on art and culture
November 1, 2024 Painter's Tape
Frank Hadzima with Alex Vlasov
"I love painting people. It is so confronting to blink, and suddenly, this guy is staring right at you into your soul. And you are like, “I did that. That came out of my brain.” Painting is such a magical process. All of it."
Frank Hadzima. Portrait by Eddie Mitchell
The studio of Frank Hadzima was not that far away from mine for about three years. Over that time, I learned from Hadzima about oil paint, movies, internet characters, fence construction, and a bunch of weird flavored drinks. Au contraire, I do not know if he learned much from me, but I jumped his car quite a few times and gave him a bucket of gesso for one of his birthdays. Hadzima’s painting skills are quite unmatchable, and his sense of humor is magnificent. He is a fearless and free artist. I was excited to sit down and talk with him about painting.
-Alex Vlasov
Alex Vlasov: I was thinking of jokingly starting this interview with the question - “What’s up with these fat white dudes?” I assume you are obsessed with painting them for a reason.
Frank Hadzima: (Laughs) My white and fat dudes? Well, I am myself a white dude, so I think it only makes sense for me to be painting other white dudes. But as a gay male, what can I say? I just like fat white guys. I am dating a fat white guy. There is a lot of beauty and appeal to fat white guys. And they are just fun to paint. Think about Jenny Saville and the way she paints fat torsos. It is so fun to render flesh, especially with oil paint. It is so voluptuous and soft-looking. That is what oil paint is best at doing. I love oil paint. I love fat white guys. A match made in heaven truly together.
AV: It brings up a serious point. How do you choose your subjects? Because they are so specific. How do you filter them? Do you wake up in the middle of the night and say, “Oh! That white dude! That's my subject!”
FH: A lot of it happens very spontaneously. As I look for my references, I simply wait until something clicks for me. Often, those things that click are atmosphere and color. If I talk formally about my references, I want something with a liminal atmosphere. It is ambiguous where they are. But at the same time, you can tell they are probably sitting in front of a screen, therefore, that makes all my subjects contemporary. Them being men is a testament to the fact that I tend to roll around in more male-dominated spaces on the internet. It is through painting these subjects I am deeming them worthy of documentation. I want to find beauty in something as simple as I am looking at you right now (Points to the screen). It is something beautiful just sitting in front of the screen. This weird and grainy front-facing light from the screen. A long time ago, that was not something debatable in terms of beauty. Screens were not a thing, and who would care to document something like that? I am choosing my subjects because I see a lot of beauty and camaraderie in them.
Frank Hadzima, Unrestrained summer fun, Oil on paper mounted on panel, 5 x 7", 2024
AV: Then you are painting them. You are not simply taking a screenshot; it is more radical than that. Why do these subjects need to be painted?
FH: To paint something is to immortalize it. A screenshot is not forever. They say that once you post something on the internet, it is forever. But not in the same way. For something to be turned into a physical object, like a painting, then it is forever. This is something I've been thinking about a lot in the last year. In Blade Runner 2049, the one with Ryan Gosling, there is this huge network outage across the entire planet. This society that was reliant on everything being digitally documented had to start all over. And back to my work, if something like that thing in Blade Runner were to happen in real life and we lose everything that has ever been documented on the internet, my paintings would still exist. In the same way that a painting of Queen Elizabeth exists. We know what Queen Elizabeth looked like because somebody took the time to grasp this ephemeral thing - her being and turned it into a physical object - a painting. I am doing the same thing with these people I find online. I want to immortalize them. I want to remember them, I want to hold on to them, and I want other people to do that. I want people to give them attention. Doing that by merely taking a screenshot is not the same thing. To paint it is to take it a step further.
AV: What you are saying correlates to the idea of an archive. The work becomes an archival impulse. Then, how much does the archive feed into a deep desire to see, understand, or know the truth? To what extent does it reflect an obsession with a factual or rational approach to what is happening? Is there an impulse to understand the present condition and then reflect on it?
FH: Yeah. But it is also filtered through my lens and the lens of the internet. So, it is not completely unbiased. I am trying to make sense of what the internet is or what is on the internet. But I cannot cast my net wide enough to get everything. I focus on where I exist.
AV: You have been using the term “Internet Realism.” What do you mean by that?
FH: I love that term! More people should use it if they are making internet art. I think about it in a very direct parallel to Realism. For instance, Gustave Courbet and so forth. After the camera was invented, we had photography, and you did not have to paint things to document them anymore. And painters were, “Well, shit, now what do I do?” And they were painting banal and mundane things. I think about The Stone Breakers (1849) painting a lot. We never would have known that those poor schmucks were breaking stones to make money had they not been painted. A painting of Nikocado Avocado spreading his butthole in front of the internet for money is the same thing… Back to the Blade Runner, if we lose the internet, this painting is the documentation of that. How are people five hundred years from now going to be, “Oh my God! This guy spread his butthole open through the internet, and everybody thought it was funny.” If we do not have the internet anymore, we have a painting. I am documenting mundane things that a lot of people do not think are worthy of being documented. But because I have the power to paint, I am imbuing that magic into these things and deeming them worthy of documentation in the same way any rich old dead person was deemed worthy of being painted.
