FALL 2021 Juxtapoz

Citation preview

Julie Curtiss

FALL 2021, n219 USA $9.99 / CAN $10.99 DISPLAY UNTIL DECEMBER 06, 2021

Umar Rashid Jane Dickson

Geoff McFetridge

ART SCHOOL CHANGES EVERYTHING ACADEMY OF ART UNIVERSITY IS OPEN. Academy of Art University is a professional school—a practical, hands-on art and design school where you learn by doing. Our goal is to prepare you for career excellence and help you enter your profession at full stride. We are looking for dedicated students who want to become the great artists, designers, innovators, storytellers, collaborators, and problem solvers of tomorrow. Develop your skills as an artist or designer. Earn your degree at Academy of Art University. Discover which of our 120+ art and design degrees is for you. Visit academyart.edu/juxtapoz.

Develop Your Art & Design Skills.

Featured student work by Xiaoyou Gong

CONTENTS

Fall 2021 ISSUE 219

40

150

Patrick Kelly’s Runway of Love at the de Young

10

48

Armory Show, Roberts Projects, Richard Heller, Thinkspace and Poster House

Editor's Letter

14

Studio Time Sebas Velasco’s Surf in San Sebastián

16

The Report A Decade of 1XRun

24

Product Reviews

Fashion

Influences César Piette Paints the Future

62

In Session The Svane Family Foundation at SFAI

Speed Wheels Spins a Story

Lily Wong

70

152

Sieben on Life Pandemic Plans

154

Pop Life

102

Jane Dickson

134

Ákos Ezer

NYC, London, Bristol, LA, Malaga, Rome, Hong Kong and more

158

64

26

Design

126

London at a Crossroads

Migrate Art Changes the Role of Contemporary Art

34

Umar Rashid

Travel Insider

On the Outside

Sohei Nishino’s Memory Maps

94

54

A Fall of Skate and Design

Picture Book

Events

Perspective The Everlasting Margaret Kilgallen

110

Shaina McCoy

142

Kayla Mahaffey

Book Reviews Lowlife Fantasies, NSFW and Judy Chicago’s Autobiography

118

Alfonso Gonzalez Jr.

84

Geoff McFetridge

6 FALL 2021

Above: Julie Curtiss, Mostly Sunny, Acrylic, vinyl, and oil on canvas, 25" x 30", 2020

74 Julie Curtiss

STAFF

FOUNDER

PRESIDENT + PUBLISHER

ADVERTISING + SALES DIRECTOR

Robert Williams

Gwynned Vitello

Mike Stalter

EDITOR

CFO

Evan Pricco

Jeff Rafnson

ART DIRECTOR

ACCOUNTING MANAGER

Rosemary Pinkham

Kelly Ma

CHIEF TECHNICAL OFFICER

C I R C U L AT I O N C O N S U LTA N T

Nick Lattner

John Morthanos

DEPUTY EDITOR

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Kristin Farr

Sasha Bogojev Simon Butler Anthony Cudahy Kristin Farr Shaquille Heath Charles Moore Alex Nicholson Evan Pricco Michael Sieben Gwynned Vitello

MAIL ORDER + CUSTOMER SERVICE

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

SHIPPING

David Black Sasha Bogojev Bianca Garcia Laura June Kirsch Mira Makai Eduardo Medrano Jr. Shaina McCoy Dan McMahon Evan Pricco Umar Rashid Dondre Stuetley Sebas Velasco

Kenny Eldyba Maddie Manson Charlie Pravel Ian Seager Adam Yim

[email protected]

CO-FOUNDER

Greg Escalante CO-FOUNDER

Suzanne Williams

ADVERTISING SALES

Eben Sterling A D O P E R AT I O N S M A N A G E R

Mike Breslin MARKETING

Sally Vitello

Marsha Howard

[email protected] 415-671-2416 PRODUCT SALES MANAGER

Rick Rotsaert 415–852–4189 PRODUCT PROCUREMENT

John Dujmovic

TECHNICAL LIAISON

Santos Ely Agustin

Juxtapoz ISSN #1077-8411 Fall 2021 Volume 28, Number 04 Published quarterly by High Speed Productions, Inc., 1303 Underwood Ave, San Francisco, CA 94124–3308. © 2016 High Speed Productions, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in USA. Juxtapoz is a registered trademark of High Speed Productions, Inc. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Opinions expressed in articles are those of the author. All rights reserved on entire contents. Advertising inquiries should be directed to: [email protected]. Subscriptions: US, $29.99 (one year, 4 issues); Canada, $75.00; Foreign, $80.00 per year. Single copy: US, $9.99; Canada, $10.99. Subscription rates given represent standard rate and should not be confused with special subscription offers advertised in the magazine. Periodicals Postage Paid at San Francisco, CA, and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement No. 0960055. Change of address: Allow six weeks advance notice and send old address label along with your new address. Postmaster: Send change of address to: Juxtapoz, PO Box 302, Congers, NY 10920–9714. The publishers would like to thank everyone who has furnished information and materials for this issue. Unless otherwise noted, artists featured in Juxtapoz retain copyright to their work. Every effort has been made to reach copyright owners or their representatives. The publisher will be pleased to correct any mistakes or omissions in our next issue. Juxtapoz welcomes editorial submissions; however, return postage must accompany all unsolicited manuscripts, art, drawings, and photographic materials if they are to be returned. No responsibility can be assumed for unsolicited materials. All letters will be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication and copyright purposes and subject to Juxtapoz’ right to edit and comment editorially. Juxtapoz Is Published by High Speed Productions, Inc. 415–822–3083 email to: [email protected] juxtapoz.com

8 FALL 2021

Cover art: Julie Curtiss, Interstice, Acrylic, vinyl and oil on canvas, 88" x 102", 2020

EDITOR’S LETTER

Issue NO 219 “It may not be possible to convey to someone else the mysterious transforming gifts by which dreams, memory, and experience become art. But I like to think that I can try.” —Betye Saar The 95-year old Saar has a special gift for words and visual art, and her sentiment feels like a perfect entry to the Fall 2021 Quarterly. It’s a modest but fulsome description of what we try to present on these pages, a message that can be difficult to shift into words. There’s something in the air these days, a new form of unsettling patience as we struggle to emerge from 18 months of seclusion and introspection, peeking outside to see changes in the physical world. I witnessed transitions in the great city of Lonodn this summer, a confusing interlude when art could offer comfort and aspiration, but was thwarted by conditions of viewing and optimal appreciation. These transformational gifts of which Saar speaks have a heightened need, and beg the questions of the current role of art and how artists’ perceptions can shape and interpret what is hopefully a brave new world. This issue weaves a thread of listening, as many of the featured artists speak of place as an in10 FALL 2021

between time. That many of them came from the middle of the United States, central Europe or central Africa even, seems to capture a mood of looking out—bringing traditions and influences from all around and transforming them into something completely fresh. We often ask about their listening habits, meaning music or podcasts. But do we mean “what do you hear” from the world around you? What are we listening to in terms of how people feel, especially within the collective identity of the time? Our cover image sets the tone: a faceless woman, between two massive buildings, brimming with expression and strength, defying an urban echo chamber, overseeing the world beneath. The first time I saw this painting by Julie Curtiss, I was struck by an ominous force upon this all-seeing, all-knowing figure, as if on a pulpit, assessing the crowd. There was a wonderful line in her interview where she seems to speak directly about this work. “I want people to still have room to project some of their lead experiences or some of their inner world into my work,” she said, “and I want to provide enough ambiguity that portrays how ideas are often complementary. I’m more interested in paradox, and in how things can reverse in one second.” The

cover begs even further questions: are we ready for what is to come? This ability to examine ambiguity and uncertainty runs deeply here, especially as we absorb what is happening all around. Umar Rashid addresses history within the process of listening and reimaging. Geoff McFetridge directs his poetic figures into a constant conversational engagement with each other and the self. Kayla Mahaffey infuses her portraits with past, present and future. Jane Dickson and Alfonso Gonzlaez Jr. paint narratives of the intricate fabric of urban experience. These moments of noticing, of listening, or trying to convey what we hear and see into something visual are the gifts that Saar speaks of. As we all begin this new decade with a frontier of uncertainty ahead, artists are here to enlighten and inspire us with memories that become universal stories. Enjoy Fall 2021.

Above: Julie Curtiss, Lobby, Vinyl, acrylic and oil paint on canvas, 96" x 60", 2020 © the artist. Photo © Charles Benton. Courtesy White Cub

STUDIO TIME

Sebas Velasco Surf, Sharing and Sound For a studio, it’s important to have windows, space to work on more than one work at a time, and room for books. Fortunately, our studio has them all! I wouldn’t mind having some more walls to hang pieces, but you can’t have everything. We moved into the studio just as we went into lockdown, around May 2020. Who knows what could happen in the future? But, at the moment, I am really happy in this one, and it does feel like home. I share the space with friends, and have indeed been very lucky in that sense. Apart from sharing all the issues related to painting, we have been able to gather to have a drink, watch films and football games, and overcome the loneliness of the Covid situation. The studio is in San Sebastián, in a neighbourhood called Egia. It has traditionally been a workers’ district, but at the same time, there are some artist studios around. I can’t think of many galleries, but there is a cultural center called Tabakalera. It has a film school where they organize some art exhibitions, though 14 FALL 2021

they tend to be more focused on new media and installations than paintings. If I had to pick the essentials to have in my studio, I would say: Speakers or headphones for music and podcasts, studiomates for sharing everyday creative issues, and a surfboard. We are fifteen minutes from the sea, so it’s great to disconnect and return to work all refreshed. I started, during lockdown, my next solar show in London. Right before, I had done a trip to Sarajevo just to take pictures, so that was lucky. In summer 2020, I also traveled to Poland with my girlfriend. We live in Spain, but she is from Wrocław. Those two trips have been the main source of inspiration, but they are always combined with the folders I‘ve collected over the years. I usually work inspired by the photos I take during my trips. However, in this show, there is a bigger presence of paintings based on previous collages in which I mix different situations in one image. I guess this process leads to a bigger feeling of strange spaces that you can´t find in reality.

In my last show, States of Transition, there was a bit of this already, but here I’ve gone a bit further with that. By working more freely with the references, I somehow came up with more ambiguous landscapes that seem to be frozen at some point between the past and future. This is something that I already feel when I visit post-socialist cities, due to the economic changes they suffered during the early 1990s. Through this process of image manipulation, I´ve tried to evolve these atmospheres a bit. In terms of size, I´ve done some bigger pieces, trying to make more evident the enormity of the architecture. At the same time, there are some very small ones. This is due to lockdown, when I was forced to look for new subjects that would work in a smaller format. Lastly, I would point out a recent shift in research to include cloudy grey atmospheres I haven’t explored that much in the past. —Sebas Velasco Sebas Velasco has an upcoming solo show in London in October, 2021.

Above: Portrait by the artist

Sasha Pierce

Shippo, 2020 Oil on linen, 23 x 18 inches

Wagara

September 4 - October 2

REPORT

1XRUN x 10 From Detroit to the World After establishing galleries and the Murals in the Market festival, along with other communitybuilding projects, 1XRUN continues to shine their high-beams on Detroit and the surrounding art scene. They’re a vibrant, energy-fueled organization, acclaimed for their limited edition print releases with favorite artists and musicians. In a salute to 1XRUN for making such a broad range of artists accessible, and with 2021 marking their milestone 10-year anniversary and new venue, Spot Lite, we thought it was the perfect time to catch up with co-founder Dan Armand. Juxtapoz: Congrats on ten years in the biz. How was 1XRUN established? Dan Armand: It was born out of our love for art and creating a product that people just like ourselves could afford and be able to collect. We 16 FALL 2021

couldn’t afford original artwork, and going to galleries was an uncomfortable process where we didn’t feel totally welcome. Online releases were almost impossible to get, but the affordability and low barrier to entry was what got us excited about selling art prints. What do you look for when curating prints? We operate in a pretty small subgenre of contemporary art, and we don’t necessarily curate based on styles, mediums, etc. One of the first things we look for with artists is whether they take their art careers as seriously as we take our own. That’s obviously a little subjective, and not meant to discount any artist that creates for themselves. Some of the greatest artists I know couldn’t care less about money, and that isn’t what drives them at all, but I think the essence, for us,

is that we want to work with artists who make art because it is part of who they are, and they have that drive to constantly create, build and share an audience of fans and collectors. What do you think set you apart when you started out? I was involved in the graffiti scene here in Detroit as a teen and throughout art school at the College for Creative Studies. The late ’90s and early 2000s were a really exciting time for graffiti and street art. Graffiti was coming out of the shadows and the rise of the internet was happening at the same time. The term street art became much more intertwined with the movement, and things started to become much more stylistically diverse, with more traditional artists getting into public art, and more graffiti artists moving into more

Above: Blotter Editions for Bicycle Day 2021

REPORT traditional avenues. Artists like Banksy and Shepard Fairy were doing print releases online, and the demand was so high that their websites would crash and the prints would be flipped on the secondary market within minutes for crazy amounts of money. We wanted to apply some of the mechanics that made some of these artists so successful to every release we did, even if they didn’t necessarily have that same level of exposure and demand. Talk about the offshoots of 1XRUN and how you grew the scope of your projects. As anyone from Detroit knows, music is a huge part of the local culture. We are proud of where we are from, and the extraordinary amount of musical talent that originates here. We cut our teeth throwing events together when we started putting on art shows back in 2008, and music was always integral, just on a smaller scale. As the years went by and we grew, our shows and events started getting bigger, and when we inaugurated our annual festival, Murals In The Market. Festival

director, Roula David had past experience with major event production during her time at Red Bull, so this was the point where we went from throwing modest art openings and events to fullon productions. Expand a bit on Murals in The Market. We always had our roots in public art. From my time tagging walls in the late ’90s, to the murals we painted on our first art gallery, 323East, back in 2008, it has always been something that is woven into the fabric of what we do. We did our first unofficial mural festival The Detroit Beautification Project in 2012 with Revok, Matt Eaton and Montana Cans, flying in some of the world’s biggest names in graffiti to spend a couple weeks painting every possible available surface. From there, we proceeded to partner with other mural festivals like POW! WOW! Hawaii and Sea Walls, where we curated limited edition prints with participating artists. In these collective experiences, throwing events, wrangling graffiti

Left: Dan Armand and Jesse Cory in their Detroit Studio Top right: Pat Perry for Murals In The Market, 2016 Bottom right: Ricky Powell signing prints in Detroit

artists, and learning how other people were doing legit festivals, we really put it all together and decided to create something special for the city of Detroit. What do you feel are your biggest accomplishments? Honestly, I think the biggest one is making it to ten years. Most businesses are lucky if they make it to five, especially in the art world. Jesse Cory and I both come from workingclass families. We started this business with no money, no savings, no trust funds. Just years and years of our time and passion while working other full-time jobs before we were able to finally turn it into a viable business. Working for yourself, in theory, always sounds so liberating, but once you take that leap, you realize it’s actually way harder. It can definitely be a roller coaster ride at times, but we love what we do, and we care about every single person we have worked with over the years. We’re very thankful to have the support of so

JUXTAPOZ .COM 17

REPORT

many people around the world who enable us to keep doing it. What kind of editions can we look forward to this fall? One that we are really proud of is our first custom Montana Cans aerosol can. We incorporated new branding that we refreshed this year, and the actual paint color is a throwback to the original Blue we used on the first website and logo design. We also have five vintage Polaroid cameras coming out with Sheefy McFly, Distortedd, Greg Mike, Ron English and Mr André; each camera edition was designed by the artists and comes with special packaging. Along with these brand collabs, we are really excited for our annual Black Friday drop and have something special planned for 2021. Who are some of the legends you’ve worked with, and were you starstruck by any? As an art fan for much of my life, after personal interaction, there have been so many moments that have left me in awe. I’d have to say working with Ron English and Shepard Fairy has been epic, and that we continue to work together. Knowing that they trust us with their art is really special. In terms of a real fanboy moment, that would be when we worked with Killer Mike and El-P of Run The Jewels on a project called Art The Jewels, which featured prints of murals around the world inspired by RTJ. They came through our gallery, Inner State, for the signing, and it was awesome to spend some time with them. I’d been a fan of El-P’s music since I was a teenager and it was amazing for things to come full circle and have a chance to work with him when they were really blowing up as a group after flying somewhat under the radar for such a long time. What do Oscar and Ozzy think about the ten-year anniversary? Those dogs have met a lot of celebs. Jesse and Roula’s dogs have been a constant source of inspiration, cuddles and love for our team and for all of the visiting artists. Oscar is now nine years old, and he has spent a lot of time in the gallery. When we had artists in our residency, he would spend hours chillin’ while we made art. There are a lot of Oscar portraits painted by Luke Chueh, Brett Amory. Michelle Tanguay, Denial, Jonny Alexander and so many more around the shop. Oscar is the muse of all muses and easy to paint because he doesn't move too much. 1XRUN.com SpotLiteDetroit.com

18 FALL 2021

Top: Killer Mike and EL-P in front of a mural by Elmer and Jesse Kassel for their Art The Jewels exhibition at Inner State Gallery / 1XRUN, 2015 Center left: First art gallery 323East in Royal Oak, Michigan, circa 2008 Center right: Official mascot, Oscar From The Block Bottom: Work by Mike Giant for his exhibition Impermanent Vacation at Inner State Gallery in 2016

HASHIMOTO CONTEMPORARY

SAN FRANCISCO

N E W YO R K C I T Y

LOS ANGELES

SEP

Ferris Plock

OCT

Kim Cogan

NOV

Jeff Canham

SEP

Jillian Evelyn

OCT

Pat Perry

NOV

Latinx Group Show

SEP

Inaugural Group Show

OCT

Joel Daniel Phillips

NOV

Scott Albrecht

JILLIAN EVELYN SEPTEMBER 2021

HASHIMOTO CONTEMPORARY N E W YO R K C I T Y

KIM COGAN OCTOBER 2021

HASHIMOTO CONTEMPORARY SAN FRANCISCO

PAT PERRY OCTOBER 2021

HASHIMOTO CONTEMPORARY N E W YO R K C I T Y

REVIEWS

Things We Are After A Fall of Skate and Design

Vault by Vans x Geoff McFetridge Collection The way Geoff McFetridge approaches a collaboration is almost inside out: instead of thinking outward, he looks inward, infusing products with personal stories in a genuine partnership that imbues each design with its own singularity. This Fall, Geoff teamed with Vault by Vans for a collection of shoes, sweatshirts, bags, hats and socks, all created with a mythical sailing team in mind. As always, color choices are spot-on, the patterns and graphics cruising along with a signature look, and the soothing, poetic wave of nostalgia and narrative that Vans wear so well. vans.com

Cinelli Bicycles x Russ Pope x Stance Collection

20th CENTURY SUMMER by Greg Hunt

Russ Pope has cultivated an intimate connection with Italy, frequently showing in Milan with Antonio Colombo, his fine art shows steeped in the sort of splendor of “watching the world go by” while lingering over a cappuccino in an Italian village. So it makes sense that when Pope teamed with Stance Socks on a collection, the iconic Italian bicycle brand, Cinelli, would be part of the collaboration. Pope translates the brand’s iconic look into a series of sock designs, perfect for a race, a hangout, or an afternoon Peroni. stance.com, cinelli.it

“I think that’s one of the things I really love about film, you have to sometimes work to find the pictures that you love,” photographer and filmmaker Greg Hunt told Juxtapoz. “They don't always jump out at you, you have to spend a little bit more time just because sometimes you might get that contact sheet back from the lab and you're looking for something else on it.” 20th CENTURY SUMMER sees a renowned documentarian release 41 never-before-published photographs from his first camera and the subsequent 12 rolls of 35mm black-and-white film. 20th CENTURY SUMMER was published in an extremely limited edition of 750 copies through Film Photographic. filmphotographic.com

24 FALL 2021

MEKIA ‘MACHINE’ DENBY

Learn more about Mekia on liquitex.com

JUST IMAGINE… That Mekia is a true ‘machine’.

A multidisciplinary creative, Mekia used vibrant shades of Acrylic Gouache during her Liquitex residency to create a collection of work exploring themes of isolation, memory, and the essence of self.

As we celebrate artists around the world, we’re proud to be a part of Mekia’s creative story. Now we’re excited to see how we can be a part of yours.

PICTURE BOOK

26 FALL 2021

Above: Diorama Map Rio, 2011

PICTURE BOOK

Sohei Nishino Listening and Assembling

Our memories are intimately tied to photographs. Whether a childhood portrait or sunset selfie, the photograph represents not just the captured moment, but how that moment is currently remembered. It’s nearly impossible to separate memory from the reality of experience. Walking down the street, we ignore one thing and gravitate towards another, while landmarks anchor us within a geographical space. But what captures or escapes our attention defines our recollection of that place. Japanese photographer Sohei Nishino’s work encapsulates this transient relationship between personal experience, memory, and place. Photography, like memory, is also defined by what is included or excluded from the frame. Like any curious photographer, Nishino weaves his way through each new city, making decisions about how to portray his surroundings. “When I’m shooting,” he says, “I am always thinking about what I’m trying to see within the events in front of me, what I am focusing on and how I feel about it.” An individual image can anchor the portrayal, but it’s how each fragment is pieced together that defines the journey and transports Nishino’s work into an expansive new realm. Shooting only film, Nishino places great importance on the labor-intensive process of developing, printing, cutting, and assembling the images. “I think I need an appropriate amount of time to process the enormous amount of experiences that I have while shooting.” The permanence of the film photograph, he explains, “allows me to separate the reality of the world from that which I was dreaming of.” Collaged frames propel us from one scene to the next, giving form to shifting landscapes, telling stories, or offering necessary perspective. Together, the photos reconstruct memory, as they contradict, renew and shape a wider understanding of places visited. We recall the old man singing on the subway yesterday as we board it today. We dread tomorrow’s commute as we sit in traffic tonight. We move forward through time in an experience that is rarely linear.

Above: Detail of Diorama Map Rio

Maps help us navigate as much as they allow us to picture the otherwise incomprehensible scale of the world around us. Nishino’s diorama maps comprehend the spectacular breadth of experiences, lives and perspectives contained within a place. “This work was born from my desire to understand human beings by looking at cities,” he says. “When I dive into a place and its people, food, scenery, culture, language, and sounds, I start to feel my body becoming empty.” It’s a sensation he attributes to philosopher Walter Benjamin’s description of the flâneur, a joyful, empathetic character intoxicated by the city and propelled to wander its streets. Seeing his topographical portrayals, we confront the vastness of the city and are ourselves intoxicated, propelled, in movement and moment through the pieces of an ever-evolving panorama. Sohei

Nishino’s maps don’t necessarily help us find our way from point A to point B but provide an opportunity to appreciate the rest of the alphabet. We are given both experience and its context, both the forest and the trees. —Alex Nicholson soheinishino.net

“A great many processes are included in the process of producing this work. I can say that each of these processes constitutes a part of my journey through the cities. The reason for that is my belief that photographs are not completed at the moment they are taken, but are completed in the process of recollecting the memories thereafter by confronting them again.”

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PICTURE BOOK

“I have visited more than twenty cities, mountains, and so-called unexplored regions. I have learned so much and made so many discoveries from these experiences, and would like to carry on as long as I can. I especially learned a lot from my local assistants about the places, and these encounters are my important treasures. Encountering something new while on a journey, I always learn more about who I am from these external elements. Those things make me realize the existence of ideas and stereotypes entrenched within my thinking.”

28 FALL 2021

Above: Diorama Map San Francisco, 2016 Above left: Detail of Diorama Map San Francisco

PICTURE BOOK

JUXTAPOZ .COM 29

PICTURE BOOK

“I always emphasize the importance of the physical side of the process, so although I think about how I’m seeing the objects I’m shooting, I don’t have a particular vision of the final map in my head. It gradually appears when I start printing, cutting the photographs up with scissors, and all the other parts of the analog process.”

30 FALL 2021

Top: Detail of Diorama Map Berlin Bottom: Diorama Map Berlin, 2011

PICTURE BOOK

“I try to capture the cities, not necessarily as the entities consisting of the symbolized information and material buildings, but as the fresh and organic life that is the accumulation of the experiences and activities, or the history or memory of the people who live there.”

