Alex Yudzon
Matthew Shelley talks with Alex Yudzon about his work
Alex Yudzon: I listened to an audio book of George Orwell’s essays, which was amazing. I didn’t realize he wrote essays but have since found out that he’s considered a master of the genre. One of them is on writing. I feel like every artist struggling with writing artist statements should listen to this. He talks a lot about the way that the English language is becoming filled with unnecessary jargon. He’s talking about it from a writing perspective, and the way that writers, in an effort to make themselves sound really intellectual and specialized are over laboring their prose with elaborate vocabulary. He puts down a very concise set of rules. He gives these wonderful examples of writing that are over intellectualized and makes fun of them and breaks it down. He covers all of this stuff that relates to our era, and he was tapping into it back in the 1950’s.
One of the rules is that if there is a simpler way to say what you want, without compromising the meaning, then you should always lean toward the simpler way. If you can use a shorter word instead of a long word, always use the shorter word.
Matthew Shelley: I absolutely agree. I have always struggled with writing about my own work. I have thought for a long time about how there are these things that we take for granted, like artist statements, because it seems like such a built in part of what we do. I often try to trace something back and look at the origins of practices. In this case, when did people start writing formal artist statements? I think it started pretty recently. It isn’t as though Van Gogh sat down and crafted an artist statement. It’s probably a tradition that started in MFA programs. Every artist gets so stressed about statements as though it is a mandatory thing that we have to do.
I wonder what it would be like to clear the table, and write about studio practice from a new perspective? When writing about my artwork, the most sincere thing I could offer would be a simple list of interests. Without any language to connect it, or sentences to link the ideas together. Listing points of inspiration would be the easiest and most honest way for me to approach writing about my work.
I think the art world could use some restructuring. In my opinion, there are a lot of pointless and counterproductive traditions in visual art. Maybe it’s time to hit the reset button on that?
AY: Yeah what are the different ways that we could approach that? Does it have to be this mechanical manifesto? That makes me think about Van Gogh’s writing. His letters were his artist statement.
MS: Right. That’s true now that I think about it.
AY: He spent years writing these letters to his brother. Everybody did that back then. People wrote diaries and letters constantly. When they were asked about their work, after doing all of that writing they could probably talk about it in a very concise way. It was possible because they had spent a lifetime writing about it in a non-formal way.
MS: It makes me want to look around and find out where artist statements come from. What school did they emerge from? Because I have never talked to an artist who enjoys writing them. Nobody wants to confine their work that way, and yet, we all keep doing it. There’s got to be a better way to describe our ideas.
I was teaching Senior Studio at SUNY, and instead of writing artists statements I asked the students to interview each other. Every person had a partner, and they had to come up with some questions about each other’s work. We used those as a basis for developing their artists statements down the road. They could look back on their interview and see how they answered basic questions about their work.
AY: We could arrive at the same place, which is to open a window of clarity to see into an artist’s work. How they think and what motivates them. Maybe with a different format we could do that in a way that’s a little more personal and not so strangely formal?
Every time that I’m writing an artist statement, I feel like I’m building a machine that will then transcribe the ideas of the artwork. Like, I’m making this weird robot, that’s going to then stand in for me and describe the work.
MS: Yeah, or I end up making something that damages the work instead of enhancing it. Whenever I dig up an old artist statement, I’m never proud of the writing. At best, it’s not pretentious and it’s clear. At worst, I am embarrassed and I don’t know what the hell I was talking about.
AY: Yeah, it’s like reading your old high school poetry or something.
MS: Exactly. You want to strike it from the record. Anyway, could you tell us where you’re from, where you grew up, and where you’re working now?
AY: Of course. I’m originally from Russia and immigrated to the United States in 1985 at the age of 8. My family moved to Washington DC. Now I live and work in Brooklyn, NY. I’ve been in New York for about 25 years.
MS: Was it mostly between Washington DC and New York? Did you live anywhere else?
AY: For the most part. I left DC to go to Pratt for a couple of years, and then I transferred to the Chelsea College of Art, which is in London. I wanted an experience of living and studying abroad. Rather than do a semester abroad, I just transferred and did my last two years in London.
MS: I used to live in DC.
AY: Oh really?
MS: Yeah, I went to graduate school down there. I liked it a lot. I grew up on the west coast and D.C. was a good introduction to the east coast
AY: Where did you grow up?
MS: In Eugene, Oregon.
