Collaboration – Page 2

“DUO” Interview with Yok and Sheryo

Yok, Australian born, and Sheryo, from Singapore, are a muralist duo and couple based in Brooklyn, New York. They first started painting walls together in Cambodia, where they realized the aesthetic and personal affinity they shared. Known for their twisted, dynamic illustrative style, and their use of stark primary palettes, they often work in red, white and black tricolor. Their hallucinatory murals feature everything from cannibalistic pizza slices to pineapple people and hot dog characters, incorporating the monstrous to the macabre with ample humor and absurdity. Eastern influences and kitschy references to surf and skate culture often appear in the work, and both artists cite 90’s cartoons like Ren & Stimpy as major graphic influences. With a love of gnarly subversive imagery, from grim reapers to deadly pina coladas, their line work is detailed, complex, and a total trip.

Thinkspace Gallery in collaboration with Berlin’s Urban Nation, is pleased to present DUO, a group exhibition featuring works by internationally acclaimed contemporary art duos. The following is an exclusive Sour Harvest interview with Yok and Sheryo.

How did you two first meet and decide to collaborate together?
Y: We met by accident, after I missed a flight and had a day to spend in Singapore. Sheryo gave me a zombie sticker and I was hooked.
We hung out for a day in Singapore and went our separate ways. We met up soon after in Cambodia and painted our first wall together and discovered we had a similar style and vision for future artworks. We also discovered a shared passion for traveling and experiencing new cultures.

S: That zombie sticker I gave Yok when I first met him must have ignited that deep passionate fire in him. It was love at first sticker for him. For me, it was all about the beard, just the beard.

What inspires you or where do you find inspiration?
Y: Inspiration comes directly from our surroundings. We draw what we are interacting with, what we are eating, what we are seeing, we are like sponges absorbing everything that comes at us and putting our twist on it. We keep a black book and all the idea’s sketches and scribbles go in there. It’s kind of like a visual diary. We spend a lot of time in NY and Indonesia so you will see a lot of influence from these two areas. For example we did a series of bad pineapples that were breaking into train yards, doing tags and getting up to no good. There is always a lot of jungle foliage and some pizza slices in our paintings. NY with a tropical angle.
The pattern work is based from batik patterns that are native to a certain part of Indonesia, they also infiltrate the artwork in various places.

S: I find inspiration in the littlest, most mundane things like dry leaves, and interesting people in interesting places. Some come to me in dreams, others on our adventure scooter rides around the world.

How do you two work through conflict when creating a cohesive vision?
Y: Normally if we are butting heads on an idea, we will just talk it out and see what works best. Sometimes we find it’s best if one person leads on a project, so there is a clear direction, and keeps things cohesive. The other person usually chimes in along the way and makes a change that makes the whole project come together in a way that would have been reached alone.

S: When things get awkward, we turn to the almighty rock paper scissors.

What is your process for collaborating, does one artist do XYZ and the other ABC? Please elaborate.
Y: We normally start with a sketch that we have both developed. Sometimes we pass the artwork back and forth, erasing parts here and there as we go till we have something we like. Some time one person will draw the whole thing but it will be based off the other persons sketch or idea, then there will be some erasing and tweaking from both sides. It’s all very organic and there is no real method, but there is definately a rhythm to it that we kind of just fell into from the first few walls.

S:
1. Arrange a beverage of choice (tea and coffee before 5pm, beer after 5pm)
2. Sit down and talk ideas and make sketch together
3. Look at sketch and erase off parts we don’t like
4. Make new sketch if needed, else skip to 5.
5. Hi-fives, more choice of bevys – rinse & repeat till too tired – sleep

Do you remember your first wall? Or have a good story to share from when you were doing a mural together…
Y: We were painting a lot in South East Asia and we were stopped for painting a spot without permission. We were taken back to the station and Sheryo was proposed to by a detective. This was all happening via a translator. It’s funny to look back on. But I was terrified I was going into a manky prison, I thought the detective was going to lock me up to take me out of the equation, Hahaha.

