Private Paradise - Interview by Rieder Gábor (EN)

Viola Boros’ recent interview with Rieder Gábor about her project Private Paradise (Privát Paradicsom). For the Hungarian version, please check the Blog section, or the link below.

https://www.violaboros.de/blog/privat-paradicsom-rieger-gabor-hu

The flourishing Garden of Eden, reimagined classics, UV lamps and graffiti-esque unframed canvases. Vibes and magnitudes fit for Neue Wilde art (german neo-expressionism) by Viola Boros. An interview by Gábor Reider.

Rieder Gábor : Let’s start with Monet’s Water Lilies. There were three sizable paintings featuring water lilies showcased in your exhibition this autumn in Debrecen (Hungary), which were an obvious reference to old Monet’s garden and his water lilies in Giverny. How much of your inspiration came from Monet, and how much of it came from the natural environment that surrounds you?

Viola Boros : These pictures were meant to connect my ‘Saját éden’ (Personal eden) series with my ‘Classic reloaded’ series. In ‘Saját éden’ my paintings were based upon my own huge, flourishing garden, painting every season. They represent the primal power of plants; as a seed sprouts and becomes a tomato or a tree. This is what I tried to piece together in my paintings.

RG : The end result was grandiose...

VB : The base units are 100x70 cm cartons. Each season is made up of these, and in the end the finished installation took up the whole wall, with a size of 4x12 meters. It was first presented at the Czóbel Museum in 2018 as a part of the Art Capital in Szentendre, filling the whole space. The four big seasons on four walls, artificial grass on the floor, and real plants along the walls. The context transformed in a fun way - the painted plants looked more lively than the real flowers and plants in the same room.

RG : Because the last thing you would do is capture plants on a miniature scale - like a watercolor painter painting botanical illustrations! You enlarge your flowers to gigantic proportions, and on top of that, they are painted in a very expressionistic way.

VB : Because that is the defining nature of the unstoppable flourishing primal power that plants hold.

RG : Is that why you paint them on such aggressively large canvases? A rose on its own could grow up to a meter tall in your garden, but in your paintings, the scale changes dramatically.

VB : I’m most comfortable painting pictures of this size. A small painting of a rose garden or a sunflower field doesn’t give the same feeling as a three and half meter big artwork.

RG : Have you always preferred these gigantic dimensions (three meter big unframed canvases!), this limitlessness?

VB : Yes. I stopped working on smaller scales years ago. I like to work on a scale fit for museums, not tailored to the walls of living rooms.

RG : The seasons are not the only things that change in your artwork, but times of the day too, as you have paintings for the nighttime as well...

VB : The moonlit installation has a daytime version too, you can turn on the lamp - they are still “properly” painted pictures. It just has an added effect because of the parts that I painted over with UV paint, which glow under the special lights, and I also used a fluorescent substance on certain parts as well.

RG : Do you keep turning the lights up and down while you work on those in the studio?

VB : At this point I have enough experience to be able to paint the nighttime pictures during the day too, because when I spray a certain area with UV paint, I’m able to picture how it would look in the dark. I have made quite a few UV installations in my life so far - the first one when I was 23, back in Germany.

RG : Where does your use of graffiti and your urbanized expressionism come from?

VB : They also come from my youthful early repertoire, which I have taken inspiration from for over twenty years now.

RG : When talking about your oeuvre, it’s important to mention that you lived and worked in Germany for a long time, after you left Hungary around the end of the '80s...

VB : Yes, I lived in Germany for several decades, up until 2009.

RG : What I see in your art that I think is particularly interesting is that despite all the modern color combinations and UV pigments in it, it is still very strongly reminiscent of the Neue Wilde art of the eighties, like the works of the german Heftige Malerei.

VB : That is absolutely correct, this is a chosen legacy.

RG : The german style brushwork and the dimensions typical of the eighties suggest this as well. This scale is rare in Hungary - I wouldn’t be able to name many painters whose studios have three meter tall unframed canvases lining the walls or even lying on the floor. Actually, I don’t even know where and how they are made, from a technical standpoint.

VB : I start out on the ground, but after a while I put them up on the wall, so I can see what needs to be changed. Painting on the ground has its advantages, namely that the paint can’t trickle down. So I work bending down on crawling on the floor.

RG : I assume you also work on the floor because you incorporate all kinds of materials into the pictures, from different textiles to sequins, which would be harder to do if the pictures were hanging from a wall and not lying on the ground.

VB : I started working with textiles in 2009, for an exhibition for Viltin Gallery. I got textiles from a friend who has a textile factory, and I incorporated them into my pictures after I repainted and spray painted them, giving them a very interesting, graphite-like surface. I worked with textiles for years, in similarly large dimensions (like in my ‘Diary’ series). These pictures carried political and sociological sentiments that were a reaction to (then) current events. This was followed by two years of Frida Kahlo inspired art, and only after that did I become enchanted with overflowing gardens and nature.

RG : The sequins almost look like artificial moss. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that this kind of overpiling on the pictures evokes flourishing nature in a tangible way. You can almost feel the enlarged, intensified, artificially amplified nature. The exhibition gives off an insensitive jungle-like feeling.

