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way into my paintings. 9) Are there any artists — both international that from Iran — that particularly inspire you? Hadi Khani: I cannot pinpoint one particular artist, since the artistic arena is too wide to know all the artists. 10) An important and recognizable aspect of your artistic production concerns your ability to provide realistic landscapes with such expressionist quality: when drawing inspiration from your inner world, do you ever happen to re-elaborate memories or references to your daily life? In particular, do you think that the realm of imagination is completely separate from ordinary life, or do you think that ordinary life's experience can influence imagination? Hadi Khani: In my opinion reality and dream are inseparable to an artist. I have tried to sieve my life through my creative faculties and dramatize it by giving it a dreamy quality. Though to explain the process in full detail is a subtle art in its own right. I do my best to review my memories and see my daily routine through artistic and illusory glasses. This, I think, aligns the reality with dreams, ideas and unification. 11) You are a prolific artist and over the years you have participated to solo and group exhibitions: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? By the way, as the move of Art from traditional gallery spaces, to street and especially to online platforms — as Elaine Crowe scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
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Instagram — increases, how would in your opinion change the relationship with a globalised audience? Hadi Khani: My endeavor is to portray the worlds of silence and beauty—the two elements that modern individuals have forgotten the most. And I think by looking at my paintings, these feeling and beauties strike my viewers as familiar again. Since we have lost these feelings I try to recapture them in my works. It goes without saying that online platforms help expand thoughts, ideas and different perspectives, but I still believe to fully acknowledge a painting, one should pay a visit to it in person. 12) 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, Hadi. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future? Hadi Khani: I would like to thank you and your great team for providing me with the opportunity to explicate my world. As always, my attempt will be to depict the boundless world of silence deeper and deeper in my paintings. Elaine Crowe scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected]
Hello Barry and welcome to LandEscape. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production and we would like to invite our readers to visit https://www.barrywolfryd.com in order to get a wide idea about your multifaceted artistic production, and we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training: you began your artistic studies in at Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, Connecticut and you later nurtured your education at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico as well as the National Institute for the Arts in San Luis Potosi, Mexico and the Chicago Art Institute. For this special edition of LandEscape we have selected Ruptured Landscapes, a stimulating body of works that has at once captured our attention for the way it questions the complex relationship between our inner landscape and the outside The work’s focus is on the conciliation of different dichotomies that get their strength from everyday life. The work shows an interest to analyze objects as symbols and displace the context so to expand my semantic field. I appropriate the objects and personages from popular culture, whether local or foreign and reinvent them in a way to create reflection. It is my pursuit that my work becomes an “absurd” narrative for us. The icons and objects in my work are part of a larger internalization, which catapults us to what is both evident and unpredictable. Even though I explore distinctive themes, the basis for all of my work is the portrayal of elaborate symbols, icons and objects that we recognize consciously or intuitively across the globe. We are all inextricably linked in a chain of popular images that identifies “culture.” Human history is a common story, and because of this, we share the ability to interpret symbolic elements that represent our heritage. As an artist, I want to “awaken minds” to fleeting governing laws by playing pictorial detective, challenging the social norms of world cultures, bringing to attention the complexities of our humanity. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected] Land scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW LandEscape meets Barry Wolfryd
AWKWARD TRANSITION 96 x 70 cm 38 x 27.5 in Oil on Linen 2019
world through such unconventional narrative drive: when walking our readers through the genesis of Ruptured Landscapes would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? Barry Wolfryd: The Ruptured Landscape series as with many of my projects is a continuing process of investigation into our surroundings. They could be literal, emotional, psychic, political or even economic. As a finish one series the process flows into other areas of interest. Perhaps something I did in a previous work is the spark for a new investigation. Or something I might see on the street, in a newspaper, on social media or the Internet. This series in particular came about as I traveled in Europe working on projects. We, I can’t escape the debate that we all have been having and are quite aware of for a long time about the degradation of the environment, nature, climate change and land inequality. Our seemingly ineffectual ability to make a difference, I felt that it was time to make a statement, comment on what I was actually observing or the