Bfree

Interview intro (by PMH: www.fotolog.com/lapmh)
Before you scroll down any further: rub your eyes, go to the toilet, switch the TV off, or put the music louder… Keep seated (if not already seated, then sit down) and keep concentrating on this page. Why? Because chances are this is the first time you will seeing Bfree’s work (www.bfreeone.com), and trust me you wont wanna miss a thing (cue that bad Aerosmith song from that bad film). I feel very honored and lucky to have been asked to introduce this interview. It makes me feel like the ideal of an older brother giving you your first Black Sabath LP or NWA tape, turning you onto something that I know is amazing, and that you will love and follow for the rest of your life. “Who is Bfree? Is he an illustrator? Street artist? Graf boy?” well he’s been all of them, and is all of them, but he’s not just them, he’s more, and that’s the best thing. Bfree is a true artist, someone who doesn’t stick to any rulebook, he’s bored of it, he’s ripped it up and is now writing his own one as he goes on. He’s not another street artist who rehashes the same tired and lame JPEG stickers, stencils or tired character. Thank God! He is one of Europe’s finest, part of a wave of artists (yes: artists) who is prolific, original, exciting and genuine. His style is unique, fresh and completely his. It refers to his old school bboy days, psychedelic art and typefaces, as well as too many drinks and childhood daydreams. Fluid loose legs attached to happy clouds with grinning monsters overlooking the chaos. This is a brave new world, and if you wanna stay, your more than welcome, but be careful because it’s not as cute as it first seems. His weapons are as varied as his paintings: sewing machines and material, canvases, old cameras, dirty pens…he creates by any means necessary. I don’t wanna drag on too much as I think I’ve already entered the realm of over doing it, besides its high time for him and his work to do the talking, but let me just say on a final note, that he’s a giant in the making. And for the record he isn’t a giant smiling cloud, but he does have some great trainers and also boasts Trevor Nelson on his speed dial.

First, one thing I want to ask everybody for these interviews: When? Where?, How? And why you started doing stuff in the streets? Background.

I grew up in the eastern part of the Netherlands. In the late eighties-early nineties we where always hanging around on the streets, everybody was skateboarding and doing Graffiti back then, it looked like every kid in the street had a skateboard and a tag. Of course I did to. On the other hand my parents are people that are really into art so we would go to art shows and museums all the time and I liked it, In the back of my head I always knew I wanted to be a artist. After high school I went to a school to become a construction engineer. Damn, that was a big mistake. People were treating me like a number over there and the material wasn’t that interesting either so the only logical thing for me was to quit and go to the academy of fine arts. At the same time I was still doing Graffiti and of course the school work and the Graffiti didn’t go together in the eyes of my teachers, one way or another a teacher challenged me to start doing something different in the street than just tagging and bombing as part of an assignment that was called your favorite spot, so I started to make characters out of everything and surprisingly it gave me a lot more satisfaction than tagging, it made me smile way more.

What was this “different” thing you started doing?

Around 1999/2000 I started to make characters out of street furniture in a very minimalistic way by for example adding two dots that would be the eyes of the character and made the object come to life. I started to look at the city in a totally different way that I did before, I was looking at the shapes that where already there and was trying to add something to it to finish it off. Then the sticker virus attacked me and a lot of other dudes and dudettes in the Netherlands and everybody went completely nuts on that. But that’s over now for me anyway.

In your work you can see a lot of traces from 70´s classic Graff like asterisks, bubbles, polka dots, line high lights… Now there is a big revival of this type of primitive writing, but I have seen this in your stuff from way back since the first time I saw it. Is this period in Graffiti an influence?

I started doing Graffiti more serious after I went to see a big group exposition that featured all the NYC legends at the Groningen museum in like 1990. A couple of days later I received my first blackbook and some postcards with images of works by Quik in the mail as a gift of my grandma. Somehow I always remember this day. I see it as the start of my Graffiti career. I guess old skool NYC Graffiti has had a way bigger impact on me than the European tradition.

Are you still skateboarding? Do you still look at that scene for inspiration?

Skateboardin is cool but I don’t do it seriously anymore since a couple of years, I fucked up my ankle, but I still cruise around now and then I gives a feeling of freedom.

How is a day in your life?

I usually wake up at 8 o’clock in the morning and do the things that people do when they start there day. I check my emails and start working on my free work or on a commercial job, surf on the Internet a bit, Ekosystem, fotologs, some blogs and then I go cook a meal for me and my girl, something simple, I’m a bad chef. At night I watch television go to some friends, play ping-pong, paint, draw, just hang out kiddo style.

Are you living off your own art or you do odd jobs to survive?

I can live off my art and design at the moment. I work as a freelance illustrator. I have a studio at home.

What is your method of working?

I just draw everything straight out of my head. I don’t do sketches. My work needs that spontaneous touch; otherwise it gets too flat or something, I don’t know. The lines are very important; I can’t copy a line from a sketch. Working without a plan works the best for me.

