Interview with Manfred Menz at ROSEARK

The earlier oeuvre of Manfred Menz consists of artworks that deal with social critical subjects such as racism, euthanasia or homelessness in a capitalist society; they take the form of installations or collages with texts from self-written poems or excerpts from screen-plays. However, in the past few years the German born artist has been working with digital manipulation in which he removes the iconic structure from famous architectural landmarks by replacing them with the stark white of photo paper and leaving us with only elements of nature. Some of these works can be currently viewed at ROSEARK in West Hollywood.


Simone Kussatz: Do you rather see yourself as a conceptual artist or photographer?

Manfred Menz: I consider myself to be a conceptual artist, although, I've worked with all kinds of cameras. In the beginning of my second career - I worked in film at first - I did more installations than photography. And when I did photography I used them for collages and added texts to them. Now the photographs at Roseark which are part of “the Invisible Project and Invisible Asia” are a combination of photography and digital work.

Kussatz: What inspired you to create photographs of landmarks that can't be actually seen?

Menz: I started with this work about 10 years ago. My work has two components. They are made out of a conceptual and an emotional part. I was first interested in the emotional part, which was to focus on what has always been there, but we've missed seeing, which is nature around landmarks. Obviously if we decide to take a tourist picture of the Eiffel Tower we want to see the tower, and don't care much about the surrounding nature. So I wanted to see what was there. The other part, the conceptual part, was that digital imaging became popular at that time and although I wasn't much into computer work, I felt fascinated by the idea that it would allow me to alter images in ways that one could never tell what happened to the pictures. Therefore I removed the landmarks. I started with my project in Europe. I went to Germany, London, Paris, and Rome. I took a photograph of one of the oldest landmarks, the Colosseum and later worked in Los Angeles and San Francisco. In 2007 and 2008, I went to South Korea and Japan.

Kussatz: Since the focus of your work is on nature do your works carry any environmental message?

Menz: There are many messages in my work and I'm always happy, when I discover another one, which I originally hadn't seen. The environmental message as I mentioned earlier is to see things that surround us, yet we've never seen and paid attention to. In regard to the Eiffel Tower I found these four trees that in some way give us an impression of the relation between the landmark Eiffel Tower and the trees. The trees are not very large by nature, and they can be overlooked easily, but they have a wonderful beauty to them, which fascinated me. However at the end of my project, I realized that most nature around landmarks are man-made. Most plants hadn't grown naturally. And that provided another interesting view which is to what extent do we value nature as what it is, or what we wanted it to look like. Therefore, my pictures show how our alter ego presents itself as nature. That's why I call them documents of society's self-portraits.

Kussatz: In your work “Tate Modern” you have these luscious looking trees and a white ground that appears to be from a winter landscape. In your work “Changdeok Palace” we see trees with colors that represent the different seasons also on what seems to be a snow-covered ground. Isn't there a contradiction?

Menz: I only take pictures during the end of April towards mid-May, because that's when we get to see the freshest green in nature. I have about 30 pieces throughout the world; some may look as if they have more than one season due to my removal of everything. I usually use grey for the ground, which enhances the green tone of nature. And that makes it look like cold winter snow. It's a nice reflection on the fresh green. So you may be puzzled, when you first look at it, thinking how it is possible that there is this fresh green in winter. I wasn't aware of that at first and it wasn't planned, but I like that effect. It's an optical illusion. As far as “Changdeok Palace”, it's my favorite image, because it's unique to get a chance to be able to see all seasons at once.

Kussatz: Karl Marx Boulevard (Karl-Marx-Allee) was your first image in this series. Is there any political agenda in this?

Menz: Karl Marx Boulevard is a well-known street in Berlin. It doesn't only bear the name of Karl Marx, but associates his ideology with it. However, my first thoughts were about the painters of the past that dealt with images of alleys lined by rows of trees. They were creating this optical illusion, a sense of infinity, by using a tunnel vision. I liked the perspective. Those two rows of trees are parallel in reality. The conceptual part of this picture is that I removed the remaining traces of all social achievements and capitalistic buildings of our collective awareness. And what I left is perhaps the 21st Century's version of a virtual reality. I'm not a Marxist. Karl Marx said of himself he isn't a Marxist. He also said “Art is not a mirror to held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it” and that's exactly what I think I did.