information I was getting through different medias. Landscapes whether urban or rural have played important roles in my work. They show up quite often as backgrounds or backdrops in the work. I think this was a natural process to have happened and a subject matter of importance for me. Timing is everything, planed or not. Ruptured Landscapes features such saliently structured combination of intense and at the same time thoughtful nuances of tones: how does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in your works? in particular, how do you develop your textures in order to achieve such brilliant results? Barry Wolfryd: Are you referring to the tone as the overall affects of color values and the graduation of light and dark area or the attitude of the work, it’s style? In either case things such as nuances for me are come both from the gut and head. The decision-making is both what is my psychological side (the uncontrolled spirit) and the intellectual part that is more calculated. Allot of the determination about color come from the way I may prep a canvas. I sometime use okras as backgrounds to begin with. Then I start working onto these background, landscapes from my own studies or ones that I appropriated. Because I work with symbolic or iconographic imagery these landscapes in themselves already contain many understood values intuitively. So, from the very beginning the nuances start to become relevant both in the choice of subject matter and the way I actually work colors into one another. As the work progresses the original foundation bleeds into those elements and objects I begin to add, creating a dialog both direct and subtle. At the same time the choice of colors starts to transform the Barry Wolfryd scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
original landscape to match or identify with a dialog I want to communicate. It’s a dual process. Much of it is very intuitive, as I push the composition and colors around I can see dialog taking shape and I mean both in the sense of tone (colors) and attitude. Some of the paintings may contain encaustics in them and that adds a certain subtle layer of transparencies plus muting colors, adding to textures and nuances in attitude. Your artistic production weaves through such wide variety of themes, and with their unique visual identity, your artworks convey such a wide variety of feelings and emotions: how do your memories influence your paintings? Moreover, how does your everyday life's experience fuel your artistic production? Barry Wolfryd: Memories are a funny thing. Much of my work is about information I collect visually. I may draw directly about what I am seeing, observing and make a study but mostly I tend to keep stuff in my head and internalize it. How I remember something and how I process them influence my paintings very directly. Memories tend to be many things; the colors, textures, sound, ambiance, structures and settings. I drive these into the work. I rely allot on that. Some of those things may dominate more than others. But they push their way onto the canvas as I am working using those memories to help me make a statement scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
Barry Wolfryd scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land FLOATING ALONE, 127 x 160 cm 50 x 63 in, Oil, Encausto on Canvas, 2017
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition RUPTURED LANSDCAPE, 125 x 165 cm 49 x 65 in, Oil, Encausto on Canvas, 2013
Barry Wolfryd scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land or explore content. Art is inaccurate it is a portrayal of emotions and memory. It is subject. You can only get so close. Everyday life, the ordinary tends to be big focus for me, and how we operate in it. It constantly shows up in my work because really that is what I am interested in. We may have memories but, in the end, the everyday is all we got. That is the gas in the tank that fuels my work. As you have remarked in your artist's statement, you want to “awaken minds” to fleeting governing laws by playing pictorial detective, challenging the social norms of world cultures, bringing to attention the complexities of our humanity. Many contemporary artists, such as Thomas Hirschhorn and Michael Light, use to include socio-political criticism and sometimes even convey explicit messages in their artworks: do you think that artists can raise awareness to an evergrowing audience on topical issues as that affect our everchanging society? And how do you consider the role of artists in the contemporary age? Barry Wolfryd: I think the artist has opportunities to apply insight and opinion to their work. I’d say art is a very subjective medium. But is a powerful means of communication. I believe the role that artist play in contemporary society is challenged by how art is structured. Meaning the art world. As artists I think we are a divided community. There is a very large
SLOW ROAD TO A RESOLUTION 120 x 180 cm 47 x 71 in Oil, Encausto on Canvas 2019
economic value placed on allot of art, without being critical of others, this has nothing to do with the merit of the work. There are many artists whose act of creativity is pushed by financial reward. And then there are many that use their talent to document, to comment, to breakthrough to others what the find scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition RECYCLED PERCENTAGE OF KNOWLEDGE, 145 x 145 cm 57 x 57 in, Oil, Encausto on Canvas, 2019
valuable, important socially, economically, politically and the things in danger around us. Art traditionally from ancient graffiti to contemporary has been used as social discourse. I think much more art and artist today are more out front politically and more involved with social issues. Havening said that it Barry Wolfryd scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land IN SEARCH OFF, 40 x 40 cm 16 x 16 in, Oil, Encausto on Canvas, 2019
