Luminous Decay

What is the current trend in Mexican art?

I think there is more than one trend. Last century artists like Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, Rufino Tamayo and Frida Kahlo, to name a few, still influence many artists in my country. Their pieces are well known at the international level and command very high prices. Furthermore, Surrealism left an important mark in my country, which is still setting a style for many artists. Similarly, in the north of the country the US-Mexico border culture has bred a very distinct art style for decades which is not only pictorial but musical as well, and the south of the country is also interesting, with an art style that blends modern and ancient elements. Good examples of this are Demián Flores, who uses wrestlers, pre-Hispanic symbols, etc., and Dr. Lakra, who is much better known at the international level.

Art in Mexico, as in any part of the world, is still immersed in difficult financial circumstances, with adrop in art collecting and a lack of adequate resources for grants, so that the artist still struggles day by day to live off his or her art. Unfortunately, there are not enough art galleries or showrooms and many artists take low-paying jobs in which their activity is of a more commercial nature. There are a significant number of art forums where artistic pieces can be shown, but there is no formal, earnest sales promotion and the artist needs to be his own promoter even though this is not easy and many lack the ability to do so. There are a few noteworthy exceptions that are fortunately being replicated, but not at the necessary pace.

The fact is that the Mexican mind has changed in regard to art. It is now much more open. There is still quite a lot of censorship, but not at all like 20 years ago when exhibits were shut down because of controversial subjects such as nudity or religion. Spencer Tunick was a positive success several years ago in the Zócalo, downtown Mexico City, there were calls for censorship, but they died down without getting a response.

I hope censorship decreases in the coming years and more spaces for art criticism open. Mexico City is an avant-garde region in this sense, and open-mindedness exists, but there is a latent risk when you go to other parts of the country. Political difficulties and discussions between different ideologies in the country have also had their consequences. The more liberal political parties have brought to the country bolder proposals and people have responded well. With more conservative governments, the difficulties have been deplorable, but public opinion – I insist – has changed.

I know many young people who are fighting for a space and it has been very interesting to see how Internet and the social networks have offered them a grand showcase. Several of them are already selling abroad at international prices. I think this is the right attitude, to keep at it rather than sitting down and deploring the situation. We must fight and come together, this is what we still need to do.

Do you consider yourself an artist of your culture?

Yes, I find social criticism exciting, particularly in regard to religion. The majority of people in Mexico are religious, predominantly Catholic. I was a Catholic up to the age of 17. The history of my country is closely tied to this religion.

To what extent do you see the artistic process as a sexual act?

I don’t see it as such. Art is addictive, exhausting, exciting, but there is a difference in that two are needed for the minimal sexual act.

Which qualities do you look for when choosing a model?

I want them to have a beautiful body, long legs and wide hips, although I usually manipulate their images digitally to achieve a final appearance that agrees with the concept of the piece. There is also a spontaneous something that emerges when I look at the position of the body and the attitude of the model.

In your drawings you celebrate the female form, but you surround it with images of decay. Are you warning us of the dangers of Woman or on the nature of desire?

I do not see the female essence as dangerous. As far as I am concerned, its capacity to provoke desire is unbelievable and inspiring. In my works I have always tried to unite two antithetical poles: decadence, many times symbolized by death, and erotic elements as a force which, through sexual instincts, produces the most unexpected and far-reaching changes in our society. Such coexistence is quite natural in fantasies, for how often have we heard the expression “I long to die in your arms” or “better to kill you than to lose you”. Society has always coexisted with this relationship, so much so that it has inspired great literary works such as Canto V in the Divine Comedy, which was itself inspired by Francesca de Rimini, a symbol of adultery, lust and love.

Freud said that the desire of children for the mother-object ceases upon the death of the father, and Baudelaire that the ultimate sense of erotism is death. Ejaculation may be a sort of foretaste of the end – la petite mort, blood, virginity, erotism and death, I believe these concepts are more complex and more profound. We are speaking of instincts that have existed for millions of years and which, now that we have created societies, we attempt to control and suppress, often more than is due, in order to achieve a “healthy coexistence”. Politicians and the Church have used such control as they like in order to suppress people through fear and ignorance. These instincts should be admitted and people should feel free to express them and to coexist responsibly with them as part of our culture. It is here that artistic expression contributes to human society, it is the channel for their expression.

