TRUDI

510 Bernard St. Los Angeles, CA 90012 gallerytrudi@gmail.com

DAIN BLODORN - Dark vibes Can we start by talking about Los Angeles’ Chinatown, it’s art scene, and how you stumbled upon it, now that we’re back in it’s bosom. Any fond memories now that we are the art relics? Brief story…. Since I moved to Oakland when I was 17 I developed a fondness for wandering around these American Chinatowns (both Oakland and SF at the time) almost religiously - hermetically - almost like a ghost - or more appropriately “Guailo” (The literal meaning of “guailo” means “demon guy”, “ghost guy”…) I could, time permitting, elaborate further on my reasons for trolling around these neighborhoods later. Fast forward to 2003 when brother Colin and I would visit LA regularly from Santa Barbara. Los Angeles Chinatown became a natural destination - along with Little Tokyo which I have a different longer standing attachment too. Our favorite restaurant was there…I liked the neighborhood’s semblance to the Bay area old Chinatowns I had become familiar with. And I tripped out on how LA C-Town was mixed with this weird Disney aspect (well parts of it were literally designed by a Disney Architect - i.e. the whole Gin Ling Way Alternate Dimension) So China Art Objects was the first Gallery I walked into…It was a JP Munro show (The Torture Garden in 2004) That huge 3 panel painting, by the same, name blew me away. Especially within the context of Chung King road at the time. It was really cool to these pretty bizarre, really dark paintings in this equally strange fantasy China world. There was also this painting of a cavernous antique shop in the show that resonated with me…being across the street from Fong’s. Also the little Glass case in the back dedicated to Giovanni Intra was very intriguing, I bought Man in the High Castle promptly after I got back home. Shortly after, I discover Dan Hug’s gallery, which had a program that was equally amazing - and international - lots of Germans, something I could somehow relate to via my surname. Overall there was this Dark vibe there that I was attracted to. I could go on forever…but…ended up going to Art Center, largely based on the visual feasts I had in Chinatown. “Interned” at Ooga Booga (I thought that might be a good way to meet people in the scene - that was pretty naive on my part, But Wendy is very nice) and met Matt there as opposed to Art Center. Did a lot of lurking @ openings (wish i was on Xanax looking back - probably would have been more outgoing)… enjoyed Dan’s whistling fits while drinking beer all day in the Press (Pruess Press) while Matt made monoprints. Now I live in that building on Bernard in what was once Dan Hug’s gallery. When I got this email at 4 this morning I looked around, thought about Chinatown…and realized, I really do believe I have successfully maintained my “Guailo” status…albeit in a much more refined and expanded capacity. So yeah - I am a Chinatown Ghost. So “Chinatown” as a start drew you in but china art objects, Black dragon, Dan Hug Gallery changed Chinatown for you? Yes - Chinatown brought me in, the art scene there at the time definately made it something more culturally accessible to me…i.e. my relationship with art, people that make it, whatever dialogue there is surrounding it is certainly closer to my core than eating chow-fun in a dingy restaurant where I don’t really understand anything language wise. Although with that said, a reverse inspiration is there - I make abstract/non objective paintings - these places are quite abstract to me - aurally, visually, well all the senses are covered more or less. You went to Idlewild, did you go and see shows then too? or was LA’s chinatown not going then? I got my high school diploma from “ISOMATA” (Idyllwild school of music and the arts) in 1996. If anything was happening in Chinatown art wise at that point I didn’t know about it. Was there? I would imagine there was…But I did get a good little snapshot of the art landscape in LA at the time (well some part of it at least) We would go on trips down to LA to see art shows at the museums, galleries, and some of the teachers’ studios. Bergamont Station was always on the itinerary, Ace gallery, and Blum and Poe and ACME(I think) when they were over at the Barker Hangers (I think) So this is how I got exposed to art in LA / My favorite professor David Amico lived / still lives and paints in a building on San Pedro right at the edge of the toy district. Seeing that studio practice in the context of skid row was very exciting for a highschooler. In fact I am writing these responses on a public computer at the Little Tokyo library. I am down here often because it’s a comforting neighborhood, there is a