contemporary art

August Serenade

Event /

August 23rd was a very special Bohemian Wednesday, featuring music and poetry at Nublu.

This Bohemian Wednesday, the August Serenade, was located at Nublu in the East Village, NYC, on August 23, 2023. It was the conclusion of the Bohemian summer series presented by The Trops– nights of art, music, poetry and culture.

Featured Performers

Poetry and music by Haleh Liza Gafori & Shahzad Ismalily

Haleh Liza Gafori is a translator, vocalist, poet, and educator born in New York City of Iranian/Persian descent. Gafori aims to transmit the whirling movement and leaping progression of thought and imagery in Rumi’s poems into the music of contemporary American poetry. Gafori believes his words offer liberating and nourishing perspectives vital to our times, inviting us into deeper levels of compassion and generosity.

Shahzad Ismaily was born in the States to Pakistani parents who emigrated here just before his birth. He grew in a bicultural household, always following a multitude of paths and perusals. He is mostly self-taught as a musician, composer, recording engineer, and producer.

Poetry by Judith Fleishman

Judith Dimitria Fleshman (b. 1958) is a visual artist, performer and writer who lives and works in New York City. In 2003, Abaton Book Company published her text/visual collaboration Looking for Maya and her prose has been published by Tema Celeste, Rogue Magazine and the artist zine The Orifice. Fleishman’s work can be found in many private and public collections, such as The Museum of Modern Art, The NYC Public Library, the Gemente Museum Arnhem, Netherlands, and The Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany.

Poetry by Anthony Haden Guest

Anthony Haden-Guest is a British-American writer, reporter, cartoonist, art critic, poet, and socialite who lives in New York City and London. He is a frequent contributor to major magazines and has had several books published. 

Music by Mehrnam Rastegari, Martin Shamoonpour, John Murchison

M​ehrnam Rastegari is a well-established Iranian musician and film score composer, singer, violinist, and master Kamancheh player. She has been featured in concerts and music festivals worldwide. Her art reflects her interest in the juxtaposition of cultures. She believes that in current times the most valuable arts are those which most people with different languages can feel connected.

Martin Shamoonpour is an autodidactic multi-instrumentalist, composer, actor, and visual artist from Tehran. He was born in 1984 in an Assyrian family. One of the most important works of Martin Shamoonpour in the field of music is the publication of sermon on the mount, Tehransaranieh, 8 Bit and Ear Magazines.

John Murchison is a Brooklyn-based bassist and multi-instrumentalist. He is known for his active role in several musical circles, performing primarily in pop and musical theater, jazz and avant-garde, and traditional musics from the Middle East and Africa.

Poetry by Leah Elimeliah

Leah Kogen-Elimeliah is a poet, essayist, short story and nonfiction writer from Moscow, currently living in New York City. She is an MFA candidate at City College of New York, the Founder of the WordShedNYC Reading Series and an Editorial Associate for Fiction literary magazine. Her writing focuses on identity, language, sexuality and culture. Leah lives in Manhattan with her husband and their children.

Poetry by David Aaron Greenberg

David Aaron Greenberg is an artist who uses multiple modes of expression.His work has been exhibited in various New York City galleries and is in the permanent collection at Stanford University. His critical writing has appeared in Parkett, The Fader, Art in America and Whitehot Magazine. Along with producer David Sisko, he co-founded Disco Pusher, a New York City songwriting and recording duo. Greenberg graduated from Rutgers University, Phi Beta Kappa. He lives in New Jersey and sometimes New York City.

Music by Sandflower

Brooklyn-based Sandflower is an artist with interests as varied as her sound. Drawing on the contrast of the buttoned-up academia of her private school upbringing against New York’s vibrant music scene, the artist cites everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Cindy Sherman, Salvador Dalí to Allen Ginsberg as inspirations for her own blend of rap-infused pop.

DJ Milo

Milo Carney was born and raised in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. He graduated from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in May 2010, with a focus on printmaking and sculpture. Milo is currently working as a preschool teacher at The Saint Ann’s School where he attended elementary and high school. He enjoys cooking, modifying clothing and deejaying during ‘free-choice.’ His art questions the effort of one’s own involvement in a cause and examines the futility of caring as well the difficulty of discernment.

August Serenade Read More »

Event

An Interview with Sante D’Orazio (Part 1)

Interview /

Talisa Soto-Bratt, Photo by Sante D’Orazio, 1992

D’Orazio’s world is populated by supermodels, actors, rock stars, and icons. His +30 year career has seen concurrent themes of eternal youth, stunning beauty, and rock and roll. D’Orazio’s portfolio is a mixture of informal and posed – an uncensored and provocative trademark. Since he first shot for Italian Vogue in 1981, D’Orazio’s work has been published in the likes of Andy Warhol’s Interview, Italian, French and British Vogue, Vanity Fair, and GQ among others.

In part 1 of their 3 part interview, Sante D’Orazio and Alexandra Kosloski discuss the artist’s current projects and the emotional connection behind his photographs.

AK: Can you describe what it feels like to make art? What is that feeling to you?

Sante D’Orazio: It’s beyond the feeling; it’s a way of life. I can’t not make. There’s a sense that if I’m not creating, I’m usually destroying. It’s the two sides, the yin and the yang of creativity. I’ve seen it with so many different artists and so many different fields. You get destructive. If you don’t have an outlet, it hurts. Whether it turns inwards and it becomes depression, or it comes out in so many different forms. Once you find the creative form, it’s healthier, but it’s just about finding it. And you need it. It’s life giving or taking.

Geometric painting by Sante D’Orazio, 2021

AK: What is your current studio practice like?

Sante D’Orazio: It varies. Recently, I had to get spinal surgery, and so I couldn’t take pictures. I couldn’t move around– because when I shoot, I move– I bend, I twist, I turn. I couldn’t do that, so I was painting more. The worse it got, the less I could paint. I had to find something else, so I started writing. I’ve always told stories since I was a kid, so I decided to write those stories down, not thinking of any particular narrative. I just wrote stories down and put them away, and when I had enough of them, I put them in some order and I had a memoir. And so I wrote a memoir during the COVID period and the period where I couldn’t walk.

Then the other thing I’ve been doing lately, which I hadn’t done in 40 years, is editing my archive. Let’s say I was doing ten pages for Vogue: they only used ten pictures, yet I shot maybe a thousand. Now, you don’t throw the others away– they’re all good pictures. Some are even better than the ones that they used, but I had to put them away because I’m onto the next shooting, and then the next one after that. When you were shooting at my pace, you didn’t even have time to know if your pictures were any good. And the only time you knew that they were good is when the client didn’t call, because if they did, that means there was something wrong. They never called you when something was right. So you put them away, and move on. And now, I’m finding gems I never knew I had. I remember the shootings, but I didn’t remember the particular images and oh, my God, I can’t believe it. I have a new me through all those images. So, I’m only up to 1993 and I started eight months ago, so you can imagine how much work I have to do.

AK: That sounds like a huge undertaking.

Sante D’Orazio: It’s daunting.

D’Orazio in his studio

AK: Not only the sheer volume of images to filter through, but emotionally, I imagine it’s exhausting.

Sante D’Orazio: Yeah, it is. The other thing that you have to know is that taking the picture is really only half the job– the other half is recognizing it within the edit. No one can edit for you if you’re looking for yourself on an artistic level. On a commercial level, knock yourself out. But on a personal level, I have to edit. I have to find my picture. I think that’s the only reason a photographer– and I’ll speak for myself– has any great success. 

You have to connect with your subject emotionally. I do. I make a strong connection with my subject. There’s trust, there’s a bond, and there’s a real closeness that happens. If it appears sexy or sensual, it is, but not on a physical level, it’s on an emotional level. And it ends there. But you really care about each other. And when you see each other again, it’s that same trust and love. I just edited some pictures of Talisa Soto– she was a great model– and I sent them to her and she texted me back, she goes “Sante, I always loved working with you.”

AK: That’s so nice to hear.

Christy Turlington by Sante D’Orazio, 1993

Sante D’Orazio: Yeah, it’s so nice. I always felt the same. And it was that bond that I’m talking about. It’s care, a lot of care.

AK: I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that, because there is such a sense of freshness and intimacy in your photographs, even when they’re obviously posed. Do you think that that bond plays a role?

Sante D’Orazio: Big role. Yeah. Guys in general are insensitive when it comes to that, but women seem to see it immediately. That trust stays because I was never a predator. And when they came back, the photographs just picked up again from that moment. And that’s what you see in the pictures.

You see it in their eyes. You just catch the whole feeling as soon as you meet somebody. And then to finish what we were saying, is that you have to then find that moment in their eyes in the edit. The eyes may be looking to the left, and the way they’re looking– is it inquisitive, is it trusting, is it not trusting? You have to be able to recognize that, you have to be sensitive to it. And then that’s the picture.

Continue to Part 2

Part 2

An Interview with Sante D’Orazio (Part 1) Read More »

Interview

An Interview with Miriam Parker

Interview /

Miriam Parker in her studio. Photo by Avery Walker

Miriam Parker is an interdisciplinary artist who uses movement, paint, video art and sculpture/installation. She has been influenced by her experience as a dancer, her study of Buddhism phenomenology, and her connection to the free jazz tradition. Through re-organizational practices, Parker refines her understanding of individuality, outside of traditions built from oppressive ethics. Parker is a Monira Foundation artist-in-residence at Mana Contemporary.

