INTERVIEW: KATHERINE BRADFORD

all works by Katherine Bradford at ADAMS AND OLLMAN in Portland; courtesy Adams and Ollman, copyright Katherine Bradford

Katherine Bradford, an American artist and recent Guggenheim Fellow, has been making a personal and intimate body of work that merges abstraction and figuration to emotional ends for nearly three decades. Her work, in turns humorous, epic and vulnerable is in conversation with a younger generation of artists dedicated to finding a way to tell stories and share experience through painting. During Bradford’s two person exhibition with Sarah Gamble at Adams and Ollman in Portland, the artist is interviewed by her son, Arthur Bradford, a writer and Emmy-nominated filmmaker.

INTERVIEW: MARCO DI GIOVANNI

from the top:  (1)"Projects of Ginnungagap", (2,3) "Stars Like Rust" by Marco di Giovanni, copyright and courtesy the artist

Last year, during the Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair, I met the Italian artist Marco Di Giovanni, who told me about his current, archival food project: He draws everything he consumes on yellow paper for one entire year and will exhibit his personal collection of food in an exhibition at BLOK art space in 2015. Being well-known in Istanbul by now, the thoughts of the 1976-born performance- and installation artist are not only reminiscent of Daniel Spoerri’s food collages, but also of Marco Ferreri’s movie “La Grande Bouffe”. Even though Marco's approach responds to complex and philosophical ideas, he formulates clear statements and regularly communicates ethic issues through an aesthetically clean formal language. Employing various media and elements from different contexts, Marco’s art is a constant experiment of challenging space and time constructions, of perception and of our consciousness.

INTERVIEW: ROBIN VON EINSIEDEL

all images: ZOO KÖLN by Robin von Einsiedel at Bosse&Baum (24.10-14.12), Courtesy Oscar Proctor, © Robin von Einsiedel

For the first and hopefully the last time in my life I have mistaken the torso of Diego Velasquez for the shape of a sausage. But luckily this embarrassing error did not happen at the Prado in Madrid, but instead while looking at a painting by British artist Robin von Einsiedel, trying to make sense of his peculiar compositions and motifs. Odd, cartoonish characters from kids' series and comics appear on abstract, sometimes even minimalist backgrounds, which seem to secretly play the lead role in the works. Robin concerns himself with materials – their manipulation and inherent relation between solid existence and cosmic emergence. Now, after recently graduating from RCA, the 1988-born artist shows his newest works in the exhibition ZOO KÖLN at Bosse & Baum, a young Peckham-based gallery that established its permanent space only this October. I asked Robin a few questions about his practice and about why Yogi-Bear and company keep on occupying the paintings and sculptures that he makes.

INTERVIEW: MARKUS HOFFMANN

All works by Markus Hoffmann / from the top: (1) "ENCOUNTER" (2014), (2+3) "MEMORY" (2014) / Courtesy and © Markus Hoffmann

Driven by a fascination for natural processes, Markus Hoffmann enables spectators to experience natural phenomena that are usually withdrawn from our perception through the experience of his art. The 1982-born installation artist concerns himself with a range of highly ambivalent materials – such as fungi, exhaust fume or radioactive artefacts –, negotiating not only their controversial position in today's society, but also the paradox of their appearance's significance in an aesthetic, as opposed to an ethical context. The materials are attributed with a calm and strange beauty, a peculiar sublimity, forcing the perception to reconsider anticipated and precast sentiments. Markus' works thus pose urgent questions to society's consciousness and to art's fictive and supposedly innocent framework, offering a space of intense experience. Equipped with a distinct aesthetic language and with a high political potential, it doesn't come as a surprise that although Markus just completed his studies in the class of Olafur Eliasson at UDK Berlin, both his own and cooperative works (created with the collective DAS NUMEN) are already represented in international museums and other art institutions. I met Markus in Berlin, where he lives and works, and talked to him about his choice of materials, about art and politics and about spectatorship.

INTERVIEW: VERA KOX

All images: Work by Vera Kox / Courtesy and copyright the artist.

Sticky, soft, damp, stony, crumbly, sleek – there is a whole range of opposing adjectives that come into mind when looking at sculptures and installations by Vera Kox. She employs a minimalist language, continuously playing with the antagonism of light and heavy, fluid and static material. Having finished her Master in 2010 at Goldsmiths College in London, the 1984-born sculptor translates her research in tangible preconceptions of materials into transitions of forms. Kox' objects often seem fragile, but they are also seductively encouraging a curiosity in the truth of their own tactility, while remaining untouchable and thus shattering expectations. In a short interview the German artist told us about her interest in this fluctuation and about her current show at GREEN IS GOLD in Copenhagen.

