I believe that all forms of art are a part of a process of communication, a dialogue rather than a monologue. I’m trying to convey an idea through my work, which implies that consideration of an audience is a part of the process - I am trying to think of how to nail down my thinking or feeling about something in a way that is visually interesting and evocative, and not only to myself. During this planning and thinking time consideration of audience reception is most definitely a part of my approach. That being said, while I am actually in the process of creating a piece, I am responding to the idea itself and how I want to use the paint, or whatever else, to capture that idea through an image, and any technical decisions I make are based on whether or not I feel the work is doing what I want it to do, rather than consideration of an external audience. The point from when I begin to paint until the time the piece is at, or near completion, tends to be a time where I exclude ‘external’ considerations.
Once the work is done though, once it is out in the public domain, then I am no longer the sole determiner of meaning, which is something I find quite exciting. I may have had a specific initial intent or idea for a piece, but I tend to title the works using ‘poetic’ language as a means to hint at my intent without becoming overly prescriptive: other people may see or feel something very different from me, and their responses and interpretations are no less valid for it. The meaning generated by this interaction extends and enriches my initial idea, and can also factor into my thinking process for other paintings. Talking to people about what they see and feel, and what in the piece has caused this reaction, is fascinating for me. Why is it that a particular shape, colour or texture creates a specific response or association? How can I use this?
Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Andrew. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving?
Thank you for having me!
In immediate terms I will continue working on the Middle Kingdom series. Up until, this point many of the pieces in the series are working with history, and I would like to bring in the urban environments a bit more, the intersection between modern and ancient in the Shanghai environment (particularly the lack of sentimentality shown in the process of development), as well as the point where nature and green spaces interact with human and urban activity. My interest in and desire to use surface texture remains, but I also want to try incorporate more of the calligraphic and graffiti type brushstrokes as well as the atmospheric effects and light we get in Shanghai, particularly on more polluted days.
I’ve also been thinking about some scientific concepts (my father was a nuclear physicist) and wanting to do something with those. These may not take the form of paintings however. I’ve been speaking to a computer programmer and am interested in trying something digital that includes time as part of those process. I’m still not sure about what form these will eventually take, though I am sure that I want to somehow work with the ideas of entropy and conservation of energy.
Something I am very keen to do is get my work out there more, get more feedback and wider exposure. One of my pieces dealing with the Hiroshima bomb has been accepted for a group show in Venice later this year, but I would ideally like to get still more work into shows, be they group or solo. I’d especially like to get the Middle Kingdom paintings installed somewhere together. I’m starting to see the works in this series as elements of a kind of fragmented and fragmentary narrative, and would love to have them all shown together so that they can be viewed in this way, rather than only as isolated, individual elements.
I’d also like to invite anyone reading to have a look at either my Instagram feed (https://www.instagram.com/cole.andrew/), Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/surfacetensionart/) or Artavita page (https://artavita.com/artists/14899-andrew-cole) if they want to see more or contact me directly.
How do you see the relationship between emotional and intellectual perception of your work? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience?
The emotional and intellectual relationship of my work always begin as two very seperate things. At first glance, my art may seem frivolously aesthetic .The colours are vibrant, and deliciously arresting. But then you look a little closer, even through the simplicity of the block colour and basic lines of geometry and pattern, there is always a story within… and that is when the emotional and intellectual perception of my art merge and the true beauty is discovered.
olted by the Thought of Known Places… Sweeney Astray” by Joan Jonas was one of the first performance installations that really made a huge impact on me. I was living in Paris during this time, in the early 90s, with a lot of influences from different cultures. It became the starting point of my own work. Joan Jonas practice has explored ways of seeing, the rhythms of ritual, and the authority of objects and gestures. Jonas continues to find new layers of meanings in themes and questions of gender and identity that have fueled her art for over thirty years. She is a great inspiration still today.
It is impossible to avoid the topic of body consciousness, embodied emotions and the image of body and personal identity that we see in your practice. What is the function of the identity appearing in your artworks – is it a canvas used to present your ideas or rather the subject of the art? What inspired you to use this as a theme in your practice?
