Dreaming Istanbul
These paintings are going into a film, Dreaming Istanbul, directed by Gilles Blaize & Julien Tréfouël, which is being made to celebrate Istanbul being European City of Culture in 2010.
It is easier to describe how they came to be made and what they’re for rather than what they are all about.
As I painted them I photographed them at every stage for Gilles to turn them into animations (now “we’ve moved on” from using a film camera and no longer shoot all the frames as we go, he has to edit them afterwards) – little ten second transformations morphing from the photograph into the painted image.
Every so often during the film the frame freezes and a stop-motion animation begins.
How to describe the way it breaks into the action? Like a song in a musical? [Read more…]
The New York, New Work Exhibition
This was the invitation for the preview of the artistʼs exhibition and film ʽNew York New Workʼ in 2001. The cards were mailed out just before the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11. So many people phoned in, disturbed by the image of the Twin Towers, that the gallery decided to cancel the previews and exhibition out of respect.
ʽCalling Cardʼ shows an image intended by the artist as a light-hearted comment on consumerism, transforming the Twin Towers into an American wearing a snap-brim hat, waving with one hand and holding up a credit card like ID with the other.
The viewersʼ perception changed after 9/11. Some could see the plane and the explosion in the painting. Interested always in the nature of perception, it was intriguing for the artist to note how an event of this magnitude could entirely determine and alter the meaning of his painting. It became an ominous and sombre comment on what had happened, the image and some other parts of the film taking on an uncanny prescience. [Read more…]