Monday, July 13, 2009

Keeping going.

Last Friday I heard back from the Studio Museum, or rather saw poking out of my mailbox a big envelope I knew was the return of my application supplemental materials. Didn't get it! I was a little sad of course, but that program is my long-shot goal. I will of course try again.

But in a positive note, I was very excited to have a call-back for the final interview for the LMCC (Lower Manhattan Cultural Council) workspace residency program. In a little over a week I'll know whether or not I got it. Out of 900 applications they only called back 30, and there are 20 spots. Good odds! Keeping my fingers up.

Geoff and Sur.

I was very excited to spend an evening with the amazing artists Geoff Hendricks and Sur Rodney (Sur) in their West Village home. Below are some snapshots I made while shooting film, which I have yet to make prints from in the darkroom. Can't wait for the final portraits!


Geoff and Sur.


Sur in the dining room.

OTK Discipline at STARR SPACE

Gio Black Peter and Brian Kenny organized a show at Jules de Balincourt's STARR Space in Bushwick last Friday night. My friend Nico and I did an installation together in the bathroom for the night-only event of performances and installations. It was pretty fun.


A close-up of a xerox wall-installation by Nico based on my portraits of him from 2005.


I made some sink and toilet xerox things. Not sure what they are really, but it was something totally fun and new and why not?


An existing photo of mine from 2005 hung with toilet paper outside of the bathroom.

More images of Nico's installation on his blog click here.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Benjamin.


Benjamin, 2009.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

LYST, at Overgaden in Copenhagen.


I will be showing the new work, A Separate Peace, in this upcoming show in Copenhagen:
http://www.overgaden.org/exhibitions/upcoming

Lyst is the Danish word for lust or desire and it is the title of a short and intensive exhibition of contemporary art. LYST is put together idiosyncratically and by way of desire and contains local darlings as well as international superstars. Around 30 artists show artworks that all touch upon and tangle notions of desire, lust and the sexy. The title LYST is taken from the Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek's novel from 1989.


The exhibition doesn’t pay much attention to the artwork as such and may contain xeroxes, texts, zines etc. alongside works on paper, photography, video and performance. A number of events, film screenings, actions, tea parties and discussions will take place during the exhibition period.

The exhibition is curated by Tomas Lagermand Lundme and Mathias Kryger and will run during the World Outgames, which are held in Copenhagen. The ambition is to make a lustful, ready to burst bubble of serious and high in quality contemporary art. During the exhibition period Overgaden will extend it's opening hours.

Participating artists: Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Bjarne Melgaard, Lars Erik Frank, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Honey Biba Beckerlee, Typisk Lesbisk, Slava Mogutin, Lasse Lau, Francois Sagat, Bruce LaBruce, Mette Winckelmann, Al Masson, Henrik Olesen, Martin Jacob Nielsen, Sands (with Elke Krystofek), Wolfgang Tillmans, You Little Teapot, Bernhard Wilhelm with Nick Knight, Sara Katrine Thiesen, Flo Maak, AA Bronson (fra general idea), Tony Regazzoni, Maiken Bent, Terence Koh, Sian Kristoffersen, Wojciech Kosma, Heine Kjærgaard Klausen, Philip Wiegard, Paco Y Manolo.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Printing portraits with Juan.












Today Juan joined me for the darkroom again, working with me while printing up some portraits of Jeffrey. Undergrads at Columbia don't get to use the color darkrooms which I think at this point is just ridiculous. So I'm glad I can help to get some color printing practice in!

Josh and Mr Kat.

Commitment.

"The portrait is the only form of depiction based on the equality of subject and object: sitters and photographer have to make a commitment to the situation as human beings. If they do not, the picture becomes and illustration of an imaged relationship of power. To my mind, a compelling portrait depends on a mutual readiness to acknowledge personal vulnerability and weakness." - Wolfgang Tillmans

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Joshua.


Joshua, Brooklyn. 2009

I've been meaning to make a new portrait of Josh for quite a long time now. We had tea and listened to David Bowie 'Scary Monsters' at his place in Ditmas Park. I love the composition with the plants - and it's another play with depth. I'm generally very anti- any immediate awareness of the lense, but there has been something nice about the slight gaps in focus that can draw the eye in closer.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Printed Matter Grants for Artists.

I was honored to be a juror along with Geoff Hendricks and Robin Kahn for the first annual Printed Matter Grants for Artists last month. There was so much great work to look at, it was hard to narrow it down to the recipients. Below is the blurb from Artnet, and here's the link to Printed Matter's press release.

