Urs Fischer

Urs Fischer is a contemporary artist renowned for his experimental and highly unpredictable practice of sculpture, installation, painting, and photography. He often uses unconventional materials, such as wax, bread, and everyday objects, which he employs to explore themes of transformation, impermanence, and creative destruction, allowing his works to transform or decay over time. Fischer’s work, influenced by movements like Surrealism and Pop Art, is marked by a dynamic interplay between construction and deconstruction, permanence and ephemerality, inviting audiences to reconsider the boundaries of art and the fleeting nature of existence. Fischer has held major solo exhibitions at institutions such as Kunsthaus Zürich, the New Museum in New York, Palazzo Grassi in Venice, MOCA in Los Angeles, and galleries including Sadie Coles HQ in London and Gagosian locations worldwide—most recently at Gagosian Gstaad in Switzerland. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: LMNT Electrolytes https://DrinkLMNT.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Athletic Nicotine https://www. AthleticNicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Squarespace https://Squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Rick Rubin?

  Tetragrammaton.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Where does art come from? Where does anything come from? Like, why do I have a thought after I had, after the next thought, after the next thought? Like, why does it move in one direction? And why do you wanna make another thing and another thing? And where does that come from that comes to you? And some of it becomes more mysterious. And other things become, like, to take on a kind of form that I understand better. Like, I, I think recently a lot about vectors. First of all, I was working with this kid and we use a lot of vectors into design stuff.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  And if you have a vector, it never makes an abrupt move. Like, if you pull it here, it goes there. There is something to a vector. It's like a wave. And I even feel that at the moment, like breathing or whatever, or tension in the body. You feel this and you're like, how there is a, what I kinda like about the vector at the moment is there is a linear direction of movement to this, you know? That I often think when you make stuff that it is on a, not on a line, but more on a moving thing.

• 1:47Rick Rubin?

  It's like rolling through?

• 1:49Speaker 01

  I think it's more like on a wave or on something, but it's the same in your mind. Like, what makes your mind wanna have the next thought after you've just?

• 2:01Speaker 01

  It keeps going.

• 2:03Rick Rubin?

  Or even the first thought, where does it come from? I know in my case, sometimes there'll be a trigger. It'll be in reaction to something.

• 2:13Rick Rubin?

  But I don't know what the nature of that reaction is. You know, I'll hear something. An idea will pop into my head in reaction to something. But they might not be related at all. And I don't see the connection.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27Rick Rubin?

  But I know without that trigger, I wouldn't have had the thought.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. With some of the making, like, what's interesting about what keeps work interesting to me is that you never know. Because there are things, when you express yourself with your hands, that are not

• 2:49Speaker 01

  clear where they come from. They just come kind of out of a knowledge of a hand. I'm sure it's the same with instruments. All like, all it's like, it's just another part of your body you can use. And

• 3:03Speaker 01

  like, how all these parts of your body can play together. And then I get obsessed.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Once I'm like on something, I'm like, I've become like driven to the point where when I go to bed, I've dreamed about this stuff. Then I know I need to slow down.

• 3:22Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Do you think of yourself as a researcher in that way?

• 3:25Speaker 01

  I always absorb any kind of information I find.

• 3:29Rick Rubin?

  Do you research things online? How do you do your?

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Anything, I buy a lot of books, like almost every day or every couple of days I buy books.

• 3:39Rick Rubin?

  What would be the range of subjects?

• 3:41Speaker 01

  Books primarily art books with pictures in them. I never read text, I just look at the images like I'm like image, image, image, image.

• 3:51Rick Rubin?

  What about like engineering books or mechanical things?

• 3:55Speaker 01

  I buy books about plants. I buy like, for example, I bought a book about pines. That was kind of interesting because there was actually a pine cone. You have these pines here, two different ones, but there is one here that only opens in a fire.

• 4:09Rick Rubin?

  I didn't know that.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  So the sap closes the pine cone. So nobody can steal the seeds. And they pop open in a fire. And then afterwards, the brush is cleared and they have fertile ground. And that's how they're, they think is their biggest way of success is starting there, you know? Things like that.

• 4:31Rick Rubin?

  I was researching pine cones this week also.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  No, I can say in this book about pines, it's really good. It's actually, once you get hooked on those, there is, it's about every kind of plant. There is one I have about the roses. One of my favorite things is grass. I love grass, you know? Because grass is, is like leaves, you know? They all look different. They're all the same, you know, but they all have that little individual something, you know? They express themselves in, in different ways or.

• 5:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. And when you look close, there's a lot going on in grass.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:12Rick Rubin?

  There's a lot of life happening.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  And it's beautiful.

• 5:17Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  Maybe smart, you know, palms are grass, you know that?

• 5:21Rick Rubin?

  I didn't know that.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're grass. So that's why they grow a thing and they have that. So the coconuts must in this case be seeds, not nuts. And coconuts, for example, like that's the kind of research. So coconut, in a way, I have to coconut the beaches because the coconut is a self-contained thing. It has all its nutrients and everything. It floats on the ocean. And then gets washed up and it can sprout while it floats on the ocean for three, four months. And it can sprout there and start to grow with a, like its own little island that then gets washed ashore in a storm weather. And it gets, why you have coconut trees on the beach.

• 5:57Rick Rubin?

  That's fascinating.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  I mean, it's totally, once you start looking at that stuff, you're like, wow.

• 6:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Yeah, I think recognizing those patterns are really helpful if you're making things. Just knowing how some things work. Yeah. It's helpful.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  And nature works.

• 6:16Rick Rubin?

  I mean, I'm just in awe, lifelong, forever awe.

• 6:24Rick Rubin?

  Is all art essentially a conversation with what came before?

• 6:29Speaker 01

  I think it's a conversation with what's before and it's a

• 6:34Speaker 01

  it's a passing on.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  The way I always understood it is you get something, I mean, basically, when I was a teenager, I realized at some point you can jump in to art. You know, so there was somewhere with a good library and I went there and you can say you can just hop on that train, you know? And then it starts expanding very fast, like any new field you get in at that age, but you're like wow, you just see the, you see the whole line and you're part of anything that was ever made, you can become part of that.

• 7:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  And in that, I believe that it's basically you just pass on and by passing it on, you pass it through you. And so it's more about passing on than about the past in a way, because nothing lives if it's not remembered.

• 7:24Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 7:26Rick Rubin?

  And the idea that it's going by whether you participate or not. You choose to get involved, but if you don't, it's going.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  It's going anyway.

• 7:36Rick Rubin?

  You know, it's going.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:37Rick Rubin?

  Was there a library that first caught your attention?

• 7:40Speaker 01

  I think the first library caught my attention is my grandparents had art books, you know, from a series, maybe a subscription, you get one a month for like Caravaggio, the Dida. And because they were not the good books, they were like low. You know, they were like on the bottom shelf.

• 7:58Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, and you can reach them.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  You can reach them and you look at all these pictures and you don't know anything makes any sense. And mainly in there, there was always this Bruegel, Bruegel and Hieronymus Bosch, these two, these images, when you look at them as a kid, they go a little deep.

• 8:15Rick Rubin?

  Do you remember looking at the images and not knowing what they meant or not understanding them?

• 8:19Speaker 01

  I know there was one painting that had, actually my grandparents, they had a print reproduction of one painting, of I think a Bruegel painting, and they had, there were people, they were sitting in some kind of taverna restaurant, on some benches, and they were wearing hats, and then they had dishes, plates, and there was, one plate was with something red on it, and some were with something white on it. And I was always thinking of, like, you don't know what it is, the food, but you don't even think how it tastes. It's just, there is something in there, there is this red and this white plate. Maybe it was a formal thing, or maybe it meant something, but you just like, you get fascinated or hung up with weird stuff.

• 9:04Rick Rubin?

  You didn't know why it was. Why weren't they all the same?

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, or why they were two. I mean, it's, the way, it's kind of similar to, you know, how the brain goes to places, like, you don't know why for a month you think about a particular place thirty years back, a particular time, and there is no real connection. It's not, oh, you had a revelation or saw something interesting. If you just were waiting somewhere, or like, you know, and how you go to that other place in your brain.

• 9:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  And it's like, what are you?

• 9:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, what's happening?

• 9:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:46Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, so much of it is both out of our control, but even out of our understanding, it's dreamlike.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I don't even know about the understanding anymore.

• 9:58Rick Rubin?

  Do you try to understand or no?

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Sure. I mean, I try to make sense, but, but it's also like you're... Actually, continues the conversation I had with this boxing coach. He was saying, you know, like, when you stop fighting life, your life is good.

• 10:15Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Which I find is a very interesting thing, coming from an old boxer, you know?

• 10:20Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Tell me, in your view, the evolution of art over time.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  I'm not sure there is one. I don't think art got better.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  If that makes sense, you know, I don't. I couldn't really say there is something like, um. I was just trying to think like an analogy to music and when I thought of music from the medieval times, I used to have a Hildegard from being in a CD and you can listen to this beautiful, but it's not. You don't really know how to integrate that so much in your daily life and like things that think music allows a lot of stuff in the ways to celebrate life and I'm not sure art really like visual art, if you frame it like that narrowly, added that much more to it, you know? I mean, maybe it did. I like old stuff.

• 11:10Rick Rubin?

