P A RS O NS MF A P H O TOGR APH Y TH E S IS CATALOG 2015
INDEX INTRODUCTION BY ALEX JOVANOVICH
3
MARCO BELL
4-5
SHIANG-JIUN CHEN
6-7
QIREN HU
8-9
DONGLI HUANG
10-11
DONGMIN LEE
12-13
ROSANA LIANG
14-15
ASHLEY MIDDLETON
16-17
KELSEY O’BRIEN
18-19
MASAHITO ONO
20-21
MELISSA PRESTON
22-23
MATTHEW SCERBAK
24-25
EMILY SHEVENOCK
26-27
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS BY JAMES RAMER
29
Graduate school’s weird. It is, in no particular order: a psychic boot camp; a resurrected adolescence; a heart attack; an ecstasy; a heart attack while on ecstasy; a time slip; a hero’s workshop; an irritant; a billion thrills-a-minute carnival tear; a huge fucking drag; a weirdo’s paradise. It is a heightened, hallucinatory atmosphere of non-stop work and imagination that’s exhausting and dramatically life-altering—unless, of course, you’re lazy. Or dead. Truly, it is not for the weak of mind and spirit. Just like the artist’s life. Consider these twelve extraordinary hearts, on their way out of Parsons to change the way the game is played: Dongmin Lee; Kelsey O’Brien; Marco Bell; Rosana Liang; Ashley Middleton; Qiren Hu; Masahito Ono; Melissa Preston; Matthew Scerbak; Shiang-Juin Chen; Dongli Huang; Emily Shevenock. They are performers, sculptors, painters, poets, activists, backyard naturalists, romantics, pranksters, sociologists, storytellers, clairvoyants, and cosplay ethnographers. They are a new generation of art “professionals” who live to pervert such a banal, calcifying term. They’re out to make a stranger, deeper, sexier artworld—one not run by branding, bullies, intellectual bottom-feeders, or fashion zombies. And though they are all united by a particular area of study within a studio arts graduate program—photography—there is little concern for keeping any sense of purity, materially or historically, within the medium. This is as it should be. It is this kind of promiscuity towards “making a picture” that keeps photography vivid and alive. Hans Hofmann was a painter, writer, and teacher who played a crucial role in New York City’s most storied period of vanguard art-making during the middle part of the twentieth century. Joan Mitchell, Lee Krasner, Allan Kaprow, Larry Rivers, and Helen Frankenthaler, among countless others, were fortunate enough to study under him as art students. Push Pull, the title of this graduating class’s thesis exhibition, is taken from one of Hofmann’s most famous concepts regarding the depiction of space in abstract painting. The idea is that an artist can create the illusion of receding or advancing form on a two-dimensional surface through strategic and intuitive uses of color, shape, and line, without having to rely on more academic or traditional methods of constructing perspective. In other words, it’s a way of producing tension and dynamism within an abstract picture plane that doesn’t have to be based on any kind of picture before it. It is a way of forging gravity and meaning in a context of one’s own design. It is, in short, a kind of world-building, making what the artist wants to divine, inhabit, or promulgate, from the atom up, for the delectation and astonishment of anyone fortunate enough to bear witness. Indeed, lucky us.
Alex Jovanovich Artist and critic who regularly contributes to Artforum
MARCO BELL Interviewed by Rebeca Pineda Burgos, Brooklyn based scholar and Associate Professor at Hunter College Rebeca Pineda Burgos: How would you describe your practice? Marco Bell: I am greatly influenced by the conceptualist movement that has had an enormous influence on Latin American art since the 60s. This movement is of special importance in the region because artists used to produce encrypted gestures to denounce the horrors of the totalitarian regimes. RPB: Can you talk about moving the bust from the museum to the town? MB: Bolivar, New York is a town with very narrow circumstances, and I see certain parallels between this pioneer oil town (named after the independence hero that had the utopian dream of the Great Colombia) and Venezuela: besides the name, both had booming economies and both are in decay. So in a way I use the sculpture of Bolivar as a symbol of emancipation. Bolivar becomes a mirror between Latin America and small town America. RPB: This raises a question that could be inserted in the Latin-American tradition of magic realism: What would happen if Bolivar revived? Obviously this resurrection is a symbolic one, but also a very provocative gesture. You also ask yourself, in your statement: if Chavez revived Bolivar in Latin America, why can’t you revive him in New York?
