Nothing New: An Interview of Puppies Puppies (Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo)

October 26, 2023

interview by Vivian Crockett
photography by Hadi Mourad
creative direction by Alec Charlip
styling by Jamie Ortega
makeup by Tayler Treadwell
hair by Rachel Polycarpe
florals by Christina Allen
production: BORN Artists

Jade Guanaro Kuriki-Olivo, known by the pseudonym Puppies Puppies, is revolutionizing trans and Indigenous visibility through her critically-acclaimed conceptual works of sculpture and performance art. Despite a very genuine and personal embodiment within the work, an air of mystery once shrouded her identity as she initially insisted on a level of anonymity rarely exhibited by artists, particularly of her generation. In late 2017, however, this shifted with the very first reference to the artist’s gender transition taking place in her Green (Ghosts) installation at Overduin & Co. in Los Angeles. Kuriki-Olivo and her then-boyfriend lived in the gallery during the hours it was closed, leaving only traces of their existence during the hours it was open. Here, she taped two estrogen pills to the wall, pointing toward her gender-affirming course of hormone therapy—a subtle gesture that gently opened the door of visibility. Employing the mundane, everyday objects that surround her life is a hallmark of Puppies Puppies’ practice and readymades are one of her favorite ways to reference the art historical canon. An initial easter egg of visibility has since swung the door open to a state of consensual voyeurism in Nothing New, her current solo exhibition at the New Museum where the artist is occupying the Lobby Gallery with nearly constant access to her comings and goings via video surveillance, live stream access, and glass walls overlooking a recreation of her bedroom. Puppies Puppies also points to elements of her multi-ethnic indigeneity—Taíno on her father’s side and Japanese on her mother’s—with the inclusion of objects and spiritual practices that connect her disparate lineages in a form of what the exhibition’s curator, Vivian Crockett, refers to as a memoryscape. Crockett got cozy in bed for her interview of Puppies Puppies on the eve of the exhibition’s inauguration to discuss their creative collaboration.

VIVIAN CROCKETT: What were you were thinking through when you proposed this name for the show?

PUPPIES PUPPIES: There's definitely layers to it. One major aspect of the discussion around trans identity is that many people think it's something that's very new, it's something that society has to get used to, but it's not. If we look at Indigenous cultures all over the world, there are all kinds of terms for people that weren't in the binary or were considered trans. I come from an art history background, so I'm really interested in homages, but also being critical of artwork. It was a very white cis art history that I learned. So, I really also play off that, which extends to different aspects of living too. The accentuation of certain things can have a cornucopia of meaning. I'm thinking about a lot of works throughout art history. Sometimes the criticism of the work that I do is, "this has been done before," but this is the criticism of a lot of work. A discourse happens when people reference other music within their music. There's a way of thinking about these things that go beyond originality or authenticity.

CROCKETT: There's a lot about this project that feels very much in line with work you’ve done in the past, but there's elements that relate to more recent years of medically transitioning.

PUPPIES PUPPIES: With older performances, I was more concealing myself and hiding. Hiding my body, hiding any way of recognizing me. I've started to attribute more of it to body dysmorphia. It kept me from wanting to be seen. But it was also a part of my personality. Things just kind of blend together sometimes and it's hard to distinguish one from the other. As I started to transition, I was working at Trans Latin@ in Los Angeles, and spent that year really focusing on that. I felt like distancing myself from art in a way. But then, I was like, what if this is actually just an extension of my practice? And that was really exciting to me because you don't have to negotiate what you want to get out of life just because you haven't seen it in art. This exhibition really combines almost every different way that I've been working over the years, which is not easy. I often feel like painting is an observation of life, sculpture an observation of the body, or different aspects of existence. And this is very much related to observation through a performative lens.

CROCKETT: I love curating the Lobby Gallery because it's at the ground level. It's the first space that people engage with and it was originally conceived as a free space in the institution. It's a space you see from the outside and you're taking the very framework of that space as a prompt for playing with hyper visibility. Why the recreation of your bedroom? What do the various layers of that particular space mean to you in the context of your work?

PUPPIES PUPPIES: This concept has evolved over the years. The first iteration that I presented at Overduin & Co. in Los Angeles was called Green (Ghosts). Me and my partner at the time moved all of the contents of our apartment into a gallery—including our bed and everything—and we lived with our dog in the space. We slept there, but then, as soon as the gallery opened, we left. So, no one really saw the same exhibition. So, that was one iteration. And then, this iteration is actually being there, present in front of people, and there is a device to change the opacity of the glass. At any time, I can decide whether it's more of a private or public moment. The bedroom has always been something that I've focused on. Anything that I’ve lived in constant proximity to somehow becomes incorporated into the work. As a trans woman, there are certain things that make me want to not go outside. I want to stay in and dream about what could be. I think there's an aspect of that to this by putting it on display as an artwork.

dress: Ferragamo
headpiece: Piers Atkinson

dress: Puppets and Puppets
earring: Area
shoes: stylist’s own

CROCKETT: In the bedroom part of the space, instead of emptying out the contents of your apartment, we are duplicating what's in your room. I like that it's not one-to-one. We're not trying to make it exactly the same, but we're trying to replicate the feeling of it. Earlier, we were talking about this idea of Nothing New, and how there is so much of an art historical precedent to your work, I want to emphasize that this project is very much in dialogue with different artists who have recreated their living environments, or have brought that into an institutional space. But there's also the way in which you reframe a potentially hetero-masculinist idea of a post-minimalist practice. This is a different kind of iteration of site/non-site. We've talked a lot about how Félix Gonzàlez-Torres was one of our patron saints and your work is very much in that lineage. However, there’s a new connotation to the various kinds of conceptual maneuvers that your work does. For example, the way that the physical space of your bedroom is flanked by these two other vignettes that are inside your brain, like a memoryscape, part of which reference a real place too. You are not literally trying to recreate the [Ryōan-ji] garden; it's the feeling of that garden and what it represents to you. The torii gate and the garden help delineate the threshold of the sacred space of your bedroom. And then on the other side, we are not just witnessing; we are literally looking inside your brain with reproductions of the MRI scans.

PUPPIES PUPPIES: Yeah, that was spot on. With the bedroom being sandwiched between the rock garden and the CBD garden, the torii gate is a way of signifying that you're entering a sacred space based off the Shinto religion, which is the Indigenous religion of Japan. I'm very much drawn to Shintoism because animism is a part of it. There's this praising of nature and sacred places. There are torii gates in the middle of the sea, or in the middle of the forest just to show that this is a sacred place.

CROCKETT: Green has been a central “readymade” color in your practice for many years. I love that green is simultaneously this naturally occurring thing in the world in so many different forms but then also we have green money and green screens. Can you speak a little on the significance of this color to you?

PUPPIES PUPPIES: Sometimes, when something is so ubiquitous, it can resonate with people in totally different ways, which makes it highly accessible. I went with green because it's the color of plants, of what people think of as nature. My dad grew up in the rainforest in Puerto Rico, so a lot of the pictures he has given me were pure green images from his childhood, and so it had this resonance. But I thought about it also as the mixing of blue and yellow, which have natural connotations with the sky and the sun and the sand. Later on, I got diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and so I was thinking about this kind of literalism with sadness and happiness between those colors and about these moods intersecting.

CROCKETT: This other piece that the show addresses is the ways that we integrate different modes of being on display—not only the IRL display but also the ways that we exist on the internet. There's an increased pressure for us to be available to others online and through our most intimate moments. I have a private Instagram account and I'm constantly navigating who I feel like giving access to the space because it is, in many ways, a professional platform. It is part of how my identity circulates in the world. But then, there's this level of self-censorship that happens. There are different codes of respectability that we are supposed to perform. So, there’s the practice of seeing your day-to-day activities through the glass as a screen, and the fact that it'll be fogged out at times. But then, there’s the surveillance cameras filming you in the space and the fact that someone in the museum might be able to watch you in real-time, and then also be looking at you through a monitor simultaneously, and then there’s a potential third loop if you activate the live stream from your computer at home or on your cell phone. Which one is more real, or which one do they consume first, or can they do all three (or even four) simultaneously? What gets lost? What gets amplified in that mise en abyme?

PUPPIES PUPPIES: I think about that with social media because it’s mostly about trying to show your accomplishments, which I definitely participated in and was excited to participate in. You're sharing with people you love, as well as people you don't know, the things that you're doing and that you care about and what you're putting your life towards. But a part of me was like, what if I showed the boring, or the monotonous, or the in-between, or my worst? I was interested in showing all the different facets of existence, which is replicated in the show as well. There's going to be cameras within the bedroom of the museum, within my bedroom at home, and there'll be a camera recording what's going on out in the world when I go to an appointment or something that I can't miss. So, that accessibility is something that you sometimes grant to people who follow you—they know what you're doing, they can see where you're at. Nothing New is trying to get closer and closer to conveying as much as I can about daily existence, even while trying to pretend like I'm not being watched. But, you can only keep it up so long. Eventually, you're like, okay … I'm being watched, so, don't do anything embarrassing. But I think at some point, I'll have to surrender to the fact that it's constantly happening and that it'll be going on for months. It'll be harder and harder to treat it as a performance and I’ll have to lean into the idea that I'm alone as much as I can.

CROCKETT: One thing that I wanted to also mention in the context of this is that I really cherish the way that we first met. I’m on social media, but I don't follow artists just because I like their work. I don't follow celebrities. So, I often don't know what some artists look like. We met in this larger, elite space, and something drew me to you. You felt like a person I could connect with. It was like a green situation emanating from you. (laughs) But something about how we were first able to connect as people who felt an affinity that goes beyond that artist-curator dichotomy was so nice.

PUPPIES PUPPIES: Yeah, I feel the same way. It's nice when you're working on something and you also just feel a connection as two people. With something so personal, it meant so much to me to be able to collaborate with a friend that I also call a sister.

Deconstructing Genesis: An Interview of Wynnie Mynerva

June 28, 2023

interview by Jesus Nebreda Galindez
creative direction by Alec Charlip
photography by Andrés Jaña
styling by Abby Bencie
makeup by Marco Castro
hair by Luisa Popović
production by BORN Artists

The question of original sin has no relevance in Lima-based artist Wynnie Mynerva’s Book of Genesis. For their inaugural American solo exhibition curated by Bernardo Mosqueira, the artist will be presenting The Original Riot, opening tomorrow (June 29) at the New Museum with a site-specific installation that constitutes the largest painting ever to be presented by the institution, as well as a sculptural element that was surgically removed from the artist’s own body. The readaptation of both mythology and anatomy is central to Mynerva’s quintessentially plastic life and practice; one that finds itself in a constant state of radical change. Painting and performance are a fluent oscillation of being as demonstrated in their 2021 exhibition Closing to Open at Ginsberg Gallery in Madrid when the artist had their vagina sutured three quarters of the way shut, allowing only for the flow of their bodily fluids to function as necessary. The corporeal roles of masculine and feminine are constantly being subverted and abstracted in works that bleed, scratch, beguile, and thrust their way through the patriarchal canon with an air of wanton ecstasy. The binary creation myth was recently addressed in Mynerva’s first UK solo exhibition Bone of My Bones Flesh of My Flesh at Gathering London earlier this year, introducing many for the first time to the role of Lilith in Judaic and Mesopotamian folklore as Adam’s first wife who was created from the same clay (equal in nature) as her husband. Her pitiable fate varies from one myth to the next, but the creation of a second wife (Eve) from his rib remains consistent. The artist’s decision to remove Adam’s body from their own for The Original Riot demonstrates the power to readapt our personal realities at will. It is a reflection of the agency that we unwittingly deny ourselves when we allow allegory to shape our internalized perspectives. The following interview was conducted in Spanish and is presented here in its original form, followed by its English translation.

JESUS NEBREDA GALINDEZ: Quiero empezar con cómo te convertiste en artista. ¿Hubo un punto de inflexión en tu vida que te llevó a elegir este camino?

WYNNIE MYNERVA: Creo que la inclinación por hacer arte solo fluyó. Siempre he sido una persona con necesidad inventiva e inquieta. Algo que fue determinante y por la cual me acerqué al arte, fue la sensación de no sentirme dentro de mi cuerpo. Recuerdo desde niña verme como “otro ser” que me miraba desde lejos, esa sensación aún me persigue y se ha convertido en un espacio, y dentro de ese espacio estoy ejecutando diferentes simulaciones y constantemente deconstruyéndome en imágenes. Es por eso que mi trabajo toca temas íntimos pero también universales, la existencia, el disfrute, el dolor, el cuerpo, la carne, la sexualidad. El arte está plagado de pequeños milagros porque no existe una forma fija de creación, y esa idea me seduce.

GALINDEZ: Los tonos rosas, rojos, marrones y piel de melocotón dominan su trabajo anterior. ¿Puedes hablar sobre tu paleta de colores y cómo llegaste a su desarrollo?

MYNERVA: El color para un pintor es como una bocanada de aire, puede medir la temperatura que atraviesan las emociones y la atmosfera de su tiempo. Trabajo en rojos, marrones y rosas, pero también he vuelto a utilizar el negro que lo había casi había desaparecido de mi obra, siento en general una sensación de retornar a tonos más oscuros. Luego que por sorpresa dentro de la pandemia mis colores estallarán en luz por pasar tanto tiempo observando todo desde lo digital y las redes sociales.

GALINDEZ: ¿Cómo se siente estar exhibiendo su trabajo en el New Museum? ¿Crees que sigue siendo relevante el hablar de centro y periferia dentro de la escena artística? ¿O por el contrario, la era de internet ha roto para siempre estas históricas barreras geográficas?

MYNERVA: Estoy un poco nerviose. Definitivamente. Especialmente trabajando por primera vez con un museo y uno tan importante como es el New Museum en Nueva York. Siento que es una acumulación de placer y trabajo por mis convicciones lo que hizo que yo esté aquí ahora. Pienso que es relevante no solo que estoy aquí, sino con quiénes estoy, y con esto quiero responder a tu pregunta sobre centro y periferia. Es importante a quiénes he nombrado en mis proyectos y quiénes me han llevado a pensar de esta manera y no de otra. Siento que es fundamental aún hacer referencia a los sistemas sociales, políticos y económicos que nos condensan. La era del internet no ha roto estas barreras, ha generado una sensación placebo para aliviar la impresión de desigualdad en la escena artística.

GALINDEZ: Estarás montando la pintura más grande que el museo ha presentado en su historia. ¿Por qué la escala de esta pieza fue tan importante para ti?

MYNERVA: El espacio de exhibición es para mí como un escenario. Las pinturas se convierten en el paisaje, y me interesa abarcarlo todo con la escala, los espectadores dan inicio a la función con sus cuerpos. La pintura es el marco arquitectónico que ofrezco al público. Es la propia obra que induce al cuerpo a recorrerla. La escala te envuelve y está diseñada de forma específica, no es trasladable, por tanto es una experiencia singular. La pintura deja de ser un objeto coleccionable para convertirse en geografía.

GALINDEZ: Tu maravillosa exposición Bone of My Bones, Flesh of my Flesh en el Gathering de Londres abordaba no solo la historia de Adán y Eva sino que se adentraba en territorios mucho más desconocidos, hablamos del mito de Lilith. Tu nueva obra, The Original Riot—dios me encanta el título—reinterpreta y se sumerge en esta inquietante alegoría. ¿Puedes contarnos cómo fue el proceso de quitarte una costilla y por qué cobra tanta significación en esta obra?

MYNERVA: Me enteré de la oportunidad de exhibir en el New Museum en medio de la preparación de Bone of My Bones, Flesh of My Flesh en Londres, y supe que este sería el espacio para desenlace de este proyecto: la extracción de mi costilla de Adán. Ha sido un proceso largo y estoy tratando de mantener un buen equilibrio, que un proyecto no se mueva demasiado rápido o demasiado lento, pensar como en el cine, que el tiempo es un elemento, y el tiempo de recuperación de mi cuerpo también tiene belleza.

En The Original Riot hay más de una historia revuelta. Parto de la mitología del génesis de Adán y Eva, Eva creada a partir de la costilla de Adán para servirle. Antes que Eva existió otra figura femenina de nombre Lilith que desafiaría a Adán y se negaría a reproducirse, por lo cual Dios la castigaría convirtiendo su vagina en una llama azul eterna y la expulsaría del paraíso hacia el infierno. En The Original Riot que es la segunda entrega de mi versión de esta historia, las dos primeras figuras femeninas se conocen y pactan una alianza. Como prueba de esa alianza, Eva se quita la costilla de Adán y se la entrega a Lilith. Esta costilla estará presente en la exhibición a modo de reliquia, que es la presencia materializada de un hecho sagrado. La extracción de mi propia costilla y su uso para esta exhibición es brindar mi cuerpo como parte de esta revuelta. Sacar el cuerpo del otro de mi propio cuerpo.

