Interview with Silviu & Irina Székely

q) For the people who don't know your work - how would you describe it?

a)What we do at the moment is described generally by the words photo-montage or photo-collage. We would briefly describe the results of our activities as paradoxical and plurivocal juxtapositions and reconstructions of displaced and vandalised fragments of reality. Everything we produce is made by hand using scissors and glue.   

q) What are the key themes running through your practice?

a)We are less concerned with meaning and psychological effects when it comes to producing art. Our message, if there is any at all, is composed by a plurality of micro- and pseudo-messages and stances that are critically and ironically aimed at certain standardized artistic behaviors such as the total subordination of the title to the visually perceivable work, or the overwhelming mass-production of pictorial works totally dependent on public exposure and technological assistance.

q) Your favourite place on earth?

a)The most desirable place on earth would be a little stone house in the French countryside surrounded by lavender, blue sky and olive trees.

q) What influences your work?

a)We are influenced by the sudden change of our inner tonality and by the impersonal amplitude of our immediate surroundings. As a direct consequence, we witness and we are subjected to an activity of movement, sound, light, contemplation and hand gestures in order to preserve the healthy lawlessness of a sign-image that has no legs to stand on.

q) What music are you into right now?

a)Traditional African music and Scandinavian jazz.

q) Describe your thought & design process...

a)We cut, we look around, we cut again; our gestures are extremely gracious and unrestrained. The excess of thought is strictly forbidden and the final design does not match the unperceivable replica of its own beginnings. We put together undesired fragments only to disseminate them father and farther away into a glued compound strictly limited by the margins of a possible interpretation.   

q) Which emerging artists are you looking forward to seeing more of?

a)As there are so many talented artists nowadays, it would be unjust to pick only a few.   

q) Favourite place on the internet?

a)Internet is just a tool. We can’t find anything interesting in particular about it.

q) Do you have any upcoming projects/exhibitions we should know about?

a)We have our solo exhibition at Leeds College of Art that runs until the 9^th of March 2013. Also, we’ll be taking part in a group exhibition hosted by CES Contemporary in Laguna Beach between 16^th of February – 21^st of March 2013.

q) Tell us something we don't know - but should...

a)We should all know that we know nothing.

q) Where can people see more of your work on the internet?

a)On our Tumblr (http://deuxbricoleurs.tumblr.com) and Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/silviundirinaszekely).

Interview with Wishcandy

q)Introduce yourself, name,age, location.

a)I'm Sashiko Yuen, although many of you know me by the name of Wishcandy! I live in Southern California and i'm in my early twenties. I'm an artist with an equal interest in beauty and the macabre.

q) Can you describe your path to being an artist? When did you really get into it?

a)I've been making art for almost as long as i've been alive. My favorite activities as a kid was to draw all over my mom's bills or sit and tempera paint while watching Saturday morning cartoons. I started getting really serious about developing my skills at the end of high school. That's when i was exposed to many different art careers and decided to go to school for it.

q) Describe your ideals and how they manifest in your work.

a)I don't believe in pure good or pure evil, i like to live in the greys and make my own path in life. So I enjoy juxtaposing darker subjects with a sweet colorful facade. A lot of it has to do with rejecting cultural ideals that we're taught and embracing ourselves. Learning through mistakes and savoring all facets of life.

q) Is music a part of your studio time? What do you listen to?

a)I have a really hard time working if there isn't any music! It really depends on my mood. It can't be too danceable or i'll do more dancing than painting. Lately i've been listening to Deerhoof, Frank Ocean, Gelatine, M83, The Flaming Lips, Francois Hardy, Ohbijou and a lot more.

q) How would you describe your work to someone?

a)This is always the trickiest part of first telling someone i'm an artist! I'd say I make colorful paintings of macabre femme fatales. Almost like Frida Kahlo in a sugar coma, though not self-portraits.

q) Influences?

a)There's a lot of them! Get ready. Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Henry Fuseli, Andy Warhol, Yoshitomo Nara, Frida Kahlo, Thomas Cole, a lot of 1960s cartoons, 1950s pin up girls, high fashion, and literature from the Romanticism period. I'm sure there is a whole lot more i'm missing.