Above: Untitled from the series Bolivar, New York, 2015, pigment print, 36x44in Opposite page: Bolivarepa, documentation of process from the series Bolivar, 2015, corn dough, plaster, dimensions variable 4
MB: I’ve been thinking a lot about the symbolic resonance of Hugo Chavez’s last speech, in which he sang to his patria querida. Although I was born in the U.S., I’ve lived all my life in Venezuela and my roots are very deep in the tropics. My father’s family is from this country, and I have strong links with this land. In this town there’s a convergence of my two fatherlands. I could revive Bolivar because after all, I have had the privilege of eye-witnessing the last 32 years of Venezuela’s socio-economic catastrophes. This project is a reflection on Venezuela’s identity crisis after Chávez and on my own heterogeneous upbringings growing up in the chimera of Venezuela. RPB: Through your interviews you decontextualize the word revolution, and it’s interesting to see the different reactions of the locals towards this concept. MB: I’ve been fascinated with the dystopic discourse and Orwell’s newspeak, because that’s exactly what our generation has been facing in Venezuela. The word “revolution” has an empty meaning, it’s an empty word. Nevertheless, the connotation of “revolution” is diametrically opposed in the two subcontinents. The “revolution” is a two-edged sword. RPB: Besides the documentary piece, you’re developing two other pieces. Could you describe them? MB: After Carlos Andres Perez nationalized the oil industry in 1973, the Venezuelan government gave the town a bust of Bolivar that is sitting at the Pioneer Oil Museum. I copied that monument, casted it with corn dough and created a Bolivarepa, as a reference to that cereal as a Pan American icon, as a bridge and a symbol of friendship betwen United States and The Americas, and to make a comment about Venezuela’s current food shortages.
www.marcobell.com
SHIANG-JIUN CHEN Interviewed by Joo Won Chon, art historian based in New Jersey Joo Won Chon: Why is it called The Drawn Towards and The Anticipating? What is your message as an artist? Shiang-Jiun Chen: During my passage through life, I have been spending most of my time dealing with daily challenges, seeking balance under structures of power. Because of a technologically evolving life, I have sensed a lack of awareness when encountering power and have been desensitized by its frequent reoccurrence. The evidence of power we encounter may not be clear because it’s already embedded into our system without our knowledge. The anticipation and the being drawn toward power might occur in different ways. Sometimes, it lies within the relationship of the influential and others. Sometimes, structures form under the unchallenged and embedded regulations. Lines familiar to our daily life and other forms of movement other than lines draw people together for many purposes. My work aims to evoke thinking in reasoning the mass movement formation, the forces that are hidden and apparent. JWC: What personal experience did you have that allowed you to capture this theme? SC: In Chinese culture, Heaven, Earth, Sovereign, Parent, and Teacher, the top five authority figures in society, are accorded unchallenged respect and power. Thus, one is naturally trained to obey unquestioningly this authority. Through challenges in life, cross-culturally, cross-disciplinarily, and cross-generationally, I have experienced the structure of power in relationships, situations or work positions, sometimes with great conflict. Those moments of obeying and resisting, built a learned pattern of handling their happenings. Freud stated that we see things through our own projections; my frequent viewing of power in surroundings indicates that some of my feelings are tied with the theme closely. I encountered them along with the changes of my status in life. I seek to project those kinds of feelings onto the outside world.
JWC: What kind of audience are you reaching out to? SC: I am reaching out to the people buried by the biological or mechanical impulses in our lives, the ones who try to free themselves and experience flow in the things that challenge us; yet, might struggle in seeking harmony under structures of power. As my work integrates both documentary and scenic qualities, I hope that the continuity of documenting and image development, the somewhat familiar but distant scenes of people we see as a by-passer or an incidental observer can connect to our own experiences and evoke our thinking in finding the hidden structure of power. JWC: What answer are you trying provide to the audience? How do you want your work to influence them? SC: The common quality of my work lies on the unclear purposes of people’s behaviors of gathering together, and the ambiguity between the facts of their passively being drawn towards something and their willful anticipation. It brings us to ponder how each of us, regardless how diverse we are, cannot resist but to attend the journey in a similar and repeated way. Therefore, it will be nice if my work helps raise awareness toward our behaviors encountering power, to bridge the gap between the powerful and the powerless, the influential and the influenced and science/technology and our humanity. JWC: Where will this work be displayed? Or optimally displayed? SC: The optimal place is a crowded, bustling, fast-paced environment with enough installation space for long prints, where people will glance at the images and become stimulated to investigate further. The grand long horizontal images of lines or mass movements were intentionally designed to grab the attention of the viewers, forcing them to walk along the piece to see its macro scope, micro details and to think about the hidden factors. They represent real scenes of anticipation as multiple frames taken from a preset location were connected back to their sequential space in time.
All these influences show in my work where I present my discovery of the hidden power structures. Instead of pointing them out, the people and their surroundings, influenced and drawn towards these structures, become the visual evidence of the very power.
Opposite page (top): Group No. 1 from Waiting Series, 2015, inkjet print, 24x36in Opposite page (middle): Waiting Line Series No. 1, 2014, accordion book, 13x170in Opposite page (bottom): Waiting Line Series No. 2, 2014, pigment print on canvas, 21x360in 6
www.shiangchen.carbonmade.com
QIREN HU Interviewed by Sylvia Tsai, Associate Editor at ArtAsiaPacific Sylvia Tsai: There is a play of dualities consistent in works such as Manufactured Landscapes (2010), The Emperor Arrives–Times Square NYC (2014) and American Ginseng (2015) in which you interweave the notions of the man-made with nature, and Asian culture with western. What strikes you about creating such overlaps? Qiren Hu: The dualities in my work are a reflection of my upbringing in post-colonial Singapore. I grew up in a very traditional Chinese family but received western education and was exposed to western media. I believe my work lies between market constructs and belief systems. ST: I find that your works speak to an exploration of traditional Chinese culture, for instance, in TCM (2009), where you print silhouettes of dried insects, fish and animals, as well as your video and performance where you play Qianlong Emperor from the Qing Dynasty. Why do you make such strong references to Chinese history? QH: I am particularly rooted as a Chinese person and attached to traditional Chinese values. For the TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) series, it was a visual reference of my grandfather’s traditional Chinese medical hall in Singapore, which also influenced my current project, American Ginseng. And as the eldest grandson, it held significant importance akin to a little emperor. ST: Taking a look at the series “The Emperor Arrives” (2013–14) from another perspective, where you inject yourself—as Qianlong Emperor—into staged photographs and a video set similar to kitschy Chinese period movies, a significant aspect of your works are quite satirical. Another example would be Art-ventures of Old Master Q (2012), where you create collaged images using the cartoon character Old Master Q. Why is this aspect of satire so important?
