Isobel Harbison: Your paintings often have exposed under layers visible in the corners, margins or frames, indicating the painterly processes and various tempos within the work. Since your show ‘Swipe’ in 2015, that sense of time was juxtaposed with an immediacy of smart phone usage. What does the ubiquity of “smart” image apparatuses mean for painting? Redundancy or renewed purpose?
Mary Ramsden: It’s difficult to not sound nostalgic in this regard but I do think painting is about paying deep or close attention with an intensity we’re gradually losing. This isn’t just about technology proper, but how technology has affected the speed of things, culturally: apps for meditating on a packed tube, sharing “life hacks” on how to cook a meal in 10 seconds flat, and a myriad of suggestions about how to achieve things without actually doing them with your hands. I use my phone as much as anybody, especially as a reference bank when I’m working but I think there’s really something crucial about pace of production and of looking at something handled that can encourage us to slow the fuck down, something essential about what it is to be human. 

IH: Love hearts reappear often in this series of works, symbols that function in social media and instant-chat applications as hasty shorthand for agreement or a public, conciliatory gesture. Here, they are elongated, distorted, and roughed about. Can you speak a little about your choice and treatment of this symbol?
MR: I decided to use that “like” ideograph as a familiar and recognisable entry point into the work that bridges a gap between a digital space and a painterly one. I was curious to handle that ubiquitous graphic and push it around with a freehand approach as a way to investigate the different speeds of those two things side by side. I’m less interested in the use-value of the specific button [the heart emoticon] than the world it inhabits.
IH: Base colour is really important in these works, as in previous works of yours. Is the palette for this show conscious or is the combination of mildly toxic pastels and deep, black impasto more intuitive?
MR: I often work with groups of paintings in clusters that together form one work. The tones of the individual elements are often informed by what’s happening in the largest work in a group because it underpins the whole. The different temperatures of each painting are often directed by the base colour so the toxicity or gaudiness might throw off a gentler component, like a particular word that reboots a sentence. It’s important that the individual personalities vibrate in unexpected ways and colour is central to that back and forth. I use black in the paintings and Dibond works as a device that speaks about a very particular “splendidly macho” mid-20th century attitude to painting and the use of black at that time in particular, but also about the screen today.  
IH: The title of your show is ‘Couples Therapy’. Some works function as diptychs, very similar in scale and complimentary to one another (as in ‘Naked Scenes’, 2017), other duos are antagonist and differ in scale and tempo (‘Coping Mechanism’, 2017), others fare better alone (the more self-contained ‘French Window’, 2017). How interested were you in depicting real life relations and human social dynamics in these works? Could we interpret them as a kind of writing through combinations of paintings? 
MR: Yes the title of the show is a way to point to a wider understanding of visual relationships that have their own character and points of difference. The viewer plays a vital role in these moving parts and becomes an integral aspect of the group as therapist, or third person in their company, assessing the compatibilities and discordance between the works. I wanted to use a title that stepped away from painting but was a nod to those intentions.

IH: You have asked two writers to contribute short prose pieces in response to the paintings. Can you explain what compelled you do so and what you think this brings to the exhibition?
MR: I invited two writers to work on separate short stories that relate back to the show title. I have worked with writers Adam Thirlwell and Leanne Shapton for the past two exhibitions and I wanted to continue this relationship between image and text as writing has a strong influence on my practice so asked Aria Beth Sloss and Mave Fellowes to collaborate with me on this show. The motifs and marks in the work are sort of stand-ins for language, both in the works and their original function in the world. I wanted to bring the show back to the source but outside of the image in a collaborative way. 

