MOMO

Somebody we know that moved into New York introduced us to MOMO (www.momoshowpalace.com) and although it’s because of that we know his work I’m certain we would have come to discover him some other way. I guess it’s a small world when you are the kind of person that can’t help but being fascinated by a collage of colored papers pasted onto a wall in a street for no apparent reason and you meet the person that took the time and effort to do it.

First of all when, where, how and why you started to do work in the streets?

I was in love with Graffiti in the late 90’s, but didn’t feel it was my place or culture, until this friend of mine Mike Menace challenged me to look closer, and from then, 1998 or so, the concept has never let go of me. I was traveling back then.

You do work outside and I know you’ve done a bunch of prints and collaborated with us in the “The amazing wandering unit” project and other projects here and there but other than that I have no idea if you do any other “inside” work, aimed at art galleries or commercial work of some kind?

I have a regular job, creating giant sculpture for Jimmy Buffett (a ridiculous cultural(? of sorts) icon). That’s been my main source of income for 10 years now. My street hobby has come inside much more these last two years, working with Paper Monster, we’ve developed prints and studio work that stays indoors. I was slow at first to think of what to do indoors - its a totally different game, that deserves its own due, but now I’m brimming with ideas; things I couldn’t do on the street. If I play it cool, I’ll be in several shows this year in NY.

In your work there’s a predominance of geometric shapes but at the same time I feel somehow that has an overall organic feel to it. What’s with you and geometry? Does it make any sense what I just said about your work looking organic in a way?

I hope so. Last year I was toying with geometry more as a primitive craft/carnival means. The rise of neo rave, 80’s inspired, retro tech graphics makes me nervous. I don’t want to be associated with that exactly, it’s probably too fine a point for people to get, but that culture feels disposable to me. The forms I’m using now were always under the most realistic drawings/ paintings I’d ever felt good about, and I’ve had a long history creating realist looking things, we are just cleaning them up, using that best part naked and raw now.

Again I might be mistaken but could you elaborate on how’s your relationship with the urban (there’s obviously some of that) and the natural (that’s where I might go wrong) and how that reflects on your work?

We’re just talking about the colorful collage, which is fine because my other projects go in too many directions. I’m not exactly a hippy in the city here. But yeah, I do feel stronger ties to the country, mountain folk, the desert, untrained folk artists, small town cultural happenings. I’d prefer to avoid things like hype, gamesmanship, technology fizz, I guess that puts me back in the woods. But being in New York 5 years now, that stuff doesn’t really exist, or I’d adjust my attitude. I walk everywhere in busted shoes and get better conversation out of them, than if I obliged marketers and got with “urban” styles. Back to collage postering - I hope each piece is a bit of an experiment for intellectual delight, each one is very different, they don’t always work, I invent lots of small techniques to try and add to the canon of the craft. I feel nothing for artists that demonstrate our dominant mass media’s power; with standardized production, aping logos and celebrity. That power was already demonstrated when US culture colonized the globe.

Ok, I see what you mean but don’t you want people to have a better view of what you do making them aware of your existence? Maybe you just want each piece you do outdoors to work on its own… I don’t know.

I think I don’t know either. My great friend Joel says if we keep doing the stuff that interests us the most, it will all come together eventually.

There’s a question that intrigues me from all artists in general and wanted to ask you about: How much of your personal visual universe comes from your childhood? Is the kid inside of you a big percentage of who you are as an artist?

Great question. It would be better if I played more. I was a little adult as a child. Obsessively trying to draw well. Now I’m an old man throwing confetti & color everywhere, but it still rarely comes from playfulness (!).

Why is that? What keeps you for being more playful with your work as an artist? Do you feel that you have to be responsible as an artist and playfulnes doesn’t mix well with that?

Protestant upbringing? Hahaha. Maybe. I’ve always admired people that just enjoy life, I’m in the other group, uncomfortable, unsatisfied, itchy. HaHa. If curiosity is playfulness, I’m flush, but its also a sort of a burning.

Your use of color gives is of a “happy” type of feel to your work. Do you deliberately try to portray a happy, optimistic view of things with your work?

HaHa. I love comedy, but that’s not my point. I try to set up uncertain compositions that break with the surroundings, feel unstable, for me there’s a look of change / danger, poor balance, unfair odds. That’s great if people take away optimism, they see the story ending well, I think its undecided. And I love color. I love southern peoples intense use of it (think Caribbean), its feels festive to Northerners, but look closer and the universal darker themes are there, vivid and stuff.

