ROBIN RHODE | INTERVIEW

Robin Rhode, Board (detail, 2003), 28 chromogenic color prints, each 11 3/4 by 18 inches,
Image courtesy of the artist and Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York. © Robin Rhode

Playing with abstraction illusionism, Robin Rhode (*1976, Cape Town, South Africa) hijacks public space and transforms it into a personal dreamscape where flat renderings of daily objects becomes 3-dimensional ones. Through a precise physical interaction with his drawn objects which Rhode then registers by photography and composes into digital animations, simple abstract shapes are transformed into elements of narratives, often highlighting moments of conflicts and possible failure. In Board (2003), for example, the persona (played by the artist himself) attempts get hold of all the commodities fallen from heaven like in a video game. However, beyond than an individual's capacity, these objects (TV, table, chair, cars, etc) all crashed into the persona and finally killed him, evoking a shared desire for urban property and success among his generation.

In the interview, Robin Rhode shares with us his concepts of art, his growing up in South Africa, his insecurity and uncertainty as a young artist migrating into the centre of the art world from a periphery region.   

Robin Rhode's work is currently showing in Framed, Indianapolis Museum of Art – IMA, until 06 March 2011; The Dissolve,  SITE Santa Fe Biennial 2010, Santa Fe, NM , until 06 Feb 2011. Rhode will also participate in 21st Century: Art in the First Decade, Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, starting on 19 Dec 2010; Staging Action: Performance in Photography Since 1960 in MoMA - Museum of Modern Art, New York, opening on 28 Jan 2011.

Robin Rhode
ST – Selina Ting for initiArt Magazine

On Claiming Space in Street Art

ST: You have been living in Berlin since 2001. Are you now doing work in Berlin as well?

Robin Rhode: No, not in Berlin. I tried but it doesn’t work. There are always alerted police observing me, curious neighbors watching me. It’s too much. Whereas in South Africa, the city is more losing, wild, the space is undefined, opened, free for everyone to claim. When you do street art in Johannesburg, you feel like you have to take the space now, it’s yours now. Maybe tomorrow someone will take over your work, but there is this new democracy that allows individuals to see and understand public space and the self differently. There is a room for you to create for yourself.

ST: It’s also to do with the concept of public and private sphere, which is the politics of street art. But I wonder it’s also part of the lifestyle in Africa where the habit of carrying out part of the private life in the public space is very common.

Robin Rhode: Definitely! Life in South Africa is more community-oriented and the sense of society is more conscious to the people – everyone is involved in the public community life. Europe is so dense, so closed that you have mental block. People tend to keep a distance. That’s why sometimes I struggle to work in the streets here. Berlin is a place for me to contemplate, to devise strategies of working. My studio is also an interesting place where I do all the drawing process. So when I go to the street, I execute my work very fast. I know what I have to do, the rhythm, the image, the composition, the movements, etc. I go to the street very well-prepared.

ST: Can we say that your Berlin studio gives you a context for analytical thinking, and out in the street, it’s the spontaneity that rules?

Robin Rhode: Yes, exactly! And I use the analytic position to adjust myself to a point so that when I enter a public context, I am able to allow my spirit to release and to be absorbed by the particular space. For example, the new work with Berlin Chair [Requiem for a Pavilion of Silence (2010)] that I have just showed you, when we were on the site, my performer looked at me after we sprayed the drawing, and said, “now what?” I was thinking what we were going to do. The preparation was up to this point, and now we had to be inspired and just do what we felt from the space. It was very organic; just let the process come to you. You know, we had all these graphic forms, now we had to allow the space, the situation to take us to the final destination.

Robin Rhode, Requiem for a Pavilion of Silence (Still), 2010. Digital animation, Courtesy of the artist & Perry Rubenstein Gallery

ST: Which means, though you prepared well in your studio, you don’t come to the spot with all the sequences on papers or in your head.

Robin Rhode: No. We don’t prepare the drawings, because you can’t find exactly what you want in a single space. You have to adapt to the situation, and there is the outside influences that force me not to do the images in a certain way.

ST: So, just the framework and then improvise.

Robin Rhode: Yes. We prepare the idea but we allow all the elements from the space to influence us. We allow risks to emerge and find solutions to the problems.

