Portfolio > Interview with CC Magazine

LES: Hi Cody, we’re here chatting on a Zoom call and it’s two o’clock in the morning where
you are. Is it quite normal for you to be up and working around this time?

CODY: Yes, but I would normally be winding down around this time. This would be the time I clean up
and fold everything over for the next day. As an artist sometimes I have to keep going, I just
can’t stop, it’s a compulsion. I might be close to solving the artistic puzzle that I’ve put before
myself (my works and how I create them are all like puzzles), I am in the moment and I can’t
stop until the materials tell me to stop. The materials I use, especially if I am working with
concrete, have a malleable time limit so the clock starts ticking as soon as it’s mixed, thus I
gotta finish what I start in the moment. Sometimes though I am just lost in the creative zone and
lose track of the time which is something I know many creatives can identify with. Also ,I might
add that the quiet of the night is my favorite time to work. Los Angeles is such a frenetic city by
day the night allows me to focus on the work.
How would you say this affects your process?
Even when working with materials that are collected I am very aggressive with how I make
things. It is very intuitive and hands on. There is a little bit of planning, but that is mainly just the
materials in front of me and then I am just bulldozing through working very intuitively.
There is also a point you get to when layering where the composition starts to inform you as you
go along. You get into sort of a debate going back and forth because you are about to lose
something you love in the piece for something you might like better. It is always shifting but
again also an exercise in immediacy because as I mentioned before the materials, even the
paper has a timer on malleability .
Sometimes I am up until four or five in the morning having that battle because I have to wait. I
use gel medium as my adhesive and am very sloppy. I just slop it on. We have a great place out
here where you can buy it by the gallon. Depending on the density of the paper and its
malleability, you just have to go. You can’t scrape back and replace with the same thing.

LES: About your work, you do a similar thing to myself. You go around big cities pulling
things off walls and you collage with that material. You have even coined a new movement called ‘Neo Urban Expressionism’.

CODY: Back in 2014 - 2016 I was trying to think about how to put this work together in a quantified way.
Everyone wants to have something they can make sense of this stuff with. For me, ‘urban expressionism’ had been a term that had already been used back in the 90’s and it was more about painting. I just thought about how I liked Nouveau Realism and Art Informel, both of those movements were very important and influential to me. So, in a small way, I tried to start my own movement. I believe that is how I met David Fredrik originally. We were both celebrated very early on by Saatchi Art having each been selected by Chief Curator, Rebecca Wilson as Rising Stars. I think It was interesting to see people sorting and processing information in different ways and I had five or six artists that I was communicating with all over the world and was trying to cultivate a collective thought. It is not
like I lost interest in it, but this town takes over, it’s busy and I thought to myself ‘What am I really doing? I just want to make my art’. I am actually liking ‘Urban Informalism' as a term more
recently. So many people have built identities around Graffiti Futurism and Post Vandalism, like Stefano Bardsley. So, I hold no banner of having discovered anything, it has always been
around us.

LES: How did you come to work with collage?

CODY: I generally call my work pictures, my work is picture-making.However, recently I have embraced
collage, but it took years to do that. I don’t really know why I kinda thought I was a painter
conceptually. I think that is because I am from the south and thought of collage as a dainty craft,
it didn’t matter to me then. I’ve felt more a kinship to Kurt Schwitters, Robert Rauschenberg,
Antoni Tapies, Jacques Villeglé and all the OGs from way way back. My process felt like it was
very different than a traditional collage maker because it was immediate and action oriented.
That thinking probably came from watching my grandma do decoupage.
Speaking of OGs, you have a project on your website called ‘It takes a Villeglé’. Did
Villeglé have a big influence on you?
My first influence was from when I was 14, much to my mother’s chagrin. She wanted us to
travel the world and she put us into exchange programs which changed me into an enigma that
probably confused her for a lot of years. I mean I think before that experience I probably wanted
to be a doctor. Maybe I should have,that would be a lot less work, lol.
I did a couple of exchange programmes and, at 14yrs, I spent the summer in Sweden at 14. As
part of the programme, we went to the Moderna Museet. I turned a corner and right in front of
me was Monogram by Robert Rauschenberg. When I dissect everything back, it all goes back to that moment. Shortly after, I saw a Duane Hanson sculpture, and all of the sudden things
went off. Those are the source of the root idea – that anything can be used.
When I circle back to what I am doing now, I had spent a lot of time in Berlin during 2007, I was
there during the Berlin Art Week, but I was more interested in the textures of the city. I was so
interested in the textures that I came back and started to paint. Nothing worked. It was failed
painting after failed painting. I am an experimenter, I like to try things, but it felt so insincere. But
to answer your question yes, Jacques Villeglé and really all the Nouveau Realists have
spiritually guided me. I created that show out of necessity and as an homage not only to him but
to the people that have supported me. The title is a bit of a double entendre. It is a play on the
phrase “It takes a village” because yes it take a Village and a Villeglé for me to do what I do.

LES: How did you then progress from painting into collage?

