The Future Relic: An Interview of Artist and Fictional Archeologist Daniel Arsham

September 11, 2015

Daniel Arsham makes art. His studio is nestled away on a quiet street in the Greenpoint neighborhood in Brooklyn. You could pass his studio door a hundred times and not even notice it, were you not looking for it. The front of the building almost looks to be an extension of his art. And, behind the unassuming door is a vast treasure of ash, crystal, obsidian and other substances that make up the various forms of his sculptures. Sharing a moment with Arsham back in May, he talked a little about some of the newer projects he is working on.

Eric Morales: Can we get a summary of what you’ve been doing the last few months and what you have coming up?

Daniel Arsham: One is a film project. I did the premiere at TriBeCa film festival last month and this is a film called Future Relic that takes place in the future. I divided the film into nine sections that I’ve made independently. The sections, while vignettes of certain times in the future, they link together to become a Future Film. Number 3 of that series, which stars Juliette Lewis, was premiered at TriBeCa and we are doing a screening in Cannes and the following weekend in Istanbul.

I also recently opened a large scale exhibition at the contemporary art center in Cincinnati. This includes a lot of the cast works in geological materials, ash and crystal. I recreated a work that had been shown in Miami, which was made to look like an excavation. Underneath the floor it looks like an archeological site. There’s nowhere to dig [in Cincinatti] so I just made it into this massive pile. It’s twelve feet tall.

I also included work that manipulates the surface of the architecture. I’ve made these works for a number of years that sort of disrupt the architecture. Like the piece back there with the drip, in Cincinnati I showed for the first time a new technique or a formal way of disrupting the architecture that looks like a drop of water that’s into the wall. So the wall has these ripples as if the whole wall was made out of liquid.

EM: Defying not only the sense of solid matter, but of gravity. Right. Gravity goes this way [motioning horizontally], against the wall.

DA: I also having a large solo exhibition here in New York, in the fall. And I’ve lived here for 15 years. I’ve only shown in Europe and Asia and other places in the U.S. This will be my first real project in New York. It will be in November.

EM: Does it feel like a homecoming?

DA: Yes, most people that I tell are very surprised because people know my work here. It’s just that the main gallery I’ve worked with since 2003 is in Paris, and they have a gallery in Hong Kong. And, I work with a gallery in LA. So, people know my work here, but they’ve only seen it elsewhere.

EM: You’ve ventured into things in which you had no background. Is that your philosophy? Try it out and see what happens?

DA: It has certainly become that. When I was asked to make that first stage design, Merce was telling me, “I want you to do this,” and him saying that he believed I could do it. He gave me the confidence to pursue that. It was definitely a large scale project, the largest I had done up to that point. But, it wasn’t as impossible as it seemed initially.

A lot of other things I’ve worked on, the creation of the films, working with architecture, all of these things, they seem difficult from the outside…and, they are [laughter]. But, often, the things I’ve pursued outside of my own practice are in collaboration with other people. In dance, stage and film, I’ve been able to find people who really know what they’re doing, and they have allowed me to make these things.

EM: Are there any other experiences where you draw your confidence from?

DA: I just did it. I worked hard to study and learn the skills and tools. But, I’ve been very fortunate since I started school, to have all these things line up for me. I had won a grant at the end of school that allowed me to live for that first year. Because things lined up, I went from living off this grant for a year to the start of selling my work. Then I got hired by Merce and worked for him for a number of years, and one thing led to another. Then we built the architecture practice (Snarkitecture), and here we are. …A lot of hard work.

EM: Is there a specific purpose in dividing the films?

DA: The film spans about 500 years in time. Each segment takes place in a different time period. There is a lot of attention to detail in the film in terms of scenography, the costuming and props. I’ve used things that exist, that I’ve already made, to fill out that world. I’ve chosen amazing architectural locations to help fill out that world. So, it made sense to make [each film] as these distinct vignettes.

And, there’s only one character who moves through them. She is in it as a young girl and then as an adult, and then as an entity, or memory. And in practicality, it was much easier to shoot it that way because all the actors and talent are friends and are donating their time. I’m working around their schedules. Having the films made in short bursts is easier than dedicating months to work on it.

EM: Interesting how that shapes the final product

DA: Yes. Film, more than anything, is the most difficult thing I have ever tried to accomplish. If I show work in a gallery or museum I can easily control everything from the light, the way people enter, and obviously what the work looks like. In film, you have to control everything, every last detail. Everything that you place on the screen means something.

For example, the organization of creating or building light. I contend to allow that to be as much of a character as the actual characters are characters. But, trying to organize all those aspects…There’s a scene where the characters are in an airplane cockpit. We built the entire cockpit. Lighting was placed on their faces as if they were moving through clouds. Shadows are cast differently, like they’re moving. That’s amazing. I know that I need that.

"There’s a lot of failure in what I do. I try stuff. It doesn’t work. I just keep going. I’m very adept at moving past things."

EM: That’s living sculpture. You’re working with light, shape/form and time all at once.

DA: It’s similar to dance in some ways. The fourth dimension is time, and film does that in a way, but it’s infinitely more complex because you can watch it over and over again. You can pick things apart.

EM: Are there more films in your future?

DA: Yes. I’m making a push toward the film stuff. I have to complete Future Relic, but there’s a couple of other shorter projects I’ve been working on. I directed a dance film recently that was just 3 minutes. But I’ve been working on Future Relic for two years already, and with another year to go. But, that’s what it takes.

EM: Are you looking toward more traditional narratives?

DA: People often think that if an artist is making a film that it’s going to be some sort of art film with no story or very abstract. There are elements of Future Relic that are like that, but there is a story that is closer to a Hollywood style thing.

EM: When it comes to process and tools that you are using, what has evolved for you? With the 3D art?

DA: Everything is hand made. All of the molds are hand made. The technology, our ability to make very complex forms is growing, we are getting much better at it. There is one mold that 5 years ago I could never have made. It’s a multi part mold that has an interior and exterior. In order to do that, you have to be able to pull the object apart in your mind. It’s like reverse engineering. I had to start with very simple forms to get to that place.

EM: You seem like a very gracious person

DA: I just want to exist in a world that is easy. And, when I say easy I mean that there aren’t people yelling and there’s no stress. There’s issues and things that happen but you just deal with them as they come.

EM: Music?

DA: A lot of hip hop. Looking forward to Rocky’s album. Drake.

EM: Film?

DA: Stanley Kubrick, George Lucas and I really love Chris Nolan. A lot of sci-fi stuff. I saw Ex Machina, which I thought was good. The films that are most successful in depicting the future for me contain aspects of the present. There’s aspects that feel true and real. Like HER. It was a totally believable scenario and environment.

EM: Greatest lessons learned in life?

DA: There’s a lot of failure in what I do. I try stuff. It doesn’t work. I just keep going. I’m very adept at moving past things. It’s very easy to dwell and spend time ruminating over something, but there’s nothing to be done about it. It’s better and more efficient to move.

EM: You manage multiple social media outlets. It’s important to know how to navigate that world today. Where do you see the benefit in all of that?

DA: I see it as an extension of my practice. I make things so that people can see them. I’m not sharing my life, I’m sharing my work. It’s another format for people to see the work. It’s particularly useful for people who don’t live in the big city, or don’t have access to museums and galleries. Every time I show work on [social media], more people will see that image than will walk through the exhibition, by ten times probably. I think that’s the benefit. A lot of people have become familiar with my work through that.

EM: What do you think about during your downtime?

DA: Downtime? Do I have any downtime [laughter]? My work is my life. I don’t distinguish. I’m super happy to come to the studio every day and to travel for things. It’s all one thing.

Daniel Arsham "Fictional Archeology" opens today in Hong Kong and runs until October 11 at Galerie Perrotin Galerie Perrotin Hong Kong.You can watch Arsham's short film Future Relic here. Text, interview and photography by Eric Morales. follow Autre on Instagram: @autremagazine

An Interview of Sue De Beer On Shooting Noir In the Middle East and the Excitement of Unpredictability

September 9, 2015

Sue de Beer paints a lonely, haunting portrait with moving imagery. She is a filmmaker, but she is ultimately an artist in the sense that her short films exist in a sculptural environment that typically inhabits a physical space – usually a gallery – replete with film stills, three dimensional objects and more. Her films are often inspired or influenced by literary works and deal with identity, memory, and paranormal activity. In her film Ghosts, an occult hypnotist recovers lost lengths of time from peoples’ memories and returns them as if they are new memories. In another film, The Quickening, sexuality and desire is explored in an oppressive environment of Puritanical New England in the 18th century. The installations in which De Beer presents her films creates an almost dreamlike environment that leaves the viewer wondering if the time spent within the installation was a dream itself. Premiering tonight at Marianne Boesky Gallery, De Beer will be presenting The Blue Lenses, which is set in Abu Dhabi and tells the tale of a woman given surgery to restore her vision: upon the bandages being removed from her eyes, she sees people with animal heads instead of human heads. It is inspired by British author Daphne du Maurier’s novel of the same name. Indeed, it is the first time the artist has filmed in the Middle East and the entire exhibition has flourishes of an Islamic theme, but with a film noir slant – even the windows of the gallery have been tinted a jewel-toned blue to hint at the power and beauty of Islam. In the following interview, De Beer talks about The Blue Lenses, rescuing Proust from an apartment fire, and trying to explain American puritanism to German electro-clash musicians.

OLIVER KUPPER: I want to talk about your first video piece, Making Out With Myself, because it’s a powerful first foray into your future oeuvre, where did the idea to make out with yourself come from?

SUE DE BEER:I made that piece in 1997 - that's 18 years ago now. Wow. I don’t quite remember why that image came up - possibly I thought it was funny that one could do that as a moving image. Funny and lonely. And intimate. It's still showing, that film. Maybe people relate to the awkwardness of it.

OK: Did you grow up watching a lot of films…was there one particular film that made you want to explore cinema as a medium?

SD: I watched a lot of films in my 20s. The filmmakers I continue to think about are ones that use real people and small budgets - like Paul Morrissey, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Abel Ferrara, and Argento. They are all sculptors to me - I think because the budgets are small I can always imagine walking around in the rooms they are shooting in. They have a physical presence. I also like the tension between what's real and what's clearly fake in those films. The bad acting sometimes lends some authenticity to the moment, which is something I think about when I am working.

OK: Literature has also had a profound affect on your work as an artist – anyone from Proust to Maurier to Dennis Cooper – can you remember the first book you ever read and how it made you feel?

SD: I don’t remember the first book I ever read. I first read Proust when a friend of mine had a fire in his apartment, and came to live with me. I went back with him to his flat the morning after it burned - everything was black. We took what few things were left - I remember the selection included a copy of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, a bottle of cologne, a bottle of Jack Daniels, and a camera. He stayed with me for 3 months, then left the book with me after he moved out. I read it cover to cover.

I met Dennis Cooper when I was quite young - I want to say 20. My boyfriend at the time was friends with him, and we would go out to LA and stay with him. So I met him before reading his books which is quite a privilege to be able to say. I found them to be frightening and romantic at the same time. The quiet parts are - theres nothing else quite like them.

OK: You lived in Berlin for a spell, and created three films there, do you think that had an influence on your work or do you think it sent your aesthetic in a new or different direction?

SD: Yes. I miss Berlin. It radically changed the color in my work. I was able to build huge sets there, and was able to assemble skeleton crews easily. It was also nice having some distance on American culture, and making work with that removal. I never could have shot The Quickening in the US for example. Trying to explain Puritans to Gina D’Orio and Annika Trost (the two German electro-clash musicians who played Puritans in my film) made me understand Puritans in a new way. They didn’t like the hats, for example. Gina made me explain Thanksgiving to her.

OK: You are not only creating the films and showing them in theaters – you present them as installations with photographs or film stills, sculptures and more…do you feel like you are doing more justice to these films by presenting them in this way?

SD: Yes.

"I like the idea of the audience picking it apart. But also of an audience just getting lost in this world, and not worrying terribly much what is fictional and what is real."

OK: Your film, The Blue Lenses, which premiers at Marianne Boesky tomorrow night, was your first film shot in the Middle East…what was it like shooting there?

SD: Wonderful.

OK: The installation is also centered around the beauty of Islamic culture…are you subconsciously or consciously trying to paint this world in a different light – a lot of people think of Islam, the Middle East, as a hot bed of terrorism and violence?

SD: I had very little experience with the Middle East before I shot there. I had no idea what to expect, and I purposefully left the shoot open to change - to be changed by the place. I mostly knew images from the news, from Hollywood movies which did not seem accurate, or a little bit of Iranian new wave cinema. I did not want my film to be political or topical. So I shot using this Noir format, which is a western narrative format. A western genre. And I found the images and places when I got there.

So my film has new images in it - I hope. Ones you wouldn’t normally get to see of that place. But it isn’t accurate which I like. Its a fictional world. I like the idea of the audience picking it apart. But also of an audience just getting lost in this world, and not worrying terribly much what is fictional and what is real.

OK: What is the ultimate overarching theme of The Blue Lenses and why it is important in the context of our current zeitgeist?

SD: That's a difficult question. Maybe the ‘theme’ and why it would be relevant now are two different things. The film tries to describe a man who doesn’t want to be describable. I think the older I get the more impossible it seems to me to fully articulate a person or a place. I am starting to enjoy people most when they reveal very little about themselves. I like sitting silently with people and just watching them do things. How they do things. Daniel I thought would change the way he does things on purpose for a time. To be confusing.

Why the Blue Lenses would be important to make now is not the story, which is not a new kind of story, or not the ‘theme’, but maybe its marrying this kind of story to that particular place. Maybe it changes your expectations of the story, and changes your expectations of the place.

OK: Is there anything that you are really excited about right now that’s driving your next project?

SD: The unpredictability of the shoot and how I never knew what to expect is still electrifying to me. I would like my next project to have more of that.

Sue De Beer: The Blue Lenses opens tonight and runs until October 25, 2015 at Marianne Boesky Gallery. Necessary reading: Sue De Beer's comprehensive 2005 monograph. Hans Un Grete is a rare out-of-print document of De Beer's 2002 short film about school shooters. Companion reading: The Complete Box Set of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. Food for thought: T he Blue Lenses and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier. Must Watch: The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @autremagazine

A Fatal Personality: An Interview With Brian Kokoska On Knives and Poison IV

September 7, 2015

Brian Kokoska, who can often be found with a knife clutched between his teeth or with a devious, wide-grinned smile, is one of our favorite artists working today. His paintings almost look like they belong to the hand of a child in art class working out some kind of trauma caused by alien abduction, but when you look closer, there is unexplainable magic going on. Perhaps Kokoska’s paintings are mirrored reflections of our own demons, or the artist’s – who really knows or cares – but what you will find amongst his crude oil painted visages is a sense of primordial familiarity. Maybe these creatures are our friends, or maybe they are out to kill us. What’s most interesting is the way the artist presents the work – it is never in the typical brightly lit gallery with white walls. Quite the contrary. What he does is create a totally immersive environment that is bathed with a single monochromatic hue – the walls, the carpet, the paintings, the sculptural props and found assemblage (like stuffed animals or toy cobra snakes), and, of course, knives – all one color. In one exhibition, it was a Pepto-Bismol pink, in another it was bug zapper blue, and in another it was a shade of codeine cough syrup, or purple drank. For his new solo exhibition at Valentin gallery, entitled Poison IV, the New York based artist creates a bath of swampy pale green where his evocative countenances interplay with knives and mannequin torsos that clutch green stuffed animals. It’s a complete ‘fuck you’ to the senses. Autre got a chance to catch up with Kokoska before the opening of his exhibition to talk about knives, his inspirations, sex, violence and his current must see show in Paris.

OLIVER KUPPER: Let’s start off with talking about the faces that appear in your paintings...how would you describe these faces, creatures…do you imagine them in your head or nightmares before you paint them?

BRIAN KOKOSKA: They are basically just from my imagination and I guess from my own life experiences. When I begin a painting there is no real clear vision for how it will turn out. So sometimes they go through multiple phases and different layers of faces and symbols are painted over and over until something new happens and then I leave the painting alone.

OK: There’s a clear evolution in your work from more detailed work to more symbolic, representational work…how would you describe this evolution?

BK: I think it's just natural for ideas to shift and to find different ways of expressing that through the work. For example, I get sick of things really easily so I try to challenge myself by bringing in new elements, particularly sculpture and installation. The paintings are something I'm passionate about but I don't see them as the key element in my work. They are only 1 factor.

OK: Who were some artists that influenced you or inspired you to be an artist?

BK: Early in school I was looking at a lot of German artists; Albert Oehlen, Jutta Koether, Isa Genzken, Kai Althoff...and then I started getting into American artists who I could relate to even a little better, like Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Cindy Sherman. I've always been drawn to nasty, raw, harsh work that is still totally genuine. Because I think there's too much fake shit right now (or always?).

OK: I want to bring up your fascination with knives…you have a lot of selfies posing with some scary knives…where does this fascination come from?

BK: Yeah, I just love knives. Aesthetically I think they are so beautiful. And I love how they can be so gentle and seductive yet also super violent and fatal. I collect rare knives but probably in the pics you are referencing I'm sourcing them for sculptures most of the time.

Even when I was a child I remember loving knives. Slasher films. And my uncles used to give me the coolest dagger-rings.. like Hells Angels shit.

Here in Paris we just went to this beautiful old knife shop called E.Dehillerin and the knife maker got concerned for my safety after he saw how into the knives I was. He kept explaining how like "this one's for meat, this one's for fish...". It was nice.

OK: You have started to do really comprehensive installations with your exhibition, choosing a single monochrome color, your last exhibition was Pepto-Bismol pink and your upcoming exhibition is sort of swamp green…can you describe your process of choosing a specific color?

BK: I get obsessed with particular colors and then it becomes this restriction in my head that I find nice to work with. Like, putting together a show in shades of one color (or perhaps a second color, black), it feels very rewarding in some weird way. It is similar to stage design or something.. where I would imagine you get a strange thrill of creating an environment that can psychologically affect an audience.

"...I have a fatal personality so I think sex and violence are probably heightened in my work because of that."

OK: Let’s talk about your current exhibition…the title is Poison IV…what is the concept behind this show?

BK: I had been doing a series of shows like you just mentioned in shades of one color. I was using mostly baby-colors...pale muted versions of colors that I like. So it went from baby blue to baby purple to baby pink and now baby/swampy green. For this show it will be my first solo version; in the past I've always asked another artist (Debo Eilers, Zack Davis, Chloe Seibert) to join my installation.

