Interview
Ernestine Faux
Cultures vary yet blend in harmony — this insight has shaped artist Ernestine Faux and is expressed visually in her paintings. Ernestine Faux ́s art practice ranges from drawing, painting, relief work, three-dimensional sculptures or objects as a room or outdoor installations, and sound productions. She does work that wanders through cultures and disciplines and is inspired by a deep examination of the inner, invisible space of consciousness in interaction with the intensely traveled, outer world.
Born in Graz, AT, the freelance artist trained as an haute couture fashion artist in Vienna. She sought from early years to balance her interests between fashion design and visual art, so that her subsequent international career in the fashion industry shaped her work as an artist in part. Ernestine Faux spent more than 20 years in the Middle East and Asia before finally dedicating herself full-time in 1994 to her calling as an artist.
Since 1996, she lives in Austria and splits her creative working time between Austria and Bali. Spending decades on various continents interacting with different cultures, a life between East and West enabled her to develop a particular artistic, very universal, color language.
“My paintings, my artifacts, are minimalistic abstract acrylic or oil paintings using color as the main protagonist, which is realized with a brush on canvas; but what is important to me is to bring the inner sense, the actual inner being to the surface. This inner essence arises from a source, a landscape that may be strange, or frightening for the observing guest, because it eludes the rational and analytical world. I see experimenting with the contemplative power of colors as a materialized translation of the space between a presence in the here and over there, a tightrope walk between being and appearing.”
Just as her life spreads between Asia and Europe, there are also rooms and situations in her paintings, a space-between space, not separating with ‘either - or’, rather by allowing both worlds, bridging the ‘here’ as well as the ‘there’. You could call this a physical paradox, an unstable existence, or equilibrium, reflecting her personal as well as current mood through her color expressions.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“Austrian born, I was not a singing girl of the romantic movie out of ‘The Sound of Music’, nevertheless I grew up in a similar beautiful countryside south of Styria and did not fit into the normality of my urban family. As a girl from the age of four, I was constantly drawing and crafting on every scratch of paper or material I got hold of. My family supported my talent as best they could, but to study art was just not possible.
However, I received an education at the Fashion and Art Design School Vienna/ Hetzendorf. Soon after receiving my diploma as a ‘Haute Couture Designer’ I got curious and wanted to work abroad and travel the world. I managed to build a career as a fashion designer and created a balance between my other activities as a graphic artist and freelance artist working and living in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. By 1994, I was living on the island of Bali calling it my home-base. The freelance artist Ernestine Faux was born. As an autodidact in the world of painting, I chose to teach myself with regards to art - research, read, listen, take notes and visit artists. I experimented with different techniques of drawings, painting in various styles and I studied various books from Piccasso to Klimt and Egon Schiele to local artists. Influenced by the Balinese culture, I produced a series of illustrations in watercolour of the urban, native village life. In the years that followed, I painted in a naturalistic, impressionistic style in bright, pure and vibrant colors using materials like inks, watercolors on paper and acrylics on canvas.
Between 1996 till 2000 I lived between Bali, Indonesia and Styria, Austria. This had a very powerful transforming effect on my artwork. By 2000, with the sudden death of my father, I stopped painting for more than a year. Influenced by that deep personal experience, I realized the need and longing to return full time to Austria, my authentic background, and the level of consciousness with the surrounding of my culture. A radical change and reorientation took place, freeing my paintings of any figurative, realistic symbols or motives. Through clearing and emptying my paintings of objects, I found a new understanding and connection to the process of life and death and the vast space of the abstract world of paintings. Back in Austria, I met contemporary artists, visited not only classical music arrangements, modern museums and contemporary galleries, but continued my research and burning hunger for the history of art knowledge. I met the art historian and artist, Prof. Jochims Raimer, ex-director of the Steadle Art School Frankfurt, and embarked on joining in annual meetings, educational as well as explorative ongoing more then 15 years.
Inspired through the new input, as well as the enormous freedom that we experience here in Europe, this individual expression was a worthwhile path, because it connected me with my unique individual and history as an artist.”
“The work with pure color evolved to become my metamorphoses.
Simultaneous to paintings, I engaged in the research of hearing the colour and seeing the sound! Yes, I am a synaesthete, I hear the sound of the color while painting and that influences the choice of colors I paint.”
What inspires you?
“Over the past thirty years, I have committed myself to the study of color, light, and sound. I experience color consciously as a language of the emotions, not only perceived through the eyes but also penetrating body and spirit! This is in effect that inspires me and definitely influences my working process. While experimenting with the contemplative power of color, I engage with the vibrations emanating from it, reflecting my personal, as well as current mood through my color expressions.
Everthing interlocks. There is no difference between my work time and free time or the inner conditions and the outer world. My artwork is produced out of an inner state of space or center and peace. Of course, while my life is not always in a state of peace, it contains all the shades of ups and downs of life, and I withdraw into that, what I call ‘inner work’, ‘inner reflection’, or ‘contemplation’. My aim is to bring the color into shape and to communicate through and with color, not excluding one shade, or overemphasizing another. All shades of color is all that what life is, the dark shades, the light shades. Color is movement, color is life.”
What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?