In a society as hypocritical as ours, these instincts are taboo, and every taboo incites us to break it.

You claim to be an atheist but in some of your works I see the deification of women, and a penchant for altered states of consciousness, is sensuality just Nature's helping hand or do you feel the touch of something greater?

I am an atheist since the age of 17, but my life as a Catholic was intense. I still have certain fears that were bred in my childhood by the apprehension of divine punishment. It is hard to pull oneself away from this unconsciously. In my case, during the creative process, more so with traditional drawing, I usually attain altered states of consciousness in which symbols and images emerge. Many times even I myself do not find the relationship between some of these elements. After a time, at any moment and all of a sudden, this recollection emerges, other times it never does.

Some psychoanalysts use art for communication and the treatment of mental disorders. Evidently, many things can arise during this process. There are artists who purposefully self-induce insomnia in order to experience psychosis, others are bolder and use entheogens, from coffee to ayahuasca and LSD, to name a few.

In my opinion, there is no divine being from a religious viewpoint, and nothing is sacred. For years I have researched the creative process and the brain from a scientific standpoint. It is an extensive and thrilling subject. I have gone to symposiums attended by scientists, shamans, physicians and artists in which grand experiences were shared in an atmosphere of great respect, and indeed, a relationship does exist between hallucinations, the imaginative process, neurotransmitters, brain functions and so on, in a culture medium that engenders great works of art.

The Divine is present in many of my pieces, sometimes as a criticism, sometimes as a symbol of the deification of woman and of erotism.

When did you start exploring digital art?

I started in 2001, when I was 39 years old. I have loved art since I was a child and I occasionally drew and painted until I turned 30. I took me almost ten years to create art once more. Digital art attracted me and was a new beginning. A couple of years later I went back to drawing.

Your digital art, on the whole, is not so dark as your drawings, and it seems that you have explored different aspects of desire in that medium. Why do you feel you are able to express yourself differently with digital art?

Definitely, traditional drawing offers me infinite options which are limited in digital art because of my skills. I am not a Photoshop professional, I never studied, I just bought books and journals, the rest was all self-learning.

Drawing takes me deeper into my personal experiences, desires and fears. Only through drawing am I able to experience a greater depth of concentration and altered states of consciousness such as daydreaming. I have never used entheogens, perhaps the only drug was alcohol at first with digital art, but drawing while intoxicated is impossible.

Many times when I get an idea, it is born by considering first if it will be digital or traditional drawing.

Personally, I enjoy traditional drawing more, even though it is mentally more exhausting. At times I break off drawing for a few days to do something digital and relax a bit.

Describe exquisite corpse.

It is a game, it is a wonderful experience, and it is addictive.

The technique was used by Surrealists in 1925 and originated in a game called “Consequences”, during which players write by turns on a sheet of paper, covering part of what they have written and passing the sheet to the next player who looks at the last part and continues the writing of the text.

 The name originated in a phrase formed when it was first played in France: Le cadavre exquis – boira le vin nouveau (the exquisite corpse shall drink the new wine). It was used a lot in poetry by Bretón, Éluard, Tzara and Desnos who all said that creation should be anonymous, a group effort, spontaneous and even automatic.

The technique was subsequently used in drawing. At present, a group of artists – myself included – continue playing this game, quite differently from the original in the sense that only the outcome is spontaneous and the actual drawing is not automatic. Those I have made with the artists Gromyko Semper (the Philippines) and Bernd Dreilich (Germany) are elaborately complex, full of symbolisms, and were consciously worked on to achieve a unified concept of the subject as seen from different viewpoints given our own cultural diversity. I am not sure one should continue to call them exquisite corpses.

There is a sense of claustrophobia in some of your work, not just the shibari ones, do you see Shibari as an artform, is there an underlying philosophy to it?