In their interview, Alexandra Kosloski and Miriam Parker discuss the artist’s philosophy and the way it manifests in her art.

AK: What is your studio practice like? 

Miriam Parker: Well, there are two aspects. One is working on installation, which is this practice of translating my process from being a dancer into being someone who is making something outside of her body, not just using the body itself. In this installation practice, I’ve been really steady with this idea of creating a space that itself becomes generative. I first use my body to create something, but then, the aim is for this thing to be the matrix for its own development. For instance, if I draw a line, it’s not just about creating a line that stays there, but the line itself has to be growing. How do I create an installation- in space- that is alive, the same way a dancer is alive, or music? How do I create an installation that animates the space?

For the past year, one of my research areas has been about the frame; what does this frame- that is going to allow for the space to be animated- look like?

I have also replaced the body with paint, still with the same question at the back of my mind– what makes something alive? How can you create life, especially where you make do with the human body? Paint is interesting because it is viscous and it can be a vehicle for energies and flows; and right now I am learning about viscosity and paint and pumps and how much energy it takes to bring the water/paint up to a certain height. I am trying many different things and learning from the numerous mistakes I make in the process. But what is interesting is that while I was working with the paint, I also realized that it was not just about using the paint as a proxy for the body– I slowly realized it was also about how the paint was released– that’s where the magic lies.

In the artist’s studio. Photo by Avery Walker

For instance, as I am speaking right now, the impression you have of me is not just the result of what I am saying, but also of how the words are released from my mouth. When someone is dancing, it’s not just about their movements, but it’s about how they move out of their bodies and towards the onlookers. Well, it’s the same thing with the paint. So now the challenge is understanding how to have each of my sculptures– which is dispensing paint– have its own rhythm and language. 

AK: So there’s that translation between inside and outside of the body, do you define any boundaries between performance and visual art? How?

Miriam Parker, in residency, via @miriamparts on Instagram

Miriam Parker: Technique. You know, the technique of creating a painting is a choreography that’s very different from the technique of creating movement with your body. The choreography of painting, or of architecture, is a different technique. I would say an artist has a vision that usually has a primary actor and then secondary actors, just like in a movie or a play. For me, my primary actor or main character is dance. I’m a dancer, I’ve spent my whole life dancing. The essence of dance is no different than painting or music making, the essence itself is always art. What is different lies in the technique, the craftsmanship, and now that I am working with different mediums, I have to learn about their own idiosyncratic techniques. 

AK: Performance art often physically inserts the artists into the work. Could you tell me a little bit about how you navigate the connection between art and your body when you’re physically in the work? How does that feel? 

Miriam Parker: Like coming home. I have this unsurmountable wish to birth something beautiful into the world. I don’t have children, and creating something that is separate from my body, but that still comes from my body, is really important. When I, as much as I can, physicalize everything I’m doing, I’m in a very, very happy place. Then, when I perform inside the spaces I have created and I activate these spaces with my body, the gestures I improvise are of deepest reverence for the space and for the architecture of that space. Once I understand the space I am in, I then can use my body to rearrange this space– even if it’s not visually rearranged for the audience, in my body I’m placing myself in different positions that help me to view the architecture of the space differently. So, what starts off as finite- an installation- then becomes infinite. It’s like a jungle gym of lines and curves and I get to just play. 

Miriam Parker, Digital Prints, via @miriamparts on Instagram

AK: I’ve noticed that your art is so tactile. You seem so invested physically, and there’s a lot about process and creation. Also, your art often involves collaboration with other artists, including many different kinds of media. What have these experiences with other characters brought to your practice? 

Miriam Parker: The reason why I started fabricating physical spaces and going into what they call “the digital art realm” is because I wanted to play with the power dynamics between performers and creators (of sculptures, installations, etc.). In a solo performance, you usually have a single body, and then you have the space, and if I am the performer I am the number one actor in that space, I am the number one focus. But soon, I felt like I also wanted to honor all the other contributing factors that allow for your eye to see. What if, instead of just applauding the performer, we honored  everything- human and non-human- that enable us to see the object? And that, to me, is very much about the social and political aspects of power living. To me, stepping into the visual art world is very much about– let me honor the ground, the importance of how ground plays on the physical body as the performer moves, how ground, in the end, allows the onlookers to see this physical body in its different aspects. And that’s the type of questions an architect would ask. How does the space design the  movements? And I say that because I didn’t want to be a master or a conductor. I didn’t want to come and say “This is what we’re doing, this is the object I want to create, and this is how you put it into motion.” I want it to move all together, as a generative, co-operative ecosystem. To me, this is very close to the definition of love. 

Working with others is having the joy of bringing in other artists who have a mastery over their own technique, and who have their own vision. People who have spent a lot of time understanding their vocabulary and whatever medium it is. Bringing those together is part of my craft, actually, their masterfulness, their individual creative ways. How do you create space that allows each of these artists to be there in an equal way, without one being more important than the other? That’s my interest in collaboration, which is honoring others without taking away from their voice, which is very challenging. 

AK: How has your study of Buddhism phenomenology influenced you? 

Miriam Parker: Well, everything I’m saying is birthed from that philosophy. One of the core ideas and concepts that is brought up through Buddhism is the idea of interdependence. The idea is that nothing arises independently, there is always something that is lending itself for something to happen. The question is then– how can I be a part of this collaborative process? How do I honor this creative nature that we are all a part of ? The cooperative, interdependent nature of the life we are living is a key element of Buddhism thought that I am trying to bring into my artistic practice. The goal, in other words, is to break down the misconceptions of how we assume things work (in this case, that things can work independently from each other). So my whole practice comes from my Buddhist philosophy studies, it’s the basis of everything.

Miriam Parker, MAYPOLE to the sun & The Minotaur’s daughter by Eleni Giannopoulou & Benjamin Craig, via @miriamparts on Instagram

AK: What current projects are you working on? 

Miriam Parker: Great question. I’ve been working on something called “Heart Patterns” for two years. “Heart Patterns” is based on the idea I was developing earlier of creating an installation that is endowed with a sense of life. In the past, I have created installations in which life was there because my body was there. And I really had this urge to do that without my body. So I’m experimenting with two main elements. One is paint flow, the other is sound. In the end, the whole flow of paint and the receiving of the paint on different canvases and wells will be made sonic. And then this other project, which is so dear to my heart, is a film that revolves around a specific image–  the one that stands in the middle of the fire. There is a Buddhist concept called “Bodhisattva”. And a Bodhisattva is somebody who, when they see/encounter suffering, do not run away. A Bodhisattva is one who trains to stand in the center of the fire. And it’s through standing in that center that they transcend by not being afraid of pain. There was an image that I found from the Brooklyn Museum, that is the image that I’m trying to embody and use as the center of this film, a real tribute to wisdom. It is about the fire and the Phoenix and ash and all of these iconic symbols of empowerment. 

In the artist’s studio. Photo by Avery Walker

As a side comment– we go to museums and look at these relics and most of them are actually meant for really high spiritual practice. Relics are meant to help us evolve. And looking at them in the context of the way  we usually see them shown, does not do that. So I really would like this film to be shown in a museum setting as a challenge. Imagine a show about wisdom. How would you curate that so that people actually learn about transcendence? And not just history. 

An Interview with Miriam Parker Read More »

Interview

Eroica Variations No. 4

Exhibition /

Photo by David Sisko

The Trops takes pride in standing behind emerging artists, whom you may not have heard of- yet- but you should, and likely soon will. By naming this survey after the Beethoven compositions we are putting forth a bold claim that these voices are heroically breaking through as a force to be reckoned with on the world stage.

Featuring:

Ben Ruhe, Nick Farhi, Rene Saheb, Armando Nin, Rawnak Rahman, Vahakn Arslanian, Jerami Dean Goodwin, David Aaron Greenberg, Conrad de Kwiatkowski

July 27

The last Bohemian Thursday in July was a grand finale. Eroica Variations featured an impressive line up of artists.

The night featured local Nuyorican artist Natalia L Diaz-Jackson and her handmade whimsical collection of soft sculpture statues, as well as music by David Aaron Greenberg, improvisational jazz by Daniel Carter and Stephon Alexander, Djembe by Khadim Sene, and a film screening by Nemo Librizzi.

Photo by David Sisko

Natalia L. Diaz-Jackson’s art of cloth doll making is a powerful way of continuing family traditions and storytelling, passed through generations to an artist who honors her family with great imagination, color and new life. Her dolls are tall, nearly childhood life-sized, with whimsical features such as unicorns and beaks.

Daniel Carter Carter is a legendary improvisational “free jazz” musician, combining saxophone, flute, clarinet, and trumpet in his performances. He performed in collaboration with Stephon Alexander, a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, musician and author.

David Aaron Greenberg is an artist who uses multiple modes of expression. Along with producer David Sisko, he co-founded Disco Pusher, a New York City songwriting and recording duo.

A native New Yorker, Nemo Librizzi has been a steadfast bohemian in the NYC arts scene for his whole life. From the cradle to today, Nemo has creative endeavors across diverse genres of artistry and craftsmanship. Creating and collaborating in film, literature, radio, and fine arts, Nemo expresses a renaissance of the underground.

This event was sponsored by Brilliant Mistake and JuneShine. The Trops is very pleased to have offered Brilliant Mistake’s sauvignon blanc as well as Juneshine’s hard kombucha and tequila margaritas.

