BRION NUDA ROSCH
Little Paper Airplanes
by Jess Wheaton
October 2009

On a strangely-warm Thursday in late October, Brion Nuda Rosch and Jess Wheaton grabbed some coffee, and then set out through the sunshine to talk in a dusty bookshop—with tape recorder in hand, and interview questions folded in pocket. Both being extremely tall, they arrived quickly... only to find the paper had fallen out of Jess' pocket along the way. They laughed, retraced their steps, fished the interview out of the gutter, and had the following conversation.

JW: I read most of the pages you sent me, and they all talk a lot about what you do now, but I was curious about where you’re from, and when you started making things...your makeup.

BNR: My makeup. I was born in Chicago. When I was young we moved to Denver, lived outside of Denver in the foothills, and then my father—my family— went bankrupt, and we moved to Connecticut. I went to high school in Connecticut. I had a rather intense athletic focus in high school, an average Hockey player with potential to continue playing in college. I opted for attending school in Arizona to remove myself from that pressure. My father was supportive because he had also attended Arizona State. 
I started as a business major because I was undecided; I was 17 and had no idea what I wanted to do. It was sometime between leaving the business department, taking studio art classes, and dropping out that gave me the confidence and assured me that I may have a voice, and my childhood doodles and other thoughts may have some meaning. I was interested in art as a child, and would always be drawing, and my mother always encouraged that, but other things kind of distracted me from art. But then as I was on my own and started getting in touch with that side, around like when I was probably 20 or so, I started getting more serious about it. That’s kind of where it all started.

JW: I have a similar experience actually. Until I was 16 I thought I was going to be a professional dancer, and then I got injured and realized how much I’d loved drawing as a kid and stuff, and got back into it then. Anyways, has your work ever been drastically different?

BNR: The first artworks that I made were with found images, through a xerox transfer. It was a little bit more of a messy, painterly application that went along with that. You know, I was never really shown a professional art studio, or the process of making art in an environment that someone who had an academic structure available to them, so instead, for me, picking up the wood around the neighborhood and applying heavy layers of paint and applying xerox transfers and found images has always been there. I’ve always focused on details within my work-space and the arrangements of objects surrounding my paintings. At some point I made more of a conscious effort to abandon painting altogether, in a traditional way. Now painting objects and arranging objects, in addition to the collages, are my primary focus. Painting is there through a heavy application, and simply to cover objects.

JW: Something I read that you said was “My interests involve pushing defined boundaries, like pushing against different boundaries within the standard art world model.” It could be pretty amorphous, but I wonder if you could characterize what you’re pushing against.

BNR: That was said during a residency, while I was balancing the roles of artist and curator.

JW: Oh, okay...

BNR: Those two roles, I think, have been statically removed from each other in the “traditional” art world. There has been a resurrection of artist run spaces, and now there are so many artists working as curators, the word “curate”— it’s such a commonly-used word—that now its meaning is blurred regardless. But from my own experience, I enjoy working as an artist, and working as a curator, and at the same time having those two mingle together in a way where it’s not necessarily always defined.

JW: Do people still ask you whether you’re one or the other sometimes, though? I feel like being both much of the time is sort of an anomaly to some people still. About 2 years ago there were panel discussions about art jobs at CCA, and I asked a gallerist if she thought it was possible to have a “career” as both an artist and a curator. She said you can’t. She thought you couldn’t run a space effectively while being an artist too. But this summer I got to go to New York through school and visited artists’ studios, and then we also got to talk with Matthew Higgs at White Columns, and he does it all!

BNR: Yeah, I think it’s just dependent on how you... I don’t necessarily think it’s important to define yourself as one or the other for the sake of having a tag that the public can read—so someone can say “Oh, so this is his role.” I think many people play in both roles. Some run successful gallery programs while doing it, and some run successful curatorial projects while doing it. And I’d be the latter. I don’t have a gallery because I think the day-to-day inventory and work to operate a gallery and also to make my own work would be a tough task to achieve. But that’s not how I’m working. And to counter that idea that someone could not be an effective curator while also being an effective artist..it’s been proven wrong by over a dozen artists off the top of my head. There’s been such an influx of artists working in that manner. Matthew Higgs is still operating in that way, so he’s the best example of the dual-role. I don’t think we live in a society right now where roles are tagged and defined as they were in the past—like I have 3 jobs to support all this—I teach and bartend, you know, I have 3 various things that I go to every week just to pay the bills. Professional individuals also balance a multitude of tasks. If you look at the administrative people in the art world, they’re all balancing so many roles. We’re a gig society. Very rarely do people have just one thing that they focus on. Peoples’ careers change a multitude of times. To get back to your question, I think art and art-making, and curating, are such versatile, fluid actions, that, you know, you can balance them both.

