We ask some of our favorite artists to describe another artist’s work as best they can, with only their words and sounds. Produced by Compound Yucca Valley, an art and event space near Joshua Tree, CA.
For this episode, we welcome Miguel Arzabe who has invited his mother, Sonia, to engage in a conversation about a watercolor drawing by his grandfather, Antonio Arzabe, titled El Zorro Atoc. Miguel is an Oakland-based artist of Bolivian heritage who draws inspiration from the cultural techniques and motifs of his Andean ancestry. He makes colorful and dynamic abstractions - weavings, paintings, videos. In Waiting for the Wind, a group exhibition at Compound in Fall 2025, he featured six films documenting his playful interactions with the unforeseen forces that exist in the environment. A means of witnessing climactic and environmental changes, his conceptual performances interpret ancient cosmology of Andean cultures through a contemporary sensibility. For this exhibition he also created Nochero, a weaving assembled from scraps collected over time from his painting process. Colorful chevrons reverberate echoes of paintings' past lives as the weaving's placement blocks out sunlight, allowing the video installation to be seen in a darker environment.
14 Feb 2026
Brock DeBoer Describes Umberto Boccioni
We've invited ceramic sculptor Brock DeBoer whose solo exhibition, So Far, was presented at Compound YV in the spring of 2025. DeBoer's work utilizes porcelain, historical motifs and surface treatments to re-contextualize everyday objects and items from his past. He draws influence from his South Dakota upbringing, combined with the ever-changing and vastly diverse landscape of Los Angeles and the Joshua Tree area. In this episode, DeBoer describes two separate encounters with Umberto Boccioni's Unique Forms of Continuity in Space.
"I imagine it unpacking and unfolding itself as it's tumbling through this space and those really futurist angular lines. It's unwrapping itself and re-wrapping at the same time all the life that's captured in it."
14 Nov 2024
Ayin Es Describes Amy Sillman
"It all starts with the line after all, that magic line that flows from the mind to the hand into the pencil and across the blank page. That's when it hit me that Sillman knows how to utterly transpose raw imagination, which was a skill I'd been chasing after using only my intuition."
Multimedia artist, writer, and musician Ayin Es is known for their unusual oil paintings, drawings, collages, and Artist's books. In this episode, they describe their encounter with Elephant by Amy Sillman.
24 Jan 2024
Elena Yu Describes Kenneth Tam
In this episode, we’ve invited Elena Yu to share her experience with Kenneth Tam’s The Founding of the World, which she experienced in summer 2023 at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Elena is an interdisciplinary artist and community organizer from Los Angeles, where she received her BA in Art from UCLA. She moved to the Morongo Basin in 2016, where she founded two artist-run alternative art spaces, The Firehouse and Sun Spot. She also worked as Assistant Director of Programming for High Desert Test Sites and as Program Director for Arts Connection, the Arts Council of San Bernardino County. She recently relocated to Charlottesville, VA where she is an Incubator Artist at McGuffey Art Center. Elena co-curated our exhibition ‘Emergence,’ featuring the Mojave Artists of Color Collective, with support from the California Arts Council. On view at Compound YV from September 9 through November 5, 2023, It was the first-ever public exhibition of works by MACC artists as a collective, aiming both to stabilize and uplift the group.
31 Mar 2023
Allegra Pacheco Describes Tadao Ando and James Turrell
Allegra Pacheco is a Costa Rican multidisciplinary artist best known for her 2021 documentary film about white-collar workers in Japan, Salaryman, which won Best Documentary and Best Composer (James Iha) at the Los Angeles Documentary Film Festival the same year. A Renaissance woman who works across cultures and media to tell stories through film, immersive installations, sculptures, paintings, and more, she is equally at home in her art studio in Escazu, Costa Rica — where she is currently preparing work for Compound YV's Spring 2023 show, Imaginary Landscapes (title and concept courtesy of Allegra).
