Happy Beginning, Middle and Ending

April 01, 2022

I visited Alex Stern at his studio in Inglewood a few months ago, and it was an immersive experience to say the least. On a scopic level, being surrounded by the LA-based, New England-born artist’s work is overwhelmingly synesthetic. The variety of mediums is at once stimulating, from subversive, sculptural mixed media collage to map-like, colorful paintings on canvas. But just like his bright, linear paintings, Stern has proven something of a cartographer across his body of work, controlling the chaos, and closely following a narrative surrounding the idea of warped reality. As he offers a creative, aesthetic and analytical point of view as fabricated it is just as fact-driven.

Whether working with a poetic list of materials from silver leaf, to oil and ink-Jet cutouts hung or coating copies of the New England Journal of Medicine, the artist also features manipulated collaged images and text and coated with resin. Stern’s style is clear, a concise and thoughtful chaos inspired by events and experiences soaked in dry wit and difficult-to-swallow truths.

Interview by Anna Zanes
Photos by Jessie Andrews

His pieces present an inspired and painful vision board of sorts, featuring pop ephemera mixed with personal nostalgic references— a selfie, the artist’s former rooftop view in Manhattan, Kurt Cobain, Kaia Gerber in Prada… And although all of the imagery can overwhelm, there is a grounding throughline I noticed almost immediately— by way of a pale blue painting leaning in the corner, in the center of which was the Suboxone logo— a piece titled Hester, ‘Trackmarks’. In this, as in his series of recent resin pieces on show at the Lower East Side gallery Trotter and Sholer, Stern’s work is heavily informed by the opioid epidemic across the country.

Here, the artist has achieved what many fall short of when dabbling with a traumatic subject— Stern’s pieces and the manner in which they draw from spirituality, personal narrative, as well as politics profoundly avoid triteness, glamorization, and pointless gore, though never lack in maintaining a sense of humor about it all. In fact, it was his candy-colored piece, painted text proclaiming, “I’m Not Lazy, I’m on Fentanyl!” which first hooked me. So to speak.

From his first solo show at Jessie Andrews’ Tase Gallery in Los Angeles, to his solo show at Trotter and Sholer, Stern’s work— precise yet abstract, vulnerable yet accessible— has shown us an incredible amount of range in a short period of time. I was lucky to get the chance to chat with him again around the opening of his show AWAKE AWAKE ASLEEP, which will be up through April 9th.

Based on all of the Star of David imagery, it seems like Judaism plays a big role in your work. What is your relationship to religion?

I have a relationship to discipline, routine, focus and simplicity and I have a faith in these things. A faith in consistency to develop a clear channel through which to make art. My work proposes this approach as a sort of religious faith, and often proclaims art to be religion or religion to be art. With the New England Journal of Medicine work, these notions are presented as "scientifically proven" — transitioning the subjective to objective. The Star of David is a way to make a self-portrait and take ownership, in the work, of big symbols and big concepts. It is also just a way to make abstraction using lines in a pre-charged configuration — a way to revere and disassemble an icon. Paintings should undo themselves at the same rate that they are generating meaning. So, the Star of David and Judaism sit at the center of a personal core identity, which is both exalted and questioned.

How does it play into the other themes in your work?

With art and religion, we revere the unknown known or the ineffable. My work relies on a prayer-like practice in the studio often aimed at abstraction, or the invention of symbology. Intellectual and critical rigor have their place - but inside the studio over-thinking can be actively anti-intellectual and close the required openness for magic to unfold. I think of the work as thematically aligned in that it manifests itself because of this ethic of prayer-like repetition on macro and micro levels. A daily practice made possible only through sacrificing so many other parts of life. Some of the work is direct in visually representing schedules on the surface, while other work points at tempo and medicine. Simply put, having a dedicated studio practice is not dissimilar from a dedicated religious practice. There is a long traversing of an inner life that I believe both practices require.

What do you think religion, spirituality, and/or God, and art have in common?

