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- [00:08]
A
This is all of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in soho. Thank you for sharing part of your day with us. I'm grateful that you're here. Coming up today on ALL OF it, artist Hans Rosenstrom is here to talk about his sound installation called out of Silence, which is now on Roosevelt Island. Documentary filmmaker Eugene Yee and musician DJ Rekha will join us to discuss their film the A list, 15 stories from Asian and Pacific Diasporas. And we'll learn about a project that brings short student operas to subway cars. That's the plan. So let's get this started with artist Sanford Biggers, Harlem based artist and newly announced Gordon Parks foundation fellow Sanford Biggers is having a great spring opening. Not one, but two shows, an immersive exhibition of new works at the Marian Boesky Gallery in Chelsea and another solo presentation called Drift at the Parish Art Museum on the east end of Long Island. The show in Chelsea, titled the Gift of Tongues, transforms the gallery space into sections by hanging curtains from the ceiling. It creates kind of a labyrinth and around each corner is a sculpture revealing motifs like African masks, European busts and clouds. There are also mixed media pieces made of quilts, painted fabric and sequins. The Gift of Tongues is now on display at the Marriott Marion Boesky gallery on West 24th street through Sunday, June 13th. And Sanford's exhibition Drift opens this Sunday, May 17th at the Parrish Art Museum on Long Island. It's a display through Sunday, September 13, and Sanford Biggers joins me in studio. It is really nice to meet you.
- [01:52]
B
Great to meet you as well.
- [01:53]
A
So the Boesky Gallery exhibition I went last night. What were some of the themes that you were thinking about for this show because you did most of the work in 2026.
- [02:03]
B
I did a lot of it in 2026, but several of the ideas have been stirring around for the last five years. I'd say it was really influenced by a residency I did at the American Academy in Rome several years ago, and that's when I started to make these sort of hybrid marble sculptures that I call Chimera. There are a few of those on view at the exhibition, but in addition to that, there is the continuation of the ongoing Codex series that I've been working on for over a decade, which are paintings, drawings and interventions, if you will, on existing antique quilts where I use several different media, including tar, glitter, spray paint, oil stick, pretty much, you name it. And honestly, I feel like this show is a point where everything I've been working on for the last 10 years is starting to consolidate into its own language.
- [02:56]
A
That's so interesting. You use the word intervention. How did you come upon that word?
- [03:01]
B
Well, it's been around in, I'd say the art conversation for quite a while. But when we say an intervention, it's often referring to taking something that's already existing, but then transforming it into a new work by intervening. And that can be done by several different means.
- [03:18]
A
It's interesting when you go into the space, there's this gorgeous, from the ceiling, these gorgeous fabrics, quilt like fabrics hanging from the ceiling. It sort of creates a different sort of vibe in the room. Tell us about the process behind creating and sectioning off areas.
- [03:34]
B
Yes. So this is my fourth show in that specific gallery at Marianne Boesky's, and I wanted to physically alter the space. And I did this for several reasons. First of which is really to give each work its own presence within the space. So rather than walking into a room and seeing everything at once, now you have to work your way through this labyrinthine type of space to get to each individual work and to receive a reward for that, that those travails to get to it. And it's also a way of really interacting and bringing the audience into the work as an active participant, so that as they walk through, they're finding their own discoveries and they're sort of being led by the architecture to get to those end results.
- [04:22]
A
What did you discover about your work by putting it in this. This labyrinth?
- [04:27]
B
I think for me, it heightened a certain degree of theatricality within the work. So, you know, I often, prior to doing the installation, thought of it almost as each section being a vignette or story, storyboard for a non sequitur abstract narrative. So, yeah, for me, it was. It was like a slow reveal as you turn each corner. And yes, you're introduced to these beautiful floor to ceiling dyed quilts, which on their own are an artwork. But as you around each corner, you start to see something else pop and surprise you. And there's even vantage points where you get glimpses of pieces that are hidden from other places. So there's a bit of hide and seek there too.
- [05:12]
A
I had to decide whether do I dive under this quilt or not, or do I, if I go around, I was sort of like, I didn't know what to do. And I had this, I went around. But I thought this would be kind of fun to duck under it and then see the next piece of art.
