So I'm curious, is Hilde Jerry Gogosian? Is Jerry Gogosian your alter ego, or is it purely satire?
I would say the primary medium I work in is as a writer, and I think of Jerry as a character I've written. Jerry is meaner, wittier, a little more heartless, ruthless, and wealth-obsessed than I am. On the other hand, Hilde is very emotional, reflective, and, at times, philosophical. I had a gallery for two years in Los Angeles, and I curated and wrote for every show, and I love to curate, but I feel like this is the time of my life when I want to be an artist. I look at using Jerry to curate this show, as a work of art, as opposed to me being the curator, if that makes any sense. Jerry Gogosian is this character that I've written and created, and Jerry is status-obsessed, wealth-obsessed, but that's not the art world that I am in, and that's not the type of artist that I personally support. I collect and support artists of all kinds in interesting philanthropic ways. But I'm not like, here's a bunch of money and a show at David Zwirner. I don't necessarily view that as supporting artists. I will probably continue to curate exhibitions. Things will likely come up, but I don't want to be a full-time curator at all at this point in my life.
I think that idea you brought up of curation as a type of art is cool. I feel many artists are like “I am an artist and a curator”, but you don't see it happening as much the other way around. I'm kind of new to this curation thing. I have the first show I'm curating in October, but the idea of curating as messaging interests me. You're not creating the works, but by putting them together in a particular way, you're conveying a larger story. By putting these images together, you're almost creating a collage of these different visual experiences you want viewers to have before leaving. You can see it as a larger collage of all these various artists. You are not creating something tangible or physical, but a creative act is going down to me. So, when you said you're curating this show as Jerry as a form of art, it makes sense to me because I believe an argument can be made for curation as its own art form. To me, it's sort of looked at as a more academic pursuit in people's eyes.
I agree with that. Every show I curated when I had a gallery was based on a poem that I had read or a film that I had watched, and then I took something profound and philosophical from that. From there, it was almost like a manifestation where suddenly, if you have a red car, you start seeing all these red cars. So suddenly, I'd begin to seeing the poem in different artists' work, and that's how I would put shows together. After studying fine art for seven years, I purposely strayed away from being academic because, first of all, a lot of academia within the context of the fine art world isn't very real. Anything could happen, the United States could implode, and in 1000 years, anthropologists can start digging around and be like, "oh, we've been finding all these signs, and we've translated them, and they say footlocker, this must have been the art of their time."
We really don't know, so it's impossible to say. The only thing we can do now is act out of love and passion and take the messages of people we feel share the values and ideas we share, dialogue, and collaborate with them.