Elizabeth Glaessner

Elizabeth Glaessner, Ocean Halo, 2021

Therapeutic gateways to an inner world, Elizabeth Glaessner uncovers the realms of the psyche conjuring up a surreal universe in a constant state of metamorphosis.

Elizabeth Glaessner (born 1984 in Palo Alto, California) is an American painter and artist whose work express meanings beyond the figures she paints. Inspired by heroes of symbolism such as Edvard Munch, Odilon Redon, personal memories and art history, Glaessner places the visible at the service of the subconscious and re-contextualise mythological elements in her dream-like paintings. With her distinct use of colour, such as the recurrent visceral acid green as well as her technique of dispersing pure pigments with acrylics, oil and water, Glaessner creates visually striking works that tap into our primordial unconscious, opening a world where surroundings and people are intuitively blurred. There is a sense of fluidity and openness in Glaessner’s work, inspired from her childhood memories and an understanding that the world as it is today cannot be limited by binary thinking. Glaessner thus pushes the conventional societal boundaries and moral codes, and uncovers the realms of her psyche conjuring up a surreal universe in a constant state of metamorphosis. 

Therapeutic gateways to an inner world, Glaessner’s paintings are indirectly a reflection of our time and a window to possible futures.

When did you start painting? Were there family influences at all? 

My mom studied and taught art, so I started drawing and painting at a young age. Her dad  was an art lover as was my grandmother on my dad’s side. Her twin brother Friedreich was a textile designer and my great aunt Mitzi was a watercolor painter. 

Elizabeth Glaessner, War in the Middle Ages, 2022

You are originally from Houston, Texas but moved to New York. How have those two distinct landscapes influenced your practice? 

I grew up in Houston, my parents moved there from California when I was 3, and I moved to New York in 2007.  Houston is a large sprawling city with lots of space. It’s hot and humid and the vegetation and landscape is pretty swampy. It also flooded a lot so it’s a pretty wet climate on the east side of Texas. Lots of frogs and lizards. I’m not sure how much has changed over the years with all the new development. New York is much more fast-paced. Everything is compact and efficient. I love being able to commute without a car and my community is very important here. I’ve gained so much from being able to visit friends’ studios and having access to so many galleries and museums. But it’s very different working here than in a place like Houston and it’s getting more difficult with out of control rent and limited space. There’s always a tradeoff.

Elizabeth Glaessner, Earth Bound, 2022

There is always a sense of fluidity and openness in your work, on different levels, pushing away moral codes and societal limitations. Bodies and genders are interchanged and intertwined. Why those particular thematics?

I grew up in a pretty chaotic environment. When my parents divorced, my mom met an ex nun who moved in with her. The nun was obviously very religious and used fear tactics and violence to maintain power and control. We grew up in two very different realities. My dad’s parents were Jewish and escaped the Holocaust from Vienna so he grew up agnostic and didn’t impose religion on us. Eventually the nun left, I remember feeling overwhelmed with a sense of freedom. So I learned pretty early on the destructive effects of imposed morality, fear and repression and also became aware of our incredible ability to adapt and change.

«I also quickly became aware that we’re quite complicated and can’t thrive in a world limited by binary thinking.»

Elizabeth Glaessner,
Professional Mourners, 2020

Your work feels like an invite into your psyche and dystopian spaces in which the subconscious and conscious coexist together. Do you see your practice as a therapeutic tool and thus liberatory? 

Yes, initially painting was a way for me to escape but also try and understand a surreal and oppressive childhood full of contradiction. I started seeing a therapist at a young age but couldn’t talk about anything.

«Drawing and painting was a tool to deal with experiences in a non-literal way that I wasn’t ready to communicate verbally.»

It’s a survival tool for many people. I’m lucky that I had that.

Elizabeth Glaessner, Misfortunes of the City, 2022

You have cited Edvard Munch, Odilon Redon as references. Who/What else inspired your style?

The first works of art that I spent time with as a kid in the museum of fine arts in Houston were Bougereau’s the elder sister (but just for the feet), Derain’s landscapes with red trees and Turrell’s tunnel. These aren’t artists that I look at now but I think the effect that they had on me at a time when I was forming memories is relevant to subconscious decision making in painting now. I have looked at and continue to look at so much art throughout history – it plays a large role in how I conceive of my paintings so it’s very difficult to just name a few. I look at different artists for different reasons. For example, Cranach the Elder and Carroll Dunham because of how far they are able to take one idea or theme and stretch it with subtle formal variations. Or someone like Chris Ofili or Francesco Clemente for color or feeling, Birgit Jurgenssen for the body and so on.

Elizabeth Glaessner, Escapism, 2022

Some of your favourite readings? What is something/someone you have recently discovered and has marked you?

I’m currently reading Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. I think he’s a brilliant writer. I also loved Never Let me Go. Haruki Murakami is one of my favorites. I’ve recently been thinking about Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider, especially “uses of the erotic: the erotic as power” and how she writes about language in «Poetry is not a Luxury». And my friend Aisling Hamrogue recently suggested I read a chapter in A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari called «One or several Wolves» discussing the body without organs which made an impression.

The colours used in your paintings offer such vibrant hues. Where does this palette come from?

It’s incredible how personal and associative color is. I have visceral reactions to certain color combinations. It’s often the thing that causes me to repaint a painting – if the color isn’t working with the content, I’ll start over with a different palette. Usually the under color shifts the tone of whatever is on top which can lead to unexpected combinations. There’s an element of intuition but I also think about symbolic associations of color – both my own which have been developed through repetition as well as learned associations. 

Elizabeth Glaessner, Charley Horse, 2022

Some colours are more recurring than others, such as acid green. There is something really appealing to it but it also feels like a warning. Why that green in particular?

I’ve been drawn to that green since I was a kid. I’m sure it comes from many places. Houston is a swampy green city and I was always outside. I was very close with my grandmother who introduced me to painters such as Klimt and Kirchner who also use that green. It’s a color that I feel comfortable with.

«That acidic quality oozes an uneasiness which I think is reflective of what it feels like to be alive.»

Elizabeth Glaessner, Heat Map, 2022

Which mediums other than painting would you like to explore with? 

There is an endless amount of learning I still have to do within painting. I’ve done silk painting – which is something I’d like to do again at some point. I’d also like to explore paper making, priming my surfaces in different ways, experimenting with different mediums when I’m pouring paint. I’d like to do some monotypes in a print studio and try different printmaking techniques. I’d love to play around with clay more but painting is keeping me pretty occupied at the moment. 

Elizabeth Glaessner, Sphinx and Friends, 2022

Could you tell us about the process you go through when you create? 

I usually start with several works on paper that are done pretty intuitively. Some drawing, some ink and gouache. First I pour and then use the color fields to find forms which I meld with preconceived ideas so there’s a balance of control and freedom. I look at these works on paper as I’m making paintings on canvas on linen, whether it’s the color and theme, or just the composition or energy. The surface of the larger paintings is often pretty built up because I change so much as I’m working. Sometimes the composition will work on a smaller scale but doesn’t feel right when I’m working large. I usually get to a point about halfway through where I feel like I’ve completely lost the painting and then have to make some big move to totally change it and dig my way out. But I’ve learned that that is just part of how it’s made so I trust it.

What are you working on at the moment?

I just finished my solo show “Dead Leg” which opens September 3rd at Perrotin in Paris. I had a pretty busy year so I’m looking forward to traveling a bit, taking some time to set up my studio again, finishing some books I started, doing some color exercises and starting a new series of works on paper. 

The theme of this issue is IN OUR WORLD. Are your paintings a reflection of our time or are they a window to the future you envision?

I think they’re both. 

«Definitely a reflection of our time which wouldn’t exist without the past and which hints at possible futures.»

Credits

Artworks · Courtesy of Elizabeth Glaessner and Perrotin

Patrick Bienert

East End of Europe

Credits

Photographs · Courtesy of Patrick Bienert

Amia Yokoyama

Amia Yokoyama, Słow Moon Sink
Ceramic

«What the immaterial creates, the material makes«

The lack of contentment governs the persistence of Amia Yokoyama to unfold the transaction between permanence and impermanence, fragility and strength. She tells NR about the void she desires to fill with whatever gnaws at her at the time she falls under its spell. She always seeks something, always on the hunt to uncover more, the reason she keeps sculpting and producing videos and animations. Somewhere between these works of art, she finds the depth of herself, the truth she owns that lies within the realms of her material and immaterial creativity. When she describes her practice, she lends her audience a piece of herself, and they soon realize the fidelity she upholds, questioning the elements of the Earth, the states of matter, the spaces that live within the physical and the memories, and the existence of layers in the digital world.

Whatever theme she touches upon, she borrows from other cultures, such as the prowess of Anime in Asia, to magnify, and sometimes distort, her objects, videos, and installations. In one work, viewers can find two naked feminine figures in euphoria as one caresses the skin of the other, beneath her breasts. In another work, a talk show occurs, hosted by two tech-driven figures who look the same. The Japanese-American artist gravitates towards pyschedelic approach to her practice, offering drugs to satiate the high-maintenance affairs of her viewers towards modernized, digitized, and sensual art. For NR, she taps into the poetess in her, layering the narratives about her art, self, and beliefs in a nature that reflects what she creates.

Amia, how has your journey been so far with your work? Was it easy achieving the creative process you have today?

It has been long, unruly, twisty, and unpredictably slippery at times, but I would not have it any other way. My process has been guided through searching for moments that trigger my creative spirit. These moments are the catalyst for my motivation. I get excited when these senses are tickled simultaneously like intellect, feelings, sensory, emotions, beauty, and tension, to name a few. When all of these are activated as I work, I know I am on the right path. If they are not, I keep searching.

