Opaque News

In our capitalistic culture we oscillate around success, canvassing for validation while fronting individualism. Reaching acclaim in our respective fields, we become tethered to that version of ourselves. Too often we are chained to fleeting moments of recognition, pre-approved styles and old, and crowd-beloved aesthetics. Sincere growth and honest evolution become elusive as we end up doing things to maintain rather than sustain. Freedom wanes as the facade becomes the artist, the image maker turned into an image. In Do I Make You Proud? Gogo gives physical form to these ideas – do with them what you will. And even if you see yourself in the reflection, hey, I’m still proud of you. Here, office chats with Gogo about all this and much more.

Lindsey - Gogo! Ok so how was the opening of your show? Was sad to miss it but it looked fab. And can you also give us a little intro to the show as a whole?

Gogo -The show opened on January 10 and I had this discussion about timing for the opening and we decided that it should be after the election. I’ve had this stuff ready since September but the content would be relevant before or after because there are pretty overt American color palettes, American flag imagery, and a big part of the show is about the crumbling notions of American exceptionalism and American supremacy. Every day that goes by, that's a thing that is more and more evident. I feel like I've been trying to find a balance of paying attention to what's going on while also not losing my fucking mind because it's turning out to be a very swift spiral into fascism.

Even with the helicopter crashing into the plane the other day?! That was insane to see the videos of. Anyway, going back through some of the themes of the show itself, honing in on grief and achievement culture, you’ve had this body of work since September and I’m imagining all of the different headspaces you must’ve been in between since making it all and now. In losing Cecilia along the way, I know she meant a lot to you, to everyone and that she’s always been a big supporter of you and your work, if not maybe the inspiration for some of it. Was it hard to look back on after harboring it for a few months?

One of the paintings in the show is supposed to be of her and me but it's like John Fouquet painting from 1452 one of the Melun Diptych and interestingly, the colors of it are red, white and blue. It’s a really strange painting of the Virgin Mary feeding her baby, Jesus, with her boob out and there's all these cherubs surrounding them. I did an acrylic painting using that as a reference for “Letting Down My Very Own Madonna del latte” and essentially it’s pretty straightforward stuff where it's like she’s this maternal figure to me but also this icon, this political figure, spiritual figure for people.

The 31st of January was her birthday and the city is naming it Cecilia Gentili day because she has a legacy and presence that's bigger than her at this point but I don't necessarily compare that (baby Jesus) to me with the painting, I'm just one of her children. I named it that because I was thinking about what she would be doing right now, which is probably organizing and doing things that are smart and helpful to people. Nobody has what she had in terms of her skills and ability to mobilize and empower people to make things better for others. Even though I made the painting a while ago, or not a while ago, the emotions behind it haven’t necessarily changed.

Right and I just feel like creativity today, making and putting out work in general can be so debilitating when you’re also competing against yourself almost, trying to make something “better” let alone “good.” You mentioned you were cleaning out your archive earlier, what was going through your head looking at all those garments especially now that you’re exploring the mediums of the fine arts a bit more?

I don't know if you feel this way about your past work but just sorting through all these things this morning, I thought some of it really cute, like I kind of did a good job with that one, and with others, I could have done better but I feel like you really don't get the chance to see that because of what you just described, comparing it to other things around you. When I was doing all the fashion stuff, I made a point to not be on social media because I didn't want to see anything from other brands because I wouldn’t want to feel inadequate, competitive, all these things that I just can't help but to feel whenever I see that kind of stuff. It’s not until I'm thinking about getting rid of stuff that I'm starting to see some of the value in some of the work that I was doing.

The last collection I did was called Speed Run in September 2022 which was about trying to keep up with the pace of fashion and well everything. The following February I had a show at Lubov Gallery titled Birthday Boy, the clothes were not on models and this was the transitional moment where I moved more into sculpture and then a few months later in August of that year, I went to Fire Island with Cecilia for Doll Invasion, which they’ve now made into an annual thing, and on the way back, I was telling her, I don't want to do it anymore. Within a month, I switched to painting starting with a performance where I made a live portrait of her while she told a story holding a baby-like sculpture (me).

Why did not having the clothes on models prove to be so pivotal for you?

Well before, I was using other people's bodies to express my ideas and it's not that I'll never want to have people model my stuff again, I do, but I think of this more as a pause rather than me quitting forever because I still love clothing, I still love personal style, but I just don't care for the fashion industry at all. I want it to feel good for models if I’m asking them to be in my shows, I want to be able to pay people enough, and I can express my ideas right now without relying on other people's bodies. Since COVID or so, the fashion industry has also swung back to being very pro-very-skinny and there's not even a question about it.

