The Carla Podcast

L.A. based artist Naotaka Hiro talks about the exploration of the “unknown body” in his multi-media practice. The Osaka-born artist, who works across painting, drawing, video, film, and sculpture, often puts constraints on his body as he works, embracing his own limitations and failures. In this episode Hiro gives listeners intimate insight to his nuanced process, and the private performance that goes into making his work. He also talks about how 2020’s pandemic and unrest directly impacted his recent exhibition, Armor.

“I think that making failure is to show myself, like a raw self.. Not pretending or [trying] to be pretty with something extra. I always have the tendency to make it neat and nice, but having a failure kind of pulls me off from that.”
–Naotaka Hiro

Host and Producer: Lindsay Preston Zappas
Production and engineering: PJ Shahamat 
Theme music: Joel P West

Audio Book of Carla issue #25, published Fall 2021. Each individual article can be accessed on our new Carla Audio Books feed. Read the full issue and access photos and more at contemporaryartreview.la/print.

Read by Lindsay Preston Zappas

Purchase this magazine or buy a 1-year subscription.

Contents:
00:01:40
Letter from the Editor
–Lindsay Preston Zappas

00:05:05
Eating the Self:
Arnold J. Kemp's Hungry Hydras
–Allison Noelle Conner

00:17:30
More than Not:
LACMA's Not I and the Necessity of History
–Melissa Lo

00:31:17
Learn from this Community:
Resisting Hierarchy through a Return to Community Arts
–Catherine Wagley

00:46:59
Interview with Taylor Renee Aldridge
–Eva Recinos

01:00:36
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring: Kang Seung Lee, Leslie Dick, and Amia Yokoyama
–Claressinka Anderson
Photos: Joe Pugliese

Reviews
01:06:34
Sessa Englund
at Hunter Shaw Fine Art
–Matt Stromberg

1:11:54
Em Kettner
at François Ghebaly
–Lindsay Preston Zappas

01:19:49
Beverly Fishman 
at GAVLAK
–Neyat Yohannes

01:27:43
Marisa Takal
at Night Gallery
–Nick Earhart

01:33:31
Intergalactix:
against isolation/
contra el aislamiento
at LACE
–Nahui Garcia

01:40:27
If it's good for you,
it's fine by me
at Real Pain
–Sampson Ohringer

Audio Book of Carla issue #24, published Summer 2021. Each individual article can be accessed on our new Carla Audio Books feed. Read the full issue and access photos and more at contemporaryartreview.la/print

Read by Lindsay Preston Zappas

Purchase this magazine or buy a 1-year subscription.

Contents:
00:01:53
Letter from the Editor
–Lindsay Preston Zappas

00:05:44
Hidden Archives:
L.A.’s Historic-Cultural Monuments and the Women They Leave Out
–Neyat Yohannes

00:19:28
Zombie(s in Candy)land:
Sula Bermúdez-Silverman’s Sugar and Salt
–stephanie mei huang

00:33:12
On Making Photographs in a Surveillance State
–Erin F. O’Leary

00:48:03
Correcting the Record to Preserve It:
The Art of the Intersectional Archive
–Catherine Wagley

01:01:34
Interview with Cauleen Smith
–Madeleine Seidel

01:12:34
Exquisite L.A.
Featuring: Lila de Magalhaes, Young Joon Kwak, and Beatriz Cortez
–Claressinka Anderson
Photos: Joe Pugliese

Reviews
01:17:36
Sarah Rosalena Brady
at Blum & Poe
–Allison Noelle Conner

1:24:07
Alex Prager
at LACMA
–Travis Diehl

01:29:23
Richard Tuttle at David Kordansky Gallery;
Stanley Whitney at Matthew Marks Gallery
–Jessica Simmons

01:38:41
Xylor Jane
at Parrasch Heijnen
–Matt Stromberg

01:44:47
(L.A. in N.Y.)
Thomas Fougeirol | Tony Marsh
at albertz benda
–Leah Ollman

01:51:16
(L.A. in N.Y.)
Becky Kolsrud
at JTT
–Anthony Hawley

L.A. based artists Amanda Ross-Ho and Erik Frydenborg talk about shifting focus and priorities after a year of the pandemic. As teachers, the two discuss what it’s been like to work with students over the last year, and they also find common threads across their art practices: attention to detail, engaging with time and archival material, and inviting the viewer into an open-ended dialogue.

