An Artist Talks with Sonja Rohleder, 26.01.2012, Kunsthaus Tacheles.

The first thing that striked me, when I met Sonja Rohleder, is her beauty. She has a delicate face with pale skin and dark red hair. I met her at an opening and we decided to meet for the talk.

Sonja Rohleder is an animation artist. She studied in Berlin and today creates within a team, animation films for private companies, in fields such as advertising and/or other commercial works.

She has her own projects, as well, that are shown in festivals. She is currently working on a funded project. She likes to start creating her characters with a simple paper and pencil, and from there give a  structure, bring in the movements and postures with sofware.

Her influences are mainly Japanese because of their incredible sens of details and a certain style of story telling. Of course she admires also the U.S. productions, such as PIXAR, their works have induced monumental technical improvements and have pushed animation sofware developement.  Today animation artists must keep up with new technologies and tools, and Sonja says it is a big part of her work, so discovering and learning how to use them, is an obligation to produce works of good quality.

She finds inspiration in every day life, searching through her experience to share a message or a feeling. Her creative process leads her to build characters from her imagination and environment, giving them a soul and spirit. She mixes all sorts of different techniques, combining film and animation tricks together. She must always determine which are the best techniques to use for a project.

Many precise rules are set to achieve this goal. Bringing life to a fictive character is a long, step by step, procedure. It comes little by little, with focus and alot of concentration. The animation artist  refines constantly his works, like a carpenter would chizzle the wood. Only with patience can one get close to a feeling of real life. The movements, for instance, she explains, must follow certain very precise mathematical rules, always moving inside a curve...

Most of her works are viewable online, I would recommend you to take time and have a look.

Sonja Rohleder is an artist full of mistery and charm, I will visit her studio soon and tell you more...

The studio, where the talk took place, was terribly cold. But we forgot about the temperature listening to eachother for a while. It was a good talk. 

http://www.sonjarohleder.de

An Artist Talks with Davidly, 08.12.2011, Kunsthaus Tacheles, Berlin.

 

Davidly is an American  music-producer and musician, living and working in Berlin. The first time I heard his music, was during the opening of the Berlinimportart event at the Forum Factory in Berlin last November.

He collaborates with other artists, such as, visual artists, singers, dancers and performance art artists. The performance that night was extremely impressive and the quality of the music composition was amazing. The music I heard was an electronic composition constructed in many ways alike classical music, both by structure and depth. The sound produced was mystical and enhanced by the participation of live classical singers, who brought a intriguing lyrical touch.

I had the feeling it would be nice to meet again and explore further his work. He kindly accepted my invitation to the artist talk.

He is a sensitive and first shy man. Though after a few questions he is very friendly and open, he has been creating for many years and worked with groups and singers. Today his focus is on moments. He fits his music into a context, confronts it to another art form. He works with electronic music but also with live instruments, depending on his feeling and inspiration. The collaborations are a good way to trigger new ideas and directions. He is extremely creative.

He likes to jam and improvise also in many places in Berlin it is possible and he had the surprise to meet a Mexican music producer while visiting the Kunsthaus Tacheles. They spontaneously decided to jam, after our exchange, as Alain Ledezma and his friend had already set up to play on the fourth floor.

I discovered the simplicity upon which he sets his creations, he does not push himself up as a master. Instead he remains accessible and curious to other young artists he encounters. I was inspired by his attitude and was pleased to, once again, have the time and space for this dialogue that took place in the New Gallery on the fourth floor of the Tacheles in presence of Alexander Rodin, the great Bielorussian artist, who’s paintings, I sadly remind, have been sequestrated in the 5^th floor of the Art House.

I do hope we will have the pleasure to meet again. It was an instructive talk.

An Artist Talks with Jan from Created Mind, 27.10.2011, Kunsthaus Tacheles, Berlin.

Jan from created Mind is a young music producer, who lives and works in Berlin. He is playing regularly in the Kunsthaus Tacheles. The created Mind started with his cousin, who also produces music.

They are both fascinated by trans music, which has given him this taste for hypnotic spychedelic productions. As he discovered the trans scene and his passion for this specific music, his enthusiasm brought him finally from djing to producing his own sound.

Jan has an easy way of going about things and life. He was brought up by very open- minded parents… maybe a field for his spontaneous friendly approach to music.

