Chaz with Blek le Rat and friend

SCION SPACE
INSTALLATION 5 TOUR:  Self-Portraits
Sept 12th – 30th 
Words and photos by Trina Calderon.


The self-portrait is not so common toady as it was during the Renaissance, unless it is perhaps assigned in an undergrad art class.  Scion Space’s Installation 5 Tour is a collection of self-portraits by a large group of international contemporary artists.  It is the latest in Scion’s traveling Installation series that made its way through 8 different cities this year.  Lucky number 5 has made its final stop in Los Angeles.

44 different artists contributed their work, which is now on sale in an online auction that donates 100% of the proceeds to Creative Capital, the national artist support organization.  From their website, “Our ultimate goal is to create an artistic home and supportive community to nurture some of the country’s most extraordinary artistic creators and to help provide the skills and confidence for these artists to realize their most ambitious dreams.”  Yeah, sounds like a good cause!  The online auction for this artwork is already underway and runs through September 30th, so please visit www.ArtNet.com/scion.html to make a bid.

With so many artists involved, you can imagine there is a variety of representations and mediums – from woodwork to painting to photography to video.  The exhibit includes work by Mark Mothersbaugh, Ron English, Blek Le Rat, Angela Boatwright, Saber, Andrew Schoultz,  Eriberto Oriol, and several others.  It is a very broad group and with different styles and techniques. The representation of oneself created by oneself is very personal and I spoke with some of the artists about their take on themselves.

Blek le Rat (left) with Saber (right) 

“People they used to call me the Godfather, the Pope, of not street art, but of stencil art.  So, it was a good connection between to make myself in a portrait like a Pope.  I took the picture from a Renaissance painting and I changed the portrait.”  Blek Le Rat, the French stencil artist is widely known for his symbolic imagery on the street.  His piece, The Godfather, is another stenciled creation with spray paint, done in black and white, with a splash of red. 

“Since a long time ago, I have been making graffiti in the street.  I figured out and noticed that black and white in the street, people they see you, because everything is in color in the streets.  When you put something in black and white, people they see it like a spot on the wall…The red spot means getting famous.  The writers, when they make pieces on the street, they usually write getting famous, getting fame.  It’s in memory of the street.”  Blek has been a strong part of the street art movement for many years.  “I remember that time in Paris in 1981, the police used to ask me – what you doin’ man?  Is that political?  What are you doing?  I’d say no, it is art. They’d say oh, and leave me alone.  It’s a very strange thing, because on one side, it’s very accepted by the art market and young people.  It’s selling at Christie’s, but if you get caught you go to jail for a long time.  In Paris, you go for 2 years.  I think the people in power are scared more of graffiti than drug prostitution.  Because through graffiti, you can say everything.  You can say fuck the police, or I love the police, so people are scared of that.  It’s a very strange movement.  I give my entire life to this movement.  I am 58. I started when I was 30.  I still believe we are in the beginning of this art.  It started 40 years ago in Philadelphia and NY, but we are still in the beginning.  For an artist it is so great.  You know that the day after 1000’s of people, millions, will see your art.  It’s so great.  I’m absolutely sure of that.”

AJ Fosik ‘s (pictured above) mixed media sculpture, Self-Portrait, is a far cry from looking anything like him.  Though, he claims it resembles a deeper part.  “It captures more of my attitude towards my art than my direct self-image – manic and crazy.  That’s sort of what I’m going for, lots of eyeballs and guts.” 

I asked him if it was a specific animal, it resembled a bear to me.  “It’s none of those.  I never set out to make a particular animal.  It’s never really representative or figurative.  It’s more like the idea or the energy or presence of that predatory nature as opposed to a literal figure.  But, it’s always funny to see what animal people associate with it - bear, tiger, or lion. I don’t ever intend it to be that way but it always seems to end up that way to someone or another…It’s my first self-portrait ever.  I’ve never done one before.  It’s not literal, it’s meant to capture the feeling of what’s going on inside my head.” 

AJ uses 2-D layering of brightly painted and patterned wood he handcrafts to build up and out into a 3-D sculpture that can be hung on the wall.  The piece has an extra large cranium area filled with twisty brain-looking guts and tons of eyeballs floating around.  “It’s the idea of looking at things in a different way.  I think that’s what my job is, to take things people are used to seeing and put them in a new context and make you think about things in a slightly different way.  For me, I’m always trying to get that idea of looking at things in a new way.   That’s what that (the eyeballs) represents and that’s (the brain guts) kind of like the physicality.  In a certain way, it’s that part of it is the real physical part, the fact that we are tied to this physical form.  But then it’s also sort of transcending a spiritual part too.”

Stormie Mills (shown above) hails from the edge of the world, Perth, Australia.  His painting, Myself & My Past, is a very personal look into himself.  “In a lot of my work I try and find some emotional point or try to illustrate some kind of an emotion, so rather than just do a straight portrait I was trying to find something deeper than just a picture of me.  I do lot of very short stubby characters.  I really love the concept of people that are downtrodden but they are still surviving, and I really want to highlight that aspect of people.  That good thing in them - the little superhero in everybody.  I was looking for that and that caused me to sort of reflect part of it.  I use fish quite a lot, because I think fish are a quite a good representation of the fragility of life, and yet they are so hearty and they are  subject to the environment whether they live or die.  The idea of the fish looking at the character and that connection between the two was really important to me, because it was like looking at my past.” 

What is striking in his image is the use of a muted palette to create a quiet introspective tone.  “I started restricting myself to just primary colors and trying to work in those colors and then just went straight to black and white and grey and silver, which is sort of the color that I’ve used the past 10 years.  I’m looking for that repetition of line.  I’m looking for the tone in a lot of those colors. I’ve kind of assigned that black is dirt, white is the removal of dirt, grey is the concrete of the city that we live in, well a lot of us live in, and silver is about dreams, hopes and those sorts of things.  I’ve assigned all of those words to colors and I find that if I lose those, that very restricted part, then I’m really thinking about what it is I’m doing and expect to realize that I’m doing it.  That’s really important to me because I saw work when I was quite young that had really big impact on me - concept art, Jenny Holzer, and stencils in NY in the 70’s and 80’s.  Social conscious is really important to me.”  Stormie has an exhibit, Diction, up at Helen Gory Gallerie in Australia, through Oct 3, 2009.  Check it out at: www.helengory.com.

Detail of Andrew Schoultz piece

Andrew Schoultz (above) is curating the upcoming Infinity exhibit that opens next month at Scion Space.  His artwork Self-Portrait (Mental Explosion), mixed media on wood panel, is a completely abstract representation, only bound to his physical state by his silhouette, which he shot on his iphone and applied a pattern application before downloading.  “It’s a self portrait because it’s a silhouette of my head with an explosion erupting from the middle of my head.  It’s more directed to someone that knows me and how I am.  Anybody that knows me, knows my head is always racing a million miles a second.  My head is constantly going, so it’s sort of this giant explosion of things coming from my head, but I used iconic things from my paintings I would say that people would recognize as mine.  I don’t approach making any type of art in a typical manner.”  The iconic images are a volcano, a medieval horse, and an El Ombre monster. 

“A lot of my work focuses on the globalization of the world and environmental degradation and different aspects of the powers of nature.  I use things like volcanoes, tornadoes, earthquakes, big cracks in the ground, rising waters, crazy tidal waves, which is basically toying with the symbolism to talk about different aspects of nature that are uncontrollable.  The horse is an aspect of nature but is something we’ve domesticated in history.  An armored horse was used to fight in war in medieval and colonial times.  It’s a juxtaposition of using these aspects of nature that man tried to control and man doesn’t try to control and talking about these issues and stories in that relationship.  It’s like a balance of how it works.”

Estevan Oriol and friends

Deck raffle prize

Roger Gastman and Angelique Groh

Saber signs a program for a fan

Please check out the online auction for these pieces and many more at:
www.ArtNet.com/scion.html. 

More info on Creative Capital can be found at: www.creative-capital.org