Raffi Kalenderian

RAFFI KALENDERIAN

WARREN ISENSEE

520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011

tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com

525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

RAFFI KALENDERIAN

520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011

tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com

525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

FEEL!THE!LOVE

By Glenn Adamson

Raffi Kalenderian is an enthusiast. He is capable of falling head over heels for all kinds of things: someone’s outfit, a carpet or a sofa, a particular color combination. Above all, he loves to love art.

When he was first starting out, he had the chance to go to the Prado in Madrid. His reaction: “El Greco! Picasso! Goya! Velasquez! Are you kidding me?” When he was making stuff in school that sort of looked like Lee Bontecou’s, someone showed him her work. Was he crushed, feeling as if it had all been done before? “No way!!! This is so great!!!”

3

Ask him today about his influences, and he doesn’t do that thing of deflecting, or going for the impressively obscure reference. He just gushes, raving about his former teachers—among them Lari Pi#man (“everything he said was the most perfect essay”) and Laura Owens (“I saw how you could take things like textiles and cra$, and make them dance”)—as well as predecessors like Alice Neel (“she finds infinite ways to paint the same se#ings; I never tire of seeing that striped chair”).

Kalenderian has turned his instinctive admiration into a methodology. He mainly depicts his own widening circle of friends—a self-reinforcing dynamic, as he has been known to choose his subjects just because he wants to get to know them be#er. Some of his most affecting images show other artists, peers of his. With supreme care and affection, he paints their paintings within his own, in miniature, a process he likens to a musician covering a song. “My friends are like celebrities to me,” he says, and you feel that in his pictures. They are exciting because he is excited when he paints them. “I think of portraiture,” he says, “as an opportunity to show love.”

To all of which, one must say: “Raffi, please bring it on. Goodness knows the world could use a li#le more of all that.” Of course, it’s never so simple, and it’s certainly not easy. Kalenderian is just like everybody else. He must win love from the jaws of indifference. As he works in his studio (about half his waking hours, beginning in the a$ernoon and o$en continuing deep into the night), his biggest challenge is to keep his spirits up. Way up. That is, he says, “the motor of the whole operation.” In art as in physics, energy must come from somewhere. It’s easy to get lost in his paintings, their saturated hues, their mesmerizing pa#erns, their psychological presence. That’s the right way to look at them—to give yourself the chance to see what Kalenderian saw, and somehow got down on canvas.

4

Given that this is meant to be a serious piece of art criticism, not a fan le#er, let’s spend a li#le while picking away at that “somehow.” Let’s think about what it takes for Raffi Kalenderian to make a Raffi Kalenderian painting.

First principle: The whole painting is the portrait. Kalenderian’s works vary greatly in their handling of scale. The figures in them may occupy as much as half the overall pictorial field, or may be quite small, tucked lovingly into a lush visual landscape. Either way, the whole surface is going to be seriously activated. The subjects’ personae project into the walls and floor, irradiate the clothing and furniture, even the houseplants, in an effect the artist has nicely described as “vampiric animism.” Every element in the picture, all emi#ing a single, shared vibe: My God, it’s alive. Formally, this helps to hold the composition together, but from Kalenderian’s point of view, it’s also a ma#er of motivation. When he’s painting (say) his friends Joe and Iman, chilling on a couch, he never stops painting them, until the whole thing is finished: the floral pa#ern of that couch; the rag rug in front and the Clyfford Still-esque wallpaper behind; Joe’s Hawaiian shirt, his guitar, his zebrastripe socks; Iman’s checkered trousers—all in one big sing-along. Even the floor gets into the act.

Kalenderian has said that whenever he feels as if he’s ge#ing too detailed, too obsessive, he pulls out his pale#e knife, and: smoosh. The wood goes on like chocolate icing, messy and delicious.

5

Piece of cake.

Second principle: The painting shows time, as well as space. Temporal complexity is intrinsic to portrait painting, as it necessarily unfolds across an extended duration yet is perceived by the viewer in, and as, an instant. Kalenderian’s pictures are saturated in this contradiction. Or be#er to say, they marinate in it, thereby a#aining depth of flavor. Looking at them is a li#le like experiencing déjà vu. You are right then and there, yet also dislodged from time as it’s usually experienced. It’s a quality he has in common with many other painters working right now—Amy Sherald and Njideka Akunyili Crosby spring to mind—and he uses some of the same techniques to achieve it, combining direct address (the si#er’s gaze meeting the viewer’s, head on), rich textural accumulation, and a descriptive pa#ern that double-reads as pure abstraction. Again, these are formal aspects of the work, which help to build a particular, painterly sense of time.

6

But they are in the service of something more fundamental, more urgent. Kalenderian explains it like this: In my life, I have these moments, o!en during some mundane activity, where I have a profound revelation about something, maybe something about the nature of a certain friendship, or about realizing I may not have the life I envisioned when I was younger. I consider these to be “super moments,” a reckoning of some sort, and I think painting is a great way to try and capture a moment like this.

