The Forum 23 | Inside The Studio Panel

Three artists reflect on their experiences working as assistants to established artists. Ian Cheng, Darren Bader, and Jamian Juliano-Villani discuss apprenticeship, authorship, studio culture, and the lessons—both practical and personal—they carried into their own practices.

00:00 — Introduction02:36 — Becoming Assistants04:10 — The Studio as Education07:37 — Learning the Craft09:13 — Building the Impossible10:54 — Authorship14:54 — Power & Studio Culture18:37 — Learning Through Failure22:50 — Good & Bad Habits30:23 — Assistants as Teachers34:30 — Knowing When to Leave40:12 — Assistants & Authorship42:03 — Learning the Business45:28 — Art & Precarity47:42 — Why Do It?

00:00:00 Ajay Kurian: Next to me here is Ian Chang. He’s an artist known for his live simulations, works that unfold over time using game engines and AI. His work has been shown at the Serpentine Galleries, MoMA PS1, Gladstone Gallery, and earlier in his career, he worked with Pierre Huyghe, which I think informs, uh, some of the ways that Ian had started to think about his work. But I’m curious to see what that relationship was. Pierre is an internationally renowned artist and has worked in massive ecosystems, taking over entire museum spaces and building things from bacteria to, you know, all sorts of crazy stuff. Um, going down the line. Next is Darren Bader. Darren is an artist whose work spans objects, language, and instructions, often questioning what an artwork even is or who it belongs to. He’s exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Palais de Tokyo, and the Dallas Museum of Art. Uh, sorry, the Museum of Modern Art in Dallas and his practice consistently unsettles ideas of authorship, making him especially interesting voice here. And he worked for the artist Urs Fischer. Um, you mentioned another artist you worked.

00:01:11 Darren Bader: For, Donald Bachelor, whom, um, the late Donald Bachelor whose estate I work for now, but he’s um. Well, yeah.

00:01:19 Ajay Kurian: We’ll get there.

00:01:19 Darren Bader: I did, yes, I did my time with two artists, um, very, very educational.

00:01:25 Ajay Kurian: And last but not least, Jamie and Juliano-villani is a painter whose work moves quickly between images, cartoons, art history, and the internet, held together by a sharp, instinctive sense of composition. She’s shown with Gagosian, Jeffrey Deitch, and at the Metropolitan Opera House. And earlier in her career she worked for Dana Schutz as well as the painter Eric Parker. So, uh, that’s actually how me and Jamie met Eric. Studio and Banks’ studio were right next to each other, and we were both assisting these artists. And yeah, Damien was just like, yeah, she, she was just in a little room and we were all just working away. So everybody give it up for all these, all the artists here. All right. Who wants to go first? No. Um, what I’m curious about is, uh, in the studios that I mentioned that you all worked for, were those studios that you sought out yourself or was it just a job? Yeah.

00:02:36 Ian Cheng: Um, yeah, I was in grad school at the time at Columbia, and I was, um, had a terrible time there. I didn’t know who I was or what I was doing. Um, I really just sat in my studio checking my email, getting no email and just, uh, just looking at the wall, waiting for the next crit to happen with nothing to say. And at the end of those two years of grad school, um, the one positive relationship I had was with, uh, Liam Gillick, who was like a kind of visiting professor. And I was like, what am I gonna do with my life? I’m gonna, I’m gonna apply as a UX designer to Google New York because I just need some totally no response rejection. And I thought, what else could I do? And I said, Liam, you know, can you hook me up with PR wigs, email? Like, I’d love to. I’ll be his dream printer. I literally pitched myself, I’ll be his dream. I can just like make anything. Um, and Liam was like, I’ll get back to you. And he gets back to me. He’s like, he used the words Pierre offers you his email, which was kind of interesting way to not like do the CC connection, but just to like, just take it from here, kid. Uh, email Pierre like pitched him like, you know, had a, had a quick meeting like, oh, I didn’t have no, had no credentials. Um, and simultaneously I thought, oh, fuck, like I need another job too. So I went to like Paul Chan’s website. Wow. Um, national philistine and just like emailed him like, hey, hi. I think like we have a lot in common. Like, can we meet? And so the next week, I met with both of them. And suddenly I had two artists kind of assistant jobs. Oh, wow. And yeah, it really kind of really began their shoot.

00:04:07 Jamian Juliano-Villani : Really good taste too, you know?

00:04:09 Ajay Kurian: Yeah. Those are great artists.

00:04:10 Ian Cheng: Well, how’s it go with people that you respect? I just thought like, oh, grad school is so bad. I didn’t respect anyone that came through. I should go to somewhere where I can speak a lot about this. Like, uh, it was the best school. Those two were like being effectively an apprentice and seeing how they lived life, like what they had for breakfast, what time they woke up, how they said no to people, how they protected their mornings was better school than school.

00:04:34 Ajay Kurian: Totally agree. Totally agree. Darren. Was it a job or was it a college?

00:04:39 Darren Bader: No no no no it was I mean, it was certainly a job insofar as you you lack the freedom that you, you um would prefer at many, many moment. But uh, no, it was a extraordinarily educational, especially with, with ers in particular. He is a real force of nature. Uh, and so, I mean, he’s just, he’s a presence. He, he’s. Always, he, he’s one of these people who, if you look at his work, you may say he’s phoning it in at times. There are also many, many, many times when he’s just creating very compelling work. But he’s he lives and breathes art every minute of the day. And, uh, it was just a very compelling environment to work in. Uh, it wasn’t always easy. I learned a ton. Um, much like what Ian said, you know, you learn about the routines, but it’s more about the relationships and how an artist can exercise power. I don’t mean that in any sort of, you know, um, manipulative or abusive way. Um, it’s just he, he was also very good at it. He if anyone I don’t Urs Fischer is physically also quite an imposing presence. He’s not Pierre um not or he’s he’s I mean he’s he’s he’s maybe five ten, but he’s very big. Uh, he’s very muscular. He’s covered in tattoos, deep voice, piercing gray eyes. Um, and so that’s a whole nother thing. And he makes these, this, this very fanciful at times and very tender art. So it’s a, but I learned so much just to just watching him operate. And then when he would let you in.

