Space 1026

We caught up with Philladelphia collective Space 1026 the night before their opening at Bravin Lee Programs in Chelsea NYC.

Senior members Isaac Lin, Max Lawrence, and Jesse Golstein, along with newer members Aryon Hoselton and Crystal Stokowski, and Bravin Lee curator Lauren VHS tell us all about what it means to produce art installations, maintain a creative space, and work together.



Chief Magazine: All ya’ll live in Philadelphia right now? Do all of you live together?

Max Lawrence: Thank god, no.

Jesse Golstein: Philly’s so small. It feels like the same spot, you know? It’s not like New York where everything's in a different borough.

So you’ve been here about a week, setting this stuff up?

Max: You guys came in Friday, right?

Crystal Stokowski: Saturday, yeah.

Max: Jesse was here, but also in Philadelphia.

Jesse: Yeah, I think our idea for the show was to make the whole thing here, so the only things we brought were screens with patterns burned into them. Then we just got a lot of pens and paper, and that was part of the idea behind it. So basically we set up a few parameters for the show to work around. One of them was that we were going to make everything here. Another was that we weren’t going to use black, and the third was…

Max: Paper!

Jesse: …that everything was going to be non-representational. Just patterns and textures.

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So since you’ve been here, building and making the prints, have there been any changes or surprises? Has anybody wanted to use black, or…

Max: We left those people back in Philadelphia, the black ones. [laughing]

Jesse: I think in all the installations there has been a mix. We sort of know what we’re doing, but I’m sure it’s different in everybody’s head, individually. And we also sort of have this confidence now that when we go and do the process, it’s going to be awesome, not what anybody individually thought it would be.

Max: Try to come with no expectations and…

Jesse: …and just the faith in each other that it will all work out.

Max: Also, I think it’s taken ten years at this point. Beyond the manifesto, we’re a collective. The way we function is more of a cooperative. And we have cheap rent. It’s kind of grown out of working together inside the studio and making a shit-load of mistakes so far. We used to try to do a show where everyone had their own individual section and then tie it together. Or if you didn’t pay your rent, you weren’t in the show. But we’ve gotten a lot better at dropping our ego and realizing that the sum of the parts is a lot greater. It’s okay to have someone curate and direct something, setting the parameters and trying to work with them. Not to always have that last place, kicked-out-of-school attitude.

Lauren VHS: I feel that what’s so exciting about working with you guys on this project is that I had a set idea about what I thought it would all look like as a finished product, but you guys just brought yourself to it, and really re-invented the idea so much more than what I imagined it being.

Max: It’s sort of a coin toss, because we haven’t even hung anything yet. When you have artists come in, even on individual shows, you have the work you saw before the show, but when the actual show comes up about a year later or so, you can’t guarantee that it’s going to be something you even enjoy. You can’t guarantee any group of artists to come up with an A+ job on demand. It’s damn near impossible. The other thing that’s been going on in the last few years of contemporary lowbrow art—or street art, or any of these sorts of kitschy names for things—the style and symbolism has become really important. There are a lot of people who make rad art, but the problem is that when they go to do an installation, they have to produce that one image that they’re known for over and over again. That’s the performance for them. It’s kind of a bummer to have to function like that. It gets tiring to do that, so you have to re-invent that image. The good thing is that we’re such a mess. We don’t have that option. We don’t have like, a giant donkey we can put up everywhere that has drips on it. We’re not the drippy donkey crew.

So does that work better then, because there are so many people? I don’t know if there are people who have been doing this for longer, or is there sort of a cycle of people who come in and out…

Max: Isaac and I have been there since day one, then Jesse came in eight years ago, or seven years ago—

Isaac Lin: Like ’99.

Max: The other thing, too, is that when you leave the space, unless you leave with a shit-load of debt (and even if you do) you’re still a space member. The community stays together. Jess lives in New York now. He’s finishing up grad school. Isaac still has to finish his grad diploma, and came back to Philly for two years.

