James Turrell, “Second Meeting” interior, 1989. Production stills from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Cinematography by Marc Levy.

“We don’t normally look at light; we’re generally looking at something light reveals.”

Filmed in early 2013, this new Exclusive shows artist James Turrell revisiting one of his first skyspaces, Second Meeting (1989), at the home of private collectors in Los Angeles, California. Second Meeting was originally installed at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 1986. In the film, Turrell explains what initially led him to work with light, and how his skyspaces encourage examination of our own visual perceptions.

When the Art21 team goes out to film, we aim to convey the in person experience of an object or installation. Every work poses unique challenges. Rackstraw Downes’s elongated paintings can appear bowed through wide-angle lenses. Without the right microphones, important sounds in Ann Hamilton’s multisensory installation the event of a thread would go unnoticed. Subtle variations in Robert Ryman’s delicately painted white-on-white canvases can be especially difficult to capture and without them we lose the essence of his work. In my opinion, James Turrell’s installations are the most difficult to convey in documentary film.

Artist James Turrell seated inside “Second Meeting” (1989). Production still from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Cinematography by Marc Levy.

When sitting inside Second Meeting you’re not only looking at the sky—you’re also observing how your eyes and mind perceive color. At dusk, tungsten bulbs cast a warm hue on the white walls that surround the opening in the ceiling, altering one’s perspective of this blue field. Turrell isn’t trying to trick us though—the mechanics of Second Meeting are straightforward and obvious. Rather, he encourages us to look inward and acknowledge that we form our own perceptions and thus can change them.

In the space, the walls fill your field of vision as you look upward. But as you watch our film, the walls only take up a few inches of your screen. With less of your field of vision occupied by warmly lit walls, your perception is not easily shifted. We simulated the experience as best we could, in this case, through time-lapse photography, but in the end the affect of Second Meeting simply cannot be recreated.

Second Meeting sits on private residential property. However, New York residents and visitors can find a nearly identical installation at MoMA PS1 in Queens, where it has been on public view since 1986. Concurrent retrospectives of Turrell’s work are also opening soon at the Guggenheim in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Go and experience the work for yourself.

"Exclusive | James Turrell Revisits “Second Meeting”" originally appeared on the Art21 Blog

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Artist Maya Lin in her Manhattan studio. Production still from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Cinematography by Rafael Salazar Moreno.

“If we forget what used to be, then we’ve lost an ability to really be sensitive to our surroundings.”

In today’s Exclusive artist Maya Lin, speaking from her Manhattan studio in late 2012 and early 2013, discusses her new body of work now on view at Pace Gallery in New York City.

Lin began these artworks by examining New York’s ecological past—from the time when streams and marshes covered Manhattan through to Hurricane Sandy when rising sea levels wreaked havoc on the city. A lifelong environmental activist, Lin has continually created artworks that encourage viewers to rethink their immediate surroundings.

Detail of Maya Lin’s “Pin River – Sandy,” 2013.
Production still from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Cinematography by Ian Forster.

By looking at New York’s past, Lin hopes we can better protect its future. Knowledge of ecological history is crucial as elected officials, homeowners, and business leaders debate the best ways to rebuild and protect against super storms. These recent discussions, according to Lin, acknowledge that if we had not destroyed all of the oyster beds, they would have mitigated much of Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge. “Or if the salt marshes were to come back, they’d be there as our first line of defense.”

It’s hard to imagine a city such as New York—one that prides itself on man-made achievements like skyscrapers, bridges, and underground subways—looking to nature for protection. But as Lin points out, it was nature that protected and cleaned New York’s harbor for thousands of years. “Do we remember that this is what Manhattan used to be?” Lin asks. “And if we remember it, could we restore it back to a fraction of what its abundance used to be?”

