On Friday, March 11, 2011, we had the opportunity to visit Paul Mpagi Sepuya. He is one of three current Artist in Residents at The Studio Museum in Harlem. You can see more of his work here:
http://www.paulsepuya.com/
The reviews -
I was really intrigued by the honesty of Paul Mpagi Sepuya. His portraits, to steal your word, were sensitive, empathic and revealing. He laid everything about his subjects bare (sometimes literally) in front of you and I felt the art and process were very natural and pure. I am working as a photographer with the word and concept of exposure. What does it mean to expose oneself? Expose film to light? Exposure has all of these connotations of revealing a secret, possibly against someone’s will. Making the private public. Within the camera body, it is taking the impermanent and making it permanent. I see it as taking transient, fleeting ideas and making them tangible. Exposing things, sharing them, photographing them is taking the subconscious and making it conscious. I think that issue was incredibly similar and pertinent to Paul’s work. It was like seeing this idea that has been bouncing around in my head and seeing it right in front of me, realized through his work. He exposes these people so that they can see themselves better, so the world can see their personalities and temperaments, whether they are lasting or only momentary. The photographs are used as a window, to see into the people, but also in Paul’s studio life. Especially in the most recent photographs, when you see photographs within images, there is a layering system that places you in the context and fabric of Paul’s friendship circle. Everything visual is given away, but nothing else. Paul was very reserved about writing or explaining his pieces, which only increased their authenticity. The images were able to explain relationships and characters without words, which was refreshing and again, a very pure simple way of working.
Another great thing about visiting Paul was that we got to see firsthand what a fellowship looks like. It is one of the very few times someone can dedicate their entire life to creating, without worrying about showing or money or other responsibilities. I really think spending that much time in the studio would make his work evolve significantly, and I think it has. I don’t know if this was the final stage, his work is slowly transitioning and we met him at a relatively young stage in his life, so there is a possibility for so much more. I’m also curious to see the show to see where he ended up after a year of sitting alone with his work, which I personally think could be daunting and overwhelming. That said, Paul seemed incredibly comfortable in his own skin, surrounded by the people he cares about, trying to get to know them through his art. After meeting him, it definitely was a practice I would love to have one day.
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Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s photographs were really good. I don’t know much of anything about photography, digital photography, networking, or queer culture, but I do know a well-composed image when I see one. His work seems to be something of an expression of the idea of life as art. All of his subjects, past and present, are very directly parts of his experience and identity. There is a very honest quality about this type of work, which uses form to explore latent content. Other than the somewhat tenuous presumption that this kind of work can expose psychological undertones of one’s social environment, it’s not very presumptuous. At no point does Paul say that his work will actually reveal to him the nuance of his social network, his family dynamic, or the world at large. Aside from a hope that patterns will emerge and visual cues will become clearer, the artist seems to have no expectation for how the work is to function.
And work should be made with no preconceived notions of how it is to function, as it’s pretty impossible to predict the future. By reacting to his environment, taking things in as he sees them, being true to his perspective, Paul is making the most me meaningful contribution an artist can make. To know that reality is worth exploring or contemplating is about as much lucidity that an artist can ask for; the rest, I imagine, comes with a good deal of trial and error.
While it is true that Paul’s work is truly less than perfect (some of the portraits border on full-fledged commercial work—though that’s not to say that isn’t reflective of his point of view and his career) he is certainly on the right track to an artistic life that reflects true devotion.
Though he himself seemed wary of this designation, I see Paul as a maker of documents. However personal his work, he is in essence cataloguing fashion and design and even demeanor from the perspective of a young gay male in the early 21st century. Tired as it may sound, he is like Baudelaire’s flâneur, taking impressions of his surroundings, which amount to his social connections and experience with media, and turning those impressions into reified images. These images do partake in a fetishization of subject, but it’s all part of the experience, and therefore must be part of the record.
But this documentary quality is certainly not all Paul’s work has to offer. In an image-obsessed society where the only constants are states of ephemera and constant change, the artifactual quality of printed photographs is something worth preserving and presenting. The auratic presence of a photograph, framed and installed as carefully as in one’s home, is one of the few things keeping lens-based imagery from functioning as mere data. Installation and physical context is crucial to the success of this work, and the success of much photograph-based explorations of self in general. In addressing the digital by resisting it (inasmuch as digital is not the final manifestation of the image’s form) Paul’s work in particular participates in a complex dialogue much too grand to comprehend at this point in time, but certainly in need of as many voices as possible.
