Steve Locke:  It’s weird because I knew you before I knew your work.  I think it was the Yvonne Rainer/Rob Storr talk at BU.  Afterwards, we had a bit of a chat and you told me about PAPER MONUMENT and were sweet enough to send me a few copies.  Because of that, I thought of you as a critical theory/curatorial sort of voice and this got reinforced when we (with Colleen Asper, Anoka Faruqee, and William Villalongo) worked together to create a response to the writings of Ken Johnson in the NYTimes.  I didn’t really know you as a painter until your project at the deCordova Biennial with Roger White.  It was the first time I had seen one of the Plaid Paintings, and I really responded to the way it troubled some of the ideas I had been fed about abstract painting.  I spent a lot of time looking at them and I could not figure out why they were so potent and so humble at the same time.  They so clearly have these references to domestic things like tablecloths (that I think you enhance by not stretching them).  They made me think of Mary Heilman where she presents something that looks mundane and upon closer inspection reveals a complex series of decisions that belie the simplicity of the image.  Like her paintings, the Plaids are really matter-of-fact and directly painted.  They don’t have pretensions of heroism and they completely deflate the notion of the “gestalt” that is promised by Modernist Painting and in this way, they start to tackle some of the same territory as Daniel Buren and some of the other artists in the Supports-Surfaces movement in France.  But beyond that moment, your paintings seem to be engaged in something much deeper that the limits of what painting can (and should) do.   I see tensions through out the work (between public/private; modest/heroic; institutional/domestic).  Which leads me to my question:

How does conflict play a role in what appears to be a deeply structured practice in the Plaid Paintings and how does it inform decisions about the separate but conjoined acts of painting and presentation?

—

Dear Steve,

Plaid , 2013, acrylic on acrylic, 18×42″

I’m so glad you asked me about conflict in the plaids! At first I thought that was too strong a word, but you’re right—the various conflicts are always there.

Of course, on a material level, plaid emphasizes the interweaving of warp and weft, so in this sense it renders the conflict/confluence of fabric visible. This is what I like when I’m looking at plaid. Each area of color emerges from the two sets of threads, so any adjacent hues are of necessity half the same, half different. For me these ramifications are interesting precisely because the rule is always explicit, inherent in how the thing is made. The pattern is surprising because it’s programmatic. I read every plaid I see like a vernacular Sol Lewitt.

And then with plaid there are also the interwoven, so to speak, questions of location and origin, issues that occur in a different register of intersections and coordinates but are nevertheless part of the pattern. Many fabrics reference or evoke a place, but plaid is a special case because it is both so ubiquitous and so commonly associated with “clans”—Scottish and otherwise. Actually, the earliest known examples of plaid are from 3500 BC China, but most people think plaid comes from Scotland, so that is itself notable. And the Scottish part of the story is complex because the famous tartans came to prominence as part of a (ongoing) conflict with England. At the same time, plaid became such a dispersed pattern because the Scots helped colonize India, where cotton “madras” plaids were produced for distribution throughout the British Empire. And of course now we live in a global age where plaids are made all over the world and depending on the context and their particular qualities can reference a range of places from honky-tonks, country clubs, grunge shows, the board room—all the while signaling membership in various groups. So the conflicts present at that level interest me, too.

I came to Ohio from Ecuador at the age of six, so for me the encounter with plaids is bound up with realizing that it was a prep-school pattern. My mom taught second grade at a private school, and I got a lot of my clothes from the thrift store there, and I think it was a way for me to fit in with kids that had a lot more money than we did. Wearing the right plaids was a way to disguise both my foreignness and my relative poverty, so I experience plaid as a kind of camouflage as well, a way of fitting in. So the pattern carries all those conflicts for me—of class, of origin, of group membership and assimilation—in a personal way. Over the years, I amassed a large collection of plaid shirts, not all of them preppy, and came to wear the pattern almost exclusively, but for decades I was merely a collector, a self-taught connoisseur.

Plaid, 2015, acrylic on acrylic, 18×24″

So I had developed a certain expertise, but deciding to paint plaids didn’t come from that so much as from sensing that there was a kind of joke in it, something funny about a painting that was plainly abstract but also utterly recognizable. I enjoy the category conflict. Somehow if you go from monochrome to stripe to plaid, even though the progression makes perfect sense, plaid ends up being the punch line. If you picture it with Buren, and he is repeatedly calling “scene!” with the stripes, I just keep going, adding stripes in the other direction.

And I like how the representation doesn’t function in a straightforward way either: Is this plaid a painting of something? An artist I admire—someone who doesn’t associate his name with his work—was making copies of Mondrian paintings, after Mondrian had died, arguing that paintings of abstractions could not be abstractions themselves. As I did with Buren’s stripes, I wanted to take that question to a different place, to where it involved patterns from everyday life.

