Level 25 Artjournal; Issue #11

Level 25 Artjournal

Level 25 ArtJournal

...art should be shared

Holly Hansen Timothy Hutto Inga Loyeva Agent X Katie Yates

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Issue #11; December 2014

Level 25 ArtJournal

http://level25art.com info@level25art.com Sean David Wright, Founder and Chief Editor

Cover Artist

Holly Hansen pg 4 Timothy Hutto pg 12 Inga Loyeva pg 22 Agent X pg 32 Katie Yates pg 40

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All interviews conducted by Sean David Wright; (editor@level25art.com)

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“Untitled” Photograph Katiebird Yates

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Holly Hansen (US) As an artist growing up on Cape Cod, Holly Hansen’s work is influenced by her experiences in the seaside landscape and it’s culture. As a young working artist, her practice reflects the idea that we must constantly push ourselves to move forward with our concepts. Therefore, Holly’s pieces have a high level of experimentation and risk in the creation of composition and use of mark-making.

Holly also relies on personal experience to create effective mood and atmosphere in her pieces. With emphasis on color, Holly’s pieces utilize landscape to create composition while remaining abstracted to incorporate memory and emotion.

The resulting pieces of these methods of working are personal, luminous records of an artist drawn to landscape but working in the city. Washes of color are soon activated by a busy, intense curiosity with marks as a tool for expression.

Common motifs and images of places appear as memory and act and a conflict between representation and abstraction.

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“Plum Island III” Holly Hansen

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“Twin Peaks, San Francisco” Holly Hansen

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Level 25 ArtJournal I love the seaside. I try to spend as much time as possible on both coasts of America and when I am on the coast, whether it is the west or east, I feel as if I have returned to my spiritual home.

What specifically about the seaside has influenced your artwork?

HH: Growing up on Cape Cod I understood the value of appreciating the beauty of your surroundings. I find a frozen, icy bay more awe-inspiring than a sunset with tourists dotted around low tide. My gratitude for the varied landscapes of Cape Cod, in every season, has driven my work since it began. In learning to appreciate the beauty of your surroundings, you can find solace anywhere, anytime.

I also see a lot of Japanese influence in your works, particularly in the brushwork. Is this a happy accident or have you in fact been influenced strongly by Japanese artists?

HH: As founders of the medium, all printmaking students look to Japanese prints as masters of technique. However, I didn’t study their ink drawings or calligraphic works. While they may have visual similarities, my brushwork is always intended to be an authentic expression of myself in that moment. I study mark-making intensively, looking to Whistler’s dictionary of marks to build my own vocabulary for my etchings. When I started to work with abstraction, I looked more to abstract expressionists and action painters for the intuition behind their marks. It’s a happy accident.

“Closer Than They Appear” Holly Hansen

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“Untitled” Holly Hansen

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Level 25 ArtJournal I love that you consider the abstract qualities of your works as being representative of memory and emotion. That is very poetic and has forced me to look at your works in a different way. Tell us, please, are the memories and emotions while you work mostly happy and pleasant, or often sad and turbulent?

HH: The memories are of times where I felt moved by my environment. In making a work I try to remember who I was at that moment, what I was experiencing, and how the landscape affected me. I depict that change of emotion, a movement from an empty sadness to something more meaningful. This is why a brush stroke can be so effective in depicting this- it’s movement is a record of myself in that moment. This authenticity of my intentions and emotions in my work are essential. I am attempting to create a body of work that display what I have found truly living feels like.

There is a work of yours in this collection called “Untitled #1” which, to me, is a virtuosic display of brushwork. But unlike your other works in this magazine it is devoid of color.

What is Holly Hansen’s decision-making process when it comes to determining how much or how little color to use in an etching?

HH: I see my works that have the most color as being the most explicit. They are more accessible, relatable, and easily read. Sometimes when I’m discussing a memory, place, or experience I want it to scream and be easily understood. I want to work quickly, and want to say what I mean very fast. Color is the easiest way for me to communicate mood. Pastels are my favorite. They are completely captivating and totally control an atmosphere when paired with something dark. But the subtleties of color, the many different colors of black, are also very interesting. In this way I may hide my intentions. I want the viewer to look harder to understand what is being said. This etching took much more work and time than others because of this.

