Peripheral ARTeries Art Review - Special Edition

Summer 2016

CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Special Edition Installation • Painting • Mixed media • Drawing • Performance • Public Art • Drawing • Video art • Fine Art Photography

SUSAN LAMANTIA YOTAM ZOHAR JACK ROSENBERG BRIGITTE DIETZ PEPIJN SIMON SHAI JOSSEF VIKTOR FUCEK SYLVAIN GRANJON GERDI MÖLLER-JANSEN

Andy Boom - This explodes in 15 minutes, a work from Simon Raab Painting, 59.8 H x 39.8 W x 0 inches

Be that as it may, this catalog or any portion ther eof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without express written permission from Peripheral ARTeries and featured artists.

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lives and works in New York City, USA

lives and works in New York City, USA

lives and works in Heidelberg, Germany

Simon Raab

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lives and works in LĂźbeck, Germany

Sylvain Granjon

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lives and works in Tel-Aviv, Israel

lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

lives and works in Paris, France BLACK & GREY THOUGHT

lives and works in Bratislava, Slovakia

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lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel

Simon Raab Artworks for the Cure 2013, presented by the T.J. Martell Foundation. The Barker Hangar, 3021 Airport Avenue, Santa Monica, CA 90405, USA

Special thanks to: Julia Ăœberreiter, Deborah Esses, Margaret Noble, Nathalie Borowski, Marco Visch, Xavier Blondeau, J.D. Doria, Matthias Callay, Luiza Zimerman, Kristina Sereikaite, Scott D'Arcy, Kalli Kalde, Carla Forte, Mathieu Goussin, Dorothee Zombronner, Olga Karyakina, Robert Hamilton, Isabel Becker, Carrie Alter, Jessica Bingham, Fabian Freese, Elodie Abergel, Ellen van der Schaaf and Courtney Henderson

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Susan LaMantia Lives and works in Houston, USA

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Lives and works New York City, USA

believe my paintings - through color, shape, and texture reflect the energy I put into my creative process.

I’ve been inspired by the pure colors, distortions and boldness of the Fauves as well as the impulsive and gestural interpretations of the Abstract Expressionists. I want my work to look spontaneous, but organized - gestural, but not chaotic. I hope that someone viewing my work will resonate with a painting and take delight in the energy of my work. Making a connection with my work in that manner is a happy thought for me. My energy, my passion gets reflected in my artwork.

How to define a piece of contemporary art is an artists interpretation of what's been done before but in their own language or form.Would that make their art more “current”? Perhaps. I'm an abstract expressionist, and although that was an art form created by artists in the 40's and 50's, I am creating my own form of abstract expressionism which makes it contemporary. I believe I already addressed some of my process in question one when I spoke to my desire to have all my senses stimulated by incense, music, and the importance of painting with my hands.

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video, 2013

Moon Dance, 2015 Oil on canvas, 120x80

Moon Dance 2, 2015 Oil on canvas, 120x80

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Hello Susan and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. We would start this interview with our usual introductory question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? By the way, what could be in your opinion the features that mark an artworks as a piece of Contemporary Art? Do you think that there's a dichotomy between tradition and contemporariness?

What defines a work of art - for me and my art it is as much about the process as the end product. To approach my process, I have music blasting in my studio, I burn incense, in tolerable weather I have the door open to the outside and can hear the birds song. I paint with my hands, no brushes, therefore the experience of creating then is to have as many of my senses stimulated at the same time. My energy, my passion gets reflected in my artwork.

How to define a piece of contemporary art is an artists interpretation of what's been done before but in their own language or form.Would that make their art more “current”? Perhaps. I'm an abstract expressionist, and although that was an art form created by artists in the 40's and 50's, I am creating my own form of abstract expressionism which makes it contemporary. By use of the term tradition and contemporariness it already implies a dichotomy. Is tradition steeped in a formalized manner of painting? Is contemporary a break from tradition?

Would you like to tell us something about your background? Are there any particular experiences that have particularly impacted on the way you currently produce your artworks?

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

Afraid to make changes because a change on one part of the painting will lead to a need for a change in another part of the painting and voila! the painting is no longer the same. That's a good thing

Susan LaMantia

of course, but I didn't realize that as a young child. I paint in my studio, a 450 sq.ft. building behind our house. Often I will bring in a painting to see if I feel it is finished and leave it in a room so that I can look at it in different light, different times of the day, do changes need to take place? keeping in mind Sr. Stanisia's words about not feeling too precious to make a change.

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

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you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

I believe I already addressed some of my process in question one when I spoke to my desire to have all my senses stimulated by incense, music, and the importance of painting with my hands. I don't remember when I started painting with my hands, perhaps 30-35 years ago. When I paint with oil sticks, which are large sticks of compressed oil paint, I use them as though I am drawing shapes, but will go in after I have color on the canvas, or paper, and move the color around with my hands. There are handmade pigment sticks that are soft and luscious, using my hands to blend or define an area is a visceral response that adds to my involvement with my work. When I paint with acrylics I apply a layer of paint on either the canvas or my hands, let the color dry on the canvas then add a layer of high gloss polymer medium, let it dry and continue adding color, then medium, and on and on. The polymer helps to seal the color, add depth and keep a clarity to the acrylic. I use liquid gloves on my hands prior to my painting, as well as in between each layer of color and polymer. Sometimes I make a thumbnail sketch in one of my sketchbooks to use as a departure for a painting. The spontaneity in my work would be lost if I replicated exactly what is in the sketch. I like to challenge myself in my work. I've been known to do a series of paintings with my nondominant hand, that series was called “On the Other Hand”. Or to limit the color of my palette. Most recently, for my upcoming exhibition opening at the end of July for display during the month of August, I challenged myself with the use of circles, something I had not used extensively in my work.

Now let's focus on your art production: I would start from your Feels So Good and Moon Dance that our readers have already started to admire in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest to visit http://www.susanlamantia.com in order to get a wider idea of it. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of theseinteresting pieces? What was your initial inspiration?

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

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

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

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and was delighted to be working large with such yummy colors. It was Spring, door open to my studio, nature is beginning to bloom, my jazz music is blasting, incense is being burned and a bird flew into my studio, resting on a table. The bird twisted its head one way then the other, flapped its wings, made a circle in the studio and flew away. It felt so good to be visited by the bird, as though the bird wanted to see me in my creative environment. The motion of the birds wings, the colors of Spring, all of it felt as though it needed to be recorded in color and a sense of freedom in the form. Red is a grounding color for me, the addition of cadmium red medium was added as a hint to the explosive chartreuse. “Moon Dance” a 30” x 30” acrylic was a night painting in which I used acrylic “skins” as a challenge to the variety of blues.

Painting at night has a whole different feel for me, as well as the difference of needing to have the lights on in my studio. The use of the acrylic skins gives a texture to the surface of the painting as well as introducing colors from my palette that were used in other paintings. It is a dance, of sorts.

We noticed that many of your pieces, as After The Ball and All Or Nothing At All although marked with a deep abstract feeling, often reveals such an inner struggle and intense involvement, as the interesting All Things Being Equal, which I have to admit is one of my favourite pieces of yours ... We would like 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?

Yes, personal experience is indispensable not just for me but I believe for all artists. All of the experiences in my life, good/bad, positive/negative all of it goes into creating who I am as a person & as an artist. I am close to my emotional core, am a passionate person; I want my artwork to reflect that. Of course it is my desire that someone viewing my artwork makes that connection to all the energy in my work too.“After The Ball” a 30” x 30” acrylic, is about the feeling of the build-up to all the dancing and socializing being light and festive, and after the ball there is a bit of a letdown to it all being over. Streamers tossed about, the lights fading, the return to what's next. In “All or

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Nothing at All” an acrylic that is 36” x 36”, the use of the yellows and flesh colors address how alive we are in the giving & receiving processes of our lives, but it isn't always constant and the dripping blues that flow through the colors are an indication of how unpredictable our lives can be whether we give it all or nothing at all. “All Things Being Equal” is a 48” x 60” acrylic. The challenge for me was to use large blocks of color near each other and find a balance within the painting using the same colors, so that it all appeared equal. In life when all things are equal it feels to be a good balance. If I did not put my feelings of color, form, life experiences in my artwork my approach would be cerebral or intellectual and I've seen those kinds of paintings. The artist may have a wonderful technique but I find those paintings cold and cannot relate to them.

Another interesting pieces of yours that have impacted on me and which I would like to spend some words are After All and in particular It is All Relative: one of the features of this work that has mostly impacted on me is the effective mix of colors that gives life to the canvas: I have been struck with the way you have been capable of merging delicate and thoughtful tone of colors with nuances of red which turns from a delicate tone to an intense one which turns to saturate the canvas, as in Light Years, and that seems to reveal such a deep tension and intense emotions... By the way, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time?

“After All” is 36” x 72” acrylic and is part of the circle series that I have been painting. I had tried to use circles in paintings in the past and never felt as though the works were strong enough. I love working on a large surface and that helped me to be more successful with the use of circles. The use of the bars of color are forms I've used in other paintings of mine. I laid in a warm tone on the canvas before I began adding colors. I wanted the titanium white to play off the warmth of the under color, but only leave a hint of the warmth around the edges, as though to keep all the action composed. The 4 red circles are contained but there are 2 lighter color circles that escaped and play on either side of the blue band. As long as I've mentioned the circle series I would like to talk about a couple of these paintings The first in

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With You In Mind, 2015, Oil on canvas, 220x160

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

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

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the circle series is an oil painting called, “I'll Take The Bitter With the Sweet”. It's a relatively small painting, 24” x 36”. The sweetness in the yellows and reds and lighter blues are centered on the canvas so as to pull the viewer in by the strength of their tones. Although the dark color looks to be black it is actually indigo and I like the idea of it not being black. There is a larger band of indigo on the right side of the painting, with just a hint of indigo mixed in on the left. When the indigo is mixed with other colors it becomes lighter and when bands of lighter colors border the indigo it emphasizes the drama of the indigo. The overall focus is accented by the sweeter, lighter colors. The last in the circle series is “With You In Mind”, a 36” x 72” acrylic & gouache. I started with a series of warm white circles of acrylic that are lighter on the left moving towards a series of warm light red circles, again, of acrylic, to the right. The circles are colored in and appear to weave through the light bands of color.

Over all the circles & bands of color are arcs painted in gouache. The gouache is applied thickly and adds a texture to the surface of the painting.

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

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important is for you the feedback of your audience?

Do you ever think to whom will enjoy your Art when you conceive your pieces? We sometimes wonder if it could ever exist a genuine relationship between business and Art...

brighter over the years, as I experiment with lighter more vivid colors and the lushness of the quality of acrylics.

And we couldn't do without mentioning Finding The Anchor and Sunday Afternoon In My Head: these extremely interesting works effectively express what you have once stated when you remarked that you "hope that someone viewing your work will resonate with a painting and take delight in the energy of your work"... and I daresay that there's such a subtle socio political feature in them: I'm sort of convinced that Art these days could play an effective role not only making aware public opinion, but I would go as far as to say that nowadays Art can steer people's behavior... what's your point about this? Do you think that it's an exaggeration?

I don't think rewards or feedbacks influence my process. I have a certain way of painting that I will continue to exercise because I enjoy how I paint and what I paint. But, I truly enjoy hearing feedback about my work... The feedback many times is a reflection of the viewers own experiences, I find that interesting and informative. Awards are good in that there are times when it is important to have a validation by others of the quality of one's work.

One of the dearest responses I ever received was from a doctor who had several of my paintings and told me where he hung one of the paintings in his house and how the light at certain times reflected the varieties of color that at first he had not realized were in the painting. It was such a sense of appreciation for the nuances of color that I use.

I like it when someone viewing my work realizes that one has to be with it for a long time, over different ways of light on the work to always be seeing something new. When someone tells me that I smile and think, “they got it!”. The business of art is tricky.

“Finding the Anchor” a 36” x 60” acrylic was an exercise in the uses of a variety of blues, adding it's compliment of orange. There are bands of color, as well as a grid to pull focus to certain areas.

What does it feel like to have a large amount of blues fill your vision and pull you in? It was important to have the grids to anchor that feeling of being pulled in to the energy. I do think paintings can “steer” people emotionally, either have a calming impact or energize by the passion that's reflected. “Sunday Afternoon In My Head” is a 36” x 72” acrylic. My goal was to use a variety of whites as a calming influence of color, then allow blues and yellows to drift through.

Sunday is a meditative time for me. I was reflecting on what movement is like for me and how it can be deliberate and exciting and stimulating, all at once. The slender black bars are like stop gaps in a thought process.

Thanks a lot for your time and your thoughts, Susan.

Our 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?

You mentioned my exhibition at Village Art Circle for the month of August, the Opening for this show is July 25th. I'm in a group show in

Over thesyears your works have been exhibited in several important occasions and we think it's imortant to mention that you have been shortlisted as featured artist show at Village Art Circle, in July...

