[Barry McGee: Tagging]

What kids will do just to have their name on something, it's fascinating to me still.

It's just as fascinating as when I was a teenager.

There's a strong population that lives on the street in San Francisco.

Almost any time you'd be doing graffiti, you'd be in contact with other people

that move around in that same type of area, and, like, that time of the night.

Sometimes you'd have to run or escape getting caught, and you'd be in some bushes,

and there'd be other people in the bushes already there.

There was always a presence of other people that were doing things,

or living or surviving somehow on the streets, or on the edges of the city,

that were just fascinating characters...

And always welcoming, like if I was running as fast as I can and ditching my bike in a bush,

they would just wave me over, like, "Come on over here. Over here--it's no problem..."

"No one's going to see you over here." [LAUGHS]

That's immediately how I gauge how healthy a city is--by the amount of tags.

It's just in direct competition with advertising, I feel like.

It's still one of the last things that I think hasn't been, like, corrupted,

[LAUGHS] ...to me. There's still drones and drones of kids that still do it.

I still do it on occasion.

It has to be the perfect storm.

There's something that's uncomfortable about it that's exciting about it.

There's that rush of being outside and getting away with it.

The satisfaction that you have something sitting out there, for however long,

amongst everything else. It just had a life, and it would go and it went,

and then that was it. You have this memory.

It's hard to recreate that in a studio. That's a completely different practice.

[Squeaking and whirring sounds of animatronic metal sculptures in motion]

The mannequin--those tagging ones--have always been like illustrations to me, like

of like things that friends and I used to do when we were younger.

Our situations we'd be in, like trying to get up higher and higher,

like getting on each other's shoulders.

You never see, with tagging, the person actually doing the crime, or the art,

or whatever they were doing.

So it became really interesting to me to, like, recreate the situation.

[Whirring sounds of an animatronic metal sculpture in motion]

You could leave this exhibition with a better understanding of how

obsessed kids in their mid-20s can be, doing graffiti.

It's more of a guidebook, I feel like.

The whole thing is like, "We'll take your hand and walk you through it, if you're interested."