Seher One

Art Asylum: Tell us about yourself. What is your lifestyle/background? Where are you from?
Seher One: My name is David Pinon Hernandez. I was born and have lived in Mexico City all my life. They call me Seher. I have a 5 year old daughter who is my source of energy. I study design and I’m in my 7th semester. I would describe myself as pretty normal, calm and creative. I like to think that there are people and places farther than i can see. I love the theater I enjoy reading fantasy and terror. I live in love with art and design books. I can spend whole days dreaming of parallel worlds and imagining that they exist. I like nature and it has become a fountain of inspiration. I have a dog. I rarely match TV or play video games; I’d rather spend time with my friends or playing soccer, or tagging an abandoned building.

Art Asylum: Your name is an interesting name, how did you come up with it and does it have a specific meaning?

Seher One: Seher is an ambiguous Word it’s origin is from the middle east. In Arabia it is a common name and holds a magical meaning, it means an aura that surrounds us. Seher is synonymous with prophet. When I started working i needed a new name, something that I could identify with and that fit my work. So I started searching for words related to magic until I found Seher. So for the past 8 years I’ve been Seher One.
Art Asylum: How do you define yourself? A Street, Graffiti, Urban artist?

Seher One: Urban artist, i don’t think I’m a graffiti artist because my technique is mixed; I utilize sprays, acrylic and markers to generate a mural that goes far beyond plastering my name on a wall. I seek to transmit an idea, an emotion, or the movement of things. Everything moves, everything is fluid and fluctuates. So with that said, I don’t consider my art graffiti but more a post-graffiti specie.

Art Asylum: As someone who communicates through a great use of symbols in your work, can you tell me a little about the ones that mean the most to you and why you use them in your art?

Seher One: Basically, I look to generate a feeling of zúrrela-pop, which is what i call it. I try to include elements that are significant to me. Also interweaving things from my childhood. There are pieces in which the saturation of elements is huge. Which allows the viewer to take a closer look to read the piece and decipher the meaning with their sight. This i do with the intention of thinking of the vanity and beauty of the form of the piece.
I have elements that repeat themselves like a box of milk, pumpkin, peyotes, flowers, fauna, and skulls. Each with its significance. The box of milk reminds me of my brother who which is central in my work.

Art Asylum: Give us a little history on how and when you got into street art? Where you artistically inclined as a child?

Seher One: As a child I loved to draw, it was my favorite pass time. I was fascinated with imaginary characters, i loved fantasy stories. That’s how I Grew up, but it wasn’t until high school when I met my friends who dedicated themselves to graffiti that I began to partake in street art. With the passing of time it became more apparent to me that that letters wasn’t for me and I was more drawn and fascinated on creating characters. And that was when I started making homemade stickers, then came the posters, followed by the mixed technique and the murals. And with that came the challenge to try and perfect and improve with each piece.
Art Asylum: Do you have any formal education in art or are you self taught?
Seher One: Self-taught, I mean grant it I did go to school for design, put a majority of my art I picked up on the streets and from my graffiti artists friends.
Art Asylum: You’re particularly renowned for your incredible blend of color prowess. What have been your greatest influences in this arena and how did you hone your technique over the years?

Seher One: One of my biggest influences is the painter and teacher Salvador Dali whose art leaves me dumbfounded. There is also, Andy Warhol, M.C Escher, Hasao Miyasaki y Takashi Murakami, among others. I love colors and I enjoy my pieces to be packed with similar colors; at the same time it is important that there is balance and harmony in the equilibrium of the pieces.
My technique I refine through each of my pieces, I enjoy this and it makes me confident on what i do. I create drawings and sketches and push myself to make the former piece better than latter, and this is how I found the evolution of technique.

Art Asylum: What is your approach to color?

Seher One: The colors I use have strong associations with intense emotions and moods. And each color i use completely reflects my state of being at the moment. The colors tend to be full of life and energy and mutate into different form and if blended together are very capable of forming black. So occasionally it may seem black but it’s really layers of different colors that have overlapped and now are perceived as black in my artwork. Color is the protagonist of my work, above even the design itself.

Art Asylum: Before you start a piece, do you have a detailed sketch and are you fully prepared with color concepts? Is there room for spontaneity as you go along?
Seher One: The majority of my work is based on spontaneity, like I was saying it is hard to create a color coordination and maintain a balance among them because there are colors which disagree with each other and require some kind of organization, which tends to generate itself while I execute a piece. It the color patterns are pleasing to me in some cases I may use an old repeater of color coordination. So the sketches are only black and white and once I put them up the color depends on my mood or the message that I’m trying to get across.

I truly enjoy painting spontaneously and although the majority of my art has an already determined beginning and an end, while I’m executing them they mutate and develop.

Art Asylum: How long does it take you to produce a piece?
Seher One: It really depends on what kind of job I’m doing, but the majority of them take me 3 or 4 days. Although it takes me longer to do a canvas than a mural for the very fact that they are two very different things and each one requires something different of me, and both i do with the respect they demand. So sometimes it’s 3 days and others it’s just one day.
Art Asylum: Who or what are your greatest influences? Any artists from the past that may have influenced your work?

Seher One: Well I strongly believe that your childhood is your destiny. Everything that surrounded me in my childhood and how I developed, the things i saw, the cartoons, the comics i read, the movie theater and the streets were all factors which played a role in awakening the love for the magic of Art.

