101 SPECIAL ISSUE Emily Casella eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral Bureau of Apprehension
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103 SPECIAL ISSUE My usual habit with the construction of ceramic sculptures is creating individual pieces that have their own meaning or overall aesthetic. They usually can exist independently without the need of other works. I struggle with the concept of series and repetitions. So when I have to make something that looks similar or follow the same theme, they are rather visually distinct from each other but all huddle under the same umbrella of an idea. When I was deciding how to go about the show Absorption Preserve my main goals were to make it as interactive as possible for the gallery location, but also to challenge myself to think critically with how each piece would bounce off each other so the audience knew they were together while making sure each piece was it’s own entity. Visually, I chose to limit my prominent glaze colors to red, brown, blue and gray. Thematically each grouping was a cause and effect to each other. With the Bureau of Apprehension, it questions why our fears of invaders and being killed at home are stored away in the back of our minds, creating anxiety as a child and continuing into adulthood. After researching Absorption psychology by Auke Tellegen, I came to the conclusion that classic tropes and dramatic imagery of movies and news on television were the cause of distress. By result, I created TV Taught Me How to Feel, the group of the mother, child and tv set, showing how imagery affects both child and adult minds.The pieces Preserve, Neighbor, and Hood are examples of the effects of the psychological implications to society, such as preserving yourself in your home and being judgemental and stigmatizing of neighboring towns and cities, that are formed by such fears. We can recognize an effective sociopolitical criticism in your inquiry into human’s need to preserve objects and history. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "the artist’s role differs depending on which part of the world you’re in. It depends on the political system you’re living under". Not to mention that almost everything, ranging from Caravaggio's Inspiration of Saint Matthew to Joep van Lieshout's works, could be considered political, what could be in your opinion the role of Art in the contemporary age? I see art as an object or remains of a reaction to try to understand or acclimate with issues going on around Emily Casella eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral
SPECIAL ISSUE 104 the artist at a certain moment in time. I feel the contemporary art world kind of woke up to social issues and started to take a more dramatic stance. Two of my favorite moments that happened in the last thirty years were with artist Felix GonzalezTorres and the social practice work of Theaster Gates. Gonzalez-Torres was seeing his loved ones dying from AIDs and alarming amounts of people reluctant to help because of stigmas against LGBT+ communities. His reaction resulted in works that were as fleeting and fragile as human morality, but criticized people’s morals on helping fellow humans. He also helped break the barrier of a static and preserving art objects by trying to reach out to viewers through billboards and piles of candy to eventually vanish from being picked up by the observer. I find this shift fascinating and then it just gets better with artists like Gates making art to fund restoring buildings that helps parts of Chicago. Reaching out to communities is politically driven. It agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries Casella_Bureau of Apprehension side drawer 1 2016(1)
105 SPECIAL ISSUE can be interpreted as having to trick people with money to help a different community and in return they get a rare art piece to keep. I’m definitely not on that level, but I explore stances that I can handle of my current moment of time. With Bureau of Apprehension, I was trying to uncover the origin of fears stored in the back of our minds associated with home, but also the fear of touching ceramics. I realized early on in ceramic-making, when you would give a piece such as a teapot to friend or family member, they are very appreciative of it, but often they don’t use it for its intended purpose. They place it on a shelf to be admired, but rarely, if ever, use it. A big part of that fear is the idea that they will accidentally break the piece, and if they break it, that would offend the artist. They would rather use a manufactured piece from a grocery store that has no sentimental attachment to. That apprehension is evident both in my subject and constructed display of the piece. That is my Emily Casella eries Contemporary Art Peripheral agazine TV Taught Me How to Feel Small Child Front
SPECIAL ISSUE 106 fundamental tiff with pottery- why are we making all these cups and bowls, when factories can make them cheaper and people find them easily disposable. So we should be using the touchability of ceramics to help other causes. I want to shift ceramics in this 21st century age to be used for society in means other than food consumption. Your approach reveals that you are a versatile artist, capable of crossing from one media to another: your works, as Absorption Preserve, are ceramic coil-built sculptures that incorporate carvings, functional drawers, and experiments with the inclusion of photography and video: so we would like to ask you if you have you ever happened to realize that such multidisciplinary approach is the only way to express and convey the idea you explore. In particular, when do you recognize that one of the mediums has exhausted it expressive potential to self? When I started incorporating photography with ceramics it was met with some surprise for disrupting this usual dichotomy. However, I found it a logical and natural pairing for what I was trying to achieve. For my work, I view a photograph as something to be used and a ceramic as a solid thing to hold and preserve ideas. Obviously, Photography