Best Friends, Black Swans

On our call, they’re immediately lighthearted and candid, and it’s easy to feel how close and effortless their dynamic is. Right before we spoke, they signed the lease for their newly shared studio space, and have been inseperable lately, playfully dubbing each other “the best boyfriend they never had."

The pair spoke to office about being each other's soulmates, their separate practices, and the art world.

Okay, first, I want to hear about how you met!

Ariane Herloise Hughes一 It's a bit of an origin story. We were sort of Instagram admirers of one another through lockdown because openings weren't happening and people were working from home. Our careers parallel one another in that sense because neither of us had the time or the space to just focus on painting until lockdown happened. So, we were making work, we were talking through Instagram, and then the world opened back up again. Vilte thinks we met organically, but I had just been sort of stalking her on Instagram, trying to figure out when she was going to have her next opening, and just sort of inserted myself and tried to play it off super cool. I approached her and complimented her outfit and her work.

Did it work?

Vilte Fuller— Yeah, it worked ‘cause I thought it was an organic meeting ‘cause I was like, She's way too cool to want to speak to me. And she's just being polite. My trousers are really not very cool. And she said, Your trousers are so cool.

AHH一 We hung out loosely since then — but we had lives, we both had boyfriends — and then it was only the end of last year that…

VF一 We've talked everyday 24/7 since September 1st.

AHH一 Vilte’s the only person I trust to give me advice on my work.

What do you think makes you such close friends?

AHH— Our work is quite different, and we have had quite different upbringings, but we have met various milestones at similar times, and in our own various ways had parallel existences.

VF— This doesn't usually happen with people our age — and particularly with painting. We are having incredibly parallel situations where we can speak to each other in a way where there's never any jealousy, or any like, I can't believe you got this and I didn't get this. Everything is different enough. But then we're also on such similar levels.

AHH一 That's how I know that you’re the love of my life and my best friend in the whole wide world because I'm never jealous of you. When you tell me something, I'm actually genuinely so happy. But I also guess it's kind of out of a needs-must situation because the way the art world operates is it's not transparent at all.

VF一 There are great people and galleries, but it's not everywhere. It kind of feels like people are maybe doing certain things because they wanna get something out of it rather than like a genuine human experience.

AHH一 Yeah, and it's difficult to know who to trust and what advice to take. And especially through art school — I feel like that's where you're really let down. There's no education surrounding how to operate as a small business, or how to get into shows, or what to do. And you just have to pick this up along the way through trial and error. Trust me, we've both had our fair shares of absolutely horrendous business decisions.

VF一 That part of it I still struggle with. We're getting better honestly. I think because we've gone through the kind of cliches of everything they say don't get into, we've gotten into. I've managed to come out the other end of it. It's fine.

What advice do you have that you've taken away from what you’ve gone through in that sense?

AHH— Well, the first show that I ever had, it was during lockdown and I saw an open call, which I applied for and I got, and it was in Japan. A very small gallery no one had ever heard of. I had to pay for my own work to get shipped there, and then the gallery very quickly went bankrupt, and those paintings are nowhere to be found. I think the Japanese government at some point got in touch with me, but I feel like that was also a scam — I don't know.

VF一 All the commissions with galleries most of the time are 50/50, so understand what is your 50% and what is theirs. You pay for your studio; you pay for materials; you make the work. You shouldn't be paying for your own transportation; you shouldn't be paying for photography. Have a payment contract. Nothing operates with anything really written down apart from WhatsApp messages and emails. And you don't see money for six months. The gallery has that money, and they're keeping their money 'cause they need to deal with their own stuff, And then you’re always at the bottom end of the barrel, even though it's your work that’s being showcased. The show is supposed to be about you, and you're the last person to see those funds. So many artists never get the money that they’re owed because people go under, and all of a sudden it doesn't exist, and it's literal theft.

AHH— Contracts are really important. When I have time — and I'm hoping to make it a yearly thing — I've also been curating shows. The first show that I curated a few years ago, I had no contract with them. Nothing about payment was in writing. It was always a phone call.

VF一 Get everything in writing.

AHH一 I took a phone call, and the gallerist of this space that I used to curate the show talked me into selling a piece of mine that wasn't in the show, that a collector wanted. I didn't want to sell it in the first place, and didn't need to sell at the time. I was holding onto it for nostalgic reasons. He guilt tripped me with his own financial issues, so I agreed to it over the phone. He sold the work, and I still haven't been paid for it. That was years ago now, and it was a decent amount of money as well. This guy is still out there doing this.

VF一 I think artists are really scared to talk about money 'cause it's seen as just being ungrateful for the opportunity. But opportunity doesn't pay your bills; it doesn't pay your rent. We need to be collectively transparent about money and discuss when things are not going right 'cause so many people are getting away with so much because nobody's talking about it.