It goes without saying that feedbacks and especially awards are capable of supporting an artist: we were just wondering if an award -or just the expectation of positive feedbacks- could even influence the process of an artist... By the way, how much

September and a one woman exhibition in 2015 at Chatham Hill Winery. I've enjoyed thinking about the questions you posed to me and found

An interview by and

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Jack Rosenberg Lives and works in New York City, USA Artist Jack Rosenberg's work establishes a conversation between abstraction and realism. His works, although they involve a degree of abstraction, often include recognizable images, which he deconstructs, embellishes or adapts into conceptually complex and layered paintings. In the body of works discussed in the following pages, Rosenberg draws from universal imagery while simultaneously asking his viewers to question their visual expectations. One of the most impressive aspects of Rosenberg's work is the way it deconstructs both the familiar and the unfamiliar to subvert their expected perceptual and cultural functions. We are very pleased to introduce our readers to Rosenberg’s stimulating and multifaceted artistic production.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

to my training and to my eye. They gave me an invaluable grounding in traditional skills that continues to shape my art.

peripheral.arteries@europe.com

Hello Jack and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. Can you tell us about your background and training? How did your studies in New York and Europe influence your development?

Looking back, I view my art education as essential and invaluable. It gave me an introduction to art history, technical skills, ways of seeing, ways of creating, ways of interpreting and ways of expressing. While developing as an educated artist, I think it is important to absorb as much information, and experience as possible; and to be open to learning about and seeing other artist’s visions.

First of all, I’m honored by your interest in my work: thank you Peripheral ARTeries.

I have been fortunate to study both in the U.S. and in Europe: at the New York Academy of Art, the Florence Academy of Art and at the Prince Charles Drawing School. Each of these institutions added something of value

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I was educated in the canon of Western Art, raised on the Old Masters,

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nourished by the Renaissance, and weaned by technology and the 21st century. These visual and visceral languages are embedded in my subconscious and I need to remain vigilant towards their influences in my art-making, sometimes deferring to their influence while sometimes taking care to avoid clichés and unintended art historical connotations and references.

It’s then essential to use this training/education as the launching point of an ever-expanding skill set that allows an artist begin his or her unique artistic journey and to begin exploring and experimenting. Then, to compliment education, dedicated studio practice— along with constant exploration and experimentation—is essential to liberate the artist from learned viewpoints and allow the development of an authentic inner vision.

Your personal way of seeing condenses and balances a multiple points of view.

How did this approach evolve and how much of it came to you instinctively?

My art-making process takes one of two distinct avenues: 1) My intrinsic response to a particular visual image.

2) A quest for a visual to represent an intellectual question that needs to be answered, illustrated or endowed with a particular mood. Having had classical

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Man in Orange Turban (after vanEyck). 54 x 60�. Oil on Canvas. 2016

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Babies. 48 x 60�. Oil on Canvas. 2016

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training in figurative art and portraiture, the basic tools of composition, color, balance, materials and techniques are always available to me, and these elements form the underpinnings and starting point of each new painting.

My artistic evolution has come as a direct result of my artistic motivations and satisfactions. I constantly take into account what pleases me about making art: what scale, subject matter, material, mark making, flexibility, tolerance; all allow me freedom to make various artistic choices. This sense of liberation enhances and contributes to the distinctive qualities of the final artwork.

For this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries we have selected several of your recent works to introduce you to our readers. Tell us about your distinctive aesthetic, your approach to imagery and a few of your recent works.

Each painting begins with a few essentials: composition, subject matter and content/context. As the painting progresses, it evolves. I may have a particular point of view; but the canvas might express something which conflicts with my intention. The canvas and I continue this “discussion� until we come to an agreement. At this point the painting may be at quite at variance of the original concept, and evolved in to something new (and hopefully wonderful,

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or at least interesting!). This dialogue is a critical part of the art making. It is mostly intuitive but a bit analytical. This is where the magic happens, in the “zone”.

My natural tendency is towards dark and black backgrounds — a la Rembrandt and van Dyck—and sometimes that is appropriate and correct for a particular image, especially one that riffs on the Old Masters. I need to be consciously aware and defiant of my “dark” predilections. The iconic Old Master images are burned so deeply into my memory and subconscious that it can be difficult to fight against that pull and go with a lighter, more “contemporary” palette. This tension— between the tones of Old Masters and my contemporary intentions—plays itself out in the process of layering a painting.

How do yu choose the subjects for the works that you then develop into series? What is your process like?

Each series begins with one or two images that I find interesting or stimulating. Then I take them through my process of transformation, look at the results and see if there is a pattern, trend or discovery to be made. After further exploration of additional images through the same artistic lens, I may find that I have created a (mostly) cohesive series of paintings. It may not be an obvious theme, even to me, until there are several to a dozen images which may suddenly lead to an “Ah-ha” moment. My artistic activity just might be that sublimated.

I’m quite fond of the textural and tactile effect that is created by the layering of different effects including impastos, scumbles, and transparent glazes. There is a “peek-a-boo” effect to the underpainting and first layers, which are often then re-iterated as they become overly obliterated. There is also a dance between the layers as they appear and disappear. The deliberate integration of background and foreground is accomplished by a non-uniform, yet cohesive mark- making process and by the effects created over time by my manner of paint handling.

Your work involves vibrant colors and textures. How do you arrange your color palette? Is there a psychological motive for some of your nuances of tone and texture?

The palette is very much determined by my intentions. Most of the new works from 2016 and after generally have a lighter and more neutral palette. This is deliberate and for no more reason other than the fact that it pleases me.

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Is there a political aspect to your work?

In what ways—if any—do you want

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Man in Red Hat (after Rembrandt).

74 x 52�. Oil on Canvas. 2016

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terms, I am a singular and unique person whose history, background, education, experience, interests and intellect fuse with unique emotional and spiritual components that all come together to equal “me.” Certainly, I share many aspects of being an artist in the 21st century with many contemporaries; but like faces, we’re all a bit different. That difference is celebrated and expressed in the highly individualistic artworks that the current generation of contemporary artists seems intent on creating. The creative process can be divorced from direct experience: think of the first human sculptures of gods and deities. Certainly, since there were no actual gods to model, those artworks were born in the imagination, although they were certainly inspired by “real” attributes and forms. The creative process takes up a substantial portion of imagination.

Having said that, I think most artists are the sum of their parts and their being absolutely affects their creative processes.

your work to affect the public’s social consciousness?

I absolutely consider many of the paintings to be political and/or societal commentary. These things are either explicitly stated, or implied—If at all possible—in my recent paintings, through subtle implications. I much prefer for the viewer to draw their own conclusions. Not that the paintings are ambiguous, no, more that they are open to interpretation, based on the viewer’s experience, preconceptions and receptivity. A painter creates images as a visual art, selecting materials and subjects and applying his or her style to generate visual expression. In all but the most exclusively decorative pieces, the artist is initiating a conversation: first with the canvas, then with the viewers. This discussion is necessarily au courant.

Even when using antique devices or subjects, the artist should be of his time and make work that reflects or discusses current and universal concerns.

You allow an open reading and a multiplicity of meanings in your work.

How important is this openness to associations and interpretations?

Your work seems to present a multilayered experience that integrates memories, perceptions and desires. Do you think that personal experience is critical to the creative process?

By blurring the boundaries, literally, of the images, I create an ambiguity that allows room for projection and interpretation. Some paintings are more

It’s not possible to disconnect the art from the artist. To put it in personal

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audience will be a key component of the experience of the exhibition. That said, I do not alter my process or artistic choices based on what I may imagine how some viewers would respond. I stay as independent as I can in the studio.

receptive to this openness than others.

It’s all a byproduct of the dialogue that goes on in my mind during the actual painting process.

Your works start in the real world, but have a captivating abstract aspect. How do you balance representation and abstraction?

Naturally, I would love for everyone to respond and be interested and enthusiastic about each and every artwork. It doesn’t work that way though: each viewer brings their own set of criteria and expectations and tastes. I couldn’t possibly anticipate what they might all be and wouldn’t want to try.

My work is obviously representational, and often familiar. It’s then processed and “disambiguated” so as to create a different conversation.

The amount or density of abstraction is directly proportional to the goal of retaining an edge of familiarity. It’s a narrow edge that I try to balance upon.

When I am successful, the image is mostly accessible—yet significantly altered and transformed—and the final artwork yields interesting, even pleasing results.

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

How do you see your work evolving?

Your recent solo exhibition— Ambiguum, at the Minor Memorial Gallery, in Roxbury, Connecticut—was meant to deeply involve your viewers.

What is the relationship that you want to establish between your work and viewers? Do you think about your audience when you are painting?

Each series or body of works is an individual statement or point of view.

Somewhere in my group of recent paintings is the seed that will grow and multiply to generate the imagery of my next series.

Where it goes from here, I’m as curious as you to find out…

In one sense, it’s quite straightforward: I paint and then I exhibit the work.

Of course, deep in my mind as I am working I do understand that the

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Simon Raab works in a unique medium, he coined and patented as “Parleau”, whose etymology is French for ‘through the water.’

Multiple layers of colored polymers are applied to stainless steel and aluminum and then “crushed” or sculpted to give the appearance of an image just under the surface of water. The art is presented as either a wall-mounted painting with embedded frames, or as a freestanding volumetric sculpture. Raab’s work is characterized by brilliant colors, figurative abstractions, and most often conveys some underlying philosophical message.

Raab identifies with the symbolism of the grenade, as an expression of disruptive ideas and the change agents from which they come. They have the ability to destroy and disrupt and expose suppressed ideas, yet they are egg-like, bearing offspring, activated and inspired by the hand of man, defensive, aggressive, working in the name of good and evil, dangerous and inviting. New and innovative ideas leave shrapnel of suspicion in your mind. The grenade is the perfect symbolism for creative destruction and aligns well with the Parleau medium. Parleau enhances the images on metal by a sculpting and crushing step, partially destroying after creating and generating a refreshing and dynamic visual perspective. Life is added to images, activated by life’s essence and the cycle of creation and destruction. Raab has enjoyed several successful years of exhibitions in Europe and Asia.

He was formerly a scientist and engineer and brings his rich technical training in materials to bear on his art. He credits the secret processes he has developed in Parleau to his scientific background. “It is a myth that the creative impulses and process in the sciences are different than those in the arts. They have many similarities, in that they are emotional, inspired, magical, technical, and are often born of frustration,” explained

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Brigitte Dietz Lives and works in Heidelberg, Germany By painting, I try to explore the paradox of the human being living alone in community. Whom are we representing and who are we in reality? Already in our personal lives, we have troubles to answer this question in a satisfactory way. The diversity of humanity is the variety of its individuals. They differ not only from each other, but also show their 'manifold faces'. As a portrait artist, my task is to discover consistently this difference in every personality. My responsability is to pick it out as a central theme. In order to achieve this, not only the facial expressions, the colours and „moods“ are important, but also the confrontation of every personality with their own contexts. The abstract parts on my paintings however, I often begin by softening up the archetypical geometrical forms, I put on the canvas before. After that and within these forms, I create ideas to design the painting. The subleties operate as counterpart of the basic forms. On this stage, my paintings receive the „character“. Expressions and spaces get introduced into the formation. My aim is to excite the observer to „finish“ the painting by himself, to motivate his imagination to create his personal image in a specific situation. The painting works as a peg on which to hang the personal interpretation of the observer. By this means, the difference between the personality and its self-portrayal appears in a specific suspence.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

are very pleased to introduce our readers to Dietz's stimulating and multifaceted artistic production.

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Rejecting any conventional classification regarding its style, Brigitte Dietz's work draws the viewers through an unconventional and multilayered experience. The central theme of her work is the paradox of the human being living alone in community and in her body of works that we'll be discussing in the following pages she accomplishes the difficult task of exciting the observer to „finish“ the painting by himself, to motivate his imagination to create his personal image in a specific situation: we

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Hello Brigitte and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have been artistically productive since your schooldays, specially supported by your professor Bernhard Epple and later by Traugott Notz. How did these experiences influence the way you currently conceive and produce your works? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum due to your studies of classical philology inform the way you

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Photography © 2015 by Steven Pearse Conway

Buber Ben Gurion, from the authentic encounter series

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relate yourself to art making and to the notion of beauty?

question, again and again, I always get different answers. The answers are my paintings. My paintings do not try to be a general truth or rule or wisdom. But they are true too: in their specific moments. In the moment I paint them, and in the moment somebody looks at them with all honesty, paintings deliver a certain truth, that always might be different but are certainly true during this specific moment of looking at them.

Hello, thank you very much for having me.

In fact, these are the three main sources that drawed me towards painting.

Bernhard Epple, my teacher at secondary school who later on became well known, supported my eagerness to paint. He helped me to develop my artistic foundation. Traugott Notz has been my portrait drawing teacher at an adult education centre since three decades. He shows me, again and again and with all required strictness, my drawing mistakes by drawing portraits from life models. So I am learning a lot by him. And my studies of classical philology, besides learning greek and latin, opened the door to philosophy and classical art fort me.

