This is the sixth installment of the VOX LACUNAE artist interview series. VOX LACUNAE features work by Sobia Ahmad, Sera Boeno, Marta Gutierrez, Nilou Kazemzadeh, Jason Kuo, Kim Llerna, and Yuli Wang.
Marta Gutierrez | Multimedia artist | Exhibiting in VOX LACUNAE from July 18 to August 22, 2018 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Interview by Rina Goldman
Can you tell me about yourself, where are you from, what inspired you to start creating art?
I was born in Colombia, South America. Since I was a child I loved drawing, painting and playing with clay. I was trained as an Architect and then moved to USA and got a BFA at The Corcoran School of Art. These multiple disciplines give me the tools to create my ‘Alternative Whimsical Universes’.
What drew you to the particular trees that you reference in your “Flora Exótica Americana” series?
Finding a theme for my series is important for my creative process. FLORA EXOTICA AMERICANA is an infinite source of inspiration and it is a subject where I can combine the beauty of our natural species with their names, creating pieces where words and visuals complement each other.
Yarumo or Yagrumo or Guarumo or Guarumbo, 2017. Wire and fiber sculptures.
The colors and patterns used in the sculptures are not necessarily true to life, what drew you to those materials?
The subjects for my series are just a starting point for inspiration. My art is in constant search for abstraction. Freedom is basic for my creative process.
What was your goal with these pieces?
The goal with my work is to create alternative whimsical universes. Research is important for my inspiration and there is always a story, a name or an experience behind each piece. Then comes a process of playing with line, color, shape and finding the right title. I obsess with one theme until several finished pieces create an interesting and fun experience for me, and hopefully for the viewers.
Papayo or Papaw or Pawpaw or Papayuelo or Chamburo, 2017. Wire and fiber sculpturesPitaya or Pitahaya, 2017. Wire and fiber sculptures.
Do you see your art as a means to communicate with those who do not speak the same language as you? How does language affect the way you create art?
Art is a language on its own, a universal language because it does not need translation. There is a tendency of explaining art works with words, it is not really necessary to me. It makes me very happy as an artist when viewers react to my work, it does not matter if they get something different of what inspired me. Freedom of interpretation is important for me too.
Where do you see your art going from here? Are you going to continue bridging gaps with your art?
I want to continue creating my Alternative Universes but in a larger scale. I want to see my art work bigger and in public spaces.
Marta Gutierrez’s work is included in Vox Lacunae at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from July 18th to August 22nd, 2018.
[detail] Catatonic Tomography Cycle (2018) by second-year MFA candidate Clay Dunklin, is available for view at The Stamp Gallery’s MEDIA LUX exhibition through May 19, 2018.This is the fourth installment of the MEDIA LUX artist interview series. MEDIA LUX features work by Clay Dunklin, Mason Hurley, Irene Pantelis, Monroe Isenberg, and Gina Takaoka.
Clay Dunklin | Second-Year Master of Fine Arts Candidate | Exhibiting in MEDIA LUX from April 2nd through May 19th, 2018 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Interview by Grace DeWitt
To start with some background, where are you from, and what brought you to the MFA program at the University of Maryland?
Really, I came here for location. I grew up in the middle-of-nowhere in East Texas where there is virtually no arts culture or art opportunities and then spent the last several years in Orlando, FL. Orlando is great but the contemporary art world there is still in a stage of infancy and opportunities are few. Here we sit in this nice place between Baltimore and Washington–even New York and Philadelphia are in close proximity. So there’s a lot to engage with and see. I really wanted to be someplace where I had all of that at my fingertips.
Can you briefly summarize the focus of your artistic practice?
My practice is very much project-based and contextual–I create a lot of parts but they really need to be installed and viewed together to make relationships and begin to make sense. I’m also not really media specific. I mean, my background is in drawing and I still think of all the work in terms of drawing, but my practice is not really just drawing, or sculpture, or video. It’s all of that. I guess I use whatever media feels right for the work.
Are there any artists you are following right now, or any specific artists who have inspired your work so far?
I’m really into Mark Leckey right now. He won the Turner Prize a few years ago and does video, image-based, and object-based works. He creates these great installations with found objects usually in front of a green screen. This really influenced the current piece, Catatonic Tomography Cycle, with the painting of that flat color on the wall and the flatness of the prints. His work made me think about achieving a kind of compression of the objects or alternatively a slight dimensionality as if just beginning to poke out into space. This is aided by the one-sided viewing of the work–even though there are objects it’s not really in the round like in Leckey’s work.
I’m really drawn to Jannis Kounellis’ work as well. For me, his installations sat in this really beautiful place between complexity and simplicity. Objects would be hung with rope from the ceiling or piled on the floor or he’d just fill a gallery with live horses–it was very straightforward like that. But the scale and the way he could fill a space was pretty awe-inspiring.
I also have a bit of a crush on Anicka Yi. Her exhibition at the Guggenheim for the Hugo Boss Prize was pretty fantastic. The piece Maybe She’s Born With It is like this huge inflatable plastic dome with tempura fried flowers in it. I kind of want to live in there.
I understand that you underwent a pretty extreme medical illness about this time last year, which plays a role in your work now. Did your practice focus on the body before this illness? How would you say your direction changed because of this experience?
Yeah, it was pretty scary actually. I had several extended stays in the hospital with this weird and kind of rare neurological disease. Most of my time in the hospital was spent just trying to figure out what this was. Then I got put on these wacky medicines that took my mind to weird places and really affected my body and how my body reacted to external stimuli. It was a wild ride for sure. I took a bit of time trying to figure out what to do with that whole experience in terms of my work and I honestly tried to avoid it. It couldn’t be helped though, it just began to creep into the studio, so I gave in and decided to just see where it takes the work. And I think a year was enough time to sort of process and be ready to talk about it. However, I don’t think it totally uprooted the direction of my practice. I’ve always been working with body as subject in some capacity–I come from a very heavy figure drawing background so I guess that is just kind of ingrained in me somewhere. I’m interested in the body as this sort of mediator between us and the world. It’s how we contextualize and make sense of everything. But I think technology is really redefining that role as we’re becoming more and more cyborgian with our phones and such. But your body still has to interface with technology so that specifically is where I want my work to be situated–that little meeting point between body and technology.
