LandEscape Anniversary Edition C o n t e m p o r a r y ART A r t R e v i e w Donya Fazelnia ERIN ADAMS KAREN GHOSTLAW SUOK WON YOON DONYA FAZELNIA DONNA CARNAHAN ALI KHORSHIDPOUR GONGSAN KIM GILL BUSTAMANTE BEKI BORMAN https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2023/02/12/rai-meloni-vuole-rossi-come-ad-ma-potrebbe-stare-in-caricasolo-18-mesi-ecco-perche-il-governo-studia-la-legge-ad-personam/7063048/
SUMMARY Donna Carnahan Iran C o n t e m p o r a r y A r t R e v i e w USA Karen Ghostlaw The day I moved to a desert as a teenager, someone welcoming me to the area said, “Look how big the sky is!” I became intrigued with how landscapes that are void of most vegetation can strikingly portray the illusion of vast spaciousness, as well as allow for a direct experience with the raw forms, colors, and surfaces that might otherwise be obscured by grass, moss, or trees. For this body of work, I traveled extensively through the treeless arctic deserts of Iceland, the world's driest desert, Atacama of Northern Chile, the deserts of the American West, and the mouth of the ice fjord in Greenland where the most productive glacier in the Northern Hemisphere surrenders to the sea. I've created a series of landscape photographs that offer a glimpse of the most remote corners of the world, while also addressing the climate crisis in unique ways including through a spoken-word short film that is set in an imagined future. These natural and sometimes fabricated fantasy-like settings invoke the beauty and drama of fairy tales when long-ago giants and elves walked the earth. Special Issue Suok Won Yoon USA USA Land scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Erin Adams USA My work engages with audiences through immersive installations, sculpture, painting, performance, video, and social practice. Through various mediums, I explore themes of landscape, monuments, Queer culture, chosen family, futurism, ageism, power structures and race. The work emerges from a combination of lived experiences, personal mythology and my research in the study of Queer bodies in contemporary American culture. Some of my artistic influences include Catherine Opie, Zanele Muholi, Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Beatriz Cortez. These creators all insist on personal representation and equity through different mediums in their work. My social practice work involves collaborations with other artists and volunteers on activist projects such as the street mural “ALL BLACK LIVES MATTER,” at Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, and “DEFUND ICE,” at McArthur Park, both produced in the summer of 2020 in Los Angeles, California. I care about clarity in my artwork, but cannot claim that my intentions automatically make my works explicit and clear for the audience. I have always endeavored to have a reason for every element in my work, even the color. In this work, you can see a white ceramic rhino that is only covered with a transparent glaze. This white, immaculate color portrays the purity of the rhino and the fact that it has been belittled and humiliated like a mouse through an exaggerated scaling effect which minimizes the rhino, who are ironically considered to be the second biggest animal after elephants. Additionally, the contrast between the immaculate white rhino, and the fence and the dusty, worn-out wooden part of the mousetrap can be an indicator of the cruelties done to rhinos or animal cruelty in general. The audience can take part in this work; they can open or close the cage or even take the rhino out. This fact directly ties into humans’ involvement in nature, and their decisions regarding their interactions with nature and animals. Donya Fazelnia United Kingdom Whilst my paintings are mostly inspired by the Sussex landscapes I see around me, I reflect any landscape or seascape I have ever visited. My painting style fuses magical, colourful and ethereal elements along with Impressionist, semi-abstract, Art Nouveau and something I term ‘Memory Impressionism’. This is where I go walking somewhere rural, look at and absorb the things I see and experience, and then come home and try to capture an 'echo' of the place from memory, including any wildlife I may have seen. My paintings reflect, for me, the spiritual echoes of beautiful places such as those in Sussex and the English countryside generally and it always fascinates me what emerges on to a canvas from a simple memory. All of them have a story attached and are named once I have completed the painting and can see more clearly what the story is! Jorge Rojas Naima Karim Cécile Filipe I experience detachment in time and space. The fragments of me swirling around in the small old cups, desks, radios, mirrors, etc. placed in front of me are revealed one by one. Substances of the essence encountered in loneliness seem to be indifferent, becoming the reality of life and experiencing accidental loneliness dyed in the form of inevitable loneliness. The moment when I was alone because I lost her mother's hand on a street when I was young, that moment still becomes a cold wind in my memory, making my heart ache. A dark emptiness and fear exist at the end of the memory that comes close at times in the journey of seeing, hearing, and experiencing, going back and forth between illusions and ideals. Darkness binds me. The darkness that I can't see even when I open my eyes, and the darkness that I can't reach even when I stretch out my hand, becomes a weight and weighs me down so I can't take even a single step away. Gill Bustamante “My collection represents majestic beauty recorded while on foot on the Amalfi coast. Bringing back my photos from the Old World reminds me of the renewal of my own mind and refreshment of my soul I experienced at the seaside and exploring the gardens of Villa Cimbrone. Images of Italian summers can be good for the heart, soul, and mental health, as we all get through these times together. Surround yourself in the majestic beauty of Italy and feel the romantic vibes open your heart. “ Donna Carnahan, international photographer from Houston, Texas, specializes in international landscape photography. Since 2015, gaining inspiration from her love of Renaissance art in Florence, Italy, she has traveled extensively throughout 10+ regions of Italy. She has a passion for travel to remote and little known places where she photographically captures hidden gems of nature.