Top: Diorama Map Tokyo, 2013 - 2014 Bottom: Detail of Diorama Map Tokyo

JUXTAPOZ .COM 31

@cinelli_official @russpope

DESIGN

Polyurethane Pushers The Art Of Speed Wheels The mid-1980s is widely regarded as the golden age of skateboard graphics, yet that focus is almost exclusively directed towards the images on the bottoms of the boards themselves. Very little attention has been paid to the small, round, printable objects spinning just below the deck—the polyurethane wheel. Wheel graphics were born in the 1980s, and their visual history is equally as compelling as their seven-layer counterpart’s. It’s important to note that Speed Wheels Santa Cruz is responsible for bringing full-color graphics to the world of wheels. How, you might ask? Good question. Let’s start at the beginning. 34 FALL 2021

Skateboard wheels used to be boring and stupid. In the 1950s, they were metal—stolen from rollerskates. In the ’60s, they were made out of a clay composite, which was only slightly better than metal. And in the ’70s, the polyurethane wheel entered the picture (thanks to Frank Nasworthy), changing the game forever. Although urethane wheels came in different colors, they were somewhat aesthetically mundane, as nobody had yet figured out how to apply graphics onto their surface. By the time the ’80s rolled around, one-color images—primarily text or simple logos— could be printed onto the side of wheels, but Richard Metiver at Speed Wheels knew there had

to be a way to bring full-color graphics into the world of wheel manufacturing. By appropriating technology used to apply images onto Christmas-tree ornaments, Speed Wheels unlocked the secret for vibrant, multicolored wheel graphics, thus blowing the doors wide open. The new printing equipment came with a hefty price tag, though—the technology was a $250,000 investment. But the company had a not-so-secret ace up their sleeve—the formidable talents of Jim Phillips, who was manning their art department. Having Jim and his studio oversee the Speed Wheels brands

Above: Jim Phillips in his studio answering questions from Andreas Ginghofer with Jimbo Phillips in foreground, Photo by Jim Raun-Byberg

DESIGN

Top left: Image from NHS Archive. OJ Street wheel separations Top right: Different size rubber pad printing daubers Bottom: Wheel pad printing machine

JUXTAPOZ .COM 35

DESIGN

probably made the quarter-of-a-million-dollar gamble seem totally worth the risk. Jim Phillips is undoubtedly one of skateboarding’s greatest graphic illustrators. From the late ’70s to early ’90s, he penned some of the most iconic skate imagery to date (think Screaming Hand). During his tenure at Speed Wheels, he oversaw the art direction of the following urethane brands: Bullets, OJIIs, Hosoi Rockets, and my personal favorite— Slime Balls. The success of these companies was due in no small part to his unmistakable artwork, but the marketing was also crucial to their successes. The top-tier riders, photos, videos, ads, 36 FALL 2021

stickers and T-shirts all created a cohesive universe filled with progressive skating, paired with humor and dangerous/disgusting imagery. What skate rat in the ’80s wouldn’t be drawn to razors, skulls, vomit, brains and maggots? Dorks, that’s who. Speed Wheels dominated the market share in the ’80s, however, the ’90s brought about radical changes in skateboarding—wheels got so small you could barely fit a graphic on them, kids chose cookie-cutter rip-off graphics over original art, and many of the legacy brands (Santa Cruz included) were no longer deemed hip by the tastemakers. Time, like a wheel, is circular,

though, and the art of Santa Cruz Speed Wheels is once again being celebrated by the four-wheeled community. And, with a retrospective, The Art of the Santa Cruz Speed Wheel, on display at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History, the timing seemed apt to share some images of the brand’s rich history alongside words from essential figures and artists inspired by it all. —Michael Sieben The Art of the Santa Cruz Speed Wheel will be on view at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History through January 2, 2022. Throughout the fall, go to Juxtapoz. com for exclusive stories from the skaters, artists and brand managers on the history of Speed Wheels.

Top left: Bullet 66 wheel graphic Bottom left: Speed Wheels Shark decal Right: Mike Vallely, OJ Razor wheel ad, Thrasher magazine, July 1990

Image: Artwork by ceramics grad student David Kruk

Master your discipline at Kent State. • Competitive graduate assistantships in all disciplines includes a full tuition waiver and a stipend • New state-of-the-art facilities • Teaching and research opportunities • Access to world-class museums and research libraries • Committed graduate faculty and strong graduate community • Renowned visiting artist and scholar program • Travel study opportunities every semester • Dedicated studio space for studio art graduate students • Summer studio intensives (Kent Blossom Art Intensives) Studio Art disciplines include: Ceramics, Drawing, Glass, Jewelry/Metals/Enameling, Painting, Print Media and Photography, Sculpture and Expanded Media, and Textiles

M.F.A. or M.A. degrees

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FASHION

Patrick Kelly A Runway of Love at de Young museum A grape. An interviewer asks the late designer Patrick Kelly to describe what captivated him about Paris. The Mississippi native smiles at the marketplace memory of biting into a juicy grape, revealing his keen appreciation for simplicity, as well as the sweetness that can supplant an acrid seed. I spoke with curator Laura Camerlengo and scholar Sequoia Barnes about the de Young museum’s retrospective, fittingly titled Runway of Love. Sequoia Barnes: Right now I’m completing doctoral research on Patrick Kelly and how he used racial kitsch in his designs, particularly how he kind of intersects between camp and Black radical art practices around subversion, specifically, subverting racial imagery into fashion, which doesn’t really happen. And what happens when a Black designer does that? What is the process between turning something inherently racist into something that’s reclaimed by someone who is queer, and then sort of turned into something else—while it still has the same meaning? We’re looking at semiotics and at processes of meaning-making via design techniques. Gwynned Vitello: Is that the approach taken by the Philadelphia show, addressing these issues into a celebration of his fashion pieces? Laura Camerlengo: The team working on Runway of Love started out around 2009 and it was mounted in 2014. When they acquired the archive from his partner, Bjorn Amerlan, it was lots of clothing and buttons all mixed together, so Monica Brown went through the collections and got the ensembles back together year by year. That presentation focused on studying and showing Patrick as a fashion designer, really inserting him into the canon of the industry. He is such an important designer for a variety of reasons, and the tragedy is that he passed away only five years after establishing his own label, part of a generation of artists and designers felled by Aids. Philadelphia really spotlighted his designs and legacy, though some of the racial kitsch was folded in. What we’re doing here is revising and updating 40 FALL 2021

the text that looks at him as a fashion designer, but also talks about the crossroads of Black history. The project is so enriched by having folks like Darnell Pritchard and Sequoia to delve deeper into the different ways to approach this work. From what I’ve read and the videos I’ve seen, he projects such an upbeat persona. I envision this

very happy, enthusiastic person who grew up with so much love and support that he was very grounded and possessed a confidence allowing him to comfortably play with racial tropes. SB: His father died when he was young and he grew up in a house full of strong women. His mother was a teacher with a master’s degree, but his grandmother was a domestic worker

All images: Courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco unless noted Above: Grace Jones at Patrick Kelly Spring-Summer 1989 Fashion Show, By Pierre Vauthey

FASHION

from whom he derived his love of fashion. His early memories were of her mending his clothes and coming home with old fashion magazines from her employers, along with old clothing that she'd remake to wear to church. He was really inspired by the women at church who had on beautiful suits and huge hats. So I think his childhood played a huge role. When people talk about Kelly, they talk about how his work is quite autobiographical and very much directly pulled from his life growing up in Mississippi. So being exposed to a lot of the imagery he used, growing up in the fifties and sixties, the question is what to do with these things when they are everywhere, and such a large part of your life. I think he was working through the everyday experience of racism, a world where Black representation is slowly becoming more dominant, say, with Nat King Cole on TV, along with attending church with powerful women and experiencing everyday racism in Mississippi, which was a quite turbulent, violent place to grow up.

LC: There was a certain theatricality in runway presentations in the 1980s, but what I think was different about Patrick’s shows is how the models were in these small groupings. Audrey Smaltz, a famed runway show creator, whom we’ve interviewed for this project, described how Patrick had a very clear vision of the models walking in groups, talking with each other in small performative vignettes. I think it’s also connected to his own experiences, starting as teenaager when he went to the Ebony Fashion Fair presentations, probably where he saw models like Pat Cleveland, who is definitely known for her theatrical runway performances.

Maybe it’s a reflection of his experience with everyone dressing up and singing in church, but it looks like his runway shows were very celebratory—the models not walking in detached, solemn straight lines, him drawing a big heart at the end of the show. They’re presented as having a good time together, like you’d want to be part of their group.

What are some elements that characterize this show? SB: It’s been very collaborative, and I appreciate that. There were so many suggestions back and forth, “What do you think about this?” or “Maybe you should do this?” There was always someone asking, “What do I think of that?” so it’s really nice to come together and help each other out.

SB: There are a set of stories as to how he met Pat Cleveland, and it’s interesting how stories about his life change over the years. Cleveland has said that she met him in the 1970s through a friend, and as a fan of hers, presented her with this sort of Josephine Baker-esque outfit and asked her to wear it at a hair show. They became fast friends after hanging out that night. The costume got sort of revamped for 1986 fall/winter where she closes the show in the Josephine Baker costume, which is in our show. LC: It’s made of wire spirals designed by the jewelry artist David Spata, who is known for the multi-colored freedom rings and worked with Keith Haring, as well as Kelly.

LC: We’ve gotten tremendous feedback from Philadelphia about situating the show in our space, very different in that it meanders in some ways. We’re starting outside of the textile galleries and some adjacent galleries, trying to evoke the feeling of Patrick’s home. There was a spread in Architectural Digest in 1989, and we were actually able to pull a lot of the artifacts you see in that feature. I also had the opportunity to go through what remains from his estate with Bjorn. Our hope is that when people come through, they’ll have all the updated texts, which Sequoia is working on. The idea is that you’ll have quotes from Kelly and feel like you’re in his space, and really get a sense of who he was as a person. SB: His home was in Paris, and he used lots of gold, gilded frames, mirrors and chairs. There were lots of small pictures on the white walls, an amalgamation of all the things he was into, like a picture of Josephine Baker, something else and something else. It looked very lived in.

Bottom left: “Woman’s Ensemble: Bra Top and Banana Skirt,” Designed by Patrick Kelly, American (active Paris), c. 1954 - 1990, and David Spada, American, 1961 - 1996. Worn by Pat Cleveland, American, born 1952. Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art Center: Patrick Kelly at the Patrick Kelly Spring 1989 show circa 1988 in Paris, France. (Photo by PL Gould/IMAGES/ Getty Images) Top right: A model at the Patrick Kelly Spring 1989 show circa 1988 in Paris, France. (Photo by PL Gould/IMAGES/Getty Images)

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I’m curious about the women who bought Kelly’s clothes and if they were aware of his intentions, if they were making a statement of some kind. SB: It gets quite nuanced because fashion is meant to be consumed, right? You buy clothes to cover your body, but at the same time, it’s double edged. What does it mean for a white person to consume something with these images? What is Patrick Kelly doing when he sells these clothes? On one hand, it could be, “Hey, we’re all in this, we’re all making money right now.” Or it could be a covert act about perpetuating your own manifesto or your views on racism for the consumption of fashion, which fashion was getting into at that time; that is, appropriating motifs from Black culture. What does it mean for a Black individual to wear these garments?

LC: Reviewing a lot of things that have been in his studio and home has been an amazing experience. You see items that he lived with that were very much used, things he appreciated. One of the conservators noted that on a lot of picture frames there were candle drippings, a reminder of the candlelit dinners that he and Bjorn hosted, beautiful brunches and meals inspired by the Southern cuisine he loved. I recently went through two large wooden crates of his materials, from which we’ll show the things that gave him inspiration. I found Michael Jackson dolls, Diana Ross dolls, Mr T dolls and Black baby dolls in beautiful dresses. The racial piece is very important to his practice, but it’s also important to see the larger whole and see the full extent of what he had. SB: At the time they were made, many cheap consumables were made, in addition to other items where they were selling something like food or cleaning products, so that the figures were a kind of toy for play that asserted certain social and racial hierarchies. Kelly collected these things, but in addition to Black art and Josephine Baker costumes and memorabilia. 42 FALL 2021

It’s more complex than just asserting that these things are inherently harmful. As stewards of Blackness, a lot of Black creatives collected racial kitsch. It’s about confronting the past in order to move forward to some type of future, reclaiming and trying to find some kind of agency in a world that is always seeking to oppress you. Avoiding these things isn’t the answer to moving forward. I think it’s important to think about those complexities, about what it means to be a person of color who collects racial kitsch. What does it mean to do that, and what are you working through in that process? Nick Cave addresses this in his shows. I’m thinking of the jockey ornaments. SB: I met with Nick Cave and talked about it, and there was a question of why he used those racist jockeys. It was very much about who is represented in heaven, and what does heaven look like based on how people talk about the afterlife, like working through being segregated and working through that exclusion, but being included in a different way that doesn’t help you lift yourself up. The jockeys are like a representation of that; we’re allowed in heaven too.

LC: And to that point, the way the designs were received was very different in the United States than in France. There’s a great article about the late Wilkes Bashford being the first cothier to sell Patrick Kelly in San Francisco. He brought back all the racialized clothing, including the Black babydoll Patrick would give out at the shows. He gave them to everyone he met, and in Paris they were so popular and well received, and it was understood to be part of Patrick’s identity. When Bashford put the clothes in his window, people basically saw it as a racial slur and were extremely upset. That said, I interviewed someone about Macy’s at Union Square where Patrick would come for meet and greets. The clothes sold really well because people had the opportunity to meet him, or learn his story from his staff. I definitely picked up on such a warm, down-toearth vibe from the videos and remembrances. I’m thinking of him at the airport and his conversation with his grandmother. SB: There’s a story from a doll-collecting journal about him holding a Black babydoll at the airport when a woman looked at him strangely, and he was kind of like, “Are you okay?” She said that her daughter would never carry a Black doll, and he was incredulous, like, “That’s crazy, we’re all Black; if you don’t want something that represents you or as a toy, then what is the point of anything?” The conversation with his grandmother came about when he was looking at one of the fashion titles she brought home and asked her why there were no Black people in the magazines. I think his grandmother said it was because nobody cares about us. He decided right then, as a young child, that he would make clothes for Black women. Knowing that is quite powerful. Patrick Kelly: Runway of Love will be on view at the de Young museum in San Francisco from October 23, 2021—April 24, 2022.

Above: Woman’s Ensemble: Coat and Dress, fall/winter 1986; Woman’s Dress, fall/winter 1986; Woman’s Dress, fall/winter 1988; by Patrick Kelly. Image courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art

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César Piette Hyper Plastic Realism In creating a jaw-dropping, hyper-plastic universe that lures viewers into a territory where conventional painting merges with modern technology and tools, César Piette nurtures and maintains respect for classical art traditions. As he completely removes brush marks from the surface of his paintings, insists on smiling sitters, and offers his sketches, actual digital files, as NFT originals, Piette pushes the established medium and its hierarchies into new heights, or as the more conservative among us might argue, way down to some clever new lows. Sasa Bogojev: When we spoke the first time a few years back, you mentioned trying to make “the worst painting” that you could, and this resulted in your current style. Please elaborate on what that painting included or excluded. 48 FALL 2021

César Piette: I do believe that my works tackle the idea of what an acceptable painting should be. If I had to describe them, I would say that they are color-saturated, illusionistic, without marks or textures, flat, cartoony, non-narrative, and self-referential. Presented like this it sounds a bit scary, and it’s not the archetype of paintings we expect. I can’t develop each point, but to me, the two most disturbing points are the absence of marks on one hand, and the cute imagery on another. The effect I get with an airbrush is really sleek, cold, clean, and illusory, so it can be difficult to get into. You can paint with an airbrush and feel the material of the paint much more, but in my work, you’ve got almost nothing. The diverse attempts made by previous painters are highly associated

with traces of authorship, as if their activity has been recorded on the surface. And, on the other hand, the cute imagery is way too much for true lovers and connoisseurs of painting. Cuteness telescoped with such traditional concerns can be hard to handle. Even if a lot has been done since the last century to diversify imagery, this is unbearable for a lot of people. The smiles really emphasize your point. Of course, smiles increase this high and low effect. Smiles are pretty rare in the history of painting. And we can easily understand why—they don’t make things appear serious. If you want to reach a high moral value impact, it’s difficult to make the characters smile. A painting by Jacques-Louis David with smiling characters would be quite weird.

Above left: Woman sitting by the window, Acrylic on board (varnished), 47.25" x 65", 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Almine Rech Above right: Red bird, Acrylic on board (varnished), 15.75" x 19.75", 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Almine Rech

INFLUENCES

Also, I found it interesting to learn that one possible reason why smiles are pretty rare in the tradition of portraits was that dental health was so bad in past centuries that a lot of people had bad teeth. So a smile would allow for brownish teeth or missing teeth to appear, which would be pretty unaesthetic. And that’s why I usually do only a few teeth. On the other hand, in representation, the smile is an expression of character. The thing is that there is no narrative in my paintings, they don’t describe complex scenes that you have to understand. They show what they show. So, if only a still and narrativefree scene is depicted, what should I do with the expression of my characters? I could have chosen to go without expression, but I was thinking I could achieve neutrality by using a really strong emotion. I’ve tried to reach neutrality by other means. When you see a smile in a painting—it’s a smile. When you see 50 smiles, you don’t see the smile anymore, or this smile becomes something else. That was the question—can an expression say something else? Are you concerned about technology becoming such a big part of art-making, especially something so manual as painting? I guess an important element in my work is the craft. I do want to make something with my hands even if it’s modeling with software. Computers have taken so much place inside our lives for a few decades that it means a lot to still want to do something with my hands. Recently, I found that I’ve been highly receptive to objects loaded with time. It is truly emotional to be able to look at a piece of art that is 20,000 or 25,000 years old in a museum or a book. The human hand is still a great added value.

aware of what oil can look like. You can achieve sleek renderings with oil, so I first tried to paint my 3D pictures with oil, but found the paintings disappointing. I have in mind a quote from Willem de Kooning, who said, “Flesh was the reason oil painting was invented.” In the beginning, I didn’t get this. Several years later, when I failed to paint these renders in oil, it just hit me—oil is too organic! I do believe that even with clean, smooth renders, you always have something warm and organic with oil. I wanted exactly the opposite. I wanted to get them cold, synthetic, and digital. With an airbrush, you don’t even touch the surface of the painting; this is a distance tool, the appearance is very cold. And there is also something interesting with it— when you put a mark of oil painting on a canvas, it’s in three dimensions, even when smooth. Oil has too much consistency. The thing is the airbrush marks are so thin that you do not get this third dimension, you do not have the depth. Which is much closer to the two dimensions of the screen and the digital. So, I guess the airbrush imposed itself formally and conceptually. The supports I use also play a significant role in the paintings’

rendering. They are completely smooth without texture and light up the pictures, compared to a canvas, which has a tendency to darken the paintings because of this texture of linen. Did you ever think that this level of recognition could be achieved with such an unorthodox painterly technique? I don’t think the tools you’re using condition yourself to success or failure. Duchamp has exhibited industrially manufactured objects in an art context, Klein painted with bodies, and some people are printing their paintings. I mean, it’s all about the meaning. History proved you can do art with any objects or material. I remember when you were a bit frustrated with the imperfection of your work. Do you feel more satisfied at this point, or how do you feel about where you are in that manner? I would talk more about materiality or physicality. I try to surf on this fine border of what is digitally produced and hand produced. I try to get paintings as clean as possible to get the confusion about what the viewer is watching. You have to look

On the other hand, technology has been here for several millions of years, since Homo habilis. The mind’s abstraction to think of material and anticipate the shapes you will get when you hit quartz is a revolution. In a sense, artists have always worked with technology. Moving heavy stones, sculpting rocks, blending eggs with pigments, studying perspective or anatomy, developing camera obscura or paint tubes, working with benday dots, silkscreens, 3D renderings, it’s all about innovation and technology, so I don’t see how I could have avoided this. Their use also can be understood as statements or comments on their time. Do you consider the airbrush revolutionary, and what do you think are its most stellar properties? Firstly, airbrushes have been there since merely the beginning of art. I don’t reduce it to a weird object or something out of fashion that suddenly became fashion again. Blowing paint is one of the most natural things to create pieces of art. But I have been working with oil for several years, so I was pretty

Above: Still life with rabbit, Acrylic on panel with PU varnish, 43" x 43", 2020

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closely to know that it’s painted. So, of course, you need imperfections; if not, how could we know it’s painted? I’m always disappointed about the rendering of the paintings at first, but in the end, I tend to finally accept them and let the works live their own lives. Colors shifts, painting drops, scalpel marks, etc., even if they are light, they make the paintings what they are—a physical object. But it doesn’t mean that I’m not trying to improve my technique. I think I still have a margin to get better. How do you feel about this quick but intense journey from making what you perceive as the worst painting to garnering the appreciation you’re getting these days? I think everything went better in my career when I stopped worrying about what people thought or expected. I was going nowhere just because I was trying to please everybody. This led to nowhere. You have to achieve a certain radicality in your choices if not you’re just making the kind of work others do. But, anyway, to be honest, I do think you do the work for yourself first. You have to worry about how the viewer is going to experience your work and how it will be received. But when you are stuck 10 hours a day on a vertical surface spraying paint, believe me, you’d better love or trust what you do. If not, it is torture. So I try to keep things this way, like making pictures I love to paint. If others are interested also, that’s the cherry on top. But to finish answering your question, I don’t get the feeling it went quickly. It took me 10 years of struggle, hope, and depression. But what better feeling in life than to fight really hard for something and to finally start getting some results? Will the show include any NFT works, and how do you see those relating to the rest of your practice? Yes, I think we are going to offer NFTs along with the gallery show. There will be maybe 4 or 5 files available, which are the ones I used to paint some of the paintings in the show. This way I’m not trying to question the authenticity or copy of an artwork. But I’m searching to interrogate the relationship and hierarchy of a final painting and its preparatory study. The digital sketch can be considered as a detailed study, and I have always been interested in the question of how I should consider this study. I do believe that if I use physical materials to paint a picture, this process leads automatically to a conversion of the digital into the physical, even if it’s clean. So, now that Blockchain can authenticate any file as a unique work, how does that affect this hierarchy? Should we still consider the digital sketch as inferior? That’s the point and it’s a painting-related question, more than a technological one. What sort of pressure or relief did recognition by someone like Almine Rech bring to your 50 FALL 2021

practice, or for that matter, life in general? Of course, things are no longer like when I was in my studio and absolutely nobody wanted to see what I was doing. I have bigger visibility now. But the pressure was also really high back then. Because when it doesn’t work, you have poor selfesteem, and you feel the psychological pressure of society on you. Being an artist is great, but you have to be a successful artist. The “artist loser” is something really unpleasant. So, I do feel the pressure, but I feel also more serene. I also think an artist is someone who is not a machine and that the periods in the work can bring more or less attention. I mean, how can you try to build a career

and assume you will always be at the top? You have to be prepared for these kinds of difficulties. But, seriously, I don’t see the recognition you’re talking about. Showing with a great gallery is amazing but it also means that you fit the market’s commercial standards. To be honest, I don’t feel as if I have achieved a consensus at all for now. I’m popular in the toys and merch community but it’s far from the case in contemporary art. A lot of people can’t stand this kind of work. I think it will take years to make it if I even manage to! @gosmoothorgohome

Above: Landscape with Mountains, Acrylic on panel with PU varnish, 47" x 59", 2020

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Memento Mori, 2021, 60 x 48 inches, Oil on canvas

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The Crossroads A London in Transition Sitting in a shady public park under a verdant canopy of hundred-year-old trees as Wimbledon plays on a giant screen, this visitor feels like a lucky extra in a novel or movie situated in London tradition, and the Woolfian setting steeps into you like a proper cup of tea. The moment finally arrived after a 10-day quarantine and pent-up anticipation of the surrounding scenarios, my only interaction with the outside world being trips to the mailbox to send the mandatory tests, this in a metropolis frenzied with energy. England was in the Euro Cup final, which felt like the Super Bowl x100, and Boris Johnson had just declared July 19 as the reopening of the nation, a “Freedom Day,” as they put it. I had finally arrived in what I perceived as London, a film set of an old place, watching a prestigious 144 year-old tennis tournament where the players perform in compulsory, 54 FALL 2021

pristine white and the audience, sprinkled with Princes and Princesses, sport elaborate hats. It’s all so staid, a bit regal, this annual celebration since 1877, which inevitably sparks a sense of irony, or in my case, a sense of anxiety: this sort simple observation of traditions that persist amid an incredible wave of the unknown, our past “normal” lives colliding with a new existence of Covid tracing, travel restrictions, Delta variants, social distancing. The off-kilter nature of the moment is palpable once experiencing something previously considered normal. The circumstance that brought me to London was one of loss. Even in that universal event, a moment we all face, the world has been so turned upside down that we are forced to rethink relationships as the things we treasure. We are programmed to believe that the world

will accept our tragedies, our grieving, and act accordingly to a normal set of rules. First off, that is no longer allowed. We accede to quarantine, accept this new way of being from the get-go, and automatically adjust to travel in this new pandemic world. Everything you used to do normally is not available, even in an event of unforeseen loss. For a culture writer for whom art is a love, a distraction and a routine, who found travel as a vehicle to elicit a bit of an escapist fantasy, I’m now in London a bit unexpectedly, attempting to establish rhythms from a previous life. And that fantasy part of a previous life is no longer needed. Because art has always been a constant, for generations, sustaining and guiding many of us through difficult times. We memorialize tragic and epic events through art, play a favorite song

All photos: by Evan Pricco Above: London Fields, Hackney

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when we are sad, watch a film when we need to be distracted, or go to our favorite museums when we need some tranquility. The pandemic has certainly taught us that we need these things more than ever. As we transition into a new way of life, these routines that ground us, embrace our shared humanity, seem to have been snatched during the pandemic. In London, at this present moment, in trying to re-establish that overwhelming sense of beauty and need for art in my own life, I was also trying to come to understand what it is we lost. And really, I spent most of my time looking at how it is that art is a tool for understanding transitions in life, to explain grief, to capture the unexplainable. So, in this fractured moment, with London’s historical convergence of centuries of art and history, of pageantry and uber-contemporality, of just simply old world versus new world, it was the perfect place to be.

