T H E D O W N W A R D S P I R A L : F A L L

DEAN KISSICK’s latest column is an ode to the comingfall, where New York is struggles to bring normalcy back

into play. But when was New York ever normal?

O P E N I N G A N D B O O K L A U N C H :" S E R V I C E W I T H O U T S T Y L E " – J E P P E

U G E L V I G & B L E S S

O U T O F S T A T E

We’re saying farwell to NATASHA STAGG’s weeklycolumn, and with it too, the summer, and maybe even the

idea of a future where the nice guys don’t finish last.

A N I M A L C R O S S I N G : N E WH O R I Z O N S F O R T H E N I N T E N D O

S W I T C H

L I A P E R J O V S C H I : » 2 0 2 0 . K E YW O R D S «

An exhibition at Spike Berlin in collaboration with IvanGallery, Bucarest; 4–26 September 2020

” . . . O F B R E A D , W I N E , C A R S ,S E C U R I T Y A N D P E A C E “ A T

K U N S T H A L L E W I E N

By Max Henry

O U T O F S T A T E

This week, NATASHA STAGG is in search of asubculture, if such a thing can still exist today. What’s out

and what's in and who gets to decide?

F O R I M M E D I A T E R E L E A S E : “ L O W E RM I D D L E C L A S S & L O V I N G I T ”

In her newest column, KAITLIN PHILLIPS gets to theheart of what really matters, like: Do you own a manualpencil sharpener? And is it safe to open the windows

again? And do you like your parents? Read on foranswers to these and other burning questions.

O U T O F S T A T E

Out Of State (part 8) is back in New York, and thereNATASHA STAGG wonders about the future of the

restaurant biz and all of the people that used to flock tothe Big Apple for the good eats and parties. Did we see

this coming?

T H E D O W N W A R D S P I R A L : A S IR E A D T H E D E C A D E B R A I N

DEAN KISSICK takes us through the troubled beginningsof the 2020s, charting his own history in New York, and

the timeline of events of the previous decade that broughtus here. Writing is the best cure for amnesia.

O U T O F S T A T E

Get your black spandex tights and head down broadwaymusical memory lane with NATASHA STAGG in her

seventh installment of OUT OF STATE. After the curtaindrops, there's still New York behind any rendition of "New

York, New York." Which is your favourite?

"Our identity could become an idol that we

"Our identity could become an idol that we

"Our identity could become an idol that we

"Our identity could become an idol that we

"Our identity could become an idol that we"Our identity could become an idol that wesculpt anew each morning from the digital

sculpt anew each morning from the digital

sculpt anew each morning from the digital

sculpt anew each morning from the digital

sculpt anew each morning from the digitalsculpt anew each morning from the digitalclay"

clay"

clay"

clay"

clay"clay"The Downward Spiral: The Figure Cannot Hold

The Downward Spiral: The Figure Cannot Hold

The Downward Spiral: The Figure Cannot Hold

The Downward Spiral: The Figure Cannot Hold

The Downward Spiral: The Figure Cannot HoldThe Downward Spiral: The Figure Cannot Hold

DISCOURSE SPIKE EVENTS

DISCOURSE

#64VIEWS

SPIKE EVENTS#64VIEWS

DISCOURSE

DISCOURSE

DISCOURSE

DISCOURSE

DISCOURSE

T H E D O W N W A R D S P I R A L : F A L L

DEAN KISSICK’s latest column is an ode to the comingfall, where New York is struggles to bring normalcy back

into play. But when was New York ever normal?

O P E N I N G A N D B O O K L A U N C H :" S E R V I C E W I T H O U T S T Y L E " – J E P P E

U G E L V I G & B L E S S

O U T O F S T A T E

We’re saying farwell to NATASHA STAGG’s weeklycolumn, and with it too, the summer, and maybe even the

idea of a future where the nice guys don’t finish last.

A N I M A L C R O S S I N G : N E WH O R I Z O N S F O R T H E N I N T E N D O

S W I T C H

L I A P E R J O V S C H I : » 2 0 2 0 . K E YW O R D S «

An exhibition at Spike Berlin in collaboration with IvanGallery, Bucarest; 4–26 September 2020

” . . . O F B R E A D , W I N E , C A R S ,S E C U R I T Y A N D P E A C E “ A T

K U N S T H A L L E W I E N

By Max Henry

O U T O F S T A T E

This week, NATASHA STAGG is in search of asubculture, if such a thing can still exist today. What’s out

and what's in and who gets to decide?

F O R I M M E D I A T E R E L E A S E : “ L O W E RM I D D L E C L A S S & L O V I N G I T ”

In her newest column, KAITLIN PHILLIPS gets to theheart of what really matters, like: Do you own a manualpencil sharpener? And is it safe to open the windows

again? And do you like your parents? Read on foranswers to these and other burning questions.

