KAWS in Conversation with Clare Lilley

this feels very precarious god we don't refer to falling honestly you can hear that that works just everything can everybody hear well hopefully yeah welcome everybody to Yorkshire sculpture park and thank you for coming my name is Clara I'm director of program at your chess culture Park and I've been working with Brian on the show that we have here I'm guessing that most if not all of you have already seen the exhibition both inside and outside I hope that's the case because we're going to talk a little bit about the show we're going to talk a little bit about causes practice and then I'm going to open the floor up for people to talks I'm sure many of you have some questions that you would like to ask and I'm going to put that there so we don't go crazy so um hello and I thought it would be nice to start talking about the studio in Brooklyn and in a way I think because often when people talk about the advertisement disruptions that you were doing in the 90s it sort of it obviously was a form of street art but actually it was a street art that was kind of located in your studio well yeah at that time I didn't have a studio it was sort of like in my bedroom ya know so that well actually the first ones were I've still at my parents house but you know eventually I moved to Manhattan in 96 and it was sort of you know everybody as soon as I did those like on the street but what I would do is I'd go around and sort of take ones out of areas I wasn't interested in taking working in and I was just sort of collect them and paint them you know time in my studio so it was just like they're sort of like a Ottoman bed and a wall yeah we're just like you know stockpile them so you weren't so you weren't necessarily doing one per night or something like that you know I would paint like you know ten of them or six of them and I'd go out with them and sometimes I you know I put up all five of all six and sometimes I'd come back with some you know one of the first times I got super rained on and they're all just like I use Marsh anq and it just had this drip in it but the point being that the kind of the studio has been central really to your practice I mean as a sense you get when you go there yeah I love being in the studio you know I love the studio that I'm in now is in Williamsburg er you know we built it for painting basically a lot of the sculptures are done you know with different foundries whoever's like the over I find that can kind of execute what I need but all the paintings are done you know in this very controlled environment that I sort of dialed in over the last like 10 years of it and it's almost kind of like a home as well a release it's an area that is yeah it's cause we live a very cozy know you know it's I mean one of the things were building my own studio is um I you know I spent so much time there I mean now and now I'm a little bit more you know domestic I have a kid and I I leave at a certain hour but it used to be seven days a week you know if I was awake I was there and I liked being there I want to make it a place where I want to be I wake up I want to be there I'm not like oh I hate this light or hate this thing you know I try to like over time just slowly dial in what I need to get done what I need a good time and I mean we've talked a bit before about how you could I mean there are other artists like Jeff Koons and Murakami who have much much or many other artists other than those that you have really big operations and in a way you could but you're you're sort of keep I don't like going I don't know if I could honestly um I don't it took me a long time like now six and that's like two two or recently so it's really just for forever and it's difficult I got like right now they probably don't have stuff to do so cuz I've been here for two weeks so it's like it's a lot of work to kind of find work for the people in the studio's to do I'm pretty like pretty hands-on micromanaging maybe I need help with that yeah yeah but so which one's your emails yeah that would be good yeah yeah that I would reply and you have some really sensational art by other artists on your walls and not to kind of go into detail but what what's the role to those pictures and sculptures have for you you know I just um I enjoy having it around the Heather in my house I have it in my studio it's not little studios sort of divide it into two sections there's upstairs and downstairs and upstairs I do a lot of you know like when I'm making paintings and drawing on the computer I'll sit up there and in that space it's sort of like you know it's usually just me it's not really any of anyone else and there's a lot of drawings where artists that I like friends you know people who I admire under they are they inspiration are they do they kind of play a part in what you do yeah I just I like having them around I mean it's just good to you know like it's not something where I'm like you know doing laps around the space studying things but um you know I found in the in-between times where you're not working or you kind of just drift off it's nice to see stuff and yeah it's nice it's there's one thing when you're when you're seeing the work you know once but when you're living with work and seeing it every day and you could kind of like assess how that's impact you or what stuck with you like what about it might interest you continually and it's good it's you know because things change they change when you change the room they change when you change and last summer when we were talking about the new paintings for the all talking about paintings for the long side gallery yeah there were there were a stack of brand-new canvases that had me in touch with still in their brown paper yeah and and they were kind of waiting for something and did you you know when you had those canvases made when you had them stretched did you have a sense then of what you were going to do with them all no not at all honestly I think there was what there were six of them I wanted the painting six and I just kept one back but there was a Alex Katz painting that I had that was that dimension and I was just like I just liked that dimension I do that a lot I'll go to shows and I mean it's kind of distracting for me I'll be at like a Sigmar Polke show and I'm looking at the plaque to see like oh that's 16 feet by whatever just because it has a feeling like it's certain things that when I get in front of them I feel like this is a shape I like or this is a you know and this cat's painting are just like ah that's an interesting shape is just a little bit you know of squares yeah off square