The Forum 20 | Kamrooz Aram: Painting on the Edge of Ornament and Abstraction

The Forum 21 | Lucas Blalock

Lucas Blalock’s photographs often look like they’re interrupting themselves. Objects bend out of place. Edits remain visible. Corrections become part of the image instead of disappearing behind it. Rather than using photography to create the illusion of clarity, Lucas uses it to expose the decisions, accidents, and contradictions that make images possible in the first place. In this NewCrits conversation, Lucas sits down with Ajay Kurian for a discussion about photography, discomfort, and what happens when the process becomes part of the final work. The conversation begins with a story Lucas has returned to in recent years: a childhood accident that resulted in reconstructive surgery using his own toe to replace his thumb—a collision of advanced medicine and old-world improvisation that he jokingly describes as “the first bad Photoshop.” Lucas reflects on discovering art through CD covers before museums, studying at Bard, and coming of age as digital tools began changing the medium itself. Instead of treating manipulation as something to conceal, he became interested in making it visible. Again and again, he returns to the same idea: images become more interesting when they stop trying to appear effortless. 00:00 — Intro 03:10 — The Disney Accident and “The First Bad Photoshop” 09:45 — Origin Stories and Discovering Photography 15:30 — Album Covers, Culture, and Looking Before Art 20:10 — Studying with Stephen Shore 26:00 — Photoshop as a New Problem for Photography 31:20 — Signature, Style, and Staying Strange 36:15 — Making the Worst Possible Image 41:00 — Working for Vik Muniz 46:10 — Labor, Accident, and Unfinishedness 50:20 — Pictures That Resist Digestion 54:15 — Photography, Bodies, and Sensation 58:40 — AI, Anxiety, and the Future of Images 1:03:00 — Outro Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe [https://newcrits.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

SPENT: Episode Three | Whitney Mallet

SPENT: Episode Three | Whitney Mallet Whitney Mallet has spent years moving through magazines, galleries, performances, readings, and the shifting ecosystems that surround contemporary culture - not as an observer standing outside of it, but as someone committed to paying attention. In this conversation, Whitney sits down with Ajay Kurian to talk about criticism, instinct, and what it means to build a practice around curiosity. They discuss magazines as art projects, the lag between cultural change and cultural criticism, and why making connections between unlikely people, scenes, and ideas can create something more exciting than simply reinforcing what already exists. Whitney reflects on developing taste, not as something fixed or innate, but as something shaped through obsession, attention, and years of showing up. They talk about influence, authority, and the slow process of learning to trust your own perspective. Throughout the conversation, Whitney returns to a tension that runs through both criticism and creative work: the pull between analysis and instinct, busyness and reflection, skepticism and hope. What emerges isn’t a defense of optimism so much as a practice of remaining open. Believing that culture can still surprise you, that intensity is worth pursuing, and that staying curious might be one way of resisting disappointment. Hosted by Ajay KurianEdited by Peter GroppeProduced by NewCrits  The Whitney Review of New Writing:   https://www.whitneyreview.org/ [https://www.whitneyreview.org/] 00:00 — Intro 04:50 — Running a Magazine by Instinct 09:20 — Taste, Influence, and Learning What You Like 15:10 — Building Unexpected Encounters 20:30 — Trusting Your Own Authority 27:15 — Information, Obsession, and Developing Taste 33:40 — Work as Practice 38:20 — Edging Burnout 43:45 — Busyness, Avoidance, and Personal Writing 49:30 — Disappointment, Intensity, and Staying Optimistic 55:15 — Criticism, Attention, and Cultural Delay 1:01:20 — The Internet, Institutions, and the Changing Role of Reviews 1:07:15 — Writing Without Permission 1:11:40 — Earnestness, Cynicism, and Seeing Through Things 1:16:20 — Breakthrough or Burnout 1:18:00 — Outro Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe [https://newcrits.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

