Edson Chagas is altering reality with discarded objects

Edson Chagas is altering our perceptions of consumable objects. The photographer recodifies reality by reframing items that have grown weary with age in new backgrounds, exploring the issues of consumerism, capitalism, and tradition. In pop art fashion, Chagas forces audiences to reevaluate the found object.

Chagas was born in Luanda, Angola in 1977. Chagas completed a degree in photojournalism at the London College of Communication in the UK and studied documentary photography at the University of Wales in Newport. He now lives and works in Luanda. In Chagas’ adolescence, everything was reused. Today, however, consumption habits do not adhere to the same values. It is these changes Chagas documents.

For the artist’s series Found Not Taken, he gathered discarded objects from the streets of Luanda, London, and Wales. He reframed these objects and took photos of them. The overlooked objects were thus reappropriated into emblems of overconsumption and waste of which our society is rampant. By manufacturing the image, Chagas makes us question social construction and reality. A selection from the series represented Angola at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), winning the Golden Lion for Best National Participation.

In Chagas’ series Tipo Passe he also toyed with the idea of social construction; he composed images of models wearing traditional African masks while wearing contemporary clothing bought in street markets. He makes us consider the role of traditional values in today’s society as well as identity.

Presenting ROOMS 16: SUPERLUMINAL

“This is how it all begins: from blinding darkness enters light; soft, beautiful, expanding, violent, maddening, defiant”.

ROOMS 16 is all about light, offering an explosion of colour, yet meditating the significance of contrast, of darkness. The darkness behind the light, which serves as a technical tool, an inception of creativity. Together with the artists who make up this issue we seek to illuminate what happens when we stop thinking of light and darkness as binaries, but rather as parts of the same force. The force that drives us to create, destroy and recreate. As featured photographer Ryan Harding points out, one must accept the necessity of scrapping things in order to reinvent. To improve. To excel.

Following this year’s Art Basel – Miami Beach, ROOMS 16 muses the creative processes and emotional influences of three Miami-based artists as Autumn Casey, 

Farley Aguilar and Bhakti Baxter consider the impact of the Sun City on their work. While the works of contemporary artists often exist by an illusion of lighting and composition, the illusion is accepted as an ancient and indispensable artistic extrication. Further, a focus on light in composition is evident in Pawel Nolbert’s works as he discusses the effect colour has on perception and visual impact. We also talk “lighting” with award-winning photographer Jamie-James Medina, whose diverse portfolio includes dramatic and characterful portraits of Mercury-prize nominee FKA Twigs. 

ROOMS 16 explores the realms of digital artistic expression, introducing the work of two extraordinary digital artists, Robert Bell and Andreas Nicolas Fischer. Their compositions are eruptions of light and yet contain within them sinister elements 

adding to the intensity of the visual experience. Featured also is onedotzero, a company responsible for creating astonishing digital sensory arts events, and Eduardo Gomes, who uses 3D computer graphics to implement and demonstrate visual artwork.

Without borders or boundaries, Alex Chinneck creates large-scale surrealist illusions. He describes the making of playful public art, the obligation for cultural experiences to be valuable and also the advantage of controlling your art, beginning to end. With The Fashtons, we ponder photo-realism in visual projects for music and fashion and the consonance brought by two separate, yet intertwined and transmittable, artistic modes of expression.

ROOMS 16 cogitates the blurring of liminal spaces, the creation of complex art. The result is art, which breaks boundaries. Art as light and darkness, simultaneously. Art, which is faster than light itself. Art, which is superluminal.

Victoria Miro welcomes NJIDEKA AKUNYILI CROSBY in her artist portfolio

Victoria Miro announced late last month that she is “delighted” to be representing Njideka Akunyili Crosby - this year’s winner of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s James Dicke Contemporary Artist Prize.

As a succession to the $25,000 award, the 32-year-old Nigerian born artist, is now to be represented by one of the “grandes dames of the Britart scene”- the internationally acclaimed art dealer with dual London gallery spaces, Victoria Miro.

“Informed by art historical and literary sources, Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s complex, multi-layered works reflect contemporary transcultural identity…Akunyili Crosby’s large-scale figurative compositions are drawn from the artist’s memories and experiences,” it is noted on Victoria Miro’s website.

As she pushes a melange of acrylic, paste, colour pencils, charcoal, marble dust, collage and transfers, the LA based artist populates her work with images of family and friends, in scenarios with details derived from everyday domestic experiences in Nigeria and America.

Combining collage and photo-transfer to provide texture and complexity, Crosby’s bold yet intimate paintings are described as “among the most visually, conceptually, and technically exciting work being made today.”

Her painterly compositions feature images with a thematic resonance to each particular work, which derived from personal archives, Nigerian lifestyle magazines and sourced from the internet.

When concluding the decision for Crosby’s James Dicke Contemporary Artist Prize, the jurors wrote: “Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s nuanced work reflects the increasingly transnational nature of the contemporary art world…She has created a sophisticated visual language that pays homage to the history of Western painting while also referencing African cultural traditions. Akunyili has a striking ability to depict deeply personal imagery that transcends the specificity of individual experience and engages in a global dialogue about trenchant social and political issues.”

Crosby has participated in numerous exhibitions in the United States and abroad, including most recently “Draped Down”(2014) at The Studio Museum, “Sound Vision” (2014) at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and “Bronx Calling: The Second Bronx Biennial” (2013) at the Bronx Museum. She will see her work featured in the New Museum Triennial in 2015.

ERIK NYSTRÖM / LEE FRASER

Block 336 presents Morphogenèse, a sound installation and performance event collaboration between Erik Nyström and Lee Fraser, marking the release of Nyström’s album of the same name.

Morphogenèse, meaning ‘the beginning of shape’, offers the listener an immersive experience created by multi channel synthesis. Block’s underground gallery space will be transformed for the event adding atmospheric elements to an interactive sonic world of Nyström and Fraser’s making. Nyström and Fraser both hold PhDs in electroacoustic composition and have both studied under composer Denis Smalley.

