Text by Cless.
When I spoke to Max on the phone and he invited me to do this little project, the first thing I thought of was how we worked 20 years ago and how that way of working has evolved. I remember going with my partner Fres through the streets while we were looking for cardboard and tagging urban furniture. I remember taking photos while tagging a container full of cardboard and I remember putting my BlackBerry away and putting my arms in the cardboard container to look for magazines in it. The norm in my city, I think in all cities, is for people who recycle to take their cartons, magazines and newspapers down to the paper bins, and many people put their magazines and books in the top of the container so that someone else can take them away. In Dresden, for example, they leave books and magazines in boxes on the street or on the shelf outside their windows.
I remember that at the beginning I worked with things I picked up from the ground, small pieces of paper or metal, pieces of adhesive tape that were stuck on lampposts or walls; I picked up tickets and fruit boxes and small cartons and with that we played at emulating great feats that we had seen on the internet like the first websites of Eduardo Recife, The Beast by {ths}, or the Blodwars Magazine by SFaustina. For us, the street was everything and had everything. We painted on it and it provided us with the stuff to be able to take graffiti, typography or art a step further.
I got so used to picking up magazines from the street that I remember funny episodes with my sisters who were nervous and embarrassed that I was looking in the containers. They wanted nothing to do with me (lol). After a while, somehow, they started to accept it and even encouraged me to continue to pick up magazines. I remember one day I went with my mother, at that time she had her shopping trolley, and we stopped a couple of times to pick up a bunch of magazines to put them in the trolley because they were heavy.
I have collected a lot of magazines, A LOT! And I have also had magazine “dealers”. Mostly from my own family and friends but I remember one client who brought me quite a few boxes full of magazines in her car and I still have several at home.
I love everything that comes out of the street. I’m a collector of books, fanzines and magazines, well, and many other things related to paper, but I’m totally incapable of cutting that material, I appreciate it too much. Imagine, I open the books at 45º to try not to damage the spine or spoil the gluing too much… how am I going to cut a book? It’s great not to have to buy anything to cut out and to be able to find treasures in the street, although I admit that everything changed with the pandemic and I stopped picking them up.
Fortunately, at home I have boxes and boxes and lots of selected sheets as well as pieces to cut out so it’s not a worry for me.
I know there are many artists who prefer vintage material and buy second hand or at flea markets, I think it’s great. I would buy it for collecting, but for cutting out I look for a thin paper, lighter than a sheet of paper, a little less than 80gr. I like thin paper because the cutting is smooth and clean, with scissors of course, and when I glue one layer on top of another, there is hardly any difference or jump of paper to be seen and the resulting piece looks like a single unified image. For years I have been playing with creating analogue pieces that look like a photo or a digitised image and working the digital collage that looks like it has been cut by hand.
One of the many stories that go through my head, but going back to the subject of paper thickness, for me it is important that the weight is fine and perhaps a very specific type of magazine that contains images of all kinds, which don’t have to be fashion or a specific theme. I work with all kinds of magazines but what I really like is to let myself be seduced by images that for other people go unnoticed or are discarded. I love to select them and work with them to elevate them to another level.
I love art and photography and, on many occasions, I use works by artists and photos of public figures to start creating my portraits or compositions, including food whenever I can, as a nod to my mother because she is a great cook, and I have become obsessed with the eyes and the looks that at first, I discarded and now they are a fundamental part and personal mark in my work. I became obsessed with Hannah Hoch and her “Der Strauss”.
