Landescape Art Review // Special Edition 2014 by LandEscape Art Review

LandEscape Special Issue

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Anniversary Edition

LARRY CWIK BRICE BOURDET BETHANY TAYLOR MELISSA MOFFAT EDAN GORLICKI OLGA BUTENOP DMITRY KMELNITSKY MONIKA SZPENER DAMIR MATIJEVIC Sphere, 2015 Installation, by Larry Cwick

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CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW

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

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R e v i e w

Olga Butenop

Dmitry Kmelnitsky

Monika Szpener

Edan Gorlicki

Larry Cwick

Bethany Taylor

Russia / USA

USA

Poland

The Netherlands

USA

In the project «Discussion» it was more convenient for me to use more traditional media – installation for expression of the idea. And, for example, in my work "The car of memoirs" I resort to newer media.

I seek to create multidimensional poetry that opens portals onto the transcendent by applying artistic vision, creative expression and innovative uses of technology to the interplay of physical, virtual, musical and visual forms. In my art practice I embrace the convergence of installation art, video art, animation, graphic design, architectural and industrial design form, as well as audio composition and performance. I thrive on the creative amalgam of independent and collaborative modes of art production that lead to more complex artworks which bridge different disciplines- art, design, dance, theater, music, architecture and film.

Considering a history of contemporary art one can argue that the artistic creation can be disconnected from direct experience as it was shown best by conceptualism. However, I do not agree it is the right way and I propose the way through the body, emotions, perceptions and thinking that are interconnected creating an integral experience. Foucault himself in his late writings had been pointing at the body where the change should appear. The body, its senses and perception is a field of battle for the better, less exclusive world. The modernity had gone to the pick with its rationalization processes that lead – as we already know – not to the better future, but to administrative, rational nightmare, where the human being disappears.

The philosophy and beliefs surrounding Edan’s artistic approach are based on searching the self within its surroundings. Inspired yet confronted by the world around him, Edan finds artistic comfort within the search for belonging and connecting. What better way to explore life then through movement and researching the body within the space around it? Edan’s work always explores psychological and emotional realms. He believes that through personal experience he can use his work as a mirror for both his audience and himself. In the past Edan has made stage works on numerous subjects such as hierarchy, sexuality, fantasy, stress, addictions, belonging and perceptions amongst others. Every work of Edan has been a personal and touching transparency of what we all as humans go through on a daily basis.

I am project-driven and work on projects for long periods of time. All five of my main photographic projects – The Visitor, Walking 1000 Miles Through Mexico’s Cities, in which I have spent a total of six months and 1000 miles walking while photographing in most major cities in Mexico from 1983 to the present; The Far North, Portrait of the Arctic; Totems; Morocco; and Industrial Districts – have been going on simultaneously for more than 11 years. I have been working on the Mexico project, obtaining images for it, for most of my life. Conceptually I am consistently drawn for all my projects to the themes of mystery, beauty, transfiguration, culture, and surrealism.

I find the creative process is very linked to personal experience. Before I conceived of the work, Malleable Midnight, for example, I had the opportunity to work in Finland during a two-month artist residency at the Nelimarkka Museum of Art. When you travel, as an artist, you are always most impacted by the differences you experience in a new place. During the midsummer in Finland, there is literally no night-time, at least not as we experience it in the United States with darkness present as we sleep at night. The 24hour daylight not only took some getting used to, but it completely restructured my time while I was there.

In this work I asked people from various internet blogs and forums to share with me the stories about the first reminiscence from their life. It was important to me to receive stories from those people whom I never saw, because I didn't know anything about them, so their stories weren't connected with me by anything personal.

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Edan Gorlicki

lives and works in New York City, USA

Larry Cwick lives and works in Montreal, Canada

Brice Bourdet

lives and works in Paris, France

Monika Szpener

lives and works in Warsaw, Poland

Olga Butenop

lives and works in Utrecht, the Netherlands

Bethany Taylor Damir Matijevic

Melissa Moffat

Brice Bourdet

Germany

Canada

France

For me, Photography is a melody of light and soul. It is evidence of a singular moment in time and space, where we find our own reflections. Often, in contemplation of my surroundings, I find myself seeking a deeper meaning. Recognizing the intimately whispering interplay of my souls vibration with the space around me, my soul is forced to express itself through images. This is how I discovered photography; as an outer reflection of my souls inner vibration. I pass these photos on to you with trust. View slowly. Contemplate upon them until you are able to pick up each subtle nuance.

I paint with paper. My collages give fashion and comic books new life by deconstructing and re-imagining them as new stunning abstract works of art. When comic books are my choice of medium, the iconic images of the characters are broken down and rebuilt in a new image. When using fashion publications, I draw the viewer in with images of luxury, intricate patterns, colours, beautiful textures and the brilliance of precious metals and stones. Through my collages, I breathes new life into magazine and comic editorials by removing them from the spine of the book and deconstructing them.

I focus on the breaches of our Western modern society. Ritualized and common locations where man has ceased to evolve, a deconstruction of a sham and seamless social illusion in which people roam aimlessly but also protect themselves from each other by means of consumerism, material goods and comfort. With intriguing but also subtle stagings, his photographic work points out various aspects of a society in which landmarks fade slowly. A world ruled by a disenchanted feeling. I think what makes the strength of art work today (at least for me) is the ability to reflect, tell, ask or provoke the time or the society to which it belongs, a whether with sublimity, or ingenuity, or irony, or humor, or subversion.

lives and works in Gainsville, USA

Melissa Moffat

lives and works in Toronto, Canada

Damir Matijevic

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lives and works in Paris, France

Dmitry Kmelnitsky 124 lives and works in Dallas, USA

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, Miya Ando, Martin Gantman , Krzysztof Kaczmar and Robyn Ellenbogen.

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E dan Gorlicki Living and working between Groningen, the Netherlands and Heidelberg, Germany

An artist's statement

he philosophy and beliefs surrounding Edanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s artistic approach are based on searching the self within its surroundings. Inspired yet confronted by the world around him, Edan finds artistic comfort within the search for belonging and connecting. What better way to explore life then through movement and researching the body within the space around it? Edanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work always explores psychological and emotional realms. He believes that through personal experience he can use his work as a mirror for both his audience and himself. In the past Edan has made stage works on numerous subjects such as hierarchy, sexuality, fantasy, stress, addictions, belonging and perceptions amongst others.

Every work of Edan has been a personal and touching transparency of what we all as humans go through on a daily basis. Through his work he has dared to approach these difficult issues and expose them respectfully yet courageously to his audience.

Edan Gorlicki Born in Haifa, Israel, Edan Gorlicki is a choreographer, teacher and movement research artist based between Heidelberg, Germany and Groningen, the Netherlands. As a dancer he has worked in Israel with the Batsheva Ensemble Dance Company and Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak Dance Theater. In the Netherlands he has danced for NND/Galilidance and Club Guy and Roni. Edan has performed the works of may choreographers such as: Ohad Naharin, Inbal Pinto, Sharon Eyal, Itzik Galili, Paul Selwyn Norton, Emmanuel Gat, Guy Weizman & Roni Haver and many more.

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LandEscape meets

Edan Gorlicki An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator landescape@europe.com

Edan Gorlicki accomplishes a refined investigation about the liminal area in which the Self establishes an ephemeral relationship with the outside reality: his incessant search of an organic symbiosys between several viewpoints offers to the viewer a multilayered experience, creating an area of deep interplay that allows us to enter psychological and emotional realms urging to force things to relate andexploring suspended worlds filling them with our personal experiences. One of the most convincing aspect og Gorlecki's work is the way he lead us to evolve from a passive audience to conscious participant, inviting us to rethink about the way we relate both to the outside world and to ourselves. I'm particularly pleased to introduce our readers to his multifaceted artistic production. Hello Edan, and welcome to LandEscape: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid training and after your dance studies in California, you moved to Israel where you degreed in Performing Arts both at the Wizo School and at the Reut School, in Haifa. How did these experiences influence you as an artist and and how do they impact on the way you currently conceive and produce your works?

Hi! Thank you for having me! Yes I started dancing at a very young age and have been fortunate to have studied at very good schools

in Israel. My teachers there were a great contribution to my development as a choreographer and I am very grateful for their mentorship. At school I was the only boy in the dance department. Of course this was difficult on many levels but it was also a great benefit as I was able to receive allot of attention from my teachers. They invested allot more energy in me then they did to the rest of my class. I am not sure that my school or my teachers have a direct influence on the way I conceive and produce my works today but I imagine that being an Israeli has something to do with that. I think we all are very influenced by our cultural upbringing. Especially growing up in such a complex survival driven country like Israel. I think that that survival instinct is imbedded in my attitude towards my work and lifestyle in general. Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up for making your artworks? In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work? And how much preparation and time do you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

Well first of all I must point out that every creation process has a different identity, process and outcome. In most cases I have an indication of what the next work will be like but then discover as I go that actually the work is something else completely. I guess I could say that the creation process is for me more of a listening process and following where the work is taking me rather then directing the work. It is more of a relationship between my goals for the work and the work

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itself. The choreographer in me then becomes a mediator. I normally start with a clear direction that interests me, weather its a feeling, a visual image, a scenario or atmosphere, a personal experience or even just an interest to work with a certain dancer or collaborator. It is never the same. Inspiration comes from everywhere. In the freelance dance scene, unfortunately the development of a work mostly doesn’t start in the studio or experimenting with materials, those things come later. I never work alone. In dance we are always collaborating with many people. Because of this, the amount of organization, productional preparations and grant confirmations always needs to be done first. In the beginning I really had allot of problems with this because I was impatient and just wanted to get into the studio. Now I have more appreciation for this process because it shapes the way the work will be made and forces the first conceptual steps and ideas to form. I think I enjoy more the creations that are driven from a personal psychological place where the process for me might be more therapeutical. I think I just care more about those pieces. Funny enough though, with a critical eye, I think those pieces don’t end up my best work. Maybe they are too emotionally charged, Im not sure, but I can tell that those works are not the most communicative to the public in the end. Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from Body Language, an extremely interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest our readers to visit directly at http://edangorlicki.com in order to get a wider idea of your multifaceted artistic production. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this interesting project? What was your initial inspiration?

‘Body Language’ is actually one of the works that grew more organically through time.

Production: The Herd

During the creation process of another piece of mine ‘A little too close’ I developed together with my dancers an improvisational movement vocabulary that was quite unique to me. After we finished that creation process I became quite fascinated with the idea of diving deeper into this unique physicality to explore what exists further in this quality. I went into the studio with one of my dancers who deeply

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inspires me: ’Mayke van Kruchten’. While watching her move this way it seemed to me as though her body was deciding for her what she was doing. This triggered an interest for us to see if it is possible to have our body choreograph what we do. We developed a step by step process that attempted to eliminate (as much as possible) mental creativity, judgment and decision making

while improvising. This resulted in a fascinating journey where Mayke was discovering where her body is taking her, something that was equally exciting to watch. This is where the idea came to present this form of movement and live experimentation to the public as a performance installation rather then a theatrical work. I called it ‘Body Language’ and we started to perform it in

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Production: The Herd

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diverse locations. During the performances we started to notice that Mayke’s body was behaving and producing interestingly different qualities and physicality’s based on the space and environment that she was in. Now for me ‘Body Language’ is an installation that exposes the authenticity of a certain environment created by the space, energy and people in it through the physicality of the dancers body. The hallmark of your practice is a search of the Self within its surroundings: when explorating the relationship our relationship with the ousde world, you seem to deconstruct and assembly memories in order to suggest a process of investigation about the liminal area in which the Self and the Outside share an ephemeral coexistence: maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this?

Yes I think that is very interesting way of putting it and touches the essence of the identity of an artist as well. I do think that the role of the artist is to mirror society in some way and create a form that could offer the platform for discourse and interpretation, especially relating to our inner nature as people and our nature as a society. I think that I frame my work around exploring the self within its surroundings because it is a natural thing for me to do. I feel it is the basic need we have as social animals for belonging and connection, whether its to one another, one with nature, one with his/her beliefs and spirituality and so on… I have appreciated the way Body Language takes an intense participatory line on the conception of art. In particular, your investigation about psychological and emotional realms has reminded me of the idea behind Thomas Demand, who stated once that "nowadays art can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological narrative elements

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within the medium instead". While conceiving Art could be considered a purely abstract activity, there is always a way of giving it a permanence that goes beyond the intrinsic ephemeral nature of the concepts you capture. So I 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 don’t know much about this to state a clear hypothesis. The only think I can do is speak from my own personal experience. In that case for me many of the subjects in my works are driven from an emotional place of personal experience. However, it is my inspiration more then it is my practice. I don’t think its either this way or that way. I think its possible to create something that has no personal experiential influence and it can be great. I think that its possible to do both. In fact I would encourage to give that a try and explore the difference. I definitely think that personal experience is intrinsically implemented into what ever we do - its what we know. But shouldn’t a creation process be more about what we don’t know? You seem to be in an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between several viewpoint out of temporal synchronization, that offer to the viewer a subtle but effective sense of narrative: moreover, the reference to the universal gestures that recurs in your works seems to remove any historic gaze from the reality you refer to, offering to the viewers the chance to perceive in a more atemporal form. In this sense, I daresay that the semantic juxtaposition between sign and matter that marks out your art, allows you to go beyond any track of contingency... What's your point about this? And in particular, how much do you explicitly think of a narrative for your works?

