The EP (The Excellent People)

THE EXCELLENT PEOPLE THE ARTIST ISSUE/WINTER 2014-15

FRANKLIN SIRMANS + PROSPECT.3 MAD’S GLENN ADAMSOM JUDITH LAUAND HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD REZA ARAMESH CLAIRE TABOURET DESTINATIONS HAUTE COUTURE

04

THE EXCELLENT PEOPLE THE ARTIST ISSUE/WINTER 2014-15 VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1

They might have been so many gods and goddesses. They accepted their worshippers with equanimity, for it was simply the case that they were far above ordinary mortals in the perfection of their hair and teeth and skin and features.

Their supple bodies deserved to be adored, as the nearest mirror could not fail to tell them. ~Brendan Gill and Jerome Zerbe, Happy Times, 1973 Editor-in-Chief and Creative Director

Ricky Lee Art Direction

Andrew Hart Editors-at-Large

Amy Kisch Jen Sall Stephanie Sherman Senior Editors

Lisa Brown Jaloza Lizzie Jones Special thanks:

Elizabeth Abrahamson Glenn Adamson Maddy Alford Brooke Davis Anderson Joakim Andreasson Jean-Luc Dupont Sean Green Richard Griggs Henzel Studio Heritage Icosae Flavin Judd

Rainer Judd Ola Kapusto Steve Miller Johnny Ramirez Robert Saywitz Franklin Sirmans Dan Tanzilli Tom of Finland Anh Co Tran Lucy Wallace Eustice Monica Zwirner

Dedicated to: Margaret J. Hardy Lee Robert C. Lee, Sr. and to Douglas Harnden

theexcellentpeople.com contact: hello@theexcellentpeople.com 917.382.9397 the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

05

CONTRIBUTORS Dietmar Busse is a New York City-based photographer. dietmarbusse.com

Jen Sall is a producer with a foundation in digital strategy and PR. She’s developed a specialty in driving press, conversation, and engagement for entertainment, including Sundance-winning films, celebrities, and web content. When she’s not plugged in, you can easily find her at an art opening or screening in and around Los Angeles.

Jean-Luc Dupont is a Paris-based fashion PR executive, who is obsessed with defending emerging designers. He is also a passionate photographer and contributor to various publications.

Katie Sharrar is a senior marketing consultant at LEITZES&CO

Aliza Edelman, Ph.D., is a New York-based curator and art historian whose research and publications have advanced gendered and transnational dialogues among artists.

Stephanie Sherman curates, writes, and organizes public projects that story everyday and extraordinary places, infrastructures, and possible worlds. These projects design collaborative systems that convert sites of popular consumption and social surplus into regenerative platforms for creative communication and co-production.

She believes there is an art to everything. stephaniesherman.net

Pia Habekost’s work takes its departure in typography. Her unique

Elizabeth Young is a fashion and portrait photographer. After living

Marianna Massey, who was born and raised in Mississippi, moved to the West Coast after graduating from the University of Florida with a Bachelor of Science degree in Photographic Journalism. She works as a contract photographer with global agency Getty Images and recently completed work as a photographer for them at the 2012 London Summer Olympic Games and the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games. Her work has appeared in many major news and entertainment magazines, including TIME, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, VIEW, Art + Design, U.S. News & World Report. mariannamassey.com

Heather Zises is an arts writer, independent curator, and aesthetic visionary based in Brooklyn. In 2013, she launched READart— readartny.com—as a multifaceted platform for contemporary art. Working both locally and abroad, READart fuses its online presence with the real world through ongoing collaborations with artists and galleries. Such projects include art advisory, art reviews, catalogue essays, copywriting, and curation. Heather has worked at the New York branches of Pace and Phillips, and is currently a contributing writer for Fjords Review. Raised in Boston, Heather graduated from Cornell University with a B.A. in English and Dance, and earned her M.A. in Art History from Christie’s Education in New York.

process of sampling and remixing bits of information combines digital and analogue techniques to create complex layered swarms.

Through painting, cutting, and layering various media, Pia creates word clouds that are both ambiguous in meaning and visually alluring. Her work ranges from small-scale collages, big-scale paintings to three-dimensional objects. piahabekost.com

based in downtown Manhattan. For more information on Katie Sharrar and LEITZES&CO visit leitzes.co.

in New York City for over a decade, she recently moved to Paris.

She hopes to discover why New Yorkers dream of Paris and why Parisians dream of New York. elizabethyoung.com

ARTIST ISSUE

06

THE ARTISTS ARE PRESENT

HUB: LOS ANGELES

ARTIST STATEMENT

08 Writer Heather Zises Talks to Prospect.3 Artistic

24 A Particular Kind of Heaven by Jen Sall

38 Dietmar Busse

Director Franklin Sirmans

14 ...She Also Speaks With Brooke Davis Anderson, P.3 Executive Director

18 Conversations On A Banquette: Eavesdropping on

Museum of Arts and Design Director Glenn Adamson and artist Marylyn Dintenfass at lunch at the Century Club in Manhattan

INTERNET HAUTE COUTURE NIGHTLIFE 1985 44 Jamie Knolwes’ FolioCue by Ricky Lee 46 Backstage at the Spring / Summer 2015 Haute Couture Collections. Photography by Jean-Luc Dupont

50 Remembrances of Excellency Past: Tod Papageorge at Studio 54

52 1985: Bill Henson’s Unforgettable Year

30 Hooray! Lauri Firstenberg and LAXART Decamp from Culver City to Hollywood by Ricky Lee

32 Bicoastal: Cole Sternberg by Ricky Lee 34 Ricky Lee Finds Out Why Allie Pohl is the Ideal Woman

DESTINATIONS

56 Happiness: An Afternoon with FriendsWithYou

by Stephanie Sherman

GREETINGS 74 A Snow Globe by Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz

60 London: A Portfolio by Reza Aramesh 68 Sao Paulo: Dr. Aliza Edelman on Meeting Brazilian Modernist Judith Lauand

70 Paris: Claire Tabouret in Her Own (English) Words 72 New York: Introducing Jenna Snyder-Phillips

by Katie Sharrar

On The Cover: Joseph Saint Laurent photographed by Dietmar Busse This Page: FriendsWithYou Rainbow City, New York City the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

07

THE ARTISTS ARE PRESENT ARTIST ISSUE

08

FRANKLIN SIRMANS IS THE TERRI AND MICHAEL SMOOKE DEPARTMENT HEAD AND CURATOR OF CONTEMPORARY ART AT LACMA. HE IS ALSO THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF PROSPECT NEW ORLEANS: NOTES FOR NOW, THE THIRD-ISH INSTALLMENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL BIENNIAL, CURRENTLY ON VIEW IN THE CRESCENT CITY. WE GOT SIRMANS ON THE PHONE TO DISCUSS HIS VISION FOR P.3, HIS DISCOVERY OF WALKER PERCY’S THE MOVIEGOER, AND THE MEANING OF CULTURAL IMAGINATION.

by Heather Zises

Portrait by Marianna Massey

H

eather Zises: How did you become involved with P.3?

Franklin Sirmans: It was a process of Dan Cameron and the board, so I was invited when the second one (P.2) opened. But I had seen the first one (P.1) a lot so I’m sure that might have played some role as well because I was in Houston.

HZ: Had you visited NOLA before, or was this a new city for you?

FS: Well it’s new, but I’ve known it and had been there as a tourist. I did an exhibition in 2008 that had a strong reference point to NOLA; so I don’t know if that played a role in the selection process or not, but it’s certainly a place that I had thought about in terms of a “cultural imagination” way.

HZ: I like that term, “cultural imagination;” it conjures up some curious elements in my head. What do you mean by that, exactly?

FS: Well as a space, it is such a specific context (the city of New Orleans). I did a show called NeoHooDoo which was very much about the syncretic religions of the Americas, so New Orleans would be just as important in that constellation as any, in thinking about it in that sense. It was a show that tried to talk about spirituality but in a very American, kind of post-colonialist sense. It was so long ago that I don’t even know if I like to think about how it should look now!

HZ: Have you been appointed as an Artistic Director for a biennial before, or is this your first experience in this role?

FS: As far as an exhibition this size, nothing similar. There are other shows that we call biennials, but nothing this big. It’s been insane, but great at the same time. And for me, it’s also a nice balance between working on the exhibitions that I am working on here in Los Angeles, with a little bit more long-term aspects to them, and then something like this which has an amazing sense of urgency. It’s been interesting in that sense; it’s been completely different.

HZ: What sort of differences have you seen already and do you anticipate in the role of Artistic Director for P.3 compared with your ongoing role as Head Curator for LACMA? FS: I wish I would have anticipated all of the differences, but I didn’t…so much of it is about surprise too…There are things you just cannot anticipate working with artists who are making work in the moment and making work in spaces that you don’t even know super well. The element of chance at the biennial is just amazingly greater than anything that happens in the space of the museum.

HZ: Is that because you are outside or because you are unfamiliar with the city structure, or perhaps a combination of the two?

FS: It’s because you don’t know it. For one, you don’t have the same infrastructure— LACMA is not super old by any means in terms of encyclopedic museums, but it’s been up and running in Los Angeles since 1965. So you have a certain infrastructure that is a well-oiled machine, whereas in New Orleans, for something like P.3, it’s only the third one, people are still trying to figure it out, and the element of chance is so much greater. And that is what makes it interesting, and what I think gives it so much energy as well. You don’t know how everything is going to look or how it’s going to play out.

HZ: How long was the selection process for participating artists in P.3?

FS: I gave myself a year and a half to look and not make any hard and fast decisions. Then I gave myself another year in which to really work with artists, and ask them to consider being in the biennial. There were probably 20 of those kind of situations where you are really having a conversation that is about the process of what will eventually happen, as opposed to the artists who made work where I knew the piece, so I was coming at it from that angle too. the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

HZ: For artists who are represented by a gallery, how are the dealers involved in the biennial, if at all?

FS: We can’t do anything without dealers. When we have an artist where you just want to get the work, it often involves the gallery. There are also situations where we have artists who are making completely new work and it is a huge financial commitment, and so we correspond with galleries about how to make that happen, i.e. perhaps they have collectors who would support the project, because there is a lot of fundraising that goes into the sitespecific works. It’s all interconnected in some way.

HZ: Can you talk a little about this biennial’s theme, Notes for Now, and perhaps a few program highlights?

