October 2023

AK Burns interviews Christian Rogers




Christian: Have you ever felt like you had control over the "success" portion of your life?

AK: I may have gotten a few accolades under my belt and mild fame, but fortune does not come with that inherently, as we all know, especially if you're not going to make pictures that hang on walls.

C: Yeah, I can at least say that I'm lucky in that sense — I make things, objects. That comes with its own burden. All the gigantic things I've made are still in my possession. And they've become bigger over the years and now they're essentially sculptures!

AK: Sculpture painting, you're crossing that threshold?

C: Yeah and now they become more and more expensive to store. Currently I'm my biggest collector, lol.

AK: It's very possible to make work by and for a particular audience.You are not by no means obligated to make things for everyone.

C: Yeah, for a long time, I felt like I needed to shoulder that burden, but I realized how much of myself and my own interest and taste I gave up in order to cater to other people's sensibilities. I'm at a point where I don't care anymore about that. The more I listened to myself, the better I am.

AK: Congratulations. That's really good. Like that mid-late-30's moment when you remember that you're actually fine. Like, "I know what I'm doing."

C: When I went into grad school, I had naked men in the paintings. And then by the end, everybody had convinced me that I didn't need them, or I should just take them out to make my paintings more marketable. In my 30’s, they had cartoonish depictions of gay sex, there wasn't any literal depictions of men. I was also pivoting towards using floral motifs. Only after grad school, when I wasn't selling paintings, and I realized I have to live with these paintings in my studio or at home, I was like, "if I have to make something, I might as well make something that I want to look at. And if that includes putting a bunch of weiners and butts in it, then that's what I want to do!" So I started putting them back in and all sudden, people started loving it more.

AK:I know you mentioned in the press release "screens," and I suppose that's inevitable in the time we're living in, especially when we're talking about pornography as an element within the work, which I don't see as the dominant feature in the work. I feel like that's a subtext to be honest. There's also stylistically what you're working with, you have this wildly Electric Palette. You have a kind of abstract floral. It's a starfish. It's a sea anemone. It's the solar anus. It's flowers. But it's kind of at the edge of floral. You know what I mean? They have an animacy to them. Does that make sense? Like a richer quality?

C: Yeah, I think of them as being multi species in a way.

AK: I also read that you started with cactus blooms, which in the plant world, cactus survive in a space of lack in a certain kind of way. There's also a kind of thorniness to them. Right? So they're different from other kinds of flowers. The Bloom is this thing that we're attracted to, that we pick, and we want, and we decorate our lives with in certain kinds of ways. The Cactus flowers have a different kind of resonance, right? I'm just curious, how did you come to the form of the abstract flower that you render?

C: At the end of my time at Hunter, I'd switched from making these goofy male bodied figures. I was going to these sex parties where there were trans individuals there. I started to feel like the paintings, which were depictions of these parties, were not really reflective of the people who were going. So I started to think about ways of representing other body types through allegory. So I pivoted into using flower forms. But the specific cactus blooms didn't come into my work until I moved to California.

C: In Oregon, I had a great garden. When I moved to New York, it completely went away. In LA, my landlords propagate cacti. They're both retired. I think the cacti are really exotic and fun. Some are so rare and I love the way they are thorny, very slow, almost non moving. Then you give it a little water and some heat, then all of a sudden out of nowhere, it has this potential within it that bursts out. Something that's perceived as being thorny, or tough all of a sudden can produce this soft ephemeral delicate thing that blooms and within 24 hours, it dies and then that's it.

C: In Dutch still life painting, the flowers are allegories for bodies or body parts. In LA, the cactus became the flower that I was seeing almost every day in the garden because there's hundreds of them in my garden. Throughout the summer, especially during the hottest periods, I go out every day looking for these little treasures. It's almost like cruising the garden. Cruising to see who's here today. It's also something that my landlords and I have bonded over.One is a retired ballet dancer, and the other is a retired CPA. It's an intergenerational friendship. It's nerdy. It's totally separate from my art practice, but it brings me so much joy and excitement.

C: The forms do have a starfish quality. Last weekend, somebody asked me about the title of the show. "Which ones are heaven and which ones are Earth?" I think it's so strange that people sometimes take painting so literally. Like the girl from the Old El Paso ad from the 90’s said, “Porque No los Dos?” Why not both?

