JOHN FORNO INYTERVIEW.
http://2095-streetart.blogspot.co.uk
We first “met” via PM3 as it were. Can you give a little bit of insight into the world of Forno the artist
“Hmmmmmmmm….before doing my Undergrad in Fine Arts, my work was an exploration into the pitfalls of Consumerism. This idea of stripping away the ego that mass media target and continually cascade in front of us. The usual “you need this, want this and are not whole without it”.
Inspired by the likes of Ben Frost, Fairey, Banksy & Ron English, I firmly believe that there is a therapy in art, so I gradually flogged myself through Undergrad, shifted more to my own personal history, my childhood, exploring psychology, ego, memory, Gestalt Principles, items of nostalgia and of course POP Culture. I’m a POP culture kid through and through.
I believe if I have experienced something in my life, then someone else has more than likely experienced something similar. Through the medium of art I hope to raise questions for the viewer and encourage self exploration. But sometimes it just looks aesthetically pleasing.”
This is a photograph of my mind map; this is what I refer to when thinking about concepts and ideas.
By using this method of getting my ideas down on paper, has helped me to write down key words relating to any particular subject.
If I have key words to work with, I find it easier to remember those points and subjects, and seeing my ideas in a more visual way.
By having discussions with my tutors and peers also helps me to broaden my knowledge, and other key words I might have not thought about.
I have this on the wall of my studio, so it is always there in front of me, if ever I need to reflect or add to the diagram.
This artwork (Untitled 2014) was another step I had previously worked on for the Disney concept. I originally sketched and inked out the form of the work.
I had the idea of portraying Snow White as a film star offset, snorting cocaine off the magic mirror. I felt this work had sum cheeky irony to it, as another word for cocaine is ‘Snow’.
This work then stemmed towards the censorship laws that we currently have in place, and how the public view shocking material. This also shows a children’s classic character seen doing something illegal.
I scanned the image onto a programme called ‘Sketch-book-express’, which I found incredibly easy to use. Using this editing art programme,
I was able to zoom into the image and clean up lines, add more colour. Also using this programme, you could rotate the image to work on more effectively, which made it an extremely useful tool to use, when tidying up your work.
This artwork (Untitled 2014) is part of my current studio practise. I did a lot of research on Walt Disney and this showed many different messages and metaphors within his work that I found quite surprising.
There was racist stereotyping through the use of black crows in the film ‘Dumbo’. Also in ‘The Little Mermaid’, Aerial sells her soul to the devil in order to be human, so she can fall in love with her prince charming. There has been hype about a lot of his work and what he was like in person.
I had a couple of ideas of taking female lead Disney characters from different movies and taking them to a completely other level. By taking them out of context from their original view,
I wanted to show them being less glamorous, and seen out of their original roles. Portraying them as real life Hollywood actresses.
The problems I came across during my crit’s (group critical analysis) was that I came to realise maybe my work was a bit too obvious, and also these ideas were steering me away from the original concept of Pop Art
I was trying to grasp this in my practise. Whilst researching this concept, I also found that many artists before me had used Disney within there work.
I really enjoy scanning some of my artworks onto the computer and playing with them on different art editing programmes.
This gives me the chance to play around with filters and colours, and to also view my artwork in a different form.
Another benefit to using these programmes saves the artist time, because they can be used fairly easily and you have more freedom to play with the work, without having to permanently alter (correcting) the artwork in any way.
Here is a simple example I did using photo-shop:
