Interview: Jesper Elg, Mikkel Grønnebæk & Todd James

The New Yorkers på V1 Gallery. Installationsview.

Hvordan startede projektet egentligt?

Mikkel: Det startede ud fra en idé, jeg havde om, at vi skulle lave en udstilling fra New York. Todd havde en idé om, at han gerne ville lave en udstilling om kunstnere, der inspirerede ham. Vi fandt ud af, at der var ret mange overlap, og at det gav mening at slå det sammen.

Jesper: Vi vidste på forhånd, hvad vi ville arbejde med, og vi har allesammen smidt en masse navne i en pulje, og så begyndte vi at sortere fra. Jeg tror, vi startede med at have ca. 60 navne, og endte på 37. Mikkel og jeg kender stort set de samme kunstnere, men Todd bringer nogle kunsterne med ind på banen, vi slet ikke kender. På den måde tror jeg, det er meget sundt at få rystet posen. Man udfordrer også sig selv, ved ikke bare at vælge de samme igen og igen.

Hvorfor tror du, at der ikke er så mange andre herjemme, der bruger kunstnere til at kuratere udstillinger?

Jesper: Jeg tror, at man har det her system af kuratorer og museumsinspektører, som traditionelt har siddet på kurateringen. Men jeg synes, at det er noget man ser mere og mere. Det kan sikkert både gå rigtigt godt og rigtig galt. Man kunne forestille sig, at kunstneren bare tager sine venner, og at han måske ikke har det her overblik og kyniske syn på sagen. Men vi har set nogle super spændende udstillinger, der har været kurateret af kunstnere.

Hvordan har processen med denne udstilling været?

Mikkel: Vi har haft timelange samtaler frem og tilbage over computeren og sendt billeder over iChat. Så har vi kontaktet alle kunstnerne og fået svar fra dem. Her i påsken tog vi så til New York, for at samle alle værkerne. Vi tog ud på studiebesøg, snakkede med kunstnerne og udvalgte nogle værker. Så vi har sådan set været med hele vejen og mødt en masse af de kunstenere, vi selv arbejder for, og en masse af de nye kunstenere, som Todd har introduceret os for. Det har været en superinspirerende måde at gøre det på.

Richard Kern		Sarah Braman

Har I også været ude at finde nye kunstnere, I vil repræsentere?

Mikkel: Gruppeudstillinger er jo en meget god måde at teste nogle kunstnere af på, som man har en idé om, at man gerne vil arbejde sammen med senere. Der er da også et par stykker på udstillingen, som vi gerne vil blive ved med at arbejde tættere med. Der er ikke lige lavet nogle faste aftaler, men der er nogle i kikkerten.

Jesper: Det er lidt ligesom at date, før man bliver gift...

I har også tidligere arbejdet meget med amerikanske kunstnere. Hvad kan New Yorkers udstillingen biddrage med til det?

Mikkel: Jeg tror, at det er den opvækst vi selv har haft og den kultur vi kommer med. Jeg har altid været meget inspireret af amerikanske kunstnere. Jeg er vokset op med skateboarding, hvor en del af miljøet omkring skateboarding handler meget om grafikkerne og kunstnerne, der laver de forskellige ting. Jeg synes bare, at USA har et eller andet.

Jesper: Specielt New York har jo altid været en smeltedigel, hvor der er sket meget på kunstfronten. Det er en super by, fordi den altid kan inspirere og motivere, men den er også enormt hård for kunstnerne.

Doug James: Secrets, 2007.

Todd James is joining.

Todd, can you give just an introduction of yourself: You’ve been working with these guys for a while?

Todd: Yeah, I’ve been working with them for a couple of years. We did a show in their old space, and after that we talked about me working with them on curating some stuff, and bringing some people over. Eventually it turned into this.

Did you start out with like five artists and then make it fit around them?

Todd: No, we went with a big list and it just kind of formed, kind of organic.

