On the 4th of July, we headed to FJORD Gallery in Philadelphia, PA for an early look at their latest show, ‘Body Without Organs.’ ‘Body Without Organs’ is an installation showcasing the material-based paintings of Sean Robert Fitzgerald alongside the playful unconventional sculptural work of Alex Da Corte. Together, the work is playful but the colors and materials combined create an eerie dream-like environment. We were able to talk with Sean and get his insight on working collaboratively on the show while simultaneously running a gallery space and curating shows. After our interview, we wondered around upstairs to the studio spaces where Sean’s own studio is located.

Fjord Gallery is the creation of Philadelphia-based artists, Lindsay Chandler, Liam Holding, AJ Rombach and Sean Robert Fitzgerald along with Natessa Amin, Cameron Masters, and Justine Jividen. The 3-story building holds a gallery on the ground floor with studio spaces on the 2nd and 3rd floors. ‘Bodies Without Organs’ is FJORD’s 13th show in the gallery’s 1.5 year history and is on view from July 5-28th.

Courtesy of FJORD Gallery

SF: The show is a collaborative work in progress between Alex and I, who met about a year ago and really hit it off in an artistic way. We quickly found that there were a lot of weird parallels between our work that we never even expected because we both work in very different ways and with very different subject matters. We collaborated earlier this year on a project for Title Magazine called ‘A Love Sonnet for Jack Smith’, which was a lot of fun. We made these short little animated GIF’s that were structured as a sonnet and inspired by imagery culled from some of Jack Smith’s films. We’ve had the idea brewing for this show for a while now, where Alex would basically make these props for my paintings. And by doing so, the paintings themselves are inevitably changed through the very act of collaborating. I came over to his studio and brought 15 or so paintings and told him he could choose whichever ones he wanted. We’ve been throwing these ideas back and forth for a couple of months and here it is!

F: How did you and Alex work together to create the final pieces? Did you re-work the paintings after or did you give Alex complete freedom to do what he wanted with your paintings?

SF: Some of them were more like – “You can do whatever you want,” whereas some of them were much more collaborative. Or sometimes I’d provide him with a loose sort of guideline for how I wanted the piece to be displayed. For example with this piece, the only real requirement I had was that both sides of the paintings had to be visible because a lot of the times, I re-work paintings by flipping the canvas around and re-stretching it. This one, I really liked from both sides. But, for example, the trapdoor piece In the other room we built together and it came about in this really almost unspoken organic way when Alex and I were hanging out in his studio one day. The show is very much about theatricality and parlor tricks so we thought how perfect to stick this little painting in this trap door hovering over this piece of black velvet.

Courtesy of FJORD Gallery

F: It has that cartoon humor, but in this super physical, textural and constructed way. It has this weird mix.

SF: That’s something that I found really interesting when working with sculpture and collaboratively with Alex. As soon as you turn something with this cartoony aspect into something physical it becomes really uncanny and strange. Have you ever seen when they turn things we know as cartoons into real life? It becomes really disturbing. Everything about it feels just wrong and I love it.

F: How do you feel about your canvases and these paintings that are very formal? You can look at them as image driven pieces but the way you are presenting them completely negates that.

SF: I actually really like that. Any opportunity in which an artist gets to see their work in a new context is automatically helpful. Even if you don’t like how you’re seeing it, it helps you think about it in a different way. I like how my paintings become objects in a very different way than if they were stuck on the wall. They have a completely different physicality in the space as part of a sculpture.

F: Was there one particular piece that you see totally different now?

SF: Yeah, this one over here is really cool. So going back to the idea of trickery or theatricality and parlor tricks, this one, I now see completely differently. First of all, the yellow wall completely sucks out this actually bright cadmium yellow and makes [the painting] into this poopy green. So that totally changed and the fact that this painting was re-streched over another support. The whole thing is really disturbing in that magic-trick or cartoon way because it looks like it’s floating when actually, if you look closely, the entire piece is supported against the the wall by this crystal heart at the top. It’s nice to give the viewer these extra little nuggets of detail that they can notice should they want to really engage with the piece in a more than superficial way.

F: The illusion is broken by having the heart there. It’s a smack in the viewers face which is great. How did you determine what the color of the wall should be? Did you create the pieces and then choose a color from
the objects?

SF: The wall colors came from a couple of different things. In certain aspects, the choices for the wall colors were formal, but they also help to relate the pieces back to each other and form this sort of narrative throughout the show. Also, this Grace Jones album cover was a big inspiration for a lot of it which really just clicked as soon as Alex showed it to me and then everything came full circle and made total sense.

