ARCO / Samson Projects (2006) (r2)
Camilo Alvarez, director / owner of Samson Projects, Boston, is presenting his booth at ARCO 2006. The gallery is showing works by photographers Leslie Hewitt and Wardell Milan and drawings by Rune Olsen. ARCO / Madrid, February 9, 2006.
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CreativityTranscript
00:00 These are works by Leslie Hewitt.
00:02 She's an African-American artist that was born in New York.
00:06 And these are using family photographs and some found photographs and found material
00:12 in order to really convey nostalgia and memory.
00:15 She tries to keep it really open for the viewer in order for them to really appreciate it fully.
00:20 Then this is actually a drawing by Wardell Milan.
00:23 He's one of my artists.
00:25 He was in the PS1 Greater New York Show in New York not too long ago.
00:29 And these are photos by him as well.
00:31 For these photos, he creates these dioramas in his studio using chocolate and live plants.
00:36 He takes pictures of himself, cuts them up, and places them in the dioramas as well.
00:43 And sometimes they include drawings and things like that.
00:46 Chocolate, fire.
00:49 He has fun with it.
00:50 Sometimes they're big, sometimes they're very small, but they kind of, you know,
00:54 really fudge with perspective a lot.
00:57 So, yeah.
01:00 That's really hard work to do dioramas.
01:06 It takes a lot of time and work.
01:09 Yes.
01:10 It takes him a long time, actually.
01:11 It takes him to build one of these dioramas and get it how he wants to maybe three or four months.
01:19 And then he takes maybe 30 to 40 photos of the dioramas to really find the perspective and the lighting and all that.
01:28 So it does take a while to produce these.
01:30 And then, you know, the finished product is mounted onto aluminum and behind plexiglass.
01:34 So it's very exquisitely presented, I think.
01:37 So.
01:40 And these drawings?
01:42 These are actually studies of live sculptures, of, you know, real life-size sculptures.
01:48 They're by Huna Olsen, and he's Norwegian.
01:51 So basically this is a sculpture that he made of two kissing wolves.
01:56 This is a sculpture that he made of -- I was amused for it.
02:00 I had to go to this pool and, you know, model for him.
02:03 And then he printed out the photograph and then drew an octopus on my groin/penis.
02:10 So there's, you know, this struggle with eroticism and violence and life and death.
02:17 It's called "For Everything I Long to Do."
02:21 It's a beautiful piece. It's huge.
02:23 I took it -- I was at an art fair in Miami, NADA, and I took it there, and people loved it.
02:27 I found a home in Canada.
02:29 It's a beautiful, huge sculpture.
02:31 Huge.
02:32 Maybe, like, big, like 3 meters by 5 meters or so.
02:40 5 by 6 meters.
02:42 It was quite a big room to --
02:44 Yeah, well, it was dangling. It hangs from the ceiling.
02:46 So it was a room sort of the size of this, and it was right up here.
02:50 Great.
02:52 Is this your first time here in ARCO?
02:54 This is my first time at ARCO, yes.
02:56 The gallery is very young.
02:57 I started the gallery -- it's going to be two years in March.
03:00 So it's a very, very young gallery.
03:02 It's a labor of love. It's been great.
03:05 So, yeah.
03:07 And the -- a lot of people, a lot of contacts?
03:13 Yes. Well, I used to -- I was born in New York.
03:15 So I worked in a lot of galleries and museums in New York and then moved to Boston.
03:20 And, you know, the world's getting smaller and smaller.
03:23 So I think, you know, it doesn't really matter where you are in order to contribute to culture.
03:28 So you have a lot of experience also already.
03:31 I guess, yeah.
03:33 I mean, there's always more.
03:35 The more you know, the less you know.
03:37 Yeah.
03:38 So it's always a learning process.
03:40 So what's the difference between New York and Boston?
03:44 New York and Boston are very different.
03:46 Well, Boston has a highly itinerant society.
03:48 There's a lot of -- you know, Harvard's there.
03:50 MIT is there.
03:52 So there's a lot of students.
03:54 And people that live there are highly mobile.
03:56 A lot of finance people, a lot of lawyers.
03:58 So they're moving all around the world all the time.
04:00 So while in New York you don't really necessarily have to go anywhere else.
04:04 But in Boston they move a lot.
04:07 So, yeah, it's good.
04:10 Okay, thank you very much.
04:12 You're welcome. Thank you.
04:13 She's very good.
04:24 She's very aware.
04:25 Very aware of the process.
04:26 Very aware of people's memories.
04:28 How they move forward is very important.
04:31 [inaudible]
04:35 [inaudible]
04:39 [inaudible]
05:05 What's the name of the artist?
05:07 [inaudible]
05:10 Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
05:13 [inaudible]
05:16 We're delving into the history of these artists.
05:21 And then we gather these self-published policies,
05:24 but I think there's a lot of people that are curating us.
05:27 Thank you.
05:29 [BLANK_AUDIO]