You just had surgery? Is everything alright? What happened?
Yeah I just had surgery for the second time in my life. The first time they waited until I was awake to remove the catheter so life is improving. I got appendicitis and almost died if it weren’t for Snow White (my girlfriend) telling me to go to the E.R. They rushed me in to surgery and also found a hernia which they fixed at the same time. It went pretty smooth though thankfully.
Do you think this will have any effect on your work?
Currently I am working on small works due to medical lifting restrictions temporarily on anything over twenty lbs. That is really the only way it is affecting my craft. As it stands I have a solid understanding on the desires of my design capability so I’ll be focusing on reducing my pin stripes to smaller geometric forms.
How is the scene in Dallas?
The scene in Dallas is actually very healthy at the moment thanks to the Internet. There are some pretty exciting things going on here right now. It seems like a bit of a renaissance of art and culture at the moment. Our down town Dallas arts district now has like more institutional bldgs. Designed by Pritzker accredited people than I think anywhere else or something like that plus we are neighbor cities to Fort Worth which has a world class museum district so in that regard there is never a dull moment. On the grass roots level it’s equally as healthy. There are just enough fresh out of art school art elitist Nazi-like hipsters to keep the critics happy. On the real though, we have Jeremy Strick and Maxwell Anderson really stepping up the programming at The Nasher and The D.M.A. I was blown away to see Katharina Grosse recently for the first time in Dallas. Across the street Mr. Anderson made the Dallas Museum of Art with Free admission. The advent of an annual art fair in recent years here has also spurred added international attention as well as the new programming with Peter Doroshenko at The Dallas Contemporary. So yeah. I’d say it’s been very progressive here.
Is it true you are a high school drop out?
Yes, this is true. In that regard I am an outsider. Dallas was always very stand-offish towards me for that reason. It’s not a town for outsider artists. My art is not identifiable with that type of jargon, but it’s true. I have a 9th grade high school education and that’s it. The tipping point was when I had to go to alternative school and they wanted to make me pull my pants up, tuck my shirt in and wear a belt. I set my books down and officially dropped out at that point. I believe my conduct with my Algebra teacher led me to alternative school. I figured out a word problem without her formula and got in trouble and then blew up and it all went downhill from there. I used to draw pentagrams on my homework assignments just to mess with her. Such a moron, but a funny moron so time well spent. The only regret about leaving high school was that I couldn’t play my Tenor Saxophone any longer because I could not afford one other than the school provided. I was good at it and loved to play.
must be filtered through in order to become manifest. One of those systems being “math”. But no, Math, to me is not readily identifiable for my work and only pertains to a facet of its overall make-up.
Where are some places you have shown? Any crazy stories?
In the beginning I used to show my work at bars and sidewalks. I sold some really good pieces for really cheap to drunk people and hope it’s not lost as a result. There was one really rich guy that paid me for a big canvas and he told me that it was going to be a family heirloom. He was pretty cool. I also showed on a side walk across the street from the local contemporary art dealers of dallas 2nd annual art fair back when those people were not my friends. I loaded my truck up, stacked the art in the bed and leaned it on a vacant warehouse wall. The people driving out from the art fair looked and laughed at me. No one stopped. Now, not even ten years later I am starting to show in museums so whateva.
Your work seems pretty mathematical, is it really?
“Mathematical” is only one form of a lowered manifestation of absolute universal truth. I suppose that there are several veils that the transmission of my work
What has been one of the most valuable things you have learned so far in this life as an artist?
To put art second and life first. I have been working so hard trying to get off the ground with output and innovation in my work for about ten years and have lost personally in different ways. Playing the role of an artist I have also re-affirmed other personal beliefs about life such as endeavoring with an independent outlook. Art has always been about freedom of expression, but once kids starting piddling around with art school and chasing the scene many of them get caught up in trends and the life style (whatever that is) of being an artist which is totally backwards. I have a saying, “life over art” and will always believe in what it can offer. As far as my craft as an artist is concerned I have benefitted positively with the evolution of my experience in life.
My art has evolved at some points to very high degrees of tolerance in design and this has cultivated my mental focus in general which has benefitted my life in greater way such as reading the directions on whatever it may be, be it assembling some weird piece of furniture or programming a television without aggravation. Also, I have opened myself up to the complex world of chemicals and how they relate to each other in regards to my various processes which also require greater focus. I don’t really feel I have learned about life as an artist rather my beliefs in and about life have informed my experience positively as an artist for the most part.
Hightest point in your art career was when?
