Sophie Wratzfeld in Conversation with Artist, Ian James Carr

Whether a shadow, an angle, or a perspective - New York-born artist Ian James Carr processes impressions of everyday urban life in his conceptual sculptures, paintings, and drawings. The starting point of his work is always the materials themselves; by engaging in a dialogue with them and making use of their possibilities and limits, the final form is created. Constructivist theories accompany his working process without dominating it. In his studio in Amsterdam, he explores questions about the environment surrounding us and how it reflects the nature of our society, but also devotes himself to humorous projects such as his Tiny Desk Series.  

MADE IN BED’s Interviews Editor Sophie Wratzfeld talks to Ian James Carr about his artistic influences, the importance of materiality, as well as his intuitive approach towards creating sculptures and paintings.  

Ian James Carr.

Sophie Wratzfeld: You studied Fine Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam – what impact did this experience have on your artistic approach? 

Ian James Carr: I was always creative; My father is sort of an outsider artist, writer, and illustrator, so creating things and being artistic was really normal for me from a young age but to think of it as a career [and] on this science approach level that I have now - I don’t think I would’ve had that if it wasn’t for the Rietveld.  

I really didn’t have a plan after high school, I was a bit lost. I didn’t go to Rietveld with a clear idea of what I was going to do - I was from the States, and I heard about that school in Amsterdam of all places. My parents were super supportive, just because the tuitions in Europe are way cheaper than in the States. I turned 18 and three days later, I was on a plane moving out of [my] mom’s house to Amsterdam.  

[At Rietveld], the teaching methods are quite radical, there are no specific assignments like “we’re all going to work on this landscape painting” - it’s nothing like that at all. They really allow you to just do your own thing within the structure of the school and as you go further and further – I went to the Fine Arts department – there’s [even less] structure. Like “here’s a studio space, you have a meeting next week to show your work - get to work!” 

[Because of my] youthful passion of skateboarding and graffiti, [my teachers] introduced me to a lot of things in contemporary art and art history that I wouldn’t have connected to on my own and that enriched everything else that I do. It’s an international school, you share and bounce back ideas, concepts, and values with people from all over the world, so you get a really broad and detailed education – very valuable, I think.  

So yes, it had a huge influence on my work - I don’t think I would have been an artist if I didn’t end up going to the Rietveld.  

Roarkism I, 2018, Steel, wood, household paint, and prefabricated hardware, 86 x 57 x 23 cm. 

SW: Looking at your sculptures, associations with the harmony and equilibrium of line and colour within constructivist paintings immediately arise – is that a movement you feel connected to or where do you position your artistic practice? 

IJC: The Constructivists are a huge influence on me since I discovered them at the Rietveld. I’ve always [felt] a real physical relationship between myself and the city around me; the Constructivists had a very similar connection to the space around them, so it felt right. Their writings didn’t feel pretentious or over-intellectual, and they really laid this foundation for art that I think is not dated. It’s something you can apply at any place in time, it’s a set of fundamental suggestions, and I build on that foundation because I think it’s strong, it’s right, it’s true. It’s something that will stand the test of time. They got wrapped up in this political side which put a bad taste in people’s mouth for the decade following but if you separate all the politics out of it and just look at their philosophies towards art, I think what they had to say is still very relevant.  

I wouldn’t consider myself a Constructivist, I wouldn’t want to be a neo-anything but I like using what they did just the way a scientist takes the experiments of Einstein and then expands on them to push forward to the new thing, furthering the science or the approach. 

Now I’m at a place in my practice where I don’t have to be too analytical, I can really go from instinct because I have enough things stored inside me and enough experience that I know when my heart says “make a decision like this”, I can always go back later with my analytical mind and figure out why it works the way it works if I really need an answer for that. I think it’s nice that my work can be appreciated by people that don’t really follow art but the more you know, the more references you’ll see in my works and the more ultimately, you’ll be able to get out of it.  

Untitled, 2017, Steel, aerosol paint, prefabricated hardware, 75 x 15 x 25 cm. 

SW: You make use of various means of artistic expression in your work, from sculpture to painting to drawing, and use a wide range of media - what role does materiality play for you? 

