HypeArt is holding the “NOISY REALITY” exhibition in New York, featuring the works of four talented emerging artists Meguru Yamaguchi, Heather Benjamin, Eny Lee Parker and B. Thom Stevenson, bringing art including painting, sculpture, mixed media and furniture design The works, capturing the ever-changing landscape of New York City through their unique perspective, present the energy of the city. Below, we have a conversation with four emerging artists in the “NOISY REALITY” exhibition, Meguru Yamaguchi, Heather Benjamin, Eny Lee Parker, and B. Thom Stevenson, to learn more about their creations, backgrounds, and this exhibition.
Meguru Yamaguchi
Tell us about your work for “NOISY REALITY” this time.
Meguru Yamaguchi: Since 2016, I have been working on creating works that go beyond the boundaries of the canvas. This time I created a series of “Awakenings” works, expressing flow by changing angular brushstrokes into smooth brushstrokes. I feel that once you look at something you’ve taken for granted, a little difference can change the whole thing. In this era of great change, in NOISY REALITY, we need to perceive the subtleties of the world more sensitively and make changes towards it. The movement of the world has become like a timeline, which is full of a lot of similar pictures. This seemed unimaginable a generation ago.
How did your artistic style develop gradually? What was the creative process like?
Meguru Yamaguchi: Inspired by the Japanese Gutai artist and painter Kazuo Shiraga, I started creating my own style works. He was a member of the Gutai Art Association, Japan’s most radical post-World War II avant-garde art group. “Gutai” means “concrete proof that our minds are free”, and “thoughts” are unique to each individual, but they also form a great whole.
Looking back on my own experience. For a while, I suddenly hated painting on canvas, combined with the Gutai style, I also had this idea: “Handwriting needs to dance more freely, freed from the frame, rather than expressed in a controlled environment. .” However, one of my favorite artists, Nakazono Koji, also said: “Painting is to create a frame.” When I heard this sentence, I realized that the frame that I thought was freely broken, turned out to be It’s just another frame I made. In short, it expresses the world as I see it and want to see it. So in the past few years, I have also started to create works on canvas, which is also about recognizing the truth of myself and being honest with it. During my creative process I experimented with a few ideas. What would happen if I took the dripping, splashing, and other techniques of American abstract expressionism and performance painting and made them three-dimensional? I am fascinated by organic movement, such as the natural flow of water, the movement of smoke and the shape of lightning. For “Prominence No.2-2” presented in this exhibition, I used solar flares and lava movements as references to create a shape that blends with handwriting.
How do you understand “NOISY REALITY”?
Meguru Yamaguchi: My understanding of “NOISY REALITY” is that this word expresses the reality of the modern age, and trends are consumed instantly. One of the philosophies proposed by the Japanese comedian Matsuo Basho is “mutability and fashion”, which means that while incorporating new and ever-changing things, don’t forget the never-changing nature of things. In addition, the unchanging essence is the trend of seeking new and changing, repeated changes. The point is, in the pop world, that’s exactly what it is. I would be happy and honored if there is an audience in the “NOISY REALITY” exhibition who can feel the essence expressed by the work.
“I am fascinated by organic movement, such as the natural flow of water, the movement of smoke and the shape of lightning.”
Heather Benjamin
What themes do you study in the artwork you present in “NOISY REALITY”?
Heather Benjamin: These paintings are a continuation of the world view I have established in the large-scale works of the past few years, which is a different world composed of the creatures I created.
I’m obsessed with deserts, but it’s weird that I’ve been drawing them before I actually set foot in them. I devote a lot of my time to them, even more so now. The desert is a very mysterious, epic, eerie place. The vastness of space and the madness of silence, both of which disturb your perception of reality, including the way you perceive your own thoughts, thus bring this ideal image and blank space of thought to my creation. In my work, I have been populating this area of me with my creatures, which I use as avatars to represent and explore different ideas about my female experience. This work is also the first time that I present these characters in proportion to life. I hope this will make them more feminine in stature and momentum, and at the same time make them more confrontational.
What was the process of creating these works?
Heather Benjamin: This work is the largest painting I have ever done. I start by making a smaller manuscript on paper with pencil and then blowing it up. In the process of zooming in, many different small works of mine will be used, including some combinations of retro pornography, Pre-Raphaelite paintings, and photos I took of myself as references, etc. I have a lot of small size on hand. These paintings are not so much sketches as fully-finished paintings, and then when I create large-scale works, I select, reference, enlarge, and combine from these paintings.
Can you tell us more about your idea of self-portrait painting?
Heather Benjamin: I see all my work as abstract self-portraits. Sometimes the women I create are different characters, sometimes I see them as all aspects of the same person, but the women I create are all me in a sense. For example, sometimes she means a verbal expression of a feeling or experience I have, sometimes she means an expression of a woman I aspire to be, and so on. Whereas in my multiplayer work, sometimes I see them as the interaction of all the different characters or aspects of myself, sometimes I see them as representations of one character moving through time. And most of the time, these happen at the same time. My work is my diary, and I use it to work through my trauma and try to visualize and express the latest version of myself.
Can you tell us more about your idea of self-portrait painting?
Heather Benjamin: Growing up, the internal digestion of myself was always intertwined with the emotional landscape of this city, and I think that will always be present in my work. I grew up in New York, and it has been my imagination and vision of the city for as long as I can remember. When I first went to another city as a child, it was quiet. In retrospect, the city of New York made me internalize a lot of sounds, visual stimuli, interpersonal concerns, drama, etc., so many things exist here at the same time, gathering immeasurable Great energy. So I guess as I get older, it’s a direct result of my attraction to environments like deserts, where I need something “yin” to complement the “yang” that I’ve lived in or around all my life, but I think This internalized high energy is reflected in my work.
