Interviews

Earlier this week I posted an email interview with Matt Crookshank, who is showing with Lisa Pereira at Gallery 61 until July 3. This is the interview with her I mentioned would be upcoming. I first met Lisa two years ago, the same night that Andrew Harwood asked me to be part of the Michael Jackson show that he curated with Lex Vaughan and which got a lot of press. In almost every review – which seemed to be in every paper – Lisa’s video was mentioned, which was a surprising accomplishment for someone who at the time had told me wasn’t sure if she’d flunked out of OCAD or not. (In the end she did have to take a year off due to academic probation, and is due to graduate next year).

Lisa’s video consists of porn culled from various sources and as I describe below, a sampling of different perversions and fetishes. The most amazing thing about it for me was that I learned that it is possible for someone to fuck themselves.

Here’s her PR:

12 Signs of the Apocalypse Lisa Pereira 2005
This video provides 12 Zodialogical pearls of wisdom and is the Kama
Sutra of the 21st century (and not as boring). Like a diver finding
a filthy oyster at the bottom of a sewage treatment plant, this video
will certainly pay off in the long run (whatever that means).

And given that we have Google Ads running on this site, I think I should mention that whatever twisted links come up via the keywords in this post are to be followed at your own risk.

——————

Your video piece, described as a Kama Sutra for the 21st Century, really seems to be a exploration of what most people call perverse. Indeed, many people didn’t want to watch your video twice, although I question what kind of wild stuff they might have on their hardrives. Do you think that the reluctance to watch your video more than once has more to do with not wanting to experience perversion in public, amongst others, or because they were really turned off and disgusted?

With regards to why people may only watch my video once I can only suggest the following two scenarios:

1.) People don’t really watch the same thing twice (particularly video art which is often difficult enough the first time around).

2.) People feel compelled to mimic disgust in front of each other, lest the public assume that they are familiar with, or even enjoy, the particular sex acts described in the video.

I don’t think the material in the video is disgusting nor do I care whether people think I participate in the activities illustrated. They probably think I do, because a lot of people have asked me which sign I am. For the record I’m a Leo, the fisting sign.

And, I’m sure there will be some people who might be turned on by some of the footage and feel the need to have a jerk off about it later on and I think that’s swell.

The found footage in the video is stuff I downloaded off the internet. Anyone with access to a computer has access to the same images. The things I shot myself are so over-the-top and unbelievable that it’s more funny (I hope) then disgusting.

Your cynical approach comes off as an intelligent response rather than just being a wanker, which is a fine balancing act that you pull off well. I find myself amused by your work rather than annoyed. But I wonder, would you ever see yourself making bourgeois-beauty Sarah-McLachlan-like videos featuring flowers and fairies? Or are you committed to exposing the sick underbelly of society forever?

I don’t like Sarah McLachlan or the kind of lame aesthetic her music videos ape, but if I were offered some cash, would I make that kind of work? You bet.

I wouldn’t necessarily be good at it but if the price were right why not? I would take that money and put it into the stuff that I really wanted to make. Better me then some other lame director who’s gonna take that kind of shit seriously and then make some horrible ‘art film’ that I will undoubtedly have to sit through at an equally boring film festival.

And if you knew some of the jobs I’ve had, in the grand scheme of things, making bad music videos would be one of the least evil things I’ve had to do. Who knows, maybe there’s some way I could slip in a few subliminal messages. Like those Coke machines with naked ladies on them.

Anyway, people who work on Canadian music videos get paid in peanuts, probably in Sara McLachlan’s case I’d get paid in free maxis, those horrible pillow-like ones you get at the dollar store so I’d probably say no fucking way you stupid, stupid bitch.

Do you consider it sick at all?

There are sicker things out there. During the making of that video I watched a lot of shit eating. And I’m not talking about a nibble on some cute little poodle poo in Pink Flamingos, I’m talking about squatting over some girl’s mouth and emptying your bowels into her eager craw. And I couldn’t put it in the video. Not because it was revolting (which it was) but because I just couldn’t make it funny. I’m not trying to shock people and gross them out. I’m just interested in people’s sick and disgusting turn-ons.

I can see why a lot of those things might be sexy to someone even though they don’t directly turn me on. I don’t think sex shocks people anymore. Shit eating is sick but it’s kind of funny to think about. It’s unpleasant for me and maybe other people because I don’t find anything sexy about it but obviously someone does because there is no shortage of shit sex sites on the internet and elsewhere so someone’s paying for this stuff and it isn’t just perverts like me (besides, I found a all of it for free). Faking it was way funnier then actually seeing it.

