YAN PEI-MING | INTERVIEW

©Yan Pei Ming, in front of his black and white version of Mona Lisa in Musee du Louvre, 2009. Courtesy of the artist.

One of the most dynamic and experimental Chinese painters in the international art scene, Yan Pei Ming is particularly known for his epic size paintings of iconic figures, Mao Zedong, Bruce Lee, Obama, and his father and self-portraits. His expressive style and controlled palette reflect a connection to the aesthetic and cultural climate of China as well as the influence of 20th Century American conceptual art. His canvases are typically mono- or bi-chromatic and painted with large brushes (sometimes a broom), in either black and white or deep shades of red. With a mastered economy of marks, he delineates his compositions with broad, sweeping gestures and visible drips, resulting in images that dissolve into near-abstraction at close view.

Today, we talked to Yan about his life and his art.

YPM - YAN Pei-MinG

ST - Selina Ting for initiArt Magazine

ST : How do your studios in Paris and Dijon function?

YPM : Nowadays, I rarely go to the Paris studio. I prefer to work here. It's very quiet. I have been working here a lot in the last 13 years.

ST : How do you find Dijon?

YPM : Most of the artists prefer to live in Paris. I am a very quiet person. I don't need to live next to the Louvre or the Pompidou Centre. I prefer the tranquility of Dijon. The work of an artist evolves with the environment where he works.

ST : Dijon is nevertheless the periphery of the art world. Don't you feel isolated here?

YPM : I am a very lonely person. But that doesn't matter. I work a lot in my studio. I can go to Paris when necessary; it's only 1.5 hours of train.

ST : Why did you settle down in Dijon when you arrived France?

YPM : I came to France as a student. At that time, I attended a language school in Dijon and later the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Dijon. When I graduated, I rented a studio with some classmates. We started to paint there, and gradually settled down in Dijon.

ST : What brought you to France at a young age?

YPM : I came to France to learn painting. It was in 1980, I was 20. China was just opened to the world and I was among the first group of Chinese to leave the country. I was the youngest artist to come to France as well. I wanted to leave because at the time, the atmosphere in China... well, for someone who wanted to study fine art, France is the place to go, lots of fantasy, lots of expectations. The artistic ambiance, the ecology, the theories, the exhibitions, etc...  Just like you, why did you come to France? It's the life for an adventurer!

ST : Did you start painting before you left China?

YPM : I left China after my high school. I've never been trained in any fine art school in China. My art training started in France. Before that, of course, I learnt to draw and paint by myself, like all the others.

ST : Did you learn Chinese painting as well?

YPM : Yes, a little bit... 5 months before I left for France.

ST : Why 5 months before?

YPM : Because people said you have to know a bit of Chinese painting, especially when you are leaving the country.

ST : Does it serve you in any way?

YPM : I think not. But I started some watercolour these years, black and white, large format.

ST : How did you feel when you just arrived France?

YPM : People of my generation... we have to be independent financially. If you managed to do so, you stay as you wish. Otherwise, you go back home.

ST : So how did you manage it?

YPM : I worked while studying in school, like everyone else. I worked in a Chinese restaurant in Dijon. It's still here, but the owner changed.

ST : What was the greatest shock when you were new to France?

YPM : At that time, all I wanted was to be admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, to obtain my diploma. After graduating from the school, I just wanted to have a studio and to concentrate on painting. When I had substantial works and feeling ready, I sought opportunities to exhibit my work. Step by step… there is passion in every different step.

ST : What you learnt and saw at that time must be extremely different from what you knew previously about art.

YPM : At that time, I frequented the European art circle. There is an art centre in Dijon. They showed a lot of American and German artists, French artists as well. And I saw a lot of new things in Paris.

ST : Who were your close friends at that time?

YPM : When I first arrived, I was alone. There was only me. Towards the end of the 1980s, Huang Yong Ping, Yang Jiechang, and the others came to France and I became very good friends with them. Before that, my artists-friends were mainly Europeans.

ST : Such as?

YPM : Daniel Buren is a very close friend of mine. There are also Sarkis, Bernard Frize, Olivier Mosset, etc... Now everyone is busy.

ST : While 30 years ago everyone were working hard to gain a place in the art world.

YPM : They already had their place in the art world. I was at the starting point of my career. Daniel Buren was my supervisor when I attended the Institut des hautes études en arts plastiques de Paris in 1988.

ST : Do you still remember your first exhibition?

YPM : The first relatively formal exhibition that I participated was in 1988, « Ateliers 88 » in Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Before that I was mainly showing in Dijon and around in the region. My strategy was to encompass the city from the region! Hahaha… Later in 1991, I started to work with the Parisian Gallery Anne de Villepoix, where I had several solo shows. I worked briefly with another gallery called Galerie Durand-Dessert, it was one of the most famous gallery in the 1980s. It's now closed. Now I have two galleries, one in the States, one in Italy. Some years ago, I had 7 to 8 galleries and it was very tiring to work with so many galleries. Now I prefer to be quiet.

Portraits

ST : You have been painting portraits all the way?

YPM : Yes. I started painting portraits when I was in China. In general, in China, we start with portrait when we learn to draw or paint.

ST : Was it also because of your special preference or sensation towards the human being?

YPM : Art is about man. It speaks to people. Portrait is like a mirror, it reflects to us who we are, what we are. My work always orients towards human beings, it's the centre, the fundamental element of my work. If you ask me to do abstract painting, I can't handle it. I am interested in human beings.

©Yan Peiming, Portraits of Picasso and Mosset. View of artist's studio. Courtesy of the artist.

ST : Is this the first time that you paint Picasso?

YPM : Yes.

