About Samara Golden
Samara Golden (b. 1973, Ann Arbor, MI) has had solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1, New York; the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Night Gallery, Los Angeles; and CANADA, New York. Her monumental installation The Meat Grinder’s Iron Clothes was on view in the 2017 Whitney Biennial. She has participated in group shows at Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; Nicelle Beauchene, New York; and Yuz Museum, Shanghai. Golden was featured in the 2014 Made in L.A. Biennial, Los Angeles, and in Room to Live at MOCA Los Angeles. In 2015, a monograph on Golden was published by MoMA PS1, and her work has been written about in publications including Artforum, Art in America, the New York Times, The New Yorker, and Mousse Magazine. Golden’s work is in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; LACMA and MOCA in Los Angeles; Orange County Museum of Art, Santa Ana; Zabludowicz Collection, London; and Yuz Museum, Shanghai. Golden lives and works in Los Angeles.
Transcript
Anna Smith: Hi, good afternoon. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Nasher Sculpture Center. I'm curator of education, Anna Smith, and today, it's my honor to introduce artist Samara Golden. The lower level gallery of the Nasher has seen a lot over the years. It's been filled with balloons, landscaped and spray-painted, and strung with barbed wire--luckily, not at the same time as the balloons--but this is the first time an artist has fundamentally reshaped the space or at least our perception of it, transforming it into a lagoon by turns alluring and repellent that extends beyond the physical boundaries of the room.
Samara Golden, the quiet force behind this transformation has had solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1, the Fabric Workshop of Museum Philadelphia, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, and CANADA, New York. Her monumental installation, The Meat Grinder's Iron Clothes, was on view in the 2017 Whitney Biennial. She has participated in group shows at Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Ba in Germany, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Nicelle Beauchene, New York, and Yuz Museum, Shanghai. Golden was featured in the 2014 Made in L.A. Biennial and in Room to Live at MOCA Los Angeles.
In 2015, a monograph on Golden was published by MoMA PS1, and her work has been written about in publications including Art Forum, Art in America, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and Moose Magazine. Golden's work is in the collections of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Whitney Museum of American Art, LACMA, MOCA, Los Angeles, Orange County Museum of Art, Zabludowicz Collection in London, and Yuz Museum, Shanghai. In conversation with Golden is Nasher Senior Curator Catherine Craft, who has been with the Nasher since 2011. Craft is the author of An Audience of Artists: Dada, Neo-Dada, and the Emergence of Abstract Expressionism and Robert Rauschenberg, as well as numerous articles and reviews.
At the Nasher, Craft has most recently curated the Dallas presentation of Thaddeus Mosely: Forest and Nairy Baghramian: Modèle Vivant. I know that artists and curator have been working closely together for the past few weeks to bring this exhibition to fruition, and I'm looking forward to a thoughtful reflection, so to speak, on that process. Please join me now in welcoming Samara Golden and Catherine Craft.
Catherine Craft: Okay. All right. Hello, everyone. Thank you for coming out, first of all, and Anna, thank you for that nice introduction. I'm going to start, I'm afraid, by taking drink, and then we will get underway. Samara, we've spent a lot of time in the lower level of the Nasher for the last three weeks, I think. As Anna was saying, this is really the first time an artist has transformed that space so fully. We've been talking about this exhibition for quite a while, and you made a number of the components for it in your Los Angeles studio, but you really were putting them together here. So, I also wanted to just start with the idea that you've really composed this work on site. You and, for that matter, I are still settling into and getting used to the fact that it's finished.
Samara Golden: Yeah.
CC: What has it been like, or do you feel like you've been able to spend enough time in it since you're no longer working on it?
SG: No, we finished it two days ago in the afternoon. Can you hear me? Okay. Actually, when I first got here, this whole room was coated with plastic and I had all my stuff everywhere and we were trying to put together all the water pieces. So, it's funny to be back here in this situation. I really didn't know if anything was going to work. So, it's been a process of figuring out things all the way along the way until pretty much this moment. So, I haven't really gotten that much time to spend with the piece in its final iteration.
CC: I mean, we've just set them on a carousel images of some of Samara's previous installations, and one of the things that you see is that for a number of years, she's used mirrors in her works to create spaces that are... I think you used the term impossible spaces, like spaces that you're seeing, but they somehow shouldn't be able to exist. One of the things that was really astonishing to me when we were installing the show is... Of course, we had a team of first four and then two art handlers and Samara was directing them how to put things, attach things to the ceiling.