You’ve made other work that seems to explore perversion – notably your vampire video featuring the liver. Why are you interested in the degradations of sex (as opposed to celebrating it or whatever else one might do?)

The vampire film was actually a cannibal film called Lesbian Cannibal (get it? she “eats” her out). There are already a lot of crappy Hollywood movies that celebrate love and sex and romance and all that stuff. Crappier still are the Hollywood movies that are supposed to be titillating and controversial but don’t discuss sex in a way that people do all the time.

Also, if one wants to jerk off, there are a variety of websites and video and magazine stores to provide you with countless hours of beat-off material. That video was about having casual sex in the midst of post-aids tension, where a single encounter could potentially kill you, but then I didn’t want to make some tragic piece about living with aids.

Matching up perversions with the signs of the zodiac was a really good idea. Was it inspired by something real? Like, where you ever involved with a nasty Pisces?

The use of the zodiac is actually based on a record called Blowfly Zodiac. For each Zodialogical sign Blowfly rearranges classic soul tracks so that they are very sexually explicit and funny. It’s a sweet little record. I don’t know anything about astrology but I liked the idea of making arbitrary connections to each sign according to some weird sex thing I was thinking about. For a mix tape of Blowfly email me at lisa@sisboombah.ca

Tim what sign are you?

I’m Aquarius

—————————

Diamonds in the Ruff continues at Gallery 61 (61 Ossington Ave) until July 3. Gallery hours: fri 7-10pm, sat 1-6pm or by appointment.

Image from the invite

Matt Crookshank currently has a show on right now with Lisa Pereira (interview with her to come) at Gallery 61, entitled, Diamonds in the Ruff and which runs until July 3. It is easily some of the most unique work out there at the moment, and so I sent Matt some questions.

Before we begin, here’s the PR Matt sent out last week in preparation for the last Friday’s opening:

“5 Chimera Love Paintings Matt Crookshank 2005
Chimera Love, so addicting. Love Bites! Like Pandora’s Box, the
devil in Miss Jones, these dirty slut paintings are prepared for you,
but are you prepared for them? Drenched in sin, decadence and
debauchery, they are the best kind of poison. Drink and be
imprisoned in the cage with golden bars.”

“Shade 1-3 revisited Matt Crookshank 2005
A shade is the insubstantial remains of the dead, a phantom without a
body or the power of thought. When hung together, these paintings
create a temporary window through which one can view Hades without
having to actually stay there for eternity.”
One of the viewers said that the circles looked like old used condoms. When I asked you about it, you said that to you they were like pockets of energy emerging between the branes of the multiverse of String Theory. Do you think this reflects some kind of fractal of reality, as a dried condom is in a way, a pocket of (captured) energy?

And, was she right-on, considering these were the Chimera love, ‘dirty slut’ paintings? (weren’t they?)

I loved her association to dirty condoms. I’m definitely interested in skins, and membranes, and fluidity in between structures. I find all of that rather sensual, and somehow almost ‘sinful’. There’s something so decadent about tubing out entire tubes of paint onto your canvas. It’s gratuitous. And when the varnish breaks through the tubed dikes, and slides all over the canvas against my will… oh my god…

You’ve told me in the past that this style of yours, with circles and squiggles are inspired by String Theory, are these:
a) concrete representations of something abstract,
b) concrete representations of a concrete reality,
c) abstract representations of a concrete reality,
d) abstract representations of an abstract reality?

e) None of the above. My paintings are not representations of anything. They are something. Certainly there are ideas in them from String Theory, and from other sources. But they are not illustrations of String Theory. They are cohesive and total power magic spells and they are designed to effect people and create changes.

I want you to talk about the ‘failure’ stuff, and this whole thing about being disgusting. I don’t really see the paintings as particularly gross – I see an interplay between materials, but they aren’t what we’d easily call beautiful. One pocket of yellow and red reminded people of a pussy sore, as if that’s the only thing that red and yellow can suggest. What’s going into your colour choices? Are the red and yellow here not related to fire, to being a window into Hades/Hell?

It depends on how you define ‘disgusting’. I think something that is gratuitous is often disgusting. Too much of something becomes gross. Do you ever have a moment when you get too turned on maybe? Or too titillated? Too aroused? And then it all comes crashing down cause it’s too much. When there’s been too much suspense and the illusion breaks. I love that line, that moment when it goes from beauty to horror. I like to make my paintings play that line.

