00:00 [silence]
00:24 I strictly believe in touching the art. Art should be touched, smelt, played with, thought about.
00:39 It's not a static thing. It's alive. It's alive!
00:47 Roberta Smith, my hero. She would have a heart attack if she saw this.
00:55 Welcome.
01:00 This is my show called "I Object." It has a double meaning.
01:05 "I object" is something typically a lawyer would say if they have complained about something.
01:12 But it's also me as an object.
01:16 You want to hear something about the show.
01:23 Nothing in this exhibition is 3D printed.
01:28 But every single work derives from a digital file.
01:34 What I'm interested in is a digital 3D file, a digital photograph, or an idea that's conceptualized
01:45 and then rendered digitally.
01:48 However, like I said, nothing is 3D printed.
01:52 One piece is made out of clay. I call it the "Chubb Venus."
01:57 I recently lost a lot of weight. This is a piece I made out of clay.
02:01 I was going to fire it, but then I decided it was too fragile because I wanted to 3D scan it.
02:08 So from this piece, which is made in a manner that could be... I modeled it after the Venus of Willendorf,
02:16 which is a 25,000-year-old fertility sculpture.
02:20 This is the anti-fertility sculpture because it's me as a fat person, overweight person.
02:26 And then I took a picture of the process of sculpting it and had it rendered as an oil painting in China.
02:35 And then I scanned the clay sculpture with the 3D scanner, made a mold, which was 3D rendered,
02:45 but then made a hand-painted aluminum sculpture.
02:48 So everything had a digital origin, but ultimately was made in the most traditional forms of sculpture,
02:57 in bronze, of Roberta Smith.
03:00 The famous composer John Sibelius made a comment in 1937 that he doesn't care,
03:08 he doesn't give a damn about criticisms of his compositions
03:12 because no one had ever erected a sculpture, a statue of a critic.
03:16 Well, Roberta Smith is probably the most profound art writer alive today, or among them.
03:23 I revere her. She renders me speechless, if you can imagine, and instills me with fear.
03:29 But she's an extraordinary, profound human being as an art writer.
03:36 And now there is a statue of a critic that I've created.
03:40 My work spans writing. I would call it performance.
03:47 What we're doing now, as far as I'm concerned, is an artwork.
03:50 I teach, I write, and I make art. I've also dealt art to make a living.
03:57 Marcel Duchamp thought he would make a fortune creating children's toys.
04:02 So he rented a booth, not in an art fair, but in a toy fair,
04:06 and he sat there with these little toys he invented that sat on a turntable,
04:11 and he thought that would be the key to his financial insecurities.
04:15 Of course it wasn't, and he lost all his money, as I often do.
04:19 But I don't differentiate between teaching, curating, writing.
04:26 I often illustrate my articles with my own videos.
04:31 I created my own platform to see my art when nobody else cared to.
04:36 I've made art out of my words, out of my writing.
04:39 These are two prints published by a young British printmaker called Oliver Clatworthy.
04:45 There's furniture. When I had a show in Austria, in Linz recently,
04:50 there's a book in production now at the Francisco Carolinum,
04:53 run by the great Alfred Weidinger, who should be a sculptor as well.
04:58 He's such an incredible iconoclastic museum director, curator, writer.
05:04 He's an authority on Klimt, and also does a body of work on photography
05:11 and documentary work in Africa.
05:14 But I created a classroom based on Joseph Beuys,
05:18 who created the Freedom International University.
05:22 Beuys said that his teaching was the greatest contribution of his artistic legacy
05:28 because he left something physical in the minds of his students.
05:34 So I created seating elements.
05:36 They said NFTism, which is a dumb word that used to mean like collaboration,
05:44 communication, and communities of people banding together with a like mind
05:51 until NFTs became overrun with greed, cynicism, and speculation.
05:59 Then I changed my tattoo to post-NFTism.
06:02 But like these are cubes, which is a classical modernist form in art,
06:08 and yet I turned it into the word NFTism, and it's a piece of furniture.
06:12 So for me, I created a classroom in Austria, and my teaching became my performance.
06:17 I gave half a dozen lectures there over the course of the show.
06:21 And again, like I've--to make a living, I'll do anything I have to
06:27 to afford myself the fulfillment of my life's work,
06:31 which is my lifelong curiosity to learn and to discover
06:37 and to share whatever it is that I learn,
06:40 whether I think people want to hear it or not.
06:42 It doesn't typically bother me.
06:44 But so like I made art out of my teaching.
06:48 I have a sale every year at Sotheby's to sell my craft.
06:52 It's called the hoarder.
06:53 So the hoarding is a pejorative term, which is critical of materialistic people
07:02 that collect too much art.
07:04 So for me, I'm materialistic because art is a material function,
07:11 but at the same time, I'm very ascetic.
