Interview: Oded Levran
Luca Curci talks with Oded Levran, during VENICE INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR, at THE ROOM Contemporary Art Space

Oded Levran (b.1984, Tel Aviv) is a multidisciplinary designer and photographer based in Berlin. His work draws on photography and design to engage with metaphors, irony and language. Levran applies various mediums and uses mixed media in his work. He has presented in several galleries and exhibitions in Europe and Israel.

Luca Curci – What’s your background? What is the experience that has influenced your work the most?
Oded Levran – I have many years of experience in photography. Professionally, I’m working as a graphic designer.

LC – My artwork is combined with photography and mixed media. I try to respond to political and environmental events using symbolism and metaphors.
OL – My current work “The Fall of Empires” was influenced by the book “A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari, and by political events taking place in the world in the last decades.

LC – Which subject are you working on?
OL – While creating The Fall of Empires project, I tried to tackle several themes such as the micro-macro theory and the Japanese aesthetic approach called Wabi-Sabi – presenting a form of beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.

LC – How is being an artist nowadays?
OL – Over the course of the last ten years, I have been working as a creative director and a designer for different companies. Art for me is something I do in my free time. Different to my daily work as a designer, where I need to work for someone else and answer a defined brief, in my art projects I can have my own experiments and express my own views and thoughts. I feel that being both a designer and an artist compliments each other.

LC – Do visitors’ suggestions enrich yourself and your art?
OL – I believe you can learn a lot from any feedback you get, especially from a fresh pair of eyes that see your work for the first time. Through other people’s eyes and points of view, I see new things in my work that I have a blind eye to because I am so familiar with it. It is always great to see your work from a new angle and to keep things in mind about how to improve in future work.

LC – Did your style change over the years? In which way?
OL – I believe that nothing actually remains the same, everything is constantly evolving. I think the same about my style. As the years go by, you become more accurate and can predict better how things would look in your head even before creating them.

LC – What is the message linked to the artwork you have shown in this event?
OL – Every piece of The Fall of Empires photo series is dedicated to a major empire from human history that has collapsed. The repetitions in this work are to show that we should not take things for granted and that nothing remains forever, not even the biggest empires. The Byzantine Empires, for example, ruled over more than 1,000 years- if we were living somewhere in the middle of this period, we would never be able to imagine a different world. For us, it would be as if the Byzantine Empires were always there are would remain forever. Today, almost 600 years after, long after it collapsed, we know it is not true, because we live in a completely different world that is dominated by completely different powers.

LC – Would you suggest a collaboration with us? What do you think about our services?
OL – I’m happy I have had the chance to collaborate with ITSLIQUID GROUP. For future work together, I hope it has opened new directions and opportunities for my work to be meaningful for audiences that ITSLIQUID GROUP works with.

LC – What is your idea about ITSLIQUID GROUP?
OL – I see it as a live and evolving platform that celebrates the different forms of art and design. That it is both a place you can discover art while simultaneously bringing artists together and promoting their work.