ART Habens Art Review // Special Edition

ART

H A B E N S C o n t e m p o r a r y

MIKI AURORA GIL GOREN MARTA DAEUBLE SIMON PEPIJN SUSAN LAMANTIA SIMON PEPIJN KATY UNGER KOSMAS GIANNOUTAKIS CHANTAL VAN HOUTEN , video installation, 2014

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Chantal van Houten The Netherlands

Gil Goren Israel

The core of any artwork is created through instinct.

When you want to create a new artwork you obviously think about a variety of different ideas, but the ones that stick, the ones that make you stop in your tracks and go “wait a minute… that’s an interesting thought”, they are often caught more by instinct than through a structured process. Of course, most artists tend to have a process that allows for more ideas to be generated.

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Simon Pepijn

Susan LaMantia

Deca Torres

The Netherlands

France

United Kingdom/Brazil

I am inspired by the fleeting moments on the edge of sleep or consumed by fantasy when there exists an overlap between fiction and reality.

In my work and in my process, I look for a connection between the conscious and subconscious - in my execution, a balance between control and chance. I seek to find a unity within the anonymity of the vast social sphere we have created and the deeply personal individuality which we can never escape.

There is ultimately a combination between realism and abstraction that is needed to portray an emotion. We are all programmed to see faces and to recognize emotion in them. Simon paints without the use of any brushes. In fact, he is using oldThere is ultimately a combination between realism and abstraction that is needed to portray an emotion. We are all programmed to see faces and to recognize emotion in them. Pepijn Simon pushes the boundaries of this challenge.

At first glance, you may seem lost, as it’s hard to decipher Grégoire’s code of what these images and words or phrases are doing placed together on the same canvas.

But being lost in Devin’s work is not a bad thing.

It’s while lost in the labyrinth of ideas and depictions of urban life Devin displays for us, the viewer is able to become fully engulfed by his ideas, as his works ask us to rethink our relationship to the vast urban space around us

My works are performed in quiet and alone environment. Where can I speak freely. All my works are performed without prior appointment and the result flows naturally. This is the point that I most identify with Surrealism. The vibrancy of colors and harmony, freedom of mixtures, techniques and colors. My inspiration is always a color vibration and stimulate always, any viewer from the leading expert on Arts to the unknown and started Admire the Arts.

I experiment with

g to see the characters differently. Simon

Katy Unger United Kingdom

In this issue

Susan LaMantia

Pepijn Simon Gil Goren

Katy Unger Kosmas Giannoutakis

Marta Daeuble Astrid Bryder

Miki Aurora

Irina Corduban

Germany

Canada

United Kingdom

I try to create an interaction between my photographic work and the viewer. At the same time I want to challenge the figurative/documen tary photography, through the incomprehension generated at an unrecognizable motive and thereby questioning how society perceive photography. I find the general understanding of photography as something reality- related and recognizable, very interesting. Throughout our life journeys we establish patterns which dete-rmine our individuality, our modes of action exist.

My major aim was to unite both teams and promote a collaboration spirit within the leading teams.

My love for strategic design, creativity and arts have always driven my eager need to learn and understand new processes and methodologies. For that reason, I accepted to work as assistant photographer for the french Gitty Darugar during my stay in New York City. Together we photographed both buildings built by Christian Portzamparc in Manhattan during the fall and winter of 2013.

Great results can be achieved in many ways. I start to paint my chickadees series as a decision of founding myself, a moment of looking for me and find some answers. I choose to subject birds and women. Starting my art-work immediately my chickadees have become part of this celebration of every single subject and the whole process has been systematic by repeating the chickadees in every single image, just changing the background images. For this reason very soon the painting become more intuitive.

Chantal van Houten Miki Aurora Jihane Mossalim

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Special thanks to: Charlotte Seegers, Martin Gantman, Krzysztof Kaczmar, Tracey Snelling, Nicolas Vionnet, Genevieve Favre Petroff, Christopher Marsh, Adam Popli, Marilyn Wylder, Marya Vyrra, Gemma Pepper, Maria Osuna, Hannah Hiaseen and Scarlett Bowman, Yelena York Tonoyan, Edgar Askelovic, Kelsey Sheaffer and Robert Gschwantner.

Lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel

Finding the anchor, 2014 Oil on canvas, 200x120

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Susan LaMantia

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Moon Dance, 2015 Oil on canvas, 120x80

An interview by and

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child. I paint in my studio, a 450

What defines a work of art - for me and my art it is as much about the process as the end product.

To approach my process, I have music blasting in my studio, I burn incense, in tolerable weather I have the door open to the outside and can hear the birds song. I paint with my hands, no brushes, therefore the experience of creating then is to have as many of my senses stimulated at the same time. My energy, my passion gets reflected in my artwork. How to define a piece of contemporary art is an artists interpretation of what's been done before but in their own language or form.Would that make their art more “current”?

Perhaps. I'm an abstract expressionist, and although that was an art form created by artists in the 40's and 50's, I am creating my own form of abstract expressionism which makes it contemporary. By use of the term tradition and contemporariness it already implies a dichotomy. Is tradition steeped in a formalized manner of painting? Is contemporary a break from tradition?

Susan LaMantia

sq.ft. building behind our house. Often I will bring in a painting to see if I feel it is finished and leave it in a room so that I can look at it in different light, different times of the day, do changes need to take place? keeping in mind Sr. Stanisia's words about not feeling too precious to make a change.

At age 10 I took private painting classes from a School Sister of Notre Dame, Sr. Stanisia. What impacted me during the classes with her was not to feel “precious” about making changes in my paintings. I believe that happens when one is just starting to paint.

Afraid to make changes because a change on one part of the painting will lead to a need for a change in another part of the painting and voila! the painting is no longer the same. That's a good thing of course, but I didn't realize that as a young

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Susan LaMantia

I believe I already addressed some of my process in question one when I spoke to my desire to have all my senses stimulated by incense, music, and the importance of painting with my hands. I don't remember when I started painting with my hands, perhaps 30-35 years ago. When I paint with oil sticks, which are large sticks of compressed oil paint, I use them as though I am drawing shapes, but will go in after I have color on the canvas, or paper, and move the color around with my hands.

There are handmade pigment sticks that are soft and luscious, using my hands to blend or define an area is a visceral response that adds to my involvement with my work. When I paint with acrylics I apply a layer of paint on either the canvas or my hands, let the color dry on the canvas then add a layer of high gloss polymer medium, let it dry and continue adding color, then medium, and on and on. The polymer helps to seal the color, add depth and keep a clarity to the acrylic. I use liquid gloves on my hands prior to my painting, as well as in between each layer of color and polymer.

Sometimes I make a thumbnail sketch in one of my sketchbooks to use as a departure for a painting.

The spontaneity in my work would be lost if I replicated exactly what is in the sketch. I like to challenge myself in my work. I've been known to do a series of paintings with my non-dominant hand, that series was called “On the Other Hand”. Or to limit the color of my palette. Most recently, for my upcoming exhibition opening at the end of July for display during the month of August, I challenged myself with the use of circles, something I had not used extensively in my work.

“Feels so Good” is an acrylic- 48” x 60”. I had gotten several new Charvin and Matisse tubes of acrylic paint and was delighted to be working large

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All or nothing at all, 2015, Oil on canvas, 220x160 21 4 74

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After the ball, 2015, Oil on canvas, 220x160

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with such yummy colors. It was Spring, door open to my studio, nature is beginning to bloom, my jazz music is blasting, incense is being burned and a bird flew into my studio, resting on a table. The bird twisted its head one way then the other, flapped its wings, made a circle in the studio and flew away. It felt so good to be visited by the bird, as though the bird wanted to see me in my creative environment.

The motion of the birds wings, the colors of Spring, all of it felt as though it needed to be recorded in color and a sense of freedom in the form. Red is a grounding color for me, the addition of cadmium red medium was added as a hint to the explosive chartreuse. “Moon Dance” a 30” x 30” acrylic was a night painting in which I used acrylic “skins” as a challenge to the variety of blues. Painting at night has a whole different feel for me, as well as the difference of needing to have the lights on in my studio.The use of the acrylic skins gives a texture to the surface of the painting as well as introducing colors from my palette that were used in other paintings. It is a dance, of sorts.

Yes, personal experience is indispensable not just for me but I believe for all artists. All of the experiences in my life, good/bad, positive/negative all of it goes into creating who I am as a person & as an artist. I am close to my emotional core, am a passionate person; I want my artwork to reflect that. Of course it is my desire that someone viewing my artwork makes that connection to all the energy in my work too.“After The Ball” a 30” x 30” acrylic, is about the feeling of the build-up to all the dancing and socializing being light and festive, and after the ball there is a bit of a letdown to it all being over. Streamers tossed about, the lights fading, the return to what's next. In “All or Nothing at All” an acrylic that is 36” x 36”, the use of the yellows and flesh colors address how alive we are in the giving & receiving processes of our lives, but it

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isn't always constant and the dripping blues that flow through the colors are an indication of how unpredictable our lives can be whether we give it all or nothing at all. “All Things Being Equal” is a 48” x 60” acrylic. The challenge for me was to use large blocks of color near each other and find a balance within the painting using the same colors, so that it all appeared equal. In life when all things are equal it feels to be a good balance. If I did not put my feelings of color, form, life experiences in my artwork my approach would be cerebral or intellectual and I've seen those kinds of paintings. The artist may have a wonderful technique but I find those paintings cold and cannot relate to them.