In terms of re-presentation, which was how my teacher Robert Reed insisted on pronouncing it, the painted plaid is a peculiar thing. You can’t actually interweave the paint, so the illusion of plaid involves layering, transparency, and a lot of guile in the way you choose and organize the colors. Eliminating the canvas was essential to this, as it allowed the paint itself to serve as its own ground. All my plaids are acrylic on acrylic, and I paint them front to back, so the first things I put down are the first things you see, and the gesso goes on last, to seal the back. (The reverse of conventional painting, where you cover things up as you go and the last thing you put down sits on top.) There is a tricky illusionistic system at play, but it’s also just overlapping paint presented directly, where everything I do is evident in the final result. So here too, in the process, I think the conflict between illusion and material reality is the generative force.

Works in the studio of Dushko Petrovich

Born in Quito, Ecuador, Dushko Petrovich is a New York-based artist, writer, editor, and teacher. He received his B.A. from Yale University and his M.F.A. from Boston University before going on to serve as the Starr Scholar (Artist-in-Residence) at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. He has exhibited his work at venues including the deCordova Museum, in Boston; Rachel Uffner Gallery, in New York; the Suburban, in Chicago; and the Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen.

His writing has appeared in periodicals such as Bookforum, Slate, Modern Painters, and the Boston Globe, among others. Petrovich is a co-founder of Paper Monument, where he has co-edited many publications, including I Like Your Work: Art and Etiquette and Draw It with Your Eyes Closed: The Art of the Art Assignment. He also chaired the n+1 Foundation’s board of directors from 2013 to 2015. Petrovich currently teaches at Boston University, RISD, NYU, and Yale. His newest project, Adjunct Commuter Weekly, made its debut at ICA Boston in July.

Anthony Palocci, Jr. Looking Up, 2015, oil on canvas, 60×96 inches. Studio view.

Steve Locke:  I think you are making some very challenging and gorgeous paintings, they were a high point of the last DeCordova Biennial. The ones that Lexi Lee Sullivan chose for that show married a haptic and almost brutal paint handling to elegant and bravura drawing. The result was spell binding. Like Vija Celmins, you managed to imbue everyday objects with an interior life. And at the same time, there was an assertion of modernist flatness and vivid surface that referenced Jasper Johns. Even the picture that Robert Moeller included in his pop up show, Yeah You Missed It, contained this dichotomy between the depicted and the felt.

My question is how does the idea of restraint inform your selection of imagery, your approach to color, and practice as a painter?

Anthony Palocci, Jr.:  It’s kind of funny for me to think about restraint. I haven’t thought about that in such depth until this question…

The first restraint I may have set up for myself was that whatever I painted must be manufactured. Whatever I paint cannot be organic or naturally occurring, it has to have been manipulated somehow. Whether it was built in a factory, sent through a meat grinder, or put through a mill, it’s got to be assembled by some form of fabrication. I think this focus stems from wanting to talk about people. I decided that I could say a lot more about people by painting images of the objects they created rather than depicting the people as themselves…

I used to paint a lot of people as people but there was a conflict of interest there because I didn’t want to talk about the individual. The individual was a very messy idea for me, something too complicated as one gets wrapped up in their story…Seeing someone in a painting, one identifies with that person as being of the same form and therefore empathizes with them; whoever they are, as they are depicted. At that point you’re too far into the painting for me…I needed to keep more of a distance between the painting and myself/the viewer/my audience…

By this “restraint” as you call it, I have boiled down my big ideas to the essential stuff I want to get at. By making a selection of a larger picture I eliminate everything else I don’t want to paint. I get distracted easily a
nd the world is such a vast place I need to discipline myself to hone in on one thing at a time. It’s really what keeps me grounded, to take one thing out of life and spend time with it. Even these objects have a story though, but it’s less literal than a person’s story because these objects are inanimate. They don’t have brains or blood. They have electricity, oil and motors. For now in my selection of imagery I have solved the first major problem I had as a painter, “What do I paint?”, and now I can get on with it…

Color is a whole other box of rocks. Color is so overwhelming to me now more so than ever because I am teaching color to students. Not only does one have to decide, “What do I paint?” but one must decide, “What Color do I use?” you could also ask, “How do I describe this?” or “Is it invented or observed?” and then there is the “Why then? How come?” to every answer you end up with…

I used to just grab any tube of paint that looked good at the time. Then that became problematic. Color is delicious and it is very easy to overindulge. Color is distracting because it is emotional. I can’t have color break my composure. For me it has always been a balance between the Venetians and the Florentines, Romanticism / Classicism, color / form, and painting / drawing. One can’t look at a form divorced from color. It’s a complicated issue for me.
My solution to this problem right now has been to work within the restraint of chromatic grays. And recently I have been drawn to objects composed of grays with parts made of plastics, metals and wires, so the shoe fits. I mostly work with either a warm or cool mixture of red and green with white added in for the shifts in value. That’s what goes on top. The under-painting is a whole other animal. I started using washy glazes of saturated colors as a ground so that the grays on top didn’t feel so dead (Nat Meade used to pick on my paintings in grad school because the grounds were left white, like the Impressionists). My under-paintings are color coordinated, differentiating the layers of spatial depth. Each painting is different but the most common use of the color is as follows:

Yellow = ground
Green = shadow
Red = light

Sometimes I mess with that, with blue, orange, and sometimes purple, just to see how the gray will behave on top. The same color gray will look different on top of a red than it does to a yellow or green, and in that, the same gray becomes a different gray. There are so many variations within these limits I feel like this is merely the starting point for me in my exploration of color. But for now, this is how I am making sense of things.

