Interviews by Brainard Carey

Julien Gardair is a French artist based in New York City since 2007. His cutout paintings, installations, sculptures, and works on paper are known for their adherence to strict sustainable systems. Gardair’s art frequently incorporates a blend of languages and stories, creating a diverse and multilayered visual experience.

He holds an MFA from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris Cergy and his work has been shown throughout Europe and the United States.  Notably, he was included in La couleur toujours recommencée, the first exhibition of the re-vamped Musée Fabre in Montpellier along with Joan Mitchell, Sam Francis, Shirley Jaffe, Peter Soriano and others.  He has had solo exhibitions at Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de Céret and Bric Arts, Brooklyn.  He was commissioned by the New York MTA Arts & Design to create a permanent installation for the 18th Avenue and Kings Highway stations in Brooklyn. The Mobilier National also commissioned him to design a Savonnerie carpet on display at the Elysée Palace.

Based in Seto City, the epicenter of Japanese ceramic making since 10th century, Ruiji Aiba (b. 1964 in Fukuoka) creates ceramic sculptures and “netsuke.” They are often figures of children, innocently unclothed and at play with frogs, goldfishes, octopuses. Inspired by traditional dolls, fairy tales, classic movies and manga, Aiba emphasizes the ominosity aspect of dolls. The artists describes they are “neither human nor objects. Dolls are transcendental existence.”

As a multi-media Afro-Caribbean American portrait artist, Kandy G Lopez explores identity through marginalized individuals who represent her community. Navigating through her own identity has inspired works from a variety of mediums to further the conversation of “otherness” with metaphorical and psychological significance.

Lopez (b. New Jersey) lives and works in Fort Lauderdale. Selected solo exhibitions include “(in)visibility: cache,” NSU Art Museum of Fort Lauderdale (2023); “Phenomenal Woman,” Miramar Cultural Center (2023); “Intersectionality”, Coral Spring Museum of Art (2023); “(in)visible: Code-Switching,” Girls Club Warehouse, Fort Lauderdale (2022); “(in)visibility: Yup-Pity,” Frank C Ortis Gallery (Third Space), Pembroke Pines (2022). Lopez’s work has been included in group exhibitions at Kinfolk House, Armory Art Center, New Bedford Art Museum, and Studio 18. Lopez received the Broward County Cultural Division Artist Innovation Grant for 2022–2023 and the Project Row House Grant in 2022. She has also been awarded residencies at Nacan in the Dominican Republic (2023), Ucross in Wyoming (2022), Hambidge in Rabun County, Georgia (2021), and Stay Home Gallery & Artist Residency in Paris, Tennessee (2021).

Anita Rogers Gallery is pleased to present Superunknown, an exhibition of new work by Henry Mandell.  Superunknown, Mandell’s debut solo exhibition at Anita Rogers Gallery, features paintings and drawings from several bodies of work the artist began during the pandemic.  Mandell’s studio practice is focused on the exploration of experimental artistic practices, the human condition, scientific principles and their merging effect on our lives, pioneering unique approaches to creating abstract artworks.

All of the paintings in Superunknown began as stories, poems, or written data.  Using digital tools, Mandell transforms line by line, letter by letter, the characters of selected source text into visually compelling abstract imagery. The first step in transforming what is known into the unknown, experimenting and painting without the use of iterative code.  All creative decisions remain with the artist’s hand and mind, establishing Mandell’s wide visual vocabulary with digital painting.

The Superunknown series of paintings depict multilayered objects composed of fine colored lines of transformed text about dark matter and current theories about what comprises the fabric of the universe. Each colored line is a separate letter. Like fabric, the overall form is knit up from thousands of separate fine colored line elements like a tapestry from another dimension.  The source theories bound up into the artwork represent the limits of our knowing, as 80% of everything everywhere is invisible dark matter / dark energy and is beyond our understanding.

The Satoshi’s Garden paintings depict looping vortexes of chimerical limbs and primeval roots; strange forms that seem to overrun the thresholds of cognition and formation. A growing living network inspired by mycelium. The paintings are composed from the text of the Bitcoin White Paper. No one knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is. He, She, It or They authored the Bitcoin White Paper. The paper solved the problems of establishing an internet-based platform for conducting financial transactions without banks via a ‘blockchain’ of growing code that lives on thousands of networked computers worldwide mimicking the Wood Wide Web of living plants. Within the Wood Wide Web, actual living root systems are connected by mycelium fungi. They are completely mysterious, and how they work to nourish every living plant in the wild is beyond our understanding.

