Category Archives: WEB/TELEVISION/RADIO

TALA MADANI IN CONVERSATION

Leave a reply

I am not using humor in the same way as I did in previous paintings and to some extent, laughter served as a side effect to a way of working. Humor and laughter, however, did allow for freedom in the painting process, as I experience euphoria when I paint. My most recent works are indeed darker both in their subject matter and physicality. These canvases are predominantly black with darker backgrounds surrounding figures, but light still breaks through them. The reason I paint in a comic style is to lessen the intensity of the subject matter so that it becomes rawer and more palatable both on the canvas and to the viewer. It is also a subversive way of rendering difficult subject matters in painting. — Tala Madani

Madani will join curator Jessica Cerasi in conversation this week for a discussion about artistic practice and Madani’s recent series Shit Moms.

TALA MADANI—ONLINE ARTIST TALK

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Thursday, December 17.

9 am on the West Coast; noon East Coast; 5 pm London; 6 pm Paris.

Tala Madani, from top: Through modernism, 2017, oil on linen; Black Sun, 2017, silkscreen medium and oil on linen; Morris Men, 2012, oil on canvas; Untitled, 2015, oil on linen; The Womb, 2019, video still, animation, color, silent; Dirty Protest, 2015, oil on linen; Bedside Scratch, 2016, oil on linen. Images © Tala Madini, courtesy of the artist and David Kordansky Gallery.

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN

Leave a reply

I looked down the line,
And I wondered.

Everyone had always said that john would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father. It had been said so often that John, without ever thinking about it, had come to believe it himself. Not until the morning of his fourteenth birthday did he really begin to think about it, and by then it was already too late. — James Baldwin*

Join Ayana Mathis for an online discussion of Baldwin’s first novel, Go Tell It On the Mountain. See link below to register.

GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN—A DISCUSSION

T Magazine Book Club

Thursday, December 17.

4 pm on the West Coast; 7 pm East Coast.

*James Baldwin, Go Tell It On the Mountain (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953); © 1953, 1985 by James Baldwin and the James Baldwin Estate.

From top: Toni Morrison and James Baldwin in 1986 at the Founders Day celebration, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York City, photograph by Hakim Mutlaq, courtesy and © the photographer; Harry Belafonte (left), Baldwin, and Marlon Brando at the 1963 March on Washington, © the Associated Press; Baldwin, Go Tell It On the Mountain (1953) reprint cover image (detail) courtesy and © Vintage International; Steve Schapiro, James Baldwin, Harlem, New York, 1963, gelatin silver print, courtesy and © the photographer; Thomas Allen Harris, Untitled (Amiri Baraka, Maya Angelou & Toni Morrison at James Baldwin’s Funeral at Cathedral of St. John the Divine), 1987, (Baraka’s face is partly hidden by torch on left).

LINDA SIMPSON AND REYNALDO RIVERA

Leave a reply

Across his body of work, Reynaldo Rivera depicts people enmeshed in their own private worlds who completely transcend their surroundings through the force of imagination and their inner lives. This remains true, whether the subject is photographed in a garden, a public toilet, or a house party in pre-gentrified Echo Park. I think this is a primary difference between Rivera’s work and Nan Goldin’s, to whom his portraits of drag queens, trans women, and other friends might be compared. Goldin’s subjects in The Ballad of Sexual Dependency are downwardly mobile: middle class kids who took a wrong turn, captured in louche dens of bohemian squalor during emotionally intimate scenes… Rivera’s photographs of drag performers taken in Latino gay bars in LA between 1989 and 1997 reflect a different kind of collaboration. He sees his subjects less as they “are” than how they most wish to be seen, lending himself to their dreams and illusions of glamour. And why shouldn’t these dreams be realized? — Chris Kraus*

This week, Linda Simpson and Reynaldo Rivera will present their new books—The Drag Explosion and Reynaldo Rivera: Provisional Notes for a Disappeared City—and join artist and editor Alex Jovanovich in conversation.

See link below to register for the online event.

AN EVENING WITH REYNALDO RIVERA and LINDA SIMPSON

Artforum / Bookforum

Tuesday, December 15.

4 pm on the West Coast; 7 pm East Coast.

*Chris Kraus, from her introduction to Reynaldo Rivera: Provisional Notes for a Disappeared City (South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e), 2020).

