SPRING 2019 Juxtapoz

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SPRING 2019, n209 USA $9.99 / CAN $10.99 DISPLAY UNTIL JUNE 3, 2019

Up your game. Make better art. Learn how at academyart.edu/jux Aspiring artists and designers can choose from 30 programs, including illustration, photography, film, and more. We can help design your future. Study on campus or online. Scholarships available. Academy of Art University | San Francisco, 1929 Master Your Craft | 888.492.2692 Visit academyart.edu to learn more about total costs, median student loan debt, potential occupations and other information. Accredited member WSCUC, NASAD, CIDA (BFA-IAD, MFA-IAD), NAAB (B.ARCH, M.ARCH), CTC (California Teacher Credential).

Featured student work by Marisa Ware, MFA, School of Illustration

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CONTENTS

Spring 2019 ISSUE 209

10

Editor's Letter

14

Studio Time Kate Klingbeil at home in Juxtapoz Projects

18

The Report James Stanford’s Las Vegas Vision

22

Product Reviews

32

Design Studio Arhoj Ceramics from Copenhagen

36

Fashion Mary Quant at the V&A

Julie Curtiss

44

Travel Insider Art Trippin in Sheboygan, Wisconsin

24

52

Miranda Barnes’ Gentle Sincerity

Marin Headlands Center for the Arts

98

Antony Micallef

On the Outside Interactive Art with Jazoo Yang

SFMOMA, Aspen Art, de Young, Mirus Denver, Galerie des Tournelles, Paris

136

Sieben on Life Daniel Johnston Bought Him Tacos

In Session

56

Maxwell McMaster

Events

Vaughn Spann is the Next Big Thing

48

126 134

Influences

Modernica, Vans, BFGF and PBR

Picture Book

88

138

Pop Life

106

Javier Calleja

Juxtapoz Clubhouse, Ron Mandos, Amsterdam, Juxtapoz Projects

142

Perspective

62

A Meander Through Nara’s Yard

Book Reviews The Mash Up, Dadara, LSD Worldpeace

116

Emily Mae Smith

78

Neo Rauch

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Right: Lucy Sparrow, In Heinz Sight, Edition of 20, 2018

68 Lucy Sparrow

STAFF

FOUNDER

PRESIDENT + PUBLISHER

A DV E R T I S I N G + S A L E S D I R E C TO R

Robert Williams

Gwynned Vitello

Mike Stalter [email protected]

E D I TO R

CFO

Evan Pricco

Jeff Rafnson

A R T D I R E C TO R

AC C O U N T I N G M A N AG E R

Rosemary Pinkham

Kelly Ma

M A N AG I N G E D I TO R

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

Eben Benson

John Morthanos

CO-FOUNDER

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Greg Escalante

Eben Benson Sasha Bogojev Kristin Farr David Molesky Alex Nicholson Evan Pricco Martyn Reed Michael Sieben Gwynned Vitello

M A I L O R D E R + C U S TO M E R S E R V I C E

C O N T R I B U T I N G P H OTO G R A P H E R S

SHIPPING

Anthony Alvarez Sasha Bogojev Ian Cox Bryan Derballa Jessica Ross Mike Stalter Christina Villamore Uwe Walter

Maddie Manson Craig D. Nash Charlie Pravel Ian Seager Adam Yim

CO-FOUNDER

Suzanne Williams CHIEF TECHNICAL OFFICER

Nick Lattner D E P U T Y E D I TO R

Kristin Farr C O N T R I B U T I N G W E B + P R I N T E D I TO R S

Sasha Bogojev Joey Garfield Alex Nicholson Jessica Ross Michael Sieben Lauren Young Smith C O N T R I B U T I N G P H OTO E D I TO R S

David Broach Bryan Derballa

A DV E R T I S I N G S A L E S

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

Mike Breslin M A R K E T I N G + A D M A N AG E R

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[email protected] 415-671-2416

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PRODUCT PROCUREMENT

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TECHNICAL LIAISON

Santos Ely Agustin

INTERN

Mark Yang

AG E N C Y D E S I G N E R

Max Stern

Juxtapoz ISSN #1077-8411 Spring 2019 Volume 26, Number 02 Published quarterly by High Speed Productions, Inc., 1303 Underwood Ave, San Francisco, CA 94124–3308. © 2016 High Speed Productions, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in USA. Juxtapoz is a registered trademark of High Speed Productions, Inc. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Opinions expressed in articles are those of the author. All rights reserved on entire contents. Advertising inquiries should be directed to: [email protected]. Subscriptions: US, $29.99 (one year, 4 issues); Canada, $75.00; Foreign, $80.00 per year. Single copy: US, $9.99; Canada, $10.99. Subscription rates given represent standard rate and should not be confused with special subscription offers advertised in the magazine. Periodicals Postage Paid at San Francisco, CA, and at additional mailing offices. Canada Post Publications Mail Agreement No. 0960055. Change of address: Allow six weeks advance notice and send old address label along with your new address. Postmaster: Send change of address to: Juxtapoz, PO Box 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 effort has been made to reach copyright owners or their representatives. The publisher will be pleased to correct any mistakes or omissions in our next issue. Juxtapoz welcomes editorial submissions; however, return postage must accompany all unsolicited manuscripts, art, drawings, and photographic materials if they are to be returned. No responsibility can be assumed for unsolicited materials. All letters will be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication and copyright purposes and subject to Juxtapoz’ right to edit and comment editorially. Juxtapoz Is Published by High Speed Productions, Inc. 415–822–3083 email to: [email protected] juxtapoz.com

8 SPRING 2019

Cover: Art by Lucy Sparrow, 2019, Photo by Ian Cox

EDITOR’S LETTER

Issue N 209 O

It’s not difficult to understand why Lucy Sparrow has become a bit of a rock star in recent years. Although I absolutely love a good opening and get excited when an artist I follow has a new body of work to share, the urgency that you have to be there, you need to see it, only comes around every so often. An exhibition may speak to you, but there are few artists who cross over into evoking a compulsion to experience their work in person no matter what. This is the space Lucy Sparrow occupies. She is a must-see. It doesn’t quite make sense, the volume, repetition and little intricacies and individuality of seeing 30,000 pieces of art before you. Made of felt. Not only objects made of felt, but entire corner stores, sex shops, grocery stores, bodegas, you name it, where every object you have spent your life consuming and seeing advertised, is presented, and made of felt. It’s mesmerizing, a bit maddening really, to even begin to consider the stamina it takes to actually make the work, and intuitively how whip-smart Sparrow’s artmaking is. Not only is it a multi-faceted comment on consumerism, but a challenge to what the art-buying market really is. You may wonder, “Why on Earth would someone do this?” But by the time you’ve posed the question, you’ve bought a felt box of Cheerios and had the best time doing it.

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Lucy Sparrow’s approach is something that, perhaps in the past, might have raised an eyebrow or two. Is it performance art? Conceptual art? Art made for Instagram? A souvenir? Feminist? Political? Of course, the answer is that it is some, none, and all of those things. Watching thousands of people come through Sparrow Mart at the Juxtapoz Clubhouse in Miami in late 2018, there didn’t seem to be one person who wanted to be there for any of the above reasons. They wanted to see felt. They wanted to see their childhood memories or daily lives reimagined and repackaged by a talented artist who also becomes the centerpiece of the exhibit. In considering the most polarizing performance artists of our time, Chris Burden, Marina Abramovic, or even Cindy Sherman, finding herself to be the material of her own work, the realization occurs that Sparrow doesn’t fit into those categories either. I would even argue that she is beginning to create her own genre, one that takes the popularity of street art, the headiness of conceptual art, and the hypersuper-modern social media world, and turns it into unreplicatable, original and interactive installation art. And the best part? You can take a little bit home with you.

I love this idea of artists creating work that ignores the fashion of the era. Emily Mae Smith, interviewed in this issue, pointedly observes that, “There was a whole period of time in the past ten years in New York where if you made representational painting, it was not cool. Nobody was showing it. That was a weird micro-trend, but a very strong one. It was just all abstract.” And you know what Smith did? She adamantly painted image-based work. She didn’t care about the trends: she just made good work and knew that time would tell the truth. Consider Julie Curtiss touching on Surrealism, Neo Rauch being a figurative painter of nearly his own genre, or Vaughn Spann mixing abstraction and portraits in the same exhibitions, side-by-side—it’s not about doing what you are told, or doing what trends say is smart and sensible. So the next time you notice an artist doing work “off-trend,” chances are, that artist is doing it best. Enjoy Spring 2019.

Above: Lucy Sparrow, Juxtapoz Cover Art, 2019, Photo by Ian Cox

H A L F M A N , H A L F M YT H , A L L I PA .

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STUDIO TIME

Kate Klingbeil Juxtapoz Projects, Mana Contemporary, Jersey City I recently moved my studio from Brooklyn to Jersey City for a three-month residency with Juxtapoz Projects at Mana Contemporary. There’s a lot to see and process while driving through Manhattan from Brooklyn. You have to go over a bridge, down buzzing Canal Street in Chinatown, and brave the long Holland Tunnel through to the other side. New Jersey is so close, yet it feels slightly removed from the chaotic and encompassing energy of NYC. I brought only the necessities to this new space: paintings I’m currently working on, some books for reference, and a brick that says “good luck.” All of my previous studios have been packed with items and visual stimuli that have, up until now,

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influenced how I work. In previous iterations, my studio was covered with dozens of my own paintings and ceramics, as well as tchotchkes and works I’ve collected from friends… but this time, I’m trying to keep it minimal. I’m finding it’s easier to conjure fresh ideas without looking at everything I’ve ever made. Each time I move, I shed layers from my past that I don't want to bring into the future. This space has allowed me to spread out and work more freely. I hadn’t realized it before, but being able to physically step back fifteen feet from a painting without worrying about knocking something over has helped me tremendously. It allows me to understand the painting and what’s working

or what’s not. Emerging from my studio inside this grand former tobacco factory with its brick facade and smokestacks, freight trains rolling by on the track, and Little India a couple blocks away, I feel lucky to have a space of my own for the next few months. Artists need space that we can make sacred so ideas can materialize. I make a mess every day and clean it up before I leave so I can start fresh the next morning. —Kate Klingbeil Kate Klingbeil is participating in the newly established Juxtapoz Projects residency program at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City. She is working alongside sculptor Megan Cavanaugh and will debut a twoperson exhibition in April 2019 at the Juxtapoz Projects Gallery.

Above: Photo by Jessica Ross

REPORT

James Stanford Light and Life in Las Vegas James Stanford’s dad packed up the household in the 1940s, and drove from Texas to Las Vegas to coach high school football. The older sons donned shoulder pads, but the youngest, a strapping figure who looks like he’d be comfortable guiding a horse on the high plains, had broader ideas for himself and Las Vegas. An ambassador for this western City of Lights, James helms Smallworks Press when not creating the coruscating mandalas that culminated in Shimmering Zen at 2018’s Asian Art in London. I visited him and wife Lynn (a Mighty Muse!) in their stomping grounds where I toured the Neon Museum, Yayoi Kusama’s Inifinity Room and wandered through a mesquite grove in the middle of town. Gwynned Vitello: Am I off-base in describing you as someone who is compelled to seek harmony, but wants to go about it outside of proscribed boundaries? Jim Stanford: My older brother was a terrific artist, a cartoonist, and that certainly impressed me when I was a small child. From the time I was 16, I knew I wanted to be an artist, and I drew all the time. I sort of knew the difference between

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drawing what was in front of me from the stored set of symbols that most children have when they draw. My brother did that, as well, but he had done enough life drawing at art school to draw figures off the top of his head. Where you at that stage at 16? I wanted to be able to do that, as well, and, at 16, I also discovered a book called Vision in Motion by the Bauhaus-influenced artist László Moholy-Nagy. I learned about Dada, Futurism, all the isms of the early twentieth century, about Picasso, Lee and Matisse; and one thing I realized they all had in common was that they were academically trained. I made up my mind to go to college and study art and learn to paint in an academic way. I realized that after they did that, they threw it all away. This fits my impression of you, appreciating structure but not wanting to be bound by rules. I graduated from high school in 1966 and was up in the San Francisco Bay Area by September. I wanted to get out of Las Vegas because then it was such a small resort town. There were no museums! I didn’t go to one until I was 20 years old. I learned about

art through books and magazines. During that time, many of the major magazines had artists on the covers, and that really stimulated me. So I’m surprised to learn that you first majored in English. I loved writing. I loved poetry, short stories and all, so I thought I would maybe become an attorney; and admittedly, my parents were pushing me toward that sort of goal. But I sat in on life drawing classes, and I loved the quieting of the mind, the extemporaneous experience of trying to master proportion and line. I would draw as much as seven or eight hours a day. One of the teachers noticed, and I was offered a scholarship if I majored in art, so I got my BFA. That’s when you painted Revelations, which was inspired by a trip to Europe. I went to the Prado everyday when we were in Madrid, and I was so blown away. I had never seen Master paintings before and I underwent a revelatory experience, which many years later I discovered is called Stendhal Syndrome. It turns out the French philosopher and writer has

Above: AWAZ (Indra’s Jewels), Digital montage of Las Vegas vintage neon signage

REPORT

an experience standing in front of Giotto’s work when he collapsed and fainted. Well, the same thing happened to me in front of Rogier van der Weyden’s painting called Descent from the Cross. It really got me, from the rendering of the robes to the painful emotion emanating from the piece. I literally lost consciousness, and though waking up confused, I somehow got this grasp of how some of the techniques were used to achieve the piece. It would be like if somebody played saxophone and studied really hard, but didn’t quite understand jazz, but got to see John Coltrane in person and had that moment where they got it. For me, it was like, “Okay, I get it, this is what I’m supposed to do.” The moment I got back to Las Vegas, I started painting Revelations. I was back home, living at my parents’ house in a 12-by-12 bedroom. I didn’t even have an easel, so I set up a dresser drawer, sat on the edge and did that painting, all in acrylic, even the glazing, because they wouldn’t allow me to paint oil in the house. This must be when you started teaching art. I’ve read that you’re an expert on color composition. I think it’s a core course for all art, including photography, ceramics, sculpture and everything. I think it gives you all the exercise you need to understand composition and have an awareness of negative space and how to control it. I found teaching to be an amazing experience, and I really learned more in that role than as a student. That said, while I took pride in growing up in a family of teachers and felt I was really making progress with the students, I was informed that I didn’t stand much chance of being hired full-time, as they wanted to hire from outside the community. I took that as a huge diss and decided to leave and form Stanford and Associates, my own design company. What seemed to be a bad experience actually changed my life in a terrific way. That was a big change, from academics to business, especially coming from a family of teachers. We did win four awards that year, but it was harsh, I’ll tell you that, especially because the business community in Las Vegas was extremely conservative at the time. That did not fit with me at all. I couldn’t stand the business culture, so I’d try not to open my mouth when they were spewing their reactionary, right-wing pronouncements. But the whole time you got to work with artists and photographers. I learned a great deal about commercial photography, watching them work and direct

photography, people who were really good. And at this time, I married Lynn, who is a key part of the whole experience. Well, I absolutely know how important she is to every aspect of your life. I had met her in 1970 at UNLV and was really attracted to her, but I was engaged to another girl, whom I did go ahead and marry. It didn’t work out, but then, through another UNLV BFA graduate, I reconnected with Lynn, and it was magical. We got married in the summer of 1984 after three months—but you know when it’s right. She really

Top left: James Stanford at the Neon Museum Top right and below: Views of the Neon Museum, Las Vegas

became, and is, my best friend and support. Oh my god, I never had that kind of support in my life, somebody who actually believed I could do this. All I really wanted was to do my work and be a fine artist—and get out of the casino business, which I had been doing to supplement things. You were a blackjack dealer, right? I was, and the strangest thing is that it’s a great lesson for life, like looking at the Masks of Mammon every day, because when you’re dealing blackjack, you have to stay in the moment. I mean, you’re a clerk, paying off winners and taking from the losers.

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REPORT

You have to pay attention to everything, in sequence, moment by moment. Well, that is Zen Buddhism, and I found some comfort in that in a strange way. The rhythm and pattern was fascinating. Another encounter during this time bolstered your commitment to Buddhism. Yes, I was taking an anthropology class from a man named Jack Fitzwater at UNLV. He had been in the Korean War as a young Marine of 18, and he had brought with him only one book, the Bhagavad Gita. They were shelled every single day and he saw lots of death and destruction. He was there for 18 months and he had a battlefield enlightenment. I don’t know how he did, but he recognized my experience at 18. He looked at my artwork and kind of adopted me and became my Zen mentor. The first book I published was his in 2007, Nawari Koans. We stayed friends until he passed away. With wife and mentor by your side and business humming, when did you start to change your method of making art? I was still painting on the side, continuing to work on it. The business converted to Macintosh in 1987, and getting into the ’90s, I really started to learn Photoshop and Illustrator, two programs I really loved. I started taking more photographs, mainly of Las Vegas signage, because I was here in this town and needed to be involved with what was going on. I shot the Neon Boneyard, pictures of motels and signage, and of course, the desert, which is so inspirational. What’s key is that Las Vegas taught me that there is unity in polarity.

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Do you think that learning to make art enabled you to understand that concept even more? Absolutely, and one of the key examples was my difficulty with shortening exercises. Look at my hand, which looks so much bigger because it’s closer. As a student, I was having difficulty and the teacher said, “Don’t draw the leg, draw the negative space that surrounds the leg,” so concentrate on the nothing and you’ll get the something. What does the Buddha mean to your work? A goal of my work is to show people you can discover your own true nature and it’s not linked to a particular culture whatsoever, and you can find enlightenment without going through a particular kind of cultural portal. Another fascination of mine is pareidolia, which is looking at random visual information, like seeing a pod of whales in a cloud formation. The mind wants to turn that into something, and everybody has that capability.

I was scared to death of it, but that discomfort didn’t stop me. Again, I understood that some discomfort was part of life, and that I was actually growing from the experience. It wasn’t going away, so I just played with it just like I played with drawing and paint, and it became just another tool to express myself. Discomfort doesn’t begin to describe what you and Lynn went through when she was sick. I was preparing to launch Shimmering Zen at the London Library, and Lynn, so sick, almost dying, just insisted. She said, “You’re going to do it,” and, despite what was she was going through, helped me all the way.

What a beautiful thought, to appreciate that capability we all have. And out of that idea of pareidolia, I started making mirror images of trees and plants, and faces would appear. I was always intrigued with this idea and used it in a surrealistic way in my paintings. When I realized I could accomplish this more quickly with Photoshop, I saw I could really progress. I could do things that were very difficult before, like achieve symmetry.

I know she is recovering successfully from stem cell therapy. You used that experience in Molecular Space X, didn’t you? It’s very emblematic of that experience. Spacious but with a molecular feel, it reminds us that we’re all part of each other and all part of the universe. As creators of the universe, we recreate it momentby-moment; we can expand our consciousness through many means, and art is one of them. That’s part of my philosophy of life. You can’t know good without bad, light without dark, and light can make the darkness comforting. Ironically, watching Lynn’s pain really intensified the joy of what we shared together, and, without a doubt, sweetened the pot.

Because of your business, I imagine the transition to digital was easier.

www.jamesstanfordart.com www.shimmeringzen.com

Above left: Double Sign, Digital montage of Las Vegas vintage neon signage Above right: Revelations, Acrylic on board, 1970

#lagunitasjux

DRAW IN THE DESERT. OR THE SURFACE OF MARS. WHEREVER.

