Spread from Paul Thek notebook #63, 1974; Courtesy Watermill Center Collection and Alexander and Bonin, New York; Photograph © Estate of George Paul Thek; Photograph Jörg Lohse

As part of the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, approaches to translate the subjective experience into the artistic process were explored in In the Shadow of the Hand and Back to the Things Themselves. Questions were raised on the nuances and distinctions between notions of the subjective, personal and self-indulgent. These borders disintegrate in the exhibition Paul Thek – ‘If you don’t like this book you don’t like me.’, on show at The Modern Institute till 2 June 2012, where fragments of the life of an artist, as narrated through pages of notebooks, become a part of the works on display.

Paul Thek; Untitled (cityscape with twin towers), 1972; Acrylic on canvas; 241.5 x 165 cm; Courtesy Watermill Center Collection and Alexander and Bonin, New York; Photograph Ruth Clark

In the past two decades, there has been an explosion of exhibitions and publications on Paul Thek, perhaps as part of an effort to re-insert him into the history of art. Though well-received in Europe during the 1970s, he died in relative obscurity in 1988 after his return to the United States. Thek’s name is often cited in relation to the Technological Reliquaries or “meat pieces”, a series of works made in the 1960s where body parts appearing as chunks of flesh were presented in geometric vitrines, a revelry of one’s fleshly mortality within the confines of the composed exterior of minimalism. While these sculptures were solid and dense, he also made works from ephemeral materials with collaborators, creating immersive environments that lasted for the duration of the exhibition. While little documentation remains of these installations, about 80 of Thek’s notebooks were retrieved and carefully preserved after his passing.

Paul Thek - If you don’t like this book you don’t like me. Installation view, The Modern Institute, Glasgow; Courtesy Watermill Center Collection and Alexander and Bonin, New York; Photograph Ruth Clark

The Technological Reliquaries are materially absent in the show. Knowledge of it is acquired through the supplementary reading materials provided. The artist’s notebooks, usually occupying this secondary position for signposts to an artist’s intentions, instead forms the core of the show, presented in the main artery of the gallery space alongside several of his paintings, and photographs by Peter Hujar in the gallery’s upper level.

Bust of Tomb Figure (Paul Thek) 1967/2010; Pigmented ink print; Sheet 51 x 40.6 cm, image 47 x 32 cm; Photograph Peter Hujar; Courtesy Alexander and Bonin, New York

His notebooks reveal repeated scribbles of self-motivational phrases to meticulous lists and copying of religious texts.  Illustrations, drawings and watercolor works suggest a mind filled with both doubt and idealism, on the possibility of fulfillment within one’s earthly existence and a continual search for a higher spiritual being. Enclosed in vitrines, most of the notebooks are spread open to specific pages. Several remain shut. While the open pages disclose paradoxes, exuberance and anxieties that intimate the intentions behind the hybrid approach to the form and style of his works, it is the pages withheld from view that provokes one to consider the subjective voice of the hand behind how one is to like the book, and Paul Thek.

Cover of Paul Thek Notebook #68, 1978; Courtesy Watermill Center Collection and Alexander and Bonin, New York; Photograph © Estate of George Paul Thek; Photograph Jörg Lohse

Please be aware that this article contains graphic representations of violence.  The author and the editors of the site would like to make clear that we are not interested in exploiting the sensational qualities of these images, but rather in their complex social roles.

"Two Flayed Men Appear in Tepic," a screen shot from Blog del Narco, 2011. Website and Digital Video. Image Slightly Blurred by Author.

As Mexican-American, I am awed by Mexico’s cartel warfare, and by the seeming American ambivalence towards it.  My first experience with Narco-violence started where you are now: at the computer, as I read through online articles about drug trafficking. Eventually, I came to El Blog del Narco. Hosted by an anonymous college student, El Blog del Narco claims to democratically post videos, pictures, and stories from anyone with information on the drug war. The moment remains vivid to me—it was a Tuesday afternoon, and the San Francisco fog was just beginning to roll across the sky. I clicked upon an article.  At first, I didn’t quite understand what I was seeing. It looked like two bodies piled on top of each other, except the skulls were the color of pus. I scrolled down, and saw what looked like a flattened mask of a face. I realized the image was of two flayed men, one with his heart removed. I felt sick. This was real. There were no movie crews creating this image—no costume designers, no makeup. It was achingly raw.  And yet in the same moment, I realized that I had seen this before, not in life, but in images of sixteenth-century Aztec ritual sacrifice.

"Sacrifice by Heart Excision" from the Codex Magliabechiano, c. 1540. Ink on parchment. Collection of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.

In pre-Columbian Aztec society, ritual human sacrifice saturated all social functions. Five hundred years later, Mexico is in the midst of yet another wave of theatrical human violence. Digitally propagated Narco-execution videos have become a tool for warfare, assuming the role of systematic violence once reserved for elaborate rituals and architecture. New media facilitates a new experience of the spectacle of torture, and Mexico’s drug cartels are developing a theater for their executions comprised of computer-interfaced viewers and digital cameras.  In doing so, they have also shifted traditional power relationships between image, warfare, and violence.

“Narco” is an abbreviated term that describes anything associated with Mexican drug cartels, including Narco-torture, Narco-santos [saints], and Narco-corridos [ballads]. There are even several Narco-novelas, or Narco-“soap operas,” primarily focused upon female cartel leaders, who glamorize, dramatize, and sexualize the consumption of Narco-culture. Are drug cartels, or Narcos, in Mexico researching Aztec violence for cues on how to conduct their own?

A more compelling question is how the spectacle of torture functions in both societies, and how its mediation transforms it into a weapon for social control. In The Origins of Violence in Mexican Society, historical sociologist Christina Johns argues that the development of Aztec human sacrifice was a form of state terror. The tzompantli was not simply a religious fetish, but a spectacle integral to the maintenance of power relationships between the ruling Aztec empire and its tributary subjects.  The empire literally elevated the theater of violence to the sky, using large pyramids and elaborate ceremonies, and physical presence was of the utmost importance. Images of this violence were casual afterthoughts compared to such visceral, physical experiences.

Francisco Bernardino de Sahagún, "Aztec Tzompantli or Skull Rack of Spaniards and Horses," c. 1545-1590. From the Book of the Conquest of The Florentine Codex. Ink on parchment.

The image above, Aztec Tzompantli, c.1545–1590, is from the Florentine Codex, a historical document made for the king of Spain forty years after the conquest of the Aztec empire. Very few people have ever seen the actual document—the image we see here just happened to be on a single piece of parchment, and was reproduced in modern times.  To be subject to the Aztec system of torture, you had to be present at the altar where the subjects, stretched over large stones, had their still-pumping hearts removed by priests.  Presence was power.

Both Aztec and Narco-warfare capitalize on the spectacle of expressive violence, or lethal violence whose primary utilitarian end is the expression of power itself. For the Narcos, however, the image has assumed the role once reserved for elaborate rituals and pyramids. We no longer have to be present to have a visceral, physical reaction to violence. We can feel sick at our desks, in front of our computers. Cartels are creating images and live action videos of heart removal, decapitation, and dismemberment to be disseminated over the Internet, and these images are vastly superior to images of Aztec violence in terms of immediacy, accessibility, and rendering. Perhaps ten people and the cameraperson witness a Narco-execution in real life, but hundreds of thousands have since witnessed it in digital space. I do not mean to say that the Internet creates this violence. Narcos will continue to dehumanize bodies with or without it, as has long been done in human conflict.  My interest is simply in how Narco-execution videos have become weapons of Narco-warfare.

"Members of Cartel del Golfo Dismember a Member of los Zetas and Claim Justice for the Masacre in San Fernando, Tamaulipas" from Cartel del Golfo via Blog del Narco, 2011. Screenshot of a website and digital video.