Poison IV will be my last iteration of the baby-color thing. I'm excited about this show because I've had the chance to make more sculptural works to go alongside the paintings.

OK: Symbols are a big part of your practice…where does this sense of ritual or symbolism come from…your paintings seem like they belong to a strange cult or religion?

BK: I tend to use whatever symbols are stuck in my head. Like, I'll keep seeing reoccurring numbers or symbols, so then when I get to work they'll just appear because it's what I'm thinking about. They usually build up in gestures to form the "face" paintings. A lot of the imagery is sentimental to me and comes from childhood experiences or memories. But I also borrow a ton of visual language from things I collect.

OK: This is your first solo show in Paris…are you going to do anything fun besides your exhibition while you are out there…are you more of a tourist or do you like to blend in?

BK: Mostly just been slaving on the show so far. I love Paris though, it's so romantic. I wander the streets and it's like I'm in a movie or something. Everybody just hanging out with baguettes. I like the pace here…nobody is really faking it...they're just enjoying life. I think that's really important, ya know?

OK: There is a distinct sense of sex and violence in your work…where do you think these themes come from?

BK: Ha ha.. Probably from my own life I guess, and from past experiences. I'm a scorpio and I have a fatal personality so I think sex and violence are probably heightened in my work because of that.

OK: What’s next?

BK: Party in France. Gonna check out Venice quickly then back to New York. I'm gonna be working on a solo for LOYAL in Stockholm which opens mid November. Before that I'm making a baby sculpture in collaboration with DIS Magazine for their new issue DIStaste.

Brian Kokoska: Poison IV will be on view until October 10, 2015 at Valentin gallery in Paris. Photographs by Sylvie Chan-Liat, courtesy of Valentin and the artist. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Hope and Fear: An Interview With Artist Will Ryman On His Upcoming Solo Show

September 4, 2015

Will Ryman is a brilliant puppeteer and manipulator of materials to expose innate contradictions in history, commerce and power. It started with a gilded reinterpretation of Abraham Lincoln’s childhood cabin and took even more shape when he crafted a true-to-size 1958 Cadillac and coated the entire thing in Bounty paper towels. It’s simple distillation and refinery, and Ryman is the centrifuge forcing the base materials to the surface – the resultant work connotes a singular layer of blatant truth. His upcoming exhibition at Paul Kasmin gallery, Two Rooms, is an even more advanced exploration of this distillation and stripping down. There are two installations. One is a life-size sculpture – entitled The Situation Room – that is based on the iconic photograph of the Obama administration watching in real time the Navy SEAL raid on Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan in 201l. The twist: the entire sculpture is crafted out of crushed black coal. In a contemplation of “war, power, propaganda, industrialization, and political theater,” the sculpture seems to also bring to light our ulterior motivations in the Middle East, the plundering of natural resources, and the blood spilt to acquire such dubious ends. Another installation, entitled Classroom, features 12 students at their desk chairs – each of the twelve sculptures is made out of a different material: cadmium, titanium, salt, iron, oil, chrome, copper, wood, and gold – are we all reduced to simple commodification?

Will Ryman wasn’t always an artist. He wanted to become a playwright. Perhaps it was a rebellion from his painter parents – his father is famed minimalist painter, Robert Ryman. After twelve years, though, Ryman realized that the characters in his play couldn’t come to life like his future sculptures and installations could. Art seemed the perfect medium to explore the themes he was interested in.

We got a chance to catch up with Ryman over the phone from New York. We had an enlightening chat about materials, crude oil, his sculptural installations and we ask whether he is hopeful or fearful about the future ahead.

Oliver Kupper: Growing up with parents who were artists, did you always know you wanted to become an artist?

Will Ryman: No, I didn’t. Initially, after high school, I wanted to be a writer. I tried to launch a career in writing. I wrote plays and screenplays. Slowly, I started to sculpt the characters in my plays. That’s how I started to become involved in installations and sculptures.

OK: You were a playwright for twelve years. That’s a long stretch of a career. What themes were you working with as a playwright? Were you more successful as an artist in interpreting those themes?

WR: As a playwright, I was interested in writers like Beckett and Ionesco. I was interested in plays that had to do with approaching our culture from a cathartic and absurd place. I’ve always been interested in how things got to be how they are in our culture—whether it’s internal psychology or external social relations. That’s what I wanted my plays to be about. They were very abstract. It was very difficult for me to get anything produced. A lot of people didn’t understand them. They weren’t traditional in a structural or commercial way. At the time, people were looking for the Reservoir Dogs style. They were looking for the next Seinfeld. My work was nothing like that. I was frustrated; I started questioning myself a lot. I was also a very young man, so I had a lot of uncertainty about everything. I became blocked. What I was interested in, what was in my true nature was not working out. I tried to make my characters 3-dimensional to see what that would do. I started to work with materials, and I became interested in the same subjects that I’m interested in now.

OK: What are those subjects, specifically?

WR: Like I said, I’m really interested in how the world got to be the way it is today. That’s a huge topic. Within that, I’m interested in external issues like how the system—mass production, capitalism, technology, social issues—how that evolved to the way it is today. My work is about retracing that and exploring what’s underneath all that through natural resource materials.

OK: The materials you choose for your work have a very political charge. When you source these materials, do you run into ethical paradoxes that validate the very statements you’re trying to make?

WR: Yeah, a little bit. A lot of my work is about studying materials. Most of the work is done before I’ve made the art—in research, in testing the materials to see what they do. Sourcing them isn’t usually an issue. I got some crude oil from Texas, which was pretty strong stuff. It’s very toxic and very difficult to work with. It brings the reality right in front of me as to what these materials are capable of and what they’re used for. It definitely makes me think a lot more. It piques my interest about the uses of these materials—titanium, dust, silicon.

OK: It must get pretty dangerous to work with these materials, especially [crude] oil. What kind of environment do you have to be in to work with these materials?

WR: When I got the [crude] oil, I didn’t want to use it much. I would be uncomfortable working with it. We used very small amounts of it. We put it in resins to help try to tint them and give them the look that I want to reference crude oil. When I use the coal, we have to wear respirators.

OK: It seems like a lot of the products we use today are made by some kind of crude oil.

WR: That’s what is interesting for me. When you strip everything down, it comes down to these elements on the periodic table. Without that, our life wouldn’t be where it is today.

OK: I want to talk about the Cadillac made from paper towels. It was made shortly before GM recalled ten million of their cars. It brought attention to their negligence and cover-up of it. It’s the same with a lot of car manufacturers. Did you feel this recall was a confirmation of what you were saying? Were you surprised?

WR: I was exploring the Cadillac as an American symbol of power. But power is fragile. I took two commercial symbols. The paper towel is disposable, mass-produced, and convenient. The Cadillac is the symbol of American power from the industrial revolution. Combining the two, I was playing with appropriating these symbols of commercialism and power. What happened with GM is certainly related to what I’m exploring, with this piece especially. Negligence stems from mass production that stems from a system that relies on the speed of consumption. Things are made in negligence and silence, all to make profit. That’s what it seems like. I’m trying to make sense of all this for myself.

"I’m not trying to take a stance on it or have a really strong activist message. I’m coming from more of a fearful place. I do these things because I have a lot of fear."

OK: It’s a complex time. It’s hard to ask questions in a way that makes sense, because it seems like nothing makes sense.

WR: When it does seem like it makes sense, it seems too simple. There’s got to be more to it, but often there’s not. When you’re playing with materials, you see the significance of the materials.

OK: The Situation Room, which is going to be a piece in your next show, is a good example of that. Why did you choose to use coal?

WR: First, I wanted to take away all the colors and emotions from that photograph. I wanted to take away any kind of nationalism and romanticism that was there. I wanted to use a monochromatic material that was also a resource. Oil would be an obvious choice, but coal was more interesting to me. The interesting thing about that piece to me is the situation itself, not the event. It’s not about Osama Bin Laden or 9/11. It’s about a much bigger situation that repeats itself throughout history. Coal is referencing that, as well as redaction. If I saw the Situation Room, and it was covered in crude oil, that’s too direct and obvious. I would walk away. I would think that I saw something that looked cool, but was something I already knew about. With coal, I walk away thinking about a lot of different things. I think about history. I think about Pompeii. I think about archaeology. I think about energy, power, and expansion during the industrial revolution. I think about when American interest became very aggressive with the Middle East, which was around the time of the industrial revolution. I think about oil replacing coal as an energy source. I think the arc of this. 9/11 and the incident itself on Bin Laden’s compound was just one letter in the entire alphabet.

OK: From a historical sense, it’s such a fresh moment in history that we glance over that photograph as iconic. There are so many of these iconic, photojournalistic moments in history that have come up in major magazines that have now solidified major political conflicts. If you were in a different time, could you think of one photograph that would influence you to make a sculpture?

WR: There are probably many. I’m not really sure. There are many photographs that make me think about things. What I found interesting about this particular photograph was the relationship between propaganda and what’s underneath all that. A lot of these photographs operate that way. The Vietnam War was photographed a lot and on television a lot, which is why people were so aware of it back in the States. Without photographs and television, no one would have known. The Gulf War was the first war that was live. It was like a video game.

OK: I remember that—night vision images of bombs exploding.

WR: Television created a reality. Shortly after that, reality television became the number one media. There are similarities in all these relationships. That’s what interests me. When you see the Situation Room sculpture in person, I tried to make it as exact and as honest I could in relation to the photograph. When you see it—I didn’t do anything to it other than making it 3-dimensional and out of new material—I took everything else away. You see the difference. You can feel the intensity. It makes you think. Why was the photograph released? Why was everybody looking at that?

OK: Another big theme that you work with is human commodification, which is a big deal right now. Terms like “human resources” are thrown around when they should not be applied to humans in a working setting. How extreme do you feel this thread is? Do you feel we are approaching a society fueled by Soylent Green?

WR: I’m not trying to take a stance on it or have a really strong activist message. I’m coming from more of a fearful place. I do these things because I have a lot of fear. What helps me along and make sense of everything is to retrace it. Ultimately, what helps is to work with these materials and make these installations.

[In Classroom] One figure is sculpted, cast, and molded twelve times; there are twelve identical figures. Each one is made from a different material. They’re all natural resources, like salt, wood, chrome, titanium, gold leaf, and copper leaf. They’re all materials that have been essential—and are essential—in building our economy, retail, technology, military, and energy. All of those elements are in this piece. They’re the same figure, but because each is made from a different material, they have different characterizations, identities, and personalities. They all look different, which is interesting, because they’re all the same. We’re all the same, but we experience each other. The differences in each piece are purely from the materials. Some of them look Asian, some white, some African. The material has washed away some of the features. I really think that’s interesting and telling.

That’s a sign of mass production. I was thinking about that when I was working on them. I arranged the child-like figures into a grid that was reminiscent of an assembly line or military formation. The idea is that human beings can be mass-produced. They are just as much a resource as titanium or silicon. That’s interesting and disturbing. It’s part of the paradigm of the system that we live in. I don’t know if it’s bad for the majority of people. It’s great for a small amount of people. It’s what we live in the United States. That’s why I want to figure it out.

Also, robots are replacing humans. You see pictures of car factories—robots are building all of these cars now.

OK: Should we be fearful, or should we be hopeful for the future?

WR: I don’t know. I’m coming from an honest and accepting place. I think I’m hopeful, especially when I do this kind of work. It makes me hopeful. I feel like I understand things better. It’s such a complex, complicated machine.

Will Ryman's Two Rooms opens on September 10 and runs until October 17, 2015 at at Paul Kasmin Gallery, 515 W. 27th Street. Profile photograph by Dan Bradica. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram to stay up to date: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Yes All Women: An Interview With Photographer, Artist and Social Activist Jessie Askinazi

August 20, 2015

Jessie Askinazi is one of those rare connectors that seems to know or work with everybody - and not just in the art world. Art, fashion, politics, social justice – she’s there. Visit her Tumblr diary and you’ll see excerpts from fashion spreads she has featured on Autre, portraits of comedians, actors and musicians, and nightlife snapshots in black and white. Her photography is real, raw and it tells stories – it’s the opposite of vapid, which seems to sum up perfectly who Askinazi is as a person. She is also the founder, organizer and curator of the #YESALLWOMEN fundraiser, which is hosting a silent auction and exhibition featuring some of the most exciting women championing women’s rights, like Kim Gordon, Barbara Kruger, Rose McGowan, Mira Dancy and many more. Proceeds from the exhibition will be donated to the East Los Angeles Women’s Center, which aids survivors of sexual assault and domestic abuse. The exhibition will be on view at Dilettante on Saturday, September 19 for one night only. There is also a Go Fund Me page raising the capital to support the project and the exhibition. In the following conversation, Jessie Askinazi opens up about her bouts with depression, the importance of standing up for people that need it and her exciting #YESALLWOMEN campaign.

OLIVER KUPPER: Where are you from originally?

JESSIE ASKINAZI: I was born in Levittown, New York, and then my family relocated to South Florida, where I lived until I moved to NYC after high school. I was watching an episode of Seinfeld last night where Jerry said, "New York, Long Island, Florida... It's like the Bermuda Triangle. Unfortunately, nobody ever disappears."

OK: You work in a variety of mediums and industries, from arts to politics, where do you feel most comfortable?

JA: Well, my involvement in the arts and activism come from a similar place of necessary vocalization. I am compelled to do these things. I've always had a kind of fire under my ass, if you will, to expose corruption and help those who - while they have voices - are stifled. Even when I was in elementary school, I assembled a group of friends to have a lemonade stand for an organization called Kids in Distress, which is an organization that cares for abused children. I can't exist without creativity in various disciplines of the arts, or without attempting to influence social change. I don't really get the point of being alive if you're not going to use your own experience to make life better for others in some way. Ego and self-furthering is boring.

OK: What do you think motivated you to be so active in the different worlds that you exist in - is there one specific instance or a series of instances?

JA: It's hard to pinpoint exactly how these journeys originated. I have been through a lot and have been exposed to a lot. I was often very sick as a child and later on suffered from major depression, and so because of many periods of debilitation, I was forced to create my own world outside of our standard. I stayed home from school a lot and was kind of a recluse, so that led me to exploring and archiving as an escape. I wanted to be a soldier for those who couldn't do it alone. I think there is a lot of shame around the idea of needing other people, but we do - we were made to be communal creatures and in this day and age we are so isolated. There's a lot that I've experienced personally which I'm sure has contributed to this sort of lifestyle - I don't know any other way to be.

OK: You are a very talented photographer and you tell great stories with a camera - who were some of your photographic or artistic inspirations?

JA: Thank you so much! I have so many influences and they constantly change. I would say Surrealism, Italian Giallo horror films, art house movies, documentaries, lo-fi video, lost Americana, 60s mod fashion photography in Harper's Bazaar, 80s post-punk (and the teenage rebel movies from those years), retro futurism, psychedelia, the occult, mysticism, and vampy silent film have been a constant. And The Rudi Gernreich book, Guy Bourdin, Francesca Woodman, Barbara Kruger (floored that she is donating work to my show), Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Craig McDean, David Hamilton, Diane Arbus, Melvin Sokolsky, Eugenio Recuenco, Claude Cahun, Wim Wenders, Mick Rock, Tim Walker, etc. But mostly the weirdos in my own life inspire me to take pictures. Ha.

OK: You usually shoot on analog film, right - what cameras do you use?

JA: I do try to shoot analog as much as possible because the texture of film photography is something that can't be replaced. I almost always use my Nikon N65, although in the past I also used the Lomo LC-A a ton. When I shoot art events, that's when I use my digital camera, because film is just not practical in those instances.

OK: What is your favorite thing about working around and with such creative people?

JA: How my perspective is constantly expanding which in turn makes me really able to see the world, and at the same time there is such a deep understanding between artists. Again, the reality of our corporate-commercial conglomerate was always foreign to me. So the creative people around me have been some kind of siblings.

"I don't really get the point of being alive if you're not going to use your own experience to make life better for others in some way. Ego and self-furthering is boring."

OK: Okay, let's cut to the chase, what brought you to start #YesAllWomen?

JA: It's all been building up to this. Every day. The comments I receive, the way I've been objectified by men since I was extremely young. The way men have pretended to care about my humanity for their own gain. Being expected to be quiet or polite or passive. Every day. Television, movies, social media, the news, video games, contemporary art, the film industry, magazines. Every day. Advertising, marketing, consumerism, the dumbing down, the ignorance, indifference, bullying, violence, fear, misogyny, regulation, inequality. Every day. The Kardashians being an ideal, being worshiped. What we're expected to be, what we're expected to do, what we're expected to say. Every day.

OK: There definitely needs to be more female creativity in the world...What is your advice to young women who feel stuck, repressed or held back from their true passions?

JA: I actually think the phrasing of this sentence is wrong. Female creativity is everywhere. Practically every woman I know is a brilliant artist or thinker. Women are often creative heroes because we have such rich emotional lives and possess a regal strength. In Peter Pan, The Lost Boys are "boys who fall out of their prams when the nurse is looking the other way and if they are not claimed in seven days, they are sent far away to Never Land". There are no "lost girls" because as Peter explains, "girls are far too clever to fall out of their prams." It's just our society that is repressive, and it's the system that keeps the male in the spotlight (the patriarchy, as it goes.) It's all to service the man. Even our laws.

So my advice to all women (not just the young) who feel stuck on the road they are traveling, is to speed up. Go all in. Make a decision and follow through, despite what challenges you think lie ahead of you. That's what I'm doing - I'm not letting the vampires suck the life out of me. I have no idea what I'm doing most of the time, but luckily the people in my life are fantastic colleagues and friends, and we work together to achieve our goals. A year ago, I never would have guessed that I'd be curating a show with some of my greatest heroes. But what I constantly remind myself is, "If you don't ask, the answer is always no."

OK: What do you think is the greatest challenge facing women in today's time?

JA: I guess the fact that questions like this one have to be asked. That we are considered "other." We are the ones who create life, yet ours are always persecuted. There really isn't just one challenge, that's why I wanted to spotlight #YesAllWomen (because it covers the broad, various factors of this big picture - and is an ongoing conversation). Also, different challenges present themselves to different cultures, which is something that needs more awareness. Child marriage affects the Middle East and Africa, for example. Women of color often have an added layer of oppression that white women will never experience. For me, personally, I'm sick of being so obsessed with what my face and body look like, as if that is all that defines or validates me.

OK: How can people be a part of the #YesAllWomen campaign?

