Jason Bereswill at Tony Shafrazi Gallery "In House - In Process."
To kick off Whitewall’s studio visit series we decided to look into a unique version of the studio. From November 11 to February 17, 2009, Jason Bereswill was invited to use Tony Shafrazi’s gallery as a studio space. The show was called “In House – In Process.” He worked each week in the gallery, finishing works first sketched in St. Barth’s. Whitewall contributor John Mollett spoke with Bereswill recently about what is was like having his studio space transformed into something quite public.
WHITEWALL: How did you first meet Tony?
JASON BERESWILL: I was introduced to him by Richard Prince. I was giving painting lessons while doing a residency in St. Barth’s, out of Eden Rock, where he was staying.
WW: You were giving painting lessons to Richard?
JB: To his daughter! And Richard would come in once in a while to the gallery. Richard and his family were amazingly supportive and friendly with me. I remember meeting Tony one day when he was having lunch with Richard. I had this large painting of a Tree that was in the gallery at the hotel. Tony asked if it was mine, and I said it was and he said he liked it.
Tony purchased a painting and started looking at studies I had done around the island and we started a correspondence. I think what helped keep me sane while living on that tiny island for that long, was having this constant dialogue with someone about painting and about this familiar territory, New York, and having someone who knew the island that I was living.
WW: The digital aspect of your work is very interesting. Was that something present in your work prior to meeting Tony or is that something that evolved as a result of your dialogue with Tony.
JB: When I first went to St. Barth’s I gathered these small sketches knowing that I was going to come back to New York and make larger paintings.
WW: This idea was present before your exhibition with the Shafrazi was ever conceptualized?
JB: Early on Tony and I started kicking around the idea, “What if you could see through the oil to your printed reference to combine the color and the light from your sketches?” Maybe a month later I started experimenting with printing references right onto the canvas and working on top of them, figuring out how to incorporate the digital image and the sketch, getting to paint and play with edges, and letting the printed information come through. Then came the idea of trying to get back to having the paintings develop in real time when people can come by and be part of the process or at least view the process of how these paintings develop.
WW: You mean actually sitting in this gallery and have the open gallery as your studio?
JB: Yeah, because no one was coming into my studio. I was off on my own working on these painting and there was definitely something in the process that I was missing. Having the process be viewed by other people becomes a part of the whole presentation of the work. So rather quickly we said, “Lets just move everything into the gallery and get moving on it.”
WW: I would have felt like I was having one of those prototypical naked in school dreams.
JB: Yes. Exactly. That’s the thing. I hadn’t really thought it through in terms of getting to see everyone looking at your work. That was terrifying. Pretty early on I got oversized headphones and was able to use those as blinders to try and tune everything out. But I would still have people come up to me and wave in my face to get my attention waiting to talk. I was really was open to doing that but I didn’t want to invite that because I would never get any painting done.
WW: It also seems that this situation would create a sense of urgency for you. Especially when you are dealing with something like the digital canvas which is already present and then having to balance getting the work finished because people are watching, you actually have to make a quick decision to cover the space or move on.
JB: That is absolutely right. I definitely had that feeling that people were watching me all the time so when I would maybe ordinarily take a break I would suddenly become conscious that there were people in here I would keep pushing through and cover the areas that I wanted to cover up, and be forced to make the decisions that really pushed the paintings along.
WW: Your work is very sensitive to the goal of exposing subtleties and tones of nature, can you tell me about your connection with nature?
JB: I have always had a fascination with rocks more than landscape. I grew up in New Jersey, which is actually a really interesting state where they have a lot of road cuts where you have these exposed rocks on the sides of the road. I spent a lot of time as a passing observer in the car just looking out the window and noticing all of these things. There was also this weird thing where rocks took on a something mystical to me. I went on a trip to the volcanoes national park in Hawaii with my dad, and took a rock from the volcanoes national park. As I am leaving there is this sign that said something like “don’t take anything from this land this is a sacred Hawaiian space and the Hawaii fire god pele watches over.” Literally three weeks later my house burnt down to the ground in Jersey and I was convinced in my head that this was Pele coming after my ass and I never took another rock after that day.
