The LongestShow Title

of the Universe

Annalisa PerazziKim Jong Il

Ronald ReaganMatt Kleenex

Ramon EsquivernaLaetitia Ann-Saedler

Camilla Perowski-WittgensteinEdo Udo

Curated by:Franklin Delano and

Eric Sutherland

From April 26 to May 28, 2012Opening Reception: Friday, May 28, 7-9 PM

NURTUREart Gallery56 Bogart St., Brooklyn, NY 11206

Hip OpenersAlina Tenser

From November 15 to December 12, 2013Opening reception: Friday, November 15, 7-9 PM

NURTUREart Gallery56 Bogart St., Brooklyn, NY 11206

Interviewedited by Marco Antonini

MA: How do you envision the life of an artwork that you created beyond the studio, in real life or even in someone else’s life?

AT: I am rarely attached to work after it has been shown; there is a natural remove that happens. It is not necessarily a rejection but I just don’t feel involved with it anymore. This specifically hap-pens with the physical sculptures more then the videos. Perhaps there is a more intense involve-ment with the physical forms while I’m making them as well; I am usually more dissatisfied with them. I am very curious about how other people live with my work; it never occurs to me while making it that someone would “live” with it… I hardly ever live with it myself. I only deal with work in the studio, and live with it in a platonic sense when I am not there.

MA: How does this, uhm… platonic relationship actually influence the finished piece? Do you spend a lot of time imagining and planning your work or do you mostly make it in the studio?

AT: I spend time imagining and writing about work that I’m working on all the time… but I’m usually more attached to a piece during its early development stages. I don’t necessarily know how the finished piece will look, or even what it will be about; it feels like a song that you can’t get out of your head, and maybe you don’t even know the words to, but makes you feel very good every time you sing it.

4

MA: When did you start working with green screen and chroma keying, and what prompted that decision?

AT: I started working with green screen in late 2011. I was in graduate school at Virginia Com-monwealth University School of the Arts, which has an incredibly strong sculpture department, and I felt the need to talk about form in a new way. The first video I made was of my hands touching one of my sculptures. The way the viewer experi-ences the form was through my fleeting moments of contact. I made several of these hand videos and at the time referred to them as “sculptures” because they were so much about form, making, and contact with material. It was actually really great to make these videos while surrounded by a group of astute makers that could think about dimensionality in such depth. Form, making, and contact are still prominent concerns in my videos, but I think more about directing and the choreography of how objects and body cutouts appear in the video. I’ve become more interest-ed in how the body articulates form.

MA: How were your experiments in those direc-tions received in school? Was there any positive or negative feedback that helped you further de-fine the work at that early stage?

AT: For the most part the videos were received with support. I definitely made a couple of crudely keyed out videos, mostly due to my in-

5

experience with lighting and editing, so I got a little bit of hesitation from my peers about where this work might be going and my technical abili-ties. Corin Hewitt was one of my advisers and he encouraged my initial interest in video be-ing another avenue for investigating form. Ester Partegas was my thesis advisor and both her and Corin encouraged the autobiographical part of my work. More specifically, my son, Nikolai, was 10-months old when I started grad school and I was trying to figure out my motherhood and my direction as an artist simultaneously. There are a lot of body and reproductive references that happen in my work and it took me a while to be confident with my own imagery.

MA: What is the difference between making and showing? And between making and making be-lieve?

AT: I try to not be very judgmental when mak-ing, letting myself make dumb things and muck around in uncertainty. What I show is edited, not the pieces themselves but the selection or grouping. A big part of my practice is about what is not shown. I don’t consider it refuse; it is a nec-essary support system.

MA: Do you consider the props you create and use in your videos “sculptures”?

AT: They are made like sculptures. Some have utility in mind. I don’t refer to them as props be-

cause they are not fake or faux in any way. The video is used to assist in experiencing their form in what I think is a more enhanced or autono-mous way. The sculptures are what carries the video, whereas props usually tend to assist a nar-rative or a scenario.

MA: I see. I think I thought of props because I carried a mental image of your studio sets, with the abandoned, inactive objects resembling some sort of tableaux… you sent me pictures documenting some of your studio settings, stills of your green screen “performances” and even studio object arrangements and texture. How do these images fit in your practice and do you envi-sion showing them (if at all)?

AT: That’s a part I am still trying to figure out. I know that the objects, costumes, and set will never be shown with the videos. But I have con-sidered showing them alone at some point. I also really like the video stills, keyed out and not. It is a very difficult logic to arrive at and I like how bizarre these are without the larger context. Its like an “if aliens landed, what would they think” game, but for people.

MA: There is a constant tension between inside and outside in your work, how does that translate in the different languages of 3d sculpture and video? What are the inherent possibilities and limits of both media?

8

AT: I like this question. There is constant reci-procity between void and form in the work. In the videos I am sometimes able to have objects have a simultaneously convex and concave state. Basically, cupped forms that have green screen exteriors and visible interiors start to look like protrusions when translated into video. It was something I was excited to find out when mak-ing the Pong With Herself video, in the spring of 2012, and have been investigating ever since. The way physical depth and dimensionality trans-late to video is endlessly surprising and interest-ing to me. I would say that’s one of the strongest drives I have in making videos right now.

MA: To what degree are craft and finish impor-tant to you, and why? Is your creative process leading you in new directions and/or to further experiment with new ideas and materials these days?

AT: The recent work has more fluidity between object, performance, and video. Some of the sculptures I make start out as stand alone pieces one day and start to resonate better in video the other (and vice versa) … some get made as props or with the intent of utility, like green screen shelves or dollies, and I end up finding that they are, actually, sculptures. I like incidental sculpture, there is a forward thinking confidence in the hand when making something with a pur-pose. I don’t get bogged down in craft or finish, however I must say I am a sucker for surface. I like to think about how surface allows a body to inter-act with the work... for example, the way translu-cency, flatness or reflectivity in surfaces approach the viewers’ body: one lets in, the second bounc-es back, and the third allows the viewer to feel

the contours of their own form. MA: What is failure to you? When is an artwork (yours or otherwise) failed?

AT: Most good work has to reach a point of fail-ure; sometimes there is a graceful recovery. Fail-ure in finished work is bare and honest, I under-stand it most in sculptural terms -- material failure is so icky and clumsy. I believe in paying atten-tion to failure because it is bare and active, it is always in a state of wanting to change. The work that gets shown is edited failure.

NURTUREart Non-Profit, Inc is a 501(c)3 New York State licensed federally tax-exempt charitable or-ganization founded in 1997 by George J. Robin-son.

NURTUREart receives support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, including member item funding from City Council Members Sara Gonzales, Stephen Levin, and Diana Reyna, the New York City Department of Education, and the New York State Council on the Arts. NURTUREart is also supported by the Harold and Colene Brown Foundation, Edelman, the Greenwich Collection, Ltd., the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Laura B. Vogler Foundation, the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, the Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, No More Poverty, the Puf-fin Foundation, Urban Outfitters, and the Wolf Kahn and Emily Mason Foundation. We receive in-kind support from Brooklyn Brewery, Societe Perrier, Tekserve, and Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. NURTUREart is grateful for significant past support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Liebovitz Foundation, and the Greenwall Foundation, and to the many generous individuals and businesses whose contributions have supported us throughout our history. Finally, we would like to acknowledge the artists who have contributed works of art to past benefits—our con-tinued success would be impossible without your generosity.

16 17

18

17

HARRISON

PL.

BOGART

ST.

MO

RGAN

AVE.

KNICKERBOCKER

AVE.

LMorgan

56 Bogart StreetBrooklyn, NY 11206

L train to Morgan Avenue

T 718 782 7755F 718 569 2086

E gallery@nurtureart.org

www.nurtureart.org

Directions:

By Subway: L train to the Morgan Avenue stop.

Exit the station via Bogart Street. Look for the NURTUREart entrance on Bogart Street, close to the inter-

section with Harrison Place.

By Car: Driving From Manhattan: Take the

Williamsburg Bridge, stay in the outside lane, and take the Broadway

/ S. 5 St. exit. Turn left at light onto Havemeyer St. Turn right next light

onto Borinquen Place, continue straight, street will change name to Grand Street. Turn right onto Bush-

wick Ave, left onto Johnson Ave, then right onto Bogart Street. Look

for our entrance at the corner of Bogart Street and Harrison Place.