Matt Hansel
I was in New York early March of 2020 in the glamorous role of Exhibitor Lounge Attendant at The Armory Show just before the pandemic became public knowledge to people in seemingly unaffected areas; this didn’t last long. Luckily for me, nine days before New York was declared to be in a state of emergency, I had a conversation physically in the studio of Matt Hansel. Here is an edited (for brevity…kind of), but otherwise direct transcription of that conversation:
Whilst fumbling for my notebook that I have since lost and clamoring to position my phone in the best position for recording, Hansel offers me a La Croix and asked me about what I am doing at the Armory. Speaking a mile of words a minute, I cram whatever feels necessary to know about me pre-interview in a few minutes. The caffeine in my system is audible; carried out in the cadence of my meandering sentences about all the plans I have while in New York and beyond, though nothing would go as planned. After sharing how I want to publish our conversation or use it for the larger piece (since titled, Disrupting Webs), Hansel jokes about not saying anything seemingly dull. I laugh it off and then encourage him (and myself, internally), then share that I can tell we are going to have a lot to talk about. Then I admit:
Julia Monte: I don’t really know much about your work, I don’t think I had ever seen your work until Anthony shared it with me during the conception of In Crystallized Time. So, I would just like to know, first of all, the themes in this body of work that you are working on right now, how long have they been consistently in your practice? How would you talk about the span of your practice recently?
Matt Hansel: So, I attended a residency in LA in 2016 called Hooper Projects, and it is now defunct, but when I went out there I sort of decided to use it as a good time to make a break with what I was doing and as a time to experiment — I just went there to crank it out. During that time I sort of changed my ways of painting, which I was not formerly doing and different subject matters were introduced into the work. That was a big shift for me, that time in 2016. Since then the work has had a few smaller iterations to it and I often work a lot in terms of small bodies of work, wether they end up in an exhibition or not. For me I feel I am an artist constantly cycling ideas and I feel I have more ideas than I have time to make work for…
I agree and relate.
MH: …but I want to make sure when I am in the studio I am doing work I want to be doing…
I, once again, can relate.
MH: …and that’s a hard balance to find especially when you have galleries and collectors that are expecting one thing and then you’re off on another tangent. So, let’s see…
He then gets on a tangent about the last exhibition he had up at The Hole NYC in May of 2019. He had just seen the Delacroix show at the MET, and specifically latched on to the last painting on display, a massive painting called Lion Hunt. This painting by Delacroix did survive a fire, so the colors are not as vibrant and there is an entire section of raw canvas at the top of the composition that crops the whole scene; the MET refers to this piece as Lion Hunt (fragment) on their website. I love how he talks about this painting and how compelled he was by its massiveness. He points out a few things he loves about it besides its scale: the relationship drawn between man and nature, how it contains as much action as a Michael Bay production, and how this painting specifically did away with extraneous information, it was well distilled. It inspired Hansel’s paintings at The Hole, Giving up the Ghost, where half of the paintings were intentionally “incomplete,” revealing the raw canvas up against intensely detailed paintings. It felt like everything was sunk to the bottom of the canvas; it looked like the full image hadn’t fully loaded. Hansel expresses wanting to bring up a sense of the effect human and nature have on each other, how we fill our own time as its passing us by, even reflecting on his position as a mid-career artist today. I thought about the Unfinished exhibition I saw at the MET Breuer in 2016. I didn’t ask if he saw it but I am sure he did.
MH: Since 2016 I have been using a lot of imagery from Dutch Vanitas still-life painting—ideas about the brevity of life. Back when the paintings were made they were moralistic plays for the audience, warning them not to drink too much, not to waste their time on earth, and it was very much so tied to religion. I started using these references as a secular way of thinking about the creative process and the amount of time someone has to make these objects that tie them to the time they are created. Of course they then live on past the artists, ideally, if anyone cares.
JM: Right, exactly—
MH: Yeah, So! That kind of imagery appears a lot. These paintings here (physically in his studio) are dealing with the empty canvas, they are not as clearly defined as the ones that were at The Hole, but I also brought the literal idea of the burning of pieces. and again, a part of that is referencing the fact that (he says very rapidly to get past the fact that) well it is not an original idea, but these are objects. Right? They are not literal windows into the world, so having the raw canvas and the Trompe-l'œil folds and cut away sections reveals how this (points) is the window into a space, and that’s (points) a window into the space (pointing to different areas of the works that reveal different depths of reality). I guess in terms of this show and things that tie to my interests—
JM: Yeah, how do you find yourself aligning in the show (In Crystallized Time)?