IJC: For me it’s very important, it’s the start. Making art is all about making decisions, you have to choose whether you are going to draw a line or a circle but before you even get to that decision you have to decide what you’re going to use. You need to [ask yourself]: “What do I want to build something out of?”. When I choose my materials, I try to lean towards what is found in real life like steel, wood, and things we use to build our life. I don’t like to use ceramics or any artsy materials because it’s not real. I don’t want to make a sculpture that’s a horse because it’s not going to be a real horse - it would be depictive of a horse but then it’s a layer away from the real thing. I try to think that my sculptures exist in their own right. 

Any material I use has its own strengths and weaknesses, the way a pencil moves across paper is very different than the way pieces of steel fit together. I try to stay true to the material’s strengths and weaknesses and when I do make drawings, they’re very dirty, smoky, abstract, almost minimal. When you look at the picture of the street in New York you have buildings and cars, steel and concrete, glass and blinds, and then you have the space between: steam coming out of the subway grate or the graffiti on the wall - it’s another layer of the urban situation. The drawings tend to lean more towards that side of things and the sculptures naturally lean more towards the heavier things like the architecture. I like to think I can make my work with any material. I don’t need to have a bunch of steel - whatever I have access to, I’m going to find a way to take the strength out of that material and fit it into my language.  

Sometimes I have this urge to make drawings that stand alone but a lot of times, the drawings and paintings are a tool to help work through a sculpture progress because it’s a lot easier to mess up a bunch of pieces of paper than to mess up a bunch of pieces of steel.   

Untitled (Marfa), 2018, Oil pastel and pencil on foam board, 22 x 28 cm. 

SW: Do you see a hierarchy between these media? 

IJC: I do think there is a natural hierarchy, I identify more as a sculptor rather than a painter. The sculptures take up a three-dimensional space, there’s weight to them, you can move around them – they have a presence. Paintings and drawings can of course have a presence too, but I think sculpture lends easier to that effect.  

I’ve had this analogy I use with people that don’t really follow art so much: the sculpture is the burrito that I’m eating and as you eat a burrito, bits and pieces fall out and they land on the plate below - those are the drawings, the sketches, and the smaller works. They all come from the same meal, and you scoop up those things from the plate afterwards and they’re also delicious. A lot of the drawings come out of the sculptural process, sometimes as a tool, sometimes they can stand alone but overall, I consider the drawings and paintings lower down on the ladder than the sculptures.  

SW: The precision of the craftsmanship of your sculptures suggests a planned-out approach while your works on paper seem to be more spontaneously executed – does your work approach differ depending on the media?   

IJC: It’s funny you say that, a lot of times people do assume that my sculptures have some sort of blueprint behind them because they are so exact but there really is no planning. The Constructivists had this great line “the form arises spontaneously out of the means of construction” - I don’t know what things are going to look like when I start. I get my inspiration from everywhere, the way a building looks as I walk by, or a shadow in relationship to an open door. An angle or a perspective or even a piece of raw material can kickstart the process of a new piece and then it is just like a dialogue. If I draw a blueprint, that means I’m creating the whole thing in my head on paper before I build it and I learned very early on that if you do that, you’re going to run into technical problems, fabrication problems. You won’t be able to translate [your idea] exactly into the real world so then it’s compromise and I don’t want that. If you build completely intuitively, you get something good at the end, hopefully.  

I take a piece of wood and cut an angle on it and then I look at it and it tells me it wants a little bit more material here or colour there, it’s a back and forth until it’s a finished piece. So, it’s the same approach but using materials in their essence. They look like they’re planned because of the choice of material and the choice of tools I use.  

ROARKISM II, 2019, wood, steel, aerosol paint, and prefabricated hardware, 107 x 15.5 x 40.5 cm. 

SW: Within your largely abstract works, there are also more figurative sculptures that are reminiscent of machine guns and surveillance cameras. What interests you about themes such as violence, control, and power?  

