Suburban Atmospherics: An Interview Of Olivia Erlanger

 
 

interview by Erik Morse

Multimedia artist and filmmaker Olivia Erlanger is a suburbanist in multiple senses of the word: her oeuvre, a combination of sculpture, scale miniatures and shadow boxes, furnishings, short films, performance, as well as vernacular and technical histories of the home, takes its inspiration from American suburban geographies and the domestic interior that form its primary mise en scène. But Erlanger’s work also explores the world of margins, thresholds, and coulisse implicit in the etymology of the sub-urb—a space that, by definition, is beneath or outside of a physical and discursive center. Hers is a work that often eschews the stabilizing components of characterization, materiality, and setting for what, absent a sturdier, more easily translatable, descriptor, might be called a suburban atmospheric.

But what precisely is a suburban atmospheric? Beyond its seeming interest in combining the milieu of the suburb with a study of speculative environments, the term remains labile and fugitive, as atmosphere tends to be. The topic of suburbanism is itself obscured in a certain kind of epistemic veil, enforced by an enduring urban-centric ambivalence toward its historical or cultural import that says indignantly, “I’d prefer not to.” The suburb has long been the subaltern to its urban hegemon. Equally, the notion of an atmosphere is resistant to any center. It is neither material/spatial nor strictly rhetorical or conceptual, but more like an environmental “mood” accompanying these objects or categories. Peter Sloterdijk, the great thinker of atmosphere, describes it as an affective envelope that shelters self, other and world in various existential interiors. Its ur-space is the home, whether hut or tract house, though the feeling of at-homeness is as much an architecture of familiarity as it is materiality. Atmosphere, however, will always retain some essential mystery or exoticism. Appearing in disguise under designations like “the sensorium,” “the spectral,” “interiority,” “microclimate,” and “the nobject,” it haunts the world of people and objects from its dark purlieus, much like the suburb haunts the city and thrives in the nooks and verges.

Erlanger’s works hover in this same elusive topology with its outré images of possessed housewares, adolescent bedrooms in miniature, deteriorating snow globes, manic realty agents, piscine nymphets, and trompe l’œil terraria. Evoking the sort of Gothic unheimlich that emanates from a landscape of empty cul-de-sacs, dead shopping malls, and vacant ranch ramblers, they play in the interstices of the quotidian and the storybook. The result is a spiritist practice that is simultaneously an “anthropology of the near,” in the words of Marc Augé, and a “space of elsewhere,” in those of Gaston Bachelard. And, perhaps, most of all, Erlanger’s works echo Longfellow’s observation in “Haunted Houses” (1858) that “All houses…/Are haunted houses/…The spirit-world around this world of sense/Floats like an atmosphere…”

On the occasion of Erlanger’s new exhibit, Spinoff, at Luhring Augustine Tribeca, the artist spoke on a variety of topics, including the mysteries of the suburb, the pleasures of the miniature, Last Year at Marienbad and the haunted house genre, Nabokov and the “final girl.”  

ERIK MORSE: I wanted to make the centerpiece of our conversation this concept of a suburban atmospheric. I will start with Prime Meridien (2024), which immediately evokes for me the famous engraving from L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire (1888), depicting the traveler who finds, at the end of the Earth, the spherical boundary to the cosmos, which he pierces to glimpse the beyond; it also evokes some of the earliest globes of the Columbian era, which served as both a decorative and metaphysical object, illustrating the dimensional mysteries of the world, where, as Sloterdijk describes, the Earth’s reserve of secrets seemed inexhaustible. What I’m getting at here in both instances is that like Prime Meridien’s miniature suburban globe, the Flammarion engraving and early, modern globes suggested an emotional or mysterious liminality that occur at a spatial margin and yet are preserved by an atmosphere of familiarity—the place of the home. That said, I’m interested to know where this mergence between the geographic space of the suburb and the sensorial mystery of atmosphere became connected through your work, and in what way do you think creative interventions into atmosphere allow you to explore the mysteries of suburban spaces?

OLIVIA ERLANGER: In making art, I feel it is as though, like the traveler in Flammarion’s engraving, I can only ever hope to catch a glimpse of what lies beyond—of what might exist on the far side of the boundary. But, let's be real, I don't think I can unravel the universe's mysteries through examining the invention of suburbia. Perhaps it is a terribly romantic notion, but I do hope to uncover something far more intimate: the contours of my place within it. The myth of the American suburb is filled with mystery—your choice of word is exact. In my work, I trace the edges of this myth, striving to glimpse what lies just beyond the surface. To peer beneath the banality, beneath the oppressive masquerade of “normalcy.” I want to know what is in your garage or stuffed behind a closet door. What lies forgotten at the bottom of your junk drawer, waiting to be uncovered? 

MORSE: Most of the pieces in the new show Spinoff are some version of what one might call a scale miniature or a boxed work.  It’s difficult to look at your miniature Sky series (Blue Sky, Orange Sky, Green Sky) and not to think of Bachelard’s writings on miniatures and daydreams. What initially drew you to miniatures as an artist?  

ERLANGER: I spoke at length with a friend about the show's title, Spinoff and how a spinoff, which, much like a miniature, will always fail in terms of its ability to recreate the essence or atmosphere of an original. There’s something about that failure that I find compelling—an inevitable distortion of the thing it's trying to replicate. And speaking of the show, have you seen the new drawings? I think they really resonate with what you’re describing, especially in the way they condense those compressed images of horror films; there are cinematic references threaded throughout my work. Miniaturization, much like directing a film or building a building, demands control—control over time, scale, narrative. It’s all about containing a world within a space. I recently gave a lecture on my practice. Initially, I thought I’d frame everything around control—but as that idea unfolded, it felt more suited to a therapy session than an auditorium full of students. Instead, I framed it around scale as a way of grappling with the contradiction of seeing the planet as both home and vast, unknowable space.

MORSE: Clearly, there is a deep connection in your work between domesticity/interiority and childhood, all of which appear as recurring themes within the realm of the scale miniature. Do you link it to childhood and rituals of toy playing? Can you elucidate on the pleasure that comes with the act of boxing or creating an atmosphere is? 

ERLANGER: I’m fascinated by the legacies of American craft, especially as we are in the midst of a crisis of content and craft. With the diorama sculptures, I wanted my work to move between the problematic lexicon of a natural history museum and the intimacy of a hobbyist’s world, like a train set built by a father and son. There’s something deeply evocative, bizarre, and sad about that tension. Maybe it’s because, in part, it speaks to how play—or, more specifically, make-believe—is often an attempt to recreate and mimic the structures seen around us. But I should clarify: I’m not interested in childhood itself; it’s adolescence that fascinates me. That specific moment in time when a person is neither fully a child nor fully an adult. I remember it as a time filled with a sense of dread, terror, and excitement. And the figure of the adolescent looms so large in the mythology of suburbia, especially in American pop culture.

MORSE: Adolescence, and particularly girlhood, seems to be present throughout your oeuvre, from sculptures like “Ida” (2017) and “Final Girl (Parallel Object)” (2021), which imagine some appendage of nymphean flesh, and pieces like “Home Is A Body” (2020) and “Shell” (2021), which are more theatrical and feel like the classic miniature tableaux of Narcissa Niblack Thorne or Frances Glessner Lee’s Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, from the 1940s. There is also the recent “Fan Fiction” (2024), whose Lepidoptera-shaped fans suggest Nabokov’s decor for Lolita's suburban bedroom. All of these pieces illustrate a form of absence, whether it be via anatomical mutilation or a scenographic vacancy, that is inherent in the huis clos of domesticity. Something or someone has always disappeared. In what ways are girlhood/adolescence a form of ghosthood in your work?

ERLANGER: I was reading Speak, Memory, Nabokov’s autobiography, while creating those sculptures. Adolescence, in particular, carries a sense of danger—especially due to the sexualization of girlhood, as seen in Lolita, but also in the Nutshell Studies, where at least one of the proposed "victims" is a teenage girl. It’s easy to exploit the young, and even easier when they’re in an environment like suburbia, which is sold to us with the promise of safety. Yet, there is power in transformation. This is evident in the trope of the final girl, which influenced both my film Appliance and my sculpture, which takes its name from the theory. Barbara Creed’s concept of the final girl turns the “last man standing” trope on its head, replacing him with a girl who, though often running and evading, ultimately survives and overcomes the outside antagonist.

Adolescence is haunted by phantasms of the future—dreams shaped by society, our families, and ourselves—but it’s also weighed down by the stark, often banal reality of the present, which for me felt flabby, uncool, and underwhelming. I think both transition and adolescence, as well as horror, can bring forth their own "phantasms" in the mind. The in-between spaces and phases of life are some of the most terrifying things the human psyche has to endure.

MORSE: What also intrigues me about your Sky series is the way in which the various colored light sources create an imagined or artificial atmosphere, which dominates the objects themselves by their very immateriality. They become less about the visible schematic of a landscape and more about the immaterial coloring of the climate in which they are immersed. What results is a literal “climate control,” another theme that crops up throughout your work.

ERLANGER: The architecture of Blue Sky is based on Last Year at Marienbad (1961) and specifically this one shot from one of the gardens at Nymphenburg Palace in Germany. It’s fantastical in so far as the forced perspective warps the ability to truly “know” the location. My original intention with the dioramas was to explore the ways in which we express power through property. Each diorama has a different technology represented in terms of how those lines are drawn. Blue Sky is showing authority through a piece of publicly owned property in which nature is so thoroughly trained it appears alien. Green Sky depicts a speculative cityscape, with a skyline filled with empty apartments—none of which I can afford! In contrast, Orange Sky presents a desolate desert mesa, empty but for a distant, almost unreadable sign—a marker that perhaps this barren land is for sale, but it’s impossible to know for sure.

I chose to title the pieces after the color of their skies because I wanted to engage directly with atmospherics, both literal and metaphorical. The sky, as a shifting environmental cue, offers a form of navigation—we understand the sky’s color as a guide to weather or ecological events: think of the green sky before a tornado or the orange glow from a wildfire. In the same way, I’ve always understood art as a way to navigate the world, to figure out my place in it. In Spinoff, the smaller planet sculptures are named after GPS coordinates, as if offering a direct connection to location itself. Meanwhile, Eros (when night was last dark), the installation of arrow sculptures, is a star map from the night before Edison patented the lightbulb—a map that shifts according to its installation site. It plays with scale—not just the inherent contradiction of a planet being “home,” but also the difference between space (no memory) and place (memory).

MORSE: I’m very happy to see your reference to Last Year at Marienbad, as I had thought of it, as well as the architecture of the suburban petite maison, which is a folly architecture based on urban fantasies of country life. Marienbad has been one of my favorite films for a very long time, and I always associate it with the dark interior fantasies of the suburb, despite it having little visually in common with the iconography of the suburb. I do wonder what it is about the atmosphere of that film, which evokes a particular fantasy of retreat, memory, and mystery that “feels” suburban.  Do you find the phantasmic elements of the film often popping up in your work?

ERLANGER: I’m drawn to Alain Robbe-Grillet’s writing, particularly the chiaroscuro in his descriptions. In Jealousy, harsh sunlight filters through the louvered blinds, and in Last Year at Marienbad, long, dark shadows stretch across the palace grounds. This interplay of light and dark is something that deeply inspires me, and it carries over into my own work. And light is a key element throughout the pieces in Spinoff, from the dioramas to the planet sculptures, even to the date determining the Eros installation.

To your point, I don’t think the film directly evokes a suburban atmosphere, but the narrative of a potential affair does echo a familiar suburban trope: “perfect house, imperfect marriage”—think The Stepford Wives, The Ice Storm, American Beauty.

Film has always been a constant touchstone in my creative life—everything I know, I know through TV and movies. I’m fascinated by how, once a story is told—whether through a book, a TV show, or a film—it doesn’t just introduce new possibilities but often affirms them. I’m not talking about how stories predict the future, like how Neuromancer anticipated the internet. Rather, I’m interested in how stories gesture toward what could be and, in some cases, shepherd reality into existence. There’s something about how a story doesn’t simply reflect reality but begins to shape it, making certain outcomes feel more conceivable, even inevitable. The term conceptual prefiguration doesn’t quite capture this—it’s something deeper at play.

MORSE: Broadly speaking, Marienbad also falls within a haunted house genre that reminds me of your short film Appliance (2024), which takes from the suburban Gothic, body horror, and science-fiction genres. In the film, a homeowner becomes haunted by an old house’s appliances as they produce a coordinated series of radiophonic and biological signals that make the house both a shelter from the dangerous, outside world and an invader from within. It has hints of Freudian unheimlich and Antonioni’s Red Desert but could also be one of those ’80s suburban horror films like Poltergeist or The Changeling. What do you think is this nexus between the suburban interior, specifically, and the pleasurable experiences of the horror film?

ERLANGER: I think everyone is a little afraid of the dark and of empty rooms. My intention with Appliance, both as a book and a film, was to extend the classic metaphor of the home as a body and suggest something a bit different: if home is a body, then the body is an appliance. The film explores the terror of what happens when your appliance—your body—doesn’t function as it’s pre-programmed. In the story, the protagonist, Sophie, is undergoing fertility treatment, and in this context, her unease becomes a doubling of sorts. She’s terrified of the structure of her house, its domestic technologies, and her own body, all of which seem to be malfunctioning. There’s no peace for poor Sophie! But is it all in her head? Or maybe aliens are involved—after all, there’s always the possibility of aliens.

With Appliance, I wanted to delve into something very Freudian, yes, and maybe even suburban—the idea that we can haunt ourselves. Specifically, I wanted to explore how prototypically American aspirations—around homeownership, fertility, and fecundity—can manifest larger into distortions. 

MORSE: With your researched histories from Garage (2017) and The Modern Shower… (2019), you have continued to make a sort of anthropological field site of domestic spaces and technologies. One of the many things I learned when reading through Garage’s history is that Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian home design eliminated ceilings and attics, while its one-story elevation made staircases mostly unnecessary. It also eliminated nooks and strived for the open concept that became the schematic for the midcentury ranch house. To me, what’s so interesting about this is that such a design immediately rejected all the spaces of the home that Bachelard would highlight as the sources of daydreaming and mystery. There are no more “happy spaces” in his words because Wright had substituted a domestic machine for a psychic shell.

ERLANGER: Houses have always reflected the technologies of their time in terms of construction methods, materials, and even their layouts. The space of the home has been a site of labor much longer than leisure, as the concept of “leisure” is a relatively modern social construct. For much of history, homes provided respite primarily as places to sleep. Depending on one's social status, this rest was often limited and infrequent, and even the bedroom itself was primarily designed for heteronormative reproduction.

MORSE: Going back over the long nineteenth century and early twentieth, we see this interesting interplay between the house as a shelter and as a laboratory. For the first time, the home pushes professional labor outside of its walls and becomes a shelter of family, leisure, and privacy. Yet, it also rapidly expands as the site of immersive and atmospheric technologies, from elaborate bedroom furnishings and indoor plumbing/heating/cooling to the earliest communications and electronic media, all of which increasingly recast the house’s atmosphere as that of a laboratory or greenhouse. How do you think this rapid technologization and hyper-interiorization of the home-as-laboratory has transformed our relationship to the house-as-shelter? 

ERLANGER: One of my favorite examples of this evolving relationship between technology and home is The Homes of Tomorrow, an exhibition at the 1933 World’s Fair. It featured early proto-modernist houses, including an all-glass house by George Keck, designed to showcase cutting-edge technologies such as central AC, dishwashers, and iceless refrigerators, as well as an attached garage. This exhibition laid the groundwork for The Town of Tomorrow, which debuted at the 1939 World’s Fair. There, homes were designed around different technological innovations. Notable examples include The Small Brick House of the Sheltered Workshops, a house where the wife performed all the housework while the husband maintained the exterior during his leisure time, and The Electric Home, which promised that electric “servants” would take over time-consuming domestic chores, allowing for a more efficient and less labor-intensive lifestyle. The tagline for the Electric Home was, “In the Electric Home, electric servants have taken over the tasks and time-consuming domestic drudgery of the old order”—an alluring vision indeed! And let’s not forget the “Magic Kitchen” that could move, talk, and tell a timely story—though, alas, it could not sing and dance. These homes and concepts are referenced in my research, particularly in Appliance, but I think they serve as a historical precursor to the modern-day single-family home. So, in summary, the 20th-century single-family home has always been at the intersection of home as both laboratory and symbol—both a financial instrument and a tool for propagating the American Dream.

Olivia Erlanger’s Spinoff is on view through April 19 @ Luhring Augustine Tribeca, 17 White Street New York

Olivia Erlanger
Eros (when night was last dark), 2024
Sixteen aluminum arrows
Dimensions variable
Image courtesy of CAM Houston. Photo: Sean Fleming

Borderlands: An Interview of Hugo Crosthwaite

Hugo Crosthwaite, La Anunciación (The Announcement), 2024
Courtesy of the artist and Luis de Jesus Los Angeles

interview by Karly Quadros

Ex-votos are a form of Mexican folk painting, part prayer, part diary, they are a dedication to the saints and a plea for guidance during difficult times. They’re sometimes crude, sometimes polished, sometimes funny, sometimes heartwrenching. Te pido perdon virgencita pues jugue con fuego (I ask you to forgive me, Virgin, because I played with fire) reads one on a painting of a woman with red skin and devil horns beckoning a man in bed while the Virgen de Guadalupe looks on. Another celebrates two luchadors who met in the ring and found love. Another thanks the Santo Niño de Atocha for surviving a late night encounter with two extraterrestrials.

Inspired by his own close encounter with death, Tijuana and San Diego-based artist Hugo Crosthwaite decided to take on the tradition of ex-votos with a new series of large-scale paintings. The show, Ex-voto, is a series of overlapping snapshots of the city of Tijuana, dense narratives of daily life at the border. Just as in the ex-votos, the physical and spiritual world mingle in scenes of border crossings, street vendors, and women at rest. The Tijuana of Crosthwaite’s paintings is not quite the real one and not quite the sin city of the American imagination. Instead, it is multilayered, a place that we tell stories about and are always returning to across the border fence.

KARLY QUADROS: Can you explain what an ex-voto painting is?

HUGO CROSTHWAITE:  Ex-votos are a tradition that happen here in in Mexico and in Latin America. It's this idea of painting agradecimientos, gratitude, miracles. They're usually painted by families, by common people. They place them on church altars. Usually this happens more in the central and south of Mexico. This doesn't really happen on the border here where I live in Tijuana, so I decided that I wanted to do my version of ex-votos that reference the situation here on the border in Tijuana and San Diego. I wanted to play with the narratives that happen usually in the ex-votos where you see angel characters or saint characters involved with people, the surrealism that's behind that.

Usually when you look at the ex-votos, you're looking at miracles, sometimes with extraterrestrial things or extra-sensory things. I love seeing some ex-votos that say, “Thank God, because I saw these aliens and they tried to abduct me.” They go from very extraordinary, fantastical things to trying to escape an abusive husband or “Thanks to San Virgencita because I was able to not get caught that I had an affair with my best friend's wife.” The narratives range from fantasy to strange things to things that deal with the problems of society in terms of poverty and violence. 

QUADROS: To me, they’re similar to your paintings in two ways. One is that they’re both very narrative – there are stories in your paintings that you feel like you’re dropped into. The other similarity that I see is these paintings include the physical world and the spiritual world, layered on top of each other.

CROSTHWAITE:  For the longest time growing up here in Tijuana, I never really had access to culture in the [Mexican] South. It just happened after 9/11 when they closed the border and this influx of immigration happened. We started seeing culture from Oaxaca and from other places start to appear here in Tijuana because of migrants settling here, hoping to cross into the United States. For example, the Day of the Dead wasn't really celebrated here in Tijuana, but now you see that happening. So, one of the consequences of immigration that has happened with the city of Tijuana is that now we're being exposed to many of the things that usually, when I was growing up here in Tijuana, I wasn't.

Hugo Crosthwaite, Ricos Elotes (Delicious Corn), 2024
Courtesy of the artist and Luis de Jesus Los Angeles

QUADROS: Is that where all the skulls in the paintings come from?

CROSTHWAITE: Yes. Here in Tijuana we're in this area where we're not Mexican enough, but then also we're not American. It’s because Tijuana is the most northern city of Mexico, so there's a lot of cross-culturalization between San Diego and Tijuana, American culture and Mexican culture. 

In my case, I was born in Tijuana and I grew up here. My family is from this area, and I don't remember learning English. It just happened naturally because my father had a curio shop where we sold Mexican items to American tourists. My life was selling stories and selling this idea of a Mexican culture that Americans wanted to see.

I've been an artist for thirty years almost, and all of my work comes from my sketchbook. I just sit in a coffee shop or I sit waiting for the bus, and I draw people.  All of the narratives in all of my work comes from these sketches. I grab a lot of the faces and the environment of Tijuana. It’s not really portraiture because I’m drawing in a very clandestine way. Sometimes people think I’m doing something very suspicious, but then I show them the drawings. That’s the magic of art. Sometimes they share back. I’ve had people sing to me. I’ve had people recite poetry because they feel like you’re presenting something of art and they want to give some art back to me.

It’s not really like taking a picture or documenting something. It’s more being able to grab impressions of the city and expand these into the narratives that go into my paintings.

QUADROS: What are some of your earlier memories of art?

CROSTHWAITE:  All my life I was going to school in the morning and in the evening I was working in the curio shop. I remember growing up with a lot of visual stimuli surrounding me. I would just do drawings to pass the time. It was a way of playing around while I was waiting for an American tourist to come in.

Part of what we did in the curio shop was tell stories, and that was the way of selling things. It was an American tourist expecting to hear a story as part of the interaction. In these paintings, it's also this idea of a transaction that happened, like in the original ex-votos. A miracle happened, so you're obliged to return the favor by painting this ex-voto as a way of making amends or making a payment. As a child, I would sell this notion of Mexico to an American public that was expecting certain stories, something exoticized. I feel like this series of paintings is playing with this idea that Tijuana is selling itself to the United States.

QUADROS: So in your paintings, is it the real version of Tijuana or the exoticized version?

CROSTHWAITE:  It's somewhere in between because it's also playing with the fantasy. There is this notion of Mexico, especially in the city of Tijuana, because, during prohibition in the United States, Tijuana became this hub for bars. It became like a Sin City, like when you think of Las Vegas today. Tijuana was the place to come, have a drink or get divorced.

It developed this reputation, what they call La Leyenda Negra. I wanted to play with this idea of La Leyenda Negra, how Tijuana was seen as this place that's selling itself to the American tourists or what is expected by the American tourists seeing Tijuana.

For example, in the 1930s and ’40s, there were these Tijuana Bibles, which were these little pornographic books that were printed in Chicago. They were little comic books that had, like Mickey Mouse having sex with Donald Duck and that kind of thing, which were sold for five cents or whatever. This was a completely American invention, but they were called Tijuana Bibles. 

Again, it's this idea that they're not from here. They're not from America. They're coming from some other place, from Tijuana, from this lawless border. Going South, there's no law and order.

QUADROS: Some classic American icons like Mickey Mouse show up in your paintings, but there’s also this idea of Americans crossing the border to deposit their own sins. I think of those big liter jugs of Coca-Cola in your paintings, in a sense, reflecting American commerce going over the border to do their dirty work that they wouldn’t do at home.

CROSTHWAITE: Yes, exactly.

QUADROS: I was thinking a lot about commerce when I was looking at your work. The characters sell tickets, they sell fruit, they talk on phones. It’s hard not to see the work in light of these recently implemented tariffs that are, once again, straining the relationship between our two countries. What roles do commerce and trade play in your work and the lives of the characters that you depict?

CROSTHWAITE:  Like I mentioned earlier, Tijuana is a very touristy city. Even now the tourism in Mexico has gone beyond restaurants or shops or beer. Now even medical tourism is very important in Tijuana.

The economies between Tijuana and San Diego are extremely interconnected. In the morning, hundreds of thousands of Mexicans cross over legally to work in the United States, and you see a lot of Americans starting to live in Tijuana because housing in San Diego is becoming too expensive. There's this interconnectivity between both cities. The border serves as an obstruction to this natural flow of people and commerce and ideas and culture. 

