{"id":33658,"date":"2025-07-24T12:02:20","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T12:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/33658\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T12:02:20","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T12:02:20","slug":"jordan-wolfson-by-matthew-barney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/33658\/","title":{"rendered":"Jordan Wolfson, by Matthew Barney"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Jordan<\/a><\/p>\n

Jordan Wolfson, photographed by Morgan Maher.<\/p>\n

Jordan Wolfson<\/a> was first struck by the work of Matthew Barney<\/a> in high school during a visit to New York\u2019s Whitney Museum of American Art. While the two artists might seem wholly unalike in style and form\u2014Barney\u2019s a surrealist wizard; Wolfson\u2019s a digital provocateur\u2014they\u2019re cut from the same mad-genius cloth. Both blow past the boundaries of art, dragging viewers into deep, squirmy territory\u2014and they don\u2019t come out clean. This summer at the Fondation Beyeler, Wolfson drops \u201cLittle Room,\u201d<\/a> a VR trip into his twisted headspace\u2014think full-body scans, identity swaps, and a healthy dose of existential dread. Wolfson, holed up in L.A. with his dogs Tofu and Broomstick, was still fine-tuning the madness when he rang up Barney to talk sculpture, slapstick, and the vast indifference of the universe.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

SUNDAY 11 AM APRIL 13, 2025 L.A.<\/p>\n

MATTHEW BARNEY: What\u2019s up, Jordan?<\/p>\n

JORDAN WOLFSON: Hey, man. You\u2019re in your kitchen? Is that the one I had breakfast in?<\/p>\n

BARNEY: Yeah. How are you doing?<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: I watched Cremaster 1 last night, and the first part of River of Fundament. Then, I watched Cremaster 3 and Cremaster 4 at my studio during a break.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: Oh my god.<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: I think I get it.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: [Laughs]<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: Can I just say what I think all of them are about?<\/p>\n

BARNEY: Sure.<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: Okay. So you\u2019ve got the penis.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: Uh-huh.<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: And then you\u2019ve got the testicles, and then you\u2019re having sex. The penis is doing something, and then the testicles have their own theater happening, and the penis has its own theater happening, and then they come together, and it\u2019s creation.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: Uh-huh.<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: [Laughs] Is that insane? Anyhow, I love this idea of two things happening at once.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: Yes. There are often two things happening at once.<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: The thing with the cars and the Chrysler Building, did you build that set?<\/p>\n

BARNEY: We did.<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: You built it strong enough to drive the car into it?<\/p>\n

BARNEY: Yes. [Laughs] That was an elaborate set. So I feel like I should lead this, because you have a show coming up.<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: Yes, but I want to let you know I really enjoyed your films and your book. I also love this Houdini drawing you did. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s a penis or a bone, but it\u2019s, like, Houdini wrapped in chains.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: Thank you. You went in deep. My god.<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: I mean, we had a lot of technical problems at the studio this week. [Laughs] I wanted to ask, was the reason you shot the Cremaster series on video because sports are recorded on video?<\/p>\n

BARNEY: That\u2019s where it started with the two pieces that are four-by-three aspect ratio. They were made with broadcast sports in mind. In fact, I even had this ambition that the first one I made, number four, would be shown on television, like on BBC, which I couldn\u2019t get to happen. But I want to ask you some questions about your work. [Laughs]<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: Wait, hold on. Just let me ask one more question. The elf and the giant [in Cremaster 5]. How did that come about?<\/p>\n