SPENT: Episode Two | Walter Price

SPENT: Episode Two | Walter Price Walter Price’s paintings may present as loose, instinctive, and immediate, but behind them is a practice built on discipline, repetition, and consistency.  In this conversation, Walter sits down with Ajay Kurian to talk about building a life around making work and what it means to remain committed to the process. Together they discuss ambition, routine, competition, and the challenge of continuing to evolve without becoming attached to outcomes. Walter reflects on making small paintings when everyone told him to scale up, embracing experimentation over certainty, and treating limitations as opportunities rather than obstacles. Again and again, he returns to the same idea: growth comes from pushing toward discomfort instead of away from it. Walter describes creativity as something active - a practice of showing up, staying curious, and refusing to get comfortable. At one point, Walter says he doesn’t want the cheers. He wants the boos. Not because he’s interested in proving people wrong, but because he understands what keeps him moving: there is always another level to reach. Hosted by Ajay KurianEdited by Peter GroppeProduced by NewCrits  More about Walter Price: https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/walter-price [https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/walter-price] 00:00 — Intro 04:15 — Growing Up 08:40 — Early Ideas About Becoming an Artist 13:25 — Consistency vs Inspiration 18:50 — Small Paintings and Ignoring Expectations 24:30 — Wanting the Boos, Not the Cheers 29:15 — Ambition, Restlessness, and Staying Hungry 34:10 — Experimentation as Practice 39:20 — Developing Taste and Trusting Instinct 44:45 — Limitations as Opportunity 49:30 — Growth Through Discomfort 55:10 — Routine, Repetition, and Showing Up 1:00:45 — Success, Satisfaction, and What Comes Next 1:06:20 — Curiosity as a Long-Term Practice 1:10:00 — Outro Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe [https://newcrits.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

SPENT: Episode One | Yaya Bey

SPENT: Episode One | Yaya Bey Yaya Bey has built one of the most singular voices in contemporary music not by chasing consensus, but by trusting her own sense of practice. Across albums that move through R&B, house, soul, poetry, and memory, their work resists easy categorization - and she’s increasingly uninterested in trying to make it legible to people who insist on misunderstanding it. In this conversation, recorded ahead of the release of her new album Fidelity, Yaya sits down with Ajay Kurian for a wide-ranging discussion about what it means to make work on your own terms while navigating an industry that often wants to flatten artists into narratives that are easier to sell. Yaya speaks candidly about the limits of criticism, who gets positioned as the authority to interpret Black art, and what happens when audiences project meaning onto work instead of listening to what the artist is actually saying. Devotion to making music. Devotion to curiosity. Devotion to continuing even when the systems around you are exploitative, unstable, or actively discouraging. Yaya Bey talks openly about the realities of being a working musician - record deals, touring economics, budgets, labels, expectations, and the invisible labor that exists behind an artist’s public life. What emerges isn’t cynicism, but a kind of grounded determination: a belief that creativity survives because people keep making things anyway. Yaya describes hope not as optimism but as discipline: if you want to be free, you have to believe freedom is possible even when it feels impossible. Otherwise you begin believing in your own defeat.  Hosted by Ajay KurianEdited by Peter GroppeProduced by NewCrits Yaya’s New Album, Fidelity:  https://yayabey.bandcamp.com/album/fidelity [https://yayabey.bandcamp.com/album/fidelity]  Yaya’s Substack: https://substack.com/@yayabeybay?utm_source=global-search [https://substack.com/@yayabeybay?utm_source=global-search]  Upcoming Show Dates:  https://www.bandsintown.com/a/15521055-yaya-bey?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQPOTM2NjE5NzQzMzkyNDU5AAGn-QGJBp8sdAH4IFe4bEeCmP3lrQR-VKQfb8hkYbMxaEaXsUZ1vfEY29Xw4Yo_aem_swM1Nk76aGvpG-4j_ajAFQ [https://www.bandsintown.com/a/15521055-yaya-bey?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQPOTM2NjE5NzQzMzkyNDU5AAGn-QGJBp8sdAH4IFe4bEeCmP3lrQR-VKQfb8hkYbMxaEaXsUZ1vfEY29Xw4Yo_aem_swM1Nk76aGvpG-4j_ajAFQ] 00:00 — Intro 05:00 — Misreading the Work 08:00 — Who Gets to Interpret Black Art 12:35 — Grief, Joy, and Refusing the Assigned Story 15:45 — Being Polarizing / Being Protected 19:00 — The Politics of Interpretation 23:40 — Grief Beyond the Self 27:35 — Refusing Other People’s Narratives 35:20 — The Industry, Capital, and Finding Your People 41:30 — Discomfort as a Teacher 48:40 — Community, Poetry, and Becoming an Artist 52:00 — Becoming a Working Musician 57:15 — Loss, Stability, and Living Through Contradiction 1:00:00 — Making a Life, Not Just a Career 1:09:35 — Curiosity as Practice 1:12:30 — Outro Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe [https://newcrits.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Forum 20 | Kamrooz Aram: Painting on the Edge of Ornament and Abstraction

