IJ: Like a sacred medium?
CC: Yes, it’s like a sacred medium or respected or feared in a way. That’s why I’ve always been inclined to keep paintings on the stretcher, and I haven’t been the type of artist who wants to do assemblage. I want to maintain that as a face, there’s this history or trajectory of painting and I want to use how I display paintings to speak about that. I want to use my paintings as weapons but they are also used sometimes to enact violence.

IJ: Can you talk more about painting being a metaphor for a battlefield?
CC: Painting is the best way that I know how to communicate. It’s essentially me throwing my ideas at you in a literal, slapstick way. People are always invested in seeing the painting upright and on the wall. They’re almost invested in this safe way of viewing.

IJ: It’s like a control group almost.
CC: Yeah, I want them to see a painting on a catapult or they see it away from the wall. Makes them think about it differently. That whole conversation of painting as object, painting beside itself, is a typical conversation around painting. I view painting as an object, and there’s just as much conversation coming out of its back, the stretchers, where the stretchers came from, the canvas that it’s on, and the signature on the back; there is as much information as on the front. The back speaks to this history and the front has the ideas. I view them both as speaking at the same time, so it’s necessary to show both. As far as painting as battlefield, I’ve never wanted to make it seem like I’m against painting. It’s not that I hate painting, I love painting.

IJ: I could see that, but I think there is a history of the idea that there is this romantic battle; painting a painting is a battle, especially found in the works of the Abstract Expressionists or Expressionists in general. There is a certain sense of humor found in that aspect of your work.
CC: Right. Sometimes you come into the studio and it’s the best studio day and you think that you made the best piece of art ever. Then the next day you think, “this is shit, I don’t know what this is but I’m never going to show it.” I want to show you that battle on the canvas. I think all artists have to deal with their medium as a battlefield, and that’s just the process of creation. It’s never a straight lined good thing, or if it is you’re doing it wrong! Or you have way too many assistants or you planned everything out too early.

IJ: I think that it’s also more of a newer attitude to show that aspect, to show more vulnerability in art. Older generations weren’t as prone to do that.
CC: It’s totally different from this idea of bad painting, where somebody consciously attempts to show a struggle that is not real.

IJ: It’s almost hyper ironic, bad painting. It’s self aware of being bad. By using the metaphor for painting as battlefield, you’re actually reintroducing the idea of effort or importance and significance.
CC: In all of those battles, which go down, the end result isn’t always the same. There are times when the painting survives and becomes the most important part of the installation, and it doesn’t get graffittied or covered up. Then there are times that it does, and the sculpture or installation has to win in order to redeem the whole project. Sometimes the paintings are heralded, and celebrated, they’re put on a pedestal literally and other times they are leaning over like they’re ready to commit suicide. I’m interested in showing all of that. It’s just more real. It is just really the process of working in the studio, and the studio is a battlefield, you know?

IJ: Sometimes you set paintings on fire, using fireworks. There is this performative element to you work. How important is your role as performer/painter to authorship? Where do you see yourself? Are you always present?
CC: I guess the question is am I the perpetrator or the savior? I’m definitely a performer in my work. I never want to be present completely in the physical way. In the Loyalist installation, where I had the canon fuse, it was never my intention to show the canon fuse being lit in the gallery. It’s theater that isn’t meant to be seen, it’s theater that’s happened in the past. It was supposed to be a past action; this canon fuse had already set off a canon that was shooting at the other painting, the Queen Victoria painting. I’m more interested in you seeing all of those layers of possible destruction, and the actual painting that was previously there, than I am watching the whole disaster go down. Either I would show up before the action or after the action, but I wouldn’t show the action itself. I think that takes a lot away from people seeing two-dimensional objects like paintings.

I’m trying to concentrate on this 2D/3D tension where you’re moving through different realities. You’re creating a reality through painting, and the sort of reality of seeing ready-made or constructed objects next to each other. Performance is just another can of worms that I’m not interested in opening.

