STUDIO VISITS – CAMILLA ENGSTROM

Swedish-born painter Camilla Engström’s work explores autobiographical issues through her lens of humor and figurative expression. With a third solo show that opened earlier this year at Brooklyn’s Cooler Gallery, Engström opens up about processing her anger through phallic symbols, her cartoon-like characters, and her quest for inspiration.


Portrait Photography by Tiffany Nicholson | Interview by Haley Weiss
Dress and shoes by J.W. Anderson

If Camilla Engström were to make a self-portrait, she would draw a rollercoaster. That’s not to say the 28-year-old artist from Örebro, Sweden is out of control; in fact, she’s in tune with her emotions — the ups, downs, and contortions in-between. From moving to New York in 2011 to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology, to dropping out in 2013 to pursue a broader art practice, trusting her creative impulses has given her the freedom to build a body of work that includes drawings, paintings, apparel design, and sculpture. In recent months, it’s also meant accepting that she doesn’t know what she’ll do next; when we visit her Brooklyn studio this fall, for example, she says that she’s simply been “releasing pressure” by painting.

“I don’t even know what I’m making,” she admits, assessing the colorful canvases that fill her wall, although there’s one obvious commonality. “It’s just a lot of sausages,” she adds with a laugh. One painting features a long and artfully twisted sausage, while another shows a sausage being stepped on by multiple feet. This new subject is unsurprising given Engström’s history of irreverent, humorous compositions. She explores sexuality, consumption, and the banal (e.g. bathing, cats) with a wink. It began with her roguish alter ego, Husa, the curvy pink figure who’s appeared in Engström’s pieces since she was first sketched years ago. Husa has many activities, including reading or drinking wine while naked on a picnic blanket, and sitting in a reclining chair, drooling, with food resting on her lap. And she, like her creator, is also capable of change; in 2016, at what Engström describes as a “zen” time in her life, she depicted Husa as a contemplative figure. The result was Faces, Engström’s first-ever solo show at Deli Gallery in Queens, in which Husa appears in various states of undress, transforming beneath a sun-like orb. In one painting from that series, Husa disappears entirely, leaving her dress suspended in mid-air, as though she’s transcended the bodies and cultural norms Engström so often points to in her work. It turns out that with an open approach like Engström’s, one recurring figure can address both the commonplace and the ecstatic.

Big Bear, 2017

You’ve described drawing in the past as not actively thinking; you’re just letting it out. Are you surprised by what you make?

Yes, sometimes. I like to start small because that’s less intimidating. That’s usually when I’m like, “Whoa, what’s going on in my head?” For the last few months, I’ve been kind of controlled in the way I’ve been painting. Now I want to be a little bit looser I think, which is frustrating because I wish I could paint the same way and stick to it. I just can’t.

When you’re painting and you’re stricter, does that happen naturally or is it a conscious decision?

It also happens naturally. I think more before I make the painting. Whereas these messy ones, [gestures to sausage paintings] I don’t really think at all, which is nice. I like both ways. With the more controlled ones, I definitely feel like I’m more relaxed, and even though I’m thinking more beforehand, I’m just focused, getting the paint in there. Whereas painting the messy ones, I feel sweaty afterwards; it’s almost like an exercise. I try to make them really quick and I try to make many of them.

Why do you think sausages are reappearing, if you were to do some self-analysis?

Before I used to paint dicks a lot. [Engström published A Book of Dicks in 2016.] I wanted to make a new dick book. I feel like I have so many dicks in my brain; I need to get them out there. I like to turn them into sausages because I feel like I can’t paint the dick. I’m just so mad at dicks right now. Sausages are easier for me to handle. They’re less intimidating.

You said you’re mad at dicks. Could you elaborate on that? Is that a cultural frustration, one with politics, or—

I think it’s politics to be honest. When every hurricane, every disaster happens, I’m just playing with a dick [in my work]. I feel like if we backtrack, it’s all the dicks’ fault. I was just reading about Harvey Weinstein and I want to destroy him. Now he’s destroying himself. How could he do that for so many years? It makes me want to cry but it also makes me so mad. It’s all of that coming to me at the same time.

