David Humphrey: Election Day
November 5, 2024

Complete playlist below; tracks in yellow were cut for time.

In honor of Election Day 2024, painter, sculptor, writer, educator, and musician David Humphrey begins his mixtape with the ominous Megastorm by Trans Am—an apt choice for an uncertain moment.

Humphrey’s work is a bit hard to categorize—people with carefully rendered clothes and hairstyles merge directly into other people or melt down into passages of pure abstraction. The clarity of the abstract picture plane breaks apart into pictorial space, only to rush back to the surface again, a trick observed by the two camera-wielding bathers occupying Shutterbugs, 2014.

Humphrey describes the construction of a painting vis a vis his series of works about ecstasy. How can one depict that loss of personal boundaries? What are the formal characteristics of extreme emotion? How does the opticality of painting connect to the other aspects of the sensorium? Was Cezanne the original psychedelic artist?

We talk about what he means by “militant shallowness,” authenticity in art, and embedding popular/vernacular culture into his work; using once- or never-loved found images/objects from commercial production in painting or sculpture. This use of found source material also connects to Humphrey’s expansive view of collaboration, a mode of working (with real and imaginary collaborators) he’s enjoyed for decades.

David Humphrey has an upcoming show, porTraits, at Fredericks & Freiser gallery in New York, opening December 12, 2024. His work can be found on his website, and you can follow him on instagram.

From 2004-2008, Humphrey had a half-hour show on WPS1 art radio called Sound and Vision with a similar premise to the Selection Committee Radio Show. You can listen to those shows now on Apple Podcasts.

CORRECTION: Stravinsky’s piece The Soldier’s Tale Suite was written in 1918; 1968, the date I mentioned, was actually the date of the recording.

1. Megastorm, Trans Am
   
2. Little Umbrellas, Frank Zappa
3. The Mac Man, Archie Shepp
4. Bridge, Amon Tobin
5. The Soldier’s Tale Suite: II. Airs by a Stream; Igor Stravinsky, Columbia Chamber Ensemble
6. The Green, Jenny Scheinman
7. My Beautiful Leah, PJ Harvey
8. Gambia, Sona Jobarteh
9. One More, Weaves
10. Contort Yourself, The Contortions
11. Room Mate, Lizzy Mercier Descloux
12. As We Used to Sing, Bushman’S Revenge
13. Black Satin, Miles Davis
14. Fleurette Africaine (African Flower), Duke Ellington
15. Constant Velocity Is As Natural As Being at Rest, Candiria
16. Four Cypresses, Grizzly Bear
17. Section I; Steven Reich, Erik Hall
18. Fire Back About Your New Baby’s Sex, Don Caballero
19. One Is Conspiracy, Junior Electronics
20. Violin Concertino: III. Rotto; Kurt Rohde, Axel Strauss, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Matilda Hofman
21. Bullet Proff, This Is The Kit
22. Wild, The Inner Banks
23. Sons of Garvey, Joe Higgs
24. Extrapolation, John McLaughlin
25. The Unanswered Question; Charles Ives, Cincinnati Philharmonic, Gerhard Samuel
26. Ricercar, “Bonny Sweet Robin;” Thomas Simpson, Musica Dolce, Clas Pehrsson
27. Eguetmar, Noura Mind Seymali
28. Masquerader; Joan As Police Woman, Tony Allen, Dave Okumu
29. For Amiri Baraka, Vijay Iyer Sextet
30. I Want It All, Shey Baba
31. Sexual For Elizabeth, Tortoise

David Humphrey is a New York artist who has shown nationally and internationally. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Rome Prize among other awards. An anthology of his art writing, Blind Handshake, was published by Periscope Publishing. He teaches in the MFA program at Columbia University and is represented by the Fredericks & Freiser Gallery, NY who published a monograph on his work in 2020 by Davy Lauterbach.

Website: davidhumphreynyc.com
Instagram: @aikenhump

Jacob Jackmauh
October 22, 2024

Complete playlist below; tracks in yellow were cut for time.

For this breezy fall show, artist Jacob Jackmauh brings a selection of songs that run the gamut from the corporate innocence of a Kidz Bop cover of an Ice Spice/Nicki Minaj collab to the moody Witch House of S4lem. This playlist was definitely influenced by YouTube—check out the amazing video by Oneohtrix Point Never—and TikTok.

One of Jackmauh’s choices is a Lim Giong piece from the soundtrack of the 2004 Jia Zhangke film The World. The film takes place in Beijing World Park, a huge amusement garden containing models of iconic art and architecture from five of the seven world continents. Jake describes his interest in reproductions, models, novelty sculptures, and roadside attractions, and he tells us about his series of sculptures incorporating large fiberglass molds and how these objects relate to tourism and experience.

