Contemporary practice has forged new concepts of art making, that involve such a wide and once even unthinkable variety of materials and objects. As you have remarked in your artist's statement, In your collages you use materials that you recycle by yourself. In this sense, we dare say that every piece of your works contains the story of its origin. American photographer and sculptor Zoe Leonard once stated, "the objects that we scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Chary Hilu Land
Paisaje
leave behind hold the marks and the sign of our use: like archeological findings, they reveal so much about us": we’d love to ask you about the qualities of the materials that you include in your artworks. In particular, how do you select them and what does you address to include found objects in your artworks? Chary Hilu: I’m always attentive for the encounter, the findings. I intend to respect the materials the way they fall into my hands, in the case of cardboard, for example, with its staples on, with its breakage. I like to think of the resilience of materials, some of them destined to becoming trash, or going to a recycling plant; I take them and give them another chance, I rescue them and re-signify them. Many times, I find the materials in the streets, sometimes they come as a present, sometimes I go looking for something specific that I’m interested in working with (as for instance nets of fruit and vegetables) and many times I use materials that I have stored, some of them for a long time. When unused objects are discarded and thrown into the trash, they end at a recycle plant where the story of that object is lost. Instead, I try to rescue that object, give it another place and value. That way the object, and material, is conserved, it is not lost, its history remains, but in a different context. Regarding the choice of material, I tend to try various alternatives, such as old papers, coffee capsules, food packaging, all kinds of cloth, ribbons, laces, wire, branches. Having all this available allows me to choose. It’s a process where I appropriate an object from reality and give it another meaning converting it into a visual metaphor, there’s a bond between objects and feelings. Something special occurs in those choices, which is that I surprise myself. Many times, I have a previous idea of which material to include, but then I try something different, and it turns out interesting, and even if it makes the artwork go somewhere else, I do not close to experimentation. This way of working is a choice, it’s the code for my work to being read. I try to buy as less as possible. I try to work with what I have, or if not, I try to get it, but, if possible, from someone who does not need it anymore. More specifically Esencia and the moving Sosteniendo feature such stimulating fusion scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Chary Hilu Land
between the concept of body and the ideas that you convey through its materic essence. How do you consider the role of human body within your artistic production? Chary Hilu: The materiality of clay has a special vibe to it: I feel that figures and bodies sprout out of it. It’s a materialising power. That vital and energetic contact with clay is what drives me directly to the human figure. Figurative art allows for things to being understood easily according to what one is trying to communicate, and sculpture, being three dimensional, is closer to the real world. Through human representation there’s an identification with oneself, and with the others. Human figure also gives the chance of telling a story. The malleability and tenderness of the clay allows for an expressiveness that is given by the gesture and the imprint. With their stimulating expressive power, your sculpture crystallizes such a wide variety of human sensations. We have been particularly fascinated with the way they walk the viewers to rediscover the idea of materially on direct, almost intuitive level: how important is for you to highlight the physical aspect of your artstic practice? In particular, how important is intuition in your creative process? Chary Hilu: In sculpture, and specially in modelling, the materials and the feeling of touch are very close to one another. Because touch is the oldest sense what is learnt through it is very relevant. The sense of touch is what humans explore since birth, and nothing invites more to the touch than clay. That alone is intuitive, clay conveys a very expressive power in itself. There is a physical compromise in the work, there is an involving of the body, and that gets materialized in the gestures, in the hand’s work, in the imprint that becomes the work. In that interaction there is a bearing where materials take shape, corporealize, where the work emerges without reason’s intervention. It’s a spontaneous act, where my being becomes imprinted, where consciousness and reason are abandoned, giving place to emotion. Your work has more than one story to tell, and as you have remarked once the works emerge from the context, providing the scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
