Hi Gabe thanks for doing this
Lets start with an easy one. What does history stand for and how does your own history fit into the greater picture of western Civilizations?
Yikes, if this is the easy one I don’t know if I’m prepared to answer the rest.
History is a narrative, most of which is unattainable or decipherable. My own history is the thing I’m most schooled in but also the one I’m least able to really grasp. I’ve answered nothing.
Lots has changed since our last couple of interviews. Do you feel you moved up in the pecking order of the local PDX art scene and which part of that is positive and which has a shadow side to it?
Yes, I think I have increased my value, somewhat. These last couple years I really have tried a bunch of different things, sometimes failing really hard. Some shows we did at Place I was totally ill prepared to handle, like the In(ter)dependence big show we did with 14 different independent curators and alt spaces. Great attendance, but totally bombed on a couple of aspects, like having labels and statements up. Bit off way more than I could chew on that. Part of this last year has been all about remodeling the galleries and now that I don’t have to worry about scraping floors or tearing down shelving I get to really have fun in programming.
Part of what I’m very curious about is how we navigate and position ourselves as participants in the local art scene. A lot of the navigation in the last year and a half has really been about Place and asking question that revolve around what an institution does and what is effective representation. Making sure we give artists enough time to really develop a project, giving enough space for the work to breath, and doing the basics before we can add on more projects.
The shadowy side of gaining access is that there is more at risk. Also, gaining a bit more access sometimes just makes me much more awkward at openings and meeting new people. I often have to force myself to go to openings because I am always wondering if I’m going to fit in, usually I do, although sometimes I don’t. Both are necessary feelings or at least both happen, so it’s best for me to not over process it.
Talking about different sides to everything. How do you cope with the daily dual aspects of everything and what are your guide posts in that regard?
I guess I cope by keeping moving. I’m sometimes terribly insecure and don’t feel like I’m adding anything to the conversation, other times I feel like I’m doing something that is worthwhile. I definitely prefer the later feeling.
With these current bodies of work you seem to ask yourself who you are and in the process you invite us to asked us the same is that a desired effect?
Maybe, I guess. With both shows, Intimate Historical Fictions at Place and If I Were You: An Apology From Myself To Myself at Half/Dozen, I’m looking at my relationship to ideas that I wrestle with daily. In IHF I’m asking how real is my narrative since it’s impossible to ever really have access to it. In IIWY I look at how much I should blame or congratulate myself for my history/processes/actions that happen. I feel that the show at Half/Dozen acted as an annex for the show at Place. It felt like a footnote to the idea of personal narrative as a form storytelling. Both are really asking about accountability in regards to determinism.
Aren’t we all just story tellers reliving the stories we are told and the ones we repeat on our own accord?
Yes, Absolutely. It makes it difficult to take credit for much or to berate ourselves when we really mess up because it all ties back to how we internalized and interpreted those stories.
Most people are split in two, the one they are in the morning in their comfort zone, and the one that goes out to try to impress or live up to the standards of the world. Do you feel internal and external pressure to be someone else?
Where I am most comfortable is probably baking or gardening. Not until recently did I realize that I’m constantly working on the balance of aesthetic and balance of information when I’m baking and gardening. When I’m in the yard it’s always about blurring my eyes and seeing the distribution of color and shapes and because it’s been my primary hobby for the last 15 years I don’t have to think about the process of what is a weed or how to dig. I am able to just interact with the dirt, plants, bugs, and tools without having to wonder what each part does. With baking I work on balancing information and usually it’s with my finger going into my mouth searching to satisfy a wide range of information hitting my palette. A big part of both or at least the way I enjoy them is in sharing them, in this way they are a lot like an opening and I really LOVE openings.
Yes I have an internal pressure to be someone else, but still me.
Do you prefer one over the other?
My baking/gardening/tinkering around self is constantly informing the other, but I love the risk taking and failure that can happen in both. One just get’s documented differently and might lead me to not be invited to be in a show or I might really fuck it up and then I might lose all credibility, the small scrappy bit that I’ve hoarded. I guess if I could just retire, bake, garden, and mess around on the beach I’d be pretty happy.
If everything is in some utopian way virtual reality can we change our history and actually create our future?