Exhibit A is Thomas, a relatively small work in mixed media, which depicts a mustachioed, bow-tied man si#ing at a table in which the wood grain has been Kalenderian-catapulted into something resembling African textile art. The overall mood is melancholy—and rather literary. Maybe it’s just the happenstance of the si#er’s name, but I think of Thomas Mann, who excelled at depicting the sort of slow-burn, introspective earthquakes of the soul that might be rippling through this young man. In another, earlier painting, an equally seismic but more extroverted “super moment” is memorialized. It shows a young woman called Dasha, who wrote poetry but lacked the confidence to perform in public. When admi#ing this to others, she’d get all ironic and self-deprecating, rolling her eyes at the absurdity. Finally, though, she organized a reading, donned a vintage dress, stood, and delivered. Kalenderian was beyond moved. “Every creative person has to cross a bridge like this,” he says, “where you have to stop rolling your eyes when you say what you do. Do you write poems? Boom! You are a poet. Who cares what anybody else thinks? So I wanted to make a painting of Dasha celebrating this moment, and celebrating her.”

If that story doesn’t bring a tear to your eye, go back and read it again. Then look at the damn picture.

See what I mean? Few artists can get this kind of emotion into their work, not without it becoming cloying and cheesy and ruining everything. Kalenderian is one who can. Alice Neel was another,

7

and it’s via her work—and by way of conclusion—that I’ll mention a third and final principle at work in Kalenderian’s paintings. Like temporality, it’s a puzzlement that lies at the very heart of portraiture.

He puts it like this: I have this debate with myself, whether it is possible to truly convey someone else with a painting. I have long thought of my portraits as like some kind of weird baby, a combination of me and the person I am painting. But there are people I paint where I hardly know them at all, and then there are people I know quite well . . . . There are paintings of someone I was dating at the time, and looking back now it is super obvious I was in love by the way I painted them. Alice Neel is someone I think about, because I wonder if she was tapping into that person’s psychology, or was she great at fusing her own psychology with theirs?

8

It’s in this slippery, shared psychological terrain that we find the real core of Kalenderian’s art— the thing that gets him up in the (late) morning, gets him to the easel, and keeps him there, making magic happen. Consider his recent painting of the excellently named Robert “Sterling” Silver. It exemplifies the collaborative process that portraiture can entail; Silver chose the Herbert Bayer sculpture Double Ascension as a backdrop, and brought his own amazing outfit to the party. Yet, if the subject got the ball rolling, it was the artist who scored a strike. Kalenderian envisions Silver as a vertical presence, striking through the banded composition, his forward-slung foot planted like a flagpole. He’s a man in the city, relaxed, confident, as if he owns the place. Or check out, finally, Anna and Sister, a portrait of a woman and her cat that bristles with detail: a closet full of clothes that you just know are fashion forward; a wall-hung red cap, which looks worryingly MAGA-esque but turns out to be Balenciaga; high-heeled boots in a corner, seemingly taking a step of their own volition; Mao Zedong watching over the proceedings; and above all, that insane ceiling, those lightning-lit walls, and those floorboards, like a hundred jungle cats pressed flat— lions and tigers and leopards, oh my. In this world, all roads lead to Anna. It’s another Kalenderian love le#er. He’s made the painting, but she is its beating heart. Thump, thump, boom.

Glenn Adamson is an independent curator and writer based in New York.

9

10

Joey and Jen, 2020

Colored pencil, oil paint and pastel on paper 44 3â „4 x 54 inches 113.7 x 137.2 cm

11

12

Michael Bauer in the Studio, 2020 Colored pencil, oil paint and pastel on paper 44 3â „4 x 54 inches 113.7 x 137.2 cm

13

14

Ramiro, 2020

Colored pencil, oil paint and pastel on paper 50 1â „2 x 36 inches 128.3 x 91.4 cm

15

16

Sophia Reading, 2020

Colored pencil, oil paint and pastel on paper 36 x 51 1â „2 inches 91.4 x 130.8 cm

17

18

Diana, 2019

Oil on canvas 48 x 36 inches 121.9 x 91.4 cm

19

20

Edgar, 2019 Oil on canvas 48 x 36 inches 121.9 x 91.4 cm

21

22

Julia and Slug, 2019 Oil on canvas 60 x 84 inches 152.4 x 213.4 cm

23

24

Alex, 2020

Oil on canvas 98 x 70 inches 248.9 x 177.8 cm

25

26

Andrew, 2020 Oil on canvas 70 x 98 inches 177.8 x 248.9 cm

27

28

Anna and Sister, 2020 Oil on canvas 98 x 70 inches 248.9 x 177.8 cm

29

30

Dasha, 2020 Oil on canvas 70 x 98 inches 177.8 x 248.9 cm

31

32

Joe and Iman, 2020 Oil on canvas 70 x 98 inches 177.8 x 248.9 cm

33

34

Robert “Sterling” Silver, 2020

Oil on canvas 98 x 70 inches 248.9 x 177.8 cm

35

36

Shanti, 2020 Oil on canvas 70 x 98 inches 177.8 x 248.9 cm

37

38

Chris and Nancy, 2020 Oil on canvas 70 x 98 inches 177.8 x 248.9 cm

39

40

Tiara, 2020

Oil on canvas 98 x 70 inches 248.9 x 177.8 cm

41

RAFFI KALENDERIAN Born in Los Angeles, CA in 1981 Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

