There is part of us that, upon seeing Armsrock’s work at FIFTY24SF Gallery this past summer, find him to be intriguing not only because of his transforming the gallery space into a completely new universe, but the personality that he is able to convey in each of his character designs. Its as if you could go up to a character, shake a hand, converse, and comment on local politics. They seem real, taken from the street outside and asked to perform still life in an installation.
But when we find out that Armsrock can answer questions, in depth and extremely thoughtful no doubt, while driving in a car across Germany, he has us convinced that he may be a magician of sorts. He can turn any environment into his own. And he quotes Brecht from a car, which in our book, is the thing of genius. —The Citrus Report
Q: Introduce yourself, where you live, what you like, what the weather is like, etc….
I am Armsrock. And right now while writing this I am sitting in a car on the highway going through east Germany at top speed, or at least as fast as this old-piece-of-junk- vehicle will allow us. I am traveling with three other people, all of them are for some reason now wearing vests and elbow pads. It’s the whole roadtrip thing that must have gotten overhand. The conversation is all thermo-coffee and cigarette-butts.
Q: Copenhagen, Denmark, 1984. You’re going to have to talk about growing up a teenager in Denmark in the 1990s. What was going on? What got you going in the fine art and street art world?
Denmark in the 1990s and up to present day for that matter is like a train-wreck waiting to happen. Some might even argue that it is already happening. Brecht pretty much caught it spot on when he was describing the place in a letter to a friend: “Here the world is also ending, only more nice and quiet…”. Or something like that anyway. But it’s the whole nice and quiet thing that gets me infuriated. Because when seen from a distance it does really seem very nice and quiet. All is well in the snuggly European backyard. Denmark has managed to brand itself as a place only consisting of hollyhocks, little mermaids, half-timbered houses and this one beer brad that people keep mentioning. But as soon as you stir up in the surface of things you will find an ultra rightwing neo-liberal bunch of rednecks lulling each other into a state of total oblivion to anything that goes on beyond the garden fence.
I am by no means ignorant of the fact that there could be a hella lot of other places where one would have worse conditions growing up. But there is some kind of horrifying dark undercurrent in Denmark, much like in Austria. And nobody seem to want to talk about it and this puts the mortal fear in me. For the last many years we have been behaving like a bunch of warmongering, foreigner-hating hicks. Jumping the bandwagon and invading exotic countries to liberate people with headshots, and then we are getting away with it. Yes, why is that? Well because its all so damn “nice and quiet”.
Well, Denmark is the one country in the European Union who is under the most critique for its immigration policy, its foreign policy, its treatment of prisoners and asylum seekers. In the last two years it has been home to social uprisings equal to those happening in France, which I guess should be a wave with the wagon pole that something could be wrong in the land of “nice and quiet”. There is of course here an aspect of condensation. Denmark is a small place, it doesn’t get a lot of attention, so yes, it can get away with the atrocities committed by all states in the world, but somehow still pull of the trick and remain the calm home of sören kirkegaard and h.c andersen. Carlsberg. And hollyhocks.
Growing up in Copenhagen in the 90s kinda made you want to steal high-powered vehicles for transportation of heavy goods and crash them into amusement parks. Or learn how to tapdance. But I got into hiphop and punk, I am a horrible driver anyway, and too much of an optimist to just give up and tapdance. I got involved with the leftwing activist culture and that shaped a lot of how I react to life in the urban environment. I have been trying to find different ways of not just coping with things and getting along with my own little world, but rather attempting to see myself as a part of a greater whole. These are ideas that I still very much try to live by and I feel that on some level this give me the possibility and responsibility to try to change the world I live in. do something to make it better, stranger, more diverse and alive.
Q: If I were to mention the name Peter Schmeichel, what is the first thing that comes to mind?
Isn’t he the guy who did those “Andre the Giant has a posse” stickers? No?
Q: Lets get back to art. 2008 has been busy, showing in SF, LA, Europe, etc, so what sort of things have you had a chance to develop in this year?
I think that development takes place all the time, and the more intensely you do something, the more development will be felt. This year has mainly led me to take on some personal confrontations with the idea of working indoors. Trying to figure out what that space was made of, what I could do with it, and if I wanted any part of it at all. For now it is working out on some basic level. I have been trying to do things inside that extends the things on the street and vice versa. I feel that I have been trying to find different strengths in the two different worlds that it is, connected as they are. Right now I am traveling with a plan but without a map. Attempting to do things with determination and consequence, but at the same time build in space for coincidences and accidents.
Q: Are you trained at all in terms of art school, or have you developed a lot of your skills on your own?
I went through the art school mill, though I flunked horribly at landscape painting. Art school is a good sort of playground, but I don’t think that you can teach creativity, only stimulate it. What you can teach is ways of dealing with creativity. You can inspire and instigate, but I think that you can only really teach people something if you are completely open to the fact that you might learn something from the process as well, and that is something that I haven’t encountered too much in art school, or any other school for that matter.
Q: What is the process of creating an Armsrock piece? From decided the subject or character, to cutting the piece out, to putting it on the street or on a gallery wall?
It depends very much what I am doing and why I am doing it. I am making drawings and small visual notations all the time. I try to draw as much from memory as possible, it trains the eye. But when I do use photographic material, I try to change it and make it as much “my own” as possible. There is no one way of doing it, it depends on my mood and what I want to try out. What all the pieces got in common, both those for the gallery and the street, is that they are all original drawings, I do circle around certain themes and characters, but I try not to reproduce anything. And even if I would try to do the same drawing twice it wouldn’t be the same, I simply cant do that. I think that only working with “one of a kind” pieces makes me both try to regard every piece with an equal amount of seriousness and carelessness. I try to focus completely and then let go completely. I feel like I am trying to work with some solidification of the idea of weightless insistence, something that I think art in general very much has. Maybe it is a way of forcing myself to be aware of the moment, not just in the things I do and their momentary lifespan, because they all disappear sooner or later, as with everything else. And maybe I am trying to embrace the ephemeral nature of life and my place in it while granting every bit of that moment maximum importance.
Armsrock is a post from: The Citrus Report | Art, Culture, News, Graffiti, Music, Street Art, Clothing, Politics, Reviews