ST: Most of your works are highly choreographed, and you actually filmed them from an aerial angle, how did you manage to have the precise bodily position?

Robin Rhode, He Got Game, 2000. 12 C-prints face-mounted with Plexiglas on aluminum panels, 9 x 11 3/4 in., each panel. Courtesy of the artist and Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York. © Robin Rhode

Robin Rhode: The physicality is being choreographed… Maybe I have a physical narrative that offset by the drawing narrative. The drawing is dictating other physical aspects and I am often confronting the physical aspect of my working process.

ST: Is this sense of physicality, of choreographed positioning a gift or a trial-and-error training process?

Robin Rhode: I won’t say it’s a gift otherwise I would be thinking too much about myself. But I think it has something to do with my childhood. The society where I grew up was very gestural, very performative, very storytelling. People love making jokes and creating situations, manipulating everything into something gestural and funny. I still remember all the jokes and how they turned silly situations into some entertaining. It also has to do with the social situation. I think it was almost a way to cope with the political dramas. When I was a student, I realized this kind of very unique situation, how the body devised a way to transcend the socio-political situation. I had a lot of fun in observing all these. But of course, I had very strong memories of violence, of political instability. But at the same time, there was freedom; it was a moment for wild creativity and fun.

ST: Because it was a moment of vacuum, a moment of unforeseeable changes that one has to be very alert and flexible. Also, body language is something that can be easily passed on from one to another. I am now influenced by the way your talk, the way you move your body. So I can imagine you as a kid imitating the politician’s talk show on the TV, for example. Through these, you develop an understanding of how the body and gestures work.

Robin Rhode: It’s a whole system of science!! [Laugh…]

ST: Are you a good dancer? Sorry for the stereotyping, but it seems like every African in sneakers will do a hip-hop and every African in black suit and white gloves will start tap dancing, like in Promenade…

Excerpt from ‘Promenade’, 2008, HD animation, 05mins. Copyright Robin Rhode. Courtesy the artist, Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York, and Tucci Russo Studio Per L’Arte Contemporanea, Turin.

Robin Rhode: well, that’s me! [Laugh…] I don’t dance a lot now but I was a break dancer, dancing in the streets. I am very much into street art. But I am not a graffiti artist.

ST: Your work is more conceptual than graffiti…

Robin Rhode: Yes. Some graffiti artists reject my work but some like it a lot, and find it very flexible. Because it can be shown in a contemporary art context, but can be just be out there in the street. I like to keep this flexibility. I don’t reject the white cube, I don’t give priority.

On the Aesthetics of the Desire

ST: What kind of graffiti art did you see in Johannesburg when you were young?

Robin Rhode: Actually there wasn’t that much graffiti art, it was mainly mural paintings. They were closer to official mural art with an educational purpose, even religious symbols, cityscapes of New York, of Venice, lakes of swans, images of African bourgeois life, etc.

ST: Sounds like they all referred to another kind of aesthetics which was not available in the daily life.

Robin Rhode: Absolutely! It was fascinating, I loved them so much. It was almost like a dreamscape for me. The murals were not done by skillful artists, but people with passions for beautiful life... Let’s paint the skyline of Manhattan, because that’s the shortest way to New York. Or let’s paint the Venetian canal… it was very fascinating because the desire is very authentic. But aesthetically I couldn’t really relate to it because of the lack of technique. So I said to myself “I could do it better than this”. It’s funny, I didn’t realize until now that what I am doing is in fact influenced by what I saw at that time!

ST: It’s like a fixed physical space that allows you to travel to your dreamland.

Robin Rhode: Yes, I love the idea of taking a public space and transforming it into another world. Now all the images are coming back to me!! I remember there is a mural in a very dangerous area, lots of gangster and drug addicts there. But on the mural, you saw ballroom dancers under the moonlit sky! I thought it was so real and so unreal at the same time. It was wonderful to me because I understood the motivation, why these images existed there. Here in Berlin graffiti art is highly stylized, just super graphic tags. I am not interested in working in this kind of context.

ST: Your work is full of fantasy as well, all the minimal geometrical forms make them elegant and poetic.

Robin Rhode, Untitled, Harvest, 2005. Digital Animation, 3mins. *Film still. Courtesy of the artist and Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York. © Robin Rhode

Robin Rhode: Now I am thinking that maybe I am too poetic! Perhaps I should be very rough and edging.

