Erosie Interview

GENESIS is almost here and for the exhibition we will be releasing a limited edition catalogue featuring exclusive artwork and interviews with the artists involved...including Erosie. Erosie's interview was fantastic but due to limited space in the catalogue we couldn't print all his answers so below are some questions that were omitted, but are exclusive to Chapter One!

On your website you say that you ‘try and get away with it’…what have you ever done that has remained a secret until now – either artistic or illegal, that you have got away with ?
In a way doing graffiti for years in general is like a visual celebration of “getting away with it”. But what I meant was slightly different. It says: “Next to that I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing, but try to get away with it anyway.” It has to do with walking a path that has a very unclear direction in the long run; doing art and making money, for instance. Well, doing art in general! If it's even art that I'm doing to start with. The doubts and struggles that comes with it for instance. So it's referring to that flipside.

After the excesses of street art in 2008, do you think that the contemporary art market is changing? And if so, what do you think to – something better?
I think those excesses really started around 2002/2003 and never really ended strangely enough. On top of that you are probably referring to London, and that is like a very different story to what I am used to in the Netherlands.

Funny thing is that it never really became clear why people that do things in the street should be in a gallery-space to start with, especially when showing the same work...it's two completely different worlds really. Exactly that difference could make it more interesting.

Maybe this whole street-thing peaked too fast, got hyped too easily. And will fall down just as quick. That's a pity in a way because so many good things have been done by so many artists. Hopefully it will just take time for things to settle and develop different directions, get more mature and varied. Personally I think it should not be about “street”, people should dare to look through things and question it's quality in a bigger picture, instead of slapping a genre on it and start applauding for the applause itself. If you look into the history of not only graffiti from NY but art in general, “streetart” is not something from the past 5 or 10 years but has been happening all along. So why is it so special now? It can only be special or different because it is about now and not about something that happened 30 years ago, and in a way a lot of “streetart”is. Every age has different topics and specific interesting problems and situations that should be considered just to make it relevant to start with. I try to look at it like that.

You are showing at the inaugural show of Chapter One…what would be the perfect gallery to you and what three artists would you show – living or dead?
From what I heard until now Chapter One seems to be near perfect! And I would be the worst person to select 3 people because I could never satisfyingly select three people since there are so many combinations and so many good artists...especially dead ones. It's like asking for my three favorite colors...or ice cream-tastes...it changes all the time...sorry, I tried!

Also don't forget that we are releasing an exlusive screenprint by Erosie on wednesday...only 50 released in our onlineshop or at the gallery.