Rachel de Joode

Various Qualities To Orbit The Mysterious Core, 2013

Various Qualities To Orbit The Mysterious Core, 2013

Interview by Whitney Mallett

When I went to visit Rachel de Joode in her studio this Fall, she said we were going to try making a “squish.” This process consisted of filling a plastic tube with wet plaster and me hugging it like a lover, leaving an imprint of my body, until it dried. “Squish” sounds more charming when de Joode says it in her Dutch accent.

Rachel usually wears pink sneakers and she always has health food lying around. The sort of absurd images you see in her work have a way of just showing up in casual conversation. The first time I met her, she was eating a bag of raw organic cashews, and waxing poetic about her love of nuts. “I wish there was just a tap that they poured out of.” She said something like that. And I pictured a bathroom facet, cashews, peanuts, almonds, Brazil nuts, streaming from it, and pooling on the floor.

That was last February when she was preparing for her solo show “The Hole and the Lump” at Interstate Gallery in Bushwick. The Berlin-based Dutch visual artist is a bit of a nomad these days, staying two months or three months in a city at a time. This Fall she was back in New York for a residency on Governors Island. I took the ferry to visit her in the studio there, and after we made a “squish,” we talked art. 

You make a lot of photographs of sculptures and sculptures using photographs. Why are you contrasting these two things?

Before I was only making photographs. The photograph is 2 dimensional. It’s an object in the sense that you hang it on a wall, but it’s not really something physical. And I was really yearning, not for this 2 dimensional object, but for like a physical thing. And that mainly has to do with the fact that I see a lot of stuff online, on my screen all day. And I miss being physical with art.

Untitled Portraits, 2011

Untitled Portraits, 2011

Tongue Piece

Tongue Piece

Getting Wet, 2013

Getting Wet, 2013

And also most of the time, the end result of any exhibition is an image online. It just seems weird to take a photo, hang it on a wall, and have it be another photograph of that that is circulating on the internet. So I thought instead of photographing something maybe I should just put the thing there.

If people see art in the gallery, I wanted to have that be an experience which is beyond just seeing it on a photograph. When you make something really big, you physically engage with that work. You’re like, “oh woah, it’s really big.” That’s the moment, for me, that’s more interesting than creating a photo that is just on the wall because in the end it will always be a photo. It will always live on as documentation.

de-Joode4

Untitled Portraits, 2011

Portrait of a Woman, 2011

Portrait of a Woman, 2011

 

You are really into surfaces right now. What makes you interested in skin and clay and stuff?

Maybe it has to do with touch and touchability of things. Like when you are like, “ew gross.” Again maybe it has to do with longing toward physical objects and physical forms.

But I always find it fun to go on the adventure to learn stuff for myself. I studied film, and then I started doing photography because film takes so long. Making photos seemed more instant. So I learned how to be a photographer and now I’m learning sculpture which I never was trained for. So this working with different surfaces for me is just playing and having fun and trying stuff out and seeing how things are. I like learning and questioning and just doing something and it’s always leading to the next thing and the next thing. It’s never like I am going to make plaster sculptures for the rest of my life. Next time it can be whatever.

Moist Flesh, 2013

Moist Flesh, 2013

Bodies Covered In Clay Surface, 2013

Bodies Covered In Clay Surface, 2013

Color of Me, 2013

Color of Me, 2013

Detail of 'Color of Me,' 2013

Detail of ‘Color of Me,’ 2013

There is definitely something really funny and playful about your work. But then I’ve also read people describe it as ironic–I’m not sure exactly even what that word means these days, but do you think it’s fitting?

I don’t think so. I think irony is almost negative. And I think you know when a child does stuff it’s never ironic. A child will build a sand castle; they never build an ironic sandcastle. And for me, I see that my work has humor, which I like because the world is kind of absurd. And the art world and making art is very absurd—it’s a weird thing to do with your life. So I do thematize that part of making art because a lot of times artists take themselves too seriously. I mean, you need to, but you also need to see that it’s very strange to make art.

What questions are you asking right now in your work?

 I went to Frankfurt to do a project on minerals and meteorites. And I was also reading this really beautiful book from the perspective of a rock. And I was thinking what is a mineral and what does it want?—like if it had a language, how would it express itself? And I was also thinking of it as a reverse anthropomorphism, like if I would be a mineral (my body) what would I look like? So I casted all these body parts and I squished them, because minerals have to do with pressure. And then they’ll have a weird finger coming out.

I made these small sculptures and I photographed them. And now I am working with that material and resculpting them with the idea of “what is a mineral?” Humans are very interested in minerals because they are somehow magnificent. So I’m making them really big, these extraordinary, big weird blobs, with these casted body parts sticking out everywhere. And they are partially sculpted and partially photograph. So it’s in between 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional realities and “what is the body?” and weird blobs.

I also photographed these meteorites but I wasn’t allowed to touch them. I thought I was. Because in the beginning of this residency, the lady was touching them all and I was touching them and then I came back on the day to photograph them and I set up a little studio and everything and she said by the way, we shouldn’t actually touch them. So that made me photograph and kind of almost touch them.

I did a lot of research of meteorites and the part that lands on earth is only five percent of the meteorites. The rest is just burned. And something like 5 percent of dust is meteorite particles. There is just like space dust everywhere.

So dust if I’m just dusting in my house has meteorite in it?

Yeah and it also has a lot of skin particles and hairs. So I thought it was a really nice metaphor. This thing dust (which is also a thing and it also has an agenda) brings those two things together: meteorites and the body. So I made these portraits of dust and they were exhibited with the photos of my finger not quite touching the meteorite.

Not Touching A Meteorite, 2013

Not Touching A Meteorite, 2013

54827981135

Dust Portrait, 2013

Dust Portrait, 2013

Tell me about your residency at Governors island.

I came here and I never worked in a space that was so open. I always worked with a studio with a door. And everyone here is super busy and working. And it just seems so weird that we are this profession of being an artist–there’s no direct result most of the time. It’s like years of just working and most of the time not selling anything. But everyone seems kind of possessed with doing it. So that’s why I made this survey to answer some questions for myself to see what that thing is: an artist. And see how other people see that who are maybe not an artist.

The answers have been very satisfying. And now I am thinking of making a work with some of those key words I have from the survey. I don’t know exactly where it’s going but I can imagine making larger sculptures which–like you know when a bagel is an everything bagel? like an everything sculpture. Like bronze sticking out and little bits of word carvings and plaster and throw it all in there.

Talking about how the final art work is an image circulating online. Do you as an artist feel like you are mostly online?

That’s interesting. Yeah I do feel that. That’s also because I’ve been traveling so much. My apartment is in Berlin. I grew up in the Netherlands and then I moved to Berlin like nine years ago. I always lived there, except for one year in Paris and one year in Mexico. I’ve mostly had a base there. But for the last one and half years, I haven’t been in my apartment, I’ve just been like everywhere and mostly like three months as a maximum in any space. I do feel for example social media and all these stuff are in a way like a house. Some sort of shelterish thing.

 

This interview is from Issue 9