A little bit of aggression gives sex a very different meaning. I think most of us like it but not everyone admits it, from very light things to something stronger, from dirty words to insults, from a slap on the buttocks to something much more elaborate in which function is inverted and pleasure is obtained through pain. Sadomasochism has always attracted me in theory and in practice, I have never tried it and when such scenes are combined with art work they become in my opinion visually delectable.

Shibari was initially a technique for torturing and restraining prisoners which could only be used by samurai warriors. Today it is a very popular tying technique during bondage, in which the individual is partially or fully immobilized and, unlike the original technique, the person tying the bonds also experiences sexual pleasure through domination.

My first piece was a contribution of several images from David Lawrence. I also met online some of his models as well as other women who regularly execute this sort of practices either as models or for pleasure, or both. With Clover, one of David’s models, I had a number of very interesting chats that impelled me to keep experimenting with this type of images. She became a sort of inspirational muse and perhaps a fetish.

Sadomasochistic techniques are in my opinion a means by which an individual can fully exert his or her sex life, a philosophy of pleasure, desire and arousal. Artistically, they are a way of expressing my basic ideas on the sexual instinct.

What are your ambitions for the Pandora's Box Gallery?

When I started to create art professionally five years ago, I received a lot of support from friends I met online (DeviantArt and Facebook), Gromyko Semper, Otto Rap, John Paul Thornton, Santiago Ribeiro, Exilentia Exiff, Roman Newak, Bernd Dreilich, George Teseleanu, and many others. With them, I have carried out different group projects, art forums, book editing, and thanks to them I had

my first international exhibitions. I believe it is now time for me to do my share and help other artists achieve their goals, and this is the aim of the art gallery: to show art that stirs people’s consciences, that is controversial, breeds discussion, and adds to other similar projects, outside the scope of the more conservative trends, through bolder options. This is more to my liking, I have always been a provoker. I also seek to make a sale that allows the artist to be compensated fairly and provides the gallery with income to be used basically for maintenance and publicity.

Nostalgia of the Entheo-nuclear Face resulting from an overdose of Liquid Sexual Desire(LSD)

Exquisite Corpse with Gromyko Semper

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http://the-surreal-arts.deviantart.com/

Moloch - Denis Forkas Kostromitin

Burial I - Denis Forkas Kostromitin

What is the art scene like in Moscow?

Moscow fell under onslaught of the worldwide “conceptual art” crusade. What had used to be the avantgarde and stood against commercialization of art was bastardized by society into a moneymaking tool. “Pure art” graced with neither talent nor skill, demanding zero effort from its creator and aimed at momentary entertainment reigns the scene like a plague. These days everyone can (and does) claim to be an artist and/or an art lover. Galleries are hopelessly infested with “common objects in uncommon environments” and some such “relevant” nonsense.

On the other hand, there is a rather strong current of low quality surrealism and art derived from it, which – even though it clearly lacks the impact and bold experimental spirit of the movement’s first wave and has that distinct second hand flavour about it – openly opposes itself to the tyranny of “concept” I’ve already mentioned.

To my dismay things like Russian fin de siècle aesthetics, Rublev’s elegant ascetism as well as the clarity of Kandinsky’s abstract painting theory don’t seem to inspire young Russian artists at all. People are forgetting their roots and that’s never a good thing.

How old were you when you started drawing?

I was very, very young when my pencils/watercolour/gouache obsession manifested itself. One of my childhood hobbies was to draw and paint illustrations in between ones included in books thus unfolding new – sometimes strangely disturbing - horizons in favourite tales.

When did you first become interested in the occult?

My first encounter was rather dramatic. Back when I was a grader (about 8-9 years old) one of my classmates’ elder brother committed a gruesome suicide. I learned that the man had been member of a local religious sect (please, bear in mind that it was around 1985, a sect like that in a Soviet country had to be the most clandestine thing on Earth) when about a month after the incident the classmate invited me to his home and showed all those books, daggers and jewelry he had concealed from the investigation. There were also drawings of naked bodies in strange positions, charts and calculations, ink studies of animal anatomy crossed with glyphs and symbols.  Even though I couldn’t possibly hope to decipher the meaning and purpose of all those things at the time, the images stayed with me. I attempted to trade my valuables for those books and drawings several times, but to no avail: my friend cherished his deceased brother’s collection.

