June 2014 Juxtapoz

Citation preview

ART + CULTURE + DESIGN

MARK RYDEN DETERMINATION & THE RETURN OF THE POP SURREAL MASTER

ART TRUANCY

20 YEARS OF JUXTAPOZ IN NYC AT JONATHAN L EVINE GALLERY

SWOON

SAILS HOME TO BROOKLYN

WALTON FORD

ANIMAL KINGDOM REIMAGINED

JUNE 2014, n161 $5.99

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

THE FLEET PANT

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

Juxtapoz

issue #161 / June, 2014 10

Contributor / sam graham

14

introduCtion

18

the report / waves for water

20

the report / matt leines

24

event / walton ford

26

piCture book / matt weber

32

design / jeff canham

36

fashion / maiko takeda

42

influenCes / swoon

48

mark ryden

62

art truancy: 2o years of Juxtapoz

74

seonna hong

82

dave hughes

90

agostino arrivabene

96

conrad roset

104

travel insider / denver

108

beautiful bits

110

book reviews

114

profile / scott listfield

118

produCt reviews

120

sieben on life

122

pop life

126

perspeCtive

JUXTAPOZ.COM

Detail of Atmosphereic Re-entry Collection By Maiko Takeda Photograph by Yuen Hsieh

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

STAFF

FOUNDER

WorldMags.net PRESIDENT + PUBLISHER

ROBERT WILLIAMS

ADVERTISING AND SALES DIRECTOR

GWYNNED VITELLO

EDITOR

CFO

EVAN PRICCO

JEFF RAFNSON

ART DIRECTOR

ACCOUNTING MANAGER

BRENT GENTILE

KELLY MA

MANAGING EDITOR

CIRCULATION CONSULTANT

ALEX NICHOLSON

JOHN MORTHANOS

CO-FOUNDER

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

GREG ESCALANTE

LIZ DEVLIN KRISTIN FARR BRENT GENTILE CARLO MCCORMICK AUSTIN MCMANUS DAVID MOLESKY CALEB NEELON ALEX NICHOLSON EVAN PRICCO MICHAEL SIEBEN DAVID B SMITH GWYNNED VITELLO

CO-FOUNDER

SUZANNE WILLIAMS GROUP CREATIVE DIRECTOR

KEVIN CONVERTITO CHIEF TECHNICAL OFFICER

NICK LATTNER EDITOR-AT-LARGE

ALEX WILLIAMS

[email protected] 415-822-3083 XT: 415 ADVERTISING SALES

EBEN STERLING MARKETING DIRECTOR

DAVE SYPNIEWSKI [email protected] AD OPERATIONS MANAGER

MIKE BRESLIN MARKETING + AD MANAGER

SALLY VITELLO WEBSTORE COORDINATOR

YOLANDA RODRIGUEZ MAIL ORDER + CUSTOMER SERVICE

TOM SHATTUCK [email protected] [email protected] 415-822-3083

C.R. STECYK III PRODUCT SALES MANAGER

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

BRYAN DERBALLA BROOKE DUTHIE RACHEL GOMEZ SAM GRAHAM DAVE HUGHES JERRY LOVELAND JULIAN MARTIN ALICE NEMNTINOVA MARC PALLARES EVAN PRICCO ASHLEI QUINONES MARK RYDEN CHRIS SEARL TOD SEELIE

CONTRIBUTING WEB + PRINT EDITORS

KRISTIN FARR JOEY GARFIELD AUSTIN MCMANUS GABE SCOTT MICHAEL SIEBEN HANNAH STOUFFER PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR

AUSTIN MCMANUS CONTRIBUTING PHOTO EDITORS

ESTEVAN ORIOL DAVID BROACH BROCK FETCH

RICK ROTSAERT 415–852–4189 PRODUCT PROCUREMENT

JOHN DUJMOVIC SHIPPING

DILLON AGUILAR BRANDON AYALA DERIK STEVENSON IAN SEAGER TECHNICAL LIAISON

SANTOS ELY AGUSTIN

THE FINAL READER

KRISTIN FARR

JUXTAPOZ ILLUSTRATOR

TRAVIS MILLARD INTERNS

JESSE FIGUEROA ORIS BUCKNER IV SHAWN MILLER LAUREN YOUNG SMITH MARY SLINKERT

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

LALÉ SHAFAGHI AGENCY DESIGNER

DREW BRISCOE

JUXTAPOZ ISSN #1077-8411 JUNE 2014 VOLUME 21, NUMBER 6

ART + CULTURE + DESIGN

MARK RYDEN DETERMINATION & THE RETURN OF THE POP SURREAL MASTER

ART TRUANCY

20 YEARS OF JUXTAPOZ IN NYC AT JONATHAN L VINE GALLERY

SWOON

Published monthly by High Speed Productions, Inc., 1303 Underwood Ave, San Francisco, CA 94124–3308. © 2014 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, $34.99 (one year, 12 issues) or $75.00 (12 issues, first class, US only); Canada, $75.00; Foreign,

SAILS HOME TO BROOKLYN

WALTON FORD

$80.00 per year. Single copy: US, $5.99; Canada, $6.99. Subscription rates given represent standard rate and should not be confused with special

ANIMAL KINGDOM REIMAGINED

subscription ofers advertised in the magazine. Periodicals Postage Paid at San Francisco, CA, and at additional mailing ofces. 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 884570, San Francisco, CA 94188–4570. 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 efort 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 JUNE 2014, n161 $5.99

Cover by Mark Ryden Queen Bee (detail) Oil on canvas

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

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

Earn Your Degree in Illustration Flexible Classes Online or in San Francisco, State-of-the-Art Facilities, Studio Learning, Faculty of Professional Artists Earn a Career-Focused Skillset for a Hands-On Approach to a Creative Future! Academy of Art University Fosters Innovation by Preparing Service Members for a Career in Art and Design

WorldMags.net

VISIT WWW.ACADEMYART.EDU TO LEARN MORE ABOUT TOTAL COSTS, MEDIAN STUDENT LOAN DEBT, POTENTIAL OCCUPATIONS AND OTHER INFORMATION. ACCREDITED MEMBER WASC, NASAD, CIDA (BFA-IAD, MFA-IAD), NAAB (B.ARCH**, M.ARCH), CTC (CALIFORNIA TEACHER CREDENTIAL). *ACTING DEGREE PROGRAM IS CURRENTLY NOT OFFERING ONLINE COURSES. **B.ARCH IS CURRENTLY IN CANDIDACY STATUS.

contributor

WorldMags.net Sam Graham

Covering Los AngeLes through PoP

WE HAVE KNOWN SAM GRAHAM FOR YEARS, considering him to have one of the great names in photography, one that really rolls of the tongue. But what Sam Graham himself does truly well is cover the Los Angeles art scene for us in the Pop Life section. After primarily covering Corey Helford Gallery for the magazine, Graham is now our go-to for printedition coverage of gallery openings down in the Southland. "What's it like shooting for Juxtapoz' ‘Pop Life?’ I love it! I gun it around LA in the wee hours, looking for happenings with a Canon 5D Mark II around my neck and too much cafeine in my blood. Corey Helford Gallery, Subliminal Projects, and Thinkspace are a just few of my haunts. I'm known as the guy in the black shirt who takes lots of group shots. I've been shooting this wonderful scene since 2009 and feel like I'm

10

Juxtapoz

contributor

part of a small community that extends worldwide. I've made great friends. How did I get into this world? I studied art at Cal Arts and paid tuition with photo gigs. After graduating, I put two and two together, and here I am, six years later. Besides illustrating and painting, I'm an animation addict. (I’m part of "Channel Frederator Network" an online animation channel on YouTube.)” –Sam Graham

For more information about Sam Graham, visit heysamgraham.com

juxtapoz.com / photography

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

YOGA SLING SANDAL COLLECTION

WorldMags.net CHECK OUT THESE FRESH PRODUCTS AND MORE @ SANUK.COM

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

www.1xRUN.com

WorldMags.net 1xRUN PRESENTS: A SOLO EXHIBITION BY

SHARK TOOF OPENING RECEPTION

MAY 16, 2014

INNER STATE GALLERY 1410 Gratiot Avenue - Detroit, MI To Join The Advanced Collector Preview Email [email protected] or call 313-744-6505

1xrun.com |WorldMags.net innerstategallery.com | sharktoof.com

INTRODUCTION

WorldMags.net ISSUE NO 161

“...WHAT LINGERED IN MY MIND WERE THE CHOICES AND juxtaposition of imagery. One of the defining actions of our time is choice. No other culture in history has had so many options available to so many people. We are defined by what we choose to put in our lives and surround ourselves with.” —Mike McGee, Director, Lee and Nicholas Begovich Gallery, California State University, Fullerton, on Mark Ryden’s 1998 The Meat Show. After a few months of interviews with colleagues and artists for this month’s cover story on Mark Ryden, Mike McGee was the last person I had the chance to speak to. Turns out, he gave me a wonderful sentiment and thoughtful response to a question I posed: “When you first saw Ryden’s paintings, what stood out to you?” HIs answer above was similar to my gut feeling the whole time I was working on the piece, and even prior to that when I looked at Ryden’s work as a casual observer. Ryden’s work has always held a sense of mystery and wonder, a bit of “je ne sais quoi” as one of our founders, Greg Escalante, told me awhile back. And in a time of inconceivable expanse of choices, Ryden always seems to pick right. It’s amazing that only 20 years ago Mark Ryden made his fine art debut at Brad Benedict’s curated Side Show exhibition. Of course, you now know that first painting as the cover of Juxtapoz n2, exposure that led to Ryden becoming a full-time fine artist, with a first solo show in 1998, and a first museum show in 2005. As the poster child of Pop Surrealism, and now one of the preeminent painters in contemporary art, his popularity has moved quickly as both a critical and populist champion. And in that world of options referenced by McGee, in a world of mass communication, information and immediacy within the “more, more, more, now, now, now” generation, Ryden sat ensconced in his studio, churning out a few choice paintings a year like an old school master painter. He bucked trends but remained in constant demand. (Not to say he never participates; he does have an entertaining Instagram). Like Robert Williams before him, and contemporaries such as Shepard Fairey, Banksy, and KAWS, Mark Ryden is emblematic of what Juxtapoz has symbolized for 20 years, and it seems only apt that we are both celebrating birthdays this month—Ryden with The Gay 90’s: West at Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles and Juxtapoz with Art Truancy: Celebrating 20 Years of Juxtapoz Magazine at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in NYC on May 15. Getting to observe this milestone with longtime friend Jonathan LeVine, an early supporter of the Juxtapoz scene in Philly and NYC when the magazine needed dots connected between the underground cultures on the East Coast, is special unto itself. Having an early

14

JUXTAPOZ

INTRODUCTION

champion of the magazine, the ever-New Yorker Carlo McCormick, sit down for a conversation with LeVine is the ice cream on the cake, and it reinforces this group exhibition is in good hands. We are not overly sentimental. The special cover story and the opening of Art Truancy allow a look back while moving forward, eager to take on the future. Swoon, Seonna Hong, the New Museum, Jef Canham, Matt Leines, Walton Ford, Dave Hughes, and Maiko Takeda all support our mission to cover content that has a truly global and conceptual reach. Ryden, Fairey, Swoon, and all the others who contributed to Art Truancy have been instrumental in taking art beyond the boundaries of our print publication. There’s hope that in a world of choices, choices, choices, every reader and artist knows our pledge to cherish, support and document the scene we love. Enjoy #161

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

CURATED BY PABLO ARAVENA

HERBERT BAGLIONE, FRANCO JAZ FASOLI, NUNCA, NELSON RIVAS CEKIS & SIXE PAREDES EXHIBITION OPENS ON JUNE 5TH, 2014 in collaboration with the Consulate General of Chile in Montreal

YVES LAROCHE GALERIE D’ART

6355, boulevard Saint-Laurent, Montréal (Québec) H2S 3C3

TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT AVAILABLE WORKS AND VIP POSSIBILITIES:

1.514.393.1999 // [email protected] // www.yveslaroche.com

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

the report

WorldMags.net Surf Craft for Charity A Benefit Auction for WAves for WAter

OVER THE PAST FIVE YEARS, Juxtapoz has made it a priority to integrate creatives we spend time every month with into projects that have a lasting impact in the world outside of gallery walls. In 2009, we held a benefit auction in conjunction with our 15th anniversary, raising nearly $200k to initiate an artist-centric community in Detroit, supporting the growth of art in an urban center. The goal in Detroit was to showcase an example of the power of public art and how city planners should set a priority for art-driven initiatives. Swoon, Retna, Tony Hawk, Monica Canilao, Lance Mountain, and Matthew Barney are just some of the names who have been involved in Detroit, so needless to say, the foundation is solid. This past December, during the week that is Art Basel in Miami Beach, Juxtapoz teamed with Chandran Gallery of San Francisco and UNIV Surf Shop in Encinitas to kick-start a new charity benefit for Waves For Water, an organization founded by surfers who help bring clean water to communities most in need of clarity around the world. After Super Typhoon Haiyan ravaged the Philippines in November 2013, there was a consensus that Basel week be repurposed and extend into something greater than one continuous

18

Juxtapoz

report

week-long party. Working with Waves For Water unfurled the great idea of recruiting artists around the country to handpaint surfoards to be auctioned of to benefit this mission. In UNIV’s pop-up surf shack at the Chandran Gallery Beach House in Miami, Geof McFetridge, Richard Colman, Andrew Schoultz, Monica Canilao, Ty Williams, Jared Swilley, and Jason Jägel got the project started. By the time we got back to California, RETNA, CR Stecyk III, Tim Biskup, Jeremy Fish, Mel Kadel, Travis Millard, Lucy McLauchlan, Cleon Peterson, Tahiti Pehrson, and Swampy had all donated their time for the benefit. Such enthusiasm organized itself into a special one-night exhibition held at T.F.R. Gallery in late March 2014 to showcase the surfoards that were part of an online auction, with all sales going to WFW’s work in the Philippines. “We don't come from traditional aid work or humanitarian relief backgrounds, so I think we have always had a diferent approach to how the work can be done,” says Jon Rose, pro surfer and founder of Waves For Water. “As a result, we have sort of carved our own path. Art is all about expression, freedom, innovation, reinvention, and these are all the qualities that I start from when designing new programs.

WorldMags.net

above Panorama by Evan Pricco right Photos by Julian Martin from left to right Surf photographer Steve Sherman Models Darsan O’connor and Kehana Rose UNIV’s James Addonizio and artist Ty Williams

WorldMags.net

The old paradigm of aid work, philanthropy, etc. is so sterile. But the reality is it doesn't have to be; it can have character, creativity, and freedom… just like art.” “The art community has energy, has a platform, and especially during the Basel week, all the attention,” says Amanda Krampf, gallery director of Chandran Gallery. “I think we, along with UNIV and Juxtapoz, wanted to use the week to really work on something that would live on outside of Miami, promote action and benefit the good work that Waves For Water is already doing.”

Juxtapoz would like to thank all the artists who contributed artwork to the benefit auction. Thank you to New Image Art Gallery and Paddle8 for their support, as well as everyone who bid on the surfoards.

