Interview

Mark Gonzales, portrait by Ari Marcopoulos

To anyone who knows anything about skateboarding Mark Gonzales needs no introduction. To those who don't know, The Gonz is a legend, a fearless and anarchic exponent of a style of street skateboarding probably best described as insane. I first met Mark Gonzales in 2000, in Los Angeles through photographer Terry Richardson; on that auspicious occasion, he skated a handrail on steep stairs in his shoes without a board. I thought he was going to kill himself.

For a while thereafter, Gonzales sent me odd postcards to my address in London—postcards from all over the world, covered in drawings. He makes art all the time, and he has been making art in some form or another for almost as long as he has been skateboarding. But it's rare to see an actual show of the work; that's why we've put together one at the Half Gallery, "South West," which opens tomorrow. Before installation, I ask Gonazales about the first artwork he remembers making. His answer was characteristically Gonz: "The first thing I did was a drawing on the back of a photo with a ballpoint pen. I was like 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 years old. My mum was really impressed with it."


EMMA REEVES: Why is the show called South West?

MARK GONZALES: A lot of the artwork in the show is supposed to by like Southwestern-style rugs done on paper with watercolor and it's kind of hard to get the lines straight. (LEFT: UNTITLED (BOWLER HAT), 2009)

ER: Some of the canvases feature the abstract Southwestern patterns and others are more representative of earlier work such as the characters driving the cars.

MG: You can't just stick with one thing. You have to let your natural style come through, and paint what you naturally like to paint.

ER: Why are you so into Southwestern patterns?

MG: I just like them. I don't know. I would like to make a rug. I don't think they are that hard to make. I have seen them do it. They shoot one spool of string through this frame, then they close it and shoot another one across.

ER: Do you mean weaving?

MG: Yes! The rugs. How they make them. The Navajo rugs.

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Richard Kern installing his show at RENTAL, New York. All photos by Emma Reeves.

A new exhibition of the work of Richard Kern is on view. Photo director Emma Reeves scopes it out.

EMMA REEVES: This is really a kind of mini-retrospective show isn't it?

RICHARD KERN: Yeah. A little bit. It is photos from ‘82 to '99.

ER: Your last show, at Feature Inc, was a more specific body of work.

RK: Yes, my shows, at least over the last five years have been really specific, a show for each space. Like I have a couple in the fall in Europe and they will be very specific shows for those places. I am leaving this Sunday and going all over Europe to shoot. One series I will be shooting is the Pot-smoking series, the ID series—girls and their IDs, and there are eight or nine different series. May be two of those will show up in these shows. One gallery will just show voyeur stuff. There is none of that in this show.

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Witness the recent transformations in Russia: 24-year-old Gosha Rubchinsky showed his second collection ever in an Orthodox church turned Soviety-era boxing gym, and the result looked more like a fighting arena than ever. Streetcast models wore motif-embroidered tracksuits and sweatpants, menacing death metal-inspired scarves, and fingerless gloves. The show was part of art and fashion festival Cycles and Season, Moscow's tentative step toward a real fashion week spearheaded by Anna Dyulgerova and sponsored by Mastercard to showcase five young Russian designers and introduce foreign press to visit serious centers of contemporary culture, the various art galleries and foundations that have established themselves in Moscow in the recent years. (LEFT: PHOTO BY JOHN KAYDASH.)

Rubchinsky's show was the hit of the week—for the designer's exquisite streetcasting of lean, crew cutted Russian youth, the almost exclusive use of tailored cotton sweat materials, and an aggressively Russian sensibility. Dyulgerova describes Rubchinsky's clothing as "a personal take on the fetishistic uniformity of Moscow street gangs' post-Perestroika suburb sportswear, mixed with patriotic political paraphernalia." We arrange to meet at Solyanka, a modern day social club and the center of all things hip in Moscow. Inside the club there's a small concept store called Twins named, appropriately enough, for its owners, a pair of smiley twentysomething twin girls. They emphasize Russian brands, and they're Rubchinsky's exclusive stockists. Gosha speaks relatively little English, so we spoke through a translator about his skateboarder friends and why the new Russian designer doesn't look to Western icons.


EMMA REEVES: Who do you make your clothes for?

GOSHA RUBCHINSKY: First of all the clothing is for my friends. They are skateboarders, all 17 and 18 years old. I wanted for a long time to do clothes and what pushed me in the end was that I met all these guys and immediately knew what they needed garment wise.

ER: How would you describe the kind of clothes you make?

GR: First of all it needs to be comfortable for something like skateboarding or graffiti writing, which you can wear to clubs too.

ER: Do you feel part of a menswear design tradition coming from Europe, or specifically Russia?

GR: Of course there are designers in Europe and America who work in this field and create clothes for this younger generation but the difference between me and them is that I create and deliver a message to Russian and Moscow teenagers. A Berlin designer would make something different for Berlin kids.

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