Vol. 3 | On Suzy Poling - Detroit Research

ON SUZY POLING

Sharsten Plenge

Specular Transmissions, 2016, still photograph from the video screened in solo show, Total Internal Reflection

Working in painting, collage, sculpture, performance, photography, sound, installation, and video, artist Suzy Poling activates a multiplicity of surfaces to summon new realms for expanding materiality and unseeable forces. Through digital effects, augmented repetition, and interference, experiential environments emerge from layered myriads, pulsing colorizations, or the strategic deduction and interplay between elements. In looking at the stream of visual conversations occurring within her work—whether through the lens of framing natural phenomenon, the transdimensional spaces captured through large-format renderings of miniature light and mirror sets, or through the pigmented labyrinths of her paintings—exploration permeates a process rooted in continual discovery.

In Poling’s massive artistic oeuvre, otherworldly landscapes inform one another through a process of digitization and combine to illuminate an ongoing cyclical conversation. To me, Poling is the synthesis of a visual alchemist and synthetic-biologist. She is her work, there is no beginning or end. She is a conduit, cultivating and always traversing an intermediate continuum, constantly setting up systems and allowing their quasi-forms and hybrids to emerge, collapse, and form again.

Site specificity, scale, and fluid experimentation between frequencies set the infinite layers of her formations. A fascination with “geological anomalies and occurrences” pairs with an intent to “connect the sublime and hypnotic,” revealing an otherworldly complexity only made visible through her manipulation of light, optics, film, feedback, pigment and pixelation. However she captures these glimpses of metamorphosis, I don’t know, but invites me to explore a space oscillating between human and technological networks where new potential interfaces for experience and interaction exist.

Spherical Shifting, 2017, mirror, paint, plexiglass, metal, chrome, mylar, and video projection. Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Music Hall, Los Angeles

Adam Lee Miller //

I think it is very interesting that many poly artists can’t read sheet music, i.e., Brian Eno. The very concept of “reading music” is very foreign to me. Can you read music?

Suzy Poling //

I haven’t been able to since elementary school. I am definitely self-taught. I would tape the notes onto to my keyboard to learn chords.

ALM //

Whether you answered yes or no, I’ve always seen many of your visual works, like Geometric Collage or Decomposed Stripes as sheet music for your compositions. Do you see it that way?

SP //

My visual art is very musical, yes. And vice versa. I would also like to point out in a light-hearted way that since you use actual sheet metal in your performances and recordings that “sheet music” for you is a great example of your different disciplines overlapping in a twisted dialogue.

Nicola Kuperus //

Why do you think, as humans, we are so attracted to sound?

SP //

Because it’s something we can’t see but can completely feel.

Nicola Kuperus //

Have you ever done a performance piece without sound? If so, why?

SP //

I haven’t! But I want to try to.

ALM //

One of my favorite things about you as a poly artist is your ability to blur. During a performance, you can sometimes even “go away” and blur into your organic geometry. Your photos blur into your projections, your sound becomes visual, installation becomes collage, is it a prop or a sculpture or both, like an ouroboros puzzle that can never be finished. Do you ever get overwhelmed and wish you were an artist that had only one practice, like just being a musician or just being a sculptor. Or is that something poly artists should even think about anymore?

SP //

I have literally tried talking myself out of quitting one of my interests. It’s impossible. It’s a strange experience, deciding what to work on next. I think I have learned more how to make it all work together. However, music is still somewhat separate from my visual art reality. But with my visual art, its on big pool that goes in a circular order just like nature. It rotates and just makes sense now.

NK //

How long has it taken you to perfect this “magic” trick? For example, please explain Time Dilation Geometry.

SP //

I started working with mirrors and projections about 10 years ago. I cut up mirrors and put together sculptural pieces covered in mirror mylar to create various refractive light collages and intricate scenes by hand. Time Dilation Geometry was the first piece that I made using more black as a backdrop, so the refraction behaves a bit differently, and I had mirror sculptures spinning on disks so the mirror and light “interferences” were endlessly changing. I could sit and watch the light apparitions in the installation change infinitely as it constantly formed new designs through each movement. This specific installation existed more like a stage set of infinity. The full name is Infinity Stage: Time Dilation Geometry. I made the installation for the Mike Kelley Foundation grant and eventually shot a performance inside of the piece which then became a finished video art piece and photographs to exhibit in the end.

