132 - Phillip Toledano
© Phillip Toledano
Phillip Toledano is a New York-based British artist born in 1968 in London, to a French Moroccan mother and an American father. He grew up in London and Casablanca, received a BA in English literature from Tufts University in Boston and embarked upon a career in advertising before abandoning that plan in favour of photography.
Phillip considers himself a conceptual artist: Everything starts with an idea, and the idea determines the execution. Consequently, his work, much of which is of a socio-political nature, varies in medium, ranging from photography to installation, sculpture, painting and video.
Phillip’s commercial and editorial work has appeared in numerous high profile publications such as Vanity Fair, The New York Times magazine, The New Yorker, Harpers, Esquire, GQ, Interview, Wallpaper, The Sunday Times magazine, The Independent Magazine and Le Monde.
His installation project America, the Gift Shop was shown at the Center for photography at Woodstock as well as the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2010. The premise: If George Bush’s foreign policy had a souvenir shop, what would it sell? His more recent mixed media project is called Kim Jong Phil, in which Phillip explores artistic narcissism and self-delusion by taking pre-existing dictatorial art-paintings from North Korea and statues of assorted dictators and has these works re-created in China, as large format oil paintings and bronze sculpture, in each instance, replacing the great leaders with himself.
Phillip has published six books: Bankrupt, Twin Palms (2006), Phonesex, Twin Palms (2008), Days with my Father, Chronicle (2010), A New Kind of Beauty, Dewi Lewis (2011), The Reluctant Father, Dewi Lewis (2013), and When I Was Six, Dewi Lewis (2015). His work has been shown internationally in numerous group and solo exhibitions.
On episode 132, Phillip discusses, among other things:
The current situation in New York
His new video series, Donald At Home
His response to the current Black Lives Matter protests
His project on fighter pilot helmets
Revenue streams
His ongoing new Deep State project
Being politcal
His upringing and the tragedy of his sister’s death
Advertising days and how it taught him about ‘cognitive brutality’
His ransition from advertising to artist
Feeling constrained in his ideas
Referenced:
“I always feel like my ideas are so obvious; they’re just a step in front of me. Where as you look at some people and you think ‘God, what bus do they have to catch to get to that planet!’ And I find that admirable, and I’m sort of jealous that I’m not going that far or I’m not being extreme enough. But, you know, you can’t prescribe extremity. You can’t look at an idea and say, ‘I’m going to make it 53% more extreme’ because that’s just bullshit.”
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INFORM THE MIND, INSPIRE THE SOUL
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