Hackney and East London This is where my first 10 days were spent, and multiple stretches thereafter. I was desperate for a routine because the arrangement to travel to the UK was the antithesis of a normal schedule. I was staying near London Fields, which I vaguely recognized from the Martin Amis novel.It proved to be a really essential part of my trip, the gateway to everything I would do in my first few weeks. Broadway Market is sort of a hub, and I found myself there for morning coffee, afternoon coffee, and preceding evening coffee, pint or meal. Pavilion also has great coffee and bread, as does Climpson and Sons. I spent a lot of time in bookshops, and this being London, literary appreciation is quite ingrained. Artwords and Donlon Books were my mainstays, the latter boasting a fantastic collection of zines and rare books, which made for multiple stops and multiple purchases. (I ended up with Joan Didion short stories, the irony of missing home.)

Top left: Hackney gardens Top right: Donlon Books Bottom left: Erno Bartha in Victoria Park Bottom center: Regent’s Canal Bottom right: Book at Artwords

But it was summer, and the center of the action was London Fields itself, and along the paths of the canal that cuts through Hackney, I spent time in Victoria Park, which had a few nice public art pieces, including two great sculptures by Romanian artist, Erno Bartha. There was a sense of calm and peace in the Park each day, and access to coffee everywhere. So, naturally, I spent a week at the Bethnal Green Town Hall to situate myself even longer. Having spent previous London visits mostly in the West, this was the first opportunity I had to explore this area of East London. Again, seeing that the country was still on lockdown and tourism at a bare minimum, being situated in a more residential section of the city was the best plan. Maybe this was a sense of calm that was needed. I was adapting to what was allowed. Art All Around So, within all this, there is art to see, and that was the routine I really wanted to re-establish:

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seeing art for real. London may be the best institutional art city in the world. There are museums everywhere, old world collections in unique buildings and galleries in every neighborhood. Of course, I made the usual stops, regardless of mask mandates and reserved viewing. Matthew Barney’s Redoubt film and installation was on view at Hayward Gallery, alongside a fantastic installation of works by South African artist Igshaan Adams that could have been overshadowed by the grandeur of a Barney film (it was not). In the brutalist architecture of that building, as well as the Barbican’s literal hard-edged splendor, you are also visiting the structures themselves. In more central London, I made sure to check in at Carl Kostyál’s space on Savile Row, which

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was hosting a new series of works by American painter, Rebecca Ness. Saatchi Yates has a grand showroom for art, and Waddington Custot had a great Peter Blake collage show. There are plenty of galleries on the two blocks around Savile Row, making it quite easy to do a full-on gallery day. Muzae Sesay had a great exhibition at Public Gallery, an emerging space that we all keep our eyes on. I also love the Royal Academy, and there was a brilliant (as always), David Hockney show, The Arrival of Spring, Normandy, 2020, extended for the fall. How exceptionally timed, too, for the experiences I was having: a major exhibition about rebirth after loss, about nature, painted on an iPad. This physicality and growth in the natural world synthesized through technology, turned into something

so breathtaking. Nature has a routine, and we humans adapt to it the best we can. I went to two collections that I had never seen before on the recommendation of a friend. There was a definite comfort in viewing the most ultimate of old world staples. The first stop was the Wallace Collection in Marylebone, occupying Hertford House in Manchester Square. It’s a massive townhouse with floor-to-ceiling displays of paintings, sculptures, and armour, in the setting of what almost looks like a movie set. Sir Richard Wallace built the collection in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with work that spans the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries. After focusing on contemporary art during this trip, it was a welcome respite. On

Top left: Matthew Barney at Hayward Gallery Top right: Peter Blake detail Bottom left: Tesfaye Urgessa detail at Saatchi Yates Bottom center: Wallace Collection detail Bottom right: Monmouth Coffee

TRAVEL INSIDER

display was an incredible presentation of two massive Rubens, the first time in 200 years that The Rainbow Landscape and A View of Het Steen in the Early Morning had been exhibited together. The second stop I made was to Sir John Soane’s Museum, the home and library of nineteenthcentury architect Sir John Soane. Just as dense as the Wallace Collection, this equally incredible building held unique spaces, hidden rooms, grand ceilings; a true gem of both architecture and the art of collecting. I haven’t mentioned coffee in a couple of paragraphs, but what is a trip to central London without a stop at Monmouth Coffee in Seven Dials? As a connoisseur of the fine effects of caffeine, there is little else in the world better than Monmouth. Just down the road in Soho, there is the famous and venerable Algerian Coffee Store, established in 1887. As this theme emerged constantly on this trip, I set things up in these dichotomies of what is now and what always was, testing it for vulnerabilities. But these old staples remind you that even over 100 years ago, there were people establishing their own routines that have stood the test of time. Ruskin’s View and Leaving the Metropolis London is its own self-contained universe, a nation with a nation, but there was much to be seen outside the city. After a year’s delay, The Vanguard show at the newly reopened Bristol Museum documents the unique history of counterculture in the harbor city. In the Brutalist “oasis” of Basildon, one of the country’s “New Town” developments in the 1940s that literally was created as a selfcontained suburb, a street art program called “Our Town,” produced by Re-FRAMED productions, just kicked off. As the city infrastructure of Basildon itself was created with the advice of artists and architects working together to form a unique and new urban experience, the Our Town curation is an ode to the city’s original intent to connect the arts and city-planning. I wanted to get away for a few days, and one of the places I decided to stay was the town in Northwest England of Kirkby Lonsdale in the north, famous for what is called the Ruskin’s View, named for John Ruskin, a prominent art critic and painter of the Victorian era. JMW Turner painted the view in 1822, and, indeed, it does look like a painting as you peer from a church cemetery above. There was something so raw about this view, this sort of counterpoint to my whole trip. I had read something so great about Ruskin that, obviously, made me want to go to this town: “In Ruskin's repudiation of everything modern, we detect that fine dissatisfaction with the age which is perhaps only proof of its idealistic trend… there

existed in him, side by side with his consuming love of the beautiful, a rigorous Puritanism.” How supremely apt in the current state of things. We are thrust, and I use that word again, into this contemporary landscape, a world of Covid testing, tracing, or family tragedy, watching nature battle with humanity, and you are sitting on a hill overlooking a view immortalized 200 years before, realizing how unsettling this experience really is. There is anxiety in this new balance between old and new, and at times, it seems so obvious as we cling to past world examples of what art is and can be. If we were ever in a transitional phase, our current moment has established our need for a sense of what the world used to be. And here is Ruskin, probably doing

Top left: Marble sculptures at Sir John Soane’s Museum Top right: Algerian Coffee Store in Soho Bottom left: Ruskin’s View in Kirkby Lonsdale

the exact same thing two centuries prior. Looking for purity, or enlightenment instead of what is in front of us. That purity and sense of value in the arts, of how we experience the things that we love, are more vital than ever. That preserved view of rolling hills, now two centuries old, helped me understand how incredibly intricate tradition is in making our contemporary lives, a sense of comfort in the face of collective unease that is beyond palpable. It is essential. —Evan Pricco A personal thank you to the lovely staff of the Zetter Townhouse in Marylebone for their generosity and incredible bar and dining room.

JUXTAPOZ .COM 57

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The Svane Family Foundation The Ark Sets Sail at SFAI “Experiences and programs that connect us to one another help everyone be better neighbors. We grow more as a community when we understand, listen and show up for one another.” Those words could have been gently admonished by Mr. Rogers, who was referring to neighborhoods everywhere, but no, they’re clear, simple wisdom from Zendesk founder and CEO Mikkel Svane, who has demonstrated a great habit of encouraging volunteerism among his employees. And apparently, he shows up too. The Svane Family Foundation was established in 2019 to support local artists and cultural institutions, who rightly depend on patronage, but were doubly undermined as a result of the pandemic. Along comes Svane, who’s offering a modern day Ark to help navigate the choppy waters. His foundation has given a $10,000 commission to 100 artists, whose work will be exhibited September 7 through 27, 2021, at the San Francisco Art Institute and auctioned 62 FALL 2021

on Artsy.com with profits benefiting the nonprofit ArtSpan, which provides Bay Artists with practical “post-grad” opportunities and skills, such as professional development and artist networking mixers, as well as youth open studios and community events that acquaint and enrich folks of every stripe. As the oldest art school west of the Mississippi, SFAI is a beautiful and symbolic host for the auction. Founded by a group of artists, writers and neighborhood leaders, its roof terrace overlooks the City, celebrating the panoramic openness of the liberal arts. Fully grasping the importance of education, The Svane Family Foundation asks the question, “What do you want to carry into the future?” Among artists like Barry McGee, Alicia McCarthy, Dana King and HP Mendoza, J. John Priola presents the archival pigment he calls Bouquet, which is such a pure interpretation of this ongoing mission. A graduate of SFAI, Priolo

describes, “In manifesting and realizing Bouquet, I asked over 49 organizations, institutions and individuals to make flowers that represented their cultures and communities.” The Bayview Opera House, The Women’s Building, AsianPacific Islander Culture Coalition and Irish Cultural Center are among the spectrum, “This bouquet holds so much more than metaphors and symbols; it holds love, hope, the creative zeitgeist of identifying, making, craft and beauty. I was able to collaborate with so many extraordinary, wonderful, lovely human beings. This is my contribution.” “We need the vibrant joy and raw expression artists bring to our lives”, urges Mikkel Svane, whose efforts demonstrate that art education has no physical, generational or intellectual boundaries. —Gwynned Vitello For more information, go to www.svaneff.org

Above: J. John Priola, Bouquet, Archival pigement print, 34.75" x 50.25" x 1.75"

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ON THE OUTSIDE

Migrate Art Simon Butler on Foundational Change Anyone reading this cleaves to the belief that art and culture have the power to directly change the world, and Migrate Art chooses to take extra steps that actively inspire us all to address and galvanize engagement with the humanitarian issues of our time. We have proven that it is possible to blend the worlds of art and charity to create a hopeful, motivating force, though indeed, these two worlds have their own inherent limits and restrictions. Art often speaks about political and social issues but neglects to reciprocate those sources of inspiration, resulting in a lopsided beneficiary. I have often seen successful western artists motivated by humanitarian needs without paying demonstrable dues to recompense their source of motivation. With extra consideration, it is possible for art to complete the journey and bridge the gap between the people who initially inspired the work and the compensation that comes from the final sale. Charity, however, can be mired in mistrust, and is often referred to as “the third sector,” as 64 FALL 2021

if the normal rules of business do not apply. This attitude is extremely limiting, and we have found ourselves in a situation where many charities are opaque, dull and uninspiring. By focusing on creativity and united art, charity and entrepreneurism, Migrate Art has successfully developed a more interactive partnership where charitable organisations maintain creativity and excitement, spurring connection, instead of simply soliciting a $10 donation monthly. As of 2020, there are over 80 million displaced people in the world, that is, 1% of the world’s population doesn’t have a place to call home. Creative art allows us to raise money and also share these folks’ stories, which in turn, creates compassion and empathy with others all over the world. In 2016, I first visited the Calais Jungle refugee camp in France, a makeshift campsite on the edge of Calais that was home to almost 10,000 displaced people. An infamous patch of land, UK media was full of stories about “swarms of migrants” trying to reach Britain. As someone skeptical of what appeared in the news, I decided to go and visit the camp myself.

I saw a very different side, a home to people from all over the globe, from Iran to South Sudan, and despite dreadful living conditions, a site rich in culture. Cafes, a school, a church and theatre existed within a place of transience, people arriving or leaving every day, resulting in an incomparably unique environment. The warmth of the people I met was a stark contrast to the unfriendliness of many people back in London who had every convenience. I decided to find a way to bridge these two worlds, using my experience and contacts in the art world to help the people in Calais. A few months later, I returned after “The Jungle” had been demolished by the French authorities, discovering a number of colouring pencils in the dirt where the makeshift school had stood. There was something powerful about these pencils and crayons—they chronicled a temporary town that no longer existed. I rummaged through the debris, collected the pencils and brought them back to London, intending to send them to artists to raise money and awareness for the millions of people impacted by this crisis.

Above: Inside the “Calais Jungle,” 2016

ON THE OUTSIDE

The big challenge was to animate the world’s best artists to empathise and participate with our cause. The artists seem to connect with our projects on many different levels. Some completely align with the mission, offering utmost collaboration; others express kinship with the creative ideas behind our projects, and many simply want to do something to help but don’t know how. Many artists do reflect their own lives through our projects—Loie Hollowell and Conor Harrington saw parallels between the children in the refugee camps and their own young families. Raqib Shaw and Mona Hatoum both

arrived in London as immigrants, and related their own stories to the people I had met in the camps. Some artists have direct connections, like Sara Shamma, who fled Syria at the start of the Syrian conflict, Iraqi artist Walid Siti, who left his homeland in 1984 to escape the IraqIran war, and Burmese artist Richie Htet who recently moved from Burma to Paris to escape imprisonment by the military dictatorship.

create a direct connection to the story, for example, my “stalking” of Anish Kapoor. I knew his studio had been designed by a famous architect and noticed a tiny, pixelated street name on his website. After Googling that street and finding his studio, I went in person with a handwritten note and one of the pencils from Calais. It worked. He has since been involved in two of our projects, and we are about to release a new edition with him.

The artists we work with are asked for charitable donations on a daily basis, so Migrate Art has to stand out. Instead of sending emails, I often locate artist studios and send them something physical to

After a year of relentlessly working on our first project, I gathered 33 brand new artworks from amazing artists, including Sean Scully, Rachel Whiteread, Jeremy Deller, Pejac and more, all of

Top left: Migrate Art pencils, “Calais Jungle” Top right: Conor Harrington in studio, London Bottom left: Simon in Kurdistan Bottom upper right: Scorched Earth student drawing Bottom lower right: Kurdistan children’s workshop drawing

JUXTAPOZ .COM 65

ON THE OUTSIDE

whom used the pencils from Calais. We curated an exhibition in Mayfair in London, culminating in an auction at Phillips in London, raising over $175,000 for our charity partners. We met people who visited to see work by their favourite artist and then learned more about the wider context of the project; other visitors had previously volunteered in Calais and wanted to continue to support the cause. Most surprisingly, we met big collectors who loved the idea of buying art and doing some good at the same time. People were connecting with our message, and a community was forming. In June, 2019, I was invited by one of the charities to travel to Kurdistan in Northern Iraq, which has been a war zone for most of my life. I wanted to see where the money we raised was being spent, curious to discover if this environment could lead to a lightbulb moment for a new project. I boarded a flight to Erbil, one of the oldest, continuously inhabited places in the world, and what followed for the next ten days was the most profound experience of my life. We visited several camps of over 50,000 people, primarily from Iraq and Syria, and were once again met with warmth and endless kindness. Whilst in the camps, I held art classes with groups of children, and was struck by the dark nature of some of the drawings. Teenagers were drawing skulls, villages on fire and airstrikes, which lent frightening insight into the intensity of their youthful experiences. Driving through the countryside, I was struck 66 FALL 2021

by a series of vast, black, burnt crop fields, and began to ask questions about their origins. After conversing with locals, many theorized that the fires were caused by remaining ISIS fighters trying to intimidate local communities and demonstrate their presence in the region. I somehow knew if I could get this ash back to London, we could turn it into paint. I got to work in 43-degree heat and started filling containers with this ash. Most people said I was a lunatic and there was no chance I would get it back through customs, but after someone commented that it looked vaguely like tea, I hatched a plan. I took a visit to the local market and bought tins of loose leaf tea. I removed the tea, replaced it with ash and resealed the tins as best I could. Miraculously, two days later, I was standing in Heathrow airport looking at the tins in my bag—they had made it through. After more cold calling, we formed a partnership with Jackson’s Art Supplies, who offered to take the ash and make bespoke acrylic and oil paints. After some more detective work, I grew a list of incredible artists all eager to create something with the paint. In October, 2020, we hosted Scorched Earth, an exhibition of 15 incredible, original artworks from the likes of Loie Hollowell, Jules de Balincourt, Mona Hatoum, Antony Gormley and Richard Long, and also produced two brand new print editions with Shepard Fairey, all made with our Scorched Earth paint. Alongside works by these artists, we also showed a series of drawings by children in the

camps in Kurdistan, which connected on a deeper level with the hundreds of visitors to the show. We later auctioned the works with Christie’s and raised over $475,000. The approach we have developed means we can react to humanitarian issues as they arise, raising much needed funds for urgent issues as they happen. In 2020 we launched Masks for Meals, a series of artist-designed face masks that raised over $60, 000 to feed the UK’s homeless throughout the Coronavirus pandemic. And, most recently, we curated Raising for Myanmar, a series of 20 limited-edition posters by leading artists including Jeremy Deller, Sarah Lucas, Sean Scully and Chloe Early to raise money for Mutual Aid Myanmar to help supply food, shelter and healthcare to communities suffering at the hands of Burma’s violent military coup. The project ran for 6 weeks and raised almost $40,000. Art is a force that can change the world, and isn’t just about auction records, inflated markets and champagne receptions. There is a reason we all chose to get involved in the art world, and for 99% of us, it is because art speaks to us on a deeper level— the rest is secondary. Art has the power to transform and become a catalyst for meaningful progress. For the Migrate Art team and me, this is the bedrock strength of art and culture. —Simon Butler Simon Butler is the founder and director of Migrate Art, and is based in London.

Above left: Simon collecting ash in Northern Iraq Above right: Migrate Art x Jackson’s “Scorched Earth” acrylic paint

BETWEEN THESE PAGES IS ARGUABLY THE MOST IMPORTANT DISCOVERY OF PRE-FAME JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT DRAWINGS IN EXISTENCE.

SCAN

TO HEAR TYLER WATTS TALKING ABOUT BASQUIAT AND THEIR WILD TIMES TOGETHER IN NYC.

Radical Beauty PAMELA JOSEPH

BOOKS

Romantic Lowlife Fantasies by Laura June Kirsch It’s funny to think that the first time Laura June Kirsch showed me the work that would become Romantic Lowlife Fantasies was in a bar, in Brooklyn, in what feels like a monumentally different era while she was talking about, even then, a monumentally different time. For Laura, the years that comprise this book are compartimalized like dream segments, yet grounded in reality, defining a particular lifestyle that feels more emblematic of the twenty-first century than any millennial-moving-to-the-city tale could ever muster. This is escapism and yet a real life exposé of the years where we thought some sort of liberal revolution of identity was on the cusp, where a 25 year old could remain 25 forever, where Tuesday was Friday and Sunday was Wednesday. It didn’t matter. These photos capture an intimacy and primal urge to be in a constant state of celebration and indulgence because there was little to no opposition to either. Music festivals, clubs, parties, pools, booze… freedom. Romantic Lowlife Fantasies isn’t Laura just showing off another youthful moment in time; there is a deeper understanding here of the fact that for perhaps the first time in American history, youth wasn’t interrupted by some drastic revolution to adulthood. Laura talks about how these photos were taken in the Age of Hope, the Obama years, the post-Bush/pre-TikTok world where a generation felt fully in control of their destiny. That it didn’t last is part of the story. Romantic Lowlife Fantasies was literally a moment when we all decided collectively that life didn’t need a schedule. These photos are fun, a word we don’t use often enough in our vernacular, and Laura captures what it was like to just have that fantastical sense of community and fucking fun. —EP Hat & Beard Press, hatandbeard.com

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WHAT WE’RE READING

The Flowering: The Autobiography of Judy Chicago LIke the rest of us, Judy Chicago was given extra hours and an empty calendar this past year. Unlike the rest of us, bingeing on cable TV and bemoaning our inability to finish reading a book, Chicago wrote one—her eleventh! It’s not called The Flower because the subject is by no means a still life. The Flowering is an autobiography about growth, in spite of, and inspired by the elements that, in turn, nurture and challenge all living things. In Chicago’s case, there’s been a lot of living, teaching, traveling and art making, much or most of it, not confined to an easel; pyrotechnics and stained glass, just to start. Of the 90 color illustrations accompanying the memoir, my favorite image shows the sweatbrowed artist in tank top and cut-offs, utilizing skills she learned from auto-body shop classes. As a young girl, on Saturdays attending her church of choice, the Chicago Institute of Art, she describes taking her vows to make art as a way to navigate life, death and injustice. Recounting The Dinner Party, she passionately describes how a collective of craftswomen made china plates almost come to life through her vision. At 416 pages, this is not an artist uncomfortable with words. As Chicago told NPR about being a Jew, “We were slaves in Egypt, and we became free, which leaves us with the mandate to work for everyone’s freedom.” In the book’s foreword, Gloria Steinem, a dynamo in her own right, describes Chicago as “a miracle.” This year, at age 82, she sees her work visiting Japan and cities across the US, notably a retrospective at the de Young in San Francisco. The Flowering recounts a life still glowing and blowing in the wind. —GV Thames & Hudson, thamesandhudson.com

NSFW by Dasha Matsuura Depending on your office situation or where you are employed, the concept of “Not Safe For Work” could conjure various meanings. Years ago, a NSFW label on a webpost or even email subject prompted a sense of salacious wonder. In art, NSFW means there’s going to be some flesh, and in her NSFW curated shows at Spoke Art, Dasha Matsuura explored not just the idea of what that label means in terms of our technological lives, but what it suggests for women who paint, draw or sculpt the naked body in a modern world. In this new book, a collection of artists and intriguing text explore the NSFW label as a bold, new vision of eroticism and empowerment. “In these pages you’ll find a vast swath of femmeidentifying artists applying their talents to the subjects of sex and eroticism…” Stoya writes in the introduction, “So, before you begin, what is femme sexuality? And, when you’re finished, what of it do you see in you?” A mix of playfulness, intimacy and intensity, enhanced with abstraction, dances through the book, bolstered by a modicum of historical precedence, which enhances the artists’ approaches to creating a dedication for the body. Although these vessels we inhabit have been painted for centuries and are integral to the artistic canon, the time has come for a fresh look and nuanced discussion of who holds the power over this imagery. “Femininity and sexuality means something different to everyone,” Matsuura writes in her essay, “and in that complexity lies something unknowable and captivating.” From Audrey Kawasaki and Lauren YS, Jillian Evelyn to Laura Berger, this is a musthave, comprehensive overview of the NSFW label in an evolving world. —EP Paragon Books, Paragon-books.com

Julie Curtiss In Her Wildest Dreams Interview by Charles Moore Portrait by Dan McMahon

R

aised in the eastern suburbs of Paris, abstract painter Julie Curtiss stands firm in her belief that the Covid-19 pandemic has forced people to look at themselves. While she’s adamant that the rippling effect of the devastation taking place in 2020-2021 is temporary, she claims people can’t understand what’s happening collectively without looking inward—and that perhaps, by taking the time to self-reflect while stuck at home, we can pave the way for a better-informed and more connected future. Let it be said that the New York-based artist isn’t political in the broad sense of the term. Her work is rooted in the female identity, focusing on vibrant close-up paintings zoomed in so close the viewer inevitably becomes lost in her largescale canvases. Showcasing the fine line between inspiring ideas and summoning questions, Curtiss creates both overwhelming nuance and in-yourface specificity that jointly encourage observers to project their own experiences into the art they’ve come to appreciate. Ambiguity is key, along with the paradox of the human experience. These, of course, are pillars of Curtiss’s work. Brought up by a French mother and a Vietnamese father, the artist—an only child—visited museums on a regular basis in her early years. She found

herself infatuated with Degas and captivated by much of the late nineteenth century; in this same vein, pulling stillness from movement plays a key role in her own work today. The artist has lived in France and Germany, Japan and the United States, working with the likes of Jeff Koons and Brian Donnelly (the latter known as KAWS) before making a name for herself. In 2004, she studied at the Art Institute of Chicago by way of a Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy Award, subsequently earning her degree from l’Ecole des Beaux-arts in Paris in 2006. It wasn’t until 2015, however, that Curtiss cemented her signature style composed of faceless portraits, skewed digits, and curved bodies masked by thick hair, macro-representations of food and drink, and seemingly simple life objects. Ask the artist what motivates her, and she’ll cite psychology; now in her 30s, Curtiss has been in therapy since she was 16. The painter explains how everyone possesses a shadow which is integral to the self, and that incorporation of the shadow into the work can be largely therapeutic. Since the shadow represents the darkest parts of a person’s being, she has set out to capture this sense of other by way of projected experiences.Through her paintings, Curtiss endeavors to serve as the viewer’s own shadow, culminating in an experience emblematic of gazing through a screen, forcing

introspection. Featureless beings, isolated body parts, accessories and food warped into abstraction in contrast to frequent monochromatic backdrops all comprise elements embraced by Curtiss. And, at this point in time, it is certain that Curtiss has given the female identity an innovative, grotesque, and utterly human overhaul the public has grown to love. “I get really excited when people really see art as it really should be,” she says, “the most successful art pieces are when people get something from it that's spiritual.” Charles Moore: So you grew up outside of Paris. Tell me about those early years and your earliest experiences with art. Julie Curtiss: I grew up in Les Pavillons-sous-Bois, which are the eastern suburbs of Paris. There's a lot like what you would call the “projects.” It was more a residential type of area, a bit different from Paris itself. My mom is French,my dad Vietnamese, and so I felt I had kind of cool parents. My dad was a really good photographer and my mom was always interested in art, so they brought me along to museums and we traveled quite a bit. I had quite a liberal upbringing. I remember going to the museum and being really into Degas because he painted dancers—and I really loved dancing. All those late nineteenth-century works really captivated me. When did you first learn that you had the talent for drawing or painting? As an only child, I was naturally inclined to drawing and all kinds of crafts. I’m glad my parents encouraged me to pursue whatever I had a fancy for. I would just lose myself in it and be captivated by the flow and mood of the moment. Is that why you decided to go to art school instead of a more traditional university? Yes. As a teenager, I experienced a lot of anxiety, so I used art to channel my nervous energy. Art was also my favorite subject in school, too. So, naturally, I wanted to get into art school. There were never any other options, and my parents were always supportive. My mother was always very savvy, so right away she was able to find a suitable prep class that was also free. It was experimental, but it was really good and enabled me to get into more recognized art schools of my choice later. The French system is different from the American system. If you want to go to a public school that's free, you have to qualify for admission, and that can be pretty difficult. From then on, your whole education is assured. So I attended the Beaux-Arts school in Paris. BeauxArts really intimidated me at first because it felt really elitist. But I got over that. I was actually looking at your CV and it seems like you jumped around from one art school

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All images: © the artist. Photo © Charles Benton. Courtesy White Cube Above: Kitchen Counter, Vinyl, acrylic and oil paint on canvas, 30" x 30", 2020

Above: Untitled (seatbelt), Vinyl, acrylic and oil paint on canvas, 20" x 25", 2021

JULIE CURTISS JUXTAPOZ .COM 77

to the next. You went to Germany and then Chicago and then back to France. Tell me about that experience. Do you know that you can apply to art program exchanges with other schools? I applied first for one in Germany and I got into Dresden, which was very competitive to get into but I made it. Then I came back to France and obtained a sizable grant from LVMH (Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton). The grant enabled me to study abroad; I had already done one exchange program, and this was the second. So I went to Chicago, which totally changed my life, and it was amazing. How so? American culture is so different from French culture in every way. For me, it was pretty liberating to be in Chicago and discover the American subculture. It was also here that I met my husband, Clinton King. Just being in Chicago made me realize that I just wanted to spend more time in America: I was learning so much here, I felt so free. But you did go back to France, right? Yes, I went back to France to do my MFA, but it was so far away from my husband that we decided 78 FALL 2021

to be in Japan together for a year. We eventually returned to Paris, but decided to try to make it happen in New York. Was your first job here in art? No way! I worked in a coffee shop and then in a shoe store, so I moved from $11 to $14 an hour. Eventually I found my way to Jeff Koons. This was a really huge upgrade and I couldn't believe my luck getting there. What were you doing for Jeff? I was working in the sculpture painting department, masking sculptures, which I enjoyed because Koons’ sculptures are amazing. But I didn't stay long because it was a full-time job and I just didn't have time to do my own art. Didn't you do any art at the time? I definitely kept doing it but that meant a lot of work. I’d go back to my studio and work through the evening and on weekends. I worked seven days a week. But that's what I like about New York—the people are so driven! After a year, I managed to get a small art residency. I finally found a job with KAWS for Brian Donnelly; this was a turning point.