«This journey means reaching for a visual language that can sing when lyrics alone do not quite cut it.»

Amia Yokoyama, Untitled (red) Ed 1, 2022

Having a Japanese-American profile, in what ways do your cultural background and upbringing influence your art and the way you make it?

I think that my early acknowledgement of my childhood and the feeling of not belonging encouraged a propensity to imagine and create worlds where I did feel I belonged.

«Inside my head, it was much more exciting, nurturing, and generous than my external social world.»

I began to develop my own relationship with my environment rather than a relationship that was heralded by my parents, teachers, or peers. 

I grew up in a multicultural household isolated within a vast sea of homogeneity, so differences, misunderstandings, and uncertainties were regular companions. This gave way to always feeling and knowing I was sutured of diverse and often disparate parts that do not fit into the ways the world told me they should.

«This understanding left the needle and thread in my hand to sew, take away, and ultimately give permission to myself to be something of my own desire.»

Amia Yokoyama, Slow moon sink, 2021
Ceramic

When the world told me that I did not make sense, I began the process of liberating myself from their idea of this ‘sense’ and allowed myself to expand the rules of existence.

«The childhood process of building sanctuary within my inner world has propelled me into my practice as if art were the overflow.»

Do you see the world – in general – as a symbiosis of humanity or dependent on self? Are you dependent on anything, artistically speaking?

Neither, or both, plus everything else. Humanity suggests a human-centric understanding of interdependency. I feel dependent on everything, all the spectrums of living and non-living things. I also know that the division between those two categories are not so exacting.

Amia Yokoyama, Slow mon sink, 2021
Ceramic

I see that you have this penchant for constant movement in all directions. Where does the affinity for this concept stem from? What is your opinion about those who map out their lifeline up to its finest details (go to college, find a job, earn money, buy a house, have a family, etc.)?

I have never experienced life as something linear. My experience in life moves in all directions, so I know nothing other than that. Being alive is ecstatic and chaotic with so many forces at play. I sometimes imagine it as a hurricane or a tornado whose energy needs humidity, dryness, coolness, and warmth, all happening at the same time.

Amia Yokoyama, In Our Embrace Eternal, 2021
Porcelain and glaze

The energy that I conjure feels like all those factors. They need to happen to create the core force that pulls things into the center.

«This movement, the tension between the core and the outer winds, is ultimately what gives the tornado its visible form, a form that can build and grow in this energy or dissipate just as easily.»

The idea I am trying to embody might be located at the center – in that stillness in the middle, the eye of the storm – but I may never arrive there. And if I do, it might only be moments before I am thrown back out again into the chaos of the surrounding energies at play.   

Amia Yokoyama, Biding Time For Enrapt Demise, 2021

You have mentioned that when it comes to your art, you are not interested in judgment and relation. Could you elaborate more on that?

I believe you mean that I am interested in relation. Judgment is arrival, a fixed point, a decision, something definitive. Whereas relation is something that is more wayward and present, something interstitial. For me, that is the intriguing part.

Amia Yokoyama, Deliquesced in the Valley of Heaven, 2021
Porcelain and glaze

A sense of femininity and feminine prowess is present in your sculptures. The softness and hardness of the edges complement, an overview of Yin and Yang. How do these concepts influence your life as an individual? What other themes do you convey in your sculptures?

With clay, there is a loud and constant negotiation between permanence and impermanence, fragility and strength. There are moments of transformation that happen throughout the process, when earth and water come together, when the air hits the water, and when the fire hits the earth. This flow between states of matter or the shapeshifting of material identities is something I feel connected with.

With my video and animation practice, it swings between dimensions, materializing and dematerializing from 3D to 2D space, back into 3D, sliding into 2D again, and back and forth.So much of my existence resonates with this multi-dimensional translation. When these various modes of existence play out at the same time, and this back-and-forth is engaged, there is an illusory or almost binaural experience where the mind simulates something that is obviously not there in a physical sense.

«This is the space where the alternative forms of being are born. This is the place I seek.»

Amia Yokoyama, Harbinger (Tengu), 2022
Ceramic

«I am interested in another layer of existence which is the dematerialized, the digital, and the fragmented projections of the self.»

The characters in my work come from notions of digitally rendered, animated, non-human figures bearing feminine shapes. They are Anime-inspired erotic and aesthetic objects that can traverse existence between the physical (clay) to the digital (dematerialized).

Anime is one of the most visually distinctive, largest exported and consumed contemporary media from East Asia. They embody borderless beings who increase their collective life force through rhizomatic reproduction. They are an amalgamation of bodies, fluid, and overflowing desire and excess.

«The portion of their bodies seduces by promising ecstasy and ultimately death.»

They are literal and abstracted in their philosophical underpinnings and poetic in their materiality.

Going through your video installations, your works engage the meeting between utopia and dystopia. How do you conceive these realms? Are they based on personal or external experiences?

I would say they are based on both my internal and external experience and perhaps even more so where those distinctions begin to overlap. I do not think of the concepts of dystopia or utopia when I am conceiving of these realms. I think of them more as personal mythology.

«Utopia connotes perfection, and perfection has no place here. Dystopia connotes something harmful or undesirable.»

That being said, I do like the literal translation of utopia – “no place” – as if it were a space of refusal.

Amia Yokoyama, Measure Wants the Seam, 2021
Porcelain and glaze

How is your artistic world unfolding these days? Is there anything missing that you want to look for? Also, how would you like your art to influence the world?

There is always something missing, always something I am looking for, always more to uncover, which is why I keep making. I like to keep the carrot on the string and the garden growing within the trampled ground beneath me, you know?

Credits

Sculptures · Courtesy of Amia Yokoyama and Sebastian Gladstone

Bianca Fields

Bianca Fields, Got something for You, 2022

«What inspires me to create at this time is finding a way to articulate the nature of noise in America;»

Bianca Fields (born 1995, Cleveland, Ohio) is a contemporary artist, currently based in Kansas City, Missouri. Fields is one to watch in the contemporary at world scene as she strikes with her highly charged paintings. NR had the pleasure of conversing with Fields, delving further into the influences behind her deeply-emotional body of work, the process supporting her craft as well as her future endeavours in Seoul and London. 

When did you start creating? When did you realise this was something you wanted to purse? 

I have always been musically inclined, since about 6 years old. Once I learned the transcendental process of painting/mixing colours in high school, I  became interested in painting — practically obsessed. I never had the intention of pursuing it as my career. I started off at a community college with high hopes of weakening this idea of pursing art, but shortly after was confronted by my painting professor, saying “he suggest I not come back next semester,” following that I should apply to the Cleveland Institute of Art, using the computers on the floor above us. 

You are originally from Cleveland, Ohio but moved to Kansas, Missouri after graduating in painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art College in 2019. Why the relocation and how does your background inform your practice? 

I met my partner who is also native to Cleveland, in art school. He is also an artist; a product designer. Prior to me graduating, he moved around a bit with designer jobs. By the time I received my BFA, he had settled at Garmin International in Kansas City. I love the midwest. Being from the midwest and living even closer to the center of America is very odd. It’s also very wholesome. The culture is like a big bowl of warm, wholesome soup. I spent a lot of time in art school hanging out with my friends who didn’t attend art school. I still would consider them some of the most creative, complex and innovative artists i have ever met. Because I’ve spent the vast majority of the pandemic in Kansas city, I’d still consider it an offbeat, yet fulfilling journey. I think it has forced me to turn within a bit in my work — it’s become a bit more introspective. 

Bianca Fields, I told you, you wasn’t gone b in the mood, 2022

One thing that is striking at first sight in your artworks is their powerful yet youthful energy within the colours, lines, text and texture. How did you discover and fine tune your craft?

As a young girl, I spent countless hours watching the American Animated TV show, Tom and Jerry. “Tom,” the fictional character from Tom and Jerry, has become a protagonist in my work that contribute to this series of highly charged paintings.

«I always think about how his character was limited to words, practically mute. It remained up to me as a viewer, as a young girl, to put sound, color and imagination in order to make sense of this anxiety-inducing show.»

What was the first piece of art you saw that left an impression on you?

The works of Allison Shulnik. It seemed like something funny or absurd to do, but when I found myself working in this fashion, I couldn’t imagine painting in any other way. 

Although your body of work bursts with vibrant colours and is almost cartoon-ish (with ‘Soul Tap’, ‘Rejected Rep’) I find myself exposed to artworks presenting a deep palette of emotions. It may also be because of a certain way I feel in this present moment whilst looking at your artworks, but there is a particular mirror effect to them. As the artist, how is your relationship with your work? 

I refer to a vast majority of the 36” x 24,” (medium to small sized pieces) as my “Mirror” pieces. These paintings particularly recall being a 6 year old girl and simultaneously looking at/through myself. The copper-chrome works are also that of my complexion — bringing damage, curiosity and vulnerability into the indestructible space that holds my world of paintings together. It also brings the metaphysical power and urge to come closer to the glistening; unusual but captivating. An overwhelming presence that I often experience as a black female artist. 

I also like to think of the palettes for my paintings as a subconscious strive for a “bruise” quality. bruises are beautiful, but I find it very frustrating to replicate the palette in an almost artificial way; challenging this idea with electrifying colors. I will always take risks in my palette and will continue to fearlessly allow the decayed rotten colors to seep through the cracks of the work. 

Would you consider your pieces therapeutic? How do you engage with your work and vice versa?

«Even though these works may appear as haywire or almost deafening, I experienced a paradoxical state of extreme silence and fragility when creating these paintings.»

