Interview Text with Wendy Olsoff by Diana Kamin on 7-9-2016

David Wojnarowicz Knowledge Base
Interview with Wendy Olsoff, PPOW Gallery
By Diana Kamin
July 8, 2016

DK: It’s July 8, 2016. I’m Diana Kamin and I’m interviewing Wendy Olsoff at PPOW Gallery in New York. So I thought we could start at the beginning. I have a list of questions here and we’ll see where the conversation goes. My first question was, how did you first learn about Wojnarowicz’s work?
WO: We had a gallery in the East Village, and he was in the East Village, and it was a small community. So.
DK: So do you remember seeing some of his early installations? Any memories about those installations that stand out?
WO: This was a really long time ago.
DK: I know.
WO: And I’ve talked a lot about this. We, Penny and I -- Civilian Warfare showed David probably before we moved down there in 1983. And then Gracie Mansion showed David. And we borrowed a piece for a show we did called Indigestion. And we probably went to the openings. I don’t know that I went to the installations. I mean, we saw his work around and about because we were at all the same places he was. We, I don’t think we were the hugest fans of David’s work at that time in the East Village, just because he was with Gracie Mansion, and her gallery and my gallery were very – and I’m friends with her now, of course, but we had very different points of view. And we were in our own sort of world of our own artists, even though we would circulate with the other dealers. So, to be honest with you, Gracie had the Peter Hujar show; I didn’t even go over to see that. In my mind it was photographs of famous people. I did not know that community. So, I knew him because David was in a ton of East Village shows. I really liked his work. I told him that, and I included him in a group show, but it was not, like, a big part of my life in those days at all.
DK: Right. Okay. I think that the reasoning behind that question was, we’re trying to ask for sort of first-person accounts, if you remember the sights, smells, and looks of some of these early installations that are sort of lost __[0:02:25] So then we can move up to the sort of 1988 period. So, soon after you moved from Tenth Street to the Soho space was when you started working with Wojnarowicz; correct?
WO: Right.
DK: Can you describe the context of the move to Soho, and how the gallery space had changed? How the gallery scene in general had changed?
WO: This has all been documented in other places, so this is repeating, like, the Smithsonian interviews. But it’s fine. So, we were hesitant to leave the East Village because we did not see ourselves, necessarily as, like, a big Soho dealer. What that meant in those days or now is a Chelsea dealer. We did not have that dream, to become a big art dealer. So we really hung out there in the East Village. We were one of the last galleries to leave the East Village, and we did a great show on it, actually, called A Hundred Years of Art on the Lower East Side, which people still remember. Anyway, everyone was like, “The East Village is over.” I’m like, it’s not over. It’s certainly not over. Is it? The Lower East Side seems to have blossomed. Anyway, so, because of real estate and the Tompkins Square Park riots, and the fact that no one would come down to -- we were at 8BC, took over the club called 8BC, where Nan Goldin did her slide show and Karen Finley and Ethel Eichelberger. Our gallery was in that club on Eighth Street. And again, it had nothing to do with David at all, except we knew who he was. In fact, Steve and Walt, good friends of mine and really major collectors now, I remember, when Gracie was closing, wanted to buy paintings from his last show there that didn’t sell, the Four Elements, which are now in their collection and The Museum of Modern Art’s collection and a promised gift. MoMA will have all of them. But Steve and Walt really wanted to buy them and they talked to us about what kind of price they could offer Gracie for it. And that was right when we left the East Village. And Gracie was also relocating and moving. So we moved to Soho because it was cheaper. It was right on West Broadway, kind of where – there were no galleries there at the time, just sweat shops, and on Broadway there was like one retail store. So we got bigger, better space in Soho. And Gracie and David had a falling out, and we asked David to show with us. But first, he was in a small show that Doug Milford did at 560, I think, Broadway. And it was the piece, If I Had a Dollar. And Steve and Walt bought that piece, I think, they definitely did. They bought that piece, and it changed the world, really. Jerry Saltz did a single-page article on that piece for Arts magazine, and it was 1988, so it was like a critical crisis in health care for people with AIDS. And David, with that piece -- which was not even in the main gallery, if I recall; it was like on the side gallery, a small gallery, too – really took on a huge __[5:25] importance compared to who he symbolized in the East Village. In the East Village, David was – and David knew this – was __ with things people hated about the East Village, like the East Village aesthetic. Which, I think now, younger people probably crave to know what it was. But at the time, a lot of people were really snobby about it or denigrating it. And David, because he was so well known, some of his paintings and installations not fitting into the neo-geo and not fitting into any other prescribed school, people perceived as maybe immature or amateur. And angry. And not that important. However, this one painting, I think, made everyone stop in their tracks. And he, from then on -- and we were showing him, he did two more shows with us, his two last shows – he became, really, the voice of everyone who had AIDS, of gay people throughout the country who had no role models. And at that time it was really free __[6:29] computer word got out about him in sort of an underground way, and he gained huge respect across the board, and internationally, as well. So, we were very fortunate, our timing, to have asked him to show with us. We were a gallery known for politics. David was very political, so he trusted us. And we contextualized his work well. We showed other really seriously important political artists. At the time, we showed Carrie Mae Weems as well, and Nancy Spero. So, the gallery knew how to deal with David and his work. Our first show was Sue Coe, who was a really political artist, and our first show with her really taught us how to respect an artist and work with them and not exploit them. And especially if you’re showing political work. And working with Carrie, too. So we were well equipped, and we still are today, how to deal with artists who work with content and make art. So, it’s a special, sort of sensitive way of doing it because, if you’re making political work and you’re in this marketplace, to confuse politics and money becomes very easy for people to point, like, how can you be so political when you’re charging X for this? Or whatever. Or if people ask to put David or whoever in a magazine, we can’t just say yes. We have to really carefully look at the content of that magazine and always be on guard. So, that’s sort of the story.
