Growing up in Brooklyn in a working class family, my grandfather was my mentor. He retired from being a subway conductor and we enjoyed our time together after school while both my parents worked. He saw I liked to draw and he’d encourage me. We would read together and argue philosophy. I consider myself fortunate to have grown up in New York where the whole city was my playground. My childhood museums were not only world class but they were more than art museums, they were the encyclopedic museums of the Brooklyn Museum and Metropolitan Museum and the exciting dioramas of the Natural History Museum. From an early age I was thinking of making art in relationship to a broader context. The first art I felt a connection to was the wonderful Egyptian collection at the Brooklyn Museum. I also felt advantaged that I could have a public school art education, finding the 1.5 hour commute to the High School of Art & Design in Manhattan worth it. Scholarships allowed me to complete a formal art education and to go on to Cornell University for my BFA and eventually Bard College for my MFA.

LO: What are the ideas in your work and what is your working process?
MR: In my work, I deal with memory embedded in places and spaces of the past, whether they be the remains of ruins or resonances of the layering and pentimentos and palimpsests of centuries. On reflection, I realized being a native New Yorker informed my subject matter and themes. I was drawn to the eclectic architecture and the mix of times and styles, a reflection of the history of New York itself. I see in buildings the lives past lived that inform and live on in a presence, the history of a place and the people who lived there embedded in its structures. I create my own environments by drawing my reference from various sources both historical and from my sketchbook of accumulated photographs. I assemble images, removing them from their original context to create a new world of my own. I deal with both the illusion of real space and objects with a reiteration of the flat surface (especially in my paintings, where I combine and alternate in multi-panels highly painted images with flat areas of color). Of course, it’s all not so deadly serious, there are visual plays and historical winks, I’m attracted to the witty and playful as a curator and it’s there in my studio work as well (albeit subtly).

As to process, I travel often for my projects and spend several months each year in Europe. Wherever I go, I build a sketchbook of images. I take photographs of building facades, grotesques and gargoyles, interior as well as exterior spaces and collect all kinds of reference. Sometimes what I am seeing triggers an idea, sometimes I have an idea of the concept and cull through my images for the form the work will take.

LO: You’re an artist, curator and gallery director and like many artists juggle many things and have several jobs. What is your advice for this juggling act?
MR: We all juggle different roles and priorities in our lives, whether we’re conscious of it or not. I make sure to give my full focus to what I am doing at the moment. As I always say, my career is my day job. And I think of all my work as one of a piece, whether in the studio or in the gallery or on the computer; everything I do is related to my art projects and my life as an artist first and foremost. I think it is important not to resent the time needed for anything I take on to be accomplished well and thoroughly. There will always be the frustration of never having enough time for everything, but that just makes for an interesting life. I can’t imagine being bored.

LO: Tell us about your new gallery CENTRAL BOOKING in the Lower East Side ie the artists, the goals for the gallery, why LES?
MR: I think of CENTRAL BOOKING more as my curatorial space rather than a traditional contemporary art gallery. After years of curating with other spaces, I felt the necessity of having complete control over my curatorial vision and decision-making so more than four years ago I founded the gallery. As a hybrid gallery (a commercial gallery with non-profit sponsorship), I feel I have the freedom to do all sorts of programming.

CENTRAL BOOKING is an interdisciplinary two gallery space focusing on the art of the book and its integration into the larger art world through exhibitions of all media on art and science themes. I have a very expansive idea of the book form and look for artists who do as well. Besides the more traditionally bound codex books, we specialize in books that push the form, whether it is utilizing the flat wall, or sculpturally situated on shelves, floor or ceiling. We represent over 160 international artists, many I’ve known and worked with for years, others I add as I see new work that excites me in its unique vision.

The quarterly exhibitions in our newly named Haber Space showcase a broad variety of work in a series of explorations where art meets science. I enjoy creating complete environments with the work, utilizing and designing the entire space- walls, floor and ceiling. The integration of the two spaces is organic as many book artists work in other media as well: painting, sculpture, installation and video art. In fact, book art often incorporates these other media itself. Therefore both galleries are distinctive but also have an interactive relationship. For each one of these exhibitions we always have a thought provoking art and science panel that puts several artists in the exhibition in discussion with scientists and scholars in the field.

The themes of my exhibitions mostly come from what I see that artists are doing in their studios. I collect files on artists whose work interests me and begin to break the work up into categories of thematic relationships. When I feel there is enough work and enough variety of approaches and media, then I have an exhibition.

