Interview with Aleksandra Waliszewska

Is destruction more fascinating than decay?

** Both phenomena are inspiring in their own respects. Myself, I would choose to be indestructible.

I often perceive death as coming from the inside. In you drawings, threat is often animalistic. Your characters are prey. Do you feel paranoid sometimes?

** I like animals a lot. I like to watch them, but I'm afraid of aggressive animals that might threaten me. It's not very frequent that I encounter such hostile animals, which is why I rather adore, than flee from them.

Do you also use them as symbols?

** There are no hidden symbols in my paintings.

Do you have a totem animal?

** I love many species of animals but I wouldn't describe any of them as totemic.

Could we interpret some of your drawings as the loss of childhood?

** The fact that I paint children is not based on any deeper

forethought. They just constitute an interesting form for me.

Do you think that thoughts, when too peremptory, can constitute an obstacle to fascinations, emotions and intimateness?

** Thinking often remains in opposition to emotion. Art is often quite weak due to over-intellectualizing it, particularly if arising out of wrongly understood ambition. Artists often do what they deem to be a proper thing to do, not something that truly interests them. I have the impression there is less and less emotion in art, rather coldly calculated boredom is predominant.

Many pictures of yours are quite peaceful. They seem to have sentimental and spiritual dimensions… Am I right?

** I try to depict various emotions. Sometimes utter peacefulness can be a background for an immense drama.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/walisz/

http://waliszewska.blogspot.com/

I saw that you used to paint. Could you tell us about this phase?

** I'm bored to death by 99% of so-called contemporary art. Old painting is still very vital for me, it makes me really emotional while approaching it. Maybe this is why I wanted to make things that would be on a comparable level, but I realized that the task is impossible to accomplish. Nevertheless, I tried my hand in tradtion-based oil painting. And I'm happy about it as a phase.

Is there any old painting you’d advise us to look at?

** I'm not trying to convince anyone to enjoy old painting. It is easily accessible through books, Internet etc. It is hard to recommend specific works as this is very personal. Regarding my personal favourites, these would be "Pieta of Avignon" and "The Coronation of the Virgin", both by Enguerrand Quarton.

“Contemporary art” is almost always displayed on white uniform walls… And each artwork stands alone… Where do think your work is better to look at? In a cluttered place? In a book? On the white wall?

** I like my works to be reproduced, book would be a lovely idea, but I also think of T-shirts, buttons etc. Regarding exhibitions, I was thinking of making an open air exhibition among the trees. My father breeds horses and he owns a large stretch of land that could nicely serve this purpose. But technically, it would be complicated so for the time I restrict myself to white walls.

Where do you draw? Do you need to be alone?

** When I work I have to be alone. Even my boyfriend is banned from entering my workplace.

Do you pay attention to yourself and your surroundings when you draw (the light, the way you perceive your body and etc…) or are you only focused on your picture?

** I always paint in daylight. I usually can easily focus on it. Sometimes I get distracted by my own leg or something, but otherwise I try not to get crazy.

How would you qualify your gestures when drawing? Are they precise, slow, nervous, impulsive… Dreamy? Imperious?

** I have no idea.

Are you very productive? How many drawings do you make each week?

** I paint for about five hours each day. About 12 gouaches get done in a week.

What sort of reaction do people have when they look at your pictures?

** I try not to be obsessed by opinions of other people. Painters are their own with their work, and this is good. However, it's nice that I have some followers.

How did you evolve in your artistic environment?

** My paintings were appreciated in my early working phase. Already when I studied at the academy I had solo exhibitions. At that time, it was unusual in Poland. Now there are many more galleries that often show very young artists. After I changed my style, I stayed in the background a bit, it was only possible to see my new works on my Flickr page.

Is there any project you want to tell us about?

** I never work on anything that could be called a "project". People who blather about their various "projects" are ridiculous. I simply paint.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/walisz/

http://waliszewska.blogspot.com/

Interview with Ludovic Levasseur

G: Would maggots in the nose be an acceptable mean to heal the brain?