DK: Okay, so maybe you can tell me more about the process of putting together an exhibition with David then, at that time?
WO: Well, we didn’t really put together anything with David. David was a very small part of the gallery’s life. We did not see him a lot. Very different in that he had many relationships and many things going on with different people, and everyone, as has been written about, frequently, by Cindy, and Olivia Laing just wrote about it too, his, and we quoted this, his relationships were intense and separate from each other, and they were equally across the board important to him. And us, as a gallery, was probably the least important. So I don’t have a lot to say, because we were managing his artwork, but his artwork was a means for him to get his message out and make money just to support himself and his own health care, because he didn’t have insurance, to get his work out urgently before he died. And so he didn’t discuss his shows with us very much. He wasn’t like he was coming in, should I make this; should I make that? It was just like, whatever David brought in, we just went with it, because, so, like, his first show with us, he brought it in like three hours before the show opened. He was working on it until the last minute, and we just hung it. And that was the show that had the buffaloes, the Sex series, many important paintings.
DK: And he didn’t express preferences about the layout or the display decisions?
WO: Yes, he did. He did. He knew in his head how he wanted it to look. But he brought it in fast, and we hung it, and it looked great. He knew how he wanted it to look, both shows. So it wasn’t like he got in and it was chaos and he just threw work. It was laid out in his mind, and it was put up.
DK: Did he come in with plans?
WO: No, he would never – uh, are there any sketches in Fales? Do you see?
DK: Yes, there’s lots of sketches.
WO: All right, so, __[9:50] see he planned it out.
DK: Okay; yeah. And did he
WO: He might have been carrying them. I don’t really know, I don’t remember.
DK: It may have been in his head at that point.
WO: Or he could have had it and stuck them in his back pocket and walked out. You know? We were fast and furiously trying to get a show open in three hours. And then, that first show, he spent a lot of time in our office typing up the catalogue, ITSOFOMO. Because he really wanted to make sure people understood what the work was about. So there’s this great – I’m sure there’s a copy over at Fales, the ITSOFOMO catalogue, he did it in our office and we ran out and got it copied, I think. I can’t really even remember how we got it stapled and put out.
DK: Weren’t there local copy shops in Soho as a sort of central meeting place for artists?
WO: You know, I never went there myself, but David’s relationship with Todd’s Copy Shop is famous. But I didn’t go there.
DK: So there must have been another sort of local shop for printing.
WO: It could have been Kinko’s.
DK: There was __
WO: Or we could have just printed it out on our printer, or our Xerox machine.
DK: So you had a Xerox machine in your office.
WO: Yes.
DK: Okay.
WO: Yes, we had a really big gallery, much bigger than this gallery, and we had big offices, and we had a Xerox machine. We probably rented it; we used to rent them and there used to be the Xerox guys who would come around. They’d always be these cute, clean-cut guys __ the Xerox machine. [they laugh]
DK: So then also, I realize this was installed very quickly – if there were other kinds of questions about lighting or framing or anything he may have conveyed.
WO: David worked directly with Stefan Petrik, our framer, and designed the frames with Stefan. So those red frames around the Sex series that have a red border and the Ant series have a blue border. The Buffaloes had a blue border. He picked the colors, and he designed the frames.
DK: So those are artist frames.
WO: They are. When we have the originals in those frames, it really feels like a historical moment. And they’re a very specific color. The red was for blood. And these red lines, if you look at his work, and when you see it all installed at the Whitney eventually, or in the show, you’ll see the red lines and these lines carry through in the paintings.
