Felipe Tascon Artist Talk
In his exhibition “Oro” at Jardin, Houston
September 26, 202
Tessa Granowski: Maybe we can go ahead and start with the show itself. Can you talk a little bit about the title and when these works began?
Felipe Tascon: This body of work started maybe 3 months before the opening, and it started with this painting over here. It's called Oro. Oro is Spanish for the word “gold.” And at the time of making it, I was looking at videos on YouTube of people purifying gold, and if you've never seen that process, it's really amazing. You basically can take impure gold, drop it in an acid and everything dissolves into the acid other than the gold. I think that was the seed of the idea for the way in which the colors and the compositions came about. It's dissolving.
TG: Amazing. With the repetitive framework of this series, everything is the same at the smallest scale, on the same basic grid, although the overall scale of the work changes. How does that affect the way that you're making these works? Is it to set up a more meditative process? Is it a way that you can let go of form and focus on color?
FT: Yeah, I think I'm really interested right now in the unit and how in Hindu mythology, the universe starts from a mustard seed, a singular unit, and expands outward. And I guess physics shows that as well. I'm really interested in making paintings that grow.
I think there's a photo somewhere of this with a single cell shaded. They all start that way. And I think it's interesting, the patterns.
FT (cont.): In the States, the conversation around these things maybe goes towards other cultures, like mosaics and rugs. But when I was in Norway and I showed some similar paintings, they immediately went Socialist and political. They were really interested in the democratization of the space and the way these could echo sort of the societal ideals that they embodied.
I don't always know why they become the way they become. But yeah, I'm figuring that out right now.
TG: Can you talk a little bit about how the paintings begin before they get translated onto the linen?
FT: I work on paper before I make these oil paintings, and often they're really loose, like unabashed acrylic or watercolor or colored pencil, anything. They're just emotional, ugly things. And I think maybe it's cliché to say painting is a way of processing, but I like the literal translation of that and the idea of taking those loose, crunchy, emotional things and coming to a newer understanding of them. That's what I'm after when I'm making these.
TG: One of the works on paper that I saw recently in Felipe's studio—I was sort of marveling at this color that he had, and I was like, how did you get that? And he's like, oh, that's just like the color that's left after mixing or cleaning all your brushes.
FT: Yeah, just straight up paint water. That's how you get it. It's like it's the offcast of every other color, which I think is very poetic.
TG: Maybe we can talk a little bit about symbols… The Oro flyer that we printed has a little peace symbol at the bottom. How did you take inspiration for the flyer itself, and can you talk about how you worked on it with your father, who is a graphic designer? There is a little peace symbol, and Felipe, in one of our early studio visits, was talking about how he was interested in the peace symbol itself. I was doing a deep dive on Wikipedia about that symbol and the guy who created it, and it is truly fascinating.
FT: Yeah, I think about symbology, which I learned about in undergrad. I think a lot about the symbols around us that we're blind to, like a stop sign being a red octagon. I had professors tell me about plant blindness, where people who live in cities often just lump the plants into a general green, and can't identify what those plants are. That really felt to me like the awakening of consciousness in the space in which you inhabit. It made my walk home infinitely more interesting, whether it was the symbols or the plants. I’ve begun researching where a lot of these symbols come from, and a lot of them have authors. And the peace sign, I'm forgetting his name…
TG: Gerald Holtom.
FT: Bingo, thank you. I asked you to write that down. Yeah, that was a nuclear disarmament symbol based on flag signaling.
FT (cont.): And new symbols are really interesting to me now. I think currently the symbolism I'm interested in generating in the studio is often inspired by trees and nature and a return. Growing up, I went to Waldorf School, and that's like the hippiest of hippie education you can get. I think it's some of that and still is really inspiring.
TG: I think you can find that a lot in nature where the microcosm reflects the macrocosm.
You also had talked a lot about Mondrian, who is an artist I think we often associate with lines and grids, but you said conversely to what I might think, that you were really interested in his early works, which I would highly recommend checking out if you are not familiar with Mondrian's early paintings. There are these incredible tonalities in his landscapes. Did you see those in person somewhere, or how did you get onto that path, and what has you so interested in that?
FT: I think making paintings is way easier when you have painter friends. Every day I get texts from friends with what's exciting them. And one of my dearest friends, Alex Balsen, was at MoMA recently and sent me a painting with these pink, cotton-candy-colored areas and they look like trees almost, but it’s a Mondrian.
FT (cont.): They're by the guy known for the hardest edges ever. And that began this deep dive for me into Mondrian's earlier work, which many people have documented and shown this chronology from landscape into minimalist abstraction. And I think that's also how Modernist painting is taught. The story of Modernism is taught through this filtration or conversion. I don't know if the moment I exist in with my peers is as linear. I think I'm interested in the middle for that reason.
