TOM CHO - Toronto, Canada - 100 West 3rd Floor Writing Studio
Fiction writer Tom Cho works at the intersections of many genres, defying rigid categorizations of his work and the reader. Sometimes characterized as Asian-Australian fiction, queer fiction, or trans fiction (or all of these), his humor-filled, energetic, and stingingly self-aware prose probes complex questions surrounding the construction and expression of human identity, as seen in his collection of fictions Look Who’s Morphing. Tom has also published over 70 pieces of fiction, spanning flash fiction to short stories in journals and anthologies in Australia, Canada, the United States, and elsewhere. He says that his writing practice involves being a collagist: he brings together seemingly disparate sources, including pop cultural figures (such as Godzilla and Fonzie from Happy Days) and scholarly works across disciplines. For his novel-in-progress, sources include philosophy of religion, musicals, and Star Wars.
Residency Focus: In the 100 West writing studio, Tom has been revising his novel-in-progress and writing the ending. Set in a robot future, Tom’s sophomore novel brings together robot-related tropes, such as the trope of giant robots, to explore questions about divine existence, religious diversity, and more. The book is written with the hope that our cultural ideas of religion can become less brittle if we find languages of belief that are capacious and pliable, as these concepts require. “To use slippery words to describe slippery concepts is a way to do justice,” says the author. tomcho.com
LITTEN NYSTRØM & HARALDUR KARLSSON - Reykjavík, Iceland - 100 West 3rd Floor Studio
Litten Nystrøm and Haraldur Karlsson are each captivated by the properties of light. Litten’s lumen prints and Harldur’s projections and video installations follow the effects of light on organic materials and awed viewers, respectively. Her ghostly prints, created through ironing and other imaginative processes of image transference from one fabric to another, unfold the fading stories of place, wear, and memory—” the teeth of time”— while his video installations visualize light on the move. Their individual processes build and inform each other, leading to site-specific collaborations that are powerful examples of “constructive interference.”
Residency Focus: On daily walks through the neighborhood, Litten collects cement, stone, crumbling paint from 100 West, and rust and blood-colored bricks in various stages of decay to create oil pastels. Pigments from the collected debris are combined with linseed oil, boiled down, and set in beeswax donated by Corsicana’s local apiary. This process can be understood as a distillation of place. As Litten distills Corsicana into color, Haraldur distills the city into pure motion using an extremely light-sensitive camera. The camera registers movement as disturbances in light, producing images similar to how a snake processes the vibrations caused by moving prey as sound and is thereby able to pinpoint its size and location. Haraldur positions the camera in the southeasternmost window of the studio to record the intersection of 3rd Avenue and Beaton Street. By manipulating the footage with Max MSP, a software used mainly by musicians, objects approaching the intersection become so abstracted that their forms are unrecognizable. What remains is a record of kinetic energy, an extended transference of light in and out of our field of view. littennystrom.com
CHRISTIAN RUIZ-BERMAN - Wassaic, New York - 100 West 3rd Floor Studio
Christian’s staggering paintings follow the logic of the remix, spinning traditions of abstraction and realism into joyous compositions that teem with color and vitality. Christian draws from backgrounds in graphic design and sculpture, his Mexican heritage, and his love of ‘70s music to create paintings that capture the dynamic interactions of living organisms, objects and histories, from which reality is constructed. Animals are rendered with breathtaking realism. Traditionally drawn to birds for their significance in Pre-Columbian mythology, the artist expands his bestiary to include the snakes and amphibians that also appear as wise administrators of the ecological life force. In contrast, humans are reified, appearing only as abstract totems and archeological artifacts against a complex backdrop that weaves architectural elements—Mayan relief carvings and kitchen linoleum—among meandering rainbows of color. Like a poem, or a symphony, Christian’s process of building a canvas unfolds in stages. Loose brushwork characterizes the initial poetic stage of intuitive response during which the artist spends up to five days listening to music and layering the canvas with these transposed rhythms. This is followed by two weeks of eight-hour days of meticulous, almost sculptural painting with tiny brushes to render the realistic elements within his works.
Residency Focus: Christian prepares for an upcoming solo show at Mindy Solomon Gallery in Miami. The exhibition will feature three 11 x 14 and seven 16 x 20 inch acrylic paintings, three of which were completed in the 2nd-Floor Studio. cruizberman.com