May 2009, Interview with Herakut

HeraKut opens May 21st 6-8pm at RedFlagg, 638 west 28th st., NYC, www.redflagg.com

Noah Becker: What are your works about and how did you become a two person artist team?

Herakut: ... well,

To give you a little background information: Akut and I were both invited to be guest artists at an urban art event in Spain in 2004. Right from the beginning we had a good laugh, so basically, we simply continued hanging out - like two kids at summer camp - and we ended up painting a nice piece together, just a couple of hours after we first met.

Since then, it’s been a friendship that connected the two of us and built a base or better: a stage on which we let our thoughts, views and techniques interact.

I's really like that. We know the only thing we have in common is the fun we have mixing up the most contrasting things. Creating odd couples. Weird mixes. Just like us: a guy who grew up on the socialist side of the Iron Curtain, and a "material girl" from the other side of a divided country. The guy now is one of the best photorealistic painters in the graffiti scene because he uses the spray-can as if it was something out of a fine arts set of tools. And on the other side, there is the girl, who has been taught the classic fine arts traditions in years and years of nature studies, and who then broke free from all that lecture, when she moved her life into the world graffiti. Hera today uses a can like a water-hose out of control. That's why all our pieces have something very rough and sketchy (Hera's part) next to some delicate and elaborate elements (Akut's work).

So, as to your question: I guess the reason why we decided to be a two person team is this - Finding the balance between two such distant sources of creative energy is a game that doesn't bore us.


NB: What is the new show about? Is there a theme?

Herakut: Yes, there is a red line that's connecting every image in the show. The question that has been keeping us busy during the past couple of months was: HOW HONEST IS OUR HONESTY?

The scale of authenticity is the most important scale to meassure yourself with. As an artist, it's NOT hard to live by that rule. It actually makes work A LOT easier, because you can always easily blank out other peoples' opinions and other people´s criticism on your own work and behavior. Because the only judgement you´ll ever trust is your own. The only eyes you´ll ever see yourself with, are your own. That makes it very easy to succeed.

BUT lately, we have more and more come to realize that we DO have an interest in stepping out of our own conveniently arranged shelters and move towards other people, other lives, other thoughts and other ways of seeing the world AND our impact on it.
Our new show is called: NO PLACEBOS.

What we went through is realizing all the above. Realizing that we need to stop making up excuses - that we need to stop making all the rules as we go.

What comes from this would be nothing more than placebo-reflection, placebo-happiness and a placebo-set-of-morals. We are now looking for some kind of realness, that is made up of more than our own standards.

The pieces in our new show are snapshots taken along this thought process.

That's what it's all about.