Monday, March 28, 2011

PAUL BEHNKE

Hektor´s Cut, acrylic on canvas, 43 x 42 inches, 2011


What are you working on in your studio right now?

I’m currently taking a break from larger canvases to focus on small paintings on paper. On the more disposable surface I’m able to trick myself and be more relaxed.  Color and transparency are becoming more important and the edges of the work are starting to play a more definite role.


Can you describe your working routine?

I paint every day but don’t have a regular starting time. I’m almost always in the studio by noon and work until about six. More of the day is probably spent looking than actually painting.



                                                                work in progress


Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?

My new space is in a Brooklyn neighborhood called Greenpoint.  I share it with three other artists (space is at a premium in New York!) and it’s housed in a large building of artists’ studios called the Pencil Factory. I’m not aware that the space I work in ever exerts any undo influence on my painting, except I tend to be more productive when I’m around other artists working.



work in progress


Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.


I have no preconceived image or colors in mind when I begin a piece.  I just reach for what looks good and put it on the canvas. After a while I stop to consider what I have. If a composition has presented itself right away I continue working and the painting may be finished quickly. In this case, the final surface is smooth and thin. More often than not things don’t go so quickly and I end up painting, scraping away and repainting for days at a time before I arrive at something that is working. Then the surface will be very built up, clotted and at times, off-putting. I generally work on more than one painting at a time, so when I’m stuck, I can move on to something else. My painting process is concerned with formal aspects. It is only after the fact that I can start to decipher imagery and any personal symbology that may be present. I’m not interested in sharing any interpretations of forms with the viewer.





studio


What are you having the most trouble resolving?

I think color has always been difficult for me.  I tend to become involved with high key colorists like the German Expressionists, the Fauves and some of the Neo-Expressionists from the 1980’s.
It’s difficult finding color combinations that produce a sense of anxiety, garishness or uncertainty without the work being misinterpreted by an unsophisticated viewer as happy and joyful. But maybe I put too much responsibility on the viewer and as I continue to become better at my job it will cease to be an issue.



Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

From the time I began making non-objective work I found it necessary or natural to work within self- imposed parameters. For years I worked only in blacks and whites using one form and the grid to build my compositions.  After a while I began to chaff at those restrictions and more elements were slowly introduced. For me, this is the crux of good painting- the powerful contrast of the need for boundaries with the need to go beyond them. But not only go beyond the self imposed rules in increments---to need the parameters, and yet want at the same time, to exceed them by miles and miles. The tension created around a need to include everything and nothing is what keeps the act of painting interesting and relevant for me.





studio


What does the future hold for this work?

I have two exhibits coming up. The first is a summer group show at the Heidi Cho Gallery in Manhattan and then a solo show in 2012 at the Rosenfeld Gallery in Philadelphia. So that’s always in the back of my mind as I work and a lot of what I’m painting now will end up in one of these two shows.



Sunday, March 27, 2011

BEN YOUNG

Yitzhak Scam, oil & spray paint on canvas, 2010


      What are you working on in your studio right now?

Right now I'm working on a series of paintings where the only rule of the game is that I don't judge too much and that when the painting's declared finished I leave it alone. I want to release myself to be more experimental and allow unsettling or jarring things to just be. The first of this new approach (it's not really new for me but it's been a while since I've imposed this discipline) is entitled 'Art Antichrist'. I'm already working on the next one - it already has a title, 'Bedeutung Police'. I have two solo shows coming up in Amsterdam and Bern, Switzerland so I'm really going for it right now. I seem to work quite well under pressure - suddenly the distractions vanish, the focus is total, real energy happens...


Can you describe your working routine?

Normally I get up at about 8am and am in my studio by 10.30/11 - that's in London. Here in Italy I walk into my basement with my cup of coffee and get into it at around 8.30/9. I like the early start because you get some great ideas first thing in the morning with your rush of caffeine. I normally just sit on a chair and survey the previous day/night's creation/destruction. As I work with collaged newspaper clipping and other ready sources of printed collage material there are lots of random clipped and torn scraps of images all over my studio floor and bench. I'll often fiddle around with these first, maybe stick a couple on a canvas and see if they do anything. I'll put various works in progress on the wall or easel and see which one calls out to be worked on. Eventually this leads to painting, decisions, colours. Sometimes I put on music sometimes not.

I'm currently not drinking but when I was a drinker (afternoons and evenings only) I would have a beer or wine while I worked. It definitely helped. I'm a believer in the trance-like state for painting although substances aren't absolutely essential for this. Now I'm mostly just a caffeine abuser.

"Sexy disco" in the studio


 Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?

