ART
H A B E N S C o n t e m p o r a r y
A r t
R e v i e w
TAKASHI HARA AYSE AKARCA PHEUIL JAY SHAW-BAKER HOMER FIVES ERIKA BARILLARI DAVEL ANGEL LOAIZA LILITH ARAN ILLINGWORTH by
ART
ART
H A B E N S C o n t e m p o r a r y
A r t
R e v i e w
Pheuil
Erika Barillari Davel
Takashi Hara
Angel Loaiza
Ayse Akarca
Jay Shaw-Baker
France
USA
Japan / USA
Spain
Turkey, / United Kingdom
United Kingdom
Pheuil is a French self taught artist. He paints abstract and figurative paintings and animal portraits. Impressionism is his main inspiration and he feels the best definition is given in the book “The Private Lives of the Impressionists” by Sue Roe. “He [Pissarro] taught Cezanne to look at the reverberations of light and air, and to watch these rhythms at play with form and line, encouraging him to forget about ‘accurate’ drawing.
I love sepia photos and the feeling they give to me and I'm trying to give to the public the same experience using the raw umber colour. My painting are presented in puzzle format because rappresent the different moment, memory, instant, feelings that I had with the person. I think the most important part of my paintings are the eyes of the person that I portrayed and what the public seeing in and trough their eyes.
One day, when I was in depression by facing a hard time of life, I noticed a little flower on a street in Tokyo. Although being surrounded by concretes, flowers rise through the concrete strongly even if the chance to survive is small. Flowers on street are classified as weeds. People love going to gorgeous flower gardens or seeing framed picture of flowers but do not pay attention to street ones. More over, weeds get killed even though they are strong and beautiful.
I paint visions of the past that can talk to us in the present. The light, our connection to the stars, the humane values that are universal and timeless. All of this I try to put into my works, hoping to bring the audience to a place where we can reflect on our lives and relationships. I work from imagination, connecting with the past, amplifying the culture of America (the continent), and aiming for a positive message with a concept behind it.
Ayse describes her My current work is artistic style as an about the destruction intuitive abstract and recycling of life painting, based on and culture. What her visual experience, came before, being gathered together attacked by what from every day life, comes after. travel impressions, her knowledge about Attempts at erasure composition and color lead to the old being combining. Her main imprinted on the source of inspiration new. Its DNA is a natural world, as remains and is well as the process of carried on in the human eye's percep- successor. Most of tion of colors in dif- the current paintings ferent light are reworking's of a situations. Ayse's project I did around work combines differ- 2014-15. The ent mediums and paintings I techniques, she considered complete works mostly on can- until I deciding to vas and paper, using radically change, if acrylics, watercolor not destroy them and color pencils. altogether.
In this issue
Aran Illingworth
Ayse Akarca
28
Pheuil
56
Erika Barillari Davel Homer Fives
Lilith
Homer FIves
United Kingdom
South Korea
United Kingdom / Italy
My work focuses on portraiture and depiction of the human figure in textiles, inspired by the people around me and using photographs as an input. My work is a visual narrative, which is intended to convey a certain emotion and which focuses on subjects carrying a specific message and meaning. Textile has a specific tactility as well as an extraordinary ability to provoke an emotional response.
Imaginary spaces has always been a main theme of my work. They are unreal areas created in reality. The start was about the deep ocean which is the another world from the one where we live and it's an imaginary space which keeps secrets undiscovered.This unknown space is fill with forgotten memories and imaginations. I thought the deep ocean might be somewhere we can't reach forever but it might be somewhere we want to escape from the real world we live in.
Five Easy Pieces :( “pieces” referring to the quintuple of firearms depicted in the work) brings together a number of disparate elements such as rubber shoe heels , plastic food packaging, toy handguns and could be viewed perhaps ,as being an indictment of the burgeoning gun crime epidemic sweeping some of our major towns and cities . Shackles : This one is really wide open ; I’ll start first – “ Habit : A shackle for the free” Bill Shakespeare . Now ,over to you .. My modus operandi goes something along these lines.
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Angel Loaiza Aran Illingworth
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124
Jay Shaw-Baker Lilith
148 166
Takashi Hara
188
Special thanks to: Charlotte Seeges, Martin Gantman, Krzysztof Kaczmar, Tracey Snelling, Nicolas Vionnet, Genevieve Favre Petroff, Christopher Marsh, Adam Popli, Marilyn Wylder, Marya Vyrra, Gemma Pepper, Maria Osuna, Hannah Hiaseen and Scarlett Bowman, Yelena York Tonoyan, Edgar Askelovic, Kelsey Sheaffer and Robert Gschwantner.
On the cover:
by
Lives and works in Cambridgeshire, England.
Just War
Orthodox priests pray for a cease-fire as they stand between activists and to use religion as a medium to communicate the message of peace to peo
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Aran Illingworth
ART Habens
video, 2013
police lines in Kiev during recent protests there. Here in this work, the priests attempt ple, regardless of their political leaning.
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Special Issue When we very young
Helen Acklam
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This little girl lives in a slum at Raikhad, Ahmadabad, in the North West of India
An interview by and
, curator curator
Hello Aran and welcome to ART Habens. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and you hold a BA (hons) in Applied Arts, that you received from the University of Hertfordshire: how did those formative years influence your evolution as an artist? In particular, how does your cultural substratum direct the trajectory of your current artistic research? My formal training in applied art occurred relatively recently, at the University of Hertfordshire up to 2010, and it was here that I eventually found my vocation for producing stitched portraits and figurative textile panels. This occurred right at the end of my time there after years spent experimenting with other techniques, approaches and media. Studying there gave me the time, space, guidance and experience to find my own voice as an artist. However, the formative experiences which led eventually to this point of departure go back much further, through my time working as a nurse in the UK, leading back eventually to my childhood in Malaysia. My original interest in textiles was learned from my mother, who was expert in a wide range of techniques such as sewing, knitting and crochet work. My underlying passion for art and textiles was originally kindled at that time, but it then lay dormant for many years. As you may imagine, leaving nursing and going back to education to pick up the threads of my interest in art was really fulfilling after having waited so many years to get started.
Aran Illingworth aesthetics, and we would like to invite our readers to visit https://www.aran-i.com in order to get a wide idea about your artistic production: when walking our readers through your usual setup and process, we would like to ask you if you think that there is a central idea that connects all your works. There is indeed a central idea – or rather, a set of central ideas – running through most of my works, although it is probably stretching the
We have appreciated the way the results of your artistic inquiry convey such a coherent combination between intuition and a rigorous
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ART Habens
Aran Illingworth
Lost boy 3 This street child is entertaining himself with piece of string
point to say that these ideas run through all of them without exception. If there is a single central idea connecting all my works, it is the search for an ever deeper understanding of the possibilities that painting in thread can offer. This would be true both of my figurative works and portraits and of my more recent experiments in ‘Or Nu goldwork’, including the landscape work
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‘Reflections’. But the central idea running through my figurative work is to convey a narrative – to draw the viewer into the story of the subject or subjects. These stories are mostly concerned with the theme of disturbing social conditions, particularly – though not exclusively – in relation to both women and children. Take, for example, the very early works ‘Madonna and
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Aran Illingworth
ART Habens
Why Me Refugee boy looking through a refugee camp’s wire fence
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Lost Boy This little boy is drying himself after washing in the muddy water on the side of a road in India
Aran Illingworth
Madonna and child
ART Habens
A young 19 year old girl who is possibly married, although this is uncertain. At a young age, she had already two lost babies to pneumonia. Her predicament is a hard and cruel vicious circle.
Child’ and ‘Madonna and Children’. These draw the viewer’s focus on women in Asia living in conditions of extreme poverty and deprivation, and refer obliquely to the underlying narrative of
the subjects. In the case of ‘Madonna and Child’, the subject is a young woman of 19 holding her third child, after the first two had already died in tragic circumstances. The viewer will not
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ART Habens
Aran Illingworth
Madonna and children A young woman is seen begging with her children in the streets of Delhi. She is looking at her babies with compassion. The sorrow in her eyes allows us a glimpse into her silent suffering. And the child is reaching out – for what – food or love? My work has been about women and children and their social situation - particularly on predicaments associated with poverty in the 21st century
necessarily know the story behind the work but they should get a sense of the subject’s predicament from looking at the image. Commentary on social conditions is not always
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the focus – some more recent works have focussed on dementia and political conflict for instance – but the narrative element is a constant throughout.
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Aran Illingworth
ART Habens
Three graces A market scene from Mohacs in southern Hungary, where two old ladies dressed in traditional indigo dresses stand juxtaposted to a modern fashionably dressed young woman
For this special edition of ART Habens we have selected When we were very young and Lost Boy, a couple of interesting artworks that our
readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once impressed us of your insightful
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ART Habens
Aran Illingworth
Eyes the window of the soul Appliqued with recycled fabric, hand-stitched and digital print background upon a stretched canvas frame A young girl sits smiling in front of the tiled wall of an old housed in Rajasthan
exploration of the relationship between textile and portraiture, is the way you provide your artworks with such a powerful narrative drive: what’s your philosophy on the nature of the portrait? How do you select the people that you decide to include in your artworks? In particular, how does your everyday life's experience fuel your creative process?