The thick, obliterated rendering of the mouths of these yelping creatures are slow and silent. Working in a more (expressionistic/intuitive fashion) the mouths are where I slow down the process of rendering. ‘Pressed out like Peanut Butter’ and ‘Smeary Eyed’ were made pretty close in time to each other. I think this is when I started examining the process of what the depiction of the yelping mouths meant to me. I started to see them as portraits of myself; laying within the screams of these creatures.

«I started to feel like I could truly see myself during that era of making. «

Bianca Fields, Hold My Purse, 2022

You have also done some sculpture work such as ’Five and Below’, in foam, resin and papier maché, with a weaving comb on top. It reminds me of how the afro comb was worn in the hair as a symbol of union against oppression during the Civil Rights Movement. Was it something you had in mind when creating this piece? Could you talk about its significance? 

This idea certainly came to mind. I very much view this specific character within the realm of my work, as a caricature/symbol of black femininity. Pairing this sculpture work with the painting, “rejected rep,” had me thinking about the representation of the athletic black female body and the process of stripping femininity away. I consider myself a very active person who works out on a daily basis. Adding elements like the comb and wig feel like “ornaments” to the subject; signifiers of non conformity.

What is your favorite part of your practice?

I would probably say when i reach the end of the painting; where i start to slow down. There is a lot of chaotic, fast mark making in the process of making these works, but I think the viewer is actually left with more of my slowed down, brutal process of covering it all up. I will usually take a large brush and completely close the subject in with thick walls of paint. I will also take whatever leftover paint on my palette, scrape it into one large wad, and intricately place it somewhere inside the work.

The theme of this issue is IN OUR WORLD. What is it in our world that inspire you to create? Who/What are your influences? 

I think what inspires me to create at this time is finding a way to articulate the nature of noise in America; essentially operating in a regimented social environment.

«The tropes of the internet world also inspire me and affect the way that I see/process. I find it a challenge to think about the spaces between language, images and culture— and where representation of the black female body fits in between.»

I’ve recently started to reread Julia Kristeva’s essay on abjection, ‘Powers of Horror.’ The last time I’ve thoroughly read it was in undergrad. Her writings inspire me to unpack a bit of tension that I’ve yet to bring to the surface in my work. Actualizing different pieces and part of my body that I have once neglected. It also helps me compartmentalise my symbolic realm of thought when making these paintings. In other terms, things that are very close and fragile to me. 

You have had your first solo exhibition with Steve Turner, Los Angeles. What did this mean to you and what can we expect from you in the forthcoming months?

It has been a pleasure working with Steve Turner; they truly have great trust and faith in my visions and processes. We have such a great system. The turnout of my most recent solo show has me super eager to flesh out further ideas within this realm. Next I have untitled art fair Miami (Steve Turner), KIAF art fair Seoul, Korea (Steve Turner), and Frieze London (Carl Freedman gallery) . 

Credits

Artworks · Courtesy of Bianca Fields and Steve Turner LA

Veronica Fernandez

Veronica Fernandez, Before I’ve Existed, Now I’ve Lived

Collective intimacy  and the impermanence of emotions

Veronica Fernandez (b. 1998) is a mixed media artist from New Jersey, who is currently working in Los Angeles, California. 

Fernandez’s work investigates relationships between people and their environments: drawing from her own memories, she attempts to illustrate the complexities of domestic life, giving space to intimate moments of the everyday. Pulling from a variety of source material – from images of family members taken from photo albums to art historical references – Fernandez blurs personal recollections into emotive scenes that evoke a shared nostalgia, or a sense of  colelctive recognition. She purposely reworks aspects that feel familiar into unfamiliar territory, taking what is hers and morphing it to better relate to a general consciousness. Drawing attention to the impermanence of emotions, Fernandez imbues her work with a sense of unfinishedness, allowing the narratives to remain open-ended for the viewer to make their own. This sharing of experience allows her to speak to a community and discuss our foundations as human beings: where we come from, what shapes us, and how we interact with one another. 

Veronica Fernandez, Trustfall

If you had to describe your body of work and what drives you to paint, what would you say?

«My body of work I would say is a form of storytelling about people and the places their bodies live through, depicting the impermanence of emotions.»

My initial drive to paint came from unpacking my own experiences growing up and spiraled really into these conversations about the human experience and how we adapt to change and the different moments in our lives, in the attempt to capture a fragment of intimacy and explore how it engages with others.

When looking at your work from a first glance two things hit immediately: size and color. Going back to this idea of intimacy and its actual space, could you tell me whether there is a link between the size of your works and this concept of entering one’s world?

I have always been in love with large scales. I started working on large scales in my New Jersey bedroom in 2019, testing wether I could transpose smaller sketches into larger surfaces. The intimacy that comes with a larger piece is different as opposed to when I work on my sketches and smaller pieces, which serve more as a form of  personal release, like a page in a diary.

«My larger paintings deliver a sense of intimacy, of acceptance, that I feel absorbs people, almost as if it were a portal.»

Space is something that I never had growing up, it was never something set in stone, so for me, it was exciting to create art that could take up actual space when I finally had a little to take advantage of. I want others to become absorbed in these works about people that want to be heard, understood, and seen, so they can also see themselves and feel to some extent that they’re taking up space too.

Take me through your working process: how do you select a moment in time that you want to depict? Does it always start from a family album or is it also a moment you experienced, or the impression of someone you recently met?

My paintings primarily stem from my experiences, then most of the time I’ll find which photographs I think work best that I can deconstruct or pull from. When I think about starting a painting, there’s usually an essence, a general sense I want it to have,  which then drives me to search for poses, gestures, facial expressions, colors, shapes, or objects from my references. The paintings usually consist of the combination of a few photographs (around 4-5), which shape the ground for a new sketch. It’s not until I get into the actual canvas that I can step back and see how to truly alter the first draft. As I work on different layers I usually incorporate different moments in time that I think will really bring a special element to the painting or change the original direction for the better.

Veronica Fernandez, Watch A Leader Cry

The only moment where my process is more directly linked to a physical photographs is when I find a picture that I think is absolutely stunning, whether it be the colors within the image, the facial expressions or the composition. Then I start from that singular element and work around it.

The role of memory and recollection is thus pivotal to your work. How is your relationship with the past, and how do you transform it to something you engage with in the present?

Throughout my work process, I try to alter the familiar into unfamiliar territory. To create the works, I do reflect on my own experiences and engage with my personal memories, captured in photographs. The final idea I work with comes from stripping down these photographs and really reconstructing them and see what they transform into in the final imagery on canvas. When I work with my personal reference material and find myself altering the original picture  I feel like I can see it at a distance and really step back and comprehend it.

«What once was a memory from my past can become a person from that memory in a new environment, with a new expression or new overall depiction, possibly surrounded by new figures I’ve created.»

The original story becomes thus a new idea that can be universally absorbed. On a formal level, I love using color, texture, and other techniques to bring a new contemporary palette to the soft pastel undertones of the older photographs I have.

I have noticed that the subject matter in many of your works are children. In relation to what you talked about before, the impermanence of emotions, do you think that childhood is key in this research towards change and possibility? Because youth is change in its purest form I guess – the openness to the future in both temporal and conceptual ways.

Children are definitely representative of openness to the future and have this kind of unpredictability hovering over them in relation to what can become of them in my work. The early years of our lives shape who we become. This sort of tabula rasa at one point everyone starts off with that slowly but shortly accumulates all these perceptions is very interesting to me. Everyone has their own specific stories, experiences, struggles, wins, losses, and even when we are too young to fully grasp the totality of every situation, we still feel and live through them. 

«This whirlwind of emotions that come from the earliest point of our lives really tie into how human beings can adapt to their experiences later on in their lives, and reflect the layers that make up each and everyone.»

The child’s mind creates that first layer, and I think that incorporating them in my works  llows me to play with these innate curiosities human beings have and how they navigate themselves in the world over time.

Titles are always very specific in your paintings. Contrary to many contemporary artists, you always seem to describe a work with precise accuracy of words. Could you tell me more about this particular attention?

The titles of the pieces stem from many places, sometimes I’ll hear my family members say phrases as forms of life lessons that I think are special, and I’ll remember them and think about how I can alter them to make them stronger, more accurate. Recently I’ve gotten into poetry, and will take a line or two I think can really stand on their own and apply it to paintings that I am already planning on making.

I think it’s important to utilize everything I can to get closer to the viewer, I want people who see my work to be able to envision themselves in it and allow it to touch them in some way or another. I think it’s interesting that very often titles are left out in gallery displays, and sometimes it isnt until you get the information written somewhere else that you can see another side to the work. I want people to be able to experience my work right away, not simply through just a title, but through what the title is to me, which is in fact poetry. I think this purposefulness can be a tool I can offer them as a chance to express that as an artist I am trying to have a conversation about people, and I am actively reaching out beyond the image.

Veronica Fernandez, Superheroes

Talking about the viewer and ways to reach put to him/her,  in which way do you try to combine the autobiographical source in your works with the outside world, in the attempt to leave space to the audience’s own gaze?

Sometimes the stories are represented through the imagery, and other times the painting evokes just the underlying emotions that come from those experiences, even though the actual source is not as recognizable. The figures in my work are depicted in different ways, some are more realistically rendered, others are recreated in odd colors, like full red, or many are altered to be irrecognizable through painterly gesture.

«Altering the identity of the figures helps me to create the distance from it that is so pivotal to its reconstruction, enough for me to continue it as anew.»

I also throw in a lot of made up elements into the paintings, to the point where the original ideas that inspired the painting become just a starting point, a vague compass, leaving the openness necessary for the viewer to incorporate his/her own elements into the story. 

