Liz Magor: Everyone Should Have a Studio | Art21 "Exclusive"

[Liz Magor: Everyone Should Have A Studio]

If I'm not here, I want to be here.

And I want to work.

It's a quiet space.

It has really good light.

The light comes from the East.

A lot of people don't know I'm here.

I don't have my name on the door.

I meet my friends outside of the studio.

It's my space--totally my space.

Working might be a placating
or calming situation

where I have no distractions.

I was going to say it's like meditating,
but what do I know about meditating?

[LAUGHS] Not very much!

It's a way to keep myself on a single focus--

on a single track--

and there's something pleasurable about that.

So I'm here for pleasure, in a way,

although it's not fun.

When I cast my material into this
mold of a paper bag,

then I get a positive.

That yellow will come to the outside.

And it's part of my wanting to
make these objects have some

vitality or vivaciousness.

The contents are going to be
pushing for your attention.

The yellow is pushing
to get the bag to be alive.

I keep the studio in a very
rudimentary state

in terms of the technology
and the systems that I use.

I'm not investing in equipment--

I'm not a factory.

It's because I want to be able

to quit whatever thing
I might be interested in

and move on to a completely different thing.

I'm thinking, so I need to be mobile.

This might sound pretentious,

but it's like a place
for physical philosophy.

I talk a lot about the "below the radar"

or the "ever-present-but-unacknowledged" things.

And to me, these are part of that realm
because they're brilliant.

This is brilliant!

And I want my mold making to register them.

Although that's...

those are air bubbles.

--So this is the front and that's the back.

--And the front has fragile things
sticking out.

I need a very quiet studio,

because a work starts with me acknowledging

those ever-present, not noisy
operations in the world.

They're always there,
but they're not always acknowledged.

Those are the things I'm interested in.

Everyone should have a studio.

They should be issued by the government
as health-mandated items.

Because it is a place where you

kind of line up all those dissonances

and have a good look.