IH: There are a number of paintings that I think of when I look at these works—including Roy Lichtenstein’s ‘Brushstroke’, 1965; Jim Dine’s ‘Four Hearts’, 1969; a range of works by Cy Twombly, including ‘Bachus’, 2006-08; and Laura Owen’s ‘Pavement Karaoke’ series, 2012. How conscious are you of genealogies of painting in your own work, or do you make a concerted effort to disengage from formal lineages?
MR: These artists, among many, are always there in the studio so it’s a tussle between very deliberate references to the histories of painting, and the signature gestures within that, but also being acutely aware of what’s left. I look to see how that can be messed about with to create something that speaks both about what came before and how those specifics appear to us now, in relation to contemporary culture and painting today. For example the aforementioned New York School utilised black to investigate numerous areas that included both a spiritual inquiry as well as the use of colour (or non-colour) as a means of self-portrait. Understanding these motivations in relation to the black screen of a tablet, as both a reflective surface and the device with which to take a selfie or curate our different selves, is a funny and important juxtaposition to navigate through painting. 

IH: Are there artists working in other media with whom you feel a particular affinity, young or old?
MR: I feel that writing is the go-to media for something outside of painting that helps me understand how I want the work to behave. This can be as removed as a poem written in a language I don’t speak. It’s as much about the sounds within the sentence structure and the form the words can take as it is about content. I find short stories particularly generative as the economy within that form helps me to be rigorous about what is necessary in my work. It makes me brave. 

IH: Do you start out with a preconceived idea of how a painting might look at the end of any day, or do these compositions come together over time and surprise?
MR: I have a load of notes that I usually make at the end of each day in preparation for the next with instructions and diagrams and I almost never look at them when I turn up in the morning. I think it’s useful to make sense of what went on and then ignore it. I normally have a plan that takes a different turn and if I feel too rigid about what I want it to do then things usually fall apart or feel too restricted and stale, a bit like working for someone else. If I’ve made a painting that’s really working for me and then try to handle the next in the same way it just looks like a bad impression of the last and almost never has the same attitude or assertiveness which is annoying but also helps me trust the value of the thing when it’s surprising me.

IH: How important is it for you to explore different material supports on which to paint?
MR: This is a key part of it all and again about the tempo of each thing. Sometimes a group needs a clunky addition, or a slick one or a shallow, slippery support. Other times I’ll use a cheap white canvas to bring some informality to the party. It just depends on what’s going on about it. I like that it makes the relationships stop or start as you take in works around the room. And sometimes in the Dibond works that “taking in” is reflected back at you. 

IH: The works have a great tonal diversity—some seem funny and upbeat, others more somber and insular. How much of your own humour inflects these works, or does their personality appear after the making?
MR: Making paintings can be pretty weird in itself as a sort of performance, particularly with these large works as I can spend half the day hovering over a canvas lying on the floor, rehearsing the move my arm needs to make in order to execute a one-shot mark. I wanted that “painterly” thing, which can be both really serious and a nonsensical, to be visible in the excess flick of paint that comes off these fast gestures. These deliberate paint sprays are pretty funny and comically sexual, less or more depending on how thin I make the paint. I also find that sometimes the almost gross use of colour combinations (that on their own are pastel and gorgeous) can verge on lurid, sickly sweet as in the work ‘Hurt Colours’, 2017. So if there’s a humour in garish colours and a room full of misshapen hearts then great.

Constructing his signature plywood structure in the center of the gallery, Tiravanija creates a communal screening room for visitors to watch his latest film, Untitled 2017 (nothing rhymes with lobscouse, labskaus, lapskaus, lobskovs). This new film work focuses on a stainless steel stove sculpture, created by the artist in tandem with the film, functioning together as a single work.
Appropriating a small-scale Victorian stove, Tiravanija creates a repurposing of this object, by enhancing it to larger than life size and casting it in steel. This stove sculpture becomes the central feature of the film, where the artist employs it, along with the pots and utensils created to accompany it, in order to cook a large communal stew, of a unique recipe designed specifically for this work. Shot using only a handful of takes, Untitled 2017 (nothing rhymes with lobscouse, labskaus, lapskaus, lobskovs) conveys the artist’s interest in capturing experiences in real time, and having his works relate directly to lived experience.