As far as my practice is concerned…it comes down to discipline again. I know I have to do certain things before I get down to business and waste a lot of material, so I have to come up with plans before I begin a painting. Every big painting starts off as a series of sketches. They can be formal or informal; on bar napkins or paper, whatever is available when I get an idea for a painting. From that point if I want more from that idea I make a small sized gouache painting and start thinking about how to conceive of the image and what to do with the paint. One thing leads to the next and I decide a size appropriate for the scale of the image and go. A lot of the time the larger paintings lead to smaller works as well. One part might strike me as worthy of more time or a separate canvas, so that spills out onto other surfaces. Keeping this part open for exploration helps me maintain an interest in any given subject. The deeper I can go into one thing, the more I can get out of it, the more I figure out, and all the while I am generating more paintings so I don’t feel like I’m wasting time on a big blow out.

Lately I’ve been returning to the image of the window fan I had hung in DeCordova. I wasn’t satisfied with my depiction of it. For a long time I would try and see how something was made, and then sort of internalize that form and make a painting of it. Now I am trying to keep it more true to what I am looking at, more observation and study of the thing itself. I’ve come to be more invested in the work as a result. Now I feel as though I am manufacturing these things. I observe, disassemble, and reassemble the objects. I’m also becoming interested in the situations one might find these objects in. The painting you cited in Yeah You Missed It is that same fan from the DeCordova but in one point perspective and with a window screen on top of it… The painting fools with perception. When you look at this painting you are looking at a small selection of a scene. Looking up from the ground outside an apartment to the second floor window where the fan is. I’ve cropped out everything but the space with the fan in it. Due to the perspective a lot of the object is obscured by the screen in front of it and the painting starts to take on different roles. It’s an illusion of space and it’s flat, like that Modernist thing you described. The tactility of the paint also helps with that. The painting asks a lot of questions at the same time and contradicts itself.

Installation view of Yeah, You Missed It, curated by Robert Moeller, at the Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the arts.
On wall: Palocci’s Looking Up. (Sculpture by Antoniadis and Stone.)

The restraints of this one object lead me to this strange selection of that scene and it is leading to even more. Restraints aren’t really restricting. I feel that restriction can be liberating, as it forces one into focus. It just takes a while to find that focus.

Talk soon,

Tony

Halo, 2002, oil on panel, 16 x 16 inches

Like a lot of artists, particularly painters, I’ve made my share of self-portraits.  I did these paintings to teach myself about myself, to mark time, to solve a painting problem, a variety of reasons.  Not all of them are art, but the ones that are have a special place in my practice.  I look at those pictures and I can think back to the moments when they were painted.  In fact, I think they contain the haptic trace of my emotional life.  Some of them, many of them in fact, I have destroyed.  Sometimes I’ve done this because they were failures as paintings and sometimes I had to get rid of them because it was enough that I knew that I painted them.  I have some photos of these paintings, but the objects themselves are gone.  Even though I am a painter, it is very hard for me to make a painting.  It’s expensive in a variety of ways.

So when I got contacted to be in a self-portrait show, I was kind of skeptical about doing it.  Like I said, I am a painter but I am not someone for whom the self-portrait is a key part of my practice.  The other artists in the show included Anne Harris and Susanna Coffey, both of whom I know and the latter is a dear, close friend.  There was also Maud Morgan and the divine Gregory Gillespie.  For that reason alone I wanted to do the show.  Coffey has had a profound impression on my work.  Gillespie, with his relentless reworking and extensive understanding of surface and material has as well.  I was thrilled that some of my work would be in consideration with these giants.

I have a self-portrait project Circumference that I offered as my contribution but the curator was interested in paintings only.  (Looking backward I also think that the underlying content in the work was, shall we say, difficult for the curator.) I have three self-portaits from a very difficult time that are very precious to me.  I struggled with them in the making and there were a lot of difficulties that I resolved in the work, and they bear that out in the making.  I talked to Julia Lavigne, the Associate Director at Samsøñ about them and she felt like it would be a good thing to have them in the dialogue created in the context of the show, which was called Self-Examination through Portraiture.  I trust her judgment.  The largest painting of the three, Self-Portrait at Skowhegan was on uncradled panel exactly the way it was painted.  In order to have it exhibition ready, I had it framed with a gorgeous float frame to accentuate the irregular edges of the picture.  (The folks at PSG Framing in Somerville did an amazing job.)

They were painted on panel and they are hard-won.  I discovered things about scraping and sanding and allowing the surface to show in the picture that are basic tools in my practice today.  My show at ICA Boston there is no one left to blame includes paintings that were begun at the same time as the self-portraits and they contain all of the lessons I learned from making these pictures.

Once I agreed to the show, I was informed that there would be a catalog for the show as well.  I was also told that all the artists were writing statements.  I wasn’t really interested in making statements about the work and said as much and the gallery provided them with a general statement about my practice.  Also, since this was for a text that was going to be published, I really balked at being asked to write something for publication without being paid for it.  I was asked multiple times and advised that it could be short.  So I eventually relented.

