67 SPECIAL ISSUE This has much more interest to me now than it did when I practiced primarily in abstraction, where the randomness of the responses sometimes bordered on comical, because I can at least narrow the parameters of those conveyed concepts. Your artistic practice seems to aim to look inside of what appears to be seen, rather than its surface: we have really appreciated the vibrancy of thoughtful nuances of the pieces as Mother, Episode 468 that show that vivacious tones are not strictly indespensable to create tension and dynamics. How did you come about settling on your color palette? And Kenneth Susynski eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral Little Talks, 2014 36 x 18”| oil and glassine collage on canvas Where Cats With Bent Tails Live, 2016 48 x 44”| oil on canvas
agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries SPECIAL ISSUE 68 how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you develope a texture? And that is the aim of this piece, as this specific painting is part of my current series which features titles that infer a commentary on motherhood – yet it’s much more than that. I am singularly privileged among men to be married to the most wonderful and inspiring woman, who is equally as magical and impressive as a mother to our daughter – yet she is not the mother in this series. This mother is embroiled with internal tension, conflicts, something is burning within her and yet, she is still and above all, a woman, a mother. The best way to convey such complexity is with extreme subtlety. I like to vary my palette as a general rule, with each piece featuring my own blends of the color wheel – in this painting, the concept for the background landscape was a Texas oilfield. Often I’ll start by picking one dominant color I want in a piece, and then building from that. My work over the past three years has been more than a shift away from abstraction to my current direction with figurative expressionism, for the shift represents a similar tranquility – or perhaps I should say, maturity – in life. Abstraction is a form of kerosene to the forest fire of an emotional artist’s psyche – in the past when there was little stability of heart nor emotion in my own life, heck yeah i would beat the absolute tar out of a canvas with a paint-loaded palette knife to get that toxicity out while create some vivid art in the process. Though references to reality, your recent paintings are rich with symbols and as the interesting How To Truss A Chicken reject an explicit explanatory strategy: 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? I think every artist can likely come up with a different definition for that relationship – for me, it’s as simple as combining the aspects of each divergent style that I like best and experiment with it. In my recent work, the abstract elements that appear are like salt - a flavouring particle to support the rest of the dish. There is so much about personal style and what it means, what goes into it – and really it’s just what you can’t help yourself
69 SPECIAL ISSUE Kenneth Susynski eries Contemporary Art Peripheral agazine Doubt Thou The Stars Are Fire | 2015 | 34 x 30”| oil on canvas
SPECIAL ISSUE 70 agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries She Wanted To Be Burnt, 2016 30 x 22”| oil and india ink on arches paper
Kenneth Susynski eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral 71 SPECIAL ISSUE subconsciously doing as you work. Thus whilst my focus is more towards expression through the figure, I just can’t help garnishing the composition with some abstract tinsel. Over these years you have had numerous solo and group shows both nationally and internationally including your participation to the 2015 Palermo International Biennale, Art Caroussel-Louvre, Seattle Art Museum Gallery, and the Sundance Group. 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? We all wish to creat artwork that is universally loved, yet the reality is that I do not personally consider audience reception in any part of my decisionmaking process. At the risk of appearing immodest, I paint for myself – I just chose to show this work of mine publically around the world rather than hide them in an attic for no one ever to see. When we are creating work to match an audience appetite, I believe we lose the cherished reverence of being an artist and just become a.....salesperson. I would hope that any direct connections and interactive experiences with viewers would be honest, based on the fact that my work is created without key takeaways from a focus group. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Kenneth. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? Thanks for having me appear in your journal. I will be having an exhibition of work this summer for the first time in Portugal, as well as other upcoming events listed on my website. Other than that, I will continue to paint and focus always on the journey, never the goal. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected]
Stéphane Vereecken Lives and works in Brussels, Belgium
