As Andrea Büttner is announced as the winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women, Laura McLean-Ferris talks to her and to Iwona Blazwick, Chair of the Jury, and Director of the Whitechapel Gallery in London, where the prize is hosted.
Klaus Gallwitz On the Works of Lucie Beppler
Summary
The visitor entering the atelier is being spoken to. He is being asked questions.
He has to recognize a distance which lies between the bright atelier light, the clear order of table, chair and cupboard, easel and modelling trestle and the works which have taken control of the space.
Lucie Beppler keeps an artistic household in which the hand crafted and the contextual operations are undertaken with the same seriousness, with quiet impartiality and rigor.
There is a conspicuously large illustration stapled to the studio wall in Frankfurt ó an unusual format of an almost physical quality.
She worked on this for over five years, excluding the breaks, carefully composing the picture base with chalk and bone-glue until it gradually became darker.
Pencil, etching needle and the traces of woodcarving instruments have gradually covered, etched and violated the firm paper. And now the almost black piece of paper looks like an old stretched skin or like a dark sky from whose depths a few lights still penetrate.
Because the work in this drawing was not done on the table but directly facing the wall, she deposited something similar to iron-shavings on the strokes extending beyond the edge of the paper, making an electromagnetic field visible.
The drawings lie in many drawers of the document cabinet, organized thematically in groups ó the result of lengthy days and nights of work.
There is a drawer for most of them: abstract/structural, abstract/figure-like, cosmic, organic, plant, landscape are some of the categories, while completely different expressions form in the mind and underhand at work.
These are related to pain, frailty, fading away and destruction.
And still, at this most extreme point, beauty and sensuality can also suddenly shine through. Like a craved for but unexpected finding, not unlike an excavation, they appear unexpectedly and spread their radiance.
Hard content and tender strokes by no means preclude one another as can also be said of drastic figure modelling and contemplative peace.
i-want-a-print is an online platform dedicated to museum quality, limited edition prints.
Born 1969, Israeli artist Asnat Austerlitz has exhibited abundantly throughout the world in exhibitions such as East International 2005 in Norwich, Art from Great Britain Now at the Wetterling Gallery in Stockholm, and at the Machida Municipal Museum of Prints in Tokyo. Austerlitz works with drawing, sculpture, photography and video, the freedom to move between the mediums is extremely important to her creative process. Austerlitz, an MFA graduate from The Slade School of Fine Art in London deals mostly with the idea of loss and absence in her work. This subject stems from her biography and is present in the reductive process of making the work and in its minimal results.
"Basically I don't call this work with colors watercolors or whatever. first of all I call everything drawing. whether oil paint or mordant. I despise chalk, but charcoal I tend to like more, or graphite. Chalk doesn't suit me. So basically everything is drawings." 1970
“I can only say that if I hadn’t made all these drawings, I wouldn’t have been able to do the political work. I also think that completely false concepts would be going around in my head if I hadn’t done this work. I still consider these drawings to be among the most important things I’ve ever done, since all these attempts and experiments in drawing form an extremely important apparatus for me. it hasn't at all been ordered, not even by me. When I now look at the older drawings, then I think: that hasn't been done, that hasn't been carried out, that hasn't even been touched. There is an awful lot in them. So, for me they are an important element in my life" 1981
" These bipolarities so inherent in Mueller's work: order and disorder, distraction and concentration, pluralism and individuality present themselves in a convincing logic. The plethora of elements chosen, create a secret formal language on the paper communicating with us but it cannot be decoded in away a message can be read as it is full blank spaces, keeping the communication open and appealing to the viewer's activity. This might be a technique Mueller used to apply when he studied lyrical structures during his studies of literature. Transferring the way literary texts are working- each word gaining significance in the context of the neighbor word - to Muellers concept of contextuality intertextuality is a key to reading of his drawings."http://www.fruehsorge.com/galerie/
I have started my recent series of works on paper with a different approach, I limited my color pallet to blues and greens. I felt in my previous series I was hiding behind color and not discussing what was really going on with my paintings. My paintings were stuck in what I felt was an uncomfortable transition, from an abstract landscape and representational imagery to total abstraction. If I go too far in either direction the painting doesn't feel right. Limiting my color pallet helped me refine the balance between the two. Something clicks when the balance is just right, I find it the most interesting.
Eye Pushing Up 2009 Acrylic and ink on paper 22"x30"
One Floating Above 2009 Acrylic and ink on paper 22"x30"
Another side of my work that I am really enjoying right now is the constant layering that happens in some of my paintings. I paint one image, then paint it out, then paint another image and again paint it out until something suddenly clicks and the painting is complete. When I look at my paintings I know the history underneath the completed painting, I hope the viewer can sense the history as well. I am starting a new project now that takes this same style of working but I am applying it to linen and muslim. Painting on the linen, but instead of using white paint to cover past images I will stitch muslim on the surface to create layers of fabric and paint. I have not worked with loose fabric in years, so I am excited to see where it takes me. I love the color and texture of linen, its natural color complements my color pallet and also tones it down.
