Friday, September 14, 2012

Interview: Jake Ziemann at Tartine Bakery (San Francisco)

Jake Ziemann, Pull no. 1, Acrylic, spray paint & collage on paper, 2012, 15" x 11" (unframed).

the face painters:  Congratulations on your show, Pull, currently up at Tartine Bakery!  It seems like you haven't slowed down a bit since graduating from California College of the Arts in May.  How do you think your work has evolved over these last few months since completing your MFA?

Jake Ziemann:  Thanks.  It's true, I was in a high-paced rhythm near the end of my MFA, and one of my goals I set for myself was to continue this momentum after graduation.  Sort of "hit the grounding running" if you know what I mean?  When I took a step back from the body of work I came out of graduate school with, it was clear to me that my work was edging into a more non-representational realm.  I began the series of paintings thinking of each one as a different landscape scenario, but it was apparent that with each new painting I was less interested in the landscape and more concerned about the formal aspects within the work, i.e., the shapes and forms I was creating, the way the paint was interacting on the surface of the canvas, and the color relationships that I set forth.  My new work embraces this lack of subject matter, and in most cases source material, and is blatantly about the formal decisions I make in the studio.  The work does not hold onto any particularly subject or theme, yet there are forms and colors that get recycled and reused throughout the show.  The work has essentially begun to reflect what has been occurring with my painting process, and visually depicts the breaking down and building up of formal layers, teetering the line between structure and debris.


Jake Ziemann, Teeter, Oil & acrylic on canvas, 2012, 53" x 53".

tfp:  I'm interested in the relationship between your small-scale drawings and larger oil paintings.  What amount of influence does each have on the other when you're working in the studio?

JZ:  I think the smaller works are a way for me to get the ideas out more quickly, a way for me to use the process of translating cut-up old work and found forms to create fragmented sections of what appear in the larger paintings.  In the smaller drawings, I limit myself to only a few gestures, whereas in the larger paintings, I usually labor over them and use many methods of applying layers of pigment over the surface.  I think of the smaller work as extractions pulled from the larger pieces.  I take a single thing I see present in a larger oil painting, for example a cutout form, and make that the main focus of a drawing.  My works on paper are refreshing to make and act as a reprieve from over-thinking and over-working.  I foresee them influencing my paintings more and more as methods of isolating potential solutions that could in turn help me un-complicate the irresolute mess I make on the canvas.  They ultimately help me make decisions and become less hesitant with the brush, which for me is not always an easy task.

tfp:  Where do you think your paintings will go from here?  Will you stay on your current path or shake things up even more?

JZ:  It's hard to say.  I'm quite enamored with the process of formal translation and extraction I've begun, and by no means have any plans to stop it.  I can envision getting more entrenched into my method of rebuilding and breaking down forms to a point that it implodes.  I don't know what the resulting work would look like or have any clue how long this would take, but the possibility of taking something so far that it almost obliterates any sense of lucidity within the work truly tempts me.  I do, however, always have grand ideas and plans for the next big project.  For the moment I've written them down and decided to focus on diving headfirst into my current method of making.  I'm sure I will get restless, but I think I'm going to let the work lead me blindly into an uncertain terrain for the time being.

tfp:  Do you have anything else exciting coming up on the horizon?

JZ:  No upcoming exhibitions; I, however, am going to Vermont Studio Center for a four-week stint this winter.

tfp:  Thanks, and congratulations again!

If you would like to see more of Jake's work, check out his personal website here: www.jakeziemann.com.  

And if you're in the Bay Area, don't forget to come to the opening reception of Pull on September 19th from 8 - 10PM at Tartine Bakery (600 Guerrero Street, San Francisco, CA, 94110).  See you there!

No comments:

Post a Comment