FLUX Hawaii / Jared Yamanuha

Writers

February 5th, 2012

Getting to Know a Star

Artist John Koga

Google “contemporary art in Hawai‘i,” and you won’t find information on John Koga. You probably should though, since Koga is situated at the center of it all. (Trying to understand the art scene without consulting Koga is like learning about the solar system but not the sun.) He is an artist with a planetary personality, the former chief preparator at The Contemporary Museum, and, by his own admission, a string-pulling puppet master. He’s the guy behind the guy. One question artists and collectors ask me more than any other is, “Do you know John Koga?”

I meet John Koga at his childhood home in Mānoa Valley. We take a seat at a table on the lanai with iced coffees. Orbiting us are whimsical plaster pieces, sliced rock sculptures, and a bronze toilet on a towering stainless steel pedestal. I ask Koga about the origins of his work.

“A big part of me is more than my art,” says Koga, who redirects my question. “It’s a drive to make Hawai‘i known for its artists.” This, I discover, is Koga’s primary mandate. “We have talent that matches up with the rest of the world, and we need to get them on the map.” He is referring to Hawai‘i’s modern masters: Tadashi Sato, Satoru Abe and other local boys who moved to New York after WWII to study art. At the time, abstract expressionism eclipsed the city. Many of those NYC transplants returned home, bringing their versions of that American art movement to the islands. Hawai‘i’s art history, without question, begins with them. “They set a foundation for us that is unreal,” says Koga.

While it remains undeniable that Hawai‘i has its share of talented artists, it seems universally acknowledged that the lack of an extensive cultural infrastructure – specifically collectors – makes being an artist in Hawai‘i prohibitive. Not so, says Koga. “When I first met Satoru Abe, he said, ‘All you need is three collectors, and you’ll be OK for the rest of your life,’” Koga recalls. “So there are enough collectors here.”

Still, space is crucial. With limited places to exhibit work, connecting artists with collectors is challenging. Koga, however, has found a practical, ingenious solution: one-night shows, which he stages in any space he can acquire for a single evening. “I’m throwing a one-nighter this Saturday, by the way, so please come,” Koga says. I ask where. “I’m moving out, so I’ll have an empty house. You see how that works?”

Saturday arrives. I wander into Koga’s home in Makiki Heights. Works on paper by Lawrence Seward and Jason Teraoka checker a wall in the living room. Koga’s pieces and drawings by children plaster the walls of a bedroom. I go outside, crack open a beer, and meander around Koga’s sprawling property with a few friends. More drinking ensues.

I dive into the parade of pupus: pasta salad with tuna and capers, Foodland ahi poke, La Pizza Rina pies, kalbi, chow mein noodles, mixed greens, fruit and cheese platters, chips with goat cheese dip, mini potato croquettes, shredded pork sandwiches, desserts galore. A few dogs comb the vicinity for morsels that may have fallen from paper plates above. The alcohol consumption continues.

Soon, other artists show up, and Koga’s empty shell of a home transforms into a gallery. Tae Kitakata’s cursive letter cutouts, tethered to red balloons, float across the room. Sculpted plastic flowers by Maika‘i Tubbs bloom on windowsills. Abstract works by Aaron Padilla and Marc Thomas grow from walls. Works by the Sculpture Club alter ledges into pedestals. “Sold” signs appear next to pieces, money exchanges hands, and pieces leave with new owners. I marvel at this microcosm of the art world.

Later in the night, Koga weaves through clusters of people, his trajectory shifting every few minutes. A large blue sticker, in the shape of a star, is stuck to his forehead. The perfect metaphor, I thought: a star hurtling through a constellation of artists, collectors and museum people. So, did I get to know John Koga? Yes, as well as any one person can know a star.

Filed UnderFeatures Issue 8 / Art

AuthorJared Yamanuha

PhotographerJohn Hook

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November 16th, 2011

Homegrown Contemporary: Artist Keith Tallett

Portrait by Aaron Yoshino
Art image by Sally Lundburg

The Honolulu Academy of Arts is tranquil at eleven o’clock in the morning when I meet artist Keith Tallett. He is tall, sports a shaved head, and his attire – a black graphic T-shirt, colorful surf shorts and Reef slippers – throws me off for a second. We trade pleasantries and jet towards the gallery in the back of the museum, where three of his pieces are on display as part of Artists of Hawai‘i 2011.

