Robert Pokorny
The artist talks about hop-scotching around stylistically, the majestic beauty of the California Desert, and letting the unconscious take over.
Robert Pokorny (b. 1969, Merced, CA) is an American contemporary visual artist living and working in Long Beach, California. Robert Pokorny paints raw and energetic portraits that range from highly stylized and abstract to peculiar renditions of the individual reality of each figure. He seamlessly connects the figures through color, shape, technique, and sometimes a cathartic joint. Pokorny’s portraits explore an amalgam of human experiences using humor and cynicism culturally tinted by California’s counterculture movements and weird fiction. The artist has had one person shows at Ampersand Gallery, Portland, OR; Johansson Projects, Oakland, CA; NBB Gallery, Berlin; and Steve Turner, Los Angeles.
MPM: Thanks for speaking with me about your practice. I've followed your work since about 2019 and have always been blown away by your stylistic dexterity, yet the portrait has remained a constant. What is it about the (formal) portrait you find so captivating?
RP: I appreciate the kind words. The portrait has a long history, and I enjoy riffing on it. I think of the structure of the portrait as a concept — this free’s me up to approach it differently, and bend it to whatever I’m working on, be it a group or a series. I’ve always hop-scotched around stylistically but there has been a common formal language within it. The portrait as of late has just been fun to paint and I haven’t gotten tired of it yet.
MPM: I’ve always loved portraiture as well. The isolated figure opens up such possibilities. Did you ever have the desire to paint the figure interacting in an environment or narrative?
RP: I do enjoy painting figures in an environment, but it has to have the right balance, meaning a little abstract and not too narrative. Making it overtly narrative feels a little too heavy handed for me. I try to keep it a bit more open for interpretation, which ironically, you will see in my upcoming exhibition this fall.
MPM: Your work certainly owes a certain energy to California 60’s counterculture. Do you have a connection to this period?
RP: Growing up in California in the 70’s and 80’s I was pretty aware of the 60’s counterculture. I have three older brothers, so I was exposed to their music, movies and visuals from that time period. Having a father who was military and mother who was old school, anything on the fringe became very enticing. I would even add the 50’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s counterculture. I feel everything during this time period before the internet was such a rich, diverse time that influenced me heavily.
MPM: Sure, but in some ways the 60’s were definitely more artistically defined. Especially in music and the graphic arts….
RP: Culturally speaking, the 60’s counterculture with its psychedelic posters, graphics and album art, and without a doubt rock and roll, left an indelible mark on me, that I didn’t realize at the time. This period was exploding in so many ways in a cultural context. To this day a lot of the music, movies, books and art I enjoy are from this era.
MPM: You often depict your subjects smoking a joint, which I’ve interpreted as art's relationship to an altered state of consciousness. Is there anything that we’re to gleam from these depictions of indulgences?
RP: When I was growing up there was such a stigmata with marijuana and now it’s legal, just a part of everyday life. So, I wanted to make work that depicted cannabis, marking this time period. The characters I paint with joints are usually more about their reality than just the reference of getting stoned. When the pandemic hit and we found ourselves on lockdown I started creating drawings and paintings depicting thinking, staring, smoking and drinking. I think we were all doing one of these things during this existential crisis, and it felt right to get it down through drawing and painting. I’m not trying to glorify smoking, but I incorporate it to reflect this contemporary culture and the human condition. It’s ironic to me that I’m painting portraits with joints, because in high school everyone thought I was stoned just because of the way I looked. I generally wasn’t. It makes me chuckle and maybe get the munchies, too.
MPM: Aside from the portrait, your work is very much about exploring the way paintings are painted. When you begin a new series, do you begin with specific stylistic intentions or do these varying approaches happen more intuitively through the painting process?
RP: I’m always thinking about art and how I can build upon my ways of working. I may come into a new series with certain stylistic intentions, but then I start drawing, and this is where I actually get a grasp on what I’m developing. Drawing is the root of everything I do and getting it from the mind to the hand is the challenge. But drawing allows me to see what works, and I use that as a basis to move forward. I have a wide stylistic vocabulary that I’ve developed over the years, so it can shift around as I’m working ideas out. Sometimes, I flesh out a drawing to act as a guide, but this can change when I switch to painting. My job is to get out of the way, letting the unconscious take over, allowing the painting to dictate what it needs. Ultimately, what I am looking for during the process is a sense of balance, harmony, and rhythm more so than style.
