¡Colores!; Interview with Ted Larson

oh absolutely yeah but i had a day of infamy like an unending actually my entire life but i go home now and people are like we do in the poet's poet with little pointy ears of the suburbs of the latest theories and i go home and i was in the paper at home and all month mr demartino will people always asked me because i'm tall about basketball so and that's what i played in a fine basketball player and it's kind of a funny thing because a lot of people know me as an athlete and i still am an athlete ride my bicycle and skiing all went along and doing all this different stuff and people also know that i'm an artist but it's kind of funny there's like people that know me and one when film in another way and there are not a lot of people that know me in both areas of my life are funny terry when you're catching

there's the cubs are ready to start but usually we have to work to make sure that our sound a saint for the heavy cotton from the camera and make sure that they here at the same time that they see the planting of a banana when talking to me where'd you go the cuts are designed to sow are fortunate to be in a studio with mr ted larsen i don't have a kid i'm really well how are you thank you for having me here yes absolutely so we're fascinated by arden have a deeper conversation with you about your process in her motivation so we start with your conversation are happening with minimalism can you tell me a little bit about that well i don't really think of myself as a minimalist i think of myself as a reductionist and so i like to reduce things down to their essence and then go

back out of that and what i mean by that is there is a very bare or state that things can exist that and there is an accumulated stood state that the very same thing can exist out and buy working both directions i find it interesting to find the nature of what things might be elderly i love that sounds great the nature where things might be able to be so there is a there is possibility in an er work when it's done hopefully this impossible you it's an investigation and not claiming answer is i don't really have much interest in answers i have a lot of interesting questions so i want to lead the possibility of the viewer towards maybe seen something but i'm not terribly concerned with actually what they see why so scott a strange thing because here i am making this thing which is seen and it's absolute mean it

is what it is and yet hopefully they see beyond that to maybe possibly something more than men are having these big these questions about meaning with the materials that you use what's the interplay with that and why why does materials actually have their own kind of competition i guess into work well the midterms are important to me and really one level and then they have a separate importance on a different level and so i'm working with pre painted maternal because it has a history of was trained as a painter and so as a painter and i'm interested in the history of painting and a painting is an object as much as it is this a real it's a lonely rivers that a painting is an object as a place where the mind can go into also and so when you look at a painting a two dimensional object on the wall your brain looks into it

and sees something inside the tomato concrete it is as an object it's still of thing that you see into and at the same time it's a physical thing that has a history its little life it sits on a wall it has a certain presence off of the wall and this is a huge history to mark making and and painting and i'm very interested in being a part of that history and so i make work which is in reference to the history that is behind me my own history as well as the history of other artists or minister of the materials and so and so going back to the maternal a pre painted thing has a history for itself and i'm interested in taking that history and relocating or dislocating it or altering that are offering that an alternate ending

because we tend to view history absolutely when this thing happened in a certain time and it happened in a certain construct in a certain fashion or what happens if if we turn it around a little bit and we started move a little bit of our understanding of things doesn't that point towards a possibly different meaning or and so i'm trying to find a place to work in my painting process that i can offer alternate endings to preexisting the lemons i like that that we weren't we were talking about perception earlier but that idea that history is perceptive i don't understand it which is saying here exactly will all of everything in our lives is is a perceptual issue and our fundamental is a perceptual issue and so what i'm interested in doing is taking these pre painted turtles removing them from the original source and then taking that maternal and then building a new wife or it

went which then alters the original life that has given him a new life and then we perceive the old life in a new way and i think there's something kind of interesting about how that might point towards the possibility of a perception stuart ng was the company's leah p's swann says that video but typically matter where you're going for a second senator started on what i'm about to go back the question because i know i saw a connection there with some predicted to do we're talking about the materials and then having a history now how does that how they impacted by your philosophy of nature the nature of the materials or the connection between your work in nature well when i was in when i painted more formal laden and was you know actual paint a

painting for me at that time was a vehicle to women in sport mr devine why when i was painting i actually was interested in and the environmental aspects of nature i am it the subject matter was a vehicle to hang pain from but it wasn't necessarily of of tremendous interest to me the subject matter it was just a way to smear painter on a certain level i know things have changed in every possible way and how i view my work and so i'm really feeling like i'm not really being particularly here in expressing what was a question so what is the relationship between your work in

