• EVELYN BENCICOVA: ‘MERROR’ – RECONCILING THE VISUAL AND THE CONCEPTUAL

    Written by Ksenia Rundin

    Evelyn Bencicova was born in Bratislava just a few days before Slovakia became an independent republic. Nevertheless, she could experience the heritage from the socialistic past that provided her with important evidence to base the understanding of the postmodernity upon. Having a vivid imagination and great ability to create stories in her head, Evelyn converted it into her own visual language, giving the beholder a hint and offering the latter to conceive own interpretation of her art works.

    Her first major solo exhibition Merror (error/mirror) at Fotografiska has been a fusion of the conceptual and the visual, bestowing the audience with ambiguous feelings, evoked by human bodies, animals, architectonic structures, fashion, portraits and gasmasks. Evelyn appears to be unique in her ability ‘to meet the other people’, showing a genuine interest in her objects and their communication with the world in the context of her eerie artworks. The photographs create an emotional withdrawal from the reality by intensifying its errors and opening up a mysterious layer for the audience, experiencing an intellectual turbulence.

    The series 'ASYMPTOTE', created by Evelyn together with Adam Csoka Keller (video) and Arielle Esther (sound), consists of “a complex of illustrations of the era and a kind of eye-opener especially for the younger generation”, which juxtaposing human and architecture into an ideological hereditary integrity. It creates a deep reflexion over the artworks as such and the reality they seem to be interpreting placed in the context of the individual perception.
    The Victorian paleness of the models posing in long Dior dresses enhances the postmodern discourse about the disruptive power of fashion and thereby creates an intellectual interplay between the context presented in the photographs and the reality outside those.

    Seemingly, Evelyn’s art creates a sublime platform for an emotional dialogue between the artworks and the beholder, where the artist plays the role of a mediator, reconciling the visual with the conceptual.

    How did you find your way to the world of photography/visionary arts?
    This is the question I am now answering a lot. But it is interesting to be asked again and again, because I do not want to be bored by my own answer, really trying to look deeper and deeper. I do not find the photography to be my main point. So the moment I started learning photography, does not mean for me the start of my real work. During your whole life you are continuously developing your visual sense. While working with photography, I work on my vision.

    As a child, I would never sleep at kindergarten, observing any object instead and creating a story about it. My family lived in a proper flat, which as a jest was called ‘prison’, due to the view from the window, which consisted of a square of windows of other people. I used to take binoculars and watch the people in those windows, without any thought about photography. It was my favourite activity. You could see a certain frame of a photograph with somebody in it, doing something and you could just create a whole story around it, using your imagination. I took those stories out of my imagination without knowing how to grasp it and I did not really care or saw it as a chance to do something; I just kept myself busy. I think this is what happens in the minds of a lot of people, if not everyone.

    Before I turned eighteen, I had a very bad eyesight and relied on my imagination in order to able to ‘see’, while my visual fascination did not work that well. Then I undergone an eye surgery, where my sight was totally repaired. For me it felt like I went from darkness to light, like in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. I was aware of things having meaning but the visual part was not that clear for me. Thus from that moment I really felt that I had just discovered the world visually. In my photography I am less interested in documenting and much more interested in a dialogue. Trying to understand the term ‘photographer’, I see that it has a defence layer, what creates a strange relationship between me and photography. Before, I was convinced that I was a photographer, now, when I am saying the word, I am not so sure anymore. I do not know what I am.