QUADROS: There’s a rich history of border art too – art that is sometimes literally on the border wall or fence, or art that is otherwise about the border. Do you see yourself in this tradition? What do you think defines border art?

CROSTHWAITE: I try not to define border art. I’m an artist, for example, that was born in Tijuana but I have American citizenship. I live in both Tijuana and San Diego. So to me, this area has always been this double identity. I grew up with this kind of schizophrenic notion. Both languages are in my head, Spanish and English. Both cultures are in my head.

When I was growing up, I would get to see all the American movies before anybody else in Mexico saw them. These films would travel to Mexico City, and then from there they would get distributed. When Star Wars came out, I saw it first in San Diego. Most of my family from further south wouldn't see it until six months later. 

My work is about this double identity and the struggles. How do you identify yourself when there is this very distinct line of culture that's being placed on the border? My family settled here way before the American border was imposed, way in the 1840s. My great grandfather fought in the Mexican American War on the American side because they were conscripted by the American army. Then he settled in Rosarito, in Tijuana, and then suddenly the border came up so my family, the Crosthwaite name, which is very old here in the Californias, was suddenly divided between Mexico and the United States.

What am I Mexican or American? Those questions of identity and history and memory permeate through the work, this surreal place in between two cultures, two languages. 

QUADROS: Frida Kahlo’s border painting [“Self Portrait Along the Border Line Between Mexico and the United States”] is like that too, right? She’s standing in the middle with America on one side and looking to Mexico on the other, and she’s in neither.

Hugo Crosthwaite, La Linea (The Line), 2024, Acrylic and color pencil on canvas
Courtesy of the artist and Luis de Jesus Los Angeles

CROSTHWAITE: It’s also the notion of the mestizo, the blending of the Spanish and the native.

QUADROS: And it comes back to the ex-votos, folk traditions and more pagan traditions mixing with Catholic imagery and traditions. There’s a few paintings with this imagery like “La Linea” and “The Woman Grabs the Snake.” Can you talk a little bit about Aztec imagery?

CROSTHWAITE:  In “La Linea” it’s the very important figure of Coatlicue, the Aztec goddess, mother of the Aztecs. She's basically the revered mother that gave birth to Huitzilopochtli, who is the god of war. Coatlicue was later replaced by the Virgen de Guadalupe when the missionaries came and tried to sell this idea of Catholicism to the Aztec people.

Even though it's a very strong image with skulls and snakes, to the Aztec people, she represented motherhood. She represented love. She represented birth. She represented all these things that were about life.

QUADROS: It’s similar to what you were saying before where Mexico is vilified or seen as darker and more sinful, but the things that actually seem sinister, like serpents and skulls, are actually very life-affirming and beautiful. And, on the other hand, the American exports that seem very wholesome, like Coca-Cola and Disney, are actually quite insidious.

CROSTHWAITE:  In this painting, you're seeing this idea of this double culture of Mexico and the United States. You're seeing images of Coatlicue on either side and in the center images of Mexican culture and American culture. You see the bottle of Diet Coke. You see Mickey Mouse. You see the cell phone. You see all these things that are an amalgam of culture on the border.

QUADROS: What was your experience like pulling together the show?

CROSTHWAITE: I've been an artist for almost thirty years, and funnily enough, all of my work was always in black and white because I never studied formally how to paint. I've always been making black and white drawings. But a couple of years ago, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer, and I went through chemotherapy. It was a very hard year and I couldn't work. So my sketchbook became the source of all my work, something that I could work on in my bed, small and not a lot of effort.

I had never contemplated doing color in my work. I decided I want to do an ambitious series, large canvases that just explode into color. As I was starting to do this, the idea of the ex-votos came about, giving thanks for regaining my health, being able to work again, being able to work big canvases. It was this gratitude that I felt towards life and towards my career and the people that supported me.


Ex-Votos is on display through April 5 at Luis de Jesus 1110 Mateo St., Los Angeles. Hugo Crosthwaite will be in conversation with Carolina Miranda at the the gallery  on March 22 2-3 PM.

Hugo Crosthwaite, Tijuacolor, 2024, Acrylic and color pencil on canvas
Courtesy of the artist and Luis de Jesus Los Angeles

The Long Journey Home: An Interview of Composer Sbusiso Shozi and Fondation Cartier Artistic Director Isabelle Gaudefroy

Picture © Zivanai Matangi

intro by Karly Quadros
interview by Oliver Kupper

Before judging someone, walk a mile in their shoes.

It’s an age-old adage. Our shoes carry the weight of our daily lives, our stories, our hardships. They represent the wear and tear of our history but also the tenacity and possibilities of new paths forward. 

For writer, composer, and musical director Sbusiso Shozi, shoes are a way to explore the many pathways of the African diaspora. Blending traditional South African musicality, oral tradition, and contemporary instrumentation, he’s mounting a new performance, African Exodus, for the Centre for the Less Good Idea, in collaboration with Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain. 

Founded in 2016 in Johannesburg, South Africa, the Centre for the Less Good Idea is an incubator for experimental and cross-disciplinary art. The “less good idea” is the one that is more marginal, more daring and more ripe for invention and discovery. It also has to do with resourcefulness; a Sechuana proverb advises that ‘when a good doctor won’t cure you, find the less good doctor.’ The Centre for the Less Good Idea is the first organization to be hosted in residence by the Fondation Cartier, beginning with a week-long takeover of Fondation Cartier’s performance spaces in Paris in May 2024. African Exodus continues that partnership at the Perelman Performance Center in New York City, running from February 27 to March 2.

Autre editor-in-chief Oliver Kupper sat down with Sbusiso Shozi and Fondation Cartier artistic director Isabelle Gaudefroy to discuss performance and the two organizations’ ongoing partnership.

OLIVER KUPPER: How did you discover The Centre for the Less Good Idea, and how did your partnership come to be?

ISABELLE GAUDEFROY: Melanie Alves de Sousa, performing art curator at the Fondation, went to see a performance from some of the Centre for the Less Good Idea’s artists in Berlin. Later, William Kentridge and Bronwyn Lace, the co-founders of The Centre, came to visit our space and we discussed the possibility of hosting the Centre in residence for a week of performances and workshops at the Fondation in Paris.

I have to say that our trip to Johannesburg, on the occasion of Season 10 at the Centre — celebrating years of collaborative, experimental, and interdisciplinary work – was a life-changing experience. It truly convinced us of the importance of showing the creativity, vitality, and talent of this group of artists. Through the residency in Paris, and now this new step in New York City at the Perelman Performing Arts Center, we hope the public will experience The Centre’s creative process firsthand.

KUPPER: Sbusiso, you explore the intersection of music, language, and culture. How do you approach blending traditional African sounds with contemporary influences?

SBUSISO SHOZI: Blending traditional African sounds with contemporary influence requires one’s understanding of the context where the traditional music is performed. African music performance emphasizes the functionality, language tonality, and instrumentation. I compose music in its purest form, and then I get to explore contemporary influences such as vocal four-part harmonies for decoration. However, it depends on the results of such explorations whether it holds and makes sense or not.

KUPPER: What role does storytelling play in your compositions, and how do you translate narratives into sound?

SHOZI: Storytelling in African music is a tradition that has been in practice for many years and is still partly used in rural areas today. This tradition serves as an educational and entertainment tool in Africa. Grandmothers and grandfathers would be surrounded by their grandchildren and perform their storytelling usually accompanied by songs to keep the listeners entertained or by putting an emphasis on the educational element, which is easily absorbed when there is a song reference. 

My compositions are very much influenced by such songs, and it is through these songs where we receive some sort of an archived music kept in its truest form from older generations. I then sample such sound into my own compositions. I sometimes translate my lyrics into any African language and add indigenous instruments for enhancements. This brings richness in the music and connects people of different ethnicities.

KUPPER: You use shoes as a symbol for migration but also as tools, props, and percussive instruments. Can you talk a little bit about the metaphor of shoes?

SHOZI: Shoes symbolize paths, directions, developments, and collapses in African Exodus. Their percussive usage also symbolizes the journey – people walking in different rhythms and paces throughout the years of human existence. They are soul bearers of the wearer, as they have experienced the hardships, wealth, tears, blood, and sweat of the wearer. All human experiences are carried on the shoes. 

When people migrate they are most likely wearing shoes to protect their feet from the journey. However, in African Exodus, we ask for a deeper connectedness – a performer’s and audience’s introspection about one’s personal life experiences. The Transatlantic slave period has been another form of migration. Some Africans in the diaspora have been trying to connect with their bloodline, but the question is, what happens when research and history fail us? We then need to search from within, and this is what the music and usage of shoes in African Exodus aims to evoke.

KUPPER: What do you think makes South African theater unique on the global stage?

SHOZI: South African theatre has evolved tremendously through the years, and it has reached the point where we’re not only writing fictional stories or true life events, we’re creating work that demands emotional involvement and interpretation from both the performers and the audience. Even musical theatre works somehow break away from the usual Western musical patterns and are more deeply invested in following the emotional and physical movements of an actor, giving the sense that a performer becomes a conductor and the music responds. 

South Africa is a multilingual society, therefore we have a wide range of options for selection in terms of culture and languages during the creative process, leading to a more nuanced, layered performance.

KUPPER: As the Artistic Director of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain that is part of a French institution, how do you see your responsibility now and in the future? How do you contend with the zeitgeist?

GAUDEFROY: Our purpose is to accompany artists in their project and foster new ideas and initiatives, independently from the zeitgeist. We endeavor to work collaboratively with artists, as we believe they can provide us with new perspectives and outlooks on the world. We rely on their visions to transform specific modes of expression into projects which can be shared widely, enhancing what we have in common rather than what divides us. There is no better tool for this than art. 

KUPPER: Sbusiso, from Durban to international platforms, how has your journey influenced your artistic identity?

SHOZI: I was born in Durban, a city located in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, however, I grew up in rural areas. My father was a prominent member in the community as he was a leader of Amabutho [Regiments/ Warriours], leading them in songs and traditional dance, a position called IGOSA. This upbringing shaped my musical fondness and shaped my taste in more traditional forms of music. My compositions align with tradition, and sometimes I juxtapose them with contemporary influences in order to appeal to international audiences. In African Exodus I went beyond my voice’s comfort zone as its sound transgresses South African borders.

KUPPER: How do you see African music evolving in the next decade, and what role do you want to play in that evolution?

SHOZI: I would like to see the evolution of African music and creativity without hierarchical order, comparisons, superiority and inferiority – music that is understood in its truest form without exotic stereotypes. It’s work like African Exodus that resonates and advocates for better humanity (Ubuntu), work that calls for introspection and healing of the soul. Oral tradition is not enough as some information could be lost through the years. As we live in digital times, I would like to see our works being documented and archived for future reference.

KUPPER: How do you see the relationship between The Centre and the Fondation Cartier continue from here? 

GAUDEFROY: Partnering with the Perelman Performing Arts Center in New York City is a unique opportunity for us to connect with New York’s artists and audiences, all the while supporting independent thought and creative research embodied by The Centre for the Less Good Idea. The North American debut of African Exodus in New York is a continuation of the relationship between the Fondation Cartier and The Centre, following the Centre’s May 2024 residency at the Fondation in Paris.

African Exodus will be performed as the Perelman Performance Center in New York City from February 27 to March 2.

Banks Violette Interviewed by Neville Wakefield On The Occasion Of His Commission by Hedi Slimane for CELINE

CELINE Art Project: Banks Violette

Text and interview by Neville Wakefield

Every era has its defining figures, and in the condensed New York artworld of the early aughts, Banks Violette was  foremost amongst them. Of the many currents running through that scene, Violette’s was the darkest and most  stringent. Broken drum-sets, skeletal architectures and vacated stages splintered by shards of white, fluorescent light and set to the subsonic undertow of death metal’s societal angst captured the zeitgeist of an era’s precarious  balance of nihilism and celebration. Drawing from music, art, theater and fashion, Violette’s art took the form of  a barograph, trace recording the pressure that was the slow implosion of everything around it - pressure the artist eventually succumbed to, withdrawing from the world he’d helped define. 

Drawn to the incandescent energy of that moment, Hedi Slimane was both documentarian and participant in this  seminal New York moment. His stark black and white images of the artists perfectly captured the taught masculinity and absolute abandon of his artist peers. In july of 2007, he curated a group show titled “Sweet Bird of Youth”, at Arndt & Partner in Berlin, featuring the works  of artists Dash Snow, Slater Bradley, Mathew Cerletty, Dan Colen, Gardar eide Einarsson, Terence Koh, Douglas Kolk,  Nate Lowman, Ryan Mcginley, Matt Saunders, Steven Shearer, Paul P., and Banks Violette. Later that year, “Young  American” at the Foam Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam, paid photographic tribute to the same generation of artists.  

After the best part of a decade sequestered in upstate New York, Violette has begun a cautious re-engagement with  the world he left behind. With the indelible legacy of that early period more relevant than ever, Violette’s work  is reappearing in galleries, museums and now in the context of Slimane’s re-imagining of the CELINE flagship stores. The synergy between artist and designer has been longstanding. “The thing that I've always admired about Hedi is that even when the approach is deconstructed, there isn’t any critical remove or detachment. there’s  a genuine sincerity to his investment in the things he admires. as a result, he can transform something that is  permanently framed as ironic into its opposite.”  

The chandelier structures created for the stores are classic Violette. The repeated modular forms take the minimalist frameworks of Dan Flavin or Sol Le Witt and pushes them into a deconstructed state of theatrical  collapse. Viiolette likens them to a figure who has stumbled and fallen. they are an image of overdose, equal parts  narcotic collapse and narcan revival. “I relate to sculpture as this thing that extends itself into the space of a  body so it’s of necessity anthropomorphized – and so autobiographically I was like yeah I know all about that…” The  resulting sculptures perfectly capture the emotional tenor of the times: “It’s as if Aristotle was raised in a warzone  which he probably was, and the poetics of post-traumatic stress disorder meet the aesthetics of boredom.” Add to that fashion and retail, and the meeting is unlike any other. 

NEVILLE WAKEFIELD: I was going to start with the early 2000s, and I realized I can't really remember much, but it would be cool to recall that moment a little bit, even if it's fragmentary, and to talk about how you recollect that scene being shaped. It was certainly an interesting time in which there were multiple conversations between purity and impurity and all these things that art had in some way tried to keep out, whether it's music or fashion. It seemed to be that the floodgate had been opened. And I certainly remember that because I participated in it with the book [Fashion: Photography of the Nineties, 1998], and was thinking about how genres were bending, which all seems now very obvious and straightforward (laughs). 

BANKS VIOLETTE: That's a great way to synopsize it. I really remember very early trying to make a case for why I thought that the music that I was interested in, the performers and the musicians, and the cultural outfit that they were generating was worthwhile. And that it was like, “Oh, I'm not trying to appropriate something. I'm just trying to point a direction towards something that I think is really, really interesting.” And having just an immense amount of resistance towards that as an idea, which, as a sort of cumulative consequence of a number of other people working in a similar kind of fashion, it stopped being an issue relatively quickly. But there was like the beginning of an argument and then the end of an argument.

NW: I remember Dave Hickey talking to me about his interest in the operatic as being an impure art form. And I was wondering whether, in this conversation between purity and impurity and genre, you saw the music that you were listening to at the time, which was probably largely death metal and black metal, as a pure form that you were introducing? Obviously, it is socially impure, and contaminated in all sorts of ways. But as a musical idiom.

BV: I thought they were better creators than I was. (Laughs) Honestly, if you're making something, and it's framed as art, inherently a substantial portion of it is a fiction. You're engaging through the mechanism of it existing as a fiction. You're suspending disbelief, you're engaging in saying this thing has the potential for meaning. And looking at the people who are active as black metal musicians or something like that, they were just better at it than I was. And it was also conditioned generationally. I was a kid in the eighties and liked PMRC and this kind of, “Oh my God, your record collection, if you listen to it backward, it all, you know, invokes it or it'll cause you to commit suicide either way.” The idea that the most gutter-level incarnation of a culture had the potential within it to do this horrendous thing.

NW: It's an architecture borne of fiction. 

BV: It's a vector for faith.

NW: And were you interested in the dramatics of it? And I'm thinking of Lords of Chaos, church burnings, stage antics and that kind of stuff. Was that theatricalization of sound something that you felt fed into the work that you were doing?

BV: The horrible instances or eruptions of criminality were sort of like confirmations of the efficacy of a particular method of communicating. I didn't know a better way of confirming that, holy, shit, this thing is really, really effective, other than like, wow, it resulted in this horrendous real-world thing. And I still kind of struggle for what would be an equivalent affirmation that this thing is effective other than something horrible happening. There's the affirmative quality of the disastrous (laughs). There is something specific to that in those instances, like black metal or church burning, arson, all those kinds of things– horrible as they are, they're affirmative instances of the disastrous, the disastrous being an affirmative gesture.

NW: It makes me also think about this other idea, which seems to have been lost since then, of amateurism and the idea that you could be a successful failure. I remember there was a great [Raymond] Pettibon piece, which had this quote: “Professionalism is a hate crime.”

BV: I think people were deeply attracted to that idea. Not that people weren't careerists, because they certainly were. People obviously wanted to make a living, but within their sort of limited understanding a living would be. But it wasn't like, “Oh yeah, I’m gonna have three cars and a house in the Hamptons because I'm an artist.” 

NW: How did Hedi Slimane come into all this?

BV: One of my favorite interviews from when I was much younger was an interview that I did with him for this Australian fashion magazine. One of the best conversations I ever had. So I'd always gotten along with him.

NW: It's come full circle because he was certainly documenting and to some extent participating in that moment. I'm curious as to how you see the bridge between then and now.

BV: I keep on coming back to this idea that it's an act of devotion. Going back to the affirmative through the disastrous, how do you literalize the devotion? Well, someone's gotta die for you to be truly devoted to something. 

NW: There's no devotion without death.

BV: The commemorative, the allegiance, all these kinds of registers only exist if they coalesce around a tragic instance. That is the thing that coheres the whole around itself. 

NW: There's also an interesting sort of connection there between entropy, collapse, decay, and artists such as [Robert] Smithson, for instance, and Romanticism and Caspar David Friedrich and The Sea of Ice or the Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. I know that there was a work that you made for the show at Barbara Gladstone that directly referenced The Sea of Ice. Do you think about the absent figure as being romantic? We had a conversation about the figure being present in all work in some way.

Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818, Oil on canvas, 94.8 cm × 74.8 cm (37.3 in × 29.4 in), Kunsthalle Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

BV: I think so. Romanticism is such a loaded kind of idea. As soon as you start talking about an inherent romantic relationship with a landscape, you start getting into blood and soil. There's an inherent ugliness to those things, no matter how much they're coated as “oh, it's romantic, it's beautiful.” Or with Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, that pictorial convention of positioning the viewer behind somebody who's viewing something. It's like you're creating, in the clumsiest manner possible, the equivalent of a dissociative fugue. So those things are already historically connected to trauma. Pictorially, as a formal device, they're related to trauma. There is a bad thing at the center of all these things.

NW: The traumatic origins or the role of trauma in that dissociation is really interesting. Coming back to the body, thinking about the chandeliers and this idea of a collapsed or absent body, the body – whether it's an empty stage that is inviting or proposing a body or a chandelier – seems to always be there in the sculpture.

BV: It's not that it's a purely anthropomorphized kind of thing. It's not like, “Oh, look at this thing and see a body and see it sort of stagger through space.” The two things I kept on staring at or thinking about a lot were [Martin] Kippenberger’s Street Lamp for Drunks and then [Alberto] Giacometti’s Woman With Her Throat Cut. One thing that's sort of this violent crime scene that's coextensive with real space. It's not on a plinth, it's in your space, and it's a horrible violation, even though it's goofy and biomorphic. And the other one is this thing that presupposes a body and presupposes a condition of the body. It's a streetlamp, but it's not anthropomorphic. It doesn't exist without an understanding of being a drunk in a space. What that feels like and how gravity affects you and all these kinds of things. Long story short, the chandeliers ended up being the Narcaned equivalent of the Kippenberger things. It was sort of like, how would you do that if you were nodding out on heroin? 

Martin Kippenberger’s Street Lamp for Drunks in situ. Bundeskunsthalle

NW: Can you talk a bit about the material language? Because it has both stayed the same and evolved a bit, I think. Obviously, white fluorescent light has been throughout it. Graphite's been throughout it and metal in various forms. Has it changed, and how does it feel going back to that language after a period where you weren't engaged in it?

BV: The CELINE pieces specifically, I would've preferred to have them as fluorescent lights. But they're being phased out, and they're illegal in a lot of areas because they incorporate mercury. So these are sort of like stand-ins for fluorescent tubes. They have the same quality of light, and they have the same sprawled-out wiring and things like that, but they're not quite the same. There's something so specific about the institutional quality of fluorescent tubes. What other lighting element has this kind of idea of institutional alienation and phenomenological ugliness of this big glass cylinder and the implied threat of high voltage running through this thing with this low hum?

NW: I'm interested in exploring this idea of threat or menace as well. I remember having very visceral responses to your work as being deeply threatening in some sense, whether it was in the literal sense of actual fire and, and it possibly blowing my face up and shit like that… 

BV: …Poor craftsmanship. (Laughs)

NW: Or, more metaphorical, perhaps, in these Narcaned sculptures. There is still the potential for danger or menace in there somehow.

BV: [Richard] Serra is sort of like the famous instance of that, where you're like, “Oh my God, I'm next to this thing that is so precarious: The weight, mass, and the physicality, it’s an unavoidable aspect of the piece, right? But there are some sculptures that just have that, like the Calder stabiles. It's a really specific quality that some sculptures that I'm attracted to and have always been attracted to just have. And it's something I respond to. 

NW: Is that manifest in different ways in the chandeliers, do you think? 

BV: I think so. These are in capital R retail spaces. These are in clothing stores. It's like being indifferent to a choking victim at a fancy dinner (laughs). There's this collapsed, violated form in this space that's coextensive with somebody with credit much better than mine shopping, and dressing up their body and performing this, and here's this violated version of that dress up in the same space. 

NW: I was looking at the images and thinking about it in terms of homelessness.

BV: Yeah. The one for Madison Avenue was initially a collapsed form, and it's Madison Avenue in New York City with these giant plate glass windows, and it's got Balenciaga right across the street from it. There’s 3/8s of an inch of glass separating the sidewalk from this thing that initially would've been collapsed and sort of sprawled out. And the first time I got to see that sort of sight, I walked up at like 11 o'clock at night when everything was closed and just saw the lights flooding out. It's pretty much like watching somebody huddle up in the Balenciaga’s doorway at 11 o'clock on a cold night in Manhattan. There is something supremely disorienting about that. 

CELINE Art Project: Banks Violette

NW: I’m curious as to how the move from Brooklyn back to Ithaca, your hometown, and how that change of landscape has affected you.

BV: I'm sympathetic with what Hedi does. He clearly responds to things that people make, like manufactured culture. I get way more from a teenager on a subway who's decorated their backpack than from staring at a bunch of trees, and I'm around a lot of trees now. There isn't the hoarding in front of the building, and it's covered with three layers of wheat-pasted posters, and here's a teenager who's decorated their shoes, or that somebody is blocking out a parking space in front of a construction site, so they took a traffic cone, a two-by-four, a Miller Light can, and made this awesome sculpture. Just all the ephemera that people generate. Instead, these days, I stare at trees. I don't get a lot from them.

NW: And what about drugs? How they've changed or shaped your vision.

BV: Water is great. I really, really like water. I really love coffee. 

NW: Probably not much water past your lips for about a decade, I'd think.

BV: Yeah. Water was this thing that you used to cook up heroin in a spoon (laughs). That was really the sum total of it. Now, fentanyl is such a common thing. People are aware of Narcan kits. It’s weird. It's tragic that it's gotten to the point where people are this conversant with what these things look like. And now that I'm sober and watching that happen and being like, oh shit. I saw a bumper sticker a little while ago that was amazing, legitimately, but it was also really deeply dark: “My Child Narcanned Your Honors Student.” Which was amazing, but also, holy shit. Like 10 years ago, every single part of that would've made zero sense. It would've kind of made sense to me, and now it's like, wow, I've shifted places with the world and heroin jokes are on the back of people's pickup trucks.  