AHH一 It's essentially money laundering.

How would you describe each other's paintings?

AHH一 My USP (unique selling point) is “creepy, sad, sexy” paintings.

VF一 You prime five layers, and sand things, and are almost so physically violent with the surfaces to make them as smooth and as perfect as possible. The process is so laborious and work intensive, but making it look effortless. It’s like that saying, “there's no beauty without pain,” that's what your work feels like.

Does that feel intentional? Did you make the choice to focus on this part of yourself that you consider “difficult”?

AHH一 It's definitely personality driven. I grew up Catholic — masochism sort of comes with the territory. I paint an oil — again, a masochistic process. I hold very high standards for myself and for the people that I let into my close circle, which is why my close circle basically consists of Vilte and my mom. It lends itself to my creative work ethic, and the fact that I think I make work that separates itself from the more fast-paced approach that the contemporary and emerging arts scene takes.

VF一 There have been many cases where people have suggested for her to take shortcuts to what they think would be the same image, but it wouldn't be. A lot of people assume if Arianne started using airbrush and acrylic paint that dries really quickly, she could do this 10 times faster, but it would not look like her work without her technique.

AHH一 The whole point of my practice is the process and the fact that it takes time and the way I source my imagery, the way I put together a composition, and then the way it takes weeks to execute. I'm commenting on this fast-paced digital age and the age of narcissism and the spectacle and the way we view things through online spaces in a traditional medium to poke fun at and critique it. What I would say about Vilte’s work is… Vilte is going through a bit of a rebrand. A “cultural reset.”

VF一 It's basically very reduced form. I'm doing less figuration. The colors are more muted. I'm trying to make it slightly less garish and maybe a bit more classy. It still has elements of sci-fi and all that stuff.

What made you decide to make that shift?

VF一 My work has always been slightly dark, creepy things with humorous elements. That was great at the time for my interests, but when I was looking at other works by other artists that I like, or just narratives that I'm interested in, my preferred tastes are a lot more muted and more abstract. It's not like the work is now serious, but before everything was very facetious and in joke. It got to a point where it felt like I was just recycling the same stuff. I started to really focus on asking myself what my actual personal tastes are and what I like.

AHH一 What I love most about Vilte’s work is her process and how she actually apply paints and creates the surface — how playful she is with how she puts together her surfaces. We're polar opposites. During lockdown, she was sewing bits of canvas together when things were closed. Now she’s carried that through, and I love seeing that in her work still. There is a DIY element, which I generally hate in artwork, but she has such a good eye for it, and understands the history behind it. It's not just messiness for messiness sake. The work now is not as in your face and figurative, but it's not serious or boring. It's still her, and there's still the element of play and the element of critique, which I think is so important to her practice.

What are some of your current references?

VF一 It's like Succession meets David Cronenberg. Being around London, there are a lot of metal buildings. I have this obsession with work in general. For the past year and a half, just fully sustaining myself from painting and kind of getting everything I would've ever wanted as a child to be like, Wow, I can sustain myself purely from painting. There's been elements where I really miss normal work and I miss routine and I miss being a part of a community where you go in and you see these people all the time. I got obsessed with the idea of work culture through spending a year and a half purely painting since it's so lonely. You have to be so determined and self-motivated and have so much belief in yourself that I do think you have to be a certain level of a narcissist. And I always thought that I was narcissistic enough, but I don't think I am. My new body of work has been very much based on the idea of work and then me being me. I love a little sci-fi horror narrative going into it. I’ve been looking at the popularity of financial and political dramas in film and television. Similarly to my other previous work, I reference movie tropes. The new work is very gray, very corporate — slightly fleshy and slimy — a little bit gross, but not too gross.

I end up in these weird rabbit holes on someone's profile; I don't know who they are, I don’t know where they came from.

AHH一 The way my practice operates is I turned a bad habit of mine — which is incessantly scrolling through Instagram, consuming unnecessary visual media, and death scrolling on any and all social media platforms all the time — into a creative outlet. I end up in these weird rabbit holes on someone's profile; I don't know who they are, I don’t know where they came from. Generally, these people will only have a few hundred followers and I'm still creeping on their stuff — taking screenshots. On my notes app, I write down thoughts that I have; titles; things that have been happening or have happened to me. It’s this combination of narratives that are personal to me, and then these images that I found, but don’t relate to me. Mixing very mundane shots, which are completely distant for me, with these very personal memories of mine, and merging them together into these compositions that make sense, but don't make sense — that are familiar, yet out of reach. There’s sort of a Lychian, uneasy feeling to them.

