John
Neff
Travels between the First and Third Dimensions
September 25 to October 30, 2004 at Western Exhibitions
Scott interviews John via email…. copyright 2004
Scott: Since you're on the West Coast, and I'm in Chicago, and since you've
been stingy with digital images, tell me about the work you plan on showing
at
WX? I understand they are reliefs? Using materials collected from your
current
job at a salvage yard?
John: You could describe these things as reliefs. Each thing begins with a flat panel (most are around 14" x 16") on the horizontal or the vertical axis. They all twist into three-dimensions. A few of the horizontal panels are in the round: one is a table. Many of the panels have a nominal function: table, fan, heater, doorbell, ashtray…decoration. Most incorporate pre-made decorative objects like tiles, vases, and small representational sculptures. Some of the panels are primarily ceramic mosaic: some of them are mainly metal, especially brass and lead.
I did get most of my materials at work, but I also collect stuff at flea markets and on the street. Usually, a panel is inspired by the collision of an interesting object, a story or image that's on my mind, the way that materials are arranged in my workshop at specific moments, and the idea of making panels.
How do they relate to the collages shown at Suitable two years ago?
Well, they're smallish, at least in terms of three dimensional art things these days. Most of my collages began as sheets of 9" x 12" Bristol brand vellum paper. The collages were composed of flat paper objects (Xerox copies, product wrappers, chunks of paint and foil, baubles) torn violently from their "natural" state and compressed — forced — into the space of the page. Without exception, the guiding subject of the collages was the anthor — the furnace where ordinary things are fused, through concentrated mental and physical effort, with their ghosts and become works of art. In the case of the collages, the anthor took the form of niches, cloisters, and carrels — small spaces where one deals with pages and other little pieces of paper. My first panel was a tile representing a screen-printed image of the anthor that served as the title page for the Suitable show. I had intended to make a traditional bronze relief, but lack of cash led me to metallic-glazed ceramic, which got me thinking about tiles generally…And then, there's a lot of ceramic work in the Bay Area. In fact, my sister Laurel — with whom I live — is a mosaicist. Ceramic is a more oriented to everyday space: lining bathrooms and kitchens, forming cups and plates…Doing ceramics right usually requires the efforts of more than one person…These are all differences between the collages and the panels, by the way…Whereas the Suitable pieces had a neat black seal (frame) that kept out the world, the tile is surrounded by the busyness of other people…My sister, my room-mate, my co-workers.
Tell me about
the shift from the installation-slash-video work you’re known for
in Chicago to this more hands-on studio approach. In your mind, is there
even a
shift? Or do your works, be they video, installation, etc., deal with
the same
concerns? If so, delineate these concerns. If not, what are the concerns
“pre-
shift” and now?
There are marked stylistic differences between of all my bodies of work. But, it would be just as easy to construct continuities between the projects as it is to locate shifts. You might say that my concerns have remained pretty consistent over time. Ruptures are subject matter, and sometimes events, in the new works. But, I continue to be preoccupied with the variability of similar forms, repetition as a formal and a social activity, the shift between language and images and vice-versa, materials as simultaneous matter and metaphor, the differences between art and other aspects of culture, and on. Each body of work addresses its medium and refers to a different set of subjects, but these concerns are always in the background.
From a cursory
look at your work, say prior to the Suitable show, one might
surmise that your work is “about” art history, or at least deals
with the
social implications of art in it’s historical context; and space
and it’s
representations through the rise (and fall?) of modernism. How accurate
are the
above statements?
All art with integrity deals with art and its social context. My work has been "about" art history only because that has been my primary field of reference at many times in my life. I don't think of my work as being "about" Modernism, or as being art-about-art, though. It's important to me that my work always addresses its nominal subjects and the organizing principals that underlie each piece or body of pieces.
Is the current
work more personal? Is this why it’s more hands-on? I see more
overt nods to sexuality, familial relationships, politics, to your physicality.
How accurate is this assumption?
Personal references are more blatant in these pieces, but that's not why the work is more hands-on. The pieces are "hand made" because the material demands direct handling. I think that the equation of "hand made" with "personal" is spurious at best. At worst, it's a marketing device that sets up a constant, false rotation between "hot" and "cold" styles — a trick that's been around since the '60s.
As for this work's overt acknowledgements of my homosexuality, my relationships with family, my progressive politics, and my physicality (subjects that have always been present in some form or another in my production), I would say that now is a time for forthrightness. When fear, hate, and excess rule our culture, it's important that art advance the values of beauty, difficulty, and inclusion.
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