SPECIAL ISSUE 23 Hello Stéphane and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux Arts and you later nurtured your education attending Ecole des arts d’Ixelles - Peinture & Lithographie: what are the most relevant epxeriences that have influenced the way you currently conceive and produce your works? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to the aesthetic problem in general? My classic studies in several academies of arts and in several artistic disciplines trained me in a multidisciplinary vision. I have make various artistic studies and trainings which opened me the spirit on a much wider intellectual space. To learn the design and the illustration opened me the spirit to discover through publications and books the contemporary paint, the video and the artistic performances and rock music. I began to build my works by means of the paint and the photographic collages. I stuck photos on the canvas or square wood of formats, and I painted with some acrylic and I drew with pencils on the images. It was already a hybrid paint. It was Photoshop without using really Photoshop, because I did not work my images on a computer. I began very fast later to paint in the acrylic on Polaroids. This small square size pleased me well and I produced over one year more than 200 Polaroids. It is with these Polaroids, when I was 25 years old, when I Stéphane Vereecken Lives and works in Brussels, Belgium Peripheral ARTeries meets Belgian photographer Stéphane Vereecken's work rejects any conventional classification and draws the viewers through a multilayered journey. In his Rabid Animals series that we'll be discussing in the following pages he inquired in the relationship between female identity and the realm of Nature, to trigger the viewers' perceptual and cultural parameters. One of the most impressive aspects of Vereecken's work is the way it invites the audience to dwell upon the suggestive power of images and to undergo a multilayered sensual and intellectual experience: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to his stimulating and multifaceted artistic production. An interview by Josh Ryders, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected] agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries
24 SPECIAL ISSUE Stéphane Vereecken eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral began to make exhibitions, and to expose in art galleries in Brussels and Belgian cultural centers. I had very early a preference to build a multidisciplinary multi-art, with diverse influences. For example when I was to see Lost Highway de David Lynch, big close-up of the movie filled with film grains appeared to me of a fabulous abstraction. And it is there in this period, that was born Rabid Animals. The relation enters the sociology, the significant and the invisible world influenced a lot me for the continuation of my work. You are a versatile artist and your works invite the viewers to a multilayered visual experience that resists any conventional classification: before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.stephanevereecken.net in order to get a synoptic view of your work: in the meanwhile, would you like to tell to our readers something about the evolution of your style? In particular, would you shed light on your usual process and set up? The basic process of my first works that were glued on canvas or on wood of 1995, was exactly the same multi-layer process on computer, or on smartphone as today. My pictures are mostly framed in wooden boxes. There is also this notion of a free and airy surface between the image and the glass that protects the photograph and gives a natural free space. This very open space is important for this multilayer work. There are reflections in the image and natural reflections of the window. I like the idea that the viewer sees himself in the window, he enters the image by a game of double and triple exposures. It participates in the intrinsic nature of the image. The almost naturalistic treatment that I give to most of my photographs, makes the viewer feel like watching a photograph of an archive or news, taken out of a magazine or his family drawer. For several years, I have made short films and videos, the process of my images is very cinematic. My pictures come out almost from a movie. But anyway I tell a story with my pictures. And the image is a piece of film. I admit that the only artists who have inspired me over the past 20 years and who still today are an inspiration to me, are film directors. Like Lynch, Yorgos Lanthimos and Shinia Tsukamoto. The other more classical artists like painters and photographers, I totally digested them. New era, new artists, new references. For this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries we have selected Rabid Animals, an extremely interesting series that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once caught our attention of your effective inquiry into the perceptual hiatus between female identity and the outside world is the way
