Trevor Guthrie
trevorguthrie​.org
Zurich, Switzerland.

Zurich-​based artist Trevor Guthrie was born in Scot­land before emi­grat­ing to Canada. He attended Vic­to­ria Col­lege of Art, earn­ing his BFA in 1989. These days he is known for his large scale char­coal works that com­bine rig­or­ous detail with intel­li­gent wit. He draws on found imagery from pho­tographs and film to cre­ate work that mines the col­lec­tive expe­ri­ence. Direct, ele­gant and cere­bral while simul­ta­ne­ously strik­ing notes of insou­ciant humor, Guthrie’s work is a bal­ance act of painstak­ing tech­nique and sar­donic but acute con­tent. Guthrie has shown at gal­leries inter­na­tion­ally from Galerie von Braun­behrens in Munich to McCaig-​Welles Gallery in Brook­lyn. Up next he will be exhibit­ing work in a group show at the Museum voor Mod­erne Kunst, in Arhem, Hol­land enti­tled “The End of His­tory, the His­tory of Paint­ing,” curated by Paco Bar­ra­gan open­ing Jan­u­ary 18^th 2011.

Curbs and Stoops: Tell us a lit­tle about your­self, where you came from and how you started mak­ing art.

Trevor Guthrie: Born in Scot­land into a fam­ily resem­bling Van Gogh’s Potato Eaters, emi­grated to a trailer park in Canada where my poor mother gave me brown paper shop­ping bags to draw on. My first mem­o­ries are of draw­ing. I would draw war scenes in church and make sound effects of bombers and tanks and soldiers-​till I got rapped on the knee by my very devout Irish mother. God was obvi­ously root­ing for his tal­ented pro­tégé how­ever. As a teenager I com­pletely went off track and found Jesus. He was no help at all. A few years later I got back into draw­ing and was accepted into a provin­cial art col­lege that catered to frus­trated housewives.

Curbs and Stoops: Your work is pri­mar­ily large scale and mono­chro­matic in char­coal or India ink. When did you hit upon this par­tic­u­lar style? Did you exper­i­ment with other medi­ums and col­ors before set­tling into your cur­rent technique?

Trevor Guthrie: The large char­coal work began in 2003 after doing a one night instal­la­tion for a Hal­loween party in a bar in Zurich. I did ten large pieces for the event and they just went off. I sold most of the work and decided to pur­sue the fin­ished draw­ing more intensely with­out much time for exper­i­men­ta­tion since then. I painted in oil for 15 years before that.

Curbs and Stoops: You use pho­to­graphic source mate­r­ial to cre­ate your com­po­si­tions. I know that you use found pho­tographs, but do you ever work with pic­tures you’ve taken your­self? What kind of cam­era do you use?

Trevor Guthrie: Con­cep­tu­ally, appro­pri­a­tion has gained trac­tion (as well in the law courts) as a valid mode of oper­a­tion. If you can jus­tify it, its yours. I do use my own pho­tos for source mate­r­ial but sam­pling known imagery speeds the viewer along to a more imme­di­ate place of under­stand­ing as to what the work is about.
My mechan­i­cal tools: Canon G9 with a 580EX flash and a 1965 Polaroid Land Camera.

Curbs and Stoops: Your work ref­er­ences a lot of clas­sic art, and I’ve heard you ref­er­ence artists like Car­avag­gio and Velasquez as major influ­ences, but since you use pho­to­graphic and cin­e­matic ref­er­ences often are there any pho­tog­ra­phers or film­mak­ers who inform your work? How about con­tem­po­rary artists?

Trevor Guthrie: Cin­e­matic mas­ters like Peter Green­away, Terry Gilliam, Stan­ley Kubrik, Roman Polan­ski are a few of my favorites if not in an unin­formed, casual sort of way. A 3^rd rail of influ­ences if you like. Noah Becker and Andy Den­zler are two artist friends with whom over many years, I have had an immensely fruit­ful dia­logue on art and all its traps, precipices, joys and rev­e­la­tions with.

Curbs and Stoops: You’re a fig­u­ra­tive artist who stuck with it even dur­ing times when fig­u­ra­tion became largely out of fash­ion in the art world. There is a large move­ment now amongst younger artists back towards fig­u­ra­tion and a so-​called “new real­ism.” How do you feel about this cur­rent return­ing to con­tem­po­rary artists?

Trevor Guthrie: Van­cou­ver had no time for quaint painters in the 90‘s. That was okay because it left me with myself and my old mas­ter heroes to learn the craft. I was stu­dio mates with a crazy Roman­ian Aca­d­e­mic who was schooled in old mas­ter tech­niques. I would learn more about paint­ing in an after­noon from him than a year in art col­lege. The new real­ism is fine but I don‘t really care what oth­ers are doing only that they do it well and hope­fully can make his­tory. For me, idea bares more weight than trends or the media. Paint­ing still holds a spe­cial place for me how­ever –paint­ings by Adrian Ghe­nie or Andrew Mor­row are amaz­ing and make me want to dive into it all over again. That said. I also really admire 3D work by artists like Urs Fis­cher or Ei Wei Wei.