I have been developing my visual imagery since I began studying art and film - from conceptual thinking, composition, using light and colour in different ways, through all the different techniques I've utilised over the years in my work and in my collaborations with stage artists such as dancers, musicians and actors. My approach is always developing through exploring these things. Visual imagery in essence is your way of experiencing what you see and transforming it. This is my world that I want to share and express through my art. The body consciousness, embodied emotions and the image of body and personal identity is part of this visual imagery, the emotional essence in my practice. Always present and always developing in different themes and projects.
Marina Abramovic stated: You see, what is my purpose of performance artist is to stage certain difficulties and stage the fear the primordial fear of pain, of dying, all of
which we have in our lives, and then stage them in front of audience and go through them and tell the audience, 'I'm your mirror; if I can do this in my life, you can do it in yours.'Can you relate anyhow to these words?
de-identify myself, by losing my roots, my culture, I would be very happy. Unfortunately the human being does'nt choose the place where he is born. He grows up in a society that automatically identifies, through education, culture, family... More than ever I think it's more important to go on a way of self-knowledge with the aim to meet “the other”.. This other without which we can not exist. It's the same for the artist. It is more important for me to be focused on my practice than to try to define it according to esthetic criteria of identification. It's probably the reason i like to remember the painter Matisse who said or wrote that an artist must never be prisoner of himself, prisoner of a style, prisoner of a reputation.
Would you like to tell us something about your background? Could you talk a little about experiences that has influence the way you currently relate yourself to your artworks?
All my way is influenced by encounterings.
It began by the meeting with my professor of literature at school. More than giving French or Literature classes, she brought us to discover texts, movies, plays, visual artworks and to think about on what we saw or read.. Thanks to her that I met Pierre Vincke, a theatredirector who was worjink in the tradition of Grotowski ... Both of them have led me to go to theater school. In this school I had meetings. Meetings with artists but also and especially human beings that made me discover. I always need o discover rather than to master a practice. It's probably the reason my encounter with Monica Klingler and Boris Nieslony was decisive for me and led me on the path of Performance Art which is a form still difficult to define. Each performance artist has a different definition of what it is...
Could you identify a specific artwork that has influenced your artistic practice or has impacted the way you think about race and ethnic identity in visual culture?
No I don't have a specific artwork that has influenced my artistic practise but many.
I'm influenced by some philsophers as well as poets or musicians or dancers or visual artists but also by some places or landscapes or atmospheres ... For some years, I was used for example to go to India where I was used to follow some traditionnal muscians or to learn bharatanatyam and practice vipassana meditation... Of course this experience has impacted my art work.... This brought me to think and work differently... My experience in India brought me to discover traditionnal strong art and paradoxally to the way of Performance Art. But there I see one common point: to make no separation between art and life and to be here and now, without projection on the future.
It's difficult for me to speak about race and ethnic identity. But I can say that today we miss more and more this notion of “to be here and now” which is more present in some cultures ... By practising Performance Art, it's my way to be connected to this way of thinking. And even in this field actually it's more and more difficult. The society and the art world brings us more and more to plan in advance, to define our work, more than to do. Just to do. To do what we deeply need.
And of course, my encountering with Black Market International and later the notion of Open Source or Open session via PAErsche have also a big impact on my work. When we go on that, each of us perform by sharing time and space but without trying to convince each other on some common way. This is for me a wonderfull way how we can meet each other, regardless of our origin, our race or our “identity”...
Many of your works carry an autobiographical message. Since you transform your experiences into your artwork, we are curious, what is the role of memory in your artistic productions? We are particularly interested if you try to achieve a faithful translation of your previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create.
My memory is clearly a starting point to create. I don't have any autobiographical message. I use my personnal experience ( what I feel , what I see, what I learn, what I ear...) to work. It's a motor or a material. I'm not able to paint, so I can't do something with red or white or yellow or black colors. All I have is life, a body alive. And I need to do something with that...
My sensation about life sometimes is too intense then I need to transform this intensity in some action. Some artistic action... If people can take something from this action this is great... but I don't want to give them “a specific message” or to control the translation of my experience.