Exhibition

Museum of Graffiti Features Layer Cake’s “Versus Project III”

Exhibition /

When we think of artists, we don’t typically think of dangerous criminals. That is, unless you are a graffiti artist in the eyes of the law. Think property damage, felonies, and even jail time; yeah, now you have entered the high-stakes realm of graffiti. These creative risk-takers willingly partake in what many prosecutors would define as “criminal vandalism” in order to express their imaginations and opinions, typically based in social commentary. 

But here’s the million dollar question- is graffiti truly vandalism, or is it a form of art? And where do policymakers and communities draw the line? These contradicting perspectives on graffiti enable some artists to be praised for their creative contributions, while allowing others to rot behind bars for the same form of self-expression.

Today, graffiti is widespread and celebrated by many. It is even used for decoration, design, and merchandising purposes, especially in Wynwood – a popular entertainment district in Miami. Some of the world’s greatest street artists have left their mark on this neighborhood, transforming spray paint and marker pens into distinguished exhibitions of their heart and soul. However, in a society that cannot make up its mind, graffitists continue to endure an uphill battle of strict fines, courtroom proceedings, and even prison sentences in hopes of one day revising the definition of graffiti in the public’s opinion. Sure, these murals may be rebellious and bold in nature, but isn’t art just mimicking life? Graffiti has set ablaze an innovative art movement that has brought more beauty, color, and vitality than ever before to cities and neighborhoods all over the world. 

In honor of its significant history, the first ever Museum of Graffiti opened in none other than Wynwood, Miami, with the mission to preserve, celebrate, and educate people on the controversial style. Representing the world’s most talented graffiti artists, the museum offers general admission tickets for touring the contemplative works, at the accessible cost of $16. It also has graffiti classes for adults and drawing classes for children, led by local artists.

Currently on display at Wynwood’s Museum of Graffiti is the revolutionary Versus Project III, spearheaded by the artists Patrick Hartl and Christian “C100” Hundertmark, whose partnership is professionally known as Layer Cake. The project is a series of canvases that the duo started, but here’s where it gets interesting: Layer Cake left the canvases incomplete. The team then shipped their unfinished graffiti projects off to their favorite artists from across the globe to allow them to contribute – including Akue, Raws, Flying Förtress, Various&Gould, Bond Truluv, Thierry Furger/Buffed Paintings, Arnaud Liard, Rocco & his brothers, Hera & MadC.

Now, if this doesn’t sound right to you, that’s probably because the number one rule in the graffiti world is to never paint over someone else’s work. Typically, that is seen as a sign of disrespect for the artist and their message. However, Layer Cake’s Versus Project III takes a different stance completely. The spirit of the exhibition is rooted in collaboration and unspoken communication between the artists.

Without instructions or guidelines, the receiving artists were free to be as imaginative as possible on their collective canvas, combining their distinct styles with the artist’s markings before them. The exhibition maintains a high level of respect for each graffitist as they meticulously work with each other’s paint, merging all different techniques into one chaotically beautiful masterpiece. By layering signatures over one another, the spontaneous hybrid works well to pay tribute to contemporary art and graffiti as it brings the viewer into a dynamic world that embraces the beauty in differences.  

From a distance, the Versus Project III is like a live battle for attention and space unfolding before your eyes, as you can almost feel each artist’s inner struggle as they were creating it. However, when you look closer at the canvases, you can see how no work is overshadowed or alone – every style and every color complements its neighbor. The intricate detailing and multitude of niche styles conveys a sense of movement, as if the piece is constantly evolving right in front of you. The final result showcases each artist’s unique perspectives and practices, while also uniting their efforts into an almost living and breathing piece of art.

As if witnessing a fluent conversation unfold through the adjacent approaches, the project implies a sense of unity, respect, and partnership. Explained by Layer Cake in an interview, this was the goal of their project- an exhibition that favors collaboration over competition in all aspects of society. Whether it be in the art world, or in the real world, cooperation is key to progress and harmony, says Layer Cake. And the Versus Project III, by demonstrating the importance of teamwork and trust, works well at encouraging this colossal theme for audiences to remember long after the exhibition is over. 

It is through monumental installations like these that showcase the benefits of graffiti in modern society. Whether it be an inspiring mural on the side of a local business, or a joint-artist canvas hanging up in a gallery, spray paint never fails to make a powerful statement, urging social and political progress toward a brighter future. Does that sound like criminal activity to you? Well hey, you don’t have to take my word for it. Explore creative neighborhoods near you or check out the Layer Cake exhibition at the Museum of Graffiti to decide for yourself whether graffiti should be criminalized or celebrated. 

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Exhibition

The Coconut Grove Arts Festival

Exhibition /

Benjamin Frey, “59th Annual Coconut Grove Featured Artwork”, 2023. Credit: Stefanie Yaegel.

For many of us, there is that one pro football game at our home stadium that we just can’t miss, or maybe it’s that one summer concert that you’ve been waiting for all winter long. For South Miami residents, their most anticipated event of the year is “one of the nation’s premier arts festivals:” The Coconut Grove Arts Festival, where creativity and community combine during a three-day long event commemorating all forms of art. Known for showcasing local businesses, original artworks, musical performances, and culinary masterpieces, the Coconut Grove Arts Festival consistently draws a crowd of locals and visitors alike, promising an unforgettable weekend of celebrating the imagination of the human spirit. 

Held every year during Presidents’ Day Weekend, the enchanting waterfront town of Coconut Grove is matched with a breathtaking view overlooking sailboats docked in Biscayne Bay; it is no surprise that the festival attracts nearly 120,000 attendees each year. With creators ranging in expertises from fine art to jewelry to cuisine, there is sure to be something for everyone. All ages are encouraged to attend this passion-filled weekend where music, art, food, and entertainment intertwine. 

Starting the weekend off strong is the festival’s signature opening day event hosted near a stunning rooftop pool with elegant greenery and intricate fountains. The annual Palette Breakfast is a luxurious celebration at the Mayfair House Hotel & Garden involving a sophisticated brunch buffet and the chance to meet participating artists. And with daily live culinary performances by celebrity chefs throughout the weekend, as well as over fifty restaurants and vendors just on-site alone, the Coconut Grove Arts Festival takes “food for the soul” to a whole new level ensuring every visitor’s palette is satisfied.

Currently in its 59th year, the festival will be representing 285 participating artists with a broad range of mediums and styles. Attendees can browse a variety of categories including glass, clay, metal, photography, digital, sculpture, watercolor, wood, paint, pottery, and more. Yeah, that’s a mouthful, but the epic lineup is no joke. With world-class artists from across every creative discipline, the festival continuously earns its undisputed reputation of prestige in the art world. 

As attendees stroll down the palm tree decorated roads of McFarlane and Bayshore Drive, they are welcomed by rows of tents hosting unique art for sale, food trucks with all types of cuisines and cocktails, and merchandise repping the 2023 poster art by Benjamin Frey. Using a delightfully bright color palette and emphasized brush strokes to mimic movement, Frey’s whimsical yet sentimental poster art encapsulates the history and spirit of Coconut Grove. The festival’s poster pays tribute to Dinner Key Marina, which served as a significant naval aviation center in the 20th century.

The historic Marina, which attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, housed new aircraft technology called the “Flying Clippers”, which were used to help win WWII. The “Sky Boats” were larger than any other aircrafts of their time, and brought the country closer to the innovation in transportation we see today. The poster’s dedication applauds Miami for being a remarkable leader in encouraging international connectivity. With the mesmerizing poster art on all of the merchandise, you may find yourself purchasing a comfy tee or helpful hat to beat the heat (or both in my case). 

Credit: Stefanie Yaegel

Best of all, the weekend-long event manages to bring together an entire community of people for one purpose: appreciating humanity as it is represented through art. For three full days, attendees share in their passions by exploring the rich culture of a diverse community in imaginative ways. And isn’t it obvious? This festival isn’t about the celebration of art, it is about the celebration of life. With each passing booth and shop, you can quite literally feel the magnetic energy of the festival nourishing your spirit.  

The Arts Festival is a beacon of self-expression. A must-see event, the CGAF offers a captivating range of entertainment including masterfully curated artworks, live music, and dining experiences like no other. With awe-inspiring views of Biscayne Bay, and some of the finest art collections in the world, you don’t want to miss this immersive celebration of individuality and culture. And don’t worry, the festival doesn’t just end after the weekend’s over. Instead, its unforgettable message carries with us long after that, inspiring us to indulge in the creativity and beauty of a more harmonious world. The Coconut Grove Arts Festival improves its town and its people every single year, encouraging community and explorative growth. And who knows, it may just become your new favorite event of the year as it is now mine.

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Exhibition

Photos of the Mind: An Interview with Jamie Nares (Part 3)

Exhibition /

Brushes made by the artist, 2013, courtesy of the artist.

Working at the edge of painting, photography, music and film over the course of five decades, Jamie Nares has profoundly explored the relationships between memory, time, movement and thought. I spoke with Jamie about her childhood, her move to New York City in the 1970s, her multidisciplinary practice, and her generous vision of art and life.