AK: It's also just a little binary. Isn't "heaven on earth," about the coexistence of Heaven on Earth?

C:I grew up in a religious house. I don't subscribe to any of that now. But I often think about things like, "what if this is the heaven that we're supposed to exist in?" What if this is it? What if the moments that we're making art, or we're having sex, or we're enjoying ourselves, or we're eating a delicious doughnut? What if those are the most heavenly things we're ever able to experience?

AK: We live in Eden, it's just that we're not taking good care of it.
C: You need to create space for it in your life. We're so caught up with our social media, our work, all the things we have to do. Taking moments to be human, and to experience the carnal pleasures of life are really where heaven exists.

AK: Maybe that gets me back to my question that I detoured off of. I wanted to talk about the psychedelic quality. There's a kind of retro aesthetic in the room and I think it's threefold. One, it exists very much in the Polaroids because of the medium and because of the tactics you're using. Then I think the psychedelic dahlias have a very literalized electric color palette and their forms. But then there's also this layer of campiness. Like the high art of craft. You bring craft into this whole other kind of zone because the paper pulp is a lowbrow method as much as something like decoupage collages, right? But you have these protruding... It's that thing that happens on drugs and the artwork comes into relief or comes into your world. You've almost animated that for us. I'm curious about that. Like, the hard lean into that kind of aesthetic.

C: The psychedelic aspects of my work really got heightened when I moved to California. I've always smoked weed but when I moved to California, it was so prevalent, it's everywhere. Even things like mushrooms and LSD. Like, that stuff does play a role as an experience. I like to work a little bit high, to get in the zone. When I've done shrooms or LSD in the studio to clear my mind or to just sit with the work, I do love the actual effects. The men literally cruise the gardenscape and move in and out of the flowers. I don't want to encourage anybody to do drugs and come see the show, but it is a great experience.

C: I'm taking on a more punchy palette. Camp is a good word for it. I also put multiple high gloss coats on it, too. I've leaned into that because I like it. I love the shininess. It reminds me of my patent leather tap shoes I had as a child. Collaging is one of these things that we all do. From when you're young and you collage shit on your bedroom wall. It's like this natural thing that everybody at some point in their life does. Whether it's drawing inside a notebook or decorating your locker. It is craft.

C: I often describe them to people as giant dream boards, where I paint my favorite things. Naked men and flowers. They all can kind of live together. It's a little corny. But it's really sexy and fun.

AK: I don't know if I would call it corny. I don't feel it's corny. Yes, I suppose in the frame of “hetero high art” maybe?

C:Going back to the Heaven on Earth title, like, why can it be both? Can they both be figures and flowers? Like Prometheus bringing the sculpted body to life... The relief is a body and it's somewhere between plant, animal and human. I'm not super rigid on how people interpret it. A body is tactile. You want to touch it and reach out. The forms sometimes resemble pecks or buts, or breasts.They have that rounded shape, where you want to massage them.

AK: Yeah, I feel like it emphasizes what I see in the flowers, which is this hybrid form. Where animals and plants intersect.

AK: I'm a huge fan of getting really close to things, and getting stopped by the security guards at the art show. I get that sense that there's this kind of richness in the surface. It's the combination of color and protrusion that make this undulating. The "campiness" of it is really what's charging it.

C: Camp is what makes it fun and exciting. When I think about what defines camp, I think it’s the defiance of expectation. Like, a painting is flat, but these aren't flat. A painting is classy. But here's a picture of a man spreading his butt cheeks open. There's a certain kind of Camp that has a cheeky subversion to it that I like.

AK: Similar to it, the levity is really important.

AK: Let's talk about some gay joy and queer joy. I guess the word gay is already about joy? It's a hard time for it. You know?

C: When I was younger, I thought making work that was overtly political was something I wanted to do. Just attempting to be happy and live my life — that in and of itself, I've realized is political. That's been a profound realization over the last few years. Just being myself and being happy, and having the relationships I want to have, and making the work I want to make, and making it really bright and colorful and filled with nude dudes is inherently political.

C: A long time ago, I thought, "oh, yeah, we're gonna make activism type work." And then just existing is a new form of resistance. I feel for all of our queer brothers and sisters. Literally walking down the street is resistance. I at least have the luxury of being a cis male and am six one. Nobody will fuck with me. But my husband, who's five five and a little swishy, can't walk around Hollywood alone.

