Drawing deeply from Korean Shamanism, also known as Mugyo, Hyongyon’s images are constructed of mysterious and otherworldly figures depicted as shaman. As a descendant of the Heavenly King, a shaman connects the physical world to the spiritual world seeking to help overcome people’s negative emotions and spiritual weaknesses. This healer, however, is often feared among skeptical people. Hyongyon believes that her unidentifiable creatures take the role of a shaman, and become incarnations of human suffering, desire, and hope.

Jongwan Choo, Emergence, 2003. Acrylic, Charcoal, Color Pencil on canvas, 114.9 x 94.5 in. Collection of Shin Gallery.

Jongwan Choo

Jongwan’s photo-realistic monochrome figures that are indistinguishable from one another talk about the loss of personal identity and the lack of truth in our materialistic society. The hidden faces of the figures represent people hiding behind their façades and the predetermined social norms and principles that constrain an individual’s behavior. His works serve to shatter the façades people construct and break through the society where power and authority reconstruct who we are individually.

Dongyoon Kim, Roundabout, 2009. Digital C type. Courtesy of the artist.

Dongyoon Kim

Dongyoon explores the fragility of our memories and experiences, both direct and indirect, by stacking multiple images into one photograph. At first glance, his photographs may look like one single image, however the subtle layers slowly unveil themselves, creating vibrant movement and confusion as the layers shift into one another. This challenge that the viewer faces represents the blurring or uncertainty of existence and the past over time, resulting in a shifting of one’s understanding of perception.

Jinyoung Min, Between roof and roof, 2012. Acrylic, fabric, styrofoam and moving light, 43 x 11 x 9 in. Collection of OCI Museum.

Jinyoung Min

Jinyoung takes her memories of childhood home and creates architectural installations. The viewer is invited to peek inside the houses, calling for the beholder’s own interpretation of the space. Jinyoung’s houses are not merely objects, or places to live, but they are about her own psychology and experience becoming spatialized. The process of experiencing these architectural installations becomes extremely private as each person gets a glimpse of his or her memories.

The post Reconstructing Individuality: Groundbreaking Korean Artists appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Bianca Sforni, From Cipango III, 2003. Gelatin silver print, 15 x 23 in. Courtesy of the artist.

Bianca Sforni: Trees from the Pacific Shores
May 29-July 12, 2014
Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery
547 W 27th St. 2nd Floor
New York City
miyakoyoshinaga.com

The post Bianca Sforni at Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

I wondered why he was so bent on showing me a dead nun. I figured it’d be a weird and slightly off-color joke, like the kegel-exercise jokes he kept telling me now that his doctor had put him on a regimented plan to regain penile control. I felt a bit creeped out; I was about to gawk at a mummified nun put on display by a religion I found frightening. Knowing Mick the way I do, I imagine he took me because he is fascinated with religion, occult oddities, ancient art, and repulsed by the powerful, seemingly never-ceasing homophobia, sexism, racism, classicism and general disregard for people not participating within its’ power structure. Mick explained that a friend of his first took him on the same trek in the early 1980’s: the Mother Cabrini Shrine, the Cloisters, and then the Piper’s Kilt for beer and burgers. It’s nice to know some places have survived gentrification.

The Cloisters opened in 1934, 17 years after Mother Cabrini’s death, which was the same year John D. Rockefeller, Jr. started the project. The more I look at this seemingly quiet corner of Manhattan, I believe both the Cloisters and the Mother Cabrini Shrine have significant allegiances to old European religious power—a coded, out-in-the-open symbol of allegiance to pre-democratic ideals—while also standing as symbols of American possibility.

Once inside the Mother Cabrini sanctuary I found myself transfixed by her mummified corpse. I wondered: How does anyone worship God in this space? What is it like to take communion with a mummified corpse in the same room? Then I noticed the late afternoon light pouring through the stain glass representation of her on the back wall of the sanctuary. The light poured across the room with the full spectrum of color, it flooded the pews, and led my eye back to her remains. The experience suggested the room is a connected architectural choice. Wrapped around the curved wall behind her altar is a simple mural: images of Mother Cabrini with Sisters, Angels, Christ, and common folks. Mother Cabrini was known to be quite humble and simple—yet the display of her corpse is everything but… Before exiting we poked around the official Mother Cabrini gift shop. I bought her biography.