ST: You don’t feel comfortable with the term “poetic”? Because it contradicts your interests in popular cultural forms?

Robin Rhode: Because I didn’t start with the idea of being “poetic”. I was trying to be rough, quick and cool, that’s why they are just marks, sprays, and charcoal. At this phrase, I am more abstract, but if a drawing shift to becoming poetic, I can’t escape it.

ST: But it has also to do with the music, the colour, the mood, as well… How did you choose the music?

Robin Rhode: I worked with a musician friend from Berlin and we just brainstorm on it.

ST: Why piano?

Pictures Reframed (Leif Ove Andsnes-Robin Rhode) Paris - December 11th 2009 Pictures Reframed (Leif Ove Andsnes-Robin Rhode) Paris - December 11th 2009.

Robin Rhode: It’s just recently. I did a world tour with the pianist Leif Ove Andsnes last year. What I tried to do is to deconstruct the notion of the piano and I became very influenced by the object. That’s why there is Promenade (2008), it was inspired by Modest Mussorgsky’s piano music (1864). So there is this kind of poetic journey…

ST: Let’s talk about the idea of the journey… What an image can create? Like the mural paintings in your youth, they project a desire, a dream and fantasy onto the onlookers and took them onto a journey towards a better future. That’s also what your works are about.

Robin Rhode: Yes. I guess it’s a very central theme. But at the very beginning, I didn’t see that. It was about taking the space and creating an imaginary world, giving the space a power, and making public our shared dreams.

ST: Do your works stay where they were created?

Robin Rhode: Sometimes. It depends on the landlord. If it’s not a commission, then I would get myself into troubles if I didn’t have the permission. At the very beginning, I was even beaten for that. Now I negotiate for the permission. Sometimes my work would get bombed by the other graffiti artists, but I don’t care since my work is the photograph and the video. Recently, when I returned to Johannesburg, I found my works actually stayed. I think they started to like this kind of abstract drawings. But you know, sometimes the older generation would ask me “please leave us a message, please tell the youth to say no to crime!”

ST: Haha… they want you to become a traitor in your street art community!! Are you a missionary now?!

Robin Rhode: These are the community people, drawing on wall for them are that kind of murals which should have a message. Now, as I continue to work in South Africa, the younger generation there start to see this as another escape. Someone is doing something on wall which is about the act of doing, about constructing false imaginations on the wall for the pure pleasure of doing, and not controlling or dictating certain kind of social values. Maybe I should create this freedom in the community for people to do things for their own great spirit. Maybe I should try to do this!

ST: Another kind of missionary, sir!

Robin Rhode, Blackhead, (Detail)2006. 16 digital pigment prints mounted on four-ply museum board, 15.5 x 22 inches each panel (39.4 x 55.9 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York. © Robin Rhode

On Becoming an artist

ST: Why did you choose to settle down in Berlin?

Robin Rhode: It was for love, not for art. I moved to Berlin for the woman I love who is now my wife.

ST: Romantic love story! How did you feel at the beginning?

Robin Rhode: It was very difficult at the beginning, I never feel myself part of the Berlin art scene. It has to do with my identity. Berlin is very international but still it’s a very white scene, very European. I was always the only black in the events and I was easily marked out by people.

ST: You felt insecure when you just moved Berlin? Like uncertain with your work?

Robin Rhode: Yes!

ST: Still?

Robin Rhode: I think yes! It’s the ambivalence of being in and out. You know, when I first arrived, I found works of artists by my generation highly conceptual, grounded on Western modernity, and I felt very insecure because I didn’t feel that I had the same grounding, the same foundation of ideas, of influences, and the same accessibility to theory, history, literature, philosophy, etc. They were so advanced in theory and I didn’t have the same level of education. All these created a distance and an insecure sense about my work.

ST: How did you overcome all these?

Robin Rhode: I became a scholar! I did research, I picked up knowledge and information. My artist friend Moshekwa Langa felt the same, so we worked very hard together to inform us with all kind of information. In my formative years in Johannesburg, we learnt only the skills not the theories. When I saw a European artist making art about a particular philosopher, it was a complete luxury to me. So, I have been accumulating knowledge and keep growing. Now I have developed my skill, I have developed my knowledge, and now I would claim my situation!