Nystrom met international recognition in the Metamorphoses International Composition Competition in 2010. His work ranges from regular participation in live electronic music projects for the London Contemporary Orchestra’s innovative performances to featuring Boiler Room events. His album, ‘Morphogenèse’, is released under Canadian electroacoustic label Empreintes DIGITALes.

Fraser’s work includes critically acclaimed album, Dark Camber, on the Entr’acte imprint earlier this year and he has received the prestigious Luigi Russolo Grand Prize for his work ‘The Visions of Ezekiel’.

Together the London-based duo engages in a new improvisational computer music project, creating an exceptional collision between different worlds of sound. The backdrop of the performance is created by introspective installation design by Tom Groves. Morphogenèse inhabits an ever-evolving visuospatial topography reflecting cycles of creation, crisis, and decay.

Morphogenèse will be exhibited at Block 336 on Friday 28 November and Saturday 29 November. For further information about the exhibition see.

The Elegant Simplicity of Amelie Bahlsen’s Liquid Boxes

Born in Germany and based in New York, fashion designer Amelie Bahlsen uses experimental patterns to produce unique and chic garments.

With exquisite yet understated materials and obscure, striking silhouettes,Bahlsen seeks to “translate abstract and conceptual ideas about space, perspective and three-dimensionality” in her work.

Bahlsen’s interest in fashion materialized after high school.  Excited by her newfound passion, she enrolled in Berlin’s Mediadesign University, where she received her Bachelor’s Degree in Fashion Design.  Following a subsequent internship with Ame Souer in Paris, Bahlsen migrated to New York to study at Parsons School of Design, where she received her Master’s Degree in Fashion Design and Society.  For her thesis project, she designed and created her Liquid BOXES collection – an array of dresses featuring bold accents of color and overlaid in distinctive white sheaths.

Bahlsen discusses the conceptual nature of BOXES with ROOMS:

My thesis collection Liquid BOXES is about the idea of three-dimensionality and perspective translated into garments. What happens when you sew a perspectively-drawn box in fabric? How do those shapes collapse on the body? I aimed to answer these questions with the dresses whose pattern construction was in fact based on cubes and boxes.

With their geometric focus and inherent exploratory nature, her BOXES garments are clearly conceptually striking. They also, however, boast a stunning aesthetic:

To emphasize the depth and the different shades of white there are two layers of dresses: a printed undergarment and a white overlay. The prints are made by ink and food coloring dropped in water and contrast the straight and graphic elements of the white ‘box’-dresses nicely.

By juxtaposing the flowing, abstract nature of the colorful patterns with the pieces’ stark, clean contours, Bahlsen’s work conveys an undeniable interest in experimenting with fashion. With her innovative focus, refreshing aesthetic, and distinctive style, Amelie Bahlsen definitely thinks outside the box.

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Towards Biology

Towards Biology is a piece created in collaboration with Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura for the exhibition "Time, Space, Existence" held at Palazzo Bembo within the framework of the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale.

In Towards Biology we consider abstractly, from the exhibition's perspective, the values of La Fábrica, creative epicenter and space of the Taller de Arquitectura from the mid-1970s to the present day. A space that moreover lays the foundations and the methodology for the development of the workshop's creative approach, which is based on innovation and focuses on ecology as well as on social and technological aspects.

Stations of the Cross in Cinemas Today. Did we like it?

With a touch of magical realism, “Stations of The Cross” is easily one of the must see films of the year as it is truly wondrous in the way it carefully avoids clichés – the biggest sin in cinema.

“…you know that this music can be satanically influenced. The drum rhythms and the monotonous bass lines tempt us to unchaste actions”, told by her Priest about singing gospel and soul in a different church's choir, Maria, our sacrificial protagonist wiped her tears before abandoning a chance to sing with the boy she likes due to the differences in their respective branch of Christianity. Such is life for the girl who has been living her whole life avoiding committing sins, a pursuit of purity that has deprived humanity from every aspect of her life. Or maybe as another “Virgin Suicide” story, the film “Stations of The Cross” de-glorifies sacraments or fundamentalism in any ideologies through a wonderfully acted set of 14 long-takes, depicting a present day German girl's life in the most horrifying circumstances –  being a member of Society of St. Paul. Director Dietrich Brüggemann employed a fantastical and yet frightfully risky way of unfolding the story which involves almost no movements of the camera, literally framing the film allowing no possibility to shift focal points. A metaphor – zero tolerance of alternative points of view. The genius of this technique presents itself beautifully in the library scene where boy meets girl for the first time, a treat that will without a doubt become a classic for its imaginative way of opening dimensions in just one static shot. Maria's character played by Lea Van Acken was perfectly cast but it was the strict and brutally uncompromising mother played by Austrian actress Franziska Weisz who brought the acting to the sublime. With a touch of magical realism, “Stations of The Cross” is easily one of the must see films of the year as it is truly wondrous in the way it carefully avoids clichés – the biggest sin in cinema. 

STATIONS OF THE CROSS is in cinemas 28 November

Award-winning film which won the Berlin Silver Bear for Best Script this year and the EIFF Student Jury Prize.

Jockum Nordström Celebrates His Solo Exhibition at David Zwirner London

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Represented by acclaimed David Zwirner London, Swedish artist Jockum Nordström boasts a celebrated and undeniably modern body of work. 

Featuring eclectic collages, exquisite watercolors, detailed drawings, and architectural sculptures, Nordström’s ouervre is diverse yet aesthetically unified.  

Through January, the gallery will proudly present For the insects and the hounds, an exhibition featuring new sculptures and works on paper from Nordström.  Inspired by the artist’s experiences in Gotland, Sweden’s largest island, For the insects and the hounds conveys an innate focus on nature and evokes the rusticity of the island’s rural landscape.  

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To coincide with the exhibition, David Zwirner London will also host a book launch celebrating the reprinting of Who is sleeping on my pillow, a book by the artist and his wife, Mamma Anderson. Both artists will be in attendance to sign copies of their charming book, which features 200 full-color plates depicted “alongside favorite family snapshots and source materials”. Co-hosted by David Zwirner Books – the gallery’s stand-alone publishing house – and the London Review of Books, this exciting event will take place in the gallery space on Friday, 28 November, at 6:30 PM. 

