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wall of the gallery do read like screens as explained in the press release, “influenced by crude digital landscapes of outdated 8-bit graphics”.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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Two years ago I met Johnny Tragedy. A normal enough dude for Brooklyn – tattoos, tight black pants, and patches on his vest. I never gave his appearance a second thought. He was who he was. He is who he is. I got to know his work. It made sense and I immediately was attracted to the irony that this punk-metal kid was making delicate porcelain sculptures.

One day I saw the name Jonathan Stanish on a showcard. What a square. Johnny Tragedy had found his “Clark Kent” disguise. I met him at his studio Grand Prix in Chinatown to have a chat.

Mark Sengbusch: Talk about your past. How does “punk” play into your work? (you mentioned something to me one time at your old Pratt studio about 90’s style DIY screen-printing culture and how that factored into your dye-printed porcelain sculptures)
Johnny Tragedy: My past is not that interesting, but the punk rock thing, now that is something to talk about. My current body of work doesn’t really have much to do with “punk” at all. It has more to do with what punk has turned into, or the commodified version of punk a la Hot Topic. I used to be really sincere about the way I dressed or the work I made, not unlike how punk was originally. But now punk is just a signifier, just a meaningless trope that can’t actually be counter-cultural anymore, it has become a brand. Johnny Tragedy has by default become that brand, and Jonathan Stanish has embraced its marketability.

MS: Does Fashion influence your work?
JT: Of course it does. I am a fashion slut—love all of it especially Chinatown trends. Fashion is a great way to project what you want others to think you are. Art is about design and trying to stay ahead of trends. I have a collaborative semi-fashion semi-technology project with Loney Abrams called ThereThere. This project is critical of fashion trends and commercial advertising. We are also doing a 2014 Fall/Winter lookbook using Walmart items we purchase, document, and then take back for a full refund. Some of the things we make only exist on the Internet. Ideas don’t always need to be made tangible, this is why the Internet is so great, it allows all of us to produce and disperse ideas thousands of times a day.

MS: You both (Stanish and Tragedy) are extremes. Does the interplay and irony happen in the studio? In your concepts? Does that dichotomy remain in the finished work or is it simply a tool to help you make the work?
JT: Johnny Tragedy is what non-artists think artists are—someone who lives in a Bushwick loft, has an MFA, tattoos, and is in a band (laughs) Even being in a band seems so old fashioned at this point. Jonathan Stanish is what the art world wants artists to be—marketable, palpable to market trends, and easily digestible. They both are cliches, they both pander to their audiences. (Don’t we all to some degree?) But by having both, I get some freedom in being able to go back and forth. Tragedy can get away with making a lot weirder art, and the pseudonym keeps it separated from what comes up when you Google search “Jonathan Stanish”, so Stanish’s professionalism remains preserved. Stanish, in some ways, allows Tragedy to have this freedom by supporting him financially. I also get to make art as Stanish that Tragedy might consider “selling out.”  Stanish’s goal is to make money as a “capital A Artist.” His work is about the history of printmaking and ceramics. Tragedy’s practice takes place more online, often in the form of self-promotion for the sake of self-promotion.

Sengbusch with Stanish and Tragedy in the studio. Image courtesy of Matt Grubb

MS: Should the viewer really give a fuck if you have face tattoos or have a bowtie on? The work is the work and we should all really respect your personal fashion choices, right? Or maybe that whole line of questioning is moot. If the existence of the dual identities helps you make the work (even if it is a just a fuck you to unnecessary judgement) then more power to ya!
JT: I think the viewer should be skeptical.  Personally I would trust a person with face tattoos more then a dude wearing board shorts and flip-flops. I wear my mistakes, I have my ex girlfriend’s initials on my face. This allows me to be critical of tattoo culture and so called self-expression. Of course we should be respectful of individual fashion choices but I think we all should be more critical of trends.

MS: What are you working on in the studio presently?
JT: Currently I am vinyl wrapping racing helmets with appropriated internet imagery. I am calling this series Biker Friendly. The vanity in car culture is intriguing. Car and bike enthusiast like to express themselves through modes of transportation. It is odd that people spend countless hours matching their motorcycle fender colors to their helmet stripes. I find a lot of connections between car culture and fine art especially the whole idea of decadence and commodity.

MS: What is Hotel Art?
JT:  Hotelart.us is a collaborative project between Loney Abrams, Ian Swanson, and myself. We document shows in alternative spaces with a guerilla mentality i.e. hotels, spas, shopping malls.  Then we show the documentation at a gallery and release the images online. We at hotelart.us recognize how seeing the documentation of art holds prominence in the art world today. Peep the project at hotelart.us.

MS: What is the best book you’ve read in the last year?
JT: Books? (Laughs) Nah, dog Facebook is all I need.