As a curator who has to install things as well, I know that it can sometimes be very difficult to verbalize where you wish you could just pick up and move 100-pound sculpture. If you could just do it yourself, you could put it in the right place. You're trying to tell somebody, "No, two inches here, four inches back." But I was watching you trying to think backwards and upside down because you're attaching sculptures to the ceiling. Do you recall how that started or how you figured out how to achieve what you wanted, not just with this piece, but earlier on?
SG: Still figuring it out, I would say. Yeah, it's a really confusing process just to talk about that actual situation, Catherine. Speaking of, it's like you have to be able to tell somebody that... Well, I should say that the mirrors were on the floor and the piece weren't up where they weren't installed until near to the end. So, I just had a mirror on a dolly, a large mirror, and we were moving it around to try to test to see what things would look like in the end. So, yeah, it's hard because first, you have to decide, "Am I speaking an illusionistic language or am I speaking in the reality? When you say up higher, down lower, is that in the reflection or in the real life?"
So part of it is coming up with a language that everyone understands and then sticking with it, which none of us did, but also, I was really composing it like a painting. Things are always a little backwards also, with the way I needed to install it, because the water surface is what I call it, the plastic, that had to be installed first. So, that I could test it with the fans and make sure the currents and that it actually was working, because in my studio, I could only test eight feet by eight feet because I didn't have enough space. So, that had to be installed first, which creates all these vertical wire lines, the way it's hung.
So, then all the sculptures not only have to be hung up there in between those, but if you want to move them clockwise or down or anything, you have to take it out and go. I really thank the art handlers for being so patient with me, because it wasn't easy for any of us and they're up on the ladders most of the time, but I was up there too. I'll say one thing that's interesting that you guys don't get to experience, but being on a ladder inside the piece with the mirrors up on top of the mirrors, we put foam and plywood and then a ladder. It's like if you're at the top of the ladder, it actually looks like it's 30 feet down. So, the illusion is really scary to be up there. So, yeah, I don't know if that gets to what you you're talking about.
CC: Yeah, I mean, just to back up a little bit, the way physically the piece started was Samara drew up plans for us to prepare the space. So, when you go into the lower level gallery, and I'm just curious, how many of you have already had a look at the show before coming? Okay, most of you have. That's great. She started by sending us plans to build basically a wedge or pie-shaped room, like a slice of pie that then got, as she was saying, covered with mirrors on the walls and on the floor.
So, I think comparing it to a painting is really interesting, because on the one hand, you have the sculptures and other materials suspended from the ceiling. You have the waves of water just below that. Then there are the fans and the lights that really finish the piece. I mean, they're like their own composition and they create effects that I think even you didn't necessarily expect.
SG: Do you want me to talk about the raindrops?
CC:
Yeah, that was really special.
SG: But interject if I'm not...
CC: Oh, yeah.
SG: So part of it is that I can't actually see the piece before it's made. Then part of it is that I really believe, I guess, in a superstitious way about the piece becoming itself in this way that I can't figure out, which is pretty terrifying as you're almost done and then you just don't know if anything's going to work and they'll come together in the way that you want. But one really nice thing is that we were working really close together the last three days of the install. Catherine and I were trying to light the piece, which is such a big deal for just... I'll talk about that in a minute. But what we saw in there from being in there for a while is those raindrops that appear around the perimeter of the circle, which you may or not see or you might, but they are not raindrops and they are just an illusion.
They are something that's like I couldn't have known how to create that. So, in terms of manipulating all the really crappy materials to make an illusion, that was such a nice surprise. It was really special because after a while for me and I don't want to have what I see in it necessarily have to be what anyone else sees, but I felt like it was the feeling when you have when it's a stormy night and there's drizzle. I don't get any of that in LA because it hardly ever rains. I really love that emotional feeling of just being able to look at something and relax, I guess, which is what the ocean or a fireplace is like. But back to the lighting, one thing is then the next day we found out, it was long story, that we could use spotlights in the piece.
So, I replaced all the lights and pointed them differently. It was also another epiphany because there was an ability to light the edges, so that you could see under really far away. Then there are a lot of things like there's no way I could have planned it. I'm not that smart. It was just things that started to happen and that's what the part of the process that I really love. It was nice to share it, and it was exciting and exhausting. The whole thing is really like... I think you said, but this is a totally new work for me, maybe a similar format I've used with mirrors a little bit, but I was trying to achieve a completely different thing. So, yeah, it's scary.
