Untitled (balloons)/Tom Loughlin
Every spring art schools around the Bay have final shows to highlight the work of the year’s graduating Masters of Fine Arts (in visual arts). If you live here, you know there are a LOT of Masters and a lot of art projects. In San Francisco alone there are shows for the San Francisco Art Institute, California College of the Arts and San Francisco State University, not to mention Mills across the Bay in Oakland and don’t forget Stanford and Berkeley.
This means a lot of work, a lot of artist statements and a whole lot of nervous grads entering a pretty competitive job market. KQED Pop had the chance to head to the Old Mint where SFAI’s final show, Currency, is being held from May 15 to 19. While the grads installed their work, we walked around and talked to some of them about why they make art and why we should care. Spoiler: we were impressed and we are hard to impress. Watch the video below and regain a bit of hope for the future of art in America.
See the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1yGAJXw1myE
Interview with Pabi by Signe Markvard
| By Signe Markvad -New York |
| There is a new kid on the east block. The Danish artist Pabi has entered the art scene of Berlin by displaying a stigma of his personal story in the shape of a scar – closely accompanied by the provocative expression of his voice. |
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| Pabi was 14 months old when he was sitting on the kitchen counter and turned over a pot of boiling fat that left him with an open wound where his polo neck had burned his chest. The Scar has grown on him since, creating both the human being and the artist Pabi. |
| “Without my scar I would have been a different man, maybe even more selfish and self centered. Or maybe just an average man with an average job.. ScArt is also an expression of my own maturity in relation to exposing my scar. It took me almost 30 years to put my first art piece on display.” Since September this year Pabi has physically been staying in Artville’s old building and art playground by Tempelhof Airport in Berlin. He’s the new kid on the old east block, looking for new playmates. Here, you don’t get points for just being a good player -attention is something you have to be loud enough to capture. And when it comes to selling his art, Pabi is a man of big expression channeled through paintings, movies and words. |
| “As long as I have a story to tell and a message to deliver I see no reason for shutting up. But shouting just to be heard is pathetic. It is a human right to speak freely and a civic duty to shut up and sit down if you don’t have anything to say,” Pabi says. |
| The rollercoaster of success is still an adventure waiting to be unfolded along with the big bills and the corners of the world map. |
| -“Fame in it self is not a goal”, Pabi says. – “It is a tool to achieve enough recognition and success to make it possible for the product and the artist Pabi to live his life the way he wants it.” Leaving Denmark has been a step on the road to something new and maybe better. |
| -“Why venture out of the duck pond, you might say, but the thing with the Danish art scene is that it most of all reminds me of group sex in small circles. We all belong to small groups where we all fuck each other, and all agree that everybody else is nasty and disgusting. I see this as both human and quite natural, and I don’t pretend it’s different elsewhere. What I seek is inspiration and variation.” |
| So that’s why you now have moved to an oversize commune for Danish artists gathered under one roof in Berlin..? |
| -“It’s true that I have moved only physically, while still living in a Danish hotchpotch. But the real group sex is yet to come. In time I will expand my horizon with other, more exotic spices. But staying with Artville has given me an excellent beginning with a soft, nationalistic transition. Berlin still has what Copenhagen has lost. – The outmoded, the unpolished and the unormalized. As within a painting, it’s the contrast that creates the depth, and Berlin’s got these contrasts… Yet!By moving you can change the story of yourself as an artist, you have created and continue to write new chapters in your mission. Tell the story in a new way, to a new audience.” |
| Human meltdown |
| Playing water polo, Pabi has been used to walk around stripped to the waist, but it has been something he has constantly been confronted by in the same way as if a girl has big boobies: people stare. |
| -“Having scars is usually considered something negative, so in that way it has physically been a barrier to me. Having barriers forces you to be aware of your own qualities, and, maybe even more important, tolerance for other peoples qualities and defects.” |
| Why do you think people find it so difficult dealing with the body’s imperfections, such as your scar? |
| -“Human beauty has its set role models and bets for the perfect body. I don’t remember ever having seen a model with visible scars, though they often show traces of anorexia and other mental meltdown. But to me beauty is not just one thing… I have more than once been offered help to make my scar look nicer, but have turned it down. I have made the decision that my scar is just a part of the way I look. Having scars mean that you have been exposed to danger and adventure, that you have tried different things, taken a risk, lived life. Living life is very important to me. Scars are the proof that you have been faced with resistance, and by resistance you grow stronger. That is why I think scars, both the ones on body and soul, as in old days should be considered an expression of personal heroism and wisdom.” |
| It is not the first time that Pabi mix his body’s expression with the debate of the present-day society. A year ago, in his gallery “Complex”, he put some of the women of his life on naked display. And in his latest project he paints from poems by Bastian Borup, inspired by the French philosopher Deleuze in a mixture of personal interpretation and a comment on society. |
| -“I use the poems as notes I compose my work from. I mix several poems in one, giving them a new context a new format. It is like a jam session between Deleuze, Borup and Pabi, each person playing his own instrument. Whether it sounds good isn’t the important thing. It is a process without an end, a fusion of expressions and contexts.” |
| So- you compose from notes in a jam-session now that you have left the duck pond and taken part of the big, nationalistic hotchpotch that is still waiting for exotic spices. Speaking in code is a part of your expression – why? |
| “For the same reason I don’t just write “I am the best artist in the world” and paint a big dick on the canvas. It’s straightforward but also primitive and boring in the long run. I would much rather play with my own unique expression and symbols, both in pictures and in words.“ “I want people to invest in my work because they like it. If they only do it, because they believe it will appreciate in value, and don’t have true feelings for my work, then… fuck it! Buy it anyway.” |
| Pabi and his art work can be experienced on the The sixth Artville, that takes place at the Berlin Exhibition Tempelhof, 30. october -2. november 2008. |