nature the relationship to my work and near term well i think major has two different possible meanings and theres the environmental aspects of nature and then there is the inherent aspects of things i'm interested in the inherent aspects of things not in the environmental aspect of things and so dealing with them or turtles for what they key for what they are exactly and for what they might be possibly is this where i had taken my grandma's fur wanted to work with this natural as a postdoctoral a pre painted maternal is is a ready made and there's a gigantic history to ready made and then i want to too take this readymade thing which has a history and has a wife that that it lived and

and take that life an offer of that wife an alternate ending from where it was in the moment before i took it and i'm hopefully that and in that i'm offering it is a possibly more interesting and in then it would have had had it continued in its life as it was and the much the same way i think about like when i'm in the studio and i'm working and i'm taking asthma turtles i'm hopefully offering different endings to aesthetics that i'm also dealing with certain theories of beauty and certain relationships of beauty and certain ideas of what beauty might be and bringing those ideas up and looking at them formally is what they were and what they are and then thinking how can i take this and offer a different way of seeing this idea of beauty and and maybe give it a

different ending from where it was originally described many hundreds of years ago maybe fifty years ago or a different story this interplay with the center playing a work between reductionism as we talked about earlier in the evolution of form well i don't really have much interest in capping myself in and making what minimalism to a certain degree has a kind of form or a petition that has involved with that conceptually as well as aesthetically and so they're serialized forms that can happen and that but that part that interests me to a certain degree but the idea of making the same thing over and over and over again really doesn't except in one other area which i find quite fascinating without it back to us and so

when i'm working what my work in premises is i have several different issues that i'm trying to to look at and investigate all at once and by offering the viewer made a difference ways of seeing the issues hopefully they will understand different perspectives of these issues so really when when one reduces things to their essence and then build back from that essence to a more complex version of that essence adding to it if you will but taking a box via the box what happens if you take too box snow you have relationships and to access weapons even ten boxes and have relationships written ten boxes as a maker of each one of those boxes something happens to me in making its box so this goes back to the reason why why working surreal it might be interesting because one of the reasons why i work actually the

primaries and my work is because i'm right very rules based artist i make very specific ways of working before i began i want to explore very specific issue in a particular piece the way that i know that i have a way a possibility of exploring that is by making very specific rules of engagement if you will for how it will work with the maternal how the work how the maternal and will inform the work and the form that the work might actually take place a new photo it might physically manifested itself under in and we talk about it you talk about creating questions nurses answers so a line of inquiry and then invest again like i said i would've tried to investigate and i work and that also lends itself into one of the questions right what are what how one of the many different ways we talk about

perspectives that that a person can see this right and so you have these rules of engagement which just focus about much water in your work in this city that sound that seems like you know what was a will there is a logical order and in the work house to have its own inherent but i almost constantly trying to subvert and so i was interested in it and having that dialog be seeing and noble and at the same time mr recognize israel sees something that you didn't expect would be part of the order and by having you know like if you take one like going back to the cube you have a cube and you take this cue how can you take that cube and see something other than that you know it all depends on how you rotated hold in your hand that you can become a different shape depending on your orientation to make and it can become a triangular like former can be much more work the linear than

square and there's many different ways by holding a q and a and looking at it formally and moving it around you can see different things so that's the metaphor towards taking taking the issue and holding it moving around and being able to perceive this possibly multi faceted idea for many different perspectives allows us to be able to see that multi faceted aspect of the original problem so i am let me let me jump in in and change which is a little bit and talk about the group talk about the slew of that before we start the interview the idea that what you're creating especially with sculptures that they actually change the orientation of the room so that you actually have to move around that it becomes something that we live with in the space does that when you're creating that thinking about that experience the experience

forty for the iowa call it the user experience for the person is going to live with this piece is that a court had it with this piece do you think about that we're creating these pieces like where to wear wool situated self in an environment i do people stand in the world in relationship to the world and there is a die i walk between who we are as people and the natural world that we're in and then the moment that we start inhabiting that world mr carlin it up and personal about making roads and buildings and everything else that we do on that we become in more and more and more in relationship to two are built world and are built world is an idea and it's a place that exists both in reality and physical space as well is this conceptually and so