QH: The Old Master Q comic strips have shown me how effective satire can be as a strategy to raise broader issues of society and at the same time, of identity and the self. The Emperor Arrives series employ the same strategy to comment on China’s economic expansion and growing global influence. The emperor remains the ultimate symbol of power and wealth but also the ability and right to consume. However, the repetition of myself in disguise heightens its superficiality and renders this masquerade meaningless. ST: You seem to place more emphasis on China than on Singapore, where you are from. Why is this? Or, are you making parallels between the two especially when you make reference to rapid economic growth and consumerism? QH: The relationship between Singapore and China has been an interesting topic for me, politically and economically. Singapore recently retained its #1 position as the world’s most expensive city and our city-state is witnessing a second wave of Chinese immigrants from the mainland. ST: Can you speak about your creative process? Where do your inspirations and ideas come from and how do you sift through them to actually realize a work? QH: My projects are mostly autobiographical. I take visual cues from my experiences and translate them through contemporary art making and presentation. The projects are interrelated and there is always a recurring theme of Chinese culture and tradition. ST: Your practice seamlessly weaves between various media, from photography and prints to video, performance and installation. What leads you to choose one medium over the other? QH: I choose a medium that best communicate my ideas or incorporate different approaches to present my work. Before turning to photography as a creative outlet, I was trained in architecture. Also, I had the opportunity to work with different artists at Singapore Tyler Print Institute as an assistant. And since moving to New York 2 years ago, I have been working for artist Hiroshi Sugimoto. These experiences have prompted my multi-disciplinary approach to art-making now. ST: What project are you currently working on? QH: I am currently expanding the American Ginseng project to create a section of a traditional Chinese medical hall. In relation to that, I am also working on a 1-year project documenting my tongue every morning which is linked to the traditional Chinese medical practice of decoding a person’s health by reading the tongue.
Above: American Ginseng, 2015, installation detail (neon signage), mixed media, dimensions variable Opposite page: American Ginseng, 2015, installation detail (ginseng packaging), mixed media, dimensions variable 8
www.visualgarden.sg
DONGLI HUANG Interviewed by Bao Kun, Chinese cultural critic and international art curator Bao Kun: Why do you focus on Chinatown? Dongli Huang: Since I came to NYC, I’ve been fascinated by everything around me and interested in the conflict between and integration of western and eastern culture. As an outsider in the west, I look for the evidence of my own culture and existence via eastern culture spontaneously, attempting to think independently and with a critical eye, understanding culture differences comprehensively. Chinatown is exactly a community that Chinese people built up to survive in a foreign land depending on their local culture. However, it is not a real China but an interesting culturally mixed and conflicting spectacle. In a way, it leaves an incomplete and one-sided impression of China for the other nations. No matter what features of their own culture they present, they have adapted to the value of the western world, while in China, they are mimetic of European and global architecture. The result of acculturation and cultural integration aroused my thinking. BK: Do you think the images can reflect the cultural differences objectively and comprehensively? DH: Actually no, due to the complexity of viewing. Viewers with different cultural backgrounds and angles read the images subjectively. Aspects of differences can be found physically in multilingual signs, marks, commodities coming from the world, people’s expression and gesture. I think images can bear witness to an age, information and detail that tell about immigrant culture, depicting the state of people’s survival. BK: I notice most images are shot in the retail stores while the figure is nearly dissolved into the crowded and dizzying commodities without expression. Did you intend to show a comparison between the environment of Chinese and American stores?
DH: No, I did not intend to show a comparison. The comparison exists in everyone’s perspective not in the image per se. People will distinguish the places by their own experiences. Stores in Chinatown absolutely are different from chain model stores in the U.S. but the key is that those are the spaces where people work and make a living. Two or three shopkeepers who sell different things share the store due to the high rents. The owners install the spaces delicately, condensing all the goods to maximize the use of space. BK: What is your perspective on cultural clash? Do you think the clash will be integrated or not? If so, what is the precondition? If not, what is the reason? DH: The clash always exists in new immigration. The misunderstanding and stereotype of alien cultures forms the potential conflicts. I hope people respect and understand the diverse cultures and beliefs based on a comprehensive cognition. Immigration all over the world promotes globalization and cultural integration, and also brings the continual clash. It will be an intense issue for every country for a very long time. I don’t think the clash will be totally integrated but it will be reduced. Even though cultural differences might become obscured in the future due to globalization and immigration, the root of every culture will continue. If so, it will be based on the social creed of equality, democracy and the strategy of financial integration. BK: What do you think of the underlying reason for cultural differences? DH: They have roots in the different ways of eastern and western social development and geographical environment, reflects on two main aspects of production patterns and economic formation. Then it builds up different national psychologies, thinking modes, linguistics, religions and so on. As a historical precipitation, Chinese culture is formed in thousands of years, which involves principles and ancient wisdom. Chinese people rely more on their rich culture and value system than the rules or law. As we know, eastern society emphasizes collectivism while the western is more individualistic. BK: What is your final goal of this project? DH: Art helps me understand and build up my sense of the world via independent and critical thought. The discussions embraced in the project create an open discussion of acculturation, cultural value, multiculturalism and so on. Most Chinese immigrants to the western world are the group with open awareness and aggressive spirit. It is good to keep our traditional essence when entering an outside culture.