"The craft element was not just about a well-made object, but a way to see other objects with precision and close attention to form. Like reading the contexts in which objects come into the world, and where they’ve been—I think of craft as being not just a tool, but a way to respect materiality. It’s a respectful ceremony for objecthood, so thereby it entends to other things in the world that you have not made... For us it’s also like a church of—it's devotional. It’s totally ritual, devotional, it’s reverence, it’s a world view."
–Amanda Ross-Ho and Erik Frydenborg

Amanda Ross-Ho holds a BFA from the School of the Art institute of Chicago and an MFA from the University of Southern California. She has exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally. Solo exhibitions include Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles, Hoet Bekaert, Belgium,The Pomona Museum of Art, Mitchell-Innes and Nash New York, The Visual Arts Center, Austin, TX, Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago, The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Vleeshal Center for Contemporary Art, Middelburg, Netherlands, the Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, Germany, Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland, The Approach, London, Praz-Delavallade, Paris, and Mary Mary, Glasgow, and Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway. Group exhibitions include Artists Space, New York, The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, The Orange County Museum of Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, The New Museum, New York, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. She was included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, and the 33rd Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts, curated by Slavs and Tatars. She has presented commissioned public works at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, City Hall Park, New York City, the Parcours Sector of Art Basel Switzerland, and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Ross-Ho's work has been featured in Artforum, The New York Times, ArtReview, Modern Painters, Art in America, Flash Art, Art + Auction, and Frieze among others. She is Professor of Sculpture at the University of California, Irvine and lives and works in Los Angeles.

Erik Frydenborg was born in 1977 in Miami, Florida. He holds a BFA from MICA in Baltimore, MD, and an MFA from the University of Southern California. Frydenborg has held solo exhibitions at The Pit, Glendale, CA, Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago, IL, Albert Baronian, Brussels, BE, The Suburban, Oak Park, IL, and Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles, CA. Previous group exhibitions include NADA House, New Art Dealers Alliance, Governor’s Island, New York, NY, 100 Sculptures, Anonymous Gallery, Paris, FR, Divided Brain, LAVA Projects, Alhambra, CA, Real Shapes, Dateline, Denver, CO, Skip Tracer, M. LeBlanc, Chicago, IL, Knowledges, Mount Wilson Observatory, Los Angeles, CA, Re-Planetizer, Regina Rex, New York, NY, TRAUMA SAUNA, ASHES/ASHES, Los Angeles, CA, Full House, Shanaynay, Paris, FR, BAD BOYS BAIL BONDS ADOPT A HIGHWAY, Team Gallery, New York, NY, Trains, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, Set Pieces, Cardi Black Box, Milan, IT, and The Stand In (Or A Glass of Milk), Public Fiction, Los Angeles, CA. Frydenborg’s work has been reviewed in Artforum, FlashArt, and The Los Angeles Times, among other publications. From 2017 through 2019, Frydenborg was a partner in the cooperative artist-run Los Angeles gallery AWHRHWAR. Erik Frydenborg lives and works in Los Angeles.

L.A. based artists Amanda Ross-Ho and Erik Frydenborg talk about shifting focus and priorities after a year of the pandemic. As teachers, the two discuss what it’s been like to work with students over the last year, and they also find common threads across their art practices: attention to detail, engaging with time and archival material, and inviting the viewer into an open-ended dialogue.

“The craft element was not just about a well-made object, but a way to see other objects with precision and close attention to form. Like reading the contexts in which objects come into the world, and where they’ve been—I think of craft as being not just a tool, but a way to respect materiality. It’s a respectful ceremony for objecthood, so thereby it entends to other things in the world that you have not made… For us it’s also like a church of—it’s devotional. It’s totally ritual, devotional, it’s reverence, it’s a world view.” –Amanda Ross-Ho and Erik Frydenborg

Audio book of Carla issue #23, published Spring 2021. Each individual article can be accessed on our new Carla Audio Books feed. Read the full issue and access photos and more at contemporaryartreview.la/print

Read by Lindsay Preston Zappas

In this episode, host Lindsay Preston Zappas talks to L.A. based artist Simphiwe Ndzube. Ndzube talks about his childhood growing up in South Africa and how as an artist he uses his Magical Realist style to blend past experiences with fantasy. Ndzube talks about following his inner child as an intuitive guide to his art making which blends sculpture, painting, and assemblage. Ndzube discusses art-making as a tool for unpacking traumas, and how he uses his own practice to process past experiences. 

