About Art

Neville Wakefield is a curator and writer interested in exploring the ways in which art behaves outside of institutional contexts. He offers that art is most successful, enlightening, and provocative when it goes beyond stereotypical labels and white spaces and is revealed in new spaces that suggest new paradigms. Previously MoMA PS1’s Senior Curatorial Advisor and Frieze Projects’ Curator, Wakefield is the co-founder of Elevation1049, a site-specific biennial in Gstaad, Switzerland, Artistic Director of Desert X, and the force behind Desert X AlUla in Saudi Arabia.He and Zuckerman spoke about starting as a writer, sailing, getting lost, no right or singular approach, embracing uncertainty, constructing your own narrative, the aesthetics of disappointment, lowering barriers of entry, and finding beauty in unexpected places!

Hilary Pecis makes paintings and drawings in which tableaus rich with interlocking fields of saturated color, geometric patterning, and bold linework provide views of sun-drenched domestic still lifes and landscape environments. Books crowding a coffee table, the remains of a dinner party, and terrains lush with Southern California succulents make frequent appearances in her work; these meticulously arranged interiors and vibrantly rendered exteriors amount to an overarching portrait of the self that identifies objects and locations as signifiers for human characteristics.She and Zuckerman spoke about the importance of questions, her use of photographs, how we know and show ourselves, running, active versus passive practice, in between spaces, choice, what she thinks about, and how things come together!

This episode is a rare, live conversation between Zuckerman and artist Mark Manders recorded as part of an exhibition opening walk through in Los Angeles! For more than three decades, Mark Manders has developed an endless self-portrait in the form of sculpture, still life, and architectural plans. Described by the artist as his ongoing “self-portrait as a building,” Manders’ works present mysterious and evocative tableaux that allow viewers to construct their own narrative conclusions and meanings. Initially inspired by an interest in writing and literature, Manders’ first conception of the self-portrait was more literal. He and Zuckerman spoke about magic, choosing a single word to describe your life, simultaneity, ways of understanding self and space, truth, freezing time, thinking machines, waiting, and how we understand God!

Derrick Adams is a multi-disciplinary artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Adams probes how the experiences and narratives of Black communities are reflected in and refracted by American history, entertainment, consumerism, iconography, and the dynamic relationship between personal identity and cultural environment. Expanding the dialogue around contemporary Black life and culture, through scenes of normalcy and perseverance, he developed and presents an iconography of joy, leisure, and the pursuit of happiness. He and Zuckerman spoke about confidence, formed language, times of invisibility, fun, artist friendships, celebrating yourself without explaining, and taking chances! is a multi-disciplinary artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Adams probes how the experiences and narratives of Black communities are reflected in and refracted by American history, entertainment, consumerism, iconography, and the dynamic relationship between personal identity and cultural environment. Expanding the dialogue around contemporary Black life and culture, through scenes of normalcy and perseverance, he developed and presents an iconography of joy, leisure, and the pursuit of happiness. He and Zuckerman spoke about confidence, formed language, times of invisibility, fun, artist friendships, celebrating yourself without explaining, and taking chances!

Kelly Crow is a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal, covering the ever-changing contemporary art market since 2006. Her work includes reports on sales at auction houses such as Sotheby's and Christie's and analyses of the funding and buying practices of the world's leading arts institutions, artists, and collectors. Extending her expertise beyond the newsroom, Crow has assisted in teaching journalism courses at Columbia University’s Graduate School, where she earned her master’s degree in 2000. Crow has been the recipient of a Front Page Award from the Newswomen's Club of New York in 2009 for her profile on an FBI officer who reclaims stolen art and a Deadline Club Award for Arts Reporting in 2021 from the New York chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for her coverage of the digital-art boom. Now residing in Texas, Crow's decades-long insight and expertise into the art world have solidified her place among our time's most influential arts journalists. She and I spoke about story telling,  the power of suggestion, the burden of telling a story, how to listen, story hunting, how she chooses what to focus on, people who have stuck with her, market maneuvering, the art world and the art market, the black market and the FBI, and how art is the story!