Down the block, I felt overwhelmed. Mother Cabrini’s fate didn’t seem deserved. It seemed like a punishment, possibly, for being a radically helpful woman. She had little desire for personal possessions, yet in death she’s a caged memento of the empire she served. And as she remains there, forever part of the Church’s propaganda, the services she fought for and devoted her life toward have, for the most part, gone under-funded and closed down.

Mother Cabrini, and 6 of her Sisters from the Institute they founded in Italy, arrived in New York City on March 31, 1889. They were immediately greeted by the city’s infamously rough side. Mother Cabrini wasn’t necessarily running around with winos getting blitzed on leftover wine sludge in Opium Dens, like those described by Luc Sante’s portrait of New York City, Low Life. But she did discover they were homeless—temporarily, anyway. Due to a miscommunication, the Archbishop didn’t expect them for several months, and suggested they had no need for the Sisters—they ought to return to Europe. But Mother Cabrini demanded the Archbishop provide housing and showed him a sealed letter from the Pope. He relented and found a boarding house for their first night. Upon settling in, they discovered their first bed infested with bedbugs. The legend goes, the Sisters shuddered at the crawling sheets and took turns sleeping in chairs as Mother Cabrini knelt in prayer and steadfastly chanted into the morning. She “discovered by experience that difficulties and discouragements at the outset showed that success was to follow.”

Once the Sisterhood settled, Mother Cabrini met Mary Reid, wife of Count Palma di Cesnola, an exile from Risorgimento who was director at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mary bought the Sisterhood a house at 43 East 59th Street. Initially the Archbishop scorned the Sisterhood and demanded they not use the house as an orphanage. He suggested they start in Little Italy. At the time, Irish Clergy held power in New York. But the two women succeeded in convincing him to give them a chance, and founded the orphanage. Moving the Sisterhood from the Italian ghetto into a premiere neighborhood attracted notice and led to increased support for Mother Cabrini’s mission. Today, the orphanage is located in West Park, New York, and is known as the Saint Cabrini Home—the first of 67 institutions Cabrini would go on to found in New York, Chicago, Des Plaines, Seattle, New Orleans, Denver, Golden, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and in countries throughout South America and Europe. Her institutions served the sick, the poor and trained additional Sisters to carry on the mission.

I imagine Mother Cabrini consoling widows and newly orphaned children who’ve lost everything. Mother Cabrini was part of many efforts the Church made to bring Italian immigrants in America back to Catholicism. When she arrived in New York nearly 50 years before, Italian families had begun giving up on the Church, because of the unfamiliar Irish Catholic customs dominating the discourse. In Italy, attending Church was free, but in New York there was an enforced door fee of 10 cents—a large sum for immigrants, and a reminder they were to appease America’s god: Capitalism. I imagine Mother Cabrini’s country accent and matriarchal witticisms reminded those she touched of a simplicity they unknowingly left in Italy.

Mother Cabrini died of complications from dysentery at 67, in Columbus Hospital, Chicago, on December 22, 1917, while preparing Christmas candy for local children. By then, she’d achieved regard for healing miracles, which she’s purported to have worked through obedience and relentless prayer. Since her death, people claim to have manifested miracles by praying to her. Because of this, she became a candidate for the canonization process. In 1931 her remains were exhumed and she was discovered to be a partially incorrupt corpse; and then officially declared a Saint. Since then the majority of her body has been held at the Mother Cabrini Shrine; her heart was sent to the site of the first Institute she founded in Codogno, Italy; a piece of her arm is in Chicago; and her head was sent to the Motherhouse, adjacent the Vatican.

My friend Crystal grew up attending church at the Mother Cabrini Shrine during the 1990’s. Her Grandmother, a devout Catholic, made a promise to God that she’d always visit Mother Cabrini. Crystal’s Grandparents immigrated to Little Italy from the Dominican Republic in 1965. The family suspects she discovered Mother Cabrini in New York. But, it could’ve been as a child in the Dominican Republic. Crystal thinks her Grandmother has remained devoted because she is the Patron Saint of Immigrants. After arriving in Little Italy, her Grandparents moved to Bushwick and opened a Bodega. Throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s many friends and family members, immigrated and stayed at the apartment above the store. All the while, Crystals’ Grandmother kept a photograph of Mother Cabrini on the mantel and often made the trek to her favorite Saint.