Jan likes to create events and organize special trans parties. It is fun for him because of the setting and decorative part. He invites visual artist, painters and installation artists to participate his events. He likes to bring joy and share his easy-going way of life.

To this extent, it seems almost, that trans is sort of like a religion, unlike other electronic music scenes, where people are very generous and kind. There is a sort of brotherhood that comes out of it. This is a true experience for him, also enhanced by the strong collaboration with his cousin and close friends.

It is almost like his music production is alike a family business, where everyone has his place and purpose. And with Jan everything is still possible. He has very positive vision as an artist and music producer.

The last party in the Goldener Saal of the Kunsthaus Tacheles was a tremendous success. The lights and the fluorescent colours gave this typical psychedelic groove, so special to the trans scene.

He has his own label and has uploaded most of his tracks on his my space, free to hear and share. You can easily meet him and take time to talk about political and social issues, that are a center of interests for him. He believes in certain values and wants to share them. And  believe me, his music production is one of the things, he shares the best!

Please, if you have not yet experienced the pleasure of this music, come to Kunsthaus Tacheles, Berlin, Oranienburger strasse 54, 56 and give it a try.

We had a nice time talking.

Thank you.

www.myspace.com/createdmind1

An Artist Talks with Paula P'Cay, 24.11.2011, Kunsthaus Tacheles, Berlin.

Paula P'Cay is an amazing singer living and working mostly in Europe and Russia. She has a strong personnality and gives alot, she is a generous person and believes in life. She believes in herself, that everything is possible also, she is confident that her singing brings joys to others. She is very happy to have the priviledge to share and live from her artistic work.

She left home at a young age and has grown from her experiences. Her life was not easy, she has been through relationships, break-ups and love stories, alike many women today. Her fans in Russia are mostly woman, they can easily relate to her. She feels, she represents independency and liberation. "In Russia, women are still very locked into old wife/husband patterns" she says.


Her personal story has filled her voice with gracefull emotion and feeling: she has a strong and powerfull vibration, she has the soul from deep inside her heart. Since her childhood, she has always been singing, it makes her feel good, alike a prayer or a meditation. She loves mainly house music because of the possibility to express positive warm feelings. She is currently writing new songs of her own, and collaborates with many producers, who send her tracks to work on. On stage, she likes to perform, mixing both cover versions of hit songs and her original songs together. She confides to have a deep admiration for Ella Fitzgerald, she learnt English, whilst reading her songs. She has a huge collection of her recordings. 

 

She has been working in Russia recently, where she is becoming more and more famous, and has been lucky enough to sing in pratically every city there. Her life is made of travel, she sleeps in hotels, and spends many hours in airports. She likes to meet and connect often with musicians also on the road waiting in transit. Her usual day at home: she wakes up late, reads and writes her emails, checks her facebook and then still in bed, she starts to write songs. She is focused on what she does and can work up to 7 or 8 hours in a row, just to get the lyrics, the tone and the feeling right. She is ambitious and perseverant...


She shared with us one of her latest recordings, a demo, " No Longer Lonely". Wow !!!! I recommend you search for it as soon as it comes out !!! It is a hit !!!




It was a nice moment we shared and to finish Paula sang us one of her favourites, she has many:-)
 "The man I love", it was beautiful.

www.paulapcay.com

An Artist Talks with Berlinimportart, Exhibition "Koffer", 16.11.2011, Forum Factory, Berlin

The talk took place inside the gallery Forum Factory the day after the opening on the 16th of November 2011. 

Artists Alejandra Borja, Jana Taube, Pascal Brateau, Aurélie Pertusot, Maria Jose Ambrois, Masayo Kajimura, Li Koelan, Ariel Lomanno, Ana Matovska, Peggy Sylopp, Gretta Louw, Nadja Milenkovic, Sebastian Seitz,  Alain Rivière and Sabia Khan were there to exchange about their work and interpretation of the theme "Koffer". 

Also there to share their impressions Tanja Dickert, a culture manager and Claudia Baricco, a film festival organiser.

Many shared the feeling of travel and memories, as if they were taken from one city to another. Strong ideas around identity and social recognition seem to be a center point for others.

The theme was carefully chosen by both Alejandra and Jana because of their representation of the suitcase. Their mixed-media installation combines collage, photography and light. The work is a  series of photographs of a female figure in different unexpected positions, inside the delimited space of the structure of a rectangular column light box.

