interviewed by Dina Ibrahim
Dina Ibrahim: Your work seems to be a perfect synthesis of conceptualism with a lot of attention to detail and materials. Is your work occupied with one more than the other, or do you work with both equally in mind?
Christian de Vietri: I consider making art and putting art into the world as an ontological project, so the existence of a work within the realm of human interaction is considered, inside and out, as idea, as object, as context, as space, as image, as surface, as memory. I do have an interest in craft and in formal games, and that becomes clear on the surface of the work. But I don’t allow craft to limit the work nor to define it because none of my works are displays of technical skill for their own sake. It is the ideas that the work suggests that are most important, and for ideas to be expressed, the physical form has to be appropriate. The work needs to exist with conviction in the arena of display, so a certain confidence in the work becomes a shared and inclusive moment.
Materials are always considered as active and meaningful elements in my work. This is because I don’t take any material for granted, and because I think that materials can be projections of larger ideas; they possess their own character and history and associations, and making a sculpture can be a way of playing with these ideas in a physical form.
For example, I cast the sculpture LightYears (2009) solid, in a highly phosphorescent light-absorbing and light-emitting plastic that I developed in my studio over several months. The idea for the sculpture... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline
Installation view, exhibition at the Fisher Landau Center New York, 2009.
Simon, 2005. Marble, 235 x 60 x 60cm. Christian Lyon Collection