We also have a full programming schedule that includes screenings, talks, original performances, readings, lecture series, discussion panels and workshops. And we publish CENTRAL BOOKING Magazine, a quarterly that focuses on book art issues that also contains a full catalog for each of our exhibitions.

CENTRAL BOOKING opened in DUMBO, Brooklyn in September 2009, but as our success grew I was looking for a storefront space that would be more than a destination space. I thought we were going to remain in Brooklyn but after I looked for over a year and had two spaces fall through, I spoke with other Brooklyn galleries that were moving to LES and heard the same story – that it was a growing gallery neighborhood and the rents were often less than in Brooklyn. I was encouraged when I found in my first walk around a number of possible spaces. And I love the fact that it is still a bit of the New York I grew up with, a real neighborhood where people live and shop and is still full of old family businesses. The other galleries have also been open and welcoming, though unfortunately there isn’t a lot of time for too much interaction, we’re all so busy. But I found that storefront with quite a large window frontage and a space big enough to comfortably fit my whole program. And one in which my community can share as we build it together. I feel a real part of something in LES and have made friendships with a number of my neighbors, many who have already become regulars in just the few months since we opened there.

LO: Why do you think art is important to people and to the world?
MR: Humans were drawing on cave walls when they could barely grunt communications. Art is part of our humanity, do we really need to argue why it is important? Good or bad, what in our world has not been created by art? Can we even look at a snowflake under a microscope and say that art is irrelevant or non-essential to our lives? Obviously, it’s intrinsic in all nature.

LO: What advice would you give an artist who has just arrived in NYC and who is not sure where to begin?
MR: As a native New Yorker, I took a lot for granted as a young artist. I knew how to navigate the vastness, understanding that NY is just a bunch of neighborhoods strung together. My advice would be to find your community, a place of comfort, and move out from there. Take a class, join a printmaking workshop, get involved in a non-profit, attend events that interest you. And keep your expenses as low as possible so that you have to earn as little as possible and can have as much time to work both in the studio and on organically building a career.

LO: What are your upcoming projects?
MR: Besides the four exhibitions I curate yearly at CENTRAL BOOKING and the 4 issues of the magazine I need to put to bed each year, I have an exhibition at Bennington College, long in the works, that opens in April which brings together artists I have worked with in both parts of the gallery. Also on the curatorial front, I will be co-jurying the summer exhibition at the Center for Book Arts and will also be working on their 40th anniversary exhibition. I am also in the process of two longer term international book art exchange exhibitions with Bristol, England and Poland.

My studio projects include finishing up my current painting series, editioning my new artist’s book, and working on my painting animation.

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The five largest paintings on the South wall of the gallery do read like screens as explained in the press release, “influenced by crude digital landscapes of outdated 8-bit graphics”.  The thick paint and occasional drips echo the grittiness of early Technicolor animation. The gradients are reminiscent of early computer generated advertisements and early arcade game backgrounds. But I also think about old Japanese prints or the rainbow rolls of 1960’s/70’s rock posters.

The reductive compositions do remain graph-like but are not so considered. They avoid a lean towards early modernists like Kandinsky or Mondrian, No Golden Ratios make an appearance here. The paintings hover somewhere between graphic color charts and actual thought-out pictures. I do not imagine Russell in his studio staring at this work thoughtfully, or calculating color theory, conceptual, or even emotional content. This attitude matches Russell’s sincere, yet not pretentious personality. He’s no Albers and no Picasso—and I’m glad.

Despite what it says in the DCKT press release about his influence of the screen and early Sci-Fi films, he makes the paintings for themselves—they reference themselves, and I think more about how they relate to his older body of work than any conceptual framework or nod to pop or art history. These are paintings made by a painter who knows how to make a bad painting. And he probably knows how to make a good painting too (I’m talking about formulas). This new work is neither trying too hard or too little.  A middle ground rarely tread upon these days. I feel like most shows I see are either heavy-handed new casualist or over-produced craft fairs/flea markets. But Tyler’s new paintings are at a mature point, curbed back from the cusp of beautiful, while not sunken into a shit-show of muddiness.

Russell Tyler, EVA-POD, 2013. Oil on wood panel. 26 in. diameter. Image courtesy of the artist.

Most of the time when you see an artist’s body of work or even more than one painting together you began to see relationships and hear conversations between the works. That is hard to do with Tyler’s paintings—maybe because the imagery is simple and similar, but also because the designs are soft and ambiguous. They are open-ended, acting like backdrops, jumping off points or fading dreamscapes. He makes the paintings bright yet muted, geometric yet sloppy. This seeming confliction allows one to read each painting individually, even when they are in a large group and in close proximity to each other. The paintings need to be seen in person—like a Brice Marden or a Julie Torres.

