EKH: This project, called Ya Kala Ben, was shot in your mother’s home country of Guinea Conakry. How does the idea of origins and heritage influence your work?
NL: For the last few years, my research has been focused on African identity through Western eyes. All I knew before the trip was that my mother is Muslim and that my father is Protestant, although I’ve not been baptized. The religious aspect of my mother’s country became very prominent. I discovered an animist side to the Guinean culture which is based on people’s respect for nature. I had been exposed to the supernatural part of Guinea since I was a child, had visited ‘marabouts’ (a type of witch doctor), and this time around I took part in many ceremonies and rituals. It enabled me to feel more aware of the existence and the intricacies of a world parallel to ours, the world of spirits. The art of photography allows me to exteriorize my emotions and my past, telling my story through different shots, in some kind of syncretism.

EKH: Many of the objects you use in your images are considered sacred. How did your models feel about the customs, the postures, and you photographing them?
NL: They would become serious and quiet. They were stressed most of the time because they were not used to being models. They knew what they were representing, and they knew they had to respect the holy tools. That is why I had to work very quickly all the time. When I got ready to shoot, I did not waste time, because my human models were recreating something holy and many times they felt uneasy. Sometimes I had to deal with violent reactions from Guineans who viewed my practices and procedures as a form of sacrilege.

EKH: Where is your imagery coming from, especially something like Statuette Ndobi? The figure seems to be twisted, pregnant, and imprisoned in those wood sticks. Could you please tell me more about that image, the symbols, the historical issues behind it, and your intentions with it?
NL: In this work, I was interested in the construction and deconstruction of the body as well as the depiction of the invisible. I have studied ritual artefacts common to the cosmology of Guineans; statuettes that are part of a ceremonial structure. They are from another world, they are the roots of the living. Thereby, I sought to touch the untouchable.

I traveled through Guinea and observed different rituals and ceremonies to create my series. I went to many places to find the ones I was looking for and to choose the right models. I am particularly interested in fetishes. The myths, the force of nature, and the deep, intuitive, impulsive culture of Africa offer me a lot of creative inspiration. My approach is to separate those sacred statuettes from their religious context in order to immortalize them in a Western framework.

Ya Kala Ben in Malinke dialect means crossed look. There are statuettes in my photographs, but in the statuettes, the humans are still exist. The final image is always layered and it shows not only the picture but what is behind it historically, religiously, and my experience as well. Statuette Ndobi is a fetish statuette. I put in her some medicine, magic words, and things that belong to me. I created my own ritual doing all my statuettes and I became the feticheur who could animate them with my mind.

EKH: How was your experience of reconnecting with your origins? What was it that surprised you the most?
NL: I have always wanted to explore and share the African culture that is part of me. I knew that the best way to do it was to visit the village founded by my great grandfather. This pilgrimage to the land of some of my ancestors inevitably raised the sensitive question of “origin” or “origins;” mine, that of my parents, of others (my subjects), and of my approach.

What surprised me the most was the pace at which people in Guinea got things done. Everything took a long time. I found myself wasting a day waiting for people to show up. I took off my watch in order to be able to relate and learn how to work at the Guinean space. The systematic lateness of models posed some technical problems, for instance the changing of light during the day, as at certain times it becomes harder to photograph.

EKH: You write, that the “photographic eye … makes [the objects] speak differently” on your website. What is it that a viewer—unfamiliar with Guinean cosmology—will understand from your work?
NL: These objects are part of a collective. They must not be separated from it without the risk of losing their value. They are not the gods of this community but their prayers. They are integrated in a rigorous symbolic order where every component has its place. They are ritual tools that I have animated by staging live models and, in a way, desecrated them by giving them another meaning; an unfamiliar meaning in the Guinean context. In reconstructing these sacred objects through the lens, I brought them in a framework meant for Western aesthetic choices and taste. I analyze myself through the lens of my camera and I constantly question myself—which is very challenging. It is like capturing an image. I travel from a spiritual ground to get to the plasticity of the picture. For me, spirituality is tradition; plasticity is modernism.

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Herod is dancing in Chambliss Giobbi’s Tanz für mich, Salome!, inspired by Richard Strauss’ very modern opera based on the Oscar Wilde play Salome. Giobbi loved the music but has turned the story around and made Herod the one dancing. This collage is filled with the image of an aging, overweight, almost naked man full of faults. He is incestuous, adulterous, and on his way to seduce his stepdaughter. For this image Giobbi used his own body as a model—a brave thing to do, since Herod is anything but handsome.

