MOMO

March 31st, 2008

Somebody we know that moved into New York introduced us to MOMO (www.momoshowpalace.com) and although it’s because of that we know his work I’m certain we would have come to discover him some other way. I guess it’s a small world when you are the kind of person that can’t help but being fascinated by a collage of colored papers pasted onto a wall in a street for no apparent reason and you meet the person that took the time and effort to do it.

First of all when, where, how and why you started to do work in the streets?

I was in love with Graffiti in the late 90’s, but didn’t feel it was my place or culture, until this friend of mine Mike Menace challenged me to look closer, and from then, 1998 or so, the concept has never let go of me. I was traveling back then.

You do work outside and I know you’ve done a bunch of prints and collaborated with us in the “The amazing wandering unit” project and other projects here and there but other than that I have no idea if you do any other “inside” work, aimed at art galleries or commercial work of some kind?

I have a regular job, creating giant sculpture for Jimmy Buffett (a ridiculous cultural(? of sorts) icon). That’s been my main source of income for 10 years now. My street hobby has come inside much more these last two years, working with Paper Monster, we’ve developed prints and studio work that stays indoors. I was slow at first to think of what to do indoors - its a totally different game, that deserves its own due, but now I’m brimming with ideas; things I couldn’t do on the street. If I play it cool, I’ll be in several shows this year in NY.

In your work there’s a predominance of geometric shapes but at the same time I feel somehow that has an overall organic feel to it. What’s with you and geometry? Does it make any sense what I just said about your work looking organic in a way?

I hope so. Last year I was toying with geometry more as a primitive craft/carnival means. The rise of neo rave, 80’s inspired, retro tech graphics makes me nervous. I don’t want to be associated with that exactly, it’s probably too fine a point for people to get, but that culture feels disposable to me. The forms I’m using now were always under the most realistic drawings/ paintings I’d ever felt good about, and I’ve had a long history creating realist looking things, we are just cleaning them up, using that best part naked and raw now.

Again I might be mistaken but could you elaborate on how’s your relationship with the urban (there’s obviously some of that) and the natural (that’s where I might go wrong) and how that reflects on your work?

We’re just talking about the colorful collage, which is fine because my other projects go in too many directions. I’m not exactly a hippy in the city here. But yeah, I do feel stronger ties to the country, mountain folk, the desert, untrained folk artists, small town cultural happenings. I’d prefer to avoid things like hype, gamesmanship, technology fizz, I guess that puts me back in the woods. But being in New York 5 years now, that stuff doesn’t really exist, or I’d adjust my attitude. I walk everywhere in busted shoes and get better conversation out of them, than if I obliged marketers and got with “urban” styles. Back to collage postering - I hope each piece is a bit of an experiment for intellectual delight, each one is very different, they don’t always work, I invent lots of small techniques to try and add to the canon of the craft. I feel nothing for artists that demonstrate our dominant mass media’s power; with standardized production, aping logos and celebrity. That power was already demonstrated when US culture colonized the globe.

Ok, I see what you mean but don’t you want people to have a better view of what you do making them aware of your existence? Maybe you just want each piece you do outdoors to work on its own… I don’t know.

I think I don’t know either. My great friend Joel says if we keep doing the stuff that interests us the most, it will all come together eventually.

There’s a question that intrigues me from all artists in general and wanted to ask you about: How much of your personal visual universe comes from your childhood? Is the kid inside of you a big percentage of who you are as an artist?

Great question. It would be better if I played more. I was a little adult as a child. Obsessively trying to draw well. Now I’m an old man throwing confetti & color everywhere, but it still rarely comes from playfulness (!).

Why is that? What keeps you for being more playful with your work as an artist? Do you feel that you have to be responsible as an artist and playfulnes doesn’t mix well with that?

Protestant upbringing? Hahaha. Maybe. I’ve always admired people that just enjoy life, I’m in the other group, uncomfortable, unsatisfied, itchy. HaHa. If curiosity is playfulness, I’m flush, but its also a sort of a burning.

Your use of color gives is of a “happy” type of feel to your work. Do you deliberately try to portray a happy, optimistic view of things with your work?

