Doug and Mike Starn
Can't, Won't, Don't Stop
SCP2228a, 2021 (C)
Doug & Mike Starn,
Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art
Doug & Mike Starn,
Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art
Can’t, Won’t, Don’t Stop
Gold Circle is pleased to present a showcase of celebrated American artists Doug and Mike Starn, recently exhibited at HackelBury Fine Art in London. The Starn brothers have been producing conceptual photography for over 30 years, gaining international recognition for pushing the boundaries of the medium beyond the constraints of the camera lens. By pioneering techniques that combine photography with other disciplines such as sculpture and architecture, the Starns have developed a body of work that examines interconnectivity, the passage of time and the physicality of the photographic object itself. In ‘Can’t, Won’t, Don’t Stop’ they have brought together two contrasting but interconnected bodies of work, Seascapes and Big Bambú, which reflect their central belief that everything is interconnected, interdependent and always changing but always the same. This in-depth Q&A with the artists provides an insightful view into some of the concepts, perspectives and techniques behind a truly pioneering body of work. Talk to us about ‘Can’t, Won’t, Don’t Stop’ and how this work developed?We have been working conceptually with photography for over 30 years. This series of work, begun in 2021, sees us returning to some of the techniques which we pioneered in the 1980s when we explored the three dimensionality and physicality of photography and incorporated painting. This exhibition includes work that shows the two contrasting but interconnected bodies of work, Seascapes and Big Bambú, which reflects our central belief that everything is interconnected, interdependent and always changing but always the same. Both bodies of work show the dynamic forces of nature and progression of time. Big Bambu takes the form of a cresting wave, we’re constructing a slice of seascape (like our photographs), a cutaway view of a wave constantly in motion. The Big Bambú iterations are always complete yet always unfinished. These works provide a visual metaphor for the interconnections of life – that of cultures, societies, relationships and individuals and collective growth. |
BB 10/19/09-90650, 2009 and BB 7/15/09-60756, 2009,
Doug & Mike Starn,
Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art
Doug & Mike Starn,
Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art
The passage of time is one of those subjects in art that can be expressed in a variety of ways. What is time to you and how is it approached in your work?With the Big Bambú photographs and Seascapes we are trying to reflect the progression of time. By showing the ageing process and deterioration of the material with which we work, we are examining how the meaning of what was created or conceptualized changes with time. In the Mountainscapes we show the indescribably slow-motion tectonic plates colliding and creating the dynamic and dramatic forms, seemingly permanent and eternal, our human time-frame not even a blip in geological time; the mountains are a living photograph that we witness in progress with our eyes. We also welcome people to touch the artwork, to walk on the artwork to spend time with the artwork. Normally, the average time for people to look at an artwork is pretty damn short. But in Big Bambú you get immersed, and you don't want to leave. |
Big Bambu at 10 & 20 weeks, 2009-10,
Doug & Mike Starn,
Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art
Doug & Mike Starn,
Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art
You offer a multidimensional perspective on photography, acknowledging both the physical object as well as the captured image as having agency. How do you approach this relationship between object and representation in your work? Are the two linked?
So, we have the Seascapes and the Big Bambú, and when that work is being communicated through the photograph it becomes documentation of the project. Photography is both the medium and the document. With a project like Big Bambú, it is a three dimensional project and materiality is so important too. Our photography has always been tactile. It is not just an image of an object but an image on a substrate – an object itself. So it is a document of a three dimensional sculpture. When you're looking at those pictures, we want you to get a tactile sensation, even if you can't touch them. The physical approach to the photograph becomes a bit more earthy, and somehow organic instead of it just being an image, like you find on your computer screen which is there and then it is gone. In traditional photography one does not acknowledge its physicality. It is just being conveyed to you through a piece of paper, but you don't think about the piece of paper. By hand coating the paper that we use and showing the edges and showing the connections from one piece to the next, that builds a larger photograph. Then it becomes something physical and brings some life to it. When we were teenagers, back in the 1970s, music was a big part of our world, and still is. Music is usually played during the construction of Big Bambú and in the studio. We decided to make art which connects us all. In the Big Bambú construction there might be 20 climbers up there and they're all connected through the music which becomes a visible connection and it is cultural as well. Whether you're talking about the latest pop star, or the Rolling Stones, it's a connection that we all have. So when we made these album cover paintings, Raw Pow-wer, Can You Feeeeeeeeeeel It?! where we invite you to pick up that album cover and hold it in your hands and think about it and read the notes where we haven't painted over it and you just have that physical experience with the artwork in a similar way to the experience with bamboo. |
SCP 2228b, 2021,
Doug & Mike Starn,
Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art
Doug & Mike Starn,
Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art
Seascape 5L,
Doug & Mike Starn,
Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art
Doug & Mike Starn,
Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art
Perpetual change and an unfinished state are recurring themes in the series. Do these states of being act as metaphors for life outside of art?
