My Interview with C'naan Hamburger in "Les Nouveaux Riches"

C’naan Hamburger. Interview

Tanya Traykovski met C’naan Hamburger at her Hunter mfa thesis exhibition in December 2023 and interviewed her at her first solo show currently on view at Charles Moffett gallery. Many artists have been inspired by the 16th century still life Vanitas genre that uses symbolism to show the ephemerality of life. But by applying this genre to a city, in her case her beloved hometown of New York, Hamburger addresses the universal theme of urban post-pandemic precarity and existential threats in a uniquely nuanced and sensitive manner.

INTERVIEW: TANYA TRAYKOVSKI – COURTESY OF ARTIST AND CHARLES MOFFETT GALLERY

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C’naan Hamburger,Theatre Is The Domestication Of An Audience, 2023, Egg Tempera, pigment and ground steel construction plate on panel.14 x 18 inches. Photo by Andy Romer, courtesy the artist and Charles Moffett.

Hamburger’s urban landscapes depict decay and the labor––from resodding park lawns to painting caution lines on subway steps––required to prevent further degradation. In fine brushstrokes of an egg tempera paint that Hamburger makes herself, she creates beautiful works that nod to myriad art historical references. While presenting the challenges inherent in maintaining order – both in the constructed worlds that surround us and in ourselves – she manages to retain levity and humor in her works.

Tanya Traykovski: Why did you decide to become an artist?
C’naan Hamburger: I think I have an academic inclination of sorts. I like to delve into things, I like to read. I dropped out of high school to become a professional skateboarder; my education was dismal because I moved around so much and I got so behind that there was a point where I didn’t think I could even catch up anymore. In art, there’s freedom from having academic training. So there’s an active mind, combined with a tactile element, too. And I always drew. Perhaps I also became an artist because English is not my mother tongue. Although it has become my primary tongue, it remains a product of my peripatetic life and fractured education. I have separate languages to feel each stage of my life and loves–– including languages I have mostly forgotten. My lack of an umbilical connection to English and my locations has led me to see the malleability and fragility of all that surrounds me.

C’naan Hamburger, Courtesy of the artist and Charles Moffett.

TT: How did skateboarding influence your artistic practice and does it continue to do so today?
CH: Skateboarding and art intertwine. I had a great arts education through skateboarding. Mark Gonzales is a legend who would create drawings and short stories for Thrasher magazine. He had his own skate company later and his drawings were such a big part of it. And another skateboarder Neil Blender would do wild things – like in the middle of a contest start rolling around on the ground and doing a whole performance and then spray paint on a wall. He would throw in a great trick, just so you knew he could do it. It was a protest against the contest because skateboarding was being overly formalized (which is very similar to art making today). I think I was also able to gain an understanding of art because sometimes skate culture was appropriated into high art, for example in advertising, there was always a play of high and low. Physically interacting with architecture is also unique to skateboarding.

C’naan Hamburger, Vanitas, 2023, Egg Tempera, pigment and ground Manhattan Schist on panel. 28 x 39 inches. Photo by Andy Romer, courtesy the artist and Charles Moffett.

C’naan Hamburger, Janus, 2024, Egg Tempera, pigment, ground meteorites and YIn Mn Blue on panel. 14 x 18 inches. Photo by Thomas Barratt, courtesy the artist and Charles Moffett.

TT: Egg tempera, an ancient type of paint, is your preferred medium and what you’ve used for paintings in this show. And you make it yourself, often with site specific materials such as schist blended into the paint. Can you explain why?
CH: There was this moment in grad school where a group of painters were talking. I was kind of on the outside as I hadn’t fully committed to being a painter at this point. I overheard them waxing poetic over a cadmium that Williamsburg paint puts out. They were describing this emotional relationship with all these brands. But you’re buying a brand of paint. And squeezing it, and I know that there’s a whole theology behind paint from the tube. And mixing paint. But I think that I am attracted to making it all. Egg tempera is traditional but I think, at this point, the opposite of tradition is a tradition in itself. The lines are quite blurry. And it’s quite transgressive to not subscribe to those rules.