Continued from Part 2

 Part 2

COM: And once you moved to New York, it seems that you hit the ground running. When did you begin doing the paintings that you are so known for?

JN: Well, I’d always, like I said been making drawings and stuff. And when the ’70s hit suddenly people were able to make a living making paintings. And I had been trying to make films and I just didn’t see a way to support myself making the films that I liked. And I didn’t want to go to Hollywood. A couple of my friends did. I never really saw the world in narrative terms, it didn’t really interest me to do that. I thought it interested me for a while and I tried. I made that film “Rome ’78,” which was about as close as I ever got to making a narrative film. There’s a funny letter I have from someone at Paramount Pictures saying, “We hear wonderful things about your film Rome ’78, would you like to come out come out to Los Angeles and meet us?” you know, with the idea of making another movie. And I just wasn’t interested at that point because I realized that… I always wanted to do everything. And I realized that you can’t do everything and be successful. Although I had a pretty good shot at it. But at that point, at that time, I figured I needed to focus on one thing and get really good at it. And painting seemed to be the thing that I would be most likely to get good at. So, I started painting. My early paintings were kind of all over the place. I had a couple of years where I was really just finding out what it was that interested me. And I started making work that was closer in look to a lot of the expressionist painters that were around then. I made a piece in 1977 called “Red X,” which was a big enamel red X on a piece of cardboard, which is still one of my favorite paintings I ever made. Julian Schnabel owns it now, but it’s been shown in Gagosian gallery, and in Milwaukee in my retrospective. And it was one of the best things I ever made. Just a simple, bright red, red X, on a black background painted on cardboard. And there’s something about the painting that people just love it. Of course, it stood for the kind of negativity that we were awash in, but it was always the negativity that was that aimed towards something better… We were fledgling iconoclasts, but I really believed in something better to come. But I started making paintings and they changed quite quickly.

JN: The thing that really interests me most in painting was the brush stroke. And I figured there was enough happening with no single brushstroke could keep me interested. And it still does, all these years later. But that wasn’t until 1992 when I was living out at the East End of Long Island, and I had a studio in a barn, and I was working very happily there. And that’s what I really refined what I was doing. I’m working right now on putting together my notebooks in a sort of facsimile edition from that time, because it was a time when I really forged the thing that I was most interested in and started making my own brushes. I started making paintings that were made in one movement. The way I would work then was to make a big brushstroke and if I didn’t like it, I’d get down on my hands and knees with a big sponge soaked in mineral spirits and wipe it off and then and then dry it with a rag. And by the time I’d done that, I had lost the muscle memory of what I was trying to do. And there’s a lot more work to do that. So, I eventually figured out this way of erasing a brushstroke that I didn’t like by squeegeeing it off with the same kind of squeegee to clean a window booth. So now I have a guy with a squeegee while I put down the brush strokes and if I don’t like them, he just Bzoop! and they disappear very quickly. And I’m able to get back into it again, trying to make it better.

Installation views, Nares: Moves, Milwaukee Art Museum, June 14-October 6, 2019, courtesy of Kasmin Gallery.

COM: I’m interested in this idea of muscle memory because your work seems to be very bodily. In a way your whole-body kind of comes through because it requires so much movement. Do you conceive your works as performative in any way? 

JN: Yeah, in that they are the product of an event. They’re not performative like I’m performing painting for an audience. I wouldn’t have any interest in making a painting in public… They are performed paintings, preformed, performed paintings. And they require a certain centering of the mind, which I like. I have to get to a place where I am not leading the brush, but I’m not following the brush. There’s this edge between those two, leading and following, and it’s a place that I have to reach. And that’s the magic can happen. 

COM: That’s interesting. It’s sort of a dance in a way.

JN: Yes, dance is very important. Rhythm, dance, music, photography. The paintings are made in a… what you see, the brushstroke is made in the same kind of time frame that a photograph is taken. It’s just a matter of seconds. So, it’s like you’re capturing a moment in time, like a photograph. And I like that the viewer can kind of participate in that moment of discovery that I had when I made the painting. It all there, it’s just like [being] naked. I don’t hide anything. I don’t go back and correct anything. If there’s something wrong with it, I wipe off the whole thing and begin again. Of course, they have a sort of photographic look, too. It’s always been a conversation between photography and painting ever since photography was invented. The dialog of one kind or another. And this is my dialog. It’s to paint like I was taking photographs. There’s that quote from Kazimir Malevich, where he says the painter has to paint the photos of his mind.

COM: That’s beautiful. Is that how you see your work? 

JN: In one aspect, yes. But it’s like capturing a moment of thought and a moment of a feeling or a moment of some kind of congruence between myself and any given moment. I said somewhere that you could connect all my paintings from one end to the other and you’d have, like, the story of my life in paint.

COM: That’s a great idea for an exhibition.

JN: Yeah.

COM: What do you consider to be your subject matter? Is it about memory time, movement, music, or all of them? 

JN: All of the above. Memory, time, movement, music, thought. It’s making manifest, manifesting an abstraction of a moment in time using the traditional tools that a painter uses: a brush, a canvas or surface of some kind, and paint. And I’ve come up with my own versions of those tools and make my own brushes and mix paint in a way that’s a bit unusual. And I prepare my surfaces. My whole practice of painting is something that I think I’m the only one who does it. But it was all necessity, you know? My invention is always because of necessity. 

COM: It allowed you to achieve something you couldn’t with the readily available materials.

Jamie Nares playing with the Contortions, 1977, Betsy Sussler.

JN: Yes, I couldn’t buy a brush that does the things that my brushes do. I just repurposed things to suit me the way I wanted it to be. There’s something very Zen about it, my practice. There’s something kind of tantric or shamanistic about it, too, in some ways. And there’s a lot of influences. 

COM: I’d love to talk about your influences. 

JN: Well, you know, I’ve been influenced by just about every other artist ever met. Something rubs off, even if your influenced in a negative way. And then I’m influenced by the things I see, the things I see other people doing. I was very influenced by my peers early on because it seemed like we were kind of forging something, figuring something out together. Those were good times, in a way. Oh, they were good times. Those seventies were rough too, the city was dangerous, and nobody had any money. It was a tough time. But it was great.

COM: A formational period.

JN: Yeah, so my influences are every place and everything I’ve ever done or been or heard or saw. It all filters through to who I am and what I do. 

COM: That’s a very generous way of looking at it, and very true about life in general. 

JN: I think so, yes. It’s life in general that interests me. I mean, there’s so many things going on in this world.

COM: It’s a matter of slowing down and looking closely. 

JN: Yes.

COM: You had a major retrospective a couple of years ago at the Milwaukee Art Museum. And now you’re returning to London after so much success. How do you see your journey from this point in your career? 

JN: Oh, it is very strange. It seems like if you make it to a certain age, people suddenly get interested in you. I made it to an age and survived. A number of people I’ve known who gave up or passed away or just disappeared. There’s something just by having stuck around. People like you when you stick around and keep going. I do have this thread of my own personal histories and it seems to be interesting to people right now. But it also seems that people are interested in that period that I was talking about when I said I was coming of age, the seventies and eighties in New York. And I have something to say about that just by virtue of being there, you know. Oops, I forgot the question.

STREET, 2011, HD video, 61 mins.

COM: Oh, well, it must be interesting to look back at so many decades of production, having that perspective. 

JN: The show in Milwaukee was just great because we worked on it for about six years. Marcelle Polednick who curated it and became the director of the museum during the time that we started working on it. So, everything just came together nicely, and she was so wonderful and supportive, and she’s the first one who really saw me and understood what I have been doing all my life. She put this show together and curated it, and we organized it thematically rather than chronologically. It was really a lovely show for me to wander around. The effort that people put into it, the exhibition designer, everybody. It was a magical time for me.

Plus, I’d just come out. I mean, it was a very intense time. I had just announced my true nature to the world, and I’d had a show that opened five days earlier in New York and I had showed up as my true self, so to speak. And had spoken to all the gallery and announced, it was like a formal announcement, that sort of thing. And I went down to Milwaukee five days later to start installing this show and was greeted with a newspaper article calling me the inadvertent advocate. I was like, “No, I’m not an advocate, I’m just trying to figure out who I am.” And of course, it was a surprise for everybody. And I could see these two trajectories converging. One was the retrospective with my life story, in a way. It was like these two trains, the other one was my transition that was coming to a head, this new life that was happening. And I could see they were going to collide, which they did at the Milwaukee show. It couldn’t have been a more perfect time and place. And Marcelle to her endless credit just jumped right on board and supported me like a 100% and sent out memos to everyone in the museum, and changed some of the bathrooms to gender neutral, and did all these little things to make it nice for me. People were so wonderful. It was just a wonderful experience. 

COM: That’s great to hear. Big moment. 

JN: Yeah, it was. It was a very big moment for me. And I think very fondly of it. There’s a wonderful catalog from that show. Just “Nares: Moves,” that’s it. But my transition is an ongoing process. 

