Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast

Artists Diana Thater, a leading pioneer of video and installation and major figure in the L.A. art community since the early 1990s, and Rachel Rose, a defining new voice of the medium, discuss the rapid evolution of video art and its limitless possibilities—including, for both of them, its ability to reckon with personal trauma and threats to the environment.

A timely conversation with the art critic Kyle Chayka, author of The Longing for Less: Living with Minimalism, on how minimalism went from radical 1960s art movement to, ironically, a hyper-commercialized lifestyle adopted by luxury brands and millennials everywhere—and where Marie Kondo and Agnes Martin overlap, if at all.  During this time, we’re evolving to give you even more to listen to, with one-on-one episodes with the people—and on the subjects—we find compelling now. Please stay tuned. You can buy Chayka’s book here. 

Photographer Tyler Mitchell and critic/curator Antwaun Sargent on the radical power shift from gatekeepers to artists, the breakdown of barriers between fashion and art photography, cautionary tales of social media groupthink and overexposure, and historical artists who made the new black vanguard possible.

A special episode dedicated to the late artist Noah Davis, with some of the the people who knew him best. The curator Helen Molesworth, his brother, the filmmaker Kahlil Joseph, and his wife, the artist Karon Davis, remember Davis, whose legacy continues to grow—through his paintings, which depict everyday life with emotional and formal ambition; The Underground Museum, the space he founded in Los Angeles that combines many different worlds; and the family, literal and figurative, that coalesced around the magnetism of his personality. You can learn more about Davis here.

A rare conversation between artists who have stayed together for over three decades. The Swedish artist Karin “Mamma” Andersson and her husband Jockum Nordström’s story—of two young artists leaning on each other as their family grew; of uncertainty and insecurity and figuring out how to be different but together; of the pleasure of getting completely lost in one’s work—feels especially potent in these uncertain times. Andersson’s recent exhibition at David Zwirner’s New York gallery, The Lost Paradise, was cut short due to the escalating spread of COVID-19, but you can explore the show here.

In uncertain and even scary times, host Lucas Zwirner revisits the first episode of Dialogues, in which Jeff Koons and the curator Luke Syson turn to art as a way of connecting and communicating through making something—an ethos that feels even more important now.  Soon Dialogues will return with even more episodes to stay in touch with our audience. Stay tuned for much more. 

In this episode, the artists Doug Wheeler and Vija Celmins revisit their years in Venice Beach, California in the late 1960s, a scene crowded with figures like Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Irwin, and James Turrell. Wheeler and Celmins—old friends and visionaries of their medium—gossip, rehash, map, and even correct this vital piece of art history, while tackling a central question of art along the way: How to impress your sensibility upon the world through your work. Vija Celmins was the subject of a recent, critically-beloved retrospective at the Met Breuer and SFMOMA. Doug Wheeler currently has an exhibition at David Zwirner in New York through March 21, 2020; a definitive monograph of his career was recently published.

Dialogues is a podcast from David Zwirner Gallery and has included guests like Doug Wheeler, Vija Celmins, Tyler Mitchell, Helen Molesworth, Kahlil Joseph, R. Crumb, and Luc Tuymans.

We're taking a quick break from new episodes but please enjoy this episode from the first season of 'Dialogues' with the artist Marcel Dzama and the musician Will Butler of the band Arcade Fire. 

The designer Thom Browne and the poet and critic Michael Glover talk about the history of the codpiece in art. Glover has written a book (Thrust) on the topic and Browne's collections often include codpieces. Show Notes: Thom Browne Thrust: A Spasmodic Pictorial History of the Codpiece in Art (Michael Glover, David Zwirner Books) Attachments area  

Eileen Myles talks to Flavin Judd about Marfa past and present, a "mammoth" new novel, and Donald Judd's life and work. Show Notes Donald Judd Interviews (David Zwirner Books, 2019, edited by Flavin Judd and Caitlin Murray) "MoMA Announces Donald Judd Retrospective" (March 1 -July 11, 2020 at the Museum of Modern Art) Judd Foundation

This episode pairs artist Oscar Murillo with the editor Charles Henry Rowell for a conversation about class, race, art, and the African cultural diaspora that is one part history lesson and one part personal history.  Murillo is short-listed for the 2019 Turner Prize and Rowell is the founder and editor of Callalloo, the longest continuously running African-American literary journal.  The Turner Prize exhibition runs through January 12, 2020, at Turner Contemporary in Margate, UK. (The winner will be announced on December 3.) Read more about Callaloo here. 

This episode is all about Yayoi Kusama and art in the Instagram age. JiaJia Fei, a digital guru for institutions like the Jewish Museum and the Guggenheim, and Christian Luiten, founder of the popular digital art platform Avant Arte, come together to talk authenticity vs. influence, high vs. low, art vs. accessibility, narrative vs. myth—and to diagnose the unabating online fanaticism for all things Kusama, an Instagram icon who isn’t on Instagram. 

An epic live episode of Dialogues. In journeying deep into Homer’s Odyssey in front of an audience at David Zwirner’s 69th Street gallery in New York, artist Chris Ofili and classicist Emily Wilson encounter religion, art, personal history, gender issues, Trinidad, Greece, truth, lies. Featuring a live reading from Wilson, the first woman to translate The Odyssey into English and a 2019 MacArthur Fellow

When the artist Alex Da Corte and the writer Charlie Fox talk about Edward Scissorhands, Frankenstein, Hercules, Michael Myers, A Clockwork Orange, Scar from The Lion King, they’re also talking about beauty and body anxiety and disability and sexual attraction and queerness—the anxieties of existing physically in the world every day. Da Corte, whose elaborate videos, sculptures, and installations critically re-stage pop culture, art history, and his own life, and Fox, whose recent book This Young Monster celebrates beautiful misfits and freaks across all walks of culture, go deep on how they live—in their minds and in their work—far from what they call normative behavior. Visit Da Corte’s solo exhibition in New York at Karma through November 3 and his work at the Venice Biennale through November 24, in the main exhibition May You Live in Interesting Times. Buy Fox’s book This Young Monster here.