We talk about the complicated layering of form and meaning in a post-internet world, and what it means to think about mass culture(s) and navigate the spaces between childhood and adulthood today. Jacob chooses some big bangers from Lil Uzi Vert and Chuckii Booker, and explains how exposure to the internet and social media—“indexes of explorables”—introduces the algorithm to the forces of social networks and chance which create our cultural spheres.

We end the show on a more nostalgic note, with a selection from the original Mean Girls soundtrack and a couple of songs by Prince. It’s a great show!

1. Barbie World,    Kidz Bop Kids,    2024
   
2. Gloomy,    Lim Giong,    2004
   
3. heavenly,    Pat's Soundhouse   
   
4. Boring Angel,    Oneohtrix Point Never,    2013
   
5. Keep U Satisfied,    Kofi,    2012
   
6. Seconds (Human League Cover),    Keef Baker,    2014
   
7. Art Star,    Yeah Yeah Yeahs,    2002
   
8. Killer,    SALEM,    2010
   
9. Built This Way,    Samantha Ronson   
   
10. That Way,    Lil Uzi Vert, WanMor,    2020
    
11. Games,    Chuckii Booker (A G Cook Remix)   
    
12. American Teenager Rave Mix,    Ethel Cain x sadie   
    
13. Liebe in Stereo,    Baby B3ns, Yung Hurn,    2024
14. Hustler,    Simian Mobile Disco,    2007
15. Let Me Go,    Tyler Berrier,    2024
    
16. Being Harsh,    A. G. Cook   
17. Moment to Moment,    Shiny Two Shiny,    2014
18. Temptation Is Hard to Fight,    George McGregor & The Bronzettes,    1967
    
19. Love... Thy Will Be Done,    Prince,    2019
    
20. Why Should I Love You?    Kate Bush,    1993

            

Josiah McElheny: Possible Impossibilities
October 8, 2024

Over the last 10 years, artist and joyful polymath Josiah McElheny has brought sound and music into his visual artwork. He’s deeply interested in musicians trying to push against existing structures and expand the boundaries of both sound and imagination. Visionary German writer Paul Scheerbart spoke about how all utopias will fail, but it’s important to talk about them anyway. For Josiah, this kind of contradiction is a way forward; a way to imagine futures without glossing over all the things that are wrong with the world.

Among the artists he chose for his playlist is legendary jazz composer Sun Ra, who had a notion that everything in life was a kind of equation—balanced with the precision of the Fates—and that “the impossible attracts me, because everything possible has been done and the world didn’t change.” This kind of push-pull can lead one to surprising places, and it’s something McElheny is looking for in music and art.

We talk at length about some of McElheny’s exhibitions which explore his thinking about music, including Dusty Groove (2014), Cosmic Love (2018), From Red Black to Black, From Blue Black to Black (2023) all at Corbett vs. Dempsey in Chicago, and Observations at Night (2019) at James Cohan in New York. The latter exhibition played host to a series of performances put on by the organization Blank Forms, on whose board McElheny sits.

McElheny’s galactic exhibition “Island Universe” is up now at LACMA in Los Angeles.

There are also upcoming screenings of “The Secret World,” a feature film made as a collaboration between McElheny and Jeff Preiss, on 10/25, 26, & 27 at Anthology Film Archives in NYC.

Josiah’s catalog for “Dusty Groove” with playable flexi-disc can be found here.

1    I Don't Believe in Love,    Sun Ra
2    Stranger in Paradise,    Sun Ra
3    Love in Outer Space,    Sun Ra
4    Somebody Else's World - a.k.a. Somebody Else's Idea,    Sun Ra
5    John Cage Interview with John Corbett & Terri Kapsalis  
6    A New Note in Music Harry Partchs Kooky 1950s Instruments,    Harry Partch
7    Note on the Mess w/David Grubbs,    John Corbett & Heavy Friends
8    1 of 1 (Pt. 1),    John Corbett & Heavy Friends
9    Babi,    Milford Graves
10    Melts into surface,    Zeena Parkins, Mette Rasmussen, Ryan Sawyer
11    Cosmic Love,    Joe McPhee
12    Paris 2022,    Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang
13    You May Dream,    Phantom Orchard Ikue Mori Zeen Parkins
14    From Red Black to Black, from Blue Black to Black,    David Grubbs
15    Shakey Jake,    Joe McPhee

Josiah McElheny’s sculptures, paintings, installations, performances, and films engage with the history of ideas across wide-ranging fields of study—from literature to architecture, music theory, and astronomy—transforming this research into physical form. His works often combine glass or mirror with other materials, to emphasize the importance of the act of looking “as a subject in and of itself.” A skilled glassblower, McElheny frequently incorporates hand-blown and shaped glass within evocative assemblages, whose mode of presentation creates a sense of unsettled ideals, and a challenge to fixed definitions. For McElheny, glass—with its qualities of reflectivity, transparency, and enigmatic mutability—highlights the interactive potential between the object and viewer. The material serves as a productive agent, inciting chance encounters between forms and ideas that point toward alternative histories and futures.

