We Want Paper Tommy Lee

[Janeth Counter]

Marina Lopes Coelho: When observing your work one sees a dichotomy. On one hand, there is the preciseness and high-technological aspect of the geometrical shapes and its computer-generated calculations for mathematical growth and fractal patterning. On the other hand, there is the simplicity of the material utilized, such as paper and cardboard, which are usually used for temporary models, added to its manual execution, which also presents a handcraft or DIY aspect. Would you like to talk about your relation to technology and the reasons for your preference of using these particular materials?

I started working with materials from the model-making world because it was something that I really could work with, controlling the outcome. It was important to have a level of precision in the work, but only in terms of what is possible to do as a human being. I thought of types of works that the viewers could be able to see how they had been made and also their small imperfections. I used the materials as I acquired them, not really processing them more than just cutting or assembling. They became more and more like ready-made materials. It was also important for me that the viewer could identify both with the processing of the materials and that they came from the local art supply shop. It also became an interest for me that the work at a slight distance would look completely artificial, but when you would get closer to it, you would notice that they do have small imperfections and they are really handmade in my studio and not fabricated in China, completely perfect, made in bronze or in marble.

MLC: Most of the titles of your former exhibitions such as The Shape of Things to Come (Charlottenborg Udstillingsbygning, Copenhagen, 2005), Even Great Futures Will One Day Become Pasts (Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, 2006), When Pasts and Futures Meet (The Nordic Embassies, Berlin, 2008), Tommy Stckel's Art of Tomorrow (Arnolfini, Bristol, 2009), make reference to the concept of time, in both optimistic and melancholic ways. Your works present an optimistic concept of time, when alluding to a futuristic visuality in a undefined future, and at the same time, a nostalgic and apocalyptic sense of decay and destruction with no possibilities of things to come. What is your relation with this concept of time that you develop in your work?

TS: When I started working with sculpture, I was working with the spatial aspect of the sculptures, with different sorts of distortions of space and distortions of the materials. After some time I needed another challenge, and another aspect I could add was the idea of time having an influence on the work, as they have this temporary quality because, even though they seem solid and permanent, they are actually very fragile and temporary. I started making sculptures, which had been finished at some point but then had been left somewhere to decay by themselves, or to be vandalized. I tried to come up with the most interesting and exotic ways that the sculptures could have broken, or could have decayed: someone knocked it over, or the surface would peel off and other materials would appear underneath. I also invented the idea that when they would break, other things would appear from inside the plinth. Slowly, I started to develop the sculptures as installations, with cardboard walls, which appeared to have fallen down, as a way of trying to work with a very traditional romantic idea of decay.

This very romantic idea of decay was inspired by many different things. First of all, the romantic idea of the anticipated ruins of the English gardens from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Inspired by thoughts of why people would have these gardens where they would create small ruins of antique temples hidden somewhere within. Also, it was inspired by science fiction, especially the idea of apocalypse, and the fictions that I would imagine: cities and continents that we know today in a state where everything would be destroyed. I am interested in these descriptions of imagining what we recognize in our everyday it in a different state. And it was also inspired by post-modern architecture of the seventies, specifically an American architectural group of the seventies and eighties who created buildings in the shape of fake ruins, but also through experiencing decay in Berlin today.

MLC: About the exhibition at Smart Projects Space, 3 Sculptures: There you dealt with time in the opposite way. You where showing something that was happening during the setting up of the exhibition with the photographs on the walls.

TS: I think that actually none of the architectural elements that I do actually relate to anything real. A couple of times, I have made these fake pillars, fake columns, and they would sometimes mimic the other columns that were in the space. But otherwise, something like the work for the Kunstverein, there is no architecture that looks like that. The architectures that I use are like stage sets. I try to give context and meaning to the materials when I work with them. In that way, I want them to really appear like stage sets for theatre or film. I would say they are all stereotypes as well. They are all kind of generic ideas of what a wall is, or what a ruin is, or what ancient architecture is.

TS: Tommy Stkel's Art of Tomorrow was in a way trying to think of time, looking forward, but in a more rational way. It was for an exhibition where I was invited to do a work about futurology, the science of predicting the future. For that, instead of thinking of what futurology usually is about, I decided to bring it to a very personal level and try to predict how my own art production could possibly develop in the future. I tried to see logical ways in which my work could develop, not only the really good and interesting ways, but also the ways that you normally would not want if you are a young artist, or that you maybe would not respect an artist for moving into.

There you could see the idea of it developing into architecture, or into more minimal art, and through that into furniture design. There were other branches that would show my work developing into Op Art, working with signs and language and diagrams, and also another branch in which I chose trash materials and ended up working with clay, something that I have never imagined myself working with. At one of the dead ends of this big diagram, there were these abstractions over a hand made in clay, which I think is something as far as possible from what I do now, or what I really want to do in the future.

They are all models in a way, generic models of something, or representations of something. I would say that it is a big diagram, which has the shape of a kind of cogs in a machine. They are all systems, which are interconnected at the outer edges of these wheels or circular systems. It is just a shape that I came up with. I wouldn't say that there is a hierarchical system at all. I would say that some of the circles are bigger, with more variations and maybe more presence in terms of time in the development. It is really based on very personal ideas of art and in terms of a general artistic career, and I hope that many of these things would not happen to me, that my work would not develop in those ways.

TS: The works that I had been making before this were almost exclusively sculptures that consisted of plinths and objects. When I made this work in 2006, I wanted to break with the idea of the presentation platform, and tried to make a work which was quite big and spread out on the floor. I chose some simple geometric shapes and repeated and reduced in size, again and again, so that it became like fractals, sculptures that grew like a fractal or mathematical trees. I basically have these objects randomly placed on the floor, with no real specific relationships to each other, loosely lying around. I saw them as building blocks for other sculptures that I could have been doing. But then, through the system of this sculpture, all these shapes exactly in that configuration would be copied and reproduced to half size and placed around and then again copied and reproduced half size and placed around, and again and again, becoming a very strict system.

TS: I think I wouldn't say that I get my references only from the art world. Of course there are many interesting artists and many things influencing me, but generally inspiration comes from everywhere, as much from cheap fiction, as from high architecture or high art.

Let me introduce you to Tommy Perez's paper crafting. His papercraft catches my eye where I had to stop to have a closer look at it, won't you? The OCD in me had me smirk to his work, clean, sharp paper cut, and even tho it's just a picture but you can feel the paper texture through it. We all know this takes time and precision to archive what he does, and god he does it well While in confinement, I had papers laying around and trying to keep my kids entertained without giving them a screen, and I craft many things, dug up memories of younger years of myself in elementary school things we did for fun to redo it, and I've tried to find inspiration online but nothing I did look like Tommy's work. Ok, now I want Tommy's skills because I want to make those fun paper crafts for my kids.

This is being written as I sit on my back porch overlooking beautiful Lake D'Arbonne during the August 21 st, 2017 lunar eclipse. The following is something I felt needed to put to paper, but if you feel a need to take a short nap, please feel free to do so since it will not hurt my feelings.

God blessed me from birth with a mother who was the kindest, most generous, and hardworking person I ever met. In that same household was my grandparents who were married for 62 years and served as extended parents and role models. My mother spent many hours teaching me how to fish, hunt, and develop an appreciation for the great outdoors.

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