q: The use of construction materials such as corrugated polyester, how and why did this to life?

Well, the material always participates. Linen, for god’s sake. So I looked for something that is less charged, where another background becomes relevant. Of course this is about fction/non-fction, about fnding a language whose grammar isn’t completely spoiled yet and out of which a distance can be created, a distance to that what it’s continually about, that they like to call a poetical-aesthetical perception. This broad feld, on which the duel is eventually never fought, should be left neither to the German Institute for Standardization nor to those who let it smooth their brushes.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

The same thing we do every night, …

Read more about Nils Bleibtreu at Sunday-S

The post Q&A With Nils Bleibtreu appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Q: Tell me about your background?

I grew up in a small village in the southern black forest close to the border to Switzerland.

In my childhood I spent most of the time building huts and dams in the woods. It was great and totally felt free, we could go out into nature and spend the whole day there coming home in the evening and always had a lot of exciting stories which we experienced.

Q: Do you remember the first artwork you made, and can you tell me about it?

As a child and also as a teenager I used to draw a lot. I was just scribbling and sketching all the time, hah more or less the same thing I´m doing now. I can’t really remember the first work of art I made, but I do remember the first work of art I consciously saw. That was `Der Lauf der Dinge` from the Swiss Artist Duo Fischli und Weiss. Because of the geographical closeness to Switzerland, we could get some Swiss TV programs through our antenna. I switched on TV on a Saturday morning, I must have been 8-9 years old, I zapped into a regional Swiss program, where they played the full version of the domino-like work of the artists. I was totally fascinated and confused at the same time, but it felt great that someone made such a big effort to create something which was somehow nonsense or a childlike game.

Q: Was there a particular moment or event where you decided to become an artist? 

It was not a certain moment, it was rather that it became serious over time. Of course having a studio and being able to work was an important moment in this chain. But it came more by chance. I wasn’t even on the lookout. A now very good friend of mine I was working with, had a place in his studio and he knew back than that I was painting in my super small apartment. So he offered me the place and I joined. From there on I began to paint with oil and just took it more serious and worked on my paintings nearly on a daily basis.

Q: What influences you? And are there any special artists that you feel inspired by? 

I try to let everything into the work. I feel like everything can have an influence whether its something to eat, a plant that I see, or a song that I hear. I don’t have anything particularly as source material. When I start with my drawings, I just make a certain mark, and then the first mark needs another and from there on it’s really process based. I try to come to a state of mind where in the end it feels like the composition has been done by itself, or by someone else.

Therefore I think all things I see and feel make it into the work without me wanting to bring them into it consciously. The concept of the hermeneutic compass is something I’m thinking about when it comes to influences. It says that everything you experience changes your perception and therefore your personality and you constantly change and grow with the things you experience and they get part of the circle.

I can see a similarity in my work, the sketch Im doing today can only be done like it is today, it would have been totally different yesterday or will be tomorrow. Therefore I think my work is personal.

I would go with Klee, Poliakoff, De Kooning, Klapheck.

Q: Can you tell me more about the process in your works?

I start with a gesture in the drawing, like I explained above. I then improve the drawings until they feel like everything is said, on a good day the marks just need new friends and at some point it feels   no more is needed. At some point there is a composition I feel satisfied with. This process was done mostly computer based. Then I bring the sketch on canvas, which never works, so that I have to start working on the composition again.

For my last show I skipped the groundwork on computer and started directly on canvas. I think I will go on with this in the next time.

Q: What is most important to you regarding your work?

For myself it is most important to keep the work challenging and evolving. Once something is done and the questions, which are asked by the work are answered, I´m no more interested.  So I try to keep it interesting for myself. When I feel like something gets a method I change things, I don’t want to get stiff, I´m interested in experimenting.
For the viewer I hope my paintings are open. Maybe through the forms, seeming to be close to representation, you think you see something particular, but once you think you find a  certain figure it disappears. The works have certain entries and you can bring your own thoughts into them.

Q: Can you tell me more about your routines and rituals in your daily practice?

I try to arrive early in the studio, but normally I dally around on the way and get excited thinking about what I can make in the studio this day. When arriving, I find myself hanging around on the studio sofa. I feel like a lazy man, looking back after some weeks I often ask myself who did all the work?

Q: The use of computer generated sketches, how and why did this come to life?

Like a lot of things in my work it came by chance. I try to stay open for chances, therefore I don’t believe that it´s random. I did use the computer-generated sketches in the past a lot, but don’t want to be too much dependent of it. Thats why recently I directly started to work on my paintings on canvas without the upstreamed computer progress, like the ones I showed in my last solo in Madrid.

Q:  Can you tell us more about the forms and “symbols” in your works?

Influenced by archaic art forms like Cave Paintings and folk art, I started to grow interest in symbolic forms. I like the idea of a sign, that carries a certain content. In my works its a bit different, since the forms look like they carry or could carry a certain content, but in the end they don’t. Its maybe kind of a ladder into the paintings.

I often don´t know where the forms come from, but it´s a very interesting thing to ask this question to myself. Sometimes when a certain memory of something I´ve seen in my childhood for example comes back I have deja-vu like connections to the work, in other cases it stays cryptically.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

Im excited to work with color again, in the last two years I excluded colors and focused on the line. It feels really liberating to start with colors without any plan and work into a more painterly direction, thats what I´m doing in the studio at the moment.

Besides that I´m experimenting with sculpture. Looking at my works, in which the lines dominate, I often thought of a three-dimensional work shown in 2D. Because the compositions deal with space a lot. So why not bring the forms I created into the room and make them three-dimensional. That´s what got me into sculpture lately.

Link to Solo Exhibition with Wolfgang Voegele in Copenhagen at Sunday-S Gallery

The post Q&A With Wolfgang Voegele appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Q: Tell me about your background?

I grew up in Mülheim, a medium-sized city in the Ruhr Metropolitan Region: a conglomeration of numerous cities strongly marked by the steel and coal industries; a working-class milieu with a large Turkish community. My parents both worked for the post office; and my father’s father was also a postman… I thus descend from a dynasty of postmen… Haha!

Art and culture played no role in my family. I spent most of my time outdoors, hanging out with the gang. I had a lot of friends in the neighbourhood, and I’d ride through the streets every day on my BMX or skateboard. We were very interested in subcultures; skateboarding, punk rock, and Hip Hop had the greatest influence on me. There were many illegal parties and concerts. We were very active, but a lot of things we did to kill time weren’t always kosher. But we were imaginative and had a lot of fun. In the end, however, not all of us were able to use our subversive energies in a constructive way.

Q: Do you remember the first artwork you made, and can you tell me about it?

When I was a child, I had a cassette player, which I used to record my own radio shows and mix ambient noises and sounds from the TV… There was something creative about this. Later on, I found school to be so boring that I distracted myself by drawing in my exercise books. Since I never studied or did any homework, I became quite professional when it came to cheat sheets. I developed my own language using symbols and icons so that I could fit as much information as possible onto the smallest piece of paper.

This reminds me that, as a child, I once nailed mussel meat onto a board about the size of a piece of A4 paper and thought to myself: ‘Hmmm… It kind of looks like art.’

Q: Was there a particular moment or event where you decided to become an artist?

I don’t think there were any key moments. I just kind of slipped into it somehow. I was always making and doing things in order to express myself visually. But to pursue a career as an artist was not a conscious decision from the start. For a very long time, I didn’t even know that you could study art. Before I enrolled in the academy in Düsseldorf, I studied Communication Design with a focus on photography and illustration at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. One of my main motivations for going to school was also to postpone entering the job world. I was never good at dealing with authority and never wanted to carry out trivial tasks for others… And at the time, a lot of things seemed very trivial to me. I experimented a lot during my studies of design and constantly looked for a way to work more autonomously and interdisciplinarily. The logical consequence was to go for a second degree at the Academy of Art.

Q: What influences you?

It’s hard to say. I enjoy observing things that at first glance might seem irrelevant – there’s quite a bit to get out of this.

In my studio, I’m constantly and quite consciously listening to music and enjoy discovering new tracks that convey something special for me.

And, of course, the freedom to lead a self-determined life.

Q: Can you tell me more about the process in your works?

My work develops for most part out of itself. I use various printing processes, whereby I’m not interested in illustrating something particular, but rather more in the methods in and of themselves, as well as the ‘faulty’ characteristics of each process. And there are also paint splatters, footprints, and traces left behind by paintbrushes, which occur coincidentally or uncontrolled when I’m working on other pictures, since I often recycle canvases which I had previously laid out on the floor. I generally work on individual pictures instead of in series. Or I work on several formats at the same time, in order to cut them apart and arrange them in a different way at a later time or sew them together to create a larger format. Aside from oil, acrylic, and such, I also often use very thin paints (usually C, M, Y, K), which I partially remove again through a bleaching process – but also everyday and non-art materials that aren’t intended to be used as paint, such as bitumen. With this combination of various processes, I create a kind of source material which, in the next step, is sewn together to create a picture with a controlled composition. The individual steps always vary and never follow a particular logic. This results time and again in works that don’t really fit in, but they’re important for the further development of my art.

Q: The idea/concept surrounding your work – can you tell us more?

I’m constantly recognizing parallels to works I made about ten years ago, when I was concentrating on conceptual works based on photography. At the time, I was already working with silkscreens, lithographs, and laser prints, as well as with pieced-together formats and site-specific installations which, as a result of their self-referentiality, questioned their own context and representativeness.

It was important to me at the time to contradict the cliché of the artist-genius through vulgar gestures, through the means of reproduction and the use of technical methods and materials. There were also always deliberate breaks, which thwarted the analytical part in an ironic way…

For me, it’s also a play with the universal validity, the intrinsic value, and the glorification of the work of art. Maybe that’s why I cut the canvases?! And there are also works, for example, where I don’t care if they’re hung in a particular direction.

Over the course of the development of my work, the conceptual level that lurks behind the surface has taken on a life of its own and constantly transforms itself. It is thus still part of the work, although it has in fact become much more subjective. In any event, I don’t think about it very actively anymore and strive instead to focus primarily on the formal level of the works. As part of the whole, the conceptual references contribute to the autonomy of the picture – without, however, pointing to anything in particular.

Q: Can you tell me more about the traces of footprints and staples we see in some of your works?

I usually work on the floor, using wooden boards to press oil paint onto the canvas.

During the printing process, staples lying on the floor underneath – remnants from an intermediate stage, during which I sometimes stretch and un-stretch sewn-together canvases – leave their impressions. For a while, the canvases lie all over the place in the studio and pick up paint and dirt, and sometimes even my own footprints.

I gave up a long time ago trying to be meticulous with my working materials. I find the organic process so much more exciting, since it develops out of a natural attitude and out of itself, so to speak.

Q: What is most important to you regarding your work?

To work independently and constantly develop the work further out of itself. I think that, in this way, it will always remain interesting.

Q: Can you tell me more about your routines and rituals in your daily practice?

My daily routine is relatively well structured. I usually bring our two daughters to school and the nursery. I then ride my bicycle to the studio. I usually stay there until about 6:30 p.m. – or until about 3:30, when I have to pick up the kids again because my wife has to work longer.

Twice a week, I try to go skateboarding with the guys – at least when the weather’s not so shitty…

On weekends, I usually visit exhibitions and meet people.

Sundays are family days.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

No!

Right now, I have an exhibition up at Geukens Devil in Antwerpen.

I’m also currently working on new works, which I’m already looking forward to, since they further develop several fundamental parameters in my work… I don’t want to say anything more at this point. At the very latest in the coming spring, you’ll be able to see them at Berthold Pott’s booth at the ART COLOGNE.

Link to artist page

Link to Gallery

Link to SundayS Feature

The post Q&A With Colin Penno appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Can you tell me about your background?

Because of my father’s work, we moved three times a year. I attended twenty-seven schools in multiple states. We lived in small towns in the southern United States. I spent summers and other long periods at my grandparent’s farm in Missouri. As I entered high school we my mother and I moved to Oklahoma and I was able to stay in one place during the four years of high school.

photograph by Allison V. Smith

Do you remember the first artwork you made and can you tell me about it?

I think it’s pretty evident that given this background I was not exposed to museums or other cultural institutions. I didn’t have an idea of what art or artists were. I always liked to draw and make all kinds of things. I had a very active imagination and my grandfather encouraged me and we drew and made stuff together. I did know that artists knew how to draw and at around seven or so I began to identify myself with that. I would tell people that I wanted to be an artist, although I really had no idea what the possibilities of that were.

No, I don’t remember the first thing I made that I thought of as art. I made many things, but I didn’t identify them as art. Looking back, I would say my grandfather and I made art all the time.

What influences you?

Everything. Especially objects and things that are ambiguous and have a certain mystery about their presence and specific thingness.

Can you tell me more about the art scene in the 1960-1990 and how you see it compared to today?

In the mid to late 60’s I was very influenced by the work of some of the minimalists and post minimalists. It was an exciting time for me. I saw work that affected me in a very elemental way,

This influence has stayed with me through my career and has helped shape my own investigations.

The 70’s were the beginnings of a kind of pluralism, which seems to continue. I don’t spend much time concerned with what’s going on or current. I’m somewhat aware but more focused on what I’m trying to do.

Your works are both physical and minimalistic, has it always been like that?

Yes. My work has looked a little different through the years but I think it has always remained about the same things. I’ve never thought of myself as a minimalist but more of an essentialist.

Can you tell me more about the process in your work?

I never work from a complete preconceived idea. I see incomplete renditions of things in my head or imagination. It might be a color or weight or shape. It’s always just a vague notion of something.  This is the beginning of a search carried out though a process of making decisions and erasing them through sanding and repainting and moving things around. It becomes a dialogue between the object and myself. I want the history of this activity to show or be evident in some way.

What is most important to you regarding your work?

Everything.

Can you tell me more about your routines and rituals in your daily practice?

I’ve never been one of those artists that adhere to a specific routine. I work hard on several pieces at a time and then I might take a brake to nap or visit friends. When I am making work it is a very ritualistic process.

Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

This spring I’m having shows in Houston, TX, at Gray Contemporary, 57W57Arts,NYC, Art Brussels Independent with Simon Gallery with annex14 Gallery, Zürich.

Link to Artist page

Bio:

b. 1946 Galveston, TX

lives and works in Dallas, TX
EDUCATION

1972
MFA, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK
1969-70
Graduate Studies – Montana State University, Bozeman, MT
1969
BFA, Kansas State University at Pittsburg, Pittsburg, KS

Otis Jones received his B.F.A from Kansas State University in 1969, continued graduate studies at Montana State University and earned his M.F.A. in 1972 from the University of Oklahoma. He was the 1982 recipient of a Visual Artists Fellowship Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and has taught at Texas Christian University, the University of Texas at Austin and has served as an Associate Professor and Visiting Professor at University of Texas at Arlington. Jones’ work can be found in many private and public collections such as the Dallas Museum of Art, A.H. Belo Corporation, American Airlines, Rosewood Corporation and Compaq Corporation.

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Q: Tell me about your background? 

I grew up in the centre of Copenhagen in a family, where most of the members have chosen a creative way of living. My father is a writer, my grandmother was a photographer and my great grand mother was a painter. I’m not saying it was a goal from the beginning but I grew up in a home with a very cultural curiosity towards history and storytelling, and I think that somehow it went along whether I was aware of it or not.

As I understood my choice of studying art, it was very important for me to leave my hometown and live abroad. During my studies I build a base in Prague, Marseille, Jerusalem and Antwerp and I regard all of these cities as home and a strong part of me.

Q: What was the first artwork you made? What / How /Why?

When we were kids, me and my twin brother used to draw maps from the great explorer James Cook. It was pencil and charcoal on brown, used lunchbox paper and we would sell them in school to our history teacher.

Q: Was there a particular moment or event where you decided to become an artist?

I think its difficult to talk about a specific moment but I can recall the time, where I saw process as it glides from a thoughtful mind throughout the hands of a certain craft.

As a kid I would follow my grandmother in her darkroom, which is a small room located with the view towards the Copenhagen canal. We would make contact prints of hands and random negatives.

To stand in this little cave of magic in the red safelight and watch an image appear through the developing bath, was kind of intriguing to the mind of a child. I still feel the same kind of magic today.

After her death I took over the place and its the space, where I develop all my photographic material, it’s a very personal place, a place where you have a dialogue with yourself.

Q: Do you have any routines and or rituals in your daily practice?

The daily practice is very attached to routine and fixed working hours, but the days rarely look the same. If I’m at the studio or the darkroom, espresso is always a companion.

Q: Can you tell me about your new works and the process behind these?

Well, in the new works I’m applying a fictous anthropological approach. The works investigate nature and human existence through motives, which could be seen as testimonials of a journey, fragments of “alien matter”. They represent a photographic momentary experience and exchange between the subject and me. In the process I have left behind the more traditional printing techniques in favour of new methods to communicate recorded impressions, hereunder sculpture and the combination of emulsion on silver.

The interest in the physical part within the silver “technique” returns to the physical elementary of analogue based photography, but the technique itself allows another layer, which is the dynamic between reference and texture. This working process is fully integrated into the motive of each plate allowing a unique non-reproducable surface.

Q: What is most important to you regarding your work:  The idea. The image. The process? Or something else? 

All of it, but Im mostly aware of it in the end, even the true meaning and idea of the image, I’m not intellectualizing the material so much in the beginning. I tend to save it till the end, not as a starting point.

Here I’m interested in the rawness of intuition, the trail that leads me to the image. The ideas appears within the act of working and making images, personally, its provoked by action, communication and movement, so the most important thing for me must be that life and work are able to have an exchange with eachtoher. The process of working with silverbased photography allows me to let the material rest, I often develop my material a long time after it was captured, this leads me back to the role of the “stranger” and in the darkroom I rediscover.

Q: The process and the choice of images, can you tell us more about it?

The choice of motives rarely comes out of preconceived ideas, they appear as I move around and tune in a constant awareness towards my work.

The attention of the motive is important to me and that the motive has an established connection to myself. The motive is the conclusion of a moment and situation that is based upon a personal experience of mine. I like to see myself as a ”collector of experiences”.

Q: What influences you?

In this moment of writing, the flora of Sri Lanka, but in a broader sense, that the photographic tool is a very communicative tool, it is often a gate crasher, a tool of gesture allowing me to visit and explore social and imaginary contexts through a very banal sense of curiosity.

Q: The transformation if I can call it that? From your earlier works, “Photos” – towards a more “painterly photographic” approach in your new works, Can you tell us more about how that came to life?

I’m fascinated by the photographic gesture rather than it’s tradition. I have a fascination of the fact that you can experience and capture a given moment within the same frame of a second. It’s the crucial capture of time and memory, but as I emphasize this fact, I’m interested in new methods that can allow the motive to have a certain exclusivity. Therefore I’m working as you mention in a more “painterly” way, allowing the motive to rest in an unique piece, referring back to the singularity of the captured moment it came from.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

Among ongoing projects, I have a certain project in Aarhus, Denmark, which is very fixed. Here I’m doing a book and exhibition about a special psychiatric hospital, it’s art achieve and another of it’s secret, yet to be revealed.

Link to Artist Page >>

Link to Artist Instagram

Link to Opening at Sunday-S

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Can you tell me about your background?

I grew up in rural Texas in a town of 898 people where there wasn’t a whole lot to do. When I was 18 I quickly moved away to college then moved to New York in 2008.

Q: What was the first artwork you made? What / How /Why?

Two of my grandparents were whittlers. I would help them out around their shop occasionally. My first artwork was probably a whittled piece of wood of a bear or a train I worked on with them, but I don’t recall exactly.

Q: What is most important to you regarding your work: – The Process. The visual outcome. The material? Or something else?

The process is secondary to the idea the work is exploring. The process and materials are a vehicle for making manifest the idea. My works also have to work as images so the visual outcome has always been important to me. Generally I will find a methodology and stick with it for awhile.

Q: Do you have any routines and or rituals in your daily practice?

I drink a lot of coffee, especially iced coffee because I need a lot of caffeine. I used to run from my apartment in Chinatown to my studio in Greenpoint everyday, iced coffee in hand. That was a healthy ritual. My studio now has a coffee shop right across the street, so that’s been convenient. I just bought a house in the Catskill Mountains with a garage studio, my routines will be different up there. Hopefully I can do more swimming in the stream behind the house before work each day and need less caffeine. I want to build a big concrete lane pool like the one Judd built in Marfa.

Q: The process and the choice of material and ideas surrounding your work, can you tell us more about it?

As Mike Kelley said, “Materials are only what you do with them”. The process is a means to an end. For the woven works, the process of weaving is done to create canvas as that’s how canvas is created. For the oil on canvas still life paintings the process of painting is used because the original paintings my paintings are based on were painted using oil on canvas (or copper). The imbuing of meaning into something simply by creating or re-creating it is what interests me. The origin, transference and language of symbolism and meaning are primary concerns of the work.

Q: What influences you?

I can be influenced by basically anything. I’m generally drawn to ideas that are universal and easy to understand. Most of my ideas get edited down and only exist on a list in my studio. Eventually I’d like to let them all fly, like Kippenberger making his subway stations to nowhere and other pointless, large-scale building projects.

Q: We are all dying to know more about the shift from the woven canvas works, to the new works you have recently shown.  Can you tell us more about how that came to life?

The reliefs, the still life paintings and the woven works are all addressing ideas of the fake, of the copy, of that copy’s effect on the original, mass production and its effects on value, of intent vs effect, of cultural and art historical iconography. The works switch between readymade imagery (collectibles), materials (canvas) and symbols (still life tropes).

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

For now I am re-focused on the woven works. They have returned to their origin point of being all-woven and compositionally determined by the dimensions of the canvas off the loom. Within the series I’m exploring artificiality, repetition and interchangeability through color and composition. The more straightforward the works are presented the clearer their intention to the viewer becomes. I want people to appreciate the works visually then the concept will hopefully start to slowly come through.

Link to Artist Page Ethan Cook

Link to Install Shots at Sundays

Images Courtesy of Anatebgi – Gallery

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Q: Tell me about your background?

My background comes from a family that is interested in arts and culture.

Q: Do you remember the first artwork you made, and can you tell me about it?