Robin Rhode, Empty Pockets, 2008. Digital animation, 1min20. Courtesy of the artist and Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York. © Robin Rhode

ST: You are ready, so you don’t need to feel insecure anymore!

Robin Rhode: Well… I do! But it can be a kind of motivation! Now I like to think that even I am from a particular geographical periphery, I don’t need to be associated with that, my work can touch on other aspects. That’s what I am doing every time when I go back to Johannesburg, I talk a lot about how our work can be related to something else and not necessarily always be referred to its geographical cultural position… how our work can also have impact on other aspects of art, etc.

ST: It’s also about the ambivalent attitude of assimilation and alienation in the global art market for contemporary art. An artist from the periphery regions is expected to produce recognizable cultural symbols in order to be catalogued into a marketable group.

Robin Rhode: Yes… but the market shifts and speculates on short term basis, at a moment, African artists were hot, then Chinese artists were hot, then it was South American artists’ turn, now Indian artists are hot, etc.

Robin Rhode, Stone Flag, 9 C-prints face-mounted with Plexiglas on aluminum panels, 12 x 18 inches each panel (30.48 x 45.72 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York. © Robin Rhode

ST: Still remember your first solo show? Was it in Berlin or Johannesburg?

Robin Rhode: My first solo show was in a public art space in Johannesburg, and 50% of my works was stolen. I made an installation with old shoes stuck inside the wall, you can imagine an invisible being climbing the wall, and at the end of the show, all the shoes were stolen by homeless people.

ST: Oh, they really needed the shoes!!

Robin Rhode: Yeah, I just found it very poetic!

ST: It’s a very nice Act as well… from the artistic, aesthetic dimensions to the functionality of the work!!

Robin Rhode: This kind of situations interest me and also allow me to develop certain concepts, such as the idea of the different formalities of object and art… should it be interactive? Should a sculpture become a tool that allows public to interact so it won’t be isolated? Etc. I remember one time I did a performance in Johannesburg where I draw a bike on the wall and tried to ride it. Then a security guard came, I thought he was going to catch us all, but then he said, “wait, let me help you on the bike”…

ST: … in his uniform!

Robin Rhode: Exactly!

Robin Rhode, Classic Bike, 1998. 12 C-prints face-mounted with Plexiglas on aluminum panels. 9 1/4 x 12 1/2 in., each panel. Image courtesy of the artist and Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York. © Robin Rhode

ST: He has a good sense of humour which turns a dangerous situation into something constructive.

Robin Rhode: Yes, and again, this is typically a South African situation. So I started to work on the idea of audience participation. Later, I initiated the concept of Drawing Field, where I reversed the role of the voyeurs and got them to do the performance. Most of my recent performances adapted this format, i.e. I initiate the performance and then throw it over onto the audience.

ST: At the same time the topic or subject you chose do have an echo in the audience, they are always about the desirable commodity, pop culture, such as the bicycle, the furniture, the sport, etc.

Robin Rhode: Yes, I take familiar situations into my work. The objects imply games… I like the idea of inclusion and exclusion in the games that you want to be involved, to contribute. This is very much the participatory format of my performance.

ST: Thank you very much!

Robin Rhode performance, Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2007.
Black & white shoes sculpted in charcoal and chalk. A bike created in soap. Percussion instruments with paper. Dance by Jean-Baptiste André. Music by Thomas Lacher, Christog Dienz and Martin Brandlmayr. Choreography by Robin Rhode.

About Robin Rhode

Robin Rhode is a South African artist, born 1976 in Cape Town, South Africa, now based in Berlin. In 1998, he obtained a diploma in Fine Art from Technikon Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, followed by a postgraduate program at the South African School of Film, Television and Dramatic Art in Johannesburg.

Rhode had his first solo exhibition at Perry Rubenstein Gallery in New York in 2004. In 2005, he was featured in the 51st Venice Biennale and New Photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2007 he had a large-scale exhibition at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. In September 2008 he had a solo show at the Hayward Gallery and White Cube Gallery, London. In 2009, Robin Rhode collaborated with the Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes to build the stage design and visual accompaniment for Andsnes’ contemporary exploration of Modest Mussorgsky’s piano suite of “Pictures at an Exhibition” which premiered at Lincoln Centre, New York City, in November 2009. This year, Rhode opened his solo show Robin Rhode in Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LA.

