Andrea Loefke an Artist's Practice
Brooklyn-Based German Artist Discusses Her Work and Practice
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 Four.
PB: The installation “Oh do let me help to undo it!” has a similar sense of quiet foreboding. At first you are met with the light and colourful sense of the childlike, a playground of objects. This gives way – as one hierarchy of narrative is subverted by another – to a feeling of unease; an 'insinuation'. Like any fairy tale; the primary narrative holds a secondary narrative within it, with a sense of reality being slightly off-kilter, highlighting the subversion of what at first appears to be an innocent scene?
AL: Yes, it is like walking into a child’s drawing – a fantastical environment, playful and discomforting at the same time: baby-blue, cartoony clouds that are “gasp” raining red string; tipped over cups and spills everywhere; ladders and platforms, composed to form an ascending gesture, with a production line of red, dripping clouds; a blackboard with sketches and scribbles and little foam peanuts with red wet tips, which seem to explode over the blackboard canvas, and comfortable carpets and scattered drawing implements.
Puffy white clouds on the floor and floating rain-clouds give the place a heavenly suggestion, yet bold construction materials, the recognizable red/white check patterned picnic tablecloth and the backboard brings us back in our world. I was trying to create a place in between – a place inbetween realities, in between comfort and disaster, in between familiar and outlandish, keeping the viewer a bit off balance. The first impression is light and friendly, but soon after one gets the distinct feeling of just having walked in on something – has something gone badly wrong, here?! A childlike, imaginative dream of disastrous dimensions? I believe with the blood cloud I found a poetic metaphor for the times and conditions in which we live today.
PB: You have amassed a large body of installations, forming a solid 'series' of works that appear thematic in nature – whether intended or derived through your playful process. Can you tell me about the direction of any future works?
AL: One of my main artistic goals is to create work that is interactive and engaging. In my work I am inviting the viewer to relate themselves to the objects and the situations they present, to pause and to experience these environments.
For future work I am interested in an even more direct interactive approach. I am very curious to literally have the audience interact with the piece – be able to climb it, feel it, play with it, become part of it – a concept that I have never really been able to put into practice before. This would be structured in such a way as to let the audience take over, to offer a physical participation and interaction incorporating aspects of discovery and the feeling of being in control.
I am currently working on an idea, an object constructed from a scaffolding structure with various platforms, housing a fantastical toxic green landscape, which allegorizes the crown of a tree – my imaginative, artificial tree house. Here I will invite visitors to climb up, and literally go on a journey of discovery “above the clouds”, imagining oneself back in childhood when still building forts and tree houses.
Read ahead to the continuation of this article with Part five, or back to Part three.
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