JW: Now that we know the plethora of things you do...in your own work, I know you’re interested in complicating everyday readings of images by collaging and layering them, and I know it’s a lot about cultivating a relationship with the audience. I was wondering if you could talk about what kind of relationship you’re aiming for, and whether it’s that explicit or not.

BNR: Yeah, I don’t know if it’s that explicit. I’m interested in very common and mundane materials that are available to you. The viewer may be able to identify with immediacy by seeing something very common and everyday. With very reductive and minimal sleight-of-hand, and alteration, the work might pose an interest in deciding what’s between those multiple layers of meaning. I think that’s up for the viewer to take away with them. They might have their own interpretation of what that means. Then there’s participatory work, or work that involves participation that has a whole other meaning than just looking at static objects: having a workshop where I presented a series of starting points and a pile of materials, and seeing what someone considering themselves a “non-artist” would achieve with those guidelines. It was rewarding to see what they did achieve, and then the pride they had in the fact that they made something, because somewhere in their lives they were told or told themselves “I’m not an artist. I’m not a creative person.”

JW: So it sounds like maybe you’re interested in creating situations that are still uncomfortable if you don’t typically think of yourself as doing that thing that you’re going to help them do, but not as uncomfortable as them trying to do it themselves alone.

BNR: Yeah! That’s where the starting points come in. It’s a soft-handed reminder that if you look at things in a very basic, task-oriented way, if you look at house-cleaning or organizing your office, I think artists work in a very similar way. The project in Houston was very much about that. They invited artists to initiate art in offices. One way that I read that came from the relationship I have with others who don’t, who are not art makers and don’t spend their time the way I spend my time or other artists spend their time in the studio, “working.” Someone who clocks in and has their daily task to achieve while they’re clocked in and working seems like they have a very, very signified occupation. And then you have an artist that works within the same realm of task, but it’s not considered an occupation by many people. So I wanted to set up real basic tasks to be achieved with the Task Book, which is reminiscent of “here’s what your boss is handing down to you, and these are the things you need to achieve before you leave today.” Those are the same kind of checklists that many artists give themselves when approaching a new project.

JW: So that gives the “Common Joe” an entry point...to have this relation to other areas of their life, so it’s not just open-ended...

BNR: Yeah. I think if you had, like, “Draw the ocean...”

JW: That’d be scary...

BNR: Yeah, it’d be like “What do you mean?!” When I say “ocean” I’m meaning the metaphor of the ocean. It’s too infinite to even wrap your brain around. But if you say “Here’s a blue pastel, draw 3 waves,” you know, if you start with a starting point that’s very specific, like “Using 3 shapes, make a face,” it’s interesting what people will come up with. I’m thinking something about how those 3 shapes are going to be in relationship to one another, but someone else comes across with a whole different approach with the same starting point.

JW: What was the rainbow starting point? I remember there being a rainbow option that was really good.

BNR: There was a rainbow...I dunno...I think the rainbow one was one of the more abstract ideas. One was “Draw a still life...” There were a few that started “Draw a still life.” I’m forgetting them. I wish I had them in front of me. There was something “Draw something as a still life to your past...” you know, these real whimsical...

JW: Was it “Draw a still life as if the parts of your past were objects?”

BNR: Oh yeah, “Draw the past objects of your life on a table as a still life.” I mean that’s kind of the idea. Some other ones get a bit more complicated. Or a real basic one that I enjoyed watching the process unfold for was “Using 3 different colors, use one color to make a mark for every individual in the room you know well, next to those marks using a second color, make a mark for individuals who don’t know, and next to those marks using a third color make a mark for each person you’d like to get to know better.” Those resulted in very abstract globs of color on pieces of paper, and you had no idea as a viewer which color represented ‘people I wanted to know,’ ‘people I don’t know,’ or ‘people I know already.’ But after they were made, they became the objects of that action.

JW: And yet they were really meaningful to the maker.

BNR: Yeah, the maker had their own intimate experience. Which I think goes back to when you asked about the meanings I want the viewer to take away.

JW: I was going to ask you a question that talked about whether art could deal with big questions, even existential ones, or whether that was too much, but it’s clear that you don’t have an agenda. I thought maybe this layering was sort of didactic almost, but it’s obviously not.

