Interviews by Brainard Carey

Donald Sultan (b. 1951 Asheville, NC) is an artist who rose to prominence in the late 1970s as part of the “New Image” movement. Sultan has challenged the boundaries between painting and sculpture throughout his career. Using industrial materials such as roofing tar, aluminum, linoleum and enamel, Sultan layers, gouges, sands and constructs his paintings—sumptuous, richly textured compositions often made of the same materials as the rooms in which they are displayed. Intrigued by contrasts, he explores dichotomies of beauty and roughness, nature and artificiality, and realism and abstraction. Weighty and structured, Sultan’s works are simultaneously abstract and representational: his imagery is immediately recognizable— flowers, daily objects, idle factories—but ultimately reduced to simple geometric and organic shapes. As Sultan says, “I try to pare down the images to their essence, and capture the fleeting aspect of reality by pitting the gesture against the geometric—the gesture being the fluidity of the human against the geometry of the object.” 

Sultan’s early experiences building theatre sets at school, working in his father’s tire company in Asheville, and later in construction as a young artist in New York had a profound influence on his artistic development. These various lines of work led to an interest in industrial reproduction, heavy materials, and a practice of painting on floors and walls, à la Jackson Pollock. Sultan’s works, constructed horizontally, denote a purposely flat quality that borrows the synthetic flatness of stage sets while also utilizing the monumental weightiness of industrial materials— which harkens back to Asheville’s strong roots in manufacturing. 

Interested in the artifice of nature as it is sold and packaged within a consumerist society, a major theme within Sultan’s work is studying the representation of an object or idea—how a flower, a factory, or a fruit is consumed in the Zeitgeist of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the 1980s, Sultan began depicting lemons in the style of traditional still lives. The blinding brightness of the yellow against the pitch black hue of the roofing tar he used as background make Sultan’s interpretations of these fruits hard to look at, while deferring monumental dignity to the common household good. The contrast of these natural organic shapes against the industrial materials and grid format has led Sultan to describe these works as pieces with “heavy structure, holding fragile meaning.” Playing with the dichotomy of meaning and material, perception and reality, the Lemon works began Sultan’s longstanding interest in depicting how an object is looked at, rather than the object itself. 

His 1990s series on dominos and dice continue this reflection on the still life—the ultimate, slow, and concentrated gaze upon an object. A style entrenched in repetition and tradition, the repertoire of this style is ultimately limited, but the combinations endless. In his compositions of back dots and mathematically endless arrangements of dominoes, Sultan creates a visual metaphor for the limitations and possibilities of the still life tradition, and the liberties allowed within its set parameter. 

The artist’s heavy use of industrial materials in the late twentieth century naturally led to his famous series of “catastrophic” paintings in the 1980s and 1990s. These industrial landscapes, titled the Disaster Paintings, illustrate the fragility of robust man-made structures, such as industrial plants and train cars, when faced with catastrophic events. This series was exhibited across the United States in a traveling exhibition in 2016 through 2018. The exhibition originated at the Lowe Art Museum at University of Miami and then traveled to the Museum 

of Modern Art, Fort Worth; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; and Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln. 

Terry Haggerty was born in London, England and studied at the Cheltenham School of Art, Gloucestershire. His work has been exhibited widely in galleries and museums around the world, including solo presentations at the Norton Museum of Art, West palm Beach, FL; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

He is the recipient of several awards including the FOR-SITE Foundation Award (2009), John Anson Kittredge Award (2003), and the NatWest Art Prize (1999). Commissions include wall drawings for AT&T Stadium in Dallas, Munich Re in London, and private collections around the world.

Terry Haggerty Two Minds, 2009 Acrylic on wall The Art Collection Cowboys Stadium, Arlington, TX Photo: Richie Humphreys/Dallas Cowboys © Terry Haggery, courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.

Terry Haggerty Step by step, 2016 Acrylic on wood panel 72 x 58.625 inches (183 x 149 cm) © Terry Haggery, courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York.

Eric Aho is an American artist whose paintings are equally concerned with the physical immensity and intimacy of the natural world as much as with an ever-evolving process of extract-ing spiritual experiences discovered within it. His energetic, gestural painting process uses lively marks and swaths of color to create richly applied paint that morphs between abstract expanses and the contours of nature. Aho’s work develops primarily from his own experience and memories of the landscape. He references broadly and freely from the history of art—responding to a wide range of works from Poussin to Constable, and from Winslow Homer to Ellsworth Kelly to inform his compositions. Aho lives and works in Saxtons River, Vermont.