As far as colours being representations of fire, no. My colour choices generally just pop into my head when I look at a canvas. It just says ‘I need some red’ or whatever. My paintings aren’t representations of anything, not in the way that they’re painted anyway. And they’re also not symbolic – I loathe symbolism. So speak and say. Yuck.

My paintings are magic spells. I know that sounds sort of simple, like I’m some kind of village idiot, but it’s true.

I love abstract paintings because you can allow them to become these organic systems, and before you know it they’ve gotten away from you and taken on a life of their own. They each have their own energy, and they are meant to make people change. When I write about my paintings raising hell, or creating world peace, or starting revolution, of course that’s all tongue in cheek. I know that my paintings probably won’t do any of those things. I can’t be totally sure of it, and I certainly am thinking and dreaming rather seriously about those kinds of ideas while I paint, but I’m aware that most of the time they will fail in my more grandiose magic casting intentions.

But this general idea, that a painting can make something tangible happen, that I have seen with my own eyes. I know how paintings can change people, and how they can open minds. There is a very real energy in painting, and it translates to the viewer. You can make someone change, you can affect their mind, and you can create all kinds of effects. Right now, I might not be causing reckless debauchery and dementia through my paintings, but one day! Just you wait.

Obviously chance is playing a part of the process, so I wonder how much you try to control, and if you do any editing after the fact, in case it didn’t turn out like you hoped.

How can you edit poured varnish? It does whatever it wants. The other elements in my paintings are extremely controlled. The painted lines are details of sketches or strokes with my computer mouse. Sometimes I lay out compositions in Photoshop. I build a very strict structure, a foundation, for the varnish to flirt with. Once I lay the varnish, I’m introducing the liquid, the fuel, and the fluid that works inside the structure. It’s the contrast of these two simple things that really lets the paintings take off. I love the varnish because from then on, the paintings pretty much paint themselves. It’s not ‘my free subconscious expression’ and it’s not something I compose and control. It’s actually something entirely random. Of course I mix in whatever colours I want, but this varnish is so unpredictable, even after 5 years using it I can’t know what it will do.

Let’s talk about abstraction. What do you enjoy about it?

Abstract painting is the most difficult thing to do well. It is so easy to make terrible abstract paintings, but it is so very hard to make extremely powerful and overwhelming abstract art.

I love that abstract painting is such a degraded art form. It went from the highest of high art with abstract expressionism, to (what it seems to be now in Toronto) the most reviled and abhorred practice. Especially from the context of a straight white male. How predictable!

Of course, the rest of the world is way ahead of Toronto on this. Abstraction is so exciting right now. There is so much innovation, and it’s really able to capture and translate the complex myriad structures we now live in so effectively. In Toronto though, it seems like people are still stuck in the 90s, still so embarrassed by abstract painting.

Still, people just don’t seem to know how to deal with it. They keep looking for a way to ‘read’ it, to force a narrative. Whether that’s the tired narrative of formalism, or the cliché of pure expression. So many people seem so at a loss. It’s so much easier to look at badly drawn cartoon art, which is a blight upon Toronto right now.

When will that shit die and go away?? If I were to draw or paint cartoons, I’d become a graphic novelist. That’s something you can respect! But how can anyone respect an artist’s stoner sketches, pinned up on a wall? A narrative no deeper than loose nostalgic empathy, maybe with a bit of irony and sarcasm thrown in. Barf.

Abstract painting is fucking HARD. It challenges me. Once you’ve really allowed a painting to come to life, and it starts to tell you what do paint next, that’s when you’ve really gotten somewhere. You’re out of your own head, and you’re into some kind of new territory where you’re forced to respond and be inventive and problem-solve. I had a fantasy once of curating an abstract art show, and forcing all these conceptual artists, and cartoon drawers, and realist painters and photographers to make abstract paintings. Because it is, to my mind, so much more of a challenge than other art practices.

I know I’m sounding totally pretentious right now, but really think about it? There’s nothing else to grab a hold of. No narrative, no figure, no ground, no concept. You have to make the painting speak on its own. And I’m not talking ‘art for art’s sake’ here. I mean you have to make it really talk to people, to make them change. I’ve seen it with so many people, getting excited and turned on in front of my paintings. High is the new low.