Here’s my statement for the show:

Self-portraiture is a form of self-location. It is a means to understand where I am physically and emotionally, in addition to being a way to explore formal issues and materials.
I made these paintings at a time when a lot of things were coming apart. There was the tremendous loss of the AIDS epidemic, my mother’s decline, and my own constant fight to have an identity as an artist. I made these paintings to prove that I could do them. I wanted to make a record of myself, my time, and my likeness knowing that it would change but knowing that the paintings would hold the memory of the moment and would be a truer record than any other thing I could access.
I wanted to prove that I existed in the context of art. The most concrete way I could do that was to paint myself into history and into being.

Steve Locke, Boston Massachusetts

I sent the statement and Julia and Camilø Álvårez handled the transport of the work to the venue.  They managed the entire process, consignment agreements, photos of the work and all that things that they do all the time for the artists they support.

I got an invitation to the opening and I was thinking it would be fun to go if Anne and Susanna were there.  I had seen Susanna earlier in the year and started doing watercolors with her at her family house in Connecticut (which led to an exciting new body of work).  Unfortunately, neither of them could get to the opening and I figured I would still go alone.  It was then that the curator contacted me about giving a talk about my work at the opening.

I got this email:

On Oct 8, 2014, at 10:09 AM, Audrey Pepper <audreypepper@mac.com> wrote:

Hi Steve,

Everything is in place. The catalog is at the printer, plans for picking up the work are in place.

I am checking in regarding the talk that will take place during the reception on Thursday, October 16th. The reception is 5 – 7 p.m. and the talk/discussion will probably be 5:30 – 6:30. I hope that this still works for you. Rick Fox will also be participating. I will be introducing the exhibit and then introducing you and Rick. There will be time for you to show images of your work and considering the theme of the show, it would be interesting to hear about your larger body of work and how the self-portraits play into it. I am asking the same of Rick Fox. There will also be a chance for there to be a Q & A.

I am thrilled to have your work in the exhibit and look forward to meeting you.

Best,
Audrey

I replied that I had the opening on my calendar, but I had no idea that there was a talk.  The curator then said that she had discussed the talk with Julia (who told the curator that she would have to ask me directly) and she thought I was on board.  And I certainly did not know that there was a talk that would include me showing images of my work and a discussion of my “larger body of work” and doing a Q and A.  All of this during the opening of the exhibition.  So it’s not an opening for me, it’s an artist’s talk and a Q and A.  And there was no compensation for my time or travel offered. So I made the work, framed it, supplied a text, my gallery arranged consignment and photos, and in addition, I am supposed to provide my time and discuss my work.

For free.

I said as much in my reply:

On Oct 8, 2014, at 11:12 AM, Steve Locke wrote:

Hi Audrey,
I apologize. I didn’t realize that I was being asked to speak about my work and my studio practice. I thought that contributing the work and the text for the catalog was all. I guess I misunderstood.
I am sorry, but I am not able to contribute my time to the talk.

S

I got an apology for the “lack of clarity in communication” and a hope that I would come to the opening.  I didn’t go.

Later, Julia did a follow up with the curator.  She asked about the catalog and also about the response to the show.  She got this message in return:

Hi Julie (sic),

I am waiting for the photos of the installation from Debbie. You will see that we only hung the 2 paintings that were in good shape. I don’t know if Debbie has been in touch with you regarding the damaged painting. I do know that you responded to her concerned email, the day of the installation, stating that one of the paintings had a large chip of paint off of the front surface of the painting. I saw the photo that you sent back in response, confirming that you knew of the clearly damaged surface. I must say that I was shocked and disturbed that a painting would be sent out in that condition, and that you thought that we would include it in the exhibit.
I was down in your neck of the woods for a couple of hours, a week or so ago, and although your lights were on, the door was locked. I had the catalogs with me at that time. I will mail a couple to you.
As far as interest in Steve’s work, I was there for the reception and haven’t been back since. I know that they get a certain flow through the gallery, but the exhibits are mostly for the benefit of the students. Debbie is the best to answer your question regarding interest in his work and responses by students and faculty. I know that they used the exhibit as material for classwork/papers/research.
These exhibits go by so quickly. This one ends this Saturday. I am making arrangements with Matt Clark to return the paintings to the gallery the beginning of next week. Does this work for you?

Best,
Audrey

Night, 2002, oil on panel, 16 x 16 inches

In fact, Julia had been contacted about “damage” to the paintings. She thought it strange and assured the curator that there was no “damage” to the works; that they were how I intended them to be.  Apparently, the curator knows what my work is supposed to look like, (which works are in “good shape”) more that I or the people who have represented me for years.  In fact, Halo, has a small mark where I scratched to the ground of the picture to bring a dot of light to the surface. She also saw fit to reprimand the standards and qualities of the staff and owner of Samsøñ.  To that end, Camilo Alvarez sent a reply:

From: Camilo Alvarez [mailto:kmilo@samsonprojects.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 11, 2014 3:20 PM
To: Audrey Pepper
Cc: Julia Lavigne; Disston, Deborah
Subject: Re: image

Audrey,

My Assistant Director’s name is Julia.