Photo by David Sisko

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Exhibition

An Interview with David Aaron Greenberg (Part 3)

Interview /

David Aaron Greenberg in his studio

Photo by Pedro Angel Serrano

David Aaron Greenberg is an artist who uses multiple modes of expression. ​His work has been exhibited in various New York City galleries and is in the permanent collection at Stanford University.​ His critical writing has appeared in Parkett, The Fader, Art in America and Whitehot Magazine. ​Along with producer David Sisko, he co-founded Disco Pusher, a New York City songwriting and recording duo. Greenberg graduated from Rutgers University, Phi Beta Kappa. He lives in New Jersey and sometimes New York City.

In the final installment of their 3 part interview, Alexandra Kosloski and David Aaron Greenberg discuss Road Tripping, his project with The Trops, and the inspiration behind it.

Continued from Part 2

Part 2

AK: How would you describe the local art scene in New Jersey? 

David Aaron Greenberg: In Asbury, the literary scene is really vibrant, this “New Jersey Poetry Renaissance” that they call it. The music and the poetry overlap, but not so much with the visuals. It used to be the eighties and nineties artists were in bands, and bands had artists and there was this cross-pollination. And I wish there was more of that. 

In terms of the visual, there’s little pockets in New Jersey, it’s very dispersed. You know, there’s real people around me. And I’ve seen young friends of mine that are in Philadelphia, where there’s definitely giant buildings where there’s like 300 other artists, and I would just find that oppressive. I mean, it’s great if you’re young or if you like that, but I don’t want to be around other artists. I want to be around real people. There are people that come into my studio that I meet on the street, literally, and then pose for me. I just recently met a gas attendant at the Wawa, and he came in here. I mean, when they walk in here, their opinion is not some bullshit. They really tell you what they think of your art. They don’t have any preconceived notions. They’re not angling for something. 

David Aaron Greenberg

Vibing, 2023

I remember years ago the Italian painter Sandro Chia said, “The greatest way to judge the value of a painting is to just leave it out with the trash and see what happens to it.” Divorced of the context of the gallery or in a museum, if you saw that fucking shit on the street, what would you do? Would you say that’s really interesting or that’s a piece of crap? And I think it’s a really wonderful concept. Like, I sometimes leave my paintings outside to dry, and people ride by and they go, “Oh, that’s really nice.” Leaning up against the wall, drying in the sun outside of the apartment building. You’re not living in the real world if you’re completely surrounded by artists and everything that you do is like: you go to openings, you go to dinner with artists, you vacation with artists and you go to the Hamptons. It’s like you’re living a lifestyle instead of actually making art, right? 

AK: You could get out of touch with most viewers. 

David Aaron Greenberg: With reality. Just like, dealing with everyday life, the artist is not supposed to be removed from society completely. As Walt Whitman said, he was “one of the roughs”. That’s what made his poetry so great. He was amongst the people. And New Jersey makes you real, no matter what. People do not give a fuck here. 

AK: But that’s a really beautiful thing that you were saying. Road Tripping, the project you’re doing with The Trops, you’re not displaying it in a white box, you’re displaying it in the community. 

Photo of the artist’s studio

David Aaron Greenberg: Yeah. I’ve talked to the owners of the spaces and had their approval to put it up. So you’re talking with real people that are part of the community that want to encourage art and music and all that. What I really love about The Trops is that it’s very simple, but it’s very revolutionary. It’s like it’s got one foot in the established art world, and it’s got one foot in the real world. And it needs to be in both of those places. And that’s what’s so great about it. To use the technology of apps to to do something that’s not just about making money, but really being part of a community. And there’s a big difference in experiencing something in real time than it is online. I mean, we all love looking at people’s art on Instagram and we love to take videos, but you can’t experience a painting unless you’re standing in front of it. I just recently saw The Cure. I’ve never seen them. And there is something about a live experience, whether it’s music, art, poetry, reading. It’s life, it’s real. I think this young generation right now is relating to that because they lived through COVID. They interact with people and have cravings for real things, real books. 

AK: Real connection. 

David Aaron Greenberg: You can see real experience. These kids sniff out when they’re being manipulated and being set up.

AK: Can you tell me a little bit of the inspiration behind Road Tripping?

David Aaron Greenberg: I tried to place paintings that seem to somehow relate to the space. It was really easy for the painting in the Scarlet Reserve Room, which is a smoking club. That particular painting I had been painting for a while. I started it on acid. It’s probably the last time I’ll ever do acid because it was just too intense. That was like two years ago. And then the friend of mine– that it was based on– was in the studio, and I said, “Oh, let me pull this out. Remember this experience?” But it was interesting, there was something not right about it. Like, the dimensions were all weird. It was trippy, you know, it was started on acid. And I said, “Let me try to fix this, stand here”. And he’s like, “The only way I can deal with this is if I smoke.” There was something missing in this painting, and he started to light the joint, and I was like “That’s it.” And it became a still life of the actual joint that he rolled. And so, the fact that a painting of mine is in a store arena in an establishment that I totally love, and if it helps promote the place, awesome, because I want this place to thrive. Not only are people smoking weed there, but the atmosphere is amazing. People read poetry and it’s just really relaxing. 

Now, The Asbury Park Roastery, that’s a strange little painting. It seems like somebody who needs a cup of coffee.

AK: Yeah, it’s a little moody.

David Aaron Greenberg

Black Eye, 2023

David Aaron Greenberg: Exactly. And Keyport Funhouse, that place is like your older sister’s best friend’s bedroom exploded, and the coolest shit is there. And you’re like, “Wow”. It’s like when you’re young and there’s an older girl and she lets you in her room. It’s a big deal. You’re like, “Wow, this is how girls live?” You know? It’s not a boy’s room. It feels like that when you walk in. It’s a great vibe, and what I put in there is a very small, very beautiful little portrait of the singer Sandflower, who I’ve written with for like ten years now. And I wanted the painting to have the feel of one of those tiny little royal portraits that you see. So it’s the oil is really heavily built up and it’s got tons of varnish on it. And you can sit on a couch and get coffee or homemade lemonade and just lounge in there, and the painting just feels natural. It’s glamorous and beautiful and feminine, and I love it. The other painting I have is in New Brunswick, which is in the George Street Co-op, which is a great place.

AK: I love the George Street Co-op.

David Aaron Greenberg: I don’t remember a time that it wasn’t there. It was such a big deal to actually have a painting in there. I didn’t know if they would agree to it. And the manager was just like, “Yeah, let’s put it up right now”. That one is called “Pop Smoke”. It’s a strange little painting, it kinda looks like the figure is in the smoke. I’ve been going there since I was in high school in the eighties. They have an open mic that they’ve been doing for years in various forms. And it’s a great little thing. It’s a great place to try a new song, for me. It gets you out of your space.

I didn’t make any of these paintings with the idea that they would wind up in these establishments, but the fact that they work in them is really rewarding. At the end of the day, as Stephen Torton says, “We are just all decorators in one form or another”. You know, it’s part of the furniture. And also the notion that they’re not all in one place, that you could literally take a road trip. You can start, let’s say, in New Brunswick and go to Red Bank, then go to Asbury, go to Keyport, come back. That’s awesome, go to the beach, get some coffee, smoke weed. I think it’s cool.

AK: It’s a whole journey. Yeah.

David Aaron Greenberg: It’s a great thing. Ultimately, even if it’s the landscapes that I do, the portraits, they’re all a way to elevate the everyday, every day. People are beautiful. The “road tripping” aspect is pretty funny, too. People travel all around the world and forget about their own backyard. The beauty in the everyday.

An Interview with David Aaron Greenberg (Part 3) Read More »

Interview

Eroica Variations No. 1

Exhibition /

The Trops takes pride in standing behind emerging artists, whom you may not have heard of- yet- but you should, and likely soon will. By naming this survey after the Beethoven compositions we are putting forth a bold claim that these voices are heroically breaking through as a force to be reckoned with on the world stage.

Featuring:

Ben Ruhe, Nick Farhi, Rene Saheb, Armando Nin, Rawnak Rahman, Vahakn Arslanian, Jerami Dean Goodwin, David Aaron Greenberg, Conrad de Kwiatkowski

July 7

Opening night of Eroica Variations featured live performances by Shaheen Malick, Zain Lokhandwalla, and RWM, as well as Kanami Kusajima, who combines dancing and painting in a unique way, using Sumi ink, a traditional mixture made from soot.

Photos by Adrian Crispin

Eroica Variations No. 1 Read More »

Exhibition

An Interview with David Aaron Greenberg (Part 1)

Interview /

The artist’s studio

Photo courtesy of David Aaron Greenberg

David Aaron Greenberg is an artist who uses multiple modes of expression. ​His work has been exhibited in various New York City galleries and is in the permanent collection at Stanford University.​ His critical writing has appeared in Parkett, The Fader, Art in America and Whitehot Magazine. ​Along with producer David Sisko, he co-founded Disco Pusher, a New York City songwriting and recording duo. Greenberg graduated from Rutgers University, Phi Beta Kappa. He lives in New Jersey and sometimes New York City.

In part 1 of their 3 part interview, Alexandra Kosloski and David Aaron Greenberg discuss his early approach to painting and his love for poetry.

