Interviews by Brainard Carey

Self Portrait, Nicholas Buffon

Nicholas Buffon (b. 1987) is a painter and sculptor who lives and works in New York. Buffon’s research-based practice centers on community, history, memorial, and remembrance. Employing both 2D and 3D techniques, Buffon memorializes queer locations and the minutiae of an ever changing urban landscape, focusing on details of place and the impact it has on a community as a whole.

Recent solo exhibitions include Marinaro (2022), a survey exhibition at Poets House, NYC (2019), Callicoon Fine Arts (2019 & 2016), and Freddy, Baltimore, MD (2014). In 2018, he participated in FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, Akron Museum of Art; and Spatial Flux: Contemporary Drawings from the JoAnn Gonzalez Hickey Collection, Gregory Allicar Museum of Art. His work has been included in exhibitions at the Jewish Museum, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), Michigan; the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina; QT Gallery; The Hole, Foxy Production, and Shoot the Lobster. His work can be found in public collections including the Rubell Family Collection, Miami; the Kadist Foundation, San Francisco; and the Akron Art Museum, Ohio. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA (BFA, 2009), and the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College, in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (MFA, 2012). 

Nicholas Buffon,  Caution Men Working, 2022 Acrylic on panel 17.5 x 14 inches 44.5 x 35.6 cm. Image © Nicholas Buffon, courtesy the artist and Marinaro, New York

Nicholas Buffon,  Han's Deli (the Remains of Pfaff's), 2019 Acrylic paint, gouache, carbon transfer and primer on maple panel 16.25 x 10.75 x .75 inches 41.3 x 27.3 x 1.9 cm. Image © Nicholas Buffon, courtesy the artist and Marinaro, New York.

Nicholas Buffon,  B&H Dairy, 2018 Foam core, Bristol paper, acrylic paint, Sobo glue, superglue, sculpey and pins 22 x 20 x 10 inches 55.9 x 50.8 x 25.4 cm, Image © Nicholas Buffon, courtesy the artist and Marinaro, New York.

Samira Abbassy was born in Ahwaz, Iran in 1965 and moved to Lon-don, UK as a child. After graduating from Canterbury College of Art, she began showing in London.

She moved to New York in 1998, where she helped to set up the Eliza-beth Foundation for the Arts, and the EFA Studio Center.

Her work has been included in shows at the Metropolitan and the British Museum, and is in private and public collections worldwide, including: the Metropolitan Museum, British Museum, the British Government Art Collection, the Grey Art Gallery at NYU, the Burger Collection, the Donald Rubin collection (Rubin Museum, NY), the Farjaam Collection, Dubai, the Los Angeles County Museum and the Afkhami Collection. Her work is currently on view at CANDICE MADEY Gallery.

During Abbassy’s thirty year career, her work has been the subject of twenty gallery solo shows in London, Dubai and New York.

Her fellowships include: Yaddo fellowship in 2006 and 2022, and Sal-tonstall in 2017.

She has been awarded two NYFA awards in 2007 and 2018, a Joan Mitchell award in 2010 and a Pollock-Krasner in 2014. Abbassy was also nominated for the Anonymous Was a Woman award in 2018.

In 2019 her work was included in the 26th Venice Biennial presented by Heist gallery London.

Abbassy has also worked as an educator in many educational institutions in the UK and the USA, some of which are: Hunter college, Penn State and the University of Virginia, where she was the artists in Residence in April 2012.

Samira Abbassy Anastasis, 2021 Oil on birch panel 44 x 33 1/2 inches 111.8 x 85.1 cm, photo by Jeanette May.

Samira Abbassy Reincarnated Fears, 2016 Oil on birch panel 48 x 36 inches 121.9 x 91.4 cm, photo by Jeanette May.

Samira Abbassy Love & Ammunition II , 2014 Oil on birch panel 48 x 36 inches 121.9 x 91.4 cm, photo by Jeanette May.