spectatorship with freedom to realize their own perception: 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? Chary Hilu: I wish my work could move the viewer, that it could pierce them, by activating either their imagination, a certain memory, or a personal perception. Behind every one of my works, underlies and idea I wish to convey, but then it depends on each person their free interpretation, according to their own structure and emotion. Works that are born out of exploration, experimentation, are more abstract and allow for multiple readings. That is for instance the case of Paisaje and Lo que se desgarró. In both, I let myself go through the experience of the making, the discovery. In Paisaje I investigated textures using silicone for drawing and then painting on top of it. In Lo que se desgarró I approached cardboard and I felt like folding it, creasing it, giving it another shape. That is how I came upon the three-dimensional. In both cases I discovered during the way what the works were trying to say to me, following the path of what they invited me to explore. You are a versatile artist and your multidisciplinary approach often develops into collages, sculptures and digital works: how important is for you to experiment with different techniques in order to create? Chary Hilu: I feel that experimenting with diverse techniques is a natural part of my creative process, it comes spontaneously. Clay accompanies me since the beginning of my career when I also got the chance to experience some wax modelling. When I got the opportunity to live in Italy for some years, I incursioned into mosaic. During the 2000’s I learnt the basics of computer graphic design, and I designed my own website. Many years later, I took all that knowledge and put it into my digital works. One could say that I came across different opportunities during my career, and I seized them. The more tools one handles, the possibilities of self-expression get wider. That variety of techniques, formats, and materials (besides scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Chary Hilu Land
my restless personality) make me approach several works at the same time. Additionally, I use photography to take a record of the process and because it is useful to me, given that it offers another vision of the work, where I get to discover things I may not see when I’m directly in front of it. You are an established artist and you participated in exhibitions at the Borges Cultural Center, the Argentine Society of Plastic Artists in Argentina (among others) and various mosaic exhibitions in Italy: 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? Chary Hilu: In traditional spaces for expositions there is a closeness that emerges, there’s a feeling of emotion when one enters a gallery and stands in front of a work, and maybe has the chance to speak with the artist. Online, instead, the body takes another dimension. The work’s body, as well as human body, are missing. Contact between the artist and the audience humanizes. In some of my expositions in Italy, besides showing the pieces, mosaic was worked on in situ and the audience was invited to experiment with the technique: that is where the most enriching interactions occurred. However, on the other hand, an artist needs to show what they create, and in that sense digital expositions are a priceless tool. You can get people in all over the world to know your work (something that in a traditional manner would be sometimes impossible). It is very gratifying when you can get in touch with people from other cultures, societies very different from your own, and seeing that they are also moved by your work. So, if through digital expositions, social networks as Instagram, and websites, my art gets to move a greater amount of people, these initiatives are very welcome. I invite you to visit https://www.instagram.com/charyhilu 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 scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
Chary Hilu scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Sin espacio
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and for sharing your thoughts, Chary. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future? Chary Hilu: I have plans for an individual exhibition at “Ramseyer Dayer Foundation” for August in Santa Fe, Argentina. I wish to continue exhibiting my work, physically as well as virtually. Right now, I’m approaching a sculpture with cardboard boxes to pack musical instruments and I’m also exploring collage with high relief. These are times of great uncertainty, of reflexion and instability. I bring back cardboard, but understanding it in its broader dimension, cardboard as a container box, cardboard as a sort of protection for people who sleep in the streets, cardboard as a support for people who pick it up in the street and then sell it, and cardboard as an artwork. In this broad sense of materials and experiences is how I like to think about art, and it was a pleasure for me having the chance of speaking with you and to be able to express some of all this through words. scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Chary Hilu Land Interior/Exterior
Hello Mike and welcome to LandEscape. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production and we would like to invite our readers to visit https://mikemcconnell.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 and you graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art: how do these formative years influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, how does your cultural substratum due to your 30 years long career as an illustrator address the direction of your current artistic research? Mike McConnell: I wasn’t accepted into the liberal arts colleges I applied to. I got into art school no problem. Maryland Institute (now MICA) was great. I mostly took painting and printmaking classes. I never had to write a paper. I could be a hippie. I graduated cum laude. I have a diploma somewhere. No one has ever asked to see it. Art schools these days have dedicated career development departments. I had nothing at the time. Fortunately my brother’s best friend was an illustrator. He took me under his wing and got me started freelancing. Baltimore had