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A brush with...

The Art Newspaper

A brush with..., sponsored by Bloomberg Connects, is a podcast by The Art Newspaper that features in-depth conversations with leading international artists. Host Ben Luke asks the questions you've always wanted to: who are the artists, historical and contemporary, they most admire? Which are the museums they return to? What are the books, music and other media that most inspire them? What do they get up to in the studio every day? And what is art for, anyway?

The podcast offers a fascinating insight into the inspirations, the preoccupations and the working lives of some of the most prominent artists today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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24 episodes
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Avg 1 hr 5 min
English

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S35 · E4
September 1 · 1 hr 7 min
A brush with... Sunil Gupta
Sunil Gupta talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to film-makers, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Across more than half a century Gupta has explored queer identity, migration and race through photography. Born in New Delhi in 1953, but based in Canada and the UK as well as India since he became an artist, he has reflected on his personal background and autobiography to explore a wealth of social and political themes, from queer desire and relationships, to the social and geographical environments in which LGBTQ life and love happens, to political violence and the oppression of queer people, and the HIV/Aids crisis and its legacy. He has said that he “couldn’t separate the living from the art-making”. Working in series that often have novel conceptual structures and explore different modes of presentation and expression in the photographic space, Gupta is both an artist and activist, with a long-held conviction to represent his own experience and that of people and communities like him in cultural fields where they have largely been absent. In this podcast, he reflects on his discovery of photography and his early experiments, the politics around photographic depiction and his alignment with community and political subjects versus a more commercial or reportage approach. He discusses great photographers including George Platt Lynes, Duane Michals and Paul Strand, expresses his admiration for Shilpa Gupta, his early passion for the tragicomedy of Bollywood and his enjoyment of writers including Flannery O’Connor, and his response to Chris Marker’s La Jétee in his work Sun City. Plus, he gives insight into his life in the studio, as well as answering our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? The conversation is also available as a video. Visit the YouTube channels of The Art Newspaper and Bloomberg Connects. Sunil Gupta: Life with a Camera, 1970-Now, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 19 September-31 January 2027 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
S35 · E3
August 25 · 1 hr 5 min
A brush with... Richard Tuttle
Richard Tuttle talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Tuttle, who was born in 1941 in Rahway, New Jersey and grew up in nearby Roselle, lives today in New York, Abiquiú, New Mexico, and Mount Desert, Maine. He combines elements of drawing, painting, sculpture, artist books, printmaking and textiles, often arranged in lyrical installations, yet does not settle in any one discipline or medium. Pushing and pulling between different forms and modes, and between two and three dimensions, he has developed a singular response to architecture, which is often activated in unexpected ways by the placement of the objects he makes and their arrangement in spatial compositions. And while the meaning of the works is often as elusive as their form, they offer poetic enticement for their audience through a delight in broad and often humble materiality and a fertile relationship with different forms of language. Tuttle is seen as a leading figure in Post-Minimalism and certainly contributed to the liberating approach to form, matter and content unleashed by that tendency from the 1960s. But any attempt to neatly categorise his output is profoundly inadequate and limiting. Experiencing his exhibitions, one feels part of a philosophical response to the world, a questioning of what it is to inhabit it and what it might mean to make art in it. As Richard himself said in 1975, “if the artist does a piece of real work and we see it, it’s as though we ourselves are doing it”. He discusses the fundamental importance of drawing to all his work and how the line he uses “is not a pure line like most people would think. It’s actually the edge of something.” He reflects on art’s relationship with the viewer and community, and art’s role as a positive force in the world. He expresses his admiration for Van Eyck, for Nam June Paik, for his friend and mentor Agnes Martin, and for Philipp Otto Runge, the German colour-theorist and Romantic painter. He also discusses reading great works of literature in their original language and his love of architecture. He gives insight into life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Richard Tuttle: Half Light, now open and on long term view at Dia Beacon, Beacon, US; Richard Tuttle: Small Sculptures of the 1970s, Modern Art, Bennet Street, London, 3 September-3 October Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
