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lenaviddo · 8 years

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“The Beasts” motion graphics video installation for House of Yes, Caravane-Gitane 2016

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lenaviddo · 8 years

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#sections 30

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lenaviddo · 8 years

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#painting

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lenaviddo · 8 years

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Winter in Bushwick @ Lena Viddo’s studio Inter-Space

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lenaviddo · 8 years

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In Conversation with Lena Viddo

by Linda Digusta

Essay featured in The Omen Magazine and Pearing the Apple Blog

"I'm an observer, a witness, but most importantly I am a maker of images" - artist Lena Viddo

In conversation with Lena Viddo, any subject will elicit an interesting story that has moved her – some are personal, like a bikini-clad, too-close encounter with a colony of wasps in an unwanted shrub. She gathers interesting information as well – the personal habits of bees, camps of immigrants living along the Thames River who survive by hunting the regal swans… Lena brings all of her enthusiasm for narrative and detail to her current series, “Earthly Delights,” without sacrificing painterly values. Her surface is fine and almost irresistible to touch.

Viddo’s points of reference reflect the location of her two studios - rural Vermont, and the deep woods of human nature known as Manhattan. She draws on her responses to both, and much more, to inspire and inform her allegorical portraits and mindscapes - found and sourced objects, live models (including herself and her daughter), and a library of hundreds of wildlife and nature reference books. Animals are not rendered placeholders for symbols and icons, they thrive in her invented world.

Depicting a sharp reality not tethered to realism, Viddo’s canvases evoke a life on the edge of the incarnate. Imagined in motion her strong characters are expressed in an energy that suggests puppetry over animation. The notion of these edgy stories in performance for children is not outlandish, these matinees recall the gruesome, ancient fairy tales we asked our parents to “read over again,” and every child’s fascination with all thinks ooky and natural – alive or dead. So it comes as no surprise that Lena is also a devoted mom with keen insight into the inner lives of children, and a pathway to the child in each of her viewers.

As in a good bedtime story, the wide eyes of an “Earthly Delights” heroine in her particular predicament - with playful mice (she’s eating one), curious swans craning severed necks, enormous ticks in the curly golden locks of a nymph, loosely stitched incisions (a reference to cosmetic surgery), giant bees, menacing toys or an amorous frog - are the window on her vulnerability as well as her power to endure and vanquish. Lena says ,“Once I get the eyes, the rest of the painting flows.”

One can trace this dynamic in the history of her works to a series depicting submissive characters in bondage situations, “Ties That Bind,” which are composed tightly around a single figure with the eyes sometimes all or partially out of view. The physical gesture so strongly radiates the angst and desire of anticipation that, when they eyes are in play, it overwhelms. For the more loosely composed “Earthly Delights” the artist restrains her own powers to dominate the emotions of the viewer, confining that energy to the depths of liquid eyes, from which escapes in flashes she allows to appear seemingly against her will.

Unlike many artists who shy away from discussing underlying messages in their work, Lena acknowledges her intention to address certain issues and themes – a food/oral motif, male-female love, the tyranny of beauty, the relationship of victim and predator. Some of these visions and characterizations populate the works of a poet who particularly sparks her imagination, Pablo Neruda.

From Viddo’s own translation of “A Cat’s Dream:

“I should like to sleep like a cat,

with all the fur of the ages,

with a tongue rough as flint,

with the dry sex of fire;

and after speaking to no one,

stretch myself over the world,

over roofs and landscapes,

with a passionate desire

to hunt the rats in my dreams.”

Lena’s work appeals to and inspires other artists. Her portrait of a roaring big cat - “Water Tiger,” - from her other current series of close up-works in vertiginously layered detail with a fauvist twist and appropriately named “Sexy Beast,” was acquired last year by Shepard Fairey.

Another artist well known for his difficult content and great detail, Ahmed Alsoudani, enjoys the contradiction in the childlike form and angry eyes of Viddo’s free-standing piece in his collection, painted on a “Dunny” toy figure, called “Hide and Secret”. “I like the idea,” he says, “That I have to look all around the piece to see all the details, heavy in some places open in others.” He pointed out a shared element in their visual vocabulary - a zipper - which appears in his recent painting as well as Lena’s work.

On message, current events can affect the evolution of a painting. Viddo explained that a vignette depicting torture in a section of the large landscape “Manifest Destiny” was inspired by the news and images of the inhumane treatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. In this series torture becomes fashion and fashion in the end becomes torture.

