Tom Smith

Tom Smith is not a digital artist. In his most recent show “Heavenly Bodies” the New York City based artist featured acrylic paintings inspired by the aesthetic of digital art. We sat down with the artist the hear more about his technique and his new video project "Tamala and the Volcano". 

 

THE UNLIMITED - Your work reminds me of digital art but it is not, describe your technique?

Tom Smith - I like for my work to go in and out of those two illusions.

For a few years I was doing collages  on paper that are cut into tiny strips and then glued together, so there is an illusion of it looking like a digital filter.  That was the entry point for me into painting and after doing that process, I took on the challenge of finalizing a painting without slicing it and combining it.

Last January while working in Brazil I started using this illusion of putting two different colors on a paint brush and creating these brush strokes that sort of mimic digital output or a photoshop filter, or pixels even. A lot of the paintings in the show are using that technique, which kind of echoes the process before of a painting that looks like it is digitally created but then when you see it in person you see all of the hand techniques to create the picture.

TU- What inspires you?

TS- I am not necessarily inspired by digital culture in any way. It is not so in the foreground of what I am planning for each painting. I think about it a lot as like building an environment that could be explored in space or in time.

"The light that is in each painting is specifically supposed to remind me of a certain time of day."

Your color palette is vivid and computer like which only adds to the digitized illusion, care to elaborate ? 

I am bit of an idealist, with color especially. 80% of the work that goes into my paintings is color studies. The colors are meant to inspire a certain type of reaction in the viewer as in other forms of entertainment. The color palette could come from a Disney or anime movie, more vibrant than true life but also referencing reality.

Can you tell us about your new piece?

I create these sci-fi surrealist videos that circle around idealism. In this case the idealistic vision of a woman or of a hero. In the video that I am working on now my character Tamala steps into the role of a volcano sacrifice. I shot the video in Iceland and under water on Fire Island. I also worked on a series of stop-motion animations that will be integrated into the piece. The final shoot will happen in New York using a green screen and the video will be released this year. 

http://www.tomsmithart.com/

Matt Starr

"I don't want to be another boring artist doing boring things in boring spaces for boring people."

Matt Starr is a New Media artist living in New York City. His art is based around creating a total experience. His work often explores low brow culture and social media culture, and creating a dialogue with viewers.

Let’s talk about your recent series you started posting on instagram?

@mattstarrmattstarr @mattstarrmattstarr @mattstarrmattstarr

For the cast series, I have no direct relation to the products I am using, the prints and logos. I've never owned a Prada Purse or Hermes Scarf. It's partially about creating a dichotomy between these two opposing forces, like cast and pain with opulent and not so necessary. At the core of it is humor. People connect with humor on Instagram. When there are so many beautiful pictures of models,  nature, and food it's relief for most to stumble upon something more unexpected. In life and art people are looking for a way to connect and humor to me, is an effective way of doing that.

Regardless of what I’m trying to say or not say with the cast series, there’s a certain humor that allows those images to resonate. It’s interesting to see in a really short period of time, how people reacted to it. I mean it’s ridiculous to see someone in a Louis Vuitton body cast, but that ridiculousness is what makes it so intriguing. 

Do you think the fact that you can receive instant feedback on your work impacts the way you will progress a series or work?

Matt Starr at diet installation

If I believe in it, the hopes are other people will catch on. Obviously I'm affected. What artist isn't looking for affirmation through likes and comments? To what degree? - I'm not sure yet.

I live quickly, I move quickly. When I speak, whatever is inside just comes out - for better or worse. It comes out and whatever comes out is just what I have to live with. It’s kind of the same with my art, and this was even before social media, but now I have an outlet.

So do you then publish things without actually being certain of what you are trying to say and then have people’s interpretations inform the work?

Yeah. Well for example the Matt Starr X Kim Kardashian sex tape. I worked on that 60 seconds for about 4 months and I obviously had a lot of thoughts about that. Then I put it out there and the way it was received, just like a lot of work, was not what I thought it would be.

With the cast series, I just thought it was funny. Only after the response did I start to re-conceptualize what it was saying, but also I think people get too caught up with concept. In college I was very caught up in concept and theory. Right now, I’m very in touch with my emotions and naturally I am a very emotionally charged person and a lot of what I do now is based off feeling. I used to be too caught up in concept and wasn’t happy with the work I was producing. When I stopped thinking so much and just started feeling, I became a lot more satisfied with what I was doing. I became more confident in my work and I think something more real came out of that. I think a lot of artists get caught up in trying to manifest these certain concepts and then you lose the emotional aspects, and then people don’t connect. In the end, the art that I make, and want to make, I want to be accessible. I want it to be out there in the public realm as much as possible. I think to do that there has to be emotion and there has to be humor. 

The diet installation was done at the DKNY New Art City show which was based on the "Downtown" culture of NYC.