00:06:29 Ajay Kurian: Right.

00:06:30 Darren Bader: And he would say, hey, come over here. I want to talk about this work with you. What do you think of this? You’re like, okay, I’ll give my two cents. He’s like, oh, thank you. Fuck off. But he’s also but you know, he’s listening the entire time, right? He’s taking all this new account and he, he understands what it takes to make an artwork, which is not infrequently, uh, you know, no artwork in Ireland. It really does require a lot of hands on, you know, hands on deck and seeing what sticks and what doesn’t.

00:07:00 Ajay Kurian: Yeah, if anyone’s interested, there’s a good interview that Rick Rubin did with Urs Fischer.

00:07:06 Jamian Juliano-Villani : Really?

00:07:07 Ajay Kurian: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. It’s long and sprawling, and, um.

00:07:12 Darren Bader: There’s some moments.

00:07:13 Ajay Kurian: Tetragrammaton.

00:07:14 Darren Bader: This is.

00:07:15 Ajay Kurian: A weird plug for another podcast.

00:07:17 Darren Bader: With Urs is also very, very bright. But he does he he’s not he. You wouldn’t know it until you meet him. And he’s extremely versatile. He’s able to jump around from topic to topic and we’ll get to that at some point perhaps. Yeah.

00:07:34 Ajay Kurian: Tell us about tell us about your time.

00:07:37 Jamian Juliano-Villani : I remember.

00:07:37 Ajay Kurian: And Eric.

00:07:38 Jamian Juliano-Villani : I, it was funny, I as a painter at the time, I never painted anything that wasn’t on a desk, so I actually just lied. I did not know how to paint at all. And I showed up and I was such a nervous wreck and he knew I did not know what the hell I was doing. And, you know, I think I got fired like twice in like a week. And then, uh, I think he felt bad for me. And then I really learned really quickly. So, um, yeah. And working for Dana too, I mean, working for painters is such a weird thing because you can’t really interrupt them when they’re doing their thing. It’s like someone like breathing or fucking or, you know, you’re like, hi, you know, you just gotta like leave them alone. Then when they’re done, you’re like, okay, maybe I can assist, you know? Um, but yeah, it was really strange. Just like, um, it’s such an intimate thing to help someone with, you know, I don’t know if, if you guys have ever seen anyone make a drawing, but can you imagine like getting in the middle of the drawing and trying to help? So I did that for people exclusively for years. So I’m just very annoying. But yeah.

00:08:42 Ajay Kurian: It was, it is very different, like the, the experience of working for a multimedia artist versus someone who has like a craft of painting is really different. And like the skill sets are really different.

00:08:55 Jamian Juliano-Villani : I remember I would see Ajay at work and it looked like someone just got murdered. Like he was just like, he would look so drained and exhausted and like lunch break because I don’t know what you guys were making over there.

00:09:06 Ajay Kurian: We were making a lot of things.

00:09:08 Jamian Juliano-Villani : Um, I’ve never seen anyone so stressed out from a job, honestly. No offense.

00:09:13 Ajay Kurian: Well, I was more stressed before I worked at Gladstone right before that. And that was definitely more stressful than working for, for an artist. Um, but, you know, banks is the kind of artist who, uh, when you look at it, everything looks really shiny, super fabricated, and it looks like everything has been shipped out to some faraway place to get made and then sent somewhere. We made everything in the studio. And what that meant is like, um, you know, when he didn’t know how to do something like he wanted, he wanted a wall of mirrors that broke itself. Uh, so the mirrors would just shatter. And of course he didn’t know how to do that. And so it was like, okay, well, we need to learn about hydraulics. So he just buy a shit ton of hydraulics. And then it would just be like, the studio would just be filled with oil everywhere because he didn’t know what he was doing. And then we’d start welding things together, trying to see if we can break a mirror. If you’ve ever tried to, um, you know, like with a can, like if you have a soda can, it’s really easy to crumple this way. But if you took your hand and tried to crumple the can that way, it’s very, very hard. That’s the problem with trying to break a mirror from the sides. So all of these engineering problems, things like that, that’s what we’re here to sort of figure out with him and how that process like gets started. He wanted to make things out of aluminum. And so he built a foundry. And I mean, it was totally illegal, but like we had a foundry and we were pouring metal all day long. So yeah, you might have seen me after pouring a ton of metal and just feeling like I may not have eyebrows anymore.

00:10:51 Jamian Juliano-Villani : Yeah. No, totally. Yeah. Yeah.

00:10:54 Ajay Kurian: But what’s, um. I mean, let’s say like, there’s walking through the doors, there’s walking through the doors and like starting your job and then there’s leaving, like, what were the, how did you feel about authorship in the middle of it? How did you feel about you contributing? Like, did peer did ers? Did they make you feel like, um, that you were all in this together or did they make you feel like, all right, well, this is what I’m doing. This is what I need done.

00:11:24 Ian Cheng: Definitely. This is what I need need to get done. Um, but with Pierre, he was so interesting working for him because he was constantly. What I respect about him is he just kept reinventing of what he was doing as an amateur. So when I started working for him, he had this idea that he really wanted to make aquariums. And it’s like not an easy thing. And not only do you want to make aquariums, he wanted them to combine like, like animals that didn’t live in the same ecosystem. Same kind of water. He just wanted to make it work. And we hired an aquarium company. And they, like there were so many moments at the aquarium company where like, you just can’t do that. And it fell on me to research how you kind of do it. And so we figured it out, figured it out, figured it out. It kind of like all the clearest memory I have was like, freeze. I think it was twenty ten.

00:12:07 Ajay Kurian: He had an art fair. For those who don’t know.

