The impact of Gerald Slota’s vivid and teeming images is immediate and arresting. They stop you in your tracks with their bright seeming-chaos. But the more you take time with them, the more you read them, you discover stories and unravel puzzles. They are peopled with ghosts and memories moving in a dreamlike light, beautiful, intriguing, and at times even disturbing. We were grateful for a chance to share Slota’s work and ask him a few questions about art and life.

Frenzy: 2020-2023

The series started during the Covid lockdown with isolation…I know every artist feels that way, so I’m not that special.
But with time on my hands, and FUCKING bored, I went back to my archives of black and white Polaroids/Film negatives and prints, Hundreds of them stacked in my loft just waiting, collecting dust.

With an explosion of energy, I started to recreate and rework them with color using cheap Apps and with more manipulation, I worked very fast, [nobody looks more than a second on IG anyway] reshooting with my cell phone and then posting on Instagram to get instant feedback…. Good or bad it really doesn’t matter in the long run…. only if the image moves you! – Gerald Slota

The Interview.

Magpies: What is the role of Instagram in our national attention span and the impermanence of art?

Slota: Brilliant first question, love producing work for IG [FAST] because I know how fleeting it is and need an immediate response, art/photos are up then flipped away but when they’re in exhibits I want the viewer to have more time to have a visceral experience with the work.

What is your favorite movie?

Harold and Maude, saw it when I was 7 years old and the opening scene changed me forever also a great soundtrack

Whenever I write interview questions I think of the scene in Godard’s Breathless in which Patricia asks the famous philosopher, “What is your grand ambition?” (To become immortal and then to die, is his answer.) So what is your grand ambition? For yourself and for art. What is your idea of success as an artist? Or just in life in general.

Keep making good work and see where it lands it’s that simple but be nice if my work survives for longer than me.

What was your favorite food as a child? What is your favorite food right now? Favorite drink?

Grill cheese, Wine, Wine

What is the nicest thing someone could say about you?

He’s fun to a point then …

Who is your favorite fictional character?

My other persona.

If you had a motto or catchphrase what would it be?

Got this from a fortune cookie last night “Only the person who risks is TRULY free “

What’s the last memorable dream you had?

Always a storm and giant black sea waves crashing and destroying everything in sight.

What smell did you most miss from your childhood? 

Fresh-cut grass in suburbia during the summer.

If you could fly but you’d have to have wings strong enough to carry your weight—so almost as long as your body—would you do it?

Nay, I have enough to carry mentally.

See Gerald Slota’s work at the upcoming show “FReNzY” at Lycoming College Art Gallery, Williamsport, PA October 27-November 25 2023

Gerald Slota is a fine artist and photographer who has been widely exhibited across the US and abroad. He has had solo shows at the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY, and Langhans Galerie in Prague, Czech Republic, as well as been shown at Recontres D’ Arles in Arles, France. Slota has had multiple solo exhibits at Ricco/Maresca Gallery in NYC and is represented by the Robert Berman Gallery in Los Angeles. His images have appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times Magazine, Vice, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Harper’s, and Scientific America, as well as in BOMB, Artforum, ARTNEWS, Art in America, and Aperture. Gerald Slota has garnered many awards including a Polaroid 20”x24” Grant, a MacDowell Artist Residency, and a Mid-Atlantic Fellowship Grant in 2001, 2009 and 2021. Slota’s photographs are in collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC, New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL, George Eastman House, Rochester, NY.

See more of Slota’s work at his website and on Instagram @geraldslota.