ST : Why Picasso?

YPM : Because Picasso is the greatest artist of the 20th Century. It is also for a new series of portraits on artists that I've just started. I painted Giacometti two years ago, I have painted some self-portraits as well. And here is another portrait, this is Olivier Mosset.

ST : I didn't know Olivier Mosset so well but my impression of Olivier is someone gay and cheerful, very energetic. I have never seen this melancholic expression on him.

YPM : I would of course modify a bit on my painting, to get the melancholy out of him.

ST : Why the melancholic aspect?

YPM : It's more interesting, melancholy, sorrow, sadness…

ST : Why did you choose this image of Picasso? What's there that attract you?

YPM : It's a picture of Picasso in the late 1960s. I found it from a magazine's cover. I put it aside, and after some months of looking at it, I started to feel something in it.

ST :What is that something in it?

YPM : There is the spirit of a bull-fighter in Picasso.

ST : His eyes are particularly sharp in this picture, and his lips, sort of in-between the spoken and the unspoken.

YPM : Picasso is a very cunning artist.

ST : Compare to Matisse, you prefer Picasso?

YPM : Yes. Matisse is very elegant, very French. His composition, brushwork, colours, everything is very refined and rational. Picasso didn't care about all these. He is very instinctive; he put colours on the canvas without much reflection.

ST : The colour and brushwork are your most distinctive and immediately recognizable elements.

YPM : Yes. If you don't have your own thinking, it's very difficult to form something distinctively yours.

ST : Who would you paint next?

YPM : I don't know. Maybe myself.

ST : How is it like painting oneself?

YPM : Artists are narcissists. Self-portrait is an eternal theme in art. I think almost all the painters have painted oneself at a certain point.

ST : Is there a self-critique, self-examination when you paint yourself?

YPM : My self-portraits are always very gloomy, tragic. There is kind of silence, but there is proud as well.

©Yan Peiming, Self-portrait for Monna Lisa's Funeral in the Musee du Louvre, May 2009. Courtesy of the artist

ST : What inspired you to paint yourself in a state of imagined death?

YPM : That of course is completely imaginative. It's the theme of Mona Lisa's funeral. Mona Lisa is an iconic portrait in Western art history. I want to tell my own story through her. I started with a story in art history, and my personal story, to go back to the very fundamental thing of mankind, the father-son relationship. Besides, death is an eternal topic in art.

ST : What does the figure of father mean to you?

YPM : A son's feeling towards his father changes all along his own life and that of his father. When you are little, your father is strong, authoritative to you. When you are an adolescent, you find him stubborn, old fahsion, oppressive, etc. When your father becomes old, you may have very different feelings towards him. These feelings can be found in all kind of inter-personal relationship, but that between a father-son is the most intense. I wanted to take my father and myself to represent the relation between all the fathers and sons in the world, i.e. the tragedy of a father witnessing the death of his son. In Chinese we say "White hair attending the funeral of the black hair", that's very very painful, very sad story.

ST : What about the figure of Mother? A mother witnessing the death of her child, i.e. the Pietà, is also a classic theme in Western art.

YPM : I will paint the Virgin Mary next year. There will be an exhibition on Virgin Mary next year.

ST : Have your ever painted your mother?

YPM : No.

ST : Why?

YPM : Perhaps it's not yet the right moment. Perhaps next year.

ST : Have you painted other female figure other than Mona Lisa?

YPM : Yes, I did, only a few though.

ST : Such as?

YPM : Marilyn in her death bed.

ST : Why?

YPM : Because she was the most beautiful, most sexy woman in the world. She is always presented as a very vivant, attractive woman, by Andy Warhol, etc. So i present another version of her.

ST : Would you paint female artists?

YPM : I guess yes.

©Yan Peiming, View of exhibition, The Funeral of Monna Lisa, Musee du Louvre, 2009. Courtesy of the artist.

ST : Funeral represents the past, the return to the origin, the starting point?

YPM : The funeral of Mona Lisa is to bury Mona Lisa. Mona Lisa is a mystery, like death itself.

ST : Why are you so obsessed with death?

YPM : Because i am afraid of it. But I can't avoid it, so I invent it.

ST : Is the direct confortation with death a way to liberate yourself from the fear of it?

YPM :Well, more precisely, I am not afriad of dying, but i am afraid of no longer living.

ST : Is painting a proof your existence in the world?

YPM : What I am interested is the presence. I have been painting all my life, I love painting, I am the happiest when I work in my studio. That's the only reason that i paint.

ST : What do you wish to attain in your life?

YPM : Nothing. I don't care about what happens after I die. It's for time and history to judge.

ST : What about Mona Lisa? What do you wish to accomplish through it?

YPM : There are many artists who have painted Mona Lisa but they've never shown with Mona Lisa. I am the first artist to show my own version of Mona Lisa in Louvre. This makes a difference.

ST : So you conceived the series of painting specifically for the exhibition?

YPM : Yes, yes, of course. Every exhibition has new theme, with new works. It's always like this in the last 30 years.

ST : Are you preparing any exhibition at the moment?

YPM : I have an exhibition in Beijing, in Ullens Art Centre (UCCA), Childhood Landscape, until the 10th October.

ST : All new work?

YPM : Yes, portraits of children. They are the orphans from a hospital in Beijing. The staff in UCCA prepared a lot of information for me. There are about 34 children, I painted their portraits on flags…

ST : On flags, not canvas?

YPM: Flags, silk flags. There is a ventilation system to make the flags flying at the centre of the exhibition hall.

ST : It sounds more like an installation.

YPM : Yes, it is an installation.

ST : Where comes the idea of such a presentation?