CODY: In 2012 I had a bad accident where I dislocated and broke my right elbow and left wrist at the
same time. I was walking around my neighborhood because I just needed to get out of the
house. I couldn’t do anything, so I had to go out. I was collecting detritus on these walks like a
diary or catalogue of the day.
As I got a little more freedom I started doing these daily ‘assemblages’ of things I found
interesting. On one of those walks I started thinking about those pieces being out there in the
world as a witness to a time and place, so I just kept collecting near me. My corner used to be a
derelict lot, but now it is a Target. Everytime I go into that store I think about how I collected
material and even the first letterpress poster I chose to make work on from that land before it
became gentrified. It was a vacant lot for skaters,taggers. the unhoused and broken fences. I
was poor, I had nothing and it was a hardcore time for me . On my walks I would be thinking
about these letterpress poster works of Mark Bradford. His earlier work also used these posters
which he collected around his neighborhood of Leimert Park.
Letterpress posters are pretty ubiquitous in my area. They have been used as a style of
advertising In Los Angeles since 1948 when the Colby Poster company started to tap into the
car culture of Southern California. They used to be all over the place,on fences and telephone
poles with bright vibrant colors and bold lettering, but they are now generally in areas that are
being developed and rougher areas but still very ubiquitous.
The fact that the posters aren’t meant to last longer than the weather outside, I started thinking
that these were important things to use as a substrate but not the information on the posters
themselves though I do occasionally incorporate it. I kept going to different places and collecting
information from the walls and construction sites of the city. a city with the constant ebb and tide
of growth and development. Early on I would name the pieces for the streets of the location
where I would collect these materials and it was kind of growing together. Doing that I realized
other information in the city that I was interested in as well and began developing a specific
vernacular through which I see and express what it means to be a body in the city.. I like how
there is beauty in decay and the discarded. That there is beauty in the language we are familiar
with after it has been left out in the world. That is mainly what has guided me and my practice.

LES: Is there a perspective that you try to display in your pieces?
Oh yes for sure. I mean given carte blanc I have very specific ways I like to see the work
presented. I love being able to make large wall size installations with my work. I call them
impact walls. I’m not really sure why except that they always make a visual impact on the view
and location. The first time I was able to do one was in San Francisco in 2019 at Art MarketSF.
It was really great to observe the viewers standing before it in meditation of the work and the
information. These walls are never recreated.For me they are an exercise in creating a
singularity out of many disparate works. These works have to lose their individual identity and
become part of a whole and then once removed they regain self sovereignty.
I was always inspired by the Nouveau Realists because, in college, I studied art history and
really became attracted to post war art and also the ‘Happenings’ of the 60s and all the
experimentation. I was a sculpture major originally, but I was asked to leave because I was
partying too hard. They told me to come back when I was ready and I moved to California
instead, so I don’t have a degree. I’ve been fortunate to be autodidactic.Being more self taught
rather than trained has given me a ton of insight and self permission to fuck it up and go for it.
I was always aware of information around me but that this information was overlooked. I feel like
that is a hint of the flavour in the stew of my identity, the idea of me feeling overlooked in life in
many ways. The work I make feels familiar to people because it is information that we are
seeing, passing and experiencing daily, but not really looking at it. I find that it is like stopping
and smelling the roses.
I wanted to bring that into my work and coincidentally around that time I began creating work
this way, I found a monograph from an exhibition called Poetry of the Metropolis. It was a
retrospective of sorts for the Affichiste art movement which included Raymond Hains, Jacques
Villegle and others. All of these artists were reacting to the environment outside their doors in
post war Europe. That is always what I have been doing, reacting to an environment outside this
place I call home. I was aware of the kinship of what they were doing, decollage, and pulling
away from that. I really dove into the history of what they were doing and to understand it. All
which lead to the virtual show It takes a Villeglé. I like playing, I wanted it to have a little humour
in it because it does take a village. I wanted to do a digital show to take hold of the reins of my
career.

LES: In terms of materials you use, I am particularly interested in your use of concrete.
Generally the posters we pull off walls are actually on concrete walls. It is almost like you
are creating your own concrete walls that you then produce work on top of, how did that
come about?