For Crystal, growing up with a mummified body was different. She comes from a large family, so funerals happen regularly; because many showcase open caskets, dead bodies become normalized. Seeing the body of some lady—and that’s all Mother Cabrini represented to her as a child—proved to be less shocking than a friend or relative’s. And because she’s on the altar wearing a habit, Crystal thought she was a statue. Around 10, Crystal mustered the gumption to go into the gift shop and ask the nun behind the register if Mother Cabrini was real. Crystal reasoned a nun wouldn’t lie. Her Grandfather teased her about the mummy, and she wanted to prove him wrong. But the nun verified Mother Cabrini’s body. She recalls feeling freaked out because she spent a lot of time at the altar with her Grandmother. She’d be there praying and Crystal would pretend to pray, but in actuality was transfixed by the mummy. Once Crystal understood it to be a real body, she went home and demanded her Mom remove all the Mother Cabrini memorabilia from her room. At the time she was obsessed with Michael Jackson’s HIStory album. Inside the album is a photo of a young girl with bandages over her eyes. Young Crystal’s imagination superimposed Mother Cabrini’s eyes over the bandages, and has since been terrified.

Just before my deadline, I made a last trek to Mother Cabrini to take photos. I read Jose Munoz’s Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics as I rode the subway uptown. A “closed” sign startled me when I arrived. I peaked through the window and pulled on a cigarette as a woman opened the door. She asked if I was there to see Mother Cabrini. “Yes,” I briefly explained the article. Her face lit up as she invited me inside. Immediately, she let me know how badly press was needed, that the sanctuary needed repairs and that interest in Mother Cabrini has drastically waned. She smiled as she pointed toward her. I asked if she knew anything about the origins of the mural. She shook her head. Then exclaimed, “But isn’t it beautiful!” I smiled and began fidgeting with my camera. There was a pause. Then she told me a story about a person who had written an unfavorable article about Mother Cabrini. Then darted from the room. I got the sense I was worrying her.

I tried to snap a high quality photo; but realized there wasn’t a clear shot. The glass case displaying the body sits about 12 feet from a velvet rope placed to keep visitors out. I took a step back and tried to refocus the room, and hopefully find a way to capture its weirdness. Then it hit me—I had taken on an impossible project. Writing about a mummified nun for a small arts magazine focused on the intersections of art and the body was an absurd idea; sure to be the least read story ever. Simultaneously, I was dumbstruck by the magnitude of importance her devout followers placed upon her. The article seemed like it’d do little more than bore one group of readers, while outraging another.

Moments later, she reappeared saying I shouldn’t use photos for a published article without first speaking to the Head Sister. If the Head Sister felt the article portrayed Mother Cabrini in an appropriate way, she’d happily allow as many photos as needed. I shot Mother Cabrini an eye roll. Paused. Then I started to stammer about my desire to speak positively about Mother Cabrini’s life and work but yes, I was aiming to … see her through a feminist gaze … Inevitably critical of the Church, which uses her death for its own profit. Sure, within the Catholic tradition the fate of Mother Cabrini’s corpse is considered a high honor. She’s been canonized, idolized, immortalized and mummified, but how does this parlay into her desire for simplicity and direct action? She lived a humble life, so why a grandiose, highly public, constant viewing of her mummified corpse? I imagine Mother Cabrini asking, “How do these excesses help serve the missions?” She gave me a long, confused look before I broke and agreed to meet the Head Sister. As the words came, I wondered what the fuck had happened to me. And then, just as quickly, I had this fantasy playing out in my head that talking to the Head Sister might actually prove an interesting, worthwhile venture. I’d come this far, I reckoned.

But when I returned to meet her, the sanctuary was closed. It felt like I had been blessed.