    When I look at some of your photos, I recall the quote, belonging to the disillusioned and paranoid Dr Snaut from Tarkovsky’s movie Solaris (1972): “We don’t want to conquer space at all. We want to expand Earth endlessly. We don’t want other worlds, we want a mirror.” Do you see any of it in your works?
    Not intentionally, actually. Nevertheless, I am acquainted with his film called ‘Zerkalo’ (‘The Mirror’). A lot of my work is based on the intuition, therefore I like people telling me about their associations and impressions of my work, where we together create a new perception. To create a name for a project has always been difficult for me because each project is very different from others. The name of the current work “Merror” is very intuitional and it kind of spoke to me, because it is composition of two worlds. There is a mirror but there is also an error. The project tells my personal story and really reflects on me but at the same time it creates a story for people to be able to visualize their own story. I do not want people to follow a certain direction, whether it is political or not, for example. There is a layer in there but it is also about how you can interpret the latter yourself and find your own explanation. I want people to see themselves and their own emotions. At the same time it also influences how you look at the body aesthetic. The bodies are perfect and controlled but there is something in there, like a crack, which is very, very tiny. But when you see it, it is actually the way inside. The mirror is slight but you should go under the surface and look inside. For me layers are very, very important in life, in work. When you get to know an artist, you suddenly start looking at his/her works very differently.

    Who are the people in your photographs?
    They are friends. Some photographs were taken 4-5 years ago, like in ‘Ecce Homo’. It was one of my first works and looking at those today I find them very strong. I was totally different at that time, a bit more expressive. I am aware that these works can be interpreted in many contrasting ways, but I do not want to be afraid of that. I am inspired by how humans change over time.

    What is really human body for you? Is it a part of the human being as an intellectual unit and an identity or it is a toll which been admired, used and abused both physically and ideologically?
    It depends on the project, because I deal a lot with human body in different contexts, what you can see in my works. I do not have one established vision, because I believe that the human body can be interpreted in various contexts. I am interested in all of them. I like to see the body essence as something admirable and also as a part of the nationalist context as in ‘Asymptote’, when people as a part of the system, believe that they are a part of something bigger.

    Concerning the architecture, 'ASYMPTOTE' was done inside a building which once was a key point for the Socialism. It is a huge and monumental, making you feel very small. Notwithstanding the fact that the place is abandoned now, it creates a feeling of grotesque, when you are standing in the huge empty hall. It is also about being overwhelmed with the collective body, where individuals are losing their own, because they believe in something. It is about recreation that does not aim to be a reality but a subject of a personal interpretation. We were trying to understand what the word ‘visual’ really means.

    Once we were filming a scene with female gymnasts jumping together simultaneously, one of the girls could not just cope with that by being tired and slower. Then I had to step in telling her, ‘No! Faster! Faster!’ And suddenly I realised how crazy it actually was, when a person could not fit in and was eliminated for falling out of the ‘perfection’. It was interesting to explore that layer in the system. Another interesting layer is about the today’s reality with the experience from the past. I am not saying that something is right or wrong. I met people who spent a few years in prison for expressing their opinion and people who felt honoured to have been a part of the system. There is no judgement from my side but a certain reaction. Another example is the photograph, depicting children wearing gasmasks, which we once at school learned how to use. Children of today do not use those anymore but there are still shelters full with such gasmasks. They are of no use but they still stay there. There is hidden history behind it that people do not want to touch, pretending it is not there. But it is necessary to touch it in order to create and to understand a country’s identity.

    There are a lot of theories and opinions about the body in space, and I do not know which one is right. I am just trying to explore more and more and it seems to me that nothing is really right. I do not feel I can do a statement, because I am observing right now. I try to express something without claiming it being a truth. It is about exploring. The process of creating for me is always more interesting than the result as such.

    People never smile in your fashion photographs. Why? What does it symbolize?
    This is something I am thinking about a lot. It might be my personality. Nevertheless, I have very light personality but I do not find smile as something positive. People might think that I am creating a negative image, but smile can actually mean something negative to me, being a way of hiding certain things. My view on what is negative and what is positive differs quite a bit from many other people’s interpretation. Cemetery for me, for example, is just a peaceful place. I also work a lot with individuals and for me the composition is of high importance, where people feel confident. Thus I try to make them comfortable to be able to show their confidence by asking them how they feel. How people react in front of the camera is a result of their own reflection, I would never interfere in that part. However, not smiling might for some of them be the way to show the confidence.