REVIEWS

Things We Are After Functional Art

BFGF Housewares Collection by Lilian Martinez Lilian Martinez has been making waves as a fine artist, with gallery shows from her home base in Los Angeles, all the way to Tokyo. And those paintings have found a home in Martinez’s own art brand/housewares company, BFGF. With a flat aesthetic and cheeky nod to 1990’s pop culture, her pillow covers, throws and mini-throw blankets each have a little edge and a lot of fun, detailed whimsy. From cartoon characters, sports and art history, Martinez’s BFGF throw blanket is unique. Have a friend over, throw a throw over them, start the conversation. bfgf-shop.com

Vault by Vans x Modernica Collection The Fiberglass Shell Chair and Vans Classic Slip-On are standards of American design, timeless and egalitarian. That Modernica has been making the fiberglass shell by hand in Los Angeles for 25 years, and Vans is the staple of all Southern California fashion, it’s downright sunny that the two companies are collaborating on a Vault by Vans collection. Both brands sport icons with absolutely zero fuss and have transformed the Style 36 LX and OG Slip-On LX into 6 classic looks, with Hawaiian, palm leaf, checkerboard designs. Take the aesthetic of California with you. The Vault by Vans x Modernica Collection will also feature the iconic Fiberglass Shell Chair, also created in the Hawaiian, palm leaf, checkerboard patterns. modernica.net, vans.com/vault

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Pabst Blue Ribbon Art Cans Seeing as Pabst Blue Ribbon has been making beer since 1844, they have had plenty of time to establish an emblematic look to their can design and logo. Now in its 6th year, PBR has established an annual National Art Contest, summoning artists to submit designs around their classic logo. With a deluge of submissions in 2018, PBR had three winners announced in late February, 2019: Charlie Kendall, Kelly Ward and Tenbeete Solomon (from left to right). Touching on a range of graphic design and comic-influence art, these cans are collectibles that you probably want to drink, too. With a cash prize and chance to be part of a legendary beer brand, head to PabstBlueRibbon.com to get ready for next year’s contest! pabstblueribbon.com

PICTURE BOOK

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Above: Tory and Tyra, 2018, Year created: 2018

PICTURE BOOK

Miranda Barnes The Unselfie There is a gentle sincerity to Miranda Barnes’ photographs. People and places she captures inhabit their own unique story, one she always welcomes and dignifies within the frame. “I find that because of how I look and how tiny I am, that sometimes people don't expect me to be a photographer,” she considers, “and I just love sort of playing with that and getting shots that they probably wouldn't let someone else take.” That warm, empathetic perspective is accompanied by a distinct timelessness, one rooted in the nostalgia of the film format she often uses but is also drawn from strong influences like Robert Frank, Stephen Shore, Ming Smith, and Latoya Ruby Frazier. Barnes offers a fresh viewpoint, one born from a long-time interest in social justice instilled by her mother, encouraged by college professors and invigorated by witnessing and participating in the Black Lives Matter protests following the 2014 police killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. “Photography allowed me the opportunity to express my emotions during 2014 in a way that I had not done so before,” she explains. “I just remember being so angry about all of it, and sad, mostly. The only way for me to vent was to take

photos... that was my first moment where I just wanted to document the people that were the same angry as me. Up until then, I had only been dabbling in photography.” While 2014 marked a new relationship with photography, Miranda has always had an affinity for pictures and images. She recalls being mesmerized by stills from classic films, relishing time she could spend alone watching Turner Classic Movies. “I was always thinking about [the images] but didn't think that I could actually go that route.” In high school, she carried around disposable cameras, taking pictures and uploading them to a Tumblr page to preserve and share the memories. “I wanted to go to art school,” she explains, “but, frankly, I couldn’t afford it.” Reassuring herself that she would continue to photograph, Barnes enrolled in community college before transferring to John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where pursuit of other interests broadened her perspective and ultimately gave new strength to her photography. “I was always documenting but nothing really came about until 2015 after taking a philosophy

class. I was sitting next to this girl, and in walks her sister; and I was shocked that they were twins.” Miranda’s grandmother was a twin, so she began working on a serious project on black female twins. “I didn’t really know what I was doing with it, but I knew I was working towards a more cohesive body of work versus just the snapshots I had been taking before.” Miranda’s twins project, Doubles, ended up being picked up by a succession of major publications and led to opportunities shooting for The New York Times, Vogue, and Vice. “I feel like I have just hit the tip of the iceberg for my work and it's exhilarating to know I have so much more to give,” says Barnes. “It's become my life, in a way. I never called myself a photographer. I wouldn't say it's given me a sense of purpose, because I think I had other interests, but I would say that it has given me something that I have never felt more sure about.” —Alex Nicholson mirandabarnes.com @mirandabarnes

Above left: Tiffany and Gio, Sunset Park, Brooklyn, Year created: 2018 Above right: Baltimore, Maryland. From Charm City, a five-part audio series from The New York Times’ The Daily, Year created: 2018

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PICTURE BOOK

“I sometimes find that people are shocked when I wanna take photos of them. I have this one photo that I took of a guy in Memphis, I'll never forget him just facing me and saying, ‘You wanna take a photo of me?’ He just got so excited. I feel like, in that

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moment, it's less about the photo and more about the interaction. You're giving someone a platform, you're giving them a sense of nobility that they deserve and empathy that they've longed for but have never had the chance to have.”

Above: South Memphis, Tennessee, Year created: 2018

PICTURE BOOK

“The technicalities that I think I lost by not going to art school can always be taught.”

Above: Cincinnati, Ohio, Year created: 2018

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PICTURE BOOK

“Photography has changed me, and I think it's also given me a way of shedding light on diversity, which is needed. I say this all the time; sometimes I'm not even taking the pictures for myself, I'm just taking pictures

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because I've had all these opportunities and I'm just trying to open the door for other people to get through. I think that that's important.”

Above: Sarae and Sarai, 2016, Year created: 2016

PICTURE BOOK

“When I'm photographing on the streets, it's random people. They trust me enough to just let me take their photo. I find that that's incredibly fascinating, and it's for two reasons; this might be an open person and they

Above: Chris and his son, Sunset Park, Brooklyn, Year created: 2018

are just not concerned, but also, I've found, especially from photographing marginalized communities, that they've never really had a good photo taken of them.”

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DESIGN

Studio Arhoj Anders Arhoj on his namesake ceramics atelier in Copenhagen

The ghosts of Studio Arhoj grabbed me. Haunting a table at Denmark’s Louisiana Museum, they conjured a youthful delight so powerful, I immediately adopted one, and then another; my ghost needed a pal. And so began a collecting obsession with the work of Anders Arhoj, an artist producing expressive ceramic sculpture alongside his tight-knit crew of potters who make artful snackware. From Chug Mugs to Brick buddies, absolutely everything Arhoj produces oozes joy. Studio Arhoj represents just one of Anders’s many talents as a designer, author and artist. Kristin Farr: I like to imagine hosting a dinner party served exclusively on Arhoj objects, but I fear the aesthetics of my food could never live up to the beauty of your tableware. Do you get this comment a lot? Anders Arhoj: No, never actually! In these Instagram days, many people, including chefs, really love to plate their food on something that plays along with it, instead of just being a white canvas. You can make some bold and dramatic

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dishes with magenta pink cherries on an Yves Klein-blue ceramic plate, or black ice cream in a shockingly sunbeam-yellow bowl. It’s about having fun and staging your dish to tell a story. Tell me about the popular “mysterious mistakes gone good,” one-of-a-kind objects in your shop. There must be funny stories behind these creations. Oh, yes, often. Most recently, last Christmas, I was home at my parents’ house in the Danish countryside and heard about a local clay digging site. There’s no public access, but I snuck in there, along with my dad, and dug out some fresh local clay. Back in the studio the week after, I made some sculptures in the clay and put them in the kiln. But instead of staying in shape, the high temperatures made them collapse completely into a flat pool on the kiln plate! If there had been more, it might have completely ruined the poor kiln. The clay was never meant to be fired so high. However, the melted pool was so beautiful—like a brown, rustic, glassy glaze full of earth particles and bits of

minerals. We now use this local clay as a glaze for our products—and I need to trespass again soon to bring home even more of the good stuff, ha! You should probably wear a disguise. I noticed you’ve been releasing more sculptural work, including pieces with that raw, textured finish. Does your crew seamlessly switch between art and functional objects? Actually, I’m the sole sculptor in the studio. I make more or less all the pieces myself, as I really love to work with the clay in that way. Wheel throwing is not my primary interest of expression; I leave that to my potters. I prefer building, cutting and manipulating the clay itself. However, sculpture is definitely becoming a thing, even though our studio is not super interested in trends. I think people are buying less junk these days, and so instead of spending $100 on 10 crap items from distant parts of the world, you buy one beautiful piece from a local artist—it’s sustainable and much more of a personal object to have in your home instead of a mass-produced item. Tell me about the series and how they develop, like the Ghosts, Bricks and Mountain Mine series. RELIC also seems to have a mysterious origin story… I have always loved sculptures, local folk art, brown ceramic money banks from the 1970s— my home is full of that stuff, so I think it’s just a natural extension of creating characters and moving in the physical, three-dimensional direction. I have worked as a character designer for 18 years now, doing children’s TV websites, animation, visual identities, children’s books and more, so creating creatures in clay is just another medium for my work. Regarding RELIC, our A/W 2018 collection, I was inspired by the Danish museums I grew up visiting. My parents took me to all these buildings around Denmark that were designed in the 1960s and housed ancient viking masks, swords and ships—old objects but exhibited in very modern, boxy surroundings, with exhibit glass displays dressed in fabric with different panels and small notes about the item and year. Something that was cool then, but today looks sort of dated—which I love! So I kind of wanted to take that feeling of old and new and see what came out of that. I’m also interested in digging into my own Northern heritage and my ancestors’ dimension without it looking like an episode of Vikings on HBO. What kinds of experiments or innovations have happened in your studio that you are most proud of? I’m still proud of our Ghosts—the little cone in

Portrait by: Andreas Houmann All photos: Courtesy studio arhoj

DESIGN

clay. We throw it on the wheel and it’s not hollow, but solid, which most ceramicists would never do, as clay usually explodes in the kiln when it’s not hollowed out. But we found a way to make things with mass, and breaking that “rule” was just very pleasing to me. I also love using materials that aren’t really supposed to be used in that way, minerals or glazes that people usually don’t fire to a high temperature, but we do, and fun stuff comes out of that.

The Ghost will always remain a classic to me—it was the product that started the studio and which broke us through to the mainstream. It’s really a very simple object, yet surprisingly hard to perfect and produce. And many people collect and use the Ghosts as talismans, travel souvenirs, representations of family members, and more. What is your studio like? Is it open for the public to visit? I built the studio as a white box with all surfaces reflecting light,

which allows us to clearly observe colors precisely and correctly. Our Studio Design Store featuring all our designs and some exclusive in-store only items is open to the public. Everyone can walk in and observe us work through the open shelves and tables while they shop. The rest of the studio is not open to the public—we have many research projects, secret new products, and upcoming news laying around, so we can’t have strangers walk around in there. Ha! What kinds of music are best for optimal Arhoj production? If I could decide, we would listen all day to 1990’s electronica from Warp Records, classical minimalism by Steve Reich, or John Adams, or sappy 1970’s Carpenters LPs. Unfortunately, the rest of the team do not agree with that, so it’s mostly a battle of the sound system. We actually create and release our own curated playlists on Spotify, and everyone can check them out! Search for Studio Arhoj. I do prefer my own tunes, which is why I’m working on building my own tiny studioin-studio where I can close the door, sculpt and listen to odd music in peace. Why are you drawn to making objects with simple but expressive faces? I think it’s exactly like that actually; my characters are objects—with a personality. Not

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the other way around, like a rock in the river that comes to life and looks up at you. My products are closer to design than to children’s toys, which maybe explains why I personally like character design that is either hysterically sweet, border-lining insane, or very dark and cruel. I have no interest in middle-ofthe-road cartoons featuring normal children or a nice dog. Perhaps because I’m Danish I’m attracted to simplicity; underplaying instead of overplaying, and without lots of ornate decor. If the representation of a face is very subtle, you can also add your own ideas about who and what this character is. Why do you think ceramics are so successful for you? You work in many creative areas. Because screens are boring and everything you make on them is quickly forgotten, deleted and defunct in a few years. I’ve been there—I spent 10 hours a day designing websites, banner ads, online brandings and Flash animations for many years, and it’s all gone here in 2019; all vanished into a digital river and it will, for sure, never come back. All those fun ideas, all that hard work—it’s like it never happened. A ceramic bowl will exist forever— at least longer than me or you. If you do good work, it’s a physical item that can be used for many years and give pleasure and function to people’s lives. Clay can do anything. There are no limits. And if there are, it’s a both creative and technical challenge to break those limits and show what can be done. I also really love the juxtaposition of character design in clay, not plastic or metal. Clay can be super smooth, pink porcelain or rustic, dark and evil black stoneware with bubbling glazes and tactile surfaces. The material takes the design to new levels and also provides new problems, of course. You have to know what you’re doing in order not to destroy what you just made. But I always feel I know nothing. That I haven’t even started to grasp the possibilities of working in ceramics, and I’ve heard that’s basically what all ceramicists believe. Besides the local Danish influence, you also take inspiration from Japan, where you studied, as seen in your substantial Tokyo series. Which parts of Japanese creative culture do you find most influential? I moved to Tokyo in 2005 to study the Japanese language, and fell in love with the culture immediately. To me, what’s interesting about Japan is the intense meeting of old and new. Many traditions are still alive and well, and respected by the young generations—ancient arts and crafts, cultural education and awareness of their own Japanese history and heritage. But, at the same time, you see incredibly new and creative ideas borderlining the surreal and totally wacky. TV commercials with pink rabbits eating a new snack bar with squid, one hundred dancing bananas

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on a train—so much fun and weirdness that would never be produced in the West. I love that wackiness and I find a lot of inspiration in it, that it’s OK to remain fun and silly in our increasingly serious and politically correct society.

expressive, rustic glazes. Our new cups are based on the classic Yunomi shape but interpreted in our design language with decorate elements—each thrown piece is completely unique and quite intense. We are excited to hear what people think!

Are there any common obsessions or interests among your studio family recently? Yes, we have been obsessing madly over our new studio dog, a Frenchie puppy called Hanx (named after the way Tom Hanks signs his tweets). She’s making our daily life much more fun and full of cuddly love.

How do you hope people feel when they experience your work? They definitely increase my enjoyment of domestic activity. That’s definitely one of the goals! To smile when your gaze lands on an item from our studio—that you enjoy your morning coffee just a little bit more when it’s in a bright yellow mug.

We’re also excited that a new bike bridge opening up across the harbor in Copenhagen. The entire studio team bikes to work every day and it’s nice that our city keeps being a great place to ride a bike.

I also hope that people appreciate that the item was made with two hands by a real human and not in a machine, and that they want to invest in someone working hard to throw, sculpt, bisque fire, glaze and fire an item. It’s a long way from a lump of fresh clay to an actual breakfast bowl.

In the studio, we’re very focused on finishing up our upcoming Edo Series—the old name for Tokyo before 1868. As opposed to our white porcelain-based modern Tokyo Series, the Edo will be an interpretation of old Japan, featuring rough, course, pattern-carved stoneware and

Find Anders’ ceramics at studioarhoj.com and at specialty stockists worldwide. San Francisco’s Chronicle Books will release his latest children’s book title, CATCH ME, on March 1, 2019.

#ArtDistilled

@DictadorArtMasters

FASHION

Mary Quant Fashion At Play At The V&A Thinking back to how Mary Quant unsheathed bodies from beige hosiery and long skirts, I’ll go out on an unshackled limb to say she almost singlehandedly brought freedom of movement and expression to fashion, as in the clothes we wear to run for the train or hop out of a truck. Who better than London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, holder of the largest public collection of Dame Mary Quant’s garments, to mount an exhibit that vibrates with Brit-quake—the fun kind when it meant Beatles, not Brexit?! Co-curator of the show, Stephanie Wood, fills us in on the designer who declared, “Good taste is death. Vulgarity is life.” Gwynned Vitello: Can you describe the social and economic scene in London when Mary Quant emerged? This so-called Fashion Quake couldn’t have happened anywhere else, right? Stephanie Wood: Mary Quant came out of gloomy, post-war Britain, with rationing still in place until 1954, and in many ways, her designs are a reaction against the drabness and austerity of the time. Her

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colorful and fun garments reflected the optimism of that period, with growing affluence and social mobility of young people benefiting from further education and higher wages. She revolutionized style for women, harnessing youth, street style and mass production and ultimately defined the spirit of the swinging ’60s. What would you say she took away from art school, besides meeting her husband, who seemed to be a great influence? As a teenager, Quant longed to study fashion design, but her parent insisted she follow them into teaching, which was a more conventional career choice for a woman. As a compromise, she trained as an art teacher at Goldsmiths College. Attending art school had a profound impact on the course of her life; not only because she met her husband—trumpet-playing aristocratic Alexander Plunkett Greene, but because art school exposed her to a network of free-thinking artists, designers and bohemians who shared her

vision of building a progressive, new identity for post-war Britain. Would you agree that humor and having fun guided her designs? What else about Mary’s personality had an effect on her work? Humor and fun played a huge part in Quant’s designs and ultimate success. Her garments were distinctive and playful, often giving witty and irreverent names such as Banana Split, Hot Dog, Snob and Booby Traps (for her single triangle-shaped bras.) A key part of her success came from her vision to see fashion as a means of communicating new attitudes, ideas and change for women. She was also defiant and daring, pushing the boundaries of what was accessible for women to wear, and liberating young women from the stifling rules and regulations and conformity of her mother’s generation. Her creativity enabled her to be a prolific designer, churning out hundreds of sketches each year

Above: Mary Quant selecting fabric, 1967 © Rolls Press/Popperfoto/Getty Images

FASHION

using the caran d’ache watercolor pencils she loved so much. Finally, Quant’s steely determination enabled her to forge a trailblazing career. We’re talking about a different time, but I was surprised to read about her relationship with Butterick patterns. I think that also speaks to a sort of democratic approach to fashion. Mary Quant’s approach to fashion was egalitarian and is reflected in her move into mass-production in 1963 with the Ginger Group line, which made her designs much more affordable for working women. The whole point of fashion is to make fashionable clothes available to everyone. Her range of Butterick homes dressmaking patterns brought some of her most iconic designs within reach of all Quant fans for the cost of purchasing a Vogue magazine, and her hugely successful cosmetics line, introduced in 1966, established her as the godmother of accessible designer fashion for all. Did she actually start in retail before design? Did her store Bazaar pre-date Mary Quant designs? After leaving Goldsmith’s, Quant’s first job was trimming hats at Erik’s, a couture milliner in Mayfair. By 1955, she opened her experimental first boutique, Bazaar, on King’s Road in London. Initially, her role was to comb wholesale warehouses and art schools to source quirky garments and jewelry for the shop. However, she swiftly grew tired of that limited range of garments available, and so began to design herself in 1956, studying at night school. Once she began designing, her garments were so popular that the stock would sell out swiftly, and so the early days of Bazaar were defined as a hand-to-mouth operation, with Quant making dresses in her bedsit in the evening to replenish stock for the next day. Is it a stretch to say that she was one of the first to transform shopping from a purchase transaction to an actual experience, and maybe one of the first to introduce fast retail? Bazaar was a forerunner of the explosion of boutique shops, which happened in the late 1950s and ’60s in London. Through Bazaar, Quant transformed the retail experience at a time when shopping was a relatively formal experience. Through music, drinks, and continually changing stock, she created an almost cultural hub, more akin to a club than a shop, which the Chelsea set flocked to. In 1958, Quant took on the fashion giants of Knightsbridge, brazenly opening her second Bazaar shop opposite Harrods itself. Although Quant was a great advocate of affordable fashion for all, her garments would certainly not be considered fast fashion. The quantities being

produced were incredibly small compared to fashion today. Quant’s ethos was to offer women choice and a range of well considered garments with mix-and-match potential, not continually produce new designs in response to fashion trends.

Top: Mary Quant and models at the Quant Afoot footwear collection launch, 1967 © PA Prints 2008 Bottom left: Design for a cowl neck minidress with mustard yellow tights by Mary Quant, about 1967, London. Museum no. E.525-1975. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London Bottom right: Kellie Wilson wearing tie dress by Mary Quant’s Ginger Group. Photograph by Gunnar Larsen, 1966. © Gunnar Larsen

Specifically, she made mannequins into visual art, and her models more like actors than just coat racks, right? Mary Quant pioneered a new approach to window display that we take for granted in retail

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elements she used that emblemized freedom and independence? How did she view color? From the beginning of Quant’s career, she experimented with new and unconventional materials. Her earliest designs used men’s suiting fabric for womenswear to playfully change traditional gender norms in fashion. In 1963, she launched her “Wet Collection,” experimenting with a new material, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) which captured the ’60s fascination with technology and the space age. Quant declared that she was “bewitched with this super-shiny, man-made stuff and its shrieking colors… its glimmering liquorice black, white and ginger.” As the 1960s progressed, she explored new fabrics which were available, such as nylon and jersey. Quant’s discovery of a new type of heat-bonded wool jersey was a revelation for her. It had been previously used in underwear and for rugby and football, and its smooth, fluid qualities were perfect for Quant’s signature sporty mini-dresses, which she produced prolifically in a rainbow of the brightest, deepest colors. She was always striving to find innovative new materials that could revolutionize the way she designed and provide increased comfort and ease for women.

around the boutiques and the street, and we have several cases in the exhibition that have been arranged to look like the Bazaar shop windows complete with specifically commissioned dynamic, mannequins similar to the ones Quant used, in addition to props and a mannequin walking a lobster on a lead!

I’d like to hear more about the V&A’s call out for clothes. How big was this effort? It sounds like that was a lot of fun, and there must have been stories with each piece. Back in June, 2018, we launched the #WeWantQuant campaign, a public call-out to locate rare and missing garments by Quant, and collect personal stories and memories from real people who wore her clothes; and with over 800 replies, to date, the response has been overwhelming. These garments and the life stories of the women who wore them show how modern Quant’s designs were. So many people have treasured their Mary Quant dresses because they represented freedom and a special time in their lives. It’s a testament to how much Quant meant to women that they kept them for so many years.