q) Describe your process for creating new work.

a)It usually happens two different ways. One way would be when i have a lot of ideas coming to me i sketch them out (and they get used eventually). Maybe it's for personal use or for a client. The second way would be for me to throw on some music and figure out why i'm in such an odd mood. I try to get the feeling out through some sort of metaphor or create a character to express it.

q) What advice do you have for artists looking to show their work?

a)Make lots of work and put it on the internet. Talk to other artists, musicians, illustrators, photographers, etc. Make friends with people who you genuinely admire. Don't kiss ass.

When you have a consistent body of work make a professional portfolio hosted on your own separately hosted website. And reach out to people you'd like to work with. Don't be discouraged because the art life is full of rejection. Eventually you'll get a yes.

q) What are you really excited about right now?

a)I just released a pillowcase with the Stay Home Club and i've got some secret projects for wearables! It's amazing that people will wear my art and carry it everywhere. Love the enthusiasm.

q) What do you love most about where you live?

a)It's very sunny and i'm very close to a lot pop surrealist galleries! I moved here a few months ago and I feel thankful that i'm finally able to see art in person that i've loved for years. Finally!

q) Best way to spend a day off?

a)Kick back and relax with a movie! Get something sweet and start thinking up new ideas. I never truly take a whole day off, i just work a lot less.

q) Upcoming shows/ projects?

a)I've got art in two new zines coming out soon! Ahoy, Booty! and Moon Power (it's dedicated to Sailor Moon!)

q) Where can people see more of your work on the internet?

a)I have a fancy art portfolio site here, but i keep my blog updated more frequently.

Interview with Ian Liddle

q)Introduce yourself, name,age, location.

a)My name is Ian Liddle, I'm male, 42, British, working and living in Berlin, Germany.

q) Can you describe your path to being an artist? When did you really get into it?

a)Pretty early memories of certain pictures/images fascinating me. Age 6 being captivated by a reproduction of Bruegals 'The Triumph of Death' in a book at home, from age 7 onwards eagerly consuming violent British comics every week, Action, Battle, 2000ad, etc. I guess at 19, having left school at 16 without being in any sort of higher education, spending months making collages/drawings with no real intention of ever showing them to anyone, just doing it for its own sake, made me realise I'll carry on doing this whether i'm 'succesful' or not.

q) Describe your ideals and how they manifest in your work.

a)Hard question... I guess dont compromise

q) Is music a part of your studio time? What do you listen to?

a)No

q) How would you describe your work to someone?

a)Intense, direct, strong, handcrafted

q) Influences?

a)Pre computer renderd comics, sci-fi, horror,,, satire, J.G Ballard, Alan Moore, Jan Svankmajer,,,, as for artists, John Heartfield, Gene Colon, Schiele, Klimt, Kevin Oneill, Bosch, Giger, Breugal, Jamie Reid stuff for the sex pistols

q) Describe your process for creating new work.

a)Different for different things I do, sometimes necessity, for example my exgirlfriend forbade me from chopping up/drawing on any of her old magazines so I had to invent a new process of collaging images i wanted to use from them by shining lamps through the pages building up layers of images to create new collages and then taking photos of the resulting images - the end result being the photographs which I then had printed - now some of these prints I've turned into multicoloured multilayered drawings. Other times I might plan something before I start it, eg, a model set up and posed in a certain way before I start drawing/painting.

q) What advice do you have for artists looking to show their work?

a)Maybe dont expect too much in the way of results from an exhibition beyond doing your stuff to the best of your ability, keep going, plan the next one, dont start believing peoples bullshit.

q) What are you really excited about right now?

a)Life Drawing

q) What do you love most about where you live?

a)Germans

q) Best way to spend a day off?

a)Avoiding Germans

q) Upcoming shows/ projects?

a)A showroom/exhibition collaberation with a fashion designer in December/January, making books, mural work for an apartment, designing/printing tshirts for some musicians i work with, life drawing, plus in the planning stage for some paintings

q) Where can people see more of your work on the internet?

