It took me a very long time to realize that inherently the materials have this beautiful quality without me having to impose meaning onto them.
I don't look at a lot of design. I try to stay focused on making sculptural art pieces and somehow translating them into design.
Have you ever had a moment where you finish a piece, and then all of a sudden the piece sort of takes on it's own life beyond you? It doesn't happen every time, but there are some pieces where that happens, and I love that. I feel like that's what I'm seeking nowadays, that moment of transcendence with a piece. Where this thing becomes larger than me as a person. It becomes otherworldly, and then I get separated as maker from it, and then it has it's own life. I love that.
Sometimes I think you just have to trust that the things you're doing make sense, instead of sitting down and analyzing this and that and, "Well, I read Paul-Michel Foucault saying..." The world and the universe have a way of resolving themselves eloquently, I think, if you're doing the right things.
When people ask me now about why I make art, I think that's what I'm seeking - a moment of transcendence with a piece. Because otherwise you're just in the hustle, you're trying to pay your bills, to do this and that, and then there's that unique moment, when you're not thinking about the market, or if it's going to sell, and all of that bullshit.
I feel like I'm changing as a human being, and I think that the work needed to be in line with where I'm at. When I was younger and I was making political work, I was trying to figure out where my work fit in because when you're young you're like, "I don't know." I'm Latino, I grew up in Mexico, and so I thought that maybe I had to talk about those things. Then finally I didn't need my identity to rely on anymore. So now the work is becoming about more esoteric things, I guess - my own sort of language.
I've loosened up over the years about materials. I started off working for Matthew Barney, and that's what his mentality is. Even while we were making pieces, like a mold, the mold would make sense conceptually with the piece. That's how deep his symbology goes. I've loosened up over the years because I very much had that mentality.
This is the personal side of things. When I started going through some of those transitions in my mind, just as a human being versus as an artist, I tried to... Essentially, I did this thing called Landmark Forum. It's three days of mind-expanding, existential philosophy, like Jean-Paul Sartre for everyday living. In existential philosophy they talk about "Being and Nothingness," this idea of not putting meaning onto things, and that in that way you live more purely. In other words, we form reality from these stories that we make up about our lives.
When I was in college, it was Jacques Derrida. Everyone was dropping quotes. I remember thinking that was important - and I don't say that it's not now - but we're just living our lives. I don't have time to think about that.
