Casey Kaplan
“On embracing the unknown”
Visual artist Brian Jungen discusses how catastrophe sharpens focus, finding the perfect idea, and the artistic benefits of limitation
From a conversation with Brandon Stosuy
BS: You work across a different mediums with a number of different approaches. When you have an idea, how do you know which way to take it? Is it something where the idea comes first, or do you see an object and you want to transform it? I’m curious how you go about making the spark of an idea into a work of art.
BJ: Well, I think the idea is the easy part. I come up with ideas daily, but really it depends on where the destination is, if it’s for an exhibition or if it’s just for my own investigation. And if I have the space and time to develop an idea, I guess. For years I had a very big studio, when I was ranching, I had basically two studios. One was just a workshop, so that afforded me a lot of space and I was able to try out a lot of things there.
Sometimes I get invited for thematic exhibitions. I did that a lot when I was young and getting started in my art career. I just dove into these things and I would work with the curator and curatorial team on their theme and try to come up with work around it. I don’t really do that anymore because I’ve never really enjoyed that. A lot of times for that I would make the work on-site. So that’s a young man’s game. It’s stressful, but it’s exciting, too, because it’s very immediate.
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