I do not compare my paintings to a philosophical book for example, where the author claims, that it is true what he wrote inside the book, regardless if somebody reads it or not. I do not claim that for my paintings. Regarding social questions, there is simply no eternal truth, so I do not try to give an eternal answer. Every glimpse of authenticity between human beings is strongly connected with the element of surprise: You can not plan it, but it might happen. I sometimes get surprised by my own paintings,when I look at them after a while. I think this question about athenticity is more or less behind all my paintings.

The results of your artistic inquiry convey together a coherent sense of unity: before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.globalartleague.com/brigittedietz.html in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you think that there is a central idea that connects all of your work as an artist.

The body of works that we have selected for this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries and that our readers have already started to admire in the introductory pages of this article has at once captured our attention for the way you have captured subtle aspects of the personality of your characters, providing the visual results of your artistic inquiry with autonomous aesthetics: when walking our readers through your usual

Well, you already insinuated it. My central artistic concern is less an idea but a question: How am I, a single person , connected to the community, the human beings around me, the political consesus?

What are the interdependencies of my social surroundings? By posing this

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process and set up, would tell us how do you select the subjects for your portrait series?

The personalities, I selected for a painting, fascinated me somehow. Without that, the portrait would probably not be very „alive“, it would appear „constructed“. I really need that very personal thrill that drives me to paint them. And that can be a problem sometimes: Let us say, you have to paint somebody, for example by a comission. The main challenge is here, to get into a close connection, in order to develop some affection. And the best trick in order to achieve this, is to get engaged with the biography of the sitter. Did you ever read a boring biography? Probably not!

So in case, you find a person really boring, and frankly, that happens sometimes on first sight, ask him about his life. And that is how I set up a creative process.With this little trick, it is impossible to paint boring people. Well, at least for me it worked.

You are a versatile artist and your media include oil painting, mixed technique, collage and pastel: what are the qualities that you are searching for in the materials that you combine in your works?

Virginia Woolf's Death, Triptych acryl oil collage 2,40 x 1m

materials, no colours! Actually, I just used materials that were used by Beuys himself in his installations. For Beuys, materials had a special significance, e.g. every day used objects are „basic things“. Some things had a symbolic value like felt, fad or copper as energy source. So just using materials he used for that portrait collage, I figured maybe I could get closer to him and his broad art concept through the materials.

Well yes, I work with different materials: oil paints, acrylic, collages. Actually I work with everything you can glue on a paperboard or a canvas. Specially for collages, there is a wide range of useful qualities: the material itself, newspaper, tree bark, metals, potatoe nets etc. If you take a look for example at my Joseph Beuys-collage, you can see that I just used

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the inevitable and therefore tragic consequence. In the first two parts of this painting, my collages describe daily events back then. In the third part, that is about the death, I glued the suicide note to her husband in shape of her profile on the canvas. I thought this discreet third portrait would be a contrast to the other two fully painted portrait heads in the painting.

Because in a way, death is tragically about

I use collage pretty often. But normally in combination with colours. For example painting my Virginia Woolf triptych, I felt I need big chromaticity. So I used oil and acrylic paints. The faces, I always paint in oil. „Virginia Woolf's Death“ is a huge triptych. I painted it in order to tell her story; about this woman at the end of the victorian era in her intellectual surroundings with the suicide as

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Triptychon, Martin Buber

that I might use for a future painting. I enjoy that.

dematerialisation. In a way, I used extra material, the collages, in a symbolic context in order to express an dematerialisation process. But this paradox-seeming procedure of the use of materials, worked out quite well in this case. So, the material gives me a huge variation of qualities at hand, and I challenge myself to choose wisely. I am constantly collecting materials

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As you have remarked once, your aim is to excite the observer to „finish“ the painting by himself, to motivate his imagination to create his personal image in a specific situation. Rather than attempting to establish any univocal sense, you seem to urge the viewers to elaborate personal

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countless ways of looking at a painting. I really enjoy these talks, some people try to classify the style, others judge it: too colourful, too big, too boring etc.

But sometimes there is somebody who really is wondering and begins to ask questions honestly. Then, the element of surprise we already talked about, kicks in: the viewer makes observations by himself, shows emotions, scrutinized himself. These are really exciting moments, because it enables me, to discover new things and perspectives in my own paintings. As I said, the element of surprise concernes the spectatorship as well as the artist. So, looking at paintings is perhaps more about being interested and open minded rather than rethink an arstist's concept.

Red is a quite recurrent tone in your pallette and we have really appreciated the vibrancy of thoughtful nuances of your pieces, that are often marked out with intense tones as Gßnter Grass and Christian Morgenstern . However, other works as Welles & Chaplin shows that vivacious tones are not strictly indespensable to create tension and dynamics. How did you come about settling on your color palette? And how much does your own psychological makeup determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you develope a painting’s texture?

associations: would you tell us how much important is for you that the spectatorship rethink the concepts you convey in your pieces, elaborating personal meanings?

I think it is not so important for the spectator, to actually rethink the concept.

When people are talking to you at exhibitions, you notice, there are

Selecting colours, I actually do not follow a strict rule or scheme. I am very pragmatic about that: What colour suites

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a certain expression? For example, the originl sample of my double portrait of Welles and Chaplin was a black and white photography. I became instantly excited by this intimate snapshot: Two titans of world cinema, sitting next to each other with a glass of whine. They both show a cautious body language getting to know each other. That is a subtle occasion. You can not use the colour red for it. Whereas Grass does not make this silent expression. There lies a certain energy in his genius and he shows that, not only in his drawings!

While referring to reality, your paintings convey a captivating abstract feeling: how do you view the concepts of the real, the authentic and the imagined playing out within your works?

Well, reality is not something that is, but something that happens. If I know something, for example, that this person suffers from something, that does not mean that it is real. It could as well be imagined. But if that,what I know, happens, then it is real. But an authentic experience includes always an element of surprise, that I can not foresee or plan.

Reality is strongly connected with time, you see? Nature itself does not tell us, if something is authentic or imagined. But we know that something is real, when it happens. In German we use a term for it: „bewähren“, that means something like to prove of value. The word „bewähren“ applies „Wahrheit“, and that means truth.

So the real differs from the imagined by happening. And that happening is

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Günter Grass, Acryl, Collage auf Leinwand

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Christian Morgenstern

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authentic. And only this action decides whether someting is right or wrong, for that specific moment.

Your artwork are pervaded with images rich with symbolic features, as Nehru & Gandhi. German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". What is your opinion about it? Morever, would you tell us something about the importance of symbols in your imagery?

I have to say, I by myself, am neither a big fan of pure symbols. A painting, conveying its message just via symbols can be very boring to be honest. Well not always obviously. Sometimes it genius.

For me, symbols can be very helpful to underline somethig or to put something in an interesting context etc. And that can be very exciting. But there is no general scheme or rule of how to balance narrative, psychological and symbolic elements. With every new painting there is a new challenge to figure it out. But yes it is a big question.

In the introductory question you remarked that by painting, you try to explore the paradox of the human being living alone in community. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "the artist’s role differs depending on which part of the world you’re in. It depends on the political system you’re living under". Not to mention that almost everything, ranging from Caravaggio's Inspiration of

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Nehru & Gandhi, from the Authentic Encounter series

Saint Matthew to Joep van Lieshout's works, could be considered political, do you think that your works is political, in a certain sense? what could be in your opinion the role of Art in the contemporary age?

much. Which role should that be? I think for an artist as well as for every human being that is no politician, the challenge is not to play a role, but to find authentic moments.

But off course: We in Germany, are alleged free. And we are allowed to express whatever we want to. But, concerning liberty, there are other, very personal qualities too: psychological issues, fashion, economic pressure, moral issues etc. For example, Joseph Beuys tried his whole life to emancipate himself from his

Of course, like every human being, the artist too is dependent and connected to his political context, above all concerning the question of liberty and freedom. But to talk about an artist's role, is perhaps a bit too

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B-Site Festival / Error 404 502 410 & “Dust�/ Manheim 2015 / Germany

determinents. To put it with a lot of pathos: Creating art as well as living a human life, is a lifelong struggle for freedom. So if Gabriel Orozco means that by politics, I would partly agree.

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

Over the years your works have been exhibited in several occasions, including your recent participation to the group exhibition at Galerie Melnikow, Heidelberg, Germany. One of the hallmarks of your work is the capability to create a direct involvement with the

Of course, means of expression affect the viewers. At least, they are supposed to. But

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what counts is, to surprise the viewer. The problem is as already mentioned: To think I can plan a 100% certain surprise would be ridiculos. Because I, the painter, am not the only one who is involved in the painting. The viewer has to invest some energy too. In order to achieve the latter, there are of course possibilities for painters. The first thing my painting should do is awaken the viewer.

Everything schematic, structured and 100% planned out, without risks, without being surprised by yourself producing the painting, leads to viewers who fall asleep.

And sleeping viewers will not experiences anything surprising. But if my painting on the wall manages it to awaken the viewrs, then, surprising experiences are possible.

Even I, who painted it, can be surprised again.

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

Thank you very much. Well, I now began with a new series „authentic encounter“, some paintings of this series you already mentioned. In this series, I began to express facets of human cooperation.

That is a very exciting topic for me and I think I will stick to it for quite a while. I am eager to see, where this topic will lead me.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator design by Dario Rutigliano, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com

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Albert Einstein acryl oil collage 70cm x 1m

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Gerdi MĂśller-Jansen Lives and works in LĂźbeck, Germany

Both brain hemispheres need to be fed equally.

And that's maybe the reason why I started painting (and dealing with other areas of art like screenprinting, photography, illustration) already during and parallel to my successful career as a graduate in business information technology.

Having started as a an autodidact I developed my techniques by attending seminars and courses with renowned artists and institutions. In 2013 I decided to focus more on my right brain side and started working as a free artist in my own studio.

I am not dedicated to a specific style or techniques but like experimenting: from acryl to pastel, from white to garish, from abstract to figurative, from painting to fractals Almost everything is inspiration to me.

Exiting and boring books.

The beauty of nature and maltreated environment.

Traveling the world and relaxing at the home beach.

Most of my works are abstract today. They usually develop in an informal process and first and foremost I am guided by my gut feeling. I do not look for perfection, however, to work as an artist is such as strong motivation for me as it allows me to work completely independently.

Painting does not just mean creating to me – but often it means finding. Finding those fascinating moments and imaginations. Something that has been covered for so long and I hope that the beholder or viewer of my works can feel and see those characteristic situations or places.

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Gerdi Möller-Jansen Lives and works in Lübeck, Germany Drawing inspiration from beauty of nature and maltreated environment, traveling the world and relaxing at the home beach, German artist Gerdi Möller-Jansen's work provides the viewers with an intense, immersive visual experience: her body of works that we'll be discussing in the following pages, successfully attempts to trigger the viewers' perceptual parameters walking them through the liminal area in which perceptual reality and the realm of imagination find a consistent point of convergence. One of the most impressive aspects of Möller-Jansen's work is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of questioning contemporary visualization practice in reference to Contemporary Abstract art movement: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating and multifaceted artistic production.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

incorporation of marble dust and bitumen (so called dust technology) for my artworks. This influence can be seen in my work cycle "Mental State" and "Zen"

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Hello Gerdi and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your multifaceted background.

You started as an autodidact and you later had the chance to developed your techniques by attending seminars with renowned artists, as Alfred Hansl, Volker Altenhof and Ines Hildur: how did these experiences influence the way you currently conceive your works? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to the notion of beauty?

However, the desire or perhaps even the necessity to express myself artistically was not so much the influence of my teachers but has already been set in my parents' house. Critical thinking, a sense for social responsibility, and above all respect for our environment are values that have been passed down to me and hence needed be reflected in some form. However, it sometimes takes time to find the appropriate means. Though I knew already at an early stage these means must be art, I made a career information technologies. Perhaps or maybe just because of that sidestep I could see it even more clearly.

In fact, each of these artists has given completely different and valuable impulses for my own work.

Thus, e.g. Altenhof's aesthetic play with the colour raised already pretty early the desire to create moods exclusively by means of colours and to create something spontaneously and unconsciously (for example, „fire and flame“).

In regard to what beauty means to my work, I believe that the ratio of form and content determines the substance of a picture. And exactly this constellation is important - not just the formal beauty. It is not so important for me to create pleasant art that appeals to the sensations, but, if possible, to convey or to create knowledge. So I am quite with Kant.

In contrast, I was influenced by the reduced, achromatic works of Hildur discover and tap the unusual techniques and materials, such as

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Anthropocene", which deals with our environmental responsibility. But this respect can also be reflected in still lives from nature, which should bring their whole beauty into the light

As an example I would like to mention two different works. First one is a digital works: "Just wanna play" A little beauty – no doubt - but also completely dolled up. Beauty contests where 12-year-old girls in evening robes and make-up are trying to outshine their competitors. I think we don't need that.

