CONVERSATIONS ON LIFE & ART—ISSUE #1
COUCHMAG Featuring: Lyndon French Cody Hudson Shawn Ghassemitari, Jan Gatewood, Ruohan Wang, Kendra Lee, Lenworth “Joonbug” Mcintosh, Hillary Pecis, Jordan Sullivan, Brennen Reed, Sterling Barret, Rachel Öffner Gallery, Natasha Young
1
EDITORS NOTE The theme for this issue is this: WELL BEING. It is quite common for a magazine to have a running theme throughout each issue, however Couch Magazine has taken a different approach to the traditional understanding of theme. Rather than tailoring each interview to the abstract concept of well-being, or asking artists to respond to what it means to them, we have decided to take a more contemplative approach. This means that we are asking the reader to reflect on the theme as they read through the magazine, and to make connections that are unique to their conception of well being. At Couch Magazine, we believe that making art and being creative is an essential tool for the path toward leading a better life.
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
CODY HUDSON 4 UP & COMING 10 HILLARY PECIS 11 JAN GATEWOOD 12 JORDAN SULLIVAN 16
3
CODY HUDSON CREATES ABSTRACT COMPOSITIONS THAT EMPHASIZE THE IMPORTANCE OF HUMAN TOUCH INTERVIEW BY SHAWN GHASSEMITARI
Los Angeles and New York City are typically overcredited when it comes to art and culture in the US. As a cultural capital in its own right, Chicago has long held a stake as a creative laboratory not just in the states, but globally. The Windy City is a proud sports town and a musical mecca that spawned the swinging compositions of Benny Goodman and the funk-induced Jazz of Herbie 4
FEBRUARY 21, 2020
Hancock, to the inception of House music along with a myriad of rappers and producers. Chicagoans do things differently, and they are damn proud of it. Take Cody Hudson, an artist and designer who’s abstract shapes and compositions provide a refreshing human touch in our increasingly digital world. Hudson has traveled across the country throughout his career, but ultimately knew that
WELL-BEING
the midwest would always be home base. A master of shape and color, Hudson works across mediums and designs under his studio, Struggle Inc. His aesthetic feels familiar, carrying a childlike curiosity that gives each piece a primal yet inviting nature that begins to take on new meanings alongside each other and the surrounding spaces. Having exhibited across the world, Hudson has worked along a range of products, murals and prints for clients that range from Nike, Stussy and Undefeated to Pitchfork, Starbucks and the MCA. I hopped on a chat with Hudson to discuss his work and what the Midwest means to him. I’d like to know a little more about your roots growing up in the Midwest, floating around the country, getting into art and the influences that inform your work? I was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin. It’s right in-between Milwaukee and Chicago so we got influenced by both cities growing up. I grew up skateboarding and going to punk shows and making zines and drawing on my grip tape and all that stuff. I didn’t realize until years later that some of what I was doing was basically graphic design or what we called it back then “Commercial Art”. I was working at Piggly Wiggly also and that was starting to get old so I tried to focus more on finding ways to turn making flyers for friends’ rave parties and such into more of a real job.
Intentions of the Voyage, 68" x 24.5" x 23"
What about the Midwest do you believe often gets overlooked — charms that you can’t quite get in the big coastal cities such as LA or NYC? The Midwest is the Midwest. I think you either love it or you don’t get it. I just happen to be from here, love it here, and will probably always live here. I like the honesty of the people; I like the work ethic; I like the food and the music. I moved around for years thinking that the location of where I lived was going to change my life; after 10 years of that I realized the change that needed to happen was in my own head not in a new city, so I came back home and started focusing on that.