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As you can see from the response to the previous question, an essential part of my philosophy on portraiture is to try to capture the emotion and essential character of the subject by painting them in thread. Another aspect of this is that I set out to convey a narrative, telling the story of the person depicted in the portrait through facial expression, gesture, clothing and, where
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Aran Illingworth
ART Habens
currently working – and here the themes of suffering and social conditions do not come into the picture; whereas the theme of narrative very much does. ‘When We Were Very Young’ and ‘Lost Boy’ reflect my interest in social conditions, such that both of the children depicted there value – and even treasure – things that the more fortunate would reject, including the broken doll treasured by the little girl in ‘When We Were Very Young’ and the muddy water in which ‘Lost Boy’ bathed. This latter part is not actually shown in the ‘Lost Boy’ image itself, but it was part of the narrative which moved me to select the subject for a portrait. My everyday life experience has been instrumental in fuelling my creative process – my work in nursing and social work gave me daily contact with a wide range of people and gave me ample opportunity to observe people and try to understand their concerns. Artist Lydia Dona once remarked that in order to make art today one has to reevaluate the conceptual language behind the mechanism of art making: are your works created gesturally, instinctively? Or do you methodically transpose geometric schemes? My works are created methodically, step by step, using photographic images to provide a skeleton or framework as a basis for the artwork itself. In doing the stitching over underlying applique fabrics, I follow an unwritten method which I have developed over a number of years in order to achieve the desired effect. Doing this impulsively would not give the quality of work to which I aspire – a methodical approach is essential.
applicable, the environment in which they live. The selection of images is mostly driven by a concern with social conditions – I look for subjects which will reflect real life, and in particular, the suffering of unsung heroes. This is not always the case though; I have recently done a series of portraits of my family – my husband and son, as well as a self-portrait on which I am
We have really appreciated the vibrancy of thoughtful nuances that mark out your artworks, and we like the way they create tension and dynamics, as in Stabat Mater. Over the years, you have developed a sewing
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ART Habens
Aran Illingworth
technique that allows you to blend colors and establish tonalities that resemble the techniques used in paintings. How did you come about settling on your color palette? And how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in a specific artwork and in particular, how do you develop a texture? A key influence in the development of my sewing techniques was the elements of fine art training which formed part of my experience at college and university before I finally found my vocation for stitched portraiture. I took the techniques which I learned in life drawing and other fine art training and applied them to the selection of fabric and thread instead of paint. In this approach, texture is developed by overlaying cloth with stitching over and through the underlying applique layers. In my use of colour, I aim to heighten the contrasts which are found in real life – but only subtly for the most part. If you look at my earliest works such as Madonna and Child, you can observe a very marked use of colour contrast between large areas of colour, whereas in my more recent work the colour contrasts are less marked and the graduations of colour have become much more fine-grained and subtle. I’m not sure that my own psychological make-up determines the nuances of tone that I use – it is more a case of trying to give expression to the emotion and psychology of the subject. As you have remarked in your artist's statement, your work is a visual narrative, which is intended to convey a certain emotion and which focuses on subjects carrying a specific message and meaning: this is particularly evident in Fractured Memories - Who is that. We daresay that your artistic practice seems to aim to look inside of what appear to be seen, rather than its surface, providing the spectatorship with freedom to realize their own perception. How important is for you to invite the viewers to elaborate
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Journey Away
My artwork reflects the poignancy and the state of limbo experienced by hun
personal meaning? And in particular, how open would you like your artworks to be understood? I aim to elicit from the viewer a personal response which arises out of their own experiences. This
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Aran Illingworth
ART Habens
dreds of thousands of people fleeing conflict and misery
could well be different from what I had in mind originally. Everyone has their own interpretation and this is not a problem – what I want is for the viewer to be drawn into the narrative of a particular work and for this to elicit a more or
less strong emotional response. This means that I would like a very open interpretation of my work, driven subjectively by the personality and emotion of the viewer and not only objectively, by the content and appearance of the image
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ART Habens
Aran Illingworth
Fractured Memory “Fractured Memory”
represents those pieces of life’s jigsaw puzzle that slowly start to disappear from the memory of someone suffering from dementia. My image shows the mind destroying itself, to that the person loses their identity. My image is in a simple form, hand stitched and created in black and white rather then colour because it portrays the convoluted process of memory loss.
itself. To look below the surface of what is presented means that the viewer’s own imagination has to be engaged.
insight which can result is something only the viewer themselves can provide. Your most recent work is focussed on the theme of dementia, taking as input a photographic
I provide the viewer with a starting point but the
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Black Tuesday
ART Habens
Aran Illingworth
I’m a big girl now Appliqued with recycled fabric, hand-stitched and kanath quilt background upon a stretched canvas frame A young girl carries a purse to suggest she has money – but the purse is empty. She was waiting for a free cookies from the shopkeeper. She is appears to have some facial defect.
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Aran Illingworth
ART Habens
THERE’S NOTHING IN THE I WOULDN’T DO A mother is lamenting for her lost child. There is nothing that could ease the horrific pain of losing her child. She is beyond herself with the grief
image taken from a series focusing on the photographer’s own mother, who was suffering from Alzheimer's: would you tell us how dioes fascinate you of this theme?
very accessible. I have a strong emotional response born out of my own professional background in nursing as well as from experience in my personal life. I worked for a time in geriatric care and learned from this the suffering that dementia brings, both to the families of the patients and to the patients themselves.
My personal experience as a nurse working with dementia makes this subject one which for me is
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Aran Illingworth
East of Eden Your work also address concerns based on social issues and political ones, including the theme of
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women's social situation: Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once remarked that "artists's role differs
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Aran Illingworth
ART Habens
What child is this? depending on which part of the world they’re in. It depends on the political system they aree living
under": how do you consider the role of artists in our globalised and media driven contemporary
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Liittle Buckland Gallery
ART Habens
Aran Illingworth
age? And how do you think your works respond to it in finding hidden, crystallised moments in the everyday?
them after the exhibition itself has been taken down. 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, Aran. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future?
The role of the artist in contemporary society is potentially a highly influential one. Artists who are able to master the unprecedented opportunities offered by modern media are able to reach a truly global audience in a way which would have been literally inconceivable a few years ago. When I publish an image of a work on social media for instance, I regularly get responses from every continent in the world. I react to this as though it is perfectly normal and this in itself is in a way very strange. Consequently, artwork which has a certain political or social message or implication can have a political or social impact in ways and in places which is quite unpredictable. So the role of the artist is now that of global influencer, although the outcome is often too remote geographically to be visible to the artist themselves.
Firstly, let me also thank you myself for giving me this opportunity to share my thoughts and experiences in a depth which is unprecedented in my career. I plan to continue in my future work to explore the themes I have previously addressed – for instance, issues around poverty and social exclusion particularly in relation to women and children. The scope of my interest is gradually expanding as I go further down my chosen path. A clear example of this in my current work is that concerns around deprivation have now expanded to take in the impact of social exclusion on men as well as women; my recent two-part work entitled ‘East of Eden’ shows two homeless people – a man as well as a woman, both struggling for survival while living on the streets. As much as the scope of subjects addressed is increasing, so is the technical range of what I do. Several works over the past year have used the so-called ‘Or Nu goldwork’ technique of very fine silk stitching over vertical gold threads, and this has addressed not only old themes such as religious imagery of the Madonna and Child but also new themes such as a landscape study of reflections on water. I am also completing a series of portraits of my immediate family. For me, like so many others, this is a journey and I am never entirely sure where this is leading. To quote a well-known saying, it is sometimes better to travel expectantly than to arrive.
Over the years your artworks have been showcased in a number of occasions, including your recent show at St. Pancras Hospital, in London: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? And what do you hope your audience take away from your artworks? The audience in the case of St Pancras Hospital includes people who typically have medical and psychiatric experience, whether as healthcare professionals or patients. The professional audience connects with work which is relevant to their line of work, as with ‘The Art of Caring’, and because I get to meet the audience this means I am able to build a direct relationship with them and understand better their responses to my work. People who have worked in war zones or with children in poverty will be drawn to works on those subjects because of the strong relevant experience which they bring as viewers. I hope the audience will take away a lasting impression of the topics addressed in my work and that this will become a source of reflection and questioning for
SummerIssue 2015 Special
An interview by and
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, curator curator
Lives and works in London, UK
The Heat Map
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Ayse Akarca
ART Habens
video, 2013
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The Eye Issue Special
Ayse Akarca
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An interview by and
, curator curator
Hello Ayse and welcome to ART Habens. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. Are there any experiences that did particularly influence your evolution as an artist? In particular, prior to turning back to Fine Arts, you worked as a scientific researcher. What made you decide to switch careers? As a child I was brought up in a household with a very protective mother, so I was not allowed to play outside with my friends, and in a sense I was isolated, therefore, I was left for many hours playing by myself with my toys, which led me to create a little magical world in my head. As a young child I use to love colouring and painting and this continued till my early twenties. Unfortunately painting took a backseat in my life, because when I migrated to the UK to continue my education I had to deal with very difficult life challenges at that time. After 7 years of hardship and difficulty I managed to get my dream job in a scientific laboratory at a fantastic institute, and a year after that I had my first scientific publication, which was on hairy cell leukaemia. I was so incredibly
Ayse Akarca photo by Gus Patterson
over joyed about my achievement in this competitive environment that I very much wanted to capture that feeling forever, this is when I decided to get out my art tools and create my first piece called The Hairy Look. So I guess in a sense science triggered the artistic spark back into my life and continues to influence my work. The
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Ayse Akarca
truth is that, this is not a career change it is a career combination. I feel complete when I combine my laboratory research skills, knowledge, and experiences with my art. I cannot stop asking myself whether I am a scientific artist or an artistic scientist. We have appreciated the way the results of your artistic inquiry convey a coherent combination between intuition and rigorous aesthetics to question the relationship between the real and the abstract: we would like to invite our readers to visit http://ayseakarca.wixsite.com in order to get a wide idea about your artistic production: when walking our readers through your usual setup and process, we would like to ask you if you think that there is a central idea that connects all of your work as an artist. In my art, I focus on transferring the inspiration and excitement that I find within my research discoveries, onto the canvas. However, in reality the inspiration for creating these beautiful pieces stem from my work with tumour samples that come from both leukaemia and cancer patients. In my research I use these tumour tissue samples in order to find innovative solutions for unmet medical needs to prevent disease and improve lives. At first glance, the vivid and mostly bright colours of majority of my art will most probably trigger happiness and
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Ayse Akarca
ART Habens
The Smoke Series 21 4 06
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Ayse Akarca
The Smoke Series Special Issue
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Ayse Akarca
ART Habens
curiosity in the viewer. These feelings will then be replaced by sadness and a sober self-reflection, once the viewer realises the origin of my inspirations. Therefore I believe that melancholy is the core element that connects all of my artwork. For this special edition of ART Habens we have selected The Heat Map and The Smoke, a couple of captivating artworks that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured our attention of your body of works is the way you sapiently combined vivacious and at the same time delicate tones with abstract feeling: how did you conceived these interesting artworks? Visual language is essential for my research work. In science, heat map is a data visualization tool for gene expression profiling that can give information on genetic makeup of individuals. In this technique the use of different colours creates an easy and effective way of identifying which genes in the human body is associated with disease. Based on the cancer sample that I was working on in my research I painted the unhealthy genes or “danger zones” as red and healthy genes or “safe zones” as green in The Heat Map painting. Now when translating the heat map into artistic language, I found myself using abstract, as this technique not only allows me to convey my emotions, but it
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Ayse Akarca
also most importantly allows the viewer to have the freedom of interpretation. However, I had to make sure that the scientific information is not missed in this artistic translation, that’s why I had to use delicate tones as well. The Smoke is based on my quest for trying to find optimum results in my research but instead being faced with imperfect results and repetition. This shaped my thought of constant need for seeking perfection in our flawed lives. While I was painting this piece I was simultaneously pioneering in a specific scientific staining technique that required multi-layering of different molecular markers. I think this definitely influenced the underpainting techniques that I used while working on painting. We have really appreciated the vibrancy of nuances of your canvas, and we like the way the vivacious tones of Cross Reaction create tension and dynamics. How did you come about settling on your color palette? And how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in an artwork and in particular, how do you develop a texture? In my research I have to stain tumor tissue with different dyes, and at times cross-reaction can occur, at this point I know that the experiment has failed. When this happens I have to pretty
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Ayse Akarca
ART Habens
The Hope 21 4 10
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Ayse Akarca
The Hairy Look Special Issue
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Ayse Akarca
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much abandon the experiment and start over again until I get the desired result. At one point I had to repeat a specific staining case for about 20 times, which took months to achieve optimum results. During this period, I started working on the Cross Reaction piece, which embodies my psychological mood at that stressful time. As you can see in this painting I have used mainly lighter tones to highlight hope, endurance and patience that I had at the time. While the use of harsher and darker tones, which is very sporadic and far in between, represent the disappointment and frustration that I felt with each negative result. We appreciate your successful attempt of making people aware of the assuming beauty that is often overlooked in their busy lives. In this sense, we daresay that your artistic practice seems to aim to look inside of what appear to be seen, rather than its surface, providing the spectatorship with freedom to realize their own perception. How important is for you to invite the viewers to elaborate personal meaning? And in particular, how open would you like your works to be understood? I invite and encourage personal interoperation, as without it my art is incomplete. I can say that my art is an extension of my personality and if my
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The One
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Ayse Akarca
viewers would like to know me and understand the message that I am trying to relay, they have to go through this journey with me with their own perception. My art is not specific to a particular sect of the society, it is open to anyone who is interested in the fusion of these two worlds (science and art), anyone that like finding beauty in somewhere that is void, and anyone that can see a piece of themselves in my work and can relate to my message. You are a versatile artist and you incorporate a wide variety of approaches; paint is poured, dripped and squeegeed across canvases. Artist Lydia Dona once remarked that in order to make paintings today one has to re-evaluate the conceptual language behind the mechanism of painting: are your works painted gesturally, instinctively? Or do you methodically transpose geometric schemes from paper to canvas? I can truly say that even my painting techniques are inspired by my scientific research. My work is both gesturally and instinctively and I find myself using whatever tools I need to transfer my thoughts and emotions onto the canvas, whether it be dripping paint or using unconventional tools such as wood chips or sometimes laboratory equipment such as pipettes and dispensers. We like the way you explore the visual language of abstraction, knowledge and
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Ayse Akarca
ART Habens
The Centres 21 4 14
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Ayse Akarca
The Colour District Special Issue
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techniques used in the scientific field, and your artworks often include references to the realm of imagination: would you tell us something about the importance of symbols and reminders to the dreamlike dimension in your imagery? My scientific research is based on a pursuit of answers for specific scientific questions that are unknown. These findings are completely based on evidence and confined to logic. I would say that most of my artwork is not based on imagination, since it reflects the reality of what I work with in my scientific research. As an artist, I try to express the reality of what I see in my research and transfer that intuitive understanding by working with different colour expressions to communicate the misery and pain of disease. As you have remarked in the ending lines of your artist's statement, your artistic practice aims to highlight innovative approaches that push the boundaries between science and art: as an artist with a solid background as a Research Scientist, how do you consider the relationship between art and scientific research? From my point of view, I find that my research and art do profoundly complement one another. Every part of
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Deep Down
ART Habens
Ayse Akarca
my research is complicated and I come across a lot of difficulties and competition. However, I cherish every moment of it, as it is this stress and intensive situation that set the ground for my artwork. In brief, I feel that my art starts in the scientific laboratory and ends on the artistic canvas. Your artworks have often ambiguous titles, that allow you to clarify the message: how do you go about naming your work? In particular, is important for you to tell something that might walk the viewers through their visual experience? Any stage of my experiments, from planning, material and methods, interpreting the results, or even the type of disease that the research is based on, may influence the name of my artwork. I think that I will continue naming my art in this way, since my research feeds my artistic production. Over the years your artworks have been showcased in a number of occasions and you currently exhibit nationally in solo and group shows: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? And what do you hope your audience take away from your artworks? Art for me is very personal; in my case, it is a way of giving a voice to the loud and intense emotions that I feel. Having said
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Ayse Akarca
ART Habens
With Flow Series 21 4 18
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Ayse Akarca
With Flow Series 2 Special Issue
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Ayse Akarca
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that when creating a piece I have to be conscious of my audience, in making sure that the true message of the work which is disease awareness, does not get over shadowed by my emotions. Being able to communicate my message to the audience is crucial to my work. I rely greatly on Tolstoy’s concept of art being a universal language and that art is relevant to every aspect of the human condition. By using this universal language I aim to shorten the gap between the scientific and the art world. It is important for me that my audience understand and appreciate the equilibrium that flows between beauty of life and the misery of disease, as most of my art is based on true-life stories, in that it is based on the painful reality of challenging diseases that people face. I found a way to tell the patient’s story by using my artistic language with any technique that I see fit for that story to come through to the viewer. We have appreciated the originality 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, Ayse. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future?
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Ayse Akarca
ART Habens
Up to now I have been selective with my scientific research, translating a few of them into artistic language. However, I am planning on extending my research into other cancer types such as breast, prostate and colon, which are unfortunately effecting a large amount of the UK population. As I have experienced before each pattern of tissue from different diseases have the tendency of sparking new emotions within me, which I plan to use to create my art. Adding to my research is the specific cell-to-cell communication pathways and the signals that these cells transmit to one another which can change the behavior of the molecules. This is very important to the research world and myself as these cellular communications play a key role in cell mutations and tumor development, causing different types of cancer. I am very excited about this future aspect of my work because I anticipate that the representation of this particular type of research requires adding specific textures. Therefore, I see myself utilizing new and definitely unconventional materials to bring my work to life, while still keeping the dignity of my inspirations. The main message of my work would always be bring awareness to the life threatening diseases that surround us and appreciating the delicacy of life. An interview by and
SummerIssue 2015 Special
, curator curator
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Ayse Akarca
ART Habens
Cross Reaction 21 4 22
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Lives and works in Paris, France
Gare Aux Loups Untitled 4 76x104cm cardboard
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Pheuil
ART Habens
video, 2013
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ART Habens
Special Gare AuxIssue Loups, Untitled 7 75x115cm canvas
Pheuil
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An interview by and
, curator curator
Hello Pheuil and welcome to ART Habens. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. As a self taught artist, are there any experiences that did particularly influence your evolution as a visual artist? In particular, how does the relationship between your cultural substratum due to your French roots and your current life in London direct the trajectory of your current artistic research? I had started painting very young. It was a way to express myself freely. It had lasted during my years at college. I have resumed painting in New York in 2009. It was like a "vital" need. My life in New York was very stressful. Painting had become a way to express myself and to let my imagination free. I had joined a drawing class at the Met Museum every Saturday. I love visiting the Met Museum. I could visit the museum for hours. In New York, I have realized that art will take center stage in my life. In November 2010, I had moved to Montreal (QC) and had started abstract painting in parallel with figurative painting. I have also made sculptures. I had moved back to Europe in November 2011. The Impressionist movement is a great source of inspiration for both subjects, technique and color compositions. I have returned to live in London in 2013. I continue to paint portraits / animals / nature. My oil painting technique has improved significantly. During my last years in London, I have painted in parallel a figurative painting and an abstract painting.
Pheuil
replaced oil painting. I have used both canvas and cardboard. In this new artistic path, I find more emotions, lightness, joy and strength. The works of Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Nicolas de Stael, Picasso, Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring have had a major influence in the development of my artistic path.
My technique and inspirations have evolved into abstract painting with a major trend that is more spontaneous: acrylic painting (and collages) has
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ART Habens
Pheuil
Gare Aux Loups Untitled 2 94x106cm cardboard
All in one way led me down an artistic pathway developing my own unique style.
your usual setup and process, we would like to ask you if you think that there are any central ideas that connect all your artworks.
We have appreciated the way the results of your artistic inquiry convey such a coherent combination between intuition and a rigorous aesthetics: when walking our readers through
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I like abstract art (more than figurative art) because there is an energetic spontaneity in the creativity process.
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Pheuil
ART Habens
Gare Aux Loups Untitled 94x106cm cardboard
My aesthetic trademark is a mix of Basquiat and de Stael.
For this special edition of ART Habens we have selected Gare Aux Loups, an interesting series that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: what has at once impressed us is the way they provide the viewers with an intense multilayered visual experience: when walking our readers to
Whereas outside influences exist in my work, I want to have my own aesthetic trademark and identity. That's my goal.
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Gare Aux Loups Untitled 60x93cm cardboard
ART Habens
Pheuil
Gare Aux Loups Untitled 49x94cm cardboard
Gare Aux Loups Untitled 45x93cm cardboard
the genesis of Gare Aux Loups, would you tell us something about your sources of inspiration?
having fun, squabbling. However, as a self taught artist much of my inspiration comes from observation and experimentation. I remember this quote from Picasso: "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to
I have started painting the serie "Gare aux Loups!" as opposed to my portrait paintings. I have created these hybrid characters. They are
Special Issue
23 4 09
Pheuil
ART Habens
Gare Aux Loups Untitled 94x106cm cardboard
remain an artist once he grows up. "
The spontaneity holds a central in the series "gare aux loups!". Spontaneity and freedom are the source of my imagination. The energy of spontaneity is enhanced by the choice of acrylic paint (which dries quickly),
Do you conceive you works instinctively or do you methodically elaborate your pieces? In particular, how importance does spontaneity play in your artistic practice?
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ART Habens
Pheuil
Gare Aux Loups Untitled 5 45x92cm cardboard collages, cardboard paper, the use of pencils, and
thoughtful nuances of the vivacious, intense
the choice of bright colors.
tones that mark out your palette, to create tension and dynamics. How did you come about
We have really appreciated the vibrancy of
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settling on your color palette? And how much
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Pheuil
ART Habens
does your own psychological make-up determine
The texture is made of collage of magazine
the nuances of tones that you decide to include
articles, line drawn in pen, and acrylic paint. I try
in a specific artwork and in particular, how do
to use the primary colors first.
you develop a texture?
The works of Nicolas de Stael have a major
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ART Habens
Pheuil
Gare Aux Loups Untitled 75x115cm canvas
Gare Aux Loups Untitled 8 75x115 cm canvas
influence on the color palette I use.
The characters seem to be "angry" but they are optimistic. They look at the world with the eyes of a child.
We daresay that your artistic practice seems to invite the viewers to look inside of what appear to be seen, rather than its surface, providing the spectatorship with freedom to realize their own perception. How important is for you to invite the viewers to elaborate personal meaning? And in particular, how open would you like your works to be understood?
You like raw medium and you usually include paper box and packing box. Photographer and sculptor Zoe Leonard once remarked that, "the objects that we leave behind hold the marks and the sign of our use: like archeological findings, they reveal so much about us". We’d love to ask you about the qualities of the materials that you include in your artworks, with a particular focus on your current artistic production: in particular,
The serie "gare aux loups!" is an invitation to reflect on our environment, in the broad sense.
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Pheuil
ART Habens
Gare Aux Loups Untitled 6 75x115cm canvas
Gare Aux Loups, Untitled 1 75x113cm canvas
what does attract you of packing box paper?
representation and a tendency towards abstraction find their balance in your work?
I put forward spontaneity and imagination. Using “raw� media like cardboard helps to emphasize the energy of spontaneity. Above all, the technique and media must be secondary.
I come to abstract painting naturally. You could say I am a kind of "hyperactive" guy. The spontaneity of abstract work often leads me to creating three or four paintings in parallel.
We like the way you artworks convey such a stimulating combination between figurative elements and captivating abstract feeling, creating such an oniric atmosphere: how would you consider the relationship between abstraction and figurative in your practice? In particular, how does
I do not oppose abstract painting and figurative painting. In figurative painting, everything has been done. The Impressionist movement shows us another way: it was no longer about capturing the reality
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ART Habens
Pheuil
Gare Aux Loups Untitled 26x41 inch cardboard
of the moment but more about capturing the moment, the feeling of things.
I’d like them to enjoy my paintings as much as I have enjoyed painting them.
Although initially viewed as controversial it opened the door to a new means of expression which has richly influenced the creative world ever since.
Like many people there is a creative spark within that needs to be addressed. In my case it was the love of art and the need to express my creativity that led me to painting.
We like the way your artworks establish direct involvement with the viewers: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? And what do you hope your audience take away from your artworks?
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, Pheuil. What projects are
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17
Pheuil
ART Habens
Then, I’d like to use big canvases (1mx2m or
you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future?
above). I’d like to combine more characters.
I have moved back to France last October (still in search for a studio with a decent surface). I am still working on the serie “gare aux loups!”. I have started to use the new canvases (75x115cm) I am planning to paint 10 paintings.
An interview by and
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, curator curator
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Lives and works in London, UK
I love sepia photos and the feeling they give to me and I'm trying to give to the public the same experience using the raw umber colour. My painting are presented in puzzle format because rappresent the different moment, memory, instant, feelings that I had with the person. I think the most important part of my paintings are the eyes of the person that I portrayed and what the public seeing in and trough their eyes. Daughters (Ariam, Yodit , Janice , Maya, Emma , Ladye)
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Erika Barillari Davel
ART Habens
video, 2013
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ART Habens
Eyes Issue Special
Erika Barillari Davel
4 03
An interview by and
, curator curator
Hello Erika and welcome to ART Habens. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and you attended Matric at Paul Klee's High School and then you later earned the professional qualification of Frescoes restoration and decoration technician: how did those formative years influence your evolution as an artist? In particular, how does you multifaceted cultural substratum due to the years you spent in South Africa, Dubai and Hong Kong direct the trajectory of your current artistic research? Thank you Art Habens for taking an interest in my art artwork and giving me the opportunity to tell you more about me. My evolution as an artist began when I was a little girl,I was always drawing, fascinated with art and how it made one feel. I grew up in Italy where I had the opportunity to further my interest in art where my education was mainly influenced by classical art techniques. Despite my classical formative years,I always wanted to experiment with new techniques and and make new experiences. This desire and curiosity led me along a self taught path of discoveries.
Covered #4 30 x 20cm, 12 x 10�
heritage of each place, and humbly understand and respect everything that crossed my path. I felt every moment and every place in special way and I have tried to express this in my artwork. Of course each place influenced my evolution as an artist, making me a richer person.
Definitely the knowledge gained from my formative years influenced my creativity, the mixture of texture and elements(such as the use of classical sketching, raw amber colour, modern materials and techniques) present in my artwork, especially in my painting. I have been very blessed to have lived in many different cultures,I have tried to absorb the
Every place resulted in a different artistic journey, and each one of them are clearly
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ART Habens
Erika Barillari Davel
Puzzle
divergent, yet connected by the process that I
We have appreciated the way the results of your artistic inquiry convey such a coherent
use to represent them.
Special Issue
combination between intuition and a rigorous
23 4 05
Erika Barillari Davel
ART Habens
Elizabeth (part of new series : Drops of Revival)
aesthetics, and we would like to invite our
to get a wide idea about your artistic
readers to visit
production: when walking our readers
http://www.erikabarillaridavel.com in order
through your usual setup and process, we
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Portraits (Emanuela, Zoe, Trish)
ART Habens
Erika Barillari Davel
Cathy
would like to ask you if you think that there is a central idea that connects all your works.
and experiment with, to draw out the subject expressions from . I particularly like to enhance the eyes in a portrait, as they reflect the light that each one of us has inside.
I am fascinated about the faces of people, women in particular, the way their different expressions connect to an instant in time and their feelings. This provides me with such a vast array of material to explore, experience
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This can change according to the situation or
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Erika Barillari Davel
ART Habens
Labola Man
Labola Woman
moment, which can make them appear dim. My art is about showing my vulnerability and
belief, but also, I hope to leave a mark of my ce and heart on the audience.
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ART Habens
Erika Barillari Davel
Red
For this special edition of ART Habens we have selected The Daughters series, an
Special Issue
interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the
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Erika Barillari Davel
introductory pages of this article. We have really appreciated the vibrancy of thoughtful
ART Habens
nuances of your canvas, and we like the way they create tension and dynamics. How did
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ART Habens
Special Issue Emma
Erika Barillari Davel
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Erika Barillari Davel
ART Habens
Maya
you come about settling on your color palette? And how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in a specific artwork and in particular, how do you develop a texture?
Ladye
the Connection between them, as they know each other.
All my paintings are different and they mean something about the person being painted. I choose the colours, the brush stroke and the way the brush touches the canvas to leave a mark that represents the expression of my perception of that person. In the “Daughters Series” I chose a range of colours that represent the purity, innocence and feelings of “day dreaming” typical of young girls. It’s an introspective view of these young girls, hope, lights, dreams and it reflects in how I see them on the outside, in a unique way. The colours are the same, although I used different texture on this occasion, to enhance
What’s your philosophy on the nature of the portrait? How do you select the people that you decide to include in your artworks? Portraits show the inner essence of the person, reflecting my point of view, not just a likeness. I think if you decide to draw or paint someone, in a certain way it is like falling in love, to be so fascinated about something you have seen in that person, that you decide to make that moment never die. It is like capturing a glimpse of that person in a very unique way. Like the majority of artists, I select my subject according to according to
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ART Habens
Erika Barillari Davel
Yodit
what I see and experience in everyday life. The eyes are the specific element that make
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me choose a person to be portrayed, it is not about the shape or the colour but that special
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Erika Barillari Davel
ART Habens
Ariam
light, and the way that I see the person. This is like opening a door to the most deepest part of themselves.
As you have remarked in your artist's statement, the most important part of your paintings are the eyes of the person that you 21 4 14
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ART Habens
Erika Barillari Davel
portrayed and what the public seeing in and trough their eyes: we daresay that your artistic practice seems to aim to look inside of what appear to be seen, rather than its surface, providing the spectatorship with freedom to realize their own perception. How important is for you to invite the viewers to elaborate personal meaning? It is the essence of art for me, to create a reaction towards the artwork observed. This should evoke thoughts, feelings, memories or an idea of any kind. My fascination is to look at someone on a deeper level rather than just considering the surface appearance of their features, this influences the connection with the materials and colours I use. This is how I capture the core of the person, not only the surface, portraying the essence and the truth in my subject. You usually paint large canvas and most of your artwork is being 800x1000 or larger: how do the dimensions of your canvass affect your workflow? The choice of the canvases used is connected, and has been influenced by my previous work experience working on large scale projects. This give me the confidence necessary to find balance between my subject and style. I like to play with the different sizes of the canvases that form my paintings as they are connected to the subject, and have specific meaning as they enhance my view of the person. It’s like putting together the pieces of a puzzle, this explain the reason the series of my paintings, are presented altogether as a completed element. The sizes are connected with my creativity but also with the practicable format that can fit easily in the suitcase of the buyers.
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We like the way you artworks convey such a stimulating combination between figurative elements and a subtle, captivating abstract feeling, whose background creates such an oniric atmosphere: how would you consuder the relationship between abstraction and figurative in your practice? In particular, how does representation and a slight tendency towards abstraction find their balance in your work? Painting someone for me is a mixture of figurative expression and feelings. The abstract part is connected with emotions and represented through the colours chosen and the background that I create according to the subject. This balanced with my representation on the surface of the figures which forms the realistic part, together this creates a deep journey that makes me expose my sensitivity to the subject. The harmony between the figurative and the abstraction can be found in the silver lining of the representation of the person, as I am trying to emphasise the hopeful and brighter side towards what might seem dull on the surface. My work tries to express feelings of peace, and an experience of positive emotions, through the earth colours used in my figurative elements, and the warm colours used in the other part of the painting. With society in such a state of flux and uncertainty at the moment, how do you think your works respond to it in finding hidden, crystallised moments in the everyday? And how does your everyday life's experience fuel your creative process? I think our society is so frenetic, and our time so constrained by a filled schedule to be completed everyday, that we lose our glimpse of the very important moments or distant
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Women
Cheeky
Erika Barillari Davel
ART Habens
experience in my routine no matter how difficult this can be. I look at everything with a different perspective and under different light according to my beliefs, as much as any other artists. My perception of things transcends the language barrier and tries to look behind the veil of the reality to create something so imaginative that it captures your attention. Over the years your artworks have been showcased in a number of occasions, including your recent show at Contemporary Venice: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? And what do you hope your audience take away from your artworks? When I finish my work and it becomes visible to the public it takes on a life and purpose that become uniquely based on how the viewers see it. I feel that the response or interpretations of the viewers to the portrait, is created in the exact instant they look at it. This is the moment in which the painting actually exist again, it is brought again to life but in a different way to that when I created the art work. Pride
When the viewers are facing the work they are free to investigate my intention and technique and draw their own conclusions. This could be things from their own life that it reminds them of when they look at my painting. I express idea and feelings in my work, but the viewer can try to solve the riddle and reveal the mystery. This can sometimes remain unsolved, as the work can be interpreted differently by each person. However, I hope my paintings will push the viewers to get to the bottom of the content of the work, leaving them a precious and unforgettable experience of reflections and
views of memories, that revealing what really is in our inner place. We have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing This great treasure. I’m trying to show my vision of the inner feelings that each of us have hidden inside somewhere, through the expression of an instant in the face portrayed and in the combination of my canvases. I live everyday as a gift trying to find joy in everything that I
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Erika Barillari Davel
ART Habens
joy captured also from the light in the eyes of each subject. 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, Erika. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future? I’m currently working on my new series called “ Drops of Revival ” which will include a self-portrait. It’s a journey through the changes that have happened in us and a realisation of where true freedom lies. It is a reflection of the past with a hope of a bright future by closing doors gently. The water is the connection with the new beginning, cleaning the past and bringing in a fresh start, being comfortable with who we are and finding joy inside us not in the presence or absence of something or someone. I will use different types of canvases and different mediums in this particular series. My future ideas are undefined at the moment as it is a result of constant inspiration affected from my environment and emotions, but I will always include a figurative element. An interview by and
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, curator curator
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Erika Barillari Davel
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ART Habens
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Lives and works in Birmingham, United Kingdom and Rome, Italy
Better Boy Digital Photography Pareidolia
ART Habens
Special Issue Forbidden Fruit Digitally enhanced drawing
Homer Fives
4 03
An interview by and
, curator curator
Hello Homer and welcome to ART Habens. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would like to invite our readers to visit https://homerfives.crevado.com and we we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background: are there any experiences that did particularly influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, do you think that there is a central idea that connects all the works of your artistic production? Cinema, comic books and the art treasures of ancient Rome Were the pivotal influences that ignited my passion for the visual arts. In my late teens, I also began to develop a keen interest in the works of Magritte, Ernst and other leading exponents of the Surrealists movement.
toy handguns and could be viewed perhaps, as being an indictment of the burgeoning gun crime epidemic sweeping some of our major towns and cities.
For this special edition of ART Habens we have selected Five Easy Pieces and Shackles, a couple of interesting artworks that our readers have already got to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured our attention of your artworks is the way they convey such a stimulating abstract feeling: would you tell us something about your usual setup and process? How do you usually conceive your artworks?
Shackles: This one is really wide open ; I’ll start first – “ Habit: A shackle for the free” Bill Shakespeare. Now, over to you. . My modus operandi goes something along these lines: I sit alone and dejected in a heap of detritus on my studio floor with Loving Spoonful’s classic 60’s hit “Daydream”, on repeat. I will then regurgitate an idea until the onset of nausea, knowing full well that eventually, the
Five Easy Pieces: ( “pieces” referring to the quintuple of firearms depicted in the work) brings together a number of disparate elements such as rubber shoe heels, plastic food packaging,
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SOS Vincent, found objects on board
ART Habens
Homer Fives
inner voice of creative reason will come to my rescue. I now find myself in the presence of an angel of mercy, her compassionate, dulcet tones offering much-needed guidance and reassurance, to save me from plunging headfirst into the gaping chasm of self-doubt that lies before me. . What a gal ! We have really appreciated the vibrancy of nuances of The Duchess of Wardour Street, and we like the way your pallette shows that vivacious tones are not strictly indespensable to create tension and dynamics. How did you come about settling on your color palette? And how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in an artwork and in particular, how do you develop a texture? Duchess relates to a “courtesan”, based in the sleezy London Wardour Street area and attempts to portray the controlling influence this woman gleefully exerts over her besotted male clients. The “techniques”, if that is the appropriate term, that I employ as a self– taught practitioner, are usually a mix of trial and error and creative intuition. Texture is usually established using a brush but there are exceptions such as Red Apple, where a more unusual flame+wax method was adopted. Do you conceive you works instinctively or do you methodically elaborate your pieces? In particular, how importance does spontaneity play in your artistic practice?
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Homer Fives
ART Habens
Canyons Moulded Canvas 21 4 06
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ART Habens
Homer Fives
Shackles Digital photography Special Issue
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Homer Fives
ART Habens
Instinct is my General, spontaneity a valued subordinate -but not always. Would you tell us your sources of inspiration? In particular, how importance does everyday life's experience fuel your creative process? It may well be, that the trials and tribulations of life have indeed a significant role to play, once refracted through the prism of a labyrinthine psyche. Inspiration- A mythical, empowering force shrouded in mystery. . or just a Pegasus chasing a light bulb ?, We daresay that your artworks, as the interesting Red Apple, seem to to aim to look inside of what appear to be seen, rather than its surface, providing the spectatorship with freedom to realize their own perception. How important is for you to invite the viewers to elaborate personal meaning? And in particular, how open would you like your works to be understood? “A red apple attracts stones� an ancient eastern proverb, I believe. The foreground figure, is essentially a disrobed rendition of the Statue of Liberty, closely observed by a gimlet-eyed usurper, intent on subverting western democracy and ideals with a pernicious and totalitarian ideology. Alternative interpretations of my work are most welcome: I believe creators and viewers should both enjoy the same freedoms. We like the way you artworks convey such a stimulating combination between figurative elements and captivating abstract feeling, creating such an oniric atmosphere: how would you consuder the relationship between abstraction and figurative in your
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Celsius Found objects Digital photography
Red Apple Flame and wax on board
practice? In particular, how does representation and a tendency towards abstraction find their balance in your work?
Your artworks often include elements rich of symbolic elements: would you tell us something about the importance of symbols and reminders to the dream-like dimension in your imagery?
The abstracted and the figurative–Equal partners coalesced in a metaphysical landscape.
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Homer Fives
ART Habens
Five Easy Pieces Found objects on board /Mixed Media 21 4 10
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ART Habens
Homer Fives
The Duchess of Wardour Street Acrylic on canvas
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Homer Fives
ART Habens
Inner Child Found objects
I can’t say that I make a conscious effort to
some observers may discern the presence of a
employ a set of specific techniques or
shared underlying narrative.
concepts but nonetheless, can appreciate that
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The Gastronomer Found objects
ART Habens
Homer Fives
Downtown LA –Tired and hungry, I meander along West Century Boulevard, pursued by a leaden blanket of searing California heat. A bearded man dressed in rags, approaches me: ‘Spare a dollar, mister“?, he slurs. I reach into my pocket and grudgingly cough up green. I walk on. Meal Deal $1.99, reads the sun–bleached sign. I usually avoid fast food but at close to five in the afternoon, I’m running on empty and so a decision is made: Let’s do it. The flimsy plastic tray is decked with what looks to be real food - meat, mashed potatoe and sweetcorn and it even smells like the real thing. I have a taste -and then it hits me: I had just blown my last couple of bucks on nothing more than camouflaged cardboard in a dishwater sauce. Hence, The Gastronomer: Fittingly crafted in wood, plastic and cardboard plus a little poisoned fly, that should’ve known better.
Dogma Flame and wax on board
SOS Vincent
months later, I come across some mobile
I just couldn’t part with an empty plastic fruit juice bottle –
phone stands, in the shape of “rubber ears”
Something about the shape of the thing intrigued me, so into storage it went. Several
take my eyes off them. I promptly return
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for sale at my local bargain store and just can’t home with at least half a dozen, without
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Homer Fives
actually recognizing their true purpose until much later. .
ART Habens
I have been “predisposed” to seeing the human likeness in inanimate objects since infancy and at first, was afraid to discuss it with anyone for fear of possible ridicule and reprisals.
A slow burner but kind of worth it. Pareidolia –
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The Kiss Digital Photography Pareidolia
ART Habens
Homer Fives
Now, I have no such reservations and would like to share the following “finds” with your readers:
your thoughts, Homer. What projects are you
The Kiss: Stumbled across a couple of savoy cabbages cheek–to- cheek in a bowl: An impromptu homage to
the ideas that you hope to explore in the
currently working on, and what are some of
future?
Magritte’s “The Lovers” ?
A graphic novel could be on the cards but it is all very much “up in the air“ at the moment but
Better Boy:
while we find ourselves at high altitude, I could
A somewhat mangled tomatoe with such an expressive “face” that all I had to do, was hit the lights, point an led torch at my subject and watch it “pop” and come alive before my very eyes.
also add, that I am seriously considering taking a crash course in cosmology. What a thrill it would be, to learn how to get all those blessed planets to align in my favour but suspect that
Pareidolia does not come much better than this, folks !
sadly, the whole enterprise would perhaps lie beyond my orbit.
Over the years your artworks have been exhibited in several occasions, including your shows at Infusion Gallery in Los Angeles and at Detroit Mona. How do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? And what do you hope your audience take away from your artworks?
I’ve really enjoyed the chinwag and the tea and biscuits.
Maybe we could do it again, sometime.
I aim to engage, stimulate and challenge and invite my audience to question, dissect and analize, should they wish to do so. The relationship between me and the viewer is symbiotic, of that I have little doubt but may I suggest, that we also consider the words of the esteemed artist Sir Francis Bacon:
-Ciao for now The one (and thankfully only)
Homer Fives 2019 “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery” An interview by
We have appreciated the originality of your artistic research and before leaving this stimulating conversation we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for sharing
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and
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, curator curator
Homer Fives
ART Habens
Recall, Acrylic on torn box canvas
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Lives and works in ____________
Out of School, 50x70 cm, 2018
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Angel Loaiza
ART Habens
video, 2013
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ART Habens
Angel Loaiza
03 From the Land, From the Air, 2018 30x20cm, oil on canvas4 Special Issue
An interview by and
, curator curator
Hello Angel and welcome to ART Habens. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and after having earned your Bachelor of Painting from PUCP, in Lima, you moved from Peru to Italy to nurture your education with your studies at the Angel Academy of Art in Florence, Italy: how did these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? In particular, how the culture of Peru, your native country, direct the trajectory of your current artistic research? First of all, I would like to thank you guys for selecting me and allowing me to share my views in art in your publication, I’m very thankful for this. These two schools I attended to, allowed me to understand painting in a very complete way. Basically in Lima, a lot of the teaching was based on the impressionists and abstract painters, it had more to do with color and values, than drawing (by values I mean nuances of grey), and also abstract composition, which I believe is very important. Then in Italy, we learned more about the drawing aspect of painting, which is something I felt I needed. To learn how to draw in painting and understand the game of light. These two experiences complemented really well, and allowed me to understand what painting is all about.
Angel Loaiza
and human values that are so important, universal and timeless. For me it’s important to share this ideas, because we are forgetting about them.
For the second part of the question, I think that art has a role in society, it has always been in the forefront of human development, and even evolution.
We have appreciated the way the results of your artistic inquiry convey such a coherent combination between imagination and a rigorous aesthetics, and we would like to invite our readers to visit http://www.angel-loaiza.com in order to get a wide idea about your artistic production: when walking our readers through your usual setup and process, we would like to ask you if you
The culture of Peru (and the American continent) has always been present for me, and since art has a role in society, and that is to renew ideas and bring things that are needed, I believe that the culture of America is needed now. Through capitalism, the law of the market and globalization, we are becoming more and more detached from nature,
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ART Habens
Angel Loaiza
think that there is a central idea that connects all your works. Even though I’ve studied a lot of art, in total I’ve done 9 years of painting, and you know, artistic education can severely damage your natural input. I’ve always wanted to keep that feeling of freedom and un-attachment I had when I was un-educated, and this is central to my work. Over the years I’ve done many series of paintings I like to call “Collections”, that to some people might come across as a little short lived, un-related or totally random, but for me there is always a central idea of just being thankful and true to what I’ve always done (ever since I was a kid) which is just to imagine something, and draw it, but also, I want it to be useful and positive for my audience. I want to be able to tell my truth, to express what I believe in. I would say that these two ideas are central to my practice. For this special edition of ART Habens we have selected From the Land, From the Air, an interesting work that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. We have really appreciated the vibrancy of thoughtful nuances of your canvas, and we like the way they create tension and dynamics. How did you come about settling on your color palette? And how much does your own psychological make up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in a specific artwork and in particular, how do you develope a texture? Talking about psychology. Working with blue has an effect on me, it really calms me down. To me this is very appealing because I’m kind of energetic and chaotic, so when working with more conventional colors for the starting layers of a painting, like brown, or black, it’s like I can’t slow down. So blue has given me a different rhythm, allowing me to better translate what I imagine into this academic world, trying to reproduce tridimensionality and light in a painting, using my imagination.
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Angel Loaiza
ART Habens
Looking Back, 2018, 50x70 cm oil on canvas 21 4 06
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ART Habens
Angel Loaiza
Pitusiray, 2018 50x70 cm Special Issue
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Angel Loaiza
ART Habens
In this painting in particular (From the Land, From the Air), I tried to use this palette with a real reference. I did a quick self portrait, and of course, looking for this moon-lit or sunrise light, I ended up having this beautiful blue reflective light merging with the colors of the face. I always finish wrapping up the message or concept of a painting with the title, so in this case it means (at least for me) that we are from the land, because we walk, but also from the air because our imagination and spirit can fly. We like the powerful narrative drive that marks out your artworks, as Out of School and Wind, Be Again…: how does everyday life's experience fuel your creative process? I think everyday life affects my creative process. As artists we are immersed in it, so our day to day life absolutely affects our practice. For me ideas can come in dreams, meditation, conversation or simply just appear at any given moment. I think it’s the same for anybody that is advocated to creation, and that is what makes it so beautiful, and it’s mystical in a sense because you don’t really know where it comes from. For this particular painting (Out Of School) I was talking with a friend, and we basically said that there should be a reference to what I do now, in the past, in the history of painting. We got to the conclusion that probably the preraphaelites were the best parallel to what I do now. Like them, I’m aiming for something before this reality we live in now, and also for something that is living within us. This painting is a dialog with Edward Robert Hughes and his painting called The Princess Out of School. I think the image is poetic and leaves room for the audience to elaborate a new meaning, specially in this day and age with the fight for women’s rights and a title like Out of School. I intend to keep this dialog with the pre raphaelites, I enjoy their work and find inspiration in their images.
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Resting, 2018 13x19cm
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Angel Loaiza
Looking at the Heavens, 2018 18x19 cm
The second painting you refer to, (Wind, Be Again‌), I believe is a better example to what I normally do for these works, which is basically to picture a situation familiar to us. It can be the
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simplest thing, in this case, some musicians playing their instruments. I imagine and paint their faces and attitude, but the clothing, the ornaments (and instruments in this case) come from things I’ve seen
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Angel Loaiza
ART Habens
Wind Masters, 20x20 cm
and documented in museums. The title comes from the lyrics of a song called Viento (Grupo Celeste, 1974). This song is an expression of Peruvian modernity, and with that title I make reference to
that modernity but also to that wind that goes thru those instruments; so that we can be again. So yes, the narrative, the everyday life, the process, everything is entangled.
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ART Habens
Angel Loaiza
Wind, Be Again, 2018 70x140 cm
background creates such an oniric atmosphere:
We like the way your artworks convey such a stimulating combination between figurative elements and captivating abstract feeling, whose
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how would you consider the relationship between abstraction and figurative in your practice? In
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Angel Loaiza
ART Habens
particular, how does representation and a
Even though, I consider myself a figurative
tendency towards abstraction find their
painter, I can also process things in an abstract
balance in your work?
manner. For me, abstraction in the narrative of
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ART Habens
Angel Loaiza
Brothers Under The Stars, 2018
these paintings has to do specifically with the spirit
But I also have to say, that the paintings I enjoy the most,
world, the things we cannot see or touch, the reflections
are the ones that from up close seem abstract and loose,
of the light, that could be seen as cracks in reality.
but become something real when seen from a distance.
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Angel Loaiza
ART Habens
So, I’m not obsessed with finishing every work all
not interested in that, but I like to make a beautiful
the way to the limit so I can have a perfectly
painting and I believe that a painting needs to be
rendered rendition of reality, because honestly I’m
bold and fresh, it needs to have some of that
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ART Habens
Angel Loaiza
A Humble Gaze, 2017 36x20 cm
Sipan, 2018 20x30 cm
“abstraction” in it and leave space for mystery and imagination. The painters I like the most, like Velázquez, or Rubens painted in a way that from up close you don’t see the image, you see masses of color, bold brushstrokes and blobs of paint, but when you step out, then you see the painting. This is something I aim for, but I have to admit that it is something I have not yet mastered, I can get it in a very small scale, so it’s still a work in progress. I guess abstraction goes both ways, and their balance is that, in the case of my practice,
abstraction helps me narrate the spiritual side of things, but there is also this look in paintings that I really like, where the work is abstract and figurative at the same time.
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Rich of symbolism, we daresay that your artistic practice seems to aim to look inside of what appear to be seen, rather than its surface, providing the spectatorship with freedom to realize their own perception. How important is for
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Girl with Pututo, 2019 44x30 cm
Angel Loaiza
ART Habens
Humilde, 2018, 51x36 cm
Piedra, 2018, 40x27 cm
you to invite the viewers to elaborate personal meaning?
impression and opinion from the audience is very important, many times I’ve learned a great deal from it.
I love paintings that have a bit of mystery, that don’t explain everything in plain, brutal light. I like when there is room to imagine, think, and look for hidden things and information you can decipher if you want to. It’s true that I use a lot of symbols in my work, for me every painting is an encoded message.
As you have remarked in your artist's statement, you work from imagination, connecting with the past, amplifying the culture of America. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "artists's role differs depending on which part of the world they’re in. It depends on the political system they are living under": does your artistic research respond to a particular cultural moment? In particular, how important is for you to convey a positive message to the viewers?
It’s very important for me that the audience make their own story with a given painting. I would normally give just an image and a title, the rest, for sure that can be explained, but that first
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ART Habens
Angel Loaiza
An the Forge of Legends, 2018 18x18 cm
I always think of Peru first, I love its people and my art is for them. I try to make my art as universal as I can. These views and subjects sure look Peruvian,
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but the atmosphere, the narrative and the underlying feeling is universal and it can appeal to anybody. Since living in Brussels, a place with a
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Angel Loaiza
ART Habens
In my last solo show, The Shaman’s Table, I presented paintings depicting the shaman’s world, centering my view on the shaman’s working table and spiritual journeys they embark on in their practice. I also presented a table full of objects shamans in northern Peru might use.
population so diverse, I’ve come to learn that this works can be appreciated by anybody regardless of their origin or culture. I believe that I need to help in this society regardless of what I do or where I am. My artistic research responds to a particular cultural moment in the sense that I really feel that we need to remember, specially at the pace humanity is evolving now. We are becoming something completely different and I’m not sure if it is for the right reasons, to me it seems that it is only money. So taking a time to think is always welcomed, and I try to make art that invites us to meditate.
My paintings became an object that refers to this world of shamanism, creating a narrative that goes beyond the painting, and allowing a discussion about shamanism itself. People that attended the show recognized the importance of shedding some light in this subject, that some consider to be the last window we still have to understand the world in the way that ancient Americans did. People from different parts of the world felt a relevance in this theme, not only Peruvians or South-Americans.
We like the way your artistic practice seems to aim to look inside of what appear to be seen, rather than its surface, providing the spectatorship with freedom to realize their own perception. How important is for you to invite the viewers to elaborate personal meaning? And what do you hope that your audience take away from your artworks?
Over the years, in the shows I’ve done and taken part of, I’ve always found that the message and meaning of my paintings resonate with the people, I feel very thankful for that. 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, Angel. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future?
The opinion of my audience interest me, I’m eager to know what they think or feel about my work, and if I’m there, I like to maybe give them extra info about a certain piece, and like that have fruitful exchanges.
I will keep in evolving this idea, this blue palette, keep digging into it, trying always to attain a style that is instantly recognizable. I’m sure it will come in time. I would like to make some landscapes in the future, but for the moment I think I still have a long way to go with this project I’m in, I’m pretty happy I’ve found it, I feel that I can put all my beliefs in it, make it from imagination, with a powerful message for everybody, and also something for my own culture and country. So thank you very much for the interview, and letting me express my ideas, I really appreciate it. I wish you the best for this year that is starting. Thank you.
I hope that these works might give an excuse to transcend, and invoke ideas we don’t normally come about in day to day life, that is so hectic nowadays. Over the years your artworks have been showcased in a number of group and solo shows, including your exhibition The Shamańs Table, held at Artimundo Gallery, in Brussels, where you are currently based: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? And what do you hope your audience take away from your artworks?
An interview by
My relationship with my audience is horizontal, I learn from them, and try to be as receptive of their comments as I can.
and
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, curator curator
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Lives and works in London, United Kingdom
Jay Shaw-Baker is a photographer and painter based in London. He graduated from UCA Canterbury in 2011 with a BA in fine art. His photojournalism/news photography is represented by Nur Photo. Special Issue
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Jay Shaw-Baker
ART Habens
video, 2013
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Jay Shaw-Baker
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An interview by and
, curator curator
Hello Jay and welcome to ART Habens. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and you hold a BA in Fine Art, that you received from UCA, in Canterbury: how did those formative years influence your evolution as an artist? In particular, how does your cultural substratum direct the trajectory of your current artistic research? It was just before my third year at university I began what I would regard as the artistic path of research I’m still on. The moment was actually not at university, in Canterbury but in the national gallery in London where I first became fascinated in the concept of levels of reality within a picture. A woman, I think from a church was giving a tour of the Sainsbury wing, where devotional art from the late middle ages is exhibited. She was explaining the picture on a purely religious level and not in way we, in the art world would usually describe a painting. (Artist, medium, era painted, ect).
Jay Shaw-Baker
This was the first time I realized that I viewed the world in secular terms. The world in which most of the art of the past was made and viewed, was in some kind or religious context. They posited a whole different reality into their work and lives. I’ve been exploring this in my work in some way ever since.
readers to visit https://www.jayshawbaker.com in order to get a wide idea about your artistic production: when walking our readers through your usual setup and process, we would like to ask you if you think that there are any central ideas that connect all your artworks.
We have appreciated the way the results of your artistic inquiry convey such a coherent combination between intuition and a rigorous aesthetics, and we would like to invite our
The central Idea in my work if I had to sum it up is the idea of perpetual change and repurposing over time. Of changing how something is viewed.
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ART Habens
Jay Shaw-Baker
two figures 2018 10.10inch
before collapsing and being retaken by chaos and nature. Much of The work I’ve only recently completed was actually started about six years ago. The imagery was
Almost all my recent work derives from a narrative that I’ve been following in my mind. Of a civilisation that becomes tyrannical
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Dawn the day 2018
ART Habens
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Jay Shaw-Baker
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Jay Shaw-Baker
ART Habens
Untitled. 2018 oil on canvas. 112.121cm
originally taken from religious imagery,
projects. The original plan was to do a project
political propaganda and failed utopian
based just on tyranny and fanaticism. I was
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ART Habens
Jay Shaw-Baker
studio around 4 years ago. Before, they were surreal landscapes only done in ink and pencil. When I painted over them again, the ink showed through giving a ghostly image beneath. I liked the idea of how the work was not complete but ever changing over time, just as a city is never complete. A city will have streets and place names that go back many centuries. What is built over it will be new but a sense of what came before will remain. I decided to keep the original names for the pieces.
reading up about political and religious movements that went sour and destroyed themselves after destroying much that came before them. The working name for the project was called The golden age of rage. As the title suggests, the paintings didn’t have much nuance and were rather unidimensional. So I left the project unfinished. I left many of the paintings for years while moving onto black and white ink drawings. Later on I realized that the two, very different styles were connected.
I suppose in a way, the person who started the pieces was different to the person who finished them. A lot happened during those years. Certainly the way I regarded them over the years, changed
It was only in 2018 that I started reworking all these paintings. Painting over the dense orange, red and yellow. and with grey and doing it in a very loose, spontaneous way. and doing the opposite with my black and white works on paper. I kept the titles of the original works even though very little of them remained.
Do you conceive you works instinctively or do you methodically elaborate your pieces? In particular, how importance does spontaneity play in your artistic practice?
For this special edition of ART Habens we have selected After London and After the city, a couple of stimulating artworks that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article: what has at once impressed us is the way they provide the viewers with an intense multilayered visual experience: when walking our readers to the genesis of After London and After the city, would you tell us something about your usual process and setup?
The thought prosses is almost entirely unconscious I don’t have any definite plan of what a painting will be. Most of my work is derived from my sketchbooks. Usually the drawings are from daydreams, musings and even some dreams, but then the image is reworked into something else. The painting, edge of the earth for instance, was originally a landscape where the world is falling to pieces, something I was imagining what it might look like while working on another painting. I then turned the original image upside-down before reworking it some months later.
I don’t relly have a single prosses for these paintings. Because they were finished and then left for years. Both paintings had a previous life. Both were completed works that I had done in another
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I suppose I have a kind of spontaneity over
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Jay Shaw-Baker
ART Habens
Forest 100.120cm 21 4 08
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Jay Shaw-Baker
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Jay Shaw-Baker
time. Dawn the day is something that took me over four years to complete. In fact I finished it a few times before now with small adjustments, I liked the work but something was always missing. I would have quick bouts of reworking over a long time rather than following through with a plan.
ART Habens
these two streams of my work together. One element establishes order and the other brings it down. The way the two colours were painted reflected this. The orange parts, with the tiny yellow and white dots took many hours of slow work to complete, it was ordered and rigid. The grey tones on the other hand were done very quickly. There was little planning, just intuition and more opportunity to be creative and dynamic.
We have really appreciated the vibrancy of thoughtful nuances of your palette, and we like the way Horus into the Fire shows that vivacious tones are not necessary to create tension and dynamics. How did you come about settling on your colour palette? And how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in a specific artwork and in particular, how do you develop a texture?
Walking the viewers to explore the connection between perception and the subconscious dimension, we daresay that your artistic practice seems to aim to look inside of what appear to be seen, rather than its surface, providing the spectatorship with freedom to realize their own perception. How important is for you to invite the viewers to elaborate personal meaning? And in particular, how open would you like your works to be understood?
The rigid palette I now use was at first just red, orange and yellow. I’m not sure why I came to these colours but for a time I would only use them. These colours were used when painting surreal depictions of gods, temples and cities. The grey tones originally came from ink drawings I was doing as a side project. The drawings were usually of cities in decay and forests.
Perception is in part, reality. Artists who wish to covey depth in their work have had a constant problem in the fact there is no underlying mythos to communicate with the viewer. Most art up until the around the 17th century was religious. There where themes and subjects that could have multiple interpretations and levels of depth. The viewers, who would always see such work within a sacred space would recognise and connect with the image. Rothko called this, unity. When we have a subjective vision in our work. It’s very hard to communicate complex ideas, visually.
It was only later when I thought about the elements in my work and what they could mean that I realized that red and yellow hues might represent order, anger, heat, some kind of explosion or beginning or the height of something, like the sun at midday in midsummer. And the black and white; chaos, cooling, like winter which is the end of the old year before the birth of the new one. Chaos is destructive but it also brings opportunity for change.
I hope when people see my work, they posit their own meaning into it. That’s why I’m sometimes hesitant to give names to my
After much experimenting, I managed to fuse
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ART Habens
Jay Shaw-Baker
Horus into fire. oil on canvas. 92.100cm
work. Or at least keep the titles simple. So to
We like the way you artworks convey such a stimulating combination between figurative elements and captivating abstract feeling,
have people read what they like into it.
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Jay Shaw-Baker
creating such an oniric atmosphere: how would you consuder the relationship between abstraction and figurative in your practice? In
ART Habens
particular, how does representation and a tendency towards abstraction find their balance in your work?
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ART Habens
Jay Shaw-Baker
The way I like to think of it is that abstraction represents a kind of spirit, or pure meaning without form. The representational is the physical, form without meaning. A symbol is said to be a unity of the two; meaning taking physical form. In my work though, the two are together but separate, like they have just come apart from each other. I love the British museum. Especially the Greek and roman sculptures. The place can be seen as a graveyard though, for gods. The statues, when they were made, had sacred significance to those who originally viewed them. They were not just stone but living things. This meaning has now been lost. When people see them, they see relics and not the physical embodiment of the divine. I think I’ve been influenced sacred art more than anything. There was no need for abstraction back then because form had abstract meaning attached to it. We like the powerful narrative drive that marks out your artistic production: Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "artists's role differs depending on which part of the world they’re in. It depends on the political system they are living under": how do you consider the role of artists in our globalised and media driven contemporary age? The role of artists I think will change as they realise they don’t just have to go through the gallery system to showcase their art. They can communicate with a very select audience online. like everything else the internet has influenced, art will become more niched to specific audiences. Crowd-funding sites and social media tools will, I think become central to artists who want to show their work. And it will increasingly become the end in itself, and
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Jay Shaw-Baker
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Jay Shaw-Baker
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Jay Shaw-Baker
ART Habens
not just the means to get a physical show. This will also mean their art will also have a more specific role within their online community. Over the years your artworks have been showcased in a number of occasions, including your recent participation to Unlimited group show at Espacio Gallery, in London: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? And what do you hope your audience take away from your artworks? I’ll hope they see originality in my work. I always want my work to stand out, whether in a good or bad way. that way it may be remembered. 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, Jay. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future? I’m currently very interested in visual symbolism. My current project involves doing intricate pencil drawing copies of medieval and Romanesque art. I’m fascinated in how the artists jammed so much symbolic meaning into a tiny space. I’m hoping to use this later in original work. An interview by and
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, curator curator
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Species of spaces, 31x23 cm, 2017
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Lilith
ART Habens
video, 2013
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ART Habens
Special ChambreIssue ensoleillĂŠe (Sunny room) 41x53 cm 2018
Lilith
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An interview by and
, curator curator
It’s impossible to learn deeply about French language or literature of France in one or two year in university. I didn’t have deeper knowledge about them and I just wanted to go somewhere I’ve never been.
Hello Lilith and welcome to ART Habens. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background: you have a solid formal training and you graduated with a Diplome national supérieur d’expression plastique, that you received from Ecole Superieure d’Art et de Design d’Orleans, in France: how did these formative years influence your evolution as an artist? In particularhow does your cultural substratum due to your South Korean roots direct the trajectory of your artistic research?
A language is a collective tool for people who use it. Each language is consist of words, sentences, implications and gestures. It is not just grammatical but it is something living itself. Every language has evolved over time and it represents its own cultural value. Everyday life in France like learning French and going to art school affected me to naturally accept many things about that country even without any erudition. I can see that myself in present is composed of my maternal culture and my acquired culture notwithstanding I am not able to explain how.
Since I was 12, who I want to be in whole life was someone who draws and paints. The name of my future job has been changed from a cartoonist, to a painter then to an illustrator and finally to an artist. The weird thing is I’ve never thought about going to art school until I decided go to France. My major was French when I entered university in Korea. Going to France was quite impulsive decision and it was only one year plan at that time. After a year I decided to quit the university in Korea and stay and go to art school in France
We have appreciated the way the results of your artistic inquiry convey a coherent combination between intuition and rigorous aesthetics to question the theme of imaginary space: do you think that there is a central idea that connects all of your work as an artist?
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Untitled, 26x18 2017
ART Habens
Lilith
The start was about the deep ocean which is the another world from the one where we live and it's an imaginary space which keeps secrets undiscovered. This unknown space is fill with forgotten memories and imaginations. I thought the deep ocean might be somewhere we can't reach forever but it might be somewhere we want to escape from the real world we live in. Jellyfishes who come and go freely and smoothly in the ocean are phantasmagorical exist in my work. They have been fascinating exist because of their appearance demi-transparent and because of their name in French as “méduse” like from the myth greek. The méduses of mine do not turn all the things into stones. They slide into the real world and also into the dreams for capturing images and making them to be in reality. Their movement create the imaginary spaces and I draw their paths, passages and many doorways between two worlds, the dream and the reality. The body of works that we have selected for this special edition of ART Habens and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article has at once captured our attention for the
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Lilith
ART Habens
Series-1, 21x14.8cm 2018
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Lilith
Series-2, 21x14.8cm 2018
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Lilith
ART Habens
way you sapiently combined rigoroud geometry with abstract feeling, as in the interesting Chambre ensoleillée, a captivating artwork that as at once impressed for the way it communicates joyful sensation: would you tell us your sources of inspiration? How did you conceived this interesting work? Chambre ensoleillée is about memories. Each memory is different kind of place, everyone has a memory of being in sunny room. Sunshine, thin shadows, breeze, air in the middle of the day, and pieces of colours and traces of the space where you are. I didn’t try to realize a specific place. I tried to create a place reconstituted by memories of different people. I wanted that people see this painting and recall their own memory about a sunny room in the past or in the present. We have really appreciated the vibrancy of thoughtful nuances of your canvas, and we like the way species of spaces show that vivacious tones are not strictly indespensable to create tension and dynamics. How did you come about settling on your color palette? And how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in an artwork and in particular, how do you develop a texture?