AY: That’s one of the states that I haven’t been to yet. I’ve been looking forward to seeing it. It sounds like a state that would be great to travel around in and explore, not just visit one motel.
MS: Yeah, the natural world there is so dynamic. You could go from old growth forests, to mountains, to high desert in one afternoon. I’d like to go back and photograph there. I haven’t ever traveled anywhere to photograph. Everything that I photograph is all in my neighborhood. Robert Adams did some incredible work in Oregon.
AY: I love Robert Adams.
MS: So did your family live in DC for a while?
AY: Yeah, we lived in the suburbs. The edges of DC. I didn’t really have much of an urban experience of the city. It was mostly a suburban upbringing.
MS: And then you moved to New York to go to Pratt?
AY: Yes.
MS: How did you get involved in visual art? When did that begin for you?
AY: I am told by my aunt that when she would come over to visit my parents at our apartment in Moscow, she would come in the afternoon, and I would be at my desk with the radio playing and making drawings. I was completely in my own world. She would come and visit my parents and when she would leave hours later, I would still be at the desk drawing and listening to music.
Creativity and visual arts was always what I loved to do. I remember my dad enrolling me in a art class when we were still in Russia, and loving that experience.
The cliche that immigrant parents want their kids to become doctors or lawyers is really true. There’s no other profession that would make an immigrant parent happier. I think my parents saw how passionate I was about visual art and how consuming art was for me. They didn’t even attempt to steer me into those other professions. They thought, this kid is clearly an artist. He doesn’t want to do anything else, so let’s not even try to fight the water. Let’s move with the current.
MS: That was my experience as well. From an early age. In the Pacific Northwest it rains all the time. So, you need to have these quiet activities that you can settle into. For me, that was always drawing or doing something visual. I wandered away from it in early adolescence. Later, about the age of 16, I rediscovered it, and it took off from there.
AY: So in high school you were lucky enough to rediscover it, and then you can target a college to go to.
MS: Yeah, it was kind of funny for me because I was a really bad student.
AY: Same here.
MS: I never connected with school. I just didn’t want to be bothered. As long as I came home with passing grades my mom left me alone. When I rediscover visual art, it was a gateway into all of these other things that were compatible with school. I started reading again, because there were things that I wanted to know about art history.
I didn’t have any clear sense of purpose or direction, but then I got very interested in art, and that gave me a place where I could excel in school. That gave me the confidence to apply myself in other areas. I started to love the educational environment and learning. I worked to get my grades up and went to University of Oregon for my BFA, and later to American University in Washington D.C. for graduate school.
AY: Nice.
MS: If I remember correctly from the first time that we talked, you began as a painter right? That’s where you started and you ended up in photography in an unexpected way. I was wondering if you could talk about that a little? What was that evolution like?
AY: I was always attracted to photography, but a tangential interest. I was aware of it, and I knew it existed. Anytime I had a camera I would use it. In college, I had a black and white camera and enjoyed the process of developing and printing in the darkroom. It wasn’t anything that I considered a creative or artistic pursuit.
I ended up buying a high end digital camera after selling a large drawing that I had made. I bought the camera with the specific purpose of documenting my work. The quality, because it was full frame, was just so stunning, and I started shooting the world around me, and printing those images and thinking about photography, but still almost like a hobby.
It wasn’t until I was traveling for work, and I happened to be is Switzerland staying at a little air B&B, but it was a really weird space. It was almost set up like a mid century modern hotel. So there was all of this cool furniture. I started making these installations. Furniture sculptures for lack of a better word. Purely out of boredom. Purely out of having my creative energy pent up. I maintain a robust creative practice and I work every day, and that routine had been disrupted when I was traveling. I was looking for some outlet, so I started making these furniture sculptures, and taking black and white photos and printed them when I got back to New York. When I hung them up in the studio they had this weird staying power. They were more intriguing than the drawings and paintings that I was making at the time.
MS: Yeah.
AY: People would come to the studio and ask me about them. I would say, “I don’t know what those are”. I made these photographs and I don’t know what to do with them. I had a friend that said, “well, these are interesting and thought provoking and maybe you should do this whenever you’re traveling and on the road.” I thought that was a great idea. That’s the power of having a good network of artist friends. Sometimes they’re the ones who know what you should really be doing. I thought, man, you’re so right, that’s the solution to this. Anytime I travel, and I travel a lot for work, I would be doing this kind of work. Eventually, I stopped waiting to travel and thought “why don’t I start traveling just to make this work”.