The ineffable, earnestness, morality, and thinking about life from the vantage point of death. I don't think there's ever been a time, for right or wrong, where I've approached artmaking as a non-existential exercise. It becomes a formal exercise quickly after the approach, but the original engine involves a sense of existence or eternity. I had a thought recently that as the years of painting stack up, I become less aware of what a painting - the object itself - is, and what the concept of painting is. The motions of an artist in and around the studio become its own kind of abstraction. Religion and art are also opposites. Religion has to do with suppression and recruitment and art does not. But this contradiction can still be generative. The idea of certainty or knowing is what I'm looking to undo or wedge apart with my work. Especially with my own opinions. I like the clip of Kanye in an interview saying: "I just told you who I thought I was, a God!" That's an art moment. It's very funny, direct, and beautiful. I think the artist needs to play God a bit - a touch of loose grandiosity - even if it means getting lost sometimes.

Your works in the current show speak to the opiate epidemic and addiction, what’s your relationship to that?

There’s what feels like a very American behavior related to ambition, that results in a need to escape. Even if it’s just a vacation. This country and the world are set up in a way where participation is required but we don't always want to participate inside any of the existing structures. It can feel claustrophobic and ridiculous. Despite the hell of addiction, being a junkie can be a way of opting out, in a very complete way. There’s something about this departure that sticks with me. Making art deals with similar internal and external processes, without the torture part. I’m dealing with this personal history in the work, but I’m also thinking about the ritual of a studio practice, the bliss attached to isolation and real connection, and developing strategies for fulfillment. Do you think you use those themes in your work because it’s cathartic to you personally, or because you want to make a statement on the larger issue? Both. And then I want to question the larger statement.

How much of your work is about personal experience?

If I knew how to avoid personal experience, I’d like to try it, at least once.

Has it always been that way?

Yes. Experience and perception are what we’ve got. I like to present mine, from different angles – Ideally when it somehow feels simultaneously inadequate, shameful, earnest, and hopeful.

How do you feel about the idea that all art comes from pain?

I think as an idea it's a simple error. All art doesn't come from pain - some does. Pain can be exquisitely beautiful, but pain is not more interesting than happiness or pleasure. It may actually be less interesting and immeasurably less sustainable. Also, working from inside serious active pain is not even possible. It can only be mined later. I think it's best to work from a rested, available, grateful, driven place, to access the broadest deepest range of precise emotion. Having said that, it's hard for me to imagine what making art would mean without some periods of profound pain.

What was the first medium you fell in love with?

I really fell in love first with ideas about what a painting could be, more than any medium. And it's stayed that way. Varying media are just tools to realize ideas in my practice. I love the idea not the tool. However, in recent years I've painted mainly with oil paint. Apart from it being so rich and beautiful it seems there's a contemporary notion that oil paint is pretentious or evil in all its superiority - This is appealing to me (to use oil paint despite this) so I'm sort of in love with this bonus. When I first started to paint, I was in love with the idea that a painting could operate between being a picture, and a sign, and a sculpture.

Which artists do you relate to the most, work wise and also, possibly separately, in regards to their story or personal narrative?

The artists I relate to most have been primarily painters who I think approached painting as a unique opportunity for object-hood, ready-made, and a sort of raw materiality. In no specific order: Kounellis, Hesse, Duchamp, Stella, Andre, Bickerton, Johns, Warhol, Ruscha, Sillman, Martin, Mehretu, Ray, Marden. I also relate to designers like McQueen and photographers like Mann and Lorca-Dicorcia. Personal narrative is harder to really know, but my hunch is a lot of time was spent thinking and dreaming about what, fundamentally, a painting, a sculpture, an image is and could be, is shared by all of these artists – something I relate to.

You haven’t always worked in this practice, what were you doing initially, and what changed that made you want to do this?

My practice of making these New England Journal of Medicine works happens alongside my larger scale painting practice in the studio. They have been a way for me to conduct a more urgent feedback loop with the work. Partly because of less labor required to finish them and partly because of the immediacy of concept generation when mixed media is being collaged onto such a pre-activated surface, like that of the Journal. This collision of imagery is exciting and effective, and simply felt like my direct gesture and sensibility. The authority of the NEJM is a compelling container to deal with a wide array of contradiction and exaltation.