With my installation at the Brooklyn Museum, there’s two pieces that have the potential to be launched, and there’s one piece that has been launched. I’ve debated in the past whether I’d show a painting being launched as a performance, that’s the obvious question that everyone asks. I would never show a painting being launched.

IJ: You have a recurring cast of characters in your paintings, you have this amphibian every person creature, the black santa, and the sexy bunny, among others. Could you talk more about the characters in your work?
CC: The Golem character, the every body, everything character, is actually from Jewish folklore. There are tales of this anthropomorphic being that gets created out of clay or sand or dirt and then becomes animated and then essentially kills its creator.

IJ: That’s almost like a twist on the Narcissus myth. Do you identify with any of the characters?
CC: If I were to identify with anybody, I would say it would be the Golem figures, but they identify with everything. Their purpose is to be chameleon like, I identify with that sort of way of living. You have to be a chameleon to be at a certain party, you have to be dressing like everyone else. Golems can be any color, and sometimes they have to change genders.

I’ve always had this narrative of a post-human world. Maybe they’re aliens that have come back that are trying to pick up the pieces of American civilization.

IJ: There’s definitely this idea of time in your work, you’ve recreated the DaVinci catapults for your installation at the Brooklyn Museum. Could you talk more about that? 
CC: It’s funny that we were just talking about the Golems taking over the future, but most of my work is about the present or the past. I have a personal fascination with history, but I’m also interested in war and politics. I really don’t want to talk about those things that specifically.

IJ: It almost seems that there is a sense of play and humor that references much more serious issues. That’s a way of allowing people to think about those things using satire.
CC: It could be considered satire, because the paintings seem light-hearted on the surface. Depending on how you look at them. If you’re just looking at the paintings, things could come out looking quite humorous and light-hearted, but if you look at everything at once you get a different interpretation. I’m not trying to necessarily make fun of war or politics, I’m just trying to give light to the fact that things you would think are very serious are humorous at the same time. When I make pieces like the Sarah Palin paintings or paintings of politicians in them or black Santa, or the Easter Bunny girl, they’re all equally fictional and absurd. The humor exists in recognizing that Sarah Palin is not much different from…

IJ: There’s this fallibility in the characters. Although none of them are really human, even Sarah Palin, they’re all deeply human on a level. By removing the human elements, you make them more human in the end.
CC: Totally. That’s the purpose that the Golems serve. It makes it easier for me to insert dialogue, whereas to put humans in the paintings, for me, would make them very weighed down. These Golems can be whatever I want them to be at any given time.

As far as the whole satire and war, it’s not that I’m trying to make war seem lighthearted, but I’m trying to get people to recognize that these things are not sacred. These things are a part of who we are. At the same time as I’m representing Queen Victoria, Britain, and America as a battle, it’s also connected to how we all have these times of great hatred for other people, fights, and jealousy. We all shoot the canon and launch paintings.

IJ: There’s a little heaven and hell in all of us.
CC: It’s not that there’s humor in that, it’s just that I’m trying to point out the humanity in war just as much as I’m trying to point out the humanity in laughter.

IJ: Do you have any upcoming events coming up?
CC: As far as upcoming events, I am curating a show, TIS BANK, at Torrance Shipman Gallery, in Sunset Park. It is an artist-run space I co-run. The show will feature work by Lisa Cobbe and Troy Michie. I will also be giving a talk at the Brooklyn Museum on August 29 with art writer and critic, Nick Faust.

The post Irena Jurek talks Painting and War with Caitlin Cherry appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

In the events of WWII Belarus lost a quarter of its population and many villages still remain wastelands. There are still some gaps left over between what can’t be said and what hasn’t been understood or properly reflected on. Sergei Loznitsa, Belarus born, tries to bridge those gaps and makes us do exactly what we don’t want to do—be enclosed in a nightmarish existential reality where human nature is examined and stripped down to bare bones.