The paint is thick, and vivid, and lush—probably not yet dry. The works smell like oil paint but I still see and read them like graphic, flat compositions. All these other elements are there but don’t get in the way of the literal or implied image. Tyler still retains the remnants of his older style of messy, bad painting. All the paintings at DCKT except the tondo works have double line borders made by squeezing paint directly out of the tube. He does not use this technique as a statement of immediacy. The painted borders act like modernist frames.

Since the entire surface is thick paint brushed on like cake frosting, we see the final image as a field. When one mutation multiplies and becomes dominant, then it becomes the norm. Russell Tyler fills his paintings with flatness.

By Mark Sengbusch

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Kristen Copham: I have identified myself as an artist for as long as I can remember.  I had strong drawing skills as a kid, so I benefited from early encouragement.  I now find the title to be a little vague and commonplace, so sometimes in response to “whaddyado?”  I say I’m an illustrator, an entrepreneur, an international playgirl, or a janitor.  My family background is about as idyllic as it gets: close knit, working class, Midwestern, rural, fun, genuine, devoted, quasi-religious and to top it all off, lucky.

LO: What are the ideas in your work and what is your working process? 

KC: First, I try to work at all.  It’s easy to be busy, discouraged or frustrated with what I’m trying to express.  And since it’s pretty entertaining to create work in my head and takes a lot of effort to do it in reality, discipline can be a challenge. But, I know that practice is crucial to successful expression.  I keep a sketchbook in my purse most of the time. I draw in it some of the time, and I embark upon drawing sprees and then drawing famines. In the studio I paint because it’s easier and feels more natural.  Painting is all about my process – organizing and mixing color and materials, and  supporting the ideas both have to coalesce into one cohesive moment.  By the time I do all that, the brush does the rest. Unlike a pen, a brush is fairly forgiving. I need the pen in order to quickly capture ideas or images that seem to come out of nowhere, and usually those are the ideas and images worth exploring further.

My specific ideas tend toward interpretation and representation of the natural world. This planet and the human experience fascinate me every single day.  I’m working on merging the internal with the external world – practicing both seeing and feeling. I try to paint looking at both the outside world or “reality” and the inside world, my place of intuition. I like to paint people from life verses photographs, which flatten out expression and nuance. I’m not saying I can capture those things in a painting either, but the process of building the personality through layers of color and tone while watching how someone moves and interacts with the world seems more dynamic to me than capturing the shadows and light across a face in a fraction of a second.  Doing the latter successfully takes way more talent than I have!  Mostly I just have a color addiction.

LO: You’re a portrait painter, which is a tradition that has produced some of the best works of art ever created. What is it about the human face in painting that fascinates us and what are some of your favorite portrait paintings?

KC: In terms of portraits, some of my all-time favorites are Alice Neel’s portrait of Andy Warhol, affected and fresh; Lucien Freud’s raw, honest and unapologetic portrayal Queen Elizabeth; Sylvia Sleigh’s various paintings of her hairy, handsome Latino model with the humungous afro; Dana Schutz’s portraits of her fantasy last-man-on-earth “Frank”– especially the one where he is bright orange and floating on an ice chunk in an endless sea; Nicole Eisenman’s fabulous prints of faces; Elizabeth Peyton’s romanticized depiction of Kurt Cobain; and Frances Bacon’s disjointed portraits of his lover. Classically, I appreciate the rawness of Rembrandt’s moody self-portraits, and figuratively I’m a fan of El Greco’s movements and gestures as well as Jenny Saville’s big juicy nudes.  Don’t get me going, I could go on and on … I love all of it!

The face expresses so much.  It’s how we connect with each other.  And faces are so varied and interesting, yet they are all fundamentally the same.  Eyes, mouth, nose, ears, and hair (or not!) on a head.  We all have a face, and we simultaneously express through it and receive information through it:  through all the features of the face we see the world, we hear and listen, we speak, breathe and consume.  It’s telling how we tend to find faces in abstract works, isn’t it? The face is the first thing we recognize as babies. I must add that the human body is equally incredible: how it moves in space and interacts with the world, its curves and lumps and lines, the way it can express feeling.

LO: How do you select the subjects that you paint?

