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A Conversation with Bert Rodríguez
Bert Rodriguez. The True Artist Makes Useless Shit For Rich People To Buy (Window or Wall Sign), 2008. Neon with transformers. 59" x 56" x 3" Courtesy of the artist
Bert Rodriguez’s brand of performance art has in some ways set the tone for the group of young artists emanating from Miami. Rodriguez’s pieces can at times reek of irony and sarcasm but more often than not they are an attempt to re-connect viewers with positive and perhaps lost aspects of their own personal experiences. Writer Bryan Barcena had a chance to sit down with the artist to discuss his participation in the 2008 Whitney Biennial and his plans for a performance at Frieze 2008.
BB: Give us some of your thoughts on what is happening in Wynwood and your relationship to the local artist community, considering that you are thought of as one of the most widely recognized local artists.
BR: The area is still in development and I think there have been attempts to capitalize and develop something that hasn’t reached full maturity. There is definitely a core of artists doing interesting things and interestingly enough they all seem to have been born and raised here, went to school here or came back after school and are living here now as opposed to artists from abroad moving into the area. I would compare it to Los Angeles during the mid 1970’s and early 80’s when artists would stay in the communities they grew up in, recycling everything they knew back into those communities.
BB: Do you see any common thread creatively between your local contemporaries?
BR: I think there is something that has to do with immigration, considering that many of us were the first kids in our families to grow up here. I think that might make you a little bit hungrier, kind of naturally hungrier without even knowing it, maybe making us a little more resourceful in a way and it’s become an automatic response. It’s hard to pin down a common subject mater or undercurrent in the work itself, because we are all are going in our own directions.
BB: As you prepare for Frieze 2008 can you reflect a little bit on your exhibition at the 2008 Whitney Biennial?
BR: There were two pieces, one in the museum called “The End,” which is an ongoing thing having to do with the idea of movies and comics and those sorts of things as cultural artifacts or new mythologies, and attempting to build a soundtrack to my life using the theme music that would play just before the end of movies, the songs that would define the entire experience of the movie. The piece consisted of an elevator with the words The End written in that kind of old movie script on the doors and as visitors entered the elevator, a collection of the end themes that I’ve collected over the years would fade in, kind of turning the elevator into a sort of theater.
The second piece was at the old park armory building, which is a super opulent building filled with hand carved wood and Tiffany glass, and my reaction was not to compete with a space that loaded, so I built a plain white cube to create this kind of reverse gallery space. Once I had that, I was kind thinking about what it means to be a New Yorker and thinking of that running joke that every New Yorker has a psychologist as their paid best friend, so I decided to suggest a kind of therapist’s office inside of the cube and furnish it with pieces from the armory’s collection. I didn’t want to make a literal connection with therapy, but I wanted to suggest it and nudge people towards having some sort of cathartic experience within. I also wanted to play with the layers, considering it was already a room within a room, so I projected the sounds from the inside of the room outwards and it ended up sounding kind of muffled and ghostly, so there was this interesting interchange between the larger room being such a charged space and there being a negative space within the white cube and the voices of the conversations inside being projected out into the room. People signed up and came in and I expected it to be the usual art fair crowd that just wanted to jockey it up with the artist, but it ended up being much more sincere and layered.
BB: What sort of exhibition do you have planned for Frieze 2008?
BR: I submitted a few proposals to the board and the one they seemed to like the most kind of pushes off of the Whitney piece, which I’m probably not going to continue doing for much longer because I keep putting myself in these situations that I’m completely unprepared for. Anyway, what I’m doing for the fair is kind of based on those really cheesy stands you see at shopping malls or state fairs where there will be free foot massages and they’re usually run by some hippie guy with a bunch of pamphlets. It kind of came out of that joke at art fairs where people complain about how tired their feet are after walking around for so many hours day after day, but that complaint to me is almost silly because it’s usually these sorts of well-to-do people that are basically chasing artists around the world and they are complaining that their feet hurt. I like the idea that I’m putting myself in a subservient position and kind of offering a solution to that problem that they themselves have created.
BB: It think it’s interesting that you see yourself putting yourself in these subservient positions, but I think that at the same time these performances put you in a position of power by directing people into situations that you dictate.
BR: A crossover is taking place. I don’t think it has to do necessarily with power, but I’m actually more than happy and excited to do these actions, because I think there is something that tends to be lacking in a lot of art, which is this kind of sincere, honest approach to genuinely creating an experience for someone that will affect them in some honest and accessible way. So, even though there is a kind of prankster thread running through my work, I really am more than happy to massage these people’s feet because it is some kind of, for lack of a better word, nice gesture. And I think the gesture is layered enough that it will make people feel different, understand the real world differently, which in a way is what art is supposed to do. It’s interesting because I tend to get a more positive response out of people that are outside of the art world, and that is really what drives me, knowing that it might be affecting the way they see the world.
BB: Well it’s interesting because I think that your work really can exist on both levels. That is to say, it can be put into an art historical context and intellectual doctrine of performance art, but I think it works just as effectively as an event within itself by providing a universally understood experience.
BR: I think subconsciously that has been my sort of goal, to make it as non-art as possible. That’s not to say that I don’t like art; I love it as much as I love anything else. If the idea of art were to disappear off the planet, I would still want these experiences to have meaning and affect people.
BB: I would almost say that the work you are doing is different from a lot of performance artists because there is a lack of theatrics, and instead, perhaps something more personal. I think there is a sense that you are trying to give people something that they can appreciate when they find it, but that they don’t necessarily look for.
BR: I think that it’s something that is always there. I think a lot of art postures itself that way. I think they jump the gun a little bit. They try to talk about the experience but don’t really create the experience. Art is a flawed medium.
Bryan Barcena is a graduate of the University of Michigan specializing in Art History and Latin American Studies and is the Assistant Director of Chelsea Galleria Wynwood, in Miami.