  Me too.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  And I like new stuff too, but it's kind of, you know, if you think of your work in images and one analogy, the way I always look at it is if you drive, whatever comes at you

• 11:26Speaker 01

  is new, that's the new and new is always about new. And it's instantaneous and you try to understand or sort it. And then there is the the blind spot, the thing that's not new. It's not a threat. You don't need to sort it out. So it becomes kind of uninteresting. And you stop seeing it, you know? And then there is the rearview mirror and in the rearview mirror, things get compacted and they become an image. And once you have the image, it's like you're free to just look at it because it's not coming at you. So then you can kind of just be in this image, like for example, here when we look at this John Chamberlain, it's the guy is not alive anymore.

• 12:10Rick Rubin?

  In the analogy of driving and what's coming towards you, are you saying that the things that you notice are the things that are new? In other words, if you drove the same route every day.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:21Rick Rubin?

  A lot of what you see would become background wallpaper and you wouldn't notice it anymore. But if there's something that's not there every day, that's the new thing.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  That's the new thing or it's a threat. I mean, new is also fear. You got to make sure you survive. So like, let's say I was just on the freeway and I didn't see that big sheet of metal getting under our car, but it's like then it's there very quickly. And but if you see that, then that maybe doesn't happen. Like you always, you know?

• 12:50Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Would you say that you notice things in everyday life? And they work their way into your work or not necessarily?

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Everything.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  I'm an omnivore.

• 13:03Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Like, I'm not, I don't have a practice. Like, my practice is just doing things.

• 13:08Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, just making things or doing things?

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Both. Like, making things, thinking about things, doing things. I just like, I just love it. Calms me down somehow, gives me something to do or... I don't have a big plan.

• 13:26Rick Rubin?

  How would you say sculpture works different than other forms, if it does?

• 13:34Speaker 01

  I don't know. All I learned is you compete with reality or you're partaking, like, reality in a way of a spatial. And an image has, usually, I think why images have frames or borders are because it's like, you enter it and it's, it's not a real thing. It's like an image. And then in an image, everything is possible. But in, when you make a sculpture, it's, you're kind of bound by the physical world. If, as one approach, you know, to understand it. I don't know. It just needs to, it needs to communicate with the physical world, you know,

• 14:15Speaker 01

  in a different way than an image does. An image is also scalable more, like, let's say you can look at an image, a photograph, you know, this. An image is more in the mind and that's, I haven't not figured it out, but I, I do like that challenge.

• 14:30Rick Rubin?

  With sculpture, do you always make it knowing where it's gonna be or no?

• 14:35Speaker 01

  No. I try to always make it that it can be anywhere where it wants to be, that it's independent. Everything, you know, everything is synergy. And often unbeknownst to us, like,

• 14:51Speaker 01

  the extent of what synergy does, what you find, what you give yourself permission to, to engage in or something. So, like, let's say the simplest way to explain it, when I work with somebody, their psyche limits what I do.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  And their psyche expands what I do, or my understanding of their psyche. I don't know exactly like how to quantify that, but with certain people, you take certain risks.

• 15:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  With certain people in, maybe there is a moment in your life and the moment in their life where things make sense, like, I think the best way I ever experienced that was I made a show with Gavin Brown. I don't know, you know, who he is.

• 15:38Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  So I was in a phase, I wanted to make a show where I show less than there was there before.

• 15:45Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  And I started to remove in my mind a little bit of the space. And then I just thought I'd take the slab out of the floor. And then I thought, why stop there? Let's just keep digging in my mind. So I felt like we'd take as much as we can out. And at the same time Gavin was open, but he's also three months earlier, his mother passed. So I think we were both for two different reasons in an emotional state where that kind of made sense. I would not think about doing a show like this with other people I work with, you know? Just because it's not, it's not there, you know?

• 16:26Speaker 01

  And that's more something in hindsight, I realize, oh, this or this person is kind of careful and very business oriented. And so you kind of meet and you act up somehow, you know, it's like,

• 16:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  You don't realize how it is. Now I pay more attention like out of the gate if it doesn't feel right. Or you, you can use that as an interesting adventure to work with somebody as long as you have your boundaries in the right place. That's okay, you know?

• 16:59Rick Rubin?

  Tell me more about the digging. That's a really interesting idea. It starts with an idea and do you necessarily know what's gonna happen?

• 17:07Speaker 01

  It's not an idea, it was more a feeling. The feeling is I've made so many shows, I didn't want to show some. And also at the time, it felt so like the whole art thing, that was before, a year before the 2008 crash, you know? But it felt so kind of heated up.

• 17:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  The feeling was more, you want to do the opposite.

• 17:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. You said take away.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Take away, show nothing, but can you show nothing and show something?

• 17:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Or show less?

• 17:35Rick Rubin?

  And do you think you were digging up? Or looking for what was underneath? Digging could mean a lot of things, you know?

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, for me, what it was.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  It was more about like something, for lack of better words, about like something soul. And something that's in deeper, you know?

• 18:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, going inside.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Going inside, like digging deeper in a good and a bad way, you know? Like, not needing to qualify that, but just like wanting to know more or needing more or whatever it is, just like going in.

• 18:14Rick Rubin?

  Just in a practical way, you couldn't do it on the third floor of a museum?

• 18:18Speaker 01

  No.

• 18:19Rick Rubin?

  It it only works on the ground floor?

• 18:21Speaker 01

  It works on the ground floor, yeah. Yeah, I mean, without a basement.

• 18:25Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, without a basement?

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:27Rick Rubin?

  And was it dirt underneath?

• 18:29Speaker 01

  It was just dirt. I think that part of the West Village is landfill or Greenwich Village. I don't know what exactly it is.

• 18:34Rick Rubin?

  Where did it happen?

• 18:35Speaker 01

  Bottom of West Village, Greenwich and Leroy, like some of that.

• 18:40Rick Rubin?

  Downtown.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  And then, cause this fantasy, like buildings totally disappear, like a gallery would not be there anymore. And a few years later, I walked by that same gallery where I made the show and they tore it down to build a.

• 18:53Rick Rubin?

  It's too bad you could have put your name on it. If you only knew.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Exactly, you know, they do it for you.

• 19:02Rick Rubin?

  It's amazing. Does it ever happen that way where? Conditions come together seemingly on their own?

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Yes, if it works out, I mean, who knows, but like if it feels right, it feels right. And then you don't, they all sync up somehow.

• 19:23Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Do you have a name for the paintings with the fruit or vegetables over the faces?

• 19:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're problem paintings is what I.

• 19:32Rick Rubin?

  Problem paintings.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Well, I don't really know. I mean, I later, I was not so much aware of that when I started with it. I mean, it has a few different origins in some ways.

• 19:44Rick Rubin?

  Who was the very first one?

• 19:45Speaker 01

  The very first one was, there were some kind of Frankenstein. Monsters and I just I love this image of this Frankenstein and

• 19:55Rick Rubin?

  The whole body or the portrait?

• 19:57Speaker 01

  It was a portrait, there was some kind of, some of them torso and I just always liked that character. You know?

• 20:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Somehow, so that started with that, but the images I collected is I had, there was this teenage boy that was the cousin of or the nephew of my girlfriend at time and I got him some kind of, you know, one of these gator figurine, there was a hand with an eye in it or something like that. And I made a package for him like a, you know, gift wrapping. And I wanted to make it cooler and I kind of just printed out these monsters because of the monster to make as a gift wrapping paper. And then I started working with these images. I didn't know what to do with them until I put some kind of metal things on them first.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  But there is a lot of origins for me like the, I once had a friend or somebody, I, I didn't keep contact and he took some drugs. And I think he was psychotic and he, when he left the house. One day started to have a tiny little colored dot smack in the middle, wherever he looked. And over a month, that dot expanded to a size where he couldn't function anymore. Cause he couldn't see a door handle or a car and on the beginning.

• 21:19Rick Rubin?

  What started as a dot of color expanded to take over his field of vision.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so slowly every day it expanded more so till he couldn't function anymore.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  And then I don't know, I think he went to some place to get help, you know?

• 21:34Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  So in a way, that's something I always felt this obstruction of like any form of obstruction between you and this. And then later on, I, I, I realized, oh, I saw that all my life. There is this Magritte paintings that were going to this, I'm like, oh. That's probably plays a huge part in it, but at that point I was already kind of had my own fun with it, so.

• 21:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  And I'm, I'm okay with, you know.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  I think it's something else if you look at something and you copy it like, or you just land in the same place, or subconsciously maybe you're influenced. I think that's all fair game.

• 22:11Rick Rubin?

  For sure.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  Then I just thought in some way, I grew up in, you know, the seventies as a cadent. There were still a lot of black and white movies on the TV. And there were still this kind of older movie stars and they were interesting to me, not because, they were interesting, they were just interesting because they were like, perfect. They were these self-contained things, you know what I mean?

• 22:38Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. You think because you only saw them in black and white?

• 22:41Speaker 01

  Maybe that's a big thing. I think there's a lot of reasons that only black and white there. I think it's from a different time or it's before counterculture in this way or where you, I mean, you see how people look in photographs. And they're just kind of perfected. I think it's the way the, the whole,

• 23:02Speaker 01

  like, a lot of things worked at that time, you know, it's like this, maybe smoothing over some cracks in the whole thing or.

• 23:09Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  But in, in some way, the way they were photographed, they, they look like empty, but they look like so much.

• 23:16Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  But it's not them. It's never them. It's just like this thing and then that has some form of

• 23:23Speaker 01

  expression or beauty, almost like a Greek statue in a way. I mean, there is a link if you look at horse pee horse photography.

• 23:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Or like this kind of idealization or this light and whatever, like, it's kind of like this. It's just these things where they don't get in the way. So I realized when you use images like that, they don't interfere because it's not a person who is like, like, they don't need anything.

• 23:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  They're made to not need.

