From emerging artists such as Alex Israel to art-world heavyweights such as Ed Ruscha, Simon de Pury visits some of Los Angeles's top art stars in their studios.
Our journey began with the young artist Alex Israel, whose studio is actually located inside Warner Brothers studios. After passing through various security checkpoints, you enter one of the world’s biggest dream factories. There, with the help of the skilled movie-studio workers, the 29-year-old artist is creating his work in ideal conditions. While he has been a full-time artist only for the past two years, he knows the art world inside out, having worked in the studio of the late Jason Rhoades and at Hauser & Wirth and Sotheby’s. His self-portraits in profile have rapidly attained iconic status, and his giant sunglass lenses have waiting lists of collectors queuing up.
Simon de Pury
Sam Falls lets the elements of nature do the work for him. He creates patterns that are obtained by the exposure of his supports to either the sun or the rain. Given the scarcity of rain in California, he is forced to do the latter on the East Coast. The mixing of natural color pigments happens entirely accidentally without any direct intervention of the artist. He was recently chosen by Eva Presenhuber from Zurich, Switzerland, who has a good track record of picking up talents early and has launched the careers of artists such as Urs Fischer and Ugo Rondinone, and her gallery is also representing red hot artist Joe Bradley.
Simon de Pury
From an art-market perspective, Sterling Ruby is best known for his spray paintings. The very latest sold at Christie’s in the Leonardo di Caprio benefit sale last May for $1.79 million. He is one of a number of artists working in California who was influenced by the late Mike Kelley. He is on the best way to become one of the art superstars. He constantly pushes the boundaries in developing five distinct bodies of work that also include large sculptures, “soft” sculptures, ceramics, works on cardboards, and alabaster paintings. Early next year he will be moving into a new studio that, at over 90,000 square feet, will be one of the world’s largest.
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Curry is best known for his striking sculptures in vivid colors. This fall Lincoln Center in New York will be adorned by a series of his new large-scale works. His paintings are equally intriguing. He derives his influence from the world of music, skateboarding, science fiction, and cartoons as well as art. His studio is next to his home, which he has so brilliantly installed. If I were Ian Schrager, I would ask him to do the interior of my next hotel project.
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Andrews is a conceptual artist working with props from movies, who just had a very successful show at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany. When I visited her studio, I was surprised to see a leather jacket hanging on the wall with a green question mark. It is the one worn by Jack Nicholson for the role of the Joker in the 1989 Batman movie (my favorite, directed by Tim Burton with the killer soundtrack by Prince). She will incorporate it in a piece that will be included in a group show she’ll do with Alex Israel and Darren Bader at the Gagosian Gallery in Rome this fall.
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Wood will take over the exhibition space of Lever House in New York this fall. The Anton Kern Gallery New York will also have an exhibition devoted to his recent work. He is a close friend of another great West Coast artist Mark Grotjahn. His upbeat representational works are a very personal cocktail of influences that range from Matisse to Calder to Hockney.
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Kusaka is a ceramic artist who shares the studio and life of artist Jonas Wood. Her work combines the tradition of some of the greatest Japanese ceramicists with the more pop sensibility also present in her husband’s work.
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Pestoni is an artist that several friends had been raving about for quite some time. When I was looking at illustrations of his work, I could not quite understand why. This has changed now that I had the chance, thanks to his gallerist David Kordansky, to visit him in his studio. He works on several works simultaneously for several weeks, applying layers after layers. These influences go from early Rothko to abstract Lichtenstein, from Polke to Richter. Despite these multiple layers the paint appears very thin, and you can only guess what he painted underneath them. On first reading they can appear hermetic, but they keep growing on you, the more you look at them.
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A visit to Mary Weatherford’s studio is enchanting: she takes you on a narrative through her multiple experiences that make you travel in your mind from the Far West to the sound of the blues of Robert Johnson to mechanical bulls in crowded Texas clubs. Her work is a combination between lyrical abstract expressionist compositions paired with special shaped and formed neons.
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Michael Chow is the most unexpected revelation of my August studio tour. An artist for nearly a decade during the 1960s, he resumed painting with a vengeance about a year and a half ago. It is Jeffrey Deitch who last summer had encouraged me to visit him. His artistic development over a year is remarkable. His work incorporates his deep knowledge of artists such as Burri, Klein, Twombly, Kiefer, Zao Wou-Ki, and Cai Guo-Qiang into his own unique visual language that is both original and seductive. The show of his work that Pearl Lam is planning for early 2014 in Hong Kong promises to be very strong.
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Mark Bradford is one of my favorite artists. It is my and my former colleagues enthusiasm for his work that had led me to introduce his work directly into an evening sale of contemporary art at Phillips de Pury when none of his works had ever been sold at auction anywhere else before. The big traveling show devoted to his work that I saw at the MCA Chicago only fortified that feeling. It was exciting to see in his studio the maquette of the large sculpture that he will install next year at the Los Angeles International Airport. It will expose his work to an audience going way beyond the art world. Besides being very gifted, Mark is also very generous. He is singlehandedly donating the funds necessary to build and run a cultural center in the immediate neighborhood of his L.A. studio.
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Darren Bader is the most radical artist that I met during my August holiday. His current show at Blum & Poe in Los Angeles changes on a daily basis. Some objects are added as others are taken away. Some only appear on his website. For a collector this is like a moving target at a fun fair. He infuses his objets trouvés with absurdity and humor. I had to photograph him in front of his heat lamp and with parking ticket!
Ruscha is, along with John Baldessari, one of the grands seigneurs of the West Coast art scene. If the general does not wear the best uniform, or the big boss does not have the poshest office, it is not surprising that Ruscha does not have the largest studio. His current work is as strong as any he has ever done, and it is clear that while he is universally acclaimed, he is still undervalued from an art-market perspective. Besides being one of the greatest artists alive, he is also one of the best-looking and most charming men alive, as my portrait of him attests. Afterall, there are certainly not many 75-year-olds who would get the comment “sexy mo-fo” when you post their image on Instagram!
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Retna’s life changed dramatically since the famed street-art show held at the MOCA. One of that show’s stars, Retna had been visited even prior to that exhibition by Damien Hirst. When the artist bought at once several of Retna’s works, it caused a run on his works that has not abated since. When I entered his studio with some friends, we initially could not even get Retna’s attention since there were simultaneously several groups of collectors accompanied by eager art advisers dancing around him. When I took his portrait, he was smoking, which helped obtain the effect of a bull having steam coming out of his nostrils. Telling some of my friends that Retna was one of the artists I visited while in L.A., I saw very violent reactions, which were comparable to the ones I would get during the 1980s when I dared to admit that besides admiring Rauschenberg, Johns, and Warhol, I also was interested in Haring.
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Rosa is an Austrian artist of Brazilian origin who is currently moving to Los Angeles. I met him at the Schindler House when HIH Francesca von Habsburg gave a lecture. Later that night we went to have some drinks with him. Every few minutes we would be interrupted by someone who stopped him, thinking he was Bruno Mars. The Ibid Gallery currently shows his works in L.A. in a pop-up exhibition.
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Aitken is the last artist I visited during my summer holiday. His studio is more like an office building of a super-creative advertising agency with very charming and stimulating colleagues working on a variety of projects in every room. The artist’s most exciting project at the moment, no doubt, is Station to Station, a train ride that will take some of the best artists and musicians of today on a cultural journey from the East Coast to the West Coast in what could well become the Woodstock of today’s youngest generation.
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The former director of MOCA, in front of an Urs Fischer.
Simon de Pury
