Interview: Christoph Niemann On Wit, Distilling an Idea, and How the Internet Has Made Us Better Readers

“Turning The Table” (2022), from the book ‘Idea Diary.’ All images © Christoph Niemann, shared with permission

The act of drawing, of envisioning an idea and conveying it visually, produces the same feelings in Christoph Niemann as it did when he was a child. A wildly successful artist, author, and animator with a keen wit, Niemann reiterates in a new interview that “there is no trick” to making the creative process easier.

It’s actually kind of comforting that the reality of drawing is that there’s no secret. Most artists have doubt. I’ve always wondered: is there a secret? Is there something I don’t know? Is there a trick that people have to make less difficult? From what I’ve found, there isn’t! What I’m doing today is exactly the same thing, with different tools, with different input, but exactly the same thing that I was doing when I was 12.

In this conversation, Niemann discusses his practice and process, how he consumes news and culture, and how his openness when experiencing a new city or space has changed since the pandemic began. The conversation veers from poetry, distillation, and the purpose of art to the downsides of pitching and finally, to his profound and enduring love for the humble act of putting ink on paper.

Read the interview.

 

“Sunday Sketch (Tangerine)” (2014), digital

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Join Us for a Colossal Workshop on Decorative Ceramic Techniques with Sophie Woodrow

All images © Sophie Woodrow, shared with permission

Artist Sophie Woodrow (previously) joins Colossal for a technique workshop on decorative patterns for clay. In this two-hour session, Woodrow will teach students how to create the textured motifs she utilizes in her figurative porcelain works on small pinch pots. Attendees are invited to work on their preferred material to learn coiling, chequering, dotting, and more, which can be translated to a variety of projects. As this is a technique workshop—see some examples of motifs below—the goal is not necessarily to finish the session with a completed project, although participants may do so.

Register here, and if you’re a Colossal Member, be sure to use the code in your account for $10 off. 10 percent of the proceeds for this workshop will benefit the Chicago Abortion Fund.

Woodrow’s ethereal porcelain figures make connections between human culture and the natural world. She first coils then incises and imprints to create a richly textured surface that harmonizes with a simple graphic form. References are conjured to cultures far away and long ago, engaging our memories and imaginations.

 

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In His Largest LEGO Work Yet, Ai Weiwei Recreates One of Claude Monet’s Most Famous Paintings

Ai Weiwei, “Water Lilies #1” (2022), LEGO. All images © the artist, shared with permission courtesy of Galleria Continua. All photos by Ela Bialkowska/OKNO Studio

Known for incorporating recognizable, everyday objects into monumental sculptures, Ai Weiwei (previously) has created acclaimed installations using bicycles, life vests, and seeds and flowers made of porcelain that often challenge political issues such as the social unrest of his native China, the global refugee crisis, and themes of liberty and freedom of speech. Since 2014, he has utilized LEGO as a medium but not without some controversy along the way due to the political nature of his work. Now, Ai has completed his largest LEGO piece to date in a recreation of “Water Lilies,” one of French Impressionist artist Claude Monet’s most iconic artworks.

Monet’s Water Lilies series was inspired by the artist’s garden in Giverny, France, featuring a foot bridge over a pond teeming with wildlife. This idyllic setting was the design and creation of Monet himself, who at the turn of the 20th century had the nearby River Epte partially diverted in order to bring his vision to life. Ai challenges our perceptions of natural beauty and reality, replacing brush strokes with plastic bricks redolent of digital pixels, using a more saturated color palette, and embedding shadows that evoke a hint of unease.

Both accessible and recognizable, LEGO allows Ai to broach difficult topics in a format that is more approachable. On the right-hand side, he has placed a dark portal depicting the door to the underground dugout in Xinjiang Province where he and his father, Ai Qing, lived in forced exile in the 1960s.

Composed of nearly 650,000 pieces in 22 colors, “Water Lilies #1” is part of Ai Weiwei: Making Sense, the artist’s forthcoming exhibition at The Design Museum. which runs April 7 through July 30 in London. Follow more updates on Instagram.

 

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Aman Khanna’s Clever Clay Characters Exude Universal Expressions of Tenderness and Emotion

All images © Aman Khanna, shared with permission

With a background in graphic design and illustration, New Delhi-based artist Aman Khanna has always had a knack for expressing human emotions and experiences in his quirky, playful personalities. Over time, he yearned to build something three-dimensional with his hands as a way to complement his predominantly digital, two-dimensional process of graphic design. An opportunity to explore this new direction arose when he attended the 2013 Pictoplasma Academy, an annual character art conference in Berlin.

Khanna experimented with shaping clay for the first time as he prepared for the Pictoplasma group show, and he hasn’t looked back. “I began to create small clay sculptures that were inspired by human feelings, emotions, and interactions,” he says, sharing that he enjoys working with the material because of its ancient history and connection to the earth. “The fact that it can be moulded into any shape or form is fascinating to me.”