We encourage everyone to support Waves For Water at wavesforwater.org

juxtapoz.com / waves - for -water

WorldMags.net

june 2014

19

the report

WorldMags.net

Tiger Heads and Make Believe Matt Leines does the cLassics at Greenpoint terMinaL GaLLery

BY THE TIME WE REALIZED THAT MATT LEINES’ The Essential Collection was on display at Greenpoint Terminal Gallery in Brooklyn, it was too late, closing night as in closed. But we were once again reminded how impactful and fascinating the career of the New Jersey-born, Brooklynbased painter has been. Leines’ unique Tiger Heads and geometric, folkloric characters and scenes have been a practice in steady craftsmanship. The Essential Collection covered the past dozen years of this trajectory. The last time Juxtapoz spoke with Leines in 2007, he wore his influences on his sleeve. “[I was influenced by] He-Man and GI Joe because they were commercials for the toys. And l liked the toys. I would spend hours envisioning all the figures on the aircraft carrier to get ready to play with them, but by the time we finished setting them up, we were too tired to play.” How fitting that the artist has spent a career setting up parallel universes and creating scenes of actions just waiting-to-happen, suspended interludes of momentum in non-reality-based worlds. We should also note that Leines is inspired by vintage hockey uniforms, especially the Vancouver Canuck uniforms from the early 1980s, making

20

Juxtapoz

the report

him perhaps the one artist to channel Harold Snepsts, Tiger Masks, and He-Man into his fine artwork. It only seems appropriate that to accompany this body of work, Leines chose a brief from Dreamtigers by Jorge Luis Borges to summarize the curation. “Destiny takes pleasure in repetition, variants, symmetries.” As Leines’ narrative continues, we too seek pleasure in the mesmerizing repetition as it unfolds.

Follow Greenpoint Terminal Gallery at greenpointterminalgallery.com For updates on Matt Leines, visit mattleinesart.tumblr.com

juxtapoz.com / matt - leines

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

PHOTO: XUN CHI

MAJORS:

MINORS

Drawing & Painting Drawing & Painting w/Sculpture Emphasis Design & Digital Media Design & Digital Media w/Action Sports Design & Digital Media w/Illustration Animation Game Art Illustration Illustration w/Drawing & Painting Emphasis Illustration w/Entertainment Emphasis

Art History Creative Writing Design & Digital Media Animation Illustration Drawing & Painting Sculpture

We know that your creativity has

GRADUATE DEGREES AND CERTIFICATES

shapes culture. We believe that

MFA Drawing MFA Painting Post-Bacc Certificate Drawing & Painting

great value and that your art and design have the power to impact the world. We champion the belief that great art changes minds and GREAT ART MATTERS.

WorldMags.net LCAD.EDU/juxtapoz

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

event

WorldMags.net Watercolors of History Walton Ford at Paul Kasmin Gallery, nyC A FEW YEARS BACK, Walton Ford revealed in our special Juxtapoz Presents video that he not only takes research seriously, but also rummages through the anecdotal gems of history to recreate allegories in his massive paintings. “Every single thing I make a painting about comes from something I have read,” Ford told us in 2011 from his studio in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. “And it might be as simple as [an historical figure] owning a monkey.” Of course, that monkey was notoriously perverted and raunchy. Ford revels in finding these threads throughout history, illuminating the unique relationship between humans and animals. Walton Ford’s new series of paintings, Watercolors, at Paul Kasmin Gallery in NYC through June 21, 2014, continues his exploration of the visual and narrative scope of traditional natural history painting with monumental watercolors, chronicling encounters between human culture and the natural world. The centerpiece of the exhibition is the ten-foot tall painting, Rhyndacus, a piece inspired by Claudius Aelian’s De Natura Animalium, which describes an “impossibly large, 60-foot serpent” inhabiting present-day Turkey that was said to “magically lure prey into its open maw.” Just as Aelian’s text captures a sense of wonder and spirituality between man and creature as a way to contextualize behavior and the civic jungle, Kasmin notes that the piece has Ford conjuring “a monstrously majestic Ancient Roman vision of the East.” “The stories are about human culture as it impacts nature and how it impacts human culture,” Ford continues. “They are animals in the human imagination rather than just animals in nature or any other context.” As seen with Ford’s work, time and time again, Watercolors demonstrates that even though we have attempted our escape from nature, our visual language still relies on these evolutionary relationships.

Walton Ford Watercolors will be on display in NYC at Paul Kasmin Gallery through June 21, 2014

juxtapoz.com / walton - ford

Rhyndacus Watercolor, gouache and ink on paper 60 ¼" x 119 ¼" 2014

24

Juxtapoz

event

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

VANCOUVER

ARTIST REBECCA LORING REBECCALOVESDESIGN COM

SEATTLE BOSTON TORONTO

DRAW STUFF HERE (IF YOU FEEL LIKE IT)

NEW YORK SAN FRANCISCO CHICAGO LOS ANGELES MONTRÉAL

©

PORTLAND QUÉBEC

   ﹒

CALGARY

THE LOPRO QUEST: PLAY ON MY DREAMS

WASHINGTON DC MINNEAPOLIS

DO YOU HAVE THE WORLD’S BEST FLUEVOG SHOES AD STUCK IN YOUR HEAD? GET IT OUT AT FLUEVOGCREATIVE.COM

WorldMags.net

DENVER FLUEVOG.COM

picture book

WorldMags.net

Matt Weber

An Unfiltered new York NEW YORK STREET LIFE IS INCESSANT, continuously unfolding at an accelerated pace on every corner and inspiring generations of image-makers to capture it from difering perspectives. Matt Weber’s photographic undertakings began in the ‘80s while driving a cab in New York, utilizing downtime between fares, shooting what he saw in his surrounding environment. Three decades later, Weber is still enamored with the streets, actively and skillfully documenting their complexity. When exploring Weber’s work, it becomes apparent that he has been exposed to healthy doses of unfiltered beauty and a whole lot of violence. In one stunning image, a young girl stands over a boy on the ground, fist raised high and ready to strike. In another, two older gentlemen tensely grasp each other against a wall in what may soon lead to a fight. The diversity of age, race and gender in Weber’s expansive photo collection of people scrapping it out reveals that fighting occurs in many diferent rings. Never one to stage a scene or seek out permission, Weber shoots hastily without warning, and it shows in the earnest moments he seizes. —Austin McManus

For more information about Matt Weber, visit weber-street-photography.com

juxtapoz.com / photography

26

Juxtapoz

picture book

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

june 2014

27

WorldMags.net

28

Juxtapoz

picture book

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

june 2014

29

WorldMags.net

30

Juxtapoz

picture book

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

june 2014

31

design

WorldMags.net Jeff Canham

The CreaTive Field oF dreams

WHEN I MET WITH JEFF CANHAM, he was readying for a long flight to Perth to work on a project for one of his commerical clients. Normally, if I were to visit Jef at his San Francisco studio, we probably would talk more about his painting and fine art, but this was going to be a diferent conversation. How does an artist with such a recognizable style approach and embrace commercial work? In the creative industry, art and design are frequent partners, so I went to the source to get some perspective. –Brent Gentile Brent Gentile: Do you consider a project like the one in Perth to be an integral part of commercial work, or riding the line of your sign painter and your design lives? Jef Canham: I feel like most of the stuf I do falls under that kind of category. It’s a weird gray area, a kind of hybrid of things, part design, part sign painting, and part art, so I feel like it’s all of the above. Being for a client, there’s that design aspect to it. They’ve got a slogan they want to use, but there isn’t much creative direction, so I’m kind of at liberty to do what I want with it and I’m going to be using all of the

32

Juxtapoz

design

techniques and strategies of painting signs, not that I know what that will be actually. Have you been approached by any clients who have actually not been specifically seeking your sign painting style? Yeah. That happens all the time. I do lots of T-shirt graphics and logo design, posters or book design. And I feel like, inevitably, some part of my sign painting background or art background creeps into it. I feel like there’s always something hand done and hand painted, but it gets scanned, manipulated, and turned into something. That’s not always the case, but more often than not, it is. Have you had any clients who have been a nightmare to work with? Is there something that you fear when working with a commercial client, like them wanting too much of X, Y or Z? I suppose I do, but I feel accepting of that. I’ll take on commercial work, and even if my first go-round is what I think is best, if that’s not the direction they want to go, I realize

WorldMags.net

above Bus for Corona Photo by Chris Searl from top to bottom Logo for Huntsmen and Hounds Mumford and Sons type treatment for The Big Easy Express Mural at Facebook Headquarters Photo by Brooke Duthie Logo for The Standard

WorldMags.net

that the client needs to be happy. This job is not about satisfying myself as an artist or a designer. I don’t need to fight them, and I want them to be happy. I’m willing to do what it takes, for the most part, to get the job done. I think that’s the realistic attitude to take with commercial work. As a designer myself, I feel like I have to accept that I’m always wrong. Right!

What was the project you did for Facebook? They have a whole artist residency program, so basically I painted a mural there. But it was really pretty amazing the way it was structured. They basically said, “This is your honorarium. You decide how much time this is worth to you. You decide what you want to do with it.” And at first I was, “Great! I’m going to be here a week. This is going to be amazing.” And then I thought I could make something really big and try something new. And that was as appealing to me as anything else, so I ended up making a big project, and being there a lot longer than I thought I was going to be. It sounds like you have worked with everybody, from local clients like the Treasure Island Music Festival, all the way up to Facebook. Is there an ideal client size for you? I enjoy diversity. I am lucky enough to be in a position where I can be choosy about the jobs that I take on. There’s this balance between how creative I can be, how much I can do what I want to do, how much I’m going to learn from this project, and how much I’m getting paid. So it’s just a balancing act, like oh the little guys can’t pay me the same as Facebook, but I can do whatever I want, or I can make this really cool thing that I’m going to be excited about. I’ll take any kind of project, any size, as long as it has the magic combination of those things. Do you miss the art direction world, all those years about back at Surfer magazine? I don’t miss working for a magazine. The deadlines are so gnarly. What do you have coming up? What are you working on today, for example? Commercially, I’m doing a bunch of stuf for Target, a whole line of beach/surf inspired clothes, towels, board shorts, and T-shirts. That’s the biggest commercial client I’ve worked for. Is this going to be a beach collection or will it be... A Jef Canham collection. What title would you put on your work with Target? I would say art direction. I think art direction is telling someone else, “This is how we should do it,” but for this project, I made all the artwork, and then they had their team say, “This is our T-shirt blank. What do you think of this?” There was a lot of back and forth with that stuf, and they’d

WorldMags.net

june 2014

33

WorldMags.net

make suggestions like, “Hey, it needs to be brighter or poppier,” and so we were both art directing each other. In an ideal world, would you be Jef Canham the artist who’s approached by all these diferent companies and able to create commissioned works, or do you enjoy the commercial work, like the Target project? I really enjoy it all—having diferent things to focus on and just the balance of it. Solely doing fine art can be really exhausting for me. Coming up with something that I’m totally confident in and believe in, creating an entire show about it, is really fatiguing. I don’t know if I could do that over and over, so it’s nice to have these other things to focus on. Where is your design studio? The bedroom. I live really close to my studio so that I can ride my bike back and forth. I’ll paint something there that I’ll then scan and turn into something else.

a rationalization when people are asked about being a designer and respond with, “I can never learn those programs.” In reality, it has nothing to do with programs. They’re a tool like anything else. Any advice to new designers out there? I always tell people to show the work that they want to do more of. The stuf on my website is the stuf that I’m excited about, and hoping to attract more of. I think whatever you put out there is how people are going to come to know you as. I’ve designed websites but I don’t really want to be doing that, so I don’t let people know. That’s my advice.

Jef’s collection for Target will be in stores on May 10, 2014 For more information about Jef Canham, visit jefcanham.com

juxtapoz.com / jeff - canham

That’s where I see design going. A lot of designers have an overarching need to get of the computer and get back to silk-screening, painting and scanning. It is a such

34

Juxtapoz

design

WorldMags.net

above left Cover design for Monocle magazine insert above right Beach towel for Jef’s Target collection

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

fashion

WorldMags.net Maiko Takeda Sculpture you can wear

WHEN F IS FOR FASHION, IN MAIKO TAKEDA’S ATELIER it’s not necessarily born of function. These are not logos branded on a five-panel cap. Form, fluidity and fantasy expand the narrow confines of the genre for this young artist who grew up in Tokyo and now designs and hangs her hats in London. Gwynned Vitello: You have referenced Björk and Tilda Swinton as muses. Each has a strong persona, but nevertheless are like canvases for a range of expression, both ciphers, and maybe androgynous. Or do you see them in a diferent way? Maiko Takada: Yes, I think their work and presence is so powerful and extraordinary. I admire what they stand for and how their influence creates culture. How did growing up in Tokyo afect your childhood daydreams and the kind of images that fascinated you? Did movies or books have an influence?

36

Juxtapoz

fashion

When I grew up, all the typical craziness of Tokyo street style and culture, like cosplay people and neon signs, was always around me. I never felt inspired by it because I saw it all the time. To an extent, I agree that my work has been influenced by what you would call Japanese aesthetics. For example, I tend to like repetition of minimal elements and find beauty in things that are aerial and sublime. However, after living in London for nine years, my designs have also been influenced by people and cultures from all over the world. I hope there’s a broad range of aesthetic and social references in my work. Why was London the deliberate choice for school? Were you apprehensive about making the move? Tokyo is huge, but it’s not a very international city. Growing up, I always felt an urge to get out of the box and see somewhere I hadn’t seen. During my final year of high school, I found that the British Council was located in our neighborhood, so I went and started to get information about

WorldMags.net

above Atmospheric Re-entry Collection Photo by Ayako Kichikawa 2013 right Atmospheric Re-entry Collection Photo by Bryan Huynh 2013

WorldMags.net

universities in the UK. I was 18 when I moved to London, but was never worried or scared about it at all. I was young and didn’t think too much, which, I think, was a good thing. Did you paint or draw, and were you interested in designing clothing before concentrating on what could be called enhancements, but I guess I should call jewelry? I wasn’t that kind of fashion-obsessed child who liked designing clothes and dressing up. Instead, I was always involved in making three-dimensional objects and experimenting with various materials. Initially, I was thinking of studying sculpture when I moved to London, but gradually my interests shifted to creating something more functional and related to the body. To me, fashion is a very superficial thing. It’s about how you feel and how you look, and seems somewhat materialistic if you too are guided that way. However, there is so much more to it, and that is why I find it challenging to propose something that is not inspired by fashion.

As someone who is known for working with clear plastic film and feathers, can you describe your experience with rougher, heavier textures? My latest collection, “Atmospheric Re-entry,” happened to be made of plastic films and other transparent materials, but this was only because these were most suitable to realize the ethereal feel I aimed to create. However, I appreciate any sort of materials that excite me. For example, for my final collection during my BA in Jewelry Design at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, I only focused on metals such as silver and plated brass. I’m guessing that your work studio is pristinely spare and orderly, but could it surprisingly be draped in bead curtains and flung with pillows? Although my final designs tend to be pared down and discreet, my conceptual process is quite chaotic and many bits of materials and prototypes are strewn around all over the workspace.

WorldMags.net

june 2014

37

WorldMags.net

Your art is dynamic and reflective, so I don’t imagine it existing independently, since it seem deliberately complemented by environmental influences. For example, wind and shadows are a component in your work. I like my pieces to be interactive and experiential. I like to involve airy, vaporous elements such as shadow and wind as part of my work, especially because clothes and accessories are normally made of more tangible and durable materials. I find it intriguing to seek and devise a way to propose something somehow more transient and ephemeral through my designs. Can one of your hats be a valid piece on its own, or does it need a model? And I don’t mean Gisele. My work lives its life within the environmental elements in the surrounding space, and most especially when worn on

38

Juxtapoz

fashion

somebody and interacting with the movement of the wearer. Then I can really imagine you moving on to set or costume design for theater or film. Oh yes, I would love that. As I often draw inspiration from theater and performance, it would really be exciting to be part of such multi-sensorial pieces of work.

For more information about Maiko Takeda, visit maikotakeda.com

juxtapoz.com / fashion

WorldMags.net

Atmospheric Re-entry Collection Photo by Bryan Huynh 2013

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

influences

WorldMags.net Swoon

Back Home at tHe Brooklyn museum

IN THE WORLD OF CONTEMPORARY ART, Swoon is ambidextrous. She has created immersive, conscious and breathtaking art that has traveled the globe by way of performance, installation, sculpture, collage, wheatpaste and painting. Through August 24, 2014, Swoon will be showing a site-specific installation, Submerged Motherlands, at the Brooklyn Museum, a return to NYC where she is based and started her career. Here is her life in art. —EP Brooklyn Brooklyn has been my home for 17 years, and NYC has shaped everything about who I am as an artist. I've been traveling so much in the past five years that I have really missed the city, and this opportunity to be here, to create something and give it my absolute all because this place is my home, is kind of tremendous. So many friends have come back together to be a part of this show because we're bringing the rafts which travelled the Hudson River and the Adriatic Sea back home to NYC.