Inside, people weave through the pedestals and false walls, their eyes hopscotching from photograph to painting to sculpture. Tallett walks towards a glossy, monolithic slab and stands right in front of it. The fetishistic finish of the piece, comprised of layers of resin and fiberglass, glints under the spotlights.

“It’s kind of counter-cultural and lowbrow,” says Tallett, referring to his using the materials and procedures of surfboard shaping in his paintings. He is soft-spoken yet articulate, with a penchant for peppering serious art talk with local colloquialisms. The painting, I realize, is not hanging flat against the wall; it’s propped up against it, like a surfboard.

“It’s a three-dimensional form that you interact with,” says Tallett, who didn’t want his pieces to simply rest flush against the wall in the way that, say, traditional paintings do. He insists that his works proffer an experiential element, and it’s true: stand close enough, and the patterns and surface envelop you. “That’s the whole thing about surfing and the materials I use,” Tallett adds. “You have to experience it, you have to feel it.”

Growing up in Hilo, making art wasn’t a part of Tallett’s life. In fact, the idea of being an artist didn’t occur to him until college, in Los Angeles, where he took his first painting classes. He realized his experiences in Hilo primed him for life as an artist. “Hawaiian or plantation culture did very resourceful things, but they never called it art,” he says. “My dad made skateboards and surfboards, and it wasn’t like painting them was hip or artistic, it was just out of necessity!”

Tallett returned home, obtained his bachelor of fine arts degree in painting from University of Hawai‘i, Hilo, then headed back to California, where he pursued his master’s degree in painting at San Francisco Art Institute. There, he encountered harsh criticism. “I got whooped my first semester,” he remembers.

He returned home, however, and had an epiphany. “When I came back to Hawai‘i on a break, I ended up surfing and making boards, and, ‘uh-oh,’ a light bulb went off in my head.” He soon began to import the procedures and ideas of surfboard construction into his paintings. He cleared out his studio, sold his oil paints, and started from scratch.

While Tallett explains the genesis of his pieces, a crowd of students quickly accumulates around us. It turns out they are a class from Punahou School. One student asks a question about the patterns Tallett uses, which I naively thought were derived from Polynesian tattoos.

“These prints are all tire marks,” he explains. “They’re actually tire treads.”

“Ohhh,” everyone says, in unison.

“I wanted to have a pattern that’s universal,” Tallett elaborates. “You’re on these patterns that go around, that are used and discarded everyday, and we don’t know anything about them.”

His own artistic practices aside, Tallett and his wife, the artist Sally Lundburg, form one-half of Aggroculture – a Hamakua-based art collective – with another art couple, Scott Yoell and Margo Ray. Given the diminutive size and relative insularity of the Big Island’s art scene, it provides them with a support system in a place with very little. “For me and the people in Aggroculture, we need to figure out how to do this and get it out, and just get the audience more aware,” says Tallett.

We part ways. Tallett throws me an open-handed shaka before disappearing into the gallery. I go back, one last time, to look at his paintings. Gazing at the reflective surfaces of his large-scale, candy-colored paintings, I think to myself, this is not what ‘local art’ is supposed to look like. Or is it?

For more information visit keithtallett.com or agrroculture.org.

Filed UnderFeatures Issue 7 / Art

AuthorJared Yamanuha

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November 16th, 2011

A Closer Look: 9 Exhibitions by John Koga That’ll Blow Your Hair Back

John Koga, at one with nature. Photo by Maile Koga.

All photos courtesy of the artist.

Here’s some food for thought: John Koga, one of Hawai‘i’s best and most established artists, was once a young emerging artist who carved depictions of the female anatomy out of avocado seeds. Yes, the man whose name is synonymous with contemporary art in Hawai‘i was, years ago, a loose cannon, a badass with a penchant for ripping up the rulebook and hoisting his middle finger at pesky protocol. He churned out work at furious pace, often staging six to seven shows in a single year. His prolific output, let it be said, would be the envy of large-scale sausage factories.

For newcomers to the contemporary art scene (this writer included), Koga seems an intrinsic part of the establishment rather than an institutional troublemaker. I realized this was a silly misconception when I looked through Koga’s archives and saw his progression over the past 20 years: everything from the aforementioned avocado carvings to monolithic commissioned pieces to radical installations that would be impressive even by today’s standards. (Reader: it took me several nights to sift through everything and, according to Koga, a substantial number of his shows weren’t even documented!) With that in mind, here’s a closer look at nine of Koga’s exhibitions that should, in my opinion, send your follicles aflutter.