JA: In this case, you can make a donation to our fundraiser at: http://www.gofundme.com/elawc. We are trying to raise money to cover the hard costs of this large production, and we also hope to raise additional money for the East Los Angeles Women's Center, the organization that we are benefiting; they help survivors of sexual assault and domestic abuse. Beyond that, keep sharing art that is reflective of the female experience, keep telling your stories that have so much weight. The only way for there to be real and actual change is by having the conversation, first and foremost.

OK: There is a one night only event supporting the campaign where people can purchase art, but what happens after the event?

JA: Actually, the one night only event at Dilettante is where the artwork will be exhibited and where there will be a series of performances and entertainment, hosted by Rose McGowan. The artwork will be available through online auction, via the website Paddle8, so anyone can bid and purchase the artwork which goes toward the charity. The auction will go live around two weeks before the actual event. Those details will be posted on the project's website soon: I am hoping that this will become an annual project, with different contemporary female voices benefiting different organizations for women.

OK: What's next for you - anything exciting that you want to share?

JA: I have some photo series in mind, and one of the artists in our show, Snovit Hedstierna and I want to collaborate on a project together. I'm really excited to work with her one on one - her passion is a rocket. She has such a rare enthusiasm.

The #YESALLWOMEN art auction and fundraiser will be on view for one night only on September 19th, 2015 at Dilettante, 120 N. Santa Fe, Los Angeles, CA. You can visit the Go Fund Me campaign here to make a donation. You can also use the #YESALLWOMEN hashtag to join the global cause. text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Just A Gut Feeling: An Interview With interdisciplinary Artist Eric Parren

July 31, 2015

Eric Parren on the swell of a new wave of artists that are borrowing from the forces of science to create major artistic statements. Parren, an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Los Angeles, combines facets of art, science, technology and investigates the human connection with deeply complex notions about the technologies that shape our future – often without our knowing – such as artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, and space exploration. The works are often deeply sensory experiences dealing with modes of perception and the physics of light and sound. For instance, Parren has genetically manipulated the e. coli bacteria, which are naturally occurring in the intestine, to light up red, green and cyan – he then filmed them with a time-lapse laser-scanning confocal microscope. With the visuals of dancing bacteria, like microscopic ballerinas, he played an algorithmically composed composition based on the biosynthetic pathways of the e. coli’s genome. The project, entitled Gut Feeling, was presented as an audiovisual performance to an audience and as an installation. Parren has also created The Synesthesia Glasses, which allows the wearer to experience what it would be like to have synesthesia, a condition where the person can see sounds. Indeed, through close study of the histories of media arts, composition, and film, Eric’s work makes connections between the past, the present, and what is to come. Parren is also a member of the art collective Macular, which includes a number of artists within the same technologically and scientifically advanced artistic milieu. In the following interview, Parren talks about his unique interdisciplinary practice, genetically manipulating e. coli bacteria for the sake of art and how rave culture influenced his trajectory as an artist.

Joe McKee: Tell me about your practice.

Eric Parren: My practice is a little all over the place, but sound and music is definitely a part of it.

JM: It was really exciting to stumble upon your work. You’re doing something with academically-inclined ideas, but it’s fun and engaging.

EP: In my work, I put myself in this triangle of art, science, and technology. That’s where the future is happening. We need all these things to go forward. I want to go towards the future. But an important thing with music and with art is that they are experiential. There’s an academic background, and there’s research behind it. But the work in itself has to be something that you can experience. You don’t have to read ten pages of explanation before you understand what’s going on. For me, it’s a sensory thing. Sensory experience of art and music is the most important way of experiencing it. The thought processes of that are another layer. Initially, I want to give people a direct, sensory experience.

JM: Sometimes art can be so alienating. It’s nice to invite people in and create something immersive for them.

EP: The most recent project that I’ve done was in the same show with William Basinski at the Pasadena Art & Science Festival. It was organized by the Pasadena Arts Council - some of the members part of an organization called Volume. They are an organization that brings sound artists here to do performances. So, they got these people from Europe who have been working on this project called Sphaerae. It’s three big domes that are inflated to this 1960s style experiential thing that you can go in. Projections were set up to project all over the ceiling. There was an amazing sound system. The project I did there is called “Gut Feeling.”

JM: Yeah, can you talk a little more about Gut Feeling?

EP: It’s research that I did at UCLA—the California Nanosystems Institute. They have all these crazy microscopes—things that can see the size of an atom. I got interested in these devices that could extend our senses. I asked him if I could work in the lab and use the microscopes. They didn’t give me the most expensive, craziest microscope, but he did give me an interesting microscope—a laser-scanning confocal microscope. It doesn’t look at things for what they are, but it shoots lasers at the sample. Whatever fluorescence is the image. At first, I was just learning how the thing worked, just putting different things under it. The microscope is used a lot in biosciences, so I met this synthetic biologist. She helped me get my hands on genetically-modified E coli bacteria that have this specific gene in them so they light up when you shoot a laser at them. I used (maybe abused) those in the microscope, and took all these time-lapse images with them. I did all kinds of crazy experiments with them. The original idea was to make a film with them, but now I’ve been using the visuals in live performances. The sound part of it is a synthesizer that looks at the biological processes inside the E coli bacteria, and turns those into micro-sound elements. It’s a songification of the processes.

JM: Can you tell me about Macular?

EP: Macular is this artist collective that I started with a friend of mine in Holland in 2009. It started as a live cinema group. Live cinema is a big thing in Holland—the idea is that live visuals are generated with live sound. It’s not some musician and some video guy; it’s people who are doing those things at the same time. You’re working together to create a whole. We started out in super-analog stuff. We were hacking online analog/video processors—color correctors, that kind of stuff. And then, we plugged the video into the audio mixer. You get these amazing sounds. Over time, it grew into a super-complicated setup in which digital and analog were feedbacking on each other. We had created a monster that was just alive, doing its own thing. If you tweaked one knob, all this stuff would happen. We started working together on other projects also. We started doing installations. The focus of Macular had always been synesthesia—how to induce artificial synesthesia in people. We’re evolving the organization of Macular into more of a label, a research institute, and a studio. We’re interested in natural and emergent processes, and synesthesia.

"I always got in big fights with the professor about what sculpture was. But I always wanted to do audio-visual stuff. It might come from raves. I’ve been going to those since I was fifteen. A rave is an audio-visual experience. I always want to translate that into a different setting."

JM: When you say natural processes, what do you mean by that?

EP: Emergence is something that everyone in Macular has worked with at one point. Emergence is the idea that simple, individual rules can lead to unexpected, big patterns. The classic example is a school of fish. Every fish is his own fish, but is also trying to follow the other fish. You get these beautiful patterns of fish swirling around. We’re playing that into installations, sound work. We’re trying to set up an online repository in which we have this research to share with each other and the world. We’re also trying to set up a label so we can produce our own work, then a studio so we can work.

JM: How did you find yourself at this point, creatively? Did you come from a musical background or a visual background? Was it a science background?

EP: I wish I had a science background. What I’ve learned is how to learn. If you understand how to learn, you don’t have to go to school. The information is there. You can teach yourself. I come from media-arts background. In Holland, after high school, you don’t go to college. You immediately decide what you’re going to study. I went to art school—doing painting, sculpture, all that. I always got in big fights with the professor about what sculpture was. But I always wanted to do audio-visual stuff. It might come from raves. I’ve been going to those since I was fifteen. A rave is an audio-visual experience. I always want to translate that into a different setting.

JM: In the academic world and art world, sound art is still trying to find its way in.

EP: There are certain places that understand that better. Santa Barbara has a Media Arts and Technology program that has a very clear understanding of sound. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy has an amazing experimental media performing arts center. They’ve built this whole temple for performance, music, and sound. It’s an interesting problem—how to get sound art integrated.

JM: Perhaps it shouldn’t be. In which case, we have to find a model to allow people to experience it.

EP: Performance art also has a really hard time. There’s an audience; there are people interested in it, but it’s hard to integrate.

JM: Also, performance art is such a temporal thing. Sound art can suffer from the same thing. Not that they have to be temporary.

EP: It’s time-based. It’s loud.

JM: It creates this noise pollution.

EP: But that’s still a part that I love about it. For me, interacting with an artwork, something that I’ve taught myself to do is force myself to spend ten, fifteen minutes with the work. You get so much more out of it. With sound stuff, it automatically is temporal. You get that engagement already with the work. You can’t interact with a sound piece for two seconds, or however people long people look at a painting. It requires patience and engagement. That interests me about the artwork itself. It actively asks the audience to spend more time with the work.

You can learn more about Eric Parren by visiting his website. You can also follow him on Twitter to stay up to date with performances and exhibitions. Watch below video of "Gut Feeling." Interview by Joe McKee. Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

The Sacred and The Profane: An Interview With Legendary Actionist Hermann Nitsch

July 24, 2015

Herman Nitsch is considered the last of the great ‘Actionists.’ Together with fellow Austrian artists Günter Brus, Otto Mühl, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, he developed what would become one of the most violent and “depraved” artistic movements of the 20th century. In reaction to a complacent post-war society, Nitsch aimed for realism…shocking, brutal realism, which he insists is only a mirror to man’s own innate brutality and thirst for violence and defilement. His performances, which are held under the title of The Orgies Mysteries Theater, were so shocking and real, that he has been arrested multiple times and even exiled from his own country. His action performances, or “aktionens,” vary in length – sometimes they last several days – but they always convey a sense of pagan ritual, replete with human and animal sacrifices, copulation, blood drinking and bloodletting, disembowelment, intestines spilling from carcasses, dance, music, and audience participation. In one filmed performance, held in Germany in 1970, you can find Nitsch disemboweling a goat, removing the intestines, forcing participants to drink the blood, placing a female participant on a crucifix and then inserting his penis into her vagina through the entrails. In 1972, he acquired the Prinzendorf Castle – ironically from the Catholic Church. To this day, he lives and works there and performs his orgiastic ‘actions’ there. Currently, he is having a major retrospective, of sorts, in Palermo, Italy at the ZAC (Zisa Contemporary Art) Spaces, which is housed in a former industrial space that used to make furniture and airplanes. The show, which is a re-envisioning of his canceled retrospective in Mexico City, will include 40 canvases, numerous photos, as well as videos documenting some of Nitsch’s most important actions over the past few decades. A multi-floor “Pharmacy” filled with fetish objects will also be on view. Like many of his exhibitions, there is a petition to have it shut down. As of writing this, the petition has close to 70,000 supporters – with only 5,000 more signatures to go. We’ll see who has the last word – the exhibition has already been on view for a few weeks. Autre was fortunate enough to have a chat with Hermann Nitsch from his studio in Vienna – our conversation ranged from development of The Orgy Mystery Theater, how the artist embraces his work in the face of possible jail time, the success of his current show in Palermo and what he likes to do for fun.

Oliver Kupper: You say that actionism wasn’t a group, but what do you think was in the atmosphere that motivated you and other artists associated with the movement to create the work they started to create?

Hermann Nitsch: The question of the development of art is also a question of society. In Vienna, it was very conservative. We wanted to make a new art—new expressions of art—in an art world that was, for us, traditional. Abstract expressionism was happening, a new form of art that was very important for us. I would say that’s what moved us together.

OK: Can you talk a little bit about the beginnings of The Orgies Mysteries Theatre ?

HN: I have been asked for thirty, forty years about the development of my theater, and I’m still not able to explain this. It involved the whole art of painting, of abstract expressionism. Traditional theater began with the Greek Tragedy. In ’58, I tried to make a theatre where I used reality. For me, I wanted to make, in my theatre, only real happenings. For me, it was important to allow people to smell, to taste, to touch, to look, and to hear reality. I come to show reality. I want to celebrate reality. And what was really new was that I used the very concept of reality.

OK: In terms of reality, the movement was very closely associated with extreme violence. Was this a reflection of anything specific?

HN: Look at the world. Look how much violence you have. I wanted to show with my theater everything, and I want to show trueness. I always say, I want to show birth, death, reality—in every direction. I want to show everything.

OK: Art is a medium for that. It is incredibly important, right?

HN: Art is celebration of being. Art is a special kind of life. What kind of life is making lukewarm art? I will not make lukewarm art. I want to make anything art. I want to make art, which is so important—like the stars, the sun systems. I want to make art, which is so important, like being.

"Art is a special kind of life. What kind of life is making lukewarm art? I will not make lukewarm art. I want to make anything art. I want to make art, which is so important—like the stars, the sun systems. I want to make art, which is so important, like being."

OK: You spent time in jail for what you do, in terms of actionist events. Does this fear of being reprimanded ever affect your work? Does it ever censor you?

HN: No. They jail me, I come again. I embrace it. If it is so, it is so. It’s not so bad in prison. I was in good thought, I was alone, I could work. It’s not too bad. A “normal” society is sometimes much more bad. They must go for holidays. They must go to a tea spot. They must do these things. That’s worse than to be in prison.

OK: What do you think have been the strangest or most shocking reactions to your work?

HN: I had problems with animal rights activists. I like, so much, animals. A celebration the body of the animal is a celebration of nature. We, in our house, we have many, many animals. We like animals, like people like having kids. I love the animals like my children. They sleep with me, they speak with me. I would never kill them in a way that would make pain. This makes me very sad. The animal protectors, they don’t see. The industrial animal farming is very sad. In the past, an animal never had so much pain. Why are they not against this? They are against poor, stupid Nitsch.

OK: In the United States, especially. Is this why you haven’t performed a real actionist event in the United States?

HN: I have done many, many performances in the United States. The first time in 1968, and the last time two years ago in a gallery in New York. I had success in New York. I did a big performance in 1968 at the University of Cincinnati. They really wanted to have a performance from me. The students, they were elated that we could do the performance. Two days later, when I went to a concert at the Fox, the whole theater clapped for me. Mostly, I was happy to be in the United States. I had success with my work in New York, in different universities. I loved going back; it made me very happy. My work spoke to people, especially to young people. They are thinking like I am.

OK: Right now, there’s a petition to shut down your show in Italy, like they did in Mexico. What do you say to these people specifically? How would you convince them to not be so afraid?

HN: I hear so much about the political background. It was not so much to do with animal protectors. Mexico was a completely different situation from Palermo. In Mexico, it was a private-owned and funded museum. The owner decided not to have his exhibition. Nevertheless, he kept active what he promised. So he invited me to come to Mexico to perform a concert. It was performed in a public space, and it had lots of visitors. He just decided, “I don’t want to show the art in my museum.” This was a very personal, private decision that cannot be related with what happened in Palermo. Maybe you saw the petition against the exhibition in Palermo. It had nearly 70,000 signatures. In fact, when there was a demonstration, police were taking care of the whole situation. Maximum, twelve people were there—one on the left side of the street, one on the right side of the street, and one with a big megaphone—that was it. It’s very easy to earn signatures against everything. It was a great success in Palermo. Young people were coming from the whole nation. They were very enthusiastic. I was so happy about that.

OK: It’s one of your biggest exhibitions right?

Translator: It’s quite big—more than 2,000 meters in space. It’s a fantastic place.

OK: Last question, what do you like to do for fun?

HN: For fun, when we are finished, I will go down in the garden and drink wonderful wine.

"Hermann Nitsch - The Orgies Mysteries Theatre" will be on view at the ZAC (Zisa Contemporary Art) Spaces, until September 20, 2015 in Palermo, Italy. Text and Interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Intro photograph by Luci Lux. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Nature Slut: An Interview With Sexual Mystic and Artist Bunny Michael

July 6, 2015

&nbs… — *photograph by Katherine Finkelstein*

Back in 2007, she was Bunny Rabbit – it was the era of scenesters, top eight, Internet party photos, seemingly blind vapidness and a generation of millennials desperately seeking a discernible identity. She sang about taking cocaine anally and smoking marijuana vaginally – with backing beats from trans MC and Coco Rosie beat boxer Black Cracker. Her album “Lovers and Crypts” garnered a lot of attention – Sasha Frere-Jones in a New Yorker article dubbed her “the original art rapper.” Today, she is Bunny Michael – after four years of self-realization and a recent sexual revolution she has found a deeper, more meaningful side to herself as an artist and a person. Her recent series of photographs, which are on view now at Alt Space in Brooklyn, are a testament to her evolution and elevation. The exhibition – entitled “The Etheric Double – is the artist’s first solo show and features portraits of the artist and her “spiritual twin” who is manifest as a higher consciousness and a conduit for “kindness, love and acceptance.” In the following interview, Bunny talks about coming out, sexual revolution and the importance of finding your own spiritual twin.

You describe yourself as a “Nature Slut,” and as a “Telepathic Goddess of the Future.” Can you introduce your identity as an artist and explain what those terms mean?

I call myself a Nature Slut because it’s an identity I created. A few years ago, I was writing an erotic poem about having sex with a woman in nature. I realized that what I was trying to get at was the other woman being myself, a higher version of myself, a natural being. I realized that I had lost touch—or I had never been in touch—with the part of me that is Nature. Human beings, we often think of Nature. The sexual part of it is just wanting to be in touch with nature as a sexual being, being a creator. I don’t really see any difference; I think that sexual expression is the ultimate form of creation. We can’t take for granted—as females—the power to create another human being. I feel that there is power in the forgotten past of sexual energy, sex magic… There are multiple layers.

Doesn’t the word slut have a negative connotation?

It’s a reclaiming of the word, “slut.” It’s natural to have sexual desire. It’s not shameful. The shaming of it is what creates a lot of the pain around it. The history of shaming our sexual nature is, in my opinion, the reason why we have so much sex crime, sex violence. It’s because we have repress this energy. And we repress it because we don’t feel free to express it. So, the word, “slut”—I was called a slut a lot when I was young, just being who I was. I didn’t even have a lot of partners, but kids at school still called me a slut. So I’ve always identified with that word, in a way. I want to reclaim it and say, “Okay, fine, I’m proud to be sexual.”

There seems to be a lot of repression in society, especially with women.

Of course with women. The sexual nature of women is an untapped, forgotten power that we have over men—great men, who are attracted to women. I think that’s why a lot of men feel the need to holler at a woman on the street or sexually degrade her. They feel overwhelmed by the power this woman has over them, and she doesn’t even notice them. We can just be walking down the street, minding our own business, but we exude a power that they don’t understand. It’s their way of reclaiming their power.

Where do you think this fear of power comes from?