CC: I think one of the things that is really new in your work with this piece is you've seen with some of the works going by in the carousel, a lot of times your installations are responding to architecture or pre-existing features in a building and they will often be different floors or they'll have some geometric basis or levels of things. Even though we're in a very architecturally significant building, I think even before, I think you got to the themes and ideas of the piece specifically, we were already talking about going down the stairs here and the descending underground as it were.
Into this space, which as Anna referenced, it has this white cube gallery feeling. It doesn't have the same architectural character necessarily that you find, say, upstairs, for example. So, I think it really did leave open the possibilities of trying something completely different. We've talked a little bit about the how and we'll come back I think continually to that, but I think the idea of thinking about water came pretty early in the process. Yes?
SG: Yeah. Well, I don't know what it is actually, but I've just been very drawn to try to create water. I made a jacuzzi in the Whitney one, which was the most fun part of the whole... Because part of it is I really love making... When it comes up, I'll point to it really fast and you can see. But I really love making all the objects. I really make everything myself mostly. I guess it's a bit of trompe l'oeil and a bit of lighting and it's a little theatrical, but I hadn't tried it again. But also, I feel like water has come up in a lot of my work, I'm trying to look for that one piece, just because I think it represents the fantasy of being on vacation or release or relief or this idea of this blue ocean that all of us have in our mind is this vacation.
I think you said yesterday, this idea that after this installation is over, oh, wouldn't it be great to go to a blue ocean clear place and it's warm water and it's so amazing and stuff? So there's that fantasy, but then there's also the swill of nuclear wastewater. I've been listening to a lot of crime stuff, which is really weird. I don't know why I've been doing it.
CC: Do you mean true crime-
SG: True crime.
CC: ... podcast stuff? Yeah.
SG: One of the art handlers really astutely said that women like to listen to it more for the fact that they want to learn from it and to be prepared, which I thought was really interesting. So, anyway, all through history and through films and books and everything, there's always a woman at the bottom of the river who's been killed. Her hair is like this, and it's also this weird demented, romantic vision, which I am totally against, but I was trying to create some balance between the nuclear swill and the beautiful scuba or snorkel weather that you can have in a perfect situation. I guess mostly it's really personal and that's why it's also hard for me to talk about the piece right now because I just finished it, but I don't know. That's something about water.
CC:
Yeah, I think it's also that, and we've talked about this a little bit, that personal thoughts about water, but water is such an elemental force and such a major and important part of all of our lives that I think we all bring our own personal connections to water that have more in common than they don't, but they can still be very specific things. I mean, we just talked to somebody this morning who said they found the piece very peaceful, and I've talked to somebody else who said they found elements of the work rather disturbing. I think both those things can be true.
I think one of the things that's somewhat unexpected is the way different elements appear as you're looking and as you're moving across from one edge of the platform to another, and this is a work that it's funny, there is this element of just wanting to stare out at it as you're looking at a fire and a fireplace or looking at a lake or the ocean. But there's also an element of it is sculptural in that if you move along the railing, you'll see different parts of it. In part, that's to the materials you're using, these incredible reflective fabrics.
SG: And diachromatic, which I forgot to-
CC: Diachromatic?
SG: Which means that there's some material in there that changes color depending on the perspective and the light, which in almost impossible way to figure out. So, there was really a lot of happy moments in the piece seeing through and I don't want to say that this is there, but what I saw is that in some far away areas, there's a small flame underneath the water and then it goes from purple to green to yellow. It's very far away and then there's black silhouettes that you can't understand. That's due to a combination of the reflective material that's actually in real life on the top of the installation, which makes a halo effect when you have a light pointed directly at it. Also, the dye, I think it's called diachromatic.
Some people call it holographic, but it's not correct, material that changes the color depending on not only your perspective, but the light on it. So, it's like to wrangle all that stuff together to create this thing, it's almost like this impossible puzzle. I couldn't have really tried to do that unless I had a year inside of the piece making. So, those surprises are really... That's what I was hoping for.
CC: In addition to those fabrics, they may be unusual to see in artworks, but they're common in construction, or how did you come across these types of fabrics?
SG: Well, actually, the reflective fabric I'm talking about is made with glass beads, which is similar to the way that they do the reflectors on stop signs or on the road on the highway, but they're smaller glass beads and it's a newer technology. Because now, if you look on eBay or whatever, Amazon, you can find a sweatshirt made of the stuff. I think some people call it flash material, because if you have headlights on it in a very dark place, it learns turns bright white. But in this case, the light is more medium.
