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Nick Hooker is really smart. His work is deeply alert and possesses an amazing clarity. His influences range from Japanese animé to Baroque architecture, which now that he mentions it, makes total sense because his imagery combines the soaring excesses of the Baroque with the crisp and garishly sophisticated use of color in Japanese animation. He just finished the new Grace Jones video, Corporate Cannibal, which is lush in a very minimal way, and captures perfectly Jones’ unflinching presence. Of course I HAD to know about Grace Jones she is an artist I have long held in the Pantheon of Major Bitch Goddesses. I mean, she’s right up there with Hera and Athena as far as I’m concerned. What follows is an exchange we had in December 2008.
JJ: As an artist, process is almost more interesting to me than the final product. In observing the still images you have on your website, I’m hoping you can tell me a bit about how you arrive at these fantastical images? Media, dimensions etc….
NH: The work on the website all comes from a scrap of video that I shot in Ber- lin when the Berlin Wall came down. I arrived a few days before the Wall actually fell and spent most of my time with a Brazilian cabaret performer called Neptuno. He was a mesmerizing presence and totally committed to cabaret. For him it was an art thing, not a gay thing; he was married and had kids. The cabaret was a kind of laboratory for him to explore stuff.
I first started working with it in 1990 when I was making a graduation show at Princeton where I had been studying painting in the Visual Arts Department. I started grabbing still images from the video and soon realized that the only way I was going to be able to get inside the image and actually work with it was to use software, of which there was very little back then. I did what I could and graduated. I moved to New York and immediately started directing music videos and then moved back to London where I grew up.
By the time I returned to the Berlin footage in 1999/2000 the world of images was changing with the proliferation of imaging programs and imag- ing hardware (printers, screens and other devices). I had been directing music videos and working on animation projects and had also been working for Miramax in London developing feature films. I was saturated with narrative and story telling and I found myself creating multiple sto- rylines for Neptuno as a way to retune my instinct for the material. For example, in one story Neptuno was an intergalactic Che Guevara leading a revolution in the vast subcon- scious of an amnesiac cabaret performer in a late 21st century Berlin who was also Neptuno, that kind of thing. The stories were sort of mind bending hall-of-mirror constructions that in many ways were just the vector points for an image or an animation sequence. The images come out as large-scale archival ink-jet prints mounted on aluminum.
JJ: Your output is very painterly. Do you have any particular painters that you look at? If so, why?
NH: The painterly aspect of the images comes from years of painting. I have been painting again recently, but sort of in secret. I look at a lot of painters from Goya to Velasquez to Rothko and Barnett Newman. Of liv- ing painters I love Frank Auerbach, and I like artists like Dirk Skreber, Matthias Weischer. I saw some of David Hockney’s recent landscapes in London earlier this year that were amaz- ing. The surface is really a big thing for me. That said I also love the DIA artists, like Donald Judd, Michael Heizer and especially James Turrell.
JJ: Well, I guess you’re out now. I love Turrell too—magic. And Fred Sandback. What other things in our culture inform your imagery?
NH: My eyes really are trash cans, everything gets dumped into them. Whatever it is I think is informing my work I’m almost certain isn’t really informing it, except in the most superficial way.
JJ: I would say that this stuff is definitely trippy, in a way that goes beyond life in a parking lot at a Dead show.
NH: The trippy stuff in the images doesn’t really come from that I don’t think. I think my images come from a pre-disposition and looking at certain things a lot: Hieronymus Bosch, and even stuff like Borromini’s Rome churches. I think Baroque architecture is probably a much bigger influence on me than psychedelics.
JJ: What were your favorite cartoons as a kid? Do you still enjoy animation?
NH: I didn’t watch animation as a kid, but I do now. I love the Japanese stuff: Miyazaki and the Ghost in the Shell films are just extraordinary pieces of art.
JJ: Obviously doing a video for Grace Jones is a huge deal. I love how FIERCE she is. Every woman should have some of that. What was she like outside of her performative persona? Or is she just an all around badass?
NH: Grace IS fierce, make no mistake. She was born hyper-charismatic, which is a condition she has had to learn to manage and master. I’ve never experienced or really seen Grace be fierce in a negative way; I think she gets fierce when people try to mess with her. She can be a tar- get for that. The truth is she is really a truly wonderful, deeply wise, super-cool woman who remains defiantly true to herself and her instincts. It’s a great feeling when one’s art connects with her instinct because if she likes what you do then she trusts you and lets you do your thing. So working with her is a dream. When we shot the video she had just been in Jamaica and she was black, black, black. We took off all her make-up, and she even put on a peel and peeled off every last cosmetic trace, leaving just the raw glow of her skin. We did no beauty stuff in post, no softening, nothing. No one does that. That is what I mean by cool. So she’s fierce off stage defending her vision, and she’s really in solidarity with the artists she works with, defending them and encourag- ing them too. She just gets it.
JJ: Well, if every woman were as true to herself as Grace Jones has been throughout her long career, the world would certainly be different than it is. The subject of her piece Corporate Cannibal is pretty prescient considering the current state of the world economy and all the other disasters. How do you think artists will func- tion in this climate?
NH: This is not an environment for fakes. By which I mean this is not an environment for artists who need the full machinery of the industry to put them over. Are those people artists any- way? I think that’s kind of great. I think it’s actually a really exciting time.
JJ: Some of the best art gets made in times like these, and I agree it’s been a very inter- esting and exciting shift. What does the struggle mean to you?
NH: Hmmm…the struggle for me has boiled down to one very defined process, which is getting over the hump from not working into working. I mean that in a really mundane way. It’s like falling asleep. One minute you’re awake and the next you’re asleep. One minute you’re not working and the next you’re working (writing, directing, painting, designing, whatever). So the struggle is to get over that thresh- old enough times a week to build a body of work. That’s it. Period.
