SPREAD | ArtCulture » Photography

Roger Ballen’s South African Rap Rave

KisaLala — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:35:52 +0000

By Kiša Lala

Photographer Roger Ballen is known for his stark, artful montages of South African life: the dirt-poor of rural townships, the beatific scallywags and sooty lowlifes on skid-row that wash up with the detritus from slums and shanties. His new music video with Cape Town band Die Antwoord “I Fink U Freeky,” meshes hip hop beats with his signature style of photography, animating his still images.

The slang used by Die Antwoord is Zef, an Afrikaans term that roughly translates to “common or trashy,” referencing a white trash culture, cheap, tin Ford Zephyrs (zef), trailer park kitsch, cool tough guys with style.

"I Fink U Freeky" - Die Antwoord - Photograph by Roger Ballen

Ballen’s work is a blend of photography and art, combining still life compositions and live portraiture. The artist has been shooting black and white film for nearly fifty years. Having grown up in the era of b&w photography Ballen continues to be one of the last few experimenting exclusively in this media. Explaining his passion for black and white and the constraints it implies, Ballen says, “Black and White is a very minimalist art form and unlike color photographs does not pretend to mimic the world in a manner similar to the way the human eye might perceive. Black and White is essentially an abstract way to interpret and transform what one might refer to as reality.”

"I Fink U Freeky" - Die Antwoord - Photograph by Roger Ballen

Ballen’s video with Die Antwoord began with still images he took of the band for their album three years ago that were made popular through youtube circulation. Eventually the growing interest in those images led him to collaborate on a full-length video project with the band. Ballen’s visual aesthetic is unique but compare this also to the musical interpretation and approach to local rhythms by another South African photographer, Pieter Hugo’s cover of Joy Division’s She’s Lost Control, a video he did for DJ Spoek Mathambo

From Roger Ballen's book, Shadow Chamber 'Twirling Wires' 2001 © Roger Ballen

More information: Roger Ballen

Stand in Line: Out of the Ordinary

KisaLala — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 23:18:59 +0000

By Kiša Lala

Nineteen year old street photographer Shane Vincent has an eye for capturing those ephemeral moments when the changing light transforms the mundane into the sublime.

The project, Stand in Line, came about when Vincent began photographing utility poles in the streets of North London where he lives: “The series started at a time where the sky looked pretty cool,” he says. “It was autumn so it would change constantly. It caused me to look up a lot.” The outcome of his first photograph, Stay connected of a utility pole “with wires coming out at all directions,” was captivating enough, recollects the young photographer, that it caused him to pay more regard to the perpendicular poles and lampposts which most take for granted and which habitually punctuate the urban horizon. By isolating them against the vivid autumnal sky, and shooting them from an anamorphic perspective, Vincent enhanced their geometric abstractions.

Never having been formally trained in the field, Vincent fell into photography as a hobby. Soon, his spontaneous street images brought him enough attention as a photographer to develop his dabbling to a more serious professional level. Initially, he says, he began by experimenting with 35mm because he liked the grain and quality of the images, but because of the expenses of printing, he later gave way to digital, whose more crisp, modern feel led him towards a contemporary vision.

“Visually, film has had the greatest influence,” the photographer tells me, remarking on his inspirations, “mainly those that show futuristic visions.”

“The interest in the future, dystopian and utopian sides is shown in the series, in the colours and moods particularly,” Vincent elaborates. “I decided to shoot them from a similar angle, straight up through the centre, fading and distorting towards the peak. It struck me as a most intimidating perspective.”

For more information on Shane Vincent’s photography: www.shaneellisvincent.com

Sitting Pretty: Remastering Renaissance Portraits

KisaLala — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:12:05 +0000

Untitled, from 'Existing in Costume' series © Chan-Hyo Bae

Stiff styles of portraiture were common practice in Elizabethan times – three contemporary artists re imagine the formal poses through photography.