The Plumb paintings shimmer with thousands of thin vertical lines converging into a veil of color.  A plumb line is traditionally used to level and center one’s self on the surface of the Earth.  It is an ancient tool still in use today, with a hanging weight at the end of a single string that always points to the center of the Earth due to gravity.  In the paintings, the lines are the transformed text of poetry by Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman.

The Theory Of Mind paintings form expressively sinuous interwoven patterns of colored lines within an inverted triangle.  Composed from altered text about theory of mind, an important social-cognitive milestone that involves the ability to think about mental states, both your own and those of others and their emotions, desires, beliefs, and knowledge.  Foundational to the development of empathy in children. Also, triangles seem to suggest ‘otherness’, as in it is an unfamiliar form in everyday experience and can serve as an invitation to relate to an ‘other’.

The theme for Superunknown is described by the artist in this way:

“I am inspired by the words of the great artist Ann Hamilton in her essay Making Not Knowing:

One doesn’t arrive — in words or in art — by necessarily knowing where one is going. In every work of art something appears that does not previously exist, and so, by default, you work from what you know to what you don’t know. You may set out for New York but you may find yourself as I did in Ohio. You may set out to make a sculpture and find that time is your material. You may pick up a paint brush and find that your making is not on canvas or wood but in relations between people. You may set out to walk across the room but getting to what is on the other side might take ten years. You have to be open to all possibilities and to all routes — circuitous or otherwise.

But not knowing, waiting and finding — though they may happen accidentally, aren’t accidents. They involve work and research. Not knowing isn’t ignorance. (Fear springs from ignorance.) Not knowing is a permissive and rigorous willingness to trust, leaving knowing in suspension, trusting in possibility without result, regarding as possible all manner of response. The responsibility of the artist… is the practice of recognizing…”

Henry Mandell was born in New York City.  He received a BFA in Fine Art from Ithaca College and went on to study art at The School of Visual Arts and Parsons School of Design / The New School in New York.  His artworks have been exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States and internationally, with artworks held in public, private and corporate collections.  Museum collections include The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Columbia Museum of Art and the Rhode Island School Of Design Museum.  Mandell’s studio is currently in the Pacific Northwest.

Judy Fox is a sculptor who works in the Hudson Valley, with a studio in Rhinebeck, New York. As an undergraduate she studied sculpture at Yale (BA1978) and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She received advanced degrees in Art History (MA1983) and Conservation (1985) from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (NYU). She is a Senior Critic and professor at the New York Academy of Art.

Fox has participated in numerous exhibitions around the U.S. and in Europe. A fellow of both Yaddo and MacDowell residencies, she has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the “Anonymous Was a Woman” Foundation, the National Academy of Design, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has had solo exhibitions at The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu; John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI; and Kunsthalle im Pallazo, Liestal, Switzerland. She has been the subject of many reviews and articles, including features in Art in America (2000), Artnet (2007), Sculpture Review (2010), O Magazine (2012), Ceramics: Art and Perception (2013), New Ceramics (2015), and Artforum (2019). Her work has been featured in several books, including David Ebony et al, Curve/The Female Nude Now (2003), Veronica Gunter, 500 Figures in Clay (2004), the Dutch publication Het Grote Boek 2 (2017), Judith Schwartz, Confrontational Ceramics (2008), and Cristina Cordova, The Figure in Clay (2022). She contributed essays to The Figure: Painting, Drawing and Sculpture: Contemporary Perspectives (Rizzoli 2014).

Polakowski’s work is currently on view at 5-50 Gallery in New York City, in the two-person show ‘Back In 5’, alongside paintings by Ivan Montoya. ‘Back in 5’ is on view through the 8th of October.

