Marc-Christoph Wagner

Role: producer

interviews

14:46

Rachel Rossin on the Journey to Self-Creation

“All art is like timekeeping.” Meet the multi-talented Rachel Rossin from New York, whose practice spans from painting to programming. Rachel Rossin started working with computers at the age of four and taught herself programming at five. Today, she reflects upon AI and developments beyond, for example, new ways of connecting humans to machines. At the same time, she sees art as one of the oldest and noblest expressions of being human. “It’s making traces of our time here. It’s like timekeeping. It’s a record of the artist’s time. Especially paintings and paintings with their expressionistic marks where you stand in the same place the artist stood. You are looking at a core sample of evidence of the trace the artist’s body made through time and space. I think we will have that as long as we exist. It’s just so precious and perfect.” Rachel Rossin, formed by her readings of the Bible during childhood, sees life as an ongoing journey to self-creation, a type of distilling over and over again: “I think that people that love life the most are the ones that are the most aware of death. It’s so brief. I want to be engaged and as present as I can. It feels like there is a spiritual calling to making art.” Rachel Rossin (b. 1987, Florida, USA) is an internationally recognised artist whose multidisciplinary practice synthesises painting, computer programming, video, built electronics, sculpture, installation, and new media to create works that address the phenomenological effects of technology on daily life. She currently lives and works in New York City, New York, USA. The New York Times has stated, “Ms. Rossin has achieved something, forging a connection between abstract painting and augmented perception that opens up a fourth dimension that existed only in theory for earlier painters.” She is widely considered a pioneer in Virtual and Mixed Realities for her innovative research. Rachel Rossin was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in June 2023. The interview took place in New York at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Rachel Rossin’s studio in Manhattan.

interviews

16:00

"First, we will die. Then we will be forgotten." | Photographer Balder Olrik

What does a graveyard tell about life? Meet Danish artist Balder Olrik who has been walking around Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris for months, taking fascinating pictures of empty mausoleums. “I looked into one of the mausoleums, and it hit me really hard in the stomach. There was a huge bouquet of flowers made of silk with hundreds of spiderwebs on top of it. It was really painful. At this moment, I realized that we are going to be forgotten.” Olrik has recently been confronted with death in his personal life and took to Paris to recover from severe illness. By chance, he visited Père Lachaise and found – in the middle of vibrant Paris – a silent world of its own. “It’s obvious that somebody has loved somebody. The most touching mausoleums are the ones where you actually can see that there was love between some people – someone who is dead, somebody that’s alive. But at a certain point, it is left there. Maybe because the person who loved died. Or fell in love with somebody else.” “It made me realize that maybe I should just do the things I want to do in life. And maybe it is also an awkward worry – this worry of not being eternal. Why is it so hard for us to grasp the fact that we don’t live forever, that it has an end? Maybe it is causing us a lot of trouble while we live that we care so much about ourselves for when we are not alive.” Danish artist Balder Olrik (b. 1966) entered The Royal Academy of Art in Copenhagen at age 16, one of the youngest artists ever to attend. Shortly after entering the academy, he was included in numerous exhibitions at museums and galleries worldwide, gaining international recognition for his works. In 1998, Olrik left the art world and became an early pioneer in new media technology, launching a successful viral media company. Sixteen years later, he returned to art, focusing on photography primarily inspired by behavioural and perceptual science. Olrik expresses a distinct silence and solitude within his art, a theme prevalent throughout his early works to the present. He lives and works in Paris and Copenhagen. Balder Olrik was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris in October 2022.