FS: I think Notes for Now is a blanket way of talking about what I think a good biennial should do at this point in time, which is on one hand it should be timely, in regards to talking about the last two to three years, and then on the other hand, you try and make sense of things. So it’s not like printing a book—actually, we printed two books! (a P.3 exhibition catalogue and a book on Basquiat)—but to me, the exhibition is an exercise in that you are taking notes for the duration of two and a half years and fact-finding by talking to artists, curators, and people about what is important, or what you believe to be important about showing in an international exhibition of contemporary art at this point in time. I think those are notes that are constantly changing which is why the title Notes for Now is a good way of encapsulating what is a really big project, and it is not only the exhibition that I have curated, but it is also P.3+ which is the hundreds of galleries and nonprofits that are going to be putting on art exhibitions during the run of Prospect 3. It’s also P.3 Reads which is an ongoing, year-round series of conversations that happen in libraries in NOLA, so it entails a lot of different moving parts.

I think Notes for Now is the umbrella statement. My essays in the exhibition catalogue are called Somewhere and Not Anywhere, which is a more specific reference to Walker Percy’s book The Moviegoer which has been a real structural device for me in terms of thinking abut the exhibition thematically. The book does a couple of things, and both are in line with that idea of what I hope the exhibition does, which is, in order for these kinds of things to be successful, they need to be very much about the place in which they take place: so context was everything. The Moviegoer was written in 1961 and is based in New Orleans.

It is a story of someone who is trying to find himself, if you will. In regards to P.3, I think the exhibition is an exercise in finding oneself and trying to understand people, and that ties back to references in the book. The protagonist is able to see people more clearly by the end of the book because they are more open to seeing people. This notion is where the “artist oracle” equivalent comes from as well, which is why we will be exhibiting a work from Paul Gauguin at NOMA. I think this work is somewhat representative of his search for himself, which precedes an idea that he posited a bit later, concerning who are we, what are we, and where are we going. These themes were important for Gauguin, especially as a post-impressionist European painter who goes to the “exotic place.” Similarly, the Brazilian painter Tarsila do Amaral (whose works are also in P.3) looks at the construction of identity and of the self and from a different point of view, one in which she is talking about the construction of an identity that is a representation of a whole country and this idea of eating “the other” along the lines of a cannibalistic manifesto.

HZ: I really like the premise of P.3 Reads—an ongoing series of public talks held at the New Orleans Library—because it offers a perspective on the relationship between literature and art. Since the program launched in January, do you feel that the talks have been well attended and generated stimulating dialogues? Have you been moderating them?

FS: Ylva Rouse, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs, conceived of P.3 Reads, and Caroline Kerrigan, Deputy Director for the Public Experience, has administered the program. These talks have been occuring in New Orleans while I have been in Los Angeles, but I look forward to being present and moderating the panel in October. I’ll be speaking

09

ARTIST ISSUE

10 with Sophie Lvoff to discuss Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer. And yes indeed, the talks have been well attended and have generated some very stimulating dialogues. The library has been packed! So it’s been really nice to have a great turnout, but it is also about having a meaningful presence, which is something we have strived hard to keep in mind.

HZ: Do you think the presence has changed since the first biennial back in 2008?

FS: I think with a different director it will just keep getting stronger and stronger. From my observation, Executive Director Brooke Davis Anderson has been an incredible force in terms of getting people excited about P.3, not only in New Orleans but everywhere else, which is important for an international biennial.

HZ: Along those lines, how does P.3 fit into the dynamic culture of the Big Easy?

Do you foresee any challenges?

FS: A lot of it is about taking cues and keeping them in mind. There are references to music, which is a culture and a history that is specific to New Orleans, and there are references to performance, which is such a part of the city’s pulse. In turn, I hope that all of those things are part of the fabric of the upcoming biennial. At the same time, I know that there is no substitute for the real thing. Therefore, so much of the exhibition will be about people experiencing the city, just as much as it will be about people experiencing the art in the show.

“The element of chance at the biennial is just amazingly greater than anything that happens in the space of the museum.”

—Franklin Sirmans

HZ: It’s wonderful to be able to have both of those components in sync. You mentioned performance; are there many performance artists who are going to be participating in the upcoming biennial?

FS: No…it’s not heavily on the performance side. The references are there, but in subtler ways. For example, Lisa Sigal has been working on an extended performance, but it’s a private performance and she will come away with this project that is about painting as much as it is about the city. Additionally, there are performances scheduled by Andrea Fraser, Liu Ding, and Gary Simmons that will happen on opening weekend. But there will be others that will happen in pockets—some around the opening, some half way, and at different events in between. Performance will be more of a constant reference point in most works on view. The more static works, like drawings by The Propeller Group and Christopher Myers, are about instruments and musicality as it relates to funerals, and not only funerals in New Orleans but also in Vietnam. Funerals are very performative in both places.

HZ: The last two biennials, P.1 and P.2, inspired the creation of some the most iconic works in recent memory, like Mark Bradford’s Mithra and William Pope.L’s Blink.

Do you have a sense of what might resonate in the artistic canon from this year’s selection?

FS: That is a tough question! With Mark’s pieces, there are no comparisons as that is a big, important piece, and what you point to there is also that there were reference points to the Lower 9th in that piece. Leandro Erlich did a really memorable piece over there as well...For me, all of the work that I have selected for the biennial sticks out in a big way, but it’s hard for me to say what other people will be attracted to and what stands out in a more public imagination. It’s definitely hard for me to break the works up into preferential categories. I would recommend watching video works by Zarina Bhimji, or seeing new works by younger artists like Firelei Baez or Hugette Caland—who most people probably don’t know of—or watching the way that William Cordova treats the city in his video work and how Los Jaichakerers treat the city in their work. I’m excited about the way that Lucia Koch is going to create a kaleidoscope of color around the contemporary art center windows where Andrea Fraser will be performing actual conversations that happened in New Orleans. It’s a definite mix, and hopefully some things really stick with people. I would never compare P.3 to any of the art fairs…perhaps a more comparable space would be the Venice Biennial. Right now Gwangju is going on in Korea, Sao Paolo is up in Brazil, and Taipei just opened. I will close by stating that the energy around P.3 has been fantastic. We have received phenomenal press, and the whole city seems to be buzzing. It’s going to be a biennial you won’t want to miss!

Under the Pandanus (I Raro te Oviri), 1891, Paul Gauguin Oil on canvas, 38 ½” x 47 ¾” x 3 ½” Courtesy of Dallas Museum of Art, Foundation for the Arts Collection, gift of the Adele R. Levy Fund, Inc. the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

11

ARTIST ISSUE

12

3 Days @ P.3

the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

13

Photography by Ricky Lee Visitor Information: ProspectNewOrleans.org

This page: A champagne toast to Tavares Strachan’s “You Belong Here” neon river barge. A P.3 highlight.

Opposite page, clockwise from top left: Self Portrait as Bunnies (Bad Boy), Alex Podesta, on view at The Parlor Gallery The Nameless, 2013-2014, Hew Locke, at Newcombe Art Gallery Natchez, 1985 (Detail), by Jean-Michel Basquiat at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art A street performance during the St. Claude District Arts District Block Party ARTIST ISSUE

14

...WE ALSO TALKED WITH BROOKE DAVIS ANDERSON, P.3 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR.

by Heather Zises

Portrait by Marianna Massey

H

eather Zises: What are some highlights for this year’s Prospect 3 Biennial?

Brooke Davis Anderson: The theme of this year’s biennial is Notes for Now, curated by Artistic Director Franklin Sirmans, who is also the Head Curator at LACMA. From my vantage point, the position that Franklin is taking for P.3 is both beautiful and challenging, and provocative and inviting. It has this wonderful capacity to do a lot of things for a variety of audiences. I feel like Franklin has put together a really gorgeous project. P.3 will feature 58 artists from around the world. Works by biennial artists will be interspersed throughout the whole city of New Orleans in 18 different venues, including museums, galleries, hotels, and public parks. Headlining this contemporary art project are two marquee artists—Paul Gauguin and Jean-Michel Basquiat—whose presence I think will greatly encourage audiences to come visit New Orleans and explore some amazing art on view courtesy of P.3.

Contemporary art is one of the harder sectors in which to engage today’s audience, so I have to say our P.3 team felt very fortunate when Franklin’s intellectual premise guided us; we realized that, intellectually, he was onto something that would really help us with the public.

the funding come from everywhere. It also helps that Franklin is based in Los Angeles, another art-friendly city. We have put together a great staff of 10 very energetic people in New Orleans, and they are as just as ignited by Franklin’s proposal as I am. On that note, the biennial feels more like a proposal than an exhibition in a lot of ways.

The conference in December is just one of the programs with international outreach. We have a programming calendar that is very active, and everything we are doing is free and open to the public. Since we do not have our own hub in New Orleans, our programming is reliant upon all of our partners, so we have to coordinate with every single venue to put anything on in the city. So this project is one of partnership. It requires a lot of discussions and coordination, but it has been a very rewarding way of working. It helps knowing that every venue works differently, and how to anticipate their needs.

HZ: Congratulations on the two new partnerships with Hyatt Regency and The New Orleans Advocate!

BDA: We are so excited about our partners in New Orleans and beyond! A lot of them are newly established, but they have allowed us to offer almost everything that we want, HZ: How will Basquiat be represented at P.3? and we are actually ahead of our fundraising goals! We were really thrilled when Hyatt BDA: I liken the exhibition format for Basquiat to “a show within the show,” because Regency came on board, and we have another partnership with Independent Curators there will be a small, yet beautiful exhibition of nine large paintings on view at the Ogden International (ICI) at the close of the biennial. The Hyatt is our sponsorship hotel—it’s a Museum of Southern Art. Franklin has been thinking about Basquiat since the ’90s, and rather conventional partnership as one might expect in art world travel—but a wonderful he has been part of almost all of the artists’ exhibitions since then. He realized that within new development is that the Hyatt is letting P.3 exhibit art in the hotel. As a venue, they Basquiat’s body of scholarly work, the projects that most of us have seen still remain rather wanted to be a site for both art and artists, which includes a designated space where the retrospective and all-consuming of his oeuvre. Therefore, Franklin put together “Basquiat artists can be together or be on their own. This partnership is one that involves a sponsorand the Bayou,” which was a way for him to look more closely at Basquiat and unpack ship, so the hotel is being very generous of our organization’s financial situation. specific aspects, concepts, and themes within his work. This “mini exhibition” will look The New Orleans Advocate partnership came about in a really great way. They are a new at how the South was central to Basquiat’s newspaper in town, and their readership is thinking and will also tease out many one that supports the arts. Our team at P.3 Southern scenes found in the artist’s work. has had the long-term goal of creating a free Curiously, Basquiat was a New Yorker of mapping guide for the biennial. The Advocate Caribbean heritage who had no desire to thought it was an equally good idea, and so in travel to the South…his idea of the South the spirit of serving a need that we have had was one that was inflected with racism of the from the beginning, the newspaper donated region. One way that the South became real the design, the printing, and the distribution —Brooke Davis Anderson for Basquiat was through painting the food of of the mapping guide. I am happy to share the South, the language of the South (particularly Gullah Creole), the jazz musicians from that there will also be a digital app for the mapping guide, thanks to a sponsorship from the South, and the Mississippi River. The P.3 team is particularly thrilled to be presenting the design team Culture Connect.