SPECIAL ISSUE 23 you have been capable of providing your artistic research with autonomous aesthetics: when walking our readers through the genesis of Rabid Animals would you tell us how did you developed the initial idea? My rabid animals have the body envelope of a woman, but they are hybrid and they are changing all the time and every day. The body and the landscape and the urban landscape drawn or projected on the bodies show us the perpetual mutation of a new world in the process of creating or continually re-creating itself. The drawings on their bodies tell their life, their personal story or their future life plans. A female body envelope also suggests birth. And the birth of a new world can only be achieved through the idea of a feminine source. Even if for me, the feminine here is a new "genre", it is not really humanoid, neither truly feminine nor truly masculine. This notion of paternalism no longer exists in my works. I have a very feminine side in the way of approaching life and my artistic work. The notion of the absolute world or of empty places or bodies without ages is very important for me, to continue the formal existence of my rabid animals. I often leave a blank page to put the continuity of an idea or an inspiration. While marked out with a seductive beauty on the surface, the pieces from your Rabid Animals series urge the agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries
24 SPECIAL ISSUE Stéphane Vereecken eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral
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24 SPECIAL ISSUE viewers to see the unseen, to inquire what meets the eye underneath the obvious and familiar: artists always vary in the importance placed on communicating their own vision without question or limitation, and the emphasis and importance placed on the audience, and how it can and will relate to them. How do you feel when people interpret your artwork inversely, or is there one primary thing you hope to have the viewer experience? My pictures are very understandable. They are conceptual but also very photographic and they possess all the information required to a natural understanding of the information required and guided. These are almost icons. The political message of revolution or sociological change appears obvious to the viewer. I have never really had messages to the contrary or bad reception from the viewer, in terms of understanding or my intentions. But the mysterious side and the unaffordable side of the subject shown, and almost abstract in intellectual intent, is also important. The spectator makes his own judgment, I impose nothing. Of course, sometimes shocking side or raw and explicit nudity is not always well perceived. But for me, represented my naked characters, it is also shown a timelessness in my works. I want my images to be without notions Stéphane Vereecken eries Contemporary Art Peripheral agazine
SPECIAL ISSUE 23 of centuries or clothing references. They are timeless. I do not necessarily want to produce shocking images or want to be shocking. There is a sociological and artistic and poetic reason for this nudity. The continuity of the given life or of the nascent life. One often forgets that my images are also poetic. The poem tells a short story filled with images that are mentally or unconsciously visible. We can recognize a subtle still effective socio political criticism in the way your Rabid Animals series addresses the viewers to inquire into the notion of our ubiqutous bond with Nature. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "the artist’s role differs depending on which part of the world you’re in. It depends on the political system you’re living under". Not to mention that almost everything, ranging from Caravaggio's Inspiration of Saint Matthew to Joep van Lieshout's works, could be considered political. Do you think that Rabid Animals could be considered political in this way? What could be in your opinion the role of Art in the contemporary age? Moreover, what role does play humour in your process? I am Belgian, I am a surreal human, and with a lot of humor. It is my deep human nature. My country was created to be a buffer zone to avoid war, a few centuries ago. And today, this small country is in the center of Europe. A agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries
24 SPECIAL ISSUE Stéphane Vereecken eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral
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24 SPECIAL ISSUE great European project still mysterious. It is certainly good things for the people and for the human, but Europe is also a very greedy ogre. In my works, and since my first works of the 1990s, we find this political and ecological criticism. The humor in my works plays a disinhibiting role, because I know that today nudity and intellectual provocation still pose problems. It is up to the artist to impose his point of view, even if sociologically he makes a backward temporal. There is in art the importance of progressing and improving, but a temporal backwardness is sometimes indispensable. Intellectual introspection is an artistic need to find a new beginning. We have appreciated the way the hybrid feature of your works bring to a new level of significance photography as a media. Provocatively, German photographer Thomas Ruff once stated that "once nowadays you don't have to paint to be an artist. You can use photography in a realistic way. You can even do abstract photographs". What is your opinion about the importance of photography in the contemporary art? Today, painting realistic or neo-realistic, does not really have any use or meaning in our century. Since the invention of a photographic camera, which captures images and shows us our life or our perception of life, as a mirror, other Stéphane Vereecken eries Contemporary Art Peripheral agazine