S35 · E2
August 18 · 1 hr 14 min
A brush with... Dawoud Bey
Dawoud Bey talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Bey, who was born in 1953 in New York, makes photographs and film installations that address the experience of Black people in the US, from the horrors of slavery via racist violence and the Civil Rights era to intimate moments in contemporary life. He began his career as a photographer in the 1970s with the consistent aim to work as an artist rather than a photojournalist. While he was celebrated from the start for his depictions of people and communities, he has always had a particular sensitivity to place, and after several decades in which portraiture and street photography were dominant strains in his practice, his work over the past decade has focused mostly on landscape. But even when they are not physically present, those who have lived in and travelled through the places he depicts are as much part of the photographs’ and films’ subject as the environments captured by his camera. He has said of recent series, for instance, that he wants to capture the landscape as seen and felt by the enslaved people who moved through it, and a profound sense of empathy underpins all his output. “This notion of the radical Black imaginary,” he explains, “is the foundation or place that my work springs from.” He discusses how his background in jazz and how it has influenced his art-making, his term “subjective opticality” and what it tells us about the camera and the perspective of the photographer, and the importance of photographs as objects. He reflects on the early influence of Roy DeCarava and John Coltrane, who continue to impact his thinking today, his early fascination with Rembrandt, his work with David Hammons and friendship with Torkwase Dyson, how he has responded to Toni Morrison in his recent photographic series, and the ongoing influence of Michael Roemer, the film-maker with whom he studied. Plus, he gives insight into life in the studio and asks our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Dawoud Bey: Material Histories, Living Landscapes, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada, until 4 July 2027. The exhibition is co-presented by the Toronto Biennial of Art 2026. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
S35 · E1
August 11 · 1 hr 7 min
A brush with... Katharina Grosse
Katharina Grosse talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Grosse, who was born in Freiberg im Breisgau, Germany, in 1961, sees painting as an expansive field, which might be explored on canvas, but also directly on gallery walls, on vast textile hangings, on sculptures and natural forms like earth and trees brought into the gallery, as well as in public space and even directly onto the landscape. Using an industrial spray gun, she sees colour as a material, and creates dense swaths of rich hues that form dazzling relationships and absorb and often surround the viewer. Whatever form her work takes, it clearly evokes Katharina’s choreography of gestures as well as representing a response to and creation of architectural space. Seeing painting as a medium that reflects and simultaneously articulates the world, Katharina invites an active response from her viewers, as much bodily as it is visual. She discusses how making her work immediately meets with “feedback” from the surfaces and environments in which she is acting, how she is “at home in flow” when working across multiple pieces, and how she employs colours as a cluster, always in relation to one another. She reflects on the early impact of choreographer Pina Bausch, her residency at Edvard Munch’s former studio at Ekely in Norway, the physicality in the paint of Lovis Corinth, the “razor-sharp sentences” of the writer Annie Ernaux and her fascination with Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and the inspiring vision and “ecology” of the film-maker Agnes Varda. Plus, she gives insight into life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Katharina Grosse: Black Bed, MUNCH, Oslo, 26 September-31 December. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
S34 · E4
June 30 · 1 hr 8 min
A brush with... Pio Abad
Pio Abad talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Abad explores objects and images that have personal resonance and political potency. His primary medium is installations comprising multiple materials, forms and methods, from fine pen drawings and textiles to photography and text. The foundation of his work is an engagement with the history and present of his homeland, the Philippines, where he was born in 1983, and where his parents were involved in the struggle against the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s and 1980s. The conditions of that brutal regime, its propaganda and visual excess, the international power structures of which it was part, and its legacies today have been fundamental to his practice. In recent years, he has expanded his work to explore broader themes relating to collections of art and artefacts, and the histories of violence, theft