several thriving advertising agencies with national clients. They produced lots of print work and TV commercials. I was hired regularly for print work but found my niche doing storyboards for TV commercials. The phone was ringing. The money was great. I had a successful run of about 10 years before I burned out. I was chained to working from photo reference. I had file cabinets full of pictures I tore out of magazines. I was working for hours at a time in a dark room under an Art-O-Graph projector. I used zillions of markers coloring the boards. The manufacturers eventually suggested using them My paintings, drawings, and constructions are fueled by life experiences and nature. I work intuitively, combining, editing, and recombining marks into compositions that are unexpectedly recognizable. I don’t set out to tell a story, but my many years as an illustrator inevitably weave their way into my work. I don’t want to learn anything from what I paint. I often look at things in my work and wonder what I did to make them. What I want from finishing a piece is the confidence to start the next one and know it will end up making me happy. In the process of finishing a piece, I want to step back and giggle An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected] Land scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW LandEscape meets Mike McConnell lives and works in Maryland, USA
East Wind
in a room with good ventilation. The burn out was good timing. I wasn’t dead yet from the marker vapors. I moved on to editorial work, mostly for publications. I started working in a more spontaneous and fun style that I could do without relying on photo scrap. More to your question, I always knew at some point I would get away from illustration and return to my art school painting foundation. I went back to MICA for a continuing studies drawing course with Michael David Brown. He was a well known illustrator that had recently transitioned to fine art. He got me back to drawing and journaling in sketchbooks. He showed me the crayon and ink technique that I use today when I work on paper. I was still a full time illustrator for the next 10 years or so but my sketchbooks were where I made the work that fueled my transition. 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 the aesthetics of environment and the act of looking. When walking our readers through your usual setup and process, would you tell us how important is intuition in your creative process? Mike McConnell: I never planned on being intuitive. Yeah, bad joke like “the fortune teller knew I was coming”. A large number of artists Mike McConnell scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Créche Pond Talk
say they work intuitively. I’m just another. Thank you for pointing out “the act of looking”. Looking can’t be taught. You have to find it on your own over time. I’m very aware that I notice many things around me that others don’t. That’s an asset for me but it also can be sort of a curse or handicap when I assume what someone else sees. We definitely love the way your works blend the real with the abstract. 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 imagination, playing within your artistic production? Mike McConnell: In several of my paintings I work in elements from well known artist’s work. I do this as a tribute or sometimes a parody. One of my favorite paintings at the Baltimore Museum of Art is Milton Avery’s “Interior with Flowers”. I reference the two seated women in his painting in my “BMA Cats” here and “Milton Avery Park” in the following pages. Yes, I use recognizable objects in my work to suggest a narrative. Like most people, I find that fantasy is almost always better than reality. We have appreciated intense and at the same time thoughtful nuances that marks out your artworks. How does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in your artworks? Mike McConnell: I didn’t paint once during my years as an illustrator. My illustrations were made using drawings that I scanned, Color was scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
Mike McConnell scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land BMA Cats
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Mike McConnell scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land added on my computer. I had a phobia about mixing paint when I thought about restarting painting. In an attempt to cure that I took a workshop at Esalen in Big Sur California. I chose the workshop because the instructor had done work for an art buyer that I know locally. He was a former illustrator turned fine artist. His work is abstract, strongly influenced by Cy Twombly. Materials at the workshop were fluid acrylics and 10” square birch plywood panels for surfaces. It took me maybe 10 minutes to get my painting restarted. The acrylics were in clear squeeze bottles. I’d only ever painted with tube oil paint. I never even considered making abstract work until then. I connected with the new materials and a found a strong curiosity to paint abstractly. My work has been a continuation of that workshop. I feel very lucky that overall it looks happy. It makes me think I must not be depressed when I see it. Contemporary practice has forged new concepts of art making, that involve such a wide and once even unthinkable variety of materials and objects, and we have been particularly fascinated with the way you use paint in a collage-like way, cutting out shapes with vibrant colors on handmade wood panels, paper, and found material. American photographer and sculptor Zoe Leonard once stated, "the objects that we leave behind hold the marks and the sign of our use: like archeological findings, they reveal so much about us": we’d love to ask you about the qualities of the materials that you include in your artworks. In particular, how do you select them and what does you address to include found objects in your artworks? Mike McConnell: I would never categorize my work as any new concept. I think artists find similar approaches as a result of frustration or
