Spring 2021 Juxtapoz

Citation preview

KAWS: WHAT PARTY is curated by Eugenie Tsai, John and Barbara Vogelstein Senior Curator, Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum.

Presented by

Leadership support for this exhibition is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

KAWS (American, born 1974). WHAT PARTY, 2020. Bronze, paint. © KAWS. (Photo: Michael Biondo)

On View Now

CONTENTS

Spring 2021 ISSUE 217

32

134

The Vibrant Universe of Yinka Ilori, MBE

10

36

MADSAKI, CalderPicasso, Julie Mehretu, Ken Nwadiogbu and Tokyo Olympic Posters

Editor's Letter

14

Studio Time Ryan Travis Christian’s Suburban Oasis

18

The Report Cut and Sewn with Christopher Martin

22

Product Reviews Brian Calvin, Golden Acrylics and Yinka Ilori Homeware

24

Picture Book Khalik Allah Shows Us the Light

Design

Fashion Alexandra Sipa Crosses the Line

Events

70

Shannon T. Lewis

102

Tiffany Alfonseca

Influences

138

Tony Toscani Reflects and Dreams

Travel Insider The Illumination of Icelandic Isolation

Pop Life

78

Ania Hobson

110

Ryan Travis Christian

54

In Session A Valentine to Columbia College Chicago

56

On the Outside

Sieben on Life Six Pack with Winston Tseng

42

46

136

Openings in Uncertain Times, Part III

140

In Memoriam Robert Williams on the Passing of Van Arno

142

Perspective

86

Amoako Boafo

118

Jason Jägel on the Magic of MF Doom

En Iwamura

Helen Bur’s Lone Wolf Sunset

60

Book Reviews Ramen Forever, Bisa Butler and Miyazaki

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94

Hernan Bas

126

Cathrin Hoffmann

Right: Art by Yusuke Hanai

62 Yusuke Hanai

STAFF

FOUNDER

PRESIDENT + PUBLISHER

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Robert Williams

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EDITOR

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Kelly Ma

CHIEF TECHNICAL OFFICER

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

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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Kristin Farr

Sasha Bogojev Ryan Travis Christian Jewels Dodson Kristin Farr Joey Garfield Shaquille Heath Jason Jägel David Molesky Charles Moore Alex Nicholson Evan Pricco Michael Sieben Gwynned Vitello Robert Williams

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CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Tiffany Alfonseca Nolis Anderson Sasha Bogojev Peter Döring Joey Garfield Cathrin Hoffmann David Molesky Jahed Quddus Silvia Ros Eric Tschernow Rio Yamamoto

TECHNICAL LIAISON

Santos Ely Agustin

Juxtapoz ISSN #1077-8411 Spring 2021 Volume 28, 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 302, Congers, NY 10920–9714. The publishers would like to thank everyone who has furnished information and materials for this issue. Unless otherwise noted, artists featured in Juxtapoz retain copyright to their work. Every effort has been made to reach copyright owners or their representatives. The publisher will be pleased to correct any mistakes or omissions in our next issue. Juxtapoz welcomes editorial submissions; however, return postage must accompany all unsolicited manuscripts, art, drawings, and photographic materials if they are to be returned. No responsibility can be assumed for unsolicited materials. All letters will be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication and copyright purposes and subject to Juxtapoz’ right to edit and comment editorially. Juxtapoz Is Published by High Speed Productions, Inc. 415–822–3083 email to: [email protected] juxtapoz.com

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Cover art by: Yusuke Hanai, Get Together and We Could Go Higher, Acrylic on paper, 12" x 16.1", 2020

Paco Pomet

Paco Pomet, Hesperides, 2020, Oil on canvas 130 x 170 centimeters

Beginnings April 3 - May 8, 2021

EDITOR’S LETTER

Issue N 217 O

“Shots of the scotch from out of square shot glasses // And he won’t stop ’til he got the masses // And show ’em what they know not through flows of hot molasses..” —MF Doom, “All Caps,” Madvillainy, 2004 Like many people my age, I spent the past New Year’s Eve in a state of grief. It was fascinating to watch the tributes for Daniel Dumile come forth that night; the loss of such a lyrical hip hop genius known to the world as MF Doom obviously struck a chord with a generation of artists and cultural savants. Doom was different in his avant-garde approach to storytelling, his mask rendering him identifiably non-identifiable, the superhero/supervillain persona cloaking his craft with artistic presentation. Artists gravitated to his ability to fashion the rules to create a fantasy world of new possibilities, expanding the horizons of his mastery. He gave creatives hope. That’s what made him a legend. That’s why my peers were, and are, in mourning. This is a new year, and in so many ways, it feels like a fresh start. We didn’t really get a 2020, at 10 SPRING 2021

least in the ways we thought we would. It got us thinking about the ones we lean on, those we look to for inspiration, and that is why our cover by Yusuke Hanai offers reason for hope and support. It is so clear; friends supporting each other in times of trouble. Such directness guides us in leaving the last year (or four) behind. Yusuke is a rare, humble talent who can convey truth for a collective consciousness. This Spring, our quarterly focuses on forthright honesty and a sense of possibility, from Yusuke to Chris Martin, Tiffany Alfonseca to Ryan Travis Christian. I remember the last music review I wrote for my college newspaper. It was Madvillainy, MF Doom and Madlib’s magnum opus, and I gave it a perfect five stars, pronouncing that everything had changed in the world of hip hop. It changed my life. It made me look at an art form that I loved in a new way, injecting hope for a better future for the art that so engrossed me. I want to remember that feeling—today, now—about the potential of art for both the makers and the viewers. We seem to be on the precipice of a new era, a new “Roaring

’20s” is what I heard from a friend, and now like to say to anyone who will listen, confident that this monumentally difficult period of time will usher in a wave of experimentation and creative freedom; a collective sharing of experience and ideas will wash through fine art, music and literature. I’d like to think Juxtapoz is helping to usher in a new era. Our Spring issue has a group of artists from around the world, each reminding me of those feelings I had back in 2004, from Yusuke’s cover image and the portraits of Shannon T. Lewis, to Amoako Boafo’s incredible textures and Cathrin Hoffmann’s reimagination of paint through a digital lens. The Roaring ’20s of a century ago was a time of technological and artistic change, a decade we think of as a monumental shift in the arts. May the 2020s be perceived in the same way. A legend crossed over and helped put the future into focus. Enjoy Spring 2021.

Above: Art by Yusuke Hanai, Untitled, Acrylic on canvas, 25" x 25", 2019

www.onlyny.com

STUDIO TIME

Ryan Travis Christian In the Land of Hughes My studio is in my home in the greater Chicagoland area, west of the city. Our house is tucked away in a little cul-de-sac in a small tract built in the 1970s that butts up against the Fermilab territory (Google it). It’s a nice place. Cheap, too. Ivan Albright grew up here. There’s lots of forest preserve surrounding us too, so that makes it peaceful.

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I’ve settled into a spare room of our house for drawing purposes and work on paintings down in the garage. The drawing room is outfitted with our works on paper collection, and the walls are entirely covered floor to ceiling. There’s a drawing table obviously, a couch for visitors, and an adjacent table with a turntable, SP404, sound system and laptop. I have four windows that look out onto our street, and during the summertime, you can hear children playing outside. It’s comforting.

The garage is cold, dirty, unremarkable, and mainly used in the fair weather seasons. I spend most of my mornings having coffee, listening to music and picking away at drawings. Then I will usually head to the garage, paint throughout the day, hang out with the family, then return to drawing until bedtime. Come by if you are ever in the neighborhood. —Ryan Travis Christian Read Ryan’s full interview on page 110

Above: Photo by Joey Garfield

Sebastie

n Boilea

u (aka M r. D) @mrd198 7

JUST IMAGINE… That over 30 years, Sebastien Boileau has never stopped evolving.

By disregarding traditional ‘art rules’, Sebastien toes the line between experimentation and life experience, taking his work to the walls, streets, studio, and everywhere in between.

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

REPORT

Christopher Martin The Bare and Bold Truth As a tattoo and textile artist, Christopher Martin is importantly guided by the tradition of folk art. His reverence for text, appreciation for the history of his material and careful collection of imagery are powerful reminders of how folk and outsider art traditions can be reinvented for new generations, new eras. What speaks to me about Martin’s work is the stark, blunt immediacy that challenges the weight of our world with naked solidarity. On the eve of his solo show at Hashimoto Contemporary in San Francisco, the North Carolina-born, Bay Areabased Martin talks frankly about Southern folk art traditions, race in America and exclusion within the tattoo community. Evan Pricco: I wanted to start with how and where you collect some of your imagery. There is a historical weight in the imagery, but your remix and reimagining of tapestries, banners, and sewing impart elements of folk traditions. Part of me is wondering about the genesis, but also, about where the research materials come from. Christopher Martin: Where I’m from, storytelling is a big tradition within the South. I try to capture this folklore through my art and learning more about what inclusivity means in America. By using variations of cotton in my work, both paper and fabric, I’m paying homage to the history that is connected to farming and free labor, which plays deeper into the narrative of my roots while being a free black man today. Also, music is inherently woven into our culture, so I've naturally gravitated to the blues. I love discovering stories through music because the lyrics are anecdotes of slavery and the south. I think a huge part of 2020 and the reexamination of race came from so many people discovering the nuances of racism. But you were already creating this work, which is not a reaction to 2020; happily, the audience reaction has probably evolved. Can you talk a little bit about that? How have you witnessed the response to your work? Have you ever read a book or watched a movie from an earlier place in life and have a completely different experience once you revisit it years later? That material never changes, we do. There's definitely a shift amongst black artists like myself and our audiences—such as gaining a boost 18 SPRING 2021

Above: I’ve Been Drinking Tears for Water, Cut and sewn tapestry, 41" x 75.5", 2019

REPORT

of followers on Instagram and brands wanting to collaborate more on “new” initiatives that support diversity and inclusion. Prior to the climate of 2020, I invested time creating and sharing this narrative, so it's hard to decipher if people genuinely appreciate the work I make or are just using me as a tool for validation of their agenda. I've always had this really deep love for textile art, but to be honest, it's definitely a tradition that I've had to really, really try and study. There are always amazing stories of textiles within Outsider Art, and then you have someone like Bisa Butler who is actually re-inventing quilts and their inherent stories. Where and when did

you start to feel excited about the possibilities of textiles and sewing as part of your practice? I was interested in making sustainable clothing for myself when I was in high school, and that later expanded into a homegrown brand with my Mom. I gained confidence in textiles when she gifted me my first sewing machine and taught me the basics. Before moving to California, I took the old tablecloth fabrics that were just sitting in my parents’ basement. They were a perfect size, but I didn’t know what I was going to do with them. One of my first banners was an image of a ball and chain for a group show called Black Mail

Left: If You Dont Belong Here Dont Be Long Here, Ink on paper with hand-carved wooden arrow, 42" x 91" x 33", 2020 Right: Portrait by Suzette Lee

in San Francisco. Prior to that, I never had any experience on how to actually make banners— it was instinctive, and I really enjoy the idea of layering fabric to tell a story. My banners were hitting different than my prints for a few reasons: the storage was easier to maintain because I could roll them up, the banners naturally gained more attention because of their size, plus I really enjoy seeing my work on a larger scale. And a simple question, why black and white? I love the simplicity because it's the strongest contrast while being easy on the eyes as it plays JUXTAPOZ .COM 19

REPORT

into the clash between black and white people in America. I also appreciate a strong design that is bold and graphic without any distracting colors.

an art to communication, and sometimes you just gotta tell it like it is like, “Here, let me actually spell this out for you.”

Where do these lines come from in the textbased work? Initially, it was from blues songs and documentaries, but it's evolving into everyday conversations that I hear. I’m starting to reference lines from hip hop songs these days. They still have that same oppressive feel as the blues, but more gritty and unapologetic.

There’s always a healing aspect when putting out a piece of art because a lot of me is so invested. But I think there is something special with an element of text because there’s another level of vulnerability. The messages change depending on the theme and context of the show I’m in. Every viewer has a different take-away from the quotes based on their life experience.

What is so incredible about the text work is how naked it is, if that makes sense? Like these powerful words left to just be the whole art piece. It's so damn effective. Did it take you time to realize that the words were the art? Did you feel vulnerable leaving them alone? I archive interesting quotes and phrases from conversations, books, music, etc. I usually write them down, never having any intention for them in my work. Back in 2019, my friend asked me to partake in a duo art show titled Love Letters From a Runaway Slave—this was the perfect time to use these phrases I had collected and curate them.

We can't go through an interview without talking about life in 2020. For many artists, hunkering down and working is their ideal life to begin with. But everyone is different, and America has gone through so many "lives" this year. How was it for you? With all of the calamities in the year, I was confronted with racial bullshit within the tattoo community. I left the last tattoo shop that I worked at because of a racially charged incident that originally started off problematic for other reasons. The challenges black people face in business are not unlike the problems we face in the world, period, which largely involves the constant fight for respect and equality across the board.

We can't take for granted the power that words yield. For example, we’ve seen the media twist headlines over and over again in ways that can be hurtful to our community. There is definitely

I feel blessed to now work at Tres Leches Studio, a community of like-minded creatives in the

tattoo industry. There’s an invaluable peace of mind working in a QTBIPOC space. This industry has proven time after time, that white folks in particular have invoked a lot of trauma. It’s important to detach yourself to heal and focus on your own personal growth. Black liberation has nothing to do with equality. I’m not interested in being equal with the oppressor. We need to create, build and nurture our own structures and radicalize the notion of for us, by us. The revolution starts with self, what we practice and consume and how we take care of ourselves. For the solo show at Hashimoto this spring, is this what you are working on? These conversations and dynamics? I've been building a large body of work based on African American traditional tattoo imagery for a while now with banners and flash paintings. The work for this show focuses on sailor tattoos by referencing traditional flash, dissecting it, and inserting black culture. Christopher Martin’s solo show at Hashimoto Contemporary in San Francisco will be on view from March 6—27, 2021. @chrispymartin

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Bottom left: Hand Painted Flash, Ink on paper, 2020 Top right: A Love Deeper Than the Atlantic Ocean, Cut and sewn tapestry, 31" x 52", 2018

REVIEWS

Things We Are After Chromatic Cravings

Yinka Ilori Homeware Collection Yinka Ilori’s new homewares collection transcends design symbolism to tell a story, in this case, the story of London’s Royal Docks and its import history with products like pineapples and rum from the Caribbean. In the exquisite Tibetan wool rug, an Ope (pineapple in the Nigerian Yoruba language) flourishes, and in the Omi (water) cushion, flow the wavy blue lines of the River Thames. You can learn more about the inspiration on page 32 in our design feature, and about Yinka, who reflects, “It’s weird having my homewares at home!” He goes on to express his hope that the collection brings a moment of joy and happiness. Mission accomplished. yinkailori.com

Meet Brian Calvin Project By AllRightsReserved “I firmly believe that artists don't need to deal with things directly to create these pathways for people to imagine a world that's more like what they want,” Brian Calvin told us, and this bares fruit in his first limited bronze sculpture in partnership with AllRightsReserved’s MEET PROJECT. Calvin’s paintings often germinate with an eye or mouth, blooming into fantasy images that frequently portray women. Luminous colors, springing from his California roots, dominate the Plant Life sculpture, where Calvin fuses eye and mouth, abstraction and figuration, to create a heavenly hybrid. ddtstore.com

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SoFlat Matte Acrylic Colors by GOLDEN Most of us have settled in quite comfortably, nesting within our studios to do some solid work, and it appears there may be a few more months of such solo, uninterrupted experimentation. That means sourcing new materials, and a lot of creative friends have been raving about SoFlat Matte Acrylic Colors by GOLDEN, a paint that helps artists create immersive fields of color without the distraction of texture and glare. Maxing a pure color effect and perfect leveling is mandatory for so many painters, and this is the absolute top of the game. goldenpaints.com

PICTURE BOOK

Khalik Allah Showing Us the Light For Khalik Allah, photography is a spiritual endeavor, a conscious marriage of street and self, a quest to elevate both. It is also inherently lyrical, and like a preacher improvising a sermon, a musician in the zone, or poet freestyling off the dome, there’s something mystical and transcendent in the execution. That’s not to say it isn’t firmly grounded in this reality, in the actuality of life at 125th and Lexington in Harlem where much of his work is focused. Cycles of addiction, poverty, and suffering haunt the darkness of this nightscape but the camera is an instrument beholden to the light. Allah has referred to what he does as “camera ministry,” and he applies the salve literally, ushering people out of the shadows and into the light to take a portrait. “When you focus on the light in another, you reinforce it in yourself,” he explains. “And really, that's what I'm striving to do. I'm trying to reinforce my own knowledge of self, which is essentially light. Spirit is light.” He is a filmmaker as well, practicing his craft in a manner inseparable from his photography. Watching his films is a dreamlike experience delivered in part by an audio track divorced from the visuals. The effect is initially disorienting but serves to sharpen focus on the images and sounds in a way it could not effect otherwise. Unable to assign words to faces, the anonymity of the deeply personal conversations takes on the shape of shared experience, and separated from the aural, the visual is heightened in style and effect, akin to spending time with a photograph. Allah’s voice from behind the camera becomes a signature presence as he guides us through the streets. Engaging with new and familiar faces, we listen as he experiments, teaches, learns and reflects. Process becomes product, and where the artist begins and the work ends are almost indistinguishable. “I believe that the art is equally about the artist as it is about what the artist is depicting. This practice of photography has a lot to do with perception. It's not an objective practice… and I'm about being real and allowing people to understand me.” Allah is self taught and builds from personal experience. Every interaction is an opportunity for knowledge. In one of his earliest films, Urban Rashomon (2013), he introduces us to Frenchie, a mentally ill man who becomes a friend and continual subject. At this particular moment, Frenchie is high on K2 (synthetic marijuana), making incoherent noises, drooling to the ground, and posing for Allah’s camera. The scene is uncomfortable and feels a little problematic. But as the film proceeds, and even more so in its follow up, Antonyms of Beauty (2013), he explores an evolving, personal relationship, creating a complex portrait of a man most of us might choose to walk past. Their bond deepens, and as Allah’s practice matures, he lays bare the human habit of conscious and unconscious tendencies towards judgment and bias. “We’re not these bodies that we inhabit,” says Allah. “But my goal as a photographer is to go beyond that. I'm trying to take images like psychic x-rays. I'm trying to deliver a person's soul. I'm trying to go beyond just the physical and I think that all good photography does that.” —Alex Nicholson Khalik Allah is a Magnum nominee and is represented by Gitterman Gallery in New York. His films Urban Rashomon, Antonyms of Beauty, Field Niggas, and Black Mother are available to stream on the Criterion Channel. His latest, IWOW (I Walk on Water), will be released this Spring. khalikallah.com

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PICTURE BOOK

All images: © Khalik Allah/Magnum Photos, courtesy Gitterman Gallery Above: Sapphire, Lexington Avenue, 2014

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PICTURE BOOK

Dialogue from the film Field Niggas (2015) Woman: [Referencing the camera] “Can I ask you a question... without this?” Allah: “Nah, this is me. Come on, you know you can open up to me." Woman: “Do I look alright?” Allah: “Listen, you look like you could be doing a little better, know what I’m saying? You look

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like this. It doesn’t matter how the fuck you look because I’m seeing you behind the body. You gotta remember one thing, you’re not the body.” Woman: “What do you see?” Allah: “I see light. And that’s the truth about you. That’s the truth about me.”

Above: Frenchie, 4-5-6 Station, 125th Street, 2014

PICTURE BOOK

Top: Untitled, Lexington Avenue, 2019 Bottom: Untitled, 125th Street, 2018

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PICTURE BOOK

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Top: Untitled, 125th Street, 2019 Bottom: Untitled, 125th Street, 2014

PICTURE BOOK

“What I want to do is help the world to be a kinder place. And also to dismiss the illusion that these black neighborhoods ought to be feared. These are the most brutalized and the most depressed neighborhoods, and the people, even after having gone through these things, are still full of love. You always got knuckleheads and you’ve got people that are into some nonsense, but the average person just wants to live and be happy, you know?”

Above: Frenchie with Hoodie, 2013

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DESIGN

Yinka Ilori, MBE Bow Down, Regardless Yinka Ilori’s eye-vibing public installations caught the attention of Her Majesty The Queen this year. She bestowed upon him the elusive title of MBE, a high-ranking award for outstanding achievements and lasting impact, remarkable for a millennial presenting critique of the same monarchy officially crowning him a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Pay attention. You are now in the presence of—His Excellency.

Did she notify you by phone? I got an email from the government or Royal Family team, asking to confirm it was me, mentioning something special they wanted to give me. I thought, gosh, have I paid my taxes? I responded saying, “Yes, I’m Yinka,” and then they went quiet for about two weeks, so I called and asked them if I was in any trouble. They said, “No, no, it’s good news. Please wait.” And then I got their next email and thought, bloody hell, an MBE? Pretty nice.

Kristin Farr: Hello, Chairman, MBE. How must I now address you? Yinka Ilori: [Laughing] I’m just a local lad, you know? I’m the same person. I’m more excited about meeting the Queen. I get to go to Buckingham Palace. When the Queen gives you the award, you can’t turn your back as you walk away. I’ve got to remember that, you know? I’m forgetful. I might take the medal and run. So many rules!

And well-deserved. Your friend, another Yinka [Shonibare], also an MBE, has spoken about the irony of receiving the award from the very empire he’s scrutinizing. [Laughing] His work talks a lot about the monarchy and post-colonialism and stuff like that.

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Yours, too. Yeah. It’s a weird one. I got a lot of mixed reviews

from people wondering if I’d take the award, since many artists and musicians have turned it down. I was of two minds when I found out, and the first people I told were my family, who were extremely excited. Growing up where I did, in Islington, North London, there was no one with a title like MBE or OBE, or any Sirs. I think of my parents and their journey, where they’ve come from and what they gave up. I had to think of the bigger picture. I hope it paves ways, or provides inspiration for the next generation of young black kids who look like me. That, to me, is very, very important. I will always talk about my culture and identity in my work, and that’s not going to change, with or without an MBE. There is some talk about changing the “empire” bit to something else—just take out the word empire, you know? The empire has done a lot of painful stuff, and I try to talk about these things in my work; subjects that are awkward, or painful

DESIGN

to speak about, but turn them into positivity and celebrate my culture—whether it’s being British, or a Black British, or being proud to be a Black African. When I was young, being Nigerian wasn’t cool or celebrated. No one wanted to be African. So, when I have an opportunity to celebrate my blackness, every day, I am going to do that. The media and society portray Africa as full of corruption and poverty, but they never want to show the goodness and beauty of the continent and what is there—culture, sunshine, beautiful people, so much heritage and things I discover when I travel to Nigeria. Growing up, it felt like when you were outside of your house, you were British, and when you were at home, you’re Nigerian. You couldn’t celebrate both; there was no middle meeting point. It was one or the other at certain times. We were lucky because my mom and dad made sure we knew who we were and where we came from. We ate

Nigerian food and they’d speak to us in Yoruba. I’m always grateful. They’d say, “We don’t care if you’re born here. You’re Nigerian and that’s it.”

the anger into my work and celebrate my culture as much as I can, and I do it in a way that’s very unapologetic. It’s who I am.

When did you first travel to Nigeria? I was 10 or 11 years old, and it was my parents’ first time back after being in London for so long, this time with their children, and taking us to see their parents, nephews, cousins, and other family. It was quite a special moment.

Unapologetically bold. Tell me about the names of the designs in your new collection. I’ve got a huge archive of patterns I’ve created over the years, through travel, just walking around London or talking to people. I’m always taking stuff into my head and then putting it into sketches and patterns. This collection was inspired by my visit to London City Airport, and its history of the Royal Docks, and what it was used for in those times. It was a place where people imported things like rum from the Caribbean, or elephants for circus fairs, that kind of thing.