GALINDEZ: Siento curiosidad por la íntima relación entre tu cuerpo y tu arte. Esta no es la primera vez que realiza modificaciones en su cuerpo como parte de su práctica. Cuando se trata de tu cuerpo y tu práctica, ¿dónde comienza uno y termina el otro?

MYNERVA: Puedo visualizarme como una persona que ha aprendido a vivir con un cuerpo herido, en una sociedad agitada. Siempre regreso desde el arte a buscar esas señales, no como turista de mis propias experiencias, ni para nombrar mis desastres personales, sino buscando herramientas que tengan la capacidad de sanar. Pienso que trabajar en el cuerpo de hoy es trabajar en el cuerpo del futuro. Y es así como veo mis proyectos, conectando a través de lo real, la materialidad y su red de significados en la historia del arte y la humanidad. El arte tiene sentido si incide en la vida y es aplicable para una transformación social. Mi vida y mi trabajo tienen una dinámica fluida.

GALINDEZ: Tu obra está cargada de corporeidad y es cierto que los rituales del cuerpo hablan de una manera intrínseca y sin engaños de nuestras herencias culturales y sistemas sociales heredados. ¿Qué es para ti la moda? ¿Crees que es una forma de disfrazarse, o quizás ser la forma más alta y representativa de representación personal?

MYNERVA: La moda es juego encantador, pero también es una cárcel. A mí me gusta la moda del desafío, aquello que es difícil de usar, el taconazo, las plataformas y hacer malabares con los pies. Hay algo masoquista en usar corset apretado y látex en verano. Verme falsa y producida. Hay que divertirse pienso o si no se convierte en un conjunto de reglas elitistas, se puede sufrir mucho en las cárceles de las marcas y el buen vestir. Como siempre, lo correcto se apodera del placer, y salen a las calles los policías de la moda. Yo en la moda no tengo más compromiso a levantar miradas, me encanta.

GALINDEZ: ¿Cómo te sientes representada por los medios? ¿Algo qué alegar que haya sido malinterpretado?

MYNERVA: Siempre soy una persona completamente diferente presentándome. Todos estamos en constante cambio, una transición hasta la hora de la muerte. Pero luego también estoy empujando de forma abstracta mi cuerpo hacia afuera y mi entorno, de forma imperfecta y defectuosa. Muchas veces se ha entendido mi obra solo como provocadora, y la verdad solo se me ocurren soluciones radicales para cambios radicales.

GALINDEZ: En ese caso, ¿dónde vamos a ver a Wynnie Mynerva en el futuro?

MYNERVA: Me encantaría lanzar una productora de porno, ¿te imaginas?

top and earrings: Heaven by Marc Jacobs
skirt and leg piece: Sarah Aphrodite
bangles: Dinosaur Designs
shoes: stylist’s own

JESUS NEBREDA GALINDEZ: I want to start with how you became an artist? Was there a tipping point in your life that led to you choosing this path?

MYNERVA: I think the urge to make art just flowed. I have always been a person with an inventive and restless need. The determining thing that drew me to art was the sensation of not feeling inside my body. I remember since I was a child seeing myself as "another being" who was looking at me from afar. That feeling still haunts me. It has become a space within which I am running different simulations and constantly deconstructing myself into images. That is why my work touches on the intimate, but also other universal themes: existence, enjoyment, pain, the body, flesh, sexuality. Art is full of small miracles because there is no fixed form of creation, and that idea seduces me.

GALINDEZ: Pinks, reds, browns, and peachy flesh tones dominate your previous work. Can you talk about your color palette and how you came about its development?

MYNERVA: Color for a painter is like a gust of air. It can measure the temperature of their emotions and the atmosphere of their time. I work in reds, browns and pinks, but I have also gone back to using the black that had almost disappeared from my work. In general, I feel a sensation of returning to darker tones. Then, by surprise, in the pandemic, my colors burst into light because I was spending so much time observing everything from digital and social networks.

GALINDEZ: How does it feel to present your work at the New Museum? Is it still relevant to talk about the art scene as having a center and a periphery, or on the contrary, has the internet finally broken the constraints of geographical significance?

MYNERVA: I'm a little nervous. Definitely. Especially working with a museum for the first time and one as important as the New Museum in New York. I feel that it is an accumulation of pleasure and work for my convictions that has brought me here now. I think it is relevant not only that I am here, but who I am here with, and with this I want to answer your question about center and periphery. It is important to those who I have named in my projects and who have led me to think this way and not another. I feel that it is still fundamental to acknowledge the social, political and economic systems that condense us. The internet age has not broken these barriers, it has generated a placebo sensation to alleviate the impression of inequality in the art scene.

dress and shoes: Loewe
bangles: Dinosaur Designs

GALINDEZ: You will be mounting the largest painting that the museum has ever presented in its history. Why was the scale of this piece so important to you?

MYNERVA: The exhibition space is like a stage for me. The paintings become the landscape, and I am interested in encompassing everything with the scale. The spectators start the performance with their bodies. Painting is the architectural framework that I offer to the public. It is the work itself that induces the body to go through it. The scale surrounds you and is specifically designed, it is not portable, therefore it is a unique experience. It ceases to be a collectible object in order to become geography.

GALINDEZ: Your wonderful exhibition Bone of My Bones, Flesh of my Flesh at Gathering in London addressed not only the story of Adam and Eve but also delved into much more unknown territory, the myth of Lilith. Your new work, The Original Riot—God, I love the title—reinterprets and plunges into this disturbing allegory. Can you tell us about the process of removing a rib and why it has such significance in this work?

MYNERVA: I heard about the opportunity to exhibit at the New Museum in the midst of preparing Bone of My Bones, Flesh of My Flesh in London, and knew that this would be the space for the dénouement of this project: the removal of my Adam's rib. It has been a long process, and I am trying to maintain a good balance so that the project does not move too quickly or too slowly, to think like in the cinema, that time is an element, and my body’s time of recovery also holds beauty.

In The Original Riot, there is more than one scrambled story. I start with the mythology from Genesis of Adam and Eve, when Eve was created from Adam's rib to serve him. Before Eve, there was another female figure named Lilith who would defy Adam and refuse to reproduce, for which God punished her by turning her vagina into an eternal blue flame and expelling her from paradise to hell. In The Original Riot, which is the second installment of my version of this story, the first two female figures meet and agree to an alliance. As proof of that alliance, Eve removes Adam's rib and gives it to Lilith. This rib will be present in the exhibition as a relic, which is the materialized presence of a sacred fact. The removal of my own rib and its use for this exhibition is to offer my body as part of this revolt. It’s a removal of the other's body from my own body.

GALINDEZ: I’m curious about the intimate relationship between your body and your art. This isn’t the first time that you’ve made modifications to your body as a part of your practice. When it comes to your body and your practice, where does one start and the other end?

MYNERVA: I can visualize myself as a person who has learned to live with a wounded body in a troubled society. I always return from art to look for those signs, not as a tourist of my own experiences, nor to name my personal disasters, but looking for tools that have the ability to heal. I think that working on the body of today is working on the body of the future. And this is how I see my projects, connecting through reality, materiality and its network of meanings in the history of art and humanity. Art makes sense if it affects life and is applicable for a social transformation. My life and my work have a fluid dynamic.

GALINDEZ: Your work is charged with corporeality and the way that our bodily rituals relate to our respective cultural heritages and social systems. Can you talk about the role of fashion and the body? Do you think it is a form of disguise, or might it be the highest and most representative form of personal representation?

MYNERVA: Fashion is a charming game, but it is also a prison. I like fashion’s challenges, things that are difficult to wear, like heels, platforms, and juggling with your feet. There's something masochistic about wearing a tight corset and latex in the summer. To see me fake and produced. You have to have fun, or else it becomes a set of elitist rules. You can suffer a lot in the prisons of brands and good dressing. As always, the right thing takes over pleasure, and the fashion police take to the streets. In fashion, I have no commitment to draw eyes. I love it.

GALINDEZ: Would you say there are any misconceptions about you as a person or about your art that you feel the need to correct, or do you feel properly represented by the media thus far?

MYNERVA: I'm always introducing myself as a completely different person. We are all in constant change, a transition until the hour of death. But then, I am also abstractly pushing my body and my environment outward, imperfectly and defectively. My work has often been understood only as provocative, and the truth is that I can only come up with radical solutions for radical changes.

GALINDEZ: In that case, where are we going to see Wynnie Mynerva in the future?

MYNERVA: I would love to launch a porn production company. Can you imagine?

Wynnie Mynerva: The Original Riot is on view through September 17 @ New Museum 235 Bowery, New York

A Rich, Somber Undercurrent: An Interview Of Alannah Farrell

October 5, 2022

Alannah Farrell
*Alex, Resting*
2022
Oil, acrylic, spray paint, and latex on canvas
50 x 78 in

text by Stella Peacock-Berardini

Alannah Farrell — the sexual awakening to colors and hues, to kinks and dreams. This queer, trans-identifying artist from rural New York gracefully depicts the real bodies of their queer scene in atmospheric paintings, the magic of which stems from the shapely emotional nuances of each subject. Here, their struggles are visible, but so are the celebrations. Though currently represented by Harper’s and Anat Ebgi, they've had an enduring journey to their current career, beginning as a child yearning for a creative outlet, from babysitter, to cashier, to model, to dungeon domme, and later, Cooper Union graduate, allowing their art to leap from the confinements of their bedroom to their first show at The Painting Center in New York. With the vibrant bodies and milky pigments enclosed in these works, Farrell expresses the multifaceted layers of their subjects’ queer identities, supporting the normalization of all expressions of beauty and power within the LGBTQI+ community. We see these queer bodies and faces through a lens unfocused on the taboo fascination that society perpetuates. It is one that instead centers the subject and how they wish to be seen and heard. Undoubtedly a New Yorker, Farrell pursues these intimate scenes and perseverances throughout the city with heart. They allow us, the viewers, into these blissful connections. We sat down with Farrell to discuss their expansive ideas surrounding queer identity in art, the fluidity of life, and their newest solo exhibition, I Want to Thank you, at Harper’s Gallery in New York.

STELLA PEACOCK-BERARDINI: Do you feel the queer identity or LGBTQ+ scene within New York differentiates heavily from other culture-heavy cities, like LA, for example, and does your work primarily present these moments in culture through an East Coast perspective?

ALANNAH FARRELL: I’ve visited but never lived outside New York, so my work is distinctly NYC, based on where I make it and the people I paint. Many different LGBTQIA+ scenes exist here.

Ultimately, I think painting exists in its world, not limited by geography or physicality — it doesn’t document in the same way photography can. Paintings might attempt a facsimile of reality, but they always deviate and become something else. That being said, I plan on meeting and working with people outside New York for my upcoming shows, and it will be interesting to see how my work changes when made in other places.

PEACOCK-BERARDINI: What does the fluidity and intimacy of bodies mean to you, and how has that changed throughout your career?

FARRELL: I find the fluidity of bodies endlessly fascinating, and I wish it were something our society treated with more curiosity, wonder, and celebration. A body’s age, ability, size, and secondary sex markers aren’t fixed. Fluidity, change, and transformation entered my paintings more obviously in the past years, but it’s something I’ve always focused on internally. Doesn’t everyone with a body think of change and transformation? Some specific paintings deal with fluidity and intimacy as a singular image. Another approach is that I have worked with the same people for years over multiple paintings. That is maybe my favorite way to depict fluidity and intimacy. Over time both the sitter and I, and our relationship will change.

Alannah Farrell
[detail of] X (Pearl Street)
2022
Oil, acrylic, and latex on canvas
78h x 50w in

Alannah Farrell
Adonis and his Fujifilm (Fidi)
2022
Oil, acrylic, latex, and spray paint on canvas
60h x 40w in

Alannah Farrell
Annasophia at Dusk (Fidi)
2022
Oil and acrylic on canvas
96h x 90w in

Alannah Farrell
Lilith (Bushwick)
2022
Oil, acrylic, and spray paint on canvas
60h x 40w in

PEACOCK-BERARDINI: The fascinating and intimate depictions of trans bodies appear to be a focus in your work. How did this start for you, and how have your experiences provided a gateway to this success?

FARRELL: The greater public isn’t familiar with a wide range of trans bodies. Trans bodies can be and look like any number of bodies, and they can be binary, non-binary, or fluid. Media pushes these thin, white, androgynous people, highly binary trans people, or low key transmisogynistic stereotypes as trans representation—which is bullshit and doesn’t represent the reality and majority of trans people. Also, not all the people I paint are trans.

As for my experiences, I’ve had a lifelong toxic relationship with my body. I think it’s an experience many people share. Trans or not, I would guess most people experience body dysphoria at least once in their life. Cis people experience body hatred in numerous ways. And I think they may have more in common with dysphoric trans people than they want to admit. We are stuck in our bodies 24/7, and even as someone who is good at disassociation, it is hard not to be aware of my body. These vessels we are stuck in hold both mental and physical pain, and I am sure my work relates to that on some level. Hopefully, when I paint other people, they experience more joy and wonder than pain in seeing their image come through in painted form.

PEACOCK-BERARDINI: How do you feel the palette of pastels and hues of blue within your newest exhibition at Harper’s Gallery play a role in your subjects’ bodies, and how do these colors connect throughout the pieces?

FARRELL: I’ve been attracted to a darker color palette heavy on blacks, greys, and rich deep blues for a long time. Almost comically a depressed person‘s color palette. The oldest painting in I Want To Thank You at Harper‘s is Annasophia At Dusk (Fidi), which I started in 2020. This painting transitions from richer, darker hues into a more pastel and luminescent palette. Annasophia styled herself in this wonderful opalescent dress, full of shimmering pastels. I loved how an epic twilight backlighted it on the evening she came to my studio. She has magical energy, which radiated quite literally that evening. From there, most of the other paintings were started in 2021 and finished in 22. This coincided with when I started HRT [hormone replacement therapy]. It was a tough year of personal upheaval and uncertain living situations. Meeting the wonderful individuals that came and posed in the various places I was living and working in became a healing experience throughout a year of radical changes and instability. And many of these individuals were going through multitudes of trying situations, too. This may be a reductive take, but manipulating light and color towards an airier and pastel direction while keeping a rich, somber undercurrent felt the truest to both individual narratives and my emotional state.

Alannah Farrell
*Ari (Downtown Brooklyn)*
2022
Oil, acrylic, and latex on canvas
40h x 60w in

PEACOCK-BERARDINI: The ability to translate the experiences of the many queer muses in your artwork is incredible. So many triumphs and hardships can be seen within these models, but do you ever feel overwhelmed by these struggles that you and others face, and do you feel like your artwork ever projects those moments of frustration or fear?

FARRELL: I love this question. Yes, I often feel overwhelmed. I don’t personally know anyone who isn’t feeling overwhelmed at least some of the time. My paintings probably do project frustration, fear, and hopefully other emotions, like love, resistance, solidity, occasional humor or playfulness, and transcendence. I try to be mindful of not harming the people I paint with the images I create. Because these are real people, even if the paintings have fantasy elements. I think about the projected messages and how the model feels about seeing their image while working on any painting.

PEACOCK-BERARDINI: As a trans artist who produces moments of queer vulnerability, do you feel your audience mostly caters to the LGBTQ+ community as a way to provide a safe space for these experiences or as a mixture of something entirely different?

FARRELL: The art world is majority cisgendered. That’s a fact right now, in 2022. So, whether I like it or not, my audience is not mostly LGBTQIA+, although I hope it caters to us. I question how much power or influence in creating societal change art (that is not propaganda) has. But if seeing my work opens cisgendered and cishet people to learn more about what trans and queer people are going through and maybe empathize, I would feel good about it. As a working trans artist, I hope to contribute to safe places, specifically for those who sit for me. I see the studio as a space to escape the bullshit and just be, whatever that means. Real, messy, evolving, angry, grieving, joyous, and shameless. Sometimes I feel the process of creating paintings and working with others is more important than the result.

PEACOCK-BERARDINI: In the mass media and social networks, big companies often monetize trans or queer trauma; how do you feel about this, and is there a proper balance that can be made between trauma and simply existing as queer within these TV and movie storylines?

FARRELL: I don’t watch much TV or movies and don’t spend much time on the internet, so I might be the worst person to ask! I think monetizing trauma porn is popular and can be done in different mediums. If individuals or corporations are profiting off trans and queer trauma, or any trauma for that matter, and not giving back to those communities in equal amounts, then it is exploitation. It is something I think about and try to be extra conscious of, even on a small scale. Having people from the actual community on every level, production, writing, funding, etc., lessens the chance that narratives will be flattened into trauma porn. *Hint, the art world, that would be people with money and power: dealers, collectors, and museum directors*

Someone with lived experience creating work funded by people with lived experience seems like it would lead to more nuanced work, TV, media, and storylines.

Alannah Farrell
*Serene, Sky, and Kaz Bathed in Light (Bushwick)*
2022
Oil, acrylic, spray paint, and latex on canvas
70h x 130w in

PEACOCK-BERARDINI: Was there a moment of clarity for you growing up, when you felt seen as you grew into your queer identity?