“After All” is 36” x 72” acrylic and is part of the circle series that I have been painting. I had tried to use circles in paintings in the past and never felt as though the works were strong enough. I love working on a large surface and that helped me to be more successful with the use of circles.

The use of the bars of color are forms I've used in other paintings of mine. I laid in a warm tone on the canvas before I began adding colors. I wanted the titanium white to play off the warmth of the under color, but only leave a hint of the warmth around the edges, as though to keep all the action composed. The 4 red circles are contained but there are 2 lighter color circles that escaped and play on either side of the blue band. As long as I've mentioned the circle series I would like to talk about a couple of these paintings The first in the circle series is an oil

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With You In Mind, 2015, Oil on canvas, 220x160 21 4 74

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Susan LaMantia

(in collaboration with Ian F. Thomas and Alex Derwick)

All things being equal, 2015, Oil on canvas, 220x160

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painting called, “I'll Take The Bitter With the Sweet”. It's a relatively small painting, 24” x 36”.

The sweetness in the yellows and reds and lighter blues are centered on the canvas so as to pull the viewer in by the strength of their tones.

Although the dark color looks to be black it is actually indigo and I like the idea of it not being black. There is a larger band of indigo on the right side of the painting, with just a hint of indigo mixed in on the left. When the indigo is mixed with other colors it becomes lighter and when bands of lighter colors border the indigo it emphasizes the drama of the indigo. The overall focus is accented by the sweeter, lighter colors.

The last in the circle series is “With You In Mind”, a 36” x 72” acrylic & gouache. I started with a series of warm white circles of acrylic that are lighter on the left moving towards a series of warm light red circles, again, of acrylic, to the right. The circles are colored in and appear to weave through the light bands of color. Over all the circles & bands of color are arcs painted in gouache. The gouache is applied thickly and adds a texture to the surface of the painting.

Layers of paint and medium and texture, like layers of individuals. “It's All Relative” is a 48” x 60” acrylic with a variety of reds at the center. It was my intent to express the redness of a painting being embraced by softer colors as they flew across the canvas. In one of the layers of red I dripped a grid to stabilize the center of the painting in holding the interest of the reds.. I added the black marks to direct the flow of energy in parts and to stop the eye moving in another area. I felt the relatedness of the movement and color created a balance that was all relative. “Light Years” is one of my smaller pieces, 20” x 20” acrylic. The challenge in that painting was its size & to only use red, yellow, blue and white. The blue bands move across the surface of the canvas getting smaller from left to right. The white and yellow getting deeper from left to right, with just a hint of the red mixed sporadically. The tension of light to dark, large to small exists from one side to the other as if traveling through light years would create the same feeling. My palette has gotten brighter over the years, as I experiment with lighter more vivid colors and the lushness of the quality of acrylics.

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Susan LaMantia

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I don't think rewards or feedbacks influence my process. I have a certain way of painting that I will continue to exercise because I enjoy how I paint and what I paint. But, I truly enjoy hearing feedback about my work... The feedback many times is a reflection of the viewers own experiences, I find that interesting and informative. Awards are good in that there are times when it is important to have a validation by others of the quality of one's work. One of the dearest responses I ever received was from a doctor who had several of my paintings and told me where he hung one of the paintings in his house and how the light at certain times reflected the varieties of color that at first he had not realized were in the painting. It was such a sense of appreciation for the nuances of color that I use. I like it when someone viewing my work realizes that one has to be with it for a long time, over different ways of light on the work to always be seeing something new. When someone tells me that I smile and think, “they got it!”. The business of art is tricky.

“Finding the Anchor” a 36” x 60” acrylic was an exercise in the uses of a variety of blues, adding it's compliment of orange. There are bands of color, as well as a grid to pull focus to certain areas. What does it feel like to have a large amount of blues fill your vision and pull you in? It was important to have the grids to anchor that feeling of being pulled in to the energy. I do think paintings can “steer” people emotionally, either have a calming impact or energize by the passion that's reflected.

“Sunday Afternoon In My Head” is a 36” x 72” acrylic. My goal was to use a variety of whites as a calming influence of color, then allow blues and yellows to drift through. Sunday is a meditative time for me. I was reflecting on what movement is like for me and how it can be deliberate and exciting and stimulating, all at once. The slender black bars are like stop gaps in a thought process.

You mentioned my exhibition at Village Art Circle for the month of August, the Opening for this show is July 25th. I'm in a group show in September and a one woman exhibition in 2015 at Chatham Hill Winery. I've enjoyed thinking about the questions you posed to me and found my own process in answering them a way of organizing my thoughts.

An interview by and

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Pepijn Simon

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Pepijn Simon

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An interview by and

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Pepijn Simon

Hello, and thank you for your interest in my artwork Through my various experiences with photography I ran into its limitations.

You are almost always dependent on existing objects and people. Or worse, a computer and Photoshop.

Paint gives the opportunity to create something truly itself and offers endless possibilities to find the right expression.

Photography remains somewhere still a form of copy.

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Pepijn Simon

The black and white paintings, i paint them without the use of any brushes. In fact, i use old twisted credit cards.I begin with a black painted canvas and paint while it’s still wet. I apply the white paint without any sketching or use of photographs, trying to catch the person who reveals himself in the paint at that moment. This goes very fast. Shortly afterwards, i decide, while the paint is still wet, if it can stay or not. If not, then i start the process again.

The other paintings are very traditional in structure and setup. They start with an underpainting and then will be built up in several layers. These paintings start, in contrast to the black and white paintings, always with an idea.

My first inspiration was the fact that a large part of figurative contemporary art still relies on the old masters. I wanted to give it a try to turn it around and did a research on the choices that the old masters made in their time. How would these paintings be as they were manufactured in this time?

What is the influence of the present on these paintings? And why are we not updating the old masters to our time.

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notice in the hand with the primary colours of Piet Mondriaan.This painting is titled The Anatomy Lesson of the Painting and is meant this way.

The painting asks the viewer to continue. The stanley knife attached to the painting, invites us to continue with the lesson, but confonteerd the spectator with his thoughts about this. Contrast is thus created between a contemporary way and the traditional way.

Yes, i do recognize contrast between Tradition and Contemporariness.

I refer to historic gaze from the reality en added contemporary elements to it. it also refers to the time in between as you can

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Pepijn Simon

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In case of the black and white pictures, it is a need to eliminate subjective experiences.

They are the result of a totall surrender of the individual to the creative process.

The other paintings just ask for a personal experience, a sense of historical perspective and a deeper understanding of human emotions.

Also, it is necessary to control the correct technique and apply it when needed.

All this put together into a cohesive unity is an important part of my creative process

I haven't much decided. These works are often based on a mere coincidence.

It is the paint that generates the expression, deconstruction, recontextualization and assemblage. I am the creator and spectator at that moment and have to accept that and letting the paint do its work. Al what I need to do is to create the right conditions to come to this work. The only decision I make is afterwards. Or the artwork may exist or not.

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Pepijn Simon

No i did not try to achieve a faithful visual translation of my feelings.

The role of memory in my process is not obliterate. In fact, she is often distracting.

To reach new works one would have to be free of any limiting thoughts and remembrances whatsoever.

The role of chance in the process is very important.

To express real emotion, you have to leave the ratio itself.

This is in my opinion why a lot of children are great artists. They are somehow blanco, and are often very well able to express emotion in their drawings and paintings. To achieve that, requires a lot of an artist

Predictable effects are very disturbing in the process of creating these paintings.

Once predictable effects are used it has an immediate effect on an expression, however minimal.

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Pepijn Simon

So I try as much as possible to omit any distracting elements in these paintings, such as color, though that of course is an excellent medium to bring express emotion, but during

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the creation of these paintings very disturbing.

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They are meant to be considered to be a

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challenging interrogation of traditional portraits and contemporary ways of portraits.

The question is what is needed for a good portrait, realism, emotion, symbolism, or the extracted version of all.

It is remarkable that one sees in photography in a way that hyperrealism is flattened by using pictorialism.

I would define my relation with the viewer as "open" I am only the creator of the artwork.Once the work is finished, and left the studio and is published, it will lead its own life.

I am basically a spectator of what happens next.

Thank you, it was my pleasure.

My future plans are to create some very large black and white pieces and move on with the investigations into the relationships between the old masters and the current painting of our time.

I will also continue to search for the boundaries between abstraction and realism in figurative painting with the black and white paintings.

And everything that the paint will lead me ...

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Lives and works in Tel-Aviv, Israel

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spaghetti, wood fiberboard (300Special x 600 x 50Issue cm)

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An interview by and

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Gil Goren As far as I can remember myself I have always aspired to do things in a different way. I have never wanted to do something that had already been done .throughout the years, while I was involved in advertising, branding and graphic design I have always started working with the intention of creating something new, to arouse interest, to be remembered by the target audience and create a real, pure experience that will last for a long time. Uncomplicated, joyful and loved. While studying graphic design twenty years ago, in all art classes I constantly refused to paint in a realistic style , to copy what is already there, whether it is a forest ,a

vase, nudity or scenery . god created our world much more beautiful than any one of us might be able to copy it .in the days when photography can paint a perfect picture I see no point in trying to copy reality even though I do appreciate the technique. This is what I have taken with me to the world of art. For three years I have mapped the world of art, explored, studied , learned and categorized whatever exists in the art world, many pages were filled with names, techniques, subjects and then- I have erased any known subject as well as any familiar technique. I was left with a blank

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page knowing the road for creation is open to start from scratch. I have erased all ways of artistic expression, known techniques subjects that had been dealt with and started a new journey , aiming to create something brand new that has not been done before. My internal urge is to create art which is both intriguing and joyful , a kind of a riddle and loved, one that will never bore and will always tell something new to the spectator, leave him with a smile, a memory and a feeling of love for that moment of revelation.