in a way look I haven't worked on so um so I just ordered a bunch of canvases like that shape and they were there in the room and then you know it's figuring actually I was thinking I did have in mind to do to use those works here but I wasn't no clue what I would pay yeah and then you committed to them I commit it to them which is great and something recent we were talking about survival machine and while I was asking you about the kind of process for making those paintings just to give an idea of how the because the paintings are incredibly meticulous and laborious ly made you know when I when I work on paintings I I tend to take a lot of injury like off the internet or looking at animations and taking screenshots and not continually drawing over them with illustrator it's a program of the computer it's a vector based program that um you know so I'll stop by I'll have like a screen up and it'll just have I just always cut and paste into it so I've hundreds of hundreds of little images and I just sort of collage pieces together and so when I'm looking at a thing I can see you know I can I can line up five paintings and make them at this time and once I have to in black and white I'll go downstairs and I'll draw them out on the canvases and then I kind of have like a little table with all you know use I use a paint number system that it used to be a cell animation paint when I work for animation I used to taking home and then eventually that come like animation paint companies went out of business so I start working with golden paints to custom makes all these numbers like colors according to numbers so I've hundreds that I go straight out of the bottle with so it's not I'm not mixing yeah so I'll sit and I'll have the paintings drawn out and then I'll just use q-tips and sort of pick all the colors for them not on the computer but like physically when I'm looking at the scale and you know so a lot of those paintings that you're seeing up there were completely resolved color wise with little cups and q-tips at the scale and dots and when I've seen those in the studio it never looks like you've changed your mind it always looks like yeah I mean rarely sometimes I pick a color like we have some some grayish greens or things like that that I always forget they're not friendly colors like they'll they'll leave marbling in the pain yeah it's only after we've done a whole section three times and haven't gotten it right there were like this just that this color doesn't work and we sort of throw it yeah give it a red flag and so that's when I change you know but usually I don't change I just hope for the best and you're also um it was kind of fascinating to see how you were making these I guess they were on canvas these kind of color I don't we call them like flakes of color that you will then give it your swatches yeah for the printer yeah basically like all the prints that you see downstairs it's the same system and you know so I'll have the number system for every color and I'm like those prints downstairs are about like 40 different colors and then I physically paint on paper and give that to the printer when I go work with him there's no like excuse not to get the color what it is so just it's either the color it's not um what was I going to say but in the in the survival machine there are kind of a few new things that are going on one is that there's a kind of a character there that you haven't explored before or a sort of a figure and the other is the merging black and white painting with color for the first time and did you did you kind of know that would you would you must have already be thinking about that before we started talking about that the the wall it's something that it's something I wanted to do it for a long time I've been working with all like doing this black-and-white abstract paintings and at the same time working on a series of colors paintings and I've kind of wanted to sort of cross pollinate them and sort of like put the series to bed you know like I feel like I've been working on these two different two different routes for a while and I want to just I don't know just just step and move on and hydrated that door if you open don't know well know that I've seen these paintings that has me thinking about a lot of stuff but um so yeah it's just it's just sort of figuring out how those work together yeah so John sees finds Joe and the other one of the other new pieces up in the gallery which is something between being a sculpture and a drawing his new home yeah you want to talk a little bit about that and how how that came into being working with the acrylic I mean we started originally there's the heats alone which is the multicolor shaped acrylic that was the first one we did for a show in 2014 on a Fraser in LA and the other piece in the show was supposed to be for that show and then right before we shipped it we used the wrong solvent on it and got thousands of cracks like little hairline cracks so it had to be redone so here we are few years later it's a long process we've been working on a few years before we even got to the first one and it's I wanted to find it try to figure out a way to push what I was doing with painting into the sculpture you know like approaching sculpture in the same sort of layering way and like even seeing that painting or that I finished sculpture there home alone which is very simple now I'm thinking about how if we step it in and build it out thicker how we can get more layers into it and on it so you're taking the the kind of pictorial space from the painting and developing it into the Quarian and the acrylic yeah because it's it's the same approach but it's a different feeling you're walking around you're seeing through it you're seeing yourself in it you're seeing a room yeah through it in other words reflected in it so I think you know from it I think it gives me a lot of opportunities to sort of just explore how you can kind of change a room with a work like that yeah and I don't know I feel like it's such it's been such a slow process that's kind of frustrating because I can't just like it's not that instant you know you're in the studio making a painting you do something you can you can get onto the next one really which is like that isn't it yeah yeah sculpture is all I mean you know everything that you see here minimal is like you know six eight nine months yeah and then some of them several years you know the first wooden piece we're working on for about two years before we actually got one finished and it was the 10-meter of the small lie so so why did you want to do that why did you want to start working