When I was 10 years old I made my first artwork, it was a painting on canvas of a still-life of flower in a vase.
The first artwork that I show was a small cardboard box covered by geographical maps with a handle outside and volcano stone and a porcelain rose inside.

Q: Was there a particular moment or event where you decided to become an artist?

I was very young, I saw a Joseph Cornell exhibition in Florence.
That day I understood that I was interested in the visual arts, but just years after I decided to involve myself into it, after the invitation of a private gallery that asked me to work with them.

Q: What influences you?

I am influenced by the world proceeding.

Q: The Idea/concept surrounding your work, can you tell us more?

I am interested to experiment the way how to show an idea in the art ambit.
The role of the human being in the society related with a place and the influence of power between individuals.

Q: Can you tell me more about the process in your works?

The process is different for every project.

Q: The Works where you collect Dirt and Dust and then “paint” with it, How did that come to life ?

Also here depends from the project, when i use the dust. I use the dust as a pigment for watercolour.
If I use effects of weathering i will leave the landscape that makes his own portrait.

Q: What is most important to you regarding your work?

The research.

Q: Can you tell me more about your routines and rituals in your daily practice?

I would like to have more rituals and more time for my readings.
Travels, computers and relationships always distract me.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

They are still in progress.

Link to Artist Page

Link to Gallery

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Q: Can you tell me about your background?

I was born in New York, grew up mostly in a Connecticut suburb of the city, went to school at RISD in Providence, Rhode Island, and then moved back to New York. I’m still in the apartment that I moved into in 2000 in Brooklyn, but now live here with my wife and two children instead of with a roving cast of friends.

Q: Do you remember the first artwork you made, and can you tell me about it?

I can’t pinpoint a first but I always drew. The first things I remember getting really into were battle scenes with knights and castles and witch houses. I remember drawing them brick by brick. I pretty much drew whatever my best friend and his older brother were drawing. This older brother also turned me on to skateboarding, various types of rock music and all of the imagery that came along with those subcultures.

Q: Was there a particular moment or event where you decided to become an artist?

I attended a pre-college program at RISD while I was in high school. I think that helped me see that there were more options than what I had preconceived an art school experience to be. I went to school to study illustration and that was what I hoped to end up doing. I wound up where I am by way of a sideways entry; which I think is just as common as the BFA-MFA-Gallery Exhibition track. I didn’t go to grad school. I opened a gallery instead.

Q: What influences you?

Just the act of working in the studio propels all the exploration. It seems to keep opening up new avenues. I’m also surrounded by an incredible community of friends and artists who I want to create opportunities for and contribute to dialog with. As much noise as is out there now, there is also so much incredible art being made. I look at a lot of art and go to a lot of shows.

Q: Can you tell me more about the process in your works?

For this show I began with photographs of light reflecting off of a tiled floor installation and the shapes that these reflections cast on the walls of the gallery. I took these shapes and projected them onto sheets of marked, scuffed and painted canvas and fabric and cut them out with a blade. I moved these shapes and their corresponding negatives around on the studio floor, into compositions that both directly referenced, and extrapolated from the arrangements of the original photographs. I then seamed these shapes, along with part of the original tiles, and other debris from the studio into one surface and stretched them as paintings.

From there I worked back into them with enamel, oil and acrylic, sometimes cutting into, tearing apart, de-stretching, re-seaming and composing, until I arrived at what feel like complete paintings. It is all very call-and-response and intuitive maneuvering. The original floor installation has been reassembled, altered and installed as two walls in the gallery. This serves as a call to the genesis of the paintings and as a reinterpretation of the architectural foot print of the previous gallery, in the new space. Variations of this floor piece have been installed in San Francisco, Miami and Toronto, each time being augmented by those who tread on it, and according to the physical parameters of the space it fills. (Here is an example of those reflections:)

Q: The Idea/concept surrounding your work, can you tell us more?

Surrounding is a good way to phrase it. I wouldn’t specifically describe my work as being “about” explicit concepts other than the act of making with my recent output being a cycle of continuously constructed, razed, rebuilt and re-flattened material.  Ongoing themes that I explore in paintings and sculptures are confusing the perception of space, combining authored and accidental gestures, marking time, and how information is created, copied and presented. On some level I see this all as a loose metaphor for the self-obsessed curation of our daily lives and how we then present them in digital environments.  I am just constantly looking inward and around the studio, altering and churning this material, “my stuff”, and formalizing it into “finished” works – which concludes with presentation in an exhibition setting and act as Luddite versions of an avatar or profile.

Q: What is most important to you regarding your work?

That it is sui generis in nature and generous to the viewer.

I work to make them especially engaging in person. I am always looking for inventive ways to use unexpected materials, or to use classical media in “wrong” ways. The work does not behave in real life as it appears in jpegs. I think the physical interaction with the works is crucial to make a case for creating paintings and objects today since we are bombarded with images on screens endlessly. I’m obsessed with art history and always keep in mind where what I’m working on may fall in this time line.

Q: Can you tell me more about your routines and rituals in your daily practice?

It’s all pretty moment to moment right now. Usually help get my sons off to school, do something for exercise, go to studio, work between physical materials,  phone,  and computer. This order of operations switches from day to day. Sometimes I watch the kids after school, otherwise I work through until dinner and then go back to studio or finish up the days work at the computer either in regards to studio or Halsey McKay.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

I will continue exploring these paintings. I’m at an exciting point and not sure which direction these will go but have lots of energy to push in. I have some sculpture ideas to develop that I had to put aside to develop this body of work to this stage. I’ll see where that leads. I will be included in Process at Marjorie Barrick Museum, University of Las Vegas, Nevada, which opens on January 17,  I will have a solo show at Romer Young in San Francisco in 2017 and the show at Susan Inglett is up through October 15 in New York.

Q: The last couple of years the art market  has changed/evolved a lot – Care to comment on how you have seen, and experienced this both as a Gallerist but also Artist?

It’s just been steady forward plodding for both really. I don’t see anything so different from the cycle in the early 2000s to what is going on now, just a new cast of characters and a different aesthetic acting as backdrop. Collectors and fashion are always intrigued by youth and cults of personality. Natural selection sorts it out over time.

I guess one difference is where I saw commodification of certain cultures happening in the late nineties and early aughts, the last few years I’ve seen a type of professionally commercialized artist seek to adapt what they do to meet the market. Savvy artists always exploit opportunity to advance their career and make their business sustainable but the last few years I really saw a lot of people look to the commercial result before the work. There was definitely more money involved this time around, but it was all a similar series of events. Then, as now, I saw a handful of great artists get noticed and a lot of filler is brought to market as part of the scene, kind of like the 90s record industry scramble to discover the next Nirvana. I think there is a direct correlation to the decline of money in the music industry leading to personality types who may have been in bands ten years ago, now look at the art world as a way to gain celebrity and make money, and certain aspects of the system act in support of this. There is always great art and bad art both celebrated and rewarded I just try to keep an earnest approach in what I’m doing in studio and with what we present at the gallery. I’m more interested in what the social ramifications of what the Bob Dylans and Ian MacKayes accomplish than in MC Hammer or NSYNCs record sales.

Link to Gallery

Link to Artist Page

Link to Artist Features on Sunday-S

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Q: Can you tell me about your background?

I was named after my maternal grandfather, who was torpedoed in the war. I was an avatar, a replacement for him and therefore it was strange being brought up as a replacement for someone missing. I was brought up in a great ship building town called Clydebank in the West of Scotland. Although one looked down the hill to the shipyard and all the steel works, your bank was the countryside which was accessible in 10 minutes on a bike. From looking at all the welding sparks of the shipyard, in ten minutes you could be listening to the Curlew.

At high school I loved gymnastics, art and football and then went to Glasgow School of Art.

My father was a carpenter.

Q: Do you remember the first artwork you made, and can you tell me about it?

When I was at school there was a drawing competition held at the Kelvin Grove Museum and Art Gallery each year. I won medals on a few occasions from this outing, although I wouldn’t consider these my first artworks. Being frustrated at high school, I took myself off to night classes at Glasgow School of Art and possibly those drawings might be considered as my first works.

I drew and painted members of my family from an early age. One early series of drawings that I made was done using a pin on carbon paper on cartridge; I was about 15 at that time.

Q: Was there a particular moment or event where you decided to become an artist?

I always loved drawing, I always asked people questions that they couldn’t answer and I loved working with my hands. I’m going to tell you something that I didn’t find out until my second child was born; I am dyslexic. It seems obvious now that the exams and the structure of school was very difficult for me, and that I felt very comfortable in my own world. So therefore, I had an independent view of the world and that lent itself to being an “artist” rather than a footballer.

Q: What influences you?

Being dyslexic I don’t read very much and therefore my influences are like a magpie. But something that I do like, but don’t always understand is science.

When I was 9 my brother was born and after a month he was taken into hospital with osteomyelitis and my parents could only visit him at weekends and children weren’t really allowed into wards. (Fortunately) across the road from the hospital was the Kelvin Grove Museum and Art Gallery. I spent hours looking at working ship engines and models, Korean warriors, the insect room, Gannet’s nesting sites and Courbet’s and Dutch still-lifes. I would also go there to hear the grand organ being tuned.

We lived in my grannies house and she taught me to garden.

He was in hospital for two years. I would think that all of that formed quite a profound part of my education.

There was no television then and my parents didn’t have many books in the house, so I self educated myself through doing things that I liked.

Q: The paintings made of ashes and glue, I would love to know more about these, the process, idea and how you made the decision to burn older works and use the ashes?

When I was in my early thirties my father died and he was cremated and I was quite comforted by having a casket of his ashes, which we later cast into a river on the Island of Arran that led into the Clyde Estuary. It was an intuitive decision to use ash as a medium. It’s just one step down from charcoal really. Also it’s basic and there are times when I do like working in monochrome.

The burning of the old work was just a practical decision of making more space and some had been damaged because they had been left outside. I don’t like throwing anything away, so recycling is part of my practise. I recycle both my materials and ideas. My painting technique is also intuitive and the material sometimes suggests the process.

Q: The postcards series, could you tell us some more about these, and how it started?

When at art school, I kept notebooks which I still have, and I still keep sketch books and my postcards are really single sketch books that are mailed off to people. My wife is a theatrical agent and I used to send a good luck card to the client’s on their opening night. And I’ve kept doing that, but the people I send it to have grown, to the point that I’ve sent tens of thousands of ‘mail art’. I didn’t realise it was an art form until I was told by Richard Morphet.

They fall into lots of series. From working drawings, found objects, packaging, signatures, viewing cards, word plays, philosophical cards, longitude and latitude cards etc. And using everything to hand. What I’ve found accessible about mail art that when you are on holiday, you can just post anything. You don’t need to have lots of materials that you’ve brought with you. Whatever is at hand can be incorporated. It is a personal diary.

When I was at art school there were very few reproductions. And the few that we had, say a Van Gogh were the nearest we would get to the original. When I actually got to see an original Van Gogh, it was shocking. The post card could never convey the emotional response, that you gave to the original. I think the stubbornness in me wanted to sort of make postcards that one could have an emotional response to and that they were a work of art in their own right.

Q: The DNA paintings- Can you tell us more about these?

I saw a program about Fermat’s last theorem and during it they showed the pattern of a flower seat head. And then the mathematical forms throughout nature, then the discovery of DNA and to me it just seemed natural that I would paint those forms as an artist not as a scientist.

During the early nineties, when the series was made, I researched the medical visuals that they used in DNA research and application. Over the years technology has changed the visual way that doctors and scientists regard the information. I just superficially took the patterns once again being an artist rather than a scientist.

Mail Art has been useful here to play around with these forms of information, as is fractals and archaeology.

Q: Can you tell me more about the process in your works?

Being dyslexic all processes are made anew each day. I don’t have a formal process, in fact, likely the opposite. Everything is used. I was once told that a camera was a mirror with a memory and I find that it’s better not to have a memory of the paintings, so that with each body of work, I start from scratch, and I am not upset with this way of working. Although it has been brought about by dyslexia I have become used to not having a process memory.

Q: The idea/concept surrounding your work, can you tell us more?

The ideas and concepts surrounding my work are always personal little working outs of either things in my private life or things that I’ve caught out of the corner of my eye. The thing is to find the right materials and right scale for what you are trying to express, ‘a witness’ as I refer to it in my body of work.

My work often captures incidental traces of my time here. I don’t like to waste anything. I often take found objects and materials that have been discarded and use them as the basis for new work.

Q: Your works are very minimal and in some cases monochrome, has it always been like that?

Funny I find them neither minimal nor monochromatic. I don’t understand the terms minimal or monochromatic.

Q: You graduated in 1967, I would love to know more about the art scene in those years, and also if you could tell us more about the art scene in London in the 1980-1990 and how you see it compared to today?

If there was an art scene in Glasgow in 1967, I wasn’t interested in it.

There was a very robust art scene in London during the 80’s, but I was a househusband bringing up three children. My attentions were drawn to Modern dance. I worked with Laurie Booth, Russell Maliphant, Aletta Collins and collaborated with Hans Peter Khun and Gavin Bryars. I worked as a Designer on those collaborations. To name a few, Wonderlawn and Tango.

Q: What is important to you regarding your work?

Me working on it, that’s my greatest pleasure.

Q: Can you tell me more about your routines and rituals in your daily practice?

I start off the day, picking things off the pavement on the way to my studio, and doing a small collage from the daily newspapers.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

I’m currently working on some new ash paintings.

Link to Gallery

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Q: Can you tell me about your background?

I grew up in a small seaside town in England called Blackpool. And I studied Fine Art at Northumbria University, Newcastle. I don’t really know what else is interesting to tell you?

Q: What was the first artwork you made?

You’ll have to ask my mother that. But, I did use to collect pebble from the beach near our house and then draw a hamsters face on them. I suppose this was my first artwork.

Q: Was there a particular moment or event where you decided to become an artist?

There wasn’t ever a moment that I decided, it has just progressed that way. I do remember seeing The Slade’s degree show catalogue while in secondary school. It was different to what we were looking at and that excited me. That was when I knew I wanted to make art.

Q: What influences you?

Everything in life does. In particular, the varying feeds of information we’re fed every day, either through a digital device, a publication or any form of advertising. I watch television, scroll through my phone or look through a magazine. We are constantly in a state of flux with information. All we want is more and more but yet it still never satisfies us. For example, I’m addicted to various forms of social media. I can spend hours scrolling through countless amounts of images, videos and gifs but yet I walk away with nothing. I’m invested in it and I have no idea why.

And that is kind of where my practice started really. I was so dissatisfied with how people see things and how we acquired them that it became the work. The repetition of an image feed and the degradation of quality. Most recent works have largely been influenced by textiles and how the handmade process has become a digital one. When as artist who likes the opposite it’s hard thing to negotiate. I want the actual object. I want to see and feel the craft that has gone in to making things. This is something I don’t get when viewing a digital image. I can only imagine.

Q: What is most important to you regarding your work: The visual outcome. The Process. The material? Or something else?

I think all are important aspects of the work, because one informs another. I have to find it visually interesting or it won’t be seen by anyone else. There is a lot I make that I don’t share. But It’s for me to sit with, to learn from and to make the new work happen. That doesn’t necessarily mean it is bad, it’s just not time for anyone to see it. We can’t make great work all the time, although it kills me to give up on a piece.

The process I use is key to what the work is about. I use found images or scanned in objects that are printed, photocopied and then image transferred. I take something that is handmade and has a lengthy process to start with and flatten it through the form of a digital process.

For material choice I like to use materials that are instant and can’t be changed over time. I find the possibilities of oil paint to daunting, the history of it and what that comes with. But also the way I can paint one day and then the next change it to be something completely different. I get itchy fingers so it would happen a lot.

Q: The process and the choice of material and ideas surrounding your work, can you tell us more about it?

I feel like I might repeat myself here in some parts, so let’s just say it’s an extension of the previous answers. The paintings tile, repeat and reproduce the image to signify the way we access information at a faster rate. Layering up processes, from digital to hand made. They merge, crossing boundaries of paint, print and drawing. Acting as a confused object from having to deal with the dissatisfaction of the world we live in. With the loss of process to digital technology the paintings try to renegotiate the new image in a physical space. The chosen image/s is the starting point to each work. They are scanned in objects or found imagery that are printed then photocopied, resulting in poor quality. This is then transferred to the canvas and repeated. Each painting consists of many layers that are combined with drawing, using an acrylic paint pen. The drawing is to signify the presence of the artist hand and resemble that of a doodle in a notebook or sketchbook. Each painting is me longing for the physical/ the hand made and wanting to satisfy the sense of touch, something you don’t get from the digital.

Briefly touching on how the ideas around the works are developing. I have started to become interested in catalogues and fake images. More so to do with the home. How we look to something for inspiration but yet it’s a forced idea of the perfect scenario. The flattening of objects and how we try to renegotiate them in the physical world. The idea of throw away culture and the need to define the space in which we live in. Constantly wanting to change the rooms in our homes and how we aspire to have what we’re fed through catalogue images even though its largely false fed information. This work is new and work in progress so I am still trying to work things out.

Q: Can you tell me more about your routines and rituals in your daily practice?

It usually starts with a coffee and ends with a coffee, the stuff in between varies. When I go to the studio, I have to kind of forget everything I’ve read and seen in order for the work to materialise. I can get to in to research and over thinking, it stops the making happening. Don’t know why, I think I’m just easily distracted. Or just always looking for something else to do.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

To continue in the studio, making new work and try out new ideas. There’s a lot to work on. Stuff I need to find answers to. If I get to share them, then I consider myself lucky.

Link to Artist page

Link to Artist Feature – Daniel Davies

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Q: Tell me about your background?

I was born and raised in New York City, where I still live, and my studio is in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. My parents were progressive, and always supported my career path; in fact, my mother was a serious painter who went to Black Mountain College, where she met John Cage (she participated in the first “Happening” in 1952), Robert Rauschenberg, Jack Tworkov, and many others. I still have her brushes and paints.

I grew up in the New York of the 1970s – a low point for the city, but for me it was vibrant. I was often found in museums, Soho galleries, CBGB, wandering the wasteland of lower Manhattan, or visiting friends’ homes where there were Carl Andre floor pieces instead of rugs.

I went to college in Buffalo, NY, and there I became involved with the seminal alternative art spaces, Hallwalls and CEPA Gallery, and the community surrounding them. Hallwalls was founded by Robert Longo and Cindy Sherman, among others.

Q: Do you remember the first artwork you made, and can you tell me about it?

I suppose I consider the last artwork I made to be the first. Until the next one, that is. Always starting over.

Q: Was there a particular moment or event where you decided to become an artist?

Not a particular moment. I suppose I always considered myself an artist. I went to college to study photography and art history – I greatly admired the “New Topographics” of Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz – and during this formative period, I adopted a more serious approach to my work, and, being among a very vibrant community both in Buffalo and New York, it became clear that art was to be my career path.

Q: What influences you?

Not art so much, although there are many artists I admire; but architecture, as it has rules, and relates to human presence, light, space, and the nature of materials; film, music, and literature (form, narrative, and structure); and long walks and road trips, as that gives me time to think – being in the world as well as a part of it.

Q: Can you tell us more about the art scene in New York in the 1980-1990 and how you see it compared to today?

My involvement with the Buffalo spaces in the 1980s allowed me an introduction to an artistic community in New York City. So, besides concentrating on my own work, I also was able to curate exhibits that included my friends and others whose work I admired, such as Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Cady Noland, Al Ruppersberg, Raymond Pettibon, John Currin, Steven Parrino, Richard Prince, Jim Shaw, Meyer Vaisman, and others. 

There was a vibrant DIY scene with artist-run spaces and collectives, and while that still exists, the dearth of affordable studio space makes it very difficult to pursue a career as an artist.
It also felt like a smaller world than today, and in terms of the community with which I was involved, felt motivated more by the work than by a market. Of course, every generation probably says that. But being pre-internet, in the ’80s you only became familiar with work through magazines, studio visits, exhibits, and travel – you had to have a personal relationship with the work. Today, social media has allowed artists to expand their communities in extraordinary ways. I’m still curious and visit galleries on a regular basis.

Q: Your works are very much minimal and monochrome, has it always been like that?

I’ve been focused on monochrome, or single-color painting since 1990. My work has consistently been about reducing forms to basic elements: structure, support, surface, materials. Drawing about drawing; painting about painting. Distilling it down to an essence, a self-awareness, whether it be photographs, drawings, or paintings.

Q: The Idea/concept surrounding your work, can you tell us more?

I see the value of monochrome in its being a strategy, a technique. I chose it, or gravitated towards it, due to its self-imposed limitations, but it is an extremely expandable form, and rather subjective about color, scale, and surface.

I don’t abide by its “rules,” and while it is usually regarded as elitist and difficult, I find it quite alive and accessible. I think of monochrome as the ultimate parody of, and the ultimate tribute to, painting. And in the end it’s just paint on cotton, and I’m going to make the best painting possible.

Q: Can you tell me more about the process in your works?

Various whites, grays, and neutrals (mostly out of the tube, but lately a bit of subtle mixing), mediums, surfaces, brushes. Multiple glazes. I work on an easel for smaller pieces, as that gives me a more personal relationship with the painting, and intimacy. The paintings are mostly titled prior to starting, and that imbues them with a certain personality, a certain feeling.

Q: What is most important to you regarding your work?

There was a period in my life that I was able to enjoy a John McLaughlin painting daily. It never bored me, so if my work can achieve that, and find a home where it can become a part of someone’s interior life (the emotional and physical landscape), and keep on giving, I’d consider that a success.

Q: Can you tell me more about your routines and rituals in your daily practice?

I’m a morning person, and prefer working in natural light, so try to get to the studio as early as possible. I pick up a cup of coffee at my local bodega, where I talk baseball with the shopkeeper, then gear up to work by cleaning up (a lost cause), organizing, laying out materials, and then I get to work. I already know the day before what I want to do, and never paint when I’m not motivated.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

Lately I’ve been interested in Emerson and the American Transcendentalists, as well as communal societies of the 1960s, so maybe in my mind there’s a relationship between failed utopias and monochromes? At the very least it’s something for me to think about while I’m painting, or as a source of titles.