David Aaron Greenberg: In the last three years, I’ve kept my guitar out of my studio. That was a big, important thing for me to do, to not have the guitar in the painting studio.

AK: Why?

David Aaron Greenberg: I finally found that it wasn’t appropriate. There’s no place for the guitar in there, just like there’s no place for an easel in the recording studio. I needed to do that in order to keep my head together because I’m not 25 anymore and living at the Chelsea Hotel. I’ve got to separate things. Keeps the mental craziness in my head in check. Do you mind if I draw you while we do this?

AK: I don’t mind.

David Aaron Greenberg: It’s easier for me.

AK: So you’re an interdisciplinary artist including painting, music, writing… Anything else?.

David Aaron Greenberg: “Include.” No, I just do them. I include everybody. All inclusive. I’m not exclusive. I cheat on myself. I’m in an open relationship with myself.

AK: But do they overlap at all? Do they inspire each other?

David Aaron Greenberg: I have a moleskine matte black sketchbook without lines. It’s like the most basic, nondescript moleskin notebook that you can have and within that is everything. I’ve got stacks of them from the years. If I want to make a drawing into a painting, I pull out the drawings, stick it on the wall next to the painting and go, “Okay, what else do I do?”. Music– if I need some lyrics, I steal from my poems. I steal all the best lines from the poems and put them in. I steal from myself and throw them into songs.

David Aaron Greenberg during the interview

AK: So you have this sketchbook which is basically a physical manifestation of all your inspiration.

David Aaron Greenberg: Yeah, but at the same time it’s like a shorthand to explain what I do. I mean, there’s other stuff I do, like I write essays and I write art criticism. So I just live my life. I don’t really know what I’m doing day to day, but it’s nice to have an excuse to pretend that I’m a normal person. So I try to keep studio hours Monday through Friday 1 to 4. Those are my office hours like I’m a psychiatrist. I might get there before one, and that’s a good day. I might get there after one, and it’s like I’m rushing around. I might not get there at all. But that’s the painting, you know? It took me my whole life to take myself seriously as a painter. I never did, unfortunately. Or not unfortunately, it was what it was.

AK: How did you first approach painting?

David Aaron Greenberg: I think I became a self-aware artist when I was 17 because I had been to Israel for the whole summer– 1988. And I had taken pictures, like you do as a tourist, and a Jew, and you’re in Israel. I didn’t take any pictures of people. I was not interested in people. I was interested in myself and my girlfriend who broke up with me the day before we were supposed to leave. And I had to be on the trip with her the whole time. So there’s misery for you. Yeah. And I had to watch her screw some guy and rub it in my face the whole time. Ah, the eighties. To be young and in a John Hughes film that didn’t exist.

So, the thing that made me aware was I don’t think I drew a picture when I was in Israel. I had a journal that I kept, and I was writing lyrics and diary entries and poems. When I got back from Israel, I had all these pictures and I did these giant watercolors. And then I was like, “Oh, I get it”. You come back to your studio with the source material. But I was still so much more interested in being a poet or a rock star. Then I was like, “Fuck it”. I loved painting but I would always do it in spurts. Like, I’d do a year’s worth of paintings in a weekend. But it took me my whole life to realize that I was painting those paintings in my mind and when I was taking photos as reference, and then I had to digest it. It took me a long time to realize that.

And I was around a lot of painters, and saw their practice, and I knew these things intellectually that, God, it’s just like a day to day job. You got to wake up, paint until you’re done, and then you go home. Yeah. Like a job. I was just holding on to this romantic notion that it was this inspired moment of creation and not, as de Kooning said, 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. Yeah, which it is, pretty much. That 10% inspiration is what you work so hard to get. I wrote in a song, “Why do I work so hard to play?” Because you do. You work so hard just to be able to play. And then the worst is when you get there and everything’s great; the studio’s all ready to go, I have an hour, two, three hours to just paint. I even turn the music off. And then nothing happens. And then you feel horrible.

Installation shot of David Aaron Greenberg’s work at Eroica Variations

AK: What do you mean “nothing happens”?

David Aaron Greenberg: Literally, nothing happens. No inspiration, no nothing. I got nothing. That’s the worst, because it’s like, “Well, now what?” That’s why I like to have at least, like, three big ones and, like, twenty little ones going on all at the same time because at least then I have something to do. Because then it’s not that moment of like, “Here’s a blank canvas– start.”

AK: It’s hard sometimes.

David Aaron Greenberg: It’s not that it’s hard. It’s just that sometimes you’re paralyzed, and that’s why accidents are great. Like, literally, “Oh, shit. I dropped some paint on this. Well, that’s awesome. So let’s continue”. And that’s how I start all my paintings. This art dealer John Cheim told me at some point– just buy pre-stretched canvas that was already primed, stop with the raw canvas, enough already. And it freed me. Because he wasn’t an artist. He tried to be an artist and became an art dealer, you know, so a failed painter or whatever. He just said he realized that there was enough shit in the world that was better than his shit. So he’d much rather help people that were making good stuff, instead of making mediocre stuff. I don’t think that way. Maybe I’m just full of myself. I kind of have this theory that a painter, when they stand in front of a blank canvas, they have the history of the world and everything that came before, behind them. And it’s like, let’s dive into the abyss, because I know everything there is to know, because there’s not that much to know. You can just pick what you need to know. Etruscans, Middle Kingdom, Old Kingdom, line drawings, Coptic vases. Like, what are we going to do today?

AK: But that’s assuming that you have exposure to all that.

David Aaron Greenberg: Art history? Well, that’s the first step. Most artists don’t know their art history from anything. But that’s probably why I don’t know what I am. I’m an artist, a poet, singer, songwriter, visual artist, essayist. I mean, there’s so many labels. In the Renaissance they just said, “You’re an artist”, and you were expected to do all that other stuff. Yeah, Michelangelo wrote poems. Leonardo made scientific drawings and did dissections and no one said, “don’t do that”. It’s very American to say, stay in your lane.

AK: There’s more incentive to become a specialized artist and it’s the more popular method. So what motivates you to remain interdisciplinary? But I get the feeling you don’t like the word interdisciplinary.

David Aaron Greenberg: No, it’s fine. I didn’t want to use the word interdisciplinary because I find it unbearably hard to pronounce. I said that I use various modes of… Yeah, interdisciplinary. It sounds so formal and antiseptic.

AK: So why do you stay that way?

David Aaron Greenberg: Because as much as I try to just do one thing, I can’t help myself. I used to say for a long time, “Hi, I’m David Aaron Greenberg. I’m a recovering poet. It’s been 48 hours since my last poem.” I’ve tried to stop writing poems. I didn’t want to write. I didn’t want to be a poet. I kind of felt like I was obliged to be a poet by Allen Ginsberg who insisted upon it.

AK: Could you explain his influence on you?

David Aaron Greenberg

Photo by Allen Ginsberg

Collection of National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

David Aaron Greenberg: Around 1987, I really found that I was like… I don’t want to say influenced. Inspired. I was profoundly connected to Walt Whitman. It was beyond just liking his poem or reading his poems. I felt connected to him in some way, and that brought up feelings of myself, my identity, my sexuality, my very existence, my everything, the universe, the cosmos. As he would say, “Do I contradict myself? Very well. I am vast, I contain multitudes”. And so anything that had to do with Walt Whitman, I was interested. So PBS had a Walt Whitman documentary. And in the documentary, there was Allen Ginsberg, poet, and the name sounded vaguely familiar. And he’s talking about what? Walt Whitman. And he seems to really be connected to him, too. Like, “Oh, wow, I’m not the only crazy who thinks that they know Walt Whitman”. And so I’m like, “Who’s this Allen Ginsberg dude?”. So I went to the library in East Brunswick, New Jersey, and I said, okay, Ginsberg poetry. And I took out whatever I could find. I opened it up and then I felt paranoid. So I went to the lake outside past the parking lot and I started reading them and it felt subversive. I shouldn’t be reading this like, is this illegal? I was hiding the book. I read a couple of short poems and I had this kind of deja vu into the future. Does that make sense?

AK: Like a premonition?

David Aaron Greenberg: Yeah, but how could you feel something that hadn’t happened? It was almost like it had already happened and I was going to relive it. And what I had was a visual of an old man in front of me, and me, carrying plastic bags from the grocery going up a staircase and helping him get up to the staircase. And then I felt this enormous sharp pain and heaviness on my chest, almost like heartache. And it wouldn’t go away. It didn’t leave me for days and then those days turned into years. And then about two and a half years later, I saw him read at the Continental Divide. He was singing Songs of Innocence and Experience that he had set to music. And then he read some poems. I don’t remember what the poems were, but he was singing. “Singing” really is an interesting thing to call it, but he was trying to sing and he had a guitar player with him. He was okay. And then I talked to him very briefly. He signed my copy of Howl. I sensed that there was something going on between the two of us. That was December, 1989. By December, 1990 I was on that same stage and I was playing guitar with him. And I gave him poems, and he read them and made corrections or suggestions. And then it was like I was writing poems to please him in a weird way. When I met the poet Gregory Corso, who I also admired, he pulled me aside and said, “Don’t let that man fuck with your poetry”.

AK: Why? Because you wanted to impress him?