Katherine Sherwood’s work is an embodiment of her ideals as a feminist and reflect her personal experience with disability. In 1997, at the age of 44, she had a cerebral hemorrhage which paralyzed the right side of her body. Teaching herself how to paint again using her non-dominant hand was part of her healing process. Her recent Brain Flowers series of mixed media paintings on the reverse of antique art historical prints include collages of cerebral angiograms of her own brain. As part of her mission to bring attention to underrecognized women painters, Sherwood repaints vanitas paintings by 17th century Dutch and Baroque women artists, in which still lives with fading flowers suggest the brevity of life and the vanity of earthly achievements. Sherwood was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1952. She received a BA from the University of California, Davis, in 1975, and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1979.

She is Professor Emerita of Painting at the UC Berkeley Department of Art Practice, where she taught painting and drawing, developed two groundbreaking courses; Art, Medicine and Disability and Art and Meditation, and played an active role in the expansion of the Disability Studies program. She serveson the board of Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, which serves artists with developmental disabilities by providing a supportive studio environment and gallery representation.

Sherwood’s work has been exhibited in the 2000 Whitney Museum Biennial, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2003 and 2009, and at the Smithsonian in 2010. Recent solo exhibitions include Anglim/Trimble in San Francisco, George Adams Gallery in New York, and Walter Maciel Gallery in Los Angeles. She had a retrospective exhibition at Worth Ryder Art Gallery at UC Berkeley in 2016. The relevance of her work to medicine and brain science has led to her participation in “Visionary Anatomies” at the National Academy of Science in Washington DC, “Inside Out Loud: Visualizing Women’s Health in Contemporary Art” at the Kemper Museum in St. Louis, “Human Being” at the Chicago Cultural Center,and a solo exhibition “Golgi’s Door” at the National Academy of Sciences in 2007. She co-curated the exhibition “Blind at the Museum” at the Berkeley Art Museum. Sherwood was the recipient of a 1989 National Endowment for the Arts Grant, 1999 Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, 2005 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2006 Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, and 2012 Newhouse Foundation Grant. Her work is in many major public collections including the Ford Foundation, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California; the National Academy of Sciences, Washington DC; and the University of Missouri, Columbia, among others. She published a chapter, “Out of the Blue: Art, Disability and Yelling,” in the book Contemporary Art and Disability Studies (Routledge Press, 2019). She is represented by George Adams Gallery in New York, Walter Maciel Gallery in Los Angeles, and Anglim/Trimble Gallery in San Francisco. She lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Katherine Sherwood Pandemic Madonna (Lucas Cranach the Elder), 2022 Mixed media on found print 29 x 21 inches, © Katherine Sherwood, courtesy George Adams Gallery, New York. Photo: Dana Davis.

Katherine Sherwood Venus After De Obidos, 2019-2022 Mixed media on found cotton duck 77 x 91 inches, © Katherine Sherwood, courtesy George Adams Gallery, New York. Photo: Dana Davis.

Bread and Brains (After Josefa de Obidos), 2022 Mixed media on found cotton duck 25 1/2 x 60 inches, © Katherine Sherwood, courtesy George Adams Gallery, New York. Photo: Dana Davis.

Joel-Peter Witkin at the time the photographs were made that are discussed in this interview.

Joel-Peter Witkin was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1939. In 1959, Edward Steichen, head of the department of photography at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), selected one of Witkin’s photographs for its permanent collection when Witkin is 16 years old.

Enlists in the U.S. Army as a photographer from 1961-1964. In 1974 he receives a B.F.A. in

sculpture from The Cooper Union, the same year awarded a fellowship in writing from

Columbia University. In 1976 he receives a M.A. in Photography from the University of New

Mexico, and then 1986 he receives a M.F.A. from the University of New Mexico. He has won

numerous awards including four National Endowments in photography and the I.C.P. Infinity Award. His photographs have been exhibited internationally and are included in many museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (USA), Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Spain), The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (USA), Centre Georges Pompidou (France), The Guggenheim Museum (USA), The J. Paul Getty Museum (USA), The Whitney Museum (USA), and Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) (England).

Other achievements include Decorated Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1990 and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres of France in 2000. Over thirty books have been published on his work. Joel-Peter Witkin lives and works in Albuquerque, New Mexico with his wife Cynthia.