Can you share some information about the title of your MEDIA LUX installation, Catatonic Tomography Cycle?
This piece deals with my experience of being sick in a pretty overt way. Here I’m using some of the more conceptual elements of the work to steer the formal qualities and I think this becomes really evident through the title. A catatonic state is an altered mental status that can be brought on by neurological disorders. This is what I experienced several times throughout my illness. It was like being a zombie or something. I have little to no memory of those times but apparently I wouldn’t speak or even move really, like being frozen. This is referenced in the stillness of the image-based components and in the slow looping videos that maybe start to reference time as something structured in layers and less linearly. This directly relates to tomography,which is a kind of imaging used most commonly in the medical field where the whole is broken up and viewed as layers (think MRI images). Again, this is referenced in some of the actual physical medical imagery used, but, it is also labeling all of these individual components as layers or slices of the whole that still contain information about the whole, and then compressing all of that into a kind of flatness (back to the Mark Lackey reference). And cycle goes back conceptually to the cyclical nature of the disease but also formally to the looping of the videos and as an indicator of the singular installation being composed of many parts: like an opera or song cycle in music composition.
Detail from one of two looping videos in Dunklin’s Catatonic Tomography Cycle (2018) installation in MEDIA LUX at The Stamp Gallery.
We’ve talked a little bit about how the footage in your installation touches on ideas of creation. Can you go into further detail about how the footage builds into the more complex idea of the MEDIA LUX installation as a whole?
This work has really taken on a kind of language all its own, as I think most works tend to do, and if you understand the artist as mythmaker, this language becomes inherently mythological. So I am constantly reflecting on the relationship between what is a deeply personal mythological language and a more universal one. I was reflecting on this relationship between creation and destruction and how water or fluid can act between those two modes. I think about the Grand Canyon where water has destroyed the landscape yet simultaneously created a new one or how this fluid around my brain acts as protection yet is the main antagonist in the story of my illness. Newborns emerge from a fluid incubator in what is a very traumatic process. None of this is new. But how do we reference these ideas that are inherent to our body in a relevant and deeply personal way? What kind of contemporary Athene can emerge from the fluid site of the head? The Native Americans around what is California today had a creation myth of humans being made from clay of the earth, as most cultures did, but with the added idea that the creator-god mixed spit with the earth to give humans life. So again, what does that mean for a contemporary body as a fluid site?
I’m interested in hearing more about your photographic/record-keeping processes and preferences. Could you highlight some other works of yours that applied captured imagery to installation? What are your intentions when it comes to image resolution and image manipulation in your work?
Like I said earlier, I’m interested in this intersection of body and technology and specifically how we negotiate those two as mediators between the self and the world. We’ve really embarked on a time where we’re beginning to experience everything through tech, even things we’re physically present for. Think about a concert where people snap every single song. Yes, now all of your friends can experience that too through an app on their phone but also you as the physically present viewer are experiencing a live event through compressed, digital, pixelated images and videos via your handheld device. That’s fascinating to me. It’s becoming second nature to understand our world through compressed images. So in terms of the work, I’m not intentionally after low quality images verging on pixilated abstraction just like I’m not intentionally after the most high quality images aimed at some kind of illusion. I don’t care about the illusion. If the image even slightly or in a subversive way recalls a quality of imagery experienced in the everyday then it brings it into that space of body/technology interface. It also begins to recall or make visible the process of the image-making, similar to how the process of tomographic imaging is inherently stamped on the images it produces simply because of the kind of images it produces. It’s a performative process where the thing is the action of its own doing and in this way, the images now become objects.
Detail of water images, blacklight, and clay component in Dunklin’s Catatonic Tomography Cycle (2018) installation.
Thinking back to the installation at The Stamp Gallery, what drew you to the use of those dark water images, applied directly on the left portion of the installation wall?
Those images come from documentation of a previous project where I was changing or obscuring the surface of my body by applying charcoal powder. I would then wash that off and be left with this deep dark charcoal water. From that, I began to pull paper thinking that these new surfaces and objects could be made from my body sluff. So the water became a transformative site where something new could emerge–this goes back to your previous question about creation and the metamyth. I had prints of these images and it just kind of hit me that they needed to be included with this project. The water references fluid around the brain but also starts to resemble images of space. That push and pull between something recognizable and something alien interests me and speaks to cosmic or magical thinking and some of the mental imagery conjured while on medication that was making me totally loopy. The application and composition of the prints is pointing to digital glitch in a way. The long linear format of each print is kind of filmic but really isn’t about time as we perceive it. As said earlier, it’s about something layered or sliced and reassembled.
Detail of wall sculpture in Dunklin’s Catatonic Tomography Cycle (2018) installation.
MEDIA LUX is an exhibition that presents five artists’ interpretation of, or association with, light. How does light relate to your concept in Catatonic Tomography Cycle?
Light is really a formal element here. When the decision was made to have the gallery dimly lit I thought that was great because video work is self-illuminating. For the rest of the installation I had to be more strategic about lighting. I knew the sculpture emerging from the wall was the one thing I wanted to be lit pretty intensely. Then the blue glow of the black light was again a formal and strategic color choice as it stands in relationship to the warm yellow of that spotlight. So that really was a further iteration of the colors found in the video works.
Detail of wall drawing in Dunklin’s Catatonic Tomography Cycle (2018) installation, available for view through May 19, 2018 in The Stamp Gallery.
Is there any advice you have for undergraduate artists or others at the beginning of their art careers?
I think one of the biggest things that I needed to hear as an undergrad was to really invest in the learning processes. It’s easy for people who have some talent to take the time in studio for granted or to not really put themselves out there because they’re afraid of failure. Make a ton, experiment a ton, be confident even in ‘failure,’ and pull everything you can out of your instructors and fellow students. Otherwise, you’ll likely only be performing at a slightly higher level than when you started college. How much good will that have really done you?
I know you have an installation up right now at VisArts, yolk | shell | source | system, a collaborative with another UMD MFA student, Bekí Basch. Anything else you have going on or coming up that you’d like to promote here?
Yeah! This was actually my first collaborative project and it was really the best experience. It’s a huge 70 foot long window display a couple of blocks from VisArts. So it definitely presented its own set of challenges but made for some great experimentation. We had a reception and artist talk for that on May 4th, and the installation will be up through June.
Clay Dunklin’s work is included in MEDIA LUX at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from April 2nd through May 19th, 2018.
Kyle Kogut | Exhibiting artist in solo show False Monarchy from January 24 through March 17, 2018 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Interview by Grace DeWitt
Walking into Kyle Kogut’s solo show, False Monarchy, at The Stamp Gallery.
Let’s start with some history. Where did you grow up? Where and what have you studied?
I grew up in a small town outside of Philadelphia, PA. I started making art at a very young age, and have been drawing for as long as I can remember. I ended up going to Tyler School of Art at Temple University and got my Bachelors of Fine Art degree and explored a range of mediums, but decided to focus in Printmaking. I was really attracted to the graphic flatness of screen printing and the tiny lines of etching, elements that are still prevalent in my work today. I was out of school for a few years and my work started to expand beyond drawing into animation and sculpture. I then got my Masters of Fine Art degree from the Mount Royal School of Art at MICA in Baltimore, where my work really grew and has informed much of my practice today. I started to experiment with video and performance, while continuing to create drawings and sculptures.
You often describe your work as autobiographical. Can you explain what processes or parts of your practice contribute to this sense autobiography?
My work draws upon narratives from my upbringing in a religious household and the life experience of my father as an auto mechanic, along with other elements of my life. I was raised Roman Catholic, attending mass every Sunday and played guitar in the Church band. In this one stained glass window at my Church growing up, I was always more attracted to how Lucifer was depicted as a dragon being conquered by the saint than the saint himself. While attending Catholic school I discovered horror films and heavy metal and became obsessed with dreadful imagery. I had a spiritual awakening at a young age and realized that I wasn’t drinking the kool-aid, so after a few terrible years in that environment I left and had a complete split with the church. My work comes from a very American Roman Catholic perspective, presenting an antithesis of the “In God We Trust” of a nationalist identity. Though many aspects of my religious upbringing, such as constant balance of good versus evil, imposed self-reflection, and a questioning of life’s meaning, still have an immense influence on my life and art. I also reflect upon my father’s life as an automechic and the labor of his life versus my life as an artist. My dad worked a lot growing up, always working two jobs to make ends meet and provide for my family. Seeing his experience as a blue collar worker has informed much of the imagery I utilize, elevating symbology from the automotive industry as relics to be worshiped as gods through an occult guise. I draw upon my history while attempting to present universal experiences.
Transitioning to The Stamp Gallery show, False Monarchy, can I ask what your thinking was behind the exhibition title?
The title is derived from Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, an appendix in Johann Weyer’s demonology manual from 1577, De praestigiis daemonum. The appendix lists the sixty-nine known demons, their characteristics, and how to conjure them. Much of my imagery draws upon historical depictions of demons as a representation of the Other, and the reality of demons to past cultures really fascinates me. While I was planning the exhibition I also spent a lot of time reflecting on Americans’ worship of jobs and the romanticisation of the working class in the rise of Donald Trump. The title was also a nod towards his absurd rise to power and exploitation of a disenfranchised demographic in this country. People now worship a monarchy founded on lies, an American dream that no longer exists, and an empty promise of a return to prosperity.
Visitors to False Monarchy often say that the show does not feel like a typical exhibition, but rather, a charged yet domestic space. There are no labels or traditional exhibition titling, print presentation is minimal, and there are animal crackers available at the docent desk. Can you talk a little bit about your intentions with the show’s atmosphere?
I hadn’t thought of the space as domestic but it’s interesting to hear viewers have had that reaction. I wanted viewers to enter the space and discover things for themselves, engulfing them in symbolism and imagery similarly to a church or other sacred space. I tend to let the work speak for itself, so we decided not to include titles and minimize other materials. I wanted the viewer to have a multi sensory experience, hearing, viewing, and tasting elements of the exhibition that will inform and play with each other. I wanted the video False Monarchy (A Ritual) to be its own entity, but also have the audio serve as the soundtrack for the entire space. A viewer would be looking at a drawing while hearing the drone metal, or eating an animal cracker while reading the prayer in the video, as if they were kneeling in a pew staring at Jesus on the cross, eating the Eucharist while hearing a psalm sung by a choir. Overall I want the space to be holy yet evil, comforting yet chaotic, familiar yet esoteric.
What was the process behind Capricho (Owner)? Were you referencing any particular objects or monuments as you created it?
Kogut’s Capricho (Owner), right, and television playing False Monarchy (A Ritual) at False Monarchy in The Stamp Gallery.
The sculpture is an amalgamation of different motifs serving as the focal point of the space. The specific shape of the sculpture is a quote from an etching from Goya’s Disasters of War, Plate 39, titled ‘An heroic feat! With dead men!’ (Grande hazaña! Con muertos!). The image is haunting, with three dismembered corpses and body parts hung to a tree, depicting the horrors of Napoleon’s invasion of Spain. The title is derived from the last section of the Disasters of War, the “emphatic caprices,” which depict absurd charactertures of the clergy and other people in positions of power. I translated that absurdity into the sculpture, creating a demon hand and using an abject t-shirt while quoting the body parts from the Goya print. The piece is also a place of worship or a shrine, with offerings and remembrances placed around the base. I was also thinking a lot about waste, fossil fuels, and sludge, covering the tree in an industrial tar.