and exploitation that underpin them. He discusses his interest in the seductive power of objects in telling complex stories and reflects on the importance of writing and drawing to his work, how his large-scale forensic drawings are a means of “excessively remembering” to counter forgotten histories, and about honouring unnamed artists from non-Western cultures through painstaking depicting their works. He recalls his memories of his aunt, the artist Pacita Abad, and her formative effect on his own artistic trajectory, as well as his position as curator of her estate. He reflects on the importance of Felix Gonzalez-Torres, especially in his balance between weighty subject matter and formal economy, the drawings of Henri Michaux and Egon Schiele, and the writers Jorge Luis Borges, Hisham Matar and Teju Cole. He gives insight into his life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Look out for a video version of this interview on the YouTube channels of The Art Newspaper and Bloomberg Connects. Pio Abad, In Minor Keys: 61st Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy, until 22 November. Watch the full-length video version of this interview on the YouTube channels of The Art Newspaper and Bloomberg Connects. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
S34 · E3
June 23 · 1 hr 2 min
A brush with... Anne Imhof
Anne Imhof talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Imhof, who was born in 1978 in Giessen in Germany, is primarily known for her epic durational performances involving diverse collectives of dancers, musicians and actors. Their movement, speech and song is built from often fragmentary gestures, and informed by a wealth of sources as well as the innate expertise of the performers themselves, which Imhof harnesses to choreograph tableaux of rich affective power. A reflection on and of contemporary societal conditions, these works are also profoundly engaged with cultural and performance traditions, from the languages and forms of contemporary dance and ballet to rock concerts and art history. Imhof’s practice extends far beyond performance, involving painting and drawing, sculpture and sculptural installation, and film. In each language that she adopts, she overtly engages her audience and particularly their bodies, whether that is in the mode of address of her performance works, in sculptures that evoke barriers or surveillance mechanisms, or in paintings that overwhelm the viewer in their scale and the gravity of their imagery. She discusses the disparate creation of meaning in her work, through her own framing, her collaborators’ performances and the viewers’ experience. She reflects on the balance between structure and improvisation in her performances and the mutual trust that is key in working with dancers, choreographers, musicians and actors. She talks about the role of drawing in underpinning the other elements of her work. Among the references she discusses are to the early influence of teachers who recognised her interest in drawing and who led her to make copies of Michelangelo. She talks about Tino Sehgal and William Forsythe’s formative influence and her admiration of cultural figures as diverse as the artists Cameron Rowland and Arthur Jafa, the philosopher Juliane Rebentisch and writers including Franz Kafka and Robert Bresson, whose screenplays she particularly admires. She gives insight into her life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Anne Imhof: Citizen, Sprüth Magers, London, until 1 August. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
S34 · E2
June 16 · 1 hr 6 min
A brush with... Caragh Thuring
Caragh Thuring talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Thuring, who was born in Brussels in 1972 and has lived in the UK since 1973 makes paintings that present fragments of images, patterns and abstraction in compositions that often upend the conventions of her medium, while reaffirming its unique descriptive and poetic powers. With motifs that appear and often reappear in morphing forms and combinations, alluding to specific moments in her life, to film or art history, her paintings are in flux, both in their structure and spatial arrangements and in their meaning. They are propositions that cannot easily be resolved or reduced to simple or convenient narrative yet are far from unfocused or bloodless; rather, they arrest us and pull us deep into their mysteries, rewarding us as we spend more time with them, and return to them. She reflects on her interest in forms of slippage across various art forms, the role of drawing in her work, and her admiration of different forms of making, especially when there is a twist in how they are realised. She discusses her early engagement with the paintings of Otto Dix, the delicacy in the handling of Vija Celmins, the awkwardness in the works of Pieter de Hooch and the wildness of René Daniëls. She reflects on her journeys into volcanoes, metaphorically and literally, and on listening to Bach in her studio. Plus, she gives insight into life in the studio, and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Caragh Thuring, Thomas Dane Gallery, London, until 19 September Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
S34 · E1
June 9 · 1 hr 6 min
A brush with... Lisa Yuskavage