PM : It's the space. The gallery of UCCA is huge, 72 meter long, the ceiling is several meters high. It's not easy to master the space with paintings, even if they are big format. This is a very simple, minimalist way of managing the space. Besides, the flags allow visitors to see the paintings from both sides. They are almost transparent, so to highlight the beautiful space of UCCA as well.

©Yan Peiming, Exhibition view, Landscape of Childhood, 2009 UCCA. Courtesy of the artist and UCCA, Beijing

ST : To paint children in your style must be a very different experience from painting politicians and artists.

YPM : Yes. It is very different. I have painted children before. Every time I painted a child, I felt like a confirmation of life, they are the new generation. The orphans that I painted... their life is very tragic, they were the abandoned, very sad story.

©Yan Peiming, Exhibition view, Landscape of Childhood, 2009 UCCA. Courtesy of the artist and UCCA, Beijing.

Colour

ST : What is colour?

YPM : Colour…  I have used colours before. But most of my paintings are black and white.

ST : Why?

YPM : Because black and white create a world of one's own. An artist has to find and create his own world. Besides, black and white suit my artistic language. I am a very simple person. These two colours are very direct and true, simple.

ST : They are closer to the emotions that you wish to express.

YPM : Yes.

ST : Because in portrait, the persona is more important than the details, that's why you economize the colour, to simplify it, even rendering it abstract?

YPM : I am more interested in simplified, minimalist things. Because in portraits, when the colour is taking away, it becomes another world, it creates a distance between the representation and the reality.

ST : Do you see the world in black and white?

YPM : Hahaha… not yet. I am not yet colour-blind.

ST : You have done some paintings in red and white before. Why did you choose red instead of other colours?

YPM : Because red is the strongest colour. It is the first colour that enters into the vision. It signifies danger, alert.

©Yan Peiming, Pope (2004), oil on canvas, 280 x 240 cm. Courtesy of the artist.

ST : How would you response to the statement of “the death of painting”?

YPM : I think it's not possible. Because every artist has his unique feeling. It's a matter of material. I like to paint since young, and this would never change... Painting is born with the birth of mankind. I don't think painting is dead.

ST : What are your comments on today's art scene?

YPM : Contemporary art has been diversified into many different media, style, etc.. I am very open. I see a lot of exhibitions. Of course, photography, video, etc., have been influenced by painting. Some decades ago, we spoke of different schools. Now, it's all about individual sentiments, personal interests, personality, media, etc.

ST : Is the art market affecting you in a certain way?

YPM : No. The financial crisis has no impact on me, even before the crisis. I am not interested in the market. My life is very simple. Look at my studio… it's always the same simple studio in ruin! Em… an artist has to be like an artist.

ST : Which means?

YPM : An artist has to know what he wants, what he needs. This has nothing to do with the market.

ST : Do you know how many paintings you have produced so far?

YPM : I guess there are several hundreds pieces. My assistant is working on the documentation, the recent works are all registered but the older ones are not yet done.

ST : Do you remember at which period that you liberated yourself from the anxiety and uncertainty of young artist?

YPM : I have never separated myself from it. I question myself everyday, my work as well. This is a motivation to work harder and to go forward. But at the same time, I am certain with myself. I know my direction and where I am heading to. Everyday I am in a bad mood. I am a very melancholic person. All that I am interested in is the human tragedy.

ST : Is it related to your experience? Your life?

YPM : No. It's more interesting to be melancholic. What's the point of telling a happy story? Tragic film is far more exciting and touching.

ST : Do you listen to music?

YPM : No. There is a radio in my studio which I listen to daily news.

ST : Painting is almost a meditation for you.

YPM : Yes.

ST : What about cinema? Do you like cinema?

YPM : Yes. I like cinema.

ST : What are your favorites?

YPM : Such as Hitchcock... something mysterious, tragic. Also Woody Allen, he has very good scripts, amazing dialogues, very little, though. He works on images and dialogues. I also like the films of Chaplin.

ST : Silent films as well!

YPM : Yes. He didn't need language, just his expression, techniques, bodily language. In the age of silent films, he acted out the dialogues when nobody could hear hm.

©Yan Peiming, Obama, 2008, oil on canvas, 98.5 x 79 in. Courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner in New York. © Yan Pei-Ming, ADAGP, Paris, 2008. Photo credit: André Morin.

ST : Just like your painting, talking to people without using the voice. What is Obama telling us here?

YPM : Obama brings hope to the world. But he can't change the fate of everyone. He only gives people hope, and perhaps inspiration to change one's fate.

ST : Thank you very much!

©The editor with the artist, Yan Pei-Ming, in his atelier. Photo by Alon Chan.

About the Artist

Yan Pei-Ming was born in 1960 in Shanghai, lives and works in Dijon, France.

Yan Pei-Ming's most awarded solo exhibitions include Childhood Landscape, UCCA, Beijing (2009), Les Funérailles de Monna Lisa, Musée du Louvre, Paris, France (2009), Yes, San Francisco, California, U.S.A (2009), Yan Pei-Ming with Yan Pei-Ming, GAMeC, Bergamo, Italy (2008), Life Souvenir , Des Moines Art Center, Iowa, U.S.A (2008), You maintain a sense of balance in the midst of great success, David Zwirner Gallery, New York (2007), The Yan Pei-Ming Show, Galleria Massimo De Carlo, Milan (2007), Execution, Musée d'Art Moderne, Saint-Etienne (2006), etc. The artist's many prestigious group shows include The unhomely, Phantom Scenes in Global Society, 2nd Biennale International of Contemporary Art, Seville, Spain (2006), A propos du Lingchi (supplice des 100 morceaux), with Huang Yong Ping, Musée Denon, Chalon-sur-Saône, France, Moi - Autoportraits du xxe siècle, Musee du Luxembourg, Paris, France (both 2004), New Zone-Chinese Art, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland (2003), The Venice Biennale, Italy (2003 and 1995) ; and Lyon Biennale, Lyon, France ( 2000 and 1997).

www.initiartmagazine.com

JESSICA WARBOYS | INTERVIEW

Jessica Warboys, La Fôret de Fontainbleau, 2010, Film still, Film: 16mm transfer to digital 4:00min, colour, silent, camera: Ville Piippo. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Gaudel de Stampa.

