WEBVTT

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MATTHEW RITCHIE: Modern art is a gift.

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Take it or leave it, you know.

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It's like nobody's forcing it
down your throat.

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All anyone is trying to do
is try out some new ideas,

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something different,
something, you know...

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just ringing the changes
a little while.

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And I think there's something
enormously ambitious

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about that idea,
that we're all trying to advance

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or at least question
what's going on,

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and I just think that's great.

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Drawing is very, very central
to the way that I work

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because it can be blown up,
taken apart,

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given to another person
to execute,

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put into a computer,

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redrawn as if the computer
had thought of your drawing

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in the first place,

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shrunk back down
to a tiny sketch,

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turned into a digital game.

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You can just keep on pushing it.

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It's like this infinite machine,

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which is very hard to do
with almost anything else.

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Like even with a painting--

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a painting becomes
a very static, fixed thing,

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but a drawing, you can make it
three-dimensional,

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you can make it flat,
you can turn it into a sphere.

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You can just keep pushing it
and pushing it and pushing it,

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because all it is
is information.

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It's just a bunch of marks.

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So once you sort
of understand it,

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you're really just the arm
at that point.

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Like the drawing
has already been made;

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you're just transcribing it.

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The idea is really taking this
very small, intimate gesture

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and making it into something

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that retains all
of the properties that it had

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but allowing it to be
really done on any scale.

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So you're really
sort of freeing it in a way

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to live in the world.

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It's like a three-way
collaboration between me,

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a computer program

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that doesn't understand
what it's doing at all

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and then a group of strangers

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who will execute it
and rebuild it in a way.

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And then we've all made
this thing together

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that has a kind
of shared integrity.

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The nice thing about
the way I'm working is

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that the program that I'm using
has an infinite resolution.

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So, you know,
you keep getting bigger.

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This is how the quality of the
line remains absolutely constant

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from very, very small
to very large.

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So it doesn't really have
a lot of the conventional ideas

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that, you know...
of reproduction,

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where you blow it up
and it's like

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it's going to lose its
definition or its resolution.

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So, this can be very, very small
or very, very big,

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and it's really the same thing.

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It's exactly the same gesture.

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It's not getting corrupted
or evolved or degraded

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at any point.

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Each time the drawing
is reproduced,

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it gets bigger and bigger
and bigger--

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it's now 270 feet long--

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and it contains more and more detail, 
because it always has to include

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not only all of the elements
that I've made since then

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but the previous version
of itself.

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So it's like a kind of cross
between a dictionary and a map,

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so it becomes
this separate thing,

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like a living document
of its own history

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and the history of all the hands

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that have participated
in its making.

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It's my work,

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but at the same time, part of
the work is letting people in.

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It's like...

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it's what keeps it
alive in some ways.

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I guess I'm most interested
in, What can one person know?

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And how much?

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It's a kind of a weakness
and a strength in the work

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that it's interested
in everything.

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There's this famous ratio
of signal and noise.

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If you try to take
too much information in,

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it turns into noise;
you can only process so much.

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So to actually
understand anything,

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you have to keep tuning
stuff out;

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that's how we all
get through the day.

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[ baby cooing ]

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RITCHIE:
Talk about building a universe.

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Eisen, my son--

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it's, like, everything for him
is on the same level.

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Everything he sees
at three months old

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is just sound, noise, light.

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They're all fused into this kind
of panoptic sort of

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synergy in his mind.

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And he has
to pick everything out

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and start filtering it
and make sense of it.

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He has to do it every day
from scratch.

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All he's getting is this just
insane, confusing information,

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and that process keeps
continuing all our lives.

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So we filter out,
you know, the knowledge

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that everything in this space
has a meaning and a history

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and a story.

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We have to sort of bank
it all down,

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but I'm kind of interested
in then, like,

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okay, we've banked it all down,

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but now, like, can we
bring it up a little?

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Can we turn the volume up
maybe just a little bit more?

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Can we listen to everything
just a little bit more loudly?

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So, that's sort of
what I'm interested in--

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describing a kind of armature
for that.

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This piece is called
"The Universal Cell,"

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and it's really conceived of
as a kind of a module,

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like a single part
of a much larger installation.

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It's derived
from a series of drawings

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that I scan into the computer

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and then I refine
through various processes

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and send to Jim.

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Jim takes it to his computer,
cleans it up a little bit,

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you know, make sure there aren't
any loose points on it.

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And then he puts it
into a machine

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that's expressly designed
to take the drawing or the line

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and reproduce it
with absolute perfection

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by cutting through metals.

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A process that ten years ago
would have taken weeks and weeks

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and weeks,
can now take a couple of days.

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And there's something
just fantastic

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about being totally in control
of the whole production.

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The whole thing was designed,
like most of my work,

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to be taken apart.

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It's as much about flatness
as it is about sculpture,

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because I'm really interested
in sustaining the drawing.