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Passage, 2016
ART Habens
Lilith
Series-3, 21x14.8cm, 2018
I picked up the colours which might be
quinacridone violet, then I added other colours trying to create indefinite
central, like prussian green, indigo,
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spaces.
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EncombrĂŠ-1, 16.2x21.8cm, 2018
Repeated several times, 27.9x35.6cm , 2018
Lilith
ART Habens
Need some space, 14.8x21cm , 2018
When I use watercolours for my works, I
Usually I like composing colours of many violets, blues, blue greens, purples with orange or yellow colours.
do not use them light, clear and transparent like usual watercolour
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ART Habens
Lilith
artworks. I prefer deep colours are painted thick but spread by water. It might be difficult to recognise the details but I hope that some kind of uncertainty would be pleasant. We like the way you explore the visual language of abstraction: how importance does everyday life's experience play in your creative process? Could mention a work that has been inspired by a particular experience? In general I recollect then rebuilt memories about place, person and sentences of books for creating spaces. “The path that the night comes (16.2x21.8cm)” is a work that I tried to realise a moment to a space. It is the moment of sunset toward evening and the moon appears in the sky then little by little the night falls. In any country this moment give me a lot of thoughts and feelings and colours so I wanted to reconstitute it to some figurative space.
Daydreaming, 12.5x18cm, 2018
also inspired from a book that I read. “Repeated several times (27.9x35.6cm)” is did after reading “The house of Asterion” of Borges. I used a specific sentence like “All parts of the house are repeated many times, any place is
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another place.”. This short story made me imagine that someone who would be locked in this maze and wandering in there.
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The path that the night comes, 16.2x21.8 cm, 2018
Blue, 24x31 cm, 2017
Lilith
ART Habens
give a hint but nothing more than that. However it does not mean that I do my work carelessly or irresponsibly. I just prefer that audience find and feel with their own memories and dreams when they see my works.
We like the way untitled, mixed media, digital, 2017 conveys the idea of movement: we daresay that your artistic practice seems to aim to look inside of what appear to be seen, rather than its surface, providing the spectatorship with freedom to realize their own perception. How important is for you to invite the viewers to elaborate personal meaning? And what do you hope that your audience take away from your artworks?
Over the years your artworks have been showcased in a number of occasions in France, South Korea and Australia: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? And what do you hope your audience take away from your artworks?
My ideas and explanations are keys or inspirations which made me doing each works. I do not paint and draw in attempt to persuade audience every time. There are my feelings, thoughts, words and also daydreaming in my works. I love give shape to invisible things like pieces of dreams, parole and I also love give colours to feelings, memories and sounds.
I want that everyone recall or feel other things when they watch same work of mine, then rebuilt their own imaginary spaces for themselves. This process is also a part of my work and it is important to me. We have appreciated the originality 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, Lilith. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future?
How would you consider the relationship between abstraction and figurative in your practice? In particular, how does representation and a tendency towards abstraction find their balance in your work? When some works are done, I just invite other people introducing myself and let them freely walk around the imaginary spaces of mine.
Since october last year, I started to work for living. It is completely different from my main business in art. I meet and work with a lot of people every day. As I used to be a freelance artist, it is very new
Sometimes I throw words in titles to
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ART Habens
Lilith
Untitled, 23x31 cm, 2016
Maze, 27.9x35.6 cm, 2016
experience. At the first time, I felt that
During a few months I needed time to adapt this situation but researching in my real job is also keep going. Series 1~3 (21x14.8cm) are the exploration among the figures in three or two dimensional forms. I keep creating ambiguous spaces and perspectives in various interpretations.
it likes an extravagant wave lapped against to me. As I said it is very new and different and it is still hard. But I believe that various experience not just in art domain can make me grow up in artworks.
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Lilith
ART Habens
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Takashi Hara
ART Habens
video, 2013
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ART Habens
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Takashi Hara
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An interview by and
, curator curator
Hello Takashi and welcome to ART Habens. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production 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 in Painting and Ceramics from the University of Regina, you moved to the United States to nurture your education with a MFA in Ceramics, that you received from the Arizona State University: how did those formative years influence your evolution as a multidisciplinary artist? In particular, how does you multifaceted cultural substratum due to your Japanese roots, as well as to your training in Calligraphy direct the trajectory of your current artistic research? It was definitely a great experience to be in art education in different countries. Each country has unique education and art styles. Specifically, I think I have learned how to express myself in Canada, then how to dig my art contents deeper in U.S. Also, living my own as an immigrant, building friendships or art connections then do it again and again in another country; the whole journey has been very tough. However, I believe It was all good experiences and gave me a strong influence.
Takashi Hara
setup and process, we would like to ask you if you think that there is a central idea that connects all your works.
We have appreciated the way the results of your artistic inquiry convey such a coherent combination between intuition and a rigorous aesthetics, and we would like to invite our readers to visit http://takashihara.com in order to get a wide idea about your artistic production: when walking our readers through your usual
I found “Resilience� is one of the biggest features in my art. I believe we get stronger after having a hard time, and I want to encourage people to taste the bitterness or sourness of it. I want viewers to find both
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Takashi Hara
ends of my message, encouragement and dark humor of humanity.
ART Habens
importance of art in each place. Some places really need political art to change society. For example, I understood why feminist artists culture has been developed strongly in U.S. after spending a couple years there. For that reason, I don’t aim any universal connection especially with my pigs. However, I try to make my art somewhat connectable to the places I have been involved. I think it’s natural to have more artists and viewers have multi cultural perspective as we living in such a global culture now.
For this special edition of ART Habens we have selected What a Perfect World, an interesting project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once captured our attention of your style it's the way it brings the notion of everyday life to a new level of significance: when walking our readers through the genesis of this stimulating artwork, would you tell us how does everyday life's experience fuel your creative process?
We have really appreciated the vibrancy of intense nuances of red that mark out Social Survivors, to create such a deep tension and dynamics. How did you come about settling on your color palette? And how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in a specific artwork and in particular, how do you develop a texture?
Our everyday life is definitely where I get inspiration most. There are a lot of stories we have. To me, everybody is the main character of his or her own novel. Someone could be feeling happiest moment for the year, but one another may be struggling or even wondering about life. I’m just curious, and I like hearing what’s up in their deeper mind.
I like considering physiological, cultural, and symbolic color meaning and play with it. Also, I’m also influenced by street fashion and subculture, so I’m sure that has something with how I decide colors on paintings. Because of having both energy and hard time in my resilient art, I challenge myself to have strong color with depth. For creating texture and some effects, I spray water a lot while I’m painting.
We really appreciate the way the encouraging messages conveyed in your artworks invite the viewers to become elements of change in our globalised still conformistic societies. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "artists's role differs depending on which part of the world they’re in. It depends on the political system they are living under": do you think that your artistic research respond to a particular cultural moment or do you aim to convey a kind of universal message? In particular, how do you consider the role of artists in our media driven and globalised contemporary age?
Your artworks are marked out with such a powerful narrative drive that marks out your artistic production and we daresay that your artistic practice seems to aim to look inside of what appear to be seen, rather than its surface, providing the spectatorship with freedom to realize their own perception. How important is for you to invite the
I agree Gabriel Orozco. I have been involved in several different cultures and seen
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Takashi Hara
viewers to elaborate personal meaning? And in particular, how open would you like your artworks to be understood? Definitely open how people connect to my art, but I also input some leads for my own message behind. I just don’t like telling people what they should feel or think, yet I want to share what and how I see this world. To do that, I realized I have to guide them to the real meaning of my art. This idea is actually from my international experience. We always have better understanding of each other once we get in the culture, talking to some people, sharing some moments rather than just hearing from media or reading books. We like the way you artworks convey such a captivating abstract feeling that creates such an oniric atmosphere: how would you consider the relationship between abstraction and figurative in your practice? In particular, how does representation and a tendency towards abstraction find their balance in your work? The balance of abstract background and pig(s) is quite important to create contents. Especially, I try to keep my art connectable to multi cultures. The emotional contrast/relationships is one of the key features of my art. Rich of symbolism, your works have often a subtle allegorical quality: in particular, you use the image of pigs to reflect on human societies and its stereotypes. How do you consider the evocative power of symbols in your practice? Symbolism guides people to a certain direction, my message. I try to have balance of leads and freedom to viewers in order to them
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Takashi Hara
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ART Habens
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Takashi Hara
to think of their own life or society. That’s also one of the reasons why I normally don’t put eyes on pigs so it’s more reflective on people. Eyes are one of the strongest facial features to define personality and emotion.
Gallery family and currently showing 2 different solo exhibitions at Hong Kong and Paris where they are based on. This gives me more opportunities to expose my art to diverse audience. The gallery founders are also immigrants as well and push international artists, so it’s like an artyromantic relationship. I’d like to keep pushing myself in this diverse, international art movement, and prove we can change the world better and friendlier.
Besides producing the interesting works that our readers have admired in these pages, you also teach: how do you consider the importance of teaching within your artistic research? Moreover, and how could Art help young generation to face the wide variety of issues that affect our ever changing societies?
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, Takashi. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future?
The way I teach is connecting with them through making art. It’s just not me creating. I have to face different generations or even cultures at a college class. To me, that's a very helpful practice of how I connect viewers through my art. Also, I like bringing up their personal issue in the society to some art projects, that helps the whole class, including myself, the student, and others to understand what experiences we carry on and how we actually think.
After finishing 2 solo exhibition of “Pig Nation,” I got some ideas of exploring and deepen narrative side. There are some ideas like going to talk to immigrants in Paris, New York, Hong Kong, and Tokyo then combine with folk tales. Those are the cities I have scheduled to be at this year, but I’d love to include London if possible. This project has potential to bring personal stories and historical perspective together. Let’s see how it goes!
Over the years your artworks have been showcased in a number of occasions and you currently exhibit widely in museums and galleries, including your recent participation to the group show Eight, at A2Z Art Gallery, in Hong Kong: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? And what do you hope your audience take away from your artworks?
Thank you very much for having me here. I truly appreciate it.
It’s been great showing my art in some different countries. Because of some inspirations are from my international experiences and stories of immigrant friends, I enjoy connecting audiences from different countries. Now, I became a part of A2Z Art
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An interview by and
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, curator curator
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