KC: Often I let them select me, as with my 1000 faces project.  Sometimes I’ll see a person who I just want to paint because they look so unique or their expression is especially intriguing.  Occasionally I’ll ask a stranger to sit for me, but usually they just think I’m strange and don’t respond. For my “Male Artists Exposed” Series, I painted men who were artists, not models – in order to subvert the idea of the model as object, explore ideas of subject-hood, and because I thought it was fun being a woman artist painting nude men.  I’ve also done a series of nude paintings of my friend David Gibson, a talented curator about town. He’s a big guy, which for me is exciting because the resulting works challenge our ideas about beauty and the human form.

Painting family, friends and lovers is a natural inclination. I want to study the faces of the people I love and record my vision of them. It’s a perceived form of making them immortal, I suppose. I never want them to die!

LO: You ran a gallery called LZ Project Space in the Lower East Side for several years. How was this experience and how was it to be part of the emerging gallery scene in LES?

KC: NY Studio Gallery started with my studio rental on the fifth floor of the Whitehall Building on 25^th street in Chelsea.  I consolidated my living and working space in 2007 and moved myself and NYSG to my building in the Lower East Side. Later we expanded to a small annex space in the back of the building and called it LZ Project Space. We hosted artists such as Arielle Falk, Emmy Mikelson, Ernest Concepcion, and many more amazingly talented voices. It is a tradition that continues to this day with Leah Oates’ sophisticated vision at Station Independent.

At the time we had a great line-up of dealers with exceptional exhibits on the block:  Alix Sloan, who still deals at fairs and has shown out of the NYSG space, Collette Blanchard on Clinton Street, the non-profit Participant who is still a player. I feel honored to have been a small part of the emerging scene in the area. It continues to grow. Today longtime East Village art dealer Paul Bridgewater runs Smart Clothes Gallery out of the space.

LO: Why do you think art is important to people and to the world?

KC: Art captures the time, place, and feeling of a culture and on a grander scale, of the collective unconscious of the planet. We preserve art because people relate to it at a fundamental or archetypal level and in turn it relates back to the experience of being human. It speaks to something universal, which is why humanity has the urge to preserve art and look to it for answers. It offers a time-space thread of connection to our past and future, to shared and personal experiences. It’s the same reason people are often threatened by art. Why else would ancient relics be defaced, or coveted or stolen, or traded at breathtaking prices?  As E. H. Gombrich points out in The Story of Art, why would you care if someone poked holes in the eyes of a picture of your mother? Because the image has power!

Another interesting thing about art is that it is both all around us and inside us. Making art is a way to give yourself a voice, give yourself that power.  The emergence of graffiti-art all over the world is just one example of how young people use mark-making as an outlet.

LO: What advice would you give an artist who has just arrived in NYC and who is not sure where to begin?

KC: It depends on what you want to achieve. I can’t really give advice generally since everyone has different dreams. Do you want to make more work?  Organize your life so that you can work. Do you want to sell your work?  Figure out your niche, find your audience, create a selling plan. Maybe you use the Internet or throw open studio parties or connect to an interior designer. Do you want a dealer?  Do your research and make a plan to find representation. Having representation outside New York can help, especially if your rep does art fairs and has a solid collector base for whose taste your work fits.

There’s nothing that feels worse than being an artist and not working.  Even if other things are out of place – money, or love, or logistics, of life – find some way to make work, even if it’s simply jotting down ideas on napkins you carry in your pocket.  If you have a serious practice or think you’re good enough to be represented, research your possible galleries and make a plan to have your work considered.  Haha, I should take my own advice!

LO: What are your upcoming projects?

KC: That’s top-secret information! (smiles)  But I can tell you a little bit … In my upstate studio I’m working on a series of mountain paintings based on the time I spent last year in Colorado and the Swiss Alps. In entrepreneur-land I am developing a cartoon character that teaches yoga to kids. Of course I still regularly paint portraits, either in Manhattan or on the road. Can I paint yours?

Lately I’ve been trying to synthesize aspects of the external world, specifically the natural world, with ideas of the internal world: living life, learning, making errors, being human and animal at once. I’m trying to mesh those ideas in the mountain paintings, which are both large and sparse – a challenge for a painter who typically covers every square inch of canvas with paint. I may need to bring the practice into plein air for a while. Now and again I’ll find myself fussing with collage, culling old sketchbooks, and looking at art in NY in order to find inspiration and make connections. I meditate and ask the universe for clarity, focus, and clues to discover that next big project that will consume my passion.  Anyway, those are just a few of the grand and sometimes ridiculous ideas that I wake up and go to sleep with. I’m ashamed to say I have another three or four non-art related projects that regularly distract me as well, like fitness, food, writing, or real estate, to name a few.  Unfortunately, I’m a busybody, and that’s never done my art any favors.

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