COM: What keeps you going today? And are there any projects that you’re excited about looking towards the future? 

JN: You know, it’s very strange because I have so many things I want to do. I’ve never had so many ideas and thoughts and things I want to do. And it’s kind of tragic that I’m declining physically at the same time… It’s more difficult for me to do the things I want to do. A lot of the things I want to do I can’t do, which is frustrating. But you know then I just do things I can do. I’m perpetually motivated and interested. Something keeps me going. It’s just the same thing I’ve always had. It’s like a life force, I guess.

COM: That same sense of direction we talked about at the beginning. 

JN: Yeah, yeah, I think so.

Continued from Part 2

 Part 2

Photos of the Mind: An Interview with Jamie Nares (Part 3) Read More »

Exhibition

Yalda

Exhibition /

SHAB – E-YALDA

WINTER SOLSTICE

Wednesday December 21, 2022

8pm – midnight

Manero’s on Mulberry, 113 Mulberry St, NYC

The Trops organizes cultural experiences for the arts communities of NYC and beyond. This Winter Solstice Holiday Event is about honoring Iranian Art & Culture during a traditional Persian holiday, Yalda. 

Originating in the pre-Zoroastrian tradition, Yalda, also referred to as Chelleh, celebrates the sunrise after the longest night of the year. Ancient Persians believed that evil forces were strongest on the longest and darkest night of the year.

Every year, Iranian people celebrate Yalda night on the longest night of the year by gathering together for eating, drinking and reading poetry through the night.

In line with this tradition, The Trops is hosting a Yalda evening of visual arts, performance arts, and poetry in the Heart of New York City.

This is a social event, and will feature live music, poetry, Iranian cinema clips. Guests are invited to bring backgammon, persian poetry to read, and musical instruments.

Iranian Poetry

A tradition of folklore and poetry in Persian Culture has been passed on for generations.

Some notable poets:

Rumi

Jalāl ad-Dīn Mohammad Rūmī, or more commonly known as Rumi, is considered the greatest Sufi mystic and poet in Persian language by many. He was born in 1207 in Balkh, part of the Khwarezmian Empire (present-day Afghanistan).

“I learned that every mortal will taste death. But only some will taste life.”

“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”

“Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.”

Hafez

Khāwje Shams-od-Dīn Moḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī (1315-1390) was a Persian poet known by his pen name Hafez (also spelled Hafiz). He’s one of the greatest poets of Persia, his works are regarded by many as a pinnacle of Persian literature.

“The words you speak become the house you live in.”

“Be content with what thou hast received, and smooth thy frowning forehead.”

“Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions.”

Saadi

Saadi Shīrāzī (1210-1291) was a major Persian poet of the medieval period. He is better known by his pen name Saadi or Saʿdī. He grew up in a family of religious scholars in Shiraz, Iran.

“A little beauty is preferable to much wealth.”

“O wise man, wash your hands of that friend who associates with your enemies.”

“A man is insensible to the relish of prosperity till he has tasted adversity.”

Omar Khayyam

Omar Khayyam (1048 – 1131) was not only famous for his poetry. The Persian poet was also a mathematician, astronomer, historian, philosopher, and polymath. Interestingly, Omar was known in his own country and time primarily for his achievements in science, not poetry.

“The thoughtful soul to solitude retires.”

“Living Life Tomorrow’s fate, though thou be wise, Thou canst not tell nor yet surmise; Pass, therefore, not today in vain, For it will never come again.”

“I often wonder what the vintners buy one half so precious as the stuff they sell.”

Ferdowsi

Ferdowsi, pseudonym of Abū al-Qasem Manṣūr (940-1019/1025) is one of the greatest figures in the history of Persian literature. The Persian poet is the author of Shāh-nāmeh (“Book of Kings”), one of the world’s longest epic poems created by a single poet.

“And the blood of brave men was shed like unto the shedding of rain from a black cloud.”

“And now may the blessing of God rest upon all men. I have told unto them the Epic of Kings, and the Epic of Kings is come to a close, and the tale of their deeds is ended.”

“How shall a man escape from that which is written; How shall he flee from his destiny?”

Iranian Cinema

Iranian cinema pre-Revolution (1979) looked very different from the industry today. Follow the link below to read about the history and timeline of Iranian cinema:

IRANIAN CINEMA 

The below video is a collage of many classic Iranian films with music by Ali Azimi, titled Pishdaramad, which means “prelude.”

This article explores the meaning and origins of the work.

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Exhibition

Ben Ruhe South Beach Miami

Exhibition /

Kill your Idols – Death Acrylic Polymer, Matte Acrylic on Wool pane, 8in x 8in, Gato-Loco (Robo Cat) Acrylic Polymer, Matte Acrylic on Wood panel, 4in x 4in, Welp (Crushed Dreams) Graphite, Ink, Matte Medium. Acrylic Polymer, Matte Acrylic on Canvas, 12in x 12in

Troubadour at Plant Daddy in South Beach Miami, FL

Heavens to Murgatroyd

Benjamin Ruhe

“Ben Ruhe’s paintings strike a sweet spot between harsh reality and storybook fantasy. He seems to journey to another dimension returning with these eerie yet friendly images, snapshots from the ghettos of a cartoon realm that has granted him a visa. Happy yet wise creatures set in a heavenly palette that register a venn diagram overlapping funny and cute with profound and spiritual.”

-Nemo Librizzi

South Beach Constellation

The South Beach Constallation is a map of paintings by artist Benjamin Ruhe, presenting artwork across a neighborhood of real world gathering places.

Ben Ruhe is a visual artist who grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Integrating soulful whimsicality into his mixed media artworks, Ruhe translates inter dimensional beings and textures into his distinct figurative language.

For List of Works and Sales Inquiries, please reach out via the contact form

La Sandwicherie

La Sandwicherie is a French-inspired restaurant, serving sandwiches, juices, and more in South Beach Miami since 1988. 229 14th St

A La Folie Cafe

A La Folie Cafe is a Parisian-inspired cafe serving French cuisine such as crepes, salads and sandwiches.

516 Española Way

Drunken Dragon

Drunken Dragon opened in 2014 as the first Korean barbecue restaurant in South Beach, serving Korean barbecue, tapas and tiki-style drinks.

1424 Alton Rd

Kill Your Idol

Kill Your Idol is a dive bar that curates art, cultural events and live music.

222 Espanola Way

Shepherd Artisan Coffee

Shepherd Artisan Cafe is a coffee house with artisan coffee and Mediterranean dishes. 

919 Collins Ave

Ted’s Hideaway

Ted’s Hideaway is a speakeasy dive bar sharing a comforting sense of familiarity for people from all walks of life.

124 2nd St

Across The River at Shepherd Artisan Coffee

Rat-Killer at A La Folie Cafe

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Exhibition

Photos of the Mind: An Interview With Jamie Nares (Part 2)

Exhibition /

Red Handed, 1971, color photograph, 12 in x 17 1/2 in.

Working at the edge of painting, photography, music and film over the course of five decades, Jamie Nares has profoundly explored the relationships between memory, time, movement and thought. I spoke with Jamie about her childhood, her move to New York City in the 1970s, her multidisciplinary practice, and her generous vision of art and life.

Continued from Part 1

Part 1

COM: You mentioned you always felt like you had a sense of direction or that you knew what you were doing and where you were going. 

JN: It’s true. 

COM: That’s pretty unique for such a young artist. 

JN: Maybe, yeah. I read so much about art, and about the art being made by the artists in downtown New York, and California, and other places, too. And in Europe. It was a very lively, inventive time for the visual arts I think, the whole dematerialization of the art object, the way of seeing things. There was so much going on, and I knew about it. I read about it even if I wasn’t really involved with it in England. I was doing things like, I had a job as a motorcycle messenger delivery person and I signed my name across London traveling along roads and then marking where I went on the map and put my signature right across London, things like that. Humorous. But I did some really beautiful things. Did you see a book of mine, a Rizzoli book? 

COM: Yes. 

JN: Under the dust cover there’s a photo of me with red hands which I love. And it was it was just called “Red Handed.” I just painted my hands red, and I was standing there with a hat on. There was another piece I made when I knew I was going to be coming to the States. And I took the little schoolboys plastic map of the United States, the kind that you put it in a book and then trace around and you got a map of America and then you can color or something… I took the edge of the East Coast and embossed it in my forearm on the place where you commit suicide, the inside of the forearm… I called it “A New Vein.” So, it was like a little death going and something new. That’s a nice piece. I like that. And of course, the piece itself is just two photographs, one where I’m pressing this thing in and the other one where you just see the bust outline of the East Coast.

Jamie Nares playing with the Contortions, 1977, Betsy Sussler.

COM: Did you feel as a young artist that you were constantly inventing or reinventing yourself? This piece seems to suggest something around that. 