Basquiat in such a formative and specific way to New Orleans when the biennial opens in Another new supporter for P.3 is Regents Bank. They are going to sponsor our visitor a few weeks. Additionally, the city is thrilled because they found out that Basquiat traveled center on wheels. Part of the beauty of this project is that it is citywide, which is definitely down to New Orleans in 1988—the year he died—to see Jazz Fest, the primary festival part of the attraction for Franklin and part of the joy for me. So we came up with the idea that takes place every year in the Big Easy. During his brief stay, Basquiat became smitthat rather than be a static, stationary hub, we should really be a mobile hub. We will paint ten with New Orleans, and apparently he expressed intentions to paint his experiences. a 1969 Citroën truck our identity color of hot pink and add our P.3 logo and Regents Banks Unfortunately, this project was not realized due to his untimely death nearly five months logo. It will travel around town for the run of the show. It will be located at our 18 venues, later. and we will have on social media where the truck will be parked for the day. Then visitors can get their mapping guide, buy their exhibition catalogue, and sip free water and coffee.

HZ: What kind of press coverage is scheduled/has occurred for P.3 so far?

Our position with P.3—particularly with the New Orleans audience—is to illustrate BDA: The organization is planning a major conference, which is fantastic! We are so that artists are thinking about the very same things that you and I are thinking about when grateful to have received major funding from The Luce Foundation and a sponsorship from we are out in the world and when we are at home. The mobile hub, the mapping guide, The Hyatt Regency, which will allow us to make the conference free to the public. The and the fact that we are free and open to the public this time (we have not been in the past) conference will examine 30 years of influence and impact that the seminal book Flash of the express that a contemporary art biennial experience is open to one and all. We think it Spirit by Robert Parrish Thompson has had on American art and culture and our underhas value to one and all, even the people who don’t typically go to museums. We hope the standing of art history. (Meanwhile, I found it to be quite serendipitous when Franklin city and all its constituents feel comfortable and curious about the biennial, as I feel that shared that Basquiat kept a dog-eared copy of this very book on his bedside table!) The comfort and curiosity are the two tools for making art accessible. conference will take place for two days in the middle of our 13-week run, and the author Parrish Thompson will give a keynote address. It was very important for me to have a HZ: Its so thrilling to hear how many partnerships and sponsorships you have major public program realized during the crux of the biennial. Subsequently, the timing is garnered for the biennial under your leadership. Regarding the community at large, fantastic because the conference will start a few days after Art Basel Miami. Therefore the has Governor Jindal embraced the biennial and local arts scene as well?

P.3 team is marketing it as an opportunity for art fair goers to stay in the South: First visit BDA: Actually, the mayor—Mitch Landrieu—and his staff have been supportive in a Miami, and then come to New Orleans to see the biennial and participate in the confercouple of different ways. We have published two catalogues (one digital, one print) and two ence. We also just had a wonderful feature in The New York Times Magazine. books (Basquiat and P.3). The mayor has issued a welcome statement in both books, and so we are thrilled to have him as a friend and a partner.

HZ: It seems like you have involved the New Orleans community in P.3 in many ways. How are you gaining global recognition?

HZ: Could you talk a little bit about P.3’s recent partnership with The Watermill BDA: I currently run P.3 operations from New York. A benefit of being offsite is that Center and how the artist residency experience has been for P.3 artist Entang Wiharso? operating on the executive director level gives us access to national and international BDA: As an international biennial, one of our commitments is to contribute to the econfunders in a way that being in New Orleans might not provide. So it is useful from the omy and wealth of New Orleans. One of the ways we can do that is by creating an art funding point of view. From the biennial’s inception, there has always been the desire that project that brings tourists to the city. In order to establish a footprint and create visibility

“I feel that comfort and curiosity are the two tools for making art accessible.”

the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

15

in the New York art world, I felt it was essential to build relationships with The Watermill Center and ICI. The partnership with The Watermill Center has been a great success so far. Entang Wiharso is a really interesting artist, and he had a great residency experience at Watermill. It is a very special spot! I was able to visit Entang during his residency, and he put together a fantastic exhibition of the work he made during his stay. He was very fortunate to have had more or less the run of the whole place.

HZ: Will Dan Cameron—acknowledged “Nolaphile” and brainchild behind the Prospect biennials—be in attendance this year?

BDA: Yes! What I love saying about Dan is that it took three people to replace him.

He was the founder and brainchild of the whole biennial, and it’s amazing what he has given birth to. He was also the executive director, the artistic director, and the president.

Meanwhile, those roles are now shared between Franklin, myself, and our President Susan Brennan. I don’t fully understand how Dan did it all! He will definitely be at P.3, and he is bringing a group of Orange County Museum of Art board members for the opening festivities. I have felt supported by Dan, which is really nice. I should add that Dan was the one who recommended Franklin for the role of Artistic Director for P.3. And then Franklin nominated me for this position as Executive Director. I feel very lucky. Franklin and I have known each other for a long time, and it’s been a real thrill to try and make his dreams come true, which is what I feel this biennial is, in many respects. I have felt very moved and

very ignited and very inspired by the propositions that he is making to us because they are thoughtful and kind, and challenging and critical, all at the same time. That is not an easy tightrope for people to walk across, and he has managed to do that with this exhibition.

HZ: What are the major differences between P.1, P.1.5, P.2, and P.3?

BDA: P.1 was amazing and people still talk about it. P.2 was equally interesting to a lot of people in New Orleans. After P.1 closed, there was a feeling from the local art community that it really wasn’t for the local art community. And so P.1.5 was an idea that maybe what Prospect could do is have a local biennial in between the international biennials. However, I am less interested in creating a dichotomy of local versus international. 1.5 was a worthwhile experiment, but it’s not the direction that we will take in the future. We have different strategies for working with the local community during the in between time. We are calling them our “bridge years,” and we have already started fundraising for them. In the meantime, we have a lot of local and international artists in P.3, and we will be activating and partnering with the local community in other ways that are not equivalent to a “mini biennial” or a local biennial. Furthermore, P.3 has a different exhibition team, so inevitably it’s going to be a different project than the others. I am eager to share it with everyone, and I am eager to see how it goes! So far, we are all feeling very good—everyone from the board to the staff to the supporters. I hope that the artists are feeling very excited about a couple of weeks from now, too.

ARTIST ISSUE

17

CONVERSATIONS ON A BANQUETTE ARTIST ISSUE

18

GLENN ADAMSON, THE DIRECTOR OF THE MUSEUM OF ARTS AND DESIGN, RECENTLY MET ARTIST MARYLYN DINTENFASS FOR LUNCH AT THE CENTURY CLUB IN MANHATTAN. WE EAVESDROPPED ON THEIR TÊTE-À-TÊTE ABOUT CRAFTSMANSHIP AND IDEAS. Photography by Dietmar Busse

M

arylyn Dintenfass: The great thing about the story with John and I is that Arthur Williams, who is a great ceramic collector, is a friend of John’s, and when John was looking to start dating and wasn’t having any luck, he called Arthur and said, “Arthur, I’m not finding anybody. Do you know anybody great that I can meet?” and Arthur said, ”Yes. I do, and if I wasn’t the man I am (because he’s gay), I would never give you her number, but I’m having a dinner party on Friday. Would you like to come check her out?” The dinner party was filled with ceramic artists and collectors. I was working as creative director for this little moment at a big internet consultancy company, and I was flying all over the country, so I had a lot of stories to tell. John was viewing me from afar, unbeknownst to me, and waited in the lobby for me to come down. But then I never came down, so then he invited me for dinner. And then what happened is that Arthur Williams decided to start a museum called MOCA, the Museum of Ceramic Art. And he picked a board of directors, trustees. John was one of the trustees, and I was one of the trustees. We had monthly meetings, and after the meetings, he’d say, “You want to go out for dinner?” and I’d say “Sure.” He says, “I just wanted a meal,” but that’s not what he wanted. And then, I would go and say, “That was so good what you said at the meeting,” and he’d be like, “Oh really, I don’t think what I said is that good,” and I would say, “No. I think it was really good.” We had dated, but it wasn’t until we were board members of the trusteeship at the never-to-be MOCA. Arthur had a huge post-production company called Tapehouse, and it was doing very well. Slowly during that time there was a big strike of all the people that were doing commercials and that kind of thing went to Canada. It hurt his business, as well as technology that was rapidly coming, so everything you used to have to go hire, a room and an editor, you could start to do on your computer. So his whole fortune actually waned at that time.

And he was not a fundraiser. And so I got a fabulous logo. And, of course, when my kids first came to see, when John and I moved in together at his apartment and the kids came up, they’re looking around and are like “this is the first place I’ve ever seen that has more ceramics than where I grew up, (my house).” I have to say, when I first met John, every closet, every drawer of his apartment was just filled with ceramics. And then, of course, when we were first dating we were like, “This is so great, this is so cool.” Of course, then when I moved in (laughs), it was like clothes and stuff.

Glenn Adamson: The apartment became clutter instead of genius. I think I might have met him first around that time. When did you met him?

MD: 2000.

GA: So it was just after; 2002, maybe. I remember seeing his collection here in New York at this time and just being absolutely rolled over. I hadn’t seen as many private collections at that time, but even so, looking back…

MD: Even now, you know why? Arthur, for example, had a very charming art collection, in that realm of people who buy what they like. But John, because he is a connoisseur, bought what he liked but also bought what led up to it, whether the artwork that led up to it were letters, or drawings, or paintings of Bernard Leach that supported the work. And then he also bought the people that surrounded Bernard Leach, like Shoji Hamada, you know, all that other material. So John’s collection is both beautiful and gorgeous to see, and it has depth, a scholarly shape.

GA: That’s quite unusual in craft collecting I think. If you call John a craft collector. But you really can’t. He’s really…

MD: No. GA: He had an interesting position vis-à-vis the art craft issue, because he was so ideological about what he was doing. I feel that the question of art was of less interest to him than it was to Leach because Leach had really been forged in the fires of the Japanese avant-gard, and so the whole question of a craft tradition becoming progressive art tradition was very crucial to him, whereas for Cardew the priorities were much more about life and ethics, more ethics than aesthetics. It’s a wonderful book, one of the finest biographies.

