• THE REALITY OF THE OBSCURE

    Written by Ksenia Rundin

    Noémie Goudal is a French photographer, who has an incredible talent to connect the viewer with nature through the features of geomorphic architecture. In her photographs you could experience how the cold brutality of concrete, placed in an obscure space, brings you into a reality that has been constructed out of something like an image of the stairs of the Paris Métro or a bunker from World War II, found on the beach in Normandy. Images mounted on cardboard start living their own life, taking the viewer on an imaginary trip to his or her true self. Her artworks reminds of a scientific investigation, referring to Egyptians with Cheops, Aristoteles with Cosmos or Tycho Brahe with Stella Nova.

    The images appear to be uncannily real, turning into an element of the autonomous discourse between the world and the viewer, the artwork and the viewer. By eternalising the moment Noémie’s images also catch something invisible by uncovering it for the viewer in a magnificent but at the same time very narrative way. The terms of abstraction such as space, light, and volume that architecture is often described with, compose a clear experience of physical presence in a remote space of nature, you do not recognise but feel a close connection to. Odalisque Magazine had an honour to meet the artist, whose exhibition “Stations” is now presented at Fotografiska in Stockholm, and to ask her a couple of questions about her hypnotising artworks.

    Why have you chosen photography as a professional path in your life?
    I think it came quite naturally, because I have had a camera since I was 12. Growing up surrounded by a lot of children, I first started to take pictures and later went to the lab to study the process. Later, I went to Central Saint Martins to learn graphic design, where I used a lot of photography. The crucial moment was actually when I applied for the Royal College of Art, where I completely re-learned how to think about photography.

    Isn’t graphic design a bit like architecture in a digital form? What relationship do you actually have to architecture in the sense of your artworks?
    I became interested in architecture in relation to nature, because my whole work is about the relationship between nature and the man-made. This is a quite specific type of architecture – geomorphic architecture that takes its imagery from nature and a natural process. There is actually a special series of mine called “In Search of the First Line” that is a cross-cultural, historical examination of geomorphic architecture. I photographed some very old Roman architecture that I later printed on paper and mounted on a cardboard with a wooden structure on the back. Then I replaced it into very small contemporary spaces. They are kind of both completely blend and at the same time you can see that there is a distance. Thus I am quite interested in the layering also in those images, the layering in architecture in general and in also having two moments in time.

    What is your message to you audience? What do you want people to see in your artworks?
    I think one of my main challenges is to create images that have a big enough gap for the viewer to really feel it with own desire, own knowledge and experience. For me it is a really big challenge itself, because my images do not really have a sense of scale, a sense of time or a specific geography. It is very difficult to create images like that. It is always difficult, therefore I always try to do a lot of research.

    Where do you find the places to take your pictures at?
    It really depends on opportunities. I have done a lot of projects in France. My last project was in California in the Mojave Desert. Now I am doing a new project, which is also in France, at the Sèvres Porcelain Factory, near Paris. They produce amazingly beautiful ceramics since the 18th Century. It is a huge place and for me it is a great opportunity to be there. I am a resident there now for a year.

    What culture are you inspired by?
    American minimalism, I think. Dusseldorf School of Photography, probably. I am actually more Londoner than a Parisian. In London I feel kind of more connected, probably because I studied there and was influenced by teachers and other people around me.

    What kind of reality do you think you create by bringing together the brutalism of concrete and purity of nature?
    It is a reality that does exist, because this is what the beauty of photography is about. It has existed at some point, it has been there. And then it is a mix between what has been there and something that stays in memory; something that lies between the collective memory and our own memory. And they meet somewhere in between.

    Is there something you would never place in your images?
    People, because I feel that the viewer needs to have a place to put their ideas in. And then I think I would avoid too many details about the geography and time.

    How does your dream photo look like? Maybe it should depict a certain place?
    I don't know. Usually I like to create such a place to take a picture of.