So, I'm mostly using it as a highlight. Then we had to make some decisions about the lighting that were hard, but one was that there was a bigger halo around a different light. Now, the light's more precise, so there's less of a halo, but the color comes out and I don't know. You have to look hard for a long time.
CC: Now, I guess it was interesting, I think what this fabric is, where it comes from and how it's typically used. I mean, it also speaks to a way that you've worked all along. I mean, you were saying that the sculptures are all handmade and they're made at a smaller scale. You'll see beach chairs in this installation that in reality may be about that high, but one of the things that I think is also interesting about it is really all the materials you use are pretty common. They're construction materials. I'm seeing flat side of the knife, which some of your installations use as a Thermax.
SG:
Yeah.
CC: Yeah, which is a common insulation material. All the sculptures, the figures, and the sea life, how are those made?
SG: Spray foam, like insulation spray foam. I don't know if it's a political thing or class thing, but I just really like using materials that I can get as... They're not really artist materials. I've found ways to make them more archival, but I like the idea that anyone can make a piece like this and anybody can have a connection to it. Kids can have a connection to it, but not because it's a trick, but because it's... I don't really know what to call it. I used to use the word populist, but now I don't know if that's the right word because that's been weaponized more in a political way, but that's been important.
CC: Yeah, go ahead.
SG: I guess in the bigger picture, what I'm trying to do is make something that can't really be made on Earth and in a sense that with gravity, with the way that all the laws of the world work, you can't do the thing I want to do. I don't like mirrors particularly or not interested in making illusionistic tricks, but I like the fact that they can carve out a space that you can never inhabit in real life, but you could also feel like is really there. It's very hard to describe it. So, that's where I'm headed and I know every piece to me fails really badly at it, but I feel that that's the only way that I have a chance to make what I want to make. I don't know if I said that very well.
CC: No, I think that makes a lot of sense. Do you think if you could make a piece that didn't fail, would it be perfect or do you think it would be satisfying?
SG: Yeah. Well, we've talked about this a lot because I struggled. It's embarrassing, but the whole thing is I've been working every second and totally stressed and I don't want to be like that as a person. But at the same time, I think that struggle, I guess it's necessary for the thing to come out the way it is and the fact that the illusion is broken is important to the way it comes out. If I had everyone fabricate every part of it and I worked with 3D designers and computer graphics, that sounds really old, but you know what I mean, and was somehow able to make this thing and it came out how it was supposed to come out, I don't think it would be right for me. That's no comment on anyone else's process though.
But also, for instance, I thought about what if I could make a piece on this space station or what if I got to design the whole space station? So there was no gravity as a limitation, but I have no idea. I don't know. A lot of people I think moved to cinema to try to deal with this problem actually, because for instance, in 2001, which I feel silly bringing it up, but everyone knows that scene where I think... Are they jogging around the whole wheel?
So every part is just where you are and that's your gravity and then it goes around. You just have to watch the scene. But I feel like a lot of film or there's film tricks that are widely employed, people that are on a wall that's actually on the floor, but the camera is above and then they're pretending like they're falling down. Anyway, I think most people trying to do what I wanted to do might think that they could do it better in film. Is that red herring you haven't heard about yet? Sorry.
CC: No, that's fine.
SG: What else?
CC: Yeah, I'm also thinking about I keep coming back to water and it's interesting to me when I was putting it together, there's slides reminding myself that water also shows up in some of your very earliest installations as video. Is it video or still image in the-
SG: Video, but it's important in that... Oh, we just passed it. The Rape of the Mirror one, which was in 2011, that footage of the breaking waves was behind... There it is, but that's actually video up there. But that was very important that it was actually a day when I went very sad over a lot of things to the ocean and it was like my eyes looking at the ocean and it's the real video. Even though it wasn't the best quality video, I didn't go back to reshoot it. It's really what it was. That's been really important to me that it's like a witchy. It's probably not the right way to say it, but I just feel things have to be sincere in order to build up any momentum with anybody else.
It has to mean something to me in order for it to mean anything to anybody else. In that case, when you're the saddest you could ever be, if you go to the water and just look out, I don't know that it heals you, but it just feels like maybe that's the only thing you can possibly do. I think that's universal. I'm not sure. But at the same time, I'm terrified. I can't swim in the ocean very well because I can't deal with the riptides. I've gotten pummeled so many times. What was the other one that was water that I was supposed to think about?
CC: Mass Murder also has the bedroom, the next one in the carousel.
