Oscar Fernando Gómez

Mexican photographer born in 1970

Zoe Strauss

American photographer born in 1970

http://zoestrauss.blogspot.com/

Yuko Nasu

‘To draw someone we do not know, who might be someone special is my interest‘
Yuko Nasu

Imaginary Portrait Series, 2006, oil on paper, 18 pieces (50 x 40 cm each). Courtesy of Yuko Nasu

Born in Hiroshima, Japan.
Lives and works in London.

She studied visual design at Kyoto City University of Art until 1997. She used to work as a graphic designer but soon realised that she wanted to do more physical work than being in front of a computer all day long.
She eventually relocated to London in 2005 to study fine art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.
Yuko Nasu makes portraits. It includes mostly oil painting but sometimes it can also be water colour.
She uses wild brushstrokes and unique colour combinations work to create a camouflage that reveals its subject. Her technique and its effects may remind Edward Munch’s The Scream where the brushstrokes are sweeping and becoming broader. The features of the face are almost removed, what is left is a trace of a mouth or an eye. We cannot say the works look ‘unfinished‘ though, it is rather that Yuko sees only the essential. We are not quite sure if some erasing is in process.
She had her first UK solo show Imaginary Portraits at Zizi Gallery in 2007. Last year she gained some media attention with a portrait of Kate Moss (KM2), although she stated to be ‘unfamiliar with the cultural references or celebrities in contemporary British media stories‘.
She was exhibiting at Art Projects during the last London Art Fair (13-17 January 2010).

Imaginary Portrait Series, KM2, 2009, oil on paper, 50 x 40 cm. Courtesy of Yuko Nasu

I was in London some time ago and I met Yuko on this occasion. The following discussion took place at her studio.

Tell me about yourself
I graduated in visual design at University. I was making posters, advertisements etc. Then I got a job at a TV game company in Japan, I was a 3D, computer graphic designer. I worked there during five years, but I was really bored, working with computers and digital things you know. I was thinking, ‘I would like to do something different, and use my hands to produce something more organic‘. So I quitted the company and I decided to come to the UK. I applied to Saint Martins College. I managed to get in and I studied for one year. Then I took a one-year class at Chelsea College of Art and Design as an international postgraduate. I finished in 2007 and I became an independent artist.

When did you start being interested in painting?
I already liked painting when I was a kid but I was not really serious about it, it was just for fun. I really started to think about painting when I was working for the TV game company. From that time I got interested in arts in general.

What inspires you?
It depends. Basically all that is energetic: it can be music for instance.

How long does it take for you to make one painting?
Sometimes it takes me a month or even more. But I can also make one painting in about fifteen minutes or less. I would say it depends on if I’m lucky or not!

Do you sometimes get back to your work to modify something -a detail?
Once it is done, I do not get back to it. Otherwise I could ruin the painting.

Imaginary Portrait Series, Y, 2007, oil on paper, 50 x 40 cm. Courtesy of Yuko Nasu

What is a typical day of work?
I have a part time job, three days a week, so I am able to dedicate to my work on the evening sometimes. I have a studio so I spend basically the whole day painting when I am not working. I would come in the morning and I would stay until 8:00 PM. Then I go back home. But there is no rule.

What are your projects?
I just exhibited at London Art Fair. Right now I would like to experiment something different, I have been painting the same way for quite some time. I think it is time for a change. For the past year I have been painting in a different way, more abstract. It does not have a title yet.

How important is art in your life?
We cannot live without art, can we? (laughs).
More seriously I am happy when I am painting.

Could you review your work in a critical way?
That is a difficult question… Looking at my work in an objective way is something I am not sure to be able of doing. Maybe I would say my work is getting more sophisticated. And at the same time it is loosing some primitive expression I suppose. As I am becoming better at painting, I have to be cautious not to loose the primitive energy. Otherwise my work could become boring.

1108b, 2009, oil on paper. Courtesy of Yuko Nasu

What is your dream?
I would like to retire in Hawaii when I turn sixty or seventy! Why not?
More seriously, my current dream would be to become a successful artist.

Did you fulfill your childhood dreams?
Growing up I wanted to be a lawyer. I found myself being fascinated with people working in politics or business, all the executive people you know. But I doubt I will fulfill that dream and I like this idea somehow. I prefer to be a painter, working with colours and canvases.

What do you see for yourself in ten years?
I have no idea. I cannot tell exactly what I will be doing in ten years. I wish I could stay in London or at least in Europe. Japanese and European cultures are totally different. There are so many ways of thinking here. But I think I will eventually go back to Japan someday.