To hear more from Lin about the environment and see her new body of work, watch the Exclusive:

"Exclusive | Maya Lin reflects on New York’s ecological past and Hurricane Sandy" originally appeared on the Art21 Blog

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Visitors swinging in the Park Avenue Armory during Ann Hamilton’s “the event of a thread” (2012). Production stills from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Cinematography by Ian Forster.

“There’s something that happens when you swing. I’m sure there’s a neurological explanation for the sense of pleasure that you feel and I think people are giving over to that.”

Filmed in 2012 at Manhattan’s Park Avenue Armory, artist Ann Hamilton discusses her installation the event of a thread, which occupied the Armory’s cavernous drill hall. Hamilton, whose artwork often deals with the connection between text and textiles, was on site every day during the installation’s one-month run. During that time she was able to witness the various ways that visitors engaged with the different though interconnected elements of the artwork.

If you were lucky enough to have visited the event of a thread, your foremost memory of it is probably the undulating white silk curtain that divided the space. Next you might remember the sensations you felt while swinging, or perhaps the odd sight of pigeons sitting calmly in nesting cages. Or maybe you remember the different sounds. There were the sounds of things you could see—people laughing as they whooshed past you on swings or the fluttering of pigeon wings. And then there were stranger sounds—distant bells and muffled voices coming from a series of paper bags randomly positioned throughout the space—whose sources were harder to locate.

A visitor to “the event of a thread” listens to a radio inside of a paper bag. Production stills from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Cinematography by Ian Forster.

Although this new Exclusive begins with footage of Hamilton’s paper bag “speakers,” the film doesn’t go into detail about what they meant or the sounds that emanated from them. Inside of each bag was a radio transmitting the voice of a “reader,” an individual who sat at the entrance of the drill hall reciting concordance texts to the pigeons.

After our interview with Hamilton, she asked us to speak with Gian-Murray Gianino, one of the readers and a professional actor with the SITI Company. Hamilton ended up interviewing him herself while we recorded. Their conversation, excerpted below, explains what a concordance text is and sheds light on their role in the installation.

Ann Hamilton. Production still from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Cinematography by Nick Ravich.

Actor Gian-Murray Gianino being interviewed by artist Ann Hamilton. Production still from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Cinematography by Nick Ravich.

Ann Hamilton: Could you start by saying what you’re doing in the piece the event of a thread?

Gian-Murray Gianino: There are always two readers sitting at a table reading a scroll and there are cages of pigeons on the table. So we’re communicating these texts to the pigeons. The texts are glorious and fabulous and rich—Aristotle, Darwin, William James, Emerson. They’re in something called a concordance, which actually I’m still trying to figure out. But it has a spinal word and it connects two different fragments of the text and puts them together with different spinal words like “in, the, breath, or” so that the actual thing we’re reading is non-linear, although we could find a linear thread in it. There are guidelines to how we read but there are no rules.

AH: That means it’s still alive.

GMG: That’s the richness of it. It is my process as an artist and as somebody who just speaks words. I mean, that is my job but everybody does it. So what does your brain go to or what words are you attracted to or what are the pigeons doing that maybe draws you to something else in the text? I’m finding my habitual rhythms and then I’m trying to swim away from them and challenge myself.

AH: How much are you affected by the reader next to you?

GMG: There are people who you’re going to have a natural affinity with, either rhythmically or tone-wise or emotionally because you know them. And some people you don’t know as well, which is exciting because it’s an opportunity to get to know someone better. Because it’s been packed and growing, it’s very hard to hear that other reader unless somebody comes by with a bag and then you hear the person’s voice. The day after we opened was the quietest day that I’ve read here, so I was able to sort of zen out and play with those people. Now, as it’s been more active, it requires more rigor to keep finding something in the text with your partner. It’s constantly changing. I wouldn’t say that any moment has been the same.

AH: I’m really struck by how essential listening is to how you read.

GMG: Any good work, any good piece of art in any medium, is a conversation between the artist and the viewer, the other artists, the space, the whole thing. This seems to me a pretty amazing example of that.