Lena’s paintings don’t evoke feeling first, they make you see, and see again. I don’t necessarily trust her not to show more than I can handle, but I know I will never resist looking. The artist possesses the insight and skill-set to transparently disturb and entertain us at the same time, and also disturb us with the fact that we are entertained…which of course teaches us something about ourselves. At her visual cocktail party, she has put her mousetrap in the potato chip bowl, and even though it snaps, and hurts, we just can’t get enough.

Linda DiGusta

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lenaviddo · 9 years

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Remembering Jim RIP James Richmond Saying goodbye for now to my mentor and good friend Jim has been an obvious time for reflection on the human condition, my existential predicament, and most especially on Jim Richmond, the beautiful man and artistic genius I loved so dearly. For me, It is an impossible task to encapsulate and describe the multidimensional Jim Richmond through words and a couple of paragraphs. And so, I only offer a tiny glimmer of what impresses me the most at this moment as I sit here a few days after his memorial service. Jim not only was my mentor in the traditional artistic sense, but he was also my most significant Life teacher and role model. I attribute to him a great deal of the way my life has turned out including the woman that I have become today. I met Jim in the late 80’s when I was in art school and working behind the bar in Soho at one of the cities most happening haunts. One of the nice guys, I quickly coveted him. He was a keeper, one of those people you don’t ever want to lose touch with; a friend for life. Jim Richmond was epic. He was a Renaissance man; artist, painter, sculptor, builder, architect, horseman, a writer of letters, storyteller, teacher, illustrator of books, father, husband and dearest of friends. Larger than life, enormous both physically and in personality, he straddled many worlds and opposites. Standing at 6’2”, he was a mid-western cowboy, muscular, monumental and rugged to the core, yet erudite and refined with the most sophisticated sensibility. Back then Jim joined me in the late afternoons early evenings for a bar steak and a glass of red wine. It was then during those interludes before the mad rushes when Jim recounted to me his stories. The adventures of Jim were often super human. Jim himself was like out of a storybook legend, or a character from a Kerouac novel. He was a gentleman beyond and from an era that had long preceded mine. His stories inspired nostalgia and awe and recounted tales of hippy flower power in which he with long hair and beard walked on foot coast to coast, from Massachusetts to California, with his beloved, Marcia and their two dogs. His tales included western sagas on horseback, and most importantly the plight of an artist of life. I will miss his stories and miss his letters. He spoke and often wrote to me of his alternative worlds including wild and wonderful Vermont as if it were a land of fairytales where pixies and trolls frolic and cause trouble. I owe to him my twenty-six year relationship with the Vermont land and friends I have grown to cherish and love so dearly. At the time I had no idea that people could live happy and fulfilling lives so remotely and simply without electricity using only wood to heat their homes. Jim’s farm, Sky Acres was one of these off the grid rustic sanctuaries. It was a magical place filled with guests from all over the world. Dinners were grand events that included characters from all walks of life including artists, academics, inventors, farmers, woodsmen, beauty queens and children. So it was from Jim that I learned how to entertain and throw a good party in high style. For those of you who know me well and have been guests at my house in Vermont, here at a dinner gathering in New York, or at one of my parties elsewhere you can thank Jim for our good times. I can even hold him responsible for my relationship with the love of my life, Felipe and in turn also for our son, Valentino. It was Jim who first introduced me to horsemanship and riding, and consequently many years later I luckily found myself in Hunter Jumper equestrian class next to a new friend, an amazingly funny and handsome Cuban named Felipe who also later grew to know and love Jim. As many sensitive people do, Jim suffered deeply. The world can be a terrible place that hurts and haunts, and there is often no making sense of these horrors, especially where someone like Jim is concerned. I miss my friend Jim, yet I am relieved that he is now free from the earthly and carnal things that weigh us down. I recently read that life and death are an illusion. If this is the case, well Jim Richmond will live forever, and I know that I will see him again. I imagine that when we do meet he will be driving a golden chariot led by his horses Sky King, Rockette, Hope, Primo, Miss Cara, and all the rest of the Equine gang ready to take me off to his studio in the sky for my next chapter of lessons.

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lenaviddo · 9 years

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Agent Provocateur "Le Salon D'Art" Commercial shot at Inter-Space, my Bushwick studio and project space. Thanks to Michael Abt and to the gorgeous muse, Bali Rodriguez. It was such a pleasure collaborating with friends and creatives. Model and Muse: Bali Rodriguez Director: Michael Abt Director of photography: Pierrot Colonna Art Director : Lena Viddo Editor: David Bryen Hair & make Up: The Sanchez sisters — with Lorenna Sánchez and Michael Abt.

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lenaviddo · 9 years

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#joy #inspiration #daysinparadise #greenstudio

#greenstudio #joy #daysinparadise #inspiration

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lenaviddo · 9 years

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