Kussatz: Can you tell us more about your work in the Korean Demilitarized Zone?

Menz: I worked from the position of the Joint Security Area. I took pictures with a view from the South Korean to the North Korean side, where there was this gigantic watchtower, from where the North Koreans would watch what was happening on the other side. There is a lot of tension with about 2 Million soldiers total on both sides standing face-to-face. In my opinion this is the most dangerous place on planet. Being from Germany that was a divided country for a long time after World War II, I expected to see military equipment or a military environment on the Northern Side. But instead, I rather looked at something that seemed to me like Disneyland. There was this wonderful nature with trees and so forth. And what fascinated me was the relationship between what reality is and what we're made to believe it is. And I think my work shows that.

Kussatz: You mentioned that you came across some difficulties when you took these pictures?

Menz: I needed to get a permit in Panmunjom first and a military escort for my own protection. I used a panorama camera. It took time to set it up. Therefore the circumstances under which I worked were very interesting.

Kussatz: Since the show includes images of Berlin and Korea, did you try to compare the former situation in Germany with the current situation in Korea?

Menz: I would never compare the two political situations or juxtapose them. They are very different from each other. Yet, it's natural for me to be interested in Korea because I know what it looks and feels like to be divided as a country and the meaning of it and how it's being presented. However, Korea was very different from what I thought it would be. It was much tenser, and yet there was this wonderful nature in such a political difficult environment. And then they have this artificial village on the Northern side. Nobody lives there but it looks very impressive, and obviously it's just there to make us believe something that's not real.

Kussatz: Your picture “Rodeo Drive” seems to me the most artificial one in that show.

Menz: It is the most artificial one and it is the most colorful one. There is the illusion that there are these potted plants floating in the air. And it appears to us as if we're standing at a point looking down at the palm trees, although it was exactly the opposite from where I took the photograph. I was actually looking up. And in a way this is how we feel, if we go shopping on Rodeo Drive. We think as if we belong to the top of society by holding a bag from one of the most well-known streets in the world, where it actually is the opposite. It doesn't make us what it appears to be. It's only an illusion.

Copyright © Simone Kussatz

Interview was published in Whitehotmagazine on December 24, 2010.

Images: Courtesy of artist Manfred Menz (right - Karl-Marx Boulevard, Berlin 2003, 36x44; left - Tate Modern, London 2003, 43x39)

Cheryl Ann Thomas "New Work" at Frank Lloyd Gallery

“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet,” American poet, Emily Dickinson, once wrote in the 19th century. It is exactly the same awareness of our mortality that American ceramicist Cheryl Ann Thomas toys around with in her new works that are currently showcased at Frank Lloyd Gallery. But more than that, her work is also about aging; the disappointments, the hopes and hardships, the dealing with suffering, all the ups and downs that shape our precious lives. Thomas said, “My work is an intimate and experiential inquiry into fragility and loss; I construct, I sabotage, I reconcile.”

The exhibit is comprised of ten elegant black and soft creamy white-colored sculptures, primarily made out of porcelain, except for two bronze and one stainless steel sculptures. Most of them contain the title Relics and several numbers, which indicate the different parts they’re made of. The simplicity in the titles and the reduction to two colors is a conscious act of the artist. Thomas wanted viewers to bring their own interpretations and experiences to her work. Therefore they almost function like a Rorschach test, where one can project one’s inner dialogue. The majority of sculptures sit individually. The two sculptures Coupled-Relics and Five Relics are installed together. Made in the same manner as her former work, the Santa Monica-born artist created them through the coil-technique, where hundreds of clumps of black, white, and gray clay are hand rolled into thin, ropelike strands and stacked, which were later over-fired.

In Six Relics, one can see what seems to be a hooded black cape with a floating creamy white scarf wrapped around it. The sculpture suggests the mysterious interplay between life and death – perhaps death made an appearance, but life force was stronger and pulled him away. In Threesome Relics, a solely creamy white sculpture, one is exposed to what seems to be a figure that could be an aged man wearing a large straw hat, resting his forehead on his left knee. In contrast to Six Relics, this sculpture presents perhaps a life that has yet been spared from a direct encounter with death.

