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Simon Leung presents “Warren Piece (in the 70s)”

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Episode 5: Looking Back
91 92 93, MAK Center
May 11, 2011

Excerpt of Simon Leung walking us through his installation “Warren Piece (in the 70s)”

Paul Pescador performing at “1, 1 1/2, 2″

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Episode 4: Developing Relationships
1, 1 1/2, 2, Human Resources
May 14, 2011

Every ten minutes for the first hour of the opening reception, Paul Pescador replaces one (or two) of the photos on the wall with a new one.

Artist Interview: Paul Pescador

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Episode 4: Developing Relationships
1, 1 1/2, 2, Human Resources
May 14, 2011

Could you tell us a little bit about yourself? Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school?

My name is Paul Pescador. I’m from Palm Springs, California. I live in Los Angeles. I went to USC for my undergrad where I studied film. I was a Critical Studies major. I started taking art classes when I was an undergrad, and a couple photo classes led to video, which turned into doing performance, performance for the camera, and eventually doing live performances. After undergrad, I spent a few years working odd end jobs, working for a performance artist as a personal assistant. I worked for Vanessa Beecroft for a couple of years. I worked at a political poster archive working with large quantities of images and trying to understand the relationship between image and concept. I also worked as a substitute teachers where I spent a lot of time looking at art books and filling in some of the art education that I didn’t have because I was never an art major. I’m currently a grad student at UCI where I’m studying performance and photography, and that comes in multiple forms where it could be anything from staged photography, performing for the camera, live performance, photographs, photographs turning into performance, performance turning into photographs that manifest in the forms of books, in films, and in collage.

How would you define your art practice?

I have a background in the relationship between photography and performance, and thinking of performance as this live event, or this event that is occurring in presence, and photography as this documenting of this thing that has already happened. We have the stage and we have the live event. I’m interested in understanding the relationship of the two and how they interweave, and how photographs can become performance, or performance has the potential to then be documented. I’m really interested in this blurring of these lines.

Do you deal with any particular themes or issues throughout your work?

When I started making photographs, I was really responding to performances that were happening in the 60s and 70s primarily in Souther California, from Chris Burton who is doing these very violent, large performances to more subtle artists who wouldn’t necessarily be considered performance artists, like William Wegman who does small gestures for the camera or Edgar Shay who’s photographed every building on Sunset Strip, and thinking of these photographs almost as a form of performance. A lot of the themes I think of in my own work is about doing these small, everyday subtle gestures. The actions are as simple as putting ice on an area where a fire had occurred to show the relationship between the burnt space with the ice. Or my hand pointing at an object similar to the way that John Baldessari did in the 60s and 70s. It’s this relationship between personal experience and my everyday life and these ideas coming together.

Could you briefly describe the work you are performing at Human Resources?

The project is called 1, 1 1/2, 2, and it’s a culmination of a two year investigation. The project comprises of three parts. There’s a set of artist books that I made: three separate books, one called 1, one called 1 1/2, and one called 2. I came to these numbers while thinking of these social relationships: 1 being the individual, 1 1/2 being the ghost of another, or the idea of another, and 2 being a social couple. I was thinking about the idea of numbers dictating relationships, and how in math, a number has a specific meaning, but socially, it takes on a different meaning because it implies personal experiences which shifts and complicates things. The second part is a live performance in which two different photographs are placed on the wall. In the gallery, there is nothing in the space but these two single photographs, and throughout the evening different photographs come out, and I start to exchange one photo for another, and so all you see is two images, but they are constantly rotating. That’s the first part of the performance. In the second part of the performance, I bring out black chairs that set the stage for the last piece which is a film. All these pieces, again, are titled 1 1 1/2 2. The film is a three part film, each part taking on the genre of cinema: 1 being neorealism. The film is shot primarily in black and white. All the exterior shots are shot in black in white. The interior shots are shot in color but all the objects within the space are in black and white. The second part is 1 1/2 which takes on a Hitchcock, suspense thriller. There’s a lot of color use. In trying to define potentially two bodies, one body is wearing all red and one body is wearing all blue. I play most of the characters in all the films, and the difference is merely the color that I’m wearing. The last film is 2, which is a split screen where in half of the screen, one character is wearing yellow, and on the other side, the character is wearing teal, and you see these two interact. Even though they are played by the same person, you see them meet, they cross paths, they miss each other, they come together, they have this very specific relationship, and by the end, it sort of complicates itself. There’s some form of violence and some form of breakup, and the idea of the couple is over. Then there’s a third body that comes in that doesn’t quite get defined. The last shot we see three bodies in the frame, which I end on as I see the beginning of the next body of work I hope to work towards. It will be called 3, 4, 5, 8, which is the social grouping of people. So from 2 we go to 3, and so the project is these three different pieces.