Also, there recently was a Hammershøi exhibit in New York, and I was enthralled by the paintings. My current work has a source in his backgrounds – the various whites and grays – so I’m using those tones as starting points.

Link to Artist Page – Daniel Levine

The post Q&A With Daniel Levine appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Q: Tell me about your background? 

I grew up in a conservative high brow cultural family. Ran in the other direction as a teen. Ended up in art school. And stuck with it.

Q: Do you remember the first artwork you made, and can you tell me about it. Can we see it?

My first conscious art work was made during College in my first drawing class taught by Brice Hobbs. I did all sorts of things growing up but never considered it art or felt like an artist doing it. He was an awesome teacher. He broke down all the preconceived idiotic ideas I had about art and artists. Off course other idiotic ideas were built up, but that is art school for you, right?

Q: Was there a particular moment or event where you decided to become an artist?

That first drawing class.

Q: What influences you?

Well I go by gut feeling! Informed gut feeling. And everything can influence me. I love seeing art works that blow my mind in the sense that I go – how did they come up with that! Like Michael Mahalchick or Sara Greenberger Raferty. I am inspired by the horizon line. The pyramids. Butt Johnson and my life. I use what is right in front of me. Like all artists before me. I guess.

Q: The Idea/concept surrounding your work, can you tell us more?

I have always really liked making stuff and building things. And I get a great pleasure out of making stuff that nurture my imagination. Putting different shapes together to form an abstract unintelligible but some what recognisable form. Turning pete plastic bottles into small sculptures. I guess I hand craft objects with industrial materials through an industrial process.

Q: How and why did you choose to work with Foam, Lacquer and sanding it down?

Since I was a kid I dreamt of making my own surf boards and now I am.

Q: Can you tell me more about the process in your works?

The other day I remembered that my sisters super cool childhood boyfriend fixed his Kreidler moped in my parents basement when I was 12! He used Bondo and metallic purple auto lacquer to fix the gas tank. The exact same process I use now and a color that is almost always my go to color. I never consciously based my work off of this memory. But there clearly is an interesting overlap between my childhood dreams/goals/heroes and what I ended up making.

Q: What is most important to you regarding your work, Process, Concept, Visual or something else? 

The weight or lack of it. My mother is a ceramist and made a worts and all version of a hoof fungi(a shape I have used). I asked her to put it on the wall but the clay was way to heavy. My work is light. It can protrude far from the wall and you can pick it up and feel it in the same way I used to check out skate boards in my friends back yard skate shop. Or like a carpenter testing out the grip of a hammer at a True Value.

Q: Can you tell me more about your routines and rituals in your daily practice?

It is really boring. I have 4 kids. I drop them off at school. Go to studio. Work. And then head home to pick them up and drive them to soccer, dance practice, horse back riding or the skate park. Obviously I work 24/7 up to a show like everybody else.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

I am combining my experiences from the past years and making out door sculptures adding concrete to the mix.

Q: Any comments on the New York / LA Art Scene the last 2-3 years, and the Term: Zombie Formalism?

Part one, zombie formalism- 

Nobody likes flippers. And nobody wants to be flipped. Just like nobody likes big banking and everybody wants equality. Yet both still exist. The art world is big and there is room for everybody. I showed with Oscar Murillo in London in 2011 in a group show, Insurgencies, curated by Peter Lamb and Shane Bradford. It was an awesome show, and I am so proud to have been part of it. I bought the Murillo piece, a coffee table, because we needed a coffee table and it was awesome. How crazy is it to make a coffee table that is a painting and a sculpture and an installation that does not get caught up in design or craftsmanship. It was great. Then a dealer stepped in and wanted all his stuff and as a good colleague I let it go. I wanted him to have all the success he could have. I still do. I wish I had the coffee table. We still need one

Part two, NY/LA – 

I just showed in Los Angeles at Sade LA, a small but great artist run gallery in the former Night Gallery space. And loved it. It is a store front gallery in a tiny strip mall in Lincoln Heights and I couldn’t wish for a better setting to exhibit art. In NY I show with Klaus Von Nichtssagend Gallery also an artist run space. I love them and their line up. We all get along. I love both cities and couldn’t pick one over the other. I live in Denmark which makes LA really far away and puts NY right in the middle. But LA is only half way to Hong Kong from here.

Link to Show in LA

Link to Gallery

Link to Artist Page

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Q: Tell me about your background?

I grew up in Montreal. My parents are both academics with counter-cultural roots. My dad was a novelist and a journalist before getting into cultural studies. My mom works in gender studies and philosophy. My upbringing was very urban. I grew up right downtown. You know the Larry Clark movie Kids? My teenage years were basically a less fucked up version of that – but it was pretty similar in a lot of ways. Drugs, skateboards, a lot of stupid stuff. A lot of wandering around the city at all hours.  But I always had a good head on my shoulders though. For a long time I wanted to be a lawyer but in the end I found a more creative path was better suited to my temperament. Art really saved my life in many ways. It gave me direction, purpose and an outlet for passion. I think without it I would have been a monster capitalist. But maybe that’s just a story I like to tell myself.

Q: Do you remember the first artwork you made?

No. But I do remember the first oil painting I made.

Q: Was there a particular moment or event where you decided to become an artist?

Yes- I was watching the movie New York Stories at my friend Katherine’s mom’s loft. I was 16 or 17. The film is in three parts. Each part is directed by different director. The first part is called Life Lessons and it’s directed by Scorsese. It’s the story of a Neo-Expressionist painter in NYC during the 80’s. I knew at that moment that I was going to be an artist.

Q: What influences you?

Capitalism, in all it’s various manifestations. I’m basically fascinated by that. And have been since I was a little kid.  The history of painting is a big influence also. Especially post-war painting. Also the Terminator- all the movies that have come out of that. The cyborg Hollywood apocalypse. Paul Verhoeven was a huge influence on me. His American movies left a very large footprint. They showed me that you could do a blockbuster but that it could also be critical and funny. I love his sense of sarcasm. David Cronenberg as well.

Q: The Idea/concept surrounding your work, can you tell us more?

First of all I should say I think my work is very urban. It’s the byproduct of someone who has lived their entire life in city centers. I’m interested in how personal desire and corporatized space work together. A question I ask myself a lot is where, within a very large and complicated matrix, do we locate ourselves? In a world where technology and consumer space have unimaginable levels of (unseen) control- what is left and how do you find meaning, and personal freedom, within that.

Q: Can you tell me more about the process, and the elements in your works?

I’ve always been interested in method’s of image production and reproduction. Although I used to make much more straightforward paintings – using oil paint and brushes – but even then I was interested in mechanical reproduction, and I went to very complicated lengths to simulate that. But lately I’ve been working with machines as my brushes- computer, scanner, printer and sewing machine. So really the current work is essentially a collaboration between me and these various machines I work with.

Q: What is most important to you regarding your work?

Communication. Art has to communicate something. Otherwise it’s basically just decoration. And that’s not so interesting to me.

Q: Can you tell me more about your routines and rituals in your daily practice?

I’m definitely a day person. A studio day is about 8 – 10 hours. I wake up between 8am and 9am, The first part of the day is emails and office related things which I prefer to do at home.  So I wake up, make a large pot of coffee and sit a my computer for a few hours. Answering things like this or whatever.
Then I go to the studio. I usually get there just around lunch time. The studio is a working space. I don’t really do anything else there but work. I don’t have internet. I try to have as few distractions as possible when I’m there. Except now I have a couch,  so it’s also a napping place.

Because my work requires various stages to make a painting I have a number of steps that get done on different days:

First – ideas get worked out on the computer. I use the scanner and the photocopier to make sketches which then get organized in photoshop. Once I have a general idea of what I want to make, I begin to prepare the canvas for printing. I use a variety of canvases to print on that each requires their own special preparation. So there is a little old school painting at this point because I apply a variety of grounds to the surface.

When that is done I am ready to start printing. This is where the images really get decided because I interact a lot with the canvas while it’s being run through the printer. Sometimes running it multiple times. Once I have a few sections printed out, I start pinning the printed sections to the wall and figuring out the composition of the painting. Each section gets coated with a UV gel.

And finally, the sections are sewn together to create the painting.  Each of these steps requires many micro decisions. The production is actually quite stressful because things don’t always go the way you want them too. The machines have minds of their owns. So it’s a constant negotiation and recalibration. And trouble shooting.

Once everything is sewn together, the canvas is ready to be stretched and the work is complete- unless I don’t like it- at which point it gets dismantled. The whole process to make a painting from start to finish can take up two or three weeks depending on the size of what I’m working on and the complexity of the image.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

I’m working towards a few art fairs and I’m also in the early stages of development for an installation that will be presented here in NYC.

Link to Artist Page

Link to Gallery

Fell free to visit – Sunday-S – New Artist Featured Every Sunday !!

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Q: What Can you tell me about your background?

I grew up in New Jersey, about twenty minutes outside of New York City. My parents had a sailboat that they lived on before I was born. When I was young we would drive down the highway on weekends in the summer to take the boat out.

Q: Do you remember the first artwork you made – What / How / Why?

It’s hard to say, but I’m sure that it no longer exists.

The oldest work that I still have is a book made of unprocessed color photographic paper, because it was never fixed the paper recorded the traces of my hand and light during the process of its construction, and continued to change as it was handled during its exhibition.

Q: How do you see your works? : Painting, installation, sculpture or?

We tend to want to turn everything into language. The work deals more with the actual being, in the sense that it asks you to incorporate your body. Some of the parts make a space for the viewer to project, while the open frames allow a literal place for your body to complete.

Q: Can you tell me more about your routines and rituals in your daily practice?

Some days seem better than others. I walk the same path to the studio every afternoon, and try to take a different route home every night. I often wake up with my contacts still in, but then I’ll take them out.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

Group exhibitions this year opening in Denmark, Germany, and Italy. Currently working on a solo show that will open at Super Dakota in the fall.

Link to artist page >>> Connor McNicholas

Link to Gallery >> Superdakota

Link to Gallery >> Berthold Pott

The post Q&A With Connor McNicholas appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Q: What Can you tell me about your background?

I grew up in Ghent Belgium were i still live. The city is perfect for me as it is not to big and relaxed to stay focussed on the work.

I spend some time in NY and other big city’s abroad but it feels most comfortable to work in Ghent.

Also because i just finished renovation of my studio and everything is well organised to have a good vibe and practical logistic issues are not so hard to manage.

I went to a cooking school and spend some time at the art academy after but stopped after a couple of months.

The idea to work on my own and feel free interested me more than a certain structure to reflect on my own work.

Q: Do you remember the first artwork you made – What / How / Why?

A: Not really clearly actually to concider it as an artwork but let’s say the first work on canvas was around the age of 6 with some oilpaint tubes from my brother. He was was at the academy for at that moment. I still have it on a roll in the studio and it looks like a badly made günther förg in a way.

Q: Was there a particular moment or event where you decided to become an artist?

A: Also not that clear. One thing led to the other. I spend drawing a lot as a kid and then started painting graffiti for a long time.

This dragged me into canvas paintings that looked really bad in the start very hip hop / graffiti stuff, but i found it fascinating to create something from nothing and the interest kept growing and growing.

Before i knew i was painting almost daily and spend more time visiting shows and so on.

Q: What influences you?

A: I am a huge fan of good graphic design. Nothing better for me than a well balanced book! Nice typography, good paper, well balanced images.

I like the roll of a graphic designer that becomes a curator to sort out structure and balance of a package of stuff (texts, images, footnotes)

Maybe also the reason why my wife is a graphic designer and work in an artbookstore…haha. We share the same interest and have a nice bookcollection.

As for interest in particular artists it is a wide range. Every artist i like  have an aspect in the work that draggs me. Most balance visually in the first step on the intention of clear control, noise and well balanced chaos.

Some examples from younger artists like Frederik Vaerslev, Dan Rees, Nathan Hylden, Nicolas Deshayes,…

Historical artists like Goya, Rothko, Caravaggio also still strikes me everytime i see some work in real.

Q: The Idea/concept surrounding your work, can you tell us more?

A: The work in general plays with defragmentation and fading out of figurative content. The source material comes from a wide range of books, magazines ect.

Actually it doesn’t matter what it is for me from the start. by a trial and error procedure of scaling and contrast adjustments the source material becomes more form intended. It plays with references to historcial abstract artists as well but then more in an office vibe related atmosphere.

As there was an error on a copymachine or an employee was bored and played with the copymachine for a few minutes.

Q: Can you tell me more about the process, and the layers in the works?

A: As told in the previous answer it plays with defragmentation of figurative content.

By scaling and contrast adjustments with a black and white copymachine there is a new image in the make.

I try to keep copying on top of each other, make collages with small parts out of the copy’s and so on.

After that i use graphic adhesive films in different colors to add to some of the study works. Those are scanned in high resolution and blown up to a certain size and printed on a mesh fabric. The mesh fabric itself has a structure that has a reference to silkscreen or digital screen.

A plain white canvas is now being transformed to the actuall work / painting. By painting on the canvas and place the mesh fabric on its place with glue there starts a visual interaction between what is printed or painted. The holes in the mesh has the benefit you see the underlaying layer also and i still can paint on top of the print also. More like an analog photoshop handling actually.

Q: What is most important to you regarding your work?

A: To be able to work in a  free medium without any clear bounderies.

It is an interesting practice as you keep reflecting daily on yourself and move in small steps further on something that is actually not clear at all what form / angle it will take in a few years from now.

Q: Can you tell me more about your routines and rituals in your daily practice?

A: I actually live just around the corner of my studio so i go back and forth in between two locations a few times a day.

Starting with some e-mails, logistic plannings ect at home and then in the studio.

Over there i grab up work that needs to be done from the day before and try to catch up with new ideas and study work in between.

I can not focus to long on the same task so some hopping around between different works in the studio feels more relaxed.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

For the moment i just finished production of a new soloshow called ‘Pinky Swear’ that opens up at Berthold Pott gallery in Cologne.

Parallel to the soloshow there will be a duo booth with Johanna Von Monkiewitsch at Art Cologne / NADA  and a groupshow in Dusseldorf at David Achenbach projects.

There is also a groupshow at FIFI Projects in San Pedro Mexico that just opened up.

For may there will be a groupshow in Torino Italy where i take part and a ‘Neighbours’ groupshow i curated at Car Drde gallery in Bologna.

This show will include works from Marius Lut, Just Quist, Lisa Hanze, Alexander Saenen and Phillipe Van Wolputte. The groupshows started in my studio actually in Ghent were i organised 4 previous editions.

As for the future the ‘Neighbours’ show will starting to be more nomadic intended.

Within my own practice / studio work i would like to go further on the direction of a crossover with the paintings into sculptures and find more interesting ways to communicate with the audience by strong scenographical intended shows.

Rather than just show only paintings.

Link to gallery >> Bertholdt Pott

Link to Artist page – Manor Grunewald

Link to Group Show in Copenhagen at Sunday S Gallery 

The post Q&A With Manor Grunewald appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Using a minimalist approach, Stefan Müller explores the depths of his paintings, though he often considers them finished at a very early point. The tiniest marks, seemingly random, sometimes suffice.

Stefan Müller work in a space bordered by abstraction, appropriation and a kind of deskilled approach to craft or handwork. A punk rock undercurrent tempers the seemingly simple, spiritual nature of the work and what looks like effortless markings and stains suggest in a coded vocabulary that art is a state of mind.

Combining raw burlap, fine and rough linens, fabric patches and suede with muted or bleached out colors and simple geometric forms, the homemade quality of these works is a refusal or glitch in the confident depersonalization that has dominated painting in recent years.

Müller’s painting is distinguished by a reduced choice of materials, motifs, and colors. He paints on untreated canvas, cotton fabric, or used fabrics such as bed sheets, which he exposes to accidental modification before and during the act of painting. Beer stains, ashes, dust, coffee, or blood often replace the conventional varnish. His palette of materials ranges from acrylic, transparent lacquers, oil, and silicone to markers, pencils, and crayons. He also integrates banal elements such as dirt, tissue paper, confetti, and glitter into his works.

In the pictures from the early 2000s, Stefan Müller is still palpably torn by the conflict between representational and abstract painting. Giraffes rambling across the canvas or a drum kit dissolve into abstract patterns of color. Yet Müller soon develops a formal vocabulary comprising circles, spheres, lines, and rectangular fields that pervade his work to this day. Curls become the I, circles represent the thoughts incessantly spinning in the artist’s head. Titles such as Total total Confusion, Aua, aua, armes Universum, Zu lange in die Sonne geschaut, and Empire of Dirt add another layer of meaning to these paintings.

Stefan Muller is a member of the bands Sud (with the artist Sergej Jensen) and Da Group, and has released a number of 7” singles, one LP (‘Sud & Sud II’), and with artist Michaela Meise, a limited edition CD ‘Songs of Nico’ (Neu Acoustics, 2006).

Sergej Jensen and Stefan has participated in group shows and in many ways share the same visual and artistic feel, look and process. They both studied together in Frankfurt Städelschule from 1996 to 2001 under professor Thomas Bayrle.

Below are some works mainly from 2006 up to 2010. I have a feeling we will see more to Stefan Müller the coming years. I am doing all I can to read, look and learn as much I can about him.

One of the best group shows the last 20 years – Sergej Jensen & Stefan Muller at Greene Naftali – SERGEJ JENSEN AND STEFAN MÜLLER – JANUARY 7 – FEBRUARY 8, 2003

Link to Gallery –

Nagel Draxler

Bärbel Grässlin

The post Stefan Müller appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Q: Can you tell me about your background?

I grew up on a small island in the southeastern part of Denmark, called Møn. It was a free-spirited and playful upbringing. Building caves and devising weapons of all kinds filled my days. An independent sense of self-sufficiency was already a part of who I was back then, ha-ha.

I remember being inspired to build pheasant traps with my brother after lending a ’Robinson Crusoe’ book from the library – and actually, for a while we were really quite a success at it.

At some point later on, I became really interested in music, and started playing bass (both electric and double) intent on becoming a professional musician.  At some point, I become frustrated with the premises of playing in a band – the joint necessity to compromise – whilst also realizing that my talent wouldn’t suffice on my own. From one day to the next, I gave up playing bass, and the practicing 6-8 hours each and every day!

Just before giving up on music, I developed an interest for building instruments and began in apprenticeship making violins at a workshop in Copenhagen. The craft satisfied my need for creating something with my hands, and I was very fascinated by the handywork. It was amazing, being able to cut a beautiful violin from a ‘simple’ piece of thin wood. However unfortunate it was at the time, I missed admission try-outs for a violinmaker’s school in Cremona, Italy – so I decided to enroll at an art high school in Copenhagen instead.To start art classes was truly inspiring. It was all classical model studies and croquis drawing. It was really great to work with different materials, transforming them into visual expressions. After the classes in Copenhagen, I went to Italy for about a year, close to Pietrasanta at Carrera, working for different sculptors and stonemasons.

When I came back to Denmark I started at the Art High School in Holbæk (Holbæk Kunsthøjskole). The school has no restrictions in terms of artistic practice and led me to apply for the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, which I attended later that same year.

Q: What was the first artwork you made? What / How / Why?

That would be an enormous installation I made when I attended the Holbæk Kunsthøjskole.

Q: Was there a particular moment or event where you decided to become an artist?

Looking back, I’ve always kind of seen myself as an artist. Well … I never really saw myself working for others, at least. My greatest interest and personal fulfillment was always in artistic fields, so it seems natural that it became the way of expressing myself.

After my stay in Italy, when I returned to Denmark it was very clear to me that I’d found the means of expressing myself. Thoughts about career and/or ‘life as an artist’ didn’t come to mind until after I’d started at the academy.

I have a deep fascination for everything one would refer to as: ’metaphysical existence’.

The life beyond the common dreams of regular men of society, working instead on a level of non-functionality.Q: What influences you?

My work is influenced by the American conceptual scene. Bruce Nauman is still one of my biggest inspirations, with his honest and persistent practice. Robert Smithson and his psychedelic land art projects relating to the autonomy and vanity of specific sites.

Artists using reality as a setting for their art mainly inspire me. There are many that I could mention …

Q:The Idea / Process. The visual outcome. The material?  

The concept is at the foundation in my practice. For quite a number of years, my interest in the world of organic matter has been the forming element of the practice. The fact that organic matter is constantly being affected by the specific moment; imprinted and reacting in correspondence to its surroundings – I think that’s truly fascinating!

Materials are also important to me, though in the sense that they generally serve a specific function. I nearly always choose a material for its distinctive potential. Different features and qualities of materials are examined whilst experimenting with the construction and underlying ideas and/or developing the concept. In fact, a lot of my time is dedicated to investigating and testing all sorts of things, much like a scientist. I test time measures and duration parameters, comparing them to a given idea or structure. Most of my work is based on studies of process.

Q: Can you tell me more about your routines and rituals in your daily practice?

I see my practice as a personal necessity. It continually satisfies a sense of freedom or self-dependence. It can be lonely, but I live for DIY (re. Do-It-Yourself), and my independence relies on it. I’m a typical hard worker, not really able to separate work from my spare time, even if I wanted to. The most important thing though, is my self-determination – no two days are similar.

Q: The Idea/concept surrounding your work, can you tell us more about it?

My practice is founded upon my genuine interest and wonder in the phenomena of ’reality’, what it consists of, and how it imprints traces on its surroundings.

I see ‘reality’ as an organic and dynamic structure that’s constantly changing due to (and in coherence with) time passing.

The character of reality is defined by the temporal potential produced by the surroundings that are continuously made visible through these different undivided structures.

Temporalities and the potential of the surroundings are incredibly hard to understand. I attempt to visualize the traces of process from the reality in which it’s produced. I do so by withdrawing and isolating some of these traces, and I’m thereby able to obtain a certain amount of information.

To me, a reality consists of a given course of time in a given situation, environment, spatial context, organic body or cognitive structure, that makes an imprint present in the world surrounding us. Interacting structures are imbedded in a landscape of reality. These structures are giving and receiving information, being both active and passive within the moment created around them. Such structures have always fascinated me. Having the characteristics of ‘just being a simple object’, as well as a performativity factor, these structures are able to exist as dynamic spatial objects.

Q: Your latest works – The “golden cubes” – Can you tell me more about them, and how they came to life?

