Interviews by Brainard Carey

Carl Berg has been a curator and gallery director for almost thirty years. He is the founder/director of PRJCTLA a new alternate gallery in downtown Los Angeles. He has owned galleries in Los Angeles and Amsterdam and has worked as a curator organizing over 150 exhibitions in Los Angeles, Berlin, Seoul, Amsterdam, Berlin, Rotterdam and elsewhere.

He has organized several groundbreaking exhibitions over the years including: “Southern California Car Culture” that highlighted the works of 15 LA artists including Slater Bradley, Chris Burden, Andrew Bush, Carolie Dixon, Ed Kienholz, Mathew Luem, Kori Newkirk, Patrick Paeper, Annica Carlson Rixon, Steve Roden, Haley Rodman, Ed Ruscha, Robert Stone, Erik Treml, Paul Tzanetopoulos and car designs by BMW (Designworks USA), Lexus (CALTY), Lincoln Mercury, Mazda, Mercedes Benz Advanced Design (SMART CAR), Schools: Art Center College of Design. This exhibition looked at the culture of the automobile in Los Angeles and how artists reacted to this unique environment.

There was a diverse blend of work from blue chip, mid-career and emerging artist all of which addressed “Car Culture” in his or her own unique way. As part of the mix in the exhibition Berg also included car designs by major Los Angeles based design studios including studios from Ford, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Mazda and Toyota. The show included early designs of the Smart Car, the [irst BMW SUV and full-scale rendering of the Mazda Miata. “Booster Up Dutch Courage” that featured the work of 17 artists from many prominent Dutch artists which premiered their LA debut including Aernout Mik, Rob Birza, Mathilde ter Heijne, Tariq Alvi, Lisa May Post, Rik Meijers and Federico D. Orazio.

This exhibition co-curated by Theo Tegelaers was the [irst to introduce a new generation of Netherlands based artist to the West Coast. This exhibition was followed up by a show of 20 Los Angeles based artist titled “CA 9000-185” at W139, a prominent non-pro[it space in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Some of the artists included Slater Bradley, Jessica Bronson, Greg Colson, Tim Hawkinson, Steve Hurd, Martin Kersels, Habib Kheradyar, Charles LaBelle, Marcos Lutyens, Yunhee Min, Patty Wickman, and Liz Young. This exhibition co-curated by Theo Tegelaers was the first of its kind introducing a new generation of Dutch artists to the LA art scene. More recently Berg curated “Framing Time” an exhibition of photography focused on the concept of movement in still photos. The show includes Los Angeles-based artists Uta Barth, Stephen Berens, John Divola, Robbert Flick, Tim Hawkinson, George Legrady, Sharon Lockhart, Ed Ruscha, and Augusta Wood and formerly from LA Dinh Q Lê (now living in Vietnam). Berg has also worked on many solo exhibitions with compelling artists including Tim Hawkinson (LA) , Folkert de Jong (Amsterdam), Slater Bradley (Berlin), Neha Choksi (LA and Mumbai), Iva Gueorguieva (LA), Megan Williams (LA), Diana Cooper (New York), Rob Birza (Amsterdam), Federico D’Orazio (Bangkok), Asad Faulwell (LA), HK Zamani (LA) amongst others.

In addition to his curatorial practice, Berg has organized a residency exchange with Foundation Kaus Australis in Rotterdam, The Netherlands and has sent over 70 artists from Los Angeles to this program from 2002-17. In Berg’s newest project, yet to be titled, he is interviewing a broad range of Los Angeles-based gallery owners, curators, collectors, critics and also artist. His objective is to create a historical document in a video format for future generations to study and enjoy. His [irst interview will be with renowned LA galleries Rosamund Felsen and he has many other exciting interviews planned for this project.

Lisa Le Feuvre at Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson

Lisa Le Feuvre is a curator, writer, and editor. She is inaugural Executive Director of Holt/Smithson Foundation, an artist-endowed foundation dedicated to the creative legacies of artists Nancy Holt (1938-2014) and Robert Smithson (1938-73).  Between 2010 and 2017 Le Feuvre was Head of Sculpture Studies at the Henry Moore Institute, a part of the Henry Moore Foundation. She led a program of education, research, publications and exhibitions, and the development of the Leeds sculpture and collection archive. Previously Le Feuvre taught on the post-graduate Curatorial Program at Goldsmiths College, led the contemporary art program at the National Maritime Museum and was Course Director of the post-graduate program in Arts Policy and Management at Birkbeck College, University of London.  She has sat on various juries including Sculpture Dublin (2021), Arnaldo Pomodoro Foundation Prize (2019),the Turner Prize (2018), Hepworth Prize for Sculpture (2016), British representation at the Venice Biennale (2015), and co-curated the quinquennial exhibition British Art Show 7: In the Days of the Comet (2009-10).