in wood um I had made this little little figure with a Japanese toy companies furniture company yeah called caramel Koo and it's the same form form that I've been working with for a long time you know same sort of figurative form but just seeing in a wood gave it a whole different warmth and feeling so I don't know it just seemed like something I wanted to explore I didn't know it would be possible actually to scale up like that and then over time we figured it out and figure out the engineering and you've you've made the big pieces with a guy in what he's kind of on the Belgium Dutch yeah he's right like you one block here and yeah exactly Holland all kind of kind of militia said Belgium um yeah he's actually yeah he's an expert at materials and he's done a lot of great projects with great artists so how did you did you seek him out did you find because there's no one else do doing work of that sort that I know of in the world yeah you know I just happened it was really like a friend knew him and kind of you know introduced us I'm not quite sure how I actually met him but I know my friend Etienne who was a postal worker in Belgium was one of the first people that always kind of like told earnest about my work and when I saw what he was doing I mean he's doing this great work with Chamberlain and Frank Stella and he doesn't really it's not a foundry you can just go and like be like I want to make this yeah he kind of has to be in it and behind it and we sort of partner on everything when we make it so um it took a few years to get to the point of starting actually we just were like I don't know figuring each other out so you start it with smaller scale and then gradually you've worked on too small I reverse at first the first thing we made together was small live with just 10 meters and we just wanted to make it you know just start from sort of impossible and then make everything else easy so no but then I started doing double figures we kind of threw him for a loop yeah and yeah it's interesting I mean there's a lot you know there's what you see but then within the inner workings of the pieces and all the mathematics of how you have to cut the planks inside just to get a you know to get it around the space to see and see off there's a lot and what's amazing about that my morning when you look inside those sculptures they are incredibly complex and the inside is almost as beautiful as the outside even though they are absolutely beautifully made and when we will bring I mean we first showed I've well I selected a small life for a show in London a couple of years ago and then knowing how that piece could come together because although they're really big and in many ways very very difficult they're actually kind of strangely easy to put together it's like a giant lollipop yeah it's like you know if you can just picture like a lollipop sitting into a torso head arms legs it's very simple it's just happens to be tons and tons of material yeah tell that to the guy yeah no where's these dollars do I have to tell as installers I said that but none of them are here tonight the pub I guarantee there yeah but they love doing it they love working working on those on those world yeah I mean they're so good they're good and I would imagine with all the all the sort of challenges they had at the park that they're like happy to find a new challenge yeah I mean they seemed up for they seemed you know yeah they certainly went for it and what's it like for you seeing because those works have been shown around and about some of them were in Amsterdam over the summer and various other places yeah what it's like for you to see them together it's I mean it's different I've never been in a situation where I've had so many of my works my sculptural works in one sight line yeah and I thought it was interest like the fruit you know when I first arrived I was doing a lot of just like wandering around the park I'm walking in it I came around from that back way sort of um I forgot sorry I forgot the artist neighbor where the octopus is yeah the bridge and just seeing like I was like oh they're there you know and you just sort of get to walk across this field and it look goes from a pea into like this massive thing it's nice you know what I'm making them we're making them one by one and it's a big time period stretch but seeing them together and just seeing how they they sort of function together it gives a new you know sort of gives a new feeling to it they should stay together really shouldn't yeah they should stay yeah yeah we should keep them but hey but I think is it true to say that some of those works are have what it is true to say because there's for the first time they haven't actually been toys as a starting point yeah yeah actually all of them oh trying to think yeah I mean all of them just existed first the sculptures whereas a lot of the stuff in the gallery alongside existed you know sometimes almost you know five ten years before I was a toy and then eventually is created as a sculpture we've talked a little bit and when we've been meeting before about artists like class Oldenburg yeah and the kind of work that he was doing through especially through its 60s and 70s and I just wondered if what you could say look a bit about that and what it was about Oldenburg that interested you I mean just the way he's sort of tackles outdoor sculpture and I think originally what really got me into a lot of those pop artists is was the additions that they were making you know like the additions company Gemini yeah I remember getting these Gemini like hardcover books and I had like Oldenburg Wesselman and all these different great you know Rothenberg just different mediums and small editions and that's like when it came time to first make my toy I was thinking more like that I wasn't thinking like oh this is great I'm going to make this thing and now I can make 500 but someday I'll make you know fifty thousand or something it was never you know I was always thinking of as a sort of intimate thing that I would make and move on and you had a conversation with somebody recently and he said what what's your next strategy or something like that and have you ever had a strategy no no I honestly I never had really much of a plan but um you can't you just can't because you don't know like you know if you meet other like if I met other artists I'm looking at somebody who's kind of like done all these great things I can't expect to do that because he's doing it you know and it's it goes the same for almost any field yeah and one of the reasons that I really wanted to work with you was because I see you as