42

Juxtapoz

influences

It’s massive and difcult and stressful, but I'm having an amazing time. Projects here are always full of a deep strength and are always a huge turning point for me. The Brooklyn Museum is a place that I have had a long relationship with. They were one of the earliest supporters of my work, and they are being pretty adventurous to allow me to create an installation that takes on the unique architecture of the rotunda in such an immersive way. Plus I have been pretty stoked watching them curate one amazing show after another, from Wangechi Mutu to Ai Weiwei. To be a part of this work they are doing is a huge honor. Community and Collaboration I work on many collaborative and community-based projects, and I also create a lot of work that is totally driven by a personal vision. In my life, I find that one balances the other. Though, at times like these, when I am making something which is created out of a fairly singular vision, I am still aware every single day that the potency of what I am able to create

WorldMags.net

All installation photos courtesy of Brooklyn Museum

WorldMags.net

rests in every sense on the people who are building it with me. All of the friends who are on my build crew right now are people who have their own art making practices and adventurous lives from which we collectively draw all of the knowledge and experience that goes into making something like this. They are everything to this process and it wouldn't be possible without them. I think so much of my understanding about the importance of community came out of watching the anti-globalization movement spring up in the late ‘90s, and then being a part of the movement in the early 2000s that was trying to

counter the endless wars that followed September 11th. So much creativity and will to action sprung up out of those movements. Submerged Motherlands I chose a space in the Brooklyn Museum that felt really special to me. I always love to pick a good architectural detail, and the 70-foot rotunda on the 5th floor of the museum is a pretty unique space. Then I thought about wanting to bring the rafts home from their long journey, and show them one more time, no longer

WorldMags.net

june 2014

43

WorldMags.net

as vessels, or floating homes, but this time as sculptures with a story to tell. I wanted something that they could nestle into that would give them safe harbor, something which would rise up into the space and really fully embrace its expansiveness. One day, sitting under the Mapou Tree in Haiti, I knew that nothing else would be as perfect as this huge sacred tree. I realized how many world mythologies have a sacred tree at their center. It seemed to make sense that this should be the anchor point for the biggest thing I have ever tried to make, and into which I would try to pour so many stories. Favorite hero in fiction? I love Don Eber, the old man from George Saunder's short story, Tenth of December.

What is your present state of mind? Total rollercoaster. In 20 years, where do you see yourself? Surrounded by baby goats, maybe. Or on a surfoard on some mild waves in a warm ocean, with a campfire waiting for me in the yard when I get home. Nothing at all like today.

Swoon’s Submerged Motherlands will be on display on the 5th Floor of the Brooklyn Museum through August 24, 2014 For more information about Swoon, visit swooninprint.com

juxtapoz.com / swoon

The natural talent you’d like to be gifted with? The ability to see and accept people for who and how they are.

44

Juxtapoz

influences

WorldMags.net

The Swimming Cities of Serenissima, Venice, 2009. © Tod Seelie

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

LIMITED EDITION CO-LAB AVAILABLE NOW

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

Mark ryden IntervIew by Evan Pricco PortraIt by the artIst

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

IT WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE THIS WAY. It was all supposed to happen on November 11, 2011, just a quiet continuation of Mark Ryden’s already blockbuster The Gay 90’s Olde Tyme Art Show that showed in NYC at Paul Kasmin in Spring 2010. Mark was scheduled to work on a few new additions for the West Coast audience at Michael Kohn Gallery, have this one opening, then move on to another body of paintings slated for the near future. “It wasn’t going to be a grandiose show,” Ryden tells me on a characteristically sunny winter day in Los Angeles, a few months before the still delayed The Gay 90’s: West show was to open. “It was going to be just a smaller thing.” Three and half years later, it’s now become a big thing with bigger things. Let us explain. In the world of outsider art, Mark Ryden is the “crossover hit.” I love this phrase and wish I thought of it first. But it was Michael Kohn who coined the phrase to explain the phenomenon that is Ryden’s collector cache and status as underground hero over the past two decades “What happened with me is probably what happens with most people when they encounter Mark’s work,” Kohn told me. “I was pretty amazed at how beautifully painted these works were, and how incredibly odd they were at the same time.” And to be certain, Ryden is not the first artist who has made beautiful and odd work to find himself in the halls of the grand art fairs next to Warhols and Hirsts. Nor will he be the last. But in the 20 year history of Juxtapoz, few artists have captured the imagination quite like Ryden, a painter whose complex talent, sense of humor, and cultural appeal has seduced the fussiest critics into accepting that even in the much maligned world of Pop Surrealism, a new category can emerge: the populist blue chipper. What makes the story even more interesting were the great odds that none of this was going to happen. If Brad Benedict didn’t put Mark’s first painting in Side Show in 1994, if Robert Williams didn’t see that painting and put it on the cover of Juxtapoz #2, if Todd Schorr didn’t make the leap from commercial to fine art, maybe Ryden wouldn’t have had the confidence. “Ryden is an heir apparent [to that first generation of comic book and outsider artists],” says Bolton Colburn, museum director and curator of the Laguna Art Museum Juxtapoz Factor retrospective in 2008. From the moment Ryden left commercial art behind in 1998 to the moment Kohn Gallery opens its renovated doors in 2014, Ryden has been sequestered in his studio, no need for assistants, a singular painter exploring what masters have done before and, in his case, transforming a love of Kitsch and Americana into figurative works of high and low culture. “There are a lot of artists who are gifted painters, technically, yet they’re not as resonating as Mark,” Kohn says. “And that means there’s something else at work, besides his skill as a painter. His work is insidious because it’s seductive, and at first glance,

50

Juxtapoz

mark ryden

critics think its ‘easy’… This unsettles them despite the fact that they like it.” Kirsten Anderson, who has shown Mark in the past as owner of Roq La Rue Gallery in Seattle, and instrumental in naming the genre Pop Surrealism, ofered a direct take on Ryden’s career. “I've never seen anything like it. I think he is special,” Anderson notes. “I think his success is due to many things all working in conjunction: one, he did happen to be there right as this art movement blew up, and second, he is a very canny businessman and he had a plan from the start in that I think he decided if he was going to play the art world game, he was going to go for it completely. Thirdly, and this is the most important, is that he does have the ability to capture the viewer in a way that very few do. You have a visceral reaction to a Ryden painting no matter what your opinion of it is. It's so purely what it is. He just can’t be dismissed as any one thing. You can’t deny his talent, and you can’t denigrate him as ‘big eye’ or ‘kitsch’ because he embraces it and transcends it.”

BEYOND THE STORY When asked what painter would get him out of the studio to check out, Mark noted Neo Rauch: “He does things that nobody else does.” This is Ryden’s fifth cover of Juxtapoz. The cover image, Queen Bee, was part of a fundraiser hosted by the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation in 2013.

“Ryden ofers up the cloying artifice of Americana in perhaps its purest form since Norman Rockwell, and he manages to do so with such a stunning lack of camp and irony,” art critic Carlo McCormick explained in describing the artist’s trajectory and critical appeal. “He allows us to revel in our myths with the same suspended sense of make-believe that makes our folkloric exceptionalism so much fun.” There it is. Fun. So much fun. In asking over 20 people about Ryden, his career, and his art, fun came up over and over. In the art world of clean white walls, I assume fun has been a four-letter word for decades. Fun means that the art isn’t taken seriously, yet with Ryden, there has been the serendipitous balance of unsurpassed technique, curiosity and fun in every painting he makes. In the midst of years of delays, Ryden created two masterworks, his biggest painting to date titled The Parlor, and an incredible hand-painted and constructed diorama that may be his most immersive fantasy to date. I spoke with Mark in two sessions at his home in Eagle Rock, California, on the eve of his first solo show in 4 years, 20 years since his first painting, and 19.5 years since his very first Juxtapoz cover. Evan Pricco: Was this show always scheduled to open the new Michael Kohn space? Mark Ryden: Originally this show was only going to be a simple continuation of The Gay 90’s Olde Tyme Art Show

WorldMags.net

Main Street U.S.A. Oil on canvas 29" x 36" 2011

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

I did at Paul Kasmin Gallery in 2010. I had more paintings I wanted to do around that theme, and I liked the idea of bringing back some of those paintings to the West Coast. It wasn’t going to be a large scale show, but intended to be a smaller exhibition. It was originally scheduled to open 11/11/11. I am interested in numerology and wanted to take advantage of that special date! As I began developing the show, Michael Kohn started renovating a new gallery space. It seemed like a great opportunity to have the premier show in his grand new space, so we delayed the exhibition… and that turned into three years of delays. But in that time, did the show grow? With the extra time I took on a very large scale painting, The Parlor, it did. It was inspired by an old color lithographic advertisement from 1878. I came across the lithograph at the flea market, and from the moment I first saw it, I fell in love with the image and knew I wanted to make a painting based on it. That is often how a painting will start. I will see something from any number of diferent places or sources, and it will trigger an idea.

52

Juxtapoz

mark ryden

Is that the biggest painting you’ve done? It is. In spite of the painting’s large size, I used the same techniques I do with a small painting. I use very tiny brushes and embellish with minute detail. It is a bit ridiculous to approach a large painting like this, but I can’t seem to do it any other way. This painting needed to be large. I wanted the viewer to stand before it and be immersed in the image. I wanted it to feel like a room you could step into. Of course, with that in mind, you built the diorama, which, to me, is one of the greatest things you have made. Maybe the delay for the show was good. You had two very completed ambitious works of art in the meantime. Yes, so even after spending so much time on The Parlor, the gallery still wasn’t finished. At that point, I began work on the diorama. I thought it would be a nice departure from painting after such a long, intense period on that large canvas. I had previously done a similar mixed media piece for the Tree Show. That piece wasn’t originally meant to be a work for sale, but an assemblage of my collection of ephemera, toys, and books that inspired the exhibition. This new piece

WorldMags.net

above Detail of Memory Lane (Diorama) Mixed media 106" wide x 114" tall x 65" deep 2013 right Memory Lane (Diorama) Mixed media 106" wide x 114" tall x 65" deep 2013

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

june 2014

53

WorldMags.net

started with a similar initial conception, but I wanted it to be more substantial.

Another dimension, really, and it’s immersive in its own way. I think the diorama encapsulates the concepts behind the Gay 90’s theme more than any individual painting did. Many of the paintings would go of in one direction or another, whereas I feel the diorama perhaps more clearly displays my thoughts about kitsch, sentiment, memory, life, and death. Do you like working with people? I’m not a very assertive boss, and I’m not comfortable telling other people what to do. I’m an introverted person who prefers to work alone and do everything myself. That was a problem on this diorama. It is the kind of project that I should have had help fabricating. I did have some outside help with the mechanical parts of the diorama, which was one of the most challenging aspects of the project. In theory, it seemed simple: put a penny in and a procession of figures go around an oval track. It was surprising how involved the work became. At this point, nearly two years later, I am still putting the finishing touches on it. You hand painted every little piece in there? There’s hardly anything that I didn’t manipulate in one way or another. Some figures are sculpted from scratch or Frankensteined from existing dolls and toys, which I would mangle and reconfigure, and everything is meticulously painted. I felt I changed roles from doing architectural design one day, to doing interior decoration or fashion design the next. I would jump from graphic design and sign painting to set and lighting design. I did manage to get some help with the carpentry on the wagon that houses the diorama, but then I painted the wagon myself. Are you constantly studying and reading up on what the masters used to do? I really enjoyed the book The Alchemy of Paint, which talks about the subtleties of the physical substance of paint. I pay close attention to most subtle details and qualities of paint. For example, I take great pleasure in the paintings of Bouguereau. He did incredible things with paint, though his work is often disdained because the content is so sappy. Museums tend to shove their Bouguereau paintings in the back. LACMA puts his art with decorative arts and furniture. But while his subject matter is banal and sentimental, his virtuosity with paint is unsurpassed. I feel that he painted flesh to be more alive than any other artist. I marvel at his technique, and I’ll look at them as close as I can get before the museum guard will say to me, “Get away from there!’ Just say, “Oh don’t worry! I’m a painter! I’m supposed to get this close!” I get as close as I can to analyze what I am seeing. More than the application of color and value and mixing of paint, there’s something more going on, almost something sublime. I have read about his technique, but nothing has sufciently explained just how he achieved what he did.

54

Juxtapoz

mark ryden

In 1994, Ryden was working as a commercial artist when curator and fellow music industry colleague Brad Benedict asked him to contribute a painting to the Side Show group exhibition, a continuing series of alternative art shows. Robert Williams saw Ryden’s work, put it on the cover of Juxtapoz #2, and the rest was history. “The opening night of Side Show, I introduced Mark to Robert Williams, who had just started Juxtapoz,” says Benedict. “During that show, Mark met Long Gone John, Billy Shire and many other Side Show followers and collectors, and of course, many of the artists from the show and other painters and scenesters who attended all my shows.

“The movement was not yet called ‘Pop Surrealism,’ probably just ‘lowbrow’ or ‘underground’ or the ‘new pop.’ I wanted to promote the show as new art. Whether painting or personal illustration, I kind of made it up as I moved along through the journey of discovering new talent, ideas, styles, and ways artists would approach their concept of representational art. Side Show was my forum for showing emerging artists and giving established artists in the scene more exposure. The movement was still small and only about ten years old by the time Ryden first showed.”

Coinciding with his opening at Michael Kohn Gallery, Ryden will release a special, limited-edition LP, “The Gay 90’s: Olde Tyme Music,” featuring reinterpretations of the classic 1890’s hit, “Daisy Bell.” From Katy Perry to Tyler The Creator, Nick Cave to Weird Al, “Daisy Bell” is taken to every corner of the musical spectrum. Even Ryden created a track. “I love the idea of making an LP as a piece of art,” Ryden says, “And it’s fun to release it at the show so people who are actually at the opening will benefit from having gone.”

Let’s step back a few years, prior to Juxtapoz’s first issue, winter 1994, while doing album covers and commercial work, how aware were you of this little universe that was starting to boil over into the art world? Very early on, I was aware of Robert Williams and the alternative art scene he was nurturing and establishing. I admired the work of Robert and artists like Todd Schorr and Georganne Deen, but I never thought I could make a serious living in the art world. But Todd was doing commercial work as well? Like me, Todd transitioned from commercial art to fine art, but he was ahead of me. The first art I ever exhibited in a gallery was in a group show with Todd, in 1994, called Side Show. Brad Benedict was the curator and he included artists like Robert Williams, Anthony Ausgang, The Pizz, and many other artists from that scene. This is where Robert Williams first saw my painting, The Birth, that he put on the cover of the second issue of Juxtapoz. That show was the first time I had ever done paintings for myself and not for a commercial purpose. After so many years of doing paintings for mercantile projects, it was a true joy to have the freedom just to do exactly what I wanted to do. And at that point, you were doing album covers, for instance, the famous cover for Michael Jackson’s Dangerous. Album covers were just one part of the commercial work I was doing. I was also doing very conservative commercial illustrations. I did work for advertising agencies, medical corporations, annual reports, you name it. This type of work paid well. The album covers were the most creative of the commercial work. I was able to do both extremes. I did my more strange bizarre work for the music industry, while doing totally conservative, straight-forward illustration work for the corporate world.

WorldMags.net

Exploration on Foot Graphite on paper 9.5" x 12" 2013

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

How often would you work on your own paintings? Not very much at all until the Side Show in 1994.

