Bryan Zanisnik's Big Pivot | Art21 "New York Close Up"

[BRYAN ZANISNIK]
I'm ready to go...

[MAN, OFF-CAMERA]
You ready to go? Okay.

[ZANISNIK]
I mean, if you want, whatever.

I was teaching at a SUNY college,

right outside of New York City.

And there's a student who never showed up.

No big deal.

He shows up in my afternoon class,

and he's like,
"I just need you to sign this form,"

"to say that you're going to
allow me to drop the class."

And I said,
"Yeah, you haven't been here all semester,"

"I'm not going to drop you on the last day."

"You failed my class."

And he says,
"Sign the form."

I said to him, like,

"This isn't even your class."

"I'm teaching."

So there's like twenty students watching this.

Then he gets in my face more.

So at some moment I had to stand up,

and he chest bumps me.

He throws me into the wall

and he's like,
"Sign the damn form!"

So he does one of these...

and knocks everything off my desk.

And he's like,
"You're not a real teacher!"

"You're an art teacher!"

"You all suck!"

"Art sucks!"

I failed him.

I failed the student.

["Bryan Zanisnik's Big Pivot"]

I think that there was
maybe some fantasy

of being an artist in New York.

To some degree,
I feel that I'm living that fantasy.

I get to make my work every day.

Get to work with amazing people,

amazing institutions.

But on the other hand,

I think a reality of having a practice

and being in New York

doesn't always meet up to one's expectation.

It's really on the artist to

produce the work,

fund it.

You just give everything to be an artist

and you don't worry about financials.

I would do projects where
I would collect thousands of objects.

I would arrange them,
photograph them,

move them,
build an installation.

I like this idea of animism--

that an inanimate object has spirit

or personality.

I think I was really drawn to

the mystery

or the adventure around acquiring these objects.

It's very easy in the art world
to look like you've made it,

and you really haven't at all.

I mean, you can have so much
institutional support,

but there's very little monetary gain
from that.

I remember I had a show with a gallery,

and I did this huge installation.

I started making these sculptures.

There were these tall columns
that objects were embedded in.

If I sell them,
we just turn them on the side,

send them off to whoever wants them.

Write me the check,

you can have these damn columns.

I start building them,

the fabrication crew meets with me

and they're like,
"We have a problem."

And I was like, "What?"

They're like,
"We're worried your column"

"is going to fall"

"and kill someone."

So I was like,
"Alright, what's the solution?"

They're like,

"We need to bolt the bottoms
into the concrete ground."

I was like, "How do we get those bolts out
when we're done?"

They're like,
"Oh, we just destroy it."

So I was like,

"Oh man, there go my columns I can sell."

"I have to destroy them."

I really wanted to take
a step back from what I was making

to really be able to reinvent a new direction.

I needed a break.

I remember when I told people,
"I'm going to Sweden,"

they said,
"Now you have made it!"

Sweden, the promised land.

The place where there aren't
any financial concerns.

You don't have to worry about
having health care.

You will arrive,

and then you can have, like,
thirty exhibitions.

The problem I ran up against is
I don't speak any Swedish.

So when I went down to be like,

"I'm an artist, give me your free money,"

they're just like,

"Okay, here's thirty forms in Swedish."

"Good luck."

I was really drawn to this aspect of Sweden

where one's career wasn't so closely tied
to one's identity.

So I started engaging in a lot of the activities
that are typically Swedish.

Obviously hiking is a big thing,

but in particular,
mushroom foraging,

and learning mushroom identity.

I remember one time riding the bus back

from the national park to the city,

and there were forty people on the bus,

and every person was comparing
their mushrooms that they found that day.

New York,
everyone wants to cut to the chase, right?

You go out,
you meet someone,

they're like,
"What do you do?"

Then the questions come
without directly asking it.

"How successful are you at what you do?"

Like, "Are you someone
I want to know or should know?"

But in Sweden you go out and people say,

"Which is your favorite pastry?"

That to me feels natural.

But in our culture today,

if you're not Instagramming every week--

what you're working on,

where you're going,

what you're doing in the studio--

people, especially in New York, say,

"Oh, he or she no longer makes art."

But I think the best way to manage that
is to look inwards.

Do we make our lives more difficult
than they have to be?

I think maybe there's a question of:

if something comes too easy,

or too joyful,

is that as successful of a work?

I've begun a new body of work.

I'm using a painterly process.

I'm really thinking a lot about
joy in my work,

and what makes me happy.

There's a stillness.

I'm just kind of sitting in one place

and repeating an action with my hand.

I think, as much as I'm describing that
as a physical stillness,

there's maybe also
a relaxed mental stillness there too.

This new body of work I make,

maybe people don't like it.

Maybe people say,

"Oh, Bryan's not a nervous wreck anymore."

"He's not torturing himself."

"He's not lugging five thousand subway tiles
across the country."

Maybe there's also,
with age,

a little more confidence to make something
that I really love making,

and then maybe not worry so much
about the reception of it.

I think I've gotten to a point where,
if I don't have opportunities,

I'll still make that art,

and I'll just become
the crazy man in the woods,

who, like...

I just yell at people to get off my property.

And they're like,
"Oh, he's an artist."

"He once had an Art21,"

"now he's just a hermit
in that shack out there."

I would run into this experience
again and again

where I would meet someone

and they would say,

"Midsummer is coming,"

a huge Swedish holiday.

And I'd say,
"Oh, I know."

They'd go,
"Crazy party."

"We go into the woods."

"We all get naked and run around,"

"and we drink and we dance."

"People, they dress as elephants
and dance."

And I was like, "Wow."

And the person says,
"I'm having one of these parties this weekend."

I'm like,
"Oh, I'm not doing anything this weekend."

They go,

"Well you really have to find one of these
parties to be invited to then."

They'd be like,
"Have a good day!"