Choose: line or color?

Baby blue, yellow, pink, orange, red & white, bright colors. These are also my favorite colors since I first started doing graff. A baby blue background, yellow, orange and pink fill in, a red outline and white second and highlight, I love it! I always hated fading and shady colors.

Here we were discussing your work and we are not too sure if we see your graphics as something cute or as a psychedelic nightmare. Which one of these points of view do you relate the most to?

I don’t know. Both? No, I really don’t know I don’t think about it, it has no philosophy behind it; it just grew to what it is right now. I get al kinds of comments like: “You get your inspiration from “The Yellow Submarine”, right? A Dutch girly magazine called them (my characters) psychedelic Barbapapas. The characters look kinda cute because of the innocence and happiness they reflect. I guess I get some inspiration out of the seventies color ways, maybe that’s why the work gets associated with psychedelic aspects. I think it is the combination between the cloudy landscapes, the stars, the happy, dreamy characters and the bright color way that gives it a kind of magical feeling.

And is really “The Yellow Submarine” and the Barbapapas an influence?
Now that you mention this, can you name your 5 top movies and your top 5 cartoon series?

I’m not really into cartoons but if I have to make a list I would pic… eeeeh “”Mr Men“, “Barbapapas“, “Spongebob“, “The Simpson” and “Miffy” by Dick Bruna. If it comes to movies I like classical American high school movies like “The Revenge of the Nerds” and “Porky’s” and stuff like that, don’t ask why, I don’t know. I don’t like fantasy, action science fiction or horror. I like movies that are slow, realistic, and have something interesting to show and that make you sleepy.

You have been working lately in a gallery environment, how do you feel there?

It’s nice to be totally free, to make whatever you want to and that gallery people want to exhibit the work. On the other hand I think there are way to many expositions that have focused on the street art thing and not on the quality of the work they produce. I want to be judged on the quality of my work, not on what or who I am. But it’s nice though.

I think the same way but at the same time I think there are more and more artists that come from the streets that are working as just artists…outside of clichés. That is one thing we are trying to do here at Subaquatica: we are aware that people we want to work with have a street background but their work is beyond that. I think your stuff reflects this…. is very personal.

True, I’m feeling you. It’s a good thing to see that the art and design world has more and more leading figures that have a Graffiti/Street Art history. It’s payback time for all those years that nobody understood what we were doing and now all of the sudden our culture is a bit in charge. But too much or too easy is never a good thing. You gotta have something to fight for to keep it pure.

What have you been working recently and any interesting project coming up?

I finished my work for the Eager Beaver kids clothing company a couple of months ago. Now I have some money to do some projects of my own. I’m just working on some free work the moment, nothing special coming up. Also I’m working on some record covers at the moment. I’m busy working on more life size dolls and paintings but no exhibits are planned yet.

Record covers are a nice place to exhibit your work… Are you interested in music? What type of music do you listen to?

I’m not really a music fanatic. I don’t know a lot about music. I listen a lot to originals that I get from friends, to seventies rock and to mid nineties Hip Hop.

I like your photographic work you have in one of your fotologs (www.tunzofgunz.web-log.nl) also… looks like old Polaroids or made with a toy camera or a Lomo or something like that. Is it something you do just for fun or has another point?

Oh, those are Polaroid pictures. I bought a big stack of Polaroid films for mad cheap. I started shooting Polaroids of my friends and the stuff that surrounds me, nothing special. Everybody can shoot cool photos with Polaroid. It’s way too cool and way too expensive. I had a camera laying around for ages but never felt like paying that much cash for a couple of pictures till I ran into that deal. I have a couple of hundreds of them laying around in my apartment, but I certainly don’t see them as artwork.

Can you tell me a little bit about your zines? Is that something you do often?

Once in a while I make like 50 zines to give away to my friends and people I hang out with. These are like little reviews of what I have been up to in a certain period or have a certain theme. I don’t sell them. They are just give-aways.

What is your relationship to Stick-it (www.stickit.nl) website? Are you part of it?

I do not have any official connection to the Stickit website. The guy who runs the website is a friend that lives in my neighborhood and asked me to re-style is logo. He also arranged an exposition for me in his brand new gallery, the Sixteen-Eigthteen.

Something you want to do that it hasn’t been proponed to you yet?

I would love to do something with patterns on clothing, wallpaper or curtains or something. Illustrating a children’s book would be pretty nice too.

Can you turn us into some artists or something interesting from your area that we should know about? Give props for your peoples!

Check out the work of my friend Teitsma (www.teitsma.com) and stay tuned for some painting battles between the two of us. Big up to all my friends and people I had and have a good time with.

Links:
http://www.bfreeone.com
http://www.fotolog.com/beefree

Interview by Zirus the virus.

January 3rd, 2006 10:07am Administrador