The other example is an acrylic painting: "femme fatale" I wonder what kind of characteristics “beauty” needs. I'm showing a woman, which can't be considered as a beauty in a common sense, but doesn't she attract even more attention by her lasciviousness?

In a second thread I continually take up various states of mind (work series “mental state”), which are the expression of a life situation or a life section.

These are stories of loving, suffering, hating, moving.

And are not my stories yours too? Art is sensuality and, for my understanding, has much to do with the narrative of experiences. We share not only one world, but also our feelings.

Your works convey a coherent sense of unity, that rejects any conventional classification. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit https://www.gerdi-jansen.de in order to get a synoptic view of your work: in the meanwhile, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up? In particular, are your works painted gesturally, instinctively? Or do you methodically transpose geometric schemes from paper to canvas?

For this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries we have selected Deep water horizon and Zen, a couple of interesting works that our readers have already started to admire in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured our attention of your artistic research is the way you provided the visual results of your analysis with autonomous aesthetics: when walking our readers through the genesis of Deep water horizon and Zen would you tell us your sources of inspiration? And how did you select your subjects?

I observe my environment and at some point a picture is formed inside my head. The work is then produced in fast-sketched image in the smallest format. Then, after the decision, the painting develops in pretty slow process. The painting process itself is then pushed forward in a dialogue between consciousness and the unconscious. But there are also these works, which do not need any sketch, because there are already final pictures, which are deeply burned to my soul and then just want to become visible.

How do you select your subjects? In particular, do you think that there is a central idea that connects all of your work as an artist?

The red thread is actually two red threads. One, as already mentioned, is a sense of responsibility and respect for our environment. And that's because the integration into nature is an elementary commonality of all human beings. This aspect can for example be found in my work series "Have nice holidays in

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Do you remember the 20th of April 2010? Eleven workers were killed in the explosion of the Deep Water Horizon oil rig. The oil leakage led to tremendous oil spills into the Gulf of Mexico, the most severe environmental catastrophe of its kind in history. This event happened so far away, but it was so close. Maybe despite or precisely because of this almost outrageous disregard of responsibility and flippancy in regard to nature, I could not get this topic out of my head.

The painting process is then always something that brings these scenarios back to life and I try to paint against rage and helplessness. After that, my subjects have to become more quiet in order to find my balance back again. The series "Zen" is an example: By reducing the form and the deliberate use of achromatic colours as a means of expression, I return to rationality and plainness and can soothe my troubled feelings.

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You are a versatile artist and as you remarked once, you are not dedicated to a specific style but you like experimenting with all kind of styles and techniques: what draws you to such cross disciplinary approach? And in particular, when do you recognize that one of the mediums has exhausted it expressive potential to self?

For sure, "Forgotten items" and "deep water horizons" have a sociopolitical and critical message or meaning. Compared to science, art is allowed to criticise and to interpret and I like to take that as a chance. But I do not completely agree with Gabriel Orozco, because no matter what political system or part of the earth we live in - we have only one common planet. It does not matter if we carelessly waste our plastic in Europe, Asia or the USA. These forgotten items form already huge islands which definitely do not belong to any country, drift around the world and pollute our seas and make animals miserably perish. Therefore our environment, regardless political systems or geographic regions, must play a role - I would even say a more important role in art.

I see freedom (also artistic) as a chance to grow. I therefore take the liberty to try out and discover and to playfully approach my work. And isn't playfulness something very human. If discovering and playing would have been expelled from art, it would be something that could not bring joy.

So I express myself with different techniques and styles, e.g. with a cycle of digital portraits that exemplify how urban citizens can be trapped in their (“Faces”) spiritual isolation, but also youthful beauty, which is not diminished by the fact that this beauty sometimes consists only of skin and bones (“Skin and bones”), up to the faces of old people and their lines of life (some call it crinkles) which can enchant the viewer very much (“Life Lines ”) But also experimenting with different materials, e.g. the use of marble dust, bitumen, corrugated cardboard (see "out of the blue") or paper chips (see "heart at the right place") is a way for me to create new insights. Painting, digital works, fractals or illustrations: everything has its time. Each method is laid aside, but then revived when an idea demands for it.

We can recognize a subtle sociopolitical criticism in how Forgotten items and Deep water horizons question our abused oceans and nature, in our technology driven age. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "the artist’s role differs depending on which part of the world you’re in. It depends on the political system you’re living under". Not to mention that almost everything, ranging from Caravaggio's Inspiration of Saint Matthew to Joep van Lieshout's works, could be considered political, what could be in your opinion the role of Art in the contemporary age?

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I neither want to present a normative expectation to art, nor do I think that art has ever driven social changes. I tend to say thank goodness. When I think of the communist agitprop art or the futuristic manifest 100 years ago, it was fortunate that it failed. But I would love to see that art can have a greater impact on the soul again - as music does and not by exhibited Brillo boxes or a sliced beef inserted in formaldehyde, but by subtle depictions and compositions.

Your artistic practice seems to aim to look inside of what appear to be seen, rather than its surface: we like the way Deep water horizons, rather than attempting to establish any univocal sense seems to urge the viewers to elaborate personal associations: when discussing about the role of randomness in your process, would you tell us how much important is for you that the spectatorship rethink the concepts you convey in your pieces, elaborating personal meanings?

What happens to us when we hear of catastrophes.

We are scared and forget the incident pretty fast. It takes only a short time until the disaster has disappeared from the media world-wide. A kind of mass amnesia. With millions of liter of chemicals BP let the oil spill disappear - but only from the screens.

And the press cheers: Tourism is booming. The

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environment on the Gulf has recovered. The water is turquoise and clear. The beaches are clean – And on the horizon you can see the dark blue of the deep water. Happy Holidays ! What a false

summery conclusion! The danger now lurks beneath the surface. And no one talks about the aftereffects And I wonder what lessons we've learned from such tragedies?

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I don't think that pictures on such themes necessarily have to show the reality in full brutality, it is more important to me that I can create an association, memory and reflection with the spectator through colours and structures.

There must be no consensus to the sensation, but if the viewer feels touched in some way or was influenced I am really satisfied.

We have really appreciated the vibrancy of thoughtful nuances of the pieces as feuer und flamme and elbe, that show that vivacious tones are not striclty indespensable to create tension and dynamics. How did you come about settling on your color palette? And how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you develope a texture?

I do not leave the choice of the colours to chance – the choice is inevitable. My objective is to develop inner tensions, friction points and harmonies by colour and texture. However, the way and scope of the transformation depends on my actual life circumstances. In times of great professional pressure but also during private blows the dark, earthy tones were pushing to the fore. But in the recent years, my colour palette almost unintentionally changed. Bright, lively, sometimes even pastel tones reflect a generally relaxed life.

It also does not bother me when deep cracks reveal how the paint has dried. Together with a thick layer of paint and manual interventions such as scratches, porous structures are created. They are sometimes reminding of dried out walls in abandoned buildings (e.g. "out of the blue"). If there is such an approximation to a natural image, it is almost automatically perceived associatively by the viewer. With "Elbe 1", e.g. it was my intention to give an idea of a water landscape with a fire ship through horizontal monochrome areas, interspersed with vertical colour traces. A fire boat that signals to me: You are at home.

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Boats on a foggy morning

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Forgotten items

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Another interesting work that has particularly impressed and that we would like to discuss is entitled Am seidenen Faden (dangling on a

string) and is from your "mental state" series, reflecting your personal situation at the time of creation: How would you define the relationship

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Feuer und flamme

abstraction find their balance in your work?

between abstraction and imagination in your practice? In particular, how does representation and a tendency towards

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"Am seidenen Faden" (hanging by a thread or

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Femme fatale

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From the viewer towards me and vice versa – a give and take, so to speak.

The influence to the soul of the viewer and on his memories, however, should not be manipulative, how could I allow this to myself? But it is my intention to help to overcome cognitive dissonances, which are nagging especially people today and which are always an unpleasant circumstance such as fear of decision making, shame on wrong decisions or purely successoriented action against one's own conviction.

As far as the influence from the viewer is concerned, especially my solo exhibition "ain't no limits" has shown to me that the positive and constructive reflection of the audience on the works can also be an encouragement to maintain the diversity and to look at it self-consciously as a characteristic of my visual language.

hangling a string) is a relatively new work. It really worries me that the world is ruled by certain people and is in a bad state. Terrorism, environmental destruction, wars, hunger catastrophes. It seems to me as if the world could come undone at any moment, because everything seems to hang by a thread. This, I believe, has nothing to do with "German Angst", but rather questioning whether mankind is using its brain.

Abstract painting is breaking with the reality-related representation and is limited to colour, form, structure, pattern and line. But exactly those objectrelated associations, which are eliminated in the abstract painting, are dedicated to show a rigid or too narrow picture and reflect exclusively the artist's view. But his stylistic means of the abstract art allow sufficient leeway for my fantasies and thus possibilities of association for the viewer.This compares with the stylistic means of the abstract art as they allow sufficient leeway for my fantasies and thus possibilities of association for the viewer.

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

How do you see your work evolving?

Not only peace, prosperity and the environment depend on the silk thread, but also cultures, progress and humanity. Great themes are hanging by a thread or in other words: large shapes are hanging by a thin line.

I am sure that not only that what is going on in Europe and Western societies will provide a lot of material. The strengthening or decay already stands out as a new project with many ideas. So it will probably be a search and interpretation of common cultural stories and experiences.

Figuration or abstraction - between these two poles I will probably continue to move, because this contrasting way of working has a natural causality for me and I would like to give the viewer food for reflection.

Over these years you have had numerous solo and group shows, including your participation to ain't no limits - Kunstforingen Humlebaek, in Denmark.

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

I would like to thank you for the opportunity to give you and your readers hereby a bit closer look at my work.

Of course, the audience reaction has an influence.

But I wouldn't go so far as to say that it affects the language decision-making process in a particular context. I see it as an influence in both directions.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com

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Yotam Zohar Lives and works in Tel-Aviv, Israel A creative process is by definition a direct experience. Direct experience is a tool, not unlike research. I could have done the Underground paintings based on anecdotes my friends tell me, or from photos that get sent to me from anonymous email addresses or something. I could have just done it all from imagination. They might end up looking similar. I decided to go out and mine the source images myself, with a smartphone—the same tool that has started revolutions in recent years.

There’s a reason for that: it is ultimately vital that I take the pictures myself, in order to link the subject (the person or people being depicted) to the viewer. I want the viewer to be aware of the single degree of separation between them and the person they are looking at, the way it is with Mona Lisa, of the artist-as-conduit.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

department has gained national recognition for its MFA program. Eastern Illinois University is more of a diamond-in-the-rough. I would describe both institutions as having brilliant faculty and programming, and although I was a terrible student I like to think that I benefitted immensely from my exposure to them. I try my best to remain in contact with any of my teachers who didn’t grow too fed up with me.

peripheral.arteries@europe.com

Hello Yotam and a warm welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. To start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You hold a BFA as well as a MA that you have received from Ohio State University and from and the Eastern Illinois University, where you studied drawing and painting: how have these experiences of formal training impacted on the way you currently produce your works?

Both institutions—OSU and EIU—are at their best in preparing students to think about their work and to craft a viable practice. To learn the Old Master techniques I traveled to Europe to study privately with my father, who is on closer personal terms with Vermeer and Rembrandt than anyone else I have ever known. So, when I came back to the American Midwest as an undergraduate with this newfound understanding of grisaille I felt a little bit like Moses on his first descent from Mount Sinai.

Thanks very much! I’m grateful for the opportunity.

I come from an artistic family. My father is a figurative painter, my mother is a violinist, and all my siblings are involved in some way in a creative field—two of them are well-known musicians. In retrospect it seems inevitable that I became an artist as well, but when I started painting I was much more inspired by literature and film than I was by other painters. The more I paint, the more I realize I have to learn from my contemporaries.

In recent years the Ohio State University’s art

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I’m very lucky, actually, because I was able to get both the classical training and the cutting-edge conceptual stuff. If I’d stayed in Ohio the whole time, or gone to some stuffy Parisian atelier, this wouldn’t be the case. Inevitably, I think, I shall always strive for Rembrandt using the tools of

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Richter, or maybe the other way around.

don’t think much has changed, so I’m not sure there’s any need to make a wide distinction.

I’ve also worked for nearly a decade in art galleries. Many young artists do this as a way to earn a living before their work starts to sell, and I think that although most gallery workers are severely underpaid it’s an extremely valuable experience because they learn from very close range what their work needs to be able to do once it leaves their hands. They also learn how to be more professional in dealing with the art world, which, to the chagrin of many gallerists, is not something they usually teach in art school.