It also makes me think about when I’ve been sexually harassed by men, and it makes me think about my sister, who’s 10 years younger than me. I just realized, I never said to her, “You have to say no.” I never had the conversation with her: “This is how you deal with a bossy guy.” She’s almost 20 now, and she’s in college and she studies international finance. There are a lot of men there, and they drink and they party all the time.

I was watching her Snapchat almost having a heart attack. That’s when most of that shit happened to me. You’re drunk, you’re with guys, and you feel pressure to be accommodating, and then it all goes downhill. I just texted her today: “We need to have this conversation. You are the boss over your own body and I see how you’re with guys all the time. I’m sure most of them are nice, but even the nicest guy, if he wants something from you and your body, you need to be able to say no.” I wish that our mom had told me that because I feel like maybe I would have been more brave and not so terrified every time. I’m definitely frustrated with the dick this year. I’m hoping next year it will all be about the beautiful vagina.

Do you remember your first drawing of Husa?

Yes. I remember I was looking at a lot on Pinterest at the time — because that’s what you do when you work in fashion, you sit on Pinterest all day (laughs) — and I was looking at all of these sculptures. I wanted to paint a round figure because I had been painting so many fashion illustrations — I was also very influenced by Picasso. Then I started to paint a round figure but it was very serious. It just didn’t feel like me. I was painting her over and over and over again. Then finally I just gave her a face, and it made me giggle, because I could see it come to life. It just all came together and I was like, “Okay, this is my friend that I’m going to paint for a long time.”

Hairier and Hairier, 2017

Dress and shoes by J.W. Anderson


When you moved from fashion to being an “artist,” what was that decision like? Were you tired of fashion; was there a certain attitude you wanted to get away from; what was it?

I was frustrated with fashion. I felt like I was so creative — a typical millennial kid that’s just like, “I deserve more attention.” I wasn’t good at dealing with technical stuff. I could create things, but no one wants the creative person because they already have that. I felt like I was going to explode because I had so much to give but I couldn’t. There was never an opportunity. Then the tasks they gave me were easy but so unfulfilling.

I still love fashion and I love clothes. I think I have like a healthier relationship to fashion now. I feel more relaxed about it. When I left fashion, I didn’t want to leave completely. I still love working with textiles and I did this little embroidery thing with the Swedish brand called Monki; we did a clothing collaboration. I’m sure there are some artists that really don’t want to see their work on clothes, but it makes me so happy.

I know a lot of people won’t be able to buy my work — I could never buy my work — but they could buy a T-shirt. It makes me so happy to see someone wear my T-shirt or tote bag.

What are you inspired by at the moment? Is there anything you’re reading, listening to, seeing?

I took a break for two weeks; I went to Japan. I just got back. I felt like going to Japan was going to change my life and that I was going to come back and be like, “This is what I want to paint now.” It was definitely inspiring to be there, but it just made me more confused.

Had you been there before?

No, it was the first time. I love Yayoi Kusama so I wanted to go there and see her work and see what kind of environment or culture she grew up around. I wanted to experience it. I came back and I was like, “I don’t even know what I want to make anymore.” Sometimes I’ll go see a show and I’ll be so inspired to make something, so it was super frustrating. I’m still inspired by Kusama a lot but it’s almost like I looked at her work too much. I think I need to step back a little bit.

I went to MoMA; I looked at the Louise Bourgeois exhibition. I tried to feel something and I just didn’t. Then I picked up ArtForum; I went through it and I just thought, “Fuck.” You know when you’re inspired, it’s just this feeling, and I haven’t had that feeling yet. I’m going to push myself and try to be inspired by myself. I hope it comes soon because I really need to work — to work with a confidence.

Hairier and Hairier, 2017

Food Coma, 2017

When you say you need to work, you need to as in you have to be making things?

I feel maybe like a guy that hasn’t had sex in a long time; I feel like the energy’s there, the need is there. I’m so frustrated. I feel like I can’t create, like something’s missing. I’ll get there. I reach this point probably like five times a year. I’m okay with it.

Do you force yourself to paint every day? What does your day-to-day life look like?