The work is titled, ‘INSPIRATIONS’ and derives from Latin (inspire = to breathe; inspiration = instance of breathing in). It consists of 10 distinctive and highly-polished brass forms. Each piece began as a quadratic cube containing a volume equal to the typical amount of oxygen my lungs process in 15 minutes. Each cube is individual in terms of how much air there has been removed by a vacuum pump. The cubes are gradually being compressed and the amount of air removed corresponds with the volume of the total amount of oxygen my lungs would need from every 1.5 minutes up to every 15 minutes.

The cubes are manifesting different temporalities (from 1.5 minutes to 15 minutes) by visualizing the various volumes of oxygen my lungs would use due to their absence. Q: I remember the Concrete Block with the same temperature and “presence” as you – Can you tell me more?

‘Self-Portrait, Naked’ is a series of 11 unique sculptures in concrete. Each has a surface area equal to my skin and emanates the same amount of heat as my body. The work is an identical thermal representation of my own physical body.   Formally, each is internally fitted with copper wiring, warming the concrete from the inside so that its surface radiates the same amount of heat as my skin. Beginning with my height (183 cm), I kept the surface area proportions to scale by decreasing the height of each by 13 cm intervals.

With this series of self-portraits, it was the first time that I used my own body so blatantly in an artwork.

Previous works often gathered or translated the physical factors within the environmental surroundings of the artwork itself. They’ve at times made use of ice, condensation, and even fungus spores to visualize the traces of organic material and/or the presence of the beholder within time and the exhibition space.Q: Ghost?

I was interested in addressing the question and type of temporality this moment will come into presence. The work consists of mirrored-glass with a cooling unit affixed to the backside and hidden from view. Any humidity in the room will always condense on the mirror’s surface.

What one encounters when viewing the work is an unclear, foggy image of one’s self reflected.   In that very same moment, you’re also seeing an image of yourself through a filter from everyone else who’s looked into the mirror. The past has a physical presence in the present, revealing itself as a dewy shadow of those who had been there before.Q: Many of your works seem to be some kind of a Self-portraits – Is that correct? And can you explain more about the many different bodies of work the last years, how it is progressing and moving forward.

As I pointed out earlier, I have a genuine fascination with the phenomenon of ‘reality’. The reality of which our world consists, and where the presence of subjects appear. Peter Sloterdijk writes in ‘Bubbles’: “We are broken hopes but opportunities of new attempts”.

Everything is inconsistent and our reality is constantly transforming.

My rather recent interest in the genre of self portraiture, was an attempt to extend and challenge my practice. Earlier works (such as ‘Ghost’ and ‘Exhale’) are registrational and/or characterized by translative features the reveal/record a witnessing. Those works examine external conditions that to some extent were already given in the exhibition space.

By making my own body the point of reference, the conceptual interests take on a more personalized content. I think it adds a sort of subjective poetry to the work and it’s becoming more concerned with the essence of my interest.Q:  Is it important for you that people understand and question your work or is it ok just to think they are great looking?

My work often has an industrial vibe to it, but beneath the apparently simple, dense forms (like the “Concrete Block” you mention), lies rather a complicated system of careful considerations. Naturally, it’s not necessarily the first thing one considers in the presence of the work – the multitude of decisions that went into its creation, but once you start considering its appearance, they begin to come to light. The decisions are the actual foundation of the work.

In terms of the audience’s reaction, what’s important for me is that one gets a sense of precision and consideration in terms of the execution and the work’s concept. It doesn’t matter to me whether one can decode all of the references and concepts in the work at first glance. I prefer a subtle means of encouraging the viewer to reflect upon the choices that were made in front of them.Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

I’m still working on the ‘INSPIRATIONS’ series I described. I’m also working on a photo project of a wall-like figure made from bricks of potassium sulphate (the substance slowly reacts with environmental humidity, causing the bricks to melt, completely deteriorating within a few months). Aside from that, I’m presenting some work in Brussels in April, and look forward to a big presentation of my work in Copenhagen in August.

Link to artist page Karl T Sandegaard

The post Q&A With Karl T. Sandegaard appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Q: Can you tell me about your background

I grew up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I started drawing and painting at an early age. I moved to Montreal five years ago. Now I split my time between Montreal, and New York.

Q: What was the first artwork you made? What / How / Why?

I can’t really remember my very first artwork, but I do remember drawing a series of deer with my auntie when I was probably 7 years old.

Q: Was there a particular moment or event where you decided to become an artist?

My auntie was a terrific wildlife painter, and I would spend a lot of time with her around her studio. She really encouraged me to make art, and from a young age I saw that it was possible to be an artist.

Q: What is most important to you regarding your work: The Process. The visual outcome. The material? Or something else?

I would have to say that all of those elements are important to the work. My process involves a lot of questions and investigation. Searching for a feeling that is based on a visual experience gained from the materials.

Q: Can you tell me more about your routines and rituals in your daily practice?

I spend a lot of time on preparations. Mixing paint, stretching and priming canvas, as well as tidying my work area. I often will look at the work for hours on end, trying to decide what can stay and what has to go.

Q: The process and the choice of material and ideas surrounding your work, can you tell us more about it?

I mainly use acrylic, or synthetic latex paint on canvas or wood panel. Lately I’ve been mixing my own acrylics from liquid or dry pigment. I find that the colors I derive from these pigments are unlike the colors most often found in tubes. I gravitate towards mixing colors that are slightly impure, and my lines are all done by hand. My hope in doing this is to help slow the viewer down. I don’t want the viewer to draw conclusions about the work too quickly. The imperfections in the colors and lines help to block that impulse.

I use acrylic because the decisions I make in the process of painting are made very quickly. The faster drying time of the acrylic really helps with this. I make marks on the surfaces and then I spend a lot of time editing them, little by little. Sometimes a couple of millimeters can make or break a painting. It can take days, weeks, or months until the paintings feel right. Until the surfaces have been built up and all of the elements are there.

Splitting my time between Montreal, and New York has been incredibly beneficial. Having that physical distance from the works, and having the time to contemplate them and not having the ability to act on any of the impulses to change the work has been helpful.

Q: Can you tell me more about the smaller works consisting of 4 squares in a room in every corner?

By hanging the four components in direct reference to the existing architecture, the room becomes an essential part of the piece. The whiteness of the wall becomes an integral part of the work, and the space itself becomes activated. Once hung, the four pieces function as a single piece. This idea came from an ongoing investigation of space, and the question of how we experience painting.

Q: What influences you?

Walking, reading, music.

Q: The artist Agnes Martin seems to have made a large impact on you. Can you tell me why and more ?

Agnes Martin is one of my all time favorite painters. Where do I start? Maybe it’s the Saskatchewan connection, haha.

Q: Is it important for you that people try to understand and question your work?

I have my own relationships with the paintings, and I’m open to others having their own experiences. That’s why I rarely title my works. My paintings are questions in a sense. I’m not that interested in finding the answers, but I’m very interested in the search. I hope that the work would ask questions of the viewer. Questions about themselves.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

I have work in an exhibition in Copenhagen at Les Gens Heureux through October 23rd. I will show work in an exhibition at Birch Contemporary in Toronto curated by Micah Lexier that runs in tandem with his solo exhibition, ‘These Five Things.’ It opens on October 29th, I’m really excited about that. I have a two-person exhibition with Russell Tyler in Portland at Ampersand in November. I also have work up at 57W57 Arts in New York.

www.matthewfeyld.tumblr.com

Link to Group Show with Daniel Levine, Andre Butzer and Matthew Feyld at Sunday-S Gallery 

Link to Solo show at SundayS Gallery in Copenhagen 2019

The post Q&A with Matthew Feyld appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Can you tell me a little about yourself? What was the first artwork you ever made?

Funny, you’re asking. Just the other day I was browsing an old family album and, to all appearances, I was seven and loved to cut out paper-furniture. And as I remember now, my playroom was utterly crammed with it.

What’s more important to you – the material, the process, the final outcome, or something else?

The individual sculpture is one thing but at its basis as well as at the basis of all my exhibitions so far there’s another question. More elementary, a question for possible alliances, somewhat similar, I’d like to wish, to Roland Barthes’ final enquiry: How to live together?

I conceive my sculptures site-specifically of the total contextual or conceptual structure available to me. The whole space in all its dimensions is the place of composition. And all pieces and ensembles are proposals for new forms of being together, of acting together, and cooperating with each other.

Thus, the material, the process, the final outcome, and even something else mutually take part in it.  But in the end, it’s a quite immediate affair, pretty physical, too. A precise space, a particular sculpture, you, myself, or anybody and whatever occurs in between … 

Some of your earlier works prominently consist of blinds. How come?

It’s definitely not that Duchamp-thingy! The fragile balance of cracking-up and reassembling orderly systems of classification or any given functionality is far too pleasurable. Still, found objects are important to me, you can’t just make them up. They give you something to think about, you’ve got to deal with ’em.

But how come the blinds? Pretty pathetic, in fact! It was an early Saturday morning, although already beautifully sunny, shortly after I had relocated to Berlin and I was heading home from Paris Bar when I found my first blinds. I was instantly ravished by the wonderful simultaneity of lineatures and planes in its delicate shadow play, by the spatial variability of the filaments … each strip can be bended, cut, tilted, shuffled or contracted into any form. Plain and easy love at first sight, I’d say.  And back then, maybe Bowie’s »pale blinds drawn all day / nothing to do, nothing to say / blue, blue, electric blue / that’s the colour of my room / where I will live«, too, a tiny bit.

And your new sculptures? What is the difference compared to the earlier ones? Why did you change?

Do you experience them differently?

The earlier sculptures were linear, for sure, intrinsic and averted, withdrawn from us. And after some years, I simply longed to make them more planar, to give them more surface, realign them towards the surrounding space and relate them closer to us. If you like as a broadside at the beholder.

And honestly, to me they are still all the same. Not visually, of course, but they all pose the same existential question of spatial corporality, of how a body gains its own stand, finds its appropriate place and holds up this position.

What is the toughest part of being an artist?

I couldn’t care less for any avant-garde-concepts, especially for the most recent, seasonal ones. That’s just as silly as all blimpish retro-gardes. If you gave me the choice of agonising myself over what to accomplish next or afore, I’d prefer not to and, being a petty dabbler instead, factually recognise my situation and merrily endure it.

That’s a little like asking, in which country I would rather like to live? To which I would courteously respond that I want to live nowhere else than here in Belle-Alliance-Straße. Anything else seemed almost delusive. Even choosing another age took more sympathies, fancy imagination and complacency than I could possibly want to spare for this topic.

Can you let us in on some of your future works?

I’m working on them …

Nah, at the moment, together with Andy Hope 1930, I am preparing an exhibition at Neue Galerie Gladbeck (»Escapement«, September 11 – October 23, 2015) for which I am about to finish three extensive pieces dwelling on the concepts of spaces within space and, at the same time, of passage or transition. Possibly something sculptural without the sculpture? Anyhow, I’m fairly excited about it! Alongside, there’s a group show at Kunstverein Reutlingen coming up (»Wo ist hier? #2: Raum und Gegenwart«, September 20 – November 22, 2015) to which I am very much looking forward, too.

Meantime in the studio, while cutting out paper models for an exhibition in late 2016, I find myself drinking peppered vegetable juice and lingering either on Tropicália, Jorge Ben, Astrud Gilberto, and Oscar Niemeyer or on the L.A. River-bed and James Cameron, »Blade Runner«’s electric billboards, a ruinous antiquity, and pastel colours.

You see, obviously seven again, all is well this very August in the Southwest of Berlin.

Link to Artist Page >>

Link to Gallerist >>

Link to Artist Feature on Sunday S Gallery

The post Q&A With Madeleine Boschan appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Q: Can you tell me about your background?

Together with my three siblings, I grew up happily – and happily untended – in my parents’ restaurant on the outskirts of a small town, which was characterized by the coal and steel industries.

Q: What was the first artwork you made? What? How? Why?

All kids make some kind of art at some point or another, so it was nothing special – but I created my first oil painting when I was 12 years old. I was in a studio in Münster, visiting my aunt and uncle, who were studying there at the academy at the time.

Q: What is more important to you regarding your work? The Process? The visual outcome? The material? Or something else?

This all has to come together somehow in a natural way. I have, of course, a clear visual idea of how a painting should appear, but the production process also has to suit me so that I can be satisfied with the final result. Even though it’s not always the case that my paintings are created without any great effort, for me, an artwork should always appear unstrained and easy.

Q: Was there a particular moment when or event where you decided to become an artist?

Around the time when I created my first oil painting, I attended an exhibition of final year students and, while speaking to the professor there, used that (in-)famous statement: “I can do that, too!” Of course, he probably understood this as a commentary, but it was actually intended more as a self-assertive message. In the meanwhile, I became less interested in art – but creating something of my own was always one of my major goals in life. There were times when I thought that I could become a writer, despite my intense dyslexia. Then, following my graduation from secondary school, I took on a very hard task in the community service system by working in a home for children from all over the world suffering from war wounds. During the night shifts, I began drawing portraits of the children, and made a clear decision to become a painter. The year before I entered the academy, I was more or less preoccupied with drawing and painting everything I came across.

Q: Can you tell us more about the process and the choice of material and ideas surrounding your work?

My forms and composition, which I vary continuously, developed out of painting in space and then found their way back onto the canvas. These were ideas borrowed from Abstract Expressionism and forms derived from Constructivism, which I strove to somehow bring together. In doing this, however, the process – the actual work itself, so to speak – had to feel natural and right for me so that the painting could find a balance somewhere between precision and looseness. The material, however, is more or less irrelevant for me if the final painting looks good and is consistent. As a painter, however, I do in fact enjoy paints with a high pigment density, high-quality paintbrushes, etc. For my sculptural works, on the other hand, I tend to simply use wood, since it’s sturdy and easy to work with. I’m not especially interested in sculptural issues. I only want the structure to remain stable, that it looks good and that it helps to convey my attitude.

Q: What influences you?

To be honest, I’m influenced by everything! Who’s not? But Influence feels like a strange Idea to me. That much is clear. I just try to be focused when I paint.

Q: Can you tell me more about the size and scale of your works?

I prefer to paint larger formats, and usually do just that. I like to move around while I’m painting, and I like it when painting becomes a physical act.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

Right now, I’m doing works for several exhibitions and art fairs, in which I’m participating. At the Art Cologne, for example, I’m doing a one-man show with Berthold Pott and, parallel to this, I’m also participating in several group shows throughout the city. This will be followed by the Art Brussels and the Nada New York. My work for these fairs is, however, already finished. I’m going to start making sculptures again sometime soon, but directly for and in the respective spaces – otherwise, I’m also already working on my next solo show in Copenhagen, which will take place at Andersen’s in the fall. Beyond all this, the most interesting thing that I’m working on right now – together with my gallery and the designer Lars Heller – is a comprehensive catalogue with works from the last three years or so, which should also be finished by the fall.

Link to artist page:  Max Frintrop

Link to Gallerist – Berthold Pott

The post Q&A With Max Frintrop appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

January 2014

Ayan Farah – Pure process and visually amazing works !

Farah´s work is often not painted at all, instead undergoing an elaborate process of digging down, dying and sun bleaching. Farah obtains the physical and tactile records of natural phenomena as a part of her artistic practice. The artist travels to carefully selected locations scattered in the North European countries and bring the imprints of long-lasting nature processes into existence of her site-specific masterpieces.Anja Schwörer

Has in many ways been an inspiration and source of reference for many of the “younger” artist today. Anja´s process is quite interesting, and visually her works are just above amazing.

Utilizing bleach as her medium, similar to how light is used in a photographic process, the images are burned into the canvas while allowing the bleach to yield fluctuations of color, shifting spatial tensions and variant values of positive and negative space. Feb – 2014 Sergej Jensen

A Solo show by the Danish artist Sergej Jensen is  opening on February 28 – 2014.March 2014 – Ryan Estep

Ryan Estep / Updated / Process

Different Types of paintings : lidocaine, Re-stretching, Cast Paintings, Clean Paintings, Sterilized Dirt, Sand.Landon Metz

While continuing the artist’s ongoing experiments with colored dyes poured onto unprimed canvas, this latest suite of paintings distinguishes itself from preceding series largely through its methodology: where Metz has to this point built up each body of work a canvas at a time, this most recent offering finds him for the first time thinking in terms of seriality, with sets of identically composed canvases mounted in self-contained groupings.

March 2014

Jens Einhorn

I am strongly influenced by the subculture of the 90s in former GDR, shaped by all its sociopolitical upheavals. I played in punk bands and witnesses the rising of grunge. The roughness of that music, also noticeable in fashion and lifestyle, has actually been an expression of sensible perception besides the mainstream culture. The symbols and codes from that period are taken over by the mainstream nowadays and I am highly interested in arranging them in different contexts. Furthermore I’m driven by the music itself, including rhythm and character of the songs in my paintings.April 2014 –  Q&A with Grear Patterson

Can you tell me a little bit about your background?

7 years old went to camp. – 9 got my first camera. – 11 left home alone for three weeks. – 14 lost virginity. – 15 got drunk. – 17 moved back to New York. – 19 pilots license. – 20 met the love of my life. – 24 bought a beach house.

April 2014 Andre Butzer

The N-paintings seem to lack “color” but the often thinly painted black and white forms are not monochromes. André Butzer is a colorist, “I will always be a colourist and nothing else” and the color choice of black and white is the result of the inclusion, or acceptance, of all existing hues; the destination, or starting point, of color potential.

Jesse Greenberg

April 2014 – Jennifer Guidi 

Luca Vitone

The artwork of Luca Vitone (1964), began in the second half of the 80s. It focuses on the idea of the place, inviting us to re-cognize something we already know, defying the con- ventions of mutable, faded memory that characterize the present.

His work explores the way places are identified through cultural production: art, cartography, music, cuisine, political associations, ethnic minorities. Vitone bridges the gap between the sense of loss of place characteristic of the postmodern and the ways in which feelings of belonging arise in the intersection of personal and collective memory.

April 2014 – Mikkel Carl

What is the idea/concept behind your art?

To use the description offered by curator and art critic Toke Lykkeberg, who recently wrote a text on these new paintings, I guess I’m …”a rather conceptual artist taking some time off as a painter.”Asger Dybvad LarsenEli PingApril 2014 – Florian Meisenberg

May 2014 – Steven Cox

“During this time of studying curating, I painted a lot in my flat, a few disasters happened along the way. I specifically remember renting a really expensive flat in a nice area of Edinburgh though completely destroyed the carpet by leaving a bad trail of oil paint. Somehow, I managed to cover it up by using cream coloured spray paint and oddly I got away with it. Though, at that point, I realized a serious studio was required so my work could be explored further. “

Alberto Tadiello

A feverish unfolding of reds, magentas, carmines, blacks, crimsons, violets, plums, greys, burgundies, pinks, whites, browns. Some golden dust.
They show all the bewilderment of fullness. The continuous crossing of a full and intense glimmer. Facing the Pale is like dipping one’s head in a blooming cherry tree.

May 2014 – Alex Da Corte

The idea / concept behind your art – Can you tell me more about it ?

The work and the words ascribed to my work are always shifting and morphing.
Id like to think that the work points to those divisions and shifts in perception, the residue of experience, the inability to translate or articulate, and proposes new ideas for how objects and people can coexist- or not…

June 2014 – Dean Levin

To create these paintings Levin makes tile “samples” by taking certain rectangular segments of linoleum tiles, into which he rubs oil pigments. After this, he dips a length of canvas in turpentine and places it over the tiles. The turpentine breaks down the pigment and stains the canvas. During this process, the grid of the tiles in the “sample” is also imprinted onto the canvas. The result is a length of monochrome canvas that contains the vagaries of the surface of the studio floor.

Alfredo Aceto

The first artwork I ever made was to ask the artist Sophie Calle, who was my deepest obsession at that time, to tattoo her signature on my skin.

Then I asked a psychologist to help me get out of my Sophie Calle obsession. He then suggested I choose another woman in the art world and live with her.

I went to Alaska to stay with Paola Pivi helping her build a new house.

Ryan Estep – Solo Show June 2014

Dirt is taken, mixed with an organic disinfectant and heated to 600 degrees.  This sterile material is then silkscreened onto canvas and re-stretched while wet.

With a systematic set of rules and premeditated actions, Estep follows a ritual of sorts, starting with the creation of a monochromatic surface in the tradition of post-minimalism, and finishing the process with the addition of gestural marks. The marks are usually the result of an intentional accident, following an action planned by the artist and at times affected by his experimentation with unconventional materials.

Giorigio Griffa

While Giorgio Griffa´s work has been overlooked for several decades, Griffa exhibited at Sonnabend gallery in New York in 1970 and participated in important international exhibitions such as Prospekt, Dusseldorf (1969 and 1974) and the Venice Biennale (1978 and 1980).

Jessica Sanders

“I’m interested in the relationships between materials – Building up, breaking down, yielding, consenting, push back, loss and gain. That intertwines process and materiality, looking for moments of shift. So yes, it looks at a things relative ability or inability to transform, but my end goal isn’t to free it from being a static object. Many ideas lead to a static state through change, and that’s just as interesting. “

July 2014 – Peppi Bottrop

What is more important to you regarding your work: the process. the visual outcome, the material – or something else?

– All of it. At first I think about the material. It is the first reference to the emerging image. After that it is important to me to completely lose myself in the process up to the point where I exit the image. A stroke is a stroke. What you see is what you get.

July 2014 – Alberto Tadiello

The new body of works, the sand paper. I would love to know more about them.

Have you ever seen a blooming cherry tree? Have you ever dip your head inside its flowering? Did you ever look at a flower meadow from the ground level? Think of something feverish, vivid. Of a sanguineous temperament. Of incandescence. Of metal substances’ colours, becoming increasingly bright and hellish at elevated temperatures

August 2014 – Andre Butzer

What is more important to you regarding your work: The process. The final visual outcome. The material? Or something else? 

IMPORTANT IS ONLY THE IMAGE. THERE IS NO PROCESS OR PROGRESS. THERE IS ONLY ENTITY, ESSENCE, DESTRUCTION, ENDLESS ANNIHILATION AND LOVE.

