#upon paper

Kim Gordon has been making music for thirty years. Still, when she blesses hordes of ecstatic young people in a Berlin gay bar with the neck of an electric guitar (almost taking out the chandelier in the process) – it is easy to understand why so many people consider her the coolest woman on the planet. Nonetheless, her bands – Sonic Youth, Free Kitten, Body/Head – have always been about more than rock n’ roll: They are about testing artistic boundaries and developing new forms of expression. Kim Gordon studied art at Otis College and was once a writer for Artforum. She exhibits internationally and is also a curator. She spoke to UPON PAPER about her works on paper, performativity, and the New York of the 1980s.

Boris Pofalla: I find your music as well as the paintings reproduced here striking in the way the body is allowed to enter the work, its resonance is always present. Is this viscerality something that comes from performance?

Kim Gordon: I always wanted to be a dancer as well as a visual artist, and I took a lot of Martha Graham classes and some ballet, so I’ve always been aware of movement and the body. But I could never have had any ideas for a dance choreography. I was very excited when I learned about Yvonne Rainer’s work and Simone Forte and then, when I played music, I discovered how electric guitar and bass are so visceral and how movement and rock gestures affect the sound, like they’re not always empty gestures originally, but become mannered and formalized over time. So yes, the answer is yes.

BP: Can you paint wherever you are? Do you need a routine? A studio?

KG: I can paint anywhere, but lately, I’ve had a bigger space to paint in, because what I’m doing has become messier. I have mixed feelings about it. I’ve never worked just because I felt that was something an artist was supposed to do every day in their studio. That’s because I used to think more conceptually about doing work to fit a particular situation, but I’m trying to do more painting without becoming too good at it, which is the way I approached playing an instrument.

I can’t escape being a performer, because it’s so much about who I am

BP: The paper used here is thin and delicate, almost transparent, while the paintings themselves are expressive and gestural. Do you experiment with different papers or is it sort of always the same?

I liked the thin paper because it wrinkles when you overload it with paint and abuse the material, making it more of a body or an object. I also like that the thin paper can show more of a narrative about other circumstances – like if it was torn or maybe someone picked it up off the floor (which I guess would be me). So yes, it gives it back a performative nature. Which I know isn’t cool – to be building on the “myth” of the artist in their studio –but I can’t escape being a performer, because it’s so much about who I am, so I’m always trying to think of a bigger structure for it.

BP: There’s always an element of chance involved when using watercolors; how much control do you need to have over the painting process?

KG: I like to do what you’re not supposed to do with watercolors, like load lots of water and paint on and fill up the space. But I guess I can control that.

BP: When you moved to New York in the late 1970s, you were an art-school graduate influenced by appropriation and conceptualism, but chose to start a band instead of pursuing a career in the art world. Why?

KG: In the 1980s, the art world in New York scared me and I discovered No Wave, which I thought was very compelling. I became interested in the relationship between the performer and the audience.

BP: Most people these days tend to focus on one field in order to become good at something (or simply more competitive). Is skill a necessity or a danger for an artist?

KG: I think it’s both: Sometimes skill leads you to a deeper place but, other times, it can keep you from having more interesting ideas.

BP: In the early 1980s, you worked at the fairly legendary Todd’s Copy Shop on Mott Street in Downtown Manhattan. What was so special about this copy shop?

KG: Everyone in the art world seemed to use it, as Todd was very sympathetic to artists. He would let us spend a lot of time with an artist on the color copier. Like I remember doing something for Tom Lawson that he was using in his show, and Jean-Michel Basquiat would also bring in stuff to copy that he would use in his paintings. Todd would give people deals.

BP: What are your current projects? Are we going to hear some new music by Kim Gordon anytime soon?

KG: I’ve been recording and playing with Bill Nace. Our improvisation-based duo is called Body/Head, named after the work of French filmmaker Catherine Breillat.

UPON PAPER is a new on-line and off-line project for contemporary international creative arts; spanning photography, the fine arts, design and the applied arts from architecture to animation, craft to technology.

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