seems we are limited to how we can effect real change. Traditionally our venue for comment and discourse is the gallery or museum, public spaces as well. Obey and Banksy are good examples of that. Although we can project and talk about current events and important issues through these spaces they are scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition OLD SCHOOL TERRORISM, 145 x 145 cm 59 x 59 in, Oil, Encausto on Canvas, 2017
HOCAS POCAS 115 x 85 cm Oil on Canvas 2020 scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Barry Wolfryd Land STEPPING ON TRADITION, 150 x 127 cm 59 x 50 in, Oil on Linen, 2019
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition UNCONSIOUS BEHAVIOR, 150 x 127 cm 59 x 50 in, Oil, Encausto on Canvas, 2019
not the parliaments, congresses or senates where power rest to make change. We can influence, we can put a finger in the eye, and we can even scream with our work but I wonder really, who is lessening. We can be the Barry Wolfryd scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land AN INSTAGRAM MOMENT, 150 x 150 cm 59 x 59 in, Oil, Encausto on Canvas, 2017
portrayers of history, the messengers of events, the documenters of contemporary society but we need to find a way to break out from the traditional ways that our work is viewed and displayed. We have created this scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition FACTORIES OF LOVE, 140 x 140 cm 55 x 55 in, Oil, Encausto on Canvas, 2017
bubble of sanctity about art…the nut is how do we make art a tool for change and not simply a relic or an armchair conversation piece. Formidable imagery (art) has affected many aspects of culture and society. From Picasso’s scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Barry Wolfryd Land MYSTIC PLANS, 145 x 147cm 57 x 57 in, Oil, Encausto on Canvas, 2016
Guernica, Che Guervara’s Iconic head shot, the 60’s peace symbol or Obey’s Obama, all great images, great food for thought and powerful meanings but it took time for that art to take affect, meanwhile the bombs kept coming. You draw a lot from objects and personages from popular culture: as an artist particularly interested in expanding your semantic field, how do you consider the role of symbols and metaphors in your creative process? Barry Wolfryd: In my own personal way, I try to find the words and metaphors through my use of iconographic and symbolic imagery to portray our humanity. I use these elements because consciously or unconsciously people recognize the images without sharing a common language; I don’t have to use script. I write with the paint. The images become common denominators that we all understand intuitively or cognitively. My approach to making art, as commentary is subtler, I want the observer to take their time, to study what is happening in the composition. I want them to walk way reflecting. Metaphors are not always obvious and much of my work is a battlefield of information. It takes a bit of time (and that is what I want) to study a piece. Many of the symbols I use are converted everyday objects. By changing their context, they take on new meanings. A pencil becomes a symbol of knowledge; scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
Barry Wolfryd scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land FIELD HANDS, 60 x 70 cm 23 x 27 in, Oil on Linen, 2019
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition WIERD SCIENCE, 127 x 165 cm 50 x 65 in, Oil, Encausto on Canvas, 2017
a clothespin becomes a symbol of entrapment. Even when I work with just one or two elements in a painting allot of the process to getting to a finished piece is how can I connect the dots. How can I make a box of animal crackers represent something more than a commercial product? I’m constantly on the search for new elements to add to my alphabet of symbolic and iconographic imagery. The more I explore a subject matter the more relevant images seem to appear and I investigate. Artists from different eras and geographical locations — from French painter Eugène Delacroix, passing through Pablo Picasso, to more recently Fang Lijun — use to communicate more or less explicit messages in their artworks: how would you consider the degree of openess of the messages that you convey in your artworks? In particular, how open would you like your works to be understood? Barry Wolfryd: Understood?! What I want almost has nothing to do what people get from the work. Yes, it would be fine that people can take away something, that they understood what I was trying to communicate. I think that is a real challenge. I may have great intent to have a precise objective. I may try my damndest to communicate an explicit message but people sometimes just see what they want to see. I’m not alone here. A good example is Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA, a critic on the Vietnam War and scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Barry Wolfryd Land
Ronald Regan; a presidential candidate at the time made it a campaign theme song. Go figure! Recently an art publisher thought my work was satanic. I had to explain it, break it down for them so they “understood” me. I sometimes think understanding is the booby prize in life. Recently Merry scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition TARGETED, 35 x 35 cm 14 x 14 in, Oil, Encausto on Wood Panel, 2019
McMasters, a cultural journalist from Mexico City explained my work in these terms, “The contemplation of his paintings is never a peaceful act”. I would hope people understand that message. You are an established artist and over the years your works have been showcased in Barry Wolfryd scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land X MARKS THE SPOT, 40 x 40 cm 16 x 16 in, Oil, Encausto on Canvas, 2019