Milton Avery Park
Big Sur Out and Back
chance mixed with a regular diet of risk. I paint in a “collage-like” way because I can’t imagine having to manage collage materials. That goes back to my early years as an illustrator doing storyboards. I have nightmares when I think of all the photo reference had to deal with. I was juried into one of my first group shows by Jerry Saltz. I got to talk with him for a few Mike McConnell scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land The Crossword Puzzle
ELSEWHERE 2017 Solo Exhibition, BlackRock Center for the Arts, Germantown, MD
minutes about my painting. He suggested working in some paper on future work. I think there’s one painting I did after that where I pasted in a couple paper pieces. Not for me. I stick to just paint. I have to re-paint areas endlessly but at least I’m painting. Paper is an equal passion. I actually have separate painting and paper studios. For me “found scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Bryce Canyon Parking Spot
objects” are physical things with intrinsic value that are repurposed into something new. I don’t do that. What’s most valuable for me is to find something I already know. We dare say that your artistic production walks the viewers to rediscover the idea of materially on direct, almost intuitive level: how important is for you to highlight the scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Mike McConnell Land Capogrossi Lake
Duke Street Tunnel Textured Vinyl, 12 murals in pedestrian tunnel. Alexandria, VA
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physical aspect of your artstic practice? Mike McConnell: I’m just making a mark and reacting to it with another mark. It’s composing the reactions after that. If a narrative emerges, I’ll try to develop it. I hope viewers sense that I’m having fun with I paint. As you have remarked in your artist's statement, you often turns to nature for inspiration: how do your memories and your everyday life's experience fuel your creative process? Mike McConnell: Nature engulfs me. My studio is in my house. I live in a suburban neighborhood but I’m isolated by several acres of heavily wooded land. My house is an expanded log cabin originally built in the mid 1700s. Trees and wood Mike McConnell scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Through Chandler with Jaehyo
CUTTING INTO ART 2017 Solo Exhibition, University of Maryland University, College, Adelphi, MD
are everywhere inside and outside. I’m constantly trying to maintain, control and harvest nature. I heat my house in the winter with wood I’ve cut. I have a pond. I work to background sounds of birds and frogs. I’ll never run out of fuel for my creative process or house. We dare say that the works emerge from the context, providing the spectatorship with freedom to realize their own perception: how scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition MOTOR HOUSE GALLERY, Baltimore, MD
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? Mike McConnell: It delights me to know that what I create is very open to personal interpretations. I want people to watch my paintings. Watch them like it’s a long video I made into a single static image. I suggest a scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Mike McConnell Land
CALIFORNIA 2017 Solo Exhibition, Greenbelt Community Center, Greenbelt, MD
narrative but I want people to find things and make up their own story. Then they possess something of their own making. It’s also okay if they just like the colors because they match their couch. Marked out with balanced sense of geometry, your works feature recurrent smooth contours and shapes that we dare say essential on the visual aspect. Would you tell us something about the presence of such refined geometric feeling? Mike McConnell: Putting down paint with a brush is seductive. Paint is a dialectic lubricant for my subconscious. Brushes define my marks. I use flat brushes almost exclusively. I paint with no plan in mind. For me that leads to a lot of random busyness. Big flat brushes loaded with paint cut into that and define new possibilities. I’ve learned design over time. I push differences in my work. Texture, color, shape, pattern, scale and contrast. The painting won’t let me go until they’re all happily playing together. You are an established and awarded artist and over the years your works have been showcased in many occasions, including your participation as finalist for the 13th Annual Bethesda Painting Awards: 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 https://www.instagram.com/mikemcconnellart — increases, how would in your opinion change the relationship with a globalised audience? Mike McConnell: Please include my Instagram link! I’m 7 or 8 years late with Instagram. I didn’t really start to use it until about 10 months ago. It’s incredibly important to me now. I’m constantly finding jaw dropping artists that I connect with. I resisted pushing my work online for years. I want people to see my work in person. Screens have definitely changed everything. No one today could consider a world without them. I look at it now as a creative opportunity. 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, Mike. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future? Mike McConnell: I just set up work in a group show at a very unique venue for me. It’s in a 250,000 square foot warehouse that’s filled with architectural salvage and antiques. I’m more excited about this show than any gallery show I’ve done. I have a couple modest solo shows coming up in the fall. I’m making a lot of small pieces for an upcoming outside festival. Future plans include making room dividers like David Hockney’s “Caribbean Tea Time” Folding Screen. scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected]