Above: Video still from Chinatown Project , 2015, 3-channel video, 9:15min, dimensions variable Opposite page: Chinatown Project, 2014, C-print, 24x35in 10
www.huangdongli.com
DONGMIN LEE Interviewed by Taeo Kang, artist based in Seoul, South Korea Taeo, Kang: Could you briefly explain your works that you have shown me? Dongmin Lee: The rapid development of technology has brought tremendous change to the daily lives of humanity. People are absorbed more and more in the technology. With this development, our lives are becoming more fast paced, changing our daily experience. Computers and communication network are changing our physical and psychological environment. Most of the human life nowadays is tied to digital media through devices such as cellphones, laptops, and computers. We can enter the virtual world at any time. Also, in this space with no physical time and space, people show various features of human lives. My work visualizes this era’s situation. It not only aims to look for the effects of cyber culture but also the inner lives of people. Further, it aims to talk about the psychological phenomena and the change in our behaviors in cyber space. TK: Can you give me more details about the psychological phenomenon and the change in our behaviors? DL: The human behavior, form, and characteristics are formed by the original subjects that control and direct their behavior in cyber space. However, the human behavior exhibited in cyber space can be completely different from oneself in the real world. Even though people express their thoughts and behaviors relatively freely, they feel the pressure to control their behavior by maintaining their harmony with others. ‘Myself’ is refracted, transformed, and limited due to the various signs through their body such as language, and outfit, and the records inscribed in the body such as age, ethnicity, and sex.
Above: Avatar ID Card, 2014, plastic, 2 1/18×3 3/18in Opposite page: Another Portrait of Today’s SNS (Social Network Service), 2015, video installation, 1.7sec 12
The ‘I’ behaves according to others view towards him/her or the figure of oneself formed by that certain view. But, in cyber space, this kind of pressure doesn’t work so well, and the conditions that limit individual behaviors are relatively small. Especially, like human behavior seeks for continuous and various changes, the behavioral principal in this space is changeable. People are able to do imaging beyond physical limitations. Since they are free from their body, they could imagine more, transform, and move anywhere. People experience this kind of psychological freedom in cyber space because of anonymity. Anonymity means the transformation that shows the person’s figure in one’s imagination to others, and it also makes a condition in which people could experience another identity without changing one’s originality. In cyber space, individuals can not only act as a completely different social role, but can also form new human relationships. They can become a member of an imaginary world that differs from reality, and get to experience things that are impossible in reality. TK: Your work is pretty similar to the other media artists. Though, I found a difference that seems you tried to follow the traditional way. Have you thought about interactivity that is considered a lot by the other media artists recently? Or do you have any idea to boost more active participation from the audiences? DL: Of course, I have thought about that for a while. The audience adds a certain thing as the artist leaded. Then the pre-programmed piece will work as the artist’s plan. Therefore, I don’t agree that there’s interactivity between the piece and the audience. It seems like the artist is controlling the audience. Also, I think interactivity shouldn’t be the only way to make the audience active. The work itself could be a piece of art, and it can commune with the people. The true interactivity should be from their mind and not from their body.
www.dongminart.com
ROSANA LIANG Interviewed by Liselot van der Heijden, visual artist and Associate Professor at The College of New Jersey Liselot van der Heijden: What is your work about? Rosana Liang: My work is about using the camera in a rules-based or systems-based way, where I’m giving structure priority over the images themselves. So this kind of structure or system I’ve created determines the narrative of the overall work. I’m also looking at the camera itself as a machine, specifically in relation to the human body, as a way of examining human relationships on a physical, psychological, and social level. LvdH: Some recurring aspects in your current work are: the element of performance and the element of interpersonal relationships, with an interaction between two protagonists and one of the protagonists is yourself. What is the importance of using your body in your performances? RL: In first starting out with performance and understanding performance, I think it was helpful to start with my body. It seemed like the most comfortable place to experiment. Initially, I saw my body as merely a representation of the self, and I didn’t want it or expect it to be personal. Of course, it has developed into somewhat of a more personal endeavor. I have always enjoyed exercising and pushing my body to its limits, so placing my body in these mostly physical performances is also out of a genuine curiosity of how my own body functions. In the future, I think I would like to expand and use other people’s bodies, rather than my own.