Kirsch Gallery (Punahou School)
found objects, stones, bronze, adobe
1990
Fresh comes close to describing what Koga (sculptures on the right) and Lawrence Seward (wall pieces on the left) were up to over two decades ago. Koga collected stones from his mother’s home in Manoa and caged them up; Seward gathered white and black detritus that drifted ashore along the reef runway on Lagoon Drive and boxed them up. The artists seem to be in cahoots conceptually: both take pre-existing forms and, sans alteration, corral them in rigid, rectilinear boundaries. They’re like canvases painted with objects, or landscape paintings painted, quite literally, with the landscape.

UH Art Gallery Rooftop (Mānoa)
shipping pallets, wood, bronze, stone, metal, crushed glass, reeds
1991
Koga’s thuggish-ruggish tendencies, which included shrink-wrapping the Art Department, earned him a reputation as a pain-in-the-ass provocateur. He stipulated that his MFA exhibition would be in the main gallery, not the commons gallery; it would be on display for months, not the designated two weeks; and, of course, it was his way or the highway. So when the powers that be told Koga to hit the road, he thought outside the box: the rooftop! Of course! (Koga, you diabolical genius!) Using his pickup truck, Koga collected approximately eighteen hundred wooden shipping pallets and built a complex environment for his sculptures. (Reader: it should come as no surprise that Koga received his MFA in ceramics, yet his MFA exhibition consisted of, you guessed it, exactly zero clay.) His outdoor pièce de résistance transformed the rooftop from ho-hum to “Ho nah!”

Borders Books and Music (Ward Centre)
found objects
1990s
In the late ’80s and early ’90s, the reef runway, on Lagoon Drive, was a veritable goldmine of supplies for Koga and crew. Why buy expensive tubes of paint and canvas when the ocean offers material free of charge? Koga, alongside architect Dean Sakamoto and others, made each and every piece in this show in-situ, down at their seaside art store. What better way for artists of Hawai‘i to make art in Hawai‘i that’s about Hawai‘i?

River Street Artist Spaces (Chinatown)
cigarettes
1993
Although he wasn’t a stalwart cigarette smoker (what sane smoker would sacrifice so much precious cigarettes in the name of art?) Koga was an occasional clove smoker with a habit of making sculptures. In fact, it’s shocking that Koga didn’t develop a hardcore addiction to nicotine, since it absorbed through his fingertips during the long and tedious process of constructing his tobacco towers. When the shop on Young Street, where he purchased packs from, refused to sell him any more – they thought he was an undercover police officer – he replied, “No! I need it!”

Sisu Gallery (Chinatown)
adobe
1994-1995
As Koga made his foray into fatherhood, he quickly mastered the art of a completely different nature: changing diapers. “I got obsessed with doo-doo,” Koga told me, as the daily routine inadvertently triggered his preoccupation with poop. This scatological exhibition, made out of what some have dubbed “Kogadobe,” may be a sly, subversive commentary by the artist about the amount of crap that’s displayed in galleries. In any case, this was one shitty show – but in the best way possible.

Bishop Square (Downtown)
paper, plastic bags, string, sticks
1990s

Taking discarded items and turning them into art is one thing; gaining inspiration from the actual physical qualities of garbage is, well, something else. Leave it up to Koga to find insight in the unconventional ways his friends stacked and balanced trash in the corners of a communal workspace. For this exhibition, organized by Dean Sakamoto, Koga stuffed paper into plastic bags, tied them together into tightly crumpled balls, festooned them with sticks, and presented them on the floor. Garbage never looked this good.

BOOM Gallery (Chinatown)
wood, paint
late ’90s
This brobdingnagian plug and socket set, built by Koga and a cohort, was constructed, painted, then subsequently broken down and reassembled in order to get it into this second-floor gallery, only to be thrown away after the exhibition. Kudos to Koga and Charles Valoroso, owner of BOOM Gallery, for staging a complicated exhibition with more “wow” factor than commercial appeal. (There were, however, manini maquettes for sale on the back wall.) The gallery’s four-letter name, written in majuscule letters, seems the perfect way to describe this colossal commentary on being connected.

