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In dialogue with Andrew Brischler and his motifs

 

Andrew Brischler show at The Arts Club in London will open on 27 May, and it is easy to predict that it will drawn a lot of attention. His highly seductive two-dimensional artworks inspired by found “abstract motifs” are part of a culture, that of abstract art, now under the spotlight. Two of the works on show are painted with colored pencil, a technique that is taking a primary role in the artists production. One of these is inspired by the book cover of “The stranger” by Albert Camus published by Vintage International in 1989. “I am not restricting myself to high or low culture – he says – very beautiful and sophisticated abstract motifs can come from anywhere. Sometimes I just directly copy them, with colored pencil, and I don’t do much to change them. Other time I really change them so that nobody can see the correlation between the source and the painting. I grab from cultural detritus”. The cultural detritus can be found everywhere, from product logos to movie posters. While the high culture Brischler talks about seems to be springing from artists such as Ellsworth Kelly, Brice Marden, Cady Noland, Marc Grotjahn and Wade Guyton. With these latter he certainly shares a specific interest in the kind of errors that come from the human being, and in the human being himself lie. 

Which is your favorite subject?

 

It is color. I am obsessed with it. I recall color’s relationship all the time. 

 

Do you believe in abstraction?

 

Absolutely.

 

Which is the most inspiring place for you?

 

Probably the Museum of Modern Art in New York. One the professors at my graduate school was Marilyn Minter and something that she said us and always stayed with me is “you have to digest your heroes”. I totally believe in that. It follows that what I make is not necessarily something new but it’s new because my hands are making it.

 

Which is the quality you prefer in an art dealer?

 

Freedom and understanding.

 

Which one in a collector?

 

I want to make beautiful things, it’s something I am devoted to. But they have to understand where it comes from psychologically.

 

Who is your favorite artist?

 

It’s in the title I’ve attached to me, that is eight and an half by Federico Fellini. One of the reasons why I love that movie so much is that it is about the only relationship the artist has in his entire life, that is the relationship with his work. You spend all your life devoted to this creativity, but sometimes it works with you and sometimes it doesn’t. I saw the movie for the first time when I was 13 and I didn’t understand a lot of it. That sense of creativity completely consuming what you are is actually what you are. But talking about fine artists, I’ve recently seen the Mike Kelly’s show at the MoMA PS1 and it has been pretty seminal for me. He was a game changer. What impressed me is the freedom that he allowed himself to without any sort of aesthetic limit. He just made, and made, and made.

 

Is there any colour or shape you really hate?

 

I hate circles, and that while I deal with them. They are insidious.

 

What makes an idea become an artwork?

 

Feeling.

 

Which novel is better comparable to your idea of art?

 

“The Sound and the fury”, by William Faulkner. It tells about a family in the deep south, alternating narrators. The first eighty pages are a long stream of consciousness by a mentally disable man. He is an adult man who has no sense of time. I re-read those eighty pages looking how words are put together, not much for the story that they tell. I think that my works goes together in a similar way.

 

Which song or kind of music?

 

Now I am listening to a band called The Knife. Their music is beautiful and discordant at the same time. It makes me intuitive for challenging colors.

 

What would you have done if you were not an artist?

 

I love writing. I don’t do it a lot anymore, but it is a huge passion of mine.

September 22, 2014