    On your webpage it is said that you combine your academic research with interest in contemporary visual culture. Could you please say a couple of words about it?
    I study at a very classic art school. From the beginning I was trying to create a world that would communicate. I think from art to the world there is something unusual, because people do not have to communicate with their work. When I have a commission within fashion and advertisement, I really try to create a work which is valuable but through the media it also gets attention from people. For example in art people have a concept, but they do not try to communicate their concept, what means it stays clear for them, while the audience gets lost. I think you have to give people a chance to interpret your work. This is what I am trying to do the whole time – to have a conversation with people. I do not feel that art world is refusing everything. Visual is not the only thing that exists in there, I think there is also a meaning. And for me the visual and the meaning is something that should be connected, because one without the other is not enough. I always try to give people a visual clue, either it is a commercial work or an assignment at school.

    http://evelynbencicova.com/

    Photography by Marek Wurfl
  • Photography: Annika Sundvik

    L. CHRISTESEVA: 'FASHION SPEAKS' IN COLOURS OF AWARENESS

    Written by Ksenia Rundin

    On August 25, L. Christeseva, Belarusian-born Swedish artist, launched a new project, ’Fashion Speaks’, which was running through Fashion Week 2018 in Stockholm. The artist placed a number of toile-dress sculptures at various locations in Stockholm, letting those evolve from orange to pink, then transforming to off-white and finally fluctuating to white and red. Why would the artist do something like this?

    The toiles of L.Christeseva were previously exhibited at The Army Museum (2016), the residency of the US Ambassador (2016), the Nordic Museum (2017), the Bergman Center located on the island of Fårö (2018) and many other places in Sweden. Constituting different versions of garments made to test a pattern, these toiles have been recycled from different designers and placed on stage by the artist L. Christeseva in order to solve artist’s main concern about her cultural identity. That concrete ‘reincarnation’ of cultural identities seeks to tell different stories by women, about women, for women – and the rest of the world. Nevertheless, the main purpose is to raise the question ‘What makes woman a woman?’ and invite the audience to answer it from an individual cultural perspective.

    ‘What makes woman a woman?’ is a main concern of L. Christeseva, who many years ago moved from the patriarchal culture of Belarus to the feminist society of Sweden. Toiles for L. Christeseva is a material to share her own story as a woman and as an artist. They are a certain embodiment of how the artist has experienced her own identity both personally and culturally. It is a complex matrix extending through many dimensions, and which is not possible to be finished with – recycling, re-forming, re-configuring, re-thinking. Thus toiles, which are usually thrown away in the fashion world, become an important artistic medium to speak about processes of construction, transformation, and learning.

    The project ‘Fashion Speaks’ is designed to extend and to enhance the perception of fashion further as an expression of individual identity by using the toiles as a remedy for creating a platform for socio-political discourses around femininity. Contrasting conceptually and ideologically with the concept of the established Fashion Week, which runs in Stockholm since 2005, ‘Fashion Speaks’ aims to disrupt the current paradigm of the phenomenon of Fashion Week by using fashion as a tool for spreading awareness of important social and political issues and helping to find resources for creating solutions. L.Christeseva claims that ‘The toiles placed in a different context in this case become a symbol, where the past and future create an interlacement, giving rise for the discourse. Today, when we are used to seeing things in black and white, we need to talk, to discuss, to listen and to hear. I use fashion to speak and to make us speak out.’

    On August, 25, the artist dressed her sculptures in orange and placed them around the city of Stockholm: Rålambshovsparken in Kungsholmen, Rosendals Trädgård, Elite Hotel Arcadia, Dansmuseet/Drottninggatan, Arméemuseum, and Norrmalmstorg 6, to mark the Orange Day together with UN Women Sverige and MeToo Sweden. The artistic idea behind the persistent fashion message was to use fashion as a tool for bringing violence against women around the world to an end.