PRINTED MATTER GRANTS FOR ARTISTS
Printed Matter, the pioneering artists’ book store, has made its first grants to artists who make books. A jury of three artists -- Geoff Hendricks, Robin Kahn and Paul Mpagi Sepuya -- chose ten artists from a list of 63 nominated candidates. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts is funding the program, which gives each artist $2,500. The winners are Osa Atoe, Heather Benjamin, Nicholas Dumit Estevez, Edie Fake, Eve Fowler, Chitra Ganesh, K8 Hardy, Arnold Kemp, Julio Cesar Morales and Carlo Quispe. Printed Matter plans an exhibition of the winning artists in the fall.

Travis, 2007.


Travis, 2007.

Monday, June 8, 2009

10%.



Monday, June 1, 2009

The Maids.






a continuation from A Separate Peace... a work-in-progress. From the film adaptation of Jean Genet's "The Maids."

Open studios.


Benjamin and Ulrich looking at prints.


Adam and Benjamin looking at magazines.


My coworker Allison shares the studio space with me.


Kaneza, Tim, and Josh looking at prints.


Hadn't seen Eric in so long! With his 2005 self.


My side of the studio space.

We had open studios at my building this Sunday afternoon, a nice amount of friends and strangers came by. I should have taken some snapshots of the other artist's studios.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

10%.

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Landscape and pile.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Art21 Blog interview with Kemi Ilesanmi.


http://blog.art21.org/2009/05/20/an-interview-with-paul-mpagi-sepuya/

Monday, May 18, 2009

Open Studios May 31st





I'm in Studio 1 on the fourth floor, along with Allison Hawkins and Rune Olsen. Come by, I'll have some drinks and lots of work to see!

Getting organized.




Filemaker Pro database!




Double-checking gallery inventory records.


When five other prints might look almost identical, it's easy to find surprises and mis-kept notes.


Last Tuesday was Inventory Day at the gallery. We made an all-day plan for me to come down and help get in order all my records. Since my day-job is all about artists and documentation and archiving, I try to practice what I preach at panels and in day-to-day discussions with other artists. Last time we did inventory was right after I began showing with envoy, back in 06, and we did a little review in 07 but nothing major. It's terrible to think that I had an entire show of work, maybe 40 prints, from 07 that was never fully inventoried.

I have to give thanks to Juan, an awesome undergrad at Columbia who dove right in on his first day of interning with me this summer. It was such a huge help, and I'm looking forward to getting a lot done with his help in the next few months.

I highly recommend every artist have their own records (you may have a great gallery but you should be the best keeper of your materials. And many galleries are much less organized than we'd like to think). Start basic. Keep a record of your artworks (reference image, dimensions, materials, installation and care instructions, date, and give it an inventory number), exhibitions (dates, locations, related people, works in the shows), artwork locations (in your studio, or strorage, at the gallery, in a collection), values by date, works donated or gifted and to whom, and publications/press/other related materials along with who wrote or published them. And last, keep records and notes of your papers (artist statements by date, CVs, notes and journals). Make a spreadsheet! Or if you're a nerd, make a database. Start simple. Don't wait til you're 60 and suddenly realize you're up against a mountain and overwhelmed. I've seen it. You don't want it.

If anyone's interested, I might post some useful links, resources, and more tips for tackling this sorta-boring subject.


Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Back in the gay.



Project for OUT Magazine May 2009.

Monday, May 11, 2009

To see the final project.



I put up a page with the final pieces from the Homebase project. Installation shots forthcoming.

I'm happy with how the piece turned out. Working from scratch to finish in a month on a project is definitely a challenge, and adding on top of it the somewhat difficult logistics, aesthetics, and loaded content of an abandoned hospital... it was something! Installation shots will show more of the room.

In the short time-frame, I wasn't able to include several ideas for related content and programming so it was pretty scaled back and In the end I figured it was better to try and make something simpler and more focused. It was interesting though, in the call I send out wondering if there was anyone else I knew who had traveled or spent time in Uganda, there were no "yes" replies. Seems I already knew exactly who I needed to.

Here's the page with scans of the work and the final project statement.


Homebase review in the New York Times.

THE NEW YORK TIMES
May 11, 2009

At a Clinic, Artists Reflecting on Home

There is little that is cozy about “HomeBase IV,” a site-specific installation built around a dozen artists’ notions of home. It is installed in a vacant medical clinic on the Lower East Side, unused for three years but still carrying the unmistakable whiff of an institution you don’t want to be in.

