Artist to watch – Numéro Berlin

EMBRACING LIFE’S FRAGILITY: BRYANT GILES IN BERLIN

Anna Klusmeier — Wed, 06 Dec 2023 11:02:56 +0000

With his 32 works of paintings and drawings, sculptures and a video work, Giles challenges themes of mental health, societal issues and human existence and starts a conversation that invites everyone seeking for honesty and pureness. Impressions of a very special evening in Berlin.

Bryant Giles’ work feels like a modern form of social studies, a moment in life that everybody can relate to, an exchange that touches the soul. The internationally celebrated artist and designer born and raised in Chicago and now working between Tokyo and Los Angeles – although at the same time living a nomadic life being constantly on the move – brought his work transcending traditional art concepts and ideas to Berlin. In his unique solo exhibition, supported by Premiata, he explores the human psyche to bring us closer to the answer of what it really means to be alive and shows exclusively for Berlin created works that are based on his memory, exploring the concept of time that for Giles is nothing else but God. He reinterprets persons he has met in drawings, poems, sculptures or biblical references. Some of the people pictured battle with addiction others depression. He depicts their flaws not as flaws, but as battle scars if will. Bryant wants each portrait to be a mirror of the economy, mental health and self depiction. „At this point, it’s just a way of me giving a home for all the people I’ve met. The millions of faces I’ve seen in the hundreds of places I’ve been that all have stories , names and people who care about them. That I may and most times never will see again. I use the memory of their image to narrate my own pains and loves. And in the most human way, doing that helps me see myself in everyone. Every portrait of you is a portrait of me“, explains Giles in a Numéro Berlin conversation with artist Ruba Abu-Nimah.

In a time that is highly defined and ruled by mass consumption and social media, it becomes more and more difficult to face the question of who we really are. We keep on running, trying to find pieces of ourselves in different countries, cities or even industries and other people. But what if we stopped for a moment and open up to moments of true human nature and moments of raw emotions? What if we tried, every day and every moment, to be as present as possible? „Being present while simultaneously creating for tomorrow has consumed my mind in whole. I can only illustrate pictures I’ve seen in passing“, explains Giles. In the way he approaches his work, he tries to be as honest as he can possibly be, to live a life of unfiltered pureness. What nurtures him are real human connections that he tries to establish throughout his travels and has found, in particular, in Tokyo where he spends most of his time now. „I find purpose through traveling, being a student, learning from those around me. But I’ll say this: to die full of knowledge without release, is to die a sealed book without a key. So teach, wisely“, states Giles. „There’s too much information everyday. I figure loving yourself is the act of censoring your intake of information. As a lot of it is bullshit. Gossip. Fast food. I’ve made work in response but it just feels like an attempt to reject you end up injecting that rubbish into your own system.”

His Berlin show ventures the human being as what it is, breaking it down to its insides visually almost. “I think it’s instinctual for people to take a shortcut in their mental development. Conforming to labels and walking around topics is easier than facing ourselves, who we really are.“ The day after his show, the artist hosted a beautiful format that travels with him too: His art therapy session which is a two hour life drawing that invites a group of people to come with their scatchbooks to draw and talk with him about life and its challenges. We can’t wait to see of what is still to come for the artist and are grateful to have shared such a special moment in his career.

IN CONVERSATION WITH ALEXANDER WERTHEIM

Anna Klusmeier — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 09:02:45 +0000

Alexander, as someone who comes from an artistic family, you probably had many, early points of contact with art. When would you say that you developed this certain connection to recognizing something as art or being able to define art?

I am not sure whether I can recognize or define something as art but I think that an expression may become art if it shows an alternative perspective on the world.

People often argue about what art is and especially what is good art?

I think good art is what stays in your mind.

And does art allow for mistakes?

Your father is a sculptor. How can one imagine your artistic exchange? Have you tried your hand at sculpting yourself?

One three-dimensional thing that comes to mind is an installation of paper streamers that I did for a group show with my classmates in Berlin. I designed the streamers in several striped color rhythms and decorated the gallery’s ceiling. Also a few years back, I did the stage design for a theatre play consisting of window display articles such as fake cherry blossom trees. Besides that I never really sculpted myself… My father and I are in a regular artistic exchange.

Looking at your history, it’s funny to see that you’ve actually been making music for a long time. Why art then?

I was drumming throughout my childhood, coping with my hyperactive disposition. As a teenager I spent my afternoons composing music and playing in bands. What struck me about painting is that nobody can watch you at work. So I went to Berlin to become an artist.

To what extent would you say your artistic reality has changed in recent years? Also, how have you changed as an artist?

