LandEscape Art Review Special Issue

LandEscape A r t Anniversary Edition

MIYA ANDO RÜDIGER FISCHER YONA LEVY GROSMAN BARBARA BARTOS YE'ELA WILSCHANSKI LEE TAL GREG CONDON EDAN GORLICKI XIAOHONG ZHANG Emptiness The Sky (Shou Sugi Ban) 84 x 84 x 84 Inches, Charred Wood, Metal Paintings.

Installation created for The 56th Venice Biennale, 2015

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Edan Gorlicki Israel

Edan’s work always explores psychological and emotional realms.

He believes that through personal experience he can use his work as a mirror for both his audience and himself. Every work of Edan has been a personal and touching transparency of what we all as humans go through on a daily basis. Through his work he has dared to approach these difficult issues and expose them respectfully yet courageously to his audience.

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Romania

Many pedagogues of art believe that before learning cinematography, a great director must learn the art of the still photograph. I went the exact opposite way. I studied the great films noir of yesterday and today because the sheer expressive power and minimalism of monochrome really speaks to me.

There is such a range of emotion, beauty, despair, and violence that can be painted with monochrome.

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Xiaohong Zhang

Rüdiger Fischer Barbara Bartos

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Yona Levy Grosman

Serbia

Israel

My work is of narrative nature, it opens up a space from which the recipient can think ahead. The works contain one (or more) questions that you can talk about.

Mostly my questions research the relationships between reality and possible reality, between sign and matter.

You can say: I am suggesting a narrative. And as well: I am creating a situation.

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Yona Levy Grosman is a multi-disciplinary artist, whose artistic activity comprehends paintings, video art, drawings, poetry and essays.

Her paintings reflect the desert topography, the harsh and blinding light, the emptiness. She uses heavy texture and bright colors keeping the acrylic glossiness. Her style is figurative with abstract tendencies. But her paintings are by no means realist.

USA

Landscape painting was regarded as the highest form of Chinese painting.

My creative focus has been on the Traversing Medium and Reappropriating Motifs in Contemporary Art with continuous investigation of traversing traditional art form of Chinese landscape ink wash painting through the concept of contemporary western art setting.

Miya Ando USA

Applying traditional techniques of her ancestry, Miya Ando skillfully transforms sheets of burnished industrial steel, using heat and chemicals, into ephemeral abstractions suffused with subtle gradations of color.

She says: “I have a deep appreciation for the dynamic properties of metal and its ability to reflect light.

In this issue

Miya Ando Lives and works in New York City, USA Installation, Mixed media

Edan Gorlicki Lives and works in Leuven, Belgium Experimental Dance, Performance

Yona Levi Grosman Lives and works in Isreal Mixed Media, Painting

Barbara Bartos Lives and works Rome, Italy Mixed media

Xiaohong Zhang

Greg Condon USA

Ye'ela Wilschanski

My animation is intrinsically linked to my life. My stories draw equally on my past and present, freely mixing distant memory with recent observations. While on the outset I use abstract and nonlinear images, my films are always focused on a thematically unified, autobiographical narrative. I do not animate in one particular medium but focus on specific themes I try to express through whatever materials seem appropriate.

Israel

Using my body and voice to express myself, is what I have been doing since I was born.

As an artist, my body and voice are the most readily available raw materials to create from and about.

I started my way as an artist sewing clothes for my dolls. I needed to sketch my sewing designs, and those sketches progressed to paintings.

Lee Tal

Lives and works in the United States Video, Mixed media

Israel / USA

I’m trying to produce several effects and influences between the objects the space and the abstract background. One of the key components in my work is the space itself.

Ye'ela Wilschanski Lives and works in Jerusalem. Israel Performance, Installation, Drawing

Rüdiger Fischer Lives and works in Lübeck, Germany Mixed media

And the possibility to minimize the artistic abstraction that is already a reality in art .so I can combines between this two orders, as I’m attempting to bring them both into a new concept.

Lee Tal Lives and works in New York City Mixed media, Installation

Greg Condon Lives and works in New York Fine Art Photography

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Emptiness The Sky (Shou Sugi Ban) 84 x 84 x 84 Inches, Charred Wood, Metal Paintings.

Installation created for The 56th Venice Biennale, 2015

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Miya Ando Lives and works in New York City, NY USA

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iya Ando is an American artist whose metal canvases and sculpture articulate themes of contradiction and juxtaposition of ideas.The foundation of Ando’s practice is the transformation of surfaces. A descendant of Bizen sword makers, she was raised among sword smiths and Buddhist priests in a temple in Okayama, Japan.

Applying traditional techniques of her ancestry, she skillfully transforms sheets of burnished industrial steel, using heat and chemicals, into ephemeral abstractions suffused with subtle gradations of color. She says: “I have a deep appreciation for the dynamic properties of metal and its ability to reflect light. Metal simultaneously conveys strength and permanence and yet in the same instant can appear delicate, fragile, luminous, soft, ethereal.

The medium becomes both a contradiction and juxtaposition for expressing notions of evanescence, including ideas such as the transitory and ephemeral nature of all things, quietude and the underlying impermanence of everything.”Miya Ando received a bachelor

degree in East Asian Studies from the University of California at Berkeley and attended Yale University to study Buddhist iconography and imagery.

She apprenticed with a master metal smith in Japan, followed by a residency at Northern California’s Public Art Academy in 2009. Ando is the recipient of many awards, including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2012. Her work has been exhibited extensively all over the world, including a recent show curated by Nat Trotman of the Guggenheim Museum. Miya Ando has produced numerous public commissions, most notably a thirty-foot tall commemorative sculpture in London built from World Trade Center steel which is installed permanently at Zaha Hadid’s Aquatic Centre in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London. Her large-scale installation piece ‘Emptiness the Sky’ (Shou Sugi Ban) was featured in the 56th Venice Biennale, in the ‘Frontiers Reimagined’ Exhibition at the Museo Di Palazzo Grimani in 2015.

She lives and works in New York. @studiomiyaando

LandEscape meets

Miya Ando An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator with the collaboration of Katherine Williams landescape@europe.com

Questioning the role of the medium as a semantic vehicle, New York based artist Miya Ando investigates about the ephemeral nature of reality, in relation to the contingent reality we inhabit. While seducing the viewer with references to the primordial nature of elements she juxtaposes, she succedes in creating an area of deep interplay, that urges us to forget our need for a univocal understanding of symbolic contents, inviting us to rethink about the atemporal mark of Reality.

One of the most convincing aspect of Ando's work is the way she effectively harmonizes ancestral heritage with a lively gaze towards contemporariness. I'm very pleased to introduce our readers to his refined artistic production.

Hello Miya and a warm welcome to LandEscape: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? In particular, I think it's important to mention that as a descendant of Bizen sword makers, you were raised among sword smiths and Buddhist priests in a temple in your native Okayama: what is the role of traditional heritage in the way you conceive your works?

Hello and thank you very much for your interview.

I am American, my mother is Japanese and my father is Russian-American. I lived when I was a child in a redwood forest in Northern California and also spent time in my family Buddhist Temple in Japan. My ancestors were sword smiths before they became Buddhist priests.

My work is inspired and informed by an investigation of history, as well as by ideas of the ancient past juxtaposed with contemporary ideas and techniques. I am interested in matters of identity and memory.

Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from Emptiness The Sky , an extremely interesting work that has been featured in the 56th Venice Biennale and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest our readers to visit directly at http://miyaando.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?

The installation piece ‘Emptiness The Sky’ is inspired by a Japanese kanji character, ‘Sora’ which means both ‘emptiness or void’ as well as ‘sky’. Sunyata is another word for this idea.

The idea was to create an empty space of reflection, the form is inspired by traditional ‘chashitsu’ or tea houses, a very simple structure which delineates a space separate from the mundane world. The piece is about memory, identity and the notion of ‘home’. The free-standing sculpture is clad on the exterior Juerg Luedi

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Miya Ando

Art Review

with a charred wood, called Yaki-sugi or Shou Sugi Ban. This material is used in my neighborhood in Okayama, Japan.

It is a fire-preventative. The material embodies transformation. I find poetic the idea that this material is burned in order to protect it and the contents of the building within it. The interior has floor to ceiling metal paintings. The eastern or Zen notion of ‘empty’ has a meaning which can mean ‘full of opportunity to change’ and I am very interested in this concept.

The ambience created by Emptiness The Sky has reminded me the concept of Heterotopia elaborated by French social theorist Michel Foucault. What has mostly impacted on me is the way you have been capable of bringing a new level of significance to the sign of absence, that invites us to rethink about the concept of the environment we inhabit in.

This is a recurrent feature of your approach that urges 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 wayto 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?

Emptiness The Sky is a physical space which represents a different consciousness or state. I used Shou Sugi Ban (Charred Wood) to demarcate this space, the wood is a material which has very clearly been through a transformation and this is a symbol to represent an entry into a different plane or field. My intention was to create a physical representation of an inner space, a space of memory, a space in another level of consciousness. detail from myFunerals, Performance

Miya Ando

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Emptiness The Sky (Shou Sugi Ban) 84 x 84 x 84 Inches, Charred Wood, Metal Paintings.

Installation created for The 56th Venice Biennale, 2015

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Obon, 48x48 Inches, Resin, Phosphorescence, Bodhi (Ficus Religiosa) Skeleton Leaves, Wat

Miya Ando

Miya Ando

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Another interesting work of yours that has particularly impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled Obon: in particular, when I first happened to get to know with this piece I tried to relate all the visual information and the presence of a primary elements as water and leaves to a single meaning. But I soon later realized that I had to fit into the visual rhythm suggested by the work, forgetting my need for a univocal understanding of its symbolic content: in your work, rather that a conceptual interiority, I can recognize the desire to enabling us to establish direct relations... Would you say that it's more of an intuitive or a systematic process?

‘Obon’ is an ongoing public art project that I have been putting forth for the past six years in various locations and countries.

The piece is inspired by the ancient Japanese festival of Obon, a ceremony to honor and commemorate the departed. Obon is an ancient event, which occurs every 15th day of the 7th month of the Lunar Calendar (mid-August).

It is believed that during this 3 day ceremony the spirits of one’s departed family members and ancestors return to the home and are reunited with their loved ones. Lanterns are hung inside the house to welcome the spirits inside and on the evening of the last day of the ceremony, lanterns are floated on rivers to guide the spirits back to the netherworld.

There is a beautiful, non-denominational notion of respect, interconnectivity, history, and memory that is celebrated with the festival of Obon. For the ‘Obon’ (Puerto Rico) version of this piece, I created 1000 hand painted (resin and phosphorescence) skeleton Ficus Religiosa (Bodhi) leaves. The leaves were hand painted with non-toxic, phosphorescent pigment.

This phosphorescent pigment ‘charged’ with sunlight during the day as the leaves were cast afloat on a small pond, at night in darkness the leaves emitted a soft, blue glow for a five hours.

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Miya Ando

Miya Ando

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9/11 Memorial Sculpture created with steel recovered from The World Trade Center Buildings 28 feet x 6 feet x 4 feet. Permanently Installed at Zaha Hadid Aquatic Centre Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London

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Miya Ando

Art Review

Obon, 48x48 Inches, Resin, Phosphorescence, Bodhi (Ficus Religiosa) Skeleton Leaves, Wat

Each fragile leaf appeared clear during the day and became luminous at night. This was a 24 hour, temporal public project.

between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

Multidisciplinarity is a crucial aspect of your art practice and you seem to be in an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between several disciplines, taking advantage of the creative and expressive potential of Sculpture as well as of Painting: while crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis

I consider materials to be intrinsic to my practice, I focus a great deal of attention on materials and in selecting the appropriate material for each project. The material reiterates, supports, communicates the idea of each work, therefore I allow myself to consider any and all substrates and mediums in my work.

Skeleton leaves are very intriguing to me in their paradoxical nature. They were once alive, now

Miya Ando

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Miya Ando

Art Review

they have been bleached, dyed and preserved, leaving only their structure. I sew them into configurations, mandalas and hanging installations for example, such as ‘Koyo’ (which in Japanese means ‘Changing of Color of Autumn Leaves). The leaves appear to be delicate, lace-like, fragile but in fact they are quite strong.

During these years your works have been extensively exhibited around the world, including a recent show curated by Nat Trotman of the Guggenheim Museum. So, before taking leave from this interesting conversation I would like to pose a a question about the nature of the relation with your audience: in particular, do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decisionmaking process in terms of what type of language for a particular context?

I remain within my own established visual vocabulary regardless of the context.

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

Thank you very much, I have two upcoming solo exhibitions, September 2015 at Sundaram Tagore Gallery Hong Kong and October 2015 at Sundaram Tagore Gallery Singapore. I will post images and information on instagram: @studiomiyaando Also my piece if The Venice Biennale will be on view through November 22, 2015.

An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator landescape@europe.com

Miya Ando's Solo Shows

Sky/Emptiness (Sora/Ku) Sundaram Tagore Gallery Hong Kong: Wednesday, September 23 to Friday, October 30 Title: Sky/Emptiness (Sora/Ku) Sundaram Tagore Gallery Singapore: Thursday, October 29 to Sunday, December 6

Miya Ando

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Edan Gorlicki Living and working between Groningen, the Netherlands and Heidelberg, Germany

An artist's statement

T

he philosophy and beliefs surrounding Edan’s artistic approach are based on searching the self within its surroundings.

Inspired yet confronted by the world around him, Edan finds artistic comfort within the search for belonging and connecting. What better way to explore life then through movement and researching the body within the space around it?

Edan’s work always explores psychological and emotional realms. He believes that through personal experience he can use his work as a mirror for both his audience and himself. In the past Edan has made stage works on numerous subjects such as hierarchy, sexuality, fantasy, stress, addictions, belonging and perceptions amongst others.

Every work of Edan has been a personal and touching transparency of what we all as humans go through on a daily basis. Through

his work he has dared to approach these difficult issues and expose them respectfully yet courageously to his audience.

Born in Haifa, Israel, Edan Gorlicki is a choreographer, teacher and movement research artist based between Heidelberg, Germany and Groningen, the Netherlands. As a dancer he has worked in Israel with the Batsheva Ensemble Dance Company and Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak Dance Theater.

In the Netherlands he has danced for NND/Galilidance and Club Guy and Roni.

Edan has performed the works of may choreographers such as: Ohad Naharin, Inbal Pinto, Sharon Eyal, Itzik Galili, Paul Selwyn Norton, Emmanuel Gat, Guy Weizman & Roni Haver and many more.

Edan Gorlicki

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LandEscape meets

Art Review

Edan Gorlicki An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator and Josh Ryder, curator landescape@europe.com

Edan Gorlicki accomplishes a refined investigation about the liminal area in which the Self establishes an ephemeral relationship with the outside reality: his incessant search of an organic symbiosys between several viewpoints offers to the viewer a multilayered experience, creating an area of deep interplay that allows us to enter psychological and emotional realms urging to force things to relate andexploring suspended worlds filling them with our personal experiences.

One of the most convincing aspect og Gorlicki's work is the way he lead us to evolve from a passive audience to conscious participant, inviting us to rethink about the way we relate both to the outside world and to ourselves. I'm particularly pleased to introduce our readers to his multifaceted artistic production.

Hello Edan, and welcome to LandEscape: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid training and after your dance studies in California, you moved to Israel where you degreed in Performing Arts both at the Wizo School and at the Reut School, in Haifa. How did these experiences influence you as an artist and and how do

they impact on the way you currently conceive and produce your works?

Hi! Thank you for having me!

Yes I started dancing at a very young age and have been fortunate to have studied at very good schools in Israel. My teachers there were a great contribution to my development as a choreographer and I am very grateful for their mentorship. At school I was the only boy in the dance department. Of course this was difficult on many levels but it was also a great benefit as I was able to receive allot of attention from my teachers.

They invested allot more energy in me then they did to the rest of my class. I am not sure that my school or my teachers have a direct influence on the way I conceive and produce my works today but I imagine that being an Israeli has something to do with that. I think we all are very influenced by our cultural upbringing. Especially growing up in such a complex survival driven country like Israel. I think that that survival instinct is imbedded in my attitude towards my work and lifestyle in general.

Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up for making your artworks? In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work? And how much preparation and time do you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

Well first of all I must point out that every creation process has a different identity, Juerg Luedi

Edan Gorlicki (photo by Sebastian Geiger)

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Production: Bliss Photographer: Valeria Cosi

Edan Gorlicki

Edan Gorlicki

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process and outcome. In most cases I have an indication of what the next work will be like but then discover as I go that actually the work is something else completely. I guess I could say that the creation process is for me more of a listening process and following where the work is taking me rather then directing the work. It is more of a relationship between my goals for the work and the work itself. The choreographer in me then becomes a mediator.

I normally start with a clear direction that interests me, weather its a feeling, a visual image, a scenario or atmosphere, a personal experience or even just an interest to work with a certain dancer or collaborator. It is never the same. Inspiration comes from everywhere. In the freelance dance scene, unfortunately the development of a work mostly doesn’t start in the studio or experimenting with materials, those things come later. I never work alone. In dance we are always collaborating with many people.

Because of this, the amount of organization, productional preparations and grant confirmations always needs to be done first. In the beginning I really had allot of problems with this because I was impatient and just wanted to get into the studio. Now I have more appreciation for this process because it shapes the way the work will be made and forces the first conceptual steps and ideas to form.

I think I enjoy more the creations that are driven from a personal psychological place where the process for me might be more therapeutical. I think I just care more about those pieces. Funny enough though, with a critical eye, I think those pieces don’t end up my best work. Maybe they are too emotionally charged, Im not sure, but I can tell that those

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Edan Gorlicki

Art Review

works are not the most communicative to the public in the end.

Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from Body Language, an extremely interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest our readers to visit directly at http://edangorlicki.com in order to get a wider idea of your multifaceted artistic production. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this interesting project? What was your initial inspiration?

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

During the creation process of another piece of mine ‘A little too close’ I developed together with my dancers an improvisational movement vocabulary that was quite unique to me. After we finished that creation process I became quite fascinated with the idea of diving deeper into this unique physicality to explore what exists further in this quality. I went into the studio with one of my dancers who deeply inspires me: ’Mayke van Kruchten’. While watching her move this way it seemed to me as though her body was deciding for her what she was doing. This triggered an interest for us to see if it is possible to have our body choreograph what we do. We developed a step by step process that attempted to eliminate (as much as possible) mental creativity, judgment and decision making while improvising. This resulted in a fascinating journey where Mayke was discovering where her body is taking her, something that was equally exciting to watch.

This is where the idea came to present this form of movement and live experimentation to the public as a performance installation rather then a theatrical work. I called it ‘Body Language’ and we started to perform it in

Production: Body Language, AltoFest Festival Naples, It

diverse locations. During the performances we started to notice that Mayke’s body was behaving and producing interestingly different qualities and physicality’s based on the space and environment that she was in. N ow for me ‘Body Language’ is an installation that exposes the authenticity of a certain environment created by the space, energy and people in it through the physicality of the dancers body.

The hallmark of your practice is a search of the Self within its surroundings: when

Edan Gorlicki

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aly, 2014

explorating the relationship our relationship with the ousde world, you seem to deconstruct and assembly memories in order to suggest a process of investigation about the liminal area in which the Self and the Outside share an ephemeral coexistence: maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this?

Yes I think that is very interesting way of putting it and touches the essence of the

identity of an artist as well. I do think that the role of the artist is to mirror society in some way and create a form that could offer the platform for discourse and interpretation, especially relating to our inner nature as people and our nature as a society. I think that I frame my work around exploring the self within its surroundings because it is a natural thing for me to do. I feel it is the basic need we have as social animals for belonging and connection, whether its to one another, one with nature, one with his/her beliefs and spirituality and so on‌

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Edan Gorlicki

Art Review

I have appreciated the way Body Language takes an intense participatory line on the conception of art. In particular, your investigation about psychological and emotional realms has reminded me of the idea behind Thomas Demand, who stated once that "nowadays art can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological narrative elements within the medium instead". While conceiving Art could be considered a purely abstract activity, there is always a way of giving it a permanence that goes beyond the intrinsic ephemeral nature of the concepts you capture. So I would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

I don’t know much about this to state a clear hypothesis. The only thing I can do is speak from my own personal experience. In that case for me many of the subjects in my works are driven from an emotional place of personal experience. However, it is my inspiration more then it is my practice.

I don’t think its either this way or that way. I think its possible to create something that has no personal experiential influence and it can be great. I think that its possible to do both. In fact I would encourage to give that a try and explore the difference. I definitely think that personal experience is intrinsically implemented into what ever we do - its what we know. But shouldn’t a creation process be more about what we don’t know?

You seem to be in an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between several viewpoint out of temporal synchronization, that offer to the viewer a subtle but effective sense of narrative: moreover, the reference to the universal

gestures that recurs in your works seems to remove any historic gaze from the reality you refer to, offering to the viewers the chance to perceive in a more atemporal form. In this sense, I daresay that the semantic juxtaposition between sign and matter that marks out your art, allows you to go beyond any track of contingency... What's your point about this? And in particular, how much do you explicitly think of a narrative for your works?

Like I said, every work is different and therefore needs diverse strategies and methods to be able to communicate what you want to say.

Clarity is very important to me. It offers the viewer freedom to experience and feel more then to have to think, analyze or solve some sort of puzzle or mystery of ‘what is the artist trying to tell me’. In some cases the tool of narrativity can be very useful for clarity.

I try my best to layer my works in a way that offers the viewer both the clarity of what this work is discussing but also the abstraction to interpret your own take on it. In my work ‘A little too close’ I consciously chose to work with a very well known pop-song. I am aware that this creates a very specific association to most of my audiences, immediately narrating a direct story. However, I then repeat this song in the piece using 7-8 different cover versions that then distorts this association, suggesting that there are many ways of seeing something that was a moment ago perfectly clear and simple.

Simultaneously very aesthetically presenting abstract movement that offers plenty of room for interpretation.

Another intersting work of yours that has particularly impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled Hunger, in which you accomplish a deep investigation about the psychological and social affects of addictions: when I first happened to get to know with this

Nara Walker

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Production: Spinsels Photographer: Koen Jantzen

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Edan Gorlicki

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experimental piece I tried to relate all the visual information to a single meaning. But I soon realized that I had to fit into the visual unity suggested by the work, forgetting my need for a univocal understanding of its symbolic content: in your work, rather that a conceptual interiority, I can recognize the desire to enabling us to establish direct relations... Would you say that it's more of an intuitive or a systematic process?

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

The triangular psychological relationship between the addict, co-addict and the addiction itself was at the heart of this work. This systematic cycle is very clear when you lay out the roles of each participant, however, the cycle itself becomes an entity of its own when you begin to look at the bigger picture and consider all three participants as one existing issue.

As Marina Abramovich once stated, "to be a performance artist, you have to hate theatre", to reject the idea of a fictional representation of the reality you are questioning in your works.

But when it comes to investigate about the semiotic of power and control as you did in A little too close it is almost impossible to split form from substance: the thin line that separates positive leadership with intimidating hierarchal control and dictatorship is almost embedded in a maleconstructed culture, that conveys apparently innocuous symbols to in order to convince people to take it as true ... what's your point about this? In particular, the capability of discerning the essential feature of a concept

Edan Gorlicki

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Production: The Herd

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Production: A little too close Photographer: Lukas Beyeler

Nara Walker

Nara Walker

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Edan Gorlicki

Art Review

to translate it into an accessible visual is a key point of your practice: how much do you explicitly think of such communicative aspect for your work?

Quite allot. I make work for public of all kinds of people. Although (unfortunately) most of my audiences are cultural intellectual types of people and I very much care for their experiences while watching my works.

I am still very interested in capturing the hearts of the (lets call them) un(dance)educated public who for whatever reason find themselves in the theater watching this. A little too close talks about such a simple subject that anyone can relate to which is the power of and in a relationship. It was important for me to make this work very easy to watch.

That is actually another layer in the piece as well. Relationships are tricky yet from the outside they always seem simple. Other couples always look like they have it all figured out - but do they really?

The visual aesthetics in this work offer that kind of starting point. It seems so beautiful, until you get used to the attractive image and then you see whats really happening inside.

Everybody understands this, and I love that.

By the way, although I'm aware that this might sound a bit na誰f, I have to admit that I'm sort of convinced that Art -especially nowadays- could play an effective role in sociopolitical issues: not only just by offering to people a generic platform for expression... I would go as far as to state that Art could even steer people's behaviour... what's your point about this?

Does it sound a bit exaggerated?

Absolutely! I not only believe this is true, we even have the evidence to prove it. In 2007 I had the privilege to co-found Random Collision together with my friend Kirsten Krans. Random Collision is a company that develops work in a very unique way involving the general public in

Edan Gorlicki

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Production: A little too close Photographer: Christian Glaus

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Production: The Herd

Edan Gorlicki

Edan Gorlicki

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the creation process. Part of our programs were collaborations with other fields, especially scientific fields of research.

Recently, Kirsten developed a trilogy titled Experiment A, B and B+. This project was a scientific experiment about group formations and was collaboratively developed by social psychologists and choreographers. These experiments manage to prove that the visual performance that the public is watching directly affects the behavior of the public after the performance and the way they interact with one another. This is a fascinating project and I recommend looking it up at www.randomcollision.net During these years your works have been performed in several occasions around the world, including a recent participation at OpenFLR in Florence, Italy. Moreover, I think it's important to highlight that you are the creator of LAMA movement research, that allows you to get in touch with a worldwide scenario, teaching both to dancers and nondancers. So, before taking leave from this interesting conversation I would like to pose a a question about the nature of the relation with your audience: in particular, do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decisionmaking process in terms of what type of language for a particular context?

I might be making allot of my work for my own satisfaction but I first and foremost create things that I feel I want and need to share with others.

Those others are my audiences. We need to be a bit more selective on what we present to the general public. If we (artists) want to make a difference on any level in whatever way, we have to think of who is watching what we are making first and then see what it is we can show them and think how can we surprise, touch, educate, transform, develop and create more thoughts, questions and discourse amongst the

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Edan Gorlicki

Art Review

Production: A little too close, Photographer: Karel Zwaneveld

public. I personally do care about what they see and experience. Not necessarily what they think about it as in like or not like. But I try to remind myself that the reaction or reception I get from the public after a performance can be a great guide for me towards understanding more the way they see things. This can improve my next pieces. For me, the public reception is my critic.

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

Well, as a freelance choreographer I am forced to exist in my past, present and future

simultaneously. I am still reflecting my last project, am working on several current projects and busy with organizing and developing future projects as well. I am currently working on a new full evening production called ‘The Players’.

This piece is the final part of my three-year study on power and control. Inspired by the theme of Psychopathy, The Players raises questions about social status, manipulation, peoples’ intentions, what is reality, hierarchy, deceit, and how far are we willing to go to get what we want? In addition I am preparing a new work for the Ludwik Solski State Drama School in Krakow set to premiere in December 2015.

Thank you for having me!

Nara Walker

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Production: A little too close Photographer: Karel Zwaneveld

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68 - Oil on canvas 200/150 c"m , 1984-5 , Fort - Mizad Zohar

LandEscape 39 Art Review

Yona Levy Grosman Lives and works in the western Negev, Israel

Y

ona Levy Grosman is a multidisciplinary artist, whose artistic activity comprehends paintings, video art, drawings, poetry and essays. By her choice, she lives and works in the Negev, the southern part of Israel which is mostly a vast desert.

acrylic glossiness. The painting's surface reflects the desert dunes, but the acrylic glossiness bestows a sense of artificiality. The large canvases echo the desert infinity. Sometimes the artist adds to the main painting other painted canvas that act like and break the rectangular format.

And the desert is the most influential factor of her artistic work. It seems that her whole creation is an attempt to understand, sometimes to conquer, sometimes letting herself being captured by the desert's power and magic.

One may refer to her work within the romantic paradigm of the sublime, on one hand the admiration of the vast landscape, on the other the realization of the insignificance of human beings.

Her style is figurative with abstract tendencies.

But her paintings are by no means realist. They invoke the historical and cultural roots of the desert which is the borderline of two civilizations, ancient Egyptians and the Biblical Hebrews.

It has symbolist affiliations, and above all the love of this rough country"

Sorin Heller

Her paintings reflect the desert topography, the harsh and blinding light, the emptiness. She uses heavy texture and bright colors keeping the

(Museolog Independent Curator)

The numbers of the works listed in the article are the numbers that appear in the Yona's pantings catalog. The catalog and works could be seen at the http://goo.gl/TvFXWy

LandEscape meets

Yona Levy Grosman An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator with the collaboration of Katherine Williams landescape@europe.com

An effective synergy between a rigorous analytical gaze and a refined artistic sensibility allows Yona Levy Grosman to accomplish a suggestive investigation in the blurry area in which memories and perceptual reality coexist in an atemporal dimension. Unlike artists as Carsten HĂśller, she does not let the viewers in the foggy area of doubt: her analytic approach drives us to investigate about the relation between reality and the way we perceive it.

One of the most convincing aspect of Levy Grosman's practice is the way she creates an area of intellectual interplay between perception and memory, contingency and immanence, that gently invites the viewers to explore the crossroad between human emotion and Nature's geometry: I'm very pleased to introduce our readers to her refined artistic production.

Hello Yona and a warm welcome to LandEscape: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? In particular, you have a solid formal training and you degreed with excellence at the at Maimad art school in Tel-Aviv, Israel: would you like to tell our readers how this experience has influenced your development as an artist and the way you currently conceive your works? By the way, do you think that your previous studies

Psychology may have informed your process as well?

Most of my adult life I have lived in the Negev which is the desert region of Israel. Most of my artistic work happened while living in the Negev.

[Works 70, 133.]

When the poet wrote the words "Man is but a landscape of his homeland" they summarized exactly the smells, tastes, sounds, rhythms, colors and scenes that shape not only the place, but also the structure of the human psyche and the reflections which guide and build the private and public reality and its social context. And the spirit of the desert where I live, sends hidden forces into all of my work as the individual grain of sand builds the dune and together become a parable of man and society. [Works 271, 234,] I think my way is not different from the way of many other artists. €Artists, throughout the history of art, have never remained indifferent to insights, scientific innovation, and social changes that occurred during their tenure. Each milestone in the history of art drew its content from the natural environment and all humanity in its time. And it is natural that I derived some insights from my studies of psychology at Bar-Ilan University. For example, one of the areas studied is that of human visual perception. When we look at the well-known images of figures and backgrounds such as a white urn standing in the middle of the field and the two characters that frame and define it, we can see either the pitcher or the two surrounding characters at any one time but not all of them simultaneously. So it is also with the well-known image of the young woman or old woman. Which will be the figure seen and which Juerg Luedi

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Yona Levy Grosman

Art Review

70 - Oil on Plywood 80/300 cm, 1989

will be the background depends on how we direct the mind This is a small example that shows the main limitation of the person dealing with a reality which has infinite dimensions. And of course, when I delved into the subject of human perception, studies revealed a long series of limitations inherent in human nature. All of these are symptoms which are the result of a central limitation that I define as linear thinking.

I turn the limitation of linear thinking into a basic working tool with which I work to describe reality as one who comes to say, "These are my human tools. They represent the human in me

when I paint infinite landscapes. So in every painting, every subject, this human limitation is present." [Works 68, 69, 299.]

Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from Landscapes, an extremely interesting project that has been featured in the 56th Venice Biennale and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest our readers to visit directly http://goo.gl/KFOOXV in order to get a wider idea of your multifaceted artistic production. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this stimulating project? What

Yona Levy Grosman

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was your initial inspiration?

Desert landscapes are unattainable. The ambivalent feeling which commands the heights of the cliff looking to the horizon visible where the sky above and the earth beneath meet in infinity and everything is visible. This creates a sense of human greatness on the one hand, and the smallness of man in relation to the place.

This is the finite man’s ultimate longing for the infinite.