and Ceramics can both be boiled down to the same purpose to visually communicate an idea and have their own unique separate histories and qualities. At this point in my career, I would feel inauthentic if I were to have a sole traditional photography showing, in the same way I would be distressed by creating a show of traditional pottery. Actually, I would feel better participating in a full-blown photography show than pottery, if struck by that hypothetical situation. I love carving clay, but sometimes it is more efficient to have a photograph to exactly convey what I’m trying to say. I start each project with a very clear vision of what I want the end result to be. I use whatever is necessary and available to achieve it. In the example of Hood, I knew I wanted to display different types of neighborhoods and the photographs clearly showed the distinction. It would have been less apparent to carve everything I was trying to convey. The use of clear vellum photographs with a light source imitated screens on phones and the Hobo signs carved into the ceramic imitated how the symbols were carved and painted on sides of fences and rocks, it was a agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries
107 SPECIAL ISSUE Emily Casella eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral
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109 SPECIAL ISSUE logical choice to incorporate both mediums in the piece. I do not have a strong loyalty to either photography or ceramics. I have no qualms with using the mediums in unconventional ways. I think my love triangle with them results from the ease that photography allows for two-dimensional representation and that ceramics serves the threedimensional aspect that I ultimately crave as an artist. We daresay that Absorption Preserve explore the notion and the consequence of surrogate reality that affects our media driven societies: how do you view the concepts of the real, the authentic and the imagined playing out within your works? In particular, do you draw inspiration from everyday experience for works as The Magician and Pigeon Teapot or do you rather aim to express your inner self? I am definitely a result of surrogate reality that was presented through media. There is a real nostalgia for fantastical worlds, especially in the Millennial generation. I was brought up on cartoons and worlds of Hayao Miyazaki. I read a lot, so I’m consistently in this state of imagined reality. From the nineties to the 00s, there was a shift in parenting methods in the United States, resulting in creating protective environments and keeping childhood alive for as long as possible. A cause of that was terrorism within the United States, like 9/11, mass shootings at schools, and child predators. TV and the Internet are powerful tools in swaying people sense of security. Now it comes even quicker in massive amounts. We not only have fictional fear driven stories but real dangers to deal with and it can become too much. It is no wonder that “helicopter” parents became a norm and people are choosing to stay indoors. But that constant imagery can result with irrational fears and worse cause people to do nothing to try and fix the problems. You must focus on the issues that you care about but also what you're best suited for and enthusiastic to help. You cannot always focus on the negative, and need some positivity in your life. Sometimes you just want things that make you purely happy and The Magician and Pigeon Teapot are that for me. But they, too are drawn from a fictional reality. I never experienced a pigeon on a hat or have any special personal Emily Casella eries Contemporary Art Peripheral agazine
SPECIAL ISSUE 110 connection to “real life” Magicians than anyone else who’ve seen a magic show or been to a fair. The closest instance was my dad was a clown for a hobby and he taught my sister and I how to do magic tricks and animal balloons, so I have an ingrained appreciation for magical and illusionistic aesthetic. Part of my reality is that my dad brings dry ice to his Montessori class for experiments, so we always got to use left-overs and one day I thought it would be fun to experiment with dry ice and my ceramics. I do not particularly care if things are labeled real or fake as long as there is some truth about your own reality. We are all living different realities. There are too many inane arguments going on right now about fake news that results in nothing but avoiding the actual issue or doing anything productive. There are some things that other people experience that I don’t find true in my everyday life, eating meat for example. The only things that are true is we need to consume nutrition and water and for the Earth to be healthy to survive. Everything else is just part of people’s realities, real or fake. But instead of negatively debating our differences and hating other humans’ realities, which leads to war and destruction, we need to start realizing what makes us similar and try to include loving acceptance in our everyday life. Multidisciplinary artist Angela Bulloch once remarked "that works of arts often continue to evolve after they have been realised, simply by the fact that they are conceived with an element of change, or an inherent potential for some kind of shift to occur". Do you think that the role of the artist has changed these days with the new global communications and the new sensibility created by new media? Yes. I think it’s really very important to think of artworks as fluid ideas. So how we relate to something when it first was created differs as time goes on. That is the whole idea of context. When was something made, who was the creator and their own history, looking at it in the present, and if it can still function as a tool to discuss ideas or has it formed into something new? I don’t think all artists relate themselves in the vast history of the world. I can’t tell if Jackson Pollock was thinking he would have a agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries
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113 SPECIAL ISSUE legacy when with his drip painting, or if he was simply drunk and did what he wanted. But I think now 21st century artists and creators in general realize that their work will shape and relate to at least one person’s life and be a part of our history. What we make now is our legacy after we die. I think social media helped that immensely. Why are websites where we can document our lives and days so important and popular? Because deep down we all want to be remembered. Marina Diamandis said it best in an interview, “it’s human behavior to instinctually want to leave something behind, whether that’s DNA, like kids, or whether that’s creating something. Even if you look at crappy graffiti on the walls people just want to make their mark in whatever way they can.” There’s a self-aware existential movement of society happening now. Does that mean we are making better art? I don’t know. Will it be relevant in grand scheme of the art world? That’s for historians in twenty to thirty years to decide. All I know is I wish visual artists were more prominent on social media. I follow authors, musicians, youtubers who make life inspirational and are more relatable. The only famous artists, I know of, that are killing the social media game is Frances Stark, Takashi Murakami, and Ai Weiwei. At this time, it's important for people to know you and what you’re doing. It also gets new generations interested and involved. If government officials are going to claim art is irrelevant and won’t fund schools, people need home-grown representations for it. Rather than attempting to establish any univocal sense, you seem to urge the viewers to elaborate personal associations: when discussing about the role of randomness in your process, would you tell us how much important is for you that the spectatorship rethink the concepts you convey in your pieces, elaborating personal meanings? I think it’s hard for people to be interested in something without personally relating to it themselves. We can be such narcissists, but I mean why shouldn’t we be? The person you spend the most time with is yourself. Media is so attractive, because it is a set amount of time where we can distract ourselves from our own being for someone else’s. We can care about other people for a while Emily Casella eries Contemporary Art Peripheral agazine
SPECIAL ISSUE 114 whether that’s fictional or real realities and we can see another person’s perspective. It can also enable us to forget about our own circumstances and can allow for doldrum behavior. If you are avoiding your own life for consumption of media, it is very hard to be unstuck from it. My goal with Absorption Preserve is to allow the viewer to think about their own relationship to media and how their house can become a jar that you ferment and congeal in. Each person’s idea of home is different, but I used my own observations and experiences to show my perspective. If people can relate, great! If not, all you can hope is that they find it somewhat interesting. If I’m with someone during a showing and they are compelled to tell me what it reminds them of or a story from their past that is what’s really awarding. I enjoy hearing about other people’s lives. One of the hallmarks of your work is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context? I think audience reception is tricky. I hope the audience will get the same connotations from my pieces as I do, but people have their own set of experiences to pull from. I know what I want to talk about within a piece but to transcribe it visually for others to understand it is challenging. We are taught a certain written language and after using it for many years we become familiar with it and can understand the nuances of tone. With visuals we know it subconsciously, but we aren’t taught to analyze it at a young age. As children, we are taught word association for images, but not dissecting the images themselves. That is an important concept I learned in my college Photography classes, the ability to read images and looking at the whole picture associating concepts with imagery. I am a very representational person with my art. Some people don’t like art that builds upon associations they are familiar with and want images that leave it open ended for interpretations. They like the language of abstract. However for my point to get across in a piece, I need to create by pulling together imagery I see in life, that I have context with such as common nouns I see in environments ie. buildings, figures, plants, machinery. I do not want to speak the language of purely hues and shapes because I find it boring in my own practice. That means it might not resonate with some people, but I think it’s very approachable for others. I can only draw from my experience and, from what I gather, people seem to understand what I’m trying to say when I use representational imagery. That’s what agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries
Emily Casella eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral 115 SPECIAL ISSUE visual artists want is for someone other than themselves to see, understand what you are trying to convey, and build upon the concept with their own unique thoughts. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Emily. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Thank you! This was such a pleasure and honor. I really appreciate you looking at my work and allowing me to discuss it. Yes, exciting things are afoot! I will be starting my MFA in Ceramics at Herron School of Art, Fall 2017. It requires a move. I’ve never lived by myself before so I’m excited to see how my understanding of home changes. I am sketching projects to make there, which involves amping up the interactiveness of sculptures. I’m currently contemplating people’s willingness to give money for charities and organizations versus the whim of throwing money into fountains for wishes. My overall hope is that society will interact with my work and it will spark curiosity that will be a positive moment in their reality.