I decided to wander the grounds and snapped photos of trees, statues, and odd memorabilia. I realized I was experiencing a joy I hadn’t experienced. It took a moment to decipher that it came with the knowledge that she was inside the sanctuary, exactly the same as my other visits. And she was the same when Crystal knelt before her with her Grandmother. I had developed an appreciation for reverence; she was one of a handful of things that I could rely on. It felt silly, yet I stared at her bench placed against a brick wall near the parking lot adjacent to the sanctuary, and imagined her covered in orphans. Her belief in faith, simplicity, humility and obedience as the source of all spiritual power still doesn’t quite register with me. But I felt like I was beginning to grasp her desire for a reliable Sisterhood.

Recently, Sister Megan Rice found herself caught while pursuing justice. The Sister, along with two anti-war activists, revealed security flaws at a nuclear facility outside Knoxville, Tennessee. They broke in using bolt cutters and a hammer. They caused no permanent harm to the facilities. The group claims they were demonstrating the ineptitude of the lackadaisical security system protecting the facility; they were acting as concerned global citizens. Despite evidence, Sister Rice faces 30 years in prison. All I could think was, “Wow, again—a Sister fights for a better, more sustainable world, only to end up caged by the powerful.”

By Stephen Boyer

The post The Religious Art of Mummification appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

VOLTA10
June 16–21, 2014
Viaduktstrasse 10
Basel
Switzerland
voltashow.com

Guest of Honor Preview
Monday, June 16, 10 am – 12 pm
VIP / Press Preview
Monday, June 16, 12 – 2 pm
Public Vernissage:
Monday, June 16, 2 – 8 pm
Public Hours:
Tuesday, June 17 – Saturday, June 21, 12 – 8 pm

See more at: gallerylog.com

The post Volta10: Patrick Jacobs appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

VOLTA10
June 16–21, 2014
Viaduktstrasse 10
Basel
Switzerland
voltashow.com

Guest of Honor Preview
Monday, June 16, 10 am – 12 pm
VIP / Press Preview
Monday, June 16, 12 – 2 pm
Public Vernissage:
Monday, June 16, 2 – 8 pm
Public Hours:
Tuesday, June 17 – Saturday, June 21, 12 – 8 pm

See more at: gallerylog.com

The post Volta10 Preview: Anthony Goicolea appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

photoEspana
June 4-July 27, 2014
Verónica 13
Madrid
Spain
phe.es

The post photoEspana appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

EKH: This project, called Ya Kala Ben, was shot in your mother’s home country of Guinea Conakry. How does the idea of origins and heritage influence your work?
NL: For the last few years, my research has been focused on African identity through Western eyes. All I knew before the trip was that my mother is Muslim and that my father is Protestant, although I’ve not been baptized. The religious aspect of my mother’s country became very prominent. I discovered an animist side to the Guinean culture which is based on people’s respect for nature. I had been exposed to the supernatural part of Guinea since I was a child, had visited ‘marabouts’ (a type of witch doctor), and this time around I took part in many ceremonies and rituals. It enabled me to feel more aware of the existence and the intricacies of a world parallel to ours, the world of spirits. The art of photography allows me to exteriorize my emotions and my past, telling my story through different shots, in some kind of syncretism.

EKH: Many of the objects you use in your images are considered sacred. How did your models feel about the customs, the postures, and you photographing them?
NL: They would become serious and quiet. They were stressed most of the time because they were not used to being models. They knew what they were representing, and they knew they had to respect the holy tools. That is why I had to work very quickly all the time. When I got ready to shoot, I did not waste time, because my human models were recreating something holy and many times they felt uneasy. Sometimes I had to deal with violent reactions from Guineans who viewed my practices and procedures as a form of sacrilege.

EKH: Where is your imagery coming from, especially something like Statuette Ndobi? The figure seems to be twisted, pregnant, and imprisoned in those wood sticks. Could you please tell me more about that image, the symbols, the historical issues behind it, and your intentions with it?
NL: In this work, I was interested in the construction and deconstruction of the body as well as the depiction of the invisible. I have studied ritual artefacts common to the cosmology of Guineans; statuettes that are part of a ceremonial structure. They are from another world, they are the roots of the living. Thereby, I sought to touch the untouchable.

I traveled through Guinea and observed different rituals and ceremonies to create my series. I went to many places to find the ones I was looking for and to choose the right models. I am particularly interested in fetishes. The myths, the force of nature, and the deep, intuitive, impulsive culture of Africa offer me a lot of creative inspiration. My approach is to separate those sacred statuettes from their religious context in order to immortalize them in a Western framework.