A few years later the iron curtain collapsed and junk occult literature of all kinds started to seep in. Those poorly translated paperbacks conveyed my passion some outline and granted bits of insight into matters like the Universal balance, energy management, will, intent, etc.

I realized soon enough that I had no way of putting my hands on any trustworthy occult research and switched to art history, theory and technique instead as there was hardly any shortage of good literature covering those subjects in Soviet libraries. It was many years later that the interest in the occult resurfaced and found its way into my drawings and paintings.

Is there a particular current of occultism that you adhere to, or is it a developed system of symbolism that appeals to you as an artist?

Chaos magic is probably the current I will have to associate myself with in order to give you some idea of my work. Yet, I neither use drugs nor “invent” gods. My techniques include sleep deprivation, meditation and self-hypnosis. I borrow vastly from different beliefs and practices of the past and I’ve found ancient mythology and traditional esoteric lore – no matter the geographical origin as all traditions conceal their share of truth, of course, - to be a solid, reliable foundation for all kinds of occult endeavors. I consider art a highly religious practice for it serves as a timeless vessel for truth itself. One cannot hope to conjure a timeless piece if he/she rejects tradition and philosophy. 

You list Austin Osman Spare as an influence and there are similarities in your work, what are your thoughts on Spare as a man and artist?

Without a doubt the man was among the most enlightened magicians of the last century. It is hard to overestimate his introduction of sentient symbols and ideas stemmed from viewing language as magic.

The persevering impact of Spare’s art is surely the result of supreme artistic vision and prowess backed up with technical skill and spiritual sacrifice – a formula worth following for artists of any school or direction.

To me Spare’s personality will always remain an example of uncompromising artistic stance and courage. Moreover, I’m profoundly moved by his never-ending quest for new means of expression (as opposed to modern artists’ doing the same perm) and gladly accept the living experimental spirit as a blessing.

Describe the automatic method.  Is it possible to produce work of artistic merit in automatic mode, or do you use it purely to instigate a trance-state?

The method itself is fairly simple. The idea is to divorce your mind from drawing/painting process, to try and become completely oblivious of your physical drawing act. This can be achieved in many ways including a chemically induced trance, but I prefer meditation. Ultimately you obtain your shape from the ever-evolving chaos of the resulting line/stroke work; and it is at this - later - stage that you put your skill and intuition to use.

An artist may, of course choose to refrain from further development of his/her automatic chaos and leave it to viewers to produce evolving shapes of their very own, so there certainly is quite a bit of merit in raw automatic material. Still, this approach technically removes artist from the process; this kind of work would have nothing to do with his particular vision and thus would bear the same artistic value as randomly arranged pebbles on a beach, autumn leaf patterns or a coffee-stained napkin.

Anxiety and panic attacks pose a major problem for me and it took a lot of energy and research to bring it down to a manageable level. I’ve found meditation and self-hypnosis to be the best tools here. Persistence works wonders.

I also keep setting up “intellectual hooks”, which help me overcome the tides of anxiety and ultimately enhance my work. Philosophy, history, religion, astronomy, biology as well as Victorian fiction and twentieth century non-American films among other things are the fields where my interest is strong enough to keep the chaos of the unconscious feedback at bay.

This subject is somewhat complex, but I’ll do my best to give as simple an answer as I can. Art and philosophy are naturally opposed to all other spheres of human activity aimed at material comfort. Both philosophy and art imply – or rather intuit - that the meaning of human life transcends empiric existence and that the truth is to be found beyond or behind the trifles of this mortal coil. The eternal search for the truth is undertaken by man and originates from his self-awareness. It is absolutely impossible to remove Man the Creator from either artistic or philosophical process as without his vision and understanding the process simply won’t exist. Yet, this vision manifests itself differently in art and philosophy. In art it is expressed in an Image (a painting, a music piece, a story, etc.) aiming at emotional response, whereas philosopher employs logic and expands the tradition by creating a personal Conception / cognitive system aiming at retrieving the ultimate truth and thus introducing the art of Understanding.

