KARL JENSEN SEPTEMBER 8 - OCTOBER 15 2005 CURATED BY LILLY WEI
CUE ART FOU NDATION
We are pleased to present this exhibition generously curated by Lilly Wei. Ms. Wei, a New York based independent curator, essayist and critic, has chosen artist Karl Jensen. Were it not for the opportunity that CUE gallery affords, it is unlikely that an installation such as this would be available for public viewing, whether in a commercial venue or not. We appreciate that artists often work tirelessly without thought or concern for exhibition. CUE is pleased to recognize such commitment by affording just such an opportunity, thus celebrating the efforts of artists such as Karl Jensen.
IN CONVERSATION KARL JENSEN AND LILLY WEI LILLY WEI: Let's talk about your latest project, the one for this show. Is it sculpture or
architecture or something else? I just saw a show in Los Angeles at the Hammer Museum called Thing. I liked the title because it underlines the difficulty of knowing what to call much of the hybridized work we see today. Is it painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, video, new media, design, installation? Often a combination of several disciplines, from the two-dimensional to the three, from still to moving, from silent to sound, much contemporary has defied traditional categories in its search for more complicated resolu tions that may more closely reflect our culture. Calling them "thing" might be a way to begin to think about these combines, these new genres, the new objecthood. What do you think? Your work might be a "thing" too. Wasn't there a horror movie called The Thing? KARL JENSEN: I do want to combine a variety of media. Partly for the sake of
expanding the range of what is acceptable (to me, at least), partly because there are so many possible combinations that can create beauty and tension and partly because I want to try different things and I hate feeling that I can't. As a maker, categories like painter or sculptor come at me from the outside; they're of no concern to me. Like other artists, I'm just doing what feels right. Sometimes that means a Gothic cathedral or a P-51 Mustang or a Tlingit rattle and then it's like: "I want to make that!" Actually, someone recently asked me if I was working on another monster, which I loved because she recognized the aggressive aspect of the urge to put something out into the public and say, "here, deal with THIS." My work is deliberately not installational. I dislike the term. It's just another pigeonhole. I am interested in questioning context, as installation does, and I increasingly see that it is crucial to define that context in addition to the piece to be placed within it. A cathedral materializes context as a sort of crystallization of the world according to the church. Although there's no single thing today with the kind of primacy the church historically enjoyed, it doesn't mean you give up the chance to define the context yourself. L W: How would you describe this new piece? How is it made? What is it made of? KJ: Hmm ... well it's a kind of a bud that has flowered. Lw: And flowered some more and then some more. Is there an iconography? I see a kind
of jumble between pop and baroque, the botanic and the geometric, the grotesque and the beautiful, the contemporary and the historical, a cornucopia of the overabundant, a deliberate confusion, the American dream pumped up, American largesse gone awry...
KJ: Yeah, keep going! You once likened Pulpit to a "jukebox destined for a late night revival tent" which I though was great. It made me think of the Royal Nonesuch put on by the King and the Duke in Huckleberry Finn. I love those guys. They were bawdy and brazen and so alive in their shameless opportunism. At the most general level, the piece is about America. The vegetal character of the piece somehow reflects my reaction to the country that is, for better or worse, very much in the business of being. Living, dying, creating, destroying. It's not something that I would first associate with the beauty of a flower. It's more like an irrepressible weed. But a weed does have its own kind of scrappy beauty. Its force is also a destructive force. I think vitality is what I' m trying to get at which is ironic because it started out as a sarcophagus! LW: How does this work differ from some of your recent projects such as Pulpit, which was the first major work of yours that I had seen and which I thought was fabulous? KJ: In Pulpit, I worked from a pre-existing type (a pulpit) and used it as an armature to experiment from. There was a platform, stair and canopy: it was pretty simple to work with. This piece actually started out as a sarcophagus, as I said. LW: Why did you change it? KJ: Partly because I was afraid that the method of working from a pre-existing type would become a crutch. I also realized I wasn't as pessimistic as I thought. The sarcophagus was about mourning. It was a reaction to the policies of the current administration. But after a certain point it no longer felt right. The whiff of defeat was too strong. It felt indulgent. I was better off projecting what I felt, the good as well as the bad. So then what? You look around and what do you see? The foxes are guarding the chicken coop. It's free-market economics as social policy (aka the law of the jungle). How surprised can we pretend to be? It's part of the national genome, the part that's always seen America as some libertarian arcadia. We've always been just that close to a deal with the devil. LW: You said that the title for this new work is "Crown jewel stolen from the King of Hell;" it seems your bud became a jewel. Why did you call it that? Is it another kind of deal with the devil?