Luke Diiorio

The works on canvas that are folded, Can you tell us more about them and the process.

– I think the folds relate to our relationship with the physical world. each visible segment of material overlaps a concealed equal portion, creating a rhythm of not only line and space, but also of visible and invisible.

September 2014 – Tove Storch

The shadow works where dealing with ideas of how to change two-dimensional material into three-dimentional objects. The steel-constructions with silk stretched on or within them somehow still deals with that thought, because the steel has the role of making construction points that something else can attatch itself to, to become volumous in space. I dont think it was a dicision to go in a certain direction, one works leads to the next and I slowly change my subject.

Kadar Brock

The ‘original’ painting is always something I made, usually some sort of gestural abstraction. It’s a direct and very free painting, and something that assumes a certain relationship about mark making and gesture, and embodies a certain kind of belief about art and art making. The original painting is taken and objectified, and acted upon and treated as a symbolic token in a larger ritual. This all evolved very slowly and methodically, albeit intuitively, out of a desire to challenge the way I made art, and to put pressure on my assumptions and beliefs about painting.

 Augustus Nazzaro

As a painter my materials are somewhat basic. I like to work within the confines of traditional mediums. I also work in a reduced palette. Limitations like these influence my decision-making and lead me to be more focused in my approach to the work. The process is very important in the creation of the work but does not supersede the final visual outcome. I work reductively, sanding off layers of paint in thin strips, slowly breaking down the image’s recognizable features. This process is crucial to the establishment of the very ideas behind the work but is not completely pre-determined. It’s important that the final product be something that teeters between representation and abstraction, where the subject is obscured but never completely lost. In the end the final visual outcome is the most important and all of the other elements are in service to the painting itself.

October 2014 – Anja Schwoerer

The textiles used are the basis of the various bodies of work. When I discover a new textile, I explore the way it reacts to being bleached, how it absorbs (or not) the dyes, the nature of it’s woven structure etc. Thus, the material influences the look of the finished work. I often get ideas through experimenting with the physical properties of the various textiles. The different, often contrary and complex, steps in this process are decisive for my work.

Baptiste Caccia

Q: The process of your paintings the repeated screen prints, can you tell us more about it?

A: The ink going through the screen becomes the image. I ‘m only the painter who talks with the image, I learn its language thanks to my translater : silkscreen. As repetitions proceed and the different appearances of the image, the image and I, we paint together.

Ayan Farah – Q&A

Q: What is more important to you:  The Process. The final visual outcome. The material? Or something else?

A: There is no ranking as such, one inspires and leads to the other. I would say the visual outcome is less important as a lot of my work happens organically and there is a lot of chance involved. Lately I’ve made more work that is far more composed. These also start as off cuts and get reconfigured into new works. Some of the materials I use are 100+ years old linen and hemp. These do whatever they want depending on the weave, ageing, stains, fibre damage etc.

November 2014 – Samuel Levi Jones

Q: What is most important to you regarding your work? The visual outcome, The process, The Material, Or something else? 

Interesting question. I feel that each of these things is no less important than the other. The “something else” for me would be the conceptual entity of the work. The term “process” seems to be used primarily for the act making. To me process is everything from getting up in the morning to turning down at night. Sometimes the process is even continued in rest. I am actually able to remember my dreams or even nightmares in the morning then they also become part of process. Part of the outcome is how the viewer, through the work, experiences the idea or ideas. The experience of the viewer is equally as important, so from beginning to end everything has to take equal importance.

December 2014 – Steve Nishimoto

Q: The process and the choice of source material and ideas surrounding your work, can you tell us more about it?

A: My most recent series of paintings is titled ‘Cessation,’ which refers to the “act of bringing to an end” or in terms of smoking cessation, quitting. I acted on my fixation with both smoking and quitting smoking to create these works. The viewer may perceive the fragility of life in the materials and treatment. Tobacco staining, burnt matches and ashes are littered across raw canvas. I try to use inexpensive, readily available materials—which may have a negative connotation about them—to hopefully create compelling artworks

The post All about art – 33 Artist in 2014 !! appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Q: Can you tell us about your background?

I was born and raised in Chicago, a fourth-generation Japanese-American. My family were, in essence, culturally assimilated Americans. We didn’t even speak the language, but I was exposed early on to certain aspects of Japanese culture. I sometimes wonder if this unconsciously influences my approach to art making. I attended Lane Tech, the city’s largest high school and the same school my father went to, which was a massive place with a highly diverse group of over 4,000 students. There I focused on my interest in art. I was fortunate to have teachers who were encouraging and supportive of my choice and I then went on to the American Academy of Art to pursue my BFA in fine art. After being graduated I moved to New York City in 2002.

Q: Was there a particular moment or event where you decided to become an artist?

A. I can’t recall the exact age, but I was fairly young when I first made a complex ink drawing. I had always drawn a lot but this particular piece was quite a bit more advanced than my previous efforts. Apparently it so impressed my father that he told me he wanted to place me in art school.

Q: What was the first artwork you made?

A. Perhaps the one I’ve just mentioned.

Q: What is most important to you regarding your work? The visual outcome, The process, The Material, Or something else?

A. With my work, the most important thing is that I feel some sense of satisfaction from what I am doing, regardless of its outcome.

Q: The process and the choice of source material and ideas surrounding your work, can you tell us more about it?

A: My most recent series of paintings is titled ‘Cessation,’ which refers to the “act of bringing to an end” or in terms of smoking cessation, quitting. I acted on my fixation with both smoking and quitting smoking to create these works. The viewer may perceive the fragility of life in the materials and treatment. Tobacco staining, burnt matches and ashes are littered across raw canvas. I try to use inexpensive, readily available materials—which may have a negative connotation about them—to hopefully create compelling artworks.

Q: Working with Matches and Tobacco – How did that happen?

A: This series started from a painting in which I invited fellow artists and studio visitors to smoke, ash and extinguish their cigarettes on a canvas they would stand on. I noticed a stray burn mark and one idea led to the next.
Q: The Works with the Ashes from the Matches – How did that come to life, and how are they made?

A: As I was putting cigarettes out on the canvas for this piece, I swiped a burnt match along with my foot and noticed what a defined line it left. This led me to the idea of recycling materials I had already used to pull them across the canvas. I was looking for the right object to function as a squeegee and, after some trial and error, it turned out to be a metal door that I found discarded in the studio space.

 
Q: What influences you?

A. Mostly sort of mundane things that I notice while I’m walking around, that make me curious or feel something. Certain aspects of my film photography also feed back in to the work and vice versa. Often, abstract elements are explored in my photographs: shadows on walls, textures, color blocking, etcetera. A selection may be viewed @steve.nishimoto
Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

I have some new ideas that I’m very excited to start working on. I will also continue to develop some of the concepts explored in the Cessation series.

Steve Nishimoto debuts his series of five process based works. These large scale (60” x 72”ʼ and 90” x 75”) pieces are materially connected, as they all utilize common objects associated with smoking, but more notably they are conceptually tied together by a formal study of the relation between chance and pattern.

The first series, Match Burn Paintings, are prepared by throwing lit matches at a canvas. By setting the barest of parameters and leaving the rest to chance he in effect recreates the basic principles of universal creation and the results bear a striking resemblance to modern satellite images of protean celestial events.

In another series, Used Match Paintings, the spent matches from the Match Burn Paintings are affixed at random intervals to a weighted sled and dragged across canvas. He is again setting minimal conditions to produce an abstract that is not a direct result of the artists will. The end products are erie Rorschach-like images where patterns are suggested and the shadows of the familiar surface and recede in watery succession.

The third set, Matchbook Paintings, brings the series to total use of the original source, the matchbooks that housed the tools from the first two series are arranged in hypnotic positive/negative space patterns that bring to mind DNA test charts. The random element is also at play here in a more understated way within the repetitive sequencing as stray marks from natural use overlay their own motifs.

Nishimoto changes medium for the Tobacco Stain Paintings. Cut tobacco, sometimes cut with graphite powder, is sprayed with water mister and left to leech on canvas. After the initial installation by the artist, gravity and the changing physical properties of the combined elements follow the dictates of their intrinsic properties to determine the final outcome. These works have an etherial micro/macro relationship to nature at once evoking the graining of igneous rock and ,as in the Match Burn Paintings, telescopic visions of the cosmos.

The final group, Ash Tray Paintings, amplifies the artists relinquishing of control by introducing multiple actors in the process. Canvases are left on the ground to be used as smoking areas by a revolving cast of studio visitors. The chaotic abstractions achieved are fittingly full of life as they are a true point specific recording of human activity.

Steve Nishimoto is a fourth generation Japanese-American artist born and raised in the city of Chicago, currently living and working in New York City. His work reflects the New York landscape that he has inhabited for the past 12 years.

 Link to Artist Page

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Q: Can you tell us about your background?

I was born in 1978. I grew up in the small Midwest town of Marion, Indiana. I would describe the town mostly as a blue-collar working class town. I grew up with three older brothers and my father worked and retired from the local General Motors plant. I spent a good deal of my childhood playing sports. I went to a university nearby to studio Communication Studies where I also played American football. After finishing my first undergraduate studies I moved to Indianapolis where I lived for seven years and a BFA in photography at the Herron School of Art and Design. In 2010 I moved to California to attend Mills College in Oakland for my MFA.

Q: Was there a particular moment or event where you decided to become an artist?

It was around the age of 27 when I really considered being an artist. At the age of 23 I took a photography class during my first undergraduate studies. I was studying Communication Studies at the time, and during my last semester I took a black and white film photography class. I had a strong draw to using the camera along with whole process of making prints. The process of making in of itself felt right and seemed to make sense me. It felt very natural.

Q: What was the first artwork you made?

Long before the first photography class that I took I had made works of art in art classes, notably in elementary school or junior high school. At the time art did not resonate with me. These classes were mandatory and as such there was little room for creative freedom. In that given context I had very little interest. It was not until I decided to pursue art in my own way that I became excited about it.

Q: What is most important to you regarding your work? The visual outcome, The process, The Material, Or something else?

Interesting question. I feel that each of these things is no less important than the other. The “something else” for me would be the conceptual entity of the work. The term “process” seems to be used primarily for the act making. To me process is everything from getting up in the morning to turning down at night. Sometimes the process is even continued in rest. I am actually able to remember my dreams or even nightmares in the morning then they also become part of process. Part of the outcome is how the viewer, through the work, experiences the idea or ideas. The experience of the viewer is equally as important, so from beginning to end everything has to take equal importance.

Q: The process and the choice of source material and ideas surrounding your work, can you tell us more about it?

A: The choice of material simply comes form ideas. Ideas are at times based upon personal experiences and reactions to various things which I encounter. The work begins with an idea and I simply try to find the best way to convey those thoughts.

Q: Working with covers from encyclopedias – How did that happen?

A: The choice of encyclopedias came from the work of my 48 Portraits (Underexposed). The paper used for the prints came from recycling pages from the encyclopedia. Working with the skins was a result of further investigating the material and a continuation of breaking it down.

Q; The mixed media works, compared to the Encyclopedia works, can you tell us more about the differences, similarities and the choice of titles?

A. The mixed media that you might be referring to are, in fact, the encyclopedias on canvas. This is the medium in which the work is described, and they are on paintings. They just so happen to be on canvas, and a lot of the time viewers ask how I have applied paint. There is no paint applied directly to the material. A majority of these paintings are created form the skins of the book covers. In some paintings I have used material in addition to the covers, and these works are usually on panel.

Q: Can you tell me more about your quote from “Recology” and what it means?
“The process of my making is an attempt to address identity within the modern world upon the existence of exclusion”

I consider the encyclopedias as a structure that controls information. I think about information that is left out, and I am giving consideration to that information that is on the outside. I am thinking about its existence or nonexistence. Does it disappear, does it find a place of its own, or is it able to exist along side all of the other information as in one in the same? The encyclopedia is a trope for various contexts of exclusion.

Q: What influences you?

There are various influences. Initially, personal experiences were the strongest influence for me to make art. The work became a way of understanding these experiences. I also look upon others or other situations around me in which I relate as influences.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

I am currently working on a project to be exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem for 2015. I have an idea of what that project will be, but still hashing out some details.

 Link to Artist Page >> Samuel Levi Jones

Link to Gallerist >>

Read more about Samuel Levi Jones >>

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SHOWING WORKS BY GLEN BALDRIDGE, COLBY BIRD, PATRICK BRENNAN, GRAHAM COLLINS, NED COLCLOUGH, STEVEN COX, GEORGIA DICKIE, CHRIS DUNCAN, HILARY HARNISCHFEGER, SARA GREENBERGER RAFFERTY, RACHEL FOULLON, TED GAHL, KARL HAENDEL, ADAM HELMS, JEREMY JANSEN, MATT KENNY, LAUREN LULOFF, AUGUSTUS NAZZARO, HILARY PECIS & RYAN WALLACE

Ryan Wallace states:

“I started curating the exhibition with two distinct groups in mind, as I did studio visits and reviewed works, it wasnʼt as clearly delineated/definable as I expected. While images sourced from movie posters are clearly photographic, and a ceramic tile is clearly material, questions arose in other works.

How to categorize a sun bleached exposure on fabric, or a remodeled thrift store painting of a tiger; as an object or an image? In this way, the gallery will be divided into two areas; the lower level filled with those works that are drawing most clearly from photographic imagery, the ground level spaces being a blend of the clearly object influence pieces and those that arenʼt so clearly categorized.”

Link to Gallery V1

Link to Q&A with Steven Cox

Link to Q&A with Augustus Nazzaro

Link to Chris Duncan

Link to Graham Collins

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Samuel Levi Jones has disassembled objects to metaphorically deconstruct the accepted beliefs connected with them.

Expanding on earlier work, Jones collected encyclopedias as well as medical reference books during his residency, removing their covers and reassembling the skin-like material into formal grids. As two-dimensional works for the wall, the pieces have a painterly quality with remnants of the book boards and glue appearing like abstract markings.

Link to Gallery – Opening Nov 8th 2014 !

By literally tearing apart these books—symbols of esteemed knowledge and arbiters of what is considered important—Jones questions the veracity of the written word and the reverence we place on it, while also speaking to imperfect paradigms, such as Western medicine.

While scavenging for books, Jones also discovered discarded sports balls, and working primarily with footballs and basketballs, he has used the same process of removing and reconfiguring their coverings.

Jones likens the act of taking apart the balls and understanding their construction to learning the inner workings of establishments, such as organized sports, in order to navigate systems and succeed. Jones has also chosen to use the interior side of the leather from the balls which he stitches together. In contrast to the familiar tough exteriors of sports balls, the reverse side of the leather has a softer, more vulnerable quality and suggests issues of the personal within institutional systems.

Jones grew up in Indiana where he received a BFA from the Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis. He received an MFA from Mills College and has exhibited in San Francisco at Jessica Silverman Gallery and Root Division, and in Southern California at Papillion Gallery in Los Angeles.

Text above from: Recology

Link to artist Page: Samuel Levi Jones

Link to Gallery: Papillion Art

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Q: Can you tell me about your background?

A: I grew up in many different places and call nowhere home but Stockholm, Sweden and Copenhagen, Denmark is where my family is.

Q: What was the first artwork you made?

A: Super 8 films from around the age of 7-8 and some Polaroids. I played a lot with film and analog photography, except some photos I didn’t really make 2 D work till much later.

Q: What is more important to you:  The Process. The final visual outcome. The material? Or something else?

A: There is no ranking as such, one inspires and leads to the other. I would say the visual outcome is less important as a lot of my work happens organically and there is a lot of chance involved. Lately I’ve made more work that is far more composed. These also start as off cuts and get reconfigured into new works. Some of the materials I use are 100+ years old linen and hemp. These do whatever they want depending on the weave, ageing, stains, fibre damage etc.

Q: The process and idea surrounding the different bodies of work, can you tell us more about them? – Fex. The sun-bleached canvases. The fabrics that are dug down in ashes, and/or treated with Clay/Mud. The silk works that are treated with a mix of alcohol, vinegar and salt.

I am very interested in knowing more about how and why these came to life?

A: I traveled to Iceland and the blanket that lined my sleeping bag was dug down in the foot of a volcano. It was the volcano’s birthday.
All these works are made parallel, as one was dug down in Iceland, another work was being sun bleached in my window in London. The silk works came after the sun bleached ones, they are negatives.

I used to work in a photography lab in my late teens and I was also an assistant, that tought me some techniques i use but my interest is in camera less photography so I’ve developed a lot of organic processes that all fill their function. The clays and mud’s are predominantly sourced from places I travel to, the mud is from the dead sea in Israel. I’ve always believed in a self-sufficient lifestyle and studio practice, it’s important to me that the materials are sourced by me and they all have a history and get recycled back into the work cycle.

Q: What influences you?

A: The places the materials come from and the stories that surround them.  I read science books and magazines, watch documentaries, travel to places.  I look at architecture and spatial design, traditional craft and old techniques for making things and I try them out. Failures are really inspiring I think, they make better works.

Q: Some people have the opinion that all contemporary art looks the same these days… Care to comment?

A: They need to look harder and closer on so many different levels. There have always been movements and trends but contemporary art is so diverse. In my circle of friends there are figurative oil painters, performance, video, sound artists and Internet artists that work with found material, and all have expansive practices that weave in so many techniques and so much skill. We all have mutual appreciation and respect for each others work and share thoughts and ideas but I can’t say one is the same as the other.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

A: I just opened my first solo show with Almine Rech Gallery in Brussels.  It’s titled “Notes on running water” It includes some new paintings based around collected rain water from artificial cloud seeding and wells in conflict regions in Africa. I’m also doing other various things with them for FIAC, Miami and London.  I’m  preparing work for “Pangaea that’s opening at Saatchi gallery early 2015. Finally I’m making plans for my second research trip to the seed bank in Svalbard.

Link to Artist Page >> Ayan Farah

Link to Gallerist Page

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Baptiste Caccia’s practice is centred on the reproduction and over-saturation of image. Through a series of repeated screen prints he floods the canvas with the reiteration of an image, each time making adjustments and adding gestural painterly elements. Caccia collects his original images from photographs taken of objects which have been unintentionally painted in a manner that resembles a gesture from an abstract painting. Through his process the artist constructs a mise en abîme, a painting within a painting within a painting, the multiplication of layers creates a large spectrum of possibilities that slowly appear within a series of works through the relentless transformation of the initial image.

Q: Can you tell me about your background?

A: My background is not one of the most original. I grew up in Brittany (west of the France) at seaside.

My family was not so fond of art but my parents never discouraged me from drawing or choosing an artistic path, they cheered me up though. I have painted and drawn since I was a child and after my bachelor degree I went to the Rennes Beaux-Arts and then the Paris one. When I was 14 I wanted to be an automobile designer.

Q: What was the first artwork you made?

A: Honestly I don’t remember. If you mean an artwork as one of the premises of what I do today, I ‘d think about my industrial blueprint prints. It was a mix of silkscreen and abstract painting.

Q: What is most important to you:  The Process. The visual outcome. The choice of material? Or something else?

A: Understanding the image through its reproduction process. I care a lot about random as well.

Q: The process of your paintings the repeated screen prints, can you tell us more about it?

A: The ink going through the screen becomes the image. I ‘m only the painter who talks with the image, I learn its language thanks to my translater : silkscreen. As repetitions proceed and the different appearances of the image, the image and I, we paint together.

Q: The original image chosen to be the “source” how and why was it chosen, and how will the series progress?

A: The cool one (Joke). I take a lot of pictures about painting largely speaking. I order them up, they grow in a corner of my head. Usually one of those ranks top naturally when it’s time to move on the next one. It also depends on what’s going on with the current one.

Q: What influences you?

A: As an artist ? As Robert Rauschenberg said, the frontier between art and life is thin. That’s why I can’t talk of precise influences, it’s more about what we build, what I could see, listen to, read,  who I have spoken to, argued with, my childhood… I know this looks general but I believe it’s true. It starts from my time being an oyster opener till the last silkscreen I bought to a goddamn good ol’ Franck Zappa album.

Q: Some people have the opinion that all contemporary art looks the same these days… Care to comment?

A: I know a lot of things look similar but tendencies have always existed. You have to take the time to know what you’re looking at. You know, today art is going fast, it will maybe “selfmake” it by its own one day.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

After my shower, often, when the sun is heavy, I look at my garden by the bathroom window.

Link to Artist Page

Link to Gallery – Superdakota

Link to Artist Feature on Sunday-S

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The works, the process and the final outcome evokes for me a very special feeling. Anja´s works might seem equal and similar to what we have all seen the latest 2-3 years from many other well known artists. But she has been making these works long time before, we have become familiar them.

Q&A – Anja Schwoerer >>

Q: Can you tell me about your background? And what was the first artwork you made?

I became interested in art rather late, at least, I didn’t grow up with it around me. Of course, at school I liked the art lessons best, and was very ambitious. I believe that my art teacher and my friends at the time got me interested in, and enthusiastic about, art. We drew pictures, made screen prints, and sculpted heads from plaster.

Later, as I got to know practising artists, I was impressed and excited by their way of thinking and how they lived their lives. It opened up a new world for me, one that I didn’t know of from my upbringing. I wanted to live and think and work as these artists did.

Q: What is more important to you:  The Process. The final visual outcome. The material? Or something else?

The materials, the process, and the result, are all actually equally important. The materials I use influence the result, and without the process of dyeing, bleaching, knotting and untying, I wouldn’t get the same result. One thing determines, and leads into, the other.

Q: The process of your works, the different bodies of works and the progression over time, can you tell us more about that ?

The textiles used are the basis of the various bodies of work. When I discover a new textile, I explore the way it reacts to being bleached, how it absorbs (or not) the dyes, the nature of it’s woven structure etc. Thus, the material influences the look of the finished work. I often get ideas through experimenting with the physical properties of the various textiles. The different, often contrary and complex, steps in this process are decisive for my work.

Q: Also the deying / deleting colour from textiles, how did that happen?

I started dyeing textiles when I was still in art school. I was working with so-called ”non-art” materials, hobby stuff really. Various tapes, stickers, puzzles. And then I discovered batik and tye-dyeing. I liked how directly and easily I could create a wonderful colour-gradation or amorphous shapes, forming an abstract image. And while I was not always happy with the results, I began to bleach areas to modify the shapes or to lighten the colours/tones.