In the streets I encountered tagged pieces and stickers on old rusting newspaper stands, this generated in me a desire to be part of this ever evolving, mutating, regenerating environment of urban art.
Art Asylum: If you could paint with anyone in the world, who would it be and why?
Seher One: This question is hard to answer, I feel great admiration for a lot of older traditional artists. I would like to collaborate with OS Gemeos and Kaws.
Art Asylum: As a Graffiti / street artist and painter? Is there a difference between them in your opinion?

Seher One: Visually there should not exist differenced among them because all three realize their purpose whether it be technique, concept or product. It all depends from the perspective you want to look at it from. Not everything that is in a museum is art, similarly not everything that is on the streets is junk. But the difference really has to do with what kind of discussion is being carried out. Say for example you have a Banksy piece and a piece that is tagged both can be appreciated differently, both are artists but their techniques may vary radically.

Art Asylum: What do you think of the current “Street Art” movement in Mexico?

Seher One: I think the movement is still growing, a couple of years ago the streets did not have so many stickers and posters, and although perhaps a lot of the people who put those stickers up there are long gone, the BOOM of graffiti survived to find and fine tune those like me who honestly enjoy doing it. And you can see this in the art, it’s no longer traditional graffiti but a very interesting mix between art and design which is developing in our generation and creating a different creature all together.

Art Asylum: How do you feel about graffiti as a culture? Graffiti in the mainstream?

Seher One: Graffiti is a great culture which in very intertwined in our everyday society which is of course linked to the development of our social, political, cultural areas of our nation since it is here that the younger population has found an outlet with the desire to express an idea and show the lack of conformity with the system and society itself.
Art Asylum: How has graffiti or art in general effected how you live and think?

Seher One: Graffiti and art is a lifestyle, like I said before I consider myself an urban artist. I live completely attached from my heart and soul to graffiti. Everything I think and do revolves around two things, my family and art. So largely a big part of my life style I owe to my art, and paintings.
Art Asylum: If you weren’t an artist, what would you be doing?

Seher One: I would be a Famous soccer player lol.
No, I would have liked to be a doctor or engineer, I’m good at math and I like it.

Art Asylum: How long have you been painting graffiti?

Seher One: I did street graffiti for 6 years, but it has only been 3 years since I found that part of me addicted to colors and that wanted to express itself through the movement of my art.

Art Asylum: What would you like to communicate as an artist to people when they see your work?
Seher One: I would like to Transmit a good state of mind, hopefully through all the color it will reflect life and bring them to a world of fantasy. That in each element they see they find a moment in their life they can relate it to. That it makes them think and play with their perception of things. And to know that everything is in such synchronized movement thru time and space.

Art Asylum: I see that you collaborate with a number of artists; do the people you paint with have any impression on your style of artwork?

Seher One: I enjoy painting with different artists, because it creates a clash and explosion of ideas that branch from two different heads who see things differently. From which is born a more calibrated mix which tends to be more complex and enriched.
Here in Mexico there are a lot of people who are fans of my work. And through all I feel that I have been successful at transmitting energy true color. The type of energy that enters thru the eyes and reaches the heart. Which leaves me very satisfied.

Art Asylum: How has American styles in graffiti impacted your concepts?

Seher One: The concept and style of LA and NY are fabulous, the US is rich in concept and design when it comes to urban art. I believe that we have to take into consideration the sociopolitical environment of each artist and appreciate the art from it’s context. I enjoy seeing different styles from different places. Which is why I decided to generate my style which can be recognize at instant eye contact.

Art Asylum: As a street artist in Mexico what are some of your greatest challenges or obstacles you face when making your art?

Seher One: There is not a lot of conflict if you do it legally. But if it’s done illegally things get more complicated. There are some areas here that have been devastated with so much overburden graffiti. I don’t have a hard time finding a stop; my biggest challenge is leaving a lasting message in the mural.

Art Asylum: When you are not painting, what do you enjoy doing?
Seher One: Travel, Read a fantasy or horror book, or simply watch a lot of movies with my girlfriend.

Art Asylum: On a more personal note, Do you have any crazy or funny stories about your experiences as an artist?

Seher One: Of course I do. I think everyone has stories. A while back I found myself in a white color neighborhood which at the time had a couple of abandoned houses, on which I had plan to draw a tree coming out of a hole. The house itself was located in front of a business which had guards one of which I knew saw me but allowed me to continue out of his own curiosity; when he noticed the tree coming out of a hole he really liked it, and went on to help me bringing me a small ladder so that I could reach it was fun and unexpected, and the cop saw it and smiled.
Art Asylum: What is your life long goal for your artistic career?

Seher One: To refine one day at a time my technique, also to travel all over the world getting to know the local art and showing my art to those who want to see it. Also, in a near future I plan on making these color explosions in sculptures, so that they can be seen at 360 degrees.
I would like to continue to create art the rest of my life.  And have it support me while I generate more and more art.

Art Asylum: And what’s new for 2009, what will we see from you this year? Any gallery shows or upcoming projects?

Seher One: At the end of this year I’m bringing out my first vinyl piece. Bearbrick, made by the Japanese company Medicom toy which has me in smiles because I’m going to be the first artist in Mexico to have a landed a contract with this company. I’m very focused in putting together several pieces to do my first solo show. And I’m looking to do it outside of Mexico. At the moment I work creating logos and publicity for brands and for international magazines. I plan on making my exhibition on life, death and places that are found in fantasy.

Thank you- Seher One

For more information on Seher One visit: www.seherone.blogspot.com

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