9 Minutes with with XL Catlin Art Prize Finalist - Neal Rock
Neal Rock's pieces are a wonder to behold in their ability to stand independently. As a finalist candidate of the XL Catlin Art Prize, his pieces are encouraged to make a lasting impression on the world of art, as it also provides them with a means and a voice to get their own work seen and heard. “We live in an age of wiki-bios and one paragraph summations of experiences that can seldom be understood on those terms. We've shifted, in the past twenty years, from material economies to virtual and experience-based economies.” Rock follows a deep understanding for the modern age, and the impact which it has had on not just how we reflect and consume art overall but also how it has developed through himself too, “it does co-exist on a material level with kitchen utensils and dildos,[…]”. We get the picture?
RL: Neal, tell us a little about your craft. Could you give me a brief explanation or definition of what you think your art is?
NR: My art work is made over a period of months, typically, but once it leaves the studio it has to survive on it's own, what I say or think about the work has no bearing on what it might actually do in the culture, but it does co-exist on a material level with kitchen utensils and dildos, silicone implants, movie special-effects and children's toys.
RL: How has your art developed over your creative career?
NR: The work that is made now is less consistent, more demanding, it makes less sense to me and often seems as if I didn't make it at all. The constant however has been the use of silicone as a paint material. My early work became unwittingly a signature-style motif and so there was very little space to move within that. I've come to understand that making work and thinking is really about finding space, easier said than done.
RL: How has your art impacted your life and perspective?
NR: The life choices I've made simply in order to continue making art have had an enduring impact upon me, particularly living in a place like South Central Los Angeles. I don't give a great deal of value to the relationship between my life and work that comes out of the studio. We live in an age of wiki-bios and one paragraph summations of experiences that can seldom be understood on those terms. We've shifted, in the past twenty years, from material economies to virtual and experience-based economies. In this sense the subject of me is something I don't really know how to address.
RL: What are the particular methods you use to create your pieces?
NR: Silicone is painted, pigmented, torn, printed, stretched, draped - these processes are often very mundane. Means and ends are never fully connected.
RL: How has your home and personal life influenced your work? Who or what is a source of key inspiration?
NR: My personal life and experiences are very much divorced from the studio, to the extent that the disconnection becomes an object itself. It's not an object I can see and so making work is a way of poking around in the dark to see what shape it is, whether it's consistent, porous and so on. I think most of the time what I do is redundant and so fear of failure is far more important than inspiration, the latter concerns mindfulness blogs and Facebook quotes from life-coaches whilst the former is more honest and mundane. If you look at a painting by someone like Gwen John, she almost exclusively paints portraits of women but that's not what her work or subject is, no more than than Morandi's subject is still-life or Ed Fornieles US frat parties, which almost pointedly is a culture both alien and familiar to him.
Neal was speaking exlusively with Roshan Langely in the third of After Nyne's interview series with this year's Catlin Art Prize finalists. A panel of judges will select one artist to receive an award of £5,000 at a private ceremony on Tuesday 17th May. An exhibition of all finalists work will be on display from Thursday 5th – Sunday 22nd May 2016 at the London Newcastle Project Space, Shoreditch.