NW: Is drawing still part of your practice? I always loved the drawings and the objecthood that they had, the layering of the graphite and the presence of the hand, and the feeling that they were this accretion of not just material, but sentiment built up into the surface of the paper. Is that something you're still practicing?

BV: Yeah, there's a group show at this young gallery in Chinatown called Francis Irv that's opening on January 21st. I'm actually finishing a drawing for that. It's similar to those earlier ones, black and white, like an X-ray of horses. It's this weird sort of thing with a sort of negative space. It doesn't have heavy scabs of graphite on it. But it does this weird sort of, for lack of a better description, op art with the kind of push-pull kind of thing. It does something kind of bizarre, I think. But yeah, it's something I still do. I kind of resent it because people are like, “Oh yeah, make a drawing,” and you're like, “Yeah, that’s 12 hours a day for a month, it's not the easy thing that it looks like.” It's much harder to do when I'm 50. But it’s something I'm still interested in, as long as it's connected to an exciting opportunity. There's a reason for it other than like, oh, let's just generate more artwork. 

NW: I think what drew me to them, apart from the subject matter, was the sort of manifest struggle between light and darkness, between shading and possibility and all this kind of stuff. Light is obviously a big element in your work, but darkness is as well. Do you see them as opposing forces?

BV: I don't see them as opposing, I see them as contiguous parts of the same argument, or same sentence, or same sentiment or however you wanna describe it. Just the way the sculpture transacts itself in terms of literal concerns like weight, physicality, and mass. Those are sculptural concerns. The drawings were always supposed to have that as well. They were supposed to be coextensive, they were supposed to be sculptures. They're supposed to have mass to them, gravity, weight, and all those things that are like capital F Formal sculptural concerns. But as a way to narrativize something, maybe the sculpture is more abstracted, or maybe the drawing is more abstracted. I always imagine all these things like just curating a show, but you just happen to be manufacturing all the things that you're curating together in a room. 

NW: I always thought about them in terms of erosion and transference. I really like that the graphite was literally being eroded, but then there was this kind of psychological act of transference going on through that erosion.

BV: I like that as a description a lot. There's also that interesting kind of tension that existed between the refined draftsmanship that went into realizing the image itself. Looked at from one angle, this matte graphite surface blended in with this finely rendered thing, and then looked at from another with raking light, and it's this big scab of violent activity on top of this thing. It was just this skin. It was really process-oriented and looked like you knew how this thing was made, and it was about physicality and all these things that had nothing to do with this refined rendered thing. The fact that they could sort of exist in that same space and coexist in that same space without one over the other. Again, that's another concern that I think equally applies to the sculptures.

NW: I always felt the tension between delicacy and brutalism or violence was a very strong thread. 

BV: Ideally, the drawings were kind of like the microcosmic version of what I was trying to accomplish with an installation or a sculpture. Like, if you want to know what's going on with the whole room, just look at the little square piece of paper or the little rectangle. 

NW: What does the day look like these days? 

BV: I wake up at like 3:00 AM and work in the morning just 'cause it's super quiet. So I wake up, do work, usually sort of working on drawings or, you know, recently I've been making foam core models for all the CELINE projects. And then, you know, I have the rest of the day to do whatever I need to do at home, help my wife out and walk dogs. I fly fish a lot. I can get away from people and go stand in very cold water and avoid other human beings. And it's really great. It's not very exciting and I love it.

Banks Violette for CELINE Art Project will on view in CELINE stores through January.

Daniel Arsham In Conversation With Andy Warhol Museum Director Patrick Moore

Photographer: Claire Dorn. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin. 

In a globalized world, pop culture transcends dialect to create a language accessible to all. Daniel Arsham’s work taps into this reservoir of collective symbols while cheekily disconnecting them from their cultural niches, sending R2D2 back in time to erode and replacing it with a fresh Venus de Milo. Patrick Moore, the director of the Andy Warhol Museum and an expert judge of the weight our common cultural relics hold, has previously examined Arsham’s work through a lens tinted by Warhol’s campy visual commentary. While Warhol crafted the thrones of monolithic cultural figures, however, Arsham’s work presents the modern deities of culture and especially Americana as decaying relics. Despite this alternative view, his work maintains a celebratory and even reverent attitude toward its subject matter, which has landed him partnerships with Star Wars and Pokémon alongside the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and Perrotin, his gallery of twenty years. This fall, the artist celebrates this two decade partnership with dual exhibitions across Perrotin New York (through October 14) and Paris (through October 7). In honor of this anniversary, Moore and Arsham come together in conversation to explore the bridge between commercialism and fine art where Arsham and Warhol have built their practices.

DANIEL ARSHAM: When I did the press preview in Paris, I was asked what I thought about your essay in comparison to Warhol. Certainly, for me, it's a flattering comparison, but it gets to the heart of people feeling sometimes like what I'm doing is this very novel approach. It's almost like people forgot that Warhol was doing this 40 years ago. I think I told you, Patrick, about the story when I did the first collaboration with Adidas. I was having a conversation with a collector of mine who was like, how are you gonna allow this brand to use your work to sell sneakers? And I said, it's the opposite. I'm using them for their reach and the funding that they're gonna put towards this crazy project that I wanna do. 

PATRICK MOORE: I think that people not only forget about how earth-shattering it was when Warhol was first blurring the lines between the commercial world and the fine art world, but they also forget that Warhol had been largely dismissed at the end of his career. For a large part, I think that there was this backlash at his exploration of the commercial world and of making money as part of his practice. Do you think that still exists in the art world? Or has it become an accepted practice?

ARSHAM: I don't know if it's more accepted, but maybe the artists who are doing it feel more comfortable around it. I'm thinking art of artists like George Condo or Tom Sachs who were already kind of integrating those sorts of elements within their own work, and it didn't matter whether the brand was directly involved with them or not. The context of those brands in their work already existed. So in some cases it's a benefit to maybe have the brand supporting that.

But really, what's the difference between a brand and a collector? The collector is purchasing or supporting. So much of my audience are not the traditional art world audience. And every time that I do an exhibition, when I post about he show, people always ask if they need tickets to come to the gallery. And I'm like, guys, this is the greatest thing ever. You can go to any art gallery and it is 100% free. Here in New York, it's like a huge free museum, and the collectors are the ones who pay for the audience to be able to see it.

MOORE: I was so glad that you and Perrotin asked me to think about this because as I mentioned in the essay, I had been thinking so much about you, and it was really seeing your work in that different setting that you described at Tiffany's in New York that started this. For you, how is it when you walk into that store and you see your work in that context? Does it feel fundamentally different than seeing it in your studio or in the gallery?

ARSHAM: In some ways it feels more natural in that location than seeing it in the gallery. I feel like the gallery, maybe it's a more minimal environment, but it's much more directly about the monetary transaction with the work. And at Tiffany, it's just there for people's pleasure or their inquisitiveness or curiosity. So it was like, the jewelry that was worn in, Breakfast at Tiffany's and other famous pieces that have been worn either in film or on the red carpet and outside of the exhibition. I had done work with Tiffany in the past, and they wanted a large work to be out there to kind of announce what was inside. 

Fractured Idols I , 2023.
Acrylic on canvas. Framed: 91 1/2 x 105 1/2
inch. Photographer: Claire Dorn. Courtesy of
the artist and Perrotin.

MOORE: In my essay about you, I also mentioned this idea of you ruining things to make them more precious or to help us see them new again. What did you think about that idea of ruining things?

ARSHAM: When I first started with that body of work, it was really about this idea of aging them, causing them to appear as if they're from a different era. And so much of the work that I've done from the beginning was always about time dislocation, where we're looking at a painting or an image or a story or a sculpture, and we don't quite know when it is from. Sometimes in the depiction of a painting, we see a landscape and there are these architectural structures within it, but it looks like maybe something ancient or something ultra-futuristic, and we don't really know when we are. And so the idea of decay in the works was really about causing the work to appear as if it's in a state of erosion, like it might be in 10,000 years. And the materiality of it is really important for the further understanding of what the object can be. Like, the crystals tell us something about the idea that a trompe-l’œil version of that would not. Like if I just took a radio, let's say, and I painted it to look old, and maybe the quality of it was sort of visually similar, the knowledge that it's actually made of crystal has this other sort of visceral truth quality about it. It's also very difficult to understand how they're made, which is a magic that I think artists often employ. You just can't understand the object. 

MOORE: When we look at your work, we see an object, but there's actually something that you're hiding underneath that object. In almost everything that you do, it seems like I'm seeing something, but you’re not letting me see what this is really about. 

ARSHAM: I guess that's one way to look at it. The other way is that you're seeing something in the objects, and this is part of the reason why I use things that are very familiar to almost everyone. No matter where they are in the world, it allows them an entrance point into the work. Like, I feel like I know that thing. I'm in. Once you get there, things become more complicated. When is this thing from, why is this wall moving? That use of the everyday object as an entrance point into my work has been consistent and super important for me.

Holiday Inn: Study for Falling Clock, 2023.
Graphite on paper. 10 1/2 x 7 1/4 inch. Graphite
on paper. 8 7/8 x 6 1/8 inch. Photographer:
Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.

MOORE: I want to know a little bit more about how and why you draw. Do you draw every day? Is it a part of your practice every day? Is it something that's associated with projects? 

ARSHAM: It's for different uses. I use it as a way to prepare. I use it as a way to think. Sometimes concentrating on an object or an idea in drawing, when you're not really thinking about language, has a different way of telling you something about it or understanding something about it. And then sometimes drawings are really just like notation. I've been either making drawings in hotels for years. I always take the stationary with me. Some of my favorite ones are like the Holiday Inn from Arkansas or something like that, where it's a really bad graphic. That contrasts with the drawing that I'm doing of an eroded Greek figure or something like that.

MOORE: I had a more glamorous fantasy of you than the Holiday Inn. I was thinking of you in some glamorous hotel in Tokyo at 3:00 AM, jet-lagged out of your mind, like, I'm gonna start drawing. Holiday Inn never occurred to me.

ARSHAM: When I toured with Merce Cunningham, the accommodations were not luxury. It was wherever he could put up the entire dance company. But [in the exhibit] there are drawings from Gritti Palace in Venice or the Amman in Tokyo. It's the whole range.

MOORE: I saw a couple paintings that you were working on in your studio, and I was really, really drawn to them. One thing I was drawn to was the paint itself. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the paint, the matte quality of the paint, the palette that you're working with.

ARSHAM: I'm colorblind, and I think it has always made it very challenging for me to mix and match paint. If I'm working one day, and then I come back the next day, I always found it ultra frustrating to try to remake a color that I had mixed to match something that was already on the canvas. So, I had been working with this company, Golden Paints, to basically make me a complete gradient in the four colors that I wanted to use. They kept sending the sample, and I would say “Add more pigment”. I think that quality that you're describing is this feeling in the paint that it's just so lush and loaded with pigment. It's got like 20 times the amount of pigment that's in a commercial paint.

MOORE: Well, here's a big difference between you and Warhol. I think Andy used the cheapest possible paint he could find (laughs). Let's talk a little bit more about the paintings, because they are such an odd amalgam and it makes them really interesting. What I responded to was this idea of nostalgia and Americana, but I'd love to hear you talk about the paintings and what you were thinking about specifically when you selected those objects, those scenes that you create.

ARSHAM: I had been working for the past couple of years with the Pokémon Company in Japan, and I made a number of sculptures based on some of the Pokémon characters. And we also worked on an animation together that I insisted was hand-drawn. I did a couple paintings at the time that were like a single cell study. This exhibition has a number of works in it that use that anime or manga-type language in them. I'm mocking up most of my paintings from multiple different images–I'm basically doing a collage in Photoshop, and then I'm using that as a reference for the painting. So I'm throwing in references to old Air Jordan ads or vintage Porsche ads. There's cars in them, there's sneakers, there's the BMX bike from the movie ET. And it's all of these Easter eggs that encompass my world. And in the exhibition there, those works also exist in sculpture. So you might see like an R2D2 in a painting in silhouette. And then in the show you're seeing the actual sculpture of it. 

MOORE: Star Wars is a particular focus right now. Was that like a touchstone for you growing up? Does it have a kind of magic resonance for you?

ARSHAM: It's really one of the first movies that I can remember seeing in the cinema with my family. I was probably five, I guess it would've been Empire Strikes Back, and kind of just like something that was always been around. When I was a kid and I would stay home sick from school, there was a VHS that my father had recorded, one of the Star Wars, but he had recorded it from television, so it had all the commercials in it out as well. And so up until I was in high school, I'd be watching commercials from like the eighties mixed in with Star Wars. I wish I still had that VHS ‘cause it probably encompasses like everything that I'm interested in. You know, today I cook advertisements, um, you know, a Super Bowl commercial or like n b a playoffs and the Nike ad and you know, car ad and then Star Wars in between.

MOORE: Star Wars is so fascinating. Business is so much a part of your work – how do you go about working with a franchise like that? How does something like that happen?

ARSHAM: I had been speaking with some people from Lucasfilm in advance of the project in Monaco with Louis Hamilton. George Lucas is a huge F1 fan, and I think he'd been to every Monaco Grand Prix since the seventies. And he was there at the event with his wife [Mellody Hobson], and she says to me, I think we own some of your work. I was like, what? George Lucas has some of my work in his house? What is this? And so I'm like, which work is it? Like, where did you get it from? And she's like, Usher gave it to us as a gift. It was a work from about 15 years ago, a 35 millimeter movie camera that I had cast in volcanic ash. I don't think she knew who the artist was or anything, she just recognized it because of the similarity with the work that I had done for Louis. And so I told her, “by the way, I'm speaking with Lucasfilm about this thing.” And she connected me with the right people. And that's sort of how it came about.

MOORE: Well, it was meant to be then.

Daniel Arsham 20 Years will be on view at Perrotin New York until October 14, and Perrotin Paris until October 7.

R2 - D2TM: Quartz CrystallizedFigure , 2023.
Quartz, Selenite, Hydrostone. 48 x 42 1/16 x
42 1/16 inch. Photographer: Guillaume
Ziccarelli. Courtesy Perrotin. © & TM
Lucasfilm Ltd. © 2023 Daniel Arsham, Inc.

A Family Gallery: An Interview Of Sow and Tailor's Karen Galloway

 
 

text by Oliver Misraje
portrait by Enio Hernandez

Important things to note about Karen Galloway in no particular order:  Karen is an Aries-Taurus cusp, the name of her gallery, Sow and Tailor, is a zeugma for the space’s origins as a sweatshop in South Central Los Angeles, and, if given the choice of which animal she’d be reincarnated into, she’d choose a cat (her husband and frequent collaborator Greg Ito says he’d be a beaver). 

Sow and Tailor is situated next to a tunnel, under a freeway on Grand Street.  It has elements reminiscent of the urban fantasy genre: It’s a tiny, practically invisible nook, that intermittently  lights up with art and its patrons, both from the neighboring community and art world Westsiders willing to venture east of Western Avenue. Karen’s description of Sow and Tailor as her “little speakeasy” is apt. Greg Ito, has a studio conjoined to the building next door. Their physical proximity reflects a professional dynamic shared between the two: they work and live together, often advising one another, while still possessing firm boundaries between her work and his practice. 

But the naming is more than just a play on words, Sow and Tailor is an ethos firmly posited in nurturing— both as an abstract, moral concept, and a practical strategy towards community and its cultivation.  Take, for example, the gallery’s  trajectory— Karen was seven months pregnant with her daughter Spring when she decided to quit her job as a producer for a notoriously exploitative fast-fashion company: “I had been on set for a shoot with a high-profile rapper since 6 am, while obviously pregnant. I was in pain and still expected to perform manual labor. There was this total disregard for my condition, and after being asked to stay past 2 am, I decided I had enough.” The conception of both her daughter and her gallery were unintentionally, yet symbolically in conjunction with one-another. Karen gave birth to Spring on February 2nd, 2021. Two  months later, Sow and Tailor opened its doors for its inaugural show, Hot Concrete: L.A. Arrangement.

Although initially an outsider to the art-world, Karen credits her mother with nurturing a passion for curation: “I grew up in Pasadena. We were always ballin’ on a budget, but she was a patron for all things culture, especially free, public events, whether that be classical music concerts or Shakespeare in the park. Our mailboxes were constantly stuffed with mail from museums’ or other public works, she knew how to scout out an event.” 

Jaime Muñoz installation

This is all to say Sow and Tailor, as Karen puts it, is “a family affair”, more explicitly expressed in their last show Friends and Family 23’, curated by her nephew, Cairo Pertum.  Karen tells me the concept for the gallery was inspired by Japanese bonsai trees, which translated, means “planted in a container”. At the heart of Sow and Tailor is the question: how can the limitations of physical space help cultivate a flourishing tree? A concept, carried out magnificently, in the ways the gallery, despite its nook-like arrangement, manages to feel more cavernous than its 700 square footing. 

Since its humble beginnings, Sow and Tailor has rapidly cemented itself as a hotspot for emerging artists, receiving institutional recognition usually reserved for legacy galleries—Sow and Tailor is one of the youngest galleries to be accepted into the Armory Collection. But as the gallery continues to grow, its ethos remains firmly planted. Instagram clout doesn’t operate as a currency here, with many of the featured artists being fresh in the embryonic stages of their career. Karen, afterall, is a risk-taker. It takes a certain gusto to abandon your comfy, if ennui-ridden life as a producer to enter the gallery game, just as it takes a bravado to invest in young artists who’ve yet to establish a name for themselves.  

Karen and her gallery tend to keep a busy docket, starting with a solo show featuring the works of Kayla Witt from February 11th until March 25th. Sow and Tailor has also been invited to host a solo presentation of Veronica Fernandez at Frieze LA next week, along with a group booth at Felix, featuring both new and old faces. The gallery will also be holding an off-site curation at the Soho House in West Hollywood for Black History Month, highlighting L.A.’s legacy of African American art.

While the accomplishments, past and future, of Sow and Tailor reflect its growing branches, the roots remain firmly planted. 

Karen Galloway and Greg Ito’s daughter Spring

Casper Brindle: Light, Glyphs and Portals To New And Strange Sensations

Casper Brindle portrait by Brent Broza, courtesy William Turner Gallery

interview by Oliver Kupper

In Los Angeles, light is often louder than the din of traffic, the sound of crashing waves, or the Santa Ana winds zephyrously careening through the palms. It is prismatic, a mystical hue of blue and amber—a reoccurring character in the cinematic vista of every tragically beautiful sunset. Artist Casper Brindle, who was born in Toronto in 1968 and moved to Los Angeles in 1974, captures this unique, transcendental illumination with his three-dimensional translucent boxes and paintings on linen. With his exhibition Light | Glyphs, which includes two new bodies of work that are on view now at William Turner Gallery in Santa Monica, Brindle has used a colloidal amalgam of acrylic and automotive paint to create supernatural keyholes into a dreamlike cosmos that harken lowriders, the abstracted horizons of Georgia O’Keefe’s Southwestern paradise, and the lush optical decadences of Light and Space artists before him, like Helen Pashgian or Larry Bell. Gradations of color take the viewer on a hallucinatory journey inward, guided by meditative symmetry. Brindle’s acrylic boxes are electric without a source of electricity; a fog of hot pink and cerulean matter—a single blade of an alternate color scheme slices a perfect, spiritual and monolithic wound through the center, like a beaming chakra glowing at the moment of enlightenment.  What comes through is the rage of Lucio Fontana and the Jungian expressionism of Rothko’s color-fields, creating a distinctly California chill, a first-gear zen that drifts upwards like the curl of wild smoke into an id-like eureka of strange new sensations. We got a change to speak with Brindle on the occasion of his exhibition.

OLIVER KUPPER You grew up in Southern California, when did you first make the connection between Los Angeles’ unique atmosphere, and culture, to fine art?

CASPER BRINDLE I was in my early teens when I went to an exhibition at the Temporary Contemporary, now MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary.  It was a show comprised by the pioneers of the light and space movement. I can’t recall the title of the show but I can recall walking down a hallway with tubes of light (which I assume was Robert Irwin) my eyes fluttered with excitement and my ears perked up to listen intently as mysterious sounds were played in different areas of the hallway making you look all around to see where the sounds were coming from. Directing you to look at different parts of the installation at precise times, comprised a detailed sensory experience. I remember connecting strongly with the experience of the exhibition and it opened my mind to what art could be. 

KUPPER Why do you think the light and atmospheric energy of Los Angeles has inspired so many artists working in LA—can this atmosphere only be defined or interpreted through the mysterious language of art—not only fine art, but also movies?

BRINDLE I think there’s something freeing about working in Los Angeles. Maybe it’s the light, the weather, or the vast beauty or the combination. I think atmosphere has a great effect on your physiological preferences. I am attracted to bright, vivid colors. My color palette is like those of a traditional woven Mexican blanket! On the other hand, if it was raining and gray every day, I’m not so sure my choices would be the same or my disposition would be as light. 

KUPPER Can this atmosphere only be defined or interpreted through art?

BRINDLE I think it could be defined as an experience also, living here in real time. A walk on the beach at sunset as a candy-colored low rider drives by with the smell of tanning lotion and indica tickling the senses.  It is all part of the cultural atmosphere that is LA.  

KUPPER What about car culture has inspired you so much—because car culture is synonymous with Los Angeles and there is a deep connection between your work and the Finish Fetishists?

BRINDLE I’m fascinated with materials, and the captivating effects different ones can have. I love the dynamic colors of the automotive paints that I use in so much of my work. The way the pearls and flakes of color refract under heavy clear coats of resin is mesmerizing to me. They have this chameleon-like quality, where the colors shift and change as one views them from different perspectives.

KUPPER You apprenticed with artist Eric Orr, what do you think is the greatest lesson you learned as an artist under his tutelage?

BRINDLE To take your profession seriously and to enjoy the experience of making art. 

KUPPER Your work is definitely connected to the Light and Space—as well as the Finish Fetish movement—but you are removed by a few generations and you have worked within your own genre. If you were to invent a name for that genre, what would it be?

BRINDLE I’m taking suggestions, any thoughts? Seriously though, the artists who we think of as “Light & Space” artists, often had strikingly different styles and approaches, but we think of them together because they all began to do something rather extraordinary—they began to think of their work less as “art objects” and more as a “catalyst” for heightening our perception of the space around us, space that is very often defined by light. 

So, while my work is also unique to my sensibility, it is also very much about engaging the viewer and leading them to a moment of heightened awareness, reflection, and curiosity about what we’re perceiving—all of those things that nature also inspires in us.

KUPPER Your new show exhibits two new bodies of work, Light-Glyphs, which appear almost sculptural, and Portal-Glyphs, which are painted on canvas. How do you think your work has evolved with these two new bodies of work?

BRINDLE They are a slight departure from my past work but they live in the same vein and are all part of the same trajectory over time. The Portal-Glyphs are painted using automotive paint on flat surfaces. With the Light-Glyphs, I’m now creating sculptural vessels for light to become a big part of the medium that interacts with the work internally. Light is a crucial component of the Light-Glyphs, more so than the paintings. 

The new medium allows me to create more depth and use light not only for the surfaces of the paintings but use the space to allow a more dynamic effect. 

KUPPER Can you talk about the colors you use—what comes first: the shape or the colors? 

BRINDLE The shape usually is determined before I start a work. When I’m starting a painting, I like to surround myself with as many colors as possible so I can grab the colors needed as the painting progresses.  Stopping and trying to find a color stops my flow. When the paint is right in front of me it doesn’t obstruct my flow and I can instinctively add and subtract as needed. I use a variety of colors and brands, and like mixing the paint colors, with their pearls and flakes. 

KUPPER What are you hoping to emote with your use of colors—is there a psychological significance to the colors used?