L: Like Père Ubu I would say the brain, in decomposition and being nibbled on by maggots, functions beyond death, and it is its dreams which are heaven…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ludovic-levasseur/

G: I distinguish different moments in violence: its premonition, its execution and its result… I noticed that in your drawings those three moments seem to coincide… Are you not fascinated by some kind of damnation, post mortem suffering and a sin which never ceases to be accomplished?

L: Certainly not, the only thing there is after death, if we aren’t mummified, is the decomposition of our body’s tissues. I am totally free of any religious preoccupation and in general so are my images, neither while I draw them nor afterwards.

I try to fill the surface with a maximum of intensity, in each case with the elements which I find graphically - and therefore intimately - satisfying: it is perhaps here where the vice lies. You never knows why this or that form satisfies or displeases you. It is without a doubt a kind of abundance whithin the image which gives you the impression of simultaneous moments, an atmosphere of generalised violence, which is, from my point of view, difficult to dissect into a sequence. Anyhow, I’m generally not in favor of psychological interpretations of works of art, and I’m not talking only about my own images. I certainly would have difficulties drawing a flowerpot; and I also viscerally reject the sketchiness of a certain kind of pseudo-contemporary drawing.

G: It seems like the things you reject, find disgusting or hate are the same as mine… disdain and lucidity simply are delicious means to enter into a highly subjective view: I was very touched by your affirmation of intimacy. Am I wrong or does it seem like your drawings are evolving towards a certain “harmony” or at least more of an equilibrium in the characters’ relations, more ambivalence? There seems to be a growing restraint in them…

L: I have the impression that as time passes we find sneakier ways to say things which we used to assert in a more straight forward manner before, in art or any other practice. Language is becoming more complex because our vocabulary is growing, at least it ideally should be like that. One should try to become more and more radical but in a more and more subtle way, in a double self-contradictory move: these are great principles though, easier to proclaim than to follow.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ah-pook/

G: Your drawings of carnage (which have a baroque aftertaste) suggest some effort of staging or composition; how much of it is improvisation?

L: By the same logic of there not being any preconceived idea or imposed significance, I don’t anticipate any composition a priori, the whole arranges itself –or doesn’t - in the course of something like an improvisation. All my difficulties come from that. In fact, I spend my time pruning, trying to harmonise something which is often wobbly. Well, it doesn’t seem to me that I make so many carnages… The baroque aspect - as you call it - of my backgrounds probably stems from a slightly decorative anxiety, a will not to end up in the total violence that the elements of the foreground would often suggest.


G: Yes, I used the word “baroque” more or less like that: cluttered, but also in terms of the line, which is not “ideal” but mostly vivacious, stark and with various ruptures. I wonder about how you draw… Do you think you’re rather nervous, dreamy, precise, slow, or fast in your gesture?

L: If the line isn’t ideal, it is actually in spite of myself ! I can’t do better. I am slow and precise, and very compelled by engraving. Always weighing the pros and cons, trying to harmonise as one goes along. It is quite laborious with rather long periods of discontinuation. Maybe the ruptures result from this. I must be lazy, incapable of working tightly all the time. Well, the best things generally come quickly, that is quite evident. However, there is no absolute rule: sometimes it is torture to achieve a satisfying result.

G: The dolls, being material entities detached from context, agonise or exult in there innermost being. I’m curious; could you to tell us more about them, their fabrication, their sizes and maybe the little more sentimental things which are related to them…

L: On the contrary, to me they are dead objects, rather mummified, fossilised… Products of taxidermy. In my mind, they have to be ancient things, or impossible to date. Also, I need to be scared when making them, and as a result they cause some kind of deadly fear in the viewer. Here, causing reactions is easier than with two-dimensional images; but again I try not to get as dark and disturbing as the “Grand guignol” (puppet show). Im not sure if I mange to…

I started with little runts of 15 cm and ended up with adult size mannequins, with some baby sized and one or two adolescent sized monsters along the way. I’m more attached to some of them, not for sentimental reasons but quite simply because I feel like they’re greater thechnical achievements. It’s a practice to which I’ve devoted myself for only a few years now , and it used to function as a sort of recreation in relation to engraving. I more or less invented my mixtures myself and, if it can be said, I “progressed” rather quickly in this bizarre technique. In general I oscillate between the two practices. At the moment, I’ve stopped with the dolls. Anyhow, there isn’t necessarily a link between the two activities, in some ways, they’re each other’s polar opposites.