The twenty or so execution videos I have personally seen all share a common theater and script. Several masked and uniformed interrogators stand around the captive. They all wear black baklavas in the style of Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos. Their leader interrogates the victim. The victim answers all questions, and at the end, the leader executes him. It is shocking how physically difficult the work of cutting someone to pieces is.

"Decapitation of Manuel Mendez Leyva: Worker for los Zetas," 2010. Screenshot of website and digital video.

The first execution I witnessed was that of Manuel Méndez Leyva. I say witnessed, but I was not physically present.  The audio-visual, time-based format of the online video, however, made me feel that I was. It happened in a small, white room. There were four uniformed men, dressed like commandos, standing around a bald man. All four men had AK-47s in front of them. Manuel had duct tape wrapped around his head, covering his eyes. His hands were also duct-taped together, and his shirt was off. He had a large belly and a mustache. He and the leader played question-and-answer for seven minutes. His answers were smooth, the questions were regular. I remember asking myself, was this scripted? Did they rehearse these questions? At the end of the seven minutes, the leader tells him, “Thank you. Now, you are going to leave here.”

Manuel: “What?”

The leader: “Now it is time for you to leave.”

It seems like Manuel did not know what was going to happen, because as they pulled his head back, he calmly put his forearms in front of him, covering his face.  His throat made a sucking sound as the broad knife hacked at his neck.

Narco-execution videos are directed towards opposing cartels. They name their opponents directly. Manuel Méndez Leyva supposedly worked for Los Zetas.  Sometimes, cartels direct their interrogations to the public. San Juana Gabriela Enriquez Galvan was executed for being an extortionist, and her interrogators spoke generally to the people of Juárez. The video of her execution was placed on YouTube and through repeated postings received more than 500,000 hits.

Screenshot of "Video of Executed Woman," taken from YouTube on March 30, 2011.

The cartels compete with their videos, attempting to best each other. This competition in digital space accelerates dehumanization in physical space. The executions are not traditional warfare, and do not serve to gain territory or material. In the same way that the Aztecs went through the extra effort of capturing—not killing—their enemies, so too must any cartel that wants to produce an execution video. Aztecs mediated their violence through systematized rituals and elevated platforms; Narcos mediate their violence through digital recordings and digital platforms.

Donaldson, Nancy, Catrin Einhorn, and Zach Wise, “Mexican Drug Trafficking." Screenshot taken from The New York Times, February 1, 2011, accessed February 18, 2011.

Why should Mexico’s economy of violence matter to us sitting in front of our computer screens in the United States?  To begin with, the vast majority of drugs trafficked in Mexico are consumed in the U.S. In the past three years, there have been more than 40,000 violent deaths attributed to drug trafficking. Ninety percent of all weapons confiscated from cartel members come from a small number of registered shops in states with minimal gun-control, like Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico.  Hitmen for the Linea cartel in Juárez, Mexico, are paid 300 dollars a month, no matter how many people they kill. They are not paid in Mexican pesos.

If we can return to the comparison of Aztec Mexico to Narco-Mexico, in the Aztec empire, thousands were sacrificed to ensure the rising of the sun each day. A pantheon of gods justified the integration of violence into society. What can we distill this ritualized belief system into? Power. The Aztecs were an empire that subsisted on tribute and subjugation, and the spectacle of violence justified that power. What can we translate as power today in Narco-Mexico? Dollars, drugs, weapons, and Narco-culture. Today, Mexican cartels sacrifice dozens daily, but to what end?

This week’s column is accompanied by images from Wynne Greenwood‘s recent show “Peace In” at Lawrimore Project in Seattle.

Your counselor, hard at work.

Do you think that learning the technique of mediums before using them (instead of just doing something arbitrary with the medium) is stifling to creativity?

No, I don’t. Creativity isn’t arbitrary, it is direct imaginative action oriented toward a medium. The more you know, the more calculating and precise you can be (all while making it seem effortless). What is stifling to creativity is when the urge to create is stymied by a lack of knowledge. Stop complaining about your color theory homework—I promise it will stand you in good stead some day.

Wynne Greenwood, "Peace In" installation view

I have Asperger’s Syndrome. I’ve known this since I was very young, and was fortunate enough to have parents who helped me sort through it in the right way. It is very mild, and I don’t even really think much of it, however I’ve noticed that my behavior tends to color people’s opinion of my artwork. Sometimes I get the impression that they think I am some narrowly-focused-boy-wonder-type. I can’t say that this impression has hurt me – in fact, I believe it amplifies any interest in my work – however I’m not sure how I feel about being contextualized this way. Should I fight against this reputation I seem to be inadvertently building?

I wonder what you could possibly do to combat the impression you believe you are making. After all, you don’t know what conclusions people are actually coming to when you interact with them. You’re just guessing. But if you want to try to fight this assumption (yours and, potentially, your studio visitor’s) you’ll have to beat them to the punch. Maybe you could make a t-shirt that says, “I think that you think that I’m some kind of boy wonder, but I want to preemptively let you know that I’m not.” For brevity’s sake, on the back it could just say ASPERGER’S–you know, like a team jersey.

Wynne Greenwood, Head #2 with Pillar, 2012. Painted ceramic, dyed fabric, thread and foam, 48 x 24 x 24 inches

However, fashion’s not really my thing (see column lead picture, above) so in place of sartorial advice let’s get to the heart of this matter: the problem of how an artist controls her public image. Obviously, it’s necessary for the professional artist to have some information about herself out in the world (name, birthplace, education, and exhibitions are all basic resume items and statements often mention inspirations, etc.), but it’s funny how quickly this can get distorted or mischaracterized. Sometimes it seems that fact checking is passé: if someone gets a notion about who you are, and especially if it enlivens a story, there’s not much you can do. It’s no easy task to fight the rising tide of misinformation that gets circulated, especially when we live in a culture that fetishizes artists even as it undervalues them.

Let me give you an extreme example of how biographical information gets twisted: one young artist I know was born in Africa but raised in the US. She has an American accent. Upon meeting her, one patron said enthusiastically, “Oh, you’re African!” “No,” corrected my pal, “I was born in Africa, but I was raised in the US, in the South.” The patron immediately switched to expressing her sympathy, appearing to believe that the artist grew up in poverty-stricken circumstances. In reality, the artist had a comfortable middle-class suburban childhood, but this woman clearly wanted to put her into a particular category: either the “foreign/exotic” box or, when that didn’t work, in the “black ghetto” box. She wanted the artist’s life experience to be one that neatly dovetailed with her own assumptions.

Wynne Greenwood, Head #1 with Pillar, 2012. Painted ceramic, dyed fabric, thread and foam, 48 x 24 x 24 inches

Even at its most benign, the art world (indeed, the entire world) loves a good narrative. Many artists have cannily crafted a detailed back-story for themselves that enhances the reception of their work. Others (like collectives) eschew authorship and, in the process, reject the idea of creating a personal history that supports their oeuvre. But in contemporary art—which, let’s face it, is often confusing or opaque—there’s a lust for biography and a desire to make direct connections between the life of the artist and her work. No matter what you do, if critics, gallerists and curators are paying attention to your practice they are going to construct a narrative that links their perception of your personal tale with your artmaking. It’s just one way that humans attempt to explain the circumstances of imagination and creativity.

It seems that there is little you can do about it—at least preemptively—without falling victim to your own conjectures about what other people might think of you and your work. Consider the possibility that your work is simply good enough to merit attention. If your natural behavioral eccentricities make you an even more charming or romantic figure, so be it. As long as you are not being disingenuous then there’s nothing wrong with allowing people to cultivate whatever notions they want about you—and remember that they’re going to do it anyway. If you feel that it’s important to correct any possible misunderstanding of your work or your studio practice, you’re free to mention Asperger’s in your artist statement or in studio visits. But be warned that this information will create another dialog around the work that will only play into another set of assumptions, ones that you may not want to deal with.