Jessica Warboys’s practice employs a variety of media, ranging from sculpture, film, and performance to large format canvases including "sea painting". Her work often departs from personal or collective memories, be it historical, mythical or fictional. Revisits to these lost and twisted memories or legendary and unknown figures shed new light on their symbolic significance in our contemporary socio-political and psychological life.

For her sea paintings, Jessica submerges large canvases in the sea after applying pigments to the inner-folded surface, obtaining the traces of movements and forms:  wind, waves, sand and folds. For out-door cyanotypes, Jessica places objects on hand painted, light-sensitive canvas, which is simultaneously exposed to the sun. In the artist’s words, she's recording transitory images which can serve as material for further "editing" or re-composition.

In the interview, we focused on Jessica's two current exhibitions in France to explore her working process.

Land and Sea
Credac – Centre d'art contemporain d'Ivry
8 April – 12 June 2011

A l’étage 
Maison d’Art Bernard Anthonioz, Nogent-sur-Marne
Jeu de Paume – Hors les murs
Curator: Raimundas Malašauska
24 March – 15 May 2011

On Sea Paintings

Selina Ting: You told me that you used to wake up early when you work on the sea paintings.

Jessica Warboys: Yes, the sea painting in Credac was made early in the morning, when there are fewer people around. The beginning of the day is the best time. The intention is to be immediate. I try to work almost blindly, spontaneously response to previous gestures, without too much force.

ST: Not to think too much…

JW: I like to be surprised, to see something unexpected. If I work too slowly, it could become self-conscious.

ST: Because then you start analyzing.

JW: Yes, analyzing and knowing. Though, through the repetition of this process of sea painting, I am becoming more aware of the effects and variables, I try to stop before I feel I am composing them, so they are as immediate as possible.

ST: Time and time again critics highlight the performative aspect of your sea paintings. Do you see it as a performance? Have you ever filmed your working process of the sea painting?

JW: There is a performative aspect to the making, but it's a process as well as a kind of performance. I am not concerned with how the tableau looks or appears as I make a sea painting, but with the result or record of the process. In a sense the performance is projected directly onto the canvas. As, I am also working on performance and films, I keep a separation. No, I haven't filmed making a sea painting. 

Jessica Warboys, 'Les Arènes de Lutèce', 2010. Film: Super 8 transferred into digital, 5 min 30. See Painting, Dunwich, 2010. Pigments on Canvas, 380 x 210 cm. Banner banner, 20110. Canvas, wood, paint, 165 x 155 cm. Courtesy of the artist & Fondation Ricard. © galerie Gaudel de Stampa

ST: Where did the idea of sea painting come from? 

JW: I didn’t have a studio for a period of time and was moving between Suffolk, London and Cornwall. In Cornwall it was practical to use the beach as a studio.

ST: I imagine it’s not possible to work on your own with such huge canvas.

JW: I have one or two people to help me. It’s too heavy to pull it back from the sea, open and close it on my own. 

ST: Does it smell good? 

JW: [Laughs] not bad.

ST: When you show the sea paintings, you never frame them. Why?

JW: I want the installation to be as close to the canvas during the time of making, currently, as just a shift from the ground to the wall. Depending on the painting or space I may cut the sea painting, remove parts, under and overlap. With the sea paintings, I like the idea that something so large and consuming can be folded and transported or simply kept as a compact minimal work.

ST: Also, there is the repetitive action of folding and unfolding from the making to the exhibiting and to the conservation. 

JW: Yes, I think framing them would stop that and also claim them as paintings… 

ST: [Laughs] Are you feeling guilty for that? 

JW: Yes, that I am not a painter! [Laughs] No, I am not guilty as the title “Sea Painting” suggests. I am interested in their ambiguity, in the end they are what they are, regardless of what they claim to be.

ST: Do you think that once you frame it, you claim the authorship of the work?

JW: No, I think I just don’t like the idea of closing something or making something final. It’s important that they can be taken down and folded up again. They can move on and be reinstalled. There is always a possibility. The installations are momentary conclusions.

ST: Can they be hung upside down or change orientation?

JW: I would have to see the space first [Laughs]. The two sea paintings in Credac were previously shown in the South London Gallery, vertically. It was interesting because the title of the paintings La Cavea referred to the seating around an amphitheatre, which was the location for the film Les arènes de Lutèce (2010) also shown in the same space. In Credac the space dictated the installation of La Cavea, in a way the sea painting became like a band circling the space; closer physically and visually to the title: La Cavea in a literal sense.

Jessica Warboys, La Cavea, Sea Paintings, Dunwich, 2010. Installation view of Jessica Warboys, Land and Sea, Credac, 2011. Courtesy of the artist and Credac - Centre d'art contemporain d'Ivry. Photo : © André Morin / le Crédac

On Film-making

ST: Are your films as improvised as your paintings? 

JW: Yes, what takes place in the filming is quite improvised as there is no story-board. I have an idea, some props and a location. After that I allow things to happen as well as directing/carrying out a simple narrative

ST: For example, La forêt de Fontainebleau is less than 4 minutes. How important is the editing? 

