ARTiculAction Art Review // Special Issue by ARTiculAction Art Review

Anniversary Edition

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Stanley Shoemaker

Johny Deluna

Steve Barnard

Anna Berry

Jihane Mossalim

Mexico

Canada

USA

United Kingdom

France

I believe that humor is the best way to connect with others because if we can laugh at ourselves there is still hope. Most artists want to be appreciated for their unique and inspiring work and most art lovers say they want to see something fresh and original. But, history shows us that truly original art runs a high risk of rejection. So all we can do is be honest, brave and stay true to our vision. My pieces are short stories that usually ask open ended questions. I want to engage the intelligence and curiosity of the the viewer.

My style is influenced by discovering the use of materials I have not used before I am presently experimenting with black lights mixed with kinetics. I also have some pieces with concrete and mixed materials. I plan to do more computer-based art because it has many benefits of really combining ones imagination to instant gratification on screen, saving it and returning to add to or make changes all reversible if needed. I'm working on desktop sized pieces using again different materials sort of mini engineering projects. I have never had cognizant inhibition or not having the ability to see an object and turn it over in your mind for all the possibilities of what one I can't make of it.

Anna creates sitespecific installation pieces, often with paper, as well as working with photography.

I am looking at the relationships and lasting memories we entertain with our surroundings, our physical environment and its components; from the painting on thewall, to the insect crawling at our feet. They leave indelible marks on the brain and stay our own forever. Sometimes quiet, sometimes as loud as a cicada on a hot summer day.

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Annaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work tends to be concerned with the way our cognition shapes reality, and hence how the nature of reality differs from what we perceive. The nature of her disability means she quite literally inhabits a parallel world to the rest of humanity; hence she likes to draw attention to how our minds impose categories upon a chaos and create the world as we know it.

To me it is fascinating, really fascinating. Emotions and memories are so 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.

Anna Bruno Switzerland

Since I moved to Switzerland, more occasions to paint and to organize my own exhibitions have arisen. I paint to express myself, my inner world, my own reality and perhaps even my dreams. Very often it seems to me that it is not me who is painting but somebody else. When a painting is completed, I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t believe that it is me who did it. Everything what I feel I try to make visible through the images and colors on my paintings and drawings. I always feel that I must express something by means of my art work. And this MUST is always stronger than me.

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Anna Berry

lives and works in London, United Kingdom

Adi Dulza lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel

Johny Deluna

lives and works in London, United Kingdom

Steve Barnard

lives and works in Tacoma, WA, USA

Anna Bruno

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lives and works in Lousanne, Switzerland

Susanne Wawra Adi Dulza

Michal Alma Markus

Susanne Wawra

Israel

Germany

In my work, I seek to investigate the evolution of ideas and knowledge and how they recreate and engineer the reality to which we are subjected. I examine the information (“memes”) that is transmitted and preserved through humans and various systems of technology. I pursue methods to examine virtual systems, within which we are situated. Through positioning based on digital media, I seek to both cast doubt on our patterns of thinking that are entrenched through media culture and expose how each medium functions as a “message” under the auspices of “the truth” and efficiency.

As an artist I constantly question familiar elements, for example, a house or a wall. When I encounter everyday items, I have this urge to rediscover both their tangible and intangible characteristics. Familiar objects evoke reflexive and unconscious thoughts in any observer – it's what makes them familiar. To get to the core of these objects, I separate them from their function and deconstruct them to the point where this process is interrupted. The deconstruction results in visions that I approach in different ways, ranging from instinctive to artificial. Along the way, I create a new logic, which I then use to reconstruct the object to something that evokes both familiar and new thoughts.

"Save the last dance for me" is an intimate piece of interchanging mouths of a man and a woman that speak the chorus of a

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lives and works in Dublin, Ireland

Jihane Mossalim

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lives and works in Montreal, Canada

Drifters' song. The film evokes a relationship between male and female speaker as the mouth words of love to each other.

Michal Alma Marcus 172 lives and works in Ramat Hasharon, Israel

This series of videos looks at placing short song lyrics into a real life context. The chorusses of popular songs are spoken and the focus is

Stanely Shoemaker 204 lives and works in Mexico

on the mouth of the speaker. It invites the viewer to read the reenacted song lyrics closely or differently. The use of the mouth makes it close and personal, at times very intimate and adds a personalised interpretation

Special thanks to Haylee Lenkey, Martin Gantman , Krzysztof Kaczmar, Joshua White, Nicolas Vionnet, Genevieve Favre Petroff, Sandra Hunter, MyLoan Dinh, John Moran, Marya Vyrra, Gemma Pepper, Michael Nelson, Hannah Hiaseen and Scarlett Bowman, Yelena York Tonoyan, Haylee Lenkey, Martin Gantman , Krzysztof Kaczmar and Robyn Ellenbogen.

of the spoken word.

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Dalia Smayze

A nna Berry Lives and works in London, United Kingdom

An artist's statement

nna creates site-specific installation pieces, often with paper, as well as working with photography. She has exhibited at galleries such as The Royal West of England Academy and The Strand Gallery, London. In 2013, she was shortlisted for ‘Open Cube’ at White Cube in London, and has recently completed residencies in Brush Creek, Wyoming and Fljotstunga, Iceland. Anna’s work tends to be concerned with the way our cognition shapes reality, and hence how the nature of reality differs from what we perceive. The nature of her disability means she quite literally inhabits a parallel world to the rest of humanity; hence she likes to draw attention to how our

minds impose categories upon a chaos and create the world as we know it. As well as undermining the fabric of reality, she is also often toying with arbitrary cultural notions like gender, race, nationality, and religion. She works in many media, but recently often with paper interventions. They are fragile and ephemeral, and rely on photographic recording. The practice of making them verges on the performative because of the often-absurd difficulty of placing the paper in the environment given the conditions, and because of the very repetitive nature of the making. Anna has a background in commercial photography. She exists in Milton Keynes."

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Anna Berry An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Highly stimulating and moving in its communicative concreteness, Spooky Action at Proximity is a compelling work by artist Anna Berry. While walking the viewers through an unconventional exploration of how the nature of reality differs from what we perceive, she accomplishes the difficult task of challenging the viewers' perceptual parameters, walking them through the liminal area in which the ambivalence between presence and identity solves itself into an unexpected point of convergence. What mostly impressed of Berry's work is the way her investigation about the phenomena of human perception provokes reflection about contemporary age unveiling unsuspected but ubiquitous connections between art producing and the audience. We are particularly pleased to introduce our readers to her multifaceted artistic production. Hello Anna and welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview, we would like to pose you a question about your background. Are there any experiences that have influenced the way you currently conceive and produce your works? In particular, how does your background in commercial photography and your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

Hello – and thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to talk a little about my work!

I would say that the main thing about my background that affects my work is my disabilities. I don’t tend to give away my ‘labels’, but being intrinsically different, particularly in terms of my brain, very much defines who I am, which in turn defines the work I produce. Having a brain that works substantially differently to others’ is a little like being of another species – my experience of the world is totally different to that of other humans. I don’t mean culturally – in terms of people treating me differently – I mean very literally in terms of my perceptual apprehension of the world around me. For me, on a personal level, that’s lead to great psychological difficulties – such as bizarre neuroses that I don’t fully exist or that I’m not a real person. Anyway – the very personal experience of a disability of my type leads me to profound questions in my day-to-day life about the nature of things, and the nature of our knowledge about things, the extent to which our brain is creating our reality, and even more substantially the nature of existence itself. These questions that are very abstract for some are actually very tangible for me simply because of my experience of being myself. With regards to my background in photography, I conceived of a seminal piece in my artistic evolution, which led on to my subsequent work with paper and segue into fine art. The photography collective I was part of at the time was asked to respond to a Gerard Byrne exhibition (about the intersection of myth and reality) with

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respect to a piece of written text, called ‘True Story’. It being a photography exhibition everybody duly produced photos. I decided to use scanning as my photographic medium – scanning the text again and again until it was unreadable, and then constructing a paper sculpture out of the printed version. My point was really that any category or definition, such as ‘photography’ has fuzzy boundaries, and by pushing that envelope we show that the bedrock of our reality is really shifting and intangible. At once my paper sculpture was in fact a photo, whilst at the same time the text had been transformed from information-bearing semiotics to corporeal object, without any material transformation occurring. I don’t think my background in photography really shapes my attitude to art. I’ve always been someone who is primarily interested in ideas, so I’ve always been drawn to deeply conceptual things. Most of the time that makes me a fish out of water around commercial photographers. Like them, I’m a real technician when it comes to my photography, but I find most of what’s produced in that area pretty dull and conceptually bankrupt. I would say that my projects tend to combine high-concept with some sort of experiential element. I’m quite traditional in some ways in what I produce, in that I like it to have some sort of aesthetic or experiential impact. I don’t at all feel that way about others’ art that I appreciate – but it does tend to be the way I want to produce things – something cerebral manifested as something visceral. I do have quite a few cross-over projects – or fine-art projects that involve the use of my photography, for example, my long-running series ‘Masks’. In processing digital pictures, an image is often built up using a number of layers in software such as Photoshop. The masks are a Photoshop layer which ordinarily would not be the top layer; In my pieces, this different (but equally integral) component of the final image is allowed to be the surface. The extraction and

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foregrounding of a different aspect of an object fundamentally changes the nature of the object. They are ‘found’ unaltered by-products reclaimed from my fine-art portraits, and commercial work. From each ‘classical’ portrait I take, I pluck one or several masks, almost like hidden dark sides, in parallel to the portraits. I have literally thousands of them. Actually the main way I think my background in photography helps is purely in practical terms – I can really do justice to my work when recording it. Given that a lot of my work is highly ephemeral intervention, that’s important! I will even confess that there are times when I think the actual installation hasn’t worked brilliantly, and I’ve been able to make it look a lot better in my photographs than it did in reality, through skilled lighting! You are a versatile artist and your approach encapsulates several techniques and media, revealing a stimulating search of an organic symbiosis between a variety of viewpoints. The results convey together a coherent sense of unity, that rejects any conventional classification. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.annaberry.co.uk in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you have you ever happened to realize that such approach is the only way to express and convey the idea you explore.

Well I guess my first response to that is that I’m definitely not what you would call a process-led artist. All power to that kind of artist, but I would just get really bored doing the same thing day-in day-out! Plus it wouldn’t really serve the goals I’m trying to achieve. I would say I’m more concept-led – I find an idea that interests me, or perhaps something political that angers me, and then I’m just looking for the process that will best render the point I want to explore. It’s definitely making a rod for my own back in that almost with every new project I have to learn an

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entirely different skillset! When I’m right in the middle of maximum stress in producing a project, I sometimes wish I were a painter instead! Having said that, I do come back again and again to very repetitive making with paper. I think there’s an element of self-comforting in that – from throwing myself out of my comfortzone into cognitive discomfort, and then back to finding refuge in a simple and repetitive process. It’s unfortunate, but I think the fact that I explore so many diverse ideas, in so many diverse media, makes me quite inaccessible to the art world. I’m not what they expect. They can’t quite categorise me so they don’t know what to do with me! (Almost none of what I do has any involvement at all with galleries or curators; I kind of exist somehow outside of, and in parallel to, The Art World.) There’s also this implicit criticism that my varied output reflects some sort of butterfly-mind inability to focus; that my work is fragmented and hence must lack depth. I find that really hurtful, to be honest, because not only is it a mistaken interpretation, but it’s a direct criticism of the nature of my mind, of my disabilities, and of what I am as a person. I am non-neurotypical, and that seems to mean that both myself and my art occupy a space that others are not quite comfortable with, and find difficult to understand. I am the very definition of an outsider! It makes me really angry that the advice I keep receiving from the art world is to make myself less than I am, in order that others can understand and categorise me. I won’t do it. For this special issue of ARTiculAction we have selected Spooky Action at Proximity, a stimulating project about the phenomenon of Quantum Entaglement, that our readers have already stared to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once caught our attention of this work is the way your inquiry into how our cognition

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influences the reality we perceive creates an harmonic mix between a vivid, performative approach to the evokative reminders conveyed by the materials you combine together: when walking our readers through the genesis of Spooky Action at Proximity, would you shed a light about the role of metaphors in your process?

Well, in this case, I became suddenly very interested in quantum physics as soon as I learned something about it, because it became clear that its central principles resonated strongly with my artistic concerns. The idea that we force something to be determinate by the very act of measuring it dovetails very beautifully with the concern in my art practise (and my life) that we create reality by the act of apprehending it. I guess that parallel is a kind of metaphor. To be honest, I haven’t thought much about the evocative nature of the materials I use – for that aspect of things I rely very much on my gut instinct and don’t poke too deeply into it with enquiry. I think perhaps that may be why the pieces land up being so evocative and experiential – because corporeally they come from a very primitive and instinctive place. For example, a lot of people find there to be organic resonances – resonances of ‘body’ – in my work, which wasn’t expressly intentional on my part. However, upon reflection I realize that it is, in some way, subconsciously intentional. Again it comes down to me always trying to marry a very cerebral concept, with a very experiential rendering. The compelling ambience that pervades Spooky Action at Proximity invites the viewers to a multilayered experience and the way you explore the ambivalent relation between the intrinsically ephemeral nature of paper and the sense of permanence accomplishes the difficult task of constructing a concrete aesthetic from experience, working on both subconscious and conscious level. So we would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is absolutely

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indispensable as part of the creative process? Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

That’s a really interesting question. I would answer definitely no! In fact I tend to believe that the only thing a piece of art can ever tell you for certain is something about the artist, which is quite a radical viewpoint, I suspect. Even if you were creating a piece about something outwith your experience and are imagining everything, in fact all you are bringing to bear is everything that you are, and everything your experience in life has made you. That’s where your beliefs and thoughts and desires come from. You could not disconnect what you create from your experience, unless you had the ability to become another person. I really like, as you phrase it in the question, the ephemeral nature of my installations, becoming a ‘concrete’ experience – I hadn’t quite thought of it like that before. Spooky Action at Proximity provides the viewers with an intense, immersive experience: how do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience and how much importance has improvisation in your process?

I find most public art to be really boring, to be honest. There’s lots of monolithic stones or bronze blokes on horses. I don’t know that I have a strong opinion on how public art should relate to the public exactly. I’m probably the wrong artist to ask, in that I consider myself to be a very selfish artist. I make only what I please, and only for myself. There’s definitely an uncomfortable ethical dimension to that, in that if I’m placing these works, uncommissioned, into public space, then surely I have some sort of duty to please the public. I’m afraid I spend little or no time considering that. I’m just absorbed in doing what I do, and then

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when a piece is in place I’m vaguely surprised and gratified if people like it, but not destroyed if they don’t. Having said that a lot of my public pieces are somewhat socially engaged and often involve the public in the process. For example, you mention Breathing Room in the next question – that was actually a very political project involving the reclamation of commercial public space for the community, and it was pivotal to the concept that the public took part both in donating their paper and helping build the finished piece. I’m a big fan of the statue in Royal Exchange Square in Glasgow that always has a traffic cone on its head. I love how the people have claimed this rather austere and bland piece of public art, interacted with it, and made it their own. I love how the public of Glasgow have arrived at a collective consciousness in this endeavor. I definitely think once you’ve released a piece into the world you can no longer control what it is – it will be as many different things as consciousnesses that encounter it, and trying to counter that is futile. So – yes – I sort of expect my art to evolve and be organic once it is placed in the environment. Also, inevitably at the point of installation things don’t go how you thought you they would in your head beforehand. Some improvisation is inevitable. Personally, because of the nature of my disabilities, I find that really difficult. In fact I find the whole process of experimentation, which is integral to every part of my process (because I’m always using a different skillset!), deeply uncomfortable. It seems, for me, that being deeply psychologically uncomfortable is sort of integral to my art production! Another interesting work of yours that has particularly impacted on us and on which

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we would like to spend some words is entitled Breathing Room: what has mostly impressed of this work is the way it forces the viewers' perceptual parameters in order to question the ambiguous dichotomy between the elusive notions of presence and absence. How did you come up with the main idea?

I hadn’t thought of it in those terms, exactly. The idea was in response to the theme of Fringe MK (who commissioned me) of ownership of public space. I decided to reclaim some of the shopping centre commercial space for the community using donated paper from civic organizations, individuals, charities etc. This then created an organic ‘living and breathing’ colonization in the space. For me, of course, the piece also shared the deeper questions explored by my other similar works – that by changing the function of the paper, whilst not its structure, from information- bearing thing to physical building block, you fundamentally change it’s nature. The public response way exceeded anything I had anticipated, which was so lovely. The experience was immersive and other-worldly, yet calming and meditative. Many thought it was like being inside a lung. I was so happy to have created a living organic space. The ambience created by Breathing Room reminds us of the concept of non lieu elaborated by French anthropologist Marc Augé: conveying both metaphoric and descriptive research, this work constructs of a concrete aesthetic that works on both subconscious and conscious level. As the late Franz West did in his installations, this work shows unconventional features in the way it deconstructs perceptual images in order to assemble them in a collective imagery, urging the viewers to a process of self-reflection. Artists are always interested in probing to see what is beneath the surface: maybe one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your view about this?