What epitaph on your grave?
Rest In Peace? (laughs). We do not have this tradition in Japan. There are no inscription on the grave. We keep ashes in graves, in the past we buried dead bodies but nowadays we do not. I do not want to have my grave and I want my ashes to be thrown in the air or in the ocean. I wanna be nothing after death. It might be a sad thing to my parents because keeping ashes and having a grave is a traditional way for any family in Japan.

website:
http://yukonasu.com/

Shelf at Yuko’s studio. Picture by the author.

Andrew Zuckerman

‘I am interested in singular themes that have universal interest, mainly relating to the human experience‘
Andrew Zuckerman

about directing
‘I started making pictures as a teenager in Washington DC shooting bands, which gave me access to situations that 14 years old don’t always have. I came to New York for the summers and lived with my sister while working at the International Center of Photography cleaning the darkrooms in exchange for printing time- all the while shooting music people in NYC. At 18 I enrolled at SVA and made short films, sculptures and pictures. I took a break from film after art school and opened a studio focusing completely on photography. I did lots of magazine work and ads.’

about Vogue
‘My first job was working for Vogue. I would shoot still lifes of bags and shoes. The Vogue art directors were really specific. We had to have a perfectly white background and it had to be beautifully done. I worked out of an old pre-war apartment on 46th Street. A fantastic photographer I assisted gave me a set of lights to start with. They were really old Speedotron piggyback systems. I didn’t have enough power in my apartment so I had to run cords out of the windows into my neighbors’ apartments and pay their electric bills. I had a totally jerry rigged system. Thank god no one from Vogue ever actually came to my studio! I was shooting like 8 products a day for Vogue and other magazines. I basically spent a year doing still lifes, which I had never intended on doing. It taught me how to light and be efficient and work on my own. I never worked with an assistant. It was just me alone in my apartment‘.

about Puma – the Fairy Godcompany
‘Puma allowed me to experiment with film after I did a successful print campaign for them. I made some spec spots to show them that what we were doing could work well on TV. They liked them and commissioned three. Now two years later we have made 27 spots together‘.

about commercials
‘The challenge of telling a story in such a short period of time sharpens one’s visual and narrative convictions. The commercial world is filled with immense talent and resources that are all looking to create something entirely new. Rigor is an ethic that making commercials requires and I like that‘.

about the Wisdom project shooting

‘By democratizing the space – shooting all on white – I was able to put all the subjects on a neutral field for the portraits – which served to strip away issues that come with environment and created a cohesive humanistic thread throughout. The white essentially transported them all to the same room. There was no variance in the setup or the equipment – aside from the Mandela shoot which we used kinos for due to an issue he has with excessive light. The shoot consisted of a two camera HD video setup as well as the still shoot so we developed a transformable set from still to motion. In the book I actually included a grid of the equipment used to illustrate the gift technology has provided us in modern times. 20 years ago it would have been nearly impossible to create this project with the same quality and efficiency‘.

about the expansion series

The featured image is an egg being pierced. It is part of a larger body of work exploring the Big Bang theory. Zuckerman used a piece of equipment often used in high-speed photography called The Time Machine to create an interface between his camera, strobe and a microphone mounted to the top of his pellet gun. The reason for the low power setting was to get the highest flash duration, in this case around 1/6000th of a second, in order to properly freeze the motion of the balloon bursting. He used a Hasselblad H2 with a Leaf Aptus 75S digital back and a 120mm lens. Once everything was in place he would pull the trigger of the gun and The Time Machine, hooked up to a microphone mounted on the gun and a pocket wizard connected to the camera and the single strobe, would then do all the work. The sound of the gun is actually what takes the image. The gun was 5 feet away from the balloon and the pellet was travelling at a 1000ft/sec so it was mostly just math and “a lot of trial and error“.

website:
http://www.andrewzuckerman.com/

twitter:
http://twitter.com/zuckermanstudio

books:
Andrew Zuckerman, Creature, Chronicle Books, 2007
a portrait series of animals

Andrew Zuckerman, Wisdom, Abrams; Har/DVD edition, 2008
an account of the portraits and thoughts of famous elders: Vanessa Redgrave, Clint Eastwood, Nelson Mandela…

Andrew Zuckerman, Birds, Chronicle Books, 2009
a visual study of birds from the rarest to the most common

Elizabeth Peyton

“That’s what oil paint’s about. You know it’ll last forever.” Elizabeth Peyton in conversation with Rob Pruitt and Steve Lafreniere for Index Magazine, 2000.

Jarvis, 1996, oil on board. Courtesy of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, NY

American painter born in 1965.
Studied fine arts at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
Her second exhibition is famous because it took place in a room of the Chelsea Hotel. The place had always been a center of artistic life in New York; many writers and musicians have stayed there (and it is also where Sid Vicious’s girlfriend Nancy Spungen was found stabbed to death in 1978).
Her body of work includes portraits of musicians such as Kurt Cobain, Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker, and famous people from fashion, art and politics: Marc Jacobs, François Truffaut, Matthew Barney, Jonathan Horowitz, Abraham Lincoln, the Kennedys…
She bases her work on pictures from books, magazines or her own snapshots.
All paintings are usually small sized, with some strong graphic sense and the use of bright colours. She creates what we can call intimate portraits, depicting her subjects in a melancholic mood most of the time.
Peyton chooses to return to portrait, which has a long tradition in art history but is probably less common in contemporary art.
2008’s show Life Forever: Elizabeth Peyton, held at the New Museum, NYC, was the first retrospective of her work in an American institution.

