A brush with...

• A brush with… Christopher Wool

  Christopher Wool talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped their lives and work. Wool, who was born in Chicago in 1955, and lives between New York and Marfa, Texas, today, is a sophisticated and dextrous explorer of the act of making paintings and other forms of art. He emerged in a period in which painting’s validity was being questioned amid the supremacy of conceptual and photographic practices in the avant-garde scene of New York in the late 1970s. And he has made light of that doubt in a cerebral practice in which he probes paint’s capacity to reflect diverse material properties, processes and effects, its openness to chance events and slippages, and its ability to contain or convey meaning through words and image. Working in often overlapping series embodied by particular methods or tools, propositions and actions, his practice has been one of relentless curiosity, where his own output is consistently reevaluated and recast through the literal repurposing of existing imagery as the foundation of new works. Though best known for his paintings, Christopher has made photographs from the start of his career, and since the mid-2010s has developed a fertile seam of sculpture. His work across all these media is similarly agile, with the different strands in a seemingly endless evolving conversation on pictorial, material and spatial concerns. He discusses the seismic effect of experiencing the Art Ensemble of Chicago and an installation by Dan Flavin as a young person, seeing Jean-Michel Basquiat’s first New York solo show with Dieter Roth, how Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye influenced one of his untitled text paintings, and eventually the title of his recent acclaimed New York and Marfa show, See Stop Run, and how jazz has been a consistent source of inspiration. He gives insight into his life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate, “What is art for?”Christopher Wool, Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London, until 19 December; See Stop Run West Texas, Brite Building, Marfa, Texas, until at least May 2027. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• A brush with... Suzanne Jackson

  Suzanne Jackson talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Jackson, who was born in 1944 in St. Louis, Missouri, but grew up in San Francisco and Fairbanks, Alaska, has worked across drawing and painting, poetry, dance and theatre, to explore a strong and often spiritual connection between people and the natural world. With a fluid and poetic painting style, Suzanne has responded to the many different natural and social environments in which she has lived in the US, from San Francisco and Los Angeles, to Fairbanks, Alaska and Savannah, Georgia, to forge a distinctive take on the world and the communities that inhabit it. She taps into a broad range of artistic languages, including Native American and African American traditions, and exhibits a deep sensitivity to history and ecology while reflecting profoundly on her personal lived experience. She has also been a gallery owner and public art administrator, with a keen sense of the role art can play in uniting and inspiring communities. Today, she makes installations formed by painted and sculptural forms that hang in the exhibition space, directly addressing subjects including the climate catastrophe. She discusses the important moment where she first encountered the work of Barbara Chase Riboud, a profound encounter with Elizabeth Catlett and her admiration for Torkwase Dyson. She talks of her passion for the cartoons Archy and Mehitabel and Krazy Kat, and her love of Mississippi Delta Blues and jazz or as she calls it, African American classical music. Plus she gives insight into her life in the studio and answer our usual questions, including the ultimate, “what is art for?”Suzanne Jackson: What is Love, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, until 1 March 2026; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 14 May-23 August 2026; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 26 September 2026-7 February 2027 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• A brush with… Wolfgang Tillmans

  Wolfgang Tillmans talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Tillmans, born in Remscheid, Germany, in 1968, has changed the history of photography. He has taken established genres of art and the photographic medium, from portraiture to still life, landscape, political subjects and abstraction, and relentlessly experimented with the framing, printing and presentation of his images and photographic objects. His subjects include everything from urgent imagery of social events like protests or club nights, formal portraits and experimental cameraless photography. From the very start of his now close to four-decade career, Tillmans has shown his works in installations that respond specifically to the intricacies of the spaces in which they are displayed, with the photographs presented in formats that range from postcard size to vast and enveloping prints. The images might abut the corner of a room, be hung high up the walls or unorthodoxly low, or adjacent to bureaucratic elements like fire exit signs. They might be organised in flurries or constellations, or in spare linear arrangements or grids. Through this process, Wolfgang consistently reenergises his archive, juxtaposing images taken years and sometimes decades apart. While photography has remained his primary medium, Wolfgang has steadily expanded his media, with video installation, text and sound and music gaining increasing prominence in his exhibitions. He discusses the early impact on him of seeing the work of Kurt Schwitters, his current interest in the paintings of Francisco de Zurbarán, his long association with the contemporary German artist Isa Genzken, a profound experience at a Laurie Anderson concert in 1986 and the influence of the Indian writer and philosopher, Jiddu Krishnamurti. Plus he gives insight into his life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?Wolfgang Tillmans: Build From Here, Maureen Paley, London, 3 October–20 December; Ausstellung in Remscheid, Haus Cleff, Remscheid, until 4 January 2026; 36th Bienal São Paulo: Not every traveler walks the roads – On humanity as a practice, until 11 January 2026; Fictions of Display, MOCA Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, until 4 January 2026; Könnt ihr noch? – Kunst und Demokratie, Königsklasse, Schloss Herrenchiemsee, Munich, until 12 October 2025; On View: Begegnungen mit dem Fotografischen, Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, until 12 October 2025 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• A brush with… Jeffrey Gibson

