The Artificiality of Painting - Interview with Axel King and LplusL by Matthias Van De Vel

Axel King is a young painter whose works appear to be conceived digitally. When you visit his website (www.axelking.com) it is striking how often he shows images of himself. Axel King, you do not seem to be the shy type.

Axel King ‘I’m proud of my work and I’m proud to come out with it. I’m a flamboyant guy, not the kind of artist that crawls away in his studio. I like to go out for example and… give interviews.’ (laughs)

M.V.D.V. Your work often consists of two parts that are conspicuously different. There is also often an aphorism incorporated in it which is divided in two parts: one at the top and one at the bottom of the work. Are you preoccupied with what is dual?

King ‘For now I’ve chosen to work in that way, but it’s no preoccupation. In a few months I may change my method to combining three or four parts. It’s rather a technique that I use, a style that I’ve developed. I’m satisfied with it and I’d like to explore it some more. It could develop in any way but it has to remain recognizable for my audience of course. The elements that I incorporate in my work are just the products of what inspires me, images that I pick up and stick with me and that I try to assimilate in a unified work.’

M.V.D.V. Where do you pick up those elements?

King ‘It’s the divine inspiration.’ (shrugs while laughing)

M.V.D.V. Those aphorisms seem to be a kind of advices that you want to share with the world. Are you a socially engaged artist?

King ‘They are not really statements, rather reflections on what I see. I’m reacting on what happens in the world, in the here and now. I’m not sure yet which precise message I want to convey. But I am sure that there’s a lot of information going around.’ (laughs)

M.V.D.V. Although you make paintings, by their appearance they almost seem to be conceived digitally. Is your work influenced by digital art?

King ‘I remove virtual images from the domain of the virtual and put them in the domain of the real. Through digital paintings I want to stress the dichotomy between new influences and a medium that has been established since forever. I also want to question both mediums. How will painting evolve and what’s the origin of digital art? Why should painting remain painting and digital art remain digital art?’

M.V.D.V. By chosing to give digital art the form of a painting you also ensure that there is only one copy of it. Do you also do this in order to give it a kind of unicity?

King ‘That’s part of it. I could have become a poster artist, send my work to a poster manifacturer and everybody would be able to buy it for a dollar. That may have been fun as well but I wanted to sell art, to participate in the game of the artistic circles. I wanted to exhibit my work in galleries and museums. That’s where I feel at home.’

M.V.D.V. You have a whole entourage around you that helps decide for instance how you should look and what you should or should not say, maybe even what your work should look like. Does this never give you the feeling that you have lost your authenticity and become a kind of stooge?

King ‘Not that I know of. (laughs) For now I have to take all the opportunities that I can get. If I refuse them, I will be refused myself. I’m just glad to be able to meet the right people. And I’m grateful to the formidable crew that surrounds me for helping me guide my talents. It is not so unusual to be surrounded and guided as an artist. The art world is in this respect not much different than say, the world of popular music. Any popular artist may wonder one day if his work is authentic. Is it really his? Where has his inspiration really come from? Maybe one day I’ll have an identity crisis myself. You should ask me this again in a few years.’ (laughs)

M.V.D.V.Thank you for this interview.

M.V.D.V. LeroyplusLeroy are two important members of Axel King’s entourage, you might say the brain behind him. LeroyplusLeroy, when you speak with Axel King, he seems to be self-confident in a way that is almost unreal.

LplusL ‘That’s because Axel King isn’t real. He’s the product of a thinking exercice. We wanted to create a machine that can create art on itself. Axel King represents our machine. We might have chosen a sphere or a box to represent it as well but machines will probably get a more human form in the future anyway. So we’ve chosen to give ours a name, a face and a personality.’

M.V.D.V. How does this machine work?

LplusL ‘It is in fact a web platform where graphic designers can post their work and grade each other. People can also post sentences and rate them. At a certain moment in time the two works and the sentence with the highest score are mashed up together in a new image through the use our software. This all still happens in Axel King’s head. Afterwards this digital image is translated on canvas. We’ve chosen to let the works be painted by studios in China. First we thought about doing it in this country and working with assistents here but we’ve finally moved to China because we found the subject of its culture very interesting. China and its economy are now more topical than ever. A great deal of the outsourcing in our economy happens in that direction. We wanted to emphasize this.’

M.V.D.V. So the work is in fact created by a whole community while Axel King himself is nothing more than a face. Do you want question the creativity of the indiviual in this way?

LplusL ‘There’s a lot we put into question. Who is the artist? Who is the deviser? Who produces the work? Is it actually important to know? Axel King is the artist and we’re in fact the artists of him. We’ve built him but apart from that we don’t touch the process anymore. Our work ends with devising him and the rest comes automatically. The creativity comes from people who’re anonymous. They have a user name but we don’t know them. Then the painting, the realization is done by assistents we know even less: anonymous Chinese people.

M.V.D.V. ‘The most interesting question is where in this process something becomes art. Are the works which are posted already art or only creative ideas? If they have won in a rating, is the new image that comes to exist art? Or is it only the product of a work of art, as the whole website is part of of the concept?’

Although Axel King is nothing more than a label to be recognized, you want to make him as real as possible. How do you want to achieve this?

LplusL ‘We want to have him appear in the everyday life: in magazines, gossip papers, interviews. He’s also going to give shows. Spectators who’re coming to visit them and see his paintings will take for granted that he really exists. In some shows we won’t reveal anything about the whole system, just show some of his work, provide some explanation to it, make a little biography, everything as it ought to be. The spectators may ask: “Where’s the artist?” We’ll just have to say: “We’re sorry, he’s absent,” something like that. That will make him real. People may think that it’s too bad he’s not there but they won’t think: “He’ll probably be some virtual guy.” And if they read an interview with him in that context, they’ll certainly swallow it.’

M.V.D.V. You do not only want to show Axel King’s paintings but also works about him.

LplusL ‘All our works about him are a kind of documentation concerning our working process. There are for instance drawings in ink of the studios in China. We also explain Axel King’s philosophy, why he has the appearance that he has…Those will be works that we produce ourselves.’

M.V.D.V. Because Axel King’s work is a product of collective creation and selection, it also comes to exist in a very arbitrary manner. Every work consists of the two images and the sentence that coincidentally get the best evaluation of the audience at a particular moment in time. Is this high random factor not a risk?

LplusL ‘Only in a limited way as we’ll also play the role of jury. All of Axel’s works will be produced and will end up in the catalogue of the works that he’s ever made. But we or the galery will then chose which of those will be exhibited. Like any artist he’ll only show his best works. So there’ll be in any case be a filter on them. The first filter is in fact the community that votes which works are the best. If the result isn’t satisfactoy we can still refrain from exhibiting it.’

M.V.D.V. What if the images and the sentence which are chosen by the community are valuable on their own but just do not fit together?

LplusL ‘In that case we won’t intervene as we have to keep our working process somewhat consistent. It’s a pity if a work ends up in the wrong place but then Axel King has made a mistake. He’s not perfect.’

M.V.D.V. As you stress the fact that the works are painted in a low-wage country, your project seems to be a critique on the globalized economy?

LplusL ‘You shouldn’t consider it a critique. We’re not like that. We want to use the means that exist today. We regard the internet as a medium and we also regard the Chinese painters who we use as assistents as a medium. We try to see what happens in the world today and which of it we can use to make art.’

M.V.D.V. But as you have chosen for China precisely because it is very topical, you do seem to make a kind of statement through this choice.

LplusL ‘Actually we’re becoming Sinophiles, or how do you call it? (laughs) The explosion of China’s economy and its impact interest us a great deal. So the logical conclusion is that we work with China and not with for instance India as we haven’t got the same connection with it.’

M.V.D.V. There remains a clear analogy with other products that are created in low-wage countries: the role of your Chinese assistents only concerns production, not any creative contribution. Do you want to take a certain position in this matter by emphasizing this?

LplusL ‘We’ve chosen to make the creative part happen somewhere else: on the internet, worldwide. It may come from any place, from China as well. We also need someone who can copy the result perfectly in a painting. There are many creative people in China but by chance we don’t need them in our process. So we’ve chosen for people who’re technically very skilled and who’re trained in a very academical way.

'If you’d want to find assistents to copy something perfectly in a Western country it’d be very difficult. People here are trained to have a contribution of their own. It’s regarded as something positive. Most people in China are trained in a very strict way, to follow exact instructions. It’s probably the influence of Communism. And for what we want to do this is in fact very convenient. If they’d start making their own interpretations, our Axel King story wouldn’t make sense anymore.

‘The expression low-wage country is always used very pejoratively but we don’t see it that way. Our Chinese assistents are glad to make such works. We learn this from their feedback through the internet. It’s their job to paint but normally they work on stuff that is technically less challenging than this. Our work is more fun for them than painting another landscape, just because it’s something different than what they’re used to.’

M.V.D.V. By chosing to have the works produced in a low-wage country you seem to state that art is just another part of our economy.

LplusL ‘Indeed. It’s actually interesting that art can coincide with the general economy. Its production isn’t necessarily something very magical. The fact that Axel King’s works are painted makes it even more delicate because the artist with his brush and his canvas is often romanticized. It is all very romantic but it can happen in a very technical way as well and then the result can be just as good.’

M.V.D.V. Regarding the economic aspect of art you often seem to walk the thin line between reflecting about it and participating in it. For example, by using the figure of Axel King you seem to show that the way art is sold to an audience is as important as the work of art itself. At the same time you want to launch promotion campaigns about Axel King so that your project will gain popularity.

LplusL ‘The fact that promotion and economical management are part of the art production is still a delicate issue for the audience. People often don’t want to know about that. But we haven’t got a problem with it. In fact we throw ourselves in it. Whether you want it or not, art is absorbed by the economy. It would be almost naïve not to acknowledge this.’

Matthias Van de Vel