In this Episode of Art is Awesome, Host Emily Wilson spends time with painter Troy Lamarr Chew II.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Today, Emily chats with Troy Lamarr Chew II, a talented painter with an ongoing exhibition at San Francisco's Altman Siegel gallery. Troy pursued his passion for art, eventually studying at the California College of the Arts and receiving a prestigious residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts. His recent work explores invisibility, inspired by his time as an Uber driver. His work can be seen in notable museums and galleries. Troy discusses his artistic journey, influences, and unique approach to language and representation in his art.
About Artist Troy Lamarr Chew II :
Troy Lamarr Chew II explores the legacy of the African Diaspora and its reverberations throughout American culture. His work looks methodically at systems of coded communication and how this is translated and mistranslated both within the Diaspora and the mainstream.
Chew’s rich artistic visual language draws inspiration largely from Black culture and its history. A highly skilled realist, inspired by European painting techniques, Chew uses these art historical traditions to reframe their exclusion of Blackness. In his Out the Mud series, hand dyed and sewn cloths from West Africa are replicated in a trompe l’oeil fashion, their patterns “torn” away to reveal portrayals of contemporary Black culture and resistance. In another series, Slanguage, the artist paints Flemish style vanitas picturing everyday objects, coded in hip-hop lexicon. His Three Crowns series explores the social history of cosmetic dentistry and the use of grills in hip-hop culture. The artist’s lush and luminous oil paintings embody the energy of this infinitely re-mixed yet deeply rooted genre.
In 2020, Chew was awarded the prestigious Tournesol Residency at Headlands Center for the Arts after becoming a Graduate Fellow from California College of the Arts, San Francisco in 2018. Solo exhibitions include The Roof is on Fire, Altman Siegel, San Francisco, CA (2022), Yadadamean, CULT Aimee Friberg Exhibitions, San Francisco, CA (2020); Fuck the King’s Horses and all the King’s Men, Parker Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2020); WWJZD, Cushion Works, San Francisco, CA (2019) and Stunt 101, Guerrero Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2019). Recent group exhibitions include Walk Against the Wind, Micki Meng and Parker Gallery, New York, NY (2023); The Culture: Hip Hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st Century, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD (2023); Imperfect Paradise, Barbati Gallery, Venice, Italy (2023); Continuum, presented by the Kinsey African American Art & History Collection and Residency Art Gallery at Sofi Stadium, Inglewood, CA (2022-2023); I Yield My Time. Fuck You!, Altman Siegel, San Francisco (2020); California Winter, organized in collaboration with Hannah Hoffman at Kristina Kite Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2019), Vanguard Revisited, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA (2019), Graduation, Good Mother Gallery, Oakland, CA (2019) and Black Now(here), Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA (2018). His work is included in the collections of the Kadist Foundation and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
See more of Troy's work at the Altman Siegel Gallery HERE.
Follow Troy on Instagram: @troylamarrchewthesecond
Troy at the Parker Gallery CLICK HERE.
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About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:
Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.
Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil
Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast
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CREDITS:
Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.
Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.
For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com
Host Emily Wilson: [00:00:00] Art is Awesome can now be heard on KSFP 102. 5 FM every Friday at 9 a. m. and 7 p. m. Please follow the show and rate us wherever you get your podcast media. If you like what you hear from today's artist, you can find links and information about them in our show notes.
Artist Troy Lamarr Chew II: I applied to the art Institute when I was in the third grade and they sent me a mail letter back, said you're too young.
So, I mean, like every chance I was trying to get a teacher, it was like, You're too young, or no, or something like that, so I just took it in my own hands.
Host Emily Wilson: That's Troy Lamar Chew II, the guest on this week's episode of Art is Awesome.
I'm your host, Emily Wilson. I'm a writer in San Francisco, often covering the arts. And I've been meeting such great people [00:01:00] that I created this bi weekly podcast to highlight their work.
Troy Lamar Chew II currently has an exhibition at San Francisco's Altman Siegel, his second solo show with the gallery. Chew lives in Los Angeles where he grew up. But he went to San Francisco's California College of the Arts for grad school and got a prestigious residency for a year at the Hedlund Center for the Arts across the Golden Gate Bridge.