"Exclusive | Ann Hamilton: “the event of a thread”" originally appeared on the Art21 Blog

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A mannequin tagging on Barry McGee’s “Untitled” (1999/2012). Production still from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Cinematography by Bob Elfstrom.
© Art21, Inc. 2013. Cinematography by Bob Elfstrom.

“That’s immediately how I gauge how healthy a city is—by the amount of tags. It’s in direct competition with advertising.”

Filmed in 2012, this new Exclusive follows artist Barry McGee through his self-titled retrospective exhibition at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAM/PFA). McGee, who became interested in tagging while growing up in San Francisco, describes the excitement of putting up new tags and the rush of getting away with it. Alongside his ongoing and intimate involvement with street culture, McGee has maintained an active studio practice, which he describes as being “completely different.” These two disparate ways of making—and showing—work meet in Barry McGee, which has traveled to the East Coast and opens today at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston.

Prominently featured in the BAM/PFA exhibition were animatronic mannequins that appeared to be tagging different areas of the museum’s concrete walls. In one instance, the figures were stacked on each other’s shoulders, suggesting the great lengths required when McGee and his friends sought to reach high up the sides of buildings and freeway overpasses. But these sculptures, McGee explains, are meant to illustrate something more real—an act that can only truly exist outside.

Artist Barry McGee. Production still from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Cinematography by Bob Elfstrom.

The distinction McGee makes between what is illustration and what is “real” is central to how he’s organized his retrospective and previous exhibitions. In an unseen segment of Art21’s Exclusive interview, he talks about this vis-à-vis large tags that he painted on BAM/PFA’s exterior:

“I know how it works with the street: you have the maximum amount of exposure that you’ll ever get. Going indoors is like marching backwards. I’ve tried over the last ten years to do more things on a museum’s façade or outside, still in the public view. But I have varying degrees of success with that because it’s all kind of fake, or they become illustrations of what the real thing is…The whole exhibition is more of a guidebook.”

Click play and take the tour:

Barry McGee is on view at ICA Boston through September 2, 2013.

"Exclusive | Barry McGee: Tagging" originally appeared on the Art21 Blog

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Elizabeth Murray in her Manhattan studio with “Bop” (2002-03). Production still from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Cinematography by Ken Kobland.

“Usually what happens is when I start to really hate it, it starts to go someplace. It’s almost as though you have to get down into that place where you absolutely hate it and want to rip it off the wall, rip it to pieces, and throw it out, to start getting into it.”

Filmed in 2002, this new Exclusive shows the late artist Elizabeth Murray working on the large-scale painting Bop (2002-03) in her Manhattan studio. As Murray adds and removes shapes and colors to its interconnected canvases, she expresses frustration but later satisfaction with the piece. For Murray, an experience like this, of finding resolution after struggling, was a highlight of being an artist.

Surely there are non-artists who can relate to Murray’s struggle with Bop. Anyone who has ever attempted a creative endeavor has at times wanted to “rip it to pieces and throw it out.” Yet Murray’s persistence, the act of pushing through until the point of completion and contentment, is equally relatable.

How we reach that moment of satisfaction is often a mysterious and unknowable process. “I don’t think I can describe it,” says Murray in the Exclusive “but when I look at [Bop], instead of it being this battle, this conflict that I have to pull together, I can look at it peacefully.”

The evolution of “Bop” (2002-03). Production stills from the series Exclusive.
© Art21, Inc. 2013. Cinematography by Ken Kobland.

At Art21 we like to say that artists are “role models for creative thinking” and Murray was certainly such a figure. She demonstrates in today’s Exclusive the need for a certain drive in the creative process to achieve an end. In the above production stills you can see from frame to frame how Murray experimented with and at times rejected new ideas.

Art21 filmed Murray twice while she was making Bop, and again as she installed the finished work at Pace Gallery. During that five-month period we witnessed the painting’s evolution from a series of drawings to a completed three-dimensional form. Watch the video below.