They had left somewhere they’d known their whole life to start a family in an unfamiliar place, which is new and scary, and I’m grateful. When the BLM movement happened recently, my mom told me about moving to London, and how she and my brother went to view an available house. When they arrived, the person told them no Blacks were allowed and shut the door on them. When you hear those stories and know what they’ve been through, it makes you angry. I pour

Looking back at that, and knowing Britain wasn’t built by just Brits alone, but by all different people and cultures, I was looking at the cultural exchange that the British people have with other countries. JUXTAPOZ .COM 33

DESIGN

The print that’s called Omi Omi means “water, water.” The blue squiggly lines represent the Thames and the water surrounding the Royal Docks. There’s an oval shape mimicking rum barrels that came from the Caribbean, through the Royal Docks and were sold here in the UK. There is always a message, meaning and story behind my work. I noticed another abstracted symbol in the rug… The pineapple. Yes! It comes from the Royal Docks shipping in fruit and veg from different countries, like bananas and pineapples, because we can’t grow those here, can we? No, we can’t! Ope means pineapple, and is again paying homage to everything that is imported from different parts of the world. You sourced Dutch Wax print fabric in your early work, and the story of that textile industry is such a cultural phenomenon. It was a huge part of my upbringing and it wasn’t until Uni that I discovered it’s not from Africa. It’s produced in The Netherlands by a company called Vlisco, but they make their money off West Africa— Nigeria, Ghana—they are the biggest consumers and buyers. When I discovered that, I thought, bloody hell, this is crazy. There’s no link between them at all, but Vlisco is making money off my peeps, you know? But I also love the fact that Nigerians made it their own. It was something they could identify with West Afridan culture. At a wedding or church service, or any special occasion, people wore it as a collective. It allowed them to take over public space, in halls, or churches or corner shops, and when they walked in, people were already wanting to speak to them and engage with their culture, and understand what they’re wearing and why. I love that fabric can give people a sense of belonging, and that’s what the prints did. I identify Dutch Wax prints with happy memories and positive times within my life. The prints have meanings and messages, and it’s powerful that fabrics can talk to you; there is a hidden message in those textiles that can be found without even speaking to the person wearing it. Not a lot of people are aware of the Dutch Wax history, and it’s messy, so that’s why I’m trying to design my own prints now, and tell my own story. People have been asking to buy my textiles by the meter, so that’s something I might do next year. It’s worth noting that Vlisco originally appropriated their style from Indonesian designers, so the plot is thick. From you, 34 SPRING 2021

I learned about Swiss Voile lace, a textile detailed for the Gods. Swiss Voile lace is crazy. When we were young, my mom and dad would have friends come ’round and sell them the lace from Switzerland, or the best jewelry from Dubai. Socializing was quite a big thing for my parents, and all the men wanted their wives to be to have the best Swiss Voile lace or the 24 karat gold from Dubai. It was really a serious thing, going to a party, because everyone wanted to be the best, and they’d spend 800 quid on the 6-yard Swiss Voile lace with amazing weaves and really small diamantes all over, so that when the camera guy shines his light, you’re blinging. It’s a proper, proper thing. An early career catalyst was the discarded chairs you would find and redesign, the reason you’re the self-described Chairman. I noticed some had their backrests removed, and I know each chair is a story about a person you know... The chairs started in Uni and paved the way for my career to move into design. I was the guy who loves and collects chairs, and “re-loves” them, and tries to tell a narrative within them. Most of the chairs do have backrests, and all have their own parable narrative. One from the If Chairs Could Talk collection speaks of this young guy I went to school with. He didn’t really have a backbone. He

was always the person who could never say no, and found himself in a lot of trouble when he was always saying yes because he wanted to fit in. The backrest is there, but in a position that isn’t really comfortable. The chairs have common themes about identity, culture, hierarchy and status, and they’re embedded with a parable. You need to read the parable over and over to understand the messages, just like a book, even though some are only one sentence. They come from my parents, who told them to us growing up. With the chairs, what I tried to do was ease the audience into my work and world with the colors and patterns, so the first thing they’d do is smile. And that makes them feel more comfortable, and then, when they understand the parable, that’s where the idea and thought process of the chair’s meaning comes through. It’s a bit more than a colorful chair. It has a message and meaning. For me, the first thing is to engage with an automatic smile, where you’re smiling without even knowing it. It’s like when you’re on the bus and you laugh to yourself. We’ve all done it. You’re not going mad, even if people might think you are. And that’s what my work does to you. yinkailori.com

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FASHION

Alexandra Sipa Through the Wire Encountering a spring-loaded tangle of wires, the most productive performance I can achieve is shoving the curly mass back into a cavity with hopes it stays out of sight. Where most see snakes on a plane, Alexandra Sipa envisions purpose and possibility. What she makes is repurposed, beautiful, a blend of old and new. All the good stuff. Gwynned Vitello: Central Saint Martins in London is such a highly regarded school. What were your expectations when you were accepted? Is your current work a departure from what you first had in mind? Alexandra Sipa: I wanted to go to CSM since I was 12 but, at the time, was attending an arts-focused high school in Bucharest, Romania. Going abroad to study was a big financial commitment and risk, especially with the job insecurity in creative fields. However, when I learned about CSM, I knew it offered the best education and environment possible to achieve my dreams. I wanted to go desperately. So much has happened over the last four years at Saint Martins that I could not have imagined. 36 SPRING 2021

What makes this school so special is the unique mix of people, personalities and backgrounds. The most important thing we learn at CSM is that to succeed in this industry and in life you need to value yourself—where you come from, who you are, and what you do. Attitude, social structure, ambience—how was the adjustment moving to London? I used to be very shy, so my first year was tough. I already knew English, but it’s one thing to be textbook fluent and another to effortlessly express your personality in a second language. It’s almost like I had to get to know myself again in a different language. Things got easier after the first few months. I was lucky to meet some amazing people who made me feel at home. It also helped when I finally was able to understand British accents! When you hatched the idea for lace wiring, were your family and teachers surprised or skeptical, or was something so novel kind of expected of you? It’s funny you ask because my tutors were in

complete disagreement. When I first started making the waste wire lace, one of them really loved the idea and encouraged it wholeheartedly, while the other was skeptical and not convinced. That was my second year before interning in the industry. When I returned in 12 months for the final year, my unconvinced tutor slowly warmed to the idea, as I had improved and refined it. That’s the great thing about having two opposing perspectives: one to push and challenge me to make my ideas better and someone supportive no matter what. I’m incredibly grateful to have been taught by Anna-Nicole Ziesche and Heather Sproat, the two BA Womenswear tutors at CSM. Once you latched on to the idea, what was most challenging about actually producing a garment? What properties of the material are difficult and which are inherently advantageous? The time-intensive nature of the lacing process was initially most challenging; however, I soon became more efficient, and making the lace became second nature. The process feels meditative now. After mastering the fundamental

Above: Alexandra Șipa wearing Lace Rings, Photo by Lucas Roth Baker

FASHION

lace stitch and technique, finishing the wire garments to a luxury standard is the difficult part, and it varies from piece to piece. For example, for the A-line lace dress from my graduate collection, I adapted the Romanian tech nique of point lace to finish the entire bottom, hiding any loose wiring and creating decorative oval petals. The challenge is to find aesthetic solutions to practical issues so it is wearable, comfortable, and beautiful. The lace dress has taken the longest of the pieces so far, about 1000 hours across a few months. Unless deliberately undone stitch-by-stitch or cut with scissors, the wire lace textile is essentially indestructible, and including the dress and ruffle coat, can be folded, bent, or reshaped, yet easily molded back to its original shape. What did the first design look like, and was it easy to proceed to the next shape or type of garment? The first time I tried making a garment out of wires, three years ago, was not what I imagined at all. It didn’t look polished or close enough to a lace fabric, but I really loved doing it and saw potential.

Above: Front and back of Discarded Electrical Wires Lace Dress

When I decided to revisit the wire lace idea during my final year, it took a lot of additional research and practice to get the wires to mimic the softness of traditional lace. The techniques I use are part YouTube, books, and happy accidents, but my lacemaking dexterity improved in a few months. As with sewing a garment made out of fabric, I began to create a “sewing plan” for each wire lace garment made, starting with the lace dress at the beginning of my final year. I consider everything: the direction of the lace, where it starts and ends, how to make it comfortable and easy to wear, whether finishings will be hidden or part of the design. It all impacts how the garment will look and feel in the end. I tend to be pretty impatient, so this collection really forced me to rein it in and be organized. If I see a mass of wire or tangled chains, I shudder and go into a panic. What is your process, starting with collecting the components and then making something? Do you have a piece or shape in mind, and can you complete a garment on your own? Ha ha, my boyfriend, Lucas Baker, has the same

reaction. When we buy or collect discarded wires, we try to get as much as we can carry, especially during the pandemic with the sporadic lockdowns. So we almost always have a substantial amount of wire in our flat ready for new projects. Since I began experimenting with my wire lace technique three years ago, I've sourced the majority of my wires from an electronic waste recycling center in East London and also from my uncle's construction sites in London and around my mom's home in Bucharest. I know exactly what I’m making before I begin a piece, usually sketching it and deciding the colors first. As I can’t cut it up or unravel it when it’s finished, I must be very precise when I start. I make patterns for each piece, just as for fabric garments, and I stick to them very closely. Each has different challenges, so it’s a process of constant design problem-solving when I try something new. I’ve completed all of the wire lace garments so far without professional help. Lucas, who is also my business and creative partner, and my mother both

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FASHION

assisted in making the wire lace in Spring 2020; however, I make the majority of the lace by hand without any machines.

colors are twisted together evenly in the electric cables, brown and white wires remained unused after the dress was finished. I made the lace ruffle coat next, using almost exclusively brown and

I wonder what it feels like against the skin. As long as all wire ends start and finish purposefully to avoid direct contact with the skin, the garments are very smooth and comfortable, which is very important. For example, the wire lace bras are very pleasant to wear, even on bare skin, despite maybe appearing uncomfortable. The lace feels plasticky against the skin and almost like soft armor. How does color play into your creations? Does it dictate what you make? I’m very inspired by my grandma’s home in Bacau, Romania. It is such a creative, colorful place. Every time I visit, there’s something changed around the house, something moved or repainted. Her faded, painted fence with endless colors revealed through the cracks inspires the painterly way I combine colors in my wire lace pieces. For my graduate collection, my color choices were motivated equally by aesthetics and the pursuit of wasting as little as possible. I first made the A-line lace dress, my dream dress, bright and colorful, a nod to its feminine, playful silhouette. As all

trash and completely altering a material’s purpose. I think it’s more interesting to create beautiful clothes out of the unordinary. It forces consumers and those uninterested in fashion to reconsider repurposing in their careers and everyday lives. I hope to inspire people to explore ways to address other types of waste through design. I’ll keep experimenting with how far I can take the electrical wires lace textile, looking into producing it with a machine and further expanding its application beyond garments. I really want to explore more techniques and dive into the craft fully.

white wires for a subdued colorway reflective of the powerful, almost intimidating silhouette of the coat. Nevertheless, the colors of wires I have do not dictate what I make. Has working with wire inspired you to craft with other unexpected materials? Yes! I definitely plan to upcycle more alternative materials. I like the idea of creating luxury out of

How often do you go back home to Romania, and does its history and culture influence your designs? I usually go home a few times a year, but with the pandemic, I only went during the summer when cases were low in Europe. I really wanted to spend a few weeks during Christmas, but flights were cancelled when cases skyrocketed because of the new variant. I plan to split my time between Romania and the UK, producing collections and pieces in Romania In my work, I look at contemporary Romanian culture, trying to show a very specific perspective and humor, rather than something traditional. I really wanted to show the subtleties that people who grew up in Romania recognize instantly. I am really inspired by the contrast between heightened austerity and extreme femininity in Romania. The aesthetic of Bucharest is a mix of French architecture, grey Brutalist apartments, and mega Communist structures, like the Palace of Parliament. The women are usually very careful about appearance, getting all dressed up for a supermarket trip and loving an ultra glamorous, feminine look. The materials in my graduate collection connect to things that I love or bring joy. The wire garments, featuring Romanian lace techniques and motifs inspired by my grandma’s doilies and tablecloths, look like her faded fence with endless colors revealed through the cracks. Beach towels, typically found for sale on sides of the road and seen on truck drivers’ seats, remind me of Romanian humor and kitschy Eurotrash songs that make me laugh; and the fabrics from Bacau are reminiscent of the love I always find there. Most of the fabrics I use have a Romanian attitude—nonchalant, humorous, adaptable. Since you embrace kitsch as a favorite expression of art, it’s fair to say that you like fashion to be fanciful and playful, right? Yes, I absolutely love fashion for its whimsy, although I also like it to be sexy sometimes, eerie other times. I’m young and still learning what

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Top center: Blooming Flower Stud Earrings Left: Making of Discarded Electrical Wires Lace Vest

FASHION

I like, but I think great designers are capable of doing all of the above, which is what I aspire to. Your accessories are a lot of fun. What accent piece did you make first, and what else are you planning? The first accessory I made was a four-finger massive wire lace ring. It was beautiful but not the most practical! I think almost anything can be made out of the wire lace textile, so I have lots of small pieces in mind, including bags, necklaces, and earrings. On the flip side, sustainability is not a frivolous topic, and you’ve addressed issues of waste, but also about the sustainability of workers. Explain how your process takes ethical matters into consideration? By using discarded wires, my practice inherently offers opportunities to consider and improve multiple aspects of sustainability, namely economic and social factors. Because the material is upcycled, its cost is very low, the bulk of spending can shift to the production workers, in my case, the lacemaker. Therefore, workers can receive most of the profits from the sales. Fashion needs to become more sustainable from the inside out, not only in the materials but also in ethical treatment and compensation for workers in the production and design chain. Now, it’s just Lucas and me, but hopefully, we’ll be able to hire full-time lacemakers and expand our artisanal team soon. Waste should be seen as an opportunity to discover new techniques. As my practice is rooted in creating luxury products out of local waste sources, my collection tackled one of the fastest growing sources in electronic waste, which amounted to 50 million tons in 2020. We hope to inspire and drive change through creativity and ingenuity Sustainability is simply about having compassion for yourself and others, within and outside of one’s community, and for future generations. There are less wasteful and harmful alternatives to so many of life’s pleasures that people continue to ignore or delay. Beautiful art and fashion does not need to be created as we always have; change is possible and necessary. Between E-commerce and covid, the fashion industry is operating in a new landscape. What other changes and challenges do you see overall, and any particular to what you want to do? On increasingly larger scales, sustainability will continue to grow at a rapid pace. The industry is aware of the urgency for change due to the climate emergency and the increasing demand from consumers for more sustainable options and transparency. Companies are beginning to recognize the business opportunity in a circular

Above: Discarded Electrical Wires Lace Ruffle Coat

fashion industry. Three out of five clothing items, or over one hundred billion US dollars of fashion textile material, goes to landfills every year. This is a major opportunity. Nevertheless, sustainable consumption is the most significant factor when it comes to creating a more sustainable industry, which, in many ways, is evolving far more quickly than sustainable production innovations. The secondhand clothing market and rental services are growing rapidly. As I did in my graduate collection, Lucas and I will continue to source secondhand and vintage

clothing to upcycle it into new, innovative garments for upcoming collections. Since your work is inherently sculptural, do you ever think of making purely conceptual pieces? You’re so young, there are a lot of life strands ahead of you. Definitely! I am currently working on a few projects that are just that. The beauty of this waste wire lace technique is that it allows us to explore other areas beyond fashion, like product and interior design. alexandrasipa.com

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INFLUENCES

Tony Toscani What a Day for a Daydream “I need to put everything on hold for about a year,” Tony Toscani told me when we met at his Brooklyn studio early in 2020 and talked about life, art practice, and plans for the future. After cleaning the cyber dust from that conversation, put on hold like so many in 2020, we started looking back at Tony’s work and how his engrossed characters feel so relevant, his solitary “daydreamers” more relatable. Distanced from anyone in their proximity or captured alone at an unspecified location, their distractions consume them to the point of being subsumed by their bodies, heads literally lost in thought. While we did enjoy visiting their melancholic vibe back in the day, the images now resonate with a whole new level of touching intensity. Sasha Bogojev: I want to start off with the limbs… Tony Toscani: How they’re exaggerated and such? Well, I think at first it was definitely not planned.

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A serendipitous mistake? It was kind of like a mistake, but more like a technical decision. I used to be way faster than I am now at painting. I slowed down a lot, but when I was really fast, I would kind of find an image and then work it out. I got really attracted by these tiny head figures because it really related to our current time where people are just kind of distracted a lot. They tend to be more distracted by phones or media or peer pressure, or try to fit into some social clique. So, people started using their awareness a lot less and their bodies a lot more because they still had to go on doing normal things in their everyday life, like going to the bathroom, eating, working, and sleeping. So, to me, it’s kind of like the human evolution in 2000 years, what we would all end up looking like. Yeah, I was going to call it an “alternative evolution.”

Right, and that’s why they tend to look like giants, as well. So, when I was working with that fast technique, it started building on this quirk of exaggerated limbs and these tiny heads. Which was funny because, I didn’t know, but a lot of people started emailing me and telling me that that’s a syndrome that a lot of people actually had. They kind of are in a state where they see their limbs extend more than they actually are. It’s called Alice in Wonderland syndrome. But I never knew this and I just recently found that out and it just came from my quirk of doing a fast technique that spiraled into a concept. The characters seem to be fashioned in a simplified way in terms of the spaces and the outfits they’re in. Is that on purpose? I think I’m trying really hard not to be too detailed in the sense that this is a specific person, or a specific place. I don’t want to say this is New York or

Above: Portrait by Sasha Bogojev

INFLUENCES

this is America. It could be anywhere in the world and anybody. They are meant to look average. What about the concept of time? I don’t think time really applies because it could be hundreds of years ago. Some things like a phone end up in an image, but I don’t really put details into the phone, because I don’t want it to be too stuck in a specific time. I don’t want it to have an iPhone symbol or anything like that, but have it just be a black brick. Same with the coffee mugs and computers. I don’t want to give people too many exact answers that they need to follow. I want them to have their own idea of what it could be. Whatever they can relate to, they can put it in that place, whether it is a book or something else. And what type of emotion do you think of when you make the work?

Well, our current state of melancholy and apathy is my biggest influence. I actually call these guys the “Daydreamers.” They are kind of a metaphor for our society. How we see ourselves in real life. Not how we imagine ourselves, like through social media. In reality, we are all united by our melancholy. Are you working from reference photos or do you have people model for your work? I use myself as a model at times. They all kind of have my face a little bit. Even the women, since I am a Mediterranean-looking person who’s white or beige-ish. But that’s only because I don’t know how to paint figures that well. So I have to kind of look at myself and see how my shadows look and how my fingers look, what color I should use and whatnot. That’s the reason why they look the way they do, because I don’t look at any pictures, or

Left: Extension, Oil on linen, 14" x 28", 2018 Right: Melancholy, Oil on linen, 24" x 30", 2018

print out any images or that kind of stuff. I have to use myself, look at myself in a mirror or something. And when you compose them, when you put them in these positions, is it derived from any particular references? No, most of the time I draw from my imagination, like a rough stick figure, and then it gets limbs, and it gets a head, and, once I rework that drawing over and over and over, then I transpose it onto a canvas. That canvas sometimes changes or it doesn’t change. But, roughly, that is the kind of drawing I come up with in my head, because these aren’t exactly fixed to places. They kind of have places; for example, this one reminds me a lot of where I grew up, with trees in the background behind a lake. And this is kind of like the gallery that I work at, but it’s very rough. I try not to show JUXTAPOZ .COM 43

INFLUENCES

44 SPRING 2021

Above: Social Anxiety, Oil on linen, 38" x 46", 2019

INFLUENCES

any details. Even with windows, you just see a blue space. No bars or anything, mostly because I don’t really have anything to reference. It’s too difficult to try and be realistic. That is why I like them to be more of a representation of that thing rather than being realistic. Apparently, for you, the process is as important as the result because you’re constantly developing technique and developing yourself. All the time. I feel like every painting has a slightly different technique. Is that satisfying or does it get frustrating? It’s always frustrating. It’s never exactly what I want it to be, but I have come to this agreement with myself that if it’s at least 70% or 80% of what I want, that’s enough for me. But it doesn’t always work out that way. I used to make a painting every day, one painting a day because I was really fast. And now it takes me about a month just to finish one work. Do you need a lot of focus when you work, and how does that work since you share the workspace with your wife, Adehla Lee? With these works, I do. My wife and I figured out a way. It was really difficult at first, but we somehow manage. We actually met at grad school. We went to grad school in New York at SVA, the School of Visual Arts, and our studios were completely separate. Even though you were in a place with 10 other studios around you, no one really bothers you. So, in a way, we’re kind of used to it now. And then when we moved in together, it was just hard because our studio was also our home, so we also had to figure out our eating situation, our cleaning situation and so on. But we have a rhythm down now and it works out perfectly. It doesn’t sound like there are podcasts, reruns of shows or favorite movies in the background for you? No, this is the most active it gets—my little ambient compositions and stuff. Adehla sometimes turns on podcasts, but not when she’s really focused, it’s more like when she’s drawing or sketching out something. But when she’s focused, it’s curtains closed, completely locked into the place, and at six o’clock—it’s dinner. And do you collaborate? Not in a sense that you work together, but do you give suggestions to each other? All the time. We talk about art all the time. Every day. Does it get spicy? At times, but in a good way. I feel like she’s always been my best teacher. I always realized

Above Couple In Bed, Oil on linen, 20" x 20", 2019

the parts of me that I have to fix, and her getting spicy or something like that is a perfect way of seeing what’s wrong with my work, or what’s wrong with how I see something. Because, when I first started painting, I was, in a way, very ignorant. I used to think, “Oh, I am the best artist. I can do this, I can do that, I can do whatever I want. It’s a free-for-all.” But she was, like, “Are you really looking at your paintings? You have too much of that ego part.” And then I started realizing, “Oh wow, now I really know I know nothing.” Because once I started realizing what she was saying, it started to compute, and then I took a step back and understood there was this ignorance that I was kind of trapped in. So, I love her feedback—on everything! She’s always been the best at that. And not only is she an amazing artist, she’s one of my favorite artists, so when it comes from a place of experience, it means a lot more to me—which is great, because, during every single meal, we talk about the stresses of art and how we can improve.

Turned out 2020 was a perfect year to take off. How did that work out for you? Unfortunately, the tragic coincidence just happened to work out that way. It’s pretty ironic. I desperately needed time and I found myself having all the time in the world. It was definitely a year of mixed emotions and tragedy. I had all this spare time to work on improving my skills and make more work. But it was also a time when everything got harder, not just for me but for everyone. Just going grocery shopping felt like work. It definitely took a toll on my painting. I also changed my technique quite a bit since the old one was requiring me to pull all-nighters, which later snowballed into severe insomnia. So the year seemed to be filled with tons of hard work and sleepless nights. It is kind of odd to say this now, but I feel like I am finally starting to get a handle on this new technique. But we will see. @tonyytoscani

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TRAVEL INSIDER

The Land of Fire and Ice David Molesky Travels to Iceland In the back courtyard of my favorite cafe in San Francisco, I heard a familiar intonation and, curious, asked if they were speaking Icelandic. “What, do you recognize my accent from a Sigur Rós video?” challenged one of the men, who was mildly surprised when I replied, “No, I lived there.” Intrigued, the Icelanders prodded me into sharing the story of living in Reykjavík’s former city library when it was owned by the painter Odd Nerdrum and how conversation evolved into a studio visit and a sale—making me the only non-Icelandic artist in the young businessman’s growing art collection. Years later, during the autumn of 2019, the collector and his wife visited me in Brooklyn and purchased another painting, Unfinished Breakfast. They also asked to put a large painting on hold for purchase the next year. Even as the world entered lockdown, they kept their word. The plan was for 46 SPRING 2021

me to transport the oversized, rolled-up canvas on the plane and then come to paint in their summer cabin, comfortably nestled within the mythical landscape of Iceland. Getting There One slight hurdle: due to the pandemic, US passport holders were not permitted into Nordic and EU countries. Luckily, a good friend had a contact working at the Icelandic Ministry of Foreign Affairs who took my case, and after a few months of processing, I was issued a letter permitting a narrow window of time to enter the country. Boston was the only airport offering service to Iceland, so in the company of a sparse, few fellow travelers, I passed through an empty TSA checkpoint, and then after a requisite 5 1/2 hours of direct-to-video movies, stumbled into Keflavik airport, ushered into a cubicle and assaulted with a cotton swab shoved up my nose. Welcome to Iceland.