00:12:10 Ian Cheng: He had a special project there where he was gonna do an aquarium of, um, a hermit crab inside of a shell. He’s like, his shell is a Brancusi like head reproduction. So super beautiful idea, this Brancusi sculpture kind of walking amongst the the rocks. And then you see it’s this crab that’s inhabiting it. And so I had to figure out, because the aquarium people couldn’t figure out how to get this crab to live in this sculpture. And it turns out like hermit crabs, their, their, their butts are very sensitive. And that’s why they like, hide it. They’re hermits for that. Um, and we tried all these different techniques and it fell on me like, I think ten days before we just ship out where I just went like, fuck, we, I gotta go to Chinatown. I gotta buy ten conch shells, you know, conch, like these giant snails boiled them in his rice cooker. I ate them and then cleaned it out and like stuck that the idea was to stick that into the enclosure, the the the, the shell of the interior of the sculpture. So secretly it’s a real shell inside. And the hermit crabs were like, so happy. I was like, oh, I finally slept in like two weeks. Um, and so like these little puzzles were, I mean, I have strong memories of them. Um, but yeah, I mean, those are the, that’s pretty brilliant. Like not authorship level, but like engineering like this was really fun. Yeah.

00:13:24 Ajay Kurian: That’s. Yeah. Oh, I always wondered how that sculpture came together.

00:13:29 Ian Cheng: It’s pretty cool. Chinatown conch.

00:13:30 Ajay Kurian: Shells. Do you feel I mean, you said you don’t have a sense of authorship to it, but, um.

00:13:40 Ian Cheng: And I wouldn’t want it either. I mean, I felt I learned so much by being able to not have the pressure of any authorship. I could just sort of absorb by osmosis, be, you know, sometimes I would write an email and try to write it in his style and like so enjoyable, so freeing to just mimic someone. I think that’s the best way to learn. And that was for me, the best way to learn just to be this mimetic thing. And then, you know, I, I would have to go to like another memory just briefly is going to reinstall that same work a year later in Miami Basel. And it’s like the air conditioners were broken. It was like one hundred twenty degrees inside this convention center. And he wasn’t there. I was there on remote installing.

00:14:18 Ajay Kurian: Oh boy.

00:14:19 Ian Cheng: Fucking Marian Goodman, like, God bless her. She comes up to me in the middle of like, trying to put the rock here and the crab here and get everything working. She’s like, you respect that animal you respect. I do not like how you’re handling this. And you all have Pierre on the phone saying like, no, the rock has to go this way. And then Marion yelling at me for the rock kind of endangering this crab.

00:14:38 Ajay Kurian: Marion is, uh, was Pierre’s gallerist. Uh, she passed away at a hundred in.

00:14:44 Darren Bader: Late nineties.

00:14:45 Ajay Kurian: Late nineties. Okay. Um, but one of the great gallerists of of the world. Really?

00:14:50 Darren Bader: Absolutely.

00:14:51 Ajay Kurian: Um, any, any similar memories? Darren.

00:14:54 Darren Bader: No, no, it was, it was a different relationship. I mean, with your lead question. Uh, it was more of this kind of communal effort. He was he, I, I assume he still is to some extent, although he has a smaller crew now. Um, he, he nurtured this environment. He was certainly, you know, at the top of the food chain as well as, you know, it was very patriarchal, let’s say, yet it was. So he has a very he has a generous streak and he, he knows how to get people to do things and make them feel included. Mhm. Without it being this, this, this very stark line between I am the author. You are, you know, the the worker. Yeah. The subordinate, the clear subordinate, you know, And yet, of course, he was clearly the author through and through. Yet I see he does have this unique, if not unique. You know, he does have this ability, this capacity, this, this, um, you know, uh, propensity to just manage. He’s a good emotional manager.

00:16:01 Ajay Kurian: Was it almost like a like lead singer of a band kind of thing?

00:16:05 Darren Bader: Well, I mean, which band? You know.

00:16:06 Ajay Kurian: Some.

00:16:08 Darren Bader: I don’t know. I don’t I wouldn’t say that, uh, more more like, you know, Don Henley on drums. Uh, but, uh, I, I, it, it was just this unique experience. I also started later, uh, I mean, I had already done a number of art jobs and, um, basically I was looking for work as when a job would come to a close. Not just, just, it just ended. There was no understood that it was, it was, uh, finite. And I hit him up because we’d worked together, I met him when he did a show at Gavin Brown twenty two thousand and five, where I worked for Gavin part time then, and he was just approachable. We were able to talk about arthouse films and I asked him, can you want to be in the group show? The first group show I curated a show I created, and he was like, sure. Like, I had seen a piece of his in a book and he was just like, he was open to things. And so I think he appreciated my openness and invited me to be part of things. And I was there kind of at this, this, um, you know, uh, inflection point where moment where it was right as he was rising to these great heights. So I kind of got to go. He was swimming in cash because the art market was very, um, healthy then. And all the galleries he had worked with from a very young age, um, we’re doing extraordinarily well. And he was extraordinarily good at, um, making art and exhibition. So it was just this wonderful journey from he just basically took me under his wing. And it’s a very it was more personal in a way less task based. He just kind of liked having me around. And I, I could not be more, um, you know, grateful for that opportunity three, three years. And he basically and he kicked me out. He’s like, you’re doing well. You’re not focused. Get the hell out of here. I’m like, all right, I’m done. But we’re still friends.

00:18:16 Ajay Kurian: That’s good, that’s good. I’m glad it’s on good terms.

00:18:18 Speaker 5: It’s on good terms.

00:18:19 Ajay Kurian: Jamie. And for you, it’s because there is more like craft and skill. I mean, even though you didn’t know what the fuck you were doing in the beginning, you clearly learned and like that relationship over time. Did it feel like. Did it feel different? Does it feel like you were, um.