No, we cannot change our history/narrative. You know what, I take that back. We are constantly changing our history every time we tell a story about our experience. We edit some details out, conjure details that weren’t there, and begin seeing it they way we need to see it in that moment.
What is the standard humans communicate with themselves and what is a desired state that is reachable while still in bodily form?
I’m not sure if I understand this question, but for myself I like the feeling of displacement I guess because it makes me feel like I’m alive and that there is something to wrestle with. Maybe that is exactly what it means to be human and to communicate it’s to know that things will always be different eventually.
Are your former selves welcome in your psychological house or are you, lets use a big word, ashamed of them?
My former selves are welcome in the house, but I never really get to see them because my current self really only performs what I think were these previous identities, which have a corresponding fiction that goes along with them.
We seem to have problems with ordinary language to formulate and to communicate our inner states. Is that what attracts you to art and it’s indirect way of saying the unspeakable?
I like to set up a space for a conversation and sometimes the best way to do it is in an installation. I love an opening because I’ve set up a conversation topic aesthetically and conceptually and I love for people to consider possibilities within it. I love to give people as much information as possible, it’s my responsibility to make sure I allow them in and not be afraid they will not be able to handle the information or that it will take away from the presentation.
What is your current disposition as an artist?
I’m not terribly sure. I’m at the end of a very busy period of involvement. I’m looking forward to taking a little break from making for a while and relaxing a bit.
Would you like to purge yourself of your past if that would be an option?
No, an ungraspable narrative might be all that I really have.
How much of your old self are you carrying forward into the future?
I’m not terrible sure of a way to measure that.
Do you feel that we have a psychological white washer in us?
We put memories in and get new stains when we retrieve them.
Is that healthy and in the interest of our psycholical well being to indulge in this somewhat on denial bordering habit?
Healthy or not, it’s the way it is. I’m not sure if there is such thing as denial, denying denial how silly, because we only have access to what we’re willing to see anyway. Some things just aren’t clear yet.
Could it be that maybe that in some way what we call a lie and the ability to do so is in itself remarkable, is an evolutionary addition to our mental make up?
It could be, not sure what that really means if it was true.
What coping mechanisms do you consider healthy?
All coping mechanisms are healthy for a short time because it lets you keep living for a bit longer. Some coping mechanisms, if they start to interfere with other parts of life that we see as necessary are not as healthy and at that point I don’t know if they can really be called a coping mechanism anymore.
Do you see your installations as metaphorical and what role play metaphors in this day and age?
I’m not sure if I see them as metaphorical. I mean in some ways they are. I use tropes that are pretty easily accessed, letting and inviting the viewer in. So in Intimate Historical Fictions I’ve created objects that feel like art objects. There are large mirrors, white columned stumps, large open-ended glass boxes leaning between the stumps and white gesso-ed books all on the mirror. Then I have the cast pinkish/red that is underneath all it. I placed the 3 sculptural events in a black room with black semi-gloss shadow responses on the wall. The installation had several entry points for the viewer to impose a metaphoric narrative if they needed it. I really felt like the show was standing in as an art piece to have a conversation of the role of having fictionalized histories and what that means for our storytelling selves.
You use light in this new body of work and the absence of it like in the black walls. What states of being-ness are you revering to?
I think I’m just playing different materials and to work in town that I really enjoy, especially and namely Laura Hughes, Damien Gilley, and Laura Fritz. I’ve been wanting to play with black for a while. One of the Place galleries is a black gallery for all of 2012, so I thought I might try my hand at it and explore the limitations and limitlessness of working with black. What I love is this endless void it created that totally enveloped the viewer. I want to play with black again soon.
Are the three pieces in the exhibit in some way representative of the different versions of Gabe Flores?
No, not particularly. What they stand in for are similar events that have different interpretations and meanings, but a similarity as a historical marker depending on how we are wanting to revisit them. So, it’s how we see categorized events like graduations, weddings, openings, deaths, or celebrations. We placed these events in similar containers, but or relationship to them individually is really the fictionalizing of the events. The supposed shadows in semi-gloss really look at the impossibility to take in the entire event. We are left solely with a fragment, we would need access to all the other variables if we wanted to really know what the event really was and really that is an impossibility that I can live without.