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I hadn’t come across the notion of ‘Non Lieu’ before, but having just read up on it, it’s definitely an interesting idea in relation to my work. Particularly my street interventions, I think, which are usually in underpasses. I find those places of intersections of paths, and ways that go ‘under’ other ways, particularly fascinating, although I’m not sure why. It is something to do with collective carving of direction; but yes, the idea of borrowing the space, whilst rejecting ownership of it, is very intriguing. In terms of the role of the artist, I definitely think part of our job description is to provoke! I think if you have made the viewer reflect upon something or experience something, then that is a good thing. But at the same time I don’t think that should define whether or not you’re succeeding as an artist. I’m not sure what the criterion for that would be, but it can’t be defined by what is reflected back at the art work from the viewer. Your approach accomplishes an effective investigation about how our minds impose categories upon a chaos. German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". What is your opinion about it? And in particular how do you conceive the narrative and especially the visual unity for your works?

I suppose my interpretation of that would be that we live in a post-modern era, so it is naïve or disingenuous to just ignore what that means. However, I’m not sure I agree that that is the artist’s problem. I conceive of this quite diagrammatically in my head, like a bunch of concentric circles. In the centre there is no questioning. In the next one out, there is self-awareness of media, and

narrative. And you can keep taking one step further back, into a further circle of ‘meta’ and narrative, and keep being cleverer and cleverer! And it’s probably important that people do that – but those people are theorists and critical thinkers. I think the artist retains the right to inhabit whatever level circle they want, and other’s can impose what narratives and meta-narratives they want. Having said that, obviously my work is hyperaware of these plural perspectives – it’s precisely the thing that I’m often exploring! Your works often induce the viewers to abandon themselves to free associations: when artists leaves their works open to interpretation, it is like giving the viewer permission to see anything in your works without anyone ever being wrong. Has that ever proven to be a problem?

As I mentioned above, I think that is an inevitability – once created you can pretend you still own the work and can dictate it’s meaning, but it’s not true! It can mean what it means to you, and it will mean what it means to others, whether you like it or not. Even if it was so unambiguous that everybody in the world roughly agreed on what the work was about (just as a thought experiment), it will still be experienced differently in every consciousness. However, I definitely experience and sympathise with the frustration of this as an artist. I often watch review shows and get quite angry with critics. They often criticise a work for not being something that it was never trying to be in the first place. I think being an active viewer, and certainly being critic, should involve an act of good faith – and that is first trying to meet the work on it’s own terms. Whilst accepting the caveats above (that inevitably meaning is shifting, organic, and different for everyone) you also

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owe it to the work to first try to appreciate what it’s trying to be. Decide if it succeeds or fails on those terms, first. So often there’s no effort to do that at all, and reviewers seem to proliferate spurious criticisms about what the piece should have been about, which is mostly irrelevant – that is really more about how they, as critics, see the world, rather than about the piece they’re criticising. I think there’s a real contradiction with respect to this in my work and my psychology, in that I’m clearly, vocationally, creating work because I’m desperate to be understood and to share my different world with normal, neurotypical people. But at the same time I completely appreciate the utter futility of that, and end up just producing for myself. Over these years you works have been internationally exhibited in several occasions, including your recent solo Spooky Action at Proximity. One of the hallmarks of your works is the capability to establish direct relation with the audience, deleting any conventional barrier between the idea you explore and who receipt and cosequently elaborate them. So before taking leave from this interesting conversation I would like to pose a a question about the nature of the relation with your audience: in particular, do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decisionmaking process in terms of what type of language for a particular context?

I think I’ve probably mostly answered this above – no, selfishly, I neither consider my audience nor tailor my language to them. Although, perversely, I agree that, despite that, I am mostly working directly with an audience, because most of what I do bypasses gallerists and curators, who might be regarded as middle-men or interpretors. However, that’s not a deliberate strategy on my part; it’s a combination of doing what I feel I need to in terms of process, which is

often environmental intervention, and the fact that I am an outsider artist with no network or connections in the art world, so I think curators and gallerists are largely unaware of my existence! Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Anna: would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

I’ve been doing a lot of political work lately, for example I recently showed my feminist piece ‘Berger’ in London, and my piece ‘The Political Is Personal’ is currently being shown in Conway Hall. I have two photo-based projects that I’m slowly forwarding, one about inequality called ‘Capitalism Shrugged’ and one about natural hair. I’d also like to do more physics projects, and have in mind a sound piece about entropy amongst other things. I have several more guerrilla paper interventions in the offing over the next couple of months – both quite political about my local area. The main way I’d like to expand my practise is digitally, and would like to collaborate with a coder. I want to make installations that interact even more directly with the environment by being able to respond to it. I also want to be able to expand the definition of ‘environment’ to sometimes be a digital environment. Whatever direction my work takes, inevitably there will always be strands relating to outsiderness, disability, and the nature of reality in my work.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Anna Berry

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A di Dulza Lives and works in Tel Aviv and Berlin

n my work, I seek to investigate the evolution of ideas and knowledge and how they recreate and engineer the reality to which we are subjected. I examine the information (“memes”) that is transmitted and preserved through humans and various systems of technology. I pursue methods to examine virtual systems, within which we are situated (physically, organically, politically, economically, etc.). Through positioning based on digital media, I seek to both cast doubt on our patterns of thinking that are entrenched through media culture and expose how each medium functions as a “message” under the auspices of “the truth” and efficiency. I attempt to produce a dialectical fusion that operates as a system of symbols that have literal and conceptual meaning. Some of the symbols are manifested overtly through advertisements and the news while others are covert and therefore nearly impossible to expose and trace. I examine how, subconscious messages that stimulate our most basic social tendencies are transmitted through light and sound. There are messages that are not situated in these terms, for example, like experience that is intended exclusively for our body and which is elicited through effects like pace, duration, time, flickering, continuity, structure, sound, volume, emotions, movement, etc. These experiences can deconstruct consciousness, thereby creating a situation that facilitates the differentiation and examination of the system of symbols just as we were taught to identify.

I regard each position as a formative event, as a system of meanings and occurrences that are reduced to one possibility. Through the combination of light and sound as raw material, the positioning transpires in time and works from the possibility of being submerged within them. I seek to create an experience of observing reality as ”nature”; not as inanimate nature but as a living object that evolves almost naturally. This involves decelerating time, in some instances to create a meditative experience and at others to create heightened expectation. This is meant to create observation anchored in time and place, in the sense of the political space; observation that is intended to react to, think about, and criticize mechanisms of control, supervision, and concealment. I strive to create a meta-structure: positioning that creates systems of exchange between information and ideas and objects, each of which contains introspective reasoning of a different order. The goal is through the use of sound, light and form, to produce a conversion between: the language of simple machine code to high-level programming, language of humans to language of animals, language of the past to language of the future, language of commerce to universal language of our nature. This entails objects based on the architecture of hardware software (consciousness – body) that we are built from and which constitutes the boundary that cannot be crossed. Adi Dulza

"Cube" (In-Formation), installation, 300X240X700 cm, Video and sound: 00:29 sec. Projection and sound of a fluorescent cube lighting on a rear screen sewn to a black felt (300X240 cm). photo: Liron Sandman

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Adi Dulza An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Tel Aviv based multidisciplinary artist Adi Dulza's work explores a variety of issues that affects our unstable contemporary age, centering his investigation on the evolution of ideas and knowledge: his multidisciplinary installations urge the viewers to rethink about notions of language, perception and the conflictual relationship between conceptual and literal meanings. In his recent work entitled I Have a Dream he brings to a new level of significance the elusive relationship between the language of machine code and the language of humans, to unveil the consequences of our technology driven era. One of the most convincing aspect of Dulza's approach is the way it accomplishes an insightful inquiry into the evolution of ideas and how they engineer the reality to which we are subjected: we are really pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating artistic production. Hello Adi and a warm welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and after your studies in the fields of Interdisciplinary Fine Arts and Architecture, you nurtured your education with a M.F.A that you received from the prestigious Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Tel Aviv: how do these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? And in particular, how does your

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(Ex-Formation) Photo: Ziv Cohen

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cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to artmaking and to the aesthetic problem in general?

This questions throws me back a few years. Already as a child, I used to look at buildings and bridges and think: these structures are as concrete as the cement they are made of, they imitate forms and structures from nature, but at the same time, they also mirror a concept, something that is only in our minds; I hoped that if I’ll be perceptive enough, I’ll be able to penetrate into the realm where abstract ideas are transformed into representations—like a bridge, like a building. This led me to think deeply about the mother of abstractions, mathematics, and the infinity and it was both thrilling and frustrating to try illustrate my thoughts on math in colors and objects. When I decided it’s time for me to start university, architecture was my first choice. The thought of visualizing a four-dimensional living space and learning the practice of how to turn these complex visions it into being excited me. However, something has happened to me during my years in school and I understood that what initially kindled my imagination and desire to study architecture was to learn the tools, both the practical and the intellectual tools of the profession. Upon graduation, it became clear to me that I’m not primarily interested in making living spaces any longer. Instead, I wanted to turn my ideas and thoughts into something else and further explore what my mind can create. The fine art school of Beit Berl welcomed me with open arms. I toyed with textile, sculpturing and painting. I had good fun playing with different materials and I learned a great deal of techniques, but I kept thinking about how to give my vision of abstract similarities and mathematics shape and form and of how to take things that are sometimes

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Untitled (In-Formation), Installation view, Florescent lamps and Calcareous rock photo: Liron Sandman

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Florescent cube (In-Formation), detail photo: Liron Sandman

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too difficult to comprehend, and make a physical exemplification that tells a story, that conveys through color, shape, structure, time, and symbols a greater truth about the nature of people and concepts. I was, however, still struggling to unshackle from the strict education I received in architecture school. I felt like they are chaining me to an ideal that isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t mine, blocking me from realizing my own voice. I ran away as far as I could. However, I also noticed that my experience gives me an upper hand in compression to other art students who were untrained in the methods I previously studied, methods that required high level of accuracy and an eye for detail. It took me years to find my voice again. It was an interesting process. I had a lot to play with: my own aesthetic inclination and spirit, the discipline I learned in architecture school and the new skills I learned in art school. To this very day, these are forces kicking in my stomach like a threesome in a pregnant womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s belly. Your approach coherently encapsulates several disciplines and reveals an incessant search of an organic investigation about psycho-physiological importance of contemplation in nature, and the results convey together a coherent and consistent sense of harmony and unity. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.adidulza.com/ in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process and set up, we would like to ask you how did you developed your style and how do you conceive your works.

In the five years interval between art school and graduate school, I locked myself

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in a studio. I needed to know what burns inside of me. What happens if I follow my instincts and experiments, this time, with outsiders’ guidance and reflection only per my request, only when I was certain I want or need it. I wanted to explore, experience and dig deeper. I flirted with different materials, techniques, scales, bodies of work—you name it. I learned my limits and came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as an idea that is impossible to implement, it’s only a matter of finding the road that goes there. It was there that something just synced in my mind about the relationship between my intellectual, scientific, philosophic and political inclination and my artwork. In many ways, my work is the process of marrying thoughts with doing. An idea, a theory, or a concept would occupy my mind for days or weeks at a time; it’s sometimes dark, other times it fills me with joy and curiosity. Then I try to think of how I can convey the turmoil and thought process in my head and make it an experience, then I ask myself if I can recreate this experience for another person by using materials, projections, sound and objects. The birth of a new project is almost always a mix of fears and excitements, because I’m trying to give a face and name to something that exists only as a concept, and since this task isn’t simple, I never know if this time it will work, or worse, that time will run out before my project is ripe. Sometimes I’m afraid: perhaps my initial vision was too ambitious or unspecific enough. But then again, when I’m able to invoke in someone a novel idea, a sense of knowledge he never had thought of or encountered, all through an installation— that’s the high level of communication I’m striving for. There is something metaphysical about taking something that is absent from the physical reality such as a subjectiveindividual experience and being able to invoked it anew in the viewers mind, making

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Imagine" (In-Formation), 116x190x250 cm, video: 02:18 min. Silkscreen print on 15 carton boxes, Wood construction, IPad screen. photo: Liron Sandman

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I Have a Dream, detail. Photo: Youval Hai

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him think about something that was never before a solid idea their thoughts in that way. For this special edition of ARTiculAction we have selected I Have a Dream, an interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once caught our attention of this work is the way it brings to a new level of significance the elusive relationship between the language of machine code and the language of humans, urging us to rethink and sometimes even subvert the way we relate ourselves to such ubiquitous concepts: while walking our readers through the genesis of this project, would you shed light on the way your main source of inspirations?

On the very basic level, this work is the fruit of few topics I looked into. I thought of the terms: synchronic and diachronic, that form the parallel terms – thinking and being, but are more part of structural way of thinking—let me unpack this. I tried to figure out what’s behind being able to fathom meaning. Is it an exclusively human talent? Is it more primal than that? How does the ability to conceive changes in different realms? All of these questions lead to the fatal one: does “meaning” mean, or could mean, anything to a computer? The diachronic allows us to conceive time passing with our own memory; it compares what happened in the past against the “now”; the synchronic is the order that includes the flow of everything. It is the complete group of all the things that exist and organized inside of it, that is moving without explainable causal order. It exist beyond explanation. Between the different orders there is a link, a meeting that allows direct or indirect effect on each other. This way of thinking, that exists only in the

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diachronic order, interprets that synchronic and gives it meaning. In the project I tried to ask myself: What is the nature of the moment of change and transition from synchronic order to the diachronic? I wanted to create an architectural form that is a skeleton of changes and dispositions of meanings, like in the architecture of hardware to software. Initially I wanted to build and installation that fits human scale, which a person can move through: from one side you move inside of it and pass between erected panels, where each panel represents a moment in time and the experience is of a diachronic progress. On the other hand, I wanted to look between the panels, and reveal the synchronic that is exemplified in the dissolvent of the complete image, cut by the panels. This is a point of view that doesn’t allow an understanding of conclusion or image of what is reflected through the panels. - That the computer is at, that doesn’t have autonomous diachronic point of view. After I built a model, I decided that the model itself is what I want to work with, and from that it evolved to its scale in relation to the space. In fact, I reversed the roles: now we look at the object from outside, not from within. I fused into this object the meaning of translation between machine language and that of men, of nature, using light as particles through a tube or a cable, a binary language of black and white lines, the sound of machine beat from the black wall, and screening Dr. King’s speech with it’s human aspiration for justice and equality. In this project I translated this speech—a speech that is a momentous and everlasting instant in history—into a

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I Have a Dream, 260X92X60 cm, Animation: 05:18 min. Iron construction, kraft chipboard sheets, aluminum poles, 2 projectors, 2 speakers. Photo: Youval Hai

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Night Lamp (Ex-Formaition), readymade, fluorescent lamp, Silkscreen print on Plexiglas. Photo: Ziv Cohen

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binary-aesthetic language. You can see the way that the machine takes this speech, takes this moment, take the significance of the words and translates it to abstract. What is left of the primal meaning of it? What is lost? The way that information goes through the machine and translates it into light, to a binary code, and at the end it becomes just one flickering dot. The machine is basically doing something very democratic; because for the machine it does not matter which information passes through it, nor the significance of it. It keeps all the information without any difference of caste, gender or category. At the end it is all dissolves into numbers, or letters, or lighting, or whatever the machine does to read it, or makes for us to read it. There is something in the way that this machine operates which allowing us to see the democratic way about, by the way that everybody and very thing is equal, but there is also something sad about that operation because the machine does not have the ability to make any decisions, just out of anything. So in the same time it is democratic - it is meaningless in that political sense. So maybe it is telling us something about the efficiency of democracy. It is meaningless when it is actually working, as in the case of the machine, otherwise it is humanized â&#x20AC;&#x201C; paradoxically as it may sound. I Have a Dream also questions impact of cutting edge techniques in our unstable and ever changing contemporary age. The impetuous way modern technology has nowadays came out on the top has dramatically revolutionized the concept of Art: in a certain sense, we are forced to rethink about the intimate aspect of the materiality of an artwork itself, since just few years ago it was a tactile materialization of an idea. We are sort of convinced that new media will definitely fill the apparent dichotomy between art

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and technology and we will dare to say that Art and Technology are going to assimilate one to each other... what's your point about this?

Our attraction to machines, like to many other things, has many layers: on the one hand we are fascinated by machines and the way they operate, move and configure information, and on the other hand we are also intimidated, even fear of the machines. I ask myself, whether there will be a time where machines wouldn’t need us anymore, that our thoughts could live independently as electrical manuscripts of our minds hosted on a hard drive. One of the things that we see, is that technology minimized the physicality of machines—a computer the size of a cellphone today can storage so much more information than a room-size computing machine in the 1980’s. The most interesting paradox behind this question, as I see it is the fear we have of the machines. In this work I apply a mechanism that can tell us about the fear of the machine. Of course: art deals with contemporary time in its contemporary ways. But today we are concerned that the machines would not need us anymore, even find us stepping on their toes; when our knowledge abundantly stored outside the human minds in technological archives, far from reach, to the point that humans memes would become technological memes – technology apparatus would be liberated from being subject to humans. I try to re-create the machine as something new that allows people to realize and understand both how technology functions, and the vision of technology. “I have a dream" does this through the speech of Luther king that embodied by passing

"untitled" (Ex-Formaition), 120X70X60 cm, aluminum a Photo: Ziv Cohen

through the structure of the machine which giving it a form. I use technology in a way that allows me to investigate technology itself, in the deepest and radical meaning of it. Despite what I said before, I don’t think we should fear technology but we need to be wise about it, think not only about performance, or how to elevate its market price in a

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nd wood poles, plexiglass, spray, clay and led light.

capital driven economy, but also think hard about what it does to us, what it can offer us, what we should want from it. The next step with this train of thoughts should be, how to use technology as a society, how to use technology in favor of society. I think that in this process or realization, art should take an important role, because itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s often ahead of itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s time in expressing

things that would only be intellectually understood later on. In other words, the symbiotic relationship between art and technology interests me sometimes as a thinker, other times as an artists, and oftentimes as both. Another interesting work of yours that has particularly impacted on us and on which we would like to spend some words is

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Untitled" (Ex-Formaition), detail. Photo: Ziv Cohen

entitled Sea Tranquillity, which is a part of the In-Formation project. Drawing from highly symbolic and evokative elements from contemporary imagery, this installation provokes direct relations in the viewers and accomplishes the difficult task of going beyond the surface of communication. We find this aspect particularly interesting since it is probabily the only way to accomplish the

vital restoration you pursued in this work, concerning both the individuals and thier place in our ever changing societies: how do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space? In particular, what kind of reactions did you expect to provoke in the viewers?