JN: I would say so. Like every day something new going on and there were very rapid changes happening. There were very rapid changes happening in the world and inside me. But I was saying that around 1976-77, we kind of revolted against the art world and we didn’t want to show our films in the established art houses. We opened our own cinema. And it was called the New Cinema. It was on St Mark’s Place, and we had something called an advent TV screen, which was a humongous projector. And you could plug a video deck into it and see your film projected onto this old TV shaped screen that was concave. So, if you were standing, like right behind the projector in the perfect place, you could see what was going on. But if you were anywhere off that line, the image deteriorated. And I remember Amy Taubin who became a great friend of mine later, writing our first review she said that the image was like bent pink soup. And that became a kind of refrain for us. Bent pink soup, is still think of it. And she thought we were just a scam to make money. And she missed the point entirely. We were very dedicated, and we did want to make money. We wanted to be sort of in the real world. We didn’t want to be in the alternative world. You had to pay to come into the movie theater. $2. There were no freebies. It’s great. It lasted for about seven months, and we closed it when it was at its hottest. I forget why exactly; I think we just didn’t want to become an institution. We saw a kind of looming bureaucracy that was going to be involved if we kept it going… We just wanted to feel like we were in the real world, making our living doing what we did. 

COM: You said that after this period, things started changing and the groups began dissolving. How did that transition into focusing on your own practice go for you? 

JN: Well, I was never the best one at being the member of a group, because I just wanted to do my thing. And, out of those groups Colab was incredible. It was wonderful, [we put some] great shows. And I have a lot of friends that were in there, but I just was more interested in doing the things that I felt compelled to do. It seemed that there was a kind of urgency to get the work made. And around ’77 music became very influential. That was when the punk bands from England became very important to us. And then the music that was happening in the States, too. And next thing I knew, there was a kind of dissatisfaction… How do I put it? The possibilities seemed to be closing down a bit or something. And so, when James asked me, do you want to play guitar in my band? I said, “Yeah, sure.” Did you see the film Blank City? 

Installation views, Nares: Moves, Milwaukee Art Museum, June 14-October 6, 2019, courtesy of Kasmin Gallery.

COM: I don’t think so…

JN: Yeah, it’s good. It was made by Celine Dahnier. The first half of it is a documentary of the scene that I was in. And then there was another scene with people who would they call themselves “the cinema of transgression,” and their names are going out of my mind right now. But the first half of the film is really good, and in it, Charles Leary, my old buddy who I don’t talk to anymore, says, “anybody who is doing what they knew how to do is very suspect.” And there was this conscious doing of things that you didn’t know how to do because it made them completely fresh. You know what I mean? We delighted doing things we didn’t know how to do and bringing ourselves to it. It seemed like the way to make something really different. And certainly The Contortions, when we first appeared, we made quite a splash. Nobody had heard anything quite like it. 

COM: Speaking about trying new things. When did painting become something you were interested in? 

JN: Well, like I said, I painted when I was young. And I had painted really up until the time I went to school in London, right through high school. I was blessed with the most wonderful art teachers at the schools I went to. It was wonderful. It was so it was so great to have these teachers and I was painting then. But I was also doing other things, like I would go out and paint the grass green, paint the bricks red, or in a piece of home I’d penciled in a rectangle on the wall our house. And it had some prints and scars of things on it and I very carefully painted it. It was what was there exactly… It was like kind of like putting makeup on or something. I just painted what was there, but it looked a little different with this penciled rectangle around it. My mother wanted to get rid of it so badly, but you know, she knew she couldn’t do it. It lasted for a long time; she really didn’t like it. But I was always doing things, you know. As a kid I was always doing things. And my parents were incredibly forgiving. I took over my stepdad’s old 16mm home movies that his father in shot of him with his brothers and sister, and I put them on a piece of wood and hit them with a blowtorch and made a kind of celluloid Jackson Pollock. It was great, it was really good. But he didn’t complain at all. I never heard a word of complaint. He’d come home to find that I raided his drawers, taken out his pipes and glued them to a chessboard and spray painted them silver or something. I was a little bit of a terror, but it was a creative terror, you know. I think they thought that it was good that I should be doing this because I was doing something I wanted to do, and I was a disaster in all the other areas. 

Back Then, 2021, oil on linen, 66 x 54 in.

COM: They sound supportive and forgiving.

 

JN: They were supportive and forgiving to Nth degree, I have to give them that until eternity. They were wonderful. And then there was a lot of music. My stepfather played the piano. That was when I was three. And actually, my stepdad bought a beautiful old gypsy caravan, and it was just like a house on wheels. It was a spectacularly beautiful thing. And they painted it in bright enamel colors. So, it was like this enamel jewel that he put on the side of the house, and that became my studio. My first studio was a gypsy caravan. I have a photo of it, it’s really nice.

 

COM: How old were you when you had your first studio? 

JN: Like ten. I was doing things like I got a chemistry set for Christmas and I very quickly found out, that if you mixed all the chemicals together and put them in a test tube and put a cork in the top and then hold them over a burner, they would explode and make this incredible multicolored splatter on the ceiling. I amused myself doing that for a while. Gosh, poor parents. Wow, I’d never spoken about this stuff before. 

COM: It sounds like a like a wonderful creative childhood. 

JN: Yeah. I think it was, I really do.

Working at the edge of painting, photography, music and film over the course of five decades, Jamie Nares has profoundly explored the relationships between memory, time, movement and thought. I spoke with Jamie about her childhood, her move to New York City in the 1970s, her multidisciplinary practice, and her generous vision of art and life.

Continued in Part 3

Part 3

Photos of the Mind: An Interview With Jamie Nares (Part 2) Read More »

Exhibition

Photos of the Mind: An Interview with Jamie Nares (Part 1)

Exhibition /

STREETS, 2011, HD video, 61 mins

Working at the edge of painting, photography, music and film over the course of five decades, Jamie Nares has profoundly explored the relationships between memory, time, movement and thought. I spoke with Jamie about her childhood, her move to New York City in the 1970s, her multidisciplinary practice, and her generous vision of art and life.

COM: We were just talking about London, and you were born in London. What drew you to New York City and when did you settle in New York? 

JN: Well, I was born in London, but I grew up in the country from the age of three onwards. My father had died when I was three and just before that he built us this house in the country. So that’s where I grew up. And then I was sent off to boarding schools when I was seven. Horrible boarding schools. So, I never really lived at home. And I think that it made it easy for me when I landed in New York and realized that it felt like I was home for the first time in my life. It was easy for me to stay because I had been leaving home all my life. But I came in 1974. I came because I was interested in all the American artists. They were the ones that interested me most, and I wanted to be around it. And I lucked out because a friend of mine had just rented a big loft in in Tribeca, which was… the kind of ground zero was the art community at that point. It shifted from Soho down to Tribeca and there were so many artists who I admired, and I’d read about so much living there and I just jumped right into the middle of it. It was a stroke of immensely good fortune. 

COM: That’s fantastic. What are some of the names of artists that you were thinking about or looking at that drew you to the city?

JN: Richard Serra, Mel Bochner, Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman, although he just moved to California at that time… Oh, my mind’s gone blank but it seemed like everyone was there, from Claes Oldenburg to my small circle of contemporaries who were all interested in the same things. 

COM: It must have been a really different New York than it is now…

JN: Keith Sonnier. Sorry, I’m thinking of names that are beginning to pile into my brain. I was thinking Keith Sonnier who was wonderful. And then Willoughby Sharp and Lisa Béar who did Avalanche magazine, which was my favorite magazine. And the list goes on. 

COM: What a what a great moment. How did the 1970s downtown Manhattan art scene shape you? I bet in many different ways.

Tetragram, 1999, oil on linen 108 x 92 in.

JN: Many different ways. I kind of came of age there, the way I see it. I had I been the art school in London for not even a year, just two semesters when my friend suggested that I come over and I just came straight over… New York in the seventies, especially down there, was a ghost town. It was great. It seemed like the whole city below 14th Street was very, very depopulated, and we never went above 23rd Street. 23rd Street was way uptown. Although that’s not strictly true, because we were also great adventurers. We’d go up to Harlem to drink in little bars. But we were so welcomed, they loved seeing those little fresh, young, white faces. It was a great time. It seemed like you could do anything and get away with it, or not. I got arrested a couple of times, but stupid things. 

COM: It sounds like a moment full of possibilities. 

JN: It was. The world seemed wide open. And it was just perfect for me because, you know, when I arrived and I looked around, I understood painters like Robert Rauschenberg. Because on every street corner, there was something that looked like a painting by him. You know, some pipes sticking out of a wall painted with a bright red enamel or something. There were little details of the city that just, I understood where all the art that I had loved came from. And I just fell into it.

COM: You also played the guitar in various groups.

JN: I was in various bands, in two bands.

COM: How did musicality influence you at that time that you were beginning to develop your practice in the visual arts? 

