Ute Bertog, Artist (Repost)

 

Hello everyone! In honor of Ute Bertog's great new show at Rosalux Gallery, I am republishing my 2017 interview with Ute with updated photos and links. This is a little wacky for me because I was 13 at the time and was still getting the hang of this blog, but her answers were and are great. Thank you for reading! (Instagram: @utebertog / Website: Ute Bertog)

Jackson: Why do you think you became an artist?

Ute: Hmmmm, there are so many influences I can think of that made me want to pursue art. First of all I had an aunt - and my favorite aunt at that -  who was an art teacher and I spent many afternoons just making things around her. She was very creative in the arts and all sorts of crafts. She instilled this possibility in me to pursue art as a career. Also going to art museums as a teenager was a magical experience, simply because it was so different than the surroundings I grew up in. Not that there anything wrong with where I grew up. On the contrary, I had a very happy childhood. I am from a small town, which gave us a lot of freedom to just roam in the surrounding fields and woods. Still, museums gave me the whiff of the wider world and as a child there was nothing more exciting than to imagine living in a different environment just because of the potential for adventure. Museums were a promise for that potential to explore and stretch beyond the known.

Jackson: What is your favorite artwork and why?

Ute: That is a very difficult question since I don't have one particular piece of artwork that I'd call my favorite. There are just so many. I do have several artists that I'm returning back to on a regular basis though and that I am always happy about seeing in a museum. Amy Sillman comes to mind, and Philip Guston.

Jackson: In what ways is art different in Germany than it is in the United States?

Ute: That is an even more difficult question since when I left Germany I had not pursued art as much yet. Back then it was more of a private endeavor and I hadn't explored much of the wider art scene. Plus in my hometown there just wasn't an art scene, just the museums that were in the bigger cities. Now I would love to show there again and maybe even spend more time there to work, just to see how I'd experience the difference, if there even is one. One time I was listening to a radio show about a theater production directed by a British guy. He was asked about the production in America was different from the one in the UK and he said that here the audience was very inquisitive, wanting to know and understand every little detail, whereas in the UK they were much more at ease about taking in the whole thing and being OK with the uncertainty of not knowing.