Veronica Fernandez, Through Steam (Lay Your Burdens Down)

In relation to the magazine’s theme –in our world – how do you think your work translates the sense of being in this time – from this current sociopolitical climate to this specific creative dimension?

We live in a strange world, where so many people feel that they are not being seen, heard, and overall understood. As I mentioned before, many of the figures in my work are asking to be understood or acknowledged in their positions too.

«I try to create an opportunity for compassion, curiosity and most importantly for conversation.»

Regardless of the way the paintings are received, I always try to make them accessible, to leave space for the other, to aknowledge the viewer and telling him/her that they are welcome, and their experiences matter.

Credits

Artworks · Courtesy of Veronica Fernandez

George Rouy

Abstraction and distortion in art come out intuitively to George Rouy along with human emotions and relationships

In his earlier artworks, George Rouy would paint elongated facial features for the wide bodies of his subjects. He would stretch the figures on the canvas through his strokes, and at times, have them sit or stand side-by-side as if conversing.

Then, around 2021, a shift took place.

Gone are the visible features of the face, replaced by intentional marks and lines guided by the haze of the moment, his creative spirit being summoned to life. Smudges of paint brush against a mosaic of splatters. Flecks of color shower dedicated spaces on the canvas. The figures still appear visible, yet invisible at the same time. They might be tall or short. Their genders, androgynous. They are colliding, manipulating the viewers first, then they sync, re-arranging themselves like puzzle pieces and letting their viewers know everything falls into place in the end. Rouy, an aficionado of abstraction, has transitioned, and he is introducing an evolution of his artistic practice.

The bodies in Rouy’s artworks evoke an innate sense of connectivity and transcendence. They trespass the realms of the physical and the beyond, almost anchoring an indescribable reason they visually came into sight in the first place. They might be five different characters Rouy brewed in his mind, but they could also be an individual with five versions of themselves. Deciphering the intention of Rouy’s paintings depends on the viewers, but the artist creates a two-way channel in his works. For every painting the viewers see, Rouy seems to ask them to trust him with their deep-seated thoughts, emotions, and fears and let him paint them through his style. For every painting he creates, Rouy stirs human sensations until he delivers.

NR wants to learn more about the psychedelic nature of Rouy’s works and mind, the desire that powers the artist to pick up his brush and lose himself in the moment of painting. When we caught up with the artist, he was in the middle of finishing some artworks for his next show. He would be flying out of the UK in the next couple of days, leaving the 12 paintings he was working on simultaneously for a while inside his studio in Kent, London. At one point, Rouy tells us he paints intuitively. He scraps off planning and gears toward illustrating what feeds his mind, whether based on his experiences or observations. Somehow, themes of interactive relationships, self-growth, therapy, and psychology bubble up and simmer in his paintings. These nuances might be implied, but one can see how they linger in Rouy’s works, drawing in whoever lays their eyes upon his paintings and locking them in there.

At first, NR wanted to ask Rouy whether he had always wanted to be an artist, then move along wherever the conversation would take us. But even before we asked him the question, Rouy had already let us in on what he would be doing in the next few days. A lot of it involved traveling, ruminating, finding breathing space, and looking at his artworks as he sits or stands before them, idling. The moment he spilled all these thoughts, we shifted our questions, inverted-pyramid style. From the role of energy in his artworks to the culmination of his present style, Rouy talked us through his artistry, influences, and life as an artist, revealing parts of himself that might be under wraps from the public’s eye. 

We started with his travels.

Does consistent traveling affect your creative process? 

I think yes. What I have found over the years of doing this is that I have times of concentration or intense work then a break. I have found that my creative process works a lot better now where I relentlessly paint all the way through before I try to find breathing space. For instance, I have solidly worked for a month now, and I will be taking a few weeks off just to ruminate and process. Then, I will come back and look at my works with fresh eyes. I see what I have done objectively and more since I have taken off some emotions and am now able to see what needs to change or shift. In that respect, traveling works well. 

I also often find myself preparing for a show, so it is good to have the works just sitting in the studio for quite a while, just to live with them. They can breathe and have their own life without me working relentlessly on them all the time.  

What is your breathing space? Do you intentionally create your own breathing space, or do you just do random activities? 

Walking, for instance, on a day-to-day basis is breathing space. Strolling in the countryside is a great way for me to process parts of the day, especially in the summertime. I find it harder to find my breathing space in winter because of the lack of light – it is always dark when I leave the studio – but I love to think of other ways to take some time off. Currently, I am between here (Kent) and Paris.

In Paris, I work more on the computer, study my art, and think about where the series is at. I was there a month ago looking at the paintings I already had in the studio, took photographs of them, then looked at them through Photoshop, just to process everything in a different way. Then, I am just actively looking at my works, and I think it is important. The act of looking also takes up time since my paintings become jigsaw puzzles, and I try to work out the next parts. Sometimes, it just does not quite click at the moment, so I let it simmer for a while before looking at it again. 

I have come to a point where I need to take some time off and come back to the studio once I feel rested because I get so caught up in the energy.

«I think painting is about having and regaining this energy and preserving the excitement, impulse, movement, vibrance, and emotions, especially because the works become a lot more abstract in areas.»

These works also need a sense of clarity, so I am trying to find and maintain that as much as I can. When I have a few to 12 paintings at the same time in my studio, I often jump from one artwork to another, so the energy gets transferred quite easily. I am conscious that when I quickly shift, things stagnate, or when I work on one painting for too long, something sucks the magic out of the artwork. It loses the spell it once had. 

Since you put it in this way, does painting ever get overwhelming for you? 

There is this idea that you have higher expectations of yourself at times, and you are constantly searching for more discoveries, so you never get quite content with the discoveries that you have already found. I think the overwhelming part is to maintain these high standards of and by self. When you reflect or get to a point when you look at some of the works you did that you felt successful, you look back to how you did in the past.

It is not that you are trying to top or match them, but I think this is where it gets overwhelming, when these successes are not happening now. When this happens, you push through it – you work through it until things reveal themselves.  It is like when we plant a seed, it takes time before the plant fully grows. 

I notice that some of the facial features of your subjects are blurred. Is that intentional? 

The faces anchor the work and the composition. They can also be a distraction that ultimately defines the work – it is about having the right amount of purpose to them. I am into abstraction, and the blurred faces break emotions and sensations by delivering physical marks in the painting. When I start to apply them, I begin to see that everything becomes emphasized while they also contradict each other. The face is about having blurred moments of life, and having these pushed out in distorted ways allow the works to have the same breadth. 

Sometimes, it is hard to explain. They just have an energy about them and a certain feel that is not of this earth – it is not from here. It is not even photographic. There is a clear distinction between these faces when they appear right, but when they do not, there is this balance between the ugly and the beautiful – transcendence and out of this world. These days, I am more into computer-generated faces or AI and the historical representation of a figure within a sculpture. Here, I can distort the face, making them heightened versions of humans. I also think about the idea of distortion or blurring as something that is not quick, but a time-based movement that links with the rest of the marks in the painting. They turn out to have the same amount of flow and energy.  

Would you say then that your paintings are energy-based? 

Not entirely energy-based, but they have an awareness of the physical in terms of their anatomy, time, and movement. So, the act of distortion can be hidden – you cannot quite tell how long strokes took or where the moment began. Other things can be visible such as the dancing figures in some paintings. 

I notice that you often use lush or dark colors for your paintings. Do you resonate well with the dark palette or do you have any intentions in the near future to shift to bright tones? 

Some of them have become brighter, but gray still is important in my work in terms of it sitting between the realms of dark and light and how it can emphasize contrast and complement well with the shades I use. I also like how gray can have different hues like pink gray or greenish gray.

I also notice that you have a lot of bodies on your canvas. How did you arrive at this point that you wanted to turn bodies into the subjects of your art?

It is an uplifting movement for me to have these bodies in my work a sense of connectivity and purpose – of flow, movement, and rhythm. I would say I am someone who has been into exploring figurative painting and how to achieve a painting that has multiple figures in it without giving a headache. I think about the figures as organisms who could be versions of themselves. There could be two people but split up into five figures. It is less about a collective, but a depiction of those you know in a space or non-space.

On the other hand, their meaning depends on how the viewers perceive them. Sometimes, the viewers place themselves in the realm that I created. Other times, they deem my paintings as romantic and soft. There is always an underlying intention to these figures and how they interact. Then, there is also this feeling of morphing, a shaping of an internal representation, of one’s psyche or being, and I think these are massively involved in my works. We are living in this life full of intricacies as an individual and as a collective, and I am thinking about these internal pressures, whether that is beauty, ego, or something else. Similar to how we show other people love or compassion, we have these intricacies that form part of who we are.

I did a painting last year called Shit Mirror (2021), and it was on how you can perceive yourself one day and have a good feeling about yourself then the next day, you have a completely different representation or idea of yourself. It is erratic when it comes to the human mind, and I try to represent it with marks, movement, and contradictions because ultimately, nothing is static. I think we live in a world where maybe we have the ideas of what and who we are, those that we think are set in stone or in one journey, then we realize they are endlessly moving.

In this matter, do you think psychology and the study of self are two of the many factors that have helped you develop or pursue your style today?

I have gone through a large amount of therapy and have to dig deep into parts of my own self-growth that there have been a lot of things I have had to tap into with myself that naturally comes out in the work I do today. I have always had this keen interest in these features of my experiences, and being able to express some of them, even hint at or allow them to just be present there, feels resonating.