TT: While your work addresses the weighty theme of the futility of attempting to delay entropy, there is also a lot of humor in it. Could you please highlight some of the humorous passages?
CH: I like to play little compositional games. For example, in Janus, there are a lot of two-faced architectural motifs throughout the work: the arrows, the crowbars and the Siamese connections are facing opposite directions. In terms of the figures, you have one looking at the other while he is looking away. We live in such tight quarters in New York. Even when you’re talking to someone perhaps they’re also looking away; we’re together, but alone, which also can be kind of funny. In Vanitas, there’s a woman picking up dog poop holding a Vanity Fair bag. Some trees take on these gestural qualities. When walking through the park, one doesn’t feel how our gestural trees are, how they too have personalities. Oh, how jarring that something else can have a personality! In Theater is the Domestication of an Audience, the barriers have a lot of personality and humor as well. I certainly get a chuckle out of the many masterful renderings of horse behinds from the Renaissance! These barriers echoed those in my mind. The barriers assembled and disassembled in several positions had a very academic, still life feel. But academic is funny too! And in Painting Class, the arm the painter holds up becomes a silhouette of the handrail. And so the object and the person become a bit interchanged in a lot of my pieces.

C’naan Hamburger, 14 Stations of the Scaffolding, 2023, Pen on paper. 11 x 15 inches. Photo by Thomas Barratt, courtesy the artist and Charles Moffett.

C’naan Hamburger, Participant, 2024, Egg tempera, pigment and collected dust from Manhattan windowpanes on panel.13 x 15inches. Photo by Thomas Barratt, courtesy the artist and Charles Moffett.

TT: Your proprietary process of creating drawings on steel seems in some ways metaphorical to the central theme of the show because it’s destructive, but you create something beautiful. How did it come about and what do you like about it?
CH: I have to wear a intense respirator because the process of burning through enamel on steel is very toxic. Burning provides an effect that is visceral. The bricks I depict come to life on a particle level! I came up with this process because I have a lot of drawings. Drawing is the basis of everything that I do. And I was wondering, what else can I do with these drawings? At school, I had access to a laser scanner and printer, and it just didn’t work. But I thought, why don’t I try burning steel plates myself, manually. And it worked! So just from a process perspective, I was mimicking something, mining technology and learning from it. And to be fair, I think I learned how to paint through Photoshop; while I don’t use Photoshop to make paintings, technology has given me lessons.

TT: You have many art historical references in your work. The most obvious of which is Pieter Breugel’s Hunters in the Snow for your work Vanitas, but others are more subtle. Can you talk about a few of them?
CH: In my drawing series, I took on the most Renaissance trope I knew. It’s based on the raising of the cross, and it’s called 14 Stations of the Scaffolding. It includes 14 stations because there are seven drawings of raising the scaffolding, the lever process. And then there’s a woman who emerges from the background in seven stages as well, walking her dog. Scaffolding is this omnipresent thing in New York. And people are carrying these heavy things, burdened, and I asked myself, where have I seen that before? There is an element of suffering related to all the labor we do in New York. And there’s also the communication that happens. In these works, I completely stole a quote from Nicolas Poussin’s Landscape of a Man Being Killed By a Snake here too; I felt especially moved to mention him in this series because of his experiments in controlled theater and the depiction of landscapes through the lens of time— I find his moves and especially, the stare of the man looking at the other being killed by the snake, to be particularly effective. I wondered if that can be evoked without such high stakes (as death). Just to twist things up, there are also a lot of modernist compositions that I play with. The composition of Painting Class comes from Piet Mondrian!

TT: The last work you made, Participant, is formally different from the others as it is devoid of people. You’ve talked about disappearing ancient cities as they relate to the work. Can you please explain?
CH: I wondered what it would look like to make a city without people, but that implies people, so that it’s not a ghost town, it’s not creepy. In Participant, the smoke and fog almost erase all the high rise buildings. All that remain are the low brick buildings. And that was a nod to the vanitas, that’s the fleeting part most explicitly. But simultaneously, as solid as the city looks, it’s pretty fleeting as well. That sort of play lends itself to thinking of architecture. Historically, all American architecture nods to another time. You’ve got your Baroque quote, you have your Renaissance quote, you have your Modernist quote, and I think of destroyed cities. When you’re quoting from another civilization, what does that mean towards ours? 

