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Spraygraphic Interview with Adam Niklewicz
By Spraygraphic | February 4, 2008
Spraygraphic Interview with Adam Niklewicz
SG: Please tell us about yourself?
AN: I was born in Poland and came to America some time ago looking for adventure (I think I found it in making art). I’ve lived in the USA ever since with my wife Grazyna and my daughter Hanna, who, among other things, is now a morning DJ at a rock station called UltraRadio.
SG: Where do you currently live and work?
AN: In New Haven, Connecticut, USA
SG: What mediums do you work with?
AN: I often use food as my medium. I’ve used sausage, bread, raisins, mustard, sauerkraut. In my latest piece I use pure water.
SG: Describe your working process when creating a new work.
AN: My process sends me to places like meat markets, hardware stores, and apiaries. When I experimented with making a flute out of sausage, I frequented (for a couple of weeks - at times twice a day) a local Polish deli to buy large quantities of sausage. The clerk at the deli was quite certain that I consume the meat (and at an alarming rate) and suggested different and more tasty kinds for a change. Instead of honoring his tips, I produced a tape measure from my pocket and took to measuring the piece of sausage I was about to buy. I needed to make sure that it had the necessary length. I knew that the only way for him to come to terms with my behavior, was to deem me mad, but I also realized that my explanation (that I’m not crazy, I measure the sausage, because I’m making a musical instrument out of it) would not necessarily improve my image with the deli personnel. Most of my projects have this type of stories attached to them, they are an integral part of the whole process and I tremendously enjoy the misconceptions that the process creates - when things aren’t exactly what they seem.
SG: What kind of things do you do when you get blocked or find it hard to create something?
AN: I read. It’s often my beloved Polish poets Czeslaw Milosz, Adam Zagajewski and Wislawa Szymborska.
SG: Where are you currently finding your inspiration?
AN: I try to tap into that open-ended territory of the subconscious. It is there, that the everyday life experiences are being processed and reshaped into surprising, revealing, compelling entities. It is a liberating departure from predictability and from the basic realm of logic. Simone Weil said that truth begins past the limits of intellect.
SG: Can you please tell us a little about your sculpture, Vinyl Curtain: A Tribute to Christo.
AN: In the year 2000 I attended a lecture given by Christo. It was a part of his exhibition at the New Britain Museum of American Art. I came in mildly interested and left with my mind blown to pieces. It became a turning point to me as an artist, and set off my life’s most creative period. Vinyl Curtain is a result of that evening’s impact, and has been created for the New Britain Museum (the very institution which brought about the change) as a part of my own show there. It is a site-specific work that addresses this serendipitous loop, and pays tribute to both Christo and the museum. Making it involved blocking off one of the museum’s doorways with 16,000 stacked up yellow, foam earplugs. It was a take on Christo’s 1962 work “Iron Curtain-Wall of Oil Barrels, Rue Visconti, Paris” in which he blocked off a street with stacked up oil drums. My usage of earplugs pointed to the changes, which occurred since the 1960s. I thought that in our times of information overload, an earplug symbolized the need to turn off in order to maintain a degree of equilibrium in one’s nervous system.
SG: Can you please tell us a little about first coming to the United States. What was that like? Why did you choose the US, as opposed to another country?
AN: It was a long time ago. Besides, it was so typical that you’ve heard this kind of story time and again.
SG: Have you been back to Poland since you left in the 80s?
AN: Yes. Several times, although I could not naturally feel at home, because one does not step twice into the same river.
SG: In what ways has Poland changed for you?
AN: I found it messy and vigorous.
SG: You have recently received your MFA from Purchase College. In what ways has that educational experience influenced your artwork?
AN: I met many wonderful artists. I talked with them about my work, drove some to and from the train station, heard them speak. The experience charged my art with new energy and gave it a new degree of clarity. The work loosened up.
SG: Where has your work been seen?
AN: ArtSpace, Grounds For Sculpture, Real Art Ways, New Britain Museum of American Art, Stamford Museum, Pelham Art Center, Galerie fur Landschaftskunst, Long Island University Art Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
SG: Where will it be seen next?
AN: At the Black & White Gallery, New York City
SG: What is your dream art assignment?
AN: Your question seems to belong to the territory of communication arts (design, illustration, all this) and I know a bit about it, but for me the appeal of the kind of art we are discussing lies in the fact that it is fiercely personal, coming from within and immune to any formal outside interference (that your term - art assignment - implies).
SG: What is your favorite color?
AN: Green. It used to be orange, so it flipped!
SG: Who is your favorite artist? And Why?
AN: At the moment it is Nina Katchadourian. I love the tone of her work. It is smart, poetic and witty.
SG: What book/magazine are you reading this week?
AN: I’m reading two books simultaneously: “WHY IS THERE SOMETHING RATHER THAN NOTHING?” by Leszek Kolakowski, published in the USA by Basic Books. and ” THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES” by Roberto Bolano, published in the USA by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Both are a blast of two very different kinds.
SG: Ever do a self portrait? Where is it now?
AN: My piece entitled “Sailor” is clearly a self-portrait. In it, I planted five small sailboats within my hair. It recalled the manner of the medieval map renderings, where oversized ships were precariously stuck onto the globe. This act turned the top of my head into a hemisphere and the strands of my hair – into ocean waves. The work is about dreams and the naiveté of an emigrant’s mindset.
SG: Where is your favorite place to hang out?
AN: A bookstore that has a coffee shop.
SG: Any final words of advice?
AN: All you need is love. Seriously.
ART:
1&2: ROMANTYCZNOCZ
3: VINYL CURTAIN: A TRIBUTE TO CHRISTO
4&5: SAILOR
6&7: DIVER
8: WAVE
9: Diver Installation
10: SOMETIME LAST JANUARY I HAD AWOKEN IN THE MORNING WITH MY HAND UP
Additional links:
http://blackandwhiteartgallery.com/upcoming-ch.html#
http://50000beds.net
http://www.aldrichart.org/news/50k11.php
http://www.aldrichart.org/news/50k11.php
Topics: Artist Interviews |
February 18th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Hi Adam,
Very nice works, so creative and fresh.
Mira
February 18th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Wieslaw Jarmulowicz and I are both members of artmesh. He very kindly contacted me to suggest you might be interested in my painting. He likes my paintings of toys as well as the more surrealistic suburban landscapes. Hope you find it of interest.
Thanks,
Douglas Newton
February 19th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Adam,
Great work - I especially like the earplugs piece, so beautifully manufactured to be all the same, irresistable.
Ken Colosky
March 4th, 2008 at 6:45 am
I love your symbolic work Adam