Artists & the Unknown: Art21 Interviews with Artists

Join us on Thursday, November 14 at 7pm for the launch of Art21’s newest collection of artist interviews, Artists & the Unknown: Art21 Interviews with Artists, published by Art21 and Gregory R. Miller & Co. Editor Jurrell Lewis will be joined in conversation by featured artists Josephine Halvorson and Diane Severin Nguyen.

Drawn from over two decades of interviews with the leading artists of the 21st century, Artists & the Unknown: Art21 Interviews with Artists captures engaging, inspiring, and stimulating conversations that explore encounters with the unknown. Featuring the works and words of eighteen artists, this collection serves as a guide and a companion in your own encounters with unknowability.

Art21 is a celebrated global leader in presenting thought-provoking and sophisticated films, educational programs, and publications about contemporary art. With the mission to educate and expand access to contemporary art to inspire a more creative and inclusive world, Art21 is the go-to place to learn firsthand from the artists of our time.

Diane Severin Nguyen

Diane Severin Nguyen was born in 1990 in Carson City, CA and currently lives and works in New York City. The artist earned her BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2013 and her MFA from Bard University in 2020. Nguyen draws material and inspiration for her photography, video, and installation work from an expansive mix of sources including social media feeds, 20th century philosophical writings, and debris sourced from the streets of New York City. In the collision of these intentionally disparate materials the artist mimics the dissonance of online culture and questions old divides between popular and elite, real and fake, repellent and sympathetic.

Josephine Halvorson

Josephine Halvorson was born in 1981 in Brewster, Massachusetts, formerly worked in New York, and currently lives and works in Western Massachusetts. Combining acute attention to detail and an insistence on painting from life, Halvorson gives herself only one day to complete each canvas. Traveling to paint, she works onsite, often selecting scenes that convey a sense of postindustrial grit. Her subjects range from a patch of missing paint on a wall to doors, windows, and other architectural details, but she acknowledges that “anything in the world could be a painting.” Interested in her relationship to the subjects of her paintings, Halvorson resists the term painter; she prefers to think of painting as recording time spent with an object in its environment.

Jurrell Lewis

Jurrell Lewis is an artist and curator, who joined Art21 in November 2020 and is currently the Assistant Curator. Prior to joining Art21, Lewis completed his Master of Fine Arts from Northwestern University’s Art, Theory, Practice Department and worked as an artist, administrator, and writer in Chicago, IL. Lewis has taught courses on contemporary art, curated artist-centered programming, exhibited work in the United States and Europe, and most recently co-directed and performed in a production of The Measures Taken, written by Bertolt Brecht.