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Brian Andrews, Duncan MacKenzie, and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with Chicago-area artist Paul Nudd at Spudnik Press, surrounded by the work of the 1st International Milwaukee Riso Invitational. Nudd has spent more than two decades producing a gloriously strange universe of hairy organisms, mutant bodies, psychedelic biological forms, and wonderfully unsettling surfaces. His work moves between painting, drawing, printmaking, video, and, most recently, ceramics. But beneath all the slime, crust, and occasional bodily horror is an artist deeply committed to experimentation, collaboration, and the pleasures of making things. The conversation begins with Nudd's long relationship with Chicago's printmaking community, including his legendary 2009 residency at Spudnik Press with cartoonist Onsmith, where the pair produced more than a thousand prints—and apparently sold none of them. Nudd describes why he loves Riso's imperfect surfaces, the magic of working with master printers, his affection for Chicago Imagism, and the importance of preserving uncertainty in the studio. The hosts also investigate whether Nudd's work is actually gross or not. The second half finds Nudd reflecting on the unexpected pleasures of ceramics, his work as an elementary school art teacher, creative attention, and the increasingly porous boundaries between his studio, garden, kitchen, compost heap, and classroom.  Recorded at Spudnik Press, Chicago, in conjunction with the closing of the 1st International Milwaukee Riso Invitational. Name drops and links Paul Nudd - https://westernexhibitions.com/artist/paul-nudd/ Onsmith - https://www.spudnikpress.org/people/onsmith/ Chris Flynn - https://cflynnprints.com/ Jim Nutt - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Nutt Peter Saul - https://www.moma.org/artists/5178-peter-saul Chloe Perkis - https://www.chloe-perkis.com/ Big Black - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Black Spudnik Press - https://www.spudnikpress.org/ Western Exhibitions - https://westernexhibitions.com/ Hoofprint - https://www.hoofprintchicago.com/ Marz Community Brewing - https://www.marzbrewery.com/

What makes a painting worth saving? What happens when the image in your head refuses to become the image on your panel? And why does everybody want another fox? This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie, Brian Andrews, and Ryan Peter Miller welcome Chicago painter Mari Eastman for a conversation recorded at Spudnik Press during its Riso Print Fest. Eastman takes us through the pleasures and frustrations of painting, from translating a beloved fox into a woodblock print to rescuing abandoned paintings with techniques borrowed from Bob Ross. They explore fashion photography, the Chicago figurative painting scene, the peculiar intimacy of appropriated images, and the elusive point where faithful representation can lose the feeling that made an image irresistible in the first place.     Name Drops: Mari Eastman - bombonprojects.com  Ben Butler - benbutlerart.com  Shannon Stratton - shannonraestratton.com  Edvard Munch - nga.gov  Kerry James Marshall - nga.gov  Paul McCarthy - hauserwirth.com  Tyson Reeder - canadanewyork.com  Carl Baratta - carlbaratta.com  Bob Ross - bobross.com  Rebecca Morris - bortolamigallery.com  Richard Estes - nga.gov  Karen Kilimnik - metmuseum.org  Richard Prince - gagosian.com  Elizabeth Peyton - gagosian.com  Margaux Williamson - bradleyertaskiran.com  Leanne Shapton - leanneshapton.com  School of the Art Institute of Chicago - saic.edu  Spudnik Press - spudnikpress.org  Process/Process - process-process.com  Bombon Projects - bombonprojects.com

What do you do when your hope for the future starts to feel fragile? And what can a painting, an act of remembrance, or a bottle of perfume do about it? Duncan MacKenzie sits down with Haitian-born artist Manuel Mathieu at Calgary's Esker Foundation for a conversation that moves between studio practice and the world beyond it. They begin with Mathieu's presentation at the 2026 Venice Biennale, including GENOCIDE and his mosaic Abundance and Drought, then explore archives, erasure, political power, the responsibilities of artists, and whether art can make room for disagreement without closing down empathy. Mathieu talks through the evolution of his paintings, from highly controlled marks to surfaces that scrape, drip, burn, and resist their original plans. He argues that figuration is not abstraction's opposite so much as one of its tools. He and Duncan work through the possibilities of beauty, Haitian Vodou, spirituality, the legacy of Toussaint Louverture, and the difference between changing the world and changing the lives of the people near you.     