BRINDLE I’m inspired by the infinite variety of color in nature, especially how different densities of atmosphere, diffuse light into a vast spectrum of colors and moods. As I’ve evolved as an artist, painting has become more instinctual for me and they often seem to paint themselves. The choice of colors is also personal and intuitive, sort of an ebb and flow. Hopefully the work evokes an emotion in the viewer, but that’s not a premeditated objective. The works are usually created in a meditative state and hopefully that translates to the viewer. However, I would never ask, or tell, the viewer how to experience my work—it’s always an individual experience. 

KUPPER Can you talk a little bit about the relationship between the art and the viewer—what do you hope occurs through this connection?

BRINDLE I would hope the viewer has some sort of response to the work—that they might have some sort of moment of communion, if not captivation, where they slow down and take in the beauty and preciousness of a moment.  Like I mentioned above, I have no specific agenda for how one views and reacts to my work—but do hope that it does touch, move or inspire some of them. 

 KUPPER Is there a tension between the painting and the three-dimensional works?

BRINDLE I don’t feel there is tension between the paintings and the sculptural work. They’re from the same family but speak through different mediums. The mediums are different so the process is different. The paintings are very intimate and happen with fast decisions. With the wall sculptures, (the Light-Glyphs), the intimate thoughts happen before the construction even begins - and then the logical, problem solving happens as the idea takes form. 

KUPPER Does Los Angeles still inspire you?

BRINDLE It does, and as with most things, some days more than others.

CASPER BRINDLE LIGHT | GLYPHS WILL BE ON VIEW UNTIL NOVEMBER 5, 2021 at WILLIAM TURNER GALLERY, 2525 Michigan Ave. E-1 Santa Monica, 90404

Omer Arbel and Kulapat Yantrasast Dream Of Biological Concrete 

YSMP0221 2.jpg

The Vancouver-based designer and founder of Bocci, and LA-based Thai starchitect discuss the violence of architecture, sustainability and evolving in the age of material technology. 

Kulapat Yantrasast: Are you focusing on more installations these days?

 Omer Arbel: I love lighting, but in addition to an installation-based practice, where we do one-offs and very, very large monstrous, gigantic works that mostly have to do with light, I have returned to the architectural practice after a ten-year hiatus. What I am trying to do is cross all the disciplines and knit together a way of working where it doesn’t matter if it’s a commercial item, or a one-off, or a piece of architecture. There is a philosophy that unites all the work. And that is the idea, that a material and its intrinsic properties, chemistry, the mechanics and the physics of a material, are the generating impetus for form.

Yantrasast: So, a form flows from material kind of thing?  

Arbel: No, I just kind of tease or encourage the materials to get formed.  

Yantrasast: Isn’t that what Louis Kahn says, “You say to a brick, 'What do you want, brick?’”

Arbel: Yeah, exactly, but it’s already a brick. But we have to take a step back and think about clay. Or I try to find this transformation on a molecular level, and then try to see if I could allow that transformation to express...  

Yantrasast: Kind of like cooking almost? 

Arbel: Yes, exactly. I am very comfortable with that. Like cooking.  

Yantrasast: So, is concrete a protein?  

Arbel: I read the other day that concrete is the most abundant material on the planet other than water. That is kind of depressing. I have always loved concrete, concrete is the most amazing material, but it’s problematic because it produces almost ten percent of the carbon in the atmosphere. We should all stop using it, we should stop building things out of concrete, but my love for it is too great to stop.  

Yantrasast: Concrete needs a new binding agent.

Arbel: The only thing evil about it is cement. We just need to find replacements for cement. And there are, there are all these companies now using other kinds of binders. I even heard the other day that there is a biological one, like a bacteria, that replaces the cement. Imagine, so your concrete is kind of alive, you have to feed it, water it. (laughs)  

 Yantrasast: Yeah, like some kind of mushroom.

Arbel: It’s super great. We’ll see, but yes, I love concrete. I am finding ways to work with it differently. I have always been depressed by the fact that concrete’s liquidity or plasticity is not expressed in most constructions that you see. Everything is rectangular, and I think that’s dishonest in the highest order to the material’s nature, on the one hand, but also super wasteful, and expensive. So, we have worked with four or five different ways of trying to do that, developing a method of forming that allows the concrete to sort of express itself. And I want to keep going, especially with this whole idea of thinking of it as an animal instead of a liquid stone, a living organism in some sense. Then, what are the formal implications of that?

Yantrasast: It is a very classic ingredient, from Roman times even, but we haven’t evolved much from that in an age when you are 3D-printing buildings. When I saw your house, you seem to long for concrete to collaborate better with other materials. Can you talk about that?

 Arbel: So, the starting point, called 75, is this idea of trying to develop another way of forming concrete. And the thought we had was to pour it into fabrics instead of a wood framework, because fabrics stretch, and it responds to the weight of the material. In the experiments we also discovered that just naturally, because of the way a fabric stretches, it swells in exactly the places that you need it to be thicker from a structural perspective. So there is kind of an intrinsic efficiency. We developed a series of, what we call, the lily pads or the reverse trumpet forms. It is essentially a series of geotextiles, which is a woven tarp stretched between plywood ribs. Everything is organized in a radial pattern that flute up, in some instances as high as 30 ft. tall. Our approach to that architecture is to think of it almost as if they were found objects. As if I had arrived at the site and discovered these ruins of archeological remains that are sort of aggressive.   

Yantrasast: Yeah, in the last ten years, you know, people have dealt with quite a bit of that, because at the end of the day, you need a cavity, and you need the concrete to define that cavity. 

Arbel: The house is on an agricultural field. I was always moved by this Edward Hopper painting, where the field came right up to the edge of the house. So, we thought of the agricultural field almost as if it were a carpet draped over this archeological site.   

Yantrasast: You are known as a lighting designer. Is light material, and if so, what is the DNA of light?

 Arbel: This is a theme that I keep returning to, which is the idea of thickening an atmosphere. When you go to Mexico City, or a city that is very polluted, you see that the sunbeams have to go through so much particulate on the way to your eye. It’s depressing, but it’s also the most beautiful thing, and it captures the nuance of light and texture. And I think that is something I try to do in the architectural projects, but also in my lighting practice. And in the installation work, is this idea of thickening the atmosphere, almost thinking of light as if it were liquid, and trying to place many things in its way. I was thinking of the rooms as if there were giant sponges sucking in light as if it were a liquid. That might come from a childhood spent in the desert environment, where sun was abundant and syrupy, not like here where it is very crisp, a much dustier sort of light.   

Yantrasast: I remember a long time ago, I took Toyo Ito, who is a good friend and someone I admire, I met him in Japan, but we went to Thailand together, he loved Thailand. He was so fascinated by Thai rivers. In Japan, the water is so clear, almost like sake, and maybe because it’s a mountainous country,  the river is flowing quite fast to go to the ocean. Whereas in Thailand it is almost like a very thick soup. It is kind of an alluvial plain and we don’t have a lot of mountains. The water is flowing very slowly to the ocean. Because of the soil and everything, it is very brownish, sticky. And, he was blown away by the fact that even water is so different. Even though his work was sort of all about transparency and clarity, he liked that water can thicken. That also makes us human, that makes us more organic. Of course, you are making something very humane, something that people can live in.

Arbel: Because architecture is violent, I think, when it’s good architecture it has a kind of violence to it.  

Yantrasast: Yeah. 

Arbel: And to start to think of the idea of domesticity, or even the idea of coziness. These things are at odds with the violence of architecture. The best architecture is able to make the violence comfortable. 

Yantrasast: I thought a lot about that too, which comes back to the subject of order and chaos. I think the art of architecture needs to have a sense of clarity. It is monumental, it is inhumane in scale, and it has to be a manifesto of something that is not alive itself, even though it grew out of life. It has to be surreal. Look at the results of modernism, whether it is Chandigarh or Brasilia. Like you say, it is so violent, it is so out of human sentiment and logic that it’s hostile.  

Arbel: Yes.  

Yantrasast: What are some of your design principles? 

Arbel: It has been to find form in an intrinsic material quality. Like you mentioned, you can 3D print with concrete, you can 3D print with anything. It is true that in the next decade, or next two decades, we will be at a point where anything that can be imagined we will be able to create and produce in perfect fidelity, printed in any kind of material. So, imagine a world where we can make anything. What is worthwhile? What should we make? It becomes a really hard problem and so, for me, the forms on some level are born of a very specific chemical reaction, or mechanical action.

Yantrasast: So, let’s talk about sustainability. It’s a big word. 

Arbel: Yeah, there are two ways to talk about it. One thing that I think about is if we have buildings, or objects, that have a cultural relevance, that are purely made to delight people, then it is less likely to be demolished or replaced. That is the most basic sustainability principle for architecture. The second thing is the trench warfare of being involved in making anything where you have to constantly be aware. I love concrete so much but learned that concrete is just this toxic and evil material that is dumping all this carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. What is the answer? Stop using concrete? No, you need to find ways to work with concrete, find out who is working with new kinds of concrete. We did an analysis on the fabric forming method and found that there is forty percent less embodied energy in these forms. Because fabric is just easier to stretch than wood would be to nail together. Way less materials, they are not thrown away after.  

Yantrasast: I think, when you look at the history of concrete, people were actually efficient before. If you look at someone like Anton García-Abril, who made that chapel, he put the hay in there and he put the concrete over the hay and when it was done he sent a cow to eat the hay. A lot of this really depends on these specific locations. But I love your idea of how we evolve in the age of material technology. What about your new space in Berlin? Is it like a showroom?  

Arbel: No, it’s like an old foundry. It’s enormous; it’s like five buildings. We have been active in Berlin for eight years and at the moment we occupy a courthouse. It was a derelict courthouse when we found it; 150 years old. It has been renovated and it has been, up to now, our showroom where we have been able to exhibit things. I was always thinking of it more as a library for old ideas. All our experiments end up there. We generally don’t respond to opportunities, we just produce work. And then when opportunities come we sort of match the idea to the opportunity. It served as an archive of ideas, and also as a laboratory to explore new pieces before they were ready. 

Yantrasast: Most of the objects are being made in Vancouver?  

Arbel: Yes, everything is made in Vancouver. We have a few small collaborations with glass shops in the Czech Republic, the bohemian glass region of the Czech republic. But most of the work is made in our studio. 

Yantrasast: We just announced a very big opera house in Russia, in which we have a big glass chandelier. I do like the idea of how light is not explored enough in architectural thinking. It’s always an afterthought. I was reading a book this morning about the Light and Space artists in LA. You have someone like James Turrell, you have Peter Alexander, and you have the Venice School. It did not talk about the theory; it did not talk about the execution of it. So, how has the art of Light and Space, which is so prominent in Southern California, never penetrated beyond the surface? A lot of people are now bringing music, bringing colors, and perceptions, and smells, into this fundamental art form. And I feel like that is fundamental, it is architecture. I want light to come in and, like you mentioned, the space would be like a sponge. And how is this sponge absorbing light, not just passively reacting to it? It feels like the art form of the future. Any thoughts on that?   

Arbel: It just sounds great. (laughs)

Yantrasast: Because as an architect you make space, you make objects and material. But as a lighting designer you create objects that illuminate.

Arbel: An object occupies the space. It perhaps has architectural ramifications, but in general is surrounded by empty space. But as an architect you create the outlines of the empty space. So it’s kind of the opposite approach. And I always think that architects make great sculptors or industrial designers but it does not really work the other way around. Industrial designers do a terrible, terrible job when they try to make space. And I think it is because you can’t think of a building as just a big object.

Yantrasast: Yeah, you are absolutely right. Even someone like Sottsass, who had really set a strong language, but when I see some of his houses, I’m like, “Hmmm.” But I think, as you say, this art of space and form as an architect, in a way, we are making space, but we are also making form. The Europeans tend to be better at space because they don’t have a lot of forms to build. The whole thing was already built. The Asians tend to be more form-based because there are a lot of places to build. There is almost a kind of dichotomy. But, more and more, people find difficulty with space, space is not real for most people anymore, because of digital media. Now you zoom in, you zoom out on the computer, and the scale of it is completely odd. You can’t put yourself into it. It is troubling in a sense, but it also gives you a sense of freedom.

This interview was published in Autre’s Spring/Summer 2020 “Edge Of Chaos” issue. Omer Arbel will present a new solo exhibition of architectural works in progress at Aedes Architekturforum in Berlin. From 28th August until 22nd October, 2020, the show 75, 86, 91, 94 will document a series of major innovations within Arbel’s ongoing experimental practice. Kulapat Yantrasast is a founding partner and Creative Director of wHY. He and his team are working on multiple current projects.

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A Conversation Between Maurizio Cattelan and Sasha Grey

SASHA GREY I first met you on a desert island in the Mediterranean where cell phones only worked at any one of the three restaurants on the island, and the group we were with did everything together. There was no daily plan, we followed only the rhythm of the island, and the house we were in (yours) was minimal to the bone. No Internet, no TV, no modern distractions and the common area was outside, or on the stairs leading to the kitchen. A few friends seemed assaulted by the setup. I guess you could call it a tech detox; it was like hitting a reset button. It really forced people to socialize in a way that used to be normal, only a decade ago. Do you see this as a social experiment?

MAURIZIO CATTELAN Yes. I arrived in Filicudi 30 years ago. There were only donkeys back then, on the island. There was no water, electricity, phone lines or cars. Things started improving 15 years ago when water and electricity finally arrived. This made a huge impact. The island though, was resistant to change. Cellphone reception is still sparse and not easily accessible. Every summer, I wonder why I itch to go back. The sea is all there is. There are no attractions and only a handful of local restaurants and bars. There is no structure on this island. It is deserted and very quiet. The silence is what I like. It slows everything down. It helps me pay attention to the little things. Simplicity runs this island. It sends me back to my childhood, when everything was new and amazing. 

SASHA GREY You left instagram with a final post encouraging people to create something wonderful outside of social media. Much of what you do is a satirical statement to get people to think and reflect, and we are all aware that social media is not always the best tool for that. Did you feel you had a responsibility to step away?

MAURIZIO CATTELAN I started "The Single Post Instagram" page to feature a new story every day, keeping it to just one post on my feed at all times. I don't like the idea of saving posts. It is distracting and it makes me feel vulnerable. I was active for a year and a half. It was not easy but it was fun. I enjoyed engagement through my captions and photos. It was great until I stopped learning from it. That was my end. I prefer to fill my existential anxiety with other things like meeting friends, reading, working and visiting galleries. At this point, I would rather sit and watch a construction site. It is more exciting to me than scrolling through Instagram.

SASHA GREY That being said, Toilet Paper, the magazine you co-founded does have a social media presence and it undoubtedly feels like you. How closely does the Toilet Paper crew work together on each issue? 

MAURIZIO CATTELAN Toilet Paper is my extended family. The magazine is a collaboration with Pierpaolo Ferrari and a very large number of people with many different skill sets. We never know what we are getting into. It is always a surprise. We are like parasites, hunting for anything we can suck on with nothing precise in mind. It is truly magic. 

SASHA GREY Economics have always dictated art in one way or another, and tend to follow class structures. What advice would you give to young artists that don’t come from the top of the hierarchy who struggle with equal representation within these social structures, especially when many young artists struggle to pay the rent?

MAURIZIO CATTELAN I came late into the art world. I had many jobs that taught me how to survive. I had no experience or professional training. It is all about believing in yourself, working and obsessively learning. Do what pleases you and stick to it. My advice is to be humble and generous with your ideas. There is something to learn from everyone/everything. Go out and see as many shows of all types. Good luck will come to you if you are good-hearted and positive. Lastly, never make the same mistake twice, make it five of six times...just to be certain.

SASHA GREY How do you deal with doubt?

MAURIZIO CATTELAN I doubt myself all the time. I consider it a friend of mine. It grounds me and I question myself a lot. In the end, I always go with my gut. I move forward even when I feel like I am skating on thin ice. I have come to find: the thinner the ice, the less I doubt myself.

SASHA GREY Of course, we'd like to know the physical and conceptual process of how “Comedian” came into existence on a wall at Art Basel Miami. I heard that it was something that you have been thinking about for a while, but was installing the sculpture at the fair or using fresh produce impromptu?  

MAURIZIO CATTELAN Up until a certain point. My first attempt was with an eggplant. As you know, it did not work out. This piece took a year. It became an obsession. I produced many replicas, out of different materials. Nothing captures the essence of a banana like a real banana. It’s easier to forge money, I promise you. 

SASHA GREY Were you surprised by the frenzy or do you consider the frenzy part of the art? Is there a relational aesthetic component to the sculpture?  

MAURIZIO CATTELAN  Once a piece is presented, the artist is no longer in charge. It has to talk directly to the public. It has to charm and defend itself. Sometimes there are events that make a piece more interesting. “America” is the perfect example. A fully functional toilet made out of 18-karat solid gold. It attracted thousands of visitors at the Guggenheim and it made an appearance at the White House. It was last seen at the Blenheim Palace, stolen on the opening night of my show. Sort of like an unwritten surreal heist movie.

 SASHA GREY The banana is rife with a lot of symbolism, is there a sociopolitical undertone to sculpture?

MAURIZIO CATTELAN All ideologies have symbols. An elephant, a donkey, a hammer and sickle…. Perhaps it is now time for the banana to find its own republic.

SASHA GREY Someone ate the sculpture as part of a "performance," the gallery seemed visibly upset by this, but were you? 

MAURIZIO CATTELAN No, not at all. It was the right time. The banana was going bad and needed to be replaced.

SASHA GREY What are your feelings about art fairs? 

MAURIZIO CATTELAN Unless to be killed, never take a cow to the slaughter house.

SASHA GREY Autre's new issue deals with some of the prevalent themes of the past decade including the magnified impact of influence in the digital age—whether that's social influence or political influence—how do you think this has affected art and the way that artists approach their work, whether personally or in general?  

MAURIZIO CATTELAN I always wonder what the Renaissance would have been like with the existence of Photoshop and social media. Would The Pieta and Mona Lisa be the same pieces we know today? Each age has its own tools and obsessions. The success of an artist used to be validated by gallery shows and museum appearances. Today the most interesting artists engage directly with the audience. Like selfie-driven installations. Things that are easy to post and understand. Readily available to fill the growing demand of content for the media. I think aesthetics play a huge role when it comes to art. Like any successful model, it’s important to be photogenic, attractive and easily reproducible.

Click here to purchase this interview in print! Comes with a special peel-able banana sticker.

Rebel Debutante: An Interview of Chelsea Mak On Her New Collection Inspired By The Sunlit Sexuality Of Los Angeles

Chelsea Mak is very much a Los Angeles clothing label. It is imbued with the intricate contradictions of a city that is impossible to replicate: diverse and homogeneous, rebellious and formal, old and new money. It’s a city with invasive palm trees and an image invented by outsiders; a glamour perpetrated by movies and popular songs. But only a native Angeleno could dream up a clothing label that plays with these stereotypes. Last week, Chelsea Mak premiered a video, entitled Lost Spirit, for the new SS20 collection at Zebulon in Los Angeles. Inspired by a gorgeously composed song by Paul Dally, and based on the mood of the collection, the video is an idiosyncratic 8mm love letter to a city permanently bathed in a kind of blurring, dissociative sunlight that shines over crystalline swimming pools and wide lane boulevards. We got a chance to ask Chelsea a few questions about her new collection and label. 

 Autre: What was the impetus for starting the Chelsea Mak label?

Chelsea Mak: It was the need for creative expression and having my own voice.  It was honestly also the result of a mental breakdown. I was at a point in my life when I was being pulled into all these different directions professionally and personally that resulted in me hitting the life-reset button hard. I didn't know why at the moment, but there was something 'missing' in my life, and I guess it was this.

Autre: What did you do before fashion?

Mak: I always did fashion!  I had a small stint in fashion PR before doing design, but for the most part I was a designer. I spent the most formative years of my career at Band of Outsiders with Scott Sternberg, who very much shaped who I am as a designer.  I also designed for other LA brands, like Current Elliott, Raquel Allegra and Entireworld before Chelsea Mak.

Autre: Chelsea Mak has really interesting silhouettes in its collections - pattern-wise, how would you define the look of the brand?

Mak: Forgiving and versatile.  So much of womenswear out there is so overtly sexy and form fitting, nipped, tucked and uptight. Or it goes the other way and you're wearing a sack.  The silhouettes speak to the brand’s message, which says you can be elegant/cool, revealing/tasteful, laid back/proper all at the same time.

 Autre: Can you describe the inspiration or mood behind the new collection?

Mak: I was inspired by a few different things, in no particular order: Los Angeles, Sarah Morris’ film 'Abu Dhabi', the 80s, sex, spirituality, and Joel Chen of JF Chen's Instagram.

Because the brand is based here I really wanted to tie the collection back to LA.  I always get such a sense of Los Angeles when driving through Hancock Park and that sorta led me into an obsession with the community and houses there. 

I also watched this amazing film by Sarah Morris called 'Abu Dhabi' while visiting White Cube gallery in Hong Kong last fall. It's very political and I am in no way inspired by that, but the colors in the film are amazing.  There's a lot of driving through the arid deserts of Abu Dhabi - dusty blues, sand tones, the ocean, and then pops of bright colors from commercialism. That piece very much informed the color palette of the collection.

The 80's — I'm always inspired by the 80's. I like to describe the brand’s muse as if Norma Kamali skipped cotillion and went to a punk show. Then the next day had to have dim sum with her godfather before going to an internship in her 80's power suit.

Sex / Spirituality – Everyone seems to be really into spirituality right now — seeking higher meanings, deeper connectivity, finding self.  Maybe it’s LA, or maybe it’s just me, but this year has involved a lot of diving in and doing work on myself. I feel like I've only scratched the surface.  Spirituality, love, sex, self is all one for me.

Autre: You utilize some really interesting fabrics, where do you go to source the materials for your collections? 

Mak: Most of the collection is made from deadstock silks that I find in the local fabric markets in Shanghai.  No one uses silk taffeta and silk shantung nowadays because it seems so dated and old lady but I'm very drawn to it.

Autre: The video you made for the new collection is fantastic, it’s a paean to Los Angeles but also to Hancock Park - is it the architecture, the beauty, the people?

 Mak: Yes! The architecture. I follow JF Chen's Instagram who is a family friend on Instagram and he's always posting these amazing homes in Hancock Park while he goes on neighborhood strolls. Something stuck to me and inspired me.  Also low key obsessed with the people — I'm not sure it's kosher to say I'm obsessed with the Hassidic Jewish community but I'm just fascinated because it's a community I'm not apart of. It feels secret and mystical.

Autre: You mentioned that each piece in the collection is named after a street in Hancock Park. 

Mak: Yes! Each piece is named after a street in Hancock Park. I always name my styles something funny. Last season all the pieces were named after famous Chinese movie stars from the 80's.  It's whatever I want to tie the collection back to.

Autre: The song in the video is great, was it composed exclusively for the video?

Mak: Yes, 'Lost Spirit' was written and composed by Paul Dally exclusively for the collection.  I discovered Paul Dally through Reverberation Radio earlier this year and listened to his album New American on repeat during the inception of this season.  It's very somber and heart wrenching and spoke to me so much, so that I knew I needed to get in touch with the artist and see if he would do a piece together.  

Autre: How did you and Paul Dally communicate the mood for the video? 

Mak: After a brief intro via DM on Instagram, I emailed Paul with the mood board and described this 'journey' I was feeling for the muse, which was the search for love through spirituality. But in doing so, ultimately surrendering and finding herself.  I wanted the song and the film to feel like an emotional wash more than anything and I was really specific about that.

There was a sense of simpatico right off the bat.  He asked me a bunch of questions in return but before I got a chance to answer them he sent a song over and it really hit the nail on the head. The first song he sent me was a 'go’ and the only big edit we really did was to make it more upbeat for the film so the viewer wouldn’t get too sad.  The original edit is pretty melancholy.

Autre: You are a native Angeleno, how does the city reflect in the label?

Mak: I grew up in San Marino, a stone’s throw from LA proper with landmarks like the Huntington Library and the Norton Simon Museum in my backyard so there’s that sort of Old LA, old world, buttoned up style that you can really feel in Chelsea Mak.