In my opinion , the artistic process is inevitably connected to the directed experience. You cannot really describe a flower unless you have smelled one and obviously you will describe it the best if you have planted its seeds, watered it and followed the process of its growth and blossom including its decay. Of course , there are various kinds of artists and various ways of art to describe landscapes , people, objects or dreams that have never existed or ones artists have never encountered. In my case, anyhow, the processes has to be totally connected to the experience itself. Every little detail which I use in the process of

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building and assembling my piece of art, is something I have touched in reality, examined, saw, sometimes even cleaned or polished- found it or as I call the process- I hunted it while wandering in the city streets. I know for sure in which corner of the street it is located, in what time of the day the sun shines on it even stronger and on my next journey , I am happy to meet it again.

Most people's life simply pass by.

People don't really pay attention to the small details which comprise life and when they do reach a point when they have time to have retrospective , they realize that they have missed almost everything. The same is true about the endless race of life in the city streets. When I saw and realized that people around me don't really pay attention to the details their life is comprised of but simply pass by, I have decided to create the world from my perspective when it is a collection of "unseen or transparent" items in urban landscapes. I told myself or actually "spoke" to my audience as if

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saying " you disregard the transparent items which compose the place itself, I will put them in the light and show you the love of a place, the passion for finding out, happiness of creation, because god –if you haven’t paid attention, is in those little details , just as David Ogilvy said. The urban world like the natural wild world is comprised of endless number of items and not of the whole general picture. The same sticker, brush of paint on a brick wall, same water hose, sewer cover or garbage bin , expressing your opinion on a wall in a street corner or a cry for love stuck by a guy – are the things that create the urban landscape and for most people they are meaningless. I take them all along with typographic messages, disassemble the urban landscape and reassemble it to create my own world, my urban life, or actually the landscape of us all. This way I actually expose the unseen and unpredictable aspect Of urban nature and reveal it to the world in a new surprising way. the typographic messages , these codes that are slowly exposed while we observe and explore, expose what I myself expose from my own internal nature as a personal , universal statement of the place to the locals and evoke thinking.

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Early memory has no major function in my life as far as creating , only about what can be said. From quite an early age I grew up in a boarding school, absolutely insecure about any human contact. The defense mechanisms I have used and the walls I have built throughout the years have been, very slowly, shattered until I have reached a point when I say "this is who I am. Use it as you think best". Choosing "NOWYOULOVEME" as the title of my first solo exhibition, is based mainly on such insights one can reach when he is exposed" musk less" as if to say , now I will show you who I am and there will be a kind of a contract between us where I will do my best to arouse your interest , make you curious , happy, evoke your thoughts, make you feel good, uncover new things every day, take you out of your comfort zone to a place where life really begin and you, in return, will love me. As a starting point for any of my creations, I get out of my comfort zone to explore new places while memories are always there but just as a statement hidden as a code which is both explicit and implicit. The same universal language which brings you to a new level of meaning as far as the elusive relations between an experience and memory, is the point I lean on and base my art on.

That same point where every human being stands in front of the art creation knowing that pleasure is in front of him and within him. I do not think that art is meant to be complicated, up high there, philosophical in a way people have to deeply contemplate about‌. I know and I believe art has to evoke happiness, light and endless joy and this belief makes me create.

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Gil Goren

This is a very interesting question which I keep asking myself every time I start a piece of art or when I come back to one which is in the process don’t really know where it all begins. Organizing the first palette is often done after much struggle and many trials , is what determines the final destination , however, the piece of art starts much earlier , while wandering endlessly around the big city streets, when I inspect its sidewalks, examine its bulletin boards , looking at those signs and statements that were left there, endlessly hunting for the visuals , stopping every few steps, leaning back or forth and taking close-up pictures, always close , unable to see the real general picture which

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everybody else can see‌.after printing those visuals on small wooden pieces , I treat them as my color palette. One can find there the greens, the oranges are here, here are the blue shades and also the words.

Reconstructing the landscape requires focus and concentration when I organize things , days of thinking, attempts of matching until finally the first small palette is there, just like the first brush of paint and it leads the way and the process as well as the decision of what messages will accompany the texture of the picture. It happens that I spend whole days working with no seemingly purpose and then in one single moment everything falls into its right place, amazingly, and I am

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satisfied and know it is right, it is the complete creation which will be loved somewhere on the globe, it will bring joy to a certain family and home. Throughout the last two years I have changed the thickness of the small wooden pieces and now there is an almost half an inch difference between them.

This technique adds another layer and makes it three dimentional. Slowly , I have also started painting again on the final art pieces I have made adding a fifth layer (searching, taking pictures, printing, constructing, coloring . painting)

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Just like Thomas Demand I consider myself a conceptual artist who uses photography techniques, printing and constructing in order to transfer personal ,social and political messages from time to time. I completely

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agree with Thomas Demand who claimed art cannot go on relying on symbolic strategies ,as I have referred to earlier in this interview, but should find emotional elements which tell a story within the art itself. Painting a visual

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element, as perfectly as one can, will evoke admiration to the technique and nothing more. The question is- is there a message? Is there a statement? Will I find in that technically perfect painting a story, because if I do not- I will lose interest fast. Thomas Demand's attitude towards art suits me very much and with your permission I shall quote his words " working with existing pictures like I do you constantly think about the flood of images we are subjected to and you want to figure out how you can make sense of it" Therefore, the function of symbols in my work is to send messages that include an

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implicit, hidden code. The symbols in my work express the feeling of the place, the location and the urban rhythm as far as colorfulness and materials are concerned ,while the symbols and typography as I disassemble and reassemble them transfer the psychological, mental and story- telling elements which exist in the medium itself.

The connection between them- is what creates interest and feelings within each spectator.

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opinion, only a garnish – a decorative element and therefore not really interesting.

The narrative in my art work is very important for me and even more than that, I want the spectator, the audience who observes the art work will find the story and move along with it in its own pace. The visual beauty is highly important , the colorful completeness the fine finishing touches, all serve the idea which lies in the base form of the work of art. The language is universal , even someone who has never visited New York but lives in today's urban world , knows what the urban jungle is , including its abyss

Color with no story doesn't interest me, I care about the conceptual narrative. Unless a work of art contain a story, an idea, the beginning of a thinking process, it is, in my

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Gil Goren

(in my work "jungle look") has experienced in his life some kind of an end (in my work" begin again")and realizes that life begins only when we leave our comfort zone )my work "the art of things") The story has a significant part in my art , without it art doesn't really exist. The development exists in its conceptual- typographical meaning parallel to the visual colorful meaning. A story is based on a word, a sentence, in combining meanings from which everything evolves, just like a good story that never ends and we can enjoy over and over again.

I have no doubt regarding the need for art and , of course, for creating artists as far as conceptual ,social art which is focused on carrying a message. The ability to express what must be said is done through my art by using urban landscapes that surround us , a kind of landscape which is daily renewed , reborn , sometimes at the expense of the lucid items which are there for a day or a week and then are covered again by new items whose time has come.

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Gil Goren

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Gil Goren

most of my art pieces the dominant language is English since my audience is English speaking. The audience realization is a critical element in the process of my decision making because, as I see it, art with no audience, especially conceptual art, has no conceptual value. The audience has a significant role in my art and during the last few months I was asked to present my work in China and in Germany in 2017-18. It is clear that I will and at least some of my work will be in the local language so a real experience is guaranteed for the audience. That will enforce me working with a translator when finding the objects and taking the pictures. A message is sent by colorfulness but the power of a word is irreplaceable.

Language is a critical component in my work. I have no doubt that a man who doesn't understand the language that was used while creating the work , misses a major part of the experience. My art works are a composition of words, shape and color, and to experience them fully one must figure out all three. In

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Gil Goren

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different conceptual directions by using intensively the written word and cooperating with parallel arts such as music and video art.

This year I was chosen by ESKFF as one of the seven European artists who will work in Mana contemporary art Center and I intend to create, while staying there, a unique project combining music and posing one simple question to each spectator, I will present 16 pieces that will expose the viewers to a wonderful and exciting experience after which people will pay some more attention to life around us. Conceptual art-this is what I am talking about. Thank you for the Honor of having this interview and the time you have spent reading it.

I want to thank you for having this interview with me and for enabling me to share the story behind my art creation with your wonderful readers. My art progresses so fast and two years after my first solo exhibition I have had four such exhibitions, my art is presented in important galleries and I am represented by one of the leading art agents in Israel. Yet, this is only the beginning. My ambition is to leave a real mark on world art so I have created my own unique language. Using digital art, printing on wood , using levels and painting on a collage . I see my creation evolves in

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Lives and works in Bern, Switzerland

, 2014, spaghetti, wood fiberboard (40

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Monica Supé

ART Habens

video, 2013

, 2014

0 x 400 x 50 cm)

Installation at „Ortung IX“, Schwabach (Germany), 2015 422 0

spaghetti, wood fiberboard (300Special x 600 x 50Issue cm)

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Katy Unger

An interview by and

, curator curator

Hello and thank you! I would define a work of art by its impact. It can be conceived through intention or by accident, and may be beautiful or hideous, but it forces us to study it and engage with it both outwardly and inwardly. I believe that anything can be be considered art because art is a way of seeing, a kind of altered lens in which to view the world, but not everything can be a work of art. A work of art challenges our way of thinking and makes us awe and pause due to its emotional and sensory impact.

