Introduced to you through our interview, from Saturday on our friend and Milan-based artist Marco “Pho” Grassi will show his latest works at Circle Culture Gallery Hamburg (read his interview with IWISHUSUN here). The solo show which is titled [Plù-ri-mo] will overview his most recent artistic research by displaying a selection of multiple materials (“Walls”), ceramics, works on paper  (“Monotypes”), as well as his new “Rayographies” – even though he variegates materials, concepts and techniques, at the second glance all seem to be connected with each other and keep a coherent aesthetic. No matter what media Grassi has chosen, the used material enters into a direct dialogue with its medium provided.

The “Walls” series which Grassi started in 2012 is composed of found objects and detritus from urban public spaces that he utilises as a subsurface for his strong and expressive abstract paintings. The artist also presents a new series of ceramics which were crafted in collaboration with the famous crocker Marco Tortarolo in 2013. As with ceramics, the “Monotypes” paper works – also part of the exhibition - emphasize the intrinsic need of the artist to commence a dialogue with different materials. Furthermore, Grassi introduces two selected “Rayographies” of his most recent project called “Le Grand Verre” that were produced in collaboration with the artist Matteo Bologna.

If you are in Hamburg, make sure you don’t miss the show! Check out a preview of his exhibited works here.

Frederic Leitzke & Andreas Lamoth

filmmakers & co-founders of Editude Pictures – Berlin

Together they are strong! Frederic Leitzke and Andreas Lamoth co-founded their own film production company Editude Pictures in late 2010. What started as a more or less improvised coalition of five friends, slowly but surely evolved into a young promising company. While music and art are definitely prioritised, both of them have also corporately worked for brands like Coca Cola, Levis, Red Bull and Converse. Nevertheless what we love the most are their urban films which are filled with their passion for street art, illustration, urban culture and music. No surprise that they are best-known for these kind of interactions. Their documentation of Berlin’s creative scene, “In The Belly Of A Whale,” is their first film and at the same time a foundation for many video works that followed.

While their first documentation strung together various filmic portraits of Berlin’s art scene members and is still complemented by new episodes, Frederic and Andreas also worked for our friend and music producer Robot Koch in the past. To unlock the exciting potential which arises from our creative supporters we teamed up with Editude Pictures and two of our other dear ambassadors – beautiful project which we will showcase very soon. Stay tuned!

In the meantime welcome Editude Pictures as one of our supporters!

You are filmmakers and therefore sight must be a very important sense to you. What other sense couldn’t be missed in your life? Why?
Andy: It’s really hard to imagine a life without any of my senses, but besides my eyes I would miss my ears the most of all I guess. For me vision is strongly connected to hearing which you can see in almost all of our films: Sound and especially Music is so important to set the right tone for moving images and are unseperable in my eyes.
Fredi: That’s for sure. Besides that I would probably miss tasting the most, because my hobby cooking wouldn’t make much “sense” anymore I guess.

What is your vision for your personal work? 
Andy: I hope to be working more in the field of documentaries in the future. There are tons of lives and people out there who are worth being banned to film and who’s stories are worth beeing told.
Fredi: Documentaries are very important to us for sure. Since our first film “In The Belly Of A Whale” lots of good things happened and we got great feedback for our work. That’s definitely a vision. Always try to do stuff that makes people happy, that entertains people, that has a purpose, that somehow “remains” in that crazy fast moving digital world.

Your personal opinion: what makes a good film? 
Andy: Authenticity. Most of the big blockbuster movies simply have no heart and are only produced for making money. So I really prefer movies with smaller or even no budgets for which the filmakers had to make a big creative effort to get it done.
Fredi: The story. Always the story. In the past, the story was the most important thing in a movie. Movies were made because writers and directors had things to say. Today it’s more about pleasing the market, the industry, the crowd with crazy effects, pompous settings, big stars, telling the same stupid stories again and again, using every cliché available. Of course today still many nice movies are made, but really good and innovative screenplays are definitely more rare than in the last century.