Similar to some of the most important historical films, which have often not been very pleasing or comfortable, Loznitsa’s In the Fog is hard to swallow. Based on the novel by Belarusian writer Vasil Bykov, the film takes place in German occupied Belarus during the year 1942. A wrongly accused man, Sushenya (Vladimir Svirski) accepts his doomed fate and readily takes on a journey with his would-be executioners Burov (Vlad Abashin) and Voityk (Sergei Kolesov). Walking forlornly through the woods, they are looking for a place to carry out the sentence when Burov is suddenly shot and Voityk flees for safety.

Fate, humanity, and free will are being questioned throughout the entire film in which Sergei Loznitsa seems to relate war as an external factor produced by internal conditions. In the beautiful visual choreography of Romanian cinematographer Oleg Mutu, the vastness of the forest with all its hidden dangers and thickening fog only reflect the uncertainty and helplessness of characters’ position. It is at this point that Sushenya chooses to stay with wounded Burov and carries him on his shoulders, making a vivid allusion to Christ carrying his cross.

Unlike most war films that would incorporate battle scenes and crowds of actors, Loznitsa manages to reveal a humanistic tragedy set to the background of war, using only three main characters. With occasional flashbacks to their past, the director penetrates into their human behavior in a Dostoevsky-like fashion. Sushenya, who fails to persuade anyone, including his wife of his innocence, is left with a single question; “how is a human being able to change so fast?” All the fever of hesitation, unease, and suspicion in the air make the choices of Loznitsa’s characters ever more poignant and dramatic.

By Masha Froliak

Masha also had a chance to conduct an interview with Sergei Loznitsa about the film:

Masha Froliak: War, or outer and inner destruction are common subjects for many of your works. Why?

Sergei Loznitsa: There is something personal in it and perhaps it doesn’t only concern me, but others as well. Something very significant was broken and it is sad. I want to get back to that point of rupture, to understand what happened or at least to re-live that experience.

MF: How important is a re-thinking of the past in your work?

SL: I wouldn’t say re-thinking, I would say understanding of the past. Then the question is–is it important to understand anything at all about ourselves? Everything that connects us to the past exists in our present. Time doesn’t move linearly towards the events in our lives. Certain problems freeze unresolved; and even though the situation itself belongs to the past it may still trouble us with its uncertainty in the present. In order to understand what happens in the present we need to look again at those events of the past where our current condition stays still, awaiting that resolving effort.

MF: Do you think that the whole tragedy of war can be portrayed with just three actors?

SL: The whole tragedy of war can’t be portrayed with any film. One can only portray a short personal evidence in the background of this larger catastrophe.

MF: Your documentaries are so visually beautiful that they seem staged and your feature film In the Fog seems almost too realistic. Where is the boundary between history and fantasy?

SL: Everything in cinema is a fantasy. And what is most interesting is that it is a fantasy of the viewer. You say it is too realistic however it is not clear what that means exactly. Any film is staged. I chose a location, a subject, and I place a camera. Everything the camera records is evidence of what happens in front of it. After which begins a fantasy and a variety of interpretations, which creators of the film think they are able to control.

MF: Please tell your thoughts about the last scene when the main character makes his final decision.

SL: I don’t have thoughts regarding the last scene. It is a story, a story that ends that way. Why does it end this way? What is the story about? That’s what a viewer should think about.

MF: Are you fully satisfied with any of your films?

SL: So far I have been lucky. I have always been satisfied with my works. Sometimes this feeling comes with time. As Volodya Golovnitskyi, a sound producer I work with said, “If you don’t like the film, watch it again.”

MF: Are you currently working on a new film and what is it going to be about?

SL: At the moment I am working on a short documentary and preparing for a feature film. It will be called “ Babyn Yar.“  It is a film about the tragic events that happened in the fall of Kiev in 1941.

The post Loznitsa’s In the Fog and an Interview with the Director appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.