Clearing Away The Bullshit Of It All: A poetic dialogue with artist Vivien Ebright Chung
Several months ago, I started parsing out what was real in my life and what was, well, bullshit. What I discovered was that, over the course of my adult life, I pioneered a sizable city of bullshit. If I were to sum up the bullshit in my life in one word, it would be this: optics. You know, looking “cool” or “fitting in.”
Anyone who’s familiar with the verbosity of my writing would probably suspect that optics plays a role in it. And optics are fine insofar as they’re mediated. All artists want to sound and look a certain way, it’s natural. But it’s when we start worrying too much about the optics of being an artist instead of just being a goddamn artist that things start to get tricky; which, admittedly, was what happened to me. My writing became emblematic of the costume I wore in public rather than the skin I revealed at home. What I wrote slowly started to feel less and less real, and I began to lose touch with why I even wrote in the first place.
This realization prompted me to take a bit of a hiatus from my beloved medium of prose writing. Instead, I started writing poetry. Pages and pages of poetry. Whatever came to my mind, mundane or exciting, I wrote a poem about: dreams, exes, my childhood, drugs, homoeroticism, Target, chocolate. The best part about these poems was that I didn’t intend to show them to anyone, and so that got rid of the whole optics issue.
I didn’t think I’d write prose again for a while. And then I met Vivien. We chanced upon one another at a tequila garden party in Santa Monica and started chatting about impressionism, poetry, New York, fashion, Nabokov—you know, all the essentials in life. After which she handed me an invitation to the opening of her upcoming art show.
I went to Vivien’s opening and, well, all I’ll say about her paintings is this: they’re brilliant. Beyond that, there’s not much I feel equipped to say via prose. Her art felt too potent for words. And yet, I thought there might be another way to chip away at the ingenuity of Vivien’s art. Following my poetic musings as of late, I went back to the gallery where her work was being shown and scribbled down whatever came into my head. What I ended up with were four poems, all of which corresponded to a specific painting or a collection of paintings.
I wasn’t sure if the poems I wrote were at all pertinent to Vivien’s art. I wasn’t too worried about that though. Art and poetry are the same insomuch as they both communicate a frequency, an aura of feeling. If anything, I was mining the frequencies given off by Vivien’s paintings and using them to fuel the frequencies generated by my poems.
Taking things a step further, I got in contact with Vivien to see if she’d be willing to collaborate on a creative experiment: a dialogue between her art and my poetry. She agreed. On the day of our conversation, Vivien kindly met me outside her studio, an industrial warehouse-type building wedged between a Staples and an auto shop. The inside of it looked like the aftermath of a Parisian drawing room that someone had used for a rave. Amidst all the ephemera, art-work, and furniture, there was this intransigent sparkle; like glitter had been sprayed everywhere.
“Help yourself to some fruit,” Vivien offered. We sat down on the couch, and I shyly picked at a bundle of purple grapes. “Sorry it’s so hot, we don’t get any AC in here,” she said. “It’s all right. I’m used to it by now. The AC in my car stopped working about a month ago,” I said. “Hey, mine doesn’t work either!” We both laughed. “Shall we start?” I asked. “Let’s do it.”[Some notes: Our conversation yielded around two hours of recorded content. Obviously, this is an article and not a podcast, so what you’re seeing is a very stripped down version of all that was said. I like to think of this transcription as one giant poem whereby it's extracting the various “auras” from our conversation and funneling them into one structure.]
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Gawain: There’s a variety of images, very diverse images, that are scattered around your studio. What do these images do for you while you're creating?
Vivien: My paintings provide this window into this world of opulence that I myself don’t even experience in real life. It’s this fantasy world I want to acknowledge. So whatever images, textiles, advertisements, or paintings that have that energy to them, I compile those and look at them while painting.
Gawain: I love that. Tell me more about these worlds in your paintings.
Vivien: They’re very heavily queer coded. But it’s interesting because in general queer people get it, but cis people, mainly men, don’t get it. And I think that it’s really fun. It aims to be a kind of sexuality that’s welcome to anybody. It’s a pretty subversive way of putting this queer perception of sexuality in a super rococo, heteronormative type of imagery.