FARRELL: Honestly, I’m not sure people saw my gender queerness until adulthood. Regarding internal moments of clarity, around age 9, I knew I was sexually attracted to women and effeminate men. I always felt like an effeminate boy/man. I was in love with (but more deeply wanted to be) Michael Jackson, Prince, Frank N. Furter from RHPS, the classics. Any character that was blatantly and stereotypically homosexual, I identified with (which there was a surprising amount to choose from in the ‘90s cartoons I would watch at my friend's house.) We would role-play in games — elementary school age — and I’d always play as those characters. Growing up, there wasn’t commonly-known language to describe genders outside the binary or transgendered people. Cross-dressing was known. I grew up in a creative household and loved fashion, but I didn't necessarily associate clothing with gender — it was all theatre. Because of the histories of famous creative individuals, society thinks artists, more than other people, have a higher probability of being gay, queer, melodramatic, crazy, or a combo of those. So, even if my family didn't necessarily see my queerness, they labeled me with an “artistic personality” from day one. (I’m pretty sure it was code for moody, pain in the ass.) There were challenges in the conservative working-class area of upstate New York where I grew up, but I'm fortunate my friends and bio-fam didn't directly have an issue with queer people.

PEACOCK-BERARDINI: How do you feel this newest exhibition allows queerness to transcend the physical realm and disrupt time? What are some experiences in queer social scenes where you witnessed this moment of altering and challenging the norms of time and space?

FARRELL: Queer nightlife disrupts time and transcends the physical realm. In NYC, I wish queer nightlife workers were protected and paid more. That’s another conversation, ha. I think these paintings in I Want To Thank You are familiar enough to communicate with the past, but I hope the dialogue centers more on the present and future. Ultimately, I view the painting process and studio time as the most transcendent, narcotic, and time-disruptive in both arduous and ecstatic ways. Whatever work I make is and always will be inherently queer. I try to trust that people can feel the love and pain I unashamedly put into a painting and not worry too much about embarrassment. That approach to making paintings feels very queer, timeless, and freeing to me.

Alannah Farrell’s debut solo exhibition I Want to Thank You was on view from June 30 - August 13 2022 @ Harper’s Gallery CHELSEA 534 West 22nd Street

Moving Past Giants: An Interview Of Devon DeJardin

June 24, 2022

text by Stella Peacock-Berardini

Devon Dejardin’s exploration of art may have started from the humble encouragement of a sugar daddy psychic, but it has grown into a journey of healing and reflection that continues to drive his success in the art world. Within his cubist-influenced style of work, Devon Dejardin, an LA-based painter, processes through the elements of life demanding answers to all of its most urgent lingering questions. Dejardin employs his work as a way to unpack and understand the entropic nature of the universe through his lens of belonging, going deeper into the storms he's faced that brought him to the clear sky of his creation. This 29-year-old, self-taught artist originating from Portland juggles depression and anxiety within the creative realm and expresses his gratitude for the therapeutic release his art supplies to himself and its viewers. His newest project, Giants dives into this preconceived idea of spirituality and shifts its narrative to his ideas surrounding the guardians of the world, those that protect, aid, and grow in strength and vulnerability within the boundaries of our world. His art, huge in size, mimics the ideas of giants and how they are commonly perceived, yet it develops further than that. These feelings, or challenges in life, such as sadness or grief materialize as giants, but represent the deception life can have on us all. We sat down with this artist to explore his influences, conceptions around his work as a whole, and his first New York solo exhibition at Albertz Benda.

AUTRE: We live in an age of anxiety and uncertainty—you are an artist who found refuge in painting, how has your adolescent experience with anxiety and now as a painter prepared you for our current zeitgeist?

DEVON DEJARDIN: It taught me that sometimes we need to go to dark places in our life to gain a better understanding of ourselves and our place in this world. Anxiety and painting both can create times of uncertainty. However, if you continue to push and wrestle with what is in front of you, oftentimes beauty is birthed. I almost feel times of anxiety have become a guardian for me. It slows me down, humbles me and redirects me … very similar to the process of creating a painting.

AUTRE: Are you hopeful about the future or is there a sense of pessimism?

DEJARDIN: Always hopeful. Pessimists are depressing to be around. Even in the worst of things there is so much good. So much of life has to do with perspective and looking at situations from all different angles.

AUTRE: Your work utilizes a lot of abstract forms, it’s almost cubist, but also extremely reflective of our 21st-century digital age, how would you describe these forms?

DEJARDIN: So much of our current physical reality is constructed by a few simple shapes that are altered and manipulated to form structures. We see these shapes in architecture, art, design, nature etc. When approaching this series of work I wanted to use these simple shapes to create something powerful. To show how the manipulation of simple constructs can form something that speaks and carries weight. The idea that simplistic forms can carry a complex identity.

AUTRE: Do you feel like the forms in your paintings are ominous or do you see them more as benevolent entities?

DEJARDIN: I think that if you look at history much of the benevolent entities we have learned about are described to be quite ominous. To answer the question, I see both. Many religious texts speak on the idea of an entity saying “fear not” before they reveal themselves. Why? I think encountering any sort of spiritual being … light or dark … would be pretty intimidating.

AUTRE: Do you dream about unrealized paintings or imagine them before the paintbrush hits the canvas, or is it an intuitive experience?

DEJARDIN: Yes and no. There are many times where it is a free flow battle aimlessly moving paint until a picture appears. However, I tend to lean more towards a controlled intuitive process. A process where sketching, creating studies, and spending time thinking give way to a much more intimate painting. I find myself lately really enjoying the process of drawing before painting. Reimaging the same painting multiple ways.

AUTRE: Your new work that will be on view at Albertz Benda is inspired by spiritual allegory, when and why did you become interested in this subject matter?

DEJARDIN: From a young age I was always interested in the concepts of “where did we come from?” and “what is next?” Spirituality or religion are primary disciplines for investigating the boundary questions of life and death, of love and hate, that characterize the human condition. All persons crave for self-transcendence in one mode or another. Religious Studies provides the opportunity to understand, with depth and nuance, the many beliefs and rituals that move persons to appreciate the alternative world of reality. I think it is important to have a strong understanding of the major concepts humans use as a framework to exist…

AUTRE: Can you talk a little bit about the parable of David and Goliath and how that fits into your new work?

DEJARDIN: Much of this exhibition stems from Malcolm Gladwell’s 2013 book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. This book was an investigation into the relationship between underdogs and giants.

In the book, Gladwell discusses a story from the Bible about David and Goliath. The Israelites were in war with the Philistines, but they were at a disadvantage to win because of the champion, Goliath. Goliath suffered from acromegaly which made him a physical giant and no one wanted to fight him. However, David stepped up to fight him even though he didn’t think he could defeat Goliath. We learn that due to Goliath's growth disorder he suffered from many physical ailments such as vision impairment, lack of coordination etc. making David, a slinger, a much more evenly matched opponent. David was easily able to defeat Golith even though the odds seemed to be against him. The simple lesson is that often these “Giants” in our lives often are not as “big” as they seem. The work in this exhibition tells the story of pushing through and ultimately moving past “Giants” in our lives.

AUTRE: You are displaying some large sculptures at the new show—can you talk a little more about these sculptures and the materiality, and what has the experience been going from two dimensions to three?

DEJARDIN: I've always wanted my work to be able to be seen in all different kinds of settings and landscapes. Painting is limited to primarily being able to be indoors but I think there's so much power in allowing work to be placed in all different types of environments. These sculptures created for the show are made of bronze and will be able to live in earth's elements for hundreds of years.

The experience going from 2D to 3D is something that I'm still learning. I'm being mentored and taught. I'm working alongside people that are far more experienced than I am at sculpting and it is a process that takes many hands. The process goes from taking an original sketch, making it into a painting, and then I bring it into a 3D format on the computer to envision what these paintings would look like from all angles. For me, that's the tricky part because all of my paintings and portraits are forward-facing. Taking on a side angle or the back angle and creating balance within that has been the most time-consuming part of it.

AUTRE: When you are working in the studio, do you have something that jump-starts the creative process—do you listen to music, is it a solitary experience or do you like to have a lot of activity?

DEJARDIN: For four years I painted alone and most of the time without music. I found solitude to be a form of therapy and the time alone helped me start to better understand my place in this world. It allowed me to gain a better sense of my voice. Now, I enjoy the communal aspect of having people in and out of the studio. I like to bounce ideas and break up my thought patterns in hope that more ideas will come forth. I think we as humans are designed to be in community with one another and I'm starting to see a much more healthy balance with how I approach my work.

AUTRE: A lot of your new show explores misrepresentations, but what about you as an artist—are there things that people get wrong about your work or you as an artist?

DEJARDIN: I am sure there are many misrepresentations about me and my work floating out there. It is not something that I need to focus on. My work is a reflection of my truth and my identity. I am responding to an innate pull to create and to share ideas with the world. If people want to twist, pick, and misinterpret … all are welcome.

Devon DeJardin: Giants is on view June 30 - August 5 @ Albertz Benda 515 W 26th Street New York

Romancing A Wound: An Interview of Estefania Puerta

October 9, 2020

portrait and interview by Abbey Meaker

Estefania Puerta is a Colombian immigrant womxn whose interdisciplinary art practice transcends genre. Experiential installations featuring sculpture, video, scent, writing, and performance are steeped in layers of psychoanalytic theory, mythology, and profound insights into language, memory, ritual, and time.

In early fall, after months of trying to connect, Estefania and I caught up on my back porch, listening to the trees, watching the light change. The pandemic made it challenging to get together, but she was also busy in her studio preparing for her upcoming solo exhibition Womb Wound, opening this Sunday, October 11th at Situations in New York.

Hearing her describe this new body of work and the ideas investigated within it, I knew we had to sit down more formally—a perfect reason to delve more deeply into its transporting complexity. Her work evokes one’s own process of recollection which condenses, displaces, and plummets us abruptly into the forgotten (or misplaced) recesses of our past.

ABBEY MEAKER: You’ve titled this body of work and your upcoming exhibition Womb Wound. You explained in a recent interview with Rachel Jones that this title represents an extended investigation of healing, of birthing something, being the holder and nurturer that then becomes wounded. This is definitely a universal paradigm: what does it mean to be rejected by a society that relies on those who have been cast out to sustain itself? And what happens when the rejected refuse the parasite?

ESTEFANIA PUERTA: I’m glad you brought up the extended metaphors of wombs and birth. I am not thinking of the womb as an organ attached to a cis female but rather the womb as a place we all have within us, a place of making selves, of nurture, of “the animal within the animal,” and very much about a holding place and how that slippery sense of “holding” can become a place of containment, detainment, of being trapped. The wound aspect of it is that piece around finding a healing place within the wound and not an escape or sutured repression from it.

“Enrejada” photograph courtesy Lindsey Flicker and Estefania Puerta.

MEAKER: Healing is an ongoing and sometimes unpredictable process, but ‘being healed’ of something implies a fixed state, yet all life forms are in a constant state of becoming. What value do you see in the act of nursing a wound, or ‘romancing a wound’ as you poetically put it, if it can never fully recover but instead continually evolves?

PUERTA: Many of the ways in which I describe what I’m thinking about in the work just ends up feeling web-like instead of linear. Even thinking about the idea of romancing the wound—what does it mean to ease pain in a way that’s not healing it but enticing it into submission. I think healing is a constant state of becoming empowered in all the complexities that a wound offers, whether it be rage, sadness, pain, forgiveness, empathy, resentment, trauma, acceptance, etc. If healing is a portal into these complicated states then the wound is this fountain, a source, an opening and a flowing sting that keeps us in the simultaneity of being animals and highly conscientious beings. I find that the wounds that I carry have also become what nurses me; they offer me a space to be truthful in the complexity of my experience being alive. The value I see in romancing a wound is thinking of it as taming a wild beast and knowing how to slow dance with it instead of trying to fight it away.

MEAKER: You have said that this work is very personal, especially with regard to the family history and mythologies you’re mining. Even within this personal thread, the feeling of disconnect from family and the attempt to piece together fragments of an unknowable history is something I deeply connect with, albeit for very different reasons.

PUERTA: Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, I feel like it's something that many of us, if not all of us, can relate to: the erasure of our own history and these glimpses we may have: moments of vulnerable truth that are obscured by a murky mystery. In my family there are moments of clarity that I have about the ways in which we exist—the characters in my family and the mystery about who they are, who they were. These histories get erased but manifest in other ways. I romance around these murky mysteries and create different signifiers to dwell with a bit.

MEAKER: It’s interesting, the function of remembering. Memory has so much to do with one’s sense of self and the forging of their history. If we can’t remember, we create stories, stand-ins.

PUERTA: Yes, for sure. But I think that’s the thing about the self referential vs the identity politics around it all. That is definitely a part of it and inevitable because we are all political bodies in this society. But I realized a lot of what I was dealing with was a personal, familial connection and the way that has been impacted by politics, but getting more into the heaviness around it. In some ways I feel like dealing with the political was my way of avoiding the familial and realizing that it’s something I actually want to deeply understand. I wanted to find a soothing place within that unknown. I’m always thinking about a family member and each of the pieces I make become homages to them and reflections in this really subtle way. There is a correspondence that I feel like I have with my family. In that they do become these mythological creatures to me that hold powers and different codes to a family history that then becomes a world.

MEAKER: Kind of a way to commune with ancestors.

PUERTA: Yes, but they are usually people that I have known or know. But they do still feel like ancestors to me because of that moment of unknowing them. There’s something about, especially older family members, that feel like they are both here and in some deep past that I don’t have access to.

Detail of “Mija” photograph courtesy Lindsey Flicker and Estefania Puerta.

MEAKER: This familiar/unfamiliar quality imbues your work with a sense of the uncanny. The sculpture titled Mija is particularly reminiscent of a body. It has an interior architecture, a bone structure. It has the qualities of an organism in that it’s alive and dying. It has a vibrancy and vitality but also shows signs of decline: dying plants against glowing water, soft and fleshy material edged by muddy mop-heads. Can you talk about these provocative, paradoxical qualities?

PUERTA: Thinking of the too-muchness of all these materials, the excess in both ways of fleshy softness and the raggedy edges. I think of the mop heads as a filter, both in their material, cultured significance and also as a proposal and simulacra of cilia and other filters that exist in nature. My dad was a janitor for the majority of my life and I have a lot of love and fond connections to this material; riding on the floor buffing machine that felt like a giant, gentle beast as my dad was its tamer, guiding it across the floor. At the same time, I feel that sharpness in how immigrant labor can be almost fetishized in the U.S, how immigrants are seen as the filters, the holders, the purifiers of what others do not want to deal with. How these mops literally hold the muck and grime and how I think of them as tendrils protecting the soft interior of this sculpture. The guiding term I was thinking about for this piece was “creature comfort” and thinking of bodies that need regeneration, that are not just beat down and exhausted but are actually resting, re-generating, feeding themselves, finding comfort. Some referential inspirations are the feminine grotesque and the goddess of fertility, Artemis.

“Mija” photograph courtesy Lindsey Flicker and Estefania Puerta.

MEAKER: I’m thinking about flowers: they are prized for their external beauty and arousing scent (how they satisfy us); yet once picked, the flower wilts, browns, drops its pedals, leaving only a rotting, stinking tuft that is hastily discarded by its once devoted admirer.

PUERTA: We remember a beautiful flower but not the decaying flower. I’ve been thinking about the idea of a fruiting body. Fungus as a fruiting body, flowers as a fruiting body, the body having its own potential to fruit in these dark places. The operation of nature within all of that. Not just the appearance of it but what does it actually do and mean and how do we identify with these processes.

MEAKER: Your sculpture Enrejada is similarly dichotomous. Spilling out of a grid-like structure lined with ears made of wax, are tendrils of pink fabric, hair, and a coiled umbilical cord. This feels like a raw, traumatic memory. Bits and pieces disconnected and out of place, trying to find each other. The burden of remembering and forgetting.

Detail of “Enrejada” photograph courtesy Lindsey Flicker and Estefania Puerta.

PUERTA: Hmm interesting, yeah, as you know, I am really interested in psychoanalysis and its poetic and very real history as it relates to hysteria and women’s experiences. Trauma is described as this type of repetition, a loop that you play over and over again but can never find the ending to it. I do think this piece plays with that notion of repetition, the over emphasis of something that cannot be forgotten. But perhaps for me, the pain attached to trauma isn’t as present for me, I was thinking more of familial lineages (there is a spice blend in the sacks that my mother uses) and also what it means to be a sentient being. I made the ears during a time when I was in deep turmoil and a creative block. A friend read my tarot and saw an image of a tongue licking flowers and instructed me to get out of my head. I was talking myself in loops and what I needed to do was be present, to listen to the earth around me in a much more embodied way. As she read my tarot, I had this material in my hand with no purpose and instinctively started making ears, they felt beautiful and cathartic in my hands, they felt right and that just led me to other ideas of these pieces typically being seen as their primary sense of existence. We talk a lot about the gaze in a visual way, but what if a sculpture can hear you? What does it mean to have empowerment through another sense? To have auditory sentience and being-ness in the room and offer the act of listening to the “talker,” instead of the “viewer.” In that way, this piece actually feels really therapeutic or healing to me.