“I see all my work as abstract self-portraits.”
Eny Lee Parker
Tell us about your lamps and the inspiration for the Lakitu Cloud stool.
Eny Lee Parker: I’ve always been drawn to the soft and natural shapes of clouds and wanted to create something that could capture that feeling in functional artwork. The lamp pieces take on a monumental form, while the hand-blown glass shades resemble the soft curves and organic shapes of clouds in the sky. In this way, the stool and lamp pieces conceptually complement each other while being made using very different materials.
What was the process of making these works?
Eny Lee Parker: For me the creative process is less about planning, steps and more about doing, in my studio we spend a lot of time prototyping and problem solving. For the Lakitu Cloud stool, I made numerous small ceramic models to test different shapes and sizes. I worked with my team to “upholster” these stools, for example in order to find the right fabric, we went through several different options. The light work started as a sketch, I wanted to incorporate a hand blown glass shade that a glassblower from Atlanta collaborated with, I then 3D modeled it, then made over 30 ceramic knobs to find the right combination. It’s a collaborative process, and I rely heavily on the input and expertise of my team to bring these pieces to life.
When designing and creating furniture works, what principles do you stick to?
Eny Lee Parker: When it comes to furniture design, I think about the people who will be involved in the process. I believe that each new work is an opportunity and a process to learn about materials, fabrication, and techniques to bring them to life. In terms of aesthetics, I don’t put my identity too much in one design, nor do I get attached to any one idea. Instead, I aim to convey a sense of comfort, sensitivity and playfulness in my work. I want the furniture to be approachable, inviting, and visually appealing.
How do you understand “NOISY REALITY”? How do you present the feeling from New York in your works?
Eny Lee Parker: For me, “NOISY REALITY” represents the constant hustle and bustle of city life and sensory overload, which can sometimes be overwhelming. Yet I also believe that this powerful energy born out of the hustle and bustle is what draws people to New York because they come with dreams and aspirations. The Lakitu Cloud stool and light sculpture I brought this time is a visual expression between the reality of my sensory overload in this city and the “daydream” of everyone. I feel that it is an honor to live in the clouds of New York City .
“My goal is to convey a sense of comfort, sensitivity and playfulness in my work.”
B. Thom Stevenson
What made you start creating the “SCARECROW” series?
B. Thom Stevenson: I’m coming out of the “Quilt” series that I’ve created in the past, and the “SCARECROW” series that took me most of 2022. I’m a bit tired of the boxy canvas and its inevitable dialogue with art history, but I’m still interested in painting and image-making, and increasingly in the relationship between painting and sculpture. How it comes down from the wall and exists, not just as an idea, but as a physical thing. In my opinion, the square canvas is where the idea lives, and outside the rectangle is where it lives, breathes, and interacts with the world. I want to continue stitching together different images and themes to create cohesive images.
After leaving New York and now living in rural Massachusetts, I’ve always been surrounded by art as a combination of craft and function. People have yards, gardens, and fields of crops, and I often see a scarecrow or a snowman in a battered t-shirt with a bucket for the head and sticks for the arms, or an old shed made of grain sacks and street signs… And my two kids, 1 and 3, who have been playing with LEGOs and dressing themselves up, don’t have the same attitudes and perspectives that follow the strict rules of the adult world, watching them mix in ways that don’t fit the “logic” of the adult world Combining LEGO bricks and clothes lifts my spirits. I also started to add more different elements together to form the works presented in the exhibition, which I called the “SCARECROWS” series.
This series of works should also be your first attempt, can you tell us about the creation process of these works?
B. Thom Stevenson: I switch back and forth between physical and digital. In my daily creation, I cycle through different processes and techniques from painting on canvas to using a printer to cutting with a utility knife to using a scanner to making with Photoshop to illustration to printer. Through these regular meditative actions, conscious and subconscious themes begin to emerge. For this batch of “SCARECROWS” series, I consciously decided to move towards a new visual language from the very beginning without planning. When I knew I wanted this type of group to be displayed on the wall, I had to figure out how to make them. My friend Dr. Kevin Anderson has a CNC machine and he cut out the various pieces for me and I sanded and painted each piece. Then my friend Charles Cowan helped me figure out how to hang them on the wall.
In your work, how do you deal with the integration of subcultures? Can you provide some examples?
B. Thom Stevenson: I try to quote as broadly as possible what I’ve been through. Including, growing up in the ’90s, at the end of the Rave and Club scene, Massachusetts in between the Post-Punk and Hardcore movements; my grandmother was an Irish Catholic quilter, and she There’s a lot of folkcraft influence; there’s also some sci-fi influence, and as my sons’ interests grew, that became more so. In my works, I try to integrate these many contents together.
How do you understand “NOISY REALITY”? How do you present the feeling from New York in your works?
B. Thom Stevenson: With two kids, a painting studio, a soda company (Miracle Seltzer), and various freelance projects, my life is a NOISY REALITY. That said, I spent 10 years in New York City living the most noisy real life imaginable. Remember when I had my first child my wife and I were “illegally living” in a painting studio, my stove was a hot plate that I also use to heat my cameos, I had a custom made shower room, which looks like a paint booth, and put an old screen print in it for the landlord to come and inspect. And my day job was designing store experiences, pop-ups and window designs for Marc Jacobs and so on. I believe that there are few boundaries between the practice of an artist and the life that is necessary for a fulfilling life as a creative. Of course, I also have a very patient partner. Thank you Sarah!
“I try to quote as broadly as possible what I’ve been through.”
Hypeart
NOISY REALITY
89 Crosby St.
New York, NY 10012