This show has a vital symbolism element to it, most immediately recognized in the car company logos throughout the work. However, the hand seems to become a symbol in False Monarchy: it is physically placed as an object in Capricho (Owner) and then referenced through print on performance materials also displayed in the show. What inspired the hand as a repeated symbol, and how important was it for you to include both the physical hand and printed hand images together in this show?
I view the hand as a utensil for transformation, a channel for mystic practices, and a tool of labor. In many of my drawings I depict demons (I call them Friends), as a representation art historical archetypes for the Other, such as the faun, wildman and satyr while also referencing depictions of demons, devils and fiends; beings who possess power beyond human understanding. I see creating (particularly drawing) similar to a transformation sequence in a werewolf movie; a metamorphosis from human into something other. I view the hand as possessing similar mysteries. I have always been drawn to the visual language of the hand, as they hold an expressive, universal vernacular.
The inclusion of the demon hand in Capricho (Owner) gave me an opportunity to explore new materials and processes that I have been wanting to utilize for some time. I cast my own drawing hand into silicone, and used my own hair to transform it a physical representation of the demon hands I have been drawing for years. While it also quoted the Goya image previously discussed, I also wanted it to loom over the viewers head; both blessing the viewer and being in a hierarchical position of power. The hand on the back of the mechanic’s suits is a quote from Éliphas Lévi’s depiction of Baphomet and reference to The Left Hand Path, a philosophy of magic that focuses on self empowerment and creation of personal dogmas.
Detail of Kogut’s Capricho (Owner), left, and television playing False Monarchy (A Ritual) following the opening performance for False Monarchy.
To what extent does humor play a part in the experience of False Monarchy?
Humor definitely plays a role in the work, but I’m never trying to hit you with a punchline. I try to poke fun at the absurdity of everyday life, history and the human condition. Like many occult practices, I try to use the carnival of powerful images to elicit a range of emotions, humor being one of them.
You’ve mentioned that the opening ritual for False Monarchy was the first public performance you have organized. Who influenced you as as you put together the words and actions of the performance, and what were your goals for its reception?
I was inspired by a range of real occult and religious practices and performance art. I studied the Satanic Black Mass and reflected upon my own childhood growing up in the Church. I wanted to use the psycho-drama of rituals to envelop the viewer in a real ceremony, forcing them to participate something that they may not have signed up. Much like being in a mass, I wanted the viewer to read the prayer and not necessarily have time to process what they were saying or hearing before the next line of prayer appeared on screen. I also wanted the viewer to give themselves over the priestesses of the ritual, feeding them a Eucharistic cracker and letting them drink the kool-aid (literally) of the cult in front of them. The prayer was a combination of passages from the Satanic Bible, Bruce Springsteen lyrics (who has always been seen as an American working-class hero), Dante’s Inferno, Faust, and a 2005 Chevrolet Cavalier manual. I also looked at a lot of performances from artists Jen Rey and Hermann Nitsch, along with films by Kenneth Anger and Häxan: Witchcraft Throughout the Ages from 1922.
Viewers and participants at the opening performance for False Monarchy.
You played drone sounds on guitar during the False Monarchy performance. Can you explain your personal connection to metal music or drone guitar? Have you included audio elements in previous exhibitions?
I discovered metal at a pivotal point in my life and it saved me in many ways. It helped me discover that there were other ways of thinking about spirituality and it never strayed away from the realities of life. It did not preach or promise salvation, but instead told me to discover those things in myself. It was scary, mystifying and fun, and sort of became a secret guilty pleasure of mine while I was in Catholic School. I would listen to Black Sabbath on the way to school, then had to transform into a different person when I walked through the school doors. It still has a profound influence on my life and art, both aesthetically and conceptually. I started playing guitar when I was around 12 and mostly learned the standard classic rock tunes, then started to teach myself Black Sabbath chords. It really amplified my interest in metal as I could now participate myself; I was now a member of the club, of the church or cult. But that dichotomy still persisted, as I also joined the youth band at my church and provided songs for the mass twice a month.
As I grew older I strayed from the dogma of the Church, but played in the band until I left for college. I’ve played in a few bands exploring other genres of music, but somehow it always comes back to metal. Most recently I’ve been listening to a lot of drone metal, and have become fascinated with the moments of lingering feedback and the repetitive mantra of a chord. I’m interested in how we fill those empty spaces and what psychological transformations can happen.
I have done one other performance where I played live guitar. For my last solo exhibition I filmed myself performing a ritual in which I played the Devil’s Tritone for 66 minutes and 6 seconds. I was standing in a magick circle with only my guitar and amplifier, using the performance as a ritual to focus my will and conjure whatever was listening. The Devil’s Tritone is a medieval chord progression used in occult practices, but is also a foundation for contemporary heavy metal and rock music, most notably in Black Sabbath’s song Black Sabbath of their debut titular album.
I understand that you embrace influence from the Renaissance and Romantic eras. Were there any artists from these periods, other than Goya, who impacted False Monarchy in particular?
I most notably reference the works of the Northern Renaissance, the movement of art making that occured north of Alps during the 1400s-1700s. I reference the draughtsmanship of masters such as Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein, along with the focus on peasant life from Pieter Bruegel the Elder. I’m also extremely influenced by the hellscapes, monsters and fiends of Hieronymus Bosch. I’m also inspired by countless other artists from across history, such as William Blake, Philip Guston, and Trenton Doyle Hancock.
What was the greatest challenge you experienced when putting False Monarchy together?
I think the biggest challenge for any artist is having the time and resources to make work while functioning in the “real” world. Along with making art I teach and work other jobs to make ends meet, so the biggest hardship gearing up for any show is balancing other responsibilities while refocusing your dedication to the work.
If you could describe the “take-away” from False Monarchy in one phrase or one feeling, what would that be?
To reflect upon how our country has gotten to the point where it is, to contemplate how images play a significant role in shaping our identity, and to question the so-called truths that have shaped our hypocritical theocracies.
Still of Kogut’s False Monarchy (A Ritual), in The Stamp Gallery.
Do you see your work heading in any particular direction at this point? Any particular impulses you feel you will follow after your experience with False Monarchy?
