Diana Al-Hadid's Suspended Reality | ART21 "New York Close Up"

[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.