Jesper: We had certain artists that we wanted. Todd was like that with Peter Saul.

Todd: Yeah, I’m a big fan. The really good thing about the choices is, that we got the usual suspects, but they’re not linked as usual. There are surprises.

Can you explain a little bit about some of the trends showing?

Todd: I don’t know. I guess we just tried to balance it out so there wasn’t a trend.

Mikkel: I think it’s good that we have everyone: Dash was born in 1981 and Saul in 1933, which is quite a big age difference.

Jesper: I also really like that idea. You have so much hype about age, and artists have to be young. At the show at the New Museum, Younger Than Christ, everybody had to be less than 33. I like that when you look at the Peter Saul piece, you wouldn’t know if he was the same age as Dash. I like that there’s not this dictatorship agewise.

Katherine Bernardt: She might just be the one who is going to save us, 2008.		Joe Bradley: Untitled, 2009.

Do you want to step inside and take a look at some of the pieces? I really like the large paintings in the back?

Todd: Yeah, that’s Katherine Bernhardt. We all had her on our list. She just lays it down, it’s not precious, you know, it’s like bam bam bam, painting wise. You can see that she intends to put everything where she wants it.

You can just pick a choose any one you want to comment on?

Jesper: I really like the Joe Bradley piece. It always gets a discussion going: “Is this supposed to be art?” I think it’s really interesting what he does. It has a good sensibility and there’s a lot of humor in it.

But what’s going on?

Jesper: What he does, for days he’ll be sketching, this is the born again Christian fish, and then he’ll just do the canvas. You can interpret it as you want. The first time me and Mikkel exhibited him, we took out this painting, that was just completely brown, and it was like, “what are you doing?”

Erik Foss: Donkey Dick, 2009.		José Parla: Ask, Eureka Blvd, 2009.

Erik, do you want to talk about your painting, the donkey here?

Erik Foss: I’m working on a series that has to do with being a child. You remember when you were given coloring books, you were told to draw within the lines. When I was a kid, I did exactly what they told me, but I was extremely bored with that. It wasn’t enough for me, so I added things like dicks and farts and swastikas. Everything against the grain. This whole idea, Coloring Outside the Lines, will deal with people that you knew when they were very young, they were not gonna be normal. They were not going to be in the general consensus of things.

Thanks. And is this just a piece from the street?

Todd: Oh well, it’s a José Parla, he used to write graffiti. Early on, when people really gravitated towards graffitit and they went to a gallery to see graffiti art, this was not what they wanted to see. They wanted to see the super clean pieces that were big and colorful. This was considered to be the dirt or the blight of out of the subway trains. Barren MacGee has definitely shown that side of the graffiti world, but José just focuses on that in a completely different way. It’s great because of the layering and writing over and over on surfaces. The stuff just kind of becomes this painting.

I assume the whole graffiti tradition has been quiet influential for you? Speaking New York and all?

Todd: Yeah, I mean, I used to do it. Yes, is the easiest answer.

Mikkel: About the whole graffiti thing: What’s interesting is that it’s not so obvious in Todds art. I mean you can’t really see that he used to be a graffiti artist. I think it’s great that just because you painted, you don’t need to stick with that anymore.

<b<KAWS</b>: Sandie, 2009.		Todd James: Untitled, 2009.

Let’s look at your stuff, Todd, do you want to speak a little bit about it?

Todd: It’s guache on paper, so it’s like a drawing that’s also a painting. And It’s all about the war and the conflicts, and the pirates, you know when they sniped the pirates.

So it’s brand new?

Todd: Yes, that one is. The other one is about the economy and the war economy trying to escape.

And that’s Kaw’ painting. He’s a good friend of mine. He has become this phenomenon: young and old, anyone from any background can enjoy what he’s doing. And people collect his stuff, he’s got things that anybody can afford.

Is that important for you?