In this first episode of the new series, Lisa Yuskavage talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Yuskavage, was born in Philadelphia in 1962 and lives today in New York, makes paintings that involve a cast of stylised and often eroticised, mostly female characters set within invented interiors and landscapes. Deeply engaged with the history of art and representation, Lisa’s pictures explore centuries-old traditions and genres and play with them, along a sliding scale from homage to subversion, sometimes within the space of one canvas. Her figures can derive from everyday observation, draw from soft-porn magazines or a wealth of other pop-cultural sources, or quote from historic paintings. But set within enigmatic spaces, accompanied by a range of props and objects, and allied to Lisa’s intoxicating colour sense, they are encapsulated in a singular realm of imagination and unleashed into the peculiar communion between this artist and us—one which can be delightful and disquieting, often at once. She reflects on the “emotional formalism” at the heart of her work, her early visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and trip to Italy and their transformative effect on her work. She discusses the seismic effect of seeing a Giovanni Bellini painting in Venice, the ongoing influence of Marcel Duchamp’s Étant Donnés and her admiration for, among others, Agnes Martin, Philip Guston and Laura Owens. She talks about the poet Wallace Stevens’s impact on her work and her interest in the films of Stanley Kubrick. Plus, she gives insight into her life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Lisa Yuskavage, David Zwirner, New York, until 26 June. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
S33 · E4
April 28 · 1 hr 13 min
A brush with... Andrew Cranston
Andrew Cranston talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Cranston, who was born in 1969 in Hawick, Scotland, draws on experiences—moments seen, felt or remembered—which are filtered, embellished, complicated, and sometimes almost obliterated through the process of being painted. As well as reflecting on personal events, from childhood memories and the recollections of family members, to more recent rituals and exploits, Cranston’s pictures are rich in cultural resonance. Images and ideas from the history of art and cinema, from poems and television series, are central to his work, whether as a core motif or a subtle reference in the title. As a result, his practice is deeply concerned with time and history—not just in recalling past events and experiences and transforming them in the present, but in his materials and methods. He often uses the covers of old hardback books, bleached by light over the years, as a surface, for instance, and the paintings hold time in their very physicality—in the immediacy of a painted gesture, in the steady build-up of layers and marks, and in the hints of their journeys to completion. Cranston’s paintings reflect his medium’s capacity for thrillingly diverse effects, modes and moods; they are full of poetry and longing, as well as absurdity and joy. He reflects on the fragility of his images, how with reiteration they gain meaning and weight. He talks about the silence in his works and what he calls his “fight with visibility”. He discusses a wealth of painterly influences, from Pieter Bruegel the Elder to Paul Klee, Pierre Bonnard and Winifred Nicholson, writers including Hugh MacDiarmid and Elizabeth Bishop, and cinematic and televisual references including the films of Nicholas Roeg and the teleplays of Dennis Potter. Plus, he gives insights into his life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Andrew Cranston: I’m going in a field, Modern Art, Bennet Street, London, until 30 May Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
S33 · E3
April 21 · 1 hr 12 min
A brush with… Sanya Kantarovsky
Sanya Kantarovsky talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Kantarovsky was born in Moscow in 1982 and emigrated to to Providence, Rhode Island, when he was ten years old. He lives and works in New York City today. His paintings present scenarios that are at once arresting and alluring. Notionally figurative, they reflect an elastic notion of how the body might be represented through paint, as figures appear in unlikely juxtaposition with other bodies and beings—even morphing into plant or animal forms—and occupy landscapes and spaces that are always infused with atmosphere and often potent with threat. Sanya regularly uses the term ostranenija, a word in his native Russia that means “making strange”, as a guiding principle. Encountering his art, one is aware of one’s own role in continuing that process: how, after slow-looking, they only grow in complexity. And that richness absorbs many moods and registers, from brutality and solemnity to absurdity and out-and-out humour. He discusses the profound effect of his early access to the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, and particularly Picasso’s painting Girl on Ball (1905). He reflects on the influence of a huge breadth of historic painters, including Francisco de Goya, Giorgio de Chirico and Philip Guston, discusses his respect for a number of contemporary artists including Trisha Donnelly and Charline von Heyl, and talks about the significance of a number of figures from other disciplines on his work, from the poet Anna Akhmatova and the choreographer Tatsumi Hijikata to the filmmaker Andrei Tarkovksy. Plus, he gives insight into his life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Sanya Kantarovsky: Basic Failure, Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Palazzo Loredan, Venice, 6 May–22 November Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