Equally, Quant’s fashion shows were a far cry from the established salon-style presentations as followed by the leading designers of the time. She preferred to use photographic rather than salon models because they swung rather than paraded down the catwalk, adopting dramatic poses en route. These shows were characterized by fun, energy, high-speed and movement, with models dancing wildly to the “hot jazz” that Quant loved so much.

Let’s talk about the clothes more specifically. Is it true that travel by scooter played a part in her designs? Freedom of movement certainly played a big part in Mary Quant’s designs. She wanted to create garments that could be worn by real women as a tool to complete life, so they could run for a bus, dance, and retain their precious freedom. Her designs were far removed from the often restrictive, corseted garments and narrow, hobbled skirts of the 1950s.

Many came forward with Quant clothing made for special occasions. We uncovered, for example, a very early, boldly printed top bought by a research scientist to meet her geologist fiancé returning from a trip to Antarctica, a PVC raincoat worn and lovingly kept by two generations of women in the same family, underscoring the longevity of Mary’s designs. We’re also featuring a dress homemade from one of her dressmaking patterns for the wearer’s 21st birthday.

In that vein, how are the designs displayed and arranged in this show? The design concept for the show is themed

Her choice of materials was really innovative and she was the first to incorporate PVC in clothing. What were some favorite fabrics and design

Mary Quant’s work is on view at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum April 6, 2019 through February 16, 2020.

today. She specifically commissioned dynamic mannequins from Rootstein in the gawky poses of the day and went as far as modeling them on Jean Shrimpton’s “long, lean legs.” These were far removed from the conventional shop window mannequins of the 1950s and ’60s, and she would artfully arrange them in the window, walking lobsters on leads or suspended from the ceiling.

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Above: Satin mini-dress and shorts by Mary Quant, photograph by Duffy, 1966 © Duffy Archive

WE’ RE IN BLOOM!

J O H NF LU EVO GS H O E S VANCOUVERSEATTLEBOSTONTORONTONEWYORKSANFRANCISCOCHICAGOLOSANGELESMONTRÉALPORTLAND QUÉBECCALGARYWASHINGTONDCMINNEAPOLISDENVEROTTAWANEWORLEANSEDMONTONVICTORIAAMSTERDAM

FLU EVO G CO M

INFLUENCES

The Rising Star Vaughn Spann Arrives Just six months after graduating from Yale, Vaughn Spann is making tracks in the art world with major shows and accomplishments lining up, logging in one after the other. The number of notable group shows includes exhibitions at Almine Rech Gallery in London, the August Wilson Center in Pittsburgh and Night Gallery in L.A., as well as his sold-out solo show with Half Gallery in NYC. The Florida-born artist was recently in Miami to see his work, curated by artist Nathaniel Mary Quinn, included with Half Gallery’s exhibit at NADA, David Castillo’s booth at Art Basel, as well a Rubell Family Collection exhibition of newly acquired work. To put this into context, this is just the beginning.

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Fascinated by his diverse body of work that includes both classic portraiture and texturerich, mixed-media abstractions, we anticipated this conversation where we could learn about his background, his perception of the art world, and what drives his unique practice. Sasha Bogojev: Showing both abstract and figurative work at the same time isn't the most usual way to go, right? Vaughn Spann: My practice is a bit conceptual, and it oscillates between figuration and abstraction, because I'm interested in these stylistic separations and distinct breaks. As artists, we're human. We have complicated ideas about everything. And I feel it would

be a disservice to limit those ideas to one framework. I feel it's such an unfortunate position for artists to be in, being determined by external factors. So I'm really challenging a way of making work that tries to embody all the things that I am, the people I encounter, the places I've gone, the things I've touched. All the things that actualize who I am as a maker, an artist, and a person. I remember browsing through your work and thinking, "Is this a group show?" Ha ha, I get that a lot, and it's a very fair statement. But the rich thing that is happening right now is that, as more people begin to see my work, they can look at it from an angle where they see threads

Above: I grew an extra head to look after my brother, Paper collage and Flashe on wood panel, 60” x 60”, 2018

INFLUENCES

that connect them. So I'm finding these axes to move them through space and discover different angles to my work. I must say, it’s a pretty ballsy way of producing work. Well, thank you, I appreciate that. It was something I had to grapple with and do the work for. It's not gonna easily give it to you. I find it a very energized place to be in as a maker. A place that is really liberating, it gives me access to think about my agency as an artist, about conceptual ideas, different avenues of making which I find so, so important. Let’s talk about the Dalmatian series. What is that one about? We keep hearing about art being about current times or times we live in, artists needing to work from a subjective position, and things like that. So I'm really interested in speaking about

the work through the lens in which I exist as a person, and as a black man, in particular, also, the ways I experience the world as a westerner and US citizen. Growing up in an urban city, concrete jungle, per se, when I think about the neighborhood, one thing I noticed is that people had animals. They would have dogs that would protect or guard their homes and domestic spaces. They were usually rugged animals, like German shepherds and such. So these are experiences I have from my youth. As an artist, I got caught up thinking about these ideas of class, social aspects, ethnicity, and all these higher notions; so every time I'd see Dalmatians, they would be associated with things around wealth, desire, those markers of money and class. They were also part of the entertainment industry, so a firefighter in a TV show would have a Dalmatian, so I kept wondering, "Where does this exist?! This is not the America I know!" It was something very

Left: Staring back at you, rooted and unwavering, Polymer paint and Flashe on wood panel, 54” x 75”, 2018 Top Right: Portrait of the artist by Anthony Alvarez Bottom Right: Harper’s Comet, Clay, polymer paint, paper pulp, and Flashe on canvas, 30 “x 30”, 2018

micro that meant so much to me. So I was always interested in the ways I was fed these false social realities that don't really exist for me as a person. How does something like that reflect on your actual work practice? So, as a painter, the way I approach my art is that I think about the lens of the society, because I can't remove myself from that. My day-to-day things, things I stand for, sort of tack against the way I think about art. So I like to think about those positions as I make my work. I'm not a formalist painter, but I really engage in histories of formalism, the way we think about color, about composition, about geometry. So I'm thinking about formalism, thinking about the social and political, thinking about the ways in which all those things are tied up, whether subtle, subvert or overt. I'm interested in thinking about the painting for painting's

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sake, but I cannot ignore these other issues and concerns that really affect who I am as a person. For me, it’s about tying them together and considering how to think about painting, tangility, time, motion, and all these different things that inform my practice. Give me an example of you tying up those things. So, I grew up in my grandparent’s home. My parents were around, but they were out working a lot. They had very, what you would call, stereotypical social norms. One of the materials that come in my paintings is terry cloth. On Sundays, in my grandparent’s home, my grandmother and I would fold towels. It was a way of learning responsibility, but also to bond with family. When it comes to painting, everything needs to be tactile, so I have a very physical approach, amd when I do make figurative work, I have the desire to speak within these beautiful traditions that I saw and still admire.

I always considered myself a draftsman. Growing up, I was the kid who always drew, mimicked people, made portraits, drew cartoons, that was my forte. But as I grew up, I had other interests, like I was really good at science. When I started undergrad, I was a biology major, but that wasn't my real passion. So I switched my major to art, cause that is what genuinely gets me excited. And while I was studying and living with my wife, I was working with materials that were given to me or had a personal history as a way of being resourceful. But, when I moved to Yale, I felt entrenched in the things that I knew, and I thought the healthiest thing to do would be to move from the things I know, and question the things I don't know. So, the first year at Yale, I moved away from abstraction and started working on what I call the Symbiotic paintings.

especially when, for example, black men are being killed on the streets by police. Or on the other side, we have violence within our own community. Every which way you think about the black body, it's the body that's disposable, dispensable. It can be taken away or removed. So I thought about the poetics between the idea of having a second head to be vigilant. To watch over yourself, take self-care. How do you feel about accidents in your process? Accidents are actually really important. For example, my abstraction works are all sewn, and I like to work on a big scale, ’cause I'm a tall guy and I like to work in that way. So when you scale up painting and try to sew it on a sewing machine, it's a mess! You just have to be aware that you will make mistakes and these accidents could be prone to the work, and you have to embrace them as the part of the work in a very beautiful way. So I'm interested in allowing the work to become itself. While I have ideas of where to move with my work, I also want to be open and take whatever comes, and accidents can be one of the most fruitful places.

Did you first start working figuratively and then move to abstraction, or was it the other way around?

They are really dealing with our existence within the environment, within the world at large. The first substantial figurative painting I made from that series was a two-headed painting called, "I grew an extra head to watch over my brother." I felt that idea on the poetics or the metaphor was so powerful,

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Left: The Widowed, Polymer paint and Flashe on wood panel, 30” x 40”, 2018 Right: Untitled 2018, Clay, polymer paint, paper pulp, and Flashe on canvas, 24” x 30”, 2018

vaughnspann.com

Twelve artists defy portraiture

FEB 7–JUL 7, 2019 Claude Cahun (Lucy Schwob) and Marcel Moore (Suzanne Malherbe), Untitled [I am in training don’t kiss me], 1927. Gelatin silver print. © Jersey Heritage Collection.

THE CONTEMPORARY JEWISH MUSEUM

Show me as I want to be seen

thecjm.org

TRAVEL INSIDER

A few journalists and I were given the chance to visit the John Michael Kohler Arts Center for two days, which seemed more than enough, considering my metropolitan mindset and distaste for cold Winters (my San Francisco relocation was deliberate…) What I found, however, was that I could have stayed for weeks, meandering around this unfamiliar yet deeply welcoming landscape, investigating the fascinating history of this moderately-sized city that lies between Milwaukee and Green Bay. Visiting Sheboygan in the winter is tough, as most Wisconsinites have entered what my shuttle bus companions referred to as, without humor or hesitance, “hibernation.” And that is not to say they can’t handle the cold. Wisconsin regularly dips below zero in the winter, and I imagine it probably has something to do with the fact that my fingers felt like they were going to break off after a three-block, gloveless journey with my (rather tasty) gas station coffee. This is coming from a Maine-native, given to regularly chastising Californians’ tendency to whine when the temperature drops below 50. The coldest temperature recorded in Wisconsin is -55 degrees.... Anyway, everywhere I went indoors was warm and the locals’ temperament even warmer.

Surf City, Wisconsin The John Michael Kohler Arts Center Sheboygan. What a delightful word to say. It almost encourages exaggerated pronunciation, especially when spoken with the rounded consonants and dragged-out vowels of many Wisconsinites. It’s a small city, hovering around 50,000 in number, and has been historically known

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as the “Bratwurst Capital of the World,” as well as home to the world’s largest American flag. On an old postcard, it boasts “Cheese, Chairs, Churches, and Children,” but in recent years, it’s also on the precipice of becoming, at the very least, a splendid place to see some fantastic art, new and old.

The first night there, a freelancer and I were brought to the Duke of Devon, a British pub that lies on the north shore of the town’s namesake Sheboygan river. We all got burgers, which, coming from San Francisco, was notable, what with more vegans joining ranks with every passing year. Each burger boasted a different type of cheese, which is notable for much more obvious reasons. Wisconsin is as enthusiastic about cheese as the Milwaukee airport might make you believe, and it certainly made me believe, I came back with three cheese pins for the office and a plush Holstein cow… But yes, the Duke of Devon, tasty burgers, lots to look at. If you can think of a famous Briton, I bet there’s a photo of them somewhere in that restaurant. The next morning, we entered Paradigm Coffee, a café reminiscent of time spent in Western Massachusetts’ Pioneer Valley, a small semi-rural region with an overwhelming number of college students and arguably too many slam poets. This was the real deal though, the rustic interior crafted almost entirely out of wooden doors. Perhaps another industry once called Sheboygan home, and maybe it still does? In addition to some truly remarkable coffee, they had all sorts of memorabilia, from hand carved Wisconsin keychains to bottle openers crafted from old stove parts. Unlike a coffee shop one might find in

All Photos by Eben Benson Above: Stephanie H Weill Center For The Performing Arts

TRAVEL INSIDER

Brooklyn or LA, there was no sizing up or staring down; folks seemed content to enjoy their coffee and pass off a newcomer with a greeting and a smile. If this sounds familiar, please cherish that coffee shop with your life. Our destination was The John Michael Kohler Arts Center, a recently renovated arts museum created from its namesake’s prestigious art collection and patronage. Founded in 1966, the arts center

serves as a creative hub for the region through community outreach and strong programming. The exterior is populated with rock and concrete sculptures that nudge the building into the surrounding landscape, and upon entering, it’s a place that feels quite separate from Sheboygan. Once visitors pass through the entrance, especially in the aforementioned Wisconsin winter, they’ll naturally walk towards the coatroom. Once that’s

done, it’s probably a good idea to stop by the bathroom, specifically to see the fabulous mosaic installations within. On each wall are painted tiles adorned with images of numerous architectural marvels, such as the Egyptian Pyramids, Chichen Itza, the Statue of Liberty, and other visual stories that chronicle humankind’s predisposition to build monuments. Even the toilets sport matching decor, perhaps not surprising given Kohler technology...

Top left: Cynthia Consentino, The Women’s Room (detail, west wing women’s room), Vitreous china and glaze, 2005. John Michael Kohler Arts Center Collection. Right: Matt Nolen, The Social History of Architecture (detail), Vitreous china and glaze, 1999. John Michael Kohler Arts Center Collection. Middle: Carl Peterson, Untitled, Concrete, shell, metal, and paint, 35” x 36.75” x 36.75”, c. 1925- c.1935. Bottom left: Carl Peterson, Untitled, Concrete, stone, metal, and paint, 72” x 86” x 64”, c. 1925- c.1935.

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TRAVEL INSIDER

The exhibitions rotate, and for Live/Work, artists created installations that reflect the ever-changing role of an artist’s studio. The ten participating artists represent a diverse cut of the art world, not just in identity, but in their practices, markets, mediums, and reputations. They hailed from all over, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Texas, New York, Oregon, even California, and each artist’s interpretation of the theme was equally unique. Joel Otterson’s sculpture-laden Dark Matter and Juxtapoz cover artist Trenton Doyle Hancock’s giant toy shelves and humorous comic in Makeshift, approach the theme from opposite ends of the spectrum. For a viewer,

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though, each exhibit provided a whole new experience and perspective. At one point, one of the hosts told me about the Sheboygan Surf Club, casually mentioning that folks had been surfing Lake Michigan for over 60 years. Lake Michigan is enormous, but I hadn’t even wondered if you could surf the Great Lakes. It was a surprise that shouldn’t have been one, only surprising if you don’t often think outside your metropolitan bubble.

Largest American Flag, laughed over burgers, almost lost my fingers, and learned about freshwater surfing. And that was only in two days! If you’re ever considering where to go to get away from it all, save the hassle and go to Sheboygan. It might surprise you, even though it probably shouldn’t. Did I mention there’s virtually no traffic? —Eben Benson Check out the John Michael Kohler Arts Center’s current and upcoming exhibits at www.jmkac.org

So, why not Sheboygan? I met wonderful people, went to a fantastic exhibition, saw the World’s

Left: Matt Nolen, The Social History of Architecture (detail), Vitreous china and glaze, 1999. John Michael Kohler Arts Center Collection. Top middle: Joel Otterson, VOLUPTUOUS DESIRE, Iron, brass, 24k gold leaf 73” x 43” x 36”, 2018 Bottom middle: Joel Otterson, BEARING GIFTS, Brass, steel, Japanese silver leaf, 50” x 25” x 9”, 2018. Right: Virgil Marti, Junior, Rubber, silver, urethane, wood, foam, fabric, trim, 2018.

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Photo: Xun Chi, michaelchiphoto.format.com

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IN SESSION

A Good Headwind The Headlands Center for the Arts For the undergrad in an art department, the menu presents some savory bites to sharpen a palate before diving into the deep dish of a graduate degree. The total immersion of an MFA program provides more depth and guidance, cozily cloaked in the security of being a student. Then it’s out of the cocoon of community and into the cold, cruel world. How ideal it would be to transition to a profession the way you arrived, with freedom, mentors, fresh air—and meals! The Headlands Center for the Arts in California’s Marin County partners with the California College of the Arts, Mills College, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco State University, Stanford University, UC Berkeley and UC Davis to provide year-long fellowships where graduates receive private studio time, public presentation opportunities, participation in a curated exhibition and peer-to-peer activities with national, international and other local artists, all in artist-refurbished, high, tin ceilinged, sun-

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suffused, old military structures—nourished by a fabled Mess Hall. Woodshop, letterpress, and an artist’s library are some of the many resources in the long hallways of these historic buildings, standing like sturdy stalwarts among the grassy hills facing the San Francisco Bay.

direction and purpose. Upon graduation, I was lucky enough to receive the Headlands Graduate Fellowship. I have studio space for a year and get to be part of an amazing community. I also work freelance as an art preparator and teach around the Bay Area.”

I met artist-in-residence Jenna Meacham in her Headlands studio where she smiled about the influence of her dad and grandfather, “hobby photographers.” Starting with that emphasis as an undergrad, she described embracing a more disciplinary practice in graduate school where, “I found myself really missing a community and struggling to advance my art without mentorship and peer critique.” Coincidentally, she became fascinated with the culture of human relationships, their expectations and realities. “I found everything I was looking for in my graduate program at SF State. The program really helped focus my practice, giving me

A study of the studio starts with two discarded wedding dresses, shredded, then braided into sculptures impaled on the wall like dreams crushed and coiled. Plaster molds of open self-help books, emblems of the “industry of relationships,” are laid out like the ten commandments of couple-ness. Experiments with electroplating, a new process for Jenna, hang by the windows of the Residency, clearly a place where artists have a room with a view and a lot more. See Jenna’s artwork on her website. —Gwynned Vitello www.jennameacham.com www.headlands.org

Above: The Commons at the Headlands Center for the Arts

MO N T RE A L

ON THE OUTSIDE

Jazoo Yang Redevelopment Redefined Jazoo Yang is probably best known for the Dots series, where she covers a home set for demolition with her thumbprint. In her homeland of Korea, the thumbprint—or “Jijang”—has a legal and personally binding power similar to a signature. With just a thumbprint, whole communities are turned over to destruction and gentrification. Upon moving to Berlin, Yang expanded her Dots series to incorporate the issue of refugees and migrants in Europe and beyond to explore the evolution of cities. Working with local immigrants, Yang discusses their stories, histories and day-to-day existence as they mark the wall together in a kind of folk song. In other series, she scrapes, gathers and re-assembles remnants of flaking paint, old wallpaper, rusted metal and the flotsam and jetsam of demolished and vacated sites, reconstituting them in the studio in acts of remembrance; time and memory sealed in resin.

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We spent time together discussing art, politics, memory, loss and her place as one of the few female “urban interventionists” currently practicing on the streets of Europe. Martyn Reed: Originally from South Korea and now working out of Berlin, what have you brought from that background to your current projects on the streets of Europe? Jazoo Yang: I was a designer and founding member of Korea's first web magazine Akzine, which covers the Korean independent scene and underground. After that, I spent time making documentary films. My former house in Seoul was so narrow and small, and one day, I just wanted to paint, so I decided to go out, paint on the streets and make installations using abandoned objects. I met other artists, and in 2012, we created a project team called Seoul Urban Art Project. It was a

contemporary urban art movement made up of street and graffiti artists, painters, illustrators, filmmakers and photographers. I had also met Brad Downey, The Wa, Akim, and Backjumps' Adrian Nabi, who have been living in Berlin. At the time, their work seemed very fresh to me and I enjoyed working with them. Those relationships led to my decision to move to Berlin. A city and its architecture obviously play important roles in your work. There’s a tentative relationship to muralism and street art, but conceptually, you’re much closer to what we’d call urban interventionism, which nurtures a viewer’s awareness of their surroundings. Is this something you research and play with? The city was just a huge canvas to me at first. However, the experience of working on the street is quite different from the work done alone in the studio. I naturally come in contact with people and hear many stories about the site where I work,

Above: Redevelopment area, South Korea, 2016, Photo by Youngmoon Ha

ON THE OUTSIDE

and at that time, redevelopment was happening throughout Seoul. It is and was easy to work because the development sites are prohibited from public access and the workers are resting at night or on weekends. I naturally chose that place to work, and as a result, came into contact with the residents and construction workers who lived in the development site. The stories I saw and heard on the field naturally affected my work, and the physically destructive situation caused by redevelopment was also very visually stimulating. It further amplified my interest in the material that makes up a city. You seem to be interested in time, memory and the past, but not in a nostalgic way. However, there’s something both poetic and a little melancholic about how you treat walls and space. You treat the wall quite seriously. I think it is because of the situation in Korea. For over ten years, South Korea has been very confused, both politically and socially. Redevelopment is one aspect. There is an old neighborhood called Ah Hyun-dong in Seoul, which was disappearing due to redevelopment, and I worked there for about two years because it was close to where I live. In the meantime, there was a case where a person who was opposed to the redevelopment got hit by an excavator and died. It happens often with conflicts between residents and construction companies; tragic events occur because proper compensation is not provided to the residents after redevelopment. However, I noticed that there was no coverage on any media. In fact, I didn’t know what was happening before I worked at the site. In 2011, I had the opportunity to do a residency in Busan, at this place called Funny Revenge, a gathering place for subculture such as graffiti, hip hop and contemporary artists and activists. I became interested in politics because of the influence of the activists I met there. For many years, Korea has undergone a great upheaval, so I don't think it was special in my case to have gained political awareness, and the influence becomes revealed through the work. Moving to Berlin in 2017, I was able to focus purely on the material that makes up the city itself. The Re-Mix series was the first of many works created and inspired by moving to Berlin. You’re probably best known for your Dots series of public art works, which were initially made up of your own fingerprints but went on to become more collective, incorporating refugees and other migrants. What was the initial concept behind creating the work, and how has it developed? The first Dots work in Busan, South Korea, was

done entirely by myself. It was the result of the direct and indirect experiences of not being able to catch up with the pace of the ever-changing metropolis, and it was also an attempt to heal the trauma caused by the Sewol ferry incident. In St. Petersburg, during the exhibition Crossing Borders/Crossing Boundaries, the theme was extended to the subject of European migrants and refugee issues, including the situation in Korea. I imprinted fingerprints on the outer walls of the Street Art Museum with six illegal migrant workers in St Petersburg. While imprinting

Top and bottom: Dots: Motgol66, Motgol, Busan, South Korea, 2015, Photos by Young-moon Ha

our fingerprints, we talked about our lives and memories as individuals, apart from the history or existence as refugees, migrants or artists. When I did the Dots in Besançon, France, that was the moment when the work really evolved into a dimension beyond myself. More than 200 people, including refugees who are legal residents in Besançon, immigrants, tourists from many different cities and countries, and local residents voluntarily participated in the production of a mural. If the works within the Dots series in

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ON THE OUTSIDE

South Korea and Russia were about me, the mural in France is purely about other people, about citizens. I would talk with them while they imprinted their fingerprints, and perhaps this work seems to have a different meaning depending on the people and where it is done. I saw how lovingly you scraped pieces of dried and flaking paint from the walls during Nuart, some, of course, which were painted by visiting artists and then painted over again and again. There’s history in the walls. I get a sense of loss from your work. Is this a feeling you recognize and try and generate in the viewer? I try not to present something in my practice. It's not a representation of my ideas, but a reaction of my senses about things. The rust, decay, corroded wall traces, old posters, and peeled paint shells that occur over time can be associated with a

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sense of loss. However, when time is included as part of work, the loss can acquire permanence. It reminds me of the concepts around Hauntology, which, I guess, could be best described as the memory of a lost future, the crackle of vinyl used in contemporary electronic music by the likes of Burial, for example. Do you have a relationship to techno and electronic music? There is a sense of retrospective texture linked to how I choose materials, but I don’t know if there is a part of the method of techno or electronic music that I directly identify with my practice. I like the sensibilities of Portishead, Massive Attack and David Lynch. Your most recent series, Stolen Times, where you use peeling paint from walls and abandoned objects and reconfigure them into studio

artworks—do you also use the same technique for creating street pieces? Yes. Mostly, I collect materials everywhere I go. Since the characteristics of each city and street are different, it is possible to collect materials of slightly different texture and color. I use what I collect on the site and bring the materials to the studio and continue to work. Street pieces are more influenced by the surrounding environment. There are some moments and points that are accidentally found as I move through the streets. Installing work in the white cube is similar, but there are many more things to consider on the street. A monograph of Jazoo Yang’s work will be released in 2019. jazooyang.com

Above: Works from Stolen Time (Materials series), Works made from using peeling paint from wall, pieces of houses and abandoned things from the street

BOOKS

Dadara: Open Your Mind So We Can Use Your Data Upon putting Dutch artist Dadara’s now infamous “What The Fuck” venn diagram painting on the Juxtapoz Instagram, it took about three minutes to realize that it was going to be on our greatest hits list. For the last few years, the pulse of our contemporary lives has thrumbed with the tone of “WTF”; politics, communication, celebrity and art are evolving so rapidly that Dadara’s image summed up the current mood. And yet, for almost three decades, Dadara (born Daniel Rozenberg) has been working in performance art, painting, sculpture and even graphic design, culminating in various projects at Burning Man and interactive works throughout Europe and the United States. Open Your Mind So We Can Use Your Data chronicles the breadth of his output over 196 pages, where projects travel, morph and are destroyed as part of a greater story of his practices. From Checkpoint Dreamyourtopia to Exchangibition Bank, Dadara asks of the audience to follow his creative vision, to participate in not only art, but these mirrored examinations of our collective reality. The fact that his father, Grzegorz Rozenberg, is a famed computer scientist seems to have set the stage for Dadara’s career in art— intricate, methodical and full of chance. Open Your Mind So We Can Use Your Data is a long overdue monograph, and a chance for all of us to try and catch up to the mind of Dadara. —EP Kochxbos Publishers, kochxbos.nl

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WHAT WE’RE READING

The Mash UP: Hip-Hop Photos Remixed by Iconic Graffiti Artists Collaborations between photographers and artists are always intriguing. Hat & Beard’s latest art book, The Mash Up, takes this concept further by effectively bringing you back to a special time in hip hop. Participants don’t just accompany their work with a photo from photographer Jeanette Beckman’s archive, but also share their personal stories from back in the day. “Part of the project,” Beckman states, “was to have them say why they were drawn to that particular photo.” Beckman’s hip hop imagery shines light on an era when the culture was just beginning to define itself, back when rappers were already living the dream in the insular world of street cred, back in the gestation of the genre that might take them mainstream. Graffiti pioneer Cey Adams, who is considered one of the Godfathers of hip hop graphics, curated the roster of artists and chose a top-shelf collection of wall and train writers across several eras, giving them free reign to infuse their straight butter styles back into past. The book also creates a broader picture of what it means to be an adolescent on the brink of honing their creative passion. An honest, intimate report on the artists’ humble, toy-box beginnings, Adams and Beckmann also ask each writer to show current work, bringing the reader a better grasp of their aesthetic. “I love it,” says Beckman. “Legendary artists remixing photographs that I shot back in the day. It's very hip hop.” —Joey Garfield Hat & Beard Press, hatandbeard.com

We Ate The Acid (61)A3HT3TA3): The Art of Joe Roberts “We Ate the Acid is my attempt at sharing my experiences with psychedelics,” says Joe Roberts, aka LSD Worldpeace. “The art used in the book was all made during a period of my life when I was experimenting with psychedelics and the paintings and drawings are my attempt to integrate and make some sense of those experiences." It’s premature to categorize Joe Roberts’s work as childish, far too simplistic in describing Roberts, not to mention a tremendously narrow description of children. Roberts, who has gained a huge following on his Instagram @lsdworldpeace, is a San Franciscobased painter whose work dips into psychedelic imagery, pop iconography, rural and suburban landscapes, as well as a bizarre agglomeration of aliens, dungeons, and smiley faces. Within his paintings, viewers can experience the full range of human emotion, and more importantly, what lies between it, the equally confusing realm of reality within the endless corridors of the psyche. Whether an image depicts serene nature or Ninja Turtles, each is endowed with Roberts’s unique take on reality, appearing both very natural and very bizarre. Through his work, Roberts returns to what most children already know, that whatever is experienced and imagined really is reality, and sometimes there’s no need to muddle it up. In that way, he refutes the idea that childish is synonymous with simple, it’s that childish is more akin to infinite. —Eben Benson Anthology Editions, anthology.net/books

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LIQUITEX.COM

Lucy Sparrow Living In A Material World Interview by Gwynned Vitello Portrait by Ian Cox

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et-lagged and trudging through a covered mini-mall of more than 50 shades of gray, more catacomb than commercial, I discovered the store–or it discovered me. Colors and shapes roused my energy and appetite. That’s what happens in an encounter with Lucy Sparrow and one of her installations. The UK artist fashions felt and seems to insert a heartbeat into the everyday objects she curates into staged bodegas, sex shops and delis. Entering one of her shows is a trip to the theater, a textural tonic that infuses longing, nostalgia and camaraderie. Individually, each piece evokes memory. How splendid that her name is Lucy Sparrow, recalling the tiny bird that symbolizes joy and protection, simplicity and community. Our conversation began with an introduction to her cats (Aldous) Huxley and Buttercup (Princess Bride) as I roosted down with the sprightly Ms. Sparrow. Gwynned Vitello: You wouldn’t be described as a performance artist, and I don’t think of your work as super-staged, but you personally are an actor in the experience. Lucy Sparrow: I think there is definitely an element of that, though it was never meant to be that way. When I first started, it was never intentional. It was just that I had no one else to run the shop I made, so it was only me and my mother coming in to help on the weekend. A lot of people didn’t know it was me when I first started out. I was just someone behind the counter. I don’t

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get that as much anymore because I guess I’ve done enough of them that people, unfortunately, recognize me, so it’s not much of a surprise. Your Mom! So she also had a part in the performance? She works in a shop that sells kitchenware, that kind of thing. So she’s really good at customer service, and people thought she was really polite and nice. But yeah, she does have her real work to do, and I haven’t done a show in England for quite awhile. The last one here was a sex shop, so it was a little uncomfortable, though she did make all the condoms for the shop. Speaking of sex and performance art, and I don’t think you’re at all uncomfortable about this, tell me how you view your former work as a stripper. I think of you as kind of a Spice Girl Stripper, along the lines of Sporty or Baby Spice, not a bored-looking stripper. Oh totally. I was very chatty, and I didn’t look that much different, to be honest. I still wore my glasses. But yeah, I looked very nerdy, very alternative; though it was in Brighton, so everyone living there is quite alternative. I did it for five years and worked all over, in Bristol, London, and Manchester, as well. Wherever, at the time, the money was good, you’d travel. I used to take my sewing to work to while away the hours when no one was in, you know, and that’s what I would rather have been doing. I’d use the money I made from stripping to pay for fabric and materials.

Did you dream of being an artist as a young girl, and did you go to art school? I knew that I loved art, and I had posters of art, as opposed to boy bands, on my bedroom walls growing up. I actually did go to university, and I went hoping it would be like scenes out of Fame, where everyone was doing music and dance and making masterpieces. But it was everyone wanting to go out and get drunk instead of being interested in art, so that was a bit heartbreaking. I wouldn’t have expected that either. I’d imagine everyone in art school being driven and passionate. I think it can be an easy option that people go for, but I found the experience crushing. I sort of soon realized that it was a load of rubbish and that I didn’t need to go to university at all, so I dropped out and became a stripper. Did you pursue art before school? Was it mainly sewing? I was drawing, painting and sewing. If there was anything artistic, I would do it and my Mum would encourage me. She’s really arty, and my Dad does lots of writing, so there was support. I remember at the age of six, making this parachute completely out of sweets wrappers, and I thought it was just the best thing I could do to make this food and fashion kind of thing. I learned to sew when I was about four, and we also did it at school in a home economics class. I didn’t think of it then as art, never took it

Above: Madame Roxy’s Emporium, London, England, 2015

seriously, so I never thought people would end up buying it, let alone show it in galleries. How did you eventually bust out? I think the first time I showed my work to the public was in 2009 when I was in a group show with some other street artists, and it started in the strip club. This guy came in and was like, “What do you do?” I asked what he did, and he said he owned an art gallery. When I told him I was interested in art, he offered to put my work in a show, and I stripped for him. Just like that. No agent, let’s say, very natural and organic. You were just hanging out with your artist friends. I didn’t know anything about street art. I’d heard of Banksy, and I’d seen some street art, but I didn’t have any particular desire to be part of it, though things sort of worked out that way. The first show I did was pretty much on my own. I shared a studio with some of my friends in this run-down garage. My friend did crochet, and some other people did sets for festivals and stuff, but it was not at all professional. So you didn’t have a master plan? There was a master plan, but I honestly didn’t see it working out. It was, like, 10 years of getting nowhere and, you know, quite depressing not knowing how to get into the art world. I just didn’t know anything about how to go about it, and social media wasn’t big then. I never assumed that people would want to buy my stuff, and at that point, I was just making it for myself. But I do remember making people’s pets out of felt for 25 quid at a time because I was so broke! But London was calling, and eventually you got your big show. I definitely felt the draw to London. I thought it was the epicenter and really didn’t even think beyond that. I was getting shows there, and my first big one did really well in 2014. That’s when I gave up work full-time and managed to go fulltime as an artist. It literally happened overnight. Someone bought the entire show, and I remember phoning my Dad and saying, “Okay, this is actually happening. I don’t know what to do!” I genuinely did not know what to do Well, it is the kind of work where someone might want the entire stock of items, but are you saying one person bought the entire show? Yeah, and I didn’t even have a company. I suddenly went from earning like, maybe, 20 quid a week to 60 grand. I had worked for my friend Harry’s lampshade business and went to him to ask what to do. He said, “Start a company. Use my accountant. You need to start paying VAT. Suddenly I had to become a company director and hire a staff. I was selling stuff on the website, as well as at the show. I think I had 800 orders to fulfill, each with about 20 items

Top: The Cornershop, London, England, 2014 Bottom Felt Cave Studio, 2019, Photo by Ian Cox

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Above and right: Sparrow Mart, The Standard Downtown, Los Angeles, 2018, Photos by Birdman Photos

I’m glad you had your Mum and Harry! Fill us in that first show. It was The Cornershop, right? It was a very small corner shop in east London. I had applied three times for Art Council money, and got it on the third try. I also did a Kickstarter campaign, and it went viral, so I took a load of photos and sent them off to a press agency because I read that’s what you do. It got syndicated around the world, and then I was on the phone talking to the BBC. And then China wanted to come and film it, as well. And I just thought, “My life has gotten very strange.” Instead of taking an Art Business class, it was baptism by fire and you just learned as you went along. For that first show, in addition to hoping to sell things, what was the concept for your role? I made myself an apron, and I painted a logo of the Cornershop on it. Besides, my parents didn’t know if anyone was going to turn up. When I opened the door, there’s this queue down the street, so my Mum and Dad were with me every night. We

didn’t have any security, so we did this “one in, one out” kind of thing; just my parents and me trying to run this art show. Then my boyfriend at the time came in to stock the shelves and hand out baskets and do crowd control. Yeah, it was mad. And you design uniforms for the staff for all the shows, right? I try and get my agents to wear outfits and uniforms, but they never do! Maybe cuz I try to make them as embarrassing as possible, always crazy, vibrant colors. Designing the outfit is sometimes the funnest part of doing a show. I saw the Miami show before the store actually opened. Were the items there in a typical sized space for your work, and do you have a kind of template for stocking the stores? I think Miami was about one twentieth of what was in LA, which we had to close early because the shelves started to look too empty. We had three different aisles and was about 3000 square feet. It’s about no reds next to each other; no yellows

next each other. As soon as a photo is taken, that’s how it’s got to stay, you know. Mostly I was using the logic of a normal supermarket, so a can of Spam would be next to a can of hot-dogs. I worked in a supermarket for over three years. There’s such an art to arranging the stuff. It made me so happy. I saw lots of American and English products and wonder if you do foods from other countries. I did a show in Montreal that had some Canadian foods, but unless they are private commissions, it’s generally UK or US. But I love foreign supermarkets and would love to do Tokyo. What you could do there would be mindblowing, as would South Korea with its brightly colored packaging. And I definitely want to do a department store or a strip mall. I know you’ve said you enjoy the health and beauty aisle, but personally, I really relate to the food. I do like all the tiny medicines, the dental floss and toothbrushes, all the little things you need

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Above: Triple Art Bypass, CONTEXT Art Fair, Miami, 2018

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in life. I’ve done a gun shop, and the sex shop, of course, but it’s always the foodld that provokes the most reaction, the most happiness. You pick up a product, and you’re like, “Oh god, this is what my Mum used to make me; and you’re instantly 12 years old after school, and your Mum’s making you pasta. It such a strong emotion, and if art can produce that, then hopefully, I’ve done my job in the best possible way. I hope that’s what I achieve. There is that beauty to your art, that its familiarity encourages thought about color, touch and emotion in a welcoming way. I remember going to galleries when I was really struggling. I was making stuff, but it was falling on deaf ears. I’d go round to galleries and cold call, but get laughed out the building and it was just crushing. Because you know, there’s not a lesser meaning to this. It’s not a crime for something to elicit an emotional response. Sometimes I think the art world defines itself as only one thing or another, trivial or high end, where you’re not allowed to understand it unless you’ve been to university, you know? I have a vision of this joyous process as you come up with ideas that you execute with a bunch of friends.

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My assistant and I will cut everything out, and I employ seven ladies from my village. It’s tiny here, like one shop. But I like it that way. I’m quite reclusive. I have one assistant here, and my friend

"I’m doing a fake museum! It’s like the history of art in felt." Gemma comes up. Were all kind of misfits, and there are a lot of cats everywhere. We listen to true crime, and yeah, we’re all a bit weird. When anyone joins the company, I say, “You have to wear pajamas to work. And everyone does.” Yes, but you’re going to have to leave your village in awhile for your trip to China!

So I’m doing a fake museum! It’s like the history of art in felt. There’s this non-profit museum in Beijing called M Woods, and we’ve been in talks for a year. I thought I could do a big Chinese supermarket, but then thought I’d like to branch out a little more. So I’m making all these famous artworks: Van Gogh, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Lichtenstein, Mondrian, Monet, Koons and today I worked on Barbara Kruger. As with your products, will you be working in real scale? Yes, 77 replicas of the art set to open June 1 and tour six different cities in China. The Kruger is 284 by 284 centimeters. [Editor’s note for the US reader: That is over nine feet.] Aren’t you freaking out about getting this done? I’m terrified, but I made Sparrow Mart in six months. The Barbara Kruger was made in two days, so I do work quickly. There are about three months to do the flat work and two months to do the sculptures. It’s going to be really tight and I’m flying by the seat of my pants. I honestly didn’t think I had the balls to do the Masters, but actually it hasn’t been too bad. They could end up looking awful, but maybe I’ll get away with it! I’ve sort of done fake art before.

Above: Felt version of Hokusai’s The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, 14.9” x 10.1”, 2019

Not any more than Warhol’s approach, you shouldn’t call it fake art. Ha! Fake art, fake life. That’s our life now. I knew you wouldn’t restrict yourself to supermarket products. I want to show a range of what I can do. Food, obviously, has been really successful, but essentially, I want to show every aspect. I’d like to make an entire home that’s like a hoarder’s house all made of felt. I might make a replica of my house where each room will have a different decade. I want to start doing big, flat tapestries with storyboards and all. There are just so many things.

In the meantime, you’re enjoying your new home. I’m loving it. I’ve never owned a home before, and now I have somewhere to live permanently. I’m designing it in the most crazy way so that the living room will be Victorian curiosities with taxidermy, a 50’s pink and lime green kitchen and a fast-food themed bedroom. I’ve got a circular bed that’s actually being made into a hamburger so that when you climb onto the meat patty, underneath will be the lettuce and the buns on top.

Yeah, essentially my goal is to create events and pieces of art that people will remember forever. And I mean pieces of art as in the whole installation. I hope that a kid who went to Sparrow Mart with their family will remember it in 20 years time. I remember going to see the Sensation show at the Saatchi Gallery when I was 11, and it blew my mind as to what art could be. It just changed how I viewed everything. My Mum took me, and I’ll never forget it. I even remember what we had for lunch that day.

It’s definitely your mission to make, and to make people happy.

Lucy Sparrow’s next exhibition will open at M Woods in Beijing, China in July 2019.

Above: Felt version of Mondrian’s Composition II in Red, Blue and Yellow, 18.1” x 18.1”, 2019

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Neo Rauch Mechanic of Dreams Interview by David Molesky Portrait by Uwe Walter

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All images: © Neo Rauch, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Courtesy Galerie EIGEN+ART, Leipzig / Berlin, David Zwirner, New York / London/ Hong Kong Above: Späte Heimkehr, Oil on canvas, 110.25” x 82.5”, 2013

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eo Rauch once expanded a variation on Descartes famous meditation and said, “I dream therefore I am.” In an era where thinking is often outsourced to computers, dreaming is an activity intrinsically human. Dreams can magically leave us feeling simultaneously connected to universes of time— present, past, and future. Neo Rauch’s work stands before us like a portal that links our era with all of its Postmodern confusion back to a time when fairy tales served as plausible short stories. With feet firmly rooted in his native Saxony, Rauch engages an ethereal undercurrent of symbol and storytelling.

Above: Duo, Oil on canvas, 11.75” x 15.75”, 2014

Neo Rauch has often said that his overall mission is to re-enchant the world and take off where the Romantics left off. In reading many of his previous interviews, one gets the sense that Rauch engages a spectrum of pre-Enlightenment and Romantic occult wisdom. He mentions the Akasha, bursts of pantheism, time continuum, and Caspar David Friedrich’s Monk by the Sea as representing the awareness of one’s placement within a grand design.

painting takes on a life of its own. Rauch spoonfeeds his creature-like creations from brushes held by large, clumsy-looking gardening gloves with paint he mixes on the floor in containers before his canvases. He keeps a schedule like a factory worker: 9 AM–7 PM, five days a week, working on three to five large canvases at a time. On the weekend he lets the paint dry, takes a break from the studio, and spends time with his family working in his garden.