Jesse: I think that there’ve been waves of people at the space, and the reason some of these installations have even been possible is that there’s a totally new crew of people at the space that aren’t me, Isaac, or Max, and who have given the energy to make this possible. Ninety percent of the work that has gone into this installation was Aryon wandering somewhere and Crystal, who has been the sinew to the heart of this whole thing. In a lot of ways, we’re all trying to help realize something that comes from Crystal’s aesthetic.

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What is the aesthetic, then? How would you describe it?

Crystal: I let a lot of other people experiment. I don’t know. Max, what do you think?

Max: I think that Crystal has sewed it together, and that she has an organic quality to the work she does. She can’t be contained by a square. That’s Crystal, that’s her way of… her family, this kind of collection. Each time we do a show it’s different, because different people take the role of curatorial responsibilities. Some shows are just us hanging artwork up. But in the last couple of years, Crystal, Aryon, Roman, and Damian—these people have allowed us to drop our pre-conceived idea of what a show is, to do things as a group, and just be able to trust that Crystal has this process. What we have to do is learn her language and try to figure out how to materialize what she’s thinking. And so consequently, we have different things where Aryon, Roman, ‘Esse, and Isaac did this show at the ICA, which was this giant Ewok village. Roman and Aryon were able to materialize a workforce, take recycled materials and make something that was 60 feet tall, silk-screened over 5,000 shingles, and hand rope-braid one of the rope-bridges out of recycled garbage bags. It was the first time I’d really seen us hold together as a group and do things. That gave us inspiration for when Crystal was like, “We have this.” Well fuck, you direct us.

Jesse: What Aryon did was the first project without ego, because his whole project was creating rope-bridges, creating rope out of plastic bags, which is a thankless chore when you don’t have a clue what it’s for. You just see hundreds and hundreds of ropes forming, and you’re just like, “Why are we doing this, it makes no sense.”  But then, when we’re installing and these rope bridges are going up, they were the single thing that brought the installation over the top. It went from a color explosion to this insane village. I think it was really a wake up call for a lot of us. It showed us that there are all of these underlying parts that can make a collaborative art process that much more awesome.

Max: Also, what I think is really key about the space is that to become a space member, there is no selection process based on work. We’re not really concerned with that. Most of that shit is arbitrary in the first place, and what we’re really concerned with is that people utilize the space, are respectful, and get along well enough with people, but are constantly producing stuff. We started getting shows for 1026 because we have a gallery that doesn’t show Space 1026 members, and they’re like, “We heard this thing about this group,” and we were like, “Okay, what do we do?” We have our own individual work, and that’s a very specific thing, but what these guys have allowed us to do is show that anybody can make any kind of art. And now the idea with the curatorial position is, how do you pull it all together. Let your solo career be your own problem, that’s something else.

Isaac: That’s how the space used to be in the beginning, for the first five years. And then, for me, leaving and coming back, the space has changed into a more collective idea.

Max: That DUMBO thing we did was the first successful attempt at a group project. We made a 30-foot scalloped wall that looked like a skateboard ramp, but you couldn’t tell it was a skateboard ramp and it ran vertically. It was me, this guy Esse, who’s a super workhorse, and Becky Suss. We just got all the prints we could get from everybody at the space, and you know – keep it simple, works on paper – went up there, built the structure, and then wheat paste it. That was the first introduction to our inspiration. Like Fort Thunder, like lightning bolt, post Providence kind of stuff. These guys, like Aryon, Crystal, Jay-Sue, Damian, Roman, and so on and so forth, this new generation of people, they have been like, “Okay that was a good place for us to rip somebody else’s idea off, now let’s try to figure out how to do it differently, and keep pushing the boundaries of it.” It’s one thing to emulate somebody that you like. It’s another thing to widen that emulation as your own.

So was it sort of a “let’s see what happens” kind of thing? Like a bunch of you got the space together, you’re artists already, and you’re throwing group shows…

Max: Originally, Isaac and I moved down. We were probably the first generation to start the space with Andrew Jeffrey Wright, Ben Woodward, John Freeborn, Jeff Wiesner, Adam Wallacavage, Adam Crawford, Jake Henry—

Isaac: Dan Murphy.