    When you start working, do you have a clear picture how it should be?
    I have an image in mind and then I make changes, depending on what is going on in the shoots. If you have a different light or something unexpected takes place. The beauty of photography is also about dealing with such things like rain or sun that you cannot control. So, I have to work around that.

    In our times, to see the invisible might be the best quality in order to stay true to yourself. Do you think that your art is a certain reflection of our times, uncovering the invisible?
    Definitely. For me it could mean that I am reaching to the spirituality. It is the role of art, I think. It makes you question things around you from the world in general and in a philosophical way the perception itself.

    If you were offered a fashion shooting job with an unlimited budget, what theme would you choose then?
    Actually, I have shot the H&M’s collaboration with Maison Martin Margiela, what was amazing. They asked me to do a show, and one project would be especially about the new collection. I work a lot with stereoscopic images as well. So, what I did was to photograph some dancers wearing the garments from the collection while dancing with a white simple background. It became very natural, because we could never see their faces, as they were always moving and it could be the hair that covered the face or something else. Later, there was a wall installation in a dark room with objects where you could see through and you could see the images in 3D. If I had a fashion shooting today, I would try to have a lot of fun, working with different materials in nature, for sure.

    What is sustainability for you?
    I like people projecting their own thoughts into my work. This is what I want to do and this is what sustainability is for me. In fact, we are in the word where we think about ecology all the time. People have that projection straight away when talking about nature, which is disappearing today.

  • “Hostess”, 2018 by Rebecca Ackroyd

    WOMEN MAKING ART HISTORY AT FRIEZE ART WEEK IN LONDON, OCTOBER 4-7, 2018

    Written by Ksenia Rundin

    For the sixth year in a row, the Frieze art fair has created a showcase of contemporary art in the middle of Regent’s Park. However, this autumn Frieze London has had a female-centric agenda, emphasising female artists in the contemporary context. The visitors could both discover new artists and rediscover those who had fallen off the radar, explore something more in-depth and experiential.

    Nevertheless, the main course of the fair has still been aimed at the dealer booths and the wide array of art for sale, the theme of female visibility has acquired a new highlighted ideological perspective. In 1971 the American art historian Linda Nochlin wrote in her legendary essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” that “the question of women’s equality—in art as in any other realm—devolves not upon the relative benevolence or ill-will of individual men, nor the self-confidence or abjectness of individual women, but rather on the very nature of our institutional structures themselves and the view of reality which they impose on the human beings who are part of them.” Celebrating the centenary of women´s suffrage this year, Britain has also celebrated the female artistic achievements and their concomitants, which have challenged the established stereotypes in the social structures of the art world.

    While entering Peres Projects’ exhibition space, the visitors could observe a woman sitting on the floor with the face turned away. Soon one would discover that the face is nothing more than an empty black hole, causing an ambivalent combination of the personal and the alien somewhere inside oneself, followed by a laughter and a fear. There is, according to artist herself, a reflection of a layered identity, where the personal and the abstract seem to be in a constant emotional battle with each other.

    The Cuban artist Glenda León, represented by the Galería Juana de Aizpuru (Madrid, Spain), offered the audience a slice of C International Photo Magazine as her work “Fragmented readings II”, formed in a cake served on a classic pedestal with a glass lock over it.

    The London gallery Pilar Corrias, run by Pilar Corrias, who offers 65 percent of the art space to female artists, featured works by such female artists as Sophie von Hellermann, Cui Jie, Helen Johnson, Koo Jeong A, Tala Madani, Sabine Moritz, Christina Quarles, Mary Ramsden and Tschabalala Self.