SPECIAL ISSUE 23 artistic practices are no more than an ego-centric means of proving to us a sort of Animal superiority quite unhealthy. It is the same process as the selfies today: I exist ... and that is enough. It is a mistake. Reproducing an image, or reproduction is none other than the printed industry, and no longer really makes sense in our time and after Andy Warhol. We do better by inventing new images from multiple sources and hybrid media. New technologies have upset our bodily and human perception and the image of the human. Our mirror broke. The profane became carnal and the initiate became worldly. We still live in a world of caste and it is intolerable. The artist must put his finger where it hurts. Right here in the belly button. Your photographs sometimes seem to deviate from photorealism and we like the way your work inquires into the points of convergence between reality and imagination: do you see a dichotomy between photography as a process of capturing real images and imagination as a process of creating such images? Photography is the basis of my work. I construct meaningful images and then move them in the opposite direction. I apply a mirror effect, open window. I say: look at what you see ... and look at what you can do. Then I apply all the possible and ideally meaningful processes for Rabid animals to illustrate agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries
24 SPECIAL ISSUE Stéphane Vereecken eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral
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24 SPECIAL ISSUE an idea or an idea process. I rarely capture real images except for my landscapes. But often, before capturing a landscape image, I change some things in the environment or in the landscape where I am, I apply a kind of land-art. The actual image capture process is now replaced by a virtual image process, placed upstream of the propagation of light as a real object. Nothing really is real. Our perception of the feeling of reality to change. And it is the role of the artist to make an exploration, an observation, a self-criticism and a social reflection of our century. Without this, an artist is a useless animal… On the street appeals us as being meticulously planned. When you start to conceptualize a project or a series, how much work goes into the preparation of your pieces? In particular, what steps do you find yourself moving through to bring the idea to fruition? « In The Street « series is not expected and not really worked like other images. They are raw images, they have not been imagined, they are just "like that", it is pure existence without transformation. Afterwards it is the hand of the artist and the builder who injects a little life into these banal and very contemporary images, on a strictly contemplative level, they are sometimes abstract and often disturbing. These images with masked Stéphane Vereecken eries Contemporary Art Peripheral agazine
SPECIAL ISSUE 23 characters are anonymous and also we can guess the dangerousness of these people. A new series is the continuity of an old series, or simply the continuity of a single image that I consider important to look for the initial idea. There is no outside influence. Rabid Animals who live their lives, they are totally autonomous. Forest provides the viewers with an immersive experience and brings the notion of landscape to a new level of significance, and evokes such an uncanny atmosphere that reminds us of the idea of non-lieu elaborated by French anthropologis Marc Augé. How would you describe the role of the landscape in your work? And in particular, how do you select the places that you included in this stimulating series? « The Forest « series is a place where everything is possible, including a territorial renewal, a new geographical area. A new experience and most likely the reintroduction of a new life, a new heterogeneous existence process and human comfort. A symbiosis of body and nature. But I do not destroy anything, I transform what already exists. I am not a destroyer, I am a builder of ideas, not a builder of influences I impose nothing, I propose an idea, a minor or major reflection. A agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries
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agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral eries Special Edition perfect artistic nihilism. If this is the idea of the non-place, I totally immerse myself in it and I will never return to the surface. Your works are currently represented by the art gallery ° CommonPlaces ° in Brussels, Belgium, and over the years SPECIAL ISSUE 23
your works have been internationally showcased in several occasions, including a wide number of publications. 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? My images have been shown all over Belgium since 1995 in some European countries and especially through several publications on the net. In 2005, a video (Chrysallis) was broadcast via a french magazine (Fantastic Report), on a DVD and the repercussion was very important for the continuation of the Rabid Animals. The process of developing a video is very long, but seeing these rabid animals live and move was very interesting for the formal evolution of the bestiary. Today, my works have been represented by a very dynamic Brussels gallery since that year, « the Commonplaces Art Gallery » in the capital of Europe, which since 2013 has developed a societal project around the artist and his works. Their exhibitions are artistic laboratories open to all publics, reflective and critical of contemporary art. Exhibition places are not set in a specific place, the artists go to meet the public and different audiences Stéphane Vereecken eries Contemporary Art Peripheral agazine 24 SPECIAL ISSUE
agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art eries Peripheral too. And it is important for me and my works to be able to go to the real or virtual audience, the Rabid Animals move constantly and will not stop moving. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Stéphane. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? My work and my research in the future will always be presented on a photographic medium and hung on a wall, like a window, like a screen, as a reflection of our world. But at different levels. I would like to build volumes, sculpture. And most certainly photograph my sculptures and my volumes. This will be real objects only photographed. A series of photographs that will be a bit like Landscapes with humanoids on volumes or on sculptures. Or the Rabid Animals themselves will be objects of art. It will be like a testimony, or a photographic relic of objects that I will never show in reality. Video and artistic performance may also be an important evolution of the Rabid Animals. Because these animals exist in the real world, I have already met them you know … An interview by Josh Ryders, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected] SPECIAL ISSUE 23
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SPECIAL ISSUE 80 Hello Gina and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and after having attended the Stroud College you degreed from the Plymouth University. How did these experiences influence the way you currently conceive and produce your works? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum dued to the years you spent in France inform the way you relate yourself to art making and to beauty? Thank you for having me! The invaluable quality of Art school is the capacity you have for the development of your practice as an artist. My course encouraged, but didn’t enforce full time studio practice. I found that there really is nothing like the freedom of being able to paint all day in your studio space. Being an artist is a way of life and allconsuming at times, so of course, I would need to paint at home as well. This was especially useful when I would get visions at 5am. As much as I loved the creative freedom, my experience of the other students in my year group at art foundation, was not that positive, in that I found them to be extremely cliquey. I’d say they were more interested in hanging around playing on skateboards, smoking and planning parties. Unfortunately, because I was bullied throughout my school years, resulting in the development of an eating disorder, depression and anxiety, I retreated socially at college. Dealing with these thought processes remain at the core of my work. I’m not sure if it is due to being bullied, or just the psychological make up I’ve become accustomed with, but I would say that most of my life I have never felt like I fitted in, Gina Love Lives and works in Bristol, United Kingdom Peripheral ARTeries meets Rejecting any conventional classification regarding its style, Gina Love's work draws the viewers through the liminal area where imagination and perceptual reality find a consistent point of convergence. In her body of works that we'll be discussing in the following pages, she created such insightful combination between abstraction and figurative, capable of triggering the viewers' perceptual parameters. One of the most impressive aspects of Love's work is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of revealing what lies in the subconscious mind of the beholder, as a reflection of the inner world, not only the artist's but also the spectatorship's: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating and multifaceted artistic production. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected] agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries
but now I know it’s ok if I don’t want to. In fact, in order to paint, I need to instigate isolation. When I graduated, I entered, and quickly resented the abyss of artist vs real world, and found the graduate existence horrendous. Employers, at the time were quick to de qualify Gina Love eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral 81 SPECIAL ISSUE