Robin Rhode is represented by Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York.

THANKS TO   http://www.initiartmagazine.com/interview.php?IVarchive=31

FRANCIS BACON | MB ART FOUNDATION

Monte Carlo, November 1981, Francis Bacon with Reinhard Hassert, © Eddy Batache, MB Art Collection 

The Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation is set to open in Monaco on the 28th of October to coincide with the anniversary of the artist’s birthday.

This institute’s mission is to promote a deeper understanding of the work, life and methodologies of Bacon worldwide, with a focus on the time the artist lived and worked in Monaco and Southern France.

The Estate of Francis Bacon welcomes the foundation and will collaborate with it on research and educational activities. The art historian Martin Harrison, editor of the Francis Bacon Catalogue Raisonné, is on the board of this institute.

Housed on the ground floor of Villa Elise at 21, Boulevard d’Italie, at the heart of Monaco, the foundation will be open to scholars and art historians throughout the year, from November 2014, and to the general public from March 2015, by appointment only. The foundation’s website will go live on the 5th of October 2014: www.mbartfoundation.com

- See more at: http://www.francis-bacon.com/blog/category/press/#sthash.GuFiXQsq.dpuf

Art_prospect

ATTILA CSORGO | INTERVIEW

©Attila Csörgő with Untitled (1 tetrahedron + 1 cube + 1 octahedron = 1 icosahedron), 1999.

Attila Csörgö (*1965 in Budapest) is among one of the best-known Hungarian artists whose work has featured in prominent international exhibitions. His works explore the relationship between a plane, space and time. He uses art as a means to accompany the viewer into the world of science. Inspired by perspective, geometric shapes and applied mathematics, his works combine fantasy and curiosity to represent various physical and mathematical phenomena, thus creating a new perspective on a reality of which we are no longer aware. Csörgö creates complex installations which upon first glance appear to bebricolage, but which provoke dynamic visual experiences.

During his residency at the Atelier Calder from March to July, Csörgö continued his study of optical illusions generated by the combination of light and movement. He conceived of a meticulous device that combines a moving geometric structure with the projection of images. Contingent on the placement of the projected images of objects on the wall, they appear different, even transformed.

In the interview, Attila Csörgö talked about his project in Atelier Calder and his artistic practices.

AC - Attila Csörgö
ST – Selina Ting for initiArt Magazine

Clock Work, 2011

Attila CSORGO, Clock Work, technic mixed. Variable dimensions. 2011. Work produced with the support of Atelier Calder. Attila Csörgö is entitled to an artistic research fund from the CNAP (Centre National des Arts Plastiques).

ST: In the structure, we see an irregular shape “sculpture” with a tickling arm programmed by a device that synchronized with the actual time second by second. At the same time, two projections on the wall show the sculpture from two different points of view, producing two one-arm clocks: one circular, the other in the form of an infinite sign. It’s a very interesting approach in telling time in the sense that the images are very metaphorical while there is mathematical precision.   

AC: It’s a little game playing on the concepts of time. The clock is of course the tool for measuring and presenting time, whereas the images work on a more abstract level. There are different representations of time. One of these is the circular motion, which implies a repeating cycle in time. Another is the concept of time as infinite, represented by the infinite sign. I want to play with these concepts. There are also two opposing ideas, the movement, which is relative to time and change; and the geometric figures, which are amongst the most static objects created by man. I like oppositions: moving and static, abstract and concrete.

ST: How did you conceive the irregular shape of the sculpture that works for both images? Was it based on mathematical calculations?

AC: I did sketches and I imagined how it should be like. Sometimes I tried to see it through a glass jar as well. At the beginning, I just wanted to make a funny irregular clock but it became more complicated as the project grew.

ST: I remember reading Milan Kundera writing somewhere that the most concrete expression of time is the pause between two musical phrases, which means time is more tangible when time is suspended, kind of being isolated from the last and the next. I like very much this concrete description of something as abstract as time.