Allowing hypnagogic visions to guide his foray into new compositions, Rauch works mostly in stream-of-consciousness with no preliminary drawing. Flowing from his trance state, the

For three decades, Rauch’s efforts have resulted in his own distinct world populated by humans and humanoid subjects that he refers to as his paintings’ personnel. These characters interact

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in an atmospheric space that challenges us with scale change, perspective shifts, and intense passages of color. The integration of historical architecture and dress, with the special effects of science fiction, spans the viewpoint across different eras of human history. Neo Rauch was raised by his grandparents in Aschersleben after a train accident put an early end to the lives of his young parents, who at 19 and 21, were both still art students. Rauch would later attend his parents’ alma mater, Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig (Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts), receiving an MFA and becoming a professor there from 2005–2009. Having remained in Leipzig his entire adult life, Rauch feels a deep connection to the intellectual and creative legacy of the region’s terroir. Since the early ’90s, Rauch has made a top floor studio space in an old cotton mill the epicenter of his creative activities, with his wife, casein painter Rosa Loy, working in another studio just across the hall. Twenty-five years ago, Rauch had his first solo exhibition with Eigen + Art, which is still his

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"These are, at best, finger exercises, which I complete in a trance-like state." principal gallery in Europe. At the turn of the millennium, he was picked up by New York gallerist David Zwirner, followed by a solo show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2007. When Rauch turned 50 in 2018, he was given a retrospective exhibition, titled Dromos, that filled all four floors of the Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle, Netherlands. This past summer, Rauch and Loy designed the costume and set for the Bayreuth Festival’s production of Wagner’s Lohengrin, which will continue to be staged for the next three summer festivals. Reopening this April at The Drawing Center in Manhattan, an exhibition traveling from the Des Moines Art Center, will feature 170 drawings by Rauch on A4 standard paper.

Over the Holiday break, Rauch was able to squeeze in an interview with Juxtapoz as he prepares for a solo exhibition opening March 26, 2019 at David Zwirner’s new gallery space in Hong Kong. I fired off a set of questions hoping to gather insight into the mind and process of the most epic painter hailing from Eastern Germany. David Molesky: I felt so fortunate that I was able to see your exhibition, Dromos. Retrospectives are an unprecedented opportunity for an artist to reflect and to make comparisons between images. What was the takeaway realization upon seeing your work filling the Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle, Netherlands? Neo Rauch: It was like a family reunion, a great

Above: Die Kontrolle, Oil on canvas, 118” x 165.25”, 2010

homecoming with touching moments of reuniting and recognition. A few of the pictures I had not seen for a long time, and all—really all, even the older ones, somehow aged well. Also, the interlocking of images from two decades does not seem abrupt or inorganic at any point; on the contrary, everything harmonizes in the most excellent way without giving up tension. It is inevitable that an artist who has worked prolifically for decades will find some repetition and certain aspects that are continuous. Despite a stated resistance to analyzing your pictures, are there any patterns in your narratives which you cannot avoid noticing? Certainly, there are recurrent patterns. Above all, probably the fact that the interactions of my characters are caught in a state of limbo; that they never really connect or even maintain eye contact. Also, I avoid, with very few exceptions, the eye contact between figures and viewer. I always perceive such stagings as indecent. In addition, there may be props, such as the burning backpack or cannons, which appear directly or in modified form again and again. Architectural elements, such as factory chimneys and church towers, are also found again and again over the decades, as well as clouds of smoke! No smoke without fire. It’s exciting that you recently translated your theater-scaled paintings into the thirddimension of opera. How has the opportunity to design costume and sets for Lohengrin affected your approach to painting? And how sensational that this has sparked a collaborative process with your wife Rosa Loy! I love that you stated, “It was easier than driving in the car together.” Will you collaborate on future projects? This is not yet foreseeable; the impressions left by the stage design are still too fresh to serve as a mold for pictures. They have to cure first. The effect of the light in the room has, in any case, addressed the painter directly, and it remains to be seen how and if this experience is reflected on the canvases. Yes, working with Rosa is indeed a great pleasure. She is very nimble—in the head and with the eyes—and thus, fills a fatal gap that gapes on my part. For the time being, there are no stage projects on the horizon, with the exception of our further work on Bayreuth Lohengrin. I am looking forward to seeing your exhibition Neo Rauch: Aus dem Boden/From the Floor when it comes to The Drawing Center in Manhattan. How do you use drawing in your practice? I would imagine drawings, which are not preliminary, could be used as exercises to help

Above: Krönung I, Oil on canvas, 98.5” x 74”, 2008

you feel out various sensibilities, like what you’ve called “the moment prior to excess.” Ms. Loy must be helpful navigating these regards. She is an exceptional painter in her own right, and I’ve heard the only person you allow into your creative process? As part of my work, the drawing is considered a kind of by-catch; she gets into the net, yet the hunt was meant for larger prey. These are, at best, finger exercises, which I complete in a trancelike state, and which take place in the run-up to a canvas project. However, they do not prepare them directly, but only charge the space between me and the canvas atmospherically. Yes, Rosa is actually the only person whose advice and help I ask for when needed. One should be picky and careful in this regard.

You’ve described that your initial motivation in beginning a composition comes from dreams or hypnagogic visions that can sometimes be as vague as a concept or a phrase. What techniques or rituals do you engage in to encourage yourself to remain in these kinds of mindstates? I derive my pictures directly from dreams only in very rare cases. Rather, I try to simulate the mechanics of a dream event. That is, I go before the picture on the sloping path of free-flowing imagining. Gravity eventually brings things together, creating a common sound. The rational can assist at best. When she takes over the direction, propaganda or journalism arise.

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Above: Die Mauer, Oil on canvas, 23.5” x 17.75”, 1997

Above: Hüter der Nacht, Oil on canvas, 118” x 98.5”, 2014

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I am very interested to know more about your view of universal processes and their relation to the collective unconscious. Could you direct me to concepts that might deepen my understanding of how paintings work to bring re-enchantment to the world? If one agrees that painting penetrates into spaces in which concepts become blurred and words lose their competence, then one accepts the management of undercurrents that unfold their own magnetism. Julien Green, for example, described very clearly how the perception of a ray of light falling on an armchair became the starting point of an entire novel. The creative person differs from someone acting creatively, in that they become the medium through which something wants to speak to us.

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As your work is celebrated more and more, society will inevitably want to find a message in your enigmatic paintings. What might you hope can be gleaned through your life project as a painter? If it were possible to help a few people to suspect that under the concrete of reality a life pulsates, which forms branched mycelia and suddenly comes to the surface in the form of a work of art, then much would have been gained. Art is unpredictable and eludes appropriation; it is a phenomenon that amazes us and should awaken a certain reverence for the possibilities of the creative. It is a gift and a miracle, and thus, the absolute opposite of what political commissars and ideologues want to make of it.

Having spent your entire life based in Leipzig, the largest city in the German state of Saxony, I am particularly intrigued by your sense of pride for this region and your engagement with its rich history of intellectual and artistic pursuits. In researching for this interview, I learned that the composer Wagner and the philosopher Nietzsche hail from Saxony. Through one of your interviews I also discovered Novalis, the great Romantic writer was also from Saxony. What common point of inspiration might foster like-minded creatives from this region? It should by no means go unnoticed that Max Beckmann was born in Leipzig, and that J.S. Bach worked in the city as Thomaskantor (the music director of an internationally known boys’ choir founded in Leipzig). The cultural humus on which one could found their workshop here is so dense

Above: Schöpfer, Oil on canvas, 82.5” x 98.5”, 2002

and nutrient-rich. The connecting element that led to this condensation may be atmospheric. Climatic conditions conducive to creative activity could also play a role. I just do not know. You are known internationally for your work as an individual artist, as well as for your position as a leading member of the New Leipzig School of painting. Tell me a little about how this community has supported each other and grown together. Has your role as the leading figure in this art community helped nurture your own work and sense of purpose? The "New Leipzig School" is a term that emerged independently and outside of our consciousness as painting contemporaries. This label was pinned to us and did not appeal or seem fitting to everyone. Basically, it referred to the fact that in Leipzig, painting was still taught on a high figurative

Above: Interview, Oil on canvas, 82.5” x 118”, 2006

level, even though most “experts” in the early ’90s thought to abolish the utilization of brushes after 40,000 years. Painting was considered obsolete by these cretins, and those who nevertheless turned to it could be sure of their contempt and ignorance. In this respect, these years were a healing retreat, in the course of which it came to a thinning of the people, as only the real painter could resist the temptation of electronic cabinets and those of conceptualist seminars. In any case, working in this blind spot was beneficial to my work, although the feeling of being marginalized was already gnawing at my pride. My first big personal exhibition with Judy Lybke at the gallery Eigen + Art in 1993 was a commercial flop, although the pictures were great! Only that at the time, the only people who saw it that way were Rosa, Judy, and me.

What will you be showing for your upcoming exhibition at David Zwirner in Hong Kong? What new developments have you explored in this new body of work, and are there any aspects of this work that have come about in consideration of the location? There will be eight large (nearly 10’ x 9’) and seven small “handbag-sized” pictures. Whatever is new to them, new to my standards, that is, will only come to me much later. I am still too entangled in the sometimes agonizing development of these canvases to be able to attest to them a peculiarity. Also, the location of the presentation did not play a major role, yet rather an underlying one. Neo Rauch’s Aus dem Boden / From the Floor will be on view at The Drawing Center, NYC, from April 12—July 28, 2019.

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Julie Curtiss Where the Wild Things Are Interview by Evan Pricco Portrait by Bryan Derballa

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Above: Late afternoon, Acrylic, vinyl and oil on canvas, 34” x 40”, 2018

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o even the most elementary research on the works of Brooklynbased, French-born painter Julie Curtiss, and words like seductive, surreal and sinister spice the headlines. There will be dissertations about hair, and oh, there is a lot of hair to discuss, and fingernails, lobsters and domesticated scenes, too. But, in conversation with Curtiss, on the precipice of a breakout solo show at Anton Kern Gallery in spring 2019, the word we keep coming back to is hypnotic. Curtiss can make a fingernail holding a lobster look cryptic, or transform a trio of safari hats into dizzying detailed hairdos drawing the viewer into a spell. When I first approached Curtiss about her work, I was curious about what era held her kinship, if she longed for some early Surrealistic impulses of the 1920s. What I found was an artist who combines graphic elements of America and painterly excellence from Europe into something wholly new and unique, making bodies of work, (literally bodies… and toilet bowls) that compel the contemporary art world to pound on her door. Evan Pricco: Let's talk about hair. Your depictions of hair completely floor me. So let's start there; talk to me about why it is such a prominent subject for you. Julie Curtiss: Hair started interesting me ever since I was a teenager when I discovered old braids of hair belonging to my mother and my aunt in my attic. I realized there was this part of us that would remain long after we are gone. Hair itself is amorphous, but you can shape it; it's inert and alive at once. On women's heads it's a sexual asset, but on her body, it's considered "abject." This organic matter holds so much cultural and personal significance. It's also interesting to observe how some people recoil at the presence of human hair, as if in the presence of a corpse. What I like about hair in painting is the pattern and repetitiveness, which is hypnotic and attractive. I particularly love Jean-AugusteDominique Ingres’ touch and I have always been fascinated with the way he paints hair, skin and fabrics. It’s that same kind of rendering, of softness, or sensuality, that I would like to emulate in my depiction of hair. And then, of course, fingernails. Another Piece of the Pie may be one of my favorites of your works because there is so much to look at and read into while combining those hair and nail elements. So let's talk about both the joy and meaning of painting hair and nails. You could say that nails and hair belong to the same category, physical attributes that women everywhere in the world tame and groom, transcending them into tools of communication and seduction. It's interesting that there is a whole international hair and nail culture out there. And I think that’s what is at the heart of my interest

Above: Caress, Acrylic, vinyl and oil on canvas, 20” x 25”, 2018

is how nature and culture relate, the balance between our wild side and our domesticated side. And also the weirdness of it all.

images. I want to retain a certain tension in the piece while challenging myself with more complex compositions and subjects.

In reading some past interviews, it seems your influences range from Chicago Imagists to Nicole Eisenman, to European painters of the nineteenth century. Plus, there was a time you were working in KAWS's studio, so there is this really interesting background you come out of, but your work is so original to me, to the point where it’s almost timeless. There seems to have been this burst of clarity in your work from 2015 to now. What sort of characteristics interest and inspire you now? When I started this new body of work in 2015, I worked at a small scale on paper, cropping my subject very narrowly to give a sense of mystery and suspense, like in noir films, but also a feeling of intimacy. Since then, I am trying to scale up the size of my works and see how big I can go while keeping the same quality and definition in my

For my upcoming show at Anton Kern Gallery, I am trying to work on images that would evoke scenes of everyday life in New York with a Surrealist twist, bringing some of my French background into the mix. For example, my love for Degas’ depiction of ordinary life in nineteenth-century Paris. What is your favorite part of the process? The idea or execution? Or neither? There is a particular pleasure in putting the last touches on a painting. It's like the last straight line for a long distance runner. It seems that nothing bad can happen anymore, and you are painting from a safe place, all the hard work behind you, which is a bit of an illusion, because I’ve had a lot of last-minute disasters. Anyways, you can definitely get a "high" from it.

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Coming up with ideas can be very exciting as well. You know when you have a solid sketch with a lot of potential. The hard part for me is to find the right combination of colors, which can take a long time. I will change colors over and over again. I prefer not to figure out too much in advance, and I don’t think I could choose the colors ahead of time on the computer. As frustrating and grueling as it can be, the struggle with colors and composition is part of the process for me now. Although you are from France, you studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, a city that often gets forgotten when we consider American art. To me, Chicago is so vital in understanding American art history and culture, spawning some of my favorite artists, whether the Imagists, or Kerry James Marshall. Was it a great place for you to start? The reason I chose Chicago for an exchange program was because I had heard of its unique underground art movement in the ’70s and ’80s. But, when I got there, I was 23 years old, and I didn't really explore any of that. It was my first time in the United States, and I was overwhelmed

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"The hard part for me is to find the right combination of colors, which can take a long time." by the novelty. Everything was new and exciting to me. I went to class, hung out with my new friends, and actually met my future husband there, Clinton King, who is also an artist. There was so much to take in: new music, new aesthetic, popular culture, underground culture, language... a new way of seeing the world. It’s only recently that I became more acquainted with the Chicago artists. In 2013, a friend saw my paintings and was reminded of Christina Ramberg. When I discovered her works, I had a shock, I felt too close to her and for a couple years, and really resisted her influence. I think it took me some time to figure out how to embrace her influence while finding my own language.

In 2014, I started to work for KAWS, who is an avid collector of the Chicago Imagists, Peter Saul, Westerman. When I worked for him, I had a chance to experience these works in an intimate setting, hold them in my hands. It felt pretty special. Strangely enough, I would say that one of my early Chicago influences was the graphic novelist and illustrator Chris Ware. Even now, reading his novels reminds me so much of the Chicago mood. The way he visually ties together the macro and micro of a story, the mundane and the historical, the individual and the collective really touches me. He came up with creative ways to evoke time and space with elaborate diagrams, I’m in love with his colors and his line.

Above: In Link, Gouache and acrylic wash on paper, 12” x 9”, 2018

I was also thinking about how your work has some Surrealistic traits, and that when we walk into museums, not a lot of women are included in the grand overarching era of Surrealism. Am I off? Where do you think you fit into that Surrealist idea? Are you trying to turn back the clock on the genre a bit? I remember clearly the moment when I discovered a sculptural installation by Surrealist artist Elizabeth Tanning at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, more than 15 years ago. I was immediately captivated by it. I think I even tried to copy her unconsciously by making soft sculpture for a while. Her sculptures looked like body parts fused to upholstered objects or furniture. It's probably true that women, despite how many there actually have been, weren't much included until very recently in the Surrealist movement, which is, without a doubt, similar to other art movements. Hopefully, things are changing a bit. In 2017, Susanna Greeves organized and curated Dreamers Awake, a massive show of female surrealism at the White Cube Gallery, and I am so thankful she included me. This survey show featured more than 50 female artists, from the women at the origins of the movement (Leonor Fini, Leonora Carrington, Lee Miller…) to the younger generation of artists who are bringing the genre to the front stage, including some fellow artists and friends like Loie Hollowell, Kelly Akashi and Cheyenne Julien. But, to answer your question, I don't think I am trying to turn back the clock on the genre because I am more interested in understanding why history is the way it is. I believe that what I am doing is revisiting the genre, and paying homage to some of my favorite artists. I feel very much in the continuation of my female predecessors. So much of Surrealism is about archetypes, and male artists have extensively represented their female archetypes. The interesting thing for me, while revisiting the Surrealist language, is to turn that female archetype inside out, shifting perception, like the model descending from the pedestal and picking up a brush. Voyeuse is one of my favorite paintings in a long time and one of things that really draws me to your work is that it contains mundane everyday moments, but with slight twists that are like snapshots from a dream. I take it you aren't, say, mapping these paintings out by taking a photograph of a lobster or fish in a sink, right? How do you start? Ha! Yes... although life can be more surreal than art sometimes! My dad is a great cook, and I remember coming down the stairs as a kid to find a huge beef tongue soaking in the sink. That’s pretty surreal! Life itself is surreal for me, and I get my inspiration from daydreaming. When I take a stroll in public spaces, weirdly a lot

Top: Another Piece of Pie, Acrylic and oil on panel, 36” x 24”, 2017 Bottom: Jour de fête, Acrylic, vinyl and oil on canvas, 25” x 30” , 2018

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Above: Carapace, Acrylic on canvas, 20” x 26”, 2017

Top: Daydreamers, Gouache and acrylic wash on paper, 14.5” x 12”, 2018 Bottom: Hotel, Acrylic and oil on canvas, 40” x 30”, 2018

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of ideas come to me, or when I take the subway. I like to observe people and funny situations. I also look at art in museums, galleries, and in books. I like the strange still life, the corner of a painting, the close crop of two hands touching. Then I often come up with mental images and leave space for free association. One thing leads to another... Have you thought about not being based in NYC, Brooklyn specifically? Does Europe or abroad come into play at all? It feels like New York is once again having a very fine moment with a ton of really talented painters all doing new and interesting things. I lived for a short time in Tokyo and was based in Paris for a few years after graduation. So I have a little bit of experience living as an artist outside of New York. I found that living here is the easiest of all places because you could find decent wages. Maybe finding a rent controlled apartment also made things easier, meaning I could afford a small studio space on the side. Above all, like you say, New York is just an amazing place to live in. It’s the city of extremes, extreme high, low, wealthy, poor, ugly, beautiful… so much happens all year long, I love my art community, and there is just this very unique energy here. Every once in a while, I consider other places that may have cheaper rent or way of life... I could see myself moving somewhere else for a short time, for a show maybe. Like in any relationship, sometimes you need a break. What's your favorite color to paint with right now? I just bought a tube of warm, light yellow oil paint. I just want to mix it into everything! Mixed into other colors, it gives them this bright, warm, optimistic hue. What was the last art show you went to that made you just want to go home and paint all day? Or is that every show? Every art shows acts as a stimulant and makes me want to be a better artist. Sadly, I never go to shows as much as I want. However, I think the Grant Wood retrospective at the Whitney Museum was very inspiring: the rigor, the clarity of the compositions and the exaggeration of the forms. Recently, Sara Hantman and Esther Varet (VSF gallery) gave me the catalogue of Gertrude Abercrombie made by Karma Gallery for her retrospective show there last summer, and while I missed the show, I think it could have been one of my favorites had I seen it. You have two upcoming shows with Anton Kern, a two-person show and your first solo show. How is the preparation for that going, and is there a little bit of excitement for you to have your first solo with a gallery that

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Top: Lateral Embrace, Acrylic and oil on canvas, 30” x 30”, 2018 Bottom: Dog Days, Gouache on paper, 2018

is really rolling well with a great roster of contemporary artists? Mmm, just a little? Ha! A lot of excitement and also a little bit of anxiety? Some of my favorite artists, people I have been looking up to, are represented by Anton. The bar is definitely set high. I guess I just will just try to keep my head cool and work as best as I can. Anton and his team, especially Brigitte who is director there, are very supportive. Besides, my show will be paired with David Shrigley’s solo presentation on the first and second floor. I am a huge fan of his work. He really cracks me up. In terms of advice you would give to another artist, what is the best thing to think of when you are about to have a show at such an esteemed gallery and you are now repped by them? What did you look for yourself? My career picked up relatively recently so I wouldn't say I am very seasoned with business related things. I learned as things kept coming. Sometimes it's hard to dispense advice because everybody is in a different situation, and I have been, for a long time, in a situation where there is just nothing coming my way and I couldn’t be