Em, 2002, etching w/aquatint printed in purple ink. Courtesy of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, NY

Extracts from a conversation with Elizabeth Peyton and Cheryl Kaplan for Deutsche Bank Artmag:

CK: How long do you work on individual paintings?

EP: It depends. A lot of times I’ll start and it’ll sit around for a month and I’ll pick it up. It’s always different.

CK: Before you start a painting, what do you know about the painting’s final version?

EP: Nothing. (laughter)

CK: Isn’t that scary…

EP: Yes. I’ll know I’m interested in a certain picture or person, then isolate a picture, but otherwise I have no idea what will happen.

CK: In what way do your paintings lean on your drawings?

EP: For me, drawing and painting have always been separate. If I can get it done in the drawing, it’s over. I don’t need to paint it. Lately I’ll draw, then I do a monotype, then I’ll like it so much I’ll want to make a painting of it, but there’ll be different problems. I never see drawing as less, it’s always another way to resolve. Drawings let you see the thought. That depends on whose drawings.

CK: Your paintings often have an androgynous quality.

EP: I’m interested in people who are androgynous. I like it when people aren’t stereotypically female or male, that their personalities are outside that and not defined or contained by being male or female. I like men who objectify themselves, which is a female trait.

Elizabeth Peyton is currently living and working in New York City.

galleries:
Gavin Brown’s Enterprise (New York)
http://www.gavinbrown.biz/
Sadie Coles HQ (London)
http://www.sadiecoles.com/

Live to Ride (E.P.), 2003, oil on board. Courtesy of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, NY

Julian Opie

The work of Julian Opie is so recognizable.
His imagery is graphic, simplified and schematized. And the use of bright flat colours has become a brand mark.
Everyday life is dominated by images and Opie says he finds inspiration in the everyday world. His influences are various, such as classical portraiture, comic books and computer games.
He has a methodological approach with the drawing at the core of his work. An image usually becomes a sculpture, an animated film, a postcard, a CD cover, a screensaver or many other multiple forms. He is making images with existing images, extending some of the projects he is working on, into any other medium.
“The first drawings were very simple, but that gave me a language on which to build. They started as black and white, with very pared-down parameters -the mouth was just a straight line and so on- and bit by bit I adjusted it until it seemed like the right balance between someone real and this generic form.” from Julian Opie (J.O.), Tate Gallery publication, 2004

Graham, Dave, Alex, Damon, 2000

THE PORTRAIT
Opie is exhibiting his portraits since 2000. At the time they were close-up portraits with front-facing heads and shoulders like on the Best of Blur album cover. Men and women of all races and ages are depicted in Opie’s portraits. Title features first name and occupation, which also avoids distance with the depicted subject.
The pictures are apparently simple, with the trademark for his portraits involving a black circle to represent the pupil. Specific individuals are displayed with a generic pattern. The style could easily remind us Hergé’s Tintin comics, especially in the way the pupil is depicted.
The personal characteristics that distinguish every human face have been omitted. Julian Opie has reduced the image down to its essential forms.
It is always the same method, with the use of computer-drawing programme.
We ask ourselves: What is a portrait ? What are the specific elements that make a person unique ?
“People are quite self conscious when I photograph them, which is embarrassing in the photo but helps to give life and presence to a painting. When I’m drawing, I feel like everyone’s face is fabulous. I don’t know if this is also true of bodies. I try to make a universal symbol for each individual I draw.” Julian Opie for the British Council, 2001.

Bijou, model, 2004

HOW TO CREATE A JULIAN OPIE PORTRAIT?
I found a method in www.mancubist.co.uk, a website dedicated to the city of Manchester.
http://www.mancubist.co.uk/2006/09/01/how-to-create-a-julian-opie-portrait

Julian Opie is born in 1958. He is currently working and living in London.
He is exhibiting his work with both solo and group exhibitions since 1982, after he graduated rom the Goldsmith’s school of Art in London.

official website:
http://www.julianopie.com/

online shop:
http://www.julianopieshop.com/

art galleries:
Lisson Gallery
http://www.lissongallery.com/

Alan Cristea Gallery
http://www.alancristea.com/

Blood by Ben Darlington, graphic art student from Dorset, England

Found in the website www.woostercollective.com (dedicated to celebrating ephemeral art placed on streets around the world)