Modart » Interview

Pär Strömberg

Maxi — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 09:00:50 +0000

One of the things that come to mind when thinking of Sweden is the vast untouched nature, crisp bright snow and extremely long or extremely short days. What comes to mind when looking at the work of Pär Strömberg is that nature translated onto canvas.

The work of the Swedish artist Pär Strömberg (1972) breathes the eerie and mystic air of the landscapes from his childhood. So much so, that the long winters, a shortage of natural light and the snow reflecting moonlight are still a major influence on his work.

Next month, September 10th, Pär will be exhibiting at Ron Mandos in Amsterdam, together with the Belgium sculptor Stief Desmet. Besides showing work from his last series Darkness Visible Pär will be showing his first works in watercolors. A drastic step from oil that forces him to slightly change is focus.

I was never really into landscape art, but there’s something about Sweden that triggers a creative way of dealing with that mass of nature. So I met up with Pär to talk about Sweden, landscapes and traditions.

Can you describe your style in three words?
Oh, that’s a tough question. My work revolves around light and darkness, which would be the first two words to describe them. I guess the third one then should be twilight.

How did you start your career?
When I was thirteen or fourteen I was very much involved in the local music scene. Most of my friends were in bands and I started designing their posters and record sleeves. In 1994 I went to art college in Örebro, Sweden and later to the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, where I finished my bachelors degree.
In some sense I was lucky and got off to a flying start. After the exhibition of the final exams of the Rietveld I was invited to For Real at the Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art; a group show for young talents. That gave me an excellent start and I went straight into working as an artist.

What were your first project and ideas?
During my final exam at the Rietveld I started looking back on he Swedish landscape. Back in the days I was a sponsored snowboarder, just not on the professional level it can be now, since the scene was just starting. I remembered the intensity of the light in the snow, the landscape, and the physicality of it. While exploring my memories I also explored materials, colors and non-figurative shapes, as you do when you’re a young artist.

How did it develop to what you do now?
After a while I got more intrigued by the idea of the mental landscape, the metaphysical. I started exploring the inner landscape of the landscape of my past, as you will, and integrated dark stories from my childhood.

A lot your work is inspired by the pagan heritage and myths of your culture. What are your thoughts about that?
I remember being told many myths of elves, trolls and ghosts when I was young. They are part of the Swedish culture. Lord of the Rings also had a big impact on me, because in the gloomy natural surroundings it is almost like reality.
Light feels much like a life source in Sweden. When you sit through the long dark winters and you have nothing else to do you start creating your own world.

Read the full interview on No New Enemies.

by MAXI MEISSNER

Birds are Nice

Maxi — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 13:35:49 +0000

Birds are Nice is our newest network member. Having a BFA in clay sculpture she noticed early in her career that her ideas don’t fit into what the clay allows her to do and that she’s too spontaneous for the log processes involved in working with clay. When BAN started working as an artist under her real name (Diane Arrieta) she focused on socially conscious work (sex offenders, mothers who kill their kids, general atrocities), but being positive and happy person she got too overwhelmed by the subject matter. Feeling the urge to turn to her happy side she changed to Birds are Nice practically overnight. The change allows BAN to explore the things she likes in life, like comic books, street art and mixed media styles with strong graphic imagery.
Intrigued by the sudden change and BAN’s way of finding her voice as an artist we decided to welcome BAN to our network by doing a little interview.

You started working under your real name, but chose a new approach with Birds are Nice. How did this change come about? Was it one instance or was it an ongoing process/annoyance that made you change your approach to a lighter one?
I had been making art as Diane Arrieta for a long time and gone through several phases. Birds are nice is relatively new. It was a fairly abrupt change. It started with the superhero series. I work in an academic environment that is very restrictive/rule oriented, which really clashes with my personality. I was tired of everyone being so serious all the time. The art world also takes itself very serious. I need to focus on the funny! Laughter is good medicine.

What is the biggest difference between your prior work and what you do under your synonym BAN?
My original work was ceramic sculpture. That is what my degree is in. I did a lot of tribal/animal works. I mostly did pit fired clay. My ideas got too big for clay. It takes too long to get a finished clay piece. So I started doing installation art. Then the work got really political and social oriented. I am interested in social deviance. So child abuse, sex offenders, general atrocities were the subject of the work. I do research all day long at work, so I had time to research all these news topics for my work.
After five years of that I got overwhelmed with all the gloom and doom. I just decided to make an abrupt change. Birds are Nice focuses on all the fun stuff in my life. Watching cartoons, drawing, animation, printing. I have developed a graphic style that fits my personality. I look at the work as more of a brand now. My images lend themselves well to merchandising.

You are inspired by the comic book genre, Robert Rauschenberg, and countless urban artists. Were those the same influences as in your former approach?
I have always been a fan of Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Marisol Escobar, and many more, but never allowed my work to go in that direction. I am having fun now experimenting and not thinking so much about everything. It comes more natural now. My main clay influence back in the day was Daisy Youngblood and Beverly Meyeri.

What is it abut those influences that attracts you the most?
I like adding found objects to the work and having things people wouldn’t expect show up in a piece. I feel it makes the work more interactive. People have to figure out what is going on in the work. I like work that makes me feel something. A lot of what I see out there has no emotion.

How did you come up with Lester the bird and what does he symbolize? Is it a mere ‘tagging device’ or is there more to it?
Lester is a long story. He is modeled after my husband, Leslie. A very long story about people thinking Leslie is not a boys name and calling him Lester…so it stuck! The character Lester is a silly little bird that is in the process of being a series of children’s books. Plus he makes great graffiti stickers. He makes me smile (both Lester and Leslie). Everyone seems to want Lester stickers and t-shirts. I have a Lester mural I want to do somewhere.