SG: This one. Well, actually this is a nice example of how I didn't... So, this is another piece where I just didn't know how it would really work or look in the end. Those sunsets and space that was created behind all this furniture in this blue living room was a surprise for me. It's really a projection on the back wall. This installation, you walk through several rooms and I thought of it all as a brain that you're walking through different thoughts, but the part that was a sunset projected was a different thought, but then it ended up creating more space in the reflections of this room.
So, it was a surprise where this room became expanded and was this huge fancy aspirational place that it was actually about my grandparents' house, but in Arizona that had white carpet. I don't even know this is blue and a piano and stuff like that. Then the other spaces were more harsh and more about terrible things, anyway, and cigarettes and booze and stuff.
CC: Yeah. Well one of the things that strikes me also from these works and also right down to the present installation, I think sometimes you've told me you're not always so comfortable talking about your work, but you have really beautiful poetic titles. This current one, "if earth is the brain then where is the body" is really put in mind to think of it again because you were describing this installation.
Mass Murder is walking through different spaces that are different parts of a brain. Also, with Upstairs at Steve's, if it's possible to go to that, I guess I'm thinking there is sometimes in the work a split between Earth, body, and brain or between what we see in our minds and what we end up with in reality. I'm just wondering, am I right in thinking that that seems to be a through line?
SG: Good question.
CC: I know. It's not a question I've sprung on you before. It just occurred to me, and it may help for people who don't know upstairs, like who Steve is and what that referred to.
SG: Okay. Yeah. Well, actually, the title for Upstairs at Steve's is more direct than any of my other titles, but my brother-in-law died of ALS. I don't know.
CC: 2019, 2020. This piece was 2020.
SG: I can't even keep track of time because of the pandemic and stuff, but he died of ALS like young. It was just a horrible situation. It's just such an unfair thing. So, this piece, it was like a hurricane hit. This is similar actually in form to this piece and that it's a pie-shaped space and everything you're seeing is installed on the ceiling. But it was like the what's after a storm in a way and then there was a building in the middle. Well, there was something you were touching on about the titles that I was... Should I talk about the title of this one for a sec? I don't know. I don't know if that's skipping around too much. Let's see. Well, I feel like I've been trying to work in an abstraction in a way a lot more.
I don't think it's the right word, abstraction, but instead of having things have their logic, there's the structure that's the mirrors and the physical structure, which is I feel like a stretcher and a painting. It's only the beginning. Then there's the structure at the Whitney, I've built with platforms, and then you see under them and above them in the reflections and they go down. Then that piece was more about class and it was more about the stratification of different ways of being in the world, but I really have been interested in trying to do something that's more... Well, all of them have had some emotion, but almost something that I can't really say what it is. So, that's why it's super uncomfortable to talk about it right now is it usually takes a while for me to even figure it out.
But with the name of this one, I felt like I just heard that in my ear, which is unusual. Usually, I have the huge lists of words and I'm trying to find the title by a million thesaurus. I have a pocket thesaurus and just trying to figure it out. But with this one, I really like the way that... Can you say it again? I'm really bad at saying the title.
CC: Yeah, if earth is the brain, then where is the body?
SG: Yes. I like the way that I couldn't understand or even really conceptualize what that meant. I just had to sit there thinking, "I can barely stretch my brain to understand what that means." Then I really liked the idea that this piece is parallel or mimicking that idea, but in a really different way. So, to me, I was happy for that moment of harmony between two unknowable things. But yeah, I think there's just something, I really love making stuff so much, and I feel like some of the logistical math that I've put into the puzzle and the other pieces was really necessary in order to get to here. But I feel interested in trying to make... Somebody said who's in here, but I can't see here, but said that the piece made her feel peaceful, which is something that I had no idea what would happen.
But I like the idea that being there, or when we saw the raindrops, I felt like a sense of relief that it was somewhere or something and it was actually becoming its own thing and that it could maybe do something similar to those other things in life that really do that like fires or ocean sides, but without being a manipulative dramatic stage set where you just need to add some crack and lightning and some special flashing lights where you're just trying to manipulate everything. So, I don't know if that makes any sense.
CC: It makes sense to me. I guess what I was thinking of and what I like about the title and the way the piece works is... I mean, I don't want to belabor it too much, but when I think of Upstairs at Steve's, which is also, we talked about this one of the first times we were talking together that I have a nephew who also died of ALS not so long ago. In both cases, I mean it is a horrible disease, but one thing that happens and it happened to both the people in our family is that the mind remains perfectly intact and you lose all ability to speak and communicate. So, it's like being trapped. It's also this separation between body and mind. I think one of the things that's in my head that this title of the Nasher piece does is that it puts a third term in there.