JN: Well, there was always a musical element in what I did. Sometimes directly, like I did a performance where I went up to Central Park, sat on a bench with a guitar which I completely detuned, and strummed away for an afternoon. Much to the surprise of people sitting on those park benches. But music was always a big part of my life. I grew up in a very musical household. Rhythm has always been a very important element in my work. And we used to fuck around with guitars and tape recorders. We had instruments. We were playing very, very sort of wild experimental stuff. And it seemed like everybody was. It was just a time of incredible creativity. When 1976 happened. Oh, I like that “when 1976 happened…” [Laughs]. When it rolled on by, things changed or began to change. But by 1977, there was a kind of malaise in the art world and a kind of frustration on the part of younger artists that they weren’t being seen or heard. And we became more vocal and visible doing things. There was Colab, this group of artists that did a lot of stuff. There was The Times Square Show, the Doctors & Dentists show, and all these shows that we put together as groups. But then, as happens with groups so often, it began to splinter up into factions and individuals and I was one of the first to break off from that life. I couldn’t stand the kind of bureaucratic, starting of a business.

Portrait of Jamie Nares, 2021, Katherine Stewart.

COM: So, there was a period in those early years where you were more involved with creating your own spaces to show your work in and to be a platform for other artists, right? 

JN: Yeah, we had a space in the garage that was underneath where I lived and where landlords kept their enormous Lincoln town cars and things during the daytime. But in the evenings, it was just an empty garage, and we would go in there with a movie screen that we built, a collapsible movie screen, and put it up and show films and do performances and have music played. That was the first place I saw James Chance, who led The Contortions a year or so later. He was playing a duo, him and this drummer. So, we did. We invaded spaces, we used them as movie backdrops. We used them as very alternative exhibition places. We were in and out of a lot of buildings, but there was a lot of empty buildings, you know? It was crazy. 

COM: Right, not like it is today. 

JN: Not like it is today, it’s true. The only empty buildings now are the ones in Hudson Yards and places like that where they’ve built all these high rises that nobody lives.

COM: Yeah. It must be kind of wild to think back on all of the different New York cities that you have experienced over the past 50 years. 

JN: That’s true. The Giuliani years, which was pretty awful. The AIDS epidemic. All these things shaped who I am and my practice. 

COM: I imagine. What were some of the early works that you started developing? Were you focusing on a particular medium or were you working across various? 

JN: I was working across various mediums. I did a lot of video and film. I wasn’t really painting, but I did a lot of drawings. I was always drawing and making sketches for, you know, ideas for events. But the most formed artwork that came out of that of mine was in my movie “Pendulum” which has been getting a lot of play lately. I thought I lost it, but I found it in deep storage a few years ago and people really like that one. But I was making sure a lot of short movies, too, like three-minute movies or ten-minute movies. And making objects and all kinds of stuff, doing performances. You know, I painted when I was a youngster and I didn’t really paint at school either. I did other things always. Photo pieces. My work was more conceptual. When I was a student, I remember I would do things like, I’d go into the common room in the middle of the night and moved everything, every object, one inch to the north or something. And then I would put up a sign on the door saying, “every object in this room was moved one inch to the North last night.” And just leave it for people to kind of go “Ah!” There was a lot of humor in my work and wordplay and stuff. 

STREET, 2011, HD video, 61 mins.

COM: You were at the School of Visual Arts, correct? 

JN: Yes. Again, I stayed there two semesters. Seems to be a pattern of mine. But I always knew what I wanted to do. And I just did it. I didn’t really take advantage of the teachers that were there in both art schools. But, you know, it was okay in the end because I just did what I was doing. It was discovering a lot about, you know, like how the education system worked. Like I showed up at the first day school and was expecting to be told where to go and what to do. I didn’t realize you had to sign up for classes. So, all the teachers that I had seen listed on the School of Visual Art’s official advertising bill, their advertising was very good, all those teachers’ classes were full. And I had slim pickings, although I ended up with some good teachers. Hannah Wilkie who died sadly. It was a good way to get acquainted with New York, and America and meet other people. 

Working at the edge of painting, photography, music and film over the course of five decades, Jamie Nares has profoundly explored the relationships between memory, time, movement and thought. I spoke with Jamie about her childhood, her move to New York City in the 1970s, her multidisciplinary practice, and her generous vision of art and life.

Continued in Part 2

Part 2

Photos of the Mind: An Interview with Jamie Nares (Part 1) Read More »

Exhibition

Moon Mixer 6/21

Exhibition /

Highlighting the intersection of community and art, the installation “Monomania” features fine art pieces at local venues in the Fort Greene neighborhood such as Brooklyn Moon and other cultural centers.

In tandem with this constellation, we host a weekly mixer series, where specially curated performance artists gather on Tuesdays to perform and represent their crafts at the iconic Brooklyn Moon and present a combination of rehearsed and improvisational performances.

This week, we had the honor of hosting three master musicians: Sheila Anozier, Daniel Carter, and Tiga Jean Baptiste at the 6/21 culture mixer. Combining Haitian Folk Music, Jazz, and Haitian drumming, this magical combination of crafts created a moment in musical history.

Sheila Anozier: Haitian Folk Musician

Sheila Anozier is a multidiscplinary artist that combines dance, songs and visual art into her work. Her creativity has given her opportunities to perform with other notable artists across the world, such as Wunmi Olaiya at Ageha in Tokyo, Japan and the Alstadtherbst Festival in Germany with Tamango’s Urban Tap.

Daniel Carter: Free Jazz Musician

Daniel Carter is an avant-garde free jazz musician and performer that has been active since the 1970’s. He has become extremely well known, and is an inspiration to many up and coming musicians. Carter is skilled at playing multiple instruments, including flute, saxophone, clarinet and trumpet. He has performed with artists such as Yoko Ono, Thurston Moore, and Yo La Tengo amongst many others. He is also a member of the cooperative free jazz group Other Dimensions in Music.

Tiga Jean Baptiste: Percussionist

Tiga Jean Baptiste is an eclectic musician who began drumming at events in Haiti with his father Bonga, master of the Haitian drum at a very young age. He has performed with many of Haiti’s other most respected artists as well, including Emeline Michel and Jean-Paul Bourelly. Baptiste has also branched outside of tradition, performing with Zimbabwean artists such as Stella Chiweshe and Thomas Mapfumo, as well as American artists John Legend and Grace Jones.

Moon Mixer 6/21 Read More »

Exhibition

Moon Mixer 6/14

Exhibition /

Highlighting the intersection of community and art, the installation “Monomania” features fine art pieces at local venues in the Fort Greene neighborhood such as Brooklyn Moon and other cultural centers.

(Explore the Fort Greene Constellation.)

In tandem with this constellation, we host a weekly mixer series, where specially curated performance artists gather on Tuesdays to perform and represent their crafts at the iconic Brooklyn Moon and present a combination of rehearsed and improvisational performances.

This week, we had the honor of hosting three master musicians: Sixty Second Assassin, Daniel Carter, and Ibrahima Diokhane at the 6/14 Culture Mixer. Combining Hiphop, Jazz, and African Drumming, this magical combination of crafts created a moment in musical history. 

SIXTY SECOND ASSASSIN: Hip Hop Artist

Sixty Second Assassin is a legendary hip hop artist and rapper, born and raised in Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn, New York. He is heavily affiliated with the Wu-Tang Clan and Sunz of Man, and was a close associate with Wu-Tang rapper Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Sixty Second Assassin is an enigmatic figure that never fails to wow the crowd with his unique style and voice.

DANIEL CARTER: Free Jazz Musician

Daniel Carter is an avant-garde free jazz musician and performer that has been active since the 1970’s. He has become extremely well known, and is an inspiration to many up and coming musicians. Daniel is skilled in playing multiple instruments, including saxophone, flute, clarinet and trumpet. He has performed with artists such as Yoko Ono, Thurston Moore and Yo La Tengo amongst many others. He is also a member of the cooperative free jazz groups and Other Dimensions of Music.

IBRAHIMA DIOKHANE: Drum Master

Ibrahima Diokhane is a seasoned African drummer originally from Senegal. He opened his drum store Keur Djembe 25 years ago in Gowanus, Brooklyn, offering authentic handmade instruments and drum lessons. Ibrahima makes his own drums with an expertise gained over years of learning, dedication and hard work.

Moon Mixer 6/14 Read More »

Exhibition

Nature’s Course: An Interview with John Newsom (Part 5)

Artist Profile, Exhibition /

John Newsom, Dense Armor, 2008-09. Credit: Oklahoma Contemporary Museum

Combining realistic representations of animals and vegetation, Abstract Expressionism, and hard-edge geometry, John Newsom’s paintings explore our intricate and complicated relationship with nature. I spoke with John about his origins, his practice, and his upcoming exhibitions – a mid-career retrospective at the Oklahoma Contemporary Museum and a two-person show with Raymond Pettibon in Palm Beach.

Continued from Part 4

PART 4

Nathalie Martin: So I was talking to my friend, a young painter who’s in the studio all day and has an incredible work ethic. But he’s always so hung up about originality or making the most original thing. And I always tell him that maybe originality isn’t the goal. Maybe you’re working towards a certain goal or idea and then your voice or that originality just comes, almost like a symptom or byproduct of whatever you’re working towards. Just not being so fixated with making the most “original” thing. You mentioned Morandi – people have painted cups before. But he makes it totally his own.

