Mitra Tashakori scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
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they engulf me and after creating that work, I get a strange sense of peace. The tones of your works — be they intense and bright, be they marked out with such thoughtful, almost meditative atmosphere create delicate tension and dynamics: how does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in your works? Mitra Tashakori: To create these spaces, I have used a special material and because the colors that can be used on paper or Mitra Tashakori scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
dark cardboard surface are limited, so the choice of colors has also created a special limitation for me, of course, I benefit from this limitation to coordinate the colors and forms. Limitation has brought me a special creativity. scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Mitra Tashakori Land
We highly appreciate the way your artworks address your audience to dive into the dreamlike dimension, helping them to question the nature of human perception. Scottish painter Peter Doig once remarked that even the most realistic scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
paintings are derived more from within the head than from what's out there in front of us, how do you consider the relationship between reality and imagination, playing within your artistic production? Mitra Tashakori: I completely agree with Peter Doug. Yes, even in the most realistic paintings, the innermost of the artist affects the work. Perhaps we see in the works of different artists that the type of lines, hatches, and levels are different from each other. Even the color in one hour of the day and in a specific place is different from the eyes of different artists and it goes back to the inner world of the artist, that is, the artist’s worldview, imagination, and mindset. Imagination has influenced my work a lot. I used to draw trees in outdoors and real space with pencil, metal pen, and Rapid, and in retrospect, all those studies, all those lines and designs have been influential in my current work. You are personally involved in topical issues that affect our society, including the crisis of scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Mitra Tashakori Land
air warming, forest burning, environmental pollution. Artists from different art movement and eras — from pioneer Richard Morris, passing through Thomas Light and Andy Goldsworthy, to more recently Kelly Richardson— use to scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
communicate more or less explicit messages in their artworks: do you think that artists can raise awareness to an evergrowing audience on topical issues? In particular, as an how do you consider the role of artists in our globalised and unstable society? Mitra Tashakori scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
Mitra Tashakori: In my opinion, artists can be pioneers in showing environmental crises to the world. Of course, a good communication between artists and environmental scientists and scientists in the field of scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
science and technology can be a new step in advancing environmental goals. The warning or display of these works is much more effective than television news coverage. The effect that art has on the audience, be it performance, painting, scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Mitra Tashakori Land
dance, theater, music, or a combination of all these, is much, much deeper and more permanent. Showing a leaf and acknowledging its beauty and appreciation of nature and the power and natural magic of leaves and trees and showing it through scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
art can be more effective than the news coverage on deforestation. After all, the visual language has the most impact. You are a versatile artist and your artworks seem to be rich of symbols, as leaves. In this sense, your artistic Mitra Tashakori scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
production aims to urge the spectatorship to a participative effort, to realize their own interpretation. Austrian Art historian Ernst Gombrich once remarked the importance of providing a space for the viewers to project onto, so that they can actively participate in the creation of the illusion: how important is for you to trigger the viewers' imagination in order to address them to elaborate personal interpretations? In particular, how open would you like your works to be understood? Yes, I really love symbols. Usually, the production and creation of a work of art or artwork may not have anything to do with the audience. I make art because I feel the need for it inside me. Air pollution, wars and destructions, etc. make me sick and this pain forces me to create a work that is a salve for this pain and then I share these works with my audience and my work affects the audience. And I see its feedback. I have never created a work to please the audience. I have been asked a lot by the audience in regard to the collection of leaves—whether this work is long-lasting? And even collectors have told me, "this work is not enduring, what would you do to make it last longer?" And in response, I would say, “Are we eternal?” The name of the collection is Leaf and Death, after all. It is not sustainable. Of course, this collection had two general goals; firstly, the leaves are not permanent. We are not permanent and we die. And secondly, the leaves are born again in the spring. In the "Leaf and Death" exhibition, I put an excerpt of Fereydon Moshiri's poem entitled "Believe in Spring" (‘Bahar ra Bavar Kon’) on the wall of the exhibition: "... the soil has come alive Why have you turned to stone? Why are you so heavyhearted? Open the windows And believe in the springs." Of course, I would very much like to see and hear the feedback of my audience both in the exhibitions and in the virtual space. This is very effective and enjoyable for me, even if their feedback is not in accordance with my own purpose or my personal perception of the works. It is still very inspiring and informative for me. With their unique aesthetic quality on the visual espect, your works seem to be laboriously structured to capture echoes from reality, pursuing such effective and at the same time thoughtful visual impact: how important is direct experience for you? In particular, how do you consider the role of memory playing within your artistic process? Mitra Tashakori: I think I have fully addressed the importance of nature and its tremendous artistic impact in the previous questions. Nature marks the beginning and end of my work; it makes its way into my works in a subconscious scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