RYAN TRECARTIN: SITE VISIT

images from the top: (1) Ryan Trecartin, excerpt ANIMATION COMPANION (2014), Photo story originally published in Modern Weekly, Guangzhou; Courtesy Ryan Trecartin // (2-4) Lizzie Fitch / Ryan Trecartin SITE VISIT, 2014, Installation view, Photo: Thomas Eugster; Courtesy of the artists; both images courtesy Andrea Rosen Gallery New York; Regen Projects Los Angeles; and Sprüth Magers Berlin London.

"You know? I mean...this is just so..." A man blabbers into a shaky hand-camera. We can't follow what he says. HipHop beats merge with his electronically amplified voice. He wears a pink lace chemise, no trousers and folded down ugg boots. His hands either play with his pink wig or they wave a petrol can about, while doing tantalizing gestures with his rouged mouth and eyes. He is a character playing in Ryan Trecartin's six-channel video work SITE VISIT, which was produced for KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. The film belongs to a series of four previous projects, which are all starred by the artist and the same group of actors. In all of these movies Trecartin's post-apocalyptic universe typically consists of guys and girls like the pink-lace one: its transgender, chaotic, loud, shallow, screeching. Its a hypnotizing outburst of digital dystopia.

INTERVIEW: ARNAUD LAPIERRE

– In cooperation with Olympus –

"RING" by Arnaud Lapierre, courtesy and copyright the artist

Anna-Lena Werner: Arnaud, how and when did you decide to work as an artist and designer?

Arnaud Lapierre: I don't really know – I have always been attracted to art and to objects. First I studied the History of Art & Archeology, but then I changed to design studies, because I wanted to tell stories through objects and space. However, I don't consider myself an artist.

Anna-Lena: Your work crosses the boundaries between art, design and scenography. Do you consider each direction equally important for your practice? How do they influence each other?

Arnaud: I don't see boundaries in these activities, because all are a support or a medium for being creative and telling or showing something unexpected. I have always considered my profession a way of expressing a delicate answer to a pertinent question. Looking at other graphic and contemporary art, or even contemporary dance and cinema is interesting in order to understand our societies. Although I always tried to banish existing designs from my inspiration, since I don't want to repeat myself or the work of someone else.

ART BERLIN CONTEMPORARY 2014

Wojciech Bakowski, booth STEREO, Warsaw Analia Saban (Detail), booth Sprüth Magers, Berlin, London Luc Fuller, booth Rod Barton, London 

all images: courtesy the artist and the gallery / photos © artfridge / Lars Petersen

Art Berlin Contemporary (in short "ABC) opened its 7th edition last Thursday. The fair – that suggests itself as an art exhibition – has been directed by Maike Cruse for the second time and presents 111 galleries, of which most are based in Germany. Known for offering a big selection of large scale works, ABC continues to show extensive installations and sculptures. Even painters spread out through the exhibition space, such as the up-and-coming American artist Luc Fuller (Rod Barton), who we interviewed this year in June (read the interview here).

OLAFUR ELIASSON: RIVERBED

all images: Olafur Eliasson "Riverbed" at Louisiana Museum, Denmark (20.8.2014 - 4.1.2015) / Courtesy the artist and Louisiana Museum, © Olafur Eliasson / photos © artfridge.de

It feels like there is hardly a nature phenomenon left that the well-known Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson has not approached or visualised yet. For his current outside-in installation "Riverbed" he turned the south-wing of Louisiana Museum in Humlebæk (Demark) into a wet and rocky landscape that embeds a small stream of water floating through three large rooms. The official purpose: a merging of art, architecture and an imitation of nature. But that agenda seems familiar and – let's be honest – has really been done before. The question is: Does the past devalue the work?

INTERVIEW: IAN HOMERSTON

all works by Ian Homerston / Copyright and courtesy the artist & courtesy Cole London // all photos by Plastiques

The British 1984-born painter Ian Homerston looks at his works as explorations in combinations: Colour, material and form are repeatedly confronted and subsequently withdrawn or reintegrated. Often consisting of photographic emulsion and paint, the works' surfaces at his current show 'Whereas' at COLE in London discuss the issue of temporality during the artistic production. Ian, who studied at the Royal College of Art and the Wimbledon College of Art in London, engages in the exhibition space by using his paintings as to consider their self-reflexivity and site-specificity. In a short interview we asked him about his ideas, his interventions and about how he questions formats, timings and display methods.