These paintings belong to the artist’s private collection. They are in the condition the artist and I are completely comfortable in exhibiting.
They would never have been released if we didn’t believe they deserved to be seen. Our attention to detail with all the unique works that come through us is thorough.
These works are not ‘damaged’. I would say more ‘damage’ has been made to those who have now been unable to see them.
We look forward to receiving the catalogs, installation images and works. Please note we are open Tuesday to Saturday from 11 to 6PM.

Best,

Camilø Álvårez
Owner/Director/Curator/Preparator

This is really the point where I found out about any of this.  Camilo and Julia worked hard to insulate me from this insulting behavior but it just got to a point where I had to be included in the discussion.  Especially after the Director of the gallery sent Camilo this email:

On Nov 11, 2014, at 3:46 PM, “Disston, Deborah” <D.Disston@snhu.edu> wrote:

Camilo, I think the tone of your email is unnecessary. It was our decision to not show the large painting by Steve because it gave the appearance of being damaged and we did not want to be perceived as poor stewards of our art exhibitions and/or collections. Steve’s reputation and work has in no way shape or form been damaged. As you recall we have exhibited his work in a group exhibition Traversing Gender for which he happily came to give an artist talk. We have happily included his work in our catalog and as Audrey pointed out she was hand delivering them to your gallery and the gallery was locked during your office hours. We all take pride in our work and we should all be respected equally for those efforts. We will be de-installing our exhibit on Sunday and arrangements are being made with the art shipper. I will mail you catalogs and email you installation images. Until then, let’s continue doing the good work we all do and give each other support. – Debbie

Self Portrait at Skowhegan, 2002, 20 x 24, oil on panel with floating frame

Apparently, all of us needing to be respected for our efforts doesn’t apply to me or my vision for my own work.  And again, someone really feels the need to reprimand an adult who has worked in contemporary art venues for his entire career about how an artist’s work should appear – an artist whom he has represented for over 7 years.  And as far as my reputation is concerned, well, I’ll let Camilo address that:

Deborah,

I thought Audrey’s tone was unnecessary as well. I hope you agree. I wonder why I was admonished for expressing and defending my viewpoint?

I am never worried about perceptions. I think if you had shown the painting and someone remarked about its perceived ‘damage’, it could have been a teachable moment about the artist’s process. Steve and I spoke about that very work and its moments and the fact that there is no such thing as perfection. Considering it is a self portrait, the correlation of ‘damage’ upon the painting by the artist makes it art. Think: Dorian Gray. The reflection of time in a painting, with the artist…

I also didn’t mention anything about Steve’s reputation. The inference was that I (or the artist) was being irresponsible by unleashing a ‘damaged’ painting into the world was an affront to my responsibility.
Thus it was more about my reputation being sullied. It seems to me more worry was felt about the perception of your respective reputations in fact by not exhibiting this work.

It is impossible to respect all equally. Some do more than others. I do a lot. I’ve been told I do good, sometimes great work. I have also been told I support great work and whenever anyone questions the inverse, you can expect to hear from me about it.

Best to you and yours,

Camilø Álvårez
Owner/Director/Curator/Preparator

You can see why I love him so much.

I found out about all this as I was driving to get groceries.  I saw the email string and had to pull over to a parking lot to get a hold of myself.  I am used to being insulted about my work.  I am used to being misunderstood.  I am not used to not being taken seriously as an artist and I do not appreciate being told that the decisions I make about presenting the work I make are not art, or worse that they are “damage” or mistakes, or evidence of me not caring about my work, the venue, or the viewers.  This has the weight of a gutter insult to me.  Especially in light of the way this whole thing has been handled.

Camilo calmed me down and I was able to drive the rest of the way home.  He told me to forget the whole thing.  I just cannot.  I sent the following to the Director and the Curator:

Debbie and Audrey,

I am really at a loss to understand the events that have taken place around this show and my work in it. I have learned late that one of the works I sent at your request (Self-portrait at Skowhegan) was not exhibited because it was perceived by the two of you to be damaged. I cannot believe that you think that I would send a damaged work for exhibition. In fact, I had the painting framed at considerable expense to HIGHLIGHT the irregularity of the edge of the support and the difficulty in layering the painting’s surface. This show was supposed to be ABOUT self-examination and that guides every aspect of my practice. Had you seen there is no one left to blame at ICA Boston, you would know that the surfaces and edges of my paintings often show the stresses and decisions that happen in creating a picture. In a show that contains Gillespie (who famously reworked and abraded the surfaces of his pictures) I find it hard to believe that you could not or would not see my work as part of that conversation. I cannot believe that I am so disregarded as a maker that my choices in the way I make my work are questioned and dismissed because of the way they may look to viewers.

My work is supported by the statement I wrote for the catalog.