How does it feel to put a show up for the public that holds so much of your own story in it?

It feels very good. When a painting is finished, and hanging in a new space, it becomes its own new thing. I relate to it in a more distant way. I walked around this recent show and felt like a viewer discovering something. It's not so sentimental. I like my work to feel like a found object or a ready-made during its creation and at its completion, so by the time the show is up its living a different life. I’m sure I would notice if something was off.

What gives you hope?

Anything, everything. For me, being an artist is the most optimistic and hopeful privilege. Cynicism has always struck me as completely uninteresting and naive. For me, even profoundly hopeless times near death, have resulted in hope. I'm inspired (made hopeful) by so much of life - sadness, a glass of water, humiliation, a song or film, a sandwich or cup of coffee. Mostly small things, but also meeting someone who is smart and warm.

What’s your ritual when you’re in the studio, if you have one?

A few important ones: Obsessive pre-work cleaning, music or podcast on too loud, and a large water or tea close by.

Art

The Mayrit Bienal Exhibits An Animated Madrid

Wet Dreams follows up on the 2022 edition of Mayrit, The Drowned Worlds, evidently appropriate themes for a biennial that takes its title from the 9th century name for Madrid which translates to “place of many waterways”. Unlike many biennials, which work to distinguish themselves thematically from their predecessors, Otero Verzier opted to build from the framework of the prior installment: a clever move that gestures to the priority of knowledge-building, social relation, and the biennial’s longer-term ambition to “position the Spanish capital as a creative focal point for emerging talent.”

Mayrit’s Curatorial Director, artist, and designer Joel Blanco, helps execute this vision. He notes that “the first edition was mostly for ourselves, the less established designers from Madrid who just wanted to have fun by creating their own events. We are gradually reaching a wider audience without forgetting about the independent, less mainstream proposals. Our approach was to fertilize the creative ground here by helping creatives develop their practice without the constraints of profit.”

Mayrit, which often takes on the celebratory and social spirit of a festival, is anchored by two notably strong institutional exhibitions: Wet Dreams, the title show at Madrid’s Centro Centro art center curated by Otero Verzier, and Espejito Espejito (“Mirror Mirror”) curated by architecture collective Grandeza Studio at the Museo de América at the western edge of the city center. Other venues, like the Bate Social Store which houses the Bienal’s design shop—a curated storefront with design objects selected from an open call — and the National Museum of Decorative Arts, which hosts Materia Computada — an exhibition curated by HyperStudio — atomize Mayrit’s itinerary across the city. “Mayrit has seeded many collaborations, and we are reaching places that were previously outside the scope of current design practice,” says Blanco.

Wet Dreams Deck Chair for Caliper's Editions Programme in collaboration with Mayrit Bienal. Designed by Miguel Leiro and Victor Clemente with Berit Levy and Caliper.

In Wet Dreams, Otero Verzier gathers an impressive array of work spanning film, industrial design, research, photography, and architecture, presenting contributions from peers, friends, allies, and a few students she has recently taught at the Design Academy Eindhoven. Artist collective La Cuarta Piel contributed documentation of their 2022 durational performance, “Spa Profundo,” in which they immersed performers in a hedonistic deluge of viscous marble extraction waste from a mine in the Vinalopó River valley near Alicante. A sample of their white mud pool inhabits the gallery in front of photos of limbs writhing in apparent delight: a visceral, if wry, critique of the slow violence of extractive capitalism. Models of Andres Jaque’s 2015 MoMA PS1 pavilion, the water-filtering “COSMO,” and the recent “Rambla Climate House,” designed with Miguel Mesa de Castillo, bring to the show an optimistic exuberance that points to architecture’s capacity to perform instrumentally at the scale of daily life. And in “Atlas de Plantas de Cuartos Oscuros en la Ciudad de Barcelona,” Pol Esteve Castelló presents floor plans of fifteen dark rooms in Barcelona with unlikely precision: sites of pleasure where social exchange often accompanies fluid exchange.

