A brush with...

Gabriel Orozco talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. You can also watch this conversation as a video on the YouTube channels of The Art Newspaper and Bloomberg Connects.Gabriel Orozco was born in 1962, in Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico and lives today between Tokyo, Mexico City and New York. His work is grounded in a singular take on realism, using everyday objects and images and transforming them through complex forms of games or rigorous structural approaches. He has said that everything he does has to do with different forms of transportation, so that his materials become vehicles for thought and action. And the breadth of knowledge and physical expression that he employs mean that his projects are both consistent and disparate, taking the form of drawings and paintings, found objects and handmade sculptures, photography and installation. This wealth of modes and methods leads to a huge variety in the kinds of work he produces, from small objects to total environments, from subtle and spare gestures to spectacular productions. He discusses his fascination with games and sports, which feature in many of his works, he reflects on the breadth of language in the manifestations of his work, and the role of the audience in completing it. He discusses his early fascination with Pablo Picasso, his enduring passion for the work of Kurt Schwitter and Constantin Brancusi, his admiration of On Kawara and the importance of writers including Jorge Luis Borges and D.T. Suzuki to his work. Plus, he gives insight into life in the studio, and answer our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?Gabriel Orozco: Chronotopic, curated by Briony Fer, White Cube Bermondsey, London, until 8 November. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kader Attia talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Attia was born in 1970 in Dugny, France, and lives in Berlin and Paris. He grew up between the French capital and Bab el Oued, a suburb of Algiers in Algeria, and his Algerian-French identity and the culture and history of Europe and North Africa—the global north and south—have profoundly informed his subject matter and materials. His work across three decades in photography, collage, sculpture, installation and sound, is concerned with a central concept: repair. By association, the notion of repair is inevitably connected with violence and injury. Within this overarching theme, he explores political and social issues in the present and the complex legacies of colonialism. While directly addressing particular historical and current moments, his work is rich in metaphor, and he considers this poetic aspect crucial to art’s ability to effect social change. Attia regards his output as the evidence of an ongoing process of research, but despite its fundamentally philosophical and textual genesis, it is often dramatic visually and experientially.He reflects on what he calls the “menemonic traces” and ghosts present through his work, explains why he feels the gaze is a bodily phenomenon beyond the ocular, and discusses the importance of his trips while a young person in Congo and Mexico. He talks about his early interest in Michelangelo’s drawings, his engagement with writers from the psychoanalyst Karima Lazali to the poets Édouard Glissant and Aimé Césaire, and the cathartic power of music. Plus he gives insight into his life in the studio and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: what is art for?Kader Attia: Shattering and Gathering our Traces, Lehmann Maupin, New York, until 20 December; Kader Attia. The Lost Paradise, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville, Spain, until 18 January 2026; Kader Attia: A Descent into Paradise, Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico, until 4 January 2026.Bienal de Sao Paulo: Not All Travellers Walk Roads—Of Humanity as Practice, until 11 January 2026; The World Tree: 24th Paiz Art Biennial, Guatemala City and Antigua Guatemala, until 15 February 2026. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Peter Doig talks to Ben Luke about his influences—from writers to musicians, film-makers and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped his life and work. Doig, who was born in Edinburgh in 1959 but grew up in Trinidad and Canada, has created a relentlessly inventive and evolving body of paintings over the past 40 years. Informed by memory, by Doig’s own photographs and found images, by an intimate knowledge and interpretation of art history, by a profound response to place and architecture, and by images and moods evoking diverse cultural forms beyond visual art, his works possess a poetic and sonorous sense of feeling and atmosphere. Often realised over many years, each painting is unique rather than part of a series, even if it shares recurring iconography with other pieces. Fundamentally concerned with figuration, Doig draws on a vast range of painterly approaches from resonant stains to thick impasto, stretching his medium to its full expressive potential and into the realms of abstraction. He has said that he wants painting to be a world unto itself and perhaps no other artist of the past few decades has created such a distinctive language for achieving that aim. Indeed, so widespread is his influence that one might describe a painterly strand in recent art around the globe as Doigian. Across his career, Peter’s work has been informed by a passionate engagement with music. He has said: “Music, being an invisible art form, is open to interpretation within the mind’s eye, and reflections from the mind’s eye are often what I’m attempting to depict in my work.” He achieves a particular tonality and ambience that evoke his aspiration to the condition of that artform, a factor emphasised in House of Music, the exhibition at the Serpentine South until 8 February 2026. He discusses several of the paintings in that show in depth, and reflects on his changing response to Trinidad, where he was based between 2002 and 2019, and his references in the paintings to the “residues of imperialism”. Among much else, he discusses the early influence of Edward Burra, his enduring fascination with Henri Matisse, his response to early graffiti art in New York, and his current fascination with Caravaggio’s Beheading of St John the Baptist (1608). He talks about his friendship and collaboration with the poet Derek Walcott and the importance to his work of STUDIOFILMCLUB, the repertory cinema he founded in his Port of Spain studio with Che Lovelace. Plus, he gives insight into his life in the studio, and answers our usual questions, including the ultimate: “what is art for?”Peter Doig: House of Music, Serpentine South, London, until 8 February 2026. There are a number of Sound Service events on Sundays through the length of the exhibition, as well as other evening sessions. Visit serpentinegalleries.org to find out more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Suzanne Jackson talks to Ben Luke about her influences—from writers to musicians and, of course, other artists—and the cultural experiences that have shaped her life and work. Jackson, who was born in 1944 in St. Louis, Missouri, but grew up in San Francisco and Fairbanks, Alaska, has worked across drawing and painting, poetry, dance and theatre, to explore a strong and often spiritual connection between people and the natural world. With a fluid and poetic painting style, Suzanne has responded to the many different natural and social environments in which she has lived in the US, from San Francisco and Los Angeles, to Fairbanks, Alaska and Savannah, Georgia, to forge a distinctive take on the world and the communities that inhabit it. She taps into a broad range of artistic languages, including Native American and African American traditions, and exhibits a deep sensitivity to history and ecology while reflecting profoundly on her personal lived experience. She has also been a gallery owner and public art administrator, with a keen sense of the role art can play in uniting and inspiring communities. Today, she makes installations formed by painted and sculptural forms that hang in the exhibition space, directly addressing subjects including the climate catastrophe. She discusses the important moment where she first encountered the work of Barbara Chase Riboud, a profound encounter with Elizabeth Catlett and her admiration for Torkwase Dyson. She talks of her passion for the cartoons Archy and Mehitabel and Krazy Kat, and her love of Mississippi Delta Blues and jazz or as she calls it, African American classical music. Plus she gives insight into her life in the studio and answer our usual questions, including the ultimate, “what is art for?”Suzanne Jackson: What is Love, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, until 1 March 2026; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 14 May-23 August 2026; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 26 September 2026-7 February 2027 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.