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 use a hybrid of Baroque and contemporary techniques, starting with grisaille: first the basic highlights and shadows are put down over a neutral background, and then color is added in translucent layers after each previous layer has been allowed to dry. This means that when the painting is viewed, the eye is seeing light that has been filtered through these layers of color and reflected off the highlights underneath. It gives the work a luminous, jewel-like quality that opaque paint cannot achieve.

By the way, being a classically-trained figurative painter who explore Contemporary Art, I would ask you if you recognize still a dichotomy between Contemporary and Tradition...

Moreover, what could be in your opinion the features that mark the contemporariness of an artwork?

I think the only meaningful difference between contemporary art and “traditional” art is the completion date. There is nothing about Vermeer’s paintings, for example, that isn’t conceptually focused or still relevant, just like there’s nothing about Lisa Yuskavage’s work that doesn’t have to do with her ability to handle paint or carry on a dialogue with history.

I also wonder whether romantic ideas about art being different in the past contribute to the inflation of secondary market prices and the difficulty many young artists face in finding open-minded collectors.

The amount of time each phase takes can vary widely. I’m not sure I’ve ever spent fewer than three hours on a painting, and I don’t think I’ve ever spent more than three months. But that’s not a rule either.

I am trained to approach painting from the point of view of someone who works with the figure.

This means that I permit myself the indulgence of rendering imperative the significance of the human being. This fundamental tuning-out—of everything except a human subject and myself— is the starting point for any figurative work.

Artists today are asking questions and saying things for the same reasons as they did in centuries past, except now we have more materials and technology to help us realize our visions. The earliest visual art was made as a means of ultra-important communication and storytelling, and now a lot of that communication is probably as frivolous as most of Facebook. In terms of art’s actual content I

My work is mostly representational, which means that it contains depictions of real-world objects and organisms as they appear on a human scale. I employ a philosophy of “by any means necessary” in order to arrive at a finished composition. Most notably, perhaps, I use optical tools and imaging technology—namely a digital camera and Photoshop—in order to create

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source compositions. The source image becomes the basis of the painting. Since optical tools technically predate the planet Earth—remember that a camera is only light passing through an aperture—I don’t think there is anything controversial about artists using them. And they have, for as long as we have a record of artwork being made.

Now let's focus on your artworks: I would like to start with your Underground series, that our readers can admire in these pages and I would suggest to visit directly to your website at www.yotamzohar.com in order to get a wider idea: in the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this interesting project? What was your initial inspiration?

I imagine that most people who come to major cities with widely used public transit systems experience the same thing that I did: such variety of life, and a much greater likelihood that a face will seem interesting, or that a gesture of body language will communicate something compelling. And people fascinate me anyway, even when they’re not especially striking.

A year after I moved to New York, on my first date with the person who would later become my wife, this phenomenon came up in conversation and we agreed about the way this fascination would lend itself so readily to a body of paintings.

Around that time I’d gotten my first mobile phone with an onboard camera, so it was simply a matter of pretending to use the device for something else while covertly snapping pictures.

Single channel HD video; 16:9 aspect ratio; 00:01:42 (loop)

I think the idea is obvious, but to my surprise there are very few people doing what I’m doing, if there are any others at all. My wife was supposed to start painting from her train snapshots too, as a sort of twin component of the project, but she’s an architect and already gives all her time to her career and our family. Maybe one day she’ll come out with an even better set of paintings!

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As you have remarked in your artist's statement, you are a person without a "tribe", constantly between cultures; because of this the Underground paintings carry an additional powerful metaphor for permanent transition... I can recognize such a socio-political feature in this aspect of your Art... By the way, I'm sort of

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convinced that Art these days could play an effective role not only making aware public opinion, but I would go as far as to say that nowadays Art can steer people's behavior... what's your point about this?

whatsoever that art should or can play a role in shaping public behavior or opinion. To the contrary, I believe that artists are very much products of the societies from which they emerge, and at their best they manage to hold mirrors and prisms up to humanity. It’s up to other people to identify this and respond. Of

First, I must say that I have no expectation

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Single channel HD video; 16:9 aspect ratio; 00:01:42 (loop)

course there are exceptions, but as a rule I don’t think artists deserve credit for “steering people’s behavior.” Parents, teachers, advertisers, and lawyers do that.

one but the point is that after a great deal of searching and moving around I realized I don’t really, fully, identify with any abstract groups: religious, ethnic, national, cultural, whatever.

There’s no single geographical place I think of as home or feel an exclusive connection with.

As for me, my personal story is a convoluted

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feel very uncomfortable indeed.

Maybe I’m projecting: what I see on the subway are just humans in perpetual transition. Down there, when the train is moving, we can only be divided according to who is sitting or standing, who is reading and who is listening to headphones, who has luggage and who has none, who is alone and who is traveling with a companion. These are characterizations that have nothing to do with inventions like nationality and race; they are much more universal and at the same time individualized, but they are at least concrete! And I like that.

The inside of a train car is, in this sense, a very egalitarian place, especially in the middle of a long tunnel when everyone becomes quiet for a moment, when the rhythm of local stops gets broken apart by an extended pause and everyone seems to simultaneously draw a breath and reflect there, beneath the riverbed. That’s the narrative moment I envision for these paintings’ settings. There is no season or day or night, just a relative closeness to the center of the planet and a ‘journeying collective of permeable solitudes.’

At the same time, however, I’m not trying to make a personal statement with these works. I don’t have a message about diversity or anything like that. It’s really more of a question I’m asking: how are we all connected now?

Your work often shows the immediate nature of Photography mixed with the "contemplative attitude" - if you forgive me this word- of Pictorialism and it effectively establishes such a direct narrative of the stories that your works tell: so I would like 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?

And it’s not that I avoid connections on purpose: whenever I feel myself gravitating toward a group there always seems to be something that makes complete immersion impossible. If I need to label myself I’ll use biology as a metric and beyond that I start to

A creative process is by definition a direct

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experience.

When I first picked up Classical technique I was shown how to work with six or seven colors, maybe more. Within a year or two I was using only five. What I’ve come to learn is that this is an important deviation from the way many other traditional painters work. In fact I’m not using a traditional palette, but some kind of minimalist iteration. Some painters will mix what is called a dead palette, which includes as a starting point many different tones and shades of each of more than seven or eight colors. I don’t. I’m not a revivalist. I want to do things differently.

Direct experience is a tool, not unlike research. I could have done the Underground paintings based on anecdotes my friends tell me, or from photos that get sent to me from anonymous email addresses or something. I could have just done it all from imagination. They might end up looking similar. I decided to go out and mine the source images myself, with a smartphone— the same tool that has started revolutions in recent years.

There’s a reason for that: it is ultimately vital that I take the pictures myself, in order to link the subject (the person or people being depicted) to the viewer. I want the viewer to be aware of the single degree of separation between them and the person they are looking at, the way it is with Mona Lisa, of the artist-asconduit. If I were to come up with the source images some other way, the work would lose this meaning; the connection would break down. I might as well sit at home and collect images from Google, which would make me a very sophisticated kind of inkjet printer, not an artist.

The color red has historically served the purpose of pulling the viewer into a painting.

Who am I to deny its power? I hope it works.

Besides producing your stimulating artworks, you also teach: have you ever happened to drw inspiration from your students... By the way, I sometimes I wonder if a certain kind of formal training could even stifle a young artist's creativity... what's your point? I can remember that you once stated that our culture trains people to be visually illiterate...

When computer programs generate advertisements we don’t call them Mad Men, we call them spam bots. If I generated these images without being present the viewer would lose that personal interaction. It would be like looking at an algorithmic vector printout.

Visually compelling, perhaps, but meaningless.

“You can throw it in the garbage,” as one of my teachers used to say.

I can consistently count on my students’ enthusiasm and ambition to inspire me to bring energy into the studio. Most teachers will tell you that they learn far more from their students than their students do from them, and I think it’s true. Having students creates that many more sets of eyes to see through, to study the problem-solving processes they use.

It’s better than reading chess manuals.

A recurrent feature of your pieces that has mostly impacted on me is the effective mix of few dark tones which are capable of creating such a prelude to light... I also noticed that several nuances of red are very recurrent tone in your works. By the way, any comments on your choice of your pallette and how it has changed over time?

Formal training, especially if it’s gained in a heavily dogmatic setting like an atelier, can be absolutely stifling. But creativity is not what’s being stifled. If anything, creativity flourishes most under constraint. If formal training stifles anything it is perhaps the off chance that the alternative might have been better, or that the breadth of understanding might have been

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though, because the children were autistic; maybe it is important for them to be taught to engender the flaws that the rest of us take for granted so that they don’t get negative attention. I don’t know very much about what’s best for autistic children so I reserve judgment.

What is more interesting—or disturbing—is that in the meantime, the rest of us draw the house as a square and a triangle without a teacher telling us to.

wider. Some of the artists who became mediocre realist painters might have been more gifted at abstract expressionism, for example.

Or they might have been amazing machinists (with a union behind them to ensure they never starve)!

So, why do so many people claim they’re not artistic, why do so many artists seem to be so bad at their jobs, and why do we keep hearing about people who have no interest in art at all?

I have a theory:

In Solomon Asch’s conformity experiments of the 1950s, he and his colleagues used a fake visual test to determine the effects of peer pressure on the way participants answered questions about the relative proportions of lines. If the rest of the group answered incorrectly—saying that two lines were of equal length when in fact they clearly were not—the test subject was more likely to conform and also answer incorrectly. The conclusion was that it is more important for us to comply with the behavior of a group than to react honestly to our own observations.

Our culture teaches us to be visually illiterate.

We just haven’t taught our children to learn how to see in an active way. By “seeing actively” I mean that when you look at something you consciously notice relationships in forms and light, and you gain an understanding of why it looks the way it does.

Representational drawing or realism is really as simple as recording this observation, but it’s an immense first step.

A friend of mine was studying to work with autistic children. She told me a story about a teacher who asked a class of autistic kids to draw their houses. The idea was to teach them how to behave like “normal” children in order to blend more easily into society. They were supposed to replicate the archetype of a child’s drawing of a house: a square with a triangle on top, the rectangular chimney with the helical squiggle coming out to represent smoke, a smiling sun with rays, and so on. Sure enough, one of the autistic children started rendering his home with the precision of an architect, in all its real detail. The teacher came and corrected him, told him to do the square with the triangle on top. Because that’s what normal kids do.

This makes sense when we’re talking about life and death: if you’re in a crowd and everyone starts screaming and running frantically in one direction you’d most likely be stupid or suicidal not to run the same way. The square with a triangle on top works as an efficient symbol for a house, as a way of quickly and easily communicating an idea that a house exists as a concept, but it is not a drawing of a house. The problem is that in our society it is rare for someone to say, wait a minute, show me what a house actually looks like.

People only see the activity on the surface— drawing a picture—and for most of them this is all art needs to be. That is, until it’s time to criticize the art world.

When I first heard this story I was incredulous.

How dare she stop this child from drawing what his eyes have seen? This is an extreme example,

In the meantime, we’re routinely failing to equip our children and ourselves with the tools to describe, and without that ability there can

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be no meaningful inference, no analysis, no reflection, no metaphor.

It’s better suited to the issue of when to make it.

Art and business do have a genuine relationship, and they have had one for a very long time. Art has probably been bought and sold almost as far back in history as sex. And art comprises the largest unregulated luxury goods market in the history of the world. This is the very definition of a business relationship: supply and demand.

Depending on whom you talk to, the lack of regulation is either a very good thing or a very bad thing.

It goes without saying that feedbacks and especially awards are capable of supporting an artist, I was just wondering if an award -or better, the expectation of an award- could 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 wonder if it could ever exist a genuine relationship between business and Art...

We [artists] do what we do because we’re supposedly good at it and it gives us pleasure, yes, but more importantly we do it to earn a living. Anyone who says otherwise is hurting our chances of being compensated fairly for our time and skills. To the amateur it seems cathartic or fun to work with paint and abstract ideas, but we do it for countless hours a day, every day, under pressure to convince someone to pay us for it or we’ll die. We have to keep coming up with reasons why people need our art. That’s the only standard, actually: if you’re an artist, your work has to be so good, or so something, that people who see it will feel the need to possess it, or to ensure its continued existence.

In a way, when an artist sells a work, it is like winning an award: some person chose that work over all the others because they liked it the best, just like a juror or curator, and there is a cash prize. I think most artists just hope their work is being enjoyed with as much energy as it was made with, but we rarely get a glimpse into what happens to our work once it leaves our hands forever. For me, it’s a little bit like exlovers who go to live out their lives on another continent, but as though it’s in the old days before Skype. And although the breakup was amicable—to extend the metaphor—they are bitter about all those incorrect brush strokes that only you know about, so they never write or call. Every once in a while, you miss them, but for the most part you’re just happy to know they’re out there being themselves.