Be sure to check out For the insects and the hounds, on view from 28 November though 24 January 2015 at David Zwirner London!

Upcoming talk:

Special event: Talk by curator Marc Donnadieu
Saturday, January 17, 11 AM

Free and open to the public
RSVP to Naomi Chassé at naomi@davidzwirner.com or +44 203 538 3165

Visit the gallery for a guided tour of the exhibition, For the insects and the hounds, and a talk on the artist by Marc Donnadieu. Donnadieu curated Jockum Nordström’s recent major European survey, All I Have Learned and Forgotten Again, which was on view in at the LaM, the Lille Métropole Musée d’art moderne, d’Art contemporain et d’art brut in Villeneuve d’Ascq, France. The exhibition later traveled to the Camden Arts Centre in London.

Klara Kristalove’s Ceramics Come from Your Childhood’s Anxieties

Klara Kristalova creates beings that would appear to come from the dark enchanted forest in Holden Caulfield’s (The Catcher in The Rye) dreams. Kristalova is known for her ceramic sculptures, which portray narratives of change that are doomed with brooding undertones. Alongside the sculptures, her repertoire includes installations, drawings, textile works, paintings, and sketches. Kristalove finds inspiration in nearly everything: traditional myths, fairytales, Hans Christian, Oscar Wilde, TV, music, and even overheard conversations. Reflecting on these various mediums, Kristalova explores themes of trauma, the loss of childhood, changes, memory and decision-making in her work. 

Born in Prague (1967), Kristalove and her family fled to Sweden when she was a child. Her mother passed away when she was only six years old and she was left to grow up with her father and brother. She studied painting at the Royal Institute of art in Stockholm. Eventually, she found the medium to be limiting and wanted to explore three-dimensional works. She began experimenting with bronze and gypsum, but being a broke student (many of us familiar with the struggle of the ramen noodle diet) led her to using clay. She was also fond of the fact that most of her peers saw ceramics as passé at the time. 

It is evident that clean lines are not a daunting concern to Klara Kristalove; her creations rarely follow real life proportions and their paint bleeds like a crying drunk girl’s makeup. Their size range from smaller delicate works to almost child-like proportions. The artist primarily portrays fauns, young girls, flora, the deep woods, animal human hybrids, masks, and doubles. The roughness and muted colors of her sculptures gives them a tone of shame and isolation. These motifs remind us of the difficulties we ourselves felt (possibly still are) when growing up. The inner anxieties we all feel when shedding our childish individuality in order to fit in as adults.

BLOOMBERG new contemporaries moves to THE ICA

Tajinder Dhami Electric Dream: Will Synthetic Intelligences Dream of Electric Sheep, 2014.

New Contemporaries is the leading UK organisation supporting emergent art practice from British art schools, whose aim is to promote and provide a platform for new and recent fine art graduates. In our current issue, we spoke with the director of Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Kirsty Ogg about the latest artists to join this year’s exhibition. After opening as an integral part of the Liverpool biennial in late September, the collection is now heading further South to London, where it will remain until late January.

With previous New Contemporaries including the Chapman Brothers, Damien Hirst and David Hockney, there is always electricity in the air at the show, with new artists showcasing their potential to join the ranks of the modern masters. This year, the final selection for the show promises to deliver a range of innovative practice, including moving image, printmaking and performance, with artists exploring themes ranging from current affairs to human behaviour and the body. Whether it be Alice Hartley’s bold large scale screen prints or Yi Dai’s poetic and subtle paintings, the exhibition will appeal to anyone looking to have their perspective challenged.

From 26th November to 25th January, the exhibition will be at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, where the public can come to see the work of the fifty five participants involved in the show. To find out more about the exhibition, and to read more about our discussions with a few of the artists on display, pick up a copy of the latest ROOMS and check out the website.

newcontemporaries

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Bloomberg Aspirations: A Contemporary New Generation. Read our interview with Director Kirsty OGG and Artists MKLK , Alice HARTLEY, Frances WILLIAMS, Jesc BUNYARD by Suzanne Zhang in our current issue ROOMS 15 Breakable 

Living through imperfection: FRANCESCO TORTORELLA

By Kiran Grewal

IN SOME WAYS, I HATE ALL OF MY ARTWORK

Francesco Tortorella is described as a creative head, an art director, illustrator, writer, film-maker, animator – all of these titles suggesting bursts of creative energy in almost every form imaginable.

He, on the other hand, doesn’t like to label himself an artist, and uses his work as a way to express and stimulate debate and questions. He is, on many levels, an ordinary man who finds solace in exposing his emotional outbursts through his work and hugely enjoys free thinking people.

He especially explores the artificial idea of perfection that is constantly and brutally imposed upon us, and how love and life is in itself, imperfect. His illustrations penetrate the fragile nature of certain eluded topics and leaves lingering questions about how we actually perceive these everyday insecurities.

How do you want people to respond to your work?

I never really raised this question to myself. Mostly my artwork are emotional outbursts that I make for personal enjoyment. I love when people have fun and I love it when they react critically. Commercially speaking it’s a different story, my daily job often requires me to deal with a brief. In that case my emotional imprint is conveyed for other purposes, and takes advantage of other types of communication.

Who influences/inspires you?

I’m inspired by almost everything. I’m very curious and I always look in different directions. My greatest sources of inspiration have always been the history of art. There are great directors and writers who influence me hugely, as I’ve always loved Italian classic movies.

I am also extremely passionate about music, in all its forms, as music is always present within my day it inspires me creatively. I’m completely addicted to collecting records. Often the sentences and titles of my drawings refer to song lyrics.

What is your background and do you think it reflects in your work? 

I studied art history, fine art and animation. Absolutely all of that reflects in my work. I start my creative process almost always from rough sketches and build on it from there. I used to be very “concrete”, trying to create a handmade feeling using paper textures and painted stuff on digital works as well.

