Be that as it may, this catalog or any portion there of may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without express written permission from Peripheral ARTeries and featured artists.
Lives and works in Tel-Aviv, Israel
Lives and works in Tel-Aviv, Israel
Lives and works in Newton, Massachusetts, USA
Lives and works in London, United Kingdom
Lives and works in Boston, MA, USA
Lives and works in Northwest Indiana, United States
Lives and works in New York City, USA
Lives and works in Veli Brgud, Opatija, Croatia
Lives and works in Moshav Bizaron, Israel
Special thanks to: Isabel Becker, Julia Überreiter, Deborah Esses, Xavier Blondeau, Margaret Noble, Nathalie Borowski, Marco Visch, Xavier Blondeau, J.D. Doria, Matthias Callay, Luiza Zimerman, Kristina Sereikaite, Scott D'Arcy, Kalli Kalde, Carla Forte, Mathieu Goussin, Dorothee Zombronner, Olga Karyakina, Robert Hamilton, Carrie Alter, Jessica Bingham, Fabian Freese, Elodie Abergel, Ellen van der Schaaf, Courtney Henderson, Ben Hollis, Riley Arthur, Ido Friedman, Nicole Ennemoser, Scott Vogel, Tal Regev, Sarah Hill, Olivia Punnet and Simon Raab
What I have is not mine and what I do must have a meaning. As our planet is part of the Solar system and the Milky Way galaxy so I have wider circles of belonging and responsibility as family, society, community and human beings no matter their religions All my life is an everlasting quest to decipher the enigma of my existence and to share my insights with other human beings. I believe in a collective effort to change for the better by evoking global call for positive actions that are derived from what unites us as human beings rather than focus on what are the gaps or differences. I am but a momentary visitor here but I believe in leaving a mark by teaching writing and gathering other human beings that wish to see a better world as I am Religion has nothing to do with temples synagogues or mosques but with the inner quest for the spirit to be revealed and each individual aspiration to find out what is the true meaning of being human. My journey has many side roads not because I leave the main spiritual quest of my life but because I search in every path I turn for more human beings that might share the same journey and wish to join the searches chariot.
An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.comRejecting any conventional classification regarding its style, Ted Barr's work draws the viewers through an unconventional and multilayered experience. The central theme of his work is "As Above So Below" and in his body of works that we'll be discussing in the following pages he accomplishes the difficult task of inquiry into the magnificence of the cosmic world and the nature and expression of the duality it represents: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating and multifaceted artistic production.
Hello Ted and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your
background. Are there any experiences that influenced the way you currently conceive and produce your works? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making in general?
There was a sentence I wrote as a young soldier in the desert, stars in the desert look brighter and closer, i stood on the edge of Ramon crater one of the biggest craters on our planet, I was exhausted after a 50 miles navigation expedition and there i wrote: my body ends in the skin but my mind reaches the stars. This is the first sentence that appear in my home page. From very young age I was captured by the starry nights, I used to spend hours gazing at the stars and wondering what is our connection as human beings to those celestial elements and what is my place within the universe.
Those thoughts led me into an inquiry of religions. I searched and studied the Abborigins in Australia, Buddhism, Kabbala, the Native American believes and rituals, i was asking, is there a binding thread, do spiritual people around the globe speak the same language , share the same notions and use similar symbols,
because if there is even one idea they all share in common there might be a truth in that and this truth is what i wish to explore, write about and express in color and form.
I am an Israeli and as such spent 8 years of my life in the army. I fought in wars and saw young
men dying near me, this experience engraved in my soul the understanding that nothing is guaranteed, what exists today might disappear tomorrow. The only time that exists is NOW. life is too valuable to spend without meaning. This in brief is the core essence of the Cycles of life painting series.
The results of your artistic inquiry 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.tedbarrart.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 think that there is a central idea that connects all of your work as an artist.
The basis of my art stand on my life quest and my writings that explores this quest. I started writing long before i expressed myself in visual art. If someone wishes to understand what is the core essence of my art i would suggest to read the articles in my site especially those that are labeled: Void & Matter.
There is order through the ray of creation, mathematicians try to formulate this order, poets write songs about it, philosophers ask big questions with the hope to implement the answers in their theories and I am trying to depict my awe about this universal wisdom in color and form mixed with words. For many years i was talking, writing , painting to myself, nobody really bothered to deepen in what i was talking about, in recent years there are more and more echoes of recognition. I am very happy that there are nowadays groups around the world that study my articles and we have interesting dialogue. In some of my articles i elaborated the idea that human life as it appears in our life time and senses is an illusion, modern culture cherishes the envelope rather developing the core essence of what makes us human, it is this process of human development i am searching and exploring. It all starts by trying to decipher the meaning of the void.