MS: If I come to the bar where you work, can you hook it up?
JT: Depends on what demographic you are. Are you a guy with a curly moustache and a monocle? If so then you would ask for a Bourbon neat with the finest IPA we have on tap. I literally witnessed a guy sniffing his beer for at least one minute then he swooshed it around in his mouth all while staring at the ground. Sometimes Brooklyn is too much that is why I love it here in Chinatown.

Johnny Tragedy has his MFA from Pratt (2013) and will have a solo show at Marc Strauss in 2014.

jonathanstanish.com

The post Born Tragedy: Mark Sengbusch talks to Stanish and Tragedy appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Being an artist has always been so much about one’s handle on previous visual history. Our access to information is now blown wide-open thanks to the Internet. It’s a resource quite available to all of us, but as with most things, it means a different thing to grow up with a technological innovation than it does to realize that the same innovation is causing rampant change within the world you are accustomed to. It must be similar to the ripple of disruption that happened the first time the camera was being fully utilized as an artistic tool. The reality of it all is, thanks to this proliferation of information, now all artists have to be aware not only of the generations before them, but also of contemporaries by their side, not to mention the young up-and-comers who are greedily sucking up information in their wake. An artist has to have his or her head on a swivel, constantly keeping an eye on all other creatives around them, knowing that with the vast sea of information available, any artist could be the next daunting aesthetic pirate. As we all know, art has always been very much about stealing.

Some young artists are making work that takes on a refined look in order to bump their name into the ring of commerce, while some older artists are making work that appears fresh and young, hoping to stay in the conversation by taking on the look of those breaking onto the scene. Meanwhile the Internet has its eyes on all of it, doing what the Internet does best, widening the spotlight and democratizing information. The funny thing is, regardless of their technological prowess, this actually means the young people have to be watching their back just as closely as the old.

There’s something great about it all.

In 2009 the New Museum ran a blockbuster of a show called Younger than Jesus, showcasing a promising group of artists who at the time were younger than the age that arguably the most documented historical figure was when he died. As far as we can tell, maybe Alan Kaprow would consider Jesus an artist, but for us it’s a bit of a stretch. This got us thinking, “Who the fuck cares? What does it mean to be young as an artist anyway? Isn’t the point that you are engaging in a lifelong pursuit? Why should your age matter at all?”

We know, it’s a lot of pointed questions.

Once we cooled off from our little fit, what this really got us thinking was, “How long does a typical artist live, maybe 80 years?” A quick check into the standard life expectancy revealed an actual statistic of closer to 78.6 years. We decided to draw a line in the sands of time at the age of 40, conceivably half way between an artist’s birth and death. Instead of taking it upon ourselves, we asked a group of artists younger than forty years old to pick a group of twenty artists they admired older than forty, and we asked a group of artists older than forty to select a promising group of twenty artists under the age of forty.

Artists have a very discerning eye, keeping their mind tuned by viewing a multitude of work, often what they really like can be quite different than the work they make themselves. Always being on the scene, on cannot follow all the trends but instead must pick and choose patterns they see as relevant and built to last. The people we selected to choose their favorite artists from across the age divide are people we knew were always out surveying the openings, meeting new people, shaking hands and forging new connections and professional relationships. In asking them to select the artists that had caught their eye, we knew they would filter out the bullshit.
Although it was a pretty specific idea, requiring a good amount of explaining on our end, we ended up with a solid group of artists doing their thing with aplomb. Age be damned, really. The more interesting thing that came out of this little experiment was the reality of how little age mattered to an invested artist these days. It seems a talented artist will always be making engaging work.

The artist’s age comes into play more readily in the way others approach the work. Gallerists and collectors will project value on the art based on the stage of development they connect to whatever age the artist seems to be. There is a perceived gamble involved with collecting young artists work in that it may be strong now, but later may unravel as studio process proves not to be sustainable. These selections represent a group of individuals who have been chosen by attentive contemporaries as artists engaged in sustainable, serious work that is built to be part of a life-long pursuit.

It proves that age matters less than ever. With the expanded field of accessible knowledge open to all and growing wider by the second, information is sometimes able to bypass actual experience when in the right young hands, paired with hard work, and a sprinkle of luck. It also doesn’t hurt to have someone else pat you on the back once in a while.

This piece began as a bit of an experiment, evolving as we began to feel out its strengths and weaknesses along the way. In the end we are pretty excited by the result. The forty artists we ended up with are making work that is only showy when appropriate, poetic but not inaccessible, and ranges many media. In the end, we feel like it’s an eclectic mix of pertinent work that may only share one thing in common: collective admiration.