John Newsom: Well I would say your friend is looking outside of themselves. What they have to do is turn that vision inward and it’ll be new. It’ll be new because they’ll be discovering themselves for the first time. Everybody, honestly, has a unique spark within them. This is what I’m saying, Nathalie. You got to bring it all in, in, in, but then you’ve got to let it go, go, go. You have to get rid of it all. That’s why you have to learn everything to unlearn everything. If that makes sense. I really mean that. You have to go out there and just learn and take in as much as possible, and then edit it down to get rid of it all. Then you’re going to be at a place that is totally new. You’re going to have an option if you’re a painter in the painting context, because your friend may discover that they can do what they need to do, but they have to do it training dolphins or something. But anyway, I do think that is something that particularly young artists struggle with. I think it’s a healthy thing. You have to be diligent about it. The cream always rises to the top, it always does. So then you go with that, whatever that is, whatever that means. I actually just finished a nine by eighteen-foot canvas that’s going to debut in the museum show in March.

John Newsom, Nature’s Course, 2021-22. Credit: Oklahoma Contemporary Museum

NM: Your retrospective? Tell me about that.

JN: Yeah, I have a mid-career retrospective, and I’ve been struggling with even saying that phrase because it’s so freaky to say out loud. But I do have a mid-career retrospective opening on March 24th at the new Oklahoma Contemporary Museum, which obviously is very meaningful because that’s the region I’m from, but it also happens to be an extraordinary building and staff. The programming is exceptional. Ed Ruscha just had a full-scale retrospective at the museum, and I’m very honored to be following him. The programming that’s coming up is very, very dynamic and international. This exhibition has been a few years in the planning. We started it

before the pandemic. Fortunately, my dates landed a little bit afterwards. It’s going to be comprised of 31 large-scale paintings from the past 20 years. The majority of works are coming in from private collections all over the United States. We decided to keep the show within national borders at the time because of COVID restrictions and shipping. There were some works abroad I would ideally liked to have brought in, but it’s okay. We were able to get the show to a hundred percent with what we have and it’s going to be outstanding. I’m excited about it. They chose the paintings and I felt like I needed to make one to debut at the show.

I jumped into this painting. I was sitting with a friend of mine, watching a horse race on television. I was talking with my friend about the race because he’s into it, I’m not into it, but it just happened to be on the screen. He said that it was the races at Longchamp. I was like, oh yeah, like the Manet painting, because that was the first time a painter had painted a painting like that, from the perspective of seeing the racers and the horses directly coming right at you. Until then the scene was always presented from the side. So that sparked an idea in my mind. Now I’ve got the title. The title of the exhibition at the museum is Nature’s Course, which I feel I just

walked the entirety of in the last hour talking to you, which is amazing. It’s a herd of five charging bison with a flock of eagles soaring above this open sky. It’s the great Mid-western Plains.

NM: I was just going to say, there’s the Kansas and Oklahoma coming back right back in.

JN: Yeah, exactly. But Nathalie, there’s no way I would have thought I would be painting this painting five years ago, ten years ago, twenty, thirty years ago. How insane? But it might be my strongest painting to date. We’ll see. I mean, a few people that have seen previews of it, I’ve been really pleased with the reaction. So I’m very excited about this. It’s going to open on March 24th and run through August 15th.

NM: So the show is called Nature’s Course. Obviously, your work deals with our complex relationship with nature. And I think you have this visual language or this mark-making style that kind of exists between abstraction and figuration, or soft and fierce, or the beautiful and the terrifying or menacing. Are these binaries representations of how you view this relationship?

JN: Yeah, there’s definitely a duality in the work. But I just feel like it needs to be there because it’s got to be there. The language is such that it incorporates a wide variety of applique and thought, but there are parameters on that. Meaning there are specifications to it. You know, there are rules, for lack of a better word. That’s not to say that you can’t break the rules. It’s just to acknowledge that there are rules and those are for the most part of my own making at this point,

because it goes back to early on. You try to learn and get on something more organic, you just got to figure out what’s working and what’s not working. Where the energy is right. You go in the direction of the good energy. Even if it’s a painting that is made during a challenging period of one’s life. The tableau of the canvas can absorb the hit of any energy that you bring to it. That’s the magic of it. It’s just kind of a tremendous thing. And then it exists in the painting, it

becomes manifested. So whatever it is, if it’s a Goya painting of a certain theme, you can see

where his energy was. It’s now transferred into the canvas – it’s in the picture. When I say you get good energy, I mean that you worked through whatever energy it is and then you hopefully will feel better. This is about healing. I think ultimately great painting is about healing. Whether it’s yourself or the viewer – and it’s really important to note that a painting doesn’t exist unless it’s got eyes in front of it.

John Newsom, Harvest, 2011-16. Credit: Oklahoma Contemporary Museum

NM: I always say this!

JN: This is really interesting because I don’t paint the human figure, I paint an allegorical representation of the human figure. The physical reality of a human figure doesn’t appear in my work. It appears through the observer of the work. I’m very conscious of that. The viewer completes the picture. Because if they’re not there, the painting doesn’t exist. It’s like if the tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? It’s a little existential, but it makes sense. So when people say, “Oh, why don’t you paint the figure?” I’m like, “You’re the figure, you’re right there!”

But to get back to the questions, I paint in allegorical terms. There are kind of two ways to read one of my paintings. One is in the literal sense, of whatever flora and fauna or expression of manner you may find within the painting, and then the other is what’s its meaning, what’s its allegory, what’s its allusion. What is it alluding to? Then that gets interesting. It gets complex. Sometimes I make that definition a little bit more reachable, but sometimes I put it out of reach because I want to give people a mystery. That’s something that I think is really important and I think is missing in a lot of today’s art. Everybody is so engaged in meaning, or getting this or that point across. It’s like, I don’t need to know! And so what I want to do is give you both. You can get this or that, or you can leave it there. It doesn’t matter. You know what I mean?

So Nature’s Course is the idea that it’s going to be what it’s going to be. And that’s what it is. You take your time with the paintings because you have to sit with paintings. People are scrolling through Instagram and their attention spans are like goldfish, just like boom, boom,

gone. Painting is the opposite of Instagram. You have to sit with a painting and you have to read it like a book, but it’s visual, you know.

NM: I think learning how to see a painting is really like learning how to read again.

JN: You just said it, learning how to see again. It’s just a different process. Myself and others have had the potential to fall in love with that process, you know, and I’m certainly in love with that process.

NM: So you have a two-person exhibition with Raymond Pettibon coming up as well, opening March 15th at County Gallery in Palm Beach. How does that differ from the retrospective or the idea of Nature’s Course? Does it differ?

JN: I’m very excited about that. Yeah, well, the title of, and the theme of that exhibition, is the five classical elements: fire, air, water, earth, and aether. So Raymond and I each made five new works for the show. There will be 10 pieces in all – my five versions of the classical elements and Raymond’s five versions of the classical elements. I’m really excited about it because just thematically speaking, it’s such a tried and true iconography of art. It goes back to the beginning of it all and everything in between. It was a fascinating project to work on. Having it open simultaneously with the museum show is just perfect. Raymond and I formed a friendship over the bond between our two sons. Our sons are good friends, so it was through them that we started our friendship and discussions and I really just admire Raymond. But you know what? It was through nature’s course itself – through the boys playing around, swimming, making little films, and going on excursions like Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. Those two are just like dynamite. It’s just great.

John Newsom in his studio, 2022.

Photo Credit: Jonathan Mannion

COUNTY is a young gallery, a very good gallery in Palm Beach. They approached me and Raymond with the idea of doing the show and we had some really healthy discussions, landed on this and I couldn’t be more pleased with how the process has unfolded and the staff at COUNTY. I’m really looking forward to both exhibitions.

NM: That’s incredible, it sounds seamless. So what keeps you painting? What inspires you?

Is it your family? Is it this internal drive? Is it outside influences?

JN: Well, it’s all of the above and more, you know, at this point – you know what, it goes back to the beginning, it’s just the same, Nathalie. It’s just that life itself brings to it what it needs to be. You know, whether it’s something I feel, observe, or experience, I put it into the paintings. And this goes back again to the idea of generosity. I want to serve up a very full meal. I want to make it a big plentiful meal, and I’m just always cooking.

NM: Always in the kitchen.

JN: I’m always in the kitchen, yes, I’m always in the kitchen. You find me in the studio or with my kids, that’s it. That’s my world.

NM: And they’re the same, probably, as far as the return you’re getting.

JN: Yeah, but you know what, that brings us back to the very beginning of our conversation, even before we hopped on the recording. I used to be incredibly social when I was younger. I was out at a thousand openings. I never slept, I was working, I was going to parties. It was exhausting. Just exhausting. It was amazing. I’m glad I lived through it, to be honest, now I’m eight years sober, I’m a sober guy. And life is golden. I don’t regret anything. But I’m glad I lived through it to get to where I am now because it’s really good right now. It wasn’t always about this balance. It was like being tied to the mast heading out to rough seas, but I learned a lot and I have a lot to be thankful for.