Sometimes when I’m discussing a memory, place, or experience I want it to scream and be easily understood.

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Timothy Hutto (US)

www.timothyhutto.com

The goal of this work is to explore the interaction of objects and colors based on semiotic concepts applied to ambiguous imagery in an attempt to create an epiphany moment of interpretation changing the “decisive moment” from the past in to the present at moment of viewing. Avant—garde reinterpretations of mass-produced objects, Pop Art color palettes, and finished print size are used to encourage dissonance between the familiar and what is presented creating a desire for understanding through ambiguity in an atmosphere of play.

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“Death” Digital chromogenic print Timothy Hutto

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“Vision” Digital chromogenic print Timothy Hutto

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My fascination with my childhood; all o made of

Level 25 ArtJournal So, explain your approach to art more for our readers, especially that “semiotic concept” you speak of.

TH: The concept that there is a system to interpretation of line, color, perspective and the other fundamental elements art is what brought me to semiotics. In the field of semiotics there are schools of thought that interest me, referred to as structuralism and post-structuralism. The first argues that there is a code underlies all interpretation.

The idea of a system visual stimulus that has rules makes me excited. Mostly because it makes me be intentional and accountable when I break the rules of the said system. On the other hand the post structural theory has the concept of play that refers to free floating associations that I feel apply to my work with a greater significance. Play is at the very center of my work. When I create there is a very intrinsic thought that I am attempting to broadcast. I choose to do this with ambiguous visual representations that fall between astute and obtuse. This creates a dialogic relationship between the artwork and viewer where the objects and colors become more than an illusionary representation of mass-produced objects with veneers of paint. The symbolic or second order interpretation is where I think the challenge of my work pays off for the viewer.

I cannot tell if all of your works are made or sculpted of plastic, or if some of those items are made of other materials that you then “made” to look like plastic. In either case, plastic seems important to you as an artist. Why? TH: My fascination with the plastic is from my childhood; all of the best toys were made of plastic. By its nature plastic offers the qualities of being moldable, changeable based on its environment and infers a paradoxical true superficiality.

Plastic doesn’t pretend to be anything more or less than what is seen on the surface. For example a molded plastic cup is more often, simply a drinking vessel but a crystal goblet is saturated with possibilities. So, I attempt to reduce or iconize objects in order to avoid the tyranny of desire found in perceived value. This is done to explore how the objects can function analogously to a visual equivalent of a mathematical variable.

h the plastic is from of the best toys were f plastic.

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“Beauty�

Digital chromogenic print Timothy Hutto

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And then “Bureaucracy…” Not red tape, but pink tape. Can you explain that for us; your whole thought process in designing that piece?

TH: This piece started as a bad day at work. At the time of its conception I had been struggling with a workplace that suffered from toxic office politics. This started an exploration of what issues bothered me most about my experiences in the professional, academic and military environments. The AH HA moment was when I was at a wits end and exclaimed “F¨ç˚ing Bureaucracy!” My imagination was off and running. The idea that paperwork was produced through paperwork intercourse made me giggle and I wondered how could I make this sexual to illustrate an issue greater than my personal frustration? The concept grew to explore the handling of sexual assaults in the military and on college campuses. In Bureaucracy I’m trying make a work of art that satirically explores frustration, loss of faith and sexuality.