I think you sometimes get forced into doing a lot of self-growth. In my case, there has been a lot of digging into internal beliefs, both rational and irrational, and they appear over time or I generate them. Then, they distort the sense of self and what is my reality in relation to other things. I have dug deep into layers of my deep-seated fears too, and I think when we start to embrace and understand these, we allow ourselves to push deeper into those areas of our mind and sensation.

Do you have any other sources of influences? 

My work is so intuitive. I can go away and experience experiences, but the ideas that I have just sit in the periphery and do not fully sit in. It is not like I am going to do a painting about this or that, no. It all just comes out in an intuitive way. Also, being around other people and having interactive relationships are important too. I often spend time on my own, painting figures. From there, I have these two extremes where I spend so much time on my own – I also live on my own – and doing these paintings about figures of human interactions and about human sensations. All of them are intense experiences to live through which then can be parts of my influences.

Have you always wanted to be an artist, then?

Absolutely. Being an artist and painting have always been my natural ways to communicate. They have never felt like a struggle. School was hard for me since it was difficult express myself through drawing and art even though they felt natural to me.

«I have always wanted to be an artist, but it was challenging to tell that to my teachers because one needs to understand how to be and what it is to be an artist to fully understand the life of it.»

It has been a huge process, overall, and I am very lucky to be doing this.

Do you have any artistic rituals before you paint?

Yes, I have got rituals. I do some exercise in the morning and in the evening. Then, I go for a walk after painting in the studio (if there is light outside). I make sure I do not work overtime. Then, I have a bath every night because I am normally covered in paint, so having a bath every night is a moment – my moment. So, not many rituals, I think.

How do your immediate surroundings influence your artistic practice today?

Living on my own, going at my own pace with everything, and not being in London were massive shifts in how I operate. There is a lot more consideration and pace that is not rushed anymore unlike in London where I had always felt urgency. Now, it is more just about looking, taking everything in from my surroundings. The thing is that in London, I would commute to the studio, step inside, and tell myself “I have to paint now.” It was a lot frantic. Whereas here in Kent, I could just come here, do a little bit of painting, and sit and look at them. Sometimes, maybe even not paint and just look at them. This is where the surrounding influences come in.

Team

Talent · George Rouy
Photography · Markn and Brigita Žižytė
Fashion · Emma Simmonds
Creative Direction · Jade Removille
Special thanks to Rosie Fitter and Thibault Geffrin at Almine Rech

Designers

  1. T shirt Vintage LAURA ASHLEY at LONDON.VINTAGE, paint splattered jeans and shoes George’s own, boxer shorts SUNSPEL and all jewellery George’s own
  2. Vintage YVES SAINT LAURENT wool suit at GASOLINE RAINBOWS, shoes CHURCH’S and jewellery George’s own
  3. Dress, archive GHARANI STROK at THE ARC
  4. Jewellery George’s own
  5. Vintage YVES SAINT LAURENT wool suit trousers at GASOLINE RAINBOWS and belt, shoes and jewellery George’s own
  6. T-shirt in red ribbed jersey, archive HELMUT LANG AW1997 at ENDYMA and classic tailored trousers in polished calfskin, archive HELMUT LANG AW2000 at ENDYMA, crystal drop earrings Stylist’s own, shoes CHURCH’S and all jewellery George’s own
  7. Vintage YVES SAINT LAURENT wool suit trousers at GASOLINE RAINBOWS and belt, shoes and jewellery George’s own
  8. Leather shirt and trousers BOTTEGA VENETA and all jewellery George’s own
  9. T-shirt in red ribbed jersey, archive HELMUT LANG AW1997 at ENDYMA and crystal drop earrings Stylist’s own
  10. Archive HELMUT LANG SS 2004 cut out Nipple tank at ENDYMA, Archive HELMUT LANG 1998 Painter Jeans at NDWC0 Archive, Paint splattered shoes and jewellery George’s own
  11. Black wool suit BOTTEGA VENETA
  12. Archive JUNYA WATANABE, SS 2002, Poem shirt at NDWC0 Archive. Black jersey strappy top, archive ALEXANDER MCQUEEN SS2002 ‘Dance of the Twisted Bull’ at THE ARC, classic tailored trousers in polished calfskin, archive HELMUT LANG AW2000 at ENDYMA, shoes CHURCH’S and all jewellery George’s own.
  13. Vintage YVES SAINT LAURENT wool suit trousers at GASOLINE RAINBOWS and belt, shoes and jewellery George’s own

Andres Serrano

Andres Serrano, Pieta (Early Works 1984-1987)

The transgressive art of Andres Serrano, an introspective window into the past that continues to feed our present 

Andres Serrano (born 1950 in New York, United States) has been recognised for his thought-provoking photographs and installations. Although the public might mostly recognise his famed Piss Christ, 1987 installation, featuring a small figurine of crucified Christ immersed in the artist’s own urine,  the photographer has created an archive of series reflecting on societal themes ranging from death, religion to torture, racism and more. The scenes and subjects of Serrano’s painting-like photographs provoke the mind exactly like one would hope art does. Trained in sculpture and painting at the Brooklyn Museum Art school and inspired by Baroque and Italian Renaissance art, rituals and religious iconography infused by his Roman catholic upbringing, Serrano’s transgressive art is timeless. Representing the destitute and the marginalised (Residents of New York, 2014), sharing an  authentic and personal take on Cuba (Cuba, 2012), portraying one of the most infamous leader of our generation (The Game: All Things Trump, 2018-2019) are only a few of the many themes and subjects Serrano explore. No matter the matter, Serrano manages to bring its beauty and inherent peace to the surface as the subject takes precedence in his work. There is a confrontational aspect to Serrano’s body of work and that is the success of his challenging work. Serving as a tool for introspection and engaging the viewer to see what it is not easy to view, Serrano’s art is an invite to reflect and not perpetuate the horrors of the past that continue to feed our present. 

Andres, it is an honour to interview you. I have discovered your work  a few years ago and have been fascinated ever since. Thank you very much for taking the time to participate, I am delighted to have you as part of this issue. I would like to start from the beginning.  I was watching an interview with photographer Joel Meyerowitz (How I Make Photographs: Joel Meyerowitz in conversation with Amanda Hajjar) and he was reflecting on a life changing moment that made him see a realm of possibilities in front of his eyes: being on set with the great Robert Frank, in New York. Have you had an event like this, that changed the course of your life or initiated the beginning of your career? 

I’ve had a few life changing moments, some good, some not. The problem with those moments is that you don’t always realize how profoundly they can affect you when they’re occurring. I used to see my life as a fast train not making any stops.

«The journey was more important than the destination. When you look back, you can’t say, “I should have done things different.” If you could, you would have, but you didn’t. I’ve fucked up more than once but I’m still here.»

There was one pivotal moment: when the Beatles came to America. I was 13. They were followed by the Rolling Stones and everyone else. Soon after that I discovered Bob Dylan and I was set for life.

You were born in New York, grew up as an only child raised by your mother. Your mother was born in Key West, Florida, was raised in Cuba and thus only spoke Spanish that you then had to learn at a young age. How did these different cultural identities impact you? 

The good thing is that I had to learn Spanish at an early age. The bad thing was that I didn’t like my mother. We fought all the time. But that was also a good thing because she was tough so I had to be tougher. The only cultural identity problem I had was when Castro came into power and a kid in the fifth grade discovered my mother had been raised in Cuba. After that, the little prick would tease me by calling me “Castro” or “Cuban.” It would piss me off and also embarrass me. The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 was a big deal and no one wanted to be called “Castro” or “Cuban.” 

Andres Serrano, Bedroom with Jesus (Cuba 2012)

60 years later you would think that kind of stigma wouldn’t matter but apparently it does. America still acts like Castro and Cuba are its biggest enemies. It’s easier to pick on someone you don’t need or fear than to stand up to the real strongmen. 

When President Biden went to Saudi Arabia he went for oil, not to confront the Crown Prince about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. And when he tried to bring it up the Crown Prince responded by telling him America wasn’t so clean either. What’s Biden going to say to that? “You’re wrong, we don’t kill innocent people or put children in cages.”

Andres Serrano, Magdalena, 2011 Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussels

I tell you what impacted me more than anything else. As a child growing up, my mother had several schizophrenic episodes. She would be fine for two or three years then she would have a nervous breakdown that would last a couple of weeks before she returned to normal. I was always trying to figure out what was going on in her head during those periods. It taught me to read people, to get a sense of what they were thinking and feeling.

Some people are obvious. They are what they appear to be. I would always shake my head when the political pundits on television would spend so much time trying to figure out what Donald Trump meant by the things he said. Trump is transparent. He means exactly what he says.

What was it like to travel there and discover it, later on, as an artist for Cuba, 2012 (exhibited in Brussels, 2014)?

I loved your documentation of the interiors of the houses and the portraits specially of the women. Did you feel attached to Cuba?

I loved Cuba when I finally went. I waited my whole life to go. I don’t like to travel except for work. I needed a reason to go to Cuba and the reason came when Jorge Fernandez invited me to the Havana Biennial. Actually, I think I asked him to ask me. I participated and at the same time I went to do some work. I felt very much at home there. I feel at home whenever I go somewhere to work. 

Andres Serrano, Cuba, 2012

The Cubans were very welcoming and I had a blast working day and night. Work, especially when it’s your work, gives you tremendous energy. I had my wife, Irina, my assistant from New York, some friends and comrades and a driver that drove us in a large SUV from one end of Cuba to the other. Talk about a great road trip! What I like best is driving in the middle of the night not knowing what you’re going to find. I don’t drive but I like being on the road, especially at night. 

