Interviews by Brainard Carey

Julie Severino is a Brooklyn based painter. She received her MFA from New York Academy of Art. Severino creates psychological narratives that function as a tool to deepen her understanding of the mind and body connection, in relation to her own personal history and the larger human experience. Playing with perspective, her paintings depict disproportionate figures or things that are in dialogue with the multidimensional environments.Rendering parts of the work differently serves as a means to distinguish rhythm, stillness, force and sensitivity. Stillness and time are necessary to reveal parts of the enigmatic scenes. The sculptures are made with various materials, such as, aluminum, magic sculpt, glass, paper, hair and other materials. The transition from painting to sculpture allows Severino to explore with her hands and body in a way that calls attention to an immersive visual language and way of creating. Including poetry with some of the work is an important part of Severino’s studio practice. Often, the writing becomes the genesis of the paintings and sculptures, but sometimes, during the process of creating, the work will inspire the text that then becomes a part of the physical artwork. Listen to Severino read her poetry here. JULIE SEVERINO, Abundance and Light, 2023, oil, graphite, colored pencil on canvas, 60 x 70 in (152.4 x 177.8 cm) JULIE SEVERINO, Arising and Passing, 2023, oil, graphite, colored pencil on canvas, 48 x 60 in (121.9 x 152.4 cm) Prayers Through Poetry, 2023, oil, gold leaf, graphite, colored pencil on canvas, 24 x 18 in (61 x 45.7 cm)

Edward Povey was born in London, England in 1951, the only child of a merchant seaman and a seamstress. He studied at the Eastbourne College for Art and Design in England and at the University of Wales in North Wales. 1972-1978 Between 1975 and 1981 he came to the attention of the British media as a muralist, completing 25 internal and external murals up to five stories in height, in Israel, Wales and England. Between 1983 and 1988 he painted and studied symbolism on the Caribbean island of Grenada, and learned under the Danish architectural abstractionist Paul Klose, and the art dealer Jan de Maere in Brussels. From 1991 he showed with John Whitney Payson in New York beside Paul Cadmus, Jack Levine and Michael Bergt and successively with galleries in The Hague, Paris, Los Angeles, San Fransisco, New Orleans, West Palm Beach and London, up to the present. In 2008 he was proposed for a knighthood for his contribution to art in Britain bythe Chancellor of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and others. In 2019 the British Library documented his career for the nation.In 2012 the Museum of Modern Art in Wales published a biography of Povey’s life and work up to that point. In 2018 Povey studied Raphael’s Ansidei Madonna in the National Gallery in London, using Ghiotto’s and Raphael’s Verdaccio palette for his new paintings which he termed Emotional Realism. Between 2019 and 2023 Povey appeared in many publications and interviews in Spain, Poland, the United States, Egypt, England, Italy, France and Brazil. His paintings hang in museum collections, private and corporate collections in thirty countries. Since 2021 he has shown with Waterhouse & Dodd in New York. His current Solo Exhibition: “HUMAN”, 5th October - 3rd November 2023. 15 East 76th Street, New York, NY 10021. T: 212 717 9100.Edward Povey is currently beginning a new collection of paintings in his studio in the Devon countryside of England. SEINE, 2023. Edward Povey, Oil on Belgian linen 170.0 X 170 cm / 67 X 67 in. More information from Waterhouse & Dodd, New York. “In civilised societies human beings devise traditions and ceremonies to safely contain meaningfulness in the desert night. Romance, religion, families, paintings and films are all ceremonies of meaning. Even boxes and vases contain what otherwise disperses beyond our control, like emotions in a thunderstorm. We are so very vulnerable, and to have seen the same chair since our childhood, the same parent, the same sky above us remaining and remaining. It is this that calms the chaos. When a couple dances to the trickling pulse of soft rock, bleeding out of a out of a midwestern late radio station, moving slowly beside the long porch window, another couple dance in the reflected glass – and that is my painting. They will always move in a dim tandem with us, twin sisters, identical brothers. Immortal tricks of the light. Paintings are altars, objects and artefacts far stronger than the buildings that host them, because they have centuries in their pockets. This painting groups all that is, for all intents and circumstances, unnecessary and transitory: the aging chair, the little vase of flowers, the ramekin of glacé cherries, the teaspoon of blood, the distracted middle-aged woman. Only a human being can appreciate that these objects are in fact precious and cherished, beautiful and indispensable.” DEFINITIE, 2023. Edward Povey, Oil on linen, 200 X 200 cm / 79 X 79 inches. Modelling courtesy of London model Emily Poynton. Photograph of Baroness Ersilia La Lomia, Sicily, courtesy of her niece, Marzia Caramazza. More information from Waterhouse & Dodd, New York. "Paintings explain themselves just as the silhouette of an arguing couple does, gesturing in a midsummer alleyway viewed from a passing train. Sunday, south London, the hot streets empty, a couple drawing lines in their lives. The English say 'Double Dutch', meaning 'inexplicable',