Q: What influences you?

Life in general…, travelling, textiles, fashion, music

Q: Some people have the opinion that all contemporary art looks the same these days… Care to comment ?

I don’t think it does, I see a great variety in contemporary art. Sure, there are trends and hypes that influence some artists, but doesn’t every era have it’s own look? In retrospect, you can say that each decade has had it’s own style.

Q: You are based in Berlin, has that influenced the way you work, If so How ?

I don’t think that Berlin as such has influenced my work, I think I could have created it in any city in the world. But Berlin was important for the start of my artistic career. The studios were affordable, there were and still are many friends and colleagues here with whom one can debate and discuss art, there is a lively Offspace scene…I love Berlin!

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

When it’s summer again, I definitely want to develop my series of Sunprints.

Link to Opening – London – Oct 14 at Vigo Gallery

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Group Show  –  Anja Schworer – London 2014

Link to Artist Page – Anja Schwörer

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Q: Can you tell me about your background?

I was born and raised in East Islip, Long Island a suburb of New York City. Despite the proximity to the city I had very little exposure to the arts in general growing up. My father is an architect and my grandfather painted landscapes in his free time, so creatively I had a very pragmatic approach to art making in art school.

Q: What was the first artwork you made?

While receiving my Bachelor in Fine Arts in painting at the School of Visual Arts I began to really focus on drawing. I worked obsessively on interpreting and translating photographs or other imagery I came across. A professor suggested I look at Troy Brauntuch’s work and things really fell into place. That’s when I first felt that I really made something that communicated deeper than only imitation.

Q: What is more important to you:  The Process. The final visual outcome. The material? Or something else?

As a painter my materials are somewhat basic. I like to work within the confines of traditional mediums. I also work in a reduced palette. Limitations like these influence my decision-making and lead me to be more focused in my approach to the work. The process is very important in the creation of the work but does not supersede the final visual outcome. I work reductively, sanding off layers of paint in thin strips, slowly breaking down the image’s recognizable features. This process is crucial to the establishment of the very ideas behind the work but is not completely pre-determined. It’s important that the final product be something that teeters between representation and abstraction, where the subject is obscured but never completely lost. In the end the final visual outcome is the most important and all of the other elements are in service to the painting itself.

Q: The process and idea surrounding the different bodies of work, can you tell us more about them?

The work stems directly from specific events or ideas that come from a particularly American perspective. I often work in series, focusing on socio-political issues. Whether it’s redacted documents from covert operations, spying by the NSA, September 11th, the rise in gun violence and school shootings. These loaded sources serve as the foundation for the creation of my work. The paintings evoke the tone surrounding these dark and uncertain subjects.

Q: What influences you?

Zines, Drone video feeds, Xeroxes, technological breakdown, government building architecture and forensic photography.

Q: Some people have the opinion that all contemporary art looks the same these days… Care to comment?

There is always a predominant trend, especially if it seems to capture an audience. I think it’s important to not only focus on how the work looks but how it is made– process and intent is really crucial to whether or not the work is successful. I think there are works that are made in service of what’s “in fashion” and others that truly derive from the artist’s process and knowledge of art.

Q: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

I am currently in a group exhibition at Koki Arts in Tokyo, Japan curated by Dexter Wimberly. My first solo exhibition, In Pursuit of Shadows, will open at Halsey Mckay Gallery at the end of September. I will also be showing in a group exhibition in Copenhagen, Denmark at V1 Gallery curated by Ryan Wallace in October. After my solo exhibition opens I’m planning to begin researching some new subjects. I’m really intrigued by the trend in America of people preparing for doomsday by stockpiling weapons and food, and there is a ton of material to be explored there.

Link to artist website – Augustus Nazzaro

Link to Halsey Mckay Gallery

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1: Can you tell me about your background? And what was the first artwork you made?

Well, it’s nothing too too exciting. I’m a semi-native New Yorker. I grew up in the suburbs, and then attended Cooper Union (R.I.P.) in the city. My folks split when I was pretty young, but both of them were very ‘new age,’ so that stuck and their respective involvements with holistic healing, new age religion, and other esoterica definitely had an enormous impact on me.

When I was getting some art history in HS I started seeing some of these new agey ideas translated by abstract artists and that’s what really got me going on abstraction.

As far as a first art work, got me. I was always drawing when I was little, and was deep into comics and fantasy art for a long time – I’ve got piles of drawings of wizards and dragons and warriors from elementary school.

2: What is more important to you regarding your work: The Process. The final visual outcome. The material? Or something else?

I don’t think I can separate those. They all beget one another and are interwoven; they’re almost the same thing, or are, at the least, simultaneous. Though if pressed I’d say the making is primary.

3: The process of sanding down the Paintings, how did that happen? And what is originally on the painting to begin with?

The ‘original’ painting is always something I made, usually some sort of gestural abstraction. It’s a direct and very free painting, and something that assumes a certain relationship about mark making and gesture, and embodies a certain kind of belief about art and art making. The original painting is taken and objectified, and acted upon and treated as a symbolic token in a larger ritual. This all evolved very slowly and methodically, albeit intuitively, out of a desire to challenge the way I made art, and to put pressure on my assumptions and beliefs about painting.

The specific act of sanding itself came about in a large part because I’ve done a fair bit of gallery prep work, and at the time that that action worked its way into the painting, I was actually ‘prepping’ my new studio. One of the more annoying art handling tasks to do is to cover up spray paint on gallery walls – you have to sand it, cover it, sand it again, cover it again, and always be crossing your fingers… so it just translated right in, from my physical studio space to the painting space, since I wanted to talk about these marks and gestures that may or may not be able to be erased or covered

4: What influences you?

Friends, games, art, shit I read or watch. The usual stuff.

5: Some people have the opinion that all contemporary art looks the same these days… Care to comment ?

There’s two sides to this for me, and honestly it depends on my mood. On one hand there can be a great sense of community or comradery, and that there’s a larger gestalt. On the other hand, it can be frustrating for so much to get aesthetically lumped together, and for meanings and readings to start to get drowned out in a blur of formal similarity.

I think in regards to this it’s important to get into why things are being made and for them to have a resonant and multilayered set of relationships for the viewer. Shit has to be meaningful.

6: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

I recently expanded my studio space, so I’m going through some minor growing pains as i learn to really take full advantage of the extra space. That’s super enjoyable problem solving. And it’s leading me to make some new things in addition to more more familiar things.

Actual projects coming up though… I’m really stoked for this year. I’m doing two things very soon with my

London gallery, VIGO; a two person booth at Untitled in Miami this December, and a solo exhibition at the gallery in January that will be called ‘unburial rites’. After that settles, I’ll begin preparation for a solo exhibition in Brussels with Almine Rech. She’ll also have a work or two at some art fairs, starting with FIAC. So yeah, a lot to look forward too, and a lot of work to do!

Artist Kadar Brock – Website 

link to www.Vigogallery.com

Kadar Brock – September 5th – 2013

Link to Feature on Sunday S

The post Kadar Brock – Q&A appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

1: Can you tell me about your background? And what was the first artwork you made?

I drew as a child, on everything, all the time. As I grew older it slowly changed into something you could call making art. I remember the first thing I did where I realized, there was some kind of dialouge going on with what has been done and what could be done wihtin art and that I could take part in it. It was something with a net on a wireframe dipped in paint…

2: What is more important to you regarding your work: The Process. The final visual outcome. The material? Or something else?

How it all comes together; the material gathered in a certain way that it becomes a work, with a life on its own.

3: The progression from the Shadow Works on paper, towards the works made by Silk and Stainless steel, can you tell more about them and what made you go in that direction?

The shadow works where dealing with ideas of how to change two-dimensional material into three-dimentional objects. The steel-constructions with silk stretched on or within them somehow still deals with that thought, because the steel has the role of making construction points that something else can attatch itself to, to become volumous in space. I dont think it was a dicision to go in a certain direction, one works leads to the next and I slowly change my subject.

4: What influences you?

I think working with art influences me. I learn both about the history of art, the challenge of material and basic physical laws by making something, even if its just two pieces of wood put together. I find that very inspirering, and it is very interesting to recognice big issues in art in gereal in this very practical way, I mean “problems” others have had, that have been solved in different ways, and sometimes has turned into classic themes.

5: Some people have the opinion that all contemporary art looks the same these days… Care to comment ?

Doesn´t everything look the same if you look at it from a distance?

6: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

I will be going to Brasil in November where I will produce a total installation in a space with shelfes made of silk.

Link to Gallery Nils Stærk

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1: Can you tell me about your background?

– On sundays my father would take me and my four older brothers on drives to visit various farms around the region. he did not know the farmers or land owners, but he showed us around nonetheless.

2: What is more important to you regarding your work: The Process. The visual outcome. The material? Or something else?

– clearly it must be all the three, for they inform and depend on each other so much. the process is the path we take to get to the visual outcome, and it so often becomes its own source of inspiration and meaning. the visual outcome is what we would like to project onto the world that best describes a unique idea or emotion, but we learn that it can never be free of certain limitations and context, like environment or circumstance . and material is a tool often thought of as secondary or auxiliary, but really it is the only thing can stand alone and hold beauty without limit or influence.

3: The works on canvas that are folded, Can you tell us more about them and the process.

– I think the folds relate to our relationship with the physical world. each visible segment of material overlaps a concealed equal portion, creating a rhythm of not only line and space, but also of visible and invisible.

4: The Framed walls from the New York show, can you tell more about them?

– Kiln-dried green douglas-fir s4s dimensional lumber. – ( common size: 2 inch x three inch. actual size: 1.5 inch x 2.inch) – Dietrich 2.5 inch metal studs. – Hardwood underlayment plywood sheeting, 48 x 96 inches.

5: What influences you?

– i am influenced by the all the contradictions of the world. the good from the bad, the truth from the lie. i think the human experience is quite dependent on them. as an artist, uncovering truth is like juggling the contradictions of life, keeping one or two in the air as we shuffle the rest with our hands. i approach my work as a path to pleasure, but i know that i must reveal a sense of struggle, pain, and and quiet anxieties in order to get there. it is important to find a balanced rhythm amongst the ironies of life, in order to make sense of it all.

6: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

– I am working on a painting show coming up in Los Angeles, and group shows in london, miami and milan. and tonight we are making tacos!

From: >> Ana Cristea Gallery

“Luke Diiorio addresses the physical process of making with an exquisite lyricism that can only be born of artistic maturity. By questioning the fundamental roles assigned to form, material and content, his work poses critical questions which seem simultaneously obvious and radical: Under what circumstances do two distinct materials operate in harmony? In opposition? As one?

Following in the footsteps of artists like Robert Ryman and Blinky Palermo, Diiorio departs from many preconceived processes. Instead of placing the emphasis on extending the limits that define form and material, his paintings extend our knowledge and awareness of those limits to produce a more acute sensitivity and to elicit an intrinsic response to the works.

Aluminum, canvas, linen and wood are merely finite materials; however, the painter’s ability to manipulate our perception of these things extends far beyond the simplicity of their physicality. Diiorio’s presentation of everyday materials forces us to second-guess their origin.

Many of the works exude a chameleon-like quality. Diiorio begins with the unfamiliar, an undirected creation. By working from something that he does not quite know how to achieve, he uncovers a result which reflects a truer reality. Born of the unconscious, the familiar and expected are shuffled. The ensuing aesthetic vision is a product of accident, negotiation and failure.”

 Link to Feature with Luke Diiorio over at SundayS Gallery

The post Luke Diiorio Q&A appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Opening Friday, August 29 from 16:00 – Late – @ Holbergsgade 10 – 1057 Copenhagen.

New works by Vuk Cuk, Luke Diioro, Bailey Hikawa, Dean Levin, Nicholas Pilato and Antoine Puisais. In Copenhagen.

About IDEA:

The Institute for the Development of Emerging Art (IDEA) acts as a vehicle for the promotion of early career artists, curators and gallerists by leveraging international relationships to increase awareness and gain exposure for the next generation of the art world.

For more info >> Email: info@emergingart.net

The post Group Show – Emerging Artists – 2014 appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

1: Can you tell me about your background? And what was the first artwork you made?

I MADE A PAINTING IN 1994 DURING MY TIME AS A CIVIL SERVANT IN A HAMBURG HOSPITAL AFTER I HAD SEEN “THE GREEN BALLET” BY ASGER JORN IN THE MUSEUM THERE. YEARS LATER I CAN SEE FACES IN THIS PAINTING SHOWING MY FATHER, MOTHER, GRANDFATHER, THE FACE OF MY DEAD BROTHER OR MY OWN FACE.

2: What is more important to you regarding your work: The process. The final visual outcome. The material? Or something else?

IMPORTANT IS ONLY THE IMAGE. THERE IS NO PROCESS OR PROGRESS. THERE IS ONLY ENTITY, ESSENCE, DESTRUCTION, ENDLESS ANNIHILATION AND LOVE.

3: The N-Bilder, and the progression from the more color-full and figurative works, can you tell more about them and what made you go in that direction?

WHAT I DID MIGHT BE A PEACEFUL REGRESSION TOWARDS “N”, “N” IS A BEAM, THRESHOLD, A DEADLY FREQUENCY OF LIFE AND REVELATION.

4: What influences you?

MY INFLUENCE IS MATISSE, ONLY ART AND MY ONGOING VISION OF INFLAMMABLE LIGHT.

5: What would you ask an artist in a Q&A and who?

I HAVE NO QUESTIONS TO ANYONE.

6: Can you let us in on some of the future projects, works?

I WILL STAY HOME. I WILL GO BACK TO THE SHACK. I AM FRIEDRICH HÖLDERLIN. I WILL SEE THE LIGHT AGAIN.

Link to –  Foundation for Contemporary Art Weidingen

Stuttgart Kunstmuseum Scharpff Collection

Link to artist page

The post Andre Butzer – Q&A appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Can you tell me about your background? And what was the first artwork you made?

Alberto Tadiello. –  I think it’s the same background of my generation’s one. It’s made of school, catechism, family, summer jobs, music lessons, a few mountain walks on Sundays, etc. When I was five, I drew a lion in a closet because I had broken a mirror and I wanted to fill the door remained white and empty. The lion was one and half meter tall. What fate the lion had, I really don’t know!

What is more important to you regarding your work: the process? The final visual outcome? The material? Or something else?

I find quite hard to get the proper answer. In some way, all is important. How ideas take shape. The process. The research. Some glances around. The persistency. The error. The system. Many dreams. Compromises. And the list could go on. But it’s a sort of “physical dimension” that seems to me most significant. It’s a basic ability, instinctive, directly linked to the stomach. A grip which makes a work a work of art. This is an aspect that gives me also a more accurate sense of my own limitations in respect to the work itself. It’s something that, in a certain sense, I can control and I cannot control. A challenge, that comes beyond my individual guidance and occurs between the work and the viewer. It’s a physical experience without any real contact involved. Like a “long-distance” electric shock.

The new body of works, the sand paper. I would love to know more about them.

Have you ever seen a blooming cherry tree? Have you ever dip your head inside its flowering? Did you ever look at a flower meadow from the ground level? Think of something feverish, vivid. Of a sanguineous temperament. Of incandescence. Of metal substances’ colours, becoming increasingly bright and hellish at elevated temperatures. Of sunspots. Imagine something that has to do with smog, pulverization, atomic shatter. And again, focus of something at its maximum point of brightness, of fullness. Just before crumbling away, reduced to dust. I believe that Pale carry all these elements and imageries inside. Technically, they consist at now of five framed sandpapers treated with waxes, glues, sprays and cosmetics. They show a vigorous amalgam of reds, magentas, carmines, blacks, crimsons, violets, plums, greys, burgundies, pinks, whites, browns. Golden slivers.

Your installations and sound. Can you tell us more about them?

I have always worked with sound, using it like a sculptural material. Over the past few years, I’ve mainly focussed my research on use and manipulation of very low and very high frequencies, vibrations, high-pitched whistles. These “polarities” interest me for a sort of epidermal effect, for the unavoidable sculptural result created by them inside an empty space. On a stage, just before a concert, there is a extremely strong energy. There are speakers, idle musical instruments, electric cables, … there is a deep aesthetic and visual component, impossible to ignore. I like to think it would be enough to increase the reverb, feedback and the output of the amplifier, and the stage could play by itself in a growing loop.

What influences you?

The Nature. Some days ago, I was climbing in the Dolomites area when I saw some particular lichens. You’ve to imagine a wrinkled lichen that forms rings and fragmented spots on vertical rocks, at high altitude. Their colour tells about extreme warmth and freeze, about South sunlight and centenarian snowfalls. In their reds and oranges appears a bit of yellow and brown, always leaving trace of an oxidize primeval shade. I keep thinking of this sort of fossil crystallization. Of these jewels, these dignified concretions. Of their minimum thickness that succeeds in tracing a script. This is just one of the images I’m taking along now.

Can you let us on some of your future projects, works?

Of course. I have in mind new sandpapers works. A great sculptural project that it’s hatching in the middle of the thoughts for a long time. And, in the meantime, the summer!

Link to Gallery T293   

The post Alberto Tadiello – Q&A appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Can you tell me about your Background? and what was the first artwork you made?

– I grew up in the industrial part of western Germany, same city where Josef Albers grew up. Ohh..I really hate this guy!
I can’t remember my first artwork, but I remember what happened very well. It was the most difficult what I had done up to that point and it made me forget everything around me, nevertheless it was also the easiest and most natural thing that I got to know up to that point.

What is more important to you regarding your work: the process. the visual outcome, the material – or something else?

– All of it. At first I think about the material. It is the first reference to the emerging image. After that it is important to me to completely lose myself in the process up to the point where I exit the image. A stroke is a stroke. What you see is what you get.

Some paintings are framed others are stapled directly to the wall – why?

-I believe thats its quiet important to point out that the first thing I have in my mind is space and architecture. A room is always the carrier and everything else should be a carrier for the new painting as well. Sometimes its better to frame pictures to have them communicate with the viewer more easily. Sometimes its better to staple them directly to the wall…I guess people would explain it as a site specific way of painting it start when you investigating the surface of an image more intensively.

What is the thoughest part of being an Artist?

-Sitting in a restaurant, sipping red wine, looking down on my dirty clothes, really dont know how to handle all the Girls.

What influences you – can you tell more about that?

– Girls – No.

Can you let us in on some of the future Projects, work?

Developing a few new series..thought about painting jet-lagged, ah..there will be a groupshow at Michael Thibault in L.A. and a soloshow at Quadrat museum, Bottrop.

Solo Show at: Jan Kaps – Gallery – Cologne

Peppi Bottrop:

LIVES AND WORKS IN DÜSSELDORF

1986 BORN IN BOTTROP, GERMANY

The post Peppi Bottrop – Q&A appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

“I’m interested in the relationships between materials – Building up, breaking down, yielding, consenting, push back, loss and gain. That intertwines process and materiality, looking for moments of shift. So yes, it looks at a things relative ability or inability to transform, but my end goal isn’t to free it from being a static object. Many ideas lead to a static state through change, and that’s just as interesting. “

Interview Jessica Sanders – Artfridge

Link to Artist Page >>> 

The post Jessica Sanders appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

While Giorgio Griffa´s work has been overlooked for several decades, Griffa exhibited at Sonnabend gallery in New York in 1970 and participated in important international exhibitions such as Prospekt, Dusseldorf (1969 and 1974) and the Venice Biennale (1978 and 1980).

Other important early exhibitions include Processes of Visualized Thought: Young Italian Avant-garde, Kunstmuseum Luzern (1970) and A Painting Exhibition of Painters who Place Painting in Question, curated by Michel Claura, Stadtische Museum, Monchengladbach (1973).

Giorgio Griffa´s work is informed by his idea that painting is an infinite action that is never finished, only to be activated for a brief moment in the space of the canvas, resulting in the deliberate end points that define his compositions. All of his works a painted on unstretched canvas, burlap and linen and nailed to the wall along the top edge.

When not exhibited, the works are folded and stacked, resulting in their underlying grid structure.

Link to Gallery >> Casey Kaplan

Link to Douglas Hyde Gallery

The post Giorgio Griffa appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Dirt is taken, mixed with an organic disinfectant and heated to 600 degrees.  This sterile material is then silkscreened onto canvas and re-stretched while wet.

With a systematic set of rules and premeditated actions, Estep follows a ritual of sorts, starting with the creation of a monochromatic surface in the tradition of post-minimalism, and finishing the process with the addition of gestural marks. The marks are usually the result of an intentional accident, following an action planned by the artist and at times affected by his experimentation with unconventional materials.

For more works and text read here >>> Ryan Estep 2014

And The first post from 2013 with Dirt and Sand works >>>>

Link to artist page >>

The post Ryan Estep – 2014 Solo Show appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Link >>> Kunsthausglarus

“ambarabaciccicoccò” (detail)
2012, ink on paper
courtesy Galerie Bugada & Cargnel, Paris

“The Arcades Project”, installation view
2013
courtesy Galerie Bugada & Cargnel, Paris

“The Arcades Project”, installation view
2013
courtesy Galerie Bugada & Cargnel, Paris

S-R 2013

courtesy Galerie Bugada & Cargnel, Paris

1: Can you tell me about your background? –  And what was the first artwork you made ?

I was born in Turin, Italy and I live in Switzerland. I studied fine arts at ECAL (Ecole Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne).

The first artwork I ever made was to ask the artist Sophie Calle, who was my deepest obsession at that time, to tattoo her signature on my skin.

Then I asked a psychologist to help me get out of my Sophie Calle obsession. He then suggested I choose another woman in the art world and live with her.

I went to Alaska to stay with Paola Pivi helping her build a new house.

2: What is more important to you regarding your work: The Process. The final visual outcome. The material ? Or something else ?

I don’t think it is up to the artist to say what is more important in his work. Usually people change their way of perceiving it very soon. But if I really have to answer, I think the most important thing in my work is trying to be a good human being. To me it’s also necessary to generate doubts and questions in the public, this approach is what makes art so fascinating especially today in such a fragmented context.

The shape, the size and the material are only excuses for making people think.