Ice Out (Allagash), Oil on linen, 90x80, Photography © Rachel Portesi. Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York

Ice Cut (Violet, Kennebec), Oil on linen, 80x90, Photography © Rachel Portesi. Courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York

Angela Westwater at 257 Bowery, 2020, photo by Alexei Hay

Angela Westwater co-founded Sperone Westwater Fischer in 1975 with Italian art dealer Gian Enzo Sperone and German gallerist Konrad Fischer, opening a space at 142 Greene Street in SoHo, New York. (The gallery's name was changed to Sperone Westwater in 1982.) An additional space was later established at 121 Greene Street. The founders' original program showcased a European avant-garde alongside a core group of American artists to whom its founders were committed.

Notable early exhibitions include a 1977 show of minimalist works by Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, and Sol Lewitt; seven of Bruce Nauman's seminal early shows; six early Gerhard Richter shows; two Cy Twombly exhibitions in 1982 and 1989; eleven Richard Long exhibitions; and the installation of one of Mario Merz's celebrated glass and neon igloos in 1979 -- part of the gallery's ongoing dedication to Arte Povera artists, including Alighiero Boetti. Other early historical exhibitions at the Greene Street space include a 1989 group show, "Early Conceptual Works," which featured the work of On Kawara, Bruce Nauman, Alighiero Boetti, and Joseph Kosuth, among others; a 1999 Fontana exhibition titled "Gold: Gothic Masters and Lucio Fontana"; and selected presentations of work by Piero Manzoni. From May 2002 to May 2010, the gallery was located at 415 West 13 Street, in a 10,000-square foot space in the Meatpacking District. In September 2010, Sperone Westwater inaugurated a new Foster + Partners designed building at 257 Bowery. Today, over 45 years after its conception, the gallery continues to exhibit an international roster of prominent artists working in a wide variety of media.

Artists represented by Sperone Westwater include Bertozzi & Casoni, Joana Choumali, Kim Dingle, Shaunté Gates, Jitish Kallat, Guillermo Kuitca, Wolfgang Laib, Helmut Lang, Amy Lincoln, Richard Long, Emil Lukas, David Lynch, Heinz Mack, Mario Merz, Katy Moran, Malcolm Morley, Bruce Nauman, Otto Piene, Alexis Rockman, Susan Rothenberg, Tom Sachs, Peter Sacks, Andrew Sendor, and William Wegman. Past exhibitions, press, and artworks can be found on the gallery website.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, Westwater received her BA from Smith College and her MA from New York University. She arrived in New York City in 1971 and landed her first job as a “gallery girl” at the John Weber Gallery at 420 West Broadway. From 1972 to 1975, she served as Managing Editor of Artforum magazine. In 1975, the same year the gallery was founded, Westwater was appointed to the Board of Trustees of The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, where she has served as President since 1980.

The books mentioned in the interview are The Free World, Art and Thought in the Cold War by Louis Menand and A Life of Picasso, The Minotaur Years by John Richardson.

Joana Choumali, Untitled (Ça Va Aller), 2019, mixed media, 9 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches (24 x 24 cm), 16 1/4 x 16 1/4 inches (41,3 x 41,3 cm)

Joana Choumali, WE ARE STILL NOW, 2022, mixed media, 4 parts; 38 1/2 x 78 inches (97,8 x 198,1 cm)

Untitled Collage 2

John J. O'Connor was born in Westfield, MA and received an MFA in painting and an MS in Art History and Criticism from Pratt Institute in 2000.

He attended The MacDowell Colony, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, was a recipient of New York Foundation for the Arts Grants in Painting and Drawing, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation Studio residency.

John has been in numerous exhibitions abroad, including The Lab (Ireland), Martin Asbaek Gallery (Denmark), Neue Berliner Raume (Germany), Rodolphe Janssen Gallery (Brussels), the Louhu District Art Museum (Shenzhen, China), TW Fine Art (Australia); and in the US at Andrea Rosen Gallery, Pierogi Gallery, Arkansas Arts Center, Weatherspoon Museum, Ronald Feldman Gallery, Marlborough Gallery, White Columns, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Baltimore, the Queens Museum, and the Tang Museum.

