INTERVIEW BETWEEN CHLOE PIENE AND ROLAND FLEXNER
DAMELIO TERRAS GALLERY
NYC
January 26, 2011

R:
Talking about contemporary Vanitas is something of a paradox  when the thematic no longer relies on philosophical and moral values. Things happen in real time rather than at a symbolic level. There is the comical and the performative, the sign, the popular culture, punk and all that -

C:
But with popular culture, like punk, it’s just rebellious.  Like a pirate flag, it’s a menacing banner.

R:
It was, but now… go to the shops.  Recuperation is the grand law of history.

R:
I try to avoid dealing with the psychology of the skull.

The way I deal with it is that I work mostly on the surface of things. My image is lateral, there is no depth really, even though it’s happening in 3 dimensions.

Bringing things to the surface reinforces the idea of the event, because an event is something that happens without background. If you have a background then you can determine what happened, it becomes predictable and it is like it never happened.

C:
For me the act of drawing is an event.
There is a moment when there is nothing going on but the act of drawing.

R:
And in your sculptures as well, when you use gravity as a way to shape the material.

C:
At the same time I am playing with a very clear sense of order - something to stay the course.

R:
How to preserve chance when you still have to deal with composition?

C:
At some point a drawing must have an edge.

R:
Ah that’s true, the subjectile!  it’s a malediction as Antonin Artaud puts it.
There are things you cannot avoid.

C:
That said I don’t see much difference between drawing and sculpture, they both invoke a physical event, their physicality is what makes them.