The following article was originally published by Rob Marks on December 5, 2011: 

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art defies the normal boundary between landing and gallery at the entrance to the fourth floor space that houses Sharon Lockhart’s "Lunch Break," 2008. Photo: Saul Rosenfield, ©2011, with permission of San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The stairway to the fourth floor of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art leads me directly toward a long, narrow, darkened space, at the end of which is the image of another, much longer, passageway. In that image, a concrete floor below and light fixtures above trace a trajectory toward infinity punctuated by pipes, wires, hoses, storage boxes, tools, and lockers. The scene is not monochrome—red, blue, yellow, orange, and green are common—nor is it dark, but the fluorescent lights, the faded floor, the absent windows, and the constrained path—no more than five feet wide—suggest that this as a place to travel through, not a place in which to settle.

This sensation is amplified by the fact that the image, I slowly realize, is moving. Inch-by-inch down the corridor, the slow-motion journey of what turns out to be Sharon Lockhart’s film, Lunch Break (2008), might be confused with a series of stills.

Still image from Sharon Lockhart, “Lunch Break (Assembly Hall, Bath Iron Works, November 5, 2007, Bath, Maine),” 2008; 35mm film transferred to HD, 80 min.; courtesy the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles; © Sharon Lockhart.

Lockhart, who says she is interested in “duration,” describes her method of filmmaking as “photographic.”[1] Despite appearances, the film is not typical slow-motion; Lockhart has digitally inserted eight repetitions of each frame, ballooning a 10-minute, 1,200-foot traverse into an 80-minute encounter. It is a film engaged in repeating moments, in suspending, not slowing, time. It asks me, in effect, to witness the moment once, and then again, and then again. It proposes that I might answer the question “What do you see?” only by pondering yet another, “Do you see what you see?”

All of a sudden, a person moves, and I recognize the objects dangling off a storage bin down the corridor as human legs. In this otherworldly place, everything that seems obvious at conventional speed becomes a mystery, a puzzle to be solved only by the closest attention. A young man with short blond hair in a white jumpsuit raises his hand to his forehead, or more precisely, raises———–his———-hand———-to———-his———–forehead, where the hand rests for two minutes of my time, or only about 10 seconds of his time. His hand settles back in his lap, and he looks down. Is this a moment of despair? As the blond man turns toward me, I recognize a gently waving hand below him. The hand is speaking, and it is attached to the green hoodie of another man. I assume the co-workers are friends; I want them to be friends. There is something emphatic in the gesture of the green-shirted man, something that could be advice or reprimand. The blond man’s lips part briefly. Then he turns away and looks down for what seems to be an eternity. Is he pensive or despondent? His hand returns to his forehead. The camera inches onward, never turning. There in front of me, two distinctive characters in a distinct place have enacted a story with no ending, one of some two dozen the procession reveals. Were the men talking about a spouse, a boss, a co-worker, a sports team, or the union? Were they complaining or sharing a story? Was the hand to the head about despair, exhaustion, a thought, or an itch?

Installation View of Sharon Lockhart: Lunch Break, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, October 15,2011—January 16, 2012, showing entrance to the film screening gallery (left), the neighboring gallery with a series of lunch-related photographs, and a pile of Lunch Break Times—Bay Area Edition, the 24-page tabloid newspaper Lockhart produced in San Francisco for this show. Photo: Johnna Arnold Photography.

It turns out that although this place looks like a passageway, it functions as a destination, a place for moving in rather than moving through. The film documents shipbuilders at the Bath Iron Works in Maine during the moments when they are not building ships. The procession down the hallway reveals one “all of a sudden” after another, its repeating moments of apparent stillness both facilitating contemplation and kindling suspense. I cannot make out the messages of these subdued bodies: body language needs the fluidity of its natural pace to achieve clarity. Further, the slow-motion procession foils the normal capacity to anticipate a movement the moment before it happens. I cannot join the rhythm of life in the corridor, and everything—a woman biting a sandwich, a man microwaving popcorn, a hand brushing a knee—becomes a riddle. While ordinarily I might compensate for these limitations through closer inspection, I cannot manage this: the procession, while inching, is inexorable, and the camera’s wide-angle frontward gaze, while inclusive, is unyielding.

The beauty of Lunch Break is that its attenuated moments make it difficult to lock onto a single interpretation: the slow shifting disturbs the storyline, twists it into another shape. I cannot resolve what has happened between the two men, but the film incubates a dozen possible answers, confounding the normal snap of my judgments. I have witnessed not simply the recorded event, but also the event of my own wondering, the activity of my imagination, which is often unconscious, extending over time. Lockhart has found a way to viscerally demonstrate the elasticity of the temporal-spatial experience. The event of the two men has taken only five minutes of my time, the camera traversing only 50 feet of corridor. Yet, within these repeated moments and movements, Lockhart has packed the narrative of a short story, one of many in the bursting anthology that comprises Lunch Break.

Still image from Sharon Lockhart, “Lunch Break (Assembly Hall, Bath Iron Works, November 5, 2007, Bath, Maine),” 2008; 35mm film transferred to HD, 80 min.; courtesy the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles; © Sharon Lockhart.

The word “duration” refers to the period of time it takes for an event to occur, but I cannot sever its kinship to “endurance.” Both words stem from durus, Latin for “hard.” As I sat down to watch Lunch Break, I intended to stay, to endure, but I anticipated that the 80-minute experience would demand a sacrifice that would exceed my capacities. SFMoMA Curator of Media Arts, Rudolf Frieling, says of the experience, “The viewer’s attention and perception are constantly at work,”[1] meaning that Lockhart’s film forces the viewer not only to attend to things that he or she might normally overlook, but also to attend to attention, to perceive perception happening. There were moments when this was exhausting. In fact, the film asks me to perform the very labor the workers will soon resume: a repetitive effort. It was, however, never boring.

Lockhart gets to the crux of the activity common to both workers and viewers: the skill, ingenuity, and variation at the core of undertakings usually dismissed as trivial or onerous simply because they are repetitive. I cannot claim that my attention never wavered, only that Lunch Break inevitably rewarded the patient process of discovery. If speed seems to be the bugaboo of our age, critiqued for its narcotic-like capacity to gratify a sensation-seeking society’s desire for stimulation, then slowness, particularly as it unfolds here, offers another avenue toward the great rumbling revelation of experience: an opening—one story after another—into the expansive world of the imagination.

Sharon Lockhart, “Dirty Don’s Delicious Dogs,” 2008; chromogenic print; 41 1/16 x 51 1/16 in. (left), and “Gary Gilpatrick, Insulator,” 2008; chromogenic print; 24 3/4 x 30 3/4 in. (right), both courtesy the artist and Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, Gladstone Gallery, New York, and neugerriemschneider, Berlin; © Sharon Lockhart

It seems accurate to say, as one description does, that “Lunch Break’s gradual passage through the aged factory offers a meditative and melancholic reflection on the architectural, social and phenomenological space of a notably anachronistic mode of industrialized labor.”[2] And I might easily reflect—as Lockhart did during her gallery talk—upon the bookends that coincidentally bracket Lunch Break’s making and showing: the real estate bubble’s pop in 2007, and the union rupture in Wisconsin and the Occupy movement, both in 2011. But what is it about the film itself—rather than my projections about its subject—that evokes melancholy? It is true that the corridor is filled neither with laughter nor even many smiles. One man stretches, perhaps relieving an ache; a woman stares, perhaps fatigued; many read silently, as unanimated as the figures in the Duane Hanson sculpture that initially inspired Lockhart.[3] It may well be that melancholy unavoidably surfaces in this claustrophobic underground world, but it may also be that the restraint and deliberation of Lockhart’s procession forces me to consider not only the practices of perception and attention, but also those of reflection and judgment. Although the film inevitably raises associations to the conditions of factory labor, I found myself suspending—far more often than reaching—easy conclusions.[4]

Lunch break, indeed.