• 23:52Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  They're made for you to project on and, you know, I, I always liked still life photography. I like to look at stuff up close and. And then I I realized, like, for example, that a fruit is much more timeless than these people, you know what I mean?

• 24:09Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Like, I asked my sixteen year old daughter about four years ago when she was twelve, she and her friends were there. So somehow, does anybody know who Marilyn Monroe is? One said, yes, I heard about her. And then so Elvis, the same girl said, yes, the other one, no clue, you know, this is like the idea of iconography and like how and popular culture.

• 24:31Rick Rubin?

  Short-lived.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Very short-lived. Now with all the YouTube, like how these references are like just

• 24:40Speaker 01

  like out the window.

• 24:41Rick Rubin?

  If the first one was Frankenstein, what ended up on top of Frankenstein?

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Metal. One was a some kind of galvanized pipe.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Like a plumbing pipe, you know, and then the other was a bent spoon.

• 24:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Maybe it was inspired by a kid like Uri Geller, you know.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Exactly, like a bent spoon. And then one was another piece of metal conduit kind of thing, you know.

• 25:12Rick Rubin?

  And did it turn into a format? Like, are they in a series where the size is similar?

• 25:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. It became like that.

• 25:19Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  And then I, you know, I still sometimes get back into it. Then I have fun doing like two, three, and then I'm.

• 25:27Rick Rubin?

  Do you have other series like that? I've seen like the metal boxes.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  They were all done at the same time, the metal boxes. That's different. That was.

• 25:36Rick Rubin?

  That's one period of time.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that's I don't really have, do I? There's some paintings I make on the iPad, like things that come out of like, you know, just out of living with certain devices or toys, you know, like whatever you have. Then there are there are some other things where it's more serial. I think you don't even have to worry about it because you're so limited as a human being, you will always

• 26:05Speaker 01

  in the end make exactly what you do.

• 26:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:09Rick Rubin?

  Would you say a lot of decision goes into what you make? Or is it more it just happens?

• 26:18Speaker 01

  I try to be somewhat disciplined, but within each thing. And I believe in that, not in a shinto way, but the thing has somewhat its own life and logic and wants to go where it goes. And you can, you can guide, you can follow, and you can make it grow, but you cannot force.

• 26:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  And then when I realized like there are two things at play, then I try to shave one of them out. Like often there is, you come from into something and then there was actually two, three things that are there. And you just try to somewhat.

• 26:55Rick Rubin?

  Say focus it?

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Focus it or let it be one thing, not three things at once. And then that sometimes leads to something boring. And sometimes it's more exciting. But it's like you let it do its own thing. It's some form of editing, but I think it's a pre-editing. It's not that you edit at the end. You kind of edit as you go or before or long.

• 27:18Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Typically, when you have an idea for an edit and you do the edit, are you ever surprised by what happens?

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Sometimes, sometimes in a positive way. And sometimes more with the sculpture stuff, it's in a pretty

• 27:40Speaker 01

  kind of not disappointment, but sobering.

• 27:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Like from your high, when you think this is great. And then you have the thing and it's like kind of, okay.

• 27:50Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  That doesn't look right.

• 27:52Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. And does that just mean time to keep working on it? Or does it mean discard it and make a new thing?

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Usually I put it aside.

• 28:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Do you put things aside and come back around to them later? See into them anew later on?

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Well, sometimes you also just not a piece with, I don't know what it is. Sometimes you're not a piece with anything you do. And you, or I, for me, then I, I don't like it. When it's the same when I make a book or a show or whatever. I'm really excited most of the way through with some dips. And when it's all coming together, I usually cannot walk into that show again.

• 28:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  I have a really complicated relationship with that. And then in hindsight, like the more time passes back to this rearview mirror thing. It's like the more I can also embrace that. And actually, sometimes even think that's, that's cool. Wow. You know, like, but it takes, it takes me a really long time to find some connection, you know?

• 28:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. When you're making it, you're probably too close to it.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:00Rick Rubin?

  But with time, you can see it like a spectator.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  More so.

• 29:05Rick Rubin?

  More so.

• 29:07Rick Rubin?

  Do you ever see something new, like years later in a piece that you didn't realize why you liked something? And then years later, you come to like, now I understand.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Oh, a lot, yeah. That's kind of, that's, uh, some of it is also like, who was the guy that made this? Like, that, that's the, the other encounter I had.

• 29:28Rick Rubin?

  It can feel totally foreign.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  It feels foreign or the, you kind of have a, like, I kind of know where I was at somewhat.

• 29:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  You're not really there anymore and you don't really know. Or you see it maybe a little more forgiving with that guy that once was. And so you can see that that guy tried to do this. And then that lets you look up the thing.

• 29:50Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  You know, somehow.

• 29:53Rick Rubin?

  Every the other way where it's like, wow, that guy was great. I wish I could do what he does.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Oh, there is a, there's a lot of stuff I could never do again.

• 30:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 30:01Speaker 01

  That I wish I, I don't know, not in a, not in a way of like lose any sleep over it. But it's more like.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  There's sometimes like an innocence or a coolness or like a freshness or a light, nothing like, just like um way down or.

• 30:22Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, now you know a lot more than you did then. And that can either be helpful or it can completely undermine.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  That can do everything, yeah. Well, I'll take that over the other thing at any second.

• 30:33Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't think there was ever a day in my life where I wanted to go a day back.

• 30:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  And it's weird how that just happens. Like, I think most people feel somewhat this way and you just how you would never wanna trade back. I'm unsure of the body and stuff like that. It's kind of not so fun.

• 30:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  But even that, you know.

• 31:02Rick Rubin?

  Would you say all the work in some way is biographical?

• 31:09Speaker 01

  I think it's inevitable personally. That's my opinion. There's a lot of different thoughts from different people, but I think biographical energy plays into anything you do.

• 31:20Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  It's maybe self synergy or whatever. But you know, it's like there is not just you doing the thing. There is you doing the thing, you know.

• 31:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  And I do like a practice where you just

• 31:40Speaker 01

  do whatever comes your way.

• 31:42Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Then I have friends that have this practice where they do this thing. They do and they do this thing for decades and if I envision myself like you do this thing, you go in there for 10 hours a day and you do this thing.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  What is that thing? But maybe within that, there is a lot of room.

• 32:08Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  For also biographical little things. It's just maybe it's not as loud, it's maybe not as screaming, it's not like as raw, maybe it's, I don't know what it is, but it's fascinating to me. And that's also, I think you see that more with people that have an image, so to speak, you know, like you know what they do, the stance, it's like a there's a clear representation of one, one thing, you know, when you think about art, one thing I'm fascinated about it is like, I like oevers, I don't like individual artworks much, you know, but I like what somebody did in their entire life.

• 32:47Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  That's interesting.

• 32:49Rick Rubin?

  The body of work.

• 32:50Speaker 01

  The whole body of work with their bad years, the good years, the interesting, the whole package.

• 32:57Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  I think is, is where the real power lies for me in

• 33:03Speaker 01

  art. Like, it's a kind of a package I find not so clearly in other arts.

• 33:12Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  And in that, there is this thing where, you know, there is always this idea of authenticity. Somebody can be very greedy and corrupt and just makes things for money. But that's authentic.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  You have a very authentic person trying to make a little step into a commercial thing and they lose everything they have. And it's just because it's not authentic to, to them. And you see that in a as one, this is just one fragment you see, like, and if you look at somebody's entire life of everything they do and when it comes to an image, you see like, one of my best or closest experience I have, like where I with art, where it's really positive because I'm not always liking it, is I go into a beautiful

• 34:04Speaker 01

  Retrospective show somewhere. And I walk out and I see things differently.

• 34:12Rick Rubin?

  You see the world differently after experiencing that?

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Yes, so it adds something to how I see or how what you pay attention to or what you just how you experience things, you know?

• 34:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. To be like reading someone's biography, the equivalent to that would be going to their show, seeing their lives work.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:34Rick Rubin?

  And you're getting a sense of how they see the world.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's in a more visual, like, non-verbal way.

• 34:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  And I, that's something, I'm always drawn logically, I mean, I just like shapes and colors, you know? For whatever reason, we have different preferences as people.

• 34:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  It just, somebody saw it for you and then helps you see it in a way.

• 35:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, you see a new possibility maybe.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, or you just, you understand some, you know? And that's more of an image. If that makes sense.

• 35:13Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  I often think if you're more all over the place, what is your image here?

• 35:20Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  You know?

• 35:22Rick Rubin?

  You remember the first time you had the experience of seeing a retrospective of an artist and feeling changed by it?

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, totally.

• 35:28Rick Rubin?

  What was the first one?

• 35:29Speaker 01

  As a semi-grown up, like, about seventeen or eighteen, I saw Bruce Naaman's show and I didn't know who that is and I walked in there and there were these clowns screaming and some shit moving and you're like, I really felt that, I was like, what the fuck is this? You know, like, you see things in a way you've never experienced them before.

• 35:51Rick Rubin?

  You say you had no context for it?

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Zero, very little, you just walked in and you're like.

• 35:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. With, there's no context, it could go either way, like, it could be the coolest thing you've ever seen or the first instinct could be, I don't know what this is, I don't like it, you know?

• 36:08Speaker 01

  But that's two feelings.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  I mean, a lot of things you don't like, they're kind of the same as the things you like.

• 36:16Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 36:19Rick Rubin?

  They have some charge that you're reacting to.

• 36:23Rick Rubin?

  When you were describing the energy before, there's a piece in the room and there's energy. Is the energy in the piece? Or is the energy in you reacting to the piece?

