Looking For U: In Conversation with Joshua Hagler

UL: We understand that your paintings are as much an excavation site by technique as they are conceptually – they present an authentic and interesting interplay between old and new. How do you gauge the balance between uncovering and adding content?

JH: I think about the paint on the surface as something to be wiped off or, in some way, removed to reveal what is beneath the surface. There is something meaningful to me about seeing a picture decay even as it comes into focus, and somehow that’s reflective of that kind of sublimated violence I’m talking about. I am not delicate in the way that I handle the paint or the canvas, but the balance itself is delicate, and there are rules. The process is actually very difficult to control, which was an intentional obstruction I put in front of myself so that genuine discovery could be made possible. You can’t know what you’re making. You have to put your faith in the process once you commit to the canvas.

UL: Your influences quite clearly extend beyond the realm of fine art. Who would you define as your most unusual influence?

JH: Well, I think the person who has most impacted my thinking about painting in particular is my partner Maja Ruznic. She’s definitely unusual. And always two steps ahead of me.

Installation shot of Hagler's River Lethe solo exhibition at the Brand Library & Art Center, CA.

UL: Your recent exhibition, The River Lethe centred on to the cultural amnesia and psychological repression emblematic of white nationalism in America today. What would you describe as the most culturally significant forgotten historic event of 21^st century white nationalist America?

JH: If we’re talking specifically about white nationalism, we can think of the present movement as a logical end stemming from the 18th-century invention of whiteness in the American colonies for the sole purpose of suppressing slave revolts. The origin of the term “white” as it was coined to describe what privileges a male person could enjoy is what is missing from the consciousness not only of white supremacists but of average white people in America who tacitly abide the white supremacist structures put in place long before we were born. Lethe, the spirit of forgetfulness or oblivion, in archaic Greek mythology is a good metaphor in this way, because, to drink from it is to forget who you are. This was understood among the Greeks, that all drink from the river before being reborn, and that to become the person one is meant to become is to reconnect with what has been forgotten.

UL: For the Looking For U exhibition, our artists have responded to themes of identity and communication in relation to modern technology. Would you describe our intertwined relationship with technology as a mark of progress and innovation or a source of darkness in the modern age?

JH: Well, I think it would be simplistic to think of it as an either/or proposition. Can we imagine living without a sewage system, irrigation, bridges, electricity for longer than a camping trip? But I think it’s worth using the question as an opportunity to think about the word progress. I do worry about current trends in consumer technology. I worry about the narcissism, isolation, stress, loneliness, envy, and sense of incompleteness it seems to engender in people. More complicated is the way in which our behaviors with our technology inform what we’re shown through it, so that our worldview is formed in an echo chamber of people who never challenge what we think. We are absolutely not equipped with the wisdom to deal with the unintended consequences just around the corner, if not already here. Anyway, I think I was mansplaining all that to my friends at halftime during the World Cup Final projected from my computer via Hulu Live TV. Then I checked to see if I had any new followers on Instagram. I had five and felt pretty good about myself.