Joel-Peter Witkin is a photographer whose images of the human condition are undeniably

powerful. For more than forty years, he has pursued his interest in spirituality and how it

impacts the physical world in which we exist. Finding beauty within the grotesque, Witkin

pursues this complex issue through people most often cast aside by society-human spectacles including hermaphrodites, dwarfs, amputees, androgynies, carcasses, people with odd physical anomalies, fetishists, and “any living myth... anyone bearing the wounds of Christ”. His fascination with other people’s physicality has inspired works that confront our sense of normalcy and decency while constantly examining the teachings handed down through Christianity.

His constant reference to paintings from art history including the works of Picasso, Balthus,

Goya, Velasquez and Miro are testaments to his need to create a new history for himself. By using imagery and symbols from the past, Witkin celebrates our history while constantly

redefining its present-day context. Visiting medical schools, morgues and insane asylums

around the world, Witkin seeks out his collaborators who, in the end, represent the numerous personas of the artist himself.

The resulting photographs are haunting, beautiful and grotesque yet bold in their defiance

hideous beauty that is as compelling as it is taboo. Witkin begins each image by sketching his ideas on paper, perfecting every detail by arranging the scene before he gets into the studio to stage his elaborate tableaus. Once photographed, Witkin spends hours in the darkroom, scratching and piercing his negatives, transforming them into images that look made, rather than taken. Through printing, Witkin reinterprets his original idea in a final act of adoration.

Joel-Peter Witkin lets us look into his created world which is both frightening and fascinating as he seeks to dismantle our preconceived notions about sexuality and physical beauty. Through his imagery we gain a greater understanding about human difference and tolerance. “My work is based on the nature of man and his relation to the divine. In the work, I attempt to establish a creative and intellectual standard for still photography in a society in moral free fall.” - Joel-Peter Witkin

Note: All the images discussed in order in the interview can be seen here.

Joel-Peter Witkin (b. 1939) Contemporary Images of Christ: Roof: Rest After The Passion (Batman and Christ) Version 2, (Batman with Christ Returns Newspaper),

Amna Asghar  (b. 1984, Detroit, MI) appropriates, layers, and remixes imagery from personal archives, popular culture, and art history, allowing the interactions to conjure hybrids and reflect the complexities of the location of identity. Asghar lives and works in Detroit.

Her first institutional solo show, Well Wishes, curated by Jova Lynne, opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in 2021. In addition to two previous shows at Klaus von Nichtssagend, Asghar has had solo as well as group shows with Belle Isle Viewing Room, Detroit. Her work was a part of a series of group exhibitions curated by Sally Howell, Osman Khan, and Razi Jafri titled Halal Metropolis across metro Detroit and two exhibitions curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah, Parallels and Peripheries: Migration and Mobility, and On The Road II at VisArts, Rockville, MD and at Oolite Arts in Miami, FL respectively. Asghar received her BFA at Michigan State University and her MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Amna Asghar Find A Home, 2022 acrylic on canvas 84 × 120 inches (213.36 × 304.80 cm)

Amna Asghar, A Meadow in the Clouds, 2022 acrylic on canvas 72 × 72 inches (182.88 × 182.88 cm)

Amna Asghar Well Wishes V, 2022 acrylic on canvas 60 × 48 inches (152.40 × 121.92 cm)

Benoît Platéus portrait in studio

Benoît Platéus (born 1972 in Liège, Belgium) investigates the spaces and relationships between mediums, exploring abstraction in form and content.

Working across diverse media and techniques, he fully embraces the creative possibilities of both analogue and digital technologies in order to wrestle with the question of the original. Found images or objects often serve as a starting point for his work, and the transformation of these images and their meanings become his focus — aging, sunbleaching, saturating, enlarging, painting over, somehow modifying. Yet in spite of these efforts, traces of the original always remain in the new reproduced image, and Platéus highlights the poetic qualities of these accidents and imperfections.

