Price + Process @ Redline

For a few weeks in July, Bruce Price filled a gallery just inside the entry of Redline with an array of work that comprised a year's worth of production. Essentially, the contents of his studio there were emptied and hung on the walls, and once everything was installed, Plus stopped by and documented the work with some quick, down-and-dirty snapshots. Some of those are included here.

While the work was still up, we asked Bruce to reflect on what this body of work represented . . .

1. The work that is in the gallery space at Redline documents your process over the last year or so. How was that work produced, from a day-to-day perspective?

I work in the studio on average 20 to 25 hours a week depending on my teaching schedule. I often have from 2 to 10 pieces in development with numerous on hold (some for years). I work to have ideas rather then have ideas to work so simply working is much the point.

2. There are works in a variety of media, or similar materials are used on various substrates. In general, how does the idea relate to the medium and the material?

Medium is actually fairly limited to acrylic & fabric on canvas or paper with minor exceptions. This is both convenience and quasi-intentional. I’m more concerned with sensation then expression so the material of the paper is important. I have a strategy for working that I use and work against that travels across supports.

3. At what point did you become interested in incorporating fabric, and why?

It came out of my interest in ornamentation as a critique of an inherited modernist narrative about abstraction. The research around it was part of assimilating various postmodern ideas. I would also say that it seems to be providing a way out of the dilemmas of critique that I am no longer interested in.

Another answer is it faster than painting the pattern and I love pattern.

4. Gingham fabric conveys certain cultural connotations. What about that pattern appeals to you?

The gingham happened through my use of arbitrary processing, that is, I found some in my sister’s trash. It’s apparently used in pattern drafting as it makes the fall of a garment visible. It is thin enough and the pattern is rigid enough that it works well for producing a distorted pattern, which functions as an analogy to ideas I have about being and becoming.

The familiarity is seductive and lighthearted and I enjoy that it folds people in.

I have toyed with using pattern as cultural artifact some so I’m not unaware of it. I’m more interested in what seems to be the origins and its evolution. It seems to be a very early pattern probably starting as a simple stripe one direction then evolving to a stripe in two directions, a good example of a simple pattern emerging from a set of forces (in this case the technology of weaving) evolving towards greater complexity, not unlike DNA.

5. A majority of the canvases are 16 x 20, or 20 x 16. What drove the decision to focus on that format?

I’ve made a lot of small work so I have a history. Last year I saw a show of Thomas Nozkowski and Tomma Abts, who both have worked with a small format for extended lengths of time. I found the modesty and restraint very compelling.

I used cheap pre-made canvases, as I wanted to work fast without much intent except to made work and to use difference as a tool, so I accepted the standardization. I tried the size larger but found the compacted space of the smaller one more comfortable.

6. The erotic collages are a pretty distinct departure from the other works on paper and canvas in terms of medium, content and specificity. At what point did they manifest and how do they relate to the other work, if at all?

I started using gay porn in graduate school. That program was very steeped in feminist theory. At first it was way of insisting on my desire within what felt like a very heterosexual environment based on/in gender tensions. It wasn’t a disagreement with the theory but it felt like my desire was irrelevant to the conversation. Producing them seemed to make my desire present and thus complicating the conversation.

It also provides for another thing I’m interested in—pleasure. It’s part of the things in the world that I like looking at.

7. When looking at the work in the gallery as a whole, do you differentiate between more or less complete, more or less valuable, or is it about illustrating a continuity of output?

I ‘called’ the ‘show’ “Everything I produced this year, finished or not, with some minor exceptions,” so I do have a line of finished or not. However I did find some work I thought was unfinished was finished as well as the reverse.

The question of whether something is finished is/has been a very central question to me. Finished has to do with being convincing, and the visual question is how to make something that looks convincing, particularly over time. My approach has been to produce complexity through the use of difference. I have played this year with the thin edge, both in terms of amount of difference and subtlety of difference.

8. Why did you choose to display the work in a fairly casual format? How public and/or private is the show intended to be? Is it a "show," per se?

It is a show in that it was to show off the work. It was not an exhibition in terms of a formal event.

I wanted to see what I had done and I also had in mind a few others I thought might be interested. I make a lot of work but what gets shown is a limited selection.

Having access to the space at Redline gave me the opportunity to show it all.

There is a small bit of an organizing impulse I followed, but didn’t really care about the presentation—I just wanted to get it up and be done, so I worked fast.

I was also feeling resentful and belligerent at the time—caring in a negative sense might be considered a design strategy.

9. Once you put everything up on the wall, what went through your mind?

If volume counts I win…?

I noticed some color issues I’ll be addressing.

I remembered the initial impulse towards difference.

I felt exposed and had anxiety about showing something I thought unfinished.

The work is stronger (or more visible) in the context of the body of work then in individual works. Not sure if this is a weakness or not but it is clearly true.

10. Has observing your work as a continuum in any way determined where you are heading next?

I’m always thinking I should be more directed and intentful while continually wandering away. I’ve lived with myself long enough to know that while I’ve had a lot of thoughts about where to go next I doubt that I’ll get there though I trust I’ll get somewhere.

Intention and the arbitrary are tensions in my process. While I’m very concerned with the finished object I’m not very interested that what is present at the finish matches some imagined image. It’s a practice of seeing what is rather then what it ought to be. I don’t know that it’s true, but I think it’s a valuable practice to develop.

- Gene Zazzaro, Plus Gallery Intern, Summer 2009

Interview with Bruce Price

On the cold winter afternoon of January 23, 2009 I arrived at RedLine Studios, Denver, Colorado, to meet contemporary, abstract artist, Bruce Price, where I was promptly offered (and eagerly accepted) a pre-interview cup of tea. I started off asking Bruce to discuss his newest works. This being the first time we had met, I wanted to get a feel for how our conversation would go, what questions are more appropriate, etc. As both Bruce and myself are quite chatty the ‘interview’ flowed casually and I felt almost right away that I should simply throw my questions out the window. I started by discussing his current, ‘in-progress’ works hanging around the studio.

He began by explaining to me that as type of ‘exercise’ he had bought out the entire stock of small, pre-stretched canvases at a local art store, about 52 of them. He said that ‘working small’ was experimental, to see “how things change in a visual progression”. “Within a body of work there are positive and negative constraints.” He began as he indicated to his small, preparatory canvases scattered around the room. The pieces play with these constraints by needing “less looking” and being “more expressive, quick works”.

He starts describing the pieces, “I think a lot about difference; difference between and within paintings; difference enacted in a fractal way.” As he explains this I note numerous examples of this on his wall and it’s not difficult to find these references through his body of work: in contrasting textures and colors, within his compositions, and between various, individual pieces. These new works are no different, filled with mesmerizing contrasts. Here, I begin discussing his ‘creative process’ asking what inspires the work. He begins saying that in his works there exists multiple parts for consideration, first there is “the I (himself) in the object, and there is the object in the world.” he explains, “They really are two different things.” When I ask how this affects his work he continues, “The reason I do it is, I accept the difference between why I do it and the reception in the world.” He explains he doesn’t try to make his work a “vehicle of conception in the world.” and that “there are just peoples reactions… I ‘m interested in that. I like playing off people’s expectations of what I’ve done in the past.”


"Crosscuta"- Bruce Price

This of course, is easier to do now that Price has a successful body work and experience to play off of. As we’re discussing this work and in reference to his small canvases I ask,

“What/who then are you influenced by? Writers? Philosophers? Artists?

“Philosophy and science, specifically Emergent Theory; systems that self organize.” He answers, and continues to discuss his interest in science and how he considers himself a “material transcendentalist” enjoying the idea of the deconstruction of materials. “Moving from parts to where each part is it’s own organism… an auto-catalysts where the forces at play come together enough where they are not just a set of sensations but a meta-organism” He also talked about his artist influences from his graduate program in the Maine College of Art, Sheryl Canada and Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, from whom he borrows the notion of being, “driven mainly by ideas, to privilege sensation and to pleasure the senses”. “Conceptualists are suspicious of pleasure” he continues, “heretical to notions of seriousness.” We discuss this in more detail before I continue,

“How do you know a piece is finished?” For Price, this becomes an issue of over-working,
“I used to say my interest was making a painting that convinced me of it’s self.” He continues to explain that key is to stop “the moment when the painting is convincing “.
I then go on to ask, “How do you then define a successful piece?” He went on to discuss how certain pieces are more significant, whether in his career as an artists or within his body of work, such as “The Decorative Transgression of Utopian Geometry” of which he described as “extremely decorative and ornamental” opposed to a painting like, "Quasi Casual Operator" in which he described problems with the painting in his eyes, but that became, “a significant piece to do”. He described how it was the first larger scale piece where, “the geometry became a gesture” and “a field of pattern became a brush-stroke” and how “that was significant”.


“The Decorative Transgression of Utopian Geometry”- Bruce Price


"Quasi Casual Operator"- Bruce Price

We continued to discuss his work and art in more general terms and we moved on to the subject of younger artists as he mentioned, “Now, I would say that artists aren’t in charge of their work… I’m not trying to control the reception of the piece because, well, it’s tyrannical on the one hand.” And more importantly because “meaning is not stable, it’s temporal. It’s a kind of conceit in the notion that I’m in charge of the meaning of it, it’s more interesting, the meaning that someone might make of it” At that we winded down our conversation before my departure from his studio.
The meeting as a whole was an informative one, in which I found myself better understanding both Price’s work and the artist himself. I found delight in the passion he puts forth in his work and his intellectual play through his concepts, but most of all I loved the pure enjoyment he gets out of making it.




- Amelia Carley, Plus Gallery Intern, Spring 2009