After two hours of traversing ice and snow with the hum and crackle of spiked tires and gusts of wind that jolted the vehicle sideways, my driver delivered me, in the shadow of darkness, to the cabin. It was 9:30 am. A faint ink color swathed the sky where the sun would emerge two hours later. In the winter months, our star only makes a low arch above the horizon before dropping back down again, a bit clockwise from where it rose. This scarcity of light can deflate you like a wilted flower, so a gulp of Vitamin D supplements helps tremendously, as well as a diet of fatty fish which Iceland supplies in abundance. A silver lining to this pervasive dimmer switch are day-long sunrise/sunsets. If they can make their way through the variable atmospheres, the rays shift prismatically to every color of the rainbow. On rare occasions you can witness other strange phenomena such as sundogs, ice halos,

All photos: By David Molesky

TRAVEL INSIDER

polar stratospheric clouds, and on clear nights, the aurora borealis. Golden Circle The geothermally heated public pools and rustic “hot pots” scattered through the landscape make it possible to enjoy some sun outdoors even when it's literally freezing. Just a stone’s throw away from the cabin are some great options. The town of Flúðir is home to the Secret Lagoon, a natural hot tub the size of a pond. In the tiny village adjacent is Hrunalaug, a primitive hot spring tucked into the hillside at the end of a short hiking trail. Year round greenhouses also harness these geothermal vents. At Friðheimar in Reykholt, the largest producer of tomatoes in Iceland, you can bask in the warm humidity of the restaurant inside the greenhouse while enjoying their world famous tomato soup. To the North, along the road that leads into the highlands, are two famous natural wonders, Geysir

(the etymological source of the word geyser) and Gullfoss (golden falls) which is basically the Niagara of Iceland. Proceed west in the direction of Reykjavík to discover Þingvellir National Park, which boasts a huge lake and a canyon that physically manifests the North American and European tectonic plates moving away from each other. This area is also the founding site of the oldest operating parliament in the world—the Alþingi, which relocated to Reykjavík (smokey bay) in 1843.

taxes to him. Most of the vikings rejected Harold and battled him without success. In 874 AD, they began a 600 mile retreat due west, along with their livestock, sailing and rowing boats across the Atlantic Ocean to settle the shores of Iceland. The challenges and conflicts of their migration were passed down through generations of oral tradition and dutifully written in runic characters in the 13th century. (For a cinematic view of viking life, check out the cult classic When the Raven Flies.)

Viking Settlement In the Middle Ages, independent seafaring people from Western Norway had a summer tradition of sending their young men out across the sea—usually to Ireland and Scotland—with the goal of bringing back treasures and wives (in no particular order?) You want vikings, you get vikings. In the mid-800s, a warlord named Harold, in attempting to unify the Norse clans under his control, demanded that everyone pay tribute

To ensure the right people came to Iceland (the nice land), someone had the clever idea to name the land covered with ice Greenland and the land with green forests and pasture Iceland. For those who came to Iceland, the law stated that you could claim as much land as you could walk the perimeter of in one day—not always easy in the lumpy mosscovered lava fields. Amazingly, the settlement of Iceland did not involve the displacement of any native peoples, only the foxes and mice who, it is

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TRAVEL INSIDER

assumed, drifted over on ice. Apparently at that time, the land was covered in forest, but little did the settlers know that these trees were old growth. They looked just like young trees in Norway because the severe weather and wind stunted their growth. Eventually, the newcomers used all of the trees as firewood, and without shelter and root structures, powerful winds blasting off glaciers blew the topsoil into the ocean, making farming even more impossible. Things got grim and then even worse as the ash from volcanic eruptions caused a mini ice age. Huddling together into smaller crevices in their mud huts, they resorted to burning manure from livestock. To prevent starvation, nothing was wasted. Every part of the sheep was eaten and there was never a by-catch, thus the taste for debatably appetizing traditional delicacies such as skata or hákarl, the infamous rotting piss shark. Reaching a ripe old age was nearly impossible. Life itself required a determined blind optimism. If you didn’t have that, your chances of survival were basically zero. This very attitude, established by experiences of the early settlers, is fundamental to the Icelandic mentality. Their national motto “Þetta reddast” translates to “it will work out.” Landlocked and living in poor conditions, the scattered 48 SPRING 2021

settlements were vulnerable. A few centuries after the settlement, Iceland was first colonized by Norway and ultimately ended up under Danish rule through blue blood marriages in Scandinavia at the time. The Danes were harsh and confiscated many of Iceland’s most valuable possessions, including its self-esteem and confidence. From Third World to First World In May of 1940, Allied Forces led by the British temporarily occupied Iceland, forestalling the Nazis who had recently conquered Denmark and Norway. Although not welcomed at first, it turned out to be a godsend for Iceland, previously one of the poorest countries in Europe. It wasn’t uncommon for people born in the ’30s to be raised in the same kind of mud huts dating to centuries prior. In 1944, Iceland declared independence and took ownership of the airports that had been used as refueling stations for aircraft coming over from America. Although Icelandic engineers were aware of the potential for geothermal energy, its use didn’t become widespread until the oil crisis of the 1970’s. Just a minimal amount of drilling untapped an unlimited source of volcanic-level heat, giving Iceland full energy independence.

Now, homes are heated and electricity is generated for peanuts, with enough energy left over to outsource energy-intensive industrial projects like aluminium smelting. Influx of Tourism When I returned to Iceland for the first time in 11 years, I was surprised by the mass of foreigners. Tourism had just become the top industry, surpassing the position held by fisheries for a millenium. With a citizenry of only 350,000, half of whom live in Reykjavík, Iceland became flooded with 2.3 million tourists that year. Now, with borders closed to the US and very little travel coming from Europe, it's been a pleasure to return to the natural attractions that are blissfully less crowded than in decades. I’ve enjoyed spending my pandemic winter in Iceland, the only country outside of the US where I have felt truly at home. With my three month tourist Schengen visa soon to expire, I’m making plans to stay longer: I applied for an extended visa, and have been accepted to the Akureyri Art Museum residency on the north coast. And so I begin the next chapter of my personal Icelandic Saga. I’ve heard springtime on the arctic circle is magical. —David Molesky

IN SESSION

Mel Valentine Columbia College Chicago “When it came time to pick a college, I was super torn between biology studies and art,” says Mel Valentine. “I ended up going to community college for two years to prep for a biology degree, but every day when I got home, all I wanted to do was draw.” Valentine, who was born in Miami, attended seven different elementary schools before her family settled down, and so, was prepped to pivot and travel through the States searching for the right institution when she made the choice to study art at Columbia College Chicago. “My first week I attended the Illustration Student Group on campus, and honestly, never looked back. It was so freeing to meet so many incredible people my age making art that was very different from each other’s. I eventually became the president of the club, and it was an incredible experience helping new students feel a sense of community the way I needed to feel when I first came to Columbia.” 54 SPRING 2021

Founded by two women in 1890, Columbia is located in South Side Chicago and is known for its industry-canny teachers, a network connecting it to Chicago’s cultural ecosystem. In fact, school President Kwang-Wu Kim, a trained concert pianist and Philosophy undergrad, describes the urban institution as “revenge of the fringe.” For example, comedian and SNL star Aidy Bryant, actress and producer Issa Rae, and now, Who Am I? illustrator Mel Valentine. Valentine’s autobiographical piece addresses having to hide her identity, and she is gratified that so many fans related for different reasons. “With Comics, I love the ability to create anything I can possibly think of with zero limitation. I always describe it as making a dream movie with an infinite budget, and where everything I could possibly want exists and is at my disposal. I love being able to tell stories

exactly how I want to tell them with characters I know others can connect to.” We love to shout out places and people happily making art, and Mel’s is a great story. “I feel infinitely lucky to have come to Columbia. The illustration professors are all passionate people who love what they do. The advice and attention I received was out of this world. Chris Elio, Chris Arnold, Cheri Charlton, Jeremy Smith and Ivn Brunetti all helped me become the artist I am today. I also love Chicago so very much; the art scene here is incredible in so many ways, and the comic community here is so rich, diverse and friendly.” An inspiring start for spring! —Gwynned Vitello melvalentinev.com colum.edu

Above: Who Am I, Digital Illustration, 2019

Hunter Potter I’ll Wake Up Older

Hunter Potter, Football Season Is Over, 2020, Acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 72 x 96 inches

February 20 - March 27, 2021

ON THE OUTSIDE

Lone Wolf Sunset Up High With Helen Bur Meeting Helen Bur at the Artscape mural festival in Sweden was memorable in itself. I had borrowed her 60-foot boom lift as we anticipated her arrival. The night she flew into town, as I handed over the keys, I asked if she needed a video projector to sketch her mural on the massive 4-story wall that awaited. The way she looked at me—with this wisdom her eyes carry—I might as well have asked if she painted with noodles instead of brushes. She wasn’t judging the use of projectors, or critical of the question, but she’s clearly a purist, a magician with no need for technical support. Purists don’t use projectors, but they do pack Swiss army knives. Helen is one of the most powerful and resourceful muralists in the game. She paints like a new old 56 SPRING 2021

master, one with a more humble and empathetic voice. We recently mused over all we took for granted back then, traveling the world and making monumental paintings alongside new friends. Her articulation of our recent global lockdown experience is a needed reminder, so poignantly true: “When you’re wrapped up in expecting one thing, then you’re thrown off the boat, treading water. You’re gently reminded never to take anything for granted, to adapt and accept the gift of the unexpected and how that grows you as a person.” Kristin Farr: Is there a tension or difference you feel between your studio paintings and public murals? Helen Bur: There is definitely a wavering tension created in the shift between these two spaces.

The occupied space, the historic context and the awareness of who will be consuming the work each carry their influence. Leaving art school, you have this institutionalised and educated language. A canvas holds the whole history of art; almost everything that can be painted has been. That’s not the case with walls, you’re occupying a space in the sketchbook of the hoi polloi—everyone can doodle and consume regardless of language, but also everyone is talked to and visually impacted, whether they choose to be or not. Both spaces come with their own freedoms and to some extent, responsibility. It’s a matter of treading carefully between creating poetic or provocative work without it becoming exclusionary. I’m always trying to

Above: The Place That Makes You, Parenti, Calabria, Italy, for Gulia Urbana Festival, 2020

ON THE OUTSIDE

bridge the gap of language so the work I create can exist across these two spaces; but I think that often means it carries a tension and becomes the misfit in either room. How many murals have you painted, and what do you love most about painting in public? Hmm, it must be a good pocket full or two by now… maybe around fifty or sixty, and with the littlest ones, somewhere in the hundreds. The adrenalin and fresh air, the offerings, encounters, characters, insects, birds, sunsets from the top of the cherry picker—I really sound like a terrible romantic, huh? But it’s truly beautiful to be a street worker, surrounded by life, living. All things that are especially enticing right now in their impossibility as I sit in the UK’s third lockdown…

painting. I have such a long way to get to where I want with it. The work is currently fairly narrative driven, so it’s about retaining that whilst also pushing the language of the material itself. One of the painters I am in love with is Cecily Brown. You really have to work to find the figures lost in the paint, it’s almost like those magic eye books! Right now I'm in this purgatory between learning and unlearning the language of realism, always trying to loosen up, always accidentally overworking. Anyone can paint a finger with enough strokes, but the holy grail is to paint it with one. Talk about the circle, the hoop. What does this signature symbolize for you or others? The circle is this wonderful symbol that holds a real fist full of symbolic meaning in different cultures; on the one hand, it’s wholeness, oneness, totality, eternity, perfection. And on the other

hand, it’s repetition, constriction, confinement. So, broadly, it holds this duality and polarity that have always dominated the themes in my work. I also love how it simply interrupts the image. I try to intentionally depart far enough away from a natural situation that it sits on this sort of pre-surrealistic armchair. Like a little glitch of an uncomfortable or unpalatable thought, and how it might look if you could embody it. It’s enlightening to think about how you are portraying unsaid feelings. How do you find your subjects? Are they often real people, or amalgamations of those you meet or see? They are always real (as far as I know!) Friends, family, whoever is around me at a specific time. Usually, the concept is coincidental to the person, and the figures are mostly intended to be universal, symbolic, rather than a portrait of the sitter.

But it is terribly romantic. Painting outdoors is when I feel the most alive. I never see you working with assistants. It seems you are a lone wolf in your work? It’s true, I’m a lone hedgehog most of the time. I think bringing someone else into the process, you have to really know what you’re doing, and half the time, I really don’t. Also I’m an only child, and perhaps with a fair dose of utilitarian, self-reliance flowing in the veins too. Though I recently worked on a wall with an artist and friend, Vlada Trocka, and we shared this kind of unspoken rhythm. It was such a treat, so perhaps it will change. Generally though, I’m quite happy alone! It was impressive to see you painting in Ljusdal. Aw, thank you—you too! I think I was on number four of back-to-back projects when I reached Sweden that time, so I was almost on auto-pilot! I still have my “Un-Fuck the World” T-shirt from Norra Station Gallery there, which seems to get more relevant by the day. No kidding. What are your key tools for painting outdoors? A little pump spray is something that was a bit of a game changer for me, strangely, especially in hot weather, to be able to keep everything wet— the wall, the brushes, the palette, so you can work the latex more like oil paint. Aside from that, the biggest brushes I can find, rollers, a chalk-line, lots of containers for mixing colours, a nice scrap of wood for a palette, gaffer tape and my trusty Swiss army knife. Talk about the balance of realism and abstraction that you look for. When does the balance feel right? This is one of the eternal beautiful battles of

Top: I be lady O, Dakar, Senegal, 2018 Bottom Right: Self Reliance (one panel), Animation, Oil on 5 panels, 12.5" x 12.5", 2019 Bottom Left: Boundary (one panel), Animation, Oil on 4 panels, 16.5" x 16.5", 2020

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ON THE OUTSIDE

How was your 2020? Where did you stay most of the time, and what’s been your latest subject of interest? For the first half of 2020, my home was where I've been based for the last couple of years—the Warehouse community in North London, UK. It was a house with a cat, a dog and 12 people, with a wide range of ages, interests, professions, etc. So I've sort of been constantly surrounded by people and had this wonderful insight into communal living, the dynamics of how different people live, feel, function and relate with each other. The dial turned up to 10 when lockdown happened. In turn, these people, isolation, reflected against the wider socio-political context, all very much became my subject matter. I’ve also had some big changes in my personal life that of course have found their way into the painting too. I almost got on a plane to Australia in March just before the first lockdown, but that was cancelled, along with a string of other projects—same story for lots of other artists, performers and musicians, of course. I adore the travel, but I suppose when 58 SPRING 2021

you’re wrapped up in expecting one thing, then you’re thrown off the boat, treading water. You’re gently reminded never to take anything for granted, to adapt and accept the gift of the unexpected and how that grows you as a person. Overall, I’ve felt very lucky to have the space and capacity to keep making in the studio. I also have been working with Void Projects, we organized Home Mural Fest during the first lockdown, and managed a trip to Kosovo to reunite and collaborate. Keeping that artist community was cardinal. Tell me about the Empty Walls festival. I co-directed Empty Walls with my great friend, collaborator and artist Erin Holly when we were both quite fresh out of art school in Cardiff, Wales. We were also running this big community art space called The Abacus in an old bus office, whilst working in a music bar at night to pay the rent. It was such a crazy time. But, basically, we invited our favorite artists to come and paint some walls; Hyuro, Phlegm, David De La Mano, Kera, Run, Zed

One, Jo¥, Russ and more all came and slept on our sofa. I was so young and in awe, and did the whole thing with so little money and experience, but it was such an eye opener and so humbling. I really have a lot to thank them all for. What’s in progress in your studio right now? Right now I’m working on paintings for a solo show coming up at Saatchi Gallery in London, which was postponed from last November to March, and could potentially be postponed again. It’s providing a great dangling carrot for now, regardless! What and where is the next mural you hope to be painting? I’ll be painting in Madrid for Urvanity in May. I hope to create a piece that celebrates female strength, defiance and unity as a little personal tribute to the late and much-loved beautiful soul and incredible artist, Tamara Djurovic [AKA Hyuro]. @abcdefghelen helenbur.com

Above: If you can stand, stand together and push others higher, The Cabot Theatre, Beverly, Massachusetts, 2019

ART PRIZE 2021 CALL FOR ENTRIES GLOBAL EXPOSURE + OVER US$45,000 WORTH OF CASH & PRIZES TO BE WON Entries open to all representational visual artists in all mediums and styles from realism and hyperrealism, to pop surrealism and lowbrow

2021 AWARD CATEGORIES Overall Winner, RAYMAR Traditional Art Award, INPRNT Photography Award, iCanvas Digital Art Award, Yasha Young Projects Sculpture Award visit beautifulbizarreartprize.art for more information | Entries close 17 July 2021 Artwork by [L-R]: 2020 Winner of the Yasha Young Projects Sculpture Award, Kristine & Colin Poole; Winner of the 2020 Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize, Phillip A Singer

SPONSORS

BOOKS

Bisa Butler: Portraits On the cover of Bisa Butler’s Portraits, a six-year old girl stands composed, brave and ready, about to emigrate from Jamaica to the US. Her face beams in luminous, golden light, her hair tied in lemon yellow ribbons, all radiating against a deep blue, which might be the ocean, might be the night sky. Color and light stun, like the majesty of stained glass, as the layers and patterns of her portrayal compel a long look and a bit of awesome wonder. The artist describes herself as, “Fiber artist, teacher, wife and mother,” and speaks with pride in equal intonation for each role. That’s befitting of a woman who began art studies at Howard University, but then pivoted when she felt, “The paintings were flat, they looked like every other painting.” A fan of Romare Bearden, she appreciated the legacy and dignity in quilting and proceeded with her first project, a small oven mitt. Now she’s making art history. Even this jewel box of a book, a humble 8 by 12 inches, speaks to how she understands the elemental, as she recalls being on the bus, captured by the beauty of a fellow passenger, and the awareness of, “Seeing a heart of gold, but they’re not recognized.” This catalog, published by the Art Institute of Chicago, accompanies Butler’s recent show, which presents layered stories that throb with vibrating color, multi-cultural pattern and lyrical texture. Essays on quilting, photography and art history accompany the 21 full-page spreads, which are richly referenced with flavoral dashes of poetry from Muddy Waters, Tupac Shakur and Maya Angelou. —Gwynned Vitello Art Institute of Chicago, artic.edu

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WHAT WE’RE READING

Ramen Forever: An Artist’s Guide to Ramen First thing’s first—I love ramen. Love might not even do my feelings justice: I literally think about ramen as the food option, every single meal. My Tokyo visits equate to ramen served as fast-food, dinner food, friendship bondingfood, breakfast, lunch, airport food and everywhere else in between. I have memories of ramen that probably take up more space in my brain than should be allowable. So when artist and curator Yarrow Lazer-Smith, AKA Yarrow Slaps, put together Ramen Forever: An Artist’s Guide to Ramen, it made perfect sense. There is a ritual with eating ramen that suffuses culture but there is also the unique appeal of being liked by everyone. Slaps is onto something with this “avant-garde cookbook,” which he affectionately calls, “An illustrated love letter to Ramen.” Featuring cover art by Kristen Liu-Wong and a collection of stories, illustrations and recipes from Slaps’ friends and fellow artists, it’s also a diary of his own edible experiences, describing memorable meals and conversations with top ramen chefs from around the world. As an art book, it’s a sensory vision. As a cookbook, it offers more than food for thought. When Slaps refers to his adventure as, “The rabbit hole of ramen,” you get the sense that what started off as an eclectic look at his favorite nosh became something richer and more comprehensive. In over 300+ pages, Ramen Forever won’t just make you pine for a barstool in a ramen shop, it will also leave you thinking about the special relationship between food and art cultures, the art of the cookbook, and the obsessions we have with each. —Evan Pricco SWIM Gallery, ramenforever.com

Hayao Miyazaki It’s interesting to look at the books on this page, whether the American obsession for gourmet ramen or the gripping representations of Bisa Butler and consider how cherished an artist connection can be. We say this thinking about the select filmmakers who, over the last few decades, spark a passion in their audience, who possess a rare combination of innovation, feeling and fantasy. Think of Wes Anderson, for sure, or the early films of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. And Hayao Miyazaki, who has been making extraordinary films for nearly four decades, singular in their ability to capture our collective mood through animation and fantasy. So many times over the past twenty years, I’ve heard fellow writers and cinephiles remark, “I don’t like fantasy or animated films, but I love Miyazaki.” From My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle, Miyazaki has changed the way critics look at the power of animated film, but also the way we perceive animation as an art form that deserves to be examined like a moving exhibition. In this new book, simply called Hayao Miyazaki, published in conjunction with an inaugural exhibition at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles in collaboration with Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli in Tokyo (slated for late 2021) by author Jessica Niebel, we get an in-depth look at the artist Miyazaki and his remarkable studio. His influence over a generation of artists is etched in the history books, and his cross-cultural metaphors are universal. For me, his lasting impact will always be the psychological depth and complexity of his animated characters who dwell in worlds beyond our imagination. This is a monograph for a true legend. —EP Delmonico Books, delmonicobooks.com

Yusuke Hanai A Most Happy Balance Interview by Gwynned Vitello Portrait by Rio Yamamoto

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Above: Conversation, Acrylic on canvas, 51" x 63", 2020

Y

asuki Hanae’s surfers, tipsy revelers and peaceful family of protestors, are neither victor nor victim. The surfer is one with the wave, the drinkers are propped up by gravity and each other, and the protestors will bundle up and be back tomorrow. Like the title of one of his shows, It Will Be Alright, Hanai reminds us that we've all been there and done that, but tomorrow is another day. Modestly calling himself an illustrator who “draws pictures to ease the mind,” he is a grateful observer of the world around him, seeing the stories and distilling them with great empathy into images that aim to be “solid and beautiful.” A curvy green leaf, floating sea creature and stubbly bearded truck driver all have a place on this earth, each deserving a full measure of dignity. Gwynned Vitello: When I walk my dog in the morning, especially on the weekends, I laugh when I see huge TV screens through the windows, so many of them showing

Above: Mural for Vans HQ, California, 2019

cartoons, and surprisingly, so many old ones that generations of kids have grown up with. One of my favorites was Bugs Bunny being captured by hungry humans, slowly being lowered into a cauldron of hot water, dipping his carrot in and munching away. You must have had a similar experience. Yusuke Hanai: When I was a kid, yes, like all the other children, I liked to watch a lot of cartoons. There was no cable or satellite TV, and of course, no internet or YouTube. It was just over-theair television, so I was always excited to check the time, sit in front of the TV and wait for my favorites. I watched many Japanese cartoons like Kitaro of the Graveyard and Ultimate Muscle. Somehow, there were some American cartoons mixed in with the Japanese, Tom and Jerry and all the Looney Tunes. They looked so cool to us kids because they brought to us a different culture. Since the 1950s, the Japanese people have had such a longing for America, for the fashion, music and lifestyle. I was born in 1978, and I would say

that my generation was the last where elders told us that everything American is the best. After my generation, the young people who came after could use the internet and then see the world more equally. But still, I saw the United States through those cartoons, and they were my first experience with American cultures. They stuck in my mind and are still there. You’ve said that you did not excel in sports as a kid, so how did you get into surfing? What did you like most about it when starting out? I did say that, even though I played soccer from second grade until junior high school. I really did like soccer, but I was chubby and had asthma, so I had to quit in my first year of high school. After that, I felt like I had nothing to do, so it was just me and some friends killing time at a cafe in our neighborhood. It turned out that the owner of the cafe was a surfer and he offered to take us out to go surf, but in the beginning, we couldn’t get any waves! At the time, in the ’90s, there were only short boards at the surf point. Every surfer rode

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on a thin, short board; the younger ones were not allowed to ride mid-length or long boards—so a beginner couldn’t catch any waves! For us, the surfing was tiring and scary, but the owner of the cafe kept taking us out anyway. We had nothing to do, so we would just go with him. Going out to the beach is always good, right? I still wasn’t getting a wave, but kept paddling out and slowly, then suddenly, I could get one. I found myself getting into surfing—this was a thing I could do myself. No need to try and make the team, and no need to keep comparing myself to others. Of course, I like to go surfing with friends, but on the water, what a feeling that it’s just me and the wave. I don’t have to think of anything. Japanese parents are famous for having very high expectations for their children. I wonder how yours felt about you spending so much time surfing, and then deciding to go into the field of art. Did they want you to do something else? How did you feel about school? I was always a lazy and unambitious kind. I couldn’t seem to stick to any one thing, even soccer, so even though I played a long time, as I said, I dropped it. What I was interested in was art, but my parents told me a big NO. They wanted me to go to college and become a businessman. There was nothing in that field I dreamed about doing, so yeah, I just went along and went to college to study economics. They didn’t seem to care about me surfing, and they really didn’t know much about it. While a college student, I took a part-time job at a cafe and bar, a bar started by the guy who took us to surf when I was in high school. And this kind of started my path. For the bar, we actually dug the ground and built the walls. We were making the bar by DIY, and when I had time, I would always go there to do work as a carpenter. It was such a fun experience and I think it created my DIY spirit. We made almost everything ourselves, so when it was time to make a sign for the bar, it made sense to be my job. I was better at drawing and painting than the others, so I painted a 4ft by 10ft sign, made a flyer and the menu all by hand. That was my life; surf in the morning, go to college during the day and work at the bar at night. I know you ended up going to the Academy of Art in San Francisco, so you traveled pretty far to get to art school. There must be a lot of art schools in Japan. How did you end up over here? There are many in Japan, but it wasn’t going in that direction for me. Like I said, I worked at the bar and made menus, event flyers and posters when work was slow. I was really into making graphics. Even though my parents didn’t want me to go to art school when I had considered that in high school, I was now making okay money at the bar, enough so that when I was 23, I had enough to attend art school. But I felt too old at 23 to go locally because in Japan everybody goes right after high school.

