[New York Close Up]
[Wu Tang Clan's "C.R.E.A.M." playing in the background]
I don't want to see what I'm working on.
The head is like the only thing on your body that you can't really see,
so, I want to make that part without seeing it.
Kind of like this.
[Diana Al-Hadid, Artist]
The work that I make mostly starts without knowing very much about what I'm doing.
I surrender to that.
I want to know what I don't know, kind of--
want to know the limits of my thinking.
A lot of my work starts with the material and starts with the careful study of
what it can do or what it can't do.
It's getting a material to misbehave.
--[AL-HADID] If we start it here and let it connect to that...
--[ASSISTANT] Okay.
[AL-HADID] Asking a good question produces really interesting answers or amazing discoveries.
--[AL-HADID] So then maybe we start bridging these, like...
--[ASSISTANT] Yeah.
[AL-HADID] Artists are making those discoveries all the time, every day, in their studio.
--[AL-HADID] And they're going to go on here...-ish.
Maybe.
I don't make work because I'm interested in something.
I don't want to explain it to you.
I'm making it to become interested.
["Diana Al-Hadid's Suspended Reality"]
[1986; Cleveland, Ohio]
Well, I probably had an atypical childhood.
When I was in first grade, when I first moved here from Syria,
you know, I didn't speak English, and couldn't read and write.
I was the weird immigrant kid that drew a lot.
[LAUGHS] I should show you what I was drawing.
[Drawings, c. 1990–94]
My grandma, she's a painter, and she told me if you could learn to draw hands,
and people, then you were really an artist.
So [LAUGHS] I tried that.
I think a lot of kids draw still life, or draw from a photograph,
but, I wanted my drawing to look more real than the photograph. [LAUGHS]
[MARIANNE BOESKY] That's amazing! Look at that!
Okay, who would've thought you could make a drawing like this.
[AL-HADID] [LAUGHS] I started drawing like that.
[BOESKY] This is incredible. [ALL LAUGH]
[Marianne Boesky -- Gallerist]
[AL-HADID] So, yeah, fast forward to now,
I think that all of that, probably, middle-school anxiety--
you know, every little pen mark, every little pencil--
was a building of layers and developing something larger.
You know, I have some rogue interest in physics and math.
Sculpture is inherently mathematical.
It lives in this world. It has to obey the laws of gravity, unfortunately.
I don't know, I think I have painting envy.
Like, I was looking up northern Renaissance or Mannerist paintings...
[Paintings, c. 1420–1528]
They have so many more liberties in terms of scale and mass,
and especially gravity and levity and illusion.
You know, I'm dealing with actual space and actual gravity,
and they get to do things that I wish I could make; but, it's not possible.
[Sound of metal being sawed]
[Marianne Boesky Gallery -- Chelsea]
For me, to get a sculpture to lift off the floor, that's the first way to rebel.
It's just the main event.
I do go to great lengths [LAUGHS] to get things off the ground,
I don't know if people realize, how...
I mean, always have things just...argh! It's really horrible.
They want to fall, and they don't fall, miraculously,
But that's because I work really hard at getting them not to fall.
That's what I labor with every day, and I think what I want left
is not to burden you with all of those mechanical details.
["At the Vanishing Point" -- 2012]
["Divided Line" -- 2012]
Making these large works, what concerns me the most
is how to get you to pay attention to weight and volume and space
and interiors and exteriors.
["Antonym" -- 2012]
I don't know, I want to make something that seems really improbable.
["Suspended After Image" -- 2012]
I have enough reality in my life,
and, not that I live in some weird fantasy world,
but I want to weigh in a little bit on the other side.