Yearning for the infinite through art is not new.

Caspar David Friedrich, J.M.W. Turner, Brancusi, Rothko, Miya Ando and many others have dealt with this problem in the images placed before

them. How to get the feel of this yearning into a painting on canvas or a sculpture of stone and iron.

Current artists also search for different paths in order to portray the sublime. For example; Hiroshi Sugimoto, Teresita Fernandez as well as the work of Catherine Opie in her series “Skiers�. All of these artists test the ability to achieve the highest expression of the intangible and the sublime through the use of absence, empty space and reduction.

I, too, face the same task to find ways to convey the yearning for the sublime and infinite onto the canvas. Most artists utilize the sea, the

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Yona Levy Grosman

Art Review

166 - Oil on canvas 100/100 c"m , 1990-1

Yona Levy Grosman

LandEscape 45 Art Review

299 - Oil on canvas 120/160 c"m , 2014

mountains or any other scenery within which they live as suitable imagery to express the sublime in their work. It is natural that the place

where I live with its dessert views, white light, waves of sand on the dunes, dry cracks in the thirsty soil and the relationship of the grain of

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Yona Levy Grosman

Art Review

77 - Oil on canvas 100/300 c"m , 19897-8 , Ramon Crater

sand to the high dune become for me preferred imagery to achieve the feeling of yearning for the sublime. I do this by breaking the frame so that my paintings are composed of several frames that create incompleteness. And the thing that characterizes my work is that the human fingerprint of cognitive and perceptual limitation is present in every picture of every image of

infinity. [Works: - 181, 280, 286.]

The ambience created by Landscapes has reminded me the concept of Heterotopia elaborated by French social theorist Michel Foucault. What has mostly impacted on me is the way you have been capable of bringing a new level of significance to the sign of

Yona Levy Grosman

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absence, that invites us to rethink about the concept of the environment we inhabit in.

This is a recurrent feature of your approach and as you once remarked, the core of your work consists of looking at the reality around, attempting to deconstruct and assembly of those endless sights... this urges the viewers' perception in order to challenge

the common way to perceive not only the outside world, but our inner dimension... I'm sort of convinced that some informations & ideas are hidden, or even "encrypted" as microscopic grains of sand in the environment we live in, so we need -in a wayto decipher them. Maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal

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Yona Levy Grosman

Art Review

300 - Oil on canvas 125/250 c"m , 2015

unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this?

There is truth in your words. Foucault spoke about the use of language as a rather limited logical instrument, to sort and categorize the reality in order to understand and explain it.

Thus the words that make up language are rooted in the fundamental divisions of a binary system. But my language is mainly the language of painting. In my opinion the best person to describe this is W.J.T. Mitchell.

Indeed, a person's inner nature is evolved as a consequence of the tools available to grasp a reality of endless dimensions, are restricted to only two dimensions (the time dimension is not considered here being a biological concept and

it is seen as a linear dimension). A human with her mental limits coping with endless reality, is the foundation and center of my work. On the one hand, I paint endless images while on the other hand, these images are illustrated by fine lines like the lines of man’s linear thinking. It is as if it had become a large canvas of delicate embroidery where detail joins detail to create the element of infinity. [Works 77, 300] This is in contrast to the romantic artists and other neo-romantics who used the dramatic transitions of color or painted dramatic situations to convey a sense of the little man against the forces of nature such as the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich; or the exchange of colors and unique locations in order to create a meditative sense of longing for infinity as Rothko's works or works of Miya Ando.

Yona Levy Grosman

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286 - Oil on canvas 105/120 c"m , 2012, The Negev Junction - in Ramat Negev

My landscape paintings, influenced by the place where I live, are provided with a white light meditation and include the drama presented as a result of the use of line and / or the creation of emptiness [work 286] when the viewer is

confronted with these two opposite feelings simultaneously. In this painting I increased the feeling of absence by combining several frames that created space and incompleteness of the frame. It seems that this gap creates a sense of

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Yona Levy Grosman

Art Review

193 - Oil on canvas 100/300 c"m , 1996

restlessness and longing for wholeness.

In my work I examine the means at my disposal to implant in the viewer the feeling of absence and the sublime despite the painting being presented as almost realistic.

The tools I use are first and foremost the line. For example, in work 77 the lines separate the landscape elements and create movement in the creation-like landscape of the Ramon Crater in the

Negev.

Another tool is the breaking of the frame. One of the qualities of the person who is contending with the inconceivable reality is to build theories which are essentially frames of reference for action which give him confidence and a sense of stability and control. Most of my works are made of a number of frames which means that the image is only part of the whole. This creates a sense of

Yona Levy Grosman

LandEscape 51 Art Review

lacking a sense of instability and this is the longing for completeness. An example of this is work 286 from the landscape series or work 258 from the series about my insights based on the scientific theory of chaos.

Other works refer directly to man’s attempt at the impossible; the impossible of trying to completely control what is uncontrollable. Works 193, 200, in which were created demarcations,

but the movement breaks the boundaries.

In addition the process of transition from the concrete to the abstract as in the case of reduction are part of the search for the optimum tools for the expression of the sublime. See works 70 and 129 and sketches from 1-5 to 3-5. I recommend that you look at the drawings in which there is a central place to the empty space on the page

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Yona Levy Grosman

Art Review

during the process of my translation of scene to paper. http://goo.gl/dqHcCw Additional drawings can be found at, http://www.art-gallery-yona.net/draws11.html I like the way your careful approach offers a rigorous but at the same time lively visual translation of the sights tha pervades our reality: in this sense, your practice is intrinsically connected to the chance of creating an area of intense interplay with the viewers, that are urged to evolve from the condition of a merely passive audience: I definitely love the way In the Land of Forgetfulness questions about the concept of Self, taking an intense participatory line not only on the way we enjoy Art, but also and especially on its conception. In particular, your investigation about the intimate consequences of constructed realities has reminded me of the ideas behind Thomas Demand's works: while conceiving Art could be considered a purely abstract activity, there is always a way of giving it a permanence that goes beyond the ephemeral nature of the concepts you capture. So I would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

The vivid visualizations probably originate in the white light of the Negev sun. And just like in the work of other contemporary artists in my work the light and lively colors are not in opposition to the sublime.

About a month ago I road on highway 101 in Morgan Hill to Gilroy, California. The mountains on the horizon were a hazy blue just like the in the paintings of American and many Europeans artists. In Israel the horizon is not blue and on a clear day it is sharp As for your question, the answer is yes and yes.

200 - Oil on canvas 120/190 c"m, 1998-9

Yona Levy Grosman

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Yona Levy Grosman

Art Review

176 - Industrial oil color & Oil on canvas 100/115 c"m , 1999

A large part of the work of any artist is at the subconscious level. The spirits of the place, time, culture and processes of the artist's life lead him to the way he meets and analyzes the reality around him and also directs him to what interests him as well as with what and how to express his art work.

One of my favorite age-old sayings of Confucius is, "To an ignorant man a mountain is a mountain, the valley is a valley and a river is a river. To an educated man a mountain is not a mountain, a valley is not a valley and a river is not a river. To a man of exceptional intellect a mountain is again a mountain, a valley is again a

Yona Levy Grosman

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220 - Clay & Oil on canvas 50/70 c"m , 2000

valley and a river is again a river."

All the artists who broke the creative boundaries set by their predecessors, are artists who have passed through all the mental processes and knew how to combine strengths in their subconscious and research process into a personal statement which simultaneously draws on both the subconscious and the processes of conscious investigation always seeking a new perspective. In work 176 I drew an unconsciousness bursting out over the neat top layer of the conscious. Later the technique of

creating a gaping wound will serve me in the series "The sand will cover everything."

In my opinion, every encounter and every new experience, always rests on experiences that preceded it. However, an experienced artist will always seek, examine and break through the known boundaries while acknowledging that everything is limited and temporary.

Another interesting project of yours that has particularly impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled

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Yona Levy Grosman

Art Review

214 - Industrial oil color & Oil on canvas 120/180 c"m , 1999

The Sand Will Cover It All: in particular, when I first happened to get to know with this piece I tried to relate all the visual information and the presence of a primary elements as sand to a single meaning.

But I soon realized that I had to fit into the visual rhythm suggested by the work, forgetting my need for a univocal understanding of its symbolic content: in your work, rather that a conceptual interiority, I can recognize the desire to enabling us to establish direct relations...

Would you say that it's more of an intuitive or a systematic process?

What is clear to me that this is a process. Even the insights I gained did not come to me at the beginning. Some were the result of pure thought, which is directed into a practical process that gave rise to insight and so on. One thing led to another and as I persisted in the work, the work enriched me. So all I can say from my experience is that a systematic process integrated with the intuitive, enrich each other over time.

Yona Levy Grosman

278 - Oil on canvas 180/180 c"m , 2008 , Cracks in innocence

LandEscape 57 Art Review

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Yona Levy Grosman

Art Review

For example: - the beginning of the series "The Sand Will Cover It All" started with an order for a work which would incorporate the use of soil. It was only natural that roofing shingles that are produced from the sandy loess soil and covering most of the roofs in my area, would be integrated in a picturesque dune with the grains of sand forming wave after wave which cover the people from the burning sun of the desert both in life and in death. [Work 189] The sand is also a well known metaphor for time. [works 196, 220] And subsequently I created a large series where waves of sand cover bloodstains. [works 214, 278].

And, sand / time covering vast cultures as well. [works 213, 251].

The recurrent reference to a universal imagery suggested by natural elements 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 Contemporariness, establishing a stimulating osmosis between materials from an ancient era and a modern, lively approach to Art: do you recognize any contrast between Tradition and Contemporariness?

I would like to divide the answer into two levels.

1. Although at the intellectual level I chose to engage in groundbreaking content involving my understanding of consciousness. But technically I made sure to do this by working with traditional tools of painting; brush with oil paints on canvas stretched on frames.

Indeed, there is a conflict. But art loves opposites, involving and expressing with their help. Just look at the contemporary artists in China or Japan who are not abandoning the traditional tools and yet expressing a contemporary statement. Therefore, I do not see any reason for contemporary artists in the Western tradition to throw away the traditional tools of their rich culture into the trash can of oblivion.

296 - Oil on canvas 180/300 c"m , 2014

Yona Levy Grosman

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Yona Levy Grosman

Art Review

302 - Oil on canvas 90/120 c"m , 2015

2. At the philosophical level, when I explore the reality of contemporary tools and try to help break barriers to the future, including rebelling against the past, it does not mean that the past is not present.

The past is present everywhere, in all cultures, at all times, even when there are those who seek to delete the past and memory itself brutal ways.

And perhaps in such cases the presence of the past is even stronger.

In my opinion, every artist is a link in a long chain

of creation. And as the artist more deeply explores the past, his creativity is enriched.

Hence as I understand it, even when the focus is on contrasts between traditional and contemporary, in the end the tradition remains present.

I suppose you're asking about a series of my work in which I raise in my own way, the memory from archaeological artifacts of the peoples of the Middle East, Assyria and ancient Babylon, which are being crushed to fine dust today. [works

Yona Levy Grosman

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190 - Clay & Oil on canvas 65/90 c"m , 1996

190, 296 and 302.] I rarely give names to my work. This time I called work 302 "I Cry for Nineveh" Multidisciplinarity is a crucial aspect of your art practice and you seem to be in an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between several disciplines, ranging from paintings and drawings to video art, poetry and essays: while crossing the borders of different

artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

In most of my exhibitions, rather than a scholarly explanation of the exhibition, I prefer to add poetry. Since I don’t give names to my work I let the poem be the guide for the exhibition.

For one of those exhibitions I wrote the following explanation:

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Yona Levy Grosman

Art Review

It is not uncommon for painters to write poetry.

There is a close relationship between development of visual acuity and the analytical selection of a single image from all perspectives with the analytical selection of language and composition as used to convey a unique experience.

This time, this small exhibition in gallery "The Steam", I chose to bring the relationship between the perspectives as reflected in paintings and poems.

And pespectives? Are these not reflections of musings? And the poems? Reflection of thoughts into words.

And reflections? Words, words, words.

Where they came from? Sights.

I travel to and fro, but I am nothing but a reflection.

Once expressed in poems.

Once expressed in paintings.

Sometimes my work is an encounter with people nearby and sometimes with other worlds.

Each painting is connected to many poems. Each poem to other paintings.

And this totality provides just a taste.

As for your question, every discipline is a working tool. Reflections and human consciousness are beyond any discipline. The consciousness needs all the disciplines to achieve expression at its best.

I invite you to watch a short video that I made. In this film can be heard the voice of a biblical figure mourning her life. The landscape that is largely presented is not a landscape. It is a view that results from the camera wandering across the two paintings. In this work are fused poetry, painting and video. http://goo.gl/35dOwH The impetuous way modern Technology and Science have nowadays came out on the top has dramatically revolutionized the idea of Art itself: in a certain sense, Art has been deprived of most of its trascendental aura that was an hallmark of classic age. However, it goes without saying that the scientifi gaze on reality cannot be assimilated to mere Reductionism (‫ )םיקרוע‬and especially the

165 Oil on canvas 100/100 c"m , 1990-1

philosophical consequences of Quantum mechanics has most to share with Parmenides and Henri Bergson than with neopositivism's ideas. Personally, I think that our analytic gaze on reality does not downsize the instinctive fashion communicated by Art, rather, it makes it more conscious: maybe because I have a scientific background that still informs the way I relate myself to Art, I'm sort of convinced that the intellectual awareness that marks out our era will definitely fill the apparent dichotomy between Art and Science and I will dare to say that Art and Technology are going to assimilate one to each other... what's your point about this?

Thank you for sending me to study the school of Parmenides There are some who contend that the impact of Parmenides is also greatly evident in

Yona Levy Grosman

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121 Oil on canvas 110/130 c"m , 1989

Spinoza's theory. Spinoza held that what is necessarily one, while all the world is but a plurality of different ways of God / nature. And since Spinoza's teachings guide the way I see

the human reality, I was pleased to learn about Parmenides.

This is precisely the example which demonstrates that the past is present in the current time.

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Yona Levy Grosman

Art Review

One exhibition of landscapes I presented works which their image was taken from nature that could be seen with the eye. Therefore I titled them "place". [works 121, 263] Next to these works I placed works which I titled “No Place� because the image was a diagram taken from an electronic device and worked to appear as a landscape [works 165, 146]. Later works included elements from nature combined with elements taken various charts. [works 153 and 166] For works of this kind I could not find an exact classification just as there is no special definition of a person whose body parts were replaced with the fruit of current technology.

To the best of my understanding, any attempt by man to copy nature is inevitably a process of reduction. And in the process of contraction there is created a process of falsifying nature. As to the question of reduction and its effect I see them as interchangeable like the chicken or egg puzzle. It depends on perspective and distance of the mind of the viewer or artist from the object. [Work 281] On the subject of the integration between art and technology, in my opinion, the contemporary artist has a greater wealth of tools, and the question to him is, where and how to focus.

Indeed, the relationship between technology and insight about the realities that come with them will deepen with art. And I wonder whether in this dual game between matter and spirit, the world of art sometimes emphasizes the wondrous material rather than examining how the technological marvels will they integrate with art in order to germinate deeper insights into the role and position of the human being in real life?

Since about a hundred years ago an artwork was considered a tactile materialization of an idea: we had to wait Impressionism to run across again to the apparently naif question: what is Art? We are nowadays mostly forced to rethink about the abstract ideas behind an image: an istant later we receive an emotion from a masterly brush

208 Oil on canvas 190/1820 c"m , 1998

stroke we are lead to find such an Ariane's Thread that could explain, even on an intuitive viewpoint, any metaphysical or even sociopolitical concept behind a landscape, as in Edward Burtynsky or Michael Light's works...

The question of what is art, always stands in the

Yona Levy Grosman

281 Oil on canvas 130/120 c"m , 2010 , First drops of rain on the sand

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Yona Levy Grosman

Art Review

center of the art world. Especially at a time when technologies and different insights will be replaced at an increasing rate. But, in the world of the language of art the search will continue for paths to the language of the subconscious mind of man.