S33 · E2
April 14 · 47 min
A brush with... Hurvin Anderson
Hurvin Anderson talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Anderson was born in Birmingham, UK, in 1965, the youngest of eight siblings, the rest of whom were born in Jamaica. His paintings are a poetic response to place, teeming with personal and cultural resonance. He transforms photographs from his own archive as well as found images into atmospheric worlds of paint, in which details of motifs, including figures, objects, interiors and landscapes pull in and out of focus, suggesting the texture of memory. Much of his work evokes scenes and spaces in Britain, where he was born, but also imagery of Jamaica, from where his parents emigrated to the UK, and the Caribbean more widely. He has stated that his paintings often relate to a feeling of—quote—“being in one place while thinking of another”. They are a profoundly subjective response to diasporic lived experience and a sustained and lyrical engagement with paint as simultaneously a tool of representation and of veiling or disturbance. He discusses for the first time his latest paintings for the survey of his work at Tate Britain, he reflects on how he uses photography in his work and his shift to working with what he calls a “second unit” in recent works. He recalls the early influence of Michael Andrews and Richard Diebenkorn, his enduring fascination with the art of Édouard Manet and Diego Velázquez, and how he responded to the Jamaican artist Carl Abrahams in his painting Passenger Opportunity (2024-25). Plus, he gives insight into his life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Hurvin Anderson, Tate Britain, until 23 August 2026. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
S33 · E1
April 7 · 1 hr 6 min
A brush with... Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Simpson was born in Brooklyn, New York, 1960. Her conceptual approach to photography, and image-making more widely, reflects a desire to subvert the conventional framing of different forms of identity. From her early photo-text works to her recent paintings using found images, Lorna has explored the complexity of representation, and the visual and textual languages with which it is constructed. While she is deeply engaged with societal issues and historical inequities, and with the camera’s time-honoured role as a documentary instrument, she blurs boundaries between reality and fiction, between witnessing and storytelling. The result is a practice that is precise and yet elusive, spare and yet capacious. She discusses how she achieves a balance between refusal and engagement to allow space for the viewer to enter her work. She talks about the role of the archive and history and how she navigates the use of existing images through various media. She reflects on her constant need to test herself through her work. She recalls the immense importance of discovering the work of David Hammons, how an exhibition of Francisco de Zurbarán at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York influenced her approach to image-making, and her connection to artists from Isaac Julien to Terry Adkins and Wangechi Mutu. She reflects on the importance of literature and writers including Robin Coste Lewis and Audre Lorde to her practice. And she discusses the vital importance of the films of Chantal Akerman. Plus, she gives insight into her life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Lorna Simpson, Punta della Dogana, Venice, until 22 November Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
S32 · E4
March 4 · 59 min
A brush with... Danh Vo
Danh Vo talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Vo was born in 1975 in Bà Rja, Vietnam and raised in Denmark. He lives and works between Germany, where he has a studio in Güldenhof, 80km outside Berlin, and Mexico City. His art is often founded in personal experiences and relationships, but alludes to wider social and political conditions and structures, both present and historical. The way he reflects on his autobiography is distinctive: his art is embedded in his experience as a Vietnamese immigrant to Europe as a child and queer identity, for instance, but his collaborative practice often stems from coincidences or serendipitous occurrences in daily life. Danh uses found objects of different registers, from household items to historic religious sculptures, as well as archival images and texts, and brings them into dynamic relationships, in which the exhibition space and context is often a vital component. He also incorporates the work of other artists and designers into his installations, and his practice has been likened to that of a curator or archaeologist. Ultimately, his vision is entirely his own, but by involving the thinking and making of others, he ensures that it resonates with