and imaginative manner.I have never used images, photos, or real landscapes in my works. I think that nature is imprinted in our minds in a mysterious way, and then it is represented through the idiosyncratic forms, methods, and techniques of each scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Mitra Tashakori Land
artist, painter, and designer. Marked out with such organic feeling and balanced sense of geometry, your works feature recurrent smooth contours and shapes that we dare say essential on the scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
visual aspect. Would you tell us something about such refined geometric aspect? Mitra Tashakori: I trace this strange order, which is completely noticeable in my work and is out of my control, and which has appeared in all my works—back to my strong interest and desire for graphics. There is a close relationship between painting and graphics in my works, and of course I like it. On the one hand, the strange symbols and order in the work and on the other hand, my feelings and connection with the events have affected my work and the painterly feeling of it. You are an established artist, and over the years your artworks have been exhbited in many occasions: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? As the move of Art from traditional gallery spaces, to street and especially to online platforms — as Instagram — increases, how would in your opinion change the relationship with a globalised audience? Mitra Tashakori: I think that the Covid, in the last few years, has greatly affected the nature of the exhibition of the works of art and has provided us with better and more useful ways to display works. Virtual exhibitions, street performances, and especially Instagram have strangely brought the artist closer and closer to his/her audience. On the daily routine of our mechanical world, we need to produce and display works of art more than ever. We need more tenderness, art, and creativity to keep away from this mundane and tedious world. We have really appreciated the multifaceted nature of your artistic research and before leaving this stimulating conversation we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for sharing your thoughts, Mitra. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future? Mitra Tashakori: I appreciate you and your good team. I myself love artistic discussions and I read them in art magazines and on Instagram, using Google Translate. It helps me understand the artists' works and the process of their creation better. I think this helps the affinity of the artist to the audience and you are the means to this perfect end. Thank you. I have new projects for which I need a good team to implement. I am thinking of implementing them and I don't know how to explain them, maybe I will share them with your good team after the implementation. I love you very much. Mitra Tashakori scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected]
Hello Adrian and welcome to LandEscape. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production and we would like to invite our readers to visit https://www.adrianf-homeworks.com in order to get a wider idea about your artistic production, and we would like to start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and you hold a BA of Sculpture, that you received from the Camberwell College, University of the Arts London: how do these formative years influence your evolution as an artist? Adrian Flaherty: Although the course was called Sculpture we were encouraged, on all courses there, to experiment with different media. With that in mind my flat became the sculpture, with interventions, paintings, photography, functional works and sculptures in response to the various spaces and ideas of the home. Over the course I also developed my interest in the use of chance in art over the last hundred years I am a Londoner, having lived here all my life and where I also studied Sculpture, completing my degree at UAL in 2016, with work interested in ideas related to the home. I worked across a variety of media on this course but since then I have been concentrating on paintings. I have always been interested in the use of Chance in art over the last century or so and I use various methods of painting and drawing to create chaotic effects on the canvases which I then try to reason with, bringing it together with more detailed work. I work in administration as well at the moment which also brings out this organising nature of mine. Having also studied Architecture I have an underlying interest in location discovering new places that are related to a wider idea of where I am from, and walking is central to the work of my recent paintings. After completing the series of bridges along the River Thames, up to the edge of London, I have been making paintings of cliffs and beaches along the West coast of England. This is meant to symbolise how both myself and the `Western’ world is constantly being unpredictability affected by the forces around it, as can be also seen in the nature of the landscape changing with coastal erosion, tides, winds, etc. The effect of climate change is only going to heighten the impact on people’s lives. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected] Land scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW LandEscape meets Adrian Flaherty @adrianfhomeworks Lives and works in London, United Kingdom
or so. In one assignment I wrote about Marcel Duchamp’s 3 Standard Stoppages – the dropping of three 1 metre long strings in a humorously ironic reference to perspective and to draftsmanship, where he would suggest that the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line but a curve. This has now become a motif in many of my paintings. Another artist I very much like is Jackson Pollock and his drip paintings and the declaration that “I am nature” which became important to the expressive and organic nature of my work. In my twenties I also completed over two years of an architecture degree which has made me interested in the environment and the interest in discovering new places. The body of works that we have selected for this special edition of LandEscape —and 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 your studies of the unpredictability and structure of the nature of coastal erosion invite the viewers to revaluate each step of the mechanism of art making, highlighting at the same time the uniqueness of the viewers' response to the work of art. When walking our readers through the genesis of the Cliffs and Beaches series, would you tell us something about your usual setup and process? Adrian Flaherty: This series followed directly on from my Bridge series where I walked the length of the River Thames up to the edge of London producing paintings at each connection over the river. This was where I started exploring the juxtaposition of chance and structure (or reason), where the depths of water have often dangerous currents under the surface if you were trying to swim in it, contrasted against the strength of the bridges. It also developed further ideas of the home. London is where I was born and where I scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