Floria González was born in Monterrey on July 20th, 1980. She moved to Acuña Coahuila in 1983, eventually moving to Mexico City at 16 where she currently lives and works. Floria’s dreamlike, cinematic scenes explore alternate realities and hidden layers of the psyche. Using photography, video, installation, performance, and painting, Floria maintains a constant dialoguebetween fantasy and imagination, excavating forms and scenes that reconstruct her own identity through memories and experiences. Floria has exhibited work in Mexico City, Monterrey,New York, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Berlin, Italy, Hong Kong, London, and Singapore. Floria González, Too Young to Die, M. Ward, First Aid Kit, 2023, oil on canvas, 44 3/10 x 44 3/10 in / 112.5 x 112.5 cm Floria González, The Smoke, The Smile, 2023, oil on canvas, 31 1/2 x 35 2/5 in / 80 x 90 cm Floria González, Crazy, Patsy Cline, 2023, oil on canvas, 35 2/5 x 35 2/5 in / 90 x 90 cm

Enemy Combatant, David Winner's third novel (March 2021) received aKirkus-starred reviewand was aPublisher's Weekly/Booklife Editor's Pick. He is the co-editor of Writing the Virus, a New York Times-noted Anthology. His Kirkus-recommended second novel, Tyler's Last, was nominated for a Pushcart while his first, The Cannibal of Guadalajara, won the 2009 Gival Press Novel Award and was nominated for the National Book Award. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, Fiction, The Iowa Review, The Millions, The Kenyon Review and (in German) Manuskripte. He is a senior editor at StatOrec magazine, the fiction editor of The American, a magazine based in Rome, a regular contributor to The Brooklyn Rail, and a columnist for 3 Quarks Daily Master Lovers, a non-fiction work inspired by hidden love letters from the 1930’s, comes out in November.

Portrait, Laura Anderson Barbata. Photo: Jake Holler Born in 1958 in Mexico City, Laura Anderson Barbata is a transdisciplinary artist, performer, writer, and educator who lives and works between New York and Mexico City.Since 1992 Anderson Barbata has worked primarily in the social realm, initiating projects in the Venezuelan Amazon, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico, Norway, and the United States. Among them is the ongoingThe Repatriation of Julia Pastrana, begun in 2005, which resulted in the removal of the project’s titular figure’s body from the Schreiner Collection in Oslo, Norway and its successful repatriation and burial in Sinaloa, Mexico, Pastrana’s birth state. The project continues with Anderson Barbata’s production of related artworks, publications, zines, and performances. Anderson Barbata is also known for her projectTranscommunality(2001-present), presented in collaboration with stilt dancers, artists, and artisans from Mexico, New York, and the Caribbean. Transcommunalityhas been staged at various museums, schools, and other public spaces both as exhibitions and performance “Interventions.” Among them are Columbia University, New York (2023); The Watermill Center, Water Mill (2021); Newcomb Art Museum, New Orleans (2021); MUCA Roma, UNAM, Mexico (2020); BRIC Arts | Media House, Brooklyn (2019); The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C. (2019); Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (2017, 2018); Rutgers University, New Brunswick (2017); United Nations Plaza, New York (2017); University of Wisconsin, Madison (2015); Museo Textil de Oaxaca, Mexico (2012, 2016); The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas (2008); and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2007). Installation View, Laura Anderson Barbata: Singing Leaf. Photo: Olympia Shannon Archive X, 1998/2023, handmade abaca paper bundles with inclusions from the New Testament in Spanish, Ye´Kuana, Yanomami, Ashuar, Maya, and Quechua languages on bamboo structure, unique installation dimensions variable. Photo: Olympia Shannon. El miedo no anda en burro (autorretrato), 1998/2023, honey wax, mirror, sticks, and stones, unique, 15½ x 7 7/8 x 6 in. / 39.4 x 20 x 15.2 cm. Photo: Olympia Shannon