MH: I often think about time; every image inherently carries a time period with it. What happens today, when you receive images on your phone or on a computer screen, those images get democratized in a very similar way where they come at you in the same shape, same amount of pixels, same size, and whether it is a photo of the Grand Canyon, or a fork on a plate, it comes at you the same. There is an extracting happening of an image from its time and place and history, which I think now effects the way we think about both the images we use, can use, and in terms of how they exist. So, I like relying on the history of an image or the way an image is made, particularly painting, referred in different times. So, maybe…that has something to do with my role, there.
JM: Totally. I think there is a lot of talk about time in general; in the few studio visits I have had thus far the conversations have been different, but we all have touched on the idea of time as well as mechanisms of painting. There is also obviously the idea of paint or any material being used in an effort to mask it. Many artists are using the airbrush or alternative tools to mimic something that has a different sense of time, wether it be digital or a historical sense of mark-making. I feel like you are starting to go about different ways to reference a shallow place (looking at a work that incorporated a mirror). I like the use of mirrors to recognize a flat space, yet it is reflecting back your own deep space. (I ramble a bit more about this before asking), Is this older or newer?
MH: Newer. This is a new series of work, where I feel I am slowly headed towards now.
Pointing to a gold area in a work in his studio, he shares that this is a process called verre églomisé, the term originated in France in the 18th century. I won’t go into his explanation of his process of using gold leaf to apply a design on the back of a glass to mirror-ize it, as it is not present in his current body of work now on display at The Hole in Inner Demon Delectatio. Though, there are many moments of sheen surfaces and portals into worlds and other spaces within a painting, reflecting on the collisions in Bosch paintings. These techniques and points of interest we had been discussing in this studio visit of 2020, definitely carries on in new shapes.
MH: I always like the idea of openings to a painting, whether it is something literal like this (pointing to a figure at the very bottom bottom of the painting you have tojump over to enter the rest of the scene)—
JM: The repoussoir?
MH: Exactly, or it is something where it is actually a distinctly cut shape butting up against an unpainted canvas. The cut shape acts as the boundary of the opening to the scene.
The following images were taken in a studio visit with Hansel in March of 2020.
JM: There has been a lot of — and this will change as I talk to other artists about negative space and distortion— capitalization on blank space, an unfinished space, perhaps… When I was meeting with Brian Willmont we talked about the context of the void in his work. With yours the “void” space snaps me back into the reality of the canvas as the substrate of the scene. This warping effect happens alongside the use of blankness… (I express how I am attracted to the visual plane of the distortion butting up against the raw canvas. It is a stark distinction at some points, at others the use of graphite on the raw canvas stretches the details of the painted surface gently upwards into the blank space. I ask about the “style” for lack of a better term, that he has developed in this endeavor to splice space). Do you see this process as an actual visualization of warping time? (I orient myself in front of A Look At Last Upon The Past, prior to knowing it would be the one included in ICT, and point out the tumultuous waves and fluid graphite drawings extending above the distorted horizon.) What does that device do for you?
MH: For me [the warping] references memory; not only the flow of time within a memory, but how it is subject to distortion. There are studies now that have been done where, instead of the usual idea that the memory is kinda like a filing cabinet —gesturing above his head like he were reaching for a file— now they are discovering how memory is essentially remade every time you recall it. So, there is an editing and additive process where the memory becomes an amalgam of a story you have already told, and it changes as time continues. I love that idea; this is a literal effect of the present on the past within these paintings. There is a digital manipulation happening of the past that is only possible with the tools of today. It is a way of remembering things in the present time.
JM: The more I am getting into your work, the more I enjoy seeing how when you recognize a shape or surface treatment you are placed somewhere specific.
I remember going in to get up close to some of the works on the wall and point to a detail saying, “then something like that happens—” (He cuts in),
MH: a 20th century moment happening?