Camilo Alvarez has known me and my work since 2002 and he and his staff, particularly Julia Lavigne, are deeply knowledgeable about my practice and my ideas. A simple call about the situation would have allowed them or me to educate you about the pictures I make. My “reputation” and my career are in a great amount due to his belief and support of my vision and my work. I found Audrey’s and your messages to Julia and to him very sad. They really do not deserve to be addressed as though they do not understand the work of exhibiting and contextualizing works of art.

Lastly, I was asked to contribute a text to a catalog, for free. I framed and prepared the work for exhibition at no cost to you. And I was put forward to give a public talk about my work under the guise of coming to an opening with no compensation for my time in speaking about my work or my travel. I loved coming out to SNHU and talking with students; it’s part of my life as an educator. But speaking at an opening or giving a talk about my work and my practice with images is not something that any artist would be asked to do for free. I am left with the feeling that my refusal to participate in the talk was the reason for the removal of my work.

After the wonderful experience of participating in TRAVERSING GENDER I am completely shocked and frankly, hurt, at the way my work and the people who work so hard on my behalf have been considered.

I advised my friends Anne and Susanna about this.  I feel a little bit better after getting this all out.  It boggles my mind that in 2014, this is the way that people make determinations about their audience, the people with whom they work, and what they think deserves to be seen.  It is difficult to bear that a  work I made to prove something to my self and to the world was hidden from view because people could not understand the difference between intention and their own ideas of art.

Luc Tuymans, Gaskamer (Gas Chamber) 1986

 One of the greatest works of art of the 20th Century is Luc Tuymans’s Gaskamer (Gas Chamber). In addition to being an image yanked from one of the unspeakable horrors of the murder of European Jewry it is a painting that refuses to obey the conventions of paintings of history.  It’s a modest size instead of being epic.  It is painted in tonal neutrals instead of a rich palette of color.  It is on a warped and angled stretcher that prevents it from being a regular rectangle and instead presents an uncomfortable image in a new form.  This is because of Tuymans’s choices, both formally and conceptually.  I can imagine the curator and director of this exhibition keeping this painting from view because to show it would make people think badly of them.  I think badly of them because they do not understand that art is not about comfort or ease.  It provokes a public conversation.  It’s sad that they do not trust themselves or their viewers enough to ask the question, “Why did the artist do that?  What are they saying to me?”

In light of all this, I got another email from the director of the space.  You would think that I made all of this clear, but apparently, I still don’t know what I am talking about when it comes to my own work:

Dear Steve and Camilo,First I want to preface that I know you both are committed to your profession and do great work. I have always admired the verve with which you engage in the arts and this is one of many reasons we invited you to be a part of our exhibit on self-portraiture.

I believe there are some significant misunderstandings here which I would like to attempt to clear up. First, “Self-Portrait at Skowhegan: is included in the exhibit, It was “Halo” which we chose not to exhibit because there was a significant white spot (chipped paint)on the surface. I contacted Julia the minute I noticed this to let her know of the condition. She in turn sent me an image showing that there was a chip of paint missing. We were not provided with the explanation that such a thing was intentional. Audrey and I discussed what we wanted to do and chose to not include “Halo” .

Here are a few thoughts about your comments about compensation.

It has been our practice at the McIninch Art Gallery to ask our exhibiting artists to speak at our opening reception, to provide bios, artist statements. I do not pay a stipend for that. If you were a guest speaker and not an exhibiting artist, I would. Why is this? Out of our incredibly small budget, we pay for advertising, marketing materials, the cost of printing catalogs, art shipping, insurance, installation costs, staffing, curatorial fees, hospitality costs, taking the artist to dinner after the event. And then there is the in-kind cost of time spent working with professors and providing them with didactic materials so that they can utilize the exhibit in their curricular activities, which is all the time. In exchange for all of these expenditures, I feel that it is fair to ask the artist to speak at an opening reception. It is entirely your prerogative to disagree and chose not to participate.

We are very proud of the exhibit. There is still time to see it. The show runs through Saturday.

The art will be returned next week. I will be forwarding installation shots and more catalogs.

Debbie

Her initial message states that the “large painting” was not shown.  At 20-by-24 inches, Self-Portrait at Skowhegan is the largest work.  But now she says that painting was shown and Halo was not.  So truly, I really have no faith in anything about this at this point.  Listen, if you don’t want to show the work, fine.  I don’t really care.  Just don’t tell me that my work is damaged and don’t be “shocked and disturbed” that a contemporary art work might try to trouble conventional standards of art.  If this is so upsetting, maybe the curatorial career choice is a bad one.

So even though Julia sent them a photo saying that she knew about the spot on the painting and that it was intentional, they still decided it was not.   It was also good to see where the gallery’s priorities are; they have so many expenses that their operation sort of requires the artist to work for a meal.   And clearly, if they were so concerned why didn’t they just send the piece back to me?  Why hold on to it, not show it, not inform me that they were not showing it, and then tell me reprimand me and Samsøñ for sending it?  I am deeply confused and feel silly explaining this over and over again to them.  I contacted my two friends who were in the show and let them know how ridiculously unprofessional this whole thing has turned out to be.  I found out that one of them hadn’t even been invited to the opening and that neither of them had received the catalog. If I was to go out to see this show at this point, it would be to take my work off the walls.