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Top: Better together. Mural, 10th Street Elementary School, Downtown Los Angeles, 2018 Bottom: Friends, Acrylic on paper, 15" x 18", 2019

"I don’t like to draw superheroes or perfect people. Our lives are always up and down." Looking back to when I was 21 and traveled by Greyhound bus from San Francisco through Los Angeles and San Diego to Mexico, I remember staying in so many different cities but really liked San Francisco. I read Jack Kerouac. I listened to ’60s hippie rock and saw as much as I could of Beautiful Losers artists like Barry McGee, Margaret Kilgallen and Chris Johanson. So really, I was dreaming of San Francisco. I decided to live there and study art in my favorite city.

Thank you. I liked looking at a book called The Art of Rock. I wanted to look at all the old posters for the shows, and also old copies of Surf magazine—oh, and also Murphy by Rick Griffin. And, as I told you, even though I had made money at the bar doing graphics, it was just a part-time job. Eventually, lots of local surfers and musicians would come to the bar every night, and fortunately, they would ask me to make posters and T-shirt graphics for them. Little by little, I could make money by doing art.

Between making signs and posters for the bar and listening to psychedelic music, I’m figuring your first jobs involved music. And your sign painting is so compelling—did looking at posters and album covers influence your work?

How did that develop into painting murals? Do you work alone when doing them, and how often do you make them now? I sent some photos of murals for an elementary school in California. My friend Erik is a teacher

Left: Beach Combing, Acrylic and plastic trash at beach on paper, 12" x 16", 2019 Top right: Tim and Gracie, Acrylic on canvas, 46" x 46", 2020 Bottom right: At a Bar, Acrylic on paper, 8" x 7", 2019

in Paramount, and I found this very strange, hearing that there is no art and music education in public elementary schools in the US, that only wealthy schools really offer it. Erik loves art and knows how important it is to be creative, especially for kids. He was upset about that, so he started free after-school classes with his friends, artists like Shepard Fairey, Rich Jacobs, Tim Kerr, Ray Barbee, Matt Leines, Travis Millard, Mel Kadel, Nat Russell, Harshi, Hidutch, Geoff McFetridge and many more. Basically, each artist gives a subject for students every month, and at the end of the school year, usually the first week of June, there is an art show. The students have their art on the wall of the school cafeteria. Musicians play music in their schoolyard and guys like Mike Watt, Tim Barbee and Tim Kerr join in. You can check it out on YouTube. I’ve painted five murals for elementary schools in California so far. Be Active and Apple Tree are murals for schools. I actually didn’t have much experience doing that before, but I tried doing it for the students. If I could help kids have a positive attitude, it makes me very happy. YUSUKE HANAI JUXTAPOZ .COM 67

One Foot in Front of the Other is a mural I made for a low-income section of Kawasaki, Japan, which is a tough place to live. Most of the dwellings are priced at a daily rate. They are single occupancy and have about the same amount of floor space you would have in a tent. Many of the occupants are factory workers that are financially struggling to stay alive. I hope the mural helps them feel a little more appreciated and that it provides them too with a daily dose of positivity! What kid of materials do you use these days? And do you especially like the color green? I’m thinking of an indoor mural you painted that has trees, leaves and birds in a bright green,

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all the same size, as if to say that they are all equally important. I mainly use acrylic house paint for murals, and for canvas work, I like golden acrylic. That mural was one I painted for the Vans Headquarters. I’ve collaborated with them for capsule collections in 2016, then in 2019, which was when we partnered together for the mural. The particular color in the mural is what I used in the collection. Another beautiful mural is the one you painted for the Hytter Lodge by Tatshina Lake in Japan. It tells me about how much you respect the environment and the out of doors, which you showed in the Vans piece we just

talked about. Did that come from where you grow up or from surfing? I have to say that when I started surfing, I didn’t care much about the environment. But since I started surfing, I knew I wanted to swim and surf in clean water. And I don’t like to surf at a beach covered with trash. The environment is the most important thing to me. The beaches near my town are losing sand, and we do a beach clean every month. Sadly, the trash in the ocean is mainly from the town. Surfers are sensitive to changes in the marine environment and we can feel the water temperature getting warmer. It even seems that the seaweed is decreasing, seaweed the ocean creatures need for their

Above: One foot in front of the other. Mural, Kawasaki, Japan, 2020

food and shelter. And last year we had a serious disaster from the typhoon. We have to change before it’s too late. How can we live without nature if we are part of it? You also illustrated the theme for the “Better Together” campaign. I love how the apple tree actually looks happy making a gift of fruit—the group looks like they appreciate and value the gesture. I guess partnership is another important quality for you. That is a mural from an elementary school in downtown LA. I saw that tree in front of the wall and I wanted to paint it. I wanted to show something happy about being with friends, so I painted the kids working together to pick the apples. I wanted to show how things are easier and enjoyable when you are together with friends. On the other hand, many of your pieces show guys sitting and sighing in front of an empty liquor bottle. What did you observe about people when you were tending bar? I don’t like to draw superheroes or perfect people. Our lives are always up and down. The guy sighing could be you, could be me, could be a friend, because we all have the experience of being down. Life is not so easy. We do stupid things we regret. Nobody is perfect, but we all have the power to laugh away the problems in life. At the bar, people talk about their failures and regrets. At first, they feel down, but after we talk, we can laugh away the problems. Here’s 2020, with so many people struggling with the pandemic and discrimination. But we are here. We could be down, but we will stand up and move forward one day. That is what I want to say, but my English is horrible (maybe my Japanese too!) So I draw and paint. I do see that in your work, that your characters never seem down and completely out. There always seems to be a sense that tomorrow will be better. Maybe it’s that you draw a lot of folks literally hanging onto each other, really supporting each other. Thank you for understanding. Like I said, life is not so easy. But if people could get together, the future is bright. You also show people alone, kind of contemplating life, as well as groups headed to the beach—or a protest march! Do you have a need to balance time alone and time socializing? I don’t like great big groups of people. I don’t like a big party. Basically, I like to be alone or with just a few friends. I have a wife and two daughters, so most of the time I spend with them or alone. I understand that big groups have more power when we need to make changes, but I also don’t like the pressure to conform. Everything needs balance.

Above: Clouds Go Way, Acrylic on paper, 12.5" x 16.1", 2020

So, how do you set up your studio to create art but maintain the kind of life you want to lead? What does it look like, and do you have a schedule? I found a small shed near my favorite surf point. Fishermen used to use it for storage, and it’s been here almost 90 years. I bought it and renovated it with my friends. I can walk there, and if there’s a swell, I can walk over with my friends. I wake at 6:00 am and get my daughter off to school at 7:30. I walk to my studio, which takes about 40 minutes. A car would take 10 minutes, but it’s a good time to think about many things. I also like to walk (good for backaches also!) and I work till

about 5:00 pm. If there’s a wave, I surf. Then I’m back home by 6:00 for dinner with my family You’re someone who values both time alone and time observing everyday people, both your friends and strangers on the street. And that’s what you paint. Yes, exactly. I paint ordinary places and people. For me, ordinary people are freaks and weirdos, some crazy, some on a bummer. Everybody is different, and what is not normal to you is normal to somebody. I hope everybody can live as who they are. @hanaiyusuke

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Shannon T. Lewis A Performance of Many Lifetimes Interview by Shaquille Heath Portrait by Eric Tschernow

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hat moment with a Shannon T. Lewis work can feel a bit like a haunting. You may find yourself questioning reality. Wondering if you are present within this world— or another? Shadows of the past emerge, while limbs of tomorrow reconfigure before your eyes. What is seen might be scorched with jolts of terror, maybe bubbling over with pleasure, or something in between. According to Lewis, all are exactly right. With new representation from Chicago’s Mariane Ibrahim Gallery, Lewis pulls from ghosts all over the world, from her ancestors in Trinidad and Panama, to those on the pages of Vogue magazine. Weaving a wealth of strands, she

explores the art of performance—when it is intentional, and when it is second nature. Her use of assemblage honors Black femininity, asserting the Black body with power and vulnerability in spaces too often regulated and structured. It is, in fact, beyond intention. Lewis is ready to dizzy your head with questions. The answers may not be soothing, but the turbo spin will drive you into asking for more. Shaquille Heath: Black person to Black person, how are you taking care and where are you finding your joy? Shannon T. Lewis: This is a good question… I feel like that's what 2020 has been about. Like trying to find these pieces of little simple joys

everywhere. And it's been like, a Zoom meetup with friends every week or a watch party. It’s food maybe… I just got back into Toronto and I just had a roti for the first time in, like, a year and a half. Hell yeah! [Laughing] Yeah, it’s like all the food of my childhood that I’m about to devour. It’s just the little things. Being able to go for a walk in the summer after being so cooped for a while—that all of a sudden became a special occasion. You mention being holed up. You were in Berlin, right? What has it been like for you, working through Covid? The first wave wasn't as bad in Berlin, so there was a little bit of the sense that it was happening somewhere else. But we had to stay home for… maybe two months? Then this summer was weirdly kind of normal. And now it’s back to notso-normal. Right when I was leaving, everything shut down again. Were you able to still have access to your studio? Or were you making work in your home space? I thought that was what I was going to do. I was very ambitious. I brought home some canvases, and I was like–yeah! I’m going to make work during lockdown! And… it just did not happen at all. I couldn't focus. And it also felt like… the world is falling apart. Does it matter if I finish these paintings? kind of thing. And it really took a long time for me to replenish that energy, that creative energy. So, I really didn’t start painting again, I think, until, maybe August. And it took going back to the studio. Being able to regain that energy, how were you able to channel it again? I mean, it’s other artists, and looking at their work. Right before we shut down again, I was able to see some really great shows in Berlin. I saw Jenna Gribbon, this painter from New York that I love. I also saw this other show at Gropius Bau. For me, it’s film. It’s also music. It’s reading. I’m really big into fiction. I think a lot of my inspiration kinda comes from, like, Toni Morrison. I read Sula at least once a year. It’s just a spell that I need to stay on this earth. It’s those kinda things. I just read this Helen Oyeyemi book, Boy, Snow, Bird. That was just so incredible. It’s about the breaching of all these different worlds. I’m interested in anything that’s around those topics.

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That’s what immediately struck me about your work, these different worlds that you produce. Worlds that exist almost mythically within themselves. Can you talk about that? It’s about this kind of beautiful monstress for me. That’s really the world we kind of live in, a world mixed with all of these terrors and horrors that underpin everything. But on top of it, there is

All images: Courtesy of the artist and Mariane Ibrahim Above : Promissory Notes, Oil on wood, 6" x 8", 2018

Above: This Beauty Will Drown Me, Oil on canvas, 27.5" x 39", 2020

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Above: Fixture of Fantasy, Oil On canvas, 9.5" x 11.75", 2019

beauty, there is joy, there is empathy. And, you know, there’s those small moments. And they all kind of mix together to make such a beautiful monster. Or, these otherworldly creatures. What do you try to explore through your work in showcasing these alternate worlds? It’s… it’s about fragmentation. I have an immigrant background, and my family’s from Trinidad, though just a little before that, we were from Guyana and from Panama, and all these different places. And I almost feel like I have this line of people who have always been packing a suitcase and are ready to go. There’s kinda this idea about home as a moving target. As an immigrant, you're so much about performance in the new place that you're in. That’s really what undergirds a lot of my work, as well as the moving between worlds. The moving between classes. The moving between geographies. You behave differently in different places and spaces, and you’re kinda more aware of the performance when you grow up like that. And for me, the fragmentation and the appendages and the arms and the limbs that you gain or you lose, are kinda like an adaptation. A skill that you learn. And it’s also play! It’s useful and you need it. Sometimes it’s hard work, but sometimes it’s also play. I love that you call it performance. Hearing that word, you often think of intentionality rather than the performance of necessity. Yeah, these kind of coded ways that are passed on to you. Or that you pick up and become instinct. Ways you learn, but you didn’t think in terms of learning... but you did! I like to play with these sorts of things, to stop and pause on these moments, and be like, Oh! How did you learn to do that? You know? It’s something that’s always with you. Even when you’re not thinking about it. You don’t turn it off, basically. I once heard you talk about focusing on what you called the “in-between” moments. What power do you find in the moments of before and after? I feel like those before and after moments really speak to how much work it was to get to that performance, in a moment. It’s all the lead up. And was it work? Was it a contortion? Was it hard to get to this moment? Or was it pleasure? And you can kind of read that in the before and after. And then, for me, these moments of before and after, and the work of the performance, speak to these histories, too. Like, what did it take to get here? What did it take to get into this room to perform to you? What happened two generations ago? You know—if my parents didn’t immigrate at a certain time, what would

that have done? So it brings all these histories together at this moment. When you meet somebody, there’s a whole history. Whether that’s colonial history or geographic history, or political history, it all comes to this moment. And the before and after sort of brings these kinds of ghosts, or these traces in. Being a Black woman, when I was meditating on this, I feel like we, more than most other groups of people, consistently are in this performance mode. And when we step out of these performances, into the “in between moments”—that’s a risk. Yeah, yeah, precisely. We’re really socialized to be, like, a very specific way. We already kind of

Above: Solid Intruston Of The Legendary Into The Real World (detail), Oil on canvas, 31.5" x 47.25", 2019

understand the regulating structures as Black women, right? You don’t want to appear too angry. You don’t want to appear too aggressive. You have to be strong. So we understand what happens if we slip out of these performances. I want to talk about these moments because I feel like it’s humanizing. Ya know, [laughing] we’re human beings and we have multifaceted ideas and energies. And what about these other moments? For me, it’s a real celebration for other Black women to read these moments. And to read this slip. And to read the works. It’s a space for, like, play; a safe space for Black women to experience pleasure, intimacy, and this kind of vulnerability that we’re not usually afforded. SHANNON T. LEWIS JUXTAPOZ .COM 75

Totally. That was a question that I had about these moments—the vulnerability. Was that your intention, or was it maybe just the result of highlighting these moments? No, for sure, I really want to speak about vulnerability and intimacy. I think, also, vulnerability becomes these moments where we create bonds with one another, just as humans, and social connection. So, vulnerability is an important space, even for internal growth. I want to foster these moments and give them protection and give them a space. Ya know, because we need them. Are the figures in your works a personal reflection? Or are they reflections of others? They’re definitely reflections of myself, and aspects of myself, but also of the women around me. My mom, my aunts, my friends. Sometimes I won’t be so aware until I’ve talked about a piece

a million times. And then I’m like, oh my god, that was completely about this person… So they’re definitely real. They’re based on real life and the people around me. But also like, the general Zeitgeist and Black femme culture. Do you feel like these figures exist in this world, or do they inhabit a realm of their own? Hmm. I think the thing with them is that they do exist! I think they move between the boundaries of the real, and also the aspirational future world that we hope to live in. And they also live in the past as a kind of connection between all of these. That’s why I think of them… not like ghosts, but as performing the same function as ghosts, in that they tie you to the present, and future, and the past. They’re all of them. And they move between these spaces. That’s what makes them a little bit beautiful—but also a little bit terrifying too. Because you know that’s

"I want to play with the unconscious archives that people always build up." tapping into something that’s a lot bigger, I think, in their connection to something a lot bigger. So, in this world, you are indeed an artist. I’m really interested in the moment when you actually realized that. That’s a good question… I always really liked drawing and painting, which my parents really encouraged. And I had a teacher in high school who said, “Oh! You should go to art school!” And I thought… there are art schools? Like, I never… that was not something that was ever mentioned to me before. Ever since then, I knew that was something I wanted to pursue. I think I got quite lucky that I had probably the only Carribean parents who were like, “Okay, yeah, go to art school.” I want to talk more about your process. As a collage artist, where do you source your components? A lot of it is collecting images from magazines. I’m constantly tearing apart Vogue or other fashion magazines, as well as design magazines. It could be things on the internet, but I’m always carrying a catalogue of images. And I’m always kind of cutting them out and playing with them until I find the pieces and the spaces where they belong! Thinking of an image that I just painted this year, I realized, when I was talking to a friend, that I had actually been carrying around that image for five years. I just didn’t know what I was gonna use it for until the right thing came along. So there’s always this kind of play, and puzzle, and jumble that comes along with it. I’m curious, what are the questions you want people to ask when they experience your work? What I really want people to do is to deconstruct their own kind of conclusions. Not necessarily to change them, but to get people to ask why they think the things that they do. It goes back to this idea of the slow-read. I kinda want people to stop and figure out how they've come to develop these sorts of ideas. I want to play with the unconscious archives that people always build up. We get so many images all the time which attach to certain people, but

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Above: Easy Conception of an Unreal Better, Oil on canvas, 47.25" x 57.9", 2020

not others. I want people to sit, stop and examine those archives, then think, “Okay, how did I develop these ideas?” and maybe, “Was I wrong about something? Was I right about something?” It’s not necessarily persuasion, but more about the scrambling. I want people to stop and sort of scramble their convictions a bit. Well, 2020 was quite the year, and we are talking at the end of it. How do you think this year has changed your art practice, if at all?

Above: Sometimes But Not Very Often, Oil on canvas, 23.6" x 23.6", 2016

Yeah, I think for me, it really made me push and make my work more explicit. I think the thing that has always undergirded my work, no matter how I dress it up, and it's beautiful, is also this idea of the politics underneath. What bodies do we deem worthy to protect? What bodies have access? These are always the questions underneath. But now I feel that I’ve pushed this more to the forefront. Not a question for the back burner, but for Now. Like, who has access to healthcare? Who can stay home? Who can travel?

Can you have entry to another country? These are questions that people who have immigrant backgrounds were asking before, but now a lot of us in Western countries are placed in the position for the first time. So, I think I’m pushing these more to the forefront. It’s time to think about it. @lolas_venus @marianeibrahimgallery

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Ania Hobson Cool, Calm Composer Interview by Gwynned Vitello Portrait by Jahed Quddus

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icture a dog lolling around on his back, legs akimbo, or a cat awakening from its nap, stretching and ready to stalk. A tree in the winter, shedding leaves but not its dignity. Ania Hobson grew up in the country, painting the surrounding movement and natural color, and with that keen eye for posture and perspective, she now paints portraits of people comfortable and confident, whether lost in thought or deep in conversation. There’s beauty in loose strands of hair and the shadows of a face. It’s life and that’s good.

surrounded by deep, thick forest which became our playground, and here we explored and played for hours. Those childhood experiences have become deeply embedded in my psyche. This focus on animals and nature continued when we moved to Suffolk—and that connection has never left me. Suffolk is my base, with affordable studio rent, but it’s also so close to London. An hour on the train takes you straight into Liverpool Street. As much as I love Suffolk, though, I am slowly considering moving to a bigger city where connecting with other artists and exhibitions is more accessible.

which made me take an interest. I remember sitting in our barn where my mother kept a few goats. I would spend hours sitting next to them in the straw, with their newborns curled up next to them, with the natural light dropping down through the barn windows. There was something so calming about that. Even though I was one of three siblings, we were taught how to spend time alone watching nature, which I feel has developed into me being an observer. Drawing animals from life at the beginning was a great practice which taught me to be quick with my mark making, which is something that I still use today.

Gwynned Vitello: I figure most British artists work out of London, and maybe Bristol, Bath or Liverpool, but how many have studios in Ipswich in Suffolk County? My dad’s family were from the town, so I’m curious to know more about it and why you’ve chosen to stay in what’s been called the “curious county.” Ania Hobson: I moved to Suffolk when I was five, but I spent my first years in Wyre Forest, Worcestershire where I was born. Our house was

The rural setting of childhood must have really informed your first expressions of art. Tell me about those first impulses. Did animals and trees just naturally present themselves as subjects? Did your parents encourage you, and did you have the luxury of alone time? I think both my parents being zoologists was the starting point for me, and also that we were privileged to live in a rural village. They taught us from an early age about nature and wildlife,

Although you started sketching animals, portrait painting is considered your artistic identification. Painting people is richer with potential, but tell me about the similarities in your portrayals of man and beast (as I ask, I’m covered in dog hair at the moment). The transition from animals to humans came slowly but naturally. Growing up on a small holding, I had learnt to be sensitive to the animals’ needs, health and moods. So I learnt what was

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Above: My Blue, Paying me an Unexpected Visit, Oil and impasto on canvas, 61" x 41", 2020

Above: Two Moods, Oil on Canvas, 39" x 47", 2020

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going on. Then I started drawing figures at primary school, at the stage when we become self aware and aware of the people around us. As I got older, I became fascinated by other people and how they react to each other. Humans are alway trying to read and analyse others’ body language and unspoken ways of communication. This, for me, was magnified because I had difficulties with my hearing until the age of 4. I was constantly reading faces and reactions. I used to draw out all of these characters in my lessons and then turn them into comic strips as requests for my classmates. I feel like I have subconsciously reverted to this in my current work. In what way did going to art school erase any early habits and what natural proclivities did it strengthen? My university experience was not entirely positive. I felt that the vision that my tutors believed in didn’t fit where I was coming from

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at all. I came within two months of failing my degree and was being told that portraits wouldn’t get me anywhere, although painting faces was my passion. I felt like it truly represented me and I wanted to portray this in my art. I didn’t want to change my work for the “right route” into the art world, but to be honest and truthful to who I am and how I see the world through my eyes. Feeling misunderstood did make me even more determined than ever to continue with figurative painting, which I guess turns out to be a positive outcome of my degree experience. How long before you went to the Florence Academy of Art? What was the most important aspect of that training, and what was a fond, enjoyable memory from the experience? In 2014, I went to Florence for the first time to try to build my knowledge and skills in portrait painting. It was an amazing experience, arriving in one of the most beautiful cities in the world with my suitcase

packed with paints and brushes surrounded by Renaissance art, Botticellis… and even outside of museums, it was one of the most intoxicating experiences. I learned so much about the process of technically painting portraits, like mixing skin tones and just really using my eyes. It felt like I was living and breathing a world of art every day. My painting isn’t traditional, but going back to these techniques grounded my work and taught me so much. After a long day of standing and painting, with half an hour to spare, we would often run through the loud, crowded streets of Florence from the studios to the Uffizi Gallery to make it just in time to see a Botticelli and a quick view of the sunset over the Pote Vecchio as the gallery was closing. Was there a growth in confidence, and how did you perceive your move from student to professional? My experience studying in Florence had a fairly profound effect on my development as a

Left: Petit Déjeuner, Oil on canvas, 2019 Top right: 10 Minute Nap, Oil on canvas, 2016 Bottom right: Sleeping, Oil on canvas, 2016

painter. I continued to submit new paintings into various competitions, like The Threadneedle, Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the BP Portrait Awards, which gave me the confidence to continue painting and forge a career. The competitions acted as a springboard into gaining exposure and experience, and probably also to working towards a tight deadline—something every artist finds challenging! Can you describe how a painter, or you as a painter, comes to realize the type of medium you want to choose, say oil or acrylic, even the color palette, and how they help you materialize your vision? How has that changed for you? I started off using acrylics in college, which I personally found chalky and limiting. Then, at University, I started using oils, but without the right guidance, so I found I had to teach myself pretty much, until Florence. Oils have a way of holding texture together, and especially with impasto, I find that mark making and brushstrokes are so much more rewarding. I become very focused on the application of paint and how it moves, so sometimes, the subject becomes secondary for me. Is it true that you prefer painting a live subject rather than a photograph? What’s the difference in how you approach them? I have used all techniques, and I still do draw from life. But, in the earlier stages, I felt like this was a rule to painting, and that using photographs was frowned upon. I did rely on photographs for a few years because I generally prefer to work privately without the pressure of someone else in my studio. For the last year, I’ve put that aside and started working directly from my sketchbook, drawing them straight onto canvas. I prefer the freedom of my own hand rather than constricting myself to trying to replicate an anatomically correct vision of the human form. Drawing is a way of freeing myself up and being able to exaggerate the features I want to focus on. I want you to look at my figures as if you are dreaming of someone you know, not quite themselves, but more like a collage of what you know of them. I’d like to know more about the actual portrait process, even from the sitter’s point of view. Once you have kind of set-designed your subjects, do you chit chat, listen to music, ever come to a realization that it’s not going in a direction as planned? Nowadays, I only have sitters for private commissions where I draw and photograph them for future reference once they leave the studio. I start with graphite straight onto the canvas whilst talking to my sitter. The downside is that there is a pressure for getting a likeness of them, and they feel equally like this experience, for them, is part of the exchange they’re owed of me commissioning a portrait for them. When I’m painting noncommissioned paintings, I often use my sister as a model and have her wear certain clothes or even

Above: A portrait of two female painters, Oil on canvas, 47.2" x 63", 2018

act out scenes with me. I use myself a lot as well. I collect coats and other items from charity shops, sometimes purely for painting. Do you work on one painting at time, or do you have several in various stages? What governs that approach? I don’t generally have multiple paintings going— once I have an idea, I like to get it out as soon as possible because I don’t want to lose the feeling of freshness. I can get bored of an idea very quickly, and my style of painting is very fast with minimal detail. A lot of the work is mark making. I don’t paint much detail as I want to feel that my paintings are getting tight or that emphasis on planes of color and angles gets lost.