Many of us have preconceived notions about identity and have not found support from the world at large that is needed to develop a sense of pride in ones personality. Do you think that plays a role while we all are tinkering with ourselves trying to constantly update our selves as if we are a toy?
We are going to update ourselves regardless. We’ve been doing that way before 2.0 ever existed.
How do universal versus media standards play into this exhibit especially in regard to history which is a good witness to show how taste in almost everything constantly change? What can we learn in that regard from our past?
I’m playing with the idea of a desirable/interesting art object that we want to eventually turn our back on once we notice the shadow riffing on the wall, so I suppose I’m looking at how there could always be something that captures our interest more and that the previous interest is very important to the current one.
Are you virtually a virtual sculptural event?
I am always virtually a virtual sculptural event.
Are you in the process to become your own work of art?
Funny you ask this. Currently, I’m 2 years and 8 months into a project I’m calling “Gabe Flores in the Arts,” which is a 5 year performance piece that looks at my social and cultural navigation within art systems. This is really to assess whether or not this is a career/endeavor I want to explore further and to see how much can be done in a relatively short amount of time.
Aren’t most of us treat themselves like a living sculptor that is like a slave to our own inner demons?
I am trapped in my body with no real verification that anything outside of it is real at all. But, even though I’m trapped I always have complete freedom to explore any path, at least in the arts, because nothing has ever been done before. There will always be similarities but no path of causal relationships has ever done what any individual is pursuing. We have complete freedom, but we fear that others will connect us to unintended causal relationships.
What future Gabe Flores is hybrid-ing in you?
I’m going to be going to a residency at Kronica Center for Contemporary Art in Bytom, Poland this summer for a month. My next gallery show will be in October at FalseFront with Nim Wunnan. I’ll be presenting 2-D work and Nim will be doing an installation, a bit of a FreakyFriday show for us. Also, we have several projects coming this summer for Place that go outside the gallery. One is a rugby game scheduled for August that will be full contact and will involve artists, curators, and directors. Also, we are holding a residency this September at my mom and her partner Jerry’s home in McMinnville, super looking forward to that. I’m going to be selling my house in the middle of next year and I have some major projects scheduled in 2014 and 2015 that will explore how to make long term investments with disenfranchised populations without displacing them.
Have you become more alien to yourself in the process or are you just expressing more aspects of your self like a human house that's being added on?
I think I’m becoming somewhat more alien in a human house.
Previous interview with Gabe. It is part of the above exercise of "Explaining Gabe Flores."
I feel that the below is document of Gabe Flores, so it doesn’t need to be altered
Here is the part of the old Gabe Flores if you wish go over these and correct enhance or illuminate the version of that self which now exists only as a memory and its residue.
Can you tell me a bit about your art practice and what drives you to create Art?
Art helps in my process of letting my guard down. I enjoy how art enables me to be vulnerable. I think my vulnerability helps the audience to be ok with vulnerability themselves.
What labels are you comfortable with if any and if not why?
I guess I’m working on becoming comfortable with labels. I am a person of more color and people freely put me into categories. I wear t-shirts that say hyphenated-American because it allows for a pause before a category can be used.
I often wonder if being gay, an atheist, a person of more color is more important of a label than being a gardener, artist, or dog lover. I know the narrative of oppression tells me that of course the history of being brown, gay, and poor means that it recognizes the struggles, but I’m not always thinking about the struggle. Maybe I’m just selfish.
With ideas of diversity you can see all people as people one in the same or you can say that they all have differences that need to be acknowledged. The minute you decide either of them you are oppressing because both honor and both oppress.
You cannot free yourself from that label.
I came across an interesting quote from your blog stating
“therapy is expensive blogs are free”
Do you think that most of us repackage our inner chaos and present it as fresh fodder and do you consider Art as form of therapy?
I definitely think of art as a form of therapy because it allows me to process and concentrate on ideas that puzzle me. The majority of my work deals with being an oppressor and how there is no escaping that, so instead with my work I focus on how I can accept that I oppress and I can honor myself in not hiding that from myself.
How would you describe your experience of “Manor of Art” in retrospect?
I had a great time at the Manor. I had taken a bit of a break from participating in shows and putting myself out there. I am really thankful for being given the freedom to really do whatever I wanted. I met a ton of people and had fantastic conversations. I hadn’t felt that high in I don’t know when.