Both bodies interact in a way that emphasizes equal plays and the anticipated outcome is not to have one win over the other; the goal is to test mutual endurance, cooperation, and reliance. The role of the camera then, because it is often attached to our bodies, is to act as an extension of the body that not only documents, but also shapes our interactions with each other, sometimes in a self-reflexive way. I wanted to start doing these performances with someone that I am comfortable with and trust. So it ended up ultimately being a lot about trust too. LvdH: Can you say something about your current project? RL: I Find You, You Find Me is a performance I consider to be the final act in a series of two-person games. For this performance, a partner and I will each be placed in two separate locations in New York City. We will take a picture of wherever we are every five minutes and send it to each other. These pictures, or small glimpses into each other’s realities, will be our only sources of information in finding each other and we will have only 24 hours. LvdH: Do you think you are going to find each other? RL: I hope so! I don’t know. I think that’s why it’s exciting, because I have no idea whether it’s going to work out or not, which also goes back to the idea of our potential or failure to work as one system and the important element of chance in my work.
LvdH: What is the relationship between your body and the body of the other? RL: My recent performances deal with interdependence and connection between my body and the body of the other. In many ways, game theory has influenced the way I examine human relationships and how they operate over a given period of time. For example, I have been setting up performances or games in which one body’s movements directly affect the other body’s movements, and vice versa.
Opposite page: I Walk With You, You Walk With Me, 2014, documentation of performance, dimensions variable
14
www.rosanaliang.com
ASHLEY MIDDLETON Interviewed by Dr. Lev Manovich, professor in the graduate center of City University of New York, director in Software Studies Initiative, and author of books on New Media Theory Lev Manovich: Your thesis project is very interesting and visually rich, and on this level it seems to be quite far from 1960s minimalism. But the “system” of combinations you construct brings to mind the systematic approaches used by Oulipo writers who used constraints to create poems and fiction. Can you comment on the interplay between the “rules” you employ in your project and the result? Ashley Middleton: Similarly to Oulipo writers, I’m interested in how systematic constraints can produce a series of endless potentialities. In my case, it is the endless potential of self that I’m most curious about. So the only rule I’ve made is that every five years, for the rest of my life, I will shoot fifteen strangers that I believe look like me. With the use of photography and video I’ve set up a system to collect people that I think look like me. The goal of this work is not to find my doppelgänger, but to continuously visualize self-perception and locate distortions. Each series will produce a narrative that is a piece of the whole so the project can only exist in its entirety where I no longer do. It is fixed to produce a series of potentials, not a static representation of self. LM: In your thesis work, you are projecting yourself [through] photos of people similar to you; you also combine photos of these people. The result has some conceptual connection to famous “composite photography” by Francis Galton. How do you see your project in relation to Galton’s work?
Above: Video still from Through Others, 2015 Opposite page: Through Others, 2015, Transparency print, 30x45in
16
AM: Through the study of physiognomy, Galton was looking to access information about a person’s character through their outer appearance. He was focused on quantifying difference and classifying individuals. This is not a set of beliefs I align my work with and without getting into the problematic ideologies of his work, I do think we’re both interested in the space of physiological data. I am just taking a different route and using a different medium to get there. Galton was focused on the end result - the image. I’m focused on the process - I’m turning my subjects into an image to help me understand why I’m choosing them in the first place. I don’t believe appearance is static or informative of one’s character. My interest is in how we see and how those systems of seeing fold into self-perception. By photographing others I am trying to unfold these systems to better understand how I exist to others and how that relates to how I exist to myself. LM: In Reflections you create a unique work using the situations which we think we know so well from our everyday life - people looking at themselves in mirrors, window reflections, and more recently, their front facing cameras of their phones. The people in Reflections share something common: their gaze is meditative, soft, and they seem to be in a bit of a dream. Since I worked on the “Selfiecity” project, where we compared 3200 selfies from five global cities, I know that in the case of self-portraits, people look very, very different from what you captured in your project. Did you select the situations where everybody looked similar - almost being lost inside themselves, as opposed to posing or trying to look pretty? Or was it indeed a common look? AM: As I let go of some control and let the project take its course I realized it began to respond to questions I didn’t know I was asking. It showed me that I was less interested in people looking at themselves and more interested the single moment of loss and disconnection that occurred when people looked at themselves. I still don’t have the precise words for how I see the work but I think the act of looking at oneself - compressing time and space, solidifying experience in an image of self, stopping the movement that informs the image - is a curious act that causes a common reaction. Because the mirror was situated in a public space I did get various portraits of people inspecting the object. However, those images did not make the series. For me, it is the curiosity of self that activates the project and I chose the images that I thought best fit that concept.
www.amiddletonprojects.com
KELSEY O’BRIEN Interviewed by Audrey Ryan, artist based in New York City Audrey Ryan: I have had the pleasure of working with you the last few years. I have come to understand that your boundaries between work and life are (admirably) almost nonexistent in your pursuit to create honest and emotionally striking work. How did your style of work develop?
AR: If I could describe the film Karstrand in one word, it would be revelatory. It has the power to be an anthem for those of us who grew up in dysfunction and now realize the power that we have to break the cycle and enact the positive change we wish we had when we felt powerless. Can you explain what the film is about?
