Interviews by Brainard Carey

Kadar Brock has lived and worked in Brooklyn, NY since graduating from The Cooper Union in 2002. In 2005 he began exhibiting bright, gestural abstractions, with solo exhibitions at BUIA Gallery, NY (2006, 2008) and Angell Gallery, Toronto (2007), which were written about in The New York Times, ArtForum, and The Village Voice. By 2009 though, he lost faith in that approach to painting and began questioning the assumptions about authorship and gesture that undergird it. 

To step away from and challenge his previous paintings, Brock began creating works via systems of role playing and ritual. He first exhibited this new vein of work with Thierry Goldberg in New York in late 2010. He’s since had solo exhibitions with The Hole, NY (2013), Vigo Gallery, London (2012, 2015, 2016), Almine Rech, Brussels (2015), and Patron Gallery, Chicago (2017), as well a group exhibitions at Praz Delavallade, Paris (2016), Sperone Westwater, NY (2015), and The Flag Foundation, NY (2015), all containing these works that dig at his earlier mode of painting.

Brock’s current body of work began nine years ago as a way to criticize his learned relationship to painting, and its roots in Romanticist myths about the artist, gesture, and progression. Now his work also scrutinizes representations of the future from his youth, which include tropes of heroism and masculinity, stories of post-nuclear dystopias, and the failed promises of New Age spirituality. He translates a love and hate of these formative concepts into a physical ritual. A canvas is painted on, dried, un-stretched, scraped with a razor blade, primed over, sanded, re-stretched, and painted on again. He repeats these processes until the layers of paintings stop functioning as pictures and congeal into a historical object, a meditative relic that contains and obfuscates a lexicon of images.

a purple field, the artist's hand, the artist's hand, the artist's hand, the invisible hand, 2019 Oil and acrylic on canvas 60 x 48 x 2 in 152.40 x 121.92 x 5.08 cm

teresa and the green screen, sally and the oscars, 2019 Oil, acrylic, house paint, and spray paint on canvas 60 x 48 x 2 in 152.40 x 121.92 x 5.08 cm

Photo by Aileen Imperial

Markel Uriu is an interdisciplinary artist based in Seattle, WA. Her work explores impermanence, maintenance, and the unseen. Drawing from her Japanese and Irish-American heritage, she is particularly interested in liminal spaces, and explores these concepts through, research, ephemeral botanical narratives, installations, and two-dimensional work. Her subjects of time, cycles, and cultural interchange have culminated in a fascination with invasive species. Her current work explores the nature of invasive species, their environmental impacts, and their links to humanity, colonialism, and globalization. 

Markel received her BA from Whitman College in 2011. She is the recipient of various awards and residencies, most recently the 2018 Amazon Artist in Residence, and the 2016-2017 Artbridge Fellow at Pratt Fine Arts Center. She is a member of the Lion's Main Art Collective for Queer and Trans Artists, Seattle and SOIL Gallery, Seattle, and has shown throughout the United States.

Books mentioned in the interview were The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing and NW by Zadie Smith.

 

Nay, I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak nothing but 'Mortimer,' and give it him to keep his anger still in motion. (PNW murmuration)2019Starling skins, starling scansDimensions variableAn accumulative installation contemplating the introduction of the European starling to North America. Eugene Schieffelin, the chairman of the American Acclimatization Society, an organization dedicated to the introduction of European flora and fauna to North America, sought to introduce every bird mentioned in Shakespeare. In 1890, he released 60 starlings in Central Park. The birds survived, and subsequently spread throughout the entirety of the United States. There are now an estimated 150 million inhabiting The United States and parts of Mexico and Canada. 60 starling skins were repeatedly scanned and printed, and added to a growing murmuration throughout the duration of the show. From "An Object Lesson" a solo show at the Hedreen Gallery in Seattle, WAPhoto by Joe Freeman

Nay, I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak nothing but 'Mortimer,' and give it him to keep his anger still in motion. (PNW murmuration)2019Starling skins, starling scansDimensions variable, DetailPhoto by Joe Freeman

The Human Dimensions of Biotic Homogenization (Pangea Revisited)2019Scans (Narrowleaf plantain, common mallow, common dandelion, chickweed, pigweed, american bullfrog, kudzu, japanese knotweed, himalayan blackberry, human, cat, european rabbit,  common starling, brown rat, house mouse, zebra mussel, asian clam, blue mussel, brown trout, rainbow trout, common carp, largemouth bass, pigweed, wild sage, water hyacinth, red swamp crayfish, grass, european sparrow, and horse tamarind)Dimensions variableA collection of species now present on all, or most continents, scanned, and woven together. Mapping out the emerging global ecosystem. From "An Object Lesson" a solo show at the Hedreen Gallery in Seattle, WAPhoto by Joe Freeman

Jennifer Ling Datchuk is an artist born in Warren, Ohio and raised in Brooklyn, New York.  Her mother came to this country in the early 1970s from China; her father born and raised in Ohio to Russian and Irish immigrant parents.  Beyond initial appearances, the layers of her parents’ past and present histories are extremely overwhelming and complicated – a history of conflict she has inherited and a perpetual source for her work.  She captures this conflict by exploring the emotive power of domestic objects and rituals that fix, organize, soothe and beautify our lives.  Trained in ceramics, the artist works with porcelain and other materials often associated with traditional women’s work, such as textiles and hair, to discuss fragility, beauty, femininity, intersectionality, identity and personal history.

