Interview: Tom Sanford & Ryan Schneider

Tom Sandford & Ryan Schneider: The Irascible Ass Holes, 2010. Modified Photo.

How did this show come about?

Ryan Schneider: I was talking to Jens Peter Brask about finding a gallery in Copenhagen and he showed some of my work to Morten Poulsen from Gallery Poulsen. Morten came to New York for the Armory Show and I showed him the studios of some of my friends. Morten suggested that we should do a group show. This show will be Morten´s first show in his new space in Kødbyen and it will be a kind of new beginning for him. Tom and I are curating a group show in New York in July with 18 figurative painters from New York in the Priska Juschka Fine Art called Big Picture. This show in Copenhagen has some of the same artists.

Tom Sanford: We are part of a community of young New York painters; we all make image-based, collage-like paintings. In each case I think our work is about painting, but it is also about other things. For instance Ryan’s paintings reference his personal life, Aaron Johnson’s iconography comes out of popular culture popular culture, Daniel Heidkamp’s painting of 9/11 has an overt political subject matter. Anyway, the way we see it there are basically two groups of young New York painters right now. There are painters that make conceptual abstraction, they make a formalist painting but they use the lens of conceptual art to explain the work. We both really dig a lot of this work, some of the best of this school of painting is being made by Wendy White, Joe Bradley, Wade Guyton, Kadar Brock just to name a few. But our work is very different from this conceptual abstraction, and the group shows Ryan and I have curated are a strong argument for this other important movement in New York painting. Each of the artists we chose for these shows are about the same age, 30-35 and part of a community of like-minded painters. We go to each other’s studios two or three times a month, talk about painting, drink beer, so we are all very close friends.

Ryan Schneider: In New York a lot of attention is put on works that are very quiet, like a triangle on a piece of raw canvas. We are the opposite of that, maximalism instead of minimalism, colors and lots of paint. My paintings are about my personal life, and Tom’s paintings are about his personal view of pop culture. It would be impossible for our group of artists to make a minimalist work. So both group shows, The Irascible Assholes and Big Picture are statements. To be a representational painter in New York today, you feel like the underdog, so we decided to get together. With the economic downturn etc. it is time for the artists to take control. From 2001 to 2009 it was the art dealers who had all the power. Now it is more about the artists again.

Daniel Heidkamp: Panopiticon, 2010. 162 x 170 cm. Oil on canvas. Aaron Johnson: Indivisible, 2009. 152 x 152 cm. Acrylic on construction debris netting.

The title of the show is The Irascible Assholes - New Paintings from New York, why The Irascible Assholes?

Tom Sanford: The most famous group of New York painters was the New York School, the Abstract Expressionists. There was a very famous photograph taken of them that appeared in Life Magazine in the early 1950´s. The photograph was called “The Irascibles,” meaning the very easily angered, excitable, aggressive artists. We thought that the most arrogant thing would be to compare ourselves to The Irascibles, so naturally we called ourselves “The Irascible Assholes.”

Tell me about your paintings...

Ryan Schneider: Most of my paintings deal directly with my life. I took a photograph of my girlfriend getting ready in the morning for the painting Seeing you see through me. Obviously my bathroom does not look like this. The plant is important in making the composition come together. I like to do that with my work, to have something right in the foreground. It is a very flat space but then it is also the tension between flatness and the actual space. I put on some subconscious writing, memories or songs that comes in to my head, it adds an emotional texture to it, but you do not necessarily need to read it so sometimes I paint over it. I have always done this writing with pencils. For me it is important to focus on color, composition and texture, I like to paint on very thick. Overall there is an emotional atmosphere of intimacy that I am going for. I plan out my paintings, I make drawings before I start and then I go from there. In my last show in January my work was more related to landscapes and nature but since I have been back in the studio I have been working with patterns and interiors. My favorite artists are long dead, like Edvard Munch, Bonnard, Matisse, so my paintings are very much influenced by modernism but I try to make it a 21st century take on modernism.

Tom Sanford: For this show I have done some portraits of celebrities. The paintings are ostensibly kitsch, but I do my best to make the paintings as good as I can. I am very comfortable with the paintings being in poor taste, however it is very important to me that they be good paintings. Don’t believe in class or taste distinctions, but I do believe in Quality and the individual who is able to produce something of quality. I think that it is actually a radical position to stand up against the prevailing academy that has devalued craft and skill. That is not to say that concept is not of great importance in art, but the brain and the hand are connected and in my opinion of equal importance. I believe that in our culture of consensus, commoditization & corporation, it is actually a political position to try to make a beautiful object, such as a painting, totally autonomously. Anyway, I chose my subject matter to reflect my ambivalence about American culture. I am uncomfortable with reality television and celebrity worship, but I do think that using celebrities as iconography is useful in that most people know who these celebrities are. We are able to communicate through common experience, and one thing most of us have in common is celebrity culture. Most of us know of Lady Gaga, and we have ideas about what she means to our culture. I see this commonality as an opportunity to have sophisticated discussions about our culture without excluding people. So I guess these paintings may appear to be a little cynical, but in fact I think of them as arguments for the individual and democracy – pretty convoluted, huh?

Thanks.

William Powhida: Talisman to Summon Rich Collectors, 2010. 55 x 76 cm. Magic, graphite, watercolor, gouache, and adhesive on paper. Ryan Schneider: Dana Reading, 2010. 100 x 120 cm. Oil on canvas.