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by with Ajay Kurian
This is what critical care for the arts sounds like. Meaningful conversations on creative practice and the conditions shaping artistic life today. Tune in on the second Thursday of every month for SPENT with Ajay Kurian, our series on creative burnout and breakthrough, and on the fourth Thursday for The Forum, our recorded artist talks. Subscribe today at newcrits.substack.com or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also join our community for transcripts and archival access via the Substack app or watch on YouTube. newcrits.substack.com
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- 1 weeks ago1h 11m
SPENT Episode Four | Erin Jane Nelson
Erin Jane Nelson joins Ajay Kurian to talk about the gap between artistic success and creative fulfillment. They discuss the reality of making a living as an artist, navigating burnout, and why reaching long-awaited career milestones can leave you questioning what comes next.The conversation explores Nelson's evolving practice—from clay pinhole cameras and photography to spirituality, caregiving, and family history—as well as the emotional and financial realities that shape life in the studio. Along the way, they reflect on ambition, artistic purpose, and the kinds of relationships that sustain a creative life long after the accolades fade.Hosted by Ajay Kurian Edited by Peter Groppe00:00 – Erin Jane Nelson on the Whitney Biennial and making cameras from clay09:38 – Success, creative block, and the unexpected reality of becoming a full-time artist17:52 – Burnout, financial anxiety, and redefining an artistic practice23:30 – October 7th, Jewish identity, spirituality, and family history31:04 – Photography, caregiving, and finding balance beyond the studio40:06 – The economics of being an artist and why most careers aren't what they seem46:39 – Almost leaving art for law school—and the opportunity that changed everything51:41 – Ajay on ambition, loss, and rediscovering purpose through art Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe
- Jun 29, 202657 min
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 — Intro03:10 — The Disney Accident and “The First Bad Photoshop”09:45 — Origin Stories and Discovering Photography15:30 — Album Covers, Culture, and Looking Before Art20:10 — Studying with Stephen Shore26:00 — Photoshop as a New Problem for Photography31:20 — Signature, Style, and Staying Strange36:15 — Making the Worst Possible Image41:00 — Working for Vik Muniz46:10 — Labor, Accident, and Unfinishedness50:20 — Pictures That Resist Digestion54:15 — Photography, Bodies, and Sensation58:40 — AI, Anxiety, and the Future of Images1:03:00 — Outro Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe
- Jun 18, 202656 min
SPENT: Episode Three | Whitney Mallet
SPENT: Episode Three | Whitney MalletWhitney 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/00:00 — Intro04:50 — Running a Magazine by Instinct09:20 — Taste, Influence, and Learning What You Like15:10 — Building Unexpected Encounters20:30 — Trusting Your Own Authority27:15 — Information, Obsession, and Developing Taste33:40 — Work as Practice38:20 — Edging Burnout43:45 — Busyness, Avoidance, and Personal Writing49:30 — Disappointment, Intensity, and Staying Optimistic55:15 — Criticism, Attention, and Cultural Delay1:01:20 — The Internet, Institutions, and the Changing Role of Reviews1:07:15 — Writing Without Permission1:11:40 — Earnestness, Cynicism, and Seeing Through Things1:16:20 — Breakthrough or Burnout1:18:00 — Outro Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe
- Jun 18, 20261h 17m
SPENT: Episode Two | Walter Price
SPENT: Episode Two | Walter PriceWalter 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-price00:00 — Intro04:15 — Growing Up08:40 — Early Ideas About Becoming an Artist13:25 — Consistency vs Inspiration18:50 — Small Paintings and Ignoring Expectations24:30 — Wanting the Boos, Not the Cheers29:15 — Ambition, Restlessness, and Staying Hungry34:10 — Experimentation as Practice39:20 — Developing Taste and Trusting Instinct44:45 — Limitations as Opportunity49:30 — Growth Through Discomfort55:10 — Routine, Repetition, and Showing Up1:00:45 — Success, Satisfaction, and What Comes Next1:06:20 — Curiosity as a Long-Term Practice1:10:00 — Outro Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe
- Jun 18, 20261h 13m
SPENT: Episode One | Yaya Bey
SPENT: Episode One | Yaya BeyYaya 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 NewCritsYaya’s New Album, Fidelity: https://yayabey.bandcamp.com/album/fidelity Yaya’s Substack: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_ajAFQ00:00 — Intro05:00 — Misreading the Work08:00 — Who Gets to Interpret Black Art12:35 — Grief, Joy, and Refusing the Assigned Story15:45 — Being Polarizing / Being Protected19:00 — The Politics of Interpretation23:40 — Grief Beyond the Self27:35 — Refusing Other People’s Narratives35:20 — The Industry, Capital, and Finding Your People41:30 — Discomfort as a Teacher48:40 — Community, Poetry, and Becoming an Artist52:00 — Becoming a Working Musician57:15 — Loss, Stability, and Living Through Contradiction1:00:00 — Making a Life, Not Just a Career1:09:35 — Curiosity as Practice1:12:30 — Outro Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe
- May 6, 20261h 2m
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. Welcome + Returning to the Studio Reclaiming “Young Artist Energy” The Nonlinear Life of a Painting Disruption, Destruction, and Letting the Work Shift Sculpture as an Extension of Painting Ornament, Abstraction, and Historical Bias Time, Fading, and Letting Go of Control Authenticity, Replication, and Constructed ValueWatch the conversationView the full episode on YouTube.Follow KamroozWeb: https://kamroozaram.com/Instagram: 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.Explore NewCrits’ offerings, including crits, courses, and mentorship programs at www.newcrits.studio.—Full Transcript Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe
- Apr 10, 202638 min
The Forum 19 | Rachel Rose: Psychic States, Motherhood, and the Moving Image
She works through feeling, perception, and narrative — Rachel Rose on interior weather, unstable perspectives, and art as a way to process what cannot be easily named.Rachel Rose moves between film, installation, and painting, using sound, light, and narrative structure to explore how experience is shaped from the inside out. Her work often begins with an emotional register and expands into systems of history, perception, and embodiment. In her recent film The Last Day, she turns inward, tracing the psychological and biological complexities of motherhood, identity, and crisis without resolving them into clear frameworks.She explains:* How personal feeling becomes a starting point for building larger perceptual and narrative systems.* Why motherhood, postpartum depression, and identity loss resist clean cultural narratives.* How sound and light can destabilize reality and reorient one’s relationship to the world.* What it means to make work that stays with ambiguity rather than resolving into message.* How falling in love with characters becomes a method for discovering structure, rather than imposing it.* Why occupying unlikeable or unstable perspectives creates more honest and generative work.* How art can act as a container for experiences that are culturally unspoken or difficult to locate. Welcome + Intro The Last Day and the Mrs. Dalloway Transposition Motherhood, Identity, and the Book Read Twice Lake Valley, Saturn Return, and the Invention of Childhood Excerpt: Lake Valley (2016) Art School, Painting, and the Crisis of Meaning Editing as Voice, the First Video, and Finding the Medium Transcendent Experiences and the Power of ArtWatch the conversationView the full episode on YouTube.Follow RachelWeb: https://gladstonegallery.com/exhibit/rachel-rose-the-rest/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/worrrld/Rachel Rose (b. 1986) lives and works in New York. The work of Rachel Rose explores how our changing relationship to landscape has shaped storytelling and belief systems. Rose’s films draw from and contribute to the long history of cinematic innovation; whether investigating cryogenics, the American Revolutionary War, or an astronaut’s space walk, Rose directs our attention to sites and histories in which the sublime and the everyday blur. She translates this in her paintings, sculptures and drawings, which materially reverberate with one another, connecting the immediate to deep time. Recent solo exhibitions include: Science Gallery, London, UK (2024); GL STRAND, Copenhagen (2023); SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe (2023); CC Strombeek, Strombeek (2022); Pond Society, Shanghai (2020); Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2020); Fridericianum, Kassel (2019); LUMA Foundation, Arles (2019); Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia (2018); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2018); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz (2017); Museu Serralves, Porto (2016); The Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2016); The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2015); Serpentine Gallery, London (2015); Castello di Rivoli, Turin (2015). Recent group exhibitions include: Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2024); ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Denmark (2023); Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2023); Centre d’Art Contemporain Geneva, Geneva (2023); 3rd Jeju Biennale (2022); 9th Beijing Biennale (2022); The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2022); Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis (2022); Schinkel Pavilion, Berlin (2021); Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, US (2021); Artspace, Sydney (2021); Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2021); A Tale of A Tub, Tlön Projects, Rotterdam (2021); Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2020); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2018); Carnegie International, 57th Edition, Pittsburgh (2018); 57th Venice Biennale (2017); 32nd São Paudalo Biennial (2016); Hayward Gallery, London (2016); Okayama Art Summit, Japan (2016). She is the recipient of the Future Fields Award and the Frieze Artist Award.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.Explore NewCrits’ offerings, including crits, courses, and mentorship programs at www.newcrits.studio.—Full TranscriptAjay Kurian: Can you tell us a little bit about The Last Day?Rachel Rose: It’s a film that I wrote. Loosely based on Vir