Ya Kala Ben in Malinke dialect means crossed look. There are statuettes in my photographs, but in the statuettes, the humans are still exist. The final image is always layered and it shows not only the picture but what is behind it historically, religiously, and my experience as well. Statuette Ndobi is a fetish statuette. I put in her some medicine, magic words, and things that belong to me. I created my own ritual doing all my statuettes and I became the feticheur who could animate them with my mind.

EKH: How was your experience of reconnecting with your origins? What was it that surprised you the most?
NL: I have always wanted to explore and share the African culture that is part of me. I knew that the best way to do it was to visit the village founded by my great grandfather. This pilgrimage to the land of some of my ancestors inevitably raised the sensitive question of “origin” or “origins;” mine, that of my parents, of others (my subjects), and of my approach.

What surprised me the most was the pace at which people in Guinea got things done. Everything took a long time. I found myself wasting a day waiting for people to show up. I took off my watch in order to be able to relate and learn how to work at the Guinean space. The systematic lateness of models posed some technical problems, for instance the changing of light during the day, as at certain times it becomes harder to photograph.

EKH: You write, that the “photographic eye … makes [the objects] speak differently” on your website. What is it that a viewer—unfamiliar with Guinean cosmology—will understand from your work?
NL: These objects are part of a collective. They must not be separated from it without the risk of losing their value. They are not the gods of this community but their prayers. They are integrated in a rigorous symbolic order where every component has its place. They are ritual tools that I have animated by staging live models and, in a way, desecrated them by giving them another meaning; an unfamiliar meaning in the Guinean context. In reconstructing these sacred objects through the lens, I brought them in a framework meant for Western aesthetic choices and taste. I analyze myself through the lens of my camera and I constantly question myself—which is very challenging. It is like capturing an image. I travel from a spiritual ground to get to the plasticity of the picture. For me, spirituality is tradition; plasticity is modernism.

The post Tracing Identity with Namsa Leuba appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Herod is dancing in Chambliss Giobbi’s Tanz für mich, Salome!, inspired by Richard Strauss’ very modern opera based on the Oscar Wilde play Salome. Giobbi loved the music but has turned the story around and made Herod the one dancing. This collage is filled with the image of an aging, overweight, almost naked man full of faults. He is incestuous, adulterous, and on his way to seduce his stepdaughter. For this image Giobbi used his own body as a model—a brave thing to do, since Herod is anything but handsome.

Herod is dancing. His expensive robe is open, showing most of his naked body. His head, arms, and legs all have multiple images, as Giobbi uses this “cubistic” method to capture movement. The two heads betray Herod’s indulgence with food and wine. In Wilde’s play Herod invites Salome to “Dip into it thy little red lips, that I may drain the cup” and, “bite but a little of this fruit, that I may have what is left” but Salome refuses. Herod still drinks the wine and eats everything else too. In Giobbi’s image we see the remains of red wine and food all over his face. He’s reached a point of drunkenness when reason is no longer bothering him. He touches his right head in a moment of recognition of his madness but he can’t stop dancing just now. Jewels cover his body. All of his fingers are richly ringed. One of his fingernails is badly bitten. He has worries. Metal necklaces surround his body like snakes.

Giobbi was a composer of classical music before he turned to visual arts. As he said, in music “time contains every move we make, everything exists in time, develops over time. I love the idea behind cubism. I love the brutality of it, the honest kind of brutality of it. These are like getting multiple moments of time; doing the direct opposite of (music), like compressing multiple moments in one cathartic image.” In the way that music is composed of single notes, Giobbi’s collages are created from thousands of little pieces. He takes portraits of his models, sometimes as many as 300 images, from different perspectives, enlarges them on the computer (but doesn’t modify them) prints them, and then cuts them into small pieces in order to create his compositions. He uses boards as a base and covers the finished work with a thin layer of beeswax to keep the pieces in place and so they will also “smell good.”

