CHRIS DRANGE: QUESTIONING AUTHORSHIP

Chris Drange: I am a big believer in DNA. My father and my grandparents were painters. I mainly grew up with my grandmother and spent most afternoons at her place drawing. She also taught art to schoolchildren, and I was one of her students. I guess I always wanted to become an artist.

CD: The result of my work is more important to me than the process. My process is digital, but the result is always a physical, handcrafted artwork. Today, we live in a world of sheer endless opportunities; we can do whatever we want through the power of the Internet. There are great tools of any sort to automate processes and develop anything. As a student, I started to automate and outsource work online around the globe simply because it was possible. I wanted to be able to work from anywhere in the world and detach myself from the studio.

CD: I am always looking for something typical, common, beautiful, or cute that says something decisive about our times. And at the same time, it should engage in a universal dialog; it should connect to a larger subject matter like portraiture.

CD: I don’t judge. What my work actually tells people is that they are OK. It is about self-affirmation. Affirming that they belong in this world and that people care about them. It's about becoming free from negative doubts, feelings, and beliefs. With a positive mental attitude, you create a kind of consciousness that helps you receive a wider point of view, more possibilities, and more abundance. The images or objects, like emojis, I work with are a result of that affirmation.

CD: Sometimes my work gets compared to the Instagram works by Richard Prince, which he started in 2015. I love Prince's work; it is always about appropriating images of various subject matters. His main theme is image theft. My work is merely a reflection of the times we live in. It is coming from a much more positive direction.

CD: Some people certainly think that my work supports a masculine gaze, but I never see it that way. When my two-year-old daughter sees one of my paintings, her response is always the same. No matter if she sees a painting of Kendall Jenner, Gigi Hadid, or Emrata, she points at it and shouts: Mama!

CD: For me, it is not so much about social media itself as what it can let you do. It is like a medium, a tool, that allows people to express themselves, affirm themselves, and grow personally, emotionally, spiritually, or financially. It’s a rather positive experience. I love searching for imagery and signs online that reflect that feeling.

CD: I know criticism as an element is often used by a lot of artists. But I don’t believe it's the role of the artist to criticize. The role and duty of the artist are to be as open as possible and reflect the world we live in. I don't believe that you can create anything unless you are 100 percent open to it. Only then can you begin to create. Being critical is like closing up, but as an artist, you need to be willing to let in, to let your work fully penetrate you. Art has to go through the artist.

CD: I am always looking for ways to expand my artistic vocabulary and subject matter. Working with animals seemed like a logical choice.

CD: I just love the feeling that rises inside me when I look at a puppy or a little goatling. That same feeling that the image conveys is what I wanted to transfer onto a canvas, just like in the artwork PUPPY WITH YELLOW BLOSSOMS, for example. The motif is painted multiple times larger than you would normally see in the image. It emphasizes all the painted details of the puppy's fur, which is quite beautiful and adds a lot of detail and compressibility to the painting. In addition, I put an extra layer of flowers on the canvas and create a sort of collage. That way, the painting gets another dimension, and the flowers increase the feeling the puppy radiates. Also, the cuteness of the puppy contrasts with the brutal way he is being held and pushed against the wall by a human hand.

CD: The forerunner painting to GIGI, BELLA & SKULL was also a side-by-side portrait of the Jenner sisters Kylie and Kendall. I experimented with several emojis until I finally ended up placing a skull right below the center of the double portrait. It immediately changed the composition and created the presence of three people in the image. It also created a triangle between the heads of the sisters and the skull, which brought them into a geometric and balanced dialogue with each other. Then I cut out the composition into a circle and made the entire painting round, which emphasized the triangle situation. In Holbein's painting, the skull is heavily distorted because of an anamorphic perspective, a very popular technique during the Early Renaissance. You can only see it if you are standing with a certain perspective towards the painting. I like that, because I also like to think that emojis are positively distorted. The skull is not threatening; he is actually grinning at you. It's like death smiles at you like a friend. For people, history is important to develop an understanding of who we are as individuals. It gives us a development kit to get confidence and a better self-understanding. Art can create a connection to history via reference points.

CD: A painting can change the way you see. It lets you look at things from a more distant perspective and creates another form of reception by eliminating speed. It's a whole different experience. This is particularly crucial when it comes to objective art. I get inspired by the early pop artworks of Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, and especially Roy Lichtenstein, because they were all committed to bringing the objective into the art world.

CD: Painting has a very big place in my practice and always will. But I am also always trying to find new ways to expand my vocabulary and experiment with different styles and mediums. Right now I am working with different techniques and materials to produce sculptures in China, which is something I have always dreamed to accomplish.