She holds an MFA in Artisanry from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and a BFA in Crafts from Kent State University. She has received grants from the Artist Foundation of San Antonio, travel grant from Artpace, and the Linda Lighton International Artist Exchange Program. She was awarded a residency through the Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum to conduct her studio practice at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Germany and has participated in residencies at the Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China, Vermont Studio Center, and the European Ceramic Work Center in the Netherlands. In 2017, she received the Emerging Voices award from the American Craft Council. Recently, she completed a residency and exhibition curated by Dr. Debra Willis for Artpace.  She lives in San Antonio, Texas where she maintains a studio and teaching practice.

In the interview three projects were discussed; The upcoming project at Black Cube called "The Fulfillment Center", "Babe Cave" at Truth Before Flowers at Women and Their Work and Big curtain of red hair at thick at Artpace.

The book mentioned in the interview is:  Her Body and Other Parties.

Don’t Touch My Hair, fake hair, porcelain beads from Jingdezhen, China Originally commissioned and produced by Artpace San Antonio Photo credit Seale Photography Studios

Don’t Touch My Hair, Detail, fake hair, porcelain beads from Jingdezhen, ChinaOriginally commissioned and produced by Artpace San AntonioPhoto credit Seale Photography Studios

Lorenzo Triburgo is a Brooklyn-based, multimedia artist employing performance, photography, video, and audio to cast a critical lens on notions of the “natural,” the construct of gender, and the politics of queer representation.

Lorenzo has artworks in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, IL, and the Portland Art Museum in Portland, OR. Lorenzo has been featured in Slate, Huffington Post, HuffPo-Live, and the Transgender Studies Reader 2 (Routledge). In 2019 Lorenzo won the Camera Club of New York’s Baxter Street Workspace Residency for Monumental Resistance:Stonewall.

Lorenzo has exhibited and lectured in cities throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia, including Bruce Silverstein, NYC; Photoforum Pasquart, Biel, Switzerland; Kunst und Kulturhaus, Berne, Switzerland; the Dutch Trading Post, Nagasaki, Japan; The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL; Magazzini del Sale di Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, Italy; and Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Lorenzo is a full-time Instructor of Photography and teaches Photography, Critical Theory, and Queer Studies for Oregon State University’s online campus and in the continuing education program at the School of Visual Arts. Lorenzo holds a BA from New York University in Photography and Gender Studies and an MFA in Photography and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts.

The curatorial project mentioned in the interview is - CRIMINALIZE THIS!

Monumental Resistance: Stonewall, photo/project credit: Lorenzo Triburgo and Sarah Van Dyck.

Monumental Resistance: Stonewall, photo/project credit: Lorenzo Triburgo and Sarah Van Dyck.

Asmudjo Jono Irianto , Curator, Indonesia Pavilion ©farrenkopf

Asmudjo Jono Irianto, a lecturer in the Fine Arts Department of Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), was executive director and curator of Gallery Soemarja at ITB from 1999 to 2001. An expert in the field of crafts, he was honored by the Asian Cultural Council and visited art museums and craft centers in the US in 2005.

In addition to serving as an adviser to the Indonesian Pavilion, he has curated a number of exhibitions over the years; his own art has appeared in solo and group exhibitions.

Indonesia Pavilion, ©farrenkopf

Indonesia Pavilion, ©farrenkopf

Zara StanhopeCuratorial ManagerAsian and Pacific Art

As a curator practising within institutions and independently Zara Stanhope focuses on expanding engagement with contemporary art across the Global South. She is currently the Lead Curator for Post hoc by Dane Mitchell, New Zealand’s pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale.

Currently Curatorial Manager, Asian and Pacific Art at Queensland Art Gallery|Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA), Stanhope is the lead curator on the 10th Asia Pacific Triennial (APT) for 2021 and led the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial in 2018. Other recently curated exhibitions and collaborations include Dane Mitchell’s Iris, Iris, Iris (Mori Art Museum, Tokyo and Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, New Zealand, 2017–18, co-curator Mami Kataoka); Ann Shelton: Dark Matter (Auckland Art Gallery 2016–17); Out of Office, Public Share collective, RMIT Project Space, Melbourne 2017); Space to Dream: Recent Art from South America (Auckland Art Gallery, 2016, co-curator Beatriz Bustos);  Yang Fudong: Filmscapes (Centre for the Moving Image and Auckland Art Gallery, 2014–15, co-curator Ulanda Blair), and TransVersa: Artists from Australia and New Zealand (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago, Chile, 2006, co-curator Danae Mossman).

