Interview with Crystal Fischetti

06/02/21
Interview with Crystal Fischetti 

Crystal Fischetti: Hello Again!
Grove Square Galleries, London
11 February – 9 April 2021
 
Besides being an artist, Crystal Fischetti (b1984, London, UK) is also an empath, psychic and shaman. For her forthcoming solo exhibition Hello Again!, she is bringing all aspects of herself together, creating “a beautiful marriage”. The 36 works on display – this number was chosen because it was her age when creating them, and Fischetti believes deeply in the power of numerology – are vibrant and pulsating, each one representing a visual journey, but also a return to self. The use of unprimed canvases goes back to the artists of the New York School, to whom she is often compared in style, and their elements of play, as well as of mysticism, and her use of bedsheets uncovers what it means to be at home, representing physical intimacy, rest and repose, lucid dreaming, and also a connection to the astral realm and the unconscious. 
 

Fischetti, who is of mixed British, Italian and Colombian heritage, trained as a dancer before turning to visual art, and she still uses her whole body to paint – often incorporating hand- and footprints in her works – and she hopes, in the future, to create more performative, live-painting pieces. 
 
I spoke to Fischetti for Studio International via Zoom about her calling by Spirit to be of service, how the pandemic has influenced her work, and the simple process of creating alchemy out of the things you have around you.

 
Watch the full interview here

Toby Deveson: embracing the most sacred depths of souls

27/12/20

Toby Deveson: embracing the most sacred depths of souls 

Dance as the narration of a magical story; that recites on lips, illuminates imaginations and embraces the most sacred depths of souls. [Shah Asad Rizvi]

 

Before becoming a photographer, Toby Deveson wrote music. ‘Avant garde, atonal and arrhythmic’ is how he describes it. ‘Jarring and jolting.’ Even his use of alliterative adjectives – whether intentional or not – has a sense of the lyrical, and, born and largely brought up in Italy, he is certainly a passionate Romantic, in the true sense of the word (originating from a Romance country). Although his photographic journey began as one of documentary, his preferred genre these days is landscape: always black-and-white, always analogue, always full-frame negative. Deveson, in part, still approaches these images as if they were documentary, however: he seeks to capture not a story, per se – that, he says, would be too simple – rather the emotions of the place and the moment, that je ne sais quoi which will provoke a reaction and, he hopes, move the viewer to tears.

Deveson’s photographic compositions are infused with his talent for musical composition, and his approach, too, is similar. He speaks of finding the geometric pattern in the viewfinder, abstracted to the point where you almost don’t see what it is; you don’t see the textures or the shape, you just see the overall jigsaw. As Henri Cartier-Bresson said: ‘Thinking should be done before and after, not during photographing,’ and Deveson, likewise, describes building a foundation – a solid and stable structure with science, knowledge and experience – on which to then let his instinct loose to do something ‘nebulous and creative’, to dance as the narration of a magical story. 

 

Musician Brian Eno uses the metaphor of gardening for his compositional process: ‘The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when’. Deveson, similarly, admits to not necessarily knowing why he pours a certain chemical where and when he does, why the result is as it is, or why it looks good (or not!) – he simply learned what he needed to know through time and habit – he is largely self-taught – and follows his intuition.

But his compositional process is not a solo dance, it is a pas de deux with a quite extraordinary and demanding partner – Mother Nature. Nevertheless, Deveson takes the leading role – after all, as Ansel Adams made clear, ‘you don’t take a photograph, you make it’. ‘You’re having to let what’s in front of you into the camera, but also put yourself into the camera from behind,’ says Deveson, who sees the process as a two-way conversation – indeed, a dance, or the intimate – and often intricate – choreography of a relationship. ‘It’s exhilarating,’ he adds. ‘A relationship infused with wonder and awe, passion and fear. A relationship with an undercurrent of playfulness and power and a constant sense of potential danger.’ As in any union, it’s a case of holding one’s own shape, while respecting that of the other – meeting midway, caressing, moulding a little to each other’s form, becoming a ‘we’, but ultimately remaining two ‘I’s. Deveson speaks of the immense challenge of placing his style and emotions on to something as vast and imposing as Mother Nature: ‘To not be engulfed by her, and to not rely on her to provide you with a stunning image, but to work with her and create something unique from something so universal’. 

To this end, Deveson travels widely, frequently driving for hours at a time, a vague plan half hatched, his route being steered, nevertheless, by his wayward dance partner. He seeks to experience as much of her as he can, to celebrate her gifts, to rise to her challenges, to capture that elusive moment in their relationship when everything changes, when something is learned and can never again be unknown. As with most significant realisations, these often only come later, when he returns to his darkroom and exposes the fragments of a partially recollected dream, reliving them all the more vividly for their bright monochrome. The dream as a whole, however, can never be fully resuscitated, leaving Deveson – and, in turn, his viewer – with the narration of a magical story, weaving in the unique stance of the present, and that of the individual’s past. Cartier-Bresson coined his famous term ‘the decisive moment’ to describe the fact that ‘photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organisation of forms which give that event its proper expression’. Just as no two performances of a given dance will ever be identical, the event itself is necessarily ephemeral, but the image Deveson makes represents the essence thereof, recites on lips, illuminates imaginations and embraces the most sacred depths of souls. 

