1
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(gentle music)

2
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(bright music)

3
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- Not knowing is a state
that I think abstraction

4
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is really, really
important for addressing.

5
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Because it's not an illustration,
it's not a representation,

6
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it's an experience of understanding

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certain kinds of physical

8
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and formal relations:
space, color, time, weight,

9
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heaviness, lightness, ugliness, beauty.

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To mark, to stroke, to
struggle, to contradict,

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to offset, to whittle, to abstract.

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Part of doing improvisational
work is pitting yourself

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against the materials and the
resistance that they offer,

14
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and trying to figure out
how to make something happen

15
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where you're both working
with the materials

16
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and also very much working against them

17
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and questioning them.

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I only use scrapers, paper
towels, and sort of sticks.

19
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And occasionally I use foam
brushes and I have some brushes,

20
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but like I don't have very many

21
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because I don't really use them.

22
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So it's kind of about finding a way

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to get some stuff on

24
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and then finding any
possible scraper, wiper,

25
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rag, trowel, et cetera
to get it out of there.

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So removal is a big part of it.

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So I need a sink in my studio.

28
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(gentle music)

29
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You're editing with your body,
you're making these decisions

30
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to like spill something out,
cut it off, put it over there,

31
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move it around, to drag,
to pull, to scumble,

32
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to cut, to like try to smear it over it.

33
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And the next thing depends
on the thing before it.

34
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You're dealing with mistakes all the time

35
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and you're dealing with regret

36
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and like thinking, oh God
no, let me do that again.

37
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So on the big level
and on the little level

38
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and on every level in between,

39
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the slippage between control

40
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and finesse and form and
wanting it to be good

41
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and constantly adjusting things

42
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and trying to make it better.

43
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And between just like first
thought, best thought,

44
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like let it all hang out, like do a thing,

45
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see what you're surprised by.

46
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That tension is the tension
of me making my work.

47
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There's this paradox at the heart

48
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of trying to say what something means

49
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that you need the person's personal story

50
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and at the same time you can't rely on it.

51
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(upbeat music)

52
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It was in the mid to the late '70s,

53
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painting was very much
under assault or critique.

54
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And the only argument for
painting was, I like to do it.

55
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And that didn't seem like
a very compelling argument.

56
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I had friends who were
doing experimental music

57
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and experimental poetry
and experimental film,

58
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and I noticed that the idea
of an improvisational music,

59
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sound, video type of thing
could be applied to painting.

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The work I was interested in
was playing with art history

61
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and playing with form or
shape or color or process.

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It might have had the same spirit

63
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that the gestural
painters in the '50s had,

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but somehow by the time

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those kinds of paintings
became commodities,

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the sort of spirit of it was gone.

67
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And what was left was the sort of heroics.

68
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And so it was kind of
an anti heroic position

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that had to be like remade in painting.

70
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So I guess I'm rebuilding
something from a much more scrappy

71
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and casual and weird position,

72
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and also at the same time
pulled in a different

73
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set of references and I
had a different spirit.

74
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(bright music)

75
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It's not perfect, it
shows its scrape downs

76
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and it shows its revision
and it shows its finickiness,

77
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but it also shows its openness.

78
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And this maybe vain attempt

79
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to like push further or dig deeper.

80
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Do you want me to turn the
lights off so it's less yellow?

81
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- [Cinematographer] Sure.

82
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- I can flip through these.

83
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There's millions of drawings.

84
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I mean I really make a lot of drawings.

85
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I mean I have stacks
and stacks of drawings,

86
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boxes and boxes and boxes of drawings.

87
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I don't know if I have
a feeling about them

88
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until they become sequenced.

89
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And then there's a point of view

90
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that allows that particular edit.

91
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(bright music)

92
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I make these two kind of things.

93
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I make these paintings
that are a million layers

94
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that you can only see the top of.

95
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And then I make these
long horizontal drawing

96
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and printmaking sequences

97
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and painting sequences to, in some way,

98
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inveigle the viewer into
a situation of time.

99
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I always take photographs in my studio,

100
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like with my phone

101
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and just see myself at night

102
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like what the sort of
progression or animation is.

103
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And in this case,

104
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I wanted to unpack and excavate

105
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actually the whole
history of one painting.

106
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So I took all the
photographs that I could find

107
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of the history of that painting

108
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and then we printed them on plates

109
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and sort of invented a stand
for them to be mounted on

110
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so that a person could
walk across the space.

111
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And you see how it comes to be

112
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and you see how it gets ruined

113
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and you see how it turns around
and you see how it changes

114
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and you see that the image

115
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and the format, none of it is stable.

116
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All of it is kind of in flux.

117
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(gentle music)

118
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I used to always ask my
students, what is your unit?

119
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There's an atom, there's
an inch, there's an hour,

120
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there's a day, there's
a hand, there's a year.

121
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What is your base unit?

122
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Because I'm assuming that
everybody's is totally different.

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And they would give me
these beautiful answers

124
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that were super concise,

125
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like one person would
just say "it's one hour."

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Whatever they said, I
would take it seriously.

127
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And I thought like,

128
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how do you build a language
out of those units?

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Because everyone's kind of making up

130
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a grammar for their own work.

131
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I don't know.

132
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I can't even answer the question.

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I think my unit is trouble.

134
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You go to trouble, then
you get out of trouble,

135
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then you get back in trouble.

136
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So trouble or not trouble,

137
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getting to it and getting away from it

138
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and getting from one
trouble to the other trouble

139
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is the unit.

140
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I'm always pretty much
looking for something

141
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that contradicts the
layer that came before,

142
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creating a certain kind of tension

143
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and creating something that feels like

144
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it sort of holds together

145
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and it's sort of falling
apart at the same time

146
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and creating something
that looks like it's built

147
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like a drawing, but it holds
together as a painting.

148
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But you're not sure why.

149
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It's a very elusive position

150
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that takes a lot of time to find.

151
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And then you can't name it.

152
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I've done a lot of writing,

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but this is a non-linguistic
activity that,

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on some level, is foiled by language.

155
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So to answer these questions
is an impossibility.

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(gentle music continues)