assume vivid astro focus in "Boundaries" - Season 6 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

[ ELI SUDBRACK ]
All of this,

the work in general,

it's about being free.

You should express yourself
the way you want it to be.

Go after things in your life
that bring you pleasure.

Gay politics,
human right politics, whatever,

it's always about being free.

We're making a series
of 58 drawings

for this art fair in Sao Paulo.

So this was my proposal email.

Me and Christophe are making
cyclops trannies portraits.

Trannies–
transvestites– portraits.

[ CHRISTOPHE HAMAIDE-PIERSON ]
We had the concept,

"Okay, let's make all these
portrait of cyclop trannies."

We had to work separately.

One of these few project
where, actually,

I did 20-something drawings,

and he did, like, 20 other,
like, something drawing.

and then they were all, like,
framed together

and displayed on the wall.

I always like this thing
of leaving your ego behind

and merge with other people.

I think that's something
quite magical.

I love this idea
of collaboration.

In 2005, we were invited
to be part of this big show

for the L.A. MOCA.

This is the first ever project
that we did together, full-on.

We conceive everything together,

so that was always driven
by this collaborative dynamic.

We spent three months
in L.A.,

and it was also during
the Bush administration

and there was all these thing
going on with Scientology.

And so we decided to connect
all this different information

for that installation.

We decided to turn
all of the museum into a disco

and wanted the disco to actually
function as a nightclub

during the course of the show.

[ ELI SUDBRACK ]
This disco was an homage

to the birth of gay rights
in America,

which, a lot of it happened
in the disco space,

like this communion, you know,
of people of the same sex,

and, like, quite often,
very hedonistic,

but also, there was a lot
of politics happening

at that–
in that environment.

That was the first time

we actually worked
with this tranny symbol.

We want to turn everybody
into trannies,

so we gave out
the tranny masks

with these pictures
that another friend of ours took

of these trannies from Paris.

These masks–they have
this special lenses

that multiply the amount
of light spots.

People were fascinated,

because once they put
the mask on,

they would see all these
different colors

and different shapes.

[indistinct conversations]

- Remember I was doing,
like, the thing with–

pumping the ink from the thing?
- Yeah, yeah.

- That's what this was.

- Oh.
- That's where that came.

Can you tell which ones
are mine

and which ones
are Christophe's?

- Um...
- I think it's a bit obvious.

But I'm not sure people--

- This is Christophe.
- Yeah.

- This is you.
- Yeah.

- Christophe, Christophe...
- Yeah.

- Christophe. You?

- Yeah.

The thing is, I--
- You're more...

- Yeah, I'm more...

- Intricate.
- Intricate.

This one is in the catalog.

Actually, this was
the very first one I made.

- Oh, yeah?
- Now I remember.

This was the very first one,
the one I made here.

And then...

[ ELI SUDBRACK ]
When I was three years old,

I was fascinated
by this magazine

which was called Disneylandia,

which is "Disneyland"
in Portuguese.

My mother would read it for me,

it would be gone
in five minutes,

and I would get
really frustrated.

And then my father taught me

to cut the characters
out of the magazine,

put them on cardboard,
and I could make my own stories.

And that evolved along the years

to Marvel superheroes,
especially the X-men.

So I would cut the little
characters out of the magazine

and the power rays
or the architecture.

And I had a board,
and I would lay on my bed

and start playing with them
and create my own stories.

[indistinct dialogue]

I think it's a lot
related to the wallpaper.

It's the same sort
of flat-surface approach

to the imagery.

My father was really
my creative connection.

When I was born,
he was already 60 years old.

He was very social,

but my memory of him is this guy
who's always at home.

My father was a general
from the army.

He was not in favor
of the military dictatorship.

He was forced to resign.

He was also a literature critic
and a poet

besides being a dentist.

He would constantly tell me,

"Oh, my god, you have to do
something with color.

you're such a colorist."

My mother was, like,
quite the opposite.

Super-conservative, but she
didn't have much education.

My father had been rewriting
his last book forever.

He would be typing
little pieces, different words,

and pasting those words
on top of the old words.

His last book is a whole collage

of different words
that he'd keep replacing.

[indistinct conversation]

He spent a whole year in '68–

the year I was born,
which was the year

that the dictatorship
got more oppressive—at home.

A lot of what I do nowadays
is due to him.

And to my mother too,
both of them.

