chain for me is that you are complicit, in that your editing the text is as staged as their original source
presentations. We as the audience, complete the work as we consume it on your Instagram feed or in
the gallery. Can anyone escape this cycle? (consuming deception)
RP: Instead of escaping... I think it’s a matter of joining. Participating. Sharing. By now, if your not “on
the gram” your either in deep shit, quicksand or riding around in a covered wagon.
SM: Speaking of escaping this cycle, when I was in front of the actual paintings, the images seem huge.
Especially, because we are used to seeing them on a mobile device. The size feels like a direct “ in your
face” experience from which I cannot escape. Removed from the phone they act like paintings. In their
editing, they feel like film. Your text commentary even becomes a traditional painting “signature” at
the bottom. New media creates new hybrids and strictly speaking these are pigment on canvas and
many artist before you have used inkjet on canvas. However, in viewing the work, I found a direct
experience about contemporary culture rather than as a painted object (that references history.) So in
your modest means, the maximum amount of cultural message communicates.
RP: Obviously I “make” them on the phone. And after I screen save them, send the “file” to an ink jet
printer and print them out in my studio. They’re printed on paper. Proofed. The proof is around 18X26
inches. I tried different ways of presenting them. I tried making them into photographs. That kind of
worked. They were more literal that way. In keeping with how they were produced in the first place.
But I thought the semi-gloss of the photo paper got in the way. It’s almost like gloss was a new kind
of screen. Anyway, I tried all kinds of reproductive methods and finally found this new type of canvas
that was brilliantly white with almost no weave. And the way the ink “fused” into the canvas was
perfect. I got lucky. That’s what I was looking for. Perfection.
SM: This makes the work look very fresh to me. Have you thought about how they might look when
Instagram no longer exists and social media has transformed itself into another form we have not yet
envisioned? Does timeliness or timelessness matter when investigating contemporary culture?
RP: It’s too early to tell. I know 3-D photography is the next frontier. And I know that video is already replacing the way most people present themselves on Instagram. I’m not worried about it. People still chisel stone.
SM: History is the fiction of those who write it. In the same way, when we look at an image, our
experience and desire completes the image. We write it. That being said, There was some controversy
around these works some of which I hope you will address. It seems that in the discourse around the
Instagram images, you have created the perfect Rorschach blot. The written press commentary says
more about the writer than the images.
RP: The reaction to the show was a complete surprise to me. It was such a new medium for me that I
wasn’t even aware that some of the people in the “portraits” knew each other. It was like a secret club
that I apparently crashed. Uninvited. It wasn’t like I was invading a country. Or was it?
SM: I was really surprised by some of the things I read for several reasons. One, this seems such a rich
cultural and conceptual territory about which we can think about our epoch. For example, the posting
of the Instagram self just taps the notion of a crafted fictive realty so perfectly mastered in reality TV
as seen in the Kardashian moment. Now, with social media, everyone gets to be famous for 5 seconds.
Two, these ideas connect directly to your earlier images from advertising and most notably the Marlboro man, issues that have already been widely discussed. Three, again, the simplicity of your means
created friction with the notion of the amount of physical labor it should take to make art. I thought
Duchamp already exposed this concept. Finally, the gender based social issues have as much to do
with the presenters as with the re-presenter.
RP: Well there was no middle ground. My “new portraits” were either hated or loved. I don’t think I’ve
ever had a show where those two emotions were so exposed. I was a genius to some and a complete
asshole to others. In the end, I don’t really care what the audience thinks. But you’re right... at this point
with my “track record”... you’d think they’d cut me some slack.
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