SG: Oh, that's nice.
CC: If earth is the brain, then where is the body? Well, shouldn't the body be here too? I mean, we usually want to connect earth and body. I think more recently people talk about Earth as that trees communicate with each other and there's all these different systems.
SG: That's interesting. I took it differently. I love that.
CC: Tell me how you took it though.
SG: I took it more like Earth, the Earth. Well, I love the idea of having the poem within a poem within a poem within a poem. I love the idea of having a macro thing happening at the same time as a micro thing or just the big picture and also inside of it are millions of details, which are the little pictures and having them in conversation with each other. So, I was thinking of it as the universe. It's really bigger than I can understand, but that the universe is asking, "Where is the body?" I can't really explain it, but you can have your own association to the title. But I just felt like it was bigger than I could imagine, and I thought of it as being galactical, really far out.
Then I just felt it was fitting because also, there's this weird... I mean this might be stretching it a little bit. I have been interested in the fact that the ocean is actually less explored and we know less about it supposedly according to scientists than we do about space at this point, about the actual stars and what's out there in terms of physical atmospheres and gases and stuff. We are really blind about what's on earth. I guess there's a lot of stuff in there that I don't talk about. I don't know.
CC: I think that's one of the things. I know you still have a lot of questions about the piece yourself to yourself and generally, but I think something that can bear that much meaning, even if they're contradictory meanings. I don't mean meaning just intellectually, but emotions and associations, it makes for a really rich work.
SG: That's nice. I mean, that's good. I don't know.
CC: I mean, I think you've talked sometimes about your work being... You've used the word invocations or trying to draw or bring things together.
SG: Yeah. What is the word? Summoning?
CC: Summoning.
SG: Yeah, summoning or convocation. I think I might be using it wrong. I hate to use the same words again, but I just don't know how to explain it really, other than I feel like if all the elements are there in the potion or something and they're all true, pure feelings poured out, that the combination of all of them, hopefully, in a perfect world, could summon something that's more than I could imagine and that I really believe in that in a way. I don't think I would try at all if I didn't feel like that's possible. I'm just not a good enough artist to be able to make it be what I wanted it to be, but that is actually helpful in making the thing be what it needs to be or it's also a matter of realizing when it is becoming the thing it needs to be and then letting it go there.
I don't have such a concrete example except for with the PS1 piece, which I know you've seen flipping by. It was like I had an idea of it and I made a model and I understood what I thought it was. I understood the three levels as to me as being conscious, living reality life. Then under that, a place in between life and death. Under that, which is actually the reflection of the white room on the top as being relief or vacation or death or something that's beyond that.
But then when it came to actually working with the piece, it really seemed necessary. The piece was way lighter in terms of having daylight in it than I thought it would be. It seemed like it had to be light and it wasn't going to be dark. I didn't fight it. I just had to realize that that was how the piece was supposed to be. I don't want to attach too many... I know it could sound not true, but I don't know. I'm losing my train of thought. Sorry.
CC: That's okay. It's complicated.
SG: Yeah. But it's been so nice working with Catherine and Jed and everyone here. It's been really amazing. I mean, I didn't realize until last week that this isn't that common for everyone or for anyone to be actually filling this place with junk and then moving all the junk over there and then bringing it over there. You saw halfway through. We really did make it here, and I think I was trying to pretend like I was going to make it there and then bring it here. Everyone's been so great and it's been pretty special experience for me, just seeing people care about each other so much because it is a real life. It's hard. It's not just a job. It's like we're people with things going on and problems and stuff and happy times.
CC: Happy times too. Yes. But I think we may be nearing an end and a time for question. Before I open the floor to questions, I've been asking you all these questions and I just wanted to give you a chance if there's any questions you have for me in all this. It only seemed fair.
SG: I don't know. I'm like a really one-on-one person.
CC: You can take a rain check on that.
SG: Okay. Rain check.
CC: For anything. A rain, so to speak, a rain check.
SG: Sorry.
CC: It's okay.
SG: But yeah, I'm happy to answer any questions or maybe Catherine can too.
CC: Yeah. Are there any questions? We have folks with microphones. If you've got questions, a microphone will come to you. Let's see.
Speaker 4: I came away yesterday very impressed with being in the space and the platform and the banister, the railing. When I described it to someone, it reminded me of being at an outlook over a national park or the ocean. So, when you just mentioned that you were considering being on a vacation, I thought that worked really well with how I perceived that entry to the place.