JW: There is a lot of shifting of orientation, reversing etc. I wanted to make a film which feels like you are climbing, and then finally the effect is the space of the place and the duration of the event becomes simultaneously twisted and expanded. The way for me to arrive at that was through less material, fewer shots and more editing.

ST: Is the second film Marie de France more structured compared to La forêt de Fontainebleau?

JW: There aren’t any repeated or reversed scenes or gestures, the narrative leads from one point to another. So, yes it’s more structured and linear when compared to the first film. The third film Victory Park(2011) simply moves from the middle of the park to one end of the park. 

ST: You presented the three films in Credac as a trilogy. What are the elements that link up your three films?

JW: The characters established in the first film are not so present in the third film, where we just the see the form their joined hands make, which is between a square a circle and a knot. This final scene refers back to the beginning of the trilogy. Despite the same characters passing through the three films, their attributes shift as they adapt to the scenario. Each time the characters are slightly redefined, like characters going through costume changes between my films.

Jessica Warboys, Land and Sea, Credac, 2011. Installation view of the trilogy: (from left) La forêt de Fontainebleau, Marie de France (Courtesy of Gaudel de Stampa) and Victory Park (Courtesy of Gaudel de Stampa and Credac) Photo : © André Morin / le Crédac

ST: Was the trilogy format intended from the very beginning? 

JW: When we (Morten Norbye Halvorsen, Ieva Kabasinskaite and Ville Piippo) made the first film, I wasn’t anticipating it would be the first of three interconnecting films. But, then towards the end of the second film, I realized it was becoming the centre of three parts. The third film was made when I knew that I would have the space in Credac to show them simultaneously. So as much as it is an autonomous film it is a response to the first two parts as well as a conclusion to the trilogy. 

ST: The way you present the three films makes them look like one single film installation piece, whilst creating a kind of emptiness in the gallery space. 

JW: I have shown the first two films independently so they weren’t constructed to create a film installation. I had the space in Credac to show the three films simultaneously, side by side and in parallel; it was interesting for me to show them side by side as this is referring to the media itself - film, the length of the canvas in the sea painting installation and also to the length of the lai (poem) by Marie de France which was cited in the second film. It has been great seeing the rhythms and patterns between the three films, as there is a constant movement between landscape, objects and gesture, and the films are in different lengths, there are innumerable variations.

ST: When we look at A l’étage (2011), we see the four films share the same cinematographic language of fragmentation, circular movements of images and sequences. Do you think it’s becoming your style? 

JW: I don’t really set out to define a style, I don’t want to repeat things, but I think a certain movement can come naturally after a previous one, especially if you are working intuitively. A l’étage comes after the trilogy, and I guess after working with the same media for eight months, you start to unconsciously develop something typically yours. But with A l’étage, I think I really wanted to document the place, to understand the space and to explore the history of the place. In a way it’s also to prepare the space, pre-empting the performance to come.

ST: Without being sentimental… 

JW: Yes, to avoid being overly sentimental or nostalgic, it is a seductive space and it is tempting to indulge in its chaotic beauty. I tried to keep a neutral approach, towards the paintings and books etc, to avoid fetishism. The film has an overall even tone and rhythm, and then at intervals is punctuated with image and sound.

Jessica Warboys, A l’étage, 2010, Film still,Film: 16mm transfer to digital 4:00min, colour, sound : Morten Norbye Halvorsen, camera: Ville Piippo. © Jessica Warboys. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Gaudel de Stampa.

On Phantom Archaeology

ST: You seem to have different attitudes towards the spaces that you work with. I want to link this to your sea paintings. I suppose the geographical subtitles are taken directly from the place where you made them. Take Dunwich as an example. It was a very prosperous medieval town in the 13th Century but most of the town has since disappeared due to sea surges. Te Motutapu a Taikehu is taken from a Pacific Island with a dislocated history. If we associate the history of the places with your working process, we wonder if these locations are simply “chance-encounter”.

JW: For Dunwich, it’s partly for practical reasons because it is very close to where I often am, in Suffolk, but then there is another layer which is the history. As sea paintings are like traces or prints, it’s interesting to know that there is something beneath the surface. Still, I don't search for the history. I would make a sea painting there regardless.

ST: Are these places innocent? 

JW: Dunwich is more of a practical reason but of course the history interests me, Motutapu is phonetically of interest amongst other things but it’s also an island with a history that shifts from the sacred to the profane, the library has its own history, Victoria Park is an old park which is going to be re-landscaped… They all have a long, lost, shifting history, or are on the cusp of change.

ST: I like the story of Dunwich and those frenetic divers and politicians who want to use high-tech cameras to take pictures of the immersed village and to re-construct the lost village. When I looked at your sea-paintings, I feel like they are almost archaeological traces. 

JW: I have thought about it, but it’s not something that I would state explicitly. There is always something behind everything, but a lot of these points are incidental to the being of the work. But, back to the paintings, they are very much about a moment, they are defined by the present, there is a very direct rapport between the sand, the wind, the wave, etc.

ST: Are we going back to the circular movement of time again? 

JW: [Laughs] What I mean is that there are two facets to the work: one is the history to which the imagination can attach itself; another is the current moment in the present of which the work is a direct record.

ST: Does the theory apply to the historical heroines in your work, such as Hélène Vanel?

JW: I am interested in Hélène Vanel who was on periphery of the surrealist circle in the late 1930s, then left to do her own thing, now she has re-emerged, in the frame of this show A l´étage, with a real power and intensity. It was fascinating to discover her character, to include her in the performance which will take place in the garden at Nogent, then later to discover that she had actually danced in the same garden, I think there is definitely a kind of rhythm and repetition here, as much connected to her history as to dance.