• 36:37Speaker 01

  There is a, I remember, but I was a little older. I was maybe like eighteen or nineteen. I was in the National Gallery in London. And there is this first room. You come in with all these impressionist paintings, like Van Gogh, sunflowers, a Syrah, a Bafour from whatever, you know. And you can stand there and you watch. Everybody that, most people that came in had a reaction to a recording of some pigment and binder on canvas that has been placed in a specific place.

• 37:10Rick Rubin?

  Yep.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  And logically, it's just molecules and whatever.

• 37:15Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  But everybody had a reaction. So that would make it a perpetual mobiley of sorts. Because everybody can take energy out and only once energy has been put in.

• 37:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  And it doesn't stop giving the energy. And I think that's probably something that has to do with the ability. I mean, you're way more knowledgeable. But anything you can record has that chance of being encountered again and again and again. So in what is it? It's in the recording. In this case, when it's molecules. I mean, I have no idea. But I do, I mean, I do know that that's, some things feel good, for example. But it's not just a visual experience. Some things feel good, some things look good, some things smell good.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  And that's definitely like stuff that is in there or taste good.

• 38:14Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  You know?

• 38:15Rick Rubin?

  You think it all relates back to nature?

• 38:18Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 38:19Rick Rubin?

  Is nature our blueprint for what looks good and tastes good? Or not necessarily?

• 38:25Speaker 01

  I think, I mean, like beauty?

• 38:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  I'm I'm fascinated with nature. I I I have so many different plants. I'm I'm like, like I have new plants every week. My garden is like full of plants. And I'm fascinated because it grows out of very little. Like even airplanes, I have airplanes that like grows out of nothing.

• 38:52Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  Little light, little, I don't know, little water. And they leave more behind than they take. They sort it out with each other. They always figure it out who grows what, but it seems. And then some of them have blossoms. And where you have the blossoms, then you attract insects and you attract birds. Some little hummingbirds, whatever, like, you know. And then the blossoms communicate and the blossom is like, I don't know the history of blossoms, I've once reading up about it like magnolias and this. So it became a way of like means of transport or like procreation in a way. And like flowers, even in nature are, they stand out.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  I mean, to us and to any insect, you could just watch they they go, they all know and how they smell. And when you watch an animal, usually they walks, they they're gay, so graceful. They're cold. I mean, it's just divine, you know?

• 39:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  And they don't make mistakes really or something. They're not confused and like you just see them doing their thing. And it's hard to imagine that beauty is not.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  It's not a part of all of it, or that it's just our perception, you know? In my feeling, it it is also, you know, like, let's say you look at an iPhone.

• 40:22Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  That's kind of the best we can do.

• 40:25Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  You know?

• 40:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  And it's really like amazing what they managed to put in there. I mean, like in so many ways, like. But you look at, I like to look at leaves a lot.

• 40:37Rick Rubin?

  Mm hmm.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  You know?

• 40:38Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  And just how that all works and it makes it all out of nothing and then it disappears and how everything works together and then from. Whatever microbes and really like all the crazy stuff we don't even understand. But like how smart that design is.

• 40:55Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  And then how clumsy.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Everything else feels like that we, our achievements, you know, a toilet bowl or like whatever, you know, it has the right water flow to flush or like, you know, it's like, I made this.

• 41:10Rick Rubin?

  It's totally barbaric in comparison.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Exactly. To every little bug is like, I mean, I watch ants.

• 41:17Rick Rubin?

  Miraculous.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  I mean, the ants, then I see the ants carrying like some stuff.

• 41:22Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, big stuff, little ants carrying big things.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  And then you see them communicating, like how they go around and

• 41:31Speaker 01

  and then you see people trying to communicate.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  You know?

• 41:38Rick Rubin?

  It's difficult.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  It's very difficult.

• 41:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, I don't think words do justice to the experience.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  No, as a human, you're born early.

• 41:50Rick Rubin?

  Explain.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  I think because from somebody told me, my sister told me, who studied biology and zoology and whatever. So because we walk upright, we come out a little early for the size of mammal we are, you know? And but we can afford that to

• 42:08Speaker 01

  kind of rear our children slowly and and then if you think it takes eighteen years to be able to go out into the world, kind of, you know? Till you learn all these complicated social norms and all that. And I was recently at the dentist and I had this video playing of this octopus. You know, it's just one of these underwater films and it's just like this, he was so freaking smart and beautiful and how he moved. I was like, then I was thinking about like me raising my two daughters and how complicated it is. Attitude from a teenager, all you're like, what good does that?

• 42:50Speaker 01

  Do actually, you know what I'm saying?

• 42:52Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  Like this level of complication to everything. And our interactions, like, what is it?

• 43:01Rick Rubin?

  It starts with us deciding we know the right way to do it, which is a real question mark, you know, who knows?

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, that's just a feeling. When you think you're right, that's usually a feeling, you know?

• 43:15Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Who knows? And what's right for you and what's right for me might not be the same. And what's right for us might not be right for someone on the other side of the world. It's impossible to know, like, there's too many conditions that dictate everything.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Or what you think is right for you is actually wrong for you.

• 43:33Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  Like.

• 43:34Rick Rubin?

  And we know many of our friends are like this.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, I'm like this.

• 43:41Rick Rubin?

  Or the fact that if we were alive 200 years ago, it would be a whole different set of rules.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know. Not even that long ago.

• 43:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, less.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  I always remember that my parents said it was difficult to rent an apartment because they were not married.

• 43:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  Like, and then you think, oh, what the fuck?

• 43:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  What do you care?

• 44:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. And in other parts of the world, the rules could be completely different. How many places have you lived in the world?

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Just Europe and here. So it's, in Europe, it's the differences are kind of there, but it's not like.

• 44:14Rick Rubin?

  Closer than everywhere else.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I never lived in Latin countries in Europe, so it's like, that's a different culture, I think. I lived in, I grew up in Switzerland, then I lived in England, which was more different than, at some point, I ended up in Berlin a bit. And then I lived in Amsterdam. I mean, I was 19, I moved there. So the first place I moved to, because I thought it's kind of smaller. I can manage.

• 44:39Rick Rubin?

  So Amsterdam was the first place you moved?

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't speak any English, so I had, my English was from liner notes. With a dictionary, so it kind of was not.

• 44:50Rick Rubin?

  Was Amsterdam a good experience?

• 44:52Speaker 01

  I had a really good time and it's, it's, you know, it was a sweet size of a city. You know, when you're kind of alone and you go out and you're, you don't really know what you.

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Want.

• 45:03Rick Rubin?

  Did you already know you were gonna do art or no?

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah. I just like doing things. So I did like photography and some art stuff before and I worked. Well, the theater was interesting to me. Like I worked with with that a bit and. Then when I went to Amsterdam, yeah, I thought I'm doing art. Then I bumped into some guy, told me there is a school that gives you money and the studio.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  And then I went to that school.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  And knocked on the door. And I had some drawings I made, so I put the drawings in a box and the night before I walked back. A woman walked by, it was heavily perfumed and I just thought that's kind of a good way to get attention. So I put all this perfume on my application, you know, so you have a little factory thing. So that's what, you know.

• 45:51Rick Rubin?

  Interesting.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  And then they called, you know, on the phone, home and like they called, say, yeah, you can come in and then uh. Then I went there and and they said somebody just left because they had like ten people a year.

• 46:03Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  So it's like some postgraduate program. And.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  I know it was not postgraduate, I was nineteen and and just didn't really finish anything before. And this, then that was kind of my introduction. Then I first timed out with people that were. Educated through art schools and so on.

• 46:24Rick Rubin?

  Was that good or bad?

• 46:25Speaker 01

  That was very uh enlightening.

• 46:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  And I'm glad I did, I didn't start there.

• 46:32Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  For me, it felt like a shock. So you see, there were some dudes that were totally. Back then, I think there was just the tail end of Julian Schnabel being like a dominating figure.

• 46:43Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Painting and perception for younger people. And there were these few older dudes that were kind of like fighting to be like this. Kind of very masculine, large canvas guys. And then there were some. People that had some conceptual things and some people painted some figuration. Each had their little pocket and they knew exactly what they do and. They had an idea of a career path or the gallery or a museum, like it was all educated. And if you were. Uh, come in. Through the side door, you can just look at it. You're not like in it.

• 47:19Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  And I'm really glad I did.

• 47:22Rick Rubin?

  Would you say you've always felt like an outsider?

• 47:27Speaker 01

  I don't know, never thought about it this way.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  But I think of it a little bit the other way around. I think this is a lot of this education and this stuff is kind of alien.

• 47:38Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 47:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, you're saying.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  I think it's to celebrate your life and I don't understand in various forms. I don't understand this need to quantify that.

• 47:50Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  As a lot of education in the arts does, I mean.

• 47:55Rick Rubin?

  It's not as free as you see the possibilities. Is that a way to say it?

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's very narrow.

• 48:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  Like, some of it is extremely narrow. I don't know why one would wanna engage in that.

• 48:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, I guess if you believe that's what it is, if you learn that early enough.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:14Rick Rubin?

  You think that's what it is. You're saying that you had the advantage of not having the blinders put on you early.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. I think, you know, if you're just surrounded by people that say things and think they are part of. I mean, it's always belonging too, you know, like the way I understand it, there's a lot of fear and you wanna do the right thing and you wanna be kind of like your peers in some way and you wanna, you want to be part. And I don't totally understand, but I do know I don't understand art education.

• 48:48Rick Rubin?

  You think it can be taught?