Because this is a core theme in my expression here is a summary of the Void article i wrote first on 2007 and keep on writing since then. First was the void, then movement in the void. Movement defines matter as matter defines the void. A fine vibration oscillates
matter and void causing bigger formations; the denser the frequency the more energy is turned into matter and forms new gas formations that turn into nebulae, stars and galaxies. The chaotic period of a universe's formation ends in order, thanks to the gravitation king that governs the universe and sets the cosmic rules: No celestial element will live alone Everything is on the move Evolution is the key arrow in creation Universal movements are elliptical and spiral shaped. Light is the bookkeeper of the universe .When there is order, defined shapes and orbits there is time and directions. There was time to create life that would ponder, ruminate and contemplate on The Creation and The Creator and remember that firstThere was the void.
For this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries we have selected conception 4th day and 9th week, that our readers have already started to admire in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured our attention of these interesting projects is the way you provided the visual results of your artistic inquiry with autonomous aesthetics: when walking our readers through the genesis of conception 4th day and 9th week would you shed a light about your usual process and setup?
The Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson was a great innovator, from 1957 he used endoscopic cameras to take marvelous photos of embryos, conception process and inner organs. This great man left his body on January this year and i felt like losing a family member. Those two art works you have choosen are from the series 'Human Formation' inspired by Lennart Nilsson's photography that were published on 2006 in the book 'LIFE'.
What struck me when i first saw Lennart Nilsson's photos in the British museum, was the similarity between those images and the Hubble telescope Deep Space images. An ovum appears to me like a star, an embryo like a galaxy, the hand formation in the 9th week of pregnancy like gas storms on the Sun. Conception 4th day was one of the first paintings in this series i created, based on one of the most inspiring images of Lennart Nilsson, it depicts the split of the Zigote and the beginning of the embryos' cells division. For me this is an eternal enigma how life emerges from the void, how is it that out of the convergence of sperm and ovum a mind that can reach the farthest galaxies is formed. From those thoughts i started to develope the 'As Above So Below' theory, about the resemblance between the biggest formats in the universe and the smallest brick stones. Everything in the universe is on the move, it starts with electrons and ends with galaxy clusters
Here is a short quote from the article As Above So Below:
In all major religions, human life is but a passage from a world without time to the mass and physical realm. What happens in conception is the physical allowance that attracts the human essence (spirit) and only when spirit and the physical vehicle (body) merge, the new born baby is called by name and becomes a citizen of Planet Earth. By becoming a new citizen, it has rights and duties, the problem in the modern world is that those rights and duties are mixed up so humans deviate from its original function and destiny into complete chaos.
In an interview to the NOVA magazine
Lennart Nilsson said:
"I have the instruments, ideas, technology to
create or see something which have not been known before, just to discover something, this is always my dream"
You have developed a multi-layered technique that consists of cold tar layers mixed with oil
colors, acrylic and lacquer: what are the qualities that you are searching for in the materials that you combine in your works?
In each human being exist many layers so i use layers in my art as well. In each human being
there are failures, fright, bad memories,unfulffiled dreams, death, the symbol for that in my art is tar, which is the extract of past lives so i use tar in my paintings. The first layer is acrylic then with a pipette I pour a drop of tar on the acrylic and the most
inspiring process starts, I am always amazed by the weird shapes this merge between acrylic and tar causes, but I found out in the workshops I deliver that there is much more then what meets the eyes. I use this moment before pouring the tar as meditation, and ask the students to think and bring up all the miseries and unfortunate moments in their lives, then to concentrate them into one small black ball that is encapsulated in this tar pipette, when the tar is released and merges with the acrylic it is not tar any more but a chaotic, surprising and for me very inspiring interference with the liquid base on the canvas. It is extremely elevating, liberating process. I have paintings with more than 20 layers each layer contains, Acrylic, tar and oil colors.
In a previous interview you stated that you try to paint what elevates your soul and spirit: how did your interest in the cosmic world first arise?
What elevates my life has to do with whatever gets me closer answering my life quest questions:
Who am I? What is my purpose on Planet Earth? What shoud I do to fulfill this purpose?
Understanding that we are but a tiny unnoticed planet within an endless universe puts human life in proportions, it was this early gazing at stars that evoked those questions in me and led me to live and create according to my wonder about my existence, in this journey i am but a momentary visitor that came into being 720 months ago and soon (100 years on planetary scale is unnoticeable) will leave my body. My choices in life direct me to say yes and be open to what elevates my soul and to stay away from petty consuming life events. I am honored and inspired to see other people being elevated and inspired by my art works or transforming for
the better in my art workshops.
Red is a quite recurrent tone in your pallete and we have really appreciated the vibrancy
of thoughtful nuances of your pieces, that are often marked out with intense tones as Andromeda Galaxy and Brain, Embryo that create tension and dynamics. How did you come
about settling on your color palette? And 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?
