A pile of dirt haunts Gregory Jacobsen, the artist who’s work is on display at Zg gallery, Chicago, this month (see Chicago Listings). The pile wrecked havoc while covered in a tarp and some tires before the show. “I knew that it was dangerous and bad, but it was also just a part of my home-town.” Jacobsen talks about the absurd nature of this pile, decorated with tires like some kind of playground or gigantic birthday cake — an image that lurks beneath the surface in this new series of paintings.
Even if the image isn’t apparent, it’s there among the pieces of rotting fruit, animal innards and raw meat depicted in his paintings. Just like the pile in his hometown, Jacobsen’s work is inviting to look at with its lush colors, and hyper-real details, but unsettling; there is the sense of something dangerous lurking just below the surface.
Jacobsen’s earlier work depicted figures caught in personal, masturbatory rituals — but in this series he has dispatched with such figures. This new work is laden with densely detailed towers of beautifully rendered rotting decay. Confronted by this cacophony of objects the viewer must consider the ambiguity of these piles, which recall the remains of gluttony depicted in seventeenth century Dutch still life painting.
Full of dualities, much like his work, Jacobsen is not easy to characterize. “I’m working with my limitations. I’m not an academically technical painter, but I’m not an intuitive painter either.” Yet his technical proficiency is clear in the sheen of an intestine that looks like it would be wet to touch, in part because of his recent switch to oil paint. “Acrylic just looked like layer upon layer.”
Unlike the threatening chaos found in that haunting pile of home-town debris, the refined precision evidenced in this work, in all of its colorful and gory detail, suggests that Jacobsen has found his higher calling after all. M
Woodward Gallery, New York
By M. Brendon MacInnis
Cristina Vergano studied at the International School of Milan, the LiceoClassico and the University of Genoa, majoring in art history, before moving to New York in the 1980s. Her paintings often draw on myth and magic, featuring hybrid figures that are half human, half animal. In this show, called "Just for You", she takes these themes into a contemporary setting, offering a nod to surrealism, but with her own twist. The show also includes, for the first time, her sculptural pieces.We spoke with the artist about her work at the Woodward Gallery in New York, earlier this month.
You had a show at this gallery a couple years ago. How did you start working together?
I met Kristine and John Woodward as early as 1997 or 1998. I had my first show at their gallery when they were in Soho in 1998. We had met by chance; I was painting in some artist owned studios and we were having open studios. Christine visited the studios. Their dog lead them there, to my studio; it was a Sharpei, who has since gone on to a better life. We immediately liked each other and they offered me an exhibition at their gallery. I’ve had shows every two or three years since. This is my seventh or eight show with them. It’s a wonderful relationship. They are old-fashioned dealers, they take a personal interest in the artists. They’re not just about business; they don’t throw tantrums, they’re lovely people.
They don’t throw tantrums; ok, I can see you have experience in the art world! I notice the themes in your work are unusual, how does your background play into this?
I’m from Italy. I grew up there and came to the US in my early twenties; all of my education took place in Italy. I absorbed a lot of classical art and always visited museums, churches and cathedrals.That had an imprint upon me. Italy never got rid of the classical balance that came from Roman art; it’s still there now, and I think I took in some of it.
Did you study in Italy?
Yes at the University of Genova.
Looking at your work, it’s hard to define it. On one level it’s sexy and provocative, but on another it’s absurd while technically refined with a lot of classical influences.Where did develop this style? Do you derive this from fairy tales or folklore?
My mind is like a compost heap. I’ve been throwing things in it ever since I was tiny. I’ve always been very visual. Some of my earliest memories, from two years old or earlier, are very visual; they are opinions about visual things. I kept feeding and throwing things in. Still every day I file images. Traveling in Italy also did a lot; in Italy, France, Germany, Greece — seeing art of the past. Also in Mexico, lots of anonymous artists, almost folk art, is absolutely wonderful. Also magazine ads, candy wrapping, everything feeds it, and somehow things come out.
Do you mix in mythology from stories you’ve read?
Yes! I took much art history and read much about it, so that is probably the base from which I take off. I also come from a family of artists, painters, and I so absorbed visual things from them. My grandfather was a known writer and painter in Italy in the seventies and sixties, he was my model, my idol. I remember being so tiny I could barely reach the table where he painted; I remember seeing oil colors and I was thinking, God, if only I could paint like that when I’m older.
Do you remember when you started painting? When did you find out that you really liked doing this?
I’ve always known it; my first oil painting I did when I was three! It was very abstract! [laughs]. I always knew. It was never really a choice to paint. It’s the only thing that I can do well, that I love to do, that talks to other people. I always felt that, I always had feedback.