The show brings together a generation of new thinkers with urgent political and social preoccupations that reflect Madrid’s increasing centrality in design discourse. In recent years, Spanish designers have built an influential presence in American and European schools of architecture (Jaque, for instance, is the Dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation, and Planning). Only a few years ago, both Leiro and Otero Verzier were both living abroad — Leiro in New York and Otero Verzier in The Netherlands—and recently have returned to Spain, setting up in Madrid. Grandeza Studio (Amaia Sánchez-Velasco, Jorge Valiente Oriol, and Gonzalo Valiente Oriol), curators of Espejito Espejito, work between Madrid and Sydney. They typify the far-reaching interest in the country’s creative vanguard, and the way it is gathering anew in the country’s capital, fostering conversations that expand beyond conventional discourse.

Video triptych for Espejito Espejito featuring 'Los Escombros' by La Escuela Nunca y los Otros Futuros, 'America Megabyte' by Nmenos1 and 'Sabe Dios' by Julia Irango and Jorge Nieto (with Ana Moure and Cesar Fuertes). Photo by Asier Rua.

Espejito Espejito develops from ideas articulated by Argentinian anthropologist Rita Segato, and from Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano’s argument that the very idea of Europe is predicated on the European “invention” (rather than discovery) of America, and its subsequent colonization. Grandeza Studio invites artists—many of them from Central and South America and their diaspora communities—whose work uses the notion of the mirror to “redirect its distorting power.” That this takes place in Madrid’s Museo de América, what the curators call a “historical guarantor and archival reservoir of the Eurocentric autofiction,” is noteworthy. The museum’s new director, Andrés Gutiérrez Usillos, was appointed in 2023 and has declared his ambition to decolonize its collection. Espejito Espejito is housed in a gallery that previously held an exhibition titled El Hombre (first installed in 1994), and vestiges of it remain in a savvy curatorial move that point to the discursive distance between old guard and new.

Some interventions from the show’s artists have further highlighted precisely this sort of friction. Earlier this year, Colombia’s Minister of Culture made a formal request to repatriate the Quimbaya artifacts—a part of the Museo’s collection—which has so far been declined by the Spanish government. Colombian artist Juan Covelli synthesized prospective new artifacts using a generative adversarial network (GAN) trained on images of the Quimbaya Treasure in an attempt at symbolic repatriation. Next to the vitrine housing Covelli’s work is a wall label authored by the Museo, clarifying that the participating artists’ views “do not necessarily represent the opinion of the institution,” and inviting visitors to see the actual relics on the building’s second floor.

“Espejito Espejito” includes vital contributions from Martine Gutierrez (“HIT MOVIE: Vol. 1”), Tatyana Zambrano and Hernán Rodriguez (“Banana Valley”), and Naomi Rincón Gallado (“Sangre Pesada”), organized in an improvised scenography composed of scaffolding and silver curtains devised by the show’s curators. The exhibition takes big risks that pay off. It is radical in the way that it works from within and alongside a museum grappling with its colonial legacy live, out in the open. Perhaps it is through dissident guest programming like this that the institution can advance beyond its own burdensome history. On a quiet day, I even observed the gallery docents playing “UNKRNS: Beyond the Entrepreneurial Spell,” a video game made by artists Diego Morera and Sebastián Lambert. Indeed, “Mayrit aspires to build more bridges with Spanish-speaking countries to give them a platform here as well,” says Blanco.

Tapiz, tapiz, 1.000 millones, please (2024) by Virginia Sosa Santos, Sebastián Lambert and Diego Morera & Banana Valley (2022) by Tatyana Zambrano and Hernán Rodríguez

Miguel Leiro, Mayrit’s Founder and Director, has cited La Movida Madrileña, the explosive creative scene of the 1980s that followed Francisco Franco’s death in 1975, as a reference for the milieu he’s interested in cultivating now. In that time, figures like Pedro Almodovar and Rossy da Palma emerged alongside new cultural dynamics and amidst a new openness around sex and glamour. Mayrit’s programming subtly nods to that moment every now and then. Its opening night party (co-organized by the local music incubator Los Invernaderos) was hosted at Sala El Sol, a venue where Almodovar and bands like Radio Futura would hang out and play. Leiro’s father, a sculptor who emerged from the same artistic movement as Marina Otero Verzier’s (who is a painter), would spend time there in the 1980s as well, descending its red spiral staircase as a new crowd did for Mayrit’s inauguration this spring. As this latest crop of young madrileños danced into the late hours of the night, sweat and drink perhaps conjured yet more novel visions of a cultural scene emerging anew. Evidently, currents still flow in Madrid’s underground.