an artist who's really kind of seriously trying to take on the idea of the public space and what sculpture can do in a public space I mean is it is it something that's it did I go flying it's because I said the word serious serious ya know I was always like having a dialogue with the you know with having works in the public and just putting them out there I mean this is you know this being a sculpture park is you know people come here expecting to see sculpture so it's different than like the earlier foam with interventions and that kind of work but at that time I was just I was super hungry like I just wanted to get work out you know I was there wasn't it was pre sort of social media I was you know I just wanted to just throw you know it's like throwing bottles into the ocean wood notes I just wanted to put work out put work put work out and but I like the idea of that you know somebody's going to work and suddenly you're interrupting their day if they do notice you know what you've changed about an ad or what you've kind of left out there and you thought that at the time when when you were making graffiti as well when you were doing the big yeah I mean graffiti it was the same thing it was more like it was for me it was for my peers it was it was sort of like a you know you find yourself you know finding a community of people you know at that age there wasn't like it's not like I'd get it together with a bunch of guys and draw you know yeah so it was just sort of a way of sort of having having these relationships and with different kids and different boroughs and yeah you create like this weird fake identity I don't know I guess now you have like a fake name online but I had a fake name it's very vague but you were even when you were really young you were having this exchange of letters with kids in Europe and yeah I mean well I was lucky that a friend of mine this guy that wrote Edie had a graph magazine called on the cover and so kids would send in send in letters with you know basically envelopes would a note and a packet of photos and then you would just sort of agree to trade you know like I would write like if there was this kid in Spain you know his kid in Berlin that was sending good photos we would just sort of have an agreement to trade I'd be going around the Bronx watching Heights taking pictures of what you know whatever I liked and going to like you know the it was forgot the name of the store it was like sort of like a Walgreens ask type store and just making cheap doubles doubles don't cover your ears jaunty of like these you know five by six photos and just sending off packets and you know a month would go by two months and this is all like this you know I have envelopes like that address and it's all to my mom's house I know I've seen them and I go well what struck me was I bet a load of those kids weren't really writing any essays while they were in school but they were writing really long ya know some people I wasn't really big on words but um yeah he's some kids would tell you you know hey I'm from Boston we're killing these freights this is this is you know this guy's doing this and thought it on you they did include photos and you'd get to I mean for me it was great I would I would get to kind of you know there was no option to just go to the computer and see it so is that or like Tower Records would sell graffiti magazines and there was you know like maybe at that time 10 or 15 in existence so that was really like you know there's like a hunger and there's not really a supply yeah so but I always get the feeling that you were even from a quite young age were sort of looking outside of America you were looking outside of the place that you were well yeah I learned about geography the graffiti honestly mmm I am that got me there when I you know I'd get these packets or I tease stuff being done in different cities be you know amazing pictures of like this trains in Spain just Kabam and you know so you see these other places you're kind of like God kind of like to check that out I'd like to go there at one point so my first place out of the country was to to Munich for some weird crafting and the government paid for the ticket really which I thought was like shocking I was like nobody's gonna pay for anything here in Jersey City yeah and so yeah I got to go I stayed with these weird kids I didn't really know and um but it was fun it was sort of like I you know I love traveling I love to go to places I don't know but I also when I do travel I do like to travel for work you know I like to go and have a purpose yeah it's not yeah unless it's like a proper vacation but otherwise I have to get in the city and you know it's it's it's a way of seeing a city when you go there and you meet people who are working in a field you're interested in because you get real insight it's not like sort of an outsider showing up my seeing when the first time that you went to Japan did you even know where you were going did you have any idea what was at the end of that you mean like potentially what could come yeah we're even - no no - a town that you didn't even yeah well alright so the first time I went to Japan um my friend this guy that wrote knows him in college his brother traded me I traded on painting a small oil painting for a trip to Japan and I thought I was going to Tokyo and it turned they were like yeah Ibaraki and I was like oh great and it was like let's just say one time I want to do stuff on the street at night in Tokyo and I had to take a taxi back to their house it was about $120 so I mean at that time that was like great there's half my funding um but yeah it was like pig farms and totally out of Tokyo I still got to Tokyo we still did billboards and got everything I needed to get done done but um but yeah I mean it was just sort of like after I mean I kind of went there just for the you know kicks of going to Japan and then it kind of when I got there I realized there was a lot of things happening that that showed a lot of potential and I was just interested in I just wanted to you know I feel like that's where creativity was happening and I wanted to get back there and gradually and social media is particularly instagram has become pretty central to what you do yeah I don't know if it's central so what I do it's just it there it exists it's like you spy I live in a bubble I work in the studio all day I'm with my family I'm in the studio so it's just nice I could you know it it's the first thing you know I never really was big on Facebook or anything it's the first thing that was just it's just sort of easy enough it's non-committal enough that