00:18:37 Jamian Juliano-Villani : I felt like I was growing with the people I was working for. Yeah. Which is really nice, you know, because you can just come in and then there’s like, you know, obviously everyone that you work for, you always have to placate to the maestro complex. That’s what we always call it maestro complex. It’s like they’re the boss, you know? Um, so there’s always that, but, um, I was, I felt like I was growing with the people I was working with because they could see me learning stuff in real time and getting stressed out and fumbling and messing up. Like I’ve worked for many artists. And I remember this one artist wanted me to prep these canvases a certain way, and I’m used to just gessoed canvases. You know, you paint the thing white, it dries, you do it a couple more times, you sand it, you’re good to go. You have your surface. This guy was so OCD. He wanted me to get like, um, I was like, you know, gesso on like the palette knife. And then you got to like scrape it on and you have to do it for like hours and hours and hours until the thing looks like glass. And I did it for like four different canvases. And then I realized I did them all backwards and I was like, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me. I’d do the whole thing again. I mean, I would never put my canvases like that. Why would you make anyone do that? I don’t know, it’s like, you know, um, but like, you know, there’s all these learning curves and like, I feel like when you are fucking up, they sympathize with you because they see that you’re really trying and they’re trying to, they’re trying to beat a new skill into you, you know, and you have that skill for the rest of your life. But does that make sense?

00:19:57 Ajay Kurian: Yeah, yeah. For sure.

00:19:59 Jamian Juliano-Villani : You know, and like, they, they kind of want to I mean, like I said, I’ve been fired from jobs like a million times. I’ve, you know, I’ve worked for other artists where I worked at, uh, Kremer pigments, which is closed, but I worked at the pigment store. So I learned how to make paint from scratch for people like I’ve done all the stuff. So like, you know, you learn all these skills as you go. And I think people really enjoy teaching you their way. You know, like my one, my one boss, Eric, um, he was a painter. He’s a painter. He, you know, like, see that table over there with all the glasses and stuff? Each one would have the most, like, esoteric name that you would never think of, like Rip Van Winkle and like neon cookie puss and like, you know, just like, you know, and each painting would have, like, I don’t know, like one hundred and twenty colors and all some stupid ass name and I have to memorize all of them. And, you know, just learning things like that. Like, you know, not everyone works like that, but that’s how he worked. So I would that became part of my habit, like working, working, you know. Um, does that make sense?

00:20:57 Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:20:58 Jamian Juliano-Villani : So everyone has a different method of working and they, I feel like, I mean, when, even when, you know, I’m a artist and when I hire people, I’d kind of put them through the ringer.

00:21:07 Speaker 5: Oh my God.

00:21:07 Ajay Kurian: Does she.

00:21:08 Speaker 5: Ever.

00:21:08 Jamian Juliano-Villani : Yeah. No. I’m surprised. Like I’ve not been cancelled yet. Straight up. But, um, I really do enjoy putting people through the ringer too, because I was put through the conceptual meat grinder as well. And I also feel like it’s good practice. Maybe I’m crazy, I don’t know.

00:21:24 Ajay Kurian: Jamian is crazy.

00:21:25 Jamian Juliano-Villani : Yeah. But yeah.

00:21:26 Ajay Kurian: I for context, um, the first time I ever took acid, I went Jamian took care of me for a portion of that, and I went to her studio and, um, initially I thought she was taking care of me. Um, she gave me a pillow, she gave me some gummy worms, and I was just chilling on the floor because I was like, there’s too many things happening. And then all of a sudden I start hearing like, jungle sounds, and then the jungle sounds have other music on top of that. And then I start hearing monologues from The King’s Speech and I’m losing my fucking mind. And I’m finally like, what is going on? And she’s cackling in laughter.

00:22:10 Speaker 5: And then.

00:22:11 Jamian Juliano-Villani : What he needed, you.

00:22:11 Speaker 5: Know.

00:22:13 Jamian Juliano-Villani : You don’t put on like a monologue from The King’s Speech when your friend’s like, tripping balls. I don’t know, eat some gummy worms, sit on the floor, let me put on the projector and put on a horrifying speech. Yeah.

00:22:24 Ajay Kurian: And then I asked her to turn that off. And finally she was like, she put on Frank ocean. She’s like, you like this shit, right? And that was. So just to say that Damien has a lot of idiosyncratic working methods that, um, not every artist has, but she works nonstop. Like there’s, there’s never, there’s never rest. Like you are an artist every day.

00:22:48 Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:22:50 Ajay Kurian: With habits though, that’s like another thing that I feel like is a really important thing that we learn from artists, good and bad.

00:22:57 Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:22:57 Ajay Kurian: So for instance, um, when I worked for banks, banks is very open about his past with drugs. Um, I had a conversation with him about it that you can watch. Um, when I got to the studio, I was the only one who didn’t do drugs and there were deliveries of drugs to the studio. And so just seeing the habits of that studio and how they work, like they would work till four or five in the morning. And if you’re not doing cocaine, that’s very difficult. Um, and so I would just go home at like two because that’s as much as I could do.

00:23:31 Jamian Juliano-Villani : That’s why you were so tired.

00:23:32 Speaker 5: Yeah. No shit.

00:23:35 Ajay Kurian: I was working on a reasonably normal schedule, but that was, um. You know, that was one of the bad habits. Whereas, uh, for, on the flip side, a good habit is banks was eternally curious. Like, if you didn’t know how to make something, he would figure it out. And we were all autodidacts in that way. Like you, you have to just keep learning what you don’t know. What are the habits good and bad that you guys learned?

00:24:00 Ian Cheng: Um, well, both Paul Chan and Pierre didn’t want me around until like eleven o’clock, eleven thirty. Oh, and it was because they wanted to protect their morning and they wanted they just couldn’t work when everyone was around. They were just reacting to people when like, can you answer this email? What do you think of this decision? And so they protected their mornings. And I mean, selfishly, that was the time where I really began and grew as an artist because I had my mornings, which were so precious. So that was a really good habit with Paul. Like he really knows how to say no to people on email, on phone calls, just I really learned that like, sometimes it’s n o send, it’s like you’re saying two, like you just say less, you know?

00:24:39 Speaker 5: Wow.

00:24:39 Ian Cheng: Just say no. Just say no.

00:24:41 Ajay Kurian: I gotta get better at it.

00:24:42 Ian Cheng: It was really cool.

00:24:44 Speaker 5: Um, yeah.