MD: The discussion about this concept of ideas vs. craftsmanship goes way, way back, including to when I first started working in ceramics because I came from a painting background. So when I would lecture about ceramics, I would try to make this distinction between the idea and the craftsmanship. If you’re jurying, the idea of jurying is always like: “How ambitious is the work, and how successful is it?” because it can be successful, but not ambitious, or vice versa. So this idea of putting that together… I think that Leach was very interested in ideas. It wasn’t that craftsmanship was the God for him. It was very much about ideas.

GA: The opposition between craftsmanship and ideas. It was about prioritizing craft as an idea.

MD: I don’t think it’s an opposition.

GA: Exactly. So you try to think dialectically about it and see that craft is already a proposition, or a base of knowledge, a set of ways of thinking about creativity, and also that concepts aren’t always reflected by the physical manifestation that they take on. So I see them as two ways of thinking about the same subject, really: one, which is coming through the physical material door, the other through the conceptual intellectual door, but it’s the same room you are in.

MD: I think that all great art has to have a level of craftsmanship to make it above, even if it’s pure idea. Think about Richard Serra. That’s just pure idea that can only exist with the level of craftsmanship that he puts into it. And I think all art, think about the paintings in the club that we see here today, they are about craftsmanship and ideas. And that’s what you are bringing back to the museum, which is something that I’m thrilled and delighted about.

GA: I think that’s right. It’s about how craftsmanship provides validity to the idea and vice versa. Each is like a flesh built on the armature of the other.

MD: I love that idea of ambition and success, which was taught to me a long time ago when I was jurying—that the item that we were looking at had to have this basis of being both ambitious as well as successful. And the word ambitious I think takes in all of those different things in terms of craftsmanship, scale, in terms of…

GA: …Personal commitment. Because the purest form of ambition is to do something that you’re not sure whether you can do. So even a great artist can become unambitious.

You can feel that, even if what they produce is much more prodigious than what a younger artist can do, because you can sense that they’re not being ambitious any longer, and it dies on the wall.

MD: John is also the one who always says, “This work is art.” He wants it to be shown as art, displayed as art, thought of as art, and he can’t.

MD: There are many artists who have incredible reputations, such as Jasper Johns, who have long ago lost the ambition, being afraid to fail. Doubling back on work that kind of made it, and then taking the essence of it—like making a whole gallon of iced tea with one tea bag—it gets diluted.

GA: Have you read The Last Sane Man, Tanya Harrod’s book about Michael Cardew?

GA: The furniture maker Wendell Castle, furniture sculptor, has this great saying: “If you

the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

19

ARTIST ISSUE

20 hit the target every time, the target is too close to you.” And indeed his work has been extremely erratic in terms of its success level, but in terms of ambition it’s always been there.

But when he’s successful it’s absolutely extraordinary. How do you keep yourself from falling back into things that will be easy for you?

MD: It doesn’t interest me anymore. It’s kind of organic.

GA: So you have the gift of boredom.

MD: Yeah. And actually now with this show coming up in the spring, with this injury that I’ve had, that I’ve been struggling with this, and now it’s clear that I’m never gonna be able to get this arm back to paint. As they say, this idea that if you want a better answer, ask a better question. So I asked myself, “How would it be possible to create a show without having an arm to paint?” I got a really great answer, and now I’m more exited about this show than almost anything I’ve done. Its very challenging, it’s way out of my comfort zone and, it’s setting the bar very, very high. Every time I have had a show, I’ve raised the bar.

It feels good to be in that zone of not knowing if I can do it, but thinking I can do it, and travel with that. I think that’s actually the definition of flow. You’re doing something that’s hard, but you feel you can do it, and it’s like a sweet spot.

GA: I definitely identify with that, because taking on a museum directorship for me was the very definition of doing something I didn’t know if I could do. It’s a kind of learning curve that scholarship just doesn’t afford you, because the risk is so much higher and there’s so much more real world in it—many more personality types and riding on the decisions that you make. But that’s what gives you the sense of motivation as well, so it’s the ambition level again. Marylyn, how did you solve this problem? Because I’m reminded of what happens with artists towards the end of their careers when they have one of their crucial tools taken away from them, like, for example, their eyesight—think about Monet or Titian—and what happens with their paintings late in life, when they have to start using long handled brushes because they cant see what they’re doing up close. Obviously, you are in a different situation because you can’t use your painting hand for a while, so what happens in that situation for you?

MD: I’ve been working for three years, maybe longer on these freestanding sculptural objects, scrims that go outdoors. It came off the experience that I had of working on the big commission I had in Fort Meyers where these big Kevlar panels were commercially printed with my images. My images went from 36 inches to 33 feet, and that sense of detail that it was able to maintain. My work has always been about layers, about seeing through things. There’s this big overarching theme of things are not what they seem. This material has given me this opportunity to do this. So, for three years, maybe more, I’ve been going through this series of fabricators who haven’t been able to build this series of pieces. This year, I hired an architectural student from Cooper Union to do some renderings. He has gotten very into the project. We are collaborating. He and his team from CU have come up with this incredibly elegant way to make this happen. So the work is going to be the showing of these scrims, which I have been working on for three to four years but also putting it in an immersive environment where the paintings will be printed so they cover walls, the floor, and all of the imagery is taken from my artwork. The printing process, which is something that I have done for 30 years, is also coming into the new age of printing. It will be a totally immersive environment. My last show was called Drop Dead Gorgeous. It was about plants and poisonous plants. This year, I’ve been working a lot on these carnivorous plants, which are very rich both visually and historically. Darwin wrote a whole book about carnivorous plants.

GA: Do you identify at all with the position of the carnivorous plants—do you paint from that perspective? I’ve always been interested in those plants as having a subjective position that is particularly hard to imagine. We think of other humans as having analogous subjectivity to us, of course, so we feel like we can at least imagine what that might be like.

Like I can try to imagine what it would be like to be Marylyn Dintenfass, and then when you get an animal, you think, “Ok, well at least I can imagine what it’s like to see as a dog, and to feel hunger like a dog does, or want to sleep like a dog does.” But then when you get to a carnivorous plant, all of your guidelines are completely out the window. So I wonder whether you think about it in that way, or whether you are thinking of them as glorious objects to be seen from outside?

MD: The way that I feel about this is that this paradox, the conundrum, is about the idea of survival. All animals and plants and everything else are doing something for survival. These are attractive, they attract, they attract insects. They have different ways that the insects are then devoured. Some have a sticky substance, which captures them, some have a kind of funnel where they slide down. The writings of Darwin on this are so fascinating because he said that these plants were developed in areas that were so devoid of any kind of nutrients that they could get from the soil that to survive they had to come up with this other way, and he was fascinated by it. He also did experiments where the plants know—like passing a strand of hair and the plant does not go for it—it knows that it won’t be food. How does it know that? It saves it for when food is there, and they’re gonna do it. This level of attraction and danger is very interesting to me. I hope the show will be a combination of trepidation and delight. Not so dark that it feels creepy, not so the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

overwhelming that you’re frustrated or wanna get out, but it has this heightened aspect, this trepidation about going, but its paid off with delight. That’s what I’m working on right now, but I’m scared.

GA: One thing that I love about what you said is that these plants evolve from a position of desperation, so they seem to be among the most impressive creations of nature, but that they would have only come about in conditions where the normal processes by which plants can grow and survive are not available to them, and so it’s this kind of extreme case of what nature can do when it’s motivated. And art is so good at those kinds of subjects, you think that the way joy and pain can be mixed together in art is quite unusual. You get it in literature and music also, but I think outside of the creative arts it’s very difficult to find that in culture, because there’s a tremendous desire to push aside the painful, ugly, negative things and just emphasize the good.

MD: It’s more convenient, as a tool. The other part of that is that the plant then has to develop to be an object of desire—an object that is so attractive that it will seduce the prey in a visual sense.

GA: Does that relate to ideas about gender for you? The idea that women in our culture are put in this position of having to be attractive, or at least there’s this massive wall of expectation that is confronting them to have that kind of visual attractiveness, in order to gain some kind of practical advantage? One reason I ask that question is that I really feel like our museum has a very feminist basis, in the sense that we were founded by a woman, Aileen Osborn Webb, but also in the sense that the craft and design disciplines have been much more open to women than fine art disciplines have been historically— maybe less so today, but it’s still arguably an issue. One thing that struck me recently, I haven’t done the math yet, but I would bet you that of all the museums in New York, we’re probably the one with the highest percentage of work by women in our collection because we collect ceramics and textiles and metalwork and that sort of material. I feel like the historical disregard for those media as compared to painting and sculpture often is mapped onto gender inequity and vice versa, and so I feel like our museum has an opportunity/obligation to think in gendered terms. But then when you get into the 21st century and you’re thinking of a post-post-feminist condition, that means that taking up a subject like we are talking about like attraction to kill, which can be so overstated and stereotyped in media, that’s quite radioactive artistic subject matter in some ways.

MD: Yes. One of the things about your museum is that it has this sense of being accessible.

The work is accessible, which is also a double-edged sword. It’s populist. People love to come and see the museum. Thank God at least they are writing reviews in the art section and not in antiques or some other section, which is good no matter what they write. I think that probably had a lot to do with why the name was changed, creating a broader base of arts and design. All of that time is a conundrum of very good on this end and moving way on that end. It also made it an international museum.

GA: And people don’t think of that very much, the change of name from American Craft Museum to the MAD. There was a lot of commentary about the word “craft” not being there, but not much about the word “American” not being there, but that was of course equally important at that time. I think the craft part is still more complicated though. No question we’re now a global museum—just about to do a Latin American show, just did a big African show, material from all around the world in our collection—so that’s not an issue anymore really, but the craft issue definitely is. It reminds me of something that popped out of my mouth when I was speaking out in California at the institution that’s now called the California College of the Arts, and of course used to be called CCAC, California College of Arts and Crafts, a name that came down from the period of the arts and crafts movement, so a very long held name. I was speaking to the people that you would call the craft constituency at the school, right after they changed the name. They asked me what I thought of that. It was a packed room, hot night, almost a political rally, that kind of feeling. Very unusual for an academic as I was at the time to experience that kind of energy. And what I ended up saying was that sometimes when somebody takes away something you care about, you fight for it harder, so maybe craft as an absence or as a problem to continue to work on rather than something just sitting there in the title of the institution is actually a better position. I think the same thing is true for the museum, and I agree that MAD, while some people might find it vague and open-ended, is definitely a better platform to speak to a broad constituency in the 21st century. But what I try to remember is with that name change, the original mission to celebrate skill, making, craftsmanship, workmanship, technique, process, materiality, and material knowledge, those platforms of the mission don’t go away—and you have to find even more assertive, more interesting, and surprising ways to address them, because you’re not sitting there with the name Craft Museum on your front wall.

