10 Questions with Ben Große-Johannböcke

Al-Tiba9 Art Magazine ISSUE14 | Featured Artist

With a background in tattooing, Ben Große-Johannböcke, born in Melle, Germany, in 2002, explores the relationship between musical compositions and visual arts. Coming from a small art school in Löhne, Germany, he was able to directly undertake postgraduate study at Chelsea College of Arts, London, without holding an undergraduate degree. His practice investigates repetitive patterns of mark-making, which he calls 'structures' that result from musical compositions by primarily Philip Glass and Steve Reich.

@bengrjart

ARTIST STATEMENT

There are many parallels between painting and music, many shared approaches, ideas, and goals. However, there seems to be a gap; composers learn mainly from composers and painters from painters. Ben Große-Johannböcke's work begins to close that gap. A large part of his work consists of graphite drawings on canvas, isolated mark-making with neither form nor colour. These patterns/structures aim to visually recreate certain parts of the musical composition they respond to. He then places the resulting structures in more complex painterly, social, and political environments to analyze their place within contemporary art; one example of this is the currently altered and destroyed Ukrainian landscape.

INTERVIEW

First of all, introduce yourself to our readers. Who is Ben Große-Johannböcke, and how would you describe yourself in three words? 

Hey, my name is Ben. I originally come from a small private art school in Löhne, Germany, where I was fortunate enough to be taught an incredible lot over the course of six years by Michael Kramer, an outstanding tutor and wonderful person. 
I have developed a lot during and since that time and am now moving to London to undertake postgraduate study at Chelsea College of Arts. I have also worked as a tattoo artist for three years now, which is part of the reason why I was offered a place on the Graduate Diploma Fine Art course without holding a BA degree.
Three words. That is a tough one. If I were good with words, I would have become a poet or a writer, not a visual artist. Maybe: idealist, curios, layered.

You started out as a tattoo artist before turning to visual art. What prompted this change? And how did you first get inspired to follow this career path? 

The combination of tattooing and pursuing further art education was always the plan; it became clearer over the years that I would like to try and sincerely take on a career as an artist. I knew I wanted to experience art uni, but also that I was not too fond of the options Germany had to offer. I realized if I wanted to go to London, since my parents could not cover these costs, I had to work first. I tried tattooing since that area seemed somewhat related to the visual arts and decided to stick with it to save for my future education. 

Do you find any similarities between your tattoos and your paintings or the approach to work you have in both fields? 

Yes, I do find similarities, which I never thought I would be able to say when I first started out. Tattooing (at least for the types of tattoos I make) is a lot about lines and tracing lines. I never before thought about lines as a tool of expression. They never had any more purpose in my practice than to guide me where the paint would go. Over time, being constantly exposed to lines working in the tattoo studio, I started to realize I had overlooked them. I was interested in a body of work in response to music but was never quite sure how to begin; without my experience as a tattoo artist, I don't think I would have found a way. 

Speaking of your work, you use musical compositions as the base layer of your work. What importance does music have for your work? And how did you develop this relationship with music? 

Well, I am interested in music as I am interested in painting, but I know very little about music. I wouldn't know the first thing about composing. I'm pursuing visual art because it always has more to offer than you can understand. I want to keep coming closer to this utopian idea of a true, absolute understanding of art. This curiosity applies to music as well.
That is what my work is all about; I create these drawings in order to grasp the musical composition they respond to and, at the same time, explore mark-making, how lines and patterns can express or represent certain moods or states. 
I hovered around the idea of paintings/ drawings coming from music for some time; it was one of those things that came back to me every couple of weeks, but I dismissed it every time. Then in early 2022, I visited Tate Modern in London, where I eventually stumbled across a wall covered in small frames with even smaller ink drawings. They all looked roughly the same, a fine grid of vertical lines with approximately twenty or so tiny squares, one on each line, varying in height but always arranged in a resembling way. The room next to it was dark. In it, nothing but the same tiny squares projected on the wall, only now they flashed rhythmically one after the other and then disappeared. In sync with the flashing, a rhythmic percussionist beat. Lala Rukh's "Rupak" just opened an enormous door for me. 

Your work is based upon repetitive patterns that you call structures. How did you come up with these designs? Do they have any specific meaning? 

I came up with the idea for the structures one evening; I tried various approaches over the previous months, none of which satisfied me. I was drawing something in my sketchbook, listening to Philip Glass. I gradually lost interest in what I was trying to draw and was listening more than anything else. You could tell by the drawing. I decided to keep going anyways, more making marks now than drawing, and after some time, I realized that as Glass's music looped and repeated itself, my marks did too. I sorted the marks, trying to find out which ones related to which part of the music, and repeated the process countless times until I arrived someplace I found interesting. That is still how I create the drawings; it is just less messy and chaotic the more I do it. 
The structures might carry fragments of meaning from the music they draw from, but I am not particularly interested in that. 
I am still trying to understand them, their intrinsic meaning, and their place in the contemporary art world. I think the relationship between them is key, the way they interact with one another.

At the same time, you also incorporate painting. What differences and similarities do you find in your approach to painting as opposed to drawing? Do you perceive one as the preparation stage for the other, or are they completely separate?

The most fundamental difference between the paintings is that these are abstractions based on photographs. So they relate to something visual. The current body of paintings faces photographic documentation of the war in Ukraine and explores questions regarding the future of the shown places: who will collect the debris, rebuild the houses, and what will happen to the people who are still there? 
The approaches to the drawings and paintings are inherently different; they come from different places and explore different ideas in different mediums; the only thing that unites them is their abstractness and the shared goal to establish a certain mood or situation without the use of figuration. 
The two are completely separate. The only time they come together is at the very end when I place parts of the structures in the painting. I want to see how they interact, always working partly with and against each other.

Ultimately, what is the message or the idea you want to communicate with your work?

My work is more trying to communicate a vision than a message; I am interested in the possibility of drawing from something other than the visual world to create visual art. I think there is a lot we (as visual artists) can learn from composers if we only find a way to access that information. 

Do you have any new series you are currently developing? And if so, do you plan to continue working on this parallel between art and music?

I am currently still creating more drawings and paintings of the same bodies of work because I feel, especially with the drawings, there is tons of work to do before I understand them enough to move on. 
I am, however, for some time now planning a new body of work that allows the structures to breathe more. I also want to take the painting into that series. I am currently short on the space and time this project demands; I am finishing everything here in Germany and getting ready to move to London. Once I am settled at Chelsea College of Arts, I plan on tackling that series. We'll see where it takes me.
I am definitely planning on continuing my work in response to music; it is such an enormous field of exploration, and there is still much more to investigate, and the new series will continue to do exactly that. 

Is there any other medium or technique you would like to experiment with? 

Yes! I would like to create some sculptures, see how the structures act in three-dimensional space, walking around them, possibly even through them. I plan on experimenting with cast glass since the facilities at Chelsea College of Arts, and UAL in general, are wonderful. 

And lastly, what is your biggest goal for the rest of 2023? 

My biggest goal is getting settled in London and meeting loads of like-minded people, going to all the shows I possibly can, and of course, bothering some artists I admire in their studios. Also, I'm having my first group show in Korea in December, which I am looking forward to.

Artist’s Talk

Al-Tiba9 Interviews is a promotional platform for artists to articulate their vision and engage them with our diverse readership through a published art dialogue. The artists are interviewed by Mohamed Benhadj, the founder & curator of Al-Tiba9, to highlight their artistic careers and introduce them to the international contemporary art scene across our vast network of museums, galleries, art professionals, art dealers, collectors, and art lovers across the globe.