Hiroshi Sugimoto, using his minimalist approach creates a series of austere portraits of Henry VIII’s six wives. Christian Tagliavini’s subjects are attired in garments handcrafted from paper and fabric the artist creates himself. And South Korean artist Chan-Hyo Bae creates a series of self-portraits identifying himself in the strangely foreign, militaristic poses of royalty.

Artemisia © Christian Tagliavini

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Jane Seymour (detail from Henry VIII and Six Wives), 1999 - © Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy The Pace Gallery

Untitled, from 'Existing in Costume' series © Chan-Hyo Bae

The royal subjects in Chan-Hyo Bae’s photographs appear isolated and estranged; the Queen appears as a misfit in her role of monarch, separated from others by the very elaborateness of her garments which imbue her with special status. Posing as a queen is not just a play on queeniness as a cross-dressing artist for Bae, who is here expressing the idea of foreignness as a South Korean living in London.

In his first solo UK exhibition ‘Cut Out & Keep’ photographer, Christian Tagliavini created a series entitiled ‘1503’ which was inspired by masters of the Renaissance, (the year the art patron, Agnolo di Cosimo was born). Using cardboard constructions Tagliavini creates a flat caricature that enhances both the severe puritan aesthetic as well as the otherworldliness of a digitally enhanced reality.

Portrait of a Lady in Green © Christian Tagliavini

Anne of Cleves (detail from Henry VIII and Six Wives), 1999 © Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy The Pace Gallery

Bartolomeo © Christian Tagliavini

Untitled, from 'Existing in Costume' series © Chan-Hyo Bae

Lucrezia © Christian Tagliavini

Christian Tagliavini, ‘Cut Out & Keep’ – 03 Nov 2011 – 07 Jan 2012 – Diemar Noble Photography
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Courtesy of Pace Gallery: http://thepacegallery.com
Chan-Hyo Bae, Courtesy of Saatchi Online

Painting the Horizon

KisaLala — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 18:11:35 +0000

Untitled (Cader) 2008 - Tree Line project © Zander Olsen

Zander Olsen’s photo series is an intervention with the landscape, a bending of the line of the horizon to create an illusion of continuity.

Olsen wraps the trees with white fabric and photographs from the viewpoint where the elements come together in perfect unity. He has created these site-specific installations in forests in Surrey, Hampshire and Wales.

Olsen’s works suggests an inversion of emulating linear perspective in two-dimensional works of art, a technique developed by Renaissance artists using foreshortening – in this case Olsen redefines a three-dimensional environment by extending a flat line across it to create an illusion two-dimensional space. Take for example the works of Georges Rousse who paints walls of interiors, photographing them finally at a fixed perspective to create the affect of continuous graphical lines across the space.

Cadair, Oak 2010 - Tree Line project © Zander Olsen

Beeches 2004 - Tree Line project © Zander Olsen

Flat Line 2005 - Tree Line project © Zander Olsen

Jhutti 2004 - Tree Line project © Zander Olsen

Untitled (Corbi) 2005 - Tree Line project © Zander Olsen

Reims 1, 2008 © Georges Rousse - Courtesy of Waterhouse & Dodd gallery

For more information: Zander Olsen
Waterhouse & Dodd: Georges Rousse

Ape and Super-Ape: A Chat with Walton Ford

KisaLala — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 21:19:27 +0000

By Kiša Lala

Walton Ford photographed by Bobby Fisher © Bobby Fisher, 2011 -- Arabian proverb from beginning of King Kong: 'And the Prophet said, ‘And lo, the beast looked upon the face of beauty. And it stayed its hand from killing. And from that day, it was as one dead.'

A witty narrative of thwarted simian desire is the theme of Walton Ford’s new series of watercolor paintings at Paul Kasmin Gallery. Ford’s obsession with King Kong, the super-sized movie monster came from his childhood viewings of the 1933 cinematic tale of abduction depicting the clash of the beastly brute Kong and delicate, blonde sophisticate, famously played by Faye Wray.

