My last studio visit from sunny LA! This week features an interview with HK Zamani, founder and director of PØST, as well as a painter. HK described PØST as “a degenerate program, an impractical proposition”. It’s what we in Phila would call an alternative show space with teeth.

view of Habib’s painting studio.

Funnel Pages : Can you speak about Erased, the show that you presented at PØST last May?
HK Zamani : When I first presented this work I didn’t want to present it as my own work. I didn’t have an opening for it; I wanted people to come see it gradually. I didn’t want it to become a spectacle, but rather have it studied and examined carefully. The text is very important to the show. Essentially what I did was take six works out of my personal collection and erase them by spray-painting them white.  The work is by artists who have shown here at PØST or work by people whom I have supported with their careers. It was about the idea of a “first show”, how do I restart this program (PØST)? It was an homage to its past, but it was more about beginning with a clean slate, a very charged slate- not being bound by its past. It was a risky show. I wanted a difficult show because we are going through difficult times.

installation view of Erased

FP: Did you get the permission from these artists to paint their work white and display it?
HKZ: No, that’s a line that I added to the press release- “The act of some how erasing their work in this exhibit must not ask for permission.” If I had asked for their permission it would have taken the risk out of it and become something completely different.

FP: How did the artists respond to this?
HKZ: I emailed with all of the artists and only one didn’t get back to me.

FP: The video, of you spraying theses works, accompanied with the show has the title- Art Has No Monetary Value. Where does that come from?
HKZ: It has to do with a lot of things- ownership, vandalism, what is and isn’t ethical, and the title just adds another level to that. The value of art is more than its monetary aspects. Historical works acquire more value for the fact that they are important…

FP: Maybe to the outside world, but is that how you feel when you collect art?
HKZ: It’s interesting for me to see why people collect art. Is it work that they paid a lot of money for? Was it a gift to them? Do they acquire the work because everyone else has one? There are a lot of collectors that collect with their ears and not their eyes. Or do they really care for and love the work?

installation view of Erased

FP: So since these works are from your own collection, why did you decide to do this to them?
HKZ: I think we need more work that takes this step towards questioning art. I mean this was insane, almost suicidal. Interesting things happened to them formally when I sprayed them white, but it wasn’t my intent to take other people’s work and make art with it. It was more about the erasing. I really wasn’t attacking the work on an aesthetic level, but rather questioning motivations- my own taste and decisions to show this work previously.

FP: How did you pick the work that you would erase?
HKZ: I picked three male and three female artists. I tried to choose the ones by artists that are visible. It’s a show about Los Angeles really. Here in LA it’s perceived as more of an attack on LA, because all of the artists are LA artists.  It was supposed to be a revolutionary gesture.

FP: If it was supposed to be that, how do you feel about it now?
HKZ: I feel this is the kind of show that will give you nightmares, and encourages consciousness. As soon as you are reminded of it you begin to question your actions and you have to wake up. We sleep a lot, not just at night, when the automatic kicks in. This kind of gesture keeps you awake.

Erased Sherin Guirsuis. 2009. Acrylic and oil on acrylic on wood (left) and Erased Linda Besemer. 2009. Acrylic and oil on acrylic paint (right)

FP: Is this a permanent installation here?
HKZ: No, but I don’t think its something that can be broken up and seen in pieces. There was a dealer in here the other day and he was really interested in showing it. The only reason he didn’t show it immediately is that since he is a dealer in LA it didn’t make sense to show it again here. But to me it is interesting to subvert the subverted, because when this work is made available for sale it’s going against its voice. I am very much into that idea of continuing this critique. I don’t by any means see this as the last showing of this work.  Although it seems like this is actually an idea of “a last show”, and I started things back up here at PØST with “a last show”, so what do you do now? That’s why I declared it as a kamikaze show. Another possibility of a kamikaze show that I came up with was to do thirty shows in September, one-a-night and it was incredible..

FP: How do you deal with the two sides of your practice- the gallerist and the painter?
HKZ: I guess some people need to do more than just stay in the studio and paint. My natural inclination is to be both introverted and extroverted.

FP: Where does the dome come from in all of these paintings?
HKZ: I built these actual domes covered with fabric. I built one that was as big as the gallery that it was being shown in, to overwhelm the architecture of the space, and to physically interact with it. I wanted to throw it into a state of disarray in a performance.

FP: Your performance work seems to produce a quiet confrontation, something I think relates very much to painting.
HKZ: That’s why I still like to paint, I see it as political as anything. Just the fact that we take time to go into the studio and make paintings is political.

photo from one of Habib’s performances

FP: So what are you working on now?
HKZ: I am still using this dome structure as a subject, but with the newer paintings I am trying to move away from it some how by thinking of them as portraits of some sort. My interest right now is in referencing the older work. Some will clearly reference the dome, but they really become their own form. The new work is a departure and a return, departure from the dome structure and return to the way I used to paint.

HKZ: I made abstract paintings for years before I went to making the fabric and armature works, so returning to my early days of painting the work is now about paint and the image– letting  paint dictate the evolution of the painting.
It seemed interesting to make these dome structures homeless, not putting them on the ground, having them floating. That opened up the reading of them. I then started to remove the structure of the dome that the fabric was hanging on, instead of seeing the structure you see the ground behind it. Only in a 2-dimensional representation can you do this, remove the structure and still have the fabric hold the shape of the structure that’s removed. The only thing left to support the form is the painting itself.

FP: It seems like you are coming from a modernist way of working- rather instead of repeating a certain pattern or form (seen in post modern abstract expressionist work) as a way to get to issues of paint and color you are using a single image (the dome). It’s the idea of simplifying subject matter to go deeper into the metaphysical aspects of painting.
HKZ: I like that. Often times I like what others have to say about the work, what I tend to come up with are these poetic blurbs that tell you nothing and a lot at the same time.

For more images of Habib’s work check out his website here.
For more info on PØST check out the space’s site here.