I think it’s thousands of years of degrading women, ever since the Inquisition. Centuries of the genocide of females. There are villages in Europe that didn’t have any women at all because they had killed them off. There was this whole campaign against women so that religion could have more control. There’s a power that women are more sensitive to, that comes within their natural abilities. I think that’s very threatening to the establishment. We’re living in a time now where we have to bring back the feminine. It exists in both males and females, but I think the energy is feminine, especially with our connection to the earth. We’re living in a time where we’re remembering our power. The old ways aren’t working anymore. We’re getting that, we’re becoming more aware of that, we’re getting more in touch. The feminine is becoming more and more powerful.

What are some ways that we can level the playing field? How do we bring progress? Through art?

I think it’s raising your voice. Whether it’s through your art, through your discussions with your friends. To be honest, I think the number one thing is raising your own consciousness. There are a lot of activists out there who identify as being an activist. But I think it takes looking at yourself first, before you can claim that somebody else is wrong. Part of that feminine energy has a lot to do with compassion and understanding.

It doesn’t seem like it should just be women exploring that. Men should be taking these topics to light as well.

Men and women have suffered from the imbalance. This goes back to the racial thing too. Privilege isn’t always a blessing. I don’t want that to be interpreted the wrong way… It’s our struggles that make us stronger people. It’s the experiences that we’ve had, the worldly ideas that we’ve encountered. I’ve said this about growing up gay. The experiences I went through were hard, but they made me more important. And they made me more in touch with my sexual nature. If you’re living in a world of illusions—you grew up in a rich family, you went to school, you did what your dad did, maybe you have a lot of money… Is that what life is about? Life is about having joyous, fulfilling experiences. I don’t resent people who haven’t been put in situations that test their strength, because those situations help you grow.

Speaking of coming out and your family, did you have a lot of support from your family on your initial journey as an artist, as a person?

Initially, I didn’t really. My mom wasn’t born in this country, and my dad grew up with a lot of cultural influences, so they didn’t quite understand what they should do. They wanted to do right. In their mind, they thought it would be a hard life, so they didn’t want that for me. The crazy thing was that when I was young and coming out, I had a lot of friends’ parents who were really supportive. But on some other level, they were kind of spoiled kids. They got a lot of money, they partied all the time. Even though my parents, since they came from a different culture, didn’t understand that aspect, they understood something else that was very, very important. That was loyalty to family, which was a very valuable lesson. I don’t think that was a part of American culture. That lasted, and we’ve grown together from that. So I don’t regret any of those experiences with my parents. Now, they’re very supportive. We’ve all grown together. But the lessons they did instill in me were invaluable.

You do have to appreciate the positive aspects of what they appreciate. When did you know that you first wanted to make music? Was it music or art? When did you first start exploring your artistic side?

I started exploring my artistic side when I was in high school. I started doing a lot of LSD, and something just clicked in my head. Something literally opened up in my brain, some portal. I started doing a lot of drugs, my friends were all doing them. I was an actress then, too. I came to New York and realized, oh shit, you could do whatever you wanted. I still hadn’t done music, but I was dating somebody who was really good friends with the band Coco Rosie. We started playing around and making music. I started freestyling about a Bunny. They were like, let’s make a record. And the put out my record in 2005. It was called “Bunny Rabbit.” I did all the lyrics, but it was really a collaboration between us and another artist called Black Cracker. We toured a lot, we had a lot of success. But at the time I was very ego. I wasn’t able to really enjoy what was happening, and that’s why it fell apart. So in the past few years since then, I’ve been teaching myself how to make music and learning a lot of life lessons. This is my first solo project.

This is your first solo art show?

This is my first solo art show. The necessity for art came with the music. We made our own flyers, our own music videos. We did everything ourselves. That was a big part of the aesthetic of sound then. Now, I use that as the same mold, the same message. The visual art, the music, everything is connected to the same message.

You’ve been doing a lot of videos on YouTube in which you’re talking directly to artists, but you’ve also been talking about this sexual revolution after experimenting with plant-based medicines. Can you describe this revolution? How has this changed you as an artist?

I used to not be very open about it. I used to want to keep things private. But I’ve been practicing with ayahuasca. I know a lot of people practice with it now. The reason why I bring it up is because I don’t think anyone is talking about it. I had a sexual revolution from it that was totally unexpected. I expected to learn to love myself and all the things I had heard about it. But for me, it channeled all this sexual energy. I looked at my body for the first time and saw that I was this sexual form of nature. I started to really love that, for the first time. And I felt really comfortable in that. I saw that I was this animal, beautiful being. Then, I got really into sex magic. I started to feel very spiritual about my sexual practices. I started having visions during them. I think there’s a whole untapped world in that realm. And it goes back to ancient eastern sex practices. I am, by far, not the first person to experience this. There’s lots of books about it. We have this power within ourselves. It’s the power of creation. It’s not just about being able to create a child. We can manifest anything we want. Also, there’s the issue of the female orgasm and how unexplored that is.

Especially to American society, it feels like a complete mystery. It seems like our viewpoints since the Victorian era have not been that different.

There are still scientists who claim that it doesn’t exist. It’s really crazy to me. So I’m praying and hoping that my work inspires others to feel unashamed about their desires. I want them to feel comfortable in their expression.

I think we need that more than ever right now. Your group show—“The Etheric Double”—is a fascinating concept. Can you describe the idea of the Etheric Double?

On this journey that I’ve been on—which I feel a lot of people are on right now—is a journey of self-realization, awakenings, and awareness of self. Actually, I started going to hypnotherapy. I started visualizing myself doing things in those sessions, and that was very healing for me. So I started to develop seeing my spirit in meditations. She was myself, the form that I see in the mirror. It was very healing for me to know that this higher being, my spirit self, was looking after me. I felt her comfort. She was who I was outside of the form of this body. The way I saw her was as my twin. So then, I made one photo where there was two of me, and something just clicked. It was her. So I kept making these photographs of me and her with a dialogue. Some of the photos are kind of uncomfortable. There’s a push and pull between the two of us. Some days, I wake up and I’m not there; I can’t be the present person that I want to be. And then some days I’m right with her. I think we’re all going through that right now. We’re at this time of really big change, really big awakening. We can feel it about to happen, but we’re not quite there yet. We still have to do more work. So I was trying to illustrate that with the Etheric Double, that story, the domestic story of our relationship to the everyday. Everyday, just trying to do your best.

That’s really interesting. You have a performance coming up in Sweden, in July. Can you talk a little about that?

It’s their pride festival. They asked to play, and I said yes, because a lot of friends of mine have played. Juliana Huxtable is a good friend, and she played there last year. I’m excited. I want to put myself out to the world, do a lot of traveling. I want to connect with people who have different experiences. I’m usually in a bubble, especially in Brooklyn. I’m really looking forward to going overseas.

Especially with last week’s ruling, that’s amazing. That’s a big, big step. My last question is, what do you want people to know about you as an artist that they don’t already know?

I want people to know that I am not about exclusivity. I’m about inclusiveness. The time of exclusiveness is over. It’s time for us to come together and realize what we have in common. We have to work together. It’s not going to be one person doing this alone. If anyone came in contact with me, I would want them to feel totally comfortable connecting with me. If they wanted to send me a message on Facebook, send me an email, whatever, they could. I don’t people to look at my art and see this untouchable thing. I want to be an artist of the people. I know they may not like the particular technique that I use, but I want the energy to be that of inclusiveness. That’s what I strive for.

Bunny Michael's first solo exhibition, entitled "Etheric Double," is on view now until July 12 at Alt Space, 41 Montrose Avenue, Brooklyn. See her music video for Gasolina below. Click here to purchase her 2014 EP Rainbow Licker. Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

"To Hide To Show" A Group Exhibition That Explores the Nature of Hiding and Revealing: An Interview With the Artists

June 12, 2015

Opening tomorrow night in Los Angeles, MAMA gallery will present To Hide To Show, a group exhibition derived from a contemporary French social anthropological study entitled Montrer / Occulter, which loosely translates to the exhibition’s title. The artists chosen to represent the ideas and concepts behind this study, and its conclusions, experiment with the notion of concealing and revealing on a societal, intellectual and creative basis. These artists include Clara Balzary, Zoe Crosher, Nana Ghana, Ariana Papademetropoulos, Mattea Perrotta, Fay Ray, Lisa Solberg, and Johanna Tagada. The concept of hiding and showing lends itself as a true analysis of the assembling and dissection of the human psyche, in a constant battle between order and sabotage, between how we present our true self to the world and how we feel about inner self – the dark ghost that is always haunting from within. In To Hide To Show, the artists are interpreting these multi-dimensional, anthropological, psychological and metaphysical concepts using varying degrees of personal reflection, historical reference, visual language and controlled performance. To Hide To Show is the idea that concealment is to make something sacred and exposure of that sacredness is equal to degradation. To be revealed in this exhibition are the artists' artifacts of what they hold sacred while at the same time what they choose to defile.

Read the following Q&As to learn more about each artist in the exhibition…

JOHANNA TAGADA

photo by Jatinder Singh Durhailay — *photo by Jatinder Singh Durhailay*

WHERE ARE YOU FROM? From a tiny village in east France. Now based in London.

WHERE DO YOU LOOK FOR INSPIRATION: Nature, daily life, feelings and traditions.

FAVORITE PLACE IN THE WORLD: A chance for "places"? My lover's arms; Nara in Japan and all the small villages near by; my grandparents’ farmhouse.

CHOSEN MEDIUM: Painting. I also do drawing, photography, video, publishing, sculpture, textile and installation.

MEDIUM THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE WORKING WITH: I enjoy very much working with all mediums mentioned above and I look forward to do more modular sculptures. In a conversation with LA based BOOK STAND earlier this year I said "It is important to question the physicality of the medium with which I am involved. It can be something difficult, for example, one of my main mediums is painting, which has such a big tradition, but that is also so often seen again and again as “dead.” Push the reflection further, compose, question, endlessly, and yet keep it simple and understandable on various levels. I like to create a dialogue between the various mediums with which I am composing in my body of work. Every thing is connected, my paintings are like the roots, my photographs might reveal the seeds, my publications are the branches that are like traces of the growth of the tree, the videos and installations pieces are like the blooming flowers of my work that are only seen occasionally and that should be enjoyed together as a whole."

GREATEST DISCOVERY AS AN ARTIST: The world.

STRANGEST EXPERIENCE: What do you call "strange?" Here is something happy and unexpected: Meeting Yoshitomo Nara, one of my favorite artists and assisting him for his lecture on the occasion of his retrospective at the Dairy Art Center in London last fall.

WHAT ARE YOU HIDING? Insecurity.

WHAT ARE YOU REVEALING? Positive feelings, happy memories.

WHAT’S NEXT? Épistolaire Imaginaire - Les Fleures du Japon: a solo exhibition and the U.S. introduction of my piece Épistolaire Imaginaire (it first premiered in Tokyo, July 2014) opening on July 11th at at IKO IKO x BUILDING BLOCKS (LA) in collaboration with BOOK STAND.

WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF AS AN ARTIST IN FIVE YEARS? Working on projects and exhibitions through which I can bring positivity to people's lives. I truly hope for my work to be a trigger, softly, like a warm hug pushing people to make positive and meaningful changes. Despite my soft and tender imagery, the ideals I pursue as a human, as an artist, require hard work and strength. For my artistic practice and lifestyle I am inspired by the way of life from my ancestors, I do best to apply this to the period of time in which we live. Such decisions for example imply saying no to mass produced food and clothes, creating my publishing work with acid free paper, binding them by hand, it's a little like being a Poetic "Punk". I am very attached to nature and I do not believe in a hierarchy system in which the human sits on top. Therefore life choices such as being Vegan are relevant to my body of work.

A QUOTE OR SENTIMENT TO LIVE BY: Oneness

MATTEA PERROTA

WHERE ARE YOU FROM? Venice Beach, California

WHERE DO YOU LOOK FOR INSPIRATION? Anywhere and everywhere. It’s all in the tiny details of what is existing in our peripheral, and what we choose to take note of. Curiosity inspires my work most.

FAVORITE PLACE IN THE WORLD: Any ocean.

CHOSEN MEDIUM: Oil.

WHAT IS THE MEDIUM THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE WORKING WITH? Bronze, plaster, wood.

GREATEST DISCOVERY AS AN ARTIST: Being comfortable sharing what is hidden. I often times have these moments and think, “what the fuck am I doing?” This is always a break through moment for me because I go deep into my unconscious when I work and lose sight of my reality. I work from emotion, pleasure and use my work as a vehicle to understand what the hell is going on around me. When I take a step back and leave my unconscious is when I’m tested. It’s what I’m revealing about my hidden emotions and seeing this abstract emotion painted on a tangible object is wild. Sometimes it works and can exist in my reality, and often times I’m not ready to share it. Vulnerability is difficult for me, but my work has helped me become okay with sharing what I’m hiding.

STRANGEST EXPERIENCE: Anytime someone asks you what your painting means.

WHAT ARE YOU HIDING? I won’t tell. We’re all hiding something, aren’t we? These things are what make us more complex and interesting individually.

WHAT ARE YOU REVEALING? Life is very, very complicated. I’m trying to understand the absurdity and beauty of it all through my work.

WHAT’S NEXT: I’m currently at Al Maqam Artist Residency in Marrakech working on a new oil series for a fall exhibition. I’ll also be showing work alongside a handful of Moroccan and French Artists in San Francisco this October.

WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF AS AN ARTIST IN FIVE YEARS: That’s difficult to say considering I barely know what I’m doing tomorrow. I only work when inspiration strikes. I hope to be traveling and understanding more about the world, being inspired from the places I visit and people that cross my path. The unconscious comes to me during these moments, and these are the moments that get me in the studio creating. I see myself working on large-scale paintings and working 3-dimensionally with plaster or wood. I’d love for these two mediums to have a relationship and co-exist in the same space.

A QUOTE OR SENTIMENT TO LIVE BY: “This whole world is wild at heart and weird on top,” David Lynch.

NANA GHANA

WHERE ARE YOU FROM? I am from a coastal village called Bakaano in Ghana West Africa

WHERE DO YOU LOOK FOR INSPIRATION? I look for inspiration from everyday life, people, places and things.

FAVORITE PLACE IN THE WORLD: Favorite place in the whole world? Hard to say, there are many places I still haven’t been yet, I guess it be in the arms of my lover.

CHOSEN MEDIUM: Performance art and filmmaking.

WHAT IS A MEDIUM THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE WORKING WITH? The medium I like to be working in is exactly the medium I am in right now: performance and filmmaking

GREATEST DISCOVERY AS AN ARTIST: The greatest discovery thus far as an artist is that that the path of the artist is a spiritual journey.

STRANGEST EXPERIENCE: Strangest experience as an artist, like Jim Morrison said, “People are Strange.”

WHAT ARE YOU HIDING? Nothing

WHAT ARE YOU REVEALING? Everything…take it all.

WHAT’S NEXT: Keep doing dope projects with amazing people and sending African Alien Mermaid vibes to ALL.

WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF AS AN ARTIST IN FIVE YEARS: In five years….Keep on doing what I'm doing but get to higher levels…Cause there are levels to this shit!

A QUOTE OR SENTIMENT TO LIVE BY: Life is a feeling process…I love Feeling…feeling it all.

LISA SOLBERG

WHERE ARE YOU FROM? Chicago.

WHERE DO YOU LOOK FOR INSPIRATION? Everywhere… boring, but true.

FAVORITE PLACE IN THE WORLD: Iceland or Indo.

CHOSEN MEDIUM: Oil paint, ballpoint pen.

WHAT IS A MEDIUM THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE WORKING WITH? Black sand.

GREATEST DISCOVERY AS AN ARTIST: Beauty.

STRANGEST EXPERIENCE: Saying I’m an artist.

WHAT ARE YOU HIDING? It would ruin the show if I said!

WHAT ARE YOU REVEALING: I like the unexpected.

WHAT’S NEXT? I’m doing a performance based installation/strip club, pimping out a snowcat in Utah, exhibiting a new show at 24HR PSYCHIC, and continuing to write on the side.

WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF AS AN ARTIST IN FIVE YEARS: With a secondary studio on a bunch of land out in nature someplace.

A QUOTE OR SENTIMENT TO LIVE BY: Go big or go home!

CLARA BALZARY

WHERE ARE YOU FROM: Los Angeles, CA.

WHERE DO YOU LOOK FOR INSPIRATION: Books, films, and out the window.

FAVORITE PLACE IN THE WORLD: The south in the summer.

CHOSEN MEDIUM: Photography.

WHAT IS A MEDIUM THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE WORKING WITH? Writing.

GREATEST DISCOVERY AS AN ARTIST: That to dig deep into your own work isn’t always all that dissimilar from a 9 - 5 job.

STRANGEST EXPERIENCE: Going on trips up north alone to take photos and realizing I hadn’t spoken out loud for days.

WHAT ARE YOU HIDING? Boring light.

WHAT ARE YOU REVEALING: That Oooh heaven is a place on earth!

WHAT’S NEXT: Breaking away from shooting pretty girls by default.

WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF AS AN ARTIST IN FIVE YEARS? On the southern coast of Italy dressed like Truman Capote.

A QUOTE OR SENTIMENT TO LIVE BY: Life’ll kill ya.

FAY RAY

WHERE ARE YOU FROM? Southern Califronia

WHERE DO YOU LOOK FOR INSPIRATION: Rocks.

FAVORITE PLACE IN THE WORLD: Any beach.

CHOSEN MEDIUM: Photography

GREATEST DISCOVER AS AN ARTIST? If you keep making work, you learn things about materials, process and meaning and if you stop making work you don't.

STRANGEST EXPERIENCE: It's all strange.

WHAT'S NEXT: I am in a group show in Miami titled Bananas at Gallery Diet in Miami from June 19 to September 5th

WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF AS AN ARTIST IN FIVE YEARS? My only hope is to still be making art and to be grateful for whatever is going on at the time.

A QUOTE OR SENTIMENT TO LIVE BY: Reward yourself often.

ZOE CROSHER

WHERE ARE YOU FROM: I was born in Santa Rosa in Northern California, but never lived there, growing up the daughter of a diplomat. I often describe my life as covering the Cold War Hot Spots - Germany in the late 70s, Moscow in the early 80s, Athens in the mid/late 80s. I spent the last few years in High School in suburban MD (years I have basically blanked out.) Then I did the rebellious thing of going to UCSC, while my parents went on to live in Seoul, Korea in the mid-90s, where I did spend a junior semester abroad. CalArts called me for my MFA, which is how I moved down to the Los Angeles area.

