Studio in the Time of Protest and Plague.
Interview with Andrew Cornell Robinson
By Michael Gormley
Living in a city driven by artistic ambition, “What are you working on” is the go-to question meant to quickly distill the daring of one’s aspirational reach, the aesthetic value of its form and the intent and likelihood of financial success and lasting fame. In the upheaval of social unrest and pandemic, the question sizes up how one is to staying alive. Over the past three months Equity has been posting text, images and videos of pandemic projects its member artists have been engaged in. Below is an interview with the ceramicist and printmaker Andrew Cornell Robinson.
Andrew Cornell Robinson in the studio, photograph by Martin Meyers
Gormley: Equity Gallery has been an ardent supporter of your ceramics and prints; we were thrilled to mount “Hard Line” featuring you and Matt Rota in 2019. In 2019 you also curated a well- received group exhibition of prints and ceramics titled “Limited Editions” for the gallery. What are you working on currently?
Robinson: I've been working with various tin glazes, like majolica on earthenware. I like the directness of the drawn line on the surface of the forms. Majolica has this wonderful quality in that the brushstrokes stay put during the glaze firing. I’ve known about these glazes for some time, but I’d never thought to use them until my partner, Sigfrido and I took a trip to Barcelona a few years ago and visited the Museu de Ceràmica of Barcelona. It’s a gem of a museum and their collection of tin glazed ceramics is really special. The line quality of the painting on the wares is loose and gestural; it has the appearance of ink drawing on paper—uninhibited and simultaneously fine in its visual effect. Upon our return I began experimenting with various glazes to replicate that fine line quality. I can easily slip into long conversations about materials, craft methods and histories. I spent the better part of my youth working as an apprentice to an English potter coming out of an Anglo-Japanese tradition; that experience, and the history of craft that I was exposed to, continues to exert a powerful influence over my work
Cowboy’s Dowry, Wood, ceramic, silkscreen, mixed media, variable dimensions 60 x 48 x 48 inches, 2007, Andrew Cornell Robinson
Gormley: In addition to the influence of materials and craft traditions on your work, can you discuss your inspiration and what you are aiming to communicate?
Robinson: Have you ever heard of the Chinese expression yí wù ( 遗物 )? It approximates what in English we call a “remnant”--- stuff we salvage or re-purpose. My work captures the essence of this idea. I mine my memory, my life, and fragments of our collective histories for inspiration. The much-admired printmaker Phillip Chen described the idea yí wù, as, “…the breaking down of objects and ideas; revising histories and rebuilding forms in unexpected ways”. I identify with that idea. Recalling and revising remnants of my life and our cultural histories are a way for me to hijack extant cannons and draw out new narratives to inform the creation of sculptural artifacts and imagery. The latter lean into a penchant for the peculiar and the weird and conflicted connectedness between power and love.
Dissident Arm, Majolica tin glazed ceramic, engobe, slip, cork, 18 x 4 1/2 x 5", 2014, Andrew Cornell Robinson
Gormley: The idea of extant power structures as a cultural artifact that can be reinvented through imagery seems apropos given the shifts and cultural upheavals we are currently experiencing.
Robinson: Yes; my work as of late has been focused on exploring notions of power and cultural memory. I’ve been working on a series of figurative fragments and artifacts in clay. I call them “disobedient objects”, because they don’t behave as expected. The figures are unheroic. The sculptures are unmonumental. They are like lost bits and bobs left behind; but when they come together they may trigger an idea, reveal clues to an underlying story, commemorate ideas, or portray people who are otherwise passed over—the result of purposeful forgetting.