AC: Artists such as Marcel Duchamp were fascinated with the fourth dimension and it’s an interesting question, because the time element is something that we can’t see. We can only detect it from signs, shapes, movements, etc. But these movements actually belong to other entities. It’s an imagination. Recently, I just saw a film by Alain Tanner, Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (1976). There is a scene in the film where a History teacher came to the classroom with a big box, and inside was a very long sausage. He took it out, made a knot, and said to the class, “this is History”. He then asked a student to cut it and he took one slice of the sausage and said, “now, this is the History lesson, we are going to observe sections of history”. I like the idea of the continuity of time in a knot, yet we can see it “sections by section”. This kind of simultaneity might not be detectable at the first glance, but if we cut it into sections, we get specific images. Here the cutting and the projecting are equivalent. We can see the images and the projections as simultaneous.

ST: Paradox in the simultaneity. There is another paradox in the sense that the materials, the geometrical shapes are concrete but the mathematical theory is very abstract. Mathematics is purely abstract.

AC: Yes, but it’s also a problem for the scientists. Werner Heisenberg, father of the Quantum Physics, has written about this. It’s shocking for them that the calculations and scientific research showed totally different things from what they could describe by language. They couldn’t describe their theories to people outside of the field because the elements of the language are meant to describe the reality that we are living in, which is the naïve realty! [Laughs] The quantum reality which we can’t see is totally different in ideas and approach. So it’s another problem that we can calculate and somehow go inside the territory of the unknown, the abstract, but then, how can that be shared?

ST: Is it a question that you are concerned with? How do you adjust when making works for a public that may have little knowledge of science or mathematics? Would their difficulties in understanding your work be a consideration for you?

AC: I think art has many layers of interpretations. It’s not necessary to know the scientific layer. For example, kids like my pieces in general. They like motions, light, something moving in front of us. The scientific question today is not like what’s the platonic solid, etc., they have very specialized questions and different theories. My questions are more like “matter questions”, such as what this shape is, how they came into being, etc.

Attila CSORGO, Clock Work, technic mixed. Variable dimensions. 2011. Work produced with the support of Atelier Calder. Attila Csörgö is entitled to an artistic rearch fund from the CNAP (Centre National des Arts Plastiques).

ST: I have read some of your preparatory notes, kind of explanation of the system. Do you show these notes with the work?

AC: Before I showed it but now less. Another concern is that my works are kinetic, but once presented in a publication or a catalogue, they became static. Sometimes you could hardly imagine the movement from one single photo. So I need to add a little description. But it’s not necessary for the audience to read when they actually see the work though it can give additional information. I don’t write all the ideas. It’s more like a research process that I have to deal with in the creative process. Sometimes it’s just very technical things, other times when I am in a more poetic mood, I would write poetic or metaphorical texts too.[Laughs]

ST: I agree with you that these works are very empirical. You don’t actually need to understand the structure but you can just feel it.

Art and Science

Attila Csörgő, Untitled (1 tetrahedron + 1 cube + 1 octahedron = 1 dodecahedron), 2000. Bois, ficelle, rouet, cadre en fer, moteur électrique, 180 x 110 x 80 cm. Collection Mudam Luxembourg, Donation KBL European Private Bankers. © Photos : Andrés Lejona

ST: Why do you always insist on using primitive tools and objects created by your own hands?

AC: At the beginning it was out of necessity. I was making things without any budget, so I started to build systems with very simple tools and poor materials. Later on, I realized that it was an interesting game in regard of the nature and function of the objects. For example, when I need a motion system, I will get a record player or an electric fan which is built for sound and music. In the process, I will have to intervene, to modify the system and make the object perform for me. Of course, there are a lot of struggles, trial and errors experiments. So, I have to solve a lot of technical problems.

Another concern is the duration of the exhibition. Sometimes the objects can’t stay performing or functioning for a long time, so the fragility of an object made in a very particular circumstance increases the temporality of the work itself. You would expect a car to perform for many years because it’s produced in a factory under a certain system. But if you just combine materials and parts with your own hand, then the work becomes far more fragile, and this gives a more poetic nature to the work.

ST: One interesting thing is that you have always been working in the scientific field which is associated with the ideals of high-end advanced technology, but the materials of your work stays very primitive.

AC: I like to use these oppositions. Human mind is never stable; it’s in a state of ever-changing. Maybe the mathematical, geometrical theories are the most elaborated and stable ideas. These geometrical shapes in my work can be considered as the polished, advanced human ideas. On the other hand, there is the use of poor materials. These paradoxical positions create conflicts and I like such combination very much.