I definitely want to stage more performances in the future. I learned a great deal from this experience and can see them getting bigger with more performers.
Any advice for undergraduate artists such as those studying at this university? Anything you would tell your younger self as you entered the arts?
My advice for young artists in a university program is to really cherish the time that you have to focus on making. Never forget that you are paying to be there, so always explore every opportunity that is presented, whether that be a lecture to attend or a crit from a visiting artist. Build a foundation of dedication to your work and don’t waste your time. When you get out of school, reality hits hard. I would also advise to build a network of classmates that you can rely on after you graduate, as finding a community can be difficult outside of a facilitated art school setting.
To close, is there anything else you’d like to promote here? Any other current or upcoming shows you’re participating in?
I currently have work in Quinn Likes Trucks at Transmitter in Brooklyn that is on view until March 25th. I’m also curating a show of two artist’s work at Fjord Gallery in Philadelphia. Other Bodies, featuring work by Emily Culver and Elliot Doughtie, will be opening June 7th. I would also like to use these closing remarks to thank Raino Isto for doing such a phenomenal job curating the show and writing a fantastic essay on my work. It was really an honor to work with him and his dedication to the project made the show possible. I would also like to thank Stamp Gallery for hosting the exhibition and the docent staff. Thank you also to my performers Miranda, Chelsea, Selina, and you, Grace.
False Monarchy is open to the public from January 24, 2018 through March 17, 2018 at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park. A recording of the opening performance for False Monarchy can be viewed at www.facebook.com/StampGalleryUMD/videos.
Kogut will join False Monarchy curator Raino Isto for an artist talk in The Stamp Gallery on Thursday, March 15, 2018 at 6:30 pm.
For more information on False Monarchy, upcoming artist talk with Kogut, and related events, visit www.thestamp.umd.edu/gallery.
Kogut, preparing for the opening performance of False Monarchy in The Stamp Gallery. False Monarchy will be open to the public through March 17, 2018. Image courtesy of curator Raino Isto.
This is the first installment of the (Sub)Urban interview series. (Sub)Urban features work by Amze Emmons, Yoonmi Nam, Benjamin Rogers, Nick Satinover, Christine Buckton Tillman, and Sang-Mi Yoo.
Installation view of (Sub)Urban at the Stamp Gallery. On right: Nick Satinover’s A Pink Slip Fashioned Flag (for College Park). Woodblock prints. 2017.
Matthew McLaughlin | Artist, Professor | Curator of (Sub)Urban from October 30 through December 16, 2017 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Interview by Grace DeWitt
Let’s start with some history. I understand that you’re a professor here, at the University of Maryland, College Park. Where did you grow up, where have you studied, and what brought you to this campus?
I grew up in Greenbelt, MD, just down the road from College Park and the University of Maryland. I received my BFA in Fine Art from Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, FL and my MFA in Printmaking from Arizona State University. I became connected with UMD after meeting Professor Justin Strom at an opening and his inviting me to the campus to meet with Professor Richardson, the Chair of the Art Department. A few months later, I was contacted about my interest in teaching foundations courses for the department.
Could you talk a little bit about the curatorial process behind (Sub)Urban? Is this your first curated show? How did the exhibiting artists come to your awareness?
(Sub)Urban is my curatorial debut and I’m quite happy with its reception by the local community. My curatorial process has a strong connection with my personal interests and areas of research for my own artistic practice. My own work focuses on the human relationship to its environment, mainly focusing on suburban and urban spaces and our alterations. So for this exhibition, I was interested in bringing together artists I admire for their practice and their conceptual exploration of similar subjects to my own.
Some of these artists are friends I have gained since graduate school, like Benjamin Rogers, who went to ASU with me, and Amze Emmons, who I met through printmaking conference events. The others have been on my radar through the suggestion of fellow artists, conference exhibitions, and Instagram.
How do you feel your word choice in the show title connects to ideas about suburban and urban spaces?
I think my show title reflects on the connection that urban and suburban spaces have, even though many try to deny it. Whether the connection is through the white flight of the 1960s or the overlapping cultural connections of television, music, etc, these two spaces that try to be separate have a strong relationship, and I wanted the title to reflect that.
It seems that you provided the (Sub)Urban artists with a certain level of exhibitory freedom while curating this show. Did the decision to work in this way create any challenges for you?
The only challenge that came from this freedom was the challenge of bringing all the work together in a comprehensive exhibition, once I knew exactly what I was going to receive. When I contacted each artist, I had some specific ideas in mind, but knew there would need to be some flexibility because of availability. I have run into this issue with my own work and having it in multiple exhibitions close together, so I understood the hassle of giving them very specific requests versus generalities. Yes, there may have been a print or piece that I would have preferred, but if it was designated for another exhibition first, I was happy to get another from the same series.
You’ve mentioned in person that your practice exists in the same conceptual conversation as many of the works in (Sub)Urban. To what extent did your artistic practice play a role in the curatorial process of this show?
My personal practice and conceptual interests had a massive role in the curatorial process for the exhibition. As I mentioned earlier, all the artists in the exhibition are people I admire and have followed, in one way or another, for some time. Just as researchers in other fields read articles by colleagues at other institutions, artists pay attention to those creating art in similar conceptual and visual avenues to know what is being explored already and how it might inform their own work.
This show covers a variety of media, often within individual artists’ practices. Was it important to you to display, say, sculpture from self-described printmakers, or prints from self-described sculptors? Or did this element to the show come about organically?
This element of the exhibition came about organically as a whole, but was more specific for each artist. My intention in requesting some of Yoonmi’s Generally Meant to be Discarded sculptures was not to specifically present sculptures created by an artist traditionally trained in printmaking, but to show work that I found compelling and interesting for its conceptual and material ideas. That the exhibition has installation and sculptural works by artists with MFAs in printmaking and drawing, alongside their more traditional works, came about when I brought all the works together and realized what I had done.
Were there any subtler themes, phrases, or concepts not marketed with the show that you either intended to visualize in (Sub)Urban, or found yourself revisiting as you compiled the show?