00:24:46 Ian Cheng: And sometimes, you know, you don’t, you know, like it’s, you know, have you guys seen like, J. Mail the Jeffrey Epstein interface with all the emails? What’s so cool is when you browse that you see his like crazy punctuation. And it was like a, you know, he will do like five commas in equal signs. And you’re like, he’s talking like a head of state or something. And you’re like, oh, it’s like he, he has like, it’s a, it’s a sign of status. Like he can just fire one off like that. Wow. Um, and.

00:25:11 Ajay Kurian: Now I don’t want to.

00:25:12 Ian Cheng: Do that. No, no. I mean, there’s this whole email world of like, yeah, how you play email?

00:25:17 Ajay Kurian: Yeah. No, I get that. I get that, that there is like a.

00:25:19 Ian Cheng: I don’t know if it’s good or bad habit, but it was definitely a habit.

00:25:22 Ajay Kurian: Right, right, right. Establishing almost like the relationships of power to.

00:25:26 Ian Cheng: Just like the punctuation or lack of it.

00:25:29 Speaker 5: Huh. Oh, there’s one for you.

00:25:32 Jamian Juliano-Villani : I was like, chain. We all were chain smoking, which is like I quit smoking a year ago. Thank you everyone. But it was like a cloud of smoke in that one studio. It was insane. Like, it was like the best and worst moments of my life, you know? But, um. Yeah, it was just like, you know, paint, smoke, paint, smoke for like hours on end. So I don’t know. Now it’s really hard for me to paint because I’m, I link it up with smoking so much, which is like really kind of lame, but it’s true. But, um.

00:26:11 Speaker 5: So do you.

00:26:11 Ajay Kurian: Have like.

00:26:12 Speaker 5: A.

00:26:12 Ajay Kurian: Do you just keep something in your hand now?

00:26:14 Jamian Juliano-Villani : Yeah. Another paintbrush. But at some point it was just like frankincense, you know? Um, uh, and then at one point I was like, maybe if I just hold incense and it didn’t do the same thing, but, um, yeah, no, it’s like we all were smoking and we all were listening to music so loud. Now I can’t hear anything, so I don’t know. I mean, like you were saying, like, there’s so many bad habits to that you can have. Like when you’re in a studio, it’s like, kind of like if you’re a runner, you know, you wake up every morning, you start running. You know, I’d wake up every morning, have a cup of coffee and buy a pack of cigarettes, chain smoke, and just paint all day long. So now, you know, doing that, like healthy, what am I supposed to do, hold an orange? Like I don’t really, but I may have to. Um, I smart.

00:27:02 Speaker 5: So.

00:27:03 Jamian Juliano-Villani : Smart.

00:27:04 Speaker 6: Yeah. Cigarette for instance.

00:27:05 Jamian Juliano-Villani : Totally. Have you guys seen that bubble cigarette? No. Oh, my God, it’s like a vape cigarette. That’s like a bubbles come out. Yeah, I may need that thing. If anyone knows, my address is three Stillery Road, Lebanon, new Jersey, zero eight eight eight three three seventy one. No, I’m just kidding, but, uh, that I may have to take it to the next level. So.

00:27:26 Ajay Kurian: Darren, any, any good habits? Bad habits?

00:27:28 Darren Bader: No.

00:27:29 Ajay Kurian: Oh. Sending the email? Yeah.

00:27:32 Darren Bader: Um, no. I mean, I just think, uh, you just you you learn where. I mean, I never had any full time assistants as an artist, but, uh, I learned that it’s what was, was very good at. Not always, but letting reminding his assistants that they were people, you know, they weren’t merely help. Sure, there are moments like, I’m paying you fucking get to fucking. We have a deadline. You’re working your ass off right now. Yes, I procrastinated, I will not admit to that for one second. We’re all burning the midnight oil and there will be no cocaine. But you know, you can. You can drink if you’d like. Um. And he would chain smoke to the guy. Can’t quit smoking. But, um, I it’s just just understanding boundaries, understanding, you know, I mean, it’s it’s just like any relationship. Sure. There’s certainly a power structure, um, uh, a power differential differential, but it’s just good and bad habits. I mean, art’s good and a bad habit. What are you going to do? It’s like this because once you get, you get you just can’t. Yeah. And you saw it consuming him. Um, even when he was a new you know, he had his, my first year, about a year in, he had his first child. And even seeing him wrestle with that, you know, because he had these, he had this major, major show at the new museum. He had three floors.

00:29:05 Speaker 6: Um, wow.

00:29:06 Darren Bader: Yeah. I mean, actually for, I suppose he, I think he had the lobby too, but, you know, it was just learning how to manage a career alongside life. And, you know, that’s just anyone’s good and bad. And I don’t think there was any, any, any kind of salient bad, uh, short of, you know, there are moments when we all go too far right and we can’t. We forget to press stop or pause and. And I don’t mean that that’s not you euphemizing anything. It’s just, you know. Yeah. It happens. There are deadlines and we must deal with them. And why was there waiting around for three weeks to work on the catalog that I was assigned to work on? Well, because he didn’t want to deal with it for three weeks. That’s on him. I’m still getting paid. But then I burn the midnight oil and it’s totally fine. It’s a great education. Um, and I think I find that’s all. I’m sure it’s the same for most any industry. It’s all any industry is. You just learn constantly. You’re reminded of things and then you, you, you’re taken aback because there’s some twist you could never have predicted. And there it is. So it’s just an education, always neither good nor bad. I mean, certainly plenty of good. But you know what I mean. There’s, there’s a.

00:30:20 Ajay Kurian: It’s, it’s sort of value neutral.

00:30:22 Darren Bader: Exactly. Yeah.

00:30:23 Ajay Kurian: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, the speaking to like feeling like you’re all included and that like you’re all valued in that way. That was something that banks did very well too. Like it was, uh, I remember a gallery that he was working with. I was liaising with them. And so, um, the gallery director was just being so rude to me, like horribly rude.

00:30:50 Speaker 6: Impossible.

