THE FOCUS

Rachel Bubis: You’ve spoken about how your grandfather and great-uncle’s roles as explorers shaped your thinking around desire, land, and ownership. I’m curious whether those ideas were ever part of your conversations with them, or whether they were aware of how their histories informed your work. McLean Fahnestock: Both my grandfather and great uncle died before I was born. So, their influence on my work has come through my family’s, especially my grandmother’s, remembrances of the expedi...

Jered Sprecher, Looking for the Eye, 2022, oil on canvas, 72 x 80 inches, photo by Bruce Cole, courtesy the artist and Ferrara Showman Gallery Anna Mages: In a statement from your show at Tri-Star’s Candoro Marble Building, you discuss your work as exploring the “precarious relationship between nature and technology.” The way that you describe this relationship recalls the theme of “nature v. nurture.” Do you see these relationships as part of the same conversation? Jered Sprecher: Those are definitely related to that. W...

Rachel Bubis: After developing your drawing skills for many years, you decided to shift away from realism which you’ve described as an “escape velocity.” What led to that moment, and how did it transform the direction of your work? Was it over time or suddenly? Lain York: It happened fairly quickly coming out of university. I was looking for a particular immediacy for what I was doing. Ideas were coming quickly and I found myself moving away from what I thou...