DK: Mm-hm. While we’re talking about framers or equipment in the office and everything, is there other information you can think of that?
WO: David liked to use our fax machine to fax people letters, including Marion Scemama, who he had this immensely emotional relationship with. And she was in Paris and faxes would be going through between them. And he’d come in then to use our fax machine.
DK: I’m sure some of those faxes are in the archive. I haven’t come across them yet.
WO: I would think so, yeah. Or Marion saved the ones she got. But there were a lot of them that would come through.
DK: Are there other sort of printers or film labs or equipment stores you can think of?
WO: The people he used – and you can talk to Penny separately, because when he did the silkscreens, for One Day, This Kid, I’m not going to remember. It was someone on 14th Street, I think, who printed those.
DK: Deborah Wye thinks it’s Giant.
WO: Deborah Wye would know, and Giant sounds familiar to me.
DK: Okay.
WO: And the person, Gary Schneider – you’re going to talk to Gary; right?
DK: I’ll make sure he’s on our list.
WO: Gary Schneider printed the Hands and the Skeletons. And then someone silkscreened the text over it. It was someone who silkscreened that text over it, but I don’t know who it was. Penny might remember. Otherwise, we provided David – like, we were getting him the materials for the paintings, like the window paintings, like when we did the second show, In the Garden, there were those flower paintings? I think we cut the windows to his specifications; that’s what I remember. But we’d get the panels for him. We were always calling him, saying, “Do you want? Can we get anything?” For that second show, too, we had to bring everything to him, he was so weak. So we would bring stuff to the studio. I wouldn’t. Robert Ransick, he teaches at Bennington, was our art installer, and he remembers going to David’s loft with stuff, and he laughs about it now. He says, “Oh my god.” And we always had to give David money, too, so, a lot, it was in cash. Somebody would bring over cash for him, and Robert would be our courier. It was an amazing experience for him, intensified in hindsight. So we tried to make sure his stuff to make art was delivered to him so he could make art.
DK: Including supplies, paints?
WO: I just remember the wood.
DK: Cut to specifications.
WO: Yes. So he could paint those flowers. That’s all I remember. You might want to ask Penny separately.
DK: Okay, and Robert, it sounds like.
WO: And Robert Ransick on the phone might give you some information, because he was our art installer in those days. And our director, Scott Cato, might remember stuff, as well. He lives on the Cape now, and is super nice, and he was very involved, too. And people don’t interview those people, Robert and Scott, very much, but they might have some memories that are unique.
DK: Yeah, I think you can tell, this resource is going to be directed toward curators and conservators and researchers who are interested in preserving and displaying his work, and a lot of what’s missing from the existing material is these details about process and technique, and reconstructing that. I talked to David Kiehl, and he’s exploring the media of One Day, This Kid, he doesn’t think it’s a photostat.
WO: He doesn’t?
DK: He said that to me in a sort of informal conversation, so I think he’s researching it now, but he has questions about the medium.
WO: Yeah, it wasn’t something that we were – we have no pictures. In other words, we have no, like now we have studios and take a picture and post it on line. In those days, we have nothing but memories.
DK: Right.
WO: We never took any photos. Never. And we never really – you know, we were living, pretty much, really basically, just trying to keep our doors open through the various recessions and what time we were in, not really doing our best.
DK: Were you taking installation photographs?
WO: There are installation photographs of David’s – I don’t know how detailed they are, but there are some. Of that first show, I can see them in my head, so we have those. Annalisa will send them to you. The second show was with the Rimbauds were in the front room and then, In the Garden – we should have it.
DK: That’s great.
WO: But it’s not like we do now.
DK: Yeah, __[16:40 extensive? Expensive?]
WO: We just really couldn’t afford photography on that level.
DK: Continuing in this vein, another
WO: __. Sorry.
DK: Oh, that’s all right. Another question we’re trying to look into is the camera equipment that Wojnarowicz worked with, so just in case you had any recollections of equipment that he may have had in his studio.
WO: I rarely ever went to his studio. I mean, we didn’t do studio visits with David. Sometimes he’d come in the gallery and just talk, but it wasn’t really about that kind of thing. It was more about, oh, I had a dream last night. Or politics, romancing and raging about what was going on in the world. But we weren’t really talking to him – everything had much more urgency and it really wasn’t like planning ads and stuff like that. I mean, it was just a much different conversation.
DK: But you were talking, it sounds like, about things like placement, and
WO: No.
DK: No. Okay.
WO: No, and I never went to his studio. I never said, “Oh, your show’s coming up; time to make a studio visit.” It was not like that.
DK: He would show up with the works.
