Just popping in again to point you to Caroline Picard’s interview with Chicago-based artist Deb Sokolow on art:21 blog! (We’ve also interviewed Deb on Episode 201 of the podcast). Caroline asks Deb a bunch of really insightful questions – don’t miss this! A brief excerpt follows; please go on over to art:21 and read it in full.
Deb Sokolow, "Dear Trusted Associate" (detail), 2008-2009. Graphite, charcoal, ink, acrylic on paper and on wall, approx. 40 feet long. Installed at the Van Abbemuseum in 2008 and at the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2009-2010.
Deb Sokolow invokes You, the audience. When engaging her work–wall drawings rife with text-narratives that revel in heist, hijinks and mystery, You are not a passive bystander. You are implicated as a character in her web, because she always writes in the second person. I spent some time talking to Deb about that second person device. It strikes me as particularly interesting because of its self-reflexiveness. Rather than sharing the artist’s gaze, looking through the lens of a camera say, the audience suddenly identifies with the model. You/We are in the drawing. You/We are being watched. Deb Sokolow is looking at us. Like an unnerving Welcome mat, Sokolow gives you a platform on which to stand.
Caroline Picard: How would you describe your development as an artist? Do you feel like there are different stages of Deb Sokolow work?
Deb Sokolow: Good question, maybe it’s a question I’d be able to answer better 10 or 20 years down the road. I’ve only been working in this current vein since 2003. That year, I was smack-dab in the middle of grad school, and it was the year that I had an art crisis; I realized I didn’t know what the heck I was doing or wanted to do as an artist. I had no personal investment in anything going on in the studio, so I stopped making work. I went home. I watched movies and ate Chinese take-out. “This is so much better than making art,†I told myself. But then when I started asking myself what was so compelling about watching movies, I realized that it was the stories, the narrative form that I loved, that I could get lost in. This was an A-ha! moment for me, because prior to this, I was making these blobby shapes out of glue and arranging them on table tops. It was boring. So boring! So I moved into working with the narrative form, making large, diagrammatic drawings on paper or multiple papers, always narrated by an anonymous, unreliable protagonist who’s only ever referred to as “you†and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of years up until a couple of months ago where I decided to make a break with this, keep using the “you†but develop a new framework for the narrative and a new way of presenting it. So, in answer to your question, I guess I could say that I’ve recently entered dynasty #2, which is actually a pretty exciting place to be. Read more.
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