[1]Exhibition press release, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, August 30, 2011.

[2]Harvard Film Archive “Timestage. The Cinema of Sharon Lockhart,” 2009 [accessed October 19, 2011]. ”Anachronistic” may reflect both an actual trend toward automation and, particularly in industries like shipbuilding, a fantasy of completely automated processes that discounts the persistence of human labor.

[3]Lockhart’s triptych, Lunch Break Installation, “Duane Hanson: Sculptures of Life,” 14, December – 23 February 2003, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (2003), documented the installation of Hanson’s Lunch Break (Three Workers with Scaffold) (1989). Lockhart’s photographs of live workers installing fiberglass ones marked the beginning of the project that resulted in Lunch Break, the film.

[4]Among these associations are: contemporary globalization and the offshoring of manufacturing jobs; 19^th-century industrialization, the conditions of factory work, and, ironically, the increasing automation of manufacturing; and the work ethic itself.

Hunter S Thompson and George McGovern during the 1972 Presidential Campaign. Photo: CSU Archive.

Writer David Shields tells a story about being a kid and liking Hunter S. Thompson’s obnoxious gonzo journalism way better than Steinbeck and other more classic fiction writers. With Thompson, you were never sure how fictional a story was going to get and it was always possible the craziest stuff was real. The young Shields believed, I think, that Thompson was telling the truth about having had a conversation with the Richard Nixon while at an adjoining urinal, but Shields’ sister thought the story was bull. The siblings wrote to Thompson, who responded, saying the sister was right and Shields was “a pencil-necked geek.”

Mercedes emblem hanging outside MOCA's Geffen Contemporary during Transmission L.A.

“But still,” write Shields, “it was liberating to read a work open-ended enough that the thought could occur to you that some of this stuff had to be made up or, even better, you couldn’t quite tell.”

When, at MOCA’s 19-day Transmisision L.A.: AV Club, which  festival curated by Beastie Boy Mike D., I pulled back a black curtain and accidentally walked into a storage closet, I felt similarly liberated. I had just been in the flashy gallery where Mercedes Benz, which backed and co-organized the festival, had its new luxury coupe on display under flashing lights, and so the closet, which I thought for a moment was an art installation, felt refreshing. It didn’t matter that “exposing-the-hidden-infrastructure art” had been done before. It just mattered that the flashiness of the Mercedes was being contrasted by something more “real,” with ladders, and boxes, and little to no lighting. Then I saw the security guard shaking his head and walking toward me, and I knew what I had entered was not part of the art at all.

There’s a photograph at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art right now, on the third floor of the Japanese Pavilion. The image shows a sleek photograph of a white woman’s perfectly made-up, fashion-ad ready face hanging on a red rack outside concrete buildings near an overgrown alley. It’s not of a closet, but I imagine photographer Daido Moriyama felt the way I did when he stumbled upon the scene in Tokyo last year: captivated by the contrast between what’s posed and polished and what’s not

Today’s feature is brought to you by our friends at Beautiful/Decay. Read below to find a recently released artist interview with Los Angeles-based painter Justin John Greene.

Los Angeles has always held a special place in the hearts and minds of Americans, but for most it exists in an almost fictional capacity.  Hollywood isn’t a real place – it’s a postcard, a huge sign on the side of a mountain bracketed with strategically placed palm tree silhouettes.  Certainly not a place to call home, but for artist Justin John Greene that’s exactly what it is.  Hollywood is a part of his heritage, and the work reflects that.  Born and raised in the Los Angeles area, Greene’s work is strongly imbued with the history of the most romanticized industry in American culture.

In his most recent solo show at Actual Size (an exhibition space he co-runs in the Chinatown gallery district of east L.A.) the influence of the film industry is in full focus.  You Oughta Be In Pictures is a comprehensive installation that utilizes painting, sculpture, and video to create a truly immersive experience for the viewer.  Installation may seem like a bit of a leap from Greene’s primarily two dimensional practice, but a closer look into the artist’s process bridges the gap seamlessly.  His work is a distinctly enjoyable blend of sly historical references, direct compositional tactics, and cleverly applied humor.  If you have the opportunity to see the work in person I strongly encourage you to do so.

View full interview

TENT in Rotterdam asked fifteen artists to think about the concept of a secret garden and make a work for their current exhibition. They interpreted the secret garden not just as a hideaway or a place of contemplation, imagination, mystery and beauty, but also a place of debauchery, derelict and danger. The secret garden is shown as a place that evokes sensuality – brilliantly depicted in the stylishly pornographic images by  Schilte en Portielje – or the deserted home of a cannibalistic tribe.

The secret element of these gardens is taken very literally by Diederik Klomberg, in the work Kura Di e Mente/Garden of the Mind, 2012, which consists of plant pots, mirrors and hallucinogenic drugs. This three-dimensional installation uses light effects to unveil a hidden breeding ground for mind-expanding experiences and shows the secret garden as the kind garden you find in attics and basements, and occasionally in newspapers after a police raid. It is, obviously, the kind of secret garden you’d expect to find in Rotterdam. In the same room is a video animation by Olphaert den Otter, entitled Drawn, 2012. It reminded me of a conversation I recently had with a friend, about a book in which bacteria are seen as the species at the top of the food chain which will eventually kill and survive all other living animals (my conversations with friends are generally quite cheerful). The hand-drawn video animation shows the slow, natural changes of a desertlike piece of land. There are some remnants of human presence – skulls and bones – but generally it shows the planet after human life has gone.

Another work worth mentioning is the spectacular installation by Guiseppe Licari, called Humus, for which the roots of several medium sized trees were cut off and attached to the ceiling. The lights in the room are dimmed, and walking around the room it feels like you’re underground, like a mole making it’s way through the soil. There is something sinister and exciting about being in the underbelly of the forest, surrounded by the roots of dead trees.

These gardens are fantastical places, literally gardens of the mind. They show the dungeons of the artist’s imagination, and make you walk through their nightmares and dreams. They’re brilliant for a thoughtful meander, but they’re not great places for cups of tea.

40,000 bottle rockets make for a lot of noise and a lot of glare. Especially when they come hurtling toward your face. On April 7, 2012, artist Cai Guo-Qiang — known for his gunpowder drawings and performative “explosion events” — opened Sky Ladder at MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary location with just such an experience. Called Mystery Circle, the event was pure spectacle. Over a thousand people showed up to watch Guo-Qiang use the rockets to burn images of crop circles and a Byzantine alien onto MOCA’s side.

Danielle Sommer: This is your first West Coast exhibition?

Cai Guo-Qiang: The first solo exhibition on the West Coast.

DS: Did that influence how you conceived the work? Is there anything specific about Los Angeles or the Western U.S. involved?

CGT: So back in the mid-nineties, when I was about to move from Japan to the U.S., I had a friend who was the editor of a major art magazine who told me that the West Coast is the closest place to the universe in the world. There’s a lot of hi-tech development, and also the aerospace industry is here.

DS: You’ve said that the role of art is to provide a distance for people to see certain issues and certain events – and that that distance is necessary to find the meaning below the surface. What it is about art that creates that distance? What is the meaning below the surface of this work?

Crop Circles, computer rendering for the exhibition Cai Guo-Qiang: Sky Ladder, 2012, courtesy Cai Studio.

CGT: Because the exhibition is titled Sky Ladder, there is a sense of distance between humans on Earth, and the universe and outer space. It’s also a pictorial review of my art career and the past works and projects I’ve done through the years.  With the crop circle installation, it’s a reversal of the normal perspective, where we humans are looking from outer space onto Earth.

DS: You talked about your first rocket painting being a tiny canvas in your studio. Do you still have a studio practice? Do you do things that are just for your own eyes?