G: You pursue quite a wide range of activities; in addition to drawing and the dolls you also produce etchings. Anne Van der Linden, Nuvish, Remi, Caroline Sury have a collection of images which you printed for them…

L: I don’t do drawings, except for some sketches here or there, I exclusively do engravings - for its rigid rules, not because of a taste for constraints, but enables me to canalise the mess a bit. There is the resistance of the technique.
You’re right to speak of a “collection”. It is when seeing how we worked at Le Dernier Cri, with Pakito Bolino and Caroline Sury, that got the taste for the adventure of working in a collective and I felt like “publishing” those friends, whose graphic oeuvre I admired and, when done as engravings, I thought would produce great results, and it wasn’t a failure.
They conceived the drawings, then etched them on plates that I had given them. At this point I have printed about twenty etchings: four portfolios by Remy, Caroline Surry, Nuvish and Anne Van der Linden who, by the way, goes on doing engravings at my home and with whom I’m doing an exhibition soon*.

In my mind, by conceiving those engravings the four of them have delivered the most intimite part of the oeuvre, the one which touches me in their respective art. The emulation is mutual, it in turn motivates me to try to do things a bit better than usual. It is an adventure which permits you to move away from your own little artistic narcissistic belly button. There are few things more interesting to do with people than working with them.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ah-pook/

G: What does your workshop looks like?

L: It is my home, I live in it: my engraving workshop is in the lounge, the acid trays are in the garage or in the bathroom during winter. I tinker about a little bit in every room. I varnish my copper plates in the kitchen, the dolls are in the cubby-hole and on the walls, and I fabricate them in the garden when it’s sunny outside.

G: How much do your working materials cost?

L: After having frequented a workshop for a long time where all materials were there, but where I couldn’t work at my leisure, I bought a second hand press a few years ago. The principal expenses concern the paper and especially the copper the market price of which hasn’t risen for few years but underwent a surge some time ago. I always keep an eye on metal prices, I’d really like to print on silver and gold, but it is too expensive. The dolls are predominantly made up out of found ingredients, culled at the beach and pulled out of the dentists’ and fishmongers’ garbage cans.
Anyway, as a general rule, in addition to the material cost the artistic practice -like culture itself - isn’t a very democratic thing. If only for the time which it takes, it is relatively incompatible with salaried employment.

G: How long does it take to make an etching ?

L: That’s a question which often turns up. It’s difficult to quantify. It depends on the way each one works, Remi for example can work quick and effectively, while Nuvish will obsessively perfect his lines. I for my part am rather slow, it can take three or four weeks to make the drawing if I work on it a bit every day, which is scarcely the case. Sometimes I put the plate aside for six months if I don’t get the results I wanted, and then I take it up once more. One cannot expect to produce more than fifteen good engravings in one year. And I don’t even think I’ve ever managed as much as that.

G: How many printings are possible?

L: At the moment I’m doing drypoint engravings on zinc; there I will get less than twenty good prints and not even ten definitive achievements. It’s possible to do fifty prints from an etching on copper, but I never did as many from an engraving, I favour small editions. The biggest print runs were the ones for the portfolios I edited, between 20 and 30 prints.

G: Have you ever tried the mezzotint?

L: I think that the drypoints that I do at the moment look like mezzotint, setting aside the laxness. I won’t engage in this technique which is, after all, quite boring. It would require employing a rocker for days to roughen the plate, or buy plates already prepared, but those are very expensive. But I generally find that this technique produces somewhat weak images.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ah-pook/

G: How do you evolve in your artistic environment?

L: I’ve made very few efforts to artistically socialise, very few efforts in general, except the ones which seemed worth it; this could appear flimsy, but I’m satisfied with it: I exhibited in the world‘s best library, Un Regard Moderne in Paris, I publish and exhibit with the best editor of the world, Le Dernier Cri à Marseille, and I worked with artists who are among the closest to me, the ones I mentioned, as well as Marie Noël Döby, whom I made hybrid dolls with, or Le Tampographe Sardon who edited “Poupée Viande”, a box of rubber stamps.