Andres Serrano, Cuba, 2012

The people are amazing! Cubans speak Spanish in a very precise way. They enunciate their words clearly. Once, in Havana, I saw a large stack of bread in a bakery that I wanted to photograph. I use lights and need time to set up for a shoot so I decided to go back the next day to photograph the bread. But the next day the bread was gone. They explained that the bread arrives early and would start selling immediately. So I bought all the bread in advance that was coming the following day. The next day, after I got to the bakery and took my picture, I told them, “Ok, now you can sell the bread again.”

I never talk much about myself in terms of ethnicity because it’s not important. All you need to know is that I was born and raised in New York City. But there are always people who like to get into your background, like it’s meaningful or the most important thing they can say about you. If you’re Black or White in America they don’t question you, but if you’re in a category that’s not easy for them to define, they try to define you anyway. My mother was born in America. I was born in America but they still want to place you somewhere else. I remember when we got back from Cuba I was telling someone about the trip. A couple of minutes into the conversation they say to me, “So what was it like going back to Cuba?” and I’m thinking, “Motherfucker, didn’t I just tell you I had never been to Cuba!”

“I don’t like to be called a photographer, but I have been called worst things.” At 17 years old, you studied painting and sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum art school. That background in painting can really be seen through your photography with the descriptiveness of the titles, the colours and the texture of the photographs. Why did you engage with photography as your preferred medium?

After two years at the Brooklyn Museum my scholarship ended and I didn’t have a studio to paint or sculpt. But I lived with a girl named Millie and she had a camera so I started taking pictures with Millie’s camera. I always knew I wasn’t a photographer but an artist who chose to take pictures as his art practice. I never went into a darkroom or printed my photographs (I still use film.) Photography has been a means to an end and that end has been to create art. I’ve always said I learned everything I know about art from Marcel Duchamp who taught me that anything, including a photograph, could be a work of art.

When I was in my twenties during the Seventies I wound up in the East Village taking and selling drugs. It was a period when I stopped taking pictures because I was not an artist at that point but a drug addict. 

Andres Serrano, Blood Cross, 1985 Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussels.

I can’t say it was a bad time because I was having a good time. But it stopped being a good time when the people around me started dying and I knew it was time for me to leave. If I had gone from the Brooklyn Museum Art School to being an artist I probably would have been a different artist although I can’t imagine how. Everything is going to have an impact on you one way or another but you might stay the same. 

Andres Serrano, Caged Meat, 1987
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussels.

The 1980s in New York, what did this mean as an artist in terms of starting out, getting recognised by galleries, having shows etc? How is it now?

The 1980s in New York was an exciting time for me. I met and married my first wife, Julie Ault, in 1980 and got back into art shortly after that. Julie had just formed an artist collective called Group Material along with Tim Rollins, her friend from Maine. Group Material was a group of several artists who mounted group exhibitions of other artists’ work that addressed social and cultural issues such as AIDS, consumerism and democracy. I was never a member of Group Member. Julie was doing her thing and I was doing mine, but it was through Julie that I became aware of what some artists were doing. I met some great artists like Leon Golub and Nancy Spero who were always super nice. They were very encouraging to other artists. 

It was Julie, who, upon meeting Felix Gonzales-Torres invited Felix to join the group. Felix didn’t need Group Material to make it but Julie recognized his talent early. Back then I wasn’t thinking about the art world, I was just doing my work. Julie and I lived on East 10 St. and when the art scene moved to the East Village several galleries, including Jay Gorney Gallery and P.P.O.W., came to our block. Interestingly, art, punk, graffiti, new wave music and street culture all came together in the East Village. Even the Post-Modernists were there. The first time I saw Jeff Koons work was at International With Monument on East 7 St. where Jeff showed his basketballs in water.

Andres Serrano, St. Clotilde II, Paris 1991
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussels

The Eighties were also important for me for another reason. It was when rap and hip-hop appeared. The first time I heard Rapper’s Delight I knew it was something. I spent the whole decade listening to and collecting rap records. Music has always moved me more than art. Art does not touch me in the same way music does and rap was riveting.

Julie and I separated after ten years. I spent the Nineties going to clubs and listening to dance and house music at night and creating pieces during the day. 

Things are different now. People come out of art school knowing what galleries they want to get into. There’s Instagram and social media. I’m not on social media. I still use a flip phone. If it wasn’t for Irina, 

I wouldn’t have any idea of what’s happening in the art world. I still don’t. I think art and culture is now defined by algorithms.

Controversy and provocation play a huge part in your work. Was that something intentional?

With Piss Christ,1987 for instance although some viewers may see it as a blasphemy, it is important to note the attention brought to the act of crucifixion and thus dying. As Sister Wendy says in an interview :’An abuse shouldn’t take away its use’ (‘Sister Wendy in Conversation With Bill Moyers’ 1997). As a religious person, how does your faith interact with your art?

I’ve always thought that being an artist was the least controversial thing I’ve done. My life has been much more intense than my work. I remember when I first heard Dylan sing “And if my thought-dreams could be seen, they’d probably put my head in a guillotine, but it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only,” and I thought, “That’s ridiculous. How could anyone get mad at you over what you’re thinking?”

Andres Serrano, Piss Christ, 1987
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris

I was born and raised a Catholic and have been a Christian all my life but who cares? Certainly not the people who label you “anti- Christian and blasphemous.” There are people who think only they know what it means to be a Christian. You can’t talk to these people because they’re convinced that only they know the answer. It must feel good to tell other people how to live their lives. Personally, I don’t have that luxury or want the responsibility. 

I like what Sister Wendy once said about me in an interview. “Serrano is not a terribly gifted young man but he tries.” I was in my late forties at the time so I was flattered that Sister Wendy called me a “young man.” I also liked when Senator Jesse Helms got up on the Senate floor and said, “Andres Serrano is not an artist. He’s a jerk who’s taunting the American people.”

Piss Christ made me think about the installation of Italian artist Maurizio Catalan, The three hanging kids (Untitled, 2004) that had been taken down almost immediately by the Italian authorities. When asked about the work, Catalan wondered if the real tensions and horrors of contemporary life should not shock us more. The Klan, 1990, Torture, 2015 and Infamous, 2019 are very confronting for instance, to the tainted history of the world. In your eyes which role art should play in society? 

Art should play the role it wants to. It’s not for me to tell the art world what to do or not do. They wouldn’t listen to me anyway. I’ve never been a political or activist artist although there could be some element of that in my work.

«I’d rather let the work speak for itself. My work is a mirror that’s open to interpretation. People see what they want to see.»

Half the people voted for Biden and almost half the people voted for Trump. It’s up to you to decide which side is more fucked up. I never voted in my life until I voted for Obama. Twice. In the last election I didn’t vote for Biden. I voted against Trump. If a tomato had been running for president I would have voted for that tomato.

Theoretically, Democrats talk a good game but often can’t deliver. On a practical level, the Republicans won’t raise your taxes. People try to shame you into voting. As an American you have the right to vote and you have the right not to vote. Even the Supreme Court sometimes says, “Let’s sit this one out.”

Since the theme of this issue is IN OUR WORLD, which themes would you wish to see more tackled in the art world?

The art world is not the real world so it’s hard for me to see how it could tackle anything other than itself. There’s a feeling of sameness in the air, same people, same faces, same chatter, same agenda. It pretends to care and promote inclusivity but that inclusivity only includes the people who fit the demographics they’re looking for. You can’t deviate from the status quo otherwise you’re left out in the cold. 

I left Paula Cooper Gallery in New York in 2008 and since then I’ve been a stranger in my own country. 

Andres Serrano, Denizens of Brussel. Cristo, 2015
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussels

I’ve had a great many museum exhibitions in Europe and around the world thanks to Nathalie Obadia and Yvon Lambert. I was even appointed a Chevalier in The Order of Arts and Letters in 2017. 

But I’ve only had one museum exhibition in America and that was in the 90’s. I recently saw Adam Weinberg, Director of The Whitney Museum of American Art, at the Whitney Biennial and told him, “You know I’m an American artist and I’ve never been in the Whitney Biennial. I guess you’re waiting for me to die before you show me.” Adam laughed and said, “We’ll do something long before that.” 

Andres Serrano, Chris Sharma, Rock Climber, 2006
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussels

When I was a junkie in the East Village I felt somewhat distant from the people around me. “I am with you but I am not like you.” I still have that feeling. 

Could you talk about your breathtaking series The Morgue, 1992 and those portraits. What was the reason behind the series and how was that experience considering that you were photographing people who had passed away. How was the interaction between them, yourself and the camera?  

The inspiration behind The Morgue series was simple. I wanted to look at death. My interaction or involvement with the dead was as an artist who wants to find that inner peace that comes from an art that gives you spiritual and aesthetic comfort; the thing that brings stillness and tranquility. You could hear a pin drop in my work. It’s a moment frozen in time. When a song is right, when a picture pleases, it makes you feel like everything is right with the world. There’s beauty and grace everywhere, even in death.

With The Morgue, 1992, I think the titles indicating the causes of death in a way engage the viewer to wonder about the personal lives of these people. By this interrogation, it adds texture and life again to the stillness of death. That’s why I dont feel a sense of voyeurism but dignity and beauty. You have mentioned before that you are passing through. Could you delve into that? 

The truth is we’re all passing through going from one thing to another, one place to another. I always title my work in such a way as to describe what you’re looking at. In the case of The Morgue, the cause of death tells you what brought these people to this place and everything I know about them.

«People change and in death they change even more. But the sense of humanity lingers on even after one’s demise.»

It was this essence that I wanted to capture. The soul and spirit of a person cannot be seen but it can be felt.

Could you talk about your collaboration with Supreme and how did that unfold? Which other brands would you be interested in collaborating with?