And, as we discussed earlier, the artist's subconscious is attracted to the patterns and rhythms upon which it has been exposed.

Do you know in the Hebrew language there is a word like "traffic artery", meaning the roads and trains? Here the terms relating to traffic patterns acquire meaning because of their tie to our own physical bodies.

Chaos theory has brought to my door of limited images of nature, products of the computer upon which I added different levels of detail. This is the converse of reduction.. [Work 258] The artist always finds in his environment shapes and rhythms of himself.[works 208 and 244].

However, I do not think that the question "What is art?" Is permanently in the artist's workshop.

While there are quite a few philosophical aspects in the work of art, but most of the time an artist is a kind of alchemist who investigates, tries and fails.

The artist learns techniques and examines their suitability to his ideas or vice versa, and all is aimed at the same subconscious. First the subconscious of the artist himself, then he examines the influence of his work on the subconscious of the audience.

Before taking leave from this interesting conversation I would like to pose a question about the nature of the relation with your audience: in particular, do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process in terms of what type of language for a particular context?

It is important for me to get a response and learn what my work does to the viewer. Of course, this is after the work is finished.

However during the creative process which includes idea, collection of information and

planning, I am clear of any thoughts of the viewer's opinions. Otherwise I might lose my personal statement.

The only language which is involved in the work is the language of the unconscious mind / my personal emotions within the context of my personal examination of visual and psychological concepts.

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

I wish I could put into practice all the programs and ideas that are waiting for me. I'll tell you about three from a long list.

The first idea that I consider is to collect imagery from nature, process them by computer and then use them as the raw material for my oil paintings.

I am currently busy with other work which now belongs to the series "The Sand Will Cover Everything" that I mentioned earlier in connection with the destruction of archaeological works in order to destroy all traces of historical people and cultures that were in the Middle East. I hope other artists, each in their own way will not let this memory fade away.

And, recently, I was exposed to a group of artists who paint with cement. It very much interests me to use this material to draw the wandering dunes, that have been my interest.

But, every day ideas come and go, and time is short.

An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator landescape@europe.com

Yona Levy Grosman

271 , Oil on canvas 180/205 c"m , 2006

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LandEscape 40 Art Review

Soundscape Instrument. Italy: Toffia. Hills, 2012 (detail).

Gouache and perforations on paper, mechanical music box, laser-cut plywood box; box: 15 cm x 15 cm 9 cm; paper: 70 x 6.8 cm

LandEscape 69 Art Review

Barbara Bartos Lives and works in Rome, Italy

M

y work explores the image in an experimental way using a variety of media, from audio-visual projects to site-specific environmental interventions, drawings, paintings and prints. Current investigations revolve around what is an image and how different forms of perception shape its meaning.

from the visual to the audible, thus the resulting sound is not composed in the traditional sense, but generated by the image via a translation process in order to make it legible by the mechanism. The instrument can produce 30 chromatic notes, but the resulting melody is not tonal, as it is not guided by any music theory concepts.

I tend to work by limiting myself to a few essential materials, each piece being the product of an elaborate generative process. The subsequent works are hybrids between my conceptual framework and nature – conveyed through the media employed. I attempt to strike a balance between human intervention and nature, creating works that hover at the threshold between my conceptual premise and the organic growth of the constituting materials.

Each painting contains in itself 4 different melodies, as each strip of paper can be played (passed through the instrument) in 4 different ways - forwards, backwards, forward flipped and backwards flipped. At this time, the project consists of 7 different landscapes-scores, and continues to grow. This series is a work in progress, evolving with every new place that I experience, thus becoming a polyphonic illustration of all the spaces I inhabited.

The Soundscape Instrument is an object that translates painted landscapes into sound. The ‘scores’ are detailed gouaches on paper of actual landscapes, which subsequently are perforated following unique features of the landscape, (i.e. the horizon line, the lines of the trees, the pattern of the birds flying, etc.). Once perforated the painting is played via the music box.

The process of creating each painting-score goes

I look at this as a translation project, one that reveals an unexpected synchronicity not only between visual and audible perception, but also between nature and culture.

Barbara Bartos http://www.barbarabartos.com/

LandEscape meets

Barbara Bartos An interview by Josh Ryder, curator with the collaboration of Katherine Williams landescape@europe.com

Ranging in a wide media, Barbara Bartos accomplishes a suggestive investigation about the liminal area in which personal perception of an image blends with collective imagery: in Soundscape Instrument that we'll be discussing in the following pages she carries out the difficult task of creating a lively symbiosis between instinctive perception and a refined cultural analysis that invites us to go beyond a traditional relationship between audio and visual information. One of the most convincing aspects of Bartos' approach is the way she unveils that Art is a vehicle not only to express feelings, but to dissect them, grapple with them, and integrate them into a coherent unity. I'm particularly pleased to introduce our readers to her refined artistic production.

Hello Barbara and welcome to LandEscape: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and after your studies in your native country, you moved to the San Francisco Art Institute, where you earned a MFA: moreover, you later had the chance to attend classes at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland: how did these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? In particular do you think that formal training Juerg Luedi

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Barbara Bartos (photo by Alessandro Balsamo)

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Soundscape Instrument. Installation view. Photo credits: Martha Gut

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does inform the way you currently conceive your works?

Yes, I believe that my formal training has had a very strong influence on how I’ve learned to see, and how I later approached my practice.

As you mentioned, after graduating from the Visual Arts Academy in Cluj, Romania I pursued a MFA degree at San Francisco Art Institute. This was a major change for me both as an artist and as a person. It has opened me up to new art forms and approaches; it gave me the freedom to experiment in other fields and to place my work in a larger context. That being said, I believe this process was constructive to me, particularly due to the solid formal art education I’ve received; it could have easily been destructive, or at least disorienting because of the huge difference in that way art is taught in the US compared to the Eastern Europe.

To illustrate the process, I basically came into the Masters program as an experimental printmaker and left making bio-art installations involving live bees. Years later, this experience resurfaced when I decided to pursue courses in digital fabrication and physical computing at University of Southern Switzerland in an attempt to give myself the means to pursue ideas which my current technical knowledge did not allow me to develop. Maybe I’m ‘old school’, but I believe that artists need to have the skills to produce their own work (or at least for the most part). I want to have the skills to make the works I envision.

I think an artist's perception of the world depends on how much agrees to this point. I am sure that for me this comes from the many years of formal education in the arts, but I have to say I’ve been lucky to experience other forms of art training, which, I think, gave me a more balanced approach to art-making.

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Multidisciplinarity is a crucial aspect of your art practice and I would suggest to visit http://barbarabartos.com in order to get a wider idea of your multifaceted artistic production: you seem to be in an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between several disciplines, taking advantage of the creative and expressive potential of Video as well as of Sound: while crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

Actually, I am convinced that only a symbiosis between different disciplines can allow me to express my ideas. I have always been in search of new forms of expression because most of the time I feel constrained by the medium. My ideal work would be polysensorial, a complete immersive experience, something that would allow anyone to have synesthesia-like experience. For now, I have limited myself to combining two or tree disciplines in one project, experimenting slowly with different permutations between forms of expression in an attempt to produce works that go beyond the immediate understanding.

I am convinced that the world we perceive through our senses, and which we process through our brains is only a fragment of what is. Modern scientific discoveries from biology to particle science have begun to prove this fact, but between a logical understanding and a personal revelation there is a huge gap. I think art can fill it, or at least can provide the means for a profound personal experience, which can give a new meaning to the word ‘understanding’.

With every work I attempt to come a step closer to this ideal, and this is why I cannot

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Soundscape Instrument. Installation view. Photo credits: Martha Gut

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Soundscape Instrument. Italy: Isola di San Michele 2013, (detail).

Gouache, acrylic and perforations on paper, mechanical music box, laser-cut plywood box; box: 15 cm x 15 cm 9 cm; paper: 70 x 6.8 cm

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limit myself to one discipline, one medium or one form of expression.

Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from Soundscape Instrument, an extremely interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: when I first happened to get to know it I tried to relate all the visual and sound information to a single meaning. But I soon realized that I had to fit into the visual rhythm suggested by the work, forgetting my need for an univocal understanding of its content: in your videos, rather that a conceptual interiority, I can recognize the desire to enable us to establish direct relations... Would you say that it's more of an intuitive or a systematic process?

The initial spark, the idea is always an image for me. It is very intuitive; I could even call it a vision. Once the process of bringing this vision into the real world begins the development for me is systematic, but that remains ‘behind the scenes’. My goal is to make possible the essence of my vision to others via the work, to spark a personal vision in the viewer. It will not be the same image I had, as we each bring our own experiences and knowledge to what we see, and we construct our understanding of the world on this, but the encounter with the work could illuminate a facet of the world invisible until now, or may give form to an ineffable feeling.

With the Soundscape Instrument, I initially had just an intuition that an image could imbed musical meaning, but it wasn’t until I’ve start making the paintings and played them to others that I was convinced it was a valid route to pursue. I needed to see that others perceived the synchronicity of the image and sound as I did. Even though each person’s experience of the piece is psychologically

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Soundscape Instrument. Finland: Fields, 2012. Gouache, acrylic and perforations on paper, 70 x 6.8 cm

conditioned, the perception of a correspondence between the audio and the visual remained a constant.

The way you accomplish such effective synesthesia in the process of translating painted landscapes into sound invites the viewer to a suggestive semantic restructuration that has reminded me of the ideas behind Thomas Demand's works, when he stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological narrative elements within the medium instead".

While conceiving Art could be considered a purely abstract activity, there is always a way of giving it a permanence that goes beyond the intrinsic ephemeral nature of the concepts you explore. So I would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process...

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

We create the world every time we look at it, consciously or unconsciously. So, I’d say that nothing we do can be disconnected from our direct experience.

The most impressive proof of this is illustrated by a quantum theory study conducted at Weizmann Institute of Science demonstrating that by the very act of watching, the observer affects the observed reality – “the greater the amount of ‘watching,’ the greater the observer’s influence on what actually takes place.” It is an extreme example, but it does point to the fact that nothing we do is done in a vacuum, and this is foremost true of the creative process.

The impetuous way modern technology has nowadays came out on the top has

Soundscape Instrument. Italy: Isola di San Michele, 2013. Gouache, acrylic and perforations on paper, 70 x 6.8 cm

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dramatically revolutionized the idea of Art itself: in a certain sense, we are forced to rethink the intimate aspect of constructed realities and especially the materiality of the artwork itself, since just a few years ago it was a tactile materialization of an idea. I'm sort of convinced that new media will definitely fill the apparent dichotomy between art and technology, and I would dare to say that Art and Technology are going to assimilate one another... what's your point about this?

I agree with you that modern technology has revolutionized the idea of Art, moving it from a tactile materialization of an idea, as you say, to just the materialization of an idea. But I do not see a dichotomy between art and technology.

To me technology is a tool that can be used (if deemed necessary) towards the much broader and complex goal of making Art. A pencil was ‘new technology’ when it first appeared, oil

paints were ‘new media’ when invented and the artists who adopted them were seen as ‘pioneers’ in the 15th century.

The development of new media and new materials is not showing any signs of slowing down, and I am one who’s always on the lookout for the latest material or process that may facilitate the translation of a concept into reality. So to go back to your statement, Technology and Art cannot assimilate each other (which would imply the annihilation of both), because, in my opinion, one is the means and the other the end of a complex process.

They can definitely have, and will continue to merge - in specific occasions - in order to generate works that were not conceivable a few years ago, but this to me is a natural growth process when media and concepts meet.

Another interesting project of yours that has particularly impacted on me and on which I

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Wisdom of the Earth, 2005.

Bee hive [Apis melifera], plant [Dracaena marginata], hydroponic system, mini video camera, TV set, polyurethane, wood, acrylic tubing.

Installation view; Detail of the bee-brain.

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Thinking Tree, 2011. C-print, 33 x 55 cm. Long exposure photograph of environmental intervention.

would like to spend some words is entitled Thinking Tree: I have appreciated the way you have been capable of bringing a new level of significance to signs, and in a wide sense to re-contextualize the concept of the environment we inhabit in. This is a recurrent feature of your approach that provides the viewers of an Ariadne's Thread, inviting them to challenge the common way we perceive not only the outside world, but also our inner dimension... By the way, I'm sort of convinced that some information & 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?

Thank you for bringing up this point. I have always intrinsically believed that there is more to the world we perceive that what meets our senses. For a long time I could not explain this, and it wasn’t even at a conscious level. Later on, meditating on what really is that makes me make art, and what is the common tread that

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Thinking Tree, 2011. C-print, 33 x 55 cm. Long exposure photograph of environmental intervention.

ties my body of work, which as you said earlier, is always shifting between forms and media, I’ve discovered that I am always looking to decipher, translate, and reveal the invisible. As you so keenly observed, I feel challenged by the task of upturning people’s common perceptions or preconceived ideas with the images I create. I believe that such a moment of semiotic disorientation holds the potential for a revelatory understanding.

Thinking Tree is an example of how I use a relatively new technical medium (a transparent photoluminescent pigment that has the ability

to absorb light and reemit it with a delay, giving the impression of phosphorescence) as a means to make visible something that has always been there: the unexpected similarity in the growth pattern of the tree and that of our nervous system. Going beyond a simple formal analogy, the image shows how each form is the direct consequence of a specific function. The structure of our nervous system and the structure of a tree’s crown are not random; the same laws of self-organization rule both. This is not a conceptual piece; it is an illustration, a

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The Secret Life of Things, 2008 Wood table and chairs, paint, photoluminescent pigment.

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visualization of the continuum between our inner nature and that we call ‘the environment’.

hope the work can spark an internal probing, a personal “aha!’ moment.

While many contemporary artists as Michael Light and Edward Burtynsky use to convey in an explicit way environmental or political message in their photographs, your works seek to maintain a more neutral approach: rather, you seem to invite the viewers to a personal investigation about the themes you touch on. Maybe that the following assumption is stretching the point a little bit, but I think that The Secret Life of Things reveals the connection between different cultural spheres which describes such a real-time aesthetic ethnography: you seem to be drawn to the structured worlds we inhabit and how they produce a selfdefining context for our lives and experience... do you agree with this analysis?

Moreover, what could be in your opinion the role that Art could play in sociopolitical questions?

Relating to your second question, I believe the role of Art in sociopolitical questions takes place exactly at this intimate, personal level. Changes need to happen first on the inside before they can have an effect on the outside. Art can make change if it first puts us in the situation to question our thought patterns, our modus operandi, our fear of sincerity.

With The Secret Life of Things - a table and two chairs placed in an isolated natural environment which transform at night into ghostly objects, floating over the grassy field – I touch on another theme: the point in space where nature and culture meet. I am particularly drawn to the intersection between, as you say, our structured, designed worlds and the neutral, chaotic natural world, between our structured time and the glacial time of nature.

In this contrasting intersection one can perceive the limits we put on ourselves, on our experience of time and space. I try to put in perspective what we think is real, what we believe as important, what we perceive as urgent.

In general, in my work, my interest in not in making explicit statements, but I rather seek a more intimate interaction with the viewer. I

Moreover, I noticed that you seem to induce the viewer to abandon himself to his associations, looking at time in spatial terms and I daresay, rethinking the concept of space in such a static way: this 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. How do you conceive the rhythm of your works?

As mentioned before, in my works I tend to blur the lines between fixed reference points, consequently the works go beyond making statements that point to a certain place or time, rather they take the perception, emotional response or experience of the viewer and raise it to a metaphysical level. The rhythm of each work is dictated by the viewer, because, to me, the actual work is born in the liminal space between the two.

During your over twenty-five years long career your works have been extensively exhibited both in Europe and in the United States, including a recent participation to The Engine Room, at the Morley Gallery, London. So, before taking leave from this interesting conversation I would like to pose a question about the nature of the relation with your audience: in particular, do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-

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Soundscape Instrument. Italy: Toffia, 2012. Gouache and perforations on paper, 70 x 6.8 cm

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

With every project, be it a drawing or a more complex installation, I see myself as the one who creates the conditions for an encounter between the work and the viewer. Similar to the Master in a Tea Ceremony, I prepare the conditions for this unique meeting, but I do not have complete control over its final outcome. The actual work forms in this spatial-temporal meeting point, and it generates a different piece every time.

