Unveil Magazine

UNVEIL MAG

ART + CULTURE + DESIGN MARCH 2015

ISSUE NO. 19

ABOUT CREATIVITY ISSUE FEATURING ARTISTS, DESIGNERS, ILLUSTRATORS PHOTOGRAPHERS & ARCHITECTS AND THEIR CREATIVE PROCESS

£ 6.99

ANDREA WAN

Berlin-based illustrator takes you into the Realm of Dream

MARK RYDEN

Determination & the Return of the Pop Surreal Master

SIDNEY SIE

Taipei-based photographer seeing the world differently

U n v e i l M aga z i n e

A b o u t C r e at i v i t y I s s u e

EDITOR’S NOTE WHEN IT COMES TO CREATIVITY, ONE OF OUR BIGGEST CONCERNS IS USUALLY HOW WE CAN BE MORE CREATIVE, OR COME UP WITH BETTER IDEAS. HAVE YOU EVER WISHED YOU WERE MORE CREATIVE? IF YOU DO CREATIVE WORK, WE ARE SURE YOU WOULD HAVE SUFFERED FROM A CREATIVE BLOCK AND BEEN STUCK WONDERING WHAT EXACTLY IS WRONG, SO HOW YOU CAN GET YOURSELF OUT OF IT? YOU’RE IN LUCK — IN THIS ISSUE OF UNVEIL MAGAZINE, YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ ONE OF THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE COMPILATION OF INTERVIEWS, WRITE-UPS ON YOUR FAVOURITE ARTISTS, DESIGNERS, ILLUSTRATORS, PHOTOGRAPHERS AND ARCHITECTS. ABOUT CREATIVITY ISSUE BRINGS YOU THROUGH ON UNDERSTANDING CREATIVITY AND SPURRING ON CREATIVE THINKING; HOW THE CREATIVE STAY CREATIVE. I AM VERY PLEASED THAT WE ARE FEATURING ANDREA WAN THIS ISSUE – ON EXCLUSIVE. WE GET AN INSIGHT ON WHY SHE INTERESTINGLY DESCRIBES HER ART AS BEING INSPIRED BY THE SUBCONSCIOUS AND THE RESPONSE TO HER SURROUNDINGS. IT IS CERTAINLY ENTERTAINING AND WORTH A READ. WE UNVEILED A SERIES OF INTRIGUING VISUALS AND DESIGN PHILOSOPHIES; ALLOW THE VISUALS AND TEXT INSPIRE YOU.

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UMAG ART + CULTURE + DESIGN About Creativity Issue

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CONTENT

THE MOST IMPORTANT TO KNOW ABOUT INSPIRATION. IT MAY COME FROM ANY SOURCE. IT CAN COME FROM ANYWHERE. UNVEIL MAGAZINE IS HERE TO TALK ABOUT INSPIRATION FROM AN EQUALLY DIVERSE COLLECTION OF PEOPLE AND PLACES THAT THEY ARE UNIQUE.

A b o u t C r e at i v i t y I s s u e

FRESH

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Landland

Column Five

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Olivia Bee

Lisa L. Cyr

The work of this midwestern printmaking studio is varied and rich.

A photographer intent on capturing life as she experiences it.

Data visualization comes through loud and clear from this agency.

Advice for illustrators, from Lisa L. Cyr, on navigating a competitive market.

On Exclusive Find out what inspires creative visual artist Andrea Wan and hear her philosophy about art-making > p 24

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9 Sydney Sie

Taipei-based photographer sees the world differently

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C o n t e n t P ag e

INSIDER

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Mark Ryden

Design x Jeff Canham

Determination & the Return of the Pop Surreal Master

On the Creative Field of Dreams

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Seonna Hong

Agostino Arrivabene

Fashion x Maiko Takeda

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EXCLUSIVE

Dave Hughes

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Interview with proclaimed Investigator of Heavy Silences

On video editing and production

Flemish still-life painter speaks about his experiences and preliminary work

On Sculptures you can wear

Illustration x ANDREA WAN

The unpredictable work of Andrea Wan brings together a variety of contradictory imagery

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A b o u t C r e at i v i t y I s s u e

Hong Kong-born, Berlin-based, artist Andrea Wan at her small studio in Berlin Friedrichshain

Photography by Ana Santl

ANDREA WAN illustrator // visual artist

Andrea Wan is a Visual Artist and Illustrator with a passion in storytelling. She mostly works with ink on paper and sees her work as a visual journal that reflects her thoughts and experiences.