Jana sees the work as a re-collection of different and changing moments of life, alike memories stored together inside our minds. The theme is obvious to Alejandra. To be a Columbian means to have specific national identity and experience. She shares, for instance, how she has to go through a special search in customs, because of the reputation of her country. The "Koffer" is also a close-up on prejudice and specific social behaviours.

Pascal Brateau and Aurélie Pertusot worked as well together for their installation.  Both artists combined together technique and savoir-faire. Aurélie sees her work as an imginary city. The ideal city, the one she pictures inside her head. In fact it may be her hometown, a place where she has lived for years, and it became a root influence to her production. Pascal concentrated on the form of the wooden box, containing the mirrors and reflections of this urban landscape. He sees the suitcase as a memory from the past putting into perspective the future. It is a direction.

Ariel Lomanno took a part of himself, a part of his roots, and piece of the family history, using in a very sincere way, the old suitcase he inherited from his grand-father. This suitcase was his first ever, and followed him through his first studios and was also his first furniture. It has been following him along the years and has equally a story in his past and a story in his future. In the present, the installation is showing this authentic old suitcase, and gives us a view upon the artists intimacy and secrets.

Masayo Kajimura presented her video installation and shared her idea around the theme. For her essentially , suitase means memory, movement, as well as, migration of populations. She is a Japanese artist born and living in Germany. Her mixed culture gives her the oriental sens of detail and occidental vision and understanding of conceptual works. She uses mixed media techniques from the past alike Origami and confronts the present with video images, trapped and shown inside a cut open old leather "Koffer". Her work is close to poetry and she is aware of this.

Li koelan with her performance/installation wanted to explore the notion of travel along with the sens of national belonging. The little bags of earth, symbol of where we come from, were collected from different countries. She invites the viewer to attach on her silver coat with a safety pin a little sample of earth. The viewer becomes an actor of her performance and she leads the game. One after another the little bags of soil are attached to her. Finally she takes the coat off and lies it on the ground aside a sort of collage map ressembling a body. The work  brings into light a certain meditative and contemplative aspect to the theme "Koffer". She explores this universal notion of mother earth.

Maria Jose Ambrois chose to set inside the space of three suitcases her memories , delicately embroided. She likes to remember her childhood and her Barby dolls. She still collects them today and are a very central point of her works. She likes the theatrical side of these suitcases, and tries to bring the viewer into her intimate world and discuss with him: What is in your suitcase?

Ana Matovska presented a series of drawings, each drawing is itself a sort of suitcase.  Placed thoughfully side by side, they are to be viewed as a series of transformations, relating the complexity of situations in our lifes. The feeling around the diversity of characteristics and possibilities is her interpretation of the theme. She choses to transcribe into an abstractive form her "Koffer", that appears to be almost organic and alive. 

Gretta Louw is an Australian artist born in South Africa. Unlike the other artist her national identity is not so clear. She puts into her suitcase something a little different, she explores behaviour and human psychology. She is trying to escape from prejudices, such as: skin colour, nationality, social background  or education.  

Peggy Sylopp amazingly presents her "Koffer" as if it where without boundaries. The tool of media art art allows her to play with architectural compositions and constructions that play with the infinite and the tiny. She puts into contrats elements and plays with them. In her Koffer there are dancers, voices and words. This very singular angle gives a mystical aspect to her work.

Nadja Milenkovics and Sebastian Seitz work mostly together. Their idea was to construct from Nadja's drawings. She leads into a direction and then Sebastian gives the light and brings and new perspective to the drawings that become multi-dimentional. The "Koffer" is a compound of thoughts and images one carries in our heads. Along the days and the years, we collect them, and keep them together. For this installation, the couple shows them hanging in display to be seen and exposed to others. The Koffer is a result of all our experiences and feelings. It is an abstaction of the physicallity of the moment that has disapeared, and has been frozen in between reality and dream.

Alain Rivière chose to explore a myth: Pandora. Why is Pandora a Koffer? Because the body of the female is set as a shrine, a precious space of unknown and wonder. The artist is fascinated by the female body and praises it in a beautifull way, showing a series of photographs of the worshiped Pandora body. You cannot escape the reality of the myth and you follow his story, one photograph after another. Alain likes to bring out the humanity and mystery out of the body. The skin becomes the walls of this human Koffer, a suitcase full of sensuality and desire.