The principal concept of the stove and film become a communication of the use value of the stove and a documentation of its ability to feed and nourish people. Bearing the markers of its original activation by the artist, the stove stands distinctly as an artifact of its previous use and an emblem of its potential future activation. One of the many notions this work conveys is that of its possible continued employment, across various spaces and amongst various groups.

Interested in examining the utilitarian aspects of the stove from many vantage points, Tiravanija reorients his own original film set from the central work for the second half of this exhibition. untitled 2017 (Lars’ voids) takes as its departure point, cinematographer Lars Skree’s various close-up shots during the making of the original film. This work focuses uniquely on the stove and distinctly details the various elements of its activation.

Rirkrit Tiravanija was born in 1961 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Tiravanija studied at the Ontario College of Art, Toronto, the Banff Center School of Fine Arts, Canada, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Whitney Independent Study Program, New York. He has exhibited at museums and galleries worldwide. Major solo retrospectives include: Utopia Station, Brooklyn Museum, New York (2017), Ishikawa Architecture Project, Okyama (2017); Tomorrow is the Question/Morgen is de vraag, Museumplein, Amsterdam (2016); YBCA, San Francisco (2015); Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas (2014); Park Avenue Armory, New York (2013); Bonnierskonsthall, Stockholm (2011); Kunsthalle Bielefield (2010); Museé de la Ville de Paris (2005); Museum Bojmans Van Beuningen (2004); Chiang Mai University Art Museum (2004); Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo (2002); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1999); and Museum of Modern Art, New York (1997).

Tschabalala Self, who identifies primarily as a painter while also working across various media, explores the implicit politicisation and sexualisation of Black bodies through a self-reflexive lens. Through the depiction of characters with active histories, psychologies and desires, her practice functions as a subversion of ethno-cultural stereotyping. With Bodega Run, Self expands her approach to create dynamic, rounded and multi-dimensional characters out of the items and experiences that exist within these corner stores.

Bodegas emerged with the arrival and settlement of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in New York and have traditionally been owned and operated by various communities of colour. The Spanish word for shop, ‘bodega’, has become a colloquialism for the small, family run corner stores seen all over the city. Found primarily in Black and Latino neighborhoods and often occupying the main intersections of these areas, the bodega has become a geographic emblem of Manhattan’s diaspora.

In Central Harlem, the area of New York City the artist was born and raised in, local bodegas are microcosms of cross-cultural exchange. With the demographic changes that have occurred across the city in recent years, bodega ownership has shifted from being Puerto Rican and Dominican to predominantly Yemeni, with these shops continuing to service primarily Black and Latino customers.

Through their practice of Islam, these new Yemeni bodega owners have a unique relationship to the Black communities who have traditionally engaged and continue to participate in these businesses. With Islam being a religion often adopted across Black diaspora as a way of reconnecting with African heritage, bodegas have become spaces for creating intersectional and inclusive connections across various cultures. The bodega’s existence, like the Black, Latino and Yemeni communities that inhabit New York City, is rooted in exclusion and therefore, has become a space for marginalized communities to organise and create their own local exchange economies.

Bodegas sell a wide selection and an often-multifarious array of products. As stores that are operated by people of colour to serve people of colour, catering to the communities they are located within, the bodega has become an articulation of its neighborhood’s identity. Self’s Bodega Run is an investigation of the social, political and economic implications of these corner stores through an exploration of the products they sell and their aesthetic organization.

Self creates her own bodega inspired by the shops that are emblematic of her culture and upbringing. As her first foray into installation, Bodega Run, represents a new avenue for the artist, who has created wallpaper, neon readymades, animation, photographs and large scale sculptures all emblematic of bodega accoutrement. Additionally, the paintings and drawings included throughout the exhibition employ the household products and food items commonly seen and procured in bodegas, as their subjects.