TG: I like that. There was a moment in my early 20s where I went to New York and I was walking around listening to jazz music, and I finally understood the later Mondrian paintings, with the rhythm and the streets there.
I know you are very interested in listening to music with your art practice. How does that play into the work?
FT: Yeah, this is funny. I listen to a lot of rap. Like, almost exclusively. This entire show was made with my headphones on full blast with loud rap. Rap is infinitely fascinating to me. At least a lot of ultra-contemporary rap, what comes about on SoundCloud, for example, has this distorted, euphoric, bittiness, like it's made of tiny parts, and it feels so analogous to this visual language. It's been really inspiring for the paintings I'm making. I think rap does a really good job of bringing about new ideas. Almost every week online I'm finding a new sound of rap, and then every few years I'm finding someone who takes that sound and makes it really profound. Like, I think most of the works in here— I was listening to a lot of Kendrick Lamar, but if you listen to the people around him, they're not as refined and as careful craftsmen, but maybe more creative.
Listen to Felipe’s SoundCloud playlist here
TG: Rap and music in general has frameworks that people play within, and if they're involved in that history, then they can play with recycling those languages. I feel like in particular, some rap artists sample from completely other genres and fold it back into that genre.
You also mentioned Paul Klee— back to the Mondrian era. I see Mondrian and Klee as artists who were able to play with genre in painting. Is that something that you consider?
FT: I think a lot of music that I listen to is pretty genre-less now. It is rap, it is techno, it is disco, it is all of it. I think I'm figuring out if genre matters. Because I used to be a potter, and in making pottery, there was always a whole category of things. And in making paintings, there's also groupings. I think any young artist is trying to figure out if they can be categorized.
TG: We have previously talked about these objects that can be beautiful and consumable, potentially acting as the “Trojan horse”… Do you see these paintings or how you make work as something that you can imbue with something else, and it can still be picked up as maybe a beautiful object and put into someone's home and they wouldn't know that?
FT: I think that's really important to me actually. I want the paintings to get your guard down. I want you to go, oh, that's a pretty thing. And then once you're there, they're onions, hopefully. I'm hoping that they mean something more. That's what I'm trying to summon, at least.
I think that's a powerful tool. I went to school with a lot of really angry folks who did not want to engage in letting people's guards down. Relaxing them first felt wrong to them, which I respect too. It's a crazy world.
TG: Did this group of work surprise you in any way? Was there anything that really changed in the process?
FT: Yeah, they started brighter. In tone, in hue and saturation, all of them were brighter at the beginning and were brought back down to earth, I think, by life. Like, and the unconscious, I think my hands started mixing darker colors as time went on. They all started a bit brighter.
TG: For this show we hung everything on this wall at the same height, so that it becomes this sort of like panoramic scroll. In the future, and potentially a different space, what would you like for that to evolve into?
FT: I'm hoping to install in a line, to write a single sentence with a series of paintings around the room. That's the hope. In hanging this show, we wanted to plant the seed for that.
TG: In thinking of these works as words in that sentence, I'm interested in some of the titles that you came up with for the work. Are there multiple origins, or do you have like a word bank… does the title come first, does it come after?
FT: Yeah, I have a document in the studio. It's everything. There’s just a little list of words that come throughout the day that get written down. And pulling from them when the time came was just instinct, like choosing. And there's always a bit of surprise too. Like, I love titling things in ways that I didn't mean to, arriving at new meanings that way.
TG: Yeah. I feel like this one had a different title though *pointing to heartsong*. There was something else written on the back.
FT: Yeah, but this one's called heartsong, which is maybe the sweetest and corniest of them all, but I like it. It was what I wanted to call it.
TG: And in terms of scale, is this the largest panel that you’ve worked on?
FT: Yeah, this is about as big as they can get. Maxed out.
TG: None of these are on traditionally canvas stretched on stretcher bars, they're all on plywood. What was that choice?
FT: I mean, part of it is functional. It's much easier to draw grids on rigid backs, but also, I think I come from a pottery background, and before this body of work I was making slabs, like ceramic slabs that were carved into and incised. And so, these kind of echo and eased that transition into painting, I think, as objects. They don't have any hollow behind, they're just boards with linen stretched onto them. And I like that they're really thin. They feel like almost like a phone thickness— We all have magic slabs in our hands. That’s the real competition we all have as artists is how do you compete with that thing? It is so entertaining.
TG: I do want to open it up for questions to the audience, but just a fun little question for Felipe... He had never really spent any time in Houston before the show. Were there certain things you enjoyed about Houston spots that you went, objects, paintings that you saw that stand out?
