First few basic questions, who are you, what are you doing, where are you coming from?
Hi! I’m Kike, that’s short for Enrique which is Spanish for Henry. I’m from Lima, Peru. And I’m a paper artist which sounds like I’m made out of paper but I’m just a boring sack of flesh and bones.
Why collages? How did you start to do them? Did it take long to find your own ”style”?
Collages because I’m not smart enough to be a surgeon. I started doing them a decade ago after quitting my job. I taught myself a variety of paper arts and crafts and became very acquainted with cardstock paper, which is a prime material in my practice now. I use cardstock paper as much as I use magazines, it gives me more control of the color palette and I can create my own objects instead of looking endlessly for them in piles of magazines.
Do you have favorite materials, or do you like the challenge of working with something new?
I’m always on the lookout for new stuff. My motto is to never copy myself, always to keep pushing what can I do with the medium. I see a lot of artists that find a formula that works and keep milking it until it becomes stale and predictable. I get bored easily so it’s always a challenge to keep myself entertained and not become fed up with my own work. Eventually, I’ll work with materials outside paper, maybe I’ll end up as an old man collecting weird stuff washed ashore on some remote beach. One can dream.
When you begin to work on a new piece, do you have a clear vision of what you are going to do or where to start? How much do your works “live”/change from the original vision? How much do you improvise?
The visions. From the moment I see an image I like I can envision what it would look like as a finished piece. There are twitches here and there in the process, but having a clear idea of what you want makes the whole process smoother and frustration-free. If your work triggers anxiety you’re doing it wrong.
What is your favorite part of the creative process? And then, what’s the least favorite part?
I don’t know if it’s part of the creative process, but cleaning after I finish a piece is always very rewarding. I work with a lot of details and tiny cuts so it tends to get pretty messy. Cleaning becomes an alchemic ritual of throwing away the old in order to create something new. My least favorite part is realizing there’s a world outside of my workshop where I have to go and talk to people and promote my work. I would just like to be here alone thinking of the next piece while removing dried glue from my fingers.
“I prefer to make people uncomfortable with my art rather than take them to a happy safe place.”
How do you feel your approach or creative style has changed over the years?
I’ve become more cynical over the years and my work shows it. It started kinda naive and now it’s more blunt and outspoken. Been doing a lot of political collage lately because of the ongoing political crisis in Peru and the fucked up situation we’ve left the planet in calls for it. I prefer to make people uncomfortable with my art rather than take them to a happy safe place. That place is a lie. Winston Smith once said “If you can’t be inspiring, at least be disturbing.” and I stand by those words.
Do you have other art forms which inspire you besides collaging? And does it show somehow in your collage works?
Movies and books. Books about movies. Movies based on books. Been in love with movies since I was a kid and I borrow a lot from them in my collages. From color grading to blocking, cinematographic language is always present when I work on compositions. For the record, no books are harmed while I do collage, only magazines get it and they love it.
Besides being a collage artist, you also run and curate @collagewave, a collage-focused IG page with 65k followers. How did you start it? And how do you feel it affects your own art when you see through the variety of the collage medium?
CollageWave started as an annual show I curated here with local collage artists, then I started the IG page because I wanted to show the huge range of styles that collage has to offer, so I took it to curate analog collage based on the uniqueness of the style and the craftsmanship of the technique. I’m always on the lookout for new collage artists, the goal of CollageWave is not to make the popular ones more popular, but to give a platform to new collage artists. The algorithm game is a tricky thing and newcomers need all the help they can get.
More than taking inspiration from the hundreds of collages I run into every day, it has given me a broad vision of what is going on in collage right now, which things are been done ‘til exhaustion, which things are new and getting trendy and more important, which things to avoid, like space backgrounds and replacing heads, can we just stop doing that, please?
What keeps you collaging? What excites you about it?
The urge to upset. In order to make people think, you have to risk being offensive.
If you should describe your art with one word, what would it be?
Mischievous.
Kike Congrains around the internet
Behance: Behance.net/congrains
Instagram: @canson_city
CollageWave: @collagewave
