if your an artist and or like art theirs a few people that you should differently know, and or get to know and PF Dash is one of those people. while attending an art show in NY we ran into the talented PF Dash, after things calmed down a bit he was cool with letting us interview him check out below to see what we talked about.
So you’re from Bronx, NY? Do you still reside there?
Yea, born in New York raised in the Bronx and Mt. Vernon. I now live on the west side of Harlem.
When did you realize your interest in art? Did you go to school for art?
I was always interested in art and music from childhood, my father worked at the Schomburg Library in Harlem and collected West & Central African Art and coins. I was a day dreamer when I was young, easily distracted and always drawing. I actually didn’t go to school for art, I initially wanted to go to school for music and was accepted into the NYU Tisch Program for music production but I opted out to go to a cheaper school and study business & marketing, although I took classes in film, art history, psychology.
How did you get your start in the industry?
Kind of a long story, I had started my first business called Big Nobodies which was an artist management/Production firm for musicians. We had just gotten our first major success with the signing of an artist of ours named Iffy The Badman to Universal Republic Records. The deal went through but we didn’t get much out of it and when our relationship spoiled with the artist everyone kind of decided to go their separate ways. It was my first big lesson in business. Coming off of that I had a friend who launched an arts publication magazine and was doing a story on another curator from Brownville Brooklyn named Derrick Harden, they asked me to come by and just kick it. I met Derrick and we soon became friends, sharing many of the same ideals and contacts we decided to begin hosting our own exhibitions, one namely became really popular in the downtown scene called “Uptown Downtown”, where we would do two exhibition openings in one night in Chelsea and the Lower Eastside or Soho. During that time me and Derrick recorded two albums (New Black Wealth & The Pussy Album) and inked a deal with indie label BluRoc Records, unfortunately neither album was released, there were issues with the producers namely due to excessive drug use, I made the decision to separate and do my own thing.
We see your one of the co-founders of Eastmen Collective what sparked the idea to create the company/agency? How many other members are a part of the collective?
Everyone thinks there’s a lot of money in art, there isn’t. The money that exists circulates among the one percenters, the art world is really the one industry where you get to see it up close and personal. While me and Derrick were running around I would often mention we should start our own consulting agency as another stream of revenue, as a curator you’re really a taste maker but we occupy an interesting space because you have an ear to the one percent and the streets. You, exist in the gap between the two, they both depend on you. This is where Eastmen was born. Eastmen consist of me, and my cousin Darrin Chandler Jr.
What exactly does a curator do? Is there anything in particular you look for when selecting a venue to show art work?
A curator is really responsible for putting the show together with the artist, coming up with a theme or a narrative, selecting the artist and the work, coming up with a layout for the hang. Having worked with a small gallery in Chelsea I’ve grown to get use to doing that plus handling the artwork and hanging the exhibition myself. When selecting a venue I look for square footage, how high the ceilings are, the walls, the location of the venue and the daily traffic. But all that depends on the artist and the goal of the exhibition.
Art can attract a pretty diverse crowd do you hold any special events for celebrities only or do they normally mix and mingle at the exhibits?
All of my exhibitions are diverse with respect to race, gender, sexual orientation, income, careers etc. We have socialites, we have enthusiasts, regular every day people, celebrities, millionaires, other artists, designers, if you can name it we’ve had it.
What style of art do you personally like the most? And do you have favorite artist at the movement?
My tastes are pretty eclectic. I’m a child of hip hop, when I was born hip hop was popular and if you think about the aesthetic of the sound, hip hop is known for sampling. Hip hop naturally is a collection of many different types of sounds rearranged and conjoined with heavy bass and drum kits. My approach to art is the same, I’m more concerned with the content, I enjoy beauty but ultimately I’m interested in seeing where is it that beauty derives from. I like art with a story, a narrative, I enjoy art with meaning and concepts that make me self reflective because that’s really where I discover everything. At heart I’m a minimalist and subscribe to the mantra less is more, but I’m also a fan of contrast so I’m not opposed to looking at or making a mess if there’s value there, hip hop is a mess too sometimes. I have a few favorite artist right now, Isaiah Robertson, Theo Mighty, Mark Bradford, Wil Shepard, Margaret Bowland, Derrick Adams, Joel Meyerowitz, Genieve Figgs, and Fahamu Pecou just to name a few. I keep a folder on my cell phone of artwork that inspires me, in fact many of my friends are some of my favorite artist.
If someone was interested in becoming a curator and or wanted to hold an art exhibition/event what advice would you give?
Go to art school. My route was a matter of chance and circumstance, being in the right place at the right time, having the right relationships and mentors. I wouldn’t advise someone do what I do, in fact I’m doing many things right now so others don’t have to, I’d like to see others have least resistance in their pursuit of a career in the arts.
We have seen you display a connection to ROC A FELLA what exactly is the association?
My older cousin started Roc-A-Fella Records with his friends Kareem Burke and Jay-Z in the early 90’s, my family has a long history in the music industry. My cousin Sarah Dash sung back up for Patti Labelle for years and had a modest solo career herself for a few years, in addition to my older cousin Darrien Dash’s father being the CEO of Epic for a while from the 70’s the early 80’s.
Did you extract anything significant from your experience around such prestige’s individuals, that you’re able to utilize able to share with us today?
The entrepreneurial spirit, we we’re raised by a family that insisted you make your own way. No handouts. You couldn’t just have a job, you had to hustle you had to make something of yourself which in a lot of ways is a gift but also a curse. I’m never content doing one thing I’m always busy I’m always working. Many of our family members took that spirit and ventured into nefarious activities. Damon showed us we could start a business and own something, Sarah showed us we could follow our dreams, and my cousin filmmaker Julie Dash showed us we could be creative and that it was cool to be smart, observant, and culturally aware.