"Exclusive | Elizabeth Murray: “Bop”" originally appeared on the Art21 Blog

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Margaret Kilgallen (right) and her heroines (left column) from top to bottom: Matokie Slaughter (center), Algia Mae Hinton (left), and Fanny Durack (left). Production stills from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Cinematography by Bob Elfstrom. Photography by Mary Ann McDonald. Images courtesy the Alice Gerrard Collection at the Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina Folklife Program, NC Arts Council, and The National Museum of Australia.

“I especially hope to inspire young women because I often feel like so much emphasis is put on how beautiful you are and how thin you are, and not a lot of emphasis is put on what you can do and how smart you are. I’d like to change the emphasis of what’s important when looking at a woman.”

In a previously unseen Art21 interview that was recorded in 2000, the late Margaret Kilgallen (1967-2001) discusses the female figures or “heroines” incorporated into many of her paintings and graffiti tags. Loosely based on women she discovered while listening to folk records, watching buck dance videos, or reading about the history of swimming, Kilgallen’s heroines are meant to inspire others and hopefully change how society looks at women. Today’s Exclusive features three of Kilgallen’s heroines—Matokie Slaughter, Algia Mae Hinton, and Fanny Durack—who are shown and heard through archival video, images, and audio recordings.

Since its premiere last week on Hyperallergic (one of our 100 Artists media partners), Margaret Kilgallen: “Heroines” has already reached thousands of online viewers. The immediate popularity of this video can only, in my opinion, be attributed to the lasting power of Kilgallen’s ideas and images. As the video was shared across social media platforms, it was clear how much Kilgallen’s artwork has stayed in the minds and hearts of her longtime fans and old friends, and even touched those newly discovering her artwork.

As footage of Kilgallen at work continues to circulate and motivate young artists, this video also provides the opportunity to learn about the three women that Kilgallen herself found inspiring. “[They] just do small things and yet somehow hit me in my heart,” she said. Though these women are accomplished musicians or athletes, their names are not widely known. In searching for photographs, footage, and audio recordings of them for our episode, I came to learn a tremendous amount about their lives, largely through friends, recording partners, and fans. For the remainder of this post I will share some of what I learned so that, perhaps, you will appreciate their lives and achievements as much as Kilgallen did.

Matokie Slaughter with her fiddle. Production still from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Image courtesy the Alice Gerrard Collection at the Wilson Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Matokie Slaughter

Musician Alice Gerard—whose archive provided images and music for our Exclusive—recently released a new album of Matokie Slaughter recordings. In the album liner notes, she sheds light on her friend and collaborator’s upbringing and musical training:

“Raised in the Back Creek section near the small industrial town of Pulaski in southwestern Virginia, Matokie was self-taught. She recalled learning the reading basics from her mother, using as a textbook the newspapers which lined the inside walls of their home. She learned her music in the same way—from neighbors in the community and from the radio, but primarily from her father and mother.”

Andy Cahan, another musician and fan of Slaughter, also contributed to the liner notes. He wrote this of Slaughter’s banjo and fiddle playing:

“The precision, the hauntingly beautiful notes, and the power in her playing had a special allure. It was raw, but elegant. It had an austere, isolated quality; a voice from the distant past, yet it was alive, and in the moment.”

Algia Mae Hnton with her guitar. Production still from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Image provided by Lightnin’ Wells.

Algia Mae Hinton

In researching Algia Mae Hinton, I was put in touch with Lightnin’ Wells through the North Carolina Folklife Program. Wells is a folk and blues musician who frequently collaborated with Hinton, who now lives near her children in North Carolina. Lightnin’ Wells shared this with me via email:

“Though she is a soft spoken ‘country gal,’ Algia Mae was always a striking physical presence with her shades, fancy outfits, braided hair, and cool air. I always called her the ‘Rockin’ Grandma.’ Those who were lucky enough to get to know Algia Mae, I think, were most impressed by her strength and ability to triumph in the face of adversity. Here was a woman who had single-handedly raised a family by performing hard farm labor yet still had time to play the music, which she learned orally from her parents, friends, and family and perform this music with style and finesse. They also undoubtedly noticed her warmth, mischievous humor, and her ability to see through the BS. She’d been around, and not much got by her.”