Wet Dreams runs until August 25th at Centro Centro. Espejito Espejito runs until November 24th at the Museo de América. The full program for the 2024 Mayrit Bienal can be found at mayrit.org.

Art

The Artist and the Cigar Box: Civil Pleasures

June 14, 2024

Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, a chain-smoker himself, once declared cigar smoking a manifestation of oral fixation, a line of thinking echoed by Emma Stern, painter of 3D-modeled hot girls, who told me during the opening night of The Artist and the Cigar Box last Thursday that she’s a firm believer in the enduring sex appeal of cigars. The Artist and the Cigar Box is a benefit exhibition curated by collector and owner of downtown fixture Fun City Tattoo Maxx Starr. When a cigar-loving artist friend told Maxx of the long history of printing customized art on cigar boxes here in Lower East Side dating back to the 1860s, Maxx was instantly inspired. He approached his long-time friend Sean Dorsey, co-founder of Civil Pleasures, a premium New York-based cigar brand hand-crafted in Nicaragua, which is making cigar-smoking cool again.

Commissioning sixteen artist friends (ranging from art world superstars such as Stern and Marika Thunder to skateboarding legend Mark Gonzales) to turn a Civil Pleasures cigar box into a painting or a sculptural assemblage, Maxx and Sean then contacted Pali Kashi of Europa, who gladly agreed to host the benefit exhibition at her Chinatown space. In line with Maxx and Sean’s commitment to fostering culture, all proceeds will go to Harlem-based non-profit Artistic Noise which empowers underserved youth through art. The opening at Europa and the afterparty at Le Bain are your classic beginning-of-summer rendezvous, where many of downtown's pleasure-seekers could be spotted.

By Qingyuan Deng
Photography by Ruvan Wijesooriya, courtesy of Civil Pleasures.

Check out photos from the opening night below and put your bids in here. The Artist and the Cigar Box online auction.

The Artist and the Cigar Box is on view online through June 30th.

Art

Charles Hascoët Seeks Salvation Through Nostalgia

June 14, 2024

A small portrait of Star Trek’s Captain James T. Kirk watches benevolently on high over viewers entering Kobayashi Maru at Perrotin, the first New York solo show by French painter Charles Hascoët. The portrait stands apart in more ways than one — it’s also the only black and white painting amongst the rich hues of Hascoët’s latest series, all produced in his Ridgewood studio over the past six months, further underscoring the work’s pointed nod to the premise. Kobayashi Maru is a crew exercise from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. In the 42 years since the film’s debut, “Kobayashi Maru” has come to mean a lose-lose situation within the popular lexicon.

Hascoët chose the title because, as he told me at Perrotin, “Whatever we do, we're fucked.” Captain Kirk bent the rules to achieve a win-win, but for Hascoët, the way out is through dreams.

By Vittoria Benzine
Images by Guillaume Ziccarelli, courtesy of the artist and Perrotin, New York.

Kobayashi Maru touches upon climate change, toxic grind culture, and mass media, all through Hascoët’s personal experience. The first chamber in the three-room show centers on his earliest influences: vats of Listerine, recognizable through their iconic shapes alone, alongside PS1 controllers and CK One, that ubiquitous, idealistic unisex scent. Lemons shout out Edouard Manet and echo tennis balls, a nod to Hascoët’s pup and Perrotin’s unofficial mascot, Simone. Three sharks prove that Hascoët, and society at large, have conquered the fears fostered by films like Jaws. Collective maturity has taught us that sharks are critical to earth’s ecosystem.