What are your sources of inspiration?

I worked for Vanessa Beecroft for a long time, and she does these long endurance performances where she has these naked women stand in high heels for a period of eight hours, and I think, after working with her for a long time, and sort of thinking of this idea of endurance, and what is the relationship with the body performing, instead I used my own body. In a lot of my performances, I’m standing still, leaning against a wall, or lying on the floor, or not engaging with the audience as I perform over the course of time. In this performance specifically, I wear all white, and as I move the chairs, and as I switched out the photographs, I refuse to engage with the people in the room, which creates this persona of the artist performing. It’s a small, subtle detail that I find critical to the work.

What advice could you offer to young, aspiring artists?

I think the best advice I would have would be to say that it’s really important to create your own community. I co-run a gallery called Workspace in Lincoln Heights. I’ve been running it for a little over two years now. I organize a lot of show. I organize a lot of projects. I try to work with my friends and people I know. I think that’s really important. It’s less about just going to openings and being a face there, but making friends and putting on shows with your friends. One friend invites you, and you invite them in return. It becomes about working with each other. I think the most important thing is trying not to become part of another group, but trying to create your own. Think what you’re doing is important because it eventually will be.

Episode 5: Looking Back

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Simon Leung, Andrea Fraser, Lincoln Tobier: 91 92 93
MAK Center
May 11, 2011

Looking Back documents the opening reception of 91 92 93, an exhibition that revisits and reworks aesthetic paradigms created by key projects from the early 1990s. Held at the MAK Center in Los Angeles, Andrea Fraser, Lincoln Tobier, and Simon Leung present new installations and performances based on seminal earlier pieces. Not only do the new works reflect contemporary critical positions, they also incorporate recent history and the modernist context created by the landmark Schindler House. The exhibition gives the artists and their audiences the opportunity to re-evaluate artistic methodologies and theories first posited two decades ago.

Similar to the way in which all three artists revisit particular works that they produced in the past such that the current works expand and recontextualize upon original concepts, this last episode of the Emerge Through Art video-web series draws upon ideas of looking back and learning from past experiences as a way to actively incorporate and involve one’s self and one’s art in contemporary issues and debates.

Andrea Fraser is a New York-based performance artist, mainly known for her work in the area of institutional critique. She is currently a professor in New Genres at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Lincoln Tobier was born in 1964 in New York, and currently works out of Los Angeles. His projects embrace a variety of media including sculpture and painting, as well as, video and radio. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally.

Simon Leung was born in Hong Kong and studied at UCLA, Columbia University, and the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. He has taught in the Studio Art Department at UC Irvine since 2001. Simon Leung’s work is project-based and very often collaborative.

Since its inception in 1994, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House has been making a unique contribution to the artistic and cultural landscape of Los Angeles. Offering a year-round schedule of exhibitions, lectures, symposia, and concerts, the MAK Center proudly presents programming that challenges conventional notions of architectural space and relationships between the creative arts.

www.makcenter.org

Episode 4: Developing Relationships

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Paul Pescador: 1 , 1 1/2, 2
Human Resources
May 14, 2011

JM Productions presents the fourth episode of the Emerge Through Art video-web series, Developing Relationships, featuring documentation of Paul Pescador’s solo exhibition at Human Resources, 1, 1 1/2, 2. Using the space as a theater, art gallery, and screening room simultaneously, Pescador explores the relationship between live events, performances, everyday objects, and their photographic documents. These photographic documents are used as the source material for the creation of new social interventions. Performances become images. Images become books. Books become films. 1, 1 1/2, 2 is a culmination of a one year investigation, which explores the use of numerical systems to dictate social dynamics and personal relationships. The social relationships in this project being 1: the individual, 1 1/2: the individual and remnants or absence of another, and 2: the couple, the pair, or the double.

Similar to the way in which Pescador is exploring the dynamics between juxtaposed correspondences and their social implications, the episode expands upon the idea of identifying/creating relationships among objects and people as a means to better progress and hopefully succeed in the process of developing as an artist and/or learning more about art and the art world.

Paul Pescador is a Los Angeles based artist, art organizer, and filmmaker. His interest in small-scale actions and gestures manifests in the form of photographic objects, performance events, and curated exhibitions. He co-directs Workspace, a project space in Lincoln Heights, and is an MFA candidate at the University of California, Irvine.

www.paulpescador.com

Human Resources is an art/performance space run by a team of creative individuals that seeks to broaden engagement with contemporary and conceptual art while emphasizing performative and underexposed modes of expression.

www.humanresourcesla.com