(images courtesy of Mr Planka, from http://www.plankomatic.com; most have been cropped for space)
So maybe we can start out basically. Why are you an artist?
Being an artist is a natural inclination for who I am as a human being. Growing up, my grandparents, both my parents, and my sister were always drawing. I always had that natural proclivity to draw, that need to draw. To express myself visually like that. I was always drawing. If I wanted to say something or I wanted to reflect, or make any type of comment or whatever. It's just who I am as a being. And then I got to the point in my life when I asked myself, "what do I want to be and what do I want to contribute to society?" What better way than something that comes naturally to me? It's something I derive pleasure from. It's kind of a selfish thing, but I enjoy making images and semantically that's how you label artists. It's just who I am.
Can you tell us a little bit about your process as an artist? Where does your iconography come from and how do you choose what to incorporate?
I really like Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, anybody who's making comments on mainstream culture or making commentary on something. I think that affects them personally, somehow making comments on what they think is important. So I am very into counterculture, conspiracy ideas. I work towards choosing separate ideas and juxtaposing them and thinking about how I can bring them together to derive meaning. It's based on stuff that I'm into, that I read, that I'm exposed to in day-to-day life.
We live in the twenty first century here and we're bombarded with imagery. Even in the last fifty years, we're bombarded with some sort of visual information at a steady rate. Some of those things that I look at, I kind of combine all those ideas together. A lot of the things that I make are based on a single idea or thought. How can I convey that thought in a way that makes sense to me? My paintings have a main theme or idea and I'll transform things and adjust to help me convey that information visually, whether it's through swapping out words or the actual iconography I'm using to suggest an idea. You know, it's basically social political commentary, no different than Basquiat, any of those guys. I'm just commenting on what I see, what I think someone should pay attention to.
I was interested in you talking about Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard in your artist statement [for your upcoming show at AS220]. In your paintings you use these little dotted lines to connect all the disparate symbols, and it really reminded me of Debord's Pyschogeographic map of Paris. What's the relationship between your work and the idea of Spectacle and Simulacra that those guys were getting at? Do you feel like you're trying to subvert it? Document it? What's that relationship?
I don't know about subvert...I guess there's a little subversion going on there. The main idea of those guys is almost a sort of nihilism, in a way. Whatever you're looking at is not even what it is; it's the representation of the idea of what it is. A lot of that stuff gets pretty far out when you're reading some of it, but it's a lot like Joseph Kosuth when he presents that chair. He has a definition of a chair, a real chair, and a picture of a chair. What is the chair? It's been told to me that that's what it is.
In the bigger scheme of society and the social systems and how it all interacts in a big kind of microcosm/macrocosm sort of semiosis, it's about how all these things relate. And there is a connection between everything. Looking into transcendental meditation or quantum physics - I'm not a quantum physicist, but I've read a lot and learned a lot - you see that at the subatomic level everything is connected. There is no difference. So what I get from these books here is that everything is intertwined. At the same time, it's label this or label that, but it's all based on historical information, this Hegelian kind of idea where I only understand these things based on my previous experiences. So I mean, without getting too in depth, I'm picking an image that I think best represents the idea that I'm trying to say, but that idea that I'm representing is already iconography, it's already a symbol that has been pre-made, it's already there. It's a way that I think people can relate to that idea or that thought.
In some images I had weapons. What do weapons signify? What do they mean? They mean aggression, protection, it all depends on you. But regardless, the symbol of the weapon, of the gun, of violence or control, is a bunch of those things and it's up to you when you look at it to decide what meanings best suit you. I'm focusing you on one of those meanings. I'm contriving the information on the board based on symbols that I think relate to everybody.
Image is everything, and image is nothing. Image is a Sprite commercial. Reading Baudrillard and Debord and those guys, you come away with despair, despair that it really means nothing. I like what those guys talk about, and it makes sense with what I do and it fits the mold of what I'm trying to talk about. It's something that relates to my work. The way I place the stuff on the actual surface, I'm looking towards advertisements and how they put symbols down. I'm looking towards hieroglyphics. The way I compose the piece is dependent on how I think about it. Some of the pictures look random, but it's a specific randomness. It looks chaotic, but there is a place for everything. Everything is in an order. It mirrors our society: it's chaos, but it's ordered chaos.
Are you an artist who goes through phases? If so, where are you now? Where have you come from?
It's interesting you ask. When I went to school, I went for illustration, because I knew I wanted to focus in on rendering and being able to be the best draftsman and the best at capturing likenesses. I grew up on sugary cereals and Mad Magazine and the Smurfs, and that's what I relate to. A lot of this stuff is very influenced by that. The other day I was looking over drawings that I had done as a kid, in high school, and the composition is very similar to what I do now. It's kind of arranged and placed in a kind of space, but they're all placed so that each image has a separate little area for itself, even while they're all intertwined and connected.
I think that I've stayed the same, but I've also developed in how I do arrange the images and the way that I look at the space. Now I'm more informed, and more specific as far as what goes in. And it fits the kind of drawings I'm doing. If I was doing a landscape, the compositions would change. Even with the Fucked Series that I'm working on now, the composition of each drawing is individual and organized, but I arrange them on the wall almost like I arrange a painting, except I'm putting it on the surface of the wall. The idea of arrangement is there. I've been developing that idea since I've been a kid.
What are some of your interests outside painting?
I'm into living life. I like music a lot. I'm big on family, that's important. Just experiencing life. Going out there and dealing with day to day things while trying to stay positive. I like coffee a lot. I like hanging out with buddies and having coffee. I like to read a lot. I like to pay attention to what's going on. It helps influence me. I teach too. I'm a teacher, so I like to think about how to better articulate and better convey ideas. Just like everyone else, I'm just trying to find happiness and trying to find a way through the daily grind, you know what I mean?
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David Planka's new works will be on view at the AS220 Empire St. Gallery from October 3 through October 30 alongside Abby Test's Portraits. Please join us for the opening reception on Sunday October 3, 4-7PM.
Brief words and interview by Gan Uyeda.