The interesting part about this work is that I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t need to use the actual T.V.; the

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TV: consumerist messages turned into imagery. Both literarily, figuratively and metaphorically this installation shows that the shell reflects the shallowness of it’ substance. I’m showing you that watching the empty boxes is no different than watching the T.V. In some ways, it requires the viewer even to think harder than if he was looking at a screen. By using an overwhelming amount of boxes in different sizes but similar shapes, I wanted to recreate the urban sphere in which we are flooded with information, more than just one TV, or flicking screens from every corner that bombards us with conceptions of music, art, sexuality and taste.

packing box was enough. I didn’t need to put the viewer inform of a flicking screen, seeing the commercials on the cardboard box alone expresses the falsity of its content. That is because the image is still the image – the image of a TV on the TV box reflects the same thing as the screen of the actual

Sea of tranquility also investigates about the theme of free choice and the role of the media in the process of consciousness change: while lots of artists from the contemporary scene, as Ai WeiWei or more recently Jennifer Linton, use to convey open socio-political criticism in their works, you seem more interested to hint the direction, inviting the viewers to a process of self-reflection that may lead to subvert a variety of usual, almost stereotyped cultural categories. Do you consider that your works could be considered political in a certain sense or did you seek to maintain a more neutral approach? And in particular, what could be in your opinion the role that an artist could play in the contemporary society?

Artists play various roles in society. Sometime we are clowns, other times judges. In Sea of Tranquility, and in other works, I ask the viewers to think, and let their minds work while their eyes scrutinize the work. I want the viewer to be a judge of

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Ex-Formaition, installation view. Photo: Ziv Cohen

the work, and as a result become a judge of his own thinking and of the world. In my work Imagine I further developed this idea. On one side of my installation was a sculpture of a telescopic construction made of a cardboard of a fictitious company, “Imagine – Good Life.” The boxes are cut so they become progressively smaller, moving toward a vanishing point where there is a moving image: an excerpt from a video documentation of the phone call between U.S. President Richard Nixon and the Apollo 11 astronauts who landed on the moon. "Sea of tranquility" deals with these issues in the macro sense, but I would like to amplify

these questions specifically through the work "Imagine.” "Imagine" is about a very specific moment, which is quite abstract, since we still don’t really know if the landing on the moon actually happened or was it staged. Some believe Stanly Kubrick directed the clip on the top of a secret U.S military zone named Erea 51, which its surface is very similar to the moon. In the work "imagine", the way that the information is transmitted to the viewer is by a documentation of the telephone conversation between President Nixon and the astronauts on the moon. It is delivered through a tunnel shape of cut T.V boxes, which in its tag end focuses only a fragment of a big screen on Nixon leaps moving, in between the image of Alex eyes

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Untitled" (Ex-Formaition), 170X130X140 cm, video: 1 min. aluminum poles, spray, metal wire, projection. Photo: Ziv Cohen

on the cardboard box, the iconic image of Stanly Kubrick's Clock Work Orange protagonist. This event is all about politics, about how information comes to us, about the secrets of the democratic systems, of the use of technology and the mass media; we are not really free because there is always already something bigger that makes these decisions for us, which makes us think that we are free to choose. And even if you go to our most individual micro decisions you would see that even these decisions are not ours, and freedom is been already taken from us. Also our most ideological thoughts are not actually ours; they are already 'ready-made' in the history of thoughts. So it deals about how information creates our imaginary

consciousness which conclusions reality by utilizing of media. I have tried defining this motif in which mass production constitute ideology; and to point to the occurrence moment in which myth is being created. Art should make us see things anew, make us notice that what we might first think is simple or common is in fact hiding secretes undersurface. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s making the dull relatable and obvious truths be rethought of. It could also be the ultimate expression of the mindâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s freedom, of exploration that is both internal and has an external outcome. Your successful attempt to produce a dialectical fusion that operates as a system of symbols creates a compelling non linear

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Night Lamp (Ex-Formaition), detail. Photo: Ziv Cohen

narrative that, walking the thin line between conceptual and literal meanings, establishes direct relations with the viewers. German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". What is your opinion about it? And in particular how do you conceive the narrative for your works?

Narrative is our way to relate to the world and to each other. We perpetually engineer and imagine our individual relation and reasoning of reality. Speculative realist philosopher Quentin Meillassoux' said in his

first book After Finitude that "the absence of reason in everything as a limit that thought encounters in its search for the ultimate reason. We must understand that this absence of reason is, and can only be the ultimate property of the entity". Our thoughts are constantly searching for ways to explain the ultimate reason of being, of why we are here. There is always an unclosed gap of nothingness, a vacuum of sorts, of void. I try to relate this absences in the work. I use narratives as broken fragments to state conflicts by their attachment with other parts of the complete structure, of the whole

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Untitled" (Ex-Formaition), detail. Photo: Ziv Cohen

mechanism of objects and space, and the subjective experiences of the viewer. Its a nonlinear narrative that implies bigger causes that confronts bigger paradoxes. Maybe, that there is no ultimate reasoning at all - and reshapes the struggle that one can never consolidate to a linguistic comprehension, free from any paradox. In other words, maybe there isn’t a reason to things. Maybe it’s all coincidental. The universe is a coincident, we are here by a random turn of events and in 20 billion years we will have no memory or remain, there will be other universes perhaps. That’s what I’m trying to convey in my works. The feeling that there is no guiding hand, that everything

is just a paradox upon a paradox that are impossible to unravel and then form in a human language. Perhaps human language cannot avoid the paradoxes of the universe. At the same time, I am moving forward by continuing to think about abstract concepts and of ways to give them tangible manifestations. I try to fuse within my works narratives that operate by representation and symbolisms, which are both organized by language. The latter constitutes our public consciousness, our ideology, formulating a faithful and obedient subject, a believer or even a skeptic subject; the former is capturing and activating us to function as components of a machine - by time based

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Untitled" (Ex-Formaition), detail. Photo: Ziv2Cohen 8

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experiences such as sound and light, which directed exclusively at our body, I try to establish an underline stream which catches sub-consciousness perceptions, which orienting and organizing us in the rhythm of traffic. My current project, named "Ex-formation" now runs at Gabirol gallery in Tel-Aviv: it has been supported by the Tel Aviv Municipality with the Yehoshua Rabinowitz Foundation for Arts, Tel Aviv. In this installation I investigated the term ex-formation, coined by Danish science writer Tor NĂ¸rretranders in his book "The User Illusion" published in 1998, which means explicitly discarded information. He said that, "Effective communication depends on a shared body of knowledge between the persons communicating. In using words, sounds, and gestures, the speaker has deliberately thrown away a huge body of information, though it remains implied. This shared context is called exformation." - Wikipedia. I tried to combine this concept with the "System Approach" theory, through primary abstract structures and elements that differ in scale, shape and function. All of those structures imply latent knowledge that is out of reach. Through formations of light that are obscure and disturbing or by use of color as coatings, or even by braking structures to their immanent fragments, projecting forms of light as a self-reflation image - back to the structure itself. Eventually, this is the most non-narrative project which I have done in a long time. Although it also seems to me that it has a non-confronted narrative or even a more concealed narrative which is hidden between the structures. Your works could be considered multisensorial biographies that unveil the aesthetic consequences of a combination between tactile, concrete reality and the abstract concept of symbol, exploring

unexpected aspects of the functionality of language on the aesthetic level: as Gerhard Richter once remarked, "my concern is never art, but always what art can be used for": what is your opinion about the functional aspect of Art in the contemporary age?

In one way, it is crucial for art to be free and independent of boundaries, including liberation from our conception of art itself. This is a precondition for innovativeness. At the same time, art needs to communicate with the world, concretely, in order to be able to say something at all, even if itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s abstract. For this reason I think that the role of art in our day and age is to allow people to see what they cannot see alone or merely through the public sphere. The function of art is to make the invisible visible, and expose what is hidden behind the aesthetic and reveal what is laying beneath the surface; to unveil the hidden meanings that exist everywhere. Maybe through that we can try to better understand out surroundings and the power-dynamics surrounding us, which is trying to manipulate our way of thinking. Over these years your works have been exhibited in several occasions, including your recent solo In-Formation at the Al HaTzuk Gallery curated by Maya Kashevitz. One of the hallmarks of your practice is the capability to create direct involvement with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

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Prior to language, I think of space. Entering the exhibition spaces changes my plans. I could decide on doing one thing, then when I study the space I realize I need to something else entirely.

Rembrandt painting can react by pointing out to the detailed smoothness of the style. My works demand the viewer to look, inquire, and then return his glance to himself, and ask, what does this does to me.

In any particular site I strive to create as a meta-structure: considering the movements in the space as a system of exchange between objects, ideas and living things. I regard this wholeness as a formative event, which formulates all my precursory assumptions back to the start by positing the viewer as an unstudied part of it.

Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Adi. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects?

The most crucial moment for me comes after installing the exhibition, when I get see how my work meets the audience. By doing my works I constantly think about this meeting: Would they be able to understand? What will they understand? What will they get from the exhibition? Sometimes my work is a manifestation of a thing that I even cannot give a name, but needs to expressed. Will they see it as I do? Perhaps they can see something that I cannot. Learning from my viewers is an integral part of my artmaking. My thoughts on concepts and aesthetics exist in my mind in forms and images ten times more richly than in my exhibitions; but only through those exhibition, I can reveal them to others. In some ways, being an artist is creating a unique language with your audience—they need to get it. And when I listen to their reaction, I can fine-tune my instruments of communication. Since the reactions are so diverse, I also learn a great deal on human nature. I give them a taste of myself, a little glance of what goes inside my head, and from the way it affects them, I know what they like, what impresses them, what touches them, what bothered or encouraged them. Sometimes the conceptual nature of some of my workings invokes conceptual reactions. A person who looks at a

First off, thanks for this interview. I don’t do it much, but I like stringing words into sentences. It’s a good way to reflect on my own work and think about my art deeply. How do you see your work evolving?

It’s hard to know. My work and I are part of the same, and my thoughts rapidly take me to different places. What I do know is that I’m not done dealing with some of the questions I invoked in my previous works, especially on how conceptual meanings can wear different shapes and forms. I’m currently working on an exciting project with two close friends, an artist and a curator that inspire me. We look to do something that will challenge various ways of artmaking, exhibition spaces and their functionality—keep an eye for it, it’ll be cool. On a more earthly note, I’m soon leaving Tel Aviv. I’m still deliberating the options for relocation, but my aim is to find a home where I can challenge myself, both intellectually and from the perspective of artmaking, to get to know new artistic communities, and continue to live in the void of nothingness.

An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Untitled (Ex-Formaition), 400X105X105 cm, video: 1 min. uluminum, spray, fluorescent lamps, projector. Photo: Ziv Cohen

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Dalia Smayze

J ohny Deluna Lives and works in Toronto, Canada

An artist's statement

believe that humor is the best way to connect with others because if we can laugh at ourselves there is still hope. Most artists want to be appreciated for their unique and inspiring work and most art lovers say they want to see something fresh and original. But, history shows us that truly original art runs a high risk of rejection. So all we can do is be honest, brave and stay true to our vision.

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Johny Deluna An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Toronto based artist Johny Deluna's work reveals a stimulating fusion between abstraction and representation, encapsulating both symbolic elements capable of triggering the viewers' perceptual parameters. His works are pervaded with unconventional still effective storytelling and the vivacious tones that mark out his palette reject any conventional classification, that draws the viewers on a journey int he liminal area in which everyday experience and dream-like dimension find an effective point of convergence. One of the most impressive aspects of Deluna's work is his successful attempt to immortalize his true, direct vision to share a captivating visual experience with his audience. We are very pleased to introduce our readers to this multifaceted artist. Hello Johny thank you for joining us and welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview we would pose you a couple of introductory questions about your background. While you have once remarked that your first love is visual art, you worked as a writer, cinematographer and in new product development: how have these experiences influenced your evolution as an artist? Moreover, is there

anything in particular that fuels your creativity as an artist?

Thank you. I really appreciate your interest in my art. Most artists work in relative isolation so there is usually some anxiety when the finished work is revealed. I’m always anxious. “Is it garbage? Is it good? Am I being truthful? Am I playing it too safe? Will others get what I am trying to say? Am I just crazy? So it’s reassuring to feel that my art resonates with others. To answer your question about my past activities, I started painting at age 4 by the time I was 8 I expanded my artistic expressions by using anything that was available in our basement or rescued from garbage bins. I guess I was like the sorcerer’s apprentice - but without a sorcerer to guide me. I glued, nailed, sprinkled, tied, melted, and painted in or on or through anything. These experiments went on for many years. They weren’t particularly beautiful or insightful, but they were damn interesting and they definitely amused me while I was doing them. These artistic explorations were often smelly, bizarre and sometimes dangerous. Once I was working in my bedroom. I was using a butane torch to melt old records, powdered detergent, copper wire and red paint globs onto a sheet of masonite. I was pretty sure this piece

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would be my greatest artistic triumph. An unprecedented stroke of genius, one that would eclipse all of my other visions. And one that was sure to strike envy in the hearts of some famous artists too. I was almost finished and I lifted my masterpiece to admire it. As I raised it, a cloud of smoke erupted beneath it - the floor was on fire. Fortunately it was just the varnish burning but it interfered with completion of my vision, so Picasso’s reputation remained unchallenged. Painting remains my first obsession, but I had to make a living so I got involved in many things; new product design, script writing, cinematography and advertising. Over the years and regardless of the activity, one rule remains paramount. Never be boring. My job as an artist is to create something new, fresh and interesting. Not every concept I explore is unique, but there is no excuse for wrapping good ideas in faded old clothes. Your paintings reveal an insightful combination between abstraction and reminders to perceptual reality, you mix together into effective balance: the results convey together a consistent sense of unity that rejects any conventional classification. We would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.johnydeluna.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production. While walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you to shed light on your main source of inspiration.

My inspirations come from everyday events, poignant moments, snatches of

words between strangers, or even reflecting on my own inner conflicts. A new piece usually starts with a fleeting glimpse of something, a curious phrase, or some simple concept. At this point I start playing with all sorts of different ideas without regard for the original concept. I never try to force or direct my intuitions. I try to let my subconscious process discover the image. Over a period of days or weeks the idea takes shape. Many times however, a small aspect of the main idea takes hold and drags me down a more interesting path. This is why I never force the process - I let the image reveal itself. If a painting starts to look like my original idea I usually abandon it because I know I’m ignoring my most valuable asset - my intuition. I am happiest when I look at a finished piece and it’s a stranger to me and I really don’t know where it came from. Whether painting or writing, I was always looking for some absolutely new and brilliant insight. One that would not be boring or trivial. Many times this extreme self criticism culminated in dark dejected silence. Then one day everything was turned upside down. ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ is a well known song I had heard thousands of times. Countless performers had tried to improve on Judy Garland’s version - but none succeeded. They merely echoed Judy’s version. Her version was The Version. There was no other. Then by chance I heard a Hawaiian man named Israel Kamakawiwo'ole singing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’. It stunned me because it was so deeply evocative. It was a fresh new song. He didn’t destroy the song to make it

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unique, he just sang from his heart. It was wonderful. It was then that I realized that I could create paintings around common themes. Ideas that anyone could understand. But I would tell the story my way. I would use my own visual language to tease, provoke and encourage people to experience these ideas in their own way. My first painting using this new approach was ‘Trust Me’ For this special issue of ARTiculAction we have selected The Kiss and Song To The Moon, a couple of stimulating works from your recent production that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: when walking our readers through the genesis of these paintings we would like to ask you how did you develop your style and how do you conceive your works. In particular, what’s a typical day in your studio like?

Many years ago painted large pieces in a very aggressive gestural style. If I was lucky the process worked and life was good, but one wrong move and the piece was a horrible mess. A huge waste of canvas, paint and enthusiasm. The mountain of failed paintings towered over the small pile of successful ones. My current painting vocabulary began as an experiment about 8 years ago. I was given some polyvinyl and was playing around on it with a calligraphy pen and liquid acrylic paint. I liked the way the bright paint sat on the vinyl. I was sketching from time to time, but had not painted in many years and I reflected on the frustrations of my old painting technique and and thought - big

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Song To The Moon

Surprise Ending

bold strokes can mean a big bold messes. I had an embarrassingly simple idea. In the worst case, tiny dots could only produce tiny mistakes. This might be a different way to go.

this. I’m lost. It’s not me. It’s impossible.” Fortunately I kicked myself in the butt and said “Nobody is waiting for this painting. What’s the rush?” About 9 weeks later I finished it.