Right now I’m hesitating between two contradictory plans: either going deeper into what I’ve already been doing with the same people, and try to do it a little better still - or quitting this deplorable artistic activity to exclusively devote myself to the practice of curling, trying to be good enough to be selected for the next world championship… which, considering the small number of practitioners of this sport in France, shouldn’t be too difficult.



* Anne Van der Linden et Ludovic Levasseur : Gravures et dessins, du 27 février au 27 mars 2010. Galerie Une poussière dans l’œil, 17 bis, chemin des Vieux arbres, 59650 Villeneuve d’Ascq.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ludovic-levasseur/

Liens :

Poupées : http://www.flickr.com/photos/ludovic-levasseur/

Gravures (et portfolios) : http://www.flickr.com/photos/ah-pook/

Le dernier cri : http://www.lederniercri.org/

Anne Van der Linden : http://heavyshop.free.fr/

Nuvish : http://nuvish.wordpress.com/archive-des-dessins/

Rémi : http://remi.over-blog.fr/

Sardon (coffret « Poupée Viande ») : http://le-tampographe-sardon.blogspot.com/2009/09/poupee-viande.html

Marie Noël Döby : http://lesdobys.free.fr/index2.html

Interview with Anne van der Linden

Nobody can avoid the radical in Anne van der Linden’s paintings; many also see the sentimental and peaceful dimensions of them. I’m seeking the human nature and tragedy that they are transcribing.
There are often contrasts between characters who are detached from the scenes depicted and those who are fully conscious and affected by them. This is the case in the painting where a child has his mouth and arsehole carved by the Alder king who also happens to be his father. The sadness on the face of the father who is teaching a lesson about life when the child seems blasé and bound by his flesh may be a profound statement about vice. This is tragic.
Also I respect very much that in Anne van der Linden’s paintings many different situations and relationships are present. The social patterns (gender, age, social class, lifestyles, sexual preferences etc…) aren’t always the same. When consumerism encourages people to define their identity so they can fit the market that has been designed for them, this multiplicity reminds us that we can face all the dimensions of our specie. The radical dimensions of these paintings work as a gargoyle: they protect something. Also Anne's paintings are sexy and hilarious!

Heavyshop: Anne van der Linden's website.

L: I’d like to know more about the different artistic directions you’ve explored… What were your different steps?

A: I started with improvised drawings, a mix of figures, symbols and abstract objects and lines, then I went to art school for 2 years and after that started a 3 or 4 year experiment with abstract painting. They were very thick, organic paintings, I tried to get away from consciousness and judgement in order to create a pure expression of inner feelings...well that was bullshit, I mean a deadlock for me which drove me close to depression, so after a 3 year break, I went back slowly to narrative art.

L: You wrote that your work was grotesque social pornography. Why? What should it mean? Is there something strategic in this term, something you believe in?

A: I cannot remember myself saying that, I should have said “obscenity” rather than “pornography”.
But truly there is something grotesque in my figures: they are so ambiguous, caught by a situation they don’t seem to belong to, assuming all the social codes while making them untidy, invaded by bestiality and at the same time so stiff and civilized. I think that this permanent contrast of order and disorder brings the sensation of social obscenity.

L: You’ve been involved in performances with Jean-Louis Costes? Could you describe these performances?
It was quite a long time ago, it was fun having a rock ’n roll band life style, touring and doing crazy things on stage, and a strange sensation of getting out of my body while I was acting, as if in a trance.

L: Any anecdotes or striking moments?

A: I got knocked in the face by a Swiss girl who came on stage while I was acting. After the show I went to get her and asked her why she did that, and her answer was “Did you see how they treated you on stage?” A feminist answer… Ha! Ha!

http://heavyshop.free.fr/

L: I have the feeling that many artists who’ve evolved in the same context as yours are quite reticent to comment about their work. What about you?

A: Commenting is something I need to do, it’s always an opportunity for me to clear my ideas, and put distance between myself and creation, that enables a renewed vision.
But it’s not so easy though. Sometimes the words are much lower than the image, just superfluous, or sometimes they kill the image! One has to find a way....I hope I do!!!