Herod is dancing. His expensive robe is open, showing most of his naked body. His head, arms, and legs all have multiple images, as Giobbi uses this “cubistic” method to capture movement. The two heads betray Herod’s indulgence with food and wine. In Wilde’s play Herod invites Salome to “Dip into it thy little red lips, that I may drain the cup” and, “bite but a little of this fruit, that I may have what is left” but Salome refuses. Herod still drinks the wine and eats everything else too. In Giobbi’s image we see the remains of red wine and food all over his face. He’s reached a point of drunkenness when reason is no longer bothering him. He touches his right head in a moment of recognition of his madness but he can’t stop dancing just now. Jewels cover his body. All of his fingers are richly ringed. One of his fingernails is badly bitten. He has worries. Metal necklaces surround his body like snakes.

Giobbi was a composer of classical music before he turned to visual arts. As he said, in music “time contains every move we make, everything exists in time, develops over time. I love the idea behind cubism. I love the brutality of it, the honest kind of brutality of it. These are like getting multiple moments of time; doing the direct opposite of (music), like compressing multiple moments in one cathartic image.” In the way that music is composed of single notes, Giobbi’s collages are created from thousands of little pieces. He takes portraits of his models, sometimes as many as 300 images, from different perspectives, enlarges them on the computer (but doesn’t modify them) prints them, and then cuts them into small pieces in order to create his compositions. He uses boards as a base and covers the finished work with a thin layer of beeswax to keep the pieces in place and so they will also “smell good.”

However fascinating his method is, Giobbi’s main focus is the character of his models, “I look for people with a free spirit and strong character; who stand for what they do with great conviction and passion.” This search often leads him to well-known personalities such as artists Joe Barnes and Alice O’Malley, filmmaker Fisher Stevens, performance artist Penny Arcade, or cult figures such as Indian Larry, the Chopper Shaman, or the transgender Amanda Lepore. Modeling for Giobbi is a commitment, since it takes about a year until he reaches the point that he knows them really well and feels that he can get into their skin, or more likely under their skin. That’s when he finally gets to the actual work. When there’s no secret left, he recreates the person in his work not as an idealized version but the “full truth.”

At first sight, you can see that Fisher Stevens is a nice guy, someone you would love to have a drink with. He seems to be a big dreamer whose head is in the clouds, surrounded by the artistic haze of cigarette smoke, while he tells sophisticated and funny stories about the characters he brings into life in his films. Stevens is an accomplished film persona with many movies to his credit including Short Circuit, Hackers, his documentary The Cove and his debut as the director of Stand Up Guys. When he talks about his work his favourite words are, “it was so much fun” or an “amazing experience.” Giobbi got him absolutely right: a nice, amazing, funny person.

Herod is not the only one who is dancing in Giobbi’s compositions. The photographer, Alice O’Malley chooses her models from New York’s club culture, and always strips them down in order to recreate them in blinding whiteness. Inspired by this method Giobbi stripped down O’Malley as she dances in the collages depicting her. There is a lot of stripping down and nakedness in Giobbi’s works. His images of the seven deadly sins (Se7n) are embodiments of unfortunate passions that are pregnant with many evils. They show the aesthetics of the morbid, its cruelty and its beauty. In the collage Pride transgender celebrity Amanda Lepore is dancing in front of a mirror. In their need for exposure Giobbi’s models become overexposed and sometimes too naked, making the viewers into voyeurs.

Herod is still dancing in his Dionysian haze. Does he really dance for Salome? I don’t think so. His dance is no longer filled with desire but becomes a bottomless pit of lust, a burning itch, more like a disease than a pleasure. It is greed that moves him, wanting more and more, never to be satisfied. This modern version of Herod is being consumed by his own needs. Giobbi’s characters are unmasked guests at the masquerade of our times, and his Herod, this overfed, oversexed antihero, leads this mad cavalcade.

By Emese Krunák-Hajagos

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Image courtesy of the artist.

Vibrant colors and piercing eyes drive my pieces. I love the impact of bright colors, and the joy they radiate. To have a blob of magenta and spread it alongside a bright orange delivers instant excitement and sunshine.

The amazing variety between individual faces fascinates me; how is it that only minimal changes in in proportions are recognizable to the human eye and determine likeness? The eyes give so much information; enveloping their roles as the windows of our soul. Our mouths manifest happiness, yearning for a kiss, and anger. In any moment, we are our emotion.

sabinepoppe.com

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Image courtesy of the artist.

All art is collaboration, whether I am collaborating with myself, or with the subject, or doing a home portrait for someone—it’s one of the things I love best about painting. Then the painting is shared and it becomes a collaboration between the viewer and the piece.

blacklionart.com

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Image courtesy of the artist.