Her drawings combine traditional narrative aesthetics with eerie and surrealist qualities, depicting a world with great sensibility. Andrea finds inspiration by looking outwards to observe her surroundings such as people and places, and looking introspectively into the obscure corners of her subconscious. Andrea Wan was born in Hong Kong, raised in Vancouver, educated in Denmark and is currently residing in Berlin. Her whimsical illustrations are the result of this rich background, the people she got to know on her journeys and the places that she got to go. Her characters explore environments of the subconscious, seemingly suspended in a white void. The usual flow of time breaks up and objects take on a life of their own. She believes that our internal and external worlds simultaneously influences and reflects one another, communicating using clues and metaphors, our subconscious dropping hints into our waking life, causing moments of synchronicity.

Take a look at her artwork yourself during her upcoming show ‘Fleeting Season’ which is dedicated to one of the oldest topics in fine arts: transience and the eternal circle of life and death.

The exhibition runs from January 15th – February 28th at BC Gallery at Libauer Strasse 14 in Berlin.

Find the event on Facebook or on BC Gallery. See you there!

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Visual Identity for Maintenant Festival 2014, Rennes

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Andrea Wan

She divides her time between freelancing and working on her own personal projects. Her art is exhibited worldwide and featured in numerous publications, such as The New York Times, Nylon and Nobrow.

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Photograph by Rikke Luna & Matias //

Text and Interview by yt

WANDERING

“ Sometimes I’m fascinated by the most random and silliest things. People who are passionate about their own thing also easily inspire me. It doesn’t even have to be art related. “

Andrea moved to Berlin two years ago. Before she lived in Canada where she moved to with her parents when she was ten years old. She has always been drawing and since her parents were graphic designers and she got to hang out at their studio a lot, she kept herself busy with painting, experimenting with Photoshop and dreaming away in imaginative worlds. After she finished school in Vancouver she studied film where she came across illustration when making narrative pieces for the first time, not even being sure what it was all about. As she really enjoyed the drawing, she started to look more into it, creating works that would reflect herself and express her ideas. Her grad film was an all hand-drawn animation so people started asking if she’d consider being an illustration which she’d never even thought of until this point. So she decided to go to Europe to study half a year longer in design and illustration in Denmark. During this time she experimented with everything, slowly approaching her characteristic style.

For her work she mainly uses acrylic ink on watercolor paper which has the same quality as watercolor except that she finds the color a little more vibrant. She likes the organic quality of ink because it allows her otherwise very precise style to loosen up a bit and be able to control it but at the same time leave a little bit of room for the ink to ran into each other. When she starts a piece she usually

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Andrea Wan

Work In Progress / Photography by Ana Santl

begins with some loose sketches to get a feeling for the composition, other times she starts working directly on the paper. She rarely makes a precise sketch of the artwork before actually drawing it ‘as I get bored drawing the same thing twice’, she states. After being satisfied with the pencil sketch, she starts to add layers of ink. ‘It’s kind of like sculpting as I usually start with a light layer adding more and more ink to it.’ People often feel that she’d use a recurring color scheme but she never actually plans the coloring before but just picks colors she likes. Though her subjects often have candy-colored hair which is kind of her trademark that she developed when she was younger and used to dye her hair in the same sort of bright colors.

With her work she expresses her emotions, while also communicating with the viewer. ‘I think people can feel it when you’re honest about your art’. The reactions she get to her work are very different. Some think it’s cute, some say it’s creepy, once a woman even started crying when standing in front of one of her pieces during an art show. When Andrea Wan asked her why she was crying she said she just got emotional and didn’t even know why. Andrea Wan is always interested in creating a dialogue about her work instead of spelling it out for the viewer.

GHOSTS, HORSES AND JURASSIC PARK Both of the big cultural changes that Andrea experienced at this point in her life, made a big influence on her, and have worked almost as a catalyst for alot of the thoughts that lays beneath the bright colors. Ghosts and horses are the first things she remembered drawing, but thereafter she uses the figures as representations of herself or her friends .

She feels that It is almost like telling stories to herself, using elements from her childhood in a context of present. Andrea characterizes her preliminary body of work as a coherent series, but the constant urge for shifting enviorments that have been a major part of her inspiration so far, seems to have laid off a bit, and maybe this will develope into new artistic paths.

