Gregor Gaida, Interview with Ingo Clauss
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2011 FlashArt 91
BRAND NEW
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Ingo Clauss: Where does your fascination with the human body come from?
Gregor Gaida: What attracts me to the human body and prompts me to make it the object of my work is its narrative potential. Every gesture, every position of the body can be considered part of the beginning or the end of a larger story. I use this quality in my sculptures. I create situations that open up an opportunity for a story to develop.
IC: Many of the figures you stage are almost naturalistic, while others remain fragments. In the series “Lateral,” for example, there are razor-sharp raw edges on the heads and limbs. What causes you to make these brutal interventions?
GG: The choice of a certain cut has its equivalent in our everyday lives. Despite all the possibilities afforded by the media, the complex processes we are immersed in can only be grasped fragmentarily. Our perception is selective. Following this idea, I condense aspects in which something suggests that it can no longer or not yet be defined. In the process, the context, I remove fragments of the body. Whoever becomes involved in my work has to tolerate this kind of void.
IC: Where do you find your themes? In everyday life? In the media? Or do you orient yourself toward art-historical models? What inspires you?
GG: One of my sources of inspiration
are photos that circulate in the image media. Reviewing my collection, most of the motifs are of a political nature, in particular war and violence. Yet I wouldn’t refer to my works as political. I’m not interested in commenting on current issues or sociocritical discourses.
I’m interested in basic issues. What are the conditions and possibilities of human existence? To what extent do social and cultural realities form our body?
IC: You’re a trained wood carver, but for several years now you’ve been working increasingly with other materials, such as aluminium, polyester resin and cement. How has the extended spectrum of possibilities changed your work?
GG: I have a great affinity with wood. When I started studying I worked almost exclusively with wood, which certainly has something to do with my previous training. I’ve also been experimenting with other materials, which provide me with many more stylistic elements. I’m becoming more and more intrigued by new materials and I experiment with new combinations. Then I try to develop a new visual idea out of a material’s peculiar qualities.
IC: You’ve recently worked on a monumental wooden frame for your exhibition in Bremen. This is striking in two respects. For the first time, the human figure has been moved from the center of attention to the periphery. In addition, in some places you left the frame in a rough state. What is this sculpture about?
GG: The frame exemplifies many of the things I deal with: form, composition, color, material; elements permanently competing with each other and, in this piece, in a palpable way. Some elements have been developed in detail, others are only roughly suggested. The frame is exaggerated, baroque, overloaded with form, but it has an empty and indefinite center. I’m fascinated by such aspects.
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Gregor Gaida - Artist Statement
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Trigger and motive of my work are the friction and unease that arise from the contradictions in current and historical context. In my continuing examination of the events of the day, artistic concepts are developed that congeal into single images. The basis is often formed by photographs I find in magazines, books and other visual media. The focus of my interest lies on composition and the protagonists’ pose in the images, as well as the openness in interpreting their actions. A special meaning lies in the gesture that indicates cultural, social or political discrepancies. From my inner mindset which states that any man can develop in many directions as long as he is subjected to certain conditions, the idea originated to extract single elements from the photographs and crop them from their context. Thus isolated, the images’ original message collapses and turns into a different, or many different, possibilities of association. The found footage is often no more than an impulse that is no longer discernible in the further development of the shape. Analogous to photography, my objects are three-dimensional snapshots. The characters are frozen in movement and often cropped along imaginary image borders. I transport the fragmented character of photos into the third dimension. Simultaneously, when dealing with color and options of shaping, painterly characteristics appear. Thus, the life-sized special interventions are formally attributed to sculpture but are equally part of painterly and photographic categories. The single elements are taken from reality, but I have altered them or taken them from their context. The result remains a translation of reality. The sum of my perception is concentrated in a new shape that is different from the original reality but equivalent to my inner point of view. The works reflect reality in two ways. On the one hand, they relate to it by being an object in space. On the other hand, they reproduce the ambiguity of reality for the meaning is not delivered along with the shape. Every work stands for itself, but relations between them can be established. I repeatedly take on different thematic strings which I also combine with each other. The “flag” for example is screen for and symbol of identity and ideology on a personal and national level. It has influence on our self- and outside-perception. Its ambivalent character combines positive