WHERE DO YOU LOOK FOR INSPIRATION: It depends on what time of day and what day of the week! Generally cinema and architecture (particularly about Los Angeles, and particularly from the 70s and 80s) inspires me, as does work that collapses theory and inspiration. Really good art writing can light a fire as well. Ladies who own who they are, have agency and are generous in nature, who really find their own course, are an endless inspiration. Recently, I’m overwhelmingly moved by someone known only as “Madame” from Lotusland - Madame Ganna Walska (please see here for more). I learned about her while doing a small residency up at the stunning garden in Santa Barbara. Just read her bio to see why I’m so inspired - she is noted for selling a million dollars worth of her jewels in the 70s to buy super rare cycad seeds to complete her gardens. She made her own clothes, staged her own plays, had numerous husbands, built out her fantasy world - she even wrote an autobiography called ‘There’s Always Room At The Top’. I think she even helped start the Audubon Society, to stop millineries from decimating birds for hats! Along with lady eccentrics, my current obsession right now is tending towards gardens - I’m thinking a lot about what gardens and art collections have a lot in common - constantly fighting entropy, chaos, decay, collecting, endlessly archiving, etc.

FAVORITE PLACE IN THE WORLD: I’m defaulting to the Ice Hotel for some reason right now. Perhaps it’s a conversation from tonight, speaking to a lady who is getting married and on the fence about taking a honeymoon. It is something I didn’t do right after getting married, which I regret - and for some reason I always thought going to the Ice Hotel in Sweden would have been amazing (it harkens back to a childhood fantasy in Superman, when I fell in love with his crystal palace, appropriately called The Fortress of Solitude.) I also default to a fantasy Italian villa that is rustic and perfect, complete with the food and wine that magically appears in between siestas, long walks and other distractions.

CHOSEN MEDIUM: Right now, I’m terming something I’m calling the IMAGIATIC - as opposed to the “photographic”. I come out of a photography background, but have always felt limited by the terms of it, terms which have in the last few years melted away. But instead of tending towards this sort of New Materiality that so many of the formerly photographically-inclined in Los Angeles do, I’m tending towards a more expanded field of photography that I am terming the IMAGIATIC - concerned with the imaginary, the image, etc. The medium itself doesn’t matter, it’s almost a conceptual conceit. Thus I’m engaged now in sculpture (natural bronze), fools gold dust, desserts, billboards, compositions, publications, and still of course images as photographs, anything that engages with the imaginary of Los Angeles. For it is not the medium that determines the message, it’s the imaginary that does.

WHAT IS A MEDIUM THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE WORKING WITH? I’ve already jumped into it - and am learning an infinite amount right now about bronzing.

GREATEST DISCOVERY AS AN ARTIST: Walking into Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Room at Robert Miller Gallery when it first was shown - before the Whitney, before its infamy. I was in NYC, somewhat annoyed and downtrodden about the commodification of Chelsea, when I fell into a line to go into this nondescript trailer sort of thing. I remember being so annoyed at having to wait in line (and it was a very short line back then), then only to discover the life and mind-bending perfect art moment. Discovering that piece, discovering the potential of art, discovering the promise of Art, it was a joy I will never forget. And it is a joy that keeps me going through the dark days of the current art world.

WHAT ARE YOU HIDING? How angry I am at/with the extreme and horrendous level of sexism that exists in the art world. And how crazy it makes me that so many women with power perpetuate this sexism.

WHAT ARE YOU REVEALING? My endless enthusiasm.

WHAT’S NEXT? Bronzing all these “blossoms” from various disappearing and rare plants from the Lotusland Garden. A lot of these incredible plants do a sort of last hurrah dance, with reproductive organs (sex parts!) that grow sometimes ten times the size of the plant itself, going full out right before the plant dies! I’m collecting all these blossoms, both male and female, from super small blossoms to super huge pieces - it’s been quite an amazing experience to work with these incredibly rare and extensive gardens. I am also continuing my conceptual mapping of Los Angeles, this time through its discarded palm fronds. Ideally this project consists of about a hundred natural bronze palm frond sculptures, all of which are unique and named according to where they were found in and around Los Angeles. There will be an exhibition of a handful of them at LAXART, opening on September 12th.

WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF AS AN ARTIST IN FIVE YEARS: Similar to my life now, but at a more expansive scale. I already have in mind the things I want to do and make, and I have tasted what is possible when there is real support behind a project. I think expansively, from huge, harrowing archives to cross-country billboard projects. Right now I’m trying to figure out how to get Swarovski involved in the crystalizing of one of the entropic Shangri-LA’d walls I’m commissioning, which I’d love to have produced all over the world (I want to see what a London florist will do vs. a San Paulo florist will do, when given the challenge to create their fantasy of Los Angeles, in any way they want, as a wall of flora and fauna.) I’d love to find the right place of support where the means and ways can catch up to what I already see and imagine in my head - and it is something I can’t wait to realize. It’s an inspiring time right now in my practice.

A QUOTE OR SENTIMENT TO LIVE BY? Don’t confuse the personal and the professional - make sure your true intimates have nothing to do (or as little to do) with your work life as possible. In a time when so much is privately and publicly collapsed, it’s hard to tell why someone might engage with you. When it comes to your home and romantic life, take that ‘what can you do for me’ and whatever power question completely out of the running. Make your personal life about something more than what you do.

ARIANA PAPADEMETROPOULOS

WHERE ARE YOU FROM: Pasadena and Venice California.

WHERE DO YOU LOOK FOR INSPIRATION: The more I think about it the more I realize that it’s very difficult to pinpoint. It’s not from being in my studio this I know, it’s from experiencing life outside of it, anywhere from attending a lizard convention, to a castle or a gun club. I would say that it stems from anything out of the ordinary, but even the ordinary can be really, really strange. If I am on a deadline and need to come up with something quickly I’ll go to places with a concentrated amount of information, i.e. library or museum, the optimal place being The Huntington Gardens that contains a bit of everything.

FAVORITE PLACE IN THE WORLD: The Greek Islands.

CHOSEN MEDIUM: Oil paint.

WHAT IS A MEDIUM THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE WORKING WITH? Electricity. I would love to start making marvelous light fixtures.

GREATEST DISCOVERY AS AN ARTIST: That a painting can possess you.

STRANGEST EXPERIENCE: Last year I co-curated a show where I planned out a séance with Andy Warhol for the artist Jeffrey Vallance. Before the show, the medium, Joseph Ross and I got into a little quarrel. We had originally agreed he would be dressed in normal attire (not actually normal he wears fabulous purple suits and feathers in his hats resembling a 90s pimp) but that he wouldn’t be in a costume of Andy Warhol. This was so that the audience wouldn’t think we were phonies. Anyhow, an hour before the séance is to begin, he tells me that Andy has communicated to him that he refuses to be channeled unless Joseph gets an outfit and a wig. I couldn’t argue with a ghost, especially not Andy Warhol; so he got his way. Later I found out that Andy Warhol would sometimes have impersonators of himself do lectures for him at schools in his wigged disguise.

WHAT ARE YOU HIDING? The taboo, the kitsch, kinky, and strange. Darkness, death and mortality.

WHAT ARE YOU REVEALING? An attractive palate of colors that distracts the viewer. Only the curious realize there’s more to what the surface layer of my paintings conceal. Sometimes it’s a midget handing a zucchini to Snow White from an Italian Snow White porno, or a dead man that’s been so brutally murdered he has become an abstraction.

WHAT’S NEXT? I’m illustrating a children’s book, recreating the vintage board game Snakes and Ladders and designing a few record covers I’m very excited about. I also have a solo show in Sonoma in a few weeks.

WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF AS AN ARTIST IN FIVE YEARS: Hopefully living in a hobbit / storybook home I’ve built.

A QUOTE OR SENTIMENT TO LIVE BY? My high school quote was “If you’re having a terrible day, just pour a bag of glitter in front of a fan and live in paradise”, and I think that’s still a pretty good quote to live by. Although I meant it literally at the time, I think it means that you don’t need much to be happy except for a little effort and a good attitude.

TO HIDE TO SHOW will open on June 13th and will be on view until July 25, 2015 at MAMA Gallery, 1242 Palmetto Street, Los Angeles, California. Interviews by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Stay up to date, follow Autre on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Healer of Civilization: An Interview With Pandrogyne Seer Genesis Breyer P'Orridge

May 29, 2015

After Genesis Breyer P’Orridge’s legendary “Prostitution” exhibition at the ICA in London – which included pornographic collages, bloody tampons, and prostitutes, transvestites, hustlers and punks intermingling with the audiences – P’Orridge was deemed a “wrecker of civilization” by House of Commons representative Nicholas Fairbairn. Coincidentally, at the same time that a debate was stirring in the Parliament and the House about the antics of P’Orridge and their neo-Dadaist art collective COUM Transmissions, they were in Kathmandu feeding and providing shelter for lepers, beggars and refugees at their own expense. Wrecker or healer – you decide. Indeed, Genesis has a mystical aura about them – they exist in a realm beyond music and beyond art, and they are truly one of this epoch’s great spiritual seers. Many people probably know Genesis from the brilliant documentary The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, which explores the artist's relationship with Lady Jaye and their pursuit to meld their identities into one using plastic surgery. Genesis is also the founder of formative "industrial" bands Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV. For Genesis, art and music are one commingling mechanism of their vast creative pursuits. In late 2015 and 2016, Genesis will have a number of major solo exhibitions from Zurich to New York. This weekend, though, you can catch Genesis at the Jackie Klempay gallery in Brooklyn where they will be holding a “Pandrogaragenous Avant-yard Sale.” Genesis will be blessing objects as they are purchased – objects like Lady Jaye’s “throne” for her late night joint (an Afghani bridal chair with matching end tables), Songe-power figures, a Balinese human-sized chicken cage in which Gen took many an out-of-body ritual trip, Lady Jaye’s Peter Fox shoes, designer platforms, bolero jackets, clothes galore, DVDs, CDs, 1960’s trinkets, guaranteed used dildos, whips and more. Autre was lucky enough to get a chance to speak to Genesis about rebellion, COUM Transmissions, the importance of the subculture, and more.

Oliver Maxwell Kupper: What were some of your earliest introductions to art? Was it a challenge to explore art where you grew up? Did you have to travel abroad, or to London?

Genesis P’Orridge: Actually, we didn’t get taught art at school after the age of ten. We had to do it all on our own. We used to persuade my parents to get one of these weekly magazines that creates an encyclopedia. It was the history of art from the Stone Age to Modern Art. We read that every week, and that’s how we educated ourselves about different forms and the historical trajectory of art. And then, we persuaded the art teacher of the young kids to let me use his studio space. He would make materials available, and that’s where we started to paint and make sculptures and objects. That’s where we really got much more into it. Through him, we found out about Dada and surrealism and got some Thames & Hudson books of all things. Basically, we got into it by trying to copy things. We did one surrealist painting to learn how they got that smooth effect. A lot of it was mimicking what we’d seen in order to learn the techniques at home.

OK: Was there any specific artists from that era—either Dadaism or surrealism—that inspired you?

GP: Yeah, Max Ernst was the one that inspired me to try my hand at collages. That’s one we’ve done all the time ever since. We still make collages regularly. The first big exhibition we had in New York was of collages—going back 30 years of collages. It was cool, 30 years of being cut up. So we’ve never stopped making collages and little objects and quirky little boxes with strange things in them. Since 2003, maybe a bit earlier, when we got to New York, we started to work with Lady Jaye and create the artist Breyer P’Orridge. We started to take photographs to document that. Then, we started to exhibit those as well. So it snowballed. Between the collages and the pandrogeny photographic work, we came back into the art world having been missing since the late 70s. Now, we make objects and multiples. We’ve got a solo exhibition in Zurich in September. In March next year, we have a solo show at Invisible Exports. Their booth at the Armory Show will all be Breyer P’Orridge, and the Rubin Museum will be doing a solo Breyer P’Orridge on our relationship with Nepal and Africa. Next year, we have a lot of art exhibitions happening.

OK: Going back a little bit to COUM Transmissions, there was a lot of political and cultural upheaval. Is there any one thing that you could pinpoint that created this atmosphere?

GP: That point of time in the 70s in Britain, and to an extent in the United States, was a time that was post-hippie. People started to look at these more cynically. You saw all the classic symptoms of something being wrong with society and culture. Bigotry, economic totalitarianism, racism, conditioning through advertising and mass media—the whole gallop, the haves and have nots. In Britain especially—we still have the class system with the monarchy. It was blatantly oppressive in every possible way. There were the very rich who were trying to maintain that at any price. Then, there were the people who were disenfranchised, who literally had no future that could be seen. You’ve got punk, you’ve got industrial—both sides of the Atlantic. It was a rebellion against inequality and domineering cultures in general with their techniques of control, usually intimidation.

OK: Why is the counter-culture important to you specifically? Why is counter-culture important to culture in general?

GP: It’s the think tank—always has been, always will be. In any culture, at any point in the history of our species, there are those who feel dissatisfied with the power structures, the dynamics of who has control over what resources, and who decides what the moral taboos are and are not. And all moral taboos and policing of sexuality are different in every country as you cross the planet. There’s no fixed truth. There’s no definite moral standard except try not to hurt anybody. Beyond that, it’s all arbitrary. As Burroughs used to say, “If you want to know what’s going on, look for the best at interest.” You can always find them. It’s really easy to spot people who like to keep things just the way they are, because they’re winning with that system.

"That attack was a cry of rage against all the hypocrisy and double standards and the ignorance of those who have power to change things for the better. We were pissed off. We wanted to confront them and create a dialogue, which did happen. But then things change. You can only do that for so long, and then it becomes just a formula. You’re doing what people expect—they come to see if you’re going to do something outrageous, and then it has no meaning."

OK: Some of your shows have had some pretty extreme reactions—arrests, outrage, deemed a wrecker of Western civilization. What was your reaction to these reactions?

GP: Actually, it was dismay. Not because we cared what they said, but because we could see how it could lead to us being restricted in what we said and what we did. Ultimately, that did happen with the government in 1991. We were told we couldn’t go home for seven years or more. We’ve got to be honest here, there’s a part of me that was kind of tickled. I thought it was really pretty funny that they were asking questions in Parliament about used tampons. There were editorials in daily newspapers trying to explain anti-art and performance art to the general public, and not doing it very well. One newspaper editorial said that Genesis P’Orridge is an evil monster who should be locked in a cage and the key thrown away. It went on and on like that, how vile and disgusting and evil we were. That’s a bit intimidating. Not so much when they say it, but you think, what happened to Johnny Rotten—he got attacked in the street because right wing thugs got wound up by what they read about him. There’s always that risk that somebody idiotic is going to attack you. But it comes with the territory, really. What can you do?

OK: Do you have any advice for artists pushing the envelope today?

GP: Push it harder…Strategies change. COUM Transmissions was in the early 70s basically. That attack was a cry of rage against all the hypocrisy and double standards and the ignorance of those who have power to change things for the better. We were pissed off. We wanted to confront them and create a dialogue, which did happen. But then things change. You can only do that for so long, and then it becomes just a formula. You’re doing what people expect—they come to see if you’re going to do something outrageous, and then it has no meaning. Therefore, you’re not creating a dialogue, and so it’s failing. There’s sort of a curve of effectiveness for every strategy. You have to learn when to let go of that strategy and look at something else. We moved on to Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth and Magick, networking and setting up communities that were still outside the norm, ignoring the status quo. Saying, “What do we want to live like? What do we want our chosen tribe to try to believe? How do we want it to behave? How do we want to protect ourselves?” Then, you get to the point where you say, “Well, just looking after ourselves and building a little bubble where we actually live much more how we would like, how about everyone else who can’t do that?” You start to look at the world outside. That was when we went to Kathmandu and financed a soup kitchen for Tibetan refugees, lepers, and beggars at our own expense. For three months, we fed anyone who came—soup twice a day, with clean water and food. We got them through the winter so they survived. Ironically, that was when they were saying we were wrecking civilization and evil. They never mentioned, to this day, that we were working with Tibetan Buddhist monks in Nepal feeding and clothing people who had nothing.

OK: Improving the world.

GP: Yeah, improving the world. That’s what you get to. You realize, ultimately, it’s about evolution—how the species is going to evolve. Is it even possible for human beings to change their behavior and lose those immediate responses and ways of living? They’re so embedded from everyone’s culture inevitably—through the pressure of family, education, religion, and so on. You get to a point where it gets very spiritual and philosophical. It becomes a question of how we can modify human behavior in some way so that we stop damning ourselves as a species and do something fantastic, like colonize space.

OK: Do you think that’s where we’ll be in the future?

GP: If we don’t destroy ourselves first and end up like Mad Max. Those are the options, to me.

OK: Space or Mad Max… Music has been on the back-burner. Do you have any plans to get back to music or making music.

GP: We just finished a tour, actually. We played a concert for peace in Kiev in the Ukraine. We played a concert for peace in Tel Aviv in Israel. We played in Italy and France and some other places. We’re even rehearsing tonight. We’re probably doing one concert this summer in New York, at Pioneer Works. And we’ll be touring again in the fall. We tour every year. We just released a brand new album called “Snakes” on Angry Love Recordings, which is our label. We’re still doing that, but we don’t make a lot of noise about it—no pun intended. We played with Aaron Dilloway two weeks ago, at the Red Bull Festival. We’re still out there playing away.

OK: You’re having a garage sale this weekend, and you’ll be blessing items. What can we expect from this event? Is there anything particularly meaningful to you that you’re giving away or blessing?

GP: We’ve been to West Africa twice, to Benin. We’ve been working on a documentary about voodoo. You see the poverty. You see the inequity of Western cultures and foreign cultures. To have a surplus and look around my apartment and say, “Why have I still got all those things?” We just don’t see them when we walk around. They’re on our shelf, but we don’t look anymore. The clothes are in a closet, but we don’t wear them anymore. The books are on the shelf, but we’ve read them. Why are we bothering to keep those things when a) they could give pleasure to someone else and be reactivated, and b) the money could go to something much more positive and creative. It can make new things happen. So it becomes awkward having too much when you come from somewhere like Nepal where people have got nothing. You feel somewhat obscene. No matter how magnanimous and altruistic you are, no matter how much you try to help, you still realize that there’s never going to be enough you can do. So we tried, as a symbolic discipline for myself, to purge belongings and material things in order to a) remember that we’re so fortunate and b) to generate funding for new art program ideas, new videos, new music, whatever it might be. Or new charities—with Nepal and the earthquake. We’re going back in October in preparation for the exhibition next year. And what we find there is going to influence what we do and how we work with materials. And it will go towards, hopefully, building a bridge from the West to the Far East that will help in some way.