The figures, which he calls Claymen, portray a spectrum of expressions inspired by the intricacies of the human condition. Some sport legs and arms or participate in activities like scuba diving and relaxing with friends, while others’ simplified, disc-like faces depict a range of feelings. “The emotions evoked in us through our actions, reactions, and how we interact with one another has led me to understand how fragile we are,” he says, “and I find that clay allows me to communicate that.”

Khanna works alongside a team of 15 assistants in the Claymen studio, and you can find more of his work on his website and Instagram.

 

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Order and Chaos Converge in Yool Kim’s Emotionally Charged Works

All images © Yool Kim, shared with permission

Yool Kim seizes the disarray of our inner emotional landscapes by trapping energetically impassioned characters in her color-blocked works. Contorted bodies, floating heads, and abstractly shaped cut-outs reveal a range of moods and feelings all compacted into the rectangular canvas. Centered on linework and simple shapes the Seoul-based artist scratches into the composition, the mixed-media works feature stylized figures who emphasize play, sadness, and malaise.

Where pattern signals an underlying sense of order, the characters’ facial expressions veer in the opposite direction. “I draw myself. I want to express everything I feel in life, such as my thoughts that are not organized, my wishes, my relationships with people,” the artist shares. ” I draw a series of thoughts that are mixed in my head that have not matured, (that have) not grown unlike my body, as if dividing categories.”

Kim will have pieces on view in a solo show opening on March 24 at All About Art in Singapore and a group exhibition opening on March 25 at Brooklyn’s Court Tree Collection. Find an archive of her works on Instagram.

 

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Unease Emanates from Alexander Harrison’s Painted Portals to an Uncanny World

“Land of Infinite Wonders” (2023), acrylic on panel, 16 x 12 inches. All images © Alexander Harrison, courtesy of Kasmin, New York, shared with permission

Through small paintings that often stretch less than a foot, artist Alexander Harrison coaxes scenes of both delicate natural beauty and profound unease. Once-fresh flowers wilt and fall, night descends around a decaying tree with a figure trapped inside, and malicious roots entangle a fleeting foot, puncturing the skin with thorns and cuts. Rendered in acrylic on panel with trompe le’oiel elements that add illusory depth to the tiny portals, the works are brimming with intrigue and mystery about what lies beyond the frame.

The pieces shown here were on view at Kasmin earlier this month in Harrison’s solo show Big World,  a title that alludes to the vast unreality from which he imagines his scenes emerging. Supernatural and uncanny, the works contain recognizable symbols that cite art historical and religious references, while the watermelon of “Down in the Mouth,” for example, draws on the long legacy of racist imagery.  “I see my paintings as another dimension, or a universe that feels like a fever dream as shown through my eyes,” Harrison told Kasmin Review. “I always like to have cosmic symbols in my work, like shooting stars and moons, because that creates distance and curiosity, but I also like to create intimacy by painting the roots under the ground.”

Often reflecting on his upbringing in South Carolina, the artist tends to situate Black men at the center of his pieces, considering the way racism proliferates both American history and life today. In addition to the paintings included in Big World, he also recently completed works featuring Black cowboys and their under-acknowledged legacies. Shown as part of a corrective exhibition at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, “Beyond the Horizon” similarly relies on caricature and emanates a sinister, foreboding feeling like that of the works shown here.

To view more of the artist’s paintings, visit Kasmin’s site and Instagram.

 

“Down by The Old Oak” (2023), acrylic on panel, 7 x 5 inches

“Down in the Mouth” (2023), acrylic on panel, 8 x 10 inches

“Hollow Acorn” (2023), acrylic on panel, 4 x 4 inches

Detail of “Hollow Acorn” (2023), acrylic on panel, 4 x 4 inches

“Boo-Hoo Flowers” (2023), acrylic on panel, 6 x 6 inches

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Kaci Smith Weaves Colorful Patterns into Miniature Looms Fashioned from Wishbones and Branches

All images © Kaci Smith, shared with permission

In autumn of 2020, artist Kaci Smith was faced with a compound dilemma: daily life was still affected by the pandemic while devastating wildfires spread around her home in Northern California. “The air was so filled with smoke that even my studio became off limits,” she says. “The first branch weaving was just a way to pass some time and do something creative while being stuck indoors.” Smith had previously turned to the craft as a calming and meditative complement to her collage and painting practice, so when she began to forage for twigs that she could transform into delicate looms, she was excited about the possibilities and a new challenge.

Weaving colorful weft threads through plain warp threads, Smith’s interventions suspend web-like miniature tapestries in natural frames. Depending on the size of the branch or the complexity of the pattern, a piece can take several days to complete. A few months ago, she was inspired to utilize a leftover wishbone as “a way to honor the turkey that fed my family on Thanksgiving,” she says, and sources additional pieces online as byproducts of the poultry industry. “Even though tapestry is basically ‘painting with yarn,’ you can never rush it. The very nature of it teaches patience, and there is a special rhythm in the repetition.”

Find more of Smith’s work on her website and Instagram.

 

 

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