40+

Linda Francis, Wendy White, Stanislav Kolíbal, Abel Barroso, Xenobia Bailey, Jane Evelyn Atwood, Tom Butter, Roberto Molla, Jim Lee, Bram Bogart, Johnny Mullen, Armen Eloyan, Annie Albers, Christian Bonnefoi, Imi Knoebel, Kes Zapkus, Peggy Ahwesh, Nancy Shaver, Taylor Davis, Rose Wylie

40-

Aaron Stephan, Abigail DeVille, Esperanza Mayobre, Fawn Krieger, Helen Benigson, Ilona Szalay, Jacolby Satterwhite, Jacqueline Cedar, Lauren Seiden, Mala Iqbal, Mark Sengbusch, Matt Mignanelli, Nichole Van Beek, Osamu Kobayashi, Rudolf Reiber, Sarah Maple, Shinsuke Aso, Tameka Norris, Laura Bottin, Nate Ethier

The post Art and Ageism: The Decisive Eye of Fellow Artists appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Mark Sengbusch is a painter, curator, and Sudoku Master living in New York City. Jeffrey Scott Mathews is a painter, writer and musician based in Brooklyn. They met in Detroit, in 1997 at College for Creative Studies. They later studied at Cranbrook Academy of Art where they picked up on a dialogue that will carry on in perpetuity.

JSM: You and I have had a continuous and lasting dialogue regarding abstraction. In preparing for this piece we reminisced over a particular quote from Azerbaijani crystallographer Khudu Mamedov where he asserts:

            Townsfolk= geometric surroundings / natural art

            Nomads= natural surroundings / geometric art

Could you elaborate on how you view this phenomenon in relation to your own work?

MS: You told me about this essay like 6 years ago and it’s always in the back of my head, especially when I travel. (I notice my dreams change when I travel, too).  I moved from MI to NYC in 2008. As in Mamedov’s theory, I ended up making gestural, natural art while surrounded by the pattern and geometry of the Big Apple. The result was the Strata Paintings. (See Central Wave Strata, 2010) Very loose, colorful, organic, detailed. Strata as in layers – sediment. That Simpsons cut scene of the layers of earth under their house with dinosaur bones, etc and that poster from High school of the different eons, like layers of a cake, upwards from bacteria to fish to dinosaurs to mammals. Perhaps this phenomenon Mamedov posits can be explained as easily as a longing for what one has not.

In January of 2011, I was at Vermont Studio Center for two months. I went with no plan as to what kind of work I’d make. I made the Comb paintings (See Whorl Stasis, 2011).  Loosely based, (and for reference sake), on Ancient African Combs and tools. Could I have been subconsciously summoning the skyscrapers of New York 350 miles away? I wasn’t thinking about buildings and highways while I was in the small, old mining town of Johnson, Vermont. I had a studio visit with Katherine Bradford (or maybe it was Carrie Moyer) and upon telling her about combs, blueprints, and NES she said, “Why do they have to have a real-world reference?” I thought “Bitch…she’s so fucking right.”

Then it hit me. It was there the whole time: overhead view vs. normal horizontal or human view. Scale and scale shift, what is the map and what is the idea of the place? Viewing the painting like an Island or a window? In other words – division of space; positive/negative push-pull, no overlapping, no layers.

In hindsight it seems too perfect. That I would make the Organic “Strata” painting in the city and make the Structural “Comb” paintings in the country. Maybe just a coincidence, but I think Mamedov was on to something. I haven’t totally figured it out yet.

JSM: One could view the phenomenon of inverse as tying into the debate of existentialism (finding meaning through making) vs. structuralism (reducing meaning or relationships through editing/structuring). Do you see yourself as an Existentialist or a Reductive Structuralist?

MS: I guess the latter – Reductive Structuralist. I consider all the work I make to be more about “the idea” or “feeling” of something rather than that thing (itself) as an endpoint or finale. (i.e. the idea of early language/design and not a specific re-creation or re-interpretation of say, the Rosetta Stone or Hamarabi’s Code).

Last week Katherine Bradford told me a quote by painter Suzan Frecon, “My decisions are visual.” That is poetry – damn. The ultimate epitome of a simple, honest, ideal artists statement. I told K-Brad immediately, “Imma steal that!” It goes back to a term I bit off of you many years ago, Jeff. You mentioned a “Non-circuitous” way of making art. I dig it.

We don’t make art in a cave, of course, far from it. We went to grad school and we live in NYC. But I try and steer clear of the tentacles of art history and contemporary trends. So, by allowing a natural puree to waft through me and into the paintings, I create as close to an objective product as possible. I avoid becoming immersed into/blinded by the objectifying gaze, thus becoming the player and the critic.