OK: It’s really devastating over there right now.

PG: Yeah, it’s a tragedy. Those temples that are hundreds of years old—gone. Those can never be replaced. You can’t even rebuild them. They had hundreds of years of devotion and people trying to explore consciousness. Because of a lot of Hinduism and Buddhism, to find ways to expand consciousness and develop compassion, generosity, and kindness. Those should be encouraged. So it’s a real tragedy, to see those centers of energy destroyed.

OK: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me.

PG: You’re really welcome, my friend. Tell everybody—come along. We have a little garden too, so we might have a little barbecue and snacks. We’re going to have little light shows and bubbles and psychedelic microfixtures. Bring back some colorful activism.

OK: I’ll make sure to spread the word.

Genesis Breyer P'Orridge's Pandrogaragenous Avant-yard Sale will be open from Saturday May 30 to Sunday May 31, 2015 at Jackie Klempay Gallery, 81 Central Ave (1A) Brooklyn, New York. text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

A Q&A With Enoc Perez At His New Exhibition 'Cut Shapes' @ Danziger Gallery In New York

May 11, 2015

Puerto Rico-born and New York-based artist Enoc Perez is an anomaly in the art world. He is a master craftsman and purveyor of fine arts: painting, sculpture, architecture, collage and other high-minded crafts transition from Perez’s mind to the canvas with shocking ease. But unlike some other modern masters, he doesn’t view technology, the Internet, or social media as an enemy; on the contrary, he approaches it with wide-eyed enthusiasm, “You kidding me?” asks Perez. “I love Instagram.”

Perez has found a way to marry his enthusiasm for the Internet and his tactile skills in his new show “Cut Shapes” at the Danziger Gallery in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. For the show, Perez sourced images from various women’s Instagram feeds and used cut out shapes to obscure the women’s faces and their more revealing body parts. What is left in the images is the essences of these women. By marrying digital imagery with tactile material, Perez proves that the two forms can most certainly co-exist, and even more so, can compliment one another to deliver a fresh way of viewing the modern world.

In an act of curatorial savvy, show curator and gallery owner James Danziger noticed that Perez’s work mirrored a series of images by artist and photographer Inge Morath. From 1959 to 1963, Morath and artist Saul Steinberg collaborated by doing a series of portraits of friends with their faces covered up by intriguing looking masks. Like Perez, Morath utilized traditional materials to create a new way of looking at technologically produced imagery. The take away from the two different sets of work created decades apart being displayed together is that the best artists have always paid heed to tradition while still embracing new ways to create art.

I caught up with Perez at the opening of “Cut Shapes” to talk about the show, his excitement about technology and why he loves portraying the auras of women.

Autre: I love the juxtaposition of your work with Inge’s, was she an inspiration or did you guys notice a similarity with your work and hers after yours was completed?

Enoc Perez: James picked up on it. It was not something I saw. I was familiar with her work and I was a big fan. But I hadn’t seen that particular group of images.

Autre: It was an act of curation?

Enoc Perez: It was curatorial, yeah. It was kind of cool when you think about it. Usually they group you in generational shows, and sometimes you share more similarities with artists that are not of your generation.

Autre: What I find interesting about this is that you’re applying tactile materials to digital imagery.

Enoc Perez: Yeah, of course, I’m a painter.

Autre: Are you a fan of the internet? Do you like being inundated with imagery?

Enoc Perez: I love it. It’s a new media and I think we are just trying to figure out what to do with it. It’s putting us in tremendous communication with the world. You can see what’s happening all over. The Internet can be like looking at art shows every day. With Instagram, you can curate shows in a way.

"It’s admiration; I love women. And actually to see the pictures that women post or take of themselves is far more beautiful than pictures of women that men have taken. Women get it, they know what works, and in a way they are more powerful.

Autre: And so many people that don’t have access to galleries, people from small rural towns, are getting turned onto amazing stuff through this new media.

Enoc Perez: Exactly, and it’s a way of representing yourself and how you want to be seen. Which actually relates to this work: all these pieces come from feeds of women that are posting themselves. This is how they want to be seen. To me, that’s a good place to start the collage: a co-existence of high and low culture.

Autre: Always the best when they are together (laughs)

Enoc Perez: I love low culture as much as I love high culture, so why not put them together?

Autre: One thing that I thought was interesting is the obscuring of the faces, the nipples, etc..

Enoc Perez: In a way, it’s a comment on the censorship of Instagram and other social media feeds. On Instagram, you have no idea how many of my posts have been taken down, it’s kind of silly but in a way they give us a starting point to make art and define the figure. Or not define it. So why censor it?

Also, I don’t know these women, so I have to be respectful, I don’t want their whole identities there. What I want is the figure, the essence, and the beauty that I love so much.

Autre: When you’re portraying women, is it romantic, is it sensual?

Enoc Perez: It’s admiration; I love women. And actually to see the pictures that women post or take of themselves is far more beautiful than pictures of women that men have taken. Women get it, they know what works, and in a way they are more powerful. As I started looking through these feeds, and I remember talking with Richard Prince about this, these feeds are gold mines of imagery. They are right there, in the public domain.

Autre: And Richard saw this happening years ago.

Enoc Perez: Yes, he did. We all have news ways of digesting and approaching new media. It’s all there, so why not embrace it?

Autre: And our accounts function as weird portals to our brains: our likes, our dislikes, our perversions and more.

Enoc Perez: It’s there, and so what? We can look; we’re not dead. It’s a way to see what’s happening culturally in the world right now. The reason these pictures work is because they look like today looks.

Inge Morath 'Masquerades' & Enoc Perez 'Cut Shapes' will be on view until June 13, 2015 at Danziger Gallery. See more photographs from the opening here. Text, interview and photographs by Adam Lehrer. Follow Autre on instagram to stay up to date: @AUTREMAGAZINE

After Malevich: A Q&A With Robert Levine Before His Solo Show @ MAMA Gallery

May 9, 2015

What do you get when you combine the work of Russian geometric abstract artist Kazimir Malevich, Superman, the minimalism of Joseph Albers, and Groucho Marx? – Besides a Pleiades-like connect the dots of near-schizophrenic referencing, you also get a conundrum of contradictions and a strange telling of art history that contemporary artist Robert Levine explores in his uniquely powerful, incongruous and disarming paintings and collages, which will be on view starting tonight at MAMA gallery. Autre got a chance to chat with Levine about his early introductions to art, his technique, his views on art history and art criticism and his solo exhibition opening tonight at MAMA gallery.

Autre: What were some of your earliest introductions to art?

Robert Levine: When I grew up, we had some art…nothing really valuable or anything…but we just always had art at home. That was my earliest introduction.

Autre: Was there a specific artist, or a specific work of art, that really inspired you?

Levine: The first time that I really thought there were possibilities or that things can be different was in Boston, at the ICA, and they were in a very small building at the time, but there was a show of minimal work….there was Robert Smithson, Robert Morrison, Donald Judd and [Dan] Flavin. I’ve tried to look up the show, but there is scant information about museums from back then. This would have been in 79’ or something. I had never seen a group of work like that, up close, and that really changed my mind about what art can be.

Autre: When you first start making art, you were creating sculptures, but then you recently started painting…what motivated you to pick up a paintbrush?

Levine: Actually, when I first started making art, I did a little bit of both. I worked concurrently until I was in CalArts, but after my first semester I stopped making painting and focused only on sculptural work. I mean I was doing these painting that stood in for painting, but it was sculpture. And I recently got back into painting, because I was making these sculptures with broken pencils and I just started doing drawings of them to have something else to go along with them.

Autre: And then drawing and painting stuck?

Levine: And then I just really started liking the drawings. Soon enough, I was doing paintings of the drawings. And while I was doing some other sculptural work, I was making small little gouache paintings…kind of like product labels and book covers. That’s where I developed a technique of tracing the image in pencil…either tracing it from something or just hand drawing with a pencil and just filling in with paint. That is kind of what I still do. I don’t really have a sophisticated painting technique.

Autre: A lot of your new works have these distinct pop art references and it’s an interesting dichotomy…can you talk a little bit about that?

Levine: That started with the image of the Malevich white painting with Superman holding up the white square. I was doing collage and I needed to do an artwork for a benefit and I was working on a college and somehow in my mind I made the connection between the cover of the very first Superman comic where he is throwing the car. I think it was 1928 or 1930. And he was throwing a car…and the car was at a very similar angle as the white square in the Malevich painting. And I just made a connection and up to that point I had never really used any pop art images in my work. In fact, I just did it as a collage.

"Through these paintings I deal with the language of talking about art. Sometimes I make it literal or I make a pun or I use humor to make a connection with the images."

Autre: Were you thinking of them as painting?

Levine: You know, I wasn’t thinking of them as paintings. I made a bunch of collages. Only later did I think to try to paint them. It grew out of the collage work.

Autre: A lot of artists throughout art history, especially 20th century art history, have declared some form as art dead. Up until the minimalists, arts were declaring that painting was dead. What can we glean from this?

Levine: You know, I am not totally against this idea. You know, maybe it is. It seems like when that happens, it opens the doors for other ways of thinking. Declaring it dead almost allows you to cast aside what was done before. Even if the art looks the same…there is an incredibly difference in the attitudes of how paintings are done now compared to how they were done in 1970 or 1960 or 1950. I think because I have done work other than painting, I don’t really think of myself as a painter in a way that some other people do…in a way that it as a distinct genre of art. I just think of it as a different form of art making.

Autre: What can we expect from your upcoming show at MAMA gallery?

Levine: I think we decided today that the show will be the collage work that generated the ideas for the Malevich, or After-Malevich paintings. After doing the initial one, I ended up printing out photocopies of as many of the supremetive paintings that I could and collaged on to them. I tried to not really limit myself to too many rules as to what I can do in this collages. But when I started painting them, I was limited to only what I felt I could paint for my skill level. But I’ve gotten much better at it and now I’m not really as limited to what I can do.

Autre: So, you will be showing collages and some of the paintings?

Levine: I will be showing collages and I have a number of paintings that I will also be showing. Through these paintings I deal with the language of talking about art. Sometimes I make it literal or I make a pun or I use humor to make a connection with the images. Or I try to use humor with the way that critics have talked about art, like Clement Greenburg. People who may have been discredited, but there is still talk of what they have done. So, a lot of what’s in my paintings is the way that I deal with the language of art and art history. But I try to make them visually interesting. You know, a lot of my most successful pieces have a little bit of a contradiction in them that causes a tension that makes them more and more interesting over time.

Robert Levine's After-Malevich opens tonight at MAMA Gallery with a reception from 6pm to 9pm and the exhibition will run until May 30th, 2015. Text, interview, photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. follow Autre on Instagram to stay up to date: @autremagazine

*Installing After Malevich at MAMA Gallery.*

Art and Curiosity: A Q&A With Curator Sylvia Chivaratanond

May 2, 2015

Everyone in the art world knows that Los Angeles' art scene is going through a frenzied and near-maniacal renaissance. But for the last fifteen years, curator and art historian Sylvia Chivaratanond has sewn for herself a unique place in this strange Shangri-La’s rich artistic tapestry, which dates back to the 50s and 60s with artists like Ed Ruscha and Billy Al Bengston. After seeing the landmark exhibition Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s, which is widely considered to be one of the most important exhibitions of contemporary art, Chivaratanond switched her major from law to art history, volunteered to be a guard at MoCA, and began a long career organizing exciting exhibitions for institutions from the Centre Pompidou to the Tate Gallery in London. Recently, Chivaratanond has been brought on the curate exhibitions for After & Again, which is a contemporary art platform celebrating the craftsmanship of textiles. Merging art, design and fashion, the platform sources textiles from all over the world, which are then presented in unique site-specific installations. For the first installation presented by After & Again, Chivaratanond has curated an electrifying exhibition by established and leading contemporary Mexican artist Betsabee Romero, which explores pre-Columbian iconography, colonial imagery, and lowrider culture – it is currently on view at the Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Autre was lucky enough to catch the very busy Chivaratanond to discuss her beginnings in the art world and her continued thirst for exploring new creative landscapes – what you will learn is that she may just be one of the most important ambassadors for the Los Angeles art scene.

Autre: What is your artistic background…how were you initially introduced to the world of art and can you remember a specific work of art that really set you off?

Sylvia Chivaratanond: I am originally from Los Angeles and was a pre-law major at UCLA. As a college sophomore I walked into the Helter Skelter show at MoCA's Geffen one evening, and that show single-handedly changed the course of my life. The following week I marched into MoCA to volunteer as a guard and intern in the Education Dept; switched my major to Art History and didn't tell my parents until six months before graduation day. My world was turned upside down when I saw the work of Charles Ray, Lynn Foulkes, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Lari Pittman, Jim Shaw, Meg Cranston, Robert Williams, Manual Ocampo, etc. Then I saw Sonic Youth perform at the Geffen outdoor plaza as part of the show and I was hooked. That work spoke to me on so many levels: viscerally, physically, emotionally, and intellectually. And it had a rock star component, which spoke to my youth culture. It was then that I learned that many of those artists taught at the art department of UCLA and several colleges around the city, and I wanted to be even closer to these individuals' energy.

A: How did you get your start in curation and can you describe your first curatorial effort?

SC: After UCLA I went to earn a graduate degree from Leicester University. During my time in London I interned at the Tate Modern for two years and worked very closely with the curatorial department on several Modernist shows. It wasn't until the following year when I received a curatorial fellowship at the Walker Art Center that my expertise in the contemporary art world was cemented. It was there where I met the most creative minds working the field of contemporary art. I was the assistant of Richard Flood, then Chief Curator, and I worked on my first contemporary art show: Matthew Barney's Cremaster 3. In addition, I worked on the drawing retrospective of Robert Gober, Bruce Conner and the most comprehensive Arte Povera show to date. It was a phenomenal time at the Walker as it was a think tank and laboratory for ideas and artists; it practiced what it preached as far as cross-discipline approach to the visual arts. There was an incredible amount of freedom in our thinking and way of looking at art; there was no hierarchy in place. The director at the time, Kathy Halbreich (now Associate Director of MoMA) practiced a special generosity with regard to knowledge and her time that continues to be her ethos till this day.

A: You most recently worked as a curator for the venerable Centre Pompidou…what was most exciting about working with that institution?

SC: The Centre Pompidou is known for its stellar scholarship and excellent collection of art. It was an honor to work with their director and curators on building their permanent collection of art with regard to American artists, a focus for the Centre Pompidou Foundation. I was instrumental in adding important American artists to their collection including Jim Shaw, Rachel Harrison, Cheyney Thompson, Erin Sheriff, Sam Falls, Mark Bradford, Sterling Ruby, Barbara Kasten, Analia Saban, RH Quaytman, among many others.

A: I want to talk about your work with After & Again, which celebrates craftsmanship of textiles…what has your experience been with textiles?

SC: I recognize the importance of textiles in art as they have been part of the fabric of culture since the dawn of time! From what we wear on a daily basis to folk and tribal art to contemporary artists working w fabric such as Sheila Hicks, Ernesto Neto, and Yinka Shonibare. There are so many artists using textiles in their work whether directly sewn or worked into the sculptural object or simply as clothing to evoke an era or statement in a photograph such as Mickalene Thomas. In Mickalene's paintings, even though she doesn't use textiles directly, she makes specific references to them in her work in order to evoke a certain epoch or make a political statement. Do Ho Suh is another artist who comes into mind who weaves intricate sculptural installations from translucent fabric and resin.

A: One of the first exhibitions presented by After & Again is a presentation of works by Betsabeé Romero, which will be on view at the Masonic Lodge, can you describe your connection with this artist?

SC: I have always admired Betsabee's work from a far but never experienced it until now. She is a legend in Mexico and Latin American and I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to bring her work to audiences in Los Angeles. Her work in sculpture, photographs, drawings and installation bridge the gap between Pre-Colombian iconography and pop culture such as Chicano and lowrider culture. The notion of death as celebratory is also a big topic in her work. I have always gravitated toward work that both celebrates and draws attention death in our culture, not so much as a dark component, but instead using darkness as way to generate lightness.

Installation view of Helter Skelter - the show at MoCA that changed curator Sylvia Chivaratanond's life forever — *Installation view of Helter Skelter - the show at MoCA that changed curator Sylvia Chivaratanond's life forever*

A: Can you talk about future shows presented by After & Again that you are curating?

SC: We plan to choose the next artist by this summer in order to show in Los Angeles in the fall. The artist will also do an edition for After & Again and will somehow integrate that project into an installation at a location in the city.

A: What type of art do you gravitate to the most…is there any type of medium or work that you are immediately drawn to?

SC: I love work in all mediums across eras. I love Surrealist and Dada work and I also love strolling the Metropolitan Museum's collection galleries of ancient south east Asian art and art from the sub-continent from 400 B.C onward!

A: You recently curated a show of Devendra Banhart's work at Reserve Ames - what is Devendra doing that is different than other artists?

SC: I love Devendra's seamless fusion of visual art and music. He is the modern day dandy who understands the subtleties of our culture from the history of sound and the works of John Cage to the poetry of Ginsburg to the latest country music. He went to art school first then began his music career, in that order.

A: What is the most exciting thing about art in LA – especially in the present – is there a boom or has there always been one continuous shock wave?

SC: Los Angeles has always been important to the scene of art since the 1950s and 1960s with Ed Kienholz and the birth of Ferus Gallery to all the artists in the now historical 1992 Helter Skelter show at MoCA. Los Angeles has always been in a strong position in the art world as this is the city with the most concentration of the best art schools in the country. The recent boom of art comes at the heels of the revitalization of downtown and with it affordable studios and housing in these dense areas of population. Everyone from New York City has figured out that LA has been inexpensive to work and live (not to mention unbeatable sunshine) so recently there has been a mass exodus of artists, galleries, and collectors from every major city in the world. Did I mention the outrageously delicious food scene here? It's out of this world with the most Michelin star restaurants in one city. Downtown LA is also the home to the most exciting museums from MoCA to the new Broad Museum, which will continue to bring fresh and new perspectives of art while broadening their audiences.

A: What’s next?

SC: For me: yoga and meditation somewhere far off. For art: continue the curiosity that makes art of our time. We must continue to support art, music and culture in any way possible.