Courtesy of FJORD Gallery

F: Yeah For sure! This is exactly like the promotional image with the figure in black tights.

SF: Absolutely, which goes back to the Grace Jones cover, which goes back to this figure sculpture, which goes back to the title, which goes back to the ‘body without organs’ idea and the act of collaboration. It’s all a big circle.

F: There’s also this domesticity about the objects as well. I feel that this is a strange out of place apartment that I’ve walked into. The space feels like an apartment. Was it ever one?

SF: Yeah I think it was before it became Fjord. There’s actually 9 studios upstairs but it probably was an apartment and probably will be again which is really weird to think about. There’s definitely this really uncomfortable stage set thing going on. We made the installation and set the lighting knowing it was going to be primarily viewed at nighttime, so the lighting is very specific. For example, The other room is terribly uncomfortable in the way its lit. There’s only 2 lights and they’re really dim so it feels like you’re on the set of a David Lynch film or you’re stuck in a bad made for TV movie. In this space with the plant, you get the impression you’re in an office waiting room and everyone else waiting is smoking these cheap cigarettes and you just want to get out but you can’t.

F: All the details have been stripped away where this is a stand-in for an entire space stripped down to its very basic parts. Also with the idea of a cartoon, the logic of when you make a caricature, you draw certain attributes to create an intimate recognizable thing and this has the same vocabulary.

SF: I agree, especially because everything is a prop for itself. The clock doesn’t work and the palm tree doesn’t grow. It’s a really good way of thinking about it.

F: When you look at the space that way, you seem to notice the construction of the building too.

SF: Its funny, all of those things disappear when the walls are painted white. As soon as you paint them a color you’re transported to that house that hasn’t been built yet and you start to notice that the ceilings aren’t properly finished and maybe all of these things are actually floating off the ground a few inches.

F: All the objects feel like they came out of this apartment too.

SF: Yeah, this apartment that doesn’t actually exist. Or this cartoon apartment turned into this real-life nightmare tragicomedy with a man that you can only see out of the corner of your eye. Dressed in black, moving things around.

F: Also you have the transparent brick pattern over brick.

SF: A fake of a fake. The show is very much about things you’re not actually supposed to see. As if we were watching a magician from behind.

‘Body Without Organs’ is up until July 28 at FJORD Gallery. You can see more of Sean Robert Fitzgerald’s work at www.seanrobertfitzgerald.com.

It seems as if Korakrit Arunanondchai‘s name is popping up everywhere. Collaborating with musicians and artists on videos and performances while simultaneously preparing for his show at CLEARING in both Brooklyn and Brussels, Korakrit Arunanondchai is not slowing down anytime soon.

At the time of our visit, Korakrit’s studio was filled with denim fire paintings for his solo show,’Muen Kuey.’ ‘Muen Kuey’ is currently up at CLEARING in Brussels from June 6-July 20. During our conversation, Korakrit talked about his identity and label as a Thai artist and his new body of work.

Courtesy of the Artist

F: You call yourself a Thai artist. What does that mean and how did you embrace that label?

KA: Since my 2nd year at my open studio in Columbia, I have wanted to embrace the idea of being a Thai artist. I was born in Bangkok but have studied as an artist in America. I went to RISD, which I feel is like the most uber-American art school and then Columbia. I was trying to fancy the idea where I would become a Thai artist and return to Thailand and somehow land in a place between the two.

KA: At RISD I was really into abstraction and fantasy – things like spaces in video games. I really didn’t want to locate my practice within this weird cliche of the Asian artist. But at Columbia, I realized that actually, I do want to. I have a western art education now, but in a way, the history of Thai modern art is one that traces back to the west as well. To try and draw a link in-between to parallel trajectories of these two distinct places that I live in, is the paradox that I am dealing with.

F: Can you talk about your work at Columbia and how that tied in with the work you made at Skowhegan?

KA: I started this series that ended up becoming a trilogy. One for each year. The first one was for my thesis for Columbia University a year ago of a Thai funeral themed installation. It was called “2012-2555.”
When I was at Skowhegan in Maine, I made the second video called “2556″ which is the year 2013 on the Buddhist Calendar. “2556″ is like me being stuck in a purgatory trying to figure how to become an artist through different artistic figures in Thailand. One of the key things that happened in “2556″ is a video clip from the famous Thai TV show, ‘Thailand’s Got Talent.’ This female performance artist did a performance where she was covered in body paint and danced against a white canvas. It became a big taboo because she used her breast to do so and later on, they found out that she actually was a go-go dancer paid by the TV show to boost their ratings.