Installation Image, Photos by Thomas Barratt, courtesy Charles Moffett.

TT: What makes you happy?
CH: Becoming part of the artistic community quite suddenly, has been quite a treat. I love skatingboarding. I love time with my family. I think my kids have the best ideas; I know I talk about the Renaissance a lot, but actually my kids came up with most of my ideas. When in conversation I encounter awkwardness, and succeed in filling it with patience, with silence, breathing in and out the tension, listening for the quiet song that pleases my sense of music, and using it to search for something with the breath of life inspiring it. In this rare peace I find much happiness. 

*Until April 20th at Charles Moffett, 437 Washington Street – 2nd Floor, New York, NY

C’naan Hamburger is a Jerusalem-born, New York-based artist. She earned her MFA from Hunter College in December 2023. Her work is held in permanent collections of the Bartow-Pell Museum, Bronx, NY, and UMass Dartmouth, Claire T. Carney Library Archives and Special Collections. Before pursuing her artistic practice, she was a World Champion Skateboarder, named best female skater of 2001 by Transworld Skateboard Magazine; and in 2000, she won the World Cup of Skateboarding and the Vans Triple Crown in Women’s Street.

Tanya Traykovski holds an A.B. in Art History from Duke University, and an M.A. in Modern and Contemporary Art History from Christie’s Education. The founder of TT Fine Art, she has over ten years of experience in identifying emerging artists who have gone on to achieve widespread market, critical, and curatorial recognition on behalf of collectors and collecting institutions. After an earlier career in high-end retail including positions in the Paris-based buying office of Barneys New York and with Joyce Boutique in Hong Kong, she greatly enjoys discovering and reporting on new talent in one of the art world’s global centers, her home city of New York.

INTERVIEWKUNSTNEW YORK

My Favorite Feminists in NYC right now

Young women artists have been surprisingly silent about issues like misogyny and racism in post- Trumpian times. In the art world nexus that is New York, nearly everyone is outraged by the rulings of 45’s Supreme Court and judicial nominees, and by the ubiquitous Fox News-driven, anti-woke, right wing rhetoric, but where’s the art? Sure, established artists such as Barbara Kruger have been at it with text works since the 1980s and Andrea Bowers has had a notable activist practice for decades, but what of the next generation? And what do artists who are immigrants have to say? At long last, in galleries and a major museum in New York this spring, artists are addressing important issues head on, with great sensitivity and an emphasis on beauty.

While there have laudably been many gallery shows by noteworthy Asian and Asian American artists in this past year, Eunnam Hong’s first solo show at Lubov on the Lower East Side is a standout. Here, she explores feminism in an early Cindy Sherman-esque cinematic manner, always painting her own blonde-wigged, elegantly dressed avatar - who often appears multiple times on the same canvas - in different outfits and poses. Originally from South Korea, Hong moved to the US in 2006 for a break from her successful career in graphic art for major fashion companies. Once here, motherhood subsumed her; while studying painting at Pratt, she met an American, married him and took on the new role as the primary caregiver for her children. But she never stopped painting, and it shows. It’s the interiority of these subjects who never meet our gaze (and the just-so cinched waists and perfectly rendered toes in the latest stiletto sandal, as well as her exceptional ability to paint drapery, light, shade and reflections) that draws you in. But back to the blond wig: Does her disguise stem from lack of security in her new identity as a painter, a profession her parents had once discouraged? Or is it simply practical? (It was certainly easier to be her own model while she painted at home). More chillingly, can we ignore the darker reading of an Asian woman in New York donning a white-passing disguise in a time of increasing incidences of anti-Asian hate crimes? Working in a long lineage of women who created meaningful works while homebound – Imogen Cunningham and Marisa Merz come to mind – Hong creates cryptic and exquisite works that speak uniquely to 21st century anxieties.