C: When you live in a big city like Los Angeles or New York, you think you are in a queer Mecca. There's people everywhere. But I've come to realize that it's just as homophobic as everywhere else. There's a narrative that Hollywood is filled with liberals. But that's not true. There's a lot of people here and they're just as conservative as everywhere else. I think I've been called faggot more times in LA than I have anywhere else.

AK: That gets us into the cross section of politics. Democrats are somehow supposed to be more liberal or conscious or something. And then you've got the Harvey Weinstein's of the world who funded the Democratic Party. No relationship between politics and a good human.

AK: The other thing I really want to talk about is frames. Because frames are a whole body unto themselves. Obviously, with the big colorful ones - that's very clear. The black and white drawings — I'm not sure what technique you're using on there, I would love to know.

C: The drawings and the photos are in a welded corner, high polish frames. It's almost like a mirror. I wanted a frame that would reflect the paintings in the room. So they would bring the paintings into the drawings.

AK: Wait, hold on. So all of the color in the black and white drawings are just the reflection in the room?

C:Yeah. Isn't that fun? It's psychedelic.

AK: Zing, I love that. That's the shit you miss by seeing it on the internet. The black and white work does not look the same if it does not have a painting near it. It's a brightly colored counterpoint. If someone buys one, they have to buy the other.

C:I like that! That's a pitch! I really wanted a way to bring the paintings into the drawings. They are black and white, made with cheap, Bic HB clicky pencils. I use one of those and a blending stick. They take anywhere from 15 to 25 hours to make. There is a lot of work in them. And a lot of detailed work. I once slapped a colorful frame on one and I thought it looked bizarre. So I wanted a way to keep them looking really tight and clean, while still picking up on the color in the room. I want them to be like a rainbow picking up on everything. As you move, I want the surface to shimmer. A reminder that they're in the room with the paintings.

C: The painted frames are all hand sculpted from paper pulp. When I lived in New York, I worked for a frame shop in Chelsea. I developed some framing and design skills but also in a funny way, it made me really particular about the way my work is presented. I often call it the “queer desire to aestheticize our lives.” I'm a nester. I liked to keep beautiful objects around me. By building a frame, it allowed me to maintain control over the painting.

AK: Part of queer joy is that beauty matters.

C: Yeah! Maybe it's my nature to want to control the paintings and the way they are presented. By putting this Fred Flintstoney, Peewee Herman, clunky frame on it, it solidifies it as a queer object. Even the lumpiness. I have a technique of painting that creates these really beautiful, marbley, or bubbly surfaces to the sides. That's specifically crafted for each painting. The back of each frame probably has anywhere from 10 to 20 different color swatch combinations. At the very last minute I will decide which combination of colors is the one I want to go with. So the frame colors, while they seem light and fun, are chosen with a lot of discrepancy just to make sure that it's the perfect color combination.

AK: I love that. I totally had a thought… It's trompe loeil. It's an interesting technique to use. It's a highly illusionistic technique you've created. It's trompe loeil in a kind of cracked out way, right? Nothing here is meant to represent reality. But you're trying to give the illusion of a specific kind of texture or volume. It utilizes some of those techniques but for a form of abstraction rather than realistic rendering.

C: When you make a painting, you have to give the viewer a reason to want to see it in person. The surfaces, the shape, the protruding parts of it, the sheen of the surface, the tactile quality of the collage. I want to make my paintings stand out to make somebody want to see them in person. Seeing them online just isn't good enough, especially for people who love viewing art. I like giving somebody a reason to see my paintings in person. Something that you can't get online. Nothing makes me feel better than going and seeing a show of somebody's work and having that moment where you say, "whoa, I never really fucking realized how awesome this is in person." That's how you have a transcendental experience with a piece of art! You can't always do it through a computer screen. But creating an object that rocks your world in person, is something I attempt to do.

AK: The pencil drawings — there's a kind of exquisite level of rendering going on, especially between hard and soft edges. It's also an interesting decision to go from this wild palette to this total opposite, this absent sort of palette. I'm curious about that decision and to bring them into the room together. You've very intentionally staged them together, especially with the frame, as you noted. From there, I would love to talk about the Polaroids a little bit, too.

