Eric Shiner is the man behind Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum. He’s also this year’s Armory Focus curator, turning the Armory Show spotlight — now in its 100th year — to US-based artists of the now. As a curator, he has a very strong voice — he’s commissioned an on-site tower of Brillo boxes in tribute to Warhol by Charles Lutz, and light sculpture by Peter Liversidge — and he’s also orchestrating an installation and performance at Ace Hotel New York we’ll tell you about soon… Another distinguishing facet: if you Google Image search him, you find a lot of guys named Eric with black eyes. We recently talked with Mr. Shiner a little bit about the centennial and these last hundred years of art.
Is the centennial of the first Armory Show an inspiration or a long shadow that it’s hard to get out from under? If the lead-up to WWI was the catalyst for the revolutions that were going on then in art, should we just be happy our own malaise are tame by comparison? Does art benefit from adversity and how much adversity is enough/too much?
I can safely say that the first Armory Show is just one of the countless change agents that have occurred in the art world over the past 100 years, although it is certainly an important one. For me, it was simply a point of reference for the Focus Section of The Armory Show, and I am including one installation that makes a direct reference on Marcel Duchamp, whose work at the 1913 Armory certainly ruffled many feathers. War and political upheaval do indeed act as a major influencer on the art being made in that period, but it’s important to note that the Armory was in 1913, with World War I starting a year later in 1914, so there is no connection to that specific war, but more broadly to the cataclysmic social change that was unfolding on a number of fronts in Europe at the time. Art always benefits from adversity, and so too does art present a fair amount of necessary adversity to its audiences. I think that great art should always make the viewer somewhat uncomfortable, challenging them to think in new ways. So, in the end, too much is never enough.
As curator of the Focus section, the country you got handed was the United States of America. That’s a big, rich country. How do you even start to narrow it down?
Yes, indeed. America is a very big thing, both in terms of geography and in more importantly in terms of its psychographic presence in the world, both within and without its borders. It’s true that it is a big, rich country… for some that’s very true, but I think it is critically important to always remember that for many, it is a very poor country with millions of people facing actual need on a daily basis. America is nothing more than a continual series of juxtapositions, from Big to Small, Rich to Poor, Liberal to Conservative. One might even say it is a series of never-ending internal strife and conflict — something that keeps it alive, if nothing else. This being the case, I didn’t narrow anything down at all. I simply addressed some of the juxtapositions that make up this nation, and selected artists who make a career out of always questioning the powers that be, in one form or another.
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From their Brooklyn workshop, thefuturefuture melds burgeoning technologies with a very DIY-informed aesthetic and sensibility. They’ll be joining us for our Nemo-delayed 3D printing jewelry bazaar at Ace Hotel New York this Saturday — and took a few minutes to talk about their work as they prepare.
How does your architectural background influence the way you relate to the human body in jewelry design?
As architects, we typically develop our ideas in terms of constraints. Working in NYC forces us to constantly work within the obstructions of the existing built environment, and we approach the human body in the same way. Our architectural pieces are always very site-specific, however designing a line to fit each individual is not necessarily possible. So our approach is to make pieces that are generated by custom algorithms so that each piece is as unique as the person wearing it.
Do you dream in 3D?
Absolutely. Actually, we dream in 4D because there is time involved! We also daydream of dark matter and parallel universes.
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![INTERVIEW : JAMES VICTORE
James Victore is a man of action. He believes that learning about free jazz and liquor fermentation and speed-racing can make you a better designer, that graphic design is about experiences and stories and using your hands.
Distilling wisdom from decades down in the beautiful muck of making ideas happen, he’s produced a stunning series of aphoristic posters on the nature of art, design and the creative process. His Aphorisms on Art & Idea Execution is on display in the gallery space at Ace Hotel New York through May 25. The installation is in partnership with the 99U Conference. Jocelyn K. Glei caught up with him recently.
What’s a normal day for you?
I like to think we’re like the army. We get more work done by noon than most people do in a full day. Chris [Victore’s sole co-worker] comes in at 10:30 or 11am. We decide on what needs to be done. We rarely work past 5pm. We’re pretty efficient. We make decisions. I look at the agency system and it’s such a waste. That’s why people like Time Magazine come to us. They know they can give it to us on a Wednesday and it will be done on Friday.
[[MORE]]You mentioned ‘making decisions’ earlier as part of the way you function efficiently. Do you think a lot of people get bogged down by that?
Part of the problem these days is there’s so much choice. At some point, someone just has to say: We’re going to do it like this because I want to do it this way. Because, if you don’t, you’re going to be churning out oatmeal. You look at some graphic design today, and you can tell that nobody is in charge.
You’ve been doing a few little films for the book release. Is that new territory? How did they come about?
The publisher wanted a little flat, static image for the book for the website. We weren’t really feeling that. So this is a great example of how we work. We had five minutes to think about it. So we said let’s get out of here. Let’s go under the Bodhi tree where genius is. So we went around the corner to the Italian restaurant, had a pizza and a bottle of wine, and halfway through we said: “You know what would be really funny? A book with chickens walking around on it.”
So we come back to the studio, and Chris calls Iowa. “Do you have chicks? Yeah, we have chicks. How much are they? $34 for a dozen. Excellent, we’ll take a dozen chicks.” So that’s Thursday afternoon. They say they’ll be hatched by Tuesday, and then they’ll ship them. The next Thursday I get a call from the post office, “You have a perishable package here.” So I’m standing in line, and I hear “cheep cheep, cheep cheep.”
So I called Chris and said, “Chicks are here, we need a tripod, a video camera and some barbeque sauce.” So we shot the thing in the afternoon. I kept them one more day, because I wanted to be with them. And we learned how to feed and care for them. Then Saturday morning we took them to McCarren Park and handed them off to a farmer who will raise them. That’s how we do stuff. We just make it up.
Do you do all of your sketching and writing on paper?
Paper, and not in the studio. I’ll go to a bar or a restaurant. When I did the book, I left the studio every morning and I went to the park and sat for an hour, hour and a half. I brought an idea, and I wrote longhand in one of these big sketchbooks. Then I would come into the studio and work during the day. Afterwards, at 4 or 5, I’d go to my bar, sit with a beer or two, and refine it. Or write on a new idea. So it became this really nice process of every day. And it became a habit. I can’t do the think-work in the studio. The studio’s for putting stuff together — for work-work. And if we’re not doing work-work, then we leave. How many great architecture ideas have been drawn on napkins? Because they’re free, they’re not thinking about work. It’s the work you do before you ever put pen to paper. That’s the important part.
Excerpted from the 99u blog](http://25.media.tumblr.com/a7636ce9283bbcc71a07c6d8dcb118ae/tumblr_mlq0uvgXu21qai3sgo1_500.jpg)