It’s interesting you say that because it does really feel like people are less up in arms about everything despite the fact that things have seemingly gotten worse. I was reading an article that was talking about how the age of hyper-politics is over, activism is no longer white hot and there’s more of show versus tell energy but really I just think a lot of people are numb.

Right and with the rise of fascism, we also have body fascism. Fashion is a reflection of our world and we see people changing their bodies to fit in and that’s the thing with fascism, it’s about things falling in line rather than expanding the lines, so people are doing that with their clothes too because they want to feel comforted. It’s also a class thing because people who are able to have this “fit body” are usually people with more access to resources. There are so many factors to all of this and the industry and brands at large are playing into it too without realizing that it affects the people who see these shows and makes them think that’s what they’re supposed to look like. But back to the not using models, I also really love to make these human effigy type doll sculptures because they have these distorted features that no human has and also relates to the main horse sculpture, the kinetic sculpture that's in the show right now. It's made in the same kind of fabrication process and has the same human-like features, the skin and eyes, that the dolls did.

Ok it all comes full circle. This being your debut painting exhibition is nothing short of a big deal but I feel like it’s also important to acknowledge the duality in your practice, you’ve always been both an artist and a designer but it’s obviously easier for people to digest if you just occupy one lane. I feel like the transition was just about you making things more sustainable for yourself because the big question is, how do you do any thing long term? How much of it means lowering your attachment to achievement?

The biggest thing for my work was never to be the biggest brand with the most sales in stores. The thing with my painting and sculpture kind of a similar thing where I'm like, if I can sustain myself with the work, that's enough for me. Beyond that, I'm not trying to be like an art star diva. When things grow to a certain point there's a lot of pressure, first of all, because usually you have more people involved who are invested or rely on the work so that becomes its own complicated thing. I think no matter what you do, the bigger something gets, the more you are faced with decisions where you're going to be making compromises, big or small, while thinking about exploitation of labor, I guess that's the biggest thing in capitalism, you can only hoard capital, if you are willing to exploit others. To be smaller is a choice, it allows for adaptability but it can be a big challenge to to make things work then too because you just have fewer things happening.

And in American culture, it’s never about trying to make smaller things work, it’s always about dreaming big, reaching for the stars, being the best because you deserve to be. It’s also ironic that the greatest American value, freedom, feels like its being lost because we’re all self-censoring because our lives are a public spectacle.

The idea that deserving anything goes with the medals and things that I have in the show. It's this idea that you earned this, even if it’s just for participating, it’s all a very American thing. What does it even mean to win? We're competing with each other to earn these meaningless symbols of success. Yet we don't have a competition for being the most kind because that’s incompatible with this kind of culture that I grew up in where you have to be better than someone else to be someone. There are a couple of paintings that are in the show that exemplify this too. They’re the ones titled “Cupid Death Blow” and “Eager Opponent" and take reference from the show, American Gladiator, which is a reality show from the early 90s where they have these average Americans competing against professional bodybuilder athletes. They have them dressed up in these freaky red, white and blue hyper sexualized, spandex outfits in this huge arena. They’re all oiled up and it just screams sex because they’re all conventionally hot people in competition, and violence because well, they’re fighting to win but to win what?

Right it’s just like the image of winning, of being seen as a winner and the validation that comes with it. It makes me think about how there’s now a degree of professionalism to creativity, how the image of being an artist almost eclipses the work itself and what the consequences of that really are. If you have to be concerned about portrayal and idealized image in order to be seen as professional that seems a lot like censorship to me, fascism baby.

Yeah it’s like here I am doing it all and also looking great while doing it. I'm traveling, I go everywhere and I do it everywhere. There are a couple things that you said there that I would speak on, I'm not an art critic by profession, however, I don't think that it would shock anyone if I said that there is a lot of bullshit out there. I'm not gonna say it's bad work. I will say that I find a lot of what I see to be ineffective when it comes to comparing the written artist statements to the physical product. It speaks to that situation that you were just talking about where it's about the money first and then after that it's about the facade of the artist; like this person can talk to people in the way that they need to in order to get their bag whether or not the work conveys what they're saying, it doesn't matter because it's not about that. I think a lot of people can see that and will say that is what's happening but it's also kind of a taboo thing where you can't walk into a gallery and say, wow, this is not good because it's all very subjective.