It’s a world that’s completely diferent than the world I graduated college in.

And when Brad approached you to have a painting in the show, were you thinking career change? Back in art school, I never imagined being able to make a living doing the strange and imaginative art that I liked. I graduated from Art Center in Pasadena thinking I was going to have a fairly conventional career. My portfolio was generally conservative, corporate work, but fortunately I also included some of my more personal, imaginative work. The more intimate strange work stood out. It is what led to album cover work, which is what eventually led to my career as a fine artist.

So you got the cover of Juxtapoz but even at that point, were you like, “This is it. I’m of to be a fine artist?” No, not at all. After that cover, I seriously considered trying to make the transition to fine art, but after doing some research and a good deal of soul searching, I completely gave up on it, even though I was bursting to make my own paintings. I conceded to a life of corporate illustration. After some serious looking into the fine art world and seeing what was still going on, I didn’t think I would really fit in. I didn’t want to be a struggling artist. By contrast my wife, Marion Peck, who went to RISD, never questioned her path as a fine artist. She was prepared to be a bohemian starving artist. She liked the romantic notion of that, and she was fully prepared to sacrifice whatever it took to make her own art. She actually was met with great success, selling out solo shows ten years before I had my first gallery show.

When you were starting out in both commercial and gallery art, the concept that one could make a living as an exhibiting artist was pretty improbable. I think about the 20 years of Juxtapoz, and the generation of kids who grew up on it, and how that concept has evolved greatly.

56

Juxtapoz

mark ryden

WorldMags.net

above The Parlor: Allegory of Magic, Quintessence, and Divine Mystery Oil on canvas with carved wood frame 96" x 60" 2012 right Fetal Cone of Memory Graphite and watercolor on paper 20" x 16" 2012 following spread Detail of Memory Lane (Diorama) Mixed media 106" wide x 114" tall x 65" deep 2013

WorldMags.net

You can still be a bohemian, just not a starving one, right? So there were four years between Side Show and your first solo show in ’98 at Mendenhall Gallery. Is this when the commercial work kind of dropped of? Financially, did it start making sense to you that exhibition art was something you wanted to do? Right at the point I had truly given up on what I thought was a fantasy to be a fine artist, the opportunity for a show came up in a gallery in Pasadena. It wasn’t New York, but I thought, “I really want to do this.” The year was 1997 and I started with Snow White, which was to become the biggest painting in the show. Long Gone John, one of the earliest collectors of Pop Surrealism, had bought a painting from Side Show and we had become friends. While visiting my studio, he saw Snow White in progress. He agreed to purchase the painting ahead of time and make monthly payments. This financial arrangement allowed me to take a year of and make The Meat Show.

It seems that you perceived The Meat Show as a culmination of all your creativity at that point in your life. I put my whole heart and soul in that work. I never dreamt it would have the success and get the attention that it did. I just reveled in the opportunity to finally make my own paintings. I started numbering my paintings in that show, which included 1 through 12. Now I am up to painting number 107. And for your career, it went straight to the fast lane after that, correct? You went from The Meat Show to the position of torchbearer of this new Pop Surreal movement quite quickly. How conscious were you at this point that this movement was getting bigger and gaining a larger audience? There was an exciting explosion of creativity in a great wave of artists: Camille Rose Garcia, The Clayton Brothers, Tim Biskup, Eric White, and many others. It was fun to be a part of it. There was a real movement, a Zeitgeist at work.

WorldMags.net

june 2014

57

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

Have you always been someone who likes to have shows so spread out? Do you like to wait that two or three years? I would actually prefer to have more frequent shows that were smaller in scale. I would like to explore more themes as well as make a larger number of smaller works. The pressure of building up a show for four years is stressful. I think about Michael Jackson’s career versus Madonna’s career. Michael had the number one record in the world, and after that, he felt he had to outdo himself every time. I think he was frozen by it. Madonna, on the other hand, just releases record after record. They’re well received, some more than others, but she just keeps going. She doesn’t have to be the top of all the charts with every single project she works on. That’s a much better way to have a career. It allows for much more creativity and freedom. With that said, with this new show, you’re kind of MJ. I suppose so, but I want to be Madonna.

How Ryden gets placed in the history books was a huge curiosity for everyone I spoke to in preparing for this piece. When I broached the subject with Bolton Colburn, he gave an expansive view. “I do know that this thing called Art History is fracturing, allowing for a much broader and inclusive interpretation of visual history and what is important in that history.” Ryden’s appreciation for history, politics, and museums was how we ended our conversation. You have released many editions to raise money for organizations like The Nature Conservancy and the Sierra Club. Are you an environmentalist? I care deeply about the environment. I think one of our most serious issues is our mistreatment of the earth. Your shows are politically in tune, but not overt. I don’t consciously make my art with a political agenda. I didn’t do The Tree Show because I’m an environmentalist. It was spiritually motivated, working with the divinity of nature. It’s interesting to observe the disparity in how people look at nature. Some people will look at California’s massive redwood trees and see evidence of God, while other people think “Let’s chop ’em up and make lots of money.” Looking at the earth as a commodity is destroying our planet. Do you find it odd that this far into the Pop Surrealism movement, or figurative painting like this in general, that there’s still a little bit of a prejudice? Unfortunately, it still seems like the old guard continues to look down upon painting, and realism in particular. I was just reading about renovation plans at the MoMA in New York. They plan to make an addition with glass walls that you can’t hang paintings on, so it’s only going to show installations, sculptures, and performance video art. There’s still a prejudice toward painting, I guess, as if they feel it’s not possible to explore new ideas with the “dead” language of painting. I think that is a ridiculous notion.

60

Juxtapoz

mark ryden

Like it’s antiquated. Is there a sense of pride that you can walk through the Basel fair and see one of your paintings? It’s interesting how out of place my work often looks in the context of a contemporary art fair. I am very lucky there are those in that world who do appreciate my work. In 20 years from now, if you could have your art at an institution or on display, where would you like to see it? There are a lot of reasons to reject the museum world and want nothing to do with it, but I honestly love these treasures. My favorite places to go are museums, whether they are fine art museums, museums of natural history, or museums of medical oddities. To me, they’re like churches. A museum, when not too crowded, can be a place to leave behind the loud, busy world, and reverently stand before something inspirational and quietly contemplate it. I love the idea of my work being viewed in that context. I think the ultimate achievement would be to have my work in an institution like the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In a day and age of such mechanical reproduction, where everything is at your fingertips, where you can live vicariously through others, do you think that viewing an original piece of art still takes people back to a certain feeling? I believe something spiritual happens in front of an original painting. You can feel something you would never get from a mechanical reproduction. This reminds me of my experience with Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus. I never really cared for that painting when I had only seen it countless times in reproduction. But standing before the original, I just couldn’t believe the feelings I got from it. I was enchanted. How would you explain your work ethic in the totally simplest way possible? I work very, very hard. I don’t paint every day, but I work hard almost every day. There’s a quote, “The harder I work, the better luck I have.” I do think I’ve been very lucky, but I’ve worked so hard. I’ve always worked hard.

Mark Ryden’s The Gay 90’s: West opens at Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles on May 3, 2014 For more information about Mark Ryden, visit markryden.com

juxtapoz.com / mark - ryden

WorldMags.net

Queen Bee Oil on canvas with carved wood frame 28" x 45" 2013

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

june 2014

61

WorldMags.net

Art truAncy

Juxtapoz turns 20 at Jonathan LeVine GaLLery Jonathan LeVine interviewed by CarLo Mc CorMiCk Portrait by Bryan DerBaLLa

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

I CAN THINK OF NO OTHER GALLERY OWNER IN MY HOMETOWN OF NEW YORK CITY who has with such longevity and consistency represented the aesthetics of Juxtapoz Magazine in all its outlaw, degenerate, infantile and iconoclastic glory, than Jonathan LeVine. There are certainly lots of equally interesting programs and levels of support and commitment for this kind of art all across this nation and the globe, but part of what makes the pit bull tenacity of LeVine so exceptional is that he has opened his outpost of the outré in the belly of the beast—smack in the middle of the world’s largest, most powerful and afuent art market, where the commerce of consensus and the ratification of value have absolutely nothing to do with the kind of art he promotes. And this matters a lot, not just for me—having worked many decades now in the ofcial art world—but to the artists who, despite their deliberate outsider status, really do want to be taken seriously by the mighty citadel of fine art. On May 15, 2014, Jonathan LeVine Gallery in NYC will host Art Truancy, an exhibition in support and honor of 20 years of Juxtapoz Magazine. The persistence of LeVine’s advocacy for the myriad expressions that make up the Juxtapoz pantheon has always seemed to be there from the start of it all. Certainly early in his support of this scene, LeVine was also just as inspired and influenced by what this magazine has done as he has, in turn, informed it. Hopefully some of this legacy will translate in the conversation we enjoyed to mark the platinum anniversary of Juxtapoz, but in full disclosure, Jonathan is a dear pal. In fuller disclosure, we’re the kind of friends who like to ridicule one another. Maybe this is endemic to the movement—something that sets us apart from the more polite discourse of high cultural politics. As usual the editors have done a superb job distilling down our rambling, rambunctious conversation into some semblance of coherence and relevance, and this reminds me of what I’ve always loved about the magazine, that it has always had the fan-boy heart of a zine and the professionalism of those other more “ofcial” art publications out there. But thinking back to how LeVine and I tend to prod and poke one another for the verbal sport of it all, also reminds me of the last time I hung out with Fausto Vitello, the mercurial spirit who founded this magazine. It was a bit of an Old Boy’s night out, and for once I got to be the kid at the table as Fausto Vitello, Robert Williams and CR Stecyk III—the three geniuses most responsible for this august institution called Juxtapoz—drank up and swapped stories with me at a bar I work at in New York. Not a moment in those many hours was anything short of hilarious, but the funniest moments came whenever anyone would leave the table to hit the restroom—something that proves pretty frequent when old people get to sitting in a bar. Then, with the greatest of afection, the most brutal of critiques would

64

Juxtapoz

art truancy

be levied on whoever happened to be absent from the table. This is very much the fun that LeVine and I have, especially when Evan, the current editorial honcho at Juxtapoz comes to town. I’d like to think it’s very much the way that every generation that has come up through this magazine comes to treat one another—with that same impossible combination of infinite love and monumental disrespect that makes this art so special. —Carlo McCormick Carlo McCormick: I was told to keep this casual and chatty and think of it as a conversation as much as an interview. Kind of odd that Juxtapoz is already 20. So 20 years ago, you were 26 and you didn’t have the gallery yet? Jonthan LeVine: When I was 26, it was the end of 1994 and I curated my first exhibition with work by three artists (including myself) at the college where I worked.

BEYOND THE STORY Carlo McCormick curated Détournement: Signs of the Times at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in August 2012, featuring Dan Witz, AIKO, ESPO, Shepard Fairey, and Leo Fitzpatrick, amongst others. Jonathan LeVine Gallery recently opened a second space in Chelsea, a ground-floor gallery that was part of both the How Nosm and WK Interact exhibitions in 2013. The story of Jonathan LeVine Gallery was chronicled in the monograph, Delusional, published by Gingko Press. The cover is at this point… legendary.

God, 20 years ago you were still an artist? Did you have hair? No. (laughter) I didn’t have hair, I started shaving my head a couple years before that. Yeah, I was still an artist, the other two artists in this show were Mark Alden, and Ulana Zahajkewycz. Anything you’d show now? No, but I still really like their work. Ulana’s work was really illustrative. Mark’s was more moody, dark landscapes that were spiritual, almost bordering on sci-fi. So it was pop culture? Yeah, always. So did Juxtapoz change your life? Yeah, absolutely, it did. Completely changed my life. Was the magazine your first exposure to a lot of the artists that we now know so well? At that time there weren’t a lot of magazines really covering that stuf but it wasn’t the first time I was exposed to it because I was heavily involved in the music scene and

WorldMags.net

Maya Hayuk Chem Trails #143 Acrylic on panel 36" x 48" 2014

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

Anthony AusgAng, Ron English, VAn ARno And i would WorldMags.net sit ARound All thE timE tRying to comE up with A bEttER nAmE thAn lowbRow already familiar with the work on album covers, in fanzines and comics. I love all that imagery. When I was 10, I visited my dad in Woodstock and I stayed with him for three weeks. He worked at a bootery next door to this bookstore. During the day, while he was working, I’d kick around Woodstock and I remember I went into this bookstore and I discovered Robert Crumb. Was Juxtapoz your first exposure to Robert Williams? My first exposure to Robert Williams was probably an album cover. Maybe it was Appetite For Destruction or a compilation record, I’m not sure. I just remember a naked woman on it, and it was in the late ‘80s. I was raised in a suburb of Trenton. It was a racially mixed community and we got radio stations from New York and Philly so I grew up with hip-hop and Grafti. I remember when “Rapper’s Delight” came out and that was it. A lot of great music came out of the North East. Your first gallery was in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and then you moved it to Philly? Two years in New Hope and two years in Philly. I had a strong relationship with the Space 1026 guys, all of them. And I met them all through Shepard Fairey. I remember, it was Spring 1999, and Ron English and I went to Philly to see Shepard and it was one of the early Space 1026 shows. That’s where I met Jim Houser and Adam Wallacavage. We’re talking about all East Coast so far, but was Juxtapoz more like a West Coast magazine? Did it change the dialogue? Well, I lived on the West Coast in Oregon for four years and came out of this whole punk rock scene there with artists like Pushead who was doing record covers. I collected independent comics back then by artists like Peter Bagge. In the zine culture I discovered people like Steven Cerio or Danny Hellman doing comics for Motorbooty, which was a music magazine. And then I started collecting Frank Kozik posters. So you were aware of the San Francisco scene from the likes of Kozik, Pushead, and Winston Smith’s art for the Dead Kennedys? Of course, and I was also very much aware of the history of psychedelic rock posters there because I was such a music fan. I think I started reading Art Alternatives around that time. Robert Williams had started that before he founded Juxtapoz, and the publishers were over in Hoboken, New Jersey. I think I wrote for them, weren’t they sleazy porn guys? The mag had bad color separation… Really ugly ass art, right? Art brute really, but I got turned on

66

Juxtapoz

art truancy

to a couple people like Todd Schorr. Juxtapoz came out in 1994 and I used to go to this great zine shop called See Hear to buy it and pick up other cool subcultural magazines, fan zines and comics. See Hear was such a special place, like the one stop home for the whole culture. New York was really blessed to have had that place for as long as it did. That was my spot, I was so into that place. I remember it opened when I was in high school in 1986. I used to sell my zines there—that was a big deal for me. I think when Juxtapoz started, it would only come out like twice a year or something. No wonder I made my deadlines! You know I met you through Ron English, right? I thought I just came to one of the shows and it was love at first sight. I know specifically how we met. I decided that I was going to curate this show called Lords Of The Lowbrow and I started

WorldMags.net

above Brett Amory Waiting #209 Oil on board 30" x 30" 2014 right Shepard Fairey Satangelic Sounds Silkscreen and mixed media collage on paper Hand Painted Multiple (HPM) Edition of 10 41.5" x 41.5" 2013

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

june 2014

67

WorldMags.net

Juxtapoz covers, 1994—The Present

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

I’m authentIcWorldMags.net In that what I’m showIng Is true to who I am. I relate to every artIst I work wIth lIke they’re my peer calling people and Ron English gave your number to me. I called you and you picked up the phone and that’s how we met. I was calling around, I was this dumb kid, I didn’t know.

it Cartoon Surrealism by then. Years before that, Anthony Ausgang, Ron English, Van Arno and I would sit around all the time trying to come up with a better name than Lowbrow.

What year was that? I remember Robert Williams was in that show. That was 1997. It was Robert Williams, Joe Coleman, Jonathan Shaw, Anthony Ausgang, Gary Panter, David Sandlin, and Ron English.