MD: I love what you said about when they changed the name—they talked more about craft than they did about the absence of American—because that’s what makes the museum: this huge repository of opportunity and, well, I love what you’re bringing to the museum is this level of intelligence, scholarship, and skill. It’s terrific; I think the museum is gonna be so well served by this, and thank God you arrived.

21

Marylyn Dintenfass is represented by Driscoll Babcock Galleries.

Her next solo exhibition there opens in March 2015. driscollbabcock.com ARTIST ISSUE

23

HUB

LOS ANGELES ARTIST ISSUE

24

A PARTICULAR KIND OF HEAVEN

by Jen Sall

Photography by Pia Habekost

the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

25

ARTIST ISSUE

26

TIP THE WORLD ON ITS SIDE AND EVERYTHING LOOSE WILL LAND IN LOS ANGELES. ~Frank Lloyd Wright

W

hile many may regard Wright’s quote to mean that Los Angeles is a city where all those unwanted, unfocused, and unappealing flock, I consider the quote as an opportunity for artists and those who support the arts to embrace LA as an exciting, innovative metropolis. I look to and love Los Angeles as the creative hub that still has room to breathe and experiment. This is not a city where every nook and cranny has been squeezed and stretched. This is a city where the opportunity for works, space, and expression abounds. A city that welcomes the underdog. Understandably, there are plenty who’ve proclaimed this for years, even decades. However, it seems artists, designers, gallerists, and institutions around the world are now paying closer attention.

The apex of this movement is found in Downtown LA. Here, one can be transported from the glamour of any number of historic and grand theaters to the underbelly of the city, known as Skid Row, in minutes. Once dormant and neglected, the pulse of the neighborhood is aflutter. Almost daily we are treated to the announcement of a new gallery, art space, or studio moving, opening, or expanding in Downtown LA. Hollywood is more than movie studios, starlets, and the scandal of entertainment. Too often written off as the old guard, opened at a time when art in LA was not taken seriously, Hollywood houses many galleries which have long anchored the city. Once considered the risk takers, these galleries have matured alongside those same artists who have made and continue to make LA their home, thereby providing a different sensibility equally as important to the new energy downtown.

Shots of Note in Los Angeles: Opening Spread: Downtown LA skyline. Taken from the rooftop of the Toy Lofts looking west, the photo shows the expanse and light of one of the busiest creative areas within the city.

Top Left: 1201 – The outside signage for the entrance to the gallery Kayne Griffin Corcoran. A fairly recent move for the now 115,000-square-foot gallery, which includes James Turrell’s Skyspace, an illumination of the skylights of the main galleries and the courtyard environment. Nearby to Kayne Griffin Corcoran is the David Kordansky gallery, recently defecting from Culver City. And in doing so, growing considerably in square footage. KGC, 1201 S La Brea Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90019 Middle Left: Entrance to Harmony Murphy Gallery – Neighboring galleries Harmony Murphy and Ibid Projects (SEE PHOTO) found along an industrial stretch of Santa Fe Ave. In true Los Angeles style, these galleries open up to adjoining outdoor spaces designed to take advantage of the SoCal mild climate. This marks Ibid’s first space outside of London, demonstrating that interest and purchases of gallery space in LA stretches far beyond New York. 679 S Santa Fe Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90021 Bottom Left: Shot from the LA River: Downtown LA, no exact address Top Right: Front Entrance of 356 S Mission Road Gallery – One of the first of the larger and more established galleries of downtown NYC galleries to open in Boyle Heights, immediately adjacent to Downtown. 356 Mission is the Gavin Brown’s Enterprise affiliate run by artist Laura Owens. 356 S Mission Rd Los Angeles, CA 90033 Bottom Right: Ubiquitous Taco Stand – The taco stand is to LA what the coffee cart is to NYC the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

27

ARTIST ISSUE

28

Top Left: A street view of Regen Projects, one of the oldest and most respected galleries in LA. A year or so ago, Regen Projects, soon to mark its 25th anniversary, moved to this 21,000-square-foot gallery in Hollywood.

Regen Projects could be credited for starting the movement eastward. 6750 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90038 Middle Left: Ibid Projects, 675 S. Santa Fe Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90021 (see Harmony Projects above) Bottom Left: Bar Amá, a Tex-Mex restaurant by Chef Josef Centeno, part of his ever-expanding Downtown LA empire. 118 W 4th St, Los Angeles, CA 90013 Opposite Page: Palm tree and stroller, Downtown LA the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

29

ARTIST ISSUE

30

AFTER 10 PIONEERING YEARS IN CULVER CITY, LAURI FIRSTENBERG AND HER OUTSTANDING NON-PROFIT LAXART ARE DECAMPING TO HOLLYWOOD. HOORAY! BUT WHY? WE FIND OUT.

by Ricky Lee

Photography by Sharon Suh

R

icky Lee: You are about to celebrate your 10-year anniversary in 2015 as one of the leading art non-profits in LA. Could you speak about the history of LAXART and what its mission has been since you founded it in 2005?

Lauri Firstenberg: LA><ART was founded as an independent flexible space to support artistic and curatorial freedom.

RL: How has the cultural landscape of LA changed since LAXART first opened it doors in Culver City?

LF: The evolution in the city is due to the expansion of the art world in LA, and more largely, as well as the visibility LA is receiving nationally and internationally. In 2005, it felt like we were working in isolation from the center of the contemporary art world, and then year by year a new colleague would move from NYC to LA, and then the community and dialogue have become more rigorous and dynamic. Artists are now moving to LA, and artists are also going to school here and staying here to live and work, which is a dramatic shift.

RL: In January, you’re relocating to a new space in Hollywood. Why have you decided to move?

LF: Part of our strategic plan has been researching new spaces for the organization to have more space, and this effort has been ongoing over the course of the past three years. LA><ART has grown programmatically, steadily, and has been tactically approaching appropriate growth for the organization. Yet we have been functioning outside of our modest footprint for quite some time. This new space allows us to house all of our disparate activities—our performance programming, discursive programs, educational laboratory with the collective Slanguage, as well as our exhibition and public art initiatives—under one roof and to become a hub for contemporary artists and audiences.

RL: What is it about Hollywood that is attracting so many galleries right now?

LF: Beautiful and available spaces that are still affordable as well as aura, history, legacy, and centricity. Our space in the media district is surrounded by studios for artists, photographers, and architects and now galleries.

RL: The new space is a former recording studio with a storied past, and you are collaborating with Lorcan O’Herlihy Architects (LOHA) on the design. What is the concept for the space?

LF: We are working in the new space as-is right now, watching how artists are responding to the space as we inherited it. We have done minor work to neutralize the space. We will slowly negotiate how to attend to some of the elements like a 1920s safe in the LA><ART loft gallery or a wood minimalist sound panel in the main space in terms of gesturing to the memory of the space while converting the space into an alternative arts organization.

RL: You’ve produced over 300 experimental exhibitions since 2005. What have been some of the highlights / frustrations over the years?

LF: We have only ever been limited by our modest space—we could have a performance and a thousand people would attend. We always wanted for our space to match the ambitions of our collaborating artists and curators. We oftentimes collaborated with other institutions using their larger gallery spaces, theater. … Moving to 7000 Santa Monica Boulevard allows us to focus on the independence of the organization.

Some memorable projects include those that set the tone for how artists worked in our space including Daniel Joseph Martinez’s inaugural show and public project, Michael Queenland’s restaging of his railroad Brooklyn apartment in our space, Ruben Ochoa’s the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

monumental Extracted sculpture, Rodney McMillian and Olga Koumoundouros’ live drawing performance titled On a Porch, as well as Kerry Tribe’s performance Critical Mass re-animating the ’70s film of the same name, Scoli Acosta’s performance for a series that Malik Gaines and Alex Segade initiated, “Talks About Acts,” Mark Bradford, Wyatt Kahn, William Leavitt, Charles Gaines, Mary Kelly, Sam Falls, Mary Weatherford, Walead Beshty, Thomas Lawson, Adria Julia, Dashiell Manley, Alex Israel ... We have learned so much from the artists we have been fortunate enough to collaborate with. I would say that the current exhibition which focused on our first international artist residency and commission under the rubric of The Occasional—a new platform for the city in which the artist works in close collaboration with a curator from our national team to produce a project over the course of up to three years—is spectacular. Our curator Matthew Schum worked with Mark Boulos to produce a new filmic installation entitled Antigone which also was shown at the Geneva Biennial. The reception has been extraordinary in terms of what can happen when an organization can dedicate resources and time to one particular artist.

RL: You are initiating some fresh activities and launching some new programming in 2015, such as The Occasional. Please describe / explain.

LF: The Occasional is a platform with a focus on international artists residencies and newly commissioned works staged in experimental sites throughout the city produced by a national curatorial team including Linda Norden, Matthew Schum, and Sylvia Chivaratanond. The Occasional will focus on the support of research and unrealized ideas—giving an artist the opportunity to realize a project according to his/her vision without being bound to institutional time including projects with Shana Lutker, Tavares Strachen, and Rainer Ganahl, to name a few.

RL: Your recent gala at the Greystone Mansion was quite the affair. The Hollywood Reporter called it “Glitzy.” What was the occasion? What went on?

LF: We have had the opportunity for artists to respond to Greystone, and 25 performances and interventions were produced for the evening including Liz Glynn’s Blindfolded Waltz performance, a monumental totem sculpture by Lisa Williamson, a site-specific video installation by Brian Bress, a meditation performance with Kathryn Garcia, Gerard & Kelly’s performance in the grand living room of the estate, a beautiful installation of 21st century Brancusique sculptures of Jason Bailer Losh in the infamous bowling alley, as well as a collaborative performance and installation with Thomas Lawson, Flora Wiegmann, and Nina Waisman. The Gala at Greystone was a fundraiser for the organization, as well as the opportunity to work with an incredible group of artists, some who produced work critiquing the context such as Ry Rocklen’s cast bronze tire affixed to a Hummer parked at the entrance of the event, Matt Merkel Hess’ ceramic gas cans staged inside of the former Doheny family home, and Joel Kyack’s tattooing of international currency symbols onto partygoers.