Winning the National Portrait Gallery’s BP Young Artist Award for A Portrait of Two Female Painters had to have been a huge thrill. How did that particular piece come about? Did you paint it with the competition in mind, or was it in your collection just waiting for the right moment? Without a doubt, that was such a great experience, though I had left it far too late to submit and had only two weeks to come up with an idea. The painting depicts me and my sister-in-law, Stevie Dix, who is also a painter and was, at the time, working in the same studios at RAF Bentwaters, a disused US Air Base in Suffolk. I felt in that moment that I wanted this painting to be natural and show how we are actually seen in our studios, no glamour and no frills. I was thinking a lot at

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the time about feminism and post-feminism and the role of women in all industries, specifically for this work, the creative industry. Once submitted, a painting goes through three processes, the last being short-listed for an award. I got a phone call, out of the blue, informing me that I had won one of the awards, but wouldn’t know which one till the actual ceremony. The night was a blur of excitement, drinks, press and nerves with a final dinner with all the winners and dignitaries sitting in one of the glorious halls of National Portrait Gallery—with the Old Masters looking on. Women painters are portraying their female subjects as more emancipated subjects,

enjoying each others’ company and often (finally) free to indulge themselves. What I like about your renderings is that they are so egalitarian, women who accept each other as equals, who take on the world without pretense, presented matter of factly. Is that a fair interpretation? Yes, absolutely, that is a correct interpretation. I want to portray my women as who we are in reality, without the glamour veneer that the world has always insisted on painting us with. We are not strictly the damsels in distress or the glamour models that the world wants us to be, playing on the madonna-whore dichotomy. I paint women in big, blocky coats and angry, chunky boots,

responsible for our own lives and decisions. The fashion that I portray my female subjects is almost military and assertive, and definitely grounded— a tribe making their mark in the world. Equally, clothes should not define us, and that might be part of the reason why I dress my models in androgynous clothes. It’s also a reflection of myself and what I wear. In fact, by illustrating them so authentically, you leave room for a story beyond the portrait. What do you have in mind when you prepare, like, what’s the chicken and the egg? In many paintings, I’m asking the observers to finish the story themselves, and everyone will have a different viewpoint and interpretation. This is my way of getting the viewer to engage with the painting and equally with themselves. A character that is portrayed looking into an ambiguous background or distance undoubtedly has a story to tell—and I like to invite the viewer to enter that internal narrative. I imagine you’re influenced by Lucien Freud and maybe David Hockney. If so, tell me how—and if not, who are some influences? Lucien Freud was probably my first massive influence. I specifically remember visiting his exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery and being completely sucked in by his brush strokes close up. Paula Rego’s narrative and contorted figures, as well as the freedom of Alice Neel’s portraits are influences. Kerry James Marshall is another, especially his edgy subject matter and blocky, flat planes of color. When did you start doing self-portraits and how do you approach painting yourself? I’ve been painting self-portraits since I can remember. Initially, they were always a faithful interpretation of my own features. Increasingly, I have begun to use myself as just a general human-face model, as a way of letting go of something that has been troubling me. My face can appear very recognizable, and other times you wouldn’t know it was me. I use myself as reference if I’m struggling with creating the shape of a face or getting the light and dark tones right. So, even when not deliberately making a selfportrait, I’m often my own model! Thomas Gainsborough dressed his Blue Boy in royal satin, and while you’re not Cindy Sherman, you do accessorize your subjects. How do you make the fashion choices? I dress my models according to the palette choice of the painting, as well as try to use clothes that have cuts and fabrics that will naturally create shapes. They are also a big part of creating the composition and maintaining cohesion throughout the work. The clothes carry the faces, which are central to my painting; ultimately, I want to portray a story that is interesting and pleasing to the eye

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Above: Sister II, Oil on canvas, 2015

Asylum Studios sounds like a great place filled with musicians and other artists, but for your work, I kind of see you working alone. My studio within Asylum is at the old American Air Base in Suffolk, and my space is the old, converted interrogation room where, 40 years ago, the American soldiers who witnessed the famous Rendlesham UFO incident were questioned about their sightings of strange lights and a craft they supposedly saw that landed in the forest nearby. A wall holding a two-way mirror has now been removed, so my space is quite big. The mirror, a relic of that story, occasionally makes an outing into the gallery as part of someone’s concept for an exhibition. In a funny way, this old interrogation room again serves a purpose to

Above: Two Girls in a Bar, Oil on canvas, 57.1" x 49.2", 2020

“read people,” in as much as I use it to paint people’s stories and invite others to interpret what they see. I do like to work alone, with my ears plugged into podcasts or music. But it’s great to work in a place where there’s plenty of company if you want it. We’re a really diverse group, and the shared space is a great sounding board for ideas and expression. How has the pandemic affected your work? Working through Covid-19 has been a strange and stressful experience. Initially, it meant that my show with Catto Gallery was delayed by five months, which did help me to get my final body of work together, even though I couldn’t access my studio for weeks. When I eventually did get back in, the isolation sort of helped me to focus

and think about my vision for the show. I tried to paint at my house, which I really struggled with, because home is usually a place for relaxing, and it was unusual bringing my work into that space, along with the uncertainty. Do you have new paintings planned, gallery shows or a dream destination in the more distant future? I have two exhibitions coming up for 2021, a solo with the Gillian Jason Gallery, a group show with Thompson’s Gallery in London in March, and am also showing some paintings with the London Art Fair. My dream destination would be to have a solo show in the US! @ania_hobson

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Amoako Boafo Accelerated Transcendence Text by Kristin Farr Portrait by Nolis Anderson

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moako Boafo paints flesh with his fingers. “This lack of instrumental barrier sets me free and diffuses a barrier between myself and the subject. I am able to connect with the subject in a more intimate way, which allows me to create an expressive skin tone. I don’t think this type of stroke can be achieved by a brush,” the artist explains. He’s described his portraits as self reflection focused on identity, and challenging preconceived notions. The visceral attraction and veritable overnight success of Boafo’s paintings can be attributed to how he activates intimacy when he applies physical, unmediated pressure to his figures, caressing their likeness into actualization with swirling, sinewy gestures. The complexity of emotion is rawly visible. Boafo grew up and studied in Accra, Ghana before moving to Vienna for love and grad school. Though he already had a handle on his style and sold commissions, he was turned away from the prejudiced galleries of conservative Austria. In choosing to enroll at the Academy of Arts, Vienna, Boafo embarked on a goal to develop a network.

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Formal training in Accra helped develop formal skills, and from his studies in Vienna, he gleaned conceptual experimentation approaches. In Accra, he had a community; in Vienna, the opposite. Unwelcome by the local art scene, he and his partner launched a platform for emerging artists of color. This was likely a seed for his new studio compound and residency in Accra, which Dior will help fund as part of a recent partnership with the artist.

Ghanaian friend, Otis Kwame Kye Guaicoe, Boafo insisted, “You better! I’m his biggest collector.” “It’s a truly honorable reflection of who he is as a person,” Roberts notes, “He doesn’t see it as taking the shine off himself to help other artists. He sees it as climbing Everest together.”

“My intention with the residency in Accra is so African artists do not have to leave the continent for professional opportunities,” Boafo explains. “It will form part of a growing network of organizations and spaces concentrating on that aim. Then, maybe collectors, when they can travel, they can visit the places that have inspired us. It is important to show resilience for the younger generation, so they always stay focused on their craft. My residency is a safe place for artists to work and share their work to people like them, living in the same place.”

The artist’s prioritization of camaraderie is reflected in his newer paintings, and as he works towards his fall solo show, Roberts has noticed changes, “More figures within each canvas, mimicking this idea of inclusion. There were a lot of isolated individual figures in his earlier works, but they’ve started to broaden to include two or more figures. I think the work will be more about inclusion than exclusion, and the Dior project is part of that, because it was much more of a collaborative effort. Everything good comes from a meeting of the minds. There are discussions and moments spent together, and if you click, that symbiotic relationship does add something much greater.”

Championing his friends has always been a part of his practice, so when his first gallerist, Bennett Roberts, suggested offering a show to Boafo’s

The contrasting elements of Boafo’s subjects, all folks he admires and most of whom he knows, adorned with the patterns of European wallpaper

All images: Courtesy of the artist and Mariane Ibrahim Above Flowered Overcoat and detail, Oil on canvas, 2020

Above: Green Beret, Photo transfer and oil on canvas, 63" x 80" x 2.4", 2020

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Above Floral Halter Dress, Photo transfer and oil on canvas, 2020

and gift wrap prints, reflects the influence of his geographic duality during formative years, though the artist is more interested in how the patterns celebrate the subject: “My intentions are always to present my subjects in a vibrant way, which is why I decided to embellish my works with gift wrappings. The wrappings adorn my subjects in a momentous way with their intriguing patterns.” Roberts recalls when Boafo says the patterns started weaving their way into the portraits, “I remember him telling me a story from when he was in school—he thought he’d try to use the patterns, and his compatriots said it would be terrible, and he said, ‘You watch me.’ I think it was a challenge by his friends, and he really took it and owned it.” The patterns also intrigued Dior Creative Director, Kim Jones, who was particularly drawn to the ivy pattern in Boafo’s painting, Green Beret, a point of pride for the artist: “Green Beret is a special piece, as this was the artwork Kim Jones drew my entire Dior collection from. He was inspired in my studio when he visited Accra. The ivy is used in many different pieces in the men’s collection.” Ivy has appeared in vintage Dior collections, so the new relationship felt serendipitous. Boafo and Jones became fast friends and mutually beneficial influences. The painter was muse and collaborator for the fashion house’s Spring/Summer 2021 collection, his glowing figures embroidered with luxurious, elegant garments. Much of the collection appears to be inspired by the paintings as well as the unique, sartorial style of Boafo and his friends in Accra, who modeled the collection in a promotional film for Dior. Beyond his aura, Boafo’s path is a rare trajectory in relationships forged in the art and fashion worlds: “Almost unbelievable,” says Roberts. Within one year, Boafo, an emerging artist without gallery representation or elitist connections, was championed by artist Kehinde Wiley, enjoyed his first stateside show, landed a museum residency, sold out a whole booth at Basel (which led to the Dior collaboration), then found himself in the collection of five international museums including the Guggenheim, obliterating auction house expectations, thanks to unsavory art flippers. One painting sold for nearly a million, over 13 times its highest expectation. The rise in demand was beyond meteoric, it was jet-fueled. Even an early collector, Josef Vascovitz, while looking at his first two Boafo works on paper, mused quietly, “This is from 2019. I find that hard to believe. I thought it was older. It’s called Fuck You Mean Though.”

Above: Baby Blue Suit, Oil on canvas, 57.5" x 83.4" x 2.4", 2020

Vascovitz’s Boafo painting on canvas, JeanJacques Ndjola, dated 2020, will soon be lent to a museum, also rare for an artist who has only just begun showing his work—a testament to his singularity. Vascovitz and his wife, Lisa Goodman, collect art from the African Diaspora, and although the couple’s taste aligns, she’s more interested in context, and he, curious about craft: “Sometimes I’m just lost in the pants, not the face of the figure.” Their collection is mostly portraiture, and Boafo’s approach stood out to Vascovitz because of the rich hues, “It was

shockingly vibrant, what can I say? I instantly liked his colors and the way the figure looked back at you. His work is very active; you feel you’re connecting to the person in the painting in an active way. Sometimes it’s simply the colors. He picks a lot of bold colors, and his paintings grab your attention and have presence.” Specific about his use of color, the artist suggests phases with different palettes and concoction of a particular alchemy, “Saffron yellow, pink and dark shades of brown, ochre, AMOAKO BOAFO JUXTAPOZ .COM 91

crimson, cerulean blue and moss green are key to my works, specifically the skin tone. Yellow and pink have been recently key to the backgrounds of my works.” Catching the eye of Kehinde Wiley was a career catalyst for Boafo, whose work on Instagram impressed the luminary portrait portrait painter. Wiley, who had never directly recommended another artist, convinced his own longtime LA gallerist, Roberts, to give Boafo a stage. “I’d never really shown anyone whose work I hadn’t seen in person because I’m a true materialist,” admits Roberts in describing his impactful, first experience with the work. “When we unrolled the paintings, they just felt new and real, and had such a humanist

dimension that I’d almost never felt. It didn’t immediately feel scholastic or topical, or of this exact moment. It felt as authentic as a handprint on the wall in a dark cave 60,000 years ago. I may sound bombastic, but that’s the emotion I got from it. And we wanted to present it in its most sublime fashion.” Roberts continued showing Boafo’s paintings with magnetic response, “I’ve been to art fairs where people who don’t know anything about him gravitated to his work immediately because there’s something that touches that very human need to feel connected. Art has a very difficult time, in this day and age, making people feel connected, because there are so many images in the world. Amoako’s work jumps over that chasm,

beyond popularity, into connection. They don’t even come to life until you’re in front of them. They’re like a visual embrace.” In agreement is Boafo’s Chicago gallerist, Mariane Ibrahim, who in her interview with Observer, observes, “I’m pretty, pretty sure that those who separated from their work intentionally probably regret it now, because Amoako is not an artist that is fashionable or anything like that. He’s the artist that we’ve been actually waiting for.” These days, it’s unfortunate that flippers can gobble up emerging artists’ work at measly prices, finding opportunity for big returns under gallery guidance and privilege. Vascovitz, the collector, lamented that it was once much easier to get his hands on the works he wanted, “The current hot market is really a very recent phenomenon over the last couple of years.” “The Market is a noise,” Boafo says bluntly, in the context of his new residency and desire to provide himself and his peers with a local platform in Ghana. He found himself trying to buy back his own painting during his unexpected market explosion, only to have more opportunists take advantage of him. They all saw green. At a time when collectors and museums purported to increase investment in representation, the typical greed in the market was relentless. Artnet reported that one sleaze pretended to be a fan who was broke, and Boafo, flattered, sent him some drawings—which were immediately flipped. Roberts knows the artist can steady the ride and weather the flourishing siren calls, “Luckily, he is who he is—a very smart, thoughtful and insightful artist with a lot of depth. He was able to deal with it. Many artists couldn’t. It would’ve ruined them. The artists that transcend their time are the ones who have figured how to transcend themselves. His greatest problem now will be how to transcend himself. He did what he had to do to become a great artist, and now he has to figure out how to get out of his own way, which is really difficult.” Variables leading an artist to the height of the art market so swiftly are complex, chance-based and often unsettling, and what makes a great artist is purely subjective. However, as Roberts says sagely, “Time is the leveler,” that will help reset Boafo’s control of his career and lead to longevity. What makes a great artist is subjective, but as far as the genuinity and salience of his success, Boafo’s admiring collector, Vaskovitz, said it best, “All of art history has been punctuated by acts of brilliance.” Amoako Boafo’s solo show at Roberts Projects in Los Angeles opens in fall 2021. See more of Boafo’s work at MarianeIbrahim.com

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Above Checkered Mofler, Photo transfer and oil on canvas, 2020

Above: Brick Red, Photo transfer and oil on canvas,61" x 84.25" x 2.4", 2020

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Hernan Bas A Certain Southern Gothic Interview by Evan Pricco Portrait by Silvia Ros

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here is a subtle inculcation from an early age that a penchant for the weird does not predispose a successful career. Even though the creatives who sport a quirky odd streak are warily admired, no one asks the school guidance counselor about how a love for The X-Files might result in a scholarship in paranormal studies. I’ve read countless interviews with the Miami-born Hernan Bas, many citing the inspiration behind his work, where there seems to be an alignment with the alluringly decadent and mysterious works of literatureby great Gothic writers of the past like Mary Shelley, Poe, or Wilde. That, coupled with his move to north-central Florida at a young age, results in a steeping in Southern Gothic tradition that oozes from each painting. His characters have grown up over the two decades Bas has been in the limelight, with hostile humor, sadness, growth, and isolation riddling each painting. Either Bas is the enigma or his signature moments are, and that he has dedicated his craft to often misunderstood or underappreciated moments of history makes him a unique and influential voice in contemporary figurative painting. I’ve always wanted to speak to Hernan Bas because I hoped to excavate the humor in his work, which provides plenty to unpack. But there is tragedy, too. After losing his mother earlier in 2020 to Covid, he made a remarkable body of work, Creature Comforts, that was on display at Perrotin in Paris through early 2021. We talked about the genesis of that series, how nature was reflected in the paintings, and how a sustained desire to uncover the mysteries of the world is one of life’s truly important journeys. Evan Pricco: You are based both in Detroit and Miami, but as we speak, you’re in Florida now? Hernan Bas: I’m in Miami now. I spend more time in Miami, these days, and I’ve been back here since March 2020 and I haven’t been back to Detroit or anywhere. Was it just a coincidence, or did you think, “If there’s going to be something that’s going to happen to all of us, Miami’s a better place for me to be.” You have a lot of shows, so I assume spending time in the studio is mostly what you do anyway? I think it’s the latter for me. Social distancing is not a stretch for me. That’s my day-to-day life, regardless, to some extent. I basically go from home to the studio every single day, pretty much. And I don’t have any studio assistants, so that was never an issue either. I was in Italy right as the whole world was shifting, so when I got back to Miami and saw what happened to Venice and Milan, I’m not doing anything. I’m not going anywhere. I did lose my mom to Covid, which was terrible. I mean, during the lockdown, Miami has not really been super responsible, let’s put it that way. To this day, it’s mind-numbing how people just don’t

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understand what social distancing means. And that was, I don’t know, it sucked, but besides that, it’s been relatively peaceful. Oh my god, I’m sorry to hear that. We’ve heard so much about death over the last 12 months as such an abstract statistic, but when it’s close and real emotions are involved, that’s incomprehensible. I was going to ask you how Miami was in the absence of the fairs, but also growing up there. Had Miami been more of an art capital 25 years ago, would it have changed you or your approach? I probably would have run to New York faster. No matter what, there is still that Miami flavor that everything’s a spectacle, you know? When I was younger, the only art you could see was what is now called the Perez Museum, which

was four blocks from my high school. My only understanding of art was going to the public library by myself, or with my friends, and just poring over all the books they have. There was no gallery district. Technically, the gallery that I worked with in Miami all these years was way down south, where nobody goes now. You wouldn’t find anyone coming for Basel. The whole creation of Wynwood and the art district was also somewhat of a ploy for real estate as far as I was concerned. Early on, these developers would give you the free space for studios, and then, coincidentally, a few years later, the neighborhood’s up and coming. It’s a classic case of gentrification. So, I tried to get away from that as quickly as possible. I want to do my own thing. I don’t want to be beholden to whatever this is. I’m

Above: Creature Comforts (cat city), Acrylic on linen, 7' x 9', 2020, © Silvia Ros, Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin

Above: How Best to Suffer Swamp Life at Dusk, Acrylic on linen, 7' x 9', 2020, © Silvia Ros, Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin

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Above: The Young Man & the Sea, Acrylic on linen, 72" x 84", 2020, Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin

kind of ambivalent about the whole Miami scene. One of the reasons I went to Detroit was because I wanted to jump out of this. It’s funny, I was driving around Detroit with some friends, maybe five years ago and it was minus three degrees and we are listening to Kraftwerk in a snowstorm. We drove past your studio and someone said, “That is where Hernan Bas is based,” and that made sense to me. As an outsider, Miami didn’t make sense to this pretty isolated aesthetic. And yet, in recent years, I definitely see the Southern Gothic, swampy vibe so strongly. The Southern Gothic world of, you know… Detroit, basically [laughs]. My work has nothing to do with urban decay. What I was intrigued by was the fact was there were all these “haunted” houses. That’s what I found more interesting than urbantype decay. I was only there for maybe one year, full-time, when I finally started being okay with painting tropical-ness. Being away from it, you miss it. I first started making those pink flamingo works when I went to Detroit. If you live in Miami, you can’t paint flamingos, but in Detroit you can, they won’t make fun of me [laughs]. So, it was a weird mental flip that happened.

I mean, no one wants to read a book where the character is so easily understood and defined. Absolutely, what I have always been drawn to both in life and literature, are people who are always in a constant identity limbo or not fully-formed in some perfect definition. I want a little mess. I was thinking about this, that in your research later on in life, are there painters that you didn’t realize were maybe into the same things that intrigued you? Maybe museums omitted that part of their interest in describing them, but I’m going to assume that you are not alone in being interested in hauntings and the paranormal. Oh, I haven’t thought of that in a while, but I think a good example would be something I recently read about Edward Hopper. The reason those paintings are creepy is that the main figures tend to be looking off, I guess you could call it off-stage, or off-camera, but always looking at something not in the frame. That

sort of weirdness I’ve really become drawn to in his works recently. Another person I came to late in the game was Charles Burchfield. He’s not someone I became exposed to until maybe 10 years ago. The gloomy Burchfield stuff that people talk about, they talk about Song of Spring and the butterfly work. But he was a dark man. Even within my own work, I’ve noticed particular trends where people are drawn to certain things even more. For example, I had two paintings that my gallerist here in Miami had to pick from for his little Miami art week exhibition. Is that the one with the waves? Such a beautiful painting. Yeah. So, that’s the one he picked. But the one he opted out on, which is in a similar vein, has got blood in it. That automatically burns off a considerable amount of collectors. It’s got a similar kind of thing going on, but the hammerhead shark has blood on its mouth. A little Hemingway never hurt anybody.

Do you feel a kinship with that rich history of Southern Gothic aesthetics? Is it weird that I don’t consider Florida the South and think of it as its own completely unique place? I’m thinking of Faulkner, Mississippi, hauntings and murders on the bayou sort of thing. I was born in Miami but right afterwards, my parents moved to the middle-of-nowhere in northern Florida, and I spent seven years of my life there. That’s where I think that sort of spirit of the South imbued itself in me, because we’d take trips, weekend trips with all my family, and we would go to Weeki Wachee Springs. That’s sort of the side of Florida I think of when I try to paint anything in my head that is emblematic. I’ve never done art deco, bikini-clad ladies. When did these characters start formulating in your head? Good question. I don’t really know. I’m trying to think back to the early work. It seems so far away now, 20 years almost. I think it was always the love of literature and just characters, in general. I was more of an avid reader of fiction when I was younger than I am now. But not just fiction; mythology and the tie-in to the paranormal. I’ve always sort of thought of the work as being... at the end of the day, when I’m off the planet, it will be like an encyclopedia of the strange course of my life. But the actual character of the figure? I don’t like to think of it as portraiture at all. I’ve been quoted as describing it as the state of where you don’t really know what or who you are. Or back to literature, a Catcher in the Rye type of thing. It’s all there. And I’ve always been drawn to that sort of in-between.

Above: Three Vampires, Acrylic on linen, 60" x 72", 2020, © Silvia Ros, Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin

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Creature Comforts, your recent body of work on view at Perrotin in Paris as we speak, is such a beautiful show, and there are just so many stunning works. I was thinking the characters feel a little bit more in turmoil, and I didn’t realize that your mother had passed. Maybe that is part of it? But also, with such an inundation of bad news this year, it seems like each character is put in this situation where there’s a lingering evil, or lingering ominous forces. I think with the characters generally, they’re isolated. But I think something about the idea of being forcibly isolated, maybe? Taking that character that was relatively normal, but in this stage of life, he has to become manic about something. A lot of my characters had that already in them, but I feel like it got more exaggerated. There’s one painting in particular that I absolutely love, the vampire at the bar. It’s just loaded with so much detail and just a bit of a scary one. The vampires, yeah, that was a fun one. I liked the idea of… what would you call it, providing comfort to creatures who don’t know what’s going on. After leaving Venice, just after the pandemic, I read this story about how the canals are clearing, turning crystal clear. True or not, this is amazing. Nature conquers all. So I think that was how the sort of creatures, literal animal creatures, came into play for me. And just being in Miami, too, just the back of my commercial building at the studio, I remember seeing birds that are not often seen. I was like, “What is happening?” So there was a bit of a weird return to nature that was happening in the paintings that I kind of got fascinated with. But, with the vampires, sometimes it’s just for the sake of humor that I do things. Do you think people miss the humor in your work, then? I think that people want to take things so seriously in general, and it’s the grand tradition of painting. They are just grand paintings. People will automatically associate the size of the work to something being historical. I like making these epic paintings of the dull moments, in a sense. Two or three years ago, I made one of the largest paintings I’ve ever done. It was based on the Andy Warhol estate. He was a massive hoarder, which we didn’t know until he died. And so, the estate set these people up to catalog the apartment, and they found out how insane he was, basically. Jewels tucked under beds. All kinds of stuff. And so, the painting is this giant spread of all of Warhol’s stuff with a cataloger sitting in the middle of all of it. Every single item in the painting was an item from Warhol’s estate. I did a lot of research for that. I just loved the idea of this kind of painting, but it’s really just this poor guy sitting with all of Warhol’s estate all around him. The point of that work, Sorting Out Andy, was that if I make a history painting, I want it to be a moment that’s

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been not just overlooked, but would never be discussed as being important. But to me, that’s a really important moment in art history. That’s what drew me to that whole scene. Also, just for fun, the idea of someone petting Warhol’s wig… And, half the time, you’re working away at this painting for, sometimes, months at a time. You kind of have to laugh for yourself, for your own sake, for your own sanity. Also, the fact that you don’t have assistants in the studio with you might result in kind of having your own internal jokes going on. Sitting alone in the studio and sometimes I think to myself, “I’m so funny.” [laughs]

Well, do you think the paranormal is often funny? I think it has potential to be completely ridiculous. Right, that’s a far better description. I mean, when you think of it, I don’t know if ridiculous is the right word. Absurd, I guess, is the best descriptor. I watch all of those ghost hunter shows and it’s always a bunch of nonsense. Nothing is ever really captured on film, or anything. But there is a lot of weird humor. The one thing I’m not super keen on, but think is hysterical, is to watch some of these people on TV who claim to be psychics. To me, it’s just a laugh.