What were you doing for him? It was a smaller studio than Koons’s, a much more intimate, hands-on and supportive atmosphere. I was only required to work four days a week, so had more time for my studio. That was such an invigorating experience. What was your work like then, and how has it evolved since your early years in New York? I've tried so many different things, but the constant is that I've always worked more with images. It was more Degas and figurative work in the early phases. But when I moved to New York, I focused more on works on paper that were really graphic—comic-bookish, if you like—but with big compositions, almost abstract. It was really the line, that strong upward line I used that actually caught KAWS’s eye: somehow he thought we did relate in some strange way. Of course, my style evolved once I started to work for Brian, because I really liked his work. I definitely see the correlation between your work and Brian's, especially the meticulous lines and unique figures. But I'm also looking at what you said in one of your other interviews about exploring the enduring influence of

Above: States of Mind, Vinyl, acrylic and oil paint on canvas, 60" x 40", 2021

surrealism through the female gaze. Tell me about the female gaze. Well, the idea is re-exploring canons of art in terms of female archetypes and figures. You paint from the inside and on the outside too, bringing in all your influences, which sometimes involves borrowing someone's gaze of the artist or the culture. You also think from the perspective of the viewer to the objects that are being displayed. The female figures being presented are far from passive. There's something very active about displaying yourself, curating yourself, presenting yourself to be seen, to be an object of adoration— or whatever I envisioned to be active and creative about that display. I remember when I started this body of work, I was really interested in finding my own voice and exploring different aspects of my psyche in relation to society. This was in the medium of visual language, that age-old argument of what it means to be a woman at a given time in history. At the time, I was just a nobody without an art career. I was just really trying to find my way, and I hadn’t sold anything. Again, figuration wasn’t big at that time. Abstract was still the big thing. That must have been tough. When you don't have a career, there are often thoughts that having a child would bring fulfillment. At the same time, you wonder whether you should be sacrificing something that’s really important. So, you had to make a choice. Yes, I was really torn, but I was really drawn to all these questions swirling in my head. On another subject, your work is considered to be surrealistic, which is often described with terms like “untethered from reality,” “dreams and the subconscious mind,” “automatism” or “pushing back our conscious mind” to make room for the work. Tell me what these things mean to you. I can’t say precisely. My work may be interpreted as surrealism, but I don’t think I consciously sought to define my work primarily in that way. But the element of surrealism is there because I would take the image, push the boundaries and use it to question perceived reality as well as my own. At the beginning of my art practice in New York, it was this very sci-fi kind of landscape that was very graphic and trippy. Every scene appeared to be made of intestines and internal landscapes— but, at the same time, I was aware I was thinking myself into a corner. Who are some of your influences? One major influence is one of my favorite Surrealists, Robert Greenwell. But there’s an area in the politics of the Surrealist movement I've never been into. I

Top: Strudy, Air-brush acrylic and gouache on paper, 11" x 14", 2020 Bottom: Cherry on Top, Air-brush acrylic and gouache on paper, 12" x 9", 2019

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Top: Snail Trails, Air-brush acrylic and gouache on paper, 12" x 9", 2020 Bottom: Ouroboros, Air-brush acrylic and gouache on paper, 12" x 9", 2020

Above: Coldroom 2, Acrylic, vinyl and oil on canvas, 60" x 84", 2020

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think people forget how political Surrealism was, how much of a chaotic and anti-establishment kind of movement it was from the beginning. That’s true. I interpreted your work as more of a juxtaposition of unexpected objects, but do you feel that your work is becoming more political? I've never been political in a strict sense. There's a fine line between inspiring ideas and exploring new perceptions of things, and becoming political in terms of advancing a really strong agenda. So you had different priorities? Yeah. I want people to still have room to project some of their lead experiences or some of their inner world into my work, and I want to provide enough ambiguity that portrays how ideas are often complementary. I’m more interested in paradox, and in how things can reverse in one second. Something that's too political in the classic sense just doesn't allow for that shift. Right, I get you. Moving on… hair features prominently in your work. How do you utilize it as an important element? Hair is a substance that is growing, that ties us to a primitive form of life and possesses a duality, especially for women. When it's on our heads, it can be perceived as quite exquisite, but when it's on the body, all of a sudden it's considered unsightly. Do you feel like you have something of a Medusa complex? Medusa was my favourite mythological story as a kid. It fascinated as well as scared me, and it brought on these weird dreams. I have this dream, where I’m working in a temple thinking it must be secret art—for me, that’s a Medusa complex. You know, the foreboding that a fixed image or a fixed rendition of something has the power to turn you into stone. It’s so strong it can kill me. Most of the time, in that whole gaze paradox with Perseus and Medusa, Medusa is the embodiment of that kind of duality between good and evil. You see, Perseus uses her head to turn it against his enemies. So she was really a symbol of duality, both the illness and the remedy. How much do dreams influence your work? Art comes from a dark place, and I find a lot of darkness in my dreams. When I started therapy, dreams would be part of the therapeutic method. I always paid attention to them and so does Clinton, who always writes them down. Occasionally, I get what's called a luminous dream, where your unconscious is trying to send a message through the dream. But, more importantly, it is the place of intuition. I'm not a cerebral or intellectual person; I try to pay attention to my instincts, 82 FALL 2021

Top: Marilyn Sushi, Plastic, self hardening clay, acrylic paint and ceramic plate, 9.8" x 5.5" x 1.5", 2021 Bottom: Maze Meal, Straw hat, wax, foam and mixed media, 13.45" x 13.45" x 5.5", 2019

and I think dreams are one expression of them. My instincts direct me to have a flexible state of mind when I walk in the street or when I go to museums. Ideas pop up because I do entertain the imagery and associations triggered, and know how to nurture them so they can evolve into a life of their own. But it has to be spontaneous. When I analyze too much, they lose their potency. Most of the work I saw involved a lot of facial hair as well as women’s fingernails. I feel like there's a little bit more emphasis on the body now. Yes, there’s more of the body. I have been working in a cinematic way of cropping, chopping and segmenting the body, like a puzzle. I crop to bring out the mystery. Now I just want to change the general framing to a wider angle. I was thinking more about how the individual relates to the collective. This is the new body of work that is tapping into those broader ideas. I also feel that literature informs a lot of your work. You’re currently reading A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe: The mathematical Archetypes of Nature, Art and Science. Is this part of a series? This book says where you are from 1 to 10. It’s basically how the universe is organized according to different scales, whether through biology, physics or mathematics; not just how things are organized, but how they can be used to create myth, which basically communicates knowledge. Then there’s myth through archetypes, meaning images that unify knowledge into one whole in terms of people’s age, symbolism and religion. The number one, as in unity, the cell, the circle, or God and the universe, recurs all over the place. And art reflects that recurring theme. What’s interesting is that the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s painting of Adam and Eve being cast out of the garden is about being aware of whether you’re naked or not. Tell me about the shadows. Everybody has a shadow, which is the dark side of oneself. We can't look at our own shadows. It’s like you're projecting your own shadow onto the other person, and that's what the paintings depict—how they are each other's shadow as they look through a screen. How can you pretend to understand what's going on in the world if you actually don't know your own self?

having a lot of fun, but it also feels less resolved than the paintings.

open up ideas because somehow I think artists are wary about new audiences and offending them.

What about the food pieces? Those are hyper-realistic, but definitely uncanny. I made a bunch of sculptures when I was in a residency in Japan using some of the materials they use there for their food displays, like fake seaweed or beef.

So, you think that art should be enjoyed? Yes, and I get really excited when people really see art as it really should be—a truly enjoyable experience. That is why I really like pop culture. For me, the most successful art pieces are when people get something spiritual from them. The beauty is being so engrossed in the moment that you are almost unaware of that transformation,

I would prefer that we just tell it as it is; we don’t need to cast a moral spin. I find it really hard to do that because there are uncomfortable subjects that are also very important and should be addressed. In fact, where there’s discomfort, we should actually go straight for it, so you definitely don't want to linger over the matter, but settle it. But I think that’s really difficult in today’s cancel culture.

I've always needed sculpture to fall back on just to keep experimenting, to keep everything fun and alive. The thing with the sculpture is that I'm

In closing, what do you want me to know about you or your work that hasn't been asked already? Nowadays, I find it harder and harder to really

Above: Backscratch, Airbrushed acrylic and gouache on paper, 14.25"x 10.25", 2020

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Geoff McFetridge The Opposite of an Idea Interview by Evan Pricco Portrait by David Black

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he beauty of Geoff McFetridge’s work is that it is both flexible and rigid, universal and personal. There is a malleability he creates in his output, where designs for Apple, Vans or Norse Projects compliment or even converse with fine art shows at Half Gallery, Cooper Cole or V1 Gallery. Over the past few decades, his work has come to signify a certain attention to detail, something I keep referring to as noticing the unnoticed, or maybe better read, unnoticing what we always notice. He is a man where color is the emphasis, where shapes and figures appear from an almost dreamlike backdrop. The figures seem to be speaking a language that is between what we call a connection, the moments that are in-between contact. As he is set to release a collection with Vault by Vans and open a solo show with Half Gallery, McFetridge has become more abstract and meditative with his commercial work and even more ubiquitous with his paintings.

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Evan Pricco: You’re, frankly, in high demand, so I can imagine this is a very busy time, with opportunities floating your way, whether commercial or fine art projects. What are you prioritizing at the moment? Geoff McFetridge: Someone came in and did sort of a visit to the studio yesterday, and the only way to answer the question of “What are you doing?” is to go through my sketchbook, which isn’t a sketchbook, but a workbook where I work on everything. It’s a big thick book and I go through and I can see, “This is what I’m working on.” On one page will be drawings for this show I’m working on for Half Gallery, and then, flipping the next page, I was like, “Oh yeah, I’m doing this thing for Dropbox.” And I go to that page and it’s all these drawings from Dropbox. And then I flipped the page and it’s, “Oh, this stuff is for Vans,” so five pages of that and six pages of Dropbox and ten pages of this other thing. Then it keeps going and it’ll be like, “Oh yeah, I’m doing this thing for Surfer’s Journal.” It’s this list of things that are happening simultaneously,

but I’m not really aware of any of them because it’s just consciousness. Are you aware of your consciousness? It’s like, “No.” It’s just that all the projects have equal footing. Is that because you’ve developed a visual language where you can speak to different projects but not have to change it up? You clearly have an ability to possess this visual language that can exist through all the things that you do. I was surprised when I went through the book, because the premium answer is sort of that I don’t really know. I think it’s hard for anyone to assess, “What do you do?” “Who do you do it for?” The book sort of goes, “Oh, it’s one project.” It’s like there’s a larger project, which is the building of language. So you build up this language that you can then apply. Do you write a poem? Do you write a list? Do you write an essay with this language? You’re also sort of growing a language. “Oh, here’s a new letter to the alphabet and here’s a new word to describe this.” But you’re also relying on previous

Above: In the Cracks of a Dream We See the Waking World, Acrylic on canvas, 60" x 40", 2021

Above: 2020, Acrylic on canvas, 44" x 60", 2020

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Above: A Poem Unrelated to Words, Acrylic on raw canvas, 40" x 50", 2019

vocabulary. I think that may sound sort of conceited or something. No, I think the question becomes, when did you feel comfortable talking about the fact that you had developed this language? Right, I mean, I think it’s over the past few years. For me to address these things, I think of how much I’ve talked about myself or thought aloud, but it’s taken me a decade to understand exactly what I’m doing, to understand, “Oh, what is actually happening?” Because I’m just acting on instinct. And you start to think, “Well, why am I?” The answer to simple things, they’re simple aspects. What projects do you choose? Why do you not have a staff? Why do you not have representation? There’s all these sorts of questions that, through the years, I’ve sort of answered with, “I like to be independent.” At that point, you get to some real truths. That, to me, is more interesting, but also I’m a super nerd for my practice. I’m the most dedicated to my own.

"I’m the most dedicated to my own." I’ve been having this conversation a lot recently, especially when it comes to writing. You read something, a really beautiful phrase in a book or a line in a poem that really conveys an emotion that you’re thinking about, and then consider how difficult it is to get from the head to the hands to express. You do that with art, but how do you differentiate if you nail it for Apple or if you nail it for a canvas? And is it different for you? I think that the idea is that you don’t have these two spheres, that there’s this convergence of the work so that it starts to minimize this feeling of “work for projects, work in a gallery.” It sort of reveals what images do in our world. If we’re all believers in images, then let’s forget about the delivery system, let’s get to what these images are doing. When someone gets something flashed to them from Apple, music of the day type of things, it’s not the same as walking up to a painting. But there is an aspect of it that’s within any piece of work, that you can sort of embolden with sincerity or with something that goes beyond ideas. I think that’s the interesting part, and I

Top and bottom: Works for NY Times, 2020

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encourage that overlap. In creating this visual language and creating this type of work, part of it was like, “Well, what work can occupy both those zones?” That’s the challenge.

came together, and painting was the receptacle for all these unknowns. And a lot of that has to do with controlling how engaged viewers would be with the work.

When we did a previous interview for Juxtapoz, I think about ten years ago, painting wasn’t new for you, but you felt a new joy in it at the time. There was this new revelation you were having, and a change in dedication. Where are you at now with painting? I come to painting through a huge roundabout. I don’t know if I talked about it in that interview, but I see it now. It was the process that brought me to painting, and it’s the same way, every little thing as you describe yourself, how you understand yourself. It’s understanding myself as a painter or as someone who... It’s weird to say, “I’m a painter.” But I found that all these elements

Your work portrays an almost socialist utopia harmony going on among the people. And it seemed really telling that over the last 18 months or so that your past works actually speak really well about these conversations that we need to have about each other. Have you had any time to reflect on the fact that your work does speak to the time in a unique way? When I’m making the work, there’s always this moment, because the way I develop the work is through drawing. So I’ll do hundreds of drawings and they’ll sort of auto-file, and I’ll be like, “This could be a painting.” Then there’s a pile of ten drawings, and it’s like one of those could be a

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painting, and then they get judged on whether they will look good or be compelling. When I look at the 100 drawings, they all start from the same point, which is just talking about our understanding of the relationship of humans with each other. In the most basic way, it’s just almost at a microcosmic level. These little unforeseen energies or unseen energies that circulate among us. There is the idea, and you pursue these iterations and meditations on one thing, rather than. “Well, I need an idea.” I don’t know when it was, but years ago, this internal thing happened, just saying that it’s the opposite of an idea. So I don’t know when I first said that out loud, but I said it to myself long before I ever spoke about it. I think I may have titled a show about that. I can’t remember, but it’s the opposite of an

Above: Psychotomimeticons, Acrylic on canvas, 33" x 27.5", 2018

Above: Image Based Gamelan Encipherment 1, Acrylic on canvas, 29" x 33", 2020

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idea. What’s the opposite of an idea when you’re pursuing work? I mean, this question explains itself, but if you hadn’t worked in some sort of design language, would you have been able to develop the confidence to make the paintings the way you do? No. I started with using a design process and the thinking I got from design. I think speaking out loud, as I’m talking to you, I’m working through ideas; speaking out loud about my work and the function of visuals, which, for me, comes from a sign critique. I also use techniques I learned in school that were these archaic sort of commercial art techniques. So it was a commercial art technique where I started. I always found it interesting that you have a very certain style, from the way you dress to the colors you wear, and it seems to align perfectly in the way that your studio was organized and the way that your paintings were made. In a way, it felt very genuine. So, are you part of the work? 92 FALL 2021

Yes. If you’re a willing participant, what you do in your work and what you do in your life just sort of mesh. Actually, a lot of things in my paintings are similar to clothes in that I dress these people, these sort of Playmobil people. There are people who have pants and shirts and hair that, in a way, are my version of a sort of Playmobil world. I think that when the designers sat down to do Playmobil,

This actually does make a lot of sense because it’s utilitarian, and your work has that quality. I realize I dress in a Playmobil way! You could say basic guy or you can say Playmobil guy. How do you dress the void? It’s leaving openness like a mandala, this incredibly complex thing that’s about losing yourself in meditation. There’s ways of dressing that are specific, referential... I

"How do you wear emptiness with possibilities?" they thought, “How does this read as a person, how is it still fun?” G.I. Joes in America have guns and Jeeps and they’re super real. But I imagine Playmobil designers thought, “We want to do something that feels more imaginative, that leaves more up to the mind of the kid.” I don’t know. I have no idea.

can’t even articulate it. I feel comfortable when I’m in Playmobil mode; but it has a function, it’s super specific. How do you wear emptiness— with possibilities? I feel there’s this thing that your paintings do where you focus on what is “unnoticed noticed”

Above: Hang Tag Art for Vault by Vans collaboration, 2021

or “noticed unnoticed.” If you look a little deeper, the clothes really matter. It’s this level of how you make an entire painting that is both evocative but also where every element of it can be dismissed. You look in the middle, like a target. A target is not a mandala because it has this value system. It’s a bull’s eye. So a painting without bulls’ eyes is what I’m looking for. In my notes today I wrote, “What are the Geoff McFetridge rules?” No outlines, so everything works as fields of color. No faces, generally. Well, it’s clearly not a rule anymore because your show with Cooper Cole this past summer did have faces. Yeah, so I already broke a rule! Because I guess it’s not really a rule. There’s a larger rule which is real, which is this sort of wandering eye thing. I do a lot with color, and that will become the focus, even though there is this central thing, a figure, that you notice. But you can really just see that I’m really working with the interplay with colors. Notice the unnoticed. We have been talking about painting, but what about design, like your upcoming Vault by Vans release? How does that fit into the studio work? The Vans project is in the sketchbook, and it’s so many pages. I mean, it’s an experiment in how many ideas, but not using the word ideas, can go into one project. It’s the opposite of what you would think, really. One might go, “Oh, you experiment in your gallery shows, that’s where you have total freedom. And then you apply those experiments to commercial projects.” Whereas for me, it’s the opposite. I use commercial projects as prompts. I did this series with the New York Times during the pandemic. It was a series of drawings that illustrated the collective year we were all having. And that was a prompt to be diagnostically personal and revealing, and talk about my family, something that I’m not going to do in a show. It opened up this way to basically paint faces; it led directly to painting faces. It broke this sort of cold wall.

That’s my point in space. And what you’re doing, too, is almost designing the memories that are experienced when we see things that change our perceptions. For lack of better phrasing, there’s a little room for some Bill Evans freestyle within these kinds of confines of what it is we know about brands. You expand the expectations of both the famous silhouette, or something familiar, for the person who will wear it. I was reading this book about jazz recently, and there was this part about how the history of jazz is explicit in the music. That within the playing, you don’t need a jazz historian to tell you what is happening. When you listen to jazz, it carries the history within the form. And that really rang true to the world I operate in. That is why I love to do stuff like Vans because it’s ingrained with culture. So the culture carries its history. There’s this literacy we all have. So, for me, it becomes an opportunity to add to this world within the rules I have set for myself. There is this really positive echo chamber aspect in what you do. I mean that in a good way, like

you are constantly speaking to your work, and the studio revolves around these visual identities between commercial and fine art. In this notebook, you are listening to yourself. If you read echo chamber in the Wall Street Journal, it’s used in the context of political discourse in a negative way. But in terms of the studio, you can’t turn off what you see in the world, what you see around you. The studio has to have a certain amount of absorbent. I like that an echo chamber is more important in my process. I’m never super deliberate about things, but it’s more of one’s own personal history that just comes out. “Why do I see things the way I do?” As an artist, that question is also, “Why do I do the things I do?” It’s very much about how you answer these questions, how do I see things and how do I do things based on my own personal history and context? And that’s something that I see very clearly now. This fall, Geoff McFetridge’s collection with Vault by Vans will be released, and he’ll open a solo show at Half Gallery.

And then with the Vans project, I took it on as this very familiar brand. What do I actually bring to this? Or what am I interested in getting out of it? So, for me, it was exploring personal history through product and graphic design. It’s not about what I want to wear. It was about how deep I could go with something easily dismissed, like a pair of shoes or a sweatshirt. That’s exactly what I do in my art. If that’s what I’m doing in my art, if I’m looking internally and using these sorts of personal materials to take these steps towards something genuine, I’m not messing with the consumer. As a total believer in the almost mystical properties of design and visuals, my intentions were to recreate that visual dynamic catharsis of the first time I had seen someone wearing Vans. I’m reaching for that.