Tanja Dickert, kultur managerin was very impressed by the quality of the works presented inside the exhibition from the Berlinimportart artists. She felt that the theme was widely explored in very different ways by a vast range of divers media and concepts. She liked the theme, as it allows to get closer to the artists, and brings a certain form of intimacy into the artistic production.

Claudia Baricco was also satisfied with the exhibition. The media works attracted her attention and she saw the challenge set by the theme "Koffer" inside the media of video, as a way to express travel, migration, transformation and development. All the works fit together as a whole and the quality of the curating was also underlined. She enjoyed the experience and the possibilty to hear the artists share their different point of views and ideas.

The exhibition was successfull with many visitors and the talk was a moment to explain the work Jana and Alejandra have both achieved inside the new born Berlinimportart organization. The choice to curate with a precise theme and push the artists selected to their best, is a long process. Alejandra and Jana are both dedicated to this project and continue to improve the platform that recently changed from Neukoelnimports to Berlinimportart, to be able to intergrate artists living and working in Berlin.

The talk was very intense and instructive , artists were able to connect with eachother in a different manner than before, thanks to the space and the selection.

Jana and Alejandra concentrated on the quality of the "Koffer". :-)

www.berlinimportart.de

An Artist Talks with Andrea Colletti, 13.10.2011, Kunsthaus Tacheles, Berlin

Andrea Colleti is an experience painter living and working in Berlin. His mixed origins, Italian Father and English mother, gives him an unusual personnality, a cocktail of latin and saxon culture. 

He has been painting mainly abstract compositions with an amazing skill, alike a patchwork,  placing and using his own vibrant colours. He sees the painting as a language to communicate and plays with textures. He likes to test and experience to see what the result of his work is. Searching brings him to make mistakes that lead into another path and widen his perception of painting. Andrea likes to pour and drip and squash and layer and glue, he follows his instinct. Amazingly he still discovers new possibilities on the canvas today.

He has recently started to do quick portraits with the use of a window. The subject sits behind the glass and he traces the lines he sees. I played the game and sat in front of this window. Andrea continued to explain as he was drawing, that this has been a way to make a little money, as it is not so simple to survive from his art.

He has been working in the Kunsthaus for a long time. He experienced many changes in the house and has grown from this time. He has discovered other artists and discusses with curiosity any topic.

Andrea is a passionate man, who likes to reinvent his work every day. He works today in his home studio and comes regurlarly to the Tacheles to play bass and share emotions. His paintings can be seen in the Welt Urlaub on the ground floor. He is generous and had pleasure talking to the audience that stayed and listened with great interest. He knows how to captivate with words and explains easily what his ideas are about art.

" Everyone has an individual experience in front of a painting. Everyone is unique" he says.

It was an exciting moment.

An Artist Talks with Louey Moss,28.09.2011, Kunsthaus Tacheles, berlin

Louey Moss is an African American living and working in Berlin since 20 years. She is from New York, where she grew up: She has always sang since her young age. Her brothers and sisters sang as well, her father was a musicain, and her mother a pastor. 

So I childhood is full of Gospel memories and singing in the church. This special feeling after performing with her family in those times remains untouched. She has learnt to play the piano and the guitar and the drums. 

She likes to write her own songs and melodies. And her composition are full of feeling and rythm'n blues. Her singing is amazing, as she reexplores the Jazz repertoire, and interprets her original cover versions of classics, such as Sommertime for instance ...She is a strong believer in Mankind and Humanity. She is aware of the great possibilties an artist has, to reach out to the people and bring them hope.

The wants to transmit her energy and passion for life. She says: "Dreams do come true, you must believe in them yourself first for them to come true".

She likes to encourage the youth, who approachs her and give them friendly advice.

She discovered the Kunsthaus Tacheles a couple of years ago and has recently been playing jam sessions downstairs ground floor in the Welt Urlaub Gallery space. She sings and brings the audience in from the street to enjoy beautifull musical moments shared also along with other singers and artists coming through the Kunsthaus.

She likes the Kunsthaus Tacheles because it stands for freedom of expression and brotherhood. She feels it is important to defend any type of artist. For her The Kunsthaus Tacheles is a place for artistic discussion and networking. She has chosen to support the Kunsthaus and bring more musicians. She plays on mostly Thursdays and Fridays: Please come and visit us. The Kunsthaus Tacheles Oranienburgerstrasse 54/56, mitte, Berlin. It was a very nice talk.