- [05:24]
B
Well, truth be told, several people have gone under that. But again, it's also a way of giving the viewer a different experience. We often, you know, have a very sort of standoffish, distanced encounter with artworks. And in this case, you're sort of activated within the space to interact and go under and go around. So it feels a little bit different.
- [05:43]
A
What was the first piece of art that you decided you wanted people to see when they came to the show?
- [05:49]
B
The first piece? Actually, there were a few things that I tried out. I wanted this very small piece that is called the Wind Whispers Mary to be the first thing you saw. But upon speaking with Marianne and going back and forth through the show a few times, I realized that I sort of wanted that to be the last thing that you saw. So the work was very improvisational in terms of even installing it. But back to that idea of a non sequitur narrative. I wanted you first to turn the corner, you know, first see the curtains, number one, because that heightens a sense of curiosity. And as soon as you turn that first corner, you see this sculptural figurative piece that's almost like a ghostish knight or shoulder wrapped in a quilt. Around the shoulder wrapped in, you know. Yes, wrapped in quilts. And this one marble foot that's jutting out of the space underneath the knee. And I think it evokes some type of mystery. It could be talks of a fallen empire or a knight getting knighted, or maybe somebody proposing. There are so many different ways to look at it.
- [06:52]
A
An exhibition of new work by Harlem based artist Sanford Biggers is in Chelsea. It coincides with his first major solo presentation at East End on Long island at the Parish Art Museum, titled Drift. He's here with me to discuss his gallery show, the Gift of Tongues, what we're talking about at the Boesky Gallery. It's on view through Saturday, June 13th. If you want to take a look at some of the subjects that we're talking about, you can go to our Instagram llnyc and you can check out some of the images on Stories. Let's talk about narcissist. Did I say it right?
- [07:23]
B
Narcissist.
- [07:24]
A
Thank you. It's cool. It's this marble sculpture. It's antique quilt. It's made out of fabric. You sort of come upon it suddenly. As you said, it's a surprise. It's a gift. Why is Narcissus hid behind these curtains? Why did you decide to like, sort of make it like a aha moment?
- [07:42]
B
Well, you know, if you recall the story of Narcissus, of course it is Narcissus who falls in love with his own image while looking into a body of water. And I wanted each viewer to have an individualized experience with the piece. So when you're looking at the artwork, in some ways metaphorically, it's almost as if you're looking at a mirror. So it's very intimate. One to one. The piece itself, I consider it an installation in two parts. There is the backdrop or the piece on the wall, which is a collage made of different fabrics that evokes a quilt. And then the marble is in front of that, and it is painted so that if you stand at the right vantage point and you look straight at the marble, you won't even see the face because it becomes totally camouflaged and loses itself to the background, which is, again, a metaphor to Narcissus losing his own self.
- [08:30]
A
Is mythology big in your work?
- [08:32]
B
I think mythology mythologies are important in my work. And as an artist, I seek to create new mythologies. I think that's what all art is about in some way, storytelling. And that can exist in many, you know, sort of evident ways or more obscure ways.
- [08:51]
A
It's interesting with this piece. It's sort of the front mask is this gorgeous sort of African mask, and the back is sort of a traditional marble. It's interesting, that combination.
- [09:03]
B
Sure. Well, you know, for me, it really evokes the idea of centuries of cross cultural pollination. When I was spending that time at Rome, in addition to seeing, you know, the fantastic sculptural ruins all over and the incredible paintings that were in various cathedrals and buildings, was also seeing the people on the street selling different works and imagining the convergence of so many world cultures in Rome, that that was one of the earliest metropolitan, cosmopolitan experiences. So could you imagine back in the day, millennia ago, if all of those people were able to represent their culture through art? And those are the kind of thoughts that go in my, you know, through my mind when I'm making works like that. So, yes, the mask is a combination of various masks from different regions in Africa. And then the back, for those people who are familiar with the sculpture, is actually the bust of Apollo.
- [09:57]
A
It makes so much sense that you thought about this in Rome. It gives another addition to the. Another element to the. To the artwork. Your studio in Harlem, is that correct? Bronx.