Like I said, every work is different and therefore needs diverse strategies and

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Production: The Herd

Production: Spinsels Photographer: Koen Jantzen

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methods to be able to communicate what you want to say. Clarity is very important to me. It offers the viewer freedom to experience and feel more then to have to think, analyze or solve some sort of puzzle or mystery of ‘what is the artist trying to tell me’. In some cases the tool of narrativity can be very useful for clarity. I try my best to layer my works in a way that offers the viewer both the clarity of what this work is discussing but also the abstraction to interpret your own take on it. In my work ‘A little too close’ I consciously chose to work with a very well known pop-song. I am aware that this creates a very specific association to most of my audiences, immediately narrating a direct story. However, I then repeat this song in the piece using 7-8 different cover versions that then distorts this association, suggesting that there are many ways of seeing something that was a moment ago perfectly clear and simple. Simultaneously very aesthetically presenting abstract movement that offers plenty of room for interpretation. Another intersting work of yours that has particularly impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled Hunger, in which you accomplish a deep investigation about the psychological and social affects of addictions: when I first happened to get to know with this experimental piece I tried to relate all the visual information to a single meaning. But I soon realized that I had to fit into the visual unity suggested by the work, forgetting my need for a univocal understanding of its symbolic content: in your work, rather that a conceptual interiority, I can recognize the desire to enabling us to establish direct relations... Would you say that it's more of an intuitive or a systematic process?

I guess its a little bit of both. In general I am quite systematic in my head with what I want but the moment intuition comes to play I immediately let go of my systematic thinking and let the intuition take over. I appreciate what you say about HUNGER, I really wanted

in this piece to show the complexities of the addictive patterns and cycles. The triangular psychological relationship between the addict, co-addict and the addiction itself was at the heart of this work. This systematic cycle is very clear when you lay out the roles of each participant, however, the cycle itself becomes an entity of its own when you begin to look at the bigger picture and consider all three participants as one existing issue. As Marina Abramovich once stated, "to be a performance artist, you have to hate theatre", to reject the idea of a fictional representation of the reality you are questioning in your works. But when it comes to investigate about the semiotic of power and control as you did in A little too close it is almost impossible to split form from substance: the thin line that separates positive leadership with intimidating hierarchal control and dictatorship is almost embedded in a male-constructed culture, that conveys apparently innocuous symbols to in order to convince people to take it as true ... what's your point about this? In particular, the capability of discerning the essential feature of a concept to translate it into an accessible visual is a key point of your practice: how much do you explicitly think of such communicative aspect for your work?

Quite allot. I make work for public of all kinds of people. Although (unfortunately) most of my audiences are cultural intellectual types of people and I very much care for their experiences while watching my works. I am still very interested in capturing the hearts of the (lets call them) un(dance)educated public who for whatever reason find themselves in the theater watching this. A little too close talks about such a simple subject that anyone can relate to which is the power of and in a relationship. It was important for me to make this work very easy to watch. That is actually another layer in the piece as well. Relationships are tricky yet from the outside they always seem simple. Other couples always look like they have it all figured out -

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but do they really? The visual aesthetics in this work offer that kind of starting point. It seems so beautiful, until you get used to the attractive image and then you see whats really happening inside. Everybody understands this, and I love that. By the way, although I'm aware that this might sound a bit naĂŻf, I have to admit that I'm sort of convinced that Art -especially nowadays- could play an effective role in sociopolitical issues: not only just by offering to people a generic platform for expression... I would go as far as to state that Art could even steer people's behaviour... what's your point about this? Does it sound a bit exaggerated?

Absolutely! I not only believe this is true, we even have the evidence to prove it. In 2007 I had the privilege to co-found Random Collision together with my friend Kirsten Krans. Random Collision is a company that develops work in a very unique way involving the general public in the creation process. Part of our programs were collaborations with other fields, especially scientific fields of research. Recently, Kirsten developed a trilogy titled Experiment A, B and B+. This project was a scientific experiment about group formations and was collaboratively developed by social psychologists and choreographers. These experiments manage to prove that the visual performance that the public is watching directly affects the behavior of the public after the performance and the way they interact with one another. This is a fascinating project and I recommend looking it up at www.randomcollision.net Over these years your works have been performed in several occasions around the world, including your recent participation including a recent participation at OpenFLR in Florence, Italy. Moreover, I think it's important to highlight that you are the creator of LAMA movement research, that allows you to get in touch with a worldwide scenario, teaching both to dancers and non-dancers. So, before taking leave from this interesting conversation I

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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 decision-making process in terms of what type of language for a particular context?

I might be making allot of my work for my own satisfaction but I first and foremost create things that I feel I want and need to share with others. Those others are my audiences. We need to be a bit more selective on what we present to the general public. If we (artists) want to make a difference on any level in whatever way, we have to think of who is watching what we are making first and then see what it is we can show them and think how can we surprise, touch, educate, transform, develop and create more thoughts, questions and discourse amongst the public. I personally do care about what they see and experience. Not necessarily what they think about it as in like or not like. But I try to remind myself that the reaction or reception I get from the public after a performance can be a great guide for me towards understanding more the way they see things. This can improve my next pieces. For me, the public reception is my critic. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Edan. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects. How do you see your work evolving?

Well, as a freelance choreographer I am forced to exist in my past, present and future simultaneously. I am still reflecting my last project, am working on several current projects and busy with organizing and developing future projects as well. I am currently working on a new full evening production called ‘The Players’. This piece is the final part of my three-year study on power and control. Inspired by the theme of Psychopathy, The Players raises questions about social status, manipulation, peoples’ intentions, what is reality, hierarchy, deceit, and how far are we willing to go to get what

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Production: A little too close Photographer: Christian Glaus

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L arry Cwik Lives and works in Portland, OR USA

An artist's statement

am project-driven and work on projects for long periods of time. All five of my main photographic projects – The Visitor, Walking 1000 Miles Through Mexico’s Cities, in which I have spent a total of six months and 1000 miles walking while photographing in most major cities in Mexico from 1983 to the present; The Far North, Portrait of the Arctic; Totems; Morocco; and Industrial Districts – have been going on simultaneously for more than 11 years. I have been working on the Mexico project, obtaining images for it, for most of my life. Conceptually I am consistently drawn for all my projects to the themes of mystery, beauty, transfiguration, culture, and surrealism. I am not certain why but I am also consistently drawn to certain types of images. Sometimes my images are infused with sociopolitical commentary, other times not. Always I strive for beauty in my work, and originality. Both are important to

me, no matter if the image is photographic, color or black and white, or from my mind, as in a drawing. Links to two interviews about my work are available for viewing by clicking the Interviews link at the top of the screen. Most of my exhibits have been of photographic work. I also work in drawing, film, and occasionally in multimedia installations. Born in West Virginia in 1959, I am primarily selftaught as an artist but have also taken classes in art and photography at Pacific Northwest College of Art and Portland Community College. Art must be in my genes. Not only was my dad an avid amateur photographer, active in a camera club during World War II, but one of my nieces is a gifted painter, and two of my mother’s sisters, my late aunts, were also professional artists. They were painters who lived and worked in the southern United States. I have been photographing since high school. I decided to pursue art, and particularly photography, for my life in 1983.

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LandEscape meets

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

Larry Cwik's camera structures events in their photographic setting. Focusing on urban and natural environments, he draws inspiration from spaces between everyday situations. The series The Visitor, Walking 1000 Miles Through Mexico that we'll be discussing in the following pages seems to raise the question of the role allocated to the individual in a worldwide cultural and economic integration. Cwik also draws attention to the camera itself, which is still able to snatch the spirit of individuality while the bare eye has long failed to do so. One of the results of his approach is an insightful investigation into the hidden narrative that pervades the reality we inhabit. Hello Larry and welcome to LandEscape. To start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have have taken classes in art and photography at Pacific Northwest College of Art and Portland Community College, but as you remarked, you are primarily a self-taught artist and have been photographing since high school. Moreover, you had the chance to grow up in a family of professional artists. So I would ask you -- how have these experiences informed your evolution as an artist? In particular do you think that formal training influenced the way you currently conceive your works?

I am primarily self-taught but do travel widely and make efforts to see art wherever I go, be it New York, Paris, Iceland, Morocco, the Dominican Republic, or Bangladesh. The world is full of excellent artists.

They are everywhere, often creating both thought-provoking and beautiful work. Work I see often inspires me. The work can be by an ancient master, an under-recognized brilliant medieval artist like Hieronymous Bosch, or a contemporary artist â&#x20AC;&#x201C; it does not matter. I can and do get inspired from many sources. Studying art history, reading art books, discussions with artist friends -- all significantly inform and educate my art practice. The classes I took were very helpful. They gave me a framework to better understand what I learn from my self-study, both in Portland, my home, and when I travel. Having two gifted aunts that exhibited their paintings did not hurt. One of my nieces is also a talented and blossoming artist. Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell our readers something about your process and set-up for producing your works? In particular, what technical aspects do you focus on in your work? And how much preparation and time do you put in before and during the process of conceiving and especially creating your series?

Often my projects evolve over time. The project The Visitor, Walking 1000 Miles through Mexico, was not initially intended to be a 32year-long project. But I found the imagery so strong and compelling I kept returning to photograph, year after year after year. Pretty soon I had visited so many different cities in Mexico that I decided to try to visit all its major cities. That ended up taking 32 years, visiting a new city each year. I have visited all regions of Mexico for the project, walking more than 1000 miles and spending a total of more than six months photographing there. Walking around

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Thodoris Trampas

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there I let my unconcious influence where and when I photograph. The Mexico project reflects my great interest in surrealism. The unusual colors and juxtapositions in Mexico pull me in like a magnet. André Breton, the founder of surrealism, and noted Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo both commented on the surrealism inherent in Mexico. I agree. Mexico has nurtured so many wonderful artists, including Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Remedios Varo, Rufino Tamayo, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Leonora Carrington, and many more contemporary artists. I feel fortunate to have talked by phone every year to Leonora Carrington, the great surrealist, from 2001 to 2010 during my visits to Mexico, though I did not get a chance to meet her in person. Both my work and I evolved over the course of The Visitor project. Over long projects a subject also evolves. Mexico, my subject in the Visitor, certainly evolved during my project. During the 32-year-long project, for example, Mexico's population spiked from 72 to 122 million, making it the world’s most populous Spanish-speaking nation; nine million Mexicans immigrated to the United States; the North American Free Trade Agreement was passed and implemented; there was an insurrection in the southern state of Chiapas; I had luggage stolen twice; I got severely sick from poorly chosen food or water five times; I experienced the wonderful hospitality of Mexicans, and the beauty, color, and unusual juxtapositions of scenery in all regions of Mexico; mega-malls, luxury buses, and discount airlines became common in Mexico; a presidential candidate was assassinated; the one-party rule of more than 70 years standing in Mexico ended; powerful drug cartels seized control of much of Mexico, leading to more than 100,000 deaths since 2006; and I became friends with a Mexican artist and musician, which friendship has continued for more than 25 years, including a 2015 collaboration on a short film that I made in Mexico. The project has hugely impacted my life and vision. Other of my projects have also evolved. A more recent project, The Far North, Portrait of the Arctic, started in 2002. I had a curiosity about the Arctic and visited it, in Alaska, for the first time that year. Then it was four more years till I

returned to the Arctic, to Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat), in 2006, visiting six communities there. I learned then from Greenlandic residents about the impacts of global climate change on their subsistence and traditional ways of life, hunting and fishing. This made me more interested to visit other Arctic locations. In 2012 and 2013 I visited the two larges U.S. Arctic communities, Kotzebue and Barrow, Alaska. The similarities between there and Greenland fascintated me. I loved the images, the stark beauty, and learning about a completely different way of life in a vastly different environment. In 2014 I took three more trips to the Arctic, to four communities in Nunavut, the northern-most region of Canada, to Longyearbyen and Kirkenes in far northern Norway, and to Murmansk, Russia, the Arctic’s largest city. The images I came back with were compelling. They were worth the many months of intense and time-intensive planning needed to visit these remote regions. Now let's focus on your artistic production. I want to start with The Visitor, Walking 1000 Miles Through Mexico, an extremely interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. I would suggest they visit http://www.larrycwik.com to get a wider idea of your multifaceted artistic production. In the meantime, would you tell us something about the genesis of this interesting project? What was your initial inspiration?

Well, I first visited Mexico in 1977, crossing the border from El Paso, Texas. The extraodinary change in cultures crossing the Rio Grande River from El Paso to Ciudad Juárez, Mexico was dramatic. I liked the imagery that I saw in Mexico even then. That began my fascination with Mexico. My second visit was in 1980. I went on a long train voyage from Mexico City through cities, jungles, farm fields, and past snow-capped mountains to Cancún. Then after I moved to Portland in 1982 I started to visit Mexico once a year to photograph, beginning in 1983. The project grew and grew and blossomed. The ambience you captured in your work Bridge (2002) seems to have some reference to De Chirico's pallette. It reminds me of the concept of non lieu elaborated by French

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anthropologist Marc Augé. What has most impacted me is the way you bring a new level of significance to the sign of absence, and in a wide sense to re-contextualize the concept of the environment we inhabit. This is a recurrent feature of your approach. It provides viewers an Ariadne's Thread, inviting them to challenge the common way we perceive not only the outside world, but also our inner dimension... By the way, I'm sort of convinced that some information and ideas are hidden, or even "encrypted" in the environment we live in, so we need -- in a way -- to decipher them. Maybe one of the roles of an artist is to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature. What do you think about this?

Giorgio De Chirico and René Magritte are my favorite artists from art history. De Chirico was a genius. His imagery has long withstood the test of time. If one of my images has a semblance to De Chirico I am very grateful. Magritte has achieved great and welldeserved recognition in recent decades. Both De Chirico and Magritte were in many ways ahead of their time. I like your comment about bringing a new level of significance to absense. This is easier said than done. But when it happens I am happy. Your comment about perception of both our outside world and our inner dimension is spot on. It is a perfect expression of what I feel in my work. Deciphering meaning in a world of information overload is a challenge but also a wonderful opportunity. I agree that artists can reveal the unexpected side of Nature. Picasso did this with his cubist portraits – making us look for clues. Marcel Duchamp did this with his famous Nude Descending a Staircase, Number 2, making us look at how he saw that. Francis Bacon, with the distorted imagery in his portraits, forced us to look with curiosity at his meaning and intent. Cindy Sherman, with her Untitled Film Stills, caused us to look at the roles acribed to women through her cinematic selfportraits. JoAnn Callis with her beautiful images calls attention to common objects in our daily life, seen newly. Gregory Crewdson, with his huge cinematic works, causes us to question what is real versus what is artifice. While some contemporary photographers like Edward Burtynsky or Michael Light convey in an explicit way their environmental or political message in their photographs your works seek to maintain a more neutral approach. Rather, you

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Larry Cwik

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seem to invite the viewers to a personal investigation about the themes you touch on. Maybe the following assumption is stretching the point a little bit, but I think that The Visitor, Walking 1000 Miles Through Mexico reveals the connection between different cultural spheres and describes a real-time aesthetic ethnography. You seem to be drawn to the structured worlds we inhabit and how they produce a self-defining context for our lives and experience. Do you agree with this analysis? Moreover, what role can art play in sociopolitical questions?

