Conquering ArtSpot’s Damien Hirst Spot Challenge: A Q&A With Alex Noschese About His Victory

Alex Noschese: I first heard about the Spot Challenge on my daily ArtInfo newsletter and was immediately intrigued. However, I had just returned from a trip to Europe for Christmas, didn’t have much money left, and was in need of finding a new job. I’m a film editor so moving from gig to gig is pretty common. I found a gig quickly but had kind of let myself accept that the Spot Challenge wasn’t realistic. That weekend, once the challenge had kicked off, I decided to register just so I could have the special card that gets stamped at each gallery. I’m a big collector and I felt it could at least be something cool to have years from now, plus I live in NYC so I could get 3 of the 11 stamps in a day. I live near the Madison Ave Gagosian so I headed over to get my card. On my way over, the thought of pursuing the challenge was creeping back into my head and I began to see an opportunity to document my potential journey with a film. Ideas started firing off and I became extremely compelled to take this on. I got my first stamp and knew I had to do this. I went home and gathered everything I could sell on eBay, made an estimate of the total value, and realized this may be possible. By the end of that week I had booked all my tickets and was beginning preparations for my journey!

Alex: It felt unbelievable! A Damien Hirst spot print and an iPhone 4S are pretty awesome rewards for traveling around the world in the name of art!

Alex: I did! Though the adventure was satisfying by itself, I felt the need to make the most of this trip by documenting it fully and make it personal. I’m only 24 and a lot of people my age are finding it very hard to find their way in the world after college. I’ve had my own struggles over the past few years but have realized that sometimes you just need to gather your resources and take a risk for something you’re passionate about. The film will focus on this as well as many other things, and I’m hoping it’ll be a tool others can use to see how possible and inexpensive travel can be. The film was also an experiment to see how I could evolve on camera. Though we live in an age where people expose their entire lives on YouTube, that’s not something I’ve ever felt comfortable with. I knew I would need to do this for the film so I pretty much forced myself into it. My first moments talking to the camera are definitely very awkward, but fortunately things got better over time. By the end my journey, the camera was almost part of me. Speaking of the camera, I used a GoPro Hero 2 for the majority of filming, and a Flip and an iPhone 4 for backup. Originally I was thinking I’d need a professional camcorder, but soon realized that would be way too much to carry for the entire trip. For such small cameras, I’m very happy with the footage I got and found several advantages to having small cameras over larger ones.

Alex: I absolutely do. My ultimate goal is to have it sent out to film festivals and see what happens from there. I have a teaser up on Vimeo and will release a few more videos before the film is finished. Here is the link for the film’s Vimeo page:

Alex: It’s hard to say because each one was so different, but I really loved the one in Paris. The people there were so welcoming and the gallery itself was very impressive. The main floor was much like the other large Gagosian spaces, but the upstairs was entirely white (floors, walls, ceiling). A white space with white canvases with a variety of colored spots was definitely overwhelming for the eyes, but created a very cool experience. The majority of the works on the second floor were older spot paintings from the early ’90s. Back then Hirst had the paintings appear factory made from a distance, but up close you could see the imperfections of a painter’s hand, and a mark from the compass in the center of each spot. You could even see the original pencil outline on some spots. You don’t really see this with any of the newer ones because Hirst perfected the technique over the years to where it now looks machine made.

Alex: Definitely quite a few but the most notable may be when I had my ATM card stolen in Paris. I had arrived the night prior and spent my day touring and completing the Paris Gagosian visit. I found a sidewalk ATM and in Paris, the machine sucks the card inside, and then you enter your pin. I didn’t notice the guy behind me had watched my pin… Upon completing the transaction, the card gets spit out before the money. I went to take the card and the guy grabbed it and ran. My initial reaction was to chase him but then I realized my money hadn’t come out yet so I had to stay. I woke up in the morning and had various fraud alerts from my bank. The guy ended up spending all of the money I had left! Thank goodness the bank refunded the money within a week but it was still a major inconvenience for the rest of the trip.

by Stephanie Day