Above: Voyeuse, Gouache and acrylic wash on paper, 20” x 14.25”, 2018

picky. The thing I often try to keep in mind is that when offered a show or anything art related, there is always the option to say: “Thank you so much and let me think about it”. I found, so far, that giving yourself a little bit of time to think goes a long way. Think of all the angles, about timeline. Do some research; ask around about people’s experience... An informed decision always pays off. It’s better to know what you are getting yourself into! If you had your Midnight in Paris moment, where would your "era" be? That's a tough question! My husband and I often play this game: "Where would you go if you could travel anywhere in time?” So many places! Medieval Europe, Japanese Edo Era, ancient Greece, and ancient Egypt, of course. However, because of my origins, I think that I would go back to France and Europe, maybe a bit before Woody Allen's character, midnineteenth century, at the moment when modern western painting was really taking shape. It's really fascinating to imagine that people like Delacroix and Monet co-existed. The century

went from Neoclassicism to post-Impressionism, even symbolism, worlds apart in the way the artist engages with the world. The idea of art for art's sake really started then, a shift of perception, moving away from religious themes and traditional canons to focus on nature and everyday life. Artists like Manet, Caillebotte or Degas gave me a window into their society and intimate lives. I think going to the museum as a little girl, my imagination was impressed by the power of art to make us travel in places and time. What was the last thing you painted? The last thing I painted is a toilet bowl! Do you think you will sneak a face into your works anytime soon? It’s a question I often ask myself. Sometimes avoiding faces does feel limiting. But the more I think about it, the more I find that working around limitations forces you to find creative solutions. Julie Curtiss has a solo show opening at Anton Kern Gallery in NYC on April 25, 2019. juliecurtiss.com

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Antony Micallef Excavating an Aura Interview by Eben Benson Portrait by Ian Cox

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earing the end of a decade that’s felt like a lifetime, it feels like our world has grown weary. A once-omnipresent optimism has given way to an absurd kind of acceptance, and each time there appears to be an answer, it is just as quickly hosed down the ideological stream into obscurity. Echoing many before him, the prolific singer-songwriter Jeff Tweedy once crooned, “Every generation thinks it’s the end of the world,” and this is certainly not the only time we’ve imagined that it might all be coming to halt. The fact that many of us have heard that sentiment, regardless of our familiarity with Wilco, might signal that this too shall pass, but, boy, it sure doesn’t feel like it. When the world hits times like these, artists get to work, gathering the pure feeling from the volksgeist and naming it with their work. The British painter Antony Micallef has consistently dug his hands into the proverbial soil, excavating biting social commentaries for the better part of the last two decades. However, in recent years, Micallef has imbued his paintings with a raw, personal emotion that cannot be ignored. They seem to communicate a direct confrontation with our collective suffering, translating the confusion,

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exhaustion, and pain into an image that speaks at deafening volume. Days spent covered in paint, drained from the emotionally and physically taxing process, he brings such feelings to light, or, in his own words, he “unearths them.” His powerful portraits bring the conversation from collective alienation to communal understanding, stripping the subject of everything but its humanity. In the same way that the boogeyman is scary because no one knows what he looks like, so are fears that we cannot describe. Micallef shows us the face of the boogeyman, so that we might remember that the human spirit contains immaculate beauty in its imperfection. Eben Benson: My first impression from your paintings was that they felt immediately violent. However, the intriguing thing was that they aren’t inherently violent, and, upon further inspection, they have a softness. What are the most common initial reactions or words associated with your art? Antony Micallef: I think the violence of the paint is just one aspect of how the paint is physically applied. I see the distortion technique as a tool to describe things that I could never say if I painted in a more representational manner. Oil paint is, in its nature, an incredibly versatile thing. You

essentially use coloured bits of earth from the ground and throw it at a canvas, hoping to make more than just an inanimate object. When you use paint in such vast quantities, the paint becomes very physical and malleable. It folds, curls, and moves. It can be sculpted, pushed, pulled, and thrown, no longer solely depicting an image or a representational portrayal. The very nature of the medium is the expression, and if used in a successful way, can create the work itself. Sometimes it feels like excavating an aura. A great piece of art makes you feel something. It makes you feel human when you look at it. To have different emotions reverberating from one piece is always a lucky strike as it’s able to communicate on different levels. Like a person in conversation, you don't want your art to give away everything it has to say in one moment. You don’t want your art to be predictable. Could you describe your personal relationship with politics? Your Trump series comes amidst a pattern of deeply personal and emotional paintings. Does your connection to politics and critique originate from a personal trait? I’ve always been interested in politics, and I’m a news junkie. I think what I find fascinating about our current times is that everything feels like it’s

Above (left and right): Trump Fags series, 2016-17

moving so fast and everything is unprecedented. Stories are shocking to us for a moment and then we just move on to the next story. News is fed to us on an octane level and it feels like nothing sticks anymore. We are immune to nuances and anything that needs our brain to stop, think and make decisions. It’s like we have diabetes from the malicious, processed clickbait diet we’re fed, but we’re malnourished. We are fed too much through social media and our delivery systems cause the symptoms of lack of judgement. Everything is a sound bite or a headline. News can’t be delivered by tweets, and our attention span has grown so small that we can’t process the bigger issues anymore. We can no longer understand the wider picture which, now, after all these years, has fomented this insensibility on both sides, causing even bigger problems with the very people we disagree with and need to talk to the most; and it’s self-perpetuating. What spurned the shift in your work from more general, social critiques to more personal and emotional ruminations? I think, after a while, I just wanted to simplify things. My older work dealt with social critiques all the time. I think I just wanted to strip everything right back and block out all the noise. Going back to how I started making art in the beginning made sense at that time in my life. I felt like I just stopped caring. Although you never really stop caring. In order to make work with social commentary, as with any work, you have to really care about what you are saying and how you make it. Current politics on both sides of the Atlantic have really engaged people. It’s motivated people to really want to have their say, which is positive, but at the same time, overwhelming. I felt like this with Brexit and Trump. The dangerous thing with what’s happening now is that we’re getting used to this circus and have become desensitized. Those are the most dangerous times, as any law can be passed and anything can happen, and we don’t notice and are too tired to care. When I look at pictures of your studio, I’m reminded of a baby rubbing food around their plate. Were you a messy child? Do you like making a bit of a mess? Do you have a cleaning ritual? I love that analogy. That suggests you’re having fun, right? I’m incredibly dyslexic and my ability to organise is as bad as my spelling. My studio always looks a mess to other people, but I always know where things are, roughly. The nature of how much paint I use doesn't help the situation. At least a third of what I throw onto the canvas falls off, so it wouldn't make any sense to clean the studio after every painting session, as it all takes hours to clean up only to be repeated the next morning. I call it the abattoir (slaughterhouse), my safe space where I can write on the walls and do all the things that parents would never let you do in your home as a kid.

The studio space is such a warm and precious thing to any artist as it’s their world. I’ve always said it’s like living in my diary or getting a hug from myself. Although you’ve said you don’t want the paintings to be viewed as portraits, what draws

you towards the traditional portrait format for many recent works? Do you want them to be read as human? I want my paintings to be viewed as beings. I want them to have a presence of something. It’s not essential for them to be human, but as I said earlier, it’s essential for these pieces

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to have a sense of actuality. I think the power of art is to confront our ideas of what we are and what we understand. I like the idea of the traditional portrait format because it’s familiar to us. The old master background of greys fused with ochres have been used as tools throughout history. We are accustomed to this conventional way of creating an environment. It settles the viewer and engenders familiarity, but I want a modern twist of distortion thrown in. Do you think your work translates more to a sense of release or a feeling of built-up pressure? Does either resonate more with you? Making these paintings is really unpredictable. I never know if they are going to be successful or turn out how I want them. That feeling of getting them right is the equivalent of throwing a jigsaw puzzle in the air and every piece landing in the exact right spot on the ground. I think when this moment happens, it feels like utter joy. I feel a release of tension and I become so excited. It’s quite a difficult sensation to describe because it

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feels like you have given birth to something that is very still and doesn’t move, but has life. Of course, it is just a canvas, but there is something very different about it at that present stage. At this point, every paint mark is working and is functional as if its veins are pumping blood around the body in all the right places at the right time. Of course, because of the very nature of the painting, there is panic and a sense of urgency too, as most of the time when these paintings are created, they need to come off the wall and rest on the floor before parts fall off to the ground below. That’s why they all have painterly hand marks around the edges. I quickly try and make room for them on the studio floor to preserve them so they can dry a little to be safe enough to be moved. It really is the best feeling when you capture that moment, and makes painting so worthwhile. It’s also a weird feeling because a lot of the painting is done at such speed and at such an unconscious level that you can’t actually remember how you created it. I think this notion adds to the feeling that it’s no longer me but a separate entity that

makes the paintings. I’ve always said a painting works and is successful when it “breathes” on its own. At that stage it becomes independent of me and is no longer just an object but a piece of art. Do you feel a connection to one time period of visual art more than others? Or is it always to multiple times at once? I think I’ve always been really lucky that my art has shape shifted and changed throughout the years. When I first started exhibiting in London back in 2005, I was involved in most of the Santas Ghettos exhibitions. Curated by Banksy, the other artists involved were Paul Insect, Chris Cunningham, Jamie Hewllet and Stanley Donwood, among others. Back then, my art was, as we mentioned earlier, more critiques of social events or “critical pop.” I think all the best artists I admire change and morph along the way in their careers. Bands like Radiohead twist and change from one album to another, and are rarely in the same place artistically to when they started out. I see a transition with my own work on a similar journey.

Above: Installation view of Raw Intent, PearlLam Galleries, Hong Kong, 2016, photo by Lucas Schifres / studioEAST

Above: Raw Intent No. 6, Oil with beeswax on French linen, 44” x 53”, 2016

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Above: Self Portrait with blue slash, Oil and Beeswax on French linen, 43” x 51”, 2017

You never intend to go down these avenues as an artist, but through development, hard work and discovery, these paths lead you there. It’s like finding new trails in a familiar forest that takes you to places you never knew existed. It’s one of the real delights of being an artist that surprises you every time. Do you listen to music when making these paintings? I love listening to music when I’m working. I love that feeling of being on your own in your own space when working, and it’s just you and the piece, and you just feel content. Since my work can be so physical, there are times you just don’t hear anything at all as you get into your rhythm of painting. You're literally hitting the canvas as hard as you can, trying to maneuver and play a 3D chess game from four different angles, hoping to find a body or something that’s recognizable within the heavy mixing oil. That's generally when you’re fully involved. Music always inspires my tempo, so I have to give consideration to the more intricate, slower, delicate work which is needed at times, too. I can’t have any Nine Inch Nails playing at that

point, as it’s the equivalent of the Hulk trying to do a watercolour. What are some of your hobbies outside of painting? With this much more physical style, do you find that you have to be more intentional in self-care? Because I try and paint every day, and painting is so consuming, a lot of my other activities are about decompressing from painting itself. I really strive to remove the toxins I feel I ingest through the huge quantities of paint I use after a long session. I love to go running around the parks of London as I find running is a great way to settle my mind and re-acclimate after long sessions. Especially when hitting on something I feel is special, the energy I take away when leaving the studio can be tangible. I don’t just leave the studio and that energy is gone. I leave feeling elated and generally very excited if something has worked. It’s very hard to “land” after that, and may take a few hours to come down. It’s not always the healthiest thing to carry around because I’m literally buzzing and it’s very hard to get off my mind. The pub is another good way of getting rid of that energy, but generally not the healthiest.

Above: Installation view of Reportrait, Nottingham Castle Museum, UK, 2017, Photo by Ian Cox

In your attempts to channel something bigger than yourself, do you take on more yourself? Do you have to mentally step back from your work to allow differentiation between what’s you and what’s everyone? This is something I find I have learned with experience… and I’m still learning. Because painting is so involving mentally and physically, it’s really hard to separate and step back. I have to be objective about what I’m doing and what I’m creating. I still find this hard to do, and I have to remind myself to be aware about what I’m trying to achieve. I’m not making this work just because it feels good, it also has to communicate to an audience using the parameters I’ve set for myself. This is not saying I’m trying to please anyone, but I do want an emotional transaction between what I’ve made and the viewer. It’s a dialogue between the piece and the viewer. With every mountain you climb, you come away with a bit more knowledge of how to navigate the paths and routes along the way. Painting is the same. antonymicallef.com

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Javier Calleja Finds That Magic Moment Interview and Portrait by Sasha Bogojev

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Above: Do Not Touch, Acrylic on canvas, 40” x 46”, 2018

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avigating the perplexing world of fine art, armed with nothing but sincerity and sparkling creativity, a series of odd circumstances, random introductions and unexpected events paved the path for Javier Calleja’s talent to get exposure. he story of his career and success shows modern world connectivity and the ways distant cultures follow and learn from each other. Although he was showing at galleries around Spain, the work seemed to need some sort of validation from afar to be fully recognized. When Calleja got a chance to exhibit his work in Asia in 2017, he decided to try something slightly different. Combining a playful approach in creating installations and relatable, light-hearted imagery instantly won the hearts of the local art aficionados, turning his Hong Kong debut into a sabbatical from the rest of the art world to absorb the full potential and irresistible charm of his creations. Unrestrained by techniques, mediums, formats or scale, he began exploring this new territory, riding the fast lane into art stardom, on track with some of the most desired and collectible artists of our time. We caught up with Javier Calleja at his Malaga, Spain studio just ahead of a successful Tokyo solo debut with Nanzuka Underground last year, and

looked back at his journey through, discussing his practice, influences, and emblematic big-eyed kids in our conversation. Sasha Bogojev: I noticed you rarely explain your works and the ideas behind them. Why do you maintain that silence? Javier Calleja: I don't like to explain the work because I think that my works are open to the observer. So I want them to finish the painting. To start and finish. I can talk about technique, why the big eyes, why this, why that; but you need to have your own idea or emotion about the painting. Also, if I think too much about my work, then there could be a moment when I know what I'm doing. And when I know what I'm doing is the right moment to stop doing it. Was it like this from the start? It was difficult for me when I was a student in the 1990s because all the big artists were really intellectual. Every artwork had to have a thousand words behind it, very conceptual. So, if you want to do that, you have to have a big explanation, and for me, that was really hard to do. I wondered, "Why do I have to explain everything?" But that was the art world then, and the big artists of that era, they were always writing, always thinking, always planning, talking about the work. So I needed to find something that I don't need to explain. There is something behind my work,

Above: Installation view of Fake is the Future, Barlach Halle K, Hamburg, Germany, 2018

but I don’t like to explain it. I prefer that the viewers are the one to finish that. Yeah, for me they feel quite simple, which gives the audience a lot of room to have opinions, because the simpler you make it, the more open to explanations. If it is done very precisely and detailed, then that's that. Is simplicity your intention? Yes. I like simple things. Simple, but not easy. I always say that I like to find a magic moment. Now, I want to do something to show you what I mean. [Javier does a very effective disappearing coin trick with his hands] It's a joke. It's not true. But, for a few seconds, or just one second, your brain says, "Oh, the magic." The next moment your brain says, "Hey, there must be a logical explanation.” But for those few seconds, it's magic. So, with art, I like this moment when the people arrive, see something and say, "Wow." This is why I like these new characters. I think there is something really important in their eyes, and it’s with only two drops, white color, and the shadows. So you get the sensation of real. But the T-shirt, background, and atmosphere are all very stupid and simple. So when your eyes notice the eyes in the painting, the brain feels like the whole image is real. They are very important to people. So your brain is looking at something real but your eyes are looking at something not real, and I think there is some kind of magic in such a moment.

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How difficult is it to find that balance between the realistically rendered eyes, and let's say, a cartoonish, very flat background? That you don't go too realistic, too flat, too childish, let's say? It's very difficult. The question is, I know that I'm a painter. I want to make a painting. But sometimes you can say, “Let's go, I can do something more realistic,” or more abstractions, but I want to be in the middle. I can paint very realistically, but also, I don't want to see myself doing realistic paintings in the future. Because maybe that is not painting anymore, something like a photograph, a representation. For example, Mark Rothko. His work is also in my paintings.

Very flat paintings, not many elements. So I want to keep this moment that one part of the painting is well-rendered or finished, and other is very expressive or casual. How much of the work is intuitive and spontaneous? How much of your process involves sketching? I always try to do some sketches before the painting, and I also make sketches for the drawings. Then I forget the sketches and just go with the flow! For example, the bodies, the eyes, the head, they have to be a bit strange. If you do a good sketch, it's very easy to make it perfect. But

in the painting, it's not easy to balance everything. Eyes need to be just right, but the T-shirt, the body, hands… I cannot think of a more stupid way to draw them than this. But not the faces, the eyes, and the mouth. What is, for you, the most important part of the work process? The most important part is when I feel the moment that I want to paint. I'm very Spanish sometimes, and not this kind of Spanish that I would paint only two paintings in one year and just relax for the rest. But I have to work every day, every day, every day, a lot, a lot, a lot. Because if I stop working, I stop working. It's that I don't want to work. And the most important thing is when I'm feeling that I want to paint. Sometimes, I'm painting because I'm professional, but sometimes you feel that you are painting because you are an artist. You are happy when you paint. Sometimes, you are painting, and your mind, your emotions, are all in the painting. This is the moment when you can find something new. It’s an emotional moment. The size of canvases you are working on now are pretty much custom made, right?! How did you come to that size and format? For the size of a canvas, I need a human size. I'm not very tall, so I need to reach the whole painting with just my hand. I did try working with bigger ones, but then I have to jump and climb things. And I want it within my reach cause it's like a dance sometimes. You need to work with something that you can manage. You obviously have an urge, a need to produce, to make things. Is this because you just want to be creative, or is it because you have a certain message you want to send? I do both because I found in my life that is the best thing I like to do. And I like to do things that I enjoy. For example, when I do a character, I'm not thinking about the audience. I'm thinking about me, about how to do it. I have to produce this kind of magic we were talking about. And I always follow this emotionally. But when I finish the work, I need to find somebody who will like it. The audience is as important as art. Vittorio Gassman, the Italian director said, "One actor— one spectator—the theater." So one actor without somebody who will watch, it’s nothing. I feel like the same thing goes for art—a painting without people, it’s nothing. You always loved installations. First, they were small-scale, but now your shows are usually one big installation. Why is that important for you? It’s important because I have so many elements from the past that I like to recover. Sometimes I do these big pencils or new characters. I like to play with the scales and make them small and big scales. Like Gulliver. Also, I had no space or possibilities to realize these big installations in

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Above: Words, Mixed media on paper, 27.5” x 39”, 2018

the past, but most of my gallerists help me to do this kind of thing now. So I can mix the old things and new things. But I'm always a little bit worried because, in the beginning, I did small installations, abstractions, figurative, conceptual, pop, surrealistic, minimal, everything. And people would say, “Javier, you are crazy. You have to choose one.” But I want to mix everything together. Sometimes it's not Surrealistic anymore, but absurd. Sometimes I paint the character, and the text on his T-shirt is absolutely absurd. But if you mix something real and absurd, you create something new, and it makes sense, so people can understand. It's like a book—the first sentence of the book is really important. And your style, your visual language translates great on all scales. Do you prefer big or smallscale works? Both. ’Cause in my very beginning I used to play with scale. You know, there was a show in CAC Malaga, where I did big and really small scale, and everything worked. So with new paintings and installations, it is a completely different way, but still similar. It's still Javier Calleja. My work is now different, but the conceptual part is the same.

Above: Installation View of Do Not Touch, NANZUKA, Tokyo, Japan, 2018

That is actually the main connection between old works and new works. At the very beginning of my art practice, I had a show in Madrid. When I arrived at the gallery where I was supposed to bring my work, they said, "Hey, you forgot your works. Where are your works?" I said, "No, no, my works are here, in a box, in my pocket.” The guy said, "What? Are you going to do a show with only this in this space?" I said, "Yes, yes, don't worry. You will see." And we did. With a box filled with tiny little pieces. Do you have a dream installation you would like to make? Yes, but I know I'm not at that level yet. So I try to not think. Sometimes I do have ideas and I try to think about the level I am at and how can I get to the next one. But I try to not think about that too much because I don't want to cry. [Laughs] My next step is to change the studio. I want to change the studio next year if I can and get a bigger one. So, you don't have any aspirations to do like a big mural, or something monumental? Yes, I did some murals, but I'm not happy in

the street. I'm not comfortable ’cause I know I'm not a street artist. And I have never been really happy with things I did in the street. So I decided to stop. Maybe one day... but I prefer to do sculptures. If I was gonna do something outside, I have more ideas with sculpture than with painting. What sorts of things inspire your work? Everything. I'm inspired by everything. I can get inspired by talking with you. Maybe there is a sentence which I can use on a T-shirt. And also, sometimes I'm inspired by other artists. This is nice to talk about because, in the art world, all the artists are scared to talk about being inspired by other artists. But for me, it’s not hard to say, "Okay, if I like the works of other artists, I can try and work with those ideas too.” There was a guitar player in Spain, Paco de Lucía, who said, "When I see somebody doing something nice, I try to do the same.” So, I wanted to do that myself. I want to repeat what somebody else made, and keep working on it. At some point, I’m doing it myself, and step by step, it's becoming mine. But at the beginning, it's the same as the source.