Name Drops and links Manuel Mathieu - https://www.manuelmathieu.com/  Clyfford Still - https://clyffordstillmuseum.org/  Kara Walker - https://www.karawalkerstudio.com/  Kent Monkman - https://www.kentmonkman.com/  Titus Kaphar - https://www.kapharstudio.com/  Willem de Kooning - https://www.dekooning.org/  Christian Boltanski - https://www.centrepompidou.fr/en/ressources/personne/z88xAxH  Francis Bacon - https://www.francis-bacon.com/  Toussaint Louverture - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toussaint_Louverture Audre Lorde - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audre_Lorde bell hooks - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_hooks Esker Foundation - https://eskerfoundation.com/  Pilar Corrias - https://www.pilarcorrias.com/  Manuel Mathieu Parfums - https://manuelmathieuparfums.com/en

Artist and magician Jeanette Andrews joins Duncan and Jesse at the Elmhurst Art Museum, the very place where, as a teenager, she began imagining how magic could become contemporary art. Nearly twenty years later, that ambition has become an exhibition. The conversation travels from Victorian parlor magic and vaudeville to the psychology of surprise, Alan Turing, and Andrews's Taken by Artificial Surprise, which asks audiences to distinguish between human-created magic and illusions developed with machine learning. Along the way: why knowing how a trick works can ruin the experience, whether magic is really for adults, and a research process involving enough handwritten notes to make an apartment resemble a conspiracy theorist's headquarters. ****Update: The HCL Benefit is November 10th, 2026 Photo: Michael George  Name Drop List: Duncan MacKenzie - kurasmackenzie.com Jesse Malmed - uwm.edu/arts/directory/malmed-jesse/ Jeanette Andrews - jeanetteandrewsstudio.com Bad at Sports - badatsports.com Lumpen Radio - lumpenradio.com Elmhurst Art Museum - elmhurstartmuseum.org McCormick House - elmhurstartmuseum.org/architecture Criss Angel - crissangel.com John Cottingham - johncottingham.co.uk Western Philosophy: An Anthology - johncottingham.co.uk/Western-Philosophy/ Max Maven - maxmaven.com The Office - peacocktv.com/stream-tv/the-office Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin - encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/theater-biographies/jean-eugene-robert-houdin Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago - mcachicago.org Invisible Roses - mcachicago.org/stories/editorial/invisible-roses/ Anton Chekhov - britannica.com/biography/Anton-Chekhov Tom Griffiths - psych.princeton.edu/people/tom-griffiths Revealing ontological commitments by magic - pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25490128/ High Concept Labs - highconceptlabs.org Harvard metaLAB - metalab.harvard.edu Alan Turing - britannica.com/biography/Alan-Turing Computing Machinery and Intelligence - academic.oup.com/mind/article/LIX/236/433/986238 Taken by Artificial Surprise - jeanetteandrewsstudio.com/taken-by-artificial-surprise Chicago Symphony Orchestra - cso.org In Plain Listen - jeanetteandrewsstudio.com/in-plain-listen-nac University of Houston - uh.edu MIT — Jeanette Andrews visiting-artist profile - arts.mit.edu/people/jeanette-andrews/ On Wonder, Mind, & Magic: Jeanette Andrews - elmhurstartmuseum.org/exhibitions/on%20wonder%20mind%20and%20magic High Concept Labs 2026 Benefit - highconceptlabs.org/events/2026-benefit

What can eight small paintings tell us about the possibilities of an artist-run space? Duncan MacKenzie, joined midway by Jesse Malmed, speaks with Jean Alexander Frater, Matthew Girson, and Dana DeGiulio about a two-person exhibition at Material, Jean's artist-run project space in Chicago's Roscoe Village. Four paintings by Matthew and four by Dana are installed in an alternating sequence, setting up a conversation across the walls rather than dividing the gallery by artist. Their discussion begins with the particular staying power of artist-run Chicago: Dana's work establishing Julius Caesar in 2008, Matthew's earlier project presenting artworks from the cab of a pickup truck, and Jean's decade of making room for other artists at Material. From there, the conversation turns to the peculiar ambitions of intimate paintings, each made within a day. Is choosing a familiar genre conservative? What happens when a painting leaves the studio and enters the social space of an exhibition? And what can an actual encounter with an object offer that a circulating image cannot? The group follows those questions through care, constraint, repetition, touch, and hospitality—with Maggie Nelson, Agnes Martin, Nina Simone, and the art market making appearances along the way. If a painting cannot tell its viewer what to feel, perhaps it can begin a sentence someone else is free to finish.   