WO: Yes.
DK: How would he transport them?
WO: We’d send a truck.
DK: Right.
WO: Or maybe Robert drove it, or we’d send a little trucking company. Nothing major.
DK: And then you’d see the work for the first time in the gallery space.
WO: Yep, that’s right.
DK: And he would come and install it.
WO: With us; yes.
DK: With you.
WO: That’s what I remember. I don’t really remember working with him that much on the installations, but I know he must have done it, had it laid out, then we just put up what he wanted. But there wasn’t like the kind of planning other artists need, a lot.
DK: And there weren’t sort of any unusual installation decisions that stand out in terms of hanging or?
WO: No; it was really clear in David’s head, like, where the Ant series were going to go. There was a chair with a mask on it and these wooden antlers. And I don’t remember the installation being a big part of our relationship, but I remember the shows having great installations. I think he just knew what he wanted to do.
DK: In terms of discussions you may have had about his legacy, did you have any discussions about reconstructing early installations? Or about the early installations being kind of part of his
WO: Which installations? You’re talking about our shows; right?
DK: I was thinking about the sort of installation work he did at Ground Zero or
WO: But I never did that.
DK: Right.
WO: We just recreated an installation as best we could at the Frieze.
DK: Yeah, I was going to ask about that, as well.
WO: So that would be one example. I never saw the James Romberger show. I assume that most of those heads and skulls and things are dispersed.
DK: Are dispersed to different collaborators.
WO: Recreating them, you know, they were in weird situations. I don’t know that it’s possible to recreate those things. And we thought we would recreate the New Museum piece, Heads of State.
DK: Right.
WO: But we just don’t have all of the pieces. It wouldn’t be impossible to do it, I don’t think; it would be, parts would be missing. I would have loved to recreate the New Museum piece, but.
DK: Do you think, in cases like that, it would be better to reconstruct missing elements, or leave the missing elements missing? To include sort of documentary photographs to indicate what’s missing? Different strategies.
WO: I don’t know. And that one has a really huge papier maché head.
DK: Papier maché head; yeah.
WO: I think it would lose a lot, not to have some of the major pieces. I mean, I think there should be an inventory done of that piece, to see what we have and what’s missing. So if you ever know anyone who wants to do that, we could use all the help there is. And I honestly don’t know the other installations; I didn’t go to see them.
DK: So then for the installation that you recreated or that you included in the Frieze, could you walk me through that process of how you, the steps that were taken in order to pull it together? If there were documentary photographs consulted or installation plans or the sort of core elements that you think are necessary in order to recreate an installation.
WO: Well, that’s a little different because years ago we were called by Robert Pincus-Witten who worked for Mnuchin at the time. And this was a while ago; I would say the beginning of the 2000s. And he said that this painting was in Mnuchin’s basement, did we want it? At his gallery. And we were like; what is it? Let’s go down and see. And we saw it and we really didn’t even realize what it was, but we were like, “Oh my god; that’s amazing.” It was just eight panels that made the backdrop. And we brought those to the gallery, and then we got a call sometime later and they said, “Oh, we found all these skulls.” So then we started doing the research and realized we had that entire installation. And then I think it was 2008, Jason Murison, he’s the director of Petzel Gallery now, did a show called Big City Fall. So we had all, I mean, you can see the pictures Peter Hujar took of Mnuchin’s basement. We could find out the story; it’s in the Lower East Side book that Semiotext did. And we could recreate 90 percent – we can’t recreate a basement. We can’t bring all the dirt. We could, bring all the dirt and garbage in that David found on the street, but a car door is missing, there’s a globe missing. There are things missing, but I think we have, the painting’s in perfect shape, and what you saw. We have all of those heads, big and small skulls, covered in – perfect; they look like they were made yesterday, because they’ve been in storage. And all of those lights were original, and they were working, and all of the flashers, whatever they’re called, strobe lights that he had on the tree. But it doesn’t really look like the original, because the original was in a basement on the Upper East Side.
DK: Right.
WO: So, we showed a photograph with it, of what it looked like. But I think in terms of owning that, for a museum would be a great thing, because that’s as close as people are going to get to having a complete installation of David’s.
DK: Right. And then, so, moving on to other kinds of non-traditional elements that are exhibited often with Wojnarowicz’s work, I’m thinking about the journals specifically, you’ve exhibited, PPOW exhibited journals, he displayed his own journals during his lifetime as part of installations.
WO: He did at the New Museum, or?
DK: At Ground Zero.
WO: Ground Zero; you want to speak to James and Marguerite. I really wasn’t; I didn’t see those shows. I don’t know. He showed his journals at Ground Zero?
DK: Yes, I believe so, as part of an installation.
