Usually based in St. Louis, the artist William LaChance has popped over to the Joshua Liner Gallery in New York City to show his latest exhibition, Strolling Astronomer.
Made up of paintings and a wallpaper installation, his collage-meets-puzzle like compositions are abstract as well as figurative, but whatever the type, they’re hella vivid. After all, color, color, and more color is his calling card.
The body is work takes inspiration from old school seaside memories, ones that he formed while he spent time in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. As a popular summer destination, it’s famous for its long beach which is lined with clam shacks, souvenir shops, a seaside amusement park, Palace Playland, and a long pier. LaChance captures the setting - one that is loud, bold, attention-grabbing and colorful - and reflects this in his pieces. If you look carefully you’ll notice a female figure strolling over a series of bright cylindrical forms that mimic the floor rollers found at the Grand Orient Fun House.
Felicity Carter: What is your earliest memory of art?
William LaChance: Growing up, my parents collected and restored antiques, including coin-operated devices- so pinball machines, jukeboxes and slot machines were everywhere and my earliest artistic experiences as an observer involve getting lost in the motifs that adorned them. Pinball machines were festooned with simple, flat two or three colors stenciled imagery that related to the game’s theme and the playing fields and back-glasses was maximalist arrays of idealized figures landscapes and objects arranged (now that I think of it) in very eastern, floating compositions- this and the fact that they were from a slightly earlier era made them timeless so very open to narrative interpretation -trips to the basement were really escapist and transcendental. On the making side of things, watching the restoration process taught me about mimicking and matching existing patinas and colors using spray paint and other household materials- I can remember really getting into the pentimenti of overspray patterns left from old projects- stools and cardboard beer boxes were covered in perfect silhouettes of gears and castings with atmospheric polychrome Krylon spray paint auras. The contrasting hard and soft edges and colors created dramatic and convincing light and space on these mundane surfaces, so in retrospect an early education in formal abstract language.
What’s in the name of the exhibition?
WLC: “Strolling Astronomer” besides being the name of the journal of the Association of Lunar & Planetary Observers, is also a song by California stoner-rock band “Fu Manchu” so I’m hoping to convey something in between, though there’s no overt reference. I think the name conjures something mystical and migratory and it implies approaching large ideas in a casual or innate manner, something that I try to maintain in the studio process. It also connotes a lone figure, a theme that looms largely throughout the show.
FC: How many pieces are featured and is there one that resonates with you the most, and why?
WLC:There are twenty-one paintings in the show that are hung in groups according to their size- I like the rhythm and pace that’s created by placing similarly scaled works in a row, it creates a filmic flow that leads viewers through the space and mimics the left to right motion of reading so there is kind of a subconsciously implied narrative that happens too. There’s one called “Phototropic” that was a “eureka!” moment when I painted it- I’ve always been interested in figurative painting but always found aspects problematic- the narrative pigeonhole for one: figures have to be doing something and that becomes the defining characteristic- if they’re doing nothing (i.e. posing) it feels like histrionic backsliding.. also if a figure is clothed it soon becomes kitschy or strangely localized to the time it was painted. In “Phototropic” there’s a vignetted space like a puppet show establishing artifice and an ungainly figure that is conspicuously made of paint the way a pot is conspicuously made of clay- in other words singular and non-representational, so it’s a way of introducing figurative elements while maintaining an abstract identity and leaving the narrative unrestricted. This piece was pivotal leading to several new paintings also in the show, including the title piece, “Strolling Astronomer”.
Tell us about the process and the significance of Maine…
WLC: Many of my paintings are made by cobbling together bits and pieces - sometimes old paintings that have been cut up, occasionally found material and also elements that are expressly created as componentry. For me, it creates a range of color and handling not achievable in singular support because the very construction methods of sewing or assembling unify the elements as parts of a whole. Because these elements are necessarily created at (sometimes drastically) different times, I feel like the pieces possess time themselves, like a film or music. Additionally, the seams and gaps of the different joining techniques provide the paintings with an abstract structure that is both provisional and formal which speaks to the significance of Maine.. I’ve been preoccupied with my memories of spending a protracted period of time in Old Orchard Beach, Maine through a Copenhagen based residency program called The Jaunt. Old Orchard Beach is an old seaside amusement town and many of these paintings are ruminations of this experience. There’s an obvious corollary between the skill vs chance of carnival games and the studio process and in the way the objects are revised and repainted to increase their appeal. The patina of layered stopgaps and updates is expressive on many levels but maintains a remote, inadvertent quality that I hope to achieve in the paintings. There’s also a haptic thing that happens because of the sewn seams that recalls the actual textile elements from the park; the seats from the rides, banners, awnings etc.- this tangible quality imparts a physical identity that shifts between art and object- which is a very rich, interesting space.
FC: What influences feed into it?
WLC:There will always be personal heroes- Cezanne for example because he taught us that all meaning both objective and subjective within a painting comes from putting one color next to another- I’m finding now though that by shifting a couple of things in the studio process and deploying new techniques like sewing I can apply this logic to all sorts of different materials; automotive paint can be used in concert with casein tempera and it works when it shouldn’t (paintings require unity after all) because of the manner in which they are constructed- they’re parts of a whole- so this opened the floodgates in terms of influence. I’ve been looking at a lot of lawn chair webbing, emergency vehicle decals and bodega signage at the moment- I like the sense of “everything” that happens when you put these random things with huge color and value range all together, it definitely feels like a gestalt hybrid or synthesis occurs that leads me right back to Mont St Victoire so to speak. There’s a large mural in the show, a kind of landscape of idiomatic shapes and colors that’s seen peripherally when viewing the paintings installed against it, giving the viewers a sense of the parent material the paintings evolved from.
FC: Do you research patterns to fit with the content or do you spot patterns and incorporate them?
WLC:The patterns and surfaces are primarily invented but take their cue from the immediacy of signs, symbols, techniques and semiotics in consumerist and vernacular cultures; letters appear as a wry reference to narrative, representational and expressionist painting (expressionist because of my early background as a sign painter). These motifs are contextualized in a somewhat classical painting approach not for irony but to bridge the gulf that has existed between these two worlds for so long which I feel is a reflection of contemporary visual culture. Formerly exclusive modes of design and fine art formats and delivery mechanisms are reciprocally engaged with one another in ways that are genuinely democratizing- artists’ collaborations with industrial and fashion designers broaden the audience and change the way we think about both making and collecting art.
FC: What do you want to leave the viewer feeling?
If there’s one visual intent it’s to recreate the feeling of fascination and possibility that I had when I was making the work- a lot of the elements in the work, letter forms, silhouettes of common objects etc. aren’t deployed as pop art innuendo, but reference commerce and advertising to let the viewer know they are entering a decision making process, something akin to the studio process. Once this connection is made, my hope is that the paintings will possess a kind of hidden potential energy.
The exhibition will run until October 5, 2019.
Joshua Liner Gallery, 540 W 28th St, New York, NY 10001, USA.