Special Issue Special thanks to Miya Ando, Juerg Luedi, Urte Beyer, Beth Krensky, Rudiger Fischer, Lisa Birke, Haylee Lenkey, Martin Gantman, Ariane Littman, Max Epstein, Nicolas Vionnet, Sapir Kesem Leary, Greg Condon, Jasper Van Loon, Alexandre Dang, Christian Gastaldi, Larry Cwik, Michael Nelson, Dana Taylor, Michael Sweeney, Colette Hosmer, Melissa Moffat, Marinda Scaramanga and Artemis Herber. SUMMARY Land scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW 4 34 Karen Ghostlaw lives and works in the United Kingdom Erin Adams lives and works in California, United States Donna Carnahan lives and works in the United States Donya Fazelnia lives and works in Teheran, Iran Gill Bustamante lives and works in the United Kingdom Gongsan Kim lives and works in the United States Suok Won Yoon lives and works in the United States Ali Khorshidpour lives and works in the United States Beki Borman lives and works in the United States 58 80 104 132 152 196 214 “For me the landscape is the most accessible subject of the natural world. It has shaped our understanding of visual order. When I look at a landscape my mind instantly begins to evaluate its design. I lay out the big shapes, patterns of color, and areas of contrast. My interest is not in recreating the scene, but rather in learning from its aesthetic. I use a painting knife as my primary tool to create a textured surface that describes the vast color experience of a landscape from afar but up close supports the objective nature of paint. Through layering I seek out a nuanced variety in mark making which speaks to the subtle experiences of space and light “ Beki Borman was born and raised in the Milwaukee area of Wisconsin. She attended the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design where she received her BFA in painting in 2004. Since graduating, Beki has exhibited her work both locally and nationally. For Beki's studio work she paints colorful and textural abstract landscapes in oil and acrylics using a combination of painting knife and brush techniques. Some of her influences include Vincent Van Gogh, Wolf Kahn, and Wayne Thiebaud. Beki works out of her studio in Waukesha. Beki Borman USA Joe O’Brien USA Gongsan Kim For a long time I sought for some means to respond to the turmoil and tragedies of my nation, a way for me to ease the grief in my heart. And my art has allowed me to channel my anger and sorrow into the arduous yet cathartic process of healing. My art is done in a ritualistic manner meant to speak healing to the wounded spirits, praying for eradication of the roots of their sorrow. I know there is no way I could possibly understand their hardship. But even so, with their cries of anguish ringing in my heart, I just burn and burn, because I can imagine no other method that could do justice to the depth of their suffering. And through my arrangements of scorched burlaps I express my sympathy, especially for those who either died during attempted escapes across the border or were captured and met their unjust end in the concentration camps. I roll up the fabric and gather them up to burn as if I have collected the tragic tales of the victims, the coarse material symbolizing their tumultuous life and death. I quietly offer to the people of North Korea these half-burnt ashes, knowing that one day the blood they’ve shed will become sparks that will make bloom the flowers of freedom. My art deals with political issues, but I have simplified my forms and colors as much as possible in an effort to show my emotions in both immense and minimal manner. Of course, there is also the strong desire to inform North Korea of the repression of human rights through my works. It is my hope that the history of past 70 years is known, remembered, and declared. Through this process, I hope to demarcate each loss, woven together by the collective experiences of the people of North Korea. Iran Nature is always attractive and very inspiring to me, and for this reason, many of my paintings and drawings feature different views of nature. For example, my previous works have included such landscapes: vast meadows, green hills, a forest in the distance, some green trees on the horizon, single trees or a bush of grass in a cold and gray atmosphere, and other such landscapes, all of which are minimalistic in terms of form and color. In continuation of the same naturalist and minimalist approach, the collection of my recent works that you can see here, have reached the maximum extent of brevity in terms of form and color. So that the forms, which are inspired by leaves, stems and grass in nature, are very geometric and abstract, and the color is limited to black and white only, because my goal in creating these works is to show simplicity, purity and visual harmony that relationships and interactions between the components of the work evoke a musical feeling. Ali Khorshidpour
Hello Karen and welcome back to LandEscape. We already got the chance to introduce our readers to your artworks in a previous edition and we are now particularly pleased to discover the development of your artistic production. The new body of works that we have selected for this special edition of LandEscape is entitled Urban Wetlands, a stimulating series inspired by water and by the study of environmental changes. How did you develop the initial idea behind such stimulting project? In my search for reflections and reflective surfaces, water has always been an inspiring layered world to explore. In recent years I have noticed a change in standing water in New York city and the communities north to the Hudson Valley. They have gone from thin layers of water that spread only a few inches wide, vastly We live in a time of changing weather patterns due to global