Workspace Gallery (Kaimuki)
clear packaging tape
2004
Nature is Koga’s BFF. They’re like this (writer crosses his fingers together). It’s the one component that remains constant throughout his entire career, from early woodcarvings to rock sculptures to this exhibit. Using cases of packaging tape, Koga’s friends mummified his entire body before cutting him out. Imagine their surprise when, after removing Koga from the thick plastic carapace, they were greeted with cascading rivers of perspiration. Sweaty souvenirs aside, Koga spruced up his hallow doppelgängers with facsimiles of the natural world: one replica is augmented with a branch sprouting from its torso, while another duplicate is locked in an intimate embrace with a large tree. If artists of Hawai‘i can’t compete with nature, why not join it?

Japanese Cultural Center (Mō‘ili‘ili)
plaster
2006
Koga’s recent puka-laden plaster sculpture forms, which straddle the divide between flora and fauna are, for the artist, a return to beauty. Plaster, Koga’s material of choice, seems the perfect platform for the exploration of handmade forms that could easily be mistaken for alien life forms on a distant planet. The installation itself resembles an intergalactic field dotted with prehistoric cocoons, out of which unknowable things will inevitably hatch – but what? Like Koga’s own artistic development, no one knows for sure. I, for one, can’t wait to see what emerges.

Filed UnderIssue 8 Online Exclusives / Art

AuthorJared Yamanuha

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November 15th, 2011

Q & A With Andrew Rose

Noreen Naughton, "Irish Vista & Pine Trees," 2010. Courtesy Andrew Rose Gallery

On First Friday, November 4th, Andrew Rose Gallery officially opened its doors to the public with Intervals, an exhibition of oil paintings and drawings by Noreen Naughton. Recently I had the opportunity to visit the space and speak with Director Andrew Rose about his gallery. Below is a snippet of our conversation.

Stupid question: What exactly is a gallerist?
It’s someone who has a commitment to curating work, to putting on exhibitions, to providing a critical context for art, and helping explain that to their patrons. We do have gallerists in Hawai‘i, but they’re not necessarily where you’d find them. Inger Tully is a gallerist, even though she works at a museum; Gelareh Khoie at thirtyninehotel is a gallerist; Gaye Chan, one of my artists, is a gallerist.

So as a gallerist, what are you looking for in your artists?
I look for someone whose voice and vision interest me personally. If I don’t get intrigued or inspired by the work, I can’t work with it. That’s the first thing: is the art good, in my opinion. Second, are they committed to it? Have they been doing it for a long time? I’m interested in presenting committed artists, and usually it takes until you’re thirty-something to say, “You know what? I have a job in the arts, I’ve done some shows, I’m gonna stick with this.”

Describe Andrew Rose Gallery.
The mission for the gallery is to present important artwork that has significant connections to Hawai‘i. I’m interested in having the gallery be a space in which we see and interact with the visual culture that has developed here, and I want the core of what we do to engage with this community and its questions. The artists with whom I work are all residents here, they all absorb the energy, ideas and the imagery of this place.

Why set up in Downtown?
Everybody comes Downtown. This corner—from Hotel and Bishop Street, to King and Bishop Street—is the crossroads of culture and commerce. There is an extraordinary amount of visibility here. To be a part of one of the most active places in the State made sense.

There are galleries here in Hawai‘i. Tell me how yours is different.
It is my understanding that nobody else properly represents artists, and we’ve begun to do that. Noreen is now represented by the gallery. I have work by other artists, and I look forward to representing more of the gallery artists, but that’s a major relationship change. Representing artists is much like the way an agent in Hollywood represents an actor: their careers are in my hands. As far as I understand, nobody has done that before.

What do you say to someone who feels intimated by the white cube gallery and contemporary art?
The elimination of visual distraction is designed to assist viewers connect with the art so they can develop their own responses and grow as a result. Questions? We’re here to help – feel free to ask.

Intervals opened on First Friday. What can people expect to see?
An explosively colorful body of work by an artist whose mastery of paint is exceptional.

Andrew Rose Gallery
Bishop Square – Pauahi Tower
1003 Bishop Street, Suite 120, Ground Floor
andrewrosegallery.com

Filed UnderBlog / Art

AuthorJared Yamanuha

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August 2nd, 2011

A Closer Look: 8 Reasons to See Artists of Hawai’i

Photos by Mike Orbito.

Wish you could hold a magnifying glass over Hawai’i’s art scene? Nursing a burning desire to see what’s cracking with contemporary art on the outer islands? There’s a simple, quick solution that involves purchasing a single ticket to one location. Make your way to the Honolulu Academy of Arts for Artists of Hawai‘i 2011, where you’ll find 118 works of art by 79 artists from four islands. Here are eight works of art from the juried show, and, if my math is correct, that makes 110 more reasons to visit the museum, pronto. Go get inspired.