You can catch Sylvia Chivaratanond's first curatorial effort for After & Again, featuring the art of leading Mexican artist Betsabee Romero at the Masonic Lodge (6000 Santa Monica Blvd - right behind Paris Photo) from May 2 to May 4, 2015. text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

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Installation of Betsabee Romero's exhibition at the Masonic Lodge, curated by Sylvia Chivaratanond — *Installation of Betsabee Romero's exhibition at the Masonic Lodge, curated by Sylvia Chivaratanond*

Live Long Enough to Live Forever: A Q&A With Cole Sternberg

April 29, 2015

Multidisciplinary artist Cole Sternberg is an explorer of the human soul, the American psyche and the paranoia surrounding global growth, change and ecological destruction. Although he is predominantly a painter, Sternberg also practices sculpture, photography, film and room installations. At Paris Photo Los Angeles 2015, Sternberg will present what may be one of his most exciting photographic journeys yet: a recreation of his grandmother’s den from her home in Long Island. Sternberg has exhaustively documented every inch of the space and the strange objects that live there: "...Late 19th century plein air impressionist American painting, a 1990s TV with really strange, hardly decipherable instructions for how to use it, her VHS collection, my grandpa’s ashes, a binder about a Parisian tourist trip they did—this real weird mix of things—pillows knitted with puppies yawning." Through collage and unorthodox photographic processes, “My Grandma’s Den” is a microcosm of a larger consciousness: an America afraid of itself, afraid of its neighbors, armed to the teeth and begging for spiritual catharsis. After Paris Photo, Sternberg will be exhibiting a site-specific work in the Hamptons and then he is off to travel the world aboard a shipping vessel to create works that deal with human minuteness and global trade. In the following fascinating interview, Sternberg discusses his practice, the fate of mankind and his grandmother’s den.

Oliver Kupper: What were some of your earliest introductions to art?

Cole Sternberg: Well, my earliest ones that I don’t actually remember—but I’ve been told from family members—my parents and grandparents used to take me to a lot of museums. I guess I got really into certain, specific impressionist paintings when I was four years old. I would just sit and stare at these different textured oil works for—not a serious amount of time—but a serious amount of time for a little kid, three to five minutes or something. Just staring at them. And they thought it was kind of strange, but that was the first thing.

OK: That makes sense now.

CS: Yeah, it came together twenty years later…The first thing I really remember getting deep into was in middle school, my family moved to Germany for my dad’s job for a couple of years. They kept dragging me, again, to museums. But these were more iconic European museums like, the ones you would think—whether it be the Louvre, or the D’Orsay in Paris, or the Uffizi in Florence—you know, whatever, every big tourist museum. So I saw a lot of work. In a two-year span, I saw a ridiculous amount of important, historical work.

OK: Can you name three artists that really had a profound influence on you?

CS: I don’t know. It’s hard because I don’t think my work really related to any of those early influences super specifically. I mean, I’ve always really liked texture, and I would see that in a variety of works. I think when I was seventeen, I started learning more about abstract expressionism, and then Twombly. Things like that – you can see a little bit more in the work. But it’s weird because I can’t really piece it to one or two specific people. It’s kind of a blend. I love Joseph Beuys, and Sigmar Polke, and Twombly, and Mapplethorpe—all kinds of different people.

OK: Yeah, I meant in a sense of—not necessarily influence your work, but just had an impact on your creativity…

CS: Well that immersive environment of large abstraction. “Fifty Days at Iliam” is a Twombly piece in the Philadelphia museum that’s either eleven or twelve massive canvases that go together to tell the story of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The feeling sitting in a room surrounded by those big, powerful works, I think, drove me to actually create something.

OK: Yeah, that makes sense. So, do you travel around a lot? Did you travel around a lot as a kid? Were you sort of moving around the world a little bit?

CS: Not really. We were pretty much in Northern California except for that few year period in Germany. But during that period in Germany we tried to travel as much as possible because it was a unique time and opportunity. And then from college until now I travel a lot.

"I like this idea of an ongoing search for some sort of truth. That truth could be very grandiose. How is the earth placed in the whole environment, in the solar system, in the universe, and so on. How is one person’s life relevant to the rest of us? I like these amorphous concepts of searching."

OK: You work in a lot of mediums—photography, sculpture, insulation, film—but painting has sort of become your main medium. What is it about painting that best expresses your creativity?

CS: Well, it’s kind of a selfish thing. I think I just enjoy painting the most. There’s an emotional connection to that, and a sort of visceral feeling about it that I really like. But at the same time, my recent body of work is all photography. And then my next project after this is a mix of photography and painting. So I don’t know. I don’t know how locked in I am on it all the time. But painting a large-scale painting is probably still my most joyful thing to create.

OK: Your work seems to be this grand exploration of humankind—evolution, civilization, culture, what drives us, what moves us. You recreated the Sistine Chapel on shipping crates and the last moments of Ray Johnson’s life, which is incredible. What are you hoping to discover? What are you looking for? Is there anything specific you are looking for?

CS: I don’t know. It feels like I’m looking for something, but I don’t know what exactly it is. I like the overarching theme of how humanity or humankind (in a more positive way) affects our environment around us—for the better or worse. Mainly for the worst, but it kind of depends. I like this idea of an ongoing search for some sort of truth. That truth could be very grandiose. How is the earth placed in the whole environment, in the solar system, in the universe, and so on. How is one person’s life relevant to the rest of us? I like these amorphous concepts of searching. Also, I like to subversively deal with social issues in the work.

OK: Where do you think humans will be in five hundred years?

CS: Oh my god. Well, the way it’s looking now, we’ll probably be turning into fossils slowly. Sometimes I buy into the Kurzweil concept of a singularity, the possibility that in five hundred years our consciousness will be, basically, where it is twenty years from now. We’ll figure out how to live forever. The idea of neurology and robotics and general science and technology combined to the point where every day automatically our brain is uploading to a cloud and we know exactly how the brain works. So if I got hit by a car one second from now, I would just download all my memories and experiences into a synthetic brain and synthetic body and be rolling again. If that works, then in five hundred years, we’ll probably have explored deep, deep into the universe and learned more truths about how small we are in the context of our world and others.

OK: Sure. That was sort of a curve ball question, sorry about that.

CS: I could go on forever about weird theories of living on.

OK: I love that. I think we’ll be downloadable, too. I think that we’re already becoming cyborgs.

CS: Oh yeah, it feels like it in the stupid connection with our phones.

OK: That’s exactly what I’m talking about. So, Paris Photo is coming up. This is really interesting to me. Can you describe your solo exhibition with MAMA at Paris Photo?

CS: Well the idea started with taking a room and recreating that in photography in another room—that other room being the booth or whatever space for Paris Photo for MAMA. I spent a lot of time in my grandma’s den, which is in a small town on Long Island. The den is really creepy—like every grandma’s dens. But it also has all these weird little components that, taken separately, can mean a lot of different things. Or, together, can be this symbol of the weird state of America and the world. So I got really into my grandma’s den, basically. It has everything from a late 19th century plein air impressionist American painting, to a 1990s TV with really strange, hardly decipherable instructions for how to use it, to her VHS collection, my grandpa’s ashes, a binder about a Parisian tourist trip they did—this real weird mix of things—pillows knitted with puppies yawning. I captured all that, shooting each square foot of it very specifically. I took it back to my studio—all that photography—and then started to figure out what I was really going to do with it.

OK: What did you do with it?

CS: What that ended up being is a series of collages that are manipulated in a kind of strange way that give it this destructive, rough feel—in black and white and color. Then, integrating text in with different images to give these little hints of what I’m thinking with each work. They address the environment in some way. My grandma has been a lifelong left-wing democrat. Suddenly, she’s a very right-winged person, which I don’t understand, except that my uncle has her watch Fox News a lot. I think maybe that’s brainwashed her. There’s these little hints of what happens to people when they get old and why their viewpoints change for no rational reason. Then, the bigger thing that came out of it is this agoraphobic tendency of my grandma, of me, and then of America in general. We really want to build walls and isolate ourselves, which, I think is super unfortunate. So a lot of the work ended up getting into more of this agoraphobia than anything else.

*Agoraphobic Tendencies of a Modern World (2015)*

OK: Does she know that you are presenting this exhibition? Does she have any idea what’s going on?

CS: She loves art. She’s exposed me to a lot of art. She went to the Ray Johnson Hamptons thing. So she knows I’m feeling it. I’m pretty sure she has no clue of the dark side of it or the agoraphobic side of it, until she sees the work. Even then, I’m kind of hoping she doesn’t figure it out. She’s very sweet and fine lady. I don’t want to bum her out too much. It’s more about everyone than her specifically. So, we’ll see.

OK: You’re about to go on this massive trip around the world. Can you talk about that project? You’re about to travel the world, essentially, on a shipping crater.

CS: I love this project. It’s been planned in a variety of forms for three or four years, and finally, it’s not coming to fruition in what I think is, probably, the best way. At first, it was more in regard to Chinese trade, and America controlling the oceans, and what that meant to the world. Now, I have been more focused on it being about the journey itself and how small humans are within the scope of the ocean. The vessel stops three times in China, one time in Korea, then goes across the Pacific. That part of the trip is around 10 or 12 days. You cross one of the few dead zones that are left in the world—zones of the ocean where if you get sick or the boat has a major issue, no one will reach you in time. Dead zones are closing very quickly due to technology. So this is a last moment to really spend any time in one of those areas. Also, you pass by, to some degree, what’s called the “plastic island.” It isn’t really an island, just a massive amount of garbage floating around. You can’t really see it all of it on the surface at once like a normal island, but it’s another sign of disgusting human waste. And then the ship goes through the Panama Canal, stops in Columbia, and then goes up the East Coast of America, ending in New York. That’s more of a human ingenuity part of the trip. I think that might be more fun.

OK: So, what are you doing on the ship?

CS: On the ship, I’m painting. I’m creating all kinds of work—paint, photography, drawing, writing—and exposing the work to the elements in different ways. For instance, a watercolor might be tied to a pole on the ship, and then the rain and saltwater will eat away at the paint to some degree for the whole journey. Another piece might be sitting in the engine room for the whole journey, and the soot will slowly build up on the piece. I’ve never done that before—physically integrating the environment into the works in some way. I think it will be a mental and physical challenge.

OK: It sounds amazing. Now, are you exhibiting those works at MAMA? How long does that take? How long does something like that take?

CS: The journey?

OK: Yeah.

CS: It’s about a month—a few days in China on the front end. This production company is making a documentary about the journey and me, so we’ll spend a little time in China beforehand just doing things and wandering around. Then, the same on the back end in New York. So I guess the whole thing is about five weeks or five and a half weeks.

OK: It sounds incredible.

CS: I think it will be good. Hopefully I don’t jump off.

OK: Yeah, hopefully. So where do you see yourself as an artist in ten years? That’s my last question. It might be a difficult question.

CS: Oh my god. I don’t know. With every exhibition or project I do, I try to grow a little and push myself a little further in terms of process, and concept, and the ending visual too. If I keep doing that, as I’ve done for at least the last five years, I think the work ten years from now will be pretty interesting and pretty in depth in a variety of formats. I think that, through it all, that’s all I can really hope for, is the work itself. You can’t really predict what business opportunities or anything will come.

You can check out Cole Sternberg's "My Grandma’s Den" at Paris Photo Los Angeles 2015, presented by MAMA Gallery, New York Backlot, Stand H3, Paramount Pictures Studios. text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Ghost Rider Motorcycle Hero: An Interview With Alan Vega

February 23, 2015

interview by Oliver Kupper

When Alan Vega first heard Bruce Springsteen’s album Nebraska, he was convinced that the song "State Trooper" was a long lost Suicide song that he had forgotten about. The song was not a lost Suicide track – it was one of Springsteen’s own, but an obvious homage nonetheless.

That’s how powerful Suicide’s influence was and still is – a band created by two nice Jewish boys from Brooklyn. Black clad and with a lethally high-voltage sound, Suicide has had a profound influence on bands like Joy Division and The Jesus and Mary Chain – amongst countless others. But what many people don’t know is that Suicide provided a strange and pulsating soundtrack for a major change in American culture: art was being stripped to a bare minimalism of shapes and primary colors, and music was being peeled away to reveal simple digitized rhythms, computerized static and monotone vocals. Alan Vega – the front man of Suicide – was one of the first people to use the word ‘punk’ to describe their music. Today, Vega, and his band Suicide, is considered the missing link in the lineage between rock n’ roll and what would become known as punk, electro-punk, no wave, new wave and early industrial music. Before listening to Nine Inch Nails, start with Suicide.

Many people also don’t know that Alan Vega is also an established visual artist - art is actually his first passion. In fact, he studied under abstract expressionist turned minimalist artist Ad Reinhardt – an artist who was famous for his black on black painting that he deemed would be the last paintings anyone could ever paint. Vega would seemingly become a physical and creative manifestation of those “last paintings.” Experimenting with bare materials and items found in the barren and depressed landscape that was New York in the 1970s, Vega would create unique light sculptures that resembled Christmas ornamented crucifixes; a pastiche of a dystopian consumerist American culture.

In a new solo show at Invisible Exports – the first show devoted entirely to new work since 1983 – Vega presents a few of his iconic light sculptures and a series of semi-autobiographical portraits that are much more personal than his three-dimensional work. We were fortunate enough to speak with Alan Vega on the eve of the opening of this exhibition – entitled Welcome to Wyoming. In the following interview, Vega talks about Suicide, his current show at Invisible-Exports and how age brings wisdom and the general notion of not giving a fuck anymore what people think.

What was your earliest introduction to art – when was your introduction?

It must have been in the late sixties – I started making art and that soon turned into music. But I was always into music, anyhow. I was always doing music while I was making art. But I wasn’t doing it as a career or anything. Not even when I started Suicide. To me, we were doing art.

"Everything. Everything was changing.
And it was great. At times, it was impossible
to know what the hell was going on."

Who were some of your earliest artistic influences?

I was influenced by Ad Reinhardt, and also some of the early surrealists. And Picasso – I used to hear all these stories about Picasso that were really wild. But Ad [Ad Reinhardt] was my generation, and as far as I’m concerned [his work] was the end of painting. It was black on black and almost no color.

And that was sort of the birth of minimalism, right – at the end of the ‘50s?

Yeah, it was. It was the beginning of the end. I didn’t know where to go from there at the time. It was like, ‘Oh shit, what do we do now?’

But that stripped down minimalism must have had a huge effect on your band, Suicide?

Yeah, it did. It was a time of minimalism – in art, in music. And Ad really started that beginning – to the end.

Well, that whole era was a time of change – the end of the fifties and early sixties – everything seemed to be changing at that point in history.

Everything. Everything was changing. And it was great. At times, it was impossible to know what the hell was going on. But seeing Ad [Reinhardt] was enough – I remember seeing his paintings for the first time and I was like, ‘Holy shit.’ I knew Ad very well – he was a very shy guy, but he was also really funny. But just to see his paintings was really a treat itself.

I want to talk about Iggy Pop for a second, because he has also had a major influence on you as well – mainly as a musician and performer, right?

Yeah, well, Iggy was a major influence. The first time I saw Iggy was in 1969 at the World’s Fair in New York City and MC5 was the headliner. And they [MC5] tried very hard to outdo Iggy, but they could not outdo Iggy – no one could outdo Iggy. And it was twenty minutes of Hell. All his jumping on stage. He was all bloodied. I remember bringing two or three people with me and all their mouths were dropped.

So, how did you come up with the name Suicide?

[laughs] We all laughed at first when we first thought of it. We would try to come up with names for days and each time we thought of Suicide, we would laugh. And then one day Marty [Martin Rev] decided let’s just keep the name, because that was really the band: SUICIDE – and it was. Suicide sort of summed up the world we lived in: Nixon, the bombings, and the war, and what the hell! People thought we were describing our own suicide, but it was the only appropriate name.

"It greeted hell for me, because
everyone that saw it was, like ‘Holy shit.’
They tried to kill me."

Well, it’s one of the greatest band names, probably ever…

It probably is one of the greatest names of all time. Everyday, you read the newspaper and you feel like you are getting closer and closer to suicide [laughs].

And you used to walk around with a jacket that read Suicide, right?

Yeah, it said Suicide on the back. It greeted hell for me, because everyone that saw it was, like ‘Holy shit.’ They tried to kill me. They threw things at me. It was just a jacket! I took hell. In fact, I took hell for the first ten to fifteen years of Suicide.

Yeah, I mean people probably hadn’t seen anything like that before. Can you describe one of your craziest experiences?

Oh god, there are so many of them. It’s hard, because we were younger. We also went out with a different energy than we do now. We were insane. Or we were acting insane. Or maybe we were insane! Every night was different. Really, because we never knew what to do – we never knew how to start. Sometimes it started right off the bat and sometimes there was silence. Waiting for a sound. For something….

So, when do you think that people started really appreciating the sound?

Well, we started getting appreciation in the United Kingdom in the early 80s. I remember there was a show in Edinburgh at the Glass Door and we expected all kinds of hell – I remember they had a big disco ball, but it was completely dark while we played four numbers or so. Then I told Marty to watch out – “expect it from all angles.” But then the lights came on and people were dancing! So it started then – then people were against the walls and they started following us. They really loved Suicide.

What about some of your peers – I mean there were other bands in New York making very avant-garde music, like Television and a number of other bands. How did they perceive your music?

I liked the guys from Televsion, but they were more rock n’ roll. But I liked the guys. I knew the drummer – he was very friendly with me. The lead singer was a very quiet guy and he didn’t really talk to anybody. But compared to Suicide, they were more commercial.

Speaking of commercial, Bruce Springsteen has said that you guys have been a major, major influence, right?

Bruce – I became very friendly with him. He was in the same studio we were in – in about 1981 or 1982. We had a lot of laughs together, me and Bruce. But when I first heard that album [Nebraska] I thought: Did I write a song that I don’t remember now? There was a song on there that I thought was a Suicide song, but no, it was Bruce Springsteen. But I like Bruce and I always liked his music.

So, I wanted to talk about your upcoming show at Invisible-Exports. Can you tell us a little bit about Welcome to Wyoming?

I’ve always wanted to go to Wyoming all my life and I want to go before I die, and see the horses. So I was working on these drawings and the show came up, so I decided to call it Welcome to Wyoming.

And this is your first show devoted to new work in multiple years – what prompted you to show your work again?

Well, I love the gallery and the two people that run the gallery, they really know me.

And a majority of the work in this show is portraits – are they self-portraits?

They are portraits, but they are not really self-portraits. I’ve been doing these drawings since I was a kid. I would do them on the Bowery – these portraits of old people. But in a way they are self-portraits. And I don’t use any models or anything like that – I just draw. I’ve been doing it all my life. I did it before Suicide stuff. In this show, there are a bunch of drawings of these guys.