Hourglass #2 2009 Acrylic and ink on paper 22"x30"
Underground Eye 2009 Acrylic and ink on paper 22"x30"
Did you always want to be a painter?
No, but I’ve always painted for as long as I can remember. Art was a huge part of my childhood. I thought in high school that I would study math or science, but then at the last minute I went to art school. In art school I studied Fiber for two years and Sculpture for my last. I painted more at home than in school. Painting came so naturally so I wanted to learn other things in school. As soon as I got out of school I quickly fell into painting and drawing. I do feel that my education in Fiber and Sculpture adds to my painting.
Can you name 4 major artist who influences your work?
I love Louise Bourgeois and Martin Ramirez for their looseness when they draw and paint. They have an instinctual freedom I aspire to in my painting.
Louise Bourgeois
Martin Ramirez
I like Vija Celmins for her craft, and Unica Zürn for the way her drawings wander but still makes sense.
Vija Celmins
Unica Zürn
What do you plan for your upcoming exhibition?
I am preparing for a show at The Dolphin Gallery in Kansas City, Missouri. They recently moved to a beautiful new space and I am excited to show there. The space is quite large so it is challenging me to work larger. I will show works on paper, the linen & muslim series and new oil paintings. I imagine the show to be a contrast of bright oil paintings and the simple natural muted colors of the linen pieces.
Can you elaborate on your art collection?
I am sentimental when it comes to my art collection. The majority of my collection consists of people I know and have known for most of my life. I identify the art with the person who made it. It comforts me and makes me feel at home to live with their work. On the other side of it, I often trade with other artists I do not know. I can’t say how rewarding it is to trade art. To get something great in the mail and also to cleanse myself of art that is pilling up around my studio. To view my art collection click here.
Here are a couple recent more paintings, here I have started working with red.
Three Points 2009 Acrylic and ink on paper 22"x30"
Above and Below 2009 Acrylic and ink on paper 22"x30"
Hefunas drawings are hand-rendered on several sheets of tracing paper, which opens up the multi-layered works to many different interpretations - from Modernist grids to latticed windows to sleek skyscrapers.
Susan Hefuna was born in 1962 and lives and works in Germany and Egypt.
ROVEN aborde les multiples pratiques du dessin : le dessin dit traditionnel et, dans un sens plus large, le dessin sous toutes ses formes.
Que le dessin existe de façon autonome ou qu'il soit une étape du processus créatif, il est un réel laboratoire de création, étroitement lié à toutes les disciplines et à tous les supports.
L'approche critique de la revue met en valeur la manière dont le dessin est pratiqué, utilisé, détourné, référencé, afin de stimuler le dialogue sur ce support et plus largement sur l'art contemporain.
Il propose des textes critiques monographiques et thématiques, des sujets relatifs au dessin, un portfolio d'un artiste peu connu et une partie de création inédite. http://rovenrevue.blogspot.com/
"I think everybody is born to do a certain thing. And they ought to study themselves, find out what they like and what they don’t like and everything, and try to find out exactly what they’re supposed to do. Everybody’s rushing so much in this life they don’t take time to really look and find out what their response is, even to their own work."
"Artwork is a representation of our devotion to life," Agnes Martin once wrote. "The enormous pitfall is devotion to oneself instead of to life. All works that are self-devoted are absolutely ineffective."
"When I decided to paint, I knew I didn’t want to paint about this world, & nature. I wanted to paint abstract. The most obvious abstract emotion is happiness. So I paint a lot of paintings about happiness. I paint about happiness, innocence, & beauty: the feelings that we have that go beyond the world, that have no worldly cause"
"All my work is above the line. I don’t paint anything depressing (laughs.) To live above the line, you have to think ‘I want to be good. I want to be good every minute.’ And you only pay attention to things that you like, you know. When you go to the museum, you just look at the paintings you like. You don’t look at the ones you don’t like, stop & criticize, and all that."
"Any material may be used but the theme is the same and the response is the same for all artwork... we all have the same concern, but the artist must know exactly what the experience is. He must pursue the truth relentlessly."
"People think that they have to understand art, but that’s not right. Understanding is, you know, the bind. Contradiction & correction, that’s all…oh boy...”
"Well, sometimes I paint about tranquility. I have a lot of paintings about tranquility. It doesn’t matter where you are – if you bring your mind to a stop you’ll feel a light, delicate happiness. That’s tranquility. You’ve stopped."
"You don’t have to listen to anybody about anything. Whatever you want, you get.”
"Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings."
"Happiness is being on the beam with life - to feel the pull of life."
"My paintings are not about what is seen. They are about what is known forever in the mind."
"To progress in life you must give up the things you do not like. Give up doing the things that you do not like to do. You must find the things that you do like. The things that are acceptable to your mind."
"When I think of art I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. It is not in the eye it is in the mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection."
"Beauty and happiness and life are all the same and they are pervasive, unattached and abstract and they are our only concern. They are immeasurable, completely lacking in substance. They are perfect and sublime. This is the subject matter of art."