I agree with your analysis. I do not try to hammer home what a viewer should think or feel. But at the same time, some of my work does occasionally have a socio-political context. I titled one of the images in The Visitor, Walking 1000 Miles Through Mexico’s Cities, from 1986, “Avenida No Reelección.” This was the actual name of a street. It reflected that the Mexican people wanted more electoral choices, I think. About 15 years later, the 70-year-long rule of the PRI in Mexico ended at the national level. There are now three major parties in Mexico, PRI, PAN, and PRD, plus smaller parties. The project The Far North, Portrait of the Arctic, has a political sub-context, though the images are not themselves political. They reflect an area of the world with significantly changing weather conditions. The Arctic’s peoples are the first in the Northern Hemisphere being forced to change their traditional ways due to accelerated global climate change. Occasionally I do projects that are purely political. One was in 2004. It was called “The Happy General.” It was a month-long multi-media installation in Gallery 500, Portland. A sandbox with toy tanks and soldiers was on the floor. A video monitor showed footage I had taken of antiwar protestors, except that I placed a large X in red tape over the screen of the video monitor. One wall of the installation had print-outs of web pages for seven major U.S. military weapon contractors. The opposite wall had more than a hundred oneinch diameter red cloth poppies, worn by the Canadian public to celebrate war dead on their Remembrance Day. That wall also had some plastic flowers, as one might see in a cemetery, to commemorate war dead. I draped the back wall with patriotic red white and blue American flag bunting. One wall had a news-print photo-mosaic

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of tiny head shots of 116 of the USA soldiers killed in Iraq in April 2004 and ten playing cards of most wanted Iraqis, all shown as faceless black silhouettes, in other words as “The Other.” A musical soundtrack added sound to the installation, playing war-oriented songs including Rock the Casbah by The Clash, In the Navy by The Village People, The Warrior by Honey Ltd., and the World War I patriotic song The Yanks Are Coming. The installation had a participatory element – a globe on a pedestal. Next to the globe was a box of push pins. Visitors were asked to take a push pin and choose a place on the globe for the U.S. to either bomb, invade, or attack. The only requirement was that people not choose a country that the U.S. had already bombed, invaded or attacked. Visitors ignored that requirement. The globe was full of push pins by the end of the show. The entrance of the installation space had large bold capital letters quoting from George Orwell, “War Is Peace,” “Freedom Is Slavery,” and “Ignorance Is Bliss.” Visitors had to walk over those quotes to enter the installation. On the opening of the show I did performance art, for the first and only time in my art practice. I dressed as a general, wearing a general’s cap, an army shirt, and dark sunglasses. I held a scepter and rocked back and forth in a swivel chair as I talked with viewers. The installation was my response to the U.S. government’s falsely-reasoned invasion and bombing of Iraq, which killed more than 170,000 Iraqi civilians. Your photography hopes to create an area of intellectual interplay with the viewers, that are urged to evolve from the condition of a merely passive audience. In particular, your process of semantic restructuration of a view has reminded me of the ideas behind Thomas Demand's works, when he stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological narrative elements within the medium instead". While conceiving art, even in the case of photography, could be considered an abstract activity, there is always a way of giving it a permanence that goes beyond the intrinsic ephemeral nature of the concepts you explore. In your opinion is personal experience an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process? Do you think that a creative process can be disconnected from direct experience?

Personal experience is indispensable to creative process. When I photograph in Mexico, and in most of my other projects, I depend on what I observe and

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Larry Cwik

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experience, whether I understand the observations and experiences at the time or not. Creative process is connected with our psyche. This in turn reflects our personal experience. My art practice also includes drawing, painting, film-making, and occasionally site-specific sculpture. When I draw I normally just start with a blank sheet of paper and draw. Then something evolves on the paper, from my subconscious. To this I then embellish, highlight, and add to, sometimes using watercolor or other media. This process taps into the unconscious. The unconscious connects through our brain to our prior experience. Dreams are the only thing I can think of which are not always related to prior direct experience. Sometimes dreams are about future experiences. Another interesting project of yours that has particularly impacted me is the Totem project. When I first happened to get to know this work I tried to relate all the visual information to a single meaning. I later realized I had to fit into the visual unity suggested by the work, forgetting my need for an unequivocal understanding of its symbolic content. In your work, rather that a conceptual interiority, I can recognize the desire to enable us to establish direct relations... Would you say that it's more of an intuitive or a systematic process?

Taking the images is intuitive. Putting them together into triptychs for the Totem Project is partly intuitive – what seems to fit together well to tell a story or hint at a story – and partly systematic. Some images do not work well with other images to communicate. So it is a bit of both. Your works are always pervaded with an inner narrative, but you reject an explicit explanatory strategy. Rather, you seem to offer to the viewer an Ariadne's Thread that allows them to find personal interpretations to the stories you tell through your photographs.

I like a viewer to respond to what they see based on their own personal experience. This helps attract a viewer’s interest. It lets a viewer formulate his/her own response. Sometimes I discover more about one of my images after a viewer sees in one of my works something that I had not consciously noticed.

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Besides your photographic projects, you also produce multi-media installations, short films and interesting mixed-media works which are marked with a lively combination of painting, collage and photography. The hallmark of these pieces seems to be an incessant search for an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between several disciplines, that in a certain sense augments the expressive potential of photography. While crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that sometimes a symbiosis between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

Sometimes photography works well to communicate what I want. Other times a combination of media works better. My short films, for example, have both moving images and sound. This produces a different response. It involves more senses. The earlier example of “The Happy General” installation had many media. It immersed a visitor in the installation. A more recent multimedia installation, from 2012, at Gallery 5 of Milepost 5, Portland was “Asia 2011.” This had fifteen photographs, a Buddha Garden on a pedestal, symbols of Islam and Hinduism on the walls, and a floor-mounted video monitor that showed a 20 minute loop of Asian television commercials, showing the yin yang of spirituality/religion compared to commerce. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Larry. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

I want to keep growing as an artist. I am excited by the Mexico project. Later this year I will continue work on my project in Morocco, where I have photographed every two years since 1990. Much of the remainder of 2015 I will spend on planning and presenting work from The Far North, Portrait of the Arctic to the public. It was just premiered in a group show at the Peoples Gallery of Portland. Later in 2015 it will be featured in solo exhibits at Portland Community College’s Northview Gallery and the Walters Cultural Center, Hillsboro, Oregon. My hope is to present the work from The Visitor, Walking 1000 Miles through Mexico, in future exhibits in the next several years and to explore a publication of that project.

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Brice Bourdet (France)

French artist who focuses on the breaches of our Western modern society. Ritualized and common locations where man has ceased to evolve, a deconstruction of a sham and seamless social illusion in which people roam aimlessly but also protect themselves from each other by means of consumerism, material goods and comfort. With intriguing but also subtle stagings, his photographic work points out various aspects of a society in which landmarks fade slowly. A world ruled by a disenchanted feeling.

Brice Bourdet

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LandEscape meets

Brice Bourdet An interview by Josh Ryder, curator landescape@europe.com

Hello Brice and a warm welcome to LandEscape. I would start this interview with my usual introductory question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? Moreover, what could be the features that mark the contemporariness of an artwork?

Hello. This is a question that can be debated for days and days, but I will try to give a concise answer. I think what makes the strength of art work today (at least for me) is the ability to reflect, tell, ask or provoke the time or the society to which it belongs, a whether with sublimity, or ingenuity, or irony, or humor, or subversion. Wow, I think I gave the shortest answer in the history of the magazine. Would you like to tell us something about your background? Are there any experiences that have particularly influenced you and that impacted on the way you currently produce your Art? By the way, what's your point on formal training? I often ask to myself if a certain kind of training could even stifle a young artist's creativity...

My background? Hem, I think that my background has nothing very

exceptional., except that at first I studied business studies, before reorientating towards studies of art. Many people will say that the two are linked, and in my opinion they are not completely wrong, but that's another debate. For the question of particular experiences, I would say that it is at first any a story of meeting people (in any case for me). Whether it is the highly-rated professors or the students, these people tempt you to exchange, to discuss and to experiment always more. And in time find yourself artistically. I think that what can stifle the creativity of a young artist it is the lack of question, the lack of exchange, the lack of meeting. If you never put anything in question, and if you take things as they present themselves to you, then, yes, it can stifle creativity. Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up for making your artworks? In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work? And how much preparation and time do you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

I would say that this can vary between one day (like with the photo series "An approximate 45 Â° tilt") and two months (like with the photo series "you are here"

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, if I intend to do post production and all the different montage tests I do before I go with one). My images often rest on the combinations of a place and a person. First of all I have to find a place which will allow me to work without being disturbed and without disturbing too much. Then comes the help of someone. Either model or subject (in this case, it is the person that comes before the place). Once I have both I set my camera and I try not to forget any details. Instead, the distance, the relationship to space and place of the individual, colors, shadows, objects, their orientations, lines, geometry of the place, and once everything is in its place, like in a Master´s tableau or in a movie scene. So at this point, it's time for me to make an image. I was never good at snapshots, for the decisive moment “l´instant décisif”, as called by Henrie Cartier-Bresson, or just being there at the right place at the right time, but it does not disturb me. I found my method of work, and in a society where everything goes faster and faster, I am content to need several hours of organization to make an image. Then I make sketches, scrawls, which become scenes, which become images, which become series. Now let's focus on your artworks: I would like to start with You Are Here that our readers have started to admire in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest them to visit http://bricebourdet.com/oeuvre-en.html in order to get a wider idea of this stimulating project... in the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this project? What was your initial inspiration?

Brice Bourdet

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Brice Bourdet

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I would say that the basis of this project is also about meeting people. When I went to live in Germany, a friend put me to the challenge of working on the concept of "the stranger". I was afraid to do something too stereotyped. So I thought long and hesitated. Then one day she showed me a picture she had made. It was an almost empty room with just a bed and hung beside the bed, there was a small picture of a landscape. (Probably the country of origin of the person who lived there.) I found the image very strong, and I said: â&#x20AC;&#x153;yes that's right, I have to create a mix!â&#x20AC;? A mix of pictures of where people are here today and where they come from. This mix and its feeling is sometimes difficult to explain. The person I was photographing gradually became living borders, but linking the two countries more than separating them. And confusion of the picture relates to me, of the ambiguity of living between two countries, two cultures. A bit like those mornings when, barely awake, we need a few seconds to remember and understand where we are. During these few seconds we are everywhere at the same time. One of the features of You Are Here that has mostly impacted on me is the way -by an effective usage of juxtapositions- you have been effectively capable of recontextualizing the idea of landscape and of environment... so I would like to stop for a moment to consider the "function" of the landscape suggested by your work: most of the times it doesn't seem to be just a passive background... and I'm sort of convinced that some informations & ideas are hidden, or even "encrypted" in the environment we live in, so we need -in a way- to decipher them. Maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this?

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Brice Bourdet

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No, it is not a passive landscape, because this landscape is born of personal experience of the model. The subjects of these photographic series all have different nationalities and have been living in Berlin for a short time. The pictures are taken in two steps. First, each model is photographed in his new bedroom, here, abroad. Then each protagonist provides photographs of his town, village or region of origin. I then put together a new place which could be called “ here is elsewhere”, made from pieces of places that are familiar to them. A new definition of “home sweet home”. In the end each subject becomes an imaginary land in himself, creating a certain complicity between his past address and the new one, with a piece of Berlin and pieces of elsewhere. But this time, without borders. Another interesting project of yours that have particularly impressed me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled An approximate 45° incline: it is very ambitious in terms of resources and creative scope... From a merely compositional viewpoint, I have highly appreciate the sense of contrast revealed from the strainghtness of the backgound and the inclination that gives the title to this stimulating series: How much do you explicitly think of a narrative for these images?

In a world in perpetual motion, this photo-series is like making a break or looking around, and asking what is wrong and what he can change. Initially I wanted to express the feeling of not always feel out of place in the society. But The photo-series « An approximate 45° incline » speaks about someone who

Brice Bourdet

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Brice Bourdet

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is not compatible with the city, with our modern society. Humanity has lost its references to nature as well as to the civilization. Do we still evolve ourselves in a world built and arranged to fit our imaginations and our corporal dimension? Or is our evolution led? Is it the space, surrounding us, which is made according to our movement capacities? Or could we comprehend our impulse as a result of our living space? In the photo-series « 45° » the places are shown like hinderance from their originals' functions. The body positions itself in a place of change, in a questioning manner. This body confronts its place of life and evolution in order to question it or perhaps to interrogate itself. In these last years we have seen a great usage of digital technology, in order to achieve outcomes that was hard to get with traditional techniques: do your think that an excess of such techniques could lead to a betrayal of reality?

A betrayal of reality in the world of the art? Or in our daily life? You know I had a teacher who said that simply framing a picture, is already changing the reality. We choose what we want to go in and what we want left out of the frame that we did not want to show. I believe that today, especially with social networking, it's the same thing. It shows only the best pictures of yourself or vacation, with or without filters, and a picture is made whose frame part is of the computer screen or smart-phone screen. But the question is who betrays reality, new technologies or our way of life where we always try to get more? I definitely love the humour of Homo Touristicus, and I can recognize in it a subtle but deep social criticism as well as in other works of yours, as the interesting Accumulations which I have to admit is one of my favourite ones... even though I'm aware

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that this might sound a bit naĂŻf, I'm sort of convinced that Art in these days could play an effective role not only making aware public opinion about socio political issues: I would go as far as to say that nowadays Art can even steer people's behavior... I would take this chance to ask your point about this. Do you think that it's an exaggeration? And what could be in your opinion the role that an artist could play in our society?

I admit that I share your enthusiasm and your opinion a little bit, because I also think that the arts can play an effective role in raising public awareness of sociopolitical and environmental questions. Art is a form of communication, and of course Art can communicate abaut all subjects. With the series"Homotouristicus" I try to ask about the abundance of images abundance. Both those images that we endure, or images that we produce while forgetting to enjoy a moment beceause we are too busy making an archive of that moment. I have not exhibited this series as it is not finished, but I sincerely hope that the audience will be led to ask questions about their own relationship to the picture. I think the art motivates people or invite people to form their own opinion on things and the world in which they live. Anyway I see it like that. So the role of the artist, is a trigger. Since 2004 your works have been exhibited in several occasions and you recently took part to the 18th Biennal of Photrography of Nancy. It goes without saying that feedbacks and especially awards are capable of supporting an artist, encouraging him: I was just wondering if an award -or even the expectation of positive feedbackscould even influence the process of an artist...

Brice Bourdet

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Brice Bourdet

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By the way, how much important is for you the feedback of your audience? Do you ever think to whom will enjoy your Art when you conceive your pieces? I sometimes wonder if it could ever exist a genuine relationship between business and Art...

Yes, of course feedbacks and rewards are not comparable incentives for artists. But I think if we do work to follow a trend or to please or to get something, I think we end up getting lost, and we just produce the imaginary commands to try to win a particular prize. No, what is hard is to invest in a work, in a project that is important and this work, this sincere work, meeting its public. It is also a very large reward, when people don´t say just "I like" or "I don´t like”, but when the work creates a real debate. When people come to me to tell me that my images are animated, or triggered, or question, or recalled home, or that my images have amazed or amused. At this point, it's almost as if the work has become autonomous and they did not need me. Just the public. Thank you for your time and for sharing with us your thoughts, Brice. My last question deals with your future plans: what's next for you? Anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

Thank you to you for the relevance of your questions. It was a pleasure. So for me there is the continuation of my project "Homotouristicus" which is very new and still developing. And for all those who wish to follow the evolution of my work and be informed of my next exhibition there is a facebook page "" Brice Bourdet visual artist "You can view the page without having a facebook account.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator landescape@europe.com

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Monika Szpener Lives and works in Dallas, USA

An artist's statement

onika Szpener, visual artist/sculptor, born 1979, lives and works in Szczecin, Poland. In 2003, she completed sculpture courses leading to a master's degree at Nicolaus Copernicus University of Thorn, fine art faculty. In 2011 she got a doctor degree in fine arts at the university. She deals with sculpture in a wider sense, including portraits, installations, objects, and artistic actions. She uses characteristic materials, e.g. various recyclable materials, worn out and useless items. Most of her works are interdisciplinary and combine various artistic techniques. Monika Szpener is the author of many individual and collective exhibitions in Poland and abroad e.g.

- Performance Intermedia Festival, Szczecin/Berlin, Germany - Draft. YOUTH FESTIVAL in Szczecin, Poland - Transmediale Festival, Berlin, Germany - Pro-exictence Festival, Schloss Brollin, Germany - individual exhibition, National Museum, Szczecin, Poland - International Symposium of Sculpture , Switzerland - POL-EKO exhibition, climate summit COP 14 Poznan, Poland - art action, Museum of Contemporary Art ms², Łodz, Poland - „CITY OF DREAMS” international Festival, individual exhibition „Vertical Objects”, Katowice, Poland - individual exhibition "reNEW", inSPIRACJE “Apocalypse 2012”,International Festival, Szczecin, Poland - International Symposium of Ceramic, Ukraine - collective exhibition, SCOPE Miami 2012, USA - collective exhibition, “Kontejnery k světu / Plzeň”, International Festival Plzen, Czech Republic - exhibition as a Group nieDAsie, “OMO Trip” Dlectricity Festival, Detroit, USA

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LandEscape meets

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

Monika Szpener explores the liminal area between the expressive potentials of traditional media and the emerging languages that comes from a careful multidisciplinary approach. Her gaze on contemporariness doesn't simply deliver a mere report on new aspects of reality but also offers a personal view on what's behind our the experiences mediated by our perceptual process. Her work nieDAsie (noCANdo) that we'll be discussing in the following pages clearly shows the multifaceted nature of Szpener's approach: I'm very pleased to introduce our readers to her refined artistic production. Hello Monika and a warm welcome to LandEscape: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and after graduating with a master's degree in Sculpture at the Nicolaus Copernicus University of Torun, you eventually pursued a Ph.D degree in Fine Arts. I would like to ask you how these experiences have influenced your evolution as an artist and how training has informed the way you currently conceive the works that we'll be soon discussing.

Artistic studies are not anymore concentrated around only traditional techniques but they inspire personal research within the ways of seeing, perceiving the world. Studying in Torun was a very important part of my artistic development and has strongly influenced my artistic, aesthetic and general consciousness. It is extremely important in the contemporary world to be able to define and express each personal perception on the world and ways of its investigation. However, the same importance has to be paid to flexibility and fluidity that are inherent moments of the world. Then, studying both practical subjects and theoretical ones helped me to make my personal artistic perception conscious and to define flexible borders of the things in the world, which are all interconnected. Of course it has also allowed me to understand my reasons for creation that are mostly based on intuition and non-verbal emotions. Due to that I have achieved another level of investigation of my sources of inspiration and I have learned to formulate my beliefs passing them into the art and creating my own picture of contemporary world.

Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from nieDAsie, an extremely interesting piece that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest our readers to visit directly at http://www.szpener.pl in order to get a wider idea of your multifaceted artistic production.

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Lamp Object made of used PET bottles Photo by Andrew Golc 22

Thodoris Trampas

Monika Szpener

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Meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this interesting project? What was your initial inspiration?

nieDasie project is an experimental piece, fluid and developed with logic of intuition. It is based on the connection and juxtapostion of two disciplines: video art and installation, which has appeared as the result of artistic cooperation and friendship with Pani Pawlosky. Then, it is hard to point at one exact point when and how it had started, as the mutual influence of two different artistic personalities with different but complementary perceptions on the matter of rubbish, was a river-like process, with the beginning well hidden in the depth of subconscious mountains and caves. The first work had been done for a design fair, for which I have been invited to prepare an exhibition of objects from recycled materials. During the preparations there had appeared an opportunity to elaborate another project with a use of video art, for which I had invited a friend of mine, Pani Pawlosky; together we constitute the duet or crew „nieDAsie“. The work together was hard as our strong artistic personas were clashing. In order to finish it, we had to reach numerous compromises. In that way we did the first work “My Room“, which has evolved into a series shown during many festivals in Detroit last year. You can see its effect here: https://vimeo.com/87133354 https://vimeo.com/115853224 I have appreciated the way you investigate the psychological nature of the cinematic image: in particular, when I first happened to get to know nieDAsie I tried to relate all the visual information and the presence of primary elements to a single meaning. I later realized I had to fit into the visual rhythm suggested by the work, forgetting my need for a univocal understanding of its symbolic content: in your work, rather

that a conceptual interiority, I can recognize the desire to enabling us to establish direct relations... Would you say that it's more of an intuitive or a systematic process? As I have already mentioned above, the nieDasie project is the intuitive synthesis of two artistic visions and experiences of two persons creatively working, each one on her own. Together we try to synchronize our perceptions, which is possible when we intuitively go back to common experiences from childhood.

Children perceive the world with all the senses much stronger than the adults, concentrated on rational thinking and isolated visual perception. Then our exploration has got a sense of synthesis and can be understood as the effort to return to this holistic type of experience. This is possible due to the use of different media and materials, which create a kind of sensual space. Contemporary electronic media and art as such have the power to return us to ourselves, to the sensual integrity as it was forseen by the prophet of the new media – Marshall McLuhan. This integrity has got its changeable form which materializes in an experience of spectactors – vusers (as Mirosław Rogala relates himself to participants in interactive art). Each experience is a tad different; however, it is also possible to be commonly shared, thanks to the rhythms sensed under the skin. By creating in that way, we try to change the human perception of the world, not just for a moment, but for a longer period of time. We try to open not only the human mind, but most of all human senses. Meble (furniture) has some references to the concept of heterotopia elaborated by Michel Foucault and has given me the same sensations that I experienced when I first happened to get to know Gabriel

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Orozco's early installations. In particular, I have appreciated the way you have been capable of bringing a new level of significance to signs, and in a wide sense to re-contextualize the concept of the environment we inhabit in. This is a recurrent feature of your approach that invite the viewers' perception in order to challenge the common way to perceive not only the outside world, but our inner dimension... By the way, I'm sort of convinced that some information & ideas are hidden, or even "encrypted" in the environment we live in, so we need -in a way- to decipher them. Maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this? You are right when relating the Foucauldian idea of heterotopia to the Meble project, as I use to materials excluded from the world of life, materials that are excremental, that are to be eliminated from the space of the “alwaysthe-new” of consumerism. In that way I try to contribute to the fight against the hegemonic position of late capitalism; fight – not in the aggressive meaning but softly, not trying to break anything but to transform our perception and understanding, and due to that also to change our worldview and the ways we act in everyday life. This is the responsibility of the artist – not arguing, but acting on the level of form and senses, as well as of emotions and intuitions. Of course, here again appears the another Foucauldian idea that our fights can be only local and dispersed. We cannot and we should not try to make any sort of bloody revolution as this changes nothing. We should change the way people relate themselves to the world thanks to the small transformation of relations with this what is the Other to the system: to the sensible body of us and of other beings and things in the world. The hegemony of “the use”, “the function” should be tresspassed. This is a truly liberating practice. We should not just ask about the function, as

Monika Szpener

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from nieDAsie project Audiovisual installation on trashy items, Detroit 2014 Photo by Pani Pawlosky

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Monika Szpener

CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW

from nieDAsie project Audiovisual installation on trashy items, Detroit 2014 Photo by Pani Pawlosky

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many years ago Herbert Marcuse had already been writing; we should ask different questions and liberate our sensibility on all the levels. For this the project Meble is done. It calls us to ask different questions: what is it?, what is it made of?, what is its matter?, why?, how do I feel it?, what kind of meanings I can find in that?

One of the most epiphanic feature of your work is concerned with the relation with Perception and Experience in the contemporary unstability: the way you question the intimate consequences of constructed and imposed realities: while conceiving Art could be considered a purely abstract activity, there is always a way of giving it a permanence that goes beyond the intrinsic ephemeral nature of the concepts you capture. So I would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

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Monika Szpener

CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW

Shusterman does, or underline the importance of bodily experience as Arnold Berleant in pragmatist aesthtetics does or reflect in the anthropological way on the triangle imagemedium-body as Hans Belting does. The importance of body and bodily experience is explicit on both sides, not only on the creative side but also on the side of reception. Arnold Berleant and Wolfgang Welsch (however each one in a slightly different way) argue against the Kantian disinterestedness and show how the art is created and received because of reasons different than only showing off the social, cultural, educational and/or economical status. I totally agree with them at that point. Your artistic production is pervaded with a subtle but effective sense of narrative and although each of your project has an autonomous life, there's always seem to be such a channel of communication between your works, that springs from the way you juxtapose the ideas you explore, recontextualizating found objects, as in odNowa (reNew) German sculptor and photographer Thomas Demand stated once that "nowadays art can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological narrative elements within the medium instead". What's your point about this? And in particular, how much do you explicitly think of a narrative for your works? You actually touch the point here. I am transforming meanings that are well connected to objects that we meet in our life, objects of everyday use and objects with sacred meanings, as crucifixes and figures of catholic saints. The rejection of dominant ideologies – as I have already explained – cannot be done just politically. Revolts without depths or internal changes do not lead anywhere. In the end we find ourselves back on square one and the only difference that appears is the difference in the dominant group. In order then to diametrically

Monika Szpener

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From "Stones" series 2013 Objects made of bottle caps Photo by Andrew Golc

Monika Szpener

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reformulate the dominant narratives: religious, economic and political ones, we have to juxtapose their ideas and recontextualize their characteristic elements. In that way we can effectively, although within a rather small dimension, refute the dominant strategies, narratives and structures. This does not mean telling or imposing new narratives, it is rather questioning, stratifying the previously coherent layers, creating or making visible a new network of relations between elements of our surrounding: material, mental and emotional. The figure of Jesus Christ „jumping” into a blue swimming pool, which is the main part of the installation odNowa is precisely this kind of work of ethical value. Although at the first sight it can stir fright (especially in Poland) of attacking religious values, it is directed at the recycling of meanings due to the change of context. It is critical to overproduction in the world of commodities, of art and of religion. However, this critique has got deep moral sense pointing at my belief that the renovation/ regeneration of the world is possible mostly by means of art. It is also important to notice that I have already been working with religious symbols before, as in the work from the year 2010 „Crucifix” or in others resembling altars. You seem to be in an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between several viewpoint out of temporal synchronization: moreover, the reference to the universal imagery that recurs in your works seems to remove any historic gaze from the reality you refer to, offering to the viewers the chance to perceive in a more atemporal form. In this sense, I daresay that the semantic juxtaposition between sign and matter that marks out your art, allows you to go beyond any track of contingency To add to the previous explanation, the concept of time is the right move. The

atemporality you mention surges from the transformation of dominant narrations, one based on functionality and the other on the eternal life that awaits us somewhere there. Both of these narrations are linear as the religious narrative in its most common version can be reduced to the Saint Augustine's concept of linear time that has started with the creation of the world by God, has had its culmination point with the birth and death of Christ and is leading us to the end of time. The time embodied in my realizations is of different nature. It is not a functional time, as the (fixed) functionality is one of the concepts that I oppose the most. The time that you can find in my artistic practice is the time lived, experienced and embodied. It is the time of being and not only doing/ using/ going to. However, it is important to stress that this time of being is not immobile and mute. The being to which I refer is not of Platonic nature, absolute, universal and immobile, but it is a living being, a being that is embodied and so: changeable, relational, transformable. Then, trying to understand my art, you cannot only read it, trace semantic trails in order to get to the one, right point. You have to feel it, integrally, as it was said many times: integrally, with your body, senses, emotions and mind. There is no one definition and no functional aim of my pieces, what does not mean that they are contingent. They are and are not. They are deliberately paradoxical, as the paradoxes are liberating, also for the time: due to them the time is liberated from the service to functionalism and comes back to our multilayered experience. Multidisciplinarity is a crucial aspect of your art practice and you seem to be in an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between several disciplines, ranging from Sculpture and Video: have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different