C: I make those drawings during my lunch breaks. I just spend my lunch hour, almost every day, drawing as a meditative practice. I often feel that they're a good contrast to painting because the paintings feel really exciting and lively. Imagine going to a club or a sex party, they are like the high endurance part of the art practice, where maybe the drawings are more like the morning after, where you stay in bed and order in and you just cuddle. When I make the drawings, it feels much more relaxing. I'm not looking to get turnt up, when I make the drawings. The drawings are for turning down. They're much more meditative than the paintings. I'm sober when I make the drawings, but maybe I'm high as I make the paintings.

AK: That's amazing. The Polaroids — there are elements in this work that have carried through from when I saw your work last. The flowers, right? Stylistically they've shifted a lot but the Polaroids are a through line for you. They are something that you have continued with over a really long period of time. They're like the baseline or something. They're the thing that keeps some tempo in the practice. They're really sexy, very sensual. The scale — you have to walk towards them. Whereas, the especially large colorful ones, come out at you. There's a very different bodily response to that intimacy that the Polaroids demand. I think there's something about the way you photograph a body that's very different from the way a body is photographed for a porn. That's part of the intimacy that I get from those. I'm curious how you see that work in the show and in your practice?

C: It's a form of collage, the overlaying of the images, and making them was a formal exercise then. Now, the source material is much more personal. The flowers are from my garden. They are these ephemeral flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, mixed with nudes or dick pics from friends, lovers, or boyfriends. Things that are also kind of ephemeral, right? It's the overlaying of these two fleeting moments that I am trying to smash together in a Polaroid. Polaroids are the perfect object for capturing ephemeral moments. Even though I use a digital to analog technique, it still takes these two events that give you this rush that you eventually forget about. But the flowers will always keep blooming and the dick pics will always keep coming to my inbox. Compared to when I used to make them 6-7 years ago, I feel like the source imagery comes from my daily life. I look for the flowers every morning. And then the boys come at night. Some of the photos are taken with my friends in the moment. I'll say, "Okay, let me go grab this stupid Polaroid projector." Because I have all these flower photos, we can take the sexy photos, do the exposures and make them in bed. The drawings are made at work, the paintings are made at night, and the photos are made in bed. As a person who has to balance my work and art life, it provides this consistent art making practice. ,

C: The paintings have oldermen, I don't personally know. Since moving to LA, I've befriended some old pornographers who are in their 70s and 80s. They provide me with a lot of the porn magazines and original photos. They'll tell me stories about the men that they photographed and the romances and relationships they had. They weren't always business transactions. They had this inner mingling community of queer men. The photo practice allows me to bring my own life and my own boys into the work. It's like a merging of two generations. Compared to when I made them years ago, it feels like I have control over it. When I started the practice, it was a formalist kind of exercise. Now I feel very sentimental about them. Every single one of them. I remember the bloom and I remember my friend, and then we put them together. I often give them to my friends. It’s part of my practice, that doesn't feel monumental. A painting takes months to make. It requires dragging my ass to the studio, every single night, where the Polaroid can be really spontaneous, and ephemeral. As I make them, I can give them to the people I love. In the past, it felt like a formal exercise. Now, it feels more like an object of love.

AK: That's a beautiful place to end I think.

AK: The best thing that can happen from grad school, is that you go in, you fall apart, and you make all these bad decisions, because too many people are giving you information and then you come out of it and say, "wait, I can see more clearly who I am through the fray." You know what I mean? I feel like you've done that very successfully.

C: Thank you. I appreciate that. It's funny, you said that about being more critical of ourselves. This weekend was the Tom of Finland erotic art fair. Of course, I didn’t say anything because nobody's asking my opinion, but I was a nasty little bitch in my head.
I was just like, "what? What are people making? This is just basic pictures of wieners." I left feeling disappointed. Not that I'm above any of it, because I want everybody to make whatever the fuck they want, whenever they want, but we can do better! We can do so much better than this!

AK: But it's okay. There's also a lot of good gay art out there.

C: Oh my gosh, yes, yes. Yes. keep on, keep'n on.

AK: We reign supreme in the art world as far as I'm concerned. We may not get the upper accolades, but it's still the best art!

C: Hands down. There's so much cool shit being made by queerdos out there. I love it.