S: We have plenty!! Second wall in Cambodia, we painted on a public holiday, no one was around and there were a lot of monkeys on the wall, so we painted a monkey god, some local guy rode past on his motorbike and tells us to stop what we were doing because the popos were on their way to bust our asses so we ran to the nearest hostel, and some dudes from the hostel hid us and covered for us while the popos showed up.
Had a few funny comments along the way painting too, like an American guy who lived in Mexico told me I was an ornamental oriental. Thanks dude.
And also that detective who made me sit on his lap and took a ton of selfies with me, proposed to me said he wanted to marry me. So they had been looking for us for a week or so and finally turned up while we were having beers and satays (skewered chicken cubes with peanut sauce) at the front of a convenience store….He proposed through a translator and held on to my hands and looked me in the eye. Good times.

If you could live in a movie for a day, what would it be? Would you be yourself or a specific character?
Y: Mad Max would be pretty fun, adventuring around in one of those turboed out frankenstein-mobiles.
S: This is a toughie, for over a day this question has bugged me, what will i choose? But I’ve finally decide that I want to be in a Wes Anderson film as myself, but tweaked out or in Ghostbusters

Anything else you would like to share? Next big project?
Making surf shacks in various parts of the world (might or might not come with rice wine) and 10ft Sheryo & Yok characters and a short 15-minute cartoon thing more animated stuff and 3d sculptural stuff in general.

View a special installation from the duo Yok & Sheryo during our opening reception for “DUO” Saturday, February 27th from 6 -9 pm. For additional information on the exhibit please visit Thinkspace Gallery’s website; if you’d like to receive a preview of the show make sure to sign up for the Thinkspace Gallery mailing list.

“DUO” Interview with Jana and JS

A duo working out of Austria, Jana is from Salzburg, and JS is from France, near Paris. A couple, their work is stencil based, incredibly precise, and inspired primarily by their personal photographic work. Interested in combining the figurative with architecture, their outdoor pieces are primarily found in major European urban centers and tend to vary in scale. They work with a variety of media to create detailed stencils, using acrylic, ink, pencil, and spray paint on architecture, wood, glass, metal, canvas or paper. Creating these interventions in a variety of contexts, they have been known to use everything from trees in forests and railway tracks – to all manner of found materials. Often portraying people in pairs, their work is about intimacy and human connection, capturing a sense of vulnerability in the passing of time.

How did you two first meet and decide to collaborate together?
We met in Madrid in 2004. We were both spending a year in Spain and at some point we happened to live in the same apartment. Around this time, Js discovered the stencil technics by seeing many in the street of Madrid. When Js later came back to Paris he discovered more about the street art and stencil scene in Paris. He met Artiste-ouvrier who shared with him his unique technic and founded the WCA collective. Back in Austria, Jana also started to cut some stencils on her own.

We started to work together when Jana came to live in Paris. That is when we started to develop our actual work, inspired by our photographs, interest in urban architecture and portrait.

What inspires you or where do you find inspiration?
We find our inspiration in our everyday life, our personal story, our travels, places we are exploring,…

How do you two work through conflict when creating a cohesive vision?
Sometimes we don’t have the same idea or the same vision, but we are trying to slowly build something together. Conflict is often a part of our creative process. We think of it as something positive and the best way for us to work through it is to trust each other.

What is your process for collaborating, does one artist do XYZ and the other ABC? Please elaborate.
At the beginning, we did not have any exact division in our collaboration; from deciding what image to use till the realisation of the painting – we were always working together. Things changed after having two children together and we started to divide our working process a little bit more. Nevertheless, there are some parts of the process we want to do together, for instance looking for new ideas, taking photos and cutting the stencils. The execution of the artwork happens in more separate ways, Jana is more into painting with brushes and acrylics, js with spray cans.