ST: How do you approach the aesthetic aspect of your work?

AC: I think it must look poor. [Laughs]  All these have an advantage. The materials suggest that we can do it from our own surroundings. If it’s produced in a super-factory, then it became an alienated position and process. It came from somewhere far away, not from my space. So there is no intimacy, between the art and the artist, and audience.

ST: Since when have you been combining science and art in your work?

AC: I studied painting in the Academy of Fine Art in Budapest, then enrolled to the Inter-media programme that focuses on photography, digital art, theories, etc. Then in the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, I was in the sculpture department.

ST: At which point did you turn to science?

AC: As a child, I liked very much to construct things and made wood structures, etc. I liked to work with my hands. I drew a lot as well. I loved geography, and I hated physics. But it’s a very interesting subject just that it should not be taught in the way schools do. It should be about experiments and making things rather than writing notes. I wanted to be a painter in the 1980s. It was the death of painting at that time…

ST: What kind of paintings were you doing?

AC: It’s a funny question, because I was actually painting pretty futuristic paintings of space and movement, a little bit figurative though. [Laughs] But I have problems feeling the good and the bad of a painting. At the same time, in the art school, I realized I had an affinity with geometry. That was also the first time I started constructing and sculpting things…

ST: Going back to the childhood…

AC: Exactly. And I found a way to judge good from bad… if the structure stands, it’s good, if it collapses, it’s bad. [Laughs]

ST: You found a precise answer in science!

AC: Yes, it somehow has a more stable grounding.

ST: Was that the moment when you started making your 360 degree panoramic camera?

AC: [Laughs] It’s a camera that takes images of almost the entire space. It’s an interesting example because it shows some typical things. The idea was from the early 1990s when I was in the Rijksakademie, at that time the idea wasn’t so clear, it was just a vision. The realization of the project started 10 years later.

Orange Space, 2003-2005. Black-and white spirally shaped photo stripes presented in two stages: Two-dimensional images, 50 x 130 cm and spherical images, 20 cm in diameter Camera, 100 x 70 x 50 cm, wooden, metal and plastic construction, lens, electric motor, revolving parts. © Attila Csörgö

ST: Why are you interested in producing this kind of images, like images in totality?

AC: It’s a good term, images in totality. [Laughs] If you take photos with a regular camera, you know that it’s a little part of the reality that is subjectively chosen with a certain composition. It’s very frustrating in this sense. If you can take images in totality, it’s then no longer a question.

ST: Is it the first camera in the world capable of capturing a total image?

AC: I am not sure. In this way, I think perhaps yes. There is a kind of images that can create a total view of the space but it’s consisted of two circles. What I did is to keep the photo special. The photographic point is from the middle of the sphere, and the space is along us, it’s an embracing space, which means normally, we can’t see it from outside. So this kind of image is very different from our experience. I know only one kind of image that is similar to it which is the celestial globe showing the stars from an outer space.

ST: Since the sphere is convex, we see the image as if from an outer space, like an observer rather than someone from inside. Just now you mentioned the subjective selection and composition of a regular camera and the more indifferent approach of a total image. I would like to link this idea to the tradition of subjectivity in art creation. Do you see the total image as creating a distance, an objective position for photography?

AC: All these concepts of subjectivity and objectivity are very confusing. I think I am just trying to give another vision of the space, another point of view. But at a certain sense, it’s very subjective too. Somebody has the vision to elaborate the system and make possible such images, I think that’s very subjective as well.

ST: Thank you!

About the artist

Attila CSÖRGŐ was born in 1965 in Budapest. He lives and works in Budapest.

His recent major solo exhibitions include Clock Work, Atelier Calder, Sache, 2011. MUDAM, Musée d´Art Moderne Grand Duc Jean, Luxemburg, 2010. In 2009 : Ludwig Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest, Hungary; Domaine de Kerguéhennec, France ; Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin. 2008: Wurfelbahnen und Raumkurven Museum Folkwang im RWE Turm, Essen, Germany. 2007: Platonic Geometry, Galeria Arsenal, Bialystok, Poland; Szent István Király Múzeum, Székesfehérvár, Hungary. 2006: Galleria Contemporaneo, Mestre–Venice, Italy; Skin of Space, Galerija Gregor Podnar, Ljubljana, Slovenia. 2005: Gallery Van Zoetendaal, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (with Gábor Ősz).