We grew up on the coast of New Jersey, and so the ocean was just always present. As little kids, we remember speaking about the enormity of it in both physical space and in time, and, and how it's always the same but it's always different, right? So that's been a big part of our work, always. We recognize that art has that same thing in common - that art is changing all the time. The minute it leaves the artist's studio it's got a new life and people bring their thoughts to the artwork, and it means something different from maybe what it meant to us. It certainly changes, if an artwork is really good and it lasts centuries, it's certainly changing from what it originally was. It just goes forward in time. And, you know, the oceans have been doing this same but different for billions of years. We are just in this little moment of time where it's in front of us. We're in front of it. All this applies to ourselves, that we're always changing, it just bounces back and forth. You know, in scale and magnitude one is talking yourself, about society, about your family, about culture, everything is always changing. They're all interdependent with each other, nothing is existing on its own. Since the mid 1980s, we were putting together our photographs with scotch tape and this was a something that we wanted people to recognize - this idea that things are put together, things are not just themselves, they are part of everything else and ourselves. A photograph is not simply an image but is existing within the world. It all emerged from decades of talking to each other about how life works. How the structure of life is built from so many interconnections that reach forward and backward in time and guide us and influence us to take a turn or support something. We're talking about events and conditions and ideas. Often random things that weren't expected in your worldview, come into play, and then new things come from that. We came to realize that there is an invisible structure. It seems chaotic and impossible to visualize. That structure that has been growing and changing for as long as people have been societal. Then it became clear that this could actually be physically demonstrated by creating a an architecture of random interconnections Big Bambú and it should always be in progress, just like the oceans and water. That is why the bamboo work was made as a wave form. |
Seaweed 1,
Doug & Mike Starn,
Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art
Can you give us some insight into the process behind constructing a work of art that breaks away from a prescriptive design before it is even created? Does the work start with a particular vision in mind?
We sometimes build models but it's impossible to draw. We always work with a core group of people that have learned these philosophies and have become a family together. But there are always people from the local area as well. So we meet with them every morning and talk about what to do and see what happens. So it is organic in the way it's constructed. At first it looks completely random and chaotic but every one of those knots up there - the scores of miles of rope up there - every knot is a decision by someone who is thinking ‘I want to go here and there’ and they add a pole and pretty soon you're standing on what was air before. It's very free and wild. |
You know it's alright,
I said it's alright,
Doug & Mike Starn,
Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art
I said it's alright,
Doug & Mike Starn,
Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art
Is there a relationship between the techniques in ‘Can’t, Won’t, Don’t Stop’ and other works that you did in the past?
These things are so unbelievably complex that we don't even realize what's happening every day to keep us moving, thinking, breathing. There is a great connection to our ‘Structure of Thought’ series and the ‘Snowflakes’ too. But not so much visually, you know, no, not visually. It's about the aggregation of those individual moments. |
Structure of Thought 27,
Doug & Mike Starn,
Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art
Doug & Mike Starn,
Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art
You have been developing a body of work, following quite consistent and identifiable principles, for decades. How do you see it evolving going forward?
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We will very often reuse sections of an earlier piece in a new work. So there is literally a physical continuation between the work. Even the works themselves are all connected through the time. |
Exhibition view at HackelBuryFineArt,
Doug & Mike Starn,
Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art
Doug & Mike Starn,
Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art
Works available by HackelBury Fine Art
Doug & Mike StarnDoug and Mike Starn, American, identical twins, were born in 1961. They first received international attention at the 1987 Whitney Biennial. For more than twenty years the Starns were primarily known for working conceptually with photography. Since 2010 their Big Bambú structures, built from “random chaos” with thousands of bamboo poles lashed together with miles of rope, have been installed in public institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MACRO Museum in Rome, at the 54th Venice Biennial and the Teshima Triennial. Major themes of their work include chaos, interconnection and interdependence.
“Our vision is that nothing in the world is monolithic, nothing is one thing—everything is interconnected (...) life is created through interconnected random moments (...) the invisible interconnected factors make us who we are, and culture what it is” www.dmstarn.com |
HackelBury Fine ArtFounded by Sascha Hackel and Marcus Bury, HackelBury Fine Art deals in 20th and 21st century artworks.
Established in 1998, the London gallery in Launceston Place is committed to nurturing long-term relationships with both artists and clients. It continues to evolve and progress through an expanding program of gallery exhibitions, museum projects and publishing ventures. The small group of artists with whom HackelBury work, represent a diversity of practice, pushing the boundaries of various media. The work and practice of these artists encompasses the worlds of photography, painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture and performance. Each artist, whether emerging or established, creates work defined by a depth of thought and breadth and consistency of approach. hackelbury.co.uk |