several occasions: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? By the way, as the move of Art from traditional gallery spaces, to street and especially to online platforms — as Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bwolfryd and Vimeo — increases, how would in your opinion change the relationship with a globalized audience? Barry Wolfryd: The audience is the final end user of what I do. And that audience is broken up into varies parts. There is general public, the museum and gallery goer, colleagues, curators, art critics and collectors. They all have different roles they play. I’m not concerned by acceptance from any of them. My work some how finds its way to their door. The nature of the relationship I would want to be based on the notion of opposing ideas. I love it when there is banter or critic because then someone got something out of it. For some strange reason children are very drawn to my work. Perhaps that audience finds what I do is like a funny perverted coloring book or close to the exaggerated drawings the get posted on the refrigerator door. Finding an audience is important I think. As communicators, not just as images makers, getting it out there is a major effort. Creating an audience and building a relationship with one will only benefit an artist. It doesn’t matter whether everyone in the audience agrees. Ten angels swearing you are right won’t make any difference. As the art world moves out of the traditional scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition
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spaces and the platforms change, the way art is viewed and how it reaches out to an audience does as well. I think we as artist need to see these new venues as tools for expanding our ability to project. I think it’s fascinating how the amount of intercourse as increased with the online medias. I’m not sure where all of this will go. At times the amount of information is overwhelming but as a tool for building new audiences and relationships it has been a world wind. 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, Barry. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future? Barry Wolfryd: Beforehand, I’d like to thank you for the opportunity. I have really enjoyed the interview and though the questions where well done. Currently I have an upcoming exhibition on August 19�� at Gallery Art-Latinou in Mexico City. I am also getting ready to publish a book, “Encounters…Nonsense and Semi Truths” an overview of my work over the last 15 years. There will be a presentation with a date and place to confirm soon. Also, I’ll be heading back to the EU (hopefully), travel permitting to work on projects postponed by Covid in Vienna at Barry Wolfryd scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
12-14 contemporary with the curator Denise Parizek As well with the curator Josip Zanki in Zagreb and Opus Art in London with Nicky Barbezat .So much is still up in the air. Let’s see where it all lands! scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition UTTER NONSENSE 40 x 40 cm 16 x 16 in Oil on Linen 2019
Hello Camilo and welcome to LandEscape. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production and we would like to invite our readers to visit https://camilocardenas.com in order to get a wide idea about your mulifaceted artistic production, and we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and after having earned your BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, you nurtured your education with an MFA from the University of Delaware: how do your formative years influence your evolution as an artist and help you to As an immigrant from Colombia working as a multimedia artist, my creative practice is concerned with questions of forming and performing identities. Through personal exploration and performative acts, I aim to highlight diversity of thought and investigate the role of identity within the human experience. This process is rooted in my personal experiences and the research that I pursue to better understand the experiences of others. I see art as an agent for individual and cultural identity formation and retention; a fundamental component of our social fabric. The current global social climate is particularly tender around issues of belonging, emigration and either welcoming or rejecting the ‘other’. My personal history of relocating from Bogotá, Colombia, to Boston, Massachusetts at the age of thirteen has generated an array of questions and shifting views on what it means to be from somewhere and to belong somewhere. Home has become a moving target, represented by people, not place. Thus, I make work that plays with, explores, and raises questions about the nuances of identity. While this liminality of belonging is far from unique, it is continuous and with me every day. Through my work I aim to strengthen the threads that connect my experience to that of others and link the personal to the collective, always in search of social resonance. An interview by Josh Ryder, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator [email protected] Land scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW LandEscape meets Camilo Cárdenas
An Abbreviated Game For Two, 2017