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Monika Szpener

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disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts? Closing oneself into a defined frames and the use of only one kind of material can be considered as reductive for an artistic practice, however in my opinion it is the reason to deeply investigate one plastic, artistic area. Drawing from a defined source allows to specialize in a concrete area, as it opens new paths both technological – related to new media – and mental ones. It helps in construction of artistic posture and a specific relation to the world open for various possibilities. I am of the opinion, as McLuhan was stressing, that the interdisciplinary symbiosis is inevitable and – furthermore – it is developing our synesthetic experience, which transforms a human and their way of functioning in the world. During the se years your works have been exhbited in several occasions, both in Poland and abroad: 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. 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 for a particular context? Definitely. Today, everyone expects quick and clear information. They are bored with too complicated message and does not want to take excessive lengths to get the answer they need. They also reluctantly decides to visit a gallery. Often the question about the reasons for doing so comes the reply of the ordinary lack of time and will. Therefore, one of the primary objectives of my project was to go out there with the exhibition into the urban space, or generally public space. The city has its own characteristics defined by its functionality and architecture. People moving along it are not inclined to pick up

the message associated with the art. Thus, the response to a piece encountered is clean and more authentic, expressed with emotions amplified by curiosity. According to psychologist Edward Nęcki, emotional arousal increases the likelihood of producing an unusual associations, positive emotions allow to reach a more abstract level of conceptual knowledge. Thanks to an abstract reasoning we associate distant facts better and we easier see similarities, use analogies, or synthesis or concept revolution. If the object or situation is surprising, but it raises our positive associations, it will encourage us to pursue further interpretation and increased intellectual effort. These processes are also held at levels of unconsciousness. Here there is a simultaneous combination of facts allowing for the collection of ambiguity. In this way, the recipient can accept different content and take other reasons. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Monika. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? My next work is a continuation of exploration in white, which I undertook last year. It is search in the plurality of particles and wilderness of metaphors. From the original unity – into the multitude, of monolith - into dispersion. I am heading toward the existential areas - the transience of states and reactions, variation of life, inconstancy, being in motion.

Commotion, constant changes, pouring sand, time, decay and solidification of matter. I am returning to the elementary sculpting as the formation of matter, accompanied with accidentality. The inclusion of its unpredictability, puzzling into the circle of artistic activities planned.

from nieDAsie project Audiovisual installation on trashy items, Detroit 2014 Photo by Pani Pawlosky

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Olga Butenop 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 (“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.

Maya Gelfman

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LandEscape meets

Olga Butenop An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator landescape@europe.com

A deep synergy between a rigorous analytical approach and a refined allows Moscow based artist Olga Butenop to accomplish a suggestive investigation in the blurry area of interplay created by the coexstistence of memories and perceptual reality. Unlike artists as Carsten Hรถller, Butenop does not let the viewer in the foggy area of doubt: her analytic gaze drives us to investigate about the relation between reality and the way we perceive it. I'm very pleased to introduce our readers to her refined artistic production. Hello Olga and welcome to LandEscape: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? In particular, besides your studies a the prestigious Institute of Contemporary Art in Moscow, your previous education in scientific fields has informed the way you currently relate yourself to Art. Would you like to tell our readers how an analytical and research-based approach creates a so effective synergy with an artistic one?

The artist can't create without the base on feelings and emotions, but due to my scientific background I can systematize these feelings and emotions. When the idea of rather new project comes to me, at first, I perceive it at the emotional level, but then I develop the concept analytically. I investigate a life situation or a psychological state through a reconstruction of an object metaphorical model

in the reality. Moreover, I often attract various data flows as an additional context received both as a result of people polls, and as a result of collecting from different sources. These data flows, which exist in many of my works, merge in quite senseless mass of signs and are always a certain reference point of the present time, time of information fatigue. Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from Behind the walls, an extremely interesting work that has been featured at the IV Krasnoyarsk International Media Art Festival and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest our readers to visit directly at http://www.olgabutenop.com in order to get a wider idea of your multifaceted artistic production. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this interesting project? What was your initial inspiration?

This project was realized in the abandoned building of children's sanatorium "October" in the suburb of Moscow. The function of this building was changed several times since its foundation, at the end, there was the children's sanatorium where different pulmonary diseases were treated. It was a big project where many artists took part, everyone worked with his own room in the house. The idea of lives' plurality passing in this building and the present state of the building, destroyed and plundered, were especially interesting to me in that project. I recreated one of the destroyed rooms of this sanatorium in the small model in that look when there still lived children. It was important

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for me to destroy a linear current of time. I combined the past and the present of this place in one place. It was important for representation of fears in front of the change of own reality. Because often it seems to us that, having changed something during the life, these changes will appear before us not as something new, but only as ruins among which we certainly will be lost. However, on the other hand, change and fast movement, unconditional distinctive features of our time, are often negative. Therefore there is also a question of finding of a border between sharp change and a natural current of life, on how deeply it is possible to internalize these states. The ambience created by Behind the walls has reminded me the concept of Heterotopia elaborated by French social theorist Michel Foucault. What has mostly impacted on me is the way you have been capable of bringing a new level of significance to the signs of absence, that invites us to rethink about the concept of the environment we inhabit in. This is a recurrent feature of your approach that I can recognize also in other works as In the timelessness: you seem to urge the viewers' perception in order to challenge the common way to perceive not only the outside world, but our inner dimension... By the way, I'm sort of convinced that some informations & ideas are hidden, or even "encrypted" in the environment we live in, so we need -in a way- to decipher them. Maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this?

Certainly. I am sure that one of the artist's tasks today is the understanding and interpretation of the information surrounding us. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s why the artist resembles now a cryptologist who hacks the information processes happening both in the reality surrounding us and in ourselves. However, the task consists not only of finding of definite answers and the statement of the truth, rather in collection of information that will be also as a result a conundrum. The process of detecting of the unusual fragments of information, hidden in space, is an important thing in the artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work. Really, if you look at these two of my works "Behind walls" and "Timelessness" - through a prism of idea of Foucault, these works are very

Total experiment. 2013. Project with Natalia Alexander. 22

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Still from the video 22

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Total experiment. 2013. Project with Natalia Alexander. Still from the video

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similar. This deserted greenhouse in the Crimea conceals in itself, as it seemed to me, the stopped time, and through the inscriptions, which are scraped off by people on the glass painted door, there is an opportunity to glance in this tranquility from the vain world. When you appear on the border of these two heterotopias, there is an impression that you stand in the middle of a temporary break. As well as in the work "Behind walls", in the work "Timelessness" the subject of a temporary gap between the past and the present is very important. It amplifies historical background of this place, since 1977 this place was a part of three different countries. And the theme of fears in front of the reality comes again here. Another interesting work of yours that has particularly impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled ASYLUM: in particular, when I first happened to get to know with this piece I tried to relate all the visual information to a single meaning. But I soon later realized that I had to fit into the visual rhythm suggested by the work, forgetting my need for a univocal understanding of its symbolic content: in your work, rather that a conceptual interiority, I can recognize the desire to enabling us to establish direct relations... Would you say that it's more of an intuitive or a systematic process?

As I've already said, I don't answer particularly the question raised in my work, I offer mine, I also suggest the viewer to find himself the answer suitable for him. The work â&#x20AC;&#x17E;ASYLUMÂť tells the viewer about a current of information by which the person creates a shelter for himself, builds the background. The theme of this work is very personal for me. In general, this theme is standard for many countries â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the person gets higher education, but then he doesn't work in his own field, there is a sharp change of a kind of activity and a person rushes from one knowledge to another. And this process can repeat several times. There is a question what is really important: in what you want to be engaged or in what you are compelled to be

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engaged? Against the background, how I methodically build a shelter of information, I read the texts which I faced in my life. These texts are connected with different spheres of knowledge, and they are mixed among themselves, so turns out the senseless text, like informational noise. The reference to a universal imagery suggested by everyday objects, as in Discussion, seems to remove the historic gaze from the reality you refer to, offering to the viewers the chance to perceive in a more atemporal form. In this sense, I daresay that the semantic juxtaposition between semantic sign and heavy matter that marks out your art, allows you to go beyond any dichotomy between Tradition and Contemporariness, establishing a stimulating osmosis between materials from an ancient era and a modern, lively approach to Art: in particular, Discussion reveals an attitude to allegorize the area of interplay that marks out the we perceive Reality an relate to it... do you agree with this analysis?

It is possible to say that installation "Discussion" is a model of debatable process. The main theme is ongoing for centuries discussions between various cultures, genders, religions, etc. Multi-colored pipes intertwine and adjoin, but don't cross each other. In pipes we see stained-glass windows with, apparently, identical images, however, these images aren't identical, they differ in size and in color of figures on them. Stained-glass windows are a subject of discussion in discussion, it seemingly the same, but everyone represents it in his own way. All problems in mutual understanding appear exactly from here. And the result is not so important, rather the quantity of a common ground. It was interesting to me to create material model of discussion in this project, to turn verbal process into mute object. More traditional media were necessary for me there. In my opinion, traditional art forms and new don't contradict each other, it is a direct gradual way of development. Besides, it is A still from ASYLUM, 2014 Video 27:22 22

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Olga Butenop

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remarkable that today we can use both new media and classical and also to connect them together in art. It increases freedom of expression of ideas and, besides, it is much more interesting! Multidisciplinarity is a crucial aspect of your art practice and you seem to be in an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between several disciplines, taking advantage of the creative and expressive potential of Technology: while crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

I think that there is nothing unusual in the use of several various media for creation of the projects by the artist today. It, as I have already mentioned about traditional and classical media, helps the artist to express the thought more stoutly. In the project «Discussion» it was more convenient for me to use more traditional media – installation for expression of the idea. And, for example, in my work "The car of memoirs" I resort to newer media. In this work I asked people from various internet blogs and forums to share with me the stories about the first reminiscence from their life. It was important to me to receive stories from those people whom I never saw, because I didn't know anything about them, so their stories weren't connected with me by anything personal. And then I depersonalized them even more - I recorded these stories by the computer voice. In general, I made the same that all people do today, sharing their thoughts, emotions, feelings in the Internet – all emotions are depersonalized though mostly we don't attach it significance. When my work was ready, some of people, who had taken part in it, were grieved, they wrote me that I was cruel to their stories, as if I took the taste and the smell from the strawberry away. Yes, I made exactly it, after all the same happens to our feelings in the Internet space. And I don't claim that it is bad, simple it is so. During these years your works have been extensively exhibited in several occasions,

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CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW

including therecent show "Military Museum" at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. 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 decision-making process in terms of what type of language for a particular context?

It is a very interesting question. On the one hand, I am engaged in art, as it is my way of reflection, over the questions, which are interesting to me. It is interesting personally to me. On the other hand, having exposed the project in the museum, it enters into a dialogue with audience. And it is also very important as, in this case, the project gets additional contexts and develops. Contact with audience, an audience response is one of the incentives to further development of the artist. As for a question whether I will change type of language of the work, depending on where it will be exposed, I think –No, it doesn’t matter. Now I am in a such condition that I work only with those subjects which are really interesting to me, I am not arranged under a concrete exhibition, rather if the subject of an exhibition approaches under my project or under my mood, I will take part in it, not on the contrary. I can tell the same about the audience. In general, the viewer's subject in the modern art is very burning in Russia. Our viewer loves classical art more, and they don't understand and don't accept modern art. Therefore audience of the modern art is not so large. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Olga. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

Yes, now I prepare new projects. I continue working with object, tactile, more traditional art, I prepare such project now, I’ll work with sand. Actually, there will be also performatory part in this project, it is a rather unusual direction for me. Moreover, I continue my work with newer media. It is interesting to me to develop further the research nature of my works, perhaps, they will gain more documentary nature too.

Olga Butenop

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Bethany Taylor Lives and works in Dallas, USA

An artist's statement

ethany Taylor graduated with a BFA from the University of Southern California and an MFA from University Coloradoat at Boulder. Herthe work has beenofexhibited

numerous venues nationally and internationally including, Post, Los Angeles, Seattle Arts Commission Gallery, Seattle, Museum for Arts and Sciences, Macon, Georgia, the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Los Angeles, California, The Bellevue Art Museum, Bellevue, Washington, The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery, Fort Myers, Florida, the Musei di Genova Raccolte Frugone, Genova Nervi, Italy, Limerick City Gallery, Limerick, Ireland, and The Nelimarkka Museum, AlajĂ¤rvi, Finland among others. Her individual and collaborative work has been written about in such publications as Art Papers, New Art Examiner, The Seattle Times, The Seattle Post Intelligencer, Seattle Weekly, The Stranger, The LA Weekly, Rocky Mountain News, Suomi-USA Magazine, Northern Ireland Scene, Worldwide Review, London among others. She received a individual artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s grant from the Seattle Arts Commission and has several works in the Seattle Arts Commission Portable Works Collection.

