Interview

Jana Danilovic, born on 1989 in Užice, Serbia. I received my Masters degree in Monumental painting from Faculty of Philology and Arts in Kraguevac in 2013, and my D.A. degree at Belgrade’s Faculty of Applied Arts, as I  defended my doctoral project „City and paintig – the role of painting in public space“ in 2018.  Focus of my interest is on various aspects of „public“, in my artistic practice as well as in my research. My artistic production is dominantly based on drawing, which I apply to pretty much everything, from paper, canvas, wood to walls. I like to explore possibilities of materials and contexts in everlasting attempts to illustrate and understand subjects that I personally feel affected by, but that are at the same time universal enough for pretty much anybody to empathyze with. So far,I displayed my work on thirteen solo exhibitions and over fifty collective exhibitions worldwide, and painted murals in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Monte Negro, Greece and Fance. I think that art should be approachable and democratic, which is why street art and muralism became my primary field of action. Co-founder of Rekonstrukcija Street Art Festival.  Worked at the Teachers` training faculty  for three full semesters, before I realised I feel way better in the studio and out on the street painting.  I live and work in Belgrade.

Karkatag is Belgrade based Serbian art collective. It exists since 2009.

Work of collective includes machines, interactive and autonomous installations and manipulable objects.
Collective uses industrial materials and technologies in research of different natural and scientific phenomena, interactivity and performativity of machines, sound, motion.
Through public actions and performances, by placing installations and machines in space as urban scenography and props, collective also introduces social aspects of its work. In those settings spectator/passer-by is being involved in co-play with machine/installation and thereby becoming an active partaker in changing the perception of space and daily routine of the city.
Karkatag works are participatory and the situation generated through their use is integral part of their realization.

Aiming to encourage experimentation and to make its metalworking and mechanical knowledge available, collective organizes series of workshops as well as offering workplace, tools and advising in its open studio/artist-in-residence project.

Karkatag has three permanent members that are together defining, managing and realizing the work of collective. Nevertheless, team structure is generally fluid and from project to project it involves new people.

Born in San Francisco, California, Christopher Grimes founded Christopher Grimes Gallery which presented a diverse yet rigorous program of contemporary art in a variety of media including painting, photography, installation, performance, sculpture and video. Over the gallery’s 40-year history he organized its many exhibitions, most notably Amnesia and Super 8, which traveled to institutions in the US, Europe, North and South America, including the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro and the Bronx Museum, NY among others. The gallery was involved in the early development of the careers of artists such as Katharina Grosse, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Ernesto Neto, Fred Tomaselli, and Lisa Yuskavage.

He has presided over the Santa Monica/Venice Art Dealers Association and served on various international institutional boards, panels and juries including the ARCO Art Fair in Madrid, Spain, the Otis College of Art and Design Board of Governors in Los Angeles, the Otis Parsons School of Design, President’s Advisory Council, Los Angeles, and served as Program Advisor for the Getty for Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA.

Inspired by an interest in architecture and its relationship with art, he began developing a program focusing on integrating the two disciplines by collaborating with artists who incorporate architecture in their work. Following the closing of the gallery in 2018, he launched Christopher Grimes Projects, a multidisciplinary contemporary art program which focuses on facilitating the integration of art and architecture for large scale, site specific environments. He, alongside his son Jarred Grimes who assists in program development, aims to bring architecturally and culturally informed work to the public sphere bridging the connection between art and architecture through impactful and innovative projects.

The book mentioned in the interview was Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.

Elisa Strinna is an Italian artist currently based in the Netherlands. Her work investigates the nature/culture bisection, addressing, in particular, the interdependence between individuals and technologies and the byproducts of such affiliations. She does that by studying different types of infrastructures -from the geodetic to telecommunication ones, up to green infrastructures.

Through sculpture, sound, and video, the artist intends to activate aesthetic ecosystems in which some of the hidden relationships that constitute a landscapes emerge. In these hybrid worlds, it becomes difficult to draw a separation between natural and artificial, geological and human, spiritual and material.

Her works have been exhibited at Culturgest Porto (2020), Hong-Gah Museum in Taipei (Taiwan, 2018), at Giardini Greenhouse of the Venice Biennale (Italy, 2015), at the MAXXI Museum (Italy, 2014), at 2012 Taipei Biennial (Taiwan, 2012), at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Guarene (Italy, 2009), amongst others. She attended the international residency program at Jan Van Eyck Academie (Maastricht, the Netherlands 2018/2019).

The book mentioned in the interview is Laboratory Life.

Andre Bogart Szabo creates paintings and wall mounted sculptures that explore the transformative power of repetition. Embracing informal materials such as gravel, fireworks, and foraged materials, Szabo creates expansive abstract fields that are chaotic, expressive, and minimal all at once. He received his BA in Post-Production from Emerson College’s Visual Media Arts department in 2012. Szabo currently lives and works in New York. He was born in Washington, D.C. in 1990.