I think the idea of a coincidence is misunderstood in a lot of our society. It’s definitely a thing. Even UFO stuff; I love seeing drawings kids make of UFOs, and stuff like that. I mean, that’s a whole other genre. Vampires are hysterical. Who originally stoked this paranormal flame in you? My older brother and older sister were the ones that got me into the paranormal when I was younger, that good weird stuff. When I was a kid, they would bring back books from the library about vampires and ghosts, so I got a lot of my early goth from those two. My brother is still very much entrenched in that world in New Orleans,

and my sister, who lives in California, still goes bigfoot hunting. That’s half of my family: always hanging onto the weirdness. What I love about that is it’s more about the mystery, as opposed to the actual end result of finding bigfoot. I went to Loch Ness in Scotland with my parents maybe 20 years ago. We weren’t going there to look for the monster, but the actual journey was the fun part. This idea that life has to have more, that the universe can’t just be some simple thing. We need those mysteries. That’s kind of what you seem to be tapping into. Getting yourself to a place, in order to believe. I did a painting of a fictionalized portrait of the

Above: Sorting out Andy, Acrylic, Oil stick and ink transfers on linen, 191" x 95.8" x 2", 2018, Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin

guy who has the Guinness World Record for most time spent watching Loch Ness. He lives in a van down by the river, literally. He’s been looking for, I think, 42 years, or something like that. And he makes these little Loch Ness sculptures and he sells them. That’s how he makes a living to eat. To me, it’s not about proving that the Loch Ness monster exists but what it could be. Who knows? They’re hopeful. People always think that the characters are sad, but I think they’re hopeful. I love the idea of a character who would be willing, for the rest of their life, to look for something that doesn’t exist. @hernanbas @galerieperrotin

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Tiffany Alfonseca A Not So Subtle Rebellion Text by Jewels Dodson Portrait by the artist

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ith a population of a little more than 200,000, Washington Heights is 1.7 square miles sitting at the north end of Manhattan. It was first settled by Irish immigrants, and by the mid-twentieth century, became the largest US refugee settlement of German Jews fleeing Nazi Germany. Today it hums as the American epicenter of Dominican culture. Imagine the aroma of deep fried chicharrón wafting through the sounds of classic merengue blaring from a bodega and reggaeton blasting from an apartment window. Street vendors are busy selling everything from suspicious M.A.C. lipsticks to pastelitos con queso y jamón as “Oye primo” resounds from all corners. A cacophony of Spanish ricochets louder and faster than a Pedro Martinez fastball. Unlike other heavily gentrified ’hoods in New York City, la gente have kept the soul of this community intact. So, on a snowy December afternoon in her South Bronx studio, when artist Tiffany Alfonseca proudly proclaims, “I’m Dominican as fuck,” I know exactly what she means.

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Dominican-American artist Tiffany Alfonseca is new to the contemporary art world, but she has always had an innate, special relationship with figures, drawing lines, colors, and shapes. “I’ve always been an artist. My earliest memory as a threeyear-old was drawing mermaids and dolphins.” And unlike many immigrant parents who encourage their kids to get good stable jobs, Alfonseca found a real cheerleader in her mother, who now exults to friends and family, “Yo tengo un hija artista famosa.” “My mom loves the fact that I’m an artist. I could never see myself doing anything else.” Alfonseca lived in the Gunhill section of the Bronx but spent most of her waking hours in the Washington Heights/Inwood section of Manhattan. “I grew up in the Inwood, 207th street area. I love that area. It’s like little DR, I feel like home there,” she says. The 26-year old is the younger of two sisters, her older sibling, a psychologist, and although their mother was born in the U.S., like many immigrant families, she adopted entrepreneurial skills and created several streams of income, owning two daycare centers and managing her own catering operation. “I was raised in a super Dominican

household. Spanish is my first language. And in our house, there were lots of bright colors and fruits and plants all through the house. It all shows up in my work,” Alfonseca explains. After attending Fashion Industries High School where she honed her drawing and illustration skills, but learned that fashion was not her medium, Alfonseca eventually graduated from the School of Visual Arts. Like many artists of color, Alfonseca echoes a reoccurring narrative often expressed by attendees of storied arts education institutions, citing a Eurocentric curriculum that focuses on works, artists, and ideologies rooted in Western philosophies. Her frustration still fresh in mind, she recalls, “In that group, I was one of the only Spanishspeaking people. There were only, like, five people of color in my cohort. The feedback I was given on my work was that it’s ‘exotic.’ Why is that the response, because I’m Latina, I have to be exotic?” This all-too-common reality at the university level is finally being re-examined with intensity at contemporary art museums and institutions, especially in the last year. The exclusion and

Above: Lata de Bustelo pa bañarse (El mundo es mio), Acrylic paint, charcoal, rhinestones and glitter on canvas, 40" x 30", 2020

erasure of anything outside the cis-gendered white male gaze is a systemic issue that often appears at the university level and proliferates into museum and gallery spaces. Artists and narratives that diverge from classical Eurocentric standards are perpetually excluded or forced to live in the margins. Silence runs the risk of stagnating the whole contemporary art discipline. While the world was in tumult for 2020, Alfonseca experienced a growth spurt that catapulted her onto the collective radar of curators and collectors, quite the feat for a new artist with no gallery representation. “I get recommended by word of mouth, and people reach out to me everyday through Instagram,” she said. She attributes her expansion to a few things, such as initiating a drawing series during quarantine when she asked close friends to pose for her, in this case, images of themselves they sent to her. Enjoying the experience so much, she extended the invitation to her Instagram followers, and the project just took off! Inadvertently, Alfonseca had successfully executed the best kind of marketing strategy—without even trying! She also saw more interest in her work during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests last summer, although,six months later, she notes that the outpouring of support has dwindled to almost nothing. “At that time, a lot of people were looking for artists of color, just to be on trend. It’s so bothersome to me. Once the protests settled down, the calls just stopped, almost completely. What happened to all the support? It all felt super trendy and very staged.” Alfonseca is part of a growing number of artists who are concerned about making work that matters, as well as who buys the work, where it will live, and who gets to see it. For many artists of color, it’s a concern that their work gets fetishized. “At first, I wanted my art to be accessible to people of color, and I still stand by that. I need that because there’s limited access, and they get turned down [through galleries]. I’m at the beginning of my career, and it’s important that my work is accessible to everyday people. I also want buyers to have my work live in their homes and to have some kind of relationship with it. But it’s also important to have it in a museum or living somewhere where everyone can see it. My subjects and my work are my culture. If you can’t relate to my culture, or don’t have a greater understanding, especially when my work is in Spanish, there’s that thought in the back of my mind, ‘Why do you want this? What are you going to do with it?’” All Alfonseca’s works feature subjects of the African diaspora, and in earlier pieces, she favored hues reminiscent of Kerry James Marshall. While she considers him a muse, her relationship to a maroon color palette also stems from another place. “A lot of my work is based off of my childhood memories

Top: No dejes que las apariencias te engañen, Acrylic paint, charcoal and glitter on stretched canvas, 48" x 48", 2020 Bottom: Si dios lo permite, Acrylic paint, oil sticks, glitter and charcoal on stretched canvas, 48" x 48", 2020

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in the Dominican Republic. I remember seeing paintings of people with dark skin, but made by Haitian artists rather than Dominican.” This is a reference to the street vendors who lavish the streets of DR, selling painted canvases reminiscent of art works from neighboring Haiti’s masters, Philomé Obin and Hector Hyppolite. Their early twentieth-century pieces often depict scenes from Haitian culture and island life. Religious ceremonies, celebrations, the island’s abundance of plant life and produce, and subjects painted in rich shades of brown abound, like early Haitian artist Gabriel Alix’s Panthère, featuring a big-eyed, midnight blue panther surrounded by tropical melons, avocados, cacti, and gushing greenery. The self-taught godfather of modern Haitian art, Philomé Obin painted street scenes and expressed his visions of Haitian history. The ‘Obin Style’ is referred to as “magical pseudorealism.” Works like his Paysans Sur la Route de Quartier Marine and Cap-Haitien Carnival capture island life with clear cerulean skies, towering palm trees, and cocoa colored black people, more multitudinous than monolithic narratives allow. The influence of these works is apparent in pieces like Alfonseca’s Natalie Matos and Si dios lo permite from her latest series. On October 2, 1937, Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo responded to reports of Haitians stealing cattle and crops from Dominicans in the northwestern borderland region of the country. He ordered his troops to kill all Haitians residing in the area. The massacre or el corte (the cutting) as it’s called by Dominicans and as kouto-a (the knife) by Haitians, lasted for six days, with armed Dominican forces killing Haitians with rifles, machetes, shovels, knives, and bayonets. Through a rich oral tradition, the horrific stories of this event have survived. Those who lived reported Haitian children tossed about and caught by soldiers' bayonets, then dumped on their mothers' corpses. Other accounts reported Haitian people strangled by soldiers, hacked with machetes, and children bashed against rocks and tree trunks. Several months later, more killings and expulsions of Haitians occurred in the southern border provinces. Due to a lack of documentation, historians estimate anywhere between 12,000 and 35,000 murders of Haitian people. “El Jefe,” as Trujillo is known, made no secret of his disdain for Haitian people. He openly viewed Haitians as racially and culturally inferior, viewing their migration as a detriment to the social and economic development of the Dominican Republic. He is quoted in a speech: “There is no feeling of humanity, nor political reason, nor any circumstantial convenience that can force us to look indifferently at the Haitian migration. That type is frankly undesirable. Of pure African race, they cannot represent for us any ethnic incentive. Not well

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Top: Rose Aiello, Acrylic paint, charcoal, oil sticks, paint markers and glitter on canvas, 48" x 48", 2020 Bottom: La Mathy Santana, Acrylic paint, charcoal, oil sticks, paint markers and glitter on canvas, 40" x 40", 2020

nourished and worse dressed, they are weak, though very prolific due to their low living conditions. For that same reason, the Haitian that enters lives afflicted by numerous and capital vices and is necessarily affected by diseases and physiological deficiencies which are endemic at the lowest levels of that society.” The accusations made against Haitians became the guise under which Trujillo began ethnic cleansing. Coupled with the mass genocide of Haitian people he also implemented a larger campaign to spread anti-Black rhetoric and sentiments, an effort to erase DR’s inextricable connection to Africa. Like

Above: Josephine&Davone (In Quarantine Series), Graphite on paper, 16" x 16", 2020

many countries around the world with a history of European colonization, DR suffers from postcolonial effects of anti-Black ideologies, white superiority, colorism and self-loathing with a collective premium put on European ideals of light skin, light eyes, and straight hair. Trujillo’s reinforcement of Eurocentrism left an indelible imprint on Dominican culture.

used Haiti’s calamitous 2010 earthquake as a reason to expel migrant Haitians and banish Dominicans born of Haitian descent, leaving them displaced and stateless, though many are lifelong residents of DR and have little relationship to Haiti. In DR today, persons of Haitian descent are highly discriminated against from the Dominicanmajority police and government.

In 2014, history repeated itself when the Dominican government changed its constitutional and immigration laws in response to an influx of Haitian immigrants. The Dominican government

Alfonseca’s work sits at a dynamic intersection comprising Afro-Latinx identity, her relationship to the Dominican Republic, and her experience as a Dominican-American born and raised TIFFANY ALFONSECA JUXTAPOZ .COM 107

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Top: El silencio entre nosotros mata (Rezando), Acrylic paint, charcoal and glitter on canvas, 40" x 30", 2020 Bottom: Esta vez sera diferente, Acrylic paint, charcoal and glitter on stretched canvas, 40" x 30", 2020

in New York City. Her work encompasses these perspectives and is laden with symbols and imagery that resonate with an ethnic demographic who exist but still don’t yet enjoy appreciation of their aesthetics, much less amplification of its voices. Her paintings feature subjects with melanated hues, African facial features, curvaceous body types, acknowledging, celebrating and honoring silenced cultures. As Afro-Latin identity becomes more of a narrative in the contemporary art sphere, young Latin American artists of African descent are differentiating from the large homogeneous umbrella of Latin America. There is a more nuanced conversation emerging, challenging the monolithic lens of Latinidad. A singular lens is inaccurate as it silences people and important cultural accounts. What once served as a distilled unifying identity is now being repelled by Latinx who want to acknowledge the differences among the Latin American experience. Cesar Garcia, Director of The Mistake Room, a non-profit art space in Los Angeles, discovered Alfonseca while organizing a Latinx art survey exhibition, and is currently organizing her first institutional solo show slated for the fall of 2021. He explains, “When Afro-Latinx work enters the art market, it immediately gets brought in through an African-American lens, and in the process, it removes Latinidad from their work, which is a really important dimension of their practice. For artists like Tiffany, whose life and work is deeply rooted in her relationship to her mother country and to Dominican-American heritage, not having that forefronted in her practice is dangerous. I am hoping that our solo exhibition with her is going to be an opportunity to begin having a very serious conversation about the harm we can do when we remove an incredibly important part of Afro-Latino artist’s identity.” In the painting, Uh-Huh Honey, a nude, curvaceous brown-skinned woman sits, legs curled beneath her on an ocean blue bed, surrounded by emerald green plants and pink pastel walls, a perfect 360 afro crowning the perfection. She looks like Amara La Negra when the cameras aren’t rolling. At first glance, this woman could be perceived as African-American but in Alfonseca’s world, there is very little doubt this woman speaks Spanish and is the descendant of both colonizers and slaves. Garcia notes, “The subtleties in these domestic spaces, in her color palette, in the objects that appear in the work [which] speak to a black experience that is Latinx—that is what got me so excited about her work, that we were going to be able to have a conversation about those subtleties and about some of these challenges. What excites me the most is that there are these very genuine specificities in the work. I am interested in how she’s able to speak to these really important parts of who she is through subtleties in the work.”

Above: Iglesia, Acrylic paint, glitter and charcoal on canvas, 48" x 60", 2020

This is also exemplified in Alfonseca’s painting, Iglesia, where she captures imagery of one of the primary pillars of the Latin female beautification experience—the hair salon. The title, which translates to “church” is apt because the hair salon in Dominican culture is a temple, a sacred space where women go to honor their treasured tresses. Underneath the blow dryer’s heat, the Dominican hair salon is a minefield riddled with hair shaming, respectability politics, and stubborn Eurocentric beauty standards that are unkind to kinky and coily Afro-Latinx hair textures. In this piece, Alfonseca focuses on the “blow out.” One woman is having her hair blown straight by another, both subject’s hair represented in gold glitter paint. The gold hair speaks to Alfonseca’s

willingness to experiment with colors and textures, but also symbolizes the premium put on Latin women’s hair. Hair, for many Latinas, especially straight hair, is a form of currency that garners acceptance and attention. Alfonseca’s work is a subtle rebellion where she honors African diasporic narratives by pushing back against centuries of colonialism. Her work provides a much needed pathway to healing. Afterall, straight hair and light skin are not prerequisites for being seen and heard, nor are they requirements to be valued and celebrated. tiffanyAlfonseca.com @tiffanyalfonseca

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Ryan Travis Christian Naughty by Nature Interview and portrait by Joey Garfield

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ust beyond the skyscrapers of the greater Chicagoland area is an archipelago of residential communities known as the suburbs, a sprawl of townships that offer a sweet spot between urban and rural culture. While some may dismiss these enclaves as bland, those quick to judge just don’t appreciate the nuance. A suburban lifer by choice, Ryan Travis Christian spends his days drawing and viewing the world from the comfort of his hometown of Warrenville, Illinois. At first glance, there is a cozy, pleasant familiarity enveloping his work that recalls old timey comics and cartoons. But don’t take Ryan’s rubber hose content strictly at face value. Study his drawings long enough, peel back the initial layer of his scenarios, and behold their provocative core. Since we’ve both been sequestered in the Midwest during this pandemic, I had the geographical advantage of being able to venture out, meet Ryan on his home turf and witness his eye-bulging imagery first hand.

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Joey Garfield: So, has Illinois always been your home state? Ryan Travis Christian: Yeah. All my formative years from seven or eight years old till now have been spent in the suburbs. Were you an artsy kid or into sports? In middle school, my half brother introduced me to a handful of different things, from hip hop to hippy shit, so I started to get into those counter cultures pretty fast. I took up skateboarding shortly after and got into everything that surrounds that too, like what I considered underground “not pop” music. I got big into raves later in high school, which was kind of the end days of the Chicago scene. Wait, so your half brother was older? Yeah. All my half siblings were considerably older than me. I grew up as a single child but they exposed me to things on our annual trip to California where my father was from. We’d go see them, and to me, it all seemed really cutting edge.

You mentioned Guru earlier. The first time I heard Gang Starr was from my brother. The song “Above The Clouds” blew my mind. I’d come back home, like, “listen to this”. Okay, you’d go visit, get a dose and return? I’d share with the two dudes I hung out with closely. I didn’t come back presenting new styles and ideas to the masses. It was just for me and a few buddies. The first time I smoked weed was out there, and it was really great weed. The first time I smoked weed here, it was like a black Frosted Flake on a stick out of a pop can. Ha, sometimes the Midwest is slow to catch up. It’s contradictory because Chicago has always had this amazing culture and contemporary art scene. Yet, for some reason, there is this idea that you need to go somewhere else for that. I’ve always rejected that notion. Clearly, with me being here now, right? When I graduated, I watched a lot of people go to the Art Institute Of Chicago and instantly go to New York or

Above: 1-8, Graphite on paper, 14" x 11", 2020

whatever and just suffer. I mean they'd have fun and party but they were suffering. Where did you go to school?? I went to Northern Illinois in De Kalb, Home of the Huskies, Cindy Crawford and where they invented barbed wire. Like, nine out of ten students would go to New York or LA, and all of them were broke as shit. I was too, but I could be less broke as shit here. I’ve stayed in my comfort zone, that’s for sure. I always say to people, “Why be some nobody in New York when I can be the fuckin’ King of Warrenville?” So, what makes you feel especially comfortable here? Well, I’ve been here my whole life. It’s cheap, and slow, and safe and it’s not so rural that I’m surrounded by extremely antiquated ideas. The ’burbs are super mixed now with massive Middle Eastern, Hispanic and Black populations. We don’t have to just eat hamburgers and hot dogs. It's ideal for me. Nowadays, with Instagram and an occasional flight here and there, you can sustain a creative career anyplace. Whether you met your half brothers or not, would you have been into art? Regardless of them, I’ve always drawn and think my parents would agree that I took it, at the very least, slightly more seriously than most other kids. I always gravitated towards artistic things. Drawing for a kid is the most accessible. It’s paper and crayon, so way easier to draw than make a film. Back then, yeah, for sure. Were you an art student at Northern Illinois? Admittedly, after high school, I had no idea what I wanted to be at eighteen. My parents encouraged me to pursue something artistic. I got it into my head that I should do graphic design because it seemed more of a financially stable future or path than trying to become a rockstar. I enrolled in graphic design and quickly realized I did not like it. I’m not great with computers and was super frustrated with software. Spending a year just studying typography and fonts alone was so fucking boring. All the fine art kids were sexier and seemed to be having more fun. After two years in design, a review came around, and they were like, “Why don’t you just go to fine arts?” They could see me gazing over there, and half the assignments I’d turn in were hand drawn. So I switched my degree over to focus on painting. Four years later, even being a painting student, I maybe made like three paintings. I did make loads of intimate, small scale works on paper because it was cheap and easy. I’d sign up for painting class and spend, like, $300 on all these paints and waste all this material to make one stinking painting. I couldn’t afford to be failing that much. I came from a blue collar family and that factored into where I went to school, so I just went close to home because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was aware I could not go to

college and still pursue what I wanted to pursue, so I settled on an affordable middle ground. My whole early twenties, my philosophy was “Keep It Affordable” in my artwork and living. At this point, you are drawing more than painting but still not knowing what you want to do? I started going to gallery shows in Chicago in the West Loop or Western Exhibitions, which is my current gallery. One group show at Bucket Rider Gallery had these little Eddie Martinez paintings, and Cody Hudson had some text pieces there that said “Fuck Christopher Columbus” which was very

Top: Drawing Room, Graphite on paper, 14" x 11", 2020 Bottom: IF YOU NOSE, YOU NOSE, Graphite on paper, 10"x 7", 2020

appealing to me. There was a Maya Hayuk painting of people packed into hot tubs having a casual, sexy adult evening. It got me excited and got the ball rolling in my head that I wanted to contribute to that world. Going to see those shows toward the end of college got me super into making studio art. So, do you want to talk about going to raves or about developing your own personal style? Let's talk about raves! Were these, like, Chicago house parties or raves out in fields? RYAN TRAVIS CHRISTIAN JUXTAPOZ .COM 113

production teams and what they would do was have a bunch of drugs and have a little team of kids and also their own private security. The kids would sell the drugs and the security would keep an eye out for us, like spot the undercover cops. So, for a brief amount of time, I was an employed drug dealer for a Chicago rave production company. It was awesome. When you said, “Working for a rave production team,” I imagined you meant like making flyers. No, this was like the seedy part. I’d go to some big security guy and say, “That dude won’t pay me.” I got into drugs pretty substantially. What would you deal? Ecstasy and K. I’d already dealt weed for supplemental income in high school. The guy who got me into going to raves introduced me to the rave producer. At the same time, he also introduced the notion that since I already illicitly distribute over there, I just needed to be shown the ropes to distribute over here, so yeah. That’s helpful with security having your back. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have done it. Any raver probably has a handful of horror stories concerning drugs and drug dealers. I know I do. Nefarious characters naturally come with an unregulated thing like that. Raves were always in terrible neighborhoods. Kids would overdose or people beat the hell out of other people. I’ve always been good about getting close to danger without really getting involved. Let’s talk about your artwork and developing a style. I’ve always been drawn to black and white. It’s the simplicity. There is a scale of grays, and that’s that. Color fucks me up. Making color decisions? I could waste time all day trying to find perfect color combinations. It’s like shopping at a mega store with too many choices. Black and white is appealing to me, going back to rave flyers. Like the really good, mostly illegal ones would seem to be on Xerox; shitkicker, black-and-white flyers. Lots of mixtape art was in black and white too. But also the rubber hose animation style was in black and white. That is the best example. There were a few different venues that I would go to regularly. This was, like, in ’99, and the last was, like, 2001. They weren’t proper venues. There was the Windy City Fieldhouse, and the Route 66 Roller Rink was another. Before the rave, they had James Brown roller skate nights where the older crowd would step out dressed to the teeth. Then the weird kids on K would be waiting outside. What was it about raves that you gravitated to? This kid I went to school with would tell me about them because he would go on the weekends. Seeing the flyers he brought back from the parties totally sucked me in. He gave me a few techno and 114 SPRING 2021

house mixtapes, and I liked them. When I went to my very first party, I had to piss and the bathroom was in the basement. When I went to find my way down this wobbly, dingey stairwell, I got to the bottom, and it was the Jungle Room. I had never been exposed to jungle music, but I loved hip hop. They were playing the “Jump Up” Jungle track and a ton of people were smoking weed, and I was like, “This is amazing!” Finding jungle, drum and bass and two-step got me obsessed. Besides rave music, did you also get into the drug culture? Totally. I ended up working for one of the rave

When I started to get into art, Pixar and all that stuff was taking off. I found those cartoons to be soulless. It’s all computer-generated and it wasn’t as appealing to me. Of course, there is a lot of gritty content in older cartoons that is lost, and a lot of it for good reason; but something about modern cartoons is dry and disinteresting to me. I would imitate a lot of old rubber hose animation but insert personal content, anecdotal shit, experiences, and friends’ stories to make it fun for me. It’s storytelling, but I don’t want the viewer to really know the story. I just want them to be compelled by the images. If anything, I’m

Above: SLUTTY EAGLE, Graphite on paper, 7" x 10", 2020

doing it to please myself, and hopefully, people will dig it. What is it about that rubber hose style, like Ub Iwerks or Heckle & Jeckle, even the Tex Avery aesthetic, that draws you? It’s visually loose and tight at the same time. That style is like the first time people saw shit where the rules of physics and stuff were all thrown out the window. The content that is orchestrated in the cartoon blew my mind so hard. I became completely enamoured by it and the black-and-white highcontrast too. I still think it’s the best shit. With CGI animation, when there is a digitally rendered fight, there is a standard of perfection you have to match to reality. Whereas the rubber hose style had to come up with stars circling heads to show pain or how to portray the chaos of a brawl, like a fight ball. I love that. With old cartoons, the effects they achieve with drawing by hand are wild. You know, like motion. A fight ball to me is so cool. They had to figure out tricks or other devices to communicate that information.

