July 25 - 27
My Favorite Actors
by KATHARINA TRUDZINSKI
To discover and make sense of our world through methods of abstraction or reinterpretation, is one of the earliest and most fundamental developmental leaps. It’s something we know quite simply as “play”. As children, when we played we let spill out a world that was unique to us - We pretended the floor was lava, we constructed cities from pillows, we imagined lions in the cupboard, and we acted along with it all. Those around us had to either play within the world we created or decode it and translate it using whatever tools they had from the world they created. This unique exchange and curiosity towards art as a tool for play and communication is something at the core of Katharina’s work. Its what makes it so familiar and so exciting. You can’t help but want to play whatever game she’s imagined even if you don’t know the rules. Luckily you can make up your own.
BH
Hi Katha, we’re very excited to welcome you to Backhaus for your upcoming show - “My Favorite Actors”! This is what we’re excited for, but do you still find the work of the artist exciting? Meaningful?
I'm excited about my work and also about my life I would say. What I love about my work or the practice of creating art is that you can have things which exist only in the mind. It's not that you already know what it is, but you do have a feeling, a mood, a vision, and then from this something materialises. This is the real work.
That shift from things in your own head, that no one could see except yourself, to then something which is out in the world and everybody can see it and also interact with it or have an opinion about it or whatever, that's exciting for me. When you have something that no one can see and then it comes out and it's then part of the real world creates a kind of energy. Something is generating. It gives me energy.
This I believe is what becomes meaningful.
You can't really tell what it means to other people, but there is something happening; a kind of communication between artist and viewer. I don't know how to put it into words exactly, but it is still meaningful to me.
“Sometimes there's a feeling first and then I express it in colour or it can be the other way around that there are colours and they make you feel a certain way.”
One thing that jumps out a lot in your work are the colours. They harmonise and elicit feelings of joy and playfulness, which is also helped by the very fun shapes you have bent or jigsaw’d your material into. What is the importance of colour in your work?
Yes, I think you can easily tell that I love colours. That is deeply true. I mean, it's something that I can indulge in or that communicates directly to my feelings. Sometimes there's a feeling first and then I express it in colour or it can be the other way around that there are colours and they make you feel a certain way.
I don't know how to put it exactly.. breathing in and breathing out? (laughs to herself) Some colours make you breathe in and some colours make me breathe out. And the combination of colours…can be very deep I think. It comes very naturally to me. Always when I'm out in the world and seeing the landscape of the city, everything is in colour except at night.
And that's interesting. It's endless. I could sit there every day and combine other colours and it wouldn't get boring to me. So it's really something very special. And every time has its own colour combination. It comes from a very,Intuitive place.
As a parent and I find it quite interesting the ways in which my child describes the world and the art that I show him. How have your children described your work?
I don't have a special comment in mind at the moment, but in general, they are very pleasant spectators. My daughter is 10 and my son is 6 years old. I love to show them my work because yes, they are mostly on the positive side, but also they have good comments. They have a good eye.
It's pleasant and very interesting to me this interaction between parent and child. Art is also a work that you can easily communicate to your kids. It's not for example that you would say, “yeah, I was answering emails all day, what do you think?”, but you can show a painting that you made and say “here’s what I made today!” And then your kid can show you what they painted that day and I think it's really nice to have that common ground together as adults and kids.
How would you describe your approach (methodology) to your work and also the end product? Is there something that is discovered/ learnt in the process and in the outcome?
When it comes to my working method, it depends on what exactly I'm working on because I'm a multidisciplinary artist. I work on drawings. I work on relief-like wall pieces and on sculptures and installations made for special rooms. But I think there’s always something playful happening in the moment, especially for the sculptures and the room installations.
It's working with the material, with the flexibilities of the material, working with the room where I exhibit the works. So there are the materials for the room and my own vision which come together and then it happens. It comes from my intuition and it's a bit like play. Play or a game perhaps.
I always like to use street finds from furniture and I also use my own leftovers from my other older works. So, all these leftovers go into the process again and bring up new forms and new shapes I wouldn't have intentionally made and that's very, fruitful, for me to be able to come to new artistic solutions.
Could you tell us about the title? Where did this come from?
With the title My Favorite Actors. I wanted to emphasize on the performance-like character of the show. When you work in the studio it's all fluid, but when you build up a show, it's like a performance. And I use all those shapes and fragments of other sculptures to come together and perform kind of a new play.
It’s spontaneous. Yeah, like a jam session or something. Things come together and then everybody has, or gives anthropomorphic value to the pieces, even though for me it's abstract. But also they bring in their own character in the way. The material would bend into a special form, a cut out piece of wood has then somehow its own individual voice.
And so for this show, I plan to not buy new material, but use all the things that I have collected in my studio from previous works and exhibitions. And now they come together, for something new. I have had some of the pieces, really, since like ten years or something, and they constantly appeared in different works.
I like that very much. And so I wanted to reflect on that by giving it this title.
What would be a dream collaboration or project for you be?
I would be very happy to realise a large-scale sculpture outside in the city. So a public work, where people can walk through or sit on and experience outside.
What advice would you give to yourself 10 years ago?
So ten years ago was actually when my first daughter was a very small baby. So I think, I would just give myself the advice that, yes, it is possible to be a full time artist and be a mother at the same time. And, yeah, I mean, it's a challenge, but it is possible.
So I would say to myself, don't worry, you will figure it out.
