Internationale Sommerakademie fuer Bildende Kunst in Salzburg, Austria 08/01/06 - 08/26/06
Artist Statement

            In the summer of 2006, I travelled to Salzburg, Austria, to attend the Internationale Sommerakademie fuer Bildende Kunst (International Summer Academy for Visual Arts). The painting course was taught by the Zou Brothers. They are originally from Beijing, China, but now live and work in Chicago. The course was titled "Feeling is Freedom" and was meant to expose and challenge the artist to succomb to the more inspirational side of creating art, rather than my more familiar terrain of analytically derived content.

            The Zou Brothers have worked in tandem for the past 30 years. Theirs is much a performance as anything at this point in their careers. Their large scale works are created at celebrated events and executed with drama and flare. They often use long poles as brushes and treat the enormous canvases as cave walls, making marks in a fevered yet stylized way. I took these methods and produced several installations that were not meant as permanent objects. The site specific paper collages evoke the spirit of the space as well as the ethos of the course. I utilized salt found in the warehouse by rubbing the paper (along with charcoal and paint) to achieve tones and colors. The structures have an organic relationship to the building's architecture that mimics the town's history and dependence on the mining of salt. As a local told me, it's not called Salzburg for nothing.

Garland Fielder
03/18/07