The illustrations are usually personal, and the characters often resemble their author, becoming surreal self-portraits harmoniously connected to nature, to different plants and animals.

IMAGINATION

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SUBURBIANS

By Squidface & The Meddler

With regard to the themes addressed and the appoach to her personal work —

Andrea’s personal work seems to draw heavily on the logic of dreams and the subconscious. We love some of the recurring images such as houses nested within each other like Russian dolls. Andrea says that houses has always been an ongoing subject of interest to her. It may be due to the fact that she grew up in the suburbs where she spent most of her time until she moved out a few years ago. In a place with urban sprawls and shopping malls everything seemed to have a recursive pattern. “ There were very little interactions between people on the street as they are busy with their own lives. In the evenings, I used to take long walks alone in my neighbourhood, observing the houses and trying to imagine the lives of people inside by looking at clues from their lawns. “ Andrea would often feel isolated while living in the suburbs and only wanted to stay home and draw. In her art she explored her response to the surrounding environment, integrating personal feelings with imagined landscapes.

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Andrea considers herself a spiritual person as she explained that she is very much into learning about herself through investigating her dreams and subconscious.

Memories, the subconscious, and the anxieties in our everyday lives are some of the themes she is interested in and that she simply see personal work as an outlet for emotions and an on-going process of self discovery.

Imagining improbable architecture, anatomy.

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Andrea Wan

Spirituality — Dreams and the Subconscious

Paintings by artist Andrea Wan has many recurring themes in her work, but what stands out to me are the blocky fragments of architecture.

Andrea finds inspiration by looking outwards to observe her surroundings such as people and places, and looking introspectively into the obscure corners of her subconscious. She believes that our internal and external worlds simultaneously influences and reflects one another, communicating using clues and metaphors, our subconscious dropping hints into our waking life, causing moments of synchronicity. >> Her series, “Mirror Mirror”, explores the dialog between these two coexisting realms with curiosity.

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Old Dream Collectors “Mirror Mirror” Series, 2014

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The Portal “Fleeting Seasons” Series, 2015

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A b o u t C r e at i v i t y I s s u e

Find out what inspires creative visual artist Andrea Wan and hear her philosophy about art-making

“I believe that as long as you are truthful and honest about your work, it will have a life of it’s own speak for itself.”

I enjoy making art because it helps me understand myself better.

M: How would you describe your work?

A: My work can be desribed as muted, intimate and subtle. I often think of my art as poems or collages that reflect the very inside of me.

M: Does your cultural background and/ or the place(s) you live/visit reflect in your artwork?

A: Definitely. My work always responds to the environment around me. I spend a lot of time thinking about where I came from, the city I’m in and where I’d like to go next.

M: What inspires you?

A: All sort of things - walks in the neighborhood, random doodles, photographs, conversations, relationships, images on google. I’m interested finding the connection between unrelated subjects.

Whenever I’m visiting a city I naturally make observations on the color palettes, the architecture, the nature

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and the fashion, because every place is unique in its own way. For example, in Denmark I saw a lot of textiles and patterns, color combinations with neutral and pastel hues against really bright colors. The streets are filled with brick-red and white buildings, and the street lights gives me a comforting feeling at night. These impressions sort of form a mood board in my head so I can use these elements to communicate a certain mood in my art when it’s appropriate.

M: “Identity is impermanent”, what do you mean by that?

When I was 10 I moved from Hong Kong to Vancouver with my family. It wasn’t an easy transition for me at that time, but I learned a lot from the process of adapting to a whole new culture. I think that was when I started to get the idea that identity is never permanent – traveling or migrating to another place doesn’t take away your identity but only adds to it. & Adapting

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INTERVIEW

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Andrea Wan

ANDREA WAN

+ Legend M: Interviewer A: Andrea Wan Sources: Rapid Eye Movement ArtRebels

to new environments has certainly been a big part of my life and it has been helping me grow personally and artistically in a lot of ways. Two years ago I relocated to Berlin and have been traveling a lot around Europe, getting new inspirations and exhibiting my work. In a way I’m just going wherever my art takes me – It seems to work out perfectly fine!

M: Can you namedrop some of your favourite artists or people that inspire you?

A: Charlie Kaufman, Stefan Sagmeister, Maira Kalman, Roald Dahl

M: When/where are you most creative?

A: I find myself most creative whenever I’m in an unfamiliar situation or a new environment, and occasionally when a deadline is approaching.

M: How does the creative process work (from idea to final “product”)?