You work with a broad array of media, most of which are self-taught. Which one do you like working with most and why?
I really like drawing on the computer. The flat graphic sleek colors and lines are very appealing and fit with my work. I am getting into screen-printing lately, but I keep going back to sculpture. 3d work is great, but hard to store in a small house. So I guess my answer is all of them. Whatever fits my idea at the time. My attention span is very short, so I get easily bored. I like to keep doing different things.

What is the idea behind your recent Supergirl series? Are you turning towards a more feminine approach?
The Supergirls was not meant to be a feminist approach, however, my old work was very feminist and I suppose it is hard to keep my opinions out of the work. I just think all women are superheroes. We have to do a lot in one day! For some reason it is easier for me to draw women than men, so I focus on super girls not boys.

Desire for World Domination

Maxi — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 11:57:44 +0000

Today I would like to introduce you to the Happy Famous Artists. A group of artists, who render the Now irrelevant, cater to the strategy of tension, fulfill the demands of celebrity, and pledge to deliver cultural products with investment potential. Their desire for world domination has driven them together and around the world with their projects.

Their philosophical manifest and projects are as amusing as they are confusing and when I checked their website the other day I didn’t know if I should laugh or feel stupid. In the end I did both and couldn’t help but contact the Holy Trinity to answer my questions and fill the gaps in my superficial papier-mâché philosophy.

When did you start working together?
HFA (Happy Famous Artists) was founded in 2001, as a logical continuation of the fab female duo, namely The Happy Female Artist (which was the brainchild of Intelligensius Anarchus and her friend and co-patriot, Klara Jiraskova). From 2001 till 2008, HFA consisted of Intelligensius Anarchus & Jeff Blind (Jeff is currently stirring Trouble in Wonderland), with Rick B contributing texts here and there. From 2009 we reshuffled and our current formation is The Holy Trinity: Intelligensius Anarchus, The Great Attractor & Rick B.

Who does what? Is there a clear division of labor?
In brief:
IA: Dictator Queen
TGA: Strategic Genius
RB: Mysterious Ideologist
…for more detailed description visit http://happyfamousartists.com/contact/

How do you work together? E.g. who comes up with the concept and how do you go from there?
We’re now working on a first big project since our new configuration. The 2 of us – Intelligensius Anarchus, The Great Attractor ¬– are actually partners in life, as well as in art. By doing things together, from travelling and seeing exhibitions, through reading books and examining our immediate surroundings, we generate a lot of ideas. Our third partner, Rick B, is based in Wales, but we talk via Skype several times a week to exchange ideas and inspiration. Also, our current project has necessitated a lot of preparatory research and text. Discussion and writing can be done long distance reasonably well due to the technologies. When possible, the 3 of us get together in the real world for periods of intensive work and refining of what we drafted earlier.

When clicking through your numerous websites I still had trouble understanding what you actually do. Is that on purpose? Do you like to stay obscure?
A certain mystery is always welcome, but the truth is slightly more prosaic: we just need to update our numerous websites, improve the structures and add the artwork photos to bring some order into the chaos.

I also noticed that everything you do is very philosophical…to a point even where it makes me feel a little stupid, because I can’t remember what I learned about Heidegger or Hegel at university. I assume that I’m not the only art lover who feels that way when confronted with your art. How do people react? Do they pretend to understand or make an effort to actually do?

Many of our older works are in one way or another linked to Nietzsche or Wittgenstein, but they’re otherwise pretty self-explanatory. No need to read Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in order to understand the Who the Fuck Is Wittgenstein series, neither Also sprach Zarathustra to enjoy the Philosophical Bowling.

And we definitely never touched bastards like Heidegger or Hegel, get real! In fact the common denominator for the works created between 2001-2008 was “what you see is not what you get”, namely “don’t get fooled by first impressions”. Our aim was to draw attention to absurd situations, which we encountered on many different levels: in everyday life, within the art world or history of art, in socio-political context or just by browsing through the Internet. If any anti-obscurantism was obscure perhaps a certain educational paradigm where wit and wonder is discouraged still confounds communication…Or whatever…

Nowadays we work a lot with elements from the social media & we investigate how digital life and real life are influencing the way people think and behave. Again, the aim is not to create complex philosophical concepts.
Rather than difficult, we’d characterize our work as layered, and as such we hope to create pieces that work on many different levels: aesthetically, conceptually, because of the subversive theme, because of their humor… it is all OK with us, as long as there’s communication and delight.

Have you ever considered easy art, to please the masses/collectors? Wouldn’t that make it easier to sell?
But our art is easy & we like to please the masses! In fact we want to get the masses on our side and rule with an iron fist. It’s on our “to do” list immediately after the update of our websites.

You are also very blunt about your intention to make money with art (e.g. ‘profits make freedom’, art is marketing). How do people react to your bluntness?
Oh, they are charmed and they just throw money at us.

What is the most expensive piece of art you’ve ever sold? How did it feel?
Classified information and it felt fucking great.

What other reason besides making money and career prompted you to be artists? Or is it all a farce and did you adapt this attitude to be less vulnerable as an artist?
Vulnerability as a strategy has its uses but always beware someone saying they are telling you the truth, however we share the same impulses of exhibitionism and uncontrollable desire for world domination. And not to forget, art also has a therapeutic aspect, it helped us to stop drinking… well most of us anyway.