In this interview she discusses the Robert Smithson exhibition at Marian Goodman Gallery in NYC, Abstract Cartography, June 24th - August 20th, 2021.

Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson, Mono Lake (still) (1968/2004) 8 mm film and Instamatic slides Color, sound; 19 minutes, 54 seconds © Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York Distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix Courtesy Holt/Smithson Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery

Robert Smithson Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Airport Layout Plan: Wandering Earth Mounds and Gravel Paths, 1966 Pencil and crayon on map 11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.6 cm) Courtesy Holt/Smithson Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery ©Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York Photo credit: Alex Yudzon

Robert Smithson SNAP SHOT NOTES Pertaining to "Double Nonsite" California + Nevada near Baker Cinder Cones Rock Collected at site (LAVA) and "Death Valley Nonsite" Rock Collected at Site (Chalk), 1968 Black and white gelatin silver contact prints, felt tip marker on paper 20 x 8 in. (50.8 x 20.3 cm) Courtesy Holt/Smithson Foundation and Marian Goodman Gallery ©Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York Photo credit: Alex Yudzon

Brittany M. Watkins (b.1989) is an interdisciplinary artist based in the Southern United States. Her practice examines contemporary society through a lens of psycho-analysis and social critique as she moves between a range of media. From immersive installation to hyper edited video-performances, her intuitive (subconscious) process mirrors the push and pull between interiority and public life, linking larger social issues to the fragility of the human psyche. Since obtaining her Master’s Degree of Fine Art in 2016 from Florida State University, she has exhibited in venues ranging from international art fairs and museums to experimental, artist-run-spaces in the U.S. and abroad. Her site-specific installation

The books mentioned in the interview are Mastery by Robert Greene and The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.

Behaviors STACKED [over] Certainty, six altered couches stacked with ratchet straps & paint, 10' x 8.5' x 10.5', 2018. Installation detail from my solo show: AFFECT-ED, BEING at 701 Center for Contemporary Art in Columbia, SC.

Under them-there Hills...Mama, mixed-media installation, 30’ x 18’ x 13’, 2019. Installation detail from MINT Gallery in Atlanta, GA.

Working in the border territory between abstraction and representation, James Esber uses a variety of media to disassemble and distort the emotionally charged and often clichéd images of Americana. The characters he’s drawn to, pawed-over icons of popular culture, include things like gunslingers, flag-wavers, dimpled children holding flowers, deadbeat alcoholic dads, and self-absorbed selfie-takers. His paintings, built through a process of hyperbolic mark-making, are done with myopic focus on each part, shifting between scales and allowing for improvised digressions which nudge the image toward abstraction. The resulting hybrid images are often fragmenting and imploding while at the same time stubbornly retaining their integrity.

James Esber has shown his work in New York and abroad including a 25-year survey at the Clifford Gallery at Colgate University (2014) and a solo exhibition at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT (2011). He has had multiple one-person shows at PPOW, NYC, Bernard Tolle in Boston and Pierogi in both New York and Leipzig. He has also shown widely in group exhibitions, including One Work at the Tang Museum (2014), The Land of Earthly Delights at The Laguna Art Museum (2008), and SITE Santa Fe’s Fifth International Biennial: Disparities and Deformations: Our Grotesque (2004).

He lives in Brooklyn, NY and is represented by Pierogi Gallery.

The book mentioned in the interview is The Inkblots by Damion Searls.

Hero, 2021, Acrylic on PVC panel, 48 x 62.5 inches

Thinker 2, 2020, Acrylic on PVC panel, 40.5 x 32 inches

Artist Bisa Butler at the Art Institute of Chicago. phot: John J. Kim.

Bisa Butler was born in Orange, NJ, the daughter of a college president and a French teacher. She was raised in South Orange and the youngest of four siblings.  Butler's artistic talent was first recognized at the age of four, when she won a blue ribbon in an art competition.