00:30:51 Ajay Kurian: It was, it was impossible. Impossible. Exactly. Um, and it was, it was making my job harder. Like it was just harder to get things done. It was harder to liaise back and forth. And finally I had to bring it up to banks. I was like, I look, I’m not trying to make a stink about this, but like, this is making things very, very difficult. And he got on the phone in like two seconds and chewed them the fuck out where he was like, you will treat everybody as if they are me. Like anybody that works for me needs to be treated as if that’s like, we’re all the same. This is my studio and everyone’s going to be respected that way. And it really set a tone where it’s like, oh, we’re not subordinates. We’re not like people that are just getting this job done. Like we are the Banks Violette Studio. And when we like it felt like we felt like a band, kind of like when we’d go places, it was like we felt cool, you know, like it was, uh, it was a cool thing to feel like, oh yeah, this is our show. Like, of course it’s Banks’s vision. And of course, no one’s trying to take credit for that either. But yeah, we did that shit. It’s like it’s not easy to do. And, um, when an artist sets those grounds, it’s like you’re excited to do those things because like, you can, you can build this together and you can share ideas and, um, and it doesn’t feel like, I don’t know, I think sometimes people think that there’s this immediate exploitative thing about artists and assistants and that, oh, they’re getting all the credit while they’re doing all the hard work. It’s not that simple. It’s just never that simple. The worlds that we inhabit. Like, so this the movie, um, you know, Michaela, in the beginning, she’s she’s purportedly his assistant. Um, she’s actually there to forge his paintings. And, um, she’s employed by his two kids who are trying to get their nest egg because they burn through their money. So, um, she goes in and that’s, that’s the job that she’s meant to do. And then she fesses up to that’s what she’s doing. And then the relationship switches again, where in a sense, she’s almost telling him about himself. Like he starts learning from her. He, he, she becomes his mirror. So like, I think maybe my final question before we open it up is, did you ever feel like you were teaching them? Did you feel like there was a way that, uh, all of a sudden like, oh, okay. Uh, let me, let me tell you what I know now.

00:33:29 Jamian Juliano-Villani : Yeah. For sure. I mean, even just like bringing in some, you know, because every artist is kind of set in their habits. Like that’s how they make their work and blah, blah, blah. But, you know, I remember one time I brought in like a, like a digital projector and everyone’s mind was blown like, oh my God, you know, it’s like, we don’t have to use like this vis a vis marker over the fucking, you know, and, uh, that changed the game. And then another time I brought in an airbrush and everyone was like, I was like, you know, you ever see that Maxell ad where the guy’s in the chair like this? That’s what happened. You know, everyone was like, you know, so really like, you know, shook things up. So, um, but yeah, I think it’s really exciting when that happens too. But I remember those were two instances where, you know, like the whole trajectory of like how we’ve been working the whole time for like years was just like, completely like, like a giant bone in the spoke, you know? Um, and it was really exciting because everyone was looking like a fool together with these new tools. Yeah.

00:34:24 Ian Cheng: Yeah, I think I made Paul and Pierre install slack.

00:34:29 Jamian Juliano-Villani : Oh my.

00:34:30 Ian Cheng: God. I’m like, it’s so lame. But but it’s not because it’s like, oh, we don’t have to do every single thing as an email, right? Imagine how psychotic. I mean, it’s hard to imagine now, but it was just everything was in email. Yeah. Maybe the other thing was on the way out with Pierre. I started to not slack, but like my attention started to drift. I had to like, I took more and more time off. And at one point we just sat down together and he was like, what’s going on? Like, this is not working and this part’s not good. And like, you fucked up on that aquarium in Miami. Marion was mad about the the crab. And I just I said this thing, I read this thing recently about someone had like reorganized, I think a guy called Tim Urban had reorganized a person’s lifetime in terms of weeks.

00:35:13 Ajay Kurian: Oh, yeah.

00:35:14 Ian Cheng: It was like a, it was like a calendar with just the weeks that you’re alive, if you’re roughly like die at seventy or eighty. And then you can also get one with days and it was like twenty seven thousand days. You’re alive. Jesus. And when I saw that, I’m like, Pierre was having this intense conversation. And in that moment, I just, I guess I kind of fired myself. I said, like, uh, I have like, we have twenty seven thousand days. He was, he learned that he was like, holy shit. And, you know, he’s, you know, when he’s older, he’s like, and I already had like, I’m like, I don’t know, like, I don’t know, like, uh, I’m bad at math, but whatever. I’m like ten, twelve thousand days in or something and like, you’re like, way more like, I gotta just, I gotta just love my life. Yeah, yeah. And I think that he really understood when I phrased it that way and what was going wrong. Like he really understood and like, we’re good friends now. We’re good. Still good friends.

00:36:08 Ajay Kurian: That’s crazy. That’s crazy that it it’s just funny that a like a firing. One firing yourself would start with like, Everything is finite. I have to go. It’s a pretty serious conversation to have. Darren, do you have a.

00:36:28 Darren Bader: I forgot.

00:36:29 Speaker 6: The question.

00:36:29 Ajay Kurian: The question? The question was, um, did you did you start teaching us a thing or two?

00:36:35 Darren Bader: I, I may have, but it didn’t it, it was never of any interest to me. I, I just I, I as, as the oldest child in my family, I’m the oldest of three. I’ve, I think I’ve always sought, you know, kind of mentorship and big brothers, older siblings. And so if I taught him anything. Sure. Great. Uh, he, I don’t know if he would let on to it.

00:36:57 Ajay Kurian: Mhm.

00:36:58 Darren Bader: Um, and my other employer, Donald, was twenty two years my senior. So, um, it there was nothing of that. I, it just, I was there to learn, I suppose also to pay bills, but um, um I, I, I, you.

00:37:15 Ajay Kurian: Have like a very mature relationship to it. Like it’s the way you talk about it. It’s like it’s a very fluid relationship, but it’s also.