What filmmakers have inspired you lately?
Andy: I love Wes Anderson and am really looking forward to his new movie in January. Besides that I am really into short documentaries about everyday life, which you can find very easily by independent and hobby filmers on Vimeo.
Fredi: Yeah, Wes Anderson for sure. The filmmaker who inspired me the most recently was Malik Bendjelloui, director of the masterpiece “Searching for Sugar Man”. A man with an – again – absolutely amazing story, without a big budget, with lots of struggles during the production but with a strong vision and impressive skills succeeds in the end, brings his vision to the screen and creates one of the most beautiful documentaries ever made.

What themes do you find yourself exploring over and over again?
Both: We have a really strong bond into Berlin’s art scene, so it’s almost natural that we are exploring themes like creativity, making a living from what you love and collaborations between different kinds of people in our films. Besides that we are planing a new documentary about the new age of making music – hopefully we will start filming in 2014, watch out!

What is the most beautiful thing you ever saw?
Andy: That’s a tough one. I believe when you look close enough you can find beautiful things happening around you everyday, even (often mostly) in the most random and trivial situations.
Fredi: Impossible to answer.

Sunrise or sunset – what do you prefer?
Andy: Sunrise.
Fredi: Sunset.

As a seeing person it is hard, if not impossible, to imagine the world from the perspective of a blind person, and the same applies in reverse. How would you describe our world and surroundings to a blind person?
Both: We don’t think it’s fair trying to tell a blind person what the world looks like. We would rather try to find advantages which blind people have. For example we believe they have no problems with prejudice and are able to experience the world in very different but also exciting ways.

What would you like to see more often?
Andy: Justice.
Fredi: Humility.

What is your tactic for making the world a better place?
Andy: There is so much screwed up stuff happening around us that one person really can’t handle all types of it. So I guess you just have to concentrate on 2 or 3 things that matter most to you and try to make a change. Lately I am trying to boycott mass animal farming by not eating any meat no more; it’s really hard to see animals suffering because of massive exorbitance in our ways of living.
Fredi: Making the world a better place is a hard task. I rather focus on little things in my daily surroundings, that you really can influence and that make a small difference. Treat people nicely and with respect, be honest, be humble to the environment and in my daily life. Things like that.

When was the last time you gave back and what did you do?  
Andy: I am trying to support Unicef on a regular basis to help them fight the problem of stranded refugees all over the world.
Fredi: The last time? I guess that was some money I gave to the fantastic street musician on Warschauer Straße, that I pass every morning.

Christmas is a time for giving and what could be better than to get a beautiful, highly desired art work and at the same time to do good to make the festive period a happy one for others?! Buying our products is good for you and good for others since with every item sold an eyesight will be saved but we also want to introduce you to another opportunity to give back to the people in need: once again LUMAS and artnet Auctions present their annual charity  auction, “HELP US BUILD A SCHOOL IN MYANMAR” 2013. 18 sold out pieces from LUMAS’ portfolio are currently auctioned and 100 per cent of the funds raised will go to the Amara Foundation e.V., which will use the donations to finance the construction of a new school in Burma (also known as Myanmar).

In 2008, typhoon “Nargis” left a trail of destruction through the country. Much of the population is still without basic services, as reconstruction and repair is a long and arduous process. To not let this disaster ruin a child’s life, LUMAS and artnet Auctions will use their profit to finance the construction of a new school in a village at the foot of the Pyapon River in Burma. Additionally, LUMAS will support the school’s operating costs for the first three years.

By indulging in a beautiful work of art, you can help give these children a more promising future. Learn more about the LUMAS charity auction 2013 and its presented art works here.

More art works:

Picture 1: Günter Rössler: LUMAS CHARITY AUCTION: Gisela, 1968. Collage: more auctioned art works. Photos via artnet Auctions.