Is diet the only work you have done as a physical product?

Diet is the only thing that I have basically objectified. It was the first time I had to think about putting a price on a piece of art. That changed the way I was thinking for a bit, about the piece while I was making it. Most of what I do is experienced based. I am selling experiences and people will hire me as Matt Starr the artist, not, ‘We like this object,' or 'We like this painting can we have it? Can we buy it? Can we put this on the wall, or in our gallery?' It's more like, ‘Can you transform this space? Here’s your budget, this is what we are looking for.’ Diet was the first time I had to think about objects. How does the price reflect the people who can afford to buy it, who want to buy it, and the type of people that will be buying it. It was weird. It was the first thing I made that you could take home with you. I’m pretty happy though, that it included diet condoms and cigarettes.

The Infinity Pool

The Infinity Pool is a digital exhibition space that features a different artist each month. The digital platform was created by artists David Alexander Flinn and Adam Patrick Ianniello. The Unlimited sat down with the two to talk about how this digital curated space functions, and Adam's currently running series.

What is The Infinity Pool?

David: The infinity pool is an entity. It is like an alien brain hovering in space. That is how I think of it.

A word to describe it?

David: Vacation.

Adam:
It is like an alien thing, but it is also a bit like a labyrinth in the way that we want it to be complex and we want you to feel like you are lost in it.

David:
The evolution of it and its natural design, the growth is not linear, so it is constantly going to be zig-zagging and bouncing between universes and dimensions because it is dealing with totally different subject matter from totally different people. Some alive, some dead.

It is already everything, so it will never need to expand. I think that is the benefit of having it be something digital and kind of ephemeral. It is unbound by weight, by rent, it has no limitations, which to me makes it everything. If the infinity pool became a gallery format, physical manifestation, it would just be a gallery. You loose the freedom to be entirely open to any type of project.

I think watching the artists grow, and watching the capability of the infinity pool grow, that growth in enough.

We have a really big sense of humor, and something we are really into is challenging institutions and challenging standard notions of right or wrong, so I think that is the beauty of having it as an abstract entity.

Adam:
We take people that are not comfortable being in a gallery, or showing art in a gallery. Then pushing then to do something that would be the equivalent of exhibiting work. We are getting them outside their box and we are learning more about ourselves and what we sort of like to see from them. It is a push and a pull when we finally get to meet, and finally get to talk about something. They do not know themselves going into it what they want to do. It is always cool to guide them along their path and figure out who they are for the website.

"The main thing is we are interested in the work, thats all. There is no money, no sponsors, there is just us wanting to see people make good work, and trying to give them the opportunity with what we have, which is this."

That is what the website is, we want it to be a sort of rite of passage. In the sense that people feel comfortable doing it but they have to step up and do something more than they have normally been doing.

Adam:
We do not want mid-career people, we don’t want people everyone knows. We either want people that are emerging in a way, or people that we idolize and respect greatly. We wanted to have new people where we can have a fresh look at things.

If the infinity pool had to exist in a world without internet what would it be?

David:
I think the infinity pool would have been more like a monthly book.

Adam:
An AA meeting.

David:
Either like an AA meeting or a monthly...its already kind of like an AA meeting. I think probably a monthly or quarterly book. I am thinking if we met in the 1700s what we would have done and it probably would have been like a manifesto. Yeah a manifesto.

Flags-  Adam Ianniello exhibit on The Infinity Pool 

What inspired you to produce for this month? as a founder and participant

Smoke-  Adam Ianniello exhibit on The Infinity Pool 

Adam:
In the past year I have been going upstate to work, to photograph. Every time I go up there it will clear my mind and I figure out new projects to do, especially in the form that I do them, which is dark room photography. The first time I went up there I went to a place which is a Tibetan monastery. Its all deep up in the hills of Woodstock, and there is an area up there that is basically a path where monks walk everyday and its covered with these Tibetan prayer flags. So that really inspired me and I really got into wanting to do something with Tibetan prayer flags and I sort of dove deep into Buddhism and meditation. When this month came around I decided to go back up in August and I brought a video camera with me, and I started filming things. I spent the whole week filming nature basically. Just whatever I felt like doing, I wanted to film. When I came back I realized I could use that footage and sort of transcode them into the flags themselves. All the flags have a good luck meaning, and they are broken down into five elements: sky, wind, earth, fire, and water. When that hit me I realized I am going to do five videos and each of them is going to contain just that element, and try to portray it in the most pure way possible.

I think when we talk about the infinity pool we always talk about taking whatever practice we do and trying to transform it into a digital format. Approaching it as this is what I am, this is what I do, this is what I like to do, but I have to make it in a way that people on the internet will understand. Which is different than the way that “the gallery” would fit into the picture.

I basically took what I did photographically, and turned that into a video format. So people could visualize what it is like to stand in front of one of my pieces.

http://www.theinfinitypool.com