My mom and I were in this mother/daughter organization called National Charity League. It’s funny because while this meant we had “made it” into this part of Pasadena society, we were still one of the two Chinese American families and we were very much outsiders. I remember almost missing my debutante tea because I got too stoned the night before and slept in at my boyfriend’s house.  My parents had sent my best friend (one of the cinematographers of “‘Lost Spirit’) to get me the morning of. I remember her speeding down the 110 freeway to get me to the Biltmore Hotel downtown. It’s not a proud moment but informs this rebel debutante vibe that’s very brand, that and being Chinese.

I’m also always super inspired by how all the kids dress at shows like at the Echoplex or warehouse parties when I used to go to them.  And all the skaters you see on the Eastside, maybe more influential in attitude than anything. So there’s really a lot of LA in a lot of different ways.

Autre: Who are some of your ultimate style icons? 

Oh man, this is hard.  Sometimes I wish I could dress more like a man than a woman — Pablo Picasso, Bernard Sumner in the 80s, all the ladies who lunch.

Autre: What kind of advice would you give to young designers starting out in a rapidly evolving retail economy?

Mak: I think the advice I would give is...be authentic to your vision, stay humble and don't be afraid to ask for help.   No matter how much you think you know or think you can do yourself, there's always someone else with more experience, connections or even just more time.  And when it's your turn don't forget to pay it forward.

Click here to shop Chelsea Mak

Soft Power: An Interview Of Nathaniel Mary Quinn

 

text and interview by Adam Lehrer
portrait by Kyle Dorosz

 

In the late artist Mike Kelley’s 1993 essay on visualizations of Freud’s “uncanny,” a term referring to the feeling of confronting something simultaneously alien and yet familiar, he connected manifestations of the sensation to memory. “This sensation is tied to the act of remembering,” wrote Kelley. But Kelley also made the claim that the uncanny sensation is typically one of dread or muted horror. And to be sure, many of the art works that Kelley wrote about in regards to the uncanny and showed in the exhibition he curated based on his text; Hans Bellmer’s anatomical dolls, Cindy Sherman’s photographs of fetish dolls (partially influenced by Bellmer’s constructions), Ron Mueck’s hyper-realist figurative sculpture of a teenage girl in a black swimsuit, etc; are connected by horror. But is it possible for an object, or an art object more specifically, to evoke the uncanny in a positive light? Can an uncanny artwork actually uplift the viewer or make him/her aware of his/her alterity and connection to the universe at the same time? Historically, I would have said no. But that was before I came to know and love the work of New York-based artist Nathaniel Mary Quinn.

Quinn’s work, renderings of bold and psychologically dense painted and drawn portraits, often look like collages upon one-dimensional viewing. Quinn depicts the human face with a network of symbols that often illustrate the humanities and complexities of his subjects infinitely more than a realistic rendering of facial attributes ever could. It is upon closer inspection that these fragmented faces are actually created with oil and pastel paint applied through a highly skillful technique of using certain oils to prevent the component parts of the portrait from bleeding into one another. The result is a very peculiarly uncanny image.

From one perspective, the fragmentations and symbolizations of human faces can feel strange and disorienting. But Quinn’s work is also deeply humanitarian. He himself has lived an incredibly painful life, having lost his mother and been abandoned by his father at a young age, and has emerged at the other end as one of the most important artists of his generation. It’s not that his work suggests anything close to the neoliberal dictum of “pick yourself up by your bootstraps,” on the contrary, it suggests that all humans are connected by our traumas, our sadness, and our pain. But this notion in Quinn’s work isn’t horrific in the sense that the uncanny is usually understood to be. Going back to Kelley’s essay, Quinn’s work does evoke troubling memories but it also addresses the fact that we all are haunted by uncomfortable memories and finds beauty in the universal nature of trauma. Quinn’s work is an uncanny that makes you feel more connected to the world than isolated from it. Perhaps this emotional resonance is what has pushed Quinn’s work beyond the confines of art world insularity and into the spotlight of mass recognition and, evidently, major collector interest. “Even when people look at something that might be alien to them, or even disgusting, abject, uncomfortable to look at,” says Quinn. “They know they are looking at something with a real emotional resonance to it.”

When I last spent time with Quinn in 2017, he was on the cusp of major art world success. And now, after having been signed to Gagosian Gallery in April and about to be the subject of his first Gagosian solo show in Beverly Hills, that success has undeniably arrived. Over the last two years, Quinn has been pushing his practice deeper into an inner psychological space. The work that will be on display at Gagosian plumbs the depths of his psyche. More and more, his work seeks to render his own insecurities and difficult remembrances. The kernels of self-doubt that are omnipresent but often left unspoken are filtered into Quinn’s pictorial space. The aesthetic of the works that will be shown at Gagosian hue closer to abstraction than works made by Quinn in the past, generating a space of empathy and consciousness raising for both artist and viewer alike. “What does it look like to make a work that renders an insecurity?” asks Quinn. “I would say this: empathy and vulnerability are tools in my practice as important as charcoal and pastels. This is what I’m pursuing.” 

Quinn’s first Gagosian solo show, Hollow and Cut, will feature thirty-six works ranging from 16x13 inches to 96x48 inches. Talking to Quinn by telephone, he is equally excited and restless. This is a monumental point in his career: his first solo show with the world’s most profitable gallery.  He understands what the weight of a show at Gagosian, a gallery subject to praise and criticism in equal measure, holds for his future. But he also is filled with an immense sense of pride, and he has earned it: Quinn has emerged as one of the most important contemporary painters in the world. “You want to make sure you come out strong,” he says of the impending opening. “But you can't think about the public when making your work. Your concern has to be your practice and creating.”

ADAM LEHRER: So, last time we were together you were on the cusp of success. Now you're on your first solo show with Gagosian.

NATHANIEL MARY QUINN: The good thing about Gagosian is you can create the bedrock of a career that you want. They have the resources to materialize that for you. Larry, c’mon man, he has relationships with all the museums, the directors, even if they have somewhat of a...

LEHRER: Weary relationship...

QUINN: Yeah, they have to deal with him. He's like the emperor. Gagosian generates up to a billion dollars every year in art sales. David Zwirner is number two and they earn 500 million dollars. I was in a different place the last time we met, I was growing. Now, here we are again, man, with Gagosian Gallery. I can't believe it.

NATHANIEL MARY QUINN
C'mo' And Walk With Me, 2019
Black charcoal, gouache, soft pastel, oil pastel on Coventry Vellum Paper
50 x 38 inches / 127 x 96.5 cm
© Nathaniel Mary Quinn
Photo: Rob McKeever
Courtesy Gagosian

LEHRER: What is the psychological impact of knowing that you are at the top of the art world food chain, so to speak? Is it pressure-inducing or is it freeing to know that so many more people are going to be seeing your work?

QUINN:It is freeing on one hand because of the gallery’s resources. As of five years ago, I had to pack all my own work. I remember [my wife] Donna and I used to ship it all out ourselves. We don't do that shit anymore. That's exciting.

In regards to the pressure, I think it would be fair to say that I feel some pressure. Any time you're making art in the public sphere it will present some pressure. If you're the kind of artist like myself, engaged in the exploration of the self, or finding ways to lay your wounds and memories bare and trying to make that visual, it presents pressure. But that is then coupled with the fact that it's Gagosian Gallery! Now, there are collectors interested in the work for any number of reasons. You start to think, “What would happen if someone finally places my work on public auction?" But you can't worry about it. Some collector is always going to be seduced by the alluring nature of generating a large profit off the work.

With that, I'll tell you, I'm very excited. For me, it's a big deal man. I think it's quite an achievement.

LEHRER: I'm psyched for you. Given these last few years, your work has obviously evolved a bit. What would you say distinguishes the works in this show compared to works of the past?

QUINN: This [show] is very personal. It’s called Hollow and Cut. When you remove whatever you've been taught to believe in, when you have cut and hollowed out all the exterior layers, what remains? This show is a courageous pursuit of excavating my internal self. I have deeply rooted insecurities. I don't talk about it much, but I don't feel worthy sometimes. These works are reflections of my fears and doubts. I did a piece called “How Come Not Me.” It's a small work on paper. When I was in high school, we had a thing called Parents’ Weekend. At that point my family was gone from my life. And I'd think "How Come Not me?” Until this day I struggle with that.

These ideas, these insecurities about my life or my looks, are tied into the actual creation of the work. I'm constantly pushing my practice. For this show I knew that I had to move to that next level in my work, so I used a more abstract approach. Even doing that was very challenging because you go through high school, college, grad school and you are making art the whole way through and then you find yourself making art a certain kind of way. That doesn't mean the work you are making is a real reflection or what you can do; it just means you've been trained or conditioned to make art in a certain way. But to make work that is closer to where you are emotionally in and of itself requires a lot of courage and doggedness. You have to go for it. l. 

LEHRER: Yes, this reminds me of that quote by the great pessimist philosopher Emil Cioran "Chaos is rejecting all you have learned. Chaos is being yourself." In a sense you are tapping into this inner turmoil, or chaos, to boldly visualize your psyche, and push yourself further into the art making process.

QUINN: Yes, that’s perfectly placed. For example, normally in my work I would draw an eye, or a nose would represent a nose, but if I'm trying to articulate these deeply embedded insecurities within me, my fears and my doubts and a sense of unworthiness, then what I am trying to articulate is not actually definitive. It's not a real figure. It's an affectation. How do you visualize that? I'm not saying I achieved that in the show, but I've made progress from work one to work thirty-five. By the time I got to the 35th work, it began to take on the kind of abstraction I had been aiming for. It feels much more palpable to me, much more honest, much more real. Much more free. Most people don't want to be free. They want to comply. And fall in line. Freedom requires real courage. You have to fight to be free.

LEHRER: Despite the often uncanny aesthetic in your work, you have broken out to a mass audience. What do you think it is that enables people who aren’t so versed in the avant-garde to connect with your work?

QUINN: Let’s go to Beyoncé. I love Beyoncé. She makes great songs. She’s a superstar. We all know this. Then you got Mary J. Blige and she can't sing anywhere near as well as Beyoncé. And, although she can't sing that well, she's good! She's not Beyoncé, or Aretha, but what she does is real. Potent. Visceral. You know what she's saying and how she's saying it is honest and pure. But when you present something real, people believe it. 

LEHRER: Is this bravery, this courage to find freedom, something you are constantly looking for in art across all media?

QUINN: I think it's important to understand that you can't grasp the scope of humanity within one tradition of art. You have to look at all of it: comedy, film, poetry, reading essays and books. Public speaking. Not just art but all forms of work and all traditions of creation must be dealt with and confronted or perused at the very least. So I'll look at a Dave Chapelle; this guy works very hard to be free. Because this guy's fighting for his right to speak his mind as a comedian, his first job is to be funny. And in addition to being funny, he's a cultural critic. He observes the culture, and criticizes it, and tries to portray it in a different light. 

I look at the works of artists like Yue Minjun, Adrian Gheni, or Neo Rauch because they have a certain freedom in their work. So many artists are afraid to confront who they are. They continue to feel empty in the face of their achievements. Why is that? [Art] isn’t just technique, skill and rendering, it is an activity in which empathy and vulnerability are necessities. I'm not just moving the needle in my work; I'm moving the needle in me. I'm not a walking Instagram page. I'm not putting up a highlight reel. This is real life. No one is happy all the time. It's impossible. I want to use the work to push back on this era’s values. An era where people are ashamed to be real. 

LEHRER: In your portraits you often shun direct representations in favor of symbolic representations. But these symbols seem to illustrate the depths of you and your subjects’ complexities infinitely more than a direct rendering of physical attributes ever could. Your ability to use symbols to pierce the symbolic order and address the... 

QUINN: Make no mistake, I like to think that every artwork I make has some representational element. But there's still evidence [in this show] of me taking that courageous step forward to push beyond traditional forms of representation. We should shoot for a higher ground. A higher level. The first comedians would walk down the street and slip on a banana peel, and that was funny. That's surface comedy. But deep human comedy is where the fragility of men and women are brought to the surface. That's deep comedy, the kind that Dave Chapelle engages in. That Pryor engaged in. I wanted to make art like that.

Nathaniel Mary Quinn “Hollow And Cut” will be on view until October 19, 2019 at Gagosian Beverly Hills. 456 North Camden Drive Beverly Hills, ca 90210

NATHANIEL MARY QUINN
Jekyll and Hyde, 2019
Oil paint, paint stick, gouache, soft pastel on linen canvas, diptych
14 x 22 inches
35.6 x 55.9 cm
© Nathaniel Mary Quinn
Photo: Rob McKeever
Courtesy Gagosian

Unearthing Embedded Knowledge: An Interview Of Rosha Yaghmai On The Occasion Of Her Exhibition At The Wattis Institute

interview by Summer Bowie
photographs by Oliver Kupper

Walking into Rosha Yaghmai’s studio is a little bit like walking into the laboratory of a junkyard hoarder/mad scientist. There’s a distinctly pleasant organization to the vast collection of Los Angeles detritus that extends from the studio to the backlot outside. The walls are plastered with images from torn magazine pages, postcards, posters, watercolors and collage works. It’s as though you could hold a microscope to any detail in the room and discover a tiny world within. This is especially the case when viewing the centerpiece of her upcoming exhibition Miraclegrow at the Wattis Institute in San Francisco. In the center of the room sits a giant sculpture of a human hair. Pubic? Maybe. This mysterious hair sits on a floor which acts as a pedestal of giant, reflective bathroom tiles. Encapsulating this familiar scene, the walls are covered in large black tiles, effectively wall works that appear to drip with the glistening traces of warm condensation. The hair itself is a sedimentary composite of industrial materials, cleaning products, bathroom products, nail polish, and so much more. Layers and layers of genetic material soaked in personal history. I had the chance to sit down with Yaghmai just a few days before the works made their way up to San Francisco to talk about her upbringing as a tinkering, junk-collecting Angeleno, her work and its relationship to personal heritage, and how she so compellingly defines the cosmic in the microcosmic.

SUMMER BOWIE: I want to start by just talking about your beginning. I understand that you started as a photographer and then transitioned into sculpture. What kind of photography were you making, and why did you lose interest in it?

ROSHA YAGHMAI: I started off making photographs really young. In the sixth and seventh grade. I was really interested in taking photographs. Really quickly, when I went to photo school, I spent most of my time trying to use the chemicals to do things you aren’t supposed to do. So, I never was making straight photographs. I was always altering the image, adding weird color.... I was trying to make the photographs more like paintings, but I think I was just trying to make sculpture. I would combine Xerox’s so there was this approximation of the real that I was really interested in, which seems like a natural link between photography and sculpture. I eventually started making fake diorama-like environments with the photographs, so again, pushing into sculpture. I was at SVA in New York at the time and I ended up transferring to CalArts. As soon as I got into the desert landscape, photography was gone, and I started making sculpture. I haven’t made photographs for a long time.

BOWIE: That is interesting because you often hear of artists coming to LA, discovering its unique light and then naturally pushing into photography.

YAGHMAI: I am also from here, so it was less about that, I just wanted to create environments when I moved here.

BOWIE: The work you presented at Made in L.A., Slide Samples (Lures, Myths) includes projected slides from photographs your father took when he first emigrated to California from Iran. Have you always wanted to work with these images, or did the urge come to you recently?

YAGHMAI: They’ve always been around our house. We had this one print, and I thought it was just an eighties photo, and I didn’t think much about it. My father was interested in photography and that’s how I got into photography. I had all his cameras. etc. and I saw those slides and started making slides, but nothing like that. They [the slides] have always been lingering for years. I finally just asked him about them. I knew he had made them in Berkeley. I knew he used abstract color, they were trying to be psychedelic because of the timing, 1969-72. When I asked him about it, just the process of his thinking, it was very similar to how I was making resin that I was calling slides. He was taking hunks of glass from the Coca Cola Company in Oakland and using different sources of light and filters (light from the television, etc.) to make reflective surfaces. I thought it was an interesting, strange way to connect with a new culture but also realizing there were some similar physical properties with my work: the resin, using lenses and different filters. I think up until the Hammer most of the work that I have made was some sort of screen or a way to alter a site and I linked it with that work once I knew he had made it.

BOWIE: You were born right around the time that the Shah of Iran was overthrown.

RY: He [my father] emigrated here in the mid-60’s and my parents got married and they moved to Iran... and I was actually conceived in Iran and we lived there...then the revolution broke out and we came back to the United States...and I was born.

BOWIE: Growing up in Los Angeles, what was it like being in the wake of these events as a first-generation Iranian-American?

YAGHMAI: I think my dad was so involved with being an American person that we never really talked about that stuff... I didn’t really understand until later but I feel like...I am realizing...how in much of my work there is a subconscious draw to that...or a feeling of wanting to traverse long distances, or different perspectives comes into the work. I am so disconnected from that part of my lineage, and I could ask my family, read more about it, and I do; but, I feel like I am in the process of unearthing some embedded knowledge and I think the misunderstanding and not knowing is really generative for me.

BOWIE: That makes sense. Maybe your dad was seeing America through a lens that is slowly revealing itself to you.

YAGHMAI: He only went back to Iran maybe five or six years ago, maybe because it was so awful and painful. It never really came up.

BOWIE: You said once that you take pleasure in the sort-of trashiness of LA. What aspects of that trashiness appeal to you most?

YAGHMAI: I don’t know if it just being that I am a beach-desert person, and there’s moments in that hair that are in this zone. You know, like a piece of glittering trash like in a desert landscape. Just these little moments of collage really interest me. But in terms of trashiness, I really thrive and enjoy a casual environment. I don’t know if trashiness is the right word, but I feel like (it’s not this way anymore) the feeling of complete freedom here. But now it is not quite like that. I grew up between Alta Dena and by the beach, we would just ride our bikes out, and go to the junkyard and find weird stuff, and my grandfather was a bit of a hoarder and a handyman type. We would just be tinkering. I think that is it. Thrift store shopping and finding some weird historical gem. I also have a real interest in outsider architecture.

BOWIE: I can see the psychedelic influence of your father’s work with those weird remnants of Americana that seem to litter the streets and the junkyards that used to exist. Santa Monica and Venice were very different places back then.

YAGHMAI: It was so wild there when I was growing up and trashy. It was great! The beach towns were abandoned—it was a bunch of old people and skaters. Weird remnants. It was magical, I feel lucky I grew up here during that time.

“I am realizing how much, basically, “dusk” is my color palette. That is where the light and space of California comes into my work. It is “dusk” but it is city dusk; that moment when the sky has that color and there is the neon turning on. That in-between time...”

BOWIE: You use a lot of found materials, industrial metals, liquids, resins, do you have any favorites or least favorites?

YAGHMAI: They are all a pain (sighs). I definitely do like working with materials that are liquid to solid. In terms of favorite, detrimental to my market, I just move through and use what I want. I don’t really have the usual approach. So, this show has a completely different approach than the one at the Hammer. I do like working with transparency, like this super clear, very toxic resin. My work relates to light and space because of my history and the physical properties of the work (color and all that), but I feel like for me it is much more about collaging. So, if you have one thing that’s transparent, you're altering what you see behind it, and for me that altering and blending of sight is really important. I also really like using silicone, the type of silicone you make prosthetics out of. Platinum silicon. And that has a translucent quality too but I like using that material as an approximation or stand in for the body, clear resin and that are the two things I go back to.

BOWIE: Your work has a quality about it that invites viewers to temporarily enter a foreign world and quietly meditate there for a moment. Is this an experience you look for when viewing the work of other artists?

YAGHMAI: I think you always fantasize that you make different art. I like going into a full on crazy installation...just something that looks like a playground. So, I am not always drawn to a contemplative space... I think that in my work that kind of emerges because up until very recently I was very stubborn about (sternly, “I make objects, I want to make objects”). Yet, it is teetering on installation because these objects when in relation to one another create this sort of psychological environment and their relation to each other creates an oddity you want to linger with. I feel like this show is the first time in a while that I am making an environment. I mean each object in the show... like the floor is the pedestal for the hair and the panels are paintings and they can be separated so they are still existing as objects kind of coming together for this moment but they are not props and still are works of art, or sculptures. I really think a lot about putting things together that are a bit perplexing or strange that makes one want to linger a bit and figure it out. I think that may be the color palette. I am realizing how much, basically, “dusk” is my color palette. That is where the light and space of California comes into my work. It is “dusk” but it is city dusk; that moment when the sky has that color and there is the neon turning on. That in-between time... which I think is a very contemplative time, when you are driving around that time.

BOWIE:  Always in LA... I think you said that your color choices are kind of the most intuitive part of the process...

YAGHMAI: I made this whole series of silicones for this show in Germany and I realized they are all colors from my childhood wetsuits that were around. It just emerges, oh, of course, that’s why I’m doing that.

BOWIE: In this show, you said you wanted to create an environment that takes on a spider's perspective on the floor of a bathroom. What inspired this particular perspective?

YAGHMAI: I was really torn about what to do for this show. I feel like the Hammer project was sort of the end to a couple years of thinking. So I felt a bit stuck, to be honest, and I was trying to figure out what the next step was. I knew I wanted to make an environment. I was super frustrated, came home to the studio, threw down my jumpsuit, and I noticed (I hate spiders. Sorry, I’m trying to change my perspective on that) a spider trying to crawl into it, so I snatched it away. And the spider kind of stopped, and I was just watching, and thought, “what the hell does that thing think just happened?” So, I had this moment where I thought, if I am trying to make work that alters perspective in a very physical, literal embodied way, why wouldn’t the next step be to try to empathize and project myself into something of which I could never understand what their perspective would be. In terms of psychedelic properties, I think that’s the most honest way to go about it. I just wanted to physically remake it, but in a skewed way.

BOWIE: Has it changed your feelings towards spiders at all?

YAGHMAI: My husband got me this Louise Bourgeois book, and so obviously, she has those big spider sculptures, and she talks about them as a symbol of renewal. So, I’m trying to get into a Louise Bourgeois way of thinking about it, rather than just thinking about them crawling on me at night. So, I think I can empathize with them a little bit more. How scary must it be? I just wanted to make a direct approach to the show.

BOWIE:  There are so many materials that went into that hair sculpture. It has this sort of sedimentary value to it...can you just talk for a moment about the different materials that you used in creating it?

YAGHMAI: I mean... it is the hardest sculpture I ever made, not in a physical way, but just that you’re really fighting the form. Not to be too literal, but your hair is a shedding of some kind of skin, and I knew I wanted to cast my body and incorporate it into the work. Almost like it is carved out of some kind of stone, or I wanted to make it seem like something that happened or something that is really forced. You don’t work on growing your hair, it just happens, but if you think about all the energies that go into making it... I used a lot of materials that I’ve used before, like limestone, graphite, household plastics like shampoo bottles, laundry soap, and shopping bags. I melted those down and put them in. It’s almost like coral where it absorbs anything that is in the environment...I was thinking about that with all the chemicals in the body and how they can all be traced in a single hair. And also, thinking back to my father and my parents, and just thinking about what you absorb in your DNA, what is trapped in there, trapped knowledge that I don’t know about. I wanted to have this sort of spacey, geological tone and I was looking at images of the sand dunes on Mars, which is basically the whole brochure for the show, which is a reach, but it’s cosmic level shit. You know, like you’re sitting here and now our molecules will be tangled forever. Things that are blowing my mind. For me it is kind of fake because it is cast and modified material, but I was trying to be really genuine and putting together a lot of stuff that I’m around on the regular.

BOWIE: There seems a deep desire to capture moments or feelings in your work; to encapsulate and oppose the forces of entropy. Would you agree with that interpretation?

YAGHMAI: I think so...there is so much in my work that is the familiar becoming foreign, and so there's this flip all the time of something so familiar (that maybe you take for granted) turning on you. I feel just that awkwardness—making you aware of your existence, of your body interacting with the object.

BOWIE: You have referred to the desire to freeze time, but is that something you feel like you want to do permanently or temporarily, and if so, for how long, what is that desire to hold things in space?

YAGHMAI: I mean, that’s sculpture. If I had one power, it would be to stop time. You know when you play that game. Just slowing down the process and pointing to that one thing and using force to stop that moment or those moments and to have it on display. Not that my work is usually that figurative, but to slow it down. Having a one-on-one relationship between the object and the viewer.


