Peter Raven
EVANICE HOLZ: In this modern age do you see the necessity to define art, and why?
PETER RAVN: No. But I personally prefer a certain physicality in art. I think a lot of artists today are very much inside their heads. A piece of art should be able to convey a feeling, a cognition, an acknowledgment of something, a message from one body and mind to another. That was a yes, wasn’t it?
EH: Delineate your creative process.
PR: My inspiration comes from situations that take place around me, things I see in people’s faces, things I read in books or just think about. I then (re-)create this situation with the men I ask to model for me, make sketches or take photos, and then when I begin to paint, I change it all again. A highly unscientific method.
EH: The sharp modern men in your paintings are pictured cavorting about in absurdities outside of the everyday normality. What compels you to paint these men so blatantly out of ‘the norm’?
PR: My work is about the basic existential conditions of interactions, relationships and the relationship between the individual and authorities and the norms of society. About the conversation a person has with him or herself throughout life. Alone.
Nobody hears this silent conversation because it takes place within yourself. To get closer to this, I eliminate the exterior just as I try to avoid contemporary identity markers such as fashion, strange hair, tatoos, piercings etc. My man is everyman having a hard time finding his place in the modernity.
