The Wes Lang Interview

Photo by Jeffrey Schad

Interview by Jason Crombie as it appears from Issue 27.

“I don’t know what fuckin’ happened, man. I just grew!”

Wes Lang is growing. When I first met him at a party a little over a year ago he was roughly the same height as me- a stately 6.1”- but now, standing with him in his Brooklyn studio, he seems significantly taller. “I grew about two inches out of nowhere,” he says, lowering his huge frame into a comfy chair and lighting a cigarette. “I’m pretty happy about it though.” He is happy about it, and I know why: the added height means more skin, and more skin equals new tattoos, and, man-oh-man, does Wes like him some tattoos.

If you’ve ever met, seen a picture, or read a word about the artist Wes Lang you’ll know that he’s been triple-dipped up to his whiskers in the ol’ tough-stamp bucket. Front-and-back, top-to-toe, the guy is positively be-doodled with them, bringing to mind a well-loved high school pencil case, only with a beard and long hair.

(At this point in the introduction you may have noticed two very fertile opportunities for metaphor: the ‘growing’ part could lead into something about Wes growing as an artist, and the pencil case analogy could provide an easy segue into some sort of ‘artist as art’ type bullshit. I couldn’t decide on either of them, however, because they’re both so awesomely fertile.)

I take a seat in the chair next to Wes and with one of his big inked-up paws he passes me a cold can of soda. Under normal circumstances he’d be handing me a beer, but spring has just rolled into town and with it a plague of Lang-debilitating allergies; so there’ll be no sly can of afternoon Coors today, nor will there be any marijuana cigarettes, which sucks for Wes- he loves his beer and pot- but comes as a great relief to me because now I wont be wasted-to-death like I was two weeks ago when I visited Wes and his buddies at ‘the shop’ for the purpose of getting an interview.

The shop is a big greasy garage in East Williamsburg where Wes and his friends come to customize motorcycles and hang out. There are motorcycles everywhere at the shop- awesome motorcycles- motorcycles I’d only ever seen on Ebay- and I got a bit excited about them, and smoked too much weed, and drank too much beer, and became, in a word, spastic. I don’t remember us leaving the shop, but I do remember being in Wes’ pick-up truck, driving somewhere in the night with a frizzy-haired man sitting in the middle. I’m eating a Twix and staring straight ahead; the frizzy haired man is eating a 3 Musketeers bar and snoring. Then, suddenly, I’m slumped in Wes’ living room, being handed a bowl of pasta by his girlfriend, Zoë. Wes is talking to me but I can’t hear him, and eventually I cant see him either, or the room for that matter. Everything fades to black except the pasta, the twinkling fork delivering the pasta to my mouth, and the Indian chief from the Doors movie standing in the corner. The very last thing I recall is being back in Manhattan, stumbling toward home, and Wes laughing, “HA! HA! HA! He’ll be okay” in the dark distance behind me. 

In the morning I woke with a signed copy of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest (really), a hangover that would bring tears to the Keifer Sutherland’s eyes, and these words scrawled in my note book-

“block ny formd jagged and black again sunset.”

And 

“Very stark”

And

“Best penne evr”

And

“Holy”

And that’s it. Complete and utter fucking nonsense. So, at the risk of sounding enormously unsympathetic, I’m glad Wes is being waylaid by allergies; maybe I’ll get the job done this time (if you’re reading this- I got the job done this time).

Who was that dude with the frizzy hair the other night?

Vince? 

Yeah! He was super wasted.

Yeah. We dropped him off at his home. Remember?

Yeah…

It’s funny, I was worried about Vince, but I didn’t realize how bad you were until we were sittin’ in my house and you kept saying, “I’m really fucked up, man.” 

Anyway, first question: Is it fair to say that you’re a bit of an anomaly in the ‘art scene’? 

Ahh…

I mean, you’re not your typical artist artist, are you?

I guess you could sorta say that, yeah. 

You obviously went to school though. 

No, I didn’t.

You’re self-taught?

Totally self-taught.

How’d you get started?