Names Dropped: Duncan MacKenzie - kurasmackenzie.com/ Jesse Malmed - jessemalmed.net/ Jean Alexander Frater - alexanderfrater.com/home.html Matthew Girson - matthewgirson.com/ Dana DeGiulio - danadegiulio.com/ Agnes Martin - diaart.org/collection/artist-a-to-z/martin-agnes Jackson Pollock - pkhouse.org/ Maggie Nelson - poetryfoundation.org/poets/maggie-nelson Martin Luther King Jr. - thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/martin-luther-king-jr/ Nina Simone - ninasimone.com/biography/ Nick Cave (musician) - nickcave.com/ Bad at Sports - badatsports.com/ Material - thevisualist.org/?p=194120 Julius Caesar - juliuscaesarchicago.net/about-jc Lumpen Radio - lumpenradio.com/ Christie's - christies.com/ Rothko Chapel - rothkochapel.org/ Palace of Versailles - en.chateauversailles.fr/ Google - blog.google/ Steinway & Sons - steinway.com/ Paintings that have the look of paintings that are looked at - thevisualist.org/?p=194120 On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint - graywolfpress.org/books/freedom-0 Art Song (section of On Freedom) - graywolfpress.org/books/freedom-0 Number 7A, 1948 (Jackson Pollock) - christies.com/en/stories/jackson-pollock-number7a-1948-john-elderfield-44b8c76206ad4793a8dccc3c899ea86f Christie's May 18, 2026 evening auctions - press.christies.com/christies-commences-spring-marquee-week-with-11-billion-in-sales-in-a-single-night/ Project Suncatcher - blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/research/google-project-suncatcher/

At Spudnik Press in Chicago, Duncan MacKenzie, Brian Andrews and Ryan Peter Miller welcome Mark Jeffery, Judd Morrissey and Kristin Mariani to discuss the Poor Farm Experiment's Leopold Benches: A P(o)or(t)ch Theater (MIDWEST REDUX). Developed through the U.S. Pavilion's PORCH program at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale and presented in Chicago at the MCA's Chicago Performs festival, the work turns a porch into a place of observation, invitation, performance and collective play. The conversation moves through Aldo Leopold's benches, stereoscopic photographs and binocular rivalry, Mariani's language-bearing Text Toiles, the choreography of "queer sitting," and the Deeply Choir's role in animating the museum plaza. It also opens onto the project's wider artistic ecology: Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam's Poor Farm in Wisconsin; Mark Jeffery and Kelly Kaczynski's residency practice; the nido residency in Umbria; and an approach to collaboration in which living together, hosting, making and friendship become inseparable. PERFORMANCE: 9/25/2026 - 3pm at the MCA! (Dolly Day)   Names Dropped: Duncan MacKenzie - kurasmackenzie.com Brian Andrews - brianandrews.org Ryan Peter Miller - ryanpetermiller.com/about Mark Jeffery - saic.edu/profiles/faculty/mark-jeffery Judd Morrissey - saic.edu/profiles/faculty/judd-morrissey Kristin Mariani - saic.edu/profiles/faculty/kristin-mariani Kelly Kaczynski - kellyfkaczynski.com/About Michelle Grabner - michellegrabner.com Brad Killam - cod.edu/faculty/websites/killam.html Cynthia Post Hunt - cynthiaposthunt.com/about Aldo Leopold - aldoleopold.org/about/aldo-leopold Shannon Stratton - shannonraestratton.com/about Kelly Lloyd - k-lloyd.com/bio-statement Chris Wood - mcachicago.org/whats-on/events/the-poor-farm-a-poortch-theater-midwest-redux Corey Smith - coreyds.com VALIE EXPORT - valieexport.at Lyubov Popova - moma.org/artists/4694-liubov-popova Varvara Stepanova - moma.org/artists/5643-varvara-stepanova Kay Rosen - kayrosen.com Sol LeWitt - moma.org/artists/3528-sol-lewitt Giotto - nga.gov/artists/1342-giotto Caravaggio - nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/michelangelo-merisi-da-caravaggio Lisa Stone - spacesarchives.org/about-us/spaces-board/lisa-stone Maria Gaspar - mariagaspar.com/bio Ginger Krebs - gingerkrebs.com/home.html Laura Paige Kyber - mcachicago.org/about/who-we-are/people/laura-kyber Joey Orr - joeyorr.com/about Moira Brennan - jeromefdn.org/moira-brennan Lin Hixson - everyhousehasadoor.org Peter Taub - pewcenterarts.org/panelist/peter-taub Vanessa Damilola Macaulay - vanessamacaulay.com/about Leon J. Hilton - taps.brown.edu/people/leon-hilton Bonnie Tyler - bonnietyler.com Mies van der Rohe - miessociety.org Midas (Kelly Kaczynski's dog) - kellyfkaczynski.com/About Leopold Benches / MCA Chicago - mcachicago.org/whats-on/events/the-poor-farm-a-poortch-theater-midwest-redux Poor Farm Experiment - poorfarmexperiment.org Living Within the Play: nido V - poorfarmexperiment.org/?page_id=1427 Spudnik Press - spudnikpress.org MCA Talk: Performance Art in Chicago - mcachicago.org/whats-on/events/mca-talk-performance-art-in-chicago