I can just go in and look at images and see what some friends are up to yeah upload some images and I don't know and you've said a couple of times that you would hope that particularly show like this would encourage a young person to kind of walk through a gallery door across the museum doorstep yeah I mean definitely it's it's it's um you know and the great thing about doing a show like this is somebody who comes here normally who's coming here to see the more is that you know they've been coming for 20 years with their family or whatever can stumble into their lower Park and be like but you know and I always I like cross-pollinating with whatever I mean it's why I'm so interested in doing collaborations and you know it's just sort of like you you have the built in this audience and and I have whatever you call it I have and it's great that you know if if I can open up people to the park and the park and open up people to my work it's a win-win why does it matter why do you care I don't know I mean it would be pretty lame if I just made work and sat alone home with it all like you know I just want to feel wouldn't feel like so so fulfilled and you know it's when I make a work it feels you I do keep some of my work of course but I feel like if it's not out in the world sort of functioning or like you know it's like a kid like if you want it you wouldn't want to keep your kid home with you all you need to push them yeah and let them figure things out so they need to figure their stuff out and I wonder if it would be a good idea to sort of open up the floor a bit if people want just ask some questions um honestly you know a lot of the things that I've done have kind of happened organically and when I met Clara from doing Regents Park and doing the sculpture pocket freeze you know I got to learn more about like the history of Yorkshire and just you know the great grunt like there's there's such a rich history of artists and you know the landscapes beautiful and I thought like contextually it puts my work in a new environment that I hasn't had the opportunity to be in it's learning you know for me when I see the work you know it's a learning opportunity for myself as well as getting the work in front of people are you happy with the end results yeah I think so I mean yet it's it's nice to have him out I know I don't know I think it's amazing oh no I mean definitely happy I don't know I'm not you never like I'm not the person to be like yeah you know you know many of the works were made before the show so it's not the the composite like the the gestures of the characters isn't like me making it a direct response to the park but um you know I never imagined when I was doing like I was always interested in sculpture I never imagined having an opportunity to make larger scale things there's like a lot of ducks and you got to get in a row in order to get to a point of of making things of that scale and that sort of like you I don't know anyway there's a lot to figure out um well actually I mean people like Miro were 50 by the time they were actually even starting to make sculpture yeah so I mean I'm sculpture is such a collaborative and such an expensive such a difficult process that it's not something that you enter into with any kind of ease anyway sorry Oh - yeah no you know it is it's it's a like a lot of times I take you know I take whatever I make and put it back into the work and I've been fortunate that I've been able to you know so say like one department one area of the work might not make money or something and but you know I do something else in this other area and you can take it and allocated and you just sort of think of like the whole picture of what you want to get what you want to accomplish as an artist and so in doing the larger sculptures there was a gradual thing you know it's from from the first piece to that it wasn't like a like yes I'm going to do this right from day one it's just like you know you make something you see it and you say alright now that's done what can I do and it's interesting when you're when you're making things you start to look at everything like I look at you know before like being in a city I'd be like you just assume like these buildings always exist and and now it's like I start to wonder like how big was the group of guys that had to get together to first sort of be like let's get this thing made who you know how are we going to get funding for this or you know you just start to wonder like all these things around you are done so I don't know if that answered anything you said but but I mean actually just to say one thing I'm not absolutely certain I understood the first question but the original fake sculpture up in the gallery made in 2006 that Brian made for his store in Tokyo was the first kind of full-size or what was more than four sizes over life-size figure yeah that's true and that I mean we made that just cus weird making you know the whole shop which a shop I didn't even know that was going to be you know it sorta started like original fake I started because I want to design this interior with my friend Masamichi Koriyama and I was working with this toy company Medicom for a while and you know we've done like so many different things and we're at dinner and were like oh we should do let go shop together and I was like yeah sure and then they seem really serious and I was like oh man so I recoiled and then and then I brought it up again about six months later and they're like yeah you know we'd like to do a company together and I was like yeah I'd be interested if I could design the shop with Carrie Yama and there was like yeah no problem and this is all very candid at a dinner so I called katayama that night and I was like you know you might get this phone call I don't know and this thing might happen and so then it happened very quickly you know the shop was almost done in about five months and then I realized like well now I have a company and I have to fill it and I became like a whole nother thing I wasn't I was just thinking about the physical space and how I wanted to do that and so that grew into me having this company for seven years so it's not really like you know I don't like I said I don't really have much of a plan but things happen along the way and you sort of see as opportunities no honestly whenever I'm making stuff I'm soon as it's actually come to fruition I'm thinking about the next thing but um it's nice to see I mean you know you go back and you see stuff and you're like oh that wasn't so bad or you know that that one turned out all right um but yeah it's hard I don't judge it's not there's