The more I examined it the more I perceived it to be a systemic failure based on nepotism. Tape came in because of its symbolism as an object that is used to bind. I felt that office tape specifically communicated the nature of the problem and was common enough to allow easy access to the audience. I treated the objects with light colors intending to simulate flesh while simultaneously evoking red tape. Positioning the tape dispensers on top of each other I attempted to evoke an image of sexual congress. In addition the juxtaposition subconsciously forms a “69” to further emphasize a sexual act. Overtly the zodiac symbol for Cancer is formed as homage to a friend who was a victim of assault and the system. The color of the foreground connotes how I view the current state of the issue. The blue in the background denoted the sky and associated the future with helpfulness and healing. The lighting was tricky to design because I wanted things to be serious but not heavy. In response to it I used a single light on the tape dispensers that threw a shadow towards the camera to imply cover-ups but also subliminally form the image of a skull.

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Level 25 ArtJournal “Bureaucracy” Digital chromogenic print Timothy Hutto

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I often feel that politicians in general ar preserve what they see as the ideal past r ing to create a visionary fut

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re attempting to rather than strivture.

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“Politics� is, to me, a funny piece: 3 dinosaurs painted the colors of the American flag, all looking backwards. Is that your opinion of politics (and politicians), that it is an institution that is far, far outdated?

TH: I chose the Red, White and Blue color scheme because of the multitude of countries around the world that use it on their banners. Thailand, France, Russia, the list goes on and on. Politics is about gaining power in my opinion. It is activity that seeks the capacity to manipulate people toward grand achievements but often is practiced by unscrupulous people producing terrible ends.

I often feel that politicians in general are attempting to preserve what they see as the ideal past rather than striving to create a visionary future.

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Inga Loyeva (Ukraine)

www.Inga-Loyeva.com

I am interested in painting not only because of its versatility as a medium but also because of its rich historical repository of images and ideas. By tracing the history of the figure in art I have learned and understood better the history of political events, shifts in spiritual beliefs and the tides of intellectual thought. Over the years of working with the body in drawing and painting, investigating the opportunities and thoughts that arise, I have begun to understand myself and my place in society as a female, immigrant and artist.

My current paintings explore seemingly anachronistic means of representation to depict historically significant events in the present, especially in relation to the depiction of the figure.

I have been interested in the global wave of civil unrest as represented by TV and journalistic news media for some time. However, it was only when I saw an image of a 19th century-looking barricade constructed of park benches, doors, car tires, chairs and whatever was at hand (all packed together with ice for reinforcement) in the country of my birth that I decided to go to Kiev to investigate the Ukrainian situation for myself. Thus, I spent a week on the barricades on Maidan, the square where the whole unfortunate crisis started. I happened to arrive at the right time in late January 2014, it happened to be the tipping point between two months of peaceful protests and the violent clashes that followed. Events have unfolded rapidly since my visit and my key sources of information transformed from firsthand experience to social media posts and discussions, live news media coverage and talk shows attempting to analyze the events.

My latest work (submitted here) was created in response to my personal experience of the protests in Kiev, engaging with the protestors and subsequent observations of the unraveling of Ukraine’s modern political history as seen from abroad. I am interested in the potential role that painting can play in interpretation and documentation of historical events. At the same time, I am investigating the possibilities of history painting in contemporary society, mainly its relationship to the impossibility of objectivity.

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Cover Artist

“Riot Police” Oil on linen Inga Loyeva

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Level 25 ArtJournal The civil unrest which has been plaguing your country is horrible and has inspired many artists who have submitted to Level 25 Artjournal. Your work certainly has a very documentary-type feel to it, making the viewer truly feel as if he or she is there. Was it an emotional process for you creating each of these wonderful paintings?

IG: irectly after I came back from Kyiv, the peaceful protest turned rather violent and brutal overnight. Some of the more radical protesters agitated the government by throwing various objects (some on fire) at the riot police and in response “someone” hired top caliber snipers and began shooting down random protesters, one by one, killing close to a hundred in total. At this very time, I was working on the #Barricades and #Riot Police paintings in my studio while having live feeds of Maidan and Hrushevskogo Street running on two computers day and night. I was witnessing the battle scenes of flying Molotov cocktails, burning tires, and mysterious executions in real time from a distance of 1500 miles and a bird’s eye view. Having just come back from spending time with the protestors, I felt still very emotionally connected with the crowd so these atrocities broke my heart. On the most murderous day, February 20th, I was so overtaken by grief that I couldn’t do anything but use a mechanical pencil to repeatedly draw hundreds of little boxes that resemble building blocks, coffins and at the same time twitter feeds on top of the #Barricades painting as a form of meditation and prayer for an end to the madness.

