| i s s u e |
002
| a p r i l |
2012
a r t i s t henry gunderson billy buck emily haasch regin igloria andrew mongenas alli rooney jason gowans molly brandt wyatt grant blake daniels
They Left Him Dead and Dying 2012 Oil on canvas 44�x60� Blake Daniels
t a b l e t o p
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a p r i l
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h e n r y
g u n d e r s o n henrygunderson.tumblr.com
“painter” by Paul McCarthy
where would you find yourself on any given Sunday around 3pm?
church aka my studio
what was the first thing you stole?
a handful of candy
which fictional character do you find yourself relating to the most?
what’s your comfort food?
it doesnt comfort me to think about the amount of pizza i eat
everlasting influences?
☯
Linear Situation 2011 Mixed media on paper
Shallow Space 2010 Acrylic and fabric dye on canvas
Circle of Life 2011 Colored pencil and acrylic on paper
Plaque 2011 Colored pencil and acrylic on paper
Light Weight Imbalance 2010 Acrylic and fabric dye on canvas
b i l l y
b u c k billybuck.net
I don’t know if I have an answer for that.
where would you find yourself on any given Sunday around 3pm?
Mostly likely researching, going to hunt for a specific site or thing to photograph, or making still life studies inside. I think of Sundays as my down time -- letting loose whilst making work, I think that is an important thing. Oh, and posting new images and influences on tumblr or updating my website. Having a presence outside of my cave-like working environment(s) allows for my work to develop and to be more thoroughly understood -- as direct meaning is not really an immediate concern in my images.
what was the first thing you stole?
I ran into 7-11 when I was about 6, my mom bought me a scratch off lottery ticket. I came out of the store with 4 gummy worms in the pocket of my jeans and began to eat them in the car -- my mom of course was furious, yet i won $40 on the scratch off ticket. Guess what I bought? A potato gun which I used to shoot at cars, from a tree.
which fictional character do you find yourself relating to the most?
what’s your comfort food?
Mashed potatoes with A-1 steak sauce, does the trick.
everlasting influences?
Artifice, the 1980’s, suburban environments, the awkwardness of B-movies.
Pink Bat 2011 Archival inkjet print 40”x30”
Self portrait (slippers) 2012 Archival inkjet print 26�x18.5�
Untitled 2010 Archival inkjet print 16.5�x20�
Monolith 2012 Archival inkjet print 24�x20�
CoCo 2012 Archival inkjet print 15.5”x20”
e m i l y
I don’t know if there is one I can relate to one off the top of my head, but I’ve always been fascinated with Stephen Dedalus.
what was the first thing you stole?
where would you find yourself on any given Sunday around 3pm?
Wandering in my distractions and appreciating the light of day.
emilyhaasch.com
which fictional character do you find yourself relating to the most?
A breath.
h a a s c h
what’s your comfort food?
Venison and biscuits.
everlasting influences?
Poetry, letterforms, and the rhythm of street diction. The Lake. The lucidity of eyes, the gregariousness of smiles, and the various colors of gray. A stable, flexible series of systems. Mi madre, mi padre.
Nest 2012
Jimmy 2012
Ken 2012
Offline 2012
Ceremony 2012
r e g i n
i g l o r i a reginigloria@gmail.com
Max Rockatansky
where would you find yourself on any given Sunday around 3pm?
Making books
what was the first thing you stole?
2 x 4s from a Dominick’s construction site to build a skateboard ramp
which fictional character do you find yourself relating to the most?
what’s your comfort food?
Anything made at home by loved ones
everlasting influences?
California, Willa Cather, Vija Celmins, Colorado, Melissa Jay Craig, Guillermo Delgado, Guerrilla Girls, Tehching Hsieh, Japan, David Jones, Alex Kotlowitz, LaBagh Woods, Lake Michigan, Lawrence Avenue, Marwen, National Parks, Orange, The Pacific Northwest, Patagonia, My Parents, The Prairie, Ed Ruscha, Safety Vests, Charles Schulz, Siblings, Students, Subaru, Sunrise/Sunset, Thoreau ,Weather
Print 1
Hanging Basket Portland to Hood Portland to Hood (Right)
Sandbag Series 1
Hills
a n d r e w
what was the first thing you stole?
where would you find yourself on any given Sunday around 3pm?
Skateboarding with friends, scouring the local thrift store- searching the alleys near my house – or working in the shop.
which fictional character do you find yourself relating to the most?