    A couple of days later, the dresses turned into the pink silhouettes, where the colour, charged with ambivalence of pureness and oppression, might often be considered as a secondary colour for a second sex on the one hand. This interpretation is, on the other hand, strongly rejected by the millennials, who see this colour as an infinite trend. The artistic approach here was directed to break the stereotypical rhetoric of the colour and redirect the audience from its superficiality towards alternative interpretations in order to strength the femininity without turning it into a sign of weakness.

    Later, L. Christeseva would turn her creations with aid of the colour of red and white into an elegant and adorable message, bestowing a vigorous effect to the eyes and mind. As Ingmar Bergman once said, the colour creates ‘the interior of the soul’. Bergman interpreted red as a symbol of the female womb, or the source of both life and sexuality. Standing in contrast with red, the colour of white is strongly linked to divinity and faith. Together these colours create a deeply emotional picture, giving rise to a number of new interpretations and feelings. Dressing the toiles in red and white was the artist’s way of paying a tribute to Ingmar Bergman, who brought the image of a strong woman on the stage and often illustrated it by dressing his actresses in red and white on the screen.

    Inspired by August Strindberg, Bergman developed and completed the image of the modern woman, which Strindberg started to build in literature, into a postmodern persona with a deep intellectual side and strong emotional power. Strindberg’s women had to struggle with the social context as much as they had to deal with their feelings, while Bergman’s women stay face to face with their inside, fighting against own fears and weaknesses, looking for their true self. What does fashion give to women today? What does it take from women? Do they have their freedom and will to power? What can fashion do for women today? These issues we wish to be integrated into the contemporary content of fashion, where a fair play can start in reality, without staying an illusion of the latter.

    Interestingly, that the artist always returns to herself and her own story, developing new concepts of works. This kind of u-turn to the original state, where the toiles appeared on stage as they initially were, naked and voiceless, is necessary for each of us before we make a step outside ourselves. Our backgrounds and our cultural differences constitute the way we perceive ourselves and the world around us.

    After receiving an incredible perception in Stockholm, the project ‘Fashion Speaks’ is on the runway through cultural borders now. It will be interesting to follow what colours and what media the artist will address while bringing her works on stage in Turkey on October, 29. How should the different concepts beyond cultural boundaries really be interpreted? Can we find a way to a mutual understanding of our multi-faceted perception in fashion and art?

    Get inspired, create awareness and extend the perception of fashion beyond identity together with the artist on www.fashionspeaks.se.

    Photography: Anna Sundström

  • BEAUTÉ PACIFIQUE: INTELLECTUAL SKIN CARE

    Written by Ksenia Rundin

    Directed by Jahwanna Berglund

    Beauté Pacifique has an intellectual approach to the skin care, where engineering and dermatology have during last twenty years created a unique concept, educating their consumers. Transparency skilfully integrated into the innovation strategy of the company, bestows the consumer with an opportunity not just to access their products but to understand their own skin, almost turning their bathroom cabinet into a laboratory. We have interviewed Beauté Pacifique’s CEO Flemming K. Christensen about his approach to the business and the company’s realtionship with their customers.

    The story of your business is quite unique because you approached the beauty industry from outside but with a great sense of engineer innovation. What made you enter the cosmetic field and what was the most challenging when you just started your path in 1997?
    In 1986 I was co-founding a new high-tech company on the basis on a prototype ultrasound scanner for imaging the skin in-vivo. The idea of such an instrument came from a Danish dermatologist looking for more modern diagnostic techniques. Until then it was not possible to see the inside details of the skin because all existing ultrasound scanners were built to look much deeper into the body and could not show details in a thin surface of the body i.e. the skin.