Oscar Oiwa Lives and works in New York City, USA
Giant Octopus
SPECIAL ISSUE 118 Hello Oscar, and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries: we would like to start this interview with a couple of questions about your multifaceted background. You have solid formal training and you hold a B.F.A. from the School of Architecture and Urbanism, in São Paulo: how does this experience influence the way you currently conceive your works? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum due to the relationship between your Japanese roots and your life in Brazil and in New York City inform the way you relate yourself to art-making and to the aesthetic problem in general? Despite the fact that I don’t work now as an architect, I always love observing cities and buildings. To me, they are like giant sculptures. My knowledge in the field of architecture has helped me a lot in developing my paintings. Many of my works describe the state and problems that modern society faces in big urban spaces. Cities are very different around the world, but despite their variances in language, culture and beliefs, I think people are very similar. I am culturally rooted in Japan and Brazil, two very Oscar Oiwa Lives and works in New York City, USA Peripheral ARTeries meets In an age of post-abstract representational painting, New York City based multidisciplinary artist Oscar Oiwa shows the point of convergence between world constructed of dissimilar or opposing elements that, although starkly different, coexist. In his body of work that we'll be discussing in the following pages, he captures the essence of his subjects, imbuing them with a coherent combination between realism and imagination: the tones of his pallette are vibrant and thoughtful, to create perfectly balanced abstract artworks. One of the most impressive aspects of Oiwa's work is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of questioning contemporary visualization practice: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating and multifaceted artistic production. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected] agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries
SPECIAL ISSUE 120 different countries. I love and deeply connect with these two cultures in particular, but in my adult life I have lived and worked in so many places that slowly my vision of the world, my aesthetic sense, has broadened from those specific places to something more global. Your works convey a coherent sense of unity that rejects any conventional classification. Before starting to agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries Six Chalanas
121 SPECIAL ISSUE Oscar Oiwa eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral elaborate about your production, we would suggest that our readers visit www.oscaroiwastudio.com in order to get a synoptic view of your work. In the meantime, would you like to tell our readers something about your artistic process and setup? In particular, do you think that there is a central idea that connects all of your work as an artist? After checking my website, the reader will probably think, “His works are very
SPECIAL ISSUE 122 varied. Some are more poetic, others more dramatic. Some subjects are more social, others reflect something more personal.” Yes, I have many types of works. I have paintings that come from my private life, and other paintings inspired by the newspaper and other media, where the subjects are part of a collective. All individuals react to stimuli around them. As an artist, I extend my reactions and express them in the form of painting, with each painting holding very different feelings Some are sad, some are full of happiness. Like an actor, I love to play with different characters. For this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries we have selected Six Chalanas and Giant Octopus, a series of interesting works that our readers have already begun to admire in the introductory pages of this article. The way you provided the visual results of your analysis with autonomous aesthetics at once captured our attention. Walking our readers through the genesis of Six Chalanas and Giant Octopus, would you tell us your sources of inspiration? How did you select your subjects? These paintings are both giant, each one about 132 inches in width. We live in a spherical planet. Wherever we go (unless we go to Moon), we are inside of the same sphere that revolves around the sun. We are economically, politically, and culturally divided by countries, but we agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries
123 SPECIAL ISSUE Oscar Oiwa eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral Weekend
SPECIAL ISSUE 124 agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries Twilight at Marble Hill
125 SPECIAL ISSUE are just a singular people living together on the same planet. These two paintings are a narrative of ships sailing in different situations. Chalana is a typical Brazilian river ship. People who move from one city to another using this type of ship sleep in hammocks for days. In the second painting Giant Octopus, a ferry very common around the Setouchi area in southern Japan can be seen. In the Setouchi area, fishing is the dominant industry, as is the capture of octopuses. Although these paintings portray very different places, they capture a familiar view of a ship sailing against a beautiful sunset. Ranging from texts and paintings to installations, conceptual works, public art, and book production, you practice is marked out with a captivating multidisciplinary feature, showing that you are a versatile artist capable of crossing from one medium to another. How do you select the medium of expression for the ideas that you explore? In particular, when do you recognize that one of the mediums has exhausted its potential for selfexpression? Each medium has a different potential. For big paintings, oil painting is best used because of its texture and color definition. For big drawings, I usually use a special type of marker. For small drawings, pencil and watercolor. I am Oscar Oiwa eries Contemporary Art Peripheral agazine
