FST StudioProjects Fund

IN THE STUDIO WITH LARS VAN DOOREN

2020 FST StudioProjects Fund recipient, American artist Lars van Dooren (b. 1976, lives and works in New York) welcomes us, over Zoom and emails, in his current studio space in Bayridge (which also doubles as a fallout shelter) and discusses the varied influences behind his drawings and installations.  

by Myriam Erdely, March 2021

In lieu of seeing your actual space, our interview is done digitally, over Zoom calls, emails, sharing images and written words. Perhaps in the future I can visit your studio and see the work in person! Can you tell me about your current studio space?

Certainly. My studio is in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. After having spent 7 or so years in Sunset Park I was forced out by the standard form NYC industrial gentrification model and ended up finding a space in the neighborhood where I live. Bay Ridge is an entirely residential and small business neighborhood with no industrial or manufacturing spaces to speak of. I have a decent sized (but low height) basement space. It is actually a fallout shelter, so that could come in handy.  The studio is very close to home with a proximity and ease that makes it possible to work almost every night. I’m very happy to have it despite some of its inherent architectural limitations.  

Having won a grant from the FST StudioProjects Fund in 2020, which was created by Frederieke Sanders Taylor in order to help artists defray the cost of their studios in New York City. How has the FST StudioProjects Fund grant changed your practice? 

One of the reasons I was drawn to FST StudioProjects Fund is that it is not a residency. I don’t really apply to residencies right now, where the expectation would be to leave New York. At this point in my life, I have other obligations such as my family and day job. I have always had a studio and been generating work, so this grant is an alternative for people like me who don’t have the flexibility to explore those dedicated creative opportunities external to NYC. It is also validation that pushing against what might be some of my more conservative creative impulses has been a good decision. One sacrifices a lot to be an artist in New York and this grant reinforces those choices. Making art has always been a defining component of my life and I see no sign of that changing. 

Do you research prior to creating a work or series? Are you driven by any type of subject or theme that you dig deep into? What are some of your influences? 

At this point, a large and eccentric group of influences runs through my work, to greater or lesser degrees; they are so disparate and broad, that I find it hard to define one thing being more important than another. But insofar as research goes it would be the things that I’m reading, which I wouldn’t really call research but more the feelings or associations that I have with these literary and historical references. Those ideas and thoughts are then inserted into the work in both concrete and subtle ways. My range of reading covers topics from nuclear war planning, First Nations mythology and belief systems, anarchist theory, US foreign policy, William Gaddis, to an interest in The Spanish Civil War – to name but a few. 

Additionally, there are some more observable elements in my work that tend to hold on. They include representative or abstracted religious iconography, text, geometric and volumetric forms, cult emblems, automatic and gestural marks, pattern, plans and schematics, de-tuned faces, and dead-end embellishing. 

That’s interesting. It reflects a lot on your aesthetics; the work looks fragmented. When I look at images of your work, I see a lot of different types of marks, gestures, textures, can you tell me more about the types of materials you use?

Drawing remains the foundation for much of what I do. Within that world, I’m open to materials and their uses. A wide variety of pens, pencils, carbon paper, incense ash, enamel, and metal leaf are common for me. Broadly, those materials can move into traditional mark making, collage, or frottage on paper; or abandoned for exploratory smoke chambers that burn scraps of previous drawings and studio ephemera onto plate glass panels. 

Sculptures and objects are often made from a combination of traditional building materials such as wood, drywall, plexiglass, cardboard, glass, Formica, driftwood, and found materials. Often, I obsessively draw (using many of the above materials) or create relief surfaces on parts of the sculptures, the latter as areas to create pigment or graphite transfers from – pulling the work back into drawing again.  

Drawing seems to be your primary focus yet sculpture also appears in your installations and ways of displaying your work. How do you combine these two disciplines, how do you pull from one or the other, how do they influence each other? 

Before moving to New York, drawing was my primary concern. When I moved here to attend Parsons The New School for Design to complete my Master of Fine Arts, I felt it was limiting me and I was looking for a way to expand my drawings into more sculptural or object-based work. 

The work, thesunthesea, 2013, is an instance of this expansion of drawing into sculpture. This is an early example of a body of work that continues to this day. Using sculptural elements like Formica and wood skeletons, plexiglass cases and other sculptural supports as framing devices and holders for drawings. By playing with how drawing is framed, constructed or displayed, I was expanding out towards making these precarious sculptural objects. The drawing and physical elements are on equal terms, both supporting each other. At the same time, I was looking to make objects that I could draw on, like tabletops, walls, backdrops, or standalone pieces.  These elements ended up being central components of installations where drawings were also exhibited, so that was the genesis. 

Your work, messenger, 2017, was included in the group show “Unseen Hand” at the Knockdown Center, in New York, NY, what can you tell me about this work? 

Messenger, 2017, was one of the recent larger pieces that I’ve exhibited. It was a combination of 2 or 3 installations that I sort of culled the elements, redacted and reconstituted the information, and then made something new. The piece has a twin or secondary piece that I am currently working on - this body of work remains an important part of my practice. Messenger also was an attempt to display more of the working aspects of the piece from the studio. It includes the smoke infused glass panels but also the charred and half-melted plastic and wood chamber that housed the entire apparatus. In the past, only the glass and wood armature was on display, now the messier remnants tag along.  This also gets back to pushing against my more conservative impulses and with this piece I gave myself a little more freedom and encouraged some chance. I believe this is a way forward that I’m trying to provoke. Messenger remains one of my favorites, a total work of intuitive sculptural decisions, drawing, embellishment, and ornament all within an indeterminate instrument for nameless rituals. 