There was Lowbrow and Pop Surrealism, and then there was another kind of shift where Street Art became such a huge part of the mag. Now you’re somebody who’s actually shown Lowbrow, Pop Surrealists, Grafti, and Street Art— is it one lineage? Should we just get the fuck over these pigeonhole descriptors? I don’t necessarily like labels but I think they’re a good way to sub-categorize this very broad movement as a whole, the way it’s done with rock music. That’s how I see it.

I’d guess Panter and Shaw had already moved to NY from LA, so other than Ausgang and Williams, it was a pretty New York show. I was really into the aesthetic of the LA scene while it was happening, the hot rod aesthetic, the lowbrow thing with Coop, Ausgang, The Pizz. It was about the burgeoning tattoo scene, hot rod scene, it was still very transgressive, rock’n’roll, fun, diferent. That makes a lot of sense. For me it was diferent as I got exposed to what was going on out there about a decade and a half before I met Robert Williams at Zero One Gallery in Los Angeles. At that time it was all equivalent, so it’s not really about Lowbrow, it’s also Richard Duardo, Raymond Pettibon, Mike Kelley, Gary Panter, probably Ausgang. I’m a very provincial New York guy, but I always liked the underdogs and this was fantastic stuf so I got really interested in it. But honestly, I never quite understood how it was Lowbrow, except that Robert was the great old master who was rallying the whole scene and he got to name it. And Billy Shire was the only other gallery there open to that kind of work. Billy was doing something very diferent than everyone else. The scene didn’t really blow up until the beginning of the 2000s with the second generation of those artists who were less transgressive and more accessible. Like Mark Ryden. That’s an interesting moment because I’m not sure people who read Juxtapoz now would actually know about this kind of schism that happened—all of a sudden it became a macho reaction from the old guard when that next generation was really hitting it big. A diferent generation came up after that initial group. There was a big age diference, too. In terms of illustration, there was a first generation of illustrators like Art Spiegelman, Charles Burns, and Panter. Their work blurred the line between fine art and illustration, but then their students took it to the next level. Pop Surrealism had to come about after Lowbrow as a way to make these diferences more compatible. Were you very instrumental in wanting it to be called that? No, I was not. That was Kirsten Anderson at Roq La Rue in Seattle. That was her thing and a lot of people started to run with that. I think Robert Williams had already started calling

70

Juxtapoz

art truancy

Before your education in youth culture, what kind of fine art interested you? I liked all the Pop artists, but THE artist that got me interested in making fine art was Alexander Calder, specifically The Circus. I saw that as a little kid at the Whitney, it was totally magical to me. I loved that, it was so inspiring to me and I couldn’t fucking believe it. All of a sudden I liked Calder and then I got really into Claes Oldenburg and Red Grooms. All that was a really engaging, democratic, populist art. And what’s interesting is when you talk about Calder and Oldenburg is that these are two of the most seminal artists beginning to investigate the multiple and developing the genesis of a product culture that a lot of artists with whom you work, who have done toys, t-shirts, record covers and such, relate to. You know, we were all very into kitsch at one point. What happened, did irony kill it for us? You know, at the time Juxtapoz began, West Coast art was heavily influenced by kitsch Americana. Shag, Tim Biskup, Ryden were all very much influenced by that. You showed two artists who became super famous and defined basically two diferent generations of Juxtapoz art and readership—Mark Ryden and Shepard Fairey. What would you say about those two moments and those two artists? I never represented Mark Ryden but I exhibited his work in a couple of group shows. He was already out of my reach by the time I opened my first gallery. I always equate Shepard to Nirvana in that I would have never expected his career to take of the way it did. I always loved his work and him as a person but I could have never predicted he’d achieve the level of success that he did. His work has defined a generation. Ryden was also a major influence on younger generations of artists crossing over from illustration into fine art. If I had to compare him to a band, it would probably be The Pixies, who moved from ’80s underground into the mainstream.

WorldMags.net

Swoon (Caledonia Curry) Miss Rockaway #236 Paper cut pasted to former Braddock church doors 34" x 88" (each)

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

Did we get an answer from you on whether this whole arc from Lowbrow through Street Art is of the same lineage? Yes, I believe it is, although it doesn’t always seem that way. I think they both have a shared history and foundation. The term that I would use, whether people like it or not, is Pop Pluralism. I feel that’s the best way to explain it. It’s much broader. There isn’t just one stage, there are hundreds of stages for it. It’s like rock ’n’ roll. I always think of the fine art world as classical music and what I’m doing as rock. The powers that be are kind of like “ugh” about it, but it’s actually much bigger and stronger. If a band happened to walk in the room, they’d get the art. That was always a good measure. I had all these friends in bands and I’d be mortified when they had to see what I did for a living; but every now and then there would be this show you could take them to where you wouldn’t have to give them this elaborate explanation, and they’d just love it. That’s right, and that’s where I come from. Maybe that’s why I haven’t been wholeheartedly accepted in the art world, which is fine, because I am probably too blue collar or something.

You know I was shocked when I curated that show for you and I put in a couple super famous art world artists and you didn’t know or care who they were because that kind of art is sort of outside your spectrum, or as far as Chelsea goes, across the street. You’re right. I don’t really care. The whole reason the gallery started was to get away from that. Even that scene around Alleged Gallery, and all those skater artists you supported seemed so insider to me. There was a scene happening here in New York at that time and it centered around Max Fish and you were there in the middle of it all. You curated some shows there. A couple. I did a show with Anthony Ausgang there. I did shows at CBGBs, stuf with Steven Keene, Kozik, and Coop, as well as a bunch of group shows with people like Danny Hellman, Steven Cerio, Eric White, Fiona Smyth. For me, a really seminal show I did there was Ron English and Daniel Johnston. Johnston drawings were selling there for $25 or $50. It was a diferent time, access to artists was diferent. I had no money and there weren’t that many artists to choose from. You had to hunt for them. Any significant memories or moments, not just in yours or Juxtapoz’s history, that stand out to you as significant in retrospect? The thing that changed it most was 9-11 and the economic crisis. I think Banksy’s show in 2006, changed everything. For me personally, it was my show with Shepard in 2007. I still feel like I’m experiencing significant moments, going to Brazil and working with all those Brazilian artists, traveling all over the world working with artists and other galleries, expanding internationally.

probably have a mixture of all that? What was the evolution to allow that to happen? If you’re starting with Coop and Kozik, and then show Eric White and Mark Ryden and all of a sudden start showing Doze Green, How and Nosm or Shepard Fairey and Invader, these would seem to signal radical shifts in your program. I’m authentic in that I’m culturally connected to all of the work in my program. I show what connects with me, personally. I have an exhibition coming up with the famous Grafti artist Crash but I’ve been showing Grafti-influenced work by artists like Doze Green, Shepard Fairey and Jef Soto for many years, long before Street Art blew up. We have a lot of common history, but something I want to know is what’s the diference, especially in regards to this art, what’s the diference between a gallerist and a critic like me? What’s the biggest diference between us as much as we have in common? The diference between us is that you don’t have to worry about finances, you can just judge work on its own but I have to approach work on both its merit and its potential to sell—that’s how I make my living. I’m managing people’s careers, creating opportunities, contextualizing the work and trying to help artists grow in five diferent ways. That’s the diference. Let me ask you a question. Ten years ago, would you predict I’d be doing this? No. I doubted… You still do! (laughter) I think there’s a way to do things and achieve success without compromising one’s integrity. I also think the world’s changing and I think hard work and honesty, call me an idealist, will eventually get me where I need to be. It also helps to have a thick skin and be a fucking pit bull, which you and I both know I am. So there’s a combination of things.

And luck as well, right? Is there a little luck or is it all hard work? There’s always a little luck everywhere, but mostly it’s a lot of planning, strategy, hard work, pushing, intelligence and risk taking. It’s a lot of risk.

Art Truancy: Celebrating 20 Years of Juxtapoz Magazine opens at Jonathan LeVine Gallery’s two NYC spaces on May 15, 2014 and runs through June 14, 2014

juxtapoz.com/ art-truancy

What did you have to navigate to move from Lowbrow to Pop Surrealism, Grafti, and Street Art and to now

72

Juxtapoz

art truancy

WorldMags.net

Todd Schorr A Slice of Pie Acrylic on canvas 14" x 18" 2010

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

Seonna Hong WorldMags.net IntervIew by Kristin Farr PortraIt by Jerry LoveLand

SEONNA HONG IS AN INVESTIGATOR OF HEAVY SILENCES. The words are sparse and the message is often indecipherable, but the quiet speaks volumes. She uses a personal code to tell stories that are encrypted and can be unlocked only by one’s own imagination. It’s up to you to decide what Seonna Hong is trying to say. She wrote the code, and you have to develop your own system to decipher it. Over the years we’ve enjoyed watching Seonna’s stories unfold in waves of evolving landscapes and characters that always captivate and keep us guessing. Hong’s successful careers in both fine art and animation connect naturally, and like those who have preceded her in both fields, she is leaving a lasting impression on our visual culture, which is lucky for the next generation. Kristin Farr: What have you been up to for the last couple of years? Seonna Hong: Working on animated features, painting when I can, doing pottery when I can, and trying to balance all of that with life, family, friends and regular exercise. Are you still incorporating text into the landscapes of your paintings? Yes. It's something new I've been trying out here and there and am still figuring out. Even though the text pieces aren’t figurative, they seem to be part of the ongoing narrative of the paintings of adventurous girls that you’re known for. Did the text represent things the girls might think or say? My narratives have always been coded, as some things are too big to address overtly, and the text is meant to be an extension of that. They're pieces of conversations, lyrics from songs, etc. that have meant something to me personally but that are still open for interpretation. Even the application of the text itself is open and permeable. The negative space that defines the shape of the words is finding and losing itself in the image, sort of the way a narrative weaves in and out of a memory. Do your images represent something that is on the edge of reality? I do see them in a dream-like world; it's like they're elements from my interactions with the real world, chopped up and collaged back together the way they are in a dream.

What compelled you to paint your girls in so many diferent post-apocalyptic landscapes over the years? I didn't set out to paint my girls in post-apocalyptic and desolate landscapes, but I can definitely see how they ended up there. I've moved away from the literal in the environments that my protagonists and antagonists inhabit into something more abstract and reflective of an inner landscape of sorts, or an alternate dream world. Yikes, I'm realizing how sad that makes my inner landscape sound! What does your inner landscape look like? I never thought of asking that question before. When I think about all the things that have brought me to this exact point in my life, I think of an actual landscape—what caused me to choose one path over another—the forks in the road, the horizon in front of you, the environment around you. Or sometimes I think of being in a body of water, literally and figuratively trying to keep afloat, getting caught up in a wave or in the undertow. Those are perfect analogies. So, I didn’t realize you considered your girls protagonists and antagonists. I just assumed they were on the same team. Oh no, you were right. The girls are on the same team. The animals are the ones that are sometimes the antagonists. Or sometimes it's the other way around. You’ve used specific animals in your paintings—horses, birds, and bears. Are they metaphors? Yes, they're metaphors for diferent things, but they're a part of the girls in a way, like their counterpoint. Maybe it's their conscience, their own worst fears, their guides and sages. The silence is thick in your paintings, like there’s so much going on that we can’t possibly know. Do you know what’s happening in every scene, or are you trying to figure it out, just like the viewer? I like the way you put that—the silence is thick. For me, silence is diferent than say, the mere absence of sound. The silence I think of when I'm working is the silence after

WorldMags.net

june 2014

75

WorldMags.net

someone walks out of a room, which is diferent than walking into a room with no one in it. Or what it feels like when you say something to someone and you bear the quiet for seconds, minutes or hours waiting for their response. It's the negative space in a painting; the breathing room or, conversely, the thing that pushes in like a weight. The things I'm thinking about but not always saying out loud. Is it too personal to talk about those things? Yeah, I think that's why I filter it through these codes or symbols. You did many wonderful paintings on paint chips, and you often left the name of the paint sample color visible. Did you allow the color names to influence the content of the pieces? Thank you, those are fun to paint. And no, the color chip

76

Juxtapoz

seonna hong

names didn't influence the content. It was an easy way to come up with a title for a piece, which I normally find very difcult to do. By the way, whoever has that job of naming paint colors, as well as lipstick and nail polish, may have one of the most awesome jobs ever. Right?! What’s your favorite paint sample name? What about your favorite color in general? I love that the names are generally super poetic, like "Whispering Pines" for a green-colored paint, but then every once in a while you come across one like "Bursting Your Bubble" for a light pink, and it sounds like the person whose job it was to come up with the names was just over it. My favorite color in general? It changes all the time, but right now I'd say a tomato red.

WorldMags.net

above Alone with You Mixed Media on Wood panel 48" x 60" 2012 right I Can’t Get Close to You Mixed Media on Wood Chip 4.5" x 7" 2012 following spread Course correction Mixed Media on Wood Panel 120" x 72" 2012

WorldMags.net

quite painful and even embarrassing to revisit. But there are some that I'm so happy that I committed to paper, canvas or wood, and that I can look back on fifty years from now and remember.

Tell me about your girls’ wardrobes and what inspires them. As a kid, I remember obsessively making up outfits for characters in stories or drawings. Me too! I also made lots of homemade paper dolls with lots and lots of outfits. That's probably a big factor in the girls’ outfits in my work today—there's a paper doll element to them with the flat color or flat application of cut-out paper. What’s your personal dream outfit? Right now I'm trying to find ways of wearing sweats as much as I possibly can. I heard that if you wear cute shoes, then any sartorial choice looks intentional. Fashionable sweats really do exist. So, back to the art, you had a series called I Know What You’re Thinking, and the girls were interacting with an object that looked like a color wheel. What did it represent? You know that wheel on Wheel of Fortune? It was sort of like that, but for me, it was my Wheel of Doom. A good friend of mine actually came up with the term "Lazy Susan of Doom," which I thought was so funny, and I borrowed it for the title of those paintings. Outwardly, I'm a pretty cheerful person, but inherently I'm more of a pessimist and my brain has easy access to that way of thinking. Have your paintings become more autobiographical? They've definitely become more autobiographical over the years and are like journal entries since I otherwise don't keep a journal. When I look back on pieces, I know exactly what I was going through or thinking about at the time. And like old journal entries, there are some that are actually

Your paintings often start with abstract brushstrokes that become part of a landscape. Are you using a special technique, trying to make specific shapes, or just making spontaneous marks? All of the above with varying degrees of success. Though I'm working more spontaneously these days, I'll still paint something out and do it again if it doesn't quite look right. So the mark itself is spontaneous and organic, but I may have done it a few times. Some of my paintings have lots of layers because of this. I've started figuring out ways to get around it, like making layers on a separate piece of paper, cutting out the piece I like, and then layering it back in. Working in Photoshop in my animation job has spoiled me in this way. I'm able to work in layers that I can do away with if they don’t work. Being able to "undo" something in Photoshop has afected the work process on my paintings. I'm constantly wishing I could do Command + Z (the hotkey to undo an action in Photoshop) while I'm painting—paint, paint, paint, undo, undo, undo. Actually there are lots of scenarios where I wish I could undo, undo, undo. Me too. Tell me about all the films and TV shows you’ve worked on. I've done background painting and art directing on some really amazing TV shows for a bunch of diferent studios, as well as a lot of really great pilots that never went to series,

WorldMags.net

june 2014

77

WorldMags.net

78

Juxtapoz

seonna hong

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

june 2014

79

WorldMags.net

but that I was so happy and honored to work on. Now I'm working in visual development on features, and am currently working on Hotel Transylvania 2 over at Sony Pictures Animation. I worked on Popeye and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 before that at the same studio. Even after 15 years, I still can't believe I get to do this for a living.

