Ivan Liotchev, Untitled, 2010, oil and acrylic on canvas and window blind, found plastic, 86 x 303 cm

INTRODUCING: At the end of Joe’s conversation with Janusz, Janusz concluded, “if you look at art as a series of co-alienated protocols intended to increase an abstraction (value), or if you look at art schools as fortresses for status quo indoctrination, then yes... the prognosis is grim indeed”. do you think so? do you think there is little artists could do to about being dominated by the market if they want to be a ‘professional artists’? do you think we’ve gone too far away from the time when the market adapts to the art being made instead of the other way around?

Ivan: Well, I think that young artists working in art schools should at least be aware of all these issues we’re talking about.  Be aware of the system as a system that probably does not have the best intentions, consciously or not, as far as raw human benefit is concerned.  It puts on all the masks of pretending to do so, and of course all art schools claim to be nurturers of experimentation, but then what do 90% of degree shows end up being?  They’re systematic pitches to what galleries are looking for.  So we can either stay obliviously blind to the situation, or we can at least be having the very conversation we’re having right now.  I’m interested in this conversation because I want to stay hopeful. 

INTRODUCING: Now , at the start of the conversation between you and Joe, you stated fairly early on that "The gift of intellect is very demanding and I think it was inevitable that humans reached a point where they needed to say ‘Look! Here I am. This is who I am.’ So in this sense, I think human beings need art not only to add decoration to their lives, but as an intrinsic and unavoidable aspect of existence".

The part of this that I am most interested in I suppose is the link to intellect and this perceived notion that art is inextricably bound to intellect and whether the intellectual capacity of both the maker and the audience is what defines the ‘value’ of the work. And if we wrap ideas and questions about value up with those about why artists are making work, I feel like we are met with a slightly difficult situation; do we make work for it to be valued either intellectually, creatively, culturally, and ultimately commercially? Regardless of format, is it even possible to separate a practice from the act of creating value?

Ivan: I don’t think good art can come from a situation where something is made with the intention that it should have value.  

We have come to expect that art is of great value, both as a commodity and as intellectual stimulant, and this is where the problems start because under this situation art is under the burden of living up to its elevated role in society. It starts to live under these restricted parameters of what it ought to be in order to retain its value.  One of the reasons I so love Terrence Malick’s films is because he has managed this impossibly weird and contradictory feat of making big budget films within the Hollywood system that eschew anything typically Hollywood in favor of meditative and not-at-all-commercial existential explorations, which coincidentally or not, just so happen to star A-listers like Sean Penn and Colin Farrell.  His film The New World, a decidedly big-budget action/adventure, featuring Farrell, had, in accordance with Malick’s wishes, a nearly nonexistent ad campaign and received little publicity, and when I went to see it on opening weekend, there was no one else in the cinema! I mean this film has Colin Farrell in it! So not only do his films not make money, but they’re also not seen by many people. What is their value then? For me their value is their irreverence for value – it’s making films for the sake of making films.  This also reminds me of the Bulgarian painter Genko Genkov, who during his life was a starving drunk artist who would hustle his still wet paintings on street corners for bottles of vodka. When he died several years ago, his paintings’ prices predictably jumped exponentially. Nevertheless, while alive I remember him saying something like, ‘when I die, I don’t care if they use my paintings to chop wood on top of.’    

In other words, as cliché as it may sound, I’m not sure what defines value. But I think the question of value should steer clear of the act of creation. Creation should be its own thing. It doesn’t have value.

INTRODUCING: I guess you mean the value of ‘creation’ or ‘creativity’ lies in itself, but there is the act of creating, and then as a result, there is the ‘creation’. Do you think artists shouldn’t concern themselves with anything after the point when the art is ‘created’? Do you think artists should focus on ‘creating’, the thinking and making leading to the point of ‘creation’, instead of the criticism, the sale, or even the presentation of the work?

Ivan: Personally I’m not that concerned with what happens to my work after I make it. I guess I want it to be seen but beyond that I don’t really care. This may be because I don’t know what the purpose or point of my work is. I like working in this cloud of not-knowingness. It excites me to not know what’s coming. I like surprises.  Obviously there are many artists who think very differently than me. Tino Sehgal’s recent “This Progress,” where he empties the Guggenheim Museum of all art, upsets our expectations of what it is to walk into a museum and look at work. This piece examines the very culture of what happens after art is made. It spotlights the value of art on display, but we cannot forget that this is a work of art in itself, which obviously was conceived in its own right. So, even if we should determine that it is clear where conception for Sehgal begins, then where does creation end? Does it end when the piece is performed and finished and the Guggenheim is filled back up with art? What is the work’s fate at this point? Is it over? Does it still have a value? Does its value rely on the value of the work that was removed from the museum?