RL: Any predictions, hopes, fears about the future of the LA art scene?

LF: Our hope is that the cultural community of the city will continue to thrive and that artists and arts organizations will be supported in a sustainable fashion. We envision an organization that can be handed off to the next generation of artists and curators.

RL: What is excellence?

LF: Taking risks without fear of failure. laxart.org

31

ARTIST ISSUE

32

BICOASTAL: COLE STERNBERG

by Ricky Lee

R

icky Lee: Tell me about your working process. You have a unique method of using watercolors, oils, and spray paint.

Cole Sternberg: My process tends to begin with a conceptual grounding. That soil gets me motivated to use a variety of mediums and layers to convey whatever message is emanating from the concept. The painterly works involve a wide variety of traditional mediums, all interwoven in a manner that is structured but also subconsciously controlled. I enjoy the discovery process and limitless possibilities of playing with different mediums in new and challenging ways.

RL: What are some of themes, concepts, and ideas that regularly occur or are explored in your work?

CS: With the widest of lenses, my work is an ongoing commentary on humankind and its relationship to humanity. Dialed down it references snapshots of society and our environment. This can be via an analysis of the Geneva Convention or Kim Kardashian’s Twitter comments, Kafka’s Amerika and my American experience, the disappearance of bees and the appearance of toxic well water, and so on.

Recently, I’ve been particularly fixated on environmental destruction and our sorry state of affairs in that regard, as well as the artistic work of Ray Johnson and Bas Jan Ader and its relationship to societal concerns today.

RL: Why? CS: Perhaps because I’m forever engaged in an inner-dialogue, and that comes out in the only place it can survive—my work.

RL: What are some of your other work series / projects?

CS: I’m currently having replica old masters painted in Xiamen, China, writing poetry on large-scale horizon-oriented watercolors, burning flags to form sculptural works and smashing found objects (as well as paintings). These will all evolve into forthcoming works, and exhibitions.

RL: How would you describe your aesthetic? the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

CS: I seem to be stuck in Payne’s grey with colors trying to poke through.

RL: What’s your background?

CS: I come from a diverse group of Southerners and Eastern Europeans, Brooklyn Jews, and old Scots—pharmacists and pianists.

RL: You divide your time between LA and New York. How does each city influence you?

CS: It is tricky working in multiple places at once, but I think my work reads in a similar way regardless of the city. For better or worse, the themes of my work and the accessible materials are nearly identical in both places. But I think perhaps if I stayed in New York too long I’d become too hard, and if I stayed in LA too long I’d become too tan.

RL: You often use text in your work. What’s the meaning behind that?

CS: The written word and the use of text in art, advertising, propaganda, religions, and so forth have always fascinated me. I also write myself, so it was a natural thing to include textual components in my work. The meaning of the text is individual to each work and up to the viewer to decipher.

RL: What’s ahead for you?

CS: A journey across the world on a shipping vessel.

RL: What is Excellence?

CS: I’m not quite sure we’ve found what excellence is yet. I could only define it within my own parameters of knowledge, which does not seem right. Or, maybe excellence is a Max Richter song or a shimmer on the water. colesternberg.com

Above: Arted House- Wainscott, photographed by Antoine Bootz, 2013 Right: Two Divergent and Flawed Horizons

33

ARTIST ISSUE

34

ALLIE POHL: THE IDEAL WOMAN

by Ricky Lee

R

icky Lee: Tell me about the Ideal Woman project and how the idea for it came about.

Allie Pohl: I have always been interested in why we follow certain cultural trends. For example, the concept of body hair and hair removal: we remove hair from certain parts of our body and add it to others. As a way to respond to this cultural phenomenon, I created a series of sculptures using a “My Size Barbie” (the doll) as a metaphor for the “ideal woman,” and I had Chia grow out of areas where our society removes unwanted hair, i.e. the armpit, vagina, and legs. The sculptures transformed from prepubescent to womanhood during the time of the installation. I was captivated by the shape of the midsection and started to explore different ways to appropriate the shape and what it really represented.

at the dawn of Post-War consumer culture. While originally intended as a toy for young girls, its ubiquitous presence resulted in a brand that has come to represent the ideal of female physical perfection. Although she has become more diverse and ambitious over the years, her physical shape has not really changed. She is an unnatural, unrealistic portrayal of beauty.

On a more general level, “Barbie” is a perfect example of how contemporary society’s standard of beauty is largely determined by our consumer culture. We are inundated with images that “define” feminine beauty, but the reality is that most of these images (or individuals) are produced with the help of technology—altering the representation of reality. Improvements in communication technology have also allowed these images to be shared more quickly and frequently, which exacerbates their impact.

RL: What is your working process?

AP: I become fixated on a cultural phenomenon, read extensively on that subject matter, talk to everyone who will talk to me about it, formulate what I want to say, and then start thinking about the best way to visually express my thoughts.

RL: You’ve also been working in a series called Peacocking. Please describe.

AP: Inspired by online dating, particularly the ever-so-popular Tinder, I chose to explore how men market themselves to women. From my research (online and in person), I created man merit-badges (based on the traditional boy-scout badges) of the qualities men most commonly try to convey.

I also made sculptures of dissected mannequin parts from different decades (finished in the most popular car color of the corresponding decade) to show how the idealized form has changed and to highlight how contemporary men are also subject to society’s notions of perfection.

Given the change in cultural trends, this is not surprising. Gay culture has become more accepted—both socially and politically—men are getting married later in life, resulting in them spending more money on themselves. You open up GQ today, and you might as well be reading Cosmo; there’s everything from designer clothing to shaving products.

RL: What are some of your other work series / projects?

AP: Two series I have been working on for over two years are Hot Seat and Heel videos. Hot Seat is a series of self-portraits taken in restroom stalls of places you go to “see and be seen” in Los Angeles. These photographs provide the viewer an intimate glimpse into one of our simplest and most personal bodily functions, in reference to the over-documentation of life on social media.

In the Heel videos, I strap a camera to the back of a high heel, giving the viewer an eyelevel perspective of the back end of a Gucci-heeled shoe. The focus of this work is the highheel shoe—a glamorous accessory emblematic of power, seduction, femininity, and female authority, worn by many at both the office and the red carpet. By removing the highheel from these environments and placing it on a hiking path, at the beach, or at the gym, I closely scrutinize the anguish involved with wearing such shoes. The resulting footage portrays the action as not only sadistic, but also absurd. Beauty should not equal pain.

RL: How would you describe your aesthetic?

AP: My work uses the principles of abstraction and is intentionally graphic and polished.

RL: What’s your background?

AP: I went to Hamilton College and was a Studio Art minor and Communications major. I wrote my thesis on the rhetoric and the trajectory of the peace symbol. I then went on to study graphic design at Parsons, The New School for Design, before receiving my MFA from the University of Denver in Electronic Media Arts.

RL: Why are we fascinated by Barbie, and how does this fascination inform your work?

AP: “Barbie” is an American cultural icon, born in 1959 (derivative of the Lilli doll), the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

RL: What’s ahead for you?

AP: An installation of life-size Ideal Women, with pet-able muffs at SCOPE Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach, followed by selections from my Hot Seat and Bathroom series, and an Ideal Woman jewelry pop-up shop, in The Photography Show in New York, produced by AKArt Advisory and The Committee, from December 11 to 20, and a solo show at Galerie 102 in California in 2015.

RL: What is perfection?

AP: It does not exist! alliepohl.com

This Page: Ideal Woman, 3Ft Neon Red Right Top: Hot Seat, Gagosian Gallery Right Bottom: Hot Seat, Jumbos Clown Room

35

ARTIST ISSUE

37

ARTIST STATEMENT

DIETMAR BUSSE ARTIST ISSUE

38

DIETMAR BUSSE

I

grew up as an only child on a small farm outside a tiny village in Northern Germany. My childhood was spent surrounded by animals and nature. As a teenager, I would hitchhike all over Europe and Morocco, looking for adventure. I was looking to connect, to belong, to be loved. Making art for me is like being on the road, except that the journey is mostly an inward one. I photograph people, animals, landscapes. I am always looking for beauty, even if there are strong dark undertones. My work is a mirror. I use film and make my own prints in my own darkroom. My darkroom and studio are both in my small and intimate Manhattan apartment. I live my work. Recently, I have been painting with photographic developer on my prints. This process is full of surprises and spontaneous decisions. The photograph serves as a structure for the painting. They inform each other. I make art to express what I cannot say in words. dietmarbusse.com

Above: Robert J. Anderson, 2014 Right: Chistpher Stribley, 2014 the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

39

ARTIST ISSUE

40

Jorge Clar, 2014 the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

41

Sophie Maguire, 2014 ARTIST ISSUE

43

INTERNET HAUTE COUTURE NIGHTLIFE 1985 ARTIST ISSUE

44

JAMIE KNOWLES’ FOLIOCUE

by Ricky Lee

R

icky Lee: How / Why did you come up with the idea for FolioCue? Jamie Knowles: It’s actually based on my university experience at Davidson College. Studio art majors had an oral review where they had to describe the evolution of a few hundred artists’ careers. It was a wonderful opportunity to share ideas and connect with other majors in the library stacks. There is no online resource—as far as I am aware—that gives an overview of an artist’s career, showcasing key moments in the early, middle, and late stages, so we had to do all of our research from old folios. When I started thinking about business ideas, I went back to this experience and wanted to address 1) the lack of art information online and 2) the shared experience of discovering art with others.

RL: What is the concept, and how does it work?

JK: Our platform provides the public an easily digestible overview—what I like to call a catalogue raisonné light—of leading artists’ careers alongside a glimpse of what inspires the artists we feature and their incredible work. We’ve expended the lifestyle side of our site in the last few months—we now feature the artist’s favorite books, playlists with their favorite musicians, and a shoppable inspired style guide, which is curated based on the themes and visual language of the artist’s work. The idea is that just as people enjoy getting a Gilt Groupe email everyday at noon, they may enjoy access to “time sensitive” content just as much. Every Monday at noon, an email announces a new featured artist. Timed appropriately, this concentrated art content is meant to be a workday reprieve and enjoyed within a few minutes during a lunch break.

RL: Any significance / history behind your selection of the name FolioCue? JK: Apparently the pronunciation confuses people, so I love this question. The name is a combination of portfolio, queue, and cue. The name FolioCue is a play on the words to suggest there is a line of upcoming artists to discover.

RL: What is the relationship between art and fashion these days? How / is technology influencing this relationship?