Above: Work for NY Times, 2020

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Umar Rashid The Man Known as Frohawk Two Feathers Interview by Doug Gillen and Evan Pricco Portrait by the artist

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are two minutes into our interview with Umar Rashid, famously known in some art circles as Frohawk Two Feathers, and he references the “malleability of history.” At this point, what you need to know about Umar is his adoption of a practice that is both loose and intricate, as if he is talking about the malleability of art as we know it. His research interprets the literal and figurative as he unearths new histories among our oldest stories and everything in between. It’s a rare capacity to speak freely about one’s identity and feel confident enough to challenge what that self is. But he is Umar Rashid, and he knows he has one shot. So while he’s at it, and luckily for us, he will decorate our world with a passionate sense of purpose and unique position of individuality. Evan Pricco: We all live in countries with a history of unrest, but I wonder what insurrection most fascinates you. Umar Rashid: There are actually quite a few insurrections. My number one, all-time favorite would have to be the Haitian Revolution because it was just… it needed to happen. If you want

to talk about modern conflicts, I think the Vietnamese and the French, the French and Vietnamese war, Dien Bien Phu. That was just amazing from the military standpoint in terms of when they took the country back, which ultimately led to the Vietnam-American war. What else is there, man? Doug Gillen: Why is that your go-to in a question that you probably get all the time? I don’t know, man. It’s because freedom struggles happen all the time. The whole world is full of popular misconceptions and horrible shit, and I just bring it to light in a very loose way. I make it accessible because if we’re at each other’s throats all the goddamn time, if we’re all like, “Fuck you. You did this to me,” it’s just like old school feuding. And that has to end. EP: At what point in your research do you feel like, okay, I’m ready to challenge this, have fun with this, reinterpret this for my work? I recently did this little workshop with the Hammer Museum about the malleability of history. I do believe there are certain times in historical record where, had things been done differently, we could have averted this modern

crisis, But in averting that particular crisis, you invite multiple crises. The way I think, man, being a Libra, I feel there is no good, there is no evil, there’s just a balance. Everything has to be balanced at the end of the day. Otherwise, Libras have a hard time making decisions because we only see the logical... I’m like a fucking Vulcan, man. I only see logic. I don’t see anything else. I’m not saying that I don’t get upset about things, like the status quo, the world or whatever; systemic racism and shit like that. Yes, that bothers me, that affects me, but I mean, you can continue on a particular path and hope for the best, or you can try to just initiate a dialogue where we sit back and we find our tribes, so to speak. Because your tribe doesn’t always look like you. Your tribe isn’t always going to be you. You can go to any place, any world, and everybody has the same problem. I don’t use the term white supremacy because I don’t believe that white people are inherently supreme. I also believe in the power and the intention of words, and the power and intention of images. We all do this. We all go about things in a weird fucked up way because our egos get involved. Even I can’t escape my own ego, like, “Yeah. I know a whole lot of shit.” So, it’s like, “I’m flawed too.” I don’t know. It’s just multiple perspectives. At the end of the day, you get this one life. Doug’s going to be Doug one time. Evan’s going to be Evan one time. Umar is going to be Umar one fucking time. It’s not like we’re going to be, like, “Oh yeah. Metaphysically, my soul age is a million years.” Man, fuck all that. You’re going to be you one time. You might turn into some other shit. I don’t know how that works. I don’t know anything about the end phases of human existence… EP: You just said you’re Umar once. I want to know about Frohawk Two Feathers and Umar Rashid. Is there a split? Is it the same? It’s the same. Frohawk Two Feathers, Umar, HiFidel. All the graffiti names that I had throughout my life. I just like to, a little bit, embody a persona that helps me enter a different phase and also I use it as a marker of the passage of time. When people call me Hi-Fidel, I know they know me from rapping. When people call me Frohawk, I know they know me from making art. When people call me Kent Cyclone, I know they know me from getting drunk and probably saying some whack shit or getting involved in a bar brawl, giving somebody a Glasgow kiss and making music at the same time. I grew up in a theater. My father was a playwright. I grew up shifting characters. I had to embody these particular characters in order to come up with these personas that influence my worldview— but now it’s like, the jig is up! It’s done. No more dancing. It’s just, like, this is me and all of my

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Above: Lo Life (Good Sport). The first equestrian games sponsored by Sir Ralph Lauren at Bronck’s Farm after the defeat of the Kingdom of Holland and Zeeland in Novum Eboracum (New York) 1794, Acrylic and mica flake on canvas, 48" x 48", 2021

multifaceted self, but it could also lead to some horrible schisms in the brain, which might lead to multiple personality disorder down the line. I hope to God that if I ever get Alzheimer’s, dementia or some shit like that, somebody just puts a fucking bullet in me. It was like, “Hey, do not resuscitate.” Because I would be like, “Oh, I’m the great Merlin doctor from Yale.” Shit. Don’t let me ever get dementia, man. Just seal the goddamn blast doors, man. DG: Do you feel that now with Umar Rashid, you’re kind of at the final stage of monikers, or are there still more to emerge? Yeah. It’s definitely the end man. I can live with this, because Umar Rashid is me. It’s the one that is me. It’s the name that I’ve lived with since I was

Above: The palace of the quilombos, Acrylic and mica flake on canvas, 72" x 84", 2015

born, and with all these personas, Umar Rashid has always been the constant. So, I do believe, I mean, if I start a space rock band, I might be like Lord Galactic Cosmo Codpiece, some weird shit. I don’t know. EP: I’m pretty fascinated about your father being a playwright. That seems like a really great place to start in the way that you approach a lot of the things. What is it like to grow up with a playwright? Difficult. EP: I can imagine. Because my father, not only is he a playwright, but he’s also an actor and a painter as well. So I would have to see plays where my father dies. I’d

have to see plays where my father is not such a great person and it was really weird; that made me realize that, “Oh man, we can be so many things and still be...” So that’s what brought about my personal journeys. You can be so many things and still be you. DG: Did that make it hard to understand who you were talking to at the end of the day? When you went home and you sat down for dinner, did you perceive a difference? He did a play called Passenger Past Midnight where he played Marvin Gaye, so he lived through Gaye’s whole life. He would come home and he’d be really feeling that pain that Marvin Gaye was going through. My brother and I, we would just say, “Okay, well he’s going through another one of UMAR RASHID JUXTAPOZ .COM 97

his things. Then the show will be over and he’ll be onto something new.” My mother was a thespian, too. Actually, my parents met when my father played Malcolm X and my mother played Betty Shabazz. It was a play called El-Hajj Malik, which is the name that Malcolm X took towards the end of his life. So, I actually grew up in a woke family. I didn’t have to wait until everybody else got ready. That’s another thing about the way that I look at things. I’ll be 45 this year, so I’m looking at things from a 44-year-old lens already, because that’s the life that I was born into. I’m not saying I have disdain for the infancy of most people’s ideas, but I have had a longer time to look at it all, and so that’s why I make the decisions I do with regards to race and politics and things. I mean, ultimately, I’m saying the same things that everybody else is saying, but there’s just certain things that I realized don’t work because I’ve seen it happen and I’ve seen it fail. I’m not a huge fan of marching, for example, and that’s just me. DG: Why? Actually, I just really hate crowds, because you can’t trust them. Every time there’s some crowd activity and something happens, people get trampled. I don’t want to get trampled to death. People have been marching, especially black people in this country, and we’ve been marching for a long time, since the ’60s. If you look at it, you can put the signs together. You can look at signs from 1965 in Birmingham, Alabama, in 2020, or whatever state, whatever metropolitan area in the United State, and the signs will be almost identical, asking for the same things. Now what has changed in 45 years? Not a whole lot. So what that says to me is that the situation won’t be resolved in this particular manner. I don’t advocate for violent reprisals because I think... It’s got to be a better way.

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DG: Was religion a part of your upbringing? What was your relationship with it, if any? That’s a very interesting question. So, growing up, even with my name, I grew up primarily Christian. My parents were into various African spiritualties, and that’s another thing about black people in the United States. It’s the reason I have the name that I have, because my mother and my father used to travel back and forth to Nigeria, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, and Ghana. So my father and my mother were hanging out with Fela Kuti and some of Fela’s friends. They were like, “Hey, if it’s going to be a girl, you should name her Rashida and if it’s a boy, you should name him Umar.” I was a boy, so they named me Umar Rashid. So that’s my whole first name. I’m not going to tell you my slave name, the name that was given to me by the captives of my people. Two reasons.

Above: Colonialism is state sponsored terror. Cotton applique, 36" x 48", 2019

Top left: Detail of Guy, or “Dolomiti, soldier of fortune and freedom fighter, Ink on paper. 32" x 40", 2019 Top left: Detail of Map of Vatica, Ink on paper. 32" x 40", 2019 Bottom: Goodbye Sancho, my tormentor. (I still love you) On the colonized mind, or a possible escape into apathy. Or, unbridled joy upon the death of your oppressor, followed by raucous laughter, Acrylic and mica flake on canvas, 72"x 84" each, 2020

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So they named me this name even though they were raised in a Christian tradition. I went through all the denominations of Christianity, from Baptist to Catholic, which is where I ended up. The thing about Catholicism that I really enjoy is its gilded nature. It’s very showy in its forms of ceremony, which I really liked. So when I was getting out of high school, I converted to Islam, so

I was practicing that, and I took the Shahada. I was practicing Muslim for some years, but then I met my wife who’s from Japan. She introduced me to Shinto and Buddhism, and so I stopped practicing organized religion after a while. I respect all faiths. DG: Did you find a common thread between the major religions you practiced?

Yeah. It’s just like Abrahamic religions. Definitely, there’s a commonality, especially between Christianity and Islam; it’s like the middle and the end, because it all begins with Judaism. All the Abrahamic faith comes from Abraham, who identified as Jewish, or whatever Jewish was back in those days. The Abrahamic faith is the Torah, the Injil and the Quran, the three books that hold these faiths together. Then again, at the end of the day, I couldn’t say that any one of those faiths represented me, or how any one of those, any of my personas, became the complete me. I needed to understand them. I needed to practice these faiths in order to understand them on a personal level. Nowadays, the world is pretty much known. You can be anywhere in 24 hours on this planet. The journeys that we take these days are more introspective. There’re more journeys into ourselves rather than the journeys of exploration and finding new lands and, “Oh, this sea moss is great. Perhaps we will figure out some way to cure cancer,” said nobody ever. You go through these phases, and I wouldn’t say it was a phase, because when I did practice religions, I was very devout. I used to sing. I loved going to Jumu’ah with my friends at the Mosque that I went to, and we would have discussions over a meal, especially during Ramadan. DG: Can you tell us about the process, and how you arrive at that final image in the painting? Usually it starts with the research, but if I’m not doing a show about anything specific, I usually do six months of research and six months of execution. For now, I’ve already researched the vast majority of the hard points, so I will just get into the intricacies later on. Right now, I’m trying to finish this narrative about the American West and also parts of New Spain. So that’s been the focus for the past five years. Five years before that, I did New England. EP: How often, as you look through history books and research, do you think, “I did not know this.” And when this happens, how does it change your perception of where the show’s going or where your consciousness goes? Every day I find something new to be wowed by, and that’s what keeps me going, finding new things. EP: With all the ways you approach your practice and make art built into these stories that you’re researching and telling, has anything changed in terms of the attention and collector bases having changed in the last couple of years? Yeah. I think what I’m doing is kind of leveling out. Normally, my M.O. was always to create, to just move so far in the future. My friend, the rapper Serengeti, once observed something about me that I felt was very accurate when he

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Top: Detail from The rise and fall of Ambroos Van Peere. Sea battle, Acrylic and ink on panel, 14" x 11", 2020 Bottom: Detail from The rise and fall of Ambroos Van Peere. A bustling colonial marketplace, Acrylic and ink on panel, 14" x 11", 2020

said, “Umar lives in the future and comes back to the present to give his own power presence.” So I literally don’t live here. I’m so far, I try to stay so far ahead because I don’t want to be caught in this wave of... reactionary shit. I hate reactivism. I want to be able to come from a position of strength and to come from a position of absolute, to talk about these things in a way in which they need to be talked about right at that particular time. I think that the problem with most revolutionary activities is that they are always reactionary. You can’t be reactive. You have to be proactive in your revolution. You can’t be reactive in your revolutionary ideals. So I’m being proactive. I’m taking a stance. I’m not saying that this is the

only stance that can be taken, but I just choose to show people what can happen, the possibilities that can happen, and also illustrate what has occurred, and get people into history and knowing what our history is, and to try not to fucking repeat that shit. Maybe not much can be said for us. Maybe we’re fucking doomed. I have no idea, but we’re going to have a good time because, like I said in the beginning, you’re going to be Evan once, you’re going to be Doug once, and I’m going to be Umar once. Everything comes back full circle at some point. But, as far as collectors go, I think that’s more of a market thing than it is about my work. I don’t think anybody’s just like, “Oh man, this guy’s brilliant,” or, “This guy’s a total fucking dick,”

Above: Surfriders vs the Jaguars from Mars (part 3 in the triptych, The Battle of Malibu: In three parts). Acrylic, ink, and mica flake on canvas, 72" x 84", 2020

or, “This guy really loves Himalayan rock salt.” But who knows? DG: Was this idea of revisionist history something that's always been with you, or was there a kind of a Eureka moment? Writers get writer's block, artist’s block, and I just wanted to have something that I made that I could do for the rest of my life, and this is what it became. So it was a Eureka moment, but it was also a moment in which I just kind of planned out my future. I made something that I could do forever and ever. @frohawktwofeathres

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Jane Dickson In the Middle of the Night Interview by Gwynned Vitello Portrait by Dondre Stuetley

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Above: Topless Dicso, Oil stick on linen, 48" x 30", 2020

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am a pretty literal person… a plainspoken Midwesterner.” Jane Dickson makes comfortable eye contact and speaks in approachable, matter-offact cadence, recalling how she didn’t get around to applying for college, but sort of backed into Harvard. Summers in Paris visiting her mother and attending classes at Beaux Arts only reinforced her fascination with defining America, though you won’t find any amber waves of grain in her oeuvre. Without frills or drama, she introduces us to strip clubs, tattoo parlors, casinos and suburban sprawl, often layered in loneliness, but always without judgment, always accompanied by a flicker of ambiguous light. Gwynned Vitello: From Paris to Harvard, to 43rd Street and 8th Avenue, you officially started your art career by answering a newspaper ad. Jane Dickson: “Of course, you know how to type?” And, of course, I answered, “Of course!” I left the job interview and immediately went across to a book store and bought Teach Yourself to Type and pounded out all weekend. I’m still not great, but by the time I learned how to use the programs, I learned to fake it. They were happy to get someone willing to give it a try, and I did know about animation. It was very crude— they hadn’t even invented floppy disks, and I remember it was so exciting when we got our first hard drive. It was so crude that I was perfectly equipped for it! You were assigned the night shift, which led to your first assignments, right? I would get in at 3:00 or 4:00pm and meet with the salespeople to see what ads I was supposed to work on. Then they would leave and I would be by myself behind the sign. They needed someone there the whole time it was running, to reboot it if it died. I was supposed to be designing ads for the next day or week, so I had a lot of time by myself to think and look out the window. I would go out for my lunch break around 9:00pm and go to this deli that was full of trans people, and it was a whole new world I knew nothing about, a lot more interesting than the still lifes I was setting up in my studio. All I can think of is crowds and New Year's Eve, and that almost sounds scary. How did it transform at night? It was fascinating, but yes, scary and repellent, so I think I used photography, and then painting and drawing, as a way to sort of tame what seemed scary. All of New York was so dirty and disgusting at that time, but at night you don’t see garbage as much. Well, bright lights can transform a city, so they all look pretty at night. Yeah, almost all you see are the bright lights. So, I was designing animation, white animation on a dark screen, so I started to replicate that with my work, painting canvases and panels black. I had done night street scenes in Boston, but that

Above: Liquors Conversation, Oil stick on linen, 56" x 36", 2020

was looking out of my leaky apartment windows at the rows of parked cars on the street. There was something about the loneliness of nighttime that I was already interested in, so it just made sense to me. Nighttime exacerbates loneliness, I guess… and a lot of other strong feelings. You have talked about having a fascination with the experience

of fear, and I wonder, at this time, was fear connected with physical danger? Well, I was in the subway and I was alone, and in my apartment, I would block the door. But it’s odd, thinking back, that I didn’t actively worry about being alone; as I said, I’d go and grab a sandwich or coffee. Times Square, however, was not really a place for a young woman, unless, I guess, you were working. People were snatching chains and JANE DICKSON JUXTAPOZ .COM 105

mugging, so it was not a place to be casual. I’d say I’m just naturally hyper-alert—and curious—which ended up with me carrying a camera and taking pictures. I also started sketching out the window of my office, which was above Times Square. It’s a little triangular building with windows. I had read Baudelaire, and you know, was intrigued with documenting the life of my time. Ha, I guess I’m fixated on New Year’s Eve, but did you personally witness it there? I programmed the sign for the New Year’s, I programmed the countdown, which led to me organizing this artist series with my own

animation, and it had Keith Haring, David Hammons, Jenny Holzer and a lot of cool artists. I convinced them to let it run right after midnight. After a year or so, my husband Charlie and I moved to a loft on 43rd, just down the street from the sign, so I lived through many New Year’s Eves, which I can say, was not a fun experience— although it led to a whole show of paintings on the subject. I can imagine the possibilities, so many people desperate to have fun. That is so not my holiday, this intent on being hopeful when the next is just another day.

I ended up being so interested in the idea of a crowd where people feel the need to convey their connection physically, so many people pushing and hanging onto each other. My daughter was born in 1989, so coming into ’90, I had a newbon, as well. My early work was all about loneliness, and this was all about connection. You know, all these people brought their kids and were either pulling them along or ignoring them. And it was about drunkenness, and yeah, sort of this desperation to have fun. I had thought, “Oh, I’ll just put this pillow over my head and wait till it’s over.” We could hear these horns endlessly, and I suddenly realized that I just should just go out and photograph this. If I hate it, I should photograph it. Later, in 2008, I did a big mosaic that’s in the subway, so now there’s this permanent presence of the revelers which came out of that experience.

"I ended up being so interested in the idea of a crowd where people feel the need to convey their connection physically." With different clothes and hair, but even in 2008, the crowd was in the same mood. If you just look at the form of the noisemakers, the horns and hats, they are absolutely Medieval. Now they’re made of cardboard and plastic, but it was people in big, long coats. I’m imagining masses of people outside of a castle and moat. How different was your work in the casinos, in Vegas? That’s a different shade of aloneness. Well, that was in 2008, which happened to be another economic bust, so it was totally different. It was kind of deserted. I remember thinking, ugh, that I hated gambling, hated Vegas—just didn’t want to go. An LA friend urged me to go, maintaining it would be great for my work. So I was, like, okay, I’ll go. And then I started taking pictures and realized how fascinating it is. There’s such a sense of disorientation designed into it, the carpet 106 FALL 2021

Above: Late Show Cop, Oil stick on linen, 32" x 22", 2020

Top: 2 Girls Felt, Acrylic on felt, 2020 Bottom: LA Lot Sunset 3, Acrylic on felt, 29.5" x 39.25", 2020

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patterns and lights, and nothing is a right angle! Every time I got off the elevator, I thought I’d have my bearings, but no, it’s deliberately designed to obviate all normal guideposts in order to empty your pockets. Like Times Square, it’s an entertainment zone that has a lot of aspiration and heartbreak. It happened that I was in Florida on the night of a Super Bowl. I wasn’t at the Super Bowl, but I saw this street fair and went back to take photos. Again, it was kind of deserted because all good Floridians were at the game. Or watching it on TV. I guess I gravitate to places that are unoccupied, or lightly occupied, where you want to be caught up in the crowd, but are not, and end up in a mode of hesitation, like, I thought this was gonna be really great, but when it’s not full of people… it looks a little tawdry. In my early days, I did a fair amount of time clubbing, but as a participant, I wasn’t there as an observer.

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So, when you painted the strippers, you definitely were there as an observer. Did you have a perception of exploitation, or rather, a sense of women owning their bodies? It’s complicated. I was asked by the writer Guy Trebay to illustrate a four-part series on Times Square, and the last section was on Melody Burlesque. I had never been to a strip club, except for going to the Playboy Club with my dad, which is another weird story. I told my husband, Charlie, that he had to go with me because they didn’t admit single women; they think you’re turning tricks if you’re alone. Melody Burlesque had a little stage, maybe three or four rows of seats on three sides. At this point, it was before plastic surgery was prevalent. So women had all kinds of bodies and they’d come out, one by one. I took photos, which you weren’t supposed to do, but I had a little black Minox that I carried with me all the time. I just sat there and click, click, click. I got a bunch of interesting photos and did drawings from them. Then our building was condemned as a part of the Times Square redevelopment.

Did you want to leave the area? I had two little kids and the building was full of creeps. I really didn’t want to raise children there, but I did keep my studio for about a year. I really wanted to focus on the heart of Times Square, which is the sex trade. Charlie went with me to Show World, got bounced taking photos and told me that was the last time; I had to figure out other men who would go with me. Because of this, I never had a chance to engage with the strippers. However, I had a friend, Jennifer Cabot, who was stripping her way through her master’s program at Columbia, so she took me to clubs. I spent a lot of time at Filly’s and this bar Tin Pan Alley, which happened to be the focus of that TV show, The Deuce. Other artists worked there, but a bunch of the women came from a much harder life. Jennifer was, like, “I have a fantastic body, I like to shake it and men hand me lots of money.” She liked the power of it, but I thought it was exploitation. I did the stripper pieces mostly on sandpaper with oil stick, so they had a kind of

Top left: Anco, Oil stick on paper, 20" x 22", 2020 Bottom left: Dance, Oil stick on linen, 32" x 22", 2020 Right: DVD Sale, Oil stick on paper, 13.5" x 20", 2020

lipstick quality. The surface is abrasive, but then it’s very juicy, so it’s seductive and repellent at the same time. I wanted to ask about your use of unexpected surfaces and mix of textures. I hesitate using the word “visceral” because it’s so overused, but your method does produce a very tactile, almost sculptural experience. Isn’t it a lot harder to paint that way? I like the challenge of figuring it out. Once I’ve gotten too comfortable with a certain set of materials, then I like to switch it up. I find that sometimes, if I go back to something I haven’t used in years, like sandpaper, it’s hard again, and I wonder how in the heck did I do this? When I do things that are fluid, I enjoy it, but then they end up looking like somebody else’s work. I guess mine has to have a certain resistance. What surface did you use for your carnival series? The one behind is on black vinyl, but the big ones are on canvas. Often, when I get the bug, I have to use canvas, but, if it’s rough, linen can work. I’m trying to figure out what my next material will be. I’ve got this sample card with all these beautiful felt colors, and am going to order a roll of felt, maybe the blue. It’s not quite the expectation of New Year’s but going to a carnival involves aspiration, or at least a lot of anticipation. You go on a ride, and you’re pretty happy afterwards, but there are moments of transcendence. I’ve done a series of ferris wheels, where you’re going up, up, up and you’re at the top… and then it’s over. But then you gotta have another hit. It’s like a drug or something, so it’s not like you end up blissful. Oh God, more desperation. I’m determined to have fun! “I’m going to Disneyland and I have to have all my fantasies met.” It’s a place where people are living their lives in public for those moments. I look at other people in groups and perceive a similar, shared dynamic that I think I recognize. Or maybe I’m projecting it on them? Nowadays, I notice people of a certain age. Suddenly I’m noticing grandmas with little grandkids. I look around and see whatever I’m thinking about, and then I paint those people. But I’m not a documentarian. I’m not really doing portraits of people. It’s just an expression, a moment, a feeling that I recognize and identify with—or again, project! Anything you can share from the show at Southampton Arts? They did pick one of my drawings to be a poster outside the show. It’s a closeup of this young Black guy. He’s got his baseball cap on backwards, there are fireworks shooting off behind him, and he has this eagerness, you know. He’s this young,

Above: Times Square, Hotel Girl Viv On Roof Hotel Carter, ps for Stems Print

attractive person enjoying the fireworks and he’s, like, “Look out word, here I come.” It looks like it should be a portrait of someone famous, but he’s just a guy I happened to catch in a photo. I love this guy’s expression, which is not typical for me. He’s looking straight at you, and he’s sort of ecstatic. I’m not sure why I was so intent on drawing this guy. Maybe you're projecting, maybe you are excited about becoming a grandma?

I’ve always wanted to do a whole series of fireworks, though I’ve done a few with them in the background. This was one attempt, though, for me, it’s not a theme that has ever quite blossomed. Jane Dickson will have a solo show with James Fuentes Gallery in NYC in 2022, a traveling exhibition New York Underground: East Village in the ’80s for the Seoul Museum of Art and Beyond the Streets, which will be shown in various venues in China.

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Shaina McCoy It’s a Family Affair Interview by Shaquille Heath Portrait by the artist

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Above: The McCoys II, Oil on canvas, 60" x 84", 2019

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y conversation with Shaina McCoy happened about a week after Father’s Day. I had spent that previous Sunday morning going through old pictures, aiming to find that idyllic shot of my dad for an Instagram story commemorating the yearly occasion. It turned out to be the perfect way to prepare for our interview. A 1990’s kid like McCoy, my family photos are a collection of faded polaroids and wallet-size portrait studio shots. There’s lots of feathered bangs, GAP hoodies, and overalls, reminiscent of a time when these portraits were the art that tightly lined the crannies of our living room walls. And, if you’ve visited your parents recently, this fact likely still holds true. These snapshots are the catalyst for McCoy’s colorful, charming portraits, which feature memories from her own family’s photo albums. With thick dollops, richly textured, she caresses

Above: Pop and Bre, Oil on canvas, 60" x 40", 2019

Black familial intimacy in moments that are beyond tender. Immersed in her work, I’m transported to Saturday get-togethers with my own family… when Pac fades to Stevie and the cigarettes burn slow. McCoy’s subjects eschew distinct facial features, an invitation to reminisce in the felicity of memory. It doesn’t take long before these dreamy portraits begin to mutate before your eyes, transforming her family’s portraits into reflections of one’s own, prompting the urge to pull out old photo albums and dive head first into nostalgia. Shaquille Heath: How are you utilizing Black girl magic to take care of yourself right now, and where are you finding your joy? Shaina McCoy: I think it’s just staying rooted with family and checking in on everyone. When everyone else is good, I’m good. Just being a part of nature… disconnecting from the internet and

being more present. Definitely working out has been a huge therapeutic part of my life recently. It’s kind of a day-to-day thing, finding balance and making sure that I’m taking care of my body and having a clear mind. It’s not always a priority to make art, because it’s most important that I take care of my body so everything else can happen. Speaking of… your work centers so much around your family. Thinking of this past year, so many people have had to be away from theirs. Is your family closeby, and were you able to stay connected to them? I saw them every now and again, but I was very serious and on top of my testing, ensuring that I was in the clear before I saw anyone. Especially like my grandma, my grandpa… I did have Covid last May. And so I was being super careful around that and I stayed home. I didn’t do any work. I wasn’t separated from them as much as other folks were, which is a very big privilege to have.