not like a piece where I'm like oh this is this is like you know my perfect piece or anything you just you know they sort of exist doesn't like this odd family and at times things seem better than another what do you think about the materials because you're using different materials all the time and yeah I have to say when the bronze came in from Los Angeles the clean slate which is the figure hoarding the child here and the one under here I mean you look at the quality of the cast and it is under paint and it is like I mean I just had goose bumps looking at it was incredible thank you um yeah I mean that you know that's the same company I was doing the fibreglass works with yeah but you know as different opportunities come up and you have things for outdoors and you know you start to just think about what you know what will exist like I started using aluminum because I had an exhibition in Philadelphia at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and they had me do a sculpture and I did a 10 foot sculpture on a plinth that was empty for 70 years yeah but it was over a doorway and we couldn't possibly put like a you know a ton sculpture up there so I had to figure out you know so it looks identical but it's aluminum it's lighter it's a little bit more manageable and so you start to find you know and just in working you find out you find your way around materials and what's more suitable for what I like bronze because it seems like you can hit it with a car yeah you could do anything to bronze don't try it and actually I mean I came to your work unlike probably most of the people in this room through sculpture and I see you know the RIT has a very very powerful sculptural value and that's kind of a quite a difficult thing to define but it's about material it's about scale it's about balance it's about kind of solid and void all these things that are going on and I think kind of almost unknown to you there are also things that trace your work back to like Greek coral sculptures and a whole tradition of reclining figures and you're actually extending a trajectory which has been going for it well certainly the last of three five thousand years did you know I leave that to the scholars I'm gonna write about it thank you this is no well passing through a start I was invited to do it a sculpture in Hong Kong and I went for a site visit and it just was like in Kowloon where the ferry let off and there was thousands like they told me for the month exhibition I'd be over a million foot traffic pass it and I was just thinking like if I was the sculpture I would be mortified to have to sit there for the month so it's not really a reference to think or any of art history is more of just like you know just can't be there you know and then as far as clean slate that came along after I did a sculpture called along the way this is the sort of two figures and before that point I always had this sort of dialogue where it was like one static figure in the viewer and there was this relationship and then I did the along the way and it just sort of had a dialogue within it and it just I don't know for me it was just something interesting to see I didn't I wasn't like looking for that when I made the sculpture but it just opened it up and got me about you know creating these sort of narratives within and that's where it claims late came from do you rent her tonight yeah well I would well okay so I guess I was I had actually seen some of your canvases at art fairs and it's quite difficult to see his work in any kind of grouping because it's it you tend to sit in bits and pieces and I was I don't know which offer it was but in any case I passed this canvas and I double back on myself because I was really surprised at how much information I got from such a tiny line it was a black and white and related to Snoopy and so I think that was probably I can't quite remember when that was but you would know when you were making those paintings and I knew your work from magazines and but that that was sort of was a stopping point and then we have a really great friend in New York who Debbie Landau who was the president of the Madison Square Gardens which is a really amazing sculpture project and Debbie said what I said to Debbie is there any way that we could get cause into free sculpture part that was that was two years ago and she sort of went about engineering it because it was a big it was a really big ask you know you're asking to for a sculpture that's 30 feet behind that takes a week to install to be there for a week and then to go again so but they were know everyone was up for it so that was the kind of beginning and I just started there and that started the conversation yeah yeah and then I came out here I thought it was over a year ago but it wasn't it was in May last yeah which seems crazy so I came for a site visit and we just like you know we took the car and drove around the grounds and I couldn't really get my head around it when Claire was saying well this part we can you know we can do something here and do something here and I was just like it just all seems so like yeah exactly um any crew we kind of snuck some sculpture in at the end - yeah you know it was originally it was like maybe one possibly two now say terribly is the worst communicating no you just you're on you're on the edge of your seat all the time not kind of not knowing it actually what's going to happen and and there was a point at which I just got on a plane and came to New York and I just said and he'd built a model DNA he had a model of the gallery he had models of scale models of all the works he owned it all there and his head you just weren't sharing it at that point yeah thank you thank you yeah yeah now I tend to put out fires that are needing put out yeah and that that was your fire was my wife I was blazing oh my god we keep doing this anyway Hey so that's yesterday well and the other thing is because Brian works with with people who also don't communicate predict the one in Belgium but you know what you know is that if they say they're going to do something they're going to move we know that we know that now yeah but on our side we know if I know if I say I'm gonna do something I do it well I was saying I was saying to them are we definitely going to have these pieces and the one for the poor woman Meriter who's on the end of the phone is going she just would not give a positive answer to anything because she didn't want to lie she didn't you know she's honest an honest woman yes I mean honestly with the was summer-like the acrylic piece new home we were working on it still well after the outdoor