The best of Both worlds!

Paik and Boingo? How would've thunk it...

Wiki link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Morning,_Mr._Orwell

Isa Genzken, ArtForum, Oct, 2000
The characterization of Isa Genzken as a traditional sculptor, along with the usual remarks concerning the heterogeneity of her method and the surprising breaks between her various bodies of work, belong firmly to the topoi of her reception. Genzken's approach, which includes recourse to photography, video, film, collages, and collage books, does, it's true, represent a continuous examination of the classic themes of sculpture: the ordering of masses and volumes; the relations between construction, surface design, and materials; the conception of and relation between objects, space, and the viewer. And regardless of the medium--from series executed in painted wood, plaster, and concrete to the more recent epoxy-resin hoods and lamps; assemblages of metal household utensils; and stelae--the artist questions the contemporary meaning of sculpture by taking up its vocabulary of forms, then expanding, discarding, and reinterpreting it.



interview from summer 07.

Interview with David Altmejd by Randy Galdman

I caught up with Altmejd for breakfast on the roof of the Armada Hotel in the old Sultanahmet sector of Istanbul the day after the opening of the Biennial. In the shadow of the Blue Mosque with a panorama view of the Bosphorus we spoke about energy generating werewolf heads, studio visits with Matthew Barney, the relationship between art and commerce, and what it means to be a French Canadian artist working in New York City.

Randy: Your work is obtuse, difficult for people to enter. There is definite aesthetic pleasure. Anybody can look at it and see that it involves a complex system of meanings. But the connections between the elements are complicated. There are so many things that are disparate, eclectic. You use mirrors and crystals in different parts of the same sculptures that aren’t connected in any direct way. Even in a lot of the press you have earned since you began showing in New York, the writers seem to have a hard time following the connections. Are you trying to create specific meanings through the relationships of the elements, or are you leaving the meanings purposefully ambiguous?

David: I am interested in complexity as a form. I am happy when people are fascinated by the thing itself, when they are absorbed by it and know that it contains something more. Personally, I like experiencing complex objects, but not because I necessarily wish to understand the system. I am seduced by complexity itself. From my perspective, my work is intuitive. I am not able to mention specific reasons why I associate these things. I get a feeling from certain combinations, a feeling that something is going to happen when I mix things together. I do not have to say something; the object will say it. I see my installations as organisms. I start making something but at a certain point it starts making choices by itself.

R: You have particular symbols that you use like a language. They appear in different forms in different pieces and the interaction between them creates a language.

D: Rather than a language, I am more interested in how the elements create energy. I know that the things I use, the Star of David or certain words affiliated with political activism, are charged and have important meaning potential. I inject them inside the installation and the meaning potential transforms into energy. My involvement is to create something that is alive that will be able to say new things. The energy of these living abstract organisms depends on the meanings of the work being unresolved, uncontrolled. When meaning is controlled, the resulting object is not alive, there is no tension in a logical system that functions.

I am so not interested in art making as a way to communicate a specific idea. That is so boring to me. It makes the art nothing but an illustration. I want my works to have intelligence of their own, not just be slave to my meaning. I made an installation last year at a gallery in Brussels and two guys were hanging out near the piece during the opening. When they came up to me they said, “That piece is definitely talking about the Holocaust.” In my mind I thought “No, not really”. But then I realized that just because I made the object doesn’t mean I get to determine what the object is saying. The realization that I was able to create an object that - on its own - has the capacity to talk about such a grave subject matter as the Holocaust is amazing to me. I’m not sure that I would be able to say new things about the Holocaust on my own, with a specific intention.

R: So you don’t think your work is political?

D: To me, it is all intuitive.

R: But when you use a symbol like the Star of David, it is as iconographic as a swastika. It undeniably carries a political meaning. Are you using it just to charge the work with energy? Is that responsible?

