P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center

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2007 Summer

Molly Larkey: From Bombs to Believers

Conversation between P.S.1 Curatorial Advisor Franklin Sirmans and Molly Larkey

Molly Larkey

The Believer

2006

102 x 45 x 45"

Mixed media

Courtesy the artist

Franklin Sirmans: How did you go from Bombs to the current body of work, The Be­lievers?

Molly Larkey: I guess Bombs continued as long as I found ways to experiment with those forms while keeping the process in­structive for me. It was a comfortable format to develop a language, especially since the concept of the series was based on making mistakes. In that way, Bombs was mostly per­sonal; it was about guilt and how I felt about my work and my place in the world. The idea for The Believers came about as I was tiring of that format, and I wanted to bring things that I was thinking about outside of art-mak­ing into the work—like Richard Rorty’s idea of the liberal ironist and how liberalism in general is being challenged by people who think their belief systems are correct for everyone. So the impulse behind the newer work is broader.

FS: You’ve spoken of how “belief” plays a role in your work and in this most recent se­ries, The Believers, you situate the work even more closely to ideas of faith. Are you reli­gious? Are you interested in icons of belief?

ML: I’m not religious and never have been, though I’ve always been fascinated by people who do have faith—whether religious, political, or otherwise. When I was in college, I was really into Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and their role in 1960s politi­cal movements, as well as the modernist art movements that were politically invested, like Dada and Surrealism. I felt cheated by the era I was born into because it seemed like there was nothing to believe in and nothing to fight for. So I’ve never been a “believer” per se, but there’s a certain kind of envy associated with the way I think about people who have faith.

As for icons, they do interest me, espe­cially how their meaning changes over time, but I would also say I’m mostly interested in breaking down and recombining different types of representations. There’s an element of self-deprecation in the way I approach icons and loaded subject matter in general: it’s seri­ous and at the same time, a little silly.

FS: In Bombs and more recent sculptures like The Mathematician and The Scientist, the work is layered and stacked with wood and then juxtaposed by minimalist pedestals. The new works incorporate the pedestal within the structure of the entire sculpture. Is that some­thing conscious you were thinking of? How to do away with a device of presentation?

ML: The relationship between the pedes­tal and the sculpture was at the core of the idea for Bombs, to make a causal relationship between the two, where the poorly made min­imalist pedestal “causes” the bomb. It was also about finding a way to combine different types of sculptures into one piece, and with the newer works, I’m still trying to do that, but in a less obvious and more idiosyncratic way.

FS: You are often working with saturated primary colors... In The Believers reds, blues and yellows play such a strong role. Tell me about the importance of color in your work.

ML: Color is important because it com­pletely changes the perception of the sculp­ture’s form and the space around it. It also has a symbolic element in that I usually start with the colors of the rainbow, which repre­sents a kind of utopian impulse for me. Then from there, I mess with the color according to what I’m trying to represent. Using so much color also goes against everything I believed when I started making sculpture—the thought that it should be minimalist, raw, material, and absolutely not painterly—so I’m also rebelling against that idea.