Ciao Christophe, welcome and thank you
for your availability. To our readers who would like to know something more
about you as an artist, what would you tell? Who is Christophe? What is avaf
(Assume Vivid Astro Focus) by Eli Sudbrack and Christophe Hamaide-Pierson?
Would you please tell our readers who you are and what you have already done
around the world?
My name
is Christophe Hamaide-Pierson and I am part of the French-Brazilian duo called
assume vivid astro focus or avaf. Eli and I have been working together as a duo
for quite a while now – since early 2000, after meeting in NYC where we lived
in the late nineties. We now tend to split the projects we are working on:
being based in Europe (I am French and based in Paris), I usually take care of avaf
projects on that side of the planet and further east, while Eli (a Brazilian based
in Sao Paulo) deals with projects happening on the other side of the Atlantic.
It mostly depends on our agenda and what is easier for us since we don’t live
in the same city anymore. Regarding the show at Francesco Pantaleone
Contemporary (FPAC) in Palermo, for instance, I was the only one entirely
involved.
Neither Eli nor I come from an art
background. Eli studied cinema back in Sao Paulo while I studied architecture
in Paris. Coming from different backgrounds and from different parts of the
world, I think, resonates in our all-encompassing, unbridled vision. Our main focus are installations
and site-specific projects, or public art projects, and that’s what we’ve been
doing (and still do) for more than 10 years now, in different locations around
the world. These include: MCA Santa
Barbara (2016), The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (2015); The Faena Art
Center, Buenos Aires, Argentina (2014); The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA),
North Miami (2013); The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo,
Norway (2009); The São Paulo Bienal, Brazil (2008); The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
(2008); The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOT), Tokyo, Japan (2007); The 1st
Athens Biennale, Greece (2007); The Geffen Contemporary (MoCA), Los Angeles
(2005); The Whitney Biennial, New York (2004), to name but a few.
Tell us about your exhibition in
Palermo, which you entitled "Isola Isola", open to the public, with
free admission, at Galleria Pantaleone in Palazzo Napoli at Quattro Canti,
until 31 May 2018?
I‘ve
known Francesco Pantaleone for a long time now, but this is actually the first
time we worked together. We discussed about doing a show together a few months
back this year, and luckily I was available and very excited to do it - especially
since Francesco offered me the option to work on site, the gallery space
becoming my studio space. So Palermo became my new place of residence for six
weeks. I only knew the city from a vacation trip a few years ago… How could I
resist the opportunity of being based in Palermo for a month and a half to work
on the show?
This site-specific
project is twofold: There is a permanent piece in the staircase, a wallpaper
pasted on the walls at the entrance of the gallery. This all-embracing energetic
“welcoming part” of the show creates a sharp contrast with the second part of
the space, that is more poetic and peaceful.
For the
second part of the show, I was focused on making a new body of work involving
the idea of actually making things with my own hands, with a limited time and
space, instead of having works produced for me by other people. Prior to
Palermo, I had made some new pieces in my Paris studio using galvanized welded
mesh, plaster and paint – and I kept developing this new approach in my work
for the show at FPAC, incorporating elements that would be related to Palermo
and to my own personal relationship to the city during my stay.
Once in Palermo, my time was mostly
spent in the gallery space producing a number of wire-mesh-and-plaster panels,
that I would then reshape so each would look different and unique, like some
crumpled discarded sheet. In the process, these bi-dimensional plaster sheets gained
a third dimension (depth) while being reshaped, bended or even folded. I then organized
them by groups and started painting a repetitive pattern on all of them: a
colourful island lost in a sea of white. The pattern looks like a cartoon-like lightning,
while still being abstract enough to allow for different interpretations – all
of them playful and joyful, though.
This
shape was repeated a number of times using a single colour per panel, and I ended
up with a colour constellation of little islands that were part of the larger plaster
constellation.
In the
process, I came to realize that this show was also about a personal artistic
conflict: 2D vs. 3D, or painting vs. sculpture, or even artefact vs.
installation. I wanted to emphasize this idea and I started thinking about how
best to express this for the viewer to share this conflict.
Every
day, walking from my apartment to to the gallery, I came across elements that I
felt were emblematic of Palermo, a city where locals and traditions mix with
mass tourism and what usually comes with it: trashy souvenirs from plastic
wonderland!
