A Stupendous Conversation with Alissa Polan
Courtesy of artist
Alissa Polan is an American multi-disciplined artist from Los Angeles that lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Alissa's artwork has been exhibited nationally in art spaces and galleries such as the Arlington Art Center, Diego Rivera Gallery, Adobe Bookstore Backroom Gallery, Clamp Light Gallery. Alissa has been in publications such as The Washington Post, Vast Art Magazine, ARTnews, and many more. Alissa has received the Working Artist Photography Purchase Award and has been a finalist for the Sonoma Emerging Visual Artist Award. She has been the artist in residence at Joya at Cortijada in Los Gázquez, Almeria, Spain. I enjoyed asking Alissa about the influences Los Angeles has had on her, what music she is listening to, and what is the hardest thing about being an artist.
UZOMAH: How do you make your art personal for your viewers?
ALISSA: My work is very personal to me. I have diligently peeled away the layers of what I think I “should make” to do work that feels very authentic to my lived experience. I hope that the people that see my work take something away from it. I am not sure that people understand my work; I just hope they like it.
U: Is there any literature that has influenced your artistic process?
A: I am a bit of a book nerd. I love to think about the book as an object, not just as a resource. My work is heavily informed by the connection between image and text, the photograph’s source, and the physical image as sculptural material. Every monograph I collect is to explore that somehow.
I collect monographs of artists I love and respect. I would say the artist I find most influential in this regard is Sophie Calle. Each book she has published is created and conceptualized as a work of art; this is instead of the book just being a vehicle for images of the work she has made placed in galleries and an outside curator/writer’s text. These books also address the constant struggle of accessibility. Too often, art is priced too far out of reach for everyone to own and revisit. I find her approach refreshing and inspiring. The first book that blew my mind was Address Book, where Sophie Calle finds an address book (this was the 90’s) of a stranger and speaks to the owner’s contacts to get an impression of him. The book itself is the size/scale of an old address book. The work is a brilliant meditation on the traces of influence we leave and a great story to boot.
My most recent acquisition is a book about Lorna Simpson, whose work is seminal in exploring race, text, and imagery. This also clearly shows my dedication to female-identifying artists.
“Want it All,” 2020 mixed media collage, 36x24
U: What is the hardest part of being an artist?
A: The constant doubt and need to support yourself, to want something so badly (like a show, gallery representation, interest from curators, etc.) and need to always believe in yourself enough to continue to make work. I love to make and have learned that for me, it is not an option to stop making art. But I love my work, and I want other people to love it too. It is a bit pathetic, but it is also the truth.
U: How has the LA lifestyle influenced how you create your art?
A: In so many ways! I grew up in a suburb of LA county. Westlake Village is a mostly white enclave of Suburban cars, lawns, and fast fashion.
The suburbs are a weird in-between that represent the American Dream as it used to be – a place where heterosexual relationships are paramount - so you could get married, live in a perfect 3-bedroom house, have 2.5 kids with a dog, and fence – it was everything you would need. In the 21st century, celebrity and ostentatious wealth have replaced that vision. In any scenario, it is all about the American dream as reinvention through the acquisition of wealth, influence, and status.
California is the birthplace of that perfect but contrived narrative of the dreamscape of the American West. Hollywood is deeply connected to re-invention and the photograph as proof positive that recreating oneself is complete and feasible. I always felt so alienated by those dreams. Like if that image was not possible by any means necessary, I had failed at something personal and invalidating.
Both of those types of dreams have a very specific interaction with the landscape around them. The landscape, particularly California’s landscape, is a thing to be managed, but not the world in which we live. It is very disconnected from the environment. I regularly explore my own anxieties about climate, the effects of consumerism, our collective slow destruction of the natural order, and the increasing idea that if you have achieved “perfection” in the monetary sense, the rest (environmental impact, personal growth) is an optional consideration.
“Services Appropriated to Real Needs”, 2020, Archival Pigment Print, 60x20
U: What is your favorite part of Los Angeles in terms of culture?
A: I love the giant open spaces the new architecture can create. Aside from that? Tacos? The beach?
“His Vibrant Vacation Home,” 2020 mixed media collage, 36x42
U: What drew you to making collage art?
A: I think of myself as first-and-foremost, a sculptor – materiality is paramount to my making. The material I choose to work with - Instagram screenshots, advertisements, catalogs, and nature calendars are readily available to me. They are indicative of this moment and how we experience daily life. Collage is my way to literally construct my thoughts into a series of interconnected images and text. It informs the whole spaces of those thoughts in fragments.
U: What is the process behind collecting material for your collages?
A: I am very drawn to the overly orate language and furniture, homeware catalogs, and Dwell house-porn. I think art should be what you love to think about every day. I dig through Interior magazines, and Instagram feeds. It’s how I have woven my own personal habits with my work. For me, it is the exchange of art and life.
U: How important can art play a role in addressing issues of climate change and other issues?
A: It is art’s role to expose undercurrents and perspectives. Art can also take any form. It could be a beach clean project, reusing materials, but I think for me, it’s about tapping into the undercurrent of climate anxieties.
“One That Appears Both Airy and Substantial,” 2020 Mixed media collage, 34x26
U: How do you use art to examine and reexamine the American dream?
A: My work connects to the contemporary American Dream – namely, seeking one’s personal fortune at any cost. The items and lifestyles I take from are ideal: Catalogs filled with images of perfect houses and near-idyllic landscapes. It’s the same practice that Albert Bierstadt and Ansel Adams employed in their iconic works - vast spaces ready for enjoyment. In these new interiors and exterior spaces, we picture ourselves in pure bliss, taking pleasure in everything our state of absolute wealth and happiness has to offer because we have made it!!!
The work is about those inner thoughts and their connections to those impulses. My titles are always direct quotes from descriptions about luxury housewares or travel magazines taken out of context to elevate the ridiculous nature of our consumer spin.
My work is also crowded, feels like you are always trying to find your way into it or through it. I want it to be disorienting on purpose because the American Dream is constantly out of reach.
U: If you could not express yourself through art, what method would you use and why?
A: I guess I would be a drag queen. That feels right.
“They Will Tempt You to Stay for a Very Long Time,” 2020, Archival Pigment Print, 30x18