Hot Wheels. I was learning sleight of hand pretty young.
what’s your comfort food?
Chili and spaghetti. Ice cream. Whisky.
everlasting influences?
andrewmongenas.blogspot.com
MacGyver. Knowledge of materials and conditions can get you out of sticky situations.
m o n g e n a s
Science. Vehicles. Antiques. Folk art. Cartoons. Minimalism. Nature. Humor.
Nice Dream 2011 Mattress padding and acrylic on wood veneer 32”x42”
Polycrux 2011 Plastics with zip-ties on wooden and brick base 17”x12”
Table for two (indexical still life) 2011 Packaging foam, laminate, Gold Foil, stickers, and acrylic on felt on board. 12”x16”
Site Unseen 2011 Plastics glass and wood on board 24”x30”
Untitled 2011 Acrylic on wood with steel wire 24”x36”
a l l i
r o o n e y allirooney.com
Probably Snow White. We both love animals and cleaning all of the time.
where would you find yourself on any given Sunday around 3pm?
Taking a break from everything and avoiding homework. The past few Sundays I’ve been enjoying the great weather and going to the dog park nearby to watch all of the cuteness.
what was the first thing you stole?
After watching the movie “Thirteen,” my best friend and I thought it would be super cool to steal a pair of earrings from Claire’s, like Evan Rachel Wood did in the movie. I did it, but then put them back an hour later because I was so paranoid of getting caught.
which fictional character do you find yourself relating to the most?
what’s your comfort food?
Mashed potatoes. Definitely.
everlasting influences?
My home in Georgia, the color photography class I took with Brian Ulrich, nature, my family, old photos found in thrift or vintage stores, meeting William Eggleston at the AIC, road trips.
Park
Trash at Garfield
Majd
Beehive Amicalola Falls (Left)
j a s o n
g o w a n s jasongowans.com
which fictional character do you find yourself relating to the most?
Garfield, because I’m unfunny, lazy, and eat too much
When I was young I used to go to the corner store and steal candy all the time. I probably should have gotten caught because I’m the least inconspicuous person in the world but thankfully, I didn’t. These days I just stick to fooling the self- check out at the grocery store.
where would you find yourself on any given Sunday around 3pm?
Distilling. Sunday is my distillation day. I’ve been working on a new project that involves make rum, whiskey and vodka. Every Sunday I distill for 10 – 12 hours. It usually gives me about 4 liters of hard alcohol.
what was the first thing you stole?
what’s your comfort food?
Beer with tomato juice, lime, and hot sauce. It’s not really a food but I can drink enough that it fills me up!
everlasting influences?
All images apart of the series Google Image Search: “May 1968 France” 2010
m o l l y
b r a n d t molly-brandt.tumblr.com
which fictional character do you find yourself relating to the most?
The girl in the horror movie that survives
what was the first thing you stole?
When I was little I use to play on this pyramid statue at night, a chunk of shiny black marble fell off and I took it home
where would you find yourself on any given Sunday around 3pm?
Making breakfast or making work
what’s your comfort food?
Double bacon cheeseburgers
everlasting influences? Staring out windows, flashing lights, telescopes, magnifying glasses, fog projectors, trains, the moment a plane takes off, and the bizarre city of St. Louis which I am from
Pavement 2011
Untitled 2011
Block 2011
Night Sky 2011
Wish You Were Here 2011
w y a t t
g r a n t wyattgrant.com
Paddington Bear, Wyatt from Weird Science or the kid from Jungle to Jungle.
where would you find yourself on any given Sunday around 3pm?
In the studio or listening to records in my room.
what was the first thing you stole?
A green ballpoint pen.
which fictional character do you find yourself relating to the most?
what’s your comfort food?
PB&J or Memphis BBQ.
everlasting influences?
Matisse, Marcel Dzama, Jesse Carsten, Stan Douglas, Garrett Durant, etc.