pieces were installed yeah it was still getting finished the paintings we finished you know a week or two before we supposed to ship that's right that was just before cuts right on time yeah well we changed the shipping date actually oh yeah see so I forgot that yeah so but here at the end of the day it's here so I can't tell you about any of them but um but yeah I do have some stuff in the pipeline that you know I'm constantly thinking when I do a show like this I feel like I I've worked in a certain certain area and it makes me want to work in other areas and kind of like you know like a I don't know I just like pushing work out in different different ways and I enjoy making product a lot so that's a sort of you know this is a place where you can come and see these big pieces but then I also like to kind of have like this intimate dialogue where you could be home with something or I don't know that's why I got into toys and I it wasn't methodical in the beginning but I realized that you know a lot of the people that are supporting me are coming to my shows now I have had some of my figures for you know 15 years or 16 whatever and so it's interesting it's like reaching people and sort of not you know not such a intense way it's sort of it's really I don't know I'm losing the word for it accessable yeah the sizable you know so I like you know I constantly try to think of you know when I was younger I didn't really go to galleries and museums much and I would come in to work through magazines and different graphics on skateboards or whatever it was and I constantly want to make work that sort of communicates in those same sort of realms so so yes and a long-winded answer I do have some corporations coming out yeah knows you never feel comfortable liking that I think it's good you don't feel comfortable um you know there's been different points where I felt like oh this is great this is gonna jump off it's like yeah and then it doesn't happen and you know like when I you know I did a show in 2000 in Manhattan and I was like you know I just met this guy who had to get it was I didn't know what working with a gallery any of that stuff was was like I met someone had a gallery was like a you know friend's father knew this guy whatever I put my stuff up in a show and like Jeff Koons came and introduced me to one of his major collectors and I was there you know I was thinking like oh wow this is like she's going to start and then my next show in New York was in 2008 so it was like you know just you can't you can't I feel like I'm extremely fortunate with the amount of stuff that has happened up until this point in my life but you never know like what you know when things are going to click or when things are going to happen it's just sort of like you just kind of got to push away out it you know but it's interesting that then you did you wanted the gallery representation you wanted that that platform for your work um I didn't actually I you know I was invited to this group show at Sandra Gering and then and then she would you know asked to do a show with me after that but then at the same time I met paracin I mean I did want that outlet but when I opened original fake I was just so frustrated with people kind of imposing this idea of being commercial artist of being a fine artist yeah and I just was you know I was into a lot of artists like you know Taryn or Yoko was a great example of Japanese artist he's in his 70s maybe I don't know he's quite a TIA probably late 70s now but um you know he would coexist in these different realms he was doing all this painting he's one of the top designers in Japan in the 60s and he do all these great products with like Yohji Yamamoto and it was just good stuff and you know I wanted to make this stuff I wanted to be honest about the stuff I wanted to wake up and make yeah so I just sort of stopped keeping track of like what the possibilities are and just started focusing on what I was doing and then yeah slowly it in a roundabout way it came to working with galleries and and now museums at times um you know like we're doing when I was doing graffiti I was just there was a hunger to get work out and get into the world and I feel like now there's more opportunities have come up and you know I've kind of I've kind of grown and I don't I don't see it as like an evolution from I just see it as like a shift of interests so I don't really have that calling to to go out and paint as far as the sculptures you know it baffles me when people come to see an exhibition of mine and look at a sculpture and call it street art like I just like I just don't know what they're looking at but um that's that's maybe one of my pet peeves you know I'm thinking about sculpture like the works in the show aren't really it's not that I don't know I don't see it as like having to belong to a category you know when I was even when I was doing graffiti I didn't think you know I was when I was in college I'd be painting all day for school and looking at Bouguereau and Sargent and Rockwell and all those different painters and just studying like the zone system and yeah painting so I had you know it's weird you see I meet people that know me as like a toy designer a street artists you know whatever it is and I just feel like a lot of them the categories are useless I enjoy I enjoy work I love to be busy I kind of freak out when I'm not busy but um with having their stores like you know before that I was working with all these different companies and I was always curious what it would be like to have a store and a company in my own and now I know so it's not you know I I just felt like at the end of the day I could be allocating more of my energies into a lot of different things when you have a shop you know it we had I think about 80 wholesale accounts there's so we there's like a certain demand you have to fulfill and even though financially it was a great business it was not um not what I want to wake up and do every day Oh Nicky you know I yeah I like to investigate like you know I like to sort of be stimulated and sort of explored things and when you're when you're worrying about fulfilling a season of clothing it's 100 130 pieces a season or something it's not you know it's like it's like you make one pair of fancy great you don't need to make 50 so yeah just interest shift well no I mean now that I don't have that that constant pole I can I can jump in and do a collaboration with somebody and do a small collection and move on it's more fun you know I mean it's unavoidable that if you know when your life changes like that it has to find its way it must find its way