The beauty in Cheryl Ann Thomas works is their elegance and philosophical content. Like each life entering the world, her oeuvre also seems to have that uncertainty of the outcome.
- Simone Kussatz


Copyright (c) by Simone Kussatz

Published in Art Ltd. March 14, 2011

http://www.artltdmag.com/index.php?subaction=showfull&id=1300148521&archive=&start_from=&ucat=32&

Henri Cartier-Bresson at Peter Fetterman Gallery

Henri Cartier-Bresson at Peter Fetterman Gallery

By Simone Kussatz

In this art world jungle where many artists want to outdo each other by using sensationalism, provocation, and high-tech manipulated images, it feels soothing to view the works of French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who knew how to create grand effects with a small German-made Leica. Cartier-Bresson’s sense for subtle, aesthetic composition, human dignity, historical relevance and psychological insight can be currently viewed in an exhibit that celebrates Peter Fetterman Gallery’s 20th anniversary. Henri Cartier-Bresson: Eye of the Century displays a collection of photographs created during Cartier- Bresson’s journeys to Belgium, former Yugoslavia, China, England, Greece, India, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Russia and the US with a strong focus on life in the 50s and 60s. The exhibit also includes landscape and street scene images of France, portrait photographs of Truman Capote, Alberto Giacometti, and Matisse as well as rare prints including a photograph by Cartier-Bresson taken in Provence about two decades after his retirement, when he'd returned to his first love, drawing.

The picture of children and women in Aquila Degli Abruzzi in central Italy is here too. The women are wearing long black dresses, their heads covered with black bandanas. Some wear aprons and carry cake trays on their heads while walking through the alleys, others are gathered at a plaza. It is an image of a slow-paced life. This high-angle shot exemplifies the influence of painting in Cartier-Bresson’s photography – perhaps the influence of André Lothe with whom he studied in Paris. Geometric forms appear as in cubist paintings or in Lothe’s L’Escale: triangles, rectangles, parallelograms, and trapezoids. A vertical axis created by a balustrade in the lower part of the photo and a building above it, as well as diagonal axes provide the photograph symmetry.

Next to Aquila Degli Abruzzi, there is a photograph of two girls walking through a narrow alley in a long shadow. It was shot in former socialist Sarajevo, the city where Islam, Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Judaism have been coexisting for centuries. The image was taken two decades after the city was liberated from the occupancy of German Nazis and seventeen years before the Bosnian war, when Josip Broz Tito was president. The two girls with their braided hair, embracing each other and holding what appears to be school supplies, suggest the quiet and peaceful and political atmosphere at that time.

And then there is a photograph that had never been printed before by a collector until gallery owner, Peter Fetterman, discovered it in an obscure book years ago. It is the image of a fundraiser ball (a very posh event) for Queen Charlotte’s hospital, one of the oldest maternity hospitals in Europe. This high angle shot captures some of the same joie de vivre that Cartier-Bresson so much admired in Hungarian photographer, Martin Munkasci’s work, especially in his photograph of the three African nude boys running into the surf at Lake Tanganyika. Yet, it doesn’t have the spontaneity of the African boys; the action seems much more controlled, which is emphasized by Cartier-Bresson catching the dancing couples positioned in perfect diagonal lines. Due to their moving the image is a bit out of focus, which has some of the effect of an aquarelle blurring.

In Decisive Moment Cartier-Bresson wrote, “In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject.” In photographs such as Barber Rome (1951) and Brussels, Belgium (1932) those human details are telling a story of absurdity and curiosity. There is the image of a barber standing next to a mannequin head covered with a wig, looking through his showcase touching his bald patch. How does he feel working with hair, while losing his? Or there are the two men in Brussels, one of them looking through a hole of a circus tent, the other with a handlebar mustache and distinctive features looking to the side as if he guards him or is distracted by something that catches his curiosity. What could it be?

The Roman Catholic Church enjoyed a huge political influence under Communism. That becomes obvious in Cartier-Bresson’s photo Mass, Warsaw, 1956. Again shot from a high angle, it shows a group of people herded together with a priest sitting in a hanging chair above them. Since the photo was taken in 1956, the year Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski was released from his three-year detainment due to his opposition against communism; it’s possible that the photo showed a service with him.

Published in Whitehotmagazine November 2010.

Copyright © by Simone Kussatz

Lezley Saar at Merry Karnowsky Gallery

Lezley Saar at Merry Karnowsky Gallery

By Simone Kussatz

Lezley Saar’s “Autist’s Fables”, an oeuvre she created over a span of two years, seems to be a continuation of her former body of work, “Mulatto Nation” - dichotomy and the anomalies of nature, too, play a key role. Saar’s body of work invites viewers into the world of her 18-year-old autistic daughter Geneva to learn to appreciate her creativity, sensitivity, penchants and overcoming isolation. The solo exhibit contains a combination of illustrations with circular color photographs collaged into paintings, glass-encased dioramas, and the gallery’s smaller exhibit hall set up as a living room, in which gothic-looking photographs in ornate golden frames are decorating its walls and a small TV monitor encircled by red velvet curtains shows the court métrage - a short film - Le Mystère de Geneviève.

The influence of Aubrey Beardsley in Saar’s paintings is obvious. There are the black ink illustrations on pastel hued backgrounds, the flexuous lines and curvy shapes, creating interesting negative spaces. Overall the exhibit is created as a third-person narrative, part of it written down in English, part of it told in French, as in Saar’s short film. The tale employs lifeless figures and Victorian settings similar to Edward Gorey’s stories. Although autobiographical, it uses techniques of fiction: Geneva is Geneviève, Lezly is Lisette, and Geneva’s father is Albert. The story unfolds with the key steps in Geneva’s development, including her birth, her loss of speech, the fantasy world she creates as a little girl in which villains and imaginary friends appear and dolls that allude to the children she won’t be able to bear. Part of the narrative applies fable elements in the manner of Aesop and Jean de La Fontaine. Mysterious looking animals – hybrids - are its main protagonists, delivering the moral that autism, as any other deviation from the norm, should be accepted in society.

In contrast to paintings such as “A imaginary life, imaginary friends,” “A calendar savant”, “A beautiful Initiation”, “All the months had a special color,” and “A Very Sensitive Child”, where the positive, extraordinary sides of Geneva’s personality are accented, the photographs “Bad Seed Boy Villain”, “Family Portrait on Stage”, “Genevieve with saw”, “Genevieve with Tall Friend and Bad Seed Boy”, seem to acquaint us with her sometimes aggressive tendencies. Generally, the exhibit conveys beauty, complexity, mystery, perplexity, and enchants viewers into another reality.

Copyright © by Simone Kussatz

Photo © belongs to Merry Karnowsky Gallery

"Combustione: Alberto Burri and America" at Santa Monica Museum of Art

By Simone Kussatz

There is a fine line between being a European-born American, and being a European with a second home in America. Italian artist Alberto Burri--who was married to the American dancer Minsa Craig with whom he wintered in Los Angeles for 28 years and kept his main home in Italy--falls under the latter category. This makes sense considering that Burri, a former physician, was first brought to America by force as a prisoner of war, rather than, say, Italian-born artist Joseph Stella who came to America freely. Burri also seemed to be more inclined towards Italian culture, showing a greater interest in Italian Renaissance than in the work of his American contemporaries such as Robert Rauschenberg, whose works he supposedly summed up as being "un'americanata e basta" (an American thing and that's all). Therefore it is no surprise that his ambiguity towards American culture made him nearly forgotten in the canon of American art history, at least until this fall, when the Santa Monica Museum of Art reintroduced him and his contributions to American art.

The exhibition, including 25 paintings (from 1951 to 1986) and ten prints (from 1990), is as beautiful as it is important due to its striking color combinations and display of found objects and outre materials, some with historical significance. White (1952), a painting composed of oil, bronze, enamel paint, cotton fabric and gold leaf with a cracked surface, seems to be inspired by the damaged frescos of Benozzo Gozzoli, which Burri viewed after his return to his hometown Cita di Castello after World War II. Composition (1953), made of oil, gold paint and pieces of burlap stitched together, with small areas of red paint shimmering through, is part of his Sacchi series, reminiscent of the Marshall Plan supply sacks, used by Americans to help Europeans with goods after the war. Nero Plastica L.A. (1963) demonstrates one of Burri's other working methods, in which he pulled and draped black plastic and created holes with a blowtorch. In Bianco Cretto C1 (1973), a white canvas with a craquelure encircles a round smooth area created by thick acrylic paint, sometimes mixed with sand or earth, dried in various ways; the work is part of Burri's Cretti series inspired by his numerous trips to Death Valley. The exhibit beautifully reveals Burri's creative progress, and the artistic expression he found in the merging of two cultures, even two worlds.

Review was published in ART Ltd. on January 7th, 2011

Copyright (C) Simone Kussatz & Art Ltd.

Jordi Alcaraz at Jack Rutberg Gallery of Fine Arts

Jordi Alcaraz at Jack Rutberg Gallery of Fine Arts

How does one paint one’s breath, show the composing process of a travel book or reduce a room into a painting? These are the kind of questions Catalonian artist Jordi Alcaraz enjoys toying with. Some of his works can be currently viewed at the Jack Rutberg Gallery of Fine Arts, the space that gave him his first U.S. solo-exhibit “Traslúcido”.

One aspect that makes Alcaraz’s show so appealing is its Catalonian sensibility. There are organic shapes in Gaudi’s style, reflected images with a surrealistic appeal, and many evocative pieces of works that keep one wondering. Some have a feeling reminiscent of the Spanish Civil War. Others seem to be inspired by Robert Motherwell, especially his painting “Elegy to the Spanish Republic”. The show, spread out through the two main gallery rooms at Jack Rutberg’s is particularly beautiful, because of its poetic and philosophical nature, its subtle colors and the elements Alcaraz works with: transparency, reflection and writing.

“Time” consists of an antique wooden sculpture, a nun-like figure, partly painted in white and beige, who reaches her fingers of her left hand through an opening in a vitrine, whose front wall is slightly bent inward and ends into what looks like the upper part of a martini glass. The contrast between the two materials, one seems to represent the traditional, the other, the modern world, is analogous to what we find in today’s architectural landscape in Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia. The enclosed sculpture also provides an interior versus exterior perspective, and creates the dimension of someone from the past looking into the future and vice versa. The idea of glass surrounding the sculpture seems is reminiscent of modern architectural concepts, where buildings include large glass windows and sliding glass walls ( as in Richard Neutra’s buildings) to bring the outside in. Situating a religious sculpture in a modern frame, the work also suggests the development of religion over time. But then there is also the element of a nun breaking through a wall, maybe the wall that leads to the mysterious and unknown as in the works by Spanish artist Antoni Tàpies. And that’s exactly what American curator and critic Peter Selz’s calls attention to in the book “Jordi Alcaraz dibuiox”, when he writes “Alcaraz takes physical space, objects, and ideas and projects them into new dimensions.”

In “painting and breathing”, the surface of a white paper is displayed as two pages of an open book. The surface is covered on the left-handside by a black mark that is similar to a Chinese or Japanese calligraphy character, and the work is covered by two layers of plexiglass. The top layer is smooth, the bottom one has a slight distortion that appears to be a chain of bubbles. Delicate shadows are thrown onto the paper. Alcaraz’s work evokes the idea that the creation of art is as essential to an artist as breath is for the human being. It also suggests process and evolution, and the association with breath has a meditative implication - breathing is practiced in Yoga and Qigong.

“Process to reduce this room into a painting”, among the more surrealistic pieces in the show, consists of a mirror with a silver surface that looks like liquid. There is a hole in the upper left corner from which that liquid seems to run. The reflection in it of Rutberg’s gallery, is soft and melting, like the watches in Salvador Dali’s “Persistence of Memory.” The hole is implicated as being the entire gallery. Hence, Alcaraz not only turned a three-dimensional space into a two-dimensional one, but also made the inside of a gallery space appear to be bigger than the gallery as a whole, stressing the importance of the inner walls of a gallery.