I don’t want to have complete control over it.

I want it to morph, change, grow, transmute and eventually transcend its original setup.

So, to answer your question, in a way, the

audience is always a key component in the development of a project, but the language of the work is more determined by the idea I want to express. Later I find ways to free it, either through the use of: living organisms (Wisdom of the Earth, Philosopher’s Stone),transforming materials (Thinking Tree, Secret Life of Things), or devising forms that allow for audience’s participation through permutations (Haiku) or direct interaction (Soundscape Instrument).

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

I’m continually searching for ways and media that would allow me to materialize my ideas.

Soundscape Instrument. Italy: Sabina Hills, 2012. Gouache and perforations on paper, 70 x 6.8 cm

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Currently, I’m really interested in working between music and visual arts. I find a rich field of exploration in translating images into sound and vice versa. I’d like to further develop the Soundscape Instrument by going from the small music box to an Organetto di Barberia, a type of street organ that uses as score large pieces of perforated paper and would allow for a more complex audio-visual experience. Another project that has been on my worktable for a while is a series of tactile drawings – drawings that use the Braille alphabet to encode both text and visual meaning.

We’re lucky to live in a world we have yet to explain, so there still is surprise and wonder, if one opens up to it. I think my work is evolving more towards these liminal translations of the

visual into other forms of perception - small experiments in meeting and discovering our Nature.

I would like close by thanking you for this inspiring conversation, and for giving me the opportunity to introduce my work to your readers.

An interview by Josh Ryder, curator with the collaboration of Katherine Williams landescape@europe.com

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Xiaohong Zhang Lives and works in the United States

An artist's statement

L

andscape painting was regarded as the highest form of Chinese painting, The classical Chinese landscape painting are rolling hills and rivers of native countryside in peaceful scenes done with softer, rubbed brushwork. Emphasis was placed on the spiritual qualities of the painting and on the ability of the artist to reveal the inner harmony of man and nature, as perceived according to Taoist and Buddhist concepts.

My creative focus has been on the Traversing Medium and Re-appropriating Motifs in Contemporary Art with continuous investigation of traversing traditional art form of Chinese landscape ink wash painting through the concept of contemporary western art setting.

I have focused on exploring digital 3D skills. I want to blur the institutional and historical boundaries between traditional Chinese ink wash painting and Western graphic practices by using western 3D graphic skills to re-figure the traditional Chinese ink mountain painting. I have

used the 3D software Maya to recreate the mountains, water.

Beside my investigation of re-figuring the traditional art form of Chinese landscape painting, I have been also re-appropriating motifs.

Mountain, river, tree and water have always been popular subjects for Chinese landscape. Much of my work often interrogates historical, social and political themes from a Chinese perspective. I tried to insert modern industrial chaos into the traditional peaceful vision. It is a very interesting mix. I want to address environmental and social issues that have been brought by China’s social, economic, and cultural development.

I have been working on a series of projects to epitomize the notion of inclusion by signifying the fusion of East and West aesthetic values through the lenses of culture, language, ethnicity, religion, and politics.

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Xiaohong Zhang An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator landescape@europe.com

Xiaohong Zhang accomplishes the difficult task of a establishing an effective synergy between painting and movement, creating an area in which emotional dimension and perceptual reality coexist in a coherent unity. Unlike artists such as Carsten HÜller, she does not let the viewers in the foggy area of doubt. Recently focusing on China’s environmental problems, her evocative imagery invites us to investigate themes investigating the relation between reality and the way we perceive it. One of the most convincing aspects of Zhang's practice is the way she creates an area of intellectual interplay between the heritage of her Far Eastern Identity and her current experience in a pluralistic society, offering to the viewers an Ariadne's Thread capable of driving us through the exploration of unexpected relationships that pervades our changing world. I'm very pleased to introduce our readers to her refined artistic production.

Hello Xiaohong and welcome to LandEscape: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and you hold a MFA from Southern Illinois University: how did this experience influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, you are currently an Associate Professor in Department of Art and Design at the University of WisconsinWhitewater; do you think that teaching and daily relations with your students informs the way you conceive your works?

My name is Xiaohong Zhang. I came from a small town in Northern China. I was traditionally trained Juerg Luedi

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Fall color of Paris Watercolor on Paper 14 x 11

in academic art forms that include Chinese brush painting, western style drawing, and foundations of graphic design in earlier 1990’s period. We did not have today’s computer technology during my undergraduate studies when I lived in China. I started to learn about computers in 1999 when I studied at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. During those three and half years in graduate school, I experienced intensive digital techniques and computer software and training. I even took programming classes like C++, database, etc. detail from myFunerals, Performance

The entire evolution of an artist for me is a gradual transformation out of instinct and eagerness to learn the new things.

In 2002, I was accepted as a faculty member in the multimedia/graphic area in the Department of Art and Design at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. The courses I taught were mainly 2D-based graphics. Since 2008, with continual curricular development in the College of Arts and Communication, my course load has gradually UW-Whitewater photo/Craig Schreiner

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shifted from traditional 2D graphics to 3D and 4D design.

feature or a function may suddenly give me some ideas of my personal creation.

The intensive teaching preparation and selfstudy of new media arts became a trigger to change my work styles over time. I used to integrate my 2D digital graphic skills with my fine arts background. Recently I started to work with the 3D in which I use 3D software Maya to rebuild the urban landscape view by incorporating traditional mountains, water and also contemporary industrial subjects like cranes.

Teaching and daily interactions with my students has informed the way I conceive my works. It has changed my working process and the way of creating new projects.

A good example is when I learned the displacement function in Maya. The function allows me to create random terrain by converting 2D vector displacement to 3D geometry. The function helps generate a random and natural looking mountain. You have the control of intensity and depth of the large composition of the mountain by adjusting the gray scale contrast of the 2D vector displacement map. Still, you have no control on how the software generates the detailed geometry. The whole working progress and final output suddenly reminds me of traditional Chinese ink and wash landscape painting creation processes. The artist has overall control of the structural composition of the mountain.

The detail of mountain and rock is the interaction result of water, ink and color on rice paper. It is very similar to western watercolor working process and I immediately used the software function to create a traditional Chinese style mountain after I learned it.

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?

My creative focus has been on “Traversing Medium and Re-appropriating Motifs in Contemporary Art� with continuous investigation of traditional art form of Chinese painting through the concept of contemporary western digital art setting. In other words, I am always trying to use the new media technology to deliver the traditional aesthetics.

My teaching area is media art. Media art itself is composed of a constantly changing assortment of computer hardware and software as creative tools.

My teaching requires me to keep updating myself with new computer software and new technology every year. During the process of learning new software and technology, a fresh

My working process is constantly changing due to the never-ending challenge of my teaching and learning.

In my earlier work, I mainly played with vector and bitmap images, layers and effects by using Photoshop and Illustrator. In the beginning of the working process, I used a pencil to make a quick sketch for the basic composition of my project. Sometimes I might also need to recreate vector images in Illustrator based on the subject.

Then I imported multiple images including vector and bitmap images into Photoshop and play with different functions to combine different images together naturally. Finally I use an inkjet printer to print out the digital

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image on Japanese rice paper. Generally due to the large scale of the final output and the limited printing size of my digital printer and small size of Japanese rice paper, I have to divide the entire large digital image into many small images. By using the conventional paper mounting skills I learned when I was in China, I eventually mount the small prints on the thin Japanese rice papers onto a larger size sheet of heavyweight drawing or printing paper on a wood board. The choice to print a digital image on Japanese rice paper is simple; rice paper is absorbent with a soft but slightly coarse texture. It gives the digital printed image a natural and refined texture and look.

My recent work process is different from that of a few years ago. I have focused on exploring digital 3D imagery creation. By doing so, I blur the institutional and historical boundaries between traditional Chinese ink wash painting and western graphic practices by using 3D digital graphics to refigure the traditional Chinese ink mountain painting. For example Maya 3D software is used to recreate the mountains and water.

The preparation time for completing a new work is considerably longer for me now. It can be a month or up to a year. The preparation includes software proficiency and creative thinking and iterations.

Now let's focus on your artistic production; I would start with Across The Divide. Our readers have already begun to get to know you in the introductory pages of this article. I would suggest that our readers also visit your website directly at http://facstaff.uww.edu/zhangx in order to get a wider idea of your artistic production.

In the meanwhile, would you like to tell us something about the genesis of this interesting project? What was your initial inspiration?

Across the Divide Project is a platform for Chinese artists and scholars teaching in American universities to share creative

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practices, research and teaching through exhibitions, symposiums, and other related events and activities. It focuses on a shared

cultural identity over differing geopolitical convictions under the large frame of Chinese culture.

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In 2002 Professor Yu Li at California State University, Long Beach, initialized the Across the Divide forum. He initially established connections

with 14 Chinese artists who were teaching in universities across the United States. After oneyear of careful and extensive preparation, in

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Inspired by Professor Yu Ji, in 2011 I collaborated with my colleague Michael Flanagan to host an international traveling exhibition Across the Divide and a related Symposium in the Crossman Gallery at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, United States. The 2011 Across the Divide exhibition at UW-Whitewater included twenty-four contemporary Chinese artists who were working in academia across the United States.

With an emphasis given to artwork that blends cultural influences drawn from both Eastern and Western aesthetics, the exhibition presented both experimental and traditional approaches that artists have applied in their studio practices to explore their personal crosscultural perspectives in relationship to the changes that have been brought by China’s current social, economic, and cultural development.

In the past few years Across the Divide has continued to grow. In 2014, the Across The Divide forum officially became an organization The Association of Chinese Artists in American Academia (ACAAA) with over 50 members. In conjunction with Beijing Normal University and The Art Education Committee of Chinese Artists Association in China, ACAAA will co-host an international conference and symposia in Beijing from June 6th to 7th, 2015.

The entire Across the Divide project has been slated to elevate awareness of the Sino-Asian immigrant experience, Chinese art and educational practices, and highlight the value of global visual literacy in the Eastern and Western education systems.

2004 he successfully held the first exhibition and symposium to open a public dialog on their cultural positions in American society.

The investigation about shared cultural identities effectively accomplished in Across the Divide reveals the connection between different cultural spheres which describes such a real-time aesthetic ethnography: you seem to be drawn to the structured worlds

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we inhabit and how they produce a selfdefining context for our lives and experience... A relevant feature of Green Blue Mountain that has particularly impacted on me is the way you highlight the inner bond between Man and Nature: you invite the viewer to appreciate the intrinsic but sometimes disregarded beauty of geometrical patterns, bringing a new level of significance to the idea of landscape itself. Like Jean Tinguely's generative works, this piece raises a question on the role of the viewers' perception, forcing us to going beyond the common way we perceive not only the outside world, but also our inner dimension... I'm personally convinced that some information is hidden, or even "encrypted" in the environment we live in, so we need to decipher them. Maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what is your point about this?

My landscape works, including Green Blue Mountain, have been deeply influenced by the philosophy embedded in classical Chinese landscape paintings. Landscape painting was regarded as the highest form of Chinese painting. Classical Chinese landscape paintings often involve depictions of peaceful scenes of rolling hills and rivers in the native countryside rendered through softer, rubbed brushwork. Emphasis was placed on the spiritual qualities of the painting and on the ability of the artist to reveal the inner harmony of man and nature, as perceived according to Taoist and Buddhist beliefs and concepts.

In China the world is composed of two basic opposing forces, namely Yin and Yang.

Mountains and Water Painting comes to show how the balance of Yin and Yang appears in

nature. The imposing mountains protruding to the sky are the masculine power of Yang while the gentle clear water is the feminine energy of Yin. Ink that composes form embodies Yang, while Yin appears as the empty and bare paper representing mist, water and sky - both forces are prominent yet delicately blended together.

The landscapes Chinese artists created were

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not the real places but imaginary, idealized landscapes. The "mind landscape," embodies both learned references to the styles of earlier masters and, through calligraphic brushwork, the inner spirit of the artist. Going beyond representation, scholar-artists imbued their paintings with personal feelings. Painting was no longer about the description of the visible

world; it became a means of conveying the inner landscape of the artist's intellectual state of mind.

My landscape work is based on retaining its inner essence while updating its subjects and media. Viewing my landscape work, it is clear that depictions of nature are seldom mere

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representations of the external world. Rather, they are expressions of the mind. Green Blue Mountain addresses China’s environmental problem of excessive urban development. As the speed and scale of China’s rise as an economic power accelerated, with no clear historical parallels, so has its unprecedented various pollutions endangered the ecosystem. Environmental degradation is now so severe, with such stark domestic and international repercussions, that pollutions pose not only a major long-term burden on the Chinese public but also an acute political challenge to the ruling Communist Party. The work uses traditional Chinese painting styles to show Chinese metropolitan areas surrounded by industrial building trash and wrapped in a toxic gray shroud.

Your relationship with the use of strong colors to evoke a personal imagery is intrinsically connected to the chance of creating an area of intellectual interplay with the viewers who are urged to evolve from the condition of a merely passive audience. A good example is Red Mountain, in which intense tones of red have a marked evocative feature. In particular, your process of semantic restructuring of a view has reminded me of the ideas behind Thomas Demand's works, when he stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological narrative elements within the medium instead." While conceiving Art could be considered a purely abstract activity, there is always a way of giving it a permanence that goes beyond the intrinsic ephemeral nature of the concepts you explore. So I would take this occasion to ask you if, in your opinion, personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process? Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

I was born during Cultural Revolution in China.

Later I came to the United States in 1997.

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Xiaohong means ”little red” in Mandarin Chinese. The Cultural Revolution was a socialpolitical movement that took place in China lasted from 1966 until 1976. The goal of it was to preserve a “purist” Communist ideology by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from within China. As we all know the color red is also associated with Communism. I believe my grandparents gave me this name to show their political loyalty as ‘true’ Communists.

I intended to use the color red in my work. Red Mountain is designed to demonstrate the identity of modern China. China is one of five remaining Communist countries in the world.

Red Mountain indeed possesses a symbolic meaning of the land that I came from.

In the West, the term “Red” was often synonymous with the fear of Communism. So my creative process was connected to my direct experience and my pluralistic identity – a Chinese artist who was born during the Cultural Revolution and later resided in the Western world.

In a similar vein as many contemporary artists, such as Edward Burtynsky and Michael Light, your works convey environmental and political messages and raise awareness of the intrinsic political potential of Art. Although I am aware that this might sound even a bit naïf, I have to admit that I'm sort of convinced that Art could play an effective role in sociopolitical questions; not only just by offering to people a generic platform for expression. In particular, I would go as far as to state that Art could even steer people's behavior. What is your point about this? Does it sound a bit exaggerated?

Arts and politics have a strong relationship across the historical era in both Western and Eastern cultures. We can take propaganda

machines during World War II as good examples. Art – the visual form - is not only the expression of artists’ creative skills but also a means to deliver their emotional power. Art is a very powerful tool. That is the main reason so many artists turned to political subject matter in the last decade. I do not feel it is exaggerated to suggest that art can influence people’s behaviors to a certain extent.

In the Western world we have many high-profile artists who proclaim political agendas including Chantal Ackerman, Omer Fast, Subodh Gupta, Teresa Margolles, Walid Raad, Bruno Serralongue, and Santiago Sierra. In China today there are contemporary artists like Ai Weiwei who declares himself as a rebel artist.

Ai's works genuinely carry weight and power reflecting and even influencing politics and society. His work has gradually shaken the social structures and helped promote the social system reform in China. So I will say art is really powerful.

I am not qualified to say my art works can steer people’s behaviors. I do wish my artwork could at least raise viewers' awareness of China’s social and environmental issues.

The ambience created in Spring Mountains has reminded me the concept of Heterotopia elaborated by French social theorist Michel Foucault. I find very impressing the way it highlights the signs of absence, urging us to rethink the concept of Space and Identity.