SG: Oh, that's nice. Yeah, I think there's another part of it that we didn't discuss very much, which is that I had all these different models of mirrors going different directions before we settled on this pie shape. Part of it was I was trying to make an ocean or a water that would be endless to a horizon. I think I just wasn't there yet in terms of figuring out that because it's a lot of math and a lot of physical construction problems that have to be solved. Before I came here, I really didn't know how everyone here was so great because you're just far away and emailing and stuff. So, I don't think I had the confidence to do those other plans at that time. So, when we were putting this together, I was really worried that it would seem too much like a pool of water, like a Shamu situation.
But I've been happy that it seems... I mean, it's always a combination. It depends what you open your eyes to, because also, if there's people all along the railing, you see them circling the entire piece if you notice it. But I guess to speak to that though, I also like the way it ended up being a pool where it's about being stuck. You can't get out of that. I mean probably maybe too much information, but I feel like this has been a really hard project to make for some reason. There has been a lot of stuckness in the process just trying to figure out how physically to make something non-physical happen. I don't know if that makes sense, but I don't know. I hope that helps. Anyone else?
CC: Cindy?
Cindy: First, I want to say thank you so much for providing us with the most incredible installation. We're lucky to have you here.
SG: Thank you.
Cindy: Thank you to the Nasher for that.
SG: Thank the Nasher.
Speaker 5: I have a question about the progression of your work. I've been a fan, as you know, for years, and a piece I'm thinking about doesn't have the different layers. So, my question for you, I think this piece from... I don't know how many years ago. It is a table turned on its side-
SG: Right, in CANADA.
Cindy: ... and it's attached to the wall, an unlikely way for what we call the tabernacle for our gatherings. The food is on there. Some of it looks like what you would love to eat. Others have weird colors, so you're always coming back to it. Now that you've explained to us the idea of you can relate to it because it looks real, but it could never be that way in reality. The food's not sliding off. No one has a table on the wall. Then the next thing I know you are doing these very complicated installations in terms of our perception.
You've provided the opportunity yet again, but in a much different way to explore what looks to be real, but then what I love to describe as the slow reveal. You realize that it's not really that way. How did you jump from a simple form?
SG: I'm sorry, Sarah. Somehow we were rushing yesterday. That table, is it not exactly from, but it is from the thinking of the installation that I did at CANADA Gallery in New York in 2016 or something. I don't remember the date, but that piece, so it was a four-wall gallery box. Each wall was a different thought is how I thought of it. So, it was similar. It was moving on from the Mass Murder show. So, there was one whole wall with tables that were from a country restaurant and then there was a mirror on the floor and there's a walkway that was raised above. So, when you're in the middle of the room, you could see to each wall. When you were looking at each wall, it looked like an aerial view of an area of a place.
So, one was like a banquet hall or a reception hall, which is where the table, the earpiece was from or a wedding or any place where there's an anticipatory fanciness that's a little... You guys know what that is. Then one was a country restaurant with stained-glass windows above and checkered tables and carpet below and stuff. Then one was a hotel lobby and one was an apartment, a single person's apartment with a bed that was bisected by the mirror. So, they became a double bed and it was a single bed. Then I think that's it. So, anyway, in my mind, again, I guess I thought of it as a mind thinking and that they can overwhelm mind thinking. You could only see one thought at a time, but they're all there and it's always confusing.
So, that's how I logically described what I was trying to do. But your table is just... I don't know what to call it. I believe in the objects too. It's been really hard to figure out a way for the objects to live by themselves. So, what I did with that table and with a lot of them is I put more energy into them and try to put some of those contradictions into the table itself, but it was originally on the wall and that's why it's still on the wall. But I don't know if that answers it enough. I'm sorry we don't have a picture of it, but you can see. You'll recognize this if you look. Maybe there's something to say more. Sarah is the person from CANADA Gallery and she's right here. Is there something I'm missing? No?
Sarah: I do remember you talking about when there was object that came out of the space, you think you were talking about them as arrows?
SG: Yeah, arrows, right. Thanks. I forget my own language all the time. Yeah, I thought of every object that came out of that installation or some of my other ones as arrows to point back to the bigger picture because that was the only way that I felt comfortable with them going out there in pieces. But I also really like the fact that to me, it's meaningful. You have one of those tables, someone else has one. That someday in the future that the whole installation could come back into shape and be shown together with all the other installations. For me, that would be really incredibly special and meaningful.