So there’s a balance between bright and dark in your work and you leave it up to the viewer if they see more of one or the other which brings me to a question I end up asking artists when the subject comes up: How much do you want your work to be open to free interpretation and how much do you want to obtain a certain response?

Oh it’s a total give away, thats the best thing about public works. What I make goes on to live another life I can only guess at. I’ve heard wild theories and stories involving my stuff, and seen a wide spectrum of people take to it. I have to have my reasons to initiate the whole business, but its a thousand times more gratifying to see where it ends up.

There’s a generation of artists worldwide that I think that share at least a somehow similar attitude and sometimes some aesthetics coordinates and you seem to be very active collaborating with artists from other countries. Do you feel part of a scene-generation… and what do you think you share with other artists from that same “scene”?

Yeah, the Internet is fueling these scattered scenes. A friend was describing it’s that way for his particular music interest. I’ve fed almost entirely on European artists while living in the US. Now I can flatter your European readers? It’s partially aesthetics and partially a next-level confrontation: the artists doing resistance work already have better educations than us in the US generally, and then the society they’re confronting is more open, subtle, historied, and educated, so the discussion skips the trivial stuff.

Not being an artist, every time I find an artist whose work I enjoy, I’m always intrigued on the creative process. In your case is it fast and wild and not rational at all, is it meticulous and slow, do you dismiss a lot of the stuff you do?… I don’t know, tell me a little bit about it.

I get the best ideas while doing something else. The first (paper napkin) sketch is usually the best. Then I waste an enormous amount of time trying it every other way, to come back to the first, and make it look easy (hopefully).

I saw some bio text about you and I’m sorry but I have to ask: Did you actually live in a geodesic dome? How did that feel like?

It’s great, a really small space feels quite large with no corners. the furniture was built into the walls of course, nothing rectangular. This was in a small village in New Mexico.

What have you been working on recently?

An illustration for a Faile collaborative book due out soon. Been learning to skate a quarter pipe. I’m cutting collage paper right now. I should be in London by the time anybody reads this trying some wacky experiments there. I created an installation at Monkey Town: an art bar in Williamsburg: a fun collaboration with Milton Carter. And I’m still futzing with silkscreen posters as experiments. Each one is different based on this computer thing “The MOMO Maker” (www.momoshowpalace.com/momomaker.html). It’s like the “best of MOMO” for collage. It was mostly for a laugh, but I can’t seem to reach the bottom, so it keeps growing and getting bigger as a project.

Yes, I meant to ask you about that. Do you feel randomness fits well in your discourse?

Maybe as a search tool; watching the MOMO Maker: there’s crap, then there’s one design I would not have thought of. I initaly got into collage because you can cut-out & toss your ingredients freely around, looking for their potential.

And any interesting project coming up that you can tell us about?

I’m focused on two main projects for this year, but need to stay quiet about them. And I just heard: in May I might collaborate with Mellisa Brown, we’re going to destroy each other’s artwork for a month; every other day; she goes, I go, she goes, I go, in a public curated space. I think New York could be fun this summer.

Some project you would love to do but didn’t have the chance or nobody has asked you to do yet?

Ha! Yeah! I want to do for Jamaica what Dewitt Peters did for Haiti. I want to do a very long expanded version of my time-based video project “In New Collage Orleans” for New York. It’d be called “In New Collage York”. I’d like to interview Daniel Burren. I want to make a Graffiti video for Stephin Merritt. I’d like to publish zines more often.

Can you turn us into some artists or something interesting that we should know about?

I never knew anything about Norman McLaren until Nano put me onto him yesterday. I’m really amazed, 3 minutes of his work might sum up all of mine, and 70 years before I began. Same goes for Daniel Burren. He was bombing 100’s of posters globally for good conceptual reasons begining in 1968. Jonkanoo is [another(!)] amazing creol culture & history: Caribbean carnival. A recent show of Zaha Hadid’s prepartory art works blew me away.