WO: Think so? Okay.
DK: Yeah. So I was just wondering if you have suggestions or thoughts about exhibiting this documentary material. It’s not classic documentary material. Do you think he thought of his journals as artworks?
WO: I think David thought of everything as artwork. In other words, I don’t know that David would think: Oh, I didn’t expect you to show that! Or do that. Like, if he were around today, I’m sure he’d be pretty surprised, but I think, like many great artists, anything that they have and they touch has a certain power and a certain relevance. Were they artworks? No. His writings and his journals were his writings, and his journals were separate from his artworks. Although sometimes they cross, because we had text in pieces. But I think a lot of the times, David, and certainly from his earlier days, and in Cindy Carr’s book, he thought of himself as a writer. So, it’s fascinating to see an artist’s – every museum shows it. I don’t know that David showed them. I can’t believe that’s true.
DK: Okay, I’ll check that.
WO: I can not see him actually thinking: I’m going to show my journals. It just seems wrong to me.
DK: Right. Okay, I’m going to fact-check that.
WO: A private person like that. And no one in those days was showing journals. This whole mania for people’s archives and journals and showing process, is new. And archives, interest in museums buying archives and seeing archives is relatively recent. Academic and new way of exhibiting artists’ work. So I would just check into that David showing his journals. You know, he wrote great postcards to people; that’s another thing. I don’t think he expected them to be seen, but they’re going to be.
DK: We also have, there’s material in Fales from, you know, figurines and Kachina dolls, and
WO: Well, the Magic Box.
DK: And the Magic Box, of course. And these sort of elements that are archival objects that are not finished works that may have been included.
WO: Well, it’s a very interesting conversation about, and we have it constantly, what’s art and what’s archives. And once museums and collectors start buying archives, they always are less interested in giving them or signing them to libraries, because they always can make money from it. So a lot of times, I think now, the line’s really blurred. And we try to keep it pretty clean; like, this should go to Fales. Carolee Schneemann, for example, is another one who made those decisions when her archives went to Stanford. It’s like: Let’s keep this; this is art; and this isn’t art. But it’s sometimes kind of arbitrary.
DK: And with someone like Wojnarowicz in particular, do you think that he felt that there was a strong division between the sort of artworks that he knew or may have hoped were bound for museums and private collections?
WO: David never thought like this. The problem I have is that, like, David was thinking about politics and about survival, and about his friends’ survival. He was being sued by the American Family Foundation; he was being bombarded by the press. He was an activist, and his performance and his collaboration with Ben Neill and Richard Kern, all of these other people, and his films about AIDS that he did, this is what he was thinking about. He was not thinking about the system, and he did not give a shit about it.
DK: Mm-hm. I think that answers, that might answer __[laughter and speech]
WO: __ someone else came from Fales and she was a doll, and she was like, doing something about archives, and should artists be taught to archive; I’m like, some of these artists don’t care. And the best ones don’t. So. It’s not going to fit in, like, teaching people to archive their work. That would not have been David. And if he was sitting home thinking about what should I save, and what should I not save, and what will go this, where, and there.
DK: Or about long-term preservation, or about __
WO: He’s thinking about living. [laughs] It was like in a war zone.
DK: Yeah. Well then, as someone who’s working with his work now, how do you approach questions of conservation? I guess we could also even go back to the Frieze installation, it was so fascinating. Would you, could you imagine showing that installation with new garbage, or new __
WO: I’d say, if someone wants to go further and try to recreate the basement, once it gets to a certain point – we have this with Martin Wong, too, and the Martin Wong show at the Bronx Museum, for example. And I can see that once the curators start curating, and they have the best intentions, and they’re geniuses, and I love them, and it’s all great, they might think: Oh, well this piece should be shown this way. And there’s no way that, like, we can speak for an artist who never left instructions, and say, so-and-so would never have wanted that. So we try as hard as we can to say, I really think that that should be this way, and doing that seems really not right. But it becomes a battle with the curators. And you have a David Kiehl or a Sergio Bessa, or all these people, they’re really taking on, it becomes their project, too. So, it’s kind of a living thing. And it’s because, some artists, like, I read or heard, someone told me Bruce Conner, who’s at MoMA now, left specific details, specific instructions on how every film should be shown. With David, we have nothing like that. So, while at times we, like, we have a record of all of his collaborative films and stuff, but they weren’t like completely stamped with his final seal of approval. And then I was just reading Olivia Laing’s book, and she told me at Fales, there’s all these recordings, like audio recordings. And I thought, I should really go listen to those. Which I never did. And you know, can that be integrated into an exhibition somehow? So you just have to try to respect the work. I think we do a really good job of it, and not exploiting it, and not making lots of copies of things, and not showing it in venues that we don’t think David would appreciate, and all that. But there’s no way, really, to know.