SPECIAL ISSUE 82 for studying art, and I ended up in office jobs temping before escaping to France. In terms of making art, generally my paintings still evolve in the same way as they always have – layer upon layer until I feel like they are complete. I don’t set fire to paintings anymore though, like I did at university- I miss that hedonism! The results of your artistic inquiry convey together a coherent sense of unity: before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.ginaloveart.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. Through my work, I am fighting for psychological balance amongst the confusion of the world. Painting is my main means of expression, and the need to paint and draw comes to me from an inexplicable subconscious level. The process of developing an image can be hyperactive, boundless, obsessive, meticulous but always therapeutic. I am also infused by cognitive and behavioural psychological activity, and the theory of the shoulds. These are essentially the pressures we feel in life, ‘I should reply to that email’, I strive to fight these voices, pressures and challenge order and routine. I also enjoy free flow drawing to release mental pressure and am fascinated by the patterns which emerge. The brain can be like an electrical storm, with nuggets of energy flashing throughout the marks that are created. The body of works that we have selected for this special edition of Peripheral ARTeries and agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries
83 SPECIAL ISSUE Gina Love eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral The Bees will sting, 2017 60x90 cm
SPECIAL ISSUE 84 agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries Thunderstorm, 2017 60x90 cm
85 SPECIAL ISSUE that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article has at once captured our attention for the way you have captured subtle aspects of the personality of your characters, providing the visual results of your artistic inquiry with autonomous aesthetics: when walking our readers through your usual process and set up, would tell us what did address you to focus on abstract painting? I have painted all my life, but Abstract artwork has been my focus since 1999. When I was growing up I focused on illustration and sewing. However, when I started Art foundation course, I enjoyed the complete escapism that Painting in colour gave me. I discovered a collection of artists I could relate to and had an epiphany moment with Georgia O’Keefe, ‘I found I could say things with colours that I couldn't say in any other way – things that I had no words for’. A research trip to the Turner Prize and Emin’s work opened my eyes to a whole new level of self-expression and I never looked back. I was recovering from an eating disorder at the time and I realised that I had found a way to escape the obsessive thoughts, and express myself. I could transport myself into another world become lost in a trance like state painting. The act of mark making, mixing colours and pouring paint, still to this day balances my emotions. I can communicate in almost a primitive way through purely colour and texture. Complex thought patterns and memories are replicated in the interaction of colours, layers of paint and contrasting heavy textures within the pieces You often use five paintbrushes and a pallet knife at once: what are the qualities that you are searching for in the techniques and the materials that you combine in your works? Gina Love eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral
SPECIAL ISSUE 86 When I am working on a painting or series, it can overtake my every waking thought. I do work on more than one piece at once as wellpartly to pacify the need for perfection in one agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries
87 SPECIAL ISSUE painting, but also because mark making can become more intense and stretch beyond the size of one canvas. The way I start a piece varies. I generally prime surfaces with the Gina Love eries Contemporary Art Peripheral agazine
SPECIAL ISSUE 88 colours I am drawn to on that day, and with the first layer, I will sometimes mix in plaster or scratch into it with objects. The way I paint is all about pulling the life and emotions out agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries
89 SPECIAL ISSUE of me, so as well as using paintbrushes and pallet knives, I also use objects to apply and move paint around. I like to break the rules, so you’ll often find me applying or scratching through paint with brushes, credit cards, combs, cutlery and wood. I also use sticks, biros, graphite to scratch through layers. I develop the journey of the canvas by experimenting with a series of gestural marks and pick colours intuitively as they come to me. I do not worry about the consequences of these marks in the initial stages because they form the basis of the painting’s journey. Sometimes, I create abstract forms by tipping paint over the base layers. This can be risky, can work out well. I don’t always want my paintings to be easy to look at so I might spend 3 hours applying paint neatly in colour blocks and then decide to get a fork/comb/knife and scratch through it all to mess up the surface. It is here I enjoy the loss of control and liberation dash of chance. Build it up, tear it down. I enjoy carving into paintings to create microcosm detail; sometimes I will mix a specific shade of acrylic paint then apply a tiny thin line of the same colour but in an oil pastel stick on the opposite side of the piece to connect the structure While referring to the affinity with deep, foreboding water to endless skies and thunderstorms, the works from your Blue Paintings series convey a captivating abstract feeling: how do you view the concepts of the real and the imagined playing out within your works? The human mind has a subconscious pattern recognition system and people are receptive to the ocean like qualities in my blue work. I also sometimes feel more endless depth painting with blue, and find it can be mixed infinitely with other colours. I love the sea, Gina Love eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral
SPECIAL ISSUE 90 and being around water or rain has always made me calm. Sometimes when I paint in blue it feels like being lost in a thunderstorm, or lost at sea. We have really appreciated the vibrancy of thoughtful nuances of your pieces, that allows you to explore a range of moods, ranging from monochrome colours on dark days, to colourful painting in times of vivacity. In particular, while the works from your Yellow and Red Paintings series are marked out with intense tones, other works shows that vivacious tones are not strictly indespensable to create tension and dynamics. How did you come about settling on your color palette? And how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you develop a painting’s texture? I usually go through obsessive phases with colour. I get visions and need to exhaust the process of painting with blue, purple with Payne’s grey layered with light pink, or everything needs to be white, with a flash of fluorescent pink. I go with my mood and instinct and allow the impulse to take over with what colours I pick. Generally, the more simply a painting is structured at the end, the calmer I am. When my work is extremely complicated, it means I have a bigger story to tell and that I cannot find clarity. I had a phase last year, when I was struggling with depression again and I created 10 pieces which were all in monochrome tones, I just couldn’t see beyond black and grey. Colours I pick allow me to exert power over haunting memories, clashing textures, conflicted psychological states. I have talked a little about how I develop textures by using everyday objects- I enjoy the power in taking an object and giving agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries
91 SPECIAL ISSUE it another purpose, for which it was not intended. The process normally involves applying paint with a brush or piece of wood, adding another colour and scraping through Gina Love eries Contemporary Art Peripheral agazine
SPECIAL ISSUE 92 agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries
93 SPECIAL ISSUE the layers. I find that is a piece has lots of texture in it, and then I decide to pour paint over it, the colour will drip in mad directions because of the architecture of the structure. One of my favourite discoveries is using combs and forks – they can create fantastic tiny bits of detail. Sometimes I mix materials – ie varnish and paint, and just pour. We daresay that one of the aim of your work is to excite the observer to „finish“ the painting by themselves, to motivate their imagination to create personal image in a specific situation. Rather than attempting to establish any univocal sense, you seem to urge the viewers to elaborate personal associations: would you tell us how much important is for you that the spectatorship rethink the concepts you convey in your pieces, elaborating personal meanings? The aims of my work are to primarily to provide an outlet for my complex emotional states. This is represented through intense colour, gestural abstraction, mark making and texture. However, I recognise that as human beings, we are drawn to favourite colours and I encourage the viewer to peel back layers of my work or look for familiarity. Some people say that they see words, shapes, churches, faces, landscapes, chairs, and objects in my work. This isn’t something that I am consciously doing but I may gather images and do some analysis at some point. Either that or maybe someone will do it when I am no longer in the world! Your artwork sometimes are pervaded with images rich with symbolic features, as the ones from your Heart Project. German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once Gina Love eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral
agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries SPECIAL ISSUE 94 stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead". What is your opinion about it? Morever, would you tell us something about the importance of symbols in your imagery? I enjoy experimenting, and the hearts project was bowing to pressure for commerciality. I wanted to see if I could create a range of smaller more home décor pieces. In the future I would like to sell more work, and am developing this side, perhaps with greetings cards or fabric. In the past 20 years, I have only done one project purposely including shapes. Any other shapes which appear in my work are co-incidental 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". What could be in your opinion the role of Art in the contemporary age? The artist’s community on Instagram is huge and one I have found to be incredibly supportive. I do wonder where I would be in my career if we’d had Instagram 15 years ago when I was at university but I am where I am. Social media provides a daily online gallery for artists- you can just exhibit your work. With things like the 100 day project, carve out time for art, you can really get to see the progress in artists’ work, studios, and it is more accessible than ever before. Social media and street art allow Artists to react to things going on in the world straight away. I am influenced by world events than politics. I recently reverted back to painting in monochrome again after our recent election– I couldn’t cope with what I was seeing.