a)www.ianliddlework.blogspot.com
www.myspace.com/ianliddle

Interview with Francesco Paolo Catalano

q)Introduce yourself, name,age, location.

a)I'm Francesco Paolo Catalano, I'm 34 years old and I live in Palermo (Sicily)

q) Can you describe your path to being an artist? When did you really get into it?

a)I began to realize  photos after studing the gender and queer theories. The self portraiture and the photographic portraiture were a natural needing to comunicate about the cultural construction of identity and personality. I don't know if I'm an artist. I only know that since 2006 I changed my "path of life" to describe  my psychological observations and my past obsessions.

q) Describe your ideals and how they manifest in your work.

a)I strive for the absence of vanity and cultural prejudice. Gender is a photographic construction. This is the starting point of my photographic work: to translate the cultural relativism in photography, through a fashion, surrealism and cinematographic language.

q) Is music a part of your studio time? What do you listen to?

a)Music is like the cinematic and literary inspirations. Sade, Prince, Depeche Mode, David Sylvian, are among the artists who listen.

q) How would you describe your work to someone?

a)My photographs are like the drawings of my infancy. Photography allows me to tell a part of who I am, what I was and my attitude to perfmorming in the mirror. My work is my definition of beauty, silence and observation.

q) Influences?

a)Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Grace Jones, Lisetta Carmi in Italy, Diane Arbus, Betthina Reims, Quentin Crisp, and my personal queer icon Patty Owens. I'm struck by people without fear of exposure and repetition over time.

q) Describe your process for creating new work.

a)I write my dreams. I note dialogues, frames of movies, memories and missed emotions. My portraits are often the beginning of my projects: "raw data" on which to argue for future portraits and stories.

q) What advice do you have for artists looking to show their work?

a)It's important, I think, to know about marketing and targeted advertising. To realize a professional portfolio and to offer itself to art galleries or magazines in function of specific projects.

q) What are you really excited about right now?

a)The idea of inventing stories and characters is really exciting for me, like the photographic process itself and the back stage of a performance. The ice cream makes me happy right now

q) What do you love most about where you live?

a)Palermo is a city with a rare photographic light: hot, muggy and sand. This is one of the few reasons why I currently live in Palermo.

q) Best way to spend a day off?

a)Run, walk, look for places with trees and watch the people on the street. Eating outdoors and search for the serendipity.

q) Upcoming shows/ projects?

a)Coming soon an exibition of mine curated by Laura Francesca Di Trapani in collaboration with Maurizio Veronese in Palermo at Spazio Cannatella, an Art Gallery in Palermo. An exibition about my queer icon-character Patty Owens and the cultural idolatry of a pop icon. In this period I'm publicizing my first job as art director for the music video Jökking by Donato Di Trapani (http://youtu.be/dBrozYgszgg) based on a story of mine, Costanza. I'm writing for a next photographic theater project too.

Where can people see more of your work on the internet?

On flickr I have a photostream with portraits and another one with self portrait. I like tumblr too to show the complete works about a photographic shooting. My new tumblr is, for istance, dedicate to the Patty Owens portraits.   

http://www.flickr.com/photos/malesoul/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/francescopaolocatalano/

http://francescopaolocatalano.tumblr.com/

http://pattyowensdiary.tumblr.com/

Interview with Wagner Olino

q)Introduce yourself, name,age, location.

a)My name is Wagner Olino, I’m 22 years old and I was born and currently live in São Paulo, Brazil.

q) Can you describe your path to being an artist? When did you really get into it?

a)I’ve been interested in art since I was a kid and saw cartoons, comic books and paintings that were done in the streets of my neighborhood during the World Cup time.
But, I’ve only started to consider been a visual artist when I was in high school and was introduced to the works of Salvador Dalí and the Dada’s artists.

q) Describe your ideals and how they manifest in your work.