Azita Moradkhani is another recent immigrant artist who plays with textiles - both beautifully drafted in colored pencil on paper or printed on fabric - in her more overtly political works on view at her first solo at Jane Lombard. Born and raised in Teheran, the artist moved to New York in the 2010s. Moradkhani embeds images from peaceful feminist protests worldwide in sensually rendered, lacy lingerie. Drawn in by the implied female body, the viewer is confronted with sign-bearing crowds of people expressing outrage against exploitation. Referencing the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom movement that resulted from the murder of teenager Mahsa Jina Amini by the Iranian police, 1970s protest in Iran, and more recent marches in her adopted country following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Moradkhani universalizes the struggle of women for gender empowerment and equality.

Perhaps the most exciting project by a young artist on view in New York now is in the least expected venue: the trying-hard-to-be-a-little-less-staid Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lauren Halsey, a Los Angeles-based Black queer artist, pays homage to the museum’s collection in a rooftop installation where she recreates a form similar to the Egyptian Temple of Dendur that is permanently installed below. Hieroglyphs on the walls are transformed into text – often expressing Black power, but sometimes mimicking signage from Black owned businesses – and Afrofuturist motifs. Sphinxes with faces of her family members and life partner stand guard.  The structure is solid and powerful, an impressive feat by a visionary young woman.

It bears reiterating that these women can really, really paint, draw and fabricate art.  In the case, of Hong and Moradhkhani, their hyperrealistically rendered forms - as much as their messages - draw you in and make you want to linger in their respective worlds. And happily, Halsey’s world will live on; the installation will be moved to her South Central Los Angeles neighborhood to serve as a community gathering place after it’s Met run.

Paris+ par Art Basel

Very early previews of the inaugural show from the Art Basel group in Paris and the smaller fair Paris Internationale are coming in and I’m excited for the action to begin on October 18th. Some highlights are below.

Portraits of young women are ubiquitous; emerging artists taking on this subject matter most successfully are American Michelle Rawlings who might be addressing her own adolescence in Texas at Chapter gallery at Paris Internationale and Romanian artist Marius Bercea, who draws inspiration from both Mary Cassatt and Czech writer Milan Kundera’s protagonists, at Francois Ghebaly at the main fair. Animals are also commonplace in painting these days and Sophie Barber’s focus on famous artists with dogs (or their depiction of dogs) playfully satirizes the white, male geniuses of Modernism (most of whom became famous in Paris) at Chris Sharp.

Andrew Kreps is presenting work by Raymond Sanders, a Black artist who incorporates detritus from his native Bay Area into his works but also nods to many summers spent in Paris – a city that has arguably been hospitable towards Black artists over the years – starting when he opened a studio there in the 1980s.

Much more to come!

Thanks for the shout out, Joyst.com! Please see the lovely article below.

HOW TO START AN ART COLLECTION FOR YOUR HOME

April 24, 2017

Tags: art, curation, home

Tanya Traykovski has been advising art collectors for over ten years. She  researches the best new artists to track, helping people select pieces for their homes and build their collections. Tanya spoke with JOYST about how to start your own home art collection, how she figures out what artists are important and why, and how she works with her clients to frame, install and even store their pieces.

Tell us about your company, Living International Art Consulting.  

My company, Living International Art Consulting, generally starts working with people when they are beginning to collect art for their homes. Once bitten by the collecting bug, some of my clients purchase more works than they can live with for reasons that span from the philanthropic to the financial. We help them make decisions regarding purchases and charitable donations as their collections grow.

What type of people are coming to you for help?

I work with individuals and couples who are just starting to collect art and those who have been collecting for a while and are becoming more serious about building meaningful collections. I’m lucky because most of my clients are genuinely interested in – or even passionate about – art and are seeking works that have historical relevance. My job is to educate them about the artists who are considered to be important and why.

How do you save your users time?