The story is less Beauty and the Beast, more unrequited love akin to Nabokov’s Lolita in which Kong, the faux monster gorilla, is trapped by unnatural desire and vanity towards an act unacceptable to consummate.

In his other series, displayed like a comic strip narrative on the gallery walls, Ford returns to his earlier Audubon inspired style, depicting a scenario described in the naturalist’s journals about his pet parrot. I chatted to Ford about his new work and flipped through his past drawings in my old copy of Pancha Tantra, a collection inspired by the ancient Sanskrit book of animal fables, possibly the oldest on the planet.

Walton Ford wearing one of his collection of gorilla masks, photographed by Bobby Fisher for Spread © Bobby Fisher, 2011

I asked Ford about his inspiration behind the story of the dead parrot and masturbating monkey, and Ford explained that Audubon’s father was a ship’s Captain: “He used to bring exotic animals home to France,” recounted Ford, “Audubon himself was born out of wedlock: the Captain had a mistress in Haiti, and after Audubon was born from this mistress, the Captain brought the young boy home to his wife in France who raised Audubon.”

“My mother had several beautiful parrots and some monkeys; one of the latter was a fully-grown male of a very large species. One morning, while the servants were engaged in arranging the room I was in, ‘Pretty Polly’ asking for her breakfast as usual, “Du pain au lait our le perroquet Mignnone,’ the man of the woods probably thought the bird [was] presuming upon his rights in the scale of nature be this as it may, he certainly showed his supremacy in strength over the denizen of the air, for, walking deliberately and uprightly toward the poor bird, he at once killed it, with unnatural composure.” John James Audubon

Ford reimagined the scenario from the few torrid tidbits left in Audubon’s diaries, “I thought, how Freudian! I made it hyper sexualized. The incident actually traumatized him and led to him painting birds.”

Walton Ford's studio, photographed by Bobby Fisher © Bobby Fisher, 2011

Walton Ford’s drawings recall a time when explorers roamed uncharted oceans, when rumors of primeval lands and exotic creatures fed our fears and dreams. Ford is attracted to the most documented of these journeys, which were accounts by western colonialists ‘discovering’ the east – the Orientalists.

In the film King Kong, travelers reach Skull Island, a lost world of colossal beasts and dinosaurs. The goliath jaws of Kong, which greets guests entering the gallery is an anachronistic caricature, no longer fearsome, and out of date. Kong’s face, full of pathos, seems just as decontextualized now as he was misplaced then, out of the jungle, climbing the Empire State. He’s molded from our fear of the wild, which lives as part of our psychic inheritance in the primordial fear of being eaten. On the other hand, one might say the nemesis of our modern fears comes from not what’s lurking in the jungle but from aliens in outer space.

Animals have lost their potency and magic, their power over our subconscious. Hunting for sport replaces hunting for survival. Animals are ‘game’ on a planet where we’re the dominant species. Zoos and safaris are the last remaining places left for modern man to face off against wild beasts, as some feel inclined to do, in macho, drunken bravado, foolishly discovering that their place in the food chain is not unconditionally secure.

But Ford believes there are still places where animals command mythic status. Wolves still prey on our imagination as werewolves and vampires, possessing supernatural powers, haunting villages of rural France and Eastern Europe.

I asked the artist why in many of his drawings in the Pancha Tantra the animals are chained or trapped, and the landscapes are burning – were humans always a threat? “It’s not about man being destructive to nature, but about exploring the relationship, which often is violent. The pet monkey is chained… they are supposed to be surrogate humans, like court jesters and keep within certain rules of cute monkey behavior. If they behave like a monkey, it’s upsetting.”

Ford studied 19^th century books of gun traps and snares on camp life and the tricks of trapping. “They are fables on the costs of pleasure, instant gratification.” Ford points to a drawing of a tapir, “He is shot and photographed at the same time. They were destroyed as ‘pests,’ or trapped for their feathers and fur. Birdlime (a kind of glue) was used to trap hummingbirds inside flowers,” says Ford, an avid connoisseur of odd animal trivia and arcane folklore.