David Aaron Greenberg: Like, when you have a professor or a teacher that you really like and you want to do well, not just for yourself, but because they taught you, so you want to show them that you learned. It’s a weird thing. I don’t know. I think it’s just a human thing. The Buddhists would say that the students should surpass the master. Therefore, if the student doesn’t surpass the master, the master is no good. But I still wanted to paint all that time. But I wasn’t in art school. I didn’t go to art school. I had art lessons at Rutgers when I was a little, little kid. I did this special program.

AK: They still do that.

David Aaron Greenberg: Oh, really? And I learned how to do everything. And then when I was in elementary school, I had this teacher, Mrs. Jochnowitz, who just passed away this year. And she would take like two or three students that she thought were the prize, but she ignored everybody else. And then she would have us come in during recess like two or three times in the week. But what we did was learn batik and papier maché and oil sticks, and she just taught us everything. So it’s like why should I go to art school when I already knew how to do all this stuff? I wanted to study literature and art history. I think studying art history is much better. You can’t teach somebody to be an artist. You can’t teach somebody to be a writer. You either are or you aren’t. You can show them great examples, and that’s about it. Now, I regret that I didn’t go to art school because there’s shit that I have to call my young friends like, “How do I do this? Can I mix the linseed?” You know, like, I don’t know certain things that people learn in their first year.

AK: You know, there’s a hotline for painting where you can call a chemist.

David Aaron Greenberg: That just proves my point, that I probably should have went to art school. I have a studio that’s like a spitting distance from Rutgers campus. And you’re a Mason Gross grad, right? So, yeah, I just need Mason Gross grads around me telling me what to do.

AK: They taught us well.

David Aaron Greenberg: It’s a good art school. 

Continue to Part 2

Part 2

An Interview with David Aaron Greenberg (Part 1) Read More »

Interview
Eroica Variations

EROICA VARIATIONS, July 2023

Exhibition /

431 E 6th St, NYC

WED-SAT 12-5pm & by appointment

The Trops takes pride in standing behind emerging artists, whom you may not have heard of- yet- but you should, and likely soon will. By naming this survey after the Beethoven compositions we are putting forth a bold claim that these voices are heroically breaking through as a force to be reckoned with on the world stage.

Featuring:

Ben Ruhe, Nick Farhi, Rene Saheb, Armando Nin, Rawnak Rahman, Vahakn Arslanian,  Jerami Dean Goodwin, David Aaron Greenberg, Conrad de Kwiatkowski

Vahakn Arslanian (b. 1975, Antwerp, Belgium) Having relocated with his family to New York City as an infant, Vahakn Arslanian is fascinated and inspired by roaring jet engine planes, explosives, luminous light bulbs and flickering candlelight. He has been nearly deaf since birth, his only sense of noise is from that which is thundering to the ears, for him, a glimpse at the vibrational frequency of sound. Along with his fascination with planes comes birds. Where this biomimetic pair have in common, Arslansian mends the two, such as his rough paintings and drawings of plane wings with bird feathers. He takes much of his work and frames them in found objects such as vintage plane windows, often broken and cracked.

Vahakn Arslanian 

Fat Bird

Oil on Canvas 

27 ¾ in x 35 ½ in 

2008 

Armando Nin Born and raised in New York, Armando Nin is a painter, photographer, and mixed media artist. His photography work captures the gritty extremities of his surroundings in the City starting in the mid 2000s into present day, and he often uses unconventional materials in his paintings and prefabrications.


Armando Nin

Coreana Chain No.

Unframed Butane Scorched Marine-grade Vinyl 

24in x 36in 

2022

David Aaron Greenberg is an artist who uses multiple modes of expression.​His work has been exhibited in various New York City galleries and is in the permanent collection at Stanford University.​His critical writing has appeared in Parkett, The Fader, Art in America and Whitehot Magazine.​Along with producer David Sisko, he co-founded Disco Pusher, a New York City songwriting and recording duo. Greenberg graduated from Rutgers University, Phi Beta Kappa. He lives in New Jersey and sometimes New York City.


David Aaron Greenberg

NP 

40in x 30in 

Oil on Canvas

2023

Rawnak Rahman Kantha Collection embodies her personal journey of navigating the delicate balance between upholding and challenging traditional Bangladeshi culture. She aims to disrupt and spark discussions around Bangladeshi traditions.


Rawnak Rahman 

“বু” / “bu”

48” x 48”

Mixed media on wood

2023

Ben Ruhe translates interdimensional beings and textures into his distinct figurative language, integrating soulful whimsicality into his mixed media artworks, 

Ben Ruhe

Untitled (captain)

Acrylic Polymer, Ink and Matte Acrylic Medium on Archival paper

14in x 11in

2023

Jerami Dean Goodwin moved to New York City in 2008. Also known as “STAINO”, his graffiti moniker, Jerami attained global notoriety for his outdoor works, recently painting murals in New York City, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Peekskill. Putting Out Fires is a series of paintings representing an exploration of new application processes, such as the use of a fire extinguisher. 

Jerami Dean Goodwin

Untitled #1 (White)

Acrylic on canvas

48 x 60 inches

Rene Saheb was born in Tehran, Iran and frequently engages allegory to comment on the social and philosophical phenomenons of life. Saheb received her Bachelor of Art in Professional Design at Limkokwing University of Creative Technology.

Rene Saheb

The Fallen Birds 1

Discarded Ceramic Pieces, paint and Glaze 

2023

EROICA VARIATIONS, July 2023 Read More »

Exhibition

Bohemian Wednesdays, June 2023

Exhibition /

Kanami Kusajima

Photo by Adrian Crispin, 2023

The Trops presents Bohemian Wednesdays as a cross-genre improvisation and cultural exchange existing at the intersection of community and culture. Exhibiting the diverse talents of NYC, this year’s summer series was hosted by Manero’s on Mulberry, featuring music, dance, film, painting, sculpture, and everything in between. Interactive cultural density fuels the spirit of Bohemian Wednesday events, each representing the vibrant celebration of a contemporary view towards Art.

June 14

The first evening of the summer series featured performances by Senegalese musicians Daniel Carter, Thio Afia, Khadim Sene. Carter is an improvisational “free jazz” musician, combining saxophone, flute, clarinet, and trumpet in his performances, while Afia is a vocalist and drummer based in NYC.

June 14, 2023

Photos by Adrian Crispin

Daniel Carter, Thio Afia, Khadim Sene

June 21

The following Bohemian Wednesday included a screening by Charlie Ahearn, performance art by Kanami Kusajima, improvisational jazz by Daniel Carter, and Cuban music by Singo, Jorge Bringas and Daniel Odria.

Charlie Ahearn

Photos by Adrian Crispin

Filmmaker Charlie Ahearn, known for his documentary “Wild Style”, screened a series of Hip Hop short films.

Kanami Kusajima

Photos by Adrian Crispin

Kanami Kusajima is a dancer orignally from Japan who now lives and works in New York City. Kusajima combines dancing and painting in a unique way, using Sumi ink, a traditional mixture made from soot. She drenches her bare hands and feet and dances over a white canvas, regularly performing for the public at Washington Square Park.

Singo, Jorge Bringas and Daniel Odria

Together, Singo, a Pianist specializing in the ” Tumbáo ” method, Jorge Bringas is a musician who plays bass, and percussion and vocalist Daniel Odria formed a Cuban band, with a sound that showcased the rich musical heritage of Cuba.

June 28

The final Bohemian Wednesday in June was a night to remember, featuring music by Daniel Carter and Persian musicians Mehram Rastegari and Mehdi Darvishi. Rastegari plays the Kamancheh and the Violin, and Mehdi Darvishi focuses on percussion. In addition, the event included a screening of short films by celebrated Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, curated by fellow filmmaker Gabe Klinger.

Photos by Adrian Crispin

The Trops Mobile Application

Bohemian Wednesdays featured the launch of the anticipated The Trops mobile app!
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Bohemian Wednesdays, June 2023 Read More »

Exhibition

An Interview With Barron Claiborne (Part 3)

Exhibition /

Barron Claiborne

Rope

2001

Born and raised in Boston, Barron Claiborne moved to New York City in 1989 assisting photography legends such as Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, and Gordon Parks. Nathalie Martin spoke with Barron about what informs his practice, the limits and reaches of photography, and the importance of constantly creating. Claiborne reflects on self-taught mastery and how his extremely honest, critical, yet sensitive eye has landed him in permanent collections all over the world, including the Polaroid Museum Cambridge, the Brooklyn Museum, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and MoCADA.

Continued from Part 2

Part 2

NM: Are you of the opinion that the work needs another set of eyes for it to be finished?

 

Barron Claiborne: I think to a point. Yeah, I think so. I think it’s good to see how other people interpret your work, because usually it’s completely different than you.

 

NM: Do you think the viewer completes the work, or that the work is made, finished, and then shown?

 

Barron Claiborne: No, I think the viewer has their own opinion of the work. It matters what I thought of the work when I was making it. It’s great to hear other people’s opinions. That’s part of being an artist– I don’t mind that. If you hate my work, I don’t care, somebody else likes it. But at least tell me why you hate it. And who are you to criticize me when I’m doing some shit you can’t do?

 

NM: Well, totally.