Adrian Flaherty scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
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have lived all my life, but when I had finished that series, I wanted to explore the idea of living in the “Western World”, and its chaotic and yet usually ordered nature. I work from drawings and from photographs taken on some of my walks along the cliffs of the west coast of England. When I start a painting, I have a general aim of what I want to depict, of late usually laying down string to try and control some of the added paint to mark out the subject. I have been using 27 one meter long pieces recently a lot. I love this number because it is 3 to the power of 3 (or three cubed), which is also the number 3 less than 30. It is an ironical reference to the freedom of the “West”, where most Londoners pronounce this number `Free’. There are also obviously three primary and three secondary colours, so this process has become like my signature method. I use a combination of oil and acrylic paints, thinned down, so that when the paint is added to the horizontal canvas it flows and mixes with other colours from other areas of the painting. I usually have to control some of the flows as I go along by tilting the canvas until an equilibrium is reached or an interesting effect is achieved. This can be seen in much the same way as there being many ways that humans attempt to control some of the impacts of nature in coastal areas as well as the urban towns and cities. This process, after it has dried, is then worked into to bring out, and accentuate various aspects and to try and make the painting as much as possible like the original scene in the photo. It is this process that is often very difficult to end very much like the ongoing need to take care of the environment and the nature that I depict, and I often return to the painting with the common question of when to decide that the painting is finished. There is no time limit only the aim to make all parts harmonise together. Adrian Flaherty scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
The tones of your works - be they intense and bright as in Cliffs and Beaches XVII, be they marked out with such thoughtful, almost meditative ambiance, as in Fulham Railway Bridge — create delicate tension and dynamics: how does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in your works? In scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
Adrian Flaherty scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land particular, what role does intuition play in the composition of your palette? Adrian Flaherty: Like I say I work from photos usually for these projects, making quick sketches of these with accentuated colours drawn into my sketchbook. The experience of walking the cliffs and feeling
the colours in that environment where changes in weather, the tides, and coastal features change markedly on the journey along the path, or in the bridge series as the land use and the colours of the bridges change, they also influence other aspects in my palette. At the start there are many other variables to influence the colours I choose, not just the scene. I lay out the colours I might want to contrast or combine certain ones to create an effect or choose a colour that I feel is useful to an idea, or even a colour that I haven’t used for a while. But generally, I use the primary and secondary colours, and blacks and whites added neat in contrasting oil and acrylic applications to form effects as they `mix’ together on the canvas. This is much like the impact of weather on the land, water and sky that I try to represent. Like the weather and the seasons, I change my palette, and sometimes the method of the way I work with an initial vision of how I feel about the location in the drawing or photo. My psychological state is important because I live and have a studio in London which is sometimes stressful, yet it is quite therapeutic on my walks, so I find I like to often express that contrast. Other factors in my life or the music I happen to be listening to can also affect the process at the initial stage. I often want to try out a new material or method of creating effects, as you can see in the Fulham Railway Bridge painting where I ground up oil pastels which I then mixed with some turps for the section of beach that ran along the river at low tide. Sometimes importantly the amount of paint scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
Adrian Flaherty scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
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and how strong the mixture is, or even the sequence that the paint was applied can totally transform the piece. So it is the living process of trying to achieve effects in the scene in the early stages that dictates most of the range of colours in each painting. You have a background in Architecture and as you have remarked once, you have an underlying interest in location discovering new places that are related to a wider idea of where you are from. In this sense, we dare say that your works could be considered a response to direct experience mediated by the lens of memory: do you agree with this interpretation? In particular, how does your everyday life's experience and your memories fuel your creative process? Adrian Flaherty: The inspiration for my paintings, as I just alluded to, and the feelings do very much come from the experiences and the interests I have had, not just on the walks, but also the contrast of living my life in the city. Between this and the calm of walking along the riverbanks away from traffic and the crowds in the first series, or along the cliffs with its often-buffeting winds and crashing waves. These are important when combined with the graceful movement of clouds and of the light and shade that makes the scene in front of me, and the textures that come with that. Some paintings have ended up on the walls of my new house and I find it is great to live with them and relive some of the feelings I have tried to express, not least because some aspects might influence another painting later on down the line. The decision to return to landscape painting, and these seascapes, some 20 years later can be seen to be very much influenced by my recollection of my Geography studies at school, and my scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Adrian Flaherty Land