Contemporary art, in my opinion, is inventive by default because it has an investigative and experimental approach and an honest and intuitive execution.

When I consider a work contemporary, it is because it has been given permission upon itself to break away from historical molds and traditions. In other words, it has paid its dues by having a solid foundation in the principles and techniques of what came before it, and thus is able to transcend traditional artistic practices into a uniquely individual viewpoint and aesthetic. I feel it has to either pay homage or challenge the art of the past in order to direct some light on the art of the future.

Monika Supé

I, like a lot of kids, I didn’t consider myself an artist when I was little. Art was such an intrinsic part of my childhood that it didn’t occur to me that it could be a profession. It wasn’t until college that I was able to call

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Katy Unger

myself an artist without confusion or hesitation. It was an acceptance of who I was, a kind of coming out in a way.

for clues to fill in the mysterious gaps that were so abundant in my early twenties.

I believe it was in an observational painting class that I started to gain a real appreciation for representational art, and eventually the human figure. In the class we would often paint outdoors, focusing mainly on perspective and architecture. We would split up and head out with our materials and plant ourselves down to paint when a specific environment spoke to us. I began to

My first year in college I had an interest in abstract and mixed media art. I loved layering text and painted images on found wood, adding and deleting words and illustrations until a message was revealed through the process. I was searching for a story, or maybe a direction, always hunting

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take this practice outside of class and would spend a lot of my time sitting outside of coffee shops or public parks, drawing in my journal the scenes in front of me, quick sketches of street lights and buildings layered on top of text or collage from previous entries. My focus would drift from the cityscapes to the people that were passing through them, observing how they moved through and physically responded to the spaces I was sketching. It revealed a

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kind of unspoken, hidden dialog between people and their environment, and the idea that there is an altering and shifting of energy that occurs not only in our presence, but in what our presence leaves behind.

I began to explore body language as a subject in my paintings to follow and my thesis investigated the aspects in which environment conditions behavior and vise versa, themes that I still touch on in my work of late.

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Katy Unger

While my formal training didn’t exactly set me up with a career right away, it gave me the education and the community that helped me believe a career was possible. It also allowed me a kind of distance from my art, a way to detach myself and see it objectively.

There have been moments, however, that I’ve found formal training to be stifling. You almost have to train yourself out of your training.

When I was fresh out of school, I was collaborating on a painting with a friend who shouted “Stop being so art school about it!” because I kept stepping back and self critiquing instead of just letting go and immersing myself in the process. That always stuck with me. Formal training gives you the tools to push you forward, but I believe you have to go out there in the world and experiment and deal with opposition and disappointments and start from scratch in order to make it your own.

I tend to be a little impatient when it comes to my preparation. Once I am painting, I am very focused but my set up isn’t always so careful. I will use whatever is in front of me for a palette: cardboard, egg cartons, scrap wood etc. and there have been times that I have even injured myself because I was too quick with my prep and forgot to make sure I was in a comfortable position before starting.

I’m trying to be better at that now. Make sure to adjust the light, add a cushion to my seat if I am going to be sitting, do a couple stretches here and there, try to remember to take lunch breaks etc. When I am painting I lose track of time, and fall into a kind of deep meditation.

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Katy Unger

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Katy Unger

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Katy Unger

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That is one of the things I love most about the process. Everything else falls away and my only focus is light, shadow, form, color, and the music in the room.

My paintings start as a light sketch, usually in pencil or charcoal. Then I plug in the shapes with thin washes of paint and build up the painting layer by layer from shadow to light, gradually forming the figure. I work the background at the same time so I am able to see the painting as a whole throughout the process. I often work while the painting is on it’s sides or upside down so that I am satisfied with the composition at all angles. As for technical aspects, I’d say I focus most of my time editing the figure until I am happy with the proportions.

Once the proportions are there, I set aside a good amount of time softening the features and working in the details and highlights.

In my recent works, I have been adding an element of spontaneity to the application of paint, allowing drips of color to trail across the surface of the subjects and backgrounds creating unpredictable paths as they fall. This gives the portraits a fluidity and transient nature that I equate to fleeting moments that occupy dreams and memory.

For my recent series, I allowed myself to let go of some control in my technique and lean more towards the abstract. Solace was the first inspiration of this series, because while it started with a charcoal sketch as do most my paintings, I became frustrated with the proportions somewhere in the process, and that

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Katy Unger

frustration led to a kind of freedom and experimentation with my medium which ended up sparking a new series.

mention there is a hidden happiness beneath it.

I am attracted to people that are comfortable with being alone and I suppose this is why my portraits all share a theme of intimacy and solitude. I think what makes them potentially unsettling is that they are devoid of a specific context and rely solely on the body or face, stripped down to bare emotions which are often hard to face.

The liquid quality of the ink and paint and the integration of the figure and background gave the pieces an ethereal quality and the subjects a ghostly presence that brought to the surface for me a feeling of Hypnagogia- a word I like because it describes the mystifying, halfconscious state on the border of sleep and wake where we can exist simultaneously in two places at once. Although this theme was touched on in my previous series, We Dream in Color, with my recent paintings, I wanted to take more of an outward and physical approach not only with the execution of the medium but with the psychology behind it.

The chiaroscuro paintings are some of my first portraits, some dating back when I was in art school. I return to them often, especially when doing commission work. Two of my big inspirations for these paintings, although widely apart historically, have been Caravaggio and Gregory Crewdson. Although one was a painter and the other is a photographer, I find that the dramatic quality of light in both of their works narrates the piece as much if not more than their subjects. It directs us to the psychological and often unsettling undertones that are lurking just beneath the surface of their subjects.

On the lines of meditation, whether they are my own or another artist’s, I like to view portraits as paused moments rather than representations of an individual. That way I feel more present with the subject, like I am suspended in that moment right there with them.

I like the dramatic effect as well as the tension that directional light can have on a subject standing beneath it. While the light shifts across the body or the face, it alters our perception of what we are seeing and how we feel about it.

I try to portray many states of mind, but I must admit I’m a sucker for melancholy. I have always found it more interesting than other emotions because it isn’t obvious and you have to dig a little deeper within yourself in order to connect with it. Perhaps as you

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, 2014 wire, paper, led-spot, mural (200 x 170 x 150 cm)

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Katy Unger

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Katy Unger

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The interesting thing about my palette over the years is that while my paintings may look quite different in terms of color, my palette has not varied much at all. Except for my ink paintings and some blues here and there, my base colors are and have been the same for about 10 years: yellow ochre, phthalo green, naphthol crimson, and titanium white. It is incredible how many shades and colors can be created from those alone.

That is an interesting question. I think that while it may not be an obvious correlation, one’s personal experience can’t help but be tied to their creative process.

At the same time that I was working on a series titled We the People which was deeply rooted in themes of anonymity and identity, my father was in the midst of a profound and life altering transition from male to female. This experience, while very personal to her, enabled me to question my own perception of identity and gender roles, and there is a kind of unity in the anonymity and the sexes of that series that I can see now has a deep connection to what was going on with me internally at the time, not just in terms of my art.

As for We Dream in Color, the first piece of the series was painted shortly after moving to Los Angeles. It is a portrait of myself with one hand pressed against the surface and the other hand pressing a paintbrush against the surface with drips of paint trailing down the canvas. It is a mirror reflection of myself set amidst white, empty space. Reflecting on it now, that painting was not just a gateway into a new series, but also a symbolic representation of myself, as an artist, in a new and unfamiliar place.

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Katy Unger

I would be lying if I said the expectation of an award or an exhibition didn’t have an influence on my process. It has a large influence because it is a huge motivator in terms of production. Feedback is important for me too, because it helps me know my market and audience and encourages me to put myself out there and step out of my studio and into the world. But I do think that it is important for myself and all artists to remember that above all, you create for yourself because you enjoy it. If you forget that, what it is the point?

Thank you for the thoughtful questions and interest in my work! Have really enjoyed sharing my answers with you.

At the moment, I am wrapped up in a few projects involving painting, stop-motion animation, and illustration as well as continuing on with my latest series. For updates on current happenings and exhibitions, please visit: www.katyunger.com

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Kosmas Giannoutakis Installation(4mx4mx4m), 2013 Snapshot of a performance of the game piece "Zeitleben/Timelife"with four "shadows" in action.

021 4 Double bass performance by Juan Pablo Trad Hasbun, photograph by Nick Acorne.

Summer 2015

Kosmas Giannoutakis

ART Habens

video, 2013

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Kosmas Giannoutakis

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Kosmas Giannoutakis

Thank you very much abens for the invitation to share my thoughts with you and your readers. I had indeed a formal training in different disciplines of the conventional music making (composition, theory, piano, percussion), which began from my childhood. In the last years, I have moved towards more experimental and radical approaches of music making (algorithmic composition, mechanical instruments, dynamic systems, games), which I am currently studying at the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics in Graz Austria. The institutional training was very important for my development, because I learned in depth historical practices of music making. I would claim nevertheless, that I am more a self-taught artist, since my actual artistic language was developed through my personal interests and investigations. Being exposed to a wide, international scene allowed me to know and develop a critical stance to the parallel artistic approaches of my colleagues and raise my work standards.

Portrait of the artist. Photograph by Nick Acorne.

An interview by and

ART ART Habens Habens

, curator curator

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Kosmas Giannoutakis

I like to drew my inspiration from philosophical questions and paradoxes, that challenge the human mind. Starting with very abstract ideas (time, space, change), I am conceptualizing my works by combining mentally different artistic fields which could possibly create interesting dynamic situations. Experimenting and improvising with concrete materials allows me to decide which combinations should I keep and develop. If I find unintended potential in a specific media combination, I don't hesitate to change completely the initial concept. Sound, Game and Performance have always central role in my concepts.