CGT: I still have a studio, but when I mentioned that I was working with that canvas thirty years ago, it was in my hometown in China. Of course, now my studio is located in New York, but it’s where I conceive ideas or make sketches. When it comes to using gunpowder, because you need a permit for that, we go out to Brookhaven and Long Island.

"Desire for Zero Gravity," 2012, gunpowder on canvas, 340.36 x 1066.8 cm (134 x 420 in.), commissioned by The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, photo by Joshua White, courtesy The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

DS: Jeffery Dietch said that he considers your work both spectacular and intimate.  How do you feel when you’re experiencing it?

CGT: A lot of times very anxious — very excited in anticipating the event. When that happens, I feel at one with the audience.

DS: We all jumped back together.

CGT: I got hit by a few rockets!

DS: I saw that!

CGT: You saw that?

DS: I did.

Sky Ladder is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, through July 30, 2012.

This week’s column is illustrated with collages by Irina and Silviu Szekely.

Your financial counselor, hard at work.

My question is: how does an artist decide how much a certain piece is worth, monetarily?

One of the most difficult things to do is put a dollar value on your work. In the absence of a gallerist’s guiding hand and prior knowledge, you have to ask yourself all kinds of ancillary questions: where am I at in my career, is this object well-made, is it unique, what have I sold in the past? etc. Pricing your work means it’s time to be brutally honest about where you stand in your career vis à vis what the market will bear. It can be a tough call. Who—at least of the unrepresented among us—hasn’t sold a piece and then wished they had asked for more? Or wondered if unsold work might have had a buyer if it was offered for less?

This is just one more situation in which artists need to do their research. Start with the local galleries and art fairs and look at the prices of work that is similar to yours to get a range of values. This will help you create a basic list of prices, but don’t stop there because numbers aren’t the only part of the equation. Take a look at the resumes of the artists, too, as accomplishments make a difference in setting a price. If the paintings of an established mid-career artist with work in private and public collections sell for $30,000, and you’re fresh out of a BFA program, then your work is not going to sell for the same amount even if the size, medium, and style are comparable.

Irina and Silviu Szekely, ( framing, deframing and reframing of semi-accidental linkages ), 18 x 22. Image courtesy of the artists.

You’ll also need to consider what it takes to make your work and what kind of work you’re making. For example, take the economics of production into account. What do you spend on your materials? Likewise, if you’re selling framed work you need to account for the costs of matting and framing. The type of work you’re making also has a particular value. If the work is part of an edition, it’s valued less than an original. A print from an edition of three hundred is less expensive than one from an edition of five.

When you’ve accounted for as many variables as possible, give yourself a small range of prices that you think are acceptable and run them by an artist friend who understands the art market. If you have access to a sympathetic teacher or dealer, you could ask those folks, too. I find that bouncing a number off a neutral party can help me make a final decision. I also take into account the words of a former professor, who told me that his sales strategy was to price things on the lower end of the scale. “I’d rather have a slightly smaller check than store [my paintings] indefinitely,” he said, and this is yet another thing to consider when you’re trying to put a dollar value on your work.

Irina and Silviu Szekely, ( the amputated experience of Sir Coincidence Sobject ), 27 x 23 cm. Image courtesy of the artists.

I am a performance artist. I have had many invitations lately to show my work, but I am worried I won’t have enough money to pay for all of the travel and materials. Is there a way to get an ‘art loan’? What would you do? I’m right on the cusp of something. It is so much about freeness, but also, it’s crazy to be running on hot air.

The first thing I want to say is that if you’re receiving invitations to perform, you should be getting at least some financial support from the institutions and venues themselves. Have you written any emails along the lines of, “Thank you for your interest in my work. Here are the costs associated with my performance, including airfare to your city. Please let me know how you are going to fund this performance.”? Though I suspect that this is not a magical solution to your problem, I would love for your work to be supported by the venues that ask you to perform for them. That’s not going to happen if you don’t ask directly, and at least it gives you a place to start.

As always, there are some larger issues at work here. We all know of some great institutions that operate on a shoestring budget. What happens when one of those worthy venues sends you an invitation? Do you turn them down if they can’t fully fund your work, thereby maintaining your financial integrity but losing an opportunity? Or do you suck it up, go into debt, and hope that this performance leads to one that will be fully financed? In a broader sense, how much do we artists have to give away before our work has (real cash) value? Can any of us afford to turn down an opportunity on principle? It’s frustrating to feel manipulated by a system that asks the very producers of culture to give it away for free. Considered on a global scale, someone somewhere is making money on our collective work, and it’s no good if you’re contributing meaningful effort and not getting your slice.

Irina and Silviu Szekely, ( unrefined manners of repossessing devaluated objects ), 18 x 18 cm. Image courtesy of the artists.

Would I get an art loan? Only if absolutely necessary and with a clear and realistic repayment strategy in place. Debt has a way of spiraling out of control, and it might be a while before you can get out from under the lead thumb of interest rates and minimum monthly payments. After all, this isn’t just about cold hard cash; it’s about your mental and emotional health, too. If the debt from today’s performance crushes your soul, how in the world are you going to get out of bed to make tomorrow’s? You need to consider the long-term implications of debt so that you can have a satisfying career instead of money-related burnout.

After you try to get some funding directly from your venues, the next step is to look into grants and awards. Grant Space at the Foundation Center has a comprehensive list of grant-making institutions. The online guide is by subscription (about $19/mo), but you can search their site for a bricks-and-mortar location near you where you can look through the guide for free. Grants are great. Not only do you get some money toward a project, you also get a line-item on your resume; even if the grant is small it has more than a financial benefit. One of the related perks of getting a grant is that it provides you with a grant history, which makes it easier to receive grants in the future (in general, granting institutions want to give their money to artists who have a proven record of being able to manage their funding properly). Start small and work your way up—a $200 grant today might not cover many of your expenses but it boosts your chance of getting a $2000 grant next year.

Irina and Silviu Szekely, ( temps de rêver au temps de vie, s’écrire et s’en douter ), 30 x 41 cm. Image courtesy of the artists.

Local funding can be crucial. Is there an institution in your area that provides small grants and awards? Try googling the name of your city and “art grant” to see what comes up. The great thing about funding on a local level is that is gives you the chance to form relationships beyond mere dollars. One artist I know received two grants from this regional institution and then was asked to sit on a grant-judging panel a few years later. The money came at the right time, to be sure; but additionally he got a wonderful “grant education” from being a judge and helping evaluate the applications. That’s the kind of knowledge that will help him get larger grants in the future.

Some of my friends have had substantial success with Kickstarter and similar crowd-sourced funding. One friend raised enough money to go off to a two-month residency across the country, and another’s campaign was so effective that he raised almost $4000 more than he requested. However, a good Kickstarter campaign takes time and energy to put together. If you’re going to try it, I suggest you spend a lot of time researching the site’s prior funded projects to determine what elements contributed to their success.

Irina and Silviu Szekely, ( simulacrum of an aesthetic mistrust prepared on the back of a postcard after periods of ontological fissures ), 56 x 82 cm. Image courtesy of the artists.

One thing to note about all of these sources is that they don’t provide money overnight, so it’s a good idea to think as far ahead as possible. Kickstarter may be among the fastest to pay out, but for any of these options it can take weeks to put together a strong application, and the checks from granting institutions come months after the application process ends. Where will you be in a year, and what will you be making? If you can start planning well in advance of production you’ll have a better chance of finding financial help. Art is so much about freeness: to experiment, create and perform. The trick is to find financial backing so that you can continue to develop your work without the weight of pecuniary shackles.

It is what it is. Or is it? will be on view May 12 – July 29, 2012.