Out of high school I started as an apprentice at a tattoo shop: cleaning, drawing designs, you know, that kinda bullshit. Not tattooing. Then I started my own little business doing sign painting in Jersey, going around in my pick-up truck, finding businesses with dilapidated signs and asking if I could paint them new ones. The whole time I was painting and drawing and doing my own shit, but I hadn’t figured out how to make it a job.

Did you draw a lot as a kid?

Oh yeah. And I still draw the same things: skulls and all that stuff. I have pieces of mine from elementary school that look like the shit I do today.

At what point did you become an “Artist”?

One day I just started making a lot of paintings. Something just clicked in my head and I started making them. And a buddy of mine moved up from Texas and got a job at the Guggenheim installing shows, and he was like, “Hey you should come work with me.” So I did that; then I got a job at Tony Shafrazi Gallery.

How’d that come about?

I walked in on my lunch break from the Guggenheim. It wasn’t intentional; I went to see this Francis Bacon show and then on the way out I asked this guy if I could have a job installing, like if they needed help-take my number, kinda thing.

Right.

So the guy called me the next day; I got the job. 

Great!

Yeah. And that gallery showed a lot of artists that I admired, so I was exposed to that world in a way that… in a way that a lot people aren’t. I got to meet the artists and the collectors in a very unassuming way.

So you sort of came through the back door.

Sort of. Eventually the guy that I worked for opened his own gallery and gave me the first exhibition. He actually gave me two ounces of weed, $5000, and a space to live in for two months, so I could make the show. And that’s how it started.

It just sort of happened, then?

I didn’t really try; I just did it. 

When was that?

That was in 2000, so, ten years ago. It feels like half an hour ago. Once I figured out what I wanted to do, this weird flow of ideas just stared pouring out of my brain without any effort. I mean, sometimes I’ve struggled but it’s generally been pretty fuckin’ easy to come up with a cohesive thing that I wanted to say.

Your work borrows from and is heavily influenced by tattoo and biker culture.

Yeah.

How is it received by, as gay as it sounds, “the biker community”? Are they into it?

Yeah. I mean, a lot of the guys I ride with, that are involved in the motorcycle community in New York City, are also fellow artists; and I’ve also gotten to know guys from the clubs in the city, and they respond to it because a lot of their aesthetic is a visual thing, you know? Putting these images that represent who they are, on their shirts and bikes and patches and everything. So they’ve responded quite well to it. 

Yourself and your friends, who I met the other week but don’t really remember, customize motorcycles. Is there much of a custom scene in New York?

The scene here is small in terms of people who build and ride old stuff. There’re a lot of crotch-rockets and new bikes and all that kinda shit, but custom motorcycle culture is not very big here. I mean, it’s here, but it’s not like it is California or anything.

Why is that?

For a start it’s a much harder in the city to have the space to work on them; and also you have to have some pretty big balls to ride here.

Why do you need big balls?

This is a fucking dangerous place to ride a bike, man; it’s fuckin’ hell.

In terms of the traffic you mean?

In terms of every goddamn thing! Every single second you’re on a bike in New York City you have to be paying attention or your gonna get killed.

When you do eventually die- of natural causes- will you have yourself tanned?

What?

That’s what my dad wants. He’s covered in tattoos too. Does your dad have tattoos?

No. He doesn’t like them.

Well my old man wants me to have his tatts tanned and mounted when he kicks the bucket. I’m not doing it, though. I told him I’d put him in a glass tank and use him for a coffee table.

Yeah! Just put your feet up on him. No, I think I’ll go with the traditional burry-me-in-the-ground way. I actually just went to a really good friend’s funeral and he was buried in a classic fuckin’ pine box. I’d never actually seen one of those, except in a Western.

No shit? 

Yeah. It was just this simple pine box in the back of the Hearse. It was rad. That’s what I’d like: a plain pine box with rope handles. Fuckin’ great.

Makes sense. Why would you spend money on something that’s just gonna rot away underground anyway?

I don’t know; people like to celebrate themselves I guess.

I’d like to be dumped in the sea, I think.

That’s not a bad way to do it.

I like the idea of fish swimming through my ribs, and crabs living in my skull… eye-socket windows… Just turn yourself into a condo for the sea critters.