ST: What about Jeanne d'Arc in your performance The Lark, in South London Gallery last year? 

JW: The Lark is play by Jean Anouilh (1952) accounting the life and trial of Jeanne d'Arc. The book I found of this play was torn so the characterisation and the structure of the play was very difficult to read, this made it clear that as things were already confused things could be changed. Around the same, I found a quantity of stage money which by co-incidence was the same amount as Jeanne d’Arc’s ransom. This found money assumed the status of Jeanne d’Arc’s ransom so she would not be burnt. So, the final part of the performance is the payment of the ransom - when money was rolling down. It is beyond optimistic, it is fantasy, a fictional ending. The performance made in collaboration with Morten Norbye Halvorsen will be re-enacted in Nogent [30 April, Maison d'art Bernard Anthonioz].

ST: Why do you want to include the performance of Jeanne d’Arc in Nogent? 

JW: When I researched into the library, I discovered the husband of Madeleine Smith (one of the two sisters who built the library 1913-1916), Pierre Champion, was an authority on Jeanne d’Arc and published a book Jeanne d’Arc in 1933. 

ST: Is it by chance that all these characters are women? 

JW: I have been thinking about this, it’s not by chance, as a woman, these characters resonate. Art making can take you outside yourself and being curious about somebody else. I don’t mean that I am acting these characters but they provide an image to work (some of the works are portraits) from where I am the mediator.

ST: Telling the story of someone else…

JW: Yes, in an abstract way with just their names as titles, Marie de France, Gabriella, etc. 

ST: Thank you!

Click to watch the video interview of Jessica Warboys on the exhibition A l'Etage:
http://lemagazine.jeudepaume.org/2011/04/jessica-warboys/

About the artist

Born in 1977, UK. Lives and works London and Paris

Jessica Warboys graduated with a Master of Fine Art (Sculpture) from Slade School of Fine Art, London, in 2004. Past Exhibitions include Ballad of the Green Hoop, 2010, curated by Anne-Sophie Dinant, South London Gallery, London; Parasol, 2009 Gaudel de Stampa, Paris; Ne pas jouer avec des choses mortes, 2008, curated by Marie de Brugerolle and Eric Mangion, La Villa Arson, Nice; Up-coming(solo) exhibitions include Sutton Lane, London (June) and Cell Project Space, curated by Milika Muritu, London (September) 2011, (group) Tableaux, curated by Yves Aupetitallot and Vincent Honoré, Le Magasin, Grenoble.

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FRANCESCO VEZZOLI | INTERVIEW

Francesco Vezzoli, photo by Jason Schmidt. Courtesy of the artist and the photographer.

The Prince of Charm masters the technique of persuasion.

Since his first appearance in the international art scene in the mid-1990s, Francesco Vezzoli (*1971, Brescia, Italy) has successfully enlisted celebrities to take part at his mega-spectacles: he cast Milla Jovovich, Courtney Love and Helen Mirren in a trailer for an non-existent remix of the X-rated 1979 filmCaligula (2005); he persuaded Natalie Portman and Michelle Williams to catfight for a fictitious perfume commercial directed by Roman Polanski in Greed (2009); his most impressive crew list in one single event comes as a recipe of superstars – “Lady Gaga don a hat designed by Frank Gehry while playing a piano painted by Damien Hirst, as members of the Bolshoi Ballet danced alongside”. While describing his work often involves an exhausting amount of name-dropping, what matters for the artist is the reality of the world in which we live and the reality of the art industry in which we operate. As the artist says, "we live in a very baroque and surreal moment, despite the fact that we're aiming to be correct and moderate."

The Prince of Charm has his moments of melancholy.

Vezzoli uses the solitary and obsessive technique of embroidery to mix the symbols of mass media society with the heterogeneous cultural references of his childhood. He likes indulging his fascination with figures cast in the limelight and his penchant for glamour, nostalgia and intelligent tragicomic clashes of high and low brow. Call him a satirist, a conceptualist, a post-Warholian, a diva-and-Prada-obsessed, an institutional critic, a descendant of Duchamp-Dali-Warhol mixture, a melodrama-queen…  He would probably reply you, “I don’t care. I do what I need to do”.  

At the occasion of Francesco Vezzoli’s recent exhibition OLGA FOREVERon view in Almine Rech Gallery (Brussels) until 02 March 2013, we have had the artist to share with us his concepts of art-making and points of view on the art industry today.

Selina Ting
Brussels, 30 January 2013

FV – Francesco Vezzoli
ST – Selina Ting of initiArt Magazine

On Olga and Women in Pain

Francesco Vezzoli, (left) Olga Forever (Olga Picasso, London, ca. 1919), 2012. Oil on canvas, laserprint and embroidery collage, 121 x 84 cm (47 5/8 x 33 1/8 inches). (right) Olga Forever (Olga Picasso, 1940s), 2012. Oil on canvas, laserprint and embroidery collage, 121 x 84 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Almine Rech Gallery.

ST: “Olga weeps for all the ballets she never danced out of love for Picasso”. You started the project on Olga Khokhlova by researching into the Olga Ruiz-Picasso Archives, and came out of it with an imagined regret that might not exist in the archives. This calls to mind the interplay between fiction and reality that has been very present in your work. Are you particular interested in a kind of presumed void or creating a void in reality?