Korakrit “2011″ performance documentation from Korakrit Arunanondchai on Vimeo.

KA: I wanted to expand this moment so I made a video which ends with me body painting and singing this song. It’s a Thai love song by a 60 year old famous singer who is singing to his wife. In the song, the singer tells his wife she grows more beautiful every day. I feel that it’s a nice song to sing to a painting.

F: So what’s next?

KA: Yeah, so this is the second video. For the next two years, I’m going to work on the third one which is going to be more of a feature film and I’m not going to be in it. It will be an adventure of these 3 Thai girls.

2556 Trailer from Korakrit Arunanondchai on Vimeo.

F: In Thailand?

KA: In Thailand and America. It’s going to be a flashback and forward structured … kind of like the t.v. show, LOST. The main character comes to America to find a guy that she has been talking to on OkCupid and it’s more of a travel log through the landscape of America.

F: Kind of like an Easy Rider type?

KA: More like Crossroads by Britney Spears. Then it will be broken up with all of these installations as pretty much all the shows act as small vignettes in the whole narrative structure.

Muen Kuey is up until July 20 at CLEARING Gallery, Avenue Louise, Louizalaan 292 1000 Belgium. You can see more of Korakrit Arunanondchai’s work at www.korakrit.com.

We met with Bradford Kessler at his live/work space located in Bushwick, New York. His work, comprised of pieces from installations and performances, were organized to one side of the loft. During our conversation, we gathered around his computer screen to view his extensive body of work.

Bradford Kessler is currently in his second year of grad school at the School of Visual Arts. He received his BFA in sculpture from the University of Kansas. His work has been exhibited at Tokyo Big Site, Taipei Film Archive, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, and Electronic Arts Intermix. He has also collaborated with AA Bronson at Art Basel Miami with Esther Schipper, Berlin and Anthology Film Archives, New York.

Bradford is currently in a show titled ‘MATERIAL CONCERNS: Three-Dimensional Objects by Seven Artists’ at Rare Gallery. Referencing Eric Drexler’s idea of “grey goo” microscopic robots consuming the Earth, Bradford’s ‘GAR[ ]DEN’ utilizes “garden ornamentation, primitive fetish objects, and landscape painting” to create a garden, or in his words “a an interface between the privacy of the house and the civic property of the street. It is a space onto which others can look, examine and judge. It is a liminal space, a paradise and a prison.” The grey primed canvas is reminiscent of an old Master painting technique where old pigments were mixed together and re-used to create a “perfect ground.”

Photos courtesy of the artist.

F: How long have you been in New York and what were you doing before??

BK: For 2 1/2 years. I was in Asia for 6 years before here. I studied Japanese for 2 years and went to China and studied Chinese. In Beijing, I worked for Ai Wei Wei. I made art all the while and showed with a gallery there at the time.

F: And now you’re currently at SVA for graduate school. Do you work here [in this studio space] or do you work there [at the grad studios]? How does that work?

BK: I work here most of the time. I’m there one day a week. I work in the biolab there … it’s the nature and technology lab actually as an Assistant and Researcher. Before grad school, I was teaching at Parsons. I wanted to do a MFA but didn’t feel like I could really commit to a full time program with all that was going on and [at SVA], the low residency set-up really made sense and the list of faculty was really exciting.

F: Can you talk a little bit about your work and what you’re doing now and how it’s changed since going to school and before school?

BK: Since 2005, my homepage was never a portfolio site. It actually functioned like a blog. There’s a lot of Photoshop and Illustrator images that were put together and you can scroll through it. I set it up as if they were these wall works and this guy was looking at them. It was kind of just for fun but then I use a flickr page to show my actual work. So I use my homepage as a blog and a blog as my homepage.

Saving the Planet from Bradford Kessler on Vimeo.

For the past 2 years … I guess I should start here. This was in Beijing. This was a solo show called ‘Monumental Ghostly Heights’ that was full of suicidal references and escaping bodily and phenomenological restraints of humaness.. When I came to New York about 2 1/2 years ago, I got on this bio-exorcist kick which was influenced by Beetlejuice. In the film, his job is as a bio-exorcist. The ghost world can hire him to exorcise the living from the house.