Another event that was emotionally very charged for me took place on May 2nd in Odessa, the city where I was born.

Essentially, there was a massacre where pro-Russian protesters (men, women and students) were locked inside the House of Trade Unions that they had occupied (once again by “someone”) and charred to the bone in a toxic fire. One day, I would like to make a painting commemorating the victims of this atrocity but I am yet to come to terms with this event within my own sensibility.

Your paintings are so meticulous and detailed, almost like photographs. The fact that you took the time to create these works evidently shows a great deal of passion on your part, passion about your subject. Do you believe that the time it takes to create a painting of such historical events brings you closer to them than if you had just photographed those same events?

IG: You are right, I am very passionate about work that I make and I am glad that comes through in the work itself.

However, it is ironic that the time the time it takes me to create the paintings is often misjudged. Due to my comprehensive background in academic drawing and paintings, I’m actually quite a fast painter. Furthermore, it is ironic that the time it takes for artists to investigate ideas and conceive of work often gets divorced from the time that it takes to physically make it. Many of my friends that are photographers, conceptual artists or abstract painters, all isms commonly misperceived by the public as taking no time at all, often take a very long time to first research, experiment and conceive but only thereafter physically create their work. For me, much of the exploratory and reflective thought processes happen as I am painting. The act of painting serves as time for thinking through what I am depicting, meditating on larger perennial questions, listening to various talks and lectures that inform my investigations and quite often planning the next piece.

I fathom the value of “thinking time” that painting provides me and I cherish it through the frenzy of the rest of my life.

Morley Safely once pointed out that “(In the days of Vietnam) you couldn’t get your film out, you couldn’t get a connection to New York, it didn’t exist. So it gave us thinking time and I think it served us well. That delay, the hiccup in this smoothness of the operation really was of great value to us as reporters and to the public who needed this information.”

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“If I wake up in Russia one day I’m immigrating back to Ukraine” Oil on linen Inga Loyeva

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“Barricades” Oil on linen Inga Loyeva

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“Time.com” Oil on linen Inga Loyeva

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Level 25 ArtJournal Can you provide more information about your experiences at the barricades, please? While you were there primarily as a protester or as an artist? Did you ever feel unsafe? Do you feel as if being there helped at all?

IG: When I landed in Kiev I didn’t yet know how I would feel about the protestors, I saw many conflicting reports on the matter from abroad. I traveled to Maidan to ask questions and record stories rather than to participate as a protestor. It actually took me several months after the trip to develop a firm position within the conflict after investigating and critically examining various facets of the stories told.

While on Maidan, I felt safer than most places that I’ve traveled to in world. One could see that orderly conduct was strictly enforced: anyone drunk, being rowdy or causing trouble would be swiftly removed from the premises by the wardens. After interviewing the Afghani Veterans in charge of security, I understood that the encampment was organized and guarded in the most professional military fashion. There was a sentiment that even if Yanukovych rolled out tanks to disperse the crowd I would have the option to be safely evacuated via a mapped escape route for students, women and innocent bystanders.

On the last scheduled day of my trip, I was considering staying another week to immerse myself even deeper into the protest. Just hours before my flight, I followed a crowd marching on the parliament house to protest newly passed legislation criminalizing the demonstrations. I was taking close up photos of the riot police when I felt tension growing in the air and my knees began to tremble. As I retreated from the front lines, I saw some people from the crowd rocking a riot police bus and it suddenly became clear that it’s time for me to hop in a taxi to catch my flight. By the time I landed in London and checked the news, the first images I saw underscored how fast a peaceful civil protest can be escalated into mayhem. I saw pictures of those same buses I was standing next to just four hours prior but already burned to the ground, molotov cocktails flying across the air and the streets being mined for cobble stone.