Lately, I’ve been looking at dog mouths. I’m really interested in dog teeth and fleshy gums. I think the juxtaposition of the soft fleshiness with the hard teeth is really interesting. And obviously all the sort of symbolism around teeth and your teeth falling out in your dreams. Something that's always on my mind is traditional religious iconography and religious themes, and merging them with more modern ideologies and images.

I wanted to ask you about the swan motif in your paintings too because I love swans.

AHH一 I am obsessed with swans. In Australia, they have the black swan. You don't see them so much in London, but we have the white swan, which is the queen's bird. When I'm feeling sad, but still able to leave my bed, I'll go and watch the swans. I literally have a folder on my phone of over 5,000 images and videos of swans from Hyde Park. So, I always have these references that I can return to whenever I need a swan reference. Symbolically, what I love about swans is obviously they're the picturesque symbol of love. You see them on postcards; they mate for life; all that sort of imagery, but then compared to the fact that they're quite a violent bird. I like this juxtaposition of eternal and forever, but also aggressive. In terms of the shape, they're quite phallic looking, so it's this idea of something so hard against something so eternal yet ephemeral. That's why I love a swan. Also, if you really watch a swan, they are magnificent creatures. You can't buy the white swans, but you can buy the black swans, and a pair is around £600, which is totally affordable, but obviously in order to properly house them, you need to have an estate with swamp. If I ever make it big time, I’m going to have an estate somewhere out in the country and breed black swans — that's my plan.

Art

Pamela Sneed’s Speaking Tongue opens at Dashwood Projects

November 15, 2024

Pamela Sneed’s latest exhibition, Speaking Tongue, will be on view at Dashwood Projects from November 20 to December 21. The show features twenty watercolor and ink paintings inspired by her recent trip to Kenya, where she was deeply moved by the elegance of giraffes, the landscapes, and the energy of Nairobi.

Blending her background as a poet and visual artist, Sneed’s work reflects on themes of identity, nature, and connection. Her paintings capture the beauty and spirit of the animals she encountered, alongside reflections on her own experiences as part of the African diaspora.

This exhibition marks Sneed’s first solo show with Dashwood Projects and will be accompanied by a new book, also titled Speaking Tongue, to be released in December.

By Enzo Holdt
Artworks by Pamela Sneed

Art

Tiebreaker - Alvin Armstrong

November 15, 2024

There is a moment of silence right before the play. Just before the racket strikes the ball as it hangs weightless in the air, breathless and charged. It’s the fleeting yet decisive instant that can alter the course of the match, determining who wins and who loses.

Alvin Armstrong depicts this crucial moment in his new exhibition Tiebreaker, symbolizing the risks and rewards of competition. It’s an implication of something else at stake, where athletes push not only their bodies, but their spirits to the absolute limit.

The dynamic figures embody the strength, grace, and agility juxtaposed by the vibrant color palette evoking not just the joy of competition but the charged energy of the court.

Tiebreaker is opening Thursday, November 16th at Anna Zorina Gallery.

By Rea Brayshaw
Artworks by Alvin Armstrong

Art

The Things People Are Ashamed To Take Photos Of: The Photography and Films of Yuhan Cheng

Yuhan’s latest exhibition of photo and video work titled 窗子外 Outside the Window, Inside the Tank 鱼缸里 takes its namesake from what could’ve been a mundane encounter. A month after moving to New York City from Chengdu, China, they stumbled across an abandoned fish tank left curbside. It reminded them of “the rotating fish in a tank that faded into the background of their mother’s home in Chengdu”, a thread connecting childhood familiarity that transformed into a symbol of greater significance in adulthood. A tank is a world within a world; a microcosm secluded from the broader chaos of the outside. Since then Yuhan has captured the other kinds of “fish tanks” closest to them in their photography and short films. Not literal ones necessarily– but intimate confined spaces in Chengdu and NYC where time stands still.

In the midst of taking snapshots of loved ones, Yuhan decided to turn their tender but examining lens on themselves. They realized shooting self-portraits unraveled a deeper understanding of their own nonbinary gender and queer sexuality. Yuhan admits in one of their short films “I hide from looking at my own body.” Yet, in the seclusion of their room which doubles as a dark room, Yuhan began to develop their first nude photos chronicling the subtle wounds; bitten cuticles, bruises, and scrapes they’ve accumulated involuntarily, once again documenting the things people choose to hide.