My first piece ‘Trust Me’ was a quite ambitious. I didn’t know what I was doing so I cautiously began working in the upper left hand corner. Three weeks later I was still there, adding dots. I wanted to quit. I told myself “I can’t do

I was very surprised and delighted with the overall effect. It had just about every colour possible. It was raw and uncontrolled. It was bright and crazy, unpredictable and emotionally strong. I could never have imagined the final

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Half Truth Most Of The Time

Choose Wisely

product in my wildest dreams, but there it was. However what I liked most, was the fact that I did something that I thought I could never do. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m working on painting number 38 now.

tired and bending over the work table can be difficult. I have to be very mindful of where the canvas is wet. It is easy to accidentally smudge the work with my arm as I reach over to paint another area or to drip or spill paint onto a finished area.

A day in the studio: I work flat on an unstretched canvas. I drape it over my table and use an old calligraphy pen to apply the liquid acrylic. I rarely use a brush. I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t work more than two hours without a break because my eyes get

I have a very small, cramped basement studio with a low ceiling which is only 5 cm above my head. I have to walk sideways to squeeze between my work

Collateral Damage2

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Pretty Birds Go To Heaven

tables. I use two LED flood lamps to illuminate the work because no light comes through the little windows. The

reason I share this information, is because I had decent studios in the past. I was thinking about going back to

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painting for a long time, but I couldn’t get going. I blamed “no space” as the reason.

Fortunately I came to the conclusion that this is what I have - I need to do what I can do in the space I have or just shut up

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The Strange Events Of May 4

and stop dreaming about painting. In spite of the cramped studio, I have never been more productive. Typically I work

on fairly large pieces around 102 CM x 150 CM and have produced works as large as 91 CM. X 173 CM. So for anyone

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Port Hope

holding holding back until the ideal situation arises. Just dig in and do what you can right now. There is no better time. Having said that If anyone knows of a big, bright and cheap studio in Barcelona or on the Amalfi Coast let me know :) The Kiss explores the multiple meanings of a simple kiss. A kiss can express many things depending on culture and context. It can be an act of love and affection, sexual arousal, respect, peace, friendship, and even betrayal. For these reasons the painting is ambiguous about the meaning of the kiss. The viewer can decide which it is.

Going Home 2 Med Size

Song To The Moon. ‘Song To The Moon’ is one of my favourite arias. It is from the opera ‘Rusalka’ by Dvorak. I had this music in mind when I was working on the concept, but in the process of developing the idea, things evolved in an unexpected way. I guess it’s what

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happens when you encourage your subconscious mind to express itself. The idea is relatively simple. We can freely enjoy the beauty of the moon but too often it’s not enough, we are never happy we are always grasping for more. The woman wants more than the moon, but the cat is content with it’s moon a bowl. Spontaneous and direct, while conveying emotions and humour, your paintings also work on a more less limbic and more rational level: in particular, you seem to invite the viewers to relate themselves with the outside world in a free, harmonic way. Can you give us some insight into your inspiration for highlighting these distinctions and how you go about choosing your subject matter?

As I said earlier on in the interview ideas come from everywhere. The news, strangers talking on the bus, curious situations, human frailties, my own experiences. I try to make the work accessible on a number of levels. It’s my hope that everyone will interpret my paintings in the their own way. If everyone saw the same thing I would be very worried. I Won’t Play is a piece directed at critics. It’s not specifically aimed at art critics. The pianist has finally had enough. He refuses to obey the critics and armchair experts. The empty chairs are reserved for the critics - they can come and sit in judgement of each other, but he won’t be there. It’s a call to everyone; you are unique, be brave and dance to your own music.

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Protecting The Pond

A Night To Remember

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Trust Me TV TIME

As painter whose images contain strong narrative elements, can you let us in on what initially got you interested in visual storytelling? Also, what would you say are some of the most relevant features that go into making an effective visual narrative?

My pieces are short stories that usually ask open ended questions. I want to engage the intelligence and curiosity of the the viewer. First and foremost the stories need to be interesting, funny or emotionally evocative. I never want to talk down to people, place myself on a moral pedestal or be deliberately obscure so as to make viewers feel insecure.

I can ask questions, but I must never hit people on the head with my queries because they will turn off immediately. So I try to lure the viewer into the story with bright colours, whimsical creatures and curious happenings. To this end I get comments on the same piece ranging from “ These are such bright happy paintings” to “These are really dark subjects.” Or “You really fooled me. I thought this painting was about xxx but when I looked closer I see something else.” When this happens I feel the work is successful because it is evoking

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responses that reflect the viewer’s inner state at that time.

experience and the process of abstraction that marks out your practice?

I Would Love You If You Were Someone Else.

I have had an interesting but very challenging life. On the plus side, I gained a very broad experiential history. These events have had a strong influence on my art. They help to give depth and unusual flavours to my stories.

The story here is a simple one. We need to love others for who they are, not who we want them to be. Sydney based artist Tom Polo once stated that "humour is a coping mechanism as well as a tool for entertainment": how would you define the role of humour in your paintings? In particular, we are interested if you think that the messages that you convey in your paintings should be open to personal interpretations by the spectatorship.

Humour is an upside-down reflection of pain. It could be moral, physical, emotional or existential pain, but if you don’t laugh you will cry. I try to use gentle humour to expose our foolishness. It also works to disarm viewers and draw them into the work. If people can laugh at themselves they are more amenable to change. Going Home It’s question about disenfranchised people. Where did they come from? Where are their friends and family? Do they have a home to go to. The trumpets are calling all of us as we walk through life. Is home a place or is home where we were before we were born? As you have remarked once, you are not trying to paint beautiful, ugly, shocking or popular pieces: your are simply depicting what you see: how important is your everyday life experience? And how would you describe the relationship between

Although created using a simple calligraphy pen and liquid acryilc paint, your paintings are quite elaborated and the dialogue established by vivacious colors and geometric texture is a crucial part of your style: in particular, the effective combination between intense nuances of tones sums up the mixture of thoughts and emotions. How much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you develop a painting’s texture? Moreover, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time?

In short, there are no bad colours. I have no favourites. I like them all. I use whatever speaks to me while I’m working. I like to mix rational with irrational ideas. Same with colour. If I want a pink sky I paint it. My colour palette has always been bright - I call it juicy. I almost paint with my eyes closed. Your figures are often set against a more abstract background: how do you conceive this juxtaposition?

There are multiple ideas living in different worlds, but they coexist, interact with each other and flow freely within the same

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space. When we dream, everything hangs together no matter how crazy the situations are. I try to go with my instincts to trust my subconscious to guide me. You could say the characters in my pieces are nouns. The abstractions and colours are the verbs . I know it sounds strange but that’s how I see it. Dealing with influences: does living and working in Toronto, influence your work at all? Moreover, are there any artists both contemporary and historical whose work influence you practice?

Toronto is a great city to live in. I think the multicultural environment has some influence on me, but not much. Toronto is quite conservative, it’s hard being an artist here. A friend said “ Come to Texas to paint, you will love the light.” It stuck me as a strange statement , I didn’t know what to say. I work out of my head, the light is the same everywhere. There are many great artists who I admire: Chagall, Picasso, van Gogh, Miro, Klee, Kandinsky, de Kooning, Bacon, O’Keeffe, Hundertwasser, Carr, Kitaj the list goes on. All of them must have some effect on me, but I do not want to emulate them or be influenced by their work because I could not dream freely. Their wonderful dreams are theirs, mine are mine. Over the years your works have been showcased in on a number of occasions. One of the hallmarks of your practice is the way you establish a true, honest relationship with the viewers' perceptual parameters. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your

audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

Audience reactions are very important. Not everyone likes my work, but those that do, give me the confidence to carry on. I never show my work to anyone until it is finished and I try not to worry about what others might think. I don’t want to second guess my intuition. During my last show, a very stern woman was examining each painting in great detail so I quietly asked her if she had any questions. She said “ No. “ I asked her if she was painter. Again she said “No. “ She was obviously not interested in talking but I ventured one more question. I asked her if there was any painting that she found interesting. Without a word she turned and walked over to “Selling The Moon”. “That one.” she said. She stood in silence looking at the piece. I stood quietly for a couple of minutes, when I looked over at her, she was crying. “That one” she repeated. I didn’t ask why - she had her reasons, but the painting spoke to her. It was an experience I will never forget and one that I hope every artist can experience at least once in their career. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Johny. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

Thank you for your interest and insightful questions. I really appreciate it. By answering your questions I have delineate processes that actually happen

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A Convenient Truth

organically and chaotically. I want to emphasize that creating a piece is not a carefully considered process it’s an act of faith. I always think I can do better and I need to be brave and fight complacency and predictability. At some point I’d like to extract some ideas from paintings and do some sculptures. Before that I’d like to work on a really big piece. It will take forever but it will be fun.

will have a life of its own. It will somehow be greater than the sum of the parts. I don’t know what it is, or how to do it, but I want to step back and let ‘the otherness’ shine through the work.

I believe that I am only a small participant in the creative process. I hope each piece

and Barbara Scott, curator

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator

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S teve Barnard Lives and works in Tacoma, WA; USA

An artist's statement

teve’s art (obsession really) began at elementary school, continued on to Junior High, where he won his first award for Idaho’s school-wide “Hire the Handicapped” poster contest. The next step was printing T-shirts for classmates and evolved into the present variety of media including sculptures, jewelry, painting, woodworking and guitar customization. Steve’s education in art has been from public and private sources. His work has many patrons and is being shown at the Proctor Art Gallery, Tacoma, and MATTER Gallery in Olympia. Past exhibitions include The American

Art Co, Tacoma, The Vault Gallery, Tacoma, The Handforth Gallery, Tacoma, and The Swiss Pub. Steve won Second place twice at the Puyallup Fair in the Sculpture Category for the last two years entered. Art has been the focus of my life in the way I am able to produce and experiment with different materials to convey what my mind’s eye continually fires off. I try (as most artists do) to create something that stops the viewer in their tracks. My purpose is to supply a piece to an individual who can adopt my vision into their everyday reality.

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Steve Barnard An interview by Josh Rider, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Multidisciplinary artist Steve Barnard accomplishes the difficult task of drawing the viewers into an unconventional journey, drawing them into a multilayered experience. His approach encapsulates both traditional heritage and unconventional sensitiveness and allows his to produce pieces marked out with a strong reference to contemporary. One of the most impressive aspects of Barnard's work is the way it provides the apparent staticity of an image with an autonomous life and aesthetics: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating and multifaceted artistic production. Hello Steve and welcome to ARTiculAction: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. Art has been the focus of your lifeand your education in art has been from public and private sources. How do these experiences influence the way you conceive and produce your works? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

Hello my first feeling of excitement with Art was in elementary school I have solved some sort of problem with design from there I was happy to create and

kept expanding my abilities my art teachers were always very serious with their profession and I knew I were wanted to pursue art in whatever forms I could. When the Kustom Kulture started to be popular and then widespread, art was being used as perhaps never before on such a wide audience. The media was exploding with images in magazines. Hot Rods, custom cars, airbrush T-shirts, advertising frenzies. I knew I was witnessing a major shift in who and what/of cause and effect I felt like I was in the middle of a revolution much like when the Impressionists caused such a big change in traditional art or when Andy Warhol shook up the conventional art scene I was ready to move my focus to the popular genre I was disillusioned with the pretentious, scholastic snobbery that seem to be the only way to get recognition. American culture and it's aesthetic values had changed. I knew I had started on a new vision. I never wanted to produce art that pander to a select audience so what if my work was off-center I wanted something that I thought was cool I relied on my intuition not my inhibition path of expressing myself. From there of course came the psychedelic Haight-Ashbury area with posters and art that caused a major upheaval in self expression. Again a primary shift in the art world. Drugs and music influenced a new and upcoming

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generation that were aware that art could be powerful and change things I never wanted to produce art that pander to a select audience so what if my work was off-center I wanted something that I thought was cool I relied on my intuition not my inhibition my style like so many others is the result of getting my ideas out of my mind and into the personal real world hopefully it speaks to others the same but different characteristics as a kaleidoscope same kaleidoscope different patterns. You are aversatile artist and the harmony you convey in your paintings and sculptures is the result of a constant evolution of your searching for new means to express the ideas you explore in your works: your inquiry into the expressive potential of a wide variety of materials you combines together shows unconventional still effective balance. Would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up? In particular, would you shed light on the evolution of your style?

My style is influenced by discovering the use of materials I have not used before I am presently experimenting with black lights mixed with kinetics. I also have some pieces with concrete and mixed materials. I plan to do more computerbased art because it has many benefits of really combining ones imagination to instant gratification on screen, saving it and returning to add to or make changes all reversible if needed. I'm working on desktop sized pieces using again different materials sort of mini engineering projects. I have never had cognizant inhibition or not having the ability to see an object and turn it over in

your mind for all the possibilities of what one I can't make of it. For this special edition of ARTiculAction we have selected Jumpin' Jack Trash an extremely interesting work that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured our attention of your work is its dynamic and autonomous aesthetics: in particular, it seems to communicate a successful attempt to transform tension to harmony, and it's really captivating. While walking our readers through the usual genesis of Jumpin' Jack Trash, would you shed light on your usual process and your sources of inspiration?

The title Jumpin' Jack Trash came about after was completed. I wanted to construct a robot on a pogo stick with spring legs so theoretically it could jump over cars. The challenge was to make it sturdy enough for occasional moving and handling. since I don't weld my pieces have to be carefully fit together. Having put together the bits and pieces even know I have them ready often times I have to backtrack and reengineer the previous edition to accommodate the next step I liked the idea of a life-sized piece and as it turns out I sold it to a gentleman that placed it outside his entry as a greeter to express his personal taste and commitment to art. Sculpture could be considered an archeology evidence of a touching moment in the past: we have been particularly impressed with the way your hybrid approach accomplishes the difficult task of transferring into a liberated expressive realm the imagery you refer to. When developing a multilayered language, you capture non-

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sharpness and bring to a new level of significance the elusive still ubiquitous relationship between experience and memory. What is the role of memory in your process?

I believe the role of memory and my work has a lot to do with the objects separate lives in the past consider for instance how many hands or miles or conversations each part has been privy to that have brought their history to me to be reassembled in a new and energetic way to start over with new owners who can connect them as an integral piece of their lives hopefully to last many generations as good art does. The dialogue established by stimulating nuances of tones is a crucial part of your style and in particular, the effective combination between both delicate and intense nuances of colors sums up the mixture of thoughts and emotions. How much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you develop a paintingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s texture? Moreover, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time?

Paintings are my means to express my own different states of "at the moment visions". These are fantasies that I am able to immediately sketch my ideas as a starting point. There is some spontaneity involved but mostly I know what I want to convey the goal is to have an original painting of as close to my initial vision as possible including testing details I always love use of color color as we know can influence moods feelings thoughts even memories just as 3D influences depth perception three colors combined increase appreciation of harmony I

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definitely try to have no conflict between colors either complementing or fighting with each other they should be natural but yet exciting brilliant but not overpowering they in themselves require balance composition and repetitive focal interest points. Strictly speaking, it would be not possible for language to replace the visual and tactile, but your works, as the interesting Madame Butterfly seems to go beyond such dichotomy to trigger the viewers' primordial parameters concerning our relation with physicality: as Gerhard Richter once remarked, "my concern is never art, but always what art can be used for": what is your opinion about the functional aspect of Art in the contemporary age?

My opinion of function in the contemporary age is not only traditional aesthetic beauty but also entertainment value if you will, we have kinetic, mechanical,lighting space effects, sculptures of many different materials and varieties, landscape manipulation etc.. so the function is suited to the viewer and the way that they need that particular media in their life either for familiar purposes or for something new they have not appreciated before. As the late Franz West did in his installations, your work shows unconventional features in the way it deconstructs perceptual processes in order to assemble them in a collective imagery, urging the viewers to a process of self-reflection. Artists are always interested in probing to see what is beneath the surface: maybe one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of

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our inner Nature... what's your view about this?

The artist Botero once said he has loud music playing as she creates, personally I like to have a calm focused mind in order

to let my hands follow whatever I am thinking personal experience comes forth in the end as if our feelings that make us who we are were put into a blending machine and condensed down to what is

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so important to us that we have to have a need to share it. As proof we count for something. Picasso was so complex and prolific. He was a good example of an artist's drive to open the gates of creativity produced from our inner nature. Your 3D installations seem to address to viewers to extract a narrative behind the

images you select, to establish direct relations with the spectatorship: this is a quite recurrent aspect of your works. German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". How would you describe the function of the evokative

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reminders to everyday life you incorporate in your pieces?