Abstract painting is the most difficult of all art forms to perfect. It’s like poetry. Listening to most poetry is like living a nightmare. But every now and then someone is so good, that it makes you forget about every shitty bad piece of poetry you’ve ever read or heard in you life. Abstract painting is the same way. It’s terrible – 99% of it is terrible. Because it’s so HARD. So much art I see my peers in Toronto making right now, it’s so easy to produce. It’s a quick idea. A one off joke. No commitment. It can be very quirky and fun, certainly. But I don’t know how that can be fulfilling. There’s no daring, no chance, no allowing for chaos and then dealing with what comes next.

————————–

Diamonds in the Ruff continues at Gallery 61 (61 Ossington Ave) until July 3. Gallery hours: fri 7-10pm, sat 1-6pm or by appointment

Matt is also currently showing at Solo Exhibition (Barr Gilmore’s storefront window space) at 787 Queen West. That piece is called Chimera Cesspool (of Sin) which consists of oil and varnish on glass. Solo Exhibition runs from one full moon to the next, and so that show ends on July 20 (the day they landed on the moon!)

Images from Matt’s website, www.mattcrookshank.com

Now that winter is but a memory for another few months, it’s safe to exhibit its images I suppose, without the groan of ennui that sets in come March. Opening at Katherine Mulherin’s gallery on Friday is a show by Mike Bayne, the PR for which reads:

“Mike Bayne’s paintings are an exercise in photo-realism. His works are painted in the genre associated with the seventeenth century Dutch school of painting. His work is a study in the effects of natural versus artificial light, and an attempt to convey a sense of human absence and isolation. Mostly, though, the paintings address the banal or commonplace objects and spaces of everyday life, and demonstrate how under close examination they are transformed. His most recent work depicts an isolated Canadian winter landscape.”

I first encountered Mike Bayne’s work with the show he had last year at Mulherin’s, consisting of interior scenes mostly of the kitchen from what I remember. A few months later, I saw a piece, a winter scene, which quite literally blew my mind. I gasped thinking I was looking at a Vermeer, which is understandable since Bayne is consciously trying to work that way. At the time, I thought of an article I first read a couple of years ago, written by a British curator (Julian Spalding) who, while coming across as a stodgy old conservative, nevertheless articulated the ‘anti-post-modernism’ backlash that began to appear in online 2003, which I understand to be a way for this decade to define itself against the fashions of yesteryear, yesterdecade, and yestercentury. In the article, he stated:

“Looking at a great work of art makes one feel more fully aware of one’s thoughts yet no longer wearied by them, more exposed to one’s emotions yet no longer drained by them, more integrated, more composed – more, in a word, conscious. It is the light of consciousness that great works ignite in our minds. ”

Or, as Donald Kuspit wrote in 1999, bemoaning the tired old avant-garde (a term, we should remember, that comes from the era of World War I), and the rise of the ‘New Old Materism’:

“The attempt to create beauty as perfectly as possible has led these artists to emphasize craft — not at the expense of vision, but as its instrument. Sol LeWitt once wrote that “When an artist learns his craft too well he makes slick art,” but the New Old Masterism makes it clear that one can never learn one’s craft too well, and the result of doing so is not slick but uncanny. For superior craft intensifies sight so that it becomes insight, which is what occurs in highly crafted Old Master art.”

Seeing Bayne’s little painting that time ignited my mind in a way that made me understand what Spalding was talking about. Further, the intensification of sight toward insight seemed applicable as well. So I’m looking forward to this new show,am fan of Bayne’s work, and as someone who dabbles with paint myself now and then, I emailed him regarding for interview, conducted via email. The questions and answers are below.

——————————————————

First of all – some background. Where are you from?

I was born and grew up in Ottawa, lived in Kingston for a few years and have lived in Toronto for the past year.

At the time of your last show at Katherine Mulherin’s, you were doing your MFA at Concordia so I’m curious as to whether you are still there and where you did your undergrad. And that leads into – plans for the future? Do you intend to teach? Do you think you can make a living selling your work?

I’m not in Montreal and I never really lived there. I commuted from Kingston, where I did my undergrad at Queen’s, to Montreal for the three years of my MFA. In terms of teaching, I would like to but have not received an offer from anyone. As to whether I can make a living from selling my work I would like to think it is possible though I have been repeatedly told that I have to do bigger paintings and more of them if I want this to be possible.

I’m curious as well as to how you approach painting – have you ever gotten caught up in ideological struggles with people who think painting is lame, or generally have you had a very supportive environment? I ask this in a sense because your work is self-consciously reflective of the Old Masters, so have you spent years dealing with the ‘why bother’ question, and in particular, ‘why not take a photograph?’ Why, in the end, have you chosen painting?