Color is the first coat of energy, each color has its own frequency that generate
different vibrancy which in our minds translates into feelings. Colors as human beings and as my paintings have many layers, my color palette varies according to the art
series I am painting: in the Deep Space series the dominant colors are, Magenta and Ultramarin in the Human Formation series, red, yellow and ochre in the Cycles Of Life
series, light blue, purple and watery pink
I will relate to the colors red and blue: On the first layer, Red calls for alert and attention
On the second it freezes On a cosmic level it is a cold, usually older star that is moving away from Planet Earth
Blue calls for flow and calmness On the second it expands On cosmic level it is a hot usually younger star that is moving toward Planet Earth
My models used to be the Deep Space images sent to Planet Earth by the Hubble telescope. In my art I try to depict what i see in the starry and galactic images and translate them to human feelings. my art is my translation of the outer world into emotions that can be recognized and shared by other human beings.
While referring to reality, your paintings convey a captivating abstract feeling: how do you view the concepts of the real, the authentic and the imagined playing out within your works?
I have studied 7 years figurative painting. I was the sole student of the Israeli master Shlomo Tzafrir that came from a very strict teaching method. For the first 2 years it was only, pencils, charcoals and sanguins, only drawing, no colors. I wanted to paint galaxies and stars, he didn t let me, i felt very frustrated then, but after I started teaching myself i totally understood what is behind this strict teaching, i came from the financial world started painting lessons at the age of 38 for my master i was void, he later explained that he needed first to empty all my perception about art and self expression before starting implementing the basic rules of drawing. Only after his death on 2002 i started to create my own theme, stars and galaxies started to appear on my canvases, I run away from this strict figurative expression, now i am totally in free
expression art which i call FLY - Free the Life within You, weaved with the symbolic language derived from my life journey and articles i wrote about my path, but from time to time i have 'figurative attacks' and use brushes and oil paints the traditional way
especially in my recent 'Cycles of Life' paintings when i use the eye symbol.
But we are touching here much wider topic: what is reality? Is it that in our limited senses with our short unnoticed life span we can
claim that we understand, grasp and communicate about reality? Reality is but a personal interpretation of the brain fed by the senses. Reality doesn t change because we love or hate, what can change is our translation, encoding,, contemplations,
feelings about what seems to be out there outside of our physical bodies, but this is an illusion because there isn't 'outthere' we are part of the universe as the universe is a part of each and every one of us. Human beings fascinate me because i look at
every individual as a complete universe in potention, universe that is connected to my universe binded by the same physical structure, the same planetary laws, and nourished by the same Sun. If we look at the work The Hand Formation, this is a 4 layers
translation and insight, i will elaborate my writing on that because it is one of the most important themes in my art: the first layer- reality
What is it? The Hand Formation is based on Lennart Nilsson photography of the embryo formation in the 9th week of pregnancy, this is the time when the fingers start to emerge. the second layer – capturing the moment
What we see? A photo is a pose in time, a fragment of reality, in the 10th week of pregnancy the embryo's hand formation would look totally different, there are so many aspects involed here, coloring, proportions, lighting is crucial, Nilsson used endoscopic cameras with light fibers, strikinly enough he started his experiments with inner body photography 60 years ago at 1957 (the year i was born)
The third layer – the artist perception
What I feel? what i see as an artist in this photo, image, model? This seeing is translated into emotions that generate creation. In every art work there is a mini process of pregnancy, conception, growth and birth and it takes time, you can’t have the merge of ovum and sperm and expect a collage student the next day. So this painting of mine is my translation of what i saw in Lennart Nilsson's photography, for me those emerging fingers looks like gas eruptions on the Sun.
The forth layer – the viewer view
What we feel? The moment i sign my painting it is not mine any more, what i see is not relevant, it is the viewer translation, perception and understanding that resonates through him or her and determines the variety of emotions evoked which are translated into like, love or dislike, hate or any other emotion that can relate to the new momentary 'reality', there are
viewers that would strongly connect to the alternative 'reality' an art object offers and would want to have it so they can relate to this 'reality' in their lives. On a different scale i ll explain it this way: an object, a model, an idea, even a still life scene has its energetic frequency translated by the mind into feelings that are the basis for the art action, what appears on the canvas is the outresult of this premordial grasp of the individual reality , by the tunning fork principal the viewer with the same frequncy can resonate with the essence that made this art work, and when it happens i call it magic. This is by the way the reason i end all my mails and messages with:
As you have remarked once, you see cycles in the movement of heavenly bodies, in human embryonic development and in symbols that define religions: 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? Morever, would you tell us something about the importance of symbols in your imagery?
