ARTWORKROOMS P R I N G VO LU M E 2 0 1 6

Interviews with Alessio Albi Gina Vasquez Renee Ackerman

Articles by Rebecca Govlja Anna Helsen

A m a g a z i n e a b o u t a r t a nd ph o t o g r a ph y

© Foto by Renee A

ckerman

Anna Helsen

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After years of existing in the virtual world, we have decided to take ARTWORKROOM one stop closer to the read world - from a Blog to an online magazine, with the potential for a real, hardcopy, perhaps a Zine, that you can hold, feel, smell and study as your heart desires. There is just something about holding a print version of images that, in our opinion, can’t be beat by technology, but for started ARTWORKROMM Magazine will exist as a digital publication. The magazine will feature interviews of numerous artists from different fields of work, be it photographers, painters, musicians, writers or more. For this first issue we have talked to Alessio Albi, Gina Vasquez and Renee Ackermann. They create stunning works of art - definately a must see!

Furthermore, insights into Art and Art History will be given, current events in the Art World and other bits and pieces. For this first issue, Rebecca Govlja has given us a great insight to the mexican artist Pedro Reyes’ work.

We hope you will thoroughly enjoy reading through those first pages of ARTWORKROOM Magazine!

Lots of Love,

ARTWORKROOM MagazineAll right reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written permission from the publisher, the photogra-phers or authors. The views expressed in ARTWORKROOM Magazine are those of the respective contributors and do not necessar-ily shared by the magazine or its staff. © Copyright 2015Karlsruhe, Germany

EDITORIAL

Anna Helsen Editor in Chief

www.malfabrik.de

© Konstantin Voit

By Konstantin Voit

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Editorial

Interview with Alessio Albi

Interview with Gina Vasquez

Rebecca’s Art Column

Interview with Renee Ackerman

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9

13

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CONTENTS

Alessio AlbiHow old are you and where are you from? I am 29 years old and from Perugia, Italy.

What do you do for a living? My main work is not photography, I’m a nu-tritionist. :)

Do you work analogue or digital? I only work in digital. That’s because post-pro-duction is important in my workflow, to reach the right mood and atmosphere that I have in mind.

What was your most recent project? I am still working on a project named “A Thousand Seas”, inspired by the atmosphere by my favourite book series ‘The Dark Tower’. It’s about parallel dimensions and post-apoca-lyptic atmospheres.

What themes interest you to photograph? Loneliness, as it represented a big part of my life.

What’s your favourite music to listen to whilst working, shooting or editing? I always listen to music whilst editing. Tool, Sigur Rós, Radiohead, *Shels, Archive, Pink Floyd and many others... They all are really important to achieve the right atmosphere that I’m looking for.

Do you have any advice for upcoming photog-raphers? Learn the basic techniques and the classical canons of photography, and then decide in total freedom when to use them or when to totally forget them.

© Alessio Albi

Alessio Albi

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What’s your favourite music to listen to whilst working, shooting or editing? I always listen to music whilst editing. Tool, Sigur Rós, Radiohead, *Shels, Archive, Pink Floyd and many others... They all are really important to achieve the right atmosphere that I’m looking for.

Do you have any advice for upcoming photog-raphers? Learn the basic techniques and the classical canons of photography, and then decide in total freedom when to use them or when to totally forget them.

How and when did you start to take an interest in photography? Did you have any plans prior to realizing you want to pursue photography? I started getting interest in photography about 3 years ago, but my first huge year was 2013, when I started to define my own personal style (still defining it). Photography is -and I hope

remains- my passion and not my work for now so I can do whatever I want and always have fun with it, without compromises.

How would you recommend doing a photo-trip? For me it is not so complicated, as my equip-ment is very small, one or two lenses and a tri-pod sometimes. I just find a place and decide how to get there and where to stay.

What equipment do you take with you when travelling? As said before, just my camera, two lenses (al-ways a 50mm f/1.4!) and a tripod. Sometimes I also take a reflective panel.

What is your favourite photo-technique? I love postproduction, to achieve the right co-lour tone that I have in mind.