A: I like to brainstorm before I start drawing. My sketchbook consists of lists of words, rough thumbnails and doodles. Sometimes I skip the sketches and go straight to making the final drawings. I also prefer finishing a piece in one go.

M: Describe your workspace?

M: When I look at your pictures it reminds me of Roald Dahl stories for example it feels like they’re telling a story. Do you agree? Can you tell us one of the stories behind one of your works?

A: I find it hard to sit still when I work so I have 3 different work areas...2 at home and one at my studio space which I’m sharing with a group of like-minded artists and designers.

Roald Dahl was one of my favorites as a kid. I like to see each of my drawing as a still image from a scene in an ongoing story. Each series is like a chapter that evolves into the next. I used to read a lot

M: What tools do you use?

A: Gouache, ink, watercolor, pencil, and sometimes Photoshop

of Fables and even made up my own as a kid – maybe that’s why I always like making narrative art. I don’t read them anymore, because real life is pretty much made up of far more interesting stories. My art is like my journal of thoughts except that it’s processed through a fictional filter. Like in a dream – things might not necessary make sense but we can draw clues from the symbols and overall mood to interpret the subconscious mind.

M: How is the creative/work process of commercial work different from your personal work?

A: I’ve worked with clients in editorial, music and fashion. For commercial works, I often have the freedom to create images using my own interpretation from the given topics, whereas personal works can be whimsical and spontaneous. So far every project I’ve worked on has been fun and challenging and I always learn something new.

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The New York Times - The Autism Wars

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North American Review - The Endurance

EDITORIAL WORK

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Andrea Wan may seem introverted but the work of this illustrator is nothing close to shy. Having worked with a slew of notable publications like Nylon and The Globe and Mail as well as participated in numerous gallery shoes. Andrea is mustering up a portfolio desirable by any young and budding illustrator.

F: Hello Andrea! I have to admit that we admire your works that constantly appears in my favourite magazines such as Meatpaper, how did you decide to dedicate yourself to magazine illustration?

A: It is natural that when we read a book we automatically come up with images in our head. Since I’m not especially good with words, turning thoughts into visuals comes naturally to me. Visualizing magazine articles is very similar so I guess that’s why I enjoy editorial illustration a lot. Other than magazines I would also be interested in illustrating for music and fashion as well.

F: You have drawn for several publications (Daily and Mail, Reveolve, Meatpaper, Avenue magazine) but there’s no Andrea Wan zines or publication. Are you into self publishing?

F: Here’s a question that comes natural: Which are your favourite magazines? Which mag would you most like to draw for?

A: I enjoy reading independent publications such as Nobrow, Le Gun and Anorak. I would love to contribute to these magazines.

A: As a freelancer who doesn’t have a fixed work schedule I think it’s very important to keep myself productive. It is difficult at times because ideas don’t always come to mind and I’m always very self critical. I find that doodling helps with loosening up and generating new ideas.

A: Yes. That’s always something I’m interested in and I haven’t had the chance to get into. I’m planning to collaborate with other artists on zines.

F: I’ve read that you push yourself into a strong work routine, all the greatest authors highlight the importance of discipline in art, like Hemingway, Bacon, Carver. Why do you think it is so important? It is very anti-bohemienne..

+ Legend F: Interviewer A: Andrea Wan Interview by Fabrizio from Glossom

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FAKELORE, SERIES 2013 Text by Dan Cole

Andrea Wan leads us deeper into her world of oneiric creatures. In a new series of ink paintings an adventure story unfolds straight out of her subconscious. Characters with no clear mission come up against surreal obstacle courses as they move through dreamscape after dreamscape.

This series detailes a strange, whimsical journey of imagined creatures through a jungle-like landscape, encountering cacti, disembodied head-girl-tepees and the occasional sloth using a laptop. Wan combines a storybook aesthetic with strange combinations of animals and plants to create a “Fakelore” of imagined stories for a strange age of storytelling.

The unpredictable work of Andrea Wan brings together a variety of contradictory imagery: feral jungles, luminous laptops and girls with teepees on their heads live side by side in perfect harmony, as if there was nothing weird about them coexisting on the same page. She plays with scale, turn­ing the tables on who and/or what is large and small.

While her subject matter is fluid like a dream, her style is what ties all her pieces together. Her pieces have a childlike playfulness while at the same time communicating grown-up themes.

