During our recent American sabbatical we visited undeniable talent, Eric Yahnker, at his LA studio, snooped around and interrogated him about his approach to making art.
Photographs by Prokopi Constantinou
Words by Matthew Giraudeau Der Kersaint
Eric Yahnker’s drawings are what you notice first. They are worked and worked in the way that belies a sort of psychotic attention to detail. Plus, once you know that he spent about a decade working in animation you start to understand that his approach to making art is probably fundamentally different to people who didn’t spend the last ten years drawing for at least eight hours a day. He worked on shows like South Park for years before the gruelling schedule of studio animation made him realise he could do something else.
‘I remember being the only person left in the studio at 4am, once again, because as per usual, the director had left me saying, “See you tomorrow, I’m sure the scene will be great”. There I was putting way more sweat and blood into it than I’d ever get out of it and I suddenly realised, what if I put in this many hours into myself as I put in for these bastards? I still have the same work ethic, but now I’m doing it for me instead of them’
The Big Con-onization (Mutha from Calcutta), 2010, charcoal and graphite on paper, 72 x 97 in.
If it wasn’t for the incredible technical ability, Eric Yahnker might be dismissed as just another conceptual joker with all the tits and puns and pop culture references that adorn the work. But along with all this adolescent humour and celebrity baiting is an interest in enlightening the audience, investigating things a little more deeply.
In the interview he kept mentioning authenticity – a word that might make a lot of people cringe – but then he spoke about trying to marry ideas which might seem paradoxical, and how that comes from an essential part of his identity.
‘What are my passions? Politic and history, yes… but there’s also basketball and extremely nude women. Simple things matched with intelligent things.
On the surface you can just enjoy the work for the jokes and the craftsmanship, but spend a little longer with it and something else starts to happen.
‘You can dip your toes in, see things as being one liners. But then if you want, you can put your floaties on and swim out to the deep end with me.’
That’s both a disconcerting image (I imagine Eric wears pretty tight trunks), and a nice way of thinking about the use of techniques more often found in comedy than in art.
‘I want to be put in the same boat as the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin, Mel Brooks and Woody Allen. You try to educate yourself everyday on something serious, so you can have comedic things to say about it. To be original in comedy is to respond to serious things.’
Looking at that quote, maybe the jokes aren’t a way of smuggling critical ideas into Eric’s art. Maybe the jokes are the critical ideas.
Take one of his meticulously drawn text pieces. ‘TESTICLE’ (2009), with the T at the beginning, the E at the end, and the rest of the letters replaced with images of Lance Armstrong, a man as famous for his testicular cancer as for his cycling proficiency. You get the joke, but the fact that you get the joke says a lot about the way we think: as westerners seeped in a celebrity image culture – immediately recognising the famous face and his life story, and as linguistic beings – able to make connections between the bare bones of an idea.
TESTICLE, 2009, colored pencil on paper, 39 x 52.5 in.
Connecting seemingly disparate ideas together is a theme that runs through Eric’s work. When he designs an exhibition, he uses what he calls,
‘Supermarket psychology. When you walk into a show, there are visual cues that lead your eye around the space.‘
He treats exhibitions as a storytelling exercise, using works to highlight different elements of an overriding theme. With his background in TV, it makes sense that he is more open to the idea of people actually enjoying his work as an interlinked narrative, rather than just stroking their chins and moving on.
‘I see my work, to some degree, as entertainment. I want people to engage with it, laugh, enjoy it, feel the same way as when they have a cinematic experience. I’m not saying come to my show with popcorn, but I want you to have a lot to look at, stick around for a while. It’s about making each show a single unit, thematically, poetically, comedically’
Fat Bastard Scramble, 2010, colored pencil on paper, 76 x 72 in.
Eric works in series. He uses a particular style of presentation for a particular idea. The text works, the piles of books/VHS, the gruelling performative sculptures (He once re-wrote a self help book with his foot) and of course the drawings. It adds up to a practice that is both coherent and constantly evolving. Each time you look at a work, you might know the format, but the content is new.
This dedication to an idea – going back to things again and again to make new versions – it all seems to link back to his days in the animation studio. He works on something not just until its done, but until it feels right; conceptually and aesthetically.
In comedy you only know the job is done when the audience are laughing, if Eric were a stand up I’d be rolling in the aisles.