A symbol is a human made pattern that reflects a common agreed idea between a group of people, the more people agree on the symbol meaning, the more powerful it becomes, because it is now a communune of minds that reflects together the power of the agreed idea, or alleged truth, that if atunned to one direction can change the world (for the better as well as for the worse). You can think about the Cross , Yin and Yang, and the ISIS flag. For me symbols are encapsulation of energetic essences that could be deciphered by the viewers and cause them to halt for a
moment and ponder what does this symbol says to them? What is this symbol relation to the whole canvas? What is this or those symbols reference to the whole body of works?
I can define the symbols in my art as the key to the art work essence. I totally disagree with Thomas Demand and think that on the conterary nowadays we use much more symbols than we used before, we live by symbols, each logo is a symbol, think about Apple, Facebook or the flag of Italy, with that I try to reflect in my art journey, that as all soul journeys has to do with awakening,
discerning between what elevates my life and what stops me, psychological and narrative elements whithin the medium are generalization of every creative process doesn t matter if you are a writer, a player a singer a sculptor or painter, each word, line, color has it s story and evokes a memory. I don t have to agree with Demand to love his work, i think his Simulacrum idea depicted especially in his 1997 brilliant work ' The Bathroom' is a replica of modern world.
The original is long gone, we leave in a world of duplicates and even the duplicates has no A type, this is our 'fake news', Demand narrative elements stay as photography and
we are back into the second layer in my answer number 7, capturing the moment.
Can you tell us why you don t sign your name on your canvases and a bit more about the symbol you choose as signature?
There are several reasons why i don t sign my name on my canvases:
the first is that Ted Barr is a name given to me by my parents and has nothing to do with my choice.
The second is that possession calls for suffering, the moment you claim a physical object, suffering raises its head, the moment i finish a painting it is not mine any more, i
sell my artworks for free much before i get paid by the gallery or a collector from the actual transfer.
The third is that when i create i prefer that Ted Barr would be out of the studio. The forth is that this symbol i call DE (Dual Eternity) encapsulates the ideas and notions i am dwelling about all my life.
My art started from wondering about my being in this specific place and time. in this search i studied the meaning of numbers and was amazed to find out the similarity about the numbers' meaning throughout diverse cultures: The number 3 stands for creation,
produce, fertility (mother, father, child) The number 5 is the symbol of the human being (2 legs, 2 hands, one head) The number 8 symbolizes the infinite, our journey, the cycles of life My symbol is depicted by 35 white dots, because human life is not a linear line. There are 2 human symbols each organ is made out of 5 dots Each figure is holding the ANKH symbol which in Ancient Egypt symbolized the eternal connection between life and death meaning that death is but
another state of the spirit that goes under several cycles of life : with a body – that appears as life. without a body - what is considered to be death This symbol encapsulates the core essence of my latest painting series 'Cycles Of Life'.
As you have remarked once, you have no intention to load too much meaning on one canvas. Rather than attempting to establish any univocal sense, you seem to urge the
viewers to elaborate personal associations: would you tell us how much important is for you that the spectatorship rethink the concepts you convey in your pieces, elaborating personal meanings?
A painter walks into the desert, he paints on 200x200 cm canvas the most stupendous art work, then he digs a big hole in the ground, burries the art work covers it with sand and walks away. 100 years later an archeologist
digs and finds rotten wood frame with rusty nails. I use to tell this story to my students and then ask is it an art work? I think that it is most important to share what you create and have reflections from other, eyes, hearts and minds. I had some inspiring elevating experiences with viewers that stood in front of my works and opened up, some cried without an apparent reason, some told me their life stories, some shared with me their hidden secrets and there were viewers that explained my paintings in such a skillful way that i embraced it and use it myself. It is always a miracle to me how shapes and colors on a canvas can cause such overwhelming emotions, those kind of engagements are my greatest motivation to keep on creating art much more than selling or exhibitting. This is the reason that in the year 2008 i founded the Current art group – an artists and art lovers gathering for worldwide sharing and collaboration.
Over the years your works have been exhibited in several occasions, including your recent show at the Physics Department of the Tel Aviv University. 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 decisionmaking process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?
I had a grand show in Tel Aviv port that was closed yesterday, when i published the event i told all my friends that i will be very glad to welcome them in the opening reception but if they really want to understand what is going
on on the walls and have deeper explanation about the core essence of my art i would suggest them to attend the gallery talk. When i am interested in an artist work i personally skip the reception and attend the gallery talk.
In the gallery talk last Thursday i spoke for 2 hours about the answers i gave in this interview especially relating to symbols and their meaning in my art. It is important to understand that first is the magical moments of the art process, creating art was and i hope will always be a wonder for me, then there is the art process and in the end line the viewers. I don t create for the vierewers i create for myself. it is my personal expression undependent of any other path i took in my life. I welcome all viewers to reflect on my art and as i quoted in the previous answers, this dialogue is very important for me.