discussion, providing more questions than answers. He reflects on his idea to set traps for himself through his art in order to question his desires, and how that relates to the viewer’s experience of his work. He discusses the balance between his studio life in Güldenhof and his use of the exhibition space as a studio to forge his installations. He reflects on the influence of Felix Gonzalez-Torres and his writing on the work of Roni Horn, he discusses the many collaborations in his work, from that with the artist and writer Julie Ault to his project working with Martin Wong’s mother on the collection she built with her son. And he explains why William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) has been the source for numerous works. Plus, he answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Danh Vo: πνεῦμα (Ἔλισσα), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, until 2 August; Danh Vo, White Cube, New York, 11 September-10 October Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
S32 · E3
February 25 · 1 hr 6 min
A brush with... Veronica Ryan
Veronica Ryan talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Ryan was born in 1956 in Plymouth on the Caribbean island of Montserrat and came to the UK as an infant. She now lives between London and New York. She explores personal, collective and historical memory through a range of sculptural materials and processes. Her installations and individual sculptures combine a wealth of things and techniques, often all at once, from found objects to time-honoured sculptural materials like bronze and marble; and from carving to casting and crocheting. Colour plays a vital role in her work, in the varied hues of textiles or plaster. And she creates forms as diverse as seeds and fruits, mats and nets, pillows and blankets and architectural structures. Through arresting and often multilayered arrangements, she evokes the minutiae of everyday experience (often with a profoundly personal meaning), makes reference to resonant historical events and their legacies, and addresses major human themes and rites of passage. She reflects on the meanings embedded in her materials, her relationship with psychoanalysis and unconscious processes, and her distinctive approach to displaying her work. She discusses the early influence of her mother’s textiles, her visits to the British Museum and her epiphanic encounter with the work of Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois. She reflects on the importance of the poetry of Maya Angelou and chamber music and reggae, and she answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Veronica Ryan: Multiple Conversations, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1 April – 14 June 2026 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
S32 · E2
February 18 · 1 hr 14 min
A brush with... Catherine Opie
Catherine Opie talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Over more than three decades, Opie, who was born in 1961 in Sandusky, Ohio, and lives today in Los Angeles, has created photographic portraits, cityscapes and landscapes that have borne witness to social and political conditions and tensions—particularly in her native United States—while also reflecting a deeply personal response to people and community. Fundamental to her work is an exploration, as a queer woman and as a documentarian photographer, of the nuanced, multifarious nature of identity, most prominently in LGBTQ+ communities, but also far beyond them. She has committed from her earliest mature images to the idea that, as she has phrased it, “Without representation, there is no visibility”—a belief that remains more vital than ever in the US and across the world in the 2020s. And that visibility is manifest not just in the portraiture for which she is best known, but also in the central place that architecture and interiors play in her work. She repeatedly calls our attention to the juxtaposition of the built environment and the construction of bodies and identities. So she documents her surroundings in the fullest sense: she depicts the people she loves, knows and meets; the spaces they occupy; and the broader physical and social environment around them. Ultimately, she hopes, through encountering her art, viewers will gain a better understanding of humanity in all its complexity. She reflects on her early discovery and desire to make pictures, aged nine, and the key figures that helped her choose to become an artist. She talks about the kinship between poetry and art and the fundamental importance, whatever her subject, of human connection. She reflects on artists as diverse as Holbein and Leonardo and Gerhard Richter and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, on the influence of writers including Joan Didion and Octavia Butler, and on her admiration for Chloe Zhao and Chris Marker. Plus, she gives insights into her life in the studio (and darkroom) and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Catherine Opie: To Be Seen, National Portrait Gallery, London, 5 March-31 May 2026; Catherine Opie: The Pause that Dreams Against Erasure, The Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany, 19 July 2026. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
S32 · E1
February 11 · 1 hr 6 min
A brush with... Louis Fratino