Stanhope is commissioning editor of and has contributor to: Ann Shelton: Dark Matter, Auckland Art Gallery (2016); The Māori Portraits: Gottfried Lindauer’s New Zealand, co-edited with Ngahiraka Mason, Auckland University Press and Auckland Art Gallery (2016); and collected symposium papers Artmatter 01: Engaging Publics/Public Engagement, Auckland Art Gallery and AUT University, 2014 and Artmatter 2: Agency and Aesthetics, co-edited with Ann Shelton, Auckland Art Gallery and Massey University (2018). Her other recent publications include: ‘Living in These Times’ in Gregor Kregar, Gow Langsford Gallery and Gregor Kregar, Auckland (2018); ‘Everything Now’ in Us V Them: Tony de Lautour, Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū (2018); ‘We Journey on through These Rough Waters’ in APT9, Queensland Art Gallery|Gallery of Modern Art (2018), Found in Translation (for Richard Maloy: Things I Have Seen) Youkobo Art Space, Tokyo (2017). She is a regular contributor to art magazines and journals, recently publishing: ‘Curating APT9: Staying with the Questions’, Art Monthly Australasia, iss 313, Summer 2018–19: 34–39 and ‘Home Truths: The Politics of Debility in Recent Projects by Shannon Novak’, Art New Zealand, iss 68, Summer 2018–19: 62–65.

Institutional roles Stanhope has held include: Deputy Director and Senior Curator at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, Australia (2002−08); inaugural Director of Adam Art Gallery, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand (1999–2002); and Assistant Director, Monash University Gallery, Melbourne, Australia (1993–99). She is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Art and Design at AUT University, Auckland and at RMIT University, Melbourne, and holds a PhD from the School of Arts and Social Sciences at the Australian National University, Canberra which focused on the international development of socially engaged art practices.

Dancers, part of Women's Wealth' in The 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT9)Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA)Start date 24 November 2018End Date 28 April 2019OPENING WEEKEND

Vuth Lyno, 'House-Spirit' 2018, installation viewThe 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT9)Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA)Start date 24 November 2018End Date 28 April 2019OPENING WEEKEND

Mireia Sallarès (Barcelona, 1973) lives between Barcelona and other foreign cities where she develops her artistic practice.Being a foreigner is an essential register in her field research that is the result of long term projects on such essential topics as violence, death, pleasure, legality, truth or love; that she defines as battle grounds.The process of creating her works is an indispensable part of the content that involves people from their uniqueness to question the apparatus of construction of the dominant discourses in our society. The notion of "lived life" is the axis on which her artistic practice is articulated and she states: “What is truly monumental is the life who has been lived. UNESCO should declare it a human right and protect it as a world heritage. The lived life cannot be an individual right because life who has been lived links us all, even the living and the dead.” Sallarès is currently developing the Trilogy of Trash Concepts; prolonged researches into life in relation to the doubtful political prestige of concepts such as truth, love and work.Video of The Little Deaths (Las Muertes Chiquitas) project

The book mentioned in the interview is Kill All Normies.

Las Muertes Chiquitas (Trailer) from Sans Godot on Vimeo.

Nate Klug is the author of Rude Woods, a modern translation of Virgil's Eclogues (The Song Cave, 2013), and Anyone, a book of poems (The University of Chicago Press, 2015).

His writing has been supported by fellowships from the James Merrill House, the MacDowell Colony, and the Poetry Foundation.

He works as a Congregationalist minister and has served churches in Connecticut, Iowa, and California.

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Daniel Maidman is best known for his vivid depiction of the figure. Maidman’s drawings and paintings are included in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, the New Britain Museum of American Art, the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Long Beach Museum of Art.

His art and writing on art have been featured in The Huffington Post, Whitehot, Poets/Artists, ARTnews, Forbes, W, and many others. He has been shown in solo shows in New York City and in group shows across the United States and Europe. He designs coins for the US Mint and the Canadian mint.

He is a repeat guest critic at the New York Academy of Art. His books, Daniel Maidman: Nudes and Theseus: Vincent Desiderio on Art, are available from Griffith Moon Publishing. He lives and paints in Brooklyn, New York.

The Edge of the Forest, oil on canvas, 36”x48”, 2019

Man versus The Tower, oil on canvas, 36”x36”, 2019

Em Rooney lives and works in Massachusettes. She’s recently been included in exhibitions at François Ghebaly in Los Angeles, Gallery Crèvecoeur, in Paris, and  Foxy Production, in New York, NY.

Her last solo show; Ordinary Time, at  Bodega in New York was concurrent with her inclusion in Being: New Photography, at The Museum of Modern Art in 2018. Her current project approaches the idea of gift giving and editions as a generative, and semantic entry into more sculptural forms.

A collection of these pieces will be exhibited in September at Galerie Fons Welters, in Amsterdam.

The book mentioned in the interview is Ana Patova Crosses a Bridge.

Are Scared By the Land, 2018 Pewter, fiberglass, Aqua-Resin, silver, steel, screws, iPad, 4:20 video on loop 40 x 16 x 13 in (101.6 x 40.6 x 33 cm)

Pinky Ring Edition of 4 (You, Me, Mariana, and Jess): Part 1, 2019. Steel, cement coating, polystyrene, enamel, pewter, leather, hardware. 60 x 23 x 13 inches (152.5 x 58.5 x 33 cm)