However fascinating his method is, Giobbi’s main focus is the character of his models, “I look for people with a free spirit and strong character; who stand for what they do with great conviction and passion.” This search often leads him to well-known personalities such as artists Joe Barnes and Alice O’Malley, filmmaker Fisher Stevens, performance artist Penny Arcade, or cult figures such as Indian Larry, the Chopper Shaman, or the transgender Amanda Lepore. Modeling for Giobbi is a commitment, since it takes about a year until he reaches the point that he knows them really well and feels that he can get into their skin, or more likely under their skin. That’s when he finally gets to the actual work. When there’s no secret left, he recreates the person in his work not as an idealized version but the “full truth.”

At first sight, you can see that Fisher Stevens is a nice guy, someone you would love to have a drink with. He seems to be a big dreamer whose head is in the clouds, surrounded by the artistic haze of cigarette smoke, while he tells sophisticated and funny stories about the characters he brings into life in his films. Stevens is an accomplished film persona with many movies to his credit including Short Circuit, Hackers, his documentary The Cove and his debut as the director of Stand Up Guys. When he talks about his work his favourite words are, “it was so much fun” or an “amazing experience.” Giobbi got him absolutely right: a nice, amazing, funny person.

Herod is not the only one who is dancing in Giobbi’s compositions. The photographer, Alice O’Malley chooses her models from New York’s club culture, and always strips them down in order to recreate them in blinding whiteness. Inspired by this method Giobbi stripped down O’Malley as she dances in the collages depicting her. There is a lot of stripping down and nakedness in Giobbi’s works. His images of the seven deadly sins (Se7n) are embodiments of unfortunate passions that are pregnant with many evils. They show the aesthetics of the morbid, its cruelty and its beauty. In the collage Pride transgender celebrity Amanda Lepore is dancing in front of a mirror. In their need for exposure Giobbi’s models become overexposed and sometimes too naked, making the viewers into voyeurs.

Herod is still dancing in his Dionysian haze. Does he really dance for Salome? I don’t think so. His dance is no longer filled with desire but becomes a bottomless pit of lust, a burning itch, more like a disease than a pleasure. It is greed that moves him, wanting more and more, never to be satisfied. This modern version of Herod is being consumed by his own needs. Giobbi’s characters are unmasked guests at the masquerade of our times, and his Herod, this overfed, oversexed antihero, leads this mad cavalcade.

By Emese Krunák-Hajagos

The post Flesh Collage: The Work of Chambliss Giobbi appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

NYA: What artists were important to you during your development? Was there a particular artist or movement you were looking at in your formative years?
JS: Piero Della Francesca, Peter Paul Rubens, Goya, Carravaggio, Picasso, Madonna, Janet Jackson, Bjork, Neo Rauch, Lisa Yuskavage, Dana Schutz, Deee-Lite, Grace Jones, Marlene Dumas, Chris Ofili, Kara Walker, Joseph Beuys, Inez and Vinoodh, Antonio Biaggi, Paul Mcarthey, Andy Warhol, Bruce Nauman, Adriane Piper, Matthew Barney, Terence Koh, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis, Dreamcast, Playstation, and music video directors like Mark Romanek, Chris Cunningham, and Michel Gondry—just to name a few out of a ton of influences.

NYA: Aside from performance, anything from photography, fibers, drawing, or computer-generated environments seem to make their way into your work. Is there a rhyme or reason as to the medium you decide to create a work with?
JS: The mediums I choose to work with are components of a more grand idea. Photographs and drawings are static, and give me the opportunity to make focused gestures in my work; those mediums are where I am most didactic. The CG animation and costuming is where the fun is. That is the territory where I am negotiating story, colors, textures, space, and composition.

NYA: The performative aspect seems to bleed through into a lot of what you do, whether in the form of actual performances, incorporation of these works into the realm of video, or stills taken from one or the other. How do you see your own body in relation to the work that you make? Is it just another tool or do all the creative ventures point back to it in some way?
JS: When talking about the work I usually use pronouns like “he”/ “him” to speak about the passive bodies that flow around in my animations. The way that I use my body in my work is similar to how I’d play with G.I. Joe dolls when I was a kid. The way I mediate my body between the animation and drawings gives it an unlimited terrain for what it can do and participate in. I have been outsourcing performances from others lately, and seeing what happens from there. I guess it’s like I’m getting 500 more G.I. Joes for my toy box.