DK: Without explicit instructions, it will always be an interpretation. Even with instructions, it’s an interpretation.
WO: The artist would have to say, like, I want these things hung five inches apart, 60 inches off the ground, everywhere.
DK: In perpetuity.
WO: Some artists do that. They’re like, and I don’t want to be shown with any other artist __[31:07] my work without any other artist in that room. But these artists, David never thought about it. He wasn’t really thinking about, like, I was going to be super famous one day, and there’s going to be scholarship about me. I think he’d be shocked that he’s still remembered at all. And that we’re still talking about the same issues.
DK: [laughs] Yes. Politically, you mean.
WO: Yes, like Orlando, and what happened down there.
DK: Of course.
WO: Sort of like the same homophobia, same issues, to some degree.
DK: And his work is resonating
WO: Constantly.
DK: With a new generation.
WO: Oh, yes.
DK: And after events like Orlando, you see his work popping up on Tumblr and blogs.
WO: Right, exactly. He’s becoming a voice for gay rights. And he was in his lifetime, too. Which was a lot of pressure on him when he was ill. He was really weak, and he was __[32:05], to finish his writings. He really wanted to get his writings done. And I think if you look at the last writings, he expresses himself very clearly about doing as best he can.
DK: I have another question that will be – I am anticipating a similar answer, that he wouldn’t have given a shit, but [laughs] part of the thing we’re struggling with because we’re building this resource,
WO: I know, I know; I appreciate that.
DK: Is describing, kind of coming up with media categories that describe his work. So, for instance, works on paper, photography, there are some traditional categories that we can work with. But we’re struggling with wall-bound multi-media works, the Fear of Evolution with acrylic, string, text, photographs, and Masonite. I’m just wondering how the gallery approaches those questions.
WO: I think of those as paintings. I could call them mixed-media, but I think of those paintings as paintings.
DK: Yes, paintings with collage elements __
WO: Or __ media something , the ones with the windows and sewn in and with the collage, where he’s painted over it; we consider them paintings.
DK: Okay, that’s helpful.
WO: That’s how we think of it. But someone else, like David __ they’re not paintings, they’re collages. [D laughs] But again, as you said, who really gives? [they laugh] DK: I guess it’s available to research or re-thinking about WO: Yeah, but if you put a label on it, it becomes one thing and not another. So, these labels are very limiting, I think, maybe less productive than productive way to spend time. In my opinion. I don’t know. David, in his lifetime, we called them, if you look at our original checklists, which we have somewhere, you’ll see what they are, what they were.
DK: Yes, we have a selection of them. And then I think I’m going to follow up with Elisa to make sure that we have everything we can get our hands on.
WO: Yes, double check it all, because again. Yeah, it’s good. You know, even today we are always just like trying to get it right. Galleries are not museums, and we’re not trained museum people, and we have a lot of demands, and it’s very hard to get the details right all the time.
DK: Mm-hm. For museums, as well. It’s ongoing.
WO: It’s just, the history, it’s just everything, by the time something’s published, there’s a mistake in it, whether you
DK: Yes.
WO: And so it perpetuates mistakes.
DK: Yes. Well, that’s why I think having the historical version, examples of checklists, and published pieces, and installation photographs, are just getting as much information as we can in a searchable space, is our sort of contribution to future researchers.
WO: Right. Yes. It’s worthwhile, because future researchers will never be able to do what you’re doing right now.
DK: Talking to the people who worked with him.
WO: Yes. Yes, certainly worthwhile. So, framing was not a big deal. He designed those frames. His paintings had little slat frames on them. Whenever we see work of David’s, we can tell, because the corners of the Masonite are like not perfect. His work, and Martin’s, too, but David’s had an imperfection to it. It wasn’t like slick, polished work. It was rough, and the edges were rough. So he would just nail on a two by half an inch by two (2”x.5”x2”), paint it black, nail it on, or stick it up. Now we get frames made that look like that but they’re better quality.
DK: More stable, I assume.
WO: They’re usually stabilized. They’re really great material but they look like a slat frame David would have designed. We don’t put his works in major frames that are antithetical to what originally
DK: That’s important.
WO: Yeah. And Stefan Petrik is still around, the guy who did the original frames with the blue lines. So again, if you wanted to talk to Stefan, he worked directly with David, the framer who designed those frames with David, he can tell you information. No one’s interviewed him, I’m sure.
DK: That would be great.
WO: So, this is important. Like, Robert and Stefan __[36:15], they’re all about. And everyone has their stories and their point of view. So, you’ve got to sort of sort out what’s fable and what’s real.