Do you remember your first wall? Or have a good story to share of when you were doing a mural together…
Yes, we remember. Our first wall was in Paris. It showed the portrait of a photographer with an old industrial building from Paris we were fascinated by. It was in the street where we were living at that time. It wasn’t a masterpiece, but we were really excited about painting something together!

If you could live in a movie for a day, what would it be? Would you be yourself or a specific character?
We’ve recently watched “Only Lovers Left Alive” by Jim Jarmusch and we really loved it. We loved the ambiance, the decor, the symbolism.

Anything else you would like to share? Next big project?
We are very excited to show more of our work in the US, in Los Angeles, with Thinkspace Gallery and in April in Chicago at Vertical Gallery. We are also so happy to have our first solo show in London coming up this year!!

Jana and JS wall art

View new works from the duo Jana and JS during our opening reception for “DUO” Saturday, February 27th from 6 -9 pm. For additional information on the exhibit please visit Thinkspace Gallery’s website; if you’d like to receive a preview of the show make sure to sign up for the Thinkspace Gallery mailing list.

“DUO” Interview with Nevercrew

Nevercrew is Christian Rebecchi and Pablo Togni, Swiss artists based in Ticino, Switzerland. Interested in the tension and back and forth of being a collaborative duo, tangential relationships are very much a part of their aesthetic and process. Interested in systems and the inner working of living things, they create pseudo “machines” or “living structures,” to explore the systemic and conceptual interactions among individual parts. The works combine fantastic pairings of realistic animals and fictional mechanical systems to create a surreal universe of weirdly bionic hybrids. At the heart of these colorful, large-scale murals is a concern for the increasingly tenuous relationship between man and nature. Mixing realistic painting styles with stencils and phenomenal graphics, their works, though seemingly playful, are thought provoking metaphors for social and political relationships.

How did you two first meet and decide to collaborate together?
We met at the art school, when we were 15 & 16 years old. We used to have similar tastes in many fields and a way of thinking on the creative side. We both used to like to build things and so we started to work together for school projects, doing videos, set models, comics and other things. In that period (the ’90) the hip-hop culture was really important in our region, south of Switzerland, and the idea of graffiti was around us. So in 1996 we realized our first painting together.

What inspires you or where do you find inspiration?
In years we’re carrying on a continuous discussion between us, and this is part of our lives and touch everything that’s around us. In this way we’re inspired by everything we do and we see, but we focus especially on the idea itself of relationship and comparison. So it’s something related to the connection between everything, between mankind and nature, it’s connected to society and politics, but also very connected to emotions.

How do you two work through conflict when creating a cohesive vision?
We’re used to discussing everything together and there’s no need to have aggressive conflicts about what we do. We’re always working on a way to create with two heads and to connect our ideas instead of letting one win over the other. We usually try to understand each other part and vision, talking a lot and explaining, if this does not happen automatically.

What is your process for collaborating, does one artist do XYZ and the other ABC? Please elaborate.
There’s not a specific partition in our work. We could say that we’re interchangeable. We start with a long exchange of ideas and then we just decide together how to realize them. Of course for practical reasons sometimes we have to decide who does what, but this depends more on the specific needs of the moment and not by preassigned tasks. Occasionally we have to divide the work into two parts, but over the years as we’ve worked together and merged our visions and techniques, these parts would be in a way equally realized by both of us.

Do you remember your first wall? Or have a good story to share from when you were doing a mural together…
Yes, of course, we remember our first wall. We probably remember all the walls we did and if not we for sure have the pictures!
Since it was our first time with spray paint we did something indoor, very ambitious and detailed, with many colors, subjects and trees in the background. We took our Sparvar cans and we barricade ourselves inside for two days, working something like 12 hours per day without stop… and without masks. We probably each lost 20 years off our life for what we breathed in during that situation, but it was very funny, inspiring and satisfying and it told us to continue. After that, each wall we did was a new experience. Working on the streets has always been intense for many reasons and it’s still like that now.