So to relate to the question the answers is: no, the audience reception has nothing to to with my decision making process in my art. This is a very big issue and i am not sure if it is right to open it in the end of this interview and that is: what are the sources of inspiration in my art? And how I start the creative process? I was interviewed by a jounalist in Kathmandu named Nishal Ully , a reporter for the 'Kathmandu Post' and he asked me this question about the starting point of the creative process, I answered: there are mornings i wake up and see, a star, a galaxy, shapes and colors i am rushing to my studio and paint what i saw. there are times when i arrive to my studio and i don t have a clue about what i am going to paint, i am sitting in my dwelling chair hoping the fog would be cleared, many times in this state the canvas remains white but if something happens and i create out of this state of mind
i consider it better paintings but there is a third state in which i enter my studio and i am completely lost and full of worries and wonderings, is it worth it, what am i doing here? If something happens and i manage to create out of this state i consider them my best paintings
Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Ted. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?
As i said i had just my Cycles of life exhibition at the Art Market Gallery in Tel Aviv port, 3 paintings were taken to a new design center in Tel Aviv so somehow it continues Next week i ll deliver the FLY workshop in the Mount Carmel (the real version in Israel not the one in California) I was invited by the R.A.R.O. organization in Madrid for a one month residency and just wrote them that the only time available is end of August till February 2018. Between 25-30 September I’ll be in Jaipur, Rajasthan India invited by the Art Pivot organization and my friend Rajesh Yadav to deliver a 3 day FLY workshop during Jaipur art festival On October 5 i ll have a solo show in Dacia Gallery, NYC, curated by Lee Vasu And on December i am back to Florida co-curating with Alessandro Berni a booth in the Scope during the Art Basel Miami week Last week i signed a representative contract with Seungyong Chang founder of the JANG ART COLLAGE in Seoul Korea and I plan to find the time to be there as well.
An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com
Addressing the viewers to a multilayered journey through the liminal area in which perceptual reality and dreamlike dimension find a consistent point of convergence, Uri Batson's work conveys both the real and the abstract. In his body of works that we'll be discussing in the following pages he accomplishes the difficult task of exciting the observers to motivate their imagination to create personal associations and to extract the stories behind his images: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to Batson's stimulating and multifaceted artistic production.
Hello Uri and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and after your studies at the “Minshar” School of Art you graduated from the “Hamidrasha” Art College, in Beit Berl. How did these experiences influence the way you currently conceive and produce your works?
Hello, shalom, thanks for having me here. Both of these schools were very different. While "MINSHAR" had an undergroundexperimental vibe which allowed fully exploring and discovering the boundaries of my creative self, "HAMIDRASHA" was a conceptual-self centering cocoon. I believe it gave me the tools to be bold
and allowed me to play with mediums in a childish yet fully aware manner which I think is one of the most important attributes for an artist, let alone a young one.
The results of your artistic inquiry reject any conventional classification, still convey a consistent sense of unity: before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit https://batson.carbonmade.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 think that there is a central idea that connects all of your work as an artist.
It's a good question I often ask myself too. Ray Kurtzweil once said that in order to
advance one must always seek for new tools both intellectual and physical. Still, in the evolution of an artist there are some characters which reappear over and over again which eventually build your own language. In the last couple of years I was reacting a lot to childhood games and the representation of children as the observers of this era.
This, mixed with an abstract-figurative technique which I developed over the years, combines somehow a center from which I can start the process.
The body of works that we have selected for this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article has at once captured our attention for the way you have provided the results of your artistic inquiry with autonomous aesthetics: how much importance does play spontaneity in your work? In particular, do you conceive your works instinctively or do you methodically elaborate your pieces?
Art immerges at the gap between knowing and not knowing. Knowing refer to the part where I practice techniques and gather as much information about an idea as I can whereas not knowing is the complete release from all this accumulated information and surrendering to the act of painting itself. I'm not trying to stay in a comfortable place too long, instead I rather try new things which allow me to fail and react. There is nothing more liberating then the first couple of times when you are
experimenting in a new medium/material. I think that spontaneity is a key element in my process of working.
Your work have a seductive beauty on the surface, still you seem to addresses the viewer to capture what is beneath the surface of your images: how much important is for you the narrative level of you painting? In particular, how much everyday life's experience does fuel your creativity?
It's all about the everyday life, whether it's in the palettes I choose or the subjects of my paintings. "Pointing Positions" series (especially "A boy pointing an airplane") started out when I saw a child pointing at an airplane like children often do and at the same time two of my friends left Israel to live abroad. It was a magical moment when the simplest childish jester was combined with my own deep and complex feeling about it.