MPM: I’ve always felt your paintings behave like stylistic Rorschach’s. I may read certain associations to Guston or Picasso, while another person might see Stuart Davis, or a Warner Brothers cartoon language. With all of these impressions in the fold, do you see an aspect of your work as trying to call attention to the fine lines that separate these different worlds and their hierarchies?
RP: I’m not trying to call attention to hierarchies of art, but rather to have a dialogue with them. The history of art including those names you mentioned Davis, Guston, Picasso and many more have had such a huge visual impact on me. All disciplines of art from high to low have become part of my visual mental resource, and subconsciously I’m not thinking about it, if I dig it and I think it’s visually interesting, that’s enough for me. Everything is up for grabs visually speaking.
MPM: Lately your portraits have been evolving, becoming more detailed, and at times, naturalistic. What has influenced this development in this work?
RP: I’m always looking to expand upon my art and build my visual language. The paintings that went naturalistic were not planned but came about as a natural evolution of the process. I have a need to keep evolving, but that could be either direction — meaning more detailed, or removing things, bringing it to a more reductive state, allowing the painting to dictate what it needs. I hope this is a lifelong journey, I am anticipating I’m about two thirds there…oh shit.
MPM: The newer works also feel as if you're approaching them with a more traditional manner of painting, and by that, I mean lights over a darker underpainting (?) Can you talk a bit about your current method of painting?
RP: I do approach my more fleshed out paintings in a traditional manner. I start with a chalk drawing that defines the composition, add a colored ground, and build with a loose monochromatic underpainting. Ideally, I work from background to foreground, but that can also get thrown out the window if I see something else developing. Lately, I’ve been working in a lot of thin layers building up the textures, letting that cure, jump to another section and over the course of many sessions build them up all over again. I’ll let my paintings sit in the studio and start other work allowing myself to digest them. More often than not, after a painting has been put aside, I’ll see things I want to tweak. It’s tricky at any stage to not miss a great moment happening, or ruin it by over working it.
MPM: Your increased focus on repetition and pattern, from the hatching brushwork describing flesh to obsessive rendering of the subject's hair, lend a more pronounced hypnotic quality to the work that seems to fall in line with those psychedelic posters you mentioned earlier. Are you consciously trying to communicate these associations?
RP: Ha, obsessive! Probably, but I’m trying to bring it to a level that I visually enjoy, and am literally hating myself for the intensified labor. I love posters from that period, however I’m not intentionally making associations with imagery from the psychedelic era. It’s influence is there (after all I did create band posters for over 10 years), but I’m more interested in finding a flowing rhythm within the mark-making.
MPM: I really like how you’ve begun to incorporate some abstraction and op art indicative of that era into some of your painting's backgrounds as well. Thoughts?
RP: My wife and I enjoy going to museums and many years ago I had taken some photos of her in front of a Gerhard Richter squeegee painting, and I just loved the juxtaposition of the two. I tucked the moment away in my mind as an idea to explore. The idea of paintings within paintings fascinates me, there is a psychological tension between them that adds another level of tension. I also enjoy making abstract, non-representational works. Incorporating them into my portraits is just another way of approaching it.
MPM: Do you have any shows or projects coming up that you’d like to share?
RP: My next exhibit, Lost In A Dream, is with Anna Zorina Gallery, opens in New York this October 10th. These new paintings are inspired by the majestic beauty of the California Desert and escaping this busy, oversaturated, anxiety riddled world we live in. The language of abstraction, figuration and landscape are all at play within these new dreamlike paintings. The main feature, though, are these fleshy, sculptural, surreal characters who are traversing imaginary landscapes with a spiritual stoicism. I have been developing this work off and on since 2020 and it’s been interesting to re-immerse myself, bring new insight to the process and see it come to fruition. These paintings have a meditative tone and emanate existential thoughts with joy, optimism, reflection and a sense of humor. There is a force in the desert that I wanted to convey, a spiritual, serene state where dualities meet, and introspection occurs.
MPM: I can’t wait to see them! Thank you so much for taking the time to talk!
RP: Thank you.
Forthcoming exhibition: