Discussion about Aris Kalaizis between actress Andrea Sawatzki and Tina Simon

A short dia­log Between act­ress Andrea Sawatzki and Ger­man­ist Dr. Tina Simon about the ori­gin of the col­lab­or­a­tion between an act­ress and a painter.

Simon: Do you have a spe­cial rela­tion­ship to visu­al art? To mod­ern art? To painting?

Sawatzki: I love almost every kind of art. In my youth I loved Picasso’s Blue Peri­od. It con­soled me. Later I pre­ferred the more opu­lent works of Klimt, and then Schiele. Now I admire Richter, Rothko…and many oth­ers. I really felt access­ib­il­ity to mod­ern art dur­ing a gal­lery tour at the Leipzig Cot­ton Mill. That was an incred­ibly ful­filling exper­i­ence for me and also led to the happy cir­cum­stance that we now own a real Kalaizis!
But I have always been impressed by the old mas­ters as well. This has nev­er been lim­ited to one par­tic­u­lar epoch. After many years in which my hus­band and I col­lec­ted older works, we have been focus­ing more on mod­ern art for some time now. In any case, I have always had a pen­chant for paint­ing. Our young­est son Bruno is now prov­ing to be truly tal­en­ted and we hope to main­tain and share his enthusiasm.

TS: How did the co-oper­a­tion between your­self and Kala­izis come about – were you curi­ous or skeptical?

AS: It was clear to me from the begin­ning that I would pose for Aris someday. His paint­ings are stun­ning and mean­while we have become the proud own­ers of the paint­ing “The Day of Great Hope” (2007). My hus­band Chris­ti­an Berkel had already posed for anoth­er Kala­izis paint­ing (“Past Pres­ence Regained”, 2010). I agreed because I am a true admirer of his.

TS: How is it dif­fer­ent when your “dir­ect­or” is a paint­er? Was it as you ima­gined it would be? Or was it com­pletely different?

AS: No, it was exactly as I had ima­gined. After all, an act­or depends on his ima­gin­a­tion, on invent­ing his own story. That’s the way it was when I saw the phe­nom­en­al stage set Aris designed for “Homegrown” (2011). The fate of the woman I trans­formed into for this pic­ture unveiled itself to me imme­di­ately before my eyes. I sensed what had happened without exactly know­ing what it was. Of course, every view­er will inter­pret the work dif­fer­ently. But that is the pre­cisely the attrac­tion of Kala­izis‘ paint­ings. Aris tells stor­ies in his paint­ings, involves you in the life of vari­ous human con­flict situ­ations, and in the end gives the view­er the free­dom to find his own meaning.

TS: Were you pre­pared? Did the paint­er give you an insight into his visu­al con­struct? Or did you simply trust him? 

…as an act­ress, noth­ing can shock me anyway

AS: Aris had sent me a photo of the set and I was drawn to it imme­di­ately and in a cer­tain way I was also fore­warned, because I under­stood that some­thing ter­rible must have happened in the life of the main char­ac­ter. But still, you can keep spin­ning the story in your head and find a good end­ing for it. But I would have posed for Aris for any motif. As an act­ress, noth­ing can shock me anyway. 

TS: It isn’t a por­trait! As the main char­ac­ter in a work of art, you provide a highly charged char­ac­ter with your face and your appear­ance to cre­ate an unfore­see­able story – and that pos­sibly forever. Does that both­er you?

AS: I loan my entire body, not only my face. I always do that as an act­ress. I have to devel­op a story togeth­er with the dir­ect­or, but I have to adapt to his visu­al­iz­a­tion, his image and yet still remain aware and claim my own body lan­guage. And I like the fact that one can’t fast-for­ward me. Inter­pret­ing a work of visu­al art is left up to the view­er even more strongly than it is in the case of a film. Can you bear that?
That is the most excit­ing part. I don’t want to over­load the view­er with my own ideas but rather want to remain trans­par­ent and incite imagination

TS: You endured patiently for a long time in swel­ter­ing heat. What were you think­ing about the whole time?

AS: That I felt like con­tinu­ing to act out the life of that woman. Before or just after that moment in time. 

TS: Would you pose for oth­er artists? Or is there some­thing in Kalaizis’s work which “facil­it­ated” your co-operation? 

AS: I nor­mally make myself scarce when con­fron­ted with such requests because I can’t rid myself of the fear that some­body might only want me because they feel they can cur­rently mar­ket their work bet­ter that way. With Aris, I know that he means me, and I like the fact that he takes a long time to con­sider his paint­ings. He searched for a situ­ation for me, for a woman who essen­tially appears like me and can pos­sibly become one with me. That is a gift for me. And now I am a part of Aris’ visu­al world.

©Andrea Sawatzki | Tina Simon | Stef­fen Junghans (pho­tos)

Andrea Sawatzki, born 1963, is a Ger­man act­ress and author. She became known to the great­er pub­lic with her appear­ance in the 1997 film “The Phar­macist”. Fur­ther­more, she has acted in sev­er­al oth­er suc­cess­ful films such as “The Exper­i­ment” and “Leo and Claire”. She is one of the most well-known Ger­man act­resses. She lives in Ber­lin togeth­er with her hus­band Chris­ti­an Berkel and their two children.