 

© Anna McNay, 2020

Image © Toby Deveson, 2020

See also Spanish and Italian translations on the Metralla Rosa site

Review of Eva Stenram: Positions at the Siobhan Davies School of Dance

22/02/15

Eva Stenram: Positions

Siobhan Davies School of Dance

16 January – 22 March 2015

Just as languages are made up of signs, carefully arranged according to rules of syntax, so dances are made up of positions, choreographed to present a certain imagery. In her various series of photographic works, currently on show at the Siobhan Davies School of Dance in Southwark, Eva Stenram collates these different postures – actually digitally isolated from 1950s and 60s pin-ups, not dance-related at all – into a dictionary of gesture and posture, full of possibility of meaning.

All around the building – in reception, in the meeting room, in the stairwell, in the toilet – she has hung works from her on-going series, Parts (2013-14). Stockinged limbs, some with fishnets, most with stilettos, on leather sofas and carpets with thick pile, the feet arch as a moment of intimacy or rapture is interrupted. Carelessly discarded, these legs appear sinister – the images could perhaps be crime scene shots. This uncanny element resonates still more with the chosen real world surroundings when, upstairs, outside the practice rooms, a row of empty shoes stand in line, beneath a photograph of a castaway limb.

To read the rest of this review, please go to: http://www.photomonitor.co.uk/2015/02/positions-2/

Video Review of Allen Jones RA at the Royal Academy of Arts

20/11/14

Allen Jones RA

Royal Academy of Arts, Burlington Gardens, London

13 November 2014 – 25 January 2015

Risking the wrath of many, London’s Royal Academy is playing host to a long-overdue thematic overview of the controversial works of British pop artist Allen Jones.

Best known for his iconic furniture pieces – Table, Hat Stand and Chair (all 1969) – the latter of which was attacked with paint stripper by feminist campaigners in 1986, Jones’s work encompasses far more than just these furore-inducing sculptures. From beautifully crafted drawings to vibrant large-scale fauve-style paintings to painted steel sculptures, his range of media is wide, but his focus and subject matter remain consistent.

Jones’s fascination with the figure and sexuality emerged early on in his works, with pieces such as Hermaphrodite (1963) and Untitled (Man Woman) (1963) showing a fusion of forms that is later picked up in his paintings and sculptures of couples dancing, bodies close, becoming one. Repeated emblems recur, such as legs, which take centre stage in paintings like First Step (1966) and Drama (1966) – both with the entwining of male and female counterparts – and 3D pieces such as Secretary (1972). But it is legs in motion that really fascinate Jones, and his dance works are apparently so accurate that one critic claimed to be able to recognise which dance was being carried out by each sculptural pair.

Jones, who began painting at the height of abstract expressionism, sought to prove that figuration was not dead. He wanted to extract the figure from the flat surface of the canvas. His steel sculptures involve bending and twisting of metal to create the shapes of individuals and couples. Maquettes for these can be enjoyed in a small room in which his studio shelving is replicated – an insight into the workings of his mind and hand.

Further such insights can be seen in some of the storyboards and sketches displayed in the room of drawings – each image a step towards the final scenario depicted large in the finished painted works, many of which involve dense and complex scenarios, full of movement.

Movement is key to Jones, and his experimentations with representing motion can also be seen in his Bus paintings, where the tilt and blur give the idea of the energy of the vehicle passing by.

Continuing with the idea of dance, the final room is bisected by a chorus line of sculptures, starting with Red Ballerina (1982), which relates to the paintings and sculptures in the previous rooms, and progressing through Hat Stand, London Hollywood (1979) and Refrigerator (2002), to the more recent commissions with Kate Moss – resulting in the photograph Body Armour (2013), in which the model wears Jones’s 1976 metallic body cast Cover Story – and Darcey Bussell, and ending with a new work produced for the Royal Academy, To be or not to be (2014), in which the figure steps completely away from the ground.

Curious Woman (1965) represents one of Jones’s early attempts to lift the figure out of a 2D representation. He bought the breasts from a joke shop in New York, but then had some trouble using the resin to cast them, as it kept heating up and melting them. Luckily, it was winter and he found a solution by opening the window and placing them in a snow bank on his window ledge, thus enabling the casting process.

Jones has often been the subject of attack for sexist, objectifying works. Ironically, his choice of fetish clothing on many of his sculptures keeps his work fresh and timeless. Playboy has, indeed, been the source of much of his material, but his response to it is actually very tongue-in-cheek and his representations of the female form consider it from all angles, as a kind of icon. Love it or hate it, Jones’s work still has the power to shock, 50 years after it was made. He is a key figure in British art history and a Royal Academician well deserving of this exuberant show.

To watch this video review, please go to: http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/allen-jones-royal-academy-london-pop-art