The processes I conceptualize, are highly structured, because I am focusing on complex systems which exhibit indeterministic behavior. In Zeitleben/Timelife, I explored for the first time the notion of continuity, which had aesthetic and technical consequences. Changes were not discrete and there were infinite states of the system. It was really a challenge to compose the mu-

Summer 2015

A possible performance state of the piano in the game piece

sic, which had to aesthetically work for every possible state. In the technical level, I had to use delay lines instead of static buffers. Dividing the process in five distinct

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Kosmas Giannoutakis

ART ART Habens Habens

. Photograph by Kosmas Giannoutakis.

rounds, made the implementation possible and the perception more transparent. I suppose my intuition have developed more sensitivity concerning live processes, during the

last years I have been working with dynamic systems. Rationality and instinct are harmonically tuned by working intimately together for the same cause.

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Kosmas Giannoutakis

Piano preparation with all keys detached in the beginning of the game piece

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. Photograph by Kosmas

Kosmas Giannoutakis

ART Habens

Symbolic strategies can be very efficient, but they have to be really strong. In Zeitleben/Timelife the simple functional game of moving images resembles metaphorically how the mnemonic experience works. But this comes in a secondary conceptual level, the resonance of the medium is of primarily importance. It is really beautiful when an artwork invites for interpretation in different levels. The sense of permanence can be associated with these factors, namely the depth of interpretation levels and the intensity of mind resonance for each level. Creative processes are gaming acts, associated with past personal experiences and absolutely connected with direct experience.

’

Giannoutakis.

My position is that the Nature of every creative process is fundamentally related to the notions of Game and Play. When we perceive art, we experience a kind of inner-subjective game where our past experiences

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Kosmas Giannoutakis

come into interplay by defining patterns of appreciation and understanding. When we create art, a more complicated process, we try things, experiment, improvise. We create temporary rules, play under them, come up with a result, perceive the result, decide if our mind resonated well enough and repeat the process, by keeping the same rules and trying to play better or change the rules.

A fixed artwork, for example a sculpture, functions as a stimulant for such a perceptive game to occur. A dynamic artwork, for example a performance, follows inevitably the gaming pattern. It is not a coincidence that in most languages we use the word “play� when we are referring to music or theater activities. Art is the resonant game of the mind. Holding this position, I create artworks which consciously reflect their gaming nature. My game pieces and installations involve the perceivers in self-similar recursive processes, because of the similar structure between the artwork and perceptive process. Revealing our inner Nature, I invite us for a deeper exploration of ourselves.

Although I have studied Mr. Penderecki's work during my studies, I wouldn't say that I am much influenced by him.

Some composer of the 20th century, that still capture my attention are Bartok, Cage, Xenakis, Ligeti, Grisey, Feldman, Tenney, Wishart.

Recently, I became more interested in composers whose work is based upon cybernetic patterns, like Lucier and di Scipio.

Summer 2015

Portrait still of the artist's tools. Photograph by Panagiotis B

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Kosmas Giannoutakis

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eretzikis.

Contemporariness arises from Tradition.

Tradition have to be studied in depth, in order someone to be able to attempt successful steps in unexplored areas. The

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Kosmas Giannoutakis

The artist sound-directing a rehearsal of the game piece

. Photograph by Nick Acorne.

prerequisite for an artistic movement to be

Heidegger points out, the art that have lost

Tradition, is to be first Contemporariness.

contact with the world it was conceived and

The value of Tradition lies in the provision of

made, is nothing more than a relic. This is

solid ground, where new art can be build. As

an enormous problem in music, where we

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Kosmas Giannoutakis

ART Habens

cordings and amplification) but we don't realize how much we distort their originality and how much we cloy our modern world with mutated “masterpieces”, which take over the vital space of new creation. The cybernetic era we have entered, provide us with new media, which extend our brain functions. These meta-tools and universal machines should not be treated as limb-extended instruments but as brain-extended organisms, which mirror our cognitive abilities. I think this is a fundamental difference between the old and new media, and it will take decades of digestion, until Art will completely adapt to the new world.

The complex systems I create have two components, a dynamic system, which is realized with digital technology, and the human agency (performers). The dynamic system receive input information (sound, image) from the performers and results to very complex, indeterministic and chaotic behavior. The performers have to react on the variable output of the dynamic system according to a set of rules of possible actions I provide (instructions, score). The resulting complex system (dynamic system human agency) is a coupled feedback system, with both components feeding with information each other. I describe these situations as “games” and the resulting artworks as “game pieces”. My approach has a hybrid form for now, since there are lots of fixed events involved. My future goal is to make both components of the complex system 100% dynamic. Real-time digital signal processing algorithms, acoustic properties of the set up and human agency, with it's

arbitrary modify old musical artworks in order to assign to them unintended modern functionality. We use modern media to massively communicate them (for example re-

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Kosmas Giannoutakis

acoustic instrumental extensions, are all conceived together in initial phase.

An utopian vision I have, is the creation of artworks, which will know where and when they should take place in order to maximize their communicating effectiveness. This should require embedded complex cognitive functions which should collect and process in real time enormous amounts of environmental and human data. When this will be achieved, we will experience a transcending step in Arts, namely the conscious artwork which adapts successfully in multiple real life environments and situations. For now, I am working on adaptive systems, which enable my dynamic systems to adapt into the specific acoustical characteristics of the rooms they are taking place. Also, I try to design my interactive environments in a specific way, which enables their presentation as installation for open public participation and as performance for specialist performers. I believe that good artistic ideas have the potential to be presented and communicated in multiple forms, languages and media, and adapt successfully in multiple contexts. One of my future distant goals, is to create such meta-artworks, which will exhibit intelligent adaptability.

It was a pleasure, thank you for your challenging questions! In August, my piece

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Kosmas Giannoutakis

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Kosmas Giannoutakis

Snapshot of the beginning of the game piece "Zeitleben/Timelife".

Double bass performance by Juan Pablo Trad Hasbun, photograph by Nick Acorne.

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Kosmas Giannoutakis

ART Habens

Zeitleben/Timelife will be performed in the Soundislands Festival - 2nd International Symposium on Sound and Interactivity in Singapore, where it received the “Si15 best student submission award”. In September, I will be in the Netherlands, where I will present a concert version of my interactive puzzle game installation “Ascending and Descending”, which I developed during my composer-in-resident program by conlon foundation in the Muzieckhuis in Utrecht.

I have recently performed myself my new game piece “Contraction point” for piano, performer and feedback system, in CUBEIEM, in Graz and in Kubus-ZKM in Karlsruhe.

These performances were totally improvisational and now I am working on making a score by fixing the events, which have to be fixed, and developing more sophisticated tracking algorithms, which will enable the feedback system to function completely autonomous, without the intervention of an extra operator. For my future game pieces, I want to explore complex systems which involve more than one performer.

I want also to enhance the physical flexibility of my dynamic systems, by enabling the dynamic change of the positional and perspective characteristics of the input/output instruments (microphones, loudspeakers, cameras, projectors) into the game rule set.

So, I have the tendency to seek for more variability and complexity which requires deeper understanding of mathematics, acoustics, computer science, media theory and philosophy.

I am really privileged that my institutional environment, the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics, can provide me the space An interview by and

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, curator curator

Summer 2015

, mix media collage on canvas, 120x

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Marta Daeuble

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video, 2013

60cm, 2015 422 0

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Marta Daeuble

, mix media collage on canvas, 80x60cm, 2015 Special Issue

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An interview by and

, curator curator

Marta Daeuble

Like for a child who grew to be an adult and has to make his own decision, many people who lived such a long time in a constrained regime were overwhelmed with choices. Political structure, economy, education and else had to restart its functions and it reflected on the atmosphere of the country. One of the problems was the closure of the communistic led structure embedded in the past, to obtain a job. Many people become unemployed and post revolution euphoria quickly changed to depression.

This was one of the reason I had move to the UK, hoping to find a job. In 1997 the differences between east and west European countries were still extremely visible. It was in these years when I started to question the way we are brought up differently in each country, in each political structure, in each family, and how it affects our

I have moved to the UK in 1997, the first decade after the fall of the Berlin wall. In the Czech Republic followed with the Velvet Revolution, as we came to call it to mark the nonviolent political change in our country.

In this decade changes came fast to Eastern Europe, Czechoslovakia led by the former dissident and writer VĂĄclav Havel peacefully created two independent countries, Czech Republic and Slovakia and started a new era.

However, this also brought, for many people’ unfamiliar feelings of independency and freedom, consequently, creating uncertainty and fear.

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Marta Daeuble

decision in our lives. Above all, what most interested me was folklore and traditions and this reflected in my work when I started to attend the Wimbledon School of art.

Fundamentally, being in London, and in one of the most cosmopolitan art school, I could experience the variation of works, fresh and full of visions, opinions and free interpretations. The school ethos encouraged experimentation, drawing didn’t mean to use a pencil and performance could be act of painting. This utter freedom was the best start to my artist practice. To overcome the limitation of still image, I quickly found my strongest points were experiment with mix media and film. I started to make animated films and collaged painting which allowed me to use layers in my work to represent changes by making reference to time.

The reality of an artist life however, is that to be free to work, one has to alter working in the studio with a paying job. I had enrol to a PGCE program (teacher training) to be able to teach in secondary schools art and design and hoped to find financial security to be able to continue my art practice.