Barron Claiborne: That’s the problem. When I see dudes doing crazy shit– sometimes I like to watch when people are snowboarding, doing all kinds of crazy shit, jumping out buildings with no parachutes–I’m not interested in doing it. But I still think it’s amazing that they do it. I think it’s amazing. When I see those dudes on snowboards and they’re doing like 720’s and all kinds of shit, that’s just fucking amazing. I’m not interested in doing it, but I would never want them to stop doing it. I would never want somebody to stop them from doing it. Because it’s part of the human spirit. They’re willing to risk it all. Dude, some of that shit is crazy. You see kids doing handstands in a chair on a cliff. I think it’s amazing that they want to challenge their physical body that much, that they’re doing this crazy shit, you know? It’s amazing.

 

NM: Definitely. It’s a form of art.

Barron Claiborne: Right, exactly. I think all that stuff is cool. I don’t think it’s dumb. They’re doing it for a reason. And it also lets you know all the different parts of the human spirit, like what humans are capable of. And that’s what’s amazing about that shit. It just shows you what humans are capable of.

NM: That’s true. Do you like discourse about your work?

 

Barron Claiborne: I don’t really like to talk about it. It’s visual, so what’s the point? That’s how I feel. It’s visual. You should interpret it yourself. It’s better if I don’t give you an interpretation. You can guess, you can make up your own answer, and then I find out shit about my work. You give something back to me.

 

NM: Totally.

 

Barron Claiborne: Other people tell you things that you never saw in it. You’ll be like, “Oh shit, I never thought about that.”

 

NM: So the meaning of your work changes?

 

Barron Claiborne: Sure. To different people.

Barron Claiborne

Long Life with Cigarette (Sierra Leone)

2007

NM: But even to you, I mean. When you hear other people’s discoveries about your work.

 

Barron Claiborne: Over time, yeah. Sometimes I’ll do photos and I never even look at them. And then I’ll look at them like, you know, five years later, and I’ll be like, “Wow, these are fucking nice.” But when I did them, I thought they were only okay. But then you start seeing ones and you’re like, “Oh shit, that’s nice.” Because you were at a different time. You were different then. But a lot of my photos I do now, I did them in childhood, I just have better equipment, and I know the techniques, how to light the camera, so I can do them better than I did when I was 10 or 11.

 

NM: Well, because your work too is aesthetically timeless, I feel like you can come back to it, you can return, and things are changing. Some things might work even better now than they did five years ago.

 

Barron Claiborne: Right. Exactly.

 

NM: How do you prefer your work to be shown? Do you like galleries, museums?

 

Barron Claiborne: No, galleries seem sterile to me. Museums too.

 

NM: I think in the work, the patterns and colors you play around with, shouldn’t be presented in a sterile environment.

 

Barron Claiborne: Yeah, I don’t like it. I saw a photo exhibit I really liked in Europe; it was in a castle. The guys’ photos were all in the castle, in the environment of this beautiful museum, and I thought that was pretty cool because it was all different shit. It was fucking weird. I thought that was cool to outfit a whole place with your work. That was different. But yeah, galleries are very sterile. And I was a commercial photographer, so I’m used to fighting with other photographers, bringing in your portfolio– like, yeah, I could go to fucking Yale and then come back big because I can theorize a picture of a chair. I could do that before I went to Yale. But that appeals to authority. People want that stuff because if you went to Yale, you must be better than most people. But in photography, that doesn’t really work.

 

NM: Really? Are you saying that photography is a specific medium you don’t need school or “formal training” for?

 

Barron Claiborne: I guess for some people. I didn’t go to school for that. I mean, nobody stops you from taking pictures, you just buy a camera and you fucking take pictures. And I think sometimes when you don’t know the rules, it’s better. Because when I moved to New York, I didn’t know there were rules, you know?

Barron Claiborne

Bjork With Heart

1998

NM: When you don’t know the rules it’s better? Don’t you think you should know the rules, so you can break them?  

 

Barron Claiborne: No! Because you’ll still be bound by the rules. Even though you think you’re breaking them, you’re still bound by them– as opposed to not knowing the rules at all, so you don’t care. I looked in the magazines that I liked the most, and then I started going to them with my portfolio, but I didn’t have any money. I had a bunch of photos in a photo box, that’s how we used to do it if you were broke. I was teaching kids and then came back to New York, and I had like seven boxes of shit. I was like, “Oh, I got to stop being a teacher and I got to fucking do some shit with this.” So then I printed a bunch of pictures over a couple of months, put them in boxes because I couldn’t afford the book things, and I started bringing them around. 

I went to the New York Times because I always liked it. I was in front of the building, and I looked inside to see the number of the photo editor, and I saw it was Kathy Ryan, and her number was there. I called her, and said, “Hi, my name is Barron, I have a bunch of photos that I’d like to show you.” And she was like, “Yeah, but this isn’t how we do things, you drop it off on Wednesday,” and I’m like, “Look, I’m right underneath you, in the building. I’ll drop it off because I know you must go to lunch,” whatever. And she says okay and tells me to come up. And I went up there and I showed her the box of photos and she gave me a job the next day.

And it was because I didn’t know any better. Everybody else to this day is like, “How the fuck did you get to shoot with the New York Times?” And I just called her from below and no one believes me. They refuse to believe. But I didn’t know the rules, so I was like, fuck it, I’ll call her, her numbers right there. She’s either going to say no, or yes. And she said yes. And I went up there. At the time I looked super young, and she was weirded out by my age when she saw me, but then I showed her the photos and they were beautiful pictures of the kids that I taught photography to at camp. So then she was like, “Wow, these are really beautiful.” And she gave me a job.

 NM: Wow. Just putting yourself out there.

 

Barron Claiborne: Yeah, I just didn’t give a fuck, right. Because if I would have known when the right day was to drop my stuff off, or thought they were never going to take me, all this shit– I didn’t give a fuck. And that’s how I got a lot of things. I just went to them.

 

NM: Where did that self-confidence come from?

 

Barron Claiborne: I have no idea. Hungry. I was fucking hungry, dude. When I moved to New York, I would just eat slices of pizza and go buy fucking linguine and make some sauce that lasted a week, you know. I love Italians. I survived on pasta and pizza. When I moved to New York, I used to be so fucking hungry, I’d be walking around with a headache and shit looking for a job. It was crazy.

 

NM: You weren’t getting paid, working for these photographers?

 

Barron Claiborne: No, you got paid, but it was nothing. Back then, I think it was like $25 bucks a day, right? But I didn’t work as an assistant all the time because I wanted to work on my own photography. And then after a while assisting, I was like, fuck this shit. I might as well make a portfolio myself.

 

NM: What triggers that decision to just go for it? 

 

Barron Claiborne: When they start having you do menial tasks, putting quarters in their car meter, shit like that. And they would ask you for your portfolio. That always made me suspicious.

 

NM: When the people you were assisting would ask for your portfolio?

 

Barron Claiborne: Yeah. You always have to show them because they would steal motherfuckers’ work.

 

NM: Oh, of course.

 

Barron Claiborne: But you didn’t know that when you were young.

NM: You think they’re just checking up on your work?

 

Barron Claiborne: No, I mean they would act like you’re young and naïve, and it’s like your resume. But they’re looking at your shit to steal it. Because they recognize you have a lot of talent and no one has seen your process, no one’s seen your work.

 

NM: I see this so much on social media with painters.

 

Barron Claiborne: Everyone’s just copying each other’s shit. Everywhere. It’s not even local now, because of social media. So before, I wouldn’t know what people were doing in the art scene in fucking Oklahoma, I didn’t give a fuck. But now you have access to all that. And I think it’s a bad thing.

An Interview With Barron Claiborne (Part 3) Read More »

Exhibition

The Trops Mobile Application

Trops Mobile App /

The Trops mobile app presents mapped exhibitions with curated art experiences across creative neighborhoods on the east coast. Culturally impactful lifestyle hubs and gathering places are featured as venues that host artwork and performance art from a vibrant community of artists.

How Art Drops Work With The Trops Mobile App

First, go visit the venue! 

An art drop happens when art is “dropped” at a host venue. Before arriving at the venue, the art drop detail page only shows the artist’s name, an image and the location of the art. 

Navigate to the art drops page when you are on location.

On arrival to the host venue, explorers who navigate back into the app are prompted to claim a token that unlocks more information about the art and artist. 

Revisit the art memory at any time in your profile.

Each token you claim saves the art drop info to the profile in “My Collection”. As the app automatically archives the imagery and info of the artwork and the venue, you can put your phone away and enjoy the art experience in front of you, IRL.

A Treasure Hunt for Art

Explore local neighborhoods and collect art experiences around the city. “Art Drops” can be visual or performing artworks. On arrival, navigate to the Art Drop page to claim a drop token and unlock more information about the artwork. Your profile saves the art memory for future reference, so you can get off your phone and participate in the experience.

Curated Culture Maps

Art Drops are carefully curated to present art as an experience. You can explore all the art drops around you, or visit a curated mapped exhibition. The curated art drops are featured exhibitions, indicated by the purple pins

Browse the highlighted art drops in the city, by date, as individual art drops, as curated mapped exhibitions, or by the specific artist.

Support The Community

Explorers receive one drop token for each art drop visited. These drop tokens are transferrable as “tokens of appreciation”. Send to artists by visiting art drop detail page artist profile, or via the recently visited section of The Vault. Transfer tokens to other users using search by username, or by scanning the QR.

The drop tokens earned from visiting art drops can be exchanged for local products, artisanal goods, tickets, and more!

Find and engage with art in the real world!

Download app for iPhone
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Frequently Asked Questions

WHO ARE WE?