Mina Wylie (left) and Fanny Durack (center). Production still from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Image courtesy the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Australia.

Fanny Durack

My research into the life of Australian swimming legend Fanny Durack brought me to the website of the National Museum of Australia. (They too graciously supplied images for the Exclusive.) The museum wrote:

“In an era when many sports were deemed too physically demanding for women, swimming was seen as acceptable. But rules forbidding women from appearing in competitions when men were present still had to be changed to enable Sarah ‘Fanny’ Durack and Wilhelmina ‘Mina’ Wylie to compete at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm. Durack and Wylie raised their own money to attend the games, but were claimed as national heroines when they won gold and silver, respectively.”

In addition to discussing her heroines, Kilgallen is shown tagging train cars with her husband, artist Barry McGee, in a Bay Area rail yard, and painting in her studio at the University of California, Berkeley.

"Exclusive | Margaret Kilgallen: Heroines" originally appeared on the Art21 Blog

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Martin Puryear painting Asphaltum on a copper printing plate at Paulson Bott Press in Berkeley, CA.
Production still from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Cinematography by Bob Elfstrom.

“Prints are direct. It’s very freeing to work so directly. There is an element of immediacy about it, or there should be. In my hands it often isn’t because I tend to be difficult to satisfy in terms of getting it the way I want it.”

In today’s Exclusive episode, Martin Puryear discusses his interest in printmaking and how the directness of the process contrasts with the accretive approach he takes to sculpture. Shown in 2002 at the Paulson Bott Press in Berkeley, California, Puryear employs skills he originally learned while enrolled at the Swedish Royal Academy of Art in Stockholm.

In watching the artist etch and paint copper plates, I am struck by the ease and focus he seems to have despite the bustle about him; his undivided attention is given to each mark and brush stroke. Though I cannot attest to his thoughts in these moments, the repetitive actions are for me almost hypnotic to observe. When the print is handed off to the printers to be pressed, Puryear’s demeanor seems to shift. One can sense a level of anxiety, however slight, once he has placed his work in the hands of others, and when the final image is about to be revealed.

In an unpublished interview conducted by Art21 in 2002, Puryear speaks about his preference for handling materials with his own hands, which can be traced to his time stationed in West Africa as a member of the Peace Corps.

Detail of Martin Puryear painting Asphaltum on a copper printing plate at Paulson Bott Press in Berkeley, CA.
Production still from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Cinematography by Bob Elfstrom.

Puryear was inspired by the high value placed on handmade objects in West Africa and describes how this later influenced his approach to art making:

“I think the influence that I felt most strongly was actually observing people who worked with hand tools, who could build things with hand tools. Because in many cases they didn’t have electricity so it all had to be done by the power of the muscles in the arms and the back. And the school that I taught in was completely built and furnished by people who had no electricity. All the benches, school desks, library bookshelves, doors—everything was made by a carpenter in town. Seeing that kind of joinery in the sixties being made with hand tools and hand-powered, it gave me a sense of independence from what I felt was such a crucial thing back home, which was the electric socket, and expensive electric tools, to be able to do things…That was liberating, particularly in the early years when I was starting out, to know that I could rely on some hand tools and a work bench to produce some work that I really could get involved in.”

Though Puryear now enjoys the privilege of working with master printers like the team at Paulson Bott Press, he still believes that “if you’ve got the right tools, you can do it all using your own physical body.” As electric tools become only more plentiful and seemingly necessary to young artists, Puryear inadvertently offers words of advice:

“A lot of people starting out get hampered because they can’t afford to set themselves up the way they think they need to. I think being in Africa showed me that you can start with a real modicum of physical support if the will is there and the know-how to do it.”

