German born artist Andrea Loefke lives and works in Brooklyn, New York - constructing conglomerates of material and form, working from innumerable materials, both decorative and everyday. These supplies overflow from the categorized shelves and bins of her studio. In fabricating these often vivid multiform assemblages, Loefke employs a myriad of techniques expressing ambiguous thoughts and sensations. These fairy-like worlds are complex structures incorporating multiple objects, colours and textures, resulting in what could be described as playful and mysterious landscapes, enticing the viewer into visual narrative journeys.
Part One.
Paul Black: Process seems an integral part of what forms your resulting works, even above that of an initial concept or intention?
Andrea Loefke: My work initially evolved from playful, intuitive little drawings and objects to a more conscious process that creates scenes or whole environments – the tone of my work is seriously playful. Or: the tone of my work is serious, it is a serious play and at the same time it is humorous, sweet and innocent. The making becomes a journey and an exploration for me. Step by step the work evolves, develops while making. I start with a material, a feeling, a color, or a vague image. Obscure, intangible thoughts and sensations collect within my head and my body. There are no words for what I am going to do. Things come together – it feels like building. One stone goes on top of the other. It is a playful process that goes through different stages of evaluation and development before finding the works finished form. It is a back and forth between letting go, allowing parts to just lay where they fall, but then again to control, to refine, to push further, to put into order. Improvisation and structure are combined in my working practice, provoking the unforeseen, the unexpected.
PB: 'Innocence' suggests a lack of intent or more precisely less of a conscious motivation to manipulate the responses of the viewer, yet I still perceive structure in your installations, as you say; combining structure with improvisation in the new works, the process now appears to express a logical narrative process interlaced with the improvisational?
AL: it maybe appears more innocent than it really is?! As I said before, play and conscious decision-making is interwoven in my process. But I like to surprise myself. Things happen while playing, often very unexpected and they open new doors that I like to embrace…give me new directions and add layers to the work which I think can only form when the process is partly improvisational. When things are too thought out and controlled they usually lack a wonderful mystery, and ambiguity that I strive for. The remarkable matter about art is that things can be created and made visible that are very complex, new, unexplainable, not logical, and full of vague emotions and moments. In my work I create elements that I myself can’t even properly explain and understand. I guess this is the “innocent” part in my work. Yet usually certain accidents and the play leads to ideas and layers which I then recognize and push forward. This creates fanciful environments that are systems, overlapping worlds, groups and subgroups that are juxtaposed and united through scale, color palette, sound, form, space, and material. With the continuous pushing and pulling among the elements of this vocabulary, I am building hierarchies of events and narratives, which compete and communicate. The groupings of objects and their placement within a particular space become a journey of discovery. Here narratives can be discovered and woven.
Part two
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