Art Yard Gallery Formento & Formento | United States
The highly staged and melodramatic images conjure many references: 1950s Japanese cinema, Ukiyo-e woodblock prints, and the erotic imagery of Ero Guro paintings. As outside observers, the Formentos’ stylized images explore the dichotomies that embody modern Japan -blurring the aesthetics between tradition and the ultra modern, fantasy and reality. The captivating tableaus exude a sense of tension,melancholy, and a quiet unease. Each image from Japan Diaries exists as if it were a still taken from a noir Japanese film, each solitary figure yearning for something unknown.
Mai VI, Kyoto 2013
Contemporary Art Station: Tell us about how you got started. When did you know you wanted to be an artist?
To fall in love with photography is one thing.To fall in love while creating photographs is a whole other thing, and both happened to us. I believe beauty is what happens when people who care about each other make things together.
CAS: What is your process like, from initial idea to the creation of the piece? Do you usually develop the idea for a project before you find the "canvas", or vice versa?
Bill Brandt said "ATMOSPHERE IS WHAT CHARGERS THE EVERYDAY AND THE BANAL WITH BEAUTY". Our projects typically start with an idea that came to us either in a dream, a memory, cinema, books, music and or a desire to explore a culture. We love the challenge of going somewhere we don't speak the language and simply relying on the universal language of art to communicate our message.
CAS: What do you love most about your creative process?
We bring our baggage to set and but also rely heavily on our subjects baggage. That alchemy is what makes our photography a success. We normally spend 2-3 years on a series and pretty much do everything ourselves. We like this control from beginning to end. We start with the idea and try to show what is unphotographable, feelings, emotions, spiritual psychological and erotic. And although we started together working in the commercial world, we are able to bring that kind of attention to detail, the glamour of hair and make-up, the timelessness of the styling with a feline like precision to every dissimilitude. Bringin deliberate quality, orchestrating ambiance that lulls you into a cradle of the uncanny and perverse with poetic dimension.
Yuka V, Tokyo 2013
CAS: What role does art and the artist play in the broader social conversation today?
Early on I realized the emotional value of photography, the way it connects people, the unspoken universal language and most importantly how one photograph has the power to transport you into a whole different world. I adore the strength of this medium to inspire imagination.
CAS: Name a few of your favourite artists and influences.
David Bowie, Edward Weston and Duane Michals.
CAS: What is the best advice you received as an artist?
Jerry Saltz said "Make an enemy of envy!!!" Envy is in the service of others, cut it out now or it will eat you alive and it will make you bitter, angry, mean, scared, it will make you a person that cannot be generous, loving and it will lead to cynicism and destroy your art.
CAS: When did you discover your voice as an artist?
Fortunately it was pretty early on for both of us. As young teenagers we already knew our path.
CAS: What advice would you give to emerging artists trying to find their own?
Work work work!
Thinking and doing are two very different processes. You always learn by doing and you can not think your way through art. Live on a little money as possible. Do what you have to do in order to make time for your art.
Marian III, Havana Cuba 2014