yes we're sitting here in relationship to one another physically but then there's also other kind of relationships that that were sitting with each other in front of each other with also the idea of the interview that we're having what does it mean to have an interview and and yet there's the physical proximity of the two of us at the same time and so i'm wondering when i'm making work it automatically has physical presence and because it has visible presence presidents and you stand in front of that are you standing relationship to you aware of the relationship that you have to the physical object and it starts to define the relationship and you start to define the relationship as well as that physical objects first to define the relationship that it has to the wall or to the floor or to the heights of the room or other kinds of issues that that come up because of a man's interest in architecture

and because we tend to view the world through the lens of of the physical world that we inhabit and those physical boundaries that were in b the limitless when you're standing in the deserts of southern new mexico and they seem so open and wide and vast there is a limitation to them as well as when you're inside the building there is limitations and openness to about it it's sort of this inversion re version sort of thing where we're it can unfold and a box is itself up at the same time and so art has this possibility this is i think a really important thing for me i don't know five minutes and i know that what are this post to do art is a way of changing the way we see and so it's like a license if

you have i mean when you have your glasses on you see the world in a very specific way when you take them off you see it in a different way when you're experiencing art it changes the way you see the world and it might be very subtle and it might prefer found but that shift that happens and that seeing the world in a new way that's what i'm trying to get to i don't know whether or not i've actually accomplished that or not for other people and that's not really what i'm interested in doing i'm interested in doing that from myself i am interested in making work which i can experience the effect of making work on myself that's the reason for working the reason for working isn't what it does for other people it's what it does for me because i don't know it will do for other people and there are so many variables to the i mean i make this thing i stand on the spot to make this nine i have no idea what

youre what your experience is going to be when you stand in that spot looking at the fine but i know what the effect is on me making the thing and doing nothing and i can measure that and i can quantify and i can take that information and that data and i can then build a new system of working on new rules based game and i can take that information and i can say well what is the perception of having the us what kind of issues there is this bring up for me what is the new work that will be developed as a result of making that work and then i and then i i i write and in the process of journal and about what those issues might be i come to a point where i realize how that work can unfold how that new work can unfold and the process of making that new work i also try without breaking the rules of the game to

cheat the game to try to go behind the rules and come up with an unanticipated results something that my original work in writing or or drilling didn't actually illuminate to me because that's actually where i am experiencing the new glasses and that's thirty we talk about supporting the logic miles i like i like you talk about in a form of again i thought peyton we had a good spot tariff you could hear me along when he was talking about what i don't know if the heart does something for anyone else but there's something for me really like that word that so i can hear what he said to me before ralph bronner is by so

this process that you create the somme these rules of engagement are the game like that where you see that manifests itself in your because we're talking about that the effect on ted like that are is the effect when you essentially the leap for sexually without the perception that would only thing you can speak to where you see their impact other parts are like a concrete example of we're not creating art that you actually have these these rules of engagement in these games in your life as a person but the north is not personally know worked with them very very specific like you know the rules based system but i don't necessarily live that way now i'm you know i'm not a very rigid regimented

person may i tend to i am maybe i maybe i need more about my my nun studio life but really my non studio life serves my studio life it's you know they're in total balance with one another when i'm not in my studio and then i think about what i do in the studio as being very much like a practice i go in there and i make things and the way i make things is is honing of a certain ability that i have in the physicality of using my hands with them or turtles there is a certain kind of discipline and development of that discipline to get become better at it and then at the same time i will change up my my ways of working frequently so i will work with totally different techniques will do this technique for a while and then i'll stop doing that technical began this technique

because i'm not really very interested in and developing craft mike the craftsmanship that comes to my work i really want to figure out a way a two both developed out and unhinged at the same time so i'm never really very comfortable and by switching between different ways of working and never really terribly comfortable with any of it but i know how to work at all and so i'm having to go back and re learn and it's that real learning it's that it's that setting up a system in which i can have a positive inquiry into things and every possible level so when i'm welding and gold in the world and then i stop building for one act almost teach myself how the world again and all its rapid change the temperatures and i have to run that the stick another from speeding yeah let's write this metal racks differently than that metal in the same way when i'm cutting wood wood feels differently in this thickness than a dozen that

fitness and i can cut it and this with this tool differently than that tool or i'm using a drill press as a post or hand role in the drill press cuts the maternal faster than that then the hand roll bands you swear that's as opposed to a nail the wire this many different ways that we can join the turtles together and have a certain comfort worthen was with joining the turtles together in one way and then you stop doing that many join in another way and it informs other things that are completely unrelated like the idea behind making