JM: Yeah, and I am trying to see (peering around the studio) if it is happening anywhere else…
It was a detail I picked up on more immediately as having a different time stamp from the 18th century references. He admits it isn’t happening as much in his work before I point out a singular acrylic nail attached to a singular finger that was being used as a hook under the edges of a custom cut panel for a wavy, warping Vanitas painting. I ask,
JM: Why do you use those more sparingly?
MH: It is a hard balance. Some of the early work was very heavy in that imagery. In the work for The Hole I took all 20th century out, and now it is creeping back in again. It is not as predetermined as I would like it to be. When a painting gets too far to one side or another you need something to bring it back to the moment in which it is being made at. If a painting is starting to feel like it was made 20 years ago or let’s say, even 100 years ago, then I know that it isn’t speaking about the moment I am in, and I think that is paramount for artists to contend the moment they are living in. So, I am compelled to stick to that idea and throw it off kilter with something. I want things to be, not obvious but slightly off kilter so people think, “oh, that’s kind of weird,” not a blunt object but something, kind of (he pauses) quirky.
I think it is endearing he used that word.
JM: The way you paint it changes as well.
MH: Yes, those 20th century moments are usually presented and painted very flat.
I reflected on the works that Anthony originally shared with me of Hansel’s work. It was a couple of works that could have been in a still life series featuring the same signature warping, which started in the center, colliding into suspended objects circling the center frame, a deceiving space behind the objects, almost a void; think Spanish Golden Age still-life painters like Cotán.
MH: I like the idea that each object is tied to a time, and that is also true with the way something is made. There a certain ways of painting which take you to different places when you see the way it is painted. I like all of these things existing in a weird way in the end, in equilibrium or im-balancing … which I feel resembles our current time period of pluralism where it feels like anything goes. Plus, there are all of these artists making; if you take a look into some of my favorite artists you might not believe it because their work is so different. I think that is great, though; (like he mentioned before) it is a hallmark of the age we are living in, and anything might go as long as you are doing it in an interesting way and it is reflecting the moment we are in.
JM: I think that that has to do with the fact we are constantly latching on to an infinite amount of information around us. My conversations with some artists about their work, we will talk about a lot of things they are interested in before we come back full circle. In the same way I think it is good to have other interests, it is obviously good to look at art that does not look like your own.
I take a really long time to say my part of the exchange above. It probably had to do with the fact Hansel was my fourth visit this day, I was really ringing out my sponge of thoughts. I ask about these small sculptures nearby and Hansel describes the casting process. Then I point out a more three d-mensional wall piece that is different from the flat flat works everywhere else. He talks a bit about this idea and the collisions of three-dimensional objects, mostly white statues, like miniature greek statues, that would stand in for the viewer. When I was re-listening to this recording I forgot it wasn’t in the thick of the pandemic. He just wasn’t sharing this work with the public that was in his studio. When talking about these works I finally start to talk about the material and I point out my appreciation for the raw cardboard being used, and the simple gesture of spraying paint in one direction over a field of folds, like Tauba Auerbach does, and how these acting in tandem with each other aim to trick the viewer’s eyes a bit.
I talk about how it is nice to get in front of the works. Admitting I haven’t seen a lot of these works in person. I explain how I have had a lot of conversations about work being aware of being presented digitally as we more often see a piece of work online before we do in real life.
JM: When you see them online, they do red as digital. I had a whole conversation about this too, about seeing the work in person, especially works that contain the language of the internet. I think your works, for me, venture more into a more traditionally euro-centric fine-art way of masking numerous brush strokes, how these Western masters would do; you need to get right up against the surface at times to see them. Whereas, today’s post-analog type painters, who reference the digital data, they are more so masking surface texture completely, as if to mimic a screen. How do you negotiate how you handle your material?
MH: I think it depends on the object I am painting. When I paint a cartoon area I want it to feel flat — non-dimensional. when I am painting something that references its time, I don’t want it to sit in that time solely, but to still be referencing that time.