My studio in London is quite large, 433 Sq Ft with 12 Ft ceilings and a big skylight so obviously this is conducive for making large-scale works, many of which I have made here. The large space is also very helpful for reducing clutter. What I mean is, I actually love the clutter of a studio with crap strewn across the floor, there's just more room for it in a big studio. My London studio is really my refuge. It's where I go to really be me and just fuck around and be free. I can do nothing there, sit in a chair and flick stuff at the canvas or really get stuck in and sweaty and asphyxiated by fumes (unfortunately the ventilation's not too good in there, something I need to resolve with a large industrial fan). My studio is an accretion of everything I've done in the last few years. The plastic drop cloth that's taped to the walls and floor is heavily encrusted with paint. Every so often I clear up the piles of paper, cutting, rags, bottles, cans and other detritus from my studio floor but mostly it's there to help me and give me clues - a mad quote on a newspaper cutting, a nice colour combination on a bit of rag or paper.

My studio in Italy, where I am now, is also a lovely place with similar accretions of colours, vibes, painting materials etc but it's slightly different in that it's at my mother's house there and I don't have to cycle half way across a city to get there. It generally enables me to make great work but it is a lot smaller and it gets a bit cramped in there sometimes. But it does have some lovely and inspiring accretions and spatterings of colour all over the place and feels like a studio should! One advantage is that I walk out the door and I'm staring at a nearby hilltop town...



     

studio




Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.?

My finished painting is the summation of an artistic process of creation and destruction. I often start with words, phrases, things I've heard recently that have been rattling round my head in several different languages. I'll spray them onto the canvas, maybe stick a newspaper clipping on, adding to or changing the context. I'm looking for a subject for the painting - what is it about? Gradually or suddenly it starts to emerge. For example, 'AC Not On' is about the lack of air conditioning/ventilation in my studio in LA last summer; 'Yitzhak Scam' (onomatapoeically it sounds like 'It's A Scam') is about getting ripped off by the people who rented me the studio and about being in a desert landscape with rodeos and cowboys (Southern California) which then makes me think of the Old Testament and Isaac or Yitzhak and how he was tricked by Jacob. So a narrative, a subject starts to emerge.

In the end I don't like things to be too clear and obvious - I'm very drawn towards an aesthetics of obscurity. I don't want to spell things out, I want ambiguity. Ambiguity is what I wanted in the painting Sexy Disco - lots of vague circles. Going in circles. If you're going in circles why not make a painting about going in circles? A painting painted in many layers, with layers destroying layers to create a painterly, visual narrative...About - open-endedness, endless return...I am interested in freedom - how I can free myself from everyday, commonsense conceptions. The worst thing in art is for you to allow your everyday or received notions about aesthetics into your work. I don't know what the new looks like - and maybe I won't like the look of it when it happens - this is the challenge of art and of painting. As long as you cling to what you think you know or appreciate, you don't have a chance. The aim is not to make a pretty picture but to make art, I think the two things are often mutually exclusive. To really come across something new (when I say new I mean new for me, first and foremost) you have to abandon your preconceptions, you have to be clear about what you're trying to achieve. If I get to a stage in a painting and say 'oh this looks like a nice de Kooning or Meese or whatever' I know I have to change it or destroy it because it will be false. Sometimes it hurts to let go of something that looks nice but I say again, it's not about looking nice.

I am recording artistic processes of creation and destruction that are steps along the way of a search for my reality not someone else's. The painting is the record of a visual, tactile, emotional journey. It's a record of jettisoning and perhaps some assumption of elements but mostly a jettisoning of elements. Painting is a visual language and new words and phrases can always be invented and old, worn, trite ones be discarded. Perhaps we never arrive but hopefully we're always getting there. But of course you can't just follow a formula in art, there is such a thing as inspiration, in fact you can't do without it. I have to be charged with the excitement of life - of colours and feelings to do a good painting. But also the subject of a work has to inspire me - it can be in a negative way too. For example, I've done several paintings inspired by Hackney Wick where my studio is in London. In truth, sometimes I find London incredibly gloomy and depressing, especially in winter, but at the same time that depression can be turned into exaltation - you can find something unique in the experience of gloom. Our world's all about contrasts. It's experiencing gloom and depression without doing anything about it, creatively or otherwise, that's the problem. I feel sorry for people who only experience but never do. Doing sets you free.


"Art Antichrist" in the studio



What are you having the most trouble resolving?