COUCHMAG
5
Chicago is a cultural mecca in its own right — from its sports heritage to music, art and design — what about Chicago do you believe cultivates this creativity? There are a lot of creative people here who want to do good work and represent the city in their own way. I feel it also gets looked down at and constantly reminded that it’s not NY or LA so I think people take pride in doing good things here and putting in the work. In our increasingly digital age, your work embraces the human touc. How would you describe your art and are there any messages you try to convey? I like making stuff by hand, I’m getting old. I started doing graphic design before they used computers to do graphic design so my hands have always been a big part of my 6
work. I also think my time focusing more on painting and sculpture has only pushed that more into my practice. I think something made by hand has a more honest feel to me; it’s not trying to be perfect. When I cut out a circle I like that it has imperfections, I don’t need or want to try and make it be a perfect circle. Paintings tend to flow out more naturally for you, where there isn’t a particular image or predetermined goal in mind. In hindsight, what would you say influences much of the final mark — be it music, film, art or anything really. Everything around me makes its way into the work in some way or another. Music, art, walking in the woods, plants, nature, animals, my family, human emotions, feelings, etc.
CODY HUDSON
"EVERYTHING AROUND ME MAKES ITS WAY INTO THE WORK SOME WAY OR ANOTHER"
What tracks and artists are currently on the playlist now? It’s been pretty mellow around the studio lately, Listening to a decent amount of Mary Lattimore, Joseph Shabason, Arp, Sign Libra, and more mellow music in the AM. Been also listening and getting back into a lot of Grateful Dead and Mazzy Star lately. Usually try to pick up the tempo later in the day and get into some more house music or electronic jams. Ellsworth Kelly’s iconic colors and shapes stemmed from his memories — from the reflection of the Seine to the back of a military caravan during WWII — as a fellow abstract artist, do you see a through line with the work you’ve created and are there particular themes or memories you attribute to them? The titles of my work reference particular moments for me more than I think the paintings themselves do. In some situations though, I’ll have a body of work that’s very inspired by a specific landscape (like the high desert for ISSUE 1
7
example). Sometimes that’s based on memory but a lot of times it’s also where those sketches or initial studies were made as I like to work from the road, so some works can feel very connected to a place in my head but others are pretty far removed Having dabbled in a variety of mediums and collaborated with studios and companies from around the world, what have been some of your favorite projects and why? I like any project that challenges me or gets me to be able to experience something new. Lately I’ve been working towards larger and larger public art murals where the scale of it becomes what starts to excite me about the project. I also like projects that really make their way out into the world. I’ve had some recent commercial projects that ended up all over the globe, so seeing that is always nice.
You recently exhibited at the David B. Smith Gallery in Denver, can you tell us a little more about the formation of this body of work? This is a series of paintings and sculptures loosely based on what I thought the landscape of Denver would look like. I purposely didn’t do any research so they are not real references but a lot of the works in the show for me were meant to be imaginary landscapes that just existed in my head. Any shows or collaborations you’re working on in this new year? I’ve got a big show in April at Andrew Rafacz Gallery. I’ll be showing in both spaces as well as painting a large mural on the outside of the gallery. I’ve got a book of my work coming out this summer with Hat & Beard Press that’s been in the works for a minute. The thing I’m probably most looking forward to though is spending some time in the woods with my family this summer and looking for turtles and frogs on the lake in Wisconsin. SEE MORE CODY HUDSON ON INSTA @STRUGGLEINC
"...IMAGINARY LANDSCAPES THAT JUST EXISTED IN MY HEAD"
8
CODY HUDSON
a collaboration between couch mag, portland-based artist brennen reed, and the animals observatory
AVAILABLE AT COUCHMAG.COM
screen printed on 100% cotton shirts, totes, and sweatshirts for children & adults 9
UP & COMING
A SPOTLIGHT FOR NEW ARTISTS AND PROJECTS RUOHAN WANG In anticipation of the program, we thought to share with you some of Ruohan Wang’s work. The artist dabbles in everything from printmaking to painting, graphic design to fashion. Originally born in Beijing, Wang now resides in Berlin, constantly experimenting with new mediums and ways to make art. Her illustrations vibrate with disruptive energy, yet their compositions and color ways seem neurotically strategic. It’s with this cool nonchalance that Ruohan Wang’s work has won the hearts of people all over, including ours.