Urged by
my desire to make sculptures rather than 2D pieces, I decided to combine my
painted plaster panels with those cell-phone holders you can find in the more touristic
streets of Palermo. All my panels could then be mounted on the gallery walls, kind
of popping out of them, escaping the flat surface they were originally assigned
to. I also used local wooden-bead curtains (so common down here), that I
dismantled to mix with other painted plaster panels, in order to create hybrid
works that were both paintings and sculptures – and curtains too!
I started
painting on sheets of paper as well, and it made sense to combine these paper
works to the painted plaster panels mounted on cell-phone holders: this would highlight
the idea of a flat surface trying to escape its natural condition. The works
were then installed in the gallery space, occupying most of the walls. A
constellation of constellations. Multiple islands interconnected…
The show
is about this experience of myself being secluded in the gallery space, like
being isolated on a very small island, which is also part of a larger one,
Sicily. Isola Isola is the result of
this creative process. As my curator and friend Agata Polizzi so beautifully
put it: “It is inspired by an analysis of the geographical yet psychological
characteristic of “being an island”, a condition that enshrines different
worlds, states of mind, visions, and multiple independent micro-universes,
where every individual is an island in its own way and, as such, maintains a
status of autonomy but also feels the need to be in contact with the rest of
the world. It is about losing and immersing yourself in a human condition that
is common to everyone and that at every step recalls the value of what we are
not as single individuals, but as part of the same universe.”
How was your passion for art, for
painting, for knowledge through art born?
I am not
really sure, but from very early on I was exposed to different forms of art
practices or creative processes through my family, and I certainly always drew.
Then I always had an appetite for life and a vivid curiosity for my surroundings,
which I guess developed through time. I am now an artist in the visual arts,
but I love performances such as the theatre and dance or ballet, movies,
literature and most of all music. All of which, again, were made accessible to
me by my parents at a very early stage, then by myself exploring and absorbing
what life has to give at different stages of my life. My dad was a puppeteer at
some point, and I spent quite some time as a kid hidden on stage (or backstage)
in a cabaret in Paris, off the Champs-Elysées, where he used to work. I think
that left quite an impression on me, that special feeling that arises once you
are transported in a world that differs from your daily reality, something almost
magical that had a lot to do with live performance, the stage, lights and
sound.
Why do you think art, painting,
sculpture are important today and should be promoted and followed by all those
who want to know and learn?
This is
true of art in general, not just the mediums mentioned above. Works of art are
important because they give you new and different ways to approach the world.
We live in a world where everything is so globalized, so unremarkable that it
seems vital to shake it all up and question our surroundings. Art is an ideal of
doing that… It can also be quite an effort to confront oneself with a work of
art, but it’s worth it, however difficult to grasp it might seem at first. Everyone
should give it a try, since it’s so rewarding – but a close look at a flower or
a tree is also a good way to start!
What would you recommend to young women
and men who want to try their hand at your profession, at your passion?
Well, nothing they haven’t heard already: if you feel you’re an artist
deep down, do what your heart (or hand) tells you, not what the current trends
or the art market are promoting at a given time. That’s the surest way to fail and to end up unfulfilled and bitter.
Also, be sure to distinguish between inspiration and imitation! But, really,
I’m starting to feel uncomfortable giving that kind of advice. Can I just
suggest they read Rilke’s very inspiring Lettere a un giovane poeta?
What are your next projects and your
upcoming artistic events? What are you working on now? And where can your fans
follow you?
We are
currently working on our next projects, a solo gallery show at Casa Triangulo in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in
July and a big solo show at Confort
Moderne, a very nice art center in Poitiers, France, in September… You can
expect colors that is certain!
Not sure
if I have fans, I don’t consider myself as a pop star but they can follow us
here on instagram: @grāv_jōnz and @assumevividastrofocus
Christophe Hamaide Pierson
Casa Triângulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil
+55 11 31675621
Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami, USA
+1 305 448 8976
Eric Hussenot Galerie, Paris, France
+33 1 48 87 60 81
ASSUME VIVID ASTRO FOCUS – Eli Sudbrack e Christophe
Hamaide-Pierson
MOSTRA “ISOLA ISOLA”
Palermo // dal 26 aprile al 31
maggio 2018
dal martedì al sabato | dalle
10:00 alle 13:00 e dalle 15:00 alle 19:00
Galleria Francesco Pantaleone Arte Contemporanea
Palermo, via Vittorio Emanuele,
303
+39 091 332482
www.fpac.it
info@fpac.it
Andrea Giostra
https://andreagiostrafilm.blogspot.it
https://business.facebook.com/AndreaGiostraFilm/
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