IJC: I think it’s just a big part of our world, whether you want to admit it or not. We are a pretty violent species and there’s a lot of power and oppression and surveillance, it’s all around us. Just as much as the buildings stand up, there’s this sort of dark presence of rules and wars and violence. Why is the fact that one of the best inventions, the most efficient designs of all times is the AK-47 assault rifle? It’s built better than anything in your kitchen or anything in any car and that’s a statement about humanity. Why are we so good at building things that kill each other? I’m not advocating for that, it’s just an observation. If art is a white light energy and the artist is the prism that the light goes through, violence is just part of the light, it’s part of our reality as humans. If we lived in a different world, I think the forms of my sculptures would certainly change.  

I always want to leave a sense of openness; I don’t want to make a sculpture that is a thing. I would rather make a real operating gun than a sculpture that looks like a gun. It’s the whole This Is Not a Pipe thing; I don’t want to make a picture of a pipe, I want to make the real pipe. I don’t want to bring my audience to some fantasy world that I’ve created, like “look at my vision of the world”. I want them to look at my work and then maybe engage in the world itself, in the world at large in a different way; Use my work as a way to start looking at their real world a little bit more critically.  

I also try to stay away from personal taste – I don’t use colours very often, if I do use colour a lot of times it’s just black steel with white paint on it, so the paint becomes another material. It turns the steel into a colour of paint, it turns the paint into a constructive material.  

Nietzsche Contra Wagner, 2013, mixed media on canvas, 160 x 150 x 7 cm. 

SW: Some of your paintings like Nietzsche Contra Wagner contain single words or letters. When using text within your works, is it to reveal their meaning or rather to create an additional layer of meaning? 

IJC: Additional layer for sure, definitely not explain. The words are very much open to any connections, I welcome those connections that the audience may make. I usually have an idea where they’re going to go because I give the audience a certain amount of information and they can put it together the way they want so that [the piece] continues to live and breathe as an artwork and not just some dead material.  

[The inclusion of words] is just a result of the way I intake information, there’s text anywhere in the city, there’s signage, and graffiti and chalk and menus – it’s everywhere in our world so that pops up. It also depends on what I’m reading, right now I’m not really reading anything, my work is a bit more minimal these days.  

Tiny Desk Series No. 5, wood, cardboard, aluminum, and aerosol paint, 20.4 x 24.3 x 2.7 cm. 

Untitled (Skull), 2020, Ink and latex paint on cardboard, custom walnut frame, 27 x 33 x 4 cm. 

SW: What are you currently working on, and do you have any projects planned in the near future?  

IJC: I have some things cooking, I don’t want to say too much because I don’t like to put things out into the universe, but I have a gallery in Turkey that I’ve been working with for a while, and we have some stuff going there.  

I’m really happy with my recent Tiny Desk Series because they’re all made of materials from my day job at a framing shop and I’m proud because I’m really keeping my language using like the smallest amount of material I have as far as sculptural work - it’s a fun exercise. Limitations are very important in my process; I made a series of sculptures where the only thing that I was thinking about was that they were going to lean against a wall. Just giving myself that one objective allowed me to really learn a lot and create a lot.  

The skulls [are another] new thing. I was kind of jealous of my friends who paint figuratively because I never painted figuratively. I wanted to paint a picture and I chose a skull because we all have one. Again, it’s that limitation of if I do paint figuratively, I’m only going to paint a skull. For me it’s really an exercise about painting; when you give yourself that limitation of only painting a skull, you’re no longer thinking about the image, you’re thinking about the materials and how you work a brush. You know you have to make a skull but how many different ways can you make it? So, I’m thinking of the paint as a material just like I think of wood and steel as a material. I want to get up to a thousand of them and then see where I’m at from there and maybe we can do a show in itself just the skulls. It’s all fun, it’s less serious than my other work. I’m really not a serious person, I take art seriously and see a real important value in art, not only for me but for society and our species. I hold it real close to me, but I also like to drink and make jokes with my buddies.  

I’ve accepted this thing as an artist; it’s beyond a career, it’s a part of me and it’s going to keep on happening and when opportunities come up, I feel good. Keeping it real Zen these days.  

Thank you, Ian.  

Image courtesy of Ian James Carr.  

Visit Ian James Carr’s website and his Instagram to find out more about his work.  

Sophie Wratzfeld,  

Interviews Editor, MADE IN BED