Add comment March 31st, 2008 10:51pm Administrador

Exhibition by Matt Sewell

We recentlty celebrated the opening of a new exhibition by UK artist (www.mattsewell.co.uk). Tree lover and master of organic ,this neo-hippy ilustrator Matt Sewell presents his premier solo exhibition in Spain right here in Subaquatica. Titled “The sun shines everyday” the artist describes the work he has elaborated for the ocassion this way: “Is about wanderings, fleeting thoughts, leaving home, migrating birds, castles in the sky, her face in the clouds. The beauty of the world and how nature can look after itself, tigers and crocodiles. The sun and Mother earth”

Proud son of the 70s Matt is known for his street work and his illustrations, with influences that come from European comic books from the end of the 20th century and his childhood in the countryside. The output is to no-one’s surprise a quite optimistic and colorful body of work whether if it’s out on the streets, his studio or commercial work as an illustrator.

March 6th, 2008 11:17pm Administrador

Remed

Since Remed opened the exhibition calendar with his buddy 3ttman he’s been restlessly travelling around the globe and proving an amazing evolution as an artist and indeniable coherence of his work. In this interview with him he shows an attitude and view of himself as an artist free of prejudices that for some reason is not too common and that we love as much as his work.

First of all when, where, how and why you started to consider yourself an artist?

Well, I think I’ve dreamed about being an artist since I was quite young but I never thought it was possible until I met the father of one of my friends who was an artist in Roubaix. When I discovered his atelier and the treasures that it contained, I began to feel it was possible to be the artist I am nowadays. I really want to thank my man Boulaone and his father Madjoub Ben Bella for having opened my eyes, and made my dream possible. After my studies I started to work in a design agency and then I quit two years later to work on my own. As I was drawing and painting more and more, I felt artist more and more, and became really proud of it, while many people around me had the will of being an artist but were afraid saying they were. I love being an artist and i’m proud of the decission I made.

And when, where, how and why did you start to do art in the streets?

The first time I worked in the street was in 1999 wih my broooother 3ttman (wesh a gueule!!). He came back from work with a big roll of virgin stickers. We started filling those white spaces. I started making eyes, nearly closed, with a kind of “malice” inside. I first pasted them wherever it was possible and once I put one on the beautifull seducing face of a woman on a advertising poster. I was really surprised by the impact of it, and how it changed the soft expression of the woman face into a vicious looking one, the one behind the mask of her “selling” function.

In your work there’s a predominance of characters and text. In the case of characters do you have a collection of them with their own personality that you use here and there or you come up with new ones for every new piece?

I don’t really have a collection of characters. At the beginning I developed a face. That was more or less my self-representation. As a witness of life or maybe just a revendication of existence… his expression wasn’t thought of before I did it. It’s just a reflection of how i felt while doing it or at that moment of my life: sometimes happy, sometimes sad, or angry. But most times I tried to lie when I saw it was too sad. Because it’s too easy to keep on being lifeless, and it don’t like spreading that vibe. Even on my canvases… if I talk about sadness, or bad feelings, I’m always trying to find an alternative, hope… In the meantime, I realized a face was not enough to express what I wanted to, and started to work on hands, patterns, and then body. That’s how shadowblackman came out and allowed me to put myself in situation, in movement, interacting with the environment.

And about the text and the word games, most artists don’t want to be too precise about the meaning (if any) of their pieces but you even give tips!! Why is that? Do you have a clear idea and concept for each new piece and like everyone to understand fully?

Of course I would like people to understand the deep part of my work. It’s not only about aesthetics. I spend quite a lot of time in front of the white page, wall or canvas, before writing something. There’s a story I’d like people to enter in. It’s really important for me creating something true and coherent. Most times, the concept of the piece is clear to me, and it gives an essential extra value to my art. My art is me. But in a way it could be you. It helps me, and I hope it could help you. It’s like the walk of a thought to the next one. I really love to explain the way an artpiece has been created, little by little, the first word, or icon, already has the seed of the one that will follow. It’s just waiting for me to find the next one. I’ve thought many times about recording my voice explaining this or that canvas. Because I want people to get it fully. And sometimes, people add an extra sense to one of the word I use. And most of all I like their interpretation. I believe in the “hasard qui n’existe pas”.

Also, it’s really good the way you make the letters part of the art. What’s up with you and letters? Big fan of typography or maybe just hand made type?

I don’t think I’ve ever been fan of typography. Text has always been present in my art since the beginning. I realized that I needed a collection of fonts wide enough to fit with the iconography I developed. All the type I drew was inspired by some existent types, but I usually look at one, forget it, and then make mine.

There’s a generation of artists worldwide that I think that share at least a somehow similar attitude and sometimes some aesthetics coordinates and you seem to be very active collaborating with artists from other countries. Do you feel part of a scene-generation… and what do you think you share with other artists from that same “scene”?