窗子外 Outside the Window, Inside the Tank 鱼缸里, debuted at FAR-NEAR Studio Hours a gallery in Chinatown focused on expanding the art world's view of Asia and Asian artists curated by Lulu Yao Gioiello. The event merged Yuhan’s works from the past three years, including 70 photographs, three short documentaries, and one installation. There was something uncanny about the gallery’s atmosphere – from the dollar store teal green curtains obscuring every window to the clusters of framed photos mimicking how photos of relatives are displayed in one’s childhood home, to the darkened lighting that was both disorienting and cozy. All these details were meticulously chosen to imitate the rooms depicted in Yuhan’s films and photography. In other words, the audience was invited to Yuhan’s “fishtank”, to share the odd balance of comfort and unease of being known intimately. We talked to Yuhan at Cafe Reggio to understand how their latest body of work came into being.

Initially, I was exploring my friends’ identities through the lens, but slowly, it became a tool to confront and understand my own queerness and gender identity.

Ora Margolis— Were any memories/childhood experiences you had in Chengdu important to how you've developed as an artist?

Yuhan Cheng— Growing up in Chengdu, especially in a military household, shaped and gave me a source of contention how I understood my identity. There was always a sense of conflict when it came to my body and feeling like I didn’t quite fit the expectations around me. This tension has been a driving force in my practice, pushing me to explore identity and belonging in my work.

Tell us a bit about your latest exhibition Outside the Window, Inside the Tank at Far. What headspace were you in when taking these photos?

YC— Outside the Window, Inside the Tank is about the fluidity of self; our bodies, our environments, and our identities. The idea of water as both a symbol of confinement and freedom is central to the photos and film that comprise the exhibit. This fluidity much like how I see my experience moving between Chengdu and New York, where similar feelings follow me no matter where I am. Water mirrors the body, the frame, and the room, which are all containers of the self.

Previously, you’ve said you wanted the exhibition space to look "like your room". How did you make that happen and why is your NYC room important to you?

YC— My room in NYC is an extension of my identity. It’s where I feel vulnerable and where I explore myself most openly. It’s a manifestation of my sense of self. I recreated certain elements in the exhibition—the green sheer curtains, the dollar store shower curtain with bubbles, and the center installation depicted a self-portrait deteriorating in water, reminiscent of a fish in a tank. This room, like any other room or container, magnifies the tension of self-exploration.

Has your idea or comfort with your gender identity and /sexuality changed since you’ve delved into photography?

YC— Yes. The process of photography and filming has been a mirror to my own understanding of self. Initially, I was exploring my friends’ identities through the lens, but slowly, it became a tool to confront and understand my own queerness and gender identity. The process of photographing my queer friends and then myself allowed me to come to terms with who I am.

How did you and Lulu Yao of FAR-NEAR Studio meet, and what makes her a good collaborator?

YC— We first connected when I reached out with my series Princess of Funan River. Lulu understood the struggles and complexities in the work and she invited me to expand on those ideas with her. Our collaboration has worked because Lulu truly resonates with the themes I’m drawn to, like fluidity, transformation, and the intimacy of navigating belonging.

After completing Fish Tank and Remnants of an Amateur Film, what kind of movie do you want to make next?

YC— Right now, I’m more focused on writing. I need to understand what I want to say before making another film. Writing helps me find clarity;it’s a crucial part of my process.

What kind of camera do you use and why?

YC— I use a Canon AE-1. I started with it and I still love it. It's small, spontaneous, easy to use, and light. It allows me to capture moments naturally without overthinking.

What's your biggest fear?

YC— Being disconnected from my sense of self, from others, and from the things I love.

When do you feel most like yourself?

YC— It’s during those fleeting moments when I complete a project. That feeling fades quickly, leaving me searching for the next project to reconnect with that sense of fulfillment.

How do you want people to feel when they interact with your art?

YC— I want them to feel whatever resonates with them. I don’t want to prescribe the experience; it should feel right for each person.

Your work focuses on the close knit communities that surround you or various metaphorical “fish tanks”. What communities do you feel closest to?
YC— The queer artist community, both in Chengdu and NYC, has been a source of comfort and understanding for me. There’s something about shared struggles and shared creative language that feels like home.

What's the biggest difference between living life as a queer artist in NYC and in Chengdu?

YC— In both NYC and Chengdu, I’m learning more about myself. NYC offers a sense of freedom, while Chengdu is home, a place of comfort and history. Neither place defines me but both are significant parts of my path.

What are your next moves/goals?

YC— I want to continue exploring both film and photography, expanding my narrative style and experimenting across mediums. During my show, I found new ways of seeing my photographs such as by adding a window screen between frames or letting a self-portrait fade and grow mold in water. These approaches allowed me to see my work not just as 2D images but as 3D objects.

I want to keep pushing the boundaries of how photo and film can interact, and I’m also interested in trying photojournalism. My focus remains on collaborating across mediums and continuing to accumulate experiences that I can translate into sincere honest work.