I would swap them. Me and some friends had a stash of them in the forest. It was a currency like fireworks and cigarettes. It’s all still present in my work. Explosives, knives, bad boy shit. Are you consciously trying to give people hard-ons? Ha! I’m not trying to turn anyone on, I don’t think. That’s the way I am in real life. It comes through in the work. If we hang out a whole evening, I will probably wander to somewhere perverse at some point. It’s on my mind. I’ve always liked it as subject matter. And I find a lot more people respond to sex shit than other things. It’s a universal fucking language.

Well, everyone is thinking about it. You just found your path to explore it. I gravitate towards others who do it like Namio Harukawa or Tom Of Finland. I was like “Oh, this shit is awesome.” Even old Robert Crumb comics. You feel once you sexualize something it is automatically pushed to the fringe, in a way? It depends. The way sexuality is viewed now is drastically different from where it was, in the best way possible, but also I feel sex is more somehow political now. Occasionally, I’ll get political responses to sexual images. Like I’ll make a boner goof and someone will type out a very thoughtful, sternlyworded paragraph, and I’ll be like, “Holy shit, it didn't

Even the very initial ones, they were like, “We gotta hire a huge jazz band to make music along to this because we don’t know how to do shit except make something bounce up and down.” The band would play some bells and whistles so you can tell this person got their bell rung or whatever, like this primitive language developing. It’s awesome. You can see mistakes and stuff. There is something human about it. I definitely do have nostalgia for things that have a trace of the human hand. Digital shit’s great. I appreciate it, but that’s not a human endeavor I want to contribute to. I’d rather keep this style going a while longer. I think you are succeeding in that appreciation for the classic style while also being current. How do you stay contemporary and throwback at the same time? Scenarios. There are things I will not draw, like iPhones. It’s like Donald Trump's face, I just don’t want to see that anymore. Even if I have a good zinger. We don’t need more of that. I draw things I don’t see but want to see more of. On the topic of wanting to see more, you’ve got naughty, kind of perverse themes throughout your work. Where does that come from? Yeah. Like many, I have a perverted side and it’s been very present since eighth grade. You know, in the sense that I’m drawn to debauchery or what’s taboo. You were one of those kids? Yeah man, I had a briefcase full of boobie mags and stuff. Yeah. Would you share them or were they for personal use?

Top: JESUS CALLED…, Graphite on paper, 10" x 7", 2020 Bottom: JACKER, Graphite on paper, 10" x 7", 2020

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cross my mind that someone would view it like that.” That’s fine. I learn from that shit. In general, we have a problem with associating sex and violence together. America’s sexual hangups have done noticeable damage to its citizens. My drawings are not just sexual, but also rule breaking, petty crime. That shit has always been attractive to me, a way of finding cheap thrills when I was younger. As-

long-as-nobody-gets-hurt kind of stuff. I got obsessed with it. Growing up in the ’80s, you got so encouraged by genuinely bad shit. Like rewatching ’80s movies we saw back then, it was a really weird, different time. To me, in a way, it’s forgivable. What is? Everyone's behavior in the ’80s? Yeah, in a way, because that’s how people were; but I’m glad I can look back and be like, “Oh shit, ’88, that was not so cool.”

Now society is quick to censure. Yeah, as a maker that’s tough. Sometimes I’ll make an image and a friend or family member will be like, “Are you sure you want to put that out?” 99% of the time, I’m like, yes. And I’ve put stuff out that people have misinterpreted and gotten irked by, which is a drag. I’m always open to speak with these people and learn their perspective and share mine. That’s where you learn things. The stakes get higher and higher socially now with cancelculture and all that. But I always want to touch on semi-taboo shit to some degree. That’s a vulnerable place to put yourself. When people get taken down who I feel shouldn’t get taken down, it feels that way. In my mind, the shit I put out there is never really radical or wrong to me. I think people are intelligent enough to read it and get it, or if one irks you, to step back and look at the collective body of work so you see I’m not coming from a place of hatred or dismissal. I wouldn’t classify the collective work as dirty. Probably 25% or less of the work is sexual or violent. Some of it is just weird and silly. Some of the pictures are naked and some of them are nude, know what I mean? There is a varying spectrum throughout the images and some are just fuckin’ dumb. Others are more thoughtful and sophisticated. Your cartoons do have different layers. If you look through my drawings, it’s not all cartoonish. Cartoons, or patterns, comic book devices, text, they’re all just tools to achieve whatever idea I have in my head that day. You’ll also see a cast of characters reoccur, like a dog, birds, this bald guy. They all serve as facets of my personality. Maybe they represent broader human characteristics or personality types. It depends. They are more fluid and serve different purposes in different scenarios. Birds are so abundant in our lives. After humans, it’s birds, cats and dogs. Right now, I’m drawing from photographs of eagles. I’ve been thinking about eagles a lot lately. That eagle looks like he’s boning the other from behind. Yeah, it’s eagles making love. It’s a great photo. “How do I make an eagle look like it’s in mid-climax?” It’s such a lowbrow dumb idea but I don’t fucking care. If it’s drawn nicely, that’s perfect for my swing zone. Well, if there is any definition of who we are in America, it’s a lowbrow eagle... Yes. There are obvious lines to be drawn. Humanity, historically, projects itself onto dogs, cats and birds. It’s a long standing, maybe unintentional, human tradition. Perceiving animals through human lenses. You see it everywhere. I love looking for the naughty parts in your drawings. Sometimes it’s obvious and sometimes it’s subtle. Oh my god. My dad, , he teaches vacation bible school for fourth grade. He does this lesson on

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Top: WHERE EAGLES DARE, Graphite on paper, 11" x 8", 2020 Bottom: WE NEED MORE STORAGE, Graphite on paper, 10" x 7", 2020

pursuing what you want to do in life as part of the curriculum, and he always shows some of my work. He was over for dinner a couple weeks ago and said he was going to show a drawing that I just posted. It’s this bird in front of a window, but the shadow that’s cast on the wall is a huge cock. He totally missed it. I was like, “Please don’t show that to your fourth grade bible class.” He’s just a regular dude, but when I was growing up, he would pretend to avert his eyes when there were breasts on the screen and say, “That’s unnecessary. Don’t you guys think that’s unnecessary?” But also he was the source of the first boob magazine I saw, which was stashed somewhere in his belongings. A complex man like all of us. What’s your demographic or who shows the most interest in your stuff? I think I've done a pretty good job at straddling the line where, though I've never been a street artist, I've gotten bunched in with some of those artists. I show with some hype people and work

Above: MOON OVER MARIN, Graphite on paper, 11" x 8", 2020

with some pretty mainstay institutions of the fine art world. If I can dip my toes in both and keep making what I make, I’m fine with that. So how did you start to get your work into gallery shows in the first place? I didn’t have much in the way of instruction on how to do it. I figured it would be helpful, beyond just making work, to be active within the community. Instead of just trying to get people to look at me and support me, maybe if I start supporting people, it will karmically come back to me. And if it doesn’t, that’s ok too. I’d gallery sit but also, from selling weed in college, I had somewhat of a disposable income, so I’d buy work from galleries. That was a quick way to be noticed because I was so young. It put me on the radar of local galleries. That snowballed into organizing shows of art I liked that weren’t coming to Chicago. I’d also go out to San Francisco and bring a bunch of Chicago art to show them. It wasn’t curating. It was more a fun social thing where fifty or a hundred artists have work up and everybody

comes. You know, it’s not just the drawing, it’s the people. Being able to do this is also having the opportunity to meet so many really wonderful and amazing people all over the world. That’s just as fun. The whole thing is a practice. It’s never ending. Maybe, experiencing this grand pandemic timeout, we won’t take for granted the need for counter cultures to have places to grow. It’s starting to get to me. Hopefully, with this next show in late spring, the planets will align and people can get their shit together. We could have a grand gathering because getting together is so rare now. When we can do that, just the sound of a packed space filled with people and drinking is gonna give me goosebumps. Kinda like discovering the jungle room at the rave all over again. Exactly! @ryantravischristian

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En Iwamura Encounters in Space Interview by Charles Moore Portrait by Peter Döring

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ager to expand viewers’ appreciation for spatial experience, En Iwamura experiments with scale in his ceramic pieces. In describing his approach, the Japanese artist speaks of the fluidity of space—of distance, movement, and other vital elements that bring his stoneware clay pieces to life. In his native country, people actively evaluate the various manifestations of Ma, an experiential concept rooted in relativity, in the search of a comfort level to foster relationships they desire with the people and places around them, a notion core to Iwamura’s multimedia approach. His work, heavily influenced by manga, anime, and traditional heroes, results in pieces that are a unique blend of history and pop culture, as he beams a dynamic trajectory. The remarkable hollow, funerary figures, widely recognized in Japan and known as Hanawa, inspire his subjects’ facial expressions, though each emanates an ambiguity that welcomes the viewer to craft their own narrative. 120 SPRING 2021

Born in Kyoto to artist parents, Iwamura earned his BFA at the Kanazawa College of Art and Crafts, later relocating to the United States to pursue an MFA from Clemson University, bringing his art to the international stage with the overarching goal of transcending language and cultures. There’s a sense of juxtaposition on which Iwamura relies, of the “cute,” and of the “not cute,” in his words. The artist seeks to create a sense of void, contrasting the emotional with an aura of neutrality, engaging the senses while encouraging viewers to take partake in the serious dialogue. His ceramics, colorful, varied, and entirely unexpected, are designed to create a personal encounter with the unknown, and Iwamura’s abstract paintings are no exception. In connecting with U.S. audiences, the artist has leveraged an opportunity to introduce Japanese characters to American viewers—again broaching cultural bounds. For the time being, Iwamura is happy to hone his craft, communicating with stakeholders across the global stage, and perfecting an atmospheric body of work that will undoubtedly return to gallery spaces post-pandemic.

Through his work, the artist invites viewers to take charge of their relationship with his art. As the times evolve, and with the tumult of 2020, Iwamura experiments with his own practice as well, moving from vibrant ceramic pieces to abstract paintings that reflect his signature style. His cool hues firmly exert calm, in contrast to warmer colors the artist deems “a little bit poisonous.” But this interpretation, of course, he graciously leaves to you. Charles Moore: It seems that parental influence fostered your interest in making art. What was it like growing up with two artists in the house? En Iwamura: My first memory of art was pretty significant because I was three years old when my younger sister was born. All my parents' attention went to her and I felt abandoned. To console me, my father gave me stacks of thin paper and a pen. He told me I should draw, and whatever I sketched, he would put up on the wall. I got his attention again—that was great for me, so I drew every night, something like 30 or 40 pieces. I was so happy they were impressed and excited about me.

All images: Photographed by Peter Döring Courtesy of: The artist, photographer and Ross + Kramer Gallery

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It was a kind of solo exhibition, not bad for a child of three. I'm 32 now and have been having exhibitions around the world.

we learn the materials and skills first so that our creations are based on the knowledge of the materials and history of the craft.

Tell me about your art education. I had originally applied to study painting at university but was rejected, so I majored in ceramics for my Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Kanazawa College of Art and Craft. This is a very strong, craft-oriented school. I learned the Japanese style of the craft, which is a little different than in the U.S. For the Japanese ceramics curriculum,

When I did my Master of Fine Arts at Clemson University in the U.S., I found the approach was very different from Japan. Being in the U.S. for the first time, of course, I had to struggle with the language and culture, but the most shocking thing was that I was expected to conceptualize my art before I began. So, as I went about making something in clay, my professor would say,

“Oh, great! You do interesting work, so what is your content?” I couldn't answer him directly because I was used to talking about techniques, or firing temperatures, or chemicals—you know, the technology of my work. But to explain what I wanted to make was extremely difficult to put into words. But they would assure me that I didn’t need to make up the content, because the content was already in my work, though I would have to justify why I wanted to create a particular piece. I was having enough of a problem trying to communicate in my very limited English, let alone understand what on earth they were trying to get across. All the same, their line of questioning prompted me to keep thinking about my content. This made me reflect deeply about my background and personality, my cultural origins and where I am right now. So, the work for your MFA forced you to research more about what you were making? And why I wanted to make it, and what is the background of my creation. I will talk about that as I discuss my technique as that is easier for me. What type of clay do you use in most of your sculptures? I used stoneware clay, which has the greatest elasticity and is very easy to manipulate with my fingers. Tell me more about your philosophy of art. My philosophy is based on Ma, the Japanese concept of space. Ma implies distance, moment, space, relationship, and more. People constantly read and measure different Ma between themselves and others, and finding a comfortable Ma between people or places can produce specific relationships at a given moment. Through my work, I intend to create such an encounter and provide an opportunity for viewers to recognize the Ma themselves through entering the space. You also have a unique technique. My technique can be called coil building, like building a three-dimensional space with my hands. It is derived from one of the most primitive sculpting techniques called wazumi, in which mounds of coiled clay are built up to shape the figure. I do not start from any sketches—I just jump in. I roll a strip of clay over the framework into a coil, layer by layer and, as the layers form, I begin to see some lines emerging. This tells me which direction I should go. And what influenced this style of working with the lines? I was inspired by ancient Japanese clay objects known as Jomon pots. In fact, my technique can be called Neo-Jomon, which is one of the oldest ceramic methods where the pot is created with

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rope to produce the lines. I believe these lines are not particular to Japan alone but have developed out of some universal consciousness. They can be found in African Masks, Aztec ceramics, metal works, Chinese bronze, etc., to produce certain rhythms. The interesting thing is that in the process of drawing in the lines, the artist goes into a form of meditation. As I meditate while drawing those lines, I am actually putting my own story into the piece. I believe that this style of ceramics not only crosses boundaries of space, it also reaches out into different time zones and can even

communicate with future generations the same way we draw knowledge from ancient artifacts. To me, ceramics becomes a universal language which transcends space and time zones. Let’s talk about those cute-looking figures. I’m sensing that manga and anime might have influenced your work. Were you into cartoons and comics as a kid? Like any typical Japanese kid, I watched anime like every day, and by the time I was in junior high school, I started reading manga. My father, being a university professor, had a whole library of books on manga as a reference.

But there is more to my work than popular culture. There is a deep connection to Haniwa. You remember the terracotta soldiers unearthed from the tomb of a Chinese emperor? Those figures were also found in the history of Japan during the Kofun period. They were made for ritual use and buried with the dead as funerary objects. The same wazumi technique was used to create Haniwa, where the coiled clay was built up to shape the figures, layer by layer. Haniwa figures have typical characteristics of neutral facial expressions, hollowed-out eyes and minimalist features. Some people think they are EN IWAMURA JUXTAPOZ .COM 123

child-like and appealing, but, actually for me, they’re not cute because those very pieces were pulled from somebody’s grave. They look quite harmless, but they can also be scary, for those eyes are connecting two different worlds, the living and the dead. There’s an irony here: cute but not-so-cute; simple but complex; smiling baby face but holes for the eyes that are void, emotionless. I hope that people will take my work seriously because I am attempting to find deeper spiritual connections. For me, working on those lines can develop into an accent or hallmark for these artifacts. The lines are not just ornamental, but imply an unknown culture which I am constantly drawing on to build my own brand. I really love your color choices in the sculptures. Do you plan the color beforehand? Actually, I'm still exploring different materials. To be honest, all the colors are decided at the time of spraying—but this often happens by chance. I don't know which object will have which color, because, for me, I mix the clay with the glazes

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in different proportions for each figure, and then I spray it. Then, when I open the kiln, I am surprised every time at the colors that emerge. When I visited Eric Parker's studio in New York, I noticed he had a huge array of colors and each had a different name. I believe that each color conveys a different meaning. Eventually, I will develop a systematic way of producing the color range with a color chart and name each color according to its emotional content or character. The naming of the color achieves more depth. How do you make the many interesting textures? It's in the glaze mix. I make my own glaze. See this grainy piece? I mix clay powder with tiny particles of sand with the glaze powder, and the glaze can

melt the clay to give it a shiny and somewhat melted look, but still keep its gray color. And tell me about the type of kiln you use in your studio now. Nowadays, since I make large pieces, I use a motor power firing method from a gas canister. An electric kiln has a certain limit on size, but the gas canister can go pretty much to any size. Still, we need a big kiln. I fire normally at 40°C, which in the US, would be in the code 8 to 9 range, which is pretty high. The reason I started firing at a high temperature is because, when I was living in Montana, I was already making big pieces. When I didn’t have enough space in my room, I would put big square pieces outside, and they would crack because they would become frozen. So, I started to use a high firing technique to be able to put the pieces outside, without cracking.

"I am always looking for unexpected forms I have not seen before."

And so now you just continue to fire at that temperature? I can fire at a lower temperature, depending on the environment. That affects how the piece will react to temperature or snow or rain or water. How do you deal with making large works while negotiating the size limits of the kiln? I've seen pictures of some of your really big work. How are you able to deal with making work of that size by hand? Big has become the norm for me. I used to play sports—track and field events—so I’m a pretty fit guy. I need to use both physical strength and agility in my creations. When making large-scale pieces, including drawings, I always think about which muscles I will need to use to balance and to stretch myself. I'm also thinking about practical things like storage and shipping… That’s always a big problem for me. I always have to call my contacts to see where I can store the large pieces. My plan is—we'll deal with the shipping and storage when it happens. Eventually, I have to have my own storage. Right now, I am building my studio, which occupies a very large space. But still, I don't want to keep all the work there because I want to have my works always fresh off the production line. My late teacher advised me to do the same. “Just keep making things and then let them go. Don’t store your piece because if you keep your piece in your hand, you can't grab the new things. You have to wave goodbye.” Right. Keep your creativity fresh. And that was actually my next question. What inspires you to create? What gives you the inspiration to create something new and different? l have this urge to explore something new I haven't yet seen. This is a constant adventure. As I work on the clay or the coil bearings, I am always looking for unexpected forms I have not seen before. I need an encounter with unknown things, and that experience needs to be uncomfortable, uncanny, uncontrollable, where I question my thinking. So I never get bored looking for new forms. My international travel helps a lot because I meet new people who give me new inspiration. I learned a lot from the community in Montana who were into ceramics. I like to explore the world with my work, so this is a kind of a ticket for me to get something new. The Roscoe McGarry gallery, among others, gives me the opportunity to showcase my works internationally and also gain more ideas. It sounds like your experiences traveling, both in your home country and America, really influence the work. How does your painting connect with your ceramic sculptures?

Actually, with painting, it seems natural shifting from 3D to 2D models. My paintings are an extension of the same themes, but they’re evolving and also moving to bigger and bigger canvasses. I am also exploring the idea of working in a more abstract mode. I understand that you have another exhibition planned for spring. What can we expect to see in your show? What I can tell you now is that I'm going to make large bronze sculptures. I'm talking about two

to three meter bronze figures. Simple color and strong lines. I want to go very simple, strong and large-scale. Above all, I want people to see my works in the best settings, not in isolation as online photos, but also to take in the atmosphere surrounding my works. So that's why I really want to have exhibitions, where I have a backdrop in real space covering a large expanse. @eniwamura

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Cathrin Hoffmann The Big Why Interview by Sasha Bogojev Portrait by the artist

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Above: Overcoming Gravity, Oil on canvas, 37" x 47", 2020

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t’s always energizing to see resilient folks transform an indifferent experience into fuel that blazes a new path. Years of working in the advertising industry was like skating on the surface, pushing Cathrin Hoffman into a passion for making work that speaks about the human experience. Through imagery and sculptural work depicting the sting and heat of being human, she delves into questions similar to those the European existentialist philosophers pondered over a hundred years ago. Blasting through an advanced digital age where reality and cyber existence keep shapeshifting, she creates rough 3D renderings of anthropomorphic shapes existing in desolate, void spaces. Stripped of identifying features,

Above: I Stick My Finger In Existence, Oil on canvas, 106" x 75", 2020

removed from objects that would suggest social status, they are portrayed with an emphasis of the questionable flaws we all carry. After years of photoshopping and perfecting models and consumer goods integral to her profession, Hoffmann decided to focus on telling the other, more complex, but certainly more emotional side of the human story.

digitally for the first time. It was such a feeling of freedom not to have a purpose, not to have a briefing by an agency or by a client, just to think about the three months we had already traveled and drawing what we experienced. That was the first time I did that for, like, 12 hours a day. My boyfriend was going to the beach, and I sat there, drank rum, and drew.

Sasha Bogojev: Describe your metamorphosis from digital to analog. Cathrin Hoffmann: I was traveling with my boyfriend, and we were in Leon, Nicaragua, where we rented a room in a shared house, and there was an actual table and a chair in the room for the first time during our trip. I had brought with me my graphic tablet and started drawing

Did you jump to oil on canvas right after you got back home? No, I was afraid of the paint and the brush. But I decided to be more physical, trying to not only sit in front of the computer. I wanted to try something with real materials, so I started doing collages as well. It’s cutting out and gluing and then a little bit of paint. But most of the

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time, I drew. I drew with pastel chalks, and that was okay. I wasn’t afraid of those [laughs]. I had some really nice paintings that I made digitally, and I thought that I really wanted to see them on a big scale. So I decided to paint them and sneak in the canvas. I guess a more standard trajectory is to learn techniques and develop what you want to paint alongside. Was it frustrating trying to manifest your finished digital work with a different technique? Yeah, it was terrible. Starting out, I really thought I needed to have lessons, that I needed to go to school somehow because I wouldn’t be able to learn otherwise. I realized painting is too hard. So I watched a lot of YouTube videos but that didn’t help, and I had always wanted to do it correctly. Maybe that’s the German part of me—I wanted to do it like a “real painter” would. I thought I had to hold my brush like Picasso. I couldn’t do it, and I still can’t [laughs]. But now I know—fuck that! Do it however you want to do it. And this is where I come back to the first thing I said—I’m happy that I didn’t have lessons because I think someone else would try to push me in a direction I would not go myself. And so I learned my own way, and I’m really happy that I learned it on my own and maybe have a different look than an educated painter. Perhaps people would say, ‘’Well, you could achieve that easily.’’ But I don’t care, I like that. I do a lot of things differently. I realized people would say, ‘’Wow, that looks very weird.’’ But it works. So, in the end, that’s all I need. It works and I’m happy. So now, after two years of painting, it’s really easy now. Sometimes I actually do find myself holding a brush like Picasso and it’s like I’m almost there. And what about achieving that end result that you set for yourself digitally? That also changed because I realized it’s not important to achieve that digital painting. It’s not necessary. I actually gained confidence, and with being more confident, it’s not important to make a copy of your reference. It’s more important to convey this feeling and what I wanted to say in the painting. Not how it’s blended, not how the gradient is. For me, at least, I don’t care anymore about that stuff. That is also something I had to learn. Failure is a very important part of the learning process. Going in the wrong directions, making mistakes, but accepting them and adapting. Yeah, and to figure out what is important to you. Obviously I don’t have great technical skills but I also don’t care a lot. It’s only important on a specific level. Being well skilled doesn’t add emotion to a painting—for me, at least. I realized that a bad brush stroke can create more feelings than a perfectly blended stroke or whatever. 130 SPRING 2021

Top: Is This A Lot of Feelings?, Oil on canvas, 63" x 71", 2020 Bottom: Let’s Just See Where This Goes, Oil on canvas, 75" x 55", 2020

But I had to learn that. This perfection I used to have before always led me to a different direction and I lost track because of that. I used to think it was important to make a perfectly crafted painting. This was an ambivalence and a conflict. It was always like being on a battlefield with myself.

Sometimes the eyes won’t help, sometimes the eyes distract, I think. For example, when an eye is looking in a direction, that means something. When the painting looks at your own eyes, that has a meaning. And sometimes I don’t want that layer of meaning, I want something else. This is when I avoid giving them eyes.

