Esteemed Readers!
Next week I will send out the first edition of my new newsletter, Several Artists.
I apologize for the disappearance of the previous one, and I swear that this will be better in every way.
This time around, I’m on a mission, and it’s been a long time coming. I had originally wanted to make Several Artists a big archive of interviews with contemporary artists, and do my art-writing, or art-criticism, in another venue: the newsletter. I tinkered with SeveralArtists.com for years. But I badly misjudged the difficulty of interviewing artists, especially about their work — I now bow very deeply indeed before the genius editors of Bomb Magazine. I also discovered a first-rate capacity for writer’s block on the Grand Themes. I must have restarted my essay on NFTs a dozen times just trying to stop cursing the Beepoid.
For the last couple of years, I have been leading a varying group of people on gallery visits in Bangkok. In the course of doing this, it became clear to me that I really should just be writing about the artists you ought to know about but probably don’t. And so I repurposed the Several Artists name, and for reasons of SEO witchcraft I decided to host the new newsletter atop the bones of the old one.
Since I am currently in Thailand, the first couple of issues are going to focus on some of the amazing artists whose work I’ve had the privilege to see here. As subscriptions pick up, I will cover some of the rising stars of the regional art scene — people who are going to be household names, and serious household pronunciation challenges in the West. But I promise I will never forget that the little-known artists are sometimes the most interesting: the quiet artists, working day jobs, making things you can fit in your car, and doing it not for glory but because they must.
I’m shooting for monthly issues, because I want the writing to be worth your time and attention. And I thank you, profusely, for both, here and now.
The first official issue of Several Artists will “drop” (ship? drop-ship?) early next week. I hope you join me on this journey, and convince all your friends to join me as well.
Until then — Prost, auf Pinsel und Eimer!