interviews

04:22

"I love painting because I can make lots of colour in it." | Katherine Bernhardt

“I am a busy body.” Meet the American painter Katherine Bernhardt for a talk about her work, her love for colourful, figurative motives, and why photographs are a great point of departure for starting a painting. “I love the 80’s aesthetic, which is very colourful. I love painting because I can make lots of colour in it. I like places that have lots of colours. I am attracted to colours. Art is a way where people can go and escape from reality. The bigger, the better.” Katherine Bernhardt (b. 1975) grew up in Clayton, MO, and received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts. Over the past two decades, Bernhardt, based in St. Louis, has established herself as one of the most sought-after painters. She first attracted notice in the early 2000s for her paintings of supermodels taken straight from the pages of fashion magazines such as Elle and Vogue. In the decade following, she began making pattern paintings with an ever-expanding list of quotidian motifs. Her vibrant images offer contemplative and multifaceted reflections of various facets of everyday life and pop culture, from childhood sticker books, toilet paper, and coffee makers to E.T., Darth Vader, and the Pink Panther. She cites Henri Matisse, the Pattern and Decoration movement, Peter Doig, and Chris Ofili as artistic influences. Bernhardt chronicles her life and the broader culture through her index of images, synthesizing her visual material with hard-won ease. She takes pleasure in variety and thoroughly investigates each of her obsessions before moving to another. Bernhardt’s trust in the fundamental underpinnings of painting gives her the freedom to depict anything she wants. The democratizing surfaces of her canvases work without illusion, perspective, logical scale shifts, or atmosphere. She is an artists’ artist, admired by many contemporary peers working today as a singular voice in painting. In a palette that ranges from restrained to vivid Day-Glo, Bernhardt paints the canvases face up on her studio floor, employing spray paint, puddles of thinned-out acrylic, and utilitarian brushwork to emphasize aspects of her motifs. Bernhardt’s process is improvisational and loose, at times inviting accident and chance into the works and asserting an equal relationship between artist and material. Bernhardt’s work is held in the collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Portland Museum of Art, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., among other venues. Katherine Bernhardt was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in June 2022 in connection with the opening of her show Why is a mushroom growing in my shower? at David Zwirner Gallery in London.

interviews

01:21

Paul Graham Gives Advice to Young Photographers

“Start working, make mistakes, keep going.” Famous British photographer Paul Graham advises young people not to give up too early on their artistic dreams and ambitions. “Every time I start something new, it is junk, and I am embarrassed. But sooner or later, the world will whisper in your ear and say: Let me show you something far more interesting than your little idea. But you have to be prepared to listen.” Paul Graham (born 1956) is a British artist who has worked solely in the photographic medium for 45 years. He was born in Stafford, UK, to parents in the Royal Air Force, and after various relocations, grew up in Harlow, Essex, before studying Microbiology at Bristol University. While there, he discovered art photography and, on graduating, decided to pursue that full time. Working in colour from the late 1970s, his work was critical in moving documentary practice forward from classic black and white photography. He made three bodies of work in the UK during the 1980s, firstly along with the A1- The Great North Road (1981/2), then on Mrs Thatcher's unemployment crisis with Beyond Caring (1984) and lastly in Northern Ireland during the darker times of the mid-1980s with Troubled Land (1984-6). Since then, he has travelled and exhibited widely for four decades, works notably engaged with western Europe in New Europe, and Japan with Empty Heaven. His photography has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale and the inaugural show of Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland, as well as a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2000 he moved to the USA, where he has completed three notable series of work, including a shimmer of possibility, which won the first Paris Photo book prize as the best photography book of the past 15 years. He lives in New York City with his partner and son. Paul Graham was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at his home in New York City in March 2022.

interviews

14:16

“Empathy is a superpower in architecture” | 10 architects share their advice

Ten world renowned architects give their advice on the role of the architect in the 21st century. Renzo Piano, Tatiana Bilbao, Alejandro Aravena, Bjarke Ingels, Anupama Kundoo, Anna Heringer, Anne Lacaton, Norman Foster, and Frank Gehry was interviewed and produced by Marc-Christoph Wagner. Kengo Kuma was interviewed by Mette Holm and produced by Christian Lund.