The work she describes in this episode is:
Tadao Ando (Japanese, 1941-) and James Turrell (American, 1943-)
The Art House Project: Minamidera
1998-1999
Naoshima
25 Jan 2023
Eric Nash Describes Jean-Michel Basquiat
Eric Nash is a California artist working in oil and charcoal. His subject matter focuses on icons and scenes inspired by Los Angeles and the California desert. His highly realistic images are pared down to their idealized essence often conveying a film still or a memory. He works in series, some of which go back decades.
Eric is a lifelong artist who began with community sponsored art classes at age 5. He went on to receive a BFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on a talented student tuition waiver. He is represented by art galleries in Los Angeles and Palm Springs where he has had numerous solo shows over the years. His work is in collections internationally including well-known Hollywood names, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and corporations such as Delta Airlines.
He has been the subject of numerous media articles and his work has been collected or featured at The Hilbert Museum of California Art, Tucson Museum of Art, Laguna Art Museum, Riverside Art Museum and Palm Springs Art Museum. He currently lives and works in the high desert town of Yucca Valley, CA near Joshua Tree National Park.
The painting he describes is:
Jean Michel Basquiat (American, 1960–1988)
Boy and Dog in a Johnnypump
1982
Oil on canvas
96” x 164”
Art Institute of Chicago
Gift of Ken Griffin
26 Nov 2022
Dispatch from RISE/SET with Matt Wessen
Matt Wessen (born in Los Angeles in 1982) is a photographer, filmmaker, and art director currently based in Ojai, California. In his current Compound YV exhibition, Rise/Set, Wessen captures the moods and movements of two occurrences we all have the opportunity to witness every day: the sunrise and the sunset. Typically thought of as either impossible to capture in a way that’s true to the experience — or else clichéd and sentimental — Wessen instead uses abstraction to organize this daily ritual into a show that is colorful, bold and graphic, more akin to a PANTONE color book than nature photography. Matt and C.YV Program Director, Caroline Partamian, chatted via Zoom as Caroline spent time in the gallery with Matt’s work.
5 Oct 2021
Luis Cobelo Describes Duane Michals
Luis Cobelo (b. 1970, Venezuela) holds a degree in Philosophy from the University of Zulia in Venezuela. He was raised between Venezuela and Spain, where he became a photographer. Beginning in 1993, he participated in numerous international photography festivals and solo exhibitions. Working independently across borders since 2001, Luis has developed documentary projects in the Americas, Asia and Europe, and has been published in magazines and newspapers worldwide. He is based in San Francisco, California.
The photographs he describes are from the series, Christ in New York (1984), by Duane Michals (American, 1932).
Gelatin Silver Print
each sheet: 8”x 0”; each image: 5” x 7”
7 Sept 2021
Akari Uragami Describes Cobird
Akari Uragami lives and works in Tokyo, Japan. Using soft sculpture, she expresses the universality of humans as organisms, depicting their internal and external phenomena. Akari graduated from Musashino Art University as a textile major and ESMOD fashion school in 2012. Her work has been exhibited in Korea, London, and California.
The work she describes in this episode is by cobird (https://www.cobirdweb.com/):
「3 minute experience」
Cyanotype on paper & Lightjet print on photo paper
745mm x 490mm
2018
She also mentions a collaboration with Ninja Tune, accessible here:
Cobird Ninja Tune Tee x Sasquatchfabrix tees
https://ninjatune.net/release/ninja-tune-x-sasquatchfabrix/ninjabushi-t-shirt-white (https://ninjatune.net/release/ninja-tune-x-sasquatchfabrix/ninjabushi-t-shirt-white)
https://ninjatune.net/release/ninja-tune-x-sasquatchfabrix/ninjabushi-t-shirt-black (https://ninjatune.net/release/ninja-tune-x-sasquatchfabrix/ninjabushi-t-shirt-black)
photo: Masayuki Saito
2 Jul 2021
Alisha Sofia Describes Hagop Hagopian
Alisha Sofia (b. 1987) attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, completing her degree at Art Center College of Design in 2009. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
The painting she describes in this episode is:
Hagop Hagopian (b. Alexandria, Egypt, 1923-2013, Yerevan, Armenia)
A Woman with a Mirror
1969
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