Mikael Levin explores our conceptions of place, identity and temporarily. His photographs are often of commonplace, everyday sites that, while seemingly insignificant in themselves, tie into larger historical events or movements of our times. By way of these places, his photographs form a topography of societal structures, predispositions, influences and memory. A note on the Stono Rebellion image from the artist: “Critical Places is essentially about how the rebellions of the enslaved areremembered (or not remembered) in the landscape. Through my witnessing of these places in my photographs, I am bringing forwardhow these rebellions still echo in social patterns and economic structures. What we see the case of the Stono Rebellion is theemergence of the trope of the Black man as "feared, violent, irrational.” Other rebellions are early examples of how powercontrols information, excessive Police violence, the lack of the Black voice in the telling of our history, the minimization of thewoman’s roll, and so on and so forth.“ LEVIN, Mikael (b. 1954) Untitled (from Subaqueous). 2018 Gelatin silver print, printed by artist. 2018 Edition of 5 Paper and image size: 19 ½ x 19 ½ inches. LEVIN, Mikael (b. 1954) U.S. Highway 17 at Wallace River, South Carolina. 2020 / The Stono Rebellion. 1739 Gelatin silver print, printed by the artist. 2023 Edition of 5 Paper size: 16 x 20 inches Image size: 14 3/8 x 17 1/2 inches. LEVIN, Mikael (b. 1954) 4th of July. La Grange, Missouri. 2022 / The Lin Uprising. 1849 Gelatin silver print, printed by the artist. 2023 Edition of 5 Paper size: 16 x 20 inches Image size: 14 3/8 x 19 3/8 inches.

Skuja Braden portrait in porcelain 2020 Skuja Braden is a pseudonym & the surnames of International duo Ingūna Skuja (Latvia), & Melissa Braden (USA) working collectively & primarily with porcelain. Skuja Braden represents an “absence of presence” of an individual author, where two artists have combined forces creating a fictive and alternate proxy identity. Collaboration is the non-hierarchical framework Skuja Braden utilize as method, strategy, and philosophy, exploring alternative relations to power through a fusion of disparate identities, inclinations, and perceptions. The work is conceptually based, but always expressed as a synthesis of painting & sculpture. Their works blend decorative, literary, and political elements into hybrid forms utilizing material that is historically associated with absolute refinement. Afternoon Matinee, porcelain (65x39x21 cm) 2021 Flower Power, porcelain (64x33x30) 2022 Rock-a-bye, porcelain, stoneware, wood, and wax (56x64xx36cm) 2008

In 1932, Paulina Peavy (1901 – 1999) attended a séance at the home of Ida L. Ewing in Santa Ana, California, where she claims to have met a UFO named Lacamo, a spirit from another world. From that moment forward Peavy, a university-trained artist, painted with a brush that “moved on its own.” In order to better channel Lacamo’s energies, Peavy also constructed and wore masks when she painted, occasionally signing her works with Lacamo’s name alongside her own. Peavy’s entire life was dedicated to promoting her worldview and various philosophies through drawing, painting, sculpture, text, and film. Her works on paper depict the artist’s individualized visual cosmos using shapes that resemble energy beams, solar systems, and procreative organic shapes signifying genitalia, ova, fallopian tubes, sperm, and fetuses. Peavy’s life and work were constantly evolving to reflect her belief in mankind’s evolution to an androgynous one-sex through contact with aliens. Laura Whitcomb is a surrealist scholar and the director of Label Curatorial, which focuses on lesser-known artists and movements of the West Coast. She has worked at the Gala - Salvador Dalí Foundation at the Dalí Theatre Museum in Figueres, Spain, while also contributing essays for exhibitions at the Dalí Museum in Florida. She is also a focused scholar of artists who engage hermetic traditions in their art practice. "Paulina Peavy: Etherian Channeler" in 2023 (D.A.P.) is edited by the adjunct LACMA curator Dr. Ilene Susan Fort and focuses on the channeler artist Paulina Peavy, whom Whitcomb curated at Beyond Baroque in 2021 and for the Andrew Edlin gallery in 2023. Label Curatorial focuses on sound art and light artists. Studying the inceptive roots of what became Los Angeles's most notable home-grown movement, she presented a Light and Space installation of Peter Alexander, Laddie John Dill, and Larry Bell at the official re-opening of the Brand Library and Art Center in 2014. In 2022, she curated "Luminaries of Light and Space" at LAX Airport, produced by Dublab, which included these artists along with Robert Irwin, De Wain Valentine, Fred Eversley, Helen Pashgian, Hap Tivey, and Gisela Colon. Whitcomb has two books forthcoming through Label Curatorial, highlighting artist and poet-run galleries from 1949-1965 and artists of the Beat era who continued surrealist lineages while exploring the occult. Paulina Peavy (1901 - 1999) 82 Modern Art, n.d. Mixed media 7.75 x 10 x 0.5 inches Paulina Peavy (1901 - 1999) Phantasma 59, c. 1980s Acrylic on canvas board 24 x 30 inches Paulina Peavy (1901 - 1999), Untitled, c. 1937 - 1939, Oil on panel, 72 x 48 inches