Frank Hadzima, On my computer, Oil on paper mounted on panel, 8 x 8", 2024
AV: That becomes almost about death and life at the same time. People are going to look at these paintings five hundred years from now, but they are also looking at them today. Then, could your act of archiving be simultaneously a resistance to and a perpetuation of death?
FH: They take on a different life because now they are paintings in conversation with painting history. That is infinitely imbued with life and death. I am going to talk about another movie. I am full of movie references (Laughs). Immortality comes from being remembered for something. No one lives forever, but your idea lives forever if somebody remembers it. The whole thing in The Last Unicorn is to leave a mark on something, to be granted immortality in the same way. In the movie, this witch captures this harpy, and then it kills her. But because she is the only person to have ever caught a harpy, she is granted immortality because that harpy (an immortal creature) will forever remember that the witch caught her. The life and death of what I am doing is coming through the capturing. The guys on the internet are my heartbeat, and I am capturing them. Whether I die or nobody remembers that I painted them, those paintings will still exist. Therefore, that is my immortality. That is also the immortality of my subjects, with or without the internet.
AV: What about experience? If it is coming through the capturing, then what kind of experience are you trying to document? Watching guys on the internet is your personal experience, but there is also an experience of your subjects performing on the internet. In addition, painting your characters is another experience.
FH: The experiences I capture are twofold. At least, there are two of them for me mainly. One of them is the capturing of a performance. Something is beautiful about the earnestness of somebody being stupid online. It is also funny. Humor is a huge qualifier for everything I do. I am capturing an earnest performance of something like eating food, taking a screenshot, or masturbating. Also, another experience is the same one you might get when you are scrolling on Instagram. You see something funny, and you do that “exhale through your nose” kind of laugh. It is fun to have that experience with a painting instead of the one on your phone. I've had that with paintings in real life that are not my own, and it is always such a pleasant surprise to go into a space with art and to be astonished by some funny internet painting because it is the same kind of experience as finding a funny picture online. And then, that is funny because you are spending time with a painting of some kid who is crying as he couldn't remember what nine plus ten was.
Frank Hadzima, 9 + 10, Oil on paper, 5 x 5", 2023
AV: (Laughs).
FH: Right? (Laughs).
AV: Sure. Why do you think there is this cultural obsession with uploading all these videos or images online? Why do they do that?
FH: Being raised alongside the development of the internet is just so commonplace for you. I remember as a kid, I had a lot of friends who were like, “I want to be a YouTuber when I grow up!” It was such an admirable thing to put your entire life on YouTube. It is not the best idea to do that, especially when you are a kid. But it is just so commonplace for people roughly my age to innately be connected to the internet. Putting your entire being on there is just the same as deciding to use a tissue when blowing your nose. Everybody needs to blow their nose, but you don’t necessarily have to use a tissue. You do not need to tell your Facebook friends or people who follow you on Instagram what you did today, but you are going to. Especially post-pandemic, everybody is online all the time. So, it is even more expected now. That is when I started having the response to my work - post-pandemic. Even I became more online than I was before.
AV: This idea of the self as a form of content. I think a lot about Adorno with Horkheimer and The Culture Industry. There is entertainment of all kinds for everybody. There is no difference if you work in a factory or make YouTube videos every day. The entire human being becomes subsumed by Capitalism. It is not about selling your labor power anymore. It is about selling yourself completely. And going back to your paintings, the figures are always staring at me, almost looking for approval of what they are doing.
FH: Absolutely! This is a part of it for me. That is why they stare at you a lot. They are performing an act. Whether they are failing at it or not, they are genuinely trying to get your attention. I even make YouTube videos sometimes. I am constantly putting on a show for people. Do I play up a character a little bit? Yes, but it is still me. It is interesting the way being a person has become a capitalist asset. You described perfectly what it is to be a content creator in the 21st century. It is the same as working on a factory floor. I guess, to that degree, it is a little sad when you think about it.
Frank Hadzima, That's gotta hurt, Oil on panel, 5 x 7", 2024
AV: I feel YouTube wouldn't exist without mass demand and consumption for your subjects. It is like an existential dilemma. You paint your subjects, and in that, you bring awareness of the self as content. When you look at the work, one almost reaffirms one's existence. It is both about thinking and looking, not just looking. You look at something, you think about it, and then comes the meaning of it all. It becomes a reconciliation between thinking and living in the world. Do you see these paintings as an existentialist statement?