World Wide Web Wave-Long Island City
SPECIAL ISSUE 128 also familiar with acrylic and some other mediums. The secret to becoming familiar with many different media is to think not about the medium, but about the end goal. Only from there, one is able to improve technique. I have also learned the basic technique for prints, metal casting, jewelry, computer graphics, photography, video editing, and even website programming, despite never having attended an art school. I am able to discover how good works of art are made simply with close observation of the finished product. As you have remarked, your work describes a world constructed of dissimilar or opposing elements that, although starkly different, coexist. agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries Ghost Ship
129 SPECIAL ISSUE How does logic come into play in your work? In particular, could you elaborate a bit on the concept of magic realism? I grew up in São Paulo and stayed in the local neighborhood for the first part of my life. It was the ‘70s and ‘80s, and we didn’t have computers, cellular phones, or internet. Information was always restricted and strictly local. Looking back, it was a good thing that the Brazil I grew up in was little influenced by other countries. Everything I saw and learned in my childhood later became an important part of my cultural asset. Within my house we spoke Japanese (my parents had immigrated to Brazil after the second world war), but I feel lucky to have had such a deep Oscar Oiwa eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral
SPECIAL ISSUE 130 connection with Latin American culture. Brazilian culture is a culture influenced by Europe, Africa, native indians, and immigrants like in the US, but from different parts of these cited continents. The type of creativity that exists there is unique. There, imagination comes from the chaos, facts happen in layers, the absurd becomes normal, and prevailing over it all is a strong influence of the Catholic moral that “destiny is guided by God.” Some critics call this cultural combination “magic realism,” and it is no question that I was strongly influenced by it. We can recognize a subtle sociopolitical criticism in how your works recording the impact of agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries Light Factory
131 SPECIAL ISSUE globalization. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "the artist’s role differs depending on which part of the world you’re in. It depends on the political system you’re living under." Not to mention that almost everything, ranging from Caravaggio's Inspiration of Saint Matthew to Joep van Lieshout's works, could be considered political. What, in your opinion, is the role of art in the contemporary age? I feel that the values and rules of art have changed drastically in these 20-30 years because of globalization and the information revolution. Now there are less distinct borders between countries, not physically, but culturally. Whereas in the past, values would take Oscar Oiwa eries Contemporary Art Peripheral agazine
SPECIAL ISSUE 132 several generations to change, now we reevaluate our country’s and individual people’s values every 10-20 years. We constantly feel the need to change the way we communicate with each other, and the way we conduct business. With so many changes, its more common that we change our friends, business partners, and sometimes our partners in our private lives. So in navigating this world of transformation, I feel that the art world believes in trends with a 4-5 year cycle, the time period necessary to consume an artist. Big galleries need a lot of works to host, say, 6-7 international art fairs annually. If they sell a particular artist well one year, they will likely not sell well again in that location after 2-3 years. The curator, gallerist, art critic and art media always need something new to survive. I understand this cycle, and I feel this is a terrible deal for artists, because the typical artist’s life is only long enough for a handful of these waves of success, by default. The creative process takes years of training, always slower than the rate of market consumption. Some of my paintings, like the WWWW series, talk about this and other invisible waves that exist in our day to day life. Your artistic practice seems to look inside of what appears to be seen, rather than its surface. We have really appreciated the vibrancy of thoughtful nuances of pieces such as Weekend and Twilight at Marble Hill, which show that vivacious tones are not strictly indespensable to create tension and dynamics. How did you come about settling on your color palette? And how much does your own psychological make-up determine the agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries Accident