FV: I was fascinated by Olga, and the foundation [Fundacion Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte ] offered me the access to research in the family photos archives. I studied the life of Olga and I could only respond to the information I had about her life. It’s very obvious that she gave up something of herself for her husband. The fact that her husband is Pablo Picasso is relevant and irrelevant at the same time. It’s a story of a famous woman, a very intelligent, sensitive and talented woman. But it could be just the story of many women – many women in their life have given up things for their husband. So, it’s not so much about fiction for me. I don’t want to be invasive or to presume anything. Maybe it’s an attempt for me to learn or to give an interpretation from a very personal point of view, but also in a very discrete way.

ST: Embroidering tears to the portraits of female celebrities is a very gentle and subtle way of showing sympathy towards these women. In your video work, you go one step further by substituting yourself in the position of these women. You were the one who’s doing the needlework at a corner, very withdrawn and isolated. You were taking up the position of these public female figures at moment of suffer, while they reassumed their glamour and power.

FV: When I started the needlework pieces about the actresses, supermodels, female celebrities, I assume that the moment when they did the needlework in their private life, they would retreat to themselves and they demand privacy. It is a very solipsistic practice. These are the projections of my sensibility on their public identity.

My fictional interpretation, if you want, is for me to project my pain onto their life. But there is no mystery about that. It’s like any movie director telling the story of public fear or a writer writing a biography on a famous figure, in the process we give interpretation to other people’s life by projecting our own life into it. It’s very natural for an artist to deal with public figures and to project onto them his or her own feelings, that’s the interpretation we did. For me, Olga is crying for the Ballets Russes that she never did, because I am crying for the Ballets Russes that I have never seen.

Francesci Vezzoli, The End (teleteatro), An embroidered Trilogy, 1999. Still from video, DVD, 4 mins. Courtesy of the artist.

ST: How do you approach these women? Do you identify yourself more with women in pain?

FV: Well, it’s interesting because being homosexual, you could say that I identify myself more with woman. The point is: men never allow themselves to express their pain. If there had been a famous crying man in the cinema, I would like to do something on that. I would say the focus of my work is pain, after certain point. I am an over-sensitive person and I tend to project my pain onto the other people.

ST: As a way to heal…

FV: [Laughs] Probably! It’s a very universal theme as well.

ST: Yes, it’s very universal. Can we say that the pain you deal with is more private than human suffering?

FV: OK, this is really to give you an insight about some of my works. [Laughs] I read newspapers. Everything reported, for example from Israel, I am deeply concerned. But then, a shorter article at the bottom of the page tells that this year 120 women were killed in domestic violence in Italy. I read the war in Israel. I read the 120 women killed in Italy. I would never make art on the Israeli war. I would feel totally inadequate to do such a thing. It’s totally out of place for me to go onto the public stage and say, “I have something to say about this”. Many people do. But I would feel that I need to study the history, political positioning of all the parties concerned, etc.

There is one thing I would like to say, many people wash their consciousness or their sense of grief by speaking about the war. But there is a war in every country. There is a war in Belgium that 100 people die in every six months because they drink too much… That’s a war, a psychological war! It’s the war of pain! People are in pain and find different devices to survive this pain! But pain is there and pain makes you die. Isn’t that a war?

ST : It’s a conflict. People are fighting against themselves and the society.

FV : Yes, it’s a conflict! I feel I am drowned to discuss those stories of private pain rather than going onto the podium and say which country is right and which country is wrong…

ST: The danger in contemporary art when dealing with pain, love or any other private sentiments is the fine line between poetry and kitsch. Most artists find it offensive to have his or her works labeled as kitsch. Does it bother you?

FV: But I am having the opposite problem. I think the kitsch ones are those who appropriated the war in Vietnam in the 70s or the war in the Middle-East in their art. I found them kitsch. I think I am not kitsch because I am discussing something I may know about, something that I may feel close to. If I take a political position and put up a political exhibition that costs a lot of money, I think that’s kitsch.

ST: Because that connection sounds artificial to you?

FV: It’s artificial, because they read newspapers and books, then make a statement and put up a show that costs one million dollar in a fancy gallery in New York. They sell the pieces and make more than one million dollar, then they continue to make their political statements and they are very happy! All these for me are very kitsch! Unless you give half of that million to save the war! [Laughs]

I am talking about private pain because it is something we are close to. It’s in our everyday life. It’s a concrete fact of life. I am talking about things that I know. I don’t know all about Picasso, but I know women who give up their public life for the love of their husband. I am discussing Olga in this sense and I am trying to discuss the topic that I can be close to.

But it doesn’t mean that I don’t have a political opinion. I came from a family that educated me to have ideas and political opinions. I was very strongly political-oriented since I was a kid, but I would never put that into my art. I would find it intellectually kitsch, totally out of place, very pretentious.

On Artists and the Art Industry

Francesco Vezzoli, GREED, a New Fragrance by Francesco Vezzoli (2009). 1 min - Short - 2009 (USA). Courtesy of the artist.

ST: Two quotes from your previous interviews. The first one on your reference to Duchamp, you said “There’s no real intellectual agenda. Just to say how much I loved that part of his work”. Second quote on the Greed project: “It would be very easy for me to claim territory on this project and say that it has a critical and moral stance, etc., but I don’t like to sell this version.” Do you purposely shrug away from any elitist or intellectual connotation in your art?

FV: I don’t go to the stage of the art world to make drama! I am more interested in soliciting debates.

ST: it’s very ambiguous, because as an artist who’s making art with a meaning, you do have a statement to make. After that, there is the ambivalent attitude of assuming it or not…

FV: I feel myself more as an amplifier; I don’t see myself as a singer. If I had to choose another job other than artist, I would have been a journalist. Of course journalists do have to have an opinion on things, but at the same time, they are supposed to describe facts rather than giving interpretations, which is historians’ job. Between a historian and a journalist, I am a journalist.