Yoonmi Nam’s Take Out (Thank You Thank You Thank You), from the Generally Meant to be Discarded series. Lithograph on gampi paper and cast glass. 2016.
Nothing that I intended or found before hand, but upon installation, I made some connections between some of the work that I hadn’t previously. There was a subtle theme that questioned the reality of urban and suburban spaces through the reality of Yoonmi, Christine, and Amze’s sculptural pieces. Each of these artists made work that re-created elements of urban and suburban spaces and life, but with materials that alter the audience’s interaction with them. Specifically considering Yoonmi’s Generally Meant to be Discarded sculptural series, the two in the exhibition have such a life-like quality people easily think the artist is displaying actual takeout bags and containers, but once they approach the work, the reality of the material nature of the sculptures immediately alters their relationship with it. This subtle switch brings in larger questions for the audience about their relationship with their own environments.
In your own words, what happens in terms of the viewing experience when elements of the suburbs are taken out of context, like in Amze’s Street Life Flat Packseries?
Amze Emmons’ Street Life Flat Pack (detail) in the Stamp Gallery. UV coroplast shapes. 2016.
To me, when elements of urban and suburban spaces are taken out of context there is a sense of importance that is typically glossed over when seen on the street, but also the viewer is exposed to the item and forced to interact with and consider it from a perspective they had not considered before. Especially when this is taken to the next level, by an artist re-presenting the known item in a new material context, as with Amze’s Street Life Flat Pack and Yoonmi’s Generally Meant to be Discarded series.
It feels like Christine’s Clay Paper Chain comes from a different corner of the suburban experience. Could you touch on your intent in including her work in (Sub)Urban, or the area you feel that her work covers in a show that covers so much about the suburbia as we know it?
Christine Buckton Tillman’s Clay Paper Chain (detail), ceramic, 2017; and Self Portrait, wood stain on model airplane, 2016 in the Stamp Gallery.
I chose to invite Christine because I felt her work touched on a more interior connection with the suburban experience, similarly to Benjamin and Nick’s works. Christine is a mom and a school teacher; I felt both works spoke to that experience and its personal nature, while also relating to Yoonmi and Amze’s works through the material nature of each and allowing the viewer to question both the reality of the artwork, but also question the idea it’s presenting.
Would you consider (Sub)Urban to be a critique of suburban or urban spaces and/or their social purpose?
No, I consider (Sub)Urban to be more of a survey of urban and suburban spaces, the concepts that we apply to them, and how we relate to each environment. I look at the exhibition as a tool to expose the audience to new ideas and perspectives of spaces they know, maybe rather well, and try to engage the viewers in re-thinking their own relationship with these environments.
This show is one of few in recent history at the Stamp Gallery that features multiple artists who collectively, and vastly, span across the U.S., and even includes some who work from international backgrounds and influences. What was your intention in curating a show here that comes from so many regions?
I wanted to expose the student body to a larger idea of the art being created in the country, and I wanted a greater representation of the work being created around the concept of the exhibition. The suburban and urban experience may be considered more universally understood, but there are subtle differences from regionally specific traits that affect the culture of suburbs and urban spaces around the country. I felt an exhibition of artists that spanned a larger swatch of the country would give a better overall interpretation of the suburban/urban experience to the audience.
I also prefer to see exhibitions that bring a more varied group of artists when considering their location and background. An exhibition of local artists on a specific concept or theme can have repetitive elements that make it only relatable to that region, while an exhibition like this can connect to a large contingency of the population.
A connection within (Sub)Urban that has fascinated me is the many ways that the suburban experience is outwardly homogenized, and yet remains internally idiosyncratic. Has this show, and seeing these artists’ work all together, expanded your perspective of suburban and urban experiences in any way?
Not really, as my own work has been examining and reconsidering the nature of these spaces through those idiosyncratic characteristics that many others gloss over. But it has expanded my perspective on how these ideas can be explored, and thus it is beginning to form new ideas on approaching my own artistic practice.
The exhibition vinyl in the Stamp Gallery contains two quotes: “This world is but a canvas to our imagination” (Henry David Thoreau), and “For to Thoreau the significant relationship is not that between [hu]man and [hu]man; it is the relationship between [hu]mans and [their] environment” (JB Jackson). Could you share some insight about your inclusion of these quotes in the show?
The JB Jackson quote was the main one I wanted to use for the wall text, but I felt it would be a little hard to understand without a little context about Thoreau. So I searched for a Thoreau quote that would give the best general insight into his thinking that could be expanded upon by the JB Jackson quote.
JB Jackson is a writer who, from the 1950s forward, focused on writing about the American landscape and the development of urban and suburban spaces. He greatly influenced the development of contemporary cultural landscape studies.
Left: Sang-Mi Yoo’s In Transition, pigment inkjet print, 2016; and Anomalous Traces, laser cut wool felt, 2015. Right: Benjamin Roger’s The Perfect Romance of Self-Reliance (detail), oil on canvas, 2014 in the Stamp Gallery.
When someone walks into (Sub)Urban, what do you hope a person will grasp from the show?
I hope they find the humor in the work, the intrigue in the material use of some pieces, but overall, gain a fresh perspective on suburban and urban spaces.
What is one thing you have learned from curating this show?
Solid respect for curators and gallerists who do this for a living. To come up with one exhibition theme, coordinate artists and the shipping of their work and then lay it all out is one thing, but to do it over and over again. Wow.
To close, is there anything else you’d like to promote here? Any current or upcoming shows you’re participating in, either as artist or curator?
I have a few new ideas for other curatorial exhibitions, but currently, I’m focusing on a residency to get a lot of work completed.
McLaughlin is the curator of (Sub)Urban in The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from October 30 through December 16, 2017.
For more information on Matthew McLaughlin, visit http://www.matthewtmclaughlin.com/.
Beki Basch, from Reaper, black and white copy shop prints
This is the first installment of the Midpoint 2017 artist interview series.