a)My production deals with the perverse and manic side of mass consumption. That’s why I’m interested in showing the other side of comic books characters and brands as I mix them with sex and violence, or try to be ironic about their morality. I’m interested in exploring the questions brought up by living in a third world country, in a city in which the north american influence is really strong. And, of course, I’m part of a generation that has been experiencing globalization in a really aggressive manner, and I think that growing up in a world that want to keep you a teenager forever is not easy.

q) Is music a part of your studio time? What do you listen to?

a)Yeah! I enjoy listening to all kind of rock and electronic music while I’m doing my stuff.
If I had to pick a genre or two, I’d say that Powerviolence or Grunge is my favorite.

q) How would you describe your work to someone?

a)I think that it’s brute, aggressive and ironic look at the consumption society. And that is reflected in every choice I do during my creative process, in which I prefer to use poor materials and a really simple almost childish graphic style.

q) Influences?

a)I love the work of the Chapman brothers, Paul Mccarthy, Thomas Hirschhorn, Jean Michel Basquiat, David Choe, Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Tom Sachs, Kenny Scharf, and many others.
Recently, I’ve been digging a lot of stuff I see from young artists in Flickr, and I think that there’s where the most amazing works are, sometimes I spent hours looking for some new artists.

q) Describe your process for creating new work.

a)I don’t really have a fixed process. It all starts with some kind of research about something I’m interested on. It can be a film, a book, an image, a conversation and a concert, whatever. After that, it takes me some days to start working on something, but it’s really natural and I just let it flow.
But, I’m really aware of what I’m doing and what I want to achieve with a certain image. I believe that a work must be a result of a half conscious and a half unconscious process.

q) What advice do you have for artists looking to show their work?

a)I don’t have any.

q) What are you really excited about right now?

a)I’ve been reading “The Adventures of Pinocchio” by Carlo Collodi and recommend it to everyone. Great book.

q) What do you love most about where you live?

a)The chaos and the ugliness.

q) Best way to spend a day off?

a)Going out with some pretty girls

q) Upcoming shows/ projects?

a)I was invited to have a solo show somewhere between July and August, so right now, I’m working on it.

q) Where can people see more of your work on the internet?

a)On my Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wagolino/
feel free to contact me if you will.

Interview with Fratelli Marvellini

q)Introduce yourself, name,age, location.

Fratelli Marvellini, vecchi e anche un po’ malandati, eredi unici dell’antico archivio Foto Marvellini - Milano

q) Can you describe your path to being an artist? When did you really get into it?

I Fratelli Marvellini a 15 anni facevano carri allegorici e gruppi mascherati di ispirazione futurista inserendosi abusivamente in qualche Carnevale italiano. I decenni successivi non hanno ridotto o modificato gli irrefrenabili impulsi creativi.

q) Describe your ideals and how they manifest in your work.

Passione, assurdo, dissonanze, umorismi, profondità,… Affetto reale per gli oggetti inventati. Disordine interiore ma ordine nell’immagine.

q) Is music a part of your studio time? What do you listen to?

Noi ascoltiamo di tutto. I poveri nostri soggetti, invece, sono quasi tutti vecchietti ormai sordi.

q) How would you describe your work to someone?

Cornici vintage a chiudere ricordi fantastici, icone da celebrare, immagini cui affezionarsi, portafortuna a protezione della casa. Piani concentrici. Universi paralleli. Pop-up...

q) Influences?

Una trentina tra pittori illustratori e fumettisti, un ventina di fotografi, quattro stilisti, tre scrittori, due psicologi, un antiquario e gli stessi Fratelli Marvellini che si influenzano molto tra loro.

q) Describe your process for creating new work.

A volte partiamo da un’antica cornice che va salvata e restituita al mondo. Oppure da un vecchio foto-ritratto che ci implora di essere “marVellinato”. Capita di passare giorni con gli occhi, le mani e il cervello che roteano in un caleidoscopio. Più spesso i piccoli Marvellini arrivano da soli e sempre da soli vanno via per il mondo in cerca di una casa e di muro.

q) What advice do you have for artists looking to show their work?