I gained many valuable insights from being on Maidan at that particular time and witnessing first-hand the unfolding of events. The patience and insistence on peaceful protest with which the demonstrators demanded change for two cold, winter months was admirable. However, the disregards to their needs and requests, repeated attempts to forcefully remove them from the public space and the slap in the face in the form of new anti-protest laws were more than they could bare. Witnessing the social dynamics as the energy of the determined protest intensified, escalated and blew up gave me a deep understanding of the psychology behind unraveling events in movements of civil disobedience.

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You mention the impossibility of objectivity with regards to historical paintings. Since you have taken on the task of documenting with your painting events in the Ukraine, give us a hint, please, of your own lack of objectivity in the images you have shared with us.

IG: Although at first, I tried to stay neutral and not take any particular side, I saw too much disinformation and misinformation coming from Moscow. This made me extremely skeptical about any pro-Russian activity or reports and nudged me further into allegiance with Ukrainian sides of the story by default. For example, Kremlin’s rumors of the rise of Neo-fascism and anti-Semitism in Ukraine were false all allegations. By spending time at the encampment, I confirmed my suspicions that the radical Right Sector wasn’t the driving force of the movement or even the most influential faction of the opposition despite that that they were visibly involved in the protest. It is true that Far-right enthusiasts exist among all nations but that group in Ukraine is statistically much smaller than for example in France, England and even Russia itself.

Russia does an excellent job of flooding information media with rivers of conflicting narratives and conspiracy theories, instilling a deep sense of confusion and distrust to Anything being said by Anyone. Recognizing the bombardment of contradictory accounts and the difficulty of untangling its webs, I became much more interested in larger implications of the information war itself and its impact on the military on-the-ground conflict in Eastern Ukraine, legislative reform in Kiev and the West’s relationship with Ukraine. I now find myself making paintings and digital images, supplemented with text and audio, grappling with the hyperreality in which we find ourselves; asking questions of how are we to survive and yet remain human within the malign chaos of mass media?

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... I saw too much d misinformation com

disinformation and ming from Moscow.

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Agent X (US)

www.agentxart.com

Agent X creates experimental, multimedia collages, paintings, and 2D artwork. His work is an amalgamation of diverse cultures, past, present and future, and his signature collage street intellectualism is a commentary on the urban experience. The phenomena of pop culture, technology, fashion, music, politics, and race are central to his practice of designing experimental works.

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“Elroy X, part 1” Collage Agent X

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“Smokin’” Collage Agent X

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Level 25 ArtJournal The “urban experience…” You use that phrase in your very brief artist’s statement. Expand on it, please. What, to you, is the urban experience?

X: First thank you so much for the interview and love Level 25 Artjournal. To me the urban experience is anything that gives someone a substantial cityscape mentality. Do you experience different cultures daily? How much technology do you deal with? Do you like a street/urban type of lifestyle or country, and how do you interpret it into your artwork. If you look at most of my artwork, unless it is my abstract work, it has some type of urban experience. Pop Art or otherwise. This is what I know and love. 1 million people paint trees. I like to do other subjects. I’m always looking to take my artwork and subject matter to the next level.

You state that your art is “an amalgamation of diverse cultures, past, present and future.” This is an interesting declaration given that one can only speculate about future cultures. So, when you do consider future cultures while creating a piece of art what is it that you are imagining?

What mental steps do you take to envision those future cultures and what sources of inspiration do you use to aid your imagination?

X: I study many futurists like Ray Kurzweil, Syd Mead, Michio Kaku and others. Neil deGrasse Tyson is the Man!!

I go to him as well, often. I also do some other things, top secret for research. I am always thinking “Is this a timeless piece” like 1000 times. I am imagining mostly about things that will happen in the future when humans stop looking at each other as a threat. Pure innovation. Or when computers take over as humans are already to depended.

Sometimes movies. Lots of techno. Lots of Jeff Mills music.