One that most embodies that role was Charles Darwin. His ‘Theory of Evolution’ sort of exorcised humans from the spirit realm by placing them on the same level as the animal kingdom in the hierarchy of ‘spirit’ so I made this video. For the animation, I hired this voice actor in LA who did a perfect impersonation of Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice to read this transcript of George Carlin’s stand-up, ‘Saving the Planet’ and then animated Darwin’s face. So from there, I was like a colorist in a way. I got really obsessed with green. Especially in cinema history, it has always defined the exotic “other,” the evil “other”, aliens, and Frankenstein. It goes on an on, think about the ooze in Ninja Turtles, Slimer, Reanimator…

F: …or the Matrix.

BK: Exactly. If you look over there. I made some of my own ooze. It’s set in … it contains various components of my own DNA and a lot of different things. It’s kind of one of these things that I do that is similar to the things that I would do as a kid like make my own ooze. It’s a fulfillment of my curiousity and playfulness. So the next project I did sort of in this bio-exorcist legacy if you will, was this … it’s called ‘Accident Study’.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

There’s an air blower inside of there that shoots air out and the ball hovers above the cube. The headlamps shine on it and casts shadows all around it. I took the title from Aristotle’s claim that there is no study for the accident. So I was thinking of my own art practice as being the exploration of the unknown, researching all the elements of this world that we live in, that can’t really be defined through systems of logic like science and math. So, there’s a lot of references to metaphysics and the paranormal in my work. In this particular work, those are plastic casts of my face, that I was melting over these skulls. I was painting this green effect and thinking of these as the children of the Wicked Witch of the West and so, I was referencing a continuation of manifest destiny. You know, asking the question, “What’s the motivation behind art and technological pursuits?” I was thinking of the Wicked Witch of the West as this intelligent demon lurking in the west. The “civilized” world moved all the way to the west and now with Nasa and the cybernetic age, it’s looking up into the sky. The use of the floating ball was inspired by Primum Mobile which was the black planet that early Greek philosophers thought all the other planets rotated around. It was like the mother planet.

F: It definitely has this X-files/science fiction feeling to it.

BK: Yeah, there definitely is a sci-fi aesthetic to it. The floating ball, you know, you’ll see it at kid’s exploration centers. There are these cliches or tropes of science and art that you’ll find throughout my work. It’s there intentionally. I compare it to David Lynch’s films. His actors will always be delivering this really cheesy dialogue but there will be this suspense music playing behind it and that juxtaposition is so unnerving. So it’s that kind of visceral flavor that I really try to get at. The cliche is there. David Lynch is a big influence. I grew up in a small town in Kansas where there’s always that evil lurking behind the white picket fence.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

This was at Art Basel Miami with Esther Schipper Gallery this past year.

F: Is that a performance piece?

BK: Actually, it was from a short film work but we [AA Bronson and I] took a still from it and had it produced into a large lightbox.

F: Was it life size?

BK: It was almost life size. It was 4ft by 2ft. We shot it on Super 8. It was for a show at Anthology Film Archives which was based off of the old porn cinemas of New York. It was kind of a divine bukkakae film and so again the slime. Did you grow up watching ‘You Can’t Do That on Television’?

F: Yeah, that Nickelodeon show? It definitely has that influence in it.

BK: Well in that show, the students would get slimed only after they said the key phrase, “I don’t know.” So it was punishment for ignorance and it came from this unknown source above. This all developed from conversations between AA and I. One of Rembrandt’s last paintings is ‘Return of the Prodigal Son‘ which depicts a parable from the Bible of a son down on his knees begging for forgiveness and his father is embracing him. So we were making a blasphemous take on this with the idea of the divine bukkakae.

There’s quite a bit of my work that’s really rooted in blasphemy which mostly stems from my upbringing in a Baptist church in small town Kansas. Almost all my ideas are drawn from philosophy and psychology. Freud and Lacan have played a role in my work but also Nietzsche and Heidegger. Those guys were tearing a part technology, spirituality, and the pursuit of knowledge itself. You can notice these epic Nietzschean and Freudian themes in my work.

.

To see more of Bradford’s work, visit his flickr page. You can also visit his “website” at www.bradfordkessler.com and his “blog” at www.engulfer.tumblr.com

F: Can you talk about your background and where you came from before Pratt?

MK: I went to Musashino Art University in Tokyo, Japan as my undergraduate. Though my major was fashion design, I was interested in clothes as a sculpture which would be able to wear. After graduation, I was working on llustrations for some books or packages but I became to want to make art not only for customers but for myself then decided to focus on fine art. I love my country, Japan but I thought I’d be able to broad my expression in NY where has many different kind of people or cultures. That’s a reason why I chose to study at Pratt.