Right and at what point does being hushed by subjectivity become art’s downfall when it’s supposed to be an active commentary or critique on the time and you know these are wild times.

I also don't want to exclude myself from this whole thing because that would be hypocritical and I don't think that my own work is beyond criticism and if it needs to be taken apart, it should. That’s what you sign up for when you put your stuff out there and the same thing goes with fashion too. In fashion today some things are clearly not cute but it’s gone beyond that now.

Well fashion is now about the “community” nowadays, it’s about the who’s who of carrying what bag, wearing what designer, gifted that collab. When you mentioned the commodification of bodies, well that’s it.

We’ve talked about this before but I'm kind of taking a break from all this stuff because I don't give a shit what celebrity is trying to wear my stuff. Celebrities are people too, yes, but at the same time, having your stuff be on their body symbolizes something. They have stylists that are like, we're going to put you in this because we know clothing means something, and if you look this way, it means something and it's going to influence others. Even with magazines, if there is going to be something in a magazine, I'm interested in it being something that isn't just like a model looking “cool.” I'm not saying there's no value in that because I was influenced by fashion imagery that I saw on Tumblr but getting into the industry, you start to see the complete picture of what goes into having that image exist. I just don't value it as much anymore.

So if this moment in your trajectory is a pause per se, what are the conditions that would warrant you wanting to come back to fashion? It’s no secret that people are fed up with the industry at large but I don’t really know what’s being done about it.

I look at fashion in the same way that you were just describing what artists should be doing and I think fashion designers should be saying something about what's going on in the world. I would want to do that when I feel like I’m in the right situation to say something with the work I’m doing. Even though I'm doing all this painting and sculpture, I'm still coming up with little designs and stuff but I want things to exist in the right context, in the right time and the right physical space and situation.

Who knows when that will be though ha! It's interesting because even in me asking you that, there does have to be this distance between fashion and art that feels more palpable these days even though both mediums ideally serve the same purpose in terms of commentary and expression. In fashion, with the celebrities, the community, the bullshit of it all, its adjacency to art feels further. Do you agree?

I do. And at the same time, I think art is moving further away from art.

This may be a dumb question but how are you defining art? What is the current state of art in your mind and what should it be?

That's tough because I think I have a pretty broad definition of what art can be and I would only define it for myself. I want art to be like a sincere expression of something I'm feeling and thinking about the going ons in my world – which is a world that obviously I share with everyone else, but I say my world because it’s my own perception of the things that exist around me. I want to see that from other artists as well. Something I also think about is that I grew up seeing things, being influenced and inspired by them and thinking like, wow, I don't want to die because I experienced this. Young people are feeling pretty bad because things are bad indeed and it's a goal for me to make things that people connect with, to feel understood and inspired by.

That just makes me think of the title of your show because ultimately, you want your show to be a success, you want it to be good, which then equates to being proud. It’s hard to say what’s honest or not today because more than ever, we have seen that there's kind of a formula for what you should be doing, what magazine you should be showing up in, what you should be wearing, and it muddies everything. Like is it popular and people genuinely like these things or does it just work?

I think it's evident when people are like, I'm doing this shit because I have to get my bills paid. The moving horse sculpture in the show was inspired by this Kentucky Derby horse that is highly-decorated, has won a lot of awards but it’s skeletal, ragged. She's tired, she has done what she's had to and now she's a couple gallops away from the glue factory but she's still going. This is something that we see around us too, where people have to compete in this way in order to stay afloat and pay their bills. We're forced into these situations which you can then see in people's work too; whether or not they mean to show it sometimes you're just like, I can tell you just did this because you knew that it was gonna get your bills paid and that’s all part of it too.

It makes me think about the word “purpose,” we all want it, we all want to feel it but it has to be discovered, it has to come from being inspired, and those are feelings that I find to be far and few to have these days while functioning to achieve.

What I want is for people to have the freedom to just express themselves and not have it be so dependent on it being “good.” I guess what I was talking about earlier with some of the art that we're seeing out there that feels a bit empty, it’s coming from artists who aren’t necessarily worried about having opportunities to show their work. There are a lot of artists out there who have never had a show and may never have a show because they're too busy trying to pay their bills. If we weren't in that cycle, then people would have the freedom to make art without having it weigh on them or needing to have a purpose other than just existing.

Sometimes reality also hits me and I’m like wait, we’re working in fashion and art, we’re already living in a fantasy, we are the spectacle.

Yeah to a certain extent, we already have our needs met otherwise we wouldn't be having time for this.