Artist Kevin Regan discusses his work with the author. — Photo by Ellen Letcher
A small white-washed basement on Gates Avenue, not unlike any other block in Ridgewood near the Myrtle-Wyckoff L/M — the middle of nowhere, to some — is the site of 15 years of collaboration between performance artists Genesis and Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge. The space served as their studio before Lady Jaye’s untimely death in 2007. Genesis — cited as a major inspiration for art stars like Dash Snow, and who can count William Borroughs as a mentor — connects Bushwick to an art historical trajectory larger than that with which the neighborhood is typically associated. That history, as well as the memory of Lady Jaye, plays a major role in the space’s reinvention. Two Bushwick-based artists, Kevin Regan and Ellen Letcher, have turned it into an exhibition space they call Famous Accountants. Their first show responds to the space itself with its obtuse title, 23, referencing a number affixed to the ceiling, supposedly left there by Lady Jaye herself.
Famous Accountants (FA) is an exhibition space used as a sketchbook. All of the work they show is experimental, provisional, and ephemeral. Letcher and Regan decided to feature their own work in the space’s debut exhibition, a deliberate breach of one of the most stringent rules in the gallery world. In fact, Letcher will continue to use the gallery’s back room as a studio. FA blurs the line between open studio and gallery.
For 23, Regan and Letcher collaborated to make an immersive paper collage installation, establishing a clear dialog with Genesis and Lady Jaye. They affixed works-on-paper, digital prints, collages, magazine and catalog cut-outs, bits of mirror, sculpture, and tiny video screens to the walls, ceiling, and floor in mosaic-like detail. Regan’s new work focuses on portraits of Ronald Regan, while Letcher appropriates recent ad campaigns of luxury brands. Visiting the space separately and together, Regan and Letcher began to play off one another’s ideas, using the space as a massive tabula rasa for unexpected pairings and combinations. You have to know them to tell their work apart.
Regan and Letcher also poached from past works for this show. Letcher even included a simple wooden frame, packed for storage with over one-hundred collages inside, covered in bungee cords and two huge metal clips that have never been unwrapped. Neither artist has sentimental attachments for the things they make. Works are never finished; they are simply tools to be used in creative exploration. The only method of freezing a work in time by either artist is to purchase it.
"What’s the point of showing finished work?" Regan asks. "Chelsea is full of finished work already."
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The entire show is a pastiche of various works, all consisting of multiple "theme" images in serial repetition, intentionally or inadvertently juxtaposed. These artists do not make meaning; they view this as a manner of controlling the work, forcing it. Meaning is allowed to happen naturally as a result of play. This process references Dadaism, especially the well-known Exquisite Corpse game. Regan and Letcher enter the space without forethought and remain open to any possibility. Accidents, misprints, warping, curling, and tearing are all viable techniques. Both artists are aware that in this process, in the words of Regan, "meaning is inevitable." The viewer is left to deconstruct extremely complex narratives and associations developed between the images. Literal or conceptual reads of the imagery presented are ineffectual.
Both Regan and Letcher work in high-level positions of print production at major media companies. Their understanding of digital printing techniques and materials is sophisticated, and the access they both have to powerful printing tools puts them in an unprecedented position as artists to question the nature of digital printing. The makeshift style of their installation is a smokescreen for the actually very expensive methods they both use to make their work. Letcher joshes Regan during the interview, "I think it’s made you more valuable in the workplace."
23 seems to analyze the nature of digital images, especially stock photography, advertising, and b-level internet sources, and the possibility of generating meaning by simply multiplying, organizing, arranging, combining, or layering those images. "Repetition is directly related to digital printing," says Regan. "I exploit the ability to create multiples, change scale and orientation."
Any image, if juxtaposed with another, multiplied, transformed in scale, color, print quality, can be imbued with meaning. Making meaning in an immersive environment (i.e., creating their own context) by juxtaposing unrelated images, and using the studio as a collaborative creative space worked for 23 because of the historical precedent set by Lady Jaye’s work, the history of the space as a studio, and the undeniable relationship between Regan and Letcher’s work that has been developed over their 12-year-long friendship. The big question is: Where do they go from here?