notions such as security, tradition, group affiliation, culture, self-esteem with a greater ensemble, but also negative ones like fundamentalism, bondage, peer pressure, war and governmental affectation of sovereignty. In these and other constellations, the „pathos“ is deliberately debilitated and turned into the subject of irony. In my work, the motive of the child is a symbol not only for what is in the present but also always for what will be in the future and therefore stands for duration. The impact of a symbolic action is perceived in the present and remains perceivable for a long time. The main motive of the life-sized sculptures is the human being. Its depiction is detailed and lifelike but not photorealistic. Clothes, hair and body remain stylized to a certain degree and the anatomy is often distorted. The material is wood, aluminum, polyester and acrylic resin. The surrounding space becomes material just as the wood or the color. In the combination of different material, their points of contact have a special meaning. And in the same way does my dialogue and interaction with the material as the single works are derived from a sensory process of creation. The single works can be examined from different perspectives such as theme, materiality, shape or composition. The emphasis varies with each work. Some works are dominated by the material through their haptics and specific visual appearance, their manufacturing process and qualities. In others, the theme as a symbol or story is in the foreground. Many of my works combine positively charged components which in their sum and constellation, however, have a negative impact. The often aestheticized shape and the object-like character of my works in inconsistent with a narrative. The image I create wavers between attraction and repulsion. The narrative character of the figurative, however, plays a vital role. I tell stories without spelling them out. Merely the possibility of a story is suggested. The created moment is chosen in such a way that it is not, yet, decipherable. The connection and spaces between persons, motives, signs and symbols are open and undefined and so from an allegory of the events of present, past, and future, days.
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Gregor Gaida - Sum of stories
„The result of my work is a translation of reality. With it, the spatial object is put into relation while the sum of perceptions reflects the ambiguity of reality.”
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Quantum physics postulates that a particle can follow every possible path in space-time on its way from one place to another and thus live through every possible story. Each of these possibilities describes one story and the sum of all these stories results in the only “probable” path while each possible story holds a probability of its own. Gregor Gaida (*1975 Chorzów, Poland) has taken on this scientific onset and transferred it to life and art. In his philosophical approach of “sum of histories”, he describes the theory of human action as the consequence of the sum of all past events. In his sculptures, Gaida literally gives shape to this approach and tells stories without writing them out. They are allegories of the contemporary that in their openness and elusiveness suggest different possibilities of a story. Contradictions in current and historical context and in social value systems generate concepts that condense to imagery. As scrutinizing observer, he documents persons facing a personal decision and, at these crossroads, logs every detail of their mimic and gestures. His sculptures depict singular moments that implicate not only the sum of causes but all possibilities arising from this moment. Starting point of these works are mostly photographs in which the protagonists’ postures and gestures as well as the composition are evaluated individually. The images’ original impact is alienated through the cropping of details, eventually opening the possibility of free interpretation by the viewer. In “Lateral III” the artist merges positively charged components like the motive of the child, the colour white and the pureness of washing powder. Their sum and constellation, however, produce a negative effect and irritate the viewer. Here, the crated image wavers between attraction and repulsion. Something similar happens in “Kind und Kreide” (“Child and Crayon”) which seems to feature the theme of childhood’s innocence and purity. Only upon the second, closer look of the viewer, the seemingly playful scene unfolds to its whole extent: In absolute equality the playing children mutate to adversaries who consciously set themselves apart from each other. The narrative character of the figurative in Gaida’s works is always strongly pronounced and the characters whose anatomic minutiae and physiognomies are defined in detail seem strangely animate. A classic and timeless impression is also given by the lightly glazed wood which finds frequent application besides other materials such as aluminium, polyester and acrylic resin. Apart from the delicate wood grain, knotholes and small irregularities shine through the white glazed surface of skin, hair and clothes. Their inner substance which in itself holds an organic vitality is revealed and imparts Gaida’s figurines with their ambivalent livelihood. Gregor Gaida merges approaches from photography and painting to form inimitable sculptures. His objects may be seen as three-dimensional snapshots as the protagonists are cropped at their imaginary image borders and wrest away from their original frame of action. It is this fragmentary character that prompts the viewer to fathom themselves the “sum of stories”. (c) Galerie Adler, Frankfurt am Main / New York.
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