Kelsey O’Brien: I think my style really developed as a child, where much of it was simply about surviving. I had to face certain realities before the age of seven that most adults have never even dealt with. Understanding and accepting the world we live in has helped me tackle issues of death, the oppression of women and domestic abuse. My work comes from personal experience, through mine or my subjects in order to validate what I am communicating.
KO: I only have two remnants of my childhood: my mother’s journals and my birth-father’s home videos. I use both of their voices from these remainings to reconstruct the memory of trauma that took place in my home. I tell the family story as an authoritative figure opposed to the child through my mother’s voice; intentionally unraveling bits of information, where the audience is left to question what actually happens throughout the film: the same way I had to question my own reality as a child. Ultimately, Karstrand is my stand against domestic violence and a voice for every woman out there who has felt what my mother went through.
AR: Why do you choose the subjects that you do?
AR: Why do you work this way?
KO: My subjects are real people; real people are damaged and dysfunctional and Western culture doesn’t leave room for that.
KO: Dorothy Allison once said, “Art should provoke more questions than answers and most of all, should make us think about what we rarely want to think about at all.” There has always been a part of me that needs to validate the real experience of being human, which is painful. I know my work can make people uncomfortable; but I can’t live with myself knowing I wasn’t true to it or my subjects.
AR:Your past work has been dedicated to the medium of photography, what is your reason to switch over to film now? KO: I am a woman and the bulk of my work is about women. I am influenced by feminist artists who used media and film as a political action to challenge one of the most difficult areas for social change. This medium allows me to give women a voice in a way photography cannot and contribute to challange.
AR: There are events in life that many choose to glaze over or hide that are highlighted in your work and because of that, it has more power as it speaks of the parts of us humans who are NOT PERFECT...the parts of us that are damaged. It is these weak areas where I believe people truly relate and it is from those parts of me that I feel connected to your work. Your work for me, creates a safe space. It is honest and open, and even though it is dark and twisted, it’s all right there. So what is next? KO: Disneyland.
Above: Karstrand, 2015, video still, 17:00min Opposite page: Three Days, Eighteen Portraits, 2014, inkjet print, 40x50in
18
www.kelseyobrien.format.com
MASAHITO ONO Interviewed by Laurel Ptak, artist and curator Laurel Ptak: Given your past professional background working in television, the contrast between the way meaning is made in your artistic work and way one tells a news story is interesting to think about. Your work has a very poetic quality in how it tells us things. It’s such a different angle than the way one would tell a story under a different set of conditions. I’m curious if and how you think about this shift in your audience? Masahito Ono: When I was a video journalist in broadcast news, my audience was the public. We had some idea, but we didn’t really know whom we were telling the stories to. We also often had to think about what news would sell. There were stories that we thought were important and that were not told. An artist is given freedom in making the work that they really care about as an individual in society. I’m interested in making meaning rather than making images. It’s not necessarily what you see with your eyes, it’s more about what you feel from it. My task is to make sure that feeling is there inside the work I produce. I would say the audience is different, but I wish the audience were the same. I don’t think my work can change the world, but I think I can influence individuals and tell stories that are important. People often say I’m a very idealistic person. Perhaps I am. This is why I make art.
LP: I would argue that both Felix Gonzalez-Torres and On Kawara aspire to make meaning in their work in very different ways than photographers typically make meaning. What is it about the image you are still drawn to despite your influences? MO: Today do we consider ourselves photographers or image-makers? That’s a question I ask myself a lot. Sometimes I’m a photographer. I can make portraits, landscapes and other photographs as they are needed. However, what I enjoy doing the most is connecting the dots from different places—not just from inside photography. I choose to use images to make new meanings. I aspire to transform them into something other than what the image literally is. We must connect these scattered dots and meet them one by one in our lives.
LP: The artists you’ve mentioned as influencing you the most are not photographers, but rather conceptual artists. I wonder whether or not conceptual art is a good framework to think about what you do and what you make? MO: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, On Kawara and Isamu Noguchi are artists I admire and am influenced by. Noguchi was the first person whose work I was really looking at. I’m from Japan and the way he explored Japanese culture and philosophy, from the vantage point of working in the United States, is very different from how someone living in Japan would look at these things—yet it seems even more deeply connected to it. To me, Noguchi’s work feels like a living thing. This durational quality I find in his work is what I aspire to carry into mine as well. I find a similar durational quality in the works of Gonzalez-Torres and Kawara.
Opposite page: Years within Years (I love you always), 2014 - ongoing, partial installation view, pigment print on canvas, dimensions variable
20
www.masahitoono.com
MELISSA PRESTON Interviewed by Neil Goldberg, artist who lives and works in New York City Neil Goldberg: It seems like in all your work there’s a relationship to what’s revealed and not revealed. What are the strategic decisions behind that, as well as, what information you choose to disclose? Melissa Preston: Revealing or obscuring information is a big part of the function of my work. It would be, you could say, a relief to the viewer if I sped up any video so that the transition of light became something one could perceive immediately, as a kind of visual consumption. I’m not so interested in that instant pleasure. It can be seen as an anti-viral video, in that way. The sublime, the serene, those uncanny moments are there, they exist in the work, but they happen in real time. They’re not in a hurry to get the viewer’s attention, as in any of the exquisitely shot clips that get passed around on social media. The work is trying to respect time and our relationship to the sun by paying attention to them. I try not to disclose the identities of the subjects. I have close, personal relationships with each of them, which was a tool in simply being able to make the work. I realize that when a first-time viewer is watching one of the videos, they’re scrutinizing the subject and the environment for information about them. If a viewer stays and watches the piece because they want to figure out who these people are, they may just accidentally discover the subtly changing light that’s consistently taking place. Withholding the info about the person in the video, which the viewer instinctively wants to have, may just aid them in stumbling upon the real subject of each piece, the sun.