E mostratelo! A casa di amici, dal balcone, per strada, sull’auto, addosso… Certo è che se il lavoro resta nel cassetto non lo vede nessuno. A meno che il fine non sia proprio quello e a tale proposito consigliamo vivamente di non sottovalutare i posteri. Fate come noi in questi casi: differenziateli.

q) What are you really excited about right now?

Dall’ultimo Marvelini creato.

q) What do you love most about where you live?

Di Milano? Ah! Ah!… Tutto. Come elencava uno sconsolatissimo Alberto Sordi: “El sciùr culéga, el barbùn, la Galeria, el Motta, el panatùn, el Martinìtt, el Dom,.. el magùn!”

q) Best way to spend a day off?

Andare nei pressi di Como da Simone, il primo fan dei Marvellini. Sdraiarsi davanti al lago e alle montagne, guardare il paesaggio, sentire musica, bere vino rosso.

q) Upcoming shows/ projects?

“Marvellinare” un paio di saloni tra Milano e Torino, un portico a Cremona, una chiesa a Pavia, una sala turbine nel trentino, confidiamo anche in un carcere in autunno. Gli altri blitz sono pensati ma non ancora ben organizzati.

q) Where can people see more of your work on the internet?

Nella rete c’è di tutto, si trovano anche i Marvellini. L’indirizzo a cui hai bussato tu è foto.marvellini@yahoo.it

Interview with Felice Zhukov

q) Introduce yourself, name,age, location.

a)My name is Felice Zhukov, I'm 25 and live in Bethnal Green, London.

q) Can you describe your path to being an artist? When did you really get into it?

a)I've been drawing since I can remember so there was never a point where I decided to become an artist.

It was this or nothing.

q) Describe your ideals and how they manifest in your work.

a)My ideals build my work, I basically create scene's that satirise everything I think is wrong with the world or that scares me. So if you read them and reverse the message then you'll find my ideals….

q) Is music a part of your studio time? What do you listen to?

a)I tend to go through stages of listening to music on my headphones, sometimes I relish silence as its extremely rare in my part of the world.

When I do listen to music it tends to be quite a varied selection and I go through different stages, at the moment I'm really getting into electronica like Prefuse 73 and The Flashbulb, but I'm also loving Brigitte Fontaine, Aesop Rock, Kimya Dawson and Ol' Dirty Bastard.

q) How would you describe your work to someone?

a)A rich tapestry of chaos and detail, done in different mediums in various hues of outlandish colour. Usually based around landscapes and filled with intricate details.

q) Influences?

a)I have so many influences! Chris Ofili and Hieronymus Bosch are probably the artists that have inspired me the most over the years but I also love MS Hove, The Clayton Brothers and SKWAK, among many many others....

q) Describe your process for creating new work.

a)I've been thinking about this recently as quite a large part of my process is intuitive, especially in the early stages of the idea, flashes of an image come to me slowly as I think about a certain subject but its takes a while for that to translate to paper, I can walk around with an idea for months before I feel the need to use it. Then I'll read a little about it and begin drawing, often from the imagination but increasingly from resources. Then I build.

q) What advice do you have for artists looking to show their work?

a)Find a gallery and show it! I've done various piece's for shows but this year for the first time I've decided to do everything myself and put on my own show, its scary but its also really exciting. I feel like I can truly create my own vision.

q) What are you really excited about right now?

a)Everything

q) What do you love most about where you live?

a)The variation, in nearly every way imaginable. My area is a melting pot of cultures and idea's and it inspires me every day. It also informs my work massively.

qBest way to spend a day off?

a)Outside, just looking around and being immersed in your environment rather than on a screen or in an idea.

q)Upcoming shows/ projects?

a)'The Urban Jungle' at East Gallery , Brick Lane, London Friday 21st-Wednesday 26th September 2012. (Private View: Thursday 20th Sep 6-9). My husband and house mate (the dustup producers FJH and CTEK will be creating a unique and contemporary soundscape to go along with my work, so it should be an interesting show!

q)Where can people see more of your work on the internet?

a)FELICEZHUKOV.COM