Gawain: I didn’t even think about that. But, then again, I am a cis man. *laughter*
Gawain: I was reading through my poems and I noticed how much they talk about religion.
Vivien: Yes, I was noticing that.
Gawain: I’ve been thinking about religion a lot. I’ve been reconsidering it. I’ve been reading a lot about it. And now I’m trying to parse out what’s actually religion and what’s just dogmatism.
Vivien: I do feel like most of us as humans want to be in the same place of peace and comfort… It's bizarre to hear these ideologies that are supposed to be so loving and then just beneath the surface is this really hateful, vitriolic world. In my paintings I’m trying to show an alternative [world] for people—to just enjoy being alive, rather than struggling so hard to create these rules and systems that not everyone can participate in. I mean I don’t think everyone can participate in the world I’ve depicted either.
Gawain: But that’s also the impossible thing with creating a utopia in that it’s not going to be everyone’s utopia.
…
Gawain: I’ll read this first poem, it’s called “The Invention.”
The Invention
(Draws inspiration from all paintings shown above.)
Tangerines
Never tasted so
Vindictively opulent.
I yearn to kiss the dragon
Who set the sky ablaze
With orchids
And wilted notions.
There’s still that residual
Smell of watercress,
And an unreciprocated
Dinner invitation.
Vivien: I love it because it really feels akin to the paintings in that it’s describing something really wild and sensuous, and then with the closing of the ‘unreciprocated dinner invitation’ there’s still these social components around. You’re still participating in a preordained structure, somehow. The bottom painting, it’s called Gathering In The Woods—so it’s all of these people who are nude hanging out in the forest, and they’re kind of checking each other out and having hushed conversations. There’s still this sense of social decorum in the image. Everyone’s very composed, it’s not like they’ve gone wild. My subtext story for this is that the person on the far left has just healed from having top surgery and has invited everybody to hang out…so it’s still very civilized. I feel like in the poems too there’s this balance between this unrestrained chaotic lusciousness and some rules that are around.
…
Gawain: I’ll read the second poem.
Unarticulated
(Draws influence from the painting shown above.)
I love the clouds
That shroud
Even the most devout
In miasmic misgivings
And crystalline cracks.
Let us play
Until sectarianism
Grows acrid,
Blooming into
A cherry-red corpse
Laminated in a millenia
Of semi-sweet tears.
Vivien: I think it’s interesting because you reference miasma, and that painting has this sort of film or haze in it. The gallerist said he felt like he was looking at it through a mist. It is unarticulated, it’s like a mystery… This is one of those paintings that, as I was making it, I was like, “Is this so weird that people will be very freaked out by it.” But I also find that those are the paintings people like the most. There is something uncomfortable about it, and there’s also a lot of humor in it. That helps with my work, it’s not taking itself so seriously.
…
Gawain: The next poem is called “Devotion.”
Devotion
(Draws influence from the painting shown above.)
The preacher’s scythe
Cut corners out of
Her flesh until all
That was left was a
Dandelion ring,
A lavender flavored
Esophagus,
And an index finger and thumb
Pinching a blackened cigarette
And a pair of Louboutins.
The baptism only lasted
An hour and a half,
And the only refreshments
Offered were refrigerated caviar
And diet pepsi.
Afterwards,
A cat curdled
Its milk and
Pronounced everyone
Insane.
Vivien: I really liked the cat as the observer because that is how I see the cat and all the other animals in my paintings. They are watching the humans interact and thinking that they’re ridiculous. Also, this to me is the most erotic painting.
Gawain: Yeah. Let me just look at it again and attune myself. I don’t want to say something’s going in, but there’s like a penetrative sort of—
Vivien: Well, yeah. One woman has her hands in this jar of liquid. I was sort of imagining this arboretum bathhouse that people can frequent.
Gawain: That’s where I was feeling this baptism of sorts… I think art can be incredibly metaphysical, and you, as an artist, have this responsibility to create a safe entry point into that.
Vivien: I try to think about what door I am opening for someone. My personal choice is that it’s not disturbing. And there’s many artists that do want to confront something distressing to get people in touch with that part of being a human. But I think it’s important to understand for yourself what exactly you are putting out there.