NYA: Your work deals a lot with a personal or familial history. Can you tell us a little bit about what makes your background so important to the nature of your work?
JS: My background is important to my work, because I am the only person in the world with my background. You are the only person in history with your background, so by default it’s a great platform for original material. A lot of the content in the drawings are schematic documents of occurrences that happened around objects and the home. It’s my mother’s journal documented by short sentences and drawings of objects. The family photographs are separate performance documents that act as evidence that the objects in her drawings existed in her home, and people performed around them. So I usually mediate between the drawings and familial documents to influence a more surreal possibility for how those objects could function in the present animations.

NYA: How would you describe the relationship you have to your mother’s drawings?
JS: I watched my mother make her drawings since I was a child; she told me if I wanted to assist her in making them, I’d have to learn to be a better draftsman. So it technically is the genesis of my art practice. I also was the best at drawing Jesus in bible school. That was a minor influence on my ambition to pursuit art.

NYA: Her drawings seem always to have been translated to a new medium, either in being prints of the originals, or having been re-drawn into a 3D modeling environment. Do you see her need to create as flowing through your work in some way?
JS: The use of them is my system for restraining my creativity. They give me order and rules.  It’s also a way to continue a creative lineage. The sheer volume of the drawings makes it necessary for me to use them to their full potential.

NYA: I hope you don’t mind me saying this—there is certainly an aspect of humor that comes through in many of your works. Can you share a little bit about the way this operates within your work?
JS: I think humor is a great subversion technique. It’s a great medium to deliver heavy content. I’m also a really goofy, nerdy, perverted guy … so it’s also a subconscious default.

NYA: You seem to have a very organic relationship to the technology you use, that is to say, you know exactly how you want it to operate and you are less concerned with a professionally polished look, and more interested in making the technology work for your project. Is this by necessity or design?
JS: I think it’s by necessity and design. My process is very analog because of tracing, rotoscoping, modeling, scanning, and performing. The design automatically results into a D.I.Y. aesthetic. I am satisfied with that, because it’s more human and porous. As I continue to learn and grow with the medium, things become more sophisticated.

NYA: Tell us about the inspiration behind the wild nature of the worlds you create, do the performances exist to be inserted into the worlds, or does the process usually happen the other way around?
JS: My live action performances are just as much of a world-building technique as my 3D animation videos; they co-exist. A lot of the footage from my live action performances informs the imagery in the animations. I compare it to an Ala Prima landscape painter like Milton Avery, Monet, or Edward Hopper going into the landscape with a sketchbook and easel, to return to their studio and make a refined project from it. I work from observation, and performance is the way that I observe the world.

NYA: Is there anything about your process or your oeuvre that you feel people overlook when encountering your work?
JS: Not in the current moment, which makes me desire to blur the lines a little more.

NYA: What upcoming exhibitions or projects do you have in the works that you are willing to share?
JS: I’m excited about a project I’m working on at Recess Art’s Sessions program. I’m outsourcing performance from the public. They’re invited to choose one of 500 drawings to re-inact on the green screen. It’s kind of like a performative Rorschach test. I’ve been working with the Kinect and 5D Camera to explore motion capturing too. Regarding upcoming shows, I am excited about Monya Rowe’s Inaugural Group Show for her new space on Orchard Street, Radical Presence Black Performance in Contemporary Art at the Grey Art Gallery and Studio Museum in Harlem this fall, my solo show at The Bindery Projects in Minneapolis, Minnesota, some upcoming solo projects in Oslo, Norway, and Mallorca, Spain at Mallorca Landings Gallery, and Untitled Art Fair in December. The 2014 stuff is tentative, but even more thrilled about that.

The post Playing G.I. Joes with Jacolby Satterwhite appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Courtesy of the artist.

The field of possibilities seems endless and confusing until I look for a place to put a color, then another. A line might turn into a shape or ask for more color. Once it starts, the balance swings from my hand to the painting. What does it want; equivalence, harmony, or is tension part of the flow?

There is always tension in the beginning as the idea in my mind and the image on the canvas or paper rejects or corresponds the imposed images. What comes next is the beginning of a concert, a unity in itself, as what is emerging becomes seen.

pamwhiteart.com

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