develop your attitude to experiment in several artistic discipines? Camilo Cárdenas: Well, first of all thank you for having me and highlighting my work. I really appreciate this opportunity to share more about my process and the driving forces behind it. It is true that for me, attending art school greatly influenced my artistic trajectory and the ability to allow myself to experiment. At MassArt in particular, while pursuing my BFA, I had an initial and powerful exposure to a student artist community that valued multidisciplinary art as personal expression and career. This awareness of other ways and reasons to create expanded my own path. One of the most influential experiences I had at MassArt was taking a Handmade Film class with the late Luther Price. I’d been interested in film since I was a teenager, and when I joined this class I was blown away by how much more there was to making film. Scratching and painting directly on Super 8 and 16mm celluloid film to animate, create abstract images and even alter the magnetic soundtrack was incredible. Film as a concept was broken down into moving images; a liberating event in how I saw image-making as a whole. This class sparked my curiosity and the energy to want to experiment. And all of this in the context and structure of an art school, with access to workshops, tools and experimental techniques, such as moldmaking, bronze and aluminum casting, woodworking, jewelry making, film editing and more. Having dedicated time and space to develop new skills, coupled with the spark to push the limits of materials and processes, landed me in a place of always wanting to experiment, and feeling comfortable doing so. When I entered the MFA program at the University of Delaware many years later, I came in with this experimental drive already, and because of the critical nature of an MFA program, that experimentation was cemented as a fundamental element of my artistic practice. You are versatile artist and your practice encompasses film, performance and installation: what does direct you to such mutidisciplinary approach and how do you consider the role of technology in your works? Camilo Cárdenas: During my BFA I focused heavily on Sculpture and Film, thinking of them as two separate tracks-my main tracks- of art-making. But by the end of those four years those two mediums had already begun to merge, moving me into installation work. The expansion from there to performance came later, during my MFA. My work at this point Camilo Cárdenas scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land
An Abbreviated Game For Two, 2017
started to become more driven by concept, message and sensation, rather than by aesthetics. These messages and concepts started to pull my physical body into the work. Speaking about identity, for example, demanded more of me to be a part of the work. When I started to create performances, film and sculpture continued to be part of my language, and so they remained a part of the performance and thus pushed the work into a very multidisciplinary arena. The way I work now doesn’t generally prioritize a medium, but rather lets the project dictate which mediums are best for telling that particular story. Technology certainly plays a role in my work, but only as another medium. A performance may need film or light to be projected or sound to be played. And of course, with performance work, technology is the way to record and share something that is ephemeral. For this special edition of LandEscape we have selected Autorretrato Colombiano, a stimulating project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article, and that can be appreciated in its whole at https://vimeo.com/335982760. What has at once captured our attention of your work is the way it highlight the connection between the personal and the collective: when walking our readers through your usual setup and process, would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea of Autorretrato Colombiano? Camilo Cárdenas: Autorretrato Colombiano - American Self-portrait is a project that was scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition Autorretrato Colombiano (American Self Portrait) 2019
Camilo Cárdenas scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land born from a very long curiosity and questioning of my identity in the US as a Colombian Immigrant. It also emerged organically as a response to feeling even more like an immigrant after the 2016 presidential election in the US. Growing up in Colombia with blond hair, light skin, and light colored eyes, I was
scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land Special Edition always ‘Gringo’, which is a way in which people from most Latin American countries refer to United Statians. Once I arrived in the US, while not fitting into the physical stereotype of Latin American, simply saying my name, Camilo, outed me as an immigrant; a label that has been with me since day one in Boston. These two labels Mochilero, 2020
were really the flash-point for Autorretrato Colombiano - American Self-portrait. Motivated by the heightened aggression towards immigrants during the 2016 presidential campaign and its results, I decided to create a piece that addressed labels and stereotypes. I knew I needed to use my own experience and my body as the main medium, and so I went about exploring all of the stereotypes I could embody. For this process I created a ‘stereotype board’ in my studio, collecting images of men from magazines, newspapers and online platforms, both in the US and in Colombia. I also looked at photos of myself from many different times in my life. Using this as a guide I collected clothing and articles from friends and thrift-stores to generate a wardrobe and prepared myself by growing my beard and hair for several months. Finally, I started to find those personalities within myself and perform them for the camera. The most interesting part of the process was blurring the lines between the multitude of stereotypes. Some personalities appear to come directly out of a magazine or tv show, while many more are impossible to label with any given nationality. Autorretrato Colombiano reflects a conscious shift regarding the composition of performative gestures: how would you consider the relationship between the necessity of scheduling the details of a performance and the need of spontaneity? How important is improvisation in your practice? Camilo Cárdenas scape CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW Land