The following article was originally published by Michael Tomeo on July 15, 2010:

If the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh keeps putting on shows like Twisted Pair: Marcel Duchamp/Andy Warhol then maybe the ol’ Burgh deserves a place on the official Dia art pilgrimage map, along with James Turrell’s Roden Crater in Arizona and Walter De Maria’s New Mexican Lightning Field.  Curated by longtime Warhol archivist Matt Wrbican, Twisted Pair is smart, funny and long overdue. Where many curators employ obscure art theory in attempts to somehow prove that what they are doing is true, Wrbican actually uses the archive. This makes for a much more grounded take on these artists, which is exactly what they need after decades of art world deification.

This show reminds us that before all of the flashbulbs, fame and auction numbers, Andy Warhol was just another young New York artist, albeit a very promising one. It also accurately depicts Duchamp as being fairly aware of what young artists were up to, despite his status as art world legend. He was more accessible as a chess playing jokester than a solitary genius.

Andy Warhol, Oxidation, 1978. Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917/1964.

There are some terrific pairings in this show, like Warhol’s Oxidation paintings next to Duchamp’s Urinal. There are also a few rare finds like Warhol’s The Lord Gave Me My Face But I Can Pick My Own Nose, 1948 and Duchamp’s Door at 11 Rue Larrey Photographic Enlargement, 1964. But some of the best stuff on view are the letters and archival material that might truly feel sacred to fans of either artist. Usually ephemera bores me to tears but here I was fascinated to see a butcher-paper test print for one of Warhol’s Shadows hanging above a case full of Duchamp’s optical illusion machines.

Among the qualities that Warhol and Duchamp share are a desire to shock, a taste for celebrity, a belief in the everyday object, a penchant for drag, and a strong voyeuristic impulse.  Duchamp’s groundbreaking idea of the readymade looms larger than any other in the 20^th century and no one did more with it than Warhol.  Warhol understood that advertisements, consumer objects, newspaper photos, the Empire State Building, and people themselves were all up for grabs as objects d’art. If Duchamp’s Bottle Rack looks rather pedestrian next to Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, it’s because Warhol never fully committed to the anti-retinal to the same degree that Duchamp did.

Andy Warhol, The Lord Gave Me My Face But I Can Pick My Own Nose, 1948, Collection Paul Warhola Family.

This show is so effective in pointing out connections between these two artists that it is tempting to see them as the same creative force formed by two separate eras. However, their differences are just as striking as their similarities. Duchamp embodied an authentic lackadaisical attitude that Warhol could only feign. With a work ethic that would make his Pittsburghian forebears proud, Warhol called his studio the Factory and constantly cranked out product.  Duchamp let large amounts of time, not to mention dust, seep into his works before finishing them. Warhol was a worldwide sensation while Duchamp only appealed to art-nerds. These days it is impossible to imagine any appropriation art, assemblage, or hip art collective like the Paris-based Claire Fontaine without these two artists – they are so influential that we are almost tired of them.

My friends in Pittsburgh roll their eyes when I over-praise their city’s magnificent bridges, or go on about how the PPG Building is like the best Banks Violette sculpture ever. And yes, I’ve been caught on Greenpoint Avenue in Brooklyn wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball hat.  But hometown bias aside, this show is worth traveling for.

On the other hand, Twisted Pair is so essentially New York that its next destination really should be the Whitney, but I doubt this will happen.  If a real sense of what these artists were like intrigues you, and the thought of seeing relics pertaining to their lives and work gets you all fluttery, then a trip to Pittsburgh is a must. After the show, indulge yourself with a little urban exploration. Vacant, post-industrial downtown Pittsburgh might be the closest thing to 60s SoHo to be found.

Louise Bourgeois working on Sleep II in Italy, 1967. Photo: Studio Fotografico, Carrara. © The Easton Foundation.

In 2004, two boxes of what have been labelled Bourgeois’ ‘psychoanalytical writings’ were discovered by her assistant in her Chelsea home, and a further two in 2010. These thousands of loose-leaf sheets of paper recorded Bourgeois’ inner conflicts, dream recordings and self-probing analysis, commencing during the period when the artist began undergoing intense psychoanalysis at the hands of Dr. Henry Lowenfeld, a follower of Sigmund Freud.

Louise Bourgeois, loose sheet, 13 September 1957, 26.7 x 20.3 cm. LB-0219, Louise Bourgeois Archive, New York. © The Easton Foundation.

With these in hand, curator Phillip Laratt-Smith published a volume of Bourgeois’ writings, and conceived the exhibition, Louise Bourgeois: The Return of the Repressed. Currently tucked away in residential North London, the works could not have found a more suitable site than The Freud Museum – a home firmly entrenched in psychoanalytic history, where both its patriarchal namesake, and his daughter Anna, remained until their deaths.

With Bourgeois’ writings, drawings and sculptures housed throughout Freud’s former possessions and collections, a challenging and quite perilous dialogue is created, laying the groundwork for a very dangerous obsession that may inextricably fuse Bourgeois to Freud.

Louise Bourgeois's bronze Janus Fleuri, 1968, suspended over Freud's couch at The Freud Museum, London. Courtesy The Easton Foundation. Photo: Ollie Harrop. © Louise Bourgeois Trust.

Hanging above Freud’s psychoanalytic couch, the original brought with him from Vienna, is a work by Bourgeois often referred to as a self portrait of the artist. The bronze sculpture Janus Fleuri is a ambiguous form with connotations of sexuality, metamorphosis, and struggle. Swaying above the place where free association was born, Janus Fleuri looks both to the past and to the future, and as Laratt-Smith has argued, embodies the artist’s Oedipal deadlock -  an unresolvable struggle between Bourgeois, her father and her mother, stalemated by her mother’s death.

Louise Bourgeois, Cell XXIV (Portrait), 2001, steel, stainless steel, glass, wood and fabric, 177.8 x 106.7 x 106.7 cm. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth and Cheim & Read. Photo: Christopher Burke. © Louise Bourgeois Trust.

Bourgeois’ work functions as an expression of her psychic unconscious – a way of giving form to anxieties she could not articulate, which she then subsequently analysed in her writings. While Freud focused on ‘the word’ – translating thoughts and dreams into articulations – Bourgeois moved freely between the two. Her writings reveal struggles, at times debilitating, to define herself within the roles of mother, daughter, wife and artist. And works like Cell XXIV (Portrait), embody this struggle. With three heads and three mirrors, Cell XXIV presents a multiplious identity further broken down by its external reflections – the kind of fragmented view of the self that Bourgeois struggled with throughout her life.

But it is this struggle, and her torment, that fueled her work. This Bourgeois understood well. Speaking specifically about Freud, Bourgeois wrote:

‘The truth is that Freud did nothing for artists, or for the artist’s problem, the artist’s torment - to be an artist involves some suffering. That’s why artists repeat themselves – because they have no access to a cure … the need of artists remains unsatisfied, as does their torment.’

While Bourgeois embraced Freudian psychoanalysis, she was aware of its limitations for herself as an artist. Her writings were not an attempt to cure herself or ease her suffering, but were rather used as fuel for the fire. And it is here, with Freud and Bourgeois under the same roof, that we find ourselves immersed in the realm of a very dangerous obsession.

Michel Auder, Cat Stranglers, 2009. Courtesy Kayne Griffin Corcoran.

I had a lazy Monday afternoon two weeks ago. A friend defended her dissertation and then we all migrated from the Inland Empire to my place, where I tried to show video art to one friend while another slept. The internet connection was slow, and so we never finished watching any one work, but the sleeping friend woke and wandered into the living room while Kenneth Tam’s I no longer worry about shoes being worn inside the house was faltering along. “We’re watching two men do invented yoga-like moves,” I said. “But they didn’t know each other — they met on Craig’s List.”

“If they knew each other, it wouldn’t be video art,” she said. “It would be friends doing Yoga.” This was a joke, but one I thought about, because, off the cuff, I couldn’t name any art I’d seen and liked recently that dealt comfortably and explicitly with the familiar. In most new art that compels me, artist hurl themselves into the unfamiliar.

