A Unique Focus

ARTICLE BY APRIL CLARK HONAKER | PHOTOGRAPHY BY KELLY MOORE CLARK

Beauty is and has always been subjective—thus the saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” When it comes to art, many artists preoccupy themselves with creating beautiful things, and many collectors strive to acquire beautiful things. But how do we know something is beautiful? On the one hand, we might expect something beautiful to display expected elements of design and composition—to be aesthetically pleasing, maybe exceptionally so. But on the other hand, if we’re willing to broaden our definition of beauty, we might also include work that affects us in a profound way—work that raises questions or stirs our emotions, even if those questions are unsettling or the emotions are disturbing.

ARTIST DAVID HASSELL’S aesthetics are not exactly conventional, but if beauty is a measure of impact, if it’s a measure of communication between artist and viewer, his work succeeds. He’s inspired largely by “things externally that match up to things internally.” For example, he said, “If you look at the gnarled roots of a tree, they might start to look like bumps—like warts—and that experience could be quite similar viscerally to looking at a photograph of someone with small pox—especially a close-up of their skin.” In his work, David is trying to evoke a gut reaction or provide a platform for the viewer to question things.

In one series, David created works he calls skins using dried paint. Like real skin, he said, “They’re pretty ephemeral.” They might peel, wrinkle, or sag like real skin. David vacuum sealed some of his skins in plastic bags to make them look glossy as is often seen in product photography. He said, “I was going for a visceral response—oh, that looks shiny and pleasing, but at the same time, it makes your blood curdle a little.” With his skins and in other works, David likes to exemplify “the uncanny.” When experiencing the uncanny, he said, “It’s like you look at something, and it feels familiar, but something is off. It disturbs you in some way.” In 1919, the famous psychiatrist Sigmund Freud described the uncanny as something inspiring fear or anxiety while also reminding us of something known. Similarly, Jacques Lacan, a psychiatrist influenced by Freud, said the uncanny unsettles us. It makes us unable to discern good from bad or delight from discomfort. David said that with his skins he wants to elicit an uncomfortable or gross feeling, akin to the uncanny.

Before David started making bloodcurdling, unsettling art, he was just a creative kid who wanted to do creative things to make money. Born in Korea, David was adopted at a young age and grew up in Monroe/West Monroe. As a kid, David was inspired by the world around him and the things he read. He remembers using how-to books from the library to teach himself how to draw. He also spent a lot of time trying to copy images from his parents’ encyclopedias. After graduating from West Monroe High School, David enrolled at Louisiana Tech University where he initially studied graphic design. However, it didn’t take long for him to realize that sitting behind a computer for hours was not his calling. Because photography used many of the same rules of composition and design, he decided it was the route to take and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography. David then went on to earn his Master of Fine Arts in a multidisciplinary program at the University of New Orleans.

Although he’s never abandoned photography, David’s experience in graduate school pushed him to explore other media. He’s now interested in sculpture and video as well and believes all three of his preferred media have something special to offer. “Photography is just so pervasive in culture,” he said. “It’s a really accessible media, and because it’s so pervasive, and everyone’s doing it, you can slip some things in that people won’t expect.” Video is similarly accessible, but the inclusion of movement and audio compounds the narrative possibilities.

Like photography and video, sculpture has narrative possibilities as well. Defining it more broadly, he said, “Even if we don’t go to museums, we’re surrounded by objects in space. A large building can make you feel something. We read objects. We see a busted couch on the side of the road, and we start thinking about stories and memories.” This type of reaction inevitably happens in a stream-of-consciousness way that is out of our control but still influenced by our unique past. David said, “How I interpret something involves history and memory.” And the same is true for all of us. The problem for the artist then becomes how to trigger the viewer’s memories and associations without overdoing it. As David said, “If you’re trying to clearly express something, sometimes it can get really generic or really stale.”

Creating art that achieves its purpose while overcoming cliché requires a balance of knowledge and intuition, as well as practice and growth. David said his work has definitely changed a lot since his days as an undergraduate. His early photographs were focused on design and composition, but as he started to master these skills, his focus shifted to content and then later to theory and the medium itself. Photography, by its nature, is restricted to a two-dimensional plane, so David said he’s always working against that restriction on some level. He also believes it’s important to consider the subject matter and the politics of the image. Questioning oneself is crucial to this process. “Are you exploiting something?” he said. “Are you adding to this cultural definition of what beauty is or, on the flip side, is it not beautiful? And if it’s grotesque, you have to question why is that gross, or why does that make me feel weird?”
In graduate school, David was required to explain and justify everything, so now he’s trying to get back in touch with his intuition. “I think sometimes when you overanalyze, it can stifle the creative process,” he said. “Intuition is important to me. You’re always thinking when you’re composing a photo, but sometimes I feel like it’s better to just do it—just take it. You can analyze it later, but you don’t have to.” For David, intuition is about trusting yourself and your abilities, but he believes some artists also use it as a crutch, as an excuse to avoid thinking critically about their work. At the same time, he said, “I think a lot of visual artists would say, if we wanted to express something in words, why wouldn’t we just write it?”

Academia trains artists to think critically. As a result, they’re forever engaging the tension between intuition and analysis. According to David, that tension not only plays out in composing an image for a photograph, but also in knowing when a work is finished. “There’s a kind of driving force,” he said, “not necessarily for perfection but for knowing when something is finished. You’re working toward a resolution.” In that process, he believes there can sometimes be too much thinking and second guessing. “You can destroy something by overworking it,” he said. Like most artists, David has experienced this kind of destruction.

Just as too much thinking can compromise a work, David believes the drive to make money can have a similar effect. It’s very easy for artists to start creating work they think the public wants rather than work that authentically expresses what they want to convey. Unfortunately, the two don’t always align. For this reason, David’s opposed to teaching young kids that they can grow up and be great artists. “There are so many politics involved,” he said. And it’s difficult to predict what the public will fall in love with. He mentioned a term that art critic Dave Hickey used to describe the rise of certain artists and styles—a phenomenon Hickey called “communities of desire.” During the 1970s, while Hickey was in New York, Andy Warhol started making vibrant silkscreen prints of flowers. At the time, many people thought the works were worthless, but a small group of people was enamored with them, and those people got to know each other, creating a “community of desire.” According to Hickey, communities of desire have the power to change the landscape of our culture by what they do and how they form, as well as by how they expand and endure.

Although there’s no way to guarantee one’s work will generate a community of desire, David said, “You can measure success in different ways.” It isn’t always about having big shows in big cities or making something people want to buy. People buy art for different reasons, but artists also create art for different reasons. For example, David participated in a group show called “The Solar Anus” at the Good Children Gallery in New Orleans. For this show, he wanted to create something interactive, so he adhered a paint skin to a tanning bed he bought off Craig’s list, provided sunblock and goggles, and encouraged people to get in the tanning bed. For this particular piece, he was interested in creating art that could physically change someone, and said, “It was a little bit comical, too.”

Today, David makes art largely for personal fulfillment. “It’s a form of expression,” he said. “There’s something satisfying for me about making something. It’s like cooking something that’s delicious or like finishing an essay or short story.” And even though there’s always a risk of overworking a piece, it’s equally possible that something great will develop. According to David, “The act of experimenting can lead you to mini epiphanies or new directions to take, so it can be a positive thing.”

In fact, experimentation may be necessary if one wants to create something that stands out. Creating something unique or original is difficult, and some would argue it’s impossible. “The cliché thing,” David said, “is that there’s nothing original anymore.” Some artists might find this notion discouraging, and others might see it as a challenge, but David isn’t really concerned about it at all. “I don’t feel originality is terribly important,” he said. “We all draw experience from everywhere, and we learn by copying things.” In a way, he even finds fakes interesting. Although he’s not endorsing forgery, he believes they raise interesting questions about value. “It ties back to art as commodity,” he said, “and why we value what we do.”
At the same time, when using tropes, which he defines as common signifiers with symbolic weight, David strives to find a fresh take on them. “I can analyze the trope and think of another way to express or use it,” he said, “or I can use it intentionally to disrupt it.” Despite being unconcerned with originality, David still strives to be different. “We’re all working with the same ingredients,” he said, “the same visual and literal language, but how we construct them expresses our own personal history. Even if you’re using tropes, if you’re doing something because you saw something similar and people liked it, or if you’re creating to get a rise out of people, it expresses something about your personal history, and no two people have the same history.” Regardless of an artist’s purpose for creating, David believes that whether people like it or not shouldn’t be the driving force. “We’re all finite beings, but you’re putting a little bit of yourself out into the world for other people,” he said. Although we can’t time travel, artists and creatives give us the opportunity to experience the world through other lenses, and for David, that’s what creating is all about.