Pond Talk Kiosk Photo Credit: Downtown Partnership of Baltimore
Hello Sven 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, and we would like to invite our readers to visit http://www.svenfroekjaer.com. In particular, for this special edition of LandEscape we have selected Landscapes and Memories, and we definitely love the way your body of works embodies the point of convergence between two apparently radically different concepts: the idea of memory — whose elusiveness lends itself to a great variety of definitions — and the notion of landscape, with its intuitive essence. We like the way you successfully accomplish the difficult task to provide such fleeting concept with materic essence: would you tell us how did you come up to the idea for Landscapes and Memories? Behind every painting is a consciousness, and in the consciousness the memories create an identity – and a landscape mixed with memory, like a trunk of treasures. Below here you can find paintings of Danish landscapes. Most of them are created recently, and you can just enjoy them as windows to chosen places in Denmark. But since all these paintings are born as a mix of the memory of the past expressed through the shape of a landscape, maybe you can encounter yourself in the pictures in this book. In this project I have strived to create my memoires form important moments of my childhood and youth. But instead of just writing it down, as normally done, I have combined the memory with a painting of a landscape. You might not have walked with a beautiful person through the night described below or been skating on the ice but since most human lives in many ways are alike, these glimpses of Denmark and the past may open doors to your own landscapes of memories. Have a pleasant journey. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected] Land scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW LandEscape meets Sven Froekjaer-Jensen
Sven Froekjaer-Jensen in front of his newest project: The Door into Summer
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Sven Froekjaer-Jensen: Actually it a story of a lifelong quest for understanding our human kind in our envireronment and also trying to solve the very important question of human idendity and find the factors that gives us important feeling of continuity and of being the same person through our life with all its changes. The buddhists talk about the importance of name and form, but to me it actually came with two minor, but Sven Froekjaer-Jensen scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land In the mercy of his Meantime
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Solen er så rød, mor og skoven bli'r så sort Nu er solen død, mor og dagen gået bort. Ræven går derude, mor vi låser vores gang. Kom, sæt dig ved min pude, mor og syng en lille sang. The sun is just so red, mom,The forest very black The sun is dead now, mom, The day has passed away. The fox hunts out there mom, we lock our door. Come, sit here by my pillow, mom and sing a little song. The name of the year was 59, my age 15, autumn it was, winter drawing near, the sky over the garden over my mother´s house blazing with colours. I really loved my mother, and when she had sent the last customers home from her shop below, where she sold a lot of dresses and other items to the women of our small town, we often sat talking, while dusk was falling. I really cherish the memory of that time, and one day, when we had been close to each other and discussing many subjects, me sitting in the red armchair, she in the sofa, I rose and went to the window and looked out. 58 years later I have tried to recollect the moment in this painting. Sunset memory from Hoerve, Sjaelland, Denmark.
Sven Froekjaer-Jensen scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land All the time they seemed to be skating in fanthomless depths of air, so blue the ice had become; and so glassy smooth was it that they sped quicker and quicker… with the white gulls circling about them, and cutting in the air with their wings the very same sweeps that they cut on the ice with their skates. Virginia Woolf. Orlando. 1928 The winters of the 50´s were often rather cold in Denmark, and the ponds on the fields, the small rivers and even the salt sea froze to ice, so you could skate on it. The clothes and the rubber boots many of us wore, were quite cold, but the lack of comfort was driven away by the feeling of the air, the lightness of running on the ice and the freedom of childhood. When you came home to your mother, the cheeks were red as old apples and the feeling of weight in your body just wonderful. I don’t keep my childhood hidden in a guitar, but maybe in a pair of rubberboots and iceskates. Tranevejlen, Odsherred. In the dead of winter, I told you so.
important understandings. The first dates back to me being about 3 or 4 years old leaving my grandparents house without permission or telling anybody, because I so intensely wanted to find out what was outside the borders of the small Danish town, the lived in. It might seem strange that such a small kid can feel and consider things like scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Mother why are these men wearing those strange hats