Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/749295
culturedmag.com 269 COOPER JACOBY, 27 @balala Cooper Jacoby works with the architecture around him, creating what looks like, at first, crisp metalworks and valuable material objects. But soon everything starts to feel a bit marred, which is just fine, because Jacoby's work embraces the damage, often of his native L.A. He is currently on a residency in Miami where he'll be researching at the National Corrosion Laboratory, which studies how materials degrade. How do you know a work you've made is good? Probably because it continues to make me uncomfortable and never feels fully resolved. It always has this part that I can't easily explain, and it doesn't wrap up neatly. What teacher did you learn the most from in school? A professor and artist Kenji Fujita. How do you find inspiration? It's a murky process. Some things are immediate—they'll just pop up and instantly gain some traction—and then others sediment over time, so that you didn't even realize you were interested in them. If you could trade with anyone, who would it be? I don't know anyone living, but it would be the best deal if I could trade with Hanne Darboven, because it's hundreds of individual framed photos, and I feel like you wouldn't need any other work after that. Do you live with your own work? No, I don't. I like to be able to turn off from it. GUTHRIE LONERGAN, 32 @guuuuup Guthrie Lonergan's sincere, digital artworks can be described in many ways, but the one thing that ties them together is their relationship to the Internet, and Lonergan's uniquely qualified ability to harvest or bend it to do his bidding. His recent works in the Made in L.A. biennial at the Hammer Museum included his installing a talking yellow M&M on the exhibition's homepage. A survey of his works is up at Honor Fraser in L.A. through December 17. What was your first gallery experience? Ten years ago, I was putting a lot of DVDs in FedEx boxes and sending them off to galleries. It's funny, because it's now all on the Internet, and you send files, but back then I'd make a looping DVD, because the galleries wouldn't know what to do with a QuickTime file. Do you have any unrealized projects? My favorite karaoke place in L.A., Max Karaoke, has a website where you can search the song database, so I made a script that downloaded the entire database, including the little numbers that you punch in to choose a song. So I could print that out into a book or something. How did you fund your first works? Everything was on a laptop I already had, and nothing really cost too much money. In your practice, what comes naturally to you and what do you have to force? I like researching. I like looking at stuff and absorbing culture. What's the difficult part? Interviews and photo shoots. KELLY AKASHI, 33 @citizenbong The human body often shows up in Kelly Akashi's sculptures, often unattached. Not quite unsettling, but messy nonetheless, Akashi's materials are presented as a way of questioning the subjects they're depicting. Her solo show at Ghebaly Gallery in L.A. runs through December 23, and she is preparing work for a group show at Antenna Space in Shanghai curated by Franklin Melendez. What was your first gallery experience? It was with the artist Phillip Zach, who was running a space called Beige Cube in Frankfurt. I went to Städelschule with him. That was really special, because the school gives the students an off-site space to run, and they can do whatever they want with it. That was a great experience, which the schools in L.A. don't do. And it taught me a lot. We had full control. If you could trade with anyone, who would it be? Paul Thek. What is the best piece of advice you've received? If I notice I'm thinking, Should this be a certain way? I really question where that 'should' is coming from and get out of that train of thought, because 'shoulds' are based on false assumptions. That was told to me by Willem de Rooij, who was my teacher in Frankfurt. When you aren't in the studio, where are you? I play a really heavy video game called Life Is Strange. Not quite unsettling, but messy nonetheless, Akashi's materials question the subjects they're depicting. "Ten years ago, I was putting a lot of DVDs in FedEx boxes and sending them off to galleries. It's now all on the Internet." JEFF VESPA; MUTANT SALON (AKASHI)