KJ: Yeah, it's definitely related. The title is part of a line in Moby Dick. I like how it frames the question of right and wrong in a way that undercuts the simple answer. We believe stealing is wrong. But is it wrong to steal from the devil? I don't think the answer is an easy one. L w: You are also an architect. How does that influence and affect your sculptural work? Do you think of the two practices as distinct or are they interchangeable? Does one feed the other? KJ: For better or worse, I think I've always approached my art as if it were architecture. One result of this is a strong tendency to want to have everything figured out before I start. But it's a frus trating way to make art and I expend a lot of energy fighting this tendency. Increasingly, I try to play things more loosely but architecture was my training and remains a profession so it's been a hard thing to shake. For me, the two practices are interchangeable because the concerns are largely the same. For example, the language of steelwork in my pieces stems from traditional architectural concerns about the interplay between material, fabrication and form. The steelwork in this piece is intentionally shaggy in character. I do this in part because the shagginess mimics so many natural forms that I love. But it's also meant to serve as a counterpoint to the conceptual rigor of the system I've developed in response to these architectural traditions. It may add nothing to the viewer's experience to say that the entire steel construction was contiguous, cut from a single sheet of material. But that construction is the basis of its design and the source of its visual language. The dense visual patterning just happens to be the result of a game I've created for myself. L W: There seems to be a trend lately toward very intricate, labor-intensive work, the decorative as discourse. Your work seems part of that trend. Why does it appeal to you? What is the psychology of little pieces, of the cumulative? KJ: Well, for me, it's first a reaction against the suffocating reductivism of minimalism. For years I'd look at something like an Islamic pattern or a Gothic vault and regret the fact that they were something that was no longer permissible to make. It was looking at these things through modernist stric tures that dominated my training in architecture school. And then at some point my internal prohibition against such things gave way. At one level, this is what Pulpit was about. I actually forced myself to choose the more excessive and ornate route whenever I found myself facing a new decision in its development.
MISC. SKETCHES Mixed media on paper
It didn't always make for the best decision but it definitely helped to expand my range. Also, intricacy and
decoration are visually generous and appeal to the viewer. This kind of ornamentation is an expression of
love for what I do. That it's time-consuming means it's just more time spent being in love. And I think if
you really connect with a piece, that feeling is palpable and requited.
LW: Is what you envisioned what you have achieved? Is that possible?
KJ: No, I never really do, which is always bothersome. There's this thing inside of me that
I want to get out. And I'm convinced that I know what it is though my mind's eye doesn't even know what
it looks like. It makes no difference that this insistence lacks a credible basis, it remains all the same. But there is always the next piece.
CROWN JEWEL STOLEN FROM THE KING OF HELL. 2003-5 Composite image
CROWN JEWEL STOLEN FROM THE KING OF HELL, 2003-5 Composite image
CROWN JEWEL STOLEN FROM THE KING OF HELL, 2003-5 Aluminum, Steel, Acrylic. Ceramic, Concrete, Wood. Tax1derm1ed Badger, Neoprene 126" X 65" X 71"
CROWN JEWEL STOLEN FROM THE KING OF HELL, 2003-5 Aluminum, Steel, Aery 1c, Ceram c, Concrete, Wood, Taxiderm1ed Badger, Neoprene 126" X 65" X 71"
CROWN JEWEL STOLEN FROM THE KING OF HELL (DETAIL), 2003-5 A um,num, Steel. Aery ,c. Ceramic, Concrete, Wood. Tax dermied Badger, Neoprene 126" X 65" X 71"
CROWN JEWEL STOLEN FROM THE KING OF HELL (DETAIL), 2003-5 Aluminum, Steel, Acrylic, Ceramic, Concrete, Wood, Taxiderm1ed Badger, Neoprene 126" X 65" X 71"
CROWN JEWEL STOLEN FROM THE KING OF HELL (DETAIL), 2003-5 Aluminum, Steel. Acryl c. Ceramic, Concrete, Wood. Tax1derm1ed Badger, Neoprene 126" X 65" X 71"
PULPIT, 2001-2 Steel, Aluminum, Bronze, Neoprene, Plastic, Concrete, Ceramics, Paint 70" X 136" X 297"
PULPIT (DETAIL), 2001-2 Steel, Aluminum, Bronze, Neoprene, Plastic, Concrete, Ceramics. Paint 70" X 136" X 297"
PULPIT (DETAIL), 2001-2 Steel. Aluminum, Bronze, Neoprene, Plastic, Concrete, Ceramics, Pa nt 70" X 136" X 297"
BIOS
KARL JENSEN
Karl Jensen was born in Texas in 1964. He received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from Rice University in 1989 and a Master of Fine Arts in painting from Hunter College in 1994. His work has been shown recently at the Drawing Center in SoHo, and in the Working in Brooklyn exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. He has also earned a number of public art commissions including a current collaborative project for a footbridge in Phoenix, Arizona. Jensen is also an architect, and is a partner in the firm of Birds Portchmouth Russum Architects in London, England. Their work has been widely exhibited in Europe, including the Royal Academy in London and the Architekturemuseum in Basel, Switzerland. Jensen has received awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Archi tectural League of New York. His work as both an artist and an architect has been reviewed in Art in America, Architectural Record, The New York Times and The Village Voice. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. LILLY WEI