The reminders you speak of are inherent as each piece of my constructions were an integral part of someones life. The conversations, the miles traveled, the objects lifetime spent with so many variables of the human condition. I

respect the power of bringing these inanimate parts together in a exciting rebirth, to go on and become a part of someones life once again only in a more personal esthetic sense rather than a utility. As you have remarked once, your paintings allow you much more freedom

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to render ideas and colors into a world you love to visit. So we would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

I do not believe you can disconnect direct experience from creativity. Many because what I create is the result of getting my ideas out of my mind and into the personal real world where hopefully it speaks to others the same but different characteristics of a kaleidoscope evidence of the conscious and subconscious spit out and displayed as a proprietary original trademark. Over these years you have exhibited your works in several occasions, including your shows at the Proctor Art Gallery, Tacoma, and the MATTER Gallery in Olympia: one of the hallmarks of your work is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

I love the idea that art can be taken seriously. Making a statement or taking a stand for a cause. My outlook tends to be more on the light hearted of even humorous approach. The absurd is a primary element for humor and lends itself very well to both print as well as

3D. The joke or pun is never lost or weakened as time goes on. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Steve. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

I see my future as wide open for larger, smooth, polished, pieces in the Henry Moore school. I believe rough textures combined with simple geometric forms will always be interesting. Thank you for allowing me to verbally project my visual work for insights to those involved and even consumed by the fascination with the creative ego.

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A nna Bruno Lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland

An artist's statement

nna Bruno was born in Nakhodka on 31st May1984. Nakhodka on the Japanese Sea coast is a port city about 85 kilometres east of Vladivostok in the Russian Far East. At the age of two, she moved together with her family to Tatarstan and some years later farther to Kaliningrad City, the former East Prussian capital KĂśnigsberg, which is nowadays the most western part of the Russian Federation. There, she went to school and began to paint. At the time, Anna Bruno never showed her paintings to

anybody else, fearing that no one would appreciate them. "Since I moved to Switzerland, more occasions to paint and to organize my own exhibitions have arisen. I paint to express myself, my inner world, my own reality and perhaps even my dreams. Very often it seems to me that it is not me who is painting but somebody else. When a painting is completed, I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t believe that it is me who did it." Anna Bruno

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Anna Bruno An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Marked out with a stimulating combination between abstract and representative feature, Anna Bruno's work explores the hidden reality and its channel of communication with the subconscious sphere. In her that we'll be discussing in the following pages she draws the viewers through a multilayered experience capable of challenging their perceptual parameters, conveying a variety of ideas, memories and feelings. Drawing from the point of convergence from abstraction and universal imagery, Bruno's approach triggers both memory and imagination, creating captivating artworks: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating artistic production. Hello Anna and welcome to ARTiculAction: before starting to elaborate about your artistic production would you like to tell us something about your back-

ground? Before settling in Sxitzerland you have travelled a lot: how do these experiences influence the way you currently conceive and produce your artworks? And in particular, how does your substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

First at all, I would like to express my gratitude to ARTiculAction for the opportunity given to introduce myself and my artistic production to a distinguished international readership. Actually, I have to modify a little bit your statement about my travelling experience. As an individual born and grown up in the former Soviet Union, as so many other of my countrymen I was restricted to travel within our frontiers â&#x20AC;&#x201C; it was the time of the Cold War. However, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t underestimate the diversity of landscape, languages and traditions we had in the vast USSR! Virtually we had

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western point of the country, to the city of Kaliningrad. Changing home over thousands of kilometers was nothing unusual at that time for Soviet people. A good example is my own grandfather, a former major of the Red Army’s strategic missile forces. Actually, he was used to live not more than two to three years in a row in a certain location before changing home again.

the whole world in a “pocket”! Fortunately, I had the possibility to visit so many places all over our territory. In a sense this journey begun with my birth! I was born in the far most eastern part of Russia, in the city of Nakhodka, some 80 km east of Vladivostok at the Sea of Japan. However, after some 3 years I had to change home. Together with my parents and my elder sister I travelled to the most

Due to the spreading of our family members between Kaliningrad and the city of Naberezhnye Chelny in the Russian Republic of Tatarstan I was forced to spend my schooldays and university years in two very different parts of our country. Although this was not always an easy situation, I have also benefited from the life between Slavic traditions and the customs of a Turkic people, the indigenous Tatars. I leave it to the professional art critics to draw conclusions about the depth of influence the “Soviet journeys” may have had on my art productions… Your approach is very personal and condenses a variety of viewpoints, that you combine together into consistent balance. We

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would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.livemaster.ru/artabru no in order to get a synoptic view of your work: in the meanwhile, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up? In particular, would you tell our readers us something about the evolution of your style?

Chatting about the rise of my artistic activities, my husband would certainly mention a painting dating from 2004 which shows a drunken girl holding a glass of whiskey in her hand and looking at the observer with her big eyes. Actually, it is one of my first paintings. I guess that my husband fall in love simultaneously with it and me when we met for the first time… Hence, for our family this little piece of art is also of symbolic value. However, aside from this more pathetic viewpoint, this painting can also be seen as a forerunner for my later works. However, by and by I begun to experiment with some other style. While the drunken girl was painted with pastel color, in the years from 2007 upwards painting in oil became my preferred

technique. I also passed over to a more expressive style using thick upstrokes on the canvas – a “van Goghisation”… I even painted some very abstract motives and patterns! If I have to asses further my artistic development, I can also mention the pluralization of the subjects or sujets during the last years. Portraiture is and remains one of my hobbyhorses, in German they use the funny expression Steckenpferd. But also landscape painting and portrayal of everyday life are important components of my artistic occupation. My overall leitmotiv is to express the emotions of life, primarily my own emotions – the happy as well as the sad ones. I would also like to mention my Italian tessellation experience in Ravenna, the famous city of mosaics! It gave me another important slice in my artistic development. We would start to focus on your artistic production beginning from the works that our readers have already started to admire in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured our attention of this

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emotions, emotions, emotions and feelings, feeling, feelings. That is the simple truth. People who know me well are aware of that I am a creature composed by 98% of emotional DNA! If I based my artistic work on strictly rational guidelines, the paintings would come out in a totally different manner – a manner I probably would not like. This must also be the reason for I visited a professional painting course some years ago only for half a year. I felt myself too much squeezed between formalistic conventions.

work is the way your exploration of your own mind provides this piece with a dynamic and autonomous aesthetic and it's really captivating. While walking our readers through the usual genesis of your pieces, would you shed light to your main source of inspirations?

The dialogue established by colors and texture is a crucial part of your style: in particular, the effective combination between intense nuances of tones sums up the mixture of thoughts and emotions. How much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you develop a painting’s texture? Moreover, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time?

The state of my soul and spirit influences the output of my works a lot. In a nutshell – the main source of my inspirations are

My psychological make-up is the spokesman of my paintings. As many observer mention, the tones, the strokes of the brush

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and the chosen themes of the paintings are always the direct outflow of my current psychological situation. The same can be said about the palette. When I feel on the sunny side of the world, I use strong and flamy yellow, orange and red tones, I paint the sun or a maid in a wonderful glittering robe. During more said times I paint in dark or cold tones, sometimes some of the most desolate traits a human being can have. My color palette isn’t subject to a straight-lined development over time. It’s rather like a pendulum changing from one side to the other and back again. How important is drawing to your practice?

Drawing is of rather secondary importance. Actually, most of my works are painted. I guess the reason is to be found in my working technique, e.g. my preference for brisk and swift movements with the paintbrush. Typically, I finish my works within a few hours, very often without having used a “blueprint”. With this technique I try to bypass and exclude every kind of rational influence and to straightforwardly transfer my personal emotions from my

body into the painting. As you have remarked once your practice could be considered as an exploration of your mind: you seem to reject an explicit explanatory strategy: rather, you seem to invite the viewer to find personal interpretations to the feelings that you convey into your paintings. This quality marks out a considerable part of your production, that are in a certain sense representative of the relationship between emotion and

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what will be the exact output when I am beginning a new work. In fact, I am not able to explain my working process rationally. Which artists do you look at most often and why? How much of an influence does this have on your own work?

memory. What is the role of memory in your process? And in particular, do you try to achieve a faithful visual translation of your feelings?

My memory doesn’t play an important role in my work process. Therefore it is not my aim to reproduce my feelings or even the real world in a faithful way. I would describe it as follows: It is not me who drives the paintbrush, but the paintbrush drives my hand! I can never really say

I mentioned before the expression “van Goghisation”. Of course, this exceptional Dutch genius is one of my preferred painters. However, I have never based my painting techniques or styles explicitly on a specific artist. By the way, I don’t have the ability to copy existing paintings although once I made a stab at painting a replica of an ancient Russian icon. As you have remarked once, you paint to express yourself, your inner world, your own reality and perhaps even your dreams. The multilayered experience to whom you invite the viewers gives a permanence to the intrinsic ephemeral nature of the feelings you convey in your canvass. So we would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a

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have visited a new spot on our globe, there always remains a new jigsaw piece in the patchwork of our mind. Recently together with my family I visited the beauties of Ireland â&#x20AC;&#x201C; I could tell you endlessly about my impressions! After our holidays in Normandy and Brittany a few years ago I could not help to paint collections of maritime impressions with many boats stretching all over the beautiful beaches. What do you feel makes your work unique and truly your own? In particular, would you speak about how your process and what goes into deciding when a piace is finally complete? creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

Everything what I feel I try to make visible through the images and colors on my paintings and drawings. I always feel that I must express something by means of my art work. And this MUST is always stronger than me. I have no doubt that direct, personal experience influences in a certain way the process of creativity. For example, after we

I can mention once more my early painting of the girl with the whiskey glass. Like a prism, it had already condensed all the ingredients of my future style: simplicity; renouncement of realistic representations; kidlike naivetĂŠ; absence of straight lines and shapes; simple coloring, mostly without mixed colors; and depicted humorous details in the background. However, in the end I would like to leave it to the observer to judge my work and its uniqueness.

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As you have remarked once, when you went to school and began to paint, you never showed ypur paintings to anybody else, fearing that no one would appreciate them. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

Neither the content, nor the colors nor the technique used for a painting are dependent on the audience. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Anna. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

I don’t want to offend nobody. However, it may be a Russian characteristic not to plan too much; definitely, I would be such a prototype… I cannot tell you which painting I am going to begin tomorrow. However, in my head there are a lot of different ideas. For example it is imperative for me to put a focus

on professional public relations activities. I am planning to improve the Internet appearance of my works. Like a castle in the air, in my mind there are always buzzing pictures of possible future exhibitions. After all, the ultimate object of a painter’s practice must be to present his “fruits” to other people! An apple tree can only grow in the open sky, under the sunshine! One of my dreams is an exhibition of my collections in Moscow, Paris, London or Dublin – hope dies last… I also welcome always personal mandates from other people. All in all, for the future I’m steering a kind of multilevel planning – projects on different layers. Well, after all I still come out as an already Westernized Russian – a planning Russian living in “Helvetia”…!

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

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S usanne Wawra Lives and works in Dublin, Ireland

An artist's statement

his series of videos looks at placing short song lyrics into a real life context. The chorusses of popular songs are spoken and the focus is on the mouth of the speaker. It invites the viewer to read the reenacted song lyrics closely or differently. The use of the mouth makes it close and personal, at times very intimate and adds a personalised interpretation of the spoken word.

The lyrics of German artist Marius Müller Westernhagen's “Sexy" are raunchy and suggestive. This is heightened by using mouths of mature women, challenging the perceptions of sexuality and age.

“Out Of My Head” shows two male mouths reciting the chorus to Kylie Minogue’s song. It changes the popular song directed at a “boy” by a woman to a same sex context. "Save the last dance for me" is an intimate piece of interchanging mouths of a man and a woman that speak the chorus of a Drifters' song. The film evokes a relationship between male and female speaker as the mouth words of love to each other.

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Susanne Wawra An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator articulaction@post.com

Dublin based German artist Susanne Wawra accomplishes the difficult task of triggering the viewers' perceptual parameter to invite them to question the relationship between their cultural substratum and the limbic sphere. In her recent series of video that we'll be discussing in the following pages, she explores the interpretation of the spoken word drawing us into a stimulating journey on the thin lines that divide perceptual processes from experience. Acting as as tourist in her own life, Wawra creates works that reject any conventional classification and condenses into consistent memories the elusive notion of experience: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her multifaceted artistic production. Hello Susanne, and a warm welcome to ARTiculAction. We would start this interview posing you some questions about your background: you have a solid formal training and after having earned a M.A. Magistra Artium English and Communication & Media, you nurtured your education in Painting at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. How have these experiences influenced your evolution as an artist? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum due to your German roots inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

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Life as an artist was not a straightforward route for me. Even though drawing was my best friend as a kid and favourite activity as a teen, I had no confidence to pursue art school. I took a decade-long detour trying to play the career game: a Masters with Distinction, international internships and an ambitious advertising role in a big player company. One element that was always in the back of my mind since my teenage years was wanting to live in an English-speaking country. I always felt so intrigued by the language and had a massive love for the culture of the British isles. So after my degree in Leipzig, Germany, I moved to Dublin, Ireland. Even after nearly 10 years here, my German roots are deeper and more prominent than I expected. Living in a different country and not fully belonging to that place or culture, leads you to the characteristics that make you different. In making art, I often look to or into myself. And being German is a major part of myself. I grew up behind the Iron Curtain in rural East Germany, a circumstance that I was just old enough to realise when the wall came down in 1989/90. My childhood is an important aspect in some of my recent work around my home village, my grandmotherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house and my immediate family. The art education at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) is really contemporary and open, without subscribing to a national approach or style. Next to artists from all over the world, I was always particularly interested in artists from my country of origin. Examples are Gerhard Richter and his atlas of personal and collected images

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as sources for his work, Neo Rauch’s pseudo-narrative teutonic worlds that surpass time and Hannah Höch’s collages as statements about the Germany of her day. While there might be a content related Germanness in my work, in aesthetic concerns I feel I am detached from it.

You are a versatile artist and your approach encapsulates several techniques, revealing an incessant search of an organic symbiosis between a variety of viewpoints. The results convey together a coherent sense of unity, that rejects any conventional classification. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our

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readers to visit http://www.susannewawra.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you have you ever happened to realize that such multidisciplinary approach is the only way to express and convey the idea you explore.

Marc Chagall used to say â&#x20AC;&#x153;I work in whatever medium likes me at the moment.â&#x20AC;? I see myself as an artist, a creative first and foremost, which then diversifies into painter, collagist, designer, filmmaker, photographer and poet. As mentioned before, even though I studied Fine Art Painting, the artistic field at NCAD is kept very free, you can work

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in 2D, 3D, film or performance, with whichever media you want. I love to explore the different avenues and keep myself open and excited about making. A lot of my approaches are related to German-American philosopher Erich Fromm’s quote “We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them.” A couple of years ago, I created a series called “Antilife Manics” which is an anagram of "Financial Times" and reflects on the struggle of the individual in contemporary society The characteristic salmon pink newspaper serves both as background and foreground text. The collages and paintings tell stories of anxiety, mental turmoil and suffering and can be understood as a comment on today’s pressures in society. As a whole this body of work represents “Weltschmerz” the realisation that one’s own weaknesses are caused by the inappropriateness of the world. I tend to approach material from different angles, so last year, I started coming back to the Financial Times and experimented with what Austin Kleon calls Newspaper Blackout. To create blackout poetry, you take a marker to black out words from articles to construct poetry with your chosen words that remain legible. I recorded this play with words in short videos in which I recite the poems. As you can see, my work does not start from nothing, not a blank canvas, but pulls things from the world. My recent series of paintings “Memento”starts on ground that is already full of information, history and visual. Like before with using

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the newspaper as background, I am working on patterned consumer fabrics like curtains or bed linen. I employ a mix of different media, processes and layers to create a collaged composition. These paintings marry printing and painting. My multidisciplinary approach shows when looking at the breadth of my production as a whole but also when considering each individual work. For this special issue of ARTiculAction we have selected your recent series of videos Out Of My Head, Sexy and Save the Last Dance, that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once caught our attention of this body of works is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of creating an harmonic mix between a figurative, realistic approach to the evocative reminders conveyed by the reminders to popular songs: when walking our readers through the genesis of this series would you shed a light about the role of metaphors in your process?

Those three videos are parables of love and desire presented as selected snippets of popular songs songs. The tradition of the love song goes back centuries, soundtracks our lives and will still be relevant in the efficiency of the cyber future. I am with Nick Cave when he says â&#x20AC;&#x153;I am not interested in anything that doesn't have a genuine heart to it. You've got to have soul in the hole. If that isn't there, I don't see the point.â&#x20AC;?I like to explore emotion and I am interested in this intimacy that the videos create between the speakers but also extending it to the audience. Depending on how the videos are shown, on a smaller screen in a group show or on a film screen in a film festival or a wall projection in an

exhibition, the close up mouths can have a major impact. The viewer only sees the lips and teeth of the person, reading all information off this zoom frame. But it is incredible how much it can tell about a person from that little information.

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Personally, I find using actors with a little more history in their face really intriguing. Being bombarded with perfect people with perfect young lips and perfect teeth, it is refreshing to see some realness.