warming. As Temperatures rise, the waters swell and grow warmer. Storms have become more frequent and destructive in some areas, while drought and forest fires have plagued others. I explore the natural world and its deconstruction caused by man, while depicting these environments made by man being reconstructed by nature. Is it a form of self correction? Does or can one exist without the other? These are the questions I ask, while exploring the waters around me. The surfaces of the waters reflect the environment around us. While currents of running waters rush through the estuaries of suburbia and the remote countryside, pedestrians move through the canyons of the urban landscapes. The ebb and flow create the abstractions and aberrations in the reflective surfaces. Whether it is a splash from a footstep in a puddle in an urban landscape or fish swimming upstream in the wilderness, the layers of complexity are overlapped and transformed. Our world is round, front to back, top to bottom, side to side, we revolve and as we do we evolve. What an important time for us to reconnect with nature and to reflect on the natural elements in our world and the fragilities and intricacies we have to balance. It is an archeology of discovery when we turn the world upside down or inside out. The threads of the present are intertwined with the past, the woven tapestry changing as we change. Through my investigations I illuminate these changes to engage us to think and ultimately act in new ways. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected] Land scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW LandEscape meets Karen Ghostlaw @karenghostlaw
growing to new depths and ponding conditions. These new conditions brought new inspiration to my reflections. The new depths of the water brought darkness but also space when illuminated. This reflected space I like to call the 4th dimension. The 4th dimension can become bottomless in darkness, or extremely shallow in illumination, defining your space and geometry in this playful depth of field. The widening pools of standing water have become other worldly, reflecting even more of the world, mirroring everyday life and current affairs. It often turns our world upside down and shakes it out a bit. Exposing things in ways you never imagined. I don’t change what I photograph, I change the way you perceive what is photographed. This is very important to understand. The works from your Urban Wetlands Series explore water and life displayed in water, and the layers that when combined, provide us with new ways of seeing. Engaging the spectators' brains to actively participate to the composition Karen Ghostlaw scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
of the image, your works seem to bring to a new level of significance Alberto Giacometti words when he stated that ''the object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.'' As a matter of fact, your works are realistic, but in a wide meaning: do you agree with this interpretation? More specifically, did you aim to extract hidden — even encrypted — aspects of reality? First of all thank you for a humbling comparison, I am inspired by Giacometti and his unique ways of depicting the world and humanity in it. I think of my work as very sculptural, always living in the 4th dimension. I adore the idea of ‘Creating a reality of the same intensity’ and embrace the ideologies of not capturing the moment, but the day, week, year! There is always a human element found in the urban environment. It was created by man, and therefore reflects humanity over time. I embrace color in my reflected work. It brings intensity to the spaces, creating emotional responses and connections, again responding to the human element and condition, but through abstractions, changing the way you perceive it. I am always looking for interesting clues, that when abstracted cause one to question, requiring you to think differently. Being an editor, I like the challenge of finding different titles for my photographs, engaging the written word as part of extracting that scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
Karen Ghostlaw scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
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Karen Ghostlaw scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land encrypted meaning, often finding the absurd and opposite meanings in the simple truths. As you have remarked once, you have found recent inspiration in collaborating on projects and contributing to something larger than yourself. It's no doubt that interdisciplinary collaborations are today ever growing forces in Contemporary Art and that the most exciting things happen when creative minds from different fields meet and collaborate on a project: could you tell us something about the collaborative nature of your approach when developing your Urban Wetlands Series? The best part of my job as editor for The Pictorial-List Magazine is working with other artists to help them tell their stories. I always approach this as a collaboration, between the artist and the editor. I have learned so much and gained much insight on how to effectively work with people to create together through equal contribution a stronger, more insightful and often cohesive piece of work. I am not competitive in nature, and find great rewards have come in my life through a combined team effort. Excellence is not an accident, it comes from diligence in practice. I want to change the way people think about photography, inspire photographers to develop different approaches to photographic practice, create a natural organic change in response in the contemporary art world, and make important advances in the world of photography.
