Tim Berresheim
Tim Berresheim, born in Germany in 1975 has been working frantically both as visual artist, art promoter (running from 2002 to 2004 the exhibition room Brotherslasher and from 2006 to 2010 FYW) and experimental musician producing his independent label New America for the last ten years. His diverse practice is hard to define and categorize and is born from the encounter between painting, photography and computer generated images. His works often deceptively look like what they are not: photographs or paintings, and have the capacity to challenge the limits of traditional media and question the power and the use of images in contemporary society. Berresheim has been producing digitally manipulated images since 2000, working initially more on a collage based structural composition that has progressively become more painterly. The fact that his work is so difficult to unravel is a conscious choice and is linked to a programmatic philosophical hermetism.
Ilaria Bonacossa interviews Tim Berresheim
I.B. I am fascinated by the complexity of your practice and by the fact that in many of your projects you have decided to work collaboratively with other artists often even releasing part of the creative project. Can you tell me a little bit about these collaborations?
T.B. The most important thing about the collaborations with Jonathan Meese (2002 – 2005) was the fun in producing things together, i.e. we met on the level of producing, most of the ideas weren't essential or marking a new step in our own ouevres. Recording almost 20 records together in four years was simply a result of the pleasure we had in doing it. I think my collaborations with Thomas Arnolds (2005 to 2009) can be seen under the same light. An important point for the picture we did together is that, as W. Brauneis stated, differently to other collaborations between painters and non-painters here painting does not have the final say. That is both a technical and a theoretical aspect.
I.B. So lets talk about the curator and critic Wolfgang Brauneis, who seems to be the key interpreter of your work. Is he involved also in the development of your projects? Do you feel the need for a filtered reading of your work?
T.B. Since 2004 Wolfgang is regularly writing about my work, he is also responsible for the two most basic texts. Recently we also started to collaborate, for the exhibtion "Future Gipsy Antifolklore (What?!)" Marc Jancou (2010), we extensively studied Ernst Gombrich's "Art as Illusion" together, which was an important background for that exhibition. The result of our discussion was published as an artist book. Soon we will start on an extensive interview book. I think our permanent exchange is very important for what I call additive knowledge, that probably, but not necessarily can lead to a knowledge about images. But once a picture is done, it's done – no matter what he or anyone else is saying or thinking about it. I think there are other important examples of long lasting collaborations between artists and art historians, like Francis Bacon and David Sylvester or Mike Kelley and John Welchmann. Of course I didn't plan something like that, but it happened.
I.B. As far as I understand music is for you as important as visual arts. Who are your references in the music world? Do you feel your creativity develops the music and visual sphere in parallel or are you developing different projects that alternatively become more urgent?
T.B. The musical references are pretty eclectic, from Sun Ra to Scooter, I would say. For some reason my solo releases (two of them actually were released on Eventuell, W. bauneis' labels) were in conceptual and/or thematical proximity to the visual work I was working on. The arrangement of my recent retrospective at the Kunstverein Leverkusen dealt with the issue of WTF through the confrontation of pictures of different phases. The idea of WTF was expanded with the CD I released for the exhibition "pondering WTF (no methodology)" that dealt with different approaches to alarm (experimental ambient vs. jumpstyle). My first solo release "No Time Left" from 2005 dealt with similar issues as the "Lake" series I did with Thomas Arnolds and there is also a strong connection between those picture and the photographs I did for the cover.
I.B. At Cardi Black Box you present a small retrospective of your career choosing one work from each series from 2005 to today. The works together are so different that it is hard to feel they have developed one from the other and because of this you have decided to show an artist book that collects the whole series as a way of offering an entrance in your works progressive transformation. Is this a way of offering the Italian public a narrative or did you feel in your practice in general it was the time to mark a specific moment?