The â&#x20AC;&#x2039;Songlines" â&#x20AC;&#x2039;series of videos looks at placing short song lyrics into a real life context. The choruses of popular songs are spoken and the focus is on the mouth of the speaker. It invites the viewer to

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read the reenacted song lyrics closely or differently. The use of the mouth makes it close and personal, at times very intimate and adds a personalised

interpretation of the spoken word. For example, "Save the last dance for me" is an intimate piece of interchanging mouths of a man and a woman that

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videos are metaphorical for the human search for love and affection, someone to lose yourself in. As a poet, I am in love with metaphors and they find their way into my artwork, too. Even into the titles, i.e. two of the works I’ve only recently completed are Käsetreppe (Cheese Stairs) and Wursthimmel (Sausage Sky). They are both reflections of memories, summarizing my experiences and observations in visual form. Furthermore, they present lots of room for interpretation from their visual clues. The forms that are prevalent in Käsetreppe and Wursthimmel are a springboard to meanings that happen in the dialogue between the painting and the viewer. Your inquiry into the intimate sphere and the interpretation of the spoken word reflects an harmonic balance between the external and internal world: we have found particularly stimulating the way your approach goes beyond a merely interpretative aspect of the contexts you refer to: although you draw inspiration from outside reality, your works could be considered as tactile biographies and the fruible set of elements you draw from universal imagery trigger the viewer's primordial parameters: as Gerhard Richter once remarked, "my concern is never art, but always what art can be used for": what is your opinion about the functional aspect of Art in the contemporary age?

speak the chorus of the song by the Drifters. The film evokes a relationship between male and female speaker as the mouth words of love to each other. The

The famous photographer Henri CartierBresson said that “In order to give meaning to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what he frames.”The frame in my work is my own experience, as stated before, acting as a tourist in my own life, a historicist of my being in this world. I think art certainly has the

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potential of transporting a message or achieving a desired effect but first and foremost, I am creating for myself. I feel this urgency to create, to show myself I have been as well as to solidify my memories and experiences. My autobiographical piece Mental Asylum that has been shown in several film festivals is a modern take on confession, it opens up a secret, something that is far too often kept to oneself. "Mental Asylum" explores personal identity in a very vulnerable place, a person's mind in the depths of mental illness. It is a recording from my admission into a psychiatric hospital with clinical depression. The piece provides access to the struggle of the self and the very core of identity when everything seems lost. This was initially a very private recording that was not intended to be seen by anyone, while knowing that film by its very nature implies an audience. It taps into the emotional potential of real life and explores showing the real, without any cut or filter. It allows for an intimate analysis of confidential experiences and emotions. Here, video is used as a device extending the boundaries of interior dialogue to include the audience. I do have a keen interest in language, I explore this in poetry and in video works. The spoken word presents a record of thought processes and emotions, it is a translation of the internal into external means. It certainly has its limits and no direct code exists for letting others see, read or hear what you experience. Indeed, I am using language and art objects as a vehicle to communicate a message. Sometimes, this message is pretty straight forward as in the Antilife

Manics series or Mental Asylum, other times it is more open to interpretation. Thinking about the functional aspect of art is not at the forefront for me, primarily its function for me is to express myself, envelop myself and elate myself. On the one hand it sounds like a very selfish enterprise but on the other I think that if there is something real in the piece, it can convey something to the viewer. As you have remarked once, your work does not start from nothing: as the late Franz West did in his installations, your work shows unconventional aesthetics in the way it deconstructs perceptual images in order to assemble them in a collective imagery, urging the viewers to a process of self-reflection. Artists are always interested in probing to see what is beneath the surface: maybe one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your view about this?

Yes, indeed, my work does not start from nothing: I do not begin at a blank canvas. Instead, my practice initiates from found and everyday materials such as patterned fabric or newspaper. So the surface I am working on is already alive, hence there is no beginning or birth to the picture, instead it is all an additive process. The imagery I am working with are my own and found photographs relating to my memories. These images are combined into a compositional form on the fabric. The work is mostly intuitive and process driven, I approach the canvas without a plan of what comprises the collage and where images are placed.

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The intention is to keep the work open and alive by allowing spontaneity, momentum and chance. Maybe this allows me to go beneath the surface, to show aspects that reveal themselves to me in the process. I am living for those moments in my practice when things happen that surprise me, when your work excites you and shows itself to you as something unexpected. This is not intended to sound esoteric, it is more a free association that I takes place, like automatic writing. There is always something underneath, something behind the facade we encounter: exterior and interior, public and private, body and mind. I’m intrigued by these layers and facets. With my work, I am aiming to portray more than the exterior, penetrate the surface and invite to view into more complex structures. This aspect also surfaces in my blackout poetry and. For example, my piece “Out Of Tune”talks about the tensions of reality/life. The words in the Financial Times and my reciting of the poem transport a Weltschmerz sensibility. Working with the Financial Times and this experimentation with words relates to my practice of starting from material that already exists in the world instead of a blank canvas. I have always been intrigued by the depth poetry offers on both ends, as a reader interpreting and decoding as well as a writer condensing and encoding the layers of meaning. There is only so much you can plan, and I like to avoid having an exact idea of what the next painting will be. Instead, I am allowing for the unexpected to happen. Gesture and affect are aspects I am

giving as much room as possible. Reading Merleau-Ponty’s essay “Eye and Mind”from the 1960s was a significant starting point for investigation and exploration of what happens between the hand and mind. How does a gesture translate from an origin in the mind to a mark or composition? How does the internal become external, how does a painter transfer vision into visual? Merleau-Ponty attests the role of the painter to project what is making itself seen with himself/herself. I was in a jazz club some time ago and the improvisations felt like the musicians were thinking in music; I want to reach those moments where I am thinking in paint. An improvisational tone is reflected in my handling of paint. I enter into a collaborative relationship with the material, it is a back and forth between us. This is a visceral process, a sort of visual stream of consciousness, in which I interpret and respond to the piece at every stage of its progression. This constant dialogue allows for the creation of something that hovers between real and imagined; a memory. Your work convey both metaphoric and descriptive research that works on both subconscious and conscious level: the compelling narrative that pervades these videos invites the viewers to a multilayered experience and allows you to construct a concrete aesthetic from experience and memories and symbols. So we would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion, personal experience is absolutely indispensable as part of the creative process? Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

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It is an interesting observation that most of my work relates to personal experience. I always seemed to veer towards it so I am now fully embracing the personal approach. There are numerous reasons to explore my individual experiences, on both personal and professional level. Personally, it can be in

touch with emotions and memories that range from painful to glorious. So the delving into a personal subject can be insightful, at points cathartic and help me to grow. My work draws from life itself, I gather and generate photographic images from my own experience. The imagery is

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informed by my perception, interests and viewpoints: places I've been, things I've seen, people I've met; things I remember and things I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. The photographs offer snapshots of my subjective experience, my memories. In my multilayered mixed media paintings Anker and Luxanamed, I worked with

imagery from my rural home village in the middle of Germany, such as the typical timber-frame houses, old photos of my mother and the radio my grandmother listened to religiously every single day. Next to exteriors, I have selected shots of interior spaces that remind of Francesca Woodmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s photographs. With their black

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and white aesthetic, they have an eeriness to them, they have a psychological potential and a vulnerability. I agree with Rothko when he says that painting is an experience itself. To me, painting is personal; such as the time I spend with the piece in its creation or the gestural marks that are traces of the act of my production. German painter Neo Rauch has many intriguing things to say about the act of painting. He sees it as a natural process, driven by instinct, wherein things pass through the painter. So not surprisingly, I find it impossible to separate my work from my experience. It does not always have to be direct experience or observation, I can tackle things that are unfamiliar and look at them from my standpoint by which I make them personal. In the same vein, my videos tap into my individual interpretation and perception of the world inside and around me. Working with actors offers a surface of projection, they are further away from myself, but still, it is me who writes the script, sets the frame and edits the video. Everything I do, everything I bring into existence moves into my experiential sphere. While exhibiting a captivating vibrancy, your works seem to reject an explicit explanatory strategy: rather, you seem to offer to the viewer a key to find personal interpretations to the feelings that you convey into your collages... this quality marks out a considerable part of your production, that is in a certain sense representative of the conflictual relationship between content and form: how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you develop a paintingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s texture? Moreover, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time?

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Susanne Wawra

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My psychological make-up certainly plays a role in the act. My own photography is a major aspect in this series and I am experimenting with both greyscale and colour prints to transport different aesthetic and psychological potential. In most recent series Memento, I create mixed-media paintings as notes toward a (re)collection of my personal life history. The ability to remember and recall what is past is of major significance for the self, in particular the sense of self and identity. John Locke based identity and selfhood on the extension of consciousness backward in time, in memory. Personally, I am concerned about my very individual capacity to recall past experiences. In order to expand on my innate ability to store these events, I have set out to paint my memories. I aim to create a permanent physical record, a fabricated form of my internal psychology, externalised and mythologized on found primers. What has changed in my practice over time is the use of colour and a freedom and confidence in making marks. My work is process driven yet intuitive, since I approach the canvas without a plan of what comprises the collage and where images are placed. The intention is to keep the work open and alive by allowing spontaneity, momentum and chance. This improvisational tone is also reflected in my handling of paint. To me, painting is an experience itself and is personal, physical and instinctive. Gestural marks are traces of a moment in my life in the act of production driven by instinct and tapping into my individual perception and interpretation of the world inside and

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around me. A free association takes place, quite like automatic writing. I enter into a collaborative relationship with the material, it is a back and forth between us. This is a visceral process in which I interpret and respond to the piece at every stage of its progression. This constant dialogue allows for the creation of something that hovers between the real and the imagined; a memory. Over these years your works have been exhibited in several occasions, including your solo Face it, 10 Days in Dublin, at the

Avenue Road Gallery. One of the hallmarks of your projects is strictly connected to the chance of establishing a direct involvement with the viewers, who are called to evolve from a mere spectatorship to conscious participants on an intellectual level, so before leaving this conversation I would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

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A sense of place has surfaced in most of my paintings, be it my home village or places that left an impact on me like Amsterdam and Hong Kong. Particular details I associate with a place have taken over, multiplied and occupied space on the canvas. There are Gouda cheeses, steep staircases, tropical fruit, characteristic architectures; things that strike me as â&#x20AC;&#x153;differentâ&#x20AC;?and belonging to a location or culture. I am planning to go back to places from my life to inform new work, retrace my steps and let them grow into art pieces.

It is a huge journey and I am excited for what will surface and show itself to me. Experimenting with scale is another venture, I have created a triptych that spans over 4 meters wide and really got immersed in the piece. It is also interesting to see the effect it has on the viewer. This might develop into installation work, too, as the work evolves and changes. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Susanne. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about

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your future projects. How do you see your work evolving?

I will continue making poetry films and further have two scripts for short films around mental health that I am applying

with for funding. Also, after the publication of â&#x20AC;&#x153;Schizo-Poetry - Fragments of Mindâ&#x20AC;?with collaborator singer/composer and writer Kevin Nolan last year, we are working on a next concept based volume of poetry.

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If it is photographing, collaging, painting, film-making or writing, I continually exploring and experimenting. As a result, things happen that surprise me and my work presents itself to me as something

unexpected but brought into existence by me. Throughout the creative act, moment to moment there is a continuous reinterpretation of the self.

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J Jill Poczkai Ibsen Lives and works in Dallas, USA

An artist's statement

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

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(“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.

Jill Poczkai Ibsen

Jihane Mossalim Lives and works in Montreal, Canada

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Jihane Mossalim An interview by Melissa C. Hilborn, curator and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

Jihane Mossalim's work explores the relationships and lasting memories we entertain with our surroundings, our physical environment and its components. Her works accomplishes an insightful inquiry into the liminal area in which perceptual process and memory find unexpected points of convergence to wlak the viewers through an unconventional, multilayered experience. Drawing from universal imagery, Mossalim's approach deconstrupts symbols to trigger both memory and imagination, creating a compelling narrative: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating artistic production. Hello Jihane and welcome to ARTiculAction: before starting to elaborate about your artistic production would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and after having graduated in Fine Arts from the Dawson College you started a career in the media industry for a few years, both as a SFX and beauty make-up artist. How does this experience influenced your evolution as an artist? And in particunfolar, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

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! Your approach is very personal and your technique condenses a variety of viewpoints, that you combine together into a coherent balance. We would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.jihanemossalim.com in order to get a synoptic view of your work: in the meanwhile, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up? In particular, would you tell our readers something about the evolution of your style?

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 interested in being part of the picture on a more intimate scale. We would start to focus on your artistic production beginning from Charlotte and the Boat, an interesting piece that

Charlotte and the Boat

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our readers have already started to admire in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured our attention of this work is the way your inquiry into the development of the color provides your pieces with a dynamic and autonomous aesthetics. While walking our readers through the genesis of Charlotte and the Boat, would you shed light to your main sources of inspiration?

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. We definitely love the nuance of red you choose for Pocket Full of Posies: the dialogue established by colors and texture is a crucial part of your style: in particular, the effective combination between intense nuances of tones sums up the mixture of thoughts and emotions. How much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you develope a painting’s texture? Moreover, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time?

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 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. As you have remarked once, you are looking at the relationships and lasting memories we entertain with our surroundings, our physical environment and its components: while exhibiting a captivating vibrancy, you seem to reject an explicit explanatory strategy . You rather seem to invite the viewer to inquire into their personal substratum to find personal association to the feelings that you convey into your paintings. This quality marks out a considerable part of your production, that are in a certain sense representative of the relationship between emotion and memory. What is the role of memory in your process? And in particular, do you try to achieve a faithful visual translation of your feelings?

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

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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 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. When inquiring into the realm of memory, you seem to draw from the subconscious, almost oniric sphere, inviting the viewers to challenge their primordial, almost limbic parameters to get involved into a multilayered experience. This is particularly evident in Mike Eddy and the Tricycle: your approach allows you to capture nonsharpness of physicality with an universal kind of language. We are particularly interested if you try to achieve to trigger the viewers' memory as starting point to expand their perceptual parameters.

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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Misery Loves Company

Up the Hill with Jack and Jill

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Mike Eddy and the Tricycle

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The theme of childhood is quite recurrent in your imagery. However, the boys that you paint, as you did in American Boy and in Observation convey something different from common imagery: they are meditative, silent and sometimes even grotesque figures on an indefinite landscape that never plays the role of a mere background and that extablishes direct relations with the viewers going beyond any process of translation of cultural symbols. German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". What is your opinion about it? And in particular how do you conceive the narrative for your works?

I completely agree with Thomas Demand and I might be wrong but wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t it always the purpose of art? Even when it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;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 rendez-vous between the subject of the painting and the viewer where everything fades in the background and all that is left are the main characters. We have appreciated the way your paintings shows a coherent equilibrium concerning the composition: the multilayered experience to whom you invite the viewers gives a permanence to the intrinsic ephemeral nature of the notion of sight. So we would take this

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The woman with the pearl necklace

occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative

process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

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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

Got One

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Believe

extended knowledge of the selected subject.

Over these years you have exhibited in several occasions throughout North America and your works are in private

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collections in Canada and Scotland. One of the hallmarks of your work is the capability to create direct

involvement with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. So before leaving

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Insight

this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

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. There’s nothing worse for an artist than indifference from an audience. Does it change the way I create my work? Yes and no. If I show pieces that had very little reactions from

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Alice

an audience, pieces that were ignored, chances, are I won’t show them again and I will concentrate on the ones that got people to react. Having said that, I’ll still create ‘’boring’’ works no matter what. The audience doesn’t play a role in what I create but plays a major part in what I’m going to present.

Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Jihane. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

I have a few projects in the making; some still brewing in my mind some already in production. I will continue exploring

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

I thank you very much for this interview and these insightful questions.

Jihane Mossalim

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An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator

This Old Man

and Barbara Scott, curator articulaction@post.com

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M ichal Alma Markus Lives and works in Ramat Hasharon, Israel

From the book "Our End to The Awakenings," 2010 Michal Alma MarKus Translator: David Herman

Lost to the wind, Mosaics lost to time, And between his tel and his projectile, Man in his loss A portrait of mosaic stones. In his presence are carved inscriptions inlaid in the mould of his dead images. History doesn't return from a thousand reincarnations History returns from a thousand mosaics. Postcards were sent from creation's strata A pain-choked delegation discovered in the present reality The plastering of the Divine Shechina on the strata walls One human bring resurrected from a thousand mosaics. The clearing- house site of the riddles of the Lord Stones, human fossils, bits of pieces How can the remains create a whole being from a thousand pieces? Stones roll down the slope between Isaac and Ishmael, Pieces of mosaic Shards of faces. This is still a task for those buried within the tel, The unburied souls live in the depth of the plastering Covered differently. And your portrait between my empty hands. Father-son shards in excavation stones On their surfaces, their faces, their faces before them. A human mosaic, ruins. To create the complete image of one man are required Tens of thousands of soulmosaics To the sound of a single Divine breath.

