An Interview with Kenny Schachter on Collecting, Curating, and Creating

Katy Diamond Hamer: Can you talk about what your experience has been like as an artist and collector? Where do you see an overlap, if any?

Kenny Schachter: I don’t differentiate between writing, making art, teaching, and collecting—which, in essence, is a form of curating, which I’ve also been engaged in for nearly 35 years. It’s putting your art life in the context of your peers, or if you collect more established works, living amongst your inspirations and heroes. For me, art is like a verb, an action concept. 

Artworks I collect are not static things to be revered; rather, I engage with the art in my collection on a daily basis, touching them, handling them, moving them around literally each and every day like chess pieces. Besides, I can’t play chess and generally avoid games, other than the contact sport that is the art world. Additionally, I rub my nose up against works regularly scrutinizing them as close as you conceivably can, shy of consuming them physically.

KDH: Is it possible to have a favorite in an art collection, and if so, what is yours?

KS: Of course it is, less so to have a favorite child. Paul Thek is an artist that has moved me since I first laid eyes on his works decades ago. His sculpture comprised of 23 bronze mice [part of Thek’s series of 1975 sculptures, “The Personal Effects of the Pied Piper,” made in Rome], I covet, even more so.

KDH: I love how your own artwork is funny, poignant, and politically charged all at once. Can you talk about what motivates you to make a new piece?

KS: When inspiration strikes, I am moved to render things in another dimension physically. It’s, I guess at first blush, a chemical reaction involving the synapses in my brain, translated into an idea—I never studied art, and the closest I got was philosophy—so my thought is then manifested into words or, from the get-go, as an image. 

The processes then begin. Invariably, the thoughts are written into text before the next stage which is a jpeg, video, sculpture, or 2D work. But, as far as the impetus, it’s generally from reading something directly, or after-the-fact, things I’ve absorbed from newspapers, books, or the news. I am not big on films, other than documentaries. 

Information from the aforementioned sources percolates in my mind while [sitting] at my desk, swimming in a pool, walking, driving, showering... all the cliches of what [one might expect to] spur an idea or inspiration, and then gets regurgitated into art. It’s at its core a synoptic phenomenon which differentiates the human species from all others.

The piece that I’m most excited about in my show, Kenny Can’t Paint, derives from being told I can’t paint. Then I ended up making paintings made by a robot. So, Kenny doesn’t need to paint, but he can use that as a springboard for other things. Art is about freedom, and the freedom to do what you want without hurting anyone or breaking the law. 

Even as an art critic, you can hurt someone, but as long as it’s done with passion and integrity and ethically. If I’m not true to myself or the people in my community, none of it would work. You rob from the rich, you go to jail. You steal from an artist, and you go to Harry Cipriani’s. The art world is imbalanced and inspiration comes from all of it. 

KDH: Technology is always changing, how do you keep up? 

KS: Contemporary art is meant to be an expression of the socio-political economic times, but technology is probably the most defining phenomena of the last century. You never see these types of shifts in intellectual, historical, and economic ways of thinking... I’ve never met a dishonest computer. 

One year in tech is like dog years: seven years in real life. It’s a challenge, but insatiable curiosity is a defining trait of artists and children alike. I love the voracious freshness of children and consider art and the quest to absorb new information to be the most enthralling aspect of what I do. This includes reading and speaking to various people in the know. I love to learn and turn around and impart it to others through teaching and sharing. 

Anyone, and I mean this in the most heartfelt manner, should feel free to contact me anytime, through any means and as long as a query is addressed with some manners ("hello" and "please" go a long way nowadays), I will do my utmost best to help. I derive great pleasure facilitating opportunities for others. As far as how, I am ubiquitously on social media like most.

KDH: You were an early proponent of NFTs and I learned so much watching a conversation you had with artist and YouTuber FEWOCiOUS (ART ART ART PODCAST #10). What has it meant for you to stay relevant amongst the younger generation? 

KS: I had a crappy childhood, and through art, I have had a chance to reclaim mine. Technology and relevance are not the purview of youth. An open mind goes a long way to being receptive to absorbing the world around us as it unfurls. I embrace change and tumult, while many take a more conservative approach which can result in complacency. 

Stasis is the enemy of art (and everything else). I showed my first computer animation in 1993 in a show I curated with artist Rachel Harrison, Jonathan Horowitz, and others. Art shouldn’t be about the past, it should be about the present and focus on what the future may look like based on your deductions of the past. NFTs are part of that conversation.

KDH: I know you have spent much of your summer in Europe. Can you talk about the project you are working on there?

KS: My exhibit, Phone Face, aligns with the advent of social media and how that has resulted in a series of paradigm changes in just about everything you can fathom, from politics and art to the most fundamental levels of human intercourse. Some manifestations are awful and algorithmically prophylactically controlled and censored, while simultaneously barriers to entry have been exploded, accessibility widened, and hierarchies busted. 

For those very reasons, I embrace Instagram, Twitter (hard for me to call it its new name, since you-know-who took over) and TikTok. Facebook less so these days, as I ended up in a yearlong argument with someone nearly 10 years ago, and it was just too depleting. 

Though my screen record is 16 hours and 7 minutes of phone time during Covid (a personal best I may never live to surpass), and oftentimes devices serve as a divisive wedge between our lived existence and the world around us, phones and social media often serve more positive ends.

My exhibit is comprised of sculptures, videos, installation, and paintings— even text based hand woven rugs. Ultimately, all works were born on my laptop— studio-less (post studio as Richard Prince once referred to the condition), on the move, from the airport, transitions to hotels and lakes (swimming is a big incubator for me for fostering thoughts into ideas and art). 

Every work in the show has a mirrored iteration in the way of a digital counterpart that will be sold in bundles as physical work and NFT. This represents one my most ambitious NFTism projects to date, in this instance, between the traditional art world via Nagel Draxler (the German gallery that has represented me the last few years) and MakersPlace, one of the pioneering digital art platforms. 

NFTism was a word I coined to connote the aspects of community, collaboration, and cooperation that characterize the best aspects of crypto art on the blockchain AND ART. 

KDH: Also, once a Hoarder, always a hoarder? Asking for a friend... 

KS: Hoarding for me is a way of life. Sure, Freud could speak volumes on the subject and has (we don’t need to get into toilet training gone awry, which he related excessive collecting to), but it’s also a positive way of deriving pleasure, joy, and love from the ideas encapsulated in the best of things: A.R.T and BOOKS, and interesting people.