00:37:21 Darren Bader: one I wasn’t mature. Um, I, I may be mature now, but perhaps arguable, but I, I, it’s just, I think it’s just, just how I’ve, I, I, I, I take orders pretty decently. Doesn’t mean I don’t kind of, you know, uh, uh, yeah. What, what’s the word? Uh, not flinch. You know, there’s a word, uh uh.

00:37:42 Speaker 6: Uh uh.

00:37:42 Darren Bader: Uh, it’s b r it’s a b r word. Uh, in any case, um, Bristol. Bristol, Bristol, Bristol. I do bristle like, constantly. I do not like people telling me what to do, yet I know how to swallow my pride and get things done. Um, I just absorbed what I could, you know, whether it was memetic, as you said, or just, you know, osmosis. I just learned and I just knew I had to get out there and do it if I wanted an art career. And what was the best job I’ve ever had? Um, I didn’t have a great social life at that time because I always had to wake up and I was always. I was also the chauffeur because he. This big guy, is terrified of driving. He still can’t drive. Uh, so I got to drive a seven series. It was.

00:38:30 Ajay Kurian: I remember you coming.

00:38:31 Darren Bader: Around Manhattan like I learned how to drive. Uh, yeah. I got to learn how to drive in New York in a seven series. I’m like, well, it’s smooth. I’m still scared out of my mind. But, um.

00:38:45 Ajay Kurian: Now I remember you coming to my studio in that seven series.

00:38:48 Darren Bader: There we go. Uh, Ditmas Park, huh?

00:38:50 Speaker 6: Yeah.

00:38:51 Darren Bader: Um, yeah, it was just. I think I’m just open to learning. I don’t want to be seen in various ways being seen and just, uh, being seen for as a human was enough for me. It still is. You know, I don’t need a pat on the back. I can get a thank you, and I’ll feel like a million bucks.

00:39:13 Ajay Kurian: I want to open it up to questions.

00:39:17 Speaker 7: Thank you. I worked for a famous writer one time, and, uh, I didn’t do any writing for her, but I. I did figure out things that she was hopeless with, like simple math and organizing her income taxes and things like that. But I recall, uh, on a tour through Venice, uh, guides talking about how in, in art schools, uh, for like Tintoretto, I think was mentioned where they would have, uh, assistants who would fill in the secondary figures and things like that. They would complete the master’s work. Was there any of that with, with, uh, your assistantships, did you ever do the corner of, uh, something that the artist was too busy to deal with or was on to the next thing?

00:40:12 Darren Bader: Let me jump in here because it’s, it’s a, it’s analogous, but it’s, it’s, it’s totally different. And so first I was just left at, for instance, at the new museum, it’s like, you know, I’m not going to show up or I don’t want to go to my own. He has some social anxiety. Like, you know, I’m going to arrive at my opening, you know, with ten minutes left, I ended up becoming just this kind of he just kind of like, let’s see what you do, you know, walk. I walked Jerry, Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith around a new museum show like it was. I wasn’t told, go do this. I just it was left to me. He’s like, I will upset myself and perhaps you can figure this out. And so in a way, it was I you know, I’m certainly I’m I’m no, I’m no, you know, studio assistant in that, but it is a it is an analog of sorts.

00:41:00 Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah.

00:41:01 Ajay Kurian: I mean, I mean, that seems like.

00:41:03 Jamian Juliano-Villani : That’s all I did.

00:41:04 Speaker 6: Yeah.

00:41:05 Jamian Juliano-Villani : Yeah. Cross the T’s and dot the I’s. I was there for that. So um, like literally for hours on per day, just go in and fill stuff in, you know, and like, just assume the role of the artist. Like what, what would blah, blah, blah. Like, and I would just do it for them. So it looked like they finished themselves, you know? So basically, you know, if you even look at my paintings, it’s almost like I don’t have a hand. I’m kind of working with everyone else’s hand. So.

00:41:33 Ajay Kurian: Is there any other questions right there?

00:41:36 Speaker 6: Yeah.

00:41:38 Speaker 8: Yeah. Um, I appreciated your comment about, um, learning how to say no effectively. Um, from here, uh, Paul. Paul. Um, I’m wondering more concretely what you learned as an assistant or an apprentice in managing yourselves as artists, like within your business interests and financially.

00:42:03 Jamian Juliano-Villani : Don’t Google yourself at work and let them catch you. It’s the worst. Yeah.

00:42:10 Ian Cheng: Well, I think just in a basic way, like when I went to grad school, you don’t learn any of that, how to manage that side. And when you work for an artist, it’s literally the best. Could you get three? You get the whole thing, all the parts. And so I really am at pains to think of how I would have become an artist without working for artists I like, really respected and were like deep in the game. Um, you learn how they move, like not just in their work, but in the world and through people like you just can’t learn that without just being there and absorbing all the details. And so yeah, um, all the business stuff, you know, Paul’s a pretty savvy guy, pairs very ambitious, you know, huge budgets. You know, I, there’s only, uh, only one way to learn that and just doing it.

00:42:55 Speaker 6: Yeah, I, I concur there that’s, it’s just you’re just there.

00:42:59 Darren Bader: And you just absorb.

00:43:00 Speaker 6: It.

00:43:00 Ian Cheng: And it’s the best. It’s really.

00:43:01 Darren Bader: You’re not even conscious of it. You’re just, I mean, when, when I get, you know, thrown, you know. Kick kicked off the boat, You know, it’s just incredible. What I knew, I mean, I had a lot of hours to fill and I was like, cool, I got to make. What the hell am I doing? There are a lot of hours in a day. Um, but yeah, you just kind of. It’s incredible what you absorb. It really is. It’s it’s it’s it’s yeah.

00:43:28 Ajay Kurian: I mean, also the things that you don’t want to do, uh, banks had back taxes for the last ten years and I had to sort through that.

00:43:38 Speaker 8: Like how external to the art, but foundational to it, finding the resources to run a studio to stage a big exhibition.

00:43:46 Darren Bader: I mean, I had to oversee like this, this he basically hired a, a contractor, basically this, this warehouse got, you know, basically building up, building it up from scratch. He’s like, you, you liaise with the contractor. It’s my first job.