sense of accessible nostalgia here that directly connects to this unique & early arts education I was so lucky to recieve. This neighborhood is somewhat lost in time, displaced, it has maintained its identity in this sense. It’s abstract in that way. I get to do some nice thinking down here. It’s very visual, especially in such close proximity to skid row which is very dirty and sparkly simultaneously. Responding here serendipitously made sense. What had changed when we entered and you reentered together in the era of Dan Hug, David Kordansky, Ooga Booga, post Giovanni Intra… I guess this would be when money started coming in but you still didn’t need money right? Did anyone outside of Joel interact with the people the art crowd was displacing? I think these questions are, factually, ones that I don’t have the knowledge / insight to respond too. I mean - with your indtroduction into this zone, which led to TRUDI 1.0 amongst many other things, most certainly the launchpad for your career. What are your views on this environment? Are we only left with nostalgia or is there a deep-rooted foundation. Or, as is so common in a city, once you’ve been there long enough, are we just migrating back to an earlier nest and finding a new can of worms there to happily, casually, munch on. Chinatown is by it’s very nature and construction a tourist destination, a post ball game playground, and also an immigrant community. Who’s displaced, misplaced…there are a lot of vacant spaces in this neighborhood. Yeah, I guess like you, I’m not qualified to answer in any respectable way. Nor do I want to research it, and we’re not displacing anyone this time. I am back in Chinatown to address my appreciation for the model created by China Art Objects, Black Dragon Society, Pruess Press, SCA, Dianne Pruess, and Dan Hug. Places and ideas that I don’t see anymore, but now have the luxury to reengage. And more than just “antique-ing” I finally have an update. Tell me about these “dark vibes” you’re so interested in. This could be as superficial as me responding to and enjoying the work of artists such as Thomas Zipp, Markus Selg, JP Munro, etc. But there is another street level aspect of the neighborhood which is somewhat “Noir”. I wouldn’t say it informs my ideas - there is just a sort of “feeling” that, in combination with contemporary art, kind of clicks in a satisfactory kind of way. And lets talk about this painting series that will be in the show. You have a name for this group? “RUB-TUG” - in reference to Hans Hofmanns “PUSH-PULL” I keep referring to them as paintings I massaged…more later. As the spent latex gloves accumulate on the studio floor - I wonder…what’s going on here??? Really tho, in all seriousness, a specific name…not yet, perhaps not necessary. They’re an ongoing line…a trajectory, it’s one way of finishing a work that progressed the wrong way, a better solution to bad decisions. Would that suggest a cover up, not necessarily. Within this system, the best way to finish it off is to harmonize with the mess beneath and bring out the best of it, to coax, massage. -addition- “Hands out up and against through the wall” series 1 / through ∞ working title. IN A SERIES. Dude. In discovering expression through an institution one is taught, in my case, to work in seriality. Seriality provides a self contained context - an enforced context which manifests itself through volume. This results in a solipsistic psychosis given form. In constructing volume I fabricate the parameters, the settings, the presets that impact this form. Where does technical aptitude - confidence in rendering compositional constructs lead a body of work. If we could step back and equate this to say, a fashion line, a “rollout” of identity, then a predestined formula would need to be put to play. So how does this “slippage” take shape? when the prototypes turn into “failures” and result in the desire to stop, assess, and instead of moving on, to pull back and skin over. With this particular trajectory - which emits a multitude of pieces, a self-defined cosmology resolves after the act, without a defined # output. The pleasure of rendering this in a physical medium rests in the traces of all these decisions and indecisions that are given depth, a texture and a history which can be teased out through viewing. What I am left with, what is left, is a closed system that has the potentiality to replicate ad infinitum. To admit or submit to repeating the same action over and over again. What I could ask of myself is that is there a possibility to re-learn neutrality. Somebody saw my work and assessed it as monochromes. At this point in the game I have no clue what it means to create a monochrome painting. There