Thank you for your time and for sharing with us your thoughts, Yotam. My last question deals with your future plans: anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

During the conception phase of a piece or a body of work its origin has absolutely nothing to do with the intended audience. That would be like getting pregnant, seeing the fetus in the ultrasound, and deciding whom it should marry when it’s 30. It’s beyond irrelevant, although I can understand why we entertain such thoughts. A better question is: “Is this artwork relevant, and to whom?”

But it doesn’t necessarily accompany the question of why or how to make a body of work.

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As far as exhibitions go, at the moment I know the following: I’ll have a trio of Underground paintings in NordArt at Kunstwerk Carlshütte in Büdelsdorf, Germany, from 14 June to 12 October.

Israel House in San Diego, California, USA, will be displaying some of my work starting 8 June.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com

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Pepijn Simon Lives and works Amsterdam, Netherlands

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There is ultimately a combination between realism and abstraction that is needed to portray an emotion. We are all programmed to see faces and to recognize emotion in them. Pepijn Simon pushes the boundaries of this challenge.

A friend in art school noticed a face in a painting and this inspired the work. He had what Simon describes as “a certain look in his eyes.” He says, “I didn’t pay much attention to it. Years later, I painted this series of portraits, and I finally understand that look.” It is clear that these are human figures, but everybody is going to see the characters differently.

Simon paints without the use of any brushes. In fact, he is using old twisted credit cards. He begins with a black painted canvas and paints while it’s still wet. He applies the white paint without any sketching or use of photographs. “I try to catch the person who reveals himself in the paint at that moment.

This goes very fast. Shortly afterwards, I decide, while the paint is still wet, if it can stay or not. If not, then I start the process again...

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Pepijn Simon Lives and works Amsterdam, Netherlands

An interview by Josh Ryders, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

Painting was the most powerful language that would have allowed you to express yourself?

peripheral.arteries@europe.com

Hello, and thank you for your interest in my artwork

Pepjin Simon 's work challenges the viewers' perceptual process urging us to unveil an unexpectedly wide variety of association between the realm of reality and the sphere of abstraction. In his recent series that we'll be discussing in the following pages, he "catch the moments", accomplishing the difficult task of going beyond the elusive dichotomy between representation and our limbic, perceptual parameters, revealing unexpected points of convergence between Tradition and Abstraction and creating a compelling aesthetics. One of the most convincing aspect of Simon's approach is the way it condenses the permanent flow of associations in the realm of memory and experience: we are really pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating artistic production.

Through my various experiences with photography I ran into its limitations.

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

Paint gives the opportunity to create something truly itself and offers endless possibilities to find the right expression. Photography remains somewhere still a form of copy.

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?

Hello Pepijn and a welcome to Peripheral ARTeries: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and after having studied photography at the Amsterdam Fotoacademie, you studied at the Academie st Joost, Breda: how have these different experiences influenced the way you relate yourself to art making and to aesthetics? In particular, what has lead you to realize that

The black and white paintings, i paint them without the use of any brushes. In fact, i use old twisted credit cards.I begin with a black painted canvas and paint while it’s still wet. I apply the white paint without any sketching or use of photographs, trying to catch the person who reveals himself in the paint at that moment. This goes very fast. Shortly afterwards, i decide,

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while the paint is still wet, if it can stay or not. If not, then i start the process again.

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

We would start to focus on your artistic production beginning from Saint Jerome Writing and Study after Velรกzquez, Francis Bacon & Sergej Eisenstein. Pope Innocent X that a couple of extremely stimulating works that our readers have started to admire in the introductory pages of this article. While you walk us around the genesis of these piece I would like to recommend to visit http://www.saatchiart.com/pepijnsimon in order to get a wider idea of your artistic production. What was your initial inspiration for these interesting pieces?

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

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

The recurrent reference to an emotional but at the same time universal imagery dued to the fruitful juxtaposition between the reference to elements from history of Art and a unique, personal approach, as in the interesting The Anatomy Lesson of the painting 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 dichotomy between Tradition and

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Contemporariness, as in the interesting Inextricable, establishing a stimulating osmosis between materials from contingent era and an absolute approach to Art: do you recognize any contrast between Tradition and Contemporariness?

Yes, i do recognize contrast between Tradition and Contemporariness.

I refer to historic gaze from the reality en added contemporary elements to it. it also refers to the time in between as you can notice in the hand with the primary colours of Piet Mondriaan.This painting is titled The Anatomy Lesson of the Painting and is meant this way.

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

Your work appeals to us for the way you structure figurative painting and an abstract gaze on reality into a multilayered but as the same time coherent unity, in such a compelling way. We would consider your paintings as visual biographies in which your investigate about the ambiguous relation with Perception and Experience: in particular, in The Anatomy Lesson of the painting, you seem to challenge the nature of our perceptual processes, giving to the abstract process of art making a permanence that goes beyond the intrinsic ephemeral nature of the emotions 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?

In case of the black and white pictures, it is a need to eliminate subjective experiences. They are the result of a totall surrender of the individual to the creative process.

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

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

All this put together into a cohesive unity is an important part of my creative process As most of the pieces from your portraits, as The doctor, The psychiatrist and The patient are open to various interpretations, that communicate a process of deconstruction, recontextualization and assemblage. These works are always pervaded with a subtle but ubiquitous narrative that seem to show the empathy you have established with your subjects, the deeper understanding of how that person thinks and feels: I can even see their will, and that's incredibly beautiful. Your approach seems to stimulate the viewer’s psyche and consequently works on both a subconscious and a conscious level. How did you decide to focus on this form of expression?

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

It is the paint that generates the expression, deconstruction, recontextualization and assemblage. I am the creator and spectator at that moment and have to accept that and letting the paint do its work. Al what I need to do is to create the right conditions to come to this work.

The only decision I make is afterwards. Or the artwork may exist or not.

While exhibiting a captivating vibrancy, some of your pieces, and we think especially to Barflies, seem to reject an explicit explanatory strategy: rather, you seem to offer to the viewer a key to find personal interpretations to the stories you tell through your portraits... this quality marks out a considerable part of your production, that are in a certain sense representative of the relationship between emotion and memory in a truly engaging way. What is the role of memory

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in your process? And in particular, do you try to achieve a faithful visual translation of your feelings?

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

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

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

This is in my opinion why a lot of children are great artists. They are somehow blanco, and are often very well able to express emotion in their drawings and paintings. To achieve that, requires a lot of an artist As you have remarked once, you apply the white paint on the wet canvas without any sketching or use of photographs: the experimental nature of your practice is as important as its implementation and the technique you use to materialize your ideas create unpredictable effects: how important is the role of chance in your process?

The role of chance in the process is very important.

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

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

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

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

Your works could be also considered an challenging interrogation of traditional portraiture: as Philippe Dagen once esta-blished

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in his Le Silence des peintres, the coming of a straight realism has caused a progressive retenchment of painting from the mere

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representetive role of reality. With exception of Hyperrealism movement, Painting is nowadays more and more marked out with a symbolic

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feature. Do you think that the dichotomy

They are meant to be considered to be a challenging interrogation of traditional portraits and contemporary ways of portraits.

between Representation and Pictorialism is by now irremediable?

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

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

Over the past summer you are sharing your paintings for the first time: so before taking leave from this interesting conversation I would like to pose a couple question about the nature of the relation with your audience. Your approach is intrinsically connected to the chance of creating an area of intellectual interplay with the viewers: do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decisionmaking process in terms of what type of language for a particular context? An in particular, how would you define your relation with the viewer?

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

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

Thank you, it was my pleasure.

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

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

And everything that the paint will lead me ...

An interview by Josh Ryders, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com

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Sylvain Granjon (France)

"I was in the circus … until the accident".

That is a reasonable version of how Sylvain Granjon replied to my "tell me about yourself" question last summer in Arles.

My heart soared with the prospect of pictures made by someone who has been communicating to a very different - non-photographic audience; there was the possibility of magic.

I want to make special mention of my encounter with him, whose reminded me that it's delight that is at the heart of photography, and that is what engages me."

Halsted and Hunt (New York) Gallery Director, collector and author of "The Invisible Eye" (Actes Sud) After nearly 20 years travelling the world playing street festivals as an actor and acrobat, Sylvain changed course to pursue his other great passion: photography.

As well as formal portraits, he specialises in photographic compositions (mises-en-scène) which incorporate collage, cut-outs and handcolouring but contain no digital manipulation (the DOUCE AMÈRE series, MR ZUPER , ZIDIOMATIKS, TRACKS).

He is represented by the (Paris and Barcelone)

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Sylvain Granjon Lives and works in Paris, France

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

It’s not me who’s looking at the photograph; it is the photograph who is looking at me.

That’s what I think.

The definition of the work of art is impossible to explain!

For me it must be personal, it must come from inside, it must be a need, it come from a source, but the source of this creativity is difficult to pinpoint. Something makes me want to create, something natural and instinctive. Something organic.

peripheral.arteries@europe.com

Sylvain Granjon is a photographer and his works focuses basically on a creative immersion into an imaginary world, and on the idea of relationship to time and childhood. However, when investigating about the way perception depends on cultural perspectives, his photographs can be also viewed as allegories of the passing of time and a contemplation of the present time. In particular, his recent TracKs (nouvelle série) that we'll be discussing in the following pages, condenses the permanent flow of the perception of time, and the events related to them, questioning its intrinsically ephemeral nature. So, it is with a real pleasure that I'm introducing our readers to Granjon's artistic production. Hello Sylvain, and a warm welcome to ARTiculAction: I would start this interview with my usual introductory question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? By the way, what could be the features that mark the contemporariness of an artwork?

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 think that it’s not a strory of technical aspects but a story of creativity !

In my past life as a comic acrobat and in my photography now, I have worked in just the same way.

I take exactly the same approach to the production of photographs as I took to the creation of shows.

It is desire which has always compelled me to create. The desire to play, to surprise, the desire to strengthen and refine my ideas. Just

Hello, and thank you for your interest.

First of all, I’m French, and you know that French people are not good in language!!! So, sorry for the readers, if you don’t understand every thing, it’s my fault!

Well….

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Granjon’s direction and his daughter’s modelling collaborate elegantly and are able to evoke ideas of searching for a lost childhood without being obvious or controversial. This combined with the signature soft-focus, vintage quality of the post-production creates just the right balance between elegance and eeriness, sadness and playfulness.

The simplicity with which the photographer has realised ‘Douce Amère’ is what makes it so powerful and able to surface strong emotions of sentimentality. It is a collection which really does not wear its heart on its sleeve as the meanings become more profound and apparent the harder you study it. On first inspection it can look like harmless, playful photography, but the closer you get, the deeper the intensity of the child’s gaze, and the more alert you become to the significance of the props, be they enlarged facial features, dolls or ripped photographs. (from Alice Brace (Tribu Magazine), talking about Douce amère

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myself the pictures and hand colorised them‌ I cut-outs, I do some collage, used glue and strings

as a show has to be roughed out, performed and toured, a photographic style comes together slowly, by research, by experiment... I see myself as a craftsman who works his material with his hands in the traditional way.

That’s why I worked in analogue, medium format, with my old Rolleiflex Camera, print

Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from the aforesaid TracKs, an extremely stimulating project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of

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this article: and I would suggest to our readers to visit directly at http://www.sylvaingranjon.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?

TRACKS is a recent serie.

But, all my series have the same genesis (Mr Zuper, a miniature superhero condemned to live his life trapped in a flat, to the illustrations which transform French idioms into literal images (Mr Sylvain's Zidiomatiks), to when I put facemasks on my daughter (Douce Amère), I always talk about myself and my relationship to the world, about the sometimes poignant events that every human being has to deal with, and of the need to manipulate objects and use grotesque gestures if one is to "succeed" in life...

My artistry is an unfolding self-portrait. It evolves with time, to the rhythm of my chance encounters and personal exploits. What is life, after all, if not a spectacular performance?

Another interesting project of yours that has particularly impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words is your recent ZIDIOMATIKS. Humour plays an important role in this series, and I have appreciated the way you have manipulated the images intentionally reveals the human intervention... Manipulation in photography is not new, but digital technology has nowadays extended the range of possibilities and the line between straight and manipulated photographs is increasingly blurry. Do you think people’s perceptions of what a photograph is are changing as a result?

I have to say that there is no digital manipulation in my work !It’s a princip for me, in my series, I work like a « Artisant » No photoshop. Only hand coloring, collage, cut outs…

But I’m shure that a lot of people in my audience, don’t realized that there is no computer

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intervention. Collectioners yes. A buyer or a collectionner, appreciated a lot that my pictures are hand colorised, printed by my self in my B/W labo, analogue process, limited edition (no more than 10 ex) etc…

For Les Zidiomatiks, it’s a game. A game with the words and expressions (french at present, but I’m working on english expressions) A game with the public who have to find the good expression, like a child game.

I made this serie at the level « first degree», like a naive person (or a child, or a clown) trying to illustrate a usual imaged expression.