FH: In the back of my mind, I am always thinking about them as mirrors in a weird way. I like to imagine anybody can see themselves in my paintings in one way or another because we can all relate to trying to get the approval of others. Doing something stupid in front of a camera or being caught with our pants down, literally or metaphorically. For instance, this concept of the black mirror. By that, I mean the black mirror your phone turns into when your screen turns off and you see yourself. Suddenly, you met with, “Oh my God! This is what I am staring at right now, and this is just a black mirror. But my whole world exists in this black mirror at the same time.” It is terrifying when you think about it but in a funny way. Especially when you open your camera, and you forget that you had it on the selfie mode, “Oh my God! I have eight chins!” That is where it is undeniably and insanely existential. But that is why I push it more toward the lens of humor. I think more about the eight chins in the selfie camera than about the terror of the black mirror. Approaching it with humor, you are not discounting the other part of it - the existential terror and whatnot. Because it is being approached with humor, you are more open to thinking about it more broadly.
AV: Nobody wants to talk about art formally anymore, or almost nobody. But your paintings are so physical in terms of their presence. The brushstrokes, color, light, texture - it is all there. The paintings exist in space all the time while I am with them, and because of that, you get very self-conscious, “What is that? What am I looking at? What should I be thinking about?” How do you go about making a painting? Is it also a conscious activity for you? Are you consciously activating our consciousness as well?
FH: When I sit down to paint, I say, “I am going to paint this thing that I found online because I want to paint it.” But then, this weird thing happens where I black out. Later, I open my eyes, and there is a painting in front of me. Not to say that I literally black out, but I almost feel this magic thing possesses me. Once I get into the groove, everything becomes subconscious. I am on autopilot. I love the activity of painting so much. I love the process of it, and it is so unconscious for me. When I work larger, I try harder to be present for it. But all my most successful paintings have come when I go blank and let it shoot through my arm onto the surface of the painting. And it's done when I feel it's done. There is just something that possesses me. Then, when it's done, it stops possessing me. And at that time, I stop painting.
Frank Hadzima, Untitled, Close up, Oil on panel, 8 x 10", 2023
AV: What else do you love about painting?
FH: I love the color. That is something you can see in all my paintings. I am insane about my colors and how vibrant and intense everything is. I never change the saturation in my references. I let that happen in my brain at some point during the process. And to naturally allow that to happen is part of the fun for me. I love the tactility of the paint. When the paint is on the substrate, when I am mixing it, or just the texture of it, it is like moving icing around a piece of cardboard or something (Laughs). I love watching how an image comes to fruition in my brain. The fact I can do that is so wild to me still. It makes me feel I have such a gift, such a power (Laughs). It is so strange to me. I forget sometimes that I can just conjure an image into being. Back to the whole thing of rendering flesh, rendering a likeness, rendering people… I love painting people. It is so confronting to blink, and suddenly, this guy is staring right at you into your soul. And you are like, “I did that. That came out of my brain.” Painting is such a magical process. All of it.
AV: There is a lot of love in what you are saying. I find there is also a lot of beauty. What do you find beautiful in your subjects? Looking at the entire archive, it feels like you are advocating that some things are beautiful. Can you describe what is beautiful for Frank Hadzima?
FH: I find a lot of beauty in a candid moment. Oftentimes, the subjects I paint are from a snapshot of something happening. I think to paint something instantaneous like that is so beautiful. Especially when we have cameras, you do not need to do that. But to labor over it, you get to pay attention to every subtle little thing. A little shine on somebody’s tooth, the way one of their eyebrow hairs is all fucked up, or even just that look on their face when you can tell they are thinking about something… That is really beautiful. There is a lot of beauty in the flesh itself. I am constantly in real life, photos, or videos online looking at how light hits the skin. I always think how fun it would be to paint that. I will see some guy out in public sometimes, and he’s just got the reddest face I've ever seen, and I am like, “That is crazy that a human being can have that kind of skin like neon pink.” I want to capture that.
Frank Hadzima, Two magical girls, Oil on canvas, 17 x 22", 2024
AV: How would you expect people to look at these paintings five hundred years from now?
FH: It would be funny if they look at it and say, “Wow, this guy was so good at painting! It is such a shame that he wasted it painting this stuff. What are we as a civilization supposed to do with this?” I hope I disappoint people in the future while also impressing them with my skills.
AV: I make a certain correlation of the late 19th - early 20th-century European tradition. These portraits are almost a new contemporary cafe society. By painting these guys, you elevate these subjects to the level of bourgeois. This is what makes it so funny.
FH: Well, exactly! In this hypothetical future where my paintings are like Van Gogh’s paintings, people will look at them, and they will be like, “Wow, this fat shirtless guy laying in a dirty bathtub must be important! I wonder what government position he held in 2015.” Then, they will be able to research this, and they will be just, “Oh, that is just Christopher Paul Whitney, famous internet fat guy, that people just bullied online for no reason. He is so unimportant. Why did this guy paint him?” But again, I see value in people like him. I recognize that maybe not everybody would agree with that, but I think that is funny. I like to mess with people a little bit in that way. If they are not open to getting it, at least I can clown on them a little bit.
AV: What is next for you?
FH: I don't know if there is much next for me, I am just painting, you know? I am still in my basement painting pictures that I find online. Once every three or four paintings, I get a good one, and I am like, “Okay, I am going to do it again.” I am just painting.