I have been creating art all my life and can now finally live my dream to its fullest by creating art on a daily basis.
I am the owner of Warodell art studio, located in south-east Sweden on an island called Öland.
I was born in 1979 and have been working with my art professionally the last 10 years.
I work with mostly oil on linen-canvas but also in charcoal on paper.
I like to paint portraits in different styles and I always try to capture the light and contrast in my paintings.
As I child I got a lot of inspiration from my father who is an artist and I have also attended several art schools.
Im thankful that I can work with art and hopefully I can keep doing it for a long time to come.

warodell.com

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Kristen Copham: I have identified myself as an artist for as long as I can remember.  I had strong drawing skills as a kid, so I benefited from early encouragement.  I now find the title to be a little vague and commonplace, so sometimes in response to “whaddyado?”  I say I’m an illustrator, an entrepreneur, an international playgirl, or a janitor.  My family background is about as idyllic as it gets: close knit, working class, Midwestern, rural, fun, genuine, devoted, quasi-religious and to top it all off, lucky.

LO: What are the ideas in your work and what is your working process? 

KC: First, I try to work at all.  It’s easy to be busy, discouraged or frustrated with what I’m trying to express.  And since it’s pretty entertaining to create work in my head and takes a lot of effort to do it in reality, discipline can be a challenge. But, I know that practice is crucial to successful expression.  I keep a sketchbook in my purse most of the time. I draw in it some of the time, and I embark upon drawing sprees and then drawing famines. In the studio I paint because it’s easier and feels more natural.  Painting is all about my process – organizing and mixing color and materials, and  supporting the ideas both have to coalesce into one cohesive moment.  By the time I do all that, the brush does the rest. Unlike a pen, a brush is fairly forgiving. I need the pen in order to quickly capture ideas or images that seem to come out of nowhere, and usually those are the ideas and images worth exploring further.

My specific ideas tend toward interpretation and representation of the natural world. This planet and the human experience fascinate me every single day.  I’m working on merging the internal with the external world – practicing both seeing and feeling. I try to paint looking at both the outside world or “reality” and the inside world, my place of intuition. I like to paint people from life verses photographs, which flatten out expression and nuance. I’m not saying I can capture those things in a painting either, but the process of building the personality through layers of color and tone while watching how someone moves and interacts with the world seems more dynamic to me than capturing the shadows and light across a face in a fraction of a second.  Doing the latter successfully takes way more talent than I have!  Mostly I just have a color addiction.

LO: You’re a portrait painter, which is a tradition that has produced some of the best works of art ever created. What is it about the human face in painting that fascinates us and what are some of your favorite portrait paintings?

KC: In terms of portraits, some of my all-time favorites are Alice Neel’s portrait of Andy Warhol, affected and fresh; Lucien Freud’s raw, honest and unapologetic portrayal Queen Elizabeth; Sylvia Sleigh’s various paintings of her hairy, handsome Latino model with the humungous afro; Dana Schutz’s portraits of her fantasy last-man-on-earth “Frank”– especially the one where he is bright orange and floating on an ice chunk in an endless sea; Nicole Eisenman’s fabulous prints of faces; Elizabeth Peyton’s romanticized depiction of Kurt Cobain; and Frances Bacon’s disjointed portraits of his lover. Classically, I appreciate the rawness of Rembrandt’s moody self-portraits, and figuratively I’m a fan of El Greco’s movements and gestures as well as Jenny Saville’s big juicy nudes.  Don’t get me going, I could go on and on … I love all of it!

The face expresses so much.  It’s how we connect with each other.  And faces are so varied and interesting, yet they are all fundamentally the same.  Eyes, mouth, nose, ears, and hair (or not!) on a head.  We all have a face, and we simultaneously express through it and receive information through it:  through all the features of the face we see the world, we hear and listen, we speak, breathe and consume.  It’s telling how we tend to find faces in abstract works, isn’t it? The face is the first thing we recognize as babies. I must add that the human body is equally incredible: how it moves in space and interacts with the world, its curves and lumps and lines, the way it can express feeling.

LO: How do you select the subjects that you paint?

KC: Often I let them select me, as with my 1000 faces project.  Sometimes I’ll see a person who I just want to paint because they look so unique or their expression is especially intriguing.  Occasionally I’ll ask a stranger to sit for me, but usually they just think I’m strange and don’t respond. For my “Male Artists Exposed” Series, I painted men who were artists, not models – in order to subvert the idea of the model as object, explore ideas of subject-hood, and because I thought it was fun being a woman artist painting nude men.  I’ve also done a series of nude paintings of my friend David Gibson, a talented curator about town. He’s a big guy, which for me is exciting because the resulting works challenge our ideas about beauty and the human form.

Painting family, friends and lovers is a natural inclination. I want to study the faces of the people I love and record my vision of them. It’s a perceived form of making them immortal, I suppose. I never want them to die!