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I like the way 1000 Pieds Sous Terre takes such a participatory line, both towards people involved in the photos and to whom recognize the everyday situations you have captured with your camera. Your works are strictly related to the chance to create a deep involvement with your audience, both on a on a emotional level, as well as on an intellectual one: 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?

The visual image is an inseparable part of my being. I clearly recall the first time I discovered that I could express myself

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through the visual image. I was a child of ten.

At school I was bored. I was a very average pupil.

One day in the playground, when nothing was going on, I started to do a mime , to invent a story without knowing where it might lead, but with a certain dramatic flair and some visual gags thrown in. A small group of kids immediately formed around me, they looked at me with curiosity and they laughed.

From then on, I gained status, I became someone different, in their eyes a "somebody", and given the laughter and appreciation that ensued I was asked to do it again.

I had that day found (without yet realising it) the key that would open the door to my artistic career. Thanks to visual art I had learned how to counter my inability to express myself in writing.

At the beginning it was a physical art, an art of motion, of my own body movement. Circus, comic scenes, acrobatics. I call this the living image. Then, by a natural process of time and chance, I moved on to a fixed image, analog, crafted, manually produced, coloured by hand, cut-out, stuck down, composed. I call this the static image.

There always seems to be a sense of narrative in your series, as in the interesting Mister Zuper.

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interest our readers around the world... During these years you have exhibited in several occasions, so I would like to ask you what are the main differences that you had the chance to notice between the European scene and the Asian one... By the way, how would you define the nature of the relation with your audience?

How much do you explicitly think of a narrative for your images?

The discovery, or revelation of this creative potential is for me a source of energy. Do we not have to constantly invent new things to keep our audience in suspense? It has guided all my artistic choices for the past 30 years. It is, simply put, humour and the cult of personality.

In my shows, I played fictional characters in often farcical circumstances, anti-heroes whose everyday reality would be turned upside-down by a chance event. In my photography I (re)place ordinary people, who are looking for distractions that will stave off boredom, in a series of adventures.

I had never exposed in Asian ! Sorry… but I want ! It can be pretentious , but I’m shure that Japonese people could like my serie DOUCE AMERE. First for the style, purified, simple, photos in black and white, unique model (my daughter) all on the same principle, analogue technic. And then for the sens, the idea of relationship to time and childhood.

Perhaps someone from Japan will read this article !!

In particular, one of the most convincing aspects of your work is the way you manipulate images in order to bring a new level of significance to them: and I would go as far as to state that in a certain sense your works force 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?

Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Sylvain. Finally, 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 have few exhibitions in preparation (2 near Paris and one in Belgrade in March) I have a photographic Residency in Lisbonne in April with my photographic Collectif (www.collectifperiscope.com) , we’ll go there at 4 photographers. Each of us have to choose a Portuguese writer and a book and make 4 little photographic stories with that.

I worked on a new serie, who will be finish in Juillet 2015 for Arles Festival. I can’t say exactly what is it, but I can tell you that it’s a Love Story, and…I play all the characters !

I’m not shure that an artist have to reveal something! But, in my case, my material is me and perhaps that my personal concerns, when they passed throught the photographic medium, concern a largest public?

At the heart of my live shows and my experimental photography is the way that others see us, the admiration it provokes and the selfmockery.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

Before taking leave from this interesting conversation I would like to pose a but cliché question, but an interesting one that I'm sure will

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Viktor Fuček

Lives and works in Bratislava, Slovakia

Critical thinking, how we should live has led my work to conversional and participative-related projects to discover communication possibilities as a mode to correlate our world. My methodology is grounded on research and preparing the models in “laboratory” conditions. I am trying to map of whole spectre of forces forming the world. Previously I focused on observing natural processes to understand the base conditions forming human essence. Presently I would like to also understand human behaviour, such as being on the fragile edge between the order and chaos, formation and dissolution, stability and instability. For this topic I hold conversations with myself and with others. During work naturally arises conflicts and misunderstandings and their "solution" is the main point of the whole process. This conversations become an excellent model situations to solve problems related to discussions and polemics in the "larger" size. It is automatically activates a deeper and more consistent approach to the entire concept and terminology of our culture. Thus reveals its true potential and importance within the society.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

how did these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to the aesthetic problem in general?

peripheral.arteries@europe.com

Marked out with a versatile multidisciplinary feature, Viktor Fuček's work explores the liminal area in which the unconscious sphere and direct experience find unexpected points of convergence. In his Antigravity series that we'll be discussing in the following pages he accomplishes an insightful investigation about the eternal struggle of man against nature. One of the most convincing aspect of Fuček's practice is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of creating a deep and autonomous synergy between our limbic parameters and our rational categories: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to his multifaceted artistic production.

The objective of my work is to cover the whole field of visuality. The focus of my work runs across different media in order to express my ideas and the architecture is also a part of it. Indeed, its essence lies in the extension of the human body as our second skin. This expansion both physically and mentally is significant to all human efforts but collides with the resistance of the outer world.

However, this issue has its roots in the patriarchal system that is constantly "raped" by this world. On contrary to the patriarchal system, there is the female principle which is softer, more natural and can be more considerate to the world. Female approach is free of the male need to cover everything in concrete. Personally, I balance at the edge of these two worlds and here I seek a common ground-the way out of the present situation. Similarly, the themes of current theory of architecture influence me greatly. Terms as the emergency, attractor or algorithm appear in my

Hello Viktor and welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and hafter having graduated from the School of Architecture in Bratislava, you later nurtured your education attending Conceptual Studio on Academy of Fine Arts in Prague where you eventually graduated in 2012:

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work quite frequently and I apply them in my approach to painting and also in my installations involving people. I perceive people as the most difficult and most complex algorithm. That is why a man stands in the center of my interest.

The unique multidisciplinary feature that marks out your artistic production allows you to encapsulate several viewpoints: ranging from Painting and Drawing to Video and Installation: the results convey together an unconventional still consistent sense of unity. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.viktorfucek.net in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between opposite viewpoints as well as different techniques is the only way to express and convey the idea you explore.

As I mentioned before, because I am focused on the entire field of visuality working in various media seems only natural to me. In the centre of my interest is a man as a main point around which revolves the whole history of the art. Consequently, I apply different approaches to express a complex system of a man. I perceive every one of us as a unique universum and our physical existence as a representation of our shared space. As a result of this, I do not focus on only one medium because it would be an unreasonable restriction of the creativity.

For this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries we have selected your Antigravity series, a stimulating project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article.

What has at once caught our attention of your investigation about the eternal struggle of man against nature is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of urging the viewer to rethink about such conflictual relationship, drawing the viewers into a multilayered experience. So, while asking you to walk our readers through the genesis of this series. we would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely

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

The genesis of this series is based on my diploma thesis I did whilst studying at Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where I graduated in 2012. My thesis was focused on human breath. The very theme made a great impression on me because of its complexity, capturing all the human activities. Breath is a core theme of the entire range of human activities and the transcendental dimension is very significant in the perception of the subject. Pneuma is according to Philo of Alexandria a divine spirit which flows into human soul in ecstasy. According to stoicism breath is the air, spirit, life force as a sort of tension that creates order of the material world.

Pneuma is the soul of the world, the active side of fire, the soul of the world which forms a passive mass. Historically speaking, this doctrine might be perceived as a predecessor of the modern field theory. I approached this theme with the record of an ink drawing I had shaped with my own breath.

The resulting forms were very similar to the natural formations. In its essence, the combination of air/wind with the principle of water resembled a tree branching. However, when we added the gravity into the equation resulting shapes began to resemble the rock erosion. It manifested the interconnection of all existing elements into one complex system. However, the direct experience engaged both the whole body and the being into the process. The self-engagement raises the questions about human experience and understanding of the world.

We definitely love the way your Antigravity series, creates an effective channel of communication between the conscious sphere and the subconscious level. This creates a compelling unconventional narrative that, playing with the evokative power of reminders to the act of breathing, belonging to the universal imagery, establishes direct relations with the viewers.

German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe

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Inner Landscape

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psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". What is your opinion about it?

And in particular how do you conceive the narrative for your works?

the physically imprinted process. This approach in itself contains self-narration and strips down the excess plaque. Perhaps this might be the way out of these times flooded with icons and signs. I am very significantly affected by the views of Marshall McLuhan who explains our reinvention from visual perception to the perception of sound. In his work visuals are considerate to be the wildcard strategies which are continual and separated from the world.

However, narrative elements fall into the interdisciplinary category, standing at the

For men it is natural that one seek a story or some sort of form in art. For us it is a biological necessity to recognize familiar form or to leave a mental imprint. My work significantly reflects the performative approach and my work might be perceived as a map or a record of the external or internal storylines. The body is entered directly into

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Clouds over my head

Clouds over my head

Mixed media on plasterboard, 100x200cm, 2016

Mixed media on plasterboard, 100x200cm, 2016

intersection of a series of particulars. My work focuses exactly at this area.

We are particularly interested if you try to achieve a faithful translation of your previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create.

Your successful attempt to capturing nonsharpness with an universal kind of language reveals an incessant search of an organic inquiry into the sphere communication possibilities as a mode to correlate our world brings to a new level of significance the elusive but ubiquitous relationship between experience and imagination, to create direct relations with the spectatorship: how would you describe this synergy in your work?

Personally, I try to consciously go beyond the terms of memory or experience. Of course, these terms cannot be left out completely because we are all shaped and formed by them. However, I rather focus on the moment of unexpected or just initiated. This allows me to work at the unknown territory which provides me with the ability to

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visualize previously uncaptured moments. When I encounter a repeating moment I try to deal with it. I solve it by using the moment of unexpected gestures or radical inputs which radically disrupt the existing structure of the work. It's basically the verification and the openness of the work within its own limits in order to achieve something "substantial" in the art.

Therefore, my work might give the impression of an inconsistency or boundlessness but I perceive it as a personal affiliation to the periphery. Yet, I always balance at the edge at some point. I balance on the line where the particular parts collide and become unclear. In my opinion, this is the area that provides us with the new ideas for our world.

As you have remarked once, a crucial part of your artistic journey is centered on the exploration of the fragile edge between the order and chaos, formation and dissolution, stability and instability: the way you deconstruct perceptual images in order to assemble them in a collective imagery of landscape, invites the viewers to a process of self-reflection. Artists are always interested in probing to see what is beneath the surface: maybe one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your view about this?

While exhibiting a captivating vibrancy, your paintings seem to reject an explicit explanatory strategy: rather, you seem to offer to the viewer a key to find personal interpretations to what you convey into your works... this quality marks out a considerable part of your production, that is in a certain sense representative of the conflictual relationship between content and form: how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you develop a painting’s texture?

Moreover, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time?

In my works I want to evoke "the effect" of nature itself. Because nature is never boring, cheesy or clear and always manages to surprise us. We are able to watch it for hours still fascinated and charmed as in the begging. For example, I see my works as clouds

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without clarity, with random structure and with random regularities. However, in clouds everyone sees something different and this is the output I am most interested in – the activation of the human imagination. The images we see are a reflection of each one of us. What we see reflects each of us and we all project ourselves into our surroundings and surroundings project into us. The result is "The Nature in us." Therefore, my approach is mainly based on my inner intuition. It is reflected in the experiments with the formational procedures and approaches and also in the materials I use. I frequently work with the principle of a chance and I get surprised by the results. A lot of my works are random and leave surprising results. This generates different mutations, constantly changes the context and the in and out relationship. The main feature of my work is based on a deep mental and physical immersion into the process of creation. I try to imprint the parts of my body or work with its limits. Originally, my work was mainly physical. I used to set myself various limits that directly determined the creation of the work and the result was a record of a process/performance. In another period of my professional development, I put the emphasis on the aspect of a procedure. Here, I gave the initial input and the result was created more or less independently. Recently, I have been returning to the performative approach. It might be a result of my enchantment by the butó dance where the work is the revelation of my unseen features. Here I work on my softness.

Due to the advertisement, human perception is set to pay attention for approximately 30 seconds.

During this short time, the viewer must receive complete information otherwise the interest fades away. Therefore, my work is developing in a different direction. From the viewer I require his time and his involvement in the work. Nowadays, what does not allow people to penetrate very deeply into the reality of the world is the superficiality. As a result, we have a lot of us suffering from different neuroses. In its essence, these neuroses are just the unrevealed reality trying to visualize itself and become real. For instance, the handling of the viewer´s perception is clearly demonstrated in my video works. These videos are based on the changes happening in a long period of time (sometimes even hours). The John´s Cage quote sums it up: "If you won´t understand the work in the first fifteen minutes, give it fifteen more and it might come to you.”

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

How do you see your work evolving?

I'm currently fluctuating between two positions in painting. Firstly, I continue to develop the conversational principle of a construction. In June 2016, this principle will be projected in the next project planned for the entire month in a public space of a bus station. The project will be transferred to a social sculpture. I would like to involve a lot of random people who will be passing by. I want to invite these people to communicate through the work creation. Through art I would like to initiate their hidden creative potential. Secondly, I still continue on my works in the tactile painting.

