Matlok Griffiths in conversation with B. Wurtz
March 10, 2026

Matlok Griffiths (b. 1983, Perth, Australia) is an artist and occasional musician who lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. He has presented solo and two-person exhibitions at Sutton Gallery, Melbourne (2025), Darren Knight Gallery, Sydney (2022, 2019, 2107, 2016), and ReadingRoom, Melbourne (2024, 2022, 2018). His work has been featured in numerous group shows, including at Wolford House, Los Angeles (curated by Nichole Caruso-Siebers, 2024) and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2023).
In 2016, Griffiths completed a four-month mentorship with artist Stanley Whitney through the support of a Skills and Development Grant awarded by the Australia Council for the Arts (now Creative Australia). His work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, and Artbank, Australia. In 2018, Griffiths released a music album, 1800, with his collaborators (Katrina Griffiths and Travis MacDonald) under the name Big Supermaket.

Born 1948 in Pasadena, California, B. Wurtz is best known for his playful and compelling sculptures constructed from discarded materials like produce packaging, construction lumber, and plastic bags. He received a BA from the University of California at Berkeley in 1970, and an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, in 1980. The sculptor and painter currently lives and works in New York, New York.
B. Wurtz's repurposing of everyday flotsam into joyous, humorous, and beautiful objects undermine grand artistic gesture while elevating the commonplace. The artist's transformative amalgams of found materials have tended to coalesce around the subjects of "sleeping, eating, and keeping warm"—the foundational human needs named in his 1973 drawing Three Important Things. While his sculptures are often modest in scale, in 2018, the artist created his now iconic Kitchen Trees for the New York City Public Art Fund, transforming City Hall Park with towering columns of colorful colanders exploding with plastic fruit.
Wurtz has been the subject of over 52 solo exhibitions at prestigious venues including: Feature Inc. (1987, 1991, 1992, 2001, 2003, 2006, New York); Gallery 400 (2000, Chicago); White Flag Projects (2012, St. Louis); Kunstverein (2015, Freiburg, Germany); and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, (2015, Ridgefield, Connecticut). In 2015, the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom mounted a retrospective exhibition of the artist's work that traveled to La Casa Encendida, Madrid through 2016. In 2018, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles mounted a major solo exhibition of his work, This Has No Name.
His work has also been included in over 174 group exhibitions including: Pandora's Box: Joseph Cornell Unlocks the MCA Collection (2011, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago); Building Blocks: Contemporary Works from the Collection (2011, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence); and Brand New: Art and Commodity in the 1980s (2018, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC).

Phyllis Baldino
February 24, 2026

The great artist Phyllis Baldino graduated from the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford as a dedicated sculptor. But a few years later, a chance encounter with a generous subletter with a trunk full of video cameras changed the course of her life.

She began making video pieces on her Sony Handycam in the early 90s in what would become the remarkable Gray Area Series. Inspired by books about fuzzy logic, each video records a sequence of actions by Baldino on common household objects that are—sometimes aggressively—deconstructed and repurposed. In Wine Rack/Not Wine Rack, for example, a wooden thrift store wine rack is sawed up to accommodate a 4L jug of blush wine. In April 1994: The Gray Band, Baldino gathered together four musician friends, Dez Cadena, Lynn Johnston, Tom Watson, and Mike Watt, to reconstruct instruments that she disassembled and play a single song: Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive.”

Baldino's musical selection for the show includes great songs from each of these artists as well as music that has influenced her work or been included in her work.

Baldino's abiding interest in the intersection of science and the everyday has led to fascinating works about nanotechnology (Nano-cadabra, 1998), quantum mechanics (Baldino-Neutrino, 2003), and parallel universe theory (19 Universes/my brother, 2004). She has been exploring issues of climate change in works like u_n_d_e_r_w_a_t_e_r, 2019 and Fake Nature Box, 2021.

It was through research on the Little Ice Age (1300 - 1850) that Baldino arrived at the process that is powering her current body of work. Learning about horrific stories of women accused of witchcraft and weather magic instilled in her the desire to speak firsthand with witnesses to the events. So she turned to an experienced friend and a Ouija board to find out what really happened: whether weather what was the result. Continuing this process led to Hit thegroundrunning, 2025, about immigrants to the US who came through Ellis Island in New York as children. What is it like communicating with the dead? Listen in to find out!

We discuss all this work as well as some of the vicissitudes of making video art. It’s a fascinating conversation with a truly unique artist. Information about the work can be found on www.phyllisbaldino.com.