CODY: For me it is about continually pushing myself to understand the information that I am looking at
and searching for. It was an evolution of those things. Here in LA my materials are layed on
these large plywood fences surrounding construction sites and sometimes I’m lucky to score
some of the actual plywood to make work on. Concrete came about because I always wanted to
use it in a way that felt nontraditional and also it is a material that builds cities. Near me is the American Cement Building completed in 1961, this building is an example of how concrete can be
used to create extraordinary architectural possibilities. It was a company that is regarded to have
poured 70% of the concrete that built this city. So in a way I incorporate this material as homage
to the materials and in doing so reflect the permanence of the information I embed unto it. There
is also something quite playful about it, almost childlike when I scribe information into it like what
happens to freshly poured sidewalks. I get bored if I find myself being redundant, so I have to
keep pushing myself and the interest in my materials. The concrete is out there, it is used to
build cities. It is used where you can find things on walls. I first started doing it during the
pandemic because I had no materials. I had to use what was around me and I thought I would
play with some concrete. Everyone said to not put concrete on canvas, but I found a brand that
works and I mix it with gel medium. So that adds elasticity to it but doesn’t change it too much it
just helps keep the flexibility necessary when working on canvas. When I first started, I would
sort the composition of paper and tape off the area to the form I wanted of the concrete, then
pulling the tape off to get depth and texture. So the concrete would be above the picture, which I
like because you can scribe in it and I like to obfuscate information.
It took me 10 years to realize I do play with language. A gallerist I work with in Palo Alto,
Pamala Walsh, recently said in a talk we were doing for my show in 2023 Under the Big Black
Sun ‘Cody really explores language’ and I thought ‘well yeah I guess I do.’ I use language in a
way that it isn’t always meant to be there, it was just for a color or shape and form. Similar to
Mimmo Rotella, where the shapes become forms. All of my bodies of work have led me to
different things. I have a body of work called Bedtime Stories and Other Mythologies where
within that there is language that looks like nonsense but it is actually coded information.
That comes from me decoding things written by some crazy person in DTLA, words they wrote
on all the walls and information that I used to see and collect. One day it clicked how they were
writing and I could read it like a second language and I sort of grabbed that code and
appropriated it for myself. In the work the information is there and it holds on like a horcrux*.
That series is about the quiet moments right before we fall asleep, when we have little secrets
or dreams and things that come up into our minds. I decided I didn’t want to carry or burden
myself with that stuff anymore, so I put it in my work. I put it in there and that is where it all goes.
That goes hand in hand with the concrete, I want imperfection because I think imperfection is
really important. I will let it dry or I will write whatever is on my mind at that moment. Whether it
be thoughts, or fits, or poetry then I will obfuscate it. I will spray paint for a little texture and
colour, sometimes letting the information pop out and sometimes not.
It is almost like leaving tantalizing glimpses of what you are thinking that is left behind.
Yes in a way. Like a good athlete leaving it all out on the field, I try to leave it all out on the
artwork. It is really quite emotional when I think about it. It’s important to let the viewer have their
own sort of relationship to the work without me demanding anything from them. I layer and layer
information and then on top of that more information added and keep pushing so it becomes
these compositions.

LES: In some of your other projects you have recurring motifs like the red hearts and the black
sun. Can you touch on those motifs and the reasons why you are using them across
multiple images?

CODY: I like how repeating a form translates and becomes an easily accepted and understood
language but in all honesty these are just really explorations. It was a non-specific journey that
brought me to some other work that I was doing. I think back when I was making Heart Blobs I
was feeling quite alone and the heart form for me was representing my pain. Upon reflection,
my work and the various series I have done over the last decade it appears they are really just
processing the immediacy of my internal self. Wow, that’s some insight I just got right now.
I always feel like I am removing myself from the work and by doing so I am concretely
embedded into it and in some cases literally in concrete. A body of work I made is 2018,
Ruminating Upon This Mortal Coil, was me dealing with my father’s death. I didn’t really have a
significant relationship with him so I didn’t know how to grieve. I looked to poetry, song and
prose to tell me how to feel. I pulled phrases, stanzas and words from the lyrics or text and then
layered them into the work. Sometimes I look at them as very colorful tombstones.
In Elegy of the Last Republic from 2017 the visual language and tones I used were all about all
the madness that was happening when Donald Trump took over as President. The world felt
like It was just destruction and fire. Those pieces go together like the Impact Walls creating a
unified whole, no longer singular works. The title is also homage to Robert Motherwell and his
work Elegy of the Spanish Republic, who I also reference in Under the Big Black Sun, a show I
did last year with Pamela Walsh gallery. The form which you are referring to as a ‘black sun’
isn’t really a sun. It started as a general reference to Robert Motherwell and morphed into a full
body of work. The black forms in the works serve multiple purposes. They Are a portal, a void,
a fissure or a tear in the fabric of illusion depending on how the viewer experiences the work.
The title for the show played homage to two seminal events in Los Angeles history,legendary
LAa punk band X's album "Under the Big Black Sun" and Paul Schimmel's "Under the Big
Black Sun: California Art 1974-1981. Basically my way of staking a claim as a Los Angeles
based artist.
Basically all my series are open bodies of work. I have been working on the Disparate Renewal
series for over a decade allowing it to grow and evolve . When it comes to the repeating motifs
found in my work I like how people view them and create relationships between the work and
themselves in their own interpretation of the recurring imagery. I always find myself going back
to work on a series again like my S.C.S series which started in 2016 then was paused but I
added several new works to it in 2023 . Currently while still doing the newer work on concrete,
I am working on a new exploration here in my alleyways, picking segments of the street and
after the concrete gets tacky pressing the concrete onto the ground. It picks up all the
information in that spot and they are titled for their time\ date\ geo map location. All this to say I
am just exploring I guess but aren’t we all.