 I genuinely don't feel like I have any problems resolving anything at the moment. I'm in quite a fruitful period of my painterly life and luck or inspiration or both is helping to resolve most of my painterly dilemmas. But what has happened a lot in the past and will certainly rear up again is the dilemma of how much to work on something - when is it finished? 

Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

I pretty much always work with the same materials - oil, spray paint, collage, permanent marker, oil stick, canvas plus lots of amazing alkyd medium - in the UK 'Alkaflow', in the US 'Galkyd' by Gamblin and in Germany 'Lucas Medium 4'...Stunning stuff, I couldn't work the way I do without alkyd medium. It speeds up the drying of oil paint and makes it more elastic, gives you much greater control. These are more than enough materials to be experimenting with. Collage was a more recent addition. I used to be a bit afraid of it, I found it hard to make it work but now I find it an invaluable way of relaxing my mind and opening up to different narrative possibilities, often with newspaper clippings, random words and images put together to form new context, meaning and subject matter. I'm quite a fan of the way Burroughs worked with cut up words and phrases to form unexpected narratives and I think Brion Gysin did this too, visually, with cut up and rearranged photos and newspaper clippings.

 
What  does the future hold for this work?

I guess we're speaking of the two paintings I mention in my response to the first question. Hopefully they'll be part of a series of up to 10 works all painted with the need to experiment and let go of preconceptions paramount. The finished works will go in my next two solo shows, at Locuslux Gallery, Amsterdam in May and Galerie Rigassi, Bern, Switzerland in June.

Jean Michel Basquiat, Naples man, 1982


Is there anything else you would like to add?

I'm very much influenced by punk attitudes and aesthetics - I used to live in squats in Amsterdam and London and listen to and play punk rock. Anarchy informs my work. I try to get my message across quickly and with maximum effect. Destruction is a form of creation. Rebellion is there in my work. I'm even rebelling against myself...And one of my favourite paintings ever is 'Man From Naples' by Basquiat. For me it is pure punk energy!
















Thursday, March 24, 2011

SABINE TRESS

I love you, 110 x 110, acrylic on canvas, 2011


What are you working on in your studio right now?

I am waiting for some money in order to buy some big formats. In the meantime I am working on some smaller pieces. Because of the fact that those smaller works are in a way just a way for me to continue working, my attitude towards them is more casual, they seem to be less of a challenge. The funny thing is that I really like what´s been happening with them, they look like they "just happened", that they were done effortlessly. Maybe it´s because I am not trying so hard.

 

Can you describe your working routine?

I get to my studio around 10 or 11a.m., before that I go for a long walk with my dog. The first thing I do when I enter my studio is to put on some music, make myself a cup of coffee, sit down and look at the work I left unfinished or that I finished the previous day. Mostly I go from there, I start on one of the paintings, prepare a colour, then on to the next. I work on several paintings at the same time. So it´s all about getting into the mood and starting the process of painting




Studio


Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?

My studio is in a big building in Cologne with lots of other working spaces around me. I used to rent a studio in this building which was a lot darker and I needed artificial light. Now I have a studio on the upper floor, I can see the sky and I even have a window on the ceiling. It´s a bright and welcoming space. When I open the door of my studio in the morning it´s uplifting. It´s difficult to get in a bad mood in this space and this definitely influences my work.


 

Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.

I don´t draw before I start working. I just start somewhere. My starting point is one colour, I decide which one I want to use and then I´ll prepare it. This is a sensual moment, opening the bottle or the bag with the pigment, pouring the acrylic medium in the container, mixing it with the paint or the pigment. Sometimes it´s surprising because of how a certain pigment turns out... I may not have used it previously. And then I just start on a fresh canvas or I continue on a canvas I already worked on. It´s all about applying the paint, looking at the work, analyzing it and then deciding if it´s good. I also read when I am in the studio to distract myself or I just sit on my sofa and stroke the dog and look at my paintings from time to time. I try and keep the ambiance in my work space open and playful. I think this is what it´s all about in my creative process, keeping this openness and the ability to act upon it.



Work in progress



What are you having the most trouble resolving?

I am constantly looking out for new shapes and forms. I have started using writing in some of my paintings but I don´t want to overuse it. I sometimes feel that I have run out of ideas and I am worried I find no more interesting elements that can basically compete with my painted surfaces.


Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

I experiment with different materials. I am using spray paint and glossy paint etc. Last week I glued an old t-shirt on one of the canvases. I should experiment even more. I think it´s only through experimenting that new ideas will come up. At least in my line of work.




Work in progress



What does the future hold for this work?

I am working on getting my paintings out there. My work was recently shown at the artfair in Karlsruhe. It was such a good experience to see so many people look at my work. Even though artfairs are a scary place