The show at Altman Siegel is on view until December 21st. It has paintings from Troy's Invisible series. It includes himself, his best friend, his mother, and people who have inspired him. You see the outline of the figures, and they are transparent, where they're not covered by their clothes. It was partly inspired by Troy's job as an Uber driver, as well as his [00:02:00] experiences in the art world.
Chew, a wildly talented and productive painter, has other series. He loves to play around with language, doing things like painting figurative representations of names of dances. For instance, one painting includes Bart Simpson, mashed potatoes, and a shopping cart.
His work is in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and KADIST in Paris, and he has had shows at many venues, including Good Mother Gallery in Oakland. CULT Amy Friberg in San Francisco, Parker Gallery in Los Angeles, the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Barbati Gallery in Venice, Italy.
Troy walked me through the show. A self portrait of him holding a paintbrush with his dog inspired this series. I[00:03:00]
Artist Troy Lamarr Chew II: just touched on me in the studio, thinking about invisibility, just, I'm making these paintings and I'm kind of invisible because before I was making like still lifes and that's really even more invisible. Nobody sees you at all. It's still not the artist, but you can connect a little more cause it's a person, but yeah, still lifes definitely don't have a, that person connection, but I wanted to make it a little more personable, but still kind of have that emptiness, like where you can relate, but not relate at the same time. Yeah. Still feel that empty void kind of like where you feel how I feel as the painter.
Host Emily Wilson: There's a portrait of a curator, writer, and the founder of the Cushion Works [00:04:00] Gallery.
Artist Troy Lamarr Chew II: This was a very important person to me, Jordan Stein.
It was the first person that gave me a solo show in the Bay, but also the first person I feel like to push me in art school to like, think out of the box. I feel like I would still be kind of painting rappers. I feel like are painting without thinking. And he kind of like pushed me to think more.
Host Emily Wilson: Troy painted people at work because he thinks we often feel invisible there.He felt like this when he was an Uber driver.
Artist Troy Lamarr Chew II: Like passengers hopping in kind of on mute. And then I would say hello. I mean, some of them wouldn't even respond, but I mean, in the art world, it was kind of a sense like at my shows, people would. Talk to me about my paintings. And I'm just like, yeah, I'm the [00:05:00] one who did it.
And it was just weird. Like, oh wow. I I'm really, I guess I don't, I don't know. I guess I don't look like a painter or I don't look like the one who would have did it.
Host Emily Wilson: As a kid. Troy played sports. He got bored with that, but not with drawing.
Artist Troy Lamarr Chew II: I would just find myself in the house up until like one o'clock drawing pictures of rappers or something like trying to draw Kanye West's face up until late night, and my mom was like, go to bed. I don't know why I was doing it. I had no real reason to do it, at least I didn't think at the time, but then I had a sketchbook that I was working on so meticulously that I still have today. It's not even finished, it was just so detailed, working on these rapper's face.
Host Emily Wilson: Ever since he was little, Troy wanted to study art.
Artist Troy Lamarr Chew II: I applied to the art Institute [00:06:00] when I was in the third grade and they have some mail in art testing. You try to draw what was on one side of the panel without erasing what they had on the paper without erasing what you drew and you mailed it in and they sent me a mail letter back, said you're too young.
So, I mean, like every chance I was trying to get a teacher, it was like, You're too young or no or something like that. So I just took it in my own hands to try and yeah, we're here.
Host Emily Wilson: Troy went to college at UC Merced. They didn't have an art program. So he studied psychology.
Artist Troy Lamarr Chew II: It's still to this day helps me because I mean thinking about the way people think is ultimately like because I mean, I make art for people.
So, I mean, when I step back and look at my art, [00:07:00] that's ultimately the, I, the eye I'm considering when I am looking at my art, when I'm stepping back and considering changing it, or making each stroke, um, I'm thinking about the perspective of the audience. Like. Even from conception of the idea, like, I want y'all to like it.
Host Emily Wilson: Troy applied to grad schools, but he didn't get accepted. He worked for a year in his art, and then he got in everywhere he applied.