And I heard that you like to draw while under the influence?

I did, but….

Not anymore?

Yeah, I did, but now the doctors have got me staying away. But I’ve been focused – I’ve been doing shows. Suicide has been better than ever. And I have new music that I’ve been working on. It’s the blues, which is something that I’ve always wanted to do.

"Age is a hell of a thing.
Maybe it’s the idea of running out of time –
knowing that I could go at any day."

You’ve always wanted to make blues music or play the blues?

Yeah, I was only going to do one song…maybe two…but it turned into a volume of ten songs…and everything is live from the top of my head. I just heard a few tracks and it sounds really good. As I get older, everything is better. Drawing is better. Singing is better. So, I don’t know…I don’t know what’s happened. After forty years, maybe I finally know what the hell I’m doing. And the album is going to come out soon.

Do you think wisdom comes from age?

Yeah, I do. Yeah, there is a lot of shit that comes with youth. Horrendous fuck-ups. Which is great – I really love fuck-ups. But working through that is a good thing. But after forty years – forty-five years – of busting my hump…now I don’t give a shit. I just do what I want to do. Age is a hell of a thing. Maybe it’s the idea of running out of time – knowing that I could go at any day.

Well, I hope for more albums and music and more of everything…

I hope so too! But I’m going through a re-birth. I’m already thinking of the next show and I am hoping for good things for it. I have a lot of ideas for it and now I don’t want to die. Whereas before, I was like, ‘The hell with it.’ Now I feel like I could live a little longer. Now, I can keep making my art, but all my friends are starting to reach that age…

But you can’t really retire from art, right?

You never retire from it. I get calls all the time – people asking why don’t I quit or retire. But why the hell would I want to quit? How do you stop art or music? You don’t…you do it forever and that’s what I want to do and I love it.

Alan Vega 'Welcome to Wyoming' is on view now until March 29, 2015 at Invisible-Exports in New York. Click here to see photos from the opening.

Olivia Locher On Her Group Show 'Pheromone Hotbox'

January 22, 2015

We first featured the work of Olivia Locher back in 2011. Over the years, her work and photographic identity has matured, but has never lost that brilliant collision of erotic and surreal – with a feminine mystique that blossoms with rich hues and jarring contexts. Tonight, Locher is included in a group exhibition – entitled Pheromone Hotbox – with four other women who have that same mystique: Amanda Charchian, Shae Detar, Marianna Rothen and Aneta Bartos. Together, they are exploring female sexuality and womanhood that is counterclockwise from the predominant male perspective, which aims more to objectify than to celebrate. In the following short interview, Locher talks female empowerment and learning to trust her artistic ideas.

AUTRE: What can we expect tomorrow night at your show Pheromone Hotbox at Steven Kasher Gallery?

OLIVIA LOCHER: A lot of girl power! I’m showing with four incredible female artists, who each have their own unique voice and style. The work all comes together fearlessly representing womanhood. It’s a great show, I’m really honored to be included in it.

AUTRE: How does your work represent some of the ideas behind the show - "post-feminist" ideologies or exuding female sexuality, or otherwise?

LOCHER: The pieces I’m showing are a really colorful, playful mixture of work. There are many different concepts though out the individual pieces, but these particular photographs meet sharing a universal theme focused around empowering women.

AUTRE: You have been finding a very unique voice in your photography over the last few years - how do you think your work as evolved or changed the most?

LOCHER: I have learnt to trust my ideas and act on them, sometimes impulsively.

AUTRE: What's next?

LOCHER: I am always working on a few projects at once. I am just finishing up a two year long series titled, “I Fought the Law”.

Pheromone Hotbox at Steven Kasher Gallery in NYC – featuring Olivia Locher, Amanda Charchian, Shae Detar, Marianna Rothen and Aneta Bartos – opens tonight. The show will be on view until February 28, 2015. Interview and text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

The Fetish of Desire: An Interview with Nino Cais

December 23, 2014

I first noticed Nino Cais’s work at Art Basel in Miami. Amongst the literal miles and miles of gallery booths and art, Cais’s work – presented by São Paulo based gallery Central Galeria de Arte – had a magnetic quality. His “fruit series” – which includes photo collages of bright ripe bananas, mangos, eggplants and exotic fruit covered in female panty hose, juxtaposed with nude glamor portraits – is a treatise on the temporality that culture places on female youth, beauty and desire. In other works, he plays with neoclassicism and roman iconography – one statue is half woman of antiquity and half stack of porcelain plates. We got a chance to ask Cais a few questions about his art – in the following interview he talks about choosing art versus priesthood and some of his biggest artistic influences.

AUTRE: Your mother was a seamstress and you grew up in the suburbs of São Paulo, where did you find your inspirations and how were you introduced to art?

NINO CAIS: My relation to art was, and still is, very intuitive. Since I was a kid, I used to manufacture my own toys with some of my mother’s materials, such as fabric scraps. I never thought I would be a professional artist – I didn’t even have a close relationship to art, nor did I visit exhibitions.

At first I entered the seminary to become a priest. I used to decorate the Church’s events and festivities. One of the priests of the seminary was convinced that I had to study art and he managed to get a scholarship for me to study in Santa Marcelina, an Art School in São Paulo. It was then that I started to understand everything I had been experiencing as a kid and young adult and started to have a more theoretical background, to think of art in a more consistent way and to start to elaborate on my production as an artist.

AUTRE: Who were some of the first artists who really expanded your mind – artists who you identified with and were inspired by?

CAIS : At the art school I met some artists that were of great importance in my personal and artistic development. One of the teachers I directly identified with was Led Catunda. Afterwards, other contemporary artists became an important reference for me, namely Constantin Brancusi, Richard Serra, Erwin Wurm, Cindy Sherman, Sam Taylor Wood and Nick Cave. In a more historical perspective, I was always fascinated by Mantegna and Giotto’s paintings. I also have a great admiration for some surrealist artists such as Man Ray, René Magritte and Marx Ernst. More recently, I am very much interested in some African artists such as Samuel Fosso and Yinka Shonibare.

AUTRE: You studied dramatic arts for roughly 8 years, how do you think that has inspired your work?

CAIS: Although I don’t really conceive a direct continuity between my experience in dramatic arts and my career as an artist, I do think that some theatrical elements are recurrent in my work. First of all, some of my installations are very scenographic and have an underlying dramatic tension, as they suggest a narrative and/or an imminent fall suspended in time. One other convergence of my artistic practice that could also be related in some way to theater is the fact that most of the figures in my work, and especially my self-portrait photographs, enact a persona that mingles with the surrounding objects, and that become some kind of entity. Note for example that my face is always hidden by an object or by a posterior intervention on the image.

AUTRE: Can you talk a little bit about your current ‘fruit’ series – I saw a few of these works in Miami and they are really stunning?

CAIS: My “fruit series” is centered on the idea of superposition of different levels and the nature of images. The starting point of this series is a recent research about the feminine figure. The pieces juxtapose images of fruits and iconic and beautiful women that harken a model of grace and sensuality. If both the fruit and the women relate to abundance, fertility and life, they are ephemeral and fleeting bodies that fade with the passing of time. In this sense, these images work as a kind of still life.

AUTRE: What’s next?

CAIS: I am working on a solo show that will take place at Central Galeria de Arte, in São Paulo, in February. The central axis of this exhibition is garments and how they relate to different cultures, how they drive projections, clichés and fetishes.

Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. You can view more of Nino Cais's work by visiting the website of Central Galeria de Arte.

LIVE LOVE DIE: A SHORT INTERVIEW WITH BRAD PHILLIPS

December 4, 2014

Canadian artist Brad Phillips' artwork elicits an immediate visceral reaction - like realizing your entire life is a joke and only God knows the punch line. His text-based works, which are composed in watercolor, are quickly becoming what he is best known for. But behind the striking, stinging, slap-you-in-the-face puns and plays on words, Phillips is a writer and a poet at heart - a writer that uses a grander lexicon to explore the darker meaning of life. On top of being a writer, Phillips is also a photographer. His new book of photography – Mother Nature Mother Creature – puts a twist on 1970s naturalist photography by following two women who undress and romp through a forest in the nude. You can also view Phillips’ stunning text-based work at Harper’s Books in the Hamptons. In the following interview, Brad Phillips talks about his obsession with literature and poking fun at Ryan McGinley.

AUTRE: Your works deals with a lot of love, death and suicide – why are those themes meaningful to you?

BRAD PHILLIPS: Well, I suppose these are classic 'big themes' - and for me my work is always personal, and love death and suicide are all things that I have had vast personal experiences with.

AUTRE: Your watercolors are predominantly text based – like subversive poems – how do those quotes come to you?

PHILLIPS: My watercolors are only predominantly text based in the last few months, primarily my watercolors have been figurative. Some of the paintings of text are taken from other sources, like the bible, but for the most part, I can't say exactly how they come to me. I'm far more interested in writing than I am in art. I publish a lot of writing, I've been obsessed with literature and language my whole life and also comedy. So much of it just comes to me spontaneously – sudden puns I come up with, bad jokes, one liners, like art in general, the source is usually a mystery to me, except that I know it begins somewhere in some dark recess of my mind.

AUTRE: You have a new book – called Mother Nature Mother Creature – can you tell us a little bit about your new publication?

PHILLIPS: I've painted from photographs for my entire career, but I don't think photography has much currency as an art anymore. I think it's been done to death. So I'd taken these photographs of my friends before I moved back to Toronto from Vancouver. I guess I was interested in making a parody of 'naturalist photography' from the seventies. I don't know that it comes across as being parody and also I wanted to sort of poke at artists like Ryan McGinley, who hire attractive models to appear to be his friends and then photograph them frolicking in the nude. For me it was a way to document two women: one is my best friend's wive, a mother of two kids, who were both raised in the west coast, just being naked hippies in the forest. It's pretty simplistic, which is what I see as one of the problems with photography. So for me photographs right now are ideally suited to being seen in books, not on gallery walls.

AUTRE: Is everything a joke or is the joke everything?

PHILLIPS: I'm not sure about this – some things are jokes, some things are deadly serious. The interesting part is to make what's deadly serious and turn it into a joke, and to take what's superficial and light and make it look serious.

Text and Interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. You can view Brad Phillips' exhibition Law and Order at Harper's Books until January 5, 2015. You can also purchase 'Mother Nature Mother' Creature here.

Subversive Narratives: An Interview With Ryan Heffington

November 28, 2014

Ryan Heffington has carved an extremely unique place in the world of dance and contemporary art. If you’ve seen the music video for Sia’s triple-platinum song Chandelier, you know Heffington’s work. If you’ve seen the Sigur Rós music video where Shia LaBeouf goes full frontal, you know Heffington’s work. But Heffington’s real magic exists in his spectacular live performances – where he uses the medium of modern dance and movement to paint a portrait of identity and culture in a fragmentary digital age. Next week, as part of Art Basel Miami, MAMA gallery will present Heffington’s premier of Wading Games – a performance that he describes as a “punk rock water ballet" – at the Ritz Carlton hotel. In the following interview, Heffington explains his upcoming performance in Miami and how dance can change the world.

AUTRE: Can you talk a little about your upcoming performance in Miami – you once described it as a “punk rock water ballet.” Is that an accurate description?

RYAN HEFFINGTON: Yes, the piece will live between a glorious ballet in terms of scale, and at moments aesthetically beautiful, but sharply contrasted by a subversive narrative where the dancers will have to fight from drowning over collectively taking part in a synchronized swim routine.

AUTRE: You have been thinking about this project for a long time – why is this particular project so meaningful to you?

HEFFINGTON: The fact that certain performative spectacles cling to my brain collecting momentum over the years creates a feeling of deep respect and attachment to the piece. I'm not sure exactly when this ballet pushed itself inside, but the element of potential danger, the symbology of over-flooding tears, and a certain societal class - all of this is so dramatic. It has spoken to me in my dreams and waking state as well - at this point it's a part of me and I cannot keep it a secret any longer.

AUTRE: Why is dance important in today’s contemporary artistic landscape?

HEFFINGTON: In this age of digital media, over-saturation of well most everything, dance claims it stake in that it is most simple in its form. Its the body expressing the mind. No need for tools, keyboards, audio accompaniment - just the human form. There is something inherently grounding about this. It's access is given once the being accepts their own invitation to do so - again no money, tools or experience is necessary. It's also powerful in terms of invigorating the soul and once you come to peace with that you dance like no one else on earth - think fingerprint - an endless amount of joy is yours. Really - imagine if every human danced for 1 hour a day, how that would change your life, your work space, your community, your nation, our world.

AUTRE:What do you hope to convey – or what kind of feelings do you want to emote – through your dancers and your choreography?

HEFFINGTON:In rehearsals, sometimes I squint when watching the piece in front of me. I know when I feel something from the bodies before me - I'll get a tingle or goosebumps or rays of energy - I know I've created something visceral and this is what I hope my audiences experience. I can make aesthetically arresting imagery - yet without playing to the heart I'm afraid people leave empty handed. We're over stimulated visually as a society - but to connect emotionally to people or art is how I want to live and have my work experienced.

Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. MAMA gallery will present Ryan Heffington'sWading Games – with music by Banks and film installations by Osk – at the Ritz Carlton (pool) in Miami Beach as part of Art Basel Miami 2014 on Thursday, December 4 (rsvp@mama.gallery).

The Ecstatic Body: An Interview with Julius Smack

November 26, 2014

Under the stage persona Julius Smack, Peter Hernandez is part of a new wave of emerging artists that are trying to define their identity in a century that is trying to do just the same. Often wearing white jeans, his signature white face paint, a white shirt, and a tuft of blond curls hanging out of a white baseball hat worn backwards, Julius Smack combines the slow mortal pangs of Butoh with a sense of definitive post-internet Millennial angst. His performances cross boundaries between music and performance art and he will often sing his own songs, which are produced and released by his own record label – called Practical Records. Most of Smack’s recent songs were produced in his former home in San Francisco (he is now based in Los Angeles) and they have distinct political overtones. In the following interview, Julius Smack (Peter Hernandez) talks political performative art, his recent move to Los Angeles and why he uses Starbucks cups and yoga mats in some of his performances.

AUTRE: Who is Julius Smack?

JULIUS SMACK:Julius Smack is an awoken statue from antiquity that pontificates social and political messages through dance and song. In the past I used make-up to conflate an impression of a Grecian statue and Butoh dancer. I’d paint my face white and wear some white hair under a white hat. I explored vogue and butoh dance mostly at a historic drag bar in San Francisco called Aunt Charlie’s Lounge, where every Tuesday I presented a new track and a new choreography.

AUTRE: How would you define your genre of music – is it art or music?

SMACK: Maybe it’s Los Angeles, but I am beginning to see the two modes as one. I’m interested in music as art and vice-versa. I don’t think of the individual recordings of my music as art, but I think of the physical package of music as cassette or CD-R as being artful. That’s when it can be packaged and asserted as art with the accompanying liner notes and design. When I can convey a narrative arc, I think of the music as art. When I perform, I feel like I’m displaying artistic gestures. When I can give a whole Julius Smack performance, I think it’s art.

AUTRE: You recently moved from the Bay Area to Los Angeles – what prompted the move?

SMACK: I’ve long wanted to live here since I was a teenager because I listen to a lot of music from here. There's a wealth of possibility and invention here and that’s partly why I'm here. I’m witnessing exciting and new modes of performance all the time, where there’s little delineation between music or dance or theater. I’m also dating a performance artist and writer named Brian Getnick, who I met when I lived in San Francisco. Being here with him has really shaped my performance practice because we discuss ideas and possibilities and he equips me with rehearsal and studio space. He also has a great performance art journal called Native Strategies that I recommend to anyone curious about Los Angeles’ emergent performance art.

AUTRE:What can you expect from a Julius Smack performance – I read something about yoga mats and Starbucks cups?

SMACK: That performance was at Aunt Charlie’s Lounge in San Francisco. There’s a great party on Tuesday nights called High Fantasy. It’s an incubator for new performance coming out of the Bay Area. The night I used a yoga mat and Starbucks cups I performed a version of the song “Choices” from my new album. I arranged three members of the audience in poses that resembled Julius Smack. One person was in the pose of the Statue of Liberty, one was in a Thinking Man pose. Then I placed in their hands a Starbucks cup of varying sizes and directed the lyrics to them --"There's no time to make up your mind, you're not sure of it anyway." I was thinking of ways to delegate the performance to the audience. I’m interested in transforming a place into a performance space through movement and voice. There’s something really exciting about seeing someone step into a performance in their usual garb. What are the possibilities of the spontaneous and unchoreographed present?

AUTRE: What are your performances like lately?

SMACK: Lately my performances involve a deal of surprise and emergence, field recordings and live recordings. I want to affect space as clearly as possible and not to rely on pre-recorded music, which has begun to feel like a crutch for performance. There is so much possibility in witnessing a body in space! Am I going to pose against a wall? Am I going to hold an audience member? In what order will I jump, sing, and dance? To allow that kind of response to space, I have been doing more acapella performances that use field recordings and live instrumentation. At Human Resources last month I used a night vision camera that was operated and projected live as a reflection of the audience. Human Resources used to be a film cinema, but all the chairs have been stripped out and it’s just a big white cube with concrete floors and perfect reverb. So I did an acapella song and then used a keyboard live for my first time. It was so liberating - I don't intend on relying heavily on backing tracks.

AUTRE:Can you describe your new album Everyday Ballet?

SMACK: Most of those songs were crafted in my big bedroom in San Francisco, and then I had a lot of room and space and time for recording. I could focus on audio effects and to adjust synthesizer tracks in a dance music form. I was really inspired by the house dance music that pervades San Francisco's music scene - it was there that I discovered some of my greatest house influences, primarily Terre Thaemlitz. And I was also looking at themes of social justice, progressivism, and gentrification, which are so fundamental to San Francisco's depleting culture. There's a song titled "Living Social," and I illustrate an image of house flippers speculating on the value of the Victorian I was living in. The lyrics empathize with the house and its history and feeling. Or "I Say What I Want," which basically calls out those who claim to oppose climate change with rhetoric instead of action.

Text and interview by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. Photograph and video by Perry Shimon. You can learn more about Julius Smack by visiting his website. You can also purchase music – including his new album Everyday Ballet - here. If you are in Los Angeles, you can see Julius Smack perform on November 29, at the Handbag Factory, 1336 S Grand Ave Los Angeles, California

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

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