Get to Know: Forrest Lewinger
Interviewed by: Eliana Blechman
We asked Forrest Lewinger a few questions about his practice, the relationship between sculpture and design in his work, and the presence of the artist. Read on for more...
Art-in-Buildings: What is the relationship between sculpture and design in your work?
Forrest Lewinger: I am struggling with those terms at the moment, and this piece was a way of working through some of it. When we say sculpture or design I think we are talking about markets, and markets usually determine the way things are used. Is this thing that I've made going into the consumer goods market and will it be used to drink out of or is it going into the art market and to become an object of contemplation? I think of myself as an artist, but I don't think I make artwork in my studio every day. When I am making a bowl or a cup for a client I don't think I am making an art work. But a sculpture is the physical presence of an artist's work. For me, Workaday was about creating a space where I could take these non- art objects that I have made with my hands and reconfigure them so that I can look at them more sculpturally. So Workaday is really about examining the conditions of labor under which an artwork is made and in turn, the markets that support them.
AiB: How can functional objects be restructured for an art exhibition context?
FL: The space of the art exhibition allows for a freedom to play with the pieces that I make in the my studio in a way that I wouldn't normally. It takes off the pressures of the work needing to fulfill a function and allows them to be reconsidered, rearranged and reconfigured. In the beginning, Workaday Handmade, my design studio, was really about an exploration of the condition of my own artistic labor. Workaday is a way to dig back into that interest by laboring over the work in a different way.
AiB: How does your work interact with the storefront window display of the West 10th Window space?
FL: I loved having the opportunity to make the work look over sized and too big. A lot of times my work is one of the smaller parts of a room. It was great to allow the work to overtake an interior. Now I want to take over a larger space with too big objects that are actually too big. Enlarging or inflating something is a way of pointing out the structures that contain it and of getting under the surface. While making itworking on the installation, I was thinking of the scene in the movie Tommy Boy where Chris Farely's character puts on David Spade's coat singing "Fat guy in a little coat" (wWhich should have been the name of the exhibition, now that I think of it) until the coat rips. It's funny, memorable and a little grotesque. That's what I want my work to be.
AiB: What is the importance of process and the presence of the hand in your work?
FL: Inherently Cceramics is inherently all about process, and clay is excellent at recording its own making into its surface. It takes a real virtuoso to get rid of the hand in the work. That, or you can apply industrial processes to it. I have never really been interested in virtuosity. I think that marrying the process with its outcomes makes for a stronger piece both aesthetically and philosophically. When we talk about honesty we are usually talking about the struggle to be good as much as we are talking about truth. So we are talking about imperfections, lapses in perception, and the limitations of human abilities. I like seeing those things. When you see my hand in the work it's not because I wanted you to see it or because I particularly care about the presence of the hand. It's because I made it.
AiB: What's next for you?
FL: Well I'm looking for that bigger room to make bigger objects for! I am also working on a series of new pieces called A Place to Sit. They are a series of objects that can be sat on where seated performances will take place.
Learn more about Forrest Lewinger on his website.
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