3. The a idea / concept behind your art – Can you tell me more about it ?

I strongly believe that an artwork should be self explanatory and demands the least explanations possible.

Visions are part of my creative process. I mainly trust my instinct because it’s the only way to be so close to the major concerns and the strongest emotions we have. When I’m starting a new work I never try to elaborate theories about it, but later in the creative process, I need to exchange a lot with people. I had the chance to discuss with extraordinary philosophers and artists who guided me along the way.

4: The change in the body of works, to the Mask Paintings in the current show At Frutta in Rome, Can you tell me more about it ?

It’s not a change at all! My works are never similar, they always differ from one to the next just because I’m not looking for comfort and I’m not able to take advantage from an easy situation.

In this case, I was looking for a studio practice in order to understand myself and the relationship between my brain, my body and my character.

5: The new Mask Paintings, Can you tell me more about the idea, process and how you came to do these ?

During the tests of prototypes cars, the producers obscure the shape and size through adhesives. This adhesive is decorated by abstract patterns on a black background.
Those drawings, borrowed from the automotive context, give birth to stamps which, thanks to an aqueous solution of gallic and tannic acid, are successively applied on canvas or on drywall.
A bit like the “Manifesto” that Alighiero Boetti realized in 1967, every symbol has a quantitative and qualitative signification that creates an impossible algorithm.

The use of this pattern invented to hide cars, on flat surfaces – common denominator of a painting – led to the negation of the pictorial act.
There is also a reflection on the place that paintings have in our generation.

I never thought about being a painter and to be honest I never thought that being a painter would be something interesting to me. But after my two years of studying at ECAL in Switzerland, I get more and more familiar with a certain kind of work and reflection. I had teachers like Francis Baudevin, Philippe Decrauzat, Stéphane Dafflon or Valentin Carron that taught me the importance of patience, respect and they gave me a vision that I consider typically swiss. I am really happy about all those values I learned.

6: What would you ask an artist in a Q&A and Who ?

I would like to talk with my friend Landon Metz about two central topics. The first would be the position that sculpture could have into his body of work. The second topic would be about our character or our “personnage”: Landon, like very few young artists, has something very impressive like Olivier Mosset who is probably the most impressive artist on earth.

Otherwise I would ask Julian Charrière who is a very young artist that I never met in person. I like his work a lot. I’d like to talk with him about epic adventures.

Link to Gallery – Frutta – Rome >>>

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Dean Levin born in Johannesburg, and raised in Los Angeles, holds a BARCH from Pratt Institute.

In school Levin studied architecture, and subsequently worked for a firm, where at one point he designed tile samples, and his work often deals with quintessentially architectural problems such as how we interact with space and form. In works like that on display in 1X1, Link to Solo Show  – Levin brings this architectural approach, as well as some of the field’s conceptual problems, to the realm of visual art.

To create these paintings Levin makes tile “samples” by taking certain rectangular segments of linoleum tiles, into which he rubs oil pigments. After this, he dips a length of canvas in turpentine and places it over the tiles. The turpentine breaks down the pigment and stains the canvas. During this process, the grid of the tiles in the “sample” is also imprinted onto the canvas. The result is a length of monochrome canvas that contains the vagaries of the surface of the studio floor, as well as qualities that result from Levin’s interaction with his materials, and the canvas, in the act of making the work—a process both physical and chemical, and which is not unrelated to other similarly indexical procedures, like those employed in photography and woodblock printing. However, each work is always ultimately a unique expression of Levin’s aesthetic goals.

This can be seen in how Levin then intuitively crops, stretches, and frames the length of canvas. Levin’s specially designed floating steel frames act as an armature, both supporting and encasing the painting, behind whose surface they sit a quarter of an inch, projecting it out towards the viewer when it is hung on a wall. There it takes on something of a sculptural presence, almost as if a chunk of floor had been pulled out of the ground and put on display—a reference back to the process by which the paintings were made.

The frames also have a practical function, being used to slide the paintings in and out of the sculptural “painting cart” that Levin has fabricated for the show. The frames allow the viewer to see a sliver of each painting’s surface color before they choose to pull one or another of them out to view. The viewing process thus engages each viewer’s interest in, or attraction to, the color of a given painting, much as how, in a store, he or she might go about picking one product over another.

Born 1988 in Johannesburg, South Africa, Dean Levin grew up in Los Angeles. He attended Pratt Institute, and graduated with a BARCH in 2012, after which he worked as an architect for two years. This is his first solo exhibition. He will be included in upcoming shows at Roberts and Tilton in Los Angeles and Sean Kelly Gallery in New York.

Levin has participated in group exhibitions in Manhattan at Bleecker Street Art Club, Lesley Heller Gallery, RH Gallery, Nicola Formichetti Studio and Temp, and in Brooklyn at AMO and Monster Island, Robert Blumenthal and in June 2014 at Rod Barton and Roberts&Tilton

Link to Rod Barton >>

Link to Roberts And Tilton >>

Link to Artist Page >>>

Link to Sean Kelly – Group Show

Link to Gallerist – Marianne Boesky

Levin’s practice combines mediums and materials to create abstract works that blur the line between process and product. Working in sculpture, painting, and installation, Levin lends an architectural sensibility to the aesthetic exploration of space and light. Combining industrial elements such plaster and tile with more traditional materials such as oil paint and canvas, Dean relies on both the physical and chemical properties of his chosen materials, activating the visual and conceptual tension that arises from their interaction.

The post Dean Levin appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

1: Can you tell me about your background? And what was the first artwork you made ?

I was born in Camden, New Jersey and grew up in Caracas, Venezuela. I studied animation in college. The first artwork I made in college was a birthday cake made of plaster.

2: What is more important to you regarding your work: The Process. The final visual outcome. The material ? Or something else ?

Well the process of making and thinking is why I do what I do. This is a slow and very tangled tapestry that we are unravelling or amending, and as long as there are holes in it then the work is right where it should be and will continue to be needed. I don’t think there is such a thing as a final visual outcome.

3: The idea / concept behind your art – Can you tell me more about it ?

The work and the words ascribed to my work are always shifting and morphing.
Id like to think that the work points to those divisions and shifts in perception, the residue of experience, the inability to translate or articulate, and proposes new ideas for how objects and people can coexist- or not…

4: What is the Worst thing about being an artist?

Its a fine job.

5: I have a feeling there must be so many personal stories linked to your works, The scarfs in the show in Copenhagen – Can you tell me more about it ?

There are many stories linked to the objects i use, and the ones we find in the street- the scarves have a special place in my heart- and what they reveal about ones lifestyle is why i cared to use them in the first place.

6: What would you ask an artist in a Q&A and Who ?

Excuse me, Mister Duchamp, can i have your shoe?

Solo show at David Risley Gallery  – Copenhagen

Solo show right now at Carl Kostyal – Stockholm

The post Q&A with Alex Da Corte appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

Text from interview – Sonic Sculptures From A Construction Worker Turned Artist

“Alberto is a bit of an enigma. “I don’t have a design background–not at all,” he tells Co.Design. “I have a background as a mountain climber and as a construction worker.” Despite the subtle subterfuge surrounding his creative pedigree, he has spent the last decade building up an impressive body of work, including numerous intricate solo and group exhibitions, residencies, and awards.”

His process varies according to the particular assignment at hand, taking on new depth depending on what component parts he finds–which he describes as a “bit of this, bit of that”–and when inspiration strikes. “There are works that start with notes, researches, abstract ideas, concepts, and so on, and I go searching for the ‘suitable materials’ only later, consequently. Sometimes everything works exactly the other way around. I find the materials, and then I make a project turn around them, developing a concept.”

The post Alberto Tadiello – Sandpaper Works appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

The interest for the secretive Wes Noble has been growing since the first Solo show in 2013 – Link to the First Solo  >>>.

There are many solo and group shows lined up for 2014. And one of the shows opening May 15 2014 shows some large scaled works.

Link to Group Show in New York > Vogt Gallery

The post Wes Noble appeared first on Copenhagen Contemporary.

1. Can you tell me about your background?

Sure, I was born in Aberdeen in 1986. Since then I have grown considerably.

I have always drawn and painted since a young age, though I attended Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art at the age of 17 and graduated in painting at Duncan of Jordanstone when I was 21. During my undergrad education I researched a lot, I traveled to Berlin, Leipzig, New York and Italy to see what was going on. I even taught painting in America for a summer. In my final year at Duncan of Jordanstone, I found that the Leipzig school and Kippenberger have most specifically influenced me. In hindsight, I guess my degree show was a bit wild because of Kippenberger’s influence on me. 3 weeks prior to my final assessment, I destroyed a series of large-scale figurative paintings so I could exhibit 9 small-scale abstract/figurative paintings. They were fun though pretty shitty in their own modest way. All of the works were oil on board, and a lot sold.

The tutors were pretty unhappy by my sudden decision-making, though I think it was a personal response to what I felt at the time. I think, because of realising how much was going on Internationally, the works I made was actually a response to my internal frustration. During my year out from graduating, I traveled a lot more and explored more galleries around Europe. I also gained a more thorough interest within art fairs etc. In 2009, I then decided to pursue a MA degree in Contemporary Art Theory and Gallery Curating from Edinburgh College of Art. It was wise to move from Dundee to Edinburgh, for I became more involved in exhibitions. As a result, I began Hunted Projects, which at the time was purely a curatorial venture where I would showcase Edinburgh/British artists within irregular spaces throughout Edinburgh. I began this because I felt this was not happening within the city, though was required.

During this time of studying curating, I painted a lot in my flat, a few disasters happened along the way. I specifically remember renting a really expensive flat in a nice area of Edinburgh though completely destroyed the carpet by leaving a bad trail of oil paint. Somehow, I managed to cover it up by using cream coloured spray paint and oddly I got away with it. Though, at that point, I realized a serious studio was required so my work could be explored further.

In 2012 I had a solo exhibition titled Roaming Wild Pastures, which was the first major solo show where I featured a series of well-finished small-scale works. These works were very object-like, and they were a celebration of what were essentially many years of personal development and research. I was delighted by this show and from that point, I continued to focus even more on my painting and Hunted Projects became a purely dialogue based platform. Since then, my time is split between by studio and my home. For the past 2 years, my studio has been no more than a 3 minutes walk from my any flat I have lived in. I need to live close to my studio as I am there every day, and when I am not there, I am working on Hunted Projects / In Dialogue.

2. How and why do you incorporate poems into your works?

I have owned an old book of Robert Burns’ poetry for several years. I bought it from a charity shop for like 20p, thought it was a great find. It includes a great selection of his best works, and a lot of many lesser-known poems, songs and Ode’s. It is fantastic. This book has been read, used as a pillow and used to keep paintings off the floor. Essentially, it is a tool.

Over the years, I have found a repeating pattern happening, where i would often return to this book when wanting to read true Scottish language. It is difficult to parallel the texts to anything else, particularly because Robert Burns was taught to me when I was only 8 years old when in primary school so I feel an affinity to his writings. His poems also have a huge cultural value, though it is difficult to avoid Robert Burns when living in Scotland. His face is/was on our currency, and as a figure, he regularly represents Scotland in many ways.

3. What is the idea/concept behind your art?

My current exhibition at Halsey McKay Gallery is titled An Ode To No One, which began as a private response to not only Robert Burns as a poet, though as an exploration of language within painting. I believe that painting owns it’s own language, and each painting technique can be defined as the visual equivalent to both a vocal or literary gesture. I find this over lap incredibly fascinating, and so I chose to create a series of paintings that explore the division of the surface that relates to literary lines/stanzas within poems. I also limited my palette and use of the stripe to symbolize language, and furthermore the manipulation of a personalized language. This body of work has a huge personal significance to me, and I am already in the studio continuing this area of work.

4. What is the worst thing about being an artist?

I am unsure if there is a worst thing. I love being able to go to my studio on a daily basis and to be able to socialize with some truly fantastic creative people on a regular basis. I wouldn’t change my profession at all.

5. Collectors – Gallerist – “art investors” – Good, bad or…..?

It is great to be able to work with a diverse range of creative individuals, and I believe that each individual involved is a vital part of the art world at large.

6. What would you ask an artist in a Q&A and who?

I have asked many questions to a mixed ranged of artists for Hunted Projects. I feel that a favourite question and response was to/by Eric Yahnker, who as an artist and individual is hilarious to me. – I quote –

Steven Cox – “I could imagine that a male, 6ft 1.5″ bearded lingerie model would face many challenging discriminatory issues, several of which would hinder the progression of a successful career as a male model. What were the highs and lows of being a male model before choosing a change in career, settling for the artistic pathway as an alternative?”

Eric Yahnker: “Thank you for understanding. It’s been difficult to find a sympathetic ear. I did make a fairly remarkable transformation from my younger years. It may sound completely stupid, but becoming an artist was tantamount to coming out of the closet for me. I still have a difficult time calling myself an artist. I consider myself a comedian, or satirist, or dipshit Neanderthal. But, as I’ve often said, when the shit you’re making doesn’t fit anywhere else, “art” is there to catch you before you fall off the proverbial cliff. So, I’m going with it. Basically, I went from being a clown who looked like a lost Backstreet Boy to a clown who looks like a lost overgrown garden gnome.”

An Ode to No One, the first solo exhibiton in the United States by Scottish artist Steven Cox. Through horizontal and vertical repetition of color, pattern and labor Cox explores the possibilities of the linear stripe as the exhibition’s visual motif.

Each painting owns similar processes and techniques, though their consciously restricted palette has encouraged the artist to deconstruct and reconstruct the canvas plane to create dazzling visual depth and texture.

The paintings nod to poetic structures likes stanzas, as flat monochrome planes are aligned alongside spray painted gestural marks and densely layered surfaces of oil and negative space. Cox pays homage to his Scottish roots through his physical use of Hessian Jute for material as well as with painting tiltles: Cutty Sark, Ay Waukin and Rantin’ Rovin, Rantin Rovin that reference Scottish poet, Robert Burns. The beautiful, battered and wise surfaces of these paintings share a kinship with the emotional polarities of Burn’s classic writings.

Steven Cox was born in 1986 in Aberdeen, Scotland and is now based in Edinburgh. He holds a BFA from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee and an MA in Contemporary Art Theory & Curating from Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh.

Exhibitions have been at The Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, 99 Hanover Projects, The Old Ambulance Depot, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design and The Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. Cox has curated, written and conducted interviews with many leading contemporary aritsts under the moniker Hunted Projects.

Link to Artist page >>>

Link to Gallery >>>

Link to Hunted Projects >>>

Link to DUST Magazine >>>

STEVEN COX

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1: Can you tell me about your background?

I was born in Odense in 1988, happy childhood, worked odd jobs trying to keep student counselors of my back.
started making paintings at 17 in the cellar of my old apartment.
then i was accepted at the royal danish academy of art.
That’s pretty much it, I think.

2: What is the process and Material in your work ?

The process is basically from painting to painting. Sometimes they feel like football players constantly being taken on and off the bench. Some need to dry up, so they are put aside for another one, you know? It’s very fluid actually.
The materials I work with at the moment are watercolor, ink and gouache on thin ,raw cotton fabric.

3: What is the Idea / concept behind your art?

Hmm, it shifts a lot. But I guess at the time I try to work a lot with stuff that I know pleases me visually and to challenge these tendencies and preferences I have. For example; painting a perfectly shaped square in the middle of the canvas. Then I remove the canvas from the stretcher, and when I put it back together I have stretched the canvas to the point that the square has lost its shape. Also because the canvas shrinks when I apply watercolors.
I find it interesting to try and force a certain strictness into a material that cannot really handle this ambition.
My ideas at the moment is, trying to stray away from a typical kind of compositorial painting, and to treat the painting much more as a surface where something has happened.
Visible or not i see view them as used pieces of fabric, or something that were once a part of something else.

i am constantly shifting between pure intuitive abstractions found in the process of painting, to concrete inspirational sources either from memory or stuff I notice in my surroundings. Like textures of walls, weird bus-seat designs, etc.

idea, concept, pushing stuff forward.. its all the same to me really..

4: What is the Worst thing about being an artist?

Ah! That is definitely looking for stuff. I don’t keep a particularly tidy studio, so half of my time spent there is spent on looking for things that I’ve misplaced.
Also moving large paintings around. For some reason I always feel like an idiot while doing that.

5: Collectors – Gallerist – ”art investors” – Good, bad or …?

Some good, some bad, as in any context I guess.

6: What would you ask an artist in a Q&A ?

What do you do beside making art? I find that interesting when you know people in the art world their work kind of becomes their persona, so when you get to know them on a personal level it’s a fucking relieve that they enjoy playing squash or collecting magic cards.

Link to Gallery

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6 Questions for Eli Ping

1: Can you tell me about your background?

My parents were hippies and raised my siblings and I in the inner city of Chicago. I studied political theory before focusing on art.

2: How do choose the material ?

Materials follow from an idea or theme. 

3: What is the Idea / concept behind your art?

I’m interested in how objects function as phenomena – in how form might be a record of becoming and how that process continues with the viewer.

4: What is the worst thing about being an artist? 

I don’t regard the challenges that an artist encounters as extraordinary. 

5: Collectors – Gallerist – ”art investors” – Good, bad or …?

Its reductive to think of the art market in terms of outcomes. The market is a process that enables and encompasses diverse objects, relationships, and experiences. However, many potentialities aren’t expression in the market, or rather, they are expressed negatively – through their exclusion. 

6: What would you ask an artist in a Q&A ? and Who ??

There are many artists whose work I admire, but I don’t want to ask them anything.

Composite (New Synthetics) – 2014 – 48 x 72 inches

Heat polished hydroponic film

Link to Artist Page >>>

Link to Gallery current show at >> twentyfourseventhreesixtyfive

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I just love the process, idea, concept and visual aspects of this amazing Italian Artist – and the fact that he has been making these wonderful minimalistic, monochrome works by collecting dirt from locations a long time before all others !!!.

The artwork of Luca Vitone (1964), began in the second half of the 80s. It focuses on the idea of the place, inviting us to re-cognize something we already know, defying the con- ventions of mutable, faded memory that characterize the present.

His work explores the way places are identified through cultural production: art, cartography, music, cuisine, political associations, ethnic minorities. Vitone bridges the gap between the sense of loss of place characteristic of the postmodern and the ways in which feelings of belonging arise in the intersection of personal and collective memory.

“All my works reference a condition to which we are subject, which I call ‘topological loss’,” Vitone explained (Note 1). So deep-rooted is this feeling, that he had the geographical coordinates (Lat N. 44°24’07’’ Long. E. 8°56’31’’) of his place of birth, the Galliera hospital in Genoa, tattooed on a forearm, while his website constantly updates his position with a tracking system.

His exhibition Monocromo Variationen at Museion, Bozen, in 2012, was epigrammatic: it brought together some recent works on paper or canvas created en plein air, by collecting atmospheric agents like smog and particle matters.

Vitone uses as pigments the same invisible substances usually held responsible for the obliteration of artworks. The cycle started with Finestre (Isola dell’Arte) (Windows (Isola dell’Arte), 2004), a group of watercolours based on an ‘élevage de poussière’ in the eponymous Milanese artist-run exhibition space, then squatted by a collective of artists, students and critics to prevent its demolition and the gentrification of the surrounding Isola neighbourhood (sadly, a lost cause).

Subsequently, it evolved into the series of raw canvases Io, Roma (I, Rome, 2005) and Landscape (2007, for the 8^th Sharjah Biennial), while Le ceneri di Milano (Milan’s ashes, 2007 – a homage to Pasolini’s collection of poems Le ceneri di Gramsci (Gramsci’s ashes, 1957)) is made of plexiglas cases enclosing toxic ashes from the city’s incinerator. Half paintings, half sculptures, these works chronicle the passage of time by means of its least welcome leftovers: those of the failed Modernist idea of progress, as well as of the conflict between our utopian aspirations to ambientalism and our massive daily consumption. 

He reconstructs and invents forgotten paths to reconfigurate his own personal geography. Since 2006 he has been teaching sculpture at the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan.

Born 1964 in Genova. – lives and works in Milano.

Gallery – Berlin – Luca Vitone

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1: Can you tell me about your background?

Grew up in Fjaltring, a little town in west jutland, straight up the North Sea. Most of my life I lived together with my two siblings and my mom and dad, both of them psychologists, which have given me a great interest in my consciousness and subconscious in the construction of a piece.

2: How do you decide which Material to use ?

Depending on the piece and the consequences of how the material contributes to the concept behind the work.

3: What is the Idea / concept behind your art?

The general idea is to invite the viewer to reflection on selected topics.

4: What is the Worst thing about being an artist?

To sit and explain my art to my grandmother.

5: Are you ever afraid of looking to much like other artist ?

No, because I don’t believe in copies because a piece of art consists of too many elements, such as time, geography, the artist’s earlier works, and so on.

6: What would you ask an artist in a Q&A And Who ?

Too hard a question to answer, but maybe I would ask Tove Storch to marry me.

Asger Dybvad Larsen (1990) is an artist, a student at the Jutland Academy of Art.

Asger works primarily with text in his works, as when he, for example, is

experimenting with swapping functions between title and object rhetorically through the titles textual potential. An immediate eye-catching handle is that these titles are just wearing a single dot.

This is based on Asgers belief that a title traditionally is only made of one sentence. The titles usually are based on personal problematic themes in relation to his own artistic practice. The themes are often displayed with ambiguous, contradictory and sometimes ironic ideas, claims and/or theories created from an artistic and art-theoretical point of view, in a collaboration with a visual inspiration and reference to 20th century art, such as abstract expressionism, minimalism and conceptual art in particular, with direct references to names such as Sol LeWitt, Ad Reinhardt, Frank Stella, Yves Klein and the inevitable Marcel Duchamp.
These references are for example used as; indirect comments, for example the artist and his gallerists relationship or as a link between two visual and idea-based recalcitrant art historical groupings based on an existing reference between the parties, as a component of a dialectical set composition of two artists.
The title is a mandatory element in the construction of a work that is formed in a literary collaboration between the artist and his work, through the use of self-references and meta-literary method, compositional, focusing on a lyrical, understated sense of humor and with a significant attachment of title functional potential.
The objects in Asgers body of work has evolved from his own minimalist creations to ready-mades and a trend for the “non-existent”, the dematerialization of the physical object is constructed and taken over by Asgers literary interest.
These are some of the elements Asger uses in an attempt to invite the viewer to reflect, as he is convinced that this is art’s primary task.