NG: Where do you place this project within the tradition of portraiture? MP: I borrow from some standards of environmental portraiture in my framing - what I allow to remain in view. I was a film major in college, which, I think, shows in some of the more cinematic elements of the work. Aspects like focal length and eye-line I use very intentionally to suggest where the real focus of the work falls, which aligns with each subject’s focus of observing the sun. NG: In the night sky photographs, where is your subjectivity? MP: In the video work, I thought a lot about situating people like the center pieces of sundials, known as gnomons (translated from Greek to mean one who knows or examines), having them face the sun and cast their shadows. In the night sky images, I’m taking on the perspective of the gnomon and trying to see the stars through my window, trying to mark time through light-polluted skies. Besides waiting for the sun to return, what else can a sundial do? I think that losing or limiting our experience with the stars is directly linked to our general lack of interest in astronomy. It seems like people think of the cosmos as ‘other’ or somehow separate from us, like all celestial bodies are purely decorative. I simply think it may be beneficial for each of us - in ways we cannot fathom, or maybe can’t yet articulate - to make our own daily observations and to recognize the direct impact the universe beyond our atmosphere has on us.
NG: What do you want people who are viewing these pieces to be thinking about? MP: I want the audience to think about their own relationship with the sun and their experience of time. They’ll definitely feel the durational aspect of the work, which of course is just the time it takes for the light to move from point A to point B. I like to joke that daylight moves at a glacial pace; that these videos happen as quickly as paint dries. This is our reality, though; nothing stays stagnant, nothing stays still. Change is constantly taking place, and here the viewer is forced to search it out and pay attention.
Opposite page (top): Marking Sunset (10/25/2014, +925 ft, 39.353° N, 78.7434° W), 2014, single channel video, 8:35min Opposite page (bottom): First Light (10/24/2014, +384 ft, 28.9366° N, 77.0831° W), 2014, single channel video, 6:00min 22
www.mpresphotos.com
MATTHEW SCERBAK Interviewed by Scott Seaboldt, artist and educator based in New York, and co-founder of AS220 in Providence, Rhode Island Scott Seaboldt: Your latest work is called Aisthesis. I understand it is related to aesthetics; can you elaborate? Matthew Scerbak: I’m an architect, so I visualize moving through space and the effect it has on the body. That is what aesthesis is, perception that includes all of your senses. Rather than isolating visual awareness, it’s about the eye being connected to everything else. The upside-down-tree-on-theback-of-the-retina paradigm that we’re taught is actually far from the whole picture. It is much more sophisticated and includes our entire person. I use that word specifically because I want my work to not just be what you might see with your eyes, but to start from a completely different vantage point that is more tactile and physically engaged. SS: So the “lite” definition of aisthesis as a combination of vision and intellect is too simplistic? MS: Aisthesis is an awareness that is much more all-encompassing. Take figure-ground, for example. How do we isolate the tree from the background? A baby does that, but it is
extraordinarily difficult for a machine. What about space and time? We cannot “see” those things, yet we perceive them. It seems that visual perception involves numerous factors, some innate, some learned, some cognitive, some derived directly from the light in the environment that doesn’t go through a linear mental process. SS: How do you think aisthesis plays into photography? MS: We tend to see the eye as a camera, like the way a camera would take a picture - an upside down image on a sensor, a single point of view. The way I see things is more like an architect, where different frames of reference are abstracted and delineated in the mind yet understood simultaneously and as a whole - up, down, front, back, side. SS: Is this something you see lacking in contemporary photography? MS: I invented an optical device to visualize multiple points of view simultaneously in a way that is impossible with Photoshop. I love making something from nothing. I love the romance of exploration and hauling gear into the woods to see what might happen. With my “camera”, the image you would see through a viewfinder is not just layered over another view done at another time, as in Photoshop, but interacts with it directly, physically, and in real time. In building design, plan and elevation are intimately connected; likewise, I capture different points of view to give a sense of the interconnected nature of the world, what it feels like to move through it with the body. I’m just parsing out and then conflating together what I experience unconsciously. SS: There is one piece that is very sweet and loving and caring…like an ode, a gift. MS: The video on the river? SS: Yes, it is really beautiful, like that awkward moment - that silence - when someone opens something you gave them. It felt very un-art appropriate! It’s not that cool remove, like e.e. cummings who wrote poems that were written in a card to someone. Then they get published. MS: I love e.e.cummings. SS: I want to ask you about the size of your images and viewing them online. Is scale important to you? MS: You really have to see my images in person printed at a large scale. You see a forest scene at twelve feet only to realize it is a decaying log up close. Our awareness of space and time expand and contract constantly as we move through it.