東京にある武蔵野美術大学に入学し、ファッションのゼミを専攻した。でも、ただ着る
だけの服ではなく、着ることのできる彫刻として興味があった。
卒業後はイラストレーターとして、本やパッケージのイラストレーションの仕事をしたけ
れど、依頼人のためではなく、自分の為に作品を作りたいと思うようになり、大学院で
ファインアートを勉強しようと決めた。日本は大好きだけれど、もっと色んな人種や文化
の集まる国で自己表現の方法を見つけたくて、NYで勉強する事を決め、Prattに入学し
た。

F: Tell me about your work and what your installation was like in your thesis show.

MK: I keep thinking how I express a boundary between reality and dream whenever I make my works. I often had a same dream when I was little and it made me confuse that whether this dream was reality or not. That weird feelings became a core of my works. I can express it through my drawing or collage but I want to involve viewers in my strange dream by offering actual space as an installation composed of my sculptures.

作品をつくる上で常に思っていることは、どうやって夢と現実の境目を表現するか、と
いうこと。小さい頃に何度も同じ夢をみたことがあって、そのうちそれが夢なのか現実な
のかあやふやな気持ちになった。その時経験した不思議な感情が今の私の作品の核になっ
ている。ドローイングやコラージュでもそれは表現出来るけれど、それを彫刻にして、イ
ンスタレーションとして空間自体をつくることで、現実世界にいる観客を、私のつくる変
な夢の世界に閉じ込めたかった。それが、今回の卒業制作展の一番の目的。

F: We’re seeing these sculptures close together in a tight space [in your studio]. Was it also like that in the installation or were they more spread out?

MK: The view of my studio you saw was arranged for my narrow studio space. So it is different from my thesis show. Those sculptures were spread as you said because I needed to make enough space to viewers for walking among my
sculptures. That was important for making them feel as if they were a part of my dream.

スタジオ訪問の際見てもらった状態は、あくまでもあの狭さに合わせてアレンジしたも
のだったので、実際の展示ではもっとそれぞれの彫刻が離れて配置されていた。観客がそ
の空間を自由に歩き回れる事が重要だった。そうすることで彼ら自身が私のつくった夢の
一部である事を感じてほしい。

F: Is the video in the miniature greenhouse, the same video projected in your installation?

MK: The film I projected on the wall in my thesis show was different from the one played in the small green house. In the small greenhouse, businessman is just walking about and the one for the gallery’s wall shows the life size businessman who came out from the small green house is working toward the actual door installed on the gallery’s wall, and knocks it. Because a huge green sculpture in a shoe lean against the opposite side of the door never responses to him, the businessman turns back to the small green house. In this way, I tried to show that kind of short story which is repeated in the dream by using two different films. My show’s title, “My Neighbor Always Pretends Not to Be Home.”, is from that story.

実際にギャラリーの壁に映し出された映像は小さいグリーンハウスの映像とは別のも
の。小さいグリーンハウスの中ではビジネスマンがただ行ったり来たりしているだけだけ
れど、壁に映し出したものは、小さい温室を抜け出したビジネスマンがやってきて、実際
に設置されているドアをノックしてまた引き返していくというもの。小さい映像と大きい
映像を連動させて、夢の中で繰り返される小さなストーリーを表現した。私の展示のタイ
トルである”お隣さんはいつも居留守を使っている”はこのストーリーに基づいている。

F: Why did you choose a businessman? What significance does the businessman have in your work?

MK: A businessman is a metaphor of reality to me. They wear similar suits, similar hair and behave in a similar way almost everyday. They seem to be a stranger but you may be the one of them. I believe that’s what a businessman is.

ビジネスマンは、私にとって現実世界のメタファー。同じようなスーツを着て、同じよ
うな髪型をして、同じように忙しく働いている。知らない誰かだと思っていたらじつは自
分自身かもしれない。それがビジネスマン。

F: Can you talk about your drawings and how they relate to your sculptures?

MK: Drawing and collage is my first step for making visible form from ambiguous image in my mind. It could be finished work but also idea sketch before making sculpture. Relation between two dimensions and three dimensions is important for my consistent theme “construct a strange dream”. Because dream is a existence whose dimension is undefined. Sometimes the thing seems to be two dimension is actually something three dimension, at other times the thing looks solid is really flat. Showing such a distortion of dimensions is one of the expresion of dream. I have been looking for my own way to convert two dimensional collage to three dimensional collage.

