Cary Leibowitz Artforum Interview

"I'm still surprised that this exhibition made it into existence", Cary Leibowitz tells Artforum's Alex Jovanovich for this week's 500 Words. "The curator of the show, Anastasia James, is about the same age as some of my work!" Museum Show, which opened in January and continues at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco until June 25th, is Leibowitz’s first-ever solo museum exhibition and midcareer survey. The show covers covers nearly thirty years of the artist’s output.

"Putting the show together was nerve-racking, but exciting. I was kind of happy with some of the older pieces. But there was another part of me that kept thinking, Oh my god, I barely changed in thirty years. Admittedly, I was embarrassed about looking at all my old work. I was also embarrassed at how badly I treated a lot of it. I had so much art shoved into the basement of my house from a million years ago. Then all of a sudden, when I needed to excavate and get it all out of there, it’s moldy and crapped-up. I was like, “Oh well, I guess this thing and that thing are going into the garbage.” Thankfully I didn’t need to get anything fixed or cleaned up—I make multiples and often have massive quantities of a single piece."

Read/watch the full interview, here: https://www.artforum.com/words/#entry66976