His exhibitions have been reviewed in Bomb Magazine, The New York Times, Artforum, the Village Voice, Art Papers, the Brooklyn Rail, and Art in America. John presented his work in discussion with Fred Tomaselli at The New Museum, and his work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Weatherspoon Museum, Hood Museum, Southern Methodist University, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. A catalogue spanning 10 years of John’s work was published by Pierogi Gallery with essays by Robert Storr, John Yau, and Rick Moody. He teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

The upcoming shows mentioned in the interview will be at False Flag Gallery and Pierogi Gallery. O'Connor also has a 2-person show upcoming at Pazo Fine Art.

The books referenced in the interview were Daniil Kharms, "Today I Wrote Nothing" and Antonio Damasio, "Feeling and Knowing."

"I Shot," 82.25 x 70.25 inches, colored pencil and graphite on paper, 2020

"Charlie (Butterfly, day 3)," 86 X 70 inches, colored pencil and graphite on paper, 2018

Brandi Twilley was born in 1982 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She received her MFA in 2011 from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

Her work has been exhibited at: Josh Lilley in London, UK; Zero Gallery in Milan, Italy; the Museum of Sex in New York City; and Kate Werble Gallery in New York City; among others. Three solo exhibitions of her work have taken place at Sargent’s Daughters in New York City.

Her work has been reviewed in: The New York Times; ARTFORUM; ARTnews; The New Yorker; Artnet News; Time Out; The Observer; and Hyperallergic; among others.

Manhattan Skyline, 2020, Oil on Canvas, 16 by 20 inches.

"Washing my Hair, 2019, Oil on Canvas, 26 by 14 inches

Stylist/Creative director: Rebekka Fellah Photographer: Enrique Leyva © Hugo McCloud Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York

Born in Palo Alto California in 1980, Hugo McCloud is one of the most prolific young artists working today. In a career that has now spanned fifteen years, Hugo McCloud's work has quickly evolved through a process of restless experimentation, bringing inventiveness and fearlessness to the act of making. The artist is engaged in an ongoing quest to elevate and master diverse methodologies and the array of subjects his work addresses. An abiding, unifying theme is Hugo's preoccupation with finding beauty in the everyday.

Self-taught with a background in industrial design, McCloud’s practice is unrestricted by classical, academic tenets. He has gravitated toward materials that could be considered abject – roofing materials, solder, and presently, single-use plastic bags. Drawing inspiration from the rawness of the urban landscape, McCloud creates rich, large-scale abstract paintings and by fusing unconventional industrial materials with traditional pigment and woodblock printing techniques. McCloud’s newest body of figural work touches on notions of class, particularly through his use of plastic bags. His investigation into plastic began approximately five years ago after traveling to India and seeing multi-color polypropylene plastic sacks everywhere. Observing the downcycle of these bags from their creation, to the companies that purchased them for the distribution of products, to the trash pickers in Dharavi slums, McCloud saw how this ubiquitous material passed through the hands of individuals at every level of society.

These representational works address issues concerning the economics of labor, geopolitics and the environmental impact of plastic. McCloud continues his practice of incorporating industrial materials using plastic as a tool to better understand our similarities and differences as a human race; to connect to our environment; and to contribute to reversing the negative impact of our carbon footprint.

McCloud has been the subject of solo exhibitions at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, The Arts Club, London and Fondazione 107, in Turin, Italy. He has also been featured in group exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, and The Drawing Center, New York. His work is in the collections of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of the Arts, The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the Brooklyn Museum, the Mott Warsh Collection, and The Joyner/Giuffrida Collection.

Hugo McCloud lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and Tulum, Mexico.

Hugo McCloud upcycled, 2021 single use plastic mounted on panel panel: 65 x 94 inches (165.1 x 238.8 cm) framed: 66 1/2 x 95 1/2 x 2 7/8 inches (168.9 x 242.6 x 7.3 cm) © Hugo McCloud Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York

Hugo McCloud evening stroll, 2022 single use plastic mounted on panel panel: 76 x 66 inches (193 x 167.6 cm) framed: 77 1/2 x 67 1/2 x 2 1/8 inches (196.8 x 171.4 x 5.4 cm) © Hugo McCloud Courtesy: Sean Kelly, New York