MEAKER: What has it been like making this work during a time of incredible tumult, fear, sickness, unknown, radical uprising? So much of what has been hidden has now come to light.

PUERTA: It has been both my refuge and sanctuary, as well as the sharpest mirror reflecting the darkest parts of my soul. The part I may not have been ready to deal with. Making art always feels like you’re putting your hands into a void and hoping that whatever you’re holding onto or making gives something back to you that is nurturing. It was a hard, weird time to try to define what would be nurturing and whether it was even something worthwhile to define in this moment. And then coming back to the romantic and true feeling around art being its own space that, for better or worse, can keep us grounded in a different reality that isn’t always a hyper-politicized and materially cruel place. I realized that I am a valid person and that I am worthy of existence and expressing my existence. In that aspect, I feel so grateful I had this show to work towards; to have a mirror I had to constantly face, to ask the hard questions and get to the other side of it, where I feel more empowered than before.

Womb Wound is on view from October 11 - November 15 with a reception on Sunday, October 11, 12-7 PM @ Situations in New York

Concept 005: An Interview Of Nordstrom Men’s Sam Lobban And Union Los Angeles Founder Chris Gibbs

August 2, 2019

Founded in 1989, Union’s history first started in New York’s Soho with the gracious ambition of giving a space to young, local designers on their way to recognition. The Los Angeles shop followed a few years later and strived to maintain the same principle born thirty years ago: embracing the creativity of fresh designers within the city while being inspired by trends coming from Japan and the UK. Union Los Angeles has now become one of LA’s prime destinations for men's contemporary fashion and streetwear. Earlier this month, Chris Gibbs, who used to work at the original NYC shop and is now the owner and operator behind Union LA, announced Union’s first ever collaboration with a national retailer: Nordstrom.

Concept 005: Union & Company features over 170 exclusive pieces across clothing, accessories and shoes from a roster of 13 brands curated by Chris Gibbs and Sam Lobban, Nordstrom’s vice president of men’s fashion. We had the opportunity to speak to both of them about their recent collaboration, but mostly about streetwear, its evolution, and its relationship to high fashion.

AUTRE: How did the two of you meet?

SAM LOBBAN: Chris and I were introduced by a mutual friend, and then we would bump into each other in showrooms during Fashion Week market around the world and talk shop. We always seemed to have a similar vibe on product and brands, which I for one found interesting and pretty cool given our very different professional backgrounds.

CHRIS GIBBS: Sam seems to remember us meeting in Tokyo…but I don’t remember that specifically. I just know that over the course of the men’s fashion gauntlet: Tokyo, Paris, Italy, NYC…I would often see Sam in the usual haunts, and over time, recognized that we shared a lot of sensibilities and we formed a friendship.

AUTRE: In collaboration on this concept project, what were some of the first conversations you had about what you wanted this pop-up to look like, and which brands you wanted to include?

SAM LOBBAN: From the start, the Union & Company concept was about giving Chris and the team a platform to tell the Union story to our customers. It was important to us that we convey what Union is all about, but at the same time have its own unique spin as a pop-up concept, hence the thirteen brand, 170-piece exclusive capsule collection featuring all but two brands which Union usually carries. For the additional two - Cactus Plant Flea Market and No Vacancy Inn - both Chris and I are fans of what each brand does, and thought they would add an interesting addition to the concept as a whole.

AUTRE: Were there any particular inspirations that you both found to be the driving force behind this pop-up? Whether it be a different concept store, another city, or even a style of design?

SAM LOBBAN: From my perspective the major inspirations would be the ideas behind Union and what they stand for: great product, an open and inclusive environment and representing a diverse range of brands and ideas across price points. I think it would be fair to say that the campaign and overall aesthetic feels pretty rooted in LA style too!

AUTRE: Are there any brands that you think are ushering in a new wave of streetwear design?

SAM LOBBAN: I think what Cactus Plant Flea Market is doing is super cool, along with the Camp High guys...I like their super interesting take on color, graphic and print placement & technique on jersey, sweat weights and shapes.

AUTRE: Do you think these kinds of pop-ups risk putting cult streetwear at risk of becoming too mainstream?

CHRIS GIBBS: I do think there is a narrative where that can happen… And some brands might succumb to the glitz and glamour of it all by overdoing it. But we (Union) have a thirty-year track record of ‘keeping it real’ and by that I guess I mean playing the long game and never overexposing any one brand or trend. The core of our business has, for some time now been Japanese street wear and three of the four brands we started with over fourteen years ago are still the leading brands in our store (Neighborhood, Wtaps and Visvim). My feeling has always been as long as you keep true to your brand ethos and don’t start doing things and making product that isn’t really true to the brand, then you don’t run the risk of saturation. This project is the perfect example. It’s a two-month pop up with a highly curated edit of brands and styles in only ten doors in the world. That isn’t mainstream.

AUTRE: Do you think streetwear has become less accessible to consumers due to the influx of luxury brands tailoring their aesthetics?

SAM LOBBAN: Personally I think the opposite; aside from the ambiguity of what ‘streetwear’ as a term really means - which seems to be a catchall for anything cool that’s going on in menswear at this point - I’d argue that more customers than ever can and want to buy into streetwear because of the range of price points available. At Nordstrom we have Union tees for $42 to Dior tees for $560, and everything in between.

AUTRE: Do you think streetwear has evolved along with high fashion brands as they have adapted to their collections to appeal to more trend-oriented customers?

CHRIS GIBBS: Sam kind of spoke to the “catchall-ness” of the term streetwear. So this is kind of tough to answer. My job as a curator, for lack of a better term, is to try and sift through everything and bring the best to our customers. Not to sound repetitive but again I would lean on our thirsty+ year history of being Los Angeles’s best kept secret. Correct me if I am wrong, but Autre is a LA-based magazine who has covered many brands we sell, designers we offer, artists we support and this might be the first article about us. And I kind of like that. There is something kind of cool and mysterious about what and how Union exists. Guess I digressed there, sorry. Ok, so the question was has streetwear evolved to be more trendy? Some parts of it have for sure…some of streetwear’s most respected and longstanding brands are now household names, that said, others are still wildly successful, yet still super niche and underground. Streetwear is very pluralistic in that way.

AUTRE: Has the ethos behind streetwear as a cultural concept been diminished by high fashion?

CHRIS GIBBS: I will admit, I do think high fashion brands are doing their best to use the ‘streetwear’ playbook and unlike most streetwear brands, high-fashion brands have multimillion dollar ad campaigns and marketing teams behind them. And I will go a step further and say some are doing a really good job at it. I suppose for me we have always been a niche store and have largely enjoyed support from the customer who really gets it. The guys and girls who want honest, organic and holistic take on fashion. In those people we will always have support and they aren’t as easily lured away as most. There are some high fashion brands that for sure are using streetwear’s new found popularity to keep themselves relevant, while others are working with, not against streetwear in a more collaborative way that I think is healthier.

AUTRE: Do either of you think that there is any single city that consistently ignites global streetwear trends?

SAM LOBBAN: I think by its very nature a number of major cities add their own trends to the global streetwear conversation, rather than any single one. I think there are lines which you could draw back to New York, LA, Tokyo, London and beyond.

AUTRE: Would you consider Los Angeles to be a city of a trend-starters or of trend-followers?

CHRIS GIBBS: What I would say is this, I am a firm believer that streetwear was born in NYC, but at some point during the early ought’s it seemed to migrate west or at the very least become bicoastal. So there is a very strong, very dope LA version of streetwear, which is a community that I think is really dope. The Japanese streetwear that we introduced to the US, for example was really done from LA and that is a huge part of streetwear. And for Union we wouldn’t be here today without the support and patronage of some really dope trend setters in Los Angeles.

AUTRE: How would you describe the fashion aesthetic of this generation?

CHRIS GIBBS: My wet dream. A truly free and democratic mix of all genres and subgenres of fashion - high, low, vintage, contemporary, hippie, cross dressing, you name it.

AUTRE: Do either of you have any trend forecast predictions for the near future of streetwear?

CHRIS GIBBS: As high fashion willingly blurs the lines, the pendulum can swing both ways…streetwear will start using their playbook, but through a younger more innovative lens.

The pop-up shops will be available July 11 through September 1 at select Nordstrom stores and Nordstrom.com/NewConcepts.

The War Back Home: An Interview with Creative Polymath Nina Ljeti

May 8, 2016

Nina Ljeti is prolific. She is a writer, filmmaker, actress, and musician. Just a few of her many projects include: starring in films directed by and alongside James Franco; co-writing and co-directing the feature length film Memoria with Vladmir de Fontenay (which is out in theaters now); performing in her band, Nani; and shooting a biopic about Jerry Garcia. She has the creative output young artists have wet dreams about. But Nina Ljeti is prolific in another sense of the word. She is the daughter of Bosnian immigrants (who came to Canada at the start of the Bosnian Revolution) and a high school punk stoner; a film buff who loves Titanic and Coppola alike. Her richness isn't just in practice; it's in spirit and history as well. We got to ask Ljeti about memory, filmmaking, ghosts, and getting to play Patti Smith. Read it here.

Autre: You were born in Bosnia and Herzegovina just before the Bosnian War. Do you have any memories of that time? Did you grow up there? What was that like?

Nina Ljeti: No. We left in 1992 when I was still a baby. We immigrated to Canada- my parents had never been there before and they didn't know the language. They were in a completely foreign setting, and they left everything they had and worked for to start a new life for me. I remember the daily struggle my parents dealt with just so we could eat and survive. And I remember them watching TV every night for any news of the war back home.

Autre: When did you know that you wanted to act and make films? Was it acting or filmmaking first?

Ljeti: I started off wanting to be an actress/singer in high school, but I was also making films at the same time. I made my first movie when I was 14. They went hand-in-hand for me. As a kid, I was also writing a lot- poetry and short stories, mostly. I don't really act so much anymore- I'm primarily a director now.

Autre: You've written and directed a number of films as well as acting, including co-writing and co-directing for Memoria. What's it like to be behind the camera? Do you prefer writing and directing to acting, or is it nice to be holistic in that way?

Ljeti: I enjoy directing way more. The only time I really perform as an actress is if I'm collaborating on a project with James. My true passion is writing and telling stories- I love writing scripts and songs. All I do in my spare time is read and write.

Autre: What was it like co-directing and co-writing Memoria with Vladimir de Fontenay?

Ljeti: I love Vlad. When we made Memoria he was much more experienced than I was as a director, so it was wonderful to learn from him and he was very supportive of me. He's my baguette.

Autre: Memoria seems like your classic bilungsroman - a teenage guy struggles to find meaning amongst friends and family that "just don't get him." Did you find this was your connection to the film as well? Did you empathize with Ivan? What is your coming-of-age story?

Ljeti: I connect with Ivan a lot. I wrote the script and a lot of the characters in the film are based on kids I knew in high school. My coming-of-age story is pretty classic. I got bullied a lot. I liked punk and thrash. I was overly sensitive and always skipped class to hang out with kids who 'understood me better.' I wrote a lot in my diary and smoked pot everyday at lunch but still got the best grades. I was also really depressed and sad all the time but, who wasn't?
Memoria also has a great deal to do with memory (hence, the title) - is elusiveness and subjectivity.

Autre: What connections do you see between memory and writing, or memory and filmmaking?

Ljeti: As a writer and filmmaker, I draw from my memories as the main source for my work. I always notice that small details will change in how I remember something---- I think to keep the feeling I felt in that moment alive so I never forget (i'm talking about memories of love) and then this memory will replay in my head over and over even after I've used it (and this part is torture).

Autre: You've worked with James Franco on Rebel, Memoria, and the upcoming film Zeroville. How did you two meet, and why do you think so work so well together?

Ljeti: We met at NYU seven years ago. It's really rare to meet someone who shares your passion for creating and exploring. He's the only person I met who is as curious as I am. I think that's why we continue to work together- there's always something new to try.

Autre: In Zeroville, you play Patti Smith. That's amazing. Did you do anything to try to get into her head?

Ljeti: I was just performing on stage as her, so I really just tried to emanate her performance technique. This bit of study did help me a lot with performing in my band (that I sing and write the lyrics for).

Autre: Zeroville deals with the ghosts of cinema, how they can haunt us despite their fictions and weave their magical thread into our daily lives. Have any films affected you in that way?

Ljeti: Titanic. I watched it when I was 6 and it set a very unrealistic standard of love for me. Also Coppola's Dracula. I wish vampires were real. And I wish Disney movies were life. And that Marlon Brando could live forever.

Autre: Along that same vein, Hollywood can be kind of this ghostly, mythical place. Have you found that in your time in Los Angeles?

Ljeti: No, I haven't found any ghosts in Los Angeles. All the ghosts I've seen are back in New York. That's where my heart is.

Autre: What projects are you working on now?

Ljeti: My next film is the biopic of Jerry Garcia, which I wrote and will be shooting this July. I also have a band called Nani, and we're going to be releasing our first EP sometime this year.

Memoria, written and directed by Nina Ljeti and Vladimir Fontenay, is out now in select theaters. Text and interview by Keely Shinners. photographs by Kevin Hayeland. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Exalting The Maîtresse: An Interview With Allen Jones

April 8, 2016

text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Allen Jones is a living legend. To this day, his iconic furniture sculptures literally stand, kneel and hunch over, as life-like remnants of not only the pop art movement, but also the sexual revolution of the 1960s. When Jones’ trademark fornophillic work, Hatstand, Table and Chair was unveiled in 1970, it was met with both praise and militant protest. Indeed, the work is combustible and tears down some of the tallest walls we have built around our understanding of figurative art. But if you ask Jones if he is a rebel, as we did in the following interview, he will tell you that he is only carrying the torch that many artists have carried before him and not using the torch to burn down the institution. If you’ve seen Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of the novel A Clockwork Orange, you’ve seen interpretations of Jones’ oeuvre in the famous Korova Milk Bar. Kubrick asked Jones if he would recreate some of his furniture sculptures for the film, but the artist politely declined.

A few years later, the film industry came knocking again. This time commissioning him to design the poster for Barbet Schroeder’s film Maîtresse, about an obsessive romance between a small time crook and a professional dominatrix. The film stars Gérard Depardieu and Bulle Ogier. A young Karl Lagerfeld designed the costumes. When the American distributor for the film commissioned Jones for the poster, the artist was given a private viewing in a theater in Paris. The film has been banned almost everywhere else. Hesitant about the film’s extreme and controversial subject matter, but also taken by the film’s heroine, Jones accepted the job. The poster, featuring a leather-clad woman with a come-hither glance behind an orange curtain holding a bullwhip would become a recurring theme in Jones’ paintings and drawings.

Indeed, the Maîtresse Cycle as it would come to be known, would take many shapes and forms over the course of the artist’s career. In February of 2016, Jones will see the opening of Maîtresse, a solo exhibition at the Michael Werner gallery in Mayfair London featuring the original paintings for the film, which have never been exhibited before. The artist kept the originals for himself, luckily, or else they might have been destroyed. The paintings offer a unique insight into Jones’ obsession with the figure, and thrilling erotic subject matter. Later in 2016, Jones will have what may be one of his biggest retrospectives to date, where his beautiful and electric obsessions will be on full display.

In the following interview, we got a rare chance to speak with Jones over the phone from his studio in Oxfordshire, England.

OLIVER KUPPER: You once said in an interview that you wanted to kick over the idea that figurative art wasn’t tough. What do you think made you such a rebel?

ALLEN JONES: Well I don’t think I was a rebel at all of course. I mean one was carrying what’s a grand tradition in art with a very long history to it. I wouldn’t use the word rebel and I doubt anyone I’m close with would either. In terms of the climate of the avant-garde art scene, I suppose when I was a young man, abstraction was really the way forward. That led into colorful painting and minimalism and so on. At that time, you actually were going against the grain to try and find ways of still dealing with the figure.

KUPPER: Sure.

JONES: The problem was that around the same time we’re talking about, with the advent of abstract expressionism, the traditional configuration had run out of steam - hit the buffers. There was no formal invention in the work. So I suppose I was part of a generation that sort of had to find a new language, a new way of presenting the figure. Pop art in a way certainly did that.

KUPPER: I mean there’s something rebellious about pop art, but it was more a turning of the tides in a way.

JONES: You were still coming out of the post war period, certainly as far as living in Europe and London was concerned. So after the austerity of the immediate post war decade, the time you got into the 60s, suddenly people were more upbeat and things were opening out. The future did look promising.

KUPPER: Yeah, I mean it was the beginning of the sexual revolution, there was a sort of explosion of creativity.