What does it mean to be a visual development artist? I get to help develop ideas for the characters, environments and props with paint and color. If it's a character painting, I work of a design by a character designer, and then figure out the colors and textures of that character. If it's a background or environment, I work of a background design made by a designer, and then try to help tell the story with a painting that shows color, texture, lighting and sometimes mood. There are times when I've contributed something to the design of a character or an environment, but mostly I just paint. It's a really great collaborative process, one that I'm learning from constantly. Are there animation artists in particular that you admire from now or history? Are you into Mary Blair’s work? I absolutely love Mary Blair's work and have been hugely influenced by her. Her design and color sense is of-thecharts amazing. And it somehow looks efortless too. It's clear that there's a lot of thought in it, but it doesn't look labored. I think that's part of the charm. I love looking at work that looks like it was fun to make, and her work looks like it was really fun to make. Would you ever do your own animated series with the girls from your pieces? No. It's two diferent sides of my brain—my animation side and my personal work side, and I like that they're separate. But I'd sort of fantasized for awhile about working on a Jem and the Holograms re-boot with a friend of mine until I recently heard that it's already in the works as a live action movie. So basically, I've got my finger on the pulse, and that pulse belongs to someone else who actually makes things happen rather than just daydreams about it. They should hire you for visual development! How do you feel about the word “cute”? Your girls seem to have become much less overtly cute over the years, although they are a bit smaller, but maybe a little older? Are these just stylistic changes, or something more intentional? The girls have aged because my daughter, who is my model, has aged. It was a purely practical but unintentional decision. But the decision to make them physically smaller in relation to their environment was a deliberate one. I moved them into the background more, and what had been in the background has moved to the forefront. And I'm ok with the word "cute"—I am very drawn to the "cute" aesthetic even though my work has moved away from that recently, which was more of an intentional decision. Does your daughter influence your work in other ways? So much. She's 11 now, and we have these amazing conversations about the world and how she observes it.

80

Juxtapoz

seonna hong

I think about what is shaping her perspective all the time; what is making an impact on her. So much of my work is about that dynamic—the relationship I have to the world around me and how it all came to be that way. But my memory is faulty, so there's some revisionist history going on there, I'm sure. With my daughter, I'm seeing this early human development in real time, and it's really cool. I read that you did drawings on command to make friends when you were a kid. What kinds of requests did you get? Lots of Strawberry Shortcake and later, in high school, lots of Danzig. What are the most significant ways your work has shifted or changed over time? I'm working more spontaneously these days, and that's diferent from the very planned and plotted-out way I used to work. That shift probably paralleled the other shifts in my life that required me to be more flexible and less entrenched in an idea or outcome. Have you done any sculpture or installation work recently? No, but I've been doing ceramics and love it so much. There is something about the entire process that is really calming and almost meditative. I mostly do wheel throwing, but I'm starting to experiment with sculptural elements in some hand-built pieces, and that's really fun.

WorldMags.net

above Hold That Tiger Acrylic on Canvas 12" x 12" 2014 right Divine Nervousness Mixed Media on Wood Panel 8" x 8" 2012

WorldMags.net

What kinds of patterns are you most attracted to? So many. I love the patterns and color in vintage fabric and paper, the patterns of farmlands when you're flying overhead, or the patterns of shipping containers all stacked against one another in a shipyard... paint chips at the paint store... Have you worked with Murakami again since your show at his gallery, and did you get some lasting advice from him? I learned so much from Murakami, from actual advice, like rethinking scale and context, to just being immensely inspired by his work, how he presents it, and how he is so supportive of other artists through his KaiKai Kiki gallery or the GEISAI Art Fair. I would love to work with him again in some capacity. Any plans for more books? Animus was so great.

Thank you! Animus was originally a concept for an art show that I had, and with some fortuitous timing and an awesome publisher, it was made into a book. So I've continued working in that narrative, although those bodies of works haven't turned into books. I think the next time it makes sense, I'd like to do it. In the meantime, I like collaborating with friends on their ideas!

Seonna’s Hold That Tiger artwork will be part of the Juxtapoz 20th Anniversary show opening at Jonathan LeVine Gallery, May 15, 2014 For more information about Seonna Hong, visit seonnahong.com

juxtapoz.com / seonna - hong

WorldMags.net

june 2014

81

WorldMags.net

Dave HugHes IntervIew by Austin McMAnus PortraIt by AlAn steAdMAn

I DISCOVERED OFF THE AIR AT 4:00 A.M., when only insomniacs, drunks and people coping with jet lag are awake, a time when grogginess reigns supreme and screens are the convenient alternative to a lullaby. I assume that most people who happen on the show by chance, like me, are happily caught of guard. Despite my semi-blurry, whiskeywasted vision, I knew immediately that this was not your typical try-too-hard-to-be-weird production. As the episode “Color” induced hypnosis, my eyeballs braced for an enjoyable visual assault. It was an ofcial brain melter. As a result of its graveyard airtime and limited episodes, Of The Air remains relatively unknown. But word of mouth is gradually spreading.

82

Juxtapoz

Dave hughes

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

Juxtapoz, with the help of Cartoon Network, produced a special Adult Swim issue in July, 2012. Of The Air somehow didn’t make the cut, presenting this opportunity to shed a little insight and background on an extraordinarily unique show. I quickly sent an inquiry email at exactly 10:26 p.m. on the night of March 19 th, 2014. 18 minutes later, at 10:44 p.m., I had a lengthy reply in my inbox from Dave Hughes. It was a record response time and surprising, considering that Hughes said in the email, “We fly a little bit under the radar, and have grown to like it that way.” Austin McManus: Hey Dave, what’s the most interesting thing to happen in your world this week? Dave Hughes: Well, two weeks ago I accidentally drank a spider in my cofee. But that's about as exciting as it gets around here. My wife and I have a six-year-old daughter, and that shifts one into a much more localized adventure. Three nights ago, my daughter, Hazel, got up in the middle of the night and projectile vomited all over the bathroom floor. That's the kind of adventures we wake up to now. Mainly puke-based adventures. How did you initially get involved in producing and editing video? I had always been interested in cartoons and animation, but my drawing ability kind of froze around age eight. I still messed around with stop motion animation, video

and computers in general, and then, somehow, my high school had this TV lab class where you learned the basics of television production. A few friends and I took it, we made some fun stuf, and I realized that I really liked to make videos, and that it could maybe be more than a hobby. I went to Ithaca College to study television and radio and took classes, but what I liked was that they had a really good pile of equipment. So I dug into it and made a TV show and an overnight radio show, and taught myself some limited computer animation. Their stations actually broadcasted out to the town, and this was pre-Internet, before global exposure to every 12-year-old with a phone was possible. It all felt kind of amazing. We even got a local pizzeria, The Nines, to sponsor the TV show with free pizza. (Thank you, here's your plug, 20 years later.) But my break into the actual industry was a genuine lucky, fluky break. I moved to NYC and was temping on the oil and futures trading floor at Citibank on Park Avenue. Very bizarre and completely out of my knowledge base, but for some reason they ofered me a job. It was for really good money but I turned it down. About a week later, Beavis and Butt-Head left a message at my apartment for this guy, Nate, whose room I was subletting. He was on tour and had sent his resume to Beavis and Butt-Head on a whim before he left, and they just happened to call while I was subletting this tiny room. There was no way I wasn't returning that call. I was

WorldMags.net

june 2014

83

WorldMags.net

above Adam Fuchs, Animals

honest about who I was, and I was totally qualified for the job, which was running tapes around town, so they let me come in for an interview. They must have liked the thrift store double-breasted suit that I wore because they hired me. Just a huge, lucky break that turned into eight years at MTV. I imagine working with Mike Judge on Beavis and ButtHead was fascinating. Today I rewatched the hallucination clip you edited. It really brought me back to being a delinquent kid. Any good stories from working on such an iconic show? It was totally fascinating and very exciting, but I wouldn't really say I worked "with" Mike Judge, who stayed in Austin while the production was out of New York. Mike was just a name to me at first, associated with notes on design packs or storyboards. “Mike says this is of-model.” “Mike says Beavis should never face forward ever again.” “Mike thinks the hair boil looks weird here.” Not that he was a dick or anything, he just had a strong vision for every aspect of the show and was trying to manage it from another city. Even later, when I wrote an episode and started to fly down to Austin to help the head writer, Kris Brown, record Mike at his studio, I never really got to know him. I just worked on his show happily, and very hard. Seeing him record those characters left a deep impression on me. He inhabited each one so completely that

84

Juxtapoz

Dave hughes

it seemed efortless. Not just nailing the diferent voices, but basically rewriting the shows on the fly in the VO booth. Every few lines, it seemed he would step back from the mic and explain, "He wouldn't say it like that, hang on," and then he'd just pause and mumble for a second, step back up to the mic and deliver a much, much funnier line. We'd all be cracking up in the studio, and he'd just rif for a while, and it was completely mind-blowing. Seeing creativity just spill out of someone like that who was so reserved, almost shy, was really inspiring, too. When and how did you start working with Adult Swim? By 2003, MTV Animation had folded, and I was working for Nickelodeon, creating interstitials and branding for their new digital spinof network, Nicktoons. It was not a great fit for me. So while I was there, Matt Harrigan called to say that he was doing the next season of Space Ghost in LA, and was I interested? I had worked with Matt at MTV on Celebrity Deathmatch and Cartoon Sushi, but I didn't know him that well, and honestly didn't really know Space Ghost very well then. But I jumped at the chance to get out of Nickelodeon, and spent the following year cutting Space Ghost out of an abandoned AOL ofce in Santa Monica. It was a revelation. Editing animation at MTV was kind of an afterthought; something that had to be done for timing, or to

WorldMags.net

right Kokofreakbean, Robots

WorldMags.net

tweak the animation here or there, or even just to get all the pieces in a row. But at Adult Swim, and especially on Space Ghost, the editor is absolutely essential to the process. You basically direct the show through your edit, and because the animation is so limited, the comedy really relies heavily on the timing, music and sound efects. Plus, the complete absurdity of the world they had created on that show was so fun. It was just this wide-open playground, and even though I have a fairly logical mind, I could apply a sort of backward logic, and it seemed to work. Until then, I'd never had that kind of responsibility and freedom in my work, and I realized that I could never go back. Had Of The Air always been in the back of your mind or did it materialize spontaneously? It was always an idea; I just never realized it would be me who did it. But I definitely thought someone should be doing it. I have felt for a long time that TV has become less and less experimental, even as the Internet is making more kinds of content available and acceptable. I do think there's been something of a golden age in big budget TV drama, and it also seems like there's a TV show for every tiny subculture now, even shows to leave on for your pets when you're not at home. I feel like there used to be way more shows for the weirdos out there, and I know there aren't fewer weirdos. I

grew up on early MTV, and there was this great stretch in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s when MTV was fully established, but still pretty experimental. Shows like Liquid Television and 120 Minutes really resonated with me. Also, Night Flight and Concrete TV on NYC cable. I felt like they exposed me to a whole new world of ideas, music and people that I just didn't see anywhere else on television. I think it's harder to give people that feeling now because we have access to so much content. Too much, maybe. This whole "curatorial" thing is just a reaction to the overwhelming amount of shit we can watch or play or listen to now. It's numbing. Most of the clips you repurposed for Of The Air are ones I’ve never seen before, except for the exceptionally amazing eagle pulling the goat of the clif in “Animals” and Kristi making a rainbow from a shotgun in “Colors.” What is the process for selecting clips? I imagine videos with low view counts or ones that don't exist on the Web are more enticing, obviously. God, that goat clip is the best, right? The footage, the music, the ‘70s patina. Once I found that for the pilot and realized we could actually get it, it totally shifted the places the show could go for me. I originally imagined that this would be a kind of bizarre collection of clips from Adult Swim shows mixed with Internet and archival stuf, ideally set to good

WorldMags.net

june 2014

85

WorldMags.net

music. But once the Adult Swim clips went away, the show really opened up. Putting that insane “El Hombre Y La Tierra” clip back-to-back with a gorgeous lilfuchs animated “Flying Lotus” video just felt so right. Then the “Blockhead” video by Anthony Francisco Schepperd at the end might be one of the best-animated videos of all time, so it made for a good pilot. I'm not sure how to say this without sounding like an asshole, but I look for clips with some kind of truth or integrity to them. I don't know how to explain it, but I usually know it when I see it. Certainly, low view counts are more attractive, although we will still go for a clip even if it's already viral. We used David Lewandowski's “Going To The Store” which had many hits when we found it, and many, many more before it aired on our show. The Cyriak clips we've used have all been pretty widely seen, but they both are pretty special. You just feel something in his work that is true and right and very specific to Cyriak. And funny. So yeah, we look for truth, beauty, and humor. And sometimes glitch. Can I assume it’s challenging getting consent to use other people’s work for a show that airs at 4 a.m. and has no described intent? Less challenging than you might think. I think being under the Adult Swim banner has helped a lot in that respect. Many artists, musicians in particular, kind of "get" Adult Swim, and

86

Juxtapoz

Dave hughes

trust or understand where it's coming from. If OTA were on some other network, I think it could be much harder to do. But there have definitely been some people who have been reluctant. Sara Lundberg, who created the amazing “Cords” piece at the beginning of “Body” was not too sure if she wanted to be involved. She said no at first, but I persisted and told her how much we love the piece and how it would really help establish the tone of the episode, and finally she agreed. Jurgen Otto (Peacock Spider) was the same way. I assume they are both happy being in it, I haven't heard otherwise. A lot of people are initially nervous to trust you with their work, and understandably so. But I really respect every piece that goes into the show, and even feel protective of them myself. This show is not trying to exploit anyone or make fun of anything or anybody. It's like the anti-Tosh. And I think Tosh is funny as hell, but he is not putting clips on that show because they move him. To get back to your question, the hardest part is really tracking some of these people down in the first place. Yoann Bourgeois, the French trampoline artist who was featured in the “Falling” episode, doesn't speak a word of English and was traveling through China when we were trying to get the rights to his performance clip. It was an insane process to get him, and I am forever in debt to a friend who agreed to

WorldMags.net

above Ronnie Land, Food right NASA Photostacks

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

translate. Right now we're hard at work trying to get rights to an early ‘90s documentary about Lotan Baba. It's hard to tell who even owns it anymore and the episode is supposed to air in April. But my two producers, Cody DeMatteis and Alan Steadman, are learning the ins and outs of tracking these things down, and when we do land a clip like that, it's very exciting. That's where it gets difcult, and that's also when I look at the free and easy ripping going on the Internet with deep jealousy. Ultimately, I think that limitations are healthy in all of life. What sort of demographic do you think watches Of The Air or do you know by analytics and surveys? Obviously, insomniacs. I follow the ratings when I think about it and I don't get analytics. If we tanked the night for some reason, ratings could be an issue, but it seems like we hold up fine. Twitter definitely lights up during air weeks, though, and that's always fun to sift through the next day. I particularly like when people fall asleep while watching Family Guy and wake up to an apple breathing or something. Confusion and fear are two of my favorite states. Euphoria isn't bad either. I would say that judging from the tweets and Facebook posts we get, our audience is actually pretty young, late teens, early 20’s, and seem strangely positive and engaged.

88

Juxtapoz

Dave hughes

Even in the nasty swampland that is YouTube comments, I don't see too many that are negative. Lots of drug recommendations, though, which is helpful. What were some of the recommendations? Would it be fair to presume that experimenting with hallucinogens has been a source for your own work? The YouTube recommendations are mostly diferent takes on best kind of drug, dosage, timing, music to play in sync with episodes, etc. I'm glad you brought this up, because I did an interview a while back that made some people think I was against drugs, which is not the case at all. It bums me out a little bit when people assume you have to be on drugs to make this kind of art, or even to appreciate it. To me, that just undervalues the pure creativity and imagination in all of this. I can't speak for any of the artists in the show, but I actually don't think I could make Of The Air if I was on anything much more than cofee. I tend to zing of on tangents or just glaze over, and making this show actually takes a lot of focus, attention to detail and hard work. I do try to stay very open when putting the episodes together, and pay close attention to the flow and the way diferent pieces play of each other.