It started at the periphery, when my paintings and drawings were at the center, and it eventually pushed the drawings out to the periphery. Photography eventually became the center.
MS: That’s all very relatable. I wandered into photography in the exact same way. I started shooting in film just to play around. I had inherited some film cameras that I was experimenting with. Later, I purchased a camera to document my work.
AY: What did you buy?
MS: First I bought a Nikon Z5 and I just recently traded that in for a Nikon ZF.
AY: Yeah.
MS: The ZF is not really professional grade, but I love the camera.
AY: Yeah, those are mirrorless right?
MS: Yes, they’re full frame mirrorless cameras. The ZF is made to function almost like the original Nikon F cameras. All of the settings are external dials and look almost exactly like a old Nikon F. Everything operates the same way that a Nikon F does. Because I started out in film photography I really like that. I still shoot in film all the time. I have a Mamiya C3 and a Mamiya 645E. You know how the interest grows? You keep selling what you have to get new gear.
AY: Absolutely. So the Nikon ZF is a throwback?
MS: Yeah. It’s a lot of fun.
AY: That’s awesome. Not too long ago I bought a Nikon 90 F. That was one of the last fully automatic film cameras that they made. It was the second tier film camera that Nikon was making around 1999 - 2000. It’s a great camera. It functions so well, but it’s crazy cheap because it doesn’t have that retro look. It has a more contemporary look, so I got it for like, $80 bucks.
MS: No way.
AY: Yeah, $80 bucks and it’s fully automatic. You can use it manually too. It’s my go to 35mm film camera now.
MS: That sounds great. I’ll have to check that out. I just got a Mamiya 645E that I have been getting to know. For a long time, I was shooting film right alongside of the digital photos that I was taking. It really helped me understand the basics of photography. Having something physical to work with helped me.
Lately, I have been struggling to find reasons to keep shooting in film. I love my film cameras, and I love going into the darkroom, but I’m really getting the images and prints that I want from my digital set up.
AY: It’s good to have both. They are useful in different ways. Film does something that digital definitely doesn’t.
MS: If I remember right, you were making some still life stuff in you studio in addition to the hotel rooms? Did that precede the hotel pictures?
AY: No, the still life stuff came later. The hotel photos kind of lit the fire, and the other stuff came later. Through the hotel pictures I realized that there was a whole new thing to explore. A new medium to learn. Maybe I have a life in this. It came at a good time because I was feeling frustrated with some the things I was doing as a painter. I felt like I was repeatedly hitting my head against the wall and not getting very far. Photography became a lifeline to have a fresh start. I came from a painting tradition that was very technical and laden with history, so I felt a certain pressure to live up to a standard. The pressure to be a part of a lineage. It was just suffocating me. It was taking all of the air out of the room.
I didn’t know the history of photography. I knew a handful of photographers that I liked, but they were all fine art people. Outside of the photographers that I saw in galleries, I really didn’t know anything. It was really nice to explore a medium without feeling the pressure to produce anything that I had to compare to other people. Both historically and in a contemporary way. Hopefully that makes sense.
MS: It makes perfect sense. That was my experience too. At the beginning of the pandemic, I was dealing with a painting problem that I couldn’t get past. It was like my practice was getting narrower and narrower. I reached this place with it where I felt like I couldn’t even get started without becoming so critical of what I was doing that I would start over. As a professor, I was looking at these paintings that my students were making, and I loved their work because it’s uninhibited. I would try and emulate that but I just couldn’t. There was a time when I would collect their discarded work and make collage out of it. That was a way to try and resolve my problems with painting.
Then I had this new camera and I was down on the beach and I started photographing rocks in forced perspective. It was the most fun I had had in a long time because I didn’t put any pressure on it. I had no intention of doing anything with it. I was learning how to do something new and seeing the potential options. It felt like drawing as a kid. Back then, you’re not drawing to build a portfolio, or interact with art history, you’re just drawing.
It was the first time that I had done that in a long time. Where I was just making something out of curiosity. It was such a relief not to have an expectation for it. I was just playing around.
AY: That’s such a good way to describe it. Play. With painting I was no longer playing. I was competing. Trying to live up to a thing. Trying to compete with other people. I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. Then when I would make something and I felt kind of good about it, I would put it out into the world, and then I wouldn’t get the reaction that I was expecting. I would get frustrated and confused. To let go of all of that and start playing again was great. To learn a new medium and let go of all of that.
I would set up these still life photos because I had stuff around the house. I started working with food, and rotting food. Some of them were so absurd that I would laugh out loud at how goofy, and funny, and weird what I was doing was.