Platéus's work has been exhibited at Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Mu.ZEE, Ostend; Karma, New York; Almine Rech, London; Meessen De Clercq, Brussels; CentreWallonieBruxelles (CWB), Paris; Art Sonje Center, Seoul; Galerie Albert Baronian, Brussels; Annarumma Gallery, Naples; and Galerie Jeanroch Dard, Paris, among others. He is included in several museum collections around the world, including the Fond National d’Art Contemporain, France and the Musée d’Ixelles, Belgium. In 2019, he was the subject of a mid-career retrospective One Inch Off at the WIELS Contemporary Art Centre in Brussels, which was accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog and later traveled to Bonner Kunstverein in Germany. In 2023, Platéus had his second solo exhibition, Other Percolators (https://www.signsandsymbols.art/exhibitions/other-percolators), at signs and symbols in New York.

Benoît Platéus, Electric Flowers, 2022, Oil on linen canvas, 23.625 x 20.87 inches (60 x 53 cm). © Benoît Platéus. Courtesy of the artist and signs and symbols, New York.

Benoît Platéus, Hieroglyph Machine, 2022, Oil on cotton canvas, 51.25 x 61 inches (130 x 155 cm). © Benoît Platéus. Courtesy of the artist and signs and symbols, New York.

Benoît Platéus, Oysters and Tools, 2022, Oil on cotton canvas, 61 x 51.25 inches (155 x 130 cm). © Benoît Platéus. Courtesy of the artist and signs and symbols, New York.

Amy Hill grew up in Elizabeth, New Jersey. She studied commercial art at Carnegie Mellon University. After graduating, she moved to New York City and worked as an illustrator for such publications as Rolling Stone, The New York Times and Penguin Books. The first solo exhibition of her paintings took place in the East Village in 1989.

Abridged text below by Reilly Davidson.

Amy Hill works in conjunction with historical frameworks, invoking Botticellian strangeness alongside the naïveté of Henri Rousseau. She also infuses her portraits with a hint of "Boterismo,” as inflated features and distorted realism recur throughout these compositions. Hill time travels with ease, intent upon picking up themes and conceits from each era of interest. Her collection of antiques are adapted to serve contemporary demands in an effort to clean out older generations and make room for new ones.

The artistic conceits of the Renaissance have been a constant touchstone for Hill, as she pursues this particular beauty via her own reinterpretations of form and content. What do the symbols of this bygone genre represent today? How can these images be improved upon? Hill’s secular figures worship consumer goods rather than the religious icons that were prominent during Europe’s “rebirth.” The desire to possess motivates Hill’s ongoing fascination with the conceits of Renaissance masterpieces. Beauty is also a compelling force by way of inspiration and pursuit.

These paintings are a continuation of what Hill has been pursuing since 2015, when she transitioned to a new mode of image making. She has always been interested in updating historical precedents in an effort to sustain a dialogue with painters past, however, she updated this endeavor by introducing new source material into the mix. By observing artists from the early American folk art tradition, she absorbed their consistent portrayal of families and the presupposed innocence of childhood. In accordance with her findings, she came to focus on the promise of youth, the imagined futures that children could occupy.

Amy Hill Family Breakfast, 2022 Oil on canvas 26 x 27 in 68.6 x 71.1 cm, courtesy of the artist and Fortnight Institute.

Amy Hill Young Woman with Strange Object, 2022 Oil on canvas 25 x 26 in 63.5 x 66 cm, courtesy of the artist and Fortnight Institute.

Amy Hill Tea, 2022 Oil on canvas 25 x 26 in 63.5 x 66 cm,courtesy of the artist and Fortnight Institute.

Julie Curtiss was born in Paris, France, and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She holds an MFA and a BA from École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France.

Her work is included in the permanent collections of the High Museum, Atlanta, GA; MCA Chicago, Chicago, IL; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Bronx Museum of Art, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis, MN; Maki Collection, Tokyo; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA; and Yuz Museum Shanghai, China. Julie is represented by Anton Kern Gallery and White Cube.