I was asked to be in, For Which It Stands, an internationally published book of contemporary artists who celebrate Americana. I was hand selected along side artists like Ai Weiwei, Kevin Berlin, Shepard Fairey, Steve McQueen, Barbara Kruger, and Vik Muniz.
I first noticed your work in the form of murals around the city of Miami years ago. How do you feel about all the murals in the city?
What are some things you are working on now?
If you could describe your work as a food by its smell, texture and taste...what would that food be?
Where are your favorite places to go in the world?
You work a lot with brands. How did that happen? Was it planned that way?
Lowest point in your art career was when?
Hightest point in your art career was when?
METRO VANCOUVER -- A 25-year-old man is facing charges in Coquitlam after a suspect dressed in a BMX bike helmet, skiing goggles and a furry werewolf costume glove allegedly tried to steal items from a truck.
RCMP said Thursday the Prolific Target Team (PTT) was targeting a prolific offender in the Burquitlam area when an unusually dressed bike rider strolled through the area.
Despite the disguise, investigators said they knew who the rider was.
Police said he got off his bike and started rummaging through a parked truck on the street, allegedly stealing surveying tools worth more than $30,000 and hiding them behind a tree. Then he tried to ride away with the tools.
"If it wasn't for the keen observation skill and the swift action of the PTT investigators, the suspect would have gotten away," said Corp. Jamie Chung in a statement. "Needless to say, the suspect was arrested red handed and we were able to recover all the tools."
Jackie Gleason was an American comedian that was extremely famous during the 1950’s and 1960’s. One of Gleason’s most famous projects was the sitcom The Honeymooners, which debuted in 1955. Although it became extremely famous, it suffered initially and was canceled after only 39 episodes.
What does this have to do with The Flintstones? In 1960, the animated sitcom The Flintstones debuted. While extremely successful, many people recognized that the two shows were extremely similar, with almost identical characters and premise.
There was longstanding controversy over the matter, but an official statement was never given until 1993 when the co-creator of The Flintstones admitted that it was based on The Honeymooners. Before the admission, Jackie Gleason contemplated suing but decided against it saying he didn’t want to be remembered as “the guy who yanked Fred Flintstone off the air.”
Tomasz
Kobialka
No Parking, Oil paint, dry pastel and spray on linen, 120 x 70cm - 2011
Tomasz is a Polish born Australian painter, presently living and working in Berlin. “Freedom is a destructive concept that involves the absolute elimination of all limits.”
Julius Hofmann doesn’t illustrate invented stories. He portrays what is inside him: doubt and fear, possible danger and threats, and he plays with temptations, metamorphoses and masquerades. His stories come into being during painting, and are made with brushes and paint, and also with saws, cutters, cardboard, glue or on the computer. Their meaning changes, is expanded or deleted, often faster than they came into being. Julius Hofmann is a filmmaker. He’s a filmmaker, but above all he’s an actor, a make-up artist, a set designer, a cameraman, a editor, a sound engineer and director, all in one. His films, though few, are nevertheless of high quality, and compact in an oppressive way, just like his paintings, which look like condensed films. It is implied that things have happened and that afterwards anything is possible. A road to a dark forest, water that is devoured by the night, a shadow kingdom behind a wall. The young artist appears to have left behind trails, tempting us to look at something.
Hofmann feels connected to the romantic artists, who always left something open, something to guess at. Like them, he doesn’t feel comfortable with the classical harmony of ‘noble simplicity and silent greatness’. He’s closer to symbolism, just as Francis Bacon, who suppressed his doubts and loneliness with the images he made. But examples aren’t the starting point of the word of forms and motifs of Julius Hofmann. His starting point is the tension between the flood of media images that surrounds him, which he dissects with his keen glance, and the world of silence that he soaks up for his wealth of images and souls during his long cycle rides. In the beginning there is only chaos. Within that he starts weaving his threads and from that he constructs his paintings. Some have enticing, friendly colours, others are brightly coloured. There aren’t many figures, but they are full of symbolism. The most prominent character in the paintings and films is a man with a dog mask. The mask makes him both invisible and acts as a protective helmet, to combat villains and to suffer together with prisoners. Murderers appear too, but they already show the face of death. Femininity looks like cast porcelain and mobile technology is indispensable for the image world of the painter and sculptor. Here, he is a man of his time. But he is also someone who tests the designer’s harmonies and looks for the boundaries of destruction.
Julius Hofmann makes a breach in the wallpaper of our daily image mania and gives us a view of his world. Better yet: He tempts us to discover a counter-world that looks fierce in order to protect something fragile. (Bernd Sikora)