Nevertheless teaching is one of the most demanding jobs I ever did. Becoming a teacher was a life changing experience for me. I had to learn to be not only an educator but also an entertaining public speaker, carer, time manager and a police-woman. Most importantly it brought another point of view to my practice by working with young people which would be later reflected in my work.

still from the film

unusual that I start working on my film in the morning and stop in the middle to paint or draw and engage in another project later. This is due to the nature of the way I choose to work. If I spend too long on one task, I have tendency to overanalyse my work and pay too much attention

Certainly, the multimedia process is a key to work intuitively to produce my work. Changing the way I work is therefore fundamental to my everyday practice. Accordingly, I set my workspace so I can switch between different media quickly. It is not

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, stop motion animation, 2014

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Marta Daeuble

to the aesthetic of the piece rather than the content, thus loosing the purpose of my work I set myself to produce.

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simultaneously on different projects, which some of them are deliberately left unfinished as ongoing pieces to work on for a longer period of time.

Given these points it is mostly impossible for me to work in singular production. That is why I work

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Marta Daeuble

still from the film

, stop motion animation, 2014

Definitely, direct experience is only one of the possibilities how to evoke creative process. In fact,

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Marta Daeuble

ART Habens

is responsible for the ability to make sense of incomplete visual scene. Similarly, I want the viewer to watch this complex image to keep his peripheral sensory organs occupied so his ability of processing the experience in connection to something familiar is reduced.

In other words, I am creating indirect experience for the audience to enable their creative thinking to take its part in processing the story.

Undeniably, in the contemporary age, social media and visual richness of our society widen the use of art today. In other words, an artist has more possibility nowadays to show his work to the wide public than ever before, hence the platform to show art is not anymore restricted to museum, art galleries or a cinema. Additionally, the spectator ability to perceive and analyse visual image, moving or still, advanced notably.

I see the audience as someone who easily relates moving images to reality, but forgetting the function of illusion which the film can offer. My purpose of making the film Insight is to make it difficult to relate to something conventional, hence the spectator question the nature of the imagery and what its representation could be. As a result he is forced to watch the sequence few times to grasp all the elements, thus each time the viewer watch the film, he gets closer to his subconscious thinking. Consequently as the

the luck of experience can be beneficial to start up creative thinking as filling the missing gaps needs to be filed with imagination.

As a matter of fact, the brain is born with priory knowledge, knowledge independent of experience which according to modern cognitive psychology

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, mix media collage on canvas, 80x60cm, 2015

spectator watches the film he will start to understand the imagery in a familiar, therefore personal way.

To explain, these visually complex scenes I force the viewer to use his ability to process the meaning of the image in the non-conventional way. My intention is to find in this experience ways to stimulate the complex processing of the brain to create meaningful pattern. For the spectator it means to reach into his imagination and the creative process of memory recollection.

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, mix media collage on board, 120x60cm, 2015

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, mix media collage on canvas, 80x60cm, 2015

, mix media collage on canvas, 100x80cm, 2015

Marta Daeuble

ART Habens

, mix media collage on board, 120x60cm, 2015

, mix media collage on board, 120x60cm, 2015

As I mention before, I have been interested to find how much our surrounding and the way we are brought up contribute to our consciousness and decision making in everyday life.

us to solve problems we face every day, not to mention that provide us with sense of continuity.

For this reason, I have started to search for information how the brain works and its ability to store memories. What is the mechanism of transferring short second lasting memories to the

Soon I find that one of the main reasons who we are is due to what we remember. Memory guides

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Marta Daeuble

, mix media collage on board, 120x60cm, 2015

, mix media collage on board, 120x60cm, 2015

one memory we remember all our life? Moreover,

Likewise, I have been troubled by letting the past to occupy my present time all the time. In my research I came across a scientific book called written by the Nobel Prize winner Eric R. Kandel and starting to find some of the answers how the mechanism of brain works.

At the same time, he makes clear that recalling

how much of our memories are delusional interpretation of someone else recollection? And most importantly, can it be possible that some of the memories are inherited or shared?

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Marta Daeuble

ART Habens

, detail, mix media collage on canvas, 120x60cm, 2015

the memory episodically is not a simple task. He relates this to the creative process. Claiming that the brain stores just the core memory he clarifies: ‘upon recall, this core memory is then elaborated upon and reconstructed, with subtraction, additions, elaborations and distortions.’ Under those finding, I start to look for a memory I could excises upon these facts. I wanted to be able to utilise my perceiving sense in a way implicit memory works, in a repetitive way, to be able to start of the creative process of explicit memory.

One of the memory which is personal to me but most people can relate to is the way we look like and change due to aging henceforth I have starting to work on the series called Obliba.

The use of non linear narrative in my work is particularly important for me as it allows me to echo the mechanism of the brain and how it collects memory.

Our information channel is forced to make up the order or, once again, look for clues to make a linear sense of the image.

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ART Habens

Marta Daeuble

That is where the symbolic strategies come to place in my work. The symbols are here to help evoke the right sensation I am dealing with. The symbols are generic: parts of the body, vivid colours, a grid, flowers, patterns and birds. They have important role to guide the spectator’s experience. The parts of abstract layers provokes awareness of self , for that I feel symbolism and metaphors can be utilised as universal visual language that viewers all over the world can relate to, sometime with different meaning, yet it forms an anchor to further analysis

The public and the public space play important role in the process of progressing my art practice and creating new work.

Following my research, I have been interested to find out more about the fact memory could be inherited or shared. Be that as it may, it could explain the sensation of déjà vu or familiar connection with people. Therefore I want to see how interpretation of symbols and imagery can vary according to the nationality or place the image is shown.

Recently, I have been closely monitoring how people react when observing certain images. As we can predict, different interpretation is received depending of the viewer’s gender and similar group can interpret images with same outcome.

For example, mothers will sensate similar feelings when watching part of the baby’s body in the picture then women which have no children.

What interest me more, in fact, is the nuances in feelings which begun apparent within similar group when watching much more complex image.

Here, I can see that the memory starts to influence the spectator’s feelings and his creative process of interpretation. When this happen and the viewer starts to look inside his inner landscape, I can say my work has been understood. Adding to this, public space can also change dramatically the purpose of the observed work. Painting in a gallery is examined differently than street art images or than the amateur paintings at the artist market. What interests me

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is how the public is easily influenced by the space and alter their views according to where the image is located.

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Marta Daeuble

ART Habens

, detail, mix media collage on canvas, 120x60cm, 2015

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ART Habens

Marta Daeuble

, detail, mix media collage on canvas, 120x60cm, 2015

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Marta Daeuble

ART Habens

As has been noted, I do things a lot based on the audience and how my work is seen. Accordingly, I progress my work in line with feedback of the spectator. My intention is to start a dialogue not only within myself but also between me and the public to channel his inner thoughts.

Recently my film Coffee Creatures was shown as part of the Très Court Film Festival, which also presented my work at the Short Film Festival Sleepwalkers in Tallinn. This festival, unlike the others,is an event without borders, with screenings during 9 days simultaneously in nearly one hundred cities in France and 23 other countries. At the end of the festival in each venue there was a public vote to choose the 3 best short films. What interested me the most was how the result varied significantly, regarding where films were shown and in which part of the world that was.

As you can imagine I am working on numerous projects at the moment. I have started new series following the idea similar to Obliba, but looking deeper into collective and shared memories. At the same time, I have been working for nearly a year on a new stop motion animation, which is linked to the perceived aging process, particularly to examine the way we used to see natural beauty.

Lastly, I have been working on a new type of project I set to myself, called ‘Free of Charge’, which involves direct experience. The project started this year at the Espacio Gallery in London as a part of the Anti Gallery Gallery Show, where I set myself rules to create specific work within certain condition and in certain time. For this one, from the time I left the door at my house (Lyon, France) to the time I reached the space at the gallery, I collected advertising promotional materials I could get for free and used them as a starting point to create a new work at my destination.

My intention is to repeat this methodology working towards a new destination and compare the experiences to find how place and time alter the way we make sense of what we see around us.

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Chantal van Houten

ART Habens

2013 collage

Summer 2015

acrylic and paper on MDF panel

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An interview by

, curator

Chantal van Houten

Well when I was a little girl, I was always drawing instead of playing outside with friends so it has always been in my system to express, I think that creativity is not something you can learn but has to be apart of you and when you have that an education is something that gets you to a higher level in your development. So the main thing I learned during my education is to go deeper in the material, look beyond boundaries. And also explore your feelings in all sorts of matters.

designer peeled off a first layer in becoming an artist, so in that way it helpt me.

I worked several years as a graphic designer, where I learned a lot about commercial thinking in this world. As the years past by at some point it felt as if I was in the wrong place, this commercial world didn’t feel right to me anymore, I had a lot of feelings whom I wanted to express and couldn’t in my job, so I made a radical decision and quitted my job to focus completely on painting and expressing my emotions in painting. I think being a graphic

My initial inspiration came basically from all bad situations in the world, everything that’s been spread all over the news everyday, it never seems to end.. And it made me think about people and these terrible things that are happening in the world today and thought, what is the one emotion that can bring people closer together and reconnect again and sympathize

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ART Habens

Chantal van Houten

60x60cm acrylic paint on panel

60x60cm acrylic paint on panel

with an other human being? That’s crying, crying brings people together, it gives us a sense of solidarity, makes us touchable, cuddly. Being able to cry and let the world see makes you the most real, most pure person that you ever can be, there is no hiding there (except if you are an actor) and it is the most intimate moment you can get with another living being.