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Back to synergy, you know? I think there are always pockets, as we all know, like in any kind of creative or artistic or even business or whatever, like there is always pockets of people. It's hardly ever you meet the solitaire, you know, you always, it's little things. And what leads to this situation to be fertile, I mean, so many factors, we don't know. But it's like, then things develop. And it is probably like one way of how you can facilitate a chance that you have. I mean, you always have an experience, but that this experience could be really kind of cross pollinating and do more.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  But I'm sure you know better than most people, you cannot force magic.

• 49:42Rick Rubin?

  You can't force anything.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm sure like people come to you and they want some matching. Give you some matching and like, you know, I like.

• 49:48Rick Rubin?

  It doesn't work that way.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  You know, can't help you there.

• 49:51Rick Rubin?

  What was your first tattoo?

• 49:53Speaker 01

  A little dot here.

• 49:55Rick Rubin?

  A dot?

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Well, this little dot, you know, when you just take a fountain pen. And then I had the, um, this some lion here, some heraldic lion or something. It's totally dumb. I'm like, I'm not.

• 50:09Rick Rubin?

  How old were you when you got the dot?

• 50:12Speaker 01

  The first dot, I've probably, I don't know, twelve or something.

• 50:16Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  I've totally forget that I have tattoos. I have to tell you, I literally forget.

• 50:26Rick Rubin?

  How was living in New York different than living in Europe?

• 50:31Speaker 01

  It was more welcoming as a non-native person. I think that in general about living in North America is my experience as not being from here is such that there are many people that are not from here or there's different histories and nobody is really from anywhere. Some people think they are, you know, but like it's, it leaves more room.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  And if I live, where I try to live somewhere in Europe, not just like to visit or spend some time of the year, once you go somewhere and you're younger and you realize so you will never be English, you will never be Dutch, you will never be whatever, French, Italian, like you will never be that. And that's usually after two years when I, whenever I started to leave. And in New York, I, I did not have that experience. I thought I actually become more part of it.

• 51:34Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  The longer I was there, almost to the point where you're like, it's good to get out.

• 51:39Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  I had this theory at first when I moved there, you know, like in Zurich where I grew up, the, the people that went to New York in the eighties or early nineties, a lot of them were very ambitious and some of them were kind of a little bit of assholes, you know? And I always imagined that city must be a hub for people with too much ambition and this and that. So I never had a fantasy to move there. So my fantasy was always to move to California. And coming from a medieval city, you know.

• 52:13Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  I like the idea this is the end of Western civilization, not the

• 52:19Speaker 01

  old, old baked in version, so that it's kind of like. But then, once I moved to New York, I I it's kind of similar, it felt similar than when I first got into art, where you see all these things, you know, all these where you can hop in and you see books and other sources of information, things in the real or people, where you realize you can be part of something and it felt to me still like there is a lot of history.

• 52:46Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  And going in there, it felt like you're not just a bunch of kids doing something, you're part of a long history. And that was really great to be part of, you know, or to feel that you partake in that somewhat.

• 53:01Rick Rubin?

  You feel like there's an artistic community there?

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Now?

• 53:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  I'm sure, yeah, they are, the communities.

• 53:09Rick Rubin?

  Ongoing.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  Ongoing, but we also have people that are eighty that once did something, or people seventy, sixty, fifty. Like you have all from all in different dimensions, directions and and they're all kind of there, you know, and it's a very rich network of histories and and also of self mythologizing creatures on top of each other. It gives what you do context and makes you feel what you do has a purpose.

• 53:42Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  If that's true or not, it doesn't matter, but it's a feeling of you're not just like in somewhere middle of nowhere, doing something and then maybe get sent out and you're like, what is that?

• 53:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. And California experience, how's that been for you?

• 54:00Speaker 01

  Oh, I just love being outdoors.

• 54:03Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  I'm outdoor, even in the winter, I have puffy jackets and blankets and heaters.

• 54:11Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  In this part of my life, that makes more sense to be closer to nature, but still be in an urban place than to be in a lot of noise.

• 54:23Rick Rubin?

  Have you experimented at all with technology?

• 54:27Speaker 01

  Always, yeah. I mean, what kind of technology?

• 54:31Rick Rubin?

  I guess we'll say digital, because I guess there's physical technology too.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and most things I do go through a computer at some point. In various ways, either in conception or in production.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  You know, I made some kind of robotic chairs a few years back. I don't know when that was. Maybe 2018, 19, so there's some free roaming. I don't know if you ever saw that.

• 54:58Rick Rubin?

  I've never seen them. They're chairs that move around?

• 55:01Speaker 01

  They're chairs. They're office chairs. I mean, it's totally crazy technology. They make no sound when they move, and the battery, they go and charge themselves. But they're all just one office chair. They have different colors and they're free-roaming robots. And they're programmed to have different, and they have about nine sensors built in. I spent a townhouse on those, you know, like, holy dumb. But they have different personalities.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  The way they react to people.

• 55:28Rick Rubin?

  Do you think of them like pets?

• 55:30Speaker 01

  No, it was more like the, it started with the idea of humans and patterns. Like how we are working in patterns. So you say you approach somebody and they're very nice. The next time you approach them and you expect, you always read what to expect, you know? And some people have a personality where that's kind of shifting, you know? And they mess up a lot of things, you know? And so I wanted to make these, it's nine office chairs and they move around. I wanted them like build expectation, also like in a way as a human, like have your expectation project.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Oh, I know how this works. You approach it, it goes away. You approach it, it goes away. You approach it, it stands still. You approach it again, it goes away, then you think it's a glitch. You approach it again and then it approaches you. You have a very hard time reading what's going on.

• 56:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  You know?

• 56:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  And very quickly you can create some confusion. So that didn't totally work out because at the time we had a little bit of a lag. Just a little bit too long.

• 56:44Speaker 01

  For people that went, because what happens, people go first slow, then they go think it doesn't work, then they go fast. Then they go slow and then the chair reacts and then then you're with a little tiny time lag, you're already kind of not in sync with the people's reaction. So it didn't totally function on this level. And then they did some choreographies together and I can show you, you wanna see that?

• 57:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, please.

• 57:08Speaker 01

  So I have two videos.

• 57:12Rick Rubin?

  It's great. That's so funny.

• 57:17Rick Rubin?

  And they're very ordinary looking chairs. They look like the chairs you'd see in any office.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, but there is two motors per wheel. There is a chip that we had some import problems because you can use it to guide a rocket.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  There is like all the tech, all the technologies inside these chairs like hidden and they don't make a sound. And then the seat cushion is actually the battery that we had made. And there is a robotic thing where they go drive in and charge themselves and they all know where they are. They know where the people are. I mean, by now we could probably do much better than this, but.

• 57:52Rick Rubin?

  It's so cool.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  So then we assigned like micro movements. They can go thirty miles an hour.

• 57:59Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  So if you have one glitch, they could.

• 58:03Rick Rubin?

  Could be dangerous.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that's all remade, like this is not the real chair, this is all remade.

• 58:09Rick Rubin?

  So cool looking.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  And then they do choreographies together. When there is a room, soon they see room, they find each other, then they do choreographies.

• 58:17Rick Rubin?

  It's a funny idea to think about, like when the office closes and everybody leaves that this is what happens, you know?

• 58:23Speaker 01

  And see when somebody goes slow, you can actually do that with them. But with the time lag, they get confused. If you're confused, then you know. And then they they have affinities to each other or not. And it's like it's like it's pretty complex. And the title is play. And I always thought it's interesting. Because it you can watch animals play.

• 58:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  You don't need to be a human to play.

• 58:46Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  Like.

• 58:48Rick Rubin?

  So from the inception, tell me the process of getting from the idea to getting to that.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  I had some idea like some years earlier for that. There was a table that just moves around, like whenever you go in a space, the table, it will go away, it will come to you and this and that. Because I saw like some cars, you know, when you back up, you have these little sensors, that's easy to do.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  And it wasn't. And then I forgot about it. And and on some point, I was thinking about it again. And I called a friend of mine who has nothing to do with robotics. But he's very smart.

• 59:28Speaker 01

  And then we did this in one and a half years, the whole production, everything.

• 59:34Rick Rubin?

  Are the ideas ever based on a new technology you see and then you see an application? Or is it always

• 59:42Rick Rubin?

  the dream of what it could be first, and then figuring out how to technically make it happen?

• 59:46Speaker 01

  It's more like you try, you're kind of informed what you see in the real world, maybe in this way, but you don't know how it works. And but you think it should be possible to push that and apply that in a in a different context, you know? Like just backing up cars and cameras and sensors, might can be put that in something else. And then the other thing is a vocabulary. I mean, things you you have done before, like let me do a lot of things now, or you scan stuff, or any kind of how you go about or work with data, you you have a vocabulary of what you know is possible.

• 1:00:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  And that informs the way you think about.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Like, for example, I often with a work.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  I just lay around and then I think about something or it comes from wherever it's just there. And then I go through the whole process of how it's made, one step by step. So I pre-make the entire thing in my mind with all the technical complications and everything in it. And so then it's kind of finished in this way. And then you make it. And then when you make it, logically, it doesn't turn out exactly like how you imagine it. And then you deal with that part.

• 1:01:09Rick Rubin?

  Does that whole process happen before you ever say, write it down or draw something?

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  So that's a funny question, because, I mean, it's the same when people say they write their diaries and they do it by hand. How how did the facts, your thinking and what you write and how it's part of your life? Like when you write, the fact that you're thinking is much faster than you writing that sentence is kind of a good thing sometimes. But then what I don't what thing I don't like personally about writing is that it has to somewhat make sense. Like, you start with a sentence and it goes to the next sentence. And then you're like, you kind of put yourself a bit into a corner.