She is one of the founding members of SOIL artist run gallery in Seattle Washington, and her art, curatorial work, and writing was featured in the book, Soil Artist-Run Gallery 1995-2005, funded by Art Patch, King County Lodging Tax, and The Washington State Arts Commission. Bethany Taylor is an Assistant Professor of Drawing at the University of Florida and has co-taught the nationally recognized foundations program (WARP) The Workshop for Art Research and Practice the past 14 years. Her teaching experience also includes graduate interdisciplinary seminars, as well as undergraduate/graduate study abroad courses in storytelling and portable art practices in Ireland and Northern Ireland. She currently lives and works in Gainesville, Florida.

Bethany Taylor

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22 malleable midnight, watercolor on velvet, marble rock, pillowcase and fiber-based drawing, 2013

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LandEscape meets

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

Bethany Taylor uses wide range techniques to seduce viewers: while conveying a rational approach and a careful attention to the evocative power of the materials she incorporates in her installations. Many of the classic sculptural concerns, such as mass and gravity, as well as a lively sociopolitical and environmental commentary are reflected in her approach and are the hallmark of her multilayered exploration of the sensuality of materials. One of the most convincing aspects of Taylor's approach lies in her incessant research of a point of concurrency of various meanings of beauty to create a coherent narrative: so it's with a real pleasure that I would like to introduce our readers to her stimulating works. Hello Bethany, and welcome to LandEscape: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and you hold a BFA from the University of Southern California and an MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder. How did these experiences influence your evolution as an artist, and how do they impact on the way you currently conceive and produce your works?

Thank you very much for your time and for this interview. I would have to say that my education definitely had an impact on the art I

make today. Both schools I attended had a marked interest in conceptual art, performance, film and photography, and this certainly informed the way I began to think about the traditions of drawing and painting. As an undergraduate student living in Los Angeles, I was most blown away by several large-scale exhibitions I saw of California-based artists such as John Baldessari (for his absurd play with semiotics, radical appropriation and juxtapositions of imagery) and Ann Hamilton (for her beautiful use of poetic materials, marks and experiential sensations). Both artists were very influential to me as a young artist, as I began to see art, and drawing in particular, as idea, material and performance, over illusion, expression or representation. As a graduate student, in Boulder, Colorado, I was exposed to the influence of Lucy Lippard, who was faculty there in Art History and Theory at the time. I learned so much from the discussion panels she organized of racially and gender diverse visiting artists, called mixing-it-up symposiums, which promoted dialogue around cultural, racial and gender history and identity as manifested in art. It was really during that time that I became most engaged in the idea that art can be much more than simply a formal exploration, but can also be a powerful form of communication that can challenge others to different perspectives, and act as a catalyst for social change. I am still committed to thinking about art, as first my own subjective lens on the world, and then more importantly as a something that can raise social and political consciousness, perhaps motivating others to take action on issues such as inequality or environmental sustainability.

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don't go there ink on duralar, parking cone, and cut, reusable orange plastic safety fence, 74" X 32" X 20", 2014 22

Bethany Taylor

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I would suggest to visit http://www.bethanytaylor.net in order to get a wider idea of her artistic production that we are going to discuss: I would begin with Don’t Go There, an interesting installation that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. When I first happened to get to know this piece, I tried to relate all the visual information to a single meaning. But I soon realized that I had to fit into the visual unity suggested by the narrative that pervades your images, forgetting my need for a univocal understanding of its symbolic content.Would you say that it's more of an intuitive or a systematic process?

I would say my approach, particularly in the work, Don’t Go There, is both structural and intuitive. During the early part of the 20th century the grid was used as an emblem of modernist ambitions. In my work, I have utilized the grid quite often, but have been mostly interested in subverting its calculated control over spacial and temporal conditions. The grid has primarily worked to counter to the natural, in that it flattens and orders the world, disallows for narrative, for imitation, for the real. It instead aestheticizes, controls and imposes stasis. In conceptualizing my work, Don’t Go There, while walking in my neighborhood overcome by recent construction, I noticed the plastic orange safety fences positioned around contested natural areas, where building construction and natural growth were happening simultaneously. I was reminded of a lecture I once attend by David Hickey, where he noted something to the effect that the different regions of the United States have different relationships to the natural landscape. For example, the Midwest United States is full of farmland and the landscape is carefully controlled, and kept neat and orderly. However, try as one may, the Southern U.S. landscape is chaotic, full of life, consisting of swampland, overgrowth and prairie; landscapes often difficult to wrangle or contain. I imagined this orange construction fence I encountered, literally breaking down under the

sheer will of nature, as the orange grid pattern begins to mimic the trees, vines and surrounding growth. The orange fencing material, in my mind, was not only defining or structuring nature, but also, over time, the natural environment was also changing the synthetic structure that worked to contain it. Slavoj Žižek, has recently said that, “there is no nature”, or that “nature doesn’t exist”. Although a provocative statement, looking at the landscape and the fact that human activity is having quite an impact on the earth, I think that seeing ourselves separate from nature (the old man vs. nature dichotomy) can be troublesome, even dangerous under contemporary imperatives. Rather, if we see ourselves as an intricate part of nature, we may be more inclined to take better care of the earth. I like the way malleable midnight shows a symbiosis between the abstract idea of night that evokes such an indefinite impalpability and the tactile feature suggested by the stones: while referring to an easily "fruible" set of symbols as starting points, you seem to remove the historic gaze from the reality you refer to, offering to the viewers the chance to perceive in a more absolute form, in order to address us not only on a mere contingent view, but especially to invite us to rethink our future. So I would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

No, I find the creative process is very linked to personal experience. Before I conceived of the work, Malleable Midnight, for example, I had the opportunity to work in Finland during a two-month artist residency at the Nelimarkka Museum of Art. When you travel, as an artist, you are always most impacted by the differences you experience in a new place. During the mid-summer in Finland, there is literally no night-time, at least not as we experience it in the United States with darkness present as we sleep at night. The 24-hour daylight not only took some getting

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used to, but it completely restructured my time while I was there. It didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t matter when I slept or when I made art. I was no longer on any natural clock, and the concept of daytime and night-time were no longer meaningful. When I returned home to Florida, where day and night are very much in opposition, I began to think about the poetry implied by in-between states. As I mentioned before, I am much more interested in the idea of things in flux, than in things held static, which is one of the reasons I am somewhat cautious about using representation in general. In Malleable Midnight the representations are always located in between two dichotomies. Meaning is usually hinged on dichotomous relationships, and I wanted to engage more in the indeterminate, which is more in line with my everyday lived experience. Boundaries are always blurry and soft, which is why I choose to paint with watercolor on velvet, to capture a sense of the indefinite, but also to memorialize a state of flux. The watercolor on velvet painting is both a wall, and a window, and is reflective of both inside and outside simultaneously. The bed of marble rocks in the work, references those typically used in an outdoor garden, and doubles as a single bed, with pillow, to sleep on. I wanted the entire piece to reflect both an abundance of life, movement and continual growth but also stillness, sleep and ultimately death. I often lie awake in my bed at night and if I listen closely I can hear the wind in the trees, the footsteps of an armadillo on the fallen leaves, and birds of prey hunting and scavenging in the night. I can swear that even the moonlight coming through the window makes a sound. Anything can happen when all existence is in flux. And this is the nature and meaning of life I most wanted to reflect. A relevant feature of Doing Fine on Cloud nine + Punched Clouds that has particularly impacted me is the way you highlight the inner bond between Man and Nature: you invite the viewer to appreciate the intrinsic but sometimes disregarded beauty of geometrical patterns, and the way you question the ephemeral nature of nature offers a multilayered experience that, like

Bethany Taylor

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runoff verdure Jacquard digitally woven photo tapestry and fiber-based drawing installation, 2014 installation variable size (approx. 9' x 24')

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runoff verdure, detail

Bethany Taylor

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Jean Tinguely's works, raises a question on the role of the viewers' perception, forcing us to going beyond the common way we perceive not only the outside world, but our inner dimension... I'm personally convinced that some information is hidden, or even "encrypted" in the environment we live in, so we need to decipher them. Maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this?

I do appreciate the satire and social critique in Tinguely’s work. My work is also interested in the revolutionary aspect of destruction as a way to comment on our disastrous relationship with the world. Your insights and observations make me think about something I often lament about humans; that our “natural relationship” to nature is often one of opposition and consumption; to want it, to own it, to use it, misuse it, or to bring it into our submission in one way or another. Even as an artist, when I draw or paint a landscape, or clouds in this instance, I am essentially killing what is most beautiful about them by attempting to represent them, or to fix them in time and space. Clouds are ephemeral, transitory, always changing, and it seems somewhat impossible to capture that truth in any one still image. My series of drawings, Clouds One-Eight of Nine, was initially inspired by the mysterious images of “punched” clouds observed in the earth’s atmosphere. It seems no one knows for sure what causes these holes that appear in the clouds, but the idea that something so ephemeral as a cloud actually be “punched” or impacted physically, haunted my thoughts. This idea then merged with musings I have about the futility of believing in or fearing invisible forces. In contemporary culture, ideas about “the other” or “the enemy” unfortunately often construct our politics and perspectives. In this work, I photographed weather clouds and used appropriated images of smoke clouds caused by incendiary devices. Then, as a somewhat violent act, I physically punched the printed images with a boxing glove to destroy the surface. Accompanying the work was a related sculpture,

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“I’m Doing Fine on Cloud Nine” inspired by the 1969 song “Cloud Nine” performed by The Temptations. An actual white vinyl punching bag and stand was transformed into a large, heavyweight, semi-soft, sculptural cloud form, coated in powdered graphite. Sparing with this normally ephemeral object (a cloud) become a heavyweight punching bag, would be exhausting, and instead of having any impact at all on this performative object, opponents (or viewers in this case) of this “cloud” would inevitably be marked on by transferred graphite, documenting on their own body their aggressive actions. The work is a sculptural drawing, in a sense, that actively makes marks on the viewer. The work poetically makes explicit the complicated relationship we have with the world and suggests the painful process of struggle in light of social, political and environmental realities. I love the futility inherent in the work. While struggling with the sheer weight of the sculpture, hitting the (heavy-weight cloud) bag, I imagine one would hear the groovy 1969 soundtrack echoing in the background with the lyrics, …. “You can be what you wanna be. (Cloud 9) You ain't got no responsibility. (Cloud 9) Every man in his mind is free. (Cloud 9) You're a million miles from reality… Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom...” Multidisciplinary is a crucial aspect of your art practice and besides kinetic installations you also produce stimulating mixed media works, as the interesting 21st Century Albatross. You seem to be in an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate synthesis: have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

Yes. One of the best things about being an artist is that you get to study the entire world. Literally everything out there is fair game to research and communicate about. Although I do appreciate art that references concepts and ideas ingrained primarily in the discipline of art, I am personally more engaged with the interaction of art and other disciplines. I like my art to have more of a function than simply

being “art for art’s sake”. In the case of my work 21st Century Albatross, for example, I loved being able to cross stories of the environmental impact of our garbage, with the personal story of my own implication in the problem. And of course, formally, I hope that there is poetry inherent in the visual of the engraved drawings on plastic. Like the issue itself, the drawings are barely visible except for the shadows they cast on the wall and the way they catch the light, glittering like diamonds. These engraved drawings on plastic, also parallel an image of myself dumping plastic garbage directly on an image of my daughter, while raining plastic debris bursting from belly of a dying Albatross does the same. Lastly, the fact that the work will continue to grow as I collect more recycled plastic, and transform it, through drawing, into dystopian narratives, is also part of the concept. I am paralleling artistic production highlighting the problem with the scientific fact of continual plastic accumulation in the oceans, and there is something intuitively right about that. During your over twenty year career your works have been extensively exhibited in several occasions, including your recent participation in the LACDA 11th Anniversary Represented Artist Exhibit at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art. So, before taking leave from this interesting conversation I would like to pose 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 decision-making process in terms of what type of language for a particular context?

Sure, I always consider audience very important. As well as an artist I am also an art educator at the University of Florida. I teach both drawing and co-teach an interdisciplinary foundations course called (WARP) Workshop on Art Research and Practice, which primarily engages students with contemporary art and theory, diverse art making practices, and exposes them to the possible and varied functions of art. The course discusses audience and how an artist may intentionally cultivate certain audiences. Some

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artists, for example make artwork for only one client at a time. Some artists are interested in mass appeal, or some only interested in public audiences made up primarily of those not at all educated in art. Some artists are deeply reliant on an audience highly versed in the specialized subject of their work or in art history and theory in general. Some artists might not care so much about an audience at all, but more about how the work actually solves a real-world practical problem. Ultimately, although I make art on some level for myself regardless of context, I definitely want to engage both art and non-art educated audiences equally. An audience member at a recent talk I gave said they liked how my art was beautiful and begged them to come look at it. But once they engaged with the work over time, an ugliness emerged that was rooted in the darker message communicated by the work. I liked this reflection she shared with me, as I often think about using beauty to seduce diverse viewers to engage initially with my work, with their guard down, so that the more repulsive, or confrontational content emerges slowly and causes them to reflect more deliberately on the meaning of the work. I do not, in the end, want a passive viewer at all, and I hope that viewers that do take time with the work will be, even subtly, impacted by the experience. Thanks a lot for this interesting conversation, Bethany. Finally, I would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects. Anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

Thank you. This was really fun to have this conversation with you. I am very excited about the upcoming year, as I have been working on several new projects. I will be having a solo exhibition at Gallery 621 in Tallahassee, Florida in November 2015. The show will be titled “Unraveling Ecologies”, and will involve the completion of several large-scale adaptable installation works as well as accompanying smaller works combining, photography, drawing and fiberbased art. The works together will present the idea of “unraveling ecologies” and the changing Florida landscape.

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runoff verdure, detail

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Melissa Moffat Lives and works in Toronto, Canada

An artist's statement

paint with paper. My collages give fashion and comic books new life by deconstructing and reimagining them as new stunning abstract works of art.