So, I love it that the parts are saved. As you can imagine, it's like nobody knows what's going to happen with this. I've been very lucky that the Whitney got the one there and they are protecting it. The Guts one, which is this, ended up getting remade and I redid it in slightly different way in Sydney at the... I don't know what the name. The new modern is pretty much the building there and that they then have it in their collection and they're saving it. So, for me, it's just about protecting the piece, which isn't easy for anybody. I have a lot of compassion because it's a storage problem. But yeah, I don't know.
CC: Yeah. Are there any other questions? Oh, one more. We'll take one more then.
Speaker 7: If I understood correctly, you design and make the pieces of the installation in LA. Is that right?
SG: Yeah.
Speaker 7: And then you ship it all here and then install it. So, do you use 100% of what you made or do you scrap parts or do you scramble and go out and get new things when you're here, all of that?
SG: All of it. It's funny because there's... Is this still working? Okay.
CC: Yeah.
SG:
The shape of the piece is literally constructed like a point. On this side and this side, there's room in the room. So, this whole side is chock-full of all this stuff that didn't make it into the piece. Some of that is a physical problem because it just takes a long time to get everything up there. Some of it is just that it didn't feel like the right thing or didn't look the right way. Then some of it is like I've always made my own vegetation in the past. When I did the show at CANADA, I made the lettuce that was in the lunchroom or lunch buffet with fabric and stuff. But in this one, we did go to Michael's and we bought the foliage because it just had to happen, I feel like, which I usually don't do. I usually don't use anything that's already made.
But it was also really fun and a huge relief to go there and see that they had pre-Halloween stuff and there was actually black leaves and stuff and I was like, "Black leaves, this is amazing." But yeah. Then just to clarify though, when I say I made everything, I melted all that plastic by hand with a heat gun. So, that was, I think, 400 pieces of plastic. Then all the attachments are handmade that go up to the ceiling with three claws and a barrel that's hammered, which my dad actually helped me with in Michigan.
CC:
I was going to mention your dad helped with various aspects of this project.
SG:
He helped a lot in terms of just working through how I'm going to build stuff and what's possible and testing. I spent a really long time trying to test how the plastics can move in a fan to make them look like a current and it's working in some areas. I don't know what kind of person would have that job. So, all that stuff came as individual parts and had to be put together. I think it's not really a normal art handler job to put all the attachments into the water. Then we all hung in the water and it was a lot of parts and they were all over the place.
CC:
We also bought some additional paint here and you also did some painting.
SG:
Oh yeah. I repainted the figures here. I repainted a bunch of stuff and I ruined some stuff and I tried cutting apart a dolphin because I was trying to put it on the mirror. There're a lot of ideas, which always happens for me, a lot of ideas that can't be realized in this piece for one reason or another. Actually, in the CANADA piece, I was trying to make a dolphin for that piece, but there was so much going on in that. I'm so sorry we don't have a picture. So, that dolphin is not even really in this piece. It's probably another piece in the future.
CC:
The dolphin is to be continued. I think that I should also say, Sarah, I made the PowerPoint this morning. I wish we had included because that's really interesting piece as well.
SG:
It's important. It was my fault. I didn't give her the picture.
CC:
Anyway.
Sarah:
It's all good. It's all good.
CC:
Okay. Go out there if you haven't and spend some time and let us know if you have an answer. I don't think there is an answer to if earth is the brain, then where is the body. Thank you very much for coming.
SG:
Can I thank you guys? I just wanted to thank these guys, everyone here, which they know who they are and you two and just everyone who helped on the project. They're amazing people that actually make it happen in the background, which I don't think really get that much credit like Bosco and Luis and stuff. I know they're not here to hear it, but it really matters to me a lot. It's been just great. I really feel like the loving nature of this place has been a huge inspiration for me.
CC:
We can shout out definitely Luis and Christopher Bosco who hopefully are enjoying-
SG:
Day off.
CC: ... a day off exactly, who have been troubleshooting things all week and especially lights and fans and electric.
SG: Always happy to just keep on making. They changed their plans lots of times because I wanted to work in there to do the lighting when they needed to do the handrail and they had to stay late. It's those little things that it's a really big deal and it's not easy to do all those jobs. I'm not good at half of it because I'm too short. There are a lot of things that art handlers also were amazing. Anyway, I don't want to blab on or whatever. Take that out, please.
CC:
Okay.
SG: All right.
CC: Thanks, everyone.
SG: Thank you very much for being here.
The Nasher Sculpture Center's 2024 exhibitions are made possible by leading support from Frost Bank.