The challenge Regan and Letcher now face after such a cohesive show which clearly illustrates the mission statement of the gallery is an equally cohesive next step. If the artists play their cards right, Famous Accountants could balloon to a collaborative space for artists not unlike the actually famous Artist’s Space in Soho; the idea of gallery-as-sketchbook could generate a lot of surprising new work. If they don’t, it could end up being another weird, unrelated or unimportant, unresolved series of apartment shows in Bushwick.
nast November 9th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Love the cigs and beer on the table. Great shot Ms. Letcher.
nast November 9th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Forget to mention: great article.
Mario Rizzo November 10th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
What’s the point of showing finished work?” Regan asks. “Chelsea is full of finished work already.”
This is really along the lines that anything can be art. Well, then what’s the point of using the word “art”? What does it distinguish? I realize the boundaries are broad and ever changing. But I don’t mind if an artist freezes his work in time by finishing it. If fact, I’d rather he did that before showing it.
Dresden November 10th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Mario, very insightful. I agree. A finished piece makes is a commodity, allowing there to be an art “market”. Bushwick is also full of finished work, fyi.
Stephen Truax November 10th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Mario, yes indeed, anything can be art. Marcel Duchamp established this at the 1913 Armory Show in New York by showing his ‘readymade’ sculptures (see link below).
Regan and Letcher’s work, albeit self-identified as ‘unfinished’ could hardly qualify as testing the boundaries of what art is and is not. They collaborated together to make an immersive installation out of hundreds, if not thousands of digital prints meticulously arranged throughout the space. This practice fits very squarely into any functional definition of art (and even fits into the well-established prescribed subcategories of drawing and installation).
The conceptually challenging piece about Famous Accountants most recent show is their lack of focus on sales (or even the possibility of sales — did anyone see a price list?)
Kevin is right in saying, “Chelsea is full of finished work already.” Chelsea constructs an entirely mediated context to make the viewer think the work is a valuable commodity in the marketplace (i.e., one small painting hangs on an enormous white wall in a space that costs $20,000 a month).
The whole point of FA is that they are not interested in that mediation; they present the work as a sketchbook, to quote myself, “experimental, provisional, and ephemeral.” Letcher and Regan might actually represent a functional position of artists at this current art historical and economic moment because of their self-sufficiency; they both have professional careers, and maintain an exciting art practice in addition to that. This frees them up to take risks like their most recent show, 23.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readymades_of_Marcel_Duchamp
Mario November 11th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Interesting. It makes me think that art may be like economics in an important way. Everyone thinks they know economics because everyone buys stuff, works at a job for money, deals with credit card companies, etc. So everyone has an opinion, informed or not.
In the case of art, everyone has seen pictures or statues they consider beautiful or ugly. So everyone knows what art is. But as the Marcel Duchamp entry suggests you must know something about what the artist is trying to do or communicate. This may not be obvious.
But there is still a bottom line with art that doesn’t exist in the case of economics. A person may simply not like the art. But perhaps he should wait to figure out what the artist means by what he does — or something like that.
Stephen Truax November 13th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
The difference you point out is very astute; a person may simply not like the art. And art, being a commodity, and artists, being producers of commodities to be sold in the open market, are in some ways bound by the viewer’s taste (this is a highly controversial subject).
What you must also bear in mind is that the open market in which contemporary art is being bought and sold is one of the most highly specialized hyper-specific subcategories of the economy at large. Although the viewer may not like the art and should take more time to consider it, from an economic point of view, economists and artists are still very much alike in their intellectual separation from the majority of the population.
I will share this interview published in Modern Painters, Nov 2009, between Michael Gabellini and artist Roni Horn:
“[Gabellini] … What do you expect of the viewer ..? / [Horn:] “I don’t have a list of expectations for the viewer.” (p. 78)
Mario Rizzo November 13th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
No expectations for the viewer???!!!
Let’s forget for a moment that art objects are bought and sold. They seem to be a form of communication. Now communication has two perspectives. What did the artist intend, what is is trying to say to other people? The other side is what do they hear or see based on the expectations they have in the context of their culture and personal lives? If I were an artist I’d be concerned about what the others see or hear because it relates to what I am communicating. On the other hand, if a “consumer” of art is serious he will try to see things from the artist’s point of view. Otherwise, how will the “consumer” ever gain insights he doesn’t already have?
So the whole thing is a process.
Now believe it or not: I have come to this from my thinking about economics. There is a school of economics concerned about these things (“Austrian” economics).