He works through form, perception, and the politics of display — Kamrooz Aram on ornament, abstraction, and the unstable ground of how we see. Kamrooz Aram moves between painting, sculpture, and collage, using material, structure, and exhibition design to question how images are read and how histories are constructed. His work often begins in the studio, through process and formal decision-making, and expands outward into larger systems of meaning: how value is assigned, how objects are categorized, and how cultural narratives are embedded within visual form. Across recent exhibitions, he continues to return to questions of ornament, modernism, and the conditions that shape perception without resolving them into fixed positions. He explains: * How openness, curiosity, and “young artist energy” remain essential to sustaining a long-term practice. * Why restraint, stepping away, and not overworking are as critical as mark-making in the studio. * What it means to work within a structure or “mode,” where improvisation can emerge without forcing novelty. * How ornament and abstraction are historically entangled, and why their separation reflects biased art histories. * Why viewers project cultural assumptions onto form, and how ideas of “the decorative” or “the exotic” are constructed. * How value shifts depending on context, authorship, and belief, from museum objects to replicas and everyday materials. * Why art can create moments of transcendence through form, rather than through narrative alone. (00:08) Welcome + Returning to the Studio(04:20) Reclaiming “Young Artist Energy”(10:00) The Nonlinear Life of a Painting(15:30) Disruption, Destruction, and Letting the Work Shift(25:56) Sculpture as an Extension of Painting(28:10) Ornament, Abstraction, and Historical Bias(33:40) Time, Fading, and Letting Go of Control(52:45) Authenticity, Replication, and Constructed Value Watch the conversationView the full episode on YouTube. Follow KamroozWeb: https://kamroozaram.com/ [https://kamroozaram.com/]Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kamroozegar/ [https://www.instagram.com/kamroozegar/] Kamrooz Aram (b. 1978) has built his practice on dismantling the divide between ornament and fine art, renegotiating the art historical hierarchies that privilege Western forms of abstraction above others. His paintings and sculptures do not simply cross categories; they probe the structures that enforce them. Born in Shiraz, Iran, Aram emigrated to the United States in the 1980s, where he found himself forced to come to terms with a multitude of identities imposed upon him. These experiences left a lasting mark. Categories, he discovered, do not merely describe identity—they invent it. This recognition drives his work, which asserts that non-Western ornamental traditions carry the same intellectual weight and conceptual rigor Western art history has long reserved for itself. About The ForumThe Forum is NewCrits’ ongoing public talk series, presented in partnership with WSA/WSBS. Talks take place live every second Tuesday at WSA. Join us for our next conversation here [https://www.newcrits.studio/events].Explore NewCrits’ offerings, including crits, courses, and mentorship programs at www.newcrits.studio [http://www.newcrits.studio/].— Full Transcript Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe [https://newcrits.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]