I preview many art fairs worldwide as well as countless New York gallery shows. I then tailor my client walk-throughs to artists that meet my client’s aesthetic, intellectual and budgetary preferences. I also advise my clients on auction records for similar works in the case of more established artists. For new works by highly sought-after artists, in addition to saving clients time in identifying artists, I can facilitate primary market access since I have relationships with many galleries. Lastly, I save my clients money by negotiating discounts on their behalf.

How do you help people choose and buy art for their collection?

I generally discuss interests and tastes with my clients to ascertain what periods, mediums and styles they prefer. Then I’ll often walk through an art fair with them to see what they respond to. Following this, I’ll show them other works by the artists they liked or similar works, ideally in person in the galleries that represent those artists. I’ll also always keep my clients apprised on the emerging artists I feel are most interesting and why. I pay attention to which artists are receiving curatorial and critical attention and keep them informed of key exhibitions and articles.

Can you give an example of how you have helped someone start their art collection?

I encouraged one of my first collectors to shift from prints by famous artists to unique works by emerging artists since value was important to him (and multiples tend to be less valuable than unique works.) He loves living with as well as lending and on occasion donating paintings and sculptures by artists of his own generation to museums, and is pleased that after slightly over 10 years, many of the works he owns have appreciated.

How do you research and identify emerging artists before they gain widespread recognition?

I find that word of mouth among curators, gallerists and critics is key and I’ll often go on studio visits of new artists I have heard about. I also attend the MFA exhibitions at Columbia University, Hunter College and the like.  Although artists’ student work is not their most mature, I go to these shows to identify artists who I can follow in the future. I regularly go to the younger galleries that tend to show ground-breaking artists, attend major international curated exhibitions like the Venice Biennale, and of course, cover the art fairs. I’m involved in several not-for-profit and educational activities in the visual arts through which I am introduced to artists and their oeuvres early on in their careers as well.

Tell us your top tips for managing an art collection once a user buy their pieces. How can you help with things like framing, packing, installation and storage?

Installing is my favorite job of all! I love helping clients put it all together in their spaces, and work with the best art handlers in the business to make sure the process goes smoothly. I know great framers here in New York and have a lot of experience with them because of my work with local hospitals for which we have bought – and framed – hundreds of works. I’ve also been responsible for the packing and storing of many art works over the years so I know excellent businesses in those areas. Lastly, most of my collectors work with collection management data bases like Collectrium to keep track of their works.

What sites and resources do you recommend people turn to for more information on this subject?

The New York Times includes excellent art reviews on Fridays, and Art News and Hypoallergic have good daily online newsletters. Art Market Monitor provides sound market information in their blog as well. I also like the print versions Art Forum. Frieze and Art in America. Looking at art and talking to art historians, dealers and specialists – at fairs, at galleries and at art auction previews – as well as at museum exhibitions of course, is always the best art education.

Anything else you would like to let us know about your business?

No job is too small! In addition to painting and sculpture, I know the print and photography markets very well, and enjoy working with clients who want to add beautiful works to their home in any price point and medium. Living with art – and becoming involved in the art world – is visually and intellectually stimulating, and can be transformative. Engaging with people who are interested in gaining knowledge and expertise about art is a pleasure and a privilege.

AUTHOR

CATHERINE SHARICK

The former head of TIME.com and now a work from home mom with three kids, Cathy knows how to manage a house and career. She’s currently consulting for early stage startups and leading content at JOYST where she is helping women take back time for themselves.

http://myjoyst.com/2017/04/24/home-art-collection/

A SUMMER EXHIBITION REVIEW

Please read my article on a remarkable exhibition by this talented artist. And if you'll be in Bolzano soon, by all means go see it!

http://followartwithme.com/korakrit-arunanondchais-first-solo-exhibition-in-italy/

Korakrit Arunanondchai's (b. 1986) first solo exhibition in Italy “Painting with history 3 or two thousand five hundred and fifty nine years to figure stuff out” at the Museion in Bolzano foregrounds personal and collective memory and the transformation thereof in the digital age.