Artist Troy Lamarr Chew II: I went to a portfolio review, and, I remember they said it wasn't personal enough and I was just like, so mad. I was like, I made it. What do you mean? That's not personal enough.
But I definitely understood cause I was just doing like assignments and that was what I applied with. I needed to make it more about [00:08:00] what. I cared about.
Host Emily Wilson: Troy loved CCA. While he was there, he and some friends had a show at the Museum of the African Diaspora. He won the highly regarded Murphy and Cadogan Award from SoMArts.
And he got a prestigious residency at the Headland Center for the Arts.
Artist Troy Lamarr Chew II: Oh yeah, that was life changing. That's when I feel like I transitioned into an artist. Because there were so many visiting artists that were big deals. I got to talk to them so much. There was dinner every night and I was rubbing shoulders with those people, and yeah, I felt spoiled at that place. It was such a good time.
Host Emily Wilson: Troy uses most of the rooms in his house, including the kitchen and living room as a studio. He works all day long.
Artist Troy Lamarr Chew II: Painting has become my entertainment and also my hobby and also my job, I listen to music while I paint, but like, I don't have a TV.
I mean, I eat, [00:09:00] I don't really get too much enjoyment out of much else. I mean, other than kicking it with people and friends, like real life stuff, but like, yeah, I don't have, Maybe I should get another hobby or like, uh, something else. But yeah, I just paint, kick it with people and see family, and I'm a paint nerd.
Host Emily Wilson: Troy loves wordplay, particularly in hip hop. One series he did took slang words for one thing and represented them figuratively. He remembers when the idea came to him.
Artist Troy Lamarr Chew II: Hip hop is so influential to my work. The way they bend words and do wordplay is just so exciting to me within rap music that I felt like I, I didn't feel like I wanted to.
It just, it just stuck out to me where I was like, wow, I have to do this in my, my paintings because I saw the [00:10:00] similarity. It just like I was taking the bus one day and I was like. I got it. Like, I remember like talking to one of my, like, she was getting off the bus and I was are about to take the bus stop and I, I take the bus and I was also getting on the bus and I was like, yo, I felt like a madman and she was like, oh, I don't know what you're talking about really, but okay, Troy, okay. But then I was like, you're going to see, you're going to get it. You're going to get it.
Host Emily Wilson: Before starting work on these, Troy makes lists of different slang words.
Artist Troy Lamarr Chew II: Money is the best example. There's so many pieces of figurative language. That's like a stand in for money example, bread, cheese, bacon.
Cheddar is also, I mean, but it's still cheese, but cabbage, like there, yeah, it's so many, [00:11:00] the list can literally go on.
Host Emily Wilson: This is the part of the show, three questions, where I asked the guest the same three questions. They are, when did you know you were an artist? What is some work that has made a big impression on you?
And what is the most creatively inspiring place in the Bay area?
Artist Troy Lamarr Chew II: I guess when I was at that table, drawing Kanye West up until like 12 o'clock, I should have known I was an artist then. Yeah,
The Scream by Edward Munch me a impression on me because I saw it at such a young age. I remember Miss Bye in second grade showing it to me and we had to like recreate in our own way. And I remember drawing it in crayons [00:12:00] and it was just so expressive.
Headland definitely was the most inspiring place to me in the Bay. Specifically when I was in the basement of the old building, they used to have. That's where my studio was. They had a basement. Well, they had a old building. At the top of the hill. And my studio was in the basement. It was lovely.
Host Emily Wilson: Thank you so much for listening to Art is Awesome.
And thank you to our guest, Troy Lamar Chu II. His show is at San Francisco's Altman Siegel through December 21st. Please follow the podcast and join us in two weeks when the guest will be Lorraine Woodruff Long, a quilter and teacher.[00:13:00]
Art is Awesome is a bi weekly podcast coming out every other Tuesday. It's created and hosted by me, Emily Wilson. It is produced and edited by Charlene Goto of Goto Productions. It's carried on KSFP LP 102. 5 FM, San Francisco on Fridays. at 9am and 7pm. Our theme music is provided by Kevin McLeod with Incompetech Music.
Be sure and follow us on Instagram at Art is Awesome Podcast, or visit our website. Till next [00:14:00] time.