“My paintings focus on pure color and the strong geometry of the circle and the square. I want people to look at my work and have it provoke sensations or thoughts like: ‘I have never seen anything quite like this before, I don’t know what it is, but this work really draws me in.’
‘Color field paintings’ rely completely on the viewer’s emotional response and that’s not easy to achieve. My works are sheer color and geometry and the viewer is invited to engage with them, to succumb to their feelings, rely on one’s sensitivity, and observe how the power of color affects them.
As with Malevich’s piece ‘Black square on white background’, rational thinking is inadequate. Instead we need to rely on our innermost feelings. Early on I dealt with the color gradients that thematize space and movement. Now I paint my pictures in several, very thin layers, from semi-covering to glazing, with a brush. Decelerated time gets all my attention during the creative process. The color gradients, the organic merging of the colors, heals the rigidity of the square form, or hard form of material. From the joy of the manual creation processes, I continue to paint what inspires me.
My work is probably also an attempt to contrast today’s optical chaos with something orderly. I believe that this trust in an aesthetic experience is particularly important these days. I would say that in our purpose - driven society, art is a way to radically connect to our present times.”
How would you describe your work?
“My art practice ranges from drawing, painting, 3D relief work, installations of sculptures - objects as room or outdoor installations, and sound work productions. I work with different materials, oil colors, acrylic colors, gouache pigments, 24 karat gold leaves, or silver and copper metal leaves or light-reflecting, iridescent colors. I paint using various techniques, draw, mold synthetic resin bodies, or do over 3 meter big sculptural disks, that stand free in nature. My paintings and artifacts are abstract, non-representational, reliefs or sculptural objects based on the color surface, and are realized with a brush on canvas or resin bodies. As an artist, I consciously understand color as a universal language as well as an emotional communication. In the works of art, I hope to succeed in bringing the inner essence, the actual being, to the surface and making it visible.
Most of the geometric stretchers, like oval, round, diamond-shaped are self-made in the atelier laboratory next door to the studio. For the relief forms, the color portal or the organic eye, etc., the base mold following my drawings is built, and then a form is cast out of synthetic resin. The sculptural forms are first wooden-shaped “disks” and then coated with structured fiberglass sheets. Especially with the reliefs and sculptures, a lot of time goes into grinding and polishing the surfaces.
My artwork made in oil paintings is produced in thinned-out oil washes, applying a few layers until the desired graduations, transitions of color shades are achieved. This is a slow, almost meditative process. For the large-sized artworks, I use 25 cm big brushes. It involves a certain physical state of fitness to be able to work a few hours ongoing by circling the brush over and over again, applying the same pressure on the surface of the artwork, with a strong grip. After days of such painting, I realize, that I am not only painting out of my own physical and mental concentration, but I somehow receive some extra power or energy that runs through me.”
Which artists influence you most?
“Not one, but a few, from Tizian to modern artists like Mark Rothko, Wassily Kandinsky, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Anish Kapoor, Malevich, Abramovic or Kosuma all the way to Austrian artists like Erwin Wurm, Herbert Brandl or more unknown artists like Raimer Jochims and curator friend and artist Manfred Makra.”
“Having traveled the world and experienced many cultures, I have come to realize the primacy of shape and color to the vast tapestry of human visual experience. We know from science that the difference between various colors is attributed to different wavelengths. We also know that different colors create different moods. I have used this knowledge as a point to ask, ‘how can I expand the possibilities available in perception?’”
What is an artist’s role in society and how do you see that evolving?
“Through our daily struggle and the input of media and society, we are trained to focus on problems, on having more, and on criticizing what is. I like to invite people through my artworks to focus on colors, geometric shapes, and their aesthetic appearance in an effort to widen one’s narrow view, and shift to the beauty of every moment. I hope to show through my visual creations, that there is something beyond, something more magnificent and touchingly freer than the everyday human brain may understand. I feel that is the mission of art- and my mission. They're sort of a window to beyond.
Like the sponsor of Mark Rothkos, Dominique de Menil said in an interview 1972: “It was always intended to be more than an art gallery”. She saw it as a meeting place — a gathering place of people who are not just going to debate and discuss theological problems, but who are going to meet because they want to find contact with other people. They are searching for this brotherhood of humanity.
Studios, galleries, Museums, Art-Places and Events carry the potential of the seeds for a way to communicate, live and share together, talk about values, respect and human rights. Art is a radical way to shine light through the cracks of our human armoring and self-limitation. It’s not about a new religious outlet, but a new place to feel safe. Inside and outside.”
Have you had any noteworthy exhibitions you'd like to share?
LONDON CONTEMPORARY ART FAIR 2021
September 09. – October 01. 2021
I organized by ITSLIQUID Group in collaboration with YMX Arts, at THE LINE Contemporary Art Space! LONDON CONTEMPORARY analyzes the relationship between body and space, and the hybridization between identities and cultural/physical/social/urban settings in contemporary time.
“THE COLOUR SYMBOLS – TRINAGLE – CROSS – CIRCLE is the artist´s visual invitation to question things, to break dogmas how we see, and what we think, that we see and what we feel about, what we see.” (Selma Ertl)
VENICE International ART FAIRFRAGMENTED IDENTITIES
July 13 to August 01, 2021
PALAZZO ALBRIZZI CAPELLO – VENICE