The Thailand-born, internationally-educated multi-media artist's oeuvre draws on myriad art historical references, yet also adds a Southeast Asian viewpoint to the pastiche and eclecticism favored by his global millennial peers. This exhibition showcases Arunanondchai's diverse practice of painting, video and installation in which he often proffers loosely autobiographical narratives.

On the ground floor of the Museion, Arunanondchai opens with the monumental Large History Paintings (Poetry Floor.) Backing the holes in his denim supports with digital photographs of the very flames he used to scorch them, he memorializes the works' own making. The huge scale and gestural brushwork nod to Abstract Expressionism, but Arunanondchai adds body outlines a la Yves Klein and embedded jeans. In the Italian context, these works evoke Alberto Burri's poetic garment-affixed works; but while Burri's incorporated clothing as a mementori mori to the defunct Italian textile industry in the post-war period, Arunanondchai, presents a tongue- in-cheek critique of the ubiquity of the denim uniform amongst global youths.[1]

Upstairs, Arunanondchai presents the conclusion to his Bildungsroman video series Painting with History in a Room Filled with People with Funny Names 3. The artist's alter ego - the Denim Painter - stars in these films in which fact and fiction, and East and West collide. Referencing the aforementioned Western sources along with Thai Modernists, the protagonist creates a world in which contemporary tools like drones that create sweeping bird's eye vistas, and rap music convey commentary on the life cycle and Thai spirituality. The title refers to his own hard-to-pronounce Thai name, or to the names of Western artists that Thais struggle with. Arunanondchai always collaborates with others, among them friends and family members, musicians, seamstresses and technically skilled workers.

Arunanondchai's installation is compelling. Visitors recline on denim pillows to watch the film in a room where bright colored filters placed in every window intensify the ambient light. Works presented in double-sided metal frames reference the video; in one mirrored painting, figures pose beside a bonfire of denim in a rural setting. When the colored light is reflected in the mirror, the viewer's experience of the artificially-enhanced illumination is accentuated. The colored light also shines on the verso - an installation/sculpture made of post-combustion debris and metal - and a scene that could evoke a post-apocalyptic nightmare is transformed and set beautifully aglow.

Museion, Bolzano, Italy. Through September 11th.

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[1]   Jaimey Hamilton, "Making Art Matter: Alberto Burri’s Sacchi," October 124 (Spring 2008): 51, accessed: 04/02/2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40368499.

SPRING AUCTIONS

So far not too bad as far as the Contemporary Art Auction market goes. Records set on works by Basquiat, Richard Prince, Agnes Martin, Mike Kelley, Kerry James Marshall, Olivier Mosset and others. Complete with a moment of levity at Christie's when the auctioneer said Donald Duck instead of Judd!

ARMORY WEEK RECAP

The Armory Fair's focus on African Art was well-executed and timely; the curators selected a diverse group of works to emphasize plurality, echoing the gallery selections of excellent African and African diaspora art throughout the fair. A standout - Njideka Akunyili Crosby's beautiful diptych homage to her mother that - rumor has it - was purchased by the Whitney Museum at the fair.

LA-bound!

We are off to Los Angeles next week to visit the third edition of Paramount Ranch in Malibu, LA Contemporary at the Barker Hanger and select galleries. Blum and Poe is addressing the much-discussed relationship between Korean Tansaekhwa and American Minimalism by presenting works from both movements side by side. Seth Price is opening at 356 Mission. For up-to-the-minute information, please visit @tanyatray on Instagram.

Happy 2016!

We thought more specifics on upcoming art fairs might be helpful. Join us if you can.

LA fairs - January 29-31.

New York - ADAA on March 2-6, Armory and Independent on March 3 - 6 and other smaller fairs around the same time, and then Art New York on May 3 - 8, and Frieze May 5 - 8 and other smaller fairs.

Basel - Art Basel from June 16 - 19.  

Southhampton - Art Southhampton - July 7 - 11.

New York - Independent projects November 3 - 6.

Miami - Art Basel Miami Beach and other Miami art fairs - December 1 - 4.

Welcome!

Welcome to our blog. In addition to our published articles, musings on recent gallery and museum exhibitions and art fairs will appear here regularly. Please visit often and share.