Rosha Yaghmai's exhibition Miraclegrow opens on January 15th and runs until March 30th at The Wattis Institute. 360 Kansas St, San Francisco, CA 94103

Rough Cuts: An Interview Of Chuck Arnoldi On The Occasion Of His Show At Desert Center Los Angeles

Some interesting facts about leopards: they are solitary animals that hunt in open terrains, they are difficult to track in the wild, they are extremely adaptable to new environments, and they often leave claw marks on trees to mark their territory. In Chuck Arnoldi’s expansive Venice Beach studio, a dusty, taxidermied leopard is perched, mid-roar, above the kitchen alcove. There is something strangely symbolic about this once ferocious, now inert genus of panthera.  Arnoldi is not a hunter, but he is quick to note that this leopard is one of the best examples of taxidermy in the world. Among the Cool School cohort of artists, like Ed Ruscha, Billy Al Bengston, and Larry Bell, Arnoldi may be the lesser known, but he may also be the most prolific. His chainsaw sculptures – which can be quickly described as chunks of painted wood with blade marks slashed into them – are his most well known, his Girl From Ipanema. They are dangerous and allude to his misfit youth. These hyper-mystical geometries can also be seen in his Machu Picchu paintings, which mimic the mysterious architecture of the ancient Incan citadel. Arnoldi’s latest show at Desert Center, entitled Rough Cuts, includes a number of recent chainsaw paintings made in and around the Yukon. A day after the Woolsey Fire broke out and threatened the artist’s home in Malibu, we sat down at his studio for a chat.

OLIVER KUPPER: First off, I want to talk about the fire because it came very close to your property in Malibu, what did you do to fight off the fires? 

CHUCK ARNOLDI:  We weren’t going to leave because I have so much art in the house--I have a little Warhol I got for nothing...that is worth two million dollars, you know. We felt comfortable, because the house is quite high up there. We knew if the fire came, we could always go to the beach. If you go up to our roof, you could see the stuff coming. They looked like atom bombs, flames a hundred feet tall. I didn’t think my house was going to burn. I took the Calder and the Warhol...I got a lot of stuff, about a hundred-fifty pieces of art at least in the house. I took it all outside and put it in different places. It took me 25,000 steps to take it out and 25,000 steps back to take it back.

KUPPER: The fires tune in to your work in a way, because some of your most well known works deal with using discarded materials or recycled materials, like your stick paintings, which came from a burned down orchard, can you talk a little bit about that?

ARNOLDI: I had an artist friend from Malibu and he told me one day, there is an orchard...and it had oranges and avocados and he told me to go steal some fruit. It was his special little thing…he’s an odd guy. So we were out there stealing oranges and avocados. The perimeter had all these leaves that had burned off, and they looked like charcoal lines. I thought those are beautiful, so I took my sticks back to the studio. The first piece I made, I took four sticks and tied them together at the end and I put two nails and hung it on the wall. It’s really about something being the sum of its parts, gravity.

KUPPER: Is it true that some of your stick paintings have come from your childhood home in Ohio?

ARNOLDI: No, but you see those thorns up on the wall? When I was a little kid growing up, those were from a tree in Ohio. So I made those paintings from thorns. I’ve been avoiding Ohio like the plague. I have a very dysfunctional, bad family. 

KUPPER: What was it like growing up there?

ARNOLDI: Most of my buddies are dead, a lot of them went to prison. I was just in a bad place. I had no art history at all in my childhood. I have an uncle who was a portrait painter, he wore a beret and had a little painting studio. I used to go there and I really liked the smell of oil painting. He was my only exposure to art and at one point I got a modeling job at an art institute. I was broke and they would pay me to pose. One of the directors convinced me to take my clothes off and then he wanted me to get a hard on. This fucking guy, I’d like to meet him today. No fucking way.  

When I was a kid, I made tree houses and forts and if I saw a Tarzan movie, I would make bows and arrows and spears. As I got older I got involved with cars. When I graduated, a teacher told me, “You are the most talented with the least amount of vision of anyone I have ever met,” and it made me feel terrible.... See, when I was growing up, I got attention for doing stuff, I was really good with my hands.

KUPPER: Seems like the whole Venice School came from places like Dayton, the mythical American city, what was it about LA that was such a beacon for you guys? 

ARNOLDI: I was a senior in high school and I had gotten in a little bit of trouble, they were gonna put me in a foster home. My father was living in Southern California with this woman he ran away with and he flew me out to California. I had never seen a freeway. It blew my mind. When I got back to Dayton I wanted to move to California. After I graduated high school, my mother had about six dollars and twenty-eight cents, so she gave me that and I left with four buddies of mine. I had a ‘55 Chevy with a ‘53 engine. We were terrible thieves.

KUPPER: When did you get serious about art?

ARNOLD: While in Los Angeles, it was time for me to go to school. I drove out to Ventura and I chickened out, I just couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t even go to an art history course. It was way over my head. I would just go to the art classes, ceramics for instance. The guy who ran the art department, Mr. Deets, saw my work and he came to see me and said, “You know son, since Picasso, everything is bullshit. You need to be an illustrator. I can make you one if you do what I tell you.” I could draw perfectly. I had the skills.

KUPPER: How did your later experiences at Art Center influence your perspective?

ARNOLDI: I’d be doing a painting and the guy would come and go, “That’s done.” To me, it wasn’t finished, but to them I was ruining it. They would take your work away from you. In painting class the first thing they taught you is that you have to wear a tie and how to wear it so you don’t paint on it. This was all bullshit to me. I’m sitting there thinking this is fucked and I quit.

KUPPER: You seem like a bit of a daredevil – can you talk about your chainsaw sculptures, because those sort of put you on the map in a way?

ARNOLDI: I just liked the way it looked. But one little slip and it’s really bad. I’ve been doing the Machu Picchu thing...these multi-paneled paintings. But the chainsaw sculptures were just one of those things that was on my mind. I don’t like to make sculptures because they are bulky. But these sort of made sense.

KUPPER: Some of the work at your current show was made in the Yukon?

ARNOLDI:  I went up there not expecting to make work, but I was sort of coaxed into it. The guy who owned the property has a gold mine. He asked if we wanted to get to work, so we go down to a river to find some wood. There were these two rough kids – one of them had recently slit a wolf’s neck that tried to attack him. So we are up there and they start to cut down some trees for me to make a sculpture. One kid said, “What do you want me to do?” I tell him to cut five slabs off and to get me some kind of platform. I said, “Kid, you’re good with the chainsaw. I’ll draw the line. You want you to give me this much of an angle.” (makes the vroom, vroom, vroom sound of a chainsaw) I look over and the other kid wants to do it too (vroom...vroom...vroom). We worked for two hours and made a few pieces. By the end, we made nine... and the new chainsaw pieces were painted in red, black and yellow. When I used to make the old chainsaw paintings, there would be splinters all over, so I would torch them away. I went and bought a serious blowtorch and all the kids were so excited.  The kids cut trees down like crazy, and never thought of doing anything beyond that. I bet that within a year these kids would be making furniture and shit out of logs.

OK: Your upcoming show at Desert Center is called Rough Cuts – there is a connection to your work and some of the other Venice artists to music, the improvisational nature could be compared to jazz?

CA:  Somebody once told me something and I felt rather flattered:  “Your chainsaw paintings are the closest thing I can think of to Pollock.” The reason is....Pollock in a sense did a dance, it was spontaneous, you know--he was physically involved. Man, then you start cutting in references and you are making hundreds of decisions a second, but it's a physical thing, you’re actively engaged in it.

Chuck Arnoldi: Rough Cuts is on view now at Desert Center Los Angeles, 7466 Beverly Blvd. Email for appointments: desertcenterlosangeles@gmail.com. Text and photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Baby, Will You Fix Me Again: An Interview Of William Eggleston In Memphis

text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

portrait by Bil Brown

 

When legendary photographer, William Eggleston, whiskey on the rocks clutched in hand, is telling you a story about Dennis Hopper saving him from falling off a 1000-foot ledge at the Continental Divide, and then asks you to stay for Chinese food, it's hard to say no. What else are you going to do on a Tuesday night in Memphis? 

In Memphis, you learn about romantic and tragic things: The last song Elvis ever played before dying was "Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain" on his upright piano in the over air-conditioned racquetball courts at Graceland. In Memphis, the cicadas grind like jammed gears in flooded engines. On a dime, the sky can turn from sunlight to shade, like a sheet pulled over a half-living corpse, slowed to a dull kind of subsistence by the tepid humidity. This is the ecosystem, the hallowed Southern environment where William Eggleston's most well known work was born and gave the world a glimpse of its hard edges, saturated colors and sad geometries. If you look closer at his work, you are looking at a microcosm within a microcosm, the moments where the mind drifts and imagines mortal uncertainties - the fragmented glow or nuclei of sunlight reflected through a glass of Coke on an airplane, a girl laying on the grass zonked out on Quaaludes, or the tailfin of a Cadillac and some kind of unaware Americana on the horizon. But, if you look closer still, you will see hidden things, secret things, lost perspectives, living shadows, forlorn personage, but always on the periphery or just under the surface. Indeed, his photographs are very plainly obvious, but there is a certain kind of gossamer stillness that is poetic and serene, and reminds you that life's simple details, the ones that are oft overlooked, are the most important ones. 

I’ve wanted to sit down with Eggleston for a few years now, and sit we did, in his Memphis apartment – crowded with a looming Bösendorfer grand piano in one room and gizmos and gadgets in another. Eggleston has always been obsessed with mechanics and the way things work – lately, his new obsession is quantum physics. Over cigarettes and the intermittent break to play piano we talk about everything from classical music to photography to the films of David Lynch. Our interview ended after day turned to night and there was no more whiskey.

Oliver Kupper: Do you enjoy classical music?

William Eggleston: Quite a bit. Mostly. My hero is [Johann Sebastian] Bach. 

Do you listen to rock & roll music living in Memphis?

There’s not much around Memphis right now. I like all kinds of music. 

You grew up with your maternal grandfather, he was an amateur photographer?

My grandfather? He did a little bit. 

And did you learn about photography from him, or were you first introduced to photography through him at all? 

No, most of the things he did long before I was around. Most of the things he did were of our family.

I saw a few portraits maybe he took of you when you were really small. Was that in Sumner, Mississippi? 

Mmhmm.

What was it like growing up there?

The whole family grew cotton and it still goes on.

You didn’t want to go into the agriculture trade? 

No, well there’s not much to do. Running a plantation – that just gets kind of boring, sitting around watching cotton grow. It’s not too interesting. 

Of course, so you turned to more artistic pursuits. Classical music and photography.

Yeah, I’ve played the piano since I was about four years old. 

And you play piano every day? 

Yes, and the night too. 

And you talk about Cartier-Bresson having a big influence on your work.

Yeah, I still think the world of him. He was one of the greats. 

When did you first discover his work?

I suppose around the 50s. His photographs were all black and white and he worked in black and white for a while. 

So how old were you at that point?

Oh, I had a best friend in prep school, we went to Vanderbilt together in Nashville and he got me interested in his work, and this was 1957. 

I wanted to talk about another photographer that I’ve always sort of loved and reminds me a little bit of you because he started taking pictures of his friends and family. His surroundings. His name is Jacques Henri Lartigue, do you know his work? 

Oh yeah, Lartigue I know his work. 

Yeah, there’s a lot of kindred similarities between his upbringing and also his introduction to photography that is really interesting. 

We never met, but I know his work.

I read somewhere that you were given a Brownie at ten years old to shoot with, and he was given his first camera at seven years old. Did you study his color photography, because he took a lot of color photography too.  

I don’t have any around here right now, but in the other house, I have his books. 

John Szarkowski, the curator at MOMA New York who put on your first show, he showed Lartigue’s work a couple years before your show actually. I think he saw something too, which I think is really interesting.  

Yeah, me and John were very close. He died a couple years ago. He would show me a lot of things I didn’t know about. We spent lots of time together when I was in New York. 

Did he teach you a lot about photography or the history of photography?

I suppose. 

And when you first showed those color slides, what was his initial reaction? What was your reaction to showing your work for the first time? Did you feel hesitant at first? 

We never much talked about it. I was quite happy to show it at MOMA, a good place to show it. 

And that show got a lot of really interesting reactions. Because I think people were confused about fine art photography in general, not just color photography, but fine art.

Yeah, it was something, photography as fine art had to be in black and white – primarily large negatives. And that didn’t much interest me.

And one of the critics was Ansel Adams.  

I didn’t care for his work to begin with. 

When you first started taking pictures you were largely self-taught, technically speaking. Was it difficult to get the exposure right, did you have sort of a hard time clicking into what you were doing...or you latched onto it pretty quickly?

At first I had to use a meter, I don’t really anymore. Film is very forgiving now. 

Can you remember those first few pictures that you took with the Leica camera? Do you remember that experience? What that felt like? 

No, but I was happy with the results. There weren’t really many other cameras out besides Leicas that I could use. 

Are there fine artists outside of photography that inspire you? 

Lucian Freud was a friend, he died too. He does great paintings. I was in London and I saw one of his last shows. I think when I saw that last show, it was probably right before he died but it was some time ago in London. 

So, speaking of legends, I want to talk about your meeting with Cartier-Bresson for a second. You got to meet him once, right?

Yeah, we were sort of friends. He was absolutely not interested in color.  

Do you believe in photographic masterpiece? 

Not much. 

They’re all masterpieces. 

I really don’t have any favorites,  

Because there is one work by you that sort of sticks out – the glass on the airplane, I know that a lot of people talk about that one. What was the context of taking that photo?

Oh, that was an ex-girlfriend of mine having a Coke, I think we were coming from Dallas to New Orleans.

It’s a really gorgeous photograph. 

Thank you, I liked it too. 

How did you come up with using your particular process or did someone mention it to you?

Do you mean by that, the dye transfer? I saw it first when, I forgot where, but it was commercial advertising pictures and fashion pictures. The process was really so good that I should use it for my own work and still do. 

And C prints but not as much; you try to stick with dye-transfer. 

I use both. I use dye transfer and pigment.  But the transfers are really, well whoever is doing the lab work, exposes them through three primary filters, black and white, big negatives of the exact sizes of what it’s going to be.

Interesting. 

And it’s just...I’ve been around and watched them be made but I’ve never tried to do it. They’re using black and white film, true to the size of the final print. 16x20 inch negatives, three negatives of that same size. It’s really just black and white through filters. 

Right, which is why your images are sharper. 

Well the filters are there to separate, rather than to mix together, all of the colors in the picture. The lab technician really had to know what they’re doing. 

Winston was saying that you’ve been studying quantum physics. What turned you on to that?

That’s right. I can’t figure out how to answer that, I don’t know. It’s just physics and then quantum is, of course, close to physics but it’s, I don’t know how to put it, but it’s...the end result is what probably will happen, not what accurately will happen, but will probably. 

Do you apply those thoughts to photography ever? 

I don’t know. 

There’s something about capturing a moment that was moving before, on film, you know? 

That could be related in some way. It’s like Mr. Einstein once said: no such thing exists as a point absolutely in one place. That’s kind of what quantum is, the probably but not exactly, if that makes sense. I feel probably close to quantum because I think it’s related to my own work, because whatever that picture is, it’s what I thought probably should be there. Not anything exact. 

One of the documentaries that these people have done, at the end of one, you were talking about a dream and then waking up and then the dream being gone completely... 

That happens so many times every day. I’m dreaming about music and I’ll get up and rush to the piano...(snaps) Gone. 

Wow, full compositions and such? 

Yeah, every note, it’s just so beautiful in the dream and then I sit down and face those 88 keys, and I don’t know which one to push.  

That’s really interesting. Do you ever think about music when you’re shooting? Is music related to shooting at all? 

I think that’s probably true, there’s some connection. Whatever that is, I wouldn’t even begin to talk about it. 

There’s a mysterious aspect to how music relates to making pictures.  

I look at it that way a great deal, probably. Working in quantum physics and theories about pictures – it’s not a bit unlike a symphony or let’s say a set of symphonies or sonatas. 

I mean the Democratic Forest, it is like a symphony in a way; it is like a multiple part symphony. 

I think of it that way.

It seems, artistically, you’re driven by pure intuition and you don’t over-think things, and you leave all of that to the quantum physics and the mechanics.

That’s right.

Inside the Eggleston Trust, Memphis

I want to talk to you about another photograph of yours that was used for the cover of a Big Star album. 

Oh yeah, that red one? 

The red one, yeah. 

I can’t explain it.

Yeah, you knew Alex Chilton’s mom, right? She had a gallery. 

Mmhmm. Well they lived here. Her husband played the piano and is in the staged lighting business, but as a hobby. He also plays jazz, which I don’t like. 

You don’t like jazz? 

I think jazz musicians are really good. In fact, they’re so good; I don’t really know why they’re playing jazz.

There’s a myth that you gave Peyote to Alex Chilton from Big Star. Is that a true story? 

I probably did. I don’t remember that but...I think he was a teenager and he was just starting to play music. 

That was probably a big moment for him. Then there’s that other famous photograph of the girl lying on the grass and she was on quaaludes, right? 

Mmhmm. It looks like she’s asleep, but back then they were so popular. 

And I want to talk a little bit about your time in New York because that was important. A lot of people don’t imagine you in New York, especially at the Chelsea Hotel. 

Yeah, the person I was mostly with was Viva, the Warhol actress, we both lived at the Chelsea. The old Chelsea. 

What was that experience like?

It was fun, but now the hotel is being re-done. 

Did you ever meet Andy Warhol?

He was rather a distant kind of person. 

Did you ever appreciate his work, or you guys kept in your own separate...

Basically, probably, no. He’s not at all one of my favorite artists. 

Did you ever go to the factory?

Mmhmm. 

You did. Who was around at that time?

Oh people like Paul Morrissey, Edie (laughs).

Malanga? 

Oh Gerard, yeah.

And Viva, she lives in Palm Springs now. Do you talk to her?

She lives in both Palm Springs and LA now. I see her every time I’m out there. 

William Eggleston at home in Memphis

And you’ve shot photographs all over the world? Is there any specific location that you enjoy shooting the most?

Not any particular one.

Yeah, it’s democratic. 

It doesn’t make a bit of a difference where, physically, I am on this Earth, most everything is the same picture.

You were just recently in Sao Paulo. 

In Rio. 

Oh, in Rio. 

It was an exhibition and I took pictures of people all around.

Yeah, and you get a lot of assignments. You’ve been commissioned to shoot a lot of stories. 

Well, but they’re not assignments, I don’t do those. Those are what I call "open commissions" without any guidelines. It’s quite open with what’s going on right now. The people at Cartier let me do whatever comes to mind. 

You shoot in Paris? 

Anywhere in the world. 

Oh anywhere in the world. And that’s for a show coming up.

Mhmm.

It seems like Cartier and Agnès b, they’re sort of great supporters of the arts and your work. 

Agnès and I have been very close for decades.

Decades?

Yes, a long, long time. She works with my daughter right now. 

You’ve always been very fashionable. Do you find it important to have good style? 

I never really think about it. I don’t know what to say.

Did you get your suits made in London at one point?

Mhmm. Several designers, and Stella McCartney just made one for me. She’s just a very swell person.

[William Eggleston takes a break for approximately 20 minutes to play Bach and improvise on the piano] 

Do you improv more than you play specific pieces and numbers? 

Probably, yes. Probably more. I love to improv.

There’s something jazzy about that.

It’s not an easy thing to do. It’s got to be the right tune and if you make too many mistakes it just falls apart.

Where did you meet Allen Ginsberg?

Oh my god, I don’t know exactly where or when but a long time. 

Yeah, Allen would have found you, you all would have found each other. It would have been circular...

That’s sort of the way it was.

Where did you meet David Lynch?

I don’t know. It’s been a long time, but I don’t know where or when it started. Or what it was even about. But we just get along easily.

What’s your favorite film by David Lynch?

Probably a cross between Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet. 

Blue Velvet is up there for me. 

I don’t think there is a better film than Blue Velvet. I’ve said this before to a lot of people, I consider David the new Hitchcock. 

Yeah, I agree. 

Because most horror films aren’t scary. David’s are scary.

Untitled, 1970-74 (Dennis Hopper) by William Eggleston ©Eggleston Artistic Trust

Yeah, without even trying, it’s sort of natural...

Exactly, and my old late friend Dennis Hopper. Dennis and I were very close. 

I heard a story about Dennis Hopper saving your life?

Yeah, he did! In the Continental Divide! 

Did you almost fall?

He bought some land up there, but there’s nothing there but rocks. I stepped on the wrong one and he grabbed me...it was about 1000 feet down. 

So, he saved your life.

Yes.

Blue Velvet – especially Dennis Hopper’s character - was one of those films that I saw when I was younger that really changed the way I saw film. 

I completely understand you. Also, I don’t know whether it was an accident but it was perfect that he found Dennis. That’s the key ingredient to making it so scary because Dennis was just...

Terrifying. 

He was the sweetest person in real life – he was just a superb actor. 

You know what he said about that role? He said, “That character is me. That character is inside me.” 

I guess what you’re saying is that he wasn’t acting. 

Essentially. He played those really bad-guy roles but there’s something really natural about that intensity for him as an actor. 

If Blue Velvet was the first, well he’s been filmed so many times, but the first place where he really did that character to the nth degree. 

Yeah, definitely. 

Terrifying. That was a truly scary movie. 

Yeah, atmospherically too. Even the silent moments were scary.

That’s right.

It wasn’t just the ear – the graphic moments, the actual silence of that film was terrifying. 

It was Dennis and David Lynch, no other two people could have gotten together and done anything like that. 

Yeah, no one will ever listen to Roy Orbison the same way.

I have a funny story about David. David was with a screenwriter friend – do you know Michael Almereyda?

I know the name, but I don’t know the person. 

He’s a very close friend and he was telling me about this person that David had a falling out with who had written, in what David’s hands, could have been a wonderful script. Guess what it was about? I could just tell you, but it was about two cows dreaming. 

That seems like a David Lynch painting come to life, in a way.

Mmhmm.

Are you looking forward to Twin Peaks?

Mmhmm.

Did you watch the first iteration of it?

Mmhmm.

There’s nothing like that out there.

What ever happened about that, did the public not like it or something? Something happened, that it was canceled or stopped. 

Well, I think there's a new one coming out. When you were watching that show, there was a subconscious sense that what you are watching isn’t like television. 

Exactly. Hey, you know what – I have to say – it’s so nice to have people visiting me that are so nice and smart.

Well, thank you! It’s rare these days. 

Well, good.

Good, right? I feel that way too. 

That’s the way maybe it should be.

I agree. 

Baby, man, it is hard to be an artist in general and anywhere. Memphis is not kind to the arts.

It seems to have this weird idea of what the arts actually are.

This goes back to quantum. We’re probably never supposed to figure that out. But you’ve only made one mistake while you have been in this city: you went to Graceland.

That was more like an anthropological...

That was a lesson, we can put it that way. 

It was very sad in a sense.

In many senses, yes. In fact, I don’t know anything better to describe it than ‘sad,’ can you?

No. A decorating tragedy. 

Just the word 'sad' is enough. It means so many different things at the same time. Priscilla hated the place. Elvis was not kind to her, she said that, very privately, and that was reflected in her taking me to every little square-inch of the place, which took several days, afternoons. And she knew what a horrible, sad place it is and she didn’t say it quite plain, but she had no happy memories of being there.

Are family members that still work and maybe even live there?

There are not any left. They’re not allowed there. The last person, she was very nice to me, was Aunt Delta, and she was the last person allowed to live there. She had one big room.

Someone said she would come down and yell at the visitors.

She was very nice to me. The only thing I remember about her, she would cook enormous amounts of fried chicken, I mean enough for 40 people and I was pretty hungry – and she would not offer me a scrap. She was not a gracious lady. There’s a certain tradition around here: to be gracious is next to godliness and without it, you might as well not exist. 

I agree with that. 

It’s hard to disagree with that. That’s what I was raised with. 

[Lighter flicks. William Eggleston requests another drink: “Baby, will you fix me again...”]