In all the travels I’ve made, for love of art, when I meet other artists, I always feel a strong energy, a strong will of living the life we choose, and make it possible in a system that is not really made for us. I feel that we represent the alternative. And it fills myself. I love to know that artists I met share the same life. We are really lucky and conscious of what we accomplishing. Something is happening!

You live a little bit all over the place: São Paulo, Madrid, Lille… I’m sure that helps you be in touch with many different artists. How’s that affecting your artistic activity and attitude as an artist?

Like I said, travelling and meeting other artists makes me stronger, because it gives me the feeling of being part of something important, whether I will be remembered or forgotten, I love to believe in us. UNITY brodaaaas! special biiiig up to the great artists who are: my everfriend 3ttman aka brad beckam, my love Fefe (cochillo bolinda!), and to my brothers, artists I respect such as Jiem, Nano, El tono, Pelucas, Zosen, Debens, Sixe, Kafre, Soviet, Momo, Maya Hayuk, Ekta, A.purdy, Andy Rementer, Dem, Orion, Kaboko, Ramon Martins, Raquel Shambri, Ciro, Speto, Carlinhos, Espak, Mikos, Isham, Mercurochrom, Buenos Aires stencil, Blu, Mark Jenkins , Tatone, Farmprod and many more I never met and hope to meet once…

Your work, for someone that sees a pic online, could be easily think is all computer-made becase of the clean lines and in fact you seem to be a very traditional artist in the way you work. Never thought of working with Illustrator, Freehand…?

I used to draw with illustrator when I was 22 til 24. I learned and understood many things. It showed me the beauty of mathematics. It gave me a graphic point of view that is still one at the foundations of my work today. But afterwards, I rediscovered the beauty of spontaneity and the “alèatoire” dimension in handdrawing. I am “mathematic” in the way I compose the image, but I keep something “human”, more about the “heart”, in the way I use the line. I like when it’s close to perfection globally, but still imperfect in the detail.

Also your work seems to be perfect for taking commercial comissions from brand and doing work as an illustrator but you don’t like it very much. Is that right? Why?

That’s right, I used to be a graphic designer before I made the choice to be an artist.

In your work there’s a predominance of characters and it also it makes me think of animation and comics and about how much of your chilldhood might reflect on your work. Can you tell us about those influences and how much of your art speaks for the child inside of you?

The influence is not really conscious. I can’t say…maybe a mix of everything I’ve seen until today.I cultivate the child in me. I prefer the word “utopia” than “cynism”.

It seems like apart from commercial work and personal work that can be sold at galleries and so on, many artists find another ways to portray their work in the form of assorted merchandising such as t-shirts, toys, etc… more accesible to most people because they are cheaper. What’s your experience and “policy” in that field?

First, I want my art to be “original” and “non-functional”. So I’m trying to keep far away from industry buisness. I don’t want my work to be seen as “decoration” but as “art”. From my point of view, silkscreening on paper is a good alternative because, it produces an affordable piece of art, it’s not a functional object as a t-shirt, and it’s still rare, original and handmade.

Not being an artist, every time I find an artist whose work I enjoy, I’m always intrigued on the creative process, tell me a little bit about it.

Nearly every canvas I do, is sketched before. Sometimes I do one sketch, which is a part of a canvas, I reproduce it on the canvas, then do another sketch, or many until I find the one that will work besides the other one on the canvas. And sometimes I do a global sketch. But everytime there’s an evolution between the sketch and the final result.

What have you been working on recently?

On a series of colourful large canvases representing a couple making love. I’ve already made two, and still have one to do. You can see one in the galery Geraldine Zberro, in Paris. 8°. 3ttman and myself have just painted the entrance of the famous ;) atelier “LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES”, in Madrid, calle Noviciado.

And any interesting project coming up that you can tell us about?

I’m now sketching for a huge wall project in Curitiba, Brazil. The theme is “Everything you see”. It’s for the festival of theatre of Curitiba.

Some project you would love to do but didn’t have the chance or nobody has asked you to do yet?

Sculpture.

Can you turn us into some artists or something interesting that we should know about?

I really enjoy outsider art, and especially Carlo Zinelli. I also recently discovered the art of Henry Moore and really love his sculptures. And, of course , you should discover the art of people I mentioned in a previous question.

2 comments March 2nd, 2008 02:01pm Administrador