| Ezra Talmatch: First off, my response to Boy with Time Machine: This is classic Landino, a real gem. It seems to fall well within your quieter side, very poetic and reflective of the very same questions and concerns you pose me, and as always, very much conjured out of the blue. I imagine that you developed an idea of your aesthetic somewhere between a dumpster and an abandoned building, smashed equally with the entire history of art as it’s known (or unknown) in the name of nothing less than the formation of your very own universe. Try to fit that into a box. |  |
Artist 2 Artist: John Landino & Ezra Talmatch – Ed. by D. Dominick Lombardi
Ezra Talmatch: First off, my response to Boy with Time Machine: This is classic Landino, a real gem. It seems to fall well within your quieter side, very poetic and reflective of the very same questions and concerns you pose me, and as always, very much conjured out of the blue. I imagine that you developed an idea of your aesthetic somewhere between a dumpster and an abandoned building, smashed equally with the entire history of art as it’s known (or unknown) in the name of nothing less than the formation of your very own universe. Try to fit that into a box.
I can recall a time back in the Williamsburg days, you pulling items like this straight out of the trash, complete or assigned on the spot, works of art, composed by your will, the elements were just waiting for the right magician to come along.
JL: It also reminds me of our early meeting—1990—in the lofts at South 8th St. between Bedford and Driggs. Six artists lofts with many characters, lots of art and music. Back in those days, Williamsburg was a dumping ground for building contractors, demolition companies and the graveyard burning of cars.
We could look out a window and see objects in the trash strewn in the empty lot five stories below. More than once, I hauled ass down the stairs and plucked a board or piece of metal from those piles.
Although the images in your art have changed over the years, your technique or signature remains. Raw, honest and true to life. A perspective of longing and struggle. Of dreams being dashed on the shoreline. Holocaust and Heaven. Your line cut by memory and pain.
ET: Oh yes, the South 8th St. studios were a trip. Patchwork party to earnest art making. I remember well the handcuff handshake, the endless forties, the naked girls, the drugs and music performances on the rooftop, the aquanaught cops, sheets of mylar and inspired filmmaking on the roof turned to dust, the one-handed loft constructions made of scraps, watching the JMZ float across the bridge, all that insane energy building and prodding us to clash with our materials. I’ve had dreams where I walk through your old studio and have held or seen pieces like Boy With The Time Machine or other types of your elementally based constructions, totems and demi-tableaux. Your dedication to abandon, dynamic sense of free self have always served as an inspiration to me.
JL: Last night CBGB’s closed its doors. I’m glad I was able to play there (1992-93?) with the band Whatever. After her performance, Patti Smith said: “This is a symptom of an empty new prosperity of our city.”
Everything is changing, breaking down or in development, all at once. When I look at our art in the context of our current history, we are there at the moment of slow destruction. Your collage; re-using older work ripped, recycled and reintroduced to the current menace of “society,” or the horrors we create within ourselves.
My sculptures, welding found rusty steel to enclose books, opening and closing of ideas, places and objects to create a code a language that is personal and universal. Well, it sure feels very personal. Current trends of thought censored, burned and rendered inaccessible.
What do I see as the future in my path to making art? I want to use more processes, not just welding or drawing: prints, video projections, I want to continue the art performances and will just have to see where they take me.
ET: This and all those other wonderful closed book pieces. Your lead infused anger and wisdom, rough and underground inspired, street dumpster ravaged, a rooftop shaman shouting, dancing against insanity, serving as overseer of all things twisted, abandoned, bent, pulled, wronged, chipped, crushed, weathered and unsung.
Performance wise, I’m hoping you mean Last Man on Earth? The day after your Jonathan Shorr gallery debut you mentioned to me on the phone that you felt “elated within the piece” and that “you would do it for the rest of your life.” I’ve only seen photos unfortunately but have heard nothing but awe filled raves about it. It’s really a character created by you for you and your concept of our universal crashing, imploding, deceiving, and surviving?
JL: Last Man on Earth is an extension of all that I perform randomly at art openings throughout the city—always unannounced. I last performed at the Tony Zito gallery for it’s closing party on Ludlow St. Before that, at Jonathan Shorr this past summer at 109 Crosby St. The suit (heat and chemical resistant) and the skeleton are found objects. It is both a living sculpture and an outfit for the performance. No words are spoken, only the arrival of the last man and the interaction between the suited man and the skeleton, then his departure. It speaks to the lack of concern for our planet in terms of the environment and the current nuclear policies or lack thereof.
Where will the artist go in the future I wonder?
ET: I’m piecing together and creating some elements for an upcoming show 109 Crosby, keeping well in mind this ongoing push and pull struggle, trying to feed it, get it there alive, lots of this angst and beauty, dashed hopes, limitless points of abstract thought, freedom from the confines of the rational, the oppressive, hopefully a language of insight and poise within the confines of a few walls.
In response to your thoughts, we tend to be willing visitors and pioneers, prone to approach the industrial wastelands and forgotten decay within slingshot of the center and periphery of our urban environs. It used to be where cheaper live/work space could be had…thus, we’ve become the invisible planners. This is nothing new, this changes everything from less than desirable to gold rush city. that goes for all of them: Greenwich Villiage, Soho, Tribeca, Dumbo, Williamsburg, Red hook and so on. Whoops, I forgot East Villiage and Long Island City—I won’t mention where we have our studios now, I don’t want New York Magazine writing an article about it so it gets fucked up (cover article 1992?) like the South side of Williamsburg. The North side is ridiculous now. As far as values are concerned I’d say that there are many artists and developers that have questionable ethics—everyman for himself and such—I see a lot of cool graffiti, fliers, street collage work out there in the streets, on and around or under and over: areas of makeshift walkways, barricades and sites—strewn textures and slap hazard dances of the utilities, construction vehicles and trenches, all plywood surrounded and guarded, those precious shells. Dugout foundations and layer over layer, thought on top of thought, rich on poor, idea on top of advertisement, a grand orgy of substance. I’ve been working at getting something of a reflection of this in some of my work, sketch narratives and doodles become physical somehow, drawings I paste to wood then attach to a framework…it’s a slowly developing idea. Two recent works of mine reflect my own wanderings, I like to think they are charged somehow with the same kind of intensity, poetic metaphor and narrative that best reflects a journey of sorts through the ruins and rebuilding of our griddled electric.
We have only the future we make for ourselves… The struggle against all odds makes for stronger work… that’s the “enclave” if there is any…besides anywhere we inhabit, developers follow. It’s a very unintentional partnership.