It was a very good combination,
in fact.

[alarm beeping]

[motor whirring]

This was the very first drawing
I made for the show at Deitch.

The core concept of that show
was demolition.

We were looking at a few
different demolition sources

related to demolishing the city,
because at that point,

a lot of the Long Island City
and the Brooklyn neighborhoods

were being demolished

to give birth
to these big high-rises.

Me and Christophe,

we were interested
in the demolition sites,

and we were actually making
a lot of installations

which replicated that imagery.

These are sketches
from that show,

and a lot of these things

are actually things that
we'd never end up producing,

Like this.

This was the DJ booth

made of all the trashed wood
with plastic ribbons.

This was supposed to be a space
that you go in.

There's, like, a staircase here,
and it had a little door.

and it had– this is a sausage,

and these are french fries
over here.

I don't remember, like,

why we came up with this
french fries and sausage thing.

It was–I was sort of obsessed
about that at one point.

Everything had a look
of construction,

so there's, like, a tarp–
Like, a blue tarp–

on top of the trash wood
structure here.

So we create sort of, like,
a shanty house structure.

We created this neon box.

it was like a hole,

and you would put
your head through

and then you would see
your face reflected.

You had all these neons
around your face.

It was like a one-way mirror.

From outside,
it was actually transparent,

so you would see this
person's face

with all these neons around,
flickering and stuff.

This is a zine that we made
for that show.

And this was, like–

we had, like, 16 different
people working with us.

A lot of our friends from Brazil
were working in the show,

and we were
giving out this zine,

so everybody had one or two
pages for this collaboration.

There was one facade

that struck
both me and Christophe:

these pink stones and, like,
gray plastic shingles.

We spent two months collecting
all the trash wood

from all these houses that were
being demolished in that area

to use in that installation.

At the same time,
we connected with Kenny Scharf.

And then we remembered
nuke bombs–

paintings he used to make
in the '80s–

and then I said,

"What if we turn one
of his nuke bombs into a neon?"

This place was
right on the water,

and it had this most
idyllic view of Manhattan

right in front of you.

I said,
"Let's nuke Manhattan."

"Let's put the bomb
right in front of the skyline."

"The history of the city
is being demolished."

"Let's point that out,
and then let's point out

that people should also make
their own history in the city."

Related to that,
we brought another subject

which we were working on
for a while,

which is the tranny,
the transgender image,

and we used that as another
symbol of demolition:

demolition of identity,
a demolition of your own body.

We had this giant doll
with a woman body,

but one side was a man face;
other side was a woman face.

We wanted to reuse that doll

and to somehow
demolish her as well,

because that's something
from the past

that we wanted to connect
this demolition idea–

we wanted to demolish
our own work.

So we broke her apart,

as if the Brooklyn facade
had just popped right onto her.

I can never remember
which witch is the one

that is dead in the beginning
of Wizard of Oz,

which you just see the shoes.

The west, the east--
I don't know.

A lot of what we make
starts by writing

or ideas or words or lists
of things I need to do,

and it's like creating
a universe, somehow.

Working together, it's very–

it's lonely, because I'm–
what happens that, you know,

I'm at my studio in New York,

and Christophe is in his studio
in Paris.

and then we exchange emails.

I have an idea for a show,
and I write–

I describe this idea
in the email.

And then he writes back to me,

and then he gives me
his thoughts about it

and I give my thoughts
about his thoughts.

So we're always, like,
kind of exchanging emails

about each other's vision
or ideas for a certain show.

[percussive rhythm]

[ CHRISTOPHE HAMAIDE-PIERSON ]
We were, in some ways,

meant to work together.

I think we have, like, the same
sort of view on life, on art.

Eli is one person;
I'm somebody else. [laughs]

And we have our own differences,

and I guess that's the great
thing about collaboration, also,

is to have those
two differences connect.

[indistinct conversations]

[ ELI SUDBRACK ]
I think there's a strategy

in what we make,

which is for everything
to become one.

the viewer become one
with the installation.

The core of what we make,

it's not object;
it's energy.

You know, we create this energy,

and then this energy,
it's there.

It happens in one moment,
and then it's gone.

You can't save that energy.
You can't sell that energy.

You can share that energy
in that moment.

But you can't really take it
somewhere else.

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"Art in the Twenty-First Century"

and its educational resources,

please visit us online at:
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