Deborah,

What you referred to as chipped paint on the surface is called a mark. I put the mark on the painting. It’s not an accident, it’s not damaged, it’s not “chipped.” Julia made this clear to you. It would have been better if you let me know you were choosing not to include the work. That would’ve given me the opportunity to take all of my work out of the show. My question to you is this: why do you assume that I do not know what I’m doing as an artist and that I don’t know how I want my paintings to be seen?

Samsøñ provided you with my bio, my CV, and a general statement about my work. They also provided at no cost to you Hi-Rez images of the work for publication.I was asked to craft a special statement for this exhibition. Since as you probably know language is part of my practice as an artist, this is also artwork. Since this was to be published as a document in a catalog for the exhibition, it would be normal for an artist to be compensated for a contribution to a publication.

Lastly, there is a difference between speaking to someone at an opening and being required to provide a slide talk with images and an overview of one’s work. As I said, I enjoyed talking with students during Traversing Gender. That is a very different situation.

Joe Biden famously said, “if you want me to know what you value, show me your budget.” Thanks for making your priorities clearer for me.

I’ve advised my colleagues Anne Harris and Susanna Coffey about this unfortunate situation.

If artists are only valued for their ability to entertain, then they are not valued at all.  In this case, the appearances were more important that the message of the works.  Instead of seeing the artist who poses a question (“Why is that white spot there?  Oh wow, it really makes it seem like it’s a piece of dust illuminated by the light, doesn’t it?) the artist is an irresponsible person who sends out damaged work and needs his “reputation” maintained.  Again, this entire thing has left me very sad.  I cannot wait to get my paintings back from this show.

A terrified Steve Locke chats with the amazing and patient Evan Garza

For those of you who missed the conversation that I had with the divine Evan Garza of FIAR at ICA/Boston about my work, the museum has created a new web cast of the lecture.  The Artist’s Voice will be a regular feature of the ICA.  See below:

THE ARTIST’S VOICE: STEVE LOCKE WITH EVAN GARZA
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Launched in September 2013, The Artist’s Voice is a free lecture series featuring some of the most important contemporary artists working today, including Amy Sillman, William Kentridge, Jim Hodges, Steve Locke and Mary Reid Kelley. This lecture series, which aligns with the ICA’s exhibition program, gives visitors direct access to these visionary artists as they discuss their work, influences and inspirations, offering a deeply meaningful engagement with the art of our time.
On September 19, 2013, artist Steve Locke sat down with Evan Garza—curator, writer, and co-founder of Fire Island Artist Residency (FIAR)—for an engaging conversation about objects, paintings, and the male figure in art.

Click here to go to the ICA’s site and view the full artist talk. 

I should say first that I know two of the artists in the Foster this year, Mark Cooper and Sarah Bapst (it’s a small town). I was thrilled that they were nominated for the Prize and it was heartening to me that two artists with such divergent practices were being recognized. I’d seen Luther Price’s work at the Whitney and I had never heard of Katarina Burin. Also, the fact that Helen Molesworth, the museum’s chief curator, put this show together – with all the studio visits and conversations that entails – to me said a lot about the commitment of the ICA to the Prize. (In full disclosure, Helen is curating my solo exhibition at ICA in July.)

So here are some things I thought as I read Smee’s Foster Prize review:

The Foster this year uses work across practices. It doesn’t privilege one kind of art making and it allows for haptic and conceptual practices to be debated and discussed in the space of a large contemporary art institution. There is a lot of work in this show and the limitation of 4 artists I think allows each of them to really provide an expansive view of their practices. (Some of the artists in the last Foster show simply didn’t have enough room for their work, and this penalized the brilliant Stephen Tourlentes, who should have won.) Some of it requires a lot of reading, and some of it delights the eyes.

Smee’s criticism that Mark Cooper’s work doesn’t “come together” says something about taste but not necessarily anything about the issues at play in contemporary art. I am hard pressed to accept that in 2013, a requirement of art is that it cohere and make sense. Contemporary life does not make sense so it stands to reason that the artists of the time would be struggling with an unsettled world. Cooper’s project, which at its core is about the jouissance of production and growth, isn’t about coherence. It’s really about the turning the gallery into host organism. Issues of infection, infiltration, and cultural exchange permeate that work. And the ICA install is much more successful than his more chromatically restrained opus in the New Blue and White show at the MFA.

Sarah Bapst is not working with the “ready-made.” I don’t think a Duchampian gesture is a feature anywhere in this work, which I think speaks more to the concerns of an artist like Robert Gober. Her work is deeply engaged in the act of looking, framing, and replicating the visual world-a world that is embodied in a discarded found mass produced object. She is addressing a key issue of art in her work: what happens as material meets material. This is by no means a hermetic concern, it is a basic concern of trying to understand how to make something out of something else. (Interestingly, Gober’s Plywood (1987) lives in this contested territory, and elicited a similar critical response.) Her devotion to and investigation of something we think we understand – and thus cannot truly see because of its function – is powerful. We don’t understand what we are looking at even though it is something with which we are familiar. Bapst’s dogged attention moves the familiar to the uncanny. She makes us examine what we consume, what we honor, and what we discard.