JK: At the end of the day, both industries are chock-full of incredibly talented free-spirits who keep pushing our culture forward. Fashion and art are designed to get people thinking about themselves, where the world has been, and where we are going. Technology is definitely influencing the conversation. More than anything, it is allowing us to create new things that were previously unthinkable, and through technology whole new audiences can see and experience these industries, which were previously reserved for the elite.

RL: You’re an artist. Please describe your work and practice.

JK: Drawing upon known cultural associations to consumer products, I try to link self-

the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

identity to a collective memory as a way to combine history, gender, and sexuality. In my artwork, I attempt to address the ease with which individuals pick and choose identity by examining how clothing, accessories, and fabrics approximate the externalized self. I am fascinated by clothing’s ability to liberate or perhaps restrict the consumer; owning a multitude of outfits allows each design to convey a different message when worn on the desired occasion. As a physical extension of the self, clothing communicates a calculated individuality to others, revealing the theatrical nature of self-expression. I examine how society has fetishized commodities, particularly fashion merchandise and accessories, through references to burlesque and to a lesser extent drag. Touching upon the nuances of gender and sexuality, it recontextualizes the fashion accessory, not as identity liberator, but perhaps as limiter. While the meaning of the word “fetish” has changed drastically in recent years, the word’s modern usage fits well within my work as it touches upon the nuances of gender and sexuality that I focus on in my, at times, eroticized practice.

RL: How do you select the artists and fashions that you feature on FolioCue? JK: We have criteria we’re working from. As a minimum starting point, artists need to have shown some work at a museum(s) and be included in some public collections.

RL: Which artists do you collect or recommend?

JK: I’m a huge fan of Bastian Gehbauer. He’s a German photographer based in Berlin.

His work is so powerful. Being in New York, it’s nice to look at his work before I start my day and be transported, albeit briefly, to another place.

RL: How would you describe your personal style?

JK: Personal style is all about how you pull together a whole look and make that feel authentically you. I’m more interested in style and what you can do with particular pieces from a designer’s collection to make a look or personal statement. This is so much more captivating and powerful, in my eyes, than getting hung up on the big names and top-tier labels. I like to push the envelope a bit with what I’m wearing, but the real art is keeping it subtle and understated, regardless of who or what I’m wearing.

RL: What is Excellence?

JK: It is knowing your values, upholding those values with conviction, and projecting them out into the world with confidence. foliocue.com

Above: FolioCue.com Right: Star Gazer by Fred Fleisher

45

ARTIST ISSUE

46

BACKSTAGE AT THE AUTUMN/WINTER 2014/15 PARIS HAUTE COUTURE COLLECTIONS Words and Photography by Jean-Luc Dupont

D

uring the last Paris couture week in July 2014, I covered a couple of shows and, as always, tried to capture the vibe and the behind-the-scenes atmosphere, whether it was the serious action with last minute alterations at Alexandre Vauthier or the serene mood, with the dresses all wrapped in tissue paper, backstage at Dice Kayek, or by observing the very directive instructions at Rad Hourani.

I love shooting with my iPhone, using the Hipstamatic app. The phone, replac-

the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

ing the classic camera, allows for a less intrusive, more spontaneous approach to the subject, Hipstamatic allowing an uncontrolled result in a digital world where everything can be (and most often is) planned, corrected, modified, enhanced, adapted, and uniformized…

I like it raw!

From French Stéphanie Coudert to Turkish Serkan Cura through Australian Bowie Wong, Paris offers a (world)wide array of visions on haute couture. In the end, you’ll find lots of hands, but ain’t haute couture all about hands and the handmade?!

47

This page: Coppélia Pique Opposite page, clock-wise from top left: Alexandre Vauthier Bowie Wong Dice Kayek On Aura Tout Vu ARTIST ISSUE

48

On Aura Tout Vu the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

49

Clock-wise from top left: Rad Hourani Serkan Cura Stéphanie Coudert Rami Al Ali ARTIST ISSUE

50

REMEMBRANCES OF EXCELLENCY PAST STUDIO 54

by Tod Papageorge

T

he 67 photographs in this book were made between 1978-80 in Studio 54, a New York discothèque that, for a handful of years, was the place where celebrities, partygoers, and those crazy for dancing most wanted to be and be seen. Because of this, it was difficult to get into: the imperturbable doormen, who doled out access according to rules that only they seemed to know, made sure of it. The most evident way of winning them over was to be beautiful, but only the famous or socially connected could assume that they’d be shooed around the flock of hopefuls milling on the street side of the entrance rope and through the door. Once inside, though, everyone there seemed thrilled by the fact, no matter how they managed to accomplish it, a feeling fed by the throbbing music and the brilliantly designed interior, which, from night to night, could suggest anything from Caliban’s cave to a harem.

Studio 54, published by Stanley/Barker, and edited by Thomas Zander, is available at stanleybarker.co.uk.

the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

51

ARTIST ISSUE

52

BILL HENSON: 1985

T

hirty years ago, at the age of 33, Australian artist Bill Henson produced some of the most evocative portraits and powerful dreamscapes of his career. These images have now been compiled for a new monograph titled 1985. Shot at dawn or dusk, in the suburbs of Melbourne and in the deserts of Egypt, 1985—with its glimpses of faces, figures, and places—marks the moment when Bill Henson’s long-held desire to find a form for “the dream of suburbia” was realized. “I began to realize that these places could be understood as a dreamscape because they affect us so powerfully and with such immediacy as a memento mori,” he says.

“The light, smell, even temperature, as well as the look of these places, animates our memory and gently sharpens our sense of the passage of time.” Henson creates an imaginary world that shows “the suburban landscape as an interior world that each of us carries around inside us, like childhood, for the rest of our lives.”

1985 is available at stanleybarker.co.uk.

the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

53

ARTIST ISSUE

55

DESTINATIONS HAPPINESS LONDON SAO PAULO PARIS NEW YORK

ARTIST ISSUE

56

HAPPINESS

the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

57

FRIENDSWITHYOU

by Stephanie Sherman

F

riendsWithYou (the collaborative moniker of Sam Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III) are best known for their large-scale art inflatables—bouncy castles, floating installations, playgrounds—but their visions take many shapes, from sculptures and prints to designs, animations, and toys. The super-cute duo just completed Lightcave, a breathing, glowing monument at the entrance of NYC’s Standard Hotel. From their new downtown Los Angeles Studio, FWY considers how technology, concepts, and handiwork come together in unusually friendly forms. ​ Stephanie Sherman: How did you meet?

FriendsWithYou: We were pretty young—18 and 19—and we were in an overlapping circle of friends in Miami and Central Florida, and there was a lot of cross-pollination.

We shared a super-goofy, over-the-top silliness that was very much art-centric. We think back now on that feeling of freedom, of not taking anything seriously, just being ridiculous and having fun, and being disarming, which is at the center of our practice. That’s where we met, in being disarming. We were like, “Wanna come over to my house and play with toys?”

The cool thing about being young is the feeling of being so bluntly confident that you see things differently. We met during that time of conviction, when everything was so fresh, at a generational pivotal point, a frontier. And we were the first people of the internet; we went from no internet to seeing the whole world. ​ SS: How do you work?

FWY: We use our hands to make work, and the computer to make work, and our minds to make work. We really don’t care. We aren’t limited by anybody’s preconceived notions of artists. From the beginning we said, “Lets push this into anything we want to make,” and that comes naturally to us. We like making sculptures by thinking about amazing things like sacred geometry and colors and emotions and healing at a philosophical level, and then we channel those ideas into things that are funny and silly and crazy. We like to

Skywalkers, 2006, Art Basel Miami Beach A collaboration of 18 Blimps by various artists.

Pictured here: FriendsWithYou, Malfi Heads ARTIST ISSUE

58 make characters and animation that have lives of their own.

Having no formal training helped us. Formal training like art school teaches you parameters and, to some degree, limitations. We were sideways to that typical system, and we didn’t script it—it just happened. We didn’t overthink it; we lucked out in following our intuition at a young age when we had all that power and energy. We just want to get these weird things to as many people as possible. But evolving how we go about doing it has changed the work. If something is running organically and beautifully, amazing. Then, if you put actual intention and consciousness and purpose in it and look at it, it only gets reflected and amplifies into clearer messaging. We’re learning a lot about that now. ​ SS: How does your collaboration happen?

FWY: It allows us to exist outside of our own ego. We are really open to genius people who look at all of this in a different way and listening to them and accepting those ideas. It proves to be a good way to grow. You don’t have to master it. You just have to be receptive, open. It’s a mixture, a balance of active and receptive, that makes the adventure.

Our evolution of being completely together has changed from trying to work through our perspectives on each thing, to setting out making the best solution for the world and everyone adding onto that. It makes sense to do art in collaboration. Because it is about the community—a unified message of this time and space. It’s weird that art is often still considered solo because most things humans do in modern times are highly collaborative efforts. Those simple ideas you can figure out on your own are taken— they’ve already happened—the things you can work out by yourself are all checked off.

As you and society get more complex, the ideas get more complex, and there is a new terrain of computers and information to work on together. There is so much space to create now with the internet it is insane. ​

“The cool thing about being young is the feeling of being so bluntly confident that you see things differently.”

— FriendsWithYou

SS: Where do your images come from?

FWY: Our visual for the last 12 years, which has also changed in the last few, comes from a simple iconic figure, a simple face, so pure and so cute and so distilled from brands and religions and everything. We made it our mantra because it gives you such an impact, such a quick connection to the human. And that was what we were trying to do: connect to people, be cute. It’s fun because we are big dudes, and we embrace the cute, yaaay. It’s almost a return to minimalism, after all that graffitti we grew up with. It’s minimalism, but we’re adding a narrative back in.

The lightcave is also about this idea of complete openness. We are coming from a place where we soak in all these ideas, take all religions, and make an abstract piece of architecture that illuminates people no matter how they see or view it—abstract elephant, psychedelic Stonehenge, whatever you see is all valid. We’re building an open space in people’s minds to add to that narrative we set forth. ​ SS: How did the Miami to LA move happen?

FWY: We needed to make a move; we had outgrown Miami to some degree. We just wanted to be in a broader network of people with more resources in other fields. We found ourselves reaching out for everything—on skype, on the phone with people, or traveling to people in other cities. We used to think, “We have enough things buzzing,” but slowly and surely it just happened. It happens a lot in Miami. There are cycles. When you get to a certain level and you want to connect to more people beyond Miami, you move. But Miami stays with you. We are always from Miami. We are repping it for life. We are unique here because of how that was. We got to do what we did in Miami because there weren’t a lot of home-grown people doing that kind-of over-the-top work, so a lot of people rallied behind us and empowered us, according to their own wish-fulfillment dynamics. We all made it happen together. ​ SS: What’s next?