JONES: Correct, that’s right. It’s a very different world today. The media of course has changed - communication and how you can do things. For young artists today the technology available is so wide spread that it doesn’t surprise me that not so many people seem to be drawing and painting, because in comparison it’s rather hard work!

KUPPER: What was your reaction to the pop art scene in New York versus the scene in London?

JONES: Well I was a very young man, I was about 24 or 25. If it had been the in the 1910s - if it had been the turn of the century, 50 years before, one would have headed to Paris. But New York was certainly seen as, and was, the center of the contemporary art world. One wanted to go there to have that experience first hand rather than feeling you were in some sort of outpost, just getting the news as it filtered through. In those days it was just the beginning of things like newspapers having cover supplements. So you would see avant-garde work, or work by a modern American artist at that time - esoteric things like the cover of Evergreen Review.

KUPPER: Oh yeah!

JONES: So you really did have to go somewhere if you wanted to see what was happening and get more than just the odd snapshot. New York in 1964 when I was first there was an incredible amount of energy. I suppose it helped to be someone out of town because usually people are much more generous with their time if it’s a visitor rather than if it’s someone on the block. The artists that I met there very quickly were really outgoing and responsive. It was a really great millennium to be thrust into. I had a recommendation from the director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London at the time, which was the conduit for modern art. He was the first person to really show all the grand abstract expressionism. He gave a couple of young artists, which I was one, an introduction to Robert Motherwell and Helen Frankenthaler who were good friends of his. Within weeks of being in New York I had suddenly had drinks with pretty much all, except for Jackson Pollock, the abstract expressionists group that was there.

KUPPER: That’s amazing.

JONES: It was incredibly exhilarating for a young artist. At the same time, of course, I gravitated towards what was the beginning of pop art. Leo Castelli’s gallery was showing Lichtenstein and Warhol and Rosenquist. I became friends with those guys although they were 10, maybe 15 years older than me. But it was a terrific time.

KUPPER: So you were kind of at the right place at the right time?

JONES: Yes I think that was true! Richard Feigen had just moved from Chicago, and had seen my first exhibition in London, my very first exhibition I had - he must have been passing through London and saw it - and offered me a contract. So I got on the plane. (Laughs.) That was good enough.

KUPPER: Going back a little bit, to your roots, and where your interest in art came from, your father was a factory worker right?

JONES: Correct yes, he was an engineer. He was excused military service during the war when I was a young lad because he was working in a heavy metal industry and they were making armaments and shells and things like that. So my father wasn’t absent from my former years and on Sunday afternoons, as a form of relaxation he used to watercolor. He got these books on watercolor and I would stand at his elbow and watch him practice sediment washes and things like that. I don’t know, I suppose it was in the genes in a way.

KUPPER: It might be in the genes. It’s interesting how that works out. I mean some people are born, and there’s no artists in their families, and then they find out that their great great grandmother or grandfather was an artist. It makes a lot of sense.

JONES: I think there’s someone a few generations back who may have been a professional artist. But the thing was, my folks were just salt of the earth people and they were not involved with the art world at all. My father, being a Welshman and being in exile in London, to keep up with his kind, belonged to a male voice choir. Of course the Welsh are quite famous for singing. Another part of my upbringing was my parents always playing opera records. I would go as a very young boy and sit at the back of the chapel hall where the male voice choir was practicing. So there was a suggestion that there was something else in life going on.

KUPPER: Sure, there was something creative going on.

JONES: The other thing was that we lived in the suburbs at basically the end of the underground line. So on the holidays we’d get on the underground and within half an hour we’d be at Marble Arch. For me, the bright lights and the city from a very early age represented somehow a certain glamour. So the city has been in a way a part of my notion of subject matter or inspiration since I can remember.

KUPPER: Speaking of your work, a lot of it is erotic in nature. Every young boy has sort of erotic fantasies about women and sexuality. This is sort of an extreme question - but were your erotic fantasies ever as extreme as some of the works you later explored?

JONES: I don’t think the work is very extreme, I think it’s rather sedated. I don’t think my enthusiasms as a teenager and a young man were any different than a large segment of the male population. I didn’t hone in on the female figure as a subject of painting, certainly for nearly five or six years of my professional career. I was in New York in the mid-60s and when I returned to London I started to see a kind of direct language from illustration, cartoons and advertising. In those days I still had to teach a bit for a living. What I wanted students to do was have an engagement with the subject matter, something that meant something to them. I wanted them to show me the drawings that they did at home and were too embarrassed to show anybody. Because they might be seen as childish or something like that.

KUPPER: Sure.

JONES: Also the business of Playboy Magazine, all of that was very new on the streets in the UK really. That idea of glamour and seeing the figure as more than the middle aged ladies they had in the art room. There you’d draw a figure who would be more like your aunt or something. They didn’t wish anyone to be excited by drawing the figure, kind of a Victorian idea.

So the first pictures that specifically came from erotica I suppose were my leg paintings with a shelf on them - which I did when I returned to London. There was a writer called Max Kozloff who was a very influential art critic in those days, friend of Jasper Johns and the rest of them. He noticed when all these artists came to the melting pot of New York, that they all came from these different kinds of cultures and backgrounds with their own excitements. But after they’d been in town, they all conformed to a certain kind of view of what modern art should be. He listed things like “the work always had to be hard edge” or “it had to be right colored, it had to be flat surfaced, or maybe eggshell” but you couldn’t have shiny paint. The other big deal was the idea of the integrity of the surface of the picture - that you should not violate the picture plane. So when I returned to London I thought I would try to paint a picture, which violated as many of his presets as possible.

KUPPER: Yeah! (Laughs.)

JONES: So I took a subject. It was exciting, I tried to paint it so that it was almost a barber shop sign - that it was something unequivocal and clear. It wasn’t suggesting it was dressed up in fine art language. I realized actually that if you saw the contour of the form clearly enough and experienced it visibly enough, that picture plane wouldn’t possibly collapse. The other insight was that by fixing a shelf on the picture, I thought would give some kind of physical connection. Because the legs are on the floor and you’re on the floor. Of course what happens is if you screw a three-dimensional or real object on the front of a canvas, it doesn’t matter if the painting is St. Paul’s Cathedral in the distance – it’s still going to be as flat as a pancake.

*Allen Jones, Chair, 1969, painted fibreglass, resin, Plexiglas, mixed media and tailor made accessories, 78 x 96 x 57 cm, private collection, courtesy the artist and Marlborough Fine Art, London*

KUPPER: Sure, that’s really interesting.

JONES: The thing really developed. By the end of this big thing I was painting volumetric figures, which I suppose I was developing a language with. It was very stylized and did come from erotic illustration. There were a lot of adult comic strips in America, certainly on 6th avenue in those days. I thought all that stuff was very interesting, because they were dealing with the figure and it was direct and exciting so I plundered some of those ideas. By the end of the 60s I thought “you know I’m trying to make these figures so real that maybe what I should try to do is make it real” - that’s when I first moved into the sculptures, which became in a way my trademark I suppose. The furniture sculptures. But they weren’t intended to be furniture – of the group the very first figure that I made was a standing figure. Which is now called “a hat stand,” but it has nothing to do with being a hat stand.

KUPPER: Of course.

JONES: What do you do when you want to make a figure? I wasn’t interested in it sitting down or running or standing on her head. So the figure was just meant to be standing there. The arms were raised in basically an ancient form of greeting or saying “here I am.” I intended to put the figure in street clothing so that they would look a little bit like the window displays you saw on Oxford street in those days. But when I tried it I just realized it looked like some surrealist found object and that really wasn’t what I wanted to do.

So what I did was clothe the figure, but used clothing that people would know but not be familiar with - it wasn’t everyday clothing. For me it was circus or nightclub clothing. When I finished the figure I still thought it kind of looked like it was a surrealist throwback. Again from the comic strips I hit on the idea that if the figure was made to look like a piece of furniture someone looking at it would have to deal with it as though it was an everyday object. Then it would really put the viewer in a place where they had to make decisions about what they were looking at.

KUPPER: Did you expect that these pieces of art would get such a strong reaction? Or that they would even become your trademark?

JONES: At the time of course I wanted a strong reaction but I was expecting a strong reaction about whether it’s art. One was trying to kick over the traces and challenge the notions of what art could be. It never occurred to me that it would be seen as an offering of a degrading view of women. I only had daughters and a wife, I’m surrounded by women. I lived on the King’s road in the late 60s with Mary Quant and Ossie Clark. The business of the emancipation of the female body, like the invention of materials like Lycra for the sports industry, allowed the body to be displayed and yet concealed. But these people were dressing for themselves. I was looking around and getting excited and recording, in a funny way, my environment. This wasn’t something I was dreaming of in the bedroom.

KUPPER: Yeah exactly. They weren’t your fantasies they were an interpretation of your surroundings.

JONES: I mean obviously I was primed for it. A lot of people think it’s my limitation and it might be. The female figure over the years has really become the pivot for my pictorial exploration.

KUPPER: In the 60s there was a rise in the feminist movement, and I think that they were maybe responding to the idea that these figures in the sculptures were kind of submissive. They were allowing you to put your feet on them.

JONES: No no I can see it! Yeah sure. If I’d been writing for one of their magazines and I’d seen this image, I’d be the same. It’s a perfect example of a figure, it happens to be a female figure, being used as an object. There’s nothing I can do about that, it’s just coincidental. It was certainly not a conscious part of the artwork. The other thing is that the militancy of that time, the same as any radical movement is that it always starts out with having to state the extreme. The idea of no bras, no makeup, no heels - but it seems that with the passage of time women use what they want to use, at least in the urban environments of Western cities that I know. When I made those shelf paintings with high heels, the reason I used the high heels was because they were totally out of fashion. I didn’t want to paint the shoes so that someone looking at the painting would think “oh that’s last year’s model.” But of course what happens over the passage of time is people end up thinking I have a stake in shoe manufacturing. (Laughs.)

KUPPER: Interesting.

JONES: It’s quite funny. In recent years, when I have an exhibition, or once in a blue moon some kind of art talk, a lot of the people who come up and say they admire my work are women. I see that as a historic period. Even if they’re a teenager or in their 20s, they don’t have the same wars to fight. Or quite the same, maybe they do deep down, but it’s a different scene. Nevertheless, they look and they think, “Oh, that’s what that’s about.” That’s the only down side for me. It’s become a part of the work to think that there is that connotation.

KUPPER: Sure, and then you have artists like Bjarne Melgaard who sort of re-interpreted your works but with black figures. Which was interesting and takes it in a whole new arena.

JONES: I didn’t take that work very seriously actually. When I look at artwork I like to see something that really draws me out and gives me pause or makes me have to re-think ideas I had about what I’m looking at. Of course I’ve been around a long enough time that I remember the photo-realist period with Duane Hanson. I’ve only ever seen the Melgaard versions of my sculptures. I hope they mean a lot to him, but they didn’t really give me a fright at all.

Allen Jones, Table, 1969, painted fibreglass, resin, Plexiglas, mixed media and tailor made accessories, 61 x 130 x 76 cm, private collection, courtesy the artist and Marlborough Fine Art, London

KUPPER: Interesting, I think that the controversy came from that Russian collector sitting on one of them. Which was maybe intentional.

JONES: Right, she didn’t know what she was getting into. You can imagine someone buying a piece of novelty furniture, to put it at its worst, and the photographer is there to take a photograph. You can picture them saying “well it looks like a seat, why don’t you sit down?” Of course as soon as they sit down it turns out to be national women’s day or something.

KUPPER: I want to go back a little bit, [Stanley] Kubrick asked you to make sculptures for Clockwork Orange and you turned him down. But the sculptures he used in the film were very similar. What was your reaction to that?

JONES: It was great. He called me and wanted to use the furniture sculptures for his film, and I said you know, they’re not film props, but if you like it I could design something for you. So that was the plan. He sent me the script with the book, and I could see why he wanted to use my stuff. Then it fell apart because he thought I’d do it for a credit and I said it’s going to be about three months’ work - I can’t afford to work for free. Then I told him, you know you like the idea, you use it. In fact, it was most likely better than I could have done. People who design for film props and the theatre know what the camera’s looking at.

KUPPER: Sure that makes sense.

JONES: They know they just have to design the front and they don’t have to worry about the back or something like that. Where I would have used the same level of intensity on making the thing that I would an artwork. It would have been a waste of time. Anyway the amusing thing is that everyone thinks I had something to do with it but I didn’t.

KUPPER: Yeah I’ve read a few conflicting reports on what exactly happened there. There were reports that you would never talk to Kubrick again, or there were reports that you tried to sue him for stealing your work. But it’s a lot more diplomatic than that I guess.

JONES: As I just said I’ve never met the guy. We spoke on the phone, there was no real reason to meet. That was fine with me. I didn’t feel threatened by that. Of course at the time, with the work I was doing, I didn’t think it would be something that would represent me or that I’d have to be talking about it in 50 years. The reality of that moment was that I could not afford to work for three months for a credit in a movie. He said “I’m a famous director, you’ll get a lot of coverage” and I said “listen, I’m not a set designer. If you can get me an exhibition at the Louvre, I’ll do it for free.”

(Laughs)

KUPPER: That’s the exposure you want as an artist. Moving along, what’s the one question you wish critics or journalists would ask you?

JONES: My god I hadn’t thought about that; I don’t particularly know what I want anyone to ask me about. I like the idea that you can tell when somebody connects with the work, usually because of the questions they ask. Often it’s a question, which makes you think about your work, not in a new way, but it's not something you’re talking about. Or at the time you hadn’t thought about it before. It shows that there’s actually some dimension to the work which is coming across at a slightly slower speed. All works give off the first hit - even if it’s a Donald Judd box, it seems as though everything is said in the first instant. But then if you live with the art, other things kind of come into play.

KUPPER: It seems like with a lot of artists, no matter who they are, art critics always misconstrue one thing. Or they have an idea about the artist that seeps into every single interview. So I’m always curious about what artists wish people would ask or want to learn about that no other critic has asked.

JONES: I really don’t think about that. The thing that I’m thinking about when I have a show or when someone sees the work, let alone when I’m doing it, is that you’re involved with perceptual and conceptual kind of problems which aren’t actually the subject. The decision is made that it’s going to be a figure, but how the figure actually looks depends on formal considerations. That might seem funny to say but in fact the work is not an illustration of somebody I wished I’d seen in a nightclub. I suppose over the years people might think wrongly but when I’m doing the thing, the way it actually turns out has to do with what the paint can do and what the situation is within the composition if it as a painting. Or within the formal elements if it’s a sculpture.

The big thing for me at the moment is whether to put the figure back into a box, a display box, because the 21st century was spent with artists trying to take the figure out of the display cabinet and make it share the same space as the viewer. Quite recently I’ve seen some of my works, which were displayed within acrylic clear boxes - mainly because they were in some ancient castle environment on the border of Wales in some exhibition. Because they were outdoors, the figures had to be protected, because they were plainly indoor figures. It did add another dimension to them. They looked as though they’d come from Mars or something.

KUPPER: Interesting.

JONES: It’s those type of things that are preoccupying me at the moment. I have a show coming up in London at the end of this month with Michael Werner Gallery. It’s going to do with a film poster I painted for the French movie Maîtresse in the 70s. Which was a film that didn’t get general lease in England because of its heavy-duty subject matter. But the American distributor asked if I’d do a poster for the American distribution, which I did. Anyway I never sold the painting because it started off as a poster commission so I never thought of it as a painting. But I kept it over the years and about three or four years ago I suddenly thought it might be quite fun to revisit it and say “here’s this figure standing on a shallow stage with a bullwhip who’s knocked over some of the letters that say Maîtresse.” I thought well what if she sits down? Or what if she picks the letters up or goes behind the curtain and so on and so forth. It spawned a series of paintings and little photo graphics which I’m going to show here and in Hamburg. At the moment the business is whether or not to put the sculpture in the show as well. Whether to put it inside a box.

KUPPER: My last question is where do you think we are with censorship today? Do you think we’re more conservative than we have been or do you think we’re becoming more open to ideas?

JONES: “We” depends on where you’re living on the globe.

KUPPER: True.

JONES: That of course is a huge topic at the moment isn’t it? I suppose somehow sex is at the basis of it all, but what is okay in one place is totally unacceptable in another. I’m just very thrilled I’m not a politician to tell you the truth. I’m also quite pleased to be living in what we call the West.

KUPPER: Thank you so much for your time Mr. Jones.

JONES: You’re quite welcome.

Allen Jones "A Retrospective" is on view now at Michael Werner gallery in New York until June 4 and Maîtresse at Michael Werner gallery in London until May 6. The interview is taken from Autre's LOVE ISSUE, which is available here. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

A Fashion Renegade Makes His Mark: An Interview With Designer Charles Elliot Harbison

March 25, 2016

Growing up near the Appalachian Mountains in his home state of North Carolina, New York-based fashion designer Charles Elliot Harbison was disconnected from the glitz, grunge, and all things in-between of New York fashion. Nevertheless, he still managed to find his way to aesthetics. Though it might seem surprising to the average New York cool kid, Harbison learned about style at the church. “There was propriety in it,” he says. “There was personal exhibition. There was worship. It was never thoughtless. I remember white shirts, blue blazer, bowtie, some suede bucks. That’s when I became acquainted with style.”