into the work but if you know it's weird before I was having a you know my daughter I was freaking out like oh my god you know it's gonna house this I couldn't even imagine having this kind of time and dealing with this sort of like you know just as a person I was very selfish as you know I'd be in the studio all the time in seven days a week and you know as soon as she came it just fit in and it's actually I feel like it helped me sort of cut the fat off a lot of things and you know you find yourself wasting a lot of time and so now it's like very like I'm in the studio within these hours I'm extremely efficient when I'm there and I don't you know if I have a friend that wants to take some BS meeting I don't do it like I just you know you just gotta figure out how to allocate your time best and them and then it yeah it's a tremendous relief to have somebody in your life like that so I'm sure it's worked its way in Stephanie what it's weighing I mean usually the places I exhibit is really posh so you know York showing me I made this exception for Claire no I mean you know whatever it's just a different place it's you know I never I never really feel comfortable anywhere I go so it's now uncomfortable and grass but it's being a kind of it's been a fairly sort of calming time I think I think you think oh it's great I mean honestly it's when I'm when I'm back home it's such a not that it's grind but there's a lot going on and you can you know it's probably why I don't answer emails but when I'm when I'm here you know it's it's you get a lot of sort of thinking space and just being able to wander the park and chill out on a trail room and do different things and you know I don't take it's funny when I'm in New York I don't get to go to museums as much what if I'm in like Paris or Amsterdam or whatever you make it a point to like visit the collection and see galleries and do stuff and you get back home you get in a routine so it's nice to get snapped out of it and you did some drawing here you did stuff but you're being ya did a better drawing yeah working a few new sculpture project yeah so you know I don't own a 3d printer and um almost every sculpture here came from a clay sculpt but I do like 3d printers I mean I do like technology I'm not against it I just am not that savvy and haven't been able to sit down and really we just I did a thing recently for for this magazine called W that um we took images of Drake and we just took them offline and we made little 3d printers of them at different scales and I put them all around my Mac pets that I had in the studio so I mean it's kind of amazing what you could do with a 3d printer you can I can take anybody here and make them like be around my studio it's pretty evil ya know it's fascinating I wish I had one if anyone wants to send one to my studio I can give you the address did you ever imagine that you would have these I mean of course you can't imagine it but you know you've you've been sort of living with these characters from bendy you know bendy and shaman accomplice and yeah some others for kind of some of them nearly 20 years I guess yes yeah just some no I mean I never it's one when I was doing it it just sort of when I made my first toy I never thought I'd make a second and there you know I think I think it went 99 was the first toy in 2002 was the second yeah and the whole time you know the guys in Japan were asked me know don't you want to make something I was like I don't know what the hell I would make I just had no like no calling and then slowly it just sort of built up and it became you know I always thought like in the two-dimensional like painting and everything and slowly sculpture built is like a real chunk of what I was doing do you have do you feel like you kind of have a relationship with those characters yeah in a way where like I feel horrible they're out in the rain do you yeah they kind of say yeah but small light it's fantastic when it's really wet yeah see oh nice yeah but you do is there do you feel a kind of I don't know uh you must feel the foot I mean I have felt over the last two weeks just having all three weeks I guess having the works in the gallery I feel sort of ridiculously fond of the sculpture it's not something I would kind of normally feel I don't think what I think I've ever felt before but but there is a kind of a fondness and I don't know I just wanted to be sort of have internal conversations with them or Oh too weird yeah it is okay well withdrawal that question and does anybody have any more questions no I just well maybe we just nice to end on what you're going to be doing next in terms of stuff that you can talk about something that you know actually a project that I started before we started this project was um in October I'll be doing showing at Fort Worth modern yeah and it's a without saying the word survey it's like sort of a survey exhibition of 20 years of work so it's all it's from the phone booths up until there'll be new work in the show and about 100 hundred 50 pieces and so just getting working my way navigating around that you know is kind of taking a good chunk of my time I can I don't see that so that's that includes products as well as yeah it'll include some products we haven't figured out how to how to sort of make the flow of the show I mean it is there's many rooms and spaces and you know we're working on a catalog for that they can't all be as fast as Sarah who's the ultimate catalog designer but but yeah I mean that's one of the projects and and then um there's some different random things that are coming between now and then and do you see do you have a night a sense of where the sculpture might be going I mean I suppose I'm particularly thinking about the outdoor work do you have another work up another piece that you're working on I do actually there's a project I'm doing in Switzerland and I think June is that one Basel is yeah that um there's a new sculpture that we're working on but more wooden pieces and basically we're taking the like wood and the acrylic pieces things that we've been working in and just sort of exploring it more yeah so it's not really going to be an exhibition it's more like a soft opening like we have a power plant that we're just going to put the works in and have a dinner so it sounds good yeah thank you thank you thank you thank you you

Channel: StreetArtNews

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Keywords: street art, art, graffiti, streetart, prints, paint, kaws

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Length: 54min 35sec (3275 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 23 2016