Deep in the Joshua Tree National Forest, in the deserts of California, artist Phillip K. Smith III revealed his beautiful architectural play of light, the so called “Lucid Stead” installation. An optical illusion, Phillip K. Smith III who received his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Bachelor of Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design and often experiments with light and its reflections proves how simple it is to irritate our perception but also the transformational possibilities of light. Smith states, “Lucid Stead is about tapping into the quiet and the pace of change of the desert.  When you slow down and align yourself with the desert, the project begins to unfold before you.  It reveals that it is about light and shadow, reflected light, projected light, and change.”

Composed of mirror, LED lighting, custom built electronic equipment and Arduino programming amalgamated with a preexisting structure, this architectural intervention seems alien in the context to the desert area and at the same time easily fit in it. As the sun moves the house’s appearance changes and turns it into an almost spiritual experience.

Phillip K. Smith draws inspiration from the reductive logic of minimalism and the optic sensation of California’s Light and Space movement. Learn more about his work and his solo exhibition of light works at royale projects which will open on November 29 2013 here.

All images via Archinect. Photo 1: Lucid Stead by Phillip K. Smith, III. Photo: Steve King. Photo 2: Lucid Stead by Phillip K. Smith, III. Photo: Lance Gerber.

When our friend as well as curator and founder of Circle Culture Gallery, Johann Haehling von Lanzenauer recently opened his new gallery space it turned out to be reunion of friends and supporters of IWISHUSUN: after twelve years Circle Culture has moved to Berlin-Tiergarten opening its third gallery space at a former warehouse on Potsdamer Straße and presents “POTSE 68″, a group show celebrating their new space and 23 artistic positions from Italy, Iceland, Mexico, USA, Germany, France, Austria and the UK, among them Jaybo Monk, Marco “Pho” Grassi and Kevin Earl-Taylor. You can check out their exhibited works below and read their interview here.

1 & 2: Marco Pho Grassi - read his interview with IWISHUSUN here.

3 & 4: Jaybo Monk – read his interview with IWISHUSUN here.

5: Aaron Rose - read his interview with IWISHUSUN here.

6: Kevin Earl-Taylor – read his interview with IWISHUSUN here.

Photography: Maria Ebbinghaus. Intsagram photography: Teresa Koester for IWISHUSUN.

If our announcement of Jaybo‘s current solo show at Kallenbach Gallery in Amsterdam got you interested in our ambassador’s work, you can learn more about the choices an artist makes when creating in this interesting short film by Rogier Postma:

Proceeding on the assumption that different artists have different focus disciplines and workflows “but they all make something out of nothing”, Postma asks artists such as Jaybo to share their origination process through one of their works. You can check out Jaybo’s way of working above.

Jaybo also supports our cause – read his interview with IWISHUSUN here.

Amsterdam’s Kallenbach Gallery is currently the site for Jaybo‘s new show “The Space Between”. For the first time our friend and supporter (check out his interview with IWISHUSUN here), the Berlin-based artist Jaybo Monk holds a solo exhibition in the capital of the Netherlands which shows an entirely new body of work made on paper, wood and canvas. 12 works, some paper sketches and 3 small installations are on display from this day forward – “The Space Between” not only offers the very unique opportunity to see Jaybo’s first ample experiments with oil as his artistic working material but also to witness an artist’s history in the making: the focus on poetry gets more and more important and so Jaybo’s paintings are accompanied by poems; a poem related to the title of the pieces which is the basis of every work comes along with every painting: “first with the automatic writing of the morning, then put in place around midday” and from afternoon to the evening he would paint on canvas or wood or paper.

It all started with this poem:

When the French artist JR was awarded the renowned TED Award in 2011, he launched his INSIDE OUT project by claiming: ”I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project, and together we’ll turn the world…INSIDE OUT.” Since then thousands of people have contributed their faces and the stories they represent to the world’s largest public photo gallery and in April 2013 the project has made its way to the northernmost part of the Earth: the North Pole. A group of 16 environmental activists arranged a thousand portraits into the shape of an eye, placing the mosaic on the snowy ground, to protest industrial destruction of the Arctic.