DK: Or also just gather it and make it available. We’re taking the sort of archival approach of trying to -- obviously, any formal organization is interpretation to some degree, and Marvin talks about that more than anyone.
WO: Any form of?
DK: Of sort of organizing material into an archive, it is interpretation,
WO: Right, exactly.
DK: Involves some act of interpretation. But we’re trying to sort of present the material that we have gathered as it is, to be descriptive rather than proscriptive.
WO: I think that’s great.
DK: So are there other? We have Robert, Stefan, Gary.
WO: Yeah, Gary Schneider, Robert Ransick.
DK: Jesse, that was Analisa’s suggestion.
WO: Well that’s __, [37:20] which is different. But Robert Ransick who is at Bennington, teaches there; he was our art installer. Scott Cato was our director, who might remember more about like what kind of copiers we had and where he printed things.
DK: Mm-hm, and he’s on the Cape.
WO: He’s on the Cape. These are people you can find; I can get you their e-mails. Stefan Petrik, I think he’s up by Beacon, he has a frame shop, still. We still use him, when people buy a print and want an original frame, because he still can reproduce that color of blue that he and David designed, the Sex Series frames. And then, um, that’s it.
DK: James and Marguerite talked about Utrecht Blue as a blue that he used all the time, and that was an important color to him.
WO: Yeah. And David had different relationships with James and Marguerite, with us, with many, many other artists. So, you’ll find bits and pieces all over.
DK: We’re going to have a section on this knowledge base that we’re building that points researchers towards the other archives and institutional holdings. How would you like us to describe PPOW as a resource for Wojnarowicz researchers? You have a description of the sort of holdings that the gallery – would you want to direct researchers to the gallery?
WO: Yes, by appointment. We’re going to actually be taking another space in this building and we’re going to have a library. Right now we just have bookcases in the back, and we need a place where people can come. So we will have a place people can sit and do research, but it’s not going to be like Fales where you’re going to see archival material. We’re not going to start to pull out old files or anything. There might be tons of David’s books and catalogues from shows he’s in, that kind of stuff. Because right now we don’t have room for it but we’re planning in September to build that.
DK: So we can follow up about that.
WO: You can follow up about it, but it will be a place where by appointment you can come and sit down and there will be all of the current shows he’s in, Art AIDS America, whatever it is, we’ll keep the catalogues. Now we don’t even have room for that. So we’re going to start doing that in the fall, building a library that was intended to be for curators and students and collectors.
DK: Great. That’s terrific.
WO: Yeah. So we’re trying to help people do that for our artists, because we’ve never been able to before, and we think now we can. So, that’s good.
DK: __historical __ historical material now
WO: Yes, and we have so many requests for people coming in and it’s very time consuming, and we don’t have it at our fingertips. If we can just seat someone at a desk and show them where the books are, they can sit and do their research here.
DK: Great. Do you feel like there are questions that you don’t get asked about Wojnarowicz? I know you have done many interviews and you’ve written about this and you’ve discussed it elsewhere.
WO: You mean something that’s important to know that no one’s ever asked me before?
DK: [laughs] Yeah! [laughs] Or times when you get pictures and say, “People never ask about X.”
WO: I can’t really think of that off hand. There’s nothing, really. It’s just amazing to me that you can have this person in a short time, intense time, making this body of work that is so rich. You know? And I don’t think anyone, I don’t think he even knew. Like I always think, that’s why I said he would be so surprised, because he was so racing against the clock, and he died so young, that there’s such an endless amount of people interested in this short life. I know there’s a lot of examples in history like that, but to see it, how it happens and how it’s created. I was just reading Olivia Laing’s book – did you read it? I just was reading it last weekend. And it’s like, oh my god. And she’s reiterating a lot of what’s already been said, but it’s getting to a wider audience now, too. And the whole environment, with Peter and the way she ties David now in connection with Darger or Hopper. With everyone on the book, there’s this string of connections. It’s fascinating to watch evolve, from my point of view. So I’m very privileged.
DK: Because of how sort of circumscribed the scene and the circle felt during his lifetime?
WO: Yeah, it felt like, because in a way, we were all earnestly doing everything we could when we were pretty young, in a very dire time. I think there’s no way of really appreciating what the AIDS crisis was like for someone who didn’t live it, if you were in the midst of it and your friends were gay. There’s just no way that you can compare that to anything going on today. I don’t think. So, and then to think that people are trying to understand what was going on by recreating, like, what was it like. I think Cindy did a pretty good job in her book. It was a pretty hard book to read, I thought.
DK: Yeah.
WO: But I mean, it’s just funny, that’s all.