T.B. Right now I do indeed feel that it actually is the time to present a kind of retrospective exhibition. This was and is the case in Leverkusen and here at Cardi Black Box, but that also will be the case at the exhibition I'll present with Hartmut Neuman at the Kunstmuseum Celle in June. I produced quite some stuff in the last few years and I had the impression that the viewers started getting lost... I wanted to take the opportunity to present the stringency of the works since 2005, their development, their peculiarities.
I.B. You have always worked with computer-generated images as a way of working on composition form and at the same time negating a narrative reading of the images. Can you explain the genesis of the work as (quoting Brauneis) curators often don't have much knowledge of computer generated …
T.B. Quoting W. Brauneis in the catalogue Condition Tidiness :"These hybrid pictures remain enigmatic –additionally secured by their self-referential grid – and assert themselves as synthetic, not decodable alternative drafts to media specific analysis and cultural formats. Including the latest technical possibilities, the previously unseen and unimaginable is being visualised."
I.B. Looking at your work the first feeling is of uncanny surrealism and unsettling post-pop that seems to voluntarily push the viewer away. Yet it also calls for a specific attention to forms, shadows and composition letting the narrative behind the work gradually become insignificant. Are these the reactions you are looking for?
T.B. Yes. Although it's not my aim to push the viewer away that would be too simple and also would be based on established premises. I want to create a rare experience, images with a very peculiar power.
I.B. Upstairs at the gallery you will present seven different wood-prints that seem to be abstract expressionist artworks gone digital and crazy. They are composed of brush strokes, lines, hair-like shapes (wigs have been central to your work other times) that seem to have finally crystallized a form of random chaos. In a way this work seems more classical or maybe more painterly? This is connected to the absence of recognizable figures and objects on the other it radically questions painting in contemporary society. Can you tell me something about them?
T.B. I am aware that with those images I enter a classification system that is defined by abstract gestures. But I hope to succeed in presenting pictures that can be read as abstract works, but, at the same time, as figurative (as conglomerates of hair or wire). Here we have to deal with abstract works, which can be mapped in every detail that can be located inside the pictorial space. Not only because – as Wolfgang wrote – all those lines and figures and not traces, but figurations, speaking about being more painterly, they are a comment on the myths of painting. I don't dislike painting in general. It's just that I think the hype of painting in the art of the 2000s and 2010s combined with the fact that there are so many new technological possibilities to produce works of art that are neglected is a sign for a pretty anachronistic and neoconservative state of things.
Ilaria Bonacossa interviews Tim Berresheim
I.B. I am fascinated by the complexity of your practice and by the fact that in many of your projects you have decided to work collaboratively with other artists often even releasing part of the creative project. Can you tell me a little bit about these collaborations?
T.B. The most important thing about the collaborations with Jonathan Meese (2002 – 2005) was the fun in producing things together, i.e. we met on the level of producing, most of the ideas weren't essential or marking a new step in our own ouevres. Recording almost 20 records together in four years was simply a result of the pleasure we had in doing it. I think my collaborations with Thomas Arnolds (2005 to 2009) can be seen under the same light. An important point for the picture we did together is that, as W. Brauneis stated, differently to other collaborations between painters and non-painters here painting does not have the final say. That is both a technical and a theoretical aspect.
I.B. So lets talk about the curator and critic Wolfgang Brauneis, who seems to be the key interpreter of your work. Is he involved also in the development of your projects? Do you feel the need for a filtered reading of your work?
T.B. Since 2004 Wolfgang is regularly writing about my work, he is also responsible for the two most basic texts. Recently we also started to collaborate, for the exhibtion "Future Gipsy Antifolklore (What?!)" Marc Jancou (2010), we extensively studied Ernst Gombrich's "Art as Illusion" together, which was an important background for that exhibition. The result of our discussion was published as an artist book. Soon we will start on an extensive interview book. I think our permanent exchange is very important for what I call additive knowledge, that probably, but not necessarily can lead to a knowledge about images. But once a picture is done, it's done – no matter what he or anyone else is saying or thinking about it. I think there are other important examples of long lasting collaborations between artists and art historians, like Francis Bacon and David Sylvester or Mike Kelley and John Welchmann. Of course I didn't plan something like that, but it happened.
