Conversation with Kozyndan

Kozyndan are a married couple who collaborate on their art pieces and illustrations seamlessly. Their work is imaginative, perverse, musical, funny, sexual, surreal, and incredibly complex; specializing in panoramic drawings of city scenes infused with a contemporary embodiment of magical realism and a somber color palette, each piece is unexpected and exciting. Kozy and Dan were kind enough to share some of the inside scoop with SG readers about the "ear muffs", the bunnyfish, and why the duo don't run out of artistic energy.

/media/news/18472/2.jpg

SUSIE GHAHREMANI: Tell me about your background; how did you meet? How did you begin collaborating?

KOZY: We live in Santa Monica, CA and we met while we were both studying illustration at Cal State University, Fullerton.

DAN: Somehow we lucked out and rolled into an art and illustration career within 2 weeks of graduating and have just been going where ever our work takes us ever since. We met in a beginning painting class. I spent the semester sexually harassing her (hah hah) but we became close friends anyway.  Eventually we got out of the relationships we were in and started dating.  We've been pretty inseparable ever since.

/media/news/18472/3.jpg

K: We didn't start collaborating though until we'd been living together for about a year. I was doing a drawing of our apartment on a long piece of paper for a class book making project.  Dan liked the drawing so much he decided he wanted to scan it in and color it in Photoshop. I saw that it was starting to look really good, so I came in and helped him finish it. We liked the results so much we decided to do more of them.

D: Before we finished college, we were showing as kozyndan and getting little notices about our site on online art/ design forums.

SG: Tell me an anecdote about one of your works.

D: One time, we were asked by COLORS magazine to do an illustration of an orgy at a sex club.  Being that kozy and I are not strictly monogamous, we were probably a good choice!  We called up some friends that got us in touch with the owner of the largest sex club in LA.  We got a tour of the club during the week and talked with the owner for a long time, and then came back on a Saturday night to really get a feel for the real orgy experience.  We had thought we would just be there anonymously, exploring and observing and maybe participating if so inclined.  Unfortunately the owner got up to do her regular speech in front of everyone and announced our presence there and pointed us out to everyone, asking them to feel free to come up and tell us anything they wanted to about swinging and their experiences in the club.

A few minutes later, I felt a huge pair of breasts drop down on either side of my head, one on each side.  I looked up to find a buxom blonde woman telling me "I call that the 'ear muffs'!"  Needless to say it was an interesting night.

/media/news/18472/1.jpg

SG: Ha! What inspires your work; what influences you?

K: Lots of things: traveling, music, and nature. Our interactions with  eachother. A lot of inspiration comes from one another.

D: In the end, art is not the main priority in our life.  Being together, meeting interesting people, traveling the world, good food, good sex, good music - those drive our life. The artistic process is just part of the cycle of our life. We experience things and then process it through our artwork and put it out there in hopes of making a decent living so we can continue to travel and experience and learn.

SG: How do you overcome feeling drained of inspiration or out of ideas?

D: I think usually, since there are two of us interacting creatively, bouncing ideas off one another, being inspired by one another, modifying each other's ideas, that we don't run into that problem. We usually have a huge backlog of ideas we need to tackle.

SG: What's your favorite texture?

D: That's tough... our kitty's fur?

K: That's a good one, Dan!  Yeah, Ami-chan's fur. I LOVE that cat!

/media/news/18472/4.jpg

SG: What's your guilty pleasure?

D: Justin Timberlake

K: I don't feel guilty about anything I like! It's good stuff!

SG: What's next for you and your work?

D: Oh man. Busy, busy somehow.  We'll be in the UK for a big group show at a museum, the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Arts, called Spank the Monkey. People like Takashi Murakami, Barry McGee, Banksy, Ryan McGuinness, Os Gemeos, Shepard Fairey, Miss Van, Aya Takano, and many others... plus little ole' us! Not sure how we got in that company, but we'll be presenting two of our panoramic prints at about 13 feet long each - one older one, and one new one created for the show. Then we'll begin work on our next solo show in LA that opens in January.

K: Also, we'll be spending some time playing with our bunnyfish!

/media/news/18472/0.jpg

See more from kozyndan by visiting their website, plus the show in the UK will be up until January 2007. This interview was conducted by boygirlpartay, painter, crafter, proprietor of boygirlparty.com.

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/news/culture/18472/Conversation-with-Kozyndan/