Fox Hunt 2011 46” x 53” Oil on canvas
Shirt 2010 22” x 15” Screenprint on paper
Fragmented Face 2012 15� x 19� Oil and enamel on plaster, mounted on wood
Cards 2011 22” x 30” Screenprint on paper
Autumn w/ Drawings 2011 Screenprint on fabric
b l a k e
d a n i e l s
blakedaniels.com
conversation with blake daniels
t t z: So do you want to introduce yourself? b d: My name is Blake Daniels. I’m a painter, well right now, it probably won’t be that way forever. Artist in Chicago. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio.
t t z: Looking at a lot of your work, there seems to be a lot of reference or use of figures; your titles suggest some sort of character or story, like Ag Pleez Deddy or They Left Him Dead and Dying. Who are these characters that you are painting? b d: There’s definitely a meta-narrative behind the abstractions, figures and landscapes. A lot of it has to do with my own personal history. I need placeholders to understand how things are working around me. Almost all of the landscape paintings are based off of mental spaces, of townships, of Mamelodi township and the spatial structure of Gauteng, South Africa. It’s so overloaded with information that there really is no more room for its population, and then you inject three million people in it. It’s so dense. As soon as you do that, everything starts to collapse in on itself, it’s something that I started to notice, when a space can no longer hold what’s placed within it. The space becomes anxious. You exist in a state of slippage, when all sense of direction and time and space is lost. In the two bigger paintings, Ag Pleez Deddy and They Left Him Dead and Dying, I’m reflecting on a series of events and meetings in Ousaka, Mamelodi with a boy named Kenneth, who had been subjected to an intense amount of physical neglect. So it was this grappling with, and unfolding of this relationship with him [Kenneth] and the realizing that I had a return ticket to the states and had to walk away. The paintings then weave a narrative by using Eugène Terre’Blanche, who was the leader of the white supremacist movement (AWB) in South Africa and was murdered two years ago. I began to use his body as a placeholder for all of these personal traumas. For example, the murder was especially sinister, you know, with such a brutal act having a plausible positive outcome.
Midnight Train to Jozi (or) Johannesburg, Wake.... Up 2011 Acrylic and urethane on monotype 22�x30�
t t z: These political undertones become of great interest. Your work references South Africa, which I can assume from past discussions that you’ve spent a good time staying in. Can you talk about how this South African perspective, per say, proliferates your work, especially in the titles and your text piece. Do you want to avoid that? d b: These social and ethical politics and poetics are something that have to be addressed, especially for me personally. Not necessarily just in context with South Africa, but as far as me mapping my own kind of trajectory and rhizomatic stream of consciousness. This is applicable whether it be within my own family, within my own inherited histories, and my agency to redraft and rebuild them. I think a lot of it has to do with working through issues regarding myself and family by removing them, or fracturing them in my work. This gives me to the space to contemplate, redraft, and question them. Those works are still a little too intimate to stand as large political polemics. That is, even though they are political in nature, they are not paintings about politics.
Brother, We are One (Ibeji #2) 2011 Monotype 22�x30�
Dumb City 2011 Acrylic and urethane on monotype 18”x26”
t t z: So a lot of these are very personal, trying to connect, and deal with larger political overtones in an intimate way with your body? b d: Yes, they use the body as a carapace or map, evokes multiple things that are crossing paths within it. That’s why I was using Terre’Blanche. When I was doing my research on Terre’Blanche, there was this strange feeling of injustice towards him: here’s this horrible guy that lead the white supremacist party in South Africa, and yet here is this empathy and sadness for him because he was brutalized, hacked up and left with his pants around his ankles. They Left Him Dead and Dying is an actual painting of the murder scene of Eugene Terre’Blanche. It’s also an actual painting of my first meeting with Kenny. There’s this strange thing that happens when the image and feelings towards Terre’Blanche, Kenny, myself and my own family begin to coelesque and forget their own origins. I have uncles and cousins who are in jail for various reasons, and there’s kind of this anger at some of my own pathological histories, like growing up around my poor Irish family, while existing myself in the Cincinnati suburbs. I always had the option to be Irish, American, Ohioan, male, there, here, other, other other etc. There were also grevious implications for these decisions I could make for myself. So a lot of it has to do with using Terre’Blanche’s body to explore that outside of my body, to then locate my own self within a socio-historical spatial stratus.