Curbs and Stoops: In older work you often played with a Holbein-​esque mor­ph­ing tech­nique, so that view­ers had to sort of move around and inter­act with a piece to see it clearly. Your more recent work seems to have less of this. Can you explain the tran­si­tion into more straight­for­ward compositions?

Trevor Guthrie: The por­trait as sub­ject for a series is a dif­fi­cult sell –a task best left for the mas­ters like John Cur­rin for exam­ple. My rea­son for mor­ph­ing the por­trait was a prag­matic one; I suck at like­nesses and the morph was a way around the men­tal bar­rier for me –they ended up look­ing more like the sit­ter. As far as a “tran­si­tion into more straight­for­ward com­po­si­tions” goes, I have a short atten­tion span. I want to visit the whole world of ideas and issues from the liv­ing room in my mind. …AND vari­a­tion on a theme is the last refuge of the unimag­i­na­tive — the audi­ence these days is con­fronted with such a glut of things to look at anyway.

Curbs and Stoops: Your recent work makes unam­bigu­ous ref­er­ences to the work of other liv­ing con­tem­po­rary artists. What has been the response to these pieces? Have you ever heard directly from any of the artists who’s work you’ve ref­er­enced, like Ter­rence Koh or Jeff Koons?

Trevor Guthrie: In the group exhi­bi­tion “Six Degrees of Sep­a­ra­tion” curated by Noah Becker at Claire Oliver gallery recently, the response from the pub­lic to my “Hin­den­bunny” piece was ter­rific. The piece is not at all about diss­ing Jeff Koons –its about the end of the folly & hype of the early 21^st cen­tury con­tem­po­rary art mar­ket –the fairs, the spec­u­la­tion, the “art invest­ing” and the rela­tion­ship to the finan­cial bub­ble of 2008. A casino for the rich. The house even­tu­ally folded, but at least the play­ers still have nice walls to throw their crys­tal mar­tini glasses at. No, the big names don’t bother with bark­ing dogs — other than them accept­ing my friend requests on Face­book. Robert Longo did use one of my images for his pro­file pic –what­ever that means.

Curbs and Stoops: In “Illus­trated His­tory of the Trade Fair,” a recent char­coal work, you com­posed a mar­quee bar­ing some of the art world’s biggest names. What is this piece com­ment­ing on? Is there a cor­re­la­tion between the names and their font size?

Trevor Guthrie: A trade fair is a trade fair –I don’t care who is say­ing Art Basel is some kind of high cul­tural event. Art fairs are about sell­ing shit. (Some­times really good shit that I would buy myself if I could). The mar­quee is like those top 100 lists –only I am the edi­tor in chief in this piece. Its pretty much “tickle your ass with a feather” in those lists as far as I can fathom. The names/​fonts are part ran­dom, part who is get­ting the most press at the time. No big thought there.

Curbs and Stoops: Much of your work has an explicit sense of humor to it. Do you think the art world takes itself too seri­ously some­times? What does the inclu­sion of humor mean in your art practice?

Trevor Guthrie: When you look at all the real prob­lems in the world, and com­pare them to this par­tic­u­lar friv­o­lity known as the art world, then you’d prob­a­bly agree that it takes itself too seri­ously. But then again, the art world has to have some­thing to bitch about –by the way, when is that cura­tor of draw­ing from the Whit­ney going to call for Christ’s sake? The inclu­sion of humor in my work is prob­a­bly because I am half Scot­tish, half Irish –an ugly mix prone to alco­hol fueled vio­lence if removed of humor.

Curbs and Stoops: Hav­ing grown up in Canada and now liv­ing in Zurich, how would you say the Cana­dian and Euro­pean art scenes respec­tively com­pare to what we find here in the United States?

Trevor Guthrie: Europe: dry but peo­ple buy shit. Canada: cold and nobody buys any­thing. Amer­ica: Just get­ting my feet wet so I can’t say.

Curbs and Stoops: Since you keep your style so con­sis­tent over time how do you adapt and chal­lenge your­self to keep the work fresh, both for your audi­ence, and for your­self? It looks like recently you’ve done some paint­ing in India ink, is this some­thing we’ll be see­ing more often?

Trevor Guthrie: My style is, if any­thing a con­sis­tent sym­phony of mis­takes lead by a ver­rŸckte Diri­gent. Keep­ing that level of tech­ni­cal mad­ness up to snuff with­out the aid of drugs is what keeps it fresh for me –and hope­fully my audi­ence. India ink is what I do on Sundays.

Curbs and Stoops: What do we have to look for­ward to from Trevor Guthrie?

Trevor Guthrie: “The End of His­tory, the His­tory of Paint­ing” curated by Paco Bar­ra­gan open­ing Jan­u­ary 18^th 2011 at the Museum voor Mod­erne Kunst, Arhem, Hol­land were I will be show­ing some new oil paint­ings in a group show…

Images cour­tesy of Trevor Guthrie, with the excep­tion of Hin­den­bunny cour­testy of Claire Oliver Gallery NYC, and Holbein’s Wed­ding cour­tesy of Galerie von Braun­behrens, Munich. You can see more of Trevor’s work on his web­site or his Face­book page.