D: I know that when I use an image like a Star of David there is the potential for something to happen. A thousand things could happen. But in comparison to an icon like the swastika, the Star of David is so much more interesting. With a swastika, only one thing can happen. I know exactly how a swastika will function inside my installation. It is too obvious and I don’t like that I know what will happen. I don’t want to know. You know? I am very interested in that void. In order to make something that is new, that says new things, you have to be able to use intuition and not really know in advance what is going to happen. If it is totally controlled then there is nothing new.

R: When you use the Star of David are you thinking about the connections to what is happening in Israel? I mean, the theme of the Istanbul biennial is “Poetic Justice”. It is about justice and there is obviously a global debate going on today about justice between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I understand from what you’ve already said that you do not want to come out and explain what your work is trying to say but at the same time there is an undeniable connection between the Star of David and Israel and you are surely aware of it and aware of the fact that in Istanbul your art is showing in a Muslim country.

D: I don’t want to sound stupid or give you the impression that I do not want to take responsibility for what occurs in my work. But I feel that it is very much like having a kid. It is very problematic when your child grows up and becomes someone with a totally independent mind. What is your responsibility as a parent for the horrible things that he does as an adult? You brought that child into this world; he has half of your genetic system. You taught him to be polite, how to read, how to count. But then he has a mind of his own. I am interested in where the responsibility lies. I want to make an installation and then at a certain point step back and say “Wow, that’s amazing. It is going in all sorts of different places; it is a thing on it’s own.”

R: Werewolf heads appear again and again in your work. I’m not sure if this has a specific meaning for you or not.

D: I started using that three years ago. At the beginning it was just an alternative to the human body. I made a chopped-up werewolf. Body art is so familiar, in terms of experience. By making a monster leg, it has something of the familiar feeling but there is an added level of weirdness. Then I was very interested in the werewolf because of its complexity, its symbolic potential. It represents both good and evil, human and animal, Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – extremes on both sides.

Every time I talk about my work I use the word “energy” a lot, not in a new age kind of way. The werewolf head with crystals on it is an energy-generating object. A man transforms into the werewolf, which is the most intense transformation, physically and mentally. The werewolf goes from one state, man, to a totally opposite state, animal, in the matter of minutes or even seconds. In movies it always happens in, like, thirty seconds. It even looks painful.

R: Were you thinking of pop movies like Michael J. Fox in Teen Wolf or Michael Jackson in Thriller? Do you deal with Pop issues?

D: I do deal with Pop, but that’s not where the werewolf comes from. For me, it is more of a Romantic notion from the end of the 19th century. In a story I made up about the werewolf, in the seconds right after the super-intense transformation from man into werewolf, the head is chopped off. It is put on a table, and instead of rotting the head crystallizes. The energy related to the transformation is kept inside the head and it crystallizes and becomes an energy-generating object. The architectural structure I use in the installation presents the object in such a way that triggers this energy and circulates or channels it throughout the piece.

R: There are not many artists I can think of who are doing similar work. The first time I saw it, I had a difficult time because it is so unlike what anyone else is doing. What artists have influenced you? Do you feel that you are working in a manner reminiscent of anyone else?

D: Some artists have definitely influenced me directly. Recently, however, I have got lost inside my own work. I get very absorbed. I have built enough objects and materials to use as starting points. But certainly Louise Bourgeois has taught me much about space and energy. Bourgeois has made wire fence and wood cell constructions. You cannot enter them but you can look at what is inside through openings and windows and inside there are arrangements of objects that seem like they are haunted. These works have a number of different parts but they are not installation because they are self-contained in a framework. The viewer can only walk around and peek into it and see objects that are full of memories or pain, generating a haunted-attic atmosphere.

R: Have you been influenced by Julia Kristeva’s “Powers of Horror; An Essay on Abjection”? There are a lot of seemingly abject objects in your work; death, dismemberment, scarification, corpses.

D: I am really not interested in gore. What I make has to be positive and seductive. Instead of rotting, the characters in my work are crystallizing. This makes the narratives of the pieces move towards life rather than death.

R: So even where there is a decapitated werewolf you are being optimistic?

D: Yes, totally. It is intended to be alive. Maybe weird and dark, but certainly alive.