The Trops is an integrative arts platform supporting communities to find and engage with art in the real world. Through pop-ups and “Art Drops,” we produce and amplify interactive moments of gathering and culture with the creative community. Our emerging mobile application archives the where/when/who of art in spacetime. 

WHAT IS IT?

The app acts as a navigation tool and digital black book for art experiences. We present dynamic mapping of creative events of cultural activity that “pop up” across local neighborhoods. Our platform looks to connect people with authentic culture through art exhibitions in traditional and nontraditional platforms. Upon arrival to experience art in-person, users of the mobile application can ‘collect’ the experience as a souvenir of art in spacetime, as well as a token. These tokens can be translated into real-world goods and services (Local Gems), and transferred between users.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Live artistic performance is a treasure for the senses. In that sense, we have worked to create a mobile application that presents the artists and their artwork in an engaging and “fun” way. Modeled after a treasure hunt, our curated maps present experiential invitations to visit artists, venues, and vendors through “Art Drops” and “Gem Drops”.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

The app is a curated system of art and maps. If a user visits artwork in person, the app will automatically “check-In” the user, and present their profile with a collectible “drop token.” This unlocks the Art Drop, revealing additional info about the artwork and saving it to your profile as “My Collection.” Explorers can always revisit art experiences, remember the host venues, and “collect” the moment as a souvenir. Like a Digital Black Book, The Trops mobile application enables users to explore culture and keep digital “souvenirs” of artistic activity in the physical world while also supporting local artists and artisans. 

WHY DO WE DO IT?

It is important to have community infrastructure that empowers the ecosystem of the arts to present itself independently IRL. Our philosophy is to enable community economics, and to empower individuals and connect creatives by developing our platform and engaging neighborhoods with creative energy that can highlight and engage the human spirit.

The Trops Mobile Application Read More »

Trops Mobile App

An Interview with Barron Claiborne (Part 2)

Interview /

Barron Claiborne

Born and raised in Boston, Barron Claiborne moved to New York City in 1989 assisting photography legends such as Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, and Gordon Parks. Nathalie Martin spoke with Barron about what informs his practice, the limits and reaches of photography, and the importance of constantly creating. Claiborne reflects on self-taught mastery and how his extremely honest, critical, yet sensitive eye has landed him in permanent collections all over the world, including the Polaroid Museum Cambridge, the Brooklyn Museum, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and MoCADA.

Continued from Part 1

Part 1

NM: You use the word “commercial.” Is there a fixed line, for you, between “commercial” and “fine art?” Do you consider everything you make “art”?

 

Barron Claiborne: No. Because when you’re doing jobs for other people, sometimes there are parameters that you’re not interested in. You do it for the money. If you want to pay me $40,000 bucks to shoot a soup can– when I was broke, I’d do it. Why wouldn’t I? It’d be stupid. And it’s the easiest shit. The stuff that pays the most is the easiest. Because it’s all set, you know.

 

NM: So there is a difference. You do categorize your work. 

Barron Claiborne: Oh, yeah. Because you’re working with directors, producers, all these other people, it’s more of a collaborative effort. When I take photos on my own, there is no collaboration other than with the model. Other than that, I have complete control, which is what I like.

 

NM: Totally. So how has your work, process or practice evolved? You know, as you’ve gotten more money, and been able to be more selective with your decisions.

 

Barron Claiborne: You gather stuff. I have a huge archive. But I still love photography. I don’t take pictures every day now. I kind of do the things I want to do. Because you’re also aware that you have an archive that’s going to be there when you’re dead.

 

NM: Yeah, totally. I feel like the more you have behind you, the more your life just becomes your practice, in a way. Or the more your practice becomes your life?

 

Barron Claiborne: Right, yeah. That’s like me making products. I like making products because I have this huge archive, right? I might as well– and the technology allows you to do all this crazy shit, which is really cool. I have a huge archive so I can pretty much do anything.

 

NM: And you were saying you work in cycles, or things happen in waves.

 

Barron Claiborne: Oh, definitely. Like a while ago during the pandemic, I made a moon, and then I just got all my friends to come and take pictures of them on the moon. Shit like that. I just do shit like that. Little projects– sometimes the project lasts three years, seven years, ten years. Some individuals I’ve been shooting for 20 years.

 

NM: What keeps you working? You mentioned it was just this natural, internal drive.

 

Barron Claiborne: I love people. I think it’s because I love people and I see them, and it’s amazing that everybody looks different. There are billions of people who don’t look alike. It’s fucking weird.

NM: I remember being younger and thinking it’s so crazy we have all the same parts– eyes, ears, noses, whatever– and freaking out about how we all have the same things on our faces but look completely different.

 

Barron Claiborne: I know, it’s amazing. I always wonder why we all look the way we do.

Barron Claiborne, Njuhi as White Powder Ma with Rose, 2007

NM: Do you think there are limits to photography?

 

Barron Claiborne: Ah, of course. People always say photography reveals things, but it also hides things. You can hide a lot in a photo. Also, interpretation. You just see something– you don’t really know what’s happening in the photo. Sometimes you do, but not always. And photos are used to fool people, just like cinematography is used to fool people. Just because it’s there doesn’t mean it’s true.

 

NM: Totally. I also think with photography– even more so than painting or sculpture or anything– you have to be so selective. So intentional with what you’re choosing to show.

 

Barron Claiborne: Yes, exactly. But also, it’s not what’s in it. The thing I like about photography– it’s like three different levels of symbolism. You have the symbolism you can put in it, you also have the symbolism of the art itself– of photography itself– and then you can manipulate it any way you want. You can take pictures to manipulate people. You can take pictures to show people the truth. Just up to the individual.

 

NM: Do you ever want to get into other mediums? Have you ever thought, “Oh, maybe painting or something else will do it for me right now, I should switch over?”

Barron Claiborne: No, no. Sometimes I’ll make my photos into other things. Like now, what a lot of people do, they’re not really making paintings. They’re just making large Photoshop.

 

NM: Right, this “painting without paint” idea.

 

Barron Claiborne: Exactly, you take a photo, right, then you put you in a program, you turn it into a painting, and then you put it on a canvas. And then people think you paint. But it’s the same as a photo.

 

NM: That’s happening a lot right now. I think that’s interesting, the lines between photography and painting being blurred.

 

Barron Claiborne: Oh, definitely! I mean Warhol made silkscreens. Well, it’s for lazy people.

 

NM: Well…

 

Barron Claiborne: Well, see, if you know photography, that’s one thing, but some people just use it for their other medium. Then I don’t really think of you as a photographer, because no one’s seeing your photography. They’re seeing the painting you made from the photography.

 

NM: That’s kind of cool, using one medium to make another.

 

Barron Claiborne: Yeah, but it’s lazy.

 

NM: I don’t think that comes from laziness.

 

Barron Claiborne: Make a painting. Don’t call yourself a painter.

 

NM: I agree with that, definitely. But also, don’t call yourself a photographer, you’re saying. So what are they? Nothing? Medium-defiers?

 

Barron Claiborne: They’re artists, but it’s just… it makes it easier. A lot of modern art is collages. Because it’s easy. You’re just cutting out other people’s work and then you put it together, but you’re skipping a crucial part. You’re not really creating it. I would rather create everything in the photo.

 

NM: But then found objects, readymades… are not art to you.

 

Barron Claiborne: It’s lazy, that’s not art, it’s bullshit.

 

NM: So what is art?

 

Barron Claiborne: Artists painting, sculpting– 

 

NM: So only plastic arts? Where does it come from, though?

 

Barron Claiborne: I think the person should do it. A lot of art is made by craftsmen. The artist doesn’t make it, doesn’t sculpt it, he just commissions it. Like you’re an art director.

 

NM: Yeah, artists with lots of money, commercial artists. Which is only a handful.

 

Barron Claiborne: Right, but it’s still a lot. Why should the biggest artists who don’t make their own shit get credit? Should the craftsmen get credit?

 

NM: Of course, or the 400 assistants that they have in their studio.

 

Barron Claiborne: Exactly, the people actually painting the paintings. My friend used to paint paintings for Damien Hirst. They do the whole paintings.

Barron Claiborne, Old Orleans (After the Deluge), 2007

NM: Maybe art’s not about the individual, it’s about the idea being reified.

 

Barron Claiborne: It’s about everything. I’m not saying art should be anything, it’s whatever it is. All I’m saying, I care a little bit more if you painted the painting, rather than hiring someone else to paint the painting. That’s what’s happening. Artists that aren’t making their own work. It’s not like that didn’t exist. Vermeer and all those guys had 20 interns, just like people do now. When you look at most of the old paintings, tons of them, everybody’s left-handed, because they use the fucking camera obscura to trace. The animals or the monkeys in the painting are left-handed. But they’ll still deny that they used a camera obscura. But most people aren’t left-handed. How the fuck is everybody left-handed in a bunch of paintings?

 

NM: Durer made those engravings showing the camera obscura. Some artists acknowledged it.

 

Barron Claiborne: Yeah, of course. In art school, I mean. Everybody creates their own mythology. So, you know, you look at somebody like Gaugin’s paintings… but his life was fucking miserable as fuck, dude.

NM: He was fucked up.

 

Barron Claiborne: He was fucked up. Spreading diseases and shit.

 

NM: Child brides and all that. 