Along with being a curator you also are a music artist as well. What was your creative force behind your trapart project?
It’s long been a dream of mine to bring rap music into the conversation of fine art, music was always a passion of mine but I don’t want to be a rapper or have a rap career. I wanted to make a record me and some of my peers could just talk about. TRApART came about because of I needed to express that, so I brought in all of these conceptual ideas like the name itself. Trap music is the most popular subgenre of rap music today and I wanted to experiment with it approaching it as art. The most rudimentary idea of a trap is like a box, something that tangible and closed off, it is what it is you can’t change it. Art is abstract you can try to define it you can try to box it in but it always escapes, it’s bigger than anything you can ever confine it to. So I thought the best way to express abstract ideas was to take the ideas and encapsulate them in an aesthetic my friends understand because prior to they weren’t interested in discussing theses topics, I chose to record in an underground new york aesthetic of conscious rap but present them in a heavy bass Houston chopped and screwed aesthetic. I soon learned that the trap aesthetic made it so you wanted to hear the content even more, because some words become hidden you grasp on to others trying to make sense of the content and are completely uninterested in the artist himself. This is why I spelled it the way I did with the lowercase P, It was TRApART, in a palindrome, a word spelled the same going forwards and backwards to express that the sound was manipulated and I was in the middle of that, I was the P, which acted as a filter to a larger idea. The persona of the artist is diminished in TRApART, there’s no image to buy into, no marketing, no advertising, just an idea. I chose the image for the cover a painting from Renassance artist Jacob Lawrence of the white abolishonist John Brown, because the larger idea is freedom, liberation, and expression, and here was a man who had that at his disposal but wanted to share it with others. In order to do that he literally had to exterminate his image of white patriarchal supremacy. The development of artist persona that exist in the music industry is supremacy in the minds of everyone of what self expression means, it’s not about music anymore, it’s not about ideas. Freedom of thought is outlawed, if you want to be an artist you have to be like one that exist already. Look at the cover, the light is on Christ, he and the guns are in the shade plotting on the country, that’s TRApART.
Intrigued by the art work and the song called “pharaoh in the trap” we herd references to the moors, the dogons and kemet and other key phrases. It seems to us there may be a preoccupation with ancient civilizations. Would that be an accurate assumption?
I believe humans are the dumbest creation out of all the universe but we have the most potential to be the greatest, and yet we continue to squander it. We created a unit of measurement that we hold to be more valuable than ourselves, currency. Pharaoh in the trap is about abundance and how it’s been misplaced, we value things that have no value and wonder why others have wealth not realizing their wealth lies in abundance of natural resources and skills. If we want the abundance we have to embrace positive information about ourselves as people of the mother continent even it its false. If believing you or your woman are god is a prosperous attribute to the development of your relationship and family embrace it. Behave like it’s true, and you will see your life change, the negatives will turn into positives. That’s what Pharaoh in the trap is about, it’s about the nature of abstract thinking influencing your life for better or for worse.
Your active as both an audio and visual artist we would like to ask how important are still visuals as it pertains to music? Is something like cover art still a priority or have videos become more pertinent in the absence of physical releases?
Depends on what your goal is, I personally think people spend less time on youtube than they use to but I could be wrong, I don’t really know. I feel like people want to be inspired, and your cover or video could be a source of inspiration if you want it to be. Give people an excuse to like your cover, give them an excuse to like your video. Put some thought into it, put yourself into it. If your goal is to make money in music the number rule hasn’t changed, make a hit record. If you want to be the best at what you do, that’s a life long journey and you might have to be prepared to take a financial hit to come out on top in the end. Longevity has never derived from overnight success. I’m trying to be talked about forever, I want to be in text books, I want to be the subject of a class.
Hip-hop has begun to express its reverence for traditional arts more than ever, even kayne gave a nod to Picasso, and do moves like these help your agenda? And in what way will this merge of art worlds effect the individual evolution of both platforms?
It helps because Kanye is the most polarizing figure in hip hop right now. He forces people to have an opinion, which ultimately forces people to express their taste. Some people don’t like Picasso, why? Some people love him, why? What does either party actually know about Picasso? Have you seen his blue period work? Are you a fan of cubism? Do you know cubism was developed in the congo? I actually got a chance to visit his meusueam in Spain last June and see his work while in art school. Does anyone know that Picasso in his era wasn’t really celebrated? People thought his paintings were hideous, at least in the states. The conversation is no longer exclusive to wealthy white men. If anything is to be gained by a merger it’s that it makes each of us a little more wiser, more emphatic, more daring, more expressive, more curious. People lack curiosity, they don’t want to know anything, they just want to wear jordans. If I wear a pair of cordovan shell wingtips to a party where everyone is wearing jordans someone may try to snap on me not realizing cordovan leather is horse leather and there are only two companies in the world still producing it, one’s in Spain and the other is in Massachusetts. Your Jordans that cost $200 dollars are made by machines in China, my shoes run almost a grand and are made by hand. But no one knows this because no one knows what quality is, and no one questions quality. Quality today is a perceived product of branding and companies are spending millions on advertising. So I hope a merger or perhaps an evolution just causes people to ask more questions.
Can you tell us anything about your upcoming projects?
TRApART2, going to do a show in Atlanta and Los Angeles this year, and a couple more surprises I don’t want to let out yet but 2016 is going to be a good year.