07:14 Asceticism is a philosophical pursuit of ideas at the expense of materiality.
07:21 Art is giving material form to thought.
07:24 But I'm addicted to things inasmuch as they convey an idea.
07:31 But I could live or die without my things.
07:34 I just love being surrounded by art.
07:36 That was really rambling on about what to do about nothing.
07:40 But every single day in my house, I touch a sculpture.
07:44 I smell a painting.
07:46 I engage with artworks like pieces of a board game.
07:50 I would say chess, but I'm not smart enough to even know how to play it.
07:53 But I don't know.
07:54 This is Selfie Man, which is a not so flattering depiction of myself
08:01 with impaled like Saint Sebastian with all these selfie sticks.
08:06 And this piece was inspired one day when I was in Miami
08:10 to see some dumb art fair.
08:12 And I was walking on the beach, and everybody was on the beach,
08:17 but nobody was experiencing the sand or the sea or the sky.
08:21 They were experiencing it through this buffer of their telephone.
08:24 And that to me is I am addicted to my phone firmly clenched in my hand
08:31 like most people smoke a vape.
08:33 I made a piece with a baby grabbing the vape.
08:37 I'm addicted to the phone like most people,
08:39 but I use it to learn and as a means of communication.
08:42 So really, what is art?
08:44 Art is a reflection of the social, political, economic,
08:48 and technological times we live in.
08:51 So for me, I'm compelled to work with technology
08:55 and different modes of expression through computers and fabrication
08:59 as well as using my fingers to make a clay sculpture
09:02 because it all reflects our time profoundly so.
09:07 And these are the things that engage me and that make me lose sleep.
09:15 I would live for my art, and I would die for my art.
09:18 It gives me sustenance in a way that nothing else has.
09:22 It helped me through the tragedy of losing one of my kids.
09:25 If it wasn't for art, I wouldn't be here boring the crap out of you,
09:29 this run-along, run-on sentence monologue, but this is it.
09:34 I mean, I would never under any circumstances--
09:38 I shouldn't even be bringing this up,
09:40 but a famous civil rights activist, Malcolm X,
09:43 said he would achieve equality and parity in the world
09:48 for people of color at any expense.
09:51 If violence was necessitated, he was willing to kill for it,
09:55 and he made this comment, which just stuck in my head,
09:58 "Any means necessary."
10:00 And even though in no way am I demeaning anything he did or said
10:05 by referencing this historical activist,
10:10 but this notion of "any means necessary,"
10:13 we have one life, life is very short,
10:15 no one will ever stop me from doing what I've been put on this planet to do,
10:20 which is to fulfill my creative curiosity.
10:24 And art can't exist--a Van Gogh painting or a Joan Mitchell painting
10:30 or a Louise Bourgeois sculpture can't exist in a vacuum in a forest.
10:36 Art is completed by an audience,
10:41 by sharing and communication and expression.
10:45 So yes, art is a means of self-expression,
10:48 but it's also a channel of communication.
10:52 It's one of the few things that differentiate the species of human beings.
10:58 And if there was more art in the world,
11:00 we'd have less assholes destroying the planet.
11:04 Take your pick of President Xi, Trump, Putin,
11:09 these men that are beyond their years,
11:14 that are grabbing on to power, making a fool of themselves,
11:20 causing untold misfortune, bloodshed,
11:25 and, yeah, subjugation of peoples. It's tragic.
11:29 If there was more art, more compassion, more generosity of spirit,
11:35 we would be in a lot better place,
11:37 and art is one of the few things in the world that could do that
11:40 besides a nice pet or child.
11:44 And with that, I bid you adieu.
11:48 I'm happy for you to look around some more or for me to show you,
11:52 but this is it. This is what gives me joy.
11:54 I don't do this for money.
11:56 I don't have an audience in Los Angeles.
11:58 I used to hate Los Angeles until I got here two weeks ago.
12:02 I'm not a movie person. I like documentaries.
12:05 I was always fat, skinny, fat, skinny, like what this sculpture is about.
12:11 Hollywood wasn't going to do it for me.
12:13 It held no sway, no attraction,
12:15 until I've recently come back in a more self-actualized position
12:21 of coming back on my terms, and it's art that took me here,
12:25 and it's been a revelation.
12:26 The city of Los Angeles, the people I've met,
12:31 it's this spirit that really moves me, touches me,
12:35 and inspires me so profoundly to this day.
12:39 Nothing has changed over 35 years of my enthusiasm for what I do.
12:44 The people I've met and the experiences I've had.
12:48 I'm very, very, very fortunate and grateful.
12:51 Life is short, and I pursue my interests in an extreme fashion.
12:58 Now I'm really finished.
13:01 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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