t t z: How do you think then moving to Chicago, which has struggled with many similar issues, has affected your work? Do you think it has progressed because of Chicago or is something of a non-issue? b d: When I moved to Chicago, it was literally four days after my last stay in South Africa. My head was in a whirlwind. I had guilt, remorse, exitement, anticipation, desire, regret. I had to leave Kenny and a place I had embraced as home for something that now seemed totally foreign. I had to go through a stage of reconfiguring my own axioms of truth; my own rule sets to manage the world, and therefore worked against strong social connection. In my work I began to push back disallowing any points of access for people, with-holding information and putting the viewer in the place where they felt all these emotional and physical impulses, the kinds of physiological happenings that take place when you’re looking at a dead or dying body. But at the same time, giving them a gleam of hope. This quickly gives in to impotence as in the end you realize there is nothing you can actually do to help. So in those paintings, I’m using this inorganic palette, it’s really vibrant. I’m playing with pigments that have a placidity to them. I call them bubble gum colors. It’s quite unsettling in opposition to an organic palwete that would give an expected mood appropriate for having this dead body presented in front of you. It’s something that I’m beginning to push away from. At the beginning of my practice, I would present you with this palette, as a means of saying “Look! It’s not all going to end; it’s not all hopeless,” but at the same time I’m not going to give you any access to actually redeem or save that body. You know that Terre’Blanche is going to die. That your going to die. That I’ll die too. And someone else will view that. The viewer has to go through that trauma. t t z: Going back to the figures, there’s this presence of something or someone, a ghostly presence. Can you talk about that? b d: You’ll notice in Ag Pleez Deddy, there’s a reference to specters, ghosts, haunting the body. It really comes down to this idea of the haunting of my own past. The ghosts are ambivalent. My history is erased. My parents brought us out of the Cincinnati ghettos and put us in the suburbs. So there is an apathy developed with that kind of erasure. It also allowed me to have free movement across time frames, historical frames, and geographical frames. But it’s not so much ghosts in that trivial way we think of, like white apparitions. Though I do love the humor and poetics of such illustration. Rather they are phenomological specters existing in a mental space. They leave me always questioning their source. What happens when the ghost of a country occupies the body of Eugene Terre’Blanche? What happens when my ghost haunts him? It becomes this disturbing thing. A presence of this person that’s about to fall apart. And there’s no reconciling or rebuilding the pieces. There’s no closure. Their can’t be a whole again. A proliferating anxiety that can’t be put to rest, like Apartheid in South Africa, the race riots of Cincinnati, my alcoholic grandfather. I’m not to say these events all carry the same weight, but instead prove to show the striation of injustice from a national to domestic stratum, and the long lasting effects they have upon the body. It’s this ghost that is overshadowing the nation state. This has real implications though, as seen in poverty and crime, spatial inequity and unjust wealth distribution. But flowers always grow up from the cemetery, food to tease the palette after the funeral.
t t z: Do you think that’s why you make work that is more geared towards the “West”? Is it to help tie in your personal traumas? b d: Not just that, but as much as it’s about South Africa, it has nothing to do with South Africa. Living in the termed “West” now too, it is impossible to not pull and add too it. I am American, I am from Ohio, and this can’t be overshadowed. There’s no reason for me to deny my upbringing, if even as a placeholder for something else. It’s using this perspective to gain another perspective from South Africa. This is important. Each painting is composed of just this, a multitude of perspectives from which to view a singular event. It all becomes self reflective for both me and the viewer. Terre’Blanche’s body also takes on a father role, and oppressive father. One that represents the shadows in one’s closets, a past era you can’t get away from. Putting him in the United States, brings forth a whole new narrative, possibility and chance of further injustice. It becomes a social exploration and exploitation. By personally moving my body to South Africa, I’ve gained insight from the outside, you see. By using media and telecommunications, I’m able to look back. I’m able to trace these fleeting connections, and reassemble as I see best fit.
t t z:Where does the title Ag Pleez Deddy come from? b d: It’s a lyric from an Afrikaans folk song from the 1960s. The song reminisces this vindictive “golden age” of when the white ruling class had total supremacy, a sadly ubiquitous historical story. The lyrics “Ag Pleez Deddy, how I miss nigger balls and licorice,” describe idealized “fetish objects” of the privileged that have obvious racial undertones. It’s this really politically-incorrect song that goes back to this ambivalence and self-indulgence that was the attitude during colonialism. There’s this genuine heart about missing these childhood things, even with the negative social political context. Its honest, yet vile, at least in looking back now, almost inhuman. I often think by means of negation, a ‘no-zone’, where everything that I understand is through understanding what it isn’t. Ag Pleez Deddy in one frame touches on that absent yet malevolent father, and that child’s longing, even for what may be detrimental. It’s like being your fathers beer runner as a child. You knew it could only have a negative effect on him, but still it served as a mediator to be physically close, if even for a moment.