Adapting to the modern movements in humanity in the arts of time. Art often help both artists and the audience to unveil the connection between the rational and the emotional, offering unconventional as well as critical political points of view of the way solitary creativity is perceived in relationship with the viewing experience. Do you think that in the light of the recent pandemic, the artistic experience could help us to develop innovative way to reconnect to humanity? In these solitary times of the pandemic we have all had time to look at oneself and to find truths we were unfamiliar with or uncomfortable with. I think the first way to create change is to identify with what needs to be changed. If you address the truth, you can look for solutions. If you remain blind to the truth, things will never change. Change is hard, but only because we have made it taboo! What if we all embraced change as knowledge and a bright path for the future. What if asking for help isn't a sign of weakness, but a chance for community and a better humanity. These are the way I see a way to connect to the future. A rebirth, renaissance, coming out of the dark ages of the pandemic. It is often during the darkest times we find light, hope, change for the better. Your Reflected rural landscapes urges the viewers to question the impact of the industrial world on environment and its scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
Karen Ghostlaw scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
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changes due to the effects caused by man. 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 communicate more or less explicit messages in their artworks: do you think that artists can raise awareness to an evergrowing audience on topical issues that affect our everchanging society? It can be overwhelming if we look at the ‘ever growing’, and the ‘ever changing’ as such, endless, infinite, a dark hole you fall into and can never climb out of. This can be debilitating, So we look at the ‘ever growing’, and ‘ever changing’ as a community garden. We all share the same soil, same water, same air, but we plant different seeds, or the same seeds in different ways. We all contribute to the harvest, to the community that cared and protected it, it is a collective of positive instead of negative. We need to create new patterns of positive, negating the negative to move into the future in critical creative new ways. I believe we are afraid of change because we fear our place in change. We are comfortable with what we are familiar with, even if what scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Karen Ghostlaw Land
we are familiar is not what we feel is not in our best innterest. We know what to expect and the unexpected can be terrifying and debilitating. We need to create new patterns that teach us to not fear the challenges and changes but be excited in the possibilities of creating as hope and inspiration to move forward into the future. We definitely love the way your works make visible the unseen, unveiling the Ariadne's thread that connect reality with abstraction: do you think that such apparently different concepts could be cosidered in a certain sense correlated? Well they do say opposites attract, I believe that difference and opposition cause us to question, the debate and arbitration finds commonalities creating balance in our universe. That is not to say we should always be balanced, I believe unbalance is what inspires us to learn how to return to re-balance, like water i think humans like to find level or balance. We learn from our mistakes, only when we can identify and admit to making them. What if we don't think of them as mistakes, but what if we think of them as opportunities for growth, this certainly would help secure balance in the future. We turn the scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
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negative into a positive find equilibrium. It has been said that you can’t enjoy happiness until you experience sadness. Through defeat we find the strength and courage to become victorious. I believe this is how we find balance. Your artworks are marked with such discerning combinations of a rigorous sense of geometry and a precise choice of tones: how important is for you to create works with a recognizable visual identity? I find my geometry to be the structure of my frame. It forms the foundation for my photograph by defining the dynamic spaces that exist within a reflection. Geometry creates clarity and order in chaos, allowing the chaotic elements to be illuminated details in my visual storytelling. The painter Mark Rothko chose his colors to evoke emotional responses, I find my color and tones need to be just as precise as my geometry to achieve these kind of connections to the work. I see color and tonality as a way to elicit the viewer to become personally engaged , seeing patterns in light, shadow,shape, color, and creatiing textures as clues to the story, always leaving room for personal interpretation of what those clues mean to each individual. Your works are often marked out with large dimension that provide your spectatorship with such immersive visual experience: how do the dimensions of your artworks affect your workflow and how important is for you to Karen Ghostlaw scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
