Mitchell - interviewed by Daniel

Conversation about an exhibition at the CAC of new work by Mitchell Kehe: Something About One Thing Becoming Another Thing to See if It Knows What’s What

The works displayed in the exhibition includes two large scale sculptures on the floor. One of the sculptures is a table with a pair of wooden legs coming down from the underside of the table top, the legs are wearing trousers and sneakers. Balancing on the right sneaker is a small abstract shape made of clay. The other sculpture is a large abstract shape made of wood and draped brown wool. Coming out of this form is a piece of wood with a leather glove on the end, which is holding a walking stick. On one of the walls of the space is a medium to large scale diptych painting. Painted on each panel is almost the same shape, a slightly indiscernible dog’s head facing downwards. Each dog’s head is a slightly different shade of brown from the other with a black outline. On another wall of the space is a medium scale painting on chip board of a simple green outline, the image of the outline is not certain. Scattered around the space are 3 small acrylic paintings on transparent sheets, all rendered in a cartoon style, as if they are frames of a cel animation. One is of a cartoon man carrying a large brown, abstract shape on his back, one is a detective holding a magnifying glass, and the other is of three dogs stacked on top of each other wearing one large trench coat and a hat as a disguise. The works were produced as a group, informing and encouraging the reading of them as a group in the space.

Interviewer: Daniel Fogarty Interviewee: Mitchell kehe

DF: What’s the significance of the title?

MK: I think it’s an attempt to frame the work, or maybe more to frame what I was thinking about while making these things. I suppose it encompasses a number of interests I have and interests that have always in some way driven my work. For instance, the flexibility of identity or more like flexible roles that things play, but also the flexibility of matter itself, matter being composed of particles that are constantly shifting around and potentially shifting until they become other things. Maybe it’s an argument against truth or anything being absolutely fixed in its identity. Using “it” as the subject in the title instead of he or she or whatever so that it’s not exclusively human or about personhood. The title also gives a kind of self awareness or consciousness to objects. As far as the “becoming another” bit, that comes from thinking about emulation. Like, maybe when you are a teenager and you really admire a certain musician or something and you start to dress like them or get their haircut. I feel like there is a very human, maybe subconscious, desire or instinct going on there, to gain knowledge, or gain the knowledge of the other. So with dressing like someone, maybe there’s like an aesthetic or style to their particular knowledge – maybe if I dress or look like that person, I can somehow align myself with how they think DF: like your enveloped in their knowledge, by way of style. MK: Yeah like ingesting something about them

DF: What kind of knowledge is going on in the show? At what point in that ingestion are we seeing the show? Does that make sense?

MK: Yeah, it does. I guess in the title because it says “it” which implies there is one thing becoming one other thing. In the work it’s more like using that idea as a subject and not necessarily starting from a particular “it.” There is a work in the show that is a drawing of a man carrying a large abstract shape on his back. So there is also something about the burden of the abstract in a world where we are supposed to be very logical and where digestible representation is king, but feeling this constant undercurrent of these abstract concepts. And not just feel them but also things that science tells us are true, like matter being made of tiny atoms, the same atoms are found in human brain matter and in dog shit and a computer screen. Dealing with that possibility, that all things are really the same thing. There is another drawing of three dogs stacked on top of one another wearing a long trench coat and hat, the classic cartoon disguise, 3 dogs plus trench coat equals human man.

DF: You mentioned the word “classic,” in the show there are these animation stills and there are these figurative forms and… I forgot the first word that I used … do you remember? MK: Classic? DF: Yeah, that’s it, is there a “classic” kind of formula or style that you’re working with? Is that a way to access these pretty big ideas that you’re thinking about?

MK: Yeah, I think so. There’s a way I’ve always felt about non-contemporary media, like a film from instance from the 20’s. So whenever I watch a period film, what comes through the most are the timeless, basic human dilemmas. When I watch a contemporary film I always get hung up on judging the characters on superficial terms. Because the contemporary is my world I understand it from the inside more and feel I can critique it maybe, so sometimes I find that maybe I miss the big picture or those timeless human concerns that I get from period films.