New York Fashion Week has solidified its position as the most commercial of all the Fashion Week’s. But as New York commerciality has reached its apex, a crop of young radical designers have emerged displaying awareness of contemporary art and pop culture and shining light back on American fashion: Eckhaus-Latta, Moses Gauntlett Cheng, Vejas, and Harbison.

But Harbison still stands out as something of a renegade even amongst this crop of wildly exciting fashion design talent. Though Harbison comes from a fine art background, having studied fine arts and painting at North Carolina State, he does not shy away from things traditionally “chic,” inspired by the luxurious approach to sportswear his mother employed when he was a child. He has leaned towards the subversive since he started his brand three years ago, employing a gender-neutral approach to his garments far before the industry jumped on the trend. But even with that, it’s not hard to imagine Park Avenue women loving to wear his modernist, color-blocked, and astoundingly beautiful clothes, allowing him a customer far wider in demographics that some of his contemporaries could ever conceive of reaching. “I don’t think [subversiveness] has to be relegated to just casual wear or crude construction,” says Harbison. “I want to do it through the filter of elegance, expense, and aspiration.”

Harbison also has some serious fashion education. Having learned about textiles and fabrics in Central Asia, studied fashion as a post-grad at Parsons, and worked for Michael Kors, Billy Reid, and Luca Luca, he has a leg up on his contemporaries with flat-out knowledge over the construction of garments. How would you describe those garments? This writer would say, “subtly striking.” They aren’t unwearable pieces of clothing architecture or tattered to shreds in the name of art. Harbison creates a form-flattering silhouette and then applies blocks of vibrant color to make the statement. They are the types of clothes that you find yourself staring at without realizing it. “Color, texture, embellishment, contrast, valence, proportion,” says Harbison. “I just wanted to be true to that when I started Harbison.”

He also has the ability to tell stories without grandiose displays of conceptual creation. Everything that Harbison presents in his shows, he sells. Much like Dries Van Noten, or even Yves Saint Laurent (minus the couture), he adheres to the tenets of ready-to-wear. And yet, he still conveys strong and discernible ideas. Patti Smith is the brand’s muse, and Harbison has also told stories centered around Erykah Badu, Aaliyah, and Nica Rothschild. The strong and cultured women that breathe in his garments has attracted the attention of Beyoncé, who wore custom Harbison to Kanye’s Yeezy Season 1 presentation (and Solangé wore the same in Paris some weeks later) and brought massive attention to the brand. “What the muse does is allow me to work them into my stories,” says Harbison.

When I meet Harbison in his small, clothes-filled office near Manhattan’s City Hall, he is in great spirits despite a busy morning. Though his brand sat out the last NYFW, he is still moving forward. His next collection will be the first “gender-neutral” collection where the clothes are cut in ways to fit a man and a woman’s body. He laughs a lot, and has an ease in explaining his ideas that is absent in a lot of creatives. We spoke at length about his history and the direction of the brand.

LEHRER: Are you still religious now?

HARBISON: I have a spiritual practice. I go to church in Harlem. It feeds me culturally as well as spiritually. It’s nice to have this whisper of my early life an hour away. [I live] in Bushwick. Every Sunday, I get to be around black people from the South.

LEHRER: Does it ever rub you the wrong way that something you’ve been doing for a while, gender-neutral collections, is now a trend and being done by like, Burberry?

HARBISON: It completely bothers me. When I launched [the brand] in 2013 it was inconceivable for the buyer to understand a man in a womenswear lookbook. They couldn’t understand seeing one coat on her and the same coat on him. From a market point of view, this is a women’s collection. But the cuts are neutral. This is how my friends and I live. When I was at Michael Kors, I would wear women’s samples as a dude. I never felt like my masculinity was compromised. Of course, I’m queer, but I saw straight guys and girls doing the same thing. By and large, America is slow to this idea. You have Selfridges with their gender-neutral merchandising.

LEHRER: They had a gender-neutral section in their store. Like, Hood by Air and J.W. Anderson.

HARBISON: Fully. You have Gucci putting dudes in pussy bow blouses. You have Jayden Smith as the face of Louis Vuitton womenswear. I feel like a lot of that gets filtered through novelty, comedy, and trend. But for me, it’s just a way of dressing that makes sense. I want to do it from a slick point of view. It makes me a better designer and marketer.

LEHRER: A lot of brands will throw dudes in a women’s lookbook or a show for a statement. You’re thinking about it in terms of the products.

HARBISON: The pant cut, we fit on a guy and a girl. The tunic cut, we do it in a way that works well on him, but it gives her tailoring options if she wants to do something more waisted. The transformability of the clothes allows them to become whatever you want them to become. It’s not just a visual statement. The shit feels good. There are a lot of clothes that are “exclusively for women,” but even that’s not true. Like, dude, it’s your life. If he wants to wear a dress, I don’t care. I just want to make cool ass shit that makes people happy.

LEHRER: Do you feel like buyers are starting to have a bigger say in what the collection is?

HARBISON: Store buyers, often, now see themselves as the end-all-be-all. It removes a lot of the excitement from the shopping and dressing process. What if someone had done that to McQueen? What if someone had done that to Galliano?

LEHRER: I shudder to think of the buyer telling Alexander McQueen what to do.

HARBISON: In the beginning, McQueen and Galliano were making crude but interesting stuff. There were problems with construction, but there was an idea there, and it was supported by the industry. It wasn’t until they got money that you saw their actual genius. Their processes were supported.

LEHRER: Color is a big part of your collections. Your brand came out three years ago, and at the time, the big predominant thing was street goth, ninja goth. Were you put off by the excessive use of black?

HARBISON: No, not put off. But I did want to offer something different. I design through the filter of art and modernism. The beginning of my arts education was in fine arts and painting. I love fine arts first.

LEHRER: When did you decide to transition from art to fashion?

HARBISON: In undergrad, I ended up weaving seventeen yards of this beautiful fabric. For me, it was like speaking to my Native American heritage. It didn’t feel right to wrap it on a canvas. So I thought to make some garments. That moment in undergrad, my junior year, was when I decided to figure this shit out.

LEHRER: You went to central Asia to study textiles. What did you learn over there?

HARBISON: I studied in Turkmenistan in undergrad – indigenous fabric construction. When I graduated, an opportunity came up to go back to the region for a year. I hadn’t found a job, so I thought, why not? I wanted to understand more about myself. There was so much mystery around that area. It’s an area that no one has really claimed. It’s former Soviet territory, but the population is South Asian, and they look East Asian in language and food. It’s influenced by the Middle East. It was also my first time out of the country, and it was the best decision I made. Fell in love with the fabrics. Spent time with students in their villages, and saw how they lived so casually amongst beautiful things.

LEHRER: And then you started working so you went to Parsons for some post-grad work, and then went to work?

HARBISON: I cut my teeth at Michael Kors Collection.

LEHRER: Your designs are much more radical than Michael Kors. What did you learn from him?

HARBISON: I learned so much: quality, detail, fabric, merchandising, selling, and how to dress people. Michael knows his way around client connection in a really amazing way. There’s an approach to his fashion that is really respectful of the genre. Though I approach novelty and art, I wanted [my clothes] to be rooted in shapes that are classic. I don’t make a lot of conceptual pieces. I love sportswear, so being with Michael was the best place for me.

LEHRER: You said you started your own brand by accident. What was that accident?

HARBISON: I burnt out. I was at Billy Reid and walked away. I started traveling. I had an Eat Pray Love experience. It was awesome. I read Patti Smith’s Just Kids, and that changed my life. She and Robert [Mapplethorpe] were the muses for my first capsule. I came back to New York from St. Croix. I had an interview at some collection, and when I walked in I thought, “I’ll be damned if I can do that.” Fashion week was coming up, and I didn’t want to skip a season. So I just made my own samples and shot some thing myself. Those images fell in the hands of Mark Holgate at Vogue and Virginie Smith. They said, “Do you want this to be a thing? We’ll feature you.” It’s been a hella crazy ride since.

LEHRER: I want to ask you about Patti Smith. You said she was the brand’s muse. What is it about her that you find so inspiring? Aside from, well, everything.

HARBISON: Beside everything she’s ever done? Patti walks this modern line of femininity, which I think is amazing. In her relationship with Robert, she was the stronger entity. He was the more fragile of the two. The relationship was beautiful and modern in that way. I find Patti’s lack of self-consciousness aspirational. She and Robert were vehemently sure of what they wanted in New York. That reminded me to take the risk. I was also able to touch this late ‘60s world that I love. In my mind, I feel I would have really done well in that time period touching on the modernist artists that I love.

LEHRER: You’ve done collections based on Sade, Aaliyah, Erykah Badu. Do you always design with a specific woman in mind?

HARBISON: For example, last spring I imagined Erykah Badu singing in a Zen garden carrying a Bryce Marden painting. This story allowed me to imagine seemingly contradicting things and bring them together. That’s a challenge that I like. I want to offer things you’ve never seen before.

LEHRER: New York has gotten known of being the most commercial of the fashion weeks, but there is a whole crop of designers and brands coming on the scene who are making innovative things. Why do you think this is happening now? Has the commercialization hit a tipping point that is being rebelled against?

HARBISON: Completely. You see the evidence in the industry itself. The commerciality is no longer commercial.

LEHRER: The biggest brands are all struggling too.

HARBISON: Exactly. For younger designers, there’s no desire to make something you already see in the world. Design based on replication doesn’t feel responsible. Also, with a global market, we’re comparing ourselves to everything around the world, even things that aren’t “high fashion.” Everything becomes a reference point. Everything influences what we find fresh, new, artful, and relevant.

LEHRER: You said you don’t want to be Ralph Lauren overnight. Would you ever want to be that big?

HARBISON: Yeah. [Laughs.] I love designing things. I feel like I have a dialogue for cars, homes, architecture. I love aesthetics. I would love to have the opportunity to configure aesthetics in different areas. As far as how big Ralph is, that is something that I think I’m still grappling with. For me, what is most valuable is having a lot of product for people to opt into. I want a lot of product in the world.

LEHRER: You sat out this fashion week. People talk about the speed of the industry – Raf leaving Dior, etc. Is that something you struggle with or not?

HARBISON: Yeah. The speed of the industry has brought me to my knees before. I think it can compromise design integrity. For me, skipping out this show season, I needed it from the business standpoint. I needed to figure out how to approach these marketing events in a way that’s more thoughtful of the business revenue. How do I give all these eyes access to the collection? You can opt out of [the traditional fashion schedule]. You don’t have to make four collections a year. You can make one. You can do this thing however you want to do it. That’s why I have so much respect for Raf and him walking away [from Dior]. It no longer worked for him, and that’s wonderful.

LEHRER: He’s supposed to be this radical, punk designer. Dior was weighing on him for a number of years. It was like he said, “Fuck that.”

HARBISON: Exactly. To be happy. How modern is that?

LEHRER: Did you have designers or artists that you looked up to when you first got into this?

HARBISON: Yeah, Dries [Van Noten] and Azzedine [Alaia].

LEHRER: I was thinking about Dries when you were saying everything comes down to product. Dries has a way of telling a story only using pieces that he will sell on the racks. That’s definitely what I see with you.

HARBISON: Thank you. That’s the goal. Dries has created a world that’s wholly his. His client base is totally devoted. My favorite pieces to wear are all Dries. I want to make that the case for Harbison. “I’m always going to go back to Harbison because it makes me happy.” I want my customers to say that

Visit Charles Harbison's website to see current collections. Text, interview and photographs by Adam Lehrer. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Through The Peep Hole: An Interview With Vanessa Prager

February 25, 2016

Vanessa Prager comes from a very talented and creative family. Most people know her sister, Alex Prager, and her larger than life cinematic portraits of people and crowds in surrealistic situations. However, the younger Prager is making a name for herself with her figurative oil paintings that verge on abstract sculptures. Faces, in a swirling, kinetic puzzle of colors and gashes of paint, seem less abstract as you pull away from the canvas. Prager’s work is currently on view as part of her first solo exhibition in New York – or outside of of Los Angeles – the Hole Gallery. The opening night of the exhibition was hosted by actor and comedian Fred Armisen, who counts himself as a fan of Prager’s work. The show, entitled "Voyeur," is interesting in that some of the works can only be viewed through a peep hole. The concept came from the artist’s thoughts about privacy, or lack thereof, in a hyper-digital world. Nonetheless, it is an interesting concept for showing figurative art in a century that has mostly abandoned the canvas as a relic of yesterday’s artists. Last Sunday, we got a chance to visit Prager’s studio in Downtown Los Angeles. As you walk through the door, the smell of oil paint is overwhelming and intoxicating. In the following conversation, we talk about her influences as an artist, her process and how Fred Armisen fits into the picture.

OLIVER KUPPER: How did you know you wanted to become an artist? Was it partly inspired by your sister’s pursuits?

VANESSA PRAGER: Well, it was weird. I went to boarding school when I was a teenager, for high school. When I was there, I started drawing. Those were the first signs of it. Weirdly, at the same time, she was down here starting to do photography. But you know, coming back to LA after I graduated, that was when I decided I wanted to do something in the arts. There were a few parts of that. One, I realized you had to get a job in LA and have a career, which wasn’t really something I thought about before then. Also, I had learned enough about myself that I was not really conducive to taking orders, doing nine to five. At the same time, my sister started having art shows. I think I went to her first one when I was seventeen. A bunch of our friends around that time were artists and photographers.

KUPPER: There was an energy going on.

PRAGER: Yeah. It was a really real thing. It wasn’t like we were all in Paris smoking and talking about art. I saw that there was this thing that you could do. It was a job for them. I don’t remember making a conscious decision after one specific thing. Around that time, after school, you wonder, what kind of job am I going to get?

KUPPER: So were your parents artists? Were they creative?

PRAGER: They were creative in their spirit. They’re not professional artists. My mom has been getting more into it. She's starting this vegan chocolate company. I consider a lot of things art. They definitely have the artistic mindset. That was definitely instilled into us. Art was a valuable thing for us growing up, more than objects. We didn’t have a lot of money, but ideas were important. That was one of the better things they could have given to us. It was always encouraged. When I started drawing, my mom was like, “Hey, you could sell these.”

KUPPER: So it seemed like a reality?

PRAGER: Yeah, it seemed like a reality. Alex is five years older than me, so she was already doing stuff when I was seventeen. I’m pretty active; when I get an idea I do something about it. But how you go about doing something like showing art – I know a lot of people wonder and never find out. To me, it was just looking at a lot of other people doing it.

KUPPER: Are there any other painters that you’re inspired by?

PRAGER: It’s hard, because I’m a painter, to view art without a critical eye. I definitely enjoy art, but ever since I was seventeen, I always look at art like – how did they do that? What’s going on there? You’re dissecting the thing. It’s hard for me to just purely enjoy things. Of course, I do. Whenever I see Lucian Freud for example, I’m in awe. I love somebody who can paint well. I love paintings. I’m just drawn into them.

KUPPER: Figurative art is relatively rare these days. It’s more conceptual. People aren’t sitting in front of a canvas as much anymore.

PRAGER: No. For a few years prior to doing this series, I was like, what am I doing? It really was a breakdown. I’m doing a really old-school thing in modern times, but I don’t feel old-school. I feel super modern in my being. I had to think about that. I think that’s how I came about this series. People would pose the question, “Why painting in 2016?” Why paint? Why paint with oil? There are so many things against the medium that don’t work in modern times. But then I realized my real love for it. I really took it apart. There’s something about it that I just love. That’s when I broke into this whole new thing. And I don’t paint in a classical way. I use the figure, which people do time and time again. But I do it in a way in which I feel I’m using it now.

KUPPER: Do you have any rituals before you start working?

PRAGER: I like to clean up and make the space my own. I really liked moving to this studio because it’s containable. I had a really big studio in Glendale that I shared before. It was always kind of hard to get each nook mine. Here, I like to water my plants. I get really bad when I’m in show. Things die. At the end of the month, I re-gather. I like throwing things away and cleaning out. I really like not having crap around. I’m a big fan of the trashcan.

"Life isn’t perfect. Things shouldn’t be perfect. I don’t like perfection. What is perfection anyway? History is a part of life, a part of now. The layering was a change for me to put everything together and have it all still be a part of the thing."

KUPPER: No clutter.

PRAGER: Yeah, no clutter. But there are little nooks. If I’m okay with them, then it’s okay. If I get into certain weird head space, I’ll do certain things. I’ll go walking or hiking. If I obsess over one stroke, and the rest of the painting isn’t working, I have to destroy what I’m attached to. Sometimes, it’ll pin me to a spot. Sometimes I end up making something that I love. But most of the time, I have to roll with it all and destroy it.