Maikaʻi Tubbs
Dissection of a Seventh Grade Eating Complex, 2011
Styrofoam food containers

True story: I’m driving down Meheula Parkway while my friend, who shall remain nameless, consumes your prototypical plate lunch: two scoops of rice, one scoop of mac salad, and some breaded meat patty bathed in brown gravy. After inhaling the aforementioned items with considerable ease, he nonchalantly hurls the empty container out the car window, as if it’s protocol. “This guy!” I shout. This, for unknown reasons, catapulted to the forefront of my memory when I first glimpsed this intricate Styrofoam tower. Tubbs tweaked the containers into a city-like complex, replete with ladders leading from one non-biodegradable level to the next (think Nintendo’s Donkey Kong circa 1980s). The styrene sculpture could double as a dream home for diminutive Barbie dolls or serve as a bastion for beleaguered G.I. Joes. The old adage, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” seems apropos: While my friend jettisons them from car windows, Tubbs transforms them into art.

Maika‘i Tubbs - dissection of a sevent grade eating complex

Aaron Padilla
Union, 2011
wood (pine)

Aaron Padilla’s serpentine sculpture, comprised of wedges cut from lumber and then reconstructed, free-stands in such a perplexing fashion that you’ll be forgiven for overlooking its formal qualities. The way in which Padilla is able to make wood interweave, with such ease and precision, ensures that you’ll see your shoelaces or anything entangled in a novel way.

3. donald dugal - twenty improvs on a bougainvillea hedge

Reem Bassous
Once There Was, Once There Wasn’t, 2010
burnt paper

What would happen if the time machine in Back to the Future ran out of plutonium to power the flux capacitor, and all Marty McFly and Doc had for fuel was a case of Fruit Punch Four Loko to transcend time and space? Probably this. And they probably wouldn’t transcend time or space, either. Bassous’s pyrographic piece recalls abandoned automobile shells in industrial areas, or police photographs of car crashes, and should be required viewing for anyone entertaining the idea of shotgunning beers and jumping behind the wheel.

Rachelle Dang
Portrait #1 (Demonstrators Rally in Yemen, Jan. 27, 2011), 2011
watercolor, colored pencil, ink & graphite on paper

The bravura brushwork in Dang’s figurative piece provides ample reason to gaze endlessly at her portrait of a Yemeni protester. Stand inches from the surface and the sheer accumulation of lines and dots begins to resemble crowds of demonstrators seen from above. Even the speed with which the portrait has been willed into existence echoes the swiftness with which the Arab Spring materialized across North Africa and the Middle East.

Lawrence Seward
Brain Drift, 2011
wood, plaster, steel, paint

Seward’s playfully brainy sculpture may elicit a chuckle, but the layers of meaning and ideas that you can parse from this piece seem endless, like the verses of Odd Future’s Tyler the Creator. Is Seward commenting on the cerebral nature of a lot of contemporary art? Something to think about.

Bradley Capello
Biscuit Diamond Altar, 2011
paper, cardboard, found materials

A wacky spectacle hemorrhaging wacky spectacles, an edification of edible delights, a view into the heretical hinterlands of high art: Welcome to the world of Bradley Capello. Here you’ll find oishi chocolates, glinting gemstones, and muscle men encapsulated in a Rumours Nightclub-ish cage. No proselytizing here, just pure pleasure. Genuflection and prayer at this altar are not required, but if you devote hours to playing Bejeweled Blitz, it’s, like, the same thing, no?

Kloe Kang
Invisible Cities: Hotel Makai 1, 2010
graphite on mylar

Walk through Chinatown inebriated on a bustling Friday night, and the vespertine experience seems synonymous with Kloe Kang’s panoramic cityscape. Perspective, scale and geography collapse, giving way to the recollection of images and incidents: the rococo cracks in a window, the fragrant smoke that curlicued from a restaurant, the massive jittery head of the lion dancer, the way that King, Hotel, Smith and Nu‘uanu seemed to be a single, complicated street, as if someone took a map of the city and crumpled it into a ball.

ARTISTS OF HAWAI’I 2011
On Display until September 25, 2011
Honoulu Academy of Arts
900 S Beretania St.

For more information, visit the Academy’s website HERE.

Filed UnderBlog / Art

AuthorJared Yamanuha

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