• 1:01:52Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  And then how we get out of there. So the other thing is more, it's also more for three dimensional things where you have to, the production or the whole, like, how it comes into life, where you need to fold that in early, you know?

• 1:02:08Rick Rubin?

  For a sculpture, is there a point where you build a small model?

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  Hardly ever, no. It's, I mean, it's the same with like notes. I make a lot of notes, but my notes are really messy. They're not like accurate drawings.

• 1:02:25Rick Rubin?

  But you know what they mean, or they help you remember things?

• 1:02:28Speaker 01

  I used to make lots of them and I plastered my walls with them.

• 1:02:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  And then I thought of it as a three dimensional model of ideas and how they interconnect and so on. But then I realized I never look at them again, never. And then I had boxes full of that stuff. And then I stopped doing them. And now recently, the last year, I got back into it, but I never look at that stuff again.

• 1:02:52Rick Rubin?

  Do you think art is meant to be seen next to other art?

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  You mean physically? It can. I mean, I don't mind it.

• 1:03:01Rick Rubin?

  Does it change anything? Does it?

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  Context changes everything, yeah, always. I mean, it's it's even like in your brain, when you look at something, you you think you you already bring context into everything, you know?

• 1:03:15Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  And some stuff looks way better when you combine it.

• 1:03:21Rick Rubin?

  Has your work ever been censored?

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  Has it? Oh, the last time I got some slack was we put up this big sculpture in the center of Moscow and like, you know, huge, huge outdoor sculpture, I don't know, forty five feet or whatever in the center of the city and

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  and it got singled out by um some more right

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  parts in politics as a weird things. It obstructs the buzzy list of the thing or whatever, a liberal turd, or now this comes to our city, you know, whatever. But it's not my work. It's like, it's ridiculous. I mean, there is there's a lot of problems there and it's definitely not in a piece of metal.

• 1:04:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:08Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've made pieces that are wax and they're candles, essentially?

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, they work like a candle. Wasn't in the beginning. I mean, it started like, you know, I kind of always liked when they light a candle for something or somebody. It's like a flame or like I think a lot of us think about flames as like some other flame of life or like a soul or like there's something to fire that I don't know what it is, but I always see fire as something alive.

• 1:04:47Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  So I just put in some on some sculptures, I just put a regular household candle, just to kind of because of what it maybe it needs to be alive. So you put that there and then all of a sudden the thing becomes alive, you know? If you think you have your office chair there and you put a candle on that, then the chair becomes like something else, you know? So it's a way. And then it shifted from there. So why not make a

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  Whole thing out of as a candle. The beginning I carved these female figures like in a more traditional. I had no clue what I was doing, more traditional kind of art idea, you know, like of a. Like it felt like a nude somewhat figure is like the most simplest figure that doesn't need to be like somebody, you know? Yeah. And some years later, there was this guy Peter Brandt, I don't know if you know who he is, is a collector and he's married with Stephanie Seymour and they have um.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  They commissioned various artists to make portraits of her, one is Maritza Cattelan, they Julian did a portrait and different people. And I offered, I have a portrait in mind. And it was a portrait of Peter Brandt and this is just when the scanning technology for people kind of like to scan human bodies was somewhat mobile enough that we could work with this technology. And it was a portrait of Peter standing behind this chair.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  And the chair was empty. And that was my portrait of her because all the other artists made a portrait of her and I thought there is something. He's also in there, you know? Yeah. And I wanted to call the piece Stephanie. And I made a show at the Brandt Foundation, at their family foundation in Connecticut and and that piece was a part of the works in there. But they separated in that time. And so I couldn't call the piece Stephanie anymore, I thought that would just feel bad, you know, so I'm. Then it was Peter and out of that came um.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  These portraits and then the next thing at the time I shared the studio with Rudy Stingle and

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  then I wanted to make a portrait of him.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  And then I wanted to make a portrait of him and then I thought because he grew up in Italy, in ordinary Italy, like all the history, this European history. So then I thought he should be with a big sculpture, like of a pressing old European art history kind of big thing, you know? And so that cut out of hands, that thing became very big. And then I wanted to put something else that's totally not thinking this way, the things ergonomic. There is an office chair, actually the same one I use for the robots. Cause it has an ergonomic design that this doesn't go by the same aesthetic principle. So I just had that to occupy like some space around it.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  So that's kind of how that came about. And then I got into it whenever I met somebody that I felt has

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  like the resting position, pretty much, you know? Carries an image, like one friend of mine, I made a thing of this guy, Adam McEwan, a good friend of mine, and the but he is kind of tall, he often looks down. So he's a bit more like a shoelacer. He feels some kind of the fart, the weight of fart always in it, in his posture. It's not that it's about him being this way. It's like more like an image of that. And he just shows that very well, or I made this portrait of Julian Schnabel and he sits on this crate and I, that was my image of Julian in a way. It's like this.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  On one side, it's like a boy sitting by a pier fishing. But then if you look from underneath, it's also like a pedestal, you're kind of on there and you.

• 1:09:03Rick Rubin?

  It's great.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  It like this, you know, so that's kind of just these images of, of people. So all these portraits are basically candles. That's what I meant like so from putting a candle on top of it to putting then make

• 1:09:18Rick Rubin?

  Making it out of a candle.

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  Make it, yeah, out of wax or a candle. So make the sculpture as the candle instead of putting a topper on it.

• 1:09:26Rick Rubin?

  Now, do you do that by sculpting into the wax or do you melt the wax and pour it into a form?

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  You make a negative and you brush in the surface, all the different colors into the halves or multi-parts. Then that gets faking up, combined, and then we turn it upside down and fill it with the wax.

• 1:09:48Rick Rubin?

  I see. So the color is actually in the wax?

• 1:09:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's brushed into like into the mold.

• 1:09:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  When you take the mold away, then it's like, it's basically like in there. It's part of the body. It's not applied after, you know.

• 1:10:05Rick Rubin?

  Do you ever make more than one candle out of the same mold?

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can. Well, it lasts about five, six runs of mold.

• 1:10:14Rick Rubin?

  Pretty cool.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's good. And you know, the good thing is you can burn it down.

• 1:10:19Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  And then you can make a new one.

• 1:10:23Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  So it doesn't age. It doesn't have the problem of aging, which everything in the physical world has the problem of aging.

• 1:10:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Do any of them live not burned? Like?

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, most of it's cost a fortune to recast them. That's a expensive hobby to light that thing up, you know?

• 1:10:45Rick Rubin?

  I read a story somewhere that you had a plan to build a bed for a show, but it ended up becoming a horse. Does that sound familiar?

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  A horse? It's a, it's a horse bed. I don't know. That doesn't sound familiar, but it's what, what it was, it was like a horse and carriage. I was thinking about this feeling of stuff that goes through you where you're defenseless, like that hurt you, not, not the feeling of that you can let things pass through you and it feels fine, like where you kind of feel overwhelmed. And that can be sounds or whatever, or you try push a kid on a stroller in Manhattan in the winter and the cars, they're on the car level and just like the honking, the anger and the anxiety that comes at you and like just this kind of feeling of overwhelm and

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  how everything passes through you, you know, like you are the sum of all this. You're only part you and you're a lot of other parts. So I wanted to make a sculpture that embodies this as a thing. So I had the first idea was I have.

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

  A horse with a carriage as something that I need a protagonist and it's a bit technical. I wanted the protagonist that implies movement and not object. So it's a horse and I like the horse and the carriage because it was very light. It's not like a heavy object that sits on the ground because it's kind of it's lifted up into the air. The horse in the carriage would have been pierced by about thirty things.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  And so these thirty things, the biggest one was a hospital bed. And that came from, um, you know, because I spent uh next to somebody on a that was laying in a hospital bed. So like ten days, you know, not really sleeping, just making sure they're okay. And you look at this kind of weird thing that a lot of people come in and out of the world on this kind of strange machine that massages and wrays and folds and I don't know what it does. But I thought that's definitely needs to be part of it. Then I wanted to make the things, we scanned all these objects, carriages this. And it became just too big and too expensive to do.

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  And then I started, I just took the horse and the hospital bed and I combined them.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  And they looked like they wanna belong together. And it's all one body, you see, it's like made out of, I mean, it's multiple parts, it's all milled aluminum, so it's a carving.

• 1:13:34Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  So they become one.

• 1:13:37Rick Rubin?

  How do you make something like this?

• 1:13:39Speaker 01

  You scan everything and then you have to texture it and then.

• 1:13:43Rick Rubin?

  When you're scanning it, are you scanning it from images or from what are you?

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  Three dimensional thing, so I bought a bed like this.

• 1:13:50Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  We take it apart, we like scan, laser scan.

• 1:13:55Rick Rubin?

  You scan the physical object.

• 1:13:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:57Rick Rubin?

  And then you put it together digitally.

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  And then you.

• 1:14:02Rick Rubin?

  Reproduce it.

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  And then you reproduce it this, we need an engineer for all the leverage and weight. And this is milled out of an aluminum that this doesn't oxidize. So that's like a special type of alloy and then I didn't want any seam. So there are just little hairlines and some parts are pretty insane too. So.

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  And then it bugged me that I didn't make that carriage thing, but I didn't wanna use the horse. And then I made a version where it's not one thing. Just back to what you asked earlier, if you come back to an idea where you have multiple objects, so where you have more that whole experience of all these things that look, they fly, like nothing touches the ground.

• 1:14:44Rick Rubin?

  But it's a trick with the gravity, but it stands on the right. It's almost like a series of arrows sticking out of an atom. Yeah, it's like a sense of passion. One's a laptop and one's a chair.