Your installations and drawings share similar elements, such as the same shards, remnants, free-floating shapes, or the same sense of space or type of composition. The block-like sculptures in the “Cult of the Fall” installation at Honey Ramka, New York, NY, are very specifically placed and ordered.  

A lot of the pieces that you see arranged on the floor are actually the cut-out and then re-imagined elements from the previous solo show Vertical Hallway and Her Attendants. Those pieces on the floor are the cross cut sections of the small free-standing room that I had built for that installation. The past information is redacted, new layers are added and this process has continued through multiple exhibitions. “Cult of the Fall” also contained the subtle invitation for viewer interaction, an entreaty to walk on the platform section and wander amongst the elements. These are certainly restrained moments of participation, but I encourage them. The back wall of the gallery was covered in a grid of chalk transfers on paper that were frottage’s pulled from the surfaces of the sculptural elements. I do see the drawings and sculptures as interrelated - siblings actually. The works on paper often begin as plans or schematics that feed into the sculptures, or the relief surfaces of the objects are locations to generate drawings. 

Did you ever create any Public Art? 

Sort of. As I came out of school in 2009 I was living in Crown Heights, this was after the financial collapse, and in and around Brooklyn there were a lot of buildings, domestic architecture, that were stalled in construction. I remember riding my bike and seeing a lot of those sites and I became very interested in making an artwork in these semi-completed, semi-abandoned spaces. So, after finding a location, I would research who the owner was and then send them a letter with my proposal, I must have written about 15 or so cold form letters to the owners, proposing that I make a sculpture in their building. The work I had in mind would not necessarily be open to the public, but I saw the work as being a sort of transitional guest in this domestic architecture that would usher it from its point of semi-completion to potential completion - like a temporary resident or squatter. One person responded and I spent 2 months making a piece in the midst of a construction site. I even had the key and was allowed to come in the afternoons to install my work on the second floor. Part of the piece actually extended out of the window so that the public could see it if they walked by. If you paid attention, you could see it. 

That’s a very interesting take on what could be considered Public Art! 

Yes, although I didn’t think of it as Public Art at the time. The work I made for the site was temporary with a known expiration date.  I’m just thinking of this now, but the life of that work echoes the life of the building, but perhaps in the inverse? The building is completed and contains its residents, yet the piece is long gone although some of its elements have probably been combined and recombined in a multitude of ways. A life through destruction rather than construction, but a life nonetheless. 

I was wondering about the use of text or language in your work. Do you write?  

I think my use of language occurs in a few different ways. For example, in the son death, 2020, the text is an initial expression that the rest of the drawing supports. The phrase is actually my religion-inflected word play based on what Adolph Reed Jr. passingly said in an interview. My use of text often comes from a variety of sources. They are either fragments of sentences that I’ve read from literature and history, internalized and intuitive turns of phrase, or often it originates from music. These are examples where the text is clearer. And then there’s language that is fainter, the scribblings that are in the background of the drawings, smudged out or erased. These are, oddly, the more self-conscious moments. They are not front and center, they tend to be more notes for myself, a stream of consciousness or transient notions that travel from head to hand. An additional relationship to language would be this idea of a long running narrative loosely tying my work together. Not a narrative in a literary sense, but rather my associations of half remembered elements, overlapping ideas, and disparate influences that contribute to a fleeting and open ended body of work. To what end, I do not know. This notion of a narrative is not an intentional decision but a welcomed unnatural outcome. 

It’s very intimate. It might go hand in hand with the way that you do research. You seem to grab many things that you want us to find or not find. I will dig deeper into your work and look more closely. 

I’d like to add that I regard the viewer as a co-conspirator. When I look at an artist’s work, it is nice not to know everything about it. Not that it’s necessarily a puzzle, but I like when things are not completely spelled out. Or to walk away from something that really makes you think, what was that all about? Or it’s a push and pull, where one is examining and questioning, it’s the little things that stick with you. I have a lot of respect for the viewer, and I believe the work is open enough that people can come to their own conclusions. What the viewer brings to the work is as important as my contribution. We owe each other that.

What are you working on now? 

I have two larger sculptures that I started on a while back that have been set-aside. I’ll continue to draw while those are progressing. I tend to work on multiple pieces and have no strong preference for what I work on other than what feels most natural at the time or if there is a deadline for an exhibition.  

I recently picked up a copy of a Dieter Roth book called Dieter Roth: souvenirs. I had not realized until reading the essay, but it's a collection of work that Dieter gave as gifts throughout his life. A nice moment of synergy as I just sent about 10 framed works on paper out to California for a show near LA in an apartment gallery my friend is starting up [link].  Part of the agreement for the show was my proposal to have all the work be pay what you wish. And it means exactly that. My thinking behind this idea is multifaceted. First, I prefer my work to be out in the world rather than occupying space in my studio. If there are people who might appreciate the things I make, then they should have access to them – regardless of their financial means. Secondly, it places the value of these pieces into strange territory.  A conflated aesthetic/economic decision is put in the hands of the viewer rather than the artist and gallerist.  This is perhaps initially awkward for the viewer, but ultimately rewarding as it puts them in the position of ascribing value onto the work as opposed to receiving it from. Lastly, I’m aware of the wild fluctuations in price that may occur and I am okay with that. Ultimately, this is rooted in a basic trust in those who would take the time to come and look at my work. The vulnerability, awkwardness, and joy of this show are exciting. If a child shows up and has 5 dollars to spend from their allowance and wants one of my drawings, they get to have it.