Formally trained , Butler graduated Cum Laude from Howard University with a Bachelor's in Fine Art degree.  It was during her education at Howard that Butler was able to refine her natural talents under the tutelage of lecturers such as Lois Mailou Jones, Elizabeth Catlett, Jeff Donaldson and Ernie Barnes. She began to experiment with fabric as a medium and became interested in collage techniques.

Butler then went on to earn a Masters in Art from Montclair State University in 2005.

While in the process of obtaining her Masters degree Butler took a Fiber Arts class where she had an artistic epiphany and she finally realized how to express her art.   "As a child, I was always watching my mother and grandmother sew, and they taught me. After that class, I made a portrait quilt for my grandmother on her deathbed, and I have been making art quilts  ever since."

Bisa Butler was a high school art teacher for 10 years in the Newark Public Schools and 3 years at Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey.

In February 2021 Bisa was awarded a United States Artist fellowship.Butler’s work is currently the focus of a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, the second stop of a traveling exhibit which began at the Katonah Museum of Art. She is represented by the Claire Oliver Gallery of New York. Butlers work has been acquired by many private and public collections including The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture,The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Nelson-Adkins Museum , 21cMuseum Hotels, The Kemper Museum of Art, The Orlando Museum of Art, The Newark Museum, The Toledo Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

*Don’t Tread On Me , God Damn, Let’s Go! ; The Harlem Hellfighters, 2021 Cotton, silk, wool and velvet * a work in progress, Photo by Bisa Butler

I Go To Prepare A Place For You, Harriet Tubman’s last words ,2021 Cotton, silk ,wool and velvet 120” x 120” Quilted and appliquéd Photo by John Butler

photo by Jamie Carr

Rebecca Bryant creates danceworks that combine movement with text, video, and objects. Originally trained in visual art, Bryant’s dances emphasize improvisational methods and performative states, as well as non-hierarchical collaboration across disciplines.  Bryant has shown her work in 26 US states and in Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Spain, Germany, Romania, Hungary, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. She worked extensively with the Lower Left Performance Collective for 13 years and is a co-founder of PMPD (dance/music/new media). Her projects have received support from residencies such as Djerassi Resident Artist Program (USA) and Guapamacátaro Art and Ecology Residency (Mexico), and a choreographic grant from the Puffin Foundation. Bryant has danced for renowned and emerging choreographers including Nina Martin, Wally Cardona, Victoria Marks, Kim Epifano, Shelley Senter, Lionel Popkin, and Marianne Kim. She has taught workshops in New York, Stockholm, Oslo, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Bogota, and at the Los Angeles Improvisational Dance Festival, West Coast Contact Improv Festival, Texas Dance Improvisation Festival, Contact Festival Freiburg, TransContact Festival, Kontakt Budapest Festival, and at numerous universities across the US.  She holds a BA in Visual Art and an MFA in Dance, and teaches dance improvisation, composition, somatics, and pedagogy at California State University, Long Beach.

The book mentioned in the interview is The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman.

Benjamin Bertocci lives with his small family and has been working out of his studio in Queens, New York since 2005. He was raised in Stockbridge Massachusetts, and attended Bard College at Simon’s Rock, UMASS Amherst, and worked as Visiting Assistant professor of Printmaking at Southern Illinois University.

He primarily shows with VonAmmonco Gallery.

Children’s Singer, oil on plastic entombed canvas, 8”x8”, 2021

Holocene Threnody XVI, oil on marble drink coaster, 4”x4”, 2020

Christy Gast

photo credit: Keil Troisi

(Amenia, New York) is an artist based in New York whose sculptures and video installations focus on issues of politics and aesthetics with regard to landscape.

Her work has been exhibited at MoMA/P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Performa, Exit Art and Artist’s Space in New York, Perez Art Museum of Miami, Bass Museum, de la Cruz Collection and Nina Johnson Gallery in Miami, Matucana 100 and Patricia Ready Gallery in Santiago, CL, and the Kadist Art Foundation in Paris.

 

 

Cucú and Her Fishes (Act 1)

Binational Seminar on Patagonian Peat Bogs

Marta Popivoda (Berlin/Belgrade) is a filmmaker, video artist, and researcher. Her work explores tensions between memory and history, collective and individual bodies, as well as ideology and everyday life, with a focus on antifascist and feminist potentialities of the Yugoslav socialist project. She cherishes collective practice in art-making and research, and for several years has been part of the TkH (Walking Theory) collective. Popivoda’s first feature documentary, Yugoslavia, How Ideology Moved Our Collective Body, premiered at the 63rd Berlinale and was later screened at many international film festivals.