HaHa. I love comedy, but that’s not my point. I try to set up uncertain compositions that break with the surroundings, feel unstable, for me there’s a look of change / danger, poor balance, unfair odds. That’s great if people take away optimism, they see the story ending well, I think its undecided. And I love color. I love southern peoples intense use of it (think Caribbean), its feels festive to Northerners, but look closer and the universal darker themes are there, vivid and stuff.

So there’s a balance between bright and dark in your work and you leave it up to the viewer if they see more of one or the other which brings me to a question I end up asking artists when the subject comes up: How much do you want your work to be open to free interpretation and how much do you want to obtain a certain response?

Oh it’s a total give away, thats the best thing about public works. What I make goes on to live another life I can only guess at. I’ve heard wild theories and stories involving my stuff, and seen a wide spectrum of people take to it. I have to have my reasons to initiate the whole business, but its a thousand times more gratifying to see where it ends up.

There’s a generation of artists worldwide that I think that share at least a somehow similar attitude and sometimes some aesthetics coordinates and you seem to be very active collaborating with artists from other countries. Do you feel part of a scene-generation… and what do you think you share with other artists from that same “scene”?

Yeah, the Internet is fueling these scattered scenes. A friend was describing it’s that way for his particular music interest. I’ve fed almost entirely on European artists while living in the US. Now I can flatter your European readers? It’s partially aesthetics and partially a next-level confrontation: the artists doing resistance work already have better educations than us in the US generally, and then the society they’re confronting is more open, subtle, historied, and educated, so the discussion skips the trivial stuff.

Not being an artist, every time I find an artist whose work I enjoy, I’m always intrigued on the creative process. In your case is it fast and wild and not rational at all, is it meticulous and slow, do you dismiss a lot of the stuff you do?… I don’t know, tell me a little bit about it.

I get the best ideas while doing something else. The first (paper napkin) sketch is usually the best. Then I waste an enormous amount of time trying it every other way, to come back to the first, and make it look easy (hopefully).

I saw some bio text about you and I’m sorry but I have to ask: Did you actually live in a geodesic dome? How did that feel like?

It’s great, a really small space feels quite large with no corners. the furniture was built into the walls of course, nothing rectangular. This was in a small village in New Mexico.

What have you been working on recently?

An illustration for a Faile collaborative book due out soon. Been learning to skate a quarter pipe. I’m cutting collage paper right now. I should be in London by the time anybody reads this trying some wacky experiments there. I created an installation at Monkey Town: an art bar in Williamsburg: a fun collaboration with Milton Carter. And I’m still futzing with silkscreen posters as experiments. Each one is different based on this computer thing “The MOMO Maker” (www.momoshowpalace.com/momomaker.html). It’s like the “best of MOMO” for collage. It was mostly for a laugh, but I can’t seem to reach the bottom, so it keeps growing and getting bigger as a project.

Yes, I meant to ask you about that. Do you feel randomness fits well in your discourse?

Maybe as a search tool; watching the MOMO Maker: there’s crap, then there’s one design I would not have thought of. I initaly got into collage because you can cut-out & toss your ingredients freely around, looking for their potential.

And any interesting project coming up that you can tell us about?

I’m focused on two main projects for this year, but need to stay quiet about them. And I just heard: in May I might collaborate with Mellisa Brown, we’re going to destroy each other’s artwork for a month; every other day; she goes, I go, she goes, I go, in a public curated space. I think New York could be fun this summer.

Some project you would love to do but didn’t have the chance or nobody has asked you to do yet?

Ha! Yeah! I want to do for Jamaica what Dewitt Peters did for Haiti. I want to do a very long expanded version of my time-based video project “In New Collage Orleans” for New York. It’d be called “In New Collage York”. I’d like to interview Daniel Burren. I want to make a Graffiti video for Stephin Merritt. I’d like to publish zines more often.

Can you turn us into some artists or something interesting that we should know about?

I never knew anything about Norman McLaren until Nano put me onto him yesterday. I’m really amazed, 3 minutes of his work might sum up all of mine, and 70 years before I began. Same goes for Daniel Burren. He was bombing 100’s of posters globally for good conceptual reasons begining in 1968. Jonkanoo is [another(!)] amazing creol culture & history: Caribbean carnival. A recent show of Zaha Hadid’s prepartory art works blew me away.

Entry Filed under: Artists