133 SPECIAL ISSUE nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece? In particular, how do you develop a texture? It's an interesting question, about the color and nuances. Sometime I do lectures for art students and I say, “the art supply shops in these days sell the same ink for everybody. Unlike the past, when each artist needed to prepare their own ink, we buy from the same art material companies Oscar Oiwa eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral
agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries SPECIAL ISSUE 134 worldwide. But what makes the painting original is not the material , but how you work with it. In other words, avoid using the plain color directly from the tube; work hard to create your own color.” I have worked with oil paintings for two decades, on average 40 weeks per year and 30 hours per week. In that time, I haven’t had any other job. I have spent around 25 thousand hours of my life in front of a canvas. This is a Kita-Senju
135 SPECIAL ISSUE lot of time. For comparison’s sake, the average person spends 35 years, about 50-60 thousand hours, on their profession. So I would say that this vast amount of time was crucial in creating my own “vocabulary” of colors and nuances of tones. Another particular aspect of your works is the coexistence of naturalist representation and the fabled-fantastic datum: they seem to be the tip of the iceberg of what you are really attempting to communicate. How would you define the relationship between abstraction and representation in your practice? In particular, how does representation and a tendency towards abstraction find their balance in your work? For the most part, I dislike abstract art, but as with anything, I have seen some exceptional abstract art pieces as well. Same thing goes for minimalism, conceptual art, and video artists. In my opinion, there are so few good artists in these categories because this kind of art depends all the more on the artist’s circumstances: where you are born, where you study, how galleries want to manipulate the market, whether your family is rich and powerful, etc. If you born in a developing country, in a middle class family, or in the case of those who are not heterosexual and male, without either extreme beauty or riches, forgot it; the cruel reality is that it is almost impossible for those people to have access to good exhibitions, compared with someone doing the same thing in New York or London with a more influential family or support Oscar Oiwa eries Contemporary Art Peripheral agazine
SPECIAL ISSUE 136 network. In my case, I realized at a young age that I needed to produce good paintings and drawings, and to be a narrative artist. If I had instead chosen to produce abstract, minimal, or conceptual art, my artistic career would have little to no chance at survival. While it is true that some of the details in my paintings look very abstract, this more abstract representation of reality is not an “abstract art” in itself. Over these years your works have been internationally showcased: you have had 60 solo exhibitions, including shows at the Arizona State University Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, and Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro. One of the hallmarks of your practice is the capability to create direct involvement with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context? I am a quiet person, I never speak a lot. I was never a good speaker, nor was I a good singer despite growing up in a very musical country. I understand 3 or agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries
Oscar Oiwa eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral 137 SPECIAL ISSUE “Oiwa Island 2”, Setouchi Triennale 2016
“Oiwa Island 2”, Setouchi Triennale 2016
SPECIAL ISSUE 140 agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries “Oiwa Island 2”, Setouchi Triennale 2016
4 languages, but I have always struggled in memorizing sounds. However, God gifted me with manual dexterity and the keenness in manipulating visual information. Art too can create a strong channel of communication with a worldwide network, and so I have a good relationship with my audience, despite the diversity of their countries and cultural backgrounds. My daily routine is very simple, and comprised mainly of spending hours in my studio. Slowly I create my own inventory. When the opportunity for a major exhibition arises, I work together with the curator to select the best works for the particular venue and audience. If I need ten big works for an exhibition, I select about twenty. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Oscar. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? I am preparing to have a big solo exhibition in a museum, likely in the year 2020. Please check my studio website regularly for more updates! Oscar Oiwa eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral 141 SPECIAL ISSUE An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected]
Darija Stipanic Lives and works in Veli Brgud, Opatija, Croatia