When m was seven, they had a pet snake named Herman. Kept him in a bubble bath container shaped like a train, and when they opened the lid, they could see him peering back. Everyone else in their family was afraid of snakes. Them favorite was the gentle black king snake. Herman was tiny and green. A rubbery toy they had to hide from their mother, who had a way of making things disappear. Like their sixth finger, which they wore between thumb and index, from which they shot little projectiles that contained messages. Like the satanic bible, which they read to investigate the opposition, since their father was a born again man of the cloth. Being a gender fluid person was likely going too far, but eventually, it wasn’t something they could put a lid on. Around the same time as Herman, they started rink roller skating, dressing in wide cords with an alligator belt, a white cotton shirt, and beneath it, a striped cravat they called a dickey. One day, m peered at Herman peering back at them and felt a sudden fear, realizing that soon, they would also be hiding. In high school, they excelled in Science and Art. In college, Psychology and Philosophy. Them was enamored of semiotics, game theory and topography while getting their mfa at Yale. No wonder that their work evolved into computer spaces, where they wove Queer meaning into photographs and made installations that were given Guggenheim, NYFA and Jerome Foundation awards. Currently, m is offering tours of their studio, working on an installation performance and editing seven years of work into a “book.” As a Professor in Exile at The New School, m teaches outside of University settings, offering group studio courses and individual mentoring.

m is currently reading these books mentioned in the imterview: The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment Volume One, by Je Tsongkhapa (Translated by Lam Rim Chen Mo); Paul Outerbridge: New Color Photos. Nazraeli Press, 2022, One Thing Well: 22 Years of Installation Art by Kim Davenport.

CHAPTEr onE, THis CHAPTEr onE, THE oTHEr cHAPTEr onE, ink on paper with grommets, ©mBurgess, 2021

Cynthia Daignault received a BA in Art and Art History from Stanford University. She has presented solo exhibitions and projects at many major museums and galleries, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Museum of Contemporary art, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, MASS MoCA, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Kasmin Gallery and White Columns. Her work is in numerous public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Daignault is a regularly published author, and editor of numerous publications.

The first major monograph on her work, Light Atlas, was published in 2019, and a new paperback edition will be released in early 2022. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a 2019 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, a 2016 Foundation for the Contemporary Arts Award, a 2011 Rema Hort Foundation Award, and a 2010 MacDowell Artist Fellowship. She lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland.

Gettysburg (Stereoscopic) 2021 30 x 60" Oil on Linen

Gettysburg (Rorschach) 2021 19 x 19" Oil on Linen

Paco Barragán (Oviedo, Spain) is a curator and culture theorist that believes that the so-called “white cube” is dead. Since 2016 he doesn’t do “white cubes.” Between 2015 and 2017 he oversaw the visual arts section of Matucana 100 in Santiago de Chile. As a curator he is interested both in the history of museology and exhibition design and the history of the making of the art market. Why? Because you can´t have a good command of curatorial practices without a profound knowledge of the art market, which had a profound impact on museological and curatorial practices. Most of the known museological displays, from the Period Room to the Impressionist or Expressionist hang respond after all to profound commercial goals. For this reason, Barragán wrote a book about the history of art fairs and biennials since ancient Greece and Rome until today as he understands that we need a longue durée perspective. At this very moment he’s finishing a book about the history of collecting since Assyria until today. Museums are the result of all kinds of collecting, so it has sense to dive into that. Barragán thinks that a curator must be a narrator, a museologist, and an exhibition designer. Today curators are only narrators, the so-called Harald Szeemann model, but we need to go back to the practices of Wilhelm Bode, Ludwig Justi, Alexander Dorner and Alfred H. Barr, Jr. to do our job properly. In other words: to be a Gesammtkurator. That is also the reason why we only see “white cubes”, from Tate to MoMA to Mori Museum, because curators these days are only narrators and have no love for the past. But the future of curating lies in creating “contextual museologies”, id est, better and more attractive presentations.

"The Nine Mile Twine”, re-staging Duchamp’s 1942 twine and performance of First Papers of Surrealism exhibition “The Vertigo of Modern Life”, 18 February 2022, Domus Artium (DA2), Salamanca, Spain Photo: Santiago Santos

Re-staging the Expressionist “Die Brücke Hang” of 1905-1911, "The Vertigo of Modern Life", 18 February 2022, Domus Artium (DA2), Salamanca, Spain Photo: Santiago Santos