Interview

March 22, 2017, 9:39am

A Conversation: Stanley Whitney

Arthur Peña: We first met in 2011 while I was at RISD and what stuck with me from that meeting was a story of how your father wasn’t allowed in museums because they were still segregated. How I remember the rest of the story is you saying that when you did have your first museum show you wanted to make paintings big enough that they wouldn’t fit through the door and the museum would have to work to get them in. Did I remember that right?

Stanley Whitney: Well it’s true that my father couldn’t go in to the Philadelphia Museum. Jack Whitten calls those years the “American Apartheid.” I have lots of stories of paintings not fitting through doors but I don’t think it’s exactly those circumstances. Although, I might have mentioned something like that. It could have been related to a story from around 2006 when my dealer José Freire came to me and asked me to make the biggest work I could make to take to Basel to try and make things happen because he kept putting me in shows and no one was paying me any mind. So I made the biggest painting I could make in my studio, 96 x 96 in., and to get it out we had to cut it in half to get it through the door. We showed it on a big expensive wall and it didn’t sell.


FOCUS: Stanley Whitney at The Modern in Fort Worth, TX

Listed under: Interview

March 14, 2017, 8:20am

A CONVERSATION: ROSS BLECKNER

This interview took place on the occasion of Bleckner’s solo show, “Find a peaceful place where you can make plans for the future” at the Dallas Contemporary. 


(L to R) Dome, 2016, Oil on linen, 84 x 84 in. Ladder Painting, 2016, Oil on linen, 96 x33 in. Dome, 2016, Oil on linen, 120 x 78 in.

Listed under: Interview

September 06, 2016, 9:02am

Light, Letting Go, and the LA River with Debra Scacco

Debra Scacco creates rich, multimedia pieces that play with light, reflections, shadows, walls, and borders. Her 2015-2016 solo show The Letting Go at Klowden Mann was full of works on paper, paintings, and more sculptural installation pieces that reference and play off of nature and geography in aesthetically pleasing and deeply profound ways. – Ellen Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor


Debra Scacco, Installation view of “The Letting Go” at Klowden Mann, 2015.

Listed under: Interview

April 05, 2016, 9:10am

Gallery on the Edges: Q and A with Sharon Arnold of Bridge Productions

The last time I spoke with Sharon Arnold in her first gallery in Georgetown, I found myself surprised at my own sadness. Her modest space LxWxH, hovering over a pizza restaurant, was closing. Arnold wasn’t going far—she was moving on to collaborate with another well-respected gallerist, in downtown Seattle. LxWxH was small in scale and remote by comparison, two miles south of the city center, in Seattle’s historic, industrial neighborhood of Georgetown. But its presence had bored deep into the landscape of the community’s visual art, through not only the gallery that balanced the homegrown with the sophisticated so well, but also through the accessible boxed sets of small works that she sold to foster collecting in the city. I knew I would miss this gallery’s ideas when it was gone. - Erin Langner, Seattle Contributor


Tectonic, Installation View. Image courtesy of Bridge Productions.

Listed under: Interview

July 30, 2015, 1:02pm

Small Things with Loud Noise: The Fabulously Sardonic World of Alex Gingrow

Alex Gingrow’s (NAP #116) work is some of my favorite I have seen recently. It is intelligent, sarcastic, relevant, humorous, and resonant. I saw it months ago and haven’t stopped thinking about it.

Taking items as mundane as daily desktop calendar pages, museum wall labels, and stickers, Gingrow transforms them all into powerful agents with important social messages. She addresses the passage of time with unexpected juxtapositions of quotes in the “Disposable Day Desk Calendar” (as the series is titled) with her daily notes in the form a completed sentence “Today I ____”. - Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor


Alex Gingrow | Calendar Page: part of the This Disposable Day Desk Calendar series. "01.11.13" graphite, ink, and acrylic on paper, 15 x 15 inches, 2013. Courtesy of the artist.

Listed under: Interview

July 29, 2015, 9:10am

On Monuments and Memories, Flags and Fire: The Art of Tom Pazderka

Tom Pazderka’s (NAP #117) work is quietly disturbing. His mixed media and wood installations have a haunting presence, suggesting isolated cabins in the woods, lone wolves, and ideas or dreams gone astray. They feel threatening, yet on the other hand, they are also somehow unassuming and peaceful. – Ellen Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor


Tom Pazderka | The Disquieting Monument to Southern Discomfort, Burned image on recycled wood, painted towel and broom, Dimensions variable, 2014. Courtesy of Artist.

Listed under: Interview

April 20, 2015, 9:32am

Skylar Fein and the Dark Art of Pop

Skylar Fein (NAP #112) combines text and paint to create powerful imagery on paper, aluminum, and wood. With a burst of dry verbal wit and starkly contrasted style, his works bite you subtlety and leave you thinking.

With the rise and renaissance of hand-lettering, ­­­Fein’s work recalls that of both pop art masters and signage gurus in works like his series of oversized matchbooks (featured in both the 2014 show Giant Metal Matchboxes and 2015 Strike Anywhere) and other works like his presidential silhouettes such as “Red FDR/Fried Chicken,” named for the color of the text signage and that which it is advertising. Here, Fein discusses text-based art, the darker side of pop, and the failure behind great 20th century revolutions. – Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor


Skylar Fein |
 Black Flag for Voltaire (All Murderers are Punished). Courtesy of Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans and the artist.

Listed under: Interview

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