Supreme came to me and said they wanted to do something with my work. They had ideas and designs for sneakers, sweatpants, sweatshirts, hoodies and a skateboard with my work. It was an easy collaboration. All I had to do was say yes. In 1996, Kirk Hammett and Lars Ulrich from Metallica came to me and asked to use one of my images for a new album they were coming out with called, Load.

They following year they came out with Reload, the follow up to Load and again asked for one of my images. They also made t-shirts and other merchandise with my work. I’m always flattered and open to collaborations of my work with good artists and brands. I’m very proud of Load and Reload and the Supreme collection. 

I’d like to collaborate with Gucci, Dior or Balenciaga. Sometimes the design houses are more cutting edge than the galleries. They know it pays to think outside the box. When people like you, they like what you do and these brands are well liked by their clients. The reason they’re liked is because their goods are well made and of good design. People always look forward to the new collections.

Do you have a favorite piece/body of work that you’ve realised?

I always have my favorites. I used to call them, “masterpieces,” the images from a particular series that stood out for me. There are many such images from The Morgue, The Klan, Immersions…etc.

Andres Serrano, Black Jesus (Immersions 1987-1990)

Piss Christ did not stand out for me until it was controversial and then it became one of my favorites! The favorites usually get a lot of attention. 

Your new series, The Robots, 2022 will be shown this November in Paris at Nathalie Obadia gallery. Could you talk about the series?

The Robots was inspired by NFTs and the Metaverse because before the Metaverse, there were robots. I like working with real things, not reproductions. And when I decided to create portraits of robots I went looking for vintage robots. I bought them on Ebay and other auctions. They’re mostly from the 60’s, and 70’s with a few from the 80’s. Some of them are rare and desirable.

The Robots is about race, childhood, science, science fiction and human nature. The word robot was coined by Karel Capek, and appears in his 1920 play, RUR or Rossum’s Universal Robots. It derives from the Old Church Slavonic word, “rabota,” which means “servitude or forced labor.” There are references to the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jeff Koons, Kaws and Andy Warhol in The Robots, intentionally and unintentionally. 

I did enough work for several exhibitions because as I started making them I realized they could be a book of robots. There are all kinds of robots: Japanese robots, European robots, black robots, white robots, …. Some of my favorite pictures are those of the very simple children’s robots. I love Mickey The Robot, Mr. Rembrandt Robot and Chuckling Charlie The Laughing Robot. All of these will be included in the exhibition at Nathalie Obadia Gallery. 

I once told Leon Golub about a bad review I got in The New York Times. I said to Leon I didn’t want to take it personally but it hurt my feelings. He said to me, “You should take it personal because when they criticize your work, they criticize you.”  Leon was right. I am The Robots!

Credits

Artworks · Courtesy of Andres Serrano

Photographer Hal

«My photography is not possible without a relationship of trust with the subject.»

Though Photographer Hal takes his moniker from the artificial intelligence character of the same name in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, there are not too many similarities between them. Whereas the sentient HAL 9000 becomes wholly untrusting of his human peers, ‘trust’ is a fundamental component of Hal, the photographer’s, work. Over the course of his career, Hal has dedicated his time to photographing couples – couples he often approaches in bars in his hometown, Tokyo – with the aim of capturing a sense of their love for one another. In his early series, Pinky & Killer DX, Hal invited couples to pose as if they’re inside a purikura (a Japanese photo booth in which the photos are printed onto stickers with effects added over the top). Later, Hal moved his couples to the bathtub and captured the ways in which his (often clothed) subjects arranged themselves in such a contained, small space. Naturally, Hal has also photographed couples pressed against the transparent plastic door of washing machines, but it is his various Flesh Love series that take the idea of capturing a couple’s intimacy to another level. 

In Flesh Love, Hal vacuum packs couples in custom-sized plastic bags; their shrink-wrapped bodies carefully positioned in a way that captures the unique bond that defines that couple’s love (no vacuum-packed couple will be the same). It’s here that trust really comes into being in Photographer Hal’s work. Approaching strangers – again, often in bars – to invite them to be photographed in an oxygen-free environment is a big ask. Working with assistants who help arrange a couple into position, Hal has mere seconds to take one or two shots after the vacuumed subjects have been sealed up before reopening the bag. I ask Hal where the concept for vacuum packing couples comes from, to which he replies that new ideas always come from previous work. “It may be close to the process by which manufacturers improve their industrial products,” he suggests. And indeed, over time Hal has updated his own formula; in Zatsuran, couples are photographed in and amongst their possessions. It’s interesting to see the extent to which ‘stuff’ can shape the personality of a particular couple’s bond – a love of music could be characterised by a collection of vinyl records or, say, guitars.

In Flesh Love Return, Photographer Hal places his sealed couples amongst other settings, whilst in Flesh Love All, his subjects’ possessions are also wrapped in plastic. The result is a series of beautiful images that raise questions (namely – “how?” which is answered below), but also of what the material and built environments around can say about love. At its most intimate, Hal’s work shows how love can exist in the absence of anything else, but as humans, we instinctively build stories and connections with one another amongst the objects and environments that surround us. That’s something that, no matter how sentient he may have been, HAL 9000 could never understand. 

NR: How do you capture a sense of the personality and the style of the couple in your photos?

PH: I used to choose models and the clothes or props they wear, but these days I do not have [that] much control. I thought that would bring out the individuality of the subject. I recently held my retrospective exhibition [at the Gallery Tosei in Tokyo last year] and noticed that the age, clothes, and shooting method of the subjects were linked to my age at that time. So even if you shoot a work ten years ago, it won’t be the same.

How does your work celebrate the idea (and the power) of love?

«The basis idea of my work is ‘to shape love’.»

In order to realize that, I mainly focus on couples a subject and shoot an image of two people using different methods (such as the vacuum-sealed bag or bathtub). With regards to the Flesh Love All series, I location scout first; in that time, I decide on an angle, the lens etc. Then I measure everything in the range of the camera. Based on this, I make a [big enough] plastic bag with staff over ten to fourteen days. I take it to the scene on the day of shooting, and then pack and shoot everything.

There’s an intimacy to your work – whether capturing couples in a bathtub or in a vacuum pack, do you ever feel like you are intruding on this intimacy?

My photography is not possible without a relationship of trust with the subject. We have enough meetings before shooting to [build up] communication.

What has your work, and meeting so many couples, taught you as an individual and as a photographer?

At first, I was shooting love as ‘sexual love’, but as I continued shooting, the types of love expanded to love as devotion and philanthropy towards the outside world. My on-going series,

«Flesh Love All contains a message that we can connect with, not only to ourselves, but also with outside society and we can shape the direction of love.»

You only have one or two chances to release the shutter for your photographs; are you always happy with the outcome? 

I have never been, and will never be, satisfied with the pictures I take. Because there is no limit to the quality of the work.

Credits

Images · Photographer Hal
http://www.photographerhal.com/

Domenico Gnoli

«I never actively mediate against the object, I experience the magic of its presence»

As one enters the exhibit – the soft stumps of the shoes break the silence – the first instinct is to graze the fingers over the relics of Domenico Gnoli, to violate the laws Fondazione Prada upholds just to caress the paintings on display and test their hyperrealism. As the sensation passes, a new emotion washes over: the awareness of stepping into someone’s home and looking into their private lives, becoming an insider and an outsider at the same time. The artist may not have intended to cause such an emotion, but there it is in its youthful peak. From the shadow clothing over the fabrics and wave-like curls of the hair to the figures sleeping under the sheets, Domenico Gnoli mastered narrating the everyday life everyone tries to hide.

Fondazione Prada presents the exhibition «Domenico Gnoli» in Milan from 28 October 2021 to 27 February 2022. This retrospective forms part of the series of exhibitions that Fondazione Prada has dedicated to artists – such as Edward Kienholz, Leon Golub, and William Copley – whose practice developed along paths and interests that took a different direction from the main artistic trends of the second half of the 20th century. The exhibit marks an exploration of Gnoli’s practice within a discourse free from labels and documenting the international cultural scene of his time, all while understanding his art’s contemporary visual relevance and recognizing the inspiration he drew from the Renaissance to illustrate the value of his works. 

Conceived by Germano Celant, the exhibition brings together over 100 works produced by the artist between 1949 and 1969 and will be complemented by as many drawings. A chronological and documentary section featuring materials, photographs, and other items will retrace the biography and artistic career of Domenico Gnoli (Rome, 1933 – New York, 1970) more than fifty years after his death. The project has been realized in collaboration with the artist’s Archives in Rome and Mallorca, which preserve Gnoli’s personal and professional heritage.

A homeowner touring a sojourner in his abode encompasses the arrangement of Gnoli’s artworks at Fondazione Prada. The yellow seat covers form uniform patterns, so freshly washed and pressed for an elegant dinner party that Santiago Martin-El Viti – based on Gnoli’s portrait of him sitting in one of the sofas – would attend. A beige shirt soon appears on a yellow tablecloth with silhouettes of flora in green, the creases and folds of the shirt visible even without scrutinizing the painting. From the living room, Gnoli heads towards the bathroom where an empty bathtub awaits next to a branch of a cactus that adorns the minimalistic interior.