Masks, 2012

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Michal Alma Markus An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Dario Rutigliano, curator articulaction@post.com

Multidisciplinary artist Michal Alma Markus' work accomplishes an insightful investigation into the psychological dimension to provide the viewers with a multilayered journey through the liminal area between reality and non-reality. One of the most captivating aspects of her approach is the way it unveils the hidden connection between the realm of imagination and perceptual reality to create a compelling narrative: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to Alma Markus' stimulating and multifaceted artistic production. Hello Michal and welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview would you tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and you degreed from the Bet Berl School of the Arts : how did this experience influence your evolution as an artist? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

In order to tell about my background, I must explain that from a very young age I interpreted the world around me in a rather creative manner. In the Bet Berl School of Arts I was exposed to varied contexts and teachers. One of them was considered to be the guru of the establishment, and his name was Rafi Lavie of Blessed Memory. He already then

described me and my works as an artist of "multiple worlds." One of the things that led me to begin to understand the unique nature of my thoughts was my preoccupation with writing about art and artists. After finishing my studies, I engaged in art research, and I wrote in the "Studio" and "Mishkafayim" art magazines of the Israel Museum and other places. I also drew and exhibited paintings. However, in practice, my studies did not lead me immediately to produce work of a definitive character. In the past decade I wrote three books of philosophical poetry and numerous articles, and I saw unusual things from the spiritual standpoint. Only then did I find the direction which suited me as an artist by creating digital art, a combination of photography and painting. The studies in the Bet Berl School of Art provided the basis, but the cultural infrastructure I developed in the course of many years, through autodidactic study, and also through a multi-aspect vision that contemplated the plains and mountains of the history of art ranging from past periods to the future. To what extent were the artists accurate in their search after the truth of their periods. Furthermore, the fact cannot be ignored that in the last two decades the world has become a global village due to the Internet, and the digital medium has become the central experience. This, too, I learned from the blog which I wrote on the Internet, and

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where, in addition to the writing, there appeared my digital works which combine the worlds. Your approach condenses an impressive combination between plastic art, literary theory and writing: the results convey together a consistent sense of unity, that rejects any conventional classification. We would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.michalma.com in order to get a synoptic view of your work: in the meanwhile, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up? In particular, would you shed light on the notion of Twilight time?

I shall answer as briefly as possible â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the notion of Twilight Time, is a major topic which I define as a description of the period in which we live. This is a concept which, according to the Kabbalah, represents the time between light and darkness, between the time when the sun sets and the time when the stars appear. It is a mystical time in which are created also spiritual vibrations and elements which are not comprehended and which are beyond human control. This time describes the sunlight as a light of blood., a light which constitutes the essential significance of human beings, flesh and blood, and when this light sinks, then the darkness arrives. In the Talmud, in Tractate Shabbat, the twilight time is emphasized as follows: Twilight time is neither of the day nor of the night, neither is it wholly of the day nor wholly of the night. The period of the twilight time represents the combining between life and death. It is a subject which I deal with also in my poems. It also comprises both the photograph and the painting. My second book is called "Other Twilight Times," and all the poems in it concern sunsets and loves that disappeared in the descent into the darkness. Twilight time signals that man constitutes the center of the world; everything

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A woman in a mirror, stars, and watch Lost, 2015

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Algae room and a painter's palette, 2015

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is concentrated there, but where is man in reality? I created models and series according to topics all belonging to the twilight. Series revolving around nature which is being increasingly destroyed by man, on the globe which is in the process of destruction. On broken and destroyed rooms in which man lived and is no longer to be seen in them. Their name - "rooms of emotion." They are populated by fragments of realities or angels or irrational bits of nature that have invaded them. The equation between the land of the earth and that of the moon, or of other stars, including Mars. Through lack of order they have invaded the memories, the times have become mixed up. Many of the series are on trees and also on the female figure and the earth. And on the inseparable connection between "figure structure." The scope of the subjects is so great around the period of twilight time. Seeing that we are dealing with time without time, these places have no conventional classification. The places described are unknown. They are discovered and revealed as in archeological excavations and only by means of the digital art and not by any other techniques. We would start to focus on your artistic production beginning from your Twilight Series, a stimulating project that our readers have already started to admire in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured our attention of these pieces is the way the insightful juxtaposition between intense tones provide the canvasses with a dynamic and autonomous aesthetics, to communicate an attempt to transform tension to harmony, and it's really captivating. While walking our readers through the genesis of the Twilight Series, would you shed light on your main source of inspiration?

The Twilight Time period, as mentioned, is basically time that exists in every day of our

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Kitchen Life, partial view undecipherable, cut worlds, and Voynich manutscript , 2013

lives, in almost every place on the globe, when the sun goes down and the stars appear. Is this the source of my inspiration? Not exactly. It arrived as a symbol. The sources of my inspiration are derived from spiritual conversations which I hold with the universe, through my poetry and my art work, with the emotional and mental spiritual aspect as far as possible, and with searches after meanings. Perhaps fol-

lowing spiritual events that I underwent and which caused pain to the soul, there came to me unidentified visions. What were they exactly?? Is man really alone in the universe? What is the source of the light and of the soul? Thus I received only a few answers, and I still have some questions, and so I search for other worlds, just as the scientists search for other heavenly bodies. And, as

Michal Alma Markus

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far as is known, every person knows that the twilight is an existing time, and even though it is not a lengthy time, it has become a symbolic time. The period of the twilight time leads to a type of interpretation. You may notice that in all my art works there is contrast between wild colorfulness and black and white. This is very important in order to create meaning. There is an amalgamation

between many nuances of color and light and darkness. The dynamic is created also due to the preoccupation with composition. The engaging in composition by Piet Mondrian led him to create a balance between the size of the surfaces and the shades of the color, like a world picture which was once correct. Will it also be correct in the future?

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The tensions between the colors in the world and the darkness, the tensions between the urban buildings and the wild nature, the tensions between man and his soul, the wars of destruction and terror, the climate change, and the soul of man lives and dies. The whole world is full of things that no one really sees Your hybrid techniques allows you to combine colors and visual patterns into an unconventional mix, in which we can recognize a dialogue that sums up a mixture of thoughts and emotions. How much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular any comments on your choice of photographic "palette" and how it has changed over time?

I am pleased with your definition, â&#x20AC;&#x153;hybrid techniquesâ&#x20AC;?. Some people change their identity, even their sexual identity, and become different cross-breeds. Of late, people have been discovering this more and more. I think my work deals with the integration of form and color, much as thoughts temper feelings. Because I deal with conceptual and artistic research, I try to rely on facts. My psychological side plays a certain part in the deep creation process, but it is only a secondary role in this conceptual study, both because there arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t many figures in my digital works, and because I feel a need to rely on the conceptual side and and to view the art I create not only on an emotional plane but also on a global one. It is a fact that light reaches the eye as a continuous spectrum of wavelengths, and it is the human sight mechanism that interprets it as colors. Animals see color differently than human beings. Consequently, humans can give a deeper interpretation to color than can animals, because they see a wide color spectrum. What I feel with respect to color is always relative. Temporal. That is what is called for, if

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Moon land and electric power lines, 2012

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Other place of Picasso's Guernica, 2014

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the window in the trees requires the colors of sunset, it will have an orange hue in it. Therefore, all depends on what the created place demands, what the contents of the created work demands. I interpret color as symbolizing the light. For example, the marks of sunset are manifested as an orange color. In my work, reality is represented by photography, that describes reality, and by painting, which is represented as creative and manual toil that changes the appearance of reality. Photography and painting, mixed together, express themselves both by altering reality and by the patches of color, the contour, the outline, the composition and the light. A photograph cannot be a painting, nor can the painting be a photograph. But when the two are merged the form a new means of expression. I am continuously in search of the light. Without light there is no color, without color there is no light. When working digitally on a computer screen an integration is achieved between artificial lighting and basic colors and pigments arising from nature. While exhibiting a captivating vibrancy, your paintings often to reject an explicit explanatory strategy: rather, you seem to invite the viewer to find personal interpretations to the feelings that you convey into your paintings... this quality marks out a considerable part of your production, that are in a certain sense representative of the relationship between emotion and memory. What is the role of memory in your process? And in particular, do you try to achieve a faithful visual translation of your feelings?

One of the most hidden things in artist's work is the ability to combine self- awareness and control of the content among inscrutable and unknown new places to walk to.

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Often scientists and artists are compared, and for a good reason. Scientists are studying issues, reasons and circumstances, so are the artists investigating the exact same values, and come to new places which new tools are needed to understand. The viewer has its own DNA and he is not a single entity. Each person sees what he wants to see and interpret the content as it sees fit, however I do not create an abstract world, but an undefined world. There's a difference. The worlds I create rely on identified places, but other worlds are entering into, some are unknown, some are known, and they create a language of night between day, quiet between storm, urban structures between chaos and more. Therefore the transition is always from the places identified to the unidentified, and their interpretation can be discovered whether one delay on the subtleties. If we think about the viewer who comes to see archaeological sites, he sees dug places which parts of walls and ancient buildings are discovered and objects are found in the earth. The viewer needs to know what he sees and what period these excavations belong. But in fact he sees mostly gray ruins. Then he tries to understand more. Occasionally, there is only an assessment of the time of the archaeological site, without maximal accuracy, they say those years between these. And what exactly happened in those years? Who wander there among the buildings? Who really lives there? Do we see their faces? They know according to historical writings, and commentary based on the past. So does my works. Whether they are archaeological excavations for discovering metaphysical worlds, or parallel worlds facing the realistic worlds, it's actually quite similar. For example in the series "emotion rooms" the rooms are empty of humans, they have the nature that penetrated in, they have a body of a torso

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Rooms of the moons and sunsets, 2013

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Torso Roomswoman of the with moons fish and and sunsets, sea room, 2013 2014

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floating in the water with fish, they have marks of places of houses and buildings that appear on the walls. Are these memories of many individuals or these my memories? Do I feel or sense or remember? These memories are of most people who live in urban structures that nature and wildness have been forgotten from their hearts, and it is good for them as long as it does not interferes. I have the obligation to remember that nature have its own forces, which affect us and can even destroy us all. I consider myself as a man watching what is happening around the last hundred years and see among the good side of things and the technological advancement also concerned for the future of man on earth. I recall my childhood days, and the more innocent, simpler world, when things were less industrial and less onerous. I pass towards parallel places, I see other realities, I see us humans do not understand the future, hardly understand the past and wonder about what we do not know. Pablo Picasso, too, said he is constantly investigating, he is not looking to produce pretty art, he is looking to explore. I sympathize with the sentence he said "There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality". I less sympathizes with the sentence he said: "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers". Your artworks are rich of references as well as of subtle reminders to symbolism. When playing with the evokative power of reminders to universal imagery your approach establishes direct relations with the viewers that goes beyond any conventional symbolism: German

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Structure with objects and sunset atomic gas mask, 2015

multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". What is your opinion about it? And in particular how do you conceive the narrative for your works?

The artist Thomas Demand created models and destroyed them after he photographed them. The phenomenon of construction and destruction for many artists, conceptual too, is familiar and known. The artist Francis Bacon destroyed all of his early works, Picasso also destroyed, as well as the conceptual pop artist Robert Rauschenberg who studied the boundaries and destroyed, because he was not satisfied with what he created, or wanted

to decipher the importance of his art, until he came to insights. The matter of art work destruction is also a personal matter. There were artists who destroyed and painted on works of others, and there were those who destroyed because they tried to confront themselves. We must remember that all destruction also leads to establishment. Human culture too, in all the fields, produces new models all the time. They appear and disappear when more suitable or more interesting new models rise. This is the way of man to create himself interest, content and new language. I believe that in every work of art there is symbolism. Symbolism and images have

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psychological values and also personal and emotional meanings. The psychological values also have narrative values - stories which bond the psychological side of the artist to symbolism and to the story behind the work, In other words, their personal aspect to the public. Eventually it is possible to analyze any piece of art also by psychological aspects; the question is whether this will lead to new discoveries. I'm not sure about that at all. It will not illuminate anything, and maybe just cover the art itself. Naturally the artist chooses what to focus on. There are artists who choose to focus on the emotional and psychological side and they produce touching or particularly

sad characters. They produce emotional art which immediately facing the viewer very visibly. I do not produce such models. The personal psychological side is less on my mind, but not disconnected, as noted, my works also based on thoughts, knowledge and insights. I think that psychology is a good diagnostic tool of life stories. And it is also a good tool to promote people who are not at peace with themselves and seek for help. However psychology does not belong directly to the art, but to the artist's personal story. Just as mathematics does not belong to the art field, but for science, and yet there are artists who incorporated this theme in their works.

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If we relate a moment to crowd psychology, we can see a very familiar image of the reality that the "Pop Art" created them recycled series. They have become a series of repetitive images. Pop Art spoken in the language of crowd psychology. Eventually many artists speak in an individual language to the public; I am producing a new language through engaging in the confrontation between parallel worlds. My works are based on photographic reality of my surroundings, nor my surroundings. The surrounding is undergoing a transformation because of other worlds which are entering, that do not belong, do not always identified. I have an interest in a parallel reality. I do not desire to destroy however to rebuild what has been destroyed. I like to restore as an archaeologist in the apparent reality - a different reality. Before there was camera there were painters who painted the reality. They painted very accurate because there was no camera. Afterward the art went through major changes to values of dissolution, change and a different construction of reality. Nowadays electronic media affects the crowds, and also influences the handwriting of the artists. Many artists produce paintings according to pictures they shoot. I photograph the reality and something it leads me to other places. The human architecture blocks the ability to really see other worlds. Therefore perhaps it is partly destroyed and another one is built in its place. The only way to understand that the person do not see too much is through his mental and blocked rooms and also the realistic. This contrast is fascinating to me, as well as the search for him. Even if the reality created in my works is not pretty and disfigures the existing reality, even if it refers indistinct times, or the exterior of the interior. These are not my memories! But the constant search for answers on what one sees and what is invisible but might exist. I constantly keep searching; I verify

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The eyes of the abandoned house, 2013

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What happened to the moon balls, 2014

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the equation between variables. Factually, parallel worlds exist physically. Works created by me produce a double meaning through multi modes visual and through the metaphysics and always the crowded and closed reality of us humans eventually breaks down. Your approach to digital art could be considered a point of convergence between photography and painting: it's no doubt that modern technologies has an huge impact on the way artworks are nowadays produced. But while artists as Olafur Eliasson use modern techiques to augment the immersive experience from the outside, your approach rather goes beyond a mere use of technology to urge the viewers to inquire into the nature of the image from the inside. In particular, we have been impressed with the way Window Sunset and A woman in a mirror, stars, and watch Lost unveil the consistency of the co-existence of imagination and perceptual parameters: how would you describe this relationship?

I have a high regard for the work of the artist Olafur Eliasson, who studies art through large-scale environmental works, replete with revolutionary ideas. He makes use of technologies in order create a fascinating dialog between art and science. He uses natural elements such as water, light and fog or sculpture, as well as the subject of light and the colors of the rainbow, the sun, turbines and miscellaneous instruments, and also works of earth inside buildings. He seems to have created a language that rejuvenates the nature of the relationship between the creating artist and the exploring artist â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the scientist. He uses an aesthetic, scientific language to produce a fertile environment for future-building, open thought. In truth there is consistency and coexistence among entities. I deal in the fusion of past and future. I also deal in the fusion between languages. I wonder how Picasso arrived at the cubistic decomposition of forms, why he wanted to disassemble the known parts that together make up reality. How he discovered that reality can be disassembled, with no misgivings. He forged a new route.

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I am interested in metaphysical questions. I ask questions about the nature of reality. I try to understand how the human soul is an entity. I ponder about mankind’s place in the universe and ask, “Are we alone?” I ask about the existence of the world outside of human cognition, and about what the human being doesn’t know about what is taking place before his very eyes. I ask about the nature, and the natural or strange position of unclear places or events, and why does it seem strange when places are unclear. I coined a term, reality literature. The essence of this term is that reality has books written about it without human intervention. But a human being translates his own reality into one that he controls, does he not? I ask about fate, divinity and the influence of foreign forces, and to what extent Man is master of his fate. I produce searches that lead to parallel universes. I know that they exist all the time, because they have been physically discovered. They exist not as fiction, not as imagination. Imagination does not remain a dream. Rather, it is a kind of living force, composed of thoughts and secrets, therefore it is a type of energy one must know how to use in order to better understand the world. Imagination is a term or a word for whatever we think isn’t real, but it is also a power of calculated goals one must find a way to achieve. Some may think that there are dreamers who will not succeed because they only dream. But some of these dreamers have been able to prove that they could reach the moon. They will reach Mars, too, and they will keep discovering more and more about the nature of people, about the powers of the soul, about our not being alone. I am trying to produce a fusion between worlds that may seem different, and show a similarity between them. I ask questions about the question of fusion and separation between the

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Window Sunset, 2013

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Room with reed at sunset, 2013

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photographic techniques and the painting techniques. Each of these represents a different language, an opposite. In trust, any photograph, once it is magnified, exhibits abstract elements. As the magnification is increased, its parts will become less understood. You will discover the obscurity of the amorphic hues, and as you continue to magnify it, it transforms into an unidentifiable location. If we adopt the assumption that reality is magnified beyond its boundaries, then even the known regions become abstract. But this abstraction has no place for imagination. Within this abstraction of reality there persists an energy of the concrete, which pulls in the direction of a new reality. Here is a question that comes to my mind foremost: To what extent is a photograph of reality, tangible? To what extent does a photograph, any photograph, really represent reality and to what extent does it represent only a selected segment of reality, one that is also frozen in time? In effect, you have repeatedly taken pictures of the reality of frozen instants, and what you are left with besides frozen instants of time? After all, time has frozen within reality. Time is a sharp instrument. It is always timeless. That is why I am involved with the timeless. As in an experiment on a computer screen, my hands work constantly. I enter into a blurred world, in which time has frozen, and it decides for me how I can involve myself with it. It tells me where to go. It is like walking in a fog, go grope with oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hands towards something from the past = and then the future manifests itself. I go through the fog in order to get somewhere else. I go through a frozen reality in order to find within it a different reality, and the, sometimes, there are answers. I still believe in traditional painting, that had represented reality in the past. I have less credence for painting that depicts reality in the present, because it has competing alternatives. And I do not