“When we arrived, it had nothing in it,” said Leor Grady, the curatorial and programming director of the project. “It smelled like a combination of mildew, chemicals, medical waste and sheet rock.” Even after a cleaning, the worn peachy-beige walls, industrial carpeting and fluorescent lighting retain a sterility that serves as a palette for the sometimes unsettling works.

The building, on East Broadway adjacent to the Bialystoker Home for the Aged, now has a dozen exam rooms filled with photos, videos, sculptural pieces and works of conceptual and performance art, many of which use materials found in the space. The free exhibition, the fourth in a series of installations called the HomeBase Project organized in conjunction with several cultural and community groups, continues through May 24.

The idea, said Anat Litwin, an artist and curator who founded HomeBase in 2006, was to allow a diverse array of artists to create and collaborate in and around a single space, and to engage the residents of a changing neighborhood. (Previous sites have been in Greenpoint, Brooklyn; SoHo; and Harlem.)

“The architecture and the setting, that’s what really inspires the entire process,” she said. The artists have three weeks to make use of the building and discuss their ideas over group dinners; there are also talks, readings and other events for the public, held, in this case, in what would normally be the center’s waiting room.

“When you arrive there today,” Ms. Litwin said, “it’s like entering a space that’s loaded, that has to do with caregiving or questions of healing. Also, there’s a sense of alienation in spaces like this. How do you create something intimate here?”

The artists were chosen as much for their background — many are immigrants — as their mediums, said Mr. Grady, who was born in Israel. Paul Sepuya, a Brooklyn photographer of Ugandan descent, hung portraits of friends and neighbors who had some association with Uganda, which he has never visited. “I thought it would be interesting to apply the idea of home as spatial,” he said. “When you’re not at home, it’s constructed by your family’s stories.” Similarly, Dafna Shalom took photos of men in the neighborhood who reminded her of her father — a hand here, a hairstyle there.

Other rooms are less about identity than community, or necessity. Sandra Lee, a sculptor and installation artist, paved her floor with asphalt but gave one wall a homey whitewash and a bright new baseboard, playing with the boundary between the public and private spheres. Marilyn Walter made her room into a drop-off point for supplies for the homeless. Letha Wilson used hacked-out drywall to create a replica of the Danish designer Poul Henningsen’s modernist Artichoke lamp.

Ms. Litwin’s piece — the project’s volunteer organizers, all artists, participated — includes images of her breath made on photo paper; developed without fixative chemicals, the images will eventually evaporate. “It’s breaking apart the idea of home into something that’s the most essential: How do you occupy space?” she said. “By this action that we all do unconsciously.”

Some artists more directly addressed the building’s history. Virgil Wong, whose work often deals with medicine and technology, installed realistic hospital posters and informational kiosks in the lobby. They promote a fictitious medical center — its Web site, rythospital.com, is disarmingly authentic — that specializes in male pregnancy (malepregnancy.com).

Abby Robinson, a photographer, perhaps went the furthest in merging home and hospital, even achieving a measure of comfort. Her work, “Home/Body Imaging,” is a combination of doctor’s office and photo studio. In a convincing waiting room complete with old People magazines and bad cartoons, “patients” fill out biographical questionnaires. (The boxes to check for “Do You Live at Home?” are Yes, No, Maybe, Sometimes, Rarely and Never.) Visitors are asked to name a favorite body part, then ushered through Ms. Robinson’s office, with its stacks of scrubs and jars of cotton balls, into a private room, where she takes a photo of the selected part. Though most people choose their hand, “they range from a young kid who was determined to show me his belly button” to an adult’s derriere, she said. “It’s — how do you want to tell us your history? Through your body.”

The photos — lips, eyes, rainbow-colored hair — are displayed like talismans in the waiting room, and Ms. Robinson also makes a laminated badge with the image for her patients to take home.

“It’s like a V.I.P. body part,” she said.

“HomeBase IV” is open noon to 8 p.m. Wednesday to Sunday, through May 24, at 232 East Broadway, at Clinton Street, Lower East Side; (646) 957-7165, homebaseproject.com.

for a photo slideshow and to see the article, click here.

Last day of BAM Auction Fundraiser!


Bid on my work, it's a bargain!

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Almost done.




Installing in the abandoned medical offices on the Lower East Side.


As-yet-untitled work. Photograph, Ugandan bark-cloth bags, screw.

Jonathon.


Jonathon, Brooklyn, NY.