- [10:07]
B
South Bronx.
- [10:08]
A
The Bronx. Sorry. What kind of environment do you like to create in? What's it like up in your studio?
- [10:13]
B
So my studio is rather large. I am fortunate to have a team that I'm working with right now, which gives me the ability to work on several projects at a time. But within that space, I have my own individual space, which is actually quite sacred. And I like to work alone. Typically, it is sort of a walking and creating meditation, if you will. So I go in there and I have to sort of cleanse myself of all the matter outside of that studio and then immerse myself in the creative process. That means ideation all the way to fabrication, painting, sculpting, and all forms in between.
- [10:52]
A
How do you decide what materials to work with on each piece?
- [10:55]
B
Really, for me, it's about an idea. If I get an idea and, you know, hence the name of the show, Gift of Tongues. Finding the best material to translate that thought. So back to narcissism. That is also talking about history. There is the history in antiquity of marbles that were actually painted and polychromed that we never got to see. Because over the years, the wind and the dust and the sand has taken off all the paint. So now we study it through art history as monochromatic white or single color marble sculptures. But the was. They were all. Many of them were polychrome before. So for me to then paint directly on marble is a way to hearken back to that history. But it's also a risk because most people see a marble and they don't imagine it painted. So to paint on it is sort of like, you know, gasp. Type of moment.
- [11:46]
A
So my guest is Sanford Biggers. We're talking about his show, the Gift of Tongs, on display at the Boesky gallery through Sunday, June 13th. This is such a basic question, and it's. It's a good one though, because you're in the gallery and you just kind of almost want to touch it. You sort of like. It's these soft, beautiful materials. But, you know, the first rulers. Don't.
- [12:07]
B
Don't touch.
- [12:09]
A
How do you think about that?
- [12:11]
B
Well, you know, again, I think, you know, on the most base level, artists are storytellers, but we're also seducers and we are tricksters. And I think very good works operate with a level of tension. So that tension that you feel of, like, I know I shouldn't touch this, but I really want to. That tension heightens the experience. And between you and me, I won't say anything if somebody were to touch it.
- [12:37]
A
All right, you heard him. In the main gallery, there's a piece called Lodestar, which shows these two masked figures sort of engulfed in clouds. Tell us about these two figures.
- [12:48]
B
Sure. Well, actually, that is a reference to, well, several artworks. One of My own, which is derivative of a Michelangelo historical piece that was commissioned by the Medici, which still exists in Florence. And it is called Dusk and Dawn. And is these two reclining demigods, I guess, that are supposed to represent dusk and dawn, you know, Alpha, Omega, eternity and death and so on. And I did a physical marble sculpture of those two figures, but they were both donning these hybridized African masks. And I decided to paint a version of that for. For Lodestar. And to do that, I took two quilts and put them together to form a diptych, and then painted both of the reclining figures with the mask embedded in floating clouds. So now they take on this very ethereal feel, as if they are somewhere in the heavens, either looking at us or we're looking at them, or they're basking in the cloudscape, but to create a sense of fantasy around that.
- [13:48]
A
And then as you go to the end of the exhibition, there's a piece from 2021 called Stand. Will you describe it for us? Because I understood it was actually taken from a photo.
- [13:58]
B
Sure. So Stand is. Yes, it is isolated in its own space. It sort of holds the room by itself. And when you first walk in, you see these small sculptures on the floor. They seem to be African sculptures, but they are actually made by my own hands in the Bronx. And another thing I'm interested in, even with all the references to Greco Roman art and African art and African American history and so on, is to create objects that are archetypes. So they make you feel away, but they may be made of things that are contradictory to that belief. So first you see these figures on the ground, and they evoke the idea of a power object or a fetish figure. And if we think of those power objects as having a real spirit inside of them, what might that look like? So to illustrate that, basically I've created these shadows along the floor that go up to the wall and create these 17 foot, 15 to 17 foot tall figures that are standing. And it's super flat on the wall because it is made out of fabric. And it is two tone sequined fabric, the kind that you've seen in pillows and evening dresses and so on, where if you rub your finger one way, you get one color, and if you rub your finger the other way, it turns another color. And I literally draw on that material to create the figures. And I've figured out, through lots of research and experimentation, a way to lock those sequins into place. So the two figures you see standing up are these two gentlemen with their arms crossed, sort of looking at you almost as if they're assessing you.
