David Kennedy Cutler
March 25, 2025

Artist David Kennedy Cutler brings us a mixtape in honor of his show Second Nature up now in New York City. He’s “moving in” to Derek Eller gallery with works that mine the everyday, everything rendered as replete replications using his extraordinary process. “Each piece originates from photographs shot at home or in the studio (or gallery, when I perform), which are then fed through digital-imaging software, converted through an inkjet transfer technique into various cut and collaged layers or skins, and held together on either a prefabricated or constructed armature—where finally painting and sculpture techniques enhance and obscure any sense of origination.”

Over the past ten+ years David has also been making copies of himself, creating a new döppelganger each time he does a performance. The penultimate iteration of this process saw 5 Davids Kennedy Cutler all signing books at the launch of a monograph about another performance with his doubles, “Off Season.” For that performance Cutler spent 10 weeks living in the *closed* Halsey McKay Gallery in East Hampton, NY. With only his clones and a webcam for company, he built structures, made paintings and sculptures, and created an alternative reality where he was creating a new society at the end of the world.

This obsession with repetition and reproduction has also found its way into a practice that involves making publications and editions. He’s collaborated often with other artists like Sara Greenberger Rafferty and Ethan Greenbaum, (the three of them as &&& were previous guests on The Selection Committee,) who share his interest in multiplicity, imaging, mediation, and software.

David is a great storyteller, and he has a lot of stories to tell about inspired collectors, other performances, and other artists who inspire him. Join us for a fascinating conversation.


Apple Podcasts︎ 
Spotify ︎

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

1. Mess, Scratch Acid, 1991
   
2. My New House, The Fall, 1985
   
3. Cloudy Day, Tom T Hall, 1969
   
4. Hymn, Diane Coffee,     
   
5. Come On, Tommy McGee, 2016
   
6. Black Foliage (Itself), The Olivia Tremor Control, 1999
   
7. This is how we walk on the Moon, Arthur Russell, 1994
   
8. Hidden Song, Delia Gonzalez, 2017
   
9. Black Panta, Lee "Scratch" Perry, 2004
   
10. Headlights, Pets, 2023
    
11. Rainbow 65 (full version), Gene Chandler   
    
12. No Side To Fall In, The Raincoats, 1979
    
13. Government Cheque, Cindy Lee   
    
14. Forced To Drive, The Breeders, 2002
15. History Lesson - Part II, Minutemen, 2019
16. Virtually Nothing, 100 Flowers, 1983
17. The Commercial, Wire, 1977
18. I'm On the Side of Mankind as Much as the Next Man, McCarthy, 1990
    
19. I'm Sad About It, Lee Moses, 2007
20. Windsor Hum, Protomartyr, 2017
    
21. When It's Over, The Soft Moon, 2010
22. Dimed, Stuck, 2020
23. I Go To Sleep, Anika, 2010
24. Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste, Galaxie 500, 1988               

David Kennedy Cutler (b. 1979, Sandgate, VT; lives and works in Brooklyn, NY) received his BFA from The Rhode Island School of Design in 2001. He was recently featured in an Artist Project in Artforum (January 2024) and received a NYFA grant for interdisciplinary work (July 2024). He has had solo exhibitions at Halsey McKay Gallery (East Hampton, NY), Essex Flowers (NYC), The Centre for Contemporary Art (Tallinn, Estonia) and Nice & Fit (Berlin, Germany). Cutler has performed in various spaces in New York including Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, Essex Flowers, Printed Matter, Halsey McKay, and Flag Art Foundation, and internationally at the Center for Contemporary Arts Estonia, among others. He has been included in group exhibitions internationally. His works are part of the the permanent collections of the Wellin Museum at Hamilton College and The RISD Museum, and his artist’s books are included in the libraries of the Whitney Museum, The Yale Arts Library, and the Brooklyn Museum.

Jen Mazza
March 11, 2025

“Ethics and aesthetics are one” —Ludwig Wittgenstein

"Attention is rewarded by a knowledge of reality. —Iris Murdoch

Jen Mazza is an artist of deep and focused attention. Her meticulously rendered paintings and drawings re-present artifacts of art historical, scientific, and cultural interest. She takes extreme care to reproduce the physical qualities of the objects she reproduces, sometimes using 20-30 colors to match just the right tone and brightness of a sheet of paper.

Mazza brings this same focus to the playlist she made for The Selection Committee, composed of songs that require serious listening—from Nina Simone and Joni Mitchell to Julius Eastman and Morton Feldman.

We begin our discussion of her recent exhibition “Vicissitudes of Nature” at Ulterior Gallery in New York City, by looking at her painting “Portent.” It’s a rippling, dizzying rectangle of thalassic movement composed almost entirely of undulating lines with a tiny city in the far distance. This roiling composition is a reproduction of one of the twelve panels in Titian’s woodblock print “The Submersion of Pharaoh's Army in the Red Sea”. Her focus on the most abstract of the panels connects to her search for how to represent attention, nature, and the sublime today. We discuss the Caspar David Friedrich show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and how he and the Romantic painters taught us how to look at nature. She also explains how drag artist John Kelly taught her how to show up as an artist.

Finally, we discuss Mazza’s interests in philosophy and literature in a conversation ranging from Wittgenstein and Iris Murdoch to Annie Dillard and Jorge Luis Borges. All in all it’s a lively chat about art, music, and life!