  Jeffrey Gibson talks to Ben Luke, welcome to A brush with… about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work.Gibson—born in 1972 in Colorado Springs, in the US, and based today in Germantown, New York—has created a visual language which fuses text, high colour and rich pattern, and a diverse materiality to evoke joy and exuberance as well as critique and resistance. A member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent, Jeffrey brings together Indigenous languages and histories, queer aesthetics, an abiding concern with broader ancient, historic, Modern and contemporary visual culture, and a profound engagement with popular music and literature. His works range from painting, in which he trained, to myriad sculptural forms, performances and installations and video. With this interdisciplinary practice, he deliberately confronts orthodoxies in the art world and art history, questioning biases regarding taste, value and legitimacy, confronting and subverting stereotypes of Indigenous people and culture, and proposing a radical interaction with the objects and spaces he creates. He reflects on his work’s overarching collage aesthetic, the deliberate confrontation in his work with decorative and craft traditions, and the role of colour in his work generally and in his new works for an exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in Paris. He discusses the early impact of Henri Matisse, his love of Magdalena Abakanowicz’s textile sculptures, the importance to him of Frank Bowling and David Hammons. He talks about his connection with the poet Layli Long Soldier, whose poem inspired the title for his US pavilion presentation at the Venice Biennale in 2024, and recalls a remarkable and formative encounter with the writer and critic Hélène Cixous. He also discusses the experience of encountering the music of Goldie and drum and bass in London in the 1990s and how it is reflected in his work today. Plus, he gives insight into his studio life and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate, what is art for?Jeffrey Gibson: THIS IS DEDICATED TO THE ONE I LOVE, Hauser & Wirth, Paris, 20 October-20 December; The Genesis Facade Commission, Jeffrey Gibson: The Animal That Therefore I Am, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,12 September–May 2026; Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me, The Broad, Los Angeles, until 28 September; Jeffrey Gibson: POWER FULL BECAUSE WE’RE DIFFERENT, MASS MoCA, North Adams, US, until September 2026; Jeffrey Gibson: boshullichi / inlʋchi / we will continue to change, Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland, until December 2026; An Indigenous Present, co-curated by Jeffrey Gibson, ICA Boston, 9 October-8 March 2026; Frist Art Museum, Nashville, 26 June-27 September 2026, Frye Art Museum, Seattle, 7 November 2026-14 February 2027. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• A brush with… Teresita Fernández

  Teresita Fernández talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Fernández, born in 1968 in Miami, Florida, is, in the broadest sense, a landscape artist. But her work across three decades has been a rigorous consideration and poetic probing of the nature of landscape. Fundamentally a sculptor, she not only explores landscapes as visual phenomena, but uses the substances found within them to sculpt with—from graphite to iron ore, gold and pyrite. So they are her subject and her material. Beginning with profound research, Teresita reflects on land in relation to geography and geology, but also as a cultural space, with intimate connection to people and communities. Inevitably, then, this is a study of power, in which the history and violence of colonisation looms large. But the landscape is also a metaphor, for the territories within us. And in her works, whether they are vast sculptural or ceramic reliefs, room-scale installations or reflective canopies covering huge areas of public space, the viewer navigates this productive tension between the objective and subjective. She discusses the early significance of Wilfredo Lam, and his influence on her major public sculpture Fata Morgana (2015). She also reflects on her admiration for artists whose writings are central to their practice, including Eva Hesse and Jack Whitten, and her deep engagement and critical response to Robert Smithson. She talks about her pivotal experiences in Japan and the influence of historic Asian art on her thinking. She talks about her friendship with and admiration for Cecilia Vicuña and the importance of the writings of José Martí and Sylvia Wynter, among others. Plus, she gives insight into her life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?Teresita Fernández: Liquid Horizon, Lehmann Maupin, Seoul, 27 August-25 October; Teresita Fernández/Robert Smithson, Radius Books, published 16 October, $60, £42.99 (hb). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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