frequent family trips to the coast during my childhood. Also, as a child I was a very keen club swimmer and I think my fascination with water stems from that as well. We highly appreciate the way your works address your audience to dive into the dreamlike dimension, helping them to discover its connections with ordinary life. Scottish painter Peter Doig once remarked that even the most realistic paintings are derived more from within the head than from what's out there in front of us, how do you consider the relationship between reality and scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
imagination, playing within your artistic production? Adrian Flaherty: Painting from photos and sketches is obviously different to working en plein air, but the fluidity of the paint important to a lot of my paintings is not possible unfortunately outdoors. But maybe what I lack in experiencing the specific location for longer, is countered by the experience of the paint and in the act of making the painting, and how it takes on a life of its own often as it slowly mixes and dries out. This is often wrestled with to bring it back to be more like the original scene but also fairly often the chance occurrences in the paint creates a new scene entirely or a weather condition in the Cliffs and Beaches series. This chance method can also be used to add something else to the work that wasn’t what I saw originally. In this way light effects, or the movements of water and clouds can also become very imagined, and ideas develop for more surreal parts, as the paint flows into different areas. Pieces can also become quite abstract working with the unexpected. So there is usually a general plan of what I want to achieve but I'm always looking for, or finding new ways to show the contrasts between chance and reason, or reality and more of an experience. You are a versatile artist and your works convey such stimulating visual ambivalence, able to walk the viewers to develop personal interpretations. Austrian Art historian Ernst Gombrich once remarked the importance of providing a space for the viewers to project onto, so that they can actively participate in the creation of the illusion: how important is it for you to trigger the viewers' imagination in order to address them to elaborate personal interpretations? In particular, how open would you like your works to be understood? Adrian Flaherty: I think it’s very important that my paintings trigger the imagination transporting the viewer into being in the landscape in these two series’. The paintings are made with the initial objective to be felt scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Adrian Flaherty Land
like how the landscape affected me during my walks, but often the ideas of the painting happen during the process of making it. I found the group exhibition titled The Sea to be great because its location in Sheffield in the UK couldn’t be much more centred between the west and east coasts of England, so the ability for art to do that to the viewer and take them into that environment is great and important sometimes. Everybody takes their experiences and knowledge with them to view art and it is important to apply that to each work of art. There are clues to what I’m expressing in my work but it’s obviously open to interpretation sometimes, and I’m sure that there might be things that I haven’t realised that some viewers might grasp, so I think that personal interpretations are vital in any work of art. This is in much the same way as I often find it more rewarding to study another artist's work and try to work out what they were trying to express before reading the caption or the press release about the exhibition. The saying “Every picture speaks a thousand words” is very true and I am actually writing a book at the moment bringing together ideas I’ve been influenced by over my life to go along with my artwork since my degree. The chapters titled The CV and Me, The Home, Chance, Reason, Walking, The Fire and the Signature, and Books go into detail of why I am interested in certain things, work the way I do, and what has made me the person I am. It is a bit of a journey of self-discovery of books, magazine cuttings and even subjects I studied back in school that have influenced me and has been put together in quite a fun way I think to understand my work and me as an artist. Your artistic production offers a critical political point of the unstable relationship scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
Adrian Flaherty scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
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between relationship between climate change and our lives. Artists from different art movement and eras used to communicate more or less explicit messages in their artworks: do you think that artists can raise awareness to an ever growing audience on topical issues — as environmental ones — that affect our everchanging society? In particular, as an how do you consider the role of artists in our globalised society? Adrian Flaherty: It is definitely important that artist do this! Art has always been a bit confrontational around the ideas of what art is and raised current issues in society in particular over the last century. Conventional art, i.e. landscapes, portraits and the human figure, have been replaced as the main genres with more conceptual art and categories such as Land Art and the modern day social initiative type projects that some artists are involved in, becoming more popular. My return to doing landscapes was done to express my need to see more of the world around me and generate work that both communicates ideas but also my desire to enjoy and show my appreciation of what nature has to offer. So, my aim is that if work can encourage that enjoyment or yes increase the awareness to the environment more in others, I would be very happy indeed. Nature should be appreciated and nurtured more because we very much rely on it for our survival. It doesn’t matter where you are, or what background you come from, most people would say that nature does things that humans find hard to beat aesthetically or indeed structurally. My studies in architecture have very much instilled in me the environmental side of scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Adrian Flaherty Land