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"You can be an artist, you can be the person in this photo that looks really cool. That’s really reassuring." My family lives here in Minnesota, on both sides, and so if it wasn’t FaceTime, it was a phone call. If it wasn’t a phone call, it was a drive by hello. I can always call up my family and say, “Hey, what’s happening in this photo? What’s going on? Who’s that person?” And they’re always happy to share stories with me at any time. I have been blessed to be able to stay connected with them through this time. I wondered if you typically knew who everyone in the photos you selected to paint? Or are you more like, “This is a dope picture, but who are these people?” Ha ha, not all the time. Sometimes I gravitate towards a piece because of the way someone is 114 FALL 2021

holding a child or an elder. And I sometimes don’t know who those people are, so I have to ask, like, “Hey, who is cousin Sean holding? What’s going on there?” And I’m lucky enough that the family knows who is who. There was one time where I thought it was a cousin of mine; it’s in this piece titled Great Aunt Dorothy and Mel… and we all thought that was my cousin Mel, and then they came back to me and were like, “That’s Marlene!” I was like, oh my gosh, no! It’s out there in the world already! Ha ha, oh no! Well, it’s the essence of both of them together, right? The genes are strong!

One of my favorite pieces is Self Portrait Number 9, which is a picture from when you were a little girl. I was wondering, what are the kinds of things that go through your mind when you paint a past self, and reflect on this little girl? It’s kind of… strange. It kind of feels like an outof-body experience, because I look back and I say, “Oh, I want to hold that little girl!” But, that little girl is me. I mean, I know that she’d be so proud of where I’m at today. I look at all these little self portraits, and I’m like, “Oh my gosh!” I look forward to having all these little children and little mini-me’s. It brings me back to my purpose as to why I do these things. And why I have to continue to press on with my art for my future family. You know, I want to be able for them to have everything they want and need from a parent. It’s always so fun to look back on “baby you” and to think about where you were and what you wanted. What were your aspirations growing up? Did you always want to be an artist? From a very young age, I always had an interest

Above left: Babygirl II, Oil on canvas, 30" x 40", 2020 Above right: Nana, Oil on canvas, 40" x 60", 2020

in creative activities. But, growing up, I remember around the fifth grade, I wanted to be an art teacher. And then art teacher became fashion designer. Fashion designer became artist, and artist became painter, ha ha. So, it just became more defined into the area I really wanted to focus on. I remember, in high school, I was like, “Wow these art teachers are super influential to youth,” and, “If I could only spark that level into another person as an adolescent in the arts, I would love to do that!” To pass on the baton. But I realized I actually really do love painting, so let me go ahead and dive into that. I don’t know if teaching in the arts can be a thing for me, but if I have a community willing to make space, I know I can always fit in there and share my knowledge to the best of my abilities. Speaking of kids, I feel like so much of your work reflects childhood, particularly Black children. Is painting children something that was intentional, or did you discover yourself naturally drawn to the subject? In my high school years studying art history, I

Above: Astralblak, Oil on canvas, 84" x 60", 2019

always gravitated to the images of the mother and child. And then, throughout my family’s history, and looking back on photos, again I saw the mother and child, like this proximity to parents just really rang true throughout the generations. I love that for our family and I wanted to be able to recreate those images of Black children… Black girl magic… Black boy joy. And also the parenthood throughout, especially because my parents were teen parents, and I hold on to that childhood. I didn’t grow up going to art museums, and I remember when I did see art, it was just never reflective of me. I love that today, and particularly in your work, these little Black kids are going to grow up and completely see themselves. Yes, I love when the kiddos interact with the art! I was able to see that in-person during the Pandemic. I had a soft opening at the François Ghebaly Gallery in L.A., and the kiddos came through. I wouldn’t let anyone else touch the pieces, but if they wanted to touch the paintings… I didn’t see a thing!

I love when they interact with the work. It means a lot to me when they can see themselves that way and realize they can be anything they want to be. You can be an artist, you can be the person in this photo that looks really cool. That’s really reassuring. I imagine that our readers may want to hear a little bit more about your choice to not paint faces. I’m wondering if you would share more about that? Of course! So, I went to the Perpich Center for Arts Education in Minnesota. It’s a high school for the performing arts, and they had all these different programs, from the visual arts to theater. In my junior year, we studied all the different kinds of mediums in visual arts, and in twelfth grade, you got to choose what you wanted to focus on. I chose the drawing and sculpture course, but I found myself not knowing how to use this medium. I didn’t have access to oil paint and it was super expensive. A guest studio teacher, Megan Rye, came into the classroom and said, “We’re doing 30 paintings for

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Yes! And I didn’t realize that until folks started really interacting with it. Folks would gravitate towards it and say, like, “Oh my gosh, this looks like my granddaughter! This looks like my dad!” It’s really good that the community can share such language… that unknown language that I created between the viewer and the artist. I didn’t know I could do that. Your paintings look so much like ’80s and ’90s portrait studio photos. Is that what they are? Yes, that’s exactly right! Okay, so my grandpa, his name is Steven Smith, and he’s a photographer. He loves his family and he loves the work that he does, so he’s always bringing his camera with him. So, back in the day, he used to work at… I think it was a 24-Hour Photo or something like that. When he was out taking his pictures, he was getting them developed the same day, so we have countless albums that we share with each other. He’ll bring something to me and say, “I got a new one for you!” and I’m like, “We got fresh material... Let’s go!”

the next three weeks.” We were like, are you nuts?! She meant these little five by seven paintings. They were for a benefit for the houseless community here in the Twin Cities, to be sold at $30 a piece. It would help a person stay in the shelter for the night and get them their necessities, and to feed them. That meant a lot to me, and it still does. I’m currently a part of the Art4Shelter committee, and we’re still doing this thing. So, at that point, I still didn’t know how to paint faces. I wanted to—so bad! I could execute and draw very realistically with charcoal and graphite. But then when it came to a new medium I’d never used before… ya know, I didn’t know how to clean my brushes. The colors were muddy… There were about 12 students in that class, and every week we would put up our 10 paintings and speak about them. We were so good to each other! So kind! We would never tear each other apart, ever. But one of the class critiques—I think one of the first ones that I had were from Megan Rye and Karen Monson, who were our studio arts teachers at the time. They really enjoyed my work and Megan was like, “Continue to do this thing, it’s uniquely you. It’s beautiful. Even if it doesn’t 116 FALL 2021

have features, there’s something very angelic and refreshing about it.” I was dang near about to cry in class! I was not confident in the work at all, because I wanted to paint realistically like my peers. You know, I wanted to be able to paint what was from a photograph and I simply couldn’t. And so, to hear those words in that time was super meaningful, and they stuck with me. And so I always give my thanks to Karen and Megan for instilling that confidence in me, and I could carry on. I don’t know what I would be doing today if I didn’t attend the Perpich Center, or if I didn’t hear those words from those two women. They believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself, and I’m super glad that I had them—and I still have them! That’s so dope! It’s really interesting that it was kind of kismet. And that it has this “turn a weakness into a strength” vibe. But it’s not even a weakness, it’s just honing in on what makes you, you! I’m very into the universe and that it knows what’s best for us before we do. And because you paint in this very specific way, it enables even more people to envision themselves in your work.

So, yeah, there’s photos from Polaroid to long film pieces. My grandpa still has all of the negatives from his original photos. He’s provided so much material over the years. Because of his passion…. because of his eye… because of wanting to capture that moment, even if people are never ready for that photograph, he’s always snapping. I’m so thankful that he was a creator, and still is a creator, and has that specific eye. We call him Pop Pop. Or Pop Pop Chicken Foot, and he’s such a goofy goober! I don’t know what I would be painting if I didn’t have those people behind the cameras on my mom’s side, and my dad’s side. But a lot of my paintings are based off of photography that he’s done over the years. I’m sure he must be so proud! Because it’s not just, I’m watching my baby girl grow up and become this incredible artist, but that she’s finding her inspiration because of MY own work. Yeah, he’s so happy. He definitely expresses to me that he feels blessed and he’s thankful that we’re able to have this kind of lifelong collaboration. I’m super thankful for that. I get asked a lot like, “Are there any other painters in your family?” And I’m, like, no, but we have a quilter... My great grandmother was a quilter. My grandpa was a photographer. My great grandmother and her children were all crocheters. So we’re all very tactile. Yeah, and my dad’s a barber, so he’s got the eye for detail. Sometimes I find myself holding a paintbrush like clippers. It’s just really funny. I’ll be doing the lineup. In my head I’m singing the Sly song, “It’s a family affair.” So much creativity in your genes. Ha ha, yes! shainamccoy.com @wallflowermccoy

Above: Self Portrait 7, Oil on canvas, 60" x 60", 2019

Above: Ba, Oil on canvas, 60" x 84", 2020

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Alfonso Gonzalez Jr. The Power of Observation Interview by Kristin Farr Portrait by Eduardo Medrano Jr.

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ook at your environment from a perspective like the one held by breakthrough observationalist Alfonso Gonzalez Jr. and you see that art is everywhere. The artist views land and cityscapes through an archeological lens, studying the evolution of visual communication, early on through a camera, and now with paint. His work is a record of time, fragmented moments that will look different by tomorrow—an ever-changing LA street patina captured by his perceptive eye that fathoms the layers of time, excavating the heart from the fades and ephemerality of existence. Alfonso’s inspired realities shape and push forward the rightful narratives of our time.

character, and the teenager decided to draw a penis on the face of a real estate agent on the bus bench, the rivalries between LA hoods, the sloppy erasure of unwanted graffiti. These are all stories and decisions of how a city comes to look the way it does.

in and out, walking around the corner down the street, in and out of a building, looking up, down and around. The irony is that I’m terrible with computers and tech. I still approach the production of my work the old school way, the way I learned through sign painting.

Is your work a method of preserving time? I see my work as documentation, like archiving and archaeology. With the world changing at such a rapid rate, this is the last time our cities are going to look the way they do. I want to preserve and convey to people that our communities are beautiful. And I want to compel people to look for what the communities before them left behind— the traces, imperfections, culture.

Kristin Farr: What attracts you to weathered surfaces? Alfonso Gonzalez Jr: When I see a weathered surface in LA, I think about the people and community. It’s people who influence and change a surface. I’m constantly amazed by people's aesthetic decisions, and a community's relationship to public space— like why someone chose to name a business a certain name, or paint a building a certain color, why the truck driver chose to paint a Looney Tunes

How else does contemporary life influence your practice? Since I grew up looking at screens, it impacts the way I approach a new work. I found that, when making compositions, my mind sometimes thinks about viewing them on a screen and cropping the image with the zoom option. My recent work focuses on landscapes. I find a cohesive parallel with the work by imagining the environment on Google Maps. Zooming

Tell me about your Dad, the sign painter. My dad Alfonso Gonzalez Sr., a.k.a. AL SIGNS, has been painting signs for over 40 years. He’s originally from Tijuana and moved to City Terrace, Los Angeles, in the early 1970s. He’s always had an art practice and began painting commercially as a career. Because of him, I grew up around books and magazines about Mexican muralism, airbrush painting, lowrider and car culture. The first book I remember looking at was on David Alfaro Siqueros. My father continues to paint signs and make art. I see truck lettering he’s done everytime I drive on a Southern California highway. Since you reference it as inspiration, talk about your neighborhood. I currently live and work in East Los Angeles. My parents’ folks both came to East LA when they immigrated to the U.S, so I have fond memories of family here. It’s 96% Latino—the highest percentage of any neighborhood in Los Angeles County. The area is rich with history and culture. Some of the movements I found the most inspiring flourished in East LA, collectives like Asco, Los Four and the East Los Streetscapers. When I was a kid, I lived in Avocado Heights, an equestrian area in unincorporated LA. Avocado Heights is still equestrian and semi-rural. It feels like a ranch in Mexico. The juxtaposition of rural ranch and industrial warehouses in California gave me a unique perspective and was a reminder that the identity of the city stretches beyond the Hollywood experience. What’s an example of reference to yourself or someone you know in one of your paintings? In Avocado Heights from 2019, I painted the house I grew up in. The painting referenced a current version of my old house. Although the home looks different now, I remembered exactly how it used to look and feel when I was younger. This was the first time the cholo on the horse appeared. Years later, I focused on the cholo again in Sueños (2021). Sueños embodies the memories, dreams, and daily life I experienced growing up in the equestrian and semi-rural barrio of Avocado Heights. Throughout my formative years, I looked up to the local youth within this community that rode horses in their ’90s-style clothing. This style of dressing was criminalized and led to racial profiling. Sueños is an exploration and a homage to the distinctive lifestyle born from the convergence of Mexican paisa culture and LA gang culture. Set amongst the mountainous and semi-industrial landscape

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Above: Fabuloso, Oil, enamel, latex, on canvas, 48" x 48", 2020

Top: Figueroa st. Beauty salon, Enamel, latex, gel medium, dirt,on canvas, 96" x 48", 2020 Bottom: Doroteos, Oil, enamel, latex, vinyl, on canvas, 82" x 73", 2018

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of my youth, this work not only commemorates my hometown, but also challenges historic representations of power. Colonizers have often been portrayed as valiant white men on horseback in oil paintings throughout history. I subvert this cliched image of strength and masculinity by substituting the “heroic” white male with the cholos who roamed my childhood community on horseback. Who do you prioritize as the audience for your artwork? I don’t prioritize an audience for my work. I would like to think almost everyone can see my work and come up with an idea about it. One of the greatest things about being an artist is the wide range of people I come into contact with. The conversations I have directly inform ideas and subjects in my work. The perspective of a street vendor or a professor are equally as valuable to me. Some people are drawn to the materials and process, others are more interested in the idea behind it. What are some ways you’ve noticed LA change over time that come up in your work? Los Angeles changing over time has been a big drive in the work I make. Years before I started making paintings, I was obsessively documenting Southern California with a deep focus on LA. I began traveling in my late teens and early twenties, and every time I’d come back home, I'd see the erasure of culture in torn down buildings with new stale developments, and the erasure of murals became the norm. The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated this process of family owned businesses being forced to close and everything else that comes with gentrification. Some of the subjects I allude to in my work are directly referenced from that reality. I make a lot of work of imagined compositions that don't exist, but that I feel would exist in real life. Any memorable stories from your recent travels in Europe and elsewhere? The last time I was in Europe was in March 2020 for a group show in Berlin. It was around the time when Covid rates started rising. I was there for a week, and I saw how people’s mannerisms changed at the airport. When I first was at the airport, some people wore masks, and then when I was coming back, people were in hazmat suits - all in a week’s time. I flew back two days before the borders shut. What were some of the paintings you made that documented these times we’re living in? It was fascinating to see completely empty freeways during the beginning of the pandemic. Los Angeles is known for heavy traffic, but it was a post-apocalyptic LA. I never thought I'd see something like that in my lifetime. I made a work focusing on the empty highways. Another work I

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made during that time was an advertisement for Fabuloso, a common household cleaning product. During Covid, I started noticing ads in my neighborhood for cleaning products more than ever. A sign of the times. Any other unintentional art or street scene in the current landscape that recently caught your eye? I've been watching the construction of the 6th Street bridge over the Los Angeles River and 101 freeway. I see it every day on the way to the studio, and it's been fascinating to see the evolution of the construction. I’m drawn to the exposed wood and steel that will eventually be covered by concrete. I find the stage before the concrete to be the most visually appealing. Once it’s complete, it’s easy to forget about the labor and materials that went into it.

How did you develop such perfect painting skills? Thank you for thinking that, but I don’t paint perfectly, and I’m fine with that. I love brush strokes and subtle imperfections. I do have an admiration for the people who take the time to develop craft and skill. I also love people who don’t care or focus on perfection. I think what makes any work good is if it's genuine. I didn’t go to art school; instead I attended Doc Guthrie’s Sign Graphics course at LA Trade Tech Community College. The first jobs I had after high school were as a freelance sign painter and working for different sign shops. I eventually started working as a low-level apprentice with a company that paints large outdoor advertisements on the sides of big buildings. My only experience then was lettering and a

Above: Mr.Giraffe, Oil, enamel,latex on canvas, 38" x 30", 2020

Above: LA Real Estate, Oil, enamel, coroplast, vinyl, on canvas, 48" x 53", 2019

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Above: Sueńos, Oil,enamel, on canvas, 138" x 94", 2021

basic understanding of oil and enamel paint. The people I worked with had a vast experience reproducing any image and advertisement. Before digital printing, everything was painted. I had the opportunity to work with old billboard painters who started before computer printers took over. After years of watching, painting backgrounds and simple areas, I began to understand the process. I saw the process of producing these large-scale murals like painting using a microscope. It allowed me to see things that would have been invisible or subtle on a smaller scale. It made me paint subjects and use techniques I would otherwise have no interest in. What are you working on now? I’m doing my first solo show at Matthew Brown Gallery LA in early 2022. I’m excited to show work in other countries and expand my practice, and I’m grateful to keep doing the work.

"When the pressure is off is when the authentic expression comes out." Your reference to the line-up of shoplifter photos behind the counter at corner stores as photo installations really stuck with me. I see so many fascinating and thought-provoking things, like coin machine rides, bounce houses and lunch truck murals, and I connect them in my work. It makes me wonder how many more artists the world would have if people had the opportunity. It's intriguing to see the space and context of objects being displayed, and how that influences their perception and value. I also don’t believe all stunning work needs to be shown in galleries and institutional spaces to make it engaging. There’s something pure about creating for the sake of creating. So many people who have an appreciation of art are afraid to attempt making something because of insecurities of it being bad. There is an unrestrained freedom about work that is in public spaces. When the pressure is off is when the authentic expression comes out. @alfonsogonzalezjr alfonsogonzalezjr.com

Above: K-town landscape, Oil, enamel, on canvas, 48" x 48", 2020 Bottom: Puerco, Enamel, gel medium, dirt on canvas, 10" x 10", 2020

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Lily Wong The Lightseeker Interview by Anthony Cudahy Portrait by Laura June Kirsch

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s with many artists, Covid-19 disrupted and changed Lily Wong's practice. Her figures, once rendered tiny and placed in maze-like environments, began to fill the frame, twisting and swelling into their own claustrophobic architecture. Color began to exert an intense, metaphorical force, often glowing and luminous. The works on paper grew in size, doubling and tripling in surface area, while Wong's intricate process of mark-making and building up of the paint grew in exponential complexity. This partially portrays the power these figures and narratives possess, but the impetus is Wong herself, as deep and considerate a thinker as she is a deft creator. We met in her Greenpoint studio in early June to discuss her influences and concerns, as well as the major changes the past year has made to her practice. Anthony Cudahy: So I watched Happy Together last night, and actually you said you hadn’t seen that one?

Lily Wong: I need to. The classics for me are Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love. There’s a website of stills from Wong Kar-wai’s movies I use for color inspiration. But here’s the thing, I feel like such a fake [laughs]. I always feel like an outsider, like six-feet-removed from these experiences that I don’t necessarily have a physical history with but have a lot of attachment to. I love to look at all sorts of anime but I’m not invested in any storylines, I’m watching for the animation styles or the colors. Or in referencing Wong Kar-wai movies, I always get this imposter’s syndrome mixed with a false nostalgia because so many of his films are from a specific time and place in Hong Kong, where my dad grew up. I secretly associate feelings of home with it, but I’ve never been there, and I know very little about my dad’s family. It’s like being very hungry for something you have no ability to access, but knowing that part of it also is embedded in you.

Isn’t that the impetus of creating and looking in general? You might not be on the same wavelength as everybody else, but you’re definitely recognizing something. There isn’t just one way to appreciate or have a dialogue with the cinematographer or even your own personal feelings about your father. That’s true, and I’ve been trying to give myself more grace. I had such a hang-up about that in school, feeling I had to factually prove my reality like, “I know this lineage. I know this history. This is what I’m referencing.” That’s not necessarily my approach. I have what I’m interested in and create a whole fantasy around it. I get so deep into that fantasy that it becomes completely detached from the real thing. I’m reminded of “Utopia’s Seating Chart,” the Muñoz essay. He draws all these connections so intuitively. It’s not so much a linear way of thinking, but more of following coincidences and interests. It’s less hierarchical. In focusing on the backdrops of anime or the color scheme of a film, you’re still engaged in dialogue with the art. I’m leaning into that more. The progress that I’ve made in the past year is because I haven’t had the noise of school in the background, and not having to defend myself in class, where it feels like everyone wants you to have this incredibly synthesized view of your work and interests. I love Japanese woodblock prints and Mughalillustrated manuscripts, stuff that pulls from folklore and Eastern mythology. Cave paintings, too. I’m also very drawn to imagery that’s rooted in pop culture aesthetics of of our childhood, especially cartoons, but the way we’ve been taught to think about any of that is completely divorced from “art” or painting with a capital P. It’s all outside the Western canon of art, which was rarely the dominant lens I was looking through. I never really know how to explain why I’m so drawn to paper, but I’ve been thinking about that a lot more lately, and how paper is foundational to so much of what I’m interested in. From my educational experience, few people talked about these ways of making in terms that school validates. I don’t know how to talk about Sailor Moon academically, but I know something important is there! Millions of people globally love that aesthetic. Sailor Moon is, specifically, some of the first art that I was obsessed with. That was the earliest thing I remember consuming on television. This hierarchy, whether on paper or the way certain things are rendered, is especially present in color. I feel like when we graduated undergrad, there was a whole color world that was “not allowed.” Especially bright, saturated Pop-y colors—there

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Above: Concession, Acrylic on paper, 40" x 48", 2021

Above: Lightseekers, Acrylic on paper, 22" x 30", 2021

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wasn’t room for that, but a lot has shifted since then. In my work, I’m trying to embed this radiating glow that I realized comes from television screens. I tried to exactly color copy a still from Wong Kar-wai’s Fallen Angels. I held swatches to the screen and everything matched, but it wasn’t working because so much of that glow is the way the device creates and projects the light. Color can be such an ephemeral goal, and with you, it’s a different medium, although the way that you layer on paper is similar to screen light because the paper glows from beneath. The glow when my work was only in black was just the stark white of the paper. I started diving into color shortly after I switched from ink to acrylic. I felt all this pressure—I tried a couple things on linen, which I hated. It’s not the same. This year, having to get to know paper again through a different medium, and using color, I feel like I understand it better, and what its function is. Some woodblock printing is like that too, really thin layers of color, printed on top of each other.

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I’ve been looking at Yoshitoshi’s 100 Aspects of the Moon series. Each print is based on historical anecdotes or mythology, and I love how the intensity and energy of each story is captured so elegantly on this fragile paper. There’s one print depicting the goddess Chang’e fleeing to the moon after stealing the elixir of life, which is sort of beautiful and romantic. But in several versions of this story, her now immortal life is spent on the moon, forever making the potion with her rabbit companion. It’s quite Sisyphian, this unattainable elixir. I think many modes of Asian art making are not a quick read. With Mughal manuscript paintings, the narrative isn’t on a singular plane. It’s embedded in multiple perspectives and timelines smushed together. Or with Chinese scroll paintings, it’s like a slow circular read where absence or negative space is what activates minute details. This concept of the essence is super important, capturing something that is ephemeral. I think that’s why I love drawing and the language of cartooning.

It’s so digestible, but what you see is hardly ever what you get. A lot of your pieces remind me of Giotto. Italian Renaissance art moved towards hierarchical images afterwards, but he consolidated the Byzantine jam-packed space, and color is narrative, which I feel relates to you. That’s what I’ve been finding really exciting about color. In the past two years, my work has had a big scale shift, and I’ve zoomed in from multiple narratives into more singular ones. I’ve had some guilt about that because I felt like I was conceding this part of image making that’s really important to me, like hiding these Easter eggs that create this cyclical read. Especially when the work was still just black and white, it really felt like something got lost. But, moving into color, especially yellow, was a spark. Color is where the narrative subtleties are being embedded now. Color changes the way an image reorients your eyes when navigating a space. When I was working smaller and in a different compositional style, I could insert everything

Above: Spider, Acrylic on paper, 15" x 12", 2019

I was thinking about but I’ve really had to rein that in. Architecture was really present before, but now figuration and color are their own internal architecture. A big part of your thesis paper and work was the intentional use of yellow formally and metaphorically. Before, there was so much ornamentation and adornment used as cultural signifiers, but I felt like that was setting the undertone of the work in a very restrictive way. Yellow can be used as the same sort of thing while also activating and navigating its position in our collective cultural memory. It also functions as a visual tool, light-wise. I was thinking about Contact, where yellow functions as the saturated color that’s coming at you, but then it’s also this omnipresent stain. Stain, yes. Residue, remnants... I’m super interested in the Veil of Veronica right now and the idea of this leftover imprint of a face being a “true” representation of the actual person. The cowgirl piece (Contact) is the most explicit use of yellow. Using yellow as a descriptor for people is still so tainted by its violent history. But “AsianAmerican” is too vague and I can’t possibly pin it down. For myself, yellow is actually very accurate and speaks to my own history, and I almost can’t use it because it makes other people so uncomfortable. So it’s not really a reclaiming, but a reinforcement of its existence.