Max: Jen Daniels, Claire Rojos. The reason this place started, is that almost all of us were kicked out of college and/or asked to leave our departments. One of the most ironic things is that Ben Woodward is our Rhode Island School of Design rep for Philadelphia, and he never graduated. He’s one credit short. So when he contacted them, they were like, “You’re exactly who we want to show RISD,” and Ben’s like, “Huh? You asked me to leave the animation department like ten times.” John Freeborn failed architecture because he built a miniature golf course out of cement under the highway. He showed it as a senior thesis to the department heads, and they were like, “No, you’re not going to do that.”  In typical John fashion, he didn’t say anything, and he just built it, and they failed him. He had to come back to do another year of architecture and do something that wasn’t illegal. I myself was asked to leave the painting department repeatedly, and I think every teacher had a different suggestion. It went from graphic design to, “If we had a performance artist department, you should be in that.” Becky Westcott, who passed away a couple years ago, was also one of the original people who came down, and we were never good in our departments. Nobody else really liked us. So it was like, everybody else is moving to Brooklyn, and they all do well in school. It’s probably not a good idea for us to go to the place where everybody does well in school. So we went to Philly. It was cheap, and when we first moved to Philly ten years ago, there were homeless people tumbleweeding down the street. Those were the denizens of Philly, and that’s what it initially took to start the space. It was $1,000 for 4,000 square feet. We were really big fans of the Legend Gallery in New York, and Shep Fairy was someone who we all used to work for in Providence, so we learned how to silk-screen from him. I think the important part was, you needed that sort of strong individualism to start something, but at some point you have to let it go, because the space is so much more beautiful when it’s not this competition over who’s shinier and who’s not. It’s okay to let someone have a different kind of painting and help them do what they want to do.

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Was there a moment when that became really apparent or when the collective absorbed the individual?

Max: We weren’t a collective until about a year ago. A year and a half ago someone contacted us and was like, “You guys are an art collective.” And we were like, “We are?”

Jesse: That was the catalyst. We had a year to work on it, and so we did a couple practice runs to screw up and succeed. The DUMBO thing was technically a practice run.

Max: The thing that we did right before that, in the summer, was horrible. We tried to work together, and it was the same shit. We would try and do sections of the wall--Max’s, Jesse’s, Crystal’s—and it just looked like shit. People fought. It was miserable, actually.

Jesse: I think it’s funny, that this outside institution decided to call us a collective. I think there was a level of collectivity that existed in the beginning, but there was just such strong individualism on top of that, that we weren’t going to work as a collective. Even though there was that vibe in the space, like the screen printing area and a lot of the other stuff in the space felt really communal, and Ben Woodward from the start made sure the screen-printing area functioned in a pretty communal way.

Max: Even to this day it functions with phone books and cinderblocks, and this shitty Plexi-glass.

Jesse: Yeah, it’s funny for me; I never went to art school. I learned how to print in the space, and every year there’s a new thing that’s introduced to me. That blows my mind, like the right way to do something. I think that a collectivity has emerged, because I think over time a lot of the people that started the space have mellowed out and allowed some of the new voices or personalities to assert themselves. And I think a lot of those personalities have taken this collective idea and made it the thing that it is now. It’s something that we never would have realized, the first round of people. It’s awesome to see it realized, because when I came to this space, it’s what I always wanted, and I spent the first few years wishing it would be like this, and it never was. Now it is and I’m so psyched.

Max: It’s that we have these things that would make us a collective, because the palettes would be the same. We were drawing our influences from the same places, and just kind of taking them in our own way. We didn’t even mean to; you actually had to watch out getting too close to someone else’s style, because then you were like, “Oh God damn! My shit looks like his, or hers.” And we had a lot of important things occur, like the book mobile, and Beth and the other people who came to the space. They’re professional. They’ve always been pro, and those women, they function properly in the group, and we did it. It’s frustrating because any time you’d try to impose a structure, it would just fall apart, and everybody would be like, “Well fuck that, I don’t want to do that.” Now, at this point, it’s just kind of formed. No manifesto…

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Jesse: Well, what’s you guys’ impression, on the other end of it?