FWY: We need to all get together and figure out how to stop fucking our world up so badly. There is a lot of bumps and bruises to get to that global village utopia that I think we can achieve as humans. Or we just get wiped off the planet, and it keeps living for a few more million years, and a slug just eats our remains.

We Are FriendsWithYou, published by Rizzoli, is available at rizzoliusa.com.

Top Left: Filed of Dreams, 2010, Vinyl application Bottom Left: Light Cave, photography by Alyssa Ringler Top Right: Sleepy Head, 2010, Bronze Bottom Right: Starburst, 2010, Inflatable sculpture, Ripstop nylon the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

59

ARTIST ISSUE

60

LONDON

PORTFOLIO REZA ARAMESH

rezaaramesh.com

Right: Collage 008, Collage on paper Pages 62-63: Action 110. Wednesday, 8 January 2009. A man sits beside the body of two youths killed. Gaza City, 2011, Black and white hand-printed silver gelatin print mounted on aluminum and archival board. Framed in black aluminium. Triptych Pages 64-65: Action 122. Iranian soldiers praying during operation Nasser VII, Northwest of the Iran-Iraqi front, 1984, 2011, Black and white hand-printed silver gelatin print, mounted on aluminum and archival board. Framed in black aluminium. Triptych Page 66: Collage 005, Collage on paper the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

61

ARTIST ISSUE

62

the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

63

ARTIST ISSUE

64

the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

65

ARTIST ISSUE

66

the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

68

SAO PAULO

MEETING JUDITH LAUAND

by Dr. Aliza Edelman

Photography by Gui Mohallem A painting is not explained. A painting is seen. Words are not substitutes for the direct vision of formal structure, of color relationships, of spaces, of plasticity ... the organization of equal elements. ~Judith Lauand

A

t the age of 93, Judith Lauand is distinguished as a pivotal figure in the development of postwar Brazilian modernism and Latin American geometric abstraction. Renowned as the great “Dame of Concretism,” or the “Dama do concretismo,” she is praised for her independent and intrepid spirit, attributes readily captured in print over a half-century ago by the celebrated poet Décio Pignatari. Lauand received a major retrospective at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo in 2011, an exhibition that inspired my own transatlantic journey to São Paulo to visit the artist at her studio. My intention was to bring Lauand’s artwork to the United States for her first solo exhibition, a survey that looked beyond her geometric landscape of the ’50s and considered her critical artworks over the following decades in Pop, Neo-Figuration, and proto-feminist dynamics.

In São Paulo, the artist warmly welcomed me into her unpretentious home. A haphazard arrangement of new paintings are displayed amid a large table stacked with books ranging on topics from the influences of Einstein’s theories, to the famous Lebanese-born writer Kahlil Gibran, as well as the formative text on the Brazilian Constructive Project by art historian Aracy A. Amaral. Lauand sustains her time by reading, thinking, and working. But she was always concerned with productive relationships among the arts, sciences, and politics, and in her youth frequented the libraries to read up on the latest publications and theories.

Lauand had cultivated her early career surrounded by prolific cultural and artistic debates in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and readily aligned herself with this era’s avant-garde possibilities. Encouraged by the establishment of important museums in both Brazilian cities, in 1953 she volunteered as one of the first gallery monitors at the celebrated second São Paulo Biennial. Undoubtedly, this was a transformative experience where she observed the development of modernism unfold before her eyes. Alexander Calder’s immensely popular kinetic sculptures and mobiles floated in the company of Paul Klee’s intricately woven drawings and Picasso’s anguished masterpiece Guernica. Soon thereafter, she became the only female member invited to participate in Grupo Ruptura—the punctilious artist group formed in São Paulo and led by its mercurial spokesperson Waldemar Cordeiro, which included pivotal artists such as Geraldo de Barros, Luiz Sacilotto, and Maurício Nogueira

the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

Lima. Yet Lauand’s career was significantly framed within the context of her status in this male membership. On her relationships with her male colleagues, the artist eagerly expressed, “I didn’t feel like a woman; I felt like a human being.”

Lauand acknowledged the fertile exchange of ideas, as well as the difficult position of all artists in the incipient gallery systems in São Paulo and limited opportunities for international recognition and travel abroad. However, Lauand underscored the particular efforts required by a female artist to be ruthlessly committed, noting that against the traditional social expectations of her large family, coupled with the cultural demands placed on women, she firmly decided not to marry, repeatedly ending, even surreptitiously, various marital engagements. These issues are subtly manifested in a series from 1969 that engages male and female bodies in suffocating embrace, women smoking, and evocative titles such as Até a morte (Until Death), Até amor (Until Love), Mulher fumando (Woman Smoking), and Sofre, ore e salve (Suffer, Pray and Save). That Lauand chose to exhibit many of these paintings in the infamously boycotted tenth São Paulo Biennial suggests a desire to address the complicated political dialogues on censorship and gender during the military dictatorship (1964-85). Moreover, these works contribute to a broader set of global and local ideas on Pop advanced by contemporary Brazilian women artists, many of whom were exhibiting at the biennials, including Maria do Carmo Secco, Anna Maria Maiolino, Teresinha Soares, and Regina Vater, among others.

Lauand returned in her late career to a principal set of shapes and networks, yet now chevrons unhinge, ribbons wind, and angles erupt. More than ever, this is our opportunity to frame Lauand’s long journey as not simply a single Concrete system but an expansive vision.

Judith Lauand: Brazilian Modernist, 1950s-2000s will be held at Driscoll Babcock Galleries in New York from October 23-December 20, 2014. Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated book by Aliza Edelman.

Top right: Até A Morte (Until Death), 1969, Acrylic on canvas, 27.5 x 41.375 inches, Copyright Judith Lauand. Courtesy Driscoll Babcock Galleries.

Bottom Right: Sem Título (Untitled), 2007, Oil on canvas, 21 x 37 inches, Copyright Judith Lauand. Courtesy Driscoll Babcock Galleries.

69

ARTIST ISSUE

70

PARIS

CLAIRE TABOURET IN HER OWN (ENGLISH) WORDS Photography by Elizabeth Young

T

he paintings you can see in Elizabeth’s photographs are part of a new series I started in September. This series is named Les débutantes, after the Bal des Débutantes, where, each year, young rich girls are presented to Society. It is a continuation from my large group portraits of children. The children have grown up a bit, are now teenagers, and I am interested to represent what can be seen as a rite of passage. A ritual.

As I said in a previous interview when I was talking about another recent work, The Big Straight Jacket, in which individuals resist disappearing into an anonymous mass: “There’s always a struggle between opposing forces, between the fascination for immersion and the terror of engulfment.”

In Les débutantes, the dresses that they are wearing are all linked one to another. There is an excess of clothing, drapery, princess attire, which by its excess becomes terrifying. Each girl is an individual, a painting of her own. The painting could be cut into lots of individual portraits. The way I paint their faces, the way they look at us in a rebellious way, emphasizes the idea that we have to fight to remain an individual in the face of pressure from the group. clairetabouret.com

Dans les bois, 2013. Acrylique sur toile, 170 x 230 cm. Collection privée. the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

71

ARTIST ISSUE

72

NEW YORK

INTRODUCING JENNA SNYDER-PHILLIPS

by Katie Sharrar

J

enna Snyder-Phillips is a talented artist and interior designer based in downtown Manhattan. With a wide repertoire, her subject matter includes wildlife creatures and colorful abstracts done in her signature gestural style. Jenna’s work has been featured in The Committee’s 2014 Summer Show and is sold at Jonathan Adler stores worldwide.

Katie Sharrar is a senior marketing consultant at LEITZES&CO, based in downtown Manhattan.

Specializing in strategic partnerships, her focus is pairing artists and fashion designers with forewordthinking brands. Recent projects include Rob Pruitt for J Brand Dégradé Denim, exclusively at Barneys New York.

Lifelong friends, Jenna and Katie have collaborated on a number of projects to feature Jenna’s artwork.

The two sat down with The Excellent People to discuss art, life, and Jenna’s upcoming event with Jonathan Adler for Art Basel Miami Beach.

Katie Sharrar: I know you’re counting down the days to Miami. Tell us about your event with Jonathan Adler.

What tricks do you have up your sleeve?

JSP: I do love a trick! For Jonathan Adler we’re bringing a piece of New York down to Miami by recreating my artist studio in-store. Watch out because I’ll be throwing paint around LIVE on Thursday, December 4th from 4-7pm. Expect palm trees, flamingos, swordfish, and more.

KS: So a lot of hot pink and neon colors?

JSP: Exactly.

KS: I love that you’ll be working live in-store. The art means so much more when you actually get to see and experience the creative process. We try to do the same thing with each of our artist collaborations by thinking about how to activate each project so they’re interesting both to the artist and to the audience. With Rob Pruitt we did something similar, building a J Brand denim spray booth in Barneys’ Madison and Beverly Hills stores.

Remind me to wear my Rob Pruitt jeans to your party so I don’t have to worry about a little extra paint.

JSP: I’ll try to contain my mess. Besides my event, what are you looking forward to at Miami Basel?

KS: I hear FriendsWithYou are working on something special for Miami, and Jeffrey Deitch always throws the best artist parties. Do you remember “The Island,” organized by LAND at Miami Basel a few years back?

Where they gave you blue flip-flops and you had to take a boat to an island of artist installations? Or Ryan McGinness’ Miami Basel exhibition at the strip club? My favorite projects are those where the artist curates an experience. Maybe next year you should think about a strip club when you’re planning your show?

JSP: Totally. I’ll pitch it to Jonathan.

KS: Jonathan’s getting a lot of air time in this conversation. What other projects do you have in the works?

Any secrets you can share?

JSP: Well, I’m launching a new limited edition print with Poster Child Print I’m excited about. It’s a peacock in blue and green jewel tones. Poster Child is a great company and works with super talented people like Dalek, Cutris Kulig, and Langley Fox, to name a few.

KS: Congratulations, that’s amazing. Excited for big things to come in December.

JSP: We’re going to need a pool day and a piña colada in Miami to recover. jennasnyderphillips.com leitzes.co

Stag, 2014, 3 x 5 inches the EXCELLENT PEOPLE

73

ARTIST ISSUE

74

GREETINGS: A SNOWGLOBE BY WALTER MARTIN & PALOMA MUÑOZ

Traveler CCIC at Night, 2013 © Walter Martin & Paloma Muñoz.

Courtesy of the artists and PPOW, New York. the EXCELLENT PEOPLE