"We want things to be binary, and nothing is." I also think about the Korean concept of han as a repetition of suffering, another type of cultural stain. In carrying that, you’re always revisiting this site of conflict or injury or pain. But to exit that site means having to go back through the way you came. I think maybe that’s the function of yellow in my work. I get nervous though, because that’s a piece of myself I don’t want to give too much of because people will hold on to that really hard. That’s where the title for my most recent show, I Wasn’t There, came from. Whenever you reach a sort of understanding or feeling of resolution, there’s always something else to disrupt and unmake that sense of self. In Minor Feelings, Cathy Park Hong writes about often existing in this place of conflict and of having to hold multiple truths at once. I think that’s a super uncomfortable place for people to exist. We want things to be binary, and nothing is. The art world has such a simplified view of systemic issues and identity, which are weaved into everything. What you were saying about not

Top: A Passing Traveler, Acrylic on paper, 51" x 65", 2021 Bottom: My Past Lives, Acrylic on paper, 40" x 26", 2021

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reclaiming is an important distinction because artspeak wants to frame things as “antagonistic to this,” or “subverting this,” but when you’re trying to examine your experience, it’s never going to be that neat, tidy package. There will never be a moment of having arrived, as if laying claim to... ...Like “wipe your hands,” done. That's a challenge I’m trying to navigate. For the longest time, I

avoided talking about any of this, because then I’m pigeon-holed. It gets especially fuzzy when it comes to Asian-American identity, because it occupies this enormous swath of in-between space of hypervisible non-existence.

so hard to walk it back. I feel like whatever direction I choose, there’s always another part of myself that’s being denied. I did a studio visit today and wondered how much am I going to tell this person?

How do I talk about trauma and give just the right amount? Because once you reveal it, it’s

It almost feels that in revealing a trauma, it’s the finish line. Instead, it’s more of an important detail that you can now enter. It’s the beginning. It’s just opening the door, but people get stuck there. And even when you express this frustration with trauma-gazing, then that gets framed as “the thing.” It’s a loop. In school I was trying to package everything in a linear way. I’m trying to now have a more instinctual conversation with different parts of myself and figure out the various access points I want to provide. In those dialogues, there’s almost this reification of the idea that someone different from you isn’t fully human. There are material, historical differences between people and their experiences. But when you have this sort of artspeak notion of identity, you never truly engage personally. You’re engaging with the idea or projection of this person. The worlds that you create are open-ended. It’s the first step and it’s generative, never providing a packaged, prescriptive statement. You’re going to love Chungking Express. It’s multiple parallel stories with no real conclusions. Even the synopsis doesn’t capture it because it’s experiential. The main characters’ stories are almost completely separate, except for several brief, shared encounters. And their relationships to each other are mostly through fragments of the other person or fragments of shared space. Within those tiny slivers of urban space are these narratives around longing, desire and aching, all allowed to exist in the muddiness. This thing we are trying to grasp at, the second you have it, it’s out of your reach again. There’s an awareness of that—it’s not trying to be tidy. Happy Together seemed on your wavelength because the film constantly shifts between black and white and extreme color. It’s the Wizard of Oz technicolor reveal, but twenty times. And every time the color returns, you gasp. This concept of hybrid, fragmented selves is always present and I think of that black-andwhite work as another split self. Those aspects of the self are always in flux, but it’s never the singular unified self that reorients to various environments. It’s the multiple consciousnesses all reorienting at the same time, like the Coney Island ferris wheel. Not all the carts are stationary. Some do a scary thing where they move as the wheel is going around. You’ve got your whole container of self in motion, and then within that there are different components also in motion.

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Above: Double Consciousness, Acrylic on paper, 18.5" x 30", 2021

It makes me think about the malleable material of your figures. Parachute is disturbing. My first Covid painting. Flesh is imprinted in such an extreme way that it deines every figure after, even if they’re not that contorted. There’s this possibility that figure could collapse or coil into itself. The figures in the earlier pieces are more distorted and bulbous. I initially thought of them as balloons filled with this tension that could explode. Lately it’s lost a lot of that… still malleable but not as overstuffed. I think that’s been a little transition. frameYou know Maia Ruth Lee? I loved her Bondage Baggage series documenting luggage during her travels back to Nepal. It triggered my own memories, especially from the ’90’s when there was a large wave of Korean immigration. Every time I’d be at the airport, there were always

Above: Covered, Acrylic on paper, 16" x 12", 2021

loads of bags and boxes tied with string, all this life stuffed into smushed packages. When we visited family, our bags looked like this too. We were transporting our American life in these bags for our family to consume and yearn for. In My Past Lives, the twine is actually her braid. In less exaggerated ways, the body is distorting itself. Those balloons had their place and maybe they will come back, but I didn't want that possibility to become so rigid. You have form and function listening to each other. I think it’s also the printmaker problem solver in me that’s like, “Well, I’ve put acid on this and can’t really reverse it,” so it’s half, “How do I trust the technical part,” and half, “How do I trust my gut?” That kind of mirrors what the work is about too. Surprises come out of that process. What I like

most in the idea stage is what I hate most in the end. I don’t often plan colors ahead of time. I just go for it, do one part and respond. That’s how I paint too. It’s reactive. For me, it’s like, you have to put something down or it’s never going to happen. I think it’s because we’re the kind of people who overthink, and it’s sort of like you have to run into the cold ocean or you’re never going to actually get in the water. It’s almost better to do something wrong because then you have this insatiable drive to fix it. That was a driving force behind Reach Out. I was like, this cannot be a fucking Hulk drawing! I made a green person. It’s chunky. I was so determined for it not to be that. @grilledcheesey

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Ákos Ezer And The Homo Inflexus Interview by Sasha Bogojev Portrait by Mira Makai

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hen exploring the human form, that most consistently tantalizing and engrossing subject, modern painters often seek approaches developed by twentieth-century portraitists like Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud. Akos Ezer shares their same interest with his own unique method, embracing the human figure in a highly relatable way, presenting our own clumsy, insecure entanglements with ourselves and others. When we discovered the work of the Hungarian painter almost three years ago, we became instant fans of his pink-loving palette of vibrant colors, buoyed by a confident and unmediated painterly technique. Using thick layers of ardently applied oils, the Budapest-based artist builds complex, multi-figure scenes, as well as simple portraits of his protagonists as they negotiate life’s vagaries. Blending the compositions of comics frames, along with the atmosphere of “fail” videos, all wrapped in a traditional expressive painting format or sculpted in ceramic, he continues to

document the degeneration of Homo Erectus towards what we might call Homo Inflexus. Sasha Bogojev: At which point did the figure become a central point of your work, and do you remember how that happened? Ákos Ezer: I started my studies at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts with a kind of an academic program. It included drawing courses at the anatomy department, and also descriptive geometry. Even in the painting class, we would start with the basics, like still life studies. In my first two years, I mainly made paintings using the everyday objects I saw around. In my third year, I started experimenting with different materials and topics. At that time, I made marker drawings from found photos made by customers of different technical stores, which I downloaded from the displayed tablets and smartphones, and redrew them. It was a very interesting project because I made a lot of fast drawings of various faces. I also photographed street views with the people on the street and made montage-like compositions with them. So I learned a lot of

color blending and compositing artwork during this year. Soon after that, I made oils again but stopped using photographs as a guide because it had confusingly limited my possibilities during this process. Also, I was able to avoid these image references because I was more and more confident after each artwork. Can you describe these “found photos made by customers of different technical stores?” How exactly did you discover them, and were the owners of those photos aware of how they were being used? There were lots of tablets and phones displayed on the shelves, and everybody took selfies with them, just for fun, or to try the quality of the cameras. I think you can still find similar snapshots in the photo gallery of displayed devices nowadays. I downloaded these photos of unknown people with Bluetooth or an infrared port. It was quite easy, I just paired them to my device. These were fun photos, people staring into the front camera of these digital mirrors, lots of them with grimaces, or making duck faces. That is awesome! So, once you dropped using photographs and started working from the head, were your characters bent and twisted from the start, or what led toward such development? Not exactly that way, but yes, these bent and twisted characters appeared at an early stage. When I turned back to oil and canvas, I searched a lot in antique book shops for art books. I found a full book with closeups of Brueghel’s painting titled Children’s Games, and it was very inspiring. It helped me head in this direction of a kind of grotesque, classical form. I really liked the atmosphere of these acts. It clearly showed his unusual depiction of human behavior, and it felt more real than lots of contemporary artists’ work for me. I was happy to use the flipped and twisted characters he created in my own work as well. My early figurative paintings were some kind of teenage backyard party scenes, more like landscape paintings with some figures, so I was able to make good use of this inspiration. Nowadays, this has changed a lot with more figures and less environment. Why do you think that work resonated with you so much? How did you relate it with human behavior? I found his perspective very interesting. He was above everything and examined what was happening as an outside observer. In addition, he put a very humanistic and people-centered theme on canvas. So the winning formula for what we’re seeing today is a mix of found photos and Brueghel? Yes, maybe that was it for me. In this pairing, one can recognize the contradictions that have always occupied me within art. Classic/current,

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Above: Wood Climbing, Oil on canvas, 74.8" x 90.6", 2021

Above: Too Long Hair, Oil on canvas, 24" x 32", 2020

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banal/simple, interesting/complex, personal/ impersonal. These are the principles that still define my work. I am interested in the tension inherent in such contradictions. What was your motivation in depicting the protagonists falling over and struggling to stay on their feet, and how much did that change? I started to search for my own way of painting and started to figure out how I could evolve my practice and style, so I spent a lot of time on Tumblr where there was a big network of contemporary artists, and also link collections. At the same time, I also watched lots of meme sites where there was an endless amount of prank videos or fail compilations. I never used them directly or copied an image, but they were an inexhaustible fountain of ideas to shape my next characters in those party scenarios. The human figure was my tool to make everything possible in these stories and realize more and more interesting and dynamic compositions.

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So, the original concept was more about fun and less about the critique or commentary on more profound emotions or experiences? Partly yes, but perhaps subconsciously, I have always been interested in philosophical thoughts about the purpose of our actions; what we call success or failure. Maybe I didn’t approach these party scenes from a moral point of view, but rather as a kind of questioning, even to myself. I could have been 21, 22 at the time, and many times I felt like I wasn’t doing what I wanted, or I just didn’t know why I was doing what I was doing. It seemed to come from an environment where members of my generation were drifting unconsciously, and these videos showed that it similarly exists globally. And how did their thick necks and the use of rainbow and color gradients come into the picture? I made gradients in the early stages in the background on the first oil painting. Sometimes the sky was created with multi-colored gradient

horizontal stripes, or I illustrated some objects like billboards or columns in the foreground with these hues. These elements moved to the necks on the portrait compositions, or to the limbs and the full-body parts in my recent group compositions. I can use these effects to adjust my characters to the overall mood or colors of the scene. I know that’s not an invention of my own, because Fernand Léger already did the same in the early 1900s, but I try to find my own color maps and tones for my characters. What was the local response when you started painting this type of work? I had good and bad responses, even during my university years and after. In Hungary, the art scene is very narrow—there is a small group of people—and it has a rather hierarchical system, although it is not very layered. By this, I mean that there is not really a difference in the quality of the galleries, or that some galleries only deal with emerging artists, and there are galleries that already

Above: Grilling, Oil on canvas, 92.5" x 72.8", 2021

represent established artists only; so there is no opportunity to grow. The works of the artists also focus more on local problems and the narrative is about the political and social surrounding. This may be due to the post-conceptualist thinking that characterized the post-communist regime change period. Those patterns change very slowly, but there are lots of new voices within the younger generation of artists who could connect to the dialog of the international art world. I’ve always been bothered by other artists forming opinions about my work because it can never be objective and unintentional. That’s why I’ve never tried to live up to expectations and opinions at home, never tried to fit in. I don’t even really go to openings, but look online or after the events that interest me. I have always looked abroad and concentrated much more on the scales of international contemporary art. What do you think might have influenced your interest in the international scene, rather than staying within the local structure? Everything seemed much bigger and more serious. I am not only thinking about artworks, but also the projects, exhibition spaces, and events that captivated me. I watched a lot of James Kalm’s videos on YouTube. He rode his bike to New York galleries and broadcast current events. Fortunately, the internet has allowed me to be part of the global art scene to some degree, as early as around 2010, even if only in digital form. Was the response different globally, and what are some of the differences you have noticed? I didn’t have much personal experience to illustrate this, but it was an interesting story for me: When my works were on display at a booth with my former gallery at the art fair, Vienna Contemporary, I had an exhibition in Budapest at the same time. I received feedback from the gallery staff that the audience and the local artists were much more interested and open to my works at the art fair than the Hungarian audience in the exhibition in Hungary. I saw this as a good sign, that was the feedback I wanted to hear. How does it feel to be having such global recognition, and how do your colleagues at home look at that? Do they find it intimidating or inspiring? I am really happy about the international presence of my paintings. It is one of the greatest pleasures for an artist to be able to present objects made in his studio to such a wide audience. I think it’s a controversial situation for me with my colleagues. They can be nice and supportive, but it can affect me badly too. Of course, some colleagues could be annoyed because of the small number of possibilities and interest for contemporary art in our home country. However, I hope there are more who will be inspired by my story because it shows that success can be achieved with work and persistence. Protection or good relationships are not necessary to get into the art world.

Above: Flashlight, Oil on canvas, 52" x 58", 2020

How do you think your work relates to the Hungarian painterly tradition, and how do you feel about that? Of course, I have favorites, like Vilmos Aba-Novák, but I don’t really identify myself with the Hungarian painting tradition. I acknowledge the work of the old Hungarian masters, but I never limited my thinking or interest inside borders. I was able to relate much more easily to the representatives of German expressionism, like Emil Nolde or Max Beckmann, or to the painters of the British school, R.B. Kitaj, Francis Bacon, or David Hockney Did the past decade of conservative government influence your work in some capacity? I have always made sure that my work does not speak against or in favor of a current political set. I don’t want to intentionally populate the paintings with political content, but, of course, I see social events, and the polarization of thinking everywhere in the society, not just in the political environment.

As a critically thinking person, that has pushed me away with concern. This critical approach naturally appears in the mood of my work. In what ways do you reflect on those events and experiences? These are not just local events or real physical experiences. With everyone from all over the world getting the news on their phone in seconds, it’s much harder to deal exclusively with national events. People’s social environments have changed and adapted differently, at least that’s what I noticed in myself. I am just painting my own reality, and I am not trying to illustrate current events, but merely illustrate their effects on the human psyche and behavior. It is an atmospheric presence—of course, all through my filter. Also, I consider myself a very life-affirming and positive person, so I do this with lots of humor and spiced with a bunch of colors.

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The current characters seem more rubbery and malleable. Was that influenced by the ceramic explorations? Yes, I had started thinking about doing some sculptural work in the summer of 2019. This is one of the influences which ceramic and 3D modeling brought to my paintings. I tried to use the ceramic-like appearance a lot in my paintings, and bend the limbs in hard angles like on the painted version, but it was not possible for me and my process. I worked fast and spontaneously, so I let this material and the regularities of matter lead me. I used more rubber-like arms, legs, and even fingers than in my paintings, and I liked this new quality. I was happy to enrich my toolbox with those new forms, so I started to use them in my paintings as well. They seem to be more profoundly rendered than previously. Is there a conceptual reason for that? I think there are no conceptual reasons. My work changes naturally, and I don’t want to go against that. I paint a lot of paintings year after year, and my abilities develop during this time. I remember, seven years ago, when I started to paint human figures; to give them a character or face was so hard for me. There was a painting where I overpainted the face several times, and nothing met my expectations. In the end, I gave up and painted a smiley-like thing instead of the face. Nowadays, finding the elements of characters goes much faster and is more defined than seven years before—fortunately! [laughs] I always worked fast and loose—and maybe the difference is that I have become more accurate over the years.

At which stage did sculpture enter your practice, and how did it happen? I worked as a freelance CGI artist until last year. I thought it would be useful to use my 3D modeling skills to make something that could supplement my artistic work. I made some sculpture sketches in modeling software to see how it could look. I was in a lucky situation. We have our ceramic kiln because my girlfriend Mira Makai works mainly with ceramics. So I started to sculpt those busts in her studio with ceramic clay, which I already made in 3D the same day. The process slowed down a bit because I was not happy with them at first sight, so I made a lot of different versions until last summer, when we exhibited two of them at my solo show at Galerie Droste in Paris. 140 FALL 2021

What are some of your favorite aspects of working in 3D? I like to compose ceramic works in every single view. I also love it if they have different looks from various angles. Also, it’s a great surprise if I see them directly after the glazing. Do you think that jumping between sculpture and painting also reinvigorated your practice in some way? Yes, it’s a very refreshing thing for me to work with both. I can get a lot of ideas for one from the other. I also find it important in the sense that when I think about exhibitions, the difference between the two qualities in the exhibition space is unique as well. The presence of ceramic figures was important to my work because it expanded the universe that I had previously shaped solely with my paintings.

One of the things I loved about your pieces early on was the confidence in your brushwork. How did you manage to have it so strongly at such an early stage of your career? When I saw Willem de Kooning’s paintings at the Centre Pompidou for the first time, I formulated something for myself—there it is something that only the painting can do, to freeze all the dynamic and force of the movement of the artist. It’s an object out of the time, with all its layers and textures, and that was an elevating recognition for me. I started to look at the paintings like music pieces, and I didn’t expect anything else from them. I realized I don’t need hard-written concepts and world-saving thoughts. I can compress all my actual feelings, moods, and thoughts, and it could formulate itself. That was my first step to this freefall-like process. This knowledge helped me start loving my gestures, respecting my decisions, or overpainting everything easily. Until then, I made only decorations or illustrations of my ideas. What about the hyper-vibrant color palette? Was that from De Kooning too, or what informed the use of such punchy colors from early on?

Above: Metalhead, Oil on canvas, 31" x 39", 2020

He is using colors in another way, I always thought. He uses shades of gray or black between pure colors in paintings to achieve a kind of graphic effect. It was an important thing to keep my paintings clean from the early years. It could be an abstract painterly side of me. Also, I saw lots of paintings at the university which were nearly all gray and seemed dusty, so looking old from the start. I decided to go against that, and use clear tones and vibrant colors, to keep everything fresh and alive. Lots of painters try to reach some vintage look because of the classical paintings you could see in the museums, but those were also bright and bold-colored canvases once, the brown and the yellowish look a result of age and decay. There are lots of restoration videos where you can see what is under the oxidized layer of varnish and oil.

Color and form in your work feel like crucial elements, as it seems that they’re the main ingredient through which you’re able to produce wonders. At which stage does the idea or narrative come into the picture? Sometimes I start a painting with an idea, but sometimes I change the story or the narrative of the painting in the middle of the process. It happened more than once, that I just started to build up the composition, also detailing the characters and the whole environment, and I came up with the action or activity and what the painting is about only in the last two hours.

in paintings and ceramics. Many times I make decisions based on my intuition. I can enjoy both of them, but differently. The best part is that I can choose which one I like to work with that day.

It seems that you enjoy this unplanned process. Why do you think this is your preferred method? I don’t really like to plan ahead. I think there is a material quality that I want to achieve and I tend to stick to it. This can be caused differently

What about the facial expressions of your characters? They’re either numb or very expressive, whistling or smoke-blowing. What do you like about those? It also can be originated from the influence of the Flemish paintings. They show the passage of time and give dynamism to the action with the open mouth or the gestures of yelling or laughing, as in Adriaen Brouwer’s drunken paintings. I am using these faces similar to those. Also, it could be a mask-like grimace, like the two faces of the Greek theaters, or the face paint of the clowns, or even the early movies. Smoke is also a great painterly effect. Also, you can enlighten the atmosphere with lots of white oil color or separate parts of the painting. It’s about nothing or the deficit, the pause between two tracks, or could symbolize the flow of the thoughts.

"The human figure was my tool to make everything possible in these stories and realize more and more interesting and dynamic compositions."

The mood of a painting or sculpture can be influenced by my mood, what the weather is like that day, or what movie or music I was listening to or watching the night before. There’s a lot of inspiration, and I like to push into my work, but I’m always careful not to do it in an obvious way. It is not good for artwork to reveal itself immediately.

Are the characters meant to be exclusively male, and how do you approach that aspect? I don’t use references to the paintings, so I think I am the only reference for myself during the painting process. I often check my hands or legs when I build up a composition. So, maybe all of those guys are a little bit like me, or my alter egos. This tumbling burlesque-like humorous situation also fits better with these characters. I am a selfironic type. All of their struggles and failures are also mine. Have you ever thought about moving away from the figures? If you had to drop them, what would your work look like? I do not consider it necessary to change. I do not feel the urge to leave the field of figurative painting yet. I’ve noticed that abstract artists also personify their work, and very often viewers try to see something into it. I think the other way, in trying to subordinate my scenes to my gestures and painterly tools, which are more abstract, like classical techniques and working methods. Also, I do not try to correspond with the conditions of reality, so these figures can take many forms until they disappear. These things give me enough freedom not to feel restricted on any level. @akos.ezer

Above: Night Routine, Oil on canvas, 51.5" x 43", 2020

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Kayla Mahaffey Chicago Hope Interview by Gwynned Vitello Portrait by Bianca Garcia

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ike clusters of colorful balloons bobbing with uncontained hope and perseverance, the wideeyed children thriving in Kayla Mahffey’s portraits strive with a bright determination. She renders them with a vibrant buoyancy that seems to burst off the canvas in bubbles of freedom and adventure. The scenes summon a nostalgia for the innocence of youth, while eliciting a warm protectiveness, inspired by the artist's loving care for her subjects and the craft of painting. In that process, Mahaffey’s vignettes easily inspire our collective responsibility to each other. As a proud Midwesterner, Chicago-born and bred, she’s a radiant reminder of the satisfaction of hard work. With time out for cartoons, of course. Gwynned Vitello: When I moved to a smaller place and didn’t have as much room for books, I made my children’s books a priority. I love the illustrations, and the messages give me a lot of joy. I feel like you might share that fondness.

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When did you start drawing? Did you like coloring books growing up? Kayla Mahaffey: Growing up, I had tons of coloring books. The editions ranged from My Little Pony, Barbie, and the ’90s favorite, Lisa Frank. I think my parents bought them for me as a way to stop me from doodling on the walls! Coloring books not only taught me how to color in the lines, but to have fun with art and use it therapeutically. I could absolutely imagine you writing and illustrating children’s books? Did you ever consider that? Yes, I’ve always enjoyed reading books, and while I loved the engaging stories, I couldn’t help but notice the glossy pages adorned with beautiful, detailed illustrations. Each author and illustrator brings something unique, making it all the more interesting. As my admiration for books grew, I wanted to write and illustrate children’s books for a living, and even started creating characters with different ideas and stories. I carried that dream throughout adolescence to my adult life. I still

would love one day to release my first one, but all in good time. I feel like you were raised with a really positive attitude because your paintings are so direct, colorful and animated. Even though there were some troubling times in my childhood, which is normal for most, I always tried to maintain a positive outlook. My paintings represent that internal warmth and colorful spirit we all contain, but sometimes forget to show. Surrounding myself with positive, supportive people really helped shape my perception on how I saw things in our world. I try to see the good in most people and I feel as though there is always a lesson to be learned in distinct situations. I also like to keep an open mind, which allows me to always walk away, learning something new and understanding things a bit more. When I paint, I try to display that as best as a can, showing visuals of the good and the beautiful around us, while revealing an underlying message or story.