Bekí Basch || Second Year M.F.A. Candidate || Exhibiting in MIDPOINT 2017 from March 29 through May 22, 2017 at The Stamp Gallery || University of Maryland, College Park || Interview by Grace DeWitt
To start with a little background, where are you from, and where did you study as an undergrad?
I’m originally from New Jersey, and I moved to Baltimore to study at MICA for undergrad.
What brought you to the arts in your undergrad career, and why the M.F.A. program at Maryland?
I started taking an interest to arts when I was about 15-16. From that point on there wasn’t a question as to what I would study in school, so what brought me there was just a sense of knowing that’s exactly what I wanted. I point this out specifically because after undergrad, I felt weirdly bruised, and after one large-ish project, I pretty much stopped making art for several years. My newfound drive to make work comes from healing those bruises and regaining that same high school-like sense of purpose to be an artist. The M.F.A. program at Maryland (in particular) was chosen for purely practical reasons. I didn’t apply anywhere else.
Having seen your previous work, can you share a little bit about the automobiles and puffins as a source of inspiration?
My work always draws from disparate sources, but the impetus is the same and it all comes from me. Puffins comes from back when I was 16 and writing a sort of myth about an island where puffins lived and floated around in balloons. They were these symbolic perfect creatures and in my story when two birds were in love, their bodies and the balloons would join together in a sort of reverse mitosis. Puffins have grown with me and I am always finding new ways in which their existence in my work makes sense. Automobiles came into play once I started formulating a narrative for a project in which the car represented my husband. It was going to be a video of him transporting a flag up a hill during a hill climb. I have since gone in a different direction with it, but ultimately cars are so multi-faceted and ubiquitous; there will likely always be inspiration there.
Moving into your MIDPOINT 2017 pieces, do you feel that the significance of either of these objects, or any others, has changed for you over the course of your MFA?
I think when you make work, you can never consider everything at play. Even the simplest pieces reveal truths over time that you didn’t ‘plan’ for. Right now, I am really enjoying the piece NEVER LET ME GO and in taking time to appreciate it, I am able to consider if I would do something similar again and how. For example, sometimes you think something is about your love for someone else, but then realize the duality is more within yourself.
Can you describe your physical and mental process in creating Reaper, and perhaps share some insight about the items used in the piece? (The hot dog has gotten some particular attention in the Gallery).
My mental process is connected to the physical process in that creating these photos was a highly intuitive process. I tend to plan a lot and I wanted to take this opportunity to present something a bit less planned and a bit more vulnerable. There is an artist I really love who works a lot with natural history and the combination of natural materials with man-made, especially contrasting contemporary imagery. I think she was in mind when I was dreaming these up. I had a lot of material in my studio that I had used or planned to use for one thing or another and I thought of combining them in a physical 3-dimensional way; to just take an overhead black and white shot would yield interesting and effective results. The images are edited slightly, but mostly to create that shrink wrap/wet effect and to boost the contrast, and place more focus on the center of each rather than any background.
Can you speak about the choice in materials for Reaper?
There are a lot of odds and ends in my studio and it’s nice to have an opportunity to use many of them without getting too focused on their structural capabilities or any other properties. Simply composing objects and snapping a photo is a really liberating process, since I usually plan a lot and don’t often make something quick the central focus of a piece.
How about your process in creating Core Samples?
These pieces were concrete cast into trash bags into a long box each. Then I added objects and resin interchangeably to make some sunken treasures.
Never Let Me Go is currently located in the Tawes fountains. What led you to this installation decision?
I had created two concrete pieces last year that I put in the fountain for a couple of hours and took some photos and made a little photo book out of them. The book was a linear transition of photos that showed the pieces clear through the water but with their hard edges made wavy by the ripples, and then slowly progressing to images where the pieces are totally obscured by harsher waves in the water.
You’ve mentioned that your practice is project-based. Working in this way, do you ever struggle to know when you’re “done” with a project?
The short answer is yes. Before I came to UMD I was struggling a lot with never having deadlines. I was working on a project and yet watching the world sweep past me, wave by wave by wave. My sense of time was, and maybe still is, by nature, super slow. If there was nobody around and nothing to do, I would be happy just napping in a field all day. That being said, I now recognize the advantage of having deadlines and I use those to ‘know’ when a project is ‘done’ but that’s just for whatever needs to be ‘done’ at that time. I think you let the idea work itself out and then you work with it and then leave it alone, but I don’t feel like I will ever have it all figured out, and especially not by any deadline, so I just do the best I can by the time something needs to be done, and then one day, I figure something else out and work on it more, or just feel pleased by that.
Are there any other events, concepts, particular artists or art movements not yet mentioned here, that also inspire your work?
Everything. Not even sure I could list them. I see little bits of every source in everything I do. The artist I was mentioning before though is Camille Henrot. I am not particularly inspired by other artists though − it feels a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. I am of course inspired by them, but not much more than everything else out there − comedy, nature, music, mythology…
You wrote a really beautiful statement for MIDPOINT 2017, which you read at the opening reception. Without putting any words in your mouth, do you feel that that such an interaction with your audience was helpful to you, or essential to exhibiting such vulnerable work − if I may call it − as that in MIDPOINT?
We were required to have a little artist talk, but the last time I did something like that, I really screwed it up, and I was working with a friend and I really screwed it up for her too. Unfortunately, I still live so much inside my head that it’s still rather difficult for me to say what I want. I am also generally in disbelief that anyone would really want to listen. Writing a statement and reading it aloud is a bit of a cheat, but I figured since this is a learning environment, it could be a good lesson for myself to try to bridge the gap between thinking-writing-speaking.
When someone walks into MIDPOINT, what do you hope that person will grasp about your work?
If there is anything, I hope it would only be that they take a minute. Putting anything in a gallery is a signal for you to take a minute. It’s important to do that anyway and just appreciate the formal and conceptual elements of everything around you, but I have specifically composed this work out of the things around me and put them in the gallery because I cared to do so. If you come in and take a minute and try to find your own entry point, you might connect with the work. But it’s okay if you don’t.