VB : Yes, for me it’s important that nature is able to flourish in any way it wants. Our garden is overflowing with vegetation, flourishing bindweed, and massive willow trees near the lakes. One of them snapped in half during a storm and now it’s partly in the lake, amidst the water lilies (I didn’t let it get cut down, it’s too pretty). The lakes are full of reed, and we even have animals, including fishes, turtles, and dragonflies. Wild nature took back what belongs to it. For me that is important. I respect life, I even rescue snails when they come out after rain so that they don’t get trampled on.

RG : Is your garden a safe place for you from the world, or do you just enjoy its vitality?

VB : Gardens will always be refuges, like in the title, a “personal eden”. Your garden is your safe place which mirrors your state of mind, where you feel most at peace.

RG : After the many flowers you painted came the water lilies, which are not simply an art history experience for you, as your garden also has real water lilies floating in your lake. However, the classics from art history still loom in the background.

VB : It started with Picasso, when I was looking through art books. Then I found Velázquez transcripts, and around May, when the water lilies were sprouting in my garden, I stumbled upon Monet’s paintings. This is when my desire to rework classic pictures in some way started. I bought a bunch of books and I searched for pictures that gave me inspiration. Among those was Picasso’s Guernica, for example...

RG : … which is a really ambitious project.

VB : It was, but I did it successfully. Then I did Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, Manet’s The Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia, Tiziano’s Sleeping Venus, Paris Bordone’s Portrait of a Young Woman, and Csontváry’s Magányos cédrus (Lonely Cedar)

RG : Seems like you chose a lot of female imagery...

VB : Yes, a fair few are female nudes, I find it important to show how female nudes changed over the centuries. First they were only allowed to paint nude women like in Sleeping Venus, stealing glances at a sleeping female, and later in Manet’s Olympia the woman is shamelessly staring at the viewer, stirring up quite a scandal.

RG : How do you transcribe these classics? In a technical sense the answer is obvious, you pile on your chosen legacy’s attributes onto a jungle-like, flourishing, intense base. The only thing you borrow from the classics is their central motif, which transcribes the classic to a great extent.

VB : I wanted to create a vibrant, cosmic effect, like the photos the Hubble Space Telescope takes of the Milky Way and of the strobing lights of stars. As if the motifs on my pictures emerged from the cosmos itself. The reduced, abstract background, this cosmic cloud, meets a very familiar, specific art history motif, creating tension. I do not wish to closely copy the original picture, so I leave out a lot of motifs and elements (for example the cat from Manet’s picture), or I add new ones.

RG : Would I be incorrect if I said that the way you repaint the classic motifs has its own naive charm? Your goal isn’t to accurately mimic the original classic’s paint style, your pictures evoke the original classics by using the same motifs and themes instead. They are pretty heavily transcribed, teleported into your own, much more grotesque world.

VB : Yes. I was thinking, how could I make this series even more radical? I want to pair them with an urban, graffiti filled background. I also want to transcribe contemporary art, not just the classics, for example the works of Jörg Immendorff, Maurizio Cattelan, or Damien Hirst (I have already transcribed works of Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami respectively).

RG : This series goes beyond depicting the female figure then, and is more of a review of the great history of painting and its current state now...

VB : Yes, I work with classics. These contemporary artists are regarded as classics by now. I don’t wish to only work with female nudes.

RG : With Jörg Immendorf, the wild creator of the Neue Wilde art style, you go back to your roots, at the Düsseldorf Art Academy.

VB : Immendorff didn’t let me into his class, because I wasn’t pretty enough. This might be in my series too.

RG : You won’t put Hungarian painters into your series?

VB : I don’t plan to, other than Csontváry.

RG : Are there any Hungarian artists who you think are similar to you or create similar art to yours? Because to me it seems that you have a very unique perspective compared to all the other Hungarian artists.

VB : For example, I very much like Imre Bukta’s art and his colour pallet. But in general I don’t let myself be influenced by others. I do what I want to do, what I have fun doing. You need to have curiosity and a good attitude to make decent pictures.

RG : How much of your art is born just for your enjoyment? Do you only paint for pleasure, or do you find it to be hard work sometimes?

VB : I love doing it. In the past I did have some pressure on me, I was afraid of ruining my pictures. But when I visited the Picasso Museum in Paris, I realized that he has a bunch of very bad art as well. Of course, he has a lot of great ones too, but he has some ugly, unfinished pictures as well. Maybe the parts that I don’t like in my own pictures, somebody else adores. Over time, this notion might become the most exciting part of painting. I wrote a sign saying “do not be afraid” and put it in my studio. It has a great effect. I don’t need to be scared, my art cannot be ruined.

RG : Do your work on these pictures in a raw, spontaneous way, or in a very controlled, measured way? How long does it take to complete one of your huge paintings?

VB : I generally paint very fast and in a spontaneous way, channeling my inner thoughts.

RG : I also assumed it was more of an aggressively spontaneous process, which is certainly more fun than the other work process.

VB : Yes. I am in a phase of my life which is positive, balanced and happy (after I went through a long period of time battling cancer), and this kind of harmonic art fits well with my current lifestyle. It is entirely possible that I may go through another tragedy and I turn to making black, aggressive art. My current state of life is very defining of my art.