During my 8 years of studying, I experimented with very different ideas. For instance I was painting in a photorealistic style for a couple of years. During the time I was studying in New York, I was painting pillow cases and table cloths. In my last semester at University, I decided that I wanted to do something different and started to paint lines in different colors on white canvases.

Your artworks represent a clash of vertical and perpendicular lines that could be called parallel indifferences? How would you translate what happens there into your reality. How would you describe it as a mood in itself?

My paintings depict the clash of horizontal and vertical entities. They try to construct a logic within the chaos of decision making. They show the struggle of a structure against its own disintegration.

For the current exhibition at Schlachter 151, which is called September 23, you have exhibited a total of 11 works, all of which were created exclusively for this exhibition. Can you explain what is reflected in the works created during this period of time?

For the show at Schlachter 151, I developed a new method of filling my canvases. On the bigger works I figured that there is a certain distance between the strokes that is just wide enough: not too crowded, not too blank. I transferred that grid matrix onto all the other paintings, meaning that the smaller the canvas, the fewer the painted strokes. Also, all the colors of the show derive from that big painting in the first room. Basically the whole exhibition consists of fragments of that starting point. Composition-wise, I was looking for a good balance between non-colors, pastel colors, primary colors and black. I wanted to make a harmonious, pretty exhibition.

When do you know if a painting is finished?

With the new method of planning the number of strokes per canvas, I don’t have to make that decision anymore. The painting is finished after the strokes have been sprayed.

What criticism do you hear most often and how would you personally respond to it?

I often hear that what I do has been painted thousands of times… show me.

To what extent does art need an audience? Does it need to be liked and understood by everyone?

I can only speak for myself and I don’t work for experts blessings. I want everyone to like my paintings.

If you look at the Berlin art scene now: How consumers view art and how artists speak about it amongst themselves – is there anything you would like to change? What developments do you think the scene needs?

I think everything is quite perfect in the Berlin art scene. I just don’t think it is my place.

As is the case with every field by now, a large part is shifting to the digital. What advantages and positive developments for art could be triggered by this, and what do you lose, to a certain extent, as a result? What could never be replaced by digital implementation?

I much respect the interest of my colleagues in the digital space. My work though is about the real world, the human body, and interactions between those two entities. To me, a blank canvas is artificial enough. When I’m traveling, I use the drawing tool on my phone to capture ideas. I realized how tempting it is to withdraw actions. To me, one advantage of the digital is its ability to simulate: just like Notes may simulate a composition for me. But I am drawn to the un-erasable and factual. I work with the amount of risk that it takes to leave a physical trace. It excites me to interact with my environment physically, just like drumming does.

Artist to Watch: KENSISE ANDERS

Anna Klusmeier — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 19:34:22 +0000

There are artists who seem overrated and there are artists whom you wish you had discovered earlier. Some you would hope had been shown to you earlier. Our artist to watch for today is taken from our „ALTER“-Issue Selection: Kensise Anders.

On the socials she calls herself DJane Guetta and Christenpunk. When Kensise Anders goes online, she uploads and shares an avalanche of footage that is a filtered choice, a condensate of what she consumes online. It is a tangle of unheard memes, silly fun facts, critical to fake news, literature photographed from a book, snippets from other Instagram and TikTok accounts, all combined with self-produced “content” that is a piece of performance art in my opinion, ranging from selfies with outrageous filters, shots of her friends eating, cooking or smoking weed, as well as her monologues on racial issues to the best and worst from German and global trash tv culture. Sometimes there are photos from Karl- Marx-Allee in her former neighborhood in Berlin to her apartment walls in Vienna, where she now lives and studies at the Fine Art Academy. Apart from all the posts and videos on her stories, Guetta often sports her own crochet wear, which are beautifully and technically created pieces with happy-sad-emojis to powerful and serious engagement with questions of identity politics and racial issues. Anders crochets her entire wardrobe, that at the same time become art pieces, especially by her performative interventions that we can see on her Instagram.

“Crocheting, for me, is some kind of secretive language. I am using monotone or multi-colored yarn to create crochet wear with mere text references, sometimes icons and that takes a lot of technical rules and formulas,” Anders says about her work. The word “text” comes from the Latin textere, which means to weave. The text as the textile as well as the garment as something woven or written. Analogue to writing a text, a crochet piece starts with one line, from there the pieces somehow “write” themselves, as Anders elaborates: “One starts with a fixation on an idea, which in its implementation leads to a kind of communication to the outside world. I would call this a ‘line.’ This line can be wool or yarn, which one crochets into surfaces in order to process them into three-dimensional bodies. I can crochet anything I want and everything starts with a line. I see crochet as a kind of ‘past performance.’ No one can really observe or understand it, but the result of this performance will be a final product that you can touch and that can be experienced.”