INTERVIEW: NADINE FECHT

all works by Nadine Fecht / Courtesy and Copyright Nadine Fecht

A couple of years ago, just having graduated from the Berlin University of the Arts as a Meisterschülerin of Stan Douglas and Lothar Baumgarten, Nadine Fecht already proofed that she knows how to play with expectations, disappointment and experience. Her work “53 beginnings” which references John Cage, features 53 beginnings of different vinyl records compiled on one single vinyl pressing. It gathers the pops and crackling right before the first song starts from 53 different sources, the seconds before the first sound appears; the nondescript segment the tone arm needs to cover until it reaches the actual content of the vinyl. 

Nadine Fecht's art is based on “The Practice of Drawing” – which is also the title of a group show she is currently participating in with her work “noise” (2014) at Gallery 5020 in Salzburg, Austria. In the first part of her solo show „adopt a revolution“ at FELDBUSCHWIESNER in Berlin, shown in July and August, she stroke a rather political note. Also her contribution to the exhibition „Money Works Pt. 2“ at the Haus am Lützowplatz – opening on August 29 – has a political implication. It was about time to talk to the Berlin-based artist.

INTERVIEW: KATHARINA FENGLER

Katharina Fengler, 'EDDIE BERNAYS 9', 2014, photo by Foort Fotografie / Courtesy and © the artist

What is the difference between being an artist and becoming an artist? Which way is the right one to balance success and individual artistic expression? Is there something like predestination? Berlin-based artist Katharina Fengler can openly discuss and reflect these questions. Holding a degree in Photography from Zurich University of Arts, the 1980-born artist returned to Germany's capital in order to explore different conceptual and cross-disciplinary approaches for her work. Her strikingly colourful art ranges from two dimensional paintings to side-specific installation work. Frequently displayed internationally, Katharina currently exhibits the solo show SWEETNESS at CACTUS Contemporary Art Space in Liverpool and has an upcoming show at BLOK Art Space in Istanbul together with John von Bergen. In our interview Katharina talked about her practice with air-brush and salt dough, her inspiration and why being an artist is a day-to-day decision.

INTERVIEW: JOHANNA VON MONKIEWITSCH

courtesy and © Johanna von Monkiewitsch

Having spent a while of her childhood in Los Angeles, Johanna von Monkiewitsch formed a strong sense for light situations and how these influence our perception, our memory and our emotion. Since her studies at the HBK in Braunschweig, where she also grew up, Johanna thus developed a unique technique of capturing and staging elusive compositions of light and shadow. While materiality is a defining aspect of her art, Johanna's works withdraw themselves from any categorisation or stylistic genre: her photographs are sculptural, her folding technique is graphical, her motif is painterly. She employs a formal language that is cleaner than clean, so that small irregularities determine the character of each work, encouraging the viewer to engage in the material's surface. Between the visual rationality and the contextual emotion incorporated in every single work, Johanna continuously challenges the notion of reality and deception. During the interview in her Cologne-based studio, which she received through a scholarship by Kölnischer Kunstverein, the 1979-born artist talked about her practice with paper and photography, her inspiration and her art's resistance to classification.

UDK RUNDGANG 2014

Mark Corfield-Moore (wall object) and Moritz Nehrkorn (sculpture), Klasse Neugebauer Andreas Foncerrada, Klasse Lewandowsky  Lisa Peters, Klasse Möbus Gary Schlingheider
all  works courtesy and © the artists // photo credit: artfridge.de

How does art reflect current politics? When are old trends replaced by new ones? What do young artists expect from the effect of their work on the spectatorship? Which art is, and which art will be interesting for the market? When hoping to find the slightest answer to any of these questions one of the best places to observe future tendencies are degree shows from art academies. The current Rundgang at UDK (Universität der Künste) in Berlin, for example, offers a pretty interesting overview on what young Berlin-based artists are interested in.

MANIFESTA 10, SAINT PETERSBURG

from the top: Thomas Hirschhorn, ABSCHLAG, 2014, General Staff Building, State Hermitage Museum // Klara Lidén, Warm up: State Hermitage Museum Theater , 2014, General Staff Building, State Hermitage Museum // Marlene Dumas The Trophy, 2013, Winter Palace, State Hermitage Museum, 2014. // all installation views MANIFESTA 10,  photos by Daria Kirsanova

The latest edition of Manifesta in Saint Petersburg caused a high degree of controversy, which was escalated by the Russian authorities who have certainly excelled in black PR for the event: The anti gay propaganda laws and the unstoppable campaign for the ‘traditional Orthodox values’ that was initiated by the lawmakers in the city have set an apocalyptic backdrop for the exhibition. This, combined with stiff museum policies of the State Hermitage* and an overwhelming amount of bureaucracy, created the intrigue around the exhibition. The main question was whether the show would actually take place. Meanwhile, the International media neither seemed to care about the conceptual core of the curatorial idea or the artist list, nor about the difficulties of building a contemporary art audience in Saint Petersburg – a city that is proud of being conservatively equipped with neo-classical architecture and post-imperialist nostalgic spirit.