In this interview with Jasmin Anoschkin, her husband, Severi Haapala serves as the translator for part of the interview

Jasmin Anoschkin creates her sculptures entirely by her own hand, whether she is carving wood with a chainsaw or molding clay. Eschewing attempts at technical perfection, she does not hide evidence of these physical processes, embracing uneven surfaces or unexpected glaze effects in her ceramic works. Her whimsical yet poignant characters and the dreamlike world they inhabit suggest an alternative to the rigid and narrow societal standards of what is valued and accepted. Their absolute and unironic sincerity feels almost radical—perhaps even uncomfortable sometimes—provoking reflection not only on the prejudices we hold towards others but on the internalized shame we carry within ourselves. Empowering through the permission it offers, this fantasy universe is an invitation to play and to exist as we are, without inhibition.

Each work that Anoschkin has produced over the course of her career as a sculptor forms a piece to an ongoing story. No linear timeline or cohesive narrative is made apparent to the viewer in this surreal journey; her creatures interact but their relationships remain ambiguous. Yet, the artist allows us glimpses into her inner life through the unique titles she bestows upon each piece. Often humorous and surprising, they imbue the sculptures with distinct personalities and individual histories. There’s No Italian Man and Bunch of Violets were conceived as a pair, in memory of Anoschkin’s late aunt Terttu, a great supporter of Jasmin’s creativity. When Terttu was younger, there was an Italian man she would visit every summer. Later, when Jasmin would try to inquire about him, she would always snap, “There’s no Italian man.” Bunch of Violets in Finnish is Terttu Orvokki, a play on her aunt’s name. Contemporary Stalker received its title when it emerged from the kiln and Jasmin, an artist for the past twenty years, proclaimed, “Oh yes, I have finally made contemporary art!” A recurring motif throughout her practice has been the unicorn, which she has adopted as an avatar both in her sculptural and video works, as seen in this exhibition with Platinum Yoga Unicorn and Golden Menstruation Yoga. Through her unicorn persona, Anoschkin rejoices in herself.

Supercharged Lollipop Valley marks Jasmin Anoschkin’s second solo presentation in the United States. Her breakthrough artwork in Finland was Bambi, shown at the Mänttä Art Festival in 2009, and again in 2010 at the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art, Turku on the occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the Association of Finnish Sculptors. This piece was subsequently acquired by the Finnish State Art Collection. Anoschkin has been the recipient of numerous awards, grants, and accolades, including being selected as the 2012 young artist in the Satakunta region of Finland, as well as having her work published on a series of postage stamps in 2017. She has exhibited extensively, and is in the collections of numerous institutions such as the Espoo Museum of Modern Art; Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art, Turku; Hämeenlinna Art Museum; Vantaa Art Museum; Lönnström Art Museum; and Kerava Art Museum. Her work is on permanent display in the lobby of the Helsinki City Museum, and she is currently featured in group exhibitions at the Hvitträsk Museum, Kirkkonummi, the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art, Turku, and the Espoo Museum of Modern Art. Anoschkin has been a member of the Arabia Art Department Society since 2014.

Keiran Brennan Hinton (b. 1992, Toronto) lives and works in Toronto and Elgin, Ontario. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute in 2014 and his MFA from Yale University in 2016.

Past international solo shows of Brennan Hinton’s work include exhibitions at MAKI Gallery, Tokyo, Japan (2022); Thomas Fuchs Gallery, Stuttgart, Germany (2021); Charles Moffett, New York, NY (2021); Michael Gibson Gallery, London, Ontario (2020); and Francesco Pantaleone Gallery, Palermo, Italy (2019) among other. His paintings have been featured in institutional exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Ontario; James Castle House, Boise, Idaho; and Katonah Museum of Art, Westchester, NY.

Polina Barskaya (b. 1984, Cherkassy, USSR) received a MFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY and a BA from Hunter College, NY. Barskaya received an Artist Fellowship in Painting from New York Foundation of the Arts (NYFA) in 2021, and an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant in 2023, 2022 and 2020.

Recent exhibitions include Taymour Grahne Projects, London; Althuis Hofland Fine Arts, Amsterdam; DC Moore Gallery, NY; Marianne Boesky Gallery, NY; and Monya Rowe Gallery, NY. Her work has been featured in Artforum, Artnet, The Brooklyn Rail, New York Magazine (“The Best New York Art Shows of 2021”) and Hyperallergic, among others. The artist lives and works in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, NY and Citta Della Pieve, Italy. Barskaya is represented by Monya Rowe Gallery, NY.