    This prototype was derived from the field of testing materials in which the need for detection of microscopic cracks is evident. The new scanner for skin was made at first to measure the thickness of skin tumours in vivo – an information needed for planning the depth for the surgical removal of the tumour. As the scanners became known by dermatologists all over the world many more skin pathologies were examined successfully by this new modality. Now, when scanning a diseased skin the surrounding healthy skin is always used as a reference and by looking at thousands of scans I and many dermatologists discovered that healthy skin has many ”faces” and even the skin’s status of aging and sun damage could be clearly seen by this machine!

    Then I came up with the idea: What if we could develop skin care products so effective that the scanner could show the improvement and document that the skin was evidently brought to a status of less sun damage and a structure like in a younger person? This dream had to be realised and it came through when we developed the Crème Métamorphique – our very first anti-age creme based on vitamin-A esters and squalene as the nanometric delivery system. (A Beauté Pacifique patent)

    You were once advised to pick a French name for your brand. Why Beaute Pacifique?
    The delivery system we use to transport the active ingredients deeply into the skin was first found in Japanese sharks – caught for food in the Pacific Ocean. Now we can get squalene for special olive types but we like the idea of our brand name to state: Beauty from the Pacific Ocean.

    You have a scientific approach with a great doze of transparency to the products you create, do you physically participate in the creative process, at least at the first stage when you discuss what product you need to produce?
    The creative process is still my passion and I like to look at a skin problem as an engineer and then use all my energy to find ways to solve this problem. Today we have chemists and pharmacists in our team and so we can comply with all the complicated EU safety precautions. Innovations often appear when the voices of the consumers are heard and combined with the new findings in science - and it is still a task for the engineer to combine scientific knowledge with the customers’ true needs.

    Helena Christensen has been a Goodwill-ambassador of Beauté Pacifique. But do you work with any influencers today (bloggers)? If yes, could you describe on what premises you decide who to collaborate with?
    We have an excellent Cooperation with the Danish actress Julie Zangenberg as our ”Face” and we also work with a number of Bloggers and beauty editors. We do not expressly require certain qualifications but we try our best to keep our communications in accordance with pharmacological science and try to avoid un-substantiated political and those negative to the field of Cosmetics in general.

    What do you think the beauty industry is lacking today?
    I miss that the authorities in the EU-countries officially abstain from political missions and support all the many well-meaning companies that strictly follow the rules put into force by the same authorities. I am disappointed that when some politically based ”Consumer Councils” can freely preach their messages and form opinions whereby innocent consumers become afraid of the word chemistry with no science behind. It makes me sad that the Authorities let this go on and stay silent whereby the consumers can be severely mislead and the Authorities lose valuable creditability.

    Could you please describe how artificial intelligence (AI) helps and affects your business today?
    This question is difficult to answer because much AI is going on invisibly below the surface. We use cookies but at this time we are still novices in this field and midget customers by GOOGLE etc. I believe we are both victims and winners in this aspect and our staff is developing our skills to match the demands for survival of the fittest. So the truth is that we look at this but we are looking around but find no safe heavens. Anyway we truly believe that our customers are our best friends and as long as we provide the right and honest products as is our philosophy then we are OK and our business can expand from there.

    What happens to the beauty industry in 10 years? What kind of products are we going to use? Do you think plastic surgery will be passé?
    Ten years is a long time frame. I think the trade will be strongly influenced by major players such as Amazon on the WEB and the likes. I see already that price competition is killing many smaller players (Doors) and this is inevitable. On the other hand we are determined to stick to our USP is using the scanner to show the customers how their skin is doing as the “Before”-status and then later show the improvements as the “AFTER”. I firmly believe this is the right way for us to work and this is how we really struggle to prescribe the right products for the individual needs. This way/ the principle will survive and by doing so we will have a place in the hearts and minds of the intelligent and critical consumers at all times. Anyway my attitude is optimistic and I believe that we as humans will always reach out for help to maintain a healthy looking skin as a parameter of good quality of life.

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