- [15:26]
A
They sort of look like Black Panthers a little bit.
- [15:28]
B
They look like Black Panthers, but again, these are archetypes, so they're not specific people or specific references that everyone is to recognize, but they are often sort of picked figures from the backgrounds of pictures of large groups of people, maybe 50 people to 100. And I find two or three figures that I find interesting that aren't focal, and then put them together to create different compositions. So I cannot really tell you the true identity of them. But that evokes that kind of feeling, alludes back to the power object and how we can interpret and put project our own impressions onto the work.
- [16:05]
A
That's the gift of tongues. The Boesky Gallery. Let's talk about your show opening this Sunday on the east end of Long Island. It's called Drift at the Parish Museum. First of all, how did you come up with the title?
- [16:16]
B
Oh, well, the Drift, the title actually was a collaboration. It came about with speaking with the curators of the exhibition. And I knew, in terms of subject matter, that I wanted to really show the history of the cloud and references to clouds that have been in my work for over 20 years. And one of them came up with the idea, what if Drift was a title? And I was like, wow. And it's funny, I keep a long list of titles for potential artworks and shows and so on. There's over a thousand titles there. Drift was one of them. It was on there. I had not located it until she said it. And I was like, oh, my God, that totally works. And, you know, sometimes these things are collaborative. I often reference music, even when making art, because you can take input and influence from other places that, you know, start to imagine themselves in your work.
- [17:08]
A
What's influence? What's the influence in this show?
- [17:10]
B
So I spent three years in Japan, and while I was there, I studied Buddhism, and I became really obsessed with mandalas and tonkas and the artworks associated with Buddhism. And one of the recurring motifs in that type of work are clouds. And even before that, as a teenager growing up in Los Angeles, I was a graffiti artist. And back in those days, there were sort of stock signature effects that you would use, such as arrows and drop shadows and clouds. So I'd been using clouds from the graffiti days, and now I was influenced again by the Buddhist moment. And then when I came back to the U.S. i started making works that I considered to be sort of abstracted, abstracted autobiographical works. And I would include these Symbols from different parts of my life, clouds being one of them. So in this show you'll see 20 years of how that expresses itself in terms of drawings, in terms of paintings on quilts, in terms of some sculptural references, and including a very large wall room sized installation of several light boxes hanging from the ceiling that are cloud shaped.
- [18:18]
A
Correct me if I'm wrong. You went to Morehouse? Yes, yes, my grandfather went to Morehouse. Oh, is that right? And a friend of my son's is going to Morehouse next year.
- [18:27]
B
Fantastic.
- [18:28]
A
Tell us what you learned about art there.
- [18:32]
B
My experience at Morehouse was very interesting. At the time I was there, art was not really a focal subject at the school.
- [18:38]
A
Interesting.
- [18:39]
B
So I wound up taking my art classes mostly at Spelman, which is, you know, the next door school that is an all women's school. And one of the instructors there, Frank Toby Martin, who was a sculptor who taught me how to weld and to, you know, use a metal shop and wood shops and so on, took me under his wing and invited, introduced me to a friend of his who was a well known professional sculptor in Atlanta. And I became his apprentice my sophomore year of college. So I had hands on experience in the metal shop and was soon put into a large art contest with grad students from all the art universities in Atlanta. So I was the youngest participant and I ended up taking second place in that competition. So that's my experience and it was via Morehouse to get there. So that really, you know, I at that time was reticent to go to an art school because I thought I might burn out. So I went to a liberal arts college but was able to have a very intense and focused art experience there.
- [19:39]
A
I've been speaking with Sanford Biggers. The Gift of Tongues is on display at the Marian Boesky Gallery in Chelsea through Sunday, June 13. And Sanford's exhibition Drift opens this Sunday, May 17 at the Parrish Art Museum on Long Island. It'll be on display through Sunday, September 13th. Thank you for coming to the studio.
- [19:57]
B
My pleasure.
- [19:59]
A
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