The multilayered experience suggested by this work gives hints of something else happening or going on, almost on a subliminal level from ordinary reality. Could you explain this point to our readers?

Ancient Chinese artists are not addressed as a group the way we are today for people with fine art skills. Painting skills are a social symbol specifically for highly educated and privileged

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class. Generally artists have a dual identity – politicians and fine artists. Song Dynasty emperor Zhao Ji is a good example. He was the emperor, but also was one of the most famous bird-flower artists in the history of China.

The majority of Classical Chinese landscape paintings show a peaceful vision. The concept of withdrawal into the natural world became a major thematic focus of Chinese landscape painters. Faced with the failure of the human orders, artists/politicians often sought permanence within the natural world, retreating into the mountains to find a sanctuary from the chaos of dynastic collapse.

My Spring Mountains has retained the peaceful vision from the Chinese tradition.

Meanwhile I intentionally changed the subject and media. Traditional trees become modern industrial cranes. In the midst of the chaos caused by extraordinary urban development, the red cranes became the intruder to the peaceful vision. The red cranes here are

symbols of modern industrialization in China and its dire impact to the environment.

Another interesting project of yours that has particularly impacted on me and which I would like to investigate is entitled Memory and Dream. In particular, when I first happened to get to know with this piece, I tried to relate all the visual information to a single meaning. But I soon realized that I had to fit into the visual rhythm suggested by the work, forgetting my need for an unequivocal understanding of its symbolic content. In your work, rather that a conceptual interiority, I can recognize the desire to enable us to establish direct relations. Would you say that it's more of an intuitive or a systematic process?

In Memory and Dream, I retained the traditional Chinese painting form - handscroll form. The subject and expression style are Western. The whole process was intuitive and it took little time to conceive the design.

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The handscroll is a long and narrow scroll for displaying a series of scenes found in painting and calligraphy from Chinese, Japanese, Indian, or Korean sources. The handscroll presents an artwork in the horizontal form and can be exceptionally long, usually measuring up to a few meters in length and around one half to one meter in height.

My use of handscroll design in Memory and Dream is intended to be viewed flat on a table while admiring it section-by-section during the unrolling as if the viewer is traveling through a landscape. In this way, this format allows for the depiction of a continuous narrative or journey. It enables the viewers to make an immediate contrast between green blue mountain and bare mountain.

I was impressed with the way the multidisciplinary feature of Green Blue Mountain reveals an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between several disciplines, taking advantage of the creative and expressive potential of

Technology. While crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

Before I answer this question. I would like to define the term “multidisciplinary.” I will say generally that artists have often used "multidisciplinary" approaches to innovate by pushing the boundaries set by artistic traditions or “schools.” It’s a way of working that integrates knowledge from multiple fields to solve a known or new problem.

To finish Green Blue Mountain, I used 2D computer graphics and traditional watercolor to assemble the elements together. I have intentionally printed the final digital image on Japanese rice paper to give the digital print an organic feel and look.

I used the “Threshold“ function in Photoshop to turn the digital crane images into their silhouettes. The effect oversimplified the shape

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and strengthened the contrast between foreground and background to give the work a powerful visual impact.

The impetuous way modern technology has nowadays come out on the top has dramatically revolutionized the idea of Art itself. In a certain sense, we are forced to rethink the intimate aspect of the materiality of an artwork itself, since just few years ago it was a tactile materialization of an idea. I am sort of convinced that new media will definitely fill the apparent dichotomy between art and technology and I will dare to say that Art and Technology are going to assimilate one to each other. What are your thoughts about this?

I feel technology plays an important role in the history of creative art. It is the part of art making process. 40,000 years ago when Asian and European cave painters made paintings on cave walls and ceilings, mineral-based pigment was the only available “state-of-the-art” medium at that time. Gradually canvas, oil paint and bronze became the “new media” and have been used and accepted by all artists.

The invention of camera and photographic technology completely changed the art world.

Realism is no longer the ultimate goal of artist.

Today's digital media, which is commonly referred as the “New Media”, becomes the de facto technology. I'm interested in breaking down the arbitrary division between traditional art and new digital world. I believe infusing digital technology will become the major trend of art creation in the future.

During your over twenty years long career your works have been extensively exhibited in several important occasions, including seven solo exhibitions. So before taking leave from this interesting conversation I would like to pose a question about the

nature of the relation with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decisionmaking process in terms of choosing a type of language for a particular context?

I never have a specific targeted audience in mind when I “brew” a new project. My creation process only engages with personal emotion and instinct. I did my undergraduate education in China and received my MFA in the United States.

Both Eastern and Western educational backgrounds helped me develop in a crosscultural aesthetic philosophy. I believe I am delivering a global message which can be easily

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understood and appreciated by both Western and Eastern audiences.

Thanks a lot for this interesting conversation, Xiaohong. Finally, I would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects.

Is anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

Currently I am in the process of learning new technologies including 3D modeling functions like rigging and animation. I will continually explore new technology and seek different approaches to create artwork. I would like to include more animation and soundscape aspects into my

current and future work. I will follow both my head and the heart while continuing to push the boundaries in all directions.

An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator landescape@europe.com

Emilia Maryniak LandEscape 40 Art Review

Menstrual blood on a wall "No"

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Ye'ela Wilschanski Lives and works in Jerusalem, Israel

An artist's statement

U

sing my body and voice to express myself, is what I have been doing since I was born.

As an artist, my body and voice are the most readily available raw materials to create from and about.

I started my way as an artist sewing clothes for my dolls. I needed to sketch my sewing designs, and those sketches progressed to paintings. Yearning for tools to paint, I went to art school. There, I was exposed to sculpture. I found that three dimensional is much more interesting than two.

The more I learned sculpting techniques, the more I became interested in the movement my body makes when I engage with a material. The process of creating an

art work excited me, but once there was a final product, I lost interest in it. I felt that my body- the tool that creates my imprint on all those materials- is not given the respect and presence it's worthy of.

That is what led me to performance art.

Documenting my performances introduced me to the possibilities of video.

Ye'ela Wilschanski

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Ye'ela Wilschanski An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator witht he collaboration of Katherine Williams landescape@europe.com

What immediately impresses of Ye'ela Wilschanski's work is the way her multidisciplinary and performative approach is capable of taking advantage from different techniques, as Sculpture, Video and Drawing to create a consistent, coherent unity that challenges the viewers' perception, accomplishing the difficult task of leading us to rethink about way we relate ourselves to modern society. Through an incessant process of recontextualization, Wilschanski goes beyond mere subjectivity and individual perception, breaking down the Four Wall and allowing the viewers to evolve from a passive audience to conscious participant of the creative process.

I'm particularly pleased to introduce our readers to her multifaceted artistic production.

Hello Ye'ela, and welcome to LandEscape: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Bezalel School of art and design that you have received from the prestigious Bezalel School of art and design: how has this experience influenced you as an artist and impacted on the way you currently conceive and produce your works?

Providing a helpful environment to produce art work is more complex than what a school curriculum can offer.

For my needs, going through therapy gave me the strength and tools to be an artist. Travelling the world gave me sensitivity and awareness to materials, in comparison to my familiar

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Ye'ela Wilschanski (photo by Colette Aliman)

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surroundings.

Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from Body Land, an extremely interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest our readers to visit directly at http://www.yeelawilschanski.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?

The inspiration for "Body Land" was refamiliarising my body in relation to the four angles of my bed, following a breakup of a relationship. For a month I stayed in bed until I had the strength to get out. A year later, I wanted to confront the feelings I had experienced, and visually recreate what I had been through, in order to recover.

What I do in the performance is to take a pile of dry soil and draw the outline shapes around my moving body, then I gather back the soil and form a square around me, moving in relation to the square. The final stage is drawing a frame referring to the shape of the room and audience within it. This stage is different at each performance, depending on the space.

I definetely love the way Body Land takes such an intense participatory line on the conception of art. In particular, your investigation about the intimate aspect of constructed realities has reminded me of Thomas Demand's works: while conceiving Art could be considered a purely abstract activity, there is always a way of giving it a permanence that goes beyond the intrinsic ephemeral nature of the concepts you capture. So I would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal

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experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

A creative process can be disconnected, but it is much more interesting both for me and for the audience to witness my going through an oneoff experience .

My choice to be inside my works is because I feel that when I am making an object, I'm totally into it and want to continue being playful forever. When I need to let go, the object becomes a foreign body that I don't want to feel any responsibility for.

"Body Land" is an example of that. The process leading up to the point of this performance began with ceramics pottery works which led on to my studying mud building. The performance absorbs all that knowledge. What I chose to share with the audience isthe relationship between body and vessel\shelter. There is no final product in the performance because the soil is dry therefore I do not form a object The performance has evolved over the years and has incorporated the experience of exposure to the audience. The core of the performance has remained intimate, and each time I perform it, I am emotionally charged.

Some of the experiences were devastating, like the one when someone from the audience interrupted me and violently shoved the soil away from me. Some were amazing, like the performance when I did a three-hour durational performance with a musician.

Multidisciplinarity is a crucial aspect of your art practice and you seem to be in an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between several disciplines, taking advantage of the creative and expressive potential of Sculpture as well

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(photo by Yonathan Shehoah)

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(photo by Yonathan Shehoah)

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as of Drawing: while crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

I don't consciously choose the multidisciplinary approach to my work. In the past ten years, each time I wanted to focus on one particular art medium, it opened a desire to study another field . This is an ongoing process that I hope will never end. As a result, I have slowly built up a variety of tools. When I start a new project, I analyze it through the lens of different disciplines until I feel that I have found the right medium.

I get inspiration from my dreams. I wake up with a notebook next to me, and write down what I remember. I respect and listen to my dreams, because in them, a kaleidoscope of people and objects in bizarre situations make sense within one frame. That notebook is my laboratory of fascinating "raw footage" that I work with. I also make decisions concerning day-to-day life, when I am still half-awake because then I'm naturally free from my brain’s limitations.

I come from a multicultural bilingual family.

Not having a one solid base to start from, influences my identity. Going away from my comfort zone and re-adjusting is my default.

This may explain why as an artist I work with multiple disciplines.

In the APPROACHING you drew outlines of the passengers silhouettes on the glass of a train station: I can recognize in this interesting project a subtle but effective investigation about the emerging of language due to a process of self-reflection, and what has mostly impacted on me is the way you have been capable of bringing a

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new level of significance to signs, and in a wide sense to re-contextualize the concept of a track of our existence. This is a recurrent feature of your approach that invite the viewers' perception in order to challenge the common way to perceive not only the outside world, but our inner dimension... By the way, I'm sort of convinced that some 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?

In the crazy city of Jerusalem, the Light Rail route reflects a political statement on the part of the Authorities. My inspiration for this project came from the text on the station screen: ‫ תברקתמ‬APPROACHING ‫ عودة‬Appearing in Arabic, Hebrew and English a minute before the train's arrival. To me, the word approaching express warm communication .

People all over the city, hope to see the word "Approaching", followed by a language used by the other side of the city they would never approach. On the same screen, is a request: "‫‫‬A ‫ ‬‫‬ttention please! Before entering the train, please make sure you have not left anything at the station”. This is a forceful reminder that, at any given time, this place can become violent and even deathly and passengers should be aware of suspicious people and objects.

Within this reality, I chose to approach passengers sitting on the bench as close as I can, with just the glass walls of the train station between us. Using an erasable marker, I drew their body outline on the glass stationwall. As time passes, people and objects that have passed through on the way to their

(photo by Hadar Levy

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destination, remain present in the station .

The street responded to my action and people approached me. Some were angry that I was violating public property, warning me I could be fined for doing this. Others appreciated the drawing and asked me not to erase it. Whatever the conversation was, my audience changed repetitively as the train arrived.

For four months, I drew on the same station.

The video documents a exceptional day, when the security guard wasn't harsh at me, and wanted me to draw him.

He is not allowed to sit when on duty, so I drew him standing. At that day's drawing, the security guard is in the center, hovering above the people sitting, as if they are looking up to him.

Another interesting work of yours that has particularly impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled No and it is based on a performance at the entrance to Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem. I have found really stimulating the way you have extracted from the apparently simple act of shaking one's head no a distinctive feature from each of the involved people: as you have remarked once, we use your body as a tool to express yourselves from the moment you are born : and I have appreciated the way your approach forces us to evolve from being a passive spectator to more conscious participants to the act you perform... By the way, although I'm aware that this might sound a bit na誰f, I have to admit that I'm sort of convinced that Art -especially nowadays- could play an effective role in sociopolitical issues: not only just by offering to people a generic platform for expression... I would go as far as to state that Art could even

steer people's behaviour... what's your point about this? Does it sound a bit exaggerated?

"NO "is a piece about my feelings as a woman, using my own hair to communicate my research . For two and a half weeks, I had a trading stand in the market designated to woman.

My own braided hair advertised the hair-do I was offering to do. In exchange, I asked for posing to the camera time.

One hundred and thirteen women chose to participate. With each woman, as I braided her hair, we discussed her feelings about being a woman in the market, and how she feels about the way the society makes her feel about her body.

When I finished doing the braids, I stood behind the camera. My instructions then to the woman was to nod her head, as if saying "No", simultaneously showing off the different angles of her braid.

Then they left, adorned with the same hairdo as mine. Over a year has passed since, and I still meet random woman who tell me how the braids changed their day, and how beautiful they felt. I know, that I had taken there unbound hair and closed it firmly to form that.

You have talked about projects you did in the street, communicating with random people, In "My happiness is your grief", you deal with your closer surrounding.

Specifically with your close family. What is the background of this video?

The video is about my relationship with my mother and my relationship to the model of a mother I was expected to become and rejected. I based the videos sequence on childhood memories from religious rituals at family meals. On Friday night dinner, it is a tradition that the father followed by the mother

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place there hands on the children's head and recite a blessing that god will bless and take care of them.

There is a different blessing for girls and boys and it's given in order from oldest to youngest sibling. Looking back I thought of the choreography and body gestures that made that ritual what it is. In the video, I am

different generations and times in my body. I thought of the gestures I would have used, expanding on the formal ones to give expression to the complexity of the family situation.

Before taking leave from this interesting conversation I would like to pose a but

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clichĂŠ question, but an interesting one that I'm sure will interest our readers around the world...

It goes without saying that feedbacks are capable of providing an artist of an important support, which is for sure not absolutely indespensable, but that can stimulate to keep on with Art: I was just

wondering if the expectation of positive feedback could even influence the process of an artist... In particular, how would you define the nature of the relation with your audience?

I think of the audience as an integral part of the work, and not a separate stage after I have

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finished. I don’t expect a specific feedback, but I do want a feedback, otherwise I would of worked alone in the studio.

The train station from "Approaching" is the one I use to commute, and the market from "No" is where I do my shopping regularly.

At both projects, I was not confined to an art context, and I was careful to even mention the word art when I explained what I'm doing.

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

Thanks for the interview!

In the next couple of months I will be performing in a movement improvisation series at Barbur Gallery, for further information: http://impromovement.wix.com/2015 The project I'm working on now is a video and a performance that deal with the image of a memorial wreath .

In the future, I hope to be attentive to the materials in my body and in my surrounding, and to be precise with myself.

An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator witht he collaboration of Katherine Williams landescape@europe.com

(Photo by Dor Kedmi)

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Rüdiger Fischer Lives and works in Lübeck, Germany

An artist's statement

M

y work is of narrative nature, it opens up a space from which the recipient can think ahead.

The works contain one (or more) questions that you can talk about.

Mostly my questions research the relationships between reality and possible reality, between sign and matter.

You can say: I am suggesting a narrative.

And as well: I am creating a situation.

Some situations do not seem to be possible (like “Moving Cities) at all and some fictions seem to be more attractive than the real history (Genealogy).

Some fiction I created (like the series “Entertainments”, the name basing on David Foster Wallace character “James O. Incandenca”, an underground director in

his novel “Infinite Jest”) is drawing dystopian stories of the future. The series is examining the way we are constructing future and especially failed futures.