Tschabalala Self (b. 1990 in Harlem, USA) lives and works in New York and New Haven. Forthcoming exhibitions include: Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon, New Museum, New York (2017). Selected current and recent exhibitions include: Tschabalala Self, Tramway, Glasgow (2017); Tschabalala Self, Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art, London (2017); Desire, Moore Building, Miami (2016); The Function, T293, Naples (2016); A Constellation, Studio Museum Harlem, Harlem (2015); Tropicana, The Cabin, Los Angeles (2015).

Adult Swim conjures an image of movement in a communal body of water, a metaphor for non-linear navigation of collective consciousness and the shared realms in which we work, play, and live. The metaphor suggests a style of thinking or approach which we might employ to reveal a multitude of behaviours, ideas and moods; existential vignettes that rise from and float around the surface of the psyche.

The exhibition brings together works by 14 artists who often communicate these ‘navigations’ with a playful or humourous delivery. Though various in medium, the works are connected by a seemingly rudimentary application of material, cartoonish in many cases, channeling transhistorical tropes of Pop Art, Abstract Expressionist posturing, surreal juxtapositions, Modernist regard for material, with a Postmodern nonchalance for mixing these references.

Curated by Gerasimos Floratos.

Huen’s oil paintings are typified by his meticulous depiction of personal, and yet, commonplace occurrences observed at his home and studio. His works materialise as delicate scenes due to their subdued colours and light gestural brushstrokes. Huen paints quickly to capture his recurrent protagonists—wife Haze; son Joel; dogs Doodood, MuiMui, and Balltsz; or various houseplants—before the moment passes. It is through painting that Huen studies the nuances of looking.

In this new body of work Huen focuses his attention towards exploring ‘humdrum moments’. For Huen, humdrum moments permeate our everyday lives, but constantly escape our consciousness. They are the bits and pieces of information that are part of a scene but fall away from our impression of a place. We tend to forget or neglect them for the ease of narrating ‘our day’—they could be the way a piece of clothing is folded across the body or the colour and shade of a leaf. We can overlook these objects and phenomena, perhaps, because we cannot locate ourselves in them: they physically exist but no narrative emanates from them to us on a conscious level.

Huen’s work is defined by the process of alighting on seemingly indistinct scenes, that for most people, are left out of the process of understanding life. He pushes to shift our perception of objects and phenomena, and how we comprehend our relation to them.

Chris HUEN Sin Kan (b. 1991 in Hong Kong) lives and works in Hong Kong. He obtained a BA in Fine Arts at The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2013. Recent solo exhibitions include: RE-FRESH: Chris Huen Sin Kan, Pilar Corrias Gallery, London (2016); Things Happen Naturally, Nanhai Gallery, Taipei (2015); Out of The Ordinary, Gallery Exit, Hong Kong (2015); Chris HUEN Sin Kan: Life In The Temporary, Gallery EXIT, Hong Kong (2014); Double Solo Exhibition:  Chris Huen Sin Kan | Vito Hung- Fai, Ch’ien Mu Library, New Asian College, CUHK, Hong Kong (2013). Recent group exhibitions: Landscapes, Ota Fine Arts Singapore, Singapore (2017); Connect 4, Simon Lee Gallery, Hong Kong (2016); Performing Time, Leo Xu Projects, Shanghai (2016); Imagine There’s No Country, Above Us Only Our Cities, Para Site, Hong Kong (2015); Absolute Collection Guideline, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing (2015); réflexion au delà des frontières, Young Art Taipei, Sheraton Grande Taipei, Taipei (2015); after/image, Studio 52, Hong Kong (2015); Imagined Geographies, Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong (2014); Remaster vs Appropriating the Classics, VT Art Salon, Taipei (2014); Collector Club, Oi!, Hong Kong (2014).

Overly smooth surfaces and strong contrasting colours characterise Louisa Gagliardi’s paintings. For Whispers in the Shade she presents four new works: Tense Shift (2017), Spitting Pearls (2017), Slow Motion Scheming (2017), and Overflow (2017), along with a piece by artist Adam Cruces.