WorldMags.net

above Anthony F. Schepperd, Animals right Jake Fried, Robots

WorldMags.net

consolidate it all in any meaningful way. I've got years of lists in text documents, note pads, stickies, evernotes, bookmarks, emails to myself, scraps of paper, Vimeo likes, Youtube links, iTunes mixes, Spotify playlists, links to lists of likes from people I love. It's fucking insane, and it would make me actually crazy if I didn't believe that a little bit of chaos is essential to the system, and that serendipity exists.

I don't mean to get all mystical here, but I think drugs might just give people easier access to something that is just sitting there the whole time anyway. It's very hard to break out of your own head, and to tune out all of the crap society has inevitably heaped up on your subconscious through the years. So anything and everything that allows you to put all that stuf aside for a minute, and just kind of be who you are at your purest core, can only be positive.

Part of the allure of the show is that there is no explanation, just a single word describing a loosely based theme, examples being “Falling,” “Light,” “Nightmares,” “Dance,” and so on. Essentially, they are visual mixtapes that really don’t need a clear explanation, right? Right.

Due to Of The Air’s cult success, do you foresee opportunities to create more separate shows of your own and are there other show ideas you have been sitting on? I don't know really how to gauge that. I think the show does exactly what it's supposed to do, and I'm very grateful that Adult Swim keeps making more. We're trying to create additional original pieces this season, so that should be an interesting evolution. I don't really know if it's opened doors to other opportunities, but I definitely have some ideas that I've always wanted to try out.

How would you describe Of The Air to a complete stranger? First of all, I don't talk to strangers. I barely talk to people I know. But, in my own words, Of The Air is essentially a visual mixtape that really doesn't need any clear explanation, right?

If I asked you for a list of must-see classic animations that you find essential or influential, what would make that bill? That list could take a million years. I have been trying so hard to create a functional database of artists and musicians, but it's just too much, and I can't find the right place to

juxtapoz.com / dave - hughes

WorldMags.net

june 2014

89

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

Agostino ArrivAbene WorldMags.net IntervIew by DaviD Molesky PortraIt by alice NeMNtiNova

IN THE GRAND FOYER OF VIENNA’S KUNSTHISTORISCHES MUSEUM, with its marble floors and ornate details, I’m pleasantly distracted by a man speaking Italian and captivating a small crowd. His disheveled curly locks bounce and sway as he passionately gestures, hands jangling with bangles, bracelets, and large rings. Entering a room of Flemish still-life paintings, I spy him again, enthusiastically rifng to his coterie as he thrusts his face up to the canvas and then quickly back to observe the efects of distance. I stop him a moment to ask if he is exhibiting in Odd Nerdrum’s Kitsch Biennale 2008, which had opened the night before. As he confirmed and introduced himself as Agostino Arrivabene, I realized that I was meeting the author of my favorite painting in the show. Growing up in the stratified terrain of Lombardy, a region of Italy populated for centuries by a variety of ethnic groups and cultures, Agostino attributes his heritage to ancient Egyptian and Viking influences. Born and raised in the small medieval village of Rivolta d’Adda, Agostino shaped himself as a young artist in an atmosphere rich with beauty and sorrow. His fascination for morbid detail plays itself out in his extreme attention to the transformative processes of mixing, boiling, and concentrating his materials. With the use of both robotic and human translators, I was able to connect with Agostino in the Italian countryside to ask a few questions as he prepared for his solo show, Verperbild, opening May 22nd at Gallerie Giovanni Bonelli in Milan, Italy. David Molesky: How did growing up in rural Italy influence your training as an artist? Agostino Arrivabene: I have many, though nebulous, memories of my childhood due to trauma. When I was four years old, my destiny was marked when my mother lost her life, suddenly leaving me alone with a newborn brother and fragile father. Thereafter, it was a continuous roam between the homes of various relatives, till later a paternal aunt made things more stable. I then began a devoted search for the ideal figure of a mother that, from year to year, grew in me like an ancient simulacrum. I have dedicated several works of my early years to this totemic image so that I may strip its mystery and drain this charge of primordial force that was consuming my brain and flattening my emotions. I received my first encouragement in art through my father who took me to confront directly all the great Italian masters. In Florence, I first encountered Leonardo Da Vinci and, for many years afterward, he was my master. I distilled from

him a sense of grace and poetic sensibility through which to view the world. My father sacrificed a wing of the house to serve as my private studio, and here I laid the foundation for my future works, guiding myself with the help of books and museums. Even the academy of fine arts could not fill my hunger for knowledge, so I created a sort of virtual workshop where I compared my technical experiments with those of the past. These were years of meticulous study; every detail and material I discovered had to be worked on, distilled, perfected and prepared with my own hands. Where do you live now and how is your studio set up? I love solitary country life in my 18th century farmhouse. The house is divided into three levels where every floor contains a space for work or meditation. In the attic, I have made the yellow atelier. This is where I keep my library and I do preparatory drawings in the soft light. On the next level down is the blue atelier, a north-facing studio where I do the fine finishing work on paintings. Here the crisp light pours in over a vastness of deserted fields and allows me to observe hues with greater subtlety. On the ground floor is the scarlet atelier, where I spend the most time and where most of my paintings are initiated. Here I also keep a few inspirational books. In one room, where I store my drawings, I have made a kind of temple dedicated to my 1996 circular painting of Orpheus. A large spiral staircase, inspired by Gustave Moreau’s Paris, ascends to my personal Wunderkammer, where I house my collection of curious objects and sculptures. You have cited the importance of your visits to Greece. How have your experiences and research there contributed to your work? Patmos is the island where I have nourished my nostalgia and homesickness for the time when human beings met the gods. This is the great hidden mystery that haunts me, the link of some mysterious visitors that constituted the foundation of our myths, from Sumerian and Egyptian to the biblical tales, and through the Minoan civilization to the more recent Greek myths.

WorldMags.net

june 2014

91

WorldMags.net

Crete was also a necessary journey, following my interest in rituals dedicated to Dionysus. In order to reach states of agitation and inebriation, the initiated would ingest ambrosia, the nectar of the gods: pure honey mixed with rainwater collected during the full-moon night of a particular month of the year and then fermented in a bag made of a sacrificed ox skin. The bafing detail is that the ox, sacrificed in the dark caverns on the southwest side of the island, had to be devoured by bee swarms that would build their honeycomb inside its carcass from which the sacred honey for the ambrosia was eventually extracted. How have you used the mythology of the abduction of the goddess of spring, Persephone, and her submersion into the underworld as an allegory in your paintings? Life and death is a mystery that involves each one of us. In my case, having empathy for the figure of Persephone helped me defeat death as a haunting specter in my life. In this way, the myth can be used to heal and sublimate the fear and anguish of a difcult path. My fascination with death and all its macabre and symbolic aspects was, because of my personal life experiences,

92

Juxtapoz

agostino arrivabene

ambiguously helpful and hindering since my childhood. A friendly cemetery caretaker near my home nurtured my curiosity, inviting me to assist in the exhumation and observation of bodies so I could study flesh transformation and putrefaction. Do you do a lot of preliminary work, or just jump into a composition? My process of constructing images changes depending on the subject. I usually proceed following sudden impressions, sometimes triggered by things found on the web or in a magazine. I have built a database/memory notebook where I collect images. Here inside this greenhouse, a mosaic of ideas cross-pollinate to nurture and bloom my incomplete works. If a subject strikes and haunts me, I am destined to repeat and inflect upon it with several versions and with various experimental techniques. I start developing a concept with sketches on paper until I can translate it into a larger size. In reverse, some images are like lightning flashes, splinters inevitably emerging without studies, starting directly on the canvas, I begin with large masses of color, slowly finishing

WorldMags.net

above Canto Infernale (Infernal Song) Oil on linen 70 x 100cm 2013 right Rhytmus de die Mortis Oil on wood 48 x 38cm 2014

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

with meticulous and methodical labor. My brush gestures are initially like violent sword strokes dripping with paint and ending like the caress of a lover. Other paintings are subjected to elaborate virtual processes that start from suggestions of anamorphic refractions, distorting and stretching images printed on elastic or soft surfaces, activating a work of collage and cut-outs, disassembling and reassembling a painting in a new interpretation. One thing that intrigues me is the continued search of new materials and their chemical and physical reactions. I like to imagine my paintings as a Leviathan assembled with complex structures and scafoldings made of bones, flesh and skin, that I love to torture, with scars I can eventually heal and soothe to activate a golden and unseen new beauty. The application of gold in your paintings is unusual. How did you first develop this technique and arrive at this process? I love the medieval paintings housed in the Ufzi. I am especially struck by the contrast of blue and rose robes with the pure gold sky in Giotto’s Madonna d’Ognissanti. I am also deeply moved by the great mystic works of Fra Angelico, who renders the idea of perfection through color and sign.

In my most recent trip to Greece, visits to the icons collection in the Patmos Monastery and the Byzantine Museum of Athens definitively confirmed my fascination for the use of gold, specifically the way time modifies the colors and gold films. Gold became that necessary abstract space to “catch the light of a divine presence in a praeternatural reverberation” to quote Aldous Huxley. My personal survey dedicated to Theophanies needed an appropriate material to reflect the transcendental idea of the apparition of God. Thus, gold represents the divine breath, the Hebrew Ruah or Greek Charis, the grace that the humans receive from gods that is the Christian Holy Spirit. In many of your recent paintings, the figures have light entering their heads or they are being engulfed in what is referred to as a bacterial cloud. To me, they look more like cone jellyfish. What are these elements representing? The rays of light are like ascending and descending trajectories, bridges of communication between the ideal and real worlds, a revelation of God or gods that infuse the mystai (initiated). The bacterial clouds represent my inner highest confusion and disease, my incapability to freeze life in its total perfection and unaltered youth. In fact, my Self Portrait with Bacterial Cloud dialogues with my other Self Portrait with Fireflies in which the fireflies are a more pleasing, romantic and dreamy element as opposed to the fear of sickness and death represented by the mass of bacteria that makes human beings fragile and fallible. This diptych is an homage to the ancient baroque vanitas, a memory of the classical theme of artist confrontation with his

94

Juxtapoz

agostino arrivabene

youth projected toward the end. What kinds of imagery are you currently brewing in the studio and what kinds of works can we expect to see in the future? I’m now working on a series of large paintings that will be exhibited in a group show called Opera at the Museum of Canton in China next winter. I’m also working on some drawings for a new precious British edition of Ovid’s Metamorphosis. But my paramount interest is now directed to the works of Giordano Bruno and his project of a wheel of memory. This mysterious machinery, never realized, has an impressive bulk with a diameter of 30 meters. It’s made of several concentric circles decorated with images and icons, which can array themselves into an infinite variety of patterns to exercise and improve memory.

Thanks to David Dalla Venezia for his contributions and translation For more information about Agostino, visit agostinoarrivabene.it

juxtapoz.com / agostino - arrivabene

WorldMags.net

above Peana Oil on linen 25 x 25cm 2014 right Le Mosche D’oro (Flies of Gold) Oil and gold leaf on linen 44.2 x 40.5cm 2014

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

Conrad roset WorldMags.net IntervIew by HannaH Stouffer PortraIt by Marc PallarèS

HISTORICALLY, THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ARTIST AND MUSE CAN RANGE FROM a complex, private and intimate connection to, in our world of new media, one of pure visual stimulation and inspiration. Muses originated as the inspirational goddesses of classical mythology, and in the visual arts, they drive the creative process, enhancing it for many notable artists. As a painter feeds of of such energy or essence, work is created that pays homage to their model, and in Conrad Roset's case, expresses the sensuality and often the simplicity of a woman. His delicate line-work and refined erogenous focus portray this gentle seduction with subtlety. Roset brings a certain warmth to his pieces, through the light use of gradients, washes and erotically directed color play, depicting woman in her most essential form. Hannah Stoufer: Who are the muses in your work? Do these women play a role in your life, or is it less personal? Conrad Roset: Mostly, yes. I started drawing my girlfriend and obviously, she is my favourite muse. But I try not to repeat the same content all the time. I look for images I like on the Internet, on blogs I visit and diferent websites. To do this, though, you always have to ask for permission from the models or the authors of the photographs. I haven't had much trouble with this when I explain my project and what I am using the photos for.

What role does fantasy have in your works? I always use references for my Muses, but aside from that, I take a lot from my imagination, trying to mix reality and fantasy to recreate imaginary worlds. You can see this in the drawings of children I did for the book Ensueños or Little

Your pieces seem very erotically charged. What parts of the female anatomy are your favorite focus? I give always a lot of prominence to the lips, the ears, the nipples, the more sensitive parts… But I think the expression in the face is very important, as are the details that give special personality to every character. I try to give to every drawing a touch of power so that the beauty arrives to every observer. Would you identify your work as erotic? As for the Muses, I would say yes, but not my other projects. I don't like to always do the same thing, so to combine erotic with childish makes for a good exercise.

What is your everyday source of inspiration? The best one of them is my girlfriend, Clara. She has been supporting and inspiring me since the beginning, and of course, to me she is the most beautiful of all! As I told you before, yes, there are others who give freshness to my work, but you can almost see a part of her in each of my drawings. You also gather quite a bit of imagery and inspiration from the internet? How does this play into your work? Of course a lot, from looking at other visual creators' styles and techniques to using references that I need for my works like flowers, birds, or any other elements. And it’s more than just visual elements, but also music, cinema, and video games. All of it provides lots of positive influences to move your workflow forward so as to not get stuck just in yourself.

Chickpea. Dreamy kingdoms are a great place to let your characters have all kinds of diferent experiences and to experiment with visuals.

BEYOND THE STORY A few months ago, I got an email saying three friends had gotten matching tattoos as a declaration of their friendship. It was one of my drawings. People thought Lady Gaga's last album cover was inspired by my style. It wasn't a copy at all! But it was very funny to see the that reaction. My first Muses were actually part of my fine arts final project. I failed the subject.

You tend to fluctuate between figurative realism to more abstract at times. How does your use of color play into this? There are a few elements that have become distinct in my style. This includes red to express the feminine sensuality applied in lips, ears, nipples, elbows and knees. But I also like to incorporate abstraction to portray some explicit shapes and let the observer imagine the rest of it. The abstraction creates a huge playground for the eroticism, and combining it with conscious and precise lines, you get a kind of blurred image of the romantic, which is also close to reality. I like to be more realistic with the lines and more conceptual with the colors. What is your current color palette? I've been using diferent kinds of palettes, from more powerful primary colors to paler and softer ones, going through dark blacks and warm toasted tones. Right now I'm using a lot of India ink and red in all its hues combined with straight black. Anyway, my motive is to keep changing the technique and the materials. Colors are infinite, so why should I only use a few of them?

WorldMags.net

june 2014

97

WorldMags.net

Dreamy kingDoms are a great place to let your characters have all kinDs of Different experiences anD to experiment with visuals Given your fairly large body of work, can you describe your process? Do you tend to work quickly? I usually look for references and do some sketches of the kind of style I'm going to use. After this, I can start drawing. And yes, I tend to draw quite fast and I even do some exercises for myself like trying to do a lot of Muses in a short time, like life drawing. This is how I get an immediate sense of the piece. You’ve been drawing all your life. Have women always been your favorite subject matter? Not really. Before that, I studied in a comics school where I drew a lot of manga. There was a time where I used to go to the zoo, so I drew a lot of animals there. I'm always drawing what touches me in every moment. The last four or five years, this has been my theme for exploring, but I've been drawing a variety of things all my life. What were you painting before women? I started drawing by copying characters from my favorite TV series like Dragon Ball Z and other manga. Do you envision moving into a diferent creative focus, or do you plan to stick with this for awhile?