James T. Kirk, 2024

But Hascoët himself is the main character in the dream sequences that play out on larger canvases across the next two main rooms. In “The Waves,” Hascoët apathetically maneuvers raging seas in a dinghy, engrossed in his purple Gameboy. Those in the know will note he’s playing Pokemon, based on the yellow cartridge. Nearby, the show’s titular work depicts him sleepless, doom scrolling in a bed that straddles the tides and sands of a beach while a far off volcano erupts. The picture’s loose brushstrokes, underscored throughout by improbable pinks, contrast another self portrait across the way titled “Self Portrait with Brachiosaurus,” this time painted using a mirror rather than memory — with defined features and a rational color palette.

The real and imagined intertwine throughout. On walks to his studio, Hascoët discovered a store selling National Geographics for $1. Red pandas, dinosaurs, and polar bears have since entered his paintings, each bringing their own meaning. The advent of social media accounts attracting eyes with cute creatures has empowered red pandas to become the patron saint of a generation starved for joy. In “Red panda vortex,” this “kind of a new cat,” as Hascoët puts it, lounges in a magnolia tree inspired by springtime in Bushwick, on a branch jutting out over a water feature referencing Hiroshige. Elsewhere, Listerine makes one final appearance next to a red maple from his mother’s home, reimagined as a bonsai — or maybe it’s just a really big bottle of mouthwash. All depends on how you see it, much like the celestial bodies in “The Wave,” “Shiatsu,” and more resemble both the sun and moon. Hascoët’s not inclined to discern for you.

The Waves, 2024

Shiatsu, 2024

Ambivalence and hauntology are the moment. As millennials have started entering their peak purchasing power and professional influence, 90s culture has proliferated contemporary art. It’s not a fad, but a mainstay — as emphasized by the art historical traditions Hascoët has translated such relics through, and rendered them alongside. He sympathizes with the desire for comfort in these uncertain times, but believes such motifs belie a deeper shift. “In the late 19th century, Nietzsche said ‘God is dead,’” the artist mused. “At the same time, Baudelaire came up with the idea that if God is dead, there is something to replace it. Why not poetry?”

Take it from both world wars — that didn’t work. “Then pop culture came along in the second part of the 20th century,” Hascoët said. “Poetry was quickly replaced.” Now, pop culture’s been used up. Rather than new stories, there’s a new Star Wars every six months. Kobayashi Maru doesn’t propose a solution, but honors Hascoët's diversions, like Polish-American techno DJ Bogdan Raczynski, who appears in a “Rave ‘Till You Cry” t-shirt. “I think it's a good way to implement poetry,” Hascoët remarked. “He would rip your mind open and then pour in some nice tunes.”

Cottage-core, 2024

Memes appear too. “Cottage-core” depicts Hascoët in his take on the “stop glamorizing the grind” meme. In the same room, Hascoët ponders his orb, right by another luminous scene based on the time Hascoët took Simone to a witch in Brittany to help her recover from getting spayed.

In fact, Hascoët’s grandmother was one of those witches, but when his father and uncle chose practical paths, the intergenerational chain shattered. Hascoët’s picked it back up again — and not without perfunctory tribulations. He failed at his first attempt to get into the École des Beaux-Arts, and heeded his father’s recommendation to try law school. Hascoët dropped out after two years, enraging his dad, then got into the École des Beaux-Arts courtesy of his renewed vigor for painting. Kobayashi Maru commemorates a decade since his graduation.

Hascoët believes the personal branding that characterizes Instagram and TikTok means the self will perhaps become society’s new god. His work has seized on that idea too, whether he wholly realizes it or not. While alchemizing disparate inputs like magazines, photos from friends, and his own observations, Hascoët only lets a painting leave his studio if he feels like it has soul. Interestingly, he says that without an element of self-portraiture that has nothing to do with the imagery itself, an artwork reads as vain. Even though he doesn’t appear in “Paleo-core,” the last work he made for this show, Hascoët sees himself in it. Whether he’s the T-Rex pissed off about the end of the world, the worried Brachiosaurus — or both — he still hasn’t decided. It’s up to you.

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