SPECIAL ISSUE 144 Hello Darija and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries: before starting to elaborate about your artistic production would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and you graduated in Fine Art and Art History from the Philosophical Faculty at the University of Rijeka, Croatia: how did your studies influence your evolution as an artist? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum dued to your Croatian roots inform the way you relate yourself to art making in general? My whole childhood I lived in a small tourist town by the sea. I had freedom to go swimming, climbing trees, running around with friends... My father was an arthitect. My first knowledge about what art is, came out in his words. He loved to share information and wished to teach me to pay attention to the environment. However, when I was a child I didn't appreciate that experience. A lot of my memories are also based on the stories of my grandfather. He was a tailor, very creative and skillful with his hands. He made my first plush toy, a cat, from his old woolen pullover. As a child I used to play in the garden, making small pots and plates from a mud. My father's friend was a carpenter and from the wood remains I used to make the furniture for my dolls. Maybe those "first steps" were the reason I chose to finish Fine Art and Art History at the Philosophical Faculty at the University of Rijeka. To point out what influenced my later works or direction in life I may tell you about few Darija Stipanic Lives and works in Veli Brgud, Opatija, Croatia Peripheral ARTeries meets Rejecting any conventional classification regarding its style, Darija Stipanic's work crosses the borders of sculpture, painting and print. In the body of works that we'll be discussing in the following pages, she effectively challenges the relationship between the viewers' perceptual parameters and their cultural substratum to induce them to elaborate personal associations, offering them a multilayered aesthetic experience. . One of the most impressive aspects of Stipanic's work is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of celebrating the beauty of nature: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating and multifaceted artistic production. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Barbara Scott, curator [email protected] agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries
147 SPECIAL ISSUE Darija Stipanic eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral experience I had. One was the participation at the International student sculpture school Montraker, in old Roman quarry in 1993 in Croatia where you can find my stone sculpture. There, I met two boys from Slovakia, students form Bratislava Academy of Fine art. Two years later, my friend Peter Machata invited me to a sculpture symposium. A new door opened for me, and there, working in the wood in a inspiring atmosphere, I fall in love for eternity with a wood as a working material. 1993 was also the year when I had my first exhibition, working on my project together with a Print professor. I graduated in December 1997 on the theme: “Ikonography of Dali’s sculpture works” and with sculptures in wood and ceramic. As a character I always had my own way, usually opposite of the main stream, searching different directions, never wanted to be marked in some closed groups. On other hand, deep in my soul I feel a strong belonging to the local area where I grew up and I am still living in. And my blood, my bones, each of my cell are breathing in the rythm of nature of the region of Kvarner and Istra. The results of your artistic inquiry into the relationship between emotions and experiences convey together a coherent sense of unity, that rejects any conventional classification. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://darijastipanic.weebly.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you think that there is a central idea that connects all of your work as an artist. In particular, would you tell our readers something about the evolution of your style? Are your works conceived instinctively or do you methodically transpose preparatory schemes? It is hard to say that all my works could be connected in one central idea. However, through my sculpture work and paintings which are mostly apstract, my deep desire is to inspire the viewers to touch, to feel the belonging, to experience their own way of concieving it, to fulfill and feed them. I like
SPECIAL ISSUE 148 creating wide spectars of different surfaces either with colour or texture. One notices the evolution of its work in a distance of time. Now, I can say how much influence had Dali's art on my first sculptures or some texts that I read in different books. Today, a trip in a botanic park or a poem can influence my art. Related to sculptures, at the moment I prefer simple and clean forms whereas in my paintings I still experiment with the richness of textures (I always use combined technics). Today I see how much my style changed in my paintings, how much I searched and questioned. Many years have passed before I felt the shift from a rational and mental approach to the flowing expression of feelings, the experience of the moment. Printing is unfortunately neglected in different ways in my art. Sometimes I partecipate at ex-libris (little formats). Ah, I just don't have time for all that I would love to do. I create mostly instinctively, driven by a general idea or thought, expressed in a very simple draft and once in touch with the working material (wood, canvas or for example linoleum), the draft is given a new life. Among my art works what I find particularly interesting is my art applied to the tradition of the area where I live, most precisely my interpretation of the carnival traditional masks like the zvončari (bellringers), protected by UNESCO or the balta, a wooden stick the bellringers hold in their hand and the painted bell-ringers scarfs. Also I would like to mention that occasionally I worked on some projects with children. agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries
149 SPECIAL ISSUE Darija Stipanic eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral