Tchera Niyego: Can you tell me a little more about your book?

Ngak’chang Rinpoche: The book, yes. There are a lot of things going on at the moment because I’ve always been interested in presenting Vajrayana to artists. There’s always been an idea about Buddhism in the West, but the most natural crossover is with philosophy, psychology, and science, but that really mainly concerns Sutric Buddhism rather than Tantric Buddhism, and I’ve always felt that maybe arts were a far better bridge in terms of Tantric Buddhism. The book is really a way of presenting Buddhism to people in the language of the arts because I went to art college for some five years, and I’ve been involved with art all my life with one form or another, either as a painter, as a poet, as a writer, or as a lyricist, or as a blues singer.

Ngak’chang Rinpoche, interviewed by Tchera Niyego

Tchera Niyego: Can you tell me a little more about your book?

Ngak’chang Rinpoche: The book, yes. There are a lot of things going on at the moment because I’ve always been interested in presenting Vajrayana to artists. There’s always been an idea about Buddhism in the West, but the most natural crossover is with philosophy, psychology, and science, but that really mainly concerns Sutric Buddhism rather than Tantric Buddhism, and I’ve always felt that maybe arts were a far better bridge in terms of Tantric Buddhism.

The book is really a way of presenting Buddhism to people in the language of the arts because I went to art college for some five years, and I’ve been involved with art all my life with one form or another, either as a painter, as a poet, as a writer, or as a lyricist, or as a blues singer. I’ve done all those things, and I’ve kept them on this realm although most of my life I’ve spent as a teacher of Buddhism. So I thought it would be useful to present the earlier part of my life as an artist without any reference to Buddhism at all, but just speaking of my life as an artist and allowing the Buddhism to come through that. So that’s one of the projects.     

While I was working on that, various interesting things happened. I was having a big clear-out one day. I’m always having a big clear-out. I’ve moved house so often in my life that often things have ended up in boxes, but just never get opened. I’ve gone off to India and things were left in my mother’s garage for many years, and my brother’s loft for many years, and gradually my wife and I’ve collected all the things back again, and now in our house we’re opening them. One of the final boxes we opened had a dusty little plastic box with scotch tape around it, and I opened it up, and there were a series of photos in there that I’d not seen in 40 years, my art college paintings. And I didn’t think I had them. The originals were all thrown away because I’d gone out to India and I’d left them with a friend who kept them in his parent’s garage. He wrote to me in India saying, “My parents want these out of their garage. Can you come and collect them?” And of course by the time I got the letter it was months too late, and his parents had sent all the paintings to the local rubbish chip. (Whistles and laughs.) They’d all gone. So then I lost track of the slides, and I didn’t even had the slides anymore. Then last year I found them, and it was quite amazing. They were in very bad condition, very dusty, and the dust had gone into the boxes, and they had some kind of fungus on them. So I scanned them anyway, and worked on them and that’s what the paintings are.

TN: So they are digital works on originally oil paintings?

N’cR: Yes. They are oil paintings either on canvas or on hardboard. Usually round about between four foot and six foot square. What I have now you can’t really call the original paintings because they were so corrupted by age and dust. I washed them off with alcohol and tried to get the dirt and the fungus off, and all I’ve been able to do is work on those with Photoshop and rebuild them. What I have now is kind of a cross between the originals and new paintings, although you can’t call them paintings anymore because they’re digitally worked on. So they’re digital re-workings of the original oil paintings.

TN: At first I’d thought they might have been collages, but there’s no photography involved at all, so in a sense, could we say they’re realistic?

N’cR: Yes. At art college I took an illustration degree. I really wanted to take a fine art degree, but at the time you didn’t get on well if you weren’t an abstract expressionist. That’s what they wanted; they didn’t want figurative artists, and to be a figurative artist you had quite a hard time, and so the illustration degree was seen as a loop hole, you know, that you could be a figurative artist although, of course, you had to fight the graphic design part then. You had to try to avoid that, but I had an extremely nice tutor, wonderful man, Derek Crow, who believed in education. Education for education’s sake. So for him it didn’t matter what I did as long as I worked because he saw education as just being there and whether people became illustrators or not was irrelevant to him as long as they made good use of their time. So I was very lucky to have him.

TN: May I ask what year this is?

N’cR: The illustration degree would be 1972 to 1975.

TN: And this is when you made the Speaking with Ravens series?

N’cR: Yes. I actually painted most of these in my spare time. They weren’t part of the course really, because I was an illustrator, and there are oil paintings, although Derek Crow did get me time on the fine art department and in the sculpture department, too. I worked on sculpture. I did almost everything. What I really wanted to do was to stay on foundation course where you do everything, and I would have liked to just stayed there doing everything not specializing because I never enjoyed specializing about much. Even within visual art because I’ve always gone into music and poetry and literature, and never been able to stay in one area. I’m always getting ideas about all the arts, apart from theater. Theater is one area that I’ve never gone into, but not because I wasn’t interested, but just because life is limited, and you can’t do everything. I’d go into filmmaking too, anything. The whole creative area just fascinates me.

TN: The way you’re working with, I imagine, is more about the process. Is it some sort of meditative state that you’re working with while painting?

N’cR: Yes. I’ve been interested in Buddhism since I was seven. The word “meditative” of course means many different things to me. Meditation from the point of view that I like to talk about to people is simply having the sense fields open and allowing the sense fields to manifest as they are, the senses to dance with the sense fields. That in itself is the meditative state, so when you’re being creative, especially if you’re being creative without concept, when you’re simply being creative, when you’re simply playing the musical instrument, painting, simply writing, and you’re not controlling with concept. So I suppose I’m not a great fan of conceptual art (laughs). When you set out with ideas I tend to see how the response to the senses is though it doesn’t have to be rational, and I suppose if I would have to call myself anything it would be a “surrealist,” although I had a pretty broad notion of what surrealism means. I suppose mainly there is non-rational. That you can go beyond what is rational, and you can make choices that are based on non-rational perception; that I would also call meditation.

TN: I’m wondering how it is that this overlaps with figurative painting because you don’t have an idea of a finished visual, however, you do have a human body in the picture.

N’cR: Yes, well, you see this is accidental (laughs). At art college you get art college models, and it’s kind of traditional that you engage in life drawing, so people sit for you, you draw them, you paint them. I’m not sure what happens in art colleges now, but when I was there life drawing was very important, so it all started with a project where we had to paint the live model according to two or more different artistic styles at the same time. A typical late-60s art project I suppose. And so I chose surrealism, pointillism, and turn-of-the-century French life model photography as being the three modes, and I just worked within that painting the model. I really enjoyed the project and kept repeating it because I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it but I also failed at it all the time because I had some sense of what I was trying to get that I wasn’t getting. To look at the life model and to be aware that within the skin tone, the way the light falls on the body, or the way the light falls on anything, you’re not just looking, well, when you’re looking at a body it’s not just pink or it’s not just brown or it’s not just whatever color it appears to be. The more you look at it the more other colors there are that you see, and you realize that you’re conditioned by ideas of what something is supposed to look like. So the more you look and the more non-conceptual you become, the more you have to believe what is there that you are perceiving. So I had quite a struggle with this working with it. Very exciting, I mean when I say I was struggling and being disappointed, that was just part of the process of what was going on. Then I started painting my lady friend at the time. I asked her if she’d sit for me and she agreed to sit for me, but said she had some conditions about it, and the condition was that there were ravens.

TN: That there would be ravens present?

N’cR: Yes, in the painting (laughs). So I said, “Sure. I’ll put ravens in.” She liked ravens, so I didn’t see any problem putting ravens in, and the ravens got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. So there was no particular reason for the ravens to be there, just that she wanted ravens. So she got ravens. The ravens were there, and actually I liked them, this combination of this lady sitting there with ravens doing one thing or another. And I became very interested in the textures of the background of this and how this worked, and I started experimenting with painting, then letting the painting dry and then sanding and painting over the painting, sanding, painting, sanding, so you had all these different layers of colors coming through, and I worked with that quite a lot in all kinds of different ways like scratching the painting, smearing it when it’s half dry, in order to build up these layers of texture. The whole process was based around looking at the nature of the texture and bringing it to a point where I felt it worked. But what working means I couldn’t really describe; I just have to look at it and say I like this now, this works. Very non-conceptual. So the lady and the raven were accidents; there was never a reason for them; it just came out of the project, and my lady friend wanted ravens, so she got ravens (laughs), and this was the sole reason for them, not that there was some great idea about what a raven meant or why the lady was there; that never came into it. So a lot of art for me is just always grown out of circumstances, and I never felt I had a need to explain why there was a lady and a raven. That just started at one point and continued and I never saw the need to stop, so I just went on painting them. If I like it I keep doing it you know, like coffee, I like coffee so I drink it every day, and so I paint every day. This would bleed in and out with poetry.

TN: Does it all continue now? Do you still do?

N’cR: No, I don’t paint anymore. Although there’s no saying that I wouldn’t start again. I think that people can be trapped as being painters or poets or songwriters or whatever, and as a Buddhist Vajrayanist, a Tantric Buddhist, every Tantrika is an artist of some kind because we have sense fields, we have senses, and appreciating the sense fields makes you an artist. As soon as you look, as soon as you see something, you know it’s like your bag.

TN: Do you think that an artist would be in conflict and in dissatisfaction almost all the time when she or he wants to improve?

N’cR: No, when I say never taking second best and always not compromising, well, I guess you could think of it as conflict, but I wouldn’t because trying to be true to what you have in your mind, I would see as exciting! And challenging and hard work. But then if life is not work, then it’s not interesting, you know. You’ve got to be prepared to work, and the harder you work at what you love, the more you get out of it. A lot of happiness comes out of not compromising, always trying to be as true as you can to what you have in your mind, a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of joy for others comes out of it because it’s something you can share with other people.

TN: And lastly, would you please ask a question you would like to be asked and answer it, too?

N’cR: (laughs) Well, I would say the question, “What do I want to achieve by the paintings, the book, and anything I do like that is creative?” And I’d say that the answer to that question is that what I really want is for people to be empowered, to see themselves as artists without necessarily being able to earn a living at it, so that someone who tries to make a living as an artist but fails is not a failed artist. They’ve just failed at it as a career. They’ve failed at commercialism. But they haven’t failed as an artist. You can’t fail as an artist unless you stop painting, unless you stop composing music, unless you stop writing poetry. You may fail to earn a living at it, but you don’t have to fail as a painter, poet, songwriter, whatever, you could just continue. So I would like people to feel empowered, not to feel like failures, also for people who don’t see themselves as artists to think that they could be artists because you never have to sell a painting to be an artist; you just have to keep working at it. And it has to be part of your own experience, part of your own appreciation. So yes, for people to be empowered, and to be able to think of themselves as artists rather than there being artists out there because they’re famous, and I’m not an artist because I’m not famous, and I’ll never be famous.

TN: Are you planning on creating new work now? Painting maybe?

N’cR: I don’t know. I might. I have no immediate plans, and there’s no reason why I shouldn’t; it’s more circumstances. If there was the circumstances that came together, sure. Recently an old school friend returned to me 23 songs I wrote between the ages of 60 and 18. I’d thrown them away in 1975. She kept them and returned them to me, and I’m now getting together with a student in California who’s a base player, and we’re going to make an album. There’re the words again. We’re going to put melodies to them; we’re going to put down tracks and get different people we know to play on them because we have quite a few musicians within our community.

TN: Do the words still apply to you the way they are, or do you think you might change them?

N’cR: Well, I was a surrealist then, and I’m still a surrealist; the world’s surreal, so… (laughs).

The post Speaking With the Ravens appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Simone Cappa on The Portable Show and The Emotional Guidance System.

 

 

 

The Portable Show and The Emotional Guidance System, two very different exhibitions were recently on display at the Broadways Gallery NYC. Italian curator and writer Stefania Carrozzini who curated both group shows brought together ten Italian artists for The Portable Show which created a compelling mix of technical approaches, all of them speaking to dreamlike and liminal states. Natalia Berselli, Alessandra Cocchi, Adriana Collovati, Marcello Diotallevi, Anna Ghisleni, Live Art, Silva Nirone, Annalisa Picchioni, Paola Scialpi, and Karl Stengel.

 

For the show the curator contributes a text called Art Travels in Time and Space of Creation. “Art travels and its vectors are physical and mental. It expands on the net; it dematerializes, yet at the same time it does not abandon substance and takes shape in all living forms; it maintains an outer layer, a shape that is perceivable in the real spatial and temporal dimension. Everything is in constant movement, things, ideas, and people. They leave traces of energy in space. Time, in the game of creation, unites them in a unique design.” The exhibition was composed of 60 artworks, small-sized, mixed media, digital photographs, paintings, and drawings. Each of the artists approaches the notion of transience through his or her own innovative mode.

 

In his colorful Abstract Expressionist canvases, Karl Stengel aims to capture the mood, nature, and ephemerality of place, while simultaneously transcending these very qualities, capturing something even more ineffable. Alessandra Cocchi’s approach is through her poetic contemplation of beauty—in her case, using the elegance of flowers as a form to abstract sculptures. Her subtley-layered abstractions done in opaque pigments, colored gessoes, and pastels are transient and light, capturing a sense of eternal grace, elegance, and purity. The same kind of delicate layering is also evident in the work of both Natalia Berselli and Adriana Collovati, each to a different effect. Berselli’s diaphanous abstractions evoke the immateriality of poetic space through their finely textured and hazy surfaces, achieving a sense of peace and positivity. Executed in paint on canvas, Berselli’s compositions connect us to our primitive past through their primal, earthy, unpretentious, and even spiritual qualities.

 

Marcello Diotallevi and Anna Ghisleni both work within the idiom of impressionistic abstraction. Similarly, Live Art and Silva Nirone’s forms and compositions aim to create a dynamic tension between the conscious and unconscious elements of their work. Annalisa Picchioni’s works employ sensual color and Surrealist imagery, amplifying the notion of dreamlike states. Paola Scialpi’s work employs a cinematic aesthetic, which floated through the gallery like a cloud. The Portable Show transports us from the conscious to the unconscious, the earthly to the celestial, inviting us to transcend our daily experiences.        

 

The Emotional Guidance System: From Fear to Joy also brought together eight artists from Italy whose work deals with the human experience of emotion. Fillippo Barbieri, Daniela Billi, Annamaria Cimbal, Miriam de Berardis, Antonella Lagana, Silvia Pisani, Stefano Saba and Clara Scarampella presented viewers with a complex censorial experience, positioned as a platform for contemplation. Focused on channels of emotions as energy, captured by an open mind and heart, the artists utilized an array of mediums—including photography, paintings, and sculptures. Through their works the artists testified their awareness about emotions that occurred during ordinary time and life, but also as mysterious and inexplicable force that lead our creative process and our lives.

 

Drawing on theoretical discourse related to the semantics of desire and difference, curator Carrozzini constructs a platform for multiple investigations of liminal space through The Emotional Guidance System: From Fear to Joy. Each artist evinces a unique reading of the central themes of the exhibition, a fact that results in a welcomed diversity in terms of the modes of conceptualization and practice on view in the show.

 

Utilizing the painting as a point of departure, Miriam de Berardis presents her work with a physicality and vibrancy of technique that seeks to enhance the gestural quality of emotion. Similarly transgressing thresholds between two differential existential planes is the work of Fillippo Barbieri and Daniela Billi depict forms excavate the psychological evaluation of “the other” through a representation of the complex mental barriers that separate people. Antonella Lagana leaves behind a physical testimony of human authenticity in her works. Traces of an actual physical world are transformed into a simulacrum on the canvas. Clara Scarampella investigates figuration and the body, but as a mode of questioning physical alienation. In her most compelling work, she transcends the postmodern perspective. Here she self-consciously emphasizes the subject-object looking relationship, making the subject (or viewer) painfully self-aware of his objectifying gaze of “the other”, resulting in a reevaluation of the hegemonic structures informing the looking relationship they participate in. Pushing the envelope of painterly practices, are several distinct abstract artists exploring the boundaries between the real and “the other” as a space. Silvia Pisani submerges herself into a series of subconscious spaces, depicting the duality of agency inherent to the creative process itself.    Depicting primary-colored abstract shapes that hover playfully on a field of white, Stefano Saba seems to emphasize the artist’s creative agency, as well as the subject-object dilemma. By creating engaging forms from the negative space, he challenges the viewer to reevaluate the real subject of the works—is it the colored shapes, the spaces between them, or the interplay between the two?

 

Through a broad range of styles and media, the artwork on view in both The Portable Show and The Emotional Guidance System stimulates in the viewer an awareness of difference, whether that difference was between opposing subjects, divergent forms, or even between the artwork and the viewer themselves.

The post Italian Interplay appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

 Mai Wong

A stunning group exhibition, The Objects of Sleep was one of Art Space Beijings highlights of the year. Featuring an exciting group of extraordinary international artists, curated by the inovative Stefania Carrozzini, The Objects of Sleep included Annamaria Cimbal, Amy Cohen Banker, Yvonne Manfrini, Antonella Massa, Elisa Mazza, Rosanna Nisi, Renata Kalamari, Marisa Pezzoli, Maria Chiara Zarabini.

The theme of the exhibition explores the nature of creation and visual perception in relations to “the theatre of sleep.” Curator Stefania Carrozzini’s utilizes the talent of her artists to investigate the environment, situations, and objects that comprise the performance of a special moment, which is that of falling asleep. In the case of Rosanna Nisi and Maria Chiara Zarabini the objects and sleeping have here a mirror like value. They cannot be set aside from the sleeper. This unique concept results in an interesting collection on aesthetics that both relate to sleep in a literal sense (a bed, a frame and mattress, sheets, pillows, sleeping tablets, books and TV sets) and those that don’t, such as visual depictions of exhaustion insomnia, and light which penetrates the exhibition space.

Resonating with an unmatched spiritual force, both Renata Kalamari and Annamaria Cimbal’s visionary works create images that combine both text and geometric design, demonstrating both artists’ obsessive attention to detail. Also working in a spiritual vein, Yvonne Manfrini creates lovely multimedia works, compelling, but ambiguous, her works add a dream-like aesthetic to the show. Working with paint in a sculptural capacity a poetic and visceral manner Amy Cohen Banker recognizes the medium’s potential: she rolls, smears, and folds an assortment of materials in order to maximize their natural qualities. In her piece, compositional panels investigate an expanse of nature-based themes. By focusing on the lack of boundaries between being conscious and subconscious, and their endless upward and downward reach, the viewer is asked to reconsider all self-constructed barriers.

Elisa Mazza’s approach to The Object of Sleep is subtle and delicate, though nonetheless highly dynamic. She constructs carefully designed compositions that contrast beautifully with Antonella Massa who creates bold and powerful sculptural statements that demonstrate the artist’s excavation of secret memories and hidden stories. Marisa Pezzoli uses fabric and form to symbolize how sleeping is one of the few moments during which our right to privacy may not be violated: and our dreams can definitely edited or censored. “The isle of slumber” as Carrozzini’s refers to it, is a place to be defended, to be kept apart from noise and semantics of everyday life. All in all, The Objects of Sleep demonstrates Carrozzini’s overarching vision that sleep can provide humans with a space of reverie and contemplation, as well as being a source of peace and spiritual motivation.

The post The Spiritual Subconscious appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Sharlene Khan

 

 

For the last nine years, my work has been focused on street trade. Street trade is proliferous in South Africa due to various socio-economic and historical conditions. The plight of these people is often ignored as they are considered a nuisance and yet street traders bring a sense of vibrancy, color, noise, and humor to South African streets. My engagement with street vending has sought to subvert negative stereotypical images of people who work on the streets, instead, focusing on the dignity and strength these people display every day in trying to earn money. In my paintings, I try to depict smaller painted or sewn images of street vendors within larger singular portraits of street traders in an attempt not only to make evident the many dimensions of these street traders’ lives—that they are a part of various family and social institutions—but also to show that one’s personal story of hardship is indicative of so many other people’s story as well. Embroidery in my artwork is meant to reference my identity, especially my upbringing in apartheid South Africa.

My most recent exhibition What I look like, What I feel like (2008) features 24 staged photographic portraits of myself in different guises, juxtaposing images of how I think others view me, against images of how I view myself. The works speak about the gender and racial stereotypes that I feel subjected to daily. For instance, in Modern. Urban. Westernised. Bitch I question how my township community projects conservative “home-bound” images on me, while I feel like a poster girl for urban, city living. In Mother, I question the “naturalized” role of motherhood and woman’s ascribed ability to handle it. I seek to question the masks we don publicly and the stripping away of these masks in private. I am flawed, scarred, imperfect. My identity is not an “either/or” stance, but a “both/and” mixture that changes depending on how I am presented, or how I choose to present myself. In using the medium of photography and myself as the subject, I pay homage to Cindy Sherman’s iconic Untitled Film Stills series, while trying to further extend the boundaries of photography by employing embroidery and embossing to visually dent and puncture pristine surface of the photograph and the public/private performances displayed. I hope these dualistic portrayals could complicate perceptions of urban womanhood, race, class, and identity in contemporary South Africa.

The post Social Masquerade appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Yinka Shonibare

 

 

 

I was born in England in 1962 and raised in Nigeria. Currently living and working in London, I try to explore issues of race and class through a range of media that includes sculpture, painting, photography, and installation art. Adopting a richly complex, unconventional approach, I lampoon the concept of achieving status through what might be called cultural authenticity. Simultaneously innocent and subversive, my works address a range of cultural and historical issues and, in the process, blur the boundaries of design, ethnography, and contemporary art.

The post Which Class Are You? appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Samuel Fosso

 

 

 

As in all my works, I am both character and director. I don’t put myself in the photographs: my work is based on specific situations and people I am familiar with, things I desire, which I rework in my imagination and afterward, I interpret. I borrow an identity. In order to succeed I immerse myself in the necessary physical and mental state. It’s a way of freeing me from myself. A solitary path. I am a solitary man.

African Spirits, a series of 14 auto-portraits, has been shown for the first time in the last edition of the Rencontres d’Arles Photographie. This puts together my concept of re-interpreting photographic icons of the great cultural leaders and minds from the African independent states, civil rights movement in the U.S., and black cultural monuments. In my pantheon are Mandela, Senghor, Aimé Césaire, Miles Davis, Martin Luther King, Seydou Keita, Angela Davis, N’Krumah, Lumumba, Tommie Smith, Haïlé Sélassié, Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ali.

The post A Loner’s Costume Party appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Jonathan Gree

 

 

 

Winner of the Arnold Bode prize at Documenta 12, Kassel, Germany, Romuald Hazoumé is one of Africa’s leading visual artists. He has worked a diverse range of media throughout his career, from discarded petrol canisters, oil paint and canvas, to large-scale installation, video, and photography.

Romuald Hazoumé was born in 1962 in Porto Novo, Republic of Benin, and now lives in Cotonou and works in Porto Novo. His work has won critical acclaim, and he has recently exhibited his major installation La Bouche du Roi, a re-creation of a slave ship made from petrol canisters, in solo shows at the Menil Collection, Houston, Texas, the Musée Quai Branly, Paris, and the British Museum, London, from which it toured the U.K. Hazoumé has also participated in many international exhibitions such as 100% Afrique at the Guggenheim Bilbao and Uncomfortable Truths at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

The post Out of Africa appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Rennio Maifredi

 

 

 

My interest in portraiture first came to me after obsessing over Richard Avedon, his truthful and beautiful capturing of politicians, artists, writers, and actors. His work made me realize the importance and power of a portrait. Later it became about pulling from many mediums; I love Nick Knight, but I also love Leonardo da Vinci’s sketches, Tony Scott, comic books, movies, and television.

