00:00 the question to the artist, how do you find your motives,
00:04 your venues you are interested in?
00:06 You are the guy with the bicycle and with the photo camera,
00:11 so how do you decide for the motive,
00:18 for the venue, then transform to the painting?
00:23 - Right, I guess ultimately I'm really influenced
00:26 by the landscape and just being in New York.
00:28 I guess what I found most, I'm interested in
00:33 sort of like this toxic urban landscape
00:38 and the bar was just attractive to me.
00:41 Because living in New York, it's like kind of
00:42 how do you escape, like how do you escape
00:44 being in this concrete jungle?
00:47 And the bar is sort of just escape portal or whatever,
00:52 it's like another, like how do you get out
00:55 of your everyday routine?
00:56 And then the landscapes, I was just attracted
01:00 by what's unattractive in New York,
01:02 like what's on the fringes and maybe where are we headed
01:06 or living in kind of a post 9/11 New York.
01:09 Yeah, I was just influenced by just these
01:15 really unattractive environments
01:17 and really toxic kind of waterfront.
01:20 This is the High Line, which is this elevated railway
01:24 that goes through New York that's like totally abandoned
01:27 and is just totally full of junk
01:29 and New York's getting so gentrified.
01:31 But maybe in the end, this is like sort of
01:35 where everything's headed.
01:36 - So the junk is an example for this jungle in New York?
01:43 - What's that?
01:44 - I think that, I don't know.
01:46 (speaking in foreign language)
01:49 - But you have to pose a question again, he didn't get it.
01:51 - Yes, that the junk is like an example for this landscape,
01:56 for this jungle in New York, as exemplary?
02:00 - This? - Yeah.
02:01 - Well, I mean, no, it's definitely not.
02:03 It's definitely not what New York looks like,
02:05 but this is something that I found in New York
02:07 that kind of blew my mind, that this is like in Manhattan,
02:10 this very dystopic--
02:13 - Junk in Manhattan.
02:14 - Maybe it's more like the charm of junk?
02:18 - Junk, this rest of the--
02:20 - Oh, junk, yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:22 You used the word toxic a couple of times.
02:24 This is like the debris and rubble,
02:26 and I guess, you know, this is something you don't see
02:30 in New York City, everything's so,
02:32 you know, everything's kind of clean and considered,
02:34 and this is like totally forgotten.
02:36 And it just kind of really irked me to find this place,
02:41 and it's so falling apart and really ugly, you know,
02:44 and it's right in the middle of all this,
02:46 but nobody sees it.
02:47 And I just found it kind of beautiful in a weird way,
02:51 and kind of attractive.
02:53 - So sometimes you focus more on these escape places,
03:01 and on the other hand, the places who make necessary
03:05 to escape from it, is that a bit your issue,
03:09 or are these places attracting you
03:12 from a visual and aesthetic quality mainly?
03:17 - Um, yeah, maybe, like, maybe both.
03:21 I first started doing landscapes,
03:22 and I was doing all these landscapes,
03:23 and I was like, oh, maybe I need to,
03:25 I wanna do some interiors as well.
03:28 And I was thinking if there's this crazy,
03:30 dystopic, falling apart world,
03:32 this kind of like seductive post-nuclear world,
03:35 what would the interior be like, and where would that be?
03:38 And I just found myself kind of investigating these bars,
03:43 and I guess on some levels, you know,
03:44 they're about this kind of human absence,
03:48 and even though there's like signs,
03:51 you know, that you can see this is like a long-term exposure,
03:54 so that people become like sort of these ghostly images.
03:56 And--
03:59 - And then you've introduced some kind of firestorm in there.
04:04 - Yeah, I guess again, I mean, yeah, it looks like fire.
04:07 It's, yeah, it reads as fire, I guess.
04:10 I was thinking more of it, sort of this paint,
04:12 like the photo to me becomes this sort of like
04:14 thin layer of reality, and then the paint
04:17 becomes sort of the depth of everything.
04:20 So like underneath reality, there's all this energy
04:23 that you don't see, but we feel it,
04:25 and that's kind of what the paint becomes to me,
04:28 is sort of the energy and everything else,
04:30 and so the photo is just this thin shell
04:34 that's being consumed by the paint.
04:36 - Question to how you do this.
04:38 You start with a photo, and then you add,
04:42 with oil paint, and then you blow it up,
04:46 or how does it work?
04:47 - Yeah, I shoot with a large format camera,
04:51 like a four by five, or with bigger pieces,
04:54 I usually use an eight by 10,
04:56 and I just find an image that kind of moves me,
05:00 and then I start by, I cut up the photograph
05:04 with the X-Acto blades, and then I start painting,
05:08 and so it's this layering of paint and photo,
05:12 and resin, so it's kind of this back and forth,
05:16 this push and pull between the three mediums.
05:19 - What happens if you accidentally ruin it?
05:21 You throw it away and start a new one?
05:23 - Nah, it just becomes an opportunity, you know?
05:26 You just go with it.
05:28 - And use it as a chance?
05:29 - Hmm?
05:30 - And use it as a chance?
05:31 - Yeah, yeah, just to keep pushing it.
05:34 So I haven't totally ruined it yet, I don't think, maybe.
05:37 - Thank you.
05:38 - I also would like to ask if there are any
05:41 interesting quotations of abstract painting?
05:44 - Yeah, yeah, no.
05:45 - Because art plays a big role,
05:47 art as art objects in this painting as well.
05:51 Is there a special background?
05:52 - Yeah, just kind of this, yeah,
05:54 I was just playing with the idea of,
05:56 you know, I love abstract painting,
05:59 and I love Gerhard Richter, and I was like,
06:01 I will make many, many Richters, and put them all along.
06:04 - Where is this bar?
06:06 - This is in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
06:08 It's called Niagara.
06:10 - Yeah.