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  One of the big printers.

• 1:14:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  It's just like a selection of random shit.

• 1:15:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah. When you're digitally composing it, do you move the objects around?

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a little here, a little there, till I think it looks good.

• 1:15:14Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, you can move around it when you're building it.

• 1:15:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:18Rick Rubin?

  3D rendering.

• 1:15:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:20Rick Rubin?

  So it seems like technically you get to learn about a lot of materials and how to make stuff. There's a lot that goes into this beyond this is a cool looking object.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  It's pretty intense technically, yeah. And there is even a level where I don't understand much about with engineers of how you crane that up and how you interlock all that stuff.

• 1:15:44Rick Rubin?

  Does the, the fact that it's difficult to build, is that ever daunting? Or does it ever get in the way of execution?

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  Um, it does, but it also gets in the way of being economical about it all.

• 1:16:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:00Speaker 01

  Because I have a hard time.

• 1:16:03Rick Rubin?

  If it costs too much, you can't even.

• 1:16:06Speaker 01

  I, I, I try to do it.

• 1:16:08Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, you find a way.

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  I find a way and usually it works out, but it's like, it, you know, it's not, it's not an economical way of going about anything. It's really kind of somewhat bit extremist, you know?

• 1:16:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  Or obsessive or whatever.

• 1:16:25Rick Rubin?

  Do you think that the place impacts your work? Either the place you live or the place you are when you're making something?

• 1:16:31Speaker 01

  Guaranteed.

• 1:16:34Speaker 01

  I wouldn't know how.

• 1:16:35Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  Well, in some of it, you know how, and some of it you don't, I I couldn't totally understand how. No, place matters so much, no? And also who you work with and.

• 1:16:46Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  One place I think that matters almost most is what kind of feedback you get on what you do. And that can be a dialogue with a friend, that can be a a bit more, a bigger excitement, like you feel people are excited by something that don't even like, my dream is always to make things where you don't have to know the artist, it's just people encounter something weird and or something that stabilates in whatever form and the work does the job.

• 1:17:22Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  That can feel good when you have a a moment like that. Just working in a vacuum and not knowing where things go is something I cannot do. I always work for

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  a show, a purpose, a place.

• 1:17:45Speaker 01

  Otherwise, I don't see the reason to make.

• 1:17:47Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. So the things right now, what are you working on right now?

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  Furniture.

• 1:17:52Rick Rubin?

  And what's the purpose of it specifically?

• 1:18:00Speaker 01

  What is the purpose of anything? I don't know. The purpose is I was asked if I want to make a furniture show and I love furniture.

• 1:18:08Rick Rubin?

  And will it be used as furniture?

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, totally. And and just like, it's an interesting endeavor because when you're not from a place, like, let's say, I think, if I understand it right, in architecture design, they have so much history and how it's made and this and that. And then so they think this way, if you just do something, you're kind of pretty free.

• 1:18:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:31Speaker 01

  And it doesn't need to make sense, it needs to, you know, it it comes more from the fact that the physical object, there is only one place on earth, like, the the pen you have in your hand, there is only one this space that's occupied by that pen is occupied by that pen.

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  Or whatever that tree and if you think of sculptures, they kind of clutter places in some way, which is some part I really don't like about the field of work. I mean, that we use up a lot of space.

• 1:19:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it takes up space.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, instead of an idea or an image or a song, there is no space to it, which is beautiful, you know? So in that, I just felt like, let's say, I have a whole bunch of sculptures. They're all in storage, not my own work, other people's, mostly in storage, because my house is kind of small. And I don't wanna expand it and I don't, I don't see no purpose having it in the house.

• 1:19:33Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  I do love furniture and if it's comfortable and if it's fun.

• 1:19:39Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it's functional, it'll work in your life and you get to be around it.

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it looks cool, like some of it looks cool. For example, one is this human figure. It was more under-arched and now it became a more female figure.

• 1:19:56Speaker 01

  So this thing, just a little context, that that's about eighty something inches, that's a little taller than a human. And it's all out of foam. This will be coated, covered, but this is the foam, so you can actually sit on the arm.

• 1:20:12Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  You can sit on the figure, you can sit on all parts.

• 1:20:16Rick Rubin?

  It's a sculpture that works as a piece of furniture.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, this one, then other ones are are sometimes more conservative.

• 1:20:26Rick Rubin?

  That's really cool. How was your work first noticed?

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  I studied some photography stuff, you know, like more more in an arts and crafts type school, you know? And I always got really into the projects and then we had some people teaching there or like, you know, somehow that gave me some feedback. You see the people react or whatever and then usually with, let's say, I went to the school in Amsterdam and there is other artists there and you do something and they. Look for dialogue and you see like you get some feedback. It's a very small notice, but it's kind of it gives you something and

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  it usually all came through other artists primarily in the beginning.

• 1:21:18Rick Rubin?

  Was there a breakthrough moment? Was there a time where it's like now it's different than it was before?

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was one moment. I did my I was maybe twenty one or something. I did my first show in a gallery.

• 1:21:31Rick Rubin?

  This in Amsterdam?

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  No, that was in Zurich. The show was in Zurich and after I had that show, I was not the same as the other kids I hung out with because you're the one that has a little success. So that's the biggest thing. The biggest change I noticed ever was you're the kind of now one of those.

• 1:21:50Rick Rubin?

  Was it how they looked at you or how you looked at yourself that changed?

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  Uh, how I felt being looked at. I mean, what do I know? It's assumptions of who they are, you know, but

• 1:22:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  how I felt I'm looked at or seen. You stop being a little bit you and you're perceived a little bit as

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  to somebody who does will make something.

• 1:22:16Rick Rubin?

  Would you say it gave you more confidence or not necessarily?

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  Uh, no, it made me insecure for a while. All right. I really didn't know how to it felt alienating.

• 1:22:25Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:28Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, we also kind of, you know, sometimes you are just you and in some context, you are you as the person who makes X, Y, Z. I'm a total piece with both of that by now. Yeah, it's not conflicting.

• 1:22:43Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. When does a piece of work go from an experiment to a finished piece? At what point in the process?

• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  On a good day.

• 1:22:57Speaker 01

  On a good day is when you don't know what to add anymore.

• 1:23:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:01Speaker 01

  And on a bad day, it's just.

• 1:23:03Rick Rubin?

  Give up.

• 1:23:04Speaker 01

  You kind of give up a bit on it. Just like, I'm sorry.

• 1:23:10Speaker 01

  That's as good as you get, you know?

• 1:23:12Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  I don't have it in me today and I don't want to continue tomorrow.

• 1:23:17Rick Rubin?

  Tell me how the art business works.

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  I mean, I have a lot of experiences. I'm not capable of of tell you how it works, but I. One thing is, why does one need to own something?

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  You know, why do you want to own this or that? And there are people that I met few

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  where I really understood what collecting means.

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  And that's not buying stuff to put in your house. Like, some people can be very obsessive. They have thousands of things. And they know everything about each piece and each context and they're like so knowledgeable. And they basically tell the story.

• 1:24:10Rick Rubin?

  That's really the audience, essentially.

• 1:24:15Speaker 01

  Um, no, that's not the audience. That's just part of of I think what created this art market.

• 1:24:21Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:24:22Speaker 01

  Is these people, you know, like, they tell a story. I know, for example, there's different people, but like somebody like Bruno Bischofberger, who was the guy that was always on the cover or back cover of the Art Forum or, you know, like a person that's been around from the sixties to now, and I was older man, old man, but they collected so many things, ten thousands of things, and every conversation I have with him, he just tells me all these stories about whatever, like from some folk art in some seventeenth century to whatever, and he knows everything, I have to copy it.

• 1:25:06Speaker 01

  And he puts it together and he started with a lot of things that then later became very desirable or collected. He started so many things early, you know?

• 1:25:17Speaker 01

  And I mean, the whole conversation is just this thing, this, and then he did only this, and then that artist, and it's like, it's a bizarre amount of information and knowledge. And I sometimes help hanging shows. And there was one collector, he collects only things that happened in New York. And he does that since the mid sixties. So basically, he is like a, I always think of him as a fisherman that goes to the shore. And you just see a little ripple. And you think, okay, I go there. And some other things can be very loud, you know, that's just noise. Because he has so much discipline and experience and a real passion.

• 1:26:02Speaker 01

  So we hang works.

• 1:26:05Speaker 01

  Obviously, okay, I put one work here and one work there. It says, well, in nineteen eighty seven, this work was hanging next to that thing. And that's how it was first shown by the art, like, like a really in-depth knowledge. So how that matters with the art market, I think there were always people that had a kind of a knowledge and a connoisseurship. And the way I imagine it, you see these things in somebody's house and it's kind of awesome. I said, I want that too, you know? And the prices of, of some of these things is absurd. You know, it makes no sense because you don't actually get a physical value for any, you know, it's like, what is it?

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  Mongo painting work, you get like a little bit of wood, some really old canvas and like you get nothing. So it, it is just what somebody is willing to pay for it, basically.

• 1:27:02Rick Rubin?

  And the fact that there's a market around it.

• 1:27:04Speaker 01

  And there's a market around it. And, and in a way that, that these figures in this market or whatever, like something like back to Mongo, everybody knows what that is. So you put it in your house, it's also you have a Mongo in your house. And historically, you did well with these kind of, if you bought one forty years ago, you did a good deal. So you don't lose anything, you have something to look at.

• 1:27:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. So it's an investment that holds its value and.

• 1:27:33Speaker 01

  Potentially.