00:44:03 Speaker 6: I’m like.

00:44:04 Darren Bader: Like, okay, I get to drive the seven series down to Red hook and talk to the you know, it was it was crazy, you know. Oh, we need we need an expert. We didn’t he didn’t know what an expediter is either. Did I go find an expediter? Okay, here’s an expediter. We need these permits. Fast, fast, fast. Oh, we’re in violation of of, you know, um, whatever DOB is. Okay, we’ll figure it out.

00:44:29 Speaker 6: It’s who the.

00:44:30 Darren Bader: You just go. You just run with it back. Taxes too? Yep. Been there.

00:44:34 Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah.

00:44:35 Darren Bader: And, uh, you just go with it, you know, it’s all real. And then it’s incredible moments when it’s like, you know, uh, it’s like, Holy shit. You you understand what? Where the finances are not not that, not that it’s your job to be, you just kind of get it. You’re like, Holy shit, this is very real. And all of a sudden, you know, angel investor, you just don’t know. It’s just like, you know, that one work sells that keeps the entire operation afloat.

00:45:03 Speaker 6: Yeah.

00:45:03 Darren Bader: Because so much money was put into this or that project or these, This combination of work and it’s just. And all of a sudden it’s all just hanging by a thread. Truly, truly hanging by a thread. Truly. It’s crazy. It’s all so real because the money is so, so real in the business. And it’s so, you know.

00:45:28 Ajay Kurian: That’s another thing to distill. Like, I think a lot of people think that there are successful artists that are making money hand over foot and, um, they’re living this lavish life. But like, if you’re running a business with the ambition that these artists are running their business, it’s every project is taking you close to bankruptcy. And then like all these people’s jobs are on the line. And if, if one thing doesn’t pay off or if one thing doesn’t go right, or if there’s a delay on something, who knows what the next step is. It’s even at those levels, there’s precarity. Like there’s very few artists that are free of precarity. And I think like understanding how you build that in is not something that we’re taught and like not something that’s taught in school. And sometimes it’s hard to learn even when you’re on the job because you just keep growing. Like you just want to keep growing things. And like you’re not necessarily thinking about how to keep that sustainable. But, you know, I, I think we all.

00:46:27 Speaker 6: Learn.

00:46:27 Darren Bader: And also rarely, I mean, I’ve never encountered, even though there are so many of them are just extremely generous, kind people. A gallery will not tell you how to manage your career. They may say yes to this project or no to that, but they will not say, hey, you’ve got. We’re pretty confident you have a modest nest egg right now. Invest wisely. This won’t last forever. They will never tell you that. And that’s that’s really fucked. I’m sorry. It’s one of the great, uh. Yeah, there’s a word for this, too. I’m just not myself tonight. But blame it on the kids, okay? My fucking kids, they. No one will tell you that this is as precarious as temporary as it is.

00:47:15 Ajay Kurian: Yeah.

00:47:15 Darren Bader: They’ll just keep feeding you because you’re feeding them. Yeah. And they’re like, oh, we forgot to tell you this very critical thing, which is no guarantees. Never, never. Yeah.

00:47:30 Ajay Kurian: But you still do it.

00:47:31 Darren Bader: Of course you’re you’re addicted.

00:47:33 Ajay Kurian: We’ll take one last question and then we’re gonna wrap. Yeah.

00:47:42 Speaker 9: Um. Thank you. You guys said some really amazing things. Um, I’m thinking over here a lot about just from a philosophical standpoint, like this dissolution of ego and identity and self in a lot of ways. And how do you really reconcile with committing that deeply to that precarity and the, the precarity that is not yours to own? You know what I mean? And being committed to, you know, the vision of this artist or this thing that you’re building. Perhaps you feel some investment in that. But I think, you know, right now, in this current moment and many other moments, there has always been this collective energy that we’re working through of precarity as well as personal. So yeah, how do you really deal with determining where you draw the line or, or how much of a, I guess, value that commitment is for you? And I think that goes for like a technical perspective as well. Yeah. Like, as well as an artist that is participating in that making process.

00:48:40 Jamian Juliano-Villani : I feel like it’s kind of like someone rolls up on a monster truck and they’re like, do you want to ride? And then you just have to decide if you want to get on or not.

00:48:49 Darren Bader: Mhm. Uh, for me, the monster truck is just. Yeah, I’ve been just, just totally enamored of art since I knew what it was as an adult or a young, young adult, and I just signed up with these people, whether they were. I mean, I worked in a museum bookstore, I worked for galleries. I, I don’t care, I don’t care where it takes me. I just care so much about the end here, the end product, it’s, you know, it’s, I care so much about walking into an art space and chancing upon a work that will just make me feel like it’s all worth it. And it’s just, I cannot it’s been such an it’s like, it’s like sitting in the sun after the winter. It’s sixty, you know, whether it’s sixty five, seventy, you feel like a million. Again, I keep saying a million bucks, a million bucks, a million bucks, a million bucks. It’s the same thing. You’re you’re you’re just I’m just bathe in this this wonderful glow and I will do anything. It’s a madness, you know, it’s a pathology, potentially. But I will do anything to get that high again, and I will do it with people as long as they treat me okay. And I expect I that I would treat them okay as well, you know. You know, just just care ethics, um, common cause for the same dream really, which is that wonderful moment when you say, aha. Thank you for that artwork to whomever the creator is to whoever, whoever the creator is. Yeah.

00:50:30 Ian Cheng: Um, well, this might be a different time, but like when I was working for those two artists, it was around twenty ten. So in my mid twenties and I really did not want an identity. I didn’t have an identity. I didn’t want one. I didn’t know who I was. So I was happy to get on the monster truck because that’s like there’s an adventure right in front of me. Like I’m like, that’s better than anything. Um, I didn’t want to like, come to them with like this big ego of like, I’m going to be an artist. Like, it’s just that wasn’t even crossed my mind. I just, I was just clay, you know, like I wanted to just be around, have an adventure.

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