I try to widen my site as much as I can in order to really observe "life", I believe that creativity can be found in the back of the most common things as long as we are open to see it and play with it.
Your artworks are marked out with captivating dreamlike quality and while referring to reality they convey such captivating abstract feeling: how do you view the relationship between concepts of the real and the imagined playing within your works?
As I started to answer in the last question,
Boy sea airplane
Reality is the foundation on which the artwork is standing. From that I'm trying to layer up my own feelings towards the subject of the work and transform all kind of thoughts and ideas into material.
I think that there is a switching positions between the role of abstract and figurative in my works; While the abstract jesters manifested as figurative figures (i.e. airplanes), I can see landscapes (what I'm
calling "atmospheres") disassembled back to abstract.
I think that it leaves the viewers in a place where they can have an aesthetic experience at first glimpse but at the same time it opens a whole new way of seeing it for those who want to enter and finish the view with questions rather than answers.
We have really appreciated the vibrancy of thoughtful nuances of your pieces that
draws the viewers though a multilayered visual journey and shows that vivacious tones are not strictly indispensable to create tension and dynamics. How did you come about settling on your color palette? And 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?
Like everything in life, it's an evolutional
process. Wood always fascinated me. It began while I was building sets for TV shows and took the coulisses after worth proceeding to work and alter it in studio. At first I was covering it fully with grain like texture similar to the canvas I was used to paint on. Later on I started to notice the various textures and colors of the wood itself and gradually started to use it as a full palette. Now days I spend a lot of time in search for different and unique pieces so
the palette is more about shades then paint itself.
I love the tension between old and new; Wood always took me back to an era of craftsmen working under the light of a candle so I'm trying to mimic all of this tonal range between a wood and a candle. At the same time I can't ignore this flashing fluorescentic digital stage that we're surrounded by so naturally I wanted to add it also. I think it creates an amazing conflict of Tradition vs. Open code.
We daresay that there is a crucial bond between the acting of painting and finished artwork. For an increasing number of artists from the contemporary scene, the act of painting its physical act, itself — plays a crucial role in their process. German visual artist Gerhard Richter once remarked that "it is always only a matter of seeing: the physical act is unavoidable": how do you see the relationship between the abstract nature of the ideas you translate on your canvass and the physical act of producing your artworks?
By converting brush strokes into sawing and abstract jesters into pieces of wood there's a tremendous importance to the physical act of painting.
I believe it can indicate an honest relation between ideas and actions. ART is all about the absolute line, that's what define a signature, without it we can all make chairs. This absolute line is a product of the body, of releasing learned techniques and trusting my own unique action.
farewell peter, well take it from here
another day another airplane
We like the way your artworks, rather than attempting to establish any univocal sense, you seem to urge the viewers to elaborate personal associations: would you tell us how much important is for you that the spectatorship rethink the concepts you convey in your pieces, elaborating personal meanings?
Every time we're looking at an artwork being presented in a museum or in a gallery we're
going through the process of selfcatharsizes we want to find ourselves inside it so personal associations are inevitable.
I don't think of the spectators while I'm working or about their understanding of my personal agenda. However, I do believe that good art works suppose to make us rethink about things in the world and a great art work operates us to do
something in the world. So hopefully my own personal meanings will intersect with someone else's view and it will produce a new thought/action.
Over the years your works have been exhibited in several occasions, including the solos "The Necessary Opposite" , Gabirol, Tel-aviv and “x-o” at the Grand Art gallery, Haifa. 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 decisionmaking process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?
oh those snowy mountain peaks!
I love interacting people in my works. An involved audience can look deeper to an art work rather that gaze upon it and move on to the next one. This shift from a spectator to a participant changes the
installation itself, transforming it to a live performance.
Both of those exhibitions were a part of a process in which I took childhood games (such as tic-tac-toe or backgammon) and
the wife over the top and far away
transform it to a social games or more accurately games which involves society.
The main idea was that I can take two people regardless to their
gender/believes/ethnics or even age and confront them with an object that is new on one hand but has certain known "symbols" which allows them to get into "game mode".
The game itself is an open code like so the audience themselves can create their
own language and set of rules providing a glimpse on their own true nature and upon society in general.
Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Uri. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects?
How do you see your work evolving?
I don’t believe in linear evolution so anything can go and I'm excited from it. Now days I'm working on a series called "Mountain & Horizon" for an upcoming exhibition. In it I try to explore different approaches towards success and failure
Batsonthrough representation of mountains. I hope to aspire as much as I can and stay as playful as can be. Thanks, it's been an amazing journey.