BARNEY: That was a funny situation. I found the smallest person and the largest person I could find who had wrestling experience. The giant was a pro wrestler, but he ended up having some pretty serious mobility issues. It often works to cast people just for the physical specialty that they bring into the role.<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: The River of Fundament is insane. I had a sense that there was almost a slight influence of Dogma in the work. The thing with Maggie Gyllenhaal was intense. And I loved the little guy with his penis wrapped in a silver ribbon. That was gorgeous.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: I\u2019d just been rewatching this series called Treme. It took place in New Orleans, where they filmed in and around the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It\u2019s mainly set around the music industry, but it\u2019s made by the same people who did The Wire, so it goes into the political and legal and social spheres. You really get a deep understanding of the place in that particular moment. But there are all these scenes where a live piece of music is performed in the background from beginning to end, and the lead actors are embedded in that performance. I remember seeing it around the time we were making River of Fundament. I was really influenced by that.<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: You were such an important figure to me and my generation. I grew up with this work and I remember getting bootlegs in college. I watched Cremaster 4 over and over because that\u2019s the only one I owned. It was a treat revisiting it, especially while I was working on my own art, which is so different, but thank you for that.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: Thank you. And also thanks for sending me the archive of your work. I know that you\u2019re preparing an exhibition at Fondation Beyeler, so I want to talk about the piece that I saw in your studio, \u201cLittle Room.\u201d I understand it\u2019s still in progress, but it seemed clear that it was departing from some of the sculptural traditions you\u2019ve been working in, like \u201cFemale Figure\u201d or \u201cBody Sculpture.\u201d Your works are operating in a tradition of the figure within the proscenium. If you think about some [Gian Lorenzo] Bernini pieces, like \u201cThe Ecstasy of Saint Teresa,\u201d where there\u2019s a kind of frame around the figure that\u2019s trussed up but also functional, this piece, \u201cLittle Room,\u201d feels to me like it\u2019s quite specifically departing from that idea of sculpture. I\u2019ve heard you say that this space you\u2019re creating is a utilitarian space, not necessarily a sculptural space.<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: All those spaces around my sculptures had been functional. They were mostly designed by engineers, and then I could select texture or color, but there wasn\u2019t much I could do within them other than decorate them superficially. I did that in \u201cBody Sculpture,\u201d with the robotic arm. We purchased it unpainted. It came with a matte primer that was red because that\u2019s the only way you could get it. So I decided I would clear-coat it to make it look like an exposed organ, the way a dog\u2019s penis looks when it\u2019s exposed.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: Uh-huh.<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: Initially, \u201cLittle Room\u201d was going to take place in a three-dimensional model of a room, but it became too artificial. We had been looking at this thing called AR-51. It\u2019s a motion-capture space that relies on AI. When I went into it, it was a gridded space similar to the gestalt of The Matrix or the last scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I noticed that the experience of being in this liminal, gridded space was expansive in a way that I hadn\u2019t felt before in VR. Mostly, VR felt like a contrived, claustrophobic experience to me. So when I saw this infinite space, I thought it was additive. I also liked the paradox of titling this infinite space \u201cLittle Room.\u201d Our bodies are little rooms, and we look out from these little rooms at the world.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: You probably don\u2019t feel the way I do about the interface. For example, when there\u2019s a video installation in an exhibition and I have to put on a set of headphones, I\u2019m really irritated to have to do that. I feel like it always creates a problem for me to engage with it as a sculptural work. It forces me into dealing with it as an image. I thought a lot about that piece that you made at the Whitney Biennial\u2014<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: \u201cReal Violence.\u201d Yeah. There\u2019s an initial problem that happens when artists engage with technology. And there\u2019s a tendency for the artist to insist on things like headphones. But when you simply ask the viewer to do almost anything, you\u2019re creating an interactive dynamic with them. I have a superstition that any type of interactivity turns a key in your brain and takes you out of an experience of art, and it puts it into a slightly pedagogical experience. When I started working on \u201cReal Violence,\u201d I really didn\u2019t like the VR medium, and I specifically didn\u2019t like it for its interactive qualities. The first part of the piece is not interactive. In the second part, you witness an extreme act of violence, and then there\u2019s the Hanukkah prayer that plays and then that cuts out. A lot of people said to me, \u201cOh, you have a robot sculpture. Is it going to interact with the audience?\u201d Initially, \u201cBody Sculpture\u201d was going to point at the audience. I thought it was going to be similar to the way it felt when \u201cFemale Figure\u201d looked at your eyes. But it was such a dramatic change. The difference of how you cognitively react to eye contact versus how you react to the sculpture approaching you and gesturing towards you was something I couldn\u2019t predict until I saw it. Then, I basically removed that interactive part of the work.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: I think what the piece is not doing in \u201cBody Sculpture\u201d is as important as what it is doing. It has a kind of withholding that could belong to butoh tradition. It\u2019s about potential energy.<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: For me, \u201cBody Sculpture\u201d is like a musical composition that has a foundation. I have high expectations for the physicalities that the work could contain. And in a way, I have a lot of really unrealistic expectations for them. I approach every project, almost irresponsibly, with optimism. And every time, it never works the way I think it\u2019s going to, and that sends me into crisis. I\u2019m in that right now with \u201cLittle Room,\u201d to be honest with you.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: [Laughs] Okay.<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: In \u201cBody Sculpture,\u201d I was very foolish, and I didn\u2019t predict this. When the robotic arm picks up the box, if it moves it too quickly, the box swings and it just looks silly. And so, I was like, \u201cThis isn\u2019t working for me. This whole thing is going to have to move really slow,\u201d and then nothing worked. Then, I found a tempo of slowness\u2014 I had studied butoh in college. It\u2019s like a whole performance where you imagine yourself as a rock. You imagine yourself as a flower. So anyway, I had to find where the work was active. The work was active in a slow movement. So what you\u2019re looking at and responding to are the limitations and dependencies of the artwork to make it operate formally.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: Which is a great place to be, in my opinion.<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: It\u2019s a realistic place to be. You have to be realistic as a professional artist.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: It\u2019s the thing that really differentiates a sculpture practice from a painting practice. Within the frame of a painting, anything can happen. What we deal with as sculptors is a kind of sequence of compromise, in that you get really good at negotiating. I mean, compromise on the level of just making something stand, or the kind of dance with gravity that you\u2019re talking about with your piece, it\u2019s a set of contingencies you have to deal with and eventually master.<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: You\u2019re dealing with the physical realities, you\u2019re dealing with mass, you\u2019re dealing with time, and how mass changes in time.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: How much do you think about theater in your work?<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: I\u2019m not. I\u2019m thinking about patterns and form, and I think about how to use form as an unlocking mechanism. So it\u2019s like 30 seconds in, 60 seconds in, 90 seconds in\u2014and then how it\u2019s constantly changing, almost switching gears like you\u2019re driving a manual transition car. It\u2019s like a dance or marriage between form and content, how they intertwine and break, intertwine and break.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: What about text? There\u2019s a piece of text at the end of the dossier on \u201cLittle Room\u201d that you showed me when I was at your studio. We talked a little bit about [Samuel] Beckett and [Bruce] Nauman and just the way that that text operates.<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: Maybe I should quote some of the text. \u201cMy thumbs, my hands behind your heart, my palms inside your lungs, my thumbs behind your teeth.\u201d Those are three lines.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: There\u2019s a starkness to it, and within that virtual space, it has some of the brutality that you feel in Nauman and Beckett. Just hearing you read it in your studio made me realize how good of a performer you are. Do you have any training in that way?<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: I actually come from a showbiz family. There are some comedians and television directors in my family. I remember acting when I was a kid, but I never liked it. I\u2019ve always felt more comfortable directing. There\u2019s something different, though, in hiring an actor to do something and me doing it myself. It was important that I was enacting this. It was stranger than working with some theater professional. Would you say you feel the same?<\/p>\n