Are there any pieces of work that hold significance more than the other? If so, which one and why?

Each piece of my art, till the moment I decide that they are finished, last as long as the inspirational mood that pushed me to create them. Then, once finished they become only pieces. In some way, I hate all of my artwork.

What drove you to become an artist? 

I don’t think of myself as an artist. When I think about great artists, who inspire me, I think of those who have double the thought process and imagination of a “normal” person – those who think without compromises and boundaries, sacrificing everything for art and adopting extreme lifestyles often to the detriment of themselves.

You’ve mentioned that you work across a whole range of media, such as independent film production, are there any projects you’re involved with at the moment? What should we look out for?

In addition to my day job as a Creative and Art Director, at the moment I am finishing a short animated film. It’s a personal and introspective project made in traditional animation.

I’m also writing an animated series, I’m excited about that, it’s great stuff…but I can’t talk too much about that yet. All I can say is that it deals with a kind of music in some ways.

Speaking of different media, are you partial to any one in particular?

I work a lot with video computers and digital stuff mostly, and I love it, but paper remains to be my favourite media. There is no day without a sketch at least.

Would you say you had a defining style which remains constant throughout your work? I’ve noticed a lot of pop art techniques. How and when did you develop a style and how does this effect your work?

I don’t think so, I think I have quite a personal style, but even that has no real definition and I have to try and understand it day by day. I constantly research and experiment with things, looking at what happens around me. It’s mainly just for my own entertainment. I try to evolve my approach, purely because I get bored easily and I like to change constantly.

You recently announced your artwork becoming available to order all over China. Are you finding an international interest in your work? Why do you think it appeals to such a wide range of audiences?

A couple of years ago I lived in Beijing for a while, working for Pixomondo. And I was lucky enough to hold an exhibition. I must say that my illustrations aroused considerable interest, especially those which were erotic, so I made an attempt to make a partnership with some distributors.

What was the inspiration surrounding your project ‘The Weird Love’?

We have always been caught between two tendencies: to expose and surround to others or to protect ourselves and hide away in search of shelter. This project has been described as dealing with the need to reveal and at the same time to hide love. It’s a secret, delightful torture and a terrible pleasure.

In terms of your piece ‘The Wall Must Fall’, do you find your artwork reflects your political stance?

I do not like to take sides, artistically speaking, I prefer to try and stimulate debate and thoughts, conceptualising the messages or the ideas I want to spread. In this case I wanted to be close to the people of Gaza, most of those people are innocent children that are unable to escape from their tragic conditions. They are not free. I just don’t think we need walls to separate or jail anybody.

You are the founder of Made On VFX, how is that going and what work are you involved with in relation to that?

Actually we do a lot of stuff! Made On VFX is an independent film production company focused on creativity, animation, visual effects and design. We are only a small part too, Made On Studio is actually a huge creative network of directors, artists, writers, designers and a lot of creative people. We work a lot on advertising, the film industry and TV, we also develop Tech and interactive projects focused on art, social and film-making mostly. Right now we’re waiting to produce an animated mid-length that I wrote, a doc-film, a lot of TV shows and a couple of shorts – everything will be written and produced by our team, it’s exciting stuff!

francescotortorella

The return of JORIS VOORN

Dutch DJ and producer Joris Voorn is set to release his third album Nobody Knows 7 years after last LP From A Deep Place.

Voorn, highly respected and well-known in the arena of electronic music returns with this 12 track fusion of guitar, piano and synth through his own record label, Green. The album features collaborations from American DJ and producer Matthew Dear, guitar talent Bram Stadhouders and vocalist Kid A.

Marking a change since his mix CD Balance 014, featuring the 100 biggest electro and dance tracks, this album creates a more ambient landscape. Mixing ethereal vocals and acoustic softness within his usual electronic environment, Voorn creates an enchanting production.

Highlights of the album include already released ‘Ringo’ and the gentler ‘Momo’, a personal track Voorn and his father collaborated on. His track ‘So Long feat Kid A’ is equally as entrancing, while ‘The Wild’ plays upon a darker tone.

Ahead of the release, Voorn has captured his previous tour in California through a series of personal photos.

The album will be released on the 17th November.

Turner Prize 2014

This year’s Turner Prize aka £25,000 will be given out on December 1st to the rightful winner, one of the four finalists whose exhibitions are currently being held at the Tate Britain.

With three of the four competing pieces being film-based, it’s proven that us the viewers may find it necessary to invest as much manoeuvre into understanding the pieces as the artists did making them, given the unanimous verdict from major critics that this year’s entries are oblique and timid. Perhaps in this political climate where daily papers have been blasting stories on child abuse, plane crashes, beheadings, dismantling of our country, either we are out of capacity to react to shock art that some of the previous Turner Prize buzz-generating artists such as Damien Hurst and Tracey Emin have unveiled or contemporary artists have lost the will to shock. Even Turner Prize’s archenemy – Stucklists who have protested every year at the Prize decided to take a break this year, the least shocking bit of the whole ordeal. Britain is at such a fragile state and this year’s four finalists Duncan Campbell, Ciara Philips, Tris Vonna-Michell, and James Richards (who has been tipped as the likely winner for his film collage – Rosebud) may have just produced the art in reaction to this. As much as we miss the eccentricity of our Turner Prize artists, this year we will get sensuality for a change.

Photos by Abigail Yue Wang

The Art of Teaching: MELANIE PAICE

After studying fine art at Central St Martins and De Montfort University, Melanie Paice went on to work for the Tate Gallery (Modern and Britain), where she managed a course programme before becoming freelance to work on projects with organisations such as Frieze Art Fair. She currently lives and works in Woking, Surrey, giving classes at the Lightbox Gallery among other venues in the surrounding area, whilst still producing her own work for commission.

