On committing to the creative path as a lifestyle

Ryu, you and I met via curatorial work we did together at the Broad Museum—that, by and large, involved music. I never knew you, specifically, as an art curator. How did you two go about deciding to start your gallery, ATLA?

Jenny: Probably when we first started dating. Early on, when we first met, collaboration was very much part of the conversation between us. I think that spirit of collaboration is what brought us closer and closer and closer.

Ryu was traveling to Japan every four weeks from New York, and suddenly we would find ourselves traveling to all the same places, coincidentally, for work. That kind of trickled into when we got married and started thinking about our professional lives as creatives, about how to stay curious and inspired—especially in the face of moments where you don’t feel like you can be curious about anything because things start to feel stagnant, when everything starts to lose its sense of luster.

Very early on, Ryu encouraged me to start curating ceramic shows because that was something I’d brought into a lot of our conversations. There have been so many different iterations of how I’ve moved through the ceramic space, especially since 2008 when the economy was horrible. To graduate, with not only an art degree, but a ceramics degree, was quite comedic at the time because people would be like, “What do you do with that?”

Ryu has also been curating for a long time, and one thing led to another, and that’s really how we started ATLA.

Ryu: To add to that: We met through The Lot Radio. We had mutual friends. [Lot Radio music curator] Chris Cherry was the plug initially for us, because Jenny was friends with them in a totally different capacity than I was friends with The Lot crew. It was surprising that we never knew each other until then.

But, yeah, we met in New York. The ceramic medium was getting super hot in the art world, and she was trying to figure out how to navigate that sort of wave of that medium.

Jenny: Right. In New York, which has a very specific voice, compared to California.

Ryu: At the same time, I knew you had some of the curatorial ideas as well. I think I straight up said, “Are you willing to commit to this artist thing for real?”

I knew she was trying to figure out what the path would be. After grinding in New York for 10 plus years, you start to question these kinds of things. She knew a ton about the contemporary ceramic scene in general, so I think I pushed her a little bit, like “Maybe curation is the path that you should also simultaneously try and pursue.”

So, she was doing that on her own, as her own project. When you [Brandon} and I were doing the curatorial work at the Broad Museum, I would visit LA and she and I would hang out. So after I moved to LA, we both had our separate practices. During the pandemic, we were completely quarantined together as a couple, but also as two creatives—

Jenny: —Who were long-distance dating up until he moved in at the start of COVID.

Ryu: I think it was easier to transition into like, “Why not try to do some kind of a thing together?” It began as a pop-up, and we had this temporary space in Echo Park, and now we have a full on actual gallery space that we moved in earlier this year. So it was a slow, organic—

Jenny: Progression.

Ryu: Yeah, progression.

Jenny: Very much so. But also, the path to being a creative and to being an artist is the most nonlinear path. In many ways, this kind of lawless space was a really fruitful one for us because it meant we could carve out our own ideas of how we wanted to exist in the world, how we wanted the art that we love and care about to exist in this world. That very much heavily influenced how ATLA came to be.

Starting a project like this with someone you’re in a relationship with could be tough. How do you continue to navigate working and living together? Is there ever a moment where you’re like, “Ok, I need some space”?

Ryu: All the time. It’s hard as fuck.

Jenny: It’s probably the most challenging thing we’ve ever done.

Ryu: I think a relationship in general is always a challenge. There’s always something coming up in early stages, mid-stages. We were still figuring that out. And on top of that, we have this project, so 24/7 we’re intertwined. We’re still figuring it out, to be honest, but I think we did adjust quite a bit. The balance between us flows more harmoniously. A lot of talks, a lot of adjustments.

Jenny: A lot of talks, yes. Also, to commit to being a creative, it’s a lifestyle. The fact that we have the chance to work together means that this creative collaboration becomes our lifestyle.