That’s cool.  You just wanna make sure you don’t wash up though. That’d be awful.

I’d make sure I was heavily weighted. I’d be weighted right down to the bottom.

And make sure you went way, way the fuck out there too. Yeah, that’d be cool. Still, I like the idea of being in a graveyard. Graveyards are pretty amazing; I spent a lot of time in them as a kid; I’ve always been fascinated by them. But then again, buried beneath a tree in the middle of nowhere could be really nice too.

Back to your art.

Yeah.

So what’s up with your latest work? I saw your recent show at ZieherSmith Gallery and it was kinda different from the drawings you’ve done in the past…

It was paintings.

Yeah! It was all paintings. What happened?

I had to change it up, man. I just felt ready to actually paint, and I think I did a good job of it this time. 

Yeah, it was great!

I did a show in Denmark just before the ZieherSmith show that was primarily paintings. It’s been received really well. I’ve been getting some positive feedback and I really wanna keep doing it. 

Are you done with the drawing now?

I’m not abandoning drawing or anything. I’ve actually gotta do this show of drawings in Paris soon, but... I couldn’t do the works on paper anymore; I needed a break. I didn’t feel like I was getting formulaic, but I felt like I could, so I stopped. I wanted to stop myself before that happened. I like to work on paper, but the painting… I like more. It’s a much more freeing process; you can fuck-up and fix it in five minutes. That show where the guy gave me the weed and all that shit, that was paintings, and my second show was all paintings. Actually, my first few shows were all paintings. And all the people I look up to artistically are painters.

Do you fuck-up much?

No, thank god. I have one piece that I fucked-up. I was using an airbrush and it backfired and sprayed ink everywhere. It was this portrait of George Jones the country singer, and I was almost done with it.

With the new stuff I noticed you’re not really saying anything about “America” anymore. It seems more personal.

Yeah, I appreciate you not asking me about “America” and all that kinda shit, actually. This guy interviewed me recently and he kept zeroing in on all that stuff I did ages ago… I’ve done so much stuff about America, and lately I haven’t really… It’s not something I’m thinking about. I’m kinda over it for the time being.

So where’s the new stuff coming from?

That last batch of stuff was mainly about… friends who’ve passed away, my friends that are around me and are really important to me, and my girlfriend. That’s what that work was about.

Who are your influences?

The major ones?

Yeah.

Kevin Burger, Martin Kippenberger, Basquiat, Donald Baechler… Franz Kline the abstract painter… Robert Crumb is a big influence… and then there’s people like my friend Eddie Martinez, he’s one of my contemporaries and best friends, we show in the same galleries and everything- he’s a big influence on me, you know? That’s cool; learning shit from your friend, that’s great. If you look at most art movements, they were very small groups of people working really closely with each other, friends with each other, and they were ripping each other off constantly. We kinda have that scene developing in this neighborhood now; It’s great. That’s an important thing to me, the continuous dialogue of influence with your peers and people who were doing stuff before you. For me to make what I make, like, my style of shit, that’s how I’ve done it: I’ll look at the work of people I like, I’ll hone in on a style of painting or a specific painting that I really like, I’ll deconstruct it and I’ll remake it. Some of my paintings have ten different artists in them. 

Actually, I’ve got two exhibitions coming up; one is going to focus primarily on Indians again, but in a totally different way to what I’ve done in the past. I’m gonna go at it on canvas this time. I already see the paintings; I know exactly what they look like. I just have to come in here and fuckin’ make them. That’s what I’m gonna get crackin’ on in the next couple of weeks. Then I’m doing these sorta… slicker paintings.

Slicker?

Slick, smooth… almost automotive, maybe.

Different.

Very different.

So you’re not strapped for ideas then?

No. I’m coming up with ideas, but I’m not struggling. Once I sit down and make it… it’s just happening and I’m not worrying about it, I’m not second guessing myself. Which is great! Every artist spends years and years worrying about things…

You’re in the zone.

I hope to sustain it, you know? I mean, it could change but I don’t feel like it will. It makes sense to me now, what I’m doing and why I’m doing it… it’s… it’s just the greatest job; I love what I do.