PIERRE HUYGHE AT MUSEUM LUDWIG KÖLN

all images: Pierre Huyghe at Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Courtesy the artist; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris; Esther Schipper, Berlin, © Pierre Huyghe / photos by Anneli Botz // photo of the dog:
© VG Bild-Kunst Bonn, 2014 /

Walking through Pierre Huyghe’s travelling retrospective at Museum Ludwig in Cologne resembles a journey through the topographical map of his complex oeuvre, which ranges from film to photography to sculpture and from architecture to living eco systems. Before leaving the rooms of Centre Pompidou in Paris, Huyghe had the exhibition’s walls cut into pieces and brought to Cologne where they were rearranged in the space of the museum. Thus the visitors are guided through the retrospective as if they were walking into a long tube of walls, where they are bound to lurk around corners and step into artificially constructed rooms. This architectural decision suggests a sense of how the artist is dealing with space: Rather than using the given or deconstructing it completely, the 1962 born Parisian deregulates allegedly deadlocked structures in both architecture but also in his single pieces. 

INTERVIEW: ÖZGE ENGİNÖZ

all images: Courtesy and © Özge Enginöz

Born in Balıkesir in Turkey, Özge Enginöz is a young contemporary artist who is specifically known for her mixed-media works. Her delicate choice of materials comprises and integrates toys, works on paper, old photos, video, collage, painting and drawing. Having studied at the Art and Design Faculty of Yıldız Teknik University, the Istanbul-based artist spent two years in the Istanbul Art Center recidency program and subsequently exhibited her work in several solo and group shows across Europe. Currently on display at Artnivo's first pop-up exhibition "Download" at Sofa Hotel and at the group show "Where am I?" at Kare Art Gallery, Özge Enginöz’s work is specifically present in Istanbul’s art scene. During our interview in Çukurcuma, she talked about her artistic practice, about her inspiration and about how Turkey’s current political situation influences contemporary art.

CRAFT & BLING BLING – FAKE

all images: Exhibition "CRAFT & BLING BLING – FAKE" at Depot Basel // detail photos by © Thomas Albrecht, installation views by © Gregor Brändli

The design exhibition CRAFT & BLING BLING – FAKE at DEPOT BASEL in Switzerland discusses a model of doubt and truth along the interpretation of fakeness. Twelve international jewellery designers created specific art and design objects that are concerned with oscillating emphasis on materiality and appearances, authorship and duplication, adaption and replica, superficiality and preciousness. Presented inside a cube of blue velvet, their works describe reversed encounters with fakeness, in which the designers play with the semiotics of fake and transform its implied crisis of originality – the effect of doubt – into an art form itself. 

HOTELS

photo by and  © artfridge.de

For a long time artists have been fascinated by the transitional state that hotels offer: people come and go, welcomes and goodbyes take place at the same time, a sense of melancholia and loneliness, of anonymity and alienation accompany each space. The lobby remains a non-space – individual rooms remain temporary homes. Only the traces of usage reveal that former guests have been sleeping in the same bed, using the same shower, opening the same window. And exactly because these rooms are premised on neutrality and on dry interiors, because they do not seem to belong to anyone in particular, and because they can be rented on a daily basis, they regularly act as exhibition spaces.

INTERVIEW: LUC FULLER

all images: Luc Fuller "Standing Paintings" / each work Untitled, 2014 / © Luc Fuller / Courtesy the artist and ROD BARTON, London

40 "Standing Paintings" currently occupy the floor space of Rod Barton's gallery in London, each displaying the outlines of Wu-Tang Clan's symbol "W" on their front side. They were created by 1989-born American artist Luc Fuller, who employs his art to explore cultural appropriation, the merging of sub- and high-culture and eventually in the meaning-production of signs, arrangements and exhibition formats. While painting is a medium commonly defined by its spatial distance to its spectators and its status as an object on a wall that is to be observed, Luc inverts this scheme and incorporates his paintings in an environment, rendering them into a "democratic" pattern. Visitors thus walk through the paths formed by his works, they enter a scene of art – a painting-scape. Also in other exhibitions that Portland-based Luc did, he repeatedly questions the classic terms of installation, materiality and space – everything is, as he once said, in "flux". In our interview with the artist, Luc told us about why and how Wu-Tang Clan's symbol is a part of his work, his fascination with subcultures and about his playful and similarly  ambitious approach of reconsidering exhibition formats.