In “Book of Astronomy”, Alcaraz pierced holes into the pages of an open book and the plexiglass covering it. Two of the holes have tiny black dots painted in them, similar to a pair of eyes. The remaining holes seem to be the solar system. Pictorially, the most direct influence on Alcaraz works where pierced holes seem to be dominant is likely the Spanish artists who lived through the civil war, as Peter Selz pointed out. Therefore, the holes in the astronomy book seem to be inspired by the holes that Manolo Millares once put into the cover of a catalogue at his show at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, as well as they’re inspired by the penetrating eyes in the works of Antoni Saura’s, and the cutting of the eye in Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali’s film “Un Chien Andalou.”

One of the more philosophical pieces “Book of Travels”, is an opened book showing two blank pages, where the writing of the underlying shimmers through. Several layers of plexiglass cover the book, on which black lines of various sizes are engraved, leading in different directions. Some of the lines cross each other, like the life lines on a palm; others expand to the left and right over the edges of the book. In this piece Alcaraz reminds us that he’s more interested in the composition process than the art work itself. Through the different layers of the plexiglass, some lines seem to be closer to the page than others. Therefore, suggesting that some thoughts are to be written down, others are still in development, and a few might lead to other thoughts and another project in the future. The work can be also understood as a metaphor for the human being and the journey he or she takes.

Aside from an aesthetic point of view, what’s striking about Alcaraz’s works is that he seems to be more interested in the evolutionary aspect of art making than art itself. He places value on all art forms and their origin, and shows them in relationship to other fields, like the sciences and humanities. He takes the viewers' and art dealers' perspectives and interpretations in consideration, drawing attention to not only what he’s trying to convey, but to the perception of others, or even the world.

Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, 357 N. La Brea Ave., (323) 938-5222, through Nov. 30. Closed Sunday and Monday. www.jackrutbergfinearts.com

Copyright © by Simone Kussatz

Matthias Merkel Hess at Steve Turner Contemporary

By Simone Kussatz

Having a BA in environmental science from the University of Kansas and a MFA from the ceramics department at UCLA, it is not surprising that Iowa-born artist, Matthias Merkel Hess, would come up with an art project that would engage his viewers in a discussion about societal and environmental issues.

Therefore what would usually appear in the real world in plastic - Rubbermaid Brute trash cans and beer buckets – Merkel Hess turned into colorful glazed ceramics that are displayed in a group show “Wet Paint 2” along with the work of eight other artists at Steve Turner Contemporary, located in the Mid-Wilshire district across from LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art).

Merkel Hess' works, which are presented in either dark blues, light yellows and pinks, or a combination of dark blue on the outer and ocher or orange in the inner, remind one of the sculptures of Swedish-American pop artist, Claes Oldenburg, who also turned ordinary objects into art objects. Yet, Merkel Hess' work is much smaller in size and not been seen in public open spaces yet.

During an artist talk at the gallery that followed the day after the reception, Merkel Hess mentioned that his project is partly influenced by a book by Thomas Hine "I Want That", which made him think about American society and the relationship between people and objects, as well as his take on it. “I make objects, sometimes big, physical things, so I'm trying to understand both my own interest in objects and how we value them as humans,” he said.

The young artist also mentioned that being a potter made him always interested in vessels and their meaning and how people use them. However, instead of making bowls, coffee mugs and teapots, he wanted to make pottery that would be of interest to a contemporary art audience.

Furthermore, Merkel Hess, a former artist-in-residence at the 18^th Streets Arts Center in Santa Monica, explained that since we live in a “hyper-consumer society”, where people are desensitized to the fact that the merchandise they find in current department stores were once luxury items, his work attempted to deal with this “by taking mundane, utilitarian objects and through a transformation of material, make them something for people to think about and consider more closely,” he explained.

Although Merkel Hess' art objects look as if they have a function that is to say to store our garbage and cool our beers, they are actually unsuitable for what they were designed to do as they are heavy and fragile. Therefore, instead of serving a literal function, they become a point of discussion. “I believe this is the main function of works of art,” he said.

Merkel Hess' work will be showcased at Steve Turner Contemporary till August 21, 2010, followed by a solo-exhibit “Devils Tower-LA” between September 4th until October 2^nd, 2010 at Las Cienegas Projects.

For further information about the artist, please visit his website http://www.merkelhess.net/ or Steve Turner Contemporary's website http://www.steveturnercontemporary.com/

Photos by Simone Kussatz

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