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believe in photographed moments that have frozen in time. The worlds of reality as in television programs, too, have long since turned into quite hallucinatory places. In these worlds people have come to behave unexpectedly, in line with decisions made by the powers that be. There is no pre-set scenario, all can be expected and you may do what you see fit. We know that reality is unpredictable. Reality is an unknown story, and the plots it unfolds in all walks of our lives are unknown as well. It is as though they who tell the stories of this reality are not human beings but, rather, fate itself. The coexistence that you speak of is exactly the story of fate as I try to understand it. It is a fate that can be found between two parts, and it coexists with the living parts and those that are defunct, between people and that which they cannot comprehend – because time is, for the most part, like a fog. I have no interest in creating virtual reality. That can be created by the film industry in high-budget films. Nor am I interested in science fiction. I am trying to understand the metaphysical in a language between reality and our perception of it. 8) You often focus your attention on the theme of landscape, providing its intrinsic ephemeral nature with a sense of permanence, so we would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

A creative process cannot be detached from direct experience or from reality. But it is an experience of itself. That is, a creative process can be disconnected from an

external process, but cannot be disconnected from the internal one. In fact, it is connected to a number of parallel systems. Pressing the camera’s shutter button is not a creative process` it is a documentation of reality. The scene or scenes that I focus on are, usually, changing, dynamic scenes. They are not constant. One time the can be a view of trees. Another time it can be an empty landscape with electricity poles, adorned with decorations in the sky. Or it can be a strange view from the window or displayed on the walls of a house, or even the building walls. One time, the scenery is a photograph I worked on in order to convert it to a fusion of an outdoor scene, which is a photograph of reality, and a metaphysical scene. Another time the scene is one that I gave different colors and unidentified reflections together with something familiar. There is a case when the scene is one of the sea, and a case where the scene is one with buildings. I have tens of sets and the scenes in them vary, especially those that enter into buildings because the make a statement about the force of nature. There is a case where I added parts of a female body, like breasts, into a acene. In another the scene is a giant moon, or a torso., or a group of moons in a black puddle. Also, there is a system of machines of the Electric Company to which were added human brains and people mounting stairs with lamps – that, too is scenery. Scenes have no bounds. Sometimes a scene can change and look like a painting, other times it will remain seemingly more photographic. The definition of “scene” is something that depends on what I have at hand, by chance or design, because I had photographed it. Sometimes something

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A tribute to Leonardo da Vinci Vitruvian Man, 2014

urges me to scrutinize a scene and snap the cameraâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shutter â&#x20AC;&#x201C; and then, when I see how the photograph turned out, I saw within in, as I was working on it, other worlds. It is as though bombs had been discovered, with the sign of the atom.

response to Question 7) penetrates into a place that had frozen, and I walk in a fog until the time and the place become clear to me. Or they become ambiguous, because they chose to reveal themselves so, and then I leave them in their ambiguity.

When I was in the Netherlands or France, I took photographs of other scenes, but the works that finally came out were under subjects related also to twilight. I may be changing, but the basis remains under the same twilight.

A creative process can be detached from the direct experience. Likewise, artists can be detached from the direct experience. But a there is always a direct experience there, too, in the sense of direct choice and in the sense of a known, familiar place that had changed.

The direct experience belongs to the moment when the camera lens captures a certain place anyone else can capture, and, as mentioned above, I seek other signs or artifacts in it. The creative process I undergo (on which I had elaborated in my

As stated above, I have two different modes of work. I make the travel through time, but I also undergo the realistic experience, and then transition to another place that belongs to the exploring and discovering

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From the series Twilight United moon - Egg of the Sun, 2011

experience. On the way to seeking answers to questions, a new place, hitherto unseen and hidden from consciousness is discovered. I hope this answers your question about direct experience. I feel direct experiences even if they are not so defined. Every direct experience is subjective. Even when I work at a computer screen, that is a direct experience. The experience isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t virtual, it is real, tangible and corresponds precisely to what was unveiled. Over these years your works have been showcased in several occasions, including your recent solo "Twilight, United Moon" at the Holon Institute of Technology: one of the hallmarks of your work is the capability to create an emotional and

psychological involvement with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

In truth, I have noticed that in various exhibitions where my works were displayed, the viewers would pause in front of my works and even approach them in order to examine them closely. I have a photograph, taken by a municipality photographer, which appeared in an Internet site and which I chanced to come across. In it, a viewer is

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seen standing very close to the creation, The Masks. In the photograph, the viewer appears to actually want to get into the picture and become a part of it. This is very interesting.

Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Michal. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

Nowfor the question of the audience. Like any artist, I too yearn for acceptance and for interest in my work. I think that audience is a very broad term. There are those who would find deep interest in my works because they appear to them to be interesting and different. To others, my works may appear strange.

Thank you very much for your interest in my work. This in itself is a special experience that you are making possible. I want to tell you that I hope that curators and art gallery or museum owners will show an interest in these works – art galleries as well as museums in Great Britain, Europe and the .USA

I do not think of the audience when I go about creating that which my art compels me to create. I create things as I have described before – from a very deep and real position, in order that interested people could see what I see, and that the message on secret places get to them, either consciously or subconsciously, either directly or spiritually.

My work is in need of additional interpretations, beyond my own that come from my position, just as an archeologist is aided by other archeologists in determining the place on the timeline in which to place his findings and to bring the to the public’s scrutiny. So, I am interested in exhibiting my Twilight .series (and there are quite a number of them) in different places in the world

I have come across very interesting reactions from people to my works, both from artists who engage in photography and from painters, and the all somehow connected to the metaphysical that is in my works. I have received wonderful responses to my work in many places. I was selected to take part in an exhibition hosted by the Electric Company, and my works were produced in a tremendous size and earned high praise from the curators.

Actually, I am continuing to work and am creating new works all the time. I examine and test the limits of what can be reached. There are works I haven’t yet unveiled, and there are others that I still have to examine because they are still in a pondering stage. I am working on a series called Layers, such .that in each layer there are different forms of life

I have never given thought to the public’s influence on my decisions. But I have work with the public that has turned into herds, and the herds have turned into apes. And there is the sunset window… I think people must not turn into herds that rush towards a target. They should examine everything cautiously, and digest it slowly. This is important for preserving the collective memory of all of humanity.

I am interested in physical and astronomical subjects, but also in studies of UFOs. I follow NASA assiduously and its discoveries on Mars and other stars. In addition to art, I continue to write poetry and content that ties together .twilight and other subjects that mankind is occupied with To summarize, I want to send you one of my poems, that deals with twilight. It .is a symbolic poem It describes the twilight era Thank you again, from all my heart!

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S tanley Shoemaker Lives and works in Dallas, USA

We live in a world made from visual contents, the

streets are flooded with advertisements telling the viewer what is the ideal merchandise, what is beautiful and what is socially acceptable, photography as a medium lets people see the ideal world through the lens. As spanish photographer Joan Fontcuberta said, " Every photograph is a fiction with pretensions to truth. Despite everything that we have been inculcated, all that we believe, photography always lies; it lies instinctively, lies because its nature does not allow it to do anything else."

So, this portfolio is a reminder of all the things photography can do as a tool to provide a different perspective on our own society. It distorts and manipulates reality inciting the viewer to see beyond the image. Perception is the ideal word to describe this body of work, the viewer will know and discover that photography is not about reality, its about making your own reality by manipulating every image. The idea itself surpasses the image and creates a whole new way of communication.

Stanley Shoemaker

Stanley Shoemaker An artist's statement

We live in a world made from visual contents, the streets are flooded with advertisements telling the viewer what is the ideal merchandise, what is beautiful and what is socially acceptable, photography as a medium lets people see the ideal world through the lens. As spanish photographer Joan Fontcuberta said, " Every photograph is a fiction with pretensions to truth. Despite everything that we have been inculcated, all that we believe, photography always lies; it lies instinctively, lies because its nature does not allow it to do anything else." So, this portfolio is a reminder of all the things photography can do as a tool to provide a different perspective on our own society. It distorts and manipulates reality inciting the viewer to see beyond the image. Perception is the ideal word to describe this body of work, the viewer will know and discover that photography is not about reality, its about making your own reality by manipulating every image. The idea itself surpasses the image and creates a whole new way of communication.

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Stanley Shoemaker An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Katherine Wilson, curator articulaction@post.com

Mexican visual artist Stanley Shoemaker's work explores the aesthetics of landscape going beyond evokative reminders to draw the viewers into a multilayered experience. In is recent works that we'll be discussing in the following pages, he urges the viewers to extract a narrative from the image he captured, to challenge their perceptual paameters. His approach encapsulates both traditional heritage and unconventional sensitiveness and allows him to produce pieces marked out with a strong reference to contemporariness. One of the most impressive aspects of Showmaker's work is the way it allows the viewers to discover that photography is not about reality, its about making your own reality by manipulating every image: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating and multifaceted artistic production. Hello Stanley and welcome to ARTiculAction: we would start this interview with a couple of questions

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about rich and multifaceted background. Are there any experiences that influence the way you conceive and produce your works? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the aesthetic problem in general?

Hi, first of all, as you mentioned in your intro, I was born and raised in Mexico, my family is both mexican (from my mothers side) and american, so, as a child I was always traveling to the US and back to mexico on a regular basis, that, I think influenced me on the ways I saw my own culture, I found it captivating how different both countries were, it created a great impact on how I saw the world, so, both cultures made a great effect on my early years. Mexico is full of color, it has a vivid architecture, art and artisans here play with contrast and are not that shy about using primary colors in their work, for example, Rufino Tamayo has a very colorful palette and I suppose my work subconsciously was influenced by color and contrast, by saying this I mean the psychology of color, using it to emphasize something that I want the viewer to see, or playing with it to show the whole picture, I have a photograph that I made called â&#x20AC;&#x153;future generationâ&#x20AC;? I placed the child facing backwards so that every person who sees this can form a relationship with the child. The red lollipop emphasizes the innocence of the subject. I made this image with the intention of creating a conscience for our own environment and to

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question our relationship with the planet we inhabit. The language you convey in your works is the result of a constant evolution of your searching for new means to express the ideas you explore in your works: your inquiry into the expressive potential of photography combines together figurative as subtle abstract feature into a coherent balance. We we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.stanleyshoemaker.com in order to get a synoptic view of your work: in the meanwhile, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up? In particular, would you tell our readers something about the evolution of your style?

When I was studying photography I was influenced by my teachers telling me that the medium was not a way to describe reality, that this reality comes from the photographer, Ansel Adams once said: “Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is creative art” and this quote really got me…I began making conceptual photographs in bw mainly because it was easier to combine a bw photograph, but I was not satisfied with the first results, I mean, Im not against black and white photographs, what Im trying to say is that they lacked that certain emphasis, I don’t know what was it but I was not satisfied with the results so I began making color photographs, so, I started creating images that had a subliminal statement, always wanting the viewer to create his or her own personal

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Stanley Shoemaker

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meaning when viewing my work, my photographs and titles just give a hint on what Im trying to communicate, in a way, the final interpretation comes from the viewer who creates the final message by his or her own personal experience. For this special edition of ARTiculAction we have selected nuclear dream and awakenings a couple of pieces that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured our attention of your work is its dynamic and autonomous aesthetics: in particular, it seems to communicate a successful attempt to transform tension to harmony, and it's really captivating. While walking our readers through the genesis of these piece, would you shed light on your usual process and your sources of inspiration?

As I said before, I think Im always trying to create a relationship between different scenes, mixing each image so that it works perfectly between on and the other, I traveled to cambodia in 2009 and was amazed by the devastation and post war apocalypse that they went through as a country, the khmer rouge destroyed society as a whole, when i was in tuol sleng prison I just couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t believe the consequences and psychological effect it had on me, so I took one of the beds that were used to torture prisoners and as I came back to mexico I knew that I needed to use that image not to emphasize the horror of civil war but to use it in a way

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Stanley Shoemaker

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that had an opposite effect as you see it, thats why I use the ocean as a background, the sea always has a positive and relaxing effect on me, and thats what Im trying to say, that even if your country has a darkest period in its own history you can always change things and see a positive futureâ&#x20AC;Ś In nuclear dream I thought of all the people that were at prypiat at the time of the nuclear accident, every gas mask that is on the floor represents someone who was at that period of time in the city, so, I want to depict and show that everybody no matter the gender, age or social status has to live and dream of a safer world. We have really appeciated the way you work provides a different perspective on our own society: while lots of visual artists from the contemporary scene, as Thomas Hirschhorn and Michael Light, use to convey open sociopolitical criticism in their works, you seem more interested to hint the direction, inviting the viewers to a process of self-reflection that may lead to subvert a variety of usual cultural categories. Do you consider that your works could be considered political in a certain sense or did you seek to maintain a more neutral approach? And in particular, what could be in your opinion the role that an artist could play in the contemporary society?

I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think that my work represents a political approach, maybe it has a peculiar way of expressing our culture and our problems as a global society, I try to get in the viewers psyche, and in

Stanley Shoemaker

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Steve Barnard

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order to do that I have to put my own past experiences to transmit an idea, I know that every individual has a different background but we as a society have global values that transcend borders, so, I think that my work is in fact an open statement that tries to emphasize our own time and place here on this planet. Our contemporary society is more visual, images have almost the same communication now as words, so we are always seeing billboards, propaganda, ads, etc with thousands of photographs these days. We need to have a certain filter to stop and think of what the image is trying to communicate. As the late John Szarkowski said â&#x20AC;&#x153;It isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t what a picture is of, it is what it is aboutâ&#x20AC;&#x153; The theme of landscape is very recurrent in your imagery and it never plays the role of a mere background: you rather seem to address to viewers to extract a narrative behind the images you select, to establish direct relations with the spectatorship. German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". How would you describe the function of the evokative places you select from landscapes?

Landscapes play an important role on my body of work, I see them as a part of the whole picture, I mean, they are all part of the same context within the image, but also, the background plays

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an important role because it takes the viewer to a certain place, the space that surrounds the subject portrayed on a photograph is just as important as the subject by itself, by using a certain type of landscape you can get into the psychological part of the viewer and by this I mean, if I use a landscape with no elements lets just say a desert, the viewer can interpret a certain lonely, introspective image, so it all begins with what Im trying to emphasize. As the late Franz West did in his installations, your work shows unconventional features in the way it deconstructs perceptual processes in order to assemble them in a collective imagery, urging the viewers to a process of self-reflection. In particular, the equilibrium concerning the composition of your works gives them a permanence to the intrinsic ephemeral nature of the images that you capture. So we would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think so, creativity and experience are blended together to form an idea, I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t untie the fusion between these two concepts because they are linked together. Same thing happens to the viewer, I suppose that their own personal experiences have a direct impact on how they see my work.

Steve Barnard

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Steve Barnard

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You accomplish the difficult task of controlling the experience of place and in your artist's statement you have quoted Joan Fontcuberta who once stated that, "Every photograph is a fiction with pretensions to truth". Artists are always interested in probing to see what is beneath the surface: maybe one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your view about this?

Thats true, I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think that Im making photographs, Im sharing ideas to everyone who happens to see my work, thats the beauty of the whole process, its not what you see in the picture its the symbolism that lies beneath the elements depicted in the image. So, its kind of a visual storytelling in which many objects unite and carry a certain meaning throughout the picture. When developing a multilayered language, you capture non-sharpness and bring to a new level of significance the elusive still ubiquitous relationship between experience and memory. What is the role of memory in your process?

I think that memory is part of a learning process in which information comes from the outside world and helps you take decisions that allow you to be part of your own essence, so, just by saying this I think that all of us make decisions based on past experiences. Now, Im aware that my own memory and experience affect directly the way I

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see and interpret my surroundings, this helps me judge and analyze pictures in a way that they work perfectly with my own past knowledge, that is how I can blend different images so they can be seen as a whole and have harmony between on and the other. One word that I think is beyond memory is perception, sometimes I can manipulate or construct an idea based on my own memory but one thing that I would not be able to control is how this final photograph will be perceived with my final audience, and thats scary but at the same time is what interests me the most. Over these years you have exhibited your works in several occasions, including your recent solo exhibition at the Museo Olga Costa, in Guanajuato: one of the hallmarks of your work is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

This is an interesting question and is directly related with what I was talking about perception, I can do whatever I want in my work, show the audience one, two or more elements working between on and the other but at the

Steve Barnard

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ICUL CTION C o n t e m p o r a r y

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Steve Barnard

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end the ones that are going to perceive and conclude the final meaning of this is the audience itself, and Im saying the audience but Im making a mistake I mean, the final idea comes from each and every individual that judges my image and makes a relationship with it, I have no control whatsoever in his or her conclusion I may be able to hint the way but at the end its the individual who will deliver the final statement and thats what will have an effect. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t make images based on what a particular person says or thinks. Im interested on the outcome that they have after they see my work, this does not affect the way I develop an idea. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Stanley. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

I'm working on a group exhibition at the center of fine art photography in colorado, USA, First of all I wanna thank all of you for giving me the opportunity to share my work, I am currently working on a series that captivates the environment and the consequences it has in our future, I am also working on an exhibit at The center for fine art photography in the US, after that well, lets see what the future has for meâ&#x20AC;Ś thanks again to all of you for taking the time and inviting me to this interview really appreciate itâ&#x20AC;Ś