What kind of signs do we prefer? And can I overwrite a special sign, which is usually used in another context?

That’s what I am doing, and I call it art.

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Rüdiger Fischer An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator landescape@europe.com with the collaboration of Theresa S. Sutton

The work of Rüdiger Fischer accomplishes an insightful exploration in the blurry area in which memories and imagination coexist in a static, almost atemporal dimension: his incessant search of an organic symbiosis between several viewpoints out of temporal synchronization offers to the viewer a multilayered experience that to urges our imagination to fill the missing pieces of the story that he has deliberated omitted. One of the most convincing aspects of Fischer's practice is the way he creates an area of intellectual interplay between perception and memory, that invites the viewers to explore the crossroad between contingency and immanence: I'm very pleased to introduce our readers to her refined artistic production.

Hello Rüdiger and welcome to LandEscape: I would start this interview, posing you some questions about your background. Are there any experiences that have particularly influence your evolution as an artist and that informs the way you currently conceive and produce your works?

During my work as a copywriter at an ad agency, I discovered the possibilities of the basic form of a print ad. You see – there is a headline, a picture and a copytext. This is a

highly structured approach of telling a story, not unlike a Haiku or a Limerick or symbolic systems like traffic signs or emoticons. But I always regretted it was used to tell rather lame stories about brands and things someone should buy. So I began to use the basic form of a print ad to tell stories I found to be interesting. That’s how it all started for me as an artist. I used to write short stories since I was 13 or 14 years old, later I studied philosophy. I was – in some way – prepared to do what I am doing now: formulate questions and hypotheses about time, experience and our behaviour in a space of possibilities - and than put it in a container defined as art.

In all of your multifaceted artistic production there's a recurrent sense of narrative: although each of your project has an autonomous life, there's always seem to be such a channel of communication between your works, that springs from the way you juxtapose ideas and media: German multimedia artist Thomas Demand stated once that "nowadays art can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological narrative elements within the medium instead". What's your point about this? And in particular, how much do you explicitly think of a narrative for your works?

Symbolic Systems are based on an almost intuitive understanding of signs, embedded in a specific culture. But in a global system of art Juerg Luedi

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Patchworks Of The Past details

production, you have a limited pool of symbols which will work for you. Iconographic symbols like crosses or skulls where excessively used not only by the advertising industry but media production at all. So what is the meaning of a skull? The Hamlet Skull, the Ed Hardy Skull, the Pirates of the Caribbean Skull, the Damien Hirst Skull? Maybe after all that “skullism”, it does not mean a thing, nothing specific, it is detail from myFunerals, Performance

just a skull. But that’s pretty boring, isn’t it?

You cannot work precisely with it.

So what I am doing in “Entertainments” for example is, I take pictures of pictures in newspapers and rearrange them to another picture. I use them to create a kind of visual film-script, telling a dystopian story. I like science fiction and I like the stories I am

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telling, but I am as well interested in the multiple transformation process of signs. What does my rearrangement prove? Does it prove anything at all? Where is the meaning of the single and than rearranged sign? Has it just vanished?

Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from "Patchworks Of The

Past", an extremely interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest our readers to visit directly at http://www.rouvenfischer.de in order to get a wider idea of your multifaceted artistic production. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something

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Patchworks Of The Past details about the genesis of this stimulating project? What was your initial inspiration?

Unlikely to my other works, Patchworks Of The Past started not with an idea but with the material - photo slides and film negatives from my grandpa. Each specific slide - for example from our 1978 journey to Berchtesgaden, Bavaria – can be seen as a symbol. It contains

memories about a certain period of my life. It contains or stimulates a reconstruction of me, a question maybe: how have I been? The Slides contain pictures of public places, people passing by, elements of nature like mountains and trees, relicts of civilisation. Each slide represents a slice of time. So the obvious question to me was: what kind of representation is established by all of these

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slides? And how can I ask this question as an artist?

I began playing with the slides, cutting them into slices and recombining them, mashing them up. The people and times and stories intertwined. I revealed unknown and new relationships, an untold history, and a possible past. The new recombined slides are containing

gaps- gaps of knowledge and meaning. I drew attention to these gaps by “marking� them with monochrome slices.

When I first happened to get to know with this work I tried to relate all the visual information and the presence of primary environmental elements to a single meaning. But I soon realized that I had to fit

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into its visual unity, forgetting my need for a univocal understanding of its symbolic content: rather that a conceptual interiority, I can recognize the desire to enabling us to establish direct relations...

Would you say that it's more of an intuitive or a systematic process?

Actually I try to prevent the attitude of symbolism, but during the process of arranging

all those slices I have cut, “strong pictures” are forming almost by itself. I have to make a decision. I don’t want the recipients to reveal a hidden meaning, but ask themselves: What is happening here? What is this? How can this fit together? Yes, I am establishing direct relationships and sometimes it works for me and sometimes it doesn’t. It is important to accept, that not each of my suggestions make

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sense. I like it very much when a system fails.

Within all the sense I am producing, it gives a special feeling of freedom to me when I can stop making sense.

The ambience created by "Patchworks Of The Past" has reminded me the concept of Heterotopia elaborated by French social theorist Michel Foucault. What has mostly

impacted on me is the way you have been capable of bringing a new level of significance to the signs of absence, that invites us to a fulfilment process that involves the viewer's personal memories.

This is a recurrent feature of your approach and you seem to deconstruct and assembly memories in order to suggest a process of investigation: maybe that one of the roles of

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Rüdiger Fischer

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an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this?

You are absolutely right: I see my work as an investigation, a research for new knowledge objects. Each work represents a question and an invitation: let’s talk about it. What is this? I hope my works are creating doors to unknown rooms.

In each room you can talk differently about a specific topic. “The limits of my language are the limits of my world”, Ludwig Wittgenstein stated in Tractatus Logico Philosophicus. That’s why I am trying to create new forms of expression: I want to expand the boundaries of my world.

To me, questions have always been more important and more powerful than answers. For example: The sentence “A man who lived in his town as if it where the sea” creates a complete different set of associations than the sentence “A man who lived in his town as if it where the woods”. I once was working on a set of pictures, just made out of one sentence like the ones above. And this can be enough to create a complete universe, a whole story, a different point of view and a wide range of possibilities. This is – more than anything else – my conception of art: Creating spaces and giving the recipient the ability to explore them by his own.

I like the way your practice is intrinsically connected to the chance of creating an area of intense interplay with the viewers, that are urged to evolve from the condition of a merely passive audience: in particular, your investigation about the intimate consequences of constructed realities: while conceiving Art could be considered a purely abstract activity, there is always a way of giving it a permanence that goes beyond the ephemeral nature of the concepts you capture. So I would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a

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Meine Matchboxautos in gefährlichen Situationen

creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

of simulation and semiotics, media, psychology or physics to create a personal tale of research.

To me, the research on my own history will always be part of my work. More than that, my association set is very private. It is my key to the understanding and rearrangement of my world. When I state, “Well see, this picture is pure theory, got it?” I am lying from time to time. It is not. It is the attempt to use theories

Can the audience transform my suggestion to a more general point of view? And if they do it – will they recognize me? Will they remember me?

You seem to be in an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between several viewpoint out of temporal

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Meine Matchboxautos in gefährlichen Situationen

synchronization: moreover, the reference to the universal imagery of childhood that recurs in "Meine Matchboxautos in gefährlichen Situationen" seems to remove any historic gaze from the reality you refer to, offering to the viewers the chance to perceive in a more atemporal form. In this sense, I daresay that the semantic juxtaposition between sign and matter that

marks out your art, allows you to go beyond any track of contingency...

The series “Meine Matchboxautos in gefährlichen Situationen” (my matchbox cars in dangerous situations) came up from the desire to construct situations like the ones I created in my childhood: rather wild combinations of matchbox cars, puppets, building blocks and so on. In my series, I combine them with toys my

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son used to play with. So there is a line from the past into the present. And you are right – timelines are flowing into each other and creating a special moment. And this is because while one plays, he is out of time and out of space. Nevertheless, the situations refer to games that have played before, to games at all. The works of this series remain in abeyance. Because the relationships of the elements in the dangerous situations to one other are doubtful, they have a certain degree of freedom to interact. But I make a suggestion – at least these are dangerous situations…

That’s not unlike another piece of work, reflecting on the way we are constructing our past. “Frozen Time – Three Generations” consists of a freezer with a glass-door. Inside are about a dozen blocks of ice, in which things are frozen, things of me, my son and my grandfather. Matchbox-cars and photos, ties and books and glasses and Play Mobil figures and so on. Again I make a suggestion what the past might be – a collection of things I can look at or take in my hands. And that’s one special way we construct a past – by taking one incident after the other into our mental hands and putting them together into a line and then say: So, this is how it has been.

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

To my birthday from my friends I wished as a gift slides or photo-negatives from them. I am going to do something with that, working on with “Patchworks Of The Past”. Also, I added some works to the series “Entertainments” and “Genealogy”. Maybe I will do something

with a special toy the five years old daughter of my woman gave to me as a gift – a pink castle, in which unicorns are living, with two unicorns as a basic “staff”. A kind of examination of game play and the possibilities of the unicorn narrative. I am also very interested in a subject I call rear-view-mirrormojos – all that stuff people are putting on the rear-view-mirrors in their cars. These “mojos” to me are a condensed tale of their wishes, hope and their history. I don’t know what do to with my fascination by now, but when it is time, I will have an idea. And so it goes…

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Lee Tal Lives and works in Basel, Switzerland

I

don't set out to produce art about one subject matter or another, instead my interest is more in the shape and form and how it react to the space itself.

In my work I’m trying constantly to combine two different fields of vision, that exist in the world in general and more particular in the art world.

Will using the connection between geometric abstract shapes and readymade objects from the everyday existence. I’m trying to produce several effects and influences between the objects the space and the abstract background.

One of the key components in my work is the space itself. And the possibility to minimize the artistic abstraction that is already a reality in art .so I can combines between this two orders, as I’m

An artist's statement

attempting to bring them both into a new concept.

The main thing that currently leads me in my art is the idea and the options that every one of those artistic fields is open to a different direction of reality. And while I’m creating in a two main medium (sculpture and photography) and I use different processes in each on of them, my methodology is staying consistent.

So although there may not always be material similarities between the mediums, they are linked by a single conceptual line. And although that the subject matter of each body of work determines the materials and the forms of the work. The conceptual thought remains the same.

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Lee Tal An interview by Josh Ryder, curator with the collaboration of Dario Rutigliano, curator landescape@europe.com

Ranging from Photography to Sculpture, Lee Tal accomplishes a suggestive investigation about the concepts of shape and form: while his approach rejects an open interdisciplinary feature, each of his projects conveys a careful analysis of the elusive nature of space. One of the most convincing aspect of Tal's work is the way he provides the viewers of an Ariadne's thread that reveals the existence of a convergence point between abstraction and experience: I'm very pleased to introduce our readers to his refined artistic production.

Hello Lee and welcome to LandEscape: I would start this interview, posing you some questions about your background. You have a solid formal training that you earned in over ten years of stimulating experiences, starting from your studies at the London Royal College of Art to the M.F.A. program that you have successfully accomplished at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design.

Besides, you also studied History, Design and Film Art: how did these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? Do they still inform the way you currently conceive and produce your works?

I am a great advocate of accumulating knowledge, especially by people who are involved in creative fields, I think it’s a must to generate Educational and intellectual side that

will add another layer to the artistic creation.

In my case the fact that I had touched in many fields during my formal education helped me to see and learned more about the way to create a solid piece that have two side, an astatic side and an intellectual side. Also the facet that I have want to a lot of Educational Institutions gave me the option to watch different point of views that contributed greatly to the development of my artistic view on the arts filed and those experience continue to contribute and influence me as an artist until today.

But when I reflect about education and particularly about arts education I believe that arts education is only the first step to become a professional artist. I cannot ignore from the fact that education and artistic studies contribute to creating a successful artist But I think it is very important not to ignore of physical from the side that is just as important as formal arts studios.

In my case I was also extremely lucky to have another way that has enriched my artistic approach, since the beginning of my studies I started also working as an artist assistant for extremely talented conceptual artist such Benni Efrat, Osvaldo Romberg and Michael Gitlin, that deeply contributed to my understanding of the art world and gave my the chance to see the conduct of a professional artist, and the opportunity the grow my conceptual aspect in a way that helping me to continue growing with my works.

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So with the combination of these two fields, theoretical studies and Practical studies I gained knowledge and tools that serving me in my work to this day.

Multidisciplinarity is a crucial aspect of your art practice and you seem to be in an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between several disciplines, taking advantage of the creative and expressive potential of Sculpture and Photography: while crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that working in different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

I fully agree with the assumption you brought here, I have always believed that as an artist you need to serve the concept, and the concept itself need to be the main characteristic that will determined the artistic medium I use.

That is the reason way in my search after the perfect way to produce an art object I’m using a lot of different artistic fields and disciplines, all is for the sake of serving the concept.

I think that when you limit yourself in terms of the medium you produce a situation where you limit your primary concept, and can bring to a holds your conceptual grow as an artist.

In my creative process I discovered that the only way to lead to the development of artistic process is the integration between different artistic disciplines and mediums.

Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from street Object, an extremely interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest our readers to visit www.leetalart.com in order to get a wider detail from myFunerals, Performance

Lee Tal

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Lee Tal

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idea of your multifaceted artistic production.

In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this stimulating project? What was your initial inspiration?

In this project my initial inspiration was the object itself and I was interested in exploring what happens to the everyday object, when he is insulate away from his original place. While placing the object out of his original context and putting him into a new context.

By this process, the viewer will be able to go back and look at the original essence of objects photography without the rest of the visual distractions that attendance in photography world. With this perception I can return to deal with a single object at a time. And allow the viewer to have an opportunity to a clan and straight view on the objet itself.

Also I should note that the thought process that led me to create this series came from my considerable preoccupation with objects and the effect of them on the space and the viewer, which you can see in my sculptures series “interlock objects”.

A sense of subtle but pervading narrative is an hallmark of your approach: although each of your project has an autonomous life, there's always seem to be such a channel of communication between your works, that springs from the way you justapose ideas and media: German Photographer and Sculptor Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological narrative elements within the medium instead". What's your point about this? And in particular, how much do you explicitly think of a narrative for your works?

It’s hard for me not to agree with the comments

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of Thomas Demand, I do believe that today in the art filed the psychological narrative elements need to be one of the must important criterion to produce a work of art which is not only good, but also has a visual artistic integrity and aesthetic quality.

takes up a large volume of the creative process itself, the fact that every object, which I use, has a historical and cultural background is one of the fact that directly affect my decision if to use a certain object or not.

But despite this as an artist whose work mainly deals with objects I cannot ignore the symbolic history and the original context of the objects that I’m using in my art.

In my personal creative process the narrative

When I first happened to get to know the interesting installation entitled Force of nature I tried to relate all the visual information and the presence of a primary environmental elements to a single

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meaning. But I soon realized that I had to fit into the visual unity suggested by the work, forgetting my need for a univocal understanding of its symbolic content: in your work, rather that a conceptual interiority, I can recognize the desire to enabling us to establish direct relations...

Would you say that it's more of an intuitive or a systematic process?

I'm very glad you asked me about this installation because this installation work is

probably one of the main starting points the influence on my current works.

In this project, I worked in the attempt to make the objects shape the environment within which it is placed, and by placing the sculptures in a specific location I was able to set a predetermined path of viewing.

In such a way that viewing order in the exhibition, would serve the message and the experience that I wanted to convey to the viewer.

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When I think about this installation work wit the perspective of several years since I created it, I can definitely that it was the moment which my work and my creative process stop being completely intuitive and started to be almost completely a systematic process.

The conceptual lines that marks out your approach is intrinsically connected to an investigation about the intimate consequences of constructed realities, as in Interlock objects: while conceiving Art could be considered a purely abstract activity, there is always a way of giving it a permanence that goes beyond the ephemeral nature of the concepts you capture. So I would take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

On the contrary, Not only I believe that the creative process can take place in disconnected from direct experience But rather the creative process should, and have to be disconnected from direct experience.