If you could live in a movie for a day, what would it be? Would you be yourself or a specific character?
Interesting question, it’s something that we don’t consider lately, but it make us think about childhood dreams: when we were really young we probably wanted to be inside movies like “Explorers” (Joe Dante, 1985), where a group of young kids discovered (from a strange collective dream) how to build a spaceship with their own skills and parent’s basement stuff. So we think that in the same way today we wouldn’t desire to become someone else, but more to have the opportunity and the means to realize everything that could appear in our minds, to discover something that’s still hidden. Nowadays it would sound a little bit as the architects in “Inception” (Christopher Nolan, 2010), but more hand-crafted.

View new works from the duo Nevercrew during our opening reception for “DUO” Saturday, February 27th from 6 -9 pm. For additional information on the exhibit please visit Thinkspace Gallery’s website; if you’d like to receive a preview of the show make sure to sign up for the Thinkspace Gallery mailing list.

“DUO” Interview with Telmo Miel

Telmo Miel are muralist and image-making duo from the Netherlands, Telmo Miel is Telmo Pieper and Miel Krutzmann. They have worked together since meeting at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam in 2007, officially becoming Telmo Miel in 2012. Their murals are both surreal and realistically rendered, with a tremendous amount of detail and vibrant color. Able to work fairly seamlessly, their styles have combined to such an extent that they’re able to execute multiple areas in tandem, exchanging places and completing each other’s work. They often execute their pieces on a monumental scale, creating huge architecturally sized spray-paint paintings on building façades. Combining multiple elements in a single composition, they layer references to the human and animal worlds to create complex creatures and fantastic scenarios. With positivity, humor and a touch of the romantic, their work is arresting and epic.

How did you two first meet and decide to collaborate together?
We met each other on the first day of the academy in Rotterdam in 2006. Both being kind of quiet guys, we found each other quite fast and got to talking about art and painting. I (Miel) was painting graffiti for a couple of years before the academy and suggested Telmo to paint a wall together to see if it would work. We painted a first collaborative mural in Amersfoort (Holland) and from that point forward we started working together on almost every wall, growing more in tune with each other each passing year.

What inspires you or where do you find inspiration?
I find inspiration in fighting the idea of being alive without a certain purpose. If I don’t paint, I don’t feel like I’m alive. Painting makes the mind escape into process and gives it the opportunity to evolve. Without practice nothing evolves, so the need to paint never stops.

Thematically we choose to work with subjects like children, who represent a certain innocence and playful view on their new world; which is also something we as painters we try to maintain in creating.

But we never stick to just one subject or theme, as we find beauty in almost every aspect of the world, within reality and the surreal.

How do you two work through conflict when creating a cohesive vision?
Exactly like that, we work through it. Working in duo form only functions if the egos aren’t too big and if you can explain your personal vision well enough to the other artist/partner. I think Telmo and myself have that aspect almost down to perfection. We can have big discussions on why something works or doesn’t, why something is good or isn’t. But in the end, it’s about making a choice at that moment in time, believing in that choice and both being happy with that choice. If it doesn’t work in the end, there’s always the next one.

What is your process for collaborating, does one artist do xyz and the other abc? Please elaborate.
We are both able to work on every part of every piece. On murals we will switch places a bunch of times and then switch back if we want to. We’ve been working together almost 10 years now and our styles and technique have come together a lot. Though this doesn’t take away from the fact that we still have our own flavor and opinion. We have room for that freedom of thinking and developed a multi-layered style that allows us to work together on one piece, but still are able to put in our own individual vision in one of the two layers that makes up our final piece. Sometimes we use this in the form that I explained, sometimes we use it to our individual advantage in painting canvases. As a lot of the canvases we do are individual pieces.

Do you remember your first wall? Or have a good story to share from when you were doing a mural together…
The first wall was the one in Amersfoort I spoke of before. We went to the free wall spot near the tracks and started on a grey/red graffiti wall with characters and styles. It was a great first test and a lot of fun. But a good story… ehhh Telmo?