DK: Yeah. And then it, in terms of, I know Marvin and Glenn, they’re the two heads of this project, have talked about or have asked people about the appropriateness or thoughts around the showing of Wojnarowicz’s work in a white cube environment.
WO: Well David showed it, and that’s where he showed it. I mean, he did other things, as well. So we always let people run with the ball if I find that they’re an interesting person who has a great idea and wants to put it in a downtown space or a non-profit space or whatever, as long as it’s well thought out and political and it’s something I would think David was interested in, go do it. And then we provide them with the material to do whatever, for rallies, for performances, for so much.
DK: That’s really nice.
WO: So we do grant a lot of license to things that aren’t major.
DK: That’s really interesting. And so, throughout this conversation, I think it’s become clear that it’s not about his sort of formal considerations, it’s about the intellectual or social context.
WO: That’s the most important thing. Because that’s what David, I am completely sure, that’s all he wanted to do, was make society more tolerant. So, that’s what our mission is, in my mind.
DK: And he wanted his work to reach people.
WO: Reach a broad amount of people, and reach people who can make change, and protect people. So, that, I feel, is what we try to keep doing. And so, we’d more likely say yes to something small that we think is great, than something that would be completely something David wouldn’t ever want. Not that people ask that much with David; it’s a very specific set of artwork that’s not going to be integrated into something too shallow. So, I think that’s really the purpose of the future, when people work with David’s work, they have to honor the integrity of his mission and what he represented.
DK: Yeah.
WO: [Aside: Eliza? . . .] So I think that’s, going back full circle to what I said at the beginning, and why David, I think, wanted to show with us and why he trusted us, and why, and because of the people we showed, like Carrie Mae and Sue Coe before him and with him. It takes a certain type of integrity and a point of view to have a gallery that is both commercial and political. And so we try to work with people who understand that. And I think we do. I think they come to us. Our collectors who buy David’s work are really very specific types of people who know more about David because there’s so much research. They aren’t buying it for resale. We don’t want to sell or put work in places that are too commercial. That would take away from his integrity, his message, which is vitally important. So I think that’s what we would ask future historians to pay attention to. And I think they will.
DK: The work demands it.
WO: The work demands it. But you never know. I think David’s work resists it. I think he created it to resist -- there’s a certain resistance to commercial exploitation he’s built into the work.
DK: Yes. Well, I think that’s a good place to end, then.
WO: Okay. If you have follow-up questions, of course, I’m. In terms of, I think it’s really important what you’re doing, actually. I finally understood it more, as we talked. Yeah, the same thing goes with the framing and the production, we keep those values David had in the way we show the films, the way we install shows. We do have installation photographs. I mean, there’s ways of doing it that we think make sense, that make it a Wojnarowicz show, not just a.
DK: Oh, and those are?
WO: Like, if you look at that show we did, Spirituality, or the booth we did in Basel, Switzerland, I think those booths, in a certain way, we try to keep it looking sort of like the shows we did with David.
DK: Right. And they look, then, distinct from the other
WO: Booths, yes, totally. I mean, a lot of it’s the work, but, and it’s amazing that you can throw the work together from the ‘80s and ‘90s and mix it up, and that’s what’s so incredible is that it still all works together and speaks to each other. And there, in fact, lies David’s brilliance in that the work he was doing very early on, to what he did the very last, it all made sense. Which he didn’t really articulate clearly all the time, because he didn’t have time to reflect. He was too busy. But it’s there now, so there’s a lot of opportunities for research.
DK: Working with a repertoire of forms and themes and sometimes specific images that recur throughout.
WO: Throughout, right, and he just kept evolving them. And had categories, that he saw things in categories.
DK: Yeah, which makes this Web project both a really interesting opportunity, because he’s such a particular kind of artist. Because it seems like it could translate really interestingly into a sort of environment where you can categorize works in ways where they can sort of hyperlink to each other, be arranged in different ways.
WO: Right.
DK: But there’s also a concern about being too rigid, because the image might not mean the same thing in every context.
WO: Right.
DK: So it’s something that we’re trying to__
WO: I think a lot of research could be done with the Native American imagery, that’s never been done. Because when I did the show at Basel, we kept seeing these arrowheads and Kachina dolls, and there’s a lot of that, but no one’s ever really.
DK: The like Snake dancers and the Hopi.
WO: There’s a lot there. I mean, we don’t have the time to do it, but.
DK: One of the things, I mean, we don’t have the time before we launch to do everything that we’d like to do, but one of the things we’re working on is to continue to list future projects. WO: Of possible things to look into.
DK: That would be strong research.
WO: That would be a good thing, rather than the same thing all the time.

The interview ends here at 49:20 but the conversation continues until 1:02:20.