Ursa Schoepper | Germany
Nothing is as it seems at first; everything is in process and thus in change. In order to arrive at new points of view, it sometimes helps to destroy familiar ways of seeing in the figurative sense. For me as an artist, for example, I am destroying a previously recorded photographic image through transformation, that is, through a new algorithmic order structure, in order to arrive at a new order of sight and perspective after a new order.
A digital photography is at the same time a light photography and a data image. My experimental fine art photography artworks are representing the inherent not yet and at the same time shows how we always construct our world, photographic material seen as a process matter. By following an artistic idea I am developing autonomous photographic fine art artworks that exist as a virtual reality in a realistic reality. A digital photographic image is generated through algorithmic genetic grammar into an autonomous work of fine art photography. It is a conceptual process working with photographic material. My tool is a professional camera and a sophisticated photo editing system.
© ursa schoepper, 2018
Ligtrooms color rooms
Contemporary Art Station: Tell us about how you got started. When did you know you wanted to be an artist?
The encouragement of experts and my passion for experimentation cleared the way to the creative artistic period. Even as a little child I was curious how things belong together. My parents were sometimes shocked, which examined their little daughter everything. So it was not surprising that I was always looking for new ways and experiments. I was discovered as an experimental photo artist while working as a cultural manager. I am an open-minded, curious person who likes to reflect on whether you can not look at things from many comparable perspectives. Are there processes regarding a photographic material that are possible and mappable, and can lead this to new insights? Can I experimentally make something visible that is comparable to the processes in nature, comparable the mutation? In this context, transformation means much more than just the mathematical-technical transformation. Adorno sayed, if there is something, yould could change, that is what is not everything. There are many realities, they are inexhaustible. Experimental photography can represent different ways of seeing and represent views. My experimental photographic art points to the freedom to see the possibility of a change, not to be content with the first impression. She gives a lecture on the creative process.
CAS: What is your process like, from initial idea to the creation of the piece? Do you usually develop the idea for a project before you find the "canvas", or vice versa?
Sometimes the artistic process is starting many months later when I created the photograph, depending on which task I set myself. There are two ways for me to realize a photo session. Either I have a topic that I want to treat, then I make special recordings in advance. Or I discover interesting things when I'm on the road that I want to capture. Sometimes I also build installations myself, which I photograph to develop certain works of art. This process takes a few weeks.
CAS: What do you love most about your creative process?
To be able to see things and contexts differently and thus to arrive at different perspectives. I'm grateful for many precious moments and thankful to my collectors, but one moment I will never forget. There were two little boys, five and six years old, who sat in front of my artworks and did not want to go home, before their parents take their two favorite artworks with them. It made me happy that not only great institutions such as the Center for Materials and Energy in Berlin or the European Art Museum in Denmark appreciated my artworks, but also so little boys during an art fair.
The individualist
CAS: What role does art and the artist play in the broader social conversation today?
Art can not only reach the spirit, but also the soul and heart of the people.
CAS: Name a few of your favourite artists and influences.
I have no favorite artists, but I'm impressed by artworks by the Bauhaus artists as well as works by Gerhard Richter and Pablo Picasso.
CAS: What is the best advice you received as an artist?
During my cultural management studies, Professor Eckart Pankoke gave us an interesting note on innovation. He recommended: "Wer seine Chance ergreift, riskiert wie der Künstler und das strategische Genie das Aufbrechen der Wahrnehmungsroutinen und im Extrem (Selbst-) Zerstörung. Doch nur das Risiko der Destruktion kann der Innovation den Weg öffnen.“ Prof.Eckart Pankoke. It is very interesting for me to look at photography as a mask of reality, as a arole model, as the archetype of a perception, a way of seeing and point of view. Aesthetic redesign does not mean devaluation, but in the process allows the way to an autonomous photographic art by transformation.
CAS: When did you discover your voice as an artist?
I think about the statements my mother. She told me that I had been a creative child when I was four.
CAS: What advice would you give to emerging artists trying to find their own?
Be brave and believe in your abilities. Do not be afraid of competition, that trains the eye and the experience.
Referenz bauhaus