I feel that my own art practice has improved a great deal since teaching. The fact that through teaching, you’re learning other peoples work constantly and finding a way of helping them to correct mistakes in their work means that my own observational skills have improved greatly. It’s just a constant thing that you do when teaching. There are some tutors particularly in adult education that will come to the front of the class, demonstrate something and then ask the class to copy what they do. I don’t work like that. I prefer people to think a bit about what they want to make so that they have further interest in what they are doing rather than just following what the teacher says. I encourage them to come up with their own ideas. My own practice has improved because of all that. 

With lecturing, I find that researching about other people’s work and teaching about artists that interest me quite often mean that I go into a lot of detail about the art history of it all so the approach in my lectures is more about looking into the art historical details, but it certainly helps my own work progress.

Abstract is really what I consider to be ‘my thing’. It’s what I like doing but abstract doesn’t really sell that well in Surrey, so I tend to do more figurative work. Although I prefer abstract work, I do certainly have a love of plants and flowers as my parents were landscape gardeners, so I still enjoy working that way. 

I love the work of Andy Goldsworthy. He is a sculptor who works with natural materials and uses only natural processes to bind the elements together. When I lecture on him I put his work under ‘land art’ because he is more than just a sculptor. His work is very transient and he takes a lot of photos of his work so that the photograph becomes the piece of art in the end. When I was around nine years old, the artist that really made me want to get into the art world was Chagall and in particular his painting, ‘The Cattle Dealer’, where the foal is in the womb of the horse. It fascinated me that an artist could show you what you knew was there, but that you couldn’t actually see. In some ways, I feel like this is similar to what I do when I teach.

I love teaching art because I love working with people and I wanted to share my love of art. To be able to make people feel what I feel when I paint is a wonderful experience. My approach is that it should be a sociable environment when I teach because then the students are more relaxed and open to learn. I prefer working with a very small class where there is more interaction and discussion about the work. It’s a much more pleasurable experience than lecturing at people. Teaching brings a lot more back into my own work.

I love working in the negative like when I do my slate drawings. I love bringing the light onto a black surface. There is an element of it being less of a blank canvas as you have something to work against. I love working that way but when I try and teach it’s surprising how hard beginners find it until they start really looking at light that way. The exhibition I did last year included a load of sculptural bees, which I created out of smashed light bulbs and so light is very important to me in that way, bringing old things into the light. The exhibition was actually called ‘Trash to Treasure’ as I was working on turning old materials into new pieces of art.

For me, creativity is the closest thing to spirituality. When something is really working in a painting or a sculpture, there is an amazing feeling that is almost spiritual. If I haven’t made artwork in a while, there is a frustration where I feel I need to make something. If people revaluated what ‘success’ was in our world and it wasn’t just about money and becoming known but more if you were happy and how you would be viewed by other people, I think people would be a lot happier.

The under stated & under exposed Saskatchewan Art

Shoreditch has been housing its very own Canada Water, Saskatchewan till Oct 18th. Saskachewan means “swiftly flowing river” in one of Canadian’s aboriginal language Cree, namesake of the province in Canada where the artists from the current exhibition were curated, by world-renowned artist and Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medalist Adrian Stimson.

Stimson’s explained that the narrative for putting together this exhibition very much converges themes of identity and diversity, in a largely vacant land of Saskatchewan where indigenous and colonial influences meet and simultaneously uphold strong socialism and economy. This exhibition is a mini museum to harbour a united people with as a complex makeup as of any post-colonial society, a 20/20 vision into a harmonious and tenacious space distilled to fit into the trendy Shoreditch studio Blackall.

“Saskatchewan artists are a force to be reckoned with, these 27 artists have and will continue to evolve Saskatchewan’s story.” Says Stimson.

The coherence of the exhibition is striking. The paintings, photography, sculptures, ceramics, bead, stone and wood works nest comfortably amongst one another, having been fed by the same flowing water, emanate nostalgia and imagination.

“Saskatchewan” is currently being held at the Blackall Studios in Shoreditch till 18th Oct before continuing to Bilbao, Spain from 29th Oct – 2nd Nov. Please check Creative Saskatchewan for more details on upcoming events.

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BLOOMBERG new contemporaries moves to THE ICA

Tajinder Dhami Electric Dream: Will Synthetic Intelligences Dream of Electric Sheep, 2014.

New Contemporaries is the leading UK organisation supporting emergent art practice from British art schools, whose aim is to promote and provide a platform for new and recent fine art graduates. In our current issue, we spoke with the director of Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Kirsty Ogg about the latest artists to join this year’s exhibition. After opening as an integral part of the Liverpool biennial in late September, the collection is now heading further South to London, where it will remain until late January.

With previous New Contemporaries including the Chapman Brothers, Damien Hirst and David Hockney, there is always electricity in the air at the show, with new artists showcasing their potential to join the ranks of the modern masters. This year, the final selection for the show promises to deliver a range of innovative practice, including moving image, printmaking and performance, with artists exploring themes ranging from current affairs to human behaviour and the body. Whether it be Alice Hartley’s bold large scale screen prints or Yi Dai’s poetic and subtle paintings, the exhibition will appeal to anyone looking to have their perspective challenged.

From 26th November to 25th January, the exhibition will be at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, where the public can come to see the work of the fifty five participants involved in the show. To find out more about the exhibition, and to read more about our discussions with a few of the artists on display, pick up a copy of the latest ROOMS and check out the website.

newcontemporaries

A work in review: ELLY LIYANA RUSLAN

At first glance, Elly Liyana Ruslan’s work comes off as a soft serve swirl of youthful naivety and muted colors. Her illustrations and paintings usually depict portraits, picturesque settings, and animals. The artist states that her work is “fragments of her personal thoughts and memories combined together to form a reflection of something intimate yet openly displayed.” Like a Wes Anderson film, her work is stunning, but, as with The Royal Tenenbaums, darkness looms beneath a pretty picture surface.