In many ways, even though there’s a lot of push/pull, we benefit from the fact that we can work together 24 hours through the day, and ideas aren’t forced to come out during one specific time. It’s sort of like. “Okay, we’re reaching a stagnant moment in this conversation. Let’s revisit it later.” And then we can revisit a few hours later. We can be in the park with our daughter making sure she has some time outdoors and we can talk about some of the projects.

It has a sense of freedom and looseness that I think is necessary, for so many of our ideas to have energy in life, and to have movement and be kinetic.

Ryu: As hard as it is, when something works, the fact that we were able to share that sentiment is really quite beautiful.

I remember once when I was interviewing Eileen Myles, they said this thing where with inspiration, you never know when it’s going to come. You just have to be ready for it and be available for it. I think that was the phrase they used, “be available.”

Ryu: Absolutely.

Jenny: The best part is that we don’t have to call HR. We have to iron things out together, human to human—again, it’s very much the spirit of our space. It’s not this corporate structured space. It’s really about the individual.

If you had to boil it down, what’s your overall curatorial vision?

Ryu: I think there’s mainly two components. One being Jenny’s background in contemporary ceramics. As of yet in LA, I still think there is a very limited amount of ceramic-focused programming in the gallery spaces. Maybe that’s national? I don’t really know.

Jenny: It is fairly national. To go back a little bit, I moved back to California because California has such a rich history tied to contemporary ceramics, and that harkens back even to post-war and contemporary cultural movements. What I found in New York was that the more dominant space for ceramics had to exist in more of a design capacity, rather than a fine art capacity. Simone Leigh is a really, really, really incredible example of somebody who has stayed the course, has been very focused, and has a thriving career in the contemporary art space.

But being in California was very important. Ceramics exists as a larger metaphor for curatorial practice and endeavors to bridge this East and West conversation, this cross-Pacific conversation. And the cross-Pacific conversation is something that Ryu has been doing for maybe his whole life as a third culture kid who grew up in New York, but every few years would move back to Tokyo and then back to the States. He oscillated between two totally different environments, but both are major urban hubs for culture at that time.

When we started to really try to define what ATLA was, it was like, “Well, who are we?” “What do we care about?” Ceramics and this cross-Pacific conversation… That’s really been the guiding principle for ATLA, and it really kind of spawns from there. It goes to a lot of different directions, but we think about it in a lot of nonlinear ways.

Ryu: That’s, in a way, how we connected in the first place: My personal sense of, “I’m never Japanese enough if I’m in Japan, I’m never American enough if I’m in the States,” and she’s mixed, her mom is Japanese and her dad’s American.

Jenny: But my mom’s from the countryside of Japan and my dad’s from Crown Heights, Brooklyn. So it’s like these are two totally different perspectives and experiences. There are extreme language barriers. There’s nuance that is really lost in between those two experiences. When you grow up in environments that don’t naturally go together, it breeds a certain kind of need for a new perspective.

Ryu: Growing up, you have to navigate this identity crisis, right? That’s a sentiment that I understood immediately about her. I think that’s rooted in terms of what we were trying to do. Even the term “gallery” is kind of weird. It’s always just, as my friend said, it’s always white walls, white wine and white people. The art world is sort of not my native language. I’m more of a music person and she’s more of an artist. None of us have this curatorial Fine Art Master’s degree, or anything like that. So instead of going along with this traditional sense of a gallery where you have a roster of artists, and in a lot of ways it’s mainly painters and it’s gender politics or it’s racial politics or—

Jenny: Whatever the dominant trend is, really.

Ryu: Right. It’s totally different from what you see in art fairs. I just personally was fatigued by the industry. We were trying to bring in something new, which is rooted for both of us, in another hometown, home country, and trying to extract some of the ideas, the philosophies, the approach in creation via these artists that we work with.

Jenny: But not through the more common introduction to Japanese culture, which is quite fetishized or from a particular vantage point. One of the advantages that we have, even though my mother lives in Japan, and I’m half Japanese, I’m still very American in a lot of ways—but Ryu, because he grew up between Tokyo and New York and traveled there every four to five weeks, he understands nuance far beyond me. It’s a different type of culture that even for me with my mother and my family, it’s still somewhat out of grasp for me.