For me as an artist that was influenced by a lot of conceptual and neo- conceptual artist, i think that the most important thing about the creative process is the idea, and everything ales need to serve this concept.

Of course I'm not saying it's impossible to insert direct experience into your work, but our experience should be involved only at the stage when you develops the primary concept, and then everything should be driven to the idea.

To clarify the subject, I'll give you an example from my series “street object�.

I began this series when after a long time I worked mainly on sculpture, and when I went to start this series I looked at a collection of Street Photography that I took during the past few

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years that lay on the hard drive. And I looked for what was the reason I photographed them in the first place, after prolonged gaze at the picture I discovered that in every photograph there was an object I was drawn to. And in the process of formulating the idea, I decided that the best way to show the environmental impact of that object would be to isolate the object from his original environment.

regardless of my personal connection with the object.

And all this because that in my point of view, when I'm finished with the work And I takes it out to the public, the Viewers should have to have the possibility of obtaining the full spiritual experience from the object itself, Without consideration to me as the artist and the creator of the piece.

Now of course the primary choice of the object comes through my own personal experience of the Photographic area.

But then, the creative process need and must serve the insulation concept of the object,

A crucial feature of your work that has impacted on me and that I would like to highligh is the way your exploration of the relation between shape and form brings a new level of significance to the concept of

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Lee Tal

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space itself: the geometric abstract shapes that are recurrent in your series seems to invite the viewers to a fullfilment process that involves the viewer's personal memories. This is a recurrent feature of your approach and you seem to deconstruct and assembly memories in order to suggest a process of investigation: maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this?

You were right to notice that one of my main interests is about shape and form and how them can react to the space itself. According to my visual perception of art I believe that geometric abstract shapes due to the option that Inherent in them to produce any visual image, can be to reveal unexpected sides of nature and the Sublime spirituality, which can

be reached by the artistic abstraction. In my art Will using the connection between geometric abstract shapes and readymade objects and the casting of readymade objects from the everyday existence, I’m trying to produce several effects and influences between the objects, space and the abstract geometrical background.

And As you pointed out in the question I do believe that’s on of the most important roles for us as artists, is to bring this spirituality abstraction to the viewer, all of this in order to allow the viewer the possibility of spiritual transcendence and connection to the art piece based on his personal experience and memories.

You seem to be in an incessant search of an organic, almost intimate symbiosis between

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

In my work I’m trying consist and to combine two different fields of vision, the idea that every one of those fields is open in different direction, as all the ingredients’ we used in our daily life are being transform into a new position.

Will using several viewpoints I’m trying to dismiss the original Purpose of the object and bring him into a new concept. This assumption is as an outline for all of my recent projects and with the attempting to minimize the artistic abstraction that is already a reality in art, i am trying to generate the combination between these two orders in the attempt to bring them both into a signal concept.

It was true of you to indicate that in my works I’m offering to the viewers the chance to perceive in a more atemporal form, That's because I'm trying to reach to a situation through which every viewer will be able to reach the work from his own perspective, and interpreted it using the tools he got and his own personal experiences.

All of this is made in order that the viewer will be able to interpret it through his own eyes and personal experiences, and not through the eyes and the thoughts of the artist During these years your works have been exhibited in several occasions, including a recent participation to the group exhibition Connections in Manhattan, curated by Joyce

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Weinstein: so, before taking leave from this interesting conversation I would like to pose a a question about the nature of the relation with your audience: in particular, do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial

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

This is a very complex question that her answer would have to be in two parts,

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On the one hand the viewer does not has any importance to my decision-making process.

When I want to begin a new piece my first consideration derives from two sources, the idea and my own personal connection to the

object. These two sources will be the only thing that will determine what kind of language, I will be using for a particular context.

But on the other hand I cannot ignore that I'm still a Visual Artist, and as an artist I always

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have to be aware, that my final product is a Visual product.

The only way u knows how to pass on my thoughts my feelings and all that I believe in; it’s a visual way. And therefore it is almost impossible to completely ignore from the viewer.

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

My future projects Will continue to evolve In a few parallel lines, I will continue my project “interlock objects” And see how I can contain the same conceptual rules on a bigger scale, If its in a full installation or an outdoor public sculpture.

Because At this point in my work I have realized that a space’s itself has the same potential as the object, and the object have the same Conceptual spatial perception the space. So occasionally the space makes the object unnecessary and vice versa. There is also a series of photographic works that I started in 2011, called “Imaginary structure”, this series I’m doing almost the identical process as in the series “street objects” and isolating parts of a photograph that came from an architectural structures, But rather than isolating it from space I'm duplicating it and makes it into the space itself.

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Greg Condon Lives and works in New York City, USA

An artist's statement

M

y animation is intrinsically linked to my life. My stories draw equally on my past and present, freely mixing distant memory with recent observations. While on the outset I use abstract and non-linear images, my films are always focused on a thematically unified, autobiographical narrative. I do not animate in one particular medium but focus on specific themes I try to express through whatever materials seem appropriate. Be it clay, flipbooks, people or manipulated found footage, the tools are as exciting to me as the idea behind the work. I have tried to create work that emphasizes connectivity, often of a non-linear sort. I like to take ordinary scenes and make something seem extra-ordinary, either through visual manipulation repetition or fantasy.

I’m interested in both the meticulous, meditative aspect of the practice itself and also a desire to trick and delight an audience with the final result. The very nature of

animation is, by design, an illusion. It can take hours of work to recreate a simple action that is almost unnoticeable in everyday life. I enjoy the juxtaposition of a complicated, labor intensive idea presented in a casual manner, and I am always striving for this element in my work.

Like many stop motion animators I started making movies in my bedroom as a teenager, using an old camcorder. The technology has continued to change with the times but the underlying process of animation has always remained the same. It is comforting to have a familiar work routine in an industry with a constantly changing standard. The desire to create images new and exciting for an audience using the traditional techniques of stop-motion is what drives me to continue to make films.

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Greg Condon An interview by Dario Rutigliano, curator landescape@europe.com with the collaboration of Jane M. Russell

Using a multidisciplinary approach, Greg Condon has developed an interesting animation style capable of investigating the relation between the outside worlds and way we perceive it. Viewers are not invited to enter an unknown realm of emotions, but urged to force things to relate, exploring suspended worlds and fill them with their personal experiences, to embrace Condon's intimate take on reality and to discover our unsuspected ability to bring a new level of significance to well-acquainted concepts as space and memory. I'm particularly pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating works.

Hello Greg, and welcome to LandEscape: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? Are there any experiences that have particularly influenced you as an artist and informed the way you currently conceive and produce your works?

Thank you for inviting me to participate in this interview. I studied animation at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan after always being interested in film. I started making flip books as a kid and just continued on experimenting in animation with a friend in high school. I think it was a desire to make movies that got me interested in picking up a camera but my friend and I really latched on to stop motion.

We started out doing simple things, animating clay and drawings on dry erase boards and gradually our projects got longer and more elaborate. By the time we were graduating high school we created an eight minute short with multiple sets and characters for our graduation project. I really enjoyed the medium and wanted to keep studying it college. I never thought I could draw well enough to work for a studio like Disney and had it in the back of my mind I may switch to a more traditional film school. But I began to take animation much more seriously after seeing films by animators like Osamu Tezuka and Caroline Leaf. Their work (among others) really exposed me to the potential and diversity of it as an art form. I don't know that a any specific experiences I had informed my work other than watching a lot of TV and movies growing up!

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?

It really differs from piece to piece. Looking back on my past work I can see why I choose to create that specific piece that way, even find a thread between pieces but it certainly never seems to make sense at the time. I pretty much just use whatever is in front of me. With a piece like 'bodysplash' I just had Juerg Luedi

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this idea of taking normal wrestling moves and arranging them as if they were in a Busby Berkeley number. It could have been any sport really, I choose wrestlers because I was working for the World Wrestling Entertainment at the time and had access to their footage. Lately I have been doing a a lot of work in after effects and on the computer because I don't have a studio right now and no space to make more traditional stop motion sets. I try and focus on something I know I can finish. It mainly is a question of 'what can I get done?' The amount of preparation varies as well, though for the most part there is always a lot of planning and thought that goes into each project. I probably spend more time developing the idea than actually working on it!

Now let's focus on your artistic production: I would start from Beat and afterbeat an extremely interesting project that our readers have already started to admire in the introductory pages of this article: and I would suggest to our readers to visit your website directly at http://www.hiddenjunk.net in order to get a wider idea of your artistic production. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this interesting project?

What was your initial inspiration?

I had been teaching myself After Effects and slowly incorporating it into my work. I think because I grew up making videos before computer software I was resistant to include programs like that into my animation while at school. When I graduated I found out that, basically, nobody is doing stop motion anymore and had to take a job in motion graphics. I didn't have much experience in these programs at that time and had to learn on the job. It really forced me to see what these programs were capable of. It took some time for me to discover how to use these programs in my style. Last summer I decided to take a detail from myFunerals, Performance

A still from beat and afterbeat

continuing ed class to further my knowledge of the After Effects. We had to make a 30 second film for our final project and I wanted

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to do something using rhythms (audibly and visually) of the New York City. I was getting into recording sound as well and my goal

initially was to have a soundtrack entirely of city sounds. A big inspiration for this piece was an early experimental short Jim Henson made

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A still from beat and afterbeat

called Timepiece. It has a percussion soundtrack and many abstract and mixed media imagery involving man relating to his

environment. The very last shot in Beat is me walking right across from the building Henson lived in at the time he made Timepiece.

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From a certain viewpoint Beat and afterbeat seems to explore from a conceptual viewpoint the way we establish relations with the environment we inhabit in: to quote, Simon Starling, the reference to geometrical patterns seems to suggest the viewer to force relation between things and concepts that would probably otherwise be unrelated.

Your visionary emphasizeation of connectivity brings a new level of significance to the stories you tell and I would go as far as to state that in a certain sense your works challenge the viewers' perception in order to going beyond the common way to perceive not only the outside world, but the way we relate to it... By the way, I'm sort of convinced that some informations & ideas are hidden, or even "encrypted" in the environment we live in, so we need -in a way- to decipher them. Maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this?

I like the way you put it, that the environment we live in is something we need to decipher. I certainly think the role of an artist is to reveal something of our inner nature. I am definitely thinking about showing something unexpected or even hidden in everyday life in my work.

Though, if I am being completely honest I think a lot of my ideas begin with a desire to simply make something I think will look cool.

Eventually I kept the city sounds in the background and had a drum beat throughout which helped move the piece along.

Often something I think would simply be visually exciting ends up revealing a bit more about myself then I intend! Sometime you just can't help having your own point of view coming through. I am always happy when people respond to my work or have theories about what is underlying there, though I am a little reticent to apply an explanation myself, often it isn't really clear to me till I have had some distance from it.

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A still from Brooms - Lazy Ass

Your works, as the interesting Brooms - Lazy Ass, are always pervaded with a deep sense of narrative: but at the same time you seem to be particualrly interested to the intrinsic expressive potential of the medium. As you have remarked once, the tools are as exciting as the idea behind the work has this has reminded me a quote of Thomas Demand, when he stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological narrative elements within the medium instead": what's your point about this? And in particular, how much do you explicitly think of a narrative for your works?

I often get excited by a tool or a visual 'trick' I think I can pull off, although I always feel what I

am saying with the trick is more important.

The work is so time consuming, I know by the time I have it out there for the public someone else is going to do a very similar idea so I better have a unique take on it. At least in this regard, narrative is extremely important in my work. I like the idea of 'probating the narrative elements within the medium.'

I am in love with the process of animation and filmmaking and like to show it as much as possible. I have fun making these works and want to get that across in the finished piece.

With something like Lazy Ass, it is a silly song on one level but it is talking about some deep stuff when you get right down to it.

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A still from Brooms - Lazy Ass

It wanted to capture both of those elements in the visual. Making a music video, I think you should be trying to make a visual representation of the song, it's maybe a bit like adapting a book, just trying to get the feel of it.

chance of getting a result following a totally different process may inform the way an animator relate himself to the process of conceiving a work: do you agree with this point?

As you have remarked once, as a teenager you started making movies in your bedroom using an old camcorder: the impetuous way modern technology has nowadays came out on the top has dramatically revolutionized the idea of animation and of filmmaking in general... it would be of course possible to produce works as Dropped, but it should have been a bit more difficult. But the main ideas underlying the process of animation are the same of Ĺ vankmajer's early times: however, it goes without saying that the

For me the process really helps how i relate to a piece. I also think you are right that the underlying process is the same as it ever was.

If you look at an old school filmmaker like Georges Melies, he was an illusionist who left the stage for the magic of film.

His thought process never changed though, he always wanted to fool people.

If he were around nowadays, I think he would adapt pretty quickly to how films are made and still be trying to capture people's imagination.

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Art Review

A still from Dropped, stop motion animation

Your work is rich of references to your personal experience and your animation style encourages a semiotic discovery of the visual: and I have really appreciated

the way, by heightening the tension between reality and perception, this conceptual work explores the concept of language and of direct experience... so I

Greg Condon

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be disconnected from direct experience?

For me a personal connection to the piece is necessary. Often pieces are personal in ways I didn't mean them to be. I may watch something I made five years ago and think i would not do it that way now but appreciate I have this snapshot of how I thought at the time.

I think the only way you could make something and not have represent you would be to try and do it in someone else's style. Like a forger. They seem to get caught all the time though, so it seems hard to make a go of it.

The way you work seems to be is intuitive but at the same time it's meticolously connected to a lot of experimenting and work-in-process, as in the interesting Roald Stevenson outtakes. From this viewpoint, multidisciplinarity is a crucial aspect of your art practice: while crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

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

I do enjoy crossing mediums. I have a lot of interests want to try out a lot of fields. I think the way the world is now it is more and more common, even necessary, to do so. Going back to your point about the how process relates to the final product - I think how achievable something like animation is with just a computer nowadays has a lot more artists willing to try it out then say in the 80s. The internet has made getting your work out there a lot easier as well, so things like promotion can all be done right in your living room. It can be a overwhelming too - knowing where or how to split your focus. Can I give my animation all I have if I am simultaneously working on a comic? That is why something like the Roald Stevenson was fun because they were

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Greg Condon

Art Review

A still from Roald Stevenson outtakes

interrelated. I would like to do more things along those lines in the future. Keep exploring many different avenues in hopes that they will, one day, all intersect. I tried to do a sort of "live Claymation" performance piece a while back, though it did not go as planned. I had ambitions I would be showing animation while interacting with it live and playing the banjo to accompany

it. Unfortunately my banjo toppled over in the beginning of the act and got out of tune for the rest of my 'set.' I always want to see the blending of art forms, especially in a live performance. Animation has so many platforms it can fit into there are a lot of possibilities there.

Greg Condon

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A still from Peanut Butter & Graduation

The audience's feedback is not essential for creating, but it goes without saying that it's very important: so, before taking leave from this interesting conversation I would like to pose a a question about the nature of the relation with your audience: in particular, do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your

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

The ideal way for me to watch my work is in a theatre with a crowd so in that respect I am considering how it might play with an audience.

Although there is definitely a danger in considering the audience too much. I like to

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Greg Condon

Art Review

A still from Choo Choo la Rouge's song "Here Come the Guns"

think I create videos that I would enjoy if I saw it at a festival or stumbled across it on the internet. I have had a couple videos go 'viral' and reach a large audience which is great to know people respond to it but I try not to let the desire for a large audience effect my decision making. There are so many venues now for media to get

consumed, it would be easy to get lost trying to guess what video would play well where and how. Ultimately I want to make something I am happy with.

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

Greg Condon

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A still from Jeffrey Lewis off the album City and Eastern Songs

professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

I will hopefully have a studio to work in this summer so i hope to make a more traditional stop motion short (or at least start one). I miss working in clay and want to get back to a more conventional narrative and character piece. I

have long down the road projects including a children's book and much longer short, but not sure if a completion date is in sight for either of those. Thanks so much for these great questions!