living but also this fascination with how nature makes such amazing forms, such as the simplicity of the spiral of a seashell, or the complexity and the strength of the material in a spider’s web, which our scientists are apparently currently trying to reproduce for work in our own structures. You use various methods of painting and drawing to create chaotic effects on the canvases: how do you consider the role of chance and improvisation playing within your artistic process? Adrian Flaherty: Each painting starts with improvisation, when the more expressive aspects of the work are generated or when textures are laid down. Whether it is by a sweeping curve of a piece of string to define a form or a thrown mix of paint onto the canvas. Chance then often takes over to create new forms, textures and effects which I later try to develop, accentuate or edit away. This final stage can take very much longer to bring all the effects and colours together. Sometimes though, as I mentioned, I return to paintings with fresh eyes after they had been in storage for a long time and worked on some more, finding solutions to parts that don’t quite work with other areas, or I have been known to totally redo paintings with other layers built up on top. The original subject matter sometimes becomes less important, and I concentrate more on the mark making process. So, I find the expressive aspects and the use of chance in my work is often the most important factor because everything thereafter, that makes the painting, is indebted to it. This is again very similar to us humans and our reliance on nature and the environment that we are in. You are an established artist and over the years your works have been exhibited in many occasions, including your recent exhibition The Sea, at the Fronteer Gallery, in Sheffield: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? As the move of Art from traditional gallery spaces, to street and especially to online platforms — as Instagram — increases, how would in your opinion change the relationship with a globalised audience? Adrian Flaherty: My relationship with my audience is mostly done through feedback with the gallery staff during physical exhibitions. The galleries and the online exhibitions continue to like to present my work which is very satisfying because they usually have a grasp of what is interesting and what makes good art. I am on the website Etsy with some details of my paintings uploaded to give a better feel of the textures of the paint, but I have been told that my paintings are much better viewed in person. I have exhibited outside the UK when I was part of a group show in Venice and I have had offers from other galleries in major cities including New York, so I am happy that my work is getting to be seen and enjoyed worldwide. It obviously takes a while to hone skills and ideas and develop a portfolio that leads to more solo shows, and this opportunity to explain some of my art is another good step on the road to be able to consider myself a professional artist. I think the Covid virus came just as my work was gaining more recognition and I am very happy that things worldwide are finally getting back to normal for most of us on that front. I tried Instagram https://www.instagram.com/adrianfhomeworks as a method to share my work to a wider audience for a time and received some good comments, but I think that it definitely suits some people’s work and personalities more scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
Adrian Flaherty scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land than others. However, as a force of showing art and of connecting people and ideas I think the internet is so very powerful and can only help the culture of the individual and influence a wider community. We have really appreciated the multifaceted nature of your artistic research and before leaving this stimulating conversation we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for sharing your thoughts, Adrian. What
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Hello Florian and welcome to LandEscape. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production and we would like to invite our readers to visit https://floriannoerl.art in order to get a wide idea about your artistic production, and we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and you hold a Master from Linz Kunstuniversität: how do these formative years influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, are there any experiences that did particularly help you to develop your attitude to experiment? Florian Nörl: Hello LandEscape. I was very fortunate to be able to study at an extremely free university without being under any time or administrative pressure. What could be better than using an entire university as a studio. I was also allowed to spend semesters during my training period in universities with cities like Pilsen CZ and Bilbao ES. Creating something new, innovative and unique is definitely one of the main reasons for my enthusiasm for experimentation. The body of works that we have selected for this special edition of LandEscape —and 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 it highlights the connection between textile art and contemporary sensitiveness, unveiling the point of convergence between tactile and pictorial aspects of the medium. When walking our readers through the genesis of your works, would you tell us something about your usual setup and process? In particular, how did you develop the idea of „Textilstein“? Florian Nörl: A focus of my studies was textile art, and I was particularly interested in screen printing even before I started studying. Leftovers and misprints were always omnipresent and I was looking for a way to work with them artistically. In most cases, textiles are something soft, worn on the body, are curtains or other home textiles. I wanted to break with this quality and started experimenting. It was All my artworks are made from Textile: I petrify textiles and then process them in a similar way to stone. I call the result and the technique textile stone (Textilstein). The overall concept of my work is the transformation of postmodern materials (old textiles) into contemporary art or contemporary gems. „Textilstein“ is a specially developed material by Florian Nörl, which redefines the boundaries of the textile medium in the visual arts. The „textilestone“ finds its place on this interface with an interaction of plastic and pictorial exploration of the textile material. Through a special process and technology, the feel is velvety and the surface reminds of „Stucco lustro“ from a distance. Only by touch can one truly understand the textile material. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected] Land scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW LandEscape meets Florian Nörl @floriannoerl