PROUD PHOTO BOOTH BY OLIVER RATH ... - Proud magazine

DESPERATE MAN BLUES
Talk about what you are working on at
the moment, please.
Sure. It started with this little scrawl.
(zeigt auf eine Kritzelei an der Wand
hinter ihm: ‘desperate man blues’ ).
These are rudimentary prints- monotypes-
just black marks painted on
plastic and then rubbed onto paper. I
was trying to choose ideas and images
to depict that are both very simple but
also have a potential for a certain type
of poetry, one that I find in many blues
songs. It is thinking about how a blues
song can be written in visual form. I
don’t remember if I heard a song by that
title or if someone said it and I wrote it
down or if I just made it up when drinking
beer. This series is a way of thinking
about a friend who has been very
influential for me in the last months,
in terms of thinking about the working
process, the reasons and motivations
for making art and the thinking about
how to manage oneself. This coupled
with his sense of desperate, destructive
behavior and how ones’ life and work
can play with one another. What I really
wanted was to make images that
could sooth his desperateness, sooth
his soul, you know.
Do you think he will like it?
The funny thing about that is, I had
been making these prints for him, and
then a few days ago I was in his studio
and he showed me some works of his
from last year or so. They were lithographic
prints titled: “Fat Lady Blues”. I
had never seen these prints before. And
it was just funny- I know that it (my
current series) is important for me if
those sorts of synchronicities
happen. I would like to further the conversation
with him about how does one
write a blues song with prints like this.
So, how does one write a blues song
with prints like this?
Well it is one of the more beautiful
forms of song writing. I have often wondered
while listening: how does that
look, without being super illustrative or
descriptive? There, it comes out to this
very interesting void somewhere between
visual language and spoken language,
in addition to the sound. And a
blues song gives you the visual imagery
so clearly with words, and the mood so
clearly with the music.
Can you do the same thing the other
way around? And how does a painted
country song look different from a
blues song? How would Mozart look
like as a painting? Blues songs often
use the double entendre, which uses
the ambiguity of one word with two
meanings, exploiting one meaning
with sexual, ironic or loaded content
by talking about things using the other
definition that is straightforward. This
is done to hide the true meaning of the
song with an innocuous meaning. So
in this series, what you see looks very
straightforward, but actually has content
that is hidden by double meanings.
“The target”, for instance, and the text
piece with “Pera, Trou and Shoot Shoot”
written in reverse are reference to heroin
addiction.
(Anmerkung: bezieht sich auf die Bilder
2 & 3 der Printserie, Seite 53)
I want these prints to function as a
‘song’…
Does he know now that it is for him?
No. I don’t know how important it ismaybe
it is better for me to continue
working if he doesn’t know. Because if
you have too much pressure to work,
then you cant work with freedom. I
want these prints to function - as a
‘song’ to sooth him, to calm him down,
to refocus him - because that is what he
needs. And that is a ridiculous thing to
try to do with drawings or printmaking.
And it’s not doing it yet. I don’t know if
this is even possible- maybe as possible
as painting ‘nothing’.
If you could choose one person in history
to talk with about art, who would
it be?
That’s a funny question. There have
been a lot of people. (lacht). I have been
thinking about Orson Welles a lot recently.
He was on the top level of genius
that you can get. It would be fun
to talk with him- probably very brutal
because he was an honest man. Van
Gogh would also be great to talk with
because he was so fucking passionate
about it and crazy-passionate, from
what I understand through his letters
and the history we know. It would be
exciting to sit down with him and just
ask “why?’, you know.
(Anmerkung: Bilder 2-5 “neverending”,
Collage, stellen den prozess eines
einzelnen Bildes dar, wobei 5 das fertige
Kunstwerk ist. Seite 51)
Many successful artists are said to be
difficult, moody or irrational personalities.
Is that true for you?
Who says that? (lacht verlegen) Yeah,
it’s all true. I think it comes from an extreme
form of selfishness, which is part
of the artist mind. The work tends to be
more than half of your identity.
So you devote this selfish energy towards
it. Unfortunately, this seeps into
the other parts of life pretty quickly.
But this is also a funny selfishness, because
at some point, and I think this is
true for many people in respect to their
work, if you can do what you are trying
to do well enough, then you are actually
giving things out. So it’s half selfishness
and half a gift that you are trying
to prepare. Maybe that is a cop-out. I
wouldn’t date me, if that’s the question.
Text: Katharina Fabian
52 CHAT
CHAT 53