Pod Blotz live at Handbag Factory.

NK //

When you are finished completing an installation, what does the work provide you with, both mentally and physically. When you’ve played a live show, what do you take away from that experience. Is there any difference for you?

Suzy Poling //

I would say that the art puts me in a more introspective state of mind, like I set out to examine light, form and design in a very thoughtful way. I do a lot of thinking and researching when I make art. A live performance leaves me with that feeling as well as a feeling that something was just channeled from the performance that is completely kinetic and almost out of reach. As if there was an occurrence through the frequencies that I was involved that I can’t see, but remember like a dream later on. I am very present while performing but also go into a trance like state that is very cathartic.

NK //

Do you find the emotion and physical output any different from performing live, say in a music venue compared to the way you feel doing a performance piece in a museum or arts space?

SP //

I like playing music venues when the PA is good. I guess the difference in venue has more to do with how people are focused or gathered in the space. I prefer playing art spaces that are big and open. I like people to feel fully immersed and to be more of a participant rather than just an observer.

ALM //

When you perform live as Pod Blotz, the visuals (costumes, props, projections, merchandise) seem equally important as the music. Is this something that developed over time or were your early shows and performances more minimal?

SP //

My early shows were even more visual; however, I have gone back and forth with having a visual performance aspect. Sometimes I just want it to be straight sound in the dark. Ultimately, I want the live music sets to be a full experience. I wear or become whatever character or non-character that I feel like that day. It’s somewhat planned but it can change last minute. Now I feel that Pod Blotz is Them or even It. I like when people think there are multiple members or don’t know the gender. It doesn’t fully matter. The band/project is just Other.

ALM //

When working for the visuals of an album, does the image come before, during or after the music? Or is it always a different process? When do you know you have the right visuals for a body of music?

SP //

Good question. For my most recent EP I made cover art specifically for the concept of the album and the music. But it’s tricky because I shared a new body of work that I have never shown before and it could have been “new art by Suzy Poling” in a gallery but instead it went straight to the album. But it’s ok because it makes for an entire experience that can be shared anywhere in the world, instead of only a gallery. It feels cohesive and I like that a lot. The making of image rarely comes before the music. It’s always whatever can accompany the music and the concepts of the material.

NK //

What do you love most about sound? What don’t you like about sound?

SP //

I think sound is the most powerful and expressive art form. It can cause a physical, sensory, and emotional effect that moves people. I think it can be more descriptive, visceral, and visual than actual visual art. And when mixing sound with light, it can become a real 3D/4D experience. I can’t think of anything that I don’t like about sound.

Time Dilation Geometry, 2016, installation, video performance photographs. Developed during an art residency called Infinity Stage, supported by the Mike Kelley Foundation

Pod Blotz live at Hollywood Forever, Los Angeles. Photo by Pricilla Scott.

Suzy Poling/Pod Blotz is a multi-media artist working with sound, video, film, photography, installation, sculpture, painting, collage, and performance art. She researches the multi-dimensional interferences between optics, mirrors, sonic resonance, electrical synthesis, video experiments, human/alien identities, and photographic studies of geological anomalies. She is from Michigan, studied at Columbia College in Chicago, lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for almost a decade, and now resides in Los Angeles.

Visually, her work has been exhibited at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure, Disjecta, Cal Polytechnic University, Chicago Cultural Center, Australian Center for Photography, Aperture Foundation, Cult Exhibitions/Aimee Friberg, and Zg Gallery. Her images have been published in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, and Dazed Digital. She has lectured at Cal Poly University, de Young Museum, Headland Center for the Arts, and Columbia College of Chicago. Poling is a recipient of the Mike Kelley Foundation Grant and was a nominee for the SECA Award at the SFMOMA.

Sonically, her project Pod Blotz has performed at the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Colour out of Space Festival, Yerba Beuna Center for the Arts, Berkeley Art Museum, Human Resources, The LAB, and Bemis Center for the Contemporary Arts. Pod Blotz has made releases with Chocolate Monk (UK), Nostilevo (LA), Conjunto Vacio (Spain), Clan Destine Records (UK) and Dungeon Taxis (NZ/NYC).

Human Glass Rotation, 2016. A live performance art, sound, video and sculptural installation piece at the Contemporary Jewish Museum for Soundwave Biennial in San Francisco. Photo by Francis John

Infinity Stage - Light Axis and the Human Mirror, 2016, video stills