Sky Portal X Gallery Ft. Gregg Fleishman

At the entrance of the Historic District of Los Angeles Fenix enters Sky Portal X for a conversation with Gregg Fleishman. Researching methods of building geometrically since 1972 Fleishmans work can be seen towering over some of the most popular events across the world. In this conversation we will explore the vision of an artist that is continuesly evolving.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi there, I'm Brent Pearson, and I'm here to welcome you to Skyportal X Gallery in downtown Los Angeles. Currently on view, we have the Antidote Collection by Greg Fleischman and featuring some of his more recent geometric explorations along with some custom sculpt chairs with some of the models going back to 2012. The first large sculpture that you see when you walk in is a it's the it's called the Return of the Caterpillar, and it's a it's a truncated octahedron series, and it features Bragg's joinery technique that is uh there's no metal, it's all fitted joinery, sort of like a puzzle, and uh it's also a play structure, a climbing structure. And this is a junior size for for kids ages sort of uh five through eleven to be able to climb through, and and uh yeah, it's a beautiful piece, uh largest piece right as you walk in the gallery.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

Welcome back to another episode of Members Pass Podcast. I am your host, Phoenix L EX. On today's episode, we're doing a gallery visit at Skyportal X in the historic downtown district, literally down the block from Colburn, LA City Hall, and the Grand Central Market. With a new MTA subway terminal footsteps away from the front door, we are literally recording from the corner of Second and Broadway. Today I'm here to check out Greg Fleischmann's antidote exhibition to learn more about the show from the man himself. Let's get into it. Talk to us a little bit about the name of the gallery, Skyportal X. Where what's the origins of that?

SPEAKER_01 1:45

Uh well, we're uh in looking at uh at structure, we're looking at the earth. You know, materials uh wood comes from the earth, uh matter is earth. Uh but in looking at uh uh what we can do with that earth is what we can do is uh what we're doing here anyway is we're building with it. And to build allows us to get up off of the earth and uh you know, approach approach the sky in a way. You know, the portal is is something that you pass through and and change your state, you know. So either you can change your state of mind by passing through this portal that's uh of this uh of this other form. So the forms are interesting in a way, uh you know, in that uh the three-dimensional I mean we can call these things polyhedra, but uh we've we've developed here is an ability not only to to look at these uh forms in three dimensions, but to build with them.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

For those that may not be able to be in the area or listening from another state, for the first time interacting with some of your sculptures, your pieces, your architecture that are here in this space, talk to us. There's no hinges, there's no adhesives other than the wood that I see here that's bonding them together. Talk to us about that technology and how did that come about?

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Uh well, uh, you know, um I started uh my um my career in the um in the concrete uh construction industry. I worked in commercial concrete construction uh off and on for 18 years uh at the beginning, and concrete is a liquid material that pours into a wooden box generally there's some kind of a form. And so I was involved in uh detailing these boxes, these forms for the concrete pours, and that detailing involved uh slotted plywood, and and actually uh uh for the high-rise buildings they used uh a variation of this plywood that I'm still using today, which was uh called uh finform, a variety of of uh birch, um sometimes with a spruce combination of uh form plywood that had this resin film. And it was uh such a great material that I uh started to experiment uh with it in my own my own work as well. This uh this work here is uh is pretty much uh I don't know you could call it uh plywood artistry. Pretty much everything I use is uh plywood, which is a manufactured wood product that uh has uh you know sort of uniform characteristics in both directions of a plane.

SPEAKER_02 4:31

Some of the sculptures that are here in front of us come from a newer sense of approaching the work, and some of the ones that are around may have a different style of um you know mechanism. Is are we looking at two different types of technology uh between the works?

SPEAKER_01 4:47

Well, it's uh it's an evolution of the same technology, really. Uh the newer stuff is uh slightly simpler in uh connection system and it allowed me to go into a new uh you know more more uh complete uh treatment of different shapes. Uh the older technology though uh was a combination of uh of the plywood pod structures and a and a structural frame, and it allowed me to build bigger. So uh so there's uh some of one and some of the other there, but um, you know, it's uh I stopped being quite as uh cute with the assembly of the pod and uh simplified it a bit. And that allowed me to like uh start to consider other ways of putting stuff or other shapes of putting shapes together and and uh the caterpillar uh in here is is uh sort of a completely different uh geometry than uh what I was using uh you know in the uh pod structures and structures I was building for the prior ten years or so.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

When you're creating these pieces, do you generally have a sense of where you would like to see them, or is it more of like, hey, I have this idea and it just needs to be fleshed out?