What is the role of the art critic in your opinion?
Their role is to keep the conversation going. Hopefully they act as navigators and give language to ideas the audience may only feel.
Do you feel your installation was worth the effort and what happened with your piece?
I would totally do it again. I loved my room. Because it was an installation piece a couple of folks were curious about how much something like my work would cost to have it in a home to purchase. I told them a round about number and then told them they could only have it for 10 days and then I would have to take it down. I love the idea of it being temporary because it reminds me how wonderful an experience can be even if it’s just momentary. I wanted to create the most comfortable room I could and I think was.
Did you leave part of it there or is going to have an afterlife?
I do need to go and pry a couple of pin nails out, that’s all that is left in the room. I might use the materials again, I mean I sanded and stained 350 mahogany tiles so I hope I’ll use them again.
Do you believe in a concept of after life?
Nope. I think that a concept in any life besides the one you’re participating is really not so important.
Several years ago I had a psychotic break and began hearing, seeing, and tactilely feeling things other people couldn’t and my psychiatrist thinks it was because of stress and judgments growing up closeted as a Jehovah’s Witness.
The voices were all about how others were judging me. The scenario was that all of this is virtual reality and that my “real” body is someplace in the future hooked up to machines and I would eventually go back to my older body after 7 years had passed.
Well, it’s been 6 years and I have finally become ok that maybe the scenario isn’t real, or rather isn’t so important. Maybe me concerning myself with this life hooked up to a virtual reality sort of gizmo is making me distant to whatever life this is that I’m currently in.
That is how I think about the belief in an after life, maybe we all have had minor psychotic breaks because we’re terrified of being fully present in the life that we have here and now, so we make up a life in a different world that wouldn’t be as bad is this one.
There is a lot hope though in the belief and you can never take away someone’s hope.
That brings me to ’’Greener than who, Greener Than You?”
What does it refer to is like meant as a survival strategy?
The ideology of Green is an idea where we find comfort even though we have unease at the same time.
Ideology is always based on the fantasy of the ideal, of course making it impossible.
To be fully Green is death.
We can only see parts of this ideology and hope to find satisfaction in the part we know. Or we choose to ignore parts because it’s just too much to be sometimes. It becomes a comfortable yet contentious part of us.
We think of being Green as our own and forget the systemic nature of how it has become something to be. Our ideologies are usually places where we find comfort, enjoy being, and can congratulate ourselves for getting it even if we sometimes don’t. I guess that’s why we maintain them.
I guess the survival strategy is to try your best, but don’t be too hard on yourself when you can’t.
We oppress each other with our ideologies and we oppress ourselves in the process because we are distancing ourselves from each other and end up playing a very silly “At least I’m not” game.
What would your ideal world look like and how can artists help to shape it?
People being really present and not afraid to show their supposed ugly parts.
I would like it if people shared their stories of struggle and perseverance because the real is somewhere in there.
I think artists need to be willing to get a little dirty and start point the finger at themselves first and be more willing to get dirty and be vulnerable.
Do you agree with the statement “imperfection is the new perfect”
Perfect is that ideal type that is part of the unattainable desire-based fantasy.
Ownership is the new perfect.
It’s hard because I would hate to see the new perfect become a confessional.
And what is satisfaction in your mind set?
Being ok with the idea that I’m going to be here for a while. That means planting bulbs in the fall and getting annuals in the spring so I can enjoy them all summer.
Because I thought I was going to be going back to the future I stopped planning ahead, even for bulbs and annuals. For me satisfaction is realizing that this is my life and I need to start enjoying it and stop being so hard on others and myself. I’m working on acceptance.
What can you tell me about the show?
There are no gimmicks in this show. I created the work with extremely limited resources. In 2008 I spent 9 weeks in a Native American based rehab for alcohol abuse and this work is my process of trying to navigate my identity and my efforts to find a connected form of treatment.
I’m a gay atheist who was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, so I am immediately distrusting of groupthink and lack of questioning that sometimes happens in rehab. Going to the 17 acres near St. Helens was my white flag. It hasn’t been the easiest path since leaving residential treatment, but I think I’ve found a rhythm that works well for me.
I am very satisfied with the work. There are eight pieces that are reflections that I was trying to process, although I think of them as one piece because they all necessitate each other.