It is a beautiful thing to being able to express your self and connect to another. . I wanted to relate crying people to world issues so people can think about what is happening in the world today and explore their own feelings in the matter.

Realize that he was a very hardworking man and had a lot of struggling in his life and the sadness that lingers around him because his real succes came to late after his death, which is still a mystery today.

To let him cry in my piece, makes him an accessible person and I think it’s beautiful to watch and stand still about his life.

The perfect environment serie is about the pollution situation in Asia, it’s a very big problem there and also in some Asian cultures it’s not common to cry, it’s losing face.. that made me sad, in other words they can’t be human and connect to an other human being.

When I made “Vincent” (around his birthday) I really want to let people see the tragical side of Vincent van Gogh’s story. Give people a further thought than his beautiful paintings.

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Chantal van Houten

ART Habens

60x60cm acrylic paint on panel

to. I think if you have personal experience it makes a creative process easier, because it’s easier to relate to your own experience and to go deep into that feeling but I don’t think is’s absolutely necessary, more how far are you

I always question the way we relate to each other because it’s such a personal matter, everybody is different and it seems that people want to be the same at some level and even trying to convince themselves that they need

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ART Habens

Chantal van Houten

40x50cm acrylic paint on panel

60x60cm acrylic paint on panel

willing to let go to come to the depth of your feelings. So I do think it’s possible have a creative process but not the direct experience but I do think that direct experience makes the process easier.

hope that it will make people think about there own emotions and expressions. My painted faces show “almost” (and that’s the part I hope the viewer can see) no expression, it’s a reflection of reality today.

And I’m hoping that if you can see what someone else is missing of expression and emotion, you will recognize what is missing within yourself and next step is to reconnect to yourself and to people around you and experience the difference and also very important to reflect on your own doings.

Personally I love it when you look at a painting and it gives you a little tickle, a feeling of excitement and connection and I can only hope that people can feel the same thing when they’re looking at my paintings.

Well for me It has been a journey through feelings and emotions to come to the conclusion that we are threaten to be disconnected of expressing our feelings. By giving my paintings a subtle glimpse of how an emotion can feel, I

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Sandra Hunter

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ART Habens

Summer 2015

ART Habens

Chantal van Houten

The Father

The Other Sister

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Chantal van Houten

ART Habens

setting. Every family has their secrets and their imperfections. People often think there is a picture perfect, they should try to achieve in their life. I think that that don’t excist, not that I’ve had a terrible childhood, I have had a good

With “A Family Story” tells a story about imperfection, recognition, reflection in a familiar

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Chantal van Houten

ART Habens

, acrylic paint on paper

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Sandra Hunter

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ART Habens

Summer 2015

ART Habens

Chantal van Houten

oil paint on paper

oil paint and paper

childhood with loving parents, who are still together (no they are not perfect ;-) and sure when you look back there are things you would like to see different, but that’s just life.I always try to achieve a sincerely visual translation of my feelings. If it’s the right feeling it is not for me to decide it’s for the viewer. They have to experience it at their own level and the main goal is to reflect on their own feeling and emotions. I want to them experience there is no ideal situation, no picture perfect, you can be happy in your own situation as bad it may seem, all you need to do is see it.

Agree! As an artist I feel the urge to do so, because I think it’s necessary to let people reflect on their own behaviour and reconnect with their inner selves. Nowadays that connection and self reflection often gets lost, it’s a luxury problem in our society I think and if you can reflect and reconnect again with your feelings and emotions you can make a

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Sandra Hunter

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ART Habens

Summer 2015

ART Habens

Summer 2015

Gemma Pepper

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Chantal van Houten

difference in our society today and it just makes you a more pure person.

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subtle layer of (non) expression on a face or a pose.

I can only hope as an artist that people pick up the signal that’s comes with the painting. And I hope to achieve this with giving my painting a

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ART Habens

Chantal van Houten

this about being an artist, it’s always a very emotional thing for me because it means the end of a journey but simultaneously new opportunities to begin a new one.

When I first started to paint, I often used only black and white because I felt that it couldn’t give more contrast than that, I came back on my decision because I felt it was not enough layered to give the painting the expression it needed. So I began to add more colors to give more expression to the painting. Now I work with no more than 5 different colors because I don’t want to give everything away in a painting, just the extra depth but not to much to let the viewer compose for themselves.

Mostly when a painting comes to his end I only have to add just one or two strokes to give the painting it’s right immersion, I absolutely love

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Maybe in the future I will paint a self portrait, if I have the courage.. I think it’s beautiful when an artist does this, it radiates some kind of selfconfidence. It tels us a lot about the artist and I think for an artist it’s a very fragile moment because it feels like you reveal a lot of yourself.

Maybe I’m just not that self-confidence…yet…

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Sandra Hunter

ART Habens

ART Habens

Spring 2015

Gemma Pepper

13

Chantal van Houten

ART Habens

Thank you! I really enjoyed your questions!

My work is constantly evolving, I never stop learning only moving forward. I have developed my own style and coming one step further every time and it’s never finished. Currently I’m working on my new collection called “Rumour”.

It’s about spreading rumours, everybody has been guilty of spreading a rumour at one point in its life. It’s in our human nature to do so. But why are we doing this? Is it because we think it’s sound to judge or just to make us feel better about ourselves? And do we think about the consequences for the person the rumour is about? These are the questions, which stands central in my new “Rumour” collection. Portraits of people who spread a rumour, as well the people are victim of this rumour, but are they really a victim?

I think that if you are being true to yourself and make art from the heart your audience comes automatically. And of course everybody has an opinion and you have lovers or haters. If somebody is being critical about my work (usually my partner;-) sure I will hear him out, discuss and still do my own thing … no sure I pick somethings out of it and see if I can improve here and there. But I don’t really let it influence on my desicion-making process. It’s really something of my own but this doesn’t mean I’m not open for it.

An interview by

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, curator

Spring 2015

Miki Aurora Special Issue

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Miki Aurora

ART Habens

video, 2013

4.6″ x 2.2″ 422 0

Special Issue glass, hair + toenails (artist's), found objects

ART Habens

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Miki Aurora

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An interview by and

, curator curator

Yes, existence in multiple mediums has been a crucial part of my creative identity. This probably is the result of my creative process continually stemming from an internal drive to instigate social change or to engage in some form of social sculputure—resulting in a clarity of exactly the kind of opinion, or narrative I would like to present in my work. Therefor the physical vessel for housing these narratives is something that generally comes much later on in the process of creation, far from the moment of a projects conception. It is rare that materiality or medium is the starting point for the

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ART Habens

Miki Aurora

creation of one of my works.

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Miki Aurora

ART Habens

involved in the occult and lived on the street, in shelters and in social housing in downtown Vancouver. We used to always hang around Granville street and congregate in certain homeless shelters and covered areas. One day, I was out of the blue given the opportunity to attend art school in Barcelona by my family, and when I came back to Vancouver after that I immediately went back to hanging out on the street with this my old band of crust punk occultists, except this time I began spontaneously documenting them as well on camera.I ended up falling in love with one of them, a chaos magician named Scott who lived in a cockroach infested SRO. One day he was cooking up a batch of weed oil and ended up burning the soles of his feet with hot oil, and couldn’t walk. This is who the man with the wounded feet in the video is, and all of the scenes of the derelict apartment are of that SRO. Obviously the injury was a really painful experience for us, and as I was reviewing the footage I captured later, I felt like it just made such a beautiful metaphor for the kind of tonic immobility that the whole lifestyle so represented. The ascetism, the disregard for the body as a means for tapping into a kind of spirituality, the attempts to distance ourselves from the horrors of the contemporary capitalist, patriarchal society. All of these people within that community were, like me, actively working to be as free from the mainstream society as possible.

But the process of keeping ourselves seperate from it kept us frozen in time, unable to do anything for a deeper purpose, because all energy was spent on survival, and running from the world which had hurt us all in unique ways.

That is what the imagery of the injured feet depicts, running and running and never being able to go anywhere. And then of course this connects perfectly with one of those dark undercurrents of female existence which is the constant objectification and self-objectification resulting from existing as a woman in patrairchal society.

Which was one of the things I was avoiding by deciding to live that way in the first place. When I was in that world, the world of chaos magick, wandering the alleys of downtown and existing with others who had sworn to reject society, there was a bit of an escape from the kind of patriarchal oppression that you can experience in

The production process for Hollow/Static was definitely a balance between the intuitive vs systematic modes of operation. I used to be part of this loosely knit band of urchins who were

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ART Habens

Miki Aurora

the more conventional arenas of life, because these people were all trying to actively distance themselves from that culture of mindless objectification of women, they were spiritualists trying to seek things that were beyond all of the stuff of the material body, some in more direct ways, others in masochistic ways.

I have found that these horrific psychological traits like the conditioning of beauty culture, and the way it impedes the mind, was very similar to the kind of immobility caused by those broken feet. How long can you look into a mirror?

Physical beauty, like ascetism, is another form of escape from the true darkness that lurks in the psyche. Both of these ideas are based in using something physical, something exteral – living in squalor and stuggling to survive, beauty and the distraction of selfies—to keep away from the true darkness lurking within the subconscious. Of course, this is not always the case with such things, but it was the essence of the work in question and of that time in my life.

The production of my video works is certainly a very rhythm based practice, the movements and shifts produced are done so automatically, like a heartbeat.

