PART TWO: PDX/NYC Kristan Kennedy: I am looking at your paintings, and listening to the song Promise by Jagged Edge. It seems fitting. Glen Fogel: I don’t think I know that song. KK: Oh you do. You just never knew RnB could be hard like that and have a name like Jagged Edge. But it seems fitting for this to be the soundtrack to the interview. GF: Maybe I should download it and listen too. KK: You should. The song is all about assuring someone that “everything will be alright” because of love. GF: So how is it being with those paintings? I realized yesterday that its a different grouping than I’ve had before, perhaps very ‘Jamie’ heavy KK: Yes. Jamie is an interesting writer—super mystical? GF: I would say more classical than mystical—he has greco-roman fantasies KK: That makes sense. The romantic ideal seems to be thread to his musings. The paintings have this tragicomic read: you catch yourself laughing and cringing at the same moment. GF: I’ve been told they are thoroughly uncomfortable—they have proven very divisive—people love ‘em or hate ‘em. KK: I can’t see hating them. Even formally they stand up; the paint quality is as awkwardly beautiful as the content. They are bewildering. GF: In the two newest ones that are there [at PICA], they have all sorts of odd grammatical errors from the translation of them being painted in China. I used to have them corrected, but have recently decided to leave the errors, did you notice them? KK: Patrick pointed them out. I love this about them. That the “reading” and meaning of the content was eradicated by the painter. If you had to revisit each letter with a paint brush it might be something of a penance. In this case, there is some appropriate distance. What was your thinking behind having them fabricated? GF: The idea was to create distance, to put the intensely personal through a totally removed process. Originally they were conceived as being paired with the With Me…You videos, and the rings were treated with a similar formal process; rendering personal artifacts through lens of advertising and commodification. KK: In this installation, they will be further removed by space, and the addition of a few new works. All of it seems to be a loop back onto itself, a series of different series… but all to the same end. GF: I’m curious to see how both the paintings and videos will work without being in the same room—perhaps it will give a more open read, less 1-to-1. KK: Can you talk about With Me…You? I am interested in the pristine trance-like quality of the spinning rings being interrupted by sound and light. By the way, Mariah is on now, I think we need a playlist for this interview. GF: We should do that KK: Consider it done. GF: This cafe i’m sitting in is playing crappy jazz. I don’t think that should be on the playlist; I can’t stand jazz. i’ll answer your question now, I swear. KK: JAZZ IS MY NIGHTMARE. GF: I really can’t stand it, unless its Nina Simone KK: ANSWER ME. Nina does not count. I guess I need voices. OK, shit. Focus. GF: So the sound and light disrupting the videos was meant to do exactly that — create a disturbance in the ring/wedding trance. Its also meant for comic effect, as a “You don’t think I’m serious, do you?” or maybe, “Damn right, I’m serious!” I’ve also been very interested in trying to use light elements and architecture as part of video installation, to fully inhabit the gallery. I think upcoming works will continue in that vein… KK: This quality of the work-seriousness/irreverence-gets to the heart of things for me. It also destabilizes the viewer. I have been thinking about the new additions to this groupings of work- the banner outside and 15’00″. They will fit into this dynamic push pull. GF: I hope so. I want them to function in the extreme irreverence direction as much as the letters/rings can function in the sentimental direction, but pull each other into this uncomfortable middle. KK: Well, 15’00″ will be quite literally in the uncomfortable middle of the room. A confrontational clown. You mentioned that the drawing on the sculpture came from childhood doodles; the other thing that is interesting to me about the work is a collapsing of time. The rings have this long familial history and the letters come from past lovers/loves, yet they both also feel like they are about RIGHT NOW. GF: Yes, the drawing on the sculpture was an attempt to recreate a face as I drew them as a child. My mother told me this story that has always felt relevant to me: as a kid I used to always draw faces with a straight line for a mouth, instead of smile. One day my mom picked me up from pre-school and I was drawing smiles, she went straight to the teacher and asked her what was up — she found out that I had been corrected by the teacher and she immediately stopped taking me there and enrolled me in a different school. An alternate title for the piece could be For Mom, but that just seems way toooo sick! KK: I think I love your mom. GF: She is kinda the best mom ever, I have to say. KK: This leads me to portraiture…which is where your work begins. I am still obsessed with the link between de Kooning’s Women and your series of photos from altered subway advertisements. I was watching a video of him describing that series, its origin and intent. It started with a collection of cut out mouths from magazines-women’s mouths-which he found appealing. He said that the mouth was so strange to him. That we do everything with it, that we, “don’t put spinach in our eyes.” A commentator in the video called the mouth, “the eye of the hurricane.” The photo we selected for the PICA deck has the same quality as de Kooning’s Women to me: violent and beautiful, something linked to the history of portraiture, but also subversive. GF: Perhaps it’s a similar impulse in the graffiti act as [in de Kooning's paintings]? I think a lot of the ‘Call me' series has elements of misogyny, also racism, homophobia… Not sure if that was were you taking that. KK: That is true. It is sort of a cultural portrait, made by many people. They reveal the best of human nature-to scrawl on the wall, to change things, to use their brains, to be clever, to invite accident-but then the graffiti also reveals how ugly things are. I was not talking about that exactly, but of course de Kooning battled the impression of the work being misogynistic his whole life. He really thought it was absurd to try to make a portrait-to pick up paint and make a nose, as he said-but also absurd not to make portraits… GF: I wonder if all art is portraiture of some kind, like the primal impulse to portray ourselves. I know I can’t seem to get away from it no matter how far away it seems. I remember a few years back I really was trying to make my work less ‘personal’ and it came back with a vengeance. I think i just fell in love. The barista is ridiculous. KK: Baristas are from a planet of aliens who keep breeding and tempting my boyfriends away from me… so BEWARE! OK back to the subject at hand…I think that is what he meant about the absurdity in trying to avoid making work that reflects who we are as artists. How can we avoid making visual statements about our lives? It is our language. GF: So true. What else do we have? KK: Nothing else. GF: Especially when one doesn’t believe in ‘truth.’ I gotta say that the barista’s hotness is true though. KK: HAAAA! I’m gonna kill you, but I think you delivered me the ending of this interview…