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The first thing that comes to mind when I see your work is playfulness and positivism. And getting to know you, that's obviously a translation of yourself. There is something in these characters. They have, you know, the eyes, puppy eyes. But it's with red. And the nose is also red. And the eyes are really shiny, watery. So these guys are happy because they just stopped crying. Do you know this moment when you are crying or child is crying, but then start to smile again? I know it really well—I have a four and a halfyear-old son... Yeah, so the pain is gone and then you’re happy again and this is the start of it. That is the moment I paint—when experiencing something bad and you just had a breakthrough. I think when a child is crying and then stops to cry—they’re a hero. Because he or she decided to overcome the pain. I also see your sense of irony, empathy, a bit of a self-critique maybe, optimism, and some sort of rebellion. Would you think that these are all parts of your character? Yes. My work is about emotions. There is a saying, I don’t know who said it, but it goes like, "everything is more important than art, but with art, you can speak about important things." So with these simple characters, only a pair of eyes and one T-shirt, I can talk about everything. I can be critical, empathic, happy. It depends. I like Philip Guston in that way, the abstract painter. One day, he was in the studio trying to mix the colors right, while there was news about the war on the radio. So he felt stupid and changed his practice, started to be a critic with the work. I know that the moment I want to say something critical, I can do that with my painting. For the moment, I prefer to be ironic.

That’s an honest way to look at it. Which artists influence your work, and which do you look up to? Of course, Nara, but I also love Philip Guston, Rene Magritte, and Alex Katz... You can see they all have very simple work. Well, it seems simple, but it's not, it's very complicated. And sometimes the work behind my paintings is really very complicated too. But there are many, many, many artists I get influenced by and you can clearly see a few of them. You can see very clear Nara, you can see the colors of Katz, Barry McGee structures. Many people see Nara in my work, but I can see more McGee in some of the pieces. You know, his faces, only heads. And honestly, I'm not ashamed of this. Sometimes artists are a little ashamed, but I’m opposite—I’m proud that my favorite artists are in my work. So that’s cool.

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It’s great to hear you talk so openly about it. So how much of your work is focused on portraying yourself? Every character is a little bit of a self-portrait. So it's me in each one a little bit. My mom asked me, "Javi, you can paint girls. Why you don't paint girls?" I say, "Because I'm not a girl. Every one of these is me." Sometimes I do girls, and sometimes I do something that is a mix between girls and boys. It’s this kind of age that you see a girl and a boy, and you don't know exactly which one it is. So I’m painting this kind of age maybe cause it was the happiest time in my life. That moment. When I was an adolescent, I wasn't really happy. But when I was a child, there was a moment when my sister Carolina and me, we were the same. You can go anywhere together, you are always playing, the body is the same, and that was a really, really happy time.

Do you get emotionally attached to the characters? Do you give them names or have a hard time letting them go? Yes, I do, and it happens more and more with time. Two, three years ago, I would just make the painting, ship it, make another one, ship it... And now I start to like them more and more and Alicia (my wife) often says, "Oh, don’t sell this, I want this piece.” I am a collector too, and sometimes, I am my first collector. For example, this guy with the glasses. If I sell it, I probably want to paint another one, and if I don’t, I might just keep it and not paint another one. So, selling my work and letting go is the reason to continue to paint. ’Cause if I have a lot of work I can say, “Okay, I have enough. I don't need to paint more.” But if I don't have them, then okay, let's make another one. You're like Geppetto: just make another one. Do you repeat them? Do you have some that you made more than once in the same way? Yeah, sometimes I try to do the same. But I cannot. I start to work with the same colors, with the same everything, but it never comes out the same.

Top: 1971, Watercolor and pencil on paper, 11.25” x 7.5”, 2017 Bottom right: I’m Ready, Watercolor and pencil on paper, 6” x 7.5”, 2017 Bottom left: I’m the Fucking Boss, Charcoal on paper, 4.75” x 6”, 2017

Above: Hold Up, Acrylic on canvas, 64” x 77”, 2018

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Top and bottom: Studio views, 2018

Every character is like my son. A little bit like my son, like my child. I have no children, I have no sons. So it's like, “Okay, this one is gone. Goodbye son. Let's produce another one.” At the end of my life, I might have thousands of children. Do you ever give them names? No, but it's a good idea. They don't have names and I don’t know why. It’s a good question... The eyes are quite exaggerated and wellrendered, like puppy eyes. And for me, it feels like they're a parody of this eye-candy aesthetic, or a joke. Did you ever think of it in that way? I never thought about this. But it's another good question to think about, and I can text you back about it. [Laughs] But no, this is the kind of thing that I like—when somebody says things about my work that I never thought about. This is why, for me, it’s most important that you finish the work, because my paintings speak with you differently than with her, him or anyone else. It feels like you often use negative space or blank space around the characters, and for me, that feels like it makes the character seem smaller and more humble. Is that the idea? This is also another connection with my older small works. I don't like crowded places, I like having space. I always say this to people when talking about this - The biggest is not the object. The biggest is the space around. Where do the text phrases that you use on the T-shirts come from? Do you make them yourself or do you find them elsewhere? Yes. I try to find myself but sometimes I just hear them somewhere. In a conversation with you, or something like that. When I finish the painting I like to find the text to put there, but sometimes I don’t know what to put on the shirt. And I like to read a lot. I like to read Samuel Beckett. In his work, I can find an infinite amount of text to use. It’s amazing. But sometimes the sentence is mine. And then I make an image around that sentence. I wanted to ask you about your experience with making these new sculptures for the Tokyo show. How did you like working in that medium? I'm really happy with this experience. I did other ones in the past, like pencils, potato, rocks, but with my new work, characters become real. This kind of idea opens a new door. Not because the painting is flatter, but with the sculptures, I can move around. It's a new way to interact with the audience. I have three dimensions, plus other possibilities, like installing them outside, inside, etc. Also, these were made of fiberglass and metal but, in the future, I want to work with bronze, aluminum, wood, these kinds of materials. It takes a lot of time to produce, and I have to check a lot, but I'm really happy we made those.

Above: Nosy, Acrylic on canvas, 51” x 64”, 2018

In new works, new canvases and drawings, it feels like you’re breaking up your characters a bit. They are more like going almost to abstraction Like the text is scattered and there is just parts of the heads. Is this the new direction you’re heading towards? I don't know. This is a moment. Sometimes I have to do something new with one painting. Just to test. At every show, I try to do something for the first time as the possible next step. Do you think you might work more with text? I saw these drawings and canvases where the text is not attached to the shirt anymore. How might you involve it more like a visual element? At this point, I'm considering using text outside the shirt. But sometimes, like in some of the latest drawings, I forgot to do the body. So if there is no body, the text is around the space. In these

new paintings, I can use texts, heads, and color, building them like abstract paintings. I like to play. So let's play with this. I'm also thinking that, in the future, I would like to do something more abstract with this new technique, because I find that I can do many things with this. Or something with nature, like trees, leaves, a little bit like Alex Katz. One day he found how to do trees, the landscape, the forest, and for me, these paintings are really the most beautiful of all of his works. So I'm thinking that one day I can maybe do a still life or something… Javier Calleja will have new works presented by Nanzuka Underground at Art Basel in Hong Kong in March 2019, and he will open his next solo show with Galerie Zink in Germany on May 26, 2019. callejastudio.com

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Emily Mae Smith A Clean Sweep Interview and Portrait by Sasha Bogojev

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he art world loves trends. It loves definition by movement, period, format, technique and medium. From time to time, this world is stymied when someone’s work just doesn’t fit into any of these boxes. Texas-born Emily Mae Smith cannot be typecast, although she's been actively creating work for the last two decades. It wasn't until five years ago or so that the art gods bestowed their grace, and by the looks of her career trajectory, it looks like Smith has become one of their favorites. We've been trying to connect for quite some time, but life kept happening and that was fortuitous. What better time to sit with Smith than at her Brooklyn studio between the opening of her first museum show at Le Consortium in Dijon, France and her exhibit at Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut? Of course, this

conversation also comes on the heels of a NYC debut with Perrotin, and just prior to a Korean exhibition with the gallery. Not only is her work rich, beautiful, smart, and original, but a forthright mindset propels what she creates. Sasha Bogojev: How does it feel to have a retrospective museum show in Europe? Emily Mae Smith: It's a show, that through a conversation between me, the curator and my gallerist, is a collection of works from the past four years. It's about 30 paintings, and they are kind of organized by theme, but not chronological. So, in a way, it might be more like an introduction rather than a retrospective, I think. However, it is a lot of work from my career, which is not so old. Retrospective sounds more established than I feel. I don't know why I have

this feeling. I had a student contact me who said, "I'm interviewing successful women artists for my project. I really wanna talk to you," and I thought, "Why does she wanna talk to me?" So I was like, "Oh, I'm that?" I just don't really get it. I totally don't. I can imagine it might be hard to look at yourself that way. But for what it's worth, it does kind of feel like a retrospective, because the last four years have been significant in your career. It's funny because when I actually look at the math, I have literally been painting, like seriously, for 20 years. I'm 39, but I haven't really been necessarily having what you might call commercial or institutional or whatever kind of success until just the past four years. Why do you think that's the case? I think it took me that much time to grow and develop and find my voice. I think with painting it really takes a long time because it has such a history and it has so many conventions. So learning all the nuances of where to break the rules or which rules to follow, I think it just takes time. I recently had a conversation with Camille Rose Garcia and she also talked about needing time after art school to figure out what she'd like to make. I totally relate. I finished graduate school in 2006 when the recession happened, and it really wiped out any opportunities, because any kind of risky endeavor for a young gallery or for the marketplace was not happening. So I just felt like, "Okay, I know this is not my time. I'm just gonna do what I'm doing." I was just waiting for things to change, and make whatever change I could make. But, yeah, I remember feeling, "This is an art world that will never accept me, so it has to change a bit, and I have to keep growing. So we'll see if we meet again later." I do feel like that's what happened. That’s a very strong point of view. You were waiting for the art world to be ready for your work! Why do you think that happened and worked out? Because I'm very stubborn, and prideful, which is not a good thing, right? But there are just some things I couldn't fake. There was a whole period of time in the past ten years in New York where if you made representational painting, it was not cool. Nobody was showing it. That was a weird microtrend, but a very strong one. It was just all abstract. I love abstract painting like I love all painting. I love art so I don't really care, but it was so trendy. And my work is so image-based, there was just no way I was just going to suddenly become a painter of abstraction. I just couldn't do that! But that obviously shifted... I really went into Le Consortium completely naive, because I had never had a museum show of my work before, and I felt so awkward. I just

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Above: The Valley, Oil on linen, 11” x 14”, 2017, Courtesy the artist and Simone Subal Gallery, New York

Above: Fiction Flesh, Oil on linen, 47” x 58”, 2018, Courtesy the artist and Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin

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kept pretending like it wasn't real. I didn't even do much research to find out about the history of Consortium. I'm really glad I didn't know that this was the first place where Cindy Sherman did a show in Europe. I think I would've been frozen with fear if I had known. So I stayed a little naive just to get through it. I do find that a lot of the curators in New York, curators being people whose job it is to put art in institutions (much different from the gallery world), really don't like painting or don't find it a valid medium. The curator of this show, Eric Troncy, he really seems to love and understand painting. Any ideas of why that is? I think it’s that they need artwork that really must be explained to people, or that intervention must occur between the artwork, curator and

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the public. What's so radical about a painting is that it can just cut through all those layers and go directly to the person looking at it. You don't need an interpreter, you don't need a person to give the artwork therapy. Eric has curated so many interesting shows unbiased by a particular genre or medium. I was just so impressed, I thought, "Okay, here's a really good example and a really good experience." You seem to be connecting well in Europe, right? It's true, actually. Yeah. I keep threatening to move overseas. Do you think they'll let me bring my dog? Definitely. We love dogs in Europe! I'm just so very, very American, from Texas, so the idea to move to Europe sounds very romantic.

I lived in France for one summer for about three months, but I was 20 years old, before the Euro. Paris was very different in '99 than it is now, like very antagonistic to Americans, and I felt really isolated. It was hard. Well, I think Paris is antagonistic towards everything non-Parisian. It doesn't feel like that to me now. Maybe it's the new generation. Like the Millennials, they're so open. Speaking of the French, you just had a show here in New York with Genesis Belanger at Perrotin, which was a gallery move for you. How did that happen? Genesis Belanger and I became really good friends over the past few years and kept joking about doing a two-person show. We'd go to

Above: Fruits of Labor, Oil on linen, 100.25” x 79.25” x 2.5”, 2018, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Perrotin, New York

"What’s so radical about a painting is that it can just cut through all those layers and go directly to the person looking at it." studios with each other, and if she liked a painting in my studio she'd say, "Save that one. That's for our two-person show." When our mutual friend, Valentine Blondel, a director at Perrotin, heard us, she said, "What? Where is this two-person show? I'm really jealous." We said, "Well, we were just joking," and she's like, "No, no, let's do it. Let's do it with me." She is an organizer, I know her, and I trust her, so it's been such a super positive experience. Now, she's organizing a group show in Korea this Spring about gender norms, beauty standards and feminism, and evidently, there's a kind of feminist awakening there. Parts of the society are so deeply patriarchal and hierarchical, so to bring that kind of work there feels really exciting.

Compared to what you’ve achieved so far, is this the high point in your career so far? Yes, I think so. If it's in waves, which means things go up and things go down, this is still going up in the first wave for me. This spring, I'll have a museum show here in the US, at the Wadsworth Atheneum, in Hartford, Connecticut, which will be my first institutional show in the United States. That's what’s so shocking—one in Europe, one here, back to back. It's kind of crazy. I can imagine. What are you preparing for that one? It's a very different show from the one in France because that was a bunch of works from the past four-plus years, curated, arranged, kind of looked at specific themes, partially retrospective. The one in

Left: Portrait as a Klein Bottle, Oil on linen, 51” x 67”, 2017, Courtesy the artist and Simone Subal Gallery, New York Right: Eve, Oil on linen, 51” x 67”, 2018, Courtesy the artist and Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin

Hartford was really different. Through a program they call MATRIX, they invite one contemporary artist to respond to the collection, which is encyclopedic. They have works through time, like medieval painting all the way up to contemporary. It's one of the oldest museums in the United States, sometimes considered the oldest. What part of their collection will you be working with? There's a quite interesting collection of American history, the history of labor, and even war, with bizarre things from the Colt gun factory in Hartford, Connecticut. The family became rich by outfitting armies and popularizing rifles, but they bought art that goes into the museum, along with all their guns, which is really wild to look at. It kinda works for you, given your smoking gunbarrels and such, right? Yeah, it's just a really strange connection. But, at this museum, they also have a painting by William Holman Hunt called The Lady of Shalott, one of the most famous pre-Raphaelite paintings, from the late 1800s or early 1900s. I'm really fascinated by that period of painting, and the specific micromovement. Hunt worked on it in waves for almost 50 years and died after finishing it. I think he went blind painting it too. It's a crazy story. It's a really

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Above: Still Life, Oil on linen, 37” x 48”, 2015, Courtesy the artist and Simone Subal Gallery, New York

Above: Citadel, Oil on linen, 30” x 38”, 2018, Courtesy the artist and Galerie Perrotin, New York

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wild painting because it's derived from a poem by Lord Alfred Tennyson about the mysterious Lady of Shalott, who is trapped in a tower and not allowed to look out the window at the world outside, except through a mirror which reflects the world. She weaves images of what she sees, and one day dares the sin of looking out the window instead of seeing it through the mirror and then dies. This painting is of the moment where she had just looked out the window and everything is about to change. I'm kind of looking at it with my very subjective interpretation of my interest. I think I have a kinda feminist read or reinterpretation of the painting because it's like an incredible metaphor for the state of the Victorian woman—sort of trapped in a cycle of invisible labor, who has to experience the world through the lens of someone else. I feel so connected

with this bizarre cycle that's in this painting, so I'm working on a few paintings inspired by sections of it. Through the research I've done, I think that the artist's intention wasn't any of this commentary. He was saying, "Look what happens when you sin." Their intended message is horrific to me, but also part of the power of my obsession with them. They're so strange and upsetting, but so interestingly painted, this place where these erotic or beautiful women experience a downfall because of their mistakes, not just because of who and what they are. There is a kind of location that carries through into the twentieth century in terms of art, a way of looking at females as the image in the painting become synonymous with bad. Maybe that's part of my obsession with this time.

I was about to ask about the themes in your work. A lot of them are about feminism, gender roles, and women's position in modern society. I remember being in school thinking, "Okay, I'm kind of interested in this stuff. I'm just painting the way I see things, my ideas. I'm a painter. Don't call me a feminist. I'm a painter first." Over time, I think, in my adult life, I experienced a lot of class struggle, so eventually, even though I grew up relatively privileged, I started to realize really how deeply ingrained a lot of the struggles were, and how deeply buried those things were in gender. At first, I started to address that through humor. Humor, you mean like a caricature or something? Yeah, because, at the time, I thought this reality is invisible to other people. If I paint it, it becomes visible. That's like how comedians work. They tell you really painful truths about the world as a joke. They make you laugh or reveal it in a way that brings you into their world rather than making you afraid, so you come at these issues with humor. I had kind of repressed that in my art, so it was like a revelation. Finally, I could paint things that were really horribly painful without feeling super self-indulgent or giving into some romantic notion of the artist as carrier of the world's pain. I could make more about states of being, conditions in society, and how they're connected to aesthetic conditions. Letting the humor come out was this big turning point, and then finding appropriate vehicles to create series helped me, too, because I could just keep digging. That's when the broom appears. Yes, the broom. Please tell us a bit more, as it's probably your most recognized image. Literally, a broom is a tool, but it's also this visual tool that communicates stories and ideas in my paintings. This agent, like some kind of secret agent, going through the history of art, disturbing constructs, making some trouble, or behaving badly, but is never doing the work of the broom. The broom is never sweeping! It initially came while I was re-watching Disney's Fantasia, specifically that sequence when the broom is bewitched by the sorcerer's apprentice. It was just performing the labor, completely unappreciated for doing all the hard work in making the sorcerer's castle function. I so deeply identified, not only as a female but just as a working class person. As a person who grew up working. I’ve had a job since I was 14, but also went to school, so I'm very lucky to benefit from education but also be a working person. So I was like, "Oh, that broom. I'm the broom. We're all the broom. Well, some people aren't." When the broom got free, it started to do interesting things. Sometimes it looks more like a mop, sometimes it looks more like a paintbrush; and attributes of the broom become visible in other objects. Mouth and teeth? Yeah, this gaping mouth also goes back to the

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Above: The Gleaner, Oil on linen, 47” x 58”, 2018, Courtesy the artist and Contemporary Fine Arts, Berlin

humor in trying to make invisible things visible. The mouth started as a frame, and I thought that if I put what I have to say inside of this, like, cartoonish, man-splainy kind of mouth, attention would be paid. It was a joke, like if I wear a mustache, you'll think I have something more important to say. It's cruel, too. It's like a cruel, horrible joke, but I wasn't paid at the time, and it made sense to me. Does it bother you if people gloss over all of those things? If they just see the surface? Not really. I think joy is very radical as well. If someone can enjoy or just be stimulated in any way by looking at an artwork, I think that's a really powerful, really direct connection. I was talking with Barry Schwabsky, who is a writer and a poet, a couple weeks ago, about this very subject. He remembered this quote, "Art is the best excuse to love something for the wrong reason," or something like that. Like, yeah, even if for the wrong reason, why not?

At what point did you start sharpening your visual language? During the recession here in New York, roughly 2008 and 2013, it was really hard, and I had to go from one weird job to another, working for artists, or working for galleries. I drew illustrations for a children's cookbook, all these random things just to get by. I was teaching, also, which I like. I got kicked out of the building where my studio was, and I suddenly found myself in my thirties, very limited. It was really painful for me because I had been so privileged to have a studio my whole adult life, one in school, and one immediately after school. It was the thing that I spent my money on, to have a studio, a place to make my work. I actually had felt ashamed because, I thought, lots of people don't have a studio. And it was a shock. So then I was just working on a tabletop in our living room, and was forced to make really small paintings that I really hadn't been doing before. I had to use different materials because I was painting in my house, and oil paint is toxic. You

Above: Bathers, Oil on linen, 67” x 51”, 2017, Courtesy the artist and Simone Subal Gallery, New York

have to use mineral spirits and so on, and I really couldn't have that stuff in my house, so, I had to make small paintings with watercolor, acrylic, things that were water-based. My work became more simple and more hard-edged because of this. Also, because oil paint is so soft and fuzzy, you cannot commit. You can kind of just softly approach an idea, not really have to put something down that you can't take away. This really forced me to just be very clear with myself as to what were my intentions with these paintings and forced me to make them communicate very simply. So it was an art of reduction when I started doing the mouth and the broom. That was about mid to late 2013. It sounds kind of corny, but I had to lose everything, my studio, my materials, everything I was comfortable with… Emily Mae Smith’s MATRIX 181 will be on view at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut through May 5, 2019.