THANKS TO   http://www.initiartmagazine.com/interview.php?IVarchive=58

CHRISTINA MACKIE | MATT MULLICAN | PRAXES

PRAXES Center for Contemporary Art

Matt Mullican, Sleeping Child (detail), 1973/2014. Wood, pillow. Installation view at PRAXES. Courtesy of the artist. Christina Mackie 30 August–28 September: Drop 3 October–9 November: And Bird 13 November–13 December: Frog And Matt Mullican 30 August–12 October: Third Person 16 October–13 December: Second Person PRAXES Center for Contemporary Art is a not-for-profit venue for international contemporary art and research in Berlin founded in 2013. Situated in a two-story 200-square-meter former community building, PRAXES presents half-year cycles of consecutive exhibition modules, publications (the Papers), and live activities such as talks, performances, and film screenings (the Parlors)—all revolving around two unassociated artistic practices. Following Cycle 1 (Gerard Byrne | Jutta Koether) in fall 2013 and Cycle 2 (Judith Hopf | Falke Pisano) in spring 2014, the third Cycle at PRAXES is dedicated to the artistic practices of Christina Mackie (London) and Matt Mullican (Berlin/New York). Christina Mackie Testing the capacities of materials such as crystals, clay, garnet sand, and pigment blocks against forces of compression, gravity, technology, or sheer empirical observation, Christina Mackie's over 30-year-long practice circumvents conceptual strategies and turns towards a meticulous investigation of the world of things and perceived interconnections. Her engagement with processes of dipping, dying, coating, collecting, and molding probes a multifaceted animation of the media. Often displayed in itinerant installations, Mackie's œuvre broadens into a continuum rather than a series of insulated works. At PRAXES these connections will unfold in three parts. Combining developments in recent and upcoming work, the first installment posits the exhibition space as a test site with two sculptural sketches for an arrangement of color drop filters forming the point of departure. The two following exhibition modules—composed of existing pieces—take their cue from a dual-monitor work from 2000, Frog and Bird, in which a frog seemingly listens to a singing blackbird. While And Bird loosely deals with performative materials and fabricated interactions, Frog And concentrates on the incidental encounter, the attuned observation, the faces in the forest. Born in 1956 in England and raised in Canada before relocating to London in the 1970s, Mackie has exhibited extensively with recent solo exhibitions including The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2014), Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2012), and Chisenhale Gallery, London (2012). A monograph on her work, supported by the Contemporary Art Society, UK, will be released in 2015. Matt Mullican Articulated in a range of formats from photographs, pencil drawings, performances, texts, and pictographic charts, Matt Mullican has continuously tracked the constructions of subjective realities by repeatedly transgressing into and testing our relationship with abstract or "imaginary" realms. Given this expansive investigation of the structures and possibilities of our perception, Mullican's Cycle at PRAXES will inhabit two connected chapters. The first will look at third-person narratives, spanning Mullican's initial experiments with photographic portraiture, the first iterations of his stick-figure Glen from the early 1970s, and on to transcriptions of recent performances done under hypnosis—a series of repeated, almost musical utterances by "That Person," the artist's alter-ego. The second part will center on a string of live lectures and performances, turning to Mullican's current investigation into the implications of the "you" in his practice—the strengthened identification with an imaginary character through a second-person point of view. Born in 1951 and trained in Los Angeles and New York City, where the artist still partially resides, Mullican is based in and works from Berlin, teaching as professor of sculpture at the Art Academy (HfbK) in Hamburg. Mullican recently had solo exhibitions at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2013), Haus der Kunst, Munich (2011), Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht (2010–2011), and Institut d'art contemporain, Villeurbanne (2010). His work was also included in The Encyclopedic Palace exhibition at La Biennale di Venezia (2013). For press inquiries, please contact Denhart v. Harling: dh@segeband.de. Cycle 3: Christina Mackie | Matt Mullican 30 August–13 December 2014 Grand Opening: 30 August, 7pm PRAXES Center for Contemporary Art Alexandrinenstraße 118–121 10969 Berlin Germany Hours: Wednesday–Sunday 1–6pm www.praxes.de