Julien Gardair portrait by Catherine Talese Julien Gardair is a French artist based in New York City since 2007. His cutout paintings, installations, sculptures, and works on paper are known for their adherence to strict sustainable systems. Gardair's art frequently incorporates a blend of languages and stories, creating a diverse and multilayered visual experience. Julien Gardair’s recent paintings reveal his innovative approach to art. Drawing inspiration from the Supports/Surfaces movement in France and the Pattern/Decoration movement in the United States, Gardair’s art is a fusion of materiality and pattern, along with the structural constraints of Minimalism. These multi-faceted pieces are a synthesis of vibrant paintings and textile works and are created by employing techniques like folding, cutting, and stitching. His work challenges the viewer’s perception of materiality. His sustainable approach ensures that no parts of the paintings are discarded, nodding to the global potential of restoration and upcycling. He holds an MFA from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris Cergy and his work has been shown throughout Europe and the United States. Notably, he was included in La couleur toujours recommencée, the first exhibition of the re-vamped Musée Fabre in Montpellier along with Joan Mitchell, Sam Francis, Shirley Jaffe, Peter Soriano and others. He has had solo exhibitions at Galerie Jean Fournier, Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne de Céret and Bric Arts, Brooklyn. He was commissioned by the New York MTA Arts & Design to create a permanent installation for the 18th Avenue and Kings Highway stations in Brooklyn. The Mobilier National also commissioned him to design a Savonnerie carpet on display at the Elysée Palace. The exhibitionJulien Gardair / Melanie Vote: Concurrence,offers an intimate exploration of works by both artists,who beyond their individual artistic pursuits, share a bond as a married couple. The show, presented by Garvey|Simon takes place at DFN Projects, 16 East 79th Street until November 3rd, 2023, Monday to Friday from11 am to 4 pm. Julien Gardair, Ascension, 2023, 16x12in, Acrylic on canvas, folded, cut, stitched, and stretched over wooden stretchers. Julien Gardair, Wide open, 2023, 16x12in, Acrylic on canvas, folded, cut, stitched, and stretched over wooden stretchers. Left: Julien Gardair, Zaouji, 2023, 16x12in, Acrylic on reclaimed pants and canvas, folded, cut, stitched, and stretched over wooden stretchers. Center: Melanie Vote, Flamboyan, 2023, 16 x 12, oil on paper on wood. Right: Julien Gardair, Striped, 2023, 16x12in, Acrylic on reclaimed t-shirt and canvas, folded, cut, stitched and stretched over wooden stretchers.

Aiba Riji 相場るい児 Based in Seto City, the epicenter of Japanese ceramic making since 10th century, Ruiji Aiba (b. 1964 in Fukuoka) creates ceramic sculptures and “netsuke.” They are often figures of children, innocently unclothed and at play with frogs, goldfishes, octopuses. Inspired by traditional dolls, fairy tales, classic movies and manga, Aiba emphasizes the ominosity aspect of dolls. The artists describes they are “neither human nor objects. Dolls are transcendental existence.” Aiba’s recent exhibitions were presented at SEIZAN Gallery (New York and Tokyo), Tsuboya Gallery (Kyoto), Gallery Kenbishi (Aichi), Ginza Mitsukoshi (Tokyo).The artist’s first solo exhibition in the US “Dancing With An Octopus” is on view at SEIZAN Gallery New York through October 21st. Ruiji Aiba, Octopus And Child, 2023, Ceramic, 8.3 x 8.3 x 5.7 inches (21 x 21 x 14.5 cm) Photo by Kenichi Hashimoto / Courtesy of SEIZAN Gallery Ruiji Aiba Octopus And Child, 2023 Ceramic 8.3 x 8.3 x 5.7 inches (21 x 21 x 14.5 cm) Photo by Kenichi Hashimoto / Courtesy of SEIZAN Gallery Ruiji Aiba Two Innocent Boys: Death Comes Equally, 2023 Ceramic Set of 2: 11 x 3.9 x 3.5 inches (28 x 10 x 9 cm) 10.6 x 3.9 x 3.5 inches (27 x 10 x 9 cm) Photo by Kenichi Hashimoto / Courtesy of SEIZAN Gallery