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Visting Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s studio at the Studio Museum in Harlem was a welcome change from some of the other artists who have visited us. Though I enjoyed many of their presentations, and felt they were valuable experiences, hearing a young, working artist fresh out of school was reassuring and, I felt, represented a goal that many of us, as young artists still in school, are working towards and which could be attainable in the not-so-distant future. Paul’s intimate portraiture of his friends, acquaintances, and lovers recalled many aspects of the history of the genre of portraiture, especially in photography. It seemed especially reminiscent to me of Richard Avedon, and a little bit of Felix Gonzalez Torres, only without the heart-wrenching political and AIDS-related discourse. Though Paul’s work was clearly homoerotic, it didn’t seem to be focusing on a sexuality discourse or solely promoting itself as a homosexual work, but rather had more to do with the individual subjects themselves and their relationships to the photographer; as Paul said, the nudity and perceived sexuality of the image is already totally apparent and unavoidable, so the central focus of the work can move from the obvious to the underlying emotion of the subject and his relationship to Paul.
Though hearing Paul speak about his work made very clear sense to me, I found I didn’t quite see what he found important evident in the works themselves. I appreciated that they were all shot in the studio, in natural daylight, and the subjects, for the most part, posed themselves. However, I found that certain elements of texture, photographic composition, and emotion were lacking in the images. While I understood that Paul wanted the comfortable environment of his studio, with its usual accoutrements, I thought the subjects might have been much more natural, or shown a wider range of emotions, if they were in an environment truly familiar to them, and much more intimate (appropriate for the intimacy of the bodies), such as a bedroom or bathroom. Furthermore, many of the objects found in the studio which were inserted into the images seemed to me a bit compositionally sloppy, as though they had little to do with the interaction between subject and environment.
That being said, I did particularly like the simplest of these portraits, which Paul passed around in book form (Beloved Object & Amorous Subject, Revisited). This series featured straightforward portraits of men mostly from the mid-chest up against a plain white background. Though these were the least complicated of his photographs, I found them the most emotionally moving and visually interesting, since they relied merely on the faces of the men portrayed.
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It is a rare opportunity to encounter a working artist who can converse with a crowd as candidly as Paul Mpagi Sepuya was able to. His easygoing and colloquial air gave him a sense of familiarity that I felt was most relatable of all the artists we have had the chance to speak with. While artists like Beverly Semmes and Kate Gilmore appear to be quite established in their practices, Paul seems like he is yet to encounter more turning points in his work. His position as an artist is also one that I can see myself being in before even entering the realms of Beverly or Kate.
The questions that Paul attempts to examine in his portraits are ones that I find to be much more applicable to our generation. The way in which he looks at and illustrates the self-contained interactions and relationships between people of such a distinct subculture has the quality of exclusivity iconic of our generation’s social networks. Paul stated himself that he mainly photographs his own friends, a decision that I found a bit disappointing. The portraits become more about compiling an album of beauty, a task made simpler by the fact that almost every one of his subjects was a young and attractive gay man with an athletic or lean build, and not necessarily about investigating or dissecting the individual. Although his photographs were beautifully constructed with pleasant lighting and some interestingly staged objects, I found them to be somewhat surface. Perhaps they would have seemed a bit more convincing had he talked about them as if he had intentioned for the photographs to have that appeal. He said that he wanted to explore and illustrate the relationships between his subjects and himself as well as his subjects with other subjects. However, when every subject begins to look like one attractive person of an ocean of many attractive people, it becomes less about the individual and more about the whole group of people, a clique even, that you are unable to penetrate into. From what I gathered from the studio visit, Paul seemed to be trying to convey scenes of disrobing. However, by physically and literally disrobing many of his subjects, he ends up with many magazine-style shots attempting to look artistic, with images of nudity that ends up shielding the individual rather than revealing him. It is strange how that happens; the loss in translation that occurs when nudity actually acts as more of a veil.