95 SPECIAL ISSUE Gina Love eries Contemporary Art Peripheral agazine
SPECIAL ISSUE 96 Over the years your works have been exhibited in several occasions, including your recent participation to the group exhibition TIMELESS, at the HLS Gallery, in London. One agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries Choose to look, 2017 20x20 cm
Gina Love eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral 97 SPECIAL ISSUE 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 I sobbed over you, 2017 20x20 cm
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 Peripheral SPECIAL ISSUE Contemporary Art 98 eries agazine Special Edition Poignant Square, 2017 20x20 cm
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 completely enjoy the process of painting, and being able to exhibit my work is wonderful. I have been amazed by the opportunities which have been opened up to me since I started putting my work on Instagram. Galleries, residencies, art fairs, projects, buying work directly from artists, seeing videos of new techniques first hand. But, with exhibiting I do consider it an addon to my practice and the process I do. I paint every day, and I have to be happy with my work before I let it into the public domain. Exhibiting work is a bit like showing bits of your brain to the world and it can be strange to be a room with loads of your paintings. A couple of times, I have had over 10 pieces up and it was like being surrounded by an emotional storm. But I am really proud of my work, and being able to exhibit my work following being bullied when I was younger has been wonderful. It feels like my reward for all the shit. I’d like to bridge the gap between paying to exhibit though, as it can get a bit costly shipping work backwards and forwards as well as the exhibition costs. The costs put restrictions on how much I can be involved with. I’d say the average exhibition costs £500 - £1500, and you go into it full of hope that someone will buy all your work, but this hasn’t happened yet. Until you are making a living from being a professional artist it does also still seem to be the notion that artists do not need to be paid, but that being involved in projects for free or limited budget is good exposure. Most artists do have a day job as well and I struggle with this perception. I would love for this to change and for living artists to be invested in/rewarded rather than retrospectively. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Gina. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? I am really grateful for this opportunity to show my work here. In terms of the future, ideally I would love to be a full time professional artist, perhaps exploring the Art therapy route if I have to have a day job to pay the bills. Until this happens I will just keep painting and hope to do workshops/open up my studio in my new house in the future. I hope my work continues to evolve and I am interested to see where it will go. I hope I can paint every day until I am no longer in the world! My grandparents lived until their mid-90’s and sadly I have lost them all in the last 18 months, but I guess that means have a good 60 years left in me to paint! An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected] Gina Love eries agazine Contemporary Art Peripheral 99 SPECIAL ISSUE
SPECIAL ISSUE 100 Hello Tye and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and you recently degreed from the prestigious The Illinois Institute of Art Chicago: how do your studies influence the way you currently conceive and produce your works? And in particular, how does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to the aesthetic problem in general? My degree in fine arts allows for me to have an organic approach that begins to go deeper than a "Cute" photograph. Fine art work is meant to make one stop and think rather than merely glancing, which hat our society is trained to do with many things. Life is one of my biggest inspirations. I believe art imitates life and vice versa. So rather than settling for what I know as popular looks or "Aesthetic" I think what is important to me as an African American woman. There's layers to being Black. Over these years you have experimented with a wide variety of different techniques, ranging from Painting and Photography to Video, Design and Jewelry. We would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.photyegraphy.com in order to get a synoptic view of your work: in the meanwhile, would you like to tell to our readers something about Tyesha Moores Lives and works in Chicago, USA Peripheral ARTeries meets Fine Art Photographer Tyesha Moores' work draw the viewers through a multilayered visual experience: while speaking of beauty, her photographs address the viewers to challenge their cultural parameters in order to question the notion of identity, urging them to capture the beauty that is under the surface of her works. One of the most impressive aspects of Moores' work is the way it walks the viewers through a unique, unconventional aesthetic and intellectual visual experience: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating and multifaceted artistic production. An interview by Josh Ryders, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected] agazine Special Edition Contemporary Art Peripheral eries