O U T O F S T A T E

Out Of State (part 8) is back in New York, and thereNATASHA STAGG wonders about the future of the

restaurant biz and all of the people that used to flock tothe Big Apple for the good eats and parties. Did we see

this coming?

T H E D O W N W A R D S P I R A L : A S IR E A D T H E D E C A D E B R A I N

DEAN KISSICK takes us through the troubled beginningsof the 2020s, charting his own history in New York, and

the timeline of events of the previous decade that broughtus here. Writing is the best cure for amnesia.

O U T O F S T A T E

Get your black spandex tights and head down broadwaymusical memory lane with NATASHA STAGG in her

seventh installment of OUT OF STATE. After the curtaindrops, there's still New York behind any rendition of "New

York, New York." Which is your favourite?

"Our identity could become an idol that we

"Our identity could become an idol that we

"Our identity could become an idol that we

"Our identity could become an idol that we

"Our identity could become an idol that we"Our identity could become an idol that wesculpt anew each morning from the digital

sculpt anew each morning from the digital

sculpt anew each morning from the digital

sculpt anew each morning from the digital

sculpt anew each morning from the digitalsculpt anew each morning from the digitalclay"

clay"

clay"

clay"

clay"clay"The Downward Spiral: The Figure Cannot Hold

The Downward Spiral: The Figure Cannot Hold

The Downward Spiral: The Figure Cannot Hold

The Downward Spiral: The Figure Cannot Hold

The Downward Spiral: The Figure Cannot HoldThe Downward Spiral: The Figure Cannot Hold

DISCOURSE SPIKE EVENTS

DISCOURSE

#64VIEWS

SPIKE EVENTS#64VIEWS

DISCOURSE

DISCOURSE

DISCOURSE

DISCOURSE

DISCOURSE

PORTRAIT: GINA BEAVERS

More Ideals!

by Camila McHugh & Tenzing Barshee

Camila McHugh: Camila McHugh: Can you tell us about your relationship to Instagram? Do you get suckedin or is your image search deliberate?

Gina Beavers: Gina Beavers: I used to get sucked in more! The algorithm basically only shows me “fine”art now. I go to the search page if I want to discover new things. For instance, I just went tosee if that page was called “search” or “discovery” and saw a picture of Demi Moore andEvan Rachel Wood at a Dior show – thought that Demi Moore’s skin looks better than mineand she’s like fifteen years older than me! Then I went looking for Evan Rachel Wood’saccount (private with 600k followers), requested a follow (have been catching up onWestworld) and found the account for the musical duo she’s in and watched a couple videos(they do underwhelming covers of late 1960s rock). So I would say my use is pretty randomand meandering. I will screenshot things and keep them in a folder and when I’m making newpaintings I will go back through the folder and see what comes up. Right now everything is ina folder mislabelled “more ideals”. It should be “more ideas”, but I keep it.

Tenzing Barshee: Tenzing Barshee: More ideals! That’s a good segue to talk about the transition theseimages are going through. From the flatness of your computer screen, the images transforminto quasi-sculptural painting-objects. What happens there?

GB: GB: It’s interesting because flatness often comes up with screens, and I think historicallythe screen might have been read like that, reflecting a more passive relationship. That haschanged with the advent of engagement and social media. What’s behind our screen is awhole living, breathing world, one that gives as much as it takes. I mean it is certainly as“real” as anything else. I see the dimension as a way to reflect that world and the ways thatworld is reaching out to make a connection. Another aspect is that once these works arefinished, they end up circulating back in the same online world and now have this heighteneddimensionality – they cast their own shadow. They’re not a real person, or burger, orwhatever, but they’re not a photo of it either, they’re something in between.

CM: CM: The images also seem to undergo a transformation which reveals a kind of creepinessor almost repulsive aspect to images that were originally intended to be “appealing” in someway.

GB: GB: I’m really not sure about beauty at all. It seems like a fleeting thing. You find it whenyou’re not looking, and things that you once thought were beautiful may have no effect onyou later when you see them again. I’m aware I’m working from images that are about a kindof manufactured “beauty”, but I don’t see that as the same thing as true beauty. I’m asinterested in the abstraction of the tutorial form, of the face split up into sections, and theidea that the painting might be trying to teach you some- thing. I honestly don’t know how tomake something beautiful or elegant. Sometimes I will start out thinking, “Oh this one’sgonna be so elegant!” and then it fails miserably. I think simply about the process of trying tore-make the photographic image as faithfully as possible. I fail because of my own limitationswith my clunky human hands and make something uncannier.

TB: TB: Can we talk more about photography? Are you interested in other types of photographicreproduction?

GB: GB: Photorealism is important to me as a painting language. The light, the reflection feelslike the most truthful way to depict how we see in this other world we inhabit, and alsosignals to the viewer that the painting is of that space.

