Interview

For over two decades, New York-based artist Max Schumann has been making paintings with an arbitrary price on them, and exhibiting them in such exotic locales as a theater lobby or a nightclub. On the occasion of his most recent exhibition of Cheap Art (in collaboration with Dale Wittig) we went into the Lower East Side bar to see why some paintings are more expensive than others. Read the full interview on Art in America.

"Manufacturing Desire" is currently on view through October 31. Max Fish is located at 178 Ludlow Street, New York. Installation photo by Asher Penn.

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"In teenage heaven, adolescence is an eternal state."

"Rock is the first musical form to be totally commercial and consumer exploitative."

"While individual rock heroes (singers) are unrepentant sinners, the rock group is more like a self sufficient commune."


These are just a few of the prescient aphorisms from the script of Rock My Religion (1984), the iconic video by conceptual artist and polymath Dan Graham that improbably sourced the era's popular music to Shakerism.

Dan Graham moved to New York in 1964 at the age of 22, where he quickly gained recognition for founding the John Daniels Gallery, exhibiting works by Donald Judd, Robert Smithson, Carl Andre and giving Sol Lewitt his first show. Upon leaving the gallery, Graham began making work in all mediums, especially gaining recognition in the art world for his video, performances, his tongue-and-cheek photo series of uniform suburban architecture, and conceptual pavillions. Throughout all this, Graham has maintained a steady practice of speculative and critical writings on all things cultural, especially music.

Timed to his first museum retrospectice Dan Graham: Beyond at the Whitney, is the publication of Dan Graham: Rock/ Music Writings, the first book to collect in one chronological volume Graham's writings on music. These sprawling, lucid, meditations of the true meaning of "Rock and Roll" affirming that while Graham is an artist first and foremost, he's also got more chops than most music scholars.

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Technically speaking, Brendan Fowler is a multi-disciplinary artist who makes intensely personal, self-reflexive recordings, performance, works on paper, and sculpture. But that sounds pretty vague, and Brendan is anything but: Fowler's practice is so weirdly unique and accessible, it's difficult to pin down. (LEFT: PHOTO BY JOSH WHITE)

Over the last eight years, Fowler has been best known and recognizd for his one-man-act Barr, a spoken word and sound project that has produced numerous LPs and singles (many of them are splits seven-inches, so it's hard to count) and toured internationally. While Fowler has always considered himself an "artist," only recently has he begun to assert the conventions of this identity more aggressively, with a one-week gallery show at Rivington Arms in New York, 2nd Cannons in Los Angeles, and his participation in the New Museum's Triennial "Younger Than Jesus." These works have included a campaign against the offensive name of the band "Aids Wolf," a series of "Cancelled" concert flyers, and framed computer screen shots blasting through one another.
Last week, Brendan launched his new book, ISBN-10: 0-9820559-3-5, at Los Angeles boutique Ooga Booga. Fowler can't be stopped: He launches the book (again) tonight in New York at Printed Matter.


ASHER PENN: How did the launch go at Ooga Booga?

BRENDAN FOWLER: It was really fun. I was going to do this really elaborate soundtrack situation but it was too stressful. After 45 minutes I turned off the soundtrack and just played music because I felt like I was supposed to be performing. It was too middle ground. It was like "press play and hang out." But I kept fucking with the volume and feeling like I had to tweak it....

AP: But how about doing a signing?

BF: I'm really into signing the book. There is the page in the book where I sign the page. You saw your page, right? I'm into it. It's a totally new thing for me.

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Seth Price, Stencil, courtesy the artist. An ad for HBO's True Blood

With so many artists today sourcing materials from advertising, it should be no surprise to see TV networks return the favor. Case in point, the campaign for the HBO show "True Blood," in which globs of presumably vampire-related blood bear an uncanny resemblance artist Seth Price's signature cut-outs, the series of appropriated images that he reproduces in negative as all drawings. Price's series of silhouetted images reproduced in the negative have been exhibited at Friedrich Petzel in New York and the Whitney Biennial. Is HBO biting Price's style? Is it an homage? Or nothing at all?

As he's no stranger to appropriation, we asked Price what he thought:


ASHER PENN: Have you seen the new True Blood ads?

SP: Yes.

AP: Where did you see them? What was your initial reaction?

SP: I saw a poster on the street, some time in the past few weeks. I didn't really think about it, beyond a glance. Is this about the ad?

AP: Yeah. For me they bore a striking resemblance to the silhouettes that I have seen you do.

SP: That's true.

AP: Do you think it's a coincidence?

SP: I don't know. I'm sure those two-profile illusions have been around for hundreds of years. I just took them as a starting point. Maybe I should take that ad and use it?

AP: Maybe. They're good ads... So you don't feel ripped off or anything?

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