Adam Milner Takes Care of the Details | Art21 "New York Close Up"

(wind blowing)

(birds tweeting)

[Adam Milner, artist]

(soft ambient music)

I think people would think of me
as a collector.

(ambient music continues)

I feel more like I'm just a magnet

and objects are just
flying at me all the time

and then I have to
then deal with them.

(ambient music continues)

[Adam Milner Takes Care of the Details]

My artworks are always
intermingling with personal stuff.

So I turned to tidying philosophies
or home decor TV shows.

A lot of these philosophies are
about getting rid of things,

but I'm really interested in
this idea of vibrant matter

or this idea that everything is active--

and how when we're done with something,

it still exists in the world.

Immediately I think of trash,
and I love trash.

(upbeat synth music)

I will just walk around the
neighborhood and look at trash.

(upbeat synth music continues)

A spilled bag of Cheetos on the sidewalk

is a stunning composition

that I have to take a photo of.

(camera clicking)

And then I come home and I start to use

something I learned from
those Cheetos in the work.

I find their accidental compositions
to be really exciting.

(clanging)

I like the flattening
that happens in thrift stores

where there's functional things
next to artworks

next to things
that seem worthless.

(glass tinkling)

I get a lot of ideas
and a lot of materials

and a lot of objects from
the people in my life.

When my friend Jen from high school

wanted me to cut off all
her hair and keep it,

it felt like a weird trophy.

Now I've lived with that
hair and protected it

and cared for it for longer
than it was on her head.

So is it my hair now?

Even as I approach something out of hair

or closeness with a person,

there's also kind of a
domination or a control.

It's always going to be Jen's hair,

but it's now also been
in the Warhol museum.

(piano synth music)

I'm realizing that arranging

is kind of my primary discipline.

I made this sculpture

with these little things I had collected,

and then I carved these stones

that I would find to hold them.

I think some of the items
are safer in the stones

than they were before.

(ethereal synth music)

It needs just a little
bit of yellow, actually.

(water running)

(water dripping)

The exhibition I'm working on right now

is with a museum called Black Cube.

(ethereal synth music)

We're showing thirteen sculptures
at a thrift store, a bodega,

one sculpture is in my friend's car.

This exhibition is about
letting these objects

have these temporary contexts
that change how you read them

and maybe help you access them,

and that aren't just this
white cube environment.

(quiet violin music)

Sometimes at an art museum,

the brackets that are hand
painted to look like marble,

those hand-painted brackets
are more exciting to me

even than the bust.

They're trying to disappear,

but then they become even more conspicuous

through this careful labor.

(ambient violin music)

A museum has its own rules
of organization and display

just like the store or
the archive or the hoard.

I'm interested in teasing out
the similarities among them,

disrupting that hierarchy a little bit.

(drill running)

I have a really fraught
relationship with my things,

and I realize that I'm,
basically, defending the hoarder.

With hoarding, you do
blur with your stuff.

Your body becomes part of the hoard.

(ethereal synth music)

I think everything is porous,

and everything is always
absorbing the thing next to it.

(ethereal music continues)

If it's confusing
where things begin and end,

it's a lot harder to divide and segment.

I'm always trying to resist
the clean category.

I like when things are
messier and blurrier.

(ethereal music continues)

(soft guitar music)