Nick Irzyk
May 6th, 2025

In this music-heavy show, painter Nick Irzyk brings a banging mixtape ranging from anarcho-punk to Finnish black metal to country.

We discuss his journey from the hardcore and skateboarding scene to zine-making, eventually leading to printmaking in college.

His paintings incorporate diagrammatic abstractions that resemble architectural blueprints or speculative spaces. The grid is a key structural tool, breaking forms into individual "cells" akin to a mirror ball or wireframe model—machines that hint at function but never fully activate.

There is a tension between clarity and ambiguity: in form versus space, scale, and references to industrial or institutional interiors like cockpits and nuclear reactors. These sometimes oppressive spatial compositions, force the viewer into tight confrontations with looming structures.

Underlying much of the work is a meditation on power—its potential energy, withheld force, and the emotional charge that creates a sense of terror through restraint and latent movement.

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

1. Her Friends the Wolves, Coil, 1992
   
2. Rauch-Haus Song, Ton Steine Scherben, 1972
   
3. Hand of Doomish, Vincebus Eruptum, 2008
   
4. Good Lovin’ Outside, BBC Version, Animal Collective, 2004
   
5. This Ol’Cowboy, Marshall Tucker Band, 1974
   
6. My Head is My Only House Unless It Rains, Captain Beefheart, 1972
   
7. Samurai, Alan Vega, 2021
   
8. Spirit of the God of Fire, Beherit, 2007
   
9. Wrath of Zeus (Original Mix), The Eternals, 2000
   
10. GeekUSA LateNiteTip, Gobby, c. 2012
    
11. I Lied When I Said I Liked Your Zine, Charles Bronson, c. 1994-7
    
12. Speed of Greed? Crass, 1983
    
13. A Cowboy Overflow of the Heart, The Avalances & David Berman, c. 2012
    
14. Spinebender, Godflesh, 1988
15. Haunted & Nervous, Sizzla, 1996
    
16. Flowers, Chug, 1992
17. Some Came Running, Bane, 2001
18. The Knife Song, Milk
19. Free, Chakra, 1981
    
20. 1471, Babyfather, 2022
    
21. To Hold You, Minimal Man, 1985
22. Quin Boys II, Jandek
    
23. Just Your Love, The Antennas

Nick Irzyk was born in 1988 in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2014. Select exhibitions include: Jack Barrett, New York (solo), Martos Gallery, New York (solo); Fall River MoCA, Fall River; KDR, Miami (solo); Nexx Asia, Taipei, TW; PMAM, London, UK (solo); Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ; My Pet Ram, New York; Ruschman, Chicago, IL; Afternoon Projects, Vancouver, Canada; Syracuse University, NY (solo); Critical Path Method, New York/Baltimore (solo); No Place Gallery, Columbus, OH; The Pit, Glendale, CA; 247365, New York, NY; and 106 Green, Brooklyn, NY (solo), among others. He was a Keyholder Resident at the Lower East Side Printshop, New York, NY, in 2019-2020. He has co-run A.D.NYC in the lower Manhattan since 2019. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Songs of Obsession
April 8th, 2025

For this music-only episode, host Nate Heiges brings songs of obsession and longing. Get ready for some Spring Fever...

1. We All Wear a Green Carnation; from Noel Coward's 1929 operetta ‘Bitter Sweet’: Michael Chance, Tom Griffin, Clive Walton, David Kinder, 2018
   
2. You Do Something to Me, Sinéad O'Connor, 1990
   
3. Blue Skies, Maxine Sullivan, 1998
   
4. Seasick, yet Still Docked, Morrissey, 1992
   
5. I Only Have Eyes for You, Tashaki Miyaki, 2015
   
6. Somebody to Love, Barbara & Ernie, 1971
   
7. Love Will Tear Us Apart, PJ Harvey & Tim Phillips, 2024
   
8. I Won't Be Free After Sunday, Female Species, 2021
   
9. Babe I'm Gonna Leave You, Led Zeppelin, 1969
   
10. Why Don't You Do Right (Get Me Some Money Too), Peggy Lee, 1948
    
11. I Can't See Nobody - Daniel Y. Remix, Nina Simone, Daniel Yaghoubi, 2006
    
12. Wicked Game, Chris Isaak, 1989
    
13. The Silence Said It All, Female Species, 2021
    
14. The Look Of Love, Pt.1, ABC, 1982
    
15. Speedway, Morrissey, 1994
    
16. A&W, Lana Del Rey, 2023
    
17. All I Want, Joni Mitchell, 1971
    
18. I'm Gonna Leave You - The Cinematic Orchestra Remix, Melanie De Biasio, The Cinematic Orchestra, 2015
    
19. Midnight Monday, And A Telescope, Cotton Jones, 2008
    
20. Transmission for Jehn: Gnossienne No 1 - Exclusive Spoken Word, Geoffrey Muller, Tierney Malone, 2020
    
21. Uno che grida amore, Ennio Morricone, 2006

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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.