Julie Curtiss Waiting room, 2022 Oil and vinyl paint on canvas 60 × 48 inches (152 4 x 121.9 cm

Julie Curtiss Ice cream truck, 2022 Acrylic and oil on canvas 40 × 32 inches (101.6 × 81.3 cm)

Mauvais Sang, 2020, Oil, acrylic, and vinyl on canvas 30 × 25 in (76.2 × 63.5 cm)

Sakari Kannosto (Finnish, b. 1973) is a multimedia artist working in Helsinki, Espoo and Vantaa Finland, with a primary focus on ceramic sculptures and large-scale installations. His fantastical and figurative creatures are inspired by fables, Greek mythology, and Finnish folklore. As he sculpts part human, part mermaid, part animal beings, he references the Finnish myth that animals can shape shift, traveling between worlds as protectors. Imbued with whimsy and humor, Kannosto’s work is also underscored by a deep environmental consciousness. By reimagining a future where humans unite with nature to create adaptive, survivalist families, Kannosto addresses the potentially disastrous environmental consequences brought on by the industrialized world.

For Kannosto, clay is crucial to the actualization of his work. As an ancient medium, it has long been a conduit for coded information. He continues in this vein, luring magic out of the clay as he creates a cast of creatures for modern fairytales. There is something deeply hopeful here. Kannosto graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts of Helsinki in 2005. In 2014 he was granted an honorary award for environmental education due to his work as a lecturer and educator. After completing an artist in residence at the Arabia Art Department in Helsinki, he became a permanent member of the department in January of 2020 and is now the chairman of the board. He is a Lecturer of Fine Arts at Omnia in Espoo, and has exhibited widely. Notably, his work can be found in the collections of the National Museum of Finland and the Art Museum of Tampere.

SAKARI KANNOSTO (Finnish, b.1973) Oracle, 2022 Glazed stoneware 59" H x 23.625" W x 23.625" D

SAKARI KANNOSTO (Finnish, b.1973) Justitia (Mother Justice), 2022 Glazed stoneware 33.5" H x 33.5" W x 15.75" D

SAKARI KANNOSTO (Finnish, b.1973) The Inflexible, Siren V, 2022 Glazed stoneware 47.25" H x 12.625" W x 9" D

Elaine Cameron-Weir, photo by Isabel Asha Penzlien 

 

Elaine Cameron-Weir (b. 1985, Red Deer, Alberta, Canada). Elaine Cameron-Weir’s contemplative objects made from carefully sourced materials allow us to consider the ways in which artifice and spectacle have been used to perpetuate systems of belief. Her major installation from the most recent Venice Biennale in 2022 invoked sites of provisional operations and religious reflection by transforming the gallery with modular steel subflooring, neon and electric flicker lights, and repurposed objects previously used for military and industrial purposes.

In addition to the Venice Biennale, Cameron-Weir recently opened a solo exhibition at Hannah Hoffman in Los Angeles, CA. Other solo shows from the past two years include the SCAD Museum of Art (2022) and the Henry Art Gallery University of Washington (2021). Recently her work was on view at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum as part of an important exhibition titled “New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century.” Other select solo exhibitions include "exhibit from a dripping personal collection," Dortmunder Kunstverein (2018); “Outlooks: Elaine Cameron-Weir,” Storm King Art Center, New York (2018) where the artist installed a steel mesh sphere for motorcycle stunts known as “globe of death” on the top of a hill; and “viscera has questions about itself,” New Museum, New York (2017). She has shown both in the U.S. and abroad, in group exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Remai Modern, Saskatoon; GAMeC, Bergamo; FUTURA, Prague; among many others.

installation view, The Milk of Dreams, curated by Cecilia Alemani, 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, IT, April 23 - November 27, 2022 Photography by Andrea Rosetti

Elaine Cameron-Weir Low Relief Icon (Figure 1), 2021 (detail) US military body transfer cases, aluminum, flicker bulbs, electrical wiring, conveyor belt, pewter, chain, pulleys, aircraft cable, hardware overall dimensions: 281 × 202 × 28 1/2 in (713.7 × 513.1 × 72.4 cm); case with candles: 26.5 × 89 × 28.5 in (67.3 × 226.1 × 72.4 cm)

Elaine Cameron-Weir Right Hand Left Hand, Grinds a Fantasizer’s Dust, 2021 (detail) concrete textile, funerary backdrop stand, neon tubing, transformers, spot lights, silk gauze 85.5 x 112 x 24 in 217.17 x 284.48 x 60.96 cm