Katarina Burin’s installation was interesting because truthfully, it wasn’t about what we were looking at. It was about the text that she produced to go with the objects. That marriage between text and context is what made this work so challenging. While it left me cold, it is great to have this work in dialog with an artist like Cooper, and I think that dialog is a big part of what the Foster Prize should do. But this is work that is really about the import of language, history, and research. It’s the kind of work that writers like to write about.

Beauty is key in Luther Price’s work, but in contemporary practice beauty is an element, not a goal. Price’s installation is a glorious array of sound and image that is really a death knell for a certain kind of art production. The joy of listening to a projector is a museum experience. The lurid, chemical color of slide photography is no longer part of our everyday experience. Price’s presentation is a concatenation of signifiers that speak to the psyche of anyone old enough to see pictures in the dark with the audible assertion of their manifestation clicking in their heads. The beautiful images belie their creation. Born of destructive and corrosive action, and mixed with the found, the altered projected slides combine to form a poetic shadow of what was once a technological innovation. It’s a symphony to the end of a certain kind of vernacular image making and the loss of a way of recording history. Other people’s Kodachrome slides, no longer important, are altered, resurrect for a moment of glory and vanish into the dull click of a carousel.

Lastly, I will say that to refer someone’s practice as “desultory” is pretty harsh and in my view, unfounded in regards to this show and these artists, some of whom have never garnered public attention until now. I simply cannot see how this applies to anything on view.

So I was/am thrilled with the show. It is challenging. All four artists deserve to be engaged critically and are working in diverse modes that reflect contemporary art in Boston and globally. Judging this will be hard and I hope there is a lot of discussion about this show – that’s part of what it’s for.

Gran Fury: READ MY LIPS at 80WSE Gallery, Steinhardt School Department of Art and Art Professions at NYU. An amazing show of powerful and desperate work that spoke to a desperate time. It makes me realize how close we were when we all were dying.

Brian Bress at Cherry and Martin at the Armory Show. I love the way he manipulates the space of video. His work expands and contracts as things enter and leave the screen. The hilarity of his work is exacerbated by his craft with all the elements of video, performance, and production. The yellow border on his video at Armory was a container of delight.

There was some painting at the Armory that really was terrific. There wasn’t a lot of it, but Tomory Dodge really made up for the lack of sophisticated painting. The show at CRG was installed beautifully and the paintings really overwhelmed you with their rich application and independence. Each painting provided a different visual structure; some related to landscape, some to atmosphere, and so on. There were no nostalgic references or attempts to recreate a certain moment in painting’s history. Modestly sized and confidently executed, Dodge showed that abstraction could be lyrical, alive, and beautiful and still carry within it ideas about collapse and entropy.

VOLTA is my favorite fair. It’s smaller than Armory and it has only one artist per booth. You get a broader view of the work of anartist at this fair and there were a lot of great things to see here.

Matt Rich at Samsøn. The work is much more uncanny. You really can no longer tell how it is made and the choice of color makes the experience of looking richer and more rewarding. Rich is making work that is stripped of all its support and still refuses to collapse.

I also really need to say that the Boston Galleries really were awesome at VOLTA. I’m not just saying that to suck up to anyone. I feel that Rich, Andrew Masullo at Steven Zevitas and Jeff Perrott at LaMontagne had terrific shows. (Andrew was all over New York, with a great show at the Whitney Biennial and works at the Independent Art Fair.) Seen together, this could lead to a discussion about contemporary abstraction and its relationship to Boston. Looking at Perrott’s work in light of Sue Williams’s paintings up now at ICA Boston in FIGURING COLOR I think that he has a better handle on what the exuberance of painting can tell us about contemporary life. It’s not just a major gesture of joy; it’s an indicator of search, a documentation of conflict, and sometimes, a way to come together.

Razvan Boar at Ana Cristea. So nice to see figure painting that had drama, action, and bathos. These paintings relied not on the photographic, but a real sense of the cinematic. The compositions were as exciting as Balthus and the color, though muted, showed a real concern with mixing. He was one of the few figure painters I saw that knew how to mix a chromatic shadow. (The other was the divine Philip Pearstein at the ADAA Fair.)

Domenico Piccolo at Federico Bianchi. Heartbreakingly beautiful and tough pictures painted in washes of ink and oil on acetate and vinyl. The antipathy between the materials creates puddles, stains, and smudges that resolve themselves into figures and spaces that are feel weightless; as if breathing on the images will make them disappear. Their delicate execution is a wonderful counterpoint to the images of loss and isolation he captures.

There was other great stuff at VOLTA as well. Neal Tait at Vigo Gallery, Patrick Jacobs at The Pool NYC, Andreas Johansson at Galleri Flach in Stockholm (Pop-up books, who knew?), and Sheila Gallagher at DodgeGallery.

I went to the ADAA Fair, The Independent Art Fair, VOLTA, The Armory Show, the Gran Fury show, and a few Chelsea galleries. I’ll get to the rest later.