 

Barron Claiborne: Yeah, they didn’t like him. He was hated by the French. And after a while, he was hated by the native people also, because, well, he was giving everybody syphilis, but also because he was poor and a crazy dude. It’s crazy. He had a fucking miserable life. Everybody hated him. Yeah, well, the French hated them because he hung out with the native people, and then the native people started hating him when he was spreading fucking venereal disease everywhere. He was ill all the time, he didn’t have food, like it was fucking crazy.

 

NM: We’ve been talking about painters. What’s the job of the photographer?

 

Barron Claiborne: To get the best image possible.

 

NM: Okay, I like that. Is that an objective thing?

 

Barron Claiborne: No, subjective. Each person, subjective to each artist.

 

NM: When you approach your work, when you’re taking a photo, what has to happen for you to be satisfied?

 

Barron Claiborne: I usually want it to be beautiful. Whatever that is to me, that’s the thing. I always want my photos to look timeless, so you don’t know when they were taken.

 

NM: Your photos do look timeless.

 

Barron Claiborne: Yeah, because I really like history. I like the fact that you can’t tell – 

 

NM: It could exist in any time.

 

Barron Claiborne: Right. It could be modern, old.

 

NM: Places, too. Any time or place.

 

Barron Claiborne: Exactly. I like those things, but I really like beauty. More than anything.

 

NM: Me too. I love that you said this, because artists never say this, or are just not being honest. It first needs to be beautiful! I must want to go up to it, right? That’s my first criteria for looking at work.

 

Barron Claiborne: Right, right. It’s not for all artists.

 

NM: No, but I love that answer. I think that’s genuinely the most important thing. And it’s not superficial. There’s a science to it, I think.

 

Barron Claiborne: Oh, sure!

 

NM: Like I think beauty is kind of, maybe, objective.

 

Barron Claiborne: I think if you make a system, you know, you make or do certain things all the time, you can expect certain results. There’s a science to it. And it’s on every level. If there’s a bunch of gardeners and my garden is far more beautiful than theirs, then I’m the master, and they’re the students. It’s on every level. There are scientists doing physics experiments, and there are basketball players that are literally using physics to play basketball. But people don’t think of that. They’re experts on physics, but you just don’t think of it.

 

NM: Yes, but beauty specifically. It’s literally a science. Color theory, for example. These two colors work or don’t work because it’s a science, not because someone decided blue and orange are randomly complementary.

 

Barron Claiborne: Definitely. But then there’s some cultures that will go the opposite.

 

NM: What do you mean?

 

Barron Claiborne: In some cultures, red is a very good color, but then in other cultures they avoid using red at all. You always have both sides. So is it a science?

 

NM: Yeah, if you take out the idea of good and bad, etc. Purple and yellow will always be complementary.

 

Barron Claiborne: Sure, yeah. But it’s so funny that different colors, depending on what culture you come from, mean completely different things.

NM: Absolutely. I was reading this Nabokov interview and he talks about how he sees letters in colors.

 

Barron Claiborne: Oh yeah, that’s a thing, what’s it called? Synesthesia, some shit like that?

 

NM: Yes. He said, “N is obviously yellow, and H is obviously green,” stuff like that.

 

Barron Claiborne: Well, just like colorblind people. So now they have these glasses that can correct your color blindness, so people buy them as gifts for colorblind people. You should see the reaction. You know, colorblind people see green as red, shit like that. That’s why they use them in war to spot tanks and shit. Because they don’t see green as green. They see different things so they can spot things that a normal person can’t see. They use them in planes to see enemy tanks and shit. But the thing is, some people smell colors, some people see colors, some people see them as numbers. There are all kinds of weird synesthesia shit. I’ve read a book on that shit. It’s so fucking weird. Some people see letters as colors.

 

NM: Yeah, sounds, even.

 

Barron Claiborne: Everything. There are all different kinds of it.

 

NM: You said growing up, you didn’t really care about credit, or your name being attached to your work.

 

Barron Claiborne: I mean, some of the greatest art in the world, nobody knows who made it. Nobody has any idea. They didn’t sign it. But no, I mean, you care a little bit. Everybody has an ego. When people are telling me they like my photos, of course I like to hear it.

 

NM: I think to be an artist you need a certain amount of ego. You feel you have something to say, to show.

 

Barron Claiborne: Yeah, I think so. I mean, you’re making something. The natural thing would be because you want people to see it. Just because people deny it doesn’t mean it’s not true. Because people often say stuff like that, that they don’t care, but you kind of have to. But everybody has a shtick. It doesn’t matter how serious the person is, everyone has their shtick. A lot of artists are just con artists, really.

 

NM: Artists are lying to you and saying it’s the truth.

 

Barron Claiborne: Mm-hmm. That’s right. But you need artists because everybody is kind of one. I’m always shocked at how much photos mean to people when they come up and tell me. It freaks me out when people come and tell me they cry, when they come in and buy a Biggie print from me. They cry and shit like that, I’m like, what the fuck? At first, I used to think it was weird, and now I’m like, well, if it means that much to the person, it must mean something.

NM: Were you just going to say you think everyone’s an artist? Because I don’t.

 

Barron Claiborne: No, I don’t think that. I think you’re an artist at something. I don’t know about everyone.

 

NM: I think there’s a difference between artists and like, “makers,” for lack of a better word. There are people who make things, and there are artists.  

 

Barron Claiborne: Yeah, but I think those people are also artists. If a guy is a gardener, right, and he makes it look beautiful, he’s an artist. He’s an artist at that.

 

NM: Oh, totally. That’s an artist. Someone who wakes up every day and does that, that’s their practice. Maybe I just mean there’s a difference between “making art,” and being an artist.

 

Barron Claiborne: Right, right. Well, I think everyone has it in them.

 

NM: Yeah… maybe. Maybe they don’t.

 

Barron Claiborne: Well yeah, some people probably don’t. There are some people probably who fucking hate art. You meet people who hate music. I’ve met people who don’t have any music in their house, they don’t have a stereo. I’ve been in houses where people are making millions of dollars. And there’s no stereo, there’s no music in their house anywhere.

 

NM: It’s insane. People also don’t have books. The biggest red flag.

 

Barron Claiborne: Oh, tons of people don’t have books. Or when people have a TV in every single room, including the bathrooms and the kitchen. I was in this guy’s house; he had a television in every single room. And in the garage. In the bathroom. He even had a TV in his kitchen closet that he could pull out and watch in the kitchen. It was fucking weird. And his house was huge. There was a television in every single room. It was fucking weird. I was like, “Wow, dude, you watch TV a lot.”

 

NM: Were your parents strict with TV?

 

Barron Claiborne: Dude, I didn’t give a fuck about TV. I was a kid. We were outside playing football and all kinds of stuff, doing shit that we were supposed to do, running around Boston. The only TV I would watch would be if I woke up on Saturday morning and watched cartoons or like sporting events, the Superbowl and shit like that. Other than that, I don’t give a fuck about TV. We never sat down and watched TV like that. And Americans, when I was a kid, the TV obsession didn’t exist. Americans watched TV, but not like they do now. I mean, it’s insane. But, yeah, give me a break. Americans never even talked about celebrities. I never heard my mother ever say anything about a fucking celebrity in my entire life. You know, they never talked about it. They like the music and shit like that, but they never talked about it. Like they listen to Stevie Wonder. Nobody gave a fuck about what Stevie Wonder was wearing or doing. Nobody cared.

 

NM: Well, I feel like culture has shifted from exclusivity and “you wish you could be like us”–

 

Barron Claiborne: To no one is special.

 

NM: Yes, no one is special, but even “buy this and you can be like me.”

 

Barron Claiborne: Yeah. No one’s special. So now you have to act like beauty doesn’t exist. No woman is prettier than the other, they’re all tens… it’s fucking insanity. Basically. You still have value, but everybody’s not physically beautiful. I mean, so what! Everybody’s not smart. Everybody doesn’t care about their clothing. Everybody doesn’t– it’s not like that. It doesn’t matter. Because everybody has their own thing. Do your thing and let other people do theirs, unless they’re trying to stop you from doing yours. If they’re not harming you, I don’t give a fuck what you do. You want to have sex with goats? Just don’t fuck my goat.

 

NM: I guess that’s one way to put it.

 

Barron Claiborne: You know, fuck your own goat! There are things people do all the time that I don’t like. But who am I to judge other people?

 

NM: I think that’s the biggest lesson I’ve learned… that once you start to judge, it means you don’t understand. You’ve lost the ability to really think about something.

 

Barron Claiborne: Yeah, I agree. I think the worst thing is to judge people. I think now, the way things are, it’s like people believe that constantly judging is performing a public service or some shit. They act like they’re spiritual, but then all you’re doing is constantly talking about how you’re better than the other people. What the fuck is that shit? And that’s what a lot of it is. This “justified” criticism. But then as soon as somebody criticizes you, you lose your fucking mind and call them all kinds of names. But you’re doing the exact same thing. And you think your cause is just.

 

NM: It’s funny too because all the criticism isn’t actual criticism. It’s all judgements, like we were saying. I think we could use young art critics. There’s a serious lack of them. You know, people who are thinking. But now we just have everyone spewing out bullshit.

 

Barron Claiborne: Social media, too. It’s brown nosing. You’re just saying whatever. Whatever everyone else is going along with. 

Continue to Part 3

Part 3

An Interview with Barron Claiborne (Part 2) Read More »

Interview