Louis Fratino talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Fratino was born in 1993 in Annapolis, Maryland, US, and lives in New York. His paintings reflect on memory and the intimate details of daily life to transmit a deeply felt response to his immediate circumstances and the world beyond. His vision is channelled through an abiding passion for art history, and particularly Modernist painters in Europe and the US. Louis’s subjects are the people and places around him, beginning with himself and extending to family, friends, partners and lovers, who he pictures in interior spaces from kitchens to bathrooms and bedrooms, as well as in the city and in nature. Crucial to his art is an exploration of queer life, from touching scenes of companionship to images of sex and desire more broadly. Louis’s painting possesses an everyday poetry yet dwells on the big questions of life. It is a singular and deeply personal practice as well as a major contribution to the expression of queer identity and sexuality in a painterly field that has until recent decades been dominated by heteronormative perspectives. If there is a philosophy in his painting, he says, it is “about living very intensely” and being “very open to experiences”. He reflects on the balance between reality and fantasy in his painting, on how memory is the principal subject of his work, and how he enjoys the “feeling of play in painting”. He discusses artists from Henri Matisse, with whom he has a show at the Baltimore Museum of Art between March and September, to Bhupen Khakhar and Winifred Nicholson, the photographer George Platt Lynes, the poet Sandro Penna and the film-maker Dag Johan Haugerud. Plus, he gives insight into life in his studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Fratino and Matisse: To See This Light Again, Baltimore Museum of Art, US, 11 March-6 September. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
S31 · E4
Dec 17, 2025 · 1 hr 14 min
A brush with... Olafur Eliasson
Olafur Eliasson talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Eliasson was born in 1967 in Copenhagen and grew up between Denmark and Iceland, where his parents were from. His installations, sculptures, photographs and paintings, among other projects, reflect a profound concern with human presence in nature and how we perceive and interact with the world around us. His works can be deceptively simple or enormously complex, but often share a rigorous and reductive geometry, which may conversely produce expansive and multifarious perceptual, sensory and embodied effects. Eliasson has stated that “the spectator is the central issue”, a long-established aspect of conceptual and environmental practices, but for him it is important that the viewer not only completes the work, but is also transformed by it. This subjective and individual revelation is, he hopes, allied to a sense of collective experience, what he calls a “we-ness”, that often alerts his audience to wider cultural and social issues including the climate catastrophe. Indeed, environment, in multiple senses, is the fundamental element of his work. He discusses his deep concern about the climate catastrophe and the importance of action. He reflects on his concept of “seeing yourself sensing” and its shifting nature in relation to different works across his career, and how he often includes the word “your” in his titles as a gesture of trust towards his audience. He discusses the wealth of writers and thinkers that inform his work on a daily basis, from Donna Haraway to Alva Noë. He recalls the epiphany of experiencing a work by James Turrell and his fascination with early Renaissance conceptions of space. He reflects on his early fascination with breakdance and his current enjoyment of music by Hilda Gunnarsdóttir and Rosalía. Plus, he gives insight into life in his vast studio in Berlin, and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Olafur Eliasson: Presence, Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia, until 12 July 2026; Olafur Eliasson: Your curious journey, Museum MACAN, Jakarta, Indonesia, 12 April 2026, Your view matter by Olafur Eliasson, Padimai Art & Tech Studio, Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Singapore, 31 March 2026; and Olafur’s first permanent public work in the UK, Your planetary assembly, 2025, is on view at Oxford North, Oxford, UK now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
S31 · E3
Dec 10, 2025 · 1 hr 2 min
A brush with... Luc Tuymans
