"Repurposing with a Passion", by D. Dominick Lombardi in: Public Art and Ecology, due in December 2011.
Excerpt of the article featuring my work:
The process of repurposing materials has immeasurable benefits. There are instinctive, economic, esthetic, philosophical, and even political reasons to recycle, and visual artists are a very big part of this process. In an attempt to bring together compelling examples of this trend, D. Dominick Lombardi asked a number of artists from various parts of the world to answer four questions with the hopes of clarifying this ever-increasing phenomenon of repurposing with a purpose.
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Isa Tenhaeff has her studio in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Her art plays the physical world against the psychological. Her compositions and installations conjure up all sorts of emotions and feelings that can be anywhere from political to playful, or mysterious to menacing. There is a frailty to her wok as well, a vulnerability that is quite compelling, and at times, puzzling.
Ms. Tenhaeff: For my art I collect used objects ranging from broken toys, precious clothing and building ornaments from the trash to fine art prints and my own academy drawings and paintings.
I look for “gem-quality” in the materials I collect: these things are often broken or worn-out but there is a spark - a classic sense of power or beauty that I can use. Also my objects have to bring up a lot of different (personal, public, historical) references.
I work from historical images and from a notion of historical continuum in which patterns, compositions, notions of proportion, etc. are repeated. As a sociologist I am trained at looking at people, seeing patterns in our behavior and in the material outcomes of this behavior. In rough lines images and structures are repeated over and over, though details may vary. I look for these kind of patterns in ‘old’ art and architecture and find absurd similarities to our world today. Similar to the idea of golden ratio, I search for the best ways to bring out these immaterial references through ordering materials.
History, meaning and beauty are not about power, status and priceless materials, but about ordering or arranging architecturally, finding the right “engine” for an installation and seeing.
About D. Domick Lombardi: click