MS: Yeah, shifting to photography was the same way for me. I started having fun making things again.
AY: It just brought a whole lightness into my life. I felt like, oh yeah, I remember why I got into visual art. It’s for the joy, and the creativity, and the exploration. It wasn’t to fucking compete to try and be the greatest. It was the pleasure of learning something. So, in a way it helped rescue me at that point in my life.
MS: I felt the same way about it. I had all of these self imposed rules about painting. I would have some creative impulse, and then I would cancel that impulse by going “that’s not really going to work on a material level, or it doesn’t make sense intellectually, or whatever…”
With photography, I didn’t have any knowledge about it and I could follow impulses without overthinking it because I didn’t have any expectation. Because I didn’t have much knowledge of the history of photography, I would get excited about new ideas without realizing that it was old territory; other artists had already covered it. All of the sudden none of that mattered to me.
AY: It didn’t matter because the stakes were so low. All of the stakes had been eliminated. There’s no success or failure, there’s just the experience and enjoyment of doing something creative.
MS: I have tried to learn enough about the camera to get it to do what I want it to. But, if someone who was an expert in photography said that there are technical problems in my work, it wouldn’t matter that much to me because I’m not really a photographer.
AY: I felt self conscious of having such a rudimentary knowledge of the technical aspect of photography until reading this Diane Arbus biography. She was the same way. It was about her relationship to the subject and none of that other stuff mattered.
MS: That knowledge can become a liability the same way that it was with painting. I think that stuff has been covered. There’s going to be any number of photographers, even locally, who’s skillset will exceed mine forever. I’m trying to be okay about that. There’s another part of me that still gets worried about technique. Always wondering if I did it correctly.
Sometimes I think that I should switch media every 5 -10 years to keep it fresh. Because I want to know about technique, and I can’t put that off forever. I’ll read up and find out how to do things, and at a certain point, I’m going to start to put pressure on myself. Then I’m going to impose all of these rules and my work will become stale. I guess that’s inevitable.
Anyway, There’s quite a bit of writing in your book. In the back of the book there are written accounts of your experiences traveling and descriptions of the hotels. Is writing something that you enjoy doing?
AY: Yeah, I love reading. I love reading narrative writing. Reading stories is such a pleasure in my life. The more I traveled, it’s such a solitary activity, that keeping a journal about these experiences became very grounding. Later, I started to realize, that this is sort of a weird project because the hotels are so self-contained, they are like these little worlds, but you really have no idea where you are.
When I first started the project I thought, this will be great because the hotel in Mississippi will really reflect the region, and the hotel in L.A. will reflect California, but later I realized that just wasn’t the case. They don’t reveal the geography of the world outside of the room. They are worlds unto themselves.
Just looking at the pictures can become an experience that is very placeless and very groundless. The writing became a way of reminding the viewer that there is a world outside of these hotels. I think in that way, the writing served a very specific purpose. In another way, I just collected so many strange and interesting stories from people who would share their experiences. I thought, man this is kind of part of the project now. I can’t just keep it all to myself.
MS: It’s a part of the book that I really enjoy. I always flip the book open and just enjoy the images for a while. I take them in formally and study them on their own, and later I’ll make my way over to that other part of the book about the locations.
I understand now how the writing helps ground the rooms back in reality. The photographs on their own are otherworldly. I always think about surrealism when I look at your work. I love the images as formal arrangements, but they also have this surrealist aspect to them.
Surrealist images are like a springboard to help viewer connect with how strange the everyday world is. I think surrealist artwork is there to shock the viewer into paying attention in a different way. I think of your hotel photographs in the same way.
On the one hand, the hotel rooms are so commonplace. They’re so basic. One the other hand, they can be places that are so strange because they are like a stage for whatever the guest wants. They’re contained spaces. You’ve got any number of people checking into them, with any number of different plans. Fram the really banal, to the super weird. I love the re-arrangement of furniture in there because it shocks me into recognizing how weird the place is. I was curious if that was a part of how you think about it too?
AY: For sure. I love Freud’s notion of the uncanny. Where everyday objects contain this repressed energy. In moments of quietude that energy can be released, and the mundane can become something strange and bizarre, and sometimes even monstrous.
