Extras | Emerge Through Art

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 3: Connecting the Dots
Profiled, Las Cienegas Projects
March 5, 2011

Can you tell us about the ideas around the exhibition?

The exhibition is called Profiled, and it revolves around issues of thinking about racial formations. It’s looking at Western canons of beauty ranging from the Apollo and the Venus to 19th century and early 20th century attempts to categorize racial differences. All of these are part of the spectrum of racial representations that I’ve been looking at for a number of years, but in this particular project, i’m really dealing with the history of sculptural representation and the legacies that are embedded but unseen in those histories.

How would you define your art practice?

If one were trying to think of how I would define my practice, I think that can be a challenge both for myself and for others. Often my projects are research oriented and tend to take the form of photographs or photographic installations. But I’ve also done work dealing with appropriated images. I’ve done sculpture and drawing and even painting, but I’m most known and have been working as a photographer in recent years.

What are your sources of inspiration?

For most artists who work in a conceptually driven practice, inspiration is not really the kind of notion that we are particularly drawn to in the sense that inspiration one thinks of Kant’s critique of judgement and notions of the sublime, and that’s really not the approach that most people that I know work from. I think it’s more about projects that are investigating a question, or a set of questions, or a set of relationships, and we can think of a number of aesthetic models that have come since Kant, since the enlightenment, from relational aesthetics to surrealism to whatever, and so my practice would be, I think, most closely linked to what is termed conceptual photography.

What advice could you give to artists still in school?

I would say that the best advice would be to follow your passions and find ways to connect your work to other issues in the world, whether that’s other artists, whether that’s social issues, whether that’s personal or emotional issues, but I think that it has to have a relevance, first of all for yourself, and then hopefully as you find an audience, people will find your particular contributions. But I think you have to love it all the time. You have to want to do it. It’s a lot of work, and not a lot of return; so you have to have some pleasure in it.

Emerge Through Art

A new, video-web series: tackling life after art school.

Category Archives: Extras

MAK Center Wallpaper

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

“91 92 93″ Photos

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

Artist Interview: Paul Pescador

“1 1 1/2 2″ Photos

Dorit Cypis at Work

Guests Interview at “A Symmetry”

Guest Interview at “Profiled”

Follow “Emerge Through Art”