INTRODUCING: I think ‘This Progress’ is a piece of criticism. It is intangible so it relies heavily on the context, in this case, I’m not sure the context is the Guggenheim NY. I think the context here is the art world, or at least all the art museums that are of any historical significance. I think an artist who makes art that relies on its context should think carefully of the life of a piece ‘after’ it’s made and shown. It seems like you feel comfortable to detach from your work after it’s made and shown. I’m very surprised that on the one hand you feel very strongly about the current state of the (art) world, but on the other hand, you don’t seem to voice that concern in your work... Is there a relationship between your work and the critical position you take (about the art world)?

Ivan: To answer your question, let me first say that I don’t readily see my work as conceptual in any way, and I feel this is so because I don’t set out with any specific purpose in mind. I think for something to be conceptual, you have to have some sort of agenda for what you want to stir up, who you want to provoke. Yes I can see arguments against this assumption, but for the most part this seems to me to be the case. I’m just interested in certain moments, and how these moments form experience, and what experience consists of and how it is perhaps manipulated by the increasing complexity and chaos of the world (here I’m mainly referring to technological advancement and all its implications, one of which being the need for ever quirkier advertisements to catch the attention of our increasingly desensitized minds). I like to present situations in my work that can invite a great range of interpretations. I like the idea of expansive thinking, if I may so put it, fully realizing how pretentious it sounds. But I value the idea of thoughts branching out and multiplying, perhaps reaching epiphanous levels or equally so becoming confusing and contradictory, with no clear sense of purpose or ultimate goal. But having said all this, I’m gonna contradict myself right now. I’ve also made work and have ideas for work that are pretty much a direct reaction or rebellion against what I see as certain pretensions of the art world. I think the schmoozing prevalent during private views, and in the art world in general, has reached almost conspiratorial or cult-like levels, and I had this idea that’s kind of an attack on that.

I want to make a large painting that appears to be a legitimate painting of mine, but which is rigged as to allow for a friend and I to hide behind it during a private view. And as the champagne sipping reaches its climax, we would burst out through the painting, each armed with a water hose and just start hosing everyone and the art down with tons of water…  But most of my work doesn’t take a direct stance against the art world, although I guess it may sorta take an indirect one, in that I generally have an aversion to most of the art world’s current conventions. I hate talking about my work in anything approaching what may be considered “art lingo,” and I generally dislike going to many shows or even looking at too much other art. I’ll go to private views to have a drink and be entertained, but I can say that a lot of the time I’m neither interested in the art nor do I feel it has any influence at all on my work. (Having said this, I’ll again take the liberty to contradict myself by saying that I generally find all things interesting, and I guess this includes all art; but this doesn’t stop me from claiming that in the current environment of the art world, and the way shows are chosen and put together, and perhaps simply the sheer amount of shows, I just don’t feel that most art speaks to me at all; as much as I may crave to be interested, I’m not…I’d rather stand outside and drink a free Carlsberg, which is what pretty much everyone else does anyway.)

In this case, I guess I take on an individualistic stance, in that I think my work is a culmination of all the fears and anxieties I have about the world, art world included, but it doesn’t pinpoint anything in particular. I’m more interested in stirring up a chaos of many different things, essentially anything I can think of –I feel free to paint or put whatever I want in my paintings, without ever feeling a need to have a reason for doing so, and thus letting the viewer swim with the freedom to make her own connections, which are often far cooler than anything I can come up with.

INTRODUCING: It’s refreshing, the freedom to interpret. It sounds to me like you just want to paint. You’re obviously familiar with all the ‘dialogues’ and ‘debates’ surrounding art-making, art-viewing, and art-buying today, but you choose to focus your energy on ‘painting’, instead of whatever ‘ideas’ or ‘reference’ that might be behind it. Now, this seems to resonate a bit with the ideals of abstract expressionism, the ‘purity of painting’ so to speak that was propelled by Clement Greenberg. What is your view on that period? And what is the progress painting as a discipline has made since then?