Kathy Grayson: I ended up calling the street punk guys “NEW YORK SHITTY” because I thought it was funnier. Dash wrote that in a zine to me once and I loved it. My love for this kind of art came from an encouter with a Chris Johanson drawing while I was in college. The drawing said HOW DID I BECOME A FUCKED UP DOG PERSON, and I was feeling like a fucked up dog person, I decided I was on the wrong track and changed my focus, I took a job at deitch after college so I could meet chris johanson, essentially. This huge show is the community of amazing people that came out of the connection to Chris, and the reason I love the art and am doing all this work here in rome right now is from the connection to the people.
GG: Can you explain what separates Ryan McGinley, Dash Snow from AVAF, Jim Drain and Jules de Balincourt and from Dan Colen and Tauba Auerbach and what they all have in common? Can you tell us whether they all form part of the same ‘community’ or were they born, have grown up and today live and work in different environments in the city?
KG: Many of the people live in a few blocks of downtown new york city. I lived above Terence Koh, around the corner from nate dan ryan and hanna, a few blocks from Dash, formerly, near the clubs and bars these people hung out in, near galleries or shops we hung out in, etc etc. but that is one small part of the picture. The real connections come through art collaboration or music collaboration, or underground exchange. Dash and Chris Johanson made a zine together though chris lived in San Francisco, AVAF and Takeshi Murata collaborated on a project even though Takeshi lives in a bunker in the woods of upstate new york, Tauba lives with and collaborated before with Keegan McHargue, Cory and Paper Rad collaborated over the internet. Barry and Ben Jones went surfing together and made a zine called Cartoon Workshop. A million of these little connections makes a community.
GG: There is a fairly large community of Italian artists in New York, such as Ra di Martino from Rome. Do you know them or do the two art worlds remain separate?
KG: The only Italian I've connected with personally before was DUMBO from Milan who I met through aaron bondaroff and graffiti connections. I don’t know the artist you mention above, but am open to it of course. I love meeting new people and encourage folks to come by Deitch and give them free books ive made or many people send me their artist books in the mail, etc.
GG: Every day we are bombarded with an unprecedented amount of information and the power of the Internet and its potential for sharing has exponentially improved our capabilities for communication and expression. Do you think this may have influenced the artists’ work? To what degree do you think this may apply more to New York than to a city such as Rome?
KG: There are many many projects in the show that could not have been made pre-internet definitely. Part of the NEW of the NEW ABSTRACTION section is a response to digital culture. One huge video project in the back of the other building plays off a hacked Nintendo cartridge, to name a few. I don’t think the internet has a different impact on Rome and New York City, I think its impact is to make Rome or New York City less relevant to art. But in terms of a meeting place, New York has been and is still the premier meeting place for artists in America at least.
GG: This exhibition marks Luca Massimo Barbero’s debut as director of the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Rome. What are you expecting from it?
KG: He seems like a really cool guy, i know he is very excited about this ambitious show. He is excited to connect with these artists and maybe activate them in the future. If the first show is this wild and fun, i think it bodes well for his future exhibitions!
GG: What is your favourite museum and what would your ideal museum be like?
KG: This is a tough one because I work at Deitch Projects because they are a gallery that acts like a Kunsthalle. We do the craziest most fun projects with the best arists around, besides working with older artists like the Keith Haring estate, the Basqiat Estate, projects with Francesco Clemente etc. I work at deitch and not a museum because we have this freedom to do whatever we want, no glass ceiling, no holds barred, with both young and old artists.
That aside, the museum I have enjoyed working with most is the DESTE in Athens Greece run by Dakis Joannou. That guy is a visionary collector-curator-creative person, he really GETS IT if you know what I mean!