Can you tell me a little about your upcoming show at Current Space, or what you’re currently working on?
My show at Current Space is a deadline for the project I couldn’t finish before I came to school. I am mostly working on that right now. I am also slowly planning for a project in Iceland this summer where I have a one month residency coming up. It’s funny but the Current Space show has a car sculpture in it and the piece in Iceland will largely be about puffins. I swear these are not my only interests.
You’ve also mentioned to me about an up-coming expedition to Iceland you’ll be going on to work with live puffins, can you explain some more about that opportunity? Do you have any insight about how it will impact your work?
Yeah, this has been a long time coming. Like I said, the puffin thing started a long time ago for me. I don’t know why I liked them at first, to be honest, but when I learned they were Iceland’s national bird, things started to fall into place a bit more. In some ways, I expect it will be incredibly anti-climactic. You just can’t engineer these things. I have been on this side-quest to see puffins in the wild for years. I’m not an active birder or anything, I just find myself in places where puffins live, over and over and over again and never see them. You could call that fate, but who knows really. There is almost no way this upcoming trip could live up that − but I feel myself going to this happy place where I can keep myself open to beautiful experience. For example, last August I went to Maine and went on a puffin watching boat and it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. Nobody could have planned it, but the water, the fog, everything, was silver and still and surreal. I think I romanticize certain things and then when I am in their presence I am reminded to be extra conscious of the beauty and symbolism present in everything.
More broadly, do you see your work heading in a particular direction over the remainder of your Masters, or beyond?
Sure. I have some sense of the future, but I think it’s mostly to keep myself going. Like I said, I have a problem with momentum. I just get too existential about things. I would love to keep working so I get more and more practice and I keep growing. Before I could see that I wasn’t growing much or being challenged for a long time. In some ways my lifetime goal might just be to write an artist statement that makes sense, but then again who really cares.
Lastly, any advice for undergraduate artists? Anything you would tell your younger self as you entered the arts?
Yes, of course. I am still very much that self, or at least I try to maintain it. I don’t understand this thing where art is a game you play, like some petty argument. It’s too earthly. The best thing you can do is shake off all the rules you know and start from square one every time. I think art needs to be a fulfilling, spiritual practice, and you just need to let it lead you places sometimes. I think art is an expression of the divine within, and surely everyone has that.
Basch’s work is included in MIDPOINT 2017 in The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from March 29 through May 22, 2017.
Above: Nara Park, Never Forget. 2014. Plastic packaging boxes, vinyl. The Stamp Gallery.
When I first stepped through Nara Park’s Never Forget, I experienced a strong and unexpected conflict. Shiny, striking, beckoning, Park’s work stands familiarly in our dimension, and is undeniably dynamic. My mental hesitance was not immediate, but seeped into me with closer inspection of the piece and its label. Park builds with “bricks” that are hollow, that have nothing natural about them, that have no part that ever came from earth or should ever return to it. “Moss” exists in a stagnant state that does not begin or end in growth, only geometry. I walked through “stone” that had no history beyond a factory print date and folds under Park’s hands. All of her work is made of mylar, plastic, vinyl, and patterned with ink printed off-site.
And I felt truly alienated. I felt an alienation that was amplified by my weeks spent with Never Forget, working in the site of its stature, and so I began to articulate a ‘why.’
I walk through Park’s work and am forced to recognize the bounds I tie to the trueness of materials. I have begun to recognize how much of the things that I love, I shamelessly love for their grounded nature. Grounded: I love not the space things occupy but the matter with which they occupy that space. Nature: I love not the things alone in this moment, but the things as a part of moments before and moments to come. It is not a realization of materialism in the traditional sense, but a sudden awareness of a strange attachment to materials nonetheless.
In other words, I was not rudely asked to reflect on how much I love to possess things, but rather asked to reflect on why I love the physical things I love. I love the buttery texture of oil paint. If you were to hand me an aerosol can of oil paint, I would not love oil paint. I grew up in a world of true-false questions and Holden Caulfield’s crises over phoniness, and so I grew up hating fake and loving truth. And somewhere along the way, as I loved the transparent and honest and real, I either created or found the romance of those characteristics. These vinyl shipping boxes before me that held nothing but contained “PROTECTION,” “DIGNITY,” and “LOYALTY,” were completely artificial and completely without romance.
Really though, that’s the point. Like a poem you write and then find online in Comic Sans, my experience with Park’s work is not my own, and what Park is saying is not romantic. And despite how my staggered impression makes it seem, Park commits no crimes in her studio practice. She is openly and wholly un-aggressive about the altered realities she builds, and in a way, her written words seem to express greater humility towards her materials than many of those uttered by sculptors who wield the very materials she mimics.
Her goal is not to deceive, her goal is to understand. She asks us to figure out something with her. What really matters, to us as persons, and to us as a people? What about the things that matter, actually matter? What about the things that matter, should?
In the present, I continue to fall in love with the unique character of materials, the behaviors they practice that you take away when you only offer their image. I am still greedy: I want to experience an item with all of my senses, and am betrayed by the option of only using one. But I am also at times made humble by the way in which I consume the visual, tangible world. Here is Never Forget, filtering objects through one sense. Here are “inscriptions” that purposefully encourage dissonance. Here are items I have trouble connecting with because of their materiality, serving as a list of attributes that have no materiality at all.
Transparency is not about things that are true to their form, nor does it blindly communicate a harmony. Transparency is the champion of alienation, dissonance, discomfort. Because in this discomfort, we are made to reflect, and to grow.
In this way, there can be nothing more transparent, more honest, more real, than massless boxes building massless ideas.
Nara Park‘s Never Forget can be seen in Collective Monument, along with work by Onejoon Che and the DZT Collective, at The Stamp Gallery, now through March 11, 2017.
Grace DeWitt
A Contemporary Art Dedicated Space at the University of Maryland
Above: Nara Park, Never Forget. 2014. Plastic packaging boxes, vinyl. The Stamp Gallery.