How the repressed always comes back as a monster. I love to think of the hotel rooms that way. Because the hotel rooms have all of this hidden energy. All. Of the people who have stayed there. The stories of those rooms are right there, but it’s all covered up at the same time. There’s always a sense of it. You have a sense that this room contains a charge. Some phycological remnant . The hundreds and maybe thousands of people that have stayed here. I love to think of my work as somehow tapping into that.
MS: That makes a lot of sense. That thing that you mentioned about the uncanny makes a lot of sense. The thing that struck me when I first saw your work was the formal qualities of the pictures. They were like abstract paintings, but just set up in a different way. It was a different vehicle to get you there.
After a while I started thinking about them a little differently. The subjects are so ordinary that you could easily look past them, but when they are rearranged in this way, they become something totally different. These commonplace things can become really eye catching and strange, when they are rearranged. It can catapult you into understanding the strangeness that always surrounds you. All of the sudden it has a completely different presence.
I thinks that’s a great thing for artworks to achieve. If you can get someone to look at something differently.
AY: I really appreciate you saying that. Because so much of the work is motivated by that. I think that’s kind of what the subconscious is. It’s a place that takes daily experience and emotions and sort of turns it on its head. It creates strange arrangements and connections, so of which reveal truth that is difficult for us to accept, so we burry it, or ignore it, or rationalize it. I think that hotels are like that because they’re these strange liminal spaces. I hate that word liminal, but I don’t know what better word to use. They’re such in-between spaces. They’re not public, but they’re not completely private. When you go there you’re divested of personal responsibility in a way that’s different from any other space, because you’re buying a certain amount of anonymity and that no matter what you do there it will be cleaned up after you leave. You have this sense of freedom that can be exploited creatively, or criminally, or however you choose to use it.
I always found it funny that the two types of people that are most attracted to hotels are criminals and artists. You know? I love that. If you could say that societies, or cultures have a kind of subconscious, I think that hotels are our collective subconscious.
MS: That’s such a cool perspective. I could think about that for a long time. There’s one more thing that I’d like to talk about if you have the time?
AY: Sure.
MS: When I start photographing, it takes me about an hour to warm up. I’ll approach something from a stock point of view. I can see a basic composition. If I take a quick series of photos and leave, I end up getting photos that are okay, but not great. If I stay with something for a long time, then I start to zero in on a composition. I can tell this is starting to happen when I’m pushing myself physically. I’ll be laying on the ground to get the shot, or climbed up on something to get an angle, like I’ve gotten physically invested in it. I was wondering when you get started on a location, what your experience is like as you’re getting warmed up to the creative possibilities of that place? How do you get started? When does an arrangement start to get your attention.
AY: Yeah, you know the first thing that I do when I go into a new room is I take inventory. I walk the space and make notes of the objects and general architectural space. It’s like location scouting in the room. Like, this is an interesting corner over here. Where this wood veneer meets this tile, which meets this carpet, and this has an interesting light the way that it comes in from the window.
Then I start to slowly make adjustments. Even just taking a chair and putting it upside down on a table. Even if I know that I’m not interested in it, just violating the order of the room is already a good way to start the creative process and my interaction with the room. I see it as an interaction with the room. Like meeting someone for the first time. So I start small. After hours of small adjustments the room starts to reveal things.
I’ll know right away after doing the inventory what I’m interested in. Like, man that’s a really cool couch, and it would be great to do an elaborate thing like put it on the bed. I’ll kind of have those ideas, but I won’t do it right away. Because I’ll need to settle into the space and work my way up to that point where I’m starting to create the chaos. Usually it takes like a good day.
MS: That makes total sense. I can see something that I think is really captivating, and I’ll want to photograph it, but when I put my camera in place it still takes time. I’ll get a basic composition going, but I try to force myself to stay on it for a time. Sometimes I try to satisfy some basics if I’m having a tough time getting something I like. I’ll photograph it at close range, medium range, and from a distance. I try to photograph it from multiple perspectives. As I do that stuff eventually something starts to happen. You’re going out of your way to see this thing through the lens of multiple possibilities, not just your stock impulse.
AY: Yeah, getting past that stock impulse.
MS: There’s a build up. Even if you’ve photographed stuff like it before, you have to build up to seeing it in a more thoughtful way. Because I have my own compositional habits and if I stay in those habits, then a photograph takes only a few minutes. If I stay with the subject long enough, something will present itself.
AY: Yeah, it’s like doing a musical improvisation with another person. You have to wait and see what melody they’re playing. Then you’re responding to that melody as opposed to just jumping in with your own unrelated song. It takes time to find that rhythm, and it takes time to find that flow.