Melissa Moffat is a fine arts collagist painting with the paper of different publications. When comic books are her choice of medium, the iconic images of the characters are broken down and rebuilt in a new image. When using fashion publications, she draws the viewer in with images of luxury, intricate patterns,

colours, beautiful textures and the brilliance of precious metals and stones. Through her collages, Moffat breathes new life into magazine and comic editorials by removing them from the spine of the book and deconstructing them. Ultimately, the goal of her work is to take existing images and reuse as well as re-appropriate them to give the viewer a cornucopia of archival pictures that are meant to be examined with a whole new lens.â&#x20AC;? Maya Gelfman

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Dawn of a new 22 day

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LandEscape meets

Melissa Moffat An interview by Melissa C. Hilborn, curator and Barbara Scott, curator landescape@europe.com

Enhancing the expressive potential of juxtaposition, Melissa Moffat invites the viewers to a captivating multilayered experience: in her collages she recontextualizes images unveiling their intimate connections between the reality that we perceive and the ambiguous dimension of our inner world. What mostly impresses of Moffat's approach is the way she accomplishes the difficult task of creating a concrete aesthetic that engages viewers, while conveying emotional and rational approaches into a consistent, coherent unity. I'm very pleased to introduce our readers to her refined artistic production.

Hello Melissa, and welcome to LandEscape: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? In particular, are there any experiences that have influenced your evolution as an artists and that impact on the way you currently conceive and produce your works?

I studied applied photography at Sheridan college, and worked as a

freelance photographer for over five years. That experience and knowledge trained my eye to composition, colour, shape and form. Art has always been a hobby for me, I went though different painting phases, splatter painting to even acrylic painting with my breasts as the brush. I had a lot of magazine around my photo studio so i started to experiment with collage. Once I had started to make the comic book collages and selling them at comic conventions, I was able to reach a large audience. I found most people really liked my work. The positive reaction helped to push me to take my art more serious, create more art and work to get it out there. It was no longer a hobby, i was going to make it a career. I also have a BA in psychology and religion and culture from Wilfird Laurier University which may influence my art in some way. Then most recently my move to Montreal has really inspired me and I've experimented with different publications and themes. Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up for making your artworks? In particular, what

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Thodoris Trampas

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technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work? And how much preparation and time do you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

My Collages are quite time consuming and involve many steps, the amount of time will vary depending on the size and materials used. To begin I have to find my materials, rip out the pages and then cut everything up. So I can spend days cutting before I even get to the creation. I have ADD though so my hands like to be busy, and i listen to audiobooks while i'm working, so often if the story is good it will keep me at it longer. If I organize pieces well as I am cutting them makes an easier and faster in the creation I do not have to search as long for a piece. I will organize by colour, content and shape. A big part of my preparation is experiencing the inspiration. Which can be many things, meditation, taking a bike ride in nature, a walk though the city, a visit to the museum, music, spending time with a muse. Or often its TV or movie,especially for the comic book ones i would watch the movie about the superhero. For the ultramarine show “Reef life” piece i watched a lot of documentaries about coral reefs, it was pretty great and I learned interesting things about fish.

Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from your Fashion Magazine Collages series that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest to our readers to visit yur website directly

at http://www.melissamoffat.com in order to get a wider idea of your artistic production... In the meanwhile, would you like to tell us something about the genesis of this interesting project? What was your initial inspiration? The magazines themselves were the genesis. They were filled with colour, patterns, and shapes. They were just sitting there in a pile, wanting to be made into something new. I enjoyed the process the ripping out of the pages and the cutting was therapeutic. During creating It was mediative the pieces would just fit like a puzzle. In some collages they were made with just one issue so it was the challenge, of trying to create with limited supplies. An important aspect of your work comes from the way you organize the materials, drawing the viewer into intricate patterns and highlighting the bond between the past of the images and their new life: I daresay that one of the most convincing aspect of your practice is the way you unveil the subtle but ubiquitous connection between Imagination and everyday life: your vision seems to speak of a kind an abstract beauty that starts from a mundane imagery but that brings a new level of significance to images.I would go as far as to state that in a certain sense your works challenge the viewers' perception in order to going beyond the common way to perceive not only the outside world, but the way we relate to it... By the way, I'm sort of convinced that some informations & ideas are hidden, or even "encrypted" in the environment we live in, so we need -in

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a way- to decipher them. Maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this? I think the viewer does get to experience some of their inner nature when viewing my art. The abstractness of it leaves to the viewer to find their own hidden images and meaning. The brain tries to interpret the lines and shapes into something recognizable so it draws from our experinces, memories and subconcious. Using everyday life material that could not be necessarily perceived as ‘beautiful’ you establish an effective symbiosys between Memory and Experience, that takes an intense participatory line with the viewers. While creating such intimate involvement, you seem to remove the historic gaze from the reality you refer to, offering to the viewers the chance to perceive in a more absolute, almost atemporal form. So I 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?

My experiences make up who am as an artist. My creativity is affect by my mood and emotions which are a result of my experiences. I think experiences shape how we see the world and even ourselves.

Your visionary approach to recontextualization that emerges especially in your Comic Book

Melissa Moffat

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Commission for Daniels Condo Building

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Commission for Daniels Condo Building

Melissa Moffat

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Collages series, has suggested me the idea that environment acts as cornerstones for a fullfilment process that has reminds me of German sculptor and photographer Thomas Demand, when he stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological narrative elements within the medium instead": what's your point about this? And in particular, how much do you explicitly think of a narrative for your works?

Sometimes there is a narrative, like with my Collage "Paradise Cove" was about a beautiful day at the beach, I created the fantasy scene for myself because it was the middle of a long cold winter in Montreal. Often with the comic book works the narrative is the essence of the character or what they represent. Like with my "Joker" piece I tried to channel insanity and with Superman collage it was the strength, heroism and justice. However often there is not a narative and it is just about the colour, patterens, shapes and lines that drive the piece.

I have appreciate the investigative feature of the way you explore emerging visual contexts: like many art forms, collage can borrow elements to create new art: your main sources are tears of posters or magazines: in your opinion are there limits to what can or should be used to create collages? In particular are there any constraints or rules that you follow when creating collages?

Most of my work is very deconstructed from its original for form so I feel like

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Boss

Wild Woman

that transformation makes it ok. As I move into doing pieces that are less so I have questioned myself as to is ok. With the “Kabuki” collage I used the illustartions of David Mack in there full form and all from one source.

from and even recommend reading the graphic Novel. So I try to change the source from its orginal form, take it out of its context, combine it with other material change and siteing the creator.

However I put them into a new context, and I always tell people where it comes

The associations expressed by the juxtapositive process seem to avoid any precise politicized meanings:

Melissa Moffat

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Blue Dream

Clutch

however, it's almost impossible to deny that giving a second life to images -and sometimes to the concept behind them- could be defined such a politicized practice itself. By the way, although I'm aware that this might sound a bit naïf, I have to admit that I'm sort of convinced that Art -especially

nowadays-could play an effective role in sociopolitical questions: not only just by offering to people a generic platform for expression... I would go as far as to state that Art could even steer people's behaviour... what's your point about this? Does it sound a bit exaggerated?

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Art is a great platform for people to make a statement on political ideas. it can be presented in a form that is easier to digest or in a way that is shocking and will get peoples attentions by being bold. People respond to visual stimulation, art could definitely influence people. During these years your works have been extensively exhibited in several occasions, including your recent participation to Ultramarnie, in Montreal. 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 decision-making process in terms of what type of language for a particular context?

Yes I often think of my audience. Especially with the comic book collages, I would choose to make art of characters that are popular. I often do commissioned Collages so in that case the audience is very important. Recently censoredmy art because of though to the audience. With this "Ohh La la" collage i was thoughtful about how much nudity i would show, of how it would be looked at as too erotic or xrated if i showed images of full body nudes verses just topless.

Thanks a lot for this interesting conversation, Melissa. Finally, I would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects. Anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of? I've started to work with Alexander Arnoux Pierre Curator of Pictura Agency. My collages will be the feature art in a new urban gallery opened in downtown Montreal Urbana Gallery, I will be exhibing there june- july and then at other points throughout the year. June 4-14 my art is art Mural festival Montreal. For the month of June Im in a Group show “Keep it Glu” in Marseille, France. July 3-5 is Montreal ComicCon. Exposition UpCycle IV -Group Show at Galerie Le repaire des 100 talents in Montreal Aug 9 to September 13 2015

Aside from the exhibiting I am looking forward to creating more art, using different materials, and subject matter and going bigger in size. You can follow my journey on social media. twitter.com/MMoffatCollage www.facebook.com/melissamoffatcollageart instagram- MelissaMoffatcollage

An interview by Melissa C. Hilborn, curator and Barbara Scott, curator landescape@europe.com

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Damir Matijevic Lives and works in Paris, France

An artist's statement

or me, Photography is a melody of light and soul. It is evidence of a singular moment in time and space, where we find our own reflections. Often, in contemplation of my surroundings, I find myself seeking a deeper meaning. Recognizing the intimately whispering interplay of my souls vibration with the space around me, my soul is forced to express itself through images. This is how I discovered photography; as an outer reflection of my souls inner vibration.

I pass these photos on to you with trust. View slowly. Contemplate upon them until you are able to pick up each subtle nuance. Look for the whispering of your own soul as it awakens memories, emotions, and little enlightenments that you have yet to discover within yourselfâ&#x20AC;Ś leaving only footprints behind!

Silence In this today's modern era, when the noise and bustle are becoming more a form of violence to People, a real privilege is to find a time and place where one can relax and return to its true nature, itself. People yearn to some place where they will be able to deeply relax, where they will be able to enter into the silence to relearn to hear and listen.The man is deeply connected with nature. In the silence and through silence we feel unity with what we observe. This gallery shows photographs of places where you can literally immerse yourself in the picture and feel all the beauty of nature that surrounds us.

Damir MatijeviÄ&#x2021;

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LandEscape meets

Damir Matijevic An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator landescape@europe.com

Hello Damir and a warm welcome to LandEscape. To start this interview I would pose you my usual introductory question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? Moreover, what could be the features that mark the contemporariness of an artwork?

Art is for me intimacy! Art is the "form" of content and form is one's identity. Therefore, the content becomes a work of art when we bring in the content our own intimacy, our energy, our strength, our spirit. The main features of the contemporary work of art would be initating the interaction between people, initating emotions, expressing different views and providing new thinking about the world and the space that surrounds us. Would you like to tell us something about your background? Are there any experiences that have particularly influenced you and that impacted on the way you currently produce your Art? By the way, what's your point on formal training? I often ask to myself

if a certain kind of training could even stifle a young artist's creativity...

My educational background is in mechanical engineering, I graduated at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, 1996, Zagreb,Croatia.I am employed in „Končar Group Company“ and work in the tehnical office as a designer , in a 3D modeling program. I tried some amateur painting for a few years. I started doing photography in high school when I was hanging out with my photographer friends, revealing all the secrets and magic of making photographs, both with camera and in the darkroom. Magic is a small word for experiences that grew into a passion for the photography. Very soon I realized that photography is not just a picture, but much more the important thing is not what you see on the photo, but what the photo hints at you, what comes out of the photo to you, something that touches you or imbues you….that the photo is only a fragment of reality, which can initiate nostalgia , longing, joy, anxiety, peace ... . something sooths or excite us. In other words, everything I've learned about photography was through my own

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Damir Matijević

Damir MatijeviÄ&#x2021;

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experience, through reading literature , through the exhibitions where spent many hours looking at photographs of old masters and searching in them something that could attract me. What I recommend to others, is the photograpy must be viewed in isolation, and that they should create their works without other people's suggestions and opinions. 2013. I became a member of the Croatian Association of Artists. Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to me something about your process and set up for making your artworks? In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work? And how much preparation and time do you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

All my photographic projects arise spontaneously, the idea is also spontaneous when I least expect it, whether I walk in Nature, in the city or simply read a book or talk with people. I experience the world creatively, it is a stage where you can always be attracted or get encouraged by something. I like to give in to the moment and often a photograph finds meâ&#x20AC;Ś I always carry a camera with me. All my photographs are made with film based 6x6cm TLR and 35mm camera and are available as classic Silver Gelatin hand Prints in black and white on a Baryta base photographic paper. 4. Modern man is exposed to overwhelming noise, many words and pictures. A rule is, people are imposed on that it is more important "to have"

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Damir MatijeviÄ&#x2021;

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and not to "be"and in that rhythm of time , people loses a step with himself and with true values. Noise, stress and lack of time are increasingly becoming the everyday man, and silence, silence is becoming a luxury selection of only the few. Now let's focus on your artworks: I would like to start with Silence that our readers have started to admire in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest them to visit your website directly at [here we cold insert a link to your website] in order to get a wider idea of this stimulating project... in the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this series? What was your initial inspiration?

We forget that silence is the beginning of awakening from this unnatural state, that in the silence man is reborn and discovers the meaning and all the beauty of the world. Silence soothes, it is creative, in it man can find answers himself and other people. Silence is not emptiness but fullness of everything. To get rid of misconceptions and noise of the world, one needs to get in touch with nature, in it we become free ... I notice that this work is capable of establishing a presence and such an atmosphere of memories, using just little reminders of human existence... I would like to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a

Damir Matijević

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Damir Matijević

Damir MatijeviÄ&#x2021;

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

For me personal, experience is very important, without it you almost can not get in touch with what you are creating and what you want to show... 6. That is it, the nature and we are in a deep ,lasting, unbreakable relationship. Wether the man will recognize himself in it, it depends on him. One should know how to "look" and how to "listen", but more importantly is how to "see" and how to "hear". Often I give my photographs names, because I try to keep the viewer further engaged and encourage them to think a little deeper and to dive into the photography. In these last years we have seen a great usage of digital technology, in order to achieve outcomes that was hard to get with traditional techniques: do your think that an excess of such techniques could lead to a betrayal of reality?