KENDRA YEE This Toronto-based painter will partake in the Couch Projects residency in Brooklyn. Hosted at Superchief Gallery in Ridgewood, Kendra Yee will be working alongside Berlin-based artist Ruohan Wang for the month of June. In anticipation of this exciting news, we want to share with you some of Yee’s art. Her work consists of mixed-media paintings, ceramic sculptures, and panel-based illustrations. Yee pulls tales from her personal history, lived experiences and collective memory to form speculative worlds where fluid characters come to life through the conversations of interactive bodies. The result is beautiful and personal and weird, with a strong emphasis on unexpected compositions.
LENWORTH “JOONBUG” MCINTOSH Even though there are cancellations and postponements all across the art world, we wanted to draw attention to a great show curated by our friends at pt. 2: Oakland. Originally hailing from Jamaica, Lenworth “Joonbug” McIntosh creates timeles works, raw but refined, with hallmarks of Juxtapoz favorites R. Crumb and Lamar Peterson. The artist, now based in Oakland, works in a variety of mediums, includIng painting, photography, illustration and design. As the gallery notes of the work in this show, “McIntosh explores the subjective nature of perception, the duality of simultaneously being right and wrong, and what you accept based on your experiences.”
10
WELL-BEING
HILLARY PECIS RACHEL UFFNER GALLERY // MARCH 01, 2020 - APRIL 24, 2020 For those in NYC at the moment, Los Angeles based- painter Hilary Pecis has a wonderful show on at Rachel Uffner Gallery on the Lower East Side. With the work being primarily focused on environments and still life compositions with a Southern California backdrop, Come Along With Me has personal observational traits that are the hallmark of Pecis’s increasingly intimate work. From the gallery: “In Come Along with Me, the Los Angeles based artist invites viewers to step into intimate settings and environments inspired by the Southern California light. Pecis
constructs portraits of friends and family through both the interior and exterior spaces they occupy utilizing objects as signifiers for human characteristics rather than the figures themselves. The imagery in Pecis’ work comes from her archive of snapshots taken from hikes, travels, visits with friends in their homes or restaurants, and depictions of the artist’s surroundings. Rather than direct re-creations, Pecis focuses on specific details that evoke the feeling of a captured moment—taking liberties while emphasizing texture and brushstroke, color and pattern, and manipulating perspective.”
COUCHMAG
11
JAN GATEWOOD:
SORCERER'S APPRENTICE INTERVIEW BY STERLING BARRET
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a story well known to most: A young initiate to the occult arts is left alone to clean his adept’s lair. To circumvent the tedium ahead of him, he takes to the sorcerer’s tools and books to find a magical shortcut. After some incantation, his mops, and buckets begin to multiply and clean with an agency of their own, building to a frothing, soapy mess.
12
FEBRUARY 27 2020
The apprentice realizes that he can’t stop the implements because he does not yet possess the spells needed to do so. Just then, the old wizard returns, breaking the magical formula, warning the initiate of further trespass. While few of us have read the original Goethe, we’ve all encountered some iteration of this tale: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Forbidden Planet, Walt Disney’s Fantasia, and now in a way, Jan Gatewoodsteps into the role. Gatewood is twenty-five years old, with an easy demeanor, and a sharp conversational style. Originally from Aurora, Colorado, his youth was spent skateboarding, and pursuing the fun that comes with pushing one’s way down busy streets with friends. Realizing early that the type of fun in question can congeal into a flat banality if one stays at the party too long, Jan began a search for something more. He attended some photography courses at the University of Colorado but quickly found that they were not to his liking. On a road trip at nineteen, he discovered Los Angeles, California (a nexus of sorcery to be sure). He immediately decided to make the move based on a mix of what he calls “serendipity and spiritual agency.” Gatewood settled into his first LA apartment soon after with a friend from back home. While short-lived, their tenure as roommates would prove to be fruitful. After moving out, the friend left behind a huge trove of art supplies, serving as the first