Ford’s watercolor paintings have evolved from a clinical stylized, technically perfect aesthetic that made his select pincered specimens appear as though isolated from their habitats, suspended within faux antique landscapes – and thus removed, the artist rendered his creatures exotic and extinct. “I like the idea of creating an artifact that isn’t real; that couldn’t have been made when it says it was,” explains Ford.

Ford’s later work turned towards wittier allegories taken from more extensive narratives, such as the lives of Richard Burton, explorer and first infidel in Mecca, Lord William and Emma Hamilton’s Neapolitan society of debauched dandies, and the bawdy Earl of Rochester. Finally in the new Kong series, Ford has abandoned his predilection for the pre-photographic era with excessive detailing and marginalia borrowed from esoteric manuscripts, and courageously leaped into the early 20^th century cinematic imagination. Though some anecdotal and literary diversions fire our reveries, the Kong portraits tackle emotions of love and rejection on our egos, (a gorilla’s face is suitably more empathic and anthropomorphic for this purpose), and also allude to Ford’s personal travails and recent divorce

Not a real silverback gorilla, Kong’s face was a Hollywood rendering made to elicit fear.

“It’s from a mixture of film stills,” Ford tells me. “They used a scale model for close-ups, and an animation model for stop motion. The proportions of the head are the same as I paint here. These are emotional portraits of what he was going through.”

In the Hollywood parable Kong is a cornered savage; the girl gets rescued and civilization scores a victory against the barbaric jungle. It would be more typical today to side with the animal – so totally vanquished and non-threatening has the wilderness become in our imagination. Ford also, takes the animal’s point of view and makes Kong’s emotions human.

“He has this overwhelming desire and lust for her and she’s screaming, it’s the worst kind of violation, he undresses her…” Ford says, building to the climax, “She escapes him and his reaction is rage. I imagine him heart broken. He kills everybody but he never sheds a tear, but goes through rage and grief.”

The text refers to the end when Kong is chained up and the girl says, ‘I don’t like to look at him, it makes me think of that awful day on the island’. Ford finds the moment, ironically poignant, “And for him the awful day on the island was the best day for him – he had his girl, it was wonderful for him. They are so far apart at this point – her rejection of him is so complete. So it starts out with disbelief, then grief and rage, and an acceptance phase, when the romance is over.”

Kong’s been dumped, and Ford sees parallels in human behavior using the animal kingdom. The way we see nature as a mirror of ourselves – is what fascinates Ford. It is the inauthentic, artificial frame we’ve imposed around nature. “They are animals in the human imagination rather than animals in nature. Generally, when you see animals in nature they are not doing very much they are running or resting, it’s not terribly interesting. There’s a lot of ‘animal nature’ art, but almost all romanticize moments where there isn’t a human viewer included in the image.”

The Image Maker

KisaLala — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 22:42:51 +0000

Tom Sachs has an extensive series of cameras that he sometimes re-constructs from machine parts of other devices, rebranding them to explore their value in relation to consumer desire – ‘Like a Leica,’ was one such artwork from his inventory of image makers. His first was a clay replica of a Nikon SLR camera he made for his father when he was eight years old.

Tom Sachs, NASAblad, 2008 Courtesy of the artist and Sperone Westwater, New York

Here are more bits and bobs of artwork and films produced by Tom Sachs and his studio, that illustrate the artist’s knack for knolling:

Tom Sachs’ studio released a video Ten Bullets that codifies studio practices. Shot in an entertaining style, it references guidelines, which according to the handbook, must be followed or else the employee might find himself being booted from the club.

The ten commandments include such prime directives as, “Creativity is the Enemy,” “Sacred Space,” “Be on Time,” and “Be Thorough.”

Excerpt from: A book I made driving from Milan to Marakkesh by Tom Sachs, Susanna Howe