What’s your favourite (art related) App? Hipstamatic.

© Alessio Albi

Alessio Albi

What type of cameras do you have and use? I have a Nikon D600 and a Canon EOS 450D (my first camera). Now I only use the D600, as it has an amazing dynamic range.

Do you have any particular artists you’d say are an inspiration to you? As for the giants; Annie Leibovitz and Tim Walker. Then other amazing photographers all over the world like Marta Bevacqua, Zhang Jingna, Alex Stoddard and Miss Aniela.

© Alessio Albi

© Alessio Albi

Alessio Albi

8All images on this page © Alessio Albi

Gina VasquezGina Vasquez is a 21 year old photographer from New York City. She is currently studying at the Fashion Institute of Technology and heads out on self employed photographic missions. Her work can be seen online at ginavasquez.com as well as on Flickr and Facebook.

Gina first came across photography back in 2011, when she saw a conceptual im-age online. After discovering how expressive photography could be, she took off to experi-ment on her own to test the waters - the results speak for themselves. She prefers to work with digital photog-raphy as it meets the needs for her photogra-phy in ways that analog photography cannot,

however still very much enjoys to shoot film an does so when she has time on the side. One of the most interesting photo proj-ects she has worked was a collaboration with the author Chiara Gamberale. The project con-sisted of concepting and creating a new cover for her book “Per Dieci Minuti”, which is an-other work that perfectly shows Gina Vasquez’ playful and fantasy-filled style. She creates works which evoke numer-ous emotions in the viewer, where one gets pulled into the work and carried off into their own fantasy world, filled with wonderous dis-coveries.

© Gina Vasquez

Gina Vasquez

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Gina’s works mostly feature people in the composition who are often a model, friend or self portraits. As to settings, she of-ten makes fantastic use of wide open spaces and claims to have a soft spot for beaches (and who doesn’t!). Before starting her shoots, she plans the composition thouroughly, however also tak-ing large expansions when shooting in case another composition winds up being more suitable for the piece of work which sometimes can only be seen during post-productions. As far as post-productions goes, Gina has listed Adobe Photoshop to be her favourite (Adobe Lightroom is also highly recommended).One of her favourite photo techniques is the Brenzier Method, which has a very shallow depth of field, relatively wide angle and pho-to-stitching and was made popular by Ryan Benzier. Her beloved hardware is a Nikon D600, which she has upgraded from her previously owned D3000 for her digital works. To sat-

isfy her love of working with film she uses a Canon AE-1 and a Instax Mini 25. These are more oftenly used to document and other type of photography rather than for her conceptual pieces. When travelling, the Nikon Camera is an obvious must, as is a 50mm f/1.8 and 35mm/f2 lense. Gina also makes sure to have her tripod, camera remote, reflector and lad-der nearby whenever possible. As many of us would agree with, in-spiration comes in many different shapes and forms, and Gina named some of her favou-rite music for us, which she enjoys to listen to whilst shooting and working on the post-pro-ductions, such as Ludovico Einaudi, Iron and Wine, Imagine Dragons, Two Door Cinema Club, and Matt Corby. Other artists are Robert and Shana Parkeharrison, Karrah Kobus, and Katerina Plotnikova. In the end, all that can be said is that her works are breathtaking and we hope to con-tinue to see many more!