interviews

36:25

Katharina Grosse Interview: On the Edge of Something Else

“As artists we produce alternatives. Constantly. We are manufacturing alternatives for whatever.” Meet German artist Katharina Grosse in this very personal conversation in which she reflects on her upbringing, the importance of traveling, different elements meeting each other, and the idea of giving back to society. Katharina Grosse uses painting, sculpture, and architecture in her artworks, which tend to be large-scale, site-related installations. Her international reputation has grown steadily over the past years. Born in 1961 in Freiburg, Germany, she attended art academies in Düsseldorf and Münster. After her education, she taught at the Art Academy Berlin-Weissensee for more than a decade between 2000 and 2010. From 2010 to 2018, Grosse was a painting professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. She currently lives and works in Berlin – a city, that she has known since childhood, but used to have split feelings about: “I did not really love the city. Today my staying here has a lot to do with the people that I meet from the different areas – writing, theatre, music. So when you have an invitation at night and you meet people, you never know what’s coming out of it, who are you going to be with, what’s the night going to do with you and your thinking.” Eventually, Grosse built her own studio in the center of the city that incorporates all necessary features for her large scale formats. “There is only skylight, the paintings are super sharp, you can see everything.” At the same time traveling and working abroad are still central elements in Grosse’s life and work: “I like to get to know a new place. I like to be a stranger to a place. And to come as a person that is not part of a place, a space, a location – to come as somebody who doesn’t know it. So being abroad became a very important part of my studio-life.” Grosse continues reflecting upon central elements in her work: color, places, structures, the role of art, social responsibility, and the importance of having grown up in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s with its dark shadow of history. Also for her artistic development shadows played a vital role: “When I woke up in the morning, I would see shadows in the room and I would imagine a paintbrush to paint them away. I was very convinced of things even though they couldn’t work. And I was very convincing even though my results did not match my conviction. Sometimes my surroundings wouldn’t agree and I was surprised. I was truly imagining something that maybe wasn’t visible. I was always very confident in terms of art. Without reason really. I mean, I wasn’t like Picasso drawing pigeons.” Today, Katharina Grosse is working and exhibiting around the globe and has won numerous recognitions for her work. “I don’t know whether or not I can describe myself as outgoing. I like to be by myself, I have no problem being by myself for days and days and days. But I do believe that I make the work for somebody else. I don’t think about the public as such. But I absolutely want it to be seen. And I think it has to be loud and noisy.” Katharina Grosse was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at her studio in Berlin in August 2020.

interviews

27:27

Anupama Kundoo: More Common Than Different

“We all feel that human society deserves better.” In this personal interview Indian architect, Anupama Kundoo reflects on her way into architecture. Growing up in Mumbai, she had an early interest in both the arts as well as math and science. Due to a test, which a family member suggested to her, architecture came up as a profession. “I stumbled into architecture, but it was a blessing. The second I realized it, there was no looking back. Architecture and design would allow me to develop my interest in everything. But they would also ground me and allow me to be of service.” “I had a very strong intuitive voice telling me to just prolong whatever I was doing, even though it did not seem clear from the outside. I decided to leave Bombay and move to South India to figure out and understand my country. I didn’t know where I was going. But I knew what I was leaving. I didn’t know what I wanted. But I knew what I didn’t want. If you see something, you cannot unsee it anymore.” Kundoo ended up in Auroville, engaging herself for many years in a project that defines itself as a “universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities. The purpose of Auroville is to realize human unity.” Kundoo also speaks about time as the most important human resource. “I feel that a lot of the problems we have in today’s world have come because of that wrong notion that time is money. No, time is the only resource we have when we are alive.” While we’re saving other resources, Kundoo argues, we don’t seem to mind spending our own time freely on anything. This is why she encourages people to use their time wisely – to use fewer natural resources and more human resources: “Use more brain, use more muscle, use more time. Because people grow clever in the end when we do that.” Anupama Kundoo was born in Pune, India in 1967. She graduated from Sir JJ College of Architecture, University of Mumbai in 1989, and received her Ph.D. degree from the TU Berlin in 2008. Anupama Kundoo was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in her studio in Berlin in March 2020.

interviews

06:37

Shirin Neshat: Advice to the Young

“I think it’s so important for young people to think about the world, the bigger picture.” The renowned Iranian artist and filmmaker Shirin Neshat here encourages young artists to be socially conscious and open to what goes on beyond the walls of their home: “Otherwise you make work that other people don’t need to look at, because it doesn’t really have a place beyond a very small narcissistic conversation.” Neshat feels that in the Western culture we are encouraged to lead a life centred on individual ideas and interests. She finds this emphasis on self-interest worrisome and considers America, where she resides, a very capitalistic and individualistic society, where people are basically told to just look after themselves. Shirin Neshat (b.1957) is an Iranian visual artist, known primarily for her work in film, video and photography. Neshat gained international prominence in 1995 with her iconic series of black and white, calligraphy-overlaid photographs ‘Women of Allah’, and broke new ground winning the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale (1999) for her video installation ‘Turbulent’ and the Silver Lion at the International Venice Film Festival (2009) for directing ‘Women Without Men’. Shirin Neshat was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at Faurschou Foundation in Copenhagen, Denmark in connection with the exhibition ‘Shirin Neshat, Looking for Oum Kulthum’ in March 2018.