Aryon Hoselton: Well, it’s interesting because I came in an administrative way, working for someone at Space 1026. I came in as a graphic designer, and just kind of found my way and saw them doing shows, and learned how to do everything just by being there. So I watched people do it, and then I helped people do it. That’s what I love about Space 1026, and why I love to bring other people in. Teaching them, that’s how I learned too. I think that’s what is so great about being in the space. You’re teaching other people and you’re learning, and you’re not so much stealing from other people, but it’s a lot like what you see with this show, a collaborative effort. It’s a two-way process. So when I came in four years ago, I didn’t know anything really, I just barely consider myself an artist now. It’s interesting to be in a collective like this. I like to build things, I like to print, but I like to do it when we’re all together. So, that’s what’s interesting about the space.

Max: Which is odd too, because a lot of people just like to be left alone. Usually art isn’t a group activity, so consequently, you don’t want other people’s opinions while you’re working on something. We’ve had this opportunity by having shows at the space, for better or for worse, to see some of the most amazing stuff. Some of the worst shows ever done in Philadelphia’s history have been done at our space. And that’s also a coin toss, depending on what it is, because since we’re not a commercial gallery, we don’t make any money off of it, and any money that is made goes right back into the space, into buying toilet paper and paint. It’s been nice because we’re constantly able to see new work and new material, and kind of have a living room where you come in and get a chance to sit with someone for a month, whereas most times you don’t get a chance to see someone’s art for more than a minute or two. You can spend a year on a painting, and most people won’t spend more than 20 or 30 seconds looking at it. You’re kind of forced to have to look at stuff, even if you don’t like it. You’re kind of like, “I have to look at it.” I think that’s how a lot of ideas have been worked out. Plus, I have to say, we’ve been hooked up by a lot of the older artists. A lot of the artists who we’ve shown our work to have been really supportive. They come and they feel comfortable just hanging out in the space, and it’s nice. We don’t want anything from them, and they don’t want anything from us. There’s no weird get-over involved.

Crystal: Something that Aryon was saying, about the two-way process and learning at the space, I found out about the space when I moved to Philly about five years ago. I was always really nervous to go in, and people were always like, “Oh you should check out space 1026, it’s got all these awesome facilities, check it out.” And I just never really did. So five years later, I decided to go upstairs. I knew some of the people there so it was a little bit easier, and then I moved in. I didn’t go to school. I didn’t go to college or anything. I taught myself how to screen print by using just filler, not emulsion, so seeing how everybody just had this whole photo-emulsion process, and how easy it was there. I was really, really afraid to try it out, and then finally I asked little Andrew, because he’s like 20 years old and not very intimidating. He showed me how to screen print using all their facilities. And then, as I was going there everyday, everybody was helping me out. Everybody there is always really encouraging and really psyched about anything that I do. If I think something is really bad, like I don’t want anyone seeing it, someone is always like, “That’s really awesome, it’s good that you’re doing this.” It’s been a huge learning experience, and having all these people around to provide constructive criticism has been really inspiring. We’re this big support group for each other, whether it’s artistic or emotional stuff. Anything. I think that’s why it functions.

Max: You guys got us over letting go, and trusting someone else to run shit. That was a big thing, finally getting to a point where it’s a relationship. Just being able to say, “I trust you to be able to do this. Tell us what you want to do.”  

Crystal: That’s definitely a positive aspect of the space, people being like, “We’re going to try this new thing,” and even if there’s one person who might feel weird about it, they know deep down that it’s time to just let it grow, and it all works out in the end.

Jesse: I feel that what Crystal is saying goes right into this installation, because this is for real. The first thing we’ve come into, not blind, but with a process that was completely untested. I made little white lies up to this. People would ask, “Do you really think we can do this?” “Yes!” I was so excited that everyone was just going to go into this white box and figure it out. I just figured we would. I learned so much in that week, art wise, personality wise, and working with other people.

Crystal: It’s ten of us sharing a studio together, an actual room as opposed to a building. I’m not used to that.

Max: We did Cinders a few months ago, and the room was about eight feet by eight feet, and there was also like ten of us in there. That was real uncomfortable.