Simphiwe Ndzube  (b. 1990, Cape Town, South Africa) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and Cape Town, South Africa. He received his BFA from the Michaelis School of Fine Arts in 2015. Ndzube’s work is characterized by a fundamental interplay between objects, media and two-dimensional surfaces; stitching together a subjective account of the black experience in post-apartheid South Africa from a mythological perspective. Recent exhibitions include INXS: Major Never Before Seen Works by Simphiwe Ndzube, Moffat Takadiwa, and Zhou Yilun, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, USA (2020); Hollywood Babylon: A Re-Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Nicodim, Jeffrey Deitch, and AUTRE Magazine, Los Angeles, USA (2020); Where Water Comes Together With Other Water, The 15th Lyon Biennale, Lyon, France (2019); People, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, USA (2019); In the Order of Elephants After the Rain, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest, Romania (2019, solo); and New Acquisitions, The Rubell Museum, Miami, USA (2018). His work can be found in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, Lyon, France, and the Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa, among others.

In this episode, host Lindsay Preston Zappas talks to L.A. based artist Simphiwe Ndzube. Ndzube talks about his childhood growing up in South Africa and how as an artist he uses his Magical Realist style to blend past experiences with fantasy. Ndzube talks about following his inner child as an intuitive guide to his art making which blends sculpture, painting, and assemblage. Ndzube discusses art-making as a tool for unpacking traumas, and how he uses his own practice to process past experiences. 

“The work is so much based on the openness. I do not judge my work. I bring to it what comes naturally, and I allow it as the finish goes to be whatever it’s going to be. And I think what ends up happening is there is something that comes naturally without dictating and controlling it and wanting to say a specific thing or be a specific thing.” –Simphiwe Ndzube

Simphiwe Ndzube  (b. 1990, Cape Town, South Africa) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and Cape Town, South Africa. He received his BFA from the Michaelis School of Fine Arts in 2015. Ndzube’s work is characterized by a fundamental interplay between objects, media and two-dimensional surfaces; stitching together a subjective account of the black experience in post-apartheid South Africa from a mythological perspective. Recent exhibitions include INXS: Major Never Before Seen Works by Simphiwe Ndzube, Moffat Takadiwa, and Zhou Yilun, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, USA (2020); Hollywood Babylon: A Re-Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Nicodim, Jeffrey Deitch, and AUTRE Magazine, Los Angeles, USA (2020); Where Water Comes Together With Other Water, The 15th Lyon Biennale, Lyon, France (2019); People, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, USA (2019); In the Order of Elephants After the Rain, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest, Romania (2019, solo); and New Acquisitions, The Rubell Museum, Miami, USA (2018). His work can be found in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, Lyon, France, and the Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa, among others.

Adapting performance work for Covid-19 safety — How performance operates without an audience present — How writing, sampling, and sound play in performance work — How the pandemic has shifted the way we we think about institutional support and artist communities

In this episode, I talk to three artists in The Hammer exhibition, Made in L.A. 2020: A Version, which is on view but still not open to the public due to Covid-19 restrictions. Harmony Holiday, Aria Dean, and Jaqueline Kiyomi Gork all had planned performance works for the biennial exhibition and had to shift their artworks to accommodate for Covid-safety. We discuss the process of adapting their initially envisioned work, how performance becomes altered without audience participation, and how other disciplines like writing, sculpture, and sound play out in each artist’s work. Together, the artists muse on issues that the pandemic has brought to light. How might alternative platforms privilege community and care for artists and performers?

Adapting performance work for Covid-19 safety — How performance operates without an audience present — How writing, sampling, and sound play in performance work — How the pandemic has shifted the way we think about institutional support and artist communities 

In this episode, I talk to three artists in The Hammer exhibition, Made in L.A. 2020: A Version, which is on view but still not open to the public due to Covid-19 restrictions. Harmony Holiday, Aria Dean, and Jaqueline Kiyomi Gork all had planned performance works for the biennial exhibition and had to shift their artworks to accommodate for Covid-safety. We discuss the process of adapting their initially envisioned work, how performance becomes altered without audience participation, and how other disciplines like writing, sculpture, and sound play out in each artist’s work. Together, the artists muse on issues that the pandemic has brought to light. How might alternative platforms privilege community and care for artists and performers? 

Hosted by Lindsay Preston Zappas