ドローイングやコラージュは、私の頭にあるもやもやしたイメージを目に見える形にす
るはじめのステップ。それ自体が作品でもあるけれど、同時に彫刻作品のアイディアス
ケッチでもある。私にとって、作品のコアである“不思議な夢の世界の構築”には、二次元
と三次元のやりとりが不可欠だ。なぜなら、夢そのものが、次元が曖昧な存在だから。平
面にみえるものが実は立体だったり、立体だと思ったものがじつはフラットだったり、そ
ういうねじれた空間の表現が私にとって“夢”の表現手段のひとつ。最近は、その点に
フォーカスをあてて、二次元としてのコラージュを三次元としてのコラージュに変換する
にはどうすればいいかを試行錯誤している。

F: Can you talk about the process you went through to create these sculptures? I know you mentioned that they were inkjet prints. How did you come up with the shapes of the sculptures and where did the images from the inkjet prints come from?

MK: The way to make a sculpture is depends on the time, now I use paper, balloon, form core board for a base of sculpture, then cover it with a inkjet printed matter. This way is the way I try to make a three dimensional collage. A greenhouse is a basic idea of my thesis show. I first visited the greenhouse in Brooklyn Botanical Garden alone last winter. Only inside of the greenhouse was filled with a lot of greens and I felt I was watched by them. After back to my studio, I draw out that weird feelings by drawing and collage as usual. They look like an abstract image which mixed human and plants and I picked one of them which is the one with an abstract green’s shape in a man’s shoes and then made a sculpture from that drawing. I made a abstract shape using paper, balloon,
chicken wire and collaged inkjet prints of plants and leaves I took in the greenhouse on the base shape and then had these sculptures put on actual man’s shoes. To me, one of the points of choosing material is lightness. I’d like my sculptures to be light even though it looks heavy as the things in a dream. I also want to express the unclear memories of colorwise or sizewise which you wake up from a strange dream, so I use mono print and color print together

どういう風に立体をつくるかはその時によって違うけれど、卒業制作の作品をふくむ最
近の彫刻に使っている主な素材は紙、風船、フォーンコアボードが下地になっている。そ
してインクジェットプリントした素材を表面にコラージュする。この表現方法はまさに、
二次元としてのコラージュを三次元としてのコラージュに変換する作業。卒業制作の彫刻
は、温室がテーマになっている。ブルックリン植物園を一人で訪れた時、冬なのに温室の
中にあふれかえる緑が、私を見ているような不思議な感覚をおぼえた。スタジオにもどっ
て、いつものようにドローイングを描いた。人と植物が入り交じったようなイメージのド
ローイングのなかから、抽象的な緑の形が靴を履いているものをピックアップして、それ
を立体におこした。風船や紙でドローイングで描いた抽象的なかたちを作って、温室で実
際に撮った植物の写真をプリントアウトしてその表面にコラージュして、実物の靴を履か
せた。私にとって、素材を選ぶポイントのひとつは軽さにある。重そうにみえるのに実は
軽い、そのギャップも、私にとっては夢の表現手段の１つ。そしておかしな夢から覚めた
あと、はっきりおもいだせない色や形の記憶の曖昧さを表すために、モノクロプリントと
カラープリントを織り交ぜた。

F: What is your past work like?

MK: I’v been focus on consisten theme even though I express it through illustrations or fashion design. When I made a clothes in my undergraduate as an assignment of fashion class, what I made was a suit for the thief. That has a extra space as a part of the close and it bulges when the thief put the stolen stuff in the space. I took a photo of the model in the clothes and cut it out and put another photo I took in my neighbor which is a common public space as collage works. What I made when I first come to America was a small sculpture made by bread. They are combined breads and daily materials I found in a hard ware store. I put a lot of them on a table, so it looked like a dining table which was served uneatable break first on.

ファッションやイラストレーションなど、彫刻とは違う媒体をあつかっていても、ずっ
と前から表現したいコアは変わっていない。日本の大学でファッションの課題で服を作っ
た時も、泥棒のための服を作った。盗んだものを取り込むことで丸い形になるスーツを
作って、それを着たモデルの写真を、住宅街や横断歩道などのありふれた景色の写真にの
り付けして、コラージュ作品としても表現した。アメリカに来て一番はじめに作ったのは
パンと日用品を組み合わせた小さな彫刻。それをたくさん作って、食べれない朝食がなら
んだダイニングテーブルを作った。

F: What do you look for in a studio?

MK: A home is filled with 100% reality. But when I come out from the house and walking toward my studio, I find something funny in everyday scenes and that makes me imagine some new idea for my works then I make out something new from the idea in my studio. Studio is a place I can forget about reality and play with an imagination freely, so it is a factory to make a strange dream to me. I need to keep it to be on a boundary between reality and dream. Of course I need a enough space to put my sculptures.

