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A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Philosopher | City of the Seekers

Artist Rives Granade loves all the things about Los Angeles that everyone else hates.
Untitled, 2009, oil on canvas, 48"x72," private collection, courtesy the artist

In the late 19th century, Southern California attracted misfits, idealists, and entrepreneurs with few ties to anyone or anything. Swamis, spiritualists, and other self-proclaimed religious authorities quickly made their way out West to forge new faiths. Independent book publishers, motivational speakers, and metaphysical-minded artists and writers then became part of the Los Angeles landscape. From yogis, to psychics, to witches, City of the Seekers examines how creative freedom enables LA-based artists to make spiritual work as part of their practices.

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"People have used adjectives such as 'plastic' and 'visceral' to describe my work," says artist and writer Rives Granade. "The dialectic between those two words is where I want my art to land."

By definition, it seems 'plastic' and 'visceral' couldn't be further apart, but in Granade's case, they really are the closest words to describe his work. In art, plastic is related to producing three-dimensional effects in painting, as well as modeling and molding in 3D. Visceral, meanwhile, relates to profound emotions and impulses. When it comes to his process and output, Granade's work indeed falls somewhere between.

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Happy, 2015, oil on canvas, 72"x72," courtesy the artist and Ochi Projects Los Angeles

With a BA in philosophy and an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, the internationally exhibited artist is influenced by everything from history and archeology to lighting design, signage, advertising, neo-futurism, and poetry by the likes of Ezra Pound, Rene Daumal, Henri Michaux, and Jean Genet. With such a broad range of interests, it's not easy to pinpoint Granade's style, but that's kind of the point.

"Style is something that comes out of sensibility—sensibility being a certain intuition to make choices based on one’s own inclinations," Granade explains. "I don’t really think of style when I work, but I do think of the way something will look and in what context it will be presented. What you end up with is a certain style, I guess, but I’ve never been that consistent. I tend to gravitate toward harsher things and forms."

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Instead of working within a specific genre, Granade is more interested in beginning with an idea and thinking about how it will look in the end. Lately, he says he's been especially inclined toward using text as a kind of of ready-made form for manipulation, exploring ideas of mutability and legibility throughout.

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Kandinsky’s Bathmat, 2012-2016, oil on canvas, 78"x48," courtesy the artist

"For example, I might say, I wonder what the letter 'A' would look like from underneath? From there, it becomes a matter of how I might achieve seeing this 'A' from underneath."

According to Granade, this could take the form of a sculpture, drawing, painting, or a video, or he might model the "A" in a 3D graphics program and see what it looked like then. Maybe he'd discover that the letter "A" isn't interesting from underneath, or he'd do something to the letter by accident, resulting in a completely different form that's ultimately more interesting than the original. Whatever the case, it's clear that Granade's artistic process is informed by his education in philosophy, with the frequent manifestation of what he describes as larger and more universal questions that address the linguistic, architectural, or mundane implications of viewing a familiar form from a new perspective.

"Also, you have to ask yourself if the object should even be brought into the world at all," Granade observes. "I once heard Peter Saul give similar advice. He was saying, essentially, that you have to be very careful what you put out into the world: it is so full of junk already, and an artist shouldn’t just be adding to this […] I believe he has a point."

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Zamora, 2015, oil and paper on canvas with cat food cans, 72"x72," courtesy the artist and Ochi Projects Los Angeles

Whatever the final form his work takes, creating is a way of life for Granade, enabling him to navigate the present in the same way people use religion to do the same. Like most professional artists, Granade says that he goes a little crazy if he's not creating, and he describes the creative process as something more akin to "scratching an itch" than any kind of cathartic release.

Yet while his process is full of questions, Granade ultimately wants his art to radiate a certain kind of energy and convey a kind of "feeling" for the observer. It's the same feeling that comes from encountering 1960s Brutalist or parametric architecture, which are also big influences of Granade's, as is graffiti made with Super Soakers. It comes as no surprise, then, that for the past six years, Granade has been living and working in the land of unlikely inspirations: Los Angeles.

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The Saddle, 2015, steel and enamel, 55"x78"x13.5," courtesy the artist and Ochi Projects Los Angeles

Granade says it was LA's architecture and the quality of light that called to him, along with the weather and the affordability of space. Unlike many other Angelenos who loathe traffic, Granade actually likes driving everywhere. In fact, the clichés people associate with the city are what Granade loves about it, including strip mall architecture, fast food, palm trees, swimming pools, and helicopters.

"It’s also a little run-down," he says. "It feels very American to me."

Granade believes that Los Angeles has a huge influence over the artists who live and work within the confines of the city, especially with the movie industry facilitating creativity in unexpected ways.

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"With prop shops and large industrial manufacturing all over town, artists may only be constrained by their budgets," he points out. "Los Angeles is a place of fantasy, and it really does live up to its own mythology."

From LA's color palette to subject matter, the city influences the artist in countless ways. Plus, Granade feels that the cross-pollination of cultures in the city supplies a distinct energy that affects not just his work, but the work of almost everyone else who lives in LA, too.

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The Saddle (detail), 2015, courtesy the artist and Ochi Projects Los Angeles

Given that Los Angeles now has more galleries than ever before, however, Granade finds himself concerned over their sustainability.

"It just seems to me that there are not that many collectors even worldwide to maintain this type of growth. After all, there are only something like a few thousand people in the world that would or can spend six figures on a work of art. The whole scene is very small, when you think about it, and yet all the same, it is an exciting time to be living and working in Los Angeles.”

In the end, Granade will be striving for the same truth in his practice, wherever he lives.

"I have found that I need art—it enhances my life. It is ritual for me," he says. "Instead of going to church, I might go and see a show, a performance, or a building. Occasionally, walking into a gallery or museum space is like walking into a cathedral. As skeptical as I am about saying this, there can at times be something transcendent in a work of art, whether it be a perfectly arranged Donald Judd installation in the desert of west Texas or a Monet water lily painting hanging in an immaculately tiled room in Japan, sometimes art shows us something greater than ourselves."

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Red Poem, 2015, installation view, courtesy Ochi Projects Los Angeles

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Kykeon, 2015, oil and acrylic on canvas, 48"x52," courtesy the artist

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Linda Flora, 2013-2015, oil and paper on canvas, 108"x78," courtesy the artist

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Acid, 2016, nickel plated steel, 137"x21"x 14," courtesy Harmony Murphy Gallery

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Acid (detail), 2016, courtesy Harmony Murphy Gallery

Visit Rives Granade’s website here.

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