That’s probably because you’re coming from the perfect world where software allows you to go way beyond human possibilities. It sounds like you now feel comfortable and confident with your technique? I feel better [laughs].

When you mentioned Ren & Stimpy, I got curious about other artistic influences. I loved Looney Tunes as well.

And how does it feel now when you see your work? Having more confidence, was there a change from the first shows and how you feel nowadays? Yeah, because I got to know a lot of the artists and I realized they are just people, and this is so good. Especially in observing their paintings, coming closer, driven by the graphic designer in me, just to find mistakes or just to observe the technique. And realizing it still doesn’t matter, because the emotion you had when you first saw the painting had nothing to do with the technique. So why would you care now? So learning that from other paintings by other artists, was very helpful. That and being able to talk about it all helped me realize what’s important to me in my work.

So, Ren & Stimpy, Looney Tunes, and Picasso’s way of holding a brush? Yeah, only that. The paintings are “Ah.” [laughs] Was the work of any particular artist groundbreaking or influential for you at any point? It was Egon Schiele, definitely. When I’m in front of one of his paintings, it never loses me.

So the moment I want to achieve is being hit by a painting. He’s beating me up all the time. The same goes for Francis Bacon, who I think is a big influence. And so are a lot of German painters. It’s a shame that I only know the males actually. Louise Bourgeois is one of the female painters I enjoy. But, in the past, when I started being interested in art and even during art lessons in school, we never talked about female artists. We all know that problem. So I always talk about male artists, but this is how I started, so I guess that’s that. I also like George Grosz a lot. Do you recognize any element of German art movements or characteristics in your work? It’s hard to say, I don’t know. Maybe the grumpy part. And also you could say a little bit of melancholy. I like this sadness in German paintings, the melancholy, and this post-war trauma. This is definitely what I’m attracted to. It actually comes back to emotional language

At what point did your imagery connect with the concept of identities lost through our online lives? Was that the concept that started everything? So, there was no concept really, but now, since I have been talking more about my art, I realize I am always driven by the idea of humanity in general, actually. What is humanity about? How did we become what we are? And how are we at this point? What is important to us in terms of society? How is technology changing society? Does it change real humans? Does it change us, or are we still thinking of the same things that philosophers from the past wondered about? When I start drawing, it is very intuitive, but I think it has always been driven by the big question, Why? Though it’s hard to really know. What is your motivation for creating shapes that obscure the human and artificial, like using holes in the heads instead of eyes? It depends. Sometimes, I think it’s not important to give them eyes. It’s funny because, when I start drawing or sketching, I do a lot of variants. So you might know one painting, but you don’t know the many variants I did before that. Sometimes these variants have eyes, sometimes no eyes. I try to create a specific feeling, which I can’t really identify. When I don’t react to my own painting, when I don’t have a feeling about it, when it’s like, “Ah,” for me, then I have to go on and work on it.

Above: I Agree With Your Look Of Horrified Realization, Oil on canvas, 63" x 75", 2020

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again, which is a very strong element because of the war. Your social media accounts show a keen interest in what’s happening in Germany, especially the growth of right wing political views and, let’s say, conservative ways of thinking. It’s happening everywhere in the world, but obviously you’re focused on where you live. Is this something that you would incorporate in your work, or are you already doing that in a way that I’m missing? Well, I am German, but you see my face and I don’t look German, right? I think it comes from a personal reality I had. I grew up in a very small town and I did not have very bad racist things happen to me, but a lot of little things constantly. I was always the not-German girl in class because I was the only one with black hair. So I dyed my hair a little bit lighter, I don’t know if you can see that. And this is what I really don’t like. My dad is German, he’s blond, and he is very left wing, I would say. My mom is from Iran, and so I grew up always being in conflict between German and the Persian cultures and being perceived

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differently. That hurt me, of course, because racism sucks. And now to see our society growing more and more in that direction is very painful for me personally. I would say I’m not really a political person in terms of knowing all about what’s going

"When the painting looks at your own eyes, that has a meaning." on in politics. Maybe I’m not very well-informed sometimes, but I have a very strong urge to do something. I go to demonstrations a lot. I go to the streets. I try to do the little things, and yes, racism is a big thing for me personally, as well.

Do you think your mixed cultural background impels you, even subconsciously, to work with figures that don’t fit in any existing gender or racial boxes? Actually, I think you’re right. It’s not the main thing I have in my mind, but now that you have said it out loud, I would agree. So, yes, it’s not like this is my concept and I do it, but I have a very strong feeling to speak up. It’s not only because of my heritage but also, I have a mentally disabled twin brother, so he is “different” as well. And I was always fighting for him, to show everyone that he is not different. So I have a big goal to try and be inclusive. I struggle to not see differences, but I do see them, of course. We are all a bit different. This is a human thing. I can also be very judgmental, too quickly sometimes, and I hate that as well. In the midst of the 2020 madness, you managed to squeeze in a London solo show. Can you tell me about that? When I started working on that show and I thought about the concept behind it, I came across a quote from the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard that I knew of for a long time. He was questioning

Above: It still smells of nothing (installation view), Public Gallery, London, 2020

the world, basically: the big “Why?” that I was talking about before. The questions like, Why are we here? Why am I here? What is it all about? “I stick my finger in existence —it smells of nothing.” That is a part of the original quote, and I liked it so much. I was already carrying this quote around for a while, and I remembered it while I was working on the London show. During this isolation and the pandemic, this quote felt even more relevant. Because I was like, “You know what? When I stick my finger in existence right now, it still smells of nothing.” And we are hundreds of years apart from when he originally said that. This is a very short, compressed form of that story because it took a while until I came to that point. One of the paintings is actually titled I Stick My Finger in Existence. And I’m sure that a lot of people connected it with Nirvana’s album.

No, no one. Isn’t it strange? No one. People were asking me if this is about Covid-19 and the loss of smell and taste. But, actually, no, I was not aware of those symptoms back then, so actually it’s a coincidence. Why did you decide to work with sculpture for that show? I mean, your work always felt like a painting of a sculpture, but it was still amazing to see them, and done so well too. It was actually one of the first things I created for the show. And I was not sure if I wanted to put them in the show because I was not sure if they were good enough. Again, that perfection thing. I thought, “Well, yes, you enjoy it, why not?” Do you make them by yourself? Yeah. I don’t have anyone here who could help me. I would love to have someone, but I have to do that all on my own. I always liked crafting and physical

Top left: No,That’s Not The First Part Of A Magic Trick, Oil on canvas, 67" x 71", 2020 Bottom left: Is This Not a Voluntary Concern?, Oil on canvas, 31" x 39", 2020 Right: Pointless Bid of Control, Oil on canvas, 55" x 71", 2020

work. When I was young, I built tree houses on my own and things like that. I built a rabbit cage on my own, poor rabbit. It was like a haunted rabbit house. So I felt like I could do a sculpture because I love working with my hands anyway, even more than doing these very delicate parts. I like this rough stuff more, actually, using a hammer and wood, things like that. Are they part of your plans for the future? My plan for the coming future is actually doing more sculptures. I don’t want to give up painting, but I would love to experiment more with sculpting. I think it is because I never felt like a real painter. I didn’t really care about the medium at all, but I realized what a sculpture does to me as someone that sees it, that it’s as important to me as what the painting does. @cathrin.hoffmann

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EVENTS

WHERE WE’RE HEADED

MADSAKI @ Perrotin, NYC April 29—June 5, 2021 // perrotin.com When we first became introduced to MADSAKI’s work, he was gaining critical and cultural attention with his Wannabie’s series, crude, graffiti-like interpretations of classic and famed artworks from the history books. Your Renoirs, Jasper Johns, even Matisses. The effect of that series was to seriously break down our conceptions of what makes a Master, who controls our cultural capital and how we elevate artists to speak for our eras of existence. It was also a play on simply understanding the psyche and lexicon of art, and as a child of the 1980s and a child of immigration in America, MADSAKI was speaking for a generation of us—although we appreciated art for what it was, we were not invested or allowed to dictate the images that were thrust upon us to “stand the test of time.” Of course, adolescence is a confusing time, no matter where you live or what culture you identify with. I often think about a conversation we had with Osaka-born, New Jersey raised artist MADSAKI when he spoke of his family's move from Japan to the East Coast of the U.S. He literally thought he could just… ride his bike back to Japan. Distance was just an abstraction to his young mind. The language and cultural barrier was clearly a hurdle, and although MADSAKI used art to gain acceptance amongst his peers, there was even an abstracted understanding of the burgeoning pop-culture appetite that was taking hold of America in the early 1980s. This almost fuzzy comprehension of Americana through the eyes of a kid from Japan, raised in the heart of Northern Jersey, has been at the core of MADSAKI’s work for years. He has traversed art history and pop through a lens almost messy and naive, yet so poignantly conceptual. Even in this almost intentional naivety, the work is a sophisticated look at the ways we understand culture and cultural immersion. Years ago, in a conversation in Juxtapoz, MADSAKI said, “You know me. I do stupid things with seriousness.” When we think of MADSAKI’s work, there is a tendency to go back to our grade school days and think of how our experiences within American pop culture were both fascinating and overwhelming. His recent collaboration with Mattel and the He Man and the Masters of the Universe series was both brilliant nostalgia and jarring subversion; a core trait of the best MADSAKI works. This spring, MADSAKI will return to NYC for his first solo show in Manhattan, years after living in the city before returning to Japan. The show is a culmination of his “own diasporic experiences of both intense alienation and belonging,” as well as an incredible insight into our collective history of the iconic touchstones that have somehow been submerged into our consciousness. Although a deeply personal show, it makes clear that MADSAKI is also speaking to a larger theme of America’s long, tumultuous relationship with immigration, the blurred lines of humor and pain and a navigation of our memories of past trauma and triumph.

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Calder-Picasso @ de Young museum, San Francisco February 27–May 23, 2021 deyoung.famsf.org Alexander Calder is credited with inventing the mobile, and Pablo Picasso actuated cubism and collage, so envisioning a joint exhibition, developed by their respective grandsons, is epic. This dynamic display presents a concept often referenced in art discussion: the visual dialogue, and here it’s based on actual history, as the two artists actually enjoyed at least four meetings together! Both possessed keen observation, imaginative freedom of thought and dexterous ability to express movement, space and emotion through abstraction. “My whole theory of art is the disparity between form, masses and movement,” explained Calder, whose Ball Player is a silhouetted figure in action, as well as a tribute to agelessness and grace. Picasso noted that “a head is a matter of eyes, nose and mouth, which can be distributed any way you like,” and his Woman Seated in a Red Armchair conveys the kinship of color, shape and gravity. More than 100 paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs invite a deep, wide-ranging and personal conversation with these very recognizable names and their work.

Above left: MADSAKI, Untitled, Acrylic paint and aerosol on canvas, 63" x 47", ©2021 MADSAKI/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy Perrotin

WHERE WE’RE HEADED

Posters for The Tokyo Olympiad @ Poster House, NYC May 20–September 12, 2021 posterhouse.org

Julie Mehretu @ Whitney Museum of Art, NYC March 25–August 8, 2021 whitney.org

So much of what we reference as great graphic design and graphic art influences stem from the creation of Olympic poster art and logo designs. There is an argument to be made of how much sports and art are intertwined with our public psyche, how we remember the look of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics or the 1968 looks for the Mexico City games. They are iconic and stand the test of time. Some of the best years in terms of design always come with Olympic games set in Tokyo or greater Japan, the 1964 games being an absolute highlight. With the delayed 2020 Olympics perhaps moving into 2021 in Tokyo, Poster House in NYC presents an exhibition of posters related to those 1964 Olympic Games in Japan. Posters for The Tokyo Olympiad showcase a series of bold works, and highlighted by a grouping of designs which announced the Italian release of the film Tokyo Olympiad, one of the great sports documentaries of all time. That 1965 documentary film, directed by Kon Ichikawa (after famed director, Akira Kurosawa declined the project due to his desire for full control over the Opening and Closing ceremonies), has in itself set a standard for its artform, a now-Criterion Collection film—controversial in its own right for not being approved by the Japanese government. The 1960s was a time of major social and political upheaval around the world, much like the massive global crisis we faced in the 2010s. Through these pivotal Games and all the surrounding artwork, we see a parallel worth exploring.

Just as Jazz is not casual background music, Julie Mehretu’s art is not hotel lobby decor. It is infinitely gratifying, but attention must be paid. Harmonic rhythm thrums in the geometric abstraction, columns and grids, while improvisation bursts out in her emotional, gestural mark making and torrents of paint. The Whitney, in conjunction with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, is opening the entire fifth gallery of its new building for your awesome appreciation with a welcome from Alice Pratt Brown Director, Adam D. Weinberg, “Few artistic encounters are more thrilling than standing close to one of Julie Mehretu’s monumental canvases, enveloped in its fullness, color, forms and symbolic content. Conviction and mastery of composition and brushwork—along with the sheer energy and full commitment of her execution—endow her works with a life force, presence and presentness.” Inspired by a reservoir of research and art history, the Ethiopian born, Michigan raised, and New York City-based artist draws from maps, Chinese calligraphy, photojournalism and graffiti to pose a reckoning on events like the police killing of Michael Brown and the California wildfires, as well as ongoing issues like migration and climate change. Employing notations and symbols like a hybrid of algorithm and emoji, Mehretu has called the works “story maps of no location.” In making canvases that are both dream and document, ancient and future, or all of the above, whether cool, modal or gospel, she plays a polyrhythmic tune.

EVENTS

Ken Nwadiogbu: UBUNTU @ Thinkspace Projects, Los Angeles March 6–27, 2021 thinkspaceprojects.com “My love for drawing faces of everyday people through ripped paper was born from a need to identify Africans in major global contexts,” Ken Nwadiogbu says on the eve of his new solo show, UBUNTU, at Thinkspace in Los Angeles. “There’ll always be a need to understand and represent people in a different way. This becomes our way of discovering and revealing who we truly are.” In a truly seminal era for young painters from the African continent, the Nigerian-born Nwadiogbu focuses much of this body of work on the concept of coming full circle. He notes that UBUNTU, the title of the exhibition, can be expressed or translated as the phrase, “I am because we are.” There is weight to this. It speaks to the idea that, as a society and a culture, we share qualities that are passed down through centuries and generations. As we have had our own reckoning in America across 2020, Nigeria, too, faced an historical understanding of its own brutal past playing out on the streets of the nation. Nwadiogbu’s works comprehend a large global vernacular with social awakenings and reckonings, and UBUNTU is a powerful show of healing and truth. I implore us to consider our society as spaces we occupy and challenge us to think, in a larger context, about our role in these spaces,” he says, “what we can do to influence these spaces and how we react to these spaces, because I believe, it is only then that we can discover the true meaning of ‘Ubuntu.’”

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SIEBEN ON LIFE

Yeah, It's Personal Six-Pack: Winston Tseng I first became aware of Winston Tseng’s work through graphics he created for enjoi skateboards. I watched (via social media) his practice shift from commercial work to personal—he began designing and installing large posters in public spaces throughout NYC. Curious about this deviation in practice, I hit him up for a quick six-pack of questions and answers to see what spurred the change and what led him into the streets. Michael Sieben: How long have you been interested in street art? Installing work in public spaces is obviously much different than making art in the comfort of your own home. Winston Tseng: I started putting up posters a few years ago, but didn’t really think of them as street art or ever imagine they’d be seen that way. Before that, I had a general interest in it—I think just because it’s such a big part of visual culture today and since there's a lot of overlap and similarities with skate art. As far as installing them in public, the main motivation is just wanting to create tangible work. I still do everything on the computer so I can obsessively undo/redo, but it’s not finished until it’s printed and posted. Plus, the act of putting them up in public is pretty fun. Have you ever been hassled by the cops or concerned citizens while installing your posters? No cops, luckily, but I do get confronted by random people. Usually it’s because the person doesn’t see the parody and takes the poster at face value, like it’s pro-opioids or pro-police or something. Most of the time, though, I’ve found New Yorkers don’t notice or don’t really care what I’m doing. Has your work always addressed political or societal concerns or was there a particular impetus for this shift? 136 SPRING 2021

I’ve always been most interested in conveying ideas around societal concerns, and ideally politics would just be a small part that falls under that umbrella. Of course, ever since 2016, it’s felt like every societal concern is tied to a political one and, as a whole, we’ve become much more politically engaged, so I hope my work is a natural reflection of that. Another reason is just that I’ve shifted to doing less commercial work and more personal work. Making these posters has been a really nice outlet for ideas and messages that aren’t exactly pleasant or going to help brands sell their products. Some of these posters are for sure kicking the MAGA/GOP hornet’s nest. Have you been harassed online because of your artwork? Yeah, definitely—pretty regularly at this point. I get random threats on social media about every month or so. From what I can tell it mostly stems from the "Keep NYC Trash Free" posters I did a couple years ago, which got quite a reaction from the MAGA folks. They doxxed me and started harassing any company or organization they thought I was connected to. I ended up having to take down a lot of information I had online and deleting accounts or making them private. I guess they succeeded in their goal, so, mission accomplished, MAGA.

What’s the craziest comment or DM you’ve received because of your work? Crazy in a good way was when Jerry Saltz shared one of my posters and called it “great art.” Unfortunately, he got a lot of backlash and ended up apologizing and basically retracting his statement, but I’ll still take it. Crazy in a bad way was when I was being doxxed, I received an anonymous email from a “Trump supporter” that said my home address and other info was all over some alt-right chat forums. The person didn’t say what was being discussed, but said they didn’t agree with it and wanted to be helpful so I could take down that info. It was a nice gesture in an otherwise crazy experience. What do you hope to achieve with your artwork? Is there a goal? It has always been to reflect what’s happening, especially societal concerns and ugly truths. I’m not necessarily trying to change anyone’s mind, and I realize I’m not proposing solutions either. Whether it’s a literal depiction or conveying a popular sentiment, the goal is to capture the times we’re in, and hopefully there’s some lasting value in that. winstontseng.com @winstontseng

Above: Photo by Winston Tseng

POP LIFE

LOS ANGELES, NYC, MIAMI, MADRID, MANILLA, MANCHESTER, PARIS

Los Angeles 1 What a refreshing start to the year, even though it might take us a few months to fully enjoy it. Thinkspace Projects opened their new space in central Los Angeles, appointment only of course, with the promise of better days and opening nights ahead. 2 In proper social distancing protocol, artist Kyle Bryant and Thinkspace’s Shawn Hosner were able to lend the new exhibition space some proper practice… 3 … while Kyle gave us a pose in front of his new, intricate installation.

Miami Beach 4 Basel Week wasn’t the same at the end of 2020, but our friend David “Mr StarCity” White was able to show works at the Soho Beach House on Collins in more mellow conditions.

Madrid 5 While traversing the world last year with our Art in Uncertain Times series, we caught up with Nicolas Romero in Spain in what has become our favorite social outing: the market.

Manila 6 We haven't had a chance to check in with our friends in the Philippines recently, but did get a good glimpse of Bat Soup Painters, Louie Cordero and Mariano Ching's collaborative show in the Manila art MO Space.

Manchester 7 Louise Giovanelli wasn't able to travel to the opening of her solo show at Grimm Gallery in Amsterdam, but we did make contact at her Manchester, England studio just before.

NYC 8 Nicolas Holiber literally sat down with us from his NYC studio while preparing a digital showcase with Unit London… 9 … while Brooklyn-based Sarah Slappey continued her standout year prepping a print she dropped to coincide with her solo show Tenderizer at Galerie Maria Bernheim in Zürich, Switzerland.

Paris 10 For her opening of Quiet Steps with Speerstra Gallery, Mina Hamada was right in the heart of Paris, and we can’t wait to follow her steps there for a visit.

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Above: All photography courtesy of the galleries and artists

IN MEMORIAM

Van Arno In Memoriam Not many Juxtapoz readers remember that the magazine was created to assist and encourage a group of gifted artists in the early 1990s who were unable to gain attention through regular art channels. The very talented young artist Van Arno was among those in that early circle. I was saddened when learning that my good friend and longtime art compatriot was no longer with us. Van Arno was a wonderful person, always kind and humble. His passing has touched a lot of fellow artists and friends. But what will honor his life and aspirations more completely will be 140 SPRING 2021

the legacy he has left for us. Van Arno was, in actuality, a master painter. He died just as his successes were starting to reach a critical peak. He was always socially restrained and quietly modest. Consequently, his skill and talents spoke for him. In an age of spattered and slapdash painting, he was a rare prodigy. The entire alternative art movement has lost a fundamental player. He has left a deep gash in American status quo art that won’t be easily patched up with new trends or zeitgeist. Good-bye, Van Arno, we will miss your vision. —Robert Williams

Portrait by: Brian Lynch Above: The Three Graces, Oil on canvas, 40" x 30", 2012. Photo by Baker Hesseldenz.

Audio conversations with the Juxtapoz Staff on all things contemporary art, culture, music, street art, graffiti, art happenings and more.

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PERSPECTIVE

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Above: Part of a Complete Breakfast (in process & uncropped), Gouache and pencil on paper, 2004

PERSPECTIVE

The Villain Never Dies Jason Jägel Honors MF DOOM When MF Doom released Operation: Doomsday in 1999 (and the split EP with MF Grimm on Brick Records), the record’s complex significance blew my mind. It demanded my scrutiny. I came to think of the MF Doom character and Operation: Doomsday as an alchemical equation that solved the twin tragedies of losing his brother and closest collaborator, as well as having their record, Black Bastards, killed by Elektra Records. Surely KMD would have received big fame if they hadn’t caught the stray bullet of cultural racism. And yet, without such affront, the circumstances that birthed the Supervillain would have been otherwise. Honestly, I was flummoxed by the un-orchestrateable coincidence involved with MF Doom’s creation. A Marvel Comics character, the super scientist Victor Von Doom, blew up his face attempting to resurrect his dead mother. The 2x trauma ultimately birthed the masked evil genius, Dr. Doom. Daniel Dumile, called Doom since youth, experienced his own two concurrent, real life losses and the further hardship that ushered the genesis of MF Doom. In a feat of prestidigitation, Dr. Doom was laced with hoodie straps to create the guise of MF Doom, which produced the feel of an illusion performed right before our eyes, both impossible and inevitable. And in doing so, elevated the comics of my youth to archetypal significance. MF Doom made Doomsday to embody all that’s caught up in the complex experience of being human and living life. He had, through his art, a knack for crystalizing the duality of joy and sorrow, of committing transcendent and dastardly acts, all embedded in a running joke with himself. Doom was jamming the signal. Calling out the world and music industry from the far-reaches of the cultural sphere in the coldest manner imaginable. Doom trading verses with himself as both MF Doom and King Ghidra took the idea of alter-ego to new heights. Doom rejected choruses, hooks, sample clearances and coherence in favor of a raw, grimy internal logic, an artist with more than

half a dozen aliases inherently throwing shade at mainstream appeal. Listening to his not-watereddown, undiluted, encoded and multi-layered storytelling, I felt inspired and creatively validated. I thought of my work as stream-of-consciousness fictional-autobiography. My drawing-paintings loved the periphery of the paper, avoided the center and anything that smacked of a simple illustration. Being in graduate school at Stanford at the time, I felt flack for identifying my intuitively-driven work as stream-of-consciousness. Doom vindicated me, revealing the higher-functioning cognition of non-sequitur tangential storytelling. Creating art for Doom was effortless. Big thanks to Jeff Jank for thinking of me when Doom recruited him for the MM.. FOOD cover. I lived and breathed Marvel Comics as a kid, watched double-feature Godzilla movies on UHF Channel 38, saw Wild Style in the theatre in 1983. I was primed and ready! I’d studied Doom, he’d inspired my drawn and painted worlds to spiral inwards. My art was unhinged, talking to itself more and more, looking for a good joke and adding tangents to the marginalia. More and more, the alleyways and rooftops were populated with masked characters and versions of Doom. My personal mandate was to craft Doom a little differently each time. You know you can’t pigeonhole the Supervillain. MM.. FOOD front and back cover, Hoe Cakes 12”, The Dime Box and the Doomsday reissue with the trading card set. During each project I had Doom on repeat and inscribed lyrics in the margins. I wanted layers to unfold in the image the way it happened in the music. Look closely at the back of MM.. FOOD and you’ll see the tin can is “Dunny Brand.” Tiny letters on a building say, “We’re All the Same,” a line Paul Barman raps on “Hot Guacamole.” The filet cooks by Sterno flame, precisely the kind of cultural artifact Doom might have referenced in a rap, but didn’t to my knowledge. Daniel Dumile—just like Marcel Duchamp— wielded a hard-earned, yet casual, sleight-of-hand that changed art indelibly. And that’s that. —Jason Jägel

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