Luc Tuymans talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Tuymans, who was born in 1958 in Mortsel, Belgium, and lives and works in Antwerp, has transformed the territory of painting in the late 20th and 21st centuries. Using photographs and images from film and other media, he tackles a breadth of subjects and motifs, including contemporary politics, cataclysmic historical events, art history, and apparently banal everyday objects and environments, with paintings that are redolent with atmosphere and poetic power. Tuymans’s process of finding the images and deciding how to transform them is slow and precise, and worked through in various stages before it reaches the canvas, where he makes the final piece in oil on a single day. In the resulting pictures, the motif can be veiled or oblique, and sometimes close to abstract, and he has used the term “authentic forgeries” to describe them. In this way, they articulate the elusiveness of representation through painting—a quality Tuymans has described as the medium’s “belatedness”—as well as the subjective nature of experience and memory, both personal and collective. He discusses the early impact of Piet Mondrian and Léon Spilliaert, his ongoing admiration for Francisco de Goya, and his response to Théodore Gericault and Mark Rothko in recent series of paintings. He reflects on the importance of literature, including the writings of Thomas Pynchon, and film, especially the painterly approach of David Lynch. He gives insight into his studio life and his singular approach to image-making, and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Luc Tuymans: The Fruit Basket, David Zwirner New York, until 19 December; David Zwirner, Los Angeles, 24 February-4 April 2026; Luc Tuymans, Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, Italy, until 22 February 2026. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
S31 · E2
Dec 3, 2025 · 1 hr
A brush with… Kader Attia
Kader Attia talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Attia was born in 1970 in Dugny, France, and lives in Berlin and Paris. He grew up between the French capital and Bab el Oued, a suburb of Algiers in Algeria, and his Algerian-French identity and the culture and history of Europe and North Africa—the global north and south—have profoundly informed his subject matter and materials. His work across three decades in photography, collage, sculpture, installation and sound, is concerned with a central concept: repair. By association, the notion of repair is inevitably connected with violence and injury. Within this overarching theme, he explores political and social issues in the present and the complex legacies of colonialism. While directly addressing particular historical and current moments, his work is rich in metaphor, and he considers this poetic aspect crucial to art’s ability to effect social change. Attia regards his output as the evidence of an ongoing process of research, but despite its fundamentally philosophical and textual genesis, it is often dramatic visually and experientially. He reflects on what he calls the “menemonic traces” and ghosts present through his work, explains why he feels the gaze is a bodily phenomenon beyond the ocular, and discusses the importance of his trips while a young person in Congo and Mexico. He talks about his early interest in Michelangelo’s drawings, his engagement with writers from the psychoanalyst Karima Lazali to the poets Édouard Glissant and Aimé Césaire, and the cathartic power of music. Plus he gives insight into his life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for? Kader Attia: Shattering and Gathering our Traces, Lehmann Maupin, New York, until 20 December; Kader Attia. The Lost Paradise, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville, Spain, until 18 January 2026; Kader Attia: A Descent into Paradise, Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico, until 4 January 2026. Bienal de Sao Paulo: Not All Travellers Walk Roads—Of Humanity as Practice, until 11 January 2026; The World Tree: 24th Paiz Art Biennial, Guatemala City and Antigua Guatemala, until 15 February 2026. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
S31 · E1
Nov 26, 2025 · 59 min
A brush with... Mary Kelly
Mary Kelly talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Kelly was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, US, in 1941 and lives today in Los Angeles. She has played a fundamental role in the history and ongoing development of conceptual and feminist art, with works that have explored sexuality and women’s experience, wider issues of identity, the spectacle and trauma of war, and the nature of memory in relation to history and geopolitics. Informed by a range of thought, including critical theory, psychoanalysis and literature, her work takes diverse physical forms, but often manifests in multimedia installations, involving a rich materiality that includes text and documents, photography and printmaking, sculpture, sound and film. She reflects on her groundbreaking projects like Post-Partum Document (1973-77) and Interim (1984-89), and the way that her use of autobiography has shifted in her work over time. She discusses the dramatic shift in her life following her move to Beirut in the 1960s and the events of May 1968. She recalls the moment she encountered Franz Kline’s work aged 15 and how it confirmed a lifelong pursuit of non-figurative work. She reflects on her role within Conceptualism and her esteem for her peers in that movement. She discusses the importance of writers as diverse as Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Genet, William Carlos Williams and Jacques Lacan. Plus, she gives insight into her life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including a moving answer to the ultimate question: what is art for? Mary Kelly: We don’t want to set the world on fire, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London, until 17 January 2026 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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