Kyle Bryant

by Ariel Radock

artist's website :: kylehbryant.blogspot.com

Fill in the Blank Gallery: What are your work habits? Do you have any specific routines or superstitions while producing art?

Kyle Bryant: I wake up most days around 11 or 12, make coffee and drink it while watching the family of swallows that fly near my eighth floor balcony. I take it easy for a while and then sneak onto the train to my studio around 2 oclock. I try to skate a little every day just to get my mind off of work for a while. When you make your hobby your profession it leaves a serious gap in your free time. By evening I make it to the studio and get to work. If I arrive too early I just end up smoking a lot of cigarettes and pacing around. I think my muse gets in kind of late, and the later I stay the more productive I am.

FIB: Where do you work and what is your process?

KB: Right now I have a studio near Alexanderplatz in Berlin. I'm currently participating in an artist residency. My work right now is focused mostly on the architecture of Berlin. It's really interesting to see the contrast between the Eastern Berlin architecture which all looks the same, and the West Berlin stuff that is equally boring but more unique. The interesting parts of Berlin are mostly in the details and the ignored places.

The work itself is made of woodcut prints. I carve the prints when I need to chill out. I just open the windows and listen to the trains at the station on the other side of the river. It's nice to hear such repetitive sounds when doing such a repetitive task. After I print the blocks I start cutting the prints up to collage them into new pieces. The physical process is pretty simple, finding new relationships between the buildings from different prints is the fun part.

FIB: How do you determine an idea for a piece? What is your inspiration?

KB: I don't really sit down and think about an idea, I usually just sit down and get to work. I think my concepts come from what is going on in my mind when I start working on something and eventually that concept starts to take hold of the piece that it was born from. There is a very harmonious relationship between the theme of a piece and it's form, they are usually born from each other.

FIB: Do you generate ideas through preliminary drawings or is it more ephemeral?

KB: My process is really ephemeral, I usually just sit down and get to work. What happens as a result is usually something I can use, and when it's not I just move on to the next thing. I never do preliminary drawings unless I'm just doing it to keep my hands busy.

FIB: Where do you get the images used in your art?

KB: The imagery comes from going for a bike ride, or a long walk, with my digital camera around Berlin or wherever else I am living. Lately I have found a lot of interesting interpretations of buildings in reflections so I have been taking pictures of car windows.

FIB: Why a black and white color scheme?

KB: I am a minimalist at heart. I strive to keep things simple, I like my coffee black and my whiskey on ice. I also think black and white comes as a by product of the printmaking process. On another level I think the graphic nature of black and white works well as a contrast to the sensory overload that we encounter every day. Advertisements are designed to grab our attention so often they use incredibly saturated colors and loud motifs. I don't want my work to get lost in that world. I am working to create my own world that doesn't immediately reach for the visual language of the world around us.

FIB: What spatial planning do you formulate in relationship to your work? Is it a well thought out pattern or purely organic overlapping?

KB: Most of the time I have absolutely no plan when I start something. I might have a basic idea of shape, or some sort of compositional device that I want to try, but most of the time I find a lot of excitement and enjoyment in the surprises that manifest themselves through the process. Even I'm just doodling or something I just start and let it create itself. I often think that I am much less an artist than a vessel through which artistic energy travels. My work is constantly surprising me and I think that is what keeps me interested in it.

FIB: How long do you typically work on a piece?

KB: I work on it until I think it's done. I don't think about things in terms of time because I don't really believe in time in the sense of a clock, I think of it as moments and memories. I tried to start wearing a watch recently, and the sound of the second hand made me go crazy so I left the watch on a ledge for someone else to find. Time is infinite and it doesn't make sense to me to try to note these specific measurements to keep track of it.

FIB: How do you know when it is complete?

KB: A piece is complete when I can't figure out what else to do with it and everything works harmoniously for me and the piece. If a piece is missing something I will work it until it has what it needs to be healthy and then I leave it to grow into it's own being. It's a lot like raising a child, not that I would know anything about that, but you create this thing, you take care of it until it is old enough to stand on its own and then you come back to it and see how it has changed since your initial conception of it. Pieces change with time, your way of looking at them changes, and after a while you may not even recognize it anymore.

FIB: What elements of an urban environment entice you?

KB: I grew up in a small New England mill town that had this really small "urban center". I found myself hanging out there exploring a lot, constantly searching for new skate spots and in that exploration I found a lot of graffiti, abandoned spaces and new places that I could use for my own purposes.I find that a lot in the cities I have lived in. I think cities give people the opportunity to thrive in creating their own realities. I enjoy discovering new places that I haven't been before, new details, new skate spots, new tags, new stores, new people, new everything. It is the unexpected that keeps me interested in cities.

FIB: What initially sparked your interest in this series? How long have you worked on this concept? How has it evolved?

KB: I started working on this project in the fall of 2008. I had this awful job at the time. I came home one day and I was totally furious about having spent 10 hours at this place and missing a date with my girlfriend at the time because they didn't let me out when I was supposed to leave. I saw this woodblock that I had been drawing sitting on my desk and decided to calm down by carving it. I sat down until three in the morning carving this thing and went to sleep excited to pick up where I left off in the morning. I spent 20 hours carving it and decided that was what I wanted to focus on for the next "block" of my lifespan. I quit my job the next day by putting up signs that said closed during construction on the store and moved to New York City. I spent all of my time there carving blocks, printing them, and eating really good vegan food. Making little prints got boring so I started cutting them up and making cool shapes for city spaces out of them. I had so much fun doing this that I haven't looked back since.

FIB: What architectural features attract you the most and why?

KB: I like the textures of tall buildings, the repeated patterns of balconies, windows, lines of different elements coming together, and the skeleton of buildings under construction. I like the small details in shorter buildings, window moldings, roofs, fire escapes, intircate facades, and ornamental doors. I like texture and detail a lot. I also really like the contrast between how imposing tall buildings can be how intimate a three story apartment can be.

FIB: What is your connection with the depictions of cities in your work? Is it a negative attitude or a more positive and hopeful one?

KB: I don't try to portray the city in one particular light. I think at times it comes across negatively, my aesthetic tends to be aggressive and negative. The places that I create are so densely built up and it doesn't leave much room for anything natural. Growing up surrounded by nature I was always drawn to anything that resembled a city. I think I wanted to be around the tall buildings and away from the trees. As I grow older I want to have both, but I tend to only focus on the architecture in a city, which through my work creates a kind of glorified metropolis.

FIB: What do you wish to convey to those viewing your art?

KB: I want to convey a sense of urgency, chaos and density. I think the modern way of life is too fast and people don't know how to slow down, myself included. There are never any people in my cities. People do not play an important part in the work which is relative to the isolation that people create around themselves in cities these days. As we grow more connected through technology we become less connected in a lo-tech sense. I hope to convey this strange feeling of having to do things, but not knowing why or for whom you are doing those things.

FIB: What advice would you give to emerging artists?

KB: As an emerging artist myself I would just say work, work really hard, and try to show as much as you can.

FIB: What’s next?

KB: I am planning to start populating the cities that I make with people that I would like to hang out with: skateboarders, pretty girls, people who relax in parks, basically the people that I hang out with now. I exist in two realities, the real and the work, both of which can seem isolating. I would prefer to make my work feel more like a party, with lots grilling, skate spots, hip hop music and dancing. You can come if you want to, just be cool about it.

FIB: What would you like to accomplish in the future?

KB: Synchronicity.