Ruslan was born in 1987 in Singapore; in her latest work, the relationships portrayed build complexity. People are posed with animals, but for what purpose? Is she contextualizing Eisenstein’s use of montage? Is it meant to represent the battle of man versus nature, or is it merely meant to make for a pleasant aesthetic? The mirror image is also a repeating subject throughout the artist’s work; are the images of twins or multiple parts of one personality? Her piece ‘Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing’ might give us a hint as to what she is trying to get at. Perhaps, the artist is trying to turn us all into skeptics… Many of the themes of the artist’s new work has carried over from the past, nature, the double image, and portraits. Her earlier illustrations, however, have a stripped down quality and she also has a lovely series of defacements.

There’s one clue left Ruslan places on her site that allows outsiders to peak into the mind of the artist:

“The satisfaction she gets from creating art is knowing that a part of her exists in the work… And if you look at them close enough, you’ll find her story.”

ellyliyana

Robot reboot: CONRAD SHAWCROSS at The Vinyl Factory

With choreographed dance moves and a dazzling display of light, one may find it hard to believe that Ada, Conrad Shawcross’ rhythmic robot, has not always been the dancing droid that she is today. 

Prior to her starring role in Shawcross’ Ada Project, the bot started out as an industrial apparatus in a factory.  Repurposed and reprogrammed by Shawcross, Ada – named after Ada Lovelace, a 19thcentury mathematician – is now so much more than a cog in a machine.

For The Ada Project, Shawcross commissioned four female artists to compose music to accompany Ada’s dancing.  Rather than establishing a soundtrack and then tweaking Ada’s movements accordingly, Shawcross has opted for a different approach: to present Ada to the composers as a means to “inspire, rather than be determined by, the pieces of music”.  After observing Ada’s gestures, each musician created a tune to complement her mechanized movements, elevating Ada from lowly piece of machinery to jazzed-up muse.   Now, as an instrumental and illuminated installation, Ada marches to the beat of her own drummer – literally.

Check out Conrad Shawcross’ The Ada Project at the Vinyl Factory now through 31 October!

thevinylfactory

An evening with artists FRANK BOWLING

The Royal Academy of Arts hosts ‘In Conversation with Frank Bowling’ ahead of the artist’s Traingone exhibition in Stockholm’s Spirit museum, looking at selected works from 1979–96.

Frank Bowling RA moved to London in 1950 from Guyana and nine years later began studying at the Royal College of Art after gaining a scholarship. Since graduating in 1962, Bowling has travelled the world with studios in both London and New York. His work has transitioned from figurative to abstract pieces, exploring and experimenting with colour, size and texture.

His upcoming Traingone exhibition named after one of his 1966 paintings, showcases his intriguing attention to colour that emerged in his later work and the unique textures he created. Allowing the colourful paint to take control of the finished work, dripping down the surface; he called his paintings ‘poured’, relinquishing control and leaving the appearance of his work to chance.

In 2005 Bowling was elected as a member of the Royal Academy of Art, becoming the first black Royal Academician in the institution’s 200 years and for one evening he returns and will be conversing with Mel Gooding, art critic and author of the Frank Bowling monograph for the Royal Academy.

Bowling’s work can be found permanently displayed in New York at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, as well as in the Tate Gallery in London.

FILIPPOS TSITSOPOULOS: Kage-where K for kott

Photos by Sonia Arias

Filippos Tsitsopoulos is a painter, installation, video theatre and performance media artist who has worked in the field of interactive theatre installation art, exploring the limits of performance and painting since 1990. His practice engages the spectator/participant to a new theatre or rather a system of including theatre as a catalyst of our daily life. This is precisely the case for his latest project, Kage – Where K for Kott. We had the chance to speak with Filippos and gain more of an insight into his intriguing background of work.

To begin, could you give us a brief background into your work?

Well even if I’m not working with painting, I consider myself a painter who decides to use other artistic disciplines as canvases; like video theatre installation, traditional repertory theatre and performance. I have worked in the field of interactive theatre installation, exploring the limits of performance, as well as in painting since 1990. My practice engages the spectator/participant to a new system including theatre as a catalyst of our daily life. How theatre can change our reality and ourselves.

I use concepts that belong to the theatre, traditional and modern. These concepts are applied to visual arts, observing the effects that they produce. With the use of self-made masks produced from living materials, animals or plants, I construct parallel equivalents that enclose and juxtapose temporally disproportionate elements.

The dialogue with the history of Art is always alive in my works and in my life, due to the fact that I was part of the external collaborators of the educational department of the Prado Museum in Madrid from 2005 to 2012. I held workshops related to drawing and art aesthetic, with the theme ‘Irony in Art’ almost every day during that period.

‘Irony in Art’ was also my research theme during my Doctorate studies in Fine Arts at Complutense University of Madrid from 1990 to 1996. Before that I studied in Greece, painting at the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki in the Faculty of Fine Arts from 1985 to 1990.

This relation with the theatre, with history of Art, with a big personal loss combined with my childhood memories, makes me create a system of works as independent ways of thought and reflection, on concepts derived from the performance and the theatre.

What inspired you to move into the realm of video theatre and performance?

The impossibility to communicate the issues that happened to me was the main reason. Although I studied painting, theatre came up, it was inevitable, and the love of all the masks, ‘layers of onions of an actor’s visibility or invisibility,’ make me jump through painting and performance.

The most unforgettable story for the development of this performance system was this one:

Long ago, back in the year 1993, the day that my mother died, I was still a student. My father, a professional actor, was interpreting Polonius in Shakespeare’s Hamlet in Athens. I must say that this performance was memorable and imposing. My father, completely destroyed by the loss of his wife, buried the same day, dedicated his entire performance to her. It was obvious that all his gestures that night on the stage were speaking about her. The climax was when Polonius had to say, reading the letter of love from Hamlet to his daughter Ophelia, the words “Doubt thou the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move, Doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt about my love, my love, never doubt about my love, my love…”

My father repeated “never doubt about my love, my love” so many times that the other actors on the stage remained astonished, and knowing that the very same day my mother had passed away, they decided to remain inert looking at one another. The public did not understand what was happening and they began applauding, touched by the text and its constant repetition and the emotion of the interpretation; so much so that they finally had to stop the performance for a few minutes because the people were continually applauding. And without understanding why this scene had upset them so much, they kept on applauding.