is so much going on within the surface, and the physicality of paint its=self, colors are loaded with psychological and cultural resonance. Texture and pure physicality of material tropes are unique and rarified, they become portraits of process - inhabitance - the thing it’s self. If anything to commit this to an actual physical object is a liberation from what the current state of the monochrome is. Nonphysical displays are the homogenous hegemony, the new institutional monochrome in our shared psychology. The material behind these viewports is hidden and nearly impossible for the casual viewer to decode. But there’s no wrong way with art! Just like eating oreo’s. All your work is like this though right? You always seem to work in a way that is “wrong”. Is this a rebuttal to your art training, the deeming of what is “right”? Could this be why Chinatown seemed so exciting all those years ago? The underbelly, the sewers, the dark vibes, everything art wasn’t at Idlewild. I might be full of shit. Full of shit, like Oreos are brown cakes containing another likeness of human (particularly male) discharge. Spending a little bit of time in the aforementioned location as a resident and not a visitor I find there to be a number of elements that expose a world outside of what I see as the trajectory of market hegemony. This place seems to be like an island, almost a hallucination. There is a lot of roleplaying going on here, and a simultaneous reality that counters that. I was thinking about the perimeters. We have this big cornfield in one direction that hosts all of these fantastical gatherings of youth culture, All Bacchanalian in substance. Burning man 2.0, Hard summer, Fuck Yeah Fest, whatever. Lazers, huge sound systems, multiple dance floors, Tainted Mali. Then there’s this huge Jail that looks like the towers of hell manifest on our earthly plane. We hear what goes on in there from the press, enough to scare you straight. They discharge the “potentially reformed” back out onto the streets at some impossible time of morning, that could only breed desperation and relapse. So we got these people slithering around. Then there’s the big transit hub, the trains, both passenger and commercial that pass by. The real / unreal river & aqueduct. And Downtown Los Angeles, whatever that is in the most decentralized city in America. Mostly an illusion of the 20th century metropolis. Oh yeah Dodgers Stadium. All of this creates a big moat around this weird little self contained nether world. Which I suppose makes it a great place to invent or render a unique take on urban existence, and reflect on that overarching structure of a shared institution. I think post-apocalypse, art will be just as important, if not more; whereas public relations and stylists won’t matter at all. When we saw Crazy Band play last week, you mentioned them living and making their music in the wake of the Armageddon, their music was just as relevant as whatever we listened to on the drive home.So…why did you start living like Snake Plissken? Yes they project young FTW energy, it’s nostalgic but completely refreshing. I believe throughout time we have been living in the apocalypse and the post apocalypse and the pre apocalypse and the shared apocalypse. I wouldn’t so much say the wake of armageddon as I would pose that there is a shared anticipation of it. I think that art is a self contained language that can exist beyond commercial communication while still cooperating with it. We are taking advantage of this right now and it will continue to be relevant. There is so much of this art, but to actually experience it in it’s true form is a rare. Something I discovered recently is the acronym MUSH - meaning: Muti User Shared Hallucination. This is a type of social gaming framework, all text based, and quite hard to access as it relies on some knowledge of computer language. In my interpretation of it’s essence I was able to relate this sentiment to the currency we trade in. Whether our work is abstract or representational or…whatever. If I restrict this comment to painting as a medium, a sort of hallucinatory proposition is rendered physical. An audience is invited to read it, and to participate in a discourse that then has the potential to further this vision and allow it to be disseminated across an expanding array of platforms. So in naming a work, taking a clue from the MUSH platform, I could describe these hand print indexes or reliefs as literally: “Hands out up and against through the wall” series 1 / through ∞ (as to say in the descriptive) We choose what we want to see. The producer takes the role of delegate for both content and framework. Snake Plissken or Jack Burton? or Charlie Chan?