I have met people who say painting is dead and the future is audio or installation or digital or whatever but I disagree. I don’t think painting or any medium for that matter should be dominant over any of the others. I think there is room for a plurality of mediums that can coexist and be weighted equally. Otherwise, though, I have generally been exposed to a pretty supportive environment even if the profs. or other students weren’t working in the same style or medium as myself.

As to why I don’t just take a photograph, I guess I could, it’s just that I enjoy painting, and I enjoy painting from photographs specifically. Whether the end result is better than the original photo or even worthwhile, I’m undecided. On the one hand, I feel justified in that I’m continuing a tradition of painters using cameras dating back at least to the fifteenth century and artists like Vermeer and currently practiced by artists as diverse as Richter, Close, Saville, Paul Fenniak, Rod Penner, as well as a number of others. On the other hand, I think anyone who spends eight to ten hours a day, alone, staring at a one inch by one inch square area and trying to reproduce it using vegetable oil and ground pigment would seriously question what they are doing with their life.

Do you work in any other media?

No. I did the obligatory print making, sculpture and experiments in painting required during undergrad but have never really been interested in practicing anything other than oil painting since I started using the medium at around sixteen or seventeen years of age.

What is your method? You obviously work from photographs. Projection, transfer, square-up or freehand? What’s your smallest brush size, what’s your largest? How long do you work on a painting?

First, I have my negatives blown up to eight by twelve inches. I then create a grid on a piece of mylar and lay it over the photo. I trace an identical grid on a primed piece of masonite and then draw, in graphite, the information in every square of the mylar grid in the grid on the masonite. I then remove the mylar grid from the photo and ‘block in’ the drawing on the masonite in thin washes of diluted oil paint. Once that is dry (one day), I begin the ‘over painting’. The paint is mixed thickly in this stage, using little or no medium and applied in successive layers once each underlayer has dried. There may be as little as one layer or as many as nine or ten in any one area. This entire process can take between four to six weeks and does not include time spent researching materials or artists or taking photos.

As for my materials, I use nine tubes of Stevenson’s oil paint, ‘OO’ Galleria short handle round brushs, ‘3/8’ Raphael short handle rounds, and my medium is a mixture of two thirds linseed oil, one third mineral spirits and several drops of cobalt siccative. I keep all of these materials in glass bottles and jars for longevity. As a support I use 1/8 of an inch masonite boards primed on both sides at least four times and sanded between layers with a fine sand paper.

People often ask whether I use projection or whether I print the image right onto the support and paint over it and I always tell them I never have. Although I’m not against the idea of artists working this way, I just find the grid system works well for me.

What is your relation to your subject matter? I’m tempted to take photos of my kitchen and try to paint them as you do, simply for the exercise. (I recently tried meditation for it’s relaxation benefits but have found spending time drawing to be just as good – since it seems to be all about concentrating and focus on one thing in order to give the rest of your mind a rest). I wonder if you approach the meticulousness of your paintings in the same way – that it doesn’t really matter what you paint, as long as you’re painting something, and the attention to detail must be mediatative. I read on the Galerie de Bellefeuille website about how there’s a study of natural and artificial light happening, the transformation of everyday objects, and a study of empty space … and how your most recent work at the time involved the sadness of winter. Given that the Old Masters had a neo-platonic relationship to the sun and light, does any of this enter into your work? Is your study of the past limited to the techniques or are you interested in their philosophies as well?

Firstly, I have never really experimented with meditation though from what I have heard I think the process of painting as I do could be said to be ‘meditative’ in a way. To answer, the second part of your question, you are right, it doesn’t really matter what I am painting, in one sense, and I choose as subject matter what is readily available. That being said there is a lot that is readily available that I choose not to paint. Why I choose one subject over another I’m not quite sure. It could be the lighting at that particular moment, the way objects or buildings are arranged, the combinations of colours, the general mood the scene or objects evoke or my mood at the time I decide to paint what I do. To answer the last part of your question, I wouldn’t say I’m particularly influenced by the philosophies of the old masters in the sense that I think their perspective of light would have had specific religious connotations. I have a naturalistic perspective of the light depicted in my paintings. It doesn’t represent the light of God to me personally though I wouldn’t object if someone felt that way about it. On the other hand though, I think we as a species are attracted to light on some fundamental level in the same way other biological entities are and which I’m not really capable of explaining.

Mike Bayne’s show opens Friday, May 13 7-10pm at Katherine Mulherin Gallery, 1086 Queen West. Photo from the gallery website.