Todd: I think it’s a really hard thing to tap into, not everybody can play that cord, and he hits it perfectly. Like a Keith Harring. It’s almost like Murakami: Little kids can walk up to it, someone will have a handbag with it, and there’ll be a big museum piece. And it doesn’t affect it, it’s all one thing.

Peter Beste: Guns & Syrup at Z-Ro's house, 2009.

I was really interested in these photos right here: is this brand new stuff as well?

Jesper: Yeah, that’s Peter Beste.

Is it real or is it ironic?

Jesper: No it’s real. He’s been following these different gangsters in Houston for seven years. Some of them still adhere to being Black Panthers and they drink cough syrup to get high.

Todd: Isn’t it kind of like an opium based drink? You mix codein, candy and soda and you can become addicted to it, like dope.

Jesper: Yeah, I think it slows everything down.

Have you been conscious of which image of The States you are representing?

Jesper: No, I think it’s a very broad image we’re presenting here. A lot of the artists here love their country, but they’re also conscious of how it affects the rest of the world. This is off course reflected in their work. All these folks, Todd, Jenny Holtz, Barbara Kruger, they all have something really important at heart that they want to share with you. They want to make you realize something or at least raise some questions. I think that binds together a lot of the artists here: That they reflect on what’s going on.

I definitely noticed that you’ve had a lot of stuff about the war in past year?

Jesper: Yeah, I really like the actuality of it. I like that the artists reflect on the times we’re living in. Todd has just done that thing on the Pirate situation: It’s like the state of the times.

Do you see that as a general trend, that artists are becoming more outwards focused?

Todd: There’s a lot to be talked about, and I think that a lot of great art comes from when people are pissed off.

Bill Mcmullen: The Coporate War, 2009.		Bill Mcmullen: The Coporate War, 2009.

Do you want to tell me about this installation?

Todd: Bill is a friend of mine, we see each other quite often and work in the same area. Bill was working on these pieces, the Coca Cola camouflage, and Starbucks camouflage, basically corporate underwriting for war.

Are these clothes going to go into commercial production?

Todd: No, well, I don’t know.

Mikkel: That is like the horror of it, imagining that corporate companies might have their own guards or armys.

Jesper: This just kind of simplifies how bad it actually is.

Mikkel: We had trouble getting the guns over with UPS, so we used these toy guns in stead.

Todd: Bill used to work in graphic design, he did all kinds of stuff, stuff for the Beastie Boys.

A real New Yorker?

Mikkel: It was this thing that we talked about when started talking about the show. Todd was like, “you have to been born in New York,” but we ended at 5 years. We wanted it to be people that actually live and use the city.

Todd: It’s not like a definitive, like these are the New Yorkers, because you can’t do that. Just some New Yorkers that we like and choose.

Noah McDonough: For Val, 2009.

Can you say anything about their backgrounds? You talked about one guy did graphics, others graffiti?

Todd: Yeah, a lot of the people did graffiti. This guy up here, Noah McDonough, he has a graffiti background. I was glad to have just a straight up graffiti painting. What I like about it is, that it’s not spray paint on canvas, which I don’t like how it looks. Noah is super patient and able to make a graffiti piece on a canvas that I really like.

Jesper: Yeah, it’s kind of like a labyrinth, you get lost in there.

And then over here we have the heavy weighters. Was that your choice Mikkel?

Mikkel: I always wanted to show Barbara Kruger, and Jenny, we worked with her before on a show. Having them on the show is one of the things we worked hardest to get.

Jesper: I really love the Jenny Holtzer piece. She has a show on at the Whitney at the moment. It’s interesting how this piece kind of has the same effect as the large scale work, really mesmerizing.

Mikkel: Yeah, we were talking about having them here and said, “That will never happen!” But we found out that it was a great project.

Jesper: Yeah, I think they feel recontextualized in some way.

Thank you.

John Copeland: Blonde and Built to Last, 2009.		Barbara Kruger: Belief + Doubt = Sanity, 2008.