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Trevor Guthrie
Page 1 | 2 | Biography
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The Ghost of Steve Irwin, 2006 90 x 110 cm
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Excerpts from Noah Becker interviewing Trevor Guthrie Nov. 17th 2006
NB: Some of your work recalls cinematic and photographic procedures can you explain your connection with photographs and the cinema?
TG: I have used a polaroid camera for about fifteen years now. It was British painter Francis Bacon`s mode of working with photos that lead me to investigate the photo as source material. I have hundreds of polaroids now but lately I have been appropriating found images more often.
The cinema is an omnipresent art-form which invariably has a broad reaching influence. One must only think of how much material Bacon appropriated from Battleship Potemkin.
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Better to Burn Out than to Fade Away,2006
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NB: So you are citing bacon as your primary influence or are there others?
TG: My influences were Velasquez and Caravaggio if not Holbein. As a figurative painter who lived and worked through the dark ages of the 90`s, when painting was disregarded everywhere, I stuck to figurative painting when it was not cool. I didn't try to be a conceptual artist just to get into the game.
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Myself on the #67,2006 85 x 100 cm
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The Spread of Democracy, 2006 60 x 120 cm
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Untitled, 2006 65 x 85 cm
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NB: How can you elaborate on the situation in the european art scene now from the perspective of the political climate in relation to the artist and the stylistic demands in relation to current trends in painting?
TG: Firstly, I think a political climate anywhere, good or bad, is material for an artist -he should only be free to express himself. In any epoch stylistic demands are a form of self censorship. I don`t follow trends.
NB: Do you have political issues in your work?
TG: They are present yes. The viewer should have something to chew on while sipping his white wine -I prefer to take a subtle approach however.
NB: What does a picture like the one about fox news mean to you politically?
TG: It is about cheerleading for an illegal war.
NB: There is a combination of morbidity and humor in your work. Why do you find old photographs interesting as source material?
TG: How they relate to the present.
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NB: Is there an element of anger in your work? It seems like you are using historical photos for a reason.
TG: Its not so much anger as "if one doesn`t study history, they are doomed to repeat it" and we seem to be repeating things that my subjects endured 50 or a 100 years ago
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Construct with marzipan, icing, silverware...
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Openings:
12.02.06 McCaig-Welles Gallery 129 Roebling st. Brooklyn, NY
12.06.06 Scope Miami with Galerie Römerapotheke Stand 20
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