Francesco Vezzoli, Democrazy (video still), 2007. Double Projection video, colour, son, 1 min. Unicredit Group Collection. Courtesy of the artist.

ST: Are you not bothered by the danger that your work is often interpreted in a superficial way?

FV: It’s very often interpreted in a polished superficial way, but I try not to look at them. It’s not my problem if they don’t want to read the books, the interviews, the articles written on my work. I have published so many books, so many people have written about my work profoundly. But it’s true that for the majority, once they see a movie star in my work, they just got stuck to think that it’s all about the movie star.

In my work, especially the films, when people see Sharon Stone, they only see Sharon Stone. They don’t want to know that I went to Washington to work on the project with the media advisors of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and John McCain. And I can reassure you that it was far more complicated to get the advisors than to get Sharon Stone! [Laughs] So I gave up. I don’t care, I do what I need to do… they can criticize or they can just not to criticize…

There are so many people going out there to give talks, seminars, teachings, and then one day you suddenly find out that these people don’t have the integrity that they are selling to you! I just don’t want to belong to this kind of people. I would rather downplay my role than playing preacher. I would rather be mistaken as a dandy! Then if one day people want to see in-depth of my work, they are welcome. There are a lot of depths!

ST : Is there a deconstructionist approach in the way your work functions within the system of the art today?

FV : The main issue here is that, I am not interested in discussing art or the nature of my art unless we discuss first of all the state of the industry I belong to. This is something that I get very aggressive about. In the 1970s, there were only a few museums and galleries, collectors. There were only a few former aristocrats who went crazy and would put Arte Povera in their houses! Contemporary art was like a small, crazy religion. Now, there are more followers in the art world than in any religious group! The art economy becomes gigantic. There is an ever-expanding number and size of art galleries, museums, fairs, journalists, blogs, magazines… This is a huge industry and we are all part of it by profession!

My point is, some artists, for me, are still making political proclaims or statements as if they would belong to a very small industry, the industry of philosophical books! But this has nothing to do with the contemporary art industry! It’s too huge; you can’t get into the industry as a philosopher… Some people are talking like preachers but they are fooling themselves about the fact that they place their preaching into a context, and this makes absolutely no sense, because it’s a context that functions like a Duty-Free store! Artists should re-adjust their thinking according to the industry to which they belong, not in a corrupted way, but they have to adjust.

Francesco Vezzoli, 24 Hr Museum, Palais d’Iena, Paris. 2012. Courtesy of the artist.

ST: Is Art defining the industry or the industry defining the Art?

FV: As far as I am personally concerned, I am interested in the discussion of the role of an artist in the art world and in the society today. I don’t have an answer for it, but to do that, I would like to sit down on the table with people who have more or less experiences in the gigantic structure. Some people just refuse to admit the existence of this industry. Does it make sense to make art that is against the industry? Are these artists going to be able to defeat the existence of this industry? Where are they exhibiting their art? In places that have the integrity to protect their statement or not? This is the topic that interests me!

I feel safe because I am not making art against the industry! I am just being honest and I know my limit. Why would I be an idiot going around and saying I hate this and that, and at the same time exhibit my work in a fancy gallery?

ST : What about the whole movement of the Institutional Critique? How do you see it?

FV : Critics said that my work belongs to institutional critique. But I am not making a critique, I am doing a portrait. It’s different. There might be a critical aspect in my portraits but it doesn’t move me. The focus of my work is not the Institutional Critique. There is more to it. I am talking about discussing together the system of the art world, the industry: Do we accept or not the existence of an industry? This is the step one. I decided that the industry exists and I am totally fine with it.

ST: I interviewed Tino Sehgal, and he formulates his approach to the institutions or the art system but saying that he is not trying to break the system of the museum with the immaterial art but to propose experiments and to expand the possibilities and conventions of what are acceptable in a museum context. In a way, he’s exposing the limits of what a museum can cater for, but at the same time investing new capacities to the museum.

FV: I think what he said makes him more respectable because by explaining his work in this way, he’s very intelligent. I think he’s really expanding the system, and I am trying to expand the possibilities, too. It’s a good approach. If Tino Sehgal said that, I would fully subscribe it! The point is that there are many other artists who said they go against but then are totally embedded in the system. Those are the ones that I don’t understand!

ST : Thank you very much !

Installation view, Francesco Vezzoli, OLGA FOREVER ! – The Olga Picasso Family Album, 2013, Brussels. Courtesy of the artist and Almine Rech Gallery.

Francesco Vezzoli 
OLGA FOREVER ! – The Olga Picasso Family Album
28 Nov 2012 – 02 March 2013
Almine Rech Gallery, Brussels

About the Artist
Francesco Vezzoli was born in 1971, in Brescia, Italy. He currently lives and works in Milan.
Vezzoli studied at the Central St. Martin's School of Art in London from 1992 to 1995.

His work has been exhibited at many institutions including: "The Films of Francesco Vezzoli," The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2002); Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Turin (2002); Fondazione Prada, Milan (2004 and 2005); Museu Serralves, Porto (2005); Le Consortium, Dijon (2006); "Marlene Redux: A True Hollywood Story (Part One)," Tate Modern, London (2006); "Dalí Dalí Featuring Francesco Vezzoli," Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2009-2010); "Marlene Redux: A True Hollywood Story!" Kunsthalle Wien (2009); the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow (2010); SFMoMA, San Francisco (2011), and “24H Museum”, Palais d’Iena, Paris (2012).

Past performances include "Right You Are (If You Think You Are)," Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (2007) and "Ballets Russes Italian Style (The Shortest Musical You Will Never See Again)," Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2009).

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