Los Angeles has always held a special place in the hearts and minds of Americans, but for most it exists in an almost fictional capacity.  Hollywood isn’t a real place – it’s a postcard, a huge sign on the side of a mountain bracketed with strategically placed palm tree silhouettes.  Certainly not a place to call home, but for artist Justin John Greene that’s exactly what it is.  Hollywood is a part of his heritage, and the work reflects that.  Born and raised in the Los Angeles area, Greene’s work is strongly imbued with the history of the most romanticized industry in American culture.  In his most recent solo show at Actual Size (an exhibition space he co-runs in the Chinatown gallery district of east L.A.) the influence of the film industry is in full focus.  You Oughta Be In Pictures is a comprehensive installation that utilizes painting, sculpture, and video to create a truly immersive experience for the viewer.  Installation may seem like a bit of a leap from Greene’s primarily two dimensional practice, but a closer look into the artist’s process bridges the gap seamlessly.  His work is a distinctly enjoyable blend of sly historical references, direct compositional tactics, and cleverly applied humor.  If you have the opportunity to see the work in person I strongly encourage you to do so.

Most people draw at some point in their lives, but for a select few the action becomes compulsory – the impetus behind a lifelong obsession.  You are clearly one of those few.  How has drawing played a role in your development as an artist?

Drawing is certainly at the root of my practice, it is part of how I think and solidify concepts.  I can recall at a very young age understanding drawing as an essential tool to engage with my soundings and imagination.  Drawing was seamless with play.  As I grew older and began to associate drawing with art, it was quite clear to me that I was going to be an artist.

I’ve noticed a certain level of immediacy to your drawings that I do not see in your paintings.  Is there a difference in the way that you approach the idea of painting verses that of drawing?

When I approach painting, I set out to make a work that shows the intuitiveness of drawing, but I also engage a more analytical approach.  I’m focusing more on the elements that make a picture; its composition and mood.  I am also making direct references to imagery that requires rendering and layering.  I want my paintings to be able to stand on their own.  The paintings that have most influenced me were seen in museums, singular masterpieces that command a presence without the aid of their kin.  Those are the types of works that set the bar for me with regards to painting.  I am also interested in where these works will end up, beyond an exhibition.  Even paintings that were created as a series, once bought, will often end up on their own.  It is important to me that my paintings can feel complete in that setting and not just be an example of my practice.

I have a more fluid and casual relationship to drawing.  If I’m unsure of what to paint, I’ll draw. When I’m making drawings that are intended for exhibition, I don’t do a lot of the same preemptive planning that I put into my paintings.  Unlike my paintings, the drawings may be viewed as studies that rely more on repetition to solidify an idea.

Regardless of the medium, your work has an inherent structure to it.  What is your process for assembling an image?

For years I’ve been interested in collective nostalgia, and in exploring that   idea I have arrived at working with imagery that I think the viewer will approach with a sort of uncanny feeling of recognition.  I gather source material from film, the Internet, advertisements and objects I come across in my daily life.  I create composite images and use the application of my medium as a visual vocabulary that evokes emotion in specific elements of one picture.  The visual descriptions also often refer to other figures and styles from art history.  I build up layers of composite imagery in an attempt to transform this “research” into a singular visceral experience.  I like to work with a variety of aesthetics, which I think is very much inspired by the convoluted landscape of Los Angeles.

In the series Fashion Drawings the bodies and heads quickly become protagonist and foil in a well-composed comedy.  Where did the inspiration for this series come from, and how important is the role of humor in your work?

I was teaching art classes to some teenage girls that were interested in fashion design.  I was flipping through magazines and books filled with fashion illustrations that the school had on hand and I was struck by the aura of these drawings.  I had seen all sorts of design illustrations, for products and cars and they all seemed to share a similar cold accuracy to them that felt necessary for instructing production, but the fashion illustrations didn’t look like that.  They were full of attitude and the line quality was sparse and elegant. The idea that these were being used to draft the production of a garment felt humorously arrogant to me, which I really liked.  I then remember thinking of my students, and questioning whether they felt at all inspired by these fashion illustrations merely as drawings beyond their association with clothes, and I compared that in my mind to the types of drawings that inspired me at the age; drawings from artists such as R. Crumb and James Ensor.  I started collecting images from fashion runways and interpreted them in what I thought looked like the style of fashion illustration that most resonated with me, and I then topped them all off with a grotesque adolescent doodle.

The Fashion Drawings as an ongoing series enables me to engage with my compulsory desire to create cartoony doodles, while still making a piece that fits into a conceptual framework.  The monster-like heads of runway figures that I think represent a specific cultural ideal, act as the punch line in a joke.  Humor has always played an important roll in my work.  I’ve often felt that concepts of culture are often most vividly revealed when viewed through a parodical lens. I believe that humor even when it is dark is a positive force.  It lets me be optimistically critical about the concepts that I’m addressing.

Comparing the painting Some Mornings (2011) to that of Red Room (2009), I notice a definite shift in the amount of visual information you’ve chosen to present.  Do you see your paintings becoming progressively more reductive as time goes on?

