A Conversation with James Scarborough and Artist Kaye Freeman on “The Tie That Binds” at Art/Space 114

The following interview was published on What the Butler Saw July 21st, 2025.

Kaye Freeman’s path from Hong Kong to downtown Los Angeles by way of Australia and Japan reads like a study in cultural accumulation. Her current practice draws from Eastern calligraphic traditions to create what she calls “gestural cartographies” that map the city’s energy. Working with oil, pencil, graphite, mixed media, film, and performance, Freeman has built a practice that spans mediums and continents. Her collaboration with Amy Kaps as the avant-garde duo Hibiscus TV extends this investigation into performance, where transformation and symbiosis become live events rather than static objects.

“The Tie That Binds” pairs Freeman with three other Los Angeles artists whose approaches seem deliberately opposed to hers. Max Presneill creates large-scale abstract paintings that operate as “layered, conceptual arenas” combining graffiti marks with historical references. Georgina Reskala manipulates photographs through folding, sewing, and erasing to destabilize familiar scenes. Andre Woodward incorporates energy in various forms—sound, light, heat, water, plants—into sculptures that invite environmental completion. Freeman’s work emerges from meditative processes rooted in Eastern tradition, while her co-exhibitors embrace more aggressive forms of manipulation and intervention.

The exhibition’s premise suggests that connection transcends technique. Freeman describes her approach as channeling “the energy of the city into gestural cartographies” that feel “both spontaneous and deeply intentional.” Her view encompasses downtown’s rooftops and extends toward the sea, creating what the gallery describes as a “kaleidoscopic web of concrete and celestial canopy.” Whether this expansive vision can cohere with the more targeted interventions of her fellow artists remains the exhibition’s central question.

Art/Space 114 is located at 114 West 4th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90013. The exhibition runs through September 4, 2025 and gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday 2 to 8 pm and Sunday 12 to 6 pm. For more information, click here.

Below follows an email conversation with Kaye Freeman.

JS: “The Tie That Binds” pairs your meditative, Eastern-influenced practice with artists who manipulate their mediums more aggressively. What connections do you see between your gestural cartographies and their more interventionist approaches?

KF: Interesting you ask that because it’s something I’ve pondered myself. I’ve always approached things quietly and through a hidden allegory of sorts. I see the world as a non-binary place. Less black and white and much more rainbow. When I create my art, I see a multiplicity of meanings and approaches. So, to answer your question, I suppose that as humans, we are all trying to make sense of the world around us through allegory and imagery, and we are all different but essentially cut from the same cloth, so that might be the tie that binds us.

JS: You describe your work as channeling downtown Los Angeles’ energy into paintings that span from rooftops to sea. How does this expansive geographical scope relate to your statement about exploring “transformation and symbiosis in the personal self and the collective, psychical environment”?

KF: As is the personal world, so is the outer world. Or as the Buddha said, “with our thoughts we create the world”. I see the city as a living organism interdependent on all its bizarre and beautiful energies. I am fascinated by Los Angeles. The light is perfect for artists, and the energy is like a furnace for creativity. It is here that I’ve been able to reach my full potential as an artist, not just limited to one medium, but a plethora of possibilities that truly excite and stimulate me creatively and personally. Honestly, I don’t think I could make the art I do anywhere else. 

JS: Your background includes classical Western training that you’ve deliberately worked to “unlearn” through Eastern calligraphic traditions. What specific aspects of Western training conflicted with your current approach to abstraction?

KF: In the Eurocentric tradition of art making, the horizon line of a painting is centered somewhere in the painting, in line with the Fibonacci sequence. Although this is still true for Japanese or Chinese art, the vanishing point can be the viewer. In a sense, I’m creating an environment that invites the viewer to be part of the experience. This is very clear in the large-scale drawings. The paintings are on grommets instead of being stretched to remove the notion of “otherness,” and they could be taken off the wall and used as protest banners for the next uprising if need be. The paintings are called The Emperor’s Collection and were made eight years ago, as my fury raged at the government of the time. Even though I am now a citizen, I am still nervous about being too specific about the deeper meaning of each work. Concerning your question, in traditional Western art, the paintings are on stretchers or frames. In my approach, I want the paintings, specifically the Emperor’s Collection, to be artifacts of this moment in history, and I feel like displaying them this way does that..

Hibiscus TV

JS: Hibiscus TV extends your studio practice into performance with Amy Kaps. How does this collaboration change your relationship to the “transformation and symbiosis” you explore in individual work?

KF: In HibiscusTV, we continue to explore these themes but in a three-dimensional way. Maybe even four…..possibly five, who knows?  Our ethos is to never limit ourselves to a perceived paradigm, which allows us to seriously color outside the lines whilst still creating deeply resonant work that is highly relevant and topical. Thinking laterally becomes the norm. Being a part of this collaboration stretches me in so many fabulous new directions. I would encourage any artist who is considering collaboration to take it on, but be sure to leave your ego at the door. 

JS: You mention pushing through “aesthetic norms of acceptability and taste.” Given your extensive exhibition history across Australia, Japan, and the United States, what specific norms are you still encountering resistance from?

KF: The art world goes through phases of vogue. What’s in what’s not, kind of thing.  One of my teachers back in art school, Nigel Thompson, told me to stay away from having a “style,” “don’t get too slick too quickly”. I get what he means now. If you become huge and fashionable too young, then the rest of your life, you are trapped in that cage.  It is also highly skewed towards the aesthetic of rich white people. Especially male aesthetic. I’ve noticed that women often create work that is visionary, challenging, and boundary pushing, and it can become relegated to “weird,” No matter how innovative it is. I believe this to still be true. You only need to look at who is showing in the major galleries. Who and how artists are written about. We still have a long way to go. 

JS: Art/Space 114’s writer-in-residence Shana Nys Dambrot describes your work as existing on both literal and “cosmic” planes. How do you navigate between representing downtown Los Angeles’ concrete reality and exploring more ethereal dimensions?

KF: This is kind of the same answer as I gave in the second question.  When you see the world around you as a breathing entity with bones and muscles and veins and all that stuff, you begin to see how everything is connected. That is what appears in my Downtown series, which is not in this show due to the major triptych being too big. I love making big paintings for some reason. I like to make big work because I experience a sense of expansiveness when I do. One begins to see the relationships between the concrete, asphalt, and humans, and see the intermingling of life. Every day I awake and go to sleep, witnessing the horror and the incandescence of this city. 

You should read the whole interview at James Scarborough’s site: What the Butler Saw.