L: I guess that 90 percent of the « psychological interpretations » people want to make when they look at paintings are erroneous. When you have the opportunity to discuss your art, what sort of themes did the viewers questioned you about?

A: I don’t know, not that interesting in general... seems that most of the time viewers ask questions to themselves and not to me!
I don’t blame them but it’s just boring ... generally it’s about sex and taboos, things that they search for or, on the contrary, reject, or how I can live and assume such a type of art etc...
In general I believe that few people can look at a piece of art and penetrate its logic, only very sensitive persons can do that... or professional eyes...

L: What passes through your mind when you’re painting? What sort of correlation is there between what you’re representing and what you’re actually thinking? Any symbols? Signs?

A: I start from a drawing or a sketch, so while painting I first think about technical matters, how to build my image, the volumes, contrasts, colors and shape associations, so maybe what passes in my mind would be “sensitive thoughts”, how I feel my own body, the surrounding light (summer or winter light) etc...
Then while keeping working, an atmosphere takes place, that goes beyond the basic drawing and brings new emotions and references (dreams, other paintings, stories)...from that point the painting pulls me to it’s own meaning, and I have to possibly add the elements that it asks for..

L: Loads of your paintings are mise-en-scenes involving several characters, how do you construct the image? Do you improvise much?

A: I never improvise, it’s a long process, not so easy putting together all those characters, also I have no models as you can see.
So I have to draw and try first to build a choreography that I have only partly in mind at the beginning and which gets more precise while drawing, with the game of lines and shapes

L: In theses scenes maybe something both animalistic and ritual could be perceived?

A: Yes, it may be that: I am a lost and suffering animal in this world, and I demand with my art to the obscure forces that drive me to be favorable, not to hurt me.

L: Sometimes it seems that you’re taking the piss out of customs and lifestyles (I remember a painting depicting a woman shitting on a house and another one with a bride clasping a big phallus)…

A: Well...
Certainly I like to make things clear... married girls need eternal big dick rather than eternal big love... this can be a refreshing idea, and when I paint it I laugh !
But of course destroying the old statues brings chaos, who knows what will come out of it... We seek for order... then kill it...etc... then we have to find new models.
(One of the results of my having turned against old rules is my loneliness)

L: How do you perceive self portraits? Do you wish to keep distance with your art? I mean some artists want people to know that their art doesn’t show what they are, some don’t know what they are doing but afterwards want to understand something about themselves, and some try to express what seems to be blocked inside… Do you think you would fit in any of theses categories?

A: Hum! I can say for sure that my characters reassemble me, more or less, in terms of body structure... and the technique, one should pay attention to the way artists use their brushes for example: it is a language, a confidence by itself.
So this way, and avoiding private confessions, I can assert that my painting is me!!...the transcription of my body and soul.

L: Is it painful to paint?

A: No, very less than digging holes.

http://heavyshop.free.fr/

L: Is there something you want to say about your writings?

A: I read a lot but write very little, the last thing I wrote was “Je veux être ton singe” (I want to be your monkey) a short story that I illustrated... since then I’ve been quite locked.

L: Your videos?
A: I tried to put in action the themes of my paintings and it was fun, I did it with friends for the first one called “Le repassage” (the ironing), then for the 2 following, I collaborated with “professional” guys who tried to abuse me, and since then I haven’t done any movies again...
A good thing with painting is that you are the master of your world, you don’t need to deal with people

L: What are your projects for the future?


A: I’ve just made a book with the poet Jérôme Bertin, Voix editions.
I am having an exhibition in September in Lyon at the bookshop-gallery “Le bal des ardents”.
Then I’ll show 2 paintings in the big exhibition “De Clovis Trouille à Hervé di Rosa” at the museum Louis Selencq of l’Ile Adam,
Then a drawing exhibition in Lille this winter at the gallery “Une poussière dans l’oeil”.

http://heavyshop.free.fr/

Interview with Yogoeme

I have been interviewed by Claudio Parentela. You may read the result after clicking here.