Louisa Gagliardi’s Whispers in the Shade plays with the suggestive nature of its own words, encapsulating an ambiguity between violence and sexuality which serves as metaphor for people’s relationship anxieties, both public and private. The paintings of this series depict a continuous tension between two role players, leaving the viewer unsure if the subjects are expressing feelings of pain and/or joy. The bodies of Gagliardi’s figures and their respective parts are flawless, hairless, and indistinguishable from one another. The atmosphere evoked is dense with oneiric elements, creating a surreal context where part of the bodies are mere silhouettes, barely visible, acting as symbols of someone’s fantasy. Though a silhouette would usually imply a position of relative inferiority, in Louisa Gagliardi’s works this reclining and almost invisible figure dominates.

Gagliardi plays with the foreground and background in the same way the tension shifts between the characters. The two bodies and their parts are often intertwined as if one could not ‘be’ without the other. Elsewhere, a body lies barely covered by a transparent lace pattern on a bed. Adorned by a collar and bracelet of the same material, this too references to a strong underlying relationship between the two characters. The physical presence of her subjects emerges through layers of gel medium built up to give both the impression of bodies enveloped in fabric and three dimensionality to the pearls; in the same way nail varnish accentuates the fingertips. Created initially as fluid digital images, these works are printed and then intervened upon again by Gagliardi with painterly techniques bringing forth texture and thus distancing them from their digital origins.

Louisa Gagliardi (b. 1989 in Switzerland) lives and works in Zürich. She received her BFA in Graphic Design from ECAL in 2012. Since 2015 she has been focusing on her painting practice. She has recently exhibited at LUMA Foundation, Zürich; Tomorrow Gallery, New York City; König Galerie, Berlin; Istituto Svizzero, Roma, and Helmhaus, Zürich. She was featured in the book Vitamin P3: New Perspective on Painting by Phaidon at the end of 2016. She received the Swiss Design Award in 2014.

— Jürg Haller

Urban Zellweger (b. 1991 in Zurich, Switzerland) lives and works in Zurich. Recent solo exhibitions include: Where am I Reptile, Karma International, Los Angeles (2016); Tables and Landscapes, Shoot the Lobster, New York, USA (2016); Plymidae, Plymouth Rock, Zürich, Switzerland (2015); Karma International, Zürich, Switzerland (2015). Recent group exhibitions include: 89plus: “Filter Bubble”, LUMA Westbau, Zürich (2016); SURREAL, Galerie König, Berlin, Germany (2016); Of Fauna and Flora, Tomorrow Gallery, New York, USA (2016); Apres Ski, Karma International, Los Angeles, USA (2016); Europe Europe, Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo, Norway (2015); A Form is a Social Gatherer, Plymouth Rock, Zürich, Switzerland (2015); “+”, 1857, Oslo, Norway (2015); Barricades of Life, a Pool Outside, Kunsthalle Freiburg, Germany (2014); How do you solve a problem like Maria?, Nordstrasse 276, Zürich, Switzerland (2014); 50/50, Ok?, Kunsthof, Zürich, Switzerland (2014).

Alice Theobald (b. 1985 Leicester) lives and works in Huntingdon and graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2014. Recent performances, exhibitions, and film screenings include: Two Queens, Leicester (2016); BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2015/16); FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims (2016); Evelyn Yard, London (2016); Lisson Gallery, London (2015); Focal Point, Southend (2015), Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge (2015); Flat Time House, London (2015); Open Source, Gillett Square, London (2015); Nosbaum Reding Projects, Luxembourg (2015); South London Gallery, London (2014); Outpost, Norwich (2014); Chisenhale Gallery, London (2014); Modern Art Oxford, Oxford (2013), Spike Island, Bristol (2014); V22, London (2013); Pilar Corrias Gallery, London (2013); Gasworks, London (2013); The Horse Hospital, London (2013); ICA, Singapore (2012). She is currently working on an opera as a member of Ravioli Me Away ( w/ Siân Dorrer and Rosie Ridgway) at Wysing Arts Centre, touring to Nottingham Contemporary and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in 2018.