Author: Domenico Gnoli (1933-1970) Title: APPLE Date: 1968, signed and dated on the reverse Dimensions: 117 x 158 cm Medium: Acrylic and sand on canvas Inscriptions: on the reverse inscribed by Domenico Gnoli: D. Gnoli 1968 » apple » (1,60 x 1,20) Inv. Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober no.51 Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober

“Many things have changed for me: I finally feel I have shrugged off many constraints and prejudices,” Gnoli wrote in 1963 and a letter to his mother. “I paint as I feel without worrying about the current culture and my responsibilities towards it and I intend to live the same way: free and faithful only to the truth that I feel now. Life begins now; up to this moment I have been apprehensive of too many things: school, friends, modern painting, socialism, marriage, culture, maturity, responsibility. I have painted a whole load of imaginary characters: a large woman reading the newspaper, a gentleman peeing against a tree, an office worker, a poetic waiter with blue lips, and then numerous portraits, but with a difference: instead of people seen from the front, they are seen from behind. Because, I thought to myself, mountains are painted from every side and so are houses, flowers, animals, trees: everything. Men and women are not, however. They are the exceptions and are only painted frontally, in three-quarter profile or from the side. Why?”

Down the hall, guests find the elevator that will take them up to the private spaces of Gnoli’s home. As the doors open and the bell dings, they stumble upon the guestrooms where intoxicated guests may sink into one of the well-made beds. All the beds are available except the ones where Gnoli and a woman sleep. In a couple of his paintings, they break up and make up in a span of two canvases, implied by the joined and separated figures under the sheets that Gnoli’s art style highlighted. 

Author: Domenico Gnoli (1933-1970) Title: CURL Title during the exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery, even though it does not appear on the catalogue this painting was exhibited Date: 1969, painted in s’Estaca, Majorca, October 1969, last paining painted by D.G. Dimensions: 139 x 120 cm Medium: Acrylic and sand on canvas Inv. Foundation C. no. p23 Courtesy Fundación Yannick y Ben Jakober

From the exhibit’s text: “For many years Gnoli’s work was interpreted in relation to the forms of realism that arose in stark contrast to the abstract and conceptual currents of the 20th century. Gnoli was viewed as a pop or hyperrealist artist by contemporary critics, who nevertheless recognized the peculiarity of his poetic imagery and artistic production. Over the following years, art critics drove their attention to those paintings made from 1964, characterized by a photographic cut and a specific interest in the human figure and objects, acknowledging the inspiration that he drew from the Renaissance or underscoring his ability to create paintings capable of creating a dialogue with the observer.”

The connection between Gnoli and the viewers sizzles, the manifestation of the intended dialogue. From one alley to another, the transition in storytelling simmers in the next paintings. The house party is about to begin. The noise of the invited crowd on the ground floor filters through the master bedroom where Gnoli and the woman deck up. The private and public lives start to blur the more the viewers wander around to gaze at Gnoli’s paintings.

On his canvases, the selection of hairstyles – neck-length, braided, and curled – comes first before choosing the shoes to wear for the party – flats or heels, leather or synthetic. Next up, Gnoli’s artworks zoom into the details of the clothing to don: the folds of the shirts’ collars, the pearl buttons of the dresses, and the zippers of jackets. Almost ready, the artworks display a necktie and a bowtie, both in stripes, and an ironed suit with a pocket square. Gnoli and the woman close their bedroom door and head for the elevator, a huff to expel the breath of excitement and agitation before inquiring “Ready?”

In 1965, Gnoli expressed how he had always embodied his art practice, but it did not attract attention due to the abstraction’s moment. “I have never even wanted to deform: I isolate and represent. My themes come from the world around me, familiar situations, everyday life; because I never actively mediate against the object, I experience the magic of its presence,” he commented. Only then, thanks to Pop Art, that his paintings became comprehensible, the employment of simple, given elements that he neither amplified nor reduced. 

Three years later, the artist deemed his system as a vehicle of showing two scenarios in one space. “You begin looking at things, and they look just fine, as normal as ever; but then you look for a while longer and your feelings get involved and they begin changing things for you and they go on and on until you don’t see the house any longer, you only see them, I mean your feelings,” he penned. “For instance, take some of these modern pictures where nobody can tell what’s what; they are a mess because they only represent the feelings rumbling about without giving you any idea of why it happened.” At Fondazione Prada, Domenico Gnoli welcomes the viewers into his home and hands them an invitation to reminisce the legacies he left.

Stefanie Schneider

On the West, Nostalgia and Instant Dreams

Stefanie Schneider captures the Western mentality and landscapes, archetypical histories of love, flawed beauty, and how women coddle chickens through her lens. She projects the life she yearns to live, the love she hopes to embody and receive, and the lust for both from within her onto her images. The results display burned spots in print or hazy and overlapping gradients of light, the signature she created for herself and her audience. These flaws, as she dubs them, manifest a mythlike dream Stefanie imagines for herself and those around her, ushering them into a discrepancy between light and darkness in photographic styles and the human psyche.

The German photographer works on self-portraiture as she poses for most of her projects, always infusing every shot with her views on life, love, and nostalgia. As she taps into her realm, Stefanie’s flair for memories and bygone eras – plus an old ranch and a farm of chickens – unravels into instinctive and distinctive photographs that ask viewers to journey through their definition of psychedelia and existence.

I wanted to ask how you got the moniker Instant Dreams then I came across your photo book of the same title. In this compendium, you take the American West as your inspiration to tell stories that evoke ideas of masquerade and play, and of love, pain, loneliness, alienation, rediscovery, and a social commentary on America. Why were you fascinated with these themes? 

Instantdreams is simply a combination of my two primary interests: the American dream and instant film. It just came to me in 1998 when I was building my first website. The American West has wide, open spaces that give us perspective on the meaning of life. Its void is a reflection of your interpretation. Expired Polaroid film produces ‘imperfections’ that mirror the flaws of the American Dream. These imperfections also illustrate that the dream is a myth that misleads, offering unachievable goals; the dream turning into a nightmare. The disintegration of Western society. The last hurrah.

That is the canvas of my creations. In fact, it’s the rudder of my uncharted journey. The allure of America is my pursuit of self-identity through love and pain, alienation and loneliness.

In your first book, Stranger than Paradise, the description mentions: There is no script, and none is necessary – a primal tale with ordinary looking people with archetypical histories – they drink, make love in nameless hotels, stalk the desert under the blinding sun, dance and carouse, and endlessly move on. A sense of liberation surrounds these scenes. Have you lived through these situations? When do you feel the most liberated?

All of my projects originate from my personal story. I created a place for my imagination to flourish, so there are no limits to where I can go. This particular project you’re referring to is called ‘Sidewinder’ and is one of my most personal stories.  It projects the intensity of love, the pain of losing love, futile attempts to hold on to it, and the destructive acts we engage in to avoid abandonment. For me,

«there is a catharsis in creation. Art liberated me. It allowed me to create a parallel universe.»

Going through your selected projects, three bodies of work caught my attention. I want to start with Oilfields (2004). It connotes both the notion of the frontier and the adventurous mentality of the West, and a kind of horizontal understanding of the landscape that is so quintessential about the West. Would you still describe the Western mentality as such today considering that you did this project in 2004? What changes have you noticed?

The project was published in 2004. The actual shoot took place in 1999. Considering that, basically everything has changed. There was still a kind of innocence present. The internet just started. Hardly anybody used cell phones. The information traveled slower. Actual letters were still sent and received. There was more time. Pre 9/11.

The landscapes were emptier and less populated. The feeling of being alone was much greater. Climate change wasn’t omnipresent. Back then the open landscapes felt like the last frontier. The last place to disappear into; to be swallowed into your own imagination. But it felt as if we were witnessing, with our own eyes, that times were changing, that everything would break apart.

Fast forward to 2014,  you introduce Wabi-Sabi (2014) as desolation and solitude are two adjectives that I would use to describe my Polaroid photographs, another two would be the Japanese term ‘Wabi-Sabi». The simplicity of ‘flawed beauty’ comes from the expired film I use to create a reflection of love and loneliness. Why did you use desolation and solitude as descriptions? Was that how you felt? Then, why did you combine the feeling of love with loneliness?

Love, lost love, and unrequited love are the prominent themes in my 29 Palms, CA project. The consequences of emptiness, loneliness, and absence are related to existential themes, just like expired films. Constantly changing and crumbling, the film mirrors the changes of time, almost like a premonition. The summers seared through heat waves to the cracks of the Wabi-Sabi void.

Onto the third one: Chicks and Chicks and sometimes Cocks (2016 – present). One sees women dearly hold chickens in their arms. Can you share the concept and beginnings of this project? What do you aim to convey?

I rescued an old ranch in the High Desert just over ten years ago. Since then, I have been focusing on self-sustainability, growing organic food, and raising chickens, which has been so rewarding to me. I absolutely love chickens and wanted to share their beauty. I call it my Desert Living project. It is about reconnecting our human needs back to the sources of living, back to basics; my own personal reset.

You have used expired Polaroid films to capture and emphasize the sun-drenched, nostalgic, and photographic appeal of memories. Is there a forgotten memory that you want to relive? How do memories influence your creative artistry?

Memories are the essence of life itself. They are stories, they are history, they are our identity. The ones you keep and show define what transpires. The Polaroid itself is a tangible reminder of a moment we want to remember and hold onto.

«We only have what we remember or imagine.»

Thinking about your filmic and trance-like style, how would you direct your self-portrait and want the backdrop, the approach, and the essence to be?

A picture of myself looking at myself in the mirror of some old car far out in the desert, alone and searching with desire for a love that I know exists.

My work is full of self-portraits. I am using myself as the subject a lot either because nobody else is around or because the project is so personal such as in the case of ‘Sidewinder’ or ‘Wastelands’. I can create my vision far easier and more precisely if I play the role myself. Nobody else could have felt what I felt at that moment, so I appear again and again and again.

Credits

Images STEFANIE SCHNEIDER
http://www.instantdreams.net/

Subscribe to our
Newsletter