When you’re two or three years old, everything is possible. Was there music in your house? I mean, were there other influences in art?
Absolutely zero music education, which is sad; I wish we had had it. Completely nothing. It was visual.
Did you read a lot of stories? Did you read fairy tales?
I never really connected with them so much. I think my present work connects to them through myth and also magic realism, but no fairy tales. I always read very adult books.
What do you think of Goya in this regard? Was his work an influence?
I love Goya; I love Goya! Of course. Big influence. I love his looseness, in a way he was very unhinged. For his time, he was crazy. He did things that were really off the charts; he was really free.
In those times, artists usually made a living doing commission paintings...
He did commissions too, in his own way, kind of rigid. He doesn’t seem to aim at flattering so much; often the people look very harsh.
Is your recent work connected to any sort of social or political statement?
I find that works of art that try to follow an idealogical line generally lose something. I do address human issues, for example there is a vain of feminism, but even that is muted, it’s subtle, it’s not hard core. I tend to deal with and portray underdogs. I think all of us feel like that at times. So it's something all of us can identify with, the human condition.
Is there an example of an underdog portrayal in this show?
Well, any hybrid creature is an outsider; they’re freaks. There are several here [in this show].
You mean like the piece that has a woman with a bird’s head? Where does that come from?
The hybrids come from mythology, magic realism, surrealism. Every myth has hybrid animals, classical myth, but also Aztec, Mayan, Norse. There’s sculpture in the show too.
I didn’t know you worked in sculpture.
The sculptor pieces are assembled from different ceramic and porcelain pieces that I buy at flea markets. I cut off parts, I sand them, I build up parts and assemble them differently. It looks effortless but it takes lots of thinking and also work.
It doesn’t look effortless.
Oh good!
So you take found pieces and you modify them?
Correct. And I assemble different parts and entirely paint certain parts and varnish them, it takes forever but it’s an inordinate amount of fun.
This one with hands for heads throws you off a bit; it’s very surreal.
It took me about a week, eight hours a day. They’re very unexpected. Here’s a monkey girl, her name is Molly. She’s also made from found objects.
Is it relatively new for you to work in sculpture?
Fairly new. I worked on Molly for several years. The rest are from just this past year.
The idea to incorporate text in the paintings, is this something new in this show?
No, I’d been putting letters or text in my paintings for many years. This show is more pop. I’ve never used talk balloons before though. It’s fun, there’s an alluded quality to them.
And why is the text reading backwards?
I did that because I don’t want the text to take over, it’s the first thing anybody sees. They read that [the words] and it colors everything. I want it to register, but as text, assomething, and then if people want, it’s fairly easy to figure it out.
You also have a motif of flying saucers.What’s the story with that?
On a shallow level, I remember old adventure books for kids’ science fiction, comics, things like that. Then, on a symbolic level they’re an open, powerful symbol, they represent everybody’s wants and fears and desires. I was talking with a teacher recently who said she showed these paintings to her class and one girl saw in the flying saucers how men hover over women, which I had never thought about, but it’s perfectly fine with me that she saw that. It’s great.
Here we have a skull, or...
An alien, it’s a happy cartoony alien. It opens [lifts off skull top]. It has eyeballs inside and a rose — a thought.
The teeth look convincing, they’re not real are they?
No, this is a medical grade model. I wouldn’t play like this with somebody’s remains. It wouldn’t be right
to me. Over here [returning to the paintings], these are portraits of two of Picasso’s women. This is Olga, his first wife. And this is a portrait that Picasso made of Olga’s successor, his next lover. He ultimately left Olga. This is also one of his poems [in the painting].
I like this one, with the frame tilted. It’s so unpredictable; there are fish in place of where you’d expect to see mountains or a landscape, I like the absurdity of it. The whole thing works.
Thank you. It joins renaissance style with surrealism. It’s the most overtly surreal painting here. The others have other influences. This one is about words passing by and about us grabbing them or not.
Why did you choose goldfish?
I like them in the shape of a school, passing by, superimposed. They also represent time passing us by.
And the hands coming out of the ears, juxtaposing the sense of touch with the sense of hearing...
It speaks of her serenity. She’s also making a meditation pose in her own hands. The frame is trompe l'oeil,
it’s painted onto the canvas. This is a take on the painting, Demoiselles d’Avignon.
Is this one of Picasso’s lovers?
It’s nobody but it looks like a young Jaquline, Picasso’s last wife. I don’t use models for faces, they’re idealized faces. They are serene, but there is also a dark side. The animal heads are animal natures, which can be dark or not . Many people fear them. This one has an ancient dog head. These are masks, one is actually a photo of one of the masks Picasso used in a painting.
These paintings over here go in a different direction, there are African and Middle Eastern sensibilities.
They were painted together, they’re more graphic; they refer to old ethnographic photos.
I notice that these are the only paintings in the show that are not hybrids; on the surface they appear as
conventional portraits. The women wear Islamic veils but they’re sexy. What’s that in the background?
That is the gate of mecca. These women are underdogs, like the hybrids are in the other paintings. This rock [in the foreground] represents that she could have been stoned just for looking sexy.
Are you trying to do something provocative?
Yeah, sure, why not? If any cause deserves it, this one does.
Almost every day young women are stoned to death, for nothing, for being raped.
The faces in these paintings have such distinct characteristics, beyond a generic reference. Are these
specific people?
No, no I don’t use models. They are all idealized. I had my male assistant pose for the hands and for the positions somewhat, but I only took those parts for making the composition and then I eventually changed them.
Ethnically, how would you describe them? Sort of generic classical faces but vaguely middle eastern, Mediterranean, they could be anything; this one girl is African.
This one is my personal favorite, it’s titled The Seven Tyrannies. There are tyrannies in each panel; there is the tyranny of the unexpected, the tyranny of boredom, the tyranny of sex, of love, of looks...
How does the fish [in the painting] represent sex?
In Mediterranean culture, it's often used as a symbol of sex, meaning the male member. I thought it’s understandable even to another viewership, in the sense that it’s animal, it’s slimy. In this panel [the tyranny of
love] she’s holding a heart, a real heart. She speaks from Virgil, “Each is drawn by their own desires”
Is there anything else you want to say about the work in general?
Just that I had an inordinate amount of fun painting it and I think it’s very vital work. I’m very happy with it.M
Named for the Swiss mega-fair that internationalized the once parochial art scene in Miami by launching its sister art fair in 2002, Art Basel Miami Beach, “Art Basel Week” has evolved to mean much more than an art fair. Today this term designates a city-wide global festival of the arts that encompasses Miami Beach, Midtown Miami, Wynwood and Miami’s Design District. Though routinely characterized in press accounts as an annual event consisting of some 20 + art fairs, Art Basel Week is not so much about the number of “art fairs” taking place; most of these are cooky-cutter affairs that pop up around the main attractions to make a fast buck. Rather, this week is really about Miami coming of age as an urban art destination, one that boasts the lure of the sun and the beach in the dead of winter. To be sure, it’s also about art — the people who collect art and the people who make art, and everyone in between. The intellectual center of the art world may be in New York; we come to Miami during Art Basel Week to feel its pulse.
The good news is there’s no really bad news. Okay, there were fewer parties this time around; prices have come down somewhat from the bubble induced stratosphere of yesteryear (with some exceptions), but the patient survived. Indeed, New York/Miami based Tony Goldman, head and heart of the socially responsible developer firm, Goldman Properties (responsible for Soho as we knew it and Wynwood as we’re getting to know it) announced the launch of a Graffiti Art Museum in Wynwood, together with New York dealer Jeffrey Deitch. Mr. Goldman’s son, Joey Goldman, opened an art friendly Italian restaurant called Joey’s in Wynwood; and the South Florida power duo, David and Lee Ann Lester, are launching another major art fair in Miami slated to debut in January. Life goes on, recession or no.
Also in Wynwood, artist/dealer John Brevard opened his large ground floor space focusing on sculpture, Brevards Gallery, while Harold Golen opened his new Harold Golen Gallery, and the immutable Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin thew a party during Art Basel Week that seemed to reset the calander to 2006. In Miami Beach the Bass Museum and the Wolfsonian Museum held lavish parties as well.
Among the established satellite booth art fairs there have been significant venue changes. NADA left the Ice Palace in Midtown Miami for a move to North Miami Beach; Helen Allen’s Pulse moved into NADA’s old venue (Ice Palace) and Scope moved into Pulse’s old venue. In this regard it’s difficult to compare the development of these fairs from the previous year, since the distinct nature of each venue was so closely associated each fair’s identity. For example, when you think of NADA, you think of the Ice Palace with its oasis-like green lawn strewn with hammocks and children playing while people looked at art. Hard to know what to think now; that’s not to say good or bad, but place matters. Aqua Art gave up its Miami Beach hotel venue, while keeping its booth fair in Wynwood. Red Dot, which launched its first booth fair in Wynwood 2008, pressed on in 2009 without director Ilana Vardy. Then there was the disastrous Bridge Art Fair 2008 that changed its name to Verge in 2009 in an apparent attempt to escape fraud charges; but its still the same Michael Workman.
Design Miami, in its temporary structure in the Design District at NE 39th Street & 1st Court was a pleasant surprise. In this case, moving out of the Art Deco Moore Building (where the fair was started) actually set it free develop its own identity. M