An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com
Contemporary Art
Working with oil portraits, photography and image manipulation, my work is a dramatization of myth, pop culture, and reality reflected through whimsical aspirations of an idyllic narrative. With the exploration of questions about the future of our species and its relationship with the cosmos, I meditate on the prospects of life and how sociopolitical factors affect this experiment that is our conscious life.
By opening personal archives of individual interpretation, and by evoking a poetic analysis of the human vision and self-expression in an intimate composition, I use artistic expression to question my own understanding of reality.
Rejecting any conventional classification regarding its style, Raquel Fornasaro's work questions about the future of our species and its relationship with the cosmos, to draw the viewers through an unconventional and multilayered experience. In her body of works that we'll be discussing in the following pages she accomplished an insightful inquiry into the prospects of life, and how politics and religion affect our unstable, ever changing contemporary age: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating and multifaceted artistic production.
Hello Raquel and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and after having earned your BA in Advertising and Media from PUC in São Paulo, you nurtured your education joining the Fine Art program at the Corcoran School of Art+Design - Washington: how does
this experience influence the way you currently conceive and produce your works? And in particular, how does the relationship between your cultural substratum due to your Brazilian roots and your current life in the United States inform the way you relate yourself to art making and fuel your creativity?
Hello and thank you for the opportunity to be part of this edition of Peripheral ARTeries Art Review.
I’m originally from Guarulhos, one of the cities that composes the macro-metropole that is São Paulo, which is a group of municipalities that encompass more than 32 million of inhabitants. This provenance alone is an essential part of how I communicate.
If you know São Paulo you know it is a difficult city to love. Some do, deeply. I just couldn’t. I still can’t. While growing up I always yearn for space and opportunity. São Paulo suffocated me with its gray buildings, interminable traffic jams and highlighted social injustice. I can’t not see the many families under the bridges. Tired of this precept I took an egoistic approach, I looked for an escape, and I
Raquel Fornasaro
found it in Boston. In my new homestead I don’t see families living under the bridges. Not that homelessness doesn’t exist. It is just easier to hide since the homeless people are far less in numbers. The awareness of this social dichotomy heightens every time I visit my hometown and guilt is added to my sense of security of not sharing that daily struggle.
What I learned with my immigration to the United States is that while immersed in a culture, you don’t naturally notice you are part of that culture. Whereas you go to a different social economic environment, you suddenly become acutely aware of that trait. Once you choose to stay in a new context, then you become immersed in a new state of constant social awareness.
This transition opened my eyes to some of the sociocultural disparities of different peoples. Synchronously, I learned to reverence the fact that we are so different and so similar in infinite ways. I was suddenly aware of my irritation with the fact that we are all blind to injustice, more than that, how disrespectfully we treat each other and the natural life around us. This is not an individual’s generalization, it is a global trait. This lingering irritation seems to be a subliminal imperative in my work.
My art results of that mix of not actively giving a fuck, but feeling bad about it. A luxury few have. Since I decided to use my voice I will use it to talk about those things that bother me. I think it should bother us all. With humanity’s list of bad deeds being so long, I find myself with difficulty to choose what bothers me more in an infinite source of material.
You work work with oils, photography and image manipulation and the multidisciplinary feature of your approach reveals that you are a versatile
artists, capable of crossing from a media to another in order to pursue the captivating visual results that mark out your works. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit www.fornasaro.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: what draws you to such cross disciplinary approach? And in particular, when do you recognize that one of the mediums has exhausted it expressive potential to self?
I always favored painting with oils above any other medium. However, my process takes time I refuse to abdicate and don’t usually have. During my first year of college I worked as a graphic designer where I learned to use Photoshop. I was still using it until a couple of years ago, only as a tool to sketch new projects. The use of Photoshop through and through became the obvious answer when I developed the Otherworldly series in 2015. Every piece has as a backdrop a high definition photograph from the Hubble Telescope and the Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity). These images needed no retouch. The digital tool quickly became an indispensable medium. Now, I love to produce digital images as much as I like painting.
In reality, I don’t see mediums as exhaustible. They are a set of tools. The idea is the prime mover for the medium. It is up to the artist to successfully select the right medium for each delusion.
An essential part of my multifaceted production, as you put it, is very influenced by my background in advertising. I see each and every one of my works as more than a work of art. To me each piece is the headline of an idea. Every line, element and color are treated with the same perfectionist eye I used to when I produced magazine and video ads.
Do you think that there is a central idea that connects all of your work as an artist? Undoubtedly. Regardless of what theme is the dynamo of a work, I can’t avoid linking it all to our environmental issues given our current knowledge about the universe we live in. Reality is so connected to our daily lives that it becomes impossible for me to think of anything other than to tap into the gargantuan woes our society has to deal, but mainly ignores. That is more than a central idea that connects all of my works, that connection is my life.
