This is 5 Questions. Each week, we send five questions to an artist featured in Under the Radar, our weekly email highlighting the best art on the ArtSlant network. This week we seek answers from Denise Treizman.

What are you trying to communicate with your work?

Using materials that we encounter in our everyday life, I am trying to make the viewer shift his perspective, even if for a short moment in time. I am hoping I can open a door that encourages the audience to see things in a different way and appreciate the beauty embedded in simple gestures and materials. I want to challenge their preconceived perceptions about what can and cannot be considered an artwork, as well as where and how art is supposed to be encountered. Using mundane objects that are known but become slightly unfamiliar when included in my pieces, I want viewers to travel in time, making associations that come from their own personal experiences or memories in relation to these materials.

What is an artist’s responsibility?

I think it is important to constantly push the limits, to not let the work become still…always strive to get out of our comfort zone so that the work stays fresh. But the most important thing to me is to make work that comes from the heart; that is true to whom I am, to my process, and to the way I see the world.

Show us the greatest thing you ever made (art or not)?

Futbolisarte poster. Design: ekis.cl  Photos: http://www.schkolnick.com

In 2010, in Chile, I developed a huge project called FUTBOLisARTE. It was the time of the Soccer World Cup in South Africa. That same year, in Chile (where I am from) sadly there was a devastating earthquake and tsunami that destroyed many cities in the country. With the whole soccer fever going on, because our national team had qualified to go to the cup after 16 years of absence, I decided to merge Soccer and Art to help those in need. I was able to get the original soccer shoes donated by the national team players and invited renowned artists from the local scene to transform one shoe into a work of art. The second one was autographed by the soccer player to whom it belonged, and together they were assembled into individual sculptures. These were exhibited and then auctioned in a huge fundraising event to rebuild a school. With the project, we raised over $50,000, but also important, with the exhibition, art was brought closer to a public that is not generally attracted to cultural activities.

Tell us about a work you want to make but never will:

Every time I discover a new material or learn a new technique I think of endless possibilities for new installations. Many times these ideas involve having access to big exhibition spaces, budgets for materials, teams of assistants, and more. I don’t like to think of these ideas as things that I will never be able to make. Instead, I think of them as dream projects that are just postponed until the right time arrives. And I hope that is sooner rather than later!

Hasta La Vista, Maybe, 2016

Who are three artists we should know but probably don’t?

David Jacobs, David Peña, and Paulina Rutman.

—The ArtSlant Team

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