LO: You ran a gallery called LZ Project Space in the Lower East Side for several years. How was this experience and how was it to be part of the emerging gallery scene in LES?

KC: NY Studio Gallery started with my studio rental on the fifth floor of the Whitehall Building on 25^th street in Chelsea.  I consolidated my living and working space in 2007 and moved myself and NYSG to my building in the Lower East Side. Later we expanded to a small annex space in the back of the building and called it LZ Project Space. We hosted artists such as Arielle Falk, Emmy Mikelson, Ernest Concepcion, and many more amazingly talented voices. It is a tradition that continues to this day with Leah Oates’ sophisticated vision at Station Independent.

At the time we had a great line-up of dealers with exceptional exhibits on the block:  Alix Sloan, who still deals at fairs and has shown out of the NYSG space, Collette Blanchard on Clinton Street, the non-profit Participant who is still a player. I feel honored to have been a small part of the emerging scene in the area. It continues to grow. Today longtime East Village art dealer Paul Bridgewater runs Smart Clothes Gallery out of the space.

LO: Why do you think art is important to people and to the world?

KC: Art captures the time, place, and feeling of a culture and on a grander scale, of the collective unconscious of the planet. We preserve art because people relate to it at a fundamental or archetypal level and in turn it relates back to the experience of being human. It speaks to something universal, which is why humanity has the urge to preserve art and look to it for answers. It offers a time-space thread of connection to our past and future, to shared and personal experiences. It’s the same reason people are often threatened by art. Why else would ancient relics be defaced, or coveted or stolen, or traded at breathtaking prices?  As E. H. Gombrich points out in The Story of Art, why would you care if someone poked holes in the eyes of a picture of your mother? Because the image has power!

Another interesting thing about art is that it is both all around us and inside us. Making art is a way to give yourself a voice, give yourself that power.  The emergence of graffiti-art all over the world is just one example of how young people use mark-making as an outlet.

LO: What advice would you give an artist who has just arrived in NYC and who is not sure where to begin?

KC: It depends on what you want to achieve. I can’t really give advice generally since everyone has different dreams. Do you want to make more work?  Organize your life so that you can work. Do you want to sell your work?  Figure out your niche, find your audience, create a selling plan. Maybe you use the Internet or throw open studio parties or connect to an interior designer. Do you want a dealer?  Do your research and make a plan to find representation. Having representation outside New York can help, especially if your rep does art fairs and has a solid collector base for whose taste your work fits.

There’s nothing that feels worse than being an artist and not working.  Even if other things are out of place – money, or love, or logistics, of life – find some way to make work, even if it’s simply jotting down ideas on napkins you carry in your pocket.  If you have a serious practice or think you’re good enough to be represented, research your possible galleries and make a plan to have your work considered.  Haha, I should take my own advice!

LO: What are your upcoming projects?

KC: That’s top-secret information! (smiles)  But I can tell you a little bit … In my upstate studio I’m working on a series of mountain paintings based on the time I spent last year in Colorado and the Swiss Alps. In entrepreneur-land I am developing a cartoon character that teaches yoga to kids. Of course I still regularly paint portraits, either in Manhattan or on the road. Can I paint yours?

Lately I’ve been trying to synthesize aspects of the external world, specifically the natural world, with ideas of the internal world: living life, learning, making errors, being human and animal at once. I’m trying to mesh those ideas in the mountain paintings, which are both large and sparse – a challenge for a painter who typically covers every square inch of canvas with paint. I may need to bring the practice into plein air for a while. Now and again I’ll find myself fussing with collage, culling old sketchbooks, and looking at art in NY in order to find inspiration and make connections. I meditate and ask the universe for clarity, focus, and clues to discover that next big project that will consume my passion.  Anyway, those are just a few of the grand and sometimes ridiculous ideas that I wake up and go to sleep with. I’m ashamed to say I have another three or four non-art related projects that regularly distract me as well, like fitness, food, writing, or real estate, to name a few.  Unfortunately, I’m a busybody, and that’s never done my art any favors.

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Image Courtesy of Guild Hall

Celebrated artist Chuck Close will show his recent work at Guild Hall in East Hampton, NY, for the second time since his solo exhibition of large scale Polaroid photographs, Chuck Close Up Close, in 1991. Mr. Close always had been an experimental artist who consistently strive for new methods in making his art. In the upcoming show at Guild Hall, his recent works in a variety of mediums including tapestries, large-scale watercolor prints, and hand-stamped portraits on paper will be on view.

Chuck Close
August 10- October 14, 2013
Guild Hall
158 Main Street East Hampton, NY
guildhall.org

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