What if the problem with Chicago's art world isn't a shortage of artists, galleries, institutions, or ideas—but a shortage of connective tissue? This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie sits down at the Gertie Hub with Gertie founder Abby Pucker and Head of Programming, Partnerships & Membership Chanelle Lacy for a conversation about building audiences, building collectors, and building cultural infrastructure in Chicago. The story starts with Gertie's origin: Abby's long-running interest in getting people into the same room, her return to Chicago during COVID, and a listening tour that revealed a strange contradiction. Chicago had museums, galleries, artists, spaces, and ambitious programming everywhere—but plenty of people still felt like they had nowhere to go and no way into the culture. Gertie emerged as an attempt to close that gap. From there, the conversation becomes a much bigger argument about Chicago. Why does the city produce so many remarkable artists and cultural workers while remaining so difficult for mid-career artists to sustain? When does Chicago's legendary self-reliance become a silo? What happens when "we don't care what New York thinks" stops being freedom and starts becoming a defensive posture? And what kind of infrastructure would make it easier for artists to stay, return, grow, and find audiences here? That leads directly into Chicago Exhibition Week, running September 14–20, 2026: Gertie's citywide effort to make Chicago's existing cultural ecosystem radically easier to enter. Abby and Chanelle talk maps, directories, marketing, partnerships, galleries, museums, new collectors, and the deceptively difficult work of getting people off Instagram and through the door. Along the way, Duncan asks the most basic—and maybe hardest—question: what is the value argument for art? Chanelle answers that art lets us see the world through someone else's eyes and creates a context for difficult conversations. Abby talks about curiosity, connection, discovery, and the pleasure of feeling "in on" a cultural conversation. All three keep circling the same problem: who is building new art fans now? The discussion also wanders happily through Riot Fest, music-festival graphics, the Armory, Coachella, Lollapalooza, art fairs, neighborhood galleries, collecting, Chicago parking, and the possibility of turning a finance professional into an art freak. Then the radio fades out... In the internet-only nugget, the conversation gets into the brass tacks: Gertie Curious and Gertie Curated, membership programming, collection and studio visits, cultural travel, and the relationship between membership and the organization's public-facing work. From there, Abby and Duncan go deep on a question Bad at Sports has wrestled with for years: why build a cultural organization as a for-profit instead of a nonprofit? That opens a long discussion about philanthropy, grants, mission creep, institutional agility, donor power, KPIs, governance, learned dependency, the economics of culture, and whether an art industry can be sustained almost entirely by galleries, auction houses, and charitable giving. The answer, at least here, is not especially tidy—which is why it is worth listening to. It may, however, begin with Abby's simplest proposition: It's cool to care. NAME DROPS / FURTHER READING Guests / Gertie Gertie — https://www.gertie.co/ Abby Pucker / Chanelle Lacy / Gertie team — https://www.gertie.co/about Gertie membership — https://www.gertie.co/membership Gertie Instagram — @gertie.chicago — https://www.instagram.com/gertie.chicago/ Chicago Exhibition Week Chicago Exhibition Week 2026 — September 14–20, 2026 — https://www.chicagoexhibitionweek.com/ CXW 2026 map — https://www.chicagoexhibitionweek.com/2026-map Gertie exhibitions discussed 82 Nights Only* — September 16–December 13, 2026, Gertie Hub — https://www.gertie.co/exhibitions/82-nights-only Over My Head: Encounters with Conceptual Art in a Flyover City, 1984–2015 — https://www.gertie.co/exhibitions/over-my-head Ornament & Information — Chicago Cultural Center — https://www.gertie.co/exhibitions/ornament-and-information Earlier projects / people Art in Common — co-founded by Zoe Lukov — https://www.artincommon.art/about-2 Zoe Lukov — https://www.zoelukov.com/about-mission — Instagram: @zoelukov Next Stop: Chicago — https://www.nextstopchicago.co/ Neighbors art fair — https://www.neighbors.art/ Mirka Serrato / Neighbors background  Vic Mensa — Next Stop: Chicago. Chicago art ecosystem / venues Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago — https://mcachicago.org/ Art Institute of Chicago — https://www.artic.edu/ The Renaissance Society — https://www.renaissancesociety.org/ Chicago Cultural Center — https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/chicago_culturalcenter.html SECRIST | BEACH — https://secristbeach.com/ Spudnik Press Cooperative — https://www.spudnikpress.org/ Corbett vs. Dempsey — https://corbettvsdempsey.com/ Recess — https://recesschicago.com/ All Together Now — https://www.alltogethernow.fun/ SVRN — https://www.svrn.com/ Music / festival / cultural comparisons Riot Fest — https://riotfest.org/ Mike "Riot Mike" Petryshyn — Riot Fest founder The Armory Show — https://www.thearmoryshow.com/ Lollapalooza — https://www.lollapalooza.com/ Coachella — https://www.coachella.com/ Knockdown Center — https://knockdown.center/ Membership-program references The Joffrey Ballet — https://joffrey.org/ Lyric Opera of Chicago — https://www.lyricopera.org/ Art Basel Paris — https://www.artbasel.com/paris Other institutions / art-market references Gagosian — https://gagosian.com/ Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) — https://www.moma.org/ Barnes Foundation — https://www.barnesfoundation.org/ Bad at Sports — https://badatsports.com/ Lumpen Radio / WLPN 105.5 FM — https://lumpenradio.com/

What if the most radical thing an artist can do right now is… take their time? This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with curators Abigail Winograd and Dieter Roelstraete, a.k.a. DRAW, to talk about their recent GRAY Chicago exhibition, IT'S ABOUT TIME: Counterproductive Conceptualisms in Chicago. Originally conceived under the much more dangerous title "Slacker Conceptualism," the exhibition gathers ten Chicago-based or Chicago-trained artists around a shared suspicion of productivity, professionalism, polish, legibility, self-branding, and the endless demand that artists explain themselves. The conversation starts with artists who take years to finish paintings, lean things against walls rather than attach them, make objects that seem almost perversely uninterested in becoming commodities, and cultivate what Abigail and Dieter call a kind of "studied nonchalance." From there, things get bigger. What does it mean to make political art without making your politics immediately legible? What happens when opacity becomes an act of resistance? Can refusing productivity itself be political? Why does Chicago—with its strange combination of universities, affordable-ish space, artist-run culture, deep pedagogical histories, and relative distance from the market machinery of New York—make this particular kind of artistic life possible? Along the way we get Pope.L, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Michael Asher, Bas Jan Ader, Josef Strau, Cologne in the 1990s, Gen-X slackerdom, cringe comedy, unfinished paintings, unopened packages, boats, sawhorses, kitchen cabinets, artist losers, artist attitudes, the fetish of identity, the problem with virtue signaling, and the revolutionary possibility of simply refusing to hustle. And then the radio turns off. In the web-only afterparty, the conversation expands into earlier generations of Chicago conceptualism, center-versus-periphery arguments, the weird provincialism of assuming New York remains the center of American art, and finally the uncomfortable relationship between art schools, enormous tuition bills, professionalization, and the economic pressure placed on young artists to turn artistic practice into a viable career. Is the artist supposed to produce? Explain? Sell? Educate? Perform an identity? Change the world? Or can you just be an artist? Apparently, in Chicago, you can at least try. NAME DROPS / FURTHER READING The exhibition IT'S ABOUT TIME: Counterproductive Conceptualisms in Chicago — GRAY Chicago, July 10–August 22, 2026. Exhibition text, artists, checklist, installation views, and curatorial essay: GRAY — IT'S ABOUT TIME DRAW — the curatorial collaboration of Abigail Winograd and Dieter Roelstraete. The exhibition page includes biographies of both curators: DRAW / GRAY exhibition page Curators Abigail Winograd — independent curator and writer; co-curator/co-commissioner of Jeffrey Gibson's 2024 U.S. Pavilion and former Neubauer Collegium Visiting Fellow: Abigail Winograd — Neubauer Collegium Dieter Roelstraete — curator at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, University of Chicago; former MCA Chicago curator and documenta 14 curatorial team member: Dieter Roelstraete — Neubauer Collegium Artists in IT'S ABOUT TIME Alex Chitty: alexchitty.com Shir Ende: shirende.com Max Guy: maxguy.studio Jinn Bronwen Lee: jinnbronwenlee.com Dave Lloyd — see the GRAY exhibition page for works and installation views: Dave Lloyd in IT'S ABOUT TIME Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle: Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle — artist information and website Devin T. Mays — see the GRAY exhibition page: Devin T. Mays in IT'S ABOUT TIME Pope.L: Pope.L — MoMA Nick Raffel — see the GRAY exhibition page: Nick Raffel in IT'S ABOUT TIME Miao Wang — see the GRAY exhibition page: Miao Wang in IT'S ABOUT TIME Conceptual-art ancestors, fellow travelers, and troublemakers Michael Asher — conceptual artist and legendary CalArts teacher whose practice becomes