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[Man VO] Let there be light.

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He can't hide, try as he might.

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♪♪♪

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A man at night making a pathetic
attempt at connection...

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[spraying]

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to connect with
anyone in an empty room.

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Have you ever danced with the
devil in the pale moonlight?

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♪♪♪

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Here is the man.

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Here is the man.

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Here is the man.

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I've seen the man perform.

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I've seen the man try and hide.

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[man] Okay, ready to roll?

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[woman] You can stand
up straight, Alex.

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[Alex] Yeah, is it okay?

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-[woman] Yeah.
-[woman] Yeah, that's fine.

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-[woman] We could reach you.
-[woman] We can reach.

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[Alex] Okay.

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[woman] It was just for the
top of your head I needed...

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[Alex] Okay.

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♪ curious jazzy music ♪

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[Alex VO] These characters or
images or objects exist within a

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world of dreams.

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♪ curious electronic music ♪

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I just want to have my mind
be freer than it is and

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that doesn't come easy to me,
so to spend time with these

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characters in this devotional
research-based way is to say,

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"I don't know if
I'll ever change,

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but I try to, at least."

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There is distance between myself
and the people in the past who

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have influenced me.

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If I think of some kind
of icon as a flat symbol,

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how do I give it depth?

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I want that, I think, of the
people I admire or the people

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that confuse me.

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I want depth.

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[Alex] There we go.

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Uh, wait, but is it all
the way up on the shoulder?

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[man] Yes.

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[Alex VO] I had a kind of very
long and winding path to be an artist.

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I was a young person in my early
20s and studying animation,

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and I didn't know how to go
forward to-- if I wanted to make

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sculpture, I just
didn't know how to proceed.

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All of the people making
sculpture were using the wood

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shop or the metal shop, and
those places did not feel safe

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for a young gay guy.

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Like, I didn't know how
to find myself there.

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When I was sort of feeling like
I was at an impasse and kind of

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had...

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had some time to think about how
I wanted to make a sculpture,

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I looked to my
grandmother and started sewing.

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In particular, I made
this large ketchup bottle.

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♪ dreamy ambient music ♪

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I filmed myself performing
this thing where I replicated a

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photograph of Claes Oldenburg
carrying a toothpaste bottle

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down the street but this
was a large ketchup bottle,

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and I walked through the streets
of Philadelphia with this big

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ketchup bottle.

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And that was my sort of first
entry into sculpture and also

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sewing as this kind of powerful
act of finding yourself.

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♪♪♪

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This idea of
embracing these things,

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softening these things that seem
to be hard is my way of taking

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down that machismo
a notch and to say, like,

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"There's room
for a gentler,

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more tender way of understanding
what it means to be human."

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♪♪♪

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Everyone I work with is doing
the same thing and wanting the

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same thing of their lives.

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There's a whole community of
people working towards something

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new and unknown.

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None of us know what
this will be in the end,

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and that, I think, is-- that's
why we all come to the studio

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every day is, like, to just
get into what we don't know.

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We'll just see how
far this gets us.

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♪♪♪

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Yeah, I mean this
will change tomorrow,

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but that's...

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what we want.

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♪♪♪

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So this is a remake of
Claes Oldenburg's Mouse Museum,

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and it's a work that he
initially made for Documenta.

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I remember, like, wanting
to just be around stuff,

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small plastic objects.

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My room growing up
probably had just, like,

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lots of buckets of this
kinds of stuff that I would

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collect.

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And I have sort of amassed
all of my objects and small

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sculptures that I've made and
things that are important to me,

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things that just kind of made
up my sculptural vocabulary,

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but in miniature.

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This little Big Bird mockup,
this was sort of the genesis of

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the work for The Met.

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[Alex VO] My work, when I'm
replicating something,

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doesn't end with
replica, 'cause for me,

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it's also important to collage
what has been replicated and put

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it into a new world.

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♪ uplifting ethereal music ♪

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It allows for those characters
or images or objects to exist

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within a world where logic is
kind of reinvented or paused or

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slowed down or reversed,
and what we think we know

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and how we think things
should be is now undone.

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I guess at an early age, when I
said I wanted to be an artist,

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I just thought that was
making Disney drawings.

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I wanted to participate in the
magical world that that space

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allowed me to exist in.

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I grew up in the suburbs
of Jersey and Pittsburgh,

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and I grew up in
Caracas, Venezuela.

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As a young person, when
you move around a lot,

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it can be unsettling, and so
I think that's kind of how I

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became a dreamer --

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because I was living in a
place and then leaving the

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place, and then you long for
the place that you were living.

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You kind of live in some sort
of space that's not actually

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underfoot but quite
far away in your mind.

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♪♪♪

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The homes I'm making,
they're very fragmented.

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They're collages of many
places and many versions,

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I think, of myself.

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♪♪♪

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How does one look forward and
then also understand the past

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and where they came from?

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I have always come to this
particular gallery for this

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Brancusi.

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How I have always understood
Brancusi was this notion that,

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like, the sculpture --

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from the top
to the ground --

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is all one.

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Your foundation or what might be
a pedestal is actually part of

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the work, and as
I interpret that,

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our roots and our history
matters as much as what is

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present or what we see or
what is visible at the top.

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And so then I think, again,
about this work and how to

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respond to it or unravel it.

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I think that's often what I want
when I spend time with these

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works is to say, "It
worked for you then,

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but how can it work for me now?

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And let's hug it out."

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♪♪♪

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[figure in video]
When I saw you...

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and that girl talking…

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♪♪♪

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[Scott] All right,
let's go ahead and roll.

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All right, ready?

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And...

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action.

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[Alex] So we could cut to some
kind of version of that.

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[Scott] Oh yeah, we
can use a piece of it.

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Do you wanna do it
again or move on?

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[Alex] Let's do one more.

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[Scott] Okay, cool.

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♪ soft piano music ♪

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Today, Alex is shooting this
sequence of the film in which

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Marcel Duchamp gets dressed
into drag as Rrose Sélavy,

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which is a fictional persona
that Duchamp came up with,

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and he's going to be performing
a song under a pink spotlight.

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[Alex VO] You know, my parents
pulled me aside and said,

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"Well, what does it mean?" [chuckles]

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They were like, "Why ketchup
and why these characters?"

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And I was like, "These
are my safe spaces."

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And as strange as
my ideas may be,

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to make sure that they still can
communicate some sort of kernel

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of what it means to be human,
that's what matters to me;

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that's, like, the driving force
of why I work and how I work,

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I think.

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[Rrose Selavy] [in robotic voice] 
♪ Why do birds ♪

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♪ Suddenly appear ♪

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[applause]

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♪ Every time ♪

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♪ That you're near? ♪

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♪ Ooh-wee baby ♪

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♪ Just like me ♪

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♪ They long to be... ♪

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[Alex VO] Walking the line
between the person that you

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really are and the person that
you long to be or the person

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that you once were,

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we are constantly negotiating and 
renegotiating those things to be,

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you know, the perfect human.

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I don't know if I'll
ever fully understand it,

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but I know that one puts things
into the world because they want

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to ask questions, and I
hope I learn something new.

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♪♪♪

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♪ And that is why ♪

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♪ soft uplifting music ♪