Jeffrey Deitch has been a prominent player in contemporary art for over fifty years. Born in 1952 and raised in Hartford, Connecticut, Deitch went on to study at Wesleyan University, turning his primary attention from economics to art history. As a college student, he opened his first gallery in 1972 in Lenox, Massachusetts. In 1978 Deitch received his MBA from Harvard Business School, where he authored his thesis on Andy Warhol as a business artist and sought to find synergy between aesthetics and economics. Such interest led him to Citibank, where he developed the art consultation division, the first professionally organized art advisory service attached to an international financial institution. Deitch has also contributed significantly to art criticism, becoming a regular columnist of Flash Art in 1980 and having his work published in Artforum, Garage, Interview magazine, and Paper magazine. In 1996, Deitch opened the Deitch Projects gallery in Soho, with shows including works from Vanessa Beecroft, Nari Ward, and Mariko Mori. Deitch has made a resounding impact on the art scene of Southern California. In 2010 he received the honor of being named the director of MOCA, relocating from New York to Los Angeles. As an early advocate of graffiti art in the 1980s, his first curated show, "Art in the Street," sold over 200,000 tickets- more than any previous show in MOCA history. In 2018 he opened a 15,000-square-foot space in Hollywood designed by Frank Gehry, where he presents museum-level exhibitions in a gallery setting. Further, in 2020, Deitch created the Gallery Association Los Angeles (GALA for short) to generate excitement about the LA gallery scene. He has also launched galleryplatform.la, an online program that serves the dynamic Los Angeles arts community with editorial content and rotating online viewing rooms. Deitch continues to operate galleries in New York and Los Angeles while advising private art collectors and institutions. As his number of shows, exhibition spaces, and artists exhibited surpass any art dealer in history, he has crafted a unique role that merges his curatorial profile with the business side of art. He and Zuckerman spoke about a daily practice of looking at art, the physicality of looking, feeling objects,  time with artists, seeking communities, running an art museum and why “All Surface. No Structure.” matters!

Angel Otero is an artist known for employing highly innovative techniques that challenge the parameters of his materials, revealing the intrinsic qualities of paint. His works are rooted in abstract image making and engage with ideas of memory through addressing art history, as well as his own lived experience. Otero is best known for the Oil Skin works he began in 2010, an ongoing series that demonstrates the inherently transformative nature of the artist’s practice as well as his dedication to expanding the visual field of abstract expressionism. The artist’s early childhood memories are brought to the forefront in his most recent series of paintings which see a return to figuration combined with his hallmark style of abstraction. Otero paints and collages dreamlike scenes upon his vibrant structured canvases, depicting objects and spaces that are loosely based on personal memories associated with the domestic sphere. Probing the boundaries of figuration and abstraction, Otero’s most recent works continue to expand the possibilities of painting and materiality. He and Zuckerman spoke about the ocean and inspiration, asking questions, personal and intimate subject matter, magical realism, giving space to space, humor as a tool, the energy surrounding his work, trust, the authentic conversation!

With Episode 106 we have changed a few things up! First, our name, we have dropped the word conversations from the podcast title.  The podcast is “About Art” so that’s what we’re now calling it! Simple and elegant. Second, we added a new photo! The previous one was when OCMA/Orange County Museum of Art was under construction, the new one is from the opening press conference. And, third, this is our first “Ask Me Anything” episode. Thank you so much to everyone who sent in your questions, we were overwhelmed by the number! We have enough to do many more episodes of this type if you’re interested! Please let us know in the comments below or via DM on Instagram. Some of the audience questions Heidi answers in this AMA episode include sacrifices she has made, critique she has received, the art where she sleeps, art that makes me laugh, and that causes a lump in her throat, her creative practice, what keeps her going, and if she ever forgets why art matters?

Dara Birnbaum is a groundbreaking figure in the emergence of media art. Among the earliest practitioners working in video, among the first women to adapt the medium, and the first to focus on TV specifically. Over the course of her nearly 50-year career, she has created a prescient body of work that in many ways prefigures our current digital realities, where anyone on social media can now “talk back” to media in ways similar to what Birnbaum has done throughout her artistic practice.  Her early works from the late 1970s took on American popular culture—Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman being among her most famous—finding homes in exhibitions at nontraditional venues such as hair salons and nightclubs in the East Village. She and Zuckerman discuss joy, awakening to nature, Monet, how art saves lives, being a “video maker,” winning, and spiritual practice.

This week on my podcast “Conversations About Art” I spoke with Hoor Al Qasimi, President and Director of Sharjah Art Foundation, a curator who established the Foundation in 2009 as a catalyst and advocate for the arts, not only in Sharjah, UAE, but also in the region and across the world. With a passion for supporting experimentation and innovation in the arts, Al Qasimi has continuously expanded the scope of the Foundation to include major international touring exhibitions; artist and curator residencies in visual art, film and music; commissions and production grants for emerging artists; publications and publication grants; performance and film festivals; architectural research and restoration; and a wide range of educational programming in Sharjah for both children and adults. In 2003, Al Qasimi co-curated Sharjah Biennial 6 and has remained Biennial Director ever since. She is currently curating the upcoming Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present (2023). Under her leadership, Sharjah Biennial has become an internationally recognised platform for contemporary artists, curators and cultural producers. Her leadership in the field led to her election as President of the International Biennial Association (IBA) in 2017, an appointment that transferred IBA’s headquarters to Sharjah. In addition to her role at the Foundation, Al Qasimi also serves as the President of The Africa Institute and President and Director of the Sharjah Architectural Triennial, which inaugurated its first edition in November 2019. She and I spoke about chance moments, the history of the place, the Africa Institute, “thinking historically in the present”, not rushing, decentralizing, doing less, telling you own history, not pursuing things that don’t work, and counting experiences!