Link to Artist Page >>

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1: Can you tell me a little about your background?

In my early teens I was obsessed with brands, so it was a really big thing to me when my uncle returning from Thailand brought back embroidered Lacoste-crocodiles in bulk. I had my mother sew one on to my home knit sweater. I also remember having this one pair of Nike tennis socks that got worn out all too quickly. So, I simply cut off the upper part featuring the logo and then I wore this on top of my regular no name socks. Later, I went on to making my own “Levi’s” T-shirts using textile pencils. I still recall one that I was particularly proud of. I sprayed lemon juice on the soles of my worn (fake!) Timberland booths, walked across a piece of paper, and then gently heated it from below until the footprints appeared. These I traced on to the white T-shirt adding the Levi’s brand and a message saying: “Rebels never go out of style, they just walk away”.

2: What is the material process behind your new paintings?

(from the press release)

The exhibition R.I.P. curl consists of a new series of paintings on titanium – a metal with the unequalled quality to permanently change colour when exposed to sulphuric acid while connected within a fixed voltage electric circuit. In a chemical process called ‘anodizing’, this builds a layer of microscopic crystals on the surface of the titanium plates, which then in turn refracts the light. The higher the voltage, the thicker the layer of crystals grows, and thus the further along the colour spectrum the light will travel: Brown, purple, blue, yellow, red, green, white. Exercising a number of different soaking, masking and application techniques while also using existing scratches and marks on the surface Mikkel Carl explores this unique opportunity to make brightly colored paintings entirely without the use of pigment.

3: What is the idea/concept behind your art?

To use the description offered by curator and art critic Toke Lykkeberg, who recently wrote a text on these new paintings, I guess I’m …”a rather conceptual artist taking some time off as a painter.”

4: What is the worst thing about being an artist?

I don’t know, but whatever it is, it may also be the best thing about being an artist.

5: Collectors, gallerists, ”art investors” – good, bad or…?

Once again quoting Toke Lykkeberg: …”collectors might be regarded as installation artists. They’re active consumers who will provide the work with a context and perhaps some function by making it cover up a hole in the woodwork of their comfy country house. Thus it will make their guests talk about what is rather than what is not.”

Link to Artist Page Mikkel Carl

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Solo show at Nathalie Karg New York

Jennifer Guidi born 1972, Los Angeles, CA lives and works in Los Angeles, CA EDUCATION 1998 MFA, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL 1994 BFA, Boston University, Boston, MA SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2006 The Sunshine Threw His Hat Away, ACME., Los Angeles, CA 2005 Paintings, ACME., Los Angeles, CA.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2011 From Where You Just Arrived, Pepin Moore, Los Angeles, CA  – 2009 The Chef’s Theory, Five Thirty Three, Los Angeles, CA  – 2008 Friends and Family, Anton Kern Gallery, New York, NY  – 2006 Landscape, Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, IL  – 2004 Singing My Song, ACME., Los Angeles, CA  – 2003 Hidden Agenda or Hide & Seek, ACME., Los Angeles, CA  – 2002 What a Painting Can Do, Hayworth Gallery, Los Angeles, CA  – 2001 Dave Muller’s Three Day Weekend, Los Angeles, CA

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Knight, Christopher. “The Ordinary in Colorful Splendor,” Los Angeles Times, Art Reviews, January 21, 2005, p. E25.

Link to Gallery Nathalie Karg – New York

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1: Can you tell me about your background?
Grew up in New Jersey, And sincerely feel my experience as a child being driven around in a car through Jersey’s sprawling landscapes inspired me. Both my parents went to Pratt, My dad for Architecture, and my mom for printmaking. My sister is a performance/ musician/ comedian/videographer.

2: How did you decide to use Bee Bee Guns ?
I use Bee Bees, because I love them as pure non-descript little orbs, like atoms, molecules or just simple building blocks as if they are the egg or seed of somethings origin.

3: What is the Idea / concept behind your art?
Something about design and how that rules our bodily experience. Finding viscerality in our relationship with technology and ultimately social relations with one another.

4: What is the Worst/Best thing about being an artist?
Life, work, and art are pretty much the same thing, which usually is great, but also is distracting.

5: Collectors – Gallerist – ”art investors” – Good, bad or ………?
I believe art brings the future closer. And whatever route is available for art to find eyeballs to view it, fund it, and advertise then the more avenues the better.

6: What would you ask an artist in a Q&A and Who ?
I kind of just wonder if any artist genuinely believes that their intentions actually match their audiences reading of it, and then I would challenge if it matters. No artist in particular.

Jesse Greenberg at Gallery Loyal >>>

Artist Page: >>>

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Belott’s practice encompasses a rich vocabulary of drawing, sound, paper collage and book making (a large collection of which are included in MOMA collection), sculpture, frozen sculpture, painting on glass, the list goes on. The life of Brian is in constant flow and he has built up several bodies of work spanning all of these practices. He is a clear sighted collector also of sound and image, having amassed a vast library of found sound and found photos which he has collected and organized into volumes. Evidence of this practice can be seen throughout his work.

Brian Belott lives and works in New York. He was born in 1973 in East Orange, NJ and received his BFA 1995 from School of Visual Arts, NY after a stint at Cooper Union. Belott has mounted several major solo and two-person exhibitions including The Journal, New York; LOYAL, Malmö, Sweden (with Jesse Greenberg); CANADA, New York; Galerie Zurcher, Paris; Zurcher Studio, New York; Kenny Schacter Contemporary, New York. Other notable exhibitions include: Jeunes créateurs à New York, Musée d’Art moderne de Saint-Etienne, Saint-Etienne (2014), Draw Gym, 247365, Brooklyn, NY (2013), Dadarhea, curated by Jim Drain and Devin Flynn, CANADA, New York (2011); New York Minute: 60 Artists on the New York Scene, curated by Kathy Grayson, MACRO Museum, Rome (2009); Book / Shelf, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008);Wordless Chorus performance with Larissa Velez, Dark Fair, Swiss Institute (2008).

link to Loyal  gallery

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1: Can you tell me a little bit about your background?

7 years old went to camp. – 9 got my first camera. – 11 left home alone for three weeks. – 14 lost virginity. – 15 got drunk. – 17 moved back to New York. – 19 pilots license. – 20 met the love of my life. – 24 bought a beach house.

2: How do you approach the use of materials in your work?

Like toys.

3: What is the idea / concept behind your practice?

Keeping my mind in order.

4: What is the worst thing about being an artist?

No complaints.

5: What would you ask an artist in a Q&A ?

I’d ask Ed Ruscha what his worst memory was from childhood.

Currently Solo show at Ellis King >> 

Forming the backbone of his solo presentation, Patterson’s new series of works entitled Duck Tests take prescience and foundation from the above phrase utilised as a form of inductive reasoning, sometimes used to counter abstruse arguments that something is not what it appears to be. His Duck Test paintings explore how we obtain meaning from visual experience and how interpretation through experience is transformed and codified through the signified.

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Q & A – 6 Questions for Florian Meisenberg 

Take your time.. watch it all.. give in !!

1: Can you tell me about your background? – YES Click here

2: Can you tell me about the Smilyfaces / Sad Faces ? Yes Click here 

3: What is the Idea / concept behind your art?   1 click here and 2 click here

4: What is the Worst thing about being an artist?  Click here

5: Collectors – Gallerist – ”art investors” – Good, bad or ………?  

http://thepiratebay.se/ 

http://momaps1.org/ 

http://addisababa.craigslist.org/crs/4344373504.html

6: What would you ask an artist in a Q&A ?  Click here

Images >>>

katemacgarry

wentrupgallery

Simone Subal Gallery

sammlung-boros

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The N-paintings seem to lack “color” but the often thinly painted black and white forms are not monochromes. André Butzer is a colorist, “I will always be a colourist and nothing else” and the color choice of black and white is the result of the inclusion, or acceptance, of all existing hues; the destination, or starting point, of color potential.

André Butzer (b.1973, Germany) is one of Germany’s most relevant contemporary artists with over 220 worldwide exhibitions including prestigious institutions such as MUMOK, the Kunsthalle Nuernberg, and works in the collections of Stuttgart Kunstmuseum, MOCA Los Angeles, LACMA, Sammlung Goetz and the Scharpff Collection, amongst many others. Butzer lives and works in Rangsdorf, near Berlin.

Sommerausstellung – Kunst in Weidingen – 3 – 31. August 2014

Ohne Titel, 2014  Öl auf Leinwand, 300 x 200 cm

Ohne Titel, 2014  Öl auf Leinwand, 340 x 280 cm

See more at: Carbon 12 Gallery, Dubai/U.A.E. – March – April 2014

Hiromi Yoshii Gallery, Tokyo/Japan – March – April 2014

Wohnung Tom Biber, Berlin/Germany – (with Tom Biber, Thomas Groetz) – April 2014

Neue Galerie Gladbeck, Gladbeck/Germany – (with Thomas Arnolds, Michael Biber, Albert Oehlen, Matthias Schaufler, Philipp Schwalb, Thomas Winkler, Ulrich Wulff) – May – July 2014

Galerie Christine Mayer, Munich/Germany – May – June 2014

Kunstverein Heppenheim, Heppenheim/Germany – (with Thomas Winkler) – June 2014

Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck/Austria – (with Marcel Hüppauff, Daniel Mendel-Black, Philipp Schwalb) – July – August 2014

Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Stuttgart/Germany – Scharpff Collection – July – November 2014

Stiftung zur Förderung zeitgenössischer Kunst in Weidingen, Weidingen/Germany – August 2014

Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst und Medien, Graz/Austria – (with Christian Eisenberger) – August – September 2014

Kunstverein Reutlingen, Reutlingen/Germany – Wo ist hier? #1: Malerei und Gegenwart – September – November 2014

Galerie Hammelehle und Ahrens, Cologne/Germany – HYPERIONS JUGEND – (with Christian Eisenberger, Cris Kirkwood, Maja Körner, David Schutter, Philipp Schwalb) – September 2014

Galerie Bernd Kugler, Innsbruck/Austria – November 2014 – January 2015

Artist Website

Gallery Carbon12 Dubai

See more by Andre Butzer >>

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Landon Metz (born 1985) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work has been widely exhibited both domestically and abroad, including last year’s Venice Biennale. His monographs include ‘Painter Painting Surface,’ published by Vimmerby Rinkeby in 2012, and an as-yet-untitled volume to be published by Libraryman Press in spring 2014. He lives and works in New York City.

Solo Show at  – Retrospective Gallery – New York 2014

Group Show – Copenhagen 2013

“A few years ago I was in the elevator of a loft building somewhere on the west side with some people and we took it to the penthouse by accident and the doors opened to this giant apartment filled with nothing but the same painting of Michael Jackson over and over and over again.” – Landon Metz

While continuing the artist’s ongoing experiments with colored dyes poured onto unprimed canvas, this latest suite of paintings distinguishes itself from preceding series largely through its methodology: where Metz has to this point built up each body of work a canvas at a time, this most recent offering finds him for the first time thinking in terms of seriality, with sets of identically composed canvases mounted in self-contained groupings.

More text below the Pictures >>

Link to Artist Page  – Landon Metz

Gallerie Torri – Paris

As is typical of Metz’s output, the paintings on display are at once intricately designed and willfully unembellished; perhaps more than in any previous showings, Penthouse finds the artist embracing an extreme economy of form, with the seven sets of work sharing a mere two colors and four forms between them. This restrained vocabulary is offset, however, by a series of inventive installations. Arranging similar works into calculated formations and grids, Metz produces a series of fractured, repeating visual motifs whose spatial interactions produce a palpable sense of objecthood, the clustered works falling somewhere between painting and sculpture. In establishing these tentative visual dialogues, Metz flirts with notions of connection and separation, as the works’ individual compositions are ultimately understood as being singular but correlated, their joint configurations – much like the resulting viewing experience itself – at once sequential and open-ended.

In exploring these new strategies, Metz confirms more literally what has long been a central idea within his broader practice: namely, that an artist’s process might be self-generative, with strategies extended and refined through succeeding works. Though individual motifs may be set apart, they are at once defined and enhanced by their connection to a broader arrangement; though each given piece offers its own points of visual interest, it must be viewed in context, as part of a larger set, for its implications to be fully grasped. Simultaneously individual and interdependent, the work in Michael Jackson Penthouse thus reinforces the underlying notions of interconnectivity, relativity, and transparency that continue to drive his practice.

This exhibition, to be held in a row house located at 438 Carroll Street, is the first in a series of shows that Retrospective is planning for spaces throughout Hudson in addition to its storefront at 727 Warren St. It will run concurrently with a show of new works by Jason Middlebrook and Letha Wilson at the Warren St. location.

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Different Types of paintings : lidocaine, Re-stretching, Cast Paintings, Clean Paintings, Sterilized Dirt, Sand.

Post from 2013 >>> Click Here

lidocaine – A lidocaine base and black pigment trace the stretcher bars of the canvas.  While wet the work is un-stretched and re-stretched, each break in the line causes a hint and cascading effect of the numbing agent.

Clean Paintings – These paintings are made by laying a pattern onto canvas, and tossing a handful of dirt onto the face while wet.  A sponge is taken and when all the dirt is cleaned, the work is finished. 

STERILIZED DIRT – Dirt is taken, mixed with an organic disinfectant and heated to 600 degrees.  This sterile material is then silkscreened onto canvas and re-stretched while wet.

Sand – These works are the collected loss of sanding the charcoal drywall mixture.  The silica sand is sifted from the drywall charcoal powder and applied using the same technique.

Link to Artist Page >>

Gallerist Page >>>>

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Opening March 21st – @ Rod Barton, London

Link to artist Page >>

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Jens Einhorn 

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A Solo show by the Danish artist Sergej Jensen is  opening on February 28 – 2014.

Sergej Jensen (born in 1973 in Maglegaard) has brought five big canvases for his exhibition at Avlskarl Gallery in Copenhagen. Jensen is internationally known for his fragile handling with the arts. Since the late 1990‘s – and based on a notion of the painting medium as old and diluted – Jensen has reduced and destroyed picturesque forms and artistic means.

He has sewn, glued, draped, turned the painting, colored in the washing machine, made noble materials look cheap, used the unpainted parts of canvases, used fragments of other paintings, used banknotes and bleached in stead of color, made holes in canvasas, sewn it back together, found textiles, stretched it on offbeat frames, used early computer graphics and outplayed modernism as inspiration.

Photos and links: Link to Avlskarl Gallery Copenhagen – Sergej Jensen And the latest solo show in Hong Kong Sergej Jensen Show in Hong Kong at WhiteCube. Sergej Jensen’s work is abstract to the point of negation. Using the principles of the readymade, he draws attention to the incidental details of his materials, transforming leftovers from past projects into new works as a gesture of self-reflexivity. In ‘Grey Plastic Scar’ (2013) ( See Above) torn pieces of material are carefully sewn and then painted over, so that they appear like past scars under skin whose dynamic verticals create their own linear composition. 

Link to Sergej Jensen CV >> White Cube

His paintings have often been shown at older architectural locations and in a bad lightning. Just recently Jensen has started working with a more classical type of painting. His use of acrylic is often more plastic than colorful, so the expressions rives, are filled with unsaturated pigments and resemble body fluid at times. The two allegorical paintings “Heksehertogen fra Herlev (Mr. Denmark) and “Fødelse og røveri af Danmark” are shown at Avlskarl Gallery, alongside the textile-constructed painting “Socialliberal abstraktion” and the two close monochrome paintings “Neoprotestantisk abstraktion” and “Positivprotestantisk abstraktion (Afsked)”. Jensen has recently exhibited his work at Berlinische Galeri, Berlin, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, M/Lartspace at Nailsalon, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, NYC and White Cube, Hong Kong.

– Sergej Jensen, New York, februar 2014.

More about Sergej Jensen

Link to Review / Sergej Jensen Hong Kong 2014 Show >>

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Anja Schwörer has in many ways been an inspiration and source of reference for many of the “younger” artist today. Anja´s process is quite interesting, and visually her works are just above amazing.

Utilizing bleach as her medium, similar to how light is used in a photographic process, the images are burned into the canvas while allowing the bleach to yield fluctuations of color, shifting spatial tensions and variant values of positive and negative space. 

Through navigating a shifting ground between chance and necessity Schwörer’s canvases offer a disjunction between the raw deconstruction of their materials and the splendor of their imagery.

Link to Solo show Jan 2014 – Gallery Hammelehle

Link to Artist Page – >>> Anja Schwoerer

Berlin-based artist Anja Schwörer

Anja Schwörer attended the National Academy of the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, Germany and has shown extensively throughout Europe including exhibitions at Andersen’s Contemporary, Copenhagen; White Flag Projects, St. Louis; Gallery Hammelehle and Ahrens, Cologne; Andreas Huber, Vienna.

She has also been included in several installments of Cave Painting, a multi-part exhibition by curator Bob Nickas.

Additionally, she is featured in Nickas’s ‘Painting Abstraction,’ published by Phaidon. Schwörer lives and works in Berlin.

Links to Books / Text : New Elements in Abstract Painting – Bob Nickas

Link to : Suckstract

Link to Andersen´s Gallery

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Farah´s work is often not painted at all, instead undergoing an elaborate process of digging down, dying and sun bleaching.

Farah obtains the physical and tactile records of natural phenomena as a part of her artistic practice. The artist travels to carefully selected locations scattered in the North European countries and bring the imprints of long-lasting nature processes into existence of her site-specific masterpieces.

For instance the work Eldfell was part of a sleeping bag dug down for six months at the foot of the volcano Eldfell in Heimaey, Iceland. The ash emitted was used to stain the material and to mark the anniversary of its last eruption.

In more recent work Farah has extended her tools from natural sunlight and environmental sources to the use of unconventional technologies such as UV-light from an old fashioned sun bed purchased on ebay which when applied to the materials and cocktail of organic and synthetic paint and fluids causes brilliantly subtle and unexpected results and the work balances on its control of chance.

The delicate nature of the work allows it to become part of space and material. The state of the material shifts as the light changes throughout the day, revealing folds, layers, lucidity and opaqueness.

While supporting the translucent material, the stretcher becomes integrated in the work and the physical space it occupies. In contrast to the time consuming process of sun and UV bleaching, Farah’s physical application process is that of controlling the ingredients of her endeavors and repositioning their results by subtle nuances of overlap, seams, and folds.

Ayan Farah – At Almine Rech

Read more About Ayan Farah  – Vigo Gallery – London

Upcoming Shows: 

Bugada Cargnel – The Figure In The Carpet – Opening Jan 31, 2014

Almine Rech – Brussels – October 2014

Excerpt from a text by : Sara Ingemann Holm-Nielsen Read the full text here >>  Touching Nature

Farah obtains the physical and tactile records of natural phenomena as a part of her artistic practice. The artist travels to carefully selected locations scattered in the North European countries and bring the imprints of long-lasting nature processes into existence of her site-specific masterpieces.

The trademark of her practice is to make use of unconventional technology and natural resources while creating sun-bleached canvases, UV-light processed paintings or solar photographs on silk and cotton. An almost sustainable artistic practice where the canvases and objects deliberately put in different locations become “stained” by the time.

As a result, wind, sunlight, rain and snow penetrate the material so immensely that their traces become fully integrated in the work. This reduces the physicality of the object and makes it part of the physical architectural space it occupies, and also connects it to the non-material lucidity of moving image and sound.

In her own words this is how Farah explain her artistic practice. “It’s about how the work occupies space and co-exits with it, it’s about weight and weightlessness, the making or the unmaking of the work and its nature, it’s cause and creation.” 

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Fantastic group of minimalistic works, pure process and interesting young artists. 2 new works by Wes Noble, Samuel Francois, Jack Greer, John Roebas and many other fantastic artists.

CE QUI ARRÊTAIT CES DAMES

SAMUEL FRANÇOIS, JACK GREER, OLIVIER KOSTA-THÉFAINE, PIOTR LAKOMY, WES NOBLE, LEIF RITCHEY, JOHN ROEBAS

1: CE QUI ARRÊTAIT CES DAMES / Exhibition view, Galerie Jeanrochdard, Paris, 2014

2: CE QUI ARRÊTAIT CES DAMES / Exhibition view, Galerie Jeanrochdard, Paris, 2014

3: SAMUEL FRANÇOIS – UNTITLED (€€€€€€€) I 2014 – white plaster on plywood, coins  – 47 x 67 inches

4: CE QUI ARRÊTAIT CES DAMES / Exhibition view, Galerie Jeanrochdard, Paris, 2014

5: OLIVIER KOSTA-THÉFAINE – DÉTAIL D’UN MUR I 2014 –  acrylic on canvas – 57,1 x 37,8 inches

6: PIOTR LAKOMY – UNTITLED I 2013 – polished aluminium printing plates – 44,5 x 28,3 x 0,4 inches

7: CE QUI ARRÊTAIT CES DAMES / Exhibition view, Galerie Jeanrochdard, Paris, 2014

8: JOHN ROEBAS – AT THE PLACE (STILL ASCENDING) I 2014 – enamel, lacquer and resin on linen – 14 x 12 inches

9: SAMUEL FRANÇOIS – WHITE STRIPES I 2014 – nylon bag, cotton, wood – 28 x 20 inches

11: CE QUI ARRÊTAIT CES DAMES / Exhibition view, Galerie Jeanrochdard, Paris, 2014

12: WES NOBLE – LUMBERJACKOFF 2 I 2014 – acrylic and lysol on canvas – 58 x 80 inches

13: CE QUI ARRÊTAIT CES DAMES / Exhibition view, Galerie Jeanrochdard, Paris, 2014

14: JACK GREER – ALEX I 2013 – canvas, thread, enamel and latex – 26 x 20 inches

15: WES NOBLE – LUMBERJACKOFF 1 I 2014 – acrylic and lysol on canvas – 54 x 64 inches

For more information contact: Jeanroch Dard 

photo credits Claire Dorn

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When considering works by Sam Moyer, one typically thinks of her works from 2010 and up to 2013.