Linda Simpson (images in color, from top): RuPaul, 1992; group of drag performers, including Lady Bunny (far left); Dean Johnson, 1987; RuPaul; event card image courtesy and © Artforum and Bookforum. Images © Linda Simpson, courtesy of the artist.

Reynaldo Rivera (images in black and white, from above): Echo Park (self-portrait), 1996; Vaginal Davis, Downtown, 1993; Cindy Gomez, Echo Park, 1992; Elyse Regehr and Javier Orosco, Downtown LA, 1989). Images © Reynaldo Rivera, courtesy of the artist

PAUL MPAGI SEPUYA IN CONVERSATION

Leave a reply

The subjects in [my] early portraits were friends or acquaintances I was just getting to know, some of whom would become good friends, some with whom I would eventually lose touch. Some I have reconnected with. It was important in deciding to make portraits that they be of people with whom I desired friendship, platonic or romantic relationships. It was also a conscious decision that, regardless of the nature of our connection, the photographs would depict them as if they were, could be, or had been a lover. I wanted that kind of desire to be the foundation, to go all the way and then negotiate back. — Paul Mpagi Sepuya*

PAUL MPAGI SEPUYA—the artist’s first institutional monograph—is out now. Co-published by the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and Aperture, the book surveys Sepuya’s various photographic series over the last ten years, and features essays by Malik Gaines, Lucy Gallun, Ariel Goldberg, Lisa Melandri, Evan Moffitt, and Grace Wales Bonner, with an artist interview by curator Wassan Al-Khudhairi.

For a discussion presented by Printed Matter in anticipation of its forthcoming virtual book fair, Sepuya will join Al-Khudhairi in conversation. See link below to register for this online event.

PAUL MPAGI SEPUYA IN CONVERSATION

Printed Matter

Monday, December 14.

5 pm on the West Coast; 8 pm East Coast.

*“Interview with Paul Mpagi Sepuya by Wassan Al-Khudhairi,” in PAUL MPAGI SEPUYA (St. Louis: Contemporary Art Museum; New York: Aperture, 2020).

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, May 17, 2019–August 18, 2019; Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston, October 19, 2019–March 14, 2020. Organized by Wassan Al-Khudhaiti, chief curator, with Misa Jeffereis, assistant curator.

Paul Mpagi Sepuya, from top: Darkroom Mirror (_2070386), 2017; Self Portrait Holding Joshua’s Hand, 2006; A Portrait (0X5A6109), 2017; Mirror Study (4R2A0857), 2016; Studio Wall (_1000021), 2018; A Portrait (File0085), 2015 [Evan Moffitt]; Paul Mpagi Sepuya exhibition catalog cover courtesy and © Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and Aperture, image—Darkroom Mirror (_2060999), 2017 (detail)—© the artist; Paul Mpagi Sepuya, The Conditions, Team Gallery, New York, installation view—Sepuya’s Model Study (0X5A3973), 2017 at left—photograph by Jason Mandella, image courtesy the artist and Team Gallery; A Portrait (0X5A8325), 2018; Orifice (0X5A6982), 2018; Aperture (_2140020), 2018. Images © Paul Mpagi Sepuya, courtesy of the artist.

STEVE MCQUEEN IN CONVERSATION

Leave a reply

I wasn’t ready [right after Hunger and Shame] to delve into this [Small Axe] narrative, because I had to mature, I had to still understand who I was and where I was, and where I wanted to go to achieve these films. — Steve McQueen

In conjunction with the Amazon Prime streaming release of McQueen’s five Small Axe films—Mangrove; Lovers Rock; Red, White and Blue; Alex Wheatle; and Education—the American Cinematheque presents an online discussion with the writer-director.

See link below to register.

STEVE MCQUEEN VIRTUAL Q & A

Saturday, December 12.

10 am on the West Coast; 1 pm East Coast; 6 pm London; 7 pm Paris.

Steve McQueen, Small Axe (2020), from top: Shaniqua Okwok and Amarah-Jae St. Aubyn in Lovers Rock, photograph by Parisa Taghizedeh; Kenyah Sandy in Education, photograph by Will Robson-Scott; John Boyega in Red, White and Blue; Micheal Ward and St. Aubyn in Lovers Rock, photograph by Taghizedeh; Sheyi Cole and Khali Best in Alex Wheatle, photograph by Will Robson-Scott; Shaun Parkes in Mangrove. Images courtesy and © the BBC, McQueen Ltd., and Amazon Prime Video.