of a few mounting synchronicities that would facilitate Jan’s initiation into the arts. He took to the supplies immediately as “a kind of therapy at first.” Seeing what materials felt right, he embarked on an exploration—a self-guided apprenticeship of sorts. Months later, during a trip to New York, Jan had a second serendipitous encounter; this time with a clutch of working gallerists and artists. The group gelled well, eventually leading to an internship for Gatewood—a literal apprenticeship this time. In his short tenure, he soaked up information about art history, operating an art space, and the surrounding market. He met a number of artists working in NYC, finding early inspiration in multi-disciplinary adepts Eric Mack and Brian Belott. Gatewood’s easy ability to be tuned-in to serendipity served him well in formulating an artistic practice that both reflects and amplifies what the Miller character in Repo Man called “the lattice o’ coincidence that lays on top o’ everything.” As we will see, lattices both literal and tropological weave their way into a body of work that points as much to its own synchronistic origin as it does to the repeating darkly humorous motifs that populate the dyed paper surfaces of the works themselves. Stepping into Jan’s studio, one gets the feeling of being on a small factory floor. Clotheslines stretch across a windowed wall, supporting small drawings on paper. Larger works currently underway line the
COUCHMAG
13
adjacent walls and a bank of shallow plastic dye vats filled with murky pigment occupy the floor across the room. Most of the light is natural, reflecting off of the white brick interior, illuminating the industrial space. The factory feel is complete, save for the actual work itself. Every item created and housed within the cold, hard angled space has the look and feel of something touched by very human hands. Papers heavily wrinkled with dye support craggy gestures of oil stick crayon, sculpted piles of rock salt and tobacco rise up from the poured cement floor, and a torn latticework of interwoven avocado bags and lemon slices stick suspended onto cardboard. If the output seems to be incongruous with its home, it is. None of Jan’s pieces really begin their lives in the studio. Physical bits of ephemera that end up in his collages are found by chance on the street or his day job. Imagery sourced for his drawings is mostly stumbled upon in the digital space. The studio here serves more like a circle of transformation, or alchemy for these objects and images, rather than the site of their rote production. Once the chanced-upon foreign matter is brought into the space, the process-driven aspect of Gatewood’s practice can begin. SEE MORE ON INSTAGRAM @JANGATEWOOD
14
JAN GATEWOOD
AVAILABLE AT COUCHMAG.COM
15
DESERTSCAPES, BIRDS IN FLIGHT, ABSTRACT SUNSETS: JORDAN SULLIVAN STRIVES FOR A "POETIC REALITY" IN HIS ART INTERVIEW BY NATASHA YOUNG
Jordan Sullivan is the kind of artist you can’t pin down to a single medium or style. Since 2010, he’s exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Spain, Japan, China, and beyond; published more than 20 art books or zines; been featured in numerous publications, including The Paris Review and The New Yorker; and, somehow, found the time to write a novel. Sullivan is best known for his photography, but he’s revealing his paintings to the world for the first time. “The photographs became my livelihood, but I’ve always been making these paintings that were rougher around 16
MARCH 15, 2020
the edges. I just thought, ‘fuck it,’ after you and I did that show in July (“Return of Polite Society”). This is the work I want to do. This is what gets me up in the morning,” Sullivan told me over the phone from his home in New York. Sullivan’s paintings are visceral, like devotional art or cave paintings. They imbue a little hope into humanity, celebrating the multicultural makeup of America vis-à-vis empathetic explorations in the historical consciousness of the working and immigrant classes, particularly in Detroit and Los Angeles.