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Golden State Of Mind Interview by Evan Pricco Portrait by Christina Villamore

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alifornia. As an inspiration, it is a cornucopia of colors. A palette of emerald from the north coast would dramatically differ from pale pastels of the deserts in the extreme Southeast. From Eureka to San Diego, it’s a massive state, an amalgamation of the entire planet in one 840-mile stretch, north to south. Maxwell McMaster, a native of Central California, now based in Los Angeles, captures a particular mood and aesthetic of the romanticism of the Golden State. With sunset hues and coastal vantage points, McMaster taps into a subconscious and flat, dreamy depiction of home and place, one that doesn’t necessarily make him an pastoral or environmental artist, but someone who channels space in unique ways. Evan Pricco: Let's kick this off with the folksy part of your work: do you prefer sunrises or sunsets?

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Maxwell McMaster: I’m into sunrises right now, since I don’t see them as often. They’re more rare for me. So maybe I don’t know as much about them, they’re not so familiar. There’s also something about the idea of new beginnings that I like. However, I typically paint sunsets. I love the colors and observing how they change with time and the seasons. You grew up in Sacramento, right? I always think of Central California as a hotbed of creative talent. So much has come from there. Did you feel that growing up? Yeah, Sacramento. It starts with my Dad and music: growing up with a dad who’s a musician and listening to music from the 1960s and ’70s. What I didn’t know at the time was about the hippie movement in the Bay and Los Angeles. My parents grew up a little after that wave, but it was still present. Growing up with that music and culture in my house that was a huge influence.

My Dad also encouraged me to draw. I remember him sitting me in front of the TV to draw from a show called Secret City on PBS. I think I still have the book around somewhere. I must’ve been about eight or ten years old. I really looked up to my older cousin, Loren, and I started skateboarding when I was about 12. At some point, he gave me his old deck. I think I got the other parts from a toy board and added bearings. It was super budget, but I was proud of it. That was the beginning of me learning about a lot of things, including hip hop. I think that was very much a generational thing. My parents didn’t like it, so maybe that’s why I was so curious. In junior high, hip hop was everything. Breakdancing was huge at my school. Graffiti was the art part of that culture, and I gravitated naturally to it. There were also the trains. I remember riding the trains from San Jose to Sacramento and

Above: Smooth Sailing, Acrylic on canvas, 48” x 36”, 2018

Above: Golden, Acrylic on canvas, 79” x 91”, 2017

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seeing graffiti along the train tracks. I was blown away because I had never seen anything like it in real life. I think it was happening in Oakland and I felt inspired to figure out what it was about. I knew a little already, but had no idea about how widespread; how many people were actually out there doing the stuff. It was the art aspect I was most attracted to… why this art was put here, out of nowhere. The style, colors and the mystery were very alluring, and from there, it became an obsession. In hindsight, I don’t really know exactly why I liked it so much. I already liked art, but this was my generation’s version, or at least that’s how I felt, and I wanted to be all about it. When I saw your show in 2018 at Public Land in Sacramento, I thought, "Okay, this is someone talking about the natural environment and climate change in an interesting way." You weren't, like, hammering us all over the head with concept, but it felt like an authentic ode to our world. What do you think when someone says that you are an environmental artist? Is this something new? I don’t consider myself to be an environmental artist. I do connect with nature and I like to make work about something so inspirational. Especially later in life, living in L.A., my appreciation for the outdoors has grown since I have less time to get out and be in it.

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That said, if my work inspires others to care for and appreciate the environment, I’m all for that. It's essential to our existence and vital to our survival, and necessary to preserve. If I could make someone take a second look and recognize the value, then I think that's awesome. How much does just the setting of California play into your work? Specifically, Los Angeles, where I currently live, inspires my color palettes. I’ve wandered around much of California over the years, so it comes out in the work for sure. In the end, though, the scenes are mostly imagined. When Juxtapoz approached you a few months back, prior to your show at First Amendment, we talked about some surrealistic qualities to the work. What’s interesting to me is that you have these natural-world-meets-surreal-video-game scenes. It feels like you are balancing a bunch of interests and inspirations. What sort of things inspire you? It’s interesting you bring up video games. I see what you mean. If they’re an influence, it’s totally subconscious. I sat in front of a console for hours on end as a kid. I had a Sega Master System. I remember a game called Hang On, and I would also borrow my friends Super Nintendo, so maybe some Zelda and Super Mario Kart were in there, too.

I have to go back to music, though. Musicians, their aesthetics, their visual languages, and fashion are all things that supply endless inspiration. And for me, it’s namely pop, jazz, soul, R&B, hip hop, and reggae acts. I’m also just inspired by the artwork of others, my peers and past masters. When I’m in the presence of art that feels visceral, it’s a quality I want to recreate. It doesn’t have to be something obvious. It may be a surface, a texture, a color combination. To get a sense of something really alluring about a piece and anything that makes me feel something deeper invites me to return and investigate what it’s really about. For me, that timeless quality is the magic of art. Did you have art heroes growing up? Early on, it was M.C.Escher, then later, Dalí. After, it was graffiti artists like Barry McGee and Mike Giant, but there are really too many to mention. Where you went to school, Art Center College in Pasadena, has this mega alumni: Ryden, Clayton Brothers, Doug Aitken and Jeff Soto, just to name a few. How was studying there? When I first moved to L.A., I didn’t really know of the school. My ex-girlfriend told me about it. I didn’t consider art as a career until I moved here. The few artists that I did know had either gone to Cal Arts or Art Center. When I went to check out

Above: Down to Earth (installation view), Public Land, Sacramento, 2018

Top Left: Cloud, Risograph print, 2017 Top Right: This Side, Acrylic on canvas, 32 x 40”, 2016 Bottom: It’s A New Dawn, It’s A New Wave, Acrylic on canvas, 54” x 27”, 2018

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Above: Kiss, Acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20”, 2017

the school, I was super impressed by the student work. I wasn’t aware of the Art Center’s legacy or alumni, I just wanted to learn what those students were learning. It was a transformative experience and I feel fortunate to have studied under the amazing artists and designers who teach there.

"Is it a gallery, a restaurant, a street? How will it be viewed and from what distance?" You've dabbled a bit in muralism and installation art, which especially compliments the paintings so well in situ. Do you like working on different scales like that? When I’m working on a mural, that particular situation makes me think a lot more about the viewer. Is it a gallery, a restaurant, a street? How will it be viewed and from what distance? I enjoy working on murals because it’s an application of an artwork that activates a space. A mural serves a slightly different purpose, and a lot of mine serve as a backdrop to enhance the experience of a space. I enjoy mining that connection. As for installations, I’m really having a lot of fun. It’s freeing not to be limited to a canvas. I’m not tied to one medium, and it opens up the possibilities for creating anything I want. To be honest, I’m most excited about this new direction. I like being able to create without the pressure of selling. It’s a bonus, an excuse to push my work. It’s created to be experienced, and that’s it. In your past work and some shows you have had, I noticed this almost perfection in the work; it felt almost digital. In Natural High, you got a little.... loose? A little intentional in almost breaking your rules. What pushed you into that direction? One of the most important things for me is to evolve. I constantly get caught in the battle between what works or staying in the safe zone, but I get most excited and satisfied when I make something fresh. The exploration is the fun. It keeps me making art. My process can weigh me down at times, and I was looking to create work that felt a little more direct, intuitive, and fun. I read in a recent interview you did about the Natural High show that the works you make might be a reaction to your own melancholy.

Above: Dreamlover, Acrylic on wood panel, 12” x 18”, 2017

What is your reaction to know that so many people are expressing this sort of love and optimism when they see your work? I understand that is the intention, but does it still strike you as a fascinating extension to your process? Yeah, totally. I think it’s awesome to leave someone with a good feeling. It’s too easy to be negative in this world. I think it’s more of a challenge to express optimism and hope. What do you want the viewer to see in your work? What is a reaction that you are seeking from

others, or that you may even seek for yourself? I want people to feel what I feel when I walk into a gallery or museum. Lightness. Almost like a stress release or an escape from reality. Sort of this feeling of, "I’m happy this exists." What do you have lined up in 2019? Still sorting it out, but really looking forward to it. I have a couple shows in the works and an exciting video project. Overall, I just want to keep growing and improving. maxwellmcmaster.com

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EVENTS

WHERE WE’RE HEADED

Margaret Kilgallen: that’s where the beauty is. @ Aspen Art Museum, Aspen Through June 16, 2019 // aspenartmuseum.org It perhaps seems contrarian to call an artist ahead of her time even as her work harkened back to an era long before her own. But time is tricky that way; it can mean two things at once. The output of Margaret Kilgallen was so influential, so connected to American and Western folk art that when we began to see a mini-renaissance of bohemian culture in the US in the late aughts, you could see the majestic and quiet spiritual quality of the late artist’s work in the studio practice of so many others. This spring, the Aspen Art Museum will present, that’s where the beauty is, Margaret Kilgallen’s first posthumous museum exhibition, and the largest exhibition of her work since In the Sweet Bye & Bye in 2005 at the REDCAT in Los Angeles. One of California’s most important artists of the last 30 years, Kilgallen’s passing in 2001 at the age of 33 reminds us that she herself was an emerging artist, one who connected to both audiences and history with mature and intimate depictions of female empowerment and solitary strength. “There is perhaps no more important time than now to provide a purview of the work of such a strong, empathic young artist; one who so presciently broke down barriers in representing the world as she saw it,” says Heidi Zuckerman, Nancy and Bob Magoon CEO and Director of Aspen Art Museum. “In that’s where the beauty is, we have the pleasure of both sharing a comprehensive view of her timely yet still-emergent practice, as well as introducing her groundbreaking work to audiences for their reflection not only on all it offers, but also, poignantly, on its promise. One cannot help but speculate what might have been had Kilgallen been given more time to explore the paths forecast within the exhibition.” The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

Monet: The Late Years @ de Young Museum, San Francisco Through May 27, 2019 deyoung.famsf.org Picture the acclaimed landscape artist, perched aloft a stilt-legged chair, possessed by a compulsion to transport his beloved, gorgeous garden at Giverny onto panoramic panels that would daze and dazzle with subtle tonal changes, mouth-watering color and sheer expanse. “I speak as if I had much ahead… taking up such an endeavor at my age,” Claude Monet would remark. At a stage when he had achieved comfortable success and could literally rest among the laurels, he took on ambitious murals, creating an expanding universe of water lilies. Monet: The Late Years, at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, conveys the undeniable appeal of Impressionism, but also portrays Claude Monet’s enduring passion as diminished vision actually forces him to memorize the arrangement of his color palette. The show surrounds us with agapanthus and iris, painted in broad, luscious impasto strokes that portray how space and optics shape our perceptions. Weeping Willows mourn the horror of World War I. Monet the young, disruptive Impressionist, keeps working as he explores Abstraction. Enter through a Japanese bridge against the museum’s walls of purples and greens, where, as described by Marcel Proust, “The garden itself is a transposition of art… and comes to life through the eyes of a great painter.”

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WHERE WE’RE HEADED

JR: The Chronicles of San Francisco and Stephen Powers: Daymaker @ SFMOMA Opening May 23, 2019 (JR) and May 18, 2019 (Powers) sfmoma.org It’s rare that a major museum focuses on two of the most prominent street and graffiti artists of their generation at the same time. But this Spring, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will be hosting two installations from renowned French artist JR, as well as Brooklynbased Stephen “ESPO” Powers, respectively. JR’s The Chronicles of San Francisco will open on May 23, 2019 inside SFMOMA’s Roberts Family Gallery, with a massive photo collage that captures human quirk and character. JR and his team embedded themselves in SF, setting up 22 predetermined locations across the city, filming, interviewing and photographing anyone passing by who wished to participate. The resulting interactive mural will tie in perfectly with the body of work presented by Powers in Daymaker. Long attributed to a sign-painting aesthetic that mixes humour, daily observation and typography, Powers’s installations present a new form of communication. Opening on May 18th, Powers will create a site-specific installation of his sign-paintings and fine art works on the museum’s third floor Architecture + Design space. Both exhibits, although different in execution, are powerful statements about human connection, this idea that the mundane, overlooked aspects of daily life can be examined, enjoyed and celebrated. Such a valuable nuance maintains a healthy community, and just might be a theme the world needs to embrace in 2019.

L’Avenir: Graffuturism Group Exhibition @ Mirus Gallery, Denver April 26—May 25, 2018 mirusgallery.com “In general, I try and distinguish between what one calls the Future and ‘l’avenir’ (the ‘to come.’) The future is that which—tomorrow, later, next century—will be.” Any art show that kicks off its theme with a quote from the philosopher, Jacques Derrida, is, in our book, heading in a thoughtful direction. The artist, Poesia, who has edited and published the influential online blog, Graffuturism.com since 2010, was at the forefront of pushing graffiti style artwork as it made its way into the contemporary art lexicon. Many of the artists he has curated in the new exhibition, L’Avenir, opening at Mirus Gallery in Denver on April 26, 2019, helped make the transition possible, but also held influential and experimental places in the history of graffiti art itself: Augustine Kofie, Tobias Kroeger (above), Carlos Mare, Doze Green, Jaybo Monk, Kenor, and Matt W. Moore, among others. These artists were consistently looking at what was to come, pushing the boundaries of what graffiti could conceivably be. “We are at a special time and moment in our art form,” Poesia says of the exhibit. “We are embraced by the mainstream and are able to engage the public like no other form of contemporary art, yet we remain outside of academia, so to speak. What once was avantgarde now caters to a small group of pseudo intellectuals that push theory over practice in most cases in our current art world. . . L’Avenir is an exhibition curated by myself that calls into question what is already here, but more importantly what to ‘is to come’.”

EVENTS

Inès Longevial: One Year @ Galerie des Tournelles, Paris March 29—31, 2019 ineslongevial.com Just a glance at Inès Longevial’s artwork and you know she was born for a solo show in Paris. A native of Southern France, her paintings and drawings seem to travel in time from an early twentieth Century European salon to 2019 in timeless portraits that are both classic and contemporary. Recent postings on her Instagram account, where she shared her own adolescent drawing replicas of van Gogh works done in her early teens, seem to confirm her eye for a particular classical painting approach. Now based in Paris, Longevial seems right at home. After a residency and exhibition in San Francisco in 2018, Longevial is back in the City of Lights producing her own solo show, One Year, at Galerie des Tournelles in the Marais from March 29—31, 2019. Recent travels to Morocco for ceramics and the framework of her portraits will make up the bulk of One Year in an exhibition that also serves as a release of a new book of Longevial’s work, featuring paintings, drawings, and drafts. The collection beautifully illustrates not only her work, but the evolution behind her process and growth, how ideas ferment and are fleshed out afterwards. When discussing the book and her new exhibition, Longevial referenced a telling quote from a former Parisian, Ernest Hemingway: “I had learned already never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.”

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SIEBEN ON LIFE

Daniel Johnston Bought Me Tacos And I’m Still Smiling... I moved to Austin, TX, in 1996 to attend the University of Texas at Austin. Directly across the street from campus was a music store called Sound Exchange, and on the wall was (is) a mural by Daniel Johnston. It depicts his iconic Jeremiah the frog, adorned with the saying ““HI, HOW ARE YOU?” (Google “Kurt Cobain Daniel Johnston” if you need a quick pop-culture reference.) I passed the mural every weekday for a number of years, and it never failed to make me smile. In truth, I didn’t know who Daniel Johnston was when I first laid eyes on it, but was soon clued in by my more savvy friends, and I became an instant fan of both his music and visual art output.

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Earlier last year, I received an email from Jeff Wheeler, an artist from Texas whose work I have long admired. He stated that he and Daniel were longtime collaborators and asked if I had any interest in exhibiting their work in Austin at The Volcom Garden. Without hesitation I hit him back with an emphatic “YES!” A dialogue began, and shortly thereafter, Jeff asked if I’d like to accompany him to visit Daniel at his home in Waller, TX. Once again, my answer was an unequivocal “YES!” We met at Daniel’s house on June 15th, 2018, and it was one of the most surreal Fridays of my life. His home is like a museum, filled with comic books, VHS tapes, toys, music ephemera and so much art!

It was like wandering through a very carefully curated secondhand store where everything was purchase-worthy. After an hour or so, Daniel’s sister Mojo asked if we’d like to go grab some lunch at one of Daniel’s favorite taquerias and then go thrift-store shopping—two things I probably would have done on my own that day. Lunch was great. We listened to Daniel reminisce about years gone by, and when the check came Mojo informed us that Daniel wanted to buy us lunch. So in addition to meeting the man himself, I can now proudly boast that Daniel Johnston bought me tacos. Thanks, Jeff, Mojo and Daniel for such a wonderful day. I still occasionally pass by that mural next to UT, and now it makes me smile even more. —Michael Sieben

Photo by: Courtney Sheets

POP LIFE

MIAMI

Juxtapoz Clubhouse @ Mana Contemporary, Miami 1 After we got our hands on a Polaroid camera on opening night of the Juxtapoz Clubhouse during Miami Art Week, cover artist Lucy Sparrow was the obvious first subject. 2 Beau Stanton is always picture perfect. 3 Kimmy McAtee, Nathan Bell and Chuck Radue from the Vans crew played some pool at the New Belgium installation. 4 Power Couple Sean Leonard and Tara McPherson holding down the Cotton Candy Machine store. 5 Ken Harman and Raul Barquet in the midst of a busy Spoke Art booth at Context. 6 Jux fam: art director Rosemary Pinkham, editor Evan Pricco, publisher Gwynn Vitello and ad director Mike Stalter. 7 Old friend Casey Gleghorn was hanging with Melanie Moyer at the Joseph Gross Gallery booth at Scope. 8 We liked running into Void Projects’ Charlotte Pyatt at the Juxtapoz storefront row. 9 Paradigm Gallery’s Sara McCorriston curated an amazing selection of artists for the New Belgium building… 10 Erica Berkowitz of Haven Gallery brought some elegance to Scope… 11 … while Art Poesia from Mirus Gallery brought some California love to the East Coast. 12 Hashimoto hangout! Dasha Matsuura, Ted Lincoln, a covered Ken Harman and Joel Daniel Phillips outside the Clubhouse on opening night!

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Photos by: Mike Stalter. Thank you to Polaroid for the camera!

POP LIFE

MIAMI, AMSTERDAM, JERSEY CITY

Juxtapoz Clubhouse @ Mana Contemporary, Miami 1 The opening of the Juxtapoz Clubhouse in Miami brought out all the friends, including painters and collaborators Add Fuel and Antonyo Marest. 2 After an intense installation buildout, artist Marina Zumi got a moment to relax with agent, Nathaly Charria. 3 Laurence Vallières and Axel Void were deep in conversation … 4 … while Martha Cooper and Nika Kramer were deep into laughter. 5 What goes on behind-the-scenes at Juxtapoz: Sasha Bogojev lent a helpful shove to Fifth Wall TV’s Doug Gillen.

Ron Mandos, Amsterdam 6 Daniel Arsham’s Lunar Garden looked exceptionally pink at the opening of his solo show, Static Mythologies at Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam.

Juxtapoz Projects, Jersey City 7 Justin Cole Smith and Heather Benjamin, fresh off their respective Juxtapoz residencies at Mana Contemporary, struck a pose at the opening of their group show upstairs at Juxtapoz Projects. 8 Heather got a moment will her proud family… 9 .. while brotherly love happened with Vinnie and Justin Cole Smith. 10 Painter Jonny Negron came out to show his support for the Jux fam.

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Photos by: Ian Cox (1–5), Sasha Bogojev (6) and Jessica Ross (7–10)

PERSPECTIVE

Nara’s Yard The Iconic Japanese Artist Unlatches a Garden Gate Claude Monet was not alone in finding refuge and rejuvenation in his garden. March 28, 2019 marks the official re-opening of N’s YARD, a verdant respite located in a quiet forest, just about a two-hour drive from Tokyo. An outpost of Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara’s neighboring studio, N’s YARD presents paintings, drawings and sculptures by the artist, along with treasures from his personal collection that have been significant in his creative process. From record covers and artwork by friends and peers, N’s YARD is a

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delightful insight into Nara’s creative journey in the surroundings he finds most nurturing. Conceived as integral to the artist’s intention to channel income from his artwork into his work environment, the seeds for a creative compound were sown a decade after building his large studio nearby. The leafy green landscape is dedicated to a rotating roster of Nara’s art, from small paper drawings to monumental outdoor sculptures, all displayed within a flourishing garden.

Visitors to N’YARD have an opportunity to see a personally curated exhibit from Nara’s personal collection and enjoy beverages and morsels like Sawayaka’s Bento Box, made from locally grown, organic ingredients as they ponder the purchase of exclusive products designed by the artist. —Sasha Bogojev www.nsyard.com

Above: Artwork by Yoshitomo Nara, Photo by Mie Morimoto

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