I really enjoyed the books that Paul passed around that showed his collaborative works as well as the descriptions of the way in which he displayed his photographs in an installation setting. I think it is particularly important for an artist like him to utilize the flexibility of installation and other media to dive further into otherwise surface imagery in order to avoid the glossy shallow quality of magazines. I found that the most interesting images were in “The Accidental Egyptian and Occidental Arrangements,” the book that showed the works he made when he collaborated with fellow artist Timothy Hull to compose collages that incorporated his portraits through cutting and Xeroxing. It is exciting to meet an artist who will likely work alongside our generation when we try our hands at entering the art world and to see the various stages of investigation he is currently immersed in.
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The visit to the Studio Museum in Harlem was very interesting. I enjoyed Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s photography, especially viewing it within the context of his studio as his photos involve his space so much. There was something about the simplicity of the photograph, referencing popular portrait photography, and the use of what would seem to be simple nude figures, revealing seemingly complicated relations and issues, especially as the photographs informed each other that appealed to me. Work that has this simplicity, leaving slight nuance to be thought over is very pleasing to me. Paul’s work functioned in this way. There was visual simplicity that directed straight at personal relationships. This personal or documentary aspect finds strength in the subject that it’s depicting. The nude male figure, and the gay community are not things that inhabit the popular consciousness or visual landscape. His presence as an African American within the art world is also present within this work, although not quite as strongly as the depiction of issues of sexuality.
Other than his work specifically, it was also nice to see the studio space of Paul that seemingly matched his art practice very well. Stripped down to a computer and a camera, with framed photos occupying the rest of the space besides a few seats that were visible within his work. Seeing a successful young artist and their practice is motivational. He certainly did not work in the manner of a traditional painter, and seemed fairly free in what he was doing. He didn’t seem too caught up in restrictions of his presentation and appeared very confident in what he was doing even though it seemed to be in an unfinished and evolving state.
The museum itself was not quite as stimulating as visiting Paul’s studio, but I did find the space pretty interesting in how it gave off a different aura to me than a traditional museum. I’m not sure if that is because I had just visited the studios above it, or because I had just been stuck in a back elevator, but it felt like it was breathing a little bit more than other places. The location was also probably part of this different feeling. It certainly is not Chelsea, and gives the museum more of a local feel than even most galleries in Manhattan.
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Visiting Paul Sepuya’s studio at the Studio Museum of Harlem is comparable to entering the fabulously lighted apartment of a dear friend. Immediately upon entering, Paul’s bright demeanor puts his guests at ease. Such a personality is well suited for the types of portraits Paul creates. There is a slight editorial air to them but it is also tempered by the comfort of his friends in the photos. By photographing people from within his circle of friends, Paul is sure to produce an image of his subject that is pure. The simplicity of the photographs allows the beauty of the body and the light that they are cast in to be fully appreciated.
As a fellow in the Studio Museum of Harlem’s artist in residency program, Paul has been given a small corner studio to make his own. With white washed walls and oversized windows that allow the light to pour in, Sepuya has created a workspace that is perfectly tailored to his portraiture. There are no frills or elaborate props, just a simple back drop for his subtly complex images. This is a functioning workspace from the photos tacked to the wall to the orange peel delicately juxtaposed with a lusciously green plant. A study in still life.
On the surface, Sepuya’s photographs could be compared to still life portraiture. They are static, unmoving. Yet, upon closer inspection the faces and gestures of his subjects truly breathe. Without the self-imposed barriers of clothing, the protective armature of daily life, the subjects of the photographs are baring themselves to the viewer. Sepuya has stripped down his subjects to reveal their truest essence, the way he sees them and cares for them and loves them.
In many ways Paul Sepuya’s images are about love. Not necessarily amorous love, but the unwavering love of a dear friend. The type of love that never passes harsh judgment. It is under the protective gaze of the watchful lover that the subjects of these photographs relinquish their vanity and thrive in vulnerability.
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It is always a fascinating experience to visit an artist’s studio, see how and where they work and get an opportunity to discuss their work and process. Paul was delightful genial, spry and insightful on his work and made me appreciate and understand his work far more than I would have had I stumbled upon them at an exhibit. While portraiture has been done inside and out throughout art history, I was very intrigued by the manner of his presentation which managed to elude many of these conventions. The unmounted photographs, sprawled on tables and ledges throughout the studio, turned his works into a cohesive installation in which the different portraits around the room interacted and informed one another as opposed to single portraits which stand on their own.