BNR: Well it’s not, but there’s also the element of what we identify as monuments. In my work, I’m identifying very mundane shapes and ridiculous things as monuments, not to downplay the importance of existing monuments, just that when you visit a monument you have your own meaning and understanding, you only take a very small part away with you. The person or event that it represents is far too large and infinite to take away the complete meaning. And often monuments are visited in short spans of time—drive six hours, get out look, back into the car type of thing. Art is viewed in a similar way—minus the drive. My monuments are void of meaning. I don’t know if there’s a way that could be somewhat political.

JW: This has been a pretty serious conversation, but from looking at the work it seems you have a lot of enjoyment in making it, and that it’s even kind of silly some of the time.

BNR: Yeah, I think humor is something that’s necessary in everything, although I take the work very seriously. When we were all sitting around and finishing up the final draft of the book, one minute we were making jokes about having this book on Oprah Winfrey’s book list, and then the other it was serious work, and I think that’s a good way to enjoy working today, in any profession. I think everyone sits around and fucks off as much as they focus on their work.

JW: Ha, or they should. Actually there are laughter classes at the junior college where my Dad lives, to teach people how to get more humor into their lives.

BNR: That’s pretty ridiculous.

JW: Mm hm. On a side note, I wanted to ask what your interest in Fluxus is, since you made your Fluxus Coloring Book.

BNR: You know, it’s something that I’ve read up on a lot, and Jessica Silverman of Silverman Gallery’s grandparents have one of the largest Fluxus collections. She shared a printed documentation of that whole collection that I borrowed for some time. I looked through all these documents of Fluxus work- it’s a really interesting way to approach art-making, even if you’re not going to make Fluxus work. Most of it is documentation of something that happened or simply an event open to accidents. Rather ridiculus and with humor, these ideas and actions have informed my work, both art-making and curating. I guess you could say it's the starting point for how Hallway Projects functions now, existing in my home as a curatorial project. Something can happen in a private space between myself and another individual, and then the only thing the public sees is maybe a letter or a document. That’s where the influence comes over to my work—that notion of private moments happening, or performances happening, or these elements happening that the public was not involved in, except for an intimate group of people. So the Fluxus Coloring Book: I thought it’d be interesting to make a coloring book where there was nothing to color into, or on, or around, and might also invite the act of not coloring the book. It was just a simple design and empty pages. It had that starting point of the humor and ridiculousness, but there was also the seriousness and the reasons for it, so that’s where that came from for me.

JW: Well your work is pretty minimal too. Are you striving to say the most with the least? What’s that about?

BNR: No, I mentioned before that I abandoned painting in the traditional sense, and the way that I accomplished that was through reflection—I had accumulated so many paintings that I was unhappy with, as an artist, and artists collect this kind of ephemera of their work, of drawings, paintings, and they’re quite unsure what to do. You throw them in the trash and they might end up somewhere, and that’s defeating the point of what you want to do. You want this destroyed, you don’t want it around anymore. I approached this with a new set of rules for my studio—select all unfinished and incomplete paintings, and paintings I was unhappy with, and paint them one solid color, and place them in a pile, offering a solution and a new starting point—observing the accumulation around my painting studio, and removing all distraction by applying one solid color. So a lot of what I’m doing right is with minimal gesture. I’m not just trying to get the most out of a simple mark, but I think you can achieve a lot with that simple mark or action. It took awhile, when making a collage or painting, to just make one mark and then stop and walk away. There’s the guilt of the thought “I should spend more time with this, because this is a work of art.” I realized that that’s fine. Time was spent thinking about the mark, not applying it. Richard Tuttle and others have assured this confidence in my process.

JW: Yeah, Tuttle is really interesting in that sense because he’s so somatic, too. He can’t really write about his work in a non-sensory way, which totally makes sense when you see it.

BNR: I like that when he does all his installations, he takes his shoes off. Every photo I’ve seen documenting him installing his works in museums especially, or galleries, he always has his shoes off. But you always see his sandal—the Tevas—or his shoes off to the side.

JW: Ha ha.

BNR: I don’t know why, that’s always interested me. I’ve actually wanted to take those photographs and cut his shoes out of the picture, and just appropriate those as new works of Richard Tuttle’s shoes, so that you can then put them away in a box somewhere. Collect all his shoes.

JW: Yeah, he doesn’t need them.

BNR: He doesn’t need them.

JW: That’s amazing that they’re always there, nearby.

BNR: Yeah in the photos I’ve seen they’ve always been there in the picture. But not on his feet.