Digital technology presents many options for creative expression to everyone and every man has freedom how he will use it. That is the freedom and the richness of of Art. Where is the limit I do not know, only time will show where digitalization will take us. I daresay that the way Silence offers such a shelter from the noise and bustle are becoming more a form of violence to People and I can recognize a subtle but deep social criticism in

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Damir Matijević

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this... even though I'm aware that this might sound a bit naïf, I'm sort of convinced that Art in these days could play an effective role not only making aware public opinion about socio political issues: many contemporary landscape photographers such as Edward Burtynsky or Michael Light have some form of environmental or political message in their photographs. Do you consider that your images are political in this way or do you seek to maintain a neutral approach?

I do not do politics, I am not interested… 10. People are my eternal inspiration. When I photograph someone I tray to be spontaneus, to take a photography when they are unaware . A moment of squeezing the trigger is the most important, I do it by intuition, my aim is to capture a feeling or an emotion in the photography, at that time a sort of bond is established between me and people I am photographing. Over these years your works have been exhibited in several occasions and this year you had two solo exhibitions... It goes without saying that feedbacks and especially awards are capable of supporting an artist, encouraging him: I was just wondering if an award -or even the expectation of positive feedbackscould even influence the process of an artist... By the way, how much important is for you the feedback of your audience? Do you ever think to whom will enjoy your Art when you conceive your pieces? I sometimes

Damir Matijević

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Damir MatijeviÄ&#x2021;

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wonder if it could ever exist a genuine relationship between business and Art...

Photography is an integral part of my daily life and I do it solely for yourself, for my own pleasure, without suggestions and thinking whether to appeal to someone or not. Later, when I exhibit my photographs in galleries, the public certainly responds to them. There are always those who like and those who remain skeptical. But this is normal, the photography is only a fragment, its weight depends on what it shows as much about whoever is watching. When prizes are concerned, they can be both positive and negative. Everyone is happy when getting one, but I think they are not that important. Thank you for your time and for sharing with us your thoughts, Damir. My last question deals with your future plans: what's next for you? Anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

As far as future, I am thinking about my first monography. I have not yet decided whether it will be in the form of "Portfolio" or one of the themes the collection that you can see on my website. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts and photographs with you and your readers.

Damir Matijević

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Dmitry Kmelnitsky Lives and works in Los Angeles, California

An artist's statement

seek to create multi-dimensional poetry that opens portals onto the transcendent by applying artistic vision, creative expression and innovative uses of technology to the interplay of physical, virtual, musical and visual forms.

In my art practice I embrace the convergence of installation art, video art, animation, graphic design, architectural and industrial design form, as well as audio composition and performance. I thrive on the creative amalgam of independent and collaborative modes of art production that lead to more complex artworks which bridge different disciplines- art, design, dance, theater, music, architecture and film. I am interested in exploring the intersection of virtual and physical dimensions resulting in hybrid experiences that can engage audiences on both micro and macro levels- from miniature pieces to large-scale immersive installations.

I am particularly keen on exploring the transformation and sensory revitalization of space whether it is a gallery, a city wall, a gymnastics structure, a fountain or a warehouse. My artwork draws inspiration from mythology, the interplay of the mystical, human and natural realms, exploration and transformation of cultural identity and memory, as well as the phenomenology of space and perception. I am drawn to exploring the beauty and poetic states of the urban landscape and the wonder of natureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s distortion as processed by the senses. Conceptually and aesthetically the work simultaneously recalls a distant past and a vision of the future. In terms of artistic style, I am keen on subverting the vernacular of commercial media (filmmaking, visual fx, graphic arts) to craft more personal messages and experiences imbued with abstraction and symbolic meaning

Dmitry Kmelnitsky

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Maya Gelfman

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LandEscape meets

Dmitry Kmelnitsky An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator landescape@europe.com

The very first feeling I got when I had the chance to get to know Dmitry Kmelnitsky 's works, is that Art and Technology are not separated at all, and that it's always possible to go beyond any artificial boundary that limits the intrinsic continuity between a rational approach with a transcendent sensibility. Kmelnitsky shows how this symbiosis is not only possible, but at a certain point unavoidable: his incessant search of an organic synergy between several viewpoints offers to the viewer a multilayered experience and his insightful gaze to nature in its infinite structures establishes an area of deep interplay with the viewers: I'm very pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating works. Hello Dmitry and welcome to LandEscape: I would start this interview, posing you some questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and you hold an MFA in Design and Media Arts, that you received from the prestigious University of California, Los Angeles: how did this experience influence your evolution as an artist? Does it still inform the way you currently conceive and produce your works?

While I was interested in diverse forms of creative expression from an early age, it wasn't until graduate school that I began to

see the possibilities and the means by which they could be integrated. The MFA program at UCLA provided an exposure to visionary artists, art forms and platforms. Figuring out how to absorb so much information and then try to do something creative and innovative was exciting and overwhelming and it certainly did set the tone and pace for my multimedia arts practice to come. It also taught me a more research-based approach to art making, especially in the context of multidisciplinary multimedia work. Your artistic approach is marked out with a deep multidisciplinarity and you seem to be in an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between several disciplines, ranging from video and animation to audio composition and performance: while crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

I believe universal concepts such as beauty can be communicated and expressed through each singular creative form, however, the integration of multiple forms can facilitate a multidimensional experience of an idea or concept. Sometimes its best to express an idea within a specific form or media. Perhaps one media is more compatible mode of expression of a concept. It may be more pure and elegant. However, there are

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Dmitry Kmelnitsky

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many ideas that could never be expressed within a single form and that do require a symbiotic relationship between diverse forms, media, and technologies to come into being. I tend to lean towards this symbiosis that engages the senses on multiple levels, yielding transportive and immersive experiences. When I was working on my thesis project, SublimeConcrete" back in graduate school my mentor, the media artist Bill Seaman, told me I was trying to create a "gesamtkunstwerk". Perhaps, I was putting all these ingredients into the melting cauldron to see what kind of magic could be conjured up. Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from SOURCE, an extremely interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest our readers to visit http://lustrecreative.com in order to get a wider idea of your multifaceted artistic production. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this stimulating project? What was your initial inspiration?

SOURCE came about as an initial exploration of some of the concepts that were informing my research and development of the multimedia installation SPaRks. All life participates in the process of creation on multiple levels. As an artist I can't help but be drawn to mythology and cosmology as fertile areas of investigation. The creation story is part of every culture and it continues to be explored time and time again in new ways as humanity continues to write its story. There's something sublime in realizing that every time we create we are connected to the beyond, to a larger cosmic fabric. When we jump into one source it is easy to emerge on the edge of another surrounding source or surface. When I was working on SOURCE I was jumping across diverse resources and spheres of information- astrophysics, cosmology, string theories, neuroscience, Kabbalah, and other other mystical traditions such as Zen and Sufism. I found it interesting how each of these

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areas could serve as portals onto each other. Somehow perhaps, aspects of each of them infiltrate into the final art work which is kind of stream of consciousness across many inspired notions. A feature of SOURCE that I would like to highlight is the way your exploration of the mystical origins of creation seems to deconstruct and assemble memories in order to suggest a process of investigation: maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this?

I think that one of the roles of the artist, whether it is consciously or unconsciously, is to create connections that reveal unexpected ways of perceiving nature and reality. Sometimes these connections could lead to new understandings and discoveries, whether for the self or for the world at large. In SOURCE it is unclear whether we are looking into the future or the past. In some way memories are explored as these mystical artifacts of culture and the self. I like the way SPaRks urges the viewers to see the beauty in the broken, creating an area of intense interplay that invites us to evolve from the condition of a merely passive audience: in particular, your investigation about the liminal area between physical and virtual reveals the intimate consequences of constructed realities: while conceiving Art could be considered a purely abstract activity, there is always a way of giving it a permanence that goes beyond the ephemeral nature of the concepts you capture. So I would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

I think this could be answered in contradictory ways depending on the context, so yes and no. I think that for the

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Dmitry Kmelnitsky

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creative process to be truly successful it needs to rely on a foundation that facilitates an artist to create on both conscious and unconscious levels. Having a certain level of proficiency in creative methods and approaches to both concept and craft allows artists to conceive and construct works that don't necessarily stem out of any direct experience. If one can break down the subject of inquiry into its elemental formtheme, motif, essence, than it is possible to create with the imagination as the catalyst rather then the direct experience. Our lives are just as dependent upon virtual experiences as they are directly lived experiences. We are capable of empathy and complex reasoning. The more personal experiences that we have the more we become capable of understanding situations through a multifaceted lens. One can also argue that it is not possible to disconnect the creative process from direct experiences because even virtual experiences can ultimately become direct experiences just as memory is susceptible to manipulation, . The ambience created by The Lure of Sirens has reminded me the concept of Heterotopia elaborated by French social theorist Michel Foucault and what has mostly impacted on me is the subtle but pervading sense of narrative: although each of your project has an autonomous life, there's always seem to be such a channel of communication between your works, that springs from the way you juxtapose ideas and media: German artist Thomas Demand stated once that "nowadays art can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological narrative elements within the medium instead". What's your point about this? And in particular, how much do you explicitly think of a narrative for your works?

I think that in many ways humans are programmed to look for narrative, whether it is there or not. Storytelling is so innate that it is truly one of the defining characteristics of human beings. I don't believe it is necessary for

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Dmitry Kmelnitsky

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narrative to be an explicit force within the conception of an artwork. It depends on the nature of the work of course. I find that in my time-based and installation work a narrative structure is often abstracted and is secondary to a kind of visceral experience that the work is attempting to illicit. I think that my art straddles a fusion of narrative and ambience. I am very interested in the poetics of space, whether it is a physical environment or an imagined space, and how it can yield transcendent experiences. Lure of the Sirens is a video piece that emerged out of an audio-visual installation, Spirited Sails, which was a commissioned for the Glow Festival in Los Angeles. The installation re-imagined a traveling ring gymnastics apparatus on Santa Monica beach into a holographic vessel immersed in video projections featuring mythical characters inspired by the Odyssey as well as other sea legends. I collaborated with my art studio partner, Kalim Chan as well as Chad Michael Hall, a choreographer and dancer. We conceived of different archetypical characters and developed movement for them that could be refashioned in a variety of ways. The video recombined the dance performances with visual effects and animation and composited the footage in a multichannel projection environment. A year after the work premiered at the festival, I felt the need to breath new life into the work by creating a standalone video narrative. This is how Lure of the Sirens emerged. I created additional assets and re-edited and composited the elements into a more narrative piece about a character's journey towards a state of transcendence. While originally conceived for a site-specific piece, in the form of a video the material was able to travel to different digital film and video art festivals around the world and be experienced by a diverse global audience. You seem to be in an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between several viewpoints out of temporal synchronization: moreover, the

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Dmitry Kmelnitsky

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reference to the universal imagery of childhood that recurs in your works seems to remove any historic gaze from the reality you refer to, offering to the viewers the chance to perceive in a more atemporal form. In this sense, I daresay that the semantic juxtaposition between sign and matter that marks out your art, allows you to go beyond any track of contingency...

I find it particularly poignant that a once lived time-dependent event can be experienced in the future in a more fractured manner through memory recall. Aspects of an event can be freed from their initial confines into an undefined space-time. My art process is inspired this kind of thought process. I want to create work with multiple entry points. This implies that each moment is crucial as a means to pull you into the work. Atemporality plays out in a variety of ways in media art. In the context of installations, viewers can experience a video-based work from different viewpoints and enter and leave at any point. The same work can be experienced linearly or nonlinearly depending upon the space it is projected or exhibited in. The contexts such as a movie theater, gallery, or public space can all contribute to differences in the perception and experience of a video. Another interesting work of yours that has particularly impacted me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled Magnetic Field: when I first happened to get to know this experimental piece I tried to relate all the visual and audio information to a single meaning. But I soon realized that I had to fit into the visual unity suggested by the work, forgetting my need for a univocal understanding of its symbolic content: in your work, rather than a conceptual interiority, I can

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Dmitry Kmelnitsky

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recognize the desire enabling us to establish direct relations... Would you say that it's more of an intuitive or a systematic process?

I am inspired by the tradition of visual music as a means to achieve a kind of synesthesia between sound and image. In my work I often use sound as a means to lure and lull the viewer into a kind of dream space. Magnetic Field is in fact a drift through the topography of a dream. The inspiration for this work came from the experience of nocturnal flight returning to Los Angeles. Hovering over the outstretched city lights below gave the sensation of being drawn into some strange digital and electrical network possessing infinite connections and possibilities. I do believe that interdisciplinary collaboration as the one that you and Kalim Chan have established together is today an ever growing force in Art and that that most exciting things happen when creative minds from different fields of practice meet and collaborate on a project... could you tell us something about this effective synergy? By the way, the artist Peter Tabor once said that "collaboration is working together with another to create something as a synthesis of two practices, that alone one could not": what's your point about this? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between two artists? I have a tendency to try create every aspect of a project. Knowing this I try to seek out collaboration in order to bring in some aspects of surprise, the unknown, that can augment and transform a project to be less about my creation and more about the potential of the work itself. Kalim Chan and I met while at the UCLA Design|Media Arts program and we ended up collaborating on each other's MFA thesis projects. We had a creative synergy that propelled our art practice. Our varied skills proved to be complimentary rather than competitive

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Maya Gelfman

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obstacles. I think he has an edge over space-based approaches while I have an edge over those that are time-based. After a series of continued collaborations we formed the art studio, Lustre, as a way to engage in more multifaceted media projects. These projects often take on a larger scale, such as installations or performance oriented work. Over the years we have had a chance to engage in collaborations with choreographers, dancers, architects, musicians and other artists. During these years your works have been screened in several occasions around the world, including your recent participation to the 404 Festival of Art and Technology in Rosario, Argentina and to the Athens Video Art Festival. 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 decision- making process in terms of what type of language for a particular context?

I think that each project can take on many life forms and be experienced by diverse audiences. I usually strive towards a more universal iconographic language. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Dmitry. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?

There's a mix of projects underway- new music compositions, an art installation and a dance/theater piece. I am currently in development on a collaborative performing arts work entitled Ancient Matter which blends in Taiko drums, dance performance, as well as, live projection-mapped video with mythology.

Reagan Lake

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