This article was originally published in our Summer 2017 print issue. Go see William Eggleston: Los Alamos on view now at The Metropolitan Museum of Art In New York. On view until May 28, 2018

Untitled, from Los Alamos, 1965-68 and 1972-74, Dye transfer print, Private collection. © Eggleston Artistic Trust

Shit From Shinola: An Interview Of Curator Dylan Brant

Dylan Brant, a young curator from New York, is quietly and maturely making a name for himself within the hallowed, oft impenetrable walls of the art world. Sure, his pedigree helps, but he surely has a knack for putting together some of the coolest art shows around. His show Rawhide at Venus Over Manhattan – which was co-curated by Vivian Brodie –  was a masculine cowboy romp through post-Modern Americana. Bandana wrapped, and pistol wheeling, the show included artists like Richard Prince and Ed Ruscha, but also queer artists known for their muscle toned homoerotica, like Bob Mizer and Tom Of Finland. And just recently, Brant curated a show called Heatwave, which is open now at the UTA Artist Space in Los Angeles. The exhibition, which includes artists like Dash Snow, Rob Pruitt, Nate Lowman, and Cady Noland, takes a more abstract route in its curatorial expression, but it is probably Brant's most personal. The artists involved are artists that he grew up with or knows personally - or knew personally, like the late Dash Snow. According to Brant, the show really came together after watching an interview of Lux Interior (of the Cramps) who talks about music having an inherently youthful energy - no matter the age of the musician or the audience. We stopped by the gallery to ask Brant a few questions about the show and gained a unique insight into his ambitions as a curator. 

AUTRE: You mentioned that you had an initial idea for this show that didn’t go through. Can you talk about that at all?

DYLAN BRANT: It’s complicated. It’s emotionally complicated. I still want to do that show, so I can’t talk about it.

AUTRE: But you had an initial idea and they were wanting to move onto another thing?

BRANT: Umm, it just..it was more like it wasn’t the right fit. It was a little too spazzy.

AUTRE: Too spazzy?

BRANT: I’m a spaz. I’m all over the place. Just to give you an idea, I like things that have a bit of a “Fuck you” sort of undercurrent to them and it was a lot of that and it was a lot of that with really big words and the words are often very redundant and actually mean absolutely nothing at the end of the day, so something that maybe I think is cool is just absolute mumbo jumbo.

AUTRE: Do you think it was too smart for Los Angeles?

BRANT: It’s not that it’s too smart. Okay, you know when you’re in college and you think you’re really hot shit because you’ve maybe had just like one semester and you’ve learned all this stuff and you start writing and using all these big words, but then when you look at that in hindsight, it’s just a lot of big words that mean nothing? That’s the majority of my ideas, so it’s not that it’s too smart, it’s not that it’s too smart for Los Angeles, it’s that it’s not smart enough.

AUTRE: So, then you arrived at Heatwave, and you mentioned that the idea for this show came to you after watching an interview with The Cramps?

BRANT: Yes, I love The Cramps, you guys love The Cramps, we love The Cramps. Lux Interior, I think is just an absolutely phenomenal singer. As far as a performance artist, as far as a singer and songwriter, I think really he epitomizes what I like about music, particularly rock and roll music. He gave this interview somewhere in Denmark or something and I found it on YouTube. He was asked a question by the interviewer: “Who is the audience of your music?” and he sort of defined it as, you know, it’s teenagers and young people and stuff. From that, the guy responded, “well you’re old so how can you justify making youth music at your age?”  He responds by basically going into rock and roll music inherently has this youthful energy. So ultimately, “real” rock and roll is about youthful energy and spirit and not about your age. When I was thinking about ideas for the show, I was kind of thinking to myself, what are the things that really mean something to me? I feel there’s a vitality that innately attracts me to music and in this case, art. So I began to think to myself, "Who are the artists that I've really liked over the last six to seven years?"

AUTRE: Like, what artists?

I remember my first major exposure to art. I remember the first time I saw a Rob Pruitt painting and learning about the history he had with Leo Castelli. I really remember for the first time actually seeing Jonathan Horowitz’s mirror piece and learning about his home and entire history. I remember for the first time seeing Josh Smith’s work that really was like “woah that’s so cool” and I just thought it was so tough and bad-ass. I remember the first time I saw Joe Bradley’s work and I thought it totally sucked and then I ended up really liking it. I remember the first time I saw Cady Noland’s work and it absolutely blew my mind. It was actually here in Los Angeles at a collector’s house. She for me is the queen, she’s everything. She is the most amazing, the most influential artist in my eyes. So the conception of the show started with Good Music For Bad People, it’s a great record, that interview and it started with that Cady Noland piece you see in the show. I wanted to do a show with Cady Noland involved in it and that sort of expanded into that Raymond Pettibon piece over there and then eventually expanded into the Dash Snow pieces. Do every single one of these pieces perfectly exemplify the spirit that I am talking about? I am not going to say ‘yes it does’ because that’s a really broad, sweeping statement that says ‘I made a perfect show’ and I don’t think there is such thing as a perfect show.


AUTRE:  So is music a main drive for most of your curatorial efforts? I mean, the Raw Hide show you did at Venus Over Manhattan - what were you listening to?

BRANT: Marty Robbins?

AUTRE: Yeah, like old country music.

BRANT: Yeah, Marty Robbins, Neil Young, Merle Haggard, Mama Tried, Hank Williams, Hank Williams Junior. Yeah, music and film predominantly. Everything starts as an X factor for me. Music was the first way I understood creativity. From there, you know, all of us have learned about art history and then kind of fell in love with that. But every time I think about how you do something, you know, it’s like making a record or playing a song or something like that and it would translate from there.

AUTRE: Yeah, music creates this really interesting energy that sort of follows you everywhere you go. Do you have a particular type of music that you make?

BRANT: Nothing that’s worth remarking on that’s inherently good, no [laughs]. But my uncle that I am staying with, Mike Andrews, is a very good musician, a very good musician and he’s a professional musician. My father Tommy Andrews is also a very good musician and a professional musician. My grandmother was a piano teacher and an opera singer. I don’t know, I wish I had some sweeping, magical, prolific thing to say but no...

AUTRE: No, I think it’s hard to talk about because it’s sort of abstract.

BRANT: Well, it’s the art of the people, the most emotional, and it’s one of the rawest forms of expression. So if you sort of consider that, in the respect of an art context, which I feel like in many ways is a captured moment, you know, that innate drive of creation, there is a singular x-factor within all the creative formats. So you know, how you get there and what it translates to, it’s like, ok cool whatever, that’s your thing. But we all have a way to kind of getting there and mine is music.


AUTRE: Yeah, and again, Raymond and Cady, I am sure in their studios, there’s like endless amounts of music blasting throughout their lives.

BRANT: Yeah, Joshua loves hip hop, Rob Pruitt loves Miley Cyrus, Joe Bradley was in Cheeseburger, Julian Schnabel played bass in a band for a little bit. Uhm, Cady Noland I am not sure about and Dash Snow I am not sure about. But Spencer Sweeney in the back, he’s a drummer. He owns Santo’s Party House. So yeah, I never even thought of that, you could say that.

AUTRE: So if you were listening to a lot of Prefab Sprout, what kind of show would you curate?

BRANT: Prefab Sprout is fucking great. I love their production style.

AUTRE: It’s cheesy but it’s so good at the same time.

BRANT: That’s the coolest fucking question ever. Let me actually think about that seriously… I would probably curate a show about commercials or I would do performance, like ballet.

AUTRE: Or?

BRANT: I don’t know. I actually really think that that record Steve McQueen is a really good record. It’s really strong and I get a lot of crap for listening to them.

AUTRE: But the lyrics… It’s profound. There’s something profound about it.

BRANT: Dude, it’s so cheesy, come on. It’s not like Talk Talk or Spirit of Eden or something like that where it’s, you know, oh my god, these revolutionary production techniques and stuff. It’s just kind of like early, college rock radio from late 80s, early 90s…

AUTRE: You also worked at the Peggy Guggenheim in Venice. What was that experience like? What did you learn from that experience?

BRANT: What did I learn from that experience? Art’s awesome. This could actually be something that you could really do and make into a career which I’d never thought was a real possibility. I never thought being in the arts period would be a real possibility. So, that was cool. Also, being at the Peggy Guggenheim and experiencing a different country and culture was mindblowing. I learned a whole lot; it was the whole cultural experience. That country’s a whole lot better than the U.S.A., intellectually.

AUTRE: Yeah, I mean it’s almost more important to have a culturally impactful experience, especially when you’re younger. How old were you when you were doing that?

BRANT: Sixteen.

AUTRE: Sixteen—so you were super young.

BRANT: Yeah I didn’t know shit from Shinola; I still don’t know shit from Shinola, but definitely didn’t know anything then. I just had this opportunity and was like “okay.” I mean the first time you do performance art it’s like “oh my god, I can express myself and be okay;” the first time you write an article and somebody is like “oh, this isn’t that bad” and you’re like “what do you mean it isn’t that bad?” My expectation level is that it’s just going to be terrible so when it turns out decently well and it’s well-received, my first reaction is to try that again.

AUTRE: Interesting. You also grew up around a lot of art—

BRANT: I grew up around a tremendous amount of art, that’s a fucking understatement. My father Peter is without a doubt one of the most intense critical eyes I’ve ever encountered in my life. Being a young person who had the opportunity to go to art openings and see the things he saw and not understand what was going on and, in hindsight, processing and understanding that all the stuff was made: this really crazy. As a little kid there was this game that we’d play where if I named one of the artists right I would gain a dollar and if I named one of the artists wrong I would lose a dollar. Seriously. Straight-up being brainwashed. Going to the Warhol Estate when Vincent Fremont still ran it and seeing that in the 90’s, being able to see Tony Shafrazi’s gallery in Soho when it was sort of at it’s height and peak, being able to see the Last Supper show that Warhol did at the Guggenheim when it was still downtown, being a little kid and seeing...I could go on and on...when Kenny Scharf still had his kiosk in Soho.

AUTRE: So you caught the tail end of a generation.

BRANT: Tail end? No, it just keeps going. Seeing all the early Richard Prince photography and works pop up in the early 2000s. He and my father starting to collect that again, seeing the paintings, and seeing him leave [Barbara] Gladstone and go to Gagosian, find out who he was, meeting Urs Fisher after he did the “Who’s Afraid of Jasper Johns?,” getting to know him as a person, getting to know any of these people in this room, it’s exceptional. Dash Snow, of course. I mean, [my dad] is the consistent X factor in my life of why I got into art. There is absolutely no way I would have ever, ever, ever, been interested in art if it wasn’t for him. I would have totally just been only interested in music and I’m a mediocre musician, so that for me was the X factor when I realized, “Oh my god, I could actually work in the arts and maybe I could be a catalyst for artists rather than be an artist myself.”

AUTRE: That’s interesting because most people aspire to be the artist but there’re so many other positions in the art world that are just as important, it’s amazing.

BRANT: Collectors, advisors, dealers, museum people. It’s a fucking eco-system. You don’t get somewhere just by being a good artist, there are tons of good artists. A lot of luck and a lot of really good, smart, thoughtful dealers. All these guys really, I mean Gavin Brown is pretty much one of the most important dealers in New York City for twenty years and going strong. Luhring Augustine - one of their early artists was Christopher Wool. Just think about that shit.

AUTRE: Yeah, it takes a lot of experience. And intuition, too.

BRANT: Yeah. And seeing things. It’s like getting married, working with an artist for a lifetime and I’m just not ready for that kind of commitment.

AUTRE: I think we could talk about art forever.  

BRANT: I know, isn’t it kind of sad?

AUTRE: It’s endless.

BRANT: I know, it’s like a snake eating it’s own tail.

Heatwave will be on view until April 18, 2017 at UTA Artist Space, 670 S. Anderson, Los Angeles. text, interview and photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram:  @AUTREMAGAZINE

Unseen And Immaterial: An Interview Of Amanda Turner Pohan

text by Abbey Meaker

 

Science, alchemy, technology, and the process of distilling and translating bodily expressions – Amanda Turner Pohan’s art practice is rooted in processes that call into question the intimate relationship between bodies and the histories of embedded power structures. In one such work, Pohan has created a custom-formulated perfume using captured carbon dioxide exhaled during thirteen of her own orgasms. The milky concentrate of the artist's expressions of pleasure is contained within a glass jug, and its scent is emitted through a long plastic tube that meanders from the mouth of the jug to a dispenser across the room.   

As an organizer, Pohan fervently seeks opportunities for connectedness, community, and collaborative practice, striving to create space that promotes inclusion and blurs the boundary between art and life. I had the pleasure of speaking with Pohan on a cold winter Sunday about her interests in alchemy, temporal expressions of the body, sexuality, and blended practices as artist and organizer.

Abbey Meaker: Hello, hello! Are you in the city or the Catskills?

Amanda Turner Pohan: Catskills!

Meaker: So tell me about your place there- you're interested in starting an artist residency called Diamond Notch? It seems like a more holistic approach to supporting artists and creating a community.

Pohan:  I didn’t quite realize how much Temporary Agency and The Social Club really helped bolster this residency desire. I feel like the ideas we talk about up here mix the two, in addition to literally mixing the groups of people involved.

Meaker: I wondered how those two organizations came to be and if they played a role in your decision to take on this new endeavor. 

Pohan: Temporary Agency was built in the spirit of collective practice, and we wanted to facilitate an open engagement with the work that we showed by pairing it with public events, remaining mindful of responding to what was happening socially, culturally, and politically at that moment in time.

It’s necessary especially in this climate. In nine months we hosted something like two shows a month and an event for each show: Poetry readings, performative lectures, screenings, round table discussions, the gamut.

Meaker:  Did Social Club overlap?

Pohan: Yes! When I graduated, the first studio I got was at the Bakery Brooklyn, where I remain today and where the Social Club is held. But when we went nomadic with Temporary Agency back in 2015, our first event post Ridgewood gallery was at The Bakery. The studio and the Social Club have a similar sensibility to Temporary Agency. The Bakery was created in 2013 by Asa Pingree and Jason Kachadourian. It’s a wood shop that Jason and Asa share with studios built out in the back. Jason is a painter, furniture designer, and art events organizer. He's always worked in a collaborative vein and two years ago, around the time Temporary Agency formed, worked on creating a collective for artists and designers to think about showing work in way that isn’t "white cube." The collective concept ended up manifesting as the Social Club. Jason asked Asa and I to join him as the core group in organizing the monthly event in the gallery space built out from the wood shop, and the first one was in October 2015.

This year we are trying to introduce prompts that will influence peoples’ behavior within the space more pointedly. An idea that holds the Social Club together is giving participants agency over the vibe of their environment through collective actions and collaborative efforts, encouraging people to directly engage with the work. 

Meaker: Would you define a scenario as a kind of happening, whereby the public comes in and isn't quite sure what's planned, what's real, staged, what their role is in creating the work?


Pohan: Happening, yes. It has a Fluxus lineage for sure. I also would hold movement based meditation groups in grad school, and while it was planned, what came out of it was always unexpected.

Meaker: Why do you think this kind of work is particularly important now? Why the interest in moving exhibitions, performances, etc. outside of the gallery?

Pohan: The idea of inclusion, of in-between-spaces, of art/life as one expression resists individuation. And individuation is what perpetuates this current polarization that is happening politically. To divide and conquer is so dangerous, particularly now. I am, and the collectives I'm involved with, are interested in individual empowerment and collective action. Or collective actions amongst empowered individuals. This may be getting a bit heavy handed!

Meaker: Does your practice as an organizer/curator inform your art practice?

Pohan: Yes. A lot of my work is about intimacy. Working in collaboratives is an intimate, emotional, and challenging experience. It helps me become more and more aware of my relation to others. That is a fundamental aspect of my work. I make work by spending a lot of time outside of the studio gathering experiences and allowing for them to digest and settle into my system.

I spend my time in these various pursuits and then enter condensed periods of time reading and writing. Then, I make the work. I would neither be making the work that I make nor be involved collaboratively without all of these wonderful people. If there is a struggle to do it all, it serves as the fuel!

Meaker:  Do you consider all experiences as fodder?

Pohan: Yes. Fodder, I like that. Very apropos to where I am currently.

Meaker: I deeply admire that you've created a reality in which there is no distinction between life and work.  

Pohan: I’m really serious about it. I've been working with a meditation teacher for about seven years now, Dina Kushnir, from whom I really came to understand the depth of this. But putting it into action is what makes it embodied as knowledge and wisdom, otherwise it’s just words. As I said before, Temporary Agency and Social Club served as the groundwork for Diamond Notch [Diamond Notch is the place upstate, its namesake is the road it's on].

Meaker: What are your dreams for Diamond Notch?

Pohan: Jason Kachadourian is my partner, by the way, and is also partner on this project. Part of the dream is related to the art/life blend, but more than just art. I'm interested generally in the question of how to live together; it structures my thinking on this residency/school/program, whatever it ends up becoming and then becoming again. Jason and I are both interested in how living, making, and working collaboratively might look like. So for now it’s the Diamond Notch Hiking Club.

Meaker: The frontiers of your work are so rich and layered, often translating and recontexualizing ephemeral expressions of the body—breath, sweat, orgasms into various media: video, installation, sculpture. These are often bodily processes we aim to conceal—where does your desire to capture these temporal experiences come from? There's a lot to unpack there.

Pohan: It is a good one whose dense answer ties my art and my collective practices together. My mother's death. Her death is what initiated the desire or longing for this capturing, de-coding, translating, and re-presenting the body both materially and immaterially through smell, sound, light, color, text, video, sculpture, a total immersion. Her death is also what partially financed the acquisition of the land upstate. Her literal dematerialization materialized a house on a property to facilitate a community as well as most of my art work to date. I have always worked with the body as a material, but eight years ago upon her suicide, it really put it into a different framework, allowing me to question and unpack my own subjectivity.

The capturing of the ephemera of the body using electronic sensors and digital devices utilized in my art making process are methods of data collecting and disciplining bodies currently used by power structures both in the public and private spheres. So from a very personal experience is tied larger politics of the disciplined body, the marginalized body, the incarcerated body, the medicated body, the working body, the female body, etc. I suppose also on a basic level, even as a child, I have been deeply curious about the undercurrents that move our lives, desires, choices, that which is more refined and ethereal than is typically seen, and I long to dig into that undercurrent. The fruits of those moments result in my work. My commitment to a meditation practice and bodywork method of releasing trauma from the body also serves as doorways for seeing the unseen, immaterial.

Meaker: How would you say sexuality fits into this scheme?

Pohan: Well, I did make a piece that was titled Orgasmic Exhalations and was represented in various forms. In one aspect, the orgasmic is a just an expression, it could have been a meditative exhalation, for example. In the end it’s about perception. The female orgasm is a form of production and a form of labor that is commodified by the porn and pharmaceutical industries, or to which Paul B Preciado would call the pharmacopornographic. A mouthful of a word, no pun intended.

The private experience of the orgasm, mine in this case for making this piece, this intimate private experience and the je ne sais quoi-ness of it all is recorded in a way that then abstracts it into numbers using an electronic sensor to record the orgasm. How? It’s always a hurdle for me to explain! I hacked a telemarketers headset, and replaced the mic with CO2 sensor. The sensor was connected to a microcontroller, which was hooked up to a computer running a software program that recorded the fluctuating values of parts per million of CO2 emanating from my breath. I took the numeric recording and applied my own scientific method to it, as you said. I took the data and massaged it, as data-ists and statisticians say, which I find so comical, and I created an algorithm from it. I applied the algorithm to two different instruments for output to produce both a scent and a form. I applied the algorithm to a perfume formula to create the scent. I plotted the algorithm in 3D space on a CAD software program, which allowed me to have it 3 dimensionally cut by a CNC routing machine. This produced a sculpture.

There’s a Neils Bohr law about light. It goes, you can observe light as either a particle or a wave, depending on the instrument you use to observe it. You see what you want to see, in short.

In this work, Orgasmic Exhalations, I represented this orgasmic breath in a semi scientific and aesthetically clinical way, but what is most important about it all was that the same breath, the same exhalation data, was used to make both a scent and a form, depending on the instrument I used to observe it. This work is about the production of desire as its base material, the digital distribution of intimacy as its method of creation, and results in two forms that confront the viewer with various perceptual questions. (I hope!) Answers to which are unknown. I like watching the process of inquiry. There is also something gendered about this, the perfume as feminized and the machine sculpted form as masculinized, and the space of the installation is what I’m interested in as the space in between this binary, between the zeros and ones of production.

Meaker: Can you describe the scent of the perfume?

Pohan: It happens to smell a bit like turpentine, a bit earthy, but also slightly like burnt plastic. I chose two essences, rosemary and myrrh, and the combination of the two and the alcohol to carry it produced this smell.

Meaker: It's interesting, too, that the expression of a woman's orgasm could be perceived as masculinized. Makes these definitions of gender all the more arbitrary, however hammered in they may be.

Pohan: There is something problematic in the potential male gazey-ness of it. Well the hammering in is what causes a lot of pain and suffering. Its real in that sense, a concrete effect on the body these constructs that are habitually reperformed binarily.

Meaker: Which brings me to the question regarding Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto. In this essay she analyzes and rejects the boundaries that separate 'human' from' animal' and human from 'machine’ and calls for a need to move away from essentialism and toward the utopian dream of the hope for a monstrous world without gender. Are you interested in the subversion of concepts related to the body and gender in your work?

Pohan: I think I am more interested in what holds together the structures and constructs that govern and form our understanding and relation to gender than a direct subversion of gender. I want a viewer to be confronted with their own embodiment, their own structuring, I think it offers the possibility of opening up to a level of vulnerability that I find compelling. 

Meaker: Tell us what you've got going on now, outside of Diamond Notch. Where can we see your work? 

Pohan: I have the work we discussed earlier, Orgasmic Exhalation Form and Device for body Spray, in a group show up now at The Knockdown Center in Maspeth Queens, up until Feb 26. I also have work in a benefit auction for the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, for which I received a nomination, on February 13 at Derek Eller Gallery. Opening March 19 will be The Whitney Houston Biennial where the perfume Linqox Criss will be on view with the work of many other female and female identified artists.

Astral America: An Interview Of FUCT Founder and Artist Erik Brunetti On His New Book Astral America

Looking like a cross between a rogue border patrol agent and a cowboy dandy, Erik Brunetti is the founder and fearless leader of one of the most iconic American street wear brands. The brand’s name alone, FUCT, harkens a kind of dissidence and lassitude belonging to that doomed generation that came before the digital dark ages and the millennials struggling to survive in its cold pixelated miasma. While street wear brands like and Supreme and Stussy opted for safety in numbers, the FUCT brand, which was conceived in Brunetti's Venice Beach bedroom in 1991, remains uniquely intact and connected to its DIY roots. Starting off as a graffiti artist in New York City, FUCT became a kind of extension of Brunetti’s seditious ideals. Just recently, Brunetti teamed up with Paperwork NYC to publish a book of new drawings. Entitled Astral America, the book is an ode to post truth with a smattering of India ink renderings of drones, US military propaganda, pop iconography and psychologically damning, accusatory, and anti-consumerist slogans aimed squarely at the gluttony of American culture. We got a chance chat with Brunetti about the book, the current state of FUCT and why it’s not cool to justify war with hashtags. 

AUTRE: Okay, lets start off with your upbringing in Jersey, which is close to New York, but seemingly a world away, what was your first introduction to culture and did you get a chance to escape to the city?

ERIK BRUNETTI: I was born in New Jersey, I grew up in Pennsylvania and Virginia. I only started visiting NYC in the late 70's early 80's with my mother, going to punk boutiques, CBGB, etcetera. I eventually moved to New York on my own and became a bike messenger when I was 18.

AUTRE: You were in New York during the halcyon days of graffiti writers – what was it about this world that was so romantic to you?

BRUNETTI: I discovered graff through a friend of mine named Darnell. We went to school together, and I noticed all the tags on his school books, same style of graff that I would to see when I went into the city, so naturally I inquired about it. He then took me to the yards and opened up an entire world to me. I then started writing for many years since throughout the tri-state area.

AUTRE: When did the idea to start the FUCT brand come to you – was it something that you decided to start right away or did you mull it over?