"visually enfold" the viewers, providing them with such unique immersive experience? Yes I think ‘BIG’! The universe is infinite and so are the possibilities. Don't be afraid of possibilities, embrace them. When you think the impossible, jump in, immerse yourself, find new solutions while making an effort to make it possible again. This is where we become aware and grow in ways we could not have preconceived. It comes from experience. This is magic for me. I don't want to be subtle, I want to grab your attention, through creating awareness, by causing a reaction, making an impression, and providing the viewer with a memorable experience. Your recent body of works seem to viewers to share a journey of discovery of beauty that can be found in what’s often taken for commonplace: how important is for you to help the viewers to capture beauty all around them? They say that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, and I do see beauty everywhere. Some may see a scar as an ugly reminder of a tragedy, deformation of smooth skin. But for me it tells a different story, the story of survival, not just the tragedy of the struggle, but the victory of life itself, the strength learned from survival. People like to see ugly, when they can't understand what it is they are looking at. Given the chance and opportunity to investigate and take another look, often you see things differently with much more clarity, and with this new understanding often the ugly disappears and you see a new beauty, never expected. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts again, Karen. How do you see your evolution as a visual artist over time? Are there any things that you do fundamentally different from when you began? I find that I have evolved the most as a visual artist when I explored things in new ways through photography. What began as learning how to make a picture, developed into using photography to express a concept and form new ideas. This evolution took place through my diligence in practice. Excellence is not an accident, or luck, but it comes in diligence in practice, openness to change, fearlessness in failure, confidence in your voice. I will continue to take chances with my work, developing new ways of expressing what I see through photography and a multidisciplinary practice. There are exciting new pages, in captivating chapters to come in my creatively motivated book of life. scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected]
Hello Erin and welcome to LandEscape. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would like to invite our readers to visit http://erinadamsart.com 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: you graduated with My work engages with audiences through immersive installations, sculpture, painting, performance, video, and social practice. Through various mediums, I explore themes of landscape, monuments, Queer culture, chosen family, futurism, ageism, power structures and race. The work emerges from a combination of lived experiences, personal mythology and my research in the study of Queer bodies in contemporary American culture. Some of my artistic influences include Catherine Opie, Zanele Muholi, Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Beatriz Cortez. These creators all insist on personal representation and equity through different mediums in their work. My social practice work involves collaborations with other artists and volunteers on activist projects such as the street mural “ALL BLACK LIVES MATTER,” at Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, and “DEFUND ICE,” at McArthur Park, both produced in the summer of 2020 in Los Angeles, California. During my Master of Fine Arts program, in the middle of the global COVID-19 pandemic, my work turned to themes of isolation, trauma, survival strategies, and potential futures, using drawing, still photos, installation, performance and video work. My newest project, “Lowkey Reboot,” explores abandoned art spaces during the Coronavirus pandemic to imagine maintenance strategies and potential sculptural futures. In this collaborative video, I work with my son Spencer Knox-Adams, to clean, dance, and create a ritual and a sculpture within the space. Using florescent painted Witches burr, disco lighting, a plexiglass pyramid, and an original soundtrack by my nephew Calvin Diego Adams, my work gains new life and power from performing self-determination and resilience. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected] Land scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW LandEscape meets Erin Adams @@erinadamsart Lives and works in California, USA
Erin Elizabeth Adams, Spencer Adams-Knox, Calvin Diego Adams in collaboration
honors from Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles California in 1987 and you have nurtured your education with an MFA, that you completed in 2021 at the University of California, Santa Barbara: how do these formative years influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, how does your cultural substratum direct the trajectory of your current artistic research? Erin Adams: Thank you kindly for inviting me to exhibit the performance videos, Lowkey Reboot and Back to School I - III for the 15th special edition of LandEscape and for your interest in my work. My interest in plant and natural based healing and energy work has been a theme in my life and work since I was a young artist at around age 12. I learned to propagate fruit trees while I was involved in a youth farming organization called the 4 -H. This initial introduction to horticulture and the transformative properties of plants inspired me to become a Master Gardener through a program at the University