Martin Puryear reviewing a finished print at Paulson Bott Press in Berkeley, CA.
Production still from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Cinematography by Bob Elfstrom.

Featured in today’s Exclusive (below) are some of Puryear’s sculptures shown at McKee Gallery in New York. In many of these works, he explores the same ideas reflected in his prints.

"Exclusive | Martin Puryear: Printmaking" originally appeared on the Art21 Blog

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El Anatsui. “Broken Bridge II,” 2012. Installed above the High Line in New York City. Production still from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Cinematography by Ian Forster.

“I come from a place where you have a lot of sky. The sky starts from almost ground level and goes up. But over here you have to really look up to realize that there is eventually sky somewhere. That’s almost the experience of most people who live in open country and they come to New York—sky is not a common commodity.”

In today’s Exclusive episode, Nigeria-based artist El Anatsui discusses his large-scale sculpture Broken Bridge II (2012) and the importance of its location on an east-facing wall above the High Line, a relatively new park located on once-abandoned, elevated railroad tracks on Manhattan’s west side. By incorporating mirrors into Broken Bridge II, a new material for the artist, Anatsui is able to reflect and point out characteristics of New York that he considers iconic.

Having now produced three Exclusive videos featuring Anatsui, in addition to his Art in the Twenty-First Century segment, Art21 has thoroughly documented his exhibitions and evolving studio practice. In my opinion, we have been able to cover his work so comprehensively because Anatsui himself is very engaged with and curious about the process of documentary filmmaking.

When Art21 was unable to visit the artist’s studio in Nsukka, Nigeria, due to high travel costs, he took it upon himself to purchase a video camera and ask a friend to film him and his assistants at work. Anatsui consulted with our director of production, Nick Ravich, on what camera to purchase, and stayed in touch with our executive producer, Susan Sollins, about the best footage to capture. Although we have worked closely with all 100 artists featured in Art in the Twenty-First Century, having Anatsui this involved with the production process meant reconsidering the distinctions between filmmaker and subject while still being able to take our audience behind-the-scenes.

El Anatsui taking a photograph on his iPad of “Broken Bridge II” (2012) installed above the High Line in New York City. Production still from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Cinematography by Ian Forster.

Anatsui’s interest in filmmaking is, perhaps, because cameras are already such an integral part of his creative process. He explains in an earlier Exclusive episode: ”For days, I can keep shifting [bottle caps] around, taking photographs of them, and putting them in the computer…I need to have a large bank of images, effects, textures that I can always refer to. They can trigger off new ideas.”

Anatsui further demonstrated the importance of picture taking for him during our filming at the High Line. As the artist oversaw installation, he was also constantly taking pictures with his iPad. “You have to let the work really sink into you so that you can review it and take certain decisions,” he said. Anatsui was making specific reference to his dissatisfaction with how the bottom edge of the artwork interacted with the concrete wall. “The decision about opening up the lower portion of the work came after studying the picture of it on the iPad. I saw it clearly as something that had to be attended to.”

El Anatsui taking a photograph of himself in the reflection of “Broken Bridge II” (2012) at his studio in Nsukka, Nigeria. Production still from the series Exclusive. © Art21, Inc. 2013. Image courtesy El Anatsui.

What I’ve found most enjoyable about working with Anatsui is receiving his process images via email, the above picture being one of my favorites.

Broken Bridge II is on the High Line through September 2013. Today’s Exclusive, embedded below, features, in addition to Anatsui, High Line Art’s project manager Jordan Benke, and curator Cecilia Alemani discussing the installation process and how this work differs from Anatsui’s smaller sculptures.