The Orange Series was the first series of portraits that I ever shot, and the effect was actually not planned. I shot the first one in a friend’s studio where I was scheduled to shoot a “test,” and the model got lost and never showed up. I had spent an hour setting everything up, and was ready to shoot. As a young photographer I didn’t want to waste the opportunity in a studio, so instead, I asked the hair stylist, the makeup artist, and their assistants to sit for me. Originally I wanted to shoot a black-and-white test with a gray background. I couldn’t get a seamless gray background in time, so I shot against orange which, in black and white, was the perfect shade of grey. But, once I saw the skin against the orange background I decided to shoot it in color. It was a mistake as simple as that that started this series. From there, later came the Blue Series, the Tan Series, and on from there.

When I do a portrait, the only thing I plan is the light, the atmosphere; I don’t plan the position of the face or the way to look into the camera. Every person is different, and the way that they react is always different when in front of the camera. For every person there is a different approach. After I had experimented with light quality, background colors, and collecting interesting and intriguing subjects, new series began to emerge. I played around with color and black and white, studio and location, and over the past years have built this archive which has ended up becoming a sort of journal of people I’ve met, places I’ve traveled, and characters who have crossed my path.

Over the years I have soaked in so much, experienced so many different subjects and melded my style with my subjects, and felt like I’ve been able to create a voice for them. A portrait shoot is more of a psychological tailing, and less of an aesthetic exercise; it’s all about the capturing of moments. When I am interested in someone’s face, someone’s story, the way they walk or even a scar, I get inspired and I want to capture them at that moment, their story, the lives they’ve lived, a soft memento of the living.

The post Keepsakes From the Past appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Sam Messenger

 

My work usually leaves a degree of control to a generative or rule-based system. A common starting point is often the document of inaccuracy and chance through repetition. Many of the works address subjects such as human error, natural growth, and originality, with results that exploit varying levels of precision and frequently subvert the idea of error.

www.sammessenger.com

The post Making Amends appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Elina Jokipii

 

 

 

Reliving, re-enactment, and remembering form an important part of my personal work. I am interested in re-telling stories that have been passed down, giving importance to past events that I played no part in but feel a connection to through the experience of others. I often use staging and re-enactment to blur the boundaries of past and present.

In the series Finnish Civil War I have used models to stage imaginary scenes, trying to picture moments that might have happened but never got recorded in history. The aim is to invoke the past and to examine ways of visually working through traumatic events in history. The scenes I am showing are clearly staged, and do not necessarily follow historical fact. Susan Sontag in her book Regarding the Pain of Others comes to the conclusion that an image, which is purely fictional, might show the reality of war better than a documentary photograph that might come with questions about its authenticity, intention, and the possibility of being used for propaganda purposes. I am trying to create scenes that might have been, but also sometimes leaving the signs of the present day into the frame, to show traces of the past as a kind of remembrance. Although the subject matter is universal and not necessarily tied to a specific time and place, it seems to have a special significance in Finland within my own generation with our coming to terms with a recent past that for our grandparents and even parents, would have been an untouchable terrain.

Another current series, Postcards, is based on French official propaganda postcards from the First World War aimed to bring hope and comfort to those at home. I have re-staged the scenes from these old postcards in studio using contemporary costumes. My aim has been to create a way of thinking about contemporary warfare and military rhetoric through the historical imagery. The soldiers, their sweethearts, and the nurses conscientiously taking care of them are shown in modern day dress but acting out old-fashioned scenarios. At one level they are just comical enactments of a historical mode of propaganda. But they also act as a reminder that the sentiments accorded to serving soldiers are still part of an ideology of heroism being played out in contemporary warfare. We may think our contemporary imagery is much more sophisticated yet the content and ideology remains similar in modern portrayals of heroic soldiers.

The post Dear Soldier appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.