There’s Leigh Ledare and Michel Auder, whose recent, respective exhibitions at The Box L.A. and Kayne Griffin Corcoran mined the eccentricities of their own biographies. But those exhibitions confront you with an idea of intimacy that’s unsettling because of how confessional it is, and how near it veers toward psychological fiction. In some of Auder’s films, he uses hired actors; for some of Ledare’s photographs, he asked women he found through personal ads to pose and dress him so that he embodies their desires.

Robert Smithson, Ithaca Mirror Trail, 1969.

Then there’s Elizabeth Peyton exhibition at Regen Projects, which is delightful and refreshing, as her work always is, because it’s not at all high concept. Peyton’s portraits, of friends and pop culture icons, are just of people she likes. In her work at Regen, she depicts painter Alex Katz sitting with crossed arms on a couch, and a watery-eyed David Bowie staring  from a 14-inch tall panel. You leave thinking about people’s interior lives, of Peyton’s perception of herself and of others. Does Alex Katz really look as stoic and controlled as figures in his own paintings, or has the artist projected a bit? This question isn’t uninteresting, but it’s not an ambitious one either.

James Lee Byars, The Angel, 1989, 125 glass spheres. Courtesy Michael Werner Gallery.

Could art about the familiar ever be really daring?

I came across a description of a work James Lee Byars did in tribute to Robert Smithson recently. The two artists, contemporaries in the New York of the 1960s, would have crossed paths and, I imagine, liked each other, but I don’t know how well they personally knew each other. In 1978, five years after Smithson tragic death in a Texas plane crash, James Lee Byars added up the dimensions of all the mirror Robert Smithson used during his career — Smithson used mirrors a lot, lining them up in the landscape to “displace” the earth perceptually or using them in gallery installation. The sum of all Smithson’s mirrors measure 1000 feet by 1360 feet. Byars then took the giant mirror to Smithson’s gravestone, and took a picture of the stone seen through the mirror. This would be “a mirror displacement of Robert Smithson’s soul.” Then Byars purportedly transported the mirror to the Utah desert — I do not know how, or whether any documents exist to prove this actually happened — and used a crane to shatter it across the desert floor. He collected the shards of mirror, packed them in a box embellished with gold leaf, and sent the box to Nancy Holt, who had been Smithson’s wife, as a token of his sympathy. Perhaps this is the ultimate example of the familiar taken to an extreme. Everything about Byars’ tribute speaks to how well he knew and loved Smithson’s art, yet the project is gapingly ambitious.

Installation view of Back to the Things Themselves (Lesley Punton & Judy Spark). Image courtesy of Lesley Punton.

Back to the Things Themselves, on show at The Briggait, presents artworks by Lesley Punton (LP) and Judy Spark (JS) who both explore possibilities and limits of translating one’s lived experience of the environment, and the potential for connections between a subjective experience with universal ways of knowing the world.

Magdalen Chua (MC) had a conversation with Punton and Spark, as a second part of a feature on exhibitions presented during the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art that place emphasis on the process of collaboration and the subjective experience within artistic practice.

Judy Spark, Like punctuation (symphoricarphos), Graphite on paper, 2012, (with Lesley Punton White out receding – Carn Dearg to right). Image copyright and courtesy of artist.

MC: Shall we start off by talking about your individual practices?

LP: My work has always been concerned with landscape issues. In recent years, through the process of walking, it has become more explicit in relation to my lived experience of places that are usually wild and rarely urban. In the exhibition, I have tried to create a diverse conversation between different pieces of work, exploring the limits of experience; and polarities – of night and day, light and dark, and time and duration.

Lesley Punton, Schiehallion, silver gelatin 5 x 4 contact print made after placing a pinhole camera in the summit cairn, pointing South, whilst bivying on the summit of Schiehallion to record the duration of the hours of darkness of midsummer night ’09, 2009-12, with Jim Hamlyn. Image courtesy of artist.

In the past, a lot of the lived experience of my work resulted in long and complicated processes of making. There are works that are directly durational in their actual making, such as Flurry, which marks time. A participatory work is Schiehallion where Jim Hamlyn and I made a pinhole photograph that recorded the duration of midsummer’s night that year at the summit of the mountain. These have a very direct relationship to experiences whilst actually in land. Recent works respond more to reflection and recollections of those experiences. Some have literary connections. Gravesend is the place where the narration of ‘Heart of Darkness’ starts, with Marlowe sitting and recounting the tale of his experience with Kurtz up the Congo.

Lesley Punton, Gravesend, graphite on paper, 2010. Image courtesy of artist.

MC: Could you talk about the Duration pieces? They make me think of a journey, where the days refer to the duration, or the process of making the work.

LP: The duration refers to polar night and polar day and the idea of time as something that is not quite fixed. I’ve always been interested in aspects of time – deep time and geological time – probably from the experience of spending a lot of time in hills.

Lesley Punton, Duration 2, oil & gesso on board, 2010-12 (photo credit L Punton). Image courtesy of artist.

MC: When did you start looking at the idea of the lived experience and venturing into remote places?

LP: I’ve always believed that you would make something that has some relationship to how you connect with the world. The intensity of the experience of walking and climbing mountains was something important and I became a bit obsessed with it. It felt unnatural not to do something with it.

Judy Spark, The things themselves, Two FM radios / transmitters with digital soundtracks, 2012. Image copyright and courtesy of artist.

JS: My route to making work about lived experience was through a concern with mechanisms like environmentalism that are established to get people to recognize the value of their surroundings. Environmentalism of any kind – whether related to ecology, renewable energies etc., – depends upon the scientific mechanisms that have created the problems that we’re facing in the first place. In the last 5 or 6 years, I’ve begun trying to find ways to think about how people engage with their surroundings. Conversely to Lesley, my landscapes might be right under my feet. It tends to be urban because that’s the environment I’m treading on all the time, and that’s how things come to consciousness.

MC: Could you explain the basis of your philosophical approach. It seems to be about being within a certain environment, perceiving what is around you, and letting these surface.

Judy Spark, Instructions for creating a gap, Printed text, 2011 – 12. Image copyright and courtesy of artist.

JS: A big influence was a Master’s in Environmental Philosophy in 2006 which broadened my thinking. There doesn’t seem to be much between the poles of not really caring about the place that you inhabit, and having a code of rules that are scientifically directed on how you should behave. We’re not used to working out anything in-between that is more personal. Trying to find a subjective response to things might actually turn out to have wider relevance than “just my own personal subjective response”. I became interested in the phenomenology movement and the idea of trying to describe actions or processes in a way that allows people to find something more direct and new. I think there are parallels with more indigenous or Buddhist experiences of the world which I can’t be a part of. I’d love to be, but I would only be putting my own Western perception onto them.

Judy Spark, Listening in the gap, Bound, printed text. Image copyright and courtesy of artist.

MC: I had a conversation with Sarah Forrest and Virginia Hutchison, and we spoke about the subjective experience and values. When there is an objective framework such as environmentalism, it is easy to subscribe to it because it is clear what kind of values there are. When we move to the subjective, it opens the question of whether there are still values within this realm.

LP: As much as I might prioritise a lived experience and the subjective, my relationship with the audience is more objective. I’m always looking for a distancing mechanism. The act of translation in the artwork gives the potential for objectivity or a poetics of space, which the viewer could enter into with their own subjective experience. If I thought for one second that what I was making was self-indulgent work, I would run for the hills, literally. At the same time I have no interest in creating distanced work. While my work might be incredibly minimal, I hope that there is a poetic layer that subverts that sparseness.

JS: The notion of value is an interesting one because of the distancing that you talk about. I know that I have a bit of a drum to bang in some way, but I can’t use my artwork for that and I wouldn’t want to try. It really is about putting something out there and if it allows viewers to think about their own response to things, then great.

Lesley Punton, Flurry, silverpoint & gesso on paper, 2008. Image courtesy of artist.