• 1:27:33Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:34Speaker 01

  How these prizes came in the last twenty years or thirty years, or maybe starting in the eighties or something, I'm not totally knowledgeable in that. It is not old stuff. It's new stuff that is made to say this is going to be a potential future artifact of value. It's a bet.

• 1:27:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  But then I had a phase where I collected, so I was hooked.

• 1:28:05Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about that. How did it start? What was the first piece you bought?

• 1:28:08Speaker 01

  Well, you know, first I traded with friends of mine always, and then you hang it in your house. And then I started buying the galleries that I worked with. And you go in some office and see this thing and that thing. And you have one and then you want more of that same artist. And then you want the ones you got. And then it was the other ones would be better. So you think you need to have those two. And from there on it goes.

• 1:28:31Speaker 01

  And then you have hundreds of things and you're like, I don't know what to do with it.

• 1:28:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:38Speaker 01

  You know, one way, what I felt at that time was I'm a high end hoarder.

• 1:28:45Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:46Speaker 01

  You're a hoarder of interesting valuable things, but you still nonetheless, you're a hoarder.

• 1:28:51Rick Rubin?

  Hmm.

• 1:28:54Rick Rubin?

  I read that you once had a gallery lower the ceiling for your show.

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  Sounds like a bookie boss, but I don't remember.

• 1:29:05Speaker 01

  I got kind of out of that vibe.

• 1:29:07Rick Rubin?

  But what would be the reason for it? Tell me the thinking, whether you would do it or not now is less the point.

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  It's all about making the work look good. Or, and that's always in context, you know? I mean, if you put a thing in the right context, it can actually unfold and be itself, you know? It can become something, you know?

• 1:29:32Speaker 01

  And like, let's say a wall is very tall. And you have a smaller thing.

• 1:29:38Rick Rubin?

  In front of it.

• 1:29:40Speaker 01

  Hanging on it.

• 1:29:41Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:29:41Speaker 01

  It will just fly like it will feel lost.

• 1:29:43Rick Rubin?

  The work will be dwarfed by the height of the wall.

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, that's another thing like it's totally bizarre like, okay, in in my field of work. The galleries are ginormous.

• 1:29:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, but people's homes are not as big as the galleries.

• 1:29:57Speaker 01

  No, and people started some of artists do these are ginormous and then they make like me included ginormous things. But what's the freaking point here, you know? It's just the context. I mean, because you, if you make a show somewhere here. This is the way it looks right or feels right. But then what do you do with it after? You know, it's like. I don't totally clock the whole thing.

• 1:30:22Rick Rubin?

  Tell me the feeling though, when you've worked on something in a rendering. And let's say you know. The final version is going to be forty feet tall.

• 1:30:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:32Rick Rubin?

  What's it like the first time you see the forty foot version?

• 1:30:37Speaker 01

  I only see.

• 1:30:39Speaker 01

  Mistakes in the.

• 1:30:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, you only see what's wrong.

• 1:30:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:43Rick Rubin?

  Because your breath is never taken away with the wow, look at that.

• 1:30:47Speaker 01

  Uh, it happened a few times, but on average, it's um.

• 1:30:51Rick Rubin?

  What's wrong?

• 1:30:52Speaker 01

  My God.

• 1:30:52Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. And the things that you're seeing and saying, my God about that are wrong. Probably no one else would notice.

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  No, oh, I would notice even on somebody else's.

• 1:31:03Rick Rubin?

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:31:06Speaker 01

  But I always think like if if something is unfinished or there is a mistake. If somebody really wants to find a mistake, let them have one.

• 1:31:14Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  It's kind of we got to reward the people that need to find the mistake.

• 1:31:18Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:20Speaker 01

  And that's kind of how I trick myself into getting over it.

• 1:31:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, who's to say what's a mistake, you know?

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  You can tell an insecurity in something.

• 1:31:34Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:34Speaker 01

  I mean, this is a mistake, no, but what one would call a mistake, it's just. You know, there's sometimes this was a shortcut or like not. Didn't go all the way.

• 1:31:47Rick Rubin?

  Are you always working?

• 1:31:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:31:52Speaker 01

  But to me, it makes no difference. I can bake a cake or I can, I just always need to do something.

• 1:31:57Rick Rubin?

  Something.

• 1:31:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:58Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:00Rick Rubin?

  Have you done any multimedia work?

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  Very little.

• 1:32:05Rick Rubin?

  Ever film?

• 1:32:07Speaker 01

  Um, I made a film when I was like twenty, twenty-one or something.

• 1:32:11Rick Rubin?

  Was that a good experience?

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  I liked it. I was just broke after because I financed it myself. I was broke for like half a year after that. And then I had that film and I didn't know what to do with it and.

• 1:32:24Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:26Speaker 01

  That was interesting, like, you know, the whole process and. But I'm, I'm not a moving image person, I believe. I think moving images is one thing. I could, I could do that. I don't like narratives. I mean, I like them. Okay.

• 1:32:42Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. It's not your thing.

• 1:32:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, no. I mean, even to watch, I, I have, the longer the more harder time watching TV or movies or something.

• 1:32:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. What are the things that you find comforting watching?

• 1:33:00Speaker 01

  Really mindless, can be okay, like, that's almost a form of meditation to me, like. You know, you're empty, your brain, it's not, you sit there depressed, like, it's just really like, just. Nothing here. I watched recently something, I thought, what is it called? Adolescence or something. It's short. It's like a mini-series, five episodes on Netflix, written by the, one of the main actors.

• 1:33:30Speaker 01

  And it's

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  it's not fun to watch, but each episode is filmed. So you have a story of this one act by one son in a family. Adolescent and how it affects the family. And it's like first you're like one day after or a few hours after that thing. It's always real time. So the whole episode is filmed in one shot. So it's like a play and you go in a car and you go there. So they they rehearsed and then emotions go up and down. You go in it. And so then you're three days after, then you are like three months after, then you are.

• 1:34:14Speaker 01

  Whatever a year after and a year and a half after. So that was really smart. Like you watch it and you're like, I didn't read what it is.

• 1:34:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:22Speaker 01

  And then you realize this shot never ends.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  That's a more technical thing, but just the emotions, the range, and it was really felt like a substantial like experience. And that somebody can put that as an entertainment, like this kind of thing, a lot of respect for that.

• 1:34:43Rick Rubin?

  What's the most beautiful place you've ever been?

• 1:34:47Speaker 01

  It's by or at the sea or ocean that I know, but then I have a lot of

• 1:34:54Rick Rubin?

  Many choices.

• 1:34:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:56Rick Rubin?

  Name a couple that you like.

• 1:34:59Speaker 01

  I had really beautiful times in Greece, the water or the sun setting by the water or like this. This kind of colors are very different and smells are different than yeah, if you're there. Sometimes in the Caribbean, there is a kind of a a place of being this smoothness to the water and the wind and also the light, the temperature kind of not fluctuating much. And I mean, that works for me, you know?

• 1:35:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  And some islands where the anxiety is far away.

• 1:35:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:35Rick Rubin?

  And tell me something that you believe now that you didn't believe when you were young.

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  That life is way crazier than anything somebody can imagine. Like in, in where everything goes since I'm a kid, you know? And the other thing, peace, that you can find some form of peace within yourself or love, you know? Like how that feels.

• 1:36:02Rick Rubin?

  Was there a time when you were young where you doubted you would ever feel those?

• 1:36:07Speaker 01

  See, I grew up with a lot of anxiety, not only my own, but like everybody around me and, or in my case, I definitely mistook anxiety for love. Because that's kind of what you grow up with. And it's not that you can have both for somebody, but it's like when it comes in a fused package, it kind of.

• 1:36:30Rick Rubin?

  Confusing.

• 1:36:31Speaker 01

  It's confusing to extract the anxiety and then just have the love and to kind of let that be.

• 1:36:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:42Speaker 01

  Pretty cool.

• 1:36:43Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. What do your parents like?

• 1:36:46Speaker 01

  They're very nice people, you know? I don't think they were good parents, but they were, they're very nice people.

• 1:36:52Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:53Speaker 01

  You know? And they're still around.

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  I mean, my dad is now Alzheimer's and it's going, you know, like that kind of stuff. But two people that didn't had easy lives, you know, a lot of, lot of family dramas and stuff, hard, hard times. They kind of carried all that with them into their young relationship and, well, they stayed together all their life. They're still together, you know?

• 1:37:23Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:23Speaker 01

  Fifty, whatever years, eighty years, something like that.

• 1:37:28Rick Rubin?

  When's the last time you were in Zurich?

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  About a month and a half ago to visit them, yeah.

• 1:37:33Rick Rubin?

  Has changed a lot since you were growing up?

• 1:37:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:36Rick Rubin?

  In what ways?

• 1:37:38Speaker 01

  Like most cities, it just cleans up somehow and a lot of the kind of funky, interesting stuff fades away or gets replaced or everything needs to make enough money.

• 1:37:52Speaker 01

  There's no crappy old cafes anymore. They're all kind of new and look the same than any other. Like that kind of part I miss, I miss old rotten facades and buildings and, you know, like a little.

• 1:38:09Rick Rubin?

  You would have loved New York in the 70s.

• 1:38:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:16Rick Rubin?

  It's not like that anymore.

• 1:38:17Speaker 01

  No, it's crazy. That place really changed so much. Unbelievable, no?

• 1:38:48Speaker 02

  Tetragrammatin is a podcast. Tetragrammatin is a website. Tetragrammatin is a whole world of knowledge.

• 1:39:03Speaker 03

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• 1:39:50Speaker 03

  Upon entering, experience the artwork of the day. Take a breath and see where you are drawn.