The Bad Vibes Club

In this episode, Matt and Andrea read Pedro Favaron y Chonon Bensho’s paper ‘Metsa Kené’ from 2020 (translated to English by AI) and Giuliana Borea’s ‘Personal cartographies of a Huitoto mythology’ from 2010. As a support text, we also read Florencia Portocarrero and Gabriela Germaná’s ‘The “Indigenous turn” and the rise of Amazonian art’ from 2026.
Matt and Andrea used these texts to explore indigenous Peruvian contemporary painting and to propose methodological alternatives to positionality, at least as it is used in art school. How do we destabilise and enlarge our understanding of painting when we parochialise ourselves?
Favaron and Bensho’s essay introduces painting in the Shipibo-Konibo context, its pedagogy, use of materials, ethics and vocabulary. It also raises crucial questions about the construction of value in painting and in the artworld. When does a tourist become a collector?
Borea’s text introduces Rember’s practice as well as the strategies he devised to position himself as a contemporary artist. The text explores the ongoing process of enlargement and redefinition of the artworld in Latin American countries – driven by the presence of indigenous artists – enabling a comparison with usual British strategies of inclusion.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music
Download PDFs of the texts below
Favaron, P. and Bensho, C. (2020) ‘Metsá Kené : los diseños y la identidad del pueblo Shipibo-Konibo.’, Visitas al Patio, 14(2), pp. 100–114. [PDF translated by AI]
Borea, G. (2010) ‘Personal Cartographies of a Huitoto Mythology: Rember Yahuarcani and the enlarging of the Peruvian Art Scene’, Revista de Antropologia Social dos Alunos do PPGAS-UFSCar, 2(2), pp. 67–87.
Portocarrero, F. and Germaná, G. (2026) ‘The “Indigenous turn” and the rise of Amazonian art: insights from the seminal work of the Seminario de Historia Rural Andina (SHRA)’, in A.U. Flynn et al. (eds) Unmaking to Make: Art as decolonising practice in Latin America’s future, past and present. London, UK: UCL Press, pp. 185–207. Available at: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781806550029

With massive thanks to all the Peruvian artists and curators that we read and looked at to make this episode:
Chonon Bensho @chononbensho3
https://www.instagram.com/chononbensho3/
Rember Yahuarcani @rember_yahuarcani
https://www.instagram.com/rember_yahuarcani/
Olinda Silvano @olinda.silvano
https://www.instagram.com/olinda.silvano/
Cordelia Sanchez @cordeliasanchez__pesinkate
https://www.instagram.com/cordeliasanchez__pesinkate/
Sara Flores @sarafloresvalera
https://www.instagram.com/sarafloresvalera/
Florencia Portocarrero @florenciaportocarrero
https://www.instagram.com/florenciaportocarrero/
Gabriela Germaná @gabgermana
https://www.instagram.com/gabgermana/
Giuliana Borea @giuliana_borea
https://www.instagram.com/giuliana_borea/
Giuliana Vidarte @giuliana_vidarte
https://www.instagram.com/giuliana_vidarte/
Miguel Lopéz @miguelopez1
https://www.instagram.com/miguelopez1/
Maria Eugenia Yllia @mariaeugeniayllia
https://www.instagram.com/mariaeugeniayllia/
Natalia Majluf @ nmajluf2
https://www.instagram.com/nmajluf2/
Pedro Favaron @pedrofavaron_nishinete
https://www.instagram.com/pedrofavaron_nishinete/
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In this episode, recorded live at City and Guilds Art School in London, Matt and Andrea read Douglas Crimp's essay, 'The End of Painting' from 1981 alongside a number of texts and a video by Helen Molesworth on the painter Noah Davis from 2020.
Crimp's essay makes the bold, and often repeated claim that painting has somehow ended. This opens up interesting questions about what has happened in painting since the 1980's. Can painting have criticality? If so, what is the nature of it?
With Molesworth's writing and video on Noah Davis, we will examine the work of a contemporary painter whose engagement with the medium was motivated by a different set of desires and concerns from the ones laid out by Crimp. If painting has ended, who has it ended for and why? If painting persists, what does it do for artists who paint?
Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music
Download PDFs of the texts from dekersaint.com/badvibesclub
Crimp, Douglas. ‘The End of Painting’. October 16 (1981): 69–86.
Molesworth, Helen. ‘40 Acres and a Unicorn’. In Noah Davis. Prestel, 2024.
Molesworth, Helen. ‘Noah Davis: An Introduction’ and ‘Some Years Count as Double’ In Noah Davis, with Noah Davis. David Zwirner Books ; The Underground Museum, 2020.

Matt and Andrea present a live podcast from TACO! in Thamesmead, London. We look at the work of Anselm Kiefer and Gerhardt Richter, two artists who have achieved both critical and commercial success and are considered by many to be geniuses. Who decides which artists get to be geniuses? What happens to the way their work is written about? Is there something about painting as an art form that lends itself to the idea of the painter as genius?

We read a profile of Anselm Kiefer by the Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgård from 2020, and a review of Benjamin Buchloh’s book on Gerhard Richter by the theorist and art historian Malcolm Bull from 2023.
Download PDFs of the texts from dekersaint.com/badvibesclub
Bull, Malcom. ‘Squeegee Abstracts: Gerhard Richter’s Dialectic’. London Review of Books, 2023.
Knausgaard, Karl Ove. ‘Into the Black Forest With the Greatest Living Artist’. Magazine. The New York Times, 12 February 2020.

Matt and Andrea present a live podcast from NCAD in Dublin, at the invitation of Fire Station Artists' Studios. We spoke about the dot: a mark that connects a diverse group of painters such as Georges Seurat, Philip Guston, Yayoi Kusama and Emily Kam Kngwarray. We read Linda Nochlin on Seurat, Margo Neale on Kngwarray and Jennifer DeVere Brody on Kusama. Thanks to everyone who came along to the event, to Mark, Niall and everyone at NCAD for hosting and to Sara Greavu for the invitation!
Download PDFs of the texts from www.dekersaint.com/badvibesclub
Brody, J. D. (2008) ‘Chapter One: Smutty Daubings’, in Punctuation: Art, Politics, and Play. Durham: Duke University Press.
Neale, M. (1998) ‘Two Worlds: One Vision’, in Alhalkere: Paintings from Utopia. North Ryde, NSW: Craftsman House.
Nochlin, L. (1989) ‘Seurat’s Grande Jatte: An Anti-Utopian Allegory’, Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, 14(2), pp. 133–242.

Welcome to the fourth episode of Ten Texts on Painting. This time, Matt and Andrea discuss the work of Lee Lozano. We read a chapter of Jo Applin’s book on Lozano Lee Lozano: Not Working, Lozano’s published notebooks from 1967-70, when she was making her masterpiece, the Wave paintings, and finally Jo Baer’s letter to Artforum from 1967. We talk about the connection between Lozano’s paintings, her art/life ‘pieces’, and her place in the New York art scene of the late 1960s.
Download PDFs of all the texts from dekersaint.com/badvibesclub
Applin, J. (2018) Lee Lozano: Not Working. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Baer, J. (1967) ‘Jo Baer - Letter to the editor’, Artforum.
Lozano, K. (2009) Lee Lozano: notebooks 1967-70. New York: Primary information.