The film is part of the permanent collection of MoMA New York, and it’s featured in What Is Contemporary Art? MoMA’s online course about contemporary art from 1980 to the present. Her work has also featured in major art galleries, such as Tate Modern London, MoMA New York, M HKA Antwerp, Museum of Modern Art + MSUM Ljubljana, etc. Popivoda received the prestigious Berlin Art Prize for the visual arts by Akademie der Künste Berlin and Edith-Russ-Haus Award for Emerging Media Artist. Her new feature documentary Landscapes of Resistance premiered in the Tiger Competition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2021. It won the Best Picture Prize in the International Competition of the 22nd Jeonju International Film Festival, South Korea, and Library Award at the 43rd Cinéma du réel - Festival international du film documentaire, Paris.

Landscapes of Resistance, Marta Popivoda, Film Still

Landscapes of Resistance, Marta Popivoda, Film Still

Cristina Mejías (Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, 1986) We have become accustomed to preconceiving the academic world as the legitimate container and transmitter of knowledge. We have the luxury of being able to forget something because we can always retrieve it from books. But here it is not enough to simply dry a leaf and store it in a herbarium, because a living plant is bitten by the air, and it is important that this happens. Libraries need to be driven by our desire in order to take on life. The practice of orality cuts across bodies. The listener listens.

Cristina Mejías’ work is predicated on familiar narrations and storytelling, challenging the strict, traditional methods used to construct history by means of a linear narrative. What has brought us here to the present is founded upon the strata of History and stories that predate us. The creation of something regarded as new always begins with seizing a murmuring that triggers the story.

Mejías has a degree in Fine Arts from UEM (Madrid) and NCAD (Dublin) and a Master’s in Research in Art and Creation from UCM (Madrid). After several years living in Berlin, now she lives and works in Madrid.

Her work has recently been exhibited individually in Art centers such as Centro Párraga (Murcia, SP)- A un tiempo. Unos higos y un cántaro , Museum of Jaen and Museum of Cadiz (Jaen/Cádiz, SP)- For What Cannot Be Recovered Can at Least Be Reenacted, Blueproject Foundation (Barcelona, SP)- You Can't Leave Fingerprints on Stone, a project born thanks to the collaboration with archaeologist and performer Efthimis Theou-, and the Contemporary Art Museum from Maracaibo (Maracaibo, VZ)- Tejer y contar.

Her work has also appeared in group exhibitions in Art institutions such as Tabakalera Donostia- Estudiotik at (San Sebastián, SP), CA2M- Colección XX (Madrid), La Casa Encedida- Generación 2020 and Things That Never Happened but Have Always Existed (Madrid, SP), SCAN Projects-Where water Rumbles (London, UK), CentroCentro (Madrid, SP), C3A-Touching Ground (Cordoba, SP), Fundación Mendoza- Correspondencias de Ultramar #4 Ana Navas y Cristina Mejías (Caracas, VZ), Artothèque-Ceux qui nous lient (Bordeaux, FR) or Tea-La tierra tiembla (Tenerife, SP).  Along with her personal artistic work, currently she is collaborating with artist and performer Víctor Colmenero and their work has been seen or will be seen in places such as Volcánica Festival (Guadalajara, MX), La Capilla Theatre and Proyecto H (Mexico City, MX) or Pradillo Theatre (Madrid, SP).

She has recently won a number of awards and grants, including Generación 2020, Blueproject Foundation, VEGAP XXIII, Comunidad de Madrid|Estampa award or Iniciarte. Over the course of the last months, she has been artist in residence at Pico do Refúgio (Azores, PT), Hangar Lisboa (Lisboa, PT), C3A (Cordoba, SP), Matadero Madrid (Madrid, SP), Ateliers dos Coruchéus (Lisboa, PT), Tabakalera Donostia (San Sebastián, PT) and MACZUL (Maracaibo, VZ)

 The book mentioned was by Ursula K. Leguin: The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader and the Imagination

You Can’t Leave Fingerprints on Stone, solo exhibition at Blueproject Foundation (Barcelona, SP, 2020). Photo by Roberto Ruiz

A un tiempo. Unos higos y un cántaro, solo exhibition at Centro Párraga (Murcia, SP, 2020). Curated by Ana García Alarcón. Photo courtesy of Centro Párraga.