Interview with Pia vom Ende
October 2019
1. How important is the absurd in your practice?
Something is only beautiful if and because it also carries something repulsive in itself. For example, a perfume is only fragrant, if "nauseating" fragrances are included. In a concentrated form, Phenylacetic acid smells like old urine. In combination with other floral fragrances, it adds a rosy honey note to the fragrance. The absurd is paradoxical, ambivalent, contradictory, surreal and there are no rational answers. The absurd can be tragically felt, but it can also turn into a comic.In my work, I turn the various controls up or down and question myself when does evil turn to good, beautiful to ugly, what happens when the laughable with the serious clashes.
2. What are you currently working on?
I am currently working on the subject of humility. Right now I am working on some drawings and paintings. Additionally, I am working on a VR Game. The visual world in VR and the paintings consists of hyenas, madonnas, animal transformations, matriarchy, sand, stones, fire, destruction and invasive plants …
3. Do you listen to music while working?
In my work, there are different phases: preparation, thinking and reflection, painting with the head and without. Depends on which mood and what phases I’m listening music or I am not.
I listen to dark wave, punk rock, 60s psychedelic rock, traditional music of South Africa, Japan, South America, stoner rock, choir chants….. I’m in love with Nico, Misfits, Crystal Castles.
4. Which artists (or other people) are you inspired by?
Christoph Schlingensief’s movies and actions illuminate the current social situation in a radical and brutal way. His logic of self-exploitation and the important message to never be ashamed for showing one’s weak spot and the darkest parts of being a human being are of grave importance for my work.
5. What is your favourite place to see art?
I like the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.
6. What is the best part of being an artist?
The best and the hardest thing at the same time is that I can and must act out of my own responsibility. I act according to my own truth and veracity and there is nobody to blame for my actions.
7. Are there any ongoing projects or upcoming exhibitions where we can see your work?
I’m living in Berlin-Spandau and right now, I start to rebuild my grandfather’s old joinery to an artist space. The joinery is going to be a studio and I plan the adjacent carriage house to be opened for exhibitions and colloquium.