In the art world and market, it seems that artists who represent a minority are often pigeonholed as creating work within the paradigm of their minority. Chitra Ganesh spoke about how many people label her work as “Indian” and dismiss many of the other aspects of her work. Many women seem to also be stuck in this labeled mode of feminist work, regardless of the content. Often it seems that only white males create mainstream work and everybody else is tied to his or her “other” identity (not that this is a particularly novel or profound concept, just something that I hope we can overcome. I have seen Gabriel Orozco described as a Latino artist, an aspect that you would be hard pressed to find in much of his work).
Paul faces this pigeonholing on two fronts; he is both an African-American as well as a homosexual. Paul’s work would not be categorized as “African-American,” especially compared to the other artists we saw at the Studio Museum of Harlem, although he is a fellow there, a position only African-American’s can hold (which perhaps is a testament to the Studio Museum’s desire to not only have African-American artists whose work deals with their own heritage.). Paul’s work, from people’s reactions and the way he spoke about it, is considered “homosexual” artwork. The models are predominantly male and often overtly homosexual and Paul(the photographer)’s relationship with many of these men is not platonic but clearly intimate and sexual. However I reject the idea that his work is within a paradigm of homosexual artists. Unlike artists like David Wojnarowicz and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, whose works deal directly with homosexual themes and struggles, Paul’s work is concerned not with the sexual orientation of the men in the photographs, but their relationship to one another, the photographer and themselves. It is almost irrelevant if this connection is a homosexual one, to me that is not what the work is about and I hope that Paul is able to escape superfluous and dismissive readings of his work due to his sexual orientation.
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In this society creating art, by nature, is necessarily a social and political act. Not because it can function to produce social or political commentary, but rather, because by engaging in the practice of art making you are declaring the importance of the existence of art in and to society. Good art, in my easily humbled opinion, must be aware of this. It must comment on its own existence, for better or worse. It is not enough to “use art” to say, for example, “conservation is important”, it must also advocate for why art is the best mode or venue for relaying such a message- otherwise, why not just go and live in a tree? Truly great art is aware of the connotations it has not only embedded in it’s imagery, materials, and location, but also in the modes of its production and commerce. Because artists are not addressing the question “what is art for?” or “how it should function to humanity”, it has become, by default, too aligned with commodity and entertainment. If one is to over simplify the situation they might say, artists make art because they went to school it in, they got a degree and it, and the trade has turned into a game which equally rewards ambition, connections, and digestibility, as much as it does talent. Thus, making art is not enough, one must investigate why we are compelled to make art and how it changes human consciousness- or at least own up to art being a big fat commodity and let it live closer to entertainment.
For this reason I was a little disheartened by Paul Mpagi Sepuya’s response to why he feels he makes art and how it should function in society. He simply put it that he made art because he had to. I have a few problems with this response, and it is one I have too often heard. First, it often implies an opposition to a “desk job”, they are compelled to make art because they couldn’t work at a desk job. It almost makes art sound like an alternative only practiced due to an inability to function in the alternative occupation. It places art making in the career world, comparable to “desk jobs” the role of artist is simply another way to make a living. While I can’t argue with the practicality of the matter- especially since I am not in a position where I have to fully provide for myself at present, I think that this is not something to be written off as essential to art. Furthermore, I have a problem with the art rationale “I couldn’t image doing anything else”, because it quite frankly seems like a cop out. I find it to be an excuse for not having thought through the matter more. Possibly because if this reasoning had been examined, than it would always followed up by the because. For example, I feel compelled to make art because it is the one place in society where we constantly evade a system of measuring success, because it has the ability to place greater importance on experience over understanding, and because it is so problematic that it accounts of the dynamic nature of life.
Now, to be fair, when looking at Paul’s work I wasn’t unimpressed. In dealing with portraiture- a relatively outdated subject matter, he does seem to make a claim the importance of the way that photography is able to change our understanding of relationships. Whether the relationships be between the pieces, as acknowledge through his careful arrangements in distancing the works based on social reasoning, or the relationship created between us and the objects which we believe to convey a sense of “humanness”. I think his work is successful, engaging and interesting, however his response made me wonder if it was consciously. While this was only a short studio visit with Paul, and I don’t want to judge him either way without truly knowing him or his work, I just feel that this issue comes up again and again with many artists. The lack of consistency in the matter makes me wish that artists voice their beliefs in and for art more. At the risk of being dramatically over dramatic, I honestly believe that the state of the world is too important to not take an increased responsibility for our actions. If making art is the action in question I think as a whole we are failing.
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