of California at Davis. During my years as an undergraduate at Otis Art Institute in the mid 1980’s I was inspired by mentor artists such as Mike Kelly, Eleanor Antin and Bette Saar. Their practices demonstrated to me that the definition of “art” could be wide open. Through this continuum, I honor their artistic practices, and now infuse my own practice and inspiration from my past and present experiences. The performance, sound, video and plant work in Lowkey Reboot is an exploration and a setting of intentions to imagine the future post Covid. It is a performative manifestation. For this special edition of LandEscape we have selected Lowkey Reboot a stimulating work that our readers can view at https://youtu.be/N6_1UgAIBac and that has at once captured our attention for the way it unveils the resonance between human activity and the surrounding space, walking the viewers through an immersive and allegorical experience. When walking our readers through the genesis of Lowkey scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Production performance still closeup from Lowkey Reb
Reboot, would you tell us something about your usual setup and process? Erin Adams: Lowkey Reboot was initially rooted in the Witches Burr seed pods. The seed pods were harvested from the deserted streets of Los Angeles in fall 2020 during the COVID 19 global lockdown. They are painted red with iridescent paint and are seen all over the installation floor, and are used as Erin Adams scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land oot...Spencer Adams-Knox 2021 at Keystone Art Space, Los Angeles California
sculptural materials in the video. When I encountered the seed pods on my daily walks, they reminded me of the news media’s illustrations of the COVID 19 variant. Upon further researching, I realized the Witches Burr balls were used as protection talismans in spiritual rituals. This gave me the idea to expand on, play with and conflate the meaning of these balls to consider their use as protection and as building blocks for a future existence after COVID. scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Production performance still (preparing for performance) Lowkey Reboot… Spencer Adams-Knox and Erin El Keystone Art Space, Los Angeles California
I began to collect, clean, and paint hundreds and hundreds of the spiked balls; and to imagine how I would use them in an installation with my son Spencer - who was one of the few people I saw during the early months of the lock down. After a few months of collecting and painting burrs, and thinking about the overall look and sound of the environment I wanted, I was ready to look for a space to build the installation and shoot the video. I was lent an abandoned art gallery called Keystone Art Space in downtown Los Angeles. During this development time I contacted my nephew Calvin Diego Adams about collaborating on the sound elements of the video and creating the soundtrack. Lowkey Reboot is a collaborative video that you created with your son Spencer KnoxAdams and nephew Calvin Diego Adams. It's no doubt that interdisciplinary collaborations are today ever growing forces in Contemporary Art and that the most exciting things happen when creative minds from different fields meet and collaborate on a project: could you tell us something about the collaborative nature of your approach to art making? The opportunity to collaborate with my son Spencer and my nephew Calvin was a great joy during this strained period in human history. We normally don’t have time to work together so I saw this as an opportunity to connect, create and remember this period as special time with family . I value their skill sets and energy and our lifelong connections, and knew the work would benefit from this collaboration. I have always felt we are better off together and that we rise together quicker. Erin Adams: There is a feeling of enacting a survival strategy at play here. Spencer’s background in fashion and large-scale music events, and his willingness to create the performative ritual with me and build the sculptures in the video were key to imparting the ideas of the work. Calvin’s background is Erin Adams scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land izabeth Adams aka antidyedacdic and rt4rtsak, 2021, at
Corner of the installation with Witches Burr seed pod pile, 2021, at Keystone Art Space, Los Angeles California
as a musician and songwriter as well as a creative writer. I have admired Calvin’s musical abilities and openness to collaborating on art-related work, so I was really honored he agreed to work on this project. His eyes on the installation and editing were key to the finished look. We have appreciated the way the soundtrack provides the footage Lowkey Reboot with such strong atmospheric mood and a bit unsettling atmosphere. According to media theorist Marshall McLuhan there is a 'sense bias' that affects Western societies favoring visual logic, a shift that occurred with the advent of modern alphabet as the eye became more essential than ear. How do you consider the role of sound within your artistic research? Erin Adams: The soundtrack was inspired by the vibe of the 1981 movie soundtrack “Diva”. We wanted to create an atmospheric and somewhat sinister or pensive feel to parts of the video with deferments of high energy that could create the ideas of bursting through the sinister of constrained segments. When I came to Calvin, we talked at length about these ideas and he went off to reflect and create in his home studio. After a couple of weeks, we