interviews

08:15

Anna Heringer Interview: The Walls Are Dancing

The Anandaloy Building hosts a center for people with disabilities combined with a small studio for the production of textiles and fair fashion. It is mainly built out of mud and bamboo from local farmers, thus the biggest part of the budget was invested in local crafts (wo)men. Much more than just a structure, the building became a real catalyst for local development. In October 2020 Anandaloy and Anna Heringer received the Obel Award that honors and recognizes exceptional architectural contributions to human development. To Anna the Anandaloy project underlines the importance of including everybody in society and let them have their share in the local community. For Anna Heringer, architecture is a tool to improve lives. The strategy of all of her projects is the use of local materials, local sources of energy including manual labor plus global know-how. As an architect and honorary professor of the UNESCO Chair of Earthen Architecture, Building Cultures, and Sustainable Development she is focusing on the use of natural building materials. She has been actively involved in development cooperation in Bangladesh since 1997. Her diploma work, the METI School in Rudrapur got realized in 2005 and won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2007. Over the years, Studio Anna Heringer has realized further projects in Asia, Africa, and Europe. Anna is lecturing worldwide at conferences, including TED and has been visiting professor at various universities such as Harvard, ETH Zurich and TU Munich. She received numerous honors: the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture, the AR Emerging Architecture Award, the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s GSD and a RIBA International Fellowship. Anna’s work has been widely published and exhibited in the MoMA New York, the V&A Museum in London and at the Venice Biennale among other places. Anna Heringer was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at her studio in Laufen, Germany, in September 2020.

interviews

03:07

David Hockney: The World is Beautiful

The influential British painter David Hockney talks about looking and painting for more than 60 years – and shares a story that made him reflect on our time. “The world is very, very beautiful if you look at it. But most people don’t look very much. They scan the ground in front of them so they can walk, but they don’t really look at things incredibly well, with intensity. I do, and I’ve always known that.” In the video, you also get to experience the world premiere of an animation technique, which Hockney himself calls “time-based brush painting.” David Hockney was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at his home in France in March 2019.

interviews

05:23

Mark Bradford Interview: Layers of Violence

“I pillage my own work. I tear it down and build it up in traces.” Let us introduce you to American painter Mark Bradford, who doesn’t use traditional paint but material “that has something to do with the social fabric of the times we live in.” Instead of paint, Bradford uses liquefied paper, which shares similarities with paint. He uses billboard paper from the streets or building material from any building supply store. Instead of “looking in,” which he finds to be typical of modernist painting, Bradford has chosen to “look out.” Bradford feels that his way of working on canvasses is aggressive, even violent: “It’s like tearing into the body. It’s very physical. It’s like if I just took my hand and reached in and pulled out the heart and then yanked it out.” Mark Bradford (b. 1961) is an American painter. One of Bradford’s concerns is improving society with his art as well as through a number of social projects. His work can be found in prominent international venues such as San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, REDCAT in Los Angeles and Saatchi Gallery in London. In 2014 Bradford was presented with the US Department of State’s Medal of Arts. He lives and works in Los Angeles, California. Mark Bradford was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at his studio in Los Angeles, California in January 2016.

interviews

12:57

Taryn Simon

Like a spy, American artist Taryn Simon uncovers the hidden places of the USA. Her work is a portrait of American society seen through the spaces that are foundational for America: religion, governance, security, law. Like the country itself, the meaning, says Simon, is “ever morphing.” Taryn Simon (b. 1975) is an American artist who has worked in photography, text, sculpture, video, and performance. She was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner at her studio in New York, October 2016.