98

Juxtapoz

conrad roset

This subject is a theme in my work, but I don't want to just stay with it, for sure. I've been thinking about other areas to explore, like video games and movies. Who are some of your biggest artistic influences? One of them is, of course, Egon Schiele. Without a doubt, he is my absolute reference for theme and technique. I love his drawings of the female body in multiple positions, as well as the very pervasive intimacy. But I do like a lot of other more contemporary artists like Audrey Kawasaki and her oriental style wood paintings, James Jean is the master of technique with his amazing versatility, and Daniel Egnéus has freshness and spontaneity. I'm always looking for new visual input. Every week you can discover an amazing new artist that you didn’t know existed. You cite the Internet as a prominent factor in your art’s popularity and you recently collaborated with Ubicuo Studio to put out an app, correct? How would you define the relationship between the Internet, social media and technology in your work nowadays? Social networks have been super important in my success. Of course, what I love to do is to draw, but without the ability to make your work public, it would simply stay at home. You

WorldMags.net

above left Music 560 Acrylic on paper above right Muse 559 Acrylic on paper right Muse 556 Acrylic on paper following spread left Muse 563 Acrylic on paper following spread right Muse 558 Acrylic on paper

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

june 2014

99

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

use your pencil to reveal what you do so you can actually make a living and turn passion into a way of life. Nowadays, I get most of my jobs from Facebook or my personal blog. Without the Internet as a tool, I wouldn't be able to make a living by drawing. Tell me about the children’s book you’re currently illustrating. The project is still in the early stages, but it will happen in a world of magic and fantasy. The imaginary characters are responsible for random daily events. For example, there are some wicked little fairies that mess up your hair while you are sleeping. They are the reason we wake up with such grungy hairdos! I like to work on very diferent projects because it's the best way to explore other styles and themes easily. When you were a child, did you envision you'd take up a career in the creative field? I never really thought I would make a living drawing, but it happened naturally. I enjoy what I do as a hobby and finally became a professional. I used to draw a lot as a child and continued as a teenager. Finally, I got a job where I just had to draw and that was an amazing step for me. Now there is a lot of work drawing, and, as I said, social media has been a very useful tool.

You're also a teacher, correct? What do you gain from your teaching? I've seen a lot of talented people emerge with a lot of energy and the will to create. This is very satisfying. When I explain my work to a student, I analyze it, and this helps me evolve and grow. Has there been any enlightening information that a student has taught you? My students usually are younger than me, so they have a fresher and unworried vision of life, which is very exciting. They are also very modern and update me with new ways to see the illustration world.

For more information about Conrad Roset, visit conradroset.com

juxtapoz.com / conrad - roset

Were you interested in figure studies and figure drawing early on? Since I studied fine arts, life drawing and the female body has been one of my favorite subjects.

102

Juxtapoz

conrad roset

WorldMags.net

above left Muse 507 Acrylic on paper above right Muse 509 Acrylic on paper right Muse 561 Acrylic on paper

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

june 2014

103

travel insider

WorldMags.net Denver

DaviD B. Smith takeS uS arounD the mile high City

CLOSE YOUR EYES AND THINK OF DENVER. What comes to mind? John Elway? An ice cold can of Coors Light? Maybe Dante Bichette in his purple uniform if you really know the town. Since 2007, David B. Smith has been a key player himself, running his namesake gallery in Denver, a force in establishing the city as an art-centric, creative capital, from curating shows with Josh Keyes, Kris Lewis, and Gregory Euclide, to a current string of installation-based shows. We asked Smith to take a break and give us the rundown of his favorite spots around the Mile High City. I moved to Colorado from Ithaca, New York back in 2001, eager to take part in all of the outdoor activities that the mountains had to ofer. I quickly felt at home in a growing city steeped in arts and culture with a diverse community that embraces everything that this area has to ofer. —David B. Smith

RiNo RiNo (River North) is a fun district to explore. There’s a plethora of galleries, shops and studios worth checking out. RedLine has interesting curated exhibitions. Stop into Ironton Studios. Make sure to go to the artisan market, The Source, and check out Svper Ordinary. Crema Cofee House (4) is one of my favorite places to recharge after a studio visit and before heading back to the gallery. While cofee is on the mind, my other favorite spot in the city is across town in South Denver at Kaladi Cofee Roasters. I’ve shipped Kaladi’s beans to friends and cofee aficionados all over. Larimer Lounge (1) in RiNo is a nice spot to catch indie bands before they make it big, and if you can push past the crowd, behind the stage is a great patio to hang out between sets. And while I’m on the topic of music, Vine Street Pub and

104

Juxtapoz

travel insider

WorldMags.net

All photography by Rachel Gomez

1

WorldMags.net 2

3

4

Brewery serves up some of my favorite Colorado Beer, and they often have some quality low-key music (in Boulder, check out Mountain Sun or Southern Sun Breweries). I love the musical diversity of the Cervantes’ Masterpiece Ballroom and the vibe and stif drinks at Quixote’s True Blue. As a die-hard music fan, I should also mention a dozen other incredible music venues here in town, but this is a short sampling of them. Uptown/Capital Hill One of my all-time favorite restaurants is Watercourse Foods. It’s a Denver institution that serves vegetarian comfort food. We’ve had artists come into town for just a few days and return to Watercourse multiple times.

from Watercourse Foods in Uptown. Easily mistaken for an upscale yoga studio, iVita epitomizes the changing landscape of marijuana in Colorado. Santa Fe Drive/South Broadway If you want to talk street art, stop in and visit our friends at Black Book Gallery, located in the Arts District on Santa Fe. While you’re in the vicinity, take a stroll down South Broadway for great bars and shops: Gildar Gallery anchors the area with great contemporary art, Metropolitan State University’s Center for Visual Art specializes in student and traveling exhibitions, and further down the way is Tank Studios, an artist-run space housing the studios of numerous, incredibly talented local artists.

For those of you looking for the world-famous Rocky Mountain high, iVita Wellness (2) is right down the street

WorldMags.net

june 2014

105

5

6

WorldMags.net

LoDo Some of the best restaurants in Denver are within a block or two from my gallery in LoDo (Lower Downtown). The Kitchen, right across the street from the gallery, features amazing homemade pasta, a farm-to-table menu, and proprietary infused cocktails, while Illegal Pete’s is a bargain lunch and margarita staple, a low-key alternative to Denver margarita legend Rio Grande on Blake. Robischon Gallery is a pillar of the contemporary art scene in Denver. Save up some cash for a snap-shirt at Rockmount Ranch Wear, then stop by Tattered Cover, hands-down the best bookstore in the region. Whatever you do, make sure to grab a drink on the upstairs patio of the MCA Denver (3) (after checking out the exhibitions downstairs). The views are great, the café area features gorgeous ceramic works from artist Kim Dickey, and there are often music and art events there on Friday nights. LoHi LoHi (the Lower Highlands), right across the Platte River from LoDo, also boasts excellent breweries, restaurants and bars. The Denver Beer Co. serves up some tasty pints. Root Down is an incredible organic experience, and head to Little Man Ice Cream (5) for their Salted Oreo Cookie. I love grabbing a drink on Linger’s rooftop, though I’m partial to anything with bourbon from their innovative menu. The building is a former mortuary, which they’ve embraced with their camp décor.

106

Juxtapoz

travel insider

Hiking at Red Rocks (6) Just outside Denver, Red Rocks Amphitheatre is well-known as an epic music venue, but my favorite time to head up there is actually on an of day when there is nothing ofcial happening. The amphitheater and area around Red Rocks is a state park, free and open to the public every day. It’s great for hiking and biking, and it’s fun to climb around the inside of the venue when it’s virtually empty. The red rock formations are classic American West, and there are quintessential views of Denver, too. Biking in Denver Like many other cities, Denver is super bike friendly. Denver B-Cycle is a city bike-sharing program that was actually the first of its kind in this country. There are similar systems now in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, but in the summer, spring, and fall, B-cycle is an awesome way to cruise around the city on two-wheels, especially in parking-challenged areas like LoDo.

David B. Smith is a gallerist in Denver. Visit the David B. Smith Gallery on Wazee Street in LoDo and let David know what you’ve discovered on your journey in Denver and beyond For more information about David B. Smith, visit davidbsmithgallery.com

juxtapoz.com / david - b - smith - gallery

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

beautiful bits

WorldMags.net NEW INC

The New MuseuM has The righT idea

THE NEW MUSEUM IN NYC HAS ALWAYS BEEN AT the forefront of all things creative, whether we’re talking about its curatorial programming, architectural stunner of a building in the LES or adaptation of new media and technology. Now the directors of the New Museum are trying something even more forward thinking as they seek to gain the admiration of a new generation of art lovers in what is being called a Digital Art Incubator, dubbed NEW INC. While Incubators have long been known as places where startups pitch and grow ideas until they reach gestation, this is a new take, encouraging artists to cohabit a work space designed to breed innovation and cooperation among residents. Much like their Silicon Valley tech counterparts, the idea behind the space is that if you collect enough bright and motivated people in the same area, their imagination and productivity will grow exponentially as they inspire each other.

With plenty of New York graduates and young adults to recruit, whose ideas are larger than their means, NEW INC provides for creative and slightly odd projects to have a place to grow. Programming of the space will also include guided events, including speakers and successful platforms for further illumination. Housed directly next door to the New Museum, it allows the NEW INCers to have a plethora of exhibits from which to draw inspiration. The world between art and tech has been searching for a bridge, but establishing a physical space which both encourages and breeds these new ideas is a pragmatic and welcome concept in our opinion. —Nick Lattner

For more information about New Inc, visit newinc.org

juxtapoz.com / beautiful - bits

108

Juxtapoz

beautiful bits

WorldMags.net

Carsten Höller Experience 2012 Slide allowed visitors to travel from the fourth floor to the second floor in less than a minute Photo by Benoit Pailley Courtesy New Museum, New York

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

reviews

WorldMags.net Books

THE TiTlEs JuxTapoz is CuRRENTlY REaDiNG FROM WHERE I AM Istanbul, an absolutely magnificent city, has been at the crossroads of civilization since there were civilizations, and that's every bit as true today as it was a millennium ago. As a traveler, Aylin Güngör is one of those local contacts you dream of—the person who can unlock the contemporary culture of a place and connect today to the past. Musicians and artists wellknown and not-so-well-known have been reaching out to her for the past decade while in Istanbul, and she's gone about quietly setting them up with a bed, a gig, and some press through her magazine, Bant. Along the way, she totes her camera. With From Where I Am, her first book, she's collected her beautifully candid and informal photographic portraits of the musicians who have been captivated by her unforgettable city. —Caleb Neelon aylingungor.com bantmag.com

THE SEVENTH DOG “It is easy to forget that in the main, we die only seven times more slowly than our dogs,” American author Jim Harrison wrote in his 1998 novel The Road Home. This quote provides the inspiration behind the title of Danny Lyon’s new Phaidon monograph, The Seventh Dog. Lyon’s pioneering immersive style of documentary photography parallels with his own personal journey. Arranged in reverse chronological order, Seventh Dog, takes us from the present day through Lyon’s major and lesser-known bodies of work, with photo collages, letters and other remembrances accompanying Lyon’s own stories. We see him living with the Chicago outlaw motorcycle club for The Bikeriders, documenting the civil rights movement and embedding himself within the Texas prison system for Conversations with the Dead. “Although I lived in the moment,” says Lyon, “my mind was always on the future, on how my work might survive as the best accounting, perhaps the only record, of what had been.” Seventh Dog is a poignant personal account of the remarkable 50 year career of one of America’s most original photographers. —Alex Nicholson phaidon.com

THE BLIGHTED EYE Imagine a compendium so big and beautiful, so obviously conceived in exhilaration that it practically rufes its pages in enticement. The Blighted Eye, Original Comic Art from the Glenn Bray Collection is massive, but welcoming, as it introduces the unheralded, as well as the masters. What sets it apart from other compilations is the breadth of the art, as well as the context, which tells the story of comics through Bray’s joyous stewardship. Artists are democratically presented alphabetically, demonstrating the collector’s respect for each practitioner. Candid photographs celebrate the comradery among the group. The introduction is written by Robert Williams, citing the wealthy land baron and collector James Brucker who declares, ”For organization, cataloging and sheer love and interest in what he likes, Glenn Bray is the number one original comic art collector in the United States.” The Blighted Eye is published by the fantastic Fantagraphics Books, Inc. —Gwynned Vitello fantagraphics.com

110

Juxtapoz

reviews

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

ART TRUANCY | CELEBRATING 20 YEARS OF JUXTAPOZ MAGAZINE

A GROUP EXHIBITION CURATED BY JUXTAPOZ MAGAZINE & JONATHAN LeVINE GALLERY

ROBERT WILLIAMS

CAMILLE ROSE GARCIA

JEREMY FISH

MARK RYDEN

THOMAS CAMPBELL

SEONNA HONG

SHEPARD FAIREY

JAMES JEAN

CRAOLA

SWOON

PARRA

JEFF SOTO

TODD SCHORR

TIM BISKUP

ANDREW SCHOULTZ

CONOR HARRINGTON

TODD JAMES

CHLOE EARLY

MAYA HAYUK

BRETT AMORY

ALEX GROSS

FAILE

MARION PECK

SANER

DOZE GREEN

ALEX PARDEE

MISS VAN

PUSHEAD

NECK FACE

AND MORE

Art Truancy May 15 – June 14, 2014 Jonathan LeVine Gallery jonathanlevinegallery.com

Opening Reception 529 West 20th Street New York, NY May 15, 2014 7:00 – 9:00PM

Opening Reception 557C West 23rd Street New York, NY May 15, 2014 6:00 – 8:00PM

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

profile

WorldMags.net Scott LiStfieLd

Search for the LoSt highway

WHEN WE WERE YOUNG, most of us half-expected to be cruising around in flying cars by this point. But the future is now, and most of us are stuck in trafc. Massachusetts artist Scott Listfield explores this disenchantment through the lens of a lone astronaut, a silent observer roaming foreign landscapes trying to make sense of unfamiliar surroundings. While the overarching sense of isolation and disappointment is palpable, the disquieting journey is enlivened by an array

114

Juxtapoz

profile

of pop cultural references, iconography wildly out of context yet seamlessly integrated into the scene, as the artist encourages you to accept their place in this altered reality. In developing his protagonist, Listfield drew from his own experiences. After living abroad and traveling the world for a few years after college, he returned home to a place he barely recognized.

WorldMags.net

above Lost Highway Oil on canvas 24" x 18" 2012 right The Landscape Oil on canvas 16" x 20" 2013

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

WorldMags.net

“When I returned to the States, I got an entry level job and moved into Boston's tiniest studio apartment. I had to be a grown up for the first time. Buying groceries, riding a bus to work, going to the laundromat. I felt ill-prepared for all of it and spent a lot of time catching up on all the TV and American pop culture I had missed over the previous four years. And even though I was now at home, I couldn't quite shake the feeling that I didn't totally belong here.” Despite Listfield’s own disappointment, his astronaut remains an impartial observer, approaching every new discovery, no matter how mundane, with a childlike innocence, an uninhibited fascination with the world around him. He has visited some of our nation’s greatest landmarks and stumbled upon our loneliest highways and unremarkable ofce parks. Each experience is documented

116

Juxtapoz

profile

through Polaroid-like snapshots, "Wish You Were Here..." mementos that feel as though they will later grace the pages of his personal scrapbook. Confronted by the reality of his present, and with a face obscured by the reflective glass of his helmet, you can't help but wonder if this is the idealistic future the space explorer once dreamt of. —Liz Devlin

For more information about Scott Listfield, visit astronautdinosaur.com

juxtapoz.com / scott - listfield

WorldMags.net

left Mooninite Oil on canvas 9" x 12" 2011 right New Moon Oil on canvas 18" x 24" 2013

PIWorldMags.net GMENT+ PALETTE





(465;/



>,:,5+@6
0;/

ARTWORK )@6