2014 Susanne Vielme#er Los Angeles Projects, Culver City, CA Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany 2013 “Paint Work,” Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany

EDUCATION 2007 Artist Residency, St. Barthélemy, French West Indies

42

2012 “Interior Life,” Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich, Switzerland “Currents, Undercurrents, and Manoeuvers,” Susanne Vielme#er Los Angeles Projects, Culver City, CA

2004 BFA, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA Artist Residency, Idyllwild Arts Academy, Idyllwild, CA

2011 Brand New Gallery, Milan, Italy

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2010 “Memoranda,” Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich, Switzerland

2020 Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY

2008 “Satellites,” Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich, Switzerland

2019 “Memento Vivo,” Susanne Vielme#er Los Angeles Projects, Culver City, CA

2007 “Palimpsest: Selected Works on Paper,” Marc Jancou Fine Art, New York, NY

2018 “Always in Rare Form,” Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany

2006 “Wicked Waters,” Medium, St. Barthélemy, French West Indies “Born Under Punches,” Black Dragon Society, Los Angeles, CA

2017 “Portraits,” Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich, Switzerland GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2016 “For the Dead,” Susanne Vielme#er Los Angeles Projects, Culver City, CA “Green River,” Brand New Gallery, Milan, Italy 2015 “To Walk Through the Night,” Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich, Switzerland

2020 “In the Meanwhile… Recent Acquisitions of Contemporary Art,” Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA “20 Years Anniversary Exhibition,” Vielme#er Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA

2019 “What is an edition, anyway?,” McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco, CA 2018 “Genius Loci 6,” Setareh Gallery, Düsseldorf, Germany “To our Fellow Artists and Poets who are Confused About Which Way to Go,” Lundgren Gallery, Palma de Mallorca, Spain 2017 “Hotel Kalifornia,” Galerie Lefebvre & Fils, Paris, France “What’s Up New York,” LVH Art, New York, NY 2016 “Painter’s Painters,” Saatchi Gallery, London, United Kingdom “A Verdant Summer,” Taymour Grahne, New York, NY “Imagine,” Brand New Gallery, Milan, Italy 2013 “Body Language,” Saatchi Gallery, London, United Kingdom 2012 “Goldmine” (curated by Christopher Scoates), Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum, California State University, Long Beach, CA 2010 “Crystal World,” Buchmann Galerie, Berlin, Germany “Die Nase des Michelangelo,” Galerie Peter Kilchmann at Marktgasse, Zürich, Switzerland “Painting” (curated by Roger Herman), LA Art House, Los Angeles, CA “Portraits de Collectionneurs,” Muro Gallery, Châtelaine, Switzerland “Next Generation,” Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland 2008 “L.A. Potential” (curated by Lioba Reddeker), HangART-7, Salzburg, Austria “Faces and Figures (Revisited),” Marc Jancou Contemporary, New York, NY “Stories: Portraits,” Eleven Rivington, New York, NY

“Some Paintings: The Third LA Weekly Annual Biennial,” Track 16 Gallery, Santa Monica, CA 2007 “Cali in CPH, Part ii: Bucket of Ice,” Co-Lab, Copenhagen, Denmark “Warhol &,” Kantor/Feuer Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “Liquid Light,” DBA 256 Gallery, Pomona, CA 2006 “Fall,” Black Dragon Society, Los Angeles, CA “Boat Show,” High Energy Constructs, Los Angeles, CA “Just My Funny Way of Laughing,” South La Brea Gallery, Inglewood, CA 2005 “Christmas in July,” Black Dragon Society, Los Angeles, CA 2004 “Walk You Home If You Walk Me Home Right A$er” (curated by Eric Palgon), Los Angeles, CA “Dear Summertime,” Black Dragon Society, Los Angeles, CA “Living in the Ice Age,” University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 2003 “UCLA Undergraduate Juried Show,” Official Selection, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA “New Work,” University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom

SELECT COLLECTIONS Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum, California State University, Long Beach, CA Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA

43

Published on the occasion of the exhibition

RAFFI!KALENDERIAN 19 November – 19 December 2020 Miles McEnery Gallery 525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011 tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com Publication © 2020 Miles McEnery Gallery All rights reserved Essay © 2020 Glenn Adamson Director of Publications Anastasija Jevtovic, New York, NY Photography by Christopher Burke Studio, New York, NY Fredrik Nilsen Studio, Los Angeles, CA Color separations by Echelon, Santa Monica, CA Catalogue layout by McCall Associates, New York, NY ISBN: 978-1-949327-36-6 Cover: Chris and Nancy, (detail), 2020