WELL-BEING
Let’s begin with where you’re coming from, both as in your backstory and your artistic practice. I was born in Houston, Texas, raised in a small town in Ohio and in Detroit. Since I was 21, I’ve lived in London, Los Angeles, Texas, and New York City, where I’m currently based. I worked lots of odd jobs before being able to make art full-time. I’ve been a construction worker, waiter, dishwasher, graphic designer, and artist assistant over the years. Place features predominantly throughout your work, but your new paintings show a pivot from the natural environment—desertscapes, birds in flight, abstract sunsets—toward urban environments and the people who inhabit them. On a basic level, my work has always been an exploration of my surroundings, some sort of attempt to try and find a little meaning. Richard Ford used the phrase “poetic reality,” and I think I’ve always strived for my art to exist in a space like that. Most of the new work is about LA or Detroit. I really miss LA all the time. It’s a huge inspiration for me still, particularly downtown LA. I had a studio on 3rd and Broadway for over two years, and I lived in it for most of the time I was there. I found downtown LA similar in certain aspects to Detroit. My family still lives in the Detroit area. I was there all of September
at the Popps Packing artist vresidency. There was a brief moment of almost coexistence in Detroit before the riots when people of different races and cultures were thriving together in one city, in close proximity. Something painting can do is bring people from different backgrounds into this space of coexistence, which doesn’t really exist at all in cities today, but I feel like maybe somehow it could, so this is my attempt to put some hope into these pictures. That was the starting point that got me interested in painting this kind of figurative work: wanting to make images of people coexisting. Would you say that comes from a place of optimism, or just wishing society would get better? Yeah, wishing things were better. I don’t think I’m very optimistic, but I’m hopeful. I think there’s a difference. There’s a distinct symbolism throughout your paintings – like in one painting which is, interestingly, structured in panels almost like how a comic book structures a narrative. There’s the card suit on a checkerboard, the bowl of fruit, the sign: “Elvira’s Wedding Chapel, Bridal & Quinceaneras.” That’s the front of my studio in Downtown LA. The man with the bird on his hat, he used to hang out outside the studio; the woman selling bags in the foreground has been
COUCHMAG
17
"NOTHING IS JUST ONE THING" working on the block for 14 years, she’s someone I said hi to every day. That’s a real place, Elvira’s Wedding Chapel. This dude Willy runs it. I’d say a lot of the work is some combination of autobiography, history, and fiction. I’ve never been interested in comic books, but the panels go all the way back to the old religious art I got into as a kid, 11th century stuff—I grew up Catholic, so a lot of the first art I saw was, like, the Stations of the Cross, or stained-glass windows, and devotional paintings. The bowl of fruit in the Elvira’s Wedding Chapel painting is an example of how one thing can take on multiple meanings, and become a sign or a symbol. I try and look at all these elements in the paintings and consider their connotations, consequence, and context. There’s a certain artistic responsibility in that sense. Nothing is just one thing. The paintings are certainly more apparently personal and vulnerable than your photographs. All of my work has been pretty personal, though. I’ve said before that my landscapes are self-portraits, but I don’t think anyone really cared. When I had just gotten to California, I was not in a good place, so I went out to Death Valley, the lowest point in North America, and made those pictures. The distant and lonely mountains, the faded colors, that was me then. There was a garden series I did shortly after that, right after my grandmother’s funeral, in a field behind her house. Those were printed on translucent silk. They were landscape images that became ghost 18
portraits of her. Very rarely has anyone shown interest in the autobiographical aspects of my photography, and that’s totally fine. But when you start painting – painting people, specifically – there starts to be a question of who the painter is. Could you tell me about the meaning behind some of the symbolism in the paintings? Let’s go back to the “Elvira’s Wedding Chapel” work. I wanted to present what that corner in Downtown LA felt like. Grand Central Market is across the street, so during the day, the block is flooded with all walks of life. At night it empties out and the sidewalks become beds for the homeless who can’t or don’t want to find space over on Skid Row. It’s a poem of a street, and in the paintings, I wanted to show the sort of joy and desperation of that block. The people looking out of the painting, they look concerned—uncertain. They are looking at you as if they’re asking something of you. I think Downtown is asking a lot of questions. The whole place is gentrified. People are being displaced, discarded, thrown away really. It’s unbelievably tragic on Skid Row. But Downtown is such an incredible part of LA, historically. It’s the beginning of LA. Today, it embodies everything that is awful and beautiful about the city – all the hope, the broken promises, and desperation. So maybe the people in that painting embody the concerns of the neighborhood.
SEE MORE JORDAN SULLIVAN ON INSTA @_JORDANSUILLIVAN_
WELL-BEING