Using this approach I map my personal world of experience and sensation.

Over your career your works have been internationally showcased in several occasions, including five solos, as your recent exhibition Random records of my reality, at the 1_7 Gallery, Ostrava. One of the hallmarks of your practice is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator

The natural principle I mentioned earlier requires an active watching approach from the viewer. This approach allows viewer to immerse in the work.

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Shai Yossef

Photo by Dror Varshevski

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Peripheral ARTeries meets

Shai Yossef Lives and works in Rosh Haayin, Israel Rejecting any conventional classification regarding its style, Shai Yossef's work draws the viewers through an unconventional and multilayered experience. Inspired from Bible, his works often inquires into social issues and in his body of works that we'll be discussing in the following pages he accomplishes the difficult task of addressing the viewers to extract and recreate personal narrative from his captivating images: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to Yossef's stimulating and multifaceted artistic production.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Katherine Williams, curator

I was a joyful boy, always curious, with tensioned senses as a street cat, ready and willing to absorb all the world I did not know had to offer.

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On the bright side, there was colorful TV, flashy fashion trends, hip-hop, video games, but even bad experiences like the gulf war, Chernobyl, the imaginary witch under my bad and even Michal Jackson’s zombies – only added to the setting of that crazy amusement park that was my teen years.

Hello Shai and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background.

Are there any experiences that particularly influence the way you currently conceive and produce your works? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to art making?

There were two other layers of great weight in my life. Religion and living alongside a father who was a public figure.

Hello, and thank you for exposing my art to your readers.

When I was 3 years old, my father was elected mayor, and served in that role for four tenures.

For 20 years, our house felt like the most interesting caravel of human figures, practically 24/7. At most times, coming home felt like entering a fascinating theater, which hosted all the possible (and impossible) kind of people, who talked, shouted, cry, laughed and made the dynamic human scale of emotions a very inspiring experience for me.

Going back in time might help me explain some of my work’s background.

I am part of the Y generation, and as such, I grew up in what felt like an endless amusement park, filled with flickering colorful lights and endless stimulations, so trying to single out just a few experiences that influenced my inner world would be nearly impossible.

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The other layer refers to religion.

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rare times I find myself so unified with my initial result, and the creation process is immediate and intense. These are moments of pure grace.

At most days I search for invigorating figures and compositions. I purchase photos from websites and collaborate with photographers , sometimes I edit them and at times, simply create them in my mind. I find myself explore during the creation process, and drift away from my initial planning. There were times I felt it didn’t work, and times I enjoyed the surprising result. That’s why I always try to balance myself and avoid from “over-scattering”.

Growing up in a traditional religious house, I was taught the importance of preserving religious and communal traditions. My family’s roots are from Yemen, and we hold on to that culture with great love. I have no doubt in my heart that this special blend was a fertile ground of unique impacts that manifested in my work in varies ways.

The results of your artistic inquiry convey together a coherent sense of unity: before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.shaiyossef.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you think that there is a central idea that connects all of your work as an artist.

“BORN” is a great example to the two-way state of mind between spontaneity and planning. The new born is being held by strong and protecting hands, which seem like a part of him, but the unfinished hands, with the multicolored drama around him, demonstrates the impermanent moment.

The main idea is to provoke what I call a “feelthink-feel process”. The use of portraits and expressive color work, is much more effective for me, than using nonlife images and symbols.

At times my creations send a very clear and simple message, while the composition is the one that conceal the true meaning of the work.

“FATHER AND SON” is a great example for that.

I searched for an intimate composition, but one that as a spectator – I will be a part of. I understood the way to get there, is to capture a spontaneous moment. The present of the viewers is supposedly interfering with this privet situation, but in a deeper sight we notice the father and the son are letting us in. This work has a very clear ambiance of love and warmth, but it also conceal a very privet story I share with my children.

I have always found faces to be interesting, due to the ‘story telling’ nature of them. They uncover secrets, feelings and history by using a dramatic and beautiful muteness.

The body of works that we have selected for this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries and that our readers have already started to admire in the introductory pages of this article has at once captured our attention for the way they combine rigorous balance with captivating aesthetics: when walking our readers through your usual process and set up, would tell us how do you select the subjects for your portrait series?

You are a versatile artist and your media include oil painting and sculpture: what are the qualities that you are searching for in the materials that you combine in your works?

That may relate as a contrast to the struggle I endure while choosing a theme. I feel very strongly about balancing the composition with the very liberating and loos paint work. Only at

At these days I am much more connected to painting than sculpturing. The three dimensional motive has narrowed itself to the canvas, but still burst out of it through generous

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thick layers of paint. I have a big passion for oil paints, which feels good and smell even better.

The tools I use are varies, seeing I believe everything useable. The main use concentrates on spatulas, but I love diversifying with rollers, fabrics, cardboards, sponges, and off course, my fingers. Canvas is the only permanent thing I am loyal to. Even though I am very much aware of materials quality, I am much more interested with the impact they create. One of the most important insights I was given by my figurative painting teacher, Tzuriel Sdomi, was to let go – never get attached to your work. Dare to Change it, scratch it, ruin it and rebuild it again. That is how you truly learn. That is how you break out.

We have really appreciated the vibrancy of thoughtful nuances of your pieces, in particulare the tone of blue in closer that seem to speak of intense emotional involvement. At the same time. other works as The shepherd shows vivacious thar to create a coherent balance between tension and dynamics. How did you come about settling on your color palette? And how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you develope a painting’s texture?

I remember visiting an old friend’s apartment, whose walls were painted in dark blue, top to bottom. Spending an entire evening surrounded by this darkness, with the company of whisky glass, felt emotionally devastating. Color theory and its psychological influences are a well-known science. Even though I learned it and was fully aware of it, I was not resistant to the experience.

It was one of the most extreme experiences I had, regarding the power of colors. The piece, “CLOSER”, shows two abstract characters smiling at each other, wrapped inside their own privet world. The shades of blue and black creates a feeling they are trying to disappear and camouflage themselves from whom ever is watching. The high-pitched contrast between the

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Photo by Dror Varshevski

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dark colors and the smiling faces, creates unexplained tension and discomfort. It was painted after a dramatic family experience, and in its way, was somewhat the way I found to unload the fear that grew inside me as a result. I usually paint on large canvases, but this painting is approximately 15’ to 30’. It reminds me it is ok to be scared – be just for a little bit. Keeping it small. “THE SHEPHERD” expresses the exact opposite of “CLOSER”. In red lips and bright eyes, the shepherd holds his face and locks, and shares his musings with the viewers. The lack of tension is noticed, to the point of near boredom. This is a time of rest. At the same time, there is still a common denominator between the two paintings – the relation between the strong and the week. The helpless needs the strong, to find shelter in his lap. That can explain the shepherd’s leisurely feeling. He is aware of his ability to lead and protect. A shepherd is the ultimate symbol of a worthy leader, as was told in the bible. It requires great responsibility, along qualities such as compassion on one side, and heroism on the other. When I stand in front of the canvas, I start with the first, rough, sketch. The main theme and general paint work are the ones that guide me, but at most time, I really don’t know what final result will appear at the end of the process, and I don’t concern myself with that. The psychological ingredient, which sets the tone at my work, is the bursting effect I seek.

Your oil paintings are influenced by social issues: Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "the artist’s role differs depending on which part of the world you’re in. It depends on the political system you’re living under". Not to mention that almost everything, ranging from Caravaggio's Inspiration of Saint Matthew to Joep van Lieshout's works, could be considered political, do you think that your works is political, in a certain sense? what could be in your opinion the role of Art in our unstable, everchanging contemporary age?

I agree with Mr. Orozco. In one way or the other, consciously or not, it all comes down to the social-

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Photo by Dror Varshevski

political well. It is very hard to separate it from the process. It's simply there. Like a shadow. At first impression, my political statement in my

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work is not recognizable. I use the paint the lure the viewer in, asking him to come closer and closer and investigate the piece on its own. The

name of the piece or the explanation that follows are usually the ones who give away its real identity and fills any missing blanks. I

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normally choose to speak out regarding my personal social criticism, in a moderate provocation. Art is a powerful political weapon,

and as such, it should be handled with great responsibility. I am all for provocation, without crossing the fine line between a statement, to a

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Photo by Tomer Yekutiel Part of the painting based on a photograph of the photographer Rod Waddington under an open content license "Attribution Share Alike"

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themselves, motivating their imagination to recreate the narrative conveyed by your images. Rather than attempting to establish any univocal sense, you seem to urge the viewers to elaborate personal associations: would you tell us how much important is for you that the spectatorship rethink the concepts you convey in your pieces, elaborating personal meanings?

sarcastic use of freedom of speech. I find the need to remind myself that even under the moral duty of criticism, there will always be a line that is not to cross, especially when it comes to a very sensitive political and social issue that has a potential of igniting a negative situation.

The places that hold a thin line between love and hate are the places that needs much more attention and sensitivity. This is the conservative and vital part that preserves pluralism. To me, the art of art is to build a bridge, instead of a wall.

I feel that exposing the work process to the viewers, or even insiuating it, arouses bigger curiosity that a clean, finished product. The usage of figurative elements alongside abstract ones, while adding or reducing some of them, makes the viewer feel at the mist of a dance between the hidden and the exposed. It leaves room for imagination and creates a deeper bond between the pieces to the viewer. I am not a minimalist artist, but I enjoy using vague scenes and let the name of the piece explain it.

In “Jungle”, one of my favorite works for example, the inspiration for the dark, powerful shades and the rich, complicated texture comes from the 1982 masterpiece “The Message”, by the hip-hop group GRANDMASTER FLASH. It shares the hard-core story about living in the ghetto, bleeding Harlem of those days, desperation and shattered dreams. That unique combination of powerful lyrics and sound left its mark on me. The first encounter with this gazing image makes the viewer ask and answer all the questions the piece rises – on its own, in a pure subjective way. It is fascinating to find out what we see and how we feel in the first reflection of things that are different from us. It is a very special way to get to know out true selves.

Your artwork are pervaded with images rich with symbolic features, as recurrent references to childhood. Could you elaborate a bit about your imagery? Morever, would you tell us something about the importance of symbols in your imagery?

I am very grateful for the simple and happy childhood I had. as a grown man, I admire and miss that childhood special inner-world. It's hard to stay indifferent to the joy they find in simple things, and as a parent, it’s a reminder to their special value as young people. That is one of the reasons their images make such a wonderful inspiration. Children are a symbol of all that is primary. They store values I find easy to connect to and represent in my work. Using children’s images is a marvels artistic use of preserving and remembering innocent, beauty, truth, forgiveness and joy. Even though they can be hard to handle and even rude or cruel, they are not dark or vindictive. They simply express some raw qualities from a bank of qualities they have not yet processed and developed. I find their point of view fascinating, and so naturally, they have a large stage in my artistic world.

Over the years your works have been internationally exhibited in several occasions, including your recent participation to the London International Creative Competition and the Billboard Creative Show in Hollywood Los

We like the way your works seem to excite the observers to „finish“ the painting by

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Photo by Dror Varshevski

Angeles. One of the hallmarks of your work is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as

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being a crucial component of your decisionmaking process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context?

This obvious connection, artist-piece-viewer, is self-evident. As a society, we naturally function in a two-way manner – even the most kindhearted, generous person, receives

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loyalty to my creation. Commercializing or the need to please others are tempting, and can very easily undermine ones judgment. In the past, I tried creating via demand, and found myself in deep suffering. I felt the creation is no longer mine, and it simply failed. Now days I rarely create ordered pieces. I assume it could work better in other genres, but my intuitive work process gives the result a lesser chance to please both sides. I wish to explore more areas, touching new fields and cross more boundaries.

I certainly try. I paint by the conscience state I am in and let myself go. I made a long way in the journey of refining and exploring myself. It was long enough to make me feel whole and complete about my decisions.

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

How do you see your work evolving?

Thank you for this wonderful opportunity. I believe my connection to portraits will be expressed in my future work as well. Key characters and outsiders will continue to appear on my canvas as a symbol. I live my life as a man of faith, and as such, I believe the creation’s purpose is the goodness within ourselves and that god’s will is to be good to us. My part of that is to make an imprint in my own way. It’s hard to see where and how my work will evolve in the future, seeing I am inspired from so many different experiences in a super dynamic world. Perhaps that is the fuel of growing. The only certain, important and study parameter to me in this whole challenging process, is staying true to myself.

something back from those he helped. I find this relationship to be healthy, legitimate and critical to our world. Never the less, my challenge as an artist is not be influenced by the public’s demand. Otherwise, I am risking my being, my purpose and myself. I highly value the viewer’s opinion, closeness and involvement, but it has to go hand in hand with my own

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Katherine Williams, curator peripheral.arteries@europe.com

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