A wall that we will never forget for sure is the one we did in Loose Creek, Missouri for the Robertson’s Family. Most walls we did were in cities, but we ended up painting a barn in the middle of nowhere. A great quiet scenery with the smell of wet grass and turkey poop.

Painting a mural was a bizarre thing to do there, so everybody had to come by and have a peek. After a few days we met them all; cops, pastor, local newspapers, school kids, teachers, neighbours, the family of the neighbours. And don’t forget the Robertson’s with just 14 grandchildren!

If you could live in a movie for a day, what would it be? Would you be yourself or a specific character?
Miel: I would be a zookeeper at Jurassic Park for sure, can’t say otherwise.
Telmo: STAR WARS for sure! I still would be doing murals in the streets but in a galaxy far, far away…

Anything else you would like to share? Next big project?
We’ve got a couple of things on schedule, like painting a whole subway station in Norway in April. Some very cool mural festivals in Ukraine, France and one really nice wall in Portugal that we will paint with our friend and graffiti artist Pariz. Besides the murals we’ll be spending a bunch of time in the studio working on new paintings and concepts for upcoming exhibitions.

View new works from the duo Telmo Miel during our opening reception for “DUO” Saturday, February 27th from 6 -9 pm. For additional information on the exhibit please visit Thinkspace Gallery’s website; if you’d like to receive a preview of the show make sure to sign up for the Thinkspace Gallery mailing list.

Thinkspace Invades Detroit – LAX/DTW

Los Angeles based gallery Thinkspace has teamed up with Inner State Gallery in Detroit, Michigan to present ‘LAX / DTW’. This special exhibition has been curated by Thinkspace and serves as an amazing introduction to the burgeoning New Contemporary movement for art lovers in the Midwest. Featuring 16×20 inch works from over 80 artists spanning the globe including featured artists: Stephanie Buer and Liz Brizzi.

‘LAX / DTW’ will kick off with an opening reception on Saturday, June 6th with two of the owners of Thinkspace on hand. With roots firmly planted in illustration, pop culture imagery, comics, street art and graffiti, put quite simply the New Contemporary Art Movement is art for the people.

Featuring 16×20 inch works from:

123Klan
Aaron Nagel
Adam Caldwell
Alexis Diaz
Allison Sommers
Amanda Marie
Andy Kehoe
Angry Woebots
Anthony Clarkson
Bec Winnel
Brett Amory
Brian Mashburn
Carl Cashman
Chie Yoshii
Christine Wu
Craig ‘Skibs’ Barker
Curiot
Dan-ah Kim
Dave MacDowell
David Cooley
Derek Gores
Derek Hess
Drew Leshko
EINE
Ekundayo
Erik Jones
Erik Siador
Frank Gonzales
Fumi Nakamura
Glenn Barr
Greg Mike
Henrik Aa. Uldalen
Hueman
Jacub Gagnon
James Bullough
James Marshall (Dalek)
Jeff Ramirez
Jeremy Hush
Jim Houser
Jolene Lai
Joram Roukes
Joseph Martinez
Kelly VIvanco
Ken Flewellyn
Kevin Peterson
Kikyz1313
Ki Sung Koh
Kojiro Ankan Takakuwa
Kozyndan
Kwon Kyung-yup
Kyle Stewart
Labrona
Lindsey Carr
Linnea Strid
Luke Chueh
Marco Mazzoni
Mari Inukai
Mary Iverson
Matthew Grabelsky
Meggs
Michael Ramstead
Michelle Tanguay
Mike Egan
Naoto Hattori
Naturel
Nick Jaskey
Nosego
Okuda
Paul Barnes
Paula Zammit
Persue
Peter Adamyan
Rodrigo Luff
Rone
Ryan Hewett
Sarah Joncas
Sean Mahan
Sebastian Wahl
Seth Armstrong
Shark Toof
Stinkfish
Tony Philippou
Tran Nguyen
Troy Lovegates