Images and Conceptions have always served as pillars of human society; no known civilization has ever been able to manage without this foundation. All known traditions have originated from work of artists and philosophers.

The artist’s role is akin to that of a priest: he uses symbols and brings divine truth to the hearts of his viewers. Emotional response is the current the viewers use to travel back to the source of the effect and thus refresh their values / priorities.

It is this delicate and beautiful process, the genuine spiritual guidance that is compromised in our age of art impostors and consumerism. By discarding tradition society plunges itself into the pits of spiritual degradation.  

Choice… I believe it is the psyche that chooses what to convey through artist. All conscious work with composition, colour, value, etc. (i.e. science) – as important as it is focus- and effect-wise, -  is ultimately defined by an idea scooped from the Unconscious. Moreover, I keep reducing the amount of physical materials (pigments, instruments, etc.) in order to clear more space for pure energy, to be able to transfer the most pristine reflection.

The Image I described earlier is not something artists choose and purchase at some sort of ethereal market. It is rather a “haunting”, an emotional disturbance that lies dormant in the darkness of unknowing until an outer, conscious impression generates an electrical charge between the two and the artist gets his chance to “reel in” the Image. The artist is the reason, the sole condition for this magickal process.

This brings us to the point of “light” and “darkness”. My work is certainly not something a common man will feel at ease with. And this is exactly what the “darkness” (as in “dark painting / photography / music / literature / culture”) is about: the majority’s discomfort. But is art supposed to bring comfort in the first place? Must it take this much talent, dedication and energy to merely entertain a viewer or make his life more comfortable? Truth has nothing to do with comfort.

Now, if my imagination can catch this kind of primal shapes and colours in its traps scattered around the Unconscious, with sincerity being the only artistic principle I’m perfectly entitled to hope my work has at least something to do with the truth.

I’m also convinced that injecting art with poison of aesthetic compromise will only result in horrible short-lived mutations, which will end up as comfortable interior decorations at best. If “light” means emotional swamp, a warm puddle of safety, then I’d rather stay in my volatile “darkness”.

A wonderful question! I believe you are coming from my life-long fascination with the art of Mikhail Aleksanrovich Vrubel. In order to give you some idea of the scale of Vrubel’s artistic possession I’ll have to touch on the origins of his mental disorder.

The darkest chapter of Vrubel's biography started with his loosing the competition for interior decoration of St.Volodymyr's Cathedral in Kiev in 1888. Apparently local authorities, priesthood and the “aesthetics committee” found his vision "unorthodox" and "disquieting". 

Rarely interrupted, ever-growing unease heralded the coming of severe mental illness. Yet, it was in the fever of the century's last decade that the image of rebel spirit, an entity of power and sadness - the Demon - manifested itself in the master's work. 

Vrubel's admiration for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's poetry lead him down the path of illustration. His paintings for the poem "Demon" (1837) by Mikhail Lermontov unleashed something primal in the painter's soul and he took the image way beyond the limits of illustration. Up from early 1890s the ghostly face would resurface in many seemingly unconnected works (e.g. "Prophet", "Azrael", "Lilacs"). The obsession culminated in the overwhelming piece "Demon Downcast" (1902), which the artist proceeded working on even when the painting was already on public display.

You see, such an obsessed, fiery art will cut short all attempts to further explore the subject matter. What can any other artist - myself included – possibly offer here? Is there really a need of new angle? One may go farther and fare worse, as they say.

Still, it might be worth mentioning that I’ve been working on a painting I refer to as “Vrubel’s Demon” for about a year now. The canvas is my homage to the master and a study of his methods. I don’t know if I should exhibit or even publish it online as I find it hard to view the piece as a work of my own. The study is rather an attempt at peculiar artistic table-turning or even necromancy, if you will. 

http://www.denisforkas.com/

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