I CONSIDER MY ART AS A ‘SABOTAGE OF MY OWN REALITY’

Later on, it was the first night that my mother was not at home waiting for us… and while I was heating my father’s meal for dinner, he told me, “That was for her (for my mother) you know”. And he continued: “And you like Laertes, (his son in the scene) please try, in your life to be honest with yourself and with it, as the night continues to day, you cannot be false to anybody…”

It was obvious that he carried on interpreting the role at home, believing or trying to convince himself that the reality we live in, the ‘truthiness’ of life, can be inverted in the theatre and extend into art. The reality we live in, brought back to the theatre; the theatre representing life, with all of our belongings part of a big stage and scenery of life.

A few years later in 2006 when my father died, I decided to watch all of his videos and performances, read and remember all of the roles, study all of the monologues, in a kind of obsession to understand my infancy and adolescence in my house full of theatre and interpretation. I constantly read essays from Harold Pinter to Gombrowicz and from Berry to Brecht and Beckett, to Peter Weiss and Marat Sade and began to articulate an enormous work of more than 72 videos of monologue performances.

I began interpreting Polonius for my father. I transformed my face with living elements, creating a flexible mask according to the face muscles and the movement of the mouth, imitating the red beard of the Danish Polonius. I played my first text for him saying exactly the same words as the ones he said for my mother. I transformed myself to communicate with my deceased father. The conclusion of a lifetime, the impossible answers to questions of our zeitgeist, how can you play or act in life and in theatre and what about if these roles could be inverted? Was this a starting point or the beginning of a philosophy for my father as actor and person — and my philosophy too, about life, religion, death and love.

I consider my art as a ‘sabotage of my own reality,’ and the reality of others as well. I use my face and my body in a concise and clear forefront. My face is like the vehicle that serves to transmit the message. And the message is a question or many perhaps: What would happen if the theatre could be used in our life to replace the reality? What would happen if our everyday life were transformed to tragedy?

I refer to all physical and mental consequences of the tragedy, including the sacrifice and the Oedipus blindness: To ‘see’ will let you blind? And the most important: How might we continue a stage play if one of its personages goes crazy, or simply it is not necessary, the zeitgeist that we live on, has replaced him or overcome it?

If there is an absence of tragic figures in our life why then do we not do the Oedipus tragedy, without Oedipus? Are theatre and its archetypes sufficient to answer to the current human existence and its questions? Or is it only a theatrical archaeology?”

Your father was an actor and you also speak a lot about famous literary figures. Have artists across different disciplines always played a part in your work?

If there is an absence of tragic figures in our life why then do not we do the Oedipus tragedy, without Oedipus? That is the question that someone must ask, wondering where all the famous literary figures go. I really care about the issues that come up when someone is looking at tragedy for instance. I don’t care too much let’s say about Euripides life, but I’m passionate about Oedipus. This became the purpose of my work.

As Jan Hoet, director of the Documenta IX in Kassel mentioned about my works “Filippos is working with art as subject. Art itself is capable to create Art.” To speak and express myself with borrowed words, brings me near to the behaviour of an actor who learns and studies an already observed and analysed reality and embodies someone else’s face, but beneath my face lies memories from reality.

I use my face, destroying it with pixels or masks, to recreate a natural disaster. The human suffering behind that mask and feeling of an impassive nature to human suffering is inverted through dramatization and theatre.

In Greek vases, almost all the figures are looking sideways, except figures that should face death; who are the only ones looking in front. So all my video portraits are figures who mentally are dealing with Hades. In Ancient Greece, before performing a tragedy role, the mythology says that Greek actors must ask permission to play from Hades, the kingdom of death.

I USE MY FACE, DESTROYING IT WITH PIXELS OR MASKS, TO RECREATE A NATURAL DISASTER

This is where the Greek tradition is placing the actor before the play. To find a specific image to respond to in one of my monologues is like juggling in the circus between nothingness and wholeness. The circus contains specific images. Everything in the circus is happening ‘for real’. The dancer dances with ‘real risk’ in a real rope, and the bear tamer shows only the spectacle of wild-domesticated animals. When ‘something happens’ really means that the image is at a ‘precise point’ or a ‘thing’. The actor’s face and the ‘garment’ is an image. If the actor interprets himself, though he remains an actor, it is a ‘precise point’. But, if he identifies himself with the person he interprets, then the images produced are ‘mimetic symbols’. Looking at the passageway between actual time and theatrical time, imagined space with the real, is my aim.

Where did inspiration for your latest project, Kage – Where K for Kott, come from? What will the performances consist of?

It is very common for an artist to use his home ground as a canvas. Having a repertory actor as my father, makes you inevitably a silent witness of his rehearsals at home. This fact can change you forever. Endgame, Hamlet and Othello, Berry, Bart, Beckett, from Jerzy Grotowski to Giorgio Strehler and from Ibsen to Calderon, to Peter Weiss, Suzuki Tadashi, Peter Sellars, Heiner Müller, Tony Harrison, and Thomas Murphy, to Kafka’s “a cage went in search of a Bird…”

If this is the conclusion of a lifetime with your father, then you must close to a religion called “Ionesco” and the person to swear, as Peter Brook’s said, is “in the name of the Bible of Jan Kott”. Theatre is the medium through which to understand the world. Jan helped me understand what it means to find the non-evident in the evident, and the evident in the non-evident.

The project is related to a big forgotten person: Jan Kott. A series of filmed performances in public spaces and monologues/reflections based on his two books, Shakespeare our Contemporary and Theatre of Essence, (which are actually closer to literature than to essays), will be used as theatrical texts for my monologues, to reconstruct the imaginary life of Jan in London. Like Joyce’s Ulysses which revisits “payments” of a day time mythology, the character who is playing Kott, will revisit all his main theatrical subjects from Ionesco to Gombrowitcz, his relation with art and life, to his beloved and magical actress Ida Kaminska, well known from her Oscar title but also for her awesome interpretation of Mother Courage in Brecht’s play.