3.6″ x 1″ tears (artist’s), glass phial

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Miki Aurora

ART Habens

14″ x 14″ acrylic, found objects, on canvas

buzz questions that are often debated within popular discourse. The opinions presented in my works usually present an angle of examining the psychological factors that contribute to a circumstance, social phenominon or archetypal

I don’t think that my works could be called neutral, though I guess it is not often that my art pieces present a clear yes or no answer to binary

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ART Habens

Miki Aurora

6.7″ x 6.6″ x 3″ glycerin, cement, plastic

trait, and I hope that by sharing these psychological insights, viewers can tap into deeper states of empathy and awareness towards the subjects referenced in the works.

that are actively shaping the structure of the world we live in.

Social sculpture is such a valuable practice for artists, it so often that the mainstream world undermines the ability for art to influence the constructs of our civillization. They are so unaware of the fact that they are heavily influenced by the aesthetic of their surroundings, and the effect that the imagery their minds are saturated with has on their subconscious. It’s for this reason that artists are in such a prime position to utilize their various mediums to influence peoples perceptions. It is the perceptions of reality that our society is holding

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Miki Aurora

ART Habens

32″ x 22″ tears, mascara, cotton t-shirt

9.4″ x 6.5″ x 6″ blades, resin, acrylic, ash on hymn book

7.7 � x 2″ rhinestones, found objects

I believe that it is possible for one to experience their practice as disconnected from direct experience, but that even then, the creative production is being influenced by the effect that one’s experiences have had on their subconscious. My works, however, refect a consciously confessional practice, very much based on my lived experience.

Sometimes I think that the process of collecting found could result from the chance encounters of those objects, but the fact that I have chosen to pick up one found object as opposed to another consistantly brings the realm of chance back into the realm of choice. It is an oscilliating dichotomy, even though I feel so in control just like in life, as in the art practice, chance will also play a role in whatever we seek to accomplish,

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ART Habens

Miki Aurora

there will always be a factor of universal chaos at play.

was curated with my partner Raghunath Khe, in conjunction our wedding. I think it did definitely tap into that immersive space, that, as you mentioned, transcends the conventional barriers between the work and the viewer, particularly with this project is a perfect example of that. For instance, a performance piece included at C+nverg=nc-, featuring local artists Ciara and Zox Svetorovich, centered around the relationship between the technological / industrial and mammalian aspects of the human experience, and possesed a great deal of physical tension—almost violent.

So it was interesting to see the way the guests some of the guests reacted to it in the middle of the cocktail reception. We also included the work of Genevieve Belleveau, an ascetic performance artist from LA, whose piece titled Intimate Ikebana involved these one on one rituals during which she presented guests with a sacred mushroom tea, which had been christened with the petals of my actual bouquet. So during the curatorial process it was of course important for me to consider the way these works would interact with the people and environment, and I personally feel that it is something that is integral part of the art making process. The perception of the work is an inextricable part of the work itself, and whether that perception involves an open reception of the piece or a more obvuscated understanding-neither is more valid—either way it needs to be taken into account.

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, video still (model: Lindsay Starbird)

Thank you! I am most excited about my upcoming curatorial project, Dystopia Dreaming, which will be a multidisciplinary experience

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Miki Aurora

happening on Dec 5 at Red Gate Arts Society in Vancouver.

I will be exhibiting interactive work, in particular I’m excited about a happening-style performance ritual I have designed which will center on a collective catharsis from the internalized misogyny that is currently plaguing contemporary

ART Habens

society. There are a limited number of places available to attend the ritual, so any one who is in Vancouver that would like reserve a place in the happening can do so by contacting dystopiadreaming@gmail.com.

Thank you so much for the stimulating conversation.

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ART ICULACTION

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Dalia Smayze

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JJill Poczkai Ibsen Lives and works in Dallas, USA

W

hen I was four years old, I had a near death experience while having an open heart surgery.

My heart stopped beating, my body temperature went low, a heart-lung machine kept me alive. Coming back from that threshold, I knew that opposites are bound together and that I encompass both. It left me fascinated with edges and yearning for meaning. My works are born from that same simultaneous sense of vertigo and stability.

They deal with a dichotomous - the realization that one reality can reflect many and there is no one definition. The truth is endlessly evolving and expanding.

I try and reconcile conflicts and contradictions such as beauty that encompasses crudeness, weakness as a source of strength and disillusionment that feeds innocence. The early works (“Red Heart”, 2007-09) are naïve drawings of bodies and situations, subtle yet disturbing. Minimalist figures floating in white space. With time, layers appear

(“Illusions & Reality”, 2010-13). Through intricate drawings and installations I struggle to weave together the past, present and future. Recently I’m fascinated with transformation (“Release”, 2014-15). The Sisyphean process evolved to a new set of rules, which dictates different materials, gestures and speed. The new paintings are large and expressive, made in one continuous session, like an intense ritual.

I see my studio as a cross between a womb and a lab. My practice is a tool for understanding myself as well as the world of phenomena around me. My goal is to generate a change that shapes perspectives and actions, thus enabling for something new to occur - symbolically, conceptually and tangibly. I have a distinct feeling that there is something beyond me, a life force, which I can’t put into words but I can channel into art.

An interview by

, curator

and

curator

Excellent question and I’ll try to answer as best as I can; Every time you do something artistic, no matter the art form used, it makes you see the world in a different manner.

You are of course more attentive to the shapes and forms, the colors, the proportions and how everything works together as a whole. In that sense, doing make-ups on people wasn’t extremely different than painting on canvas!

Jihane Mossalim

When I first started painting, I was more interested in an abstracted depiction of people and their environment. As I kept on working, I felt the need of portraying subjects, especially faces, as more figurative until the abstraction disappeared altogether.

One could say that I was more interested in a generic, observer’s point of view whereas today I’m

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Jihane Mossalim

interested in being part of the picture on a more intimate scale.

ART Habens

palettes; to me they are more interesting to use and easier for the viewer to ‘’read’’.

Some works I picture more in reds, others more in blues and some in black and white. I keep it simple. As for the texture, when I first started I used painting knifes a lot, creating different thicknesses of paint. The knife slowly disappeared to eventually, be given up entirely. My layers of paint are now extremely thin, using acrylics in a similar fashion as watercolors. I love using the medium that way.

Ghosts! Well part of it; I love old photographs and the melancholy that can emanate from them. I think that when we delve into the past, especially late 19th, early 20th century, ghosts and eerie things seem easy to imagine. This whole Gothic era… It definitely was and still is in many ways, a big inspiration to a lot of my work.

Memory defines the ‘’self’’. Everything we do in our life is defined by our memory and different situations triggers different memories; an object, a sound, a scent... I remember coming home with this antique Victorian baby carriage similar to the one featured in ‘’The Doll’’. The first time my grand-mother saw it, she became very emotional and started crying. When asked what was wrong she couldn’t give me an answer. She couldn't make sense of her own sudden emotion. Maybe she had a similar carriage as a kid? I can’t say for sure but the sight of that particular object triggered a strong emotion from a long forgotten memory. To me it is fascinating, really fascinating. Emotions and memories are so

It’s funny because when I was working on my first show I used a lot of blues. Why? I’m not entirely sure… I guess in a way it was well suited for the whole melancholy aspect of the chosen subjects. Red was a color I used extensively in my very early works and right now, it seems to be creeping back into my paintings. I make a very conscious choice of leaning towards monochromatic

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ART Habens

Jihane Mossalim

deeply interconnected and so personal to each and every individual. When I paint, I dig in the past (not necessarily mine) in a general way trying to capture here and there a possible memory trigger.

Interesting! Well I will admit, I have never seen it that way or done it with that particular purpose in mind but it is absolutely something that could apply to what I do. When I painted this particular piece, I wanted the boys to be ‘’nowhere’’ therefore in a way, it could definitely make the viewer use their own memory to visualize the untold setting of the work itself.

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Jihane Mossalim

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ART Habens

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Jihane Mossalim

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Jihane Mossalim

ART Habens

I completely agree with Thomas Demand and I might be wrong but wasn’t it always the purpose of art? Even when it wasn’t out in the open, the suggestions of underlying meanings were always there. They were dormant maybe, but always there. I believe that my work is generally straightforward having a main subject/figure without much background embellishments or ornamentations. Just like a strange rendezvous between the subject of the painting and the viewer where everything fades in the background and all that is left are the main characters.

In my opinion, personal experience is crucial to any creative process. I think an artist (writer, painter, musician, etc.) is able to create a much stronger work if he/she knows the subject very well; whether it be personal experience or extended knowledge of the selected subject.

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ART Habens

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Jihane Mossalim

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Jihane Mossalim

This might sound strange to say but I don’t think I would be doing what I do if people didn’t like my work or a least ‘’reacted’’ to it.

ART Habens

There’s nothing worse for an artist than indifference from an audience. Does it change the way I create my work? Yes and

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ART Habens

Jihane Mossalim

no. If I show pieces that had very little

again and I will concentrate on the ones that

reactions from an audience, pieces that were

got people to react. Having said that, I’ll still

ignored, chances, are I won’t show them

create ‘’boring’’ works no matter what. The

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Jihane Mossalim

ART Habens

audience doesn’t play a role in what I create but plays a major part in what I’m going to present.

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ART Habens

Jihane Mossalim

still brewing in my mind some already in production.

I will continue exploring memories, childhood, insects, and group

I have a few projects in the making; some

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Jihane Mossalim

photos (something new). As well as continuously being inspired by the magic world of books and movies.

I thank you very much for this interesting

ART Habens

Interview and these insightful questions.

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An interview by

, curator

and

curator

Special Issue