Above: Optical Conflation Device, perspective Opposite page: Aisthesis-Forest and Decaying Log, 2015, archival inkjet print, 60x86in
www.matthewscerbak.com 24
EMILY SHEVENOCK Interviewed by Mubasher Naseer, psychologist
MN: Can you talk about some of your work, a poem or a photograph?
Mubasher Naseer: As a poet do you think it takes a special kind/type to become an artist?
ES: Do you know how tired I am? Art is exhausting, even violent, but it doesn’t always have to be. Some days I’m just done—with the day. And other days it is more colliding hands with incessant pre-pondering.
Emily Shevenock: I don’t think of the term ‘special’ but I think it takes a certain kind of a person. MN: By ‘certain kind’ what do you mean? ES: Read. MN: You have won some prestigious awards from your poetry. Do you derive any pleasure from this success? ES: It is only somewhat success, but it is more about satisfaction from creative work, but awards can possibly assist in building a career. The term ‘artist’ comes with its limitations, despite recognition. MN: Why did you become an artist and when did you know? Which medium do you prefer? ES: It’s rather an innate disposition. I learned to read at a very young age and language and literature are fused with external visualizations. I’m an investigative person by nature, and I have a strong sense of justice, objectivity, facts. If this doesn’t align with creativity for some, or seems its own chaotic dispersing into an amorphous or muddled form, I would be concerned that the logic and fact of a vision may be rendered properly, yet ignored fully. An example of a poem that might have a discourse with little resembling reality, will justify fact with its enamored slant of a specific factual subject. The way this happens is not meant to be dissembled. Fantasy and phantasmagoria have their own ploy or even headiness to a given work, but this would not elude the objective in its finality or its purported or supported intellectual excitement. Thinking of an image under the duress or, say finesse of a –perhaps—more complicated language of literature is not possible. Literature is not a meta-space inhabiting an image, but a space. A blank one maybe. But a space nonetheless.
MN: There is no sense of joy or pleasure in this? ES: There has been. I think the joy or softer pleasure comes more the exuberance of intellectual ideas, and the realms of natural visions, from nature and the less esoteric that might not necessarily be restrained. I say this in order to build a colloquial dialogue with the pieces of my own work. MN: What do you mean by ‘colloquial dialogue?’ ES: It’s more of a normative conversing with my own language that is sometimes contrasted with the esoteric. I only extenuate this due to reasoning with the unreasonable, and with expression there is room for misunderstandings. Please allow I’ve not mentioned any detail/s or even the subject matter that consumes more frequently, because this may take a book-form that is not as readily shelved or even written as I would like. But there is always room for the non-written, as the written will inculcate the intellectual disparity it may have encountered in the days, months, or years it had in less rumination than consideration, and the problematic gems occurring in consideration. MN: Is there a message in your artwork? ES: I just said yes. And it’s fact.
Opposite page: Untitled, 2015, inkjet print, 20x30in
www.emilyshevenock.com 26
It is my great pleasure to introduce the MFA in Photography Class of 2015. Drawing from their personal perspectives and experiences, these artists present us with a wide range of responses to an increasingly complex world. They are talented, intelligent, committed and ambitious. Over the past 26 months they have exhibited an unyielding dedication to their pursuits, developing mature attitudes and practices. These young artists are gifted, reflective, sensitive and committed. During their time at Parsons each of these artists have refined their craft, confronted and over come many challenges in their practice. More importantly, they have struggled with the limitations of the medium and discovered its greatest potentials. It has been an honor to work with this group of emerging artists and I wish them well in all their future endeavors. As they continue to strive for the highest possible standard of excellence, I look forward to witnessing their ongoing growth and success. This catalogue and exhibition were made possible through the combined efforts of many dedicated and talented people. I would like to give Parsons Dean Joel Towers and the Dean‘s Office an enormous thank you for the ongoing support of this program. A massive thank you to AMT Dean Anne Gains for her steadfast leadership and guidance. A heartfelt thank you to the faculty for their extraordinary commitment, hard work, and dedication. To the departmental staff: special thanks for your tireless contributions to this program‘s success. Finally, sincerest thanks go to Rosanna Liang, Masa Ono, Qiren Hu, and Dongli Huang and their colleagues for the outstanding design of this catalogue.
James Ramer Associate Professor, Director MFA Photography
The graduating class of 2015 would like to thank: James Ramer, Director of MFA Photography at Parsons, for his guidance and support. Michele Abeles, Martha Burgess, Charlotte Cotton, Rupert Goldsworthy, Sarah Hasted, Craig Kalpakjian, William Lamson, Stacy Miller, Arthur Ou, Laura Parnes, Karina Skvirsky, Mark Stafford, and Joseph Wolin. The Cage staff, Amanda Alfieri, Barbara Compagnoni, Hashem Eaddy, Nathaniel Harger, Sol Hashemi, and Colin Todd. All visiting artists, critics, and curators. All the interviewers for this catalog. Alex Jovanovich for writing a remarkable introduction. All family and friends. Special thanks to Jeanine Oleson for her patience and honesty.
WWW.PUSHPULL2015.COM