Anna Helsen

© Gina Vasquez

Gina Vasquez

All images on this page © Gina Vasquez

Gina Vasquez

12All images on this page © Gina Vasquez

Th is article will present the artwork “Disarm” by the Mexican Artist Pedro Reyes from both a pro-fessional and personal view point, of a newcomer in the fi eld of working in the art scene. I have chosen to write about this particular work because its eff ect on the visitors of our institution in Berlin has stuck with me since I fi rst started working with the artwork. Th e artist Pedro Reyes was born in Mexico in 1972 where he still works and lives today. He stud-ied architecture at the Ibero-American Univeristy in Mexico City. As an artist he has won international at-tention for his large-scale projects such as “Palas por Pistolas” and “Disarm” which will be the centre of at-tention for the following article. His projects take ex-isting social problems and intend to suggest solutions for a happier, more peaceful world. Ryes refers to him-self foremost as a sculptor, which involves the sculpt-ing of social realities as much as physical materials. Th e artist has always been directly engaged in social activism, which fi rst became manifested in “Palas por Pistolas” (Pistols into Spades) in the year 2008. In this project he melted down 1,527 weapons to create the same number of shovels used to plant 1,527 trees with the help of local residents. Th e weapons used had been voluntarily donated by the civilian population of Culiacan, Mexico. His political stance, the use of found materials and disclaiming the collective men-tality sets him in the tradition of Arte Povera, most likely to be seen in his approach towards the Mexican gun culture.

My personal experiences with the artwork “Disarm” started on the 22th of February at the Kun-straum Kreuzberg/ Bethanien (Berlin, Germany) as part of our current exhibition “CTM. Seismographic Sounds. Visions of a new World”, running until 30th of March 2016. I had not heard about the artwork nor the artist before and did not quite know what to expect. Th e fi rst information handed to me was the fi nancial value of the artwork ranging up to EUR 350.000 total for the installation, borrowed from Lisson Gallery in London, which made me bow down in respect, as I had never worked with an artwork estimated this high in both its idealistic as well as economic value. Th e work “Disarm” is a second generation of instruments built aft er “Imagine” (2012). For this installation, Reyes has taken about 6700 guns that were turned in or seized by the army and police in Ciudad Juarez, a city of about 1,3 million people where 10 people were shot a day at the height of violence. Back in the 2010 Ciudad Juarez had a murder rate of 230 killings to every 100,000 inhabitants. “Disarm” was created in cooperation with a team of musicians and Cocolab, a media studio in Mexico City. Reyes has cut down gun barrels to diff erent lengths to sound like marimbas while other pistol parts have been turned into cymbals. Nevertheless one can still recognize the threatening shape of weapons, ex-orcising the demon of harm which they once used to inhabit. When the instruments play or are played, the music expels the evil for which these weapons used to stand and the melody works as a requiem for the lives lost.

Rebecca´S Art Column

STRAIGHT OUTTA BERLIN

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Speaking about his work, such as “Disarm” from 2013, Ryes himself says that the fact of taking metals won out of guns and rearranging the broken parts into new forms in his sculptures is a classical approach that re-lates to the advent of bricolage in the post-war era. The project “Palas Por Pistolas” as well as “Imagine” and “Disarm” also connect with the ideas of social sculpture, in the physical transformation of the origi-nal materials, which aim to trigger psychological and social transformation. Reyes stresses that his artwork is not just to be seen as a protest, but a proposal. For him, music is the opposite of weapons and the exer-cise of transformation one sees when looking at the guns as part of musical instruments is what he de-sires to see in society. At the moment the new instru-ments are played they are meant to become “agents of change”, creating a musical event which people gather in a positive manner. Contrary to post-war artists who worked with anonymous flotsam and jetsam, the material Reyes uses derive from a decommissioning weapons pro-gram and therefore already possess a powerful history in the first place. Yet for Reyes it is important that the viewers are not seduced by the weapons themselves although their form is left recognizable in the sculp-ture. Reyes is convinced that human brains, especially those of men, are predisposed to violence and the drive to kill. This desire to terrorise however, which in Reyes belief is enrooted so deep in human nature is aimed to be totally transformed by a psychological process of sublimation which shall be instigated by the artworks. The artist sees the human fascination with objects and their strong effects on us as a basic trigger to this psychological process. Rather than trying to deny or eliminate the capacity for violence in the nature of hu-man beings Reyes tries to displace it in terms of its object. Whilst writing a checklist for the variety of in-struments exhibited in our rooms, my excitement to see the instruments perform rose from day to day un-til the installation finally arrived. After all I had read and researched so far, which I have put together in the text above, I was eager to experience the sound it