わたしにとって家は１００％現実的な場所。でも家を出て、歩いている間に日常風景の
なかで色んなイメージがわいてきて、スタジオでそれを形にする。スタジオは、わたしに
とってイマジネーションを自由に遊ばせることができる場所であり、おかしな夢を生産す
る工場。そのためにも、スタジオこそ現実と夢の境目に位置しつづけていてほしい。もち
ろん、彫刻を保管するための十分なスペースも必要だけれど。

F: Has the school studio environment and the closeness of your peers affected your work?

MK: I got a lot of good stimulation in my studio environment at school. When I had just come to Pratt, I always struggled to use English, so art work was the only communication tool to me at that time. Conversation with my friends and professors in class through each works was so helpful for me to understand each other. I think this process was hard to have other environment. Thanks to my patient friends and teacher, I got a lot of great invisible tools to express my self.

とても良い刺激のある環境だと思う。日本から来た私にとって、prattに来たばかりの
時は言葉のハンディが今よりもっと大きかった。だから、作品そのものが最大のコミニュ
ケーション手段だった。授業で先生やクラスメートと互いの作品を通してやりとりするこ
とはお互いを理解するのにとても役立った。このプロセスは、他の環境ではなかなか得ら
れない大切な経験だと思う。根気よくやりとりしてくれる仲間がそばにいる環境にいたか
ら手に入れた目に見えない道具がたくさんある。

You can find more of Maiko Kikuchi’s work at www.maikokikuchi.net

F: Tell me about your most recent work.

KM: For my thesis show, I did an installation and a lot of the stuff that’s in here was part of it. I had half of the gallery and you had to take your shoes off to come into it. There were all these blankets and pillows and stuff on the floor and I had this table with all the artist books. I had these really big collages on the wall which are actually all rolled up in there right now because my studio is pretty small. I can’t have everything out all at once. Then I also had some smaller installations on the floor. I had two videos that were playing. They were stop motion animation videos. That was pretty much it. Oh, and I had a couple of these fans in there too and the lighting was kind of low – kind of like a bedroom. I had like four lamps…that were decorated and the overhead lights I had sort of dimmed. I sat in there the whole time. It was kind of like a performance. I received people and they could stay as long as they wanted. I had food and stuff out constantly and so, it was sort of about the conversations that I had with people when they were in the space and while they looked at everything. I sort of achieved everything I wanted to in one installation.

F: And you would acknowledge these viewers and talk to them about whatever you wanted to? What did you talk about?

KM: Yeah, I didn’t have a script or anything. I was basically being myself and inhabiting that space. People would sometimes talk about what they saw or ask questions about the work and they’d also ask questions about me and then we’d always start talking about random things, whatever they felt like talking about.

F: So, it’s almost in a weird sense, creating this comfort zone in a gallery setting and transforming it from a place that might not be the most comfortable.

KM: Yeah, I was thinking about two things- first of all, whenever you go to an opening, its kind of awkward like you don’t know what to do with yourself or your body. So I thought if I had a space where everyone could just sit on the floor, then people would want to stay longer and actually talk about stuff instead of just small talk. I was also thinking about myself and how for all the thesis shows here [at Pratt] are one person, one week shows and you have to be your own gallery guard. If I have to be in this space for a whole week by myself, who knows if people will come by. What kind of space would I want to be in?

F: In terms of the work because I see almost all of it as one single object. There are all these little objects that make up this one thing. Do you see it that way or do you see it as individual objects or finished pieces? How do you go about that in creating your work?

KM: I guess I think about them (like most things I make), they could be separate but they could also be part of something larger too. I think the book is a good metaphor for my work. You have this one object but within it, it contains multiple pages so you could tear them out or you could keep it all together.

F: You reference a lot of products that you find interesting and then, in turn, you’re creating products out of products. Is that a viewpoint of life in general? Can you talk about that?

KM: I’m definitely interested in consumerism and that was, maybe a few years ago, when that was a major conceptual component of my work. I think it’s sort of expanded out from that because it’s also about collecting and saving things and I’m also interested in the idea of souvenirs or objects containing memory or referencing the past.

F: I see a lot of these patch quilt things that become tapestries on the wall. That also in a way, becomes a metaphor.

KM: Yeah, everything is composed of little miniature things coming together. Also, the idea of being comforted by something. I’m also really interested in repetitive action too.