Taking place at:
Inner State Gallery
1410 Gratiot Avenue
Detroit, Michigan 48207
www.innerstategallery.com

Opening Reception: Saturday, June 6th 7-10PM
On view: June 6th through July 4th, 2015

Featured artist Stephanie Buer:
Portland based artist Stephanie Buer explores derelict and abandoned urban spaces in her meticulously detailed oil paintings and charcoal drawings. Looking to the barren architectural vestiges of industry, Buer explores the life of marginalized structures once they’re divested of function and condemned to vacancy and neglect. Buer is fascinated by the living histories of absence, and by the poetic solitude of remnants; these buildings, once brimming with purpose and commercial enterprise remain untenanted reminders of human desertion and waste.

Stephanie Buer’s work is inspired by an untiring search for the spectral half lives of desolate spaces. Ever in search of dissonant juxtapositions and interesting details, Buer captures the poetry of imperfection in the graffiti marred walls of abandoned factories, and in the permanent vacancy of old buildings overgrown and dispossessed by the progress of nature. Initially, Buer began her search for these urban ruins and relics in the abandoned industrial recesses of Detroit. From these early urban explorations sprang an interest in the stories of structures, and in the spatial poetry of architectural remains. Her works are very much about the process of looking, of excavating beauty and value from inglorious castoffs and flawed fragments. Critically, her work encourages the viewer to consider the larger significance of a culture that pursues indiscriminate and unsustainable development; the abandoned buildings themselves endemic of the progress that once necessitated their development. Buer reminds us that things continue to live, even once they have been discarded.

Featured artist Liz Brizzi:
Los Angeles based, French born, artist Liz Brizzi’s mixed media collage paintings combine photography, paper and acrylic washes of paint on board to build complex and layered graphic works that capture the architectural specters of the urban core.

Brizzi is an artist adrift and in search of the mutable lives of structures. Through her travels, Brizzi has sought to capture the cultural specificity of her subjects, looking to the ways in which architecture speaks of its city’s past and present. A central component of her practice involves the undertaking of urban “safaris” on which she seeks and arrests the absentia of industrial relics and buildings through photography. Her work can be defined as architectural portraiture, seeking the evasive identities of these receding and often forgotten edifices. Whether in a decrepit neon sign, a vacant alley way or a gutted building, Brizzi excavates the lives of partial vestiges. In the absence of human subjects, the works focus on these architectures and environments as living entities subject to the ravages of time and neglect.

Brizzi’s gritty and colorful works are ambient, and capture the moodiness of these urban hauntings with impressionistic license. At once graphic and painterly, the works are often composites of fractured moments and vistas. Architectonically devised compositionally, the panels are nonetheless as deeply emotive and stirring as they are technically impressive. They feel both holistically bound and fragmentary – a beautifully injured vision of remnants and unknown hollows. An avid traveller with an interest in Japanese philosophy, particularly the tenets of Wabi-Sabi which expound an appreciation of transience and imperfection, Brizzi is a spatial poet in search of ragged edges and haunted fissures.

About Inner State Gallery / 1xRun:

1xRUN is the premier online destination for exclusive one of a kind artwork in any and all forms. Working with leading and emerging artists from around the world, 1xRUN is focused on bringing limited-edition time released artwork to collectors across the globe. Here at 1xRUN, our artists are a special breed and so are our customers. We strive to offer a one of a kind product that suits both and is unlike anything else in the marketplace.

1xRUN was founded by the team at Inner State Gallery ( formally 323East) in Detroit’s Historic Eastern Market. Over the past 6 years, we’ve worked with hundreds of amazing artists, both locally and internationally, and we’re constantly adding new artists.

Formed out of years and years of developing trusted relationships with our favorite artists, gallerists and curators, our team is a rotating band of artists, filmmakers, musicians, writers, photographers and designers. We do this because we love it. We get up every day and love coming to work, because we work on what we love. We’re here to tell you that mail-order is still fun.

http://innerstategallery.com
http://1xrun.com

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