Max: The cool thing about you guys is that I’m not afraid of making mistakes or generating bad ideas. I don’t feel like a complete asshole for trying, which for a long time at the space it was hard, because there was a level of competition that wasn’t necessary. That kind of false individualism doesn’t exist like it used to. A lot of people will make mistakes and not be like, “Well shit, that’s three hours of building fucking mash potato pyramids.”

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Crystal: Tonight was really fun. There was an opening two doors down so people kept wandering in and wanting to talk about it. You just see it automatically in people’s faces, that they already feel so much more comfortable in the space. Having the process be just as important as the finished piece, it just opens a whole new dialogue about the work. People appreciate the new experience.

Max: People have perceived us as ‘cool’ or whatever, but the reality of it is, it’s not an exclusionary group. We’re comprised of three groups: dorks, nerds and geeks, and depending on what you do puts you in that: a weird sort of social reject who doesn’t have any friends outside of the space. You also get to know people who you wouldn’t ever normally get the chance to. If it weren’t for the space I wouldn’t have met Crystal in the same capacity. A lot of people who came to the space, my initial visceral reaction was, “I fucking hate you.” And that’s a good thing, because it challenges me in a way that my own insecurities get pulled up, and the more I learn from them, I’m like, "Damn, you’re a super genius.” We have people from different genres, and it allows us to talk about stuff that maybe we wouldn’t normally be able to.

Jesse: Let’s give love to Roman while he’s not here. So Roman came to the space a few years ago and totally rubbed everybody the wrong way. The dude’s just completely abrasive, or that’s how he’s perceived, and over the next couple of years, it’s gotten to the point where he’s becoming the glue at the space. He makes everything function. He and Aryon were the two who did the biggest projects at the ICA show we just did. And here at this installation, he is the one that makes sure everything works. I’m at that intangible level, where it’s so far from even holding a paint brush, or making things, because it’s just cleaning up spilled ink, or making sure that this is over here or that’s over there. Roman—and some other people too—fill in those roles of what makes these collaborations possible. If there were six people that were just like, “My art is so important, I just have to do my thing,” it would break. You need mechanisms that integrate, that make sure the machine stays oiled. And he’s so much fun to make fun of.

Max: He’s another example of a strong individual who is still willing to work in a group. Roman will dress how he wants to, and if he wants to come in as a Spanish conquistador from the future, that’s what he’s going to do. Other people, like Ted Passion, Ted is our only videographer at the space, and he does an incredible job. He is so creative and he is able to do so many different things. And he’s such a good guy that his goodness makes you want to be good. Like the Bird Flu of goodness, you’re like, “Yeah, I can be a good person.”

What was the thinking behind putting it all up, and then taking it all down to put it back up again?

Lauren: Well originally it was in that room, and there just wasn’t enough room to be able to put everything up. I want to be able to see what everything looks like together, have it in my head, and then take it down and put it back up again in a way that everybody’s work is out there.

So is anybody originally from Philly?

Max: Yeah, well all of – Ben, Jim, Andrew Jeffrey Wright, Jeff Wiesner, John Freeborn. Isaac, you’re originally from Philly, right?

Jesse: Philly’s one of those towns where a lot of the people from the area stick around. A lot of the people from the city stay in the city.

But you’re up in New York now?

Jesse: Yeah, I’m up at City University.

How long have you been here?

Jesse: For about a year, I was in Toronto for a while too. I’ve been hopping around a bit, but I’ve tried to stay in touch with the space. It means a lot to me, and now it’s finally doing the things that I always wished it would do.

So are you going to move back immediately?

Jesse: The thing is, going to New York is so close. I’ve been in New York this summer, maybe four nights – except with this install. I just keep going back and forth. Then for the school year, I’ll have to spend most of my time here.

How many people are at the space now?

Crystal: Maybe 25?

Jesse: If you count interns and assistants, there are probably another six or seven people. And then people who don’t have their own studios but who hang around, that’s maybe another eight or nine people. So it’s a big network. But it’s our social world as well.

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Crystal: Yeah, we don’t go out.





Wesbite
www.space1026.com


Photos
Adam Bezer


Thanks
Lauren VHS at Bravin Lee

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