SPEAKER_01 6:10

I'm pretty much uh focused on on the building itself, just being able to build. So I'm fortunate when I have a destination.

SPEAKER_02 6:20

I did I did want to mention that back in 2013, at the time I was 23 and hanging out in kind of the fashion area off of Melrose and um Fairfax, all the vintage shops and all of that, and I remember the talk of the town was this pyramid that showed up at Burning Man. Talk to us about that time in your career. What was that like?

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Because uh, you know, they're uh they're pretty experimental and uh and uh they're also all about going big, you know. It's about let's build bigger and bigger, and and uh so I was able to uh to combine two systems together. One was this uh space frame structure and and the other was a pod structure and be able to build uh big uh bigger with these uh two things. Uh the 2013 Temple, that was my third uh large structure out there, and that was uh primarily the space frame structure. And we built a six-story tall uh structure, it was uh sixty-three feet tall out of uh you know all wood parts uh as a ceremony ceremonial piece uh for for the for the burn there. And uh you know it was uh it was actually sort of proof of the put in in a way, you know. I got to show uh what I could do with uh with these systems, you know, at a as about as big a scale as uh as anybody would want. And and it uh all uh you know worked pretty well. We put it up, finished a day early. It took uh 15 days to build uh to build the the pyramid. Although we burned it, what that did is it sort of saved us having to, you know, take it down and saved uh having to store it, you know. Storing stuff is a pretty big uh problem.

SPEAKER_02 8:24

Wow. What what are you following up that with uh in 2026? Is there any projects that you have on the horizon now?

SPEAKER_01 8:30

Uh like uh uh the return of the caterpillar here is done with this other geometry. These are now truncated octahedrons. Uh the difference is this is a little simpler uh level of truncation. There's a way of uh you start with these five uh platonic solids, but then you can move into what are called the Archimedean solids, which are uh sort of variations on the forms, and they're variations typically by by cutting off the points of the polyhedra, and that creates another facet.

SPEAKER_02 9:08

Is there any terms that you ha yourself have created?

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Well, you know, I've stopped uh using the terms I've created myself, actually. Uh I I started doing that at the beginning, but uh it was very hard to communicate with people on that. I did uh I did uh you know do a lot of work. I used to give uh what I would call a math lesson, which is also more of a geometry lesson, and uh I found that uh it was very difficult to to convey uh to get interest in this uh lesson and and I resolved that I just had to go ahead and and demonstrate it more effectively. And so that's this new work is demonstrating what's possible.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

I gotta go ahead and get a few words in there for my, you know, aspiring architects. If you can give them a few words of advice, what would he say?

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Uh well this math lesson is all about this one triangle. And it's a triangle with a ratio of one, square root of two, square root of three. And that's what connects uh, you know, all of these different polyhedra together. If you learn that uh angle, it can help help help a lot.

SPEAKER_02 10:22

What does success look like for you here? Is there is there like a goal in mind for you with this space here? I think you mentioned it's two years that you've been here.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

Oh yeah, well, so uh well we're just uh uh you know still formulating. I'm really just working on trying to get these lessons down so that I can teach this thing, you know, because the uh the point here is that uh this this is uh a new way to create structure. And it's a way to create structure in line sort of with a more natural environment. Uh it has uh, you know, this this is more of uh it's not uh organic necessarily, but it's uh you know, it's crystalline. It's like what what minerals do when they consolidate is they form structure along these lines.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

For more information on Skyportal X Gallery, give them a follow at Skyportal X or visit the showroom from Wednesday to Saturday, noon to 6 p.m. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing to the podcast. A special shout out goes out to Evolutionary Media Group. And with that, we conclude this episode. As always, thank you for your time. I am your host, Phoenix L E X, and this is Members Past Podcast.