    In parallel with the Frieze London art festivity, Swedish artists have tempted the public by a cogent installation group called Fashion Speaks “Sisterhood”, designed and produced by the Belarussian-born Sweden-based artist L Christeseva, consisting of discarded toiles — prototype garments, collected from the prominent Swedish designers. The installations would make the audience wonder what sisterhood means for each of us coming from different cultures and families in particular, as well as for us –- women –- today in general? Based on a personal story of her own, the artist could illustrate how a fashion garment becomes an emotional symbol that provides a way to learn how to unite and support each other. When being a little girl during the World War II, her mother had to wait for one of her sisters to come home from school to be able to wear the only dress all the sisters shared in order to go to school herself, while the other sisters would wait for her to return.

    The exhibition Fashion Speaks Sisterhood was brought to London in order to support the international project Artdom, upheld by the Embassy of Sweden in London and curated by the Goodwill ambassador of Swedish National Committee for UN Women Arghavan Agida, who by means of art seeks to build bridges between Iranian and Swedish female artists.

    Revealing an intellectual deepness, framed by the institutional weakness of recognizing the full creative potential and conspicuous importance of the female art, the women at the art fair have sincerely displayed their outstanding artistic talent, grinded by hard work, surrounded by cultural-ideological biases and inadequacies. Frieze London might have bestowed them an opportunity to face up to the reality of their history in order to re-construct their future in the art world.

                   “Fragmented readings II” by Glenda León
     
                             “Feel'd”, 2018 by Christina Quarles

    Installation view “Fashion Speaks Sisterhood” by L. Christeseva

    Photography by Erica Bergmeds

    		 
      
      

    Installation view “Fashion Speaks Sisterhood” by L. Christeseva

    Photography by Erica Bergmeds

  • MAXJENNY: A COLOURFUL RHAPSODY OF PRINTED TEXTILES

    Written by Ksenia Rundin

    Maxjenny Forslund is the name of an incredibly innovative, resourceful and ingenious fashion and print designer.  After having started her brand maxjenny in 2016, the designer has already conquered the hearts of both the Swedish royalty and international celebrity elite with her sanguine colour palette and vivid self-speaking printed images. Inspired by the entirely unique and remarkable style character of Vesterbro in Copenhagen, where Maxjenny has her studio, she also brings up her roots from picturesque and poetic Österlen in Skåne by integrating images of the province into the textiles. It grants her garments an exquisitely expressive and folkloric chic, letting the silhouette and the prints complete each other in a harmonic interplay. Nevertheless, the colours are rather exaggerated and accomplished by a theme, sometimes with a slight Catholic echoing, reminding of Dolce & Gabbana’s authentic Sicilian context.

    Creating vibrant and time-consuming collages of different mages, Maxjenny conceives a complex architectonic storytelling, where a printed image becomes a part of the silhouette, granting a certain 3D individuality to the garment. She always works in parallel with a print and a shape, what sometimes requires to break up the image into smaller parts to make it work within a garment. Maxjenny’s aesthetic feeling is build upon the spirituality of the Memphis Group that surrounded her during the childhood and the Scandinavian beauty context with its clean and straight lines. Since 1997 she has been settled in Copenhagen, what also completed her aesthetic map, creating an elusive but tenacious cultural balance.

    The brand has a deep sustainability agenda integrated into its business model and the textiles are produced and printed in Europe, in Ikast, Denmark, which is a Danish version of Borås, and in Estonia. The colours used in the production are merely water-based and the number of the garments produced corresponds to the existed orders, what also gives a rigid control over waste. 

    Life is the biggest inspiration source for Maxjenny, what she skilfully completes with travelling and art. “The art life in Copenhagen reminds a lot of a big community, what is very inspirational and stimulating”, claims the artist. Her great success amid women, Maxjenny addresses to her individuality, where she does not follow any trends, and the uniqueness of the way she integrates her print images into the garments. To dare is one of the brand’s strongest features, even though the discretion is a good thing to lean toward while working with colours. Seemingly, Maxjenny has an elegant gut-feeling concerning colours and shapes. During Stockholm Fashion Week we were given a great opportunity to witness it through the optical eye of an unique collaboration project SPECS x maxjenny.

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