“Ice Cream” Collage Agent X

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“Pledge of Allegiance” Collage Agent X

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“Cape Cod” Collage Agent X

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“Cape Cod” is my favorite of your works. Not only is it a beautiful piece but there seems to be something sarcastic being said to the viewer, something about that imaginary woman and her lifestyle. Talk to us about “Cape Cod,” please…

X: Well growing up on the east coast in New Haven,CT you would always here people in the city talk about going to”The Cape” in the summers or long weekends. It is my take in how the modern woman is so business minded in the city but takes time out for reflection and vision. Thus in the artwork why it has such a busy graffiti type middle but calming outlook. The sarcasm is in trying to juggle both aspects of personal/business.

At first, “The Pledge of Allegiance” looks like a work which belongs to a different era, the 1960s…but then it hits you: this work and its message is as germane now, in 2014, as it was in, say, 1965. Do you feel that you have a responsibility to take up the mantle of all those socially conscious artists from the 1960s?

For me yes. I am a socially conscious artist, and always like to keep my ear to the pulse of the people. If it’s waking up looking at BBC,CNN or Worldstar. I don’t feel any mantle to artists from the 60’s but unfortunately police brutality for Afro Americans is a timeless issue. From 1960 to now. With the Michael Brown case and others recently I had to make a artwork about the injustice. I do think at lease for me, the type of art I make I can take more risks and push the limits.

And I will push. Always. The Limit.

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Katiebird Yates (US) Syracuse-based Life form. Travel the world, take pictures.

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“Gullfoss, Iceland” Photograph Katiebird Yates

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Level 25 ArtJournal “Travel the world, take pictures.” I love it. We can all be historians if we have a camera, can’t we? What do you believe is the responsibility of the modern-day photographer?

KY: I originally turned to photography as a way to capture what I couldn’t with watercolors while traveling. After receiving positive feedback for my work, I decided to pursue it with a more disciplined rigor. With photography, I feel my responsibility is to capture what others may miss. Even the most well-photographed places have a mood that goes unreported; that mood is what I attempt to capture. I want to represent an ephemeral preciousness in all subject matter.

Exactly how restless are you?

KY: I refuse to nest. I am constantly on the move, on to the next project, thinking ahead and dreaming. Since graduating college in 2012, I have moved five times, been out of the country four times and changed jobs three times. On a whim, I quit my job and traveled to Iceland for ten days. On another whim, I took a job in Texas as a ranger at a national park. By December, I will be in a new place altogether. I am in constant flux. I can live no other way. In a word, VERY.

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“Vik, Iceland” Photograph Katiebird Yates

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“Untitled” Photograph Katiebird Yates

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“Untitled 2” Photograph Katiebird Yates

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Level 25 ArtJournal “Untitled 2” is, in reality, one of the best portraits I have ever seen photographed. Yet many would argue with me; after all, the young woman’s face is obscured by her hands. However, to me, there is so much revealed about that woman in her obscurity.

When you take a portrait photograph, do such ideas come naturally, or are they the result of a lot of trial and error with your subject?

KY: I’ve found that the best photographs are the moments between the poses. Often times, my subjects will try to pose—sometimes unconsciously. I direct them a little, but mostly I try to engage them in conversation. The portrait you’re talking about sprouted naturally when the subject declared, “I hate the way my face looks when I smile,” and covered her face with her hands. I love the vulnerability and humaneness of that nanosecond when my subjects forget about the camera altogether.

“Pescara, Italy” just looks like a photograph with a story behind it. Tell it to us, please, because I love hearing the serendipitous stories behind great photos.

KY: While living in Florence, Italy a few years ago, I traveled to Pescara, Italy to visit Italian relatives. The woman in the picture, Marghertia, is my grandfather’s first cousin. I flew across the ocean, traveled several hours by bus and train, just to meet this incredible person and find a connection between the past and the present. Everything about the picture is a dreamy memory for me.

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Everything about the picture is a dreamy memory for me.

“Pescara, Italy�

Photograph Katiebird Yates

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