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

1. Indeterminacy (clip), John Cage and David Tudor, 1959
   
2. Guitar Solo at Toad's, The B Willie Smith Band   
   
3. Merle Rock A Bye, Steve Baldino   
   
4. Another Day, Another Night; Steve Baldino, 2005   
   
5. You Know I Love You, The B Willie Smith Band   
   
6. No More (Dez Cadena Version), Black Flag, 1982  
7.  Walking The Cow, Firehose, 1991
8. The Letter, The Red Krayola, 1995
9. Little Rootie Tootie, CRUEL FREDERICK, 1991
   
10. Love, More Love; The United Society of Shakers, 1996
    
11. Who Will Blow and Bend Like the Willow, The United Society of Shakers, 1996
12. Auber: Manon Lescaut - C'Est L'Histoire Amoureuse, Amelita Galli-Curci, 1917
    
13. Nessuno, Mina, 1959
14. Stars (Live – Montreux Jazz Festival 1976), Nina Simone, 1976
15. Nell'Ufficio Di Produzione Di Otto E Mezzo, Nino Rota, 1962
    
16. Tighten Up, Archie Bell & The Drells, 1968
    
17. Kimberly, Patti Smith, 1975
18. 96 Tears, ? & The Mysterians, 1966
19. Chan Chan - Dúo con Elíades Ochoa, Cuba Segundo   
20. The Wind Cries Mary, Jimi Hendrix, 1967
21. For What It's Worth, Buffalo Springfield, 1966
22. They're Red Hot, Robert Johnson, 1937  
23. Andy Warhol - 2015 Remaster, David Bowie, 1971
24. I'll Never Get Out Of This World Alive, Hank Williams, 1954
25. Mercedes Benz, Janis Joplin, 1971

Phyllis Baldino is a conceptual artist whose work merges performance, video, sculpture, and installation combining an exploration of perception ranging from the everyday to scientific inquiry with extensive research to make work that creates its own logic. She has had one-person exhibitions at Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio and Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, Ohio. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Guggenheim Museum Soho, New York. Baldino’s work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the M+ Museum in Hong Kong. Baldino received a Preservation Grant from the NEA to digitize her video work in 2021 and was nominated for the Anonymous Was A Woman award in 2020. Baldino earned a B.F.A. in sculpture from the Hartford Art School, University of Hartford, Connecticut.

Alexander Dumbadze
January 27, 2026

I first met the charming art historian Alexander Dumbadze when he was my TA in a Richard Schiff class at the University of Texas at Austin. In the years since, Dumbadze has produced a focused body of work, including his two books “Bas Jan Ader: Death Is Elsewhere” and the just-published “Jack Goldstein: All Day Night Sky.” Combining biography, traditional art history, and theory, these books are eminently readable portraits of two remarkable people.

Both artists died prematurely—Ader was lost at sea during a transatlantic solo voyage at 33 and Goldstein by his own hand at 57— and both are big, mythic figures in the art world. What happens when the idea of the artist dominates the work that they make, when the myth precedes them and hovers around their art? Both artists were searching for a fundamental truth—Ader by making art that was unmediated and could communicate without representational systems and Goldstein through deep exploration of the possibilities of the representational image.

Dumbadze walks us through Jack Goldstein’s life and times, from his early student days at Chouinard and Cal Arts, to his social circles and his time in New York City, and ultimately to the end of his life in California. We discuss Goldstein’s major bodies of work and his tendentious relationship to artistic mediums. Most of all we talk about Goldstein’s efforts to make an ideal image, something pure that is also a fundamental experience: an unsustainable moment of intensity.

Dumbadze considers the books on Ader and Goldstein to be part of a trilogy of works, and he is currently working on the third and final book in the series: a novel set in the 1970s about a conceptual artist who only makes works in his head. I am very much looking forward to seeing how this book will continue the questions, problems, and possibilities that Dumbadze is dealing with in art history!

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

1. The Headmaster Ritual, The Smiths, 1985
   
2. Save It for Later, The English Beat, 1982
   
3. Ceremony, New Order, 1987
   
4. O Superman, Laurie Anderson, 1982
   
5. Uncertain Smile, The The, 1983
   
6. Freak Scene, Dinosaur Jr., 1988
   
7. Death or Glory, The Clash, 1979
   
8. What the World Is Waiting For, The Stone Roses, 1989
   
9. Star Sign    , Teenage Fanclub    , 1991
   
10. Rattlesnakes, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions    , 1984
    
11. Anesthesia, Luna, 1992
    
12. 6’1”, Liz Phair, 1993
    
13. Miss Modular, Stereolab, 1997
    
14. That's Entertainment, The Jam, 1980
    
15. The State I Am In, Belle and Sebastian, 1996
    
16. Sooner Or Later, The Feelies, 1991
    
17. Corona, Minutemen, 1984
    
18. Our Lips Are Sealed, The Go-Go’s, 1981

Alexander Dumbadze is Associate Professor of Art History. He is the author of Bas Jan Ader: Death Is Elsewhere (University of Chicago Press, 2013; paperback 2015) as well as co-editor and co-author of Contemporary Art: 1989 to the Present (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013; Korean translation, 2015). He is currently writing Jack Goldstein: All Day Night Sky. His essays and criticism have been published in a variety of national and international publications. A recipient of a Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, Dumbadze was a Visiting Professor of Art History at the Université Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis in 2012. He is also a co-founder and former president of the Society of Contemporary Art Historians. He teaches courses on contemporary art, theory, and historiography.

Sam Anderson Returns!
January 13, 2026

Artist Sam Anderson returns with a new selection of music that continues our journey into the world of synthesizers that started with her first appearance in 2021.

Anderson breaks down every track, giving us an in-depth history of the instruments, contexts, and the artists who made them. She focuses especially on legendary pioneers of synth/electronic music like Suzanne Ciani, Shiho Yabuki, and Raymond Scott.

Anderson’s most recent project started when she discovered a draft of a one-act play written in the 1970s by her mother, the late actress Conchata Ferrell. Using notes and journals that she inherited as well as other resources from the time, Anderson finished the play, The Wolf Is an Endangered Species. It's about five women in a theater company working to put on a play. Themes of relationships, competition, and the difficulties for women of working in a male-dominated field are still very relevant today. In December, she produced, directed, and starred in a production of the show at 15 Orient gallery in New York City, and in the spring she plans to produce it in Los Angeles.

We discuss Anderson’s mysterious and evocative sculptural work, including her pieces E Number 1-11 and TV from her 2017 show “The Park” at Sculpture Center in New York City. TV comprised a weathervane positioned outside the museum that determined the soundtrack for the gallery below; one of eight pieces composed by Anderson and her partner would play depending on which way the wind blew. It is emblematic of Anderson's concerns with space, sound, story, and fate.

In this music-forward episode, we talk about the psychoactive properties of sound and how it can be used for better or for worse. In Anderson’s playlist, it is used for good!


Listen on Mixcloud here

1. At The Store, Ernest Hood, 2019
   
2. Footprints on the Moon, Johnny Harris, 1969
   
3. The Inspector Clouseau Theme, Henry Mancini, 1982
   
4. Thatcherie (from "Inner Space",) Sven Libaek, 2006
   
5. Ride a White Horse (Tiny Surf,) Sven Libaek, 2013
   
6. Le carnaval des animaux, R. 125: VII. Aquarium; Camille Saint-Saëns, Pascal Rogé, Cristina Ortiz, London Sinfonietta, Charles Dutoit; 1980
   
7. Baby Elephant Walk, Henry Mancini, 1962
   
8. Track Of The Cat, Pram, 2003
   
9. Tomoshibi, Shiho Yabuki, 2018
   
10. The Seventh Wave - Sailing Away, Suzanne Ciani, 1982
    
11. Pompeii 76 A.D., Gail Laughton, 2013
    
12. Deep Distance, Ashra, 1977
    
13. Sleepy Time, Raymond Scott, 1995
    
14. Tempo Block, Raymond Scott, 1995
    
15. Noonday Yellows, Ernest Hood, 2022
    

Sam Anderson is a sculptor whose work explores the fragile interplay between memory and the material world, as much through language as through form. Her rigorously arranged, often minimal compositions combine figures and objects that feel both intimately familiar and unsettlingly existential. Using materials such as clay, metal, plastic, resin, reclaimed wood, and fabric alongside everyday objects, Anderson constructs scenes that oscillate between the poetic and the uncanny, humor and pathos. Drawing from the visual language of American literature and cinema, personal history, and the slippages of linguistic play, Anderson’s work probes how meaning is constructed and deconstructed. Her sculptures inhabit the sad, often absurd space between expectation and desire, functioning like prototypes—she believes the prototype of an idea is often more sincere and open-ended than its final result. By reconfiguring interchangeable, everyday materials, she uncovers the latent narratives embedded within the mundane. Bio courtesy Derosia