Back to reducing meaning by editing/structuring, I make between 50-200 drawings for each Comb painting. Making the drawings and editing them down make up 1/3 of the whole process (but is really the only creative part!). My criteria in editing is 3 fold (loosely):

1. Too Op-Art-y

2. Too design-y (rugs, etc)

3. Too busy (i.e. more than one to two cornerstone elements before reaching full circle to a field)

By choosing the drawing that lacks 1-3, the final painting exists in limbo. No affiliation to known scale, orientation, or basic design shticks – intentionally anonymous. It’s like Superman losing the race or Goku losing to Mr. Satan. “The stone that the builders refuse will become the cornerstone.”

Whorl Stasis, 2011, Scrimshawed Acrylic on Panel, 31″ x 31″

JSM: In ANTI-OEDIPUS Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri postulate that a schizophrenic out for a walk is better than a neurotic on an analyst’s couch. I am taking this to mean that breaking structure is a better solution than trying to find it thorough analysis. In relation to your work, I wonder if you feel that the process of making is your schizoid walk, or if it is commanding the importance of rigidity of form? Rational or Anti-Rational? Perhaps this is the ultimate painters paradox – synthesizing the rational (paint, alchemy, spectral composition) with the non-rational (the mystical, spiritual, or spectral walk.)

MS: Fuck you, Jeff! That’s like 5 questions in one! And you’ve only given me A or B options, yo! Remember, my decisions are visual. Paint is paint AND language. I try to simplify shape and line to its most base form.

When was visual communication born? Did “design” exist before? Could the first written communication have pre-dated Sumer, a land cloaked by design? Was the zig-zag line just a frivolous, decorative, subconscious mark on a pot? Was it strategically, naturally, or instinctually decided to be a zig-zag line representing mountains as opposed to parallel horizontal lines, which would have signified desert plains?

I think about these things – but not in my studio. Yes, my schizoid walk is stumbling backwards to a time/feeling/state of mind before written language.

JSM: Could you talk about language in relation to your work? I recall we shared an interest in Lewis Carrol’s Symbolic Logic.

MS: Yes, there is a logic to the work, way more in the new Kuba Comb paintings, though. Raffia or Kuba cloths are ceremonial textiles from the Congo, worn as ceremonial skirts and at times used as currency. You put it on the floor, wear it, hang it on the wall! It’s a hard but natural balance for me but I think about the diversity in perception of things like Kuba cloths. When I draw, the line creates a thing and a place. It is also a re-presentation or illustration of that thing – and a map of that place. One may think, “Hey, but it’s really only the latter” or, “You’re only a sculptor”. But no – especially when it becomes a painting (from the drawing), the line width is what it is: A = A.

When I was a kid I loved making mazes. Of course, in the back of my mind it was a map of some sort, but not really. It wasn’t make-believe. I was invested in the real thing – pen on paper. Maybe that’s the ultimate trickery of design; that you cannot ever fully remove the signifier from the sign.

JSM: Considering solitude, have you ever had a conversation with yourself? Who was doing the asking and who was answering?

MS: Not sure. But, recently I was at Alicia Gibson’s studio and Yasamin Keshtkar queried, “who is the speaker of text in a painting?” Like who is the maker and why did she make/say this? Or is it a story and the speaker is different than the maker? When one reads text, whether in a zine or on a painting, who is speaking? Is it in first, second, or third person? This conversation made me think about who is the “speaker” of my paintings or images in my paintings. I guess I like to leave that ambiguous. If you’re hunting for arrowheads – it’s hard to know if it’s just a freakin’ rock or an authentic man-made object. That is the ever quiet and rhetorical conversation between “I” as a maker of things and “I” as storyteller, historian, or magician.

JSM: How do you view the concept of time in relation to the concrete materiality of painting?

MS: When we met in Detroit in undergrad I walked into the dorm room behind mine in the smoking back tower of the ACB building. You, Ted, Kobie, and the gang were playing Rampart on the NES. In Rampart, you build your castle (overhead view like a map or a drawing) and you bomb your enemy’s castle, he bombs yours – then you rebuild. This destruction/creation was like a time-lapse.

I see my paintings like this, kinda; a scale model or a blueprint is a re-presentation. I can pick it up and feel it – so it becomes some thing, not an idea.

I made a mouse maze out of two by fours when I was a kid. This was real, not a scale model. English garden mazes, corn mazes, etc. can be experienced from an objective view as in the map or the mouse maze, or as a participant such as in a corn maze. Video games have given these things names: First person shooters, overhead-view God games, etc. So yes, I consider the element of time inherent in my work. There are different stages in the life of a thing. First, it is not there, then it is there. It exists, then it maybe changes, it fades or crumbles or grows, and eventually all things disappear and are again “not there”.

JSM: Could you name the three of your least influential painters?

MS: Peter Halley, Matthew Ritchie, Francis Bacon.

marksengbusch.com

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