Ray Carney and the Masks of Identity
(part 2 of 2)
What follows is a video piece Carney created that we discussed in the video portion of part one of this interview. This fifteen minute piece shows a process Carney described as a ‘demulleting.’ Enjoy:
Wes Unruh:
On your flickr it shows ‘Church + State = Homophobic,’ a painting that I assume you’ve just recently finished. This shows a shark and an alien with erect phalluses being married by Elvis in front of an American flag and in place of stars you have an x-ray of a dildo up someone’s ass.
Ray Carney:
yeah that’s finished and it was all about the gay marriage law and Iraq.
RC:
The drawing that I had sent you of the highly cross-hatched, highly post-hatched drawing of the dude snorting his leg attached to a pill bottle sitting in an alley, that references people’s drug use but it also references the time I spent in Wichita, and the event of eating at Burger King and biting into a Whopper, and breaking my molar.
And subsequently I went on to eat tons of Lortabs which made me feel like shit for many days, and really it’s inspiration towards some of the abysmal use in it, with some of these pills you have to keep taking them. People feel that they need them but they don’t necessarily. Fucking Burger King.
WU:
Did Burger King pay for..
RC:
Hell now they didn’t return my calls. I got it taken care of so I didn’t sue them, but it’s still completely feasible to do so, I’m still within my statute of limitations.
But yeah that’d be a hassle that might be good, might be really bad. Most college kids that graduate don’t have a whole
lot of money. So I could be without paying for stuff.
WU:
How much money do you suppose you spend on one canvas, with paints and brushes, gesso and shit?
RC:
Probably around a hundred to two hundred dollars.
WU:
I know you also build all the canvases by hand. You’ve told me that you had help with the construction of the pop can canvas, but I think you build all your own canvases by hand, so they’re not off-the-shelf canvases. You’re actually constructing them out of 2×4′s.
RC:
Yeah, yeah. I think that’s the true essence of doing this stuff, making a piece of work that is actually building the whole canvas. You know, I don’t make my own brushes so maybe I’m wrong. The guy who helped me with the pop can canvas, I actually supervised him for the whole six hours. Slow person, but he had the math right, it worked out really well. And there’s a variant edition, I guess you could say like a comic. 
WU:
So, let’s look at your spectacle. Okay Carney, you’ve got the dildo mask, you’ve got the paintings, what is it that you’ve got behind it, what is the themes that you’re working with, beyond just ‘Addiction’ and what is the inspiration that you’re drawing these from?
RC:
The spectacle.. um.. the themes that I draw from are conversations, essentially. You can borderline the addiction theme from conversation, and personal experience.
WU:
And a lot of the addictions that you’re showing, you show the primary objects, the main objects all out in open spaces, under open skies, like the one that is in the online magazine Why Vandalism, shows him watching TV, which is his addiction, out in public on a brick wall. And then you’ve got the descending bottle of pills to two guys out in a wheat field. Are you trying to bring things into the open with your paintings?
RC:
Yeah, essentially yeah to make people aware. Because people aren’t really quite aware of a lot of what’s actually going on. Caffeinism or things like that, or in medications and such. You could even go so far as to say a lot of what I’m addressing are epidemics. In so many ways it is to try to further people along so they’ll not use these addictions like they are.
And generally in the paintings it does show.. kind of.. it shows the person generally in distress. Except for the pill bottle descending on the two phallic people.
WU:
They seem to be experiencing awe, in that particular painting, and the overall cycle of that work.
RC:
Yes, and they are wearing dildo masks as well.
WU:
Okay, do you think there’s a lack of people doing political art in this country? Do you think people are doing political work?
RC:
I don’t if there’s so much a lack, as there is a lack of the viewer getting what the fuck they should be doing. Take the, what, the nine inch nails album? That’s completely political and against the government.
But even though it’s sales have been killer right now, and the point has been made about online stuff you know, being put out there for free and people still buying albums, and it’s completely political and it’s pointing out things about the government, you don’t see people protesting, you don’t see people waking up, you don’t see reactions that I’m sure are warranted by that album.
Or by artwork. And saying that could be one of the reasons that a lot of people view it as there being a lack thereof. A lot of people go into the idea of it not.. uh, they’re not making money from it, so they move on.
WU:
Against that backdrop, what are your influences, what are you pulling from to create this, beyond just the techniques you’ve learned from other artists. What ideas or media that you’ve brought into your work?
RC:
I’ll point out, like, my mother, she’s on disability. She always will be on disability, and she will always have mental health issues due to medication. I pull a lot from that.
A lot of just experiences, like having a drug dealer for a father or what have you. And when I see a lot of things in the media that I disagree with. I pull a lot from that, and especially spectacles, you could look at 9-11 as a huge spectacle to get something done. And that’s essentially kind of one of the easiest forms that I could put a spectacle in. I’m not saying either way what happened in 9-11, but something happened, then explosion happened, and then you had the Patriot Act.
The other influences that I pull from, one that I’ve been looking at quite a bit right now is Max Beckmann, he’s a German artist, and he’s got a really hard style with a lot of his drawings, very linear. I’ve been looking at quite a few underground comics lately, especially R. Crumb. One of the more intriguing things about R. Crumb is how people think that he’s depicting how society was when he was probably just a racist bigot depicting what he thought. His work is phenomenal but just like Andy Warhol, when they would ask him a question, he would turn to his friend for the answer.
These guys didn’t quite know what they were doing, they just did it. And now academics looks at that, and they have fifty critics say ‘This is what they were doing’ and dance on it.
Other influences, big time influences are comic books. Frank Miller is a huge influence on painting. Alex Ross, he’s an influence, he’s done one of the best political things that I’ve seen.
WU:
And that was?
RC:
That was Bush as a vampire biting Lady Liberty’s neck. It’s very interesting. I like the idea, but I think when you start getting into that stuff, the political thing, it could be the reason there’s not as much of it is because people a lot of times don’t know what’s going on and when you put Bush biting the Statue of Liberty that’s actually wrong in a lot of terms. Presidents are figureheads, it’s the government that you should look at. I don’t know, society inspires me, if society wasn’t fucked up I wouldn’t be making art.
In closing, I want to thank Carney for the interview. Ray Carney visited me here in Troy over the Memorial Day weekend. Along the way I was able to shoot video for the first part of this interview, and we also visited Ben Mack in Vermont. Carney’s partner Sarah came with us as we stopped first at the grave of Uncle Sam. Once we arrived, Ben Mack explained the legend of Uncle Sam to Sarah, and it’s all captured in this eleven minute travelogue:
RCarney Studios
Carney Altertube Profile
Carney Myspace Profile