TB: TB: I wanted to return to what you said about Instagram and how the images assume a formof depth as they are experienced socially. You described how reproductions of your worksare fed back into the loop. Does this influence how you think about authorship?

GB: The question of authorship is a super-interesting one. For a long time I saw myself asoperating from more of a documentarian space, appropriating and re-presenting, maybemore of a Duchampian attitude. There’s no judgment. I’m as implicated as everyone else andthe images I select often relate to me in some way autobiographically.

THE EFFECT OF MY PAINTING IS LESS HEROIC, IT’SNOT TRYING TO BE BETTER THAN YOU, IT’S MORE

WANTING TO BE LIKED. I would describe the voice in the memes I’ve started making (as opposed to appropriating) astrying to be “liked”. Someone called one of those paintings “thirsty”, I think the effect of mypainting is less heroic, it’s not trying to be better than you, it’s more wanting to be liked.Maybe trying too hard to be liked. This was definitely the thought I had in mind when I beganthe make-up tutorials. I liked the idea that the painting was drawing and painting itself, whilealso teaching or demonstrating. And in the end, it really wants you to like it.

CM: CM: There is something softer about seeing self-improvement à la make-up tutorial as adesire to be liked, revealing a persistent sense of inadequacy as this vulnerable under- bellyto the culture of self-optimisation. That idea of trying too hard to be liked, also as a way ofsetting oneself up for failure, is interesting to consider with regard to what you said abouthow your painting often emerges from “failing miserably” to make something elegant.Last week I was reading a lecture by the LA-based abstract painter Rebecca Morris, whereshe concludes by declaring, “Smother me with failure so I can charge back up and outagain!! Oh the high.” Could you elaborate ?

GB: GB: Rebecca Morris is awesome!I used to be really afraid of failure in general, but I taught art full-time at a public K–8 school inNew York for twelve years. As I started teaching, I failed so much and so consistently foryears that fear was really burned out of me. If something goes badly, right away I ask myself,“What can I do differently next time?”. And I usually forget any of the day’s failuresovernight.When it comes to painting, I guess it’s easier to talk about when I feel successful, whenthere’s an uncanny likeness to the original image I’m working from. When there’s a morelayered narrative in the finished piece than I originally foresaw. So the flip side of thosesuccesses would be a spectrum of failure for me. The failure is really in an attempt to re-make the original photo, or Photoshop image, exactly, and fail to do so. Humannessintruding, I guess. But I am not distraught over failure in any case. I’ll just move on to anotheridea, another painting.I also wonder how the idea of failure dovetails with shame. I’ve been thinking about howmuch of the Internet is about shaming and at the same time people being completelyshameless. If shame is completely eliminated or the stakes are low, it’s difficult to orient themeaning of failure in relationship to that.

TB: TB: Looking at your works, I pick up on an attempt to illustrate a relationship to desire.Blown out of proportion and distorted, your pieces physically represent the magnitude ofobsession for a desired object.

GB: GB: I like that idea. At the same time, desire is kind of hard for me to think about in thecontext of the sources I’m pulling from because the idea that these images often originatefrom a platform that is always about showing off maybe screams louder. Is it about elicitingdesire and envy? “Look at the great things I have or do” is the context for everything. Inorder to enact true desire online, you often have to make yourself the subject of the photo,putting the result in a more unpredictable space.

GINA BEAVERS (*1974) lives and works in Newark, New Jersey.Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at MoMA PS1, New York; Gnyp Gallery, Berlin(both 2019); Michael Benevento, Los Angeles (2018); and Carl Kostyal, London (2017).Among other group shows she has participated in “The Art of Critique: Image Power”, FransHals Museum, Haarlem (2020); “Painting/Sculpture”, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York;“I campi magnetici”, Gió Marconi, Milan (both 2019); “Summer School”, Flag ArtFoundation, New York (2016); “Greater New York”, MoMA PS1, New York; and “How ToTell If Your Krill Oil Supplements Are Ripping You Off”, Abrons Art Center, New York (both2015). Beavers is represented by Marianne Boesky Gallery (New York), Gnyp Gallery(Berlin), and Michael Benevento (Los Angeles).

TENZING BARSHEE is a curator and the programme director at the Berlin gallery Efremidis.CAMILA McHUGH is a writer and curator based in Berlin.

– This text also appears in Spike #63. You can buy it in our online shop –

GINA BEAVERS MOMA PS1 MARIANNE BOESKY POP ART

SHARE IT!

Share Tweet

#63 Spring 2020

PORTRAIT: GINABEAVERSby Camila McHugh &Tenzing Barshee

Tweet

Corn Nails, 2019, Acrylicon linen on panel, 76 x 66cm

Courtesy of the artist andGNYP Gallery, Berlin.

Share

SPIK

EHO

ME