Jean 1 (Poor Marat), Color print on metal, 16 x 24 x 1 inches, 2016, Andrew Cornell Robinson
For instance, I may cherish a favored photograph of my grandfather because he looks respectable, even dignified, but the hidden fragments of his life reveal that he was a bootlegger who was involved with the gangster Dutch Schultz; a man who was murdered behind the hotel that my grandfather managed. There is a history behind every image--one that is equally humorous and mischievous. Sometimes these histories are personal, other times more metaphorical. For example, leading up to the 2016 presidential election, I was working on a rather elaborate project exploring the life and death of the French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat and his assassin Charlotte Corday. I had been looking at Marat as a visual character; it was not really about Marat the man, but more about the notion of power and the people that are mad for it. Sadly, the project was prescient of current events.
Charlotte 3 (Counter Revolution), Color print on metal, 24 x 16 x 1 inches, 2016, Andrew Cornell Robinson
Gormley: Can art ever be truly divorced from the time in which it is created? Is yours?
Robinson: I suppose making art can’t help but be infected by the times we live in. Or perhaps art can be invented that portrays the times others lived in. Over the past several years I’ve been using “personae” as a conceptual starting point for the research that I do prior to or in tandem with a new body of work. “Persona” is a technique typically used by industrial designers. Essentially it is a story that is written to describe the life, desires and behaviors of a person who would use something that a designer was trying to create.
I first began playing with personae in 2010 when I wrote a series of fictionalized stories loosely based on two real people. Isabella, is a persona based on my partner’s grandmother from the Dominican Republic and Fredrick is a persona based on an ancestor of mine from Flatbush, Brooklyn. In real life, he fought in the American revolutionary war with Washington’s troops, and she fought against the dictator Rafael Trujillo in the guerilla underground, but from there the personae were heavily fictionalized to explore a notion of revolutionary transgression of authority.
Our Lady of the Flowers (Installation Christopher Stout Gallery) Color print on metal, 24 x 16 x 1 inches, embroidered wool uniform, tin glazed ceramic, wood and latex, 2015, Andrew Cornell Robinson
The stories were historically revisionist, they were a means of giving me a starting point to make sculptural objects--invented heirlooms left behind from these two lives. The stories were shared with several other makers who collaborated with me; a fashion designer, a bespoke tailor from Panama, a fashion photographer, a DJ, a curator, and a printmaker. I used the stories as a starting point in a collaboration with each of these makers who helped me to create hand sewn clothing for each character, musical playlists, ceramic and sculptural objects, a series of printed symbols and drawings. All these elements were then used as props in a photo-shoot of myself and a friend dressed as the characters. The work was then brought together in an exhibition curated by Gabriella Alva Cal y Mayor in which the show used the format and visual trope of a historical society. There was a fictional wall essay about Isabella and Fredrick, clothing, furniture, weapons, china, photo essays, images, and ceramic sculptures all presented as artifacts with ascension numbers. It was an interesting project for me because it allowed me to step behind another personality, almost sublimating my own, in order to make art that reflected another person’s story, one that would be vaguely historical and so perhaps more accessible to an audience who could enter the work with their own ideas about that narrative without me getting in the way.
Gormley: And what of now? What work is coming out of the pandemic?
Robinson: Before the pandemic, I had done some traveling to Rome, and after that, to Madrid and then Granada. Now that I am back in New York City, I find myself working on a series of drawings and ceramic sculptures. I’ve been thinking about the Shakespearean play, ‘The Tragedy of Julius Caesar,’ for some reason. I suppose it was looking at all the ancient statuary in Rome and all those Goya’s at the Prado, and the latest news headlines. In any case, I’ve been drawing portraits and sculpting busts of some of the characters, Brutus, Caesar, etc. I am curious to see where this leads me. Sometimes I feel like, as an artist, I am just along for the ride, and my job is to simply show up and do the work and try not to second guess myself.
L to R Julius Caesar, Marcus Antonius, and Brutus; from the series Friends, Romans, Countrymen 2020, Charcoal, oil and chalk pastel on cotton rag paper, 30.75 x 23.5 inches, Andrew Cornell Robinson
So I hope I was able to shed a little light on what I've been doing in the studio. At times when I’m working, I can get so engrossed in the project at hand, so it's nice to take a moment and step back to look at and try to articulate what’s happening in the whirlwind of making.