NM: I think that directly relates to how you work and your practice. You’re gonna go where you go or shit’s going to come from you and happen to you, but you just got to work through it. You constantly have to work through it, whether it’s painting or life –

JN: Thus, nature’s course.

NM: Nature’s course. Exactly.

Nature’s Course: An Interview with John Newsom (Part 5) Read More »

Artist Profile, Exhibition

Nature’s Course: An Interview with John Newsom (Part 4)

Artist Profile, Exhibition /

John Newsom, Nature’s Course, 2021-22. Credit: Oklahoma Contemporary Museum

Combining realistic representations of animals and vegetation, Abstract Expressionism, and hard-edge geometry, John Newsom’s paintings explore our intricate and complicated relationship with nature. I spoke with John about his origins, his practice, and his upcoming exhibitions – a mid-career retrospective at the Oklahoma Contemporary Museum and a two-person show with Raymond Pettibon in Palm Beach.

Continued from Part 3

PART 3

John Newsom: So I want to go back just for a second to some of the references you made. It’s interesting because it’s a plethora of artists that you’ve mentioned, and those cornerstones are in the work, but they’re kind of existing simultaneously, and I’m just going to make a quick observation on something there that goes back to the idea of collage. Collage is so central, I think, to the language of painting in general in the last 50 to 60 years. Collage is the most important development of painting in the 20th century. It didn’t occur before that period. Collage was new. Collage was very, very important. So you look at painters like Picabia, Rosenquist, David Salle. These are really great painters. But if you study their surface structures and you see how the pictorial elements are arranged in relationship to collage, for the most part, you’re going to find the kind of break in the images within the canvas. Whereas in my work, I was kind of always attached to the overall picture plane. I mentioned Marden earlier. That’s one painter I really admire, just the overall sense of the big picture. You know what I mean?

John Newsom, Beyond the Horizon, 2008-09. Credit: Oklahoma Contemporary Museum

Nathalie Martin: Yes, generous with every inch of the canvas.

JN: So in my work, you’re going to see that fragmentation happen in layers. Like when you’re making a bed – the sheets to the blankets, it’s all tucked in, but it’s over one complete surface. So that’s why when you’re reading it – and you mentioned Mitchell or Pollock, Pollock more so – but for the most part, it’s like, that’s the modern picture. That’s the overall picture. And then you mentioned somebody like Audubon or Kahlo or something. I understand it, but I’m not really

conscious of those painters when I’m working. You look at them because my work does have a pastoral side to it. That’s what I think you’re seeing, this pastoral element, but it’s happening across the entire surface of the painting. Then there’s this hard-edge geometry that acts as a foundational structure in some of the backgrounds. If you’re listening to this and you’re with one of my paintings, if you’ve noticed, more times than not, the backgrounds and the elements within it will be painted last. You can’t see that in a reproduction. If it’s a reproduction that you’re looking at, you’re not going to get that. You have to see it live, to see the paint in the flesh. And that goes back to another important aspect that is intrinsic to the experience of viewing a painting. It has to be done in the flesh; you cannot read a painting over a screen. That’s why painting will always remain autonomous, because the lived experience is so important. It’s like an opera. You gotta go see it. It will always be like that. There’s no way to make that transference, and I have a lot of friends who are involved in new conceptual mediums, which is fantastic. It’s interesting. My son loves this kind of new tech stuff, but it’s not painting. So don’t say it is.

NM: That’s what I say, call it what you want, but it’s not painting.

JN: But it’s not a big deal. There are artists who are using painting to expand other conceptual ideas, and it’s super cool, but painting is paint. That’s why it’s called painting. So look for the paint. I don’t want to dwell on that because it’s ridiculous to. What I want to say is when you’re with one of my paintings, check out what happens around the edges of the forms. When I go to The Met here in New York, I’m looking at how something is painted. I get up on a Manet or a

still-life, and all of a sudden you start realizing what’s happening within the brushstrokes, the touch and the medium, the form of what’s happening. What’s positive is negative and what’s negative is positive. Then you see an articulation of space occurring, and now you’re getting into the language of form and you’re getting into the articulation of how these things work in space. So that’s something I wanted to give a focus to, because the way the fragmentation, or these kind of collage aspects that happen within my work, it’s all over. It’s not contingent within a certain area of the painting, you know? I think that’s an interesting part of my work.

John Newsom, Dense Armor, 2008-09. Credit: Oklahoma Contemporary Museum

I’m not obsessed with making a “new” type of painting, but I am interested in presenting what my interests are to develop a painting that’s intrinsically and closely tied to that individual vision as much as possible. Because if I’m doing that, it’s going to be new. Somebody asked Jay-Z who’s the greatest rapper of all time. Jay-Z said Biggie Smalls because he was the one that could tell his story in the realest way. That means the clearest way. That’s what that means. I think if you look at a Morandi painting, and you’re looking at those bottles, it’s like, they’re just bottles. But it’s magical because it’s Morandi. It’s like the articulation is so there, that it’s inescapable, and you become transfixed on those bottles and those paintings just because he was so in tune with it.

So that’s what I’m trying to get to. I’ve laid out a little bit of my influences and my early foundation experience and all that. It’s very American. I feel like for lack of a better word, it actually does have a quality of “Americanness” to it. One of my good friends, the German painter André Butzer, who I’ve known for a long time, he’s an incredible painter. I highly admire his work ethic. We kind of came up together, showed together. I really respect him, and there’s the Germanic quality to his work. He moved to California and he was living in Altadena for awhile. He’s interested in aspects of American life and he let that into his work. So his work has kind of a different type of feel to it. This is interesting because, for me, I’m a big fan of German painting. So when you’re mentioning people like Pollock and Mitchell – yes, they’re great, but I also look at people like Markus Lüpertz, he’s just an incredible painter, and more obvious references like Kiefer and Baselitz, things like that of the eighties. Big, fantastic paintings. But I’m not German! So sometimes you got to lay down Thor’s hammer and be like, “No. That one isn’t for me, I got to pick up this new thing.” You just have to embrace what it is you’re about, and really try to do that. If I had to give advice to a younger painter, that would be it. Keep doing, keep exploring. Keep making trials and errors and get to a point where you’re getting closer to your original voice, and then just “BOOM!” From the mountaintop, scream what it is,

you know? That’s kind of how it has to be.

Combining realistic representations of animals and vegetation, Abstract Expressionism, and hard-edge geometry, John Newsom’s paintings explore our intricate and complicated relationship with nature. I spoke with John about his origins, his practice, and his upcoming exhibitions – a mid-career retrospective at the Oklahoma Contemporary Museum and a two-person show with Raymond Pettibon in Palm Beach.

Continued in Part 5

PART 5

Nature’s Course: An Interview with John Newsom (Part 4) Read More »

Artist Profile, Exhibition

Nature’s Course: An Interview with John Newsom (Part 3)

Artist Profile, Exhibition /

John Newsom in his studio, 2022.

Photo Credit: Jonathan Mannion

Combining realistic representations of animals and vegetation, Abstract Expressionism, and hard-edge geometry, John Newsom’s paintings explore our intricate and complicated relationship with nature. I spoke with John about his origins, his practice, and his upcoming exhibitions – a mid-career retrospective at the Oklahoma Contemporary Museum and a two-person show with Raymond Pettibon in Palm Beach.

Continued from Part 2

PART 2

Nathalie Martin: It’s also interesting that your first encounter with art was through Rauschenberg and Warhol and kind of all the guys that sought to “break the rules,” then going to school and studying the rules yourself, is a really unique way to get into it or to get into the history.

 

John Newsom: Yeah, definitely. Definitely, because there’s a generation in between. If you look at it really by decades and things, there was a generation in between there that was such an incredible, momentous time for painting in the eighties. So the Pop Art that I was really looking at, it came earlier, when we were moving out of Abstract Expressionism into Pop. Like real early Pop into middle Pop. That was a really interesting period, but it was also a very popular period. So that’s why I was able to get access to it in rural Oklahoma because I couldn’t get to some of the things that were happening in the European context, or even the Far East, which I eventually made it to. I studied abroad and lived in Kyoto. I was in Yokohama, Osaka, Tokyo, and then I was down in Mexico City for a while, around San Miguel and Palenque. So I traveled a lot. I was very interested in broadening my knowledge. I wanted to get the knowledge. And so it wasn’t exclusively linear like with the New York context. But for me, it’s always been about the journey.

John Newsom, The Bright Side, 2017. Credit: Oklahoma Contemporary Museum

I’ve done a lot of exhibitions in Los Angeles. I’ve had good experiences in LA. I’ve always been based in New York and coming up I never had the dream of going to Los Angeles. I always knew I wanted to get to New York and it’s a different place to paint here. It’s just a little different than it is in LA. And it’s not to make a value judgment. It’s just to say that it’s a different type of context to be painting in. I think that’s benefited my particular type of work again because of the tactility of the surface. That’s kind of a uniquely New York historical way of approaching the canvas. If you look at my work, for the most part, the works are rather large in scale and they’re also very tactical. They’re tough, they’re heavy, and they’re physical paintings. So I always found it kind of a nice juxtaposition when I would go to Los Angeles and see friends and artists out there and shows where it became about light and space. It was all about light and space and atmosphere and it was amazing. It was a trip, but then I get back here and it was like we’re back in this earthen realm of the physical, up-in-your grill surface structures. I love that because I feel like paintings are made as much as they are painted. I mean, there’s the idea of the mark.

