BEN SCHUMACHER

Posted on | November 18, 2008 |

Recently releasing Don’t Look Down, a Tiny Vices Book with Tim Barber, Ben Schumacher creates art in many traditional and non tradition forms.  Whether it be through drawings or exploring new ways to conceptualize and present art via the internet, Ben’s work consistently intrigues and impresses.  Specifically of note are the Forts that he and his friends create, which he talks about below, as well as his plans to release another TV book featuring photos taken from the Forts. By Kyle Morrison.

Tell me about the forts. Do you consider those art, or a platform on which to make art?
I consider the forts artwork, however questions of authorship and location of the art object are cloudy. Trying to show a fort to an audience is difficult because I have to borrow images of the event from others people who were present. At the same time, anyone who comes to the fort is able to distribute or show any of the photographs or objects on whatever platform they may choose. The forts have no real identifiable position and no particular medium or singular location, there is continuity in spirit but the people who attend and the form of the fort differs each time. Documentation of the event happens through the collection of objects, photographs, maps, written stories and field recordings but the most successful dispersion often happens word-of-mouth. The event itself always evades the image or the object but it’s not really like the anti-retinal art of Duchamp or dematerialization from the 1960s, the images and objects collected and edited are really just a failure of capturing an event which has no clear ideology.

You recently launched a book with Tim Barber’s TV Books. Tell me a little about the book and how that came about?
I lived in London a year ago and started drawing everyday on the bus to work and I came up with all these drawings about stories that were from Canada. I had a coherent set that I sent to Tim and he wanted to make a book out of them. We are working on a new book about Forts right now.

What about the sculptures you make? What are you trying to get across with those? Do you have any particular favorites?
Yes, right now I like making my ‘.gif sculptures’ the most. I find images from Flickr or a 3-D model from google 3-D warehouse, then I remake parts of the image or the whole image into an object which I photograph against a white wall and then destroy. I lay the photograph of the sculpture over top of the found image and then make a .gif file. The idea is that the sculpture can be dispersed (copy and pasted) purely as an image circulating on the internet and not an object in a gallery (although the manner in which it is photographed hints at gallery appropriation). The work exists somewhere between the image of the destroyd physical sculpture and its virtual presence on the web.

Another sculpture is the one titled ‘16 hours 30 minutes $750 (getting a prescription I don’t need)’. This work is just a shelf that documents the time that it took me to visit various psychologists and doctors in order to get a Ritalin prescription. On the shelf there are receipts from the purchase of the prescription, the actual pills in the bottle, and photocopies of the psychological tests taken.

The sculptures are art themselves, but for most viewers, they see a photo of the sculpture rather than the sculpture itself. How does this come into play? Are the photos part of it or just a way to expose the sculptures
This idea is central to the GIF sculptures. I was thinking about blogs and websites becoming accepted platforms to view artwork and how often a works presence on the internet is an excuse to not attend a show. One can also easily take authorship of these images if they have not yet been in a show and so ideas of location, reproduction, distribution and stealing through the Internet became an important idea for the GIF sculptures.

How does living in a smaller town like Kitchener affect your work?
I have more space to make the forts and I also have access to a shop, which I wouldn’t have in a larger city.

The majority of your work comes across as pretty crude or haphazard. Is it intentional to do this? How do you manage to do this while maintaining integrity as an artist.
My interest in the obscene per se doesn’t go so far, it’s a guilty pleasure, something to do with nostalgia. I think that a lot of people are naturally attracted to youthful imagery, as it is something that constantly evades everyone. One only has to look at the age gap between the Spice Girls and Miley Cyrus at the height of their careers to see that we are becoming more and more attracted to the idea of youth culture (a theme which has been prevalent since the men in ancient Greece were fascinated with young boys whose image reminded them of their own youth).

Your work reminds me of Dash Snows with the forts being similar to his Nest project as well as the reference points and themes in your work. How do you feel about that?
I think the main difference is that the forts are not something that will happen inside of the gallery or indoors at all. The forts are autonomous structures built on public property or Crown land and usually left there to decay. However, the idea of exploring the various modes of representation of an event is similar to the nest project. I think both projects are heavily indebted to the happenings of Alan Kaprow or 1960’s conceptual projects like Yves Klein’s A Leap Into The Void.

Are there any artist that you admire or inspire you?
Anders Nordby, Kippenberger, Seth Price, Dan Graham, Michael Asher. They change a lot.

Check out more of Ben’s work at The Steelers.

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