Josiah McElheny (b. 1966, Boston, MA) has exhibited widely, including solo shows at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, CA (2019); Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, TX (2018); MAK Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst, Vienna, Austria (2016); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (2013), Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA (2012), Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, England (2011), Museo de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain (2009), Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2007), The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2007), Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain (2002), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA (2001), The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA (1999) and the Seattle Art Museum, WA (1995). His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; and Tate Modern, London, UK among others. McElheny lives and works in New York, New York.

Michael Smith
August 13, 2024

Complete playlist below; tracks in yellow were cut for time.

The legendary performance, video, and installation artist Michael Smith joins Nate Heiges with a mixtape ranging from Mr. Rogers to sales tips for closers to some of the filthiest songs you’ve ever heard in your life. We discuss his career in comedy and performance and his process of taking inspiration from life, media, and thrift store sales bins.

Smith’s work revolves around a character named “Mike,” a modern-day Candide who spends time drinking coffee, watching TV, and exploring various careers, including comedy impresario and entrepreneur. Smith organized variety shows at storied NYC venues like the Pyramid Club and Danceteria, and eventually made a pilot for Cinemax of Mike’s Talent Show. This episode of the Selection Committee itself is organized a bit like a variety show, with music, comedy clips, and Mike’s inimitable sense of humor. How many people do you know who’ve hitched a ride on a city bus molassesed and feathered from head to toe on the South Side of Chicago? Or who’ve attended Burning Man as a big baby?

Smith’s piece Mike Builds a Shelter is currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In the spring of 2025, he will be putting out a boxed set of DVDS with many video works and documentation of performances, along with a 120-page catalog.

https://michaelsmithartist.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Smith_(performance_artist)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBWpWKwSbTk

1. Hi Mike, Paul Tripp
   
2. Jackie Vernon, Jackie Vernon
   
3. In My Room, The Beach Boys
   
4. You Can't Hurry Love, The Supremes
5. Cashing Objections Sales 1960, J Douglas Edwards
   
6. 'Round Midnight, Thelonious Monk, Gerry Mulligan, Wilbur Ware, Shadow Wilson
   
7. The Sound Heard Round the World, Muzak Orchestra
   
8. Papa's Got A Brand New Bag, James Brown
9. You Send Me, Aretha Franklin
10. I Like To Take My Time, Mister Rogers
    
11. Doug Clark And The Hot Nuts Side 1 Intro, Doug Clark And The Hot Nuts
    
12. Roly Poly, Doug Clark And The Hot Nuts
    
13. Shitting On The Dock Of The Bay, Blowfly
    
14. Petey Wheatstraw Shit Scene, Wildman Steve
15. Knockers Up!, Rusty Warren
    
16. He's the Greatest Dancer (Live Version), CHIC
    
17. Ain't Too Proud To Beg, The Temptations
18. Fun, Fun, Fun, The Beach Boys
19. Won't You Be My Neighbor? Mister Rogers
20. (What A) Wonderful World, Sam Cooke
21. Airlines, Shelley Berman
    
22. Up, Up and Away, The 5th Dimension
    
23. Air Traffic Controller, Bob Newhart
    
24. Bob The Builder Full theme song
25. P.S. Unless One Has (Blues Connotation), Ornette Coleman
26. ABC, The Jackson 5
27. Growing Up Is Fun, Paul Tripp
28. Wimoweh - Live, The Kingston Trio
29. We Gotta Get Out Of This Place, The Partridge Family
30. National Lampoon Kung Fu Christmas
31. Party And Bullshit In The USA, Notorious BIG and Miley Cyrus
32. Skybird - Instrumental, Neil Diamond
33. Forever In Blue Jeans, Neil Diamond
34. Somewhere Over the Rainbow,  Judy Garland, 1939

Michael Smith is a performance, video, and installation artist who has exhibited widely at fine art and popular venues, including museums, galleries, theaters, festivals, nightclubs, television, online, and in the street. His work has been shown internationally at the 2017 Sculpture Project, Münster; Glasgow International; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead; The Tate Modern, South London Gallery, Hales Gallery, London; Dan Gunn Gallery, Berlin; Ellen De Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam; Le Magasin, Grenoble; Mumok, Vienna; Jeu de Paume and Pompidou Center, Paris; Blanton Museum, Austin; ICA, Philadelphia among others.

In New York City his work has been shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, New Museum, and Greene Naftali, New York.

His works are in the collections of MoMA and Paley Center for Media, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Migros Museum, Zurich; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Centro de Arte Contemporânea Inhotim, Brazil.

Smith has received numerous awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim
Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Center for Advanced Visual Studies at M.I.T., New York Foundation for the Arts, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and Alpert Award in the Arts.

Pictured: Government Approved Home Fallout Shelter Snack Bar, 1983/2023, currently on view at MoMA, New York.