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— Oh, that's nice--
the way that fits there.

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RITCHIE: So I wanted to 
build a structure

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that felt like a cell,

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your cell in the whole universe.

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If the universe is a prison,
this is your cell.

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This is where you're standing,

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and you drag it with you
wherever you go.

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The show in Sao Paulo is really
about the prison of life

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where you are trapped
in a set of circumstances

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that are biological, temporal,
physical, mental.

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You're locked in
to a point of view.

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As a culture, we've defined evil
in one particular way,

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by building structures
to contain it.

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We build prisons.

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And basically, no matter
what bad thing you've done,

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you go to jail and that's it.

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Every crime has
the same punishment.

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And I was thinking about that,

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and then I was thinking
about, in a larger sense,

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how the context of information
defines everything.

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So, in a way, each of us is
in kind of our own prison,

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like you bring it with you.

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It's the prison of your biology,
of your social structure,

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of your life,

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and how that is both a sort
of challenge and an opportunity.

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"Proposition Player" is
about the idea of risk.

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And it's about the idea of,
Is it possible to always win?

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The slogan of this show is
"You may already be a winner,"

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that takes the idea
of a fixed set of relationships

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and turns it into something

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that's completely, you know,
shuffle-able, you can mix it up.

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There is no story
in a pack of cards,

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but you can tell any story
you want to tell.

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So, the cards themselves,
you know,

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the first and most important
cards are the four aces.

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And the four aces represent

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the four fundamental forces
in the universe,

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which is the weak force, the
strong force, gravity, and light.

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There's only four forces
in the universe,

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conveniently enough for me,

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and, uh, they underlie
everything.

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They tie everything together.

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And the four aces generate
the four units of measurement,

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which are time, mass, length
and temperature.

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To make it into
a proper pack of cards,

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of course I had to introduce,
um, a joker,

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which is time-- absolute time
rather than linear time,

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which is the totality of time,

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the kind of non-time
that we all live inside.

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Like we measure off:

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there's the hours
and the minutes and the days

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and then there's all of time.

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In the moment of gambling

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between placing your bet
and the result of the bet,

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there's a kind of moment
of infinite freedom,

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because all the possibilities
are there.

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You may already be a winner.

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So you've started out as
the smallest possible element,

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a particle
in the gigantic universe,

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and gradually you see
how essential that particle is

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to everything else, how
everything is woven together.

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We're all part
of that same structure as well.

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We're all part of the continuum.

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So, that's the idea.

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It's a very simple thing.

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It's like, here you are,
this is a...

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literally like a little way
of representing you

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in a giant game.

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Come in, put your card
on the table and play.

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It's really just sort of taking
the traditional aspect

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of confronting large, complex
ideas about the universe,

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which is one of awe, and
inverting it to one of play.

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This kind of boundary between
abstraction and figuration

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became much more interesting
to think about

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as a sort of more
porous boundary

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between us and everything.

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How do we define the figure?

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How do we limit the figure?

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How do we think of ourselves
as this bounded state?

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And so these figures
started appearing

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who are really
kind of manifestations.

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It was almost like all
of the universal ideas

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that I talked about
in the earlier work

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decided that they needed
to have bodies

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that were much
more recognizable.

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They needed to turn back
into people

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and walk around and start seeing
what that was like.

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And these figures started
to kind of emerge.

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Before that, they had been
typically more abstract

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in the paintings,
more present in the drawings.

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They got very present in the
drawings, as you can see now.

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And they're still in the paintings

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they're a little more abstracted,

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but they're very much...
they're there.

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And there's this
sort of ridiculous idea

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that's left over
from the 20th century

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that abstraction and figuration
are legitimate poles.

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And I, from the very start,

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have incorporated
the two things together,

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been fascinated by the idea that
there is really no distinction;

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it's just a question of scale.

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And you can always analyze
the visual art

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in terms of content
or appearance--

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these formal qualities.

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I would argue that
it's a game to separate them.

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They're indissolubly linked.

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Everything in the material world
around us has a narrative.

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So to sort of classify
visual art alone

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as the one medium
that shouldn't require

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any effort on behalf of anybody
to ever understand it--

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you should just be able to look
at it and walk away on a...

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as a pure sensation--

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that relegates it to the level
of like a roller-coaster ride,

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like "Just shut your eyes
and enjoy the ride."

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I'm more in mind of saying,

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"Open your eyes
and enjoy the ride,"

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because it's much more exciting

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if you are thinking
and questioning

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and you don't know what it is,

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and it is full
of questions and statements

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that you can't possibly grasp,

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because that is
a truer reflection

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of just how extraordinary
reality is

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than something that's sort
of neatly tied up in a bow

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and it's, like, "There, look
at that, be at peace, go home."

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I'm more interested in something

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that leaves you
asking all those questions,

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like "What is that?

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I don't know what that is."