t t z: Which ties into They Left Him Dead and Dying. b d: Yes, that one has to do with the gaze, sitting and watching a person pass on, impotent to action. Then being able to walk away and continue with life. It deals with my own family and Kenny, specifically having been with him for my last days in South Africa, unable to find any semblance of remedy, to have to literally walk away. I don’t know what happened to him, I don’t know if he’s alive or dead. The time shared changed everything; this spectator, this haunting, this ghostly being. Also, the painting relates the body of Terre’Blanche once more to the body of Steve Biko, who was a South African beaten and killed by the governmental police during Apartheid. I was thinking about Sam Nhlengethwa’s painting They Left Him Cold and Dying, which the title references to. Terre’Blanche and Biko, both South Africans, both with a cause, both slain and left naked. I couldn’t think of a more chilling poetic echo.
Ag Pleez Deddy 2012 Oil on canvas 44”x60”
Sister, I Implore You (Ibeji #1) 2011 Urethane on monotype 22”x30”
t t z: Do you think you want the viewers to reflect how far they can insert themselves into these bodies, into the work? b d: Definitely. In Ag Pleez Deddy and They Left Him Dead And Dying it’s about the apathetic gaze, the staring because you have to look at something, simply and forthrightly. For example, one must only think on the fallacy and detriment the gaze has casted on the black body. This is a body that hasn’t been pushed to extinction but has been through trauma; raped, enslaved, beaten, marginalized. This isn’t exhaustive. One feels guilty right, if not for their own history or apathy then just for looking. We want to reach out a hand but it’s only going to go so far. It’s always going to come back to this self-beneficiary state of action, because we know instinctually that if you extend it at full reach it might lock, and you may be on the ground next. This serves as a detrimental level of disconnect. Now I’m trying to move beyond that and figure out ways of reconnecting. You have to be able to find agency or access within the figure. Here then the viewer begins to question the space and the perspective, their frame of reference, in which to access not just the issue’s we’re raising now, but their disposition upon the world.
t t z: Is that your next step? b d: Yeah it is. Like Picasso’s Guernica tries to embody all that is wrong, the entire trauma, all that is bad in the world. Even though it’s originally about a singular town, it has become this monolith, depicting the state of depravity innate within humanity. Same as Guston, who has this great quote that talks about when reading news on the Vietnam war, suddenly ones decision between blue and red is somewhat silly and foolish. The stakes at play are suddenly washed away. It’s this ambivalence that happens when suddenly you have all these information networks, events, and feeds converging in time and space. It forces you to ingest it all, while equivalently expunging it out of yourself.
I only have one language, it is not mine. No amount of “rainbow nation” rhetoric, never mind the troubadour who calls on the ghost of a general to come back and liberate his people, can cause It then to migrate.Transcribed. You know about the stones, the utterance, I shall lead you away to the voices of Estremadura. Offer this song I use to sing as a child, a welcome to the cheeky doge. Here is your knife. This animal, which is quite unhistorical, remind him what his existence fundamentally is. A Mickey Mouse party. Das Schibboleth, hinaus in die Fremde der Heimat, the first animal to die in orbit. A city whom seems to have forgotten its own first name. For the men who devour the vast landscape, the operating system development of low-penis, I wet the fate of my f ather hungrily. Ag pleez Deddy, how we miss neggarballs and licorice, Dubhula I’bunu, fettered tothe moment and its pleasure or displeasure. I am monolingual, never will this language be mine, and truth to tell, it never was. Its flesh at last inlaid in the horizons of speech. It then – migrate. Transcribed. Today and forever.
Text #1 in Conjunction with Photo Farm 2012 Writings and found photos
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t t z: What was the first thing you stole? b d: My mother’s sanity. No, no. The first thing I can remember was this little army soldier from my best friend Cole back in Ohio. I nabbed it from his closet one day and threw it in a pocket. It was weird because I would flaunt it at him but I would change things so he didn’t know it was his. We would be hanging out, playing with action figures and I would pull the army man out but dressed with clothes off a Ken doll so he would never recognize it. It comes back to this guilt and constant skepticism, but desire also. A need to manipulate a given social situation. These are questions I am always processing, like feeling bad about steeling something, but remediating that guilt quickly. Then questioning the possibilities now at play.
The Seventh Village of Ghost 2011 Acrylic and urethane on monotype 22”x30”
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