Even though I grew up going there. I spent summers there. I never lived there, but I spent quite a bit of time going there. So that aspect is important to acknowledge because it is such an insular and very, very protected culture. The people are very self-protective. And we’ve noticed that even with the artists that we reach out to, I think they feel a little bit more comfortable knowing that Ryu is full Japanese, knowing that there’s certain things that get inferred. We don’t try to come in as the Americans that are like, “Hey, we’re trying to commodify your product.”

How do you two view something as successful? When do you end the day thinking, “Ok, this was a good day?”

Ryu: We meet the artists we work with in person. We go visit their studio, their environment, particularly with the artists in Japan. So, for me, it’s to be able to bring a different context to what they do and re-contextualize it here, in the U.S., so that it shines more.

A lot of the artists that we work with, they specifically, almost unanimously, have said how that influence has impacted them, in terms of seeing their work in a completely different context and different way of installation. Also the reaction from the crowds they get here versus the responses in Japan, because what they’re doing is seen here as somewhat exotic and also very masterfully done. Whereas, the artists think it’s still not good enough or still in process.

Jenny: But also the format there is quite challenging for artists to work with, like the galleries that are available to them. Sometimes the shows there are up for two or three weeks—

Ryu: Not even.

Jenny: When somebody labors over their body of work, they’re spending a lifetime developing the motifs and techniques, and that short amount of time is painful. So re-contextualizing a lot of these artists have been very important and truly a success.

You mentioned community. Are there other ways that you bring community into the space, outside of the exhibitions?

Ryu: Something that Jenny had always wanted to do is she used to teach ceramics in New York City—

Jenny: In Greenwich House Pottery, which is an amazing place in Greenwich Village.

Ryu: —and I think especially now with our baby, it’s something that we’d love to do, just have kids learn about ceramics, and not have those boundaries of an elitist art space. During our openings, so many kids and babies show up, and it’s kind of my favorite part of it. Dogs, babies. That’s how it should be, I think.

Jenny: Most people when they think of clay, they’re like, “It’s fragile. We can’t come anywhere near it. We will see you another time.” And it’s like, no, no, this material is resilient. Your children and your pets are going to be very happy in our space. Nothing will break, I promise.

I think it does scare people away, when they feel like they don’t know the proper etiquette. “I’m not going to go into that place. Someone’s going to yell at me.” “I’m going to make a fool of myself.”

Jenny: Especially galleries that are our size, it’s become customary to create this transactional experience. So people, when they walk in, they feel like they have to buy something. That’s very much what we’re trying to really take apart and disassemble it so that it’s not the driving force of why you’re there.

That’s why anybody that comes to this, I walk them through the show, I talk them through the works. Any questions they have, I’m happy to answer them. It’s not like, “Oh, hi, who are you? Can you sign the book? Have you been here before?” The standard New York experience, where they just stare you down from behind the reception desk. That’s also why we’re open Friday through Sunday, during the weekend. We’re open four hours each day. It’s enough time for people to make it over. And during the week, it’s our time to really focus on work and be very intentional about how we use our time. We also receive a lot of people who make appointments with us who want to maybe have more of an intentional one-on-one visit to this space.

I think that’s kind of the push/pull for a lot of galleries, in that they have these open hours, but they also have to work during those open hours. And that’s, I think, what stirs this, “Who are you, what are you doing here?,” attitude. That’s what we’re trying to avoid.

To make art accessible, you need a welcoming space: ATLA feels like a return to a gathering space versus a space that’s alienating, or just for commerce, or rarified and removed from the day-to-day.

Ryu: Right. Hopefully we can serve some of that kind of need in terms of just showing up. And if you want to just see some cool shit that you’ve never seen before, with no expectation.