would make and was even more curious to know how the installation actually works. Each of the instruments came with boxes, carefully hiding its technology in form of MAC Computers uti-lizing programs such as Ableton Live, MIDI and Max MSP to transform guns into self-playing instruments. We had a loop programmed which now makes the instruments play one after another, which at first sounds as if the instruments start playing randomly and without any connection to one another. It is only after hearing the loop repeatedly for weeks that I can finally make a melody out of it. Yet one might not believe how beautiful and melodic the instruments sound when played together, every Sunday. Whilst there is still a moment of threat in the instruments shooting out sound without warning for the unpre-pared viewer every sense of potential harm is expelled when the instruments interact with each other and play their melody all at once. For me, this fact under-mines the peaceful intent of the artwork in an even deeper sense, for if everything works and reacts to-gether what we get is a transformed reality of beautiful music. I will always remember the artwork as one of the first great pieces of art for me to work with. For in-stance I will probably never forget the opening of the exhibition when the room in which the installation was so crowded that my boss and me where all over the place trying to convince everyone not to touch the artwork, which bares so much seduction to touch it and in fact interact with it. And then there was this guy who just walked into the centre of the room, in between the different instruments and started moving in a really weird manner, which one might refer to as a “dance” and all the viewers around believing he was part of the performance and applauding enthusiasti-cally as he finished. Since then I have seen so many more positive reactions on this work of art, like chil-dren bursting into laughter and excitement and young musicians eager to play the instruments that I feel like Ryes intentions are, in reality, not even as utopic as it might seem when reading about them on a piece of paper.

Rebecca Govlja

Renee AckermanHow old are you and where are you from? I’m 21 years old, from Willoughby, Ohio, USA

What are you studying right now?As of now I am working on finishing up an Associate Degree of Science. Eventually I plan to get a Degree in Environmental Science or Wildlife Management. My dream is to be able to work for the National Park Service!

Do you work analogue or digital? Analogue all the way. There is something about film that captures every moment exactly how it was; something that digital has never been able to do for me.

What themes interest you most to photograph? My work almost always revolves around the wonders of nature and Earth and the affect it has on the human spirit. Nearly all my photos are taken outside.

What or who are your favourite subjects to pho-tograph? I love to photograph the Earth in the way that it is supposed to be. Meaning I get great joy out of exploring and visiting places that are left untouched by mankind. It’s almost like go-ing back in time to a simpler day and age and I love seeing the effect that it has on people.

Renee Ackerman

Renee Ackerman

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Do you have any advice for upcoming photogra-phers? What’d be a good idea to do, what might one want to stay clear of? My only advice would be to avoid TRYING to get a good photo. Many times when a moment is forced and not genuine, it shows. Sometimes you just have to let go and just let things hap-pen around you.

What do you want to evoke in the viewer? I want to stir up feelings inside them that have been lost due to modern day desires and life-styles

What would you say is the most interesting place you’ve travelled to, to take photos and why? One of my favourite places that I’ve ever been is the American Pacific Northwest. Something about that place feels so ancient and magic. All the photos I’ve taken in Washington state give me the best feeling ever.

How would you recommend doing a photo-trip? (Organization, bookings, equipment) All my trips have been nothing more than four close friends, a reliable car, a map, a backpack, a tent, an old film camera, a bunch of film and a lot of wanderlust.

Renee Ackerman

Renee Ackerman

All images on this page © Renee Ackerman

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Renee Ackerman

What equipment do you take with you when travelling? My grandpa’s old Pentax K-1000, about 20 rolls of film (usually Fuji-Film) and a dispos-able camera for night-time shots.

What programs do you use for photo editing? Which one would you recommend aspiring photographers to get into? I just use windows live photos gallery because it came with the computer. The only editing

I do is to mess with contrast, hues and high-lights. I have very little experience with edit-ing.

What type of cameras do you have? Which do you use the most? Pentax K-1000 is what I use the most; its du-rable and I know it well. I also have a Minolta X-700 I use every once in a while.

Renee Ackerman

Renee Ackerman

Recommended Album

Junip - Fields (2010)

www.junip.net