Sadie Laska on the Power of Cynicism in Art

Painter and mixed media artist Sadie Laska, whose collage Everything is Just Dirt! II is on view in Pace’s online exhibition Twenty-One Humors, brings a ‘90s edge to her work. Inspired by the music of that decade, the artist creates vibrant canvases and collages that take up contemporary issues related to politics, climate change, and the pandemic. Employing sarcasm and cynicism as salves for these anxieties, Laska aims to connect with viewers of her work on a personal level.

 

In conjunction with the Twenty-One Humors presentation, which explores dark humor in art, Laska spoke with the gallery about her process, influences, and modes of addressing current events. Her statements, which follow below, have been edited and condensed.

 

To title my painting Everything is Just Dirt! II, I took a quote from the Velvet Underground song “Sweet Jane” that goes “everything is just dirt.” At the time, I was working with these flag materials and using the Earth flag a lot. I kept hearing that song lyric and I think it captured a lot of different ideas that were kind of funny, sarcastic, and maybe a little melancholy, which is where my humor lands. I was thinking of the figure in the drawing as this fat, rich man. My work is really based in collage. There’s an element of chance in putting different things together.

 

I’ve been making these kinds of flag works for the past year and half or two years, working with fabrics. I collect a lot of images from all kinds of sources and different media—I see illustrations in the news and reference them to make drawings. Using banners of text, I try to make these absurd posters or flags that aren’t really specific to any location. I make these images, cut them up, tack them down to the flag substrate, and add text in the same way I would compose something on paper. But, in this case, these elements are sewn and glued together and they’re much larger than paper pieces.