JR writes:

The team also carried a n Inside Out banner with over a thousand portraits of members of the #savethearctic movement  and placed it at he North Pole.  Both the time capsule and the Inside Out Eye stand in opposition to government and corporate interests who are scrambling to claim region to exploit its vast natural resources which are becoming available due to climate change.  Now we have The eyes of the world, at the top of the world, watching over the world.

Learn more about the project here.

Photo: JR.

AARON ROSE

artist, writer, musician, film director, independent curator, photographer & publisher – Los Angeles

Born in Portland in 1969, Aaron Rose has to be praised as one of the cornerstones of the contemporary art movement who doesn’t get tired of working multidisciplinary and being in uncharted water. An artist, writer, musician, film director, independent curator, photographer and publisher who is currently based in Los Angeles, Aaron Rose is a true multi talent: In the 1990’s he founded the influential Alleged Gallery in New York and at the same time he worked as a producer and director for MTV Networks, collaborating with then budding directors Mike Mills, Spike Jonze and Harmony Korine among others. After 10 years he bowed out of his responsibility for Alleged Gallery in 2002 to continue working as an independent curator. At Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) Aaron Rose co-curated the large-scale “Art In The Streets” exhibition in cooperation with Roger Gastman and Jeffrey Deitch in 2011. Also, Rose is signed as a director with the Los Angeles company The Directors Bureau which also represents Wes Anderson, Mike Mills, Roman and Sofia Coppola.

Above all, the majority of people will probably know his pop-folkloristic art works, his various films and shorts but most of all his world touring show “Beautiful Losers”, followed by an award-winning documentary of the same name in 2008. A semi-autobiographical piece about the pressures of being a young artist, the film and the tour introduce us to the loose artists’ collective that was close to Aaron Rose’s Alleged Gallery in the early 1990’s: illustrators, designers, photographers and filmmakers like IWISHUSUN ambassador Cheryl Dunn, Shepard Fairey, Aaron Rose himself, Barry McGee, Mike Mills, Ed Templeton, and Harmony Korine. Now being some of the icons of contemporary pop culture and urban influenced art, back then these creatives, often self-taught, worked outside the mainstream and were inspired by street style and the subcultures of punk, graffiti and hip hop, embracing a DIY aesthetic so they could „make something out of nothing“ – just as Rose puts: “The avant-garde today is the establishment of tomorrow. There’s now wax around it.”

We appreciate Aaron Rose’s work ever since and therefore we are very happy to introduce the inspiring creative chameleon and self-declared beautiful loser to you via this interview. A very warm welcome!

If you happen to be in Berlin in September or in October, don’t miss his „Cults“ show at Circle Culture Gallery. Read more about this solo exhibition here. 

What is more important to you, the sense of taste or sight? Why?
 
Sight is infinitely more important to me! I’m an artist not a chef. In fact I can’t cook anything! Not even pasta! I use my eyes for every single thing I do. I’m addicted to beauty, visual beauty. I love color. I love shape. My personal experience of the world is very connected to my seeing.

You are a creative person. What is your vision for your personal work?

Like most artists, I long for a connection to other people. I’m a storyteller. I believe that is why I work across so many different mediums. There are so many ways to tell stories! Even if those stories are my own, I hope that people will see something of themselves in my work. I want to tell the story of out times. I believe that is the artist’s job.

A few years ago you decided to stop complaining about schools and founded your own school, called “Make something,” that offers creative workshops for children and involves a lot of artists of your past “Beautiful Losers” show and film. Is this school your sequel to these? 
Ironically, I started Make Something!! because I absolutely hated school. Especially art school. After art school I was unable to be creative for almost five years. It killed the joy of creation in me. Everything became very regimented, considered. I believe art should be free! For years I complained about this, until one day I got sick of listening to myself and just said, “Aaron, why don’t you change it?” So I wouldn’t say that Make Something!! is a sequel to anything, it’s just an extension. I would never want a young artists to have to go through what I did as the result of education.