met again to listen to the samples he had created and worked on changes and additions. In the spirit of our collaboration, I asked Calvin to speak to his deeper musings on the sound component of Lowkey Reboot… Calvin- I remember people talking about noise a lot at the height of the pandemic. News, information, analysis, forecasting, reaction, reaction squared, calls to action, and bottomless distraction was adding up to noise. A disturbing set of frequencies playing ad nauseam as folks were entering into an extended period of life confined to their homes. The sound in LR plays a lot with harsh frequencies, forceful rhythm, subtle undefinable noise, and then places real mammalian sounds in that environment (the artists voice, a dog yipping). It’s the sound of our thoughts as we move deeper and scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Erin Elizabeth Adams performing Lowkey Reboot in the
Erin Adams scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land more holistically into the collective cyber-sphere. A troubled and vibrant meditation. Grieving and leaving behind. A new relationship to this mutated form of life. You are a versatile artist and your production encompasses immersive installations, sculpture, painting, performance, video, and social practice. Still, each of them conveys such stimulating visual ambivalence, able to walk the viewers to develop personal visual grammars. In this sense, we daresay that your installation environment at, Keystone Art Space, Los Angeles, California 2021
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition artistic 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? Spencer Adams-Knox performing Lowkey Reboot in the installation environment at Keystone Art Space, Los
Erin Adams: To be immersed in light and suspended in the performative actions and images are indeed intoxicating notions for me. I invite viewers into the 3-dimensional environments in exhibition spaces and in the visual film sets to engage with me in this sociological experiment and expression of our earthly existence. Each viewer will bring their own experiences and interpretations to the work, and the collaborative process of dance and reimagining is a pleasurable moment. The sacred act of performing and creating collaboratively with my family and viewers is at the core of my work. I have been considering the concept of Collective Effervescence in my work, based on this description: Collective effervescence is the basis for Émile Durkheim's theory of religion as laid out in his 1912 volume Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Durkheim argues that the universal religious dichotomy of profane and sacred results from the lives of these tribe members: most of their life is spent performing menial tasks such as hunting and gathering. These tasks are profane. The rare occasions on which the entire tribe gathers together become sacred, and the high energy level associated with these events gets directed onto physical objects or people which also become sacred. Another interesting work of yours that has particularly impressed us and that we would like to introduce to our readers is the series BACK TO SCHOOL, shot entirely on campus at the University of California Santa Barbara, before and during the Corona-Virus pandemic from 2019-2020. How did your personal experience fuel the idea of BACK TO SCHOOL? And how did you consider the relationship between the necessity of scheduling the details of the performance and the need of spontaneity? More generally, how important is improvisation in your practice? Erin Adams: Back To School is a different origin and genesis of creating compared to Lowkey Reboot. Back to School I, Back to Erin Adams scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Angeles, California 2021
Erin Elizabeth Adams and Spencer Adams-Knox collaborating on the sculptural ritual for Lowkey Reboot in the ins
tallation environment at Keystone Art Space, Los Angeles, California 2021
School II and Back to School III were created while I was in graduate school at the University of California Santa Barbara. These Works were initially inspired by my experience of going to school in 2019 as an older female artist and reflecting on my experiences as a woman artist over the years. The series took on new actions, props and potent meanings during the COVID 19 pandemic. Improvisation is very important in the Back to School series just as many of the physical messages sent on a skateboard would share urgent energy. Calvin – Speaking to the importance of improvisation and spontaneity in Lowkey Reboot: We approached our performances in LR as a family at play. We showed up with some tools, meaningful clothes, and a few special objects. We identified obstacles, resources, broken strategies, and objectives. Then we inhabited the world as children. Every movement of the performers, the camera, and burs was improvised. Working with limited resources and needing to accomplish something on the fly - while having fun - I think - is inherent to our experience as working-class Americans. Those are the conditions we feel comfortable playing in. And we trust the meaning born from play. Your artistic production offers a critical political point of view of the ways the human body is perceived in relationship with its surroundings. 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 communicate more or less explicit messages in their artworks: do you think that artists can raise awareness to an scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Close up producti