 

NM: I agree and see that in your own work.

 

JN: There’s a certain attribute about mark-making in New York that is different than anywhere else, and I love it. That’s why I continue to be encouraged by the energy of it. I was talking with the painter Ed Moses about this one time, and he was an interesting painter because although he was in Los Angeles, he was a very physical type of painter. His surfaces were very physically driven. So if he had stayed in New York, he would’ve had a very different history. And if a painter like Brice Marden had gone to Los Angeles, with his type of work, those Cold Mountain paintings would have a totally different feel to them. I just think it’s interesting to really take note of the context of where it is you are painting in a landscape. Corot was painting in a certain landscape, Turner was painting in a certain landscape, Van Gogh too, and it’s just all this kind of stuff. So it’s really fascinating. I am so blessed and grateful to be able to have the opportunity to get up every day and go to the studio and do what I do.

 

NM: Where is your studio?

 

JN: My studio right now is located at Mana Contemporary. So I’m actually in Jersey City. But my studio was in Soho previously for twenty years. That was the right amount of time to be in Soho. I’m glad I was in Soho when it was like that. Especially in the nineties, because coming into Soho in 92, we got the backwash of what was there, but there was enough. From 92 to 95, it was still jamming. There were still unbelievable, pivotal types of presentations happening with exhibitions there and these artists and it was amazing. It was amazing. Things shifted, which is okay.

John Newsom in his studio, 2022.

Photo Credit: Jonathan Mannion

NM: As they do.

 

JN: Yeah, the city doesn’t go anywhere, you just get offered different options, but being there at that time was just incredible to come in on that period, you know? So listen, every generation comes in on their own time.

 

NM: That’s what I tell myself at least.

 

JN: Yeah, for sure. So I was planning a move of studios and my wife and I found out we were pregnant with our first child and we had been living in Soho prior to having kids. So we moved to Brooklyn and we live in Park Slope. I decided to move my studio, and through a chain of associations I was offered to take a look at the current space, and I built it out. I really like it. I’ve been at the current studio maybe six, seven years, something like that. It’s a long commute, but I’m glad I have it. I walk, I take the trains. I love living in a walking city. As a painter, I love it. That’s another reason why I could never be in LA. There was an apartment I had access to for four years through the gallery I was with in LA and I’d stay there and I’d either get a car or have a driver or some way to get around, but I never really drove. You get to run into people here. You want to have experiences. You feel a part of the city, you feel closer to it. So I walk, I take the trains. I don’t go to the gym, but I go to the studio. It helps you a little bit. But it’s all good. Everything’s good. Everything’s in a real good space. So yeah, totally. I’m happy.

 

NM: Good. I want to talk about your influences too. Your fauna definitely reminds me of Audubon and your backdrops remind me of Pollock or Mitchell, and your flora reminds me of Kahlo even.

 

JN: Well, I love all those artists you’re mentioning. It’s really important to do two things. It’s really important to address your influences, to work with and through your influences. You have to do that, but you have to literally work through your influences until it’s digested fully and it’s yours now.

John Newsom, Keep Watch, 2020. Credit: Oklahoma Contemporary Museum

NM: Absolutely, so you’re not just regurgitating.

 

JN: You have to do that. I mean, the Greats study the Greats in order to be great. You have to do that in anything, in music, sports, entertainment, in writing. Again, because I kind of started out early, I got to go through a lot, and quickly. I gathered a lot, I went through a lot. When I say a lot, it wasn’t like I was looking at a dozen artists. I was looking at hundreds of artists. Really, hundreds of artists, trying to see what it was all about. And there are many, many false starts. You’re not going to hit it out of the park every time. There’s going to be a lot of strikes, and you have to embrace it. Sometimes it’s like, “This is interesting, but it’s kind of a dead-end,” and so now I’m going to go over here and, “Oh, wow, this is happening.” But you have to keep an open mind, always have to keep an open mind. You never know where it’s going to come from, where that spark is going to be. So you’re mentioning artists like Audubon to Joan Mitchell, which is interesting. Who the hell is thinking of that together? You know what I mean? You make an interesting point because it’s like, “I want it all.” Going back to Rauschenberg, when you look at Skyway, it’s like he was cramming everything he could into every square inch of that painting. That’s what I love about Rauschenberg and certain other artists that I’ll get into – the level of generosity. I just love when I walk into a show, wherever it is, I’m like, “Oh, wow. Whoa.” You know, it’s just, “Oh my God, look at this!” So if I’m flipping through Artforum or whatever, I see an announcement for an exhibition by a certain artist, then it’s like, “Oh shit! I can’t wait to see this!”

 

NM: Me too! And when it hits, it hits.

 

JN: Oh man, when it delivers? Because it might not deliver. But when it delivers, you know, it’s like watching Pacino in a film or something…. and it delivers! You walk in and you’re like, “Wow, this is it!” It didn’t happen overnight. Paintings don’t make themselves. You’ve got to get up, get your coffee, get in the studio, grind, flow – however it gets done – and you have to paint every day. This reminds me of a quote by Alex Katz that I’ve always loved. I really admire Alex Katz. He’s amazing. And he said, “Go to the studio, paint 10 hours a day every day for 10 years, and then come see me.” And that’s just such a pretentious, badass, New York quote. That’s just awesome. So that’s what I did. I painted 10 hours a day for 10 years. And then I went to see him. He gave me a drawing of his wife Ada reclining on the beach, and my wife has it hanging in our bedroom and it’s signed: To John, Love Alex. So I took his advice and if you’re a painter like that, I’m giving you Alex Katz’s advice, because it was really good advice. Just get in there and grind, and that’s really it. You’re also going to find out a lot about yourself and if you’re cut out for this, because not everybody is built for this nor should they be. It’s just following your own bliss, figuring out what that means, and what’s that about.

John Newsom, Solstice, 2016. Credit: Oklahoma Contemporary Museum

So I can get into influences. Certainly, there have been many, many, many, and I gotta tell you, it’s at a point now where it’s become self-referential in the work. And that’s a strange thing to say. It’s not completely self-referential, but it’s to the degree that… like, the Jasper Johns show just closed at the Whitney, and it’s been a very busy time for me and I didn’t get to see it.

 

NM: What! No way.

 

JN: No, no, no, but it’s fine. I’m not stressed about not seeing it because I’ve seen other Johns’ shows. He’s a great painter, but I’m at the point where I can’t see anything right now because I’ve got to be on my shit. But it hasn’t always been like that. There was a point earlier where I would have made sure to see a show like that because I needed to see it. Or I had to see it or whatever, but you know what, I’ve seen iterations of it. I hope I’m getting this across because it’s an exciting place to be at. It’s like, wow, I finally have so much on my plate with my own painting that I actually can’t go see this stuff, but it’s okay. Because I know it, I know what it is. I’ve really enjoyed sharing these stories with you because it’s a time to look back. It’s a time to take a moment of self-reflection and to look back and to take stock and see what things have happened, what paintings exist now that are particularly important and strong in my own lineage, and then see where I’m going with it. Then I’ll have a period that opens up where I can exhale and go see something, and then you see what happens. It’s interesting, things that you would have never imagined you would’ve been into at a certain period, you’re obsessed with, you know what I mean?

 

NM: Totally. Some of my favorite painters now are artists I originally didn’t understand or like.

 

JN: And then vice versa, you know, you’ve got to be like that. You can’t just stay on one thing. If you’re on a type of painting or an artist as an influence, and you’re looking at it and you know it back and forth, it doesn’t mean you have to stay on it forever. You can set it down and you can evolve into other things, knowing that it was there. It is there. But you don’t have to feel obligated to take it with you everywhere. Not that you should either, because the most important thing is to find your own voice as a painter. You have to work through your influences. You look at Velazquez or Caravaggio or late Manet – this is capital “P” Painting, and you have to get through that stuff. You have to go to the Prado and see Spanish painting, you have to see the Louvre and the French painting. You’ve got to do all that stuff. I was told that when I was young, and I’ve been to those places. So you get into a certain moment in your development and then you process it, and it gets better. It just keeps getting better, and you get wiser too, just by doing the work. Because the work leads the way.

Combining realistic representations of animals and vegetation, Abstract Expressionism, and hard-edge geometry, John Newsom’s paintings explore our intricate and complicated relationship with nature. I spoke with John about his origins, his practice, and his upcoming exhibitions – a mid-career retrospective at the Oklahoma Contemporary Museum and a two-person show with Raymond Pettibon in Palm Beach.

Continued in Part 4

PART 4

Nature’s Course: An Interview with John Newsom (Part 3) Read More »

Artist Profile, Exhibition