The entire series Otherworldly was produced with the specific problem of water in mind. One of the works that belongs to this series is the piece Arid where you have the future of our species longing for a livable future. On Zoomorphs, a new series I’m currently working on, the focus is on extinction and our interdependence with the biodiversity around us. Gentoo is the first painting of this project. You can follow the progress of the second painting, April, at fornasaro.com.
For this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries we have selected HypnoBaby and Perch, 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 paintings is the way you provided the visual results of your analysis with autonomous aesthetics: when walking our readers through the genesis of HypnoBaby and Perch would you shed a light about your usual process and setup?
If I want to talk about a certain subject I see or hear in the media, I have to dig into the many possibilities to translate a rough idea into something that best visually represents meaning. Whereas the image comes as a vision gifted by a muse, the process becomes one of understanding its meaning while transcribing it into reality.
Some of those ideas brew in my mind for weeks, months, and in very special cases, years, until I feel ready to start working on it. That doesn’t mean that the imagery I will use to transpose the message is fully formed yet. It can be, at times, a tedious process with many additions and changes along the way. A process that feels painful at times, but is intrinsically necessary.
Every work edges around a main character which, when defined, is captured through a photographic composition that will be the underlying element of the piece. I tend to digitally hoard images that have some potential to become part of something of bigger significance. I take those images to Photoshop and elaborate a primitive collage sketch of what the final image will be.
Once the sketch is ready, I began the painting process digitally or on canvas. It could be a lengthy process to arrive at the final artwork, both corporeally as well as its message.
HypnoBaby and Perch are fine examples of this process. The first is based on a photograph of my firstborn when she was 6 months old. I always loved that original portrait: her facial expression seemed to reiterate my own feelings of pressure and change. Now, Perch has a more classical approach of a portrait. There mom and son personify the familial aspect that I was so isolated from and longed for. Additionally, I pointed out the social challenges of family detachment in Brazil, a country that has been economically unstable.
Your works are rich with symbols and sometimes reject an explicit explanatory strategy: they seem to be the tip of the iceberg of what you are really attempting to communicate. How would you define the relationship between abstraction and
representation in your practice? In particular, how does representation and a tendency towards abstraction find their balance in your work?
When I construe a work I follow one of two paths: I either give a concise explanation of what I meant by the piece, or (depending on the patience of my listener) I dig into the many underlines, symbolisms and meanings of my message. The extensive approach often surprises
me with the continuous discovery of new components I wasn’t aware initially.
I’m obsessed by the old masters and how every single element and color they added to their canvasses was deliberate. In the same way mass media is very deliberate in forcing us to unaware temptation. I emulate this approach, not only to manipulate, but also to provoke thought.
As an artist I’m the interpretative instrument of a new dimension, not realistic neither abstract. As
the designer of a narrative that uses the likelihood of my own limitations as an arbitrary usher for the imaginary.
Art is the representation of abstract ideas that cease to be abstract as soon as they receive a physical form. Though, once they hit the eye of the viewer, they become abstract once more. The abstract and the representation are interchangeable and essential to communication, though I’m unsure if they are ever balanced.
We have appreciated your insightful inquiry into how politics and religion affect our lives and we have been impressed with the effective sociopolitical criticism that pervades Savage Capitalism. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "the artist’s role differs depending on which part of the world you’re in. It depends on the political system you’re living under". Not to mention that almost everything, ranging from Caravaggio's Inspiration of Saint Matthew to Joep van Lieshout's works, could be considered
political, what could be in your opinion the role of Art in the contemporary age? In particular what role does play humour in your work?
I don’t believe the role of art in the contemporary age has changed. There are many kinds of approaches and styles to the aspirations of an artist. In my view, it can be to appease, to intrigue or to instigate. Most of all, I believe that since the first hand was outlined in a cave, the role of art has been to register our history. Though, that may not be the artist’s original intention.
It is difficult to argue against Orozco’s statement that the role of the artist can take many forms depending on which part of the world they are in. I would add that the willingness to be open to the cliché of being ideological also influences the artist’s role.
The humorous approach in my work is a manifestation of a childhood shaped by intense 90’s cartoon contemplation. In Savage Capitalism that humor is more evident, though mostly for my own amusement. When I moved to the US I was surprised by the sheer amount of fast food restaurant brands versus the lack of farmers markets, a hallmark in my childhood. Go on Wikipedia and type: “list of fast food restaurant chains”. It is sarcastic to compare the US’s list to other countries’. Savage Capitalism was one of my first paintings produced in the US and the question in my mind was what would happen to the skinny Brazilian immigrant.
Connectivity and The Things We Miss seem to inquire into how rapid and dramatic transformation affect our contemporary age and also to highlight how the impetuous way modern technology has came out on the top has dramatically revolutionized our lives as well as the idea of Art itself: we are urged to rethink