Now that we are talking about the presentation of images online, I ponder aloud to Hansel on the ability for a history of images to be manipulated and played with, as Hansel literally depicts in the bodies of work we have discussed thus far. The existence of the screen to mediate information and images is an avenue in which artists explore the boundaries physical material can create. I admit that I think some artwork looks better online and Hansel immediately and enthusiastically agrees. I give an example and admit I cared less about the work when I saw it in person, but I do respond more to works that have a deeper subject matter at hand that acknowledges corporeal experiences. However, in a reel of dozens of other portrayals of life and art and whatever shit-posts I scroll past on Instagram when I come across a work like the one I was grappling with above, I will totally find it interesting. Experiencing scale is important, though, and Hansel also brings up how craft is often erased, as does the human, when you experience art on the other side of a screen.
I acknowledge how there is such diversity in the way artists in ICT will relay images. This piling of images and information we deal with everyday… it is illuminating to see how others handle and translate it.
I asked Matt where he studied as a way to see who he might have been influenced by as he made his work (he received his BFA at Cooper, MFA at Yale). I wanted to know how he thought about his work then and now, and if he was ever settling into a comfortable way of making while he was in school. He told me pretty quick,
MH: I was making shit in grad school. Just real bad things.
JM: At Yale?!
MH: Probably the worst paintings I had ever made. What happens in my practice generally is I will work on something for three to four years and then I will find my way into another idea that I think is a slight move but really effects the way the work was made… Stuff happens all the time that keeps me from settling into being the guy who does “the thing.”
We talk about how boring it is to fulfill the same demand from people who are buying his work. He mentions how he went to school with Kehinde Wiley, and his work has essentially been the same since his time at Yale. The signature painting that Wiley makes becomes commodified in a way, Hansel explains.
MH: You either fight against what you have been doing and flip everything, or really refine and perfect what you are doing. And some artists choose that. And in terms of having a career and market, yes people like that consistency.
At almost the end of my visit, I thought about how Hansel shared with me he cares much about making what he wants to make. Considering how his work on view at the time I am writing this is none of what he previously had planned, this makes so much sense. Before leaving this studio visit in 2020, He was imagining to me a large scale-installation of painting, drawing, cut shapes and objects protruding off the wall and other raised surfaces. One of the last topics we talked about was this desire to make some massive wall installations that sounded like a spread out version of these paintings and objects created with the seductions depicted in Dutch Vanitas painting. There was a lot of passion and extravagance backing the description of what it might look like. Hansel might have executed a project at such a scale since then, but I haven’t seen evidence of it. And I am honestly far more inquisitive about the work in Inner Demon Delectatio, for many reasons, than I was invested in the plan he was sharing with me in this visit. His interests and instinct took him elsewhere, I feel, for the better.
It was time for him to say, fuck the consistency. Consistencies can still be found in the subject matter or handling of the material, but I was ready for him to find a new weirdness to embrace. The current work also more explosively reveals the lustful ideas just barely emerging in the work we were surrounded by during the visit in March of 2020.
Before I left his studio and before I leave this piece, I learn a very intimate detail about the context of Hansel’s practice. Asking bout when he came back to New York post-graduate school, he shares he returned in September of 2001. Like, the first week of September. While on a call, which he specifically states was on his cell phone, with a family member desperately checking in with him, he can hear the ascending of footsteps to the roof of his building. Once on the roof, he saw the first tower had already collapsed, the second aflame. He shares the sentiment of watching a tragedy and it isn’t clicking into reality. Is this normal? Then helplessness creeps in. He says “surreal” is not even a word to describe the tragedy that was September 11th. This marked his first moment back, but he stayed. But everything was at a standstill. He eventually got work as a scenic painter and he worked with a woman who was the godmother of two children who had lost their parents on that tragic day. He thought of her immediately because as of this conversation he had just recently asked someone to be his wife’s and his child’s godparent. That is some real life intensity. An artist’s practice can be contextualized by their perspective as a witness. We talk about how escaping to our worlds of making allow for deep reflection, too. Soon after this conversation everything would come to a standstill again, and the opportunity for escaping presents itself.
I have now run out of steam and tell Hansel I have been given an exceptional amount of information to distill. I congratulate him on his successes and express my excitement for whatever he chooses to do next, which can be seen until December 5th in person at The Hole or online here.
It was a privilege to visit with Matt Hansel in his studio before everything shut down again, and I thank him for the time he gave me to have this meandering conversation. Stay tuned for more interviews to follow from artists in In Crystallized Time, on view at Museum of Museums in Seattle, WA until December 27th.