MC: How did you meet and what led you to decide to collaborate on this exhibition.

LP: A mutual friend was planning on hillwalking in 2004 and we started regular weekend walks.

JS: We did talk about the possibility of showing work together for years and have had many conversations. When we secured the show, I became very busy. Lesley has a young son and we both work. The collaborative aspect probably starts now in the debriefing of what we’ve done.

LP: As we have individual practices, it was probably important that we had our time to make our own work.

JS: Now that we have put our work in proximity like this, maybe this is the beginning of the next stage

LP: Walking is a very interesting way to collaborate and to build friendships. There are extended periods of silence and these are different from the conversations you have when you meet somebody in the pub. You actively experience something together. I have made some works where I have collaborated with Jim Hamlyn, my partner. The notion of collaboration is still quite new for me in the actual making of artworks together. Up until very recently I’ve not formally collaborated.

Judy Spark, Orrery (gallium aparine), Graphite on paper, 2012. Image copyright and courtesy of artist.

JS: I’m usually a very isolated practitioner. I teach in an art school and that’s maybe where I get a lot of my energy. Collaboration is something I haven’t made a decision not to do. It seems to be closely connected to that thing of value. Maybe if I meet another artist whose work or practice, or something they say to me about my work or practice, chimes in a way. Maybe it’s to do with being a friend first.

LP:  I think collaborations grow organically. I don’t think you can just put two people together and say collaborate, do it now. It doesn’t work that way.

MC: Perhaps you need a lot of trust. It starts off from conversations and knowing that those conversations can take place even without the art.

LP: …and equality as well. If there’s an imbalance there, I don’t think you can collaborate, and that’s where your idea of trust comes in.

Sarah Forrest / Virginia Hutchison, In the Shadow of the Hand: cymbal (cast lead cymbal on stand). Image courtesy of artists.

These interviews will be published in two editions–check back in with us tomorrow for our interview with the artists from Back to the Things Themselves. This post features In the Shadow of the Hand which is on show at Market Gallery and presents new work by Sarah Forrest (SF) and Virginia Hutchison (VH). Reflecting on the process of evaluation and critique in the development of artistic practice, both artists create texts for each other that are cast in lead. The lead is then melted and recast into an object by each artist in response to the text, forming part of a series of exchanges exploring subjective responses to an objective call, and the relationship between object and text.

MC: Could you talk a bit about your individual practice? I saw Sarah’s work in the exhibition P is for Protagonist and couldn’t help but think of that exhibition when I entered gallery 1.

Virginia Hutchison, Excerpts from 7 sunsets (temporary intervention with gold leaf, IOTA public art projects, Inverness, 2010). Image courtesy of artist.

VH: A lot of my work is site or context-specific interventions in the public realm. Quite often it is objective or brief-led. Recent projects have required interaction between the work and people, and an exchange of skills. What has become more important for me has been the dialogue in the making of the work, for example with people installing the work and having conversations about the space and the work.  Through the conversations, I’ve become interested in the different roles, of whether I am the artist, or they are the artists because they help to make the work come to full cycle. That was what made us decide to collaborate. Both of us were dealing with relationships between viewer, artist, object, audience, and how all these roles shift. I was at the point when I was really quite keen to just reflect on all the work that I was doing.

SF: My practice is much more gallery-based and I do creative writing with texts published independently of the visual work. I was in an exhibition at Transmission Gallery and my starting point for my work was the voices of objects. In the run-up to the exhibition, I was undertaking a lot of research on the voices of objects and I became so lost in theory that I almost lost myself. The work I presented, Part 1: for the voice, was a white sculpture narrating with a pair of headphones. Everything had gone white, and it was about a voice that was missing. By that point, I had a desire to move away from intellectualizing, come back to a much more subjective space, and find different ways to talk about a creative practice. That was when we began speaking about evaluation and critique, in relation to the art object. I am interested in creative writing as a response to a visual experience and I think that’s when our conversation started.

Sarah Forrest, Part 1: for the voice, (2010), installation with a framed text, a monitor playing a video, a white sculpture made of plaster, paper, wire mesh and gloss paint which had headphones emitting a female voice attached to it. Duration 10.23 minutes. Exhibited in Days, a three-person show at Transmission Gallery, Glasgow. Image courtesy of artist.

VH: I haven’t done a lot of creative writing myself but what I like is how it made me think differently about the projects I was doing. I thought that it was important to find a way to present a narrative of the conversations I was having. When we started off, I thought it was going to be very linear, when we had text, object, text, object, and one would follow one from the other. In reality, when responding to Sarah’s text, I was thinking of my text, and I was also thinking of what object she might be making in response. So many things started to feed in, including our conversations.

SF: We started off with texts that each of us had written or appropriated that were cast into lead letters in Edinburgh. We would respond to each other’s text with an object.  The size and weight of the object was dictated by the size and weight of the texts. It was a really simple relationship between text and an object, and a playful way to work and structure a collaboration. There was a point when I was making a symbol that was in response to the the the and I was asking for advice. We spoke about ideas of repetition and rhythm, the the the being like a stutter almost, and talked about the idea of making an object like a stutter. We began to collaborate in the making of the object.

Sarah Forrest / Virginia Hutchison, In the Shadow of the Hand: the the the (typeset text on paper). Image courtesy of artists.

VH: Even in the making of the work, we had to share our skills quite a lot. What I found healthy yet scary was letting go of ownership of something, as well as authorship. Although I know what texts I wrote and what objects I made, because Sarah has a text that sits with my object  – is it mine or her’s? Is it somebody else’s?

MC: I was interested in the decisions that both of you had decided to take, in relation to what you considered physical and immaterial within the exhibition space. The materiality of the objects could be very seductive just by looking at it. Yet these vanish into a two-dimensional screen. I personally found the texts very three-dimensional. One of the texts had instructions for a person to inhale and exhale and it made me feel my own body.

VH: From the standpoint of public art that I work in, issues of permanence are things I am always considering. What is permanent or temporary? It could be a day or 20 years. I like the swopping round, of the text becoming the object, and the object becoming quite two-dimensional. Once an object disappears, it has a different narrative.

SF: What is it that sticks with you when you’ve left the exhibition? What is the echo of the object and how do you narrativize that memory of the object?

MC: I think that because I’m unable to move around an object, it changes how my narrative of an experience is made. When the object is presented on a screen, perhaps it changes the way you remember it?

VH: I think definitely. Although it is projected on a lead screen, almost as the last remaining object…

SF: … and the size of the screen relates to the weight of the object.

Sarah Forrest / Virginia Hutchison, In the Shadow of the Hand (gallery image). Image courtesy of artists.

MC: An objective framework has a determined set of values. In shifting from objective to subjective evaluation, are there still values? For example, when you were talking about the conversations that had occurred, are you suggesting that for any kind of critique, there has to be a relationship between two people, or an emotional involvement?

SF: I think it’s a part of communication. For something to have value, there has to be a sharing of what is important and some kind of agreement on what things are important, which is what has happened in this whole process.

VH: I think you’re always going to have a relationship with somebody whom you’re critiquing or evaluating a piece of work. If it’s a media-driven thing then there is definitely a separation. I think that’s the problem – there is a separation when you are not encountering somebody on a face-to-face, real time situation. When you think about the context of making work, it might reveal a lot about the people that create it and how they have conversation with folk. Are they dominant in a conversation and does it reflect in their work? Does their work allow people to put their own selves into it in some way?

SF: That was always a concern with the project because it’s a call-and-response between us. We had to think about how it is interesting to someone else and not just about our personal relationship. The installation became important as a space where you can read and you can sit. I was quite aware of not becoming quite closed and this feels like an experimental exhibition. It’s the first time I’ve collaborated on an exhibition and the work, when presented, still feels very active. As soon as you present something as an exhibition it takes on a position, as a thing in the world.