Gawain: Yeah, definitely. These are really intense worlds that you’re having your viewers delve into. You’re leading someone into an alternate dimension, and that’s a lot!
Vivien: It’s very rewarding when people come to me and they say this painting made me feel at peace or a sense of happiness. It’s really powerful.
Gawain: With transcendental works of art, someone could completely trip out on it. That’s where the imagery from my poems comes from. It’s me tripping out on your paintings. It’s like psilocybin, this really multisensory experience. That’s what art, in a lot of ways, offers us.
…
Gawain: This one’s called “Nuptials.”
Nuptials
(Draws influence from both paintings shown above.)
The continuity of scene and setting
Was eradicated by the pseudo-science of faith.
Babies gnawed their mothers’ bosoms
With malignant devotion,
While fathers tarried
The unconscious realm of idiosyncratic idiocracy
Like disreputable actors in a staging of a
Greek comedy.
Everyone’s naivety catapulted
The jaws of society
Into a kaleidoscope
Of heretical bombings
And misguided
Hedonisms.
Our salvation has been lost
In the paroxysm
Of hunger
And indolence.
Vivien: What I really like about your poetry is what reminds me of my paintings. The sound of the language has as much meaning as the words. And, similarly, it’s the look and feel of the paintings I’m after rather than a coherent narrative.
Gawain: Yeah, that is—that is my religion. That is everything I stand for.
Vivien: That’s why I think painting and poetry go together so well and overlap so much, because it is a lot about the structure and the history, and connecting with other poets and painters. It’s the technicalities of it as much as it is the meaning. The meaning is within the structure.
Gawain: I completely agree. What I like about paintings [compared to poetry] is that it takes things a step further. I can imagine these [poems], but sometimes it’s hard for me to fully immerse myself in poetry.
Vivien: Me too. I really love poetry, but there’s a slight distancing from it, which I actually enjoy. There’s this space for me to sit with it, somehow, and also create—to have an intellectual conversation as I’m reading it because there’s a little space and it’s not so visually forceful like a novel.
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Gawain: I would love it if these worlds [in your paintings] could be instituted, but I’m not sure society’s ready for it.
Vivien: I know some people who tried to live that lifestyle, and it’s challenging. They still have their egos, childhood traumas, and all these histories and hurt feelings. It’s really challenging to coexist with other people. It’s something we’re all trying to overcome everyday… Even within these paintings, we’re only seeing certain scenes of these people. It’d be interesting to think about how they would deal with these kinds of issues and questions.
I was lucky to have met Vivien because, without her art, I don’t know when I would’ve been zapped out of my writerly slumber. As an artist, you have a duty not only to yourself but to others to set a standard for why we create. It’s not about what’s on the surface, but the intricate system of veins underneath. Obviously, what’s on the surface can be the “doorway” into these underworlds and offer an addendum of meaning, but it should never eclipse the feel of it all.
At the basis of every art work, every medium, is a poem; invisible stanzas which suffuse the work with character and originality. As my conversation with Vivien suggests, poetic application is limitless and everywhere. What is a conversation between two people if not a swapping of creative energies sourced from different platforms of expression? What is poetry if not the universal language of feeling, relatability? And who are we if not individual manifestations of a common thread, a well-known poem?
I stopped writing prose because it didn’t feel real to me anymore. The “look” of being an artist got in the way. I was missing that poetic initiative that is the very basis of art. Namely, the frequencies which underlie and permeate every brush stroke, stanza, verb-choice, punctuation mark, sound, color, and indent. The frequencies which stir up an unbridled amount of nostalgia, desire, and tranquility.
It was through poetry that I was able to reconnect with why I started writing in the first place: to find what frequencies, feelings, and subliminal thoughts existed in my life and isolate them. It wasn’t so much about understanding these things, but acknowledging that they were there; that they constituted a reality. The problem with writing for your own ego is that you aggrandize everything external to you (i.e. other people’s perception of you) and mute everything on the inside. The effect it produces is like a Russian nesting doll: beautifully hollow.
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(Images taken by Gawain Semlear on his lovely iPhone.)