Episode #097: Filmed in her Berlin studio, a group of Julie Mehretu's assistants — Sarah Rentz, Damien Young, Erika Fortner and Harmony Murphy — discuss how they each bring different areas of expertise to the process of making paintings, from fine art backgrounds in printmaking and illustration to furniture polishing techniques and administrative skills. Julie Mehretu's paintings and drawings refer to elements of mapping and architecture, achieving a calligraphic complexity that resembles turbulent atmospheres and dense social networks. Architectural renderings and aerial views of urban grids enter the work as fragments, losing their real-world specificity and challenging narrow geographic and cultural readings. The paintings' wax-like surfaces—built up over weeks and months in thin translucent layers—have a luminous warmth and spatial depth, with formal qualities of light and space made all the more complex by Mehretu's delicate depictions of fire, explosions, and perspectives in both two and three dimensions. Her works engage the history of nonobjective art—from Constructivism to Futurism—posing contemporary questions about the relationship between utopian impulses and abstraction. Learn more about Julie Mehretu at: http://www.art21.org/artists/julie-mehretu VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Ian Serfontein. Sound: Paul Stadden. Editor: Lizzie Donahue, Paulo Padilha & Joaquin Perez. Artwork Courtesy: Julie Mehretu. Special Thanks: Erika Fortner, Harmony Murphy, Sarah Rentz & Damien Young.

Comments

1. This video intrigues me, is this a smart way of criticising the absence of the artist? factory and abcense
2. Que lixo
3. Really?
4. koons daughter's.
5. So, the smart-ass doesn´t do anything, is that right? Clever girl.
6. amaziiing >>> WoW
7. excllent
8. @sgerlichphotography Thanks for explaination! it truely cleared up my bafflement with such a grand production and body of work! As a matter of fact, i just saw her work at the guggeheim a month ago! It is amazing! I love the scale, and the precision and then apparent abstraction she incorporates? wonderful work!
9. where does this artist "julie" get the money to fund such an extravagant production of work? assistants,studio ect.? Transport of such large work to museums? Please! Someone explain to me the funding process of such a lifestyle!
10. beautiful work !
11. Sigh!
12. me too...sigh :)
13. I want to be an artist assistant one day... Sigh!