BARNEY: Yeah, I feel a big difference. I also feel really limited as a performer. What I can do is rather specific, so I love bringing somebody in who can really lay it down in a way that I cannot. My project has become more and more of an ensemble cast, and I\u2019ve moved away from the single-performer work, although the drawing restraints keep pulling me back in. I\u2019m still really interested in working in that reductive way. But even with those, I\u2019m often working with a different performer. It\u2019s interesting that comedy is in your background because it\u2019s such a hard energy to tap in visual art. It\u2019s something you do really well.<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: It\u2019s hard to bring humor into art. In the beginning of Cremaster 3, they\u2019re making funny noises. I was watching it last night being like, \u201cMatthew\u2019s doing funny.\u201d In a way, funny is as difficult as negotiating interactivity, in terms of art. For my work, I imagine there is no other viewer but me. What gives our art distinct qualities is that an artist is unlocking a liminal space in the viewer\u2019s mind that\u2019s not really placeable. There\u2019s a tension in this non-position that allows the viewer to witness a scene in the present moment, and everything that\u2019s within that moment, and everything that\u2019s come before it and after it. I think that\u2019s what artists, authors, and composers do. It\u2019s kind of absurd, all the lengths that you and I go to. Cy Twombly can do it just by scribbling a little bit. You rebuilt the Chrysler Building. I built a box that has sex with the floor.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: [Laughs]<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: And F\u00e9lix Gonz\u00e1lez-Torres puts candy in a pile. We\u2019re all just doing the same thing. And it\u2019s a farce, what we\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: I\u2019ve heard you use the word ambivalence. How is that central to your work?<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: Art is like sailing, and you need to have a combination of tension and slack on the sail. That\u2019s what we\u2019re talking about when we talk about ambivalence. It\u2019s like, where do you withhold and where do you give, formally and contextually? Withholding can be deciding not to hang a picture on one wall, or how you edit a film. At the end of \u201cFemale Figure,\u201d the sculpture says, \u201cI\u2019m getting old, I\u2019m getting fat, and I don\u2019t believe in god.\u201d And then it loops into, \u201cMy mother\u2019s dead. My father\u2019s dead. I\u2019m gay. I\u2019d like to be a poet. This is my house.\u201d For me, this kind of nihilism was an act of withholding.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: It\u2019s an interesting thing to think about, ambivalence located in nature\u2014the way that a waterfall is ambivalent, or an earthquake is ambivalent. It doesn\u2019t care about you.<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: I would use the word indifferent. I used to see a cliff on Big Sur and be like, \u201cIt\u2019s so beautiful and it\u2019s so scary because it\u2019s so indifferent.\u201d I don\u2019t see it that way anymore. Sometimes on Instagram, you see people killing turtles to make turtle soup, and it\u2019s horrific to see the human animal act so indifferently. It\u2019s as if we\u2019re acting with a mask, and this mask gives us permission to be indifferent with a similar hostility that god or nature comes down upon us with. That\u2019s something that lives inside of us as human animals.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: That\u2019s probably a pretty good place to end. [Laughs]<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: I\u2019m very grateful to you, Matthew. Thank you. That was a real treat. I think you\u2019re one of the greatest. Do you still have that dog?<\/p>\n

BARNEY: Yeah, Clover. My daughter named him.<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: I have a dog named Tofu, but I didn\u2019t name him.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: Who did?<\/p>\n

WOLFSON: I think the person who abandoned him. I wanted to rename him Mario, but it just felt weird. Alright. I\u2019ve got to go to work.<\/p>\n

BARNEY: Have a good day.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Fashion Assistant: Tristan Nguyen.<\/p>\n

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