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

1. Feeling Good, Nina Simone, 1965
   
2. In the Morning, Nina Simone, 1969
   
3. I Shall Be Released, Nina Simone, 1969
   
4. Woodstock, Joni Mitchell, 1970
   
5. Joni Mitchell’s Blue (bootleg), John Kelly 
   
6. A Chloris: "S'il est vrai, Chloris, que tu m'aimes" (Très lent), Reynaldo Hahn, Philippe Jaroussky, Jerome Ducros, 2012
   
7. 3 Gymnopédies: No. 1, Lent et douloureux, Erik Satie, Pascal Rogé, 1984
   
8. The Long Ride II, Devonté Hynes, 2020
   
9. Evil Nigger, Julius Eastman, Wild Up, Christopher Rountree, Devonté Hynes, Adam Tendler, Lewis Pesacov, 2023
   
10. Sonatas XIV and XV, 'Gemini' - After the Work of Richard Lippold, John Cage, Adam Tendler, 2008
11. Rothko Chapel 5, Morton Feldman, 1991
    
12. Flowers for Prashant, Tyshawn Sorey, 2017    
    
13. Tiger Balm, Annea Lockwood, 2007

Jen Mazza (b. 1972, Washington D.C.) received an M.F.A. from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in 2001 and is currently based in New York, NY. A committed educator, as well as an avid thinker and writer, Mazza draws her inspiration across a range of disciplines which include philosophy, literature, and visual culture. Her work has been recently exhibited in a mid-career retrospective at The James Gallery at the Center for the Humanities, in a digital project for Artist Alliance Inc., and as part of her recent talk on art and nature at the Getty Museum. Mazza’s work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Art in America, Art News, and Hyperallergic.  

February 25, 2025
Mixtape Show!

Combining two vintage mixtapes for a nice midwinter afternoon. First up “How to Handle Rejection” from 2017 and then “Small Animals Respond to Electronically Produced Sounds” from 2009. Enjoy!

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1. Since I Left You, Avalanches, 2000
   
2. Errare Humanum Est, Jorge Ben, 1974
   
3. The House Music Anthem - Move Your Body, Frankie Knuckles Presents Marshall Jefferson, 1986
   
4. Lebanese Blonde, Thievery Corporation, 2004
   
5. Casino, Ralph Myerz and the Jack Herron Band, 2003
   
6. Very Stylish Girl, Dimitri from Paris, 1998 
   
7. Brazil, Xavier Cugat, 1943 
   
8. Kryptonite, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, 2011  
   
9. We Are The People, Empire Of The Sun, 2008
   
10. Total Recall, Flosstradamus, 2012 
    
11. Eccojam A5, Chuck Person, 2013
    
12. Soldissimo - EDC Remix (with Air), Etienne De Crecy, 1998   
    
13. Sofa Rockers, Richard Dorfmeister, 1998
    
14. John Tomes, Tosca, 2000
    
15. 22nd Century, Nina Simone, 2013

1. Riri, Dim Dim, 2002
   
2. The Casio Fight Song, David Shore & The Bloodthirsty Lovers, 2001
   
3. Switch on Bach, Moderne, 1980
   
4. Kometenmelodie 2, Kraftwerk, 1974
   
5. hollywood, Cluster, 1974
   
6. Secret Life, Material, 1981
   
7. Lovelane, Jimmi Moon    2009
   
8. Hello Tomorrow, Squeak E. Clean feat. Karen O., 2009
   
9. Collision With a Frogman, Swell Maps    2009
   
10. Rise, Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom    2009
    
11. Untitled, Gas, 1996
    
12. She Wants to Move (DFA Remix)    N.E.R.D.    2009

Jeff Williams
February 11, 2025

With songs from the Theatre of Eternal Music, the Stooges, and more, artist Jeff Williams brings a drone-inspired mixtape to the Selection Committee. This open, meditative, and recursive mode of music making rhymes with Williams’ art practice which deals with themes of time, environment, and the passage of materials through both of those elements.

Whether he’s tracing thousands of feet of fluorescent yellow cable through a vast empty industrial building or throwing rolls of aluminum flashing down the foothills of Mount Washington, Williams’ lyrical work inscribes lines in space over time. We travel from La Monte Young’s Dream House in TriBeCa to a subbasement of the American Academy in Rome to a cement culvert in Austin, Texas to the wild-boar ensorcelled farmland of rural France. Join us for a delightful conversation and meet some of Williams’ friends and collaborators along the way.

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

1. On the Prowl, Paris
   
2. Raise the Bells, The Folk Implosion
   
3. Trance #2, Angus LacLise, Tony Conrad, John Cale
   
4. We Will Fall, The Stooges
   
5. Dopesmoker, Sleep
   
6. Big Church [megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért], Sun O)))
   
7. The Fare to Get There, Do Make Say Think
   
8. The Dance No. 1, Laraaji with Brian Eno
   
9. RF5, Ben Vida
   
10. Meinhof, Tania Cross
11. Dazed and Awake, Aerial M

Jeff Williams lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, and Austin, TX, where he is an Associate Professor Of Sculpture at The University of Texas.  He has been awarded residencies at the Dora Maar House in Ménerbes, France; Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, CA; Recess in New York, NY; Galería Perdida in Chilchota, Michoacán, Mexico; and the Core Program in Houston, TX. Williams was the 2009 Leonore Annenberg Fellow in the Arts at the American Academy in Rome. He is a recent recipient of an NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship for Environmental Structures and a Santo Foundation Award. Solo exhibitions include Jack Hanley Gallery in New York, NY; Co-Lab Projects in Austin, TX; RAIR in Philadelphia, PA; 1708 Gallery in Richmond, VA; Arthouse in Austin, TX; and Artpace in San Antonio, TX.