VUE

The first thing that comes to mind when stepping into Stanley Casselman's studio at Mana Contemporary is, "How does an economics major from Pitzer College in California end up creating beautiful abstract paintings in Jersey City?" After a brief look around, it's clear. Stanley Casselman was born to create. Casselman became well-known in the art world after answering Art Critic Jerry Saltz's social media challenge for an imitation Gerhard Richter painting. For Casselman, true art is creating something new and original. So much so that even his initial imitations of Richter became uniquely his own. Using a 10-foot homemade squeegee, he put his own impressionistic-like spin on Richter, leading to projects such as "Inhaling Richter" and "Luminor." Today, Casselman is part of Mana Contemporary, a growing cultural center of over 1 million square feet. He has since shifted his focus to work on polyester screen (silkscreen) in what he calls "Frequency." Though he still uses some similar practices from previous works, Casselman now creates his "Frequency" works from behind the actual painting, applying and forcing paint through with huge squeegees. In his latest abstractions, Casselman searches for moments and emotions in their most natural form, capturing them in the layered complexity of the polyester screen. The scope of Mana Contemporary is massive. What brought you here? I was in Fort Greene, Brooklyn at the end of a seven year lease. The neighborhood had gone from kind of shitty but safe, which means it was reasonably priced, to new condo construction everywhere. I was adjacent to Pratt. My landlord said my rent was going up significantly and that he wanted a 90- day out. Definitely an "oh shit" moment. So I started looking in Bushwick, Sunset Park, and Long Island City, even the Bronx, and I wasn't thrilled with what I was finding. At the time, the Eyelene Kaminski Foundation was opening at Mana. So one Sunday, my wife and kid were doing something else and I thought what the hell, I've heard her name, I'll go and hobnob and try to sell her a painting. I walked in, got on the freight elevator, which is huge, and that's a thing that often limits a building is that the freight elevator is too small. But I saw this one and I got excited, walked onto the fourth floor, saw the ceiling height, the space, the light and I spent the rest of the time finding out who I had to talk to to get a studio. At the time, there were only seven studios. So I found Micha Lang [founder] and here I am. The carrot they dangled back then, is that one day there's gonna be a cafe on the fourth floor and I thought, "Bullshit. It'll never happen." Well, lo and behold there's a cafe now, there's five public exhibition spaces, one of which is 50,000 square feet, it's incredible what they've done. It's turned into this amazing thing. CAPTURING THE MOMENT BY MICHAEL SCIVOLI VUE ON LIFESTYLE V U E N J . C O M 70

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