DF: Maybe that has something to do with what you were saying about things not having one static identity or another, like the things you’re making can exist in more than one time, or at least, they are hard to place in a certain time. Whatever the word is for the time version of transcontinental. (Both laugh) Is this a new body of work for this show? Would you call it a body?

MK: Yeah, I would call it a body. Or a room? DF: A room of work? MK: I guess I always think in terms of a room of things, just as a very basic way of how I imagine my work existing. I very rarely think of a work being on it’s own. It’s more like a marry-go-round, somethings get off and then get back on later, one horse leads to the next I guess. I will make something and then put it aside, then maybe pick it up again but tear part of it off which will reveal something much better and leads to another work, that kind of thing. Like a whirlpool of things that I eventually edit and whiddle it down until a group of things emerge.

DF: Merry-go-round is such a practical name for something, you know like, “We’re merry and we’re goin round.” (both laugh)

DF: When I look at the work, there a lot of gestures going on, I was going to say figures, but I think it’s gestures, could you talk about that?

MK: I think so, I’ve never thought about it exactly like that. DF: Cause their like stopped in motion or something. MK: Okay, right, their like frozen mid action maybe. DF: Yeah and even the sort of clumps, the clay shapes fom instance, everything seems to be sort of balancing or holding something up or leaning.

MK: Yeah, that actually what I was going to say, there is a lot of propping up, holding, balancing, even mutually supportive. It’s actually something I’m not super aware of while making things, I guess it’s just there and always becomes appearent when a group of things comes together, like I was saying before. So, it’s hard to say, at the moment, where that comes from but I guess it has something to do with some kind of collective pool, all things being connected and holding one another precariously. Mutually supportive sounds like a really good thing but I guess it gets a bit scary in its fragility. Gravity plays a big part in that I think. This enormous invisible force that influences everything.

DF: I’m going to make a really big leap here. That bit about gravity and potential for toppling. You’ve got this diptych of two elongated dog heads, which have been abstracted through gravity.

MK: wow

DF: It’s a really big leap, but could you talk about dogs?

MK: I really like what you just said, that gravity is stretching those dogs into something else, and we are seeing them in between identities, in a sort of abstracted . Again, there’s this invisible force transforming us.

DF: And also that the dogs are looking down almost as if they can see the gravity.

MK: Dogs do seem to know more than they let on.

MK: The invisible force idea is something that has always been an interest and a personal dilema for me too. There’s this massive invisible thing, like gravity, but without a name that alters things. Maybe my whole aim is to somehow begin to describe that force through the things I make, or at least my experience with that force. And maybe that goes back to the burden, trying to deal with these abstract things with a human brain. Okay, what was the other thing?

DF: Dogs.

MK: Oh yeah, okay, I have an answer for that I think. Dogs occupy a very particular place in the world, there is this weird space between nature and humans. They basically live the exact same lives that we do, or live in the same spaces, surrounded by the same stuff, for the most part. But they experience our world from a completely different angle, not just a physical, under the table angle, but also, of course, a different psychological angle. So maybe that what the work and the title is also saying, maybe a dog need to fake being a human for a little while to see the world from a different angle, to gain that perspective or knowledge. I also see dogs as non-judgmental observers. Or maybe they are judgemental, who knows.

DF: Okay, I’ve got a classic question to finish up with: What are you working on now? (giggles)

MK: Nothing. DF: Right, Okay. MK: I mean really, since I installed this show, I’ve not done one thing. I guess I’ve been thinking a lot about narrative fiction to run parallel to this work. I haven’t written anything, but thinking is working right? DF: Yeah MK: So, that’s what I’ve been working on, thinking about a format or character to write in and about, it will probably be a detective type thing. Yeah, so I guess a big part of the work is also this striving to find a truth or the truth but there is no truth to find. So, maybe the fiction would be something like that, like a perpetual solving of a crime that never leads to any final conclusion.

DF: I definitely see that reflected in the work, and even those tropes of the detective story. Like the smart dog and a trench coat.

MK: And I think even dog detectives are a thing that is somewhat common. DF: A stylized dog in a trenchcoat.

DF: Okay, I think I’m probably done, what can you say in 50 seconds? MK: 49… 48… 47 (both laugh)

DF: Any last thing you want to say to the people? Enjoy the show?

MK: Ummm … THERE IS NO TRUTH. (both laugh)