I had the good fortune of seeing a performance similar to this from the Greek actress Katina Paxinou when I was six or seven years old. Jan Kott knew Paxinou well and several times saw that play to include her in his specific book about Drama. My father, a repertory actor, was acting the role of the priest in Brecht’s play next to Paxinou. I barely remember Mr. Kott now, but his smile, his black shirt and he enjoying like a child the cakes Paxinou offered to both of us backstage. Almost every night after school I was in the theatre backstage doing my homework, watching Brecht’s play, enjoying my father’s acting, as every kid would do, every afternoon, until my mother, who usually finished work later would come and take me home.

Well, this project starts mentally from my home ground and is transported to the theatrical ground of London, creating performances in public spaces, scenarios and monologues, and reflections about theatre and life, as if I was metaphorically wearing the skin of Kott. In my works is living in London, walking the streets, watching galleries and Museums, sleeping on a boat by the river, approaching nearby strangers and talking with them and using masks as Kott’s favorite element of his Verfremdunseffekt (Distancing effect).

Acting is putting on other faces and embodying someone else’s soul. This journey was inspired by Kafka and “a cage went in search of a bird”, which became “Kage- where K for Kott”; video- filmed- performances and monologues all over London. This work will be displayed in a Gallery as a photography and large-scale multi channel video installation and will have several exhibitions when finished.

How important is the role of spectator/participant to your work? How much of a part will the spectators play in this piece? What is the final goal of this piece?

As a Joycian Ulyssean journey, where Homer’s Ullyses embodies the Joycian one and vice versa, as the Marquis de Sade and Marat in the Peter Weiss play shift into the other, there is no theatre without spectator. The only difference is that in theatre language we see things opposite, as well as in my works, from the end to the beginning from left to right. All this is like the classic theatre paradigm of the mirror, when Hamlet tells his actors to pull up a mirror so that they may view themselves, and if a theatre is a mirror then “the right is left in and the left is right. In the mirror, our heart is on the right side, we cross with our left hand”. And if we ask ourselves what is real in the theatre, then probably we will answer: the chairs. Yet these chairs when taken from the auditorium and set on the stage, they are no longer chairs but representations of chairs or “spots” in theatre language, like Ionesco`s empty chairs are waiting for the viewers to come. I also aim to convert the audience into actors.

The second part that I am now developing in London, is called The Grimaces Competition Bus and is drawn from an essay by Jan Kott about an incident that took place during the Second World War in Poland. During one long night of constant bombing, two Warsaw actors are trying, during this awful night, to fight and win a strange competition:

“The ugliest and most horrible grimace of the world made by the muscles of a human face”.

Finally, we don’t know who was the winner of this absurd expressionistic behaviour, but it was used as an example by Ionesco later on to his students of how performance could push boundaries and limits and how opposite the so called theatrical truth is from reality. The Grimaces Competition Bus is the digital and technological reconstruction and adaptation in a modern life and public art form of that incident.

In a Hackney central 38 London bus are installed 120 screens in its exterior façade and lateral, as well as in the upper outside roof. People are invited to get in and make a grimace and then give the reason for the horror or the joy of their feelings, and or any personal or political disappointments.

In every stop of the bus new people will come up and new grimaces will be added in the timeline of the day. Every grimace will be filmed and streamed on the flat television screens on the exterior of the bus. This event will be collecting grimaces all over London. Older ‘grimaces’ (from the days before) will be added on hard discs and streamed in some of the outer screens of the bus, while on other screens, the new ones will be performed totally live.

EVERY END EMBODIES EVERY BEGINNING

The inside part of the bus will be removed to include a space with one camera, waiting to record the reaction of a passenger to a memory or to something related to a grimace. A video edition and streaming team of volunteers and people explaining the action and the artist will be there to help and give them guidance points. Every day the artist will perform a two hour sequence of grimaces streaming them directly on one outer screen of the bus.

The Grimaces Competition is an adaptation a modern life form of that Warsaw incident but in an outside inverted shape. The metaphor of the attack of the commercial markets, art markets, social markets, art war, ‘the constant bombing of the human rights and work’, as well as the cuts of all type of benefits due to the new order of things, which embrace with indifference the unprotected citizens, makes critical the reaction and activation of the series of primary feelings and interior nerve mechanics, spasms and expressions and the use of them as the possible theatrical Utopia. In the exterior of the bus, as well as in Ancient Greece feasts the Eleusinian Telesterion (initiation hall) and Ex Amaxis events will turn too into a live structure society performance.

It can be considered as a collective absurd comedy drama viewed live but in video. In the outside part of the bus there are nearly two hundred or more connected and adapted flat television screens. In our theatrical modern theory, the fact of the two actors competing for the most horrible grimace under the sound of bombing Warsaw is translated to London reality.

This work will perform from the inside and will criticize with grimace and absurdity, the world of nowadays. This theatre bus will not stay hidden but will reveal the expression of the inner protected or unprotected presence of territorial freedom and the mechanics that arise in the human being in order to defend himself psychologically and physically from an external pressure, defeat the fear, as well the sadness. Grimaces as the weapon to face the impossibility, to formulate coherent actions and thoughts is doing exactly the opposite if we invert it.

Will these works be exhibited anywhere?

The idea of the Opposite, mentioned before is the matrix of this project. The works will start in galleries and institutions, filming myself there with my masks in places such as The Serpentine Galleries, The Whitechapel and Frieze art fair and will end in a social project where the Bus will be the final destination. When this overall work is finished, it will be exhibited one more time in several galleries. At this moment a map is being created to get all the locations, from museums and galleries to theatres and pubs that are taking part in this journey. To work with the Opposite, to bring the end and the purpose of something in the very beginning of your investigation or a project, is philosophical. Every end embodies every beginning. This reminds me of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing 1729-1781 and how prophetic his words were about how art shapes are translated, and with this I would like to finish with, “Poetry finally is spoken painting, and painting is poetry who remains in silence” from Laocoon.