KUPPER: So you’ll start over completely if you feel something isn’t going in the direction you want it to go in?

PRAGER: For sure. Or I’ll just change it in a really dramatic way. If a face is going a certain direction and it’s just not working, oftentimes, I’ll turn the canvas over and do it on another thing. I always say that it’s telling me at the same time that I’m telling it what it’s going to be. I think that’s important for this kind of work. I never painted abstract before, but it totally borders on that. I can’t do it alone. It has to be an organic, flowy thing. There has to be something in the pure substances that tell me what needs to be there.

KUPPER: Your work started off much more realistic, and it became more abstract. Was that evolution natural?

PRAGER: Like I said, right before I started doing this series, I sat back and was like, why am I painting? What is that I like about it? How will it fulfill the thing that I want to get out into this world? This world, the one that we live in now, not the 1600s or the 1950s. Will it be able to interact with people? Essentially, that’s the purpose - for it to interact with people. In thinking about all that, it changed. It wasn’t quite there for it before. The style I was painting in before didn't make sense for all of those questions.

KUPPER: Your first solo shows have been happening recently. It looks like you’re just getting ready to explore that.

PRAGER: Totally. Had I gone to college, I probably wouldn’t have shown until last year. I started doing pop ups, little things here and there, in stores for one night only. While I was doing that, everyone got to see it. Good, bad, ugly, whatever - it just was. Had I been in school during that time, people wouldn’t have seen the work.

KUPPER: Or only students would have seen it.

PRAGER: Yeah, and they would have tore it to shreds, and I would have cried. [Laughs.] I equate it to that because that’s what makes sense to me. This is the work that I’m really proud of. There is a difference to me. I was still learning then. It’s a matter of figuring out how to release your feeling. Until you do that, you’re always reaching for that. I think I’ll always be exploring new ways to do stuff. That’s the job of an artist.

KUPPER: Part of that process seems like a layering. That seems to be a distinct style of yours. Is that accidental or is that part of it?

PRAGER: It’s part of it. It’s a big part of it. Life isn’t perfect. Things shouldn’t be perfect. I don’t like perfection. What is perfection anyway? History is a part of life, a part of now. The layering was a chance for me to put everything together and have it all still be a part of the thing. That’s how I see layering. I don’t use it in the classical oil-painting, glazing sense, which I’m sure some painters think is really annoying. I use it more in a sculptural sense. Topography and maps, even looking at mountains and rocks and stuff, is really inspiring to me. I use that a lot in the layering process. I enjoy painting with the skylight because it has those shadows. You see it in different lights, and everything changes.

KUPPER: Do you see yourself getting into sculpture?

PRAGER: I may. I really like sculpture. It’s just a matter of how. It’s learning another medium or hiring out. The way I envision it is kind of big. I think this is a good way of getting into that. I do like sculpture. I like the idea of it coming into three dimensions.

KUPPER: I want to talk about fans of your work. Fred Armisen is a big fan of your work.

PRAGER: He’s a pal. He’s a big fan of painting and art in general. He’s super cool and supportive. When we met, we just hit it off and chatted about art. He came over to my studio. Now, he’s hosting my show. It’s great because I think he’s so cool, and I love crossing over to new areas of art. I’m from LA, so the way that I envision having an art show isn’t necessarily classic. We have the movie industry here. Of course, I think it should be integrated. The art world shouldn’t be a separate, special area. I love anything that crosses over and opens it up to other groups of people.

KUPPER: The Hole is a great place for that. They’re really experimental in how they show their shows. And Kathy [Grayson] is a great curator.

PRAGER: She’s amazing. It was a really good fit. I’ve known her for years. She loves painting - she is a painter - but she tends to show the super conceptual work. She shows the picture of a painting, work that’s based on the pure idea. She shows less of the classic oil paintings. It was going to be interesting to see how that crossed over. But she loves oil painting. I thought it was a really good match, in the end. She brought a lot of conceptual stuff to it. The idea for “Voyeur” - we totally vibed on that.

KUPPER: Talk about that. That’s a really interesting way to present the work. A lot of the work, you can only view through a peep hole, right?

PRAGER: One of them you literally cannot get to. It’s an eight-foot painting behind a wall. You can only see it through the peep hole. Some of them you look through peep holes. Walls are set up. It’s in a maze-like fashion. In the end, you get to a painting. It has a definite flow. The idea of “Voyeur” was seeing things that you shouldn’t see. It’s messing with the fact that we have so much information these days. People can find out everything about other people before they even meet them.

KUPPER: What’s next after this series?

PRAGER: I don’t know. The show is still up. I always take a moment to relax and regroup after an opening. That was my first time showing in New York, so I had no idea what was going to happen. I just put everything into it for months. I’m going to have an empty studio. It will be a good place to start. I’ll just start making stuff. I’ll see where the next vibe takes me.

Vanessa Prager's exhibition Voyeur is on view until February 28, 2016 at The Hole NYC, 312 Bowery, New York. Text and photographs by Oliver Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Art In the Age of Afrogallonism: An Interview with Ghanaian Artist Serge Attukwei Clottey

October 26, 2015

There are not a lot of artists willing to get dragged by a noose through the streets of Accra, the capital of Ghana, in the name of social justice. Gallon by gallon, Ghanaian artist Serge Attukwei Clottey is returning your used plastic refuse in the form of beautiful masks and mask-like sculptures that take on haunting human expressions. In the artist’s native Ghana, yellow canisters are ubiquitous and have become a seamless part of the country’s landscape. Where these containers come from has become a source of plight for the people of Ghana and central to Clottey’s artistic practice. Originating in Europe, the containers once held cooking oil, but after a water shortage, the containers were repurposed to hold water and gasoline. Over time, though, the gallon jugs have become so plentiful that they have started to pollute the beaches and even landfills. Clottey has coined the term “Afrogallonism” to describe this exercise and it has, over the years, become his rallying cry. Indeed, there is something very punk in what the artist is trying to achieve. Many of his sculptures come from works created by Clottey for his performance collective GoLokal, which has held numerous public presentations that have to do with displacement, migration, colonialism and Africa’s place in the treacherous nexus of a vastly globalized world. A land rich with resources, but flooded with greed. Footage of Clottey being dragged through the streets by a noose while performers throw money at him was replayed multiple times a day for a week straight on the local news. Reverberations of Clottey’s message is slowly making its way westward to the States. Officially opening today, Mesler/Feuer gallery in New York presents an exhibition entitled “The Displaced” where you can experience many of Clottey’s incredible assemblages, wood installations and plastic sculptures in person. Autre caught up with Clottey during the installation of his current exhibition to discuss his own art history, his politically and socially charged performances, and his ideas of the “New Africa.”

Adriana Pauley: How did your art career start? Did you always know you wanted to become an artist?

Serge Attukwei Clottey: My dad is an artist. I drew and painted at an early age. But I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pursue art as a career. I was more interested in electronics. Growing up in Africa as a child, we got all of these electronics imported from America. I was very interested in how they functioned and in who is behind that creative process. But because my dad is an artist, he thought that I should pursue art. He was going to give me the platform to be successful in that field. So, I got chance to study art in Ghana for four years. Then, I studied in Brazil.

AP: How did you decide you wanted to study in Brazil? Was it a similar culture? Did that influence your art?

SAC: After going through four years in art school, I wanted a way to further my education. I had a scholarship to study in Brazil for three months. I wanted to experience a different place, and how art is shaped differently in that place. Brazil actually changed my entire relationship with art. I became more experimental with materials. In art school, I learned how to paint traditionally. In Brazil, I got a sense of contemporary art. When I came back to Ghana, my approach was totally changed.

AP: Does your interest in electronics come up at some points in your work?

SAC: Yes. Electronics have been a part of my practice from childhood. Now, I combine art and electronics. I work more with performance and installation. I work more with electronic interests. It has given me a new platform to visualize those ideas with materials. It has given me a lot of exposure. It’s very new—combining art and electronics, in Ghana especially.

AP: Has art always been a big part of your life?

SAC: Growing up with my dad, I studied how to paint even before I went to art school. I don’t feel anything special about art, because I grew up in that space. It was a very creative upbringing.

AP: You recently did a performance piece, and you have a performance collective now. What has been the response from the public?

SAC: From the beginning, people were unsure about it. The guys who are in it are not artists actually; they are from different careers. There are a lot of creative people in the community where I was born, but they don’t have the platform to explore that. As an artist, I have that platform. I find a way to bring them together to address issues in our community. Since then, it has been very challenging. The topics we work on are very political. We have very religious subjects. We explore gender identity. Over time, people have become more understanding. We have a lot of presence in the media, in publications. We are trying to address issues such as how the politicians manipulate youth during elections. And how after, they have nothing to offer. We were very critical about that, and it was on TV the whole week before elections. It gave us a lot of publicity. It tells me that it’s possible to create that sort of a platform. I hope we can establish a company which serves as a profit for the group, and for the locals as well.

AP: Would you say, generally, that you would like to give something back to society? To educate them about certain issues?

SAC: I grew up in the community. Ghana has been my inspiration. It makes sense to extend my exposure to the community. The community has been my main collective in exploring my artistic ideas.

AP: In one of the performances you did, you traced the journeys of your family. Your ancestors used to go to the north of Ghana, and come back to the south with different Buddhist techniques. Does that spiritual aspect play into your work?

SAC: It’s played a major role in my work. I wanted to narrate my family’s journey, because we also have a migration background that no one knows about. I’m using the narrative to make a new construction relating to my present work. The idea of continents, of transporting something from one continent to another, is very interesting to me. My family would transport from one town to another, but there is no proper documentation of that history. In my artistic practice, I want to reconstruct that history for my generation. I’m interested in combining my family history in relationship to my new work.

I’m interested in the sea and how it navigates the world together. I’m also interested in finding ways to trade back to the West. All of my materials are imported from Europe or America. The trade relationship changes the value of materials. Africa has come to realize how trade has come to benefit the West. As an artist, I want to find a strategic way to trade back to the West with materials that now benefit Africa.

"Our development needs to be seen. It needs to be shown to the world. We have to acknowledge our past, but we need to develop our present, our future. I’m interested in creating a link between Africa and the people who have been displaced from Africa."

AP: Do you see any parallels between your family’s journeys and your own journeys now?

SAC: I’ve traveled a bit throughout the continent, and I’ve seen how African art is being pursued in different ways. It’s not about people struggling in Africa. I’ve shown my work in Ghana as well as all over the world. There’s a possibility for change that African art is exploring. My family background has been a guide in my artistic journey. I see how powerful my ancestors were trading on the coast. That is the spiritual aspect that has been guiding me on my journey.

AP: You use a lot of plastic, which is very important in the United States. It is important in Africa, too, but for other reasons. Do you address that issue?

SAC: I try to address where my materials come from, and how that changes the value of those materials. There is a big difference between a plastic that is made to be presentable and a plastic that is being dumped somewhere.

AP: How do you gather that material?

SAC: We collect them on the coastal beaches, as well as at dump sites. In Ghana, because of the volume, there is no space to consume them. They find ways to dump them. We don’t have proper recycling structures. You end up seeing them on the streets and in the ocean. For me, the material plays a very significant role in my work. I take care in picking out and repurposing the plastic that has been discarded.

AP: What about colors? I know you use a lot of yellow. Do colors have a certain meaning in your work?

SAC: The dominant color is yellow because yellow is used for transporting oil. Looking at yellow in Ghana, it’s in our flag to symbolize wealth. But I want to change that. It shouldn’t be about the “New Africa.” What can we generate from this plastic? It has become part of our life. We need that to survive. Instead of getting it out, we can use them. We can’t just store them; need to take care of the environment. Once I put them together, I can build houses. We need to innovate new ways of dealing with this.

AP: Can you explain your concept of “Afrogallonism?”

SAC: Afrogallonism is a word I made up after working with this plastic for fifteen years. Over time, it has become my second skin. Every time I see a gallon, I get inspired. I realized that the top of it looks like a mask. Afrogallonism is the new Africa, the future of Africa. We have traditional masks, but this is the mask of our time. This is a relevant mask that brings up issues of water and environment. It’s a movement that I started. I want to find ways to inspire people to work with plastic. Afrogallonism is a word that came up after realizing how much time I have spent working with this material.

AP: What would you like your American audience to take away from your exhibition?

SAC: The displays are about migration and how people have been displaced all over the world. Coming from Africa, I’m interested in bringing that kind of connection—the relationship of humans and materials. I’m interested in how migration has displaced everyone. I want the audience to see that this is a New Africa. This is Africa in the 21st century. This is what we are going through. Our development needs to be seen. It needs to be shown to the world. We have to acknowledge our past, but we need to develop our present, our future. I’m interested in creating a link between Africa and the people who have been displaced from Africa. As this material comes to America, I hope to create that link.

AP: Do you have any upcoming shows or performances planned?

SAC: Right after this exhibition, I have a performance in Ghana, just before the next election. I’m very critical. When it comes to politics, people have loud voices, but they are not heard. As an artist, together with my collective, we perform in public space. We hit the matter hard. We want to use our exposure to address that relevant issue.

Serge Attukwei Clottey's "Displaced" is on view now through November 22 at Mesler/Feuer Gallery, 319 Grand Street, 2nd Floor New York, NY. Follow Afrogallonism here. intro text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Interview and photographs by Adriana Pauly. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Noah's Arc: An Interview With Supreme's Former Creative Director Brendon Babenzien On A New Fashion Frontier

October 19, 2015

As I first walk into the flagship store for Brendon Babenzien’s Noah brand in the NoLiTa neighborhood of Manhattan, Babenzien is a little on edge. The store, beautiful in its design as it is, still smells of paint and there appears to be a credit card issue (that issue is now completely fixed). So Babenzien politely requests that we take a 15-minute recess and I poke around the store.

Staying true to the brand’s slight adherence to its beach community theme, the store stands out in the neighborhood full of high fashion boutiques with its white brick exterior and nautical logo on the glass door. Inside is something like a portal to Babenzien’s head. There is an old issue of High Times with John Lydon on the cover, a stack of records, and numerous trinkets and gadgets that would serve a variety of activity-based functions.

And then of course there are the products. Babenzien has cultivated an aesthetic with Noah; equally informed by beach community prep and skateboarding grunge; but these products have a malleability that could serve a variety of personal styles. They are also high quality and priced exactly in accordance with their qualities. A t-shirt is $48, a sheepskin jacket is $2,000. The whole point of Noah is that the customer is buying a product and not into a brand. Thus, you pay for what you get when you need it.

News launched that Babenzien would be leaving Supreme in February, and Noah was announced shortly thereafter. He is quick to say that he wasn’t unhappy at Supreme, but his daughter had just been born and that instilled in him a drive to start vocalizing his ideas about garment sustainability and smart shopping. Babenzien’s message isn’t all that different than that of say Vivienne Westwood: buy less, buy high quality, buy beautiful.

Babenzien is immediately disarming once conversation gets rolling. He has a mystical surfer guy vibe with a soft cadence to his voice that allows him to deliver philosophies without coming off as too heavy. He and I sat down at the Noah flagship to discuss the brand, sustainability, activity, and how style is everything and fashion is nothing.

Adam Lehrer: I’m really into the whole Noah concept, I grew up on Cape Cod.

Brendon Babenzien: Oh you did, nice!

AL: When I first read an interview about you, you were talking about growing up in a beach community and how that informs the brand.

BB: Did you see the reversal sweatshirt? That literally is from this memory that I had from the clammers working when I was a kid. They’d be out there in the middle of the winter and would be wearing these two-ply sweatshirts. They weren’t even wearing jackets really and they would be digging all winter. My brother would dig for clams just for easy beer money. And my version of that, or what I grew into, was surfing. You share this common experience [living in a beach community]: surfers, fisherman, and people that are just generally beachgoers.

AL: It’s a lifestyle.

BB: You all share this common physical experience: the look of the water, the smell of the water, the beach, the sounds that go with it. I’ve always loved how a surfer and a sailor doing different activities on the same body of water - they share food locations.

AL: There’s like six restaurants, four bars.

BB: I’ve always really loved that overlap. That’s an underlying constant in the brand, but it’s not a nautical brand. It’s one part of the culture. A one-dimensional brand recognizes how you’re going to work. Apple is Apple: it’s clean design. But I think with clothing, that’s influenced by culture, it can be limiting. I’m into a lot of things why can’t I express them all under one roof? If it’s from one voice, it comes off natural. Because we’re small, and the brand is singular, I think it works.

AL: Is that something you were maybe thinking about at the latter days of Supreme, that you wanted to express all the things you love as opposed to a few specific things: art music, skateboarding…

BB: Supreme already does that better than anyone. They throw all these cultures into one place and have it make sense. It wasn’t so much that they’re not doing it so I want to do it. This label is more about me growing up and my personal experiences. There are things that I wanted to say about how I see the world. The only way to do that is to put your own brand out into the culture, and to use your own words. I was only one of many people that went into making Supreme what it is, granted I was an important part of it. But it wasn’t just my voice. It was just time for [Noah], plain and simple.