FT: Yeah, I think I was really surprised, but I really liked Hiram Butler's space, and the Menil as well— I didn't realize Houston had really great taste. We got a tour of the house next to Hiram Butler. It's where the artists stay when they host shows. It's really beautiful, full of amazing art. And I think the people in Houston have been so lovely, so receptive. I think the conversations I had on the day of the opening were like probably much better than the conversations I had with my professors on the day of my BFA exam. They're up to par, if not much better.
TG: So on that note, I'd love to open it up for questions.
Isabel Wilson: I was curious to hear more about the clay side of your practice because you seem to have worked in clay for a really long time. I was curious about your process of layering paint and the way you think about color and space, or the materiality of creating an image on clay versus a hard surface that you paint on?
FT: Yeah, I made pottery every day from like age 12 up to like age 21. I worked in studios. I just couldn't stop. I was absolutely addicted. I'd come home from a day of making pottery at school and make pots in the pool shed until I'd get a call from my mom saying I had to go to sleep. I was just absolutely obsessed with the process and the material and so I think if nothing else has transferred, it's just the passion. I feel like I'm in that pool shed often in my studio, in the best way.
I think you develop a hand working in any craft. And I think I have a hand. I was able to pick up paint and have it do things my way, or I've tried to do that. So yeah, there's more clay coming, I think.
TG: And Felipe's studio is not a pool shed… it is an old law library, with law books lining the studio, and it's carpeted, which is really nice. I get to go in and take off my shoes.
FT: Yeah, and it's above a crystal shop.
Jamie Sterling Pitt: I just was curious in your interest in symbology, how that then parlays into color choice, and if color choice is symbolic as well. I think you can really cancel things out if you can have a beautiful symbol in the wrong color.
FT: I think I'm really careful not to use red and black in the symbols I'm drawing in the paintings. I think those allude to things that I'm not interested in engaging with, at least at this moment, whether it be politically or— yeah. At least in the choices in this show, I was trying to soften symbols through contrast. Sometimes they're blending into the painting through saturation, sometimes they're just glowing. But hopefully not cut out or violent. I think that's fraught territory. It’s dangerous.
Tyler Swanner: Before you began, you mentioned making these emotional ugly kinds of studies, and then you spoke about patterns. Do you have ways that you arrive at patterns? Do they come unconsciously, or do you kind of narrow in on something?
FT: I always want whatever patterns arise in the work to be in service of the image, so I think it's a balancing act organically. I think in the studio now, the symbols are changing more radically— or more rapidly. And in this show, I think so much of what I was thinking about was trying to be a better artist. The plus and the cross, the sort of symbols of addition. I think they also come out of an emotional place, the patterns of response.
Eric Pearce: Did you run into any limitations when you were working on these? Were there any things that you wanted to do that you couldn't do?
FT: Yeah, they're painful. They are really detailed. My eyes stop working at a certain hour, so I think there's that. My back too. I'm pretty young, so I'm trying to be careful. I work on them on the floor, so I'm like craned over a little section for days on end. I would make them crazier if I could, but currently I can't.
The gridding is really hard on my hands because they're incised, they're not drawn, or they're not graphite, they're carved into a soft layer I use before the paint goes on. So, pushing through that layer, I wear work gloves and get really careful.
Isabel Wilson: Do you cut because you don't want the pencil line,?
FT: Yeah, if I'm layering, I'll lose the pencil line one layer in, but if they're grooved, then I can keep going almost infinitely.
IW: How many layers is on this piece, for example?
FT: A lot. I can tell you where the beginning of the painting is showing through. I think this little cell is layer 1.
IW: So, you'll do like one whole color for one layer and then another?
FT: Yeah. And start to block and try things. And they sort of funnel down into the piece. But also in response to the original drawing.
Audience Member: Are you working on more than one piece at a time?
FT: Yeah, this whole show was made at the same time. Everything's juggled. I work on them like I water plants. You just go every day, and you do a little bit and a little bit and all that's subject to change too. Who knows, maybe the next show will be super focused on each piece. But currently they're simultaneous.
TG: Does working on one help you solve another?
FT: Absolutely. It's the only way I know how to work. I think I get so stuck and so frustrated. Towards the end when you have to finish them in preparation for a show, is usually the hardest part. It's like coming to the final decision.
TS: Do you ever have moments where you're like, ah, I fucked this up?
FT: Yeah, I mean, it's a high-risk, high-reward, I think. You bite off a lot more than you can chew and hope you can chew it. I think that is maybe one of the more beautiful parts of art making is that it shows you that you can do more than you think.
TG: There's more sandwich.
Thanks for reading!