Above left: Kid In Play, Acrylic and aerosol paint, 36" x 48", 2021 Above right: No Public Enemy, Acrylic and aerosol paint, 36" x 48", 2021

Did you ever consider doing something else? I could definitely imagine you as a teacher. I still consider becoming a teacher or professor when I get a lot older, but I’ll have to see how things turn out. I love learning from those around me, and in return, I like spreading the knowledge to others curious about a certain subject. It seems cool to send off the next generation prepared and ready to take on anything… that thought always makes my heart melt. Besides being an author and illustrator, I thought when I was in high school that if the “art thing” didn’t work out that I would want to become a historian or a biologist. Some people may think that’s totally left field, but I always enjoyed those subjects, and at a certain time, I was even ready to choose one of those as a major. It’s pretty obvious that cartoons had a great influence on you. Which were your favorites,

Above: Head in the Clouds, Acrylic and aerosol paint, 60" x 72", 2021

and do you still like to watch them? Cartoons have always been special to me, and I even considered becoming a cartoonist. Later, I saw the work it took to become one, and said I’ll stick to paintings that don’t move. Maybe that’s why I try to add motion into my still concepts. My art definitely has been influenced by many favorite titles, but there are so many, so I’ll just name a few. The older cartoons contained a certain charm and a vintage humor that cartoons that came after could never replicate. My favorites from that generation include Tom and Jerry, Scooby Doo, and all things Looney Tunes. Shows released during my childhood came with a more modern take on humor, and mostly included a more candy-coated color palette. Those that stand out the most (so many to name!) would have to be SpongeBob, Powerpuff Girls, Sailor Moon, and The Simpsons. From the newer generation it would be Adventure Time, Regular Show, and Steven

Universe, but since those have all ended, I usually just stick to anime like Attack on Titan, Demon Slayer, etc. Art school wasn’t really an optimum experience for you. What was disappointing and what did you take that was positive from those two years? That was definitely a unique experience. It taught me a lot, but failed to take on subjects that would begin and further my art career. Freshman year, I came in with some prior knowledge of art skills that made learning new lessons a bit easier, and as time went on, my skills with rendering and proportions became more refined. This was extremely beneficial, but as I took more classes, I was not learning anything new; on top of that, I couldn’t find any curriculum about how the art world operates. I learned to educate and market myself about gallery and company expenses and

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find out what it would take to sustain life as an artist. When I took the leap to leave and put myself out there a bit, it definitely worked out in the best way. I don’t regret the experience whatsoever; it brought new experiences and helped me meet tons of artists and friends I still hang out and work with to this day. The studio classes elevated my technique. The negative aspects really pushed me out of my comfort zone to forge connections, and make stuff happen, and I‘m truly thankful. How has your style and subject matter changed from those days—now that you’re all of 26 years old? Over the years, my style and subject matter has taken on various forms, but some aspects still remain. The older and newer subjects still share the goal of displaying messages and tales of warning, but I think I have switched to a more positive message of having a bit of freedom as a child and

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the memories and nostalgia that come with new experiences. My older paintings were an array of age groups, while I now almost only paint children. The style changed tremendously as I started experimenting throughout the years. I used to paint solely in watercolor, which made the piece look a bit more muted and breezy than what we see today. I also painted animals, skulls, nature, you name it, and even had a more Renaissance-type look, but this was when I was in college and searching for my style. The school days of painting still lifes, skulls, plants, and figures really influenced me, but it wasn’t until I combined painting rendered figures and portraits with cartoon drawings I made in illustration classes that I knew I was on to something! Did you have a mentor? You broke through so quickly—or did it seem quick to you? I actually never had a mentor throughout my career. During college, when me and my peers

started to market ourselves through social media, we’d get contacted by galleries that were interested in showing our work. I participated in many group shows and juried exhibitions, hoping to get a breakthrough, and eventually applied to be a part of a juried show with LineDot Editions. And my artwork, along with other Chicago artists, was chosen. I became familiar with the gallery owners and this led to a solo show the following year—a whopping 30 pieces!. After that, I worked with them and continued showing my work at other galleries in town. I kept my social media art page up-to-date and posted regularly, so I was able to work with various galleries and my work became popular fairly quickly. I have to thank the galleries, social media, my supporters, and myself for that. Do you portray children from the neighborhood or are you just inspired by your favorite photographs?

Above: No Harm Done, Acrylic and aerosol paint, 72" x 84", 2021

While some are inspired by the children in my neighborhood, they don’t necessarily share the same face. Some take on the mannerisms of many I’ve encountered, while other times I want them to display a certain type of emotion. Sometimes the faces reference old family photos, vintage and modern photography; other times I create a completely new face. Occasionally, people swear that I painted them when they were a child (which always gets a chuckle out of me), or a child they once knew. I find it so gratifying that a portrait could take someone back to their childhood. The portraits of elderly folks show a different kind of appreciation. Whether young or old, how are you able to render such tenderness? When I painted the elderly, I wanted to share a narrative that was a bit on the somber side. My subject matter was focused on displaying how life can pass you by, about finding your happy place, appreciating life’s little gifts. Many of these figures were inspired from the elders who were around me, their many dark tales of regret, unlearned lessons, and broken promises. My younger subjects are almost the opposite, living more freely, immersed in a society they don’t yet understand. In these pieces, the color palette is more saturated and the compositions more animated to show the vitality of a child’s mind and energy. The paintings containing the elders feature a more muted palette with stagnant compositions. Their eyes once full of life and spirit now left white as if blinded by their past. The children contrast by possessing bright, clear eyes, which I paint with tons of reflective light. Their demure expressions indicate gentleness, youth, and admiration, so I keep their face in a resting guise or a slight smile. Tell us how acrylic best suits your style of work. Has that always been your favorite medium? Acrylic is one of the most versatile mediums; it delivers a saturated punch while being able to be diluted for glazing and smooth blending. Since my artwork is full of color and consists of rendered figures and flat, two-dimensional images, acrylic allows me to go back and forth with ease, flattening and carving out values as needed. The fast drying time makes glazing easy. Once the last layer is dry, you can always glaze on top of that to brighten a section or tone it down. The downside of fast drying is it may make blending difficult. With trial and error, I found out that acrylic mediums don’t really work well for me. I prefer a bit of water mixed into the paint or having a soaked brush, which helps it glide across the panel or canvas with ease and melds the colors. Acrylic keeps the cartoon elements totally flat and vibrant with each pass. It really goes well with what I visualize. But I do like all mediums and they all bring a certain type of feeling. The first time I truly loved a medium was watercolor, which gave a sense of control—and fun! I loved building the values with

Top: Free at Last?, Acrylic and aerosol paint, 48" x 48", 2021 Bottom: The Sweet Escape, Acrylic and aerosol paint, 48" x 48", 2021

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layers; the translucent film always gave an airy touch to a piece. I used to hate acrylics, but that’s before I knew what I know today. Oils were very enjoyable, but just like watercolors, the time to actually make the piece took too long because of the oil’s drying time, and made it very hard to keep up with demand. Acrylic is my happy medium for getting opaque colors and vibrancy, while being able to dilute the pigment to create depth. What’s your method? Do you sketch out figures first, and do you have something definite in mind when you start?

When I come up with an idea, I usually start with a quick sketch or thumbnail to get a good feel. It’s rare that I change the set up once it’s sketched out, but sometimes this happens, I just move the figures around a bit and see how best to keep the composition balanced and visually pleasing. Ideas usually emerge out of the blue, and I will jot the description down in my notes or I’ll draw a quick thumbnail with the elements I want to feature. Color choices happen pretty sporadically at first. Once I get the child figures painted with certain hues, I start filling the background with colors at random. Then I reel the colors back in

and try to find a common color scheme to balance out the palette for uniformity, followed by small tweaks here and there by adding more details, like freckles on a child’s face, or the little cloud bubble pieces that appear in almost all of my paintings. Do you have a routine, and did it change as a result of Covid? What do you need to create your best studio experience? I have a routine, but Covid didn’t really disrupt it. I work from home and think of myself as more of a homebody; with the pandemic, my daily events barely changed. I wake up, eat breakfast, shower, get groceries once a week, paint, exercise, and repeat. I occasionally go out with friends and family, and that came to a halt; but other than that, they were pretty normal days. When I paint, I always need my two big cups of water for brush cleaning and dilution, some background music (whatever I’m feeling that day) or podcasts, and some tea and/or water to hydrate, along with some granola, nuts, or gummy candy nearby. My needs are pretty simple, especially if the painting is going well. A mural is a whole other experience, so did you feel any hesitation at first? What was the process like in terms of materials, methods and time? My first mural was pretty small compared to those I painted later. It was only about 10ft tall and 8ft wide and was done on the side section of a thrift store. Looking back, I was kind of nervous to paint something that size. “What if I don’t finish in time,” or, “What if I run out of paint?” I asked myself tons of questions I would never think about ordinarily. I had to take into consideration supplies and use tools like paint rollers, ladders, and spray paint, which I normally didn’t use. Once started, the process was fairly easy, basically painting a huge painting, and when I got midway done, I saw that I actually brought too much paint, which never happens on bigger mural sites now. After two days of painting and only eight hours of work total, I was proud of what I accomplished in a timely fashion, but I didn’t take into account the physical exhaustion—and the weather. My body ached so badly the next day, I felt like I ran a marathon. I take that knowledge with me on every project now and prepare for the physical undertaking. The weather can be an issue, especially if you’re still painting and rain decides to appear, or the heat is so scorching you end up taking more breaks and drinking water so you end up painting way less, making the mural process more time consuming. For my first, I experienced both. The first day was humid and the sun was blazing and the second day of painting brought out the rain, which made me have to stop and wait till it let up. Nonetheless, a very exciting experience taught me a lot of tips and tricks that I use with the murals I do today. It’s impossible to separate you from Chicago. Did you grow up in the same home, the same

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Above: Tender Love and Care, Acrylic and aerosol paint, 36" x 48", 2021

neighborhood? I can tell a real loyalty to the city, especially the South Side. Chicago is such a special place. While it has its problems, it is and will always be my home. I’ve moved around a few times with my family, and jumped to different neighborhoods, but we always found ourselves on the South Side. From Roseland to Auburn Gresham, to Chatham to a few more neighborhoods that, while still on the South Side, contained their own flair. It’s not

Above: The Child In Us, Acrylic and aerosol paint, 60" x 72", 2021

necessarily a loyalty, but more of a part of my identity. Everyone’s experiences vary dramatically by where they grew up, and Chicago has shaped me and those who live here in a significant way. The nostalgia and cultural significance are instilled into my memories as I grow older. There is a certain type of humility and resilience to the people who grow up here… and of course the food is amazing. It has a spirit that can’t be really described in words, but is experienced in

the people who love living here. If I ever moved somewhere else, I would miss those two things the most. I love seeing new things and traveling to new places and, who knows, I don’t know where I’ll end up moving in the future, if I ever do, but Chicago will always hold a special place in my heart. Kayla Mahaffey’s solo show, Remember the Time, will be on view at Thinkspace Projects in Los Angeles from September 18–October 9, 2021.

K AYL A MAHAFFEY JUXTAPOZ .COM 149

EVENTS

WHERE WE’RE HEADED

Betye Saar: Black Doll Blues @ Roberts Projects, Los Angeles Sept. 18–Oct. 23, 2021 // robertsprojectsla.com Those lucky enough to have read or seen a conversation with the 95-year-old Betye Saar, the esteemed American assemblage artist, have experienced the transcendency of her words. As she observed a few years ago, “It may not be possible to convey to someone else the mysterious transforming gifts by which dreams, memory, and experience become art. But I like to think that I can try.” There is so much wisdom in this perception that speaks to the complexity of creativity, including the lifelong desire to make and what fuels that visionary impulse. Saar is often referred to as a legend, and she earns that description by how she continues to think about art in an original and provocative way. Betye Saar: Black Doll Blues, on view this fall at Roberts Projects in Los Angeles, brings together her decades-long process of addressing underrepresented manifestations of Black America through dolls and assemblage. This particular exhibition will also feature a series of new watercolor works on paper. As the gallery notes, “For over six decades, Saar has created work that explores the social, political, and economic underpinnings of America’s collective memory.” Much of this stems from her works featuring Black dolls from her personal archive. In musing that, “Every object has a story,” she has made prodigious works of subversion and illumination that qualify her as one of the ultimate pioneers of the assemblage movement. Her pieces represent a decades-long socially active practice in fine art, auguring the conversations we have today about race, identity and history, each more than rediscovery, but as poignant blueprints for complex challenges to the status quo. That her work is not done affirms the ways we look at our legacies and traditions, and the rituals by which we continue to challenge our collective norms.

The Armory Show @ Javits Center, NYC Sept. 9–12, 2021 thearmoryshow.com Attending the Armory Show has always been an annual “end of winter” art event, a wardrobe challenge as to whether you were going to trample in the March snow or stagger through a rare warm afternoon to Piers 92 and 94 in NY, regardless of seeing some of the most famed and emerging galleries showing standout works. It was the last gathering of 2020 in some respects, with Covid extending its global grip just the week after. The Armory Live program was able to sustain a sense of community over the ensuing months, but there is still something incomparable about seeing art in person. It’s still only the next year, and the classic Armory Show is back, albeit in a new season and location. The Armory will set camp at its new home, the Javits Center, kicking off the fall art season with a solid stable of past masters and those of-the-moment artists who have solidified our love for the fair. From the David Zwirners to one of our favorite galleries, such as The Hole and 1969, the Armory straddles the line of historic and contemporary, looking back, showcasing the present and gazing into the future. As we continue conversations about what the function of a good art fair should be, or even what gathering around the arts can look like once again, it is reassuring to be confident that the Armory will usher us into this new era. They have long been a staple, as its original inception in 1994 at the Gramercy Park Hotel reminds us of just how immense and global the idea of an art fair has truly become. It’s good to be back at the gateway of New York.

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Above right: Jon Key for Armory Show

WHERE WE’RE HEADED

Cindy Bernhard: Smoke and Prayers @ Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica September 4–October 2, 2021 richardhellergallery.com

You Won’t Bleed Me: How Blaxploitation Posters Defined Cool & Delivered Profits @ Poster House, NYC Sept. 2, 2021–Feb. 6, 2022 posterhouse.org

Cindy Bernhard paints smoke and mirrors, and we love the clever deception. Welcome to her world of super-flat pictures and air-brushed veneers, then swim into those ombre gradations of pastel hues and dive into the dreamscapes. Raised on a hog farm in rural Illinois and now calling Chicago home, as student, studio assistant and teacher, she makes her magic with a wealth of perspective. Bernhard’s seamless depictions of the duality of life, sly humor and satiny sense of color invites viewers to slow down and embrace the wonders of life, including the delicious irony. She has painted mysterious rooms and hallways, but maybe her favorite ciphers are dogs and cats. “This structure allows me to access viewers through empathy and humor. I use humor not merely as relief, but also as a political response and act of resistance to pop culture’s demanding aesthetics.” Bernhard’s first solo exhibit, Smoke and Prayers, wafting in a slow simmer of reflection and the crackle of humor that ignites all of her paintings, opens in September at Santa Monica’s Richard Heller Gallery. Just as smoke is the transition of matter into spirit, Joints and Jesus is a prayerful and playful appreciation of life, “visual poems,” as she calls them—whether or not you’re a cat person.

It’s incredible to think that we now live in an era where small-budget, limited resource film-making has the potential to shape our world and cultural views. A look back at previous eras, the 1970s in particular, inevitably involves the subcultural genre of “Blaxploitation” films, which speak to the power of lo-fi, low budget movies. At that point in time, Blaxploitation films were sort of seen as caricatures of that early ’70’s aesthetic, but now we perceive the countless examples of their artistic weight through some of the great soundtracks and memorable Black characters of film history. Shaft, Super Fly and Foxy Brown are just a few that come to mind, but what perhaps sets these films apart from other genres were the marketing methods, mainly in the form of movie posters. Poster House in New York will soon open You Won’t Bleed Me: How Blaxploitation Posters Defined Cool & Delivered Profits, a vital, in-depth reexamination of that form of art and its critical place in 1970’s American cinema. The bold brashness, unadulterated sexuality and unhinged coolness of each poster set the stage for what the museum calls, ”a rare opportunity for Black men and women to be heroic, strong, cool, sexy, and, most importantly, to win on the big screen after decades with either little or demeaning representation.” Not only does this exhibition show the importance of visual arts in the way we process entertainment, establishing iconic characters in concert with music, design, fine art and film, it also sends a powerful, unifying message.

EVENTS

Boris Anje @ Thinkspace Projects, Los Angeles Nov. 13–Dec. 4, 2021 thinkspaceprojects.com When Boris Anje received international acclaim for his 2020 solo show, Black Is Beautiful at Barcelona’s OOA Gallery, many gravitated to the Afro-Punk aesthetics and clothing worn by his characters. There was a sense of pop-culture appreciation from the Douala, Cameroonbased painter, but the style, backdrops and details were entirely his own. Even the fabric colors seemed to signify a complete new type of fashion and style, which Anje has documented from a new generation of Congolese dandies, the Society of Ambianceurs and Elegant People (SAPE) who have taken ownership of colonial oppression into a uniform of their own. But Anje has found something more contemporary in his adaptation of street culture. For his upcoming solo show at Thinkspace Projects in Los Angeles, we perceive a pivotal, landmark moment for the artist. As the shifting dynamics and influence of a new generation of African painters continue to shine, these paintings appear perfectly at ease within the backdrop of movie sets and elaborations of identity in depth that stands out. The history of the African continent and a subculture exploration remind us of how many stories are yet to be told, and a talent like Boris Anje is the voice to shine a light on all of them. “I want to give value to the Black body,” Anjel told Thinkspace from his studio in the coastal city of Douala. “I’m trying to give some kind of attention, some kind of attraction, to the person of color.”

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SIEBEN ON LIFE

Pandemic Plans Revisiting the Checklist A year ago, I wrote a column for this mag titled “Post-Pandemic Plans.” In it, I outlined all of the fun and adventurous things I was hoping to do once Covid-19 chilled the F out. But here we are one year later, and the situation feels almost exactly the same. Despite being fully vaccinated, I’m still wrapping my face up like a mummy in indoor spaces, still staying six feet away from all the weirdos out there, and still checking the news to see if a lockdown is looming. Now, I’m not complaining and I’m certainly not surprised, but the current climate does have me rethinking my not-so-distant goals. So, in the spirit of working with what you’ve got, here’s what I’m hoping to check off my list in the next few months while staying the hell away from everybody.

• Finish writing my great American novel about how cool Canada is • Start reading the Bible to try to find the part where Jesus says getting vaccinated against Covid will magnetize your forehead and give you better 5G cell reception • Learn how to bake weed brownies without the weed • Give myself a “No Regrets” tattoo and then get it removed once the pandemic is actually over • Watch every episode of Magnum PI back-to-back while wearing a Hawaiian shirt (and nothing else) • Get my minivan up to 100 MPH on a deserted country road while chugging iced coffee and blasting Eminem

• Spend that extra five hours a day bustin’ wheelies in front of the house on my daughter’s mountain bike • Plant a garden and watch it slowly die • Try and find a cure for my Bieber Fever • Teach my dog how to bark in French • Paint my fingernails purple, then my fingers, then both of my arms and one of my legs • Learn a bunch of science stuff so I can determine why my cats are so darn cute! • Finally start my Murder She Wrote fan club • Shave my dog, glue his hair to my face and brag to my wife that I finally have a big-boy beard • Not catch Covid

• Stop staring at social media apps for five hours a day 152 FALL 2021

Above: Art by Michael Sieben

F I G U R E 8 D ES I G NS P R ES E N T S

The 12th Annual

MANNEQUINS ON THE LOOP

2021

GRAND PR IZE WINNER

ARTISTS/DESIGNERS

ABOUT

1 Keli Schaefer Artist For Hire

6 Kimiara Johnson

13 Yolonda Newson

2 Keely von Gemmingen

7 Molly Fralick

14 Ken Neuman

3 Celeste Grayer

8 Romona Bullock

15 Bob Arcipowski

4 Christine A. Holtz— Grand Prize Winner

9 Artists First

16 Angelia Scott

10 Dylan Narsh, Shannon Corgan, Michael Young & Dina Worzel

17 Brock Seals

5 Linda Caraway, Michele Cleaveland & Pamela Rivet

11 UCHS Art/Fashion Dept. 12 Kayla Kemp

18 Victoria L. Szulc 19 Deja Stinson, Jessica Michelle & Carlyn Moore

The Mannequins on The Loop Project is an annual public Art Installation on The Delmar Loop in University City, St. Louis Missouri USA. Artists/ Designers team up with merchants to compete by adorning a mannequin using recyclable materials to be displayed on the streets of the Delmar Loop for Three Weeks. Portions of the proceeds are donated to the Dorothy Davis Art/Fashion Scholarship Fund, these funds are awarded to three high school graduates. We are seeking local and national artists/designers to compete in this annual public art installation. Interested in being a sponsor?

Contact us: www.mannequinsontheloop.com IG / Facebook @mannequinsontheloop

POP LIFE

LOS ANGELES, WUPPERTAL, MALAGA, NYC, BRISTOL

Los Angeles 1 After his session with the Radio Juxtapoz team, Umar Rashid, aka Frohawk Two Feathers, takes a needed break.

Galerie Droste, Wuppertal, Germany 2 Not exactly a day off for Ákos Ezer at the opening of his solo show, Days Off Ideas, at Galerie Droste in Wuppertal, Germany this summer.

CAC Malaga, Spain 3 At the opening of his milestone exhibition, Fifteen, at the Contemporary Art Center of Malaga in Spain, Rafa Macarrón literally gets into his work.

Ross-Sutton Gallery, New York 4 At her namesake space, gallerist Destinee Ross-Sutton shares a moment with artist Lance de los Reyes for his solo show PAST is PRESENT is FUTURE.

SHRINE, New York 5 The vibes are back. Eddie Martinez, Derek Aylward, and Travis Landry, together at Shrine in NYC.

Bristol Museum’s M Shed, Bristol, England 6 VIP guests Feek, Mudwig and Eko at the long-awaited opening of Vanguard’s Bristol Street Art: The Evolution of a Global Movement show with the Bristol Museum. 7 After a year of delays due to the COVID pandemic, smiles abound all around, including artist Jody and his partner. 8 Lokey looking the part… 9 … while Faye Mole and Jen Reid enjoy a late-night chat by the fire.

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Photos by: Sasha Bogojev (2), Khris Cowley for Here & Now (6–9), All other photos courtesy of the gallery and artist.

19Karen.com.au

POP LIFE

AMSTERDAM, BRUGES, BERLIN, LONDON, MARBELLA, HONG KONG, NYC, ROME

Amsterdam Noord 1 Painter Javier Ruiz and curator Gabriel Rolt get down after Ruiz’s pop-up exhibition in Amsterdam.

Thomas Serruys, Bruges 2 Kristof Santy sports a sartorial look at his show with Thomas Serruys in Bruges, Belgium.

Duve, Berlin 3 Crossing the Atlantic, Trey Abdella and Jessica Westhafer, channel the opening spirit for Westhafer’s solo show at Duve gallery in Berlin.

Carl Kostyál, London 4 One of our favorite American painters, Rebecca Ness, continues her superb evolution with an early summer exhibition, Windows and Worlds, at Carl Kostyál, London.

Reiners Contemporary, Marbella 5 Idowu Oluwaseun brings his realism to the Reiners Contemporary Art space in Marbella, Spain.

FUTURALAND, Hong Kong 6 The type of theme park/public art installation we can get behind: AllRightsReserved’s SK and the legendary FUTURA in the midst of an epic backdrop for the opening of FUTURALAND in Hong Kong.

Albada Jelgersma, Amsterdam 7 Angling down the stairs with Mathieu Cherkit and Renée Albada Jelgersma at Albada Jelgersma, Amsterdam.

Ross-Sutton Gallery, NYC 8 Standing before another breathtaking work, Khari Turner recalls his midsummer working on Breathing Water to Air, his first NYC solo show at Ross-Sutton Gallery.

Postmasters, Rome 9 Sara Birns communing with our good friend, Nicola Verlato, at the opening of her new solo show Blips in Matter at Postmasters Roma in Rome, Italy.

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Photos by: Sasha Bogojev (1), All other photos courtesy of the gallery and artist.

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PERSPECTIVE

That’s Where the Beauty Is Margaret Kilgallen’s Legacy Is Essential Time has not forgotten the works of Margaret Kilgallen, but occasionally, we’re roused with a vivid reminder of the magical brilliance of this rarified, iconic artist who left us too soon. This summer and early fall, the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht, the Netherlands opened that’s where the beauty is, a traveling retrospective of Kilgallen’s work from the Aspen Art Museum. It is the largest collection of the San Francisco artist’s work, and yet, hardly feels like enough of her bounty. Within each figure, phrase and object she imbued is simply profound language, seemingly from a different era, yet entirely embedded in a new folk movement that arguably hasn’t been adequately articulated. Although the Mission School has been documented frequently, branded into art history as the last great San Francisco movement, Kilgallen’s work stands out as an emblematic, focused language of our lives, a balance of craft, care and culture, encapsulating everything from 158 FALL 2021

surfing and nature, music to handmade objects, to activism and outsider art. And she was the doyen. It has been 20 years since her untimely death at age of 33, and that’s where the beauty is has become the perfect articulation of that unexplainable, exhilarated feeling of encountering something timeless for the first time and seeing it countless times after. It’s so hard to speak about the things that you love and so easy it is to spend time mocking things you don’t. I love Margaret Kilgallen’s work, and her uncomplicated renderings help me understand what beauty is in the world. The colors are warm and her works feel as if pulled through a time machine, as if the paintings have been keeping good company for generations. Maybe that is why her connection to vagabonds and train culture ran so deep; the works seem borne from folklore, the femininity balanced with the

rawness of street culture. There was sadness and grief, too, both personal and universal. And, there was just the incredible talent of an unmatched hand. “I do spend a lot of time trying to perfect my line work… when you get close up, you can always see the line waver,” Kilgallen remarks in her now legendary PBS Art21 interview. “And I think that’s where the beauty is.” Margaret Kigallen was a time-traveler, and what she left behind is a legacy that still shows us how taking the time to look a little deeper, listen more and speak about the things we love connects us to the world and people in our lives in a richer, fuller way. —Evan Pricco That’s where the beauty is will be on view at the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht through November 7, 2021.

Above: Margaret Kilgallen, Untitled, ca. 2000. Acrylic on paper, 4.5" x 6.5". Courtesy the Estate of Margaret Kilgallen and Ratio 3, San Francisco

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