I.B. As far as I understand music is for you as important as visual arts. Who are your references in the music world? Do you feel your creativity develops the music and visual sphere in parallel or are you developing different projects that alternatively become more urgent?
T.B. The musical references are pretty eclectic, from Sun Ra to Scooter, I would say. For some reason my solo releases (two of them actually were released on Eventuell, W. bauneis' labels) were in conceptual and/or thematical proximity to the visual work I was working on. The arrangement of my recent retrospective at the Kunstverein Leverkusen dealt with the issue of WTF through the confrontation of pictures of different phases. The idea of WTF was expanded with the CD I released for the exhibition "pondering WTF (no methodology)" that dealt with different approaches to alarm (experimental ambient vs. jumpstyle). My first solo release "No Time Left" from 2005 dealt with similar issues as the "Lake" series I did with Thomas Arnolds and there is also a strong connection between those picture and the photographs I did for the cover.
I.B. At Cardi Black Box you present a small retrospective of your career choosing one work from each series from 2005 to today. The works together are so different that it is hard to feel they have developed one from the other and because of this you have decided to show an artist book that collects the whole series as a way of offering an entrance in your works progressive transformation. Is this a way of offering the Italian public a narrative or did you feel in your practice in general it was the time to mark a specific moment?
T.B. Right now I do indeed feel that it actually is the time to present a kind of retrospective exhibition. This was and is the case in Leverkusen and here at Cardi Black Box, but that also will be the case at the exhibition I'll present with Hartmut Neuman at the Kunstmuseum Celle in June. I produced quite some stuff in the last few years and I had the impression that the viewers started getting lost... I wanted to take the opportunity to present the stringency of the works since 2005, their development, their peculiarities.
I.B. You have always worked with computer-generated images as a way of working on composition form and at the same time negating a narrative reading of the images. Can you explain the genesis of the work as (quoting Brauneis) curators often don't have much knowledge of computer generated …
T.B. Quoting W. Brauneis in the catalogue Condition Tidiness :"These hybrid pictures remain enigmatic –additionally secured by their self-referential grid – and assert themselves as synthetic, not decodable alternative drafts to media specific analysis and cultural formats. Including the latest technical possibilities, the previously unseen and unimaginable is being visualised."
I.B. Looking at your work the first feeling is of uncanny surrealism and unsettling post-pop that seems to voluntarily push the viewer away. Yet it also calls for a specific attention to forms, shadows and composition letting the narrative behind the work gradually become insignificant. Are these the reactions you are looking for?
T.B. Yes. Although it's not my aim to push the viewer away that would be too simple and also would be based on established premises. I want to create a rare experience, images with a very peculiar power.
I.B. Upstairs at the gallery you will present seven different wood-prints that seem to be abstract expressionist artworks gone digital and crazy. They are composed of brush strokes, lines, hair-like shapes (wigs have been central to your work other times) that seem to have finally crystallized a form of random chaos. In a way this work seems more classical or maybe more painterly? This is connected to the absence of recognizable figures and objects on the other it radically questions painting in contemporary society. Can you tell me something about them?
T.B. I am aware that with those images I enter a classification system that is defined by abstract gestures. But I hope to succeed in presenting pictures that can be read as abstract works, but, at the same time, as figurative (as conglomerates of hair or wire). Here we have to deal with abstract works, which can be mapped in every detail that can be located inside the pictorial space. Not only because – as Wolfgang wrote – all those lines and figures and not traces, but figurations, speaking about being more painterly, they are a comment on the myths of painting. I don't dislike painting in general. It's just that I think the hype of painting in the art of the 2000s and 2010s combined with the fact that there are so many new technological possibilities to produce works of art that are neglected is a sign for a pretty anachronistic and neoconservative state of things.
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