an important reference point in the conversation: Michael Asher — CalArts / MOCA overview Bas Jan Ader — particularly In Search of the Miraculous and Ader's subsequent association with failure, romantic conceptualism, and the mythology of the "artist loser": Bas Jan Ader — Estate / Meliksetian | Briggs Josef Strau — artist and author of "The Nonproductive Attitude," one of the central intellectual reference points for the exhibition: Josef Strau — Whitney Museum Christopher Williams - https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/christopher-williams Lawrence Weiner - https://www.mariangoodman.com/artists/70-lawrence-weiner/ Günther Förg - https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/19427-gunther-forg/ Martin Kippenberger - https://www.maxhetzler.com/artists/martin-kippenberger Albert Oehlen - https://gagosian.com/artists/albert-oehlen/ Bennett Simpson - https://heni.com/news?artist=Bennett%20Simpson Hannah Arendt - https://hac.bard.edu/about/hannaharendt/ Sigmund Freud - https://www.freud-museum.at/en/ Dan Peterman - http://www.danpeterman.com/ Michelle Grabner - https://www.jamescohan.com/artists/michelle-grabner Josh Kline - https://www.lissongallery.com/artists/josh-kline Institutions / places GRAY Chicago Renaissance Society Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society University of Chicago Northwestern University University of Illinois Chicago School of the Art Institute of Chicago Columbia College Chicago Art Institute of Chicago MCA Chicago ICA Boston Regards Gallery Image: Dieter Roelstraete and Abigail Winograd Photo by Robert Chase Heishman. Image courtesy of GRAY Chicago/New York

Blurb:   Daniel Tucker interviews Georgia Kotretsos about her work with the ΤΗΕ ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY which is conceived of as a Arts & Culture Research Lab Observatorium with projects throughout Greece and beyond. This interview was conducted at the Twenty-First International Conference on the Arts in Society conference "Modeling Life Systems: Art, Algorithms, Ecologies" at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.    Bio: Georgia Kotretsos is a visual artist, researcher, the founder of the nonprofit organization THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY, Arts & Culture Research Lab Observatorium, in Athens, Greece and the publisher of TTS Press, which operates in the field of cultural studies and art research in Greece, the Balkans, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. TTS focuses on the Greek periphery, the islands, and remote areas. It creates interdisciplinary teams tailored for each project, working collaboratively on site-specific intangible projects that uncover the unique aspects of each locale. TTS publications are available at the following bookstores: Politeia, Ianos, Museum of Cycladic Art, Iambos, Pixel,and Public (online). Through these endeavors, THE TEΛΟΣ SOCIETY highlights the importance of contemporary art and cultural heritage while fostering new creative perspectives and audiences. She holds an MFA in Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (USA, 2004), where she studied on a full merit-based scholarship, and a BFA from the Durban Institute of Technology in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (2000), where she relocated as a teenager during the country's post-apartheid transition. Her work systematically critiques conventional theoretical positions on viewing and perceiving artworks, seeking—through liberatory and anarchic visual practices—to reveal that the experience of viewing is site-specific, and that the emancipation of the viewer is a crucial source of artistic knowledge. Her research-based approach—whether in the form of artwork, text, or interview—resists traditional forms and historical modes of acquiring knowledge, proposing alternative methodologies for its creation and reception. Her work has been presented both in Greece and internationally, including at the Onassis Art Center and the Asia Society in New York, the 4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, the Tinguely Museum (Basel), La Kunsthalle (Mulhouse), the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art (Thessaloniki), and the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis. She has held seven solo exhibitions and participated in numerous significant international initiatives, including the 56th Venice Biennale, MediaImpact in Moscow, and FIELD MEETING in New York. From 2006 to 2010, she co-founded the independent art space Boots Contemporary Art Space in St. Louis, USA—an alternative contemporary art laboratory—and served as editor-in-chief of BootPrint, a biannual journal by and for artists. From 2009 to 2013, she served as a columnist for Art21 Magazine of PBS Arts Feature in New York, with her column Inside the Artist's Studio. In 2014, her writing was also published on LABKULTUR.TV in Germany. In 2019, Kotretsos published a report on the arts in Greece reflecting on the decade of recession 2008-18 entitled "Athens is the Only Cave in the World that has a Skylight" for the Field Journal in the US.  Her works are held in private collections, including the National Bank of Greece, the Mamidakis Foundation, and others. More information about her work can be found at:  www.georgiakotretsos.com | www.thetelossociety.com  Georgia Kotretsos portrait for RTIN by Kostas Pappas and the TTS Logo

Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist Claire Ashley at the Door County Contemporary Art Fair for a conversation that wanders from broken-down minivans to Scottish standing stones, from inflatable sculpture to protest aesthetics, and from the economics of artistic survival to the philosophy of color. Ashley discusses nearly two decades of building monumental inflatable sculptures that refuse to stay still—works that exist somewhere between architecture, bodies, creatures, performance, and public intervention. They explore why artists should embrace experimentation, why humor can be politically powerful, and how softness, absurdity, and vulnerability can become serious sculptural strategies. Links Claire Ashley — https://clairehelenashley.com/ Door County Contemporary Art Fair — https://www.doorcountycontemporary.com/ Lee Bontecou — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Bontecou Nick Cave — https://nickcaveart.com/Main/Intro.html Paul McCarthy —https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_McCarthy José Lerma — https://kavigupta.com/artists/42-jose-lerma/ Weisman Art Museum — https://wam.umn.edu/ Cameron Art Museum — https://cameronartmuseum.org/ Saint Kate – The Arts Hotel — https://www.saintkatearts.com/ Callanish Standing Stones — https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/calanais-standing-stones/ Isle of Lewis — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Lewis

Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist, curator, arts administrator, and Door County Contemporary co-founder Jaymee Harvey Willms for an unexpectedly personal and funny conversation. What begins as a discussion about goats unfolds into an exploration of grief, religious deconstruction, contemporary art, and the rituals we create to survive profound loss. Once a painter immersed in saturated color, Jaymee found herself unable to tolerate color at all, turning instead toward broken ceramics, white paint, damaged objects, and sculptures that ask what it means for something broken to continue functioning. Links Jaymee Harvey Willms http://www.jaymeeharveywillms.com/ Door County Contemporary https://www.doorcountycontemporary.com/ Familiar (Milwaukee) https://www.familiarmke.com/ Walker Art Center https://walkerart.org/ Mary Gabriel — Ninth Street Women https://www.joanmitchellfoundation.org/joan-mitchell/citations/ninth-street-women Lee Krasner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Krasner Jackson Pollock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock JoAnne Carson https://joannecarson.com Adam Frelin https://adamfrelin.com Hair + Nails https://hairandnailsart.com

Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, and Brian Andrews are joined by painter Jenal Dolson for a conversation recorded live from the Door County Contemporary Art Fair in Wisconsin. Dolson discusses her vividly textured paintings, her installation practice, and the role of touch, memory, and sensory experience in shaping the visual language of her work. The conversation ranges from tactile abstraction and flocked wallpaper to popcorn ceilings, raccoon vision, painting directly onto gallery walls, collaboration, titling artworks, and why artists continue making work in the first place.  Links Jenal Dolson https://jenaldolson.com/home.html Andrew Rafacz Gallery https://andrewrafacz.com/ 65GRAND https://65grand.com/ Good Naked Gallery https://www.goodnakedgallery.com/ Door County Contemporary https://doorcountycontemporary.com/ Deb Sokolow https://www.debsokolow.com/ Trish Tillman https://www.trishtillman.com/ Rebecca Morris https://www.byrebeccamorris.com/ Chris Cran http://chriscran.com/

Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller finally welcome painter, educator, and perennial instigator Tyson Reeder to Bad at Sports. Recorded during Door County Contemporary Art Fair, the discussion wanders through the history of Milwaukee's DIY art scene, the legendary Dark Fair, artist-run culture, teaching, painting, collaboration, and the productive tension between sincerity and absurdity. Reeder reflects on organizing exhibitions as artistic experiments rather than scholarly declarations, describing curating as "a speculative mindset" where the question is always what if?  The conversation also explores painting's unique solitude, collaborative work with his brother Scott Reeder, the role of humor in contemporary art, regional artistic identity, materiality after the pandemic, why artists still need to stand in front of paintings, and how drawing together can become an antidote to digital isolation.   Links Tyson Reeder https://canadanewyork.com/artists/tyson-reeder Scott Reeder https://canadanewyork.com/artists/scott-reeder Canada Gallery https://canadanewyork.com/ Door County Contemporary Art Fair https://www.doorcountycontemporary.com/ Process Print Shop https://process-process.com/ Swiss Institute https://www.swissinstitute.net/ White Columns https://whitecolumns.org/ Threewalls https://three-walls.org/ Green Gallery http://www.thegreengallery.biz/ Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture https://www.skowheganart.org/

This week Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist Sophia Chai at the Door County Contemporary Art Fair to discuss photography that insists on becoming something else. Working between painting, sculpture, installation, and large-format analog photography, Chai creates images that challenge our assumptions about perspective, representation, and the mechanics of seeing itself.  The conversation moves from camera obscuras and four-by-five view cameras to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, cave painting, Korean language, immigration, and the colonial language embedded within photographic practice. Chai reflects on transforming her graduate studio into a walk-in camera obscura after September 11th, collaborating with architectural space rather than simply depicting it, and asks whether photography might become a practice of witnessing rather than capturing. Name Drops & Links Sophia Chai – https://www.sophiachai.com Hair + Nails – https://hairandnailsart.com/ University of Illinois Chicago School of Art & Art History – https://artandarthistory.uic.edu/ Kerry James Marshall – https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/kerry-james-marshall Judith Kirshner – https://stories.mcachicago.org/speaker/judith-kirshner/ Plato – https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato/ Camera Obscura – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_obscura Plato's Allegory of the Cave – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave Jeff Wall – https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/jeff-wall Barbara Kasten – https://barbarakasten.net/ Johannes Vermeer – https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio/artists/johannes-vermeer Peter Jackson – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Jackson The Lord of the Rings – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_(film_series)

Tanner MacArthur joins Bad at Sports live from Door County Contemporary for a conversation that begins with secret fry sauce recipes and somehow ends with the shape of Delaware as a sandwich-eating methodology. MacArthur discusses his dual role as both artist and gallerist through his Milwaukee project space, Addendum, founded alongside James Stepanek as an extension of No Instructions Gallery. The conversation moves through contemporary painting, Midwestern DIY culture, artist-run spaces, collecting habits in the Midwest, labor history, and the strange but fertile ground between formal abstraction and dumpster diving. Tanner speaks about his own assemblage-based painting practice, his evolution from hard-edge abstraction into sculptural wall works built from salvaged materials, and his desire to reconnect with painting's possibilities through color, surface, and material experimentation. The discussion also highlights a growing generation of Milwaukee artists creating new spaces and opportunities outside traditional institutions, including apartment galleries, publishing projects, and experimental exhibition venues. Name Drops and Links: Tanner MacArthur – https://www.tannermacarthur.com/ Addendum Gallery – https://addendum.gallery/ No Instructions Gallery – https://www.noinstructs.com/ Martyna Alexander – https://www.instagram.com/martyna_alexander Meg White (artist) – https://www.meganwhite.work/ Tony Conrad – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Conrad Lawrence University – https://www.lawrence.edu/ University of Wisconsin–Madison – https://www.wisc.edu/ University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts – https://uwm.edu/arts/ Experimental Sculpture Room (ESR) – https://experimentalsculptureroom.com/ Milwaukee Art Museum – https://mam.org/ Gertrude Abercrombie – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Abercrombie Kim Sajet – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Sajet Door County Contemporary – https://www.doorcountycontemporary.com/