F: I would almost see that if you were to turn on that fan. It has that movement and the repetition that you were talking about in the fan. Back to the idea of the studio space… Being at Pratt, has that changed how you work in terms of your studio or being in different studio spaces. Do you do something over and over at each studio that you have?

KM: This is my second studio at Pratt. I had a smaller one my first year. I try, in all my studios, sort of divide materials that are waiting to be used and stuff that’s already being used. There’s half the space that I’m working in and the other half of the space is containing things to be worked with. I always recycle things in my work so if I build an installation then I can take it apart and use it again and sort of catalogue it. I always have things divided in different areas or bins by what they are. Usually above my desk area, where I make my books. I want to have lots of things to look at and those things I can use in a piece but then if they’re not being used, they come here for me to look at. I want to be able to see everything at once so that I can know what I have and be inspired to use it. I also like to watch TV while I work so I always have a TV and a DVD player and I’ll play a lot of TV shows.

F: Do you think that even though you’re probably just listening and glancing over, that watching tv changes your work?

KM: Yeah, depending on what I’m watching, it changes what mood I’m in and how I make things. I usually try to watch things that I’ve already seen before so that I don’t have to pay attention to it but that I can still follow it.

F: In terms of the objects, how do you choose what you want. Is it more of what interests you or are there certain colors or aesthetic that you choose that reminds you of something? I almost see a childhood, like these would be the things that I would find under my bed 10 years later. Is there something where you used to have these toys and you’re trying to come back to it?

KM: Well, everything that I use in my work with the exception of maybe 2 or 3 things that I’ve ever used, is stuff that I’ve collected now as an adult. None of the things are directly from my childhood. A lot of times when I’m looking at something, it reminds me of something and that’s why I gravitate towards it. I want the things to be universal, like you said, something that anyone can gravitate towards. I am really drawn to things that you would forget about or are sort of unimportant in a way like packaging from things that you would throw away after you open it or stuff that you would get in the mail. I think there’s something about them where…I kind of think about what I do as making something out of nothing. All of the things are kind of forgettable in a way but when you bring attention to them, they change.

Image courtesy of Kelly McCafferty

F: I was reading an article and it was about this drugstore that they closed in 1992 but all this stuff stayed the same. They just boarded it all up and then they opened the store and its exactly the same. All these products from 1992, including magazines and that type of stuff were still there. There was this one thing that really caught my eye though. It was a box of bandaids in the tin metal box. It just reminds me exactly of what you’re talking about. These very specific things that are associated with certain memories.

KM: Yeah, I like what you’re saying about the store. I think about stores a lot having worked retail a lot in my life. Also, theres this five and dime store in Kentucky, where I grew up, that still exists. They keep the same products on the shelf and keep adding new things in. Every time I go in there, I’ll find this thing that’s from 20 years ago that’s still sitting on the shelf. I think that’s sort of how I think about my work because I use old things and new things. A lot of the new things that I use sort of make you think of old things so everything is sort of stuck in time somehow.

F: Do you consider what these objects would be like 20 years in the future?

KM: I haven’t thought about that before. I’ve been making my work in this way for about 5 years now. I used to make paintings before that. It’s been pretty consistent over those 5 years. I’ve been drawn to the same kinds of objects and using them in different ways and surprising myself. It’ll be really interesting to think about that. I think time in general is pretty important to me. A lot of things I think about are trying to hold on to time and stop it from going. I think that’s where a lot of the childhood ideas come from.

Image courtesy of Kelly McCafferty

F: Its interesting to see the drawings versus the collages. Do you see those as almost the same thing in a certain sense or different? I see the collages as paintings quite frankly. What’s your connection to the paintings you were making and the collages that you’re doing now?

KM: I started off making paintings. That’s always been what I’ve been drawn to. There’s a lot of things that I love about paint and paintings in general. When I was an undergrad, I first did paintings and they were oil paintings and then I did encaustic paintings. I got really sick from the process and inhaling the pigments. I became allergic to paint and solvents that I were using. I really had to change what I was doing. I couldn’t use the materials anymore. So, I started doing a lot of collages and drawings which I’ve always done. I love the idea of collage like finding something and finding a new home for it or reusing it and making it important again. I do feel that way too. I think about color and the relation of shape when I put things down. It could be painting in a way. Even when I’m doing an installation, I feel like its meant to be seen as a whole from above like one giant painting.

Update!
Kelly McCafferty will be in a two-person show alongside Panini Malekzadeh at Freight + Volume. She will be showing an installation and a video/installation. The show will be up this summer from July 5-August 11, 2012.

You can find more of Kelly McCafferty’s work at kellymccafferty.net/