Yes, I force myself because I feel like I have the energy. If I don’t have the energy, I don’t even try. I just stay at home and cuddle with my cat. But now, because I have all this amped up energy to paint, I force myself because I feel like maybe I’m thinking too much. Maybe I just need to paint and then it will click, and that’s where I’m at right now. I’m hoping that maybe tomorrow or the next day something’s going to happen. We’ll see.

When was the first time you can encountered a work of art while you were growing up?

I grew up with this huge painting that disturbed me so much.

In your house?

Actually it was in my grandfather’s house. It was so big, it had to be the centerpiece. It was dark blue and it was a forest at night and there were animals running away. I remember at night I would always run past that painting, because there was this owl sitting in the middle with its bright yellow eyes staring at me. But then during the day, it was right next to the couch and I had to deal with that painting. When my grandfather died, it moved into our house in the same spot towards the couch. It was really bizarre.

I knew there was something special about that painting, that it wasn’t just a painting or a picture on the wall. It was something that really, really bothered me. It made me feel something, and knowing that a piece of art could make me feel something, that was the first time I understood that it was art, and it was important. Being around that painting for so many years, even the scale of it… It’s always going to be with me.

Dress and shoes by J.W. Anderson

Hair and Makeup by Agata Helena @ agatahelena using NARS cosmetics, Art Direction by Louis Liu, Editor Marc Sifuentes, Production by Benjamin Price

All art work © Camilla Engström images courtesy of the artist
For more information visit camilla-engstrom.com

DAVID HOCKNEY – THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

For nearly 60 years, David Hockney (British, born 1937) has pursued a singular career with a love for painting and its intrinsic challenges. A major retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art—the show’s only North American venue, opening November 27, 2017—honors the artist in the year of his 80th birthday by presenting his most iconic works and key moments of his career from 1960 to the present. Working in a wide range of media with equal measures of wit and intelligence, Hockney, has examined, probed, and questioned how to capture the perceived world of movement, space, and time in two dimensions. The exhibition David Hockney will offer a grand overview of the artist’s achievements across all media, including painting, drawing, photography, and video. From his early engagement with modernist abstraction and mid-career experiments with illusion and realism, to his most recent, jewel-toned landscapes, Hockney has consistently explored the nature of perception and representation with both intellectual rigor and sheer delight in the act of looking.

Born in West Yorkshire, where he attended the local Bradford School of Art, Hockney moved to London in 1959 to study at the Royal College of Art. His career is distinguished as much by early successes as by his willingness to flaunt conventions both societal and artistic. Hockney’s works from the 1960s brazenly reference homoerotic subject matter, from Walt Whitman to Physique Pictorial muscle magazines, while his dedication to figuration throughout his career runs against the grain of predominant art world trends on both sides of the Atlantic.

Many fine examples of Hockney’s work from California in the late 1960s and early 1970s, as well as his double portraits from New York, London, and Los Angeles, show the artist’s interest in the tension that exists in social relationships and the difficulty of depicting transparent material such as glass and water. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hockney turned to a brightly hued palette and fractured, cubistic perspective that mirrors both his interest in Pablo Picasso and his own experiments with Polaroid photography. In recent decades, Hockney has ventured outdoors to paint the changeable landscapes of his native Yorkshire across the seasons, while simultaneously returning to the study of figures in social groupings. Keenly interested in scientific innovations in the aid of art, Hockney recently experimented with an old technology: he created a series of portrait drawings using a camera lucida, first employed by artists in the Renaissance to render one-point perspective. He has also always embraced new technologies, including the possibilities for colorful composition offered by applications on the iPhone and iPad. Examples of the artist’s experiments in that medium will be included in the galleries. The exhibition ends with his most recent, near neon-toned landscapes, painted in the last three years in Southern California, where he returned to live in 2013. The Met presentation marks the first time the series will be exhibited publicly in the United States. Even to the most committed follower of Hockney’s art, the unprecedented unification of his renowned early works with the newest, will be revelatory.