BRUNETTI: It was an accident that I had to cultivate. There was no blue print or business plan, there still isn't one to this day.

AUTRE: Did you have any idea that it would become this multiple decade brand experiment?

BRUNETTI: I knew it was different, I never think too much about it's future. 
 

AUTRE: Do you feel like it would be hard to start a brand like FUCT in this day and age?

BRUNETTI: The opposite. It was hard to start a brand FUCT in 1990 due to the fact that nothing like it existed. It would be much easier to start today. The groundwork has been carved out and people are more indoctrinated and accepting of subversive ideals because due to the internet.

AUTRE: It seems like the message that you are trying to get across with FUCT is more important than ever – it seems like subversion is crucial, especially in our current political climate?

BRUNETTI: It depends how it is presented I suppose. It could swing either way.

AUTRE: Let’s talk about Astral America – can you talk about the central focus of the book?

BRUNETTI : The books title comes from a chapter in Jean Baudrillard's book, "America." In that book he writes about the grotesque aspect of our country that American's seem to celebrate. My drawings in Astral America are observations and critiques of today's wasteful country. Unnecessary oversized parking lots, shopping mals, fast food feeding overweight people, televison and movie stars becoming activist to save the day. The USA starting as many wars as we possibly can in the Middle East and then justifying them with hashtags and social media slogans.

AUTRE: How did the book come about – was it a collection of work that you’ve been meaning to put out for a while?

BRUNETTI: I had began working with India ink as a medium again last year, just drawing much more and compiling a body of work that was based on the above mentioned theme and ideals, with no intention of showing them. Fast forward, Mike, from Paper Work NYC contacted me earlier in the year and came to my loft to visit and saw them and thought they would be great in a limited edition publication. So, we laid it out and it was done. It happened very naturally. I work with people much easier when meeting in person rather then via email or social media. If we
hadn't met, it wouldn't have happened. I like to see people, develop a working relationship and become friends, it shows in the quality of work that is then put out.

AUTRE: Where do you see FUCT in the next 20 years?


BRUNETTI: Done, hopefully.

AUTRE: What’s next for you as a fine artist – any exhibitions in the works?
 

BRUNETTI: I'm in the studio working everyday, I don't really make plans, if someone approaches me I'm into it. The art world in general is in a weird place right now. I'm also terrible at networking and putting myself out there. Art in the states is boring and contrived right now. I might move to Spain.

You can purchase Astral America on the Paperwork NYC website. photographs by Mike Krim. Interview and text by Oliver Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Brutal Beauty: An Interview of Artist and Muse Michele Lamy On Organizing Rick Owens' First Furniture Exhibition

On a cold, rainy night, the day before the private opening, we huddled in the cab of a moving truck to chat about furniture, music and fashion. It may have been a symbolic coincidence that Michele Lamy was in the driver's seat, clutching on to the huge steering wheel, but maybe it wasn't. It's true – although the furniture line is a true collaboration, Lamy does most of the general contracting and she is organizing the exhibition all on her own. But it’s obvious that she is used to it and loves the process, and Rick is happy to take a back seat. 

Despite her diminutive frame, Lamy’s primal and mystical energy seems enough to muster ample kinetic energy to move hundreds of tons of concrete, alabaster and marble. The way she talks (with a thick, rough French accent), gesticulates, moves her eyes - the way her jewelry and stacked rings move with an orchestral clattering - is hypnotic. It is no wonder that the creative class has flocked to her – like an oasis in an indefinable desert of sameness – for the last couple of decades. It's no wonder why she and Rick have become a centrifugal force in the world of fashion and art.

Lamy is anything but ordinary. In some circles, you may know Lamy because of her relationship to fashion and furniture designer Rick Owens. Indeed, there are many clichés to describe her relationship to her partner: muse, alter ego, better half, right hand woman and so on. But more than anything, Lamy is a vital counterpart - a long lost spiritual and creative twin. That Owens and Lamy found each other in this modern artistic wilderness is kismet in the form of nuclear fusion, but it is not terribly surprising. Before the two were globally recognized, Michele owned a famous restaurant in Los Angeles called Les Deux Café and Owens was honing his craft in a studio across the street. While both Michele and Owens are mercilessly creative - Lamy really took the reigns with the furniture side of their output. Lamy almost exclusively heads all production, which takes her on material buying trips around the world looking for rare skins and fur, wood, bone and marble.

Open now at MOCA's Pacific Design Center outpost, you can experience an immersive exhibition of new furniture pieces designed by Owens, but spearheaded and organized by Lamy. A large alabaster wall, marble benches, camel skin ottomans and an ox bone settee - you can move your fingers across and through all the pieces. The furniture is a perfect, brutalist, and antiestablishment vision for a bombed out future where we must carve out our palaces from the ruins of factories and government headquarters. Complimenting the furniture are works by the late sculptural painter Steven Parrino, whose works capture the same anarchy and vision as the furniture. 

In the following interview, we chat with Michele Lamy about the exhibition, her past as the iconic ringleader at Les Deux Café and what she misses most about the Los Angeles she left behind before leaving for Paris with Rick Owens.

BJ PANDA BEAR: How have you been? I’ve been seeing you pop around and I know you’re working on this upcoming exhibition. How is everything coming along with it?

MICHELE LAMY: So, we are almost done. Just finishing up. I like the process so there is a thing that we’ve built and it’s just outside of Paris. We have this big atelier and then we did a warehouse in Los Angeles. For example, we do a lot of pieces in concrete, which is difficult to move, paying for the weight of the concrete for sending on a plane because we are always late. And then we found this great warehouse that’s on Highland and Romaine. Now we move in to MOCA and there is a little bit of adjustment because it’s still an institution, but it’s cool. We can break stuff, we can repair stuff up there, but for example you cannot drink a cup of tea. I don’t know why - it’s just the rules. When you’ve finished building something, you cannot have tea. I’m sure you can come in with a gun, but you cannot have tea.

BJ PANDA BEAR: That's insane! Where did the origin of the furniture come from? 

LAMY: When we move somewhere, we always do the furniture. We moved so many times. A gallery said it looked like a collection so I took it from there to produce it. It turned into two collections. It turned into gallery showings, we have dealers. We just keep doing it.

BJ PANDA BEAR: You’re always so hands on when we see all the documentation of your work. Have you always been so hands on with every single detail and the luxury.

LAMY: Which luxury?

BJ PANDA BEAR: Like all the images of you picking out slabs of marble and everything.

LAMY: Yeah you know I completely fell in love with doing this. The material, and there is something about the story behind making the pieces. We have a collection where everything is coming from Pakistan. In another collection, we are finding camel fur in the Empty Quarters desert in Abu Dhabi. But everything is produced just outside of Paris. That’s just where we find the right people.

BJ PANDA BEAR: What type of music is inspiring for you? What have you been listening to lately?

LAMY: I’m very into techno, house. I love radio stations, but now they are so lacking. There were so many and they’ve disappeared. I listen here on the internet from France like continuous house music, but I like LSD from A$AP [Rocky], I like his music.

BJ PANDA BEAR: You and A$AP are close, right?

LAMY: Yep. We just did a performance together at Art Basel Miami. It was fantastic. I was so happy. It was in the Design District on a roof. Silencio, a club from Paris, opened it. It was this space and it was a performance with Caecilia Tripp. Where you never see her, but she is there. We were there. It was a nice courtyard in the design district, so the location was good. It was not a hotel, it was more its own space.

BJ PANDA BEAR: When you were laying out and organizing the exhibition, was there a central focus or drive for this particular project?

LAMY: Yeah, There was a special focus. The one thing is the prong. It is represented everywhere even if you don’t see it, because it’s the way that we attach a bench of six meters – by two prongs, there is flow. It is floating. It looks like you need to hammer something, but it is about floating. The paintings are hung on the side. The space was sort of difficult, because it is very high and there’s not so much space on the first floor. Then we made this huge wall in alabaster that is a weeping wall. That piece - you know, I did feel good because coming to LA, I was sort of seeking a home, found the right warehouse, and then we were able to make this space our space. And changing the dynamic of the space, that’s usually what I’ve seen is always a challenge.

BJ PANDA BEAR: You’re used to transforming spaces, right? Your place in Paris doesn’t have a specific living room, or even a specific kitchen.

LAMY: Right right.

BJ PANDA BEAR: It is often said that you are the muse behind the show, but also that you’re kind of spearheading all of it. What are your personal muses and inspirations for design? Do you have a muse yourself?

LAMY: I don’t know what a muse is in that way. When you are with someone and you are doing things together and people say that because it is too difficult to say what exactly it is. I’m sure there is something I am inspired by. I’m old enough that all of these pieces of inspiration are melting into something more personal for me. People I admire is more because they have the guts to do what they’re meant to do and especially now with what just happened in the election, I think people have to be strong and do something they believe in.

BJ PANDA BEAR: Since this is like a comeback to LA for you, have there been any restaurants or places new here that you really love?

LAMY: I came a couple of times to do this exhibition. So I’ve had time to visit many places here. This time around, I live at the Chateau. When I was with Rick, we lived for two years at the Chateau, because we got attacked at the house we lived in. I have some friends and I gave them a tour of Traction Avenue and where there used to be factories are now galleries. I am really, really happy to see that little part of downtown – it is still the same, sort of, like SCI-Arc is still there. It was always good, except Al’s Bar is closed, but American Hotel is still there. They always say there was no one there before. They were there. We weren't so underground, but the prices were different. I always liked Little Tokyo and Koreatown – and Korean baths! My favorite thing, I think they are better here than in Korea. Of course the beach, it is beautiful. I was at the beach for Thanksgiving. There were not many people there – just people skateboarding on Venice Beach.

BJ PANDA BEAR: Can we chat a little about Les Deux Cafe or is that something you’d rather not? Cause I’ve heard so many stories.

LAMY: You know it was fantastic. It has been like twelve years of doing this. It was great, it was a time. Me and Rick were living across the street. Now it’s set to be demolished in a few months. Everything there is going to be demolished because it is going to be a mall. Another mall.

BJ PANDA BEAR: That’s so nuts…

LAMY: You know there has been a story in Another Magazine written by Chris Wallace who was a maître d' at Les Deux Cafe. Then we had this great artist, Konstantin Kakanias, who did these drawings, because at the time people did not have cell phones so it was preferential to taking a picture. And because it was a private place, the drawing was so much better to help tell the stories.

BJ PANDA BEAR: I love hearing the stories.

LAMY: It made it even better. There was no Instagram. Can you believe? It was so long ago. It worked though, we had so many great stories.

BJ PANDA BEAR: They’re so epic. I don’t even know if some of them are real.

LAMY: That was a very great time.

BJ PANDA BEAR: Are you going to be spending more time in Los Angeles? What took you guys so long to come back? Does Rick ever come here?

LAMY: You know before this MOCA story, we never came back. Rick you know, he is not coming for the exhibition. We don’t want to be analyzing all of this, but at the same time it’s a lot of things that are happening so he decided not to come here and let me do all the work alone. I know that next year, we are going to be in Europe a lot. Lots of time in Venice for the Biennale, so it seems like these things are happening and then Rick is going to our show in Milano. But I feel very at home in New York.

BJ PANDA BEAR: In New York, really? I’ve heard stories about Rick not liking New York. Does he ever go there?

LAMY: Yeah he doesn’t come there.

BJ PANDA BEAR: I was going to ask about the crystal and foam you’re planning on working with. How did you guys get involved with that kind of material?

LAMY: One thing to the next. Right now in this show, there is foam. The main thing in this show that changed the old perspective is a big wall of carved alabaster - the weeping wall. That is so heavy. There’s a lot of totems. It’s difficult to explain without seeing it.

BJ PANDA BEAR: Can you talk a little bit about Steven Parrino’s work in the show?

LAMY: It started because we are doing a show at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. It was a Carol Rama show and they asked us to be guests with our furniture. It was this combination because there is something on the wall, and then something on the floor. So then when Phillipe Vergne asked us to do a show, we thought it would be nice to work with somebody, and who is better than Steven Parrino? I know that we always liked him and his work is very related to our work. Lot’s of canvases that you think are collapsed, but are actually very controlled.

BJ PANDA BEAR: Did you get to meet him when he was around?

LAMY: Not at all, because all the years he was in Europe, I was here. I did know about him. I could have met him in Paris, but I didn’t. He was more known in Europe than in the States and he had a lot of collectors in Geneva. Did you like his work?

BJ PANDA BEAR: I like his work and his minimalist sort of nihilistic work. It reminds me a bit of Alan Vega’s work from Suicide and I like that deconstructed sort of connection between music and fashion.

LAMY: Steven Parrino’s work is very connected to those worlds. It speaks very well to this show at MOCA.

Rick Owens: Furniture will be on view until April 2, 2017 at MOCA Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles. Interview by BJ Panda Bear. Intro text and photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Wish I Wasn't Here: An Interview of Maritza Yoes and Sean Monahan On Their Art Basel Collaboration With Snapchat and Artsy

The gap between technology, advertisement and art is nearly sealed. With years of philosophical rants over context, technique and accessibility often polarizing the art crowd. Today it seems unrealistic to not have some internet served with your art. During Art Basel Miami Beach, Maritza Yoes, one of the founders of LACMA’s social media channel and Sean Monahan, one of the founders of trend forecasting darlings K-HOLE, collaborated with Artsy and Snapchat to bring an array of artists out of the galleries and onto our phones with a range of special edition Snapchat geofilters. The filters were located around the city at prominent art locations featuring a grouping of artist including Chloe Wise and Katherine Bernhardt. I caught up with them to find out how this meeting of art and technology is just the beginning.

BJ Panda Bear: So, can you tell us about the project?

Snapchat is our favorite platform for creativity. We were excited to help make this project come to life to give artists a chance to play with the platform in a deeper way and for Snapchatters to have an accessible art experience. Without going into too much detail, Snapchat had a great idea for artist-designed geofilters. Sean and I helped bring Artsy and Snapchat together to make the creative initiative happen.

BJ: Have you worked with Snapchat in this art context before?

Yes, I have a relationship with Snapchat from my LACMA ties. I was an early art pioneer on the platform through my LACMA work so there's some good mutual trust.

BJ: Is it true that you got LACMA on Snapchat? 

True! I developed LACMA's Snapchat account and the strategy of meshing pop-culture and art history. The pairings are meant to be simultaneously irreverent and thought-provoking. LACMA has continued to maintain the strategy and it's still seeing a lot of success!

BJ: What drives a project like this?

An interest in how art, culture, social media, and technology can converge. We're constantly thinking about opportunities to explore new technologies in an art context. Finding ways for the worlds of art and technology to work together is at the heart of our participation with the project. 

BJ: What does cultural strategist mean?

"Cultural strategy" is our definition for bringing creative people and culturally relevant opportunities together. Full time I work as a social strategist with an emphasis on arts, tech, and culture, but I also love introducing people and helping make collaborations happen, this is something I do naturally! Sean is a full-time freelancer and branding genius. He was a founding member of the art collective K-HOLE where he worked with businesses that had the uncompromising creative integrity of art.

text and interview by BJ Panda Bear for Autre Magazine. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Ritualized Catharsis: An Interview of Hyon Gyon

text by Adam Lehrer

South Korean New York-based visual artist and painter Hyon Gyon’s Chinatown studio is hard to miss. Walking down Canal Street past the skateboarders that grind the rails along the bike path at the bottom of the Manhattan side of the Manhattan bridge, the markets that smell ripe of fish and assorted edible sea creatures, and the dizzyingly busy intersection of a diverse population, you finally take a right on Eldridge Street. Quite visibly from the opposite end of the block your eye catches an out-of-place looking two floor building with a massive sign that reads “Hyon Gyon.” The building looks more like a hut or a place of worship than an emerging visual artist’s studio. Considering Gyon’s aesthetic and work, that notion could feel rather deliberate on part of the artist. But talking to Gyon for any length of time quickly dispels that notion. Her studio is just an outgrowth of her practice, and her practice lacks any grand conceptual conceit. She channels energy into her art. What you see is simply what has come out of her.

Inside that studio is a visual world perhaps even more rarified and indicative of Gyon’s work than the locale’s exterior. The first floor is half work space and half gallery displaying several of Gyon’s large-scale and quite spectacular paintings that combine the markings of abstract expressionism and traditional Korean shamanistic imagery alongside Gyon’s scattered work materials. The room is accented by vibrant Korean carpets that cover almost the entirety of the floor. Upstairs, Gyon maintains a sizable collection of art and design books and has been stockpiling an assortments of garments that Gyon has taken to painting, deconstructing, and refashioning. At the center of the artifacts and tasteful junk is Gyon herself: ethereally beautiful, petite, and adorned in a sparkly pink top over a Rolling Stones t-shirt, she abstractly resembles the ideas that flow out of her in her work.

Gyon was attending university when she decided to be an artist professionally. Initially interested in fashion and having even worked at a studio that designed traditional Korean garments, Gyon’s decision to work in the fine arts was catapulted by the death of her grandmother. When Gyon’s grandmother passed, her family took part in a gut (pronounced: “goot”) ritual for her; in these ceremonies, a Korean shaman leads a series of sacrifices, physical gestures and prayers to the gods that theoretically enable a peaceful transition for the human spirit to leave the physical plane and enter into the spiritual plane. But in a more tangibly relatable manner, the gut ritual serves the purpose of allowing the deceased’s loved ones to move on. To purge negativity. To experience catharsis. That ritualized catharsis had a deep impact on Gyon, and she knew then that she had found her subject manner. “It’s hard to describe what happened to me,” says Gyon referring to her catharsis felt during the gut ritual. “Something in me had changed. I knew that I wanted people to experience emotion through my work.”

Gyon focuses on bold paintings and abstract sculptures with textile elements that use the faces and bodies of monstrous characters, or “incarnations” as she calls them, that are emblematic of specific emotions from the wide scale of human feeling. After working and developing her practice in Japan for 13 years, Gyon moved to New York in 2013 on a residency supported by her new dealers at Shin Gallery. The residency first resulted in a pop-up show entitled Hyon Gyon and The Factory that referenced Warhol and saw Gyon producing at truly Warholian (or should we say Herculean?) rates. This year, Shin included Gyon’s work alongside titans like Balthus and Salvador Dali in a group show entitled I Wanna Be Me that used its Sex Pistols aping title to celebrate utterly personal expression in a world of appropriation. But the greatest testament to Gyon’s talents at this juncture was her first eponymous Shin Gallery solo show that ran over the summer. The centerpiece of the show was the sculptural Headpiece that saw Gyon applying oil paints to pillows. Every pillow was its own face unlike any of the other faces and, according to Gyon, each represented a human emotion. The stacking of the pillows on top of one another and fashioning them to collide into one another was emblematic of any single human being’s psychology: chaotic and disorganized but still working together to create a definable whole. While so much of the conceptual art world explores the anxiety and paranoia that technology has unleashed upon the world populace, Gyon looks toward a concept that is, if not divine, than spiritual. Her work is awake and tapped into something that lives above the cacophony of daily existence. I had to talk to her.

LEHRER: What were you going through emotionally while in university that led you to transition into creating art works?

Gyon: During my first master course, I was working through my own personal experiences with my grandmother having just passed and that prompted me to focus on my work. I was enjoying making art, but really didn’t know what I wanted to make and I wasn’t sure what my subject matter would be. I was looking for something. We held a a “gut” ritual for her and that had a big impact on me.

LEHRER: Obviously having your grandmother pass away is an emotional event, but what was it about the ceremony specifically that you connected with making artwork?

Gyon: I was not very close with my grandmother.  I was not a good grandchild. I did very bad things to her. I regretted this. After she passed away, I couldn’t do anything for her. It made me so sad and I wanted to meet her again. 

LEHRER: So you felt making art somehow would connect you to your grandmother in the way that you couldn’t while she was alive?

Gyon: Yes. During the Guy Ceremony, I felt I could meet my grandmother, like I could talk to my grandmother. I had such negative emotions in my mind and after the ceremony, they were gone. Not completely gone, but my emotions changed.

LEHRER: Your artwork is obviously very emotional. I was curious, I read that as a child, you liked burning textiles and that this became a part of your process later on. For you, was that destructive act also a creative act?

Gyon: Mhmm

LEHRER: Could you explain that a little bit?

Gyon: As a kid, I didn’t want to go out. I didn’t want to play with my friends. I just wanted to be alone. My mom had a lot of fabrics and I wanted to do something with them. Draw, paint, write. But, I used a lighter. It didn’t work. It all burned

LEHRER: I’ve read articles about the fashion designer Margiela when he was still around.

Gyon: I love him

LEHRER: When people asked why he sent ripped clothing down the runway, he said for him ripping clothes is just another creative act. It’s like you’re destroying something to create something else. 

GYON: I use that process, always. When I make a painting, I’ll destroy it, remake it, destroy it. It’s much better in the end. 

LEHRER: Your work has been broken down into these five different ideas: Incarnations, hair which I guess is a metaphor for life and how life can continue after death, the stigma of the shaman lifestyle of being ostracized or put away from your community, but called upon for important funerals and things like that, and catharsis. That sounds very specific. What sort of lead you to focus on these five ideas?

Gyon: I don’t think it’s so specific. It’s about life and death. Happy or unhappy.

LEHRER: So many contemporary artists now are dealing with the paranoia surrounding the digital age and surveillance technology. But your work is still dealing with the big themes of life, death, and spirituality. Obviously you have have a laptop and Wi-Fi, but do you feel yourself consciously disconnecting from technology to get in touch with your work?

Gyon: I’m not a huge technology person.

LEHRER: That helps

Gyon: I have to use laptop, i have to use iPhone. Instagram brought you and I together, it has a power. It’s so amazing. I use it, but I am very human.

LEHRER: Are you religious or just spiritual?

Gyon: I don’t have any religion. Shamans aren’t about religion, they are spiritual. 

LEHRER: Right, and they can be like medicine men too? Healers? 

Gyon: Yes, healers. That’s why I’m interested. I’m not very interested in religions. I mean, I used to go to church and used to go to Temple. You know, the Temple is a very interesting place in Chinatown. 

LEHRER: I was wondering, too, because your work does have elements of abstract expressionism and also some figuration to it, were you influenced at all by the conventional schools of art history? Are you trying to blend these concepts of ritual with the traditions of art history?

Gyon: Blend. Everything is hybrid. I always use juxtaposition—so high culture and low culture. I am always trying to juxtapose emotion and culture. My work does not just focus on shamanism. 

LEHRER: Yeah, because it still is in the context of contemporary art and art history and things like that. So for some of your work, Headcount for instance, when I first saw it I was amazed by the way it almost implies an explosive imagination. How do all those faces and characters appear to you? And how do they flow out of you?

Gyon: They just came out. And each piece is different, with different faces. I didn’t make them as a portrait, I just filled them in with emotions. I was transformed by other people. It just came out. 

LEHRER: Do you think that they’re all feelings? 

Gyon: Yes. I don’t know, it just came out and I can’t explain why. I made it by myself. 

LEHRER: You don’t use assistants or anything? 

Gyon: Some people helped me with the sewing and stuffing the cotton, but basically I do it by myself. 

LEHRER: That’s what’s so interesting about art criticism is that sometimes we take meaning from the work that’s so much different than what’s intended. 

Gyon: So different, yeah. And I really hate that people want to know what the meaning of the painting is, of these characters. It’s too much for me. I really don’t want to explain everything, every marking

LEHRER: One thing I did want to ask you though is you used to design traditional Korean garments? When did you notice the potential in those fabrics for other creative purposes? 

Gyon: I always loved clothing. I always loved the fabrics. I wanted to be a designer more than a painter. I don’t know why I’m a painter. That experience was really amazing. I didn’t even want to be an artist because I thought that it was impossible to live as one. I just went to the interview and had no idea how to make the clothing, I still can’t do it, but the designer hired me because I was really good with using color and good at drawing. And so that’s how I started working there. It was amazing. Amazing. I didn’t know how beautiful the traditional Korean dresses were. I’m very proud of it. It’s super inspiring. I mean, that’s why I went to Japan, because I wanted to study fashion. 

Follow Hyon Gyon on Instagram. text and interview by Adam Lehrer