- Mar 5, 202659 min
The Forum 18 | Reginald Sylvester II: Discipline as Devotion
Reginald Sylvester II approaches painting as a structure of discipline. What begins in daily rituals—routine, repetition, and care—extends into a larger philosophy about belief, responsibility, and endurance. Practice, for him, is not separate from life. It is shaped by it.Fatherhood, spiritual inquiry, and the demands of time become part of the architecture of the studio. Rather than protecting art from those pressures, Sylvester allows them to recalibrate how the work unfolds. The result is a practice grounded less in spectacle and more in sustained commitment.Abstraction emerges through this framework as an act of faith. To begin a painting without knowing its final form is to trust that meaning will surface through repetition and attention. At a certain moment, that commitment required stepping away from exhibition altogether, allowing the work to evolve privately before returning to public view.Rather than presenting artistic growth as clarity or mastery, Sylvester describes a practice built through persistence, where rigor, vulnerability, and belief remain inseparable.He explains:• Why daily rituals and discipline are foundational to sustaining a studio practice.• How fatherhood reshaped his relationship to time, responsibility, and ambition.• Why abstraction functions as an act of faith rather than a stylistic choice.• What it meant to withdraw from the exhibition to deepen the work in private.• How travel and research expanded the historical resonance of the work.Timestamps Ritual and the Structure of Practice Fatherhood and Responsibility Abstraction and Faith Stepping Away from Exhibition Discipline and Repetition Cutting into Surface: The Gates Travel, History, and Material Memory Persistence and Staying in the WorkWatch the conversationView the full episode on YouTube.Follow ReginaldInstagram: @reginaldsylvester2Follow Maximillian WilliamWeb: https://www.maximillianwilliam.comInstagram: @maximillian_williamReginald Sylvester II (b. Jacksonville, NC, USA, 1987; lives and works in Jersey City, NJ) creates large-scale paintings and sculptures that trace the generative threshold between the two mediums. Working predominantly in abstraction, he expands the language of his painting practice by incorporating materials such as rubber, tarp, aluminium and steel. His singular approach lends his paintings a sculptural presence and imbues his sculptures with a painter’s sensibility. While grounded in traditional painting techniques, Sylvester II ventures beyond the conventions of stretched canvas, working on surfaces that both absorb and reject paint. His layered, often multi-partite works investigate the language of his chosen mediums: stretcher bars are left exposed, becoming part of his compositions, while oxidised and patinated metal surfaces evoke the histories of gestural painting. Sylvester II also transcends the surface, creating monumental sculptures that reference forms observed through painting and from his environment. The artist is drawn to materials that relate to his personal history, spirituality, or broader societal narratives. In his approach to assemblage, Sylvester II appropriates byproducts of his making process, physically attaching studio debris to works to enrich their tactile quality and textural narrative.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.Explore NewCrits’ offerings, including crits, courses, and mentorship programs at www.newcrits.studio.—Full TranscriptAjay Kurian: I’m gonna start off with the big questions, things that are really important to people. You are 37 years old. What the fuck is your skincare routine man?Reginald Sylvester ll: 39.Ajay Kurian: That’s insane.Reginald Sylvester ll: Knocking on 40, bro.Ajay Kurian: Oh my God.Reginald Sylvester ll: Yeah, man. Cold water and shots out to mom Dukes.Ajay Kurian: That’s really Mom Dukes and cold water. I remember this very clearly when Pharrell was asked, he said cold water too.Reginald Sylvester ll: He’s right. Closes up your pores, but, yeah
About The NewCrits Podcast
This is what critical care for the arts sounds like. Meaningful conversations on creative practice and the conditions shaping artistic life today. Tune in on the second Thursday of every month for SPENT with Ajay Kurian, our series on creative burnout and breakthrough, and on the fourth Thursday for The Forum, our recorded artist talks. Subscribe today at newcrits.substack.com or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also join our community for transcripts and archival access via the Substack app or watch on YouTube. newcrits.substack.com
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