AL: I’m really interested in how you talk about how the effort put into being fashionable can overrule having style. Does Noah have a specific customer or are you trying to make products that allow people to be who they are?

BB: It’s a really tricky thing. You make all this stuff in a really particular way but then you talk about people being individuals but then you are asking them to step into your box.

AL: (Laughs) Right.

BB: So for lack of a better word, it’s a fucked up situation! That’s one of the reasons that I talk about activities and what they do and what they think because that’s really the thing that gives rise to their personal styles. We’re not asking people to come in and be a “Noah person,” we’re asking them to be themselves and see if any of these products fit their lives. If you want to run in these shorts or you decide this is the year that you’re going to buy a sheepskin jacket, and which one is it? Maybe it’s ours. Maybe it’s the Tom Ford one, I don’t know. But we really like the piece and we hope the customers can do their own things with it. So we aren’t really asking people to join this culture, it’s more how do we intersect with people.

AL: A lot of designers seem to say that they don’t buy into trends, but you’re really a trend averse designer, is that conscious or are you just trying to filter things into the world?

BB: I definitely get nervous with the designer term because I really don’t know if I am. I’m a glorified stylist: I don’t have any design training, and I couldn’t cut a pattern if I tried. I’m something else, but I don’t know what that is yet. The trend-averse thing, it’s not a thought. From the time I was 13 working at a surf shop, I’ve trusted my instincts. Sometimes that leaves you ahead of the curve. We try not to analyze it so much here. I’m not even sure we are trend averse. They are just clothes. But I feel like we sit really closely with the world and I’ve often thought that people that make things, whether it be fashion or television shows, are so closely related in their thinking. I’d love to think that we are ahead of something, but I really don’t think we are.

AL: One thing that I found interesting was that the spectrum of price points is vast, but all the products are priced exactly as they should be. A t-shirt is $45 or a jacket can go up to 2 grand. Is it important to you that the product always matches its price point?

BB: Yes. One of the things at the core of this, from the business side and maybe culturally, we produce garments that make sense and we don’t over-produce. Sometimes the price is really high because you are making a small quantity of a beautiful thing in a very expensive fabric. That is design to me. But a t-shirt shouldn’t be $200, I wouldn’t want to wear a fancy t-shirt. When you have a store, there’s an advantage to things not being ridiculously priced, because you cut out the wholesale component.

[Brendon walks over to the Noah store’s racks of clothing and motions toward a shirt] We have a cashmere shirt, and it’s expensive it’s $800.

AL: I felt it though, it’s nice.

BB: Oh, it’s incredible. If I was in the wholesale department, or I was in another brand that was in a position to buy that fabric, it would be $3,000. That’s a real thing.

AL: And I also think that brands like modern day Saint Laurent selling cut off denim skirts for 1200 dollars just to maintain brand integrity is sick.

BB: I have a hard time critiquing Saint Laurent because of all the “luxury brands” I actually think they are doing a pretty phenomenal job. The clothes are pretty normal.

AL: And that’s interesting because it does go into Yves’s philosophy of normal clothes made in the most luxurious of fabrics.

BB: There’s some stuff where you really see the rock n’ roll influence and maybe there are some people that couldn’t get it, but then they’ll have a coat that by most standards is pretty preppy.

AL: I think it’s more the styling that makes it look subversive.

BB: Yeah it’s incredible. My criticisms of the fashion world mostly have to with it pushing products on the public. Products that people might not be interested in after a year. That has to do with more of my personal consumption. If you buy my jacket you can wear it for 30 years, cool. If you buy something wear it once and throw it in to the back of your closet, we have an issue.

"We live in a fucked up world where there is no perfect answer. So what do I do? I make clothes, I understand brand culture, and I have things that I want people to see. So I open up the doors and communicate every aspect of the process. Focus on how style is style and you need not buy 100 things to look cool."

AL: What’s interesting though is that the people who aren’t smart about shopping buy so much shit, but people like me who do care about a quality product are going to trust you more as the person behind a brand, and they will want to buy Noah.

BB: You would hope. Styling is a huge component. There are things in this room that on one person might look really preppy but on another might look more mod or English punk or whatever. It depends. If I get a 50-year old guy from Naples and he buys this [double breasted jacket] he’s going to look Euro. But someone else could wear it and look like Shane MacGowan. That’s there the style component comes in.

AL: With Supreme, the only thing in front of the brand is the red box logo, has it been weird transitioning to someone who is in front of the brand, doing interviews, in some sense being the face.

BB: Yes (laughs). I’m not a huge fan, but I’m getting more comfortable with it. As a father I feel a responsibility to start communicating these ideas. I’m not good if I’m not taking the little amount of connection I have to people. If I’m not doing that, I’m kind of being irresponsible. If I can maybe open someone’s mind to buying less or starting their own business, then I need to do it. But I don’t necessarily enjoy it.

AL: I just remember when you were at Supreme one video of you came out and everyone was like, “Brendon Babenzien speaks,” it was a big deal, just to hear you speak at all. Now there’s tons of press. It has to be different.

BB: It’s a lot. I’m not stoked. Did you see how stressed I was this morning? It was pretty much because of this. I like talking to you, I like talking to people. All the writers that have come in are informed and cool and it’s a pleasure to have these conversations. But I don’t want to be fucking famous.

AL: And fame can be a by-product.

BB: Here I am trying to talk about consumption issues and buying less and I’m selling products. We live in a fucked up world where there is no perfect answer. So what do I do? I make clothes, I understand brand culture, and I have things that I want people to see. So I open up the doors and communicate every aspect of the process. Focus on how style is style and you need not buy 100 things to look cool. I would argue that people with less money and access that know how to dress are far superior creatively to people that can buy anything they want. It’s easy to buy a Celiné piece and look fresh, Celiné is incredible!

AL: It’s harder to go dig up an old Yohji Yammamoto jacket at a thrift store.

BB: Forget that even. Maybe you can’t even afford that, and you have to co-opt something. That’s why I think skateboard culture and hip-hop culture were so impressive in the early years. These kids had nothing, but they would go buy stuff at Army Navy stores and workwear and make it look fucking cool.

AL: And it’s been influencing everything ever since.

BB: That’s style. To not have to go out and buy the latest and the greatest thing.

AL: You’ve said Supreme was more about the artists, musicians, skaters, surfers, writers, and athletes, are these still your people with Noah?

BB: They’re not even separate. You can’t separate music and fashion and skateboarding and style. Think about skateboarding: the style isn’t just the fashion, it’s the doing. You watch the old Dogtown doc, they say you have to have style. How your arm sits, you land. The clothes are an extension of that. You can say the same thing about a painter or a writer, the physical action of what they do is natural. It’s a style. Because if you skip that process of skating, running, or painting, and go straight to just trying to look a certain way, there’s nothing there. There’s no substance. Shopping shouldn’t be a fucking hobby.

AL: With Supreme something everybody liked were the campaigns with people like Lou Reed, do you still want to use the brand to highlight people that you admire?

BB: Without a doubt. I don’t know that I’m in the position to do that yet, there are costs involved. We’ve already started in some way, these bandanas are from some Japanese kid who cuts up bandanas. We’ll do that, when we can.

AL: To finish up, just sitting here I see people coming in and you seem so interested in people. And stories, and you have ideas and an overall message, do you see yourself in some sense being a storyteller?

BB: I think I like people, I joke a lot that I don’t like people but I just don’t like bad people. I definitely like a good story. I don’t know if I’m the storyteller or if I like other peoples’ stories and want others to know those stories. Maybe I’m the person who spreads the story. Because you realize that there are so many people that do amazing things and don’t get noticed, maybe they don’t have connections, or can’t talk to the press, or don’t understand social media. They never get their due. It’s fucking crazy. Or these days if you aren’t into alternative music or lifestyle, you’re nothing. Why? I met these guys at a wash house the other day. They were these big MMA guys from Maine, like brawlers. And they were there getting some of their clothes washed. They have a big factory in the woods in Maine, and they make MMA fighting gear. And they were super cool, smart, fun to talk to, interested in New York. We talked for like an hour, because they were really interested in fabrics. But if you saw these huge guys walking in and they said, “Yeah I love textiles,” you wouldn’t know how that happened. I love that shit.

The Noah flagship store is now open at 195 Mulberry Street in New York. The online store will be live on October 22, 2015. Text and interview by Adam Lehrer. Images by Thomas Iannaccone. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

CATEGORIES: ART / CULTURE / MUSIC / FILM PROSE / DESIGN / FASHION

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THE GREAT SPIRIT IS IN ALL THINGS. Autre is thrilled to present its S/S24 LEVITY ISSUE (preord3r 🔗 in biO), a 300+ page investigation into our zeitgeist of antigravity. Featuring our fifth cover, an original artwork by Jeffrey Gibson, the first Indigenous artist to be chosen for the United States Pavilion with a solo album exhibition at the 2024 Venice Biennale. Since the 1990s, Jeffrey Gibson has been weaving his own Native traditions and queer history with pop cultural references—particularly song titles, into kaleidoscopic textile works, paintings, videos, and performances. A member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, he is the first Indigenous artist to represent the United States with a solo presentation at the Venice Biennale. His exhibition at the US Pavilion, the space in which to place me, takes its title from Oglala Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier’s poem e Sápa. In the following interview, Nellie Scott, the director of the Corita Art Center in Los Angeles, delves into Gibson’s history-mining practice. Preord3r the issue now by clicking the 🔗 in biO. All preord3rs come with a full digital preview delivered to your inbox immediately after checkout while you wait for the print edition to arrive (third week of April). #jeffreygibson #nativeamerican #indigenous #venicebiennale #venicebiennale2024

MICHELANGELO PISTOLETTO BY ALESSANDRO SARTORI. Autre is thrilled to present its S/S24 LEVITY ISSUE (preord3r 🔗 in biO), a 300+ page investigation into our zeitgeist of antigravity. Featuring our fourth cover, an in-depth profile on Arte Povera legend Michelangelo Pistoletto by Zegna artistic director @alessandrosartoriofficial with an interview by @danthawley . The legendary Italian artist discusses his life’s work from his foundation, Cittadellarte, in Biella—including the unique philosophical machinations behind his mirror paintings and the Third Paradise, a conceptual anchor for Pistoletto’s artworks and the marriage between nature and artifice, symbolized by an infinity logo. Preord3r the issue now by clicking the 🔗 in biO. All preord3rs come with a full digital preview delivered to your inbox immediately after checkout while you wait for the print edition to arrive (third week of April). Photography @alessandrosartoriofficial interview by @danthawley special thanks @luhringaugustine / @cittadellarte #michelangelopistoletto #pistoletto #italy #biella #zegna #alessandrosartori #danthawley

BOTTEGA VENETA… A LOVE STORY. Autre is thrilled to present its S/S24 LEVITY ISSUE Issue (preord3r 🔗in biO), a 300+ page investigation into our zeitgeist of antigravity. Featuring our third cover, a special collaboration with Bottega Veneta by @matthieu_blazy photography by @parker__woods Across 30 pages we cast our favorite friends, actors, models and artists in an expansive editorial featuring Bottega Veneta’s SS24 collection. In line with the issue’s theme, they interpret the new weightless energy of the iconic Italian fashion house. See Akon Adichol (cover), Matthew Modine, Kandis Williams, Karon Davis, Julie Mehretu, Clairo, and more. Preord3r the issue now by clicking the 🔗 in biO. All preord3rs come with a full digital preview delivered to your inbox immediately after checkout while you wait for the print edition to arrive (third week of April). Photography @parker__woods Styled by @julieragolia Casting @ben_grimes_casting Makeup @alliesmithmakeup Set design @ericmestman Assistant @wearisamy #bottegaveneta #matthieublazy #fashion

ROSE WYLIE BY JUERGEN TELLER. ⚡️Autre is thrilled to present its S/S24 LEVITY ISSUE (preord3r 🔗 in bi0), a 300+ page investigation into our zeitgeist of antigravity. Featuring almost ninety-year-old British painter Rose Wylie photographed by Juergen Teller. A nearly 40-page document of classic portraits. Interview by novelist and critic @jennifer_higgie. Preord3r the issue now by clicking the 🔗 in bi0. All preord3rs come with a full digital preview delivered to your inbox immediately after checkout while you wait for the print edition to arrive (third week of April). Photography Juergen Teller Creative Partner @doviledrizyte Special thanks @davidzwirner Postproduction: Lucas Rios Palazesi at Quickfix #rosewylie #juergenteller #magazine #issue #ss24

WHO IS CHARLI XCX? Autre is thrilled to present its S/S24 LEVITY ISSUE Issue (preord3r 🔗 in bi0), a 300+ page investigation into our zeitgeist of antigravity. Featuring genre defying pop phenom @charli_xcx on the occasion of her upcoming album BRAT. In an in-depth, career spanning interview @hansulrichobrist goes back to Charli’s early days of releasing demos on Myspace, dropping out of art school, the power of collaboration, unfinished projects, creating the famous driving song for the Barbie movie, her advice for young artists, and her new album. But who is Charli XCX? We also asked her friends and collaborators, from @jtfirstman to @glennmartens to @carolineplz and more, to offer clues through quotes, tweets, and behind the scenes photos. Preord3r the issue now by clicking the 🔗 in bi0. All preord3rs come with a full digital preview delivered to your inbox immediately after checkout while you wait for the print edition to arrive (third week of April). Photography @daveyadesida Styling @julieragolia Hair @MattBenns Makeup @rommynajor Stylist assistant Amy Bialek (@wearisamy) Design @martinmajor #charlixcx #autremagazine #levity #eclipse #light

Gaetano Pesce (1939–2024) “The time of copies is behind us. We are in a time of originals.” Very sad to hear the news of Pesce’s passing, a legendary architect and designer with a meteoric influence on design, both in practice and theory. He was featured in our Utopia issue (SS23) alongside other giants of the Italian Radical Design movement. His work was deeply political and revolutionary—even a simple chair was an act of resistance. Portraits by @noua_unu #gaetanopesce #design #architecture

April Fools! What we thought were a new pair of AirPods is actually an invite to @mschf ‘s upcoming exhibition at @perrotin LA. The logo with two bites out the apple should have given it away, even the receipt was convincing, and the AirPods are actually edible. @mschf Art 2 opens April 6th #mschf #bigredboots #airpods #edible #aprilfools

Scenes from SPLAT by Bobbi Salvör Menuez @hi_its_bobbi a one night only sensory play party in NYC. No cameras allowed - only a live feed titled macrophilic installation resembling a giant mouth titled I’m Big, You’re Small. See more on www.autre.love #bobbimenuez #play #party #installation #art

&hearts;️ to Mohammed Ahmed and @casamagazinesnyc happy retirement ! Thanks for the tremendous support over the years &hearts;️ seen here pictured with our first John Waters cover in 2019

#mohammedahmed #casamagazines

♥️ to Mohammed Ahmed and @casamagazinesnyc happy retirement ! Thanks for the tremendous support over the years ♥️ seen here pictured with our first John Waters cover in 2019 #mohammedahmed #casamagazines

Cola Boyy (1989–2024) "…my music is a tool of class struggle. Promoting the work that’s being done and making music for people to sing that not only reflects their lives but that encourages rebellion." Cola Boyy in conversation with @johncarrollkirby for AUTRE SS21. Deeply saddened to learn of the Oxnard-based musician’s death at 34. Photo by @teardrop_estates #colaboyy #oxnard

interview by Vivian Crockettphotography by Hadi Mouradcreative direction by Alec Charlipstyling by Jamie Ortegamakeup by Tayler Treadwellhair by Rachel Polycarpeflorals by Christina Allenproduction: BORN Artists

interview by Jesus Nebreda Galindezcreative direction by Alec Charlipphotography by Andrés Jañastyling by Abby Benciemakeup by Marco Castro hair by Luisa Popovićproduction by BORN Artists

text by Stella Peacock-Berardini

text by Stella Peacock-Berardini

portrait and interview by Abbey Meaker

text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

"Life isn’t perfect. Things shouldn’t be perfect. I don’t like perfection. What is perfection anyway? History is a part of life, a part of now. The layering was a change for me to put everything together and have it all still be a part of the thing."

"Our development needs to be seen. It needs to be shown to the world. We have to acknowledge our past, but we need to develop our present, our future. I’m interested in creating a link between Africa and the people who have been displaced from Africa."

interview by Vivian Crockett
photography by Hadi Mourad
creative direction by Alec Charlip
styling by Jamie Ortega
makeup by Tayler Treadwell
hair by Rachel Polycarpe
florals by Christina Allen
production: BORN Artists

interview by Jesus Nebreda Galindez
creative direction by Alec Charlip
photography by Andrés Jaña
styling by Abby Bencie
makeup by Marco Castro
hair by Luisa Popović
production by BORN Artists