David Hockney
Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)
1972
Acrylic on canvas
The Lewis Collection
© David Hockney, Photo Credit: Art Gallery of New South Wales / Jenni Carter

David Hockney
Large Interior, Los Angeles
1988
Oil, ink on cut-and-pasted paper, on canvas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Purchase, Natasha Gelman Gift, in honor of William S. Lieberman, 1989 (1989.279)
© David Hockney

David Hockney
“Garden, 2015”
Acrylic on canvas
48 x 72″
© David Hockney
Photo Credit: Richard Schmidt
David Hockney
Domestic Scene, Los Angeles
1963
Oil on canvas
Private collection
© David Hockney
David Hockney
Colorado River
1998
Oil on canvas
Private collection, courtesy of Richard Gray Gallery
© David Hockney, Photo Credit: Tom Van Eynde
David Hockney
Cleaning Teeth, Early Evening (10 PM) W11
1962
Oil on canvas
Astrup Fearnley Collection, Oslo, Norway
© David Hockney

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David Hockney
A Bigger Splash
1967
Acrylic on canvas
Tate, purchased 1981
© David Hockney, Photo Credit: ©Tate, London 2017                                                                                                 

Exhibition Dates:
November 27, 2017– February 25, 2018
Exhibition Location:
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Galleries,
Gallery 999


At The Met, David Hockney is curated by Ian Alteveer, Curator, with assistance from Meredith Brown, Research Associate, both in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art.
The exhibition is made possible in part by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Jay Pritzker Foundation, the Jane and Robert Carroll Fund, and the Aaron I. Fleischman and Lin Lougheed Fund. It is supported by an Indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. It is organized collaboratively by Tate Britain, London; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.


The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated, scholarly catalogue published by Tate

WILL COTTON EXHIBITION – MARY BOONE GALLERY


INSTALLATION : Mary Boone Gallery, New York.  September 2017.

On Thursday 7 September 2017, Mary Boone Gallery opened at its Fifth Avenue location an exhibition of new paintings by Will Cotton. The attractive elsewhere promised in the child’s board game Candy Land continues to serve Will Cotton as a metaphor for adult desire, temptation, and indulgence.


WILL COTTON
“Cocoa Queen”
85” by 54” (215 cm by 137 cm)
oil/linen
2016
COPYRIGHT: WILL COTTON.
COURTESY: MARY BOONE GALLERY, NEW YORK.
(MBG#11949)

The paintings in the current exhibition meld this imaginary world with reality, as Cotton has invited his studio models to participate in a collective fantasy by selecting their own costumes from among a number that he has created. These dresses are constructed from contemporary commercial packaging materials for cacao beans, candy, donuts, and sugar. The alluring bright colors and bold graphics of these familiar brands are as captivating and comforting as the frosting crowns and lollipop trimmings are implausible and exotic.

WILL COTTON
“Departure”
75” by 50” (190 cm by 127 cm)
oil/linen
2017
COPYRIGHT: WILL COTTON.
COURTESY: MARY BOONE GALLERY, NEW YORK.
(MBG#12053)

In the most recent painting “Departure”, Cotton alludes to an impending shift in the place his figures occupy. This model turns away from the viewer, one raised arm shielding her eyes from the glare of sun and cool blue water. Her outfit, made of cane sugar bags, blends in color and pattern with the deck on which she sits. She gazes toward an idling seaplane, the peppermint-striped letters of the carrier name mostly obscured but presumably Candyland Airways. The painting is an orchestration of layers of red and white, and the only thing edible is the model’s crown. A bag is packed, a plane awaits – perhaps the model is really reaching for her crown, ready to relinquish it and leave behind her realm where sweetness is the most prized attribute.

WILL COTTON
“Hostess”
65” by 46” (165 cm by 116 cm)
oil/linen
2016
COPYRIGHT: WILL COTTON.
COURTESY: MARY BOONE GALLERY, NEW YORK.
(MBG#11929)

The exhibition, at 745 Fifth Avenue, is on view through 28 October 2017. For further information, please contact Ron Warren at the Gallery, or visit  www.maryboonegallery.com.

WILL COTTON
“Joyous”
80” by 50” (203 cm by 127 cm)
oil/linen
2017
COPYRIGHT: WILL COTTON.
COURTESY: MARY BOONE GALLERY, NEW YORK.
(MBG#12052)