Anatsui’s solo exhibition Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui opens today at the Brooklyn Museum. Many of the works on view appear in the Exclusive “El Anatsui: Language & Symbols,” filmed at The Museum of Modern Art in Hayama, Japan.

"Exclusive | El Anatsui: “Broken Bridge II”" originally appeared on the Art21 Blog

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Shahzia Sikander, Drawing for “The Last Post.” Courtesy the artist.

“I’m interested in taking a form, breaking it apart, and then rebuilding it. It is about transformation for me — whether it is the transformation of a image or a mark or a symbol or if it’s a transformation of a genre or transformation of a medium – but it is a very core notion that I think stabilizes my practice.”

In today’s Exclusive episode, Shahzia Sikander discusses her animated video work The Last Post (2010). Sikander also describes how beginning to create animations was a natural evolution in her studio process because she had already been working with narrative and layering in her paintings and large-scale installations.

Filmed in 2012 at her Manhattan studio, the video tells a story about the development of her work yet the nature of editing is that content gets cut, even things that you or I may find interesting. During our interview, Sikander shared personal observations that didn’t make it into our final video, but because these thoughts shed more light on her creative process, I thought it important to share them here.

The Last Post began with a series of paintings that Sikander created using gouache, ink and watercolors. The images were then scanned at high resolution, allowing her to analyze and manipulate them in Photoshop and After Effects. In looking at her work under a digital microscope, she was presented with new opportunities and challenges. “One very interesting observation for me is that everything is magnified in HD space,” she said. “So all the marks that create the tactile experience of a drawing become magnified, and may not necessarily sit well in the animation or in a digital space. It’s a very fine line.”

Shahzia Sikander, Drawing for “The Last Post.” Courtesy the artist.

In her attempt to transform paintings into moving images, Sikander must determine which paintings are suitable. For her, this is an experimental process. “There’s a lot of testing going on in terms of how certain forms can create a sense of dimension, a sense of scale, a sense that they can expand indefinitely,” she explains. Of the paintings that make the cut for her animations, she might only use a fraction of the original image. A detail might be magnified and given new associations. For instance, the French horn in the painting at the very top here was extracted for The Last Post and the two figures were removed. Sikander brought the horn together with the top half of the image just above, which she enlarged and used as the background. The seamless end result floats through today’s Exclusive in a moment characterized by almost celestial depth and foreboding movement.

As much as Sikander’s painting process has informed her animations, working in animation has affected her approach to painting, the medium for which she may be best known. “The biggest challenge of animations is to create not just one or two works, or a body of work, but to be able to create drawings that have infinite sensibility of time, scale, and space, so you can freely go through them and use them,” she said. “Working in animation has allowed me to take more care in making the drawings. It has a feedback process.”

"Exclusive | Shahzia Sikander: “The Last Post”" originally appeared on the Art21 Blog

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Production still from the Exclusive episode, Richard Serra: Tools & Strategies. © Art21, Inc. 2013.

“What’s interesting about artists is that they constantly come up with ways of informing themselves by inventing tools or techniques or processes that allow them to see into a material manifestation in the way that you would not if you dealt with standardized or academic ways of thinking.”
—Richard Serra

The latest video from our Exclusive series is now available for your viewing: Richard Serra: Tools & Strategies.

Filmed in 2000 at Richard Serra’s Manhattan studio, the artist describes the various tools and conceptual strategies he has used throughout his career when working with lead and steel. Serra discusses his early focus on the nature of the art production process itself which resulted in his writing a “Verb List” (1967-68). Multiple lead works that resulted from Serra acting out the “Verb List” are shown through archival images. Serra’s invention of a tool that twisted sheet metal around a wheel enabled him to shape steel in a new way–from the inside out. “Torqued Ellipses” (1996-97), which resulted from this process, are shown at Dia:Beacon in 2004.

Watch the full episode and learn more about Richard Serra on Art21.org.

"Exclusive | Richard Serra: Tools & Strategies" originally appeared on the Art21 Blog

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