ARTIST STATEMENT – WEHRENS
I am a POP artist heavily influenced by DADA, SURREALISM and the Situationists who in his practice does comics, paintings, etchings, prints, sculptures made of found objects and other materials like papier mache, wood, plastic, metal, fibreglass.
There is a long quote from a book by Hans Richter called DADA ART AND ANTI-ART that in some ways describes the black and white, agree and disagree at the same time approach I have to my art.
“I have been looking for a motto which could be used to sum up the “new” Dada situation which is apparent in contemporary art. It describes itself as Neo-Dada, Non-Realism, Pop Art, etc. I can find not one slogan, or one motto, but several.
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“The desert grows, woe to him who bears deserts within himself.”
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“Art must first be totally despised, it must first be thought totally pointless, before it can once more come into it's own.” (Philipp Otto Runge)
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“I have seldom seen so much inventiveness combined with so little talent.” (L.K.)
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“Kitsch is always in the process of escaping rationality.” (Hermann Broch)
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“Dada fell like a raindrop from Heaven. The Neo-Dadists have learnt to imitate the fall, but not the raindrop.”(Raoul Hausmann)
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“The new art is a contribution to art criticism.” (Harold Rosenberg in the New Yorker)
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“Like a joke without humour, told over and over again until it begins to sound like a threat.” (ibid)
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“Advertising art which advertises itself as art that hates advertising.” (ibid)
Humour is essential to my art. Al Capp the cartoonist who did Lil' Abner said that if we didn't laugh we would cry. Humour can help us solve problems and makes us human.
VINYL TO MP3
In 2013, I was in in a Group Show at Hamilton Art Inc called Envisage 3. My exhibit was called from Vinyl to MP3 which were a series of paintings of famous record covers that started large and were reduced in size. What I wanted to show, is that Records are relatively large in format with amazing art. Album covers have had reproductions of famous artists paints such as Escher, Dali, Coleville etc on their covers and with CDs the images are smaller and less noticeable and with MP3s there basically are no images. This exhibit showed my bias towards Vinyl. Yes, I am a Vinyl junkie.
You might be interested in viewing additional artwork at : https://jamesnorthlifedrawing.com