Are children “better” artists?
I wouldn’t say that children are better artists than adults, they just haven’t been closed up yet. They don’t over analyse their work. That’s a good lesson.

What is your utmost concern in art?
Connection. If art doesn’t connect with an audience it is not serving its function in society. I worry about this the most in my own work.

Pieces of luggage are often part of your artistic work. Are you a passionate traveller or can it be seen as your personal interpretation of street art characteristics?
I love the dimensionality of three dimensional objects. There is something fantastic about having five different panels intersect the way they do on a suitcase. Plus, I like the idea of recycling, and also pushing art off the idea of it just being a standard square canvas on the wall. Of course, they also have so much meaning in terms of movement, travel, relationships. There are so many personal histories in each piece of luggage. Whose was it? Where did they take it before I acquired it? Who were they with? I can feel the energy in the cases. It’s funny though, for my newer works, I’ve decided to go back to painting on canvas. I guess life just runs in circles. There’s no way around it. I still love suitcases though!

In an interview with Gestalten.tv you claimed that you are addicted to make things and your steady multidisciplinary work proves it true. So you already made a lot of things but what has still to be done?  
If I stopped having ideas today, I would still have enough in reserve to last me my entire life! I would of course love to develop more in the crafts I already practice, but also try new things. I’ve been thinking about starting a memoir, and also about choreography. I love dance and I have some interesting ideas for dance performances.

In 2008 The Selby visited you at home and asked you to tell him why collaboration is better than competition. Four years ago you answered: “Being friends with people is just way better than not.” That is how we all wish the world would be like, but is this possible in real life?
I actually still believe the same thing! I think it is possible. So much of it depends on how honest you are able to be with yourself. In every altercation I’ve ever had with another human being, I have always had some part in it. Most disputes can be settled over a cup of coffee!!! Nobody wants to carry the energy around from a grudge.

What is your tactic for making the world a better place?

I don’t expect grand gestures from life. I just try to do lots of little things that help make people’s lives better in small ways. Maybe at the end of the day they’ll all add up to some sort of positive influence on the planet?

When was the last time you gave back and what did you do?
I do this all the time, but I don’t consider it giving back. It’s just the way I believe I should live! I do things for people every week. Sometimes these are small things, like introducing someone to another person that might be able to help them. Some times I work with established charities. Usually I just try to give support to people who I believe are trying to make the world a better place. This could come from anywhere! Sometimes it’s about doing some artwork or a film for an organization that’s doing great things, sometimes it’s just making sure I buy my lunch from an independent restaurant and not a large corporation. There are many ways to give back.

What is the most beautiful thing you ever saw?
My wife on our wedding day.

What would you like to see more often?
I would like to see creativity become more a part of the fabric of our human experience, not just something we consume for entertainment.

What is your picture for IWISHUSUN?

The gift of sight has made me the person and the artist I am today. If there is anyway that someone can contribute to helping another person experience the beauty and wonder of this life experience then I completely stand behind it!! It’s important work.

Photo: Jen Siska.

On the occasion of Jaybo Monk’s “Paper Tears” show at Los Angeles-based Soze Gallery Kristin Bauer, editor of Beautiful/Decay, met the artist and friend of IWISHUSUN for an interview to discuss his new body of work, how it relates to poetry and what comes next.

One of his upcoming projects concerns us as well and we are very excited to read Jaybo’s announcement:

“. . . I am working on a project for IWISHUSUN, a new platform for charity, called BLIND MEMORIES, where after a time of observation I will try to interpret the portrait of the observed person in complete darkness. Those originals will be available to purchase and the money will help unfortunate cataract victims with a chirurgical intervention.”

Read the entire interview on Beautiful/Decay Art & Design.

Also, we met Jaybo and Soze Gallery founder and director Toowee Kao for interviews – don’t miss to check them out!