ON SLOTHS On top of it being one of my favorite animals, the sloth is the animal of our generation. Sloths are lazy and they don’t bother moving much, this makes them the perfect users of modern technologies such as tablets, smart phones and laptops. Basically they want everything that keeps them in touch with the world at the push of a button, so they don’t have to be physically present.

ON GHOSTS As for my ghosts, I’d like to imagine them as lost but harmless beings. They are not necessary dead, but they are definitely wanderers who don’t always want to be seen.

ON FACES I guess the viewers are naturally drawn to the faces of the characters, but the focus is on the different scenarios and interactions of the characters. I’ve always been intrigued by anything that conceals the human face though. Veils, masks, sunglasses, balaclava etc. hide one’s identities but at the same time they also give off certain statements.

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Maps and Altases “Fakelore” Series, 2013

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“I am inspired by my environment— it is like an emotional landscape,” — Andrea Wan

EXPLODING HEADS, SERIES 2013 Exploding Heads is a series where she beautifully illustrates various extinct creatures exploding from the porcelain faces of young men and women. It’s rather odd, but lovely and allows your mind to travel back in time.

MIRROR MIRROR, SERIES 2014

Portfolio http://andreawan.com/ Process / Blog http://babbletoe.blogspot.sg/

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Instagram andrea_wan

Andrea finds inspiration by looking outwards to observe her surroundings such as people and places, and looking introspectively into the obscure corners of her subconscious. She believes that our internal and external worlds simultaneously influences and reflects one another, communicating using clues and metaphors, our subconscious dropping hints into our waking life, causing moments of synchronicity. Her series, “Mirror Mirror”, explores the dialog between these two coexisting realms with curiosity.

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about the artist

NEW SERIES

FLEETING SEASONS With her new series “Fleeting Seasons” Berlin based artist Andrea Wan dedicates her artwork to one of the oldest topics in fine arts: transience and the eternal circle of life and death. Taking inspiration by the old idea of ‘Vanitas’, which can be found in many different cultures, known in Europe mainly from baroque still-life paintings, Wan’s art depicts growth, transformation and decay in nature and the human body. In her surreal but still very graphic style, which is mostly achieved through color drawings with ink and gouache, she combines figures, plants and otherworldly landscapes against the white void. The tension which therefore fill the works intrigue the viewers mind and leaves it with fascination as much as that the topic itself troubles the artist’s mind who considers the unpredictable nature of growth, impermanent beauty and decay fascinating and yet terrifying.

Despite her young age Berlin based artist Andrea Wan has already lived a very cosmopolitan life. Born in Hong Kong in 1985, she moved to Vancouver at the age of 10 where she grew up into a completely different culture. Upon graduating in film studies she decided to go to Europe to study half a year longer in design and illustration in Denmark. During this time she also started experimenting a lot which made her grow as an artist and let her develop her distinguished, surreal style.

In 2012 Wan decided to make Berlin her home base from where she still keeps on travelling a lot. The content of her art also correlates with the idea of a perpetual change and that even identity is not necessarily a permanent thing.

The paintings in “Fleeting Seasons” feature hybridized figures — girls as islands whose bodies combine with nature and architecture. Each head and torso serves as a home to a host of strange, mysterious characters that appear to beckon the central, youthful protagonist into a world beyond.

Anthropomorphic skeletons and loose eyeballs hint at life beyond the grave while jubilant butterflies and plants pull her back to the earthly kingdom.

“Fleeting Seasons” is on exhibit at BC Gallery, Berlin. The show runs from March 15 - April 28, 2015.

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ART + CULTURE + DESIGN About Creativity Issue

UMAG STAFF

Published quarterly by XYX Productions, Inc., 109 Edgedale Plains, Singapore, SG 823109. Printed in Singapore. Articles and text are credited to its writers of knowledge. Opinions expressed in articles are those of the authors.

Unveil Mag is Publshed by XYX Productions, Inc. email to xie.xiuyun@live.com or editor@unveilmag.com

founder

contributing writers

Xie Xiuyun

Caroline Kurze Dan Cole Squidface & The Meddler Rapid Eye Movement ArtRebels Fabrizio from Glossom

editor

Evan Prico art director

Bren Gentl

contributing photographers

Alex Nicolas

Ana Santl Rikke Luna & Matias

photography director

sales director

Austin Manus

Xie Xiuyun

designer

technical liaison

Xie Xiuyun

Santos Ely

managing director

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Tasmainian Tiger Andrea Wan “Exploding Head� Series, 2014