Lilly Wei is a New York-based independent curator, essayist and critic who writes for several publications in the United States and abroad. A frequent contributor to Art in America, she is a contributing editor at ARTnews and Art Asia Pacific. She has also been the essayist for many exhibition catalogues and brochures on contemporary art. Wei has served on numerous advisory panels and review committees, including the Pew Fellowship awards and is a member of several boards, including the International Association of Art Critics (AICA/USA), Art in General, and Art Omi, an inter national artist residency program. She has been a guest lecturer and visiting critic at art institutions nationally and internationally. One of her most recent large-scale curatorial projects was the exhibition, The Invisible Thread, Spirit of Buclclhisni in Contemporary Art, at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten Island, New York which was part of The Buddhist Project, a consortium of exhibitions and programs exploring Buddhist influence in contemporary American culture. She was also a curator of the first International Biennale of Lael;:, in Poland. Wei has an M.A. in art history from Columbia University.
ARTIST'S ACKNOWLEDGE MENTS This most recent piece was a two-year project that required help from a lot of people to complete. While there is not the space here to acknowledge all of their generosity I would like to thank the following people whose input was particularly important. First, Paul Gabrielli and Yasuko Shingu, who assisted me from almost the start. Their diligence, skill and creativity contributed immensely to the piece, and their cheery presence always made for a nice day at the studio. I also want to credit Paul for the great job he did in sculpting the skull and wig. Next I would like to thank Steve Mont gomery, who practically spoon-fed me the entire ceramic process in six weeks. He gave me clay and the use of his kiln, suffered my constant interruptions, offered endless advice and kept me on schedule. Thanks to my dad, Harold Jensen, who came to New York and lent his strength, expertise and general fatherly support to the installation. He never hesitated to dive into the next task, regardless of how arduous (or how great the promise of tetanus!). And finally I want to thank the CUE Art Foundation and Lilly Wei: CUE, for all of their help in preparing for the exhibit; and Lilly, who has been such a great supporter and backed me at a time when the piece was little more than a paper model.
CUE ART FOUNDATION MISSION CUE Art Foundation, a non-profit organization, provides educa
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
tional programs for young artists and aspiring art professionals in New York and from around the country.
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These programs draw on the unique community of artists, critics, and educators brought together by the
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Foundation's season of exhibitions, public lectures, and its in-gallery studio program. Gallery internships
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and stipends afford the next generation of art professionals intimate, working knowledge of the art-making
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and exhibition processes. CUE's 2000 sq. ft. gallery and offices, located in New York's Chelsea gallery district, serves as the base for the various educational programs conducted by CUE. The Foundation's exhibition season gives unknown or under-recognized artists profes
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sional exposure comparable to that offered by neighboring commercial galleries, without the usual
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financial restraints. CUE does not promote a particular school of artistic practice or regional bias; we only
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require that exhibiting artists must either not have had a solo exhibition in a commercial venue, or have
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received minimal recent public exposure.
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CUE's Advisory Council, an honorary group of artists and leading figures from the arts
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education, applied arts, art history, and literary communities, has the responsibility of selecting exhibition
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curators. The curators, in turn, nominate artists to exhibit at CUE, and continue to play a role throughout
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the exhibition process, helping the artists catalogue their work for exhibition. Both the Advisory Council and the exhibition curators actively participate in the public lectures and educational programs.
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Beatrice Wolert-Weese Al artwork © Karl Jensen Photographs © Lyd a Gould Bessler Catalog designed by Elizabeth Ell s
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