INTERVIEW w/ WARREN SCHULTHEIS

I met Warren Schultheis years ago, and have had the unique pleasure of observing his growth as an artist, as well as being his friend, throughout that time. I eagerly awaited the opening of his solo show, "Vector/No Vector," at Gallery Ocho this month, and, needless to say, I found the work to be incredibly developed, well-crafted, and exciting. Warren's paintings are complex, abstract, minimal, odd at times, and obtain an austere, evocative, elegantly messy aesthetic. Up close, many layers seem to lurk beneath the surface; from far away, they can suggest landscapes of alien spaces: The best I can describe them is by likening them to what I imagine the inside of my thoughts looks like. Below is a short interview with Warren, conducted via email, this last week. The show will be up at Gallery Ocho through May 17, 2008.

This is That: Tell me a bit about the overall intent and cohesion that you see with this show. It seems very complete to me, yet still versatile in its meanings and the places it can go. In the most simple terms, what is it about?

Warren Schultheis: It's about a lot of things. I'm still not sure how I feel about the overall cohesiveness of the show (to be honest)—though it certainly felt complete to me from a layout standpoint. What the show is about is kind of a three-part answer.

I'd say maybe 1/3 of what went into the pieces and the idea behind the show was a playful (and often earnest) grappling with how information (and personal experience) is layered, appropriated, preserved, and/or decorated over time.

The second 1/3 is simply playing with color, layout, materials and textures. It's a lot like doodling on your notebook while you're sitting at a lecture; it's not that you aren't listening—it's just that making marks helps the information sink-in.

The remaining bit has to do with my wish for a conversation to occur between the eventual viewer and the art. While most of that conversation (beyond my presenting the kind of general themes I mentioned a second ago) is almost entirely up to them—I do hope to create a certain sense of decorative unease as a jumping-off point.

So when I say that I'm not sure about the cohesiveness of the show—I mean mainly that I'm not sure how consistently that last part of the process is executed in all of the pieces that were hung. I have several pieces at my studio that didn't make it into the gallery, that may have been more successful. But then again...I am sometimes slow with this stuff.

TisT: I want to know about what your paintings go through from beginning to end—they suggest many layers and different guises underneath what, in the end, is the finished product. Can you give a sense of the process there?

WS:Yeah...It's pretty convoluted. The first thing I usually do is have a good session of laying down colors and textures—which has very little real premeditation. Then I'll take a bunch of pictures of the paintings and drop them into Photoshop/Indesign where I clip, distort and combine them with digital sketches, and images I've collected. This is the part where I try to complicate the piece a little to create that unease that I mentioned earlier. Then I make printouts and use them as guides for the actual paintings. I often go in circles this way for a few rounds on each painting, but recently I do just the one time.

The plexiglass pieces are bit similar, but often starting with a scan of a handmade piece of artwork as the "base" piece, and then collage on top of it with bits and pieces of scans of other pieces or sketches.



TisT: What are the inspirations and things that piqued your interest while you were working on this show? I'm always interested to hear about what is going on in the background of an artist's periphery. Any books or films or subjects that were holding your attention when you weren't painting?

WS: I spend an unhealthy amount of time on the internet. I can't stop reading the news, blogs, or indulging every single stupid question I have on Wikipedia and GoogleEarth. So that gets me thinking a lot about the new shelf-life of information (and our relationship to it).

I've also been renting lots of Hayao Miyazaki films and PBS history documentaries from Netflix. The only non-screen reading I am doing is dipping back into Michel De Certeau's The Practice of Everyday Life.

TisT: This may seem a bit overarching, but I'd like to hear your thoughts about where you think painting is going, and where it will be pulling its relevance in the coming years. You incorporate digital aspects in your paintings very seamlessly—how big a role or shift toward the digital do you feel is happening in painting?

WS: Painting (which I don't really see as distinct from art at large) is going in too many directions to keep track of. I don't want to make predictions about painting except that it (again like most art) often orbits around what is happening in the world.

As for the digital influence...yeah. There will probably be more of it for sure—especially since everyday activities and ideas are (increasingly) saturated with digital content/media. I don't know how big a shift there will be, but my guess is that as our ability to conceive of the new online cultural movement improves, so will the interestingness of the artwork that is influenced by it. Maybe just more cross-pollination and genre bleeding—maybe a lot more.

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I'd like to extend a thank you to Warren and to Gallery Ocho.