Art Sense

A conversation with artist Derek Fordjour about his paintings, sculptures and installations that raise questions of race, identity, and inequality. Derek discusses the journey from his youth as the son of immigrants in Memphis to the inner sanctum of the art world. He also talks about his new show titled "SCORE" opening November 10 at Petzel Gallery in New York. Like his 2020 "SELF MUST DIE" exhibit at Petzel, "SCORE" transforms the exhibit space and utilizes performance to push the bounds of what we think of as a gallery exhibit.

https://www.petzel.com/exhibitions/derek-fordjour2

https://www.instagram.com/fordjourstudio/?hl=en

A conversation with legendary guerrilla poster artist Robbie Conal about decades of activism by the dark of night. Conal’s signature style combines grotesque and satirical grayscale portraits of U.S. political figures paired with clever, hard-hitting text. His poster’s have become part of the American urban landscape and the original paintings that serve as the basis for the prints have found homes in some of the country’s most prized collections. His latest exhibition titled “Raw: Work in Process” is up now through November 4 at Track 16 Gallery in downtown Los Angeles.

https://www.track16.com/robbie-conal-raw-work-in-process

https://robbieconal.myshopify.com/

A conversation with artist Sarah Cunnningham about her vibrant paintings that teeter on the edge of landscape and abstraction. Sarah recently wrapped up her first solo show at Lisson Gallery in London. That exhibition titled "The Crystal Forest" utilizes saturated colors and bold brushstrokes to invite viewers into spaces inspired by ecology, literature and a sense of interconnectedness.

https://www.lissongallery.com/artists/sarah-cunningham

A conversation with artist Tomashi Jackson to discuss her life, her career, and her latest exhibit, up now at Night Gallery in Los Angeles. The conversation is a little longer than the usual episode, but well worth the listen. Jackson makes work that layers site-specific materials and imagery to make paintings that speak on many different levels. In our conversation, she takes time to share the lessons she's learned on the winding road that's taken her from South Central LA to destinations worldwide, while gathering degrees from Cooper Union, MIT, Yale and a summer spent at Skowhegan.

https://www.nightgallery.ca/exhibitions/tomashi-jackson2

https://mcadenver.org/exhibitions/tomashi-jackson

A conversation with artist William Monk about his artistic journey and his latest work. The conversation touches on the significance of scale, his use of repetition, how one defines a landscape, and his most recent exhibition “West of Nowhere” which just wrapped up at Pace Gallery in Los Angeles.

https://www.williammonk.com/

https://www.pacegallery.com/exhibitions/william-monk-west-of-nowhere/

In April of this year, the Museums of Tomorrow Roundtable brought nearly two dozen museum directors from around the world together in Silicon Valley to discuss the evolving role of technology in museums. As dialogs between museum directors and technology leaders in Silicon Valley evolved, it became apparent that planning for the use of artificial intelligence had become a critical need.

On today’s episode, I’m honored to be joined by four museum executives who are an active part of these conversations about the future of museums:

Thomas P Campbell
Director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
https://www.famsf.org/

Seb Chan
Director & CEO at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne, Australia
https://www.acmi.net.au/

Amanda de la Garza
Director General of Visual Arts at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City and head of its University Museum of Contemporary Art
https://muac.unam.mx/acerca-de-nosotros?lang=en

Suhanya Raffel
Museum Director, M+, Hong Kong
https://www.mplus.org.hk/en/

A conversation with artist Stefan Brüggemann about his artistic journey, the power of words, truth vs. fiction, and his latest show titled “White Noise” up now through January 14th of next year at Hauser & Wirth’s 901 East 3rd Street location in downtown Los Angeles. Later in the conversation, Stefan and I are joined by Sebastien Montabonel whose digital platform The Island has collaborated with Brüggemann to create on-chain artworks that leverage aspects of conceptual and generative art.

https://www.hauserwirth.com/hauser-wirth-exhibitions/41874-stefan-bruggemann-white-noise/

https://www.theisland.io/projects/stefan-bruggemann

http://www.stefanbruggemann.com/

A conversation with Los Angeles County Museum of Art curator Diva Zumaya about the new exhibit “The World Made Wondrous: The Dutch Collector’s Cabinet and the Politics of Possession” on display now through March 3rd of next year. Zumaya, who is the Assistant Curator, European Painting and Sculpture at LACMA, has brought together over 300 objects for the exhibit, including paintings, prints, sculptures, precious stones, shells, and taxidermy in order to recreate a fictive 17th-century Dutch collector’s cabinet. The result is a dialog about the political and colonial histories of European collecting practices in the 17th century which highlights problematic policies, beliefs and visual representations.

https://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/world-made-wondrous-dutch-collectors-cabinet-and-politics-possession

A conversation with artist and author Edmund de Waal. De Waal’s artwork is characterized by large collections of his handmade pottery which are carefully arranged within specially-designed vitrines, while his books, like his New York Times Bestseller “The Hare with Amber Eyes”, examine the past through the personal stories that objects can tell. Themes of origin, belonging, memory, and legacy permeate all of his work.

https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2023/edmund-de-waal-this-must-be-the-place/

https://gagosian.com/exhibitions/2023/to-light-and-then-return-edmund-de-waal-and-sally-mann/

https://www.edmunddewaal.com/

A conversation with artist Wolfgang Tillmans. Tillmans is one of only two artists listed on Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2023 and his work was recently featured in a major retrospective at Museum of Modern Art in New York. He took time out from installing his latest work at David Zwirner Gallery to discuss his creative process, the importance of installation and the necessity of play.

https://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/2023/wolfgang-tillmans-fold-me

https://tillmans.co.uk/