At the time that I made Red Room, I was interested in creating an illusionistic space that had the type of bazaar impenetrable charm that I was seeing in what Jim Shaw calls, “thrift store paintings.”  However, the image Red Room is painted from is a picture of a lavishly designed interior.  That high and low contrast is of central focus in that painting, and I employed a wide array of clashing techniques to address that idea.  When I was painting Red Room, I realized how much I wanted to share my process with viewer.  Since then I’ve been simplifying the level of visual information in my paintings, because I think that will bring the viewer closer to understanding the process of how I piece together the work.  In the painting, Some Mornings, the various elements that make up that space are more easily distinguishable apart from the greater composition.  With that painting, I want the viewer to feel as if though there are mentally bringing the imagery together to then arrive at a space, as opposed to being struck with the illusion of one at first glance.

With the exhibition You Oughta Be In Pictures, you’ve arrived at installation as the next progressive step in a practice that relies heavily on composite sensibilities.  It is almost as if the different aesthetic departments of your mind had some sort of corporate merger, and that was the end result.  Did you set out with the intention of creating a participatory experience for the viewer, and is this “full immersion” method something we might be seeing more of in future endeavors?

Yeah, I’m definitely going to continue working in this method.  I see it as vital element to my practice.  It’s making a composite image in the fourth dimension.   A work like You Oughta Be In Pictures lets me engage in a more communal process beyond a solitary studio practice, which is important to me.  It took a collaborative effort to produce and like a performance it was not complete with out the viewer or audience present.  When I was planning, You Oughta Be In Pictures, I knew that I was making this self-parodying portrait that was flirting on the edge of being manically heavy-handed, and because of that I felt it necessary to create a way for the viewer to be directly placed into the show.  I wanted the viewer to feel like they were being approached by the exhibition in a manner relatable to a participatory performance.  Every element in that installation directed its attention at the viewer.

Thanks for letting me pick through your brain for a little while.

My pleasure, thanks for taking an interest.

FASTWÜRMS is a Canadian artist collective started in 1979 by Kim Kozzi and Dai Skuse, who are associate professors of studio art at the University of Guelph in Ontario. Their artwork seemingly encompass all disciplines – installation, video, manifesto, performance, drawing, etc – and concerns witch positivity, working class aesthetics, queer politics, and public collaborations. Many of the images after the jump are taken from the FASTWÜRMS: DONKEY@NINJA@WITCH catalogue that accompanied a 2007 retrospective at the Art Gallery of York University.

Artist Kate Tucker’s work has amazing colorblock layering in her pattern pieces, as well as her more representational works. She has intricate drawings and bold paintings that together are seriously impressive. Her series “Counterfeit Sanctity’ has tons of versions of the same drawing in different color, pattern, and media that are mesmerizing when seen together.

Breanne Trammell’s work is categorized by oversized every day objects created in monumental proportions. Her work is playful, inspiring, and just plain intriguing. Her candy cigarette installation is genius with giant cigarettes decorated like rainbow sprinkles, Reese’s cups, Sweettarts, Swedish fish and Junior Mints. In addition to her larger than life sculptures, she also incorporates patterns, prints, and 2D expertise into her body of work. 

Tonalis Luminous (also known as tink-tinks) is a new breed of tonal flowers discovered by sound artist, Salvador Orara. Sensitive to light, each flower has it’s own sonic personality and mood which requires careful attention. Check out a video of the Tonalis Luminous in action after the jump.

“Similar to how we water our plants and talk to them, the tonalis has a simple mode of interaction by controlling the amount of light each plant receives. Pruning individual tonalis can set the collective whole into a new rhythmic territory, only to have them sway back into its natural state or mood. Each mood has its own affordances of interaction, in this respect I also use the tonalis to explore the possibilities of having one simple mode of interaction controlling a large complex system of simple objects. The system requires active listening, where the pruner must be in constant attention of the tonal quality of the whole and each plant individually”

I can only imagine how loud a nursery full of these would be… Any plans on making a Tonalis farm, Orara? Be sure to check out the artist’s web site to learn more about the process and thinking behind this project.

Benjamin Oliver, a recent graduate of the Royal College of Art’s Design Interactions program explores the space between our everyday experiences, inventing prototypes that can give participants a way to experience all new senses. I love the approach Benjamin took in framing his experiments – By creating photographs with such rich narrative, the artist leaves behind a series of bizzarre rooms in which these sensory objects supposedly underwent a round of testing.

I really really want to be a lab rat in these experiments. If only I could know what life would be like with really long arms… Sign me up, Ben.

The above image is a photograph of an Apparatus for inducing out of body experiences. Because Benjamin has decided to communicate this research through still photography as opposed to moving image, the viewer is given a cozy space to ponder how it is these prototypes work.

From his graduation show website: “What lies in the space between everyday experience, what we have learned at school, the snippets of scientific discoveries in the media and the cultural mythologies that surround extrasensory perception… How do we relate to the possibility of new and novel sensory experiences.”

Interdisciplinary artist Pamela Saturday has a body of work that toys with layering both in painting and installation. Her game of hide and reveal creates a fantastic energy. From her statement she says “any truth is partial, and that the actual includes potential” which I think perfectly describes her work.

Whether it’d be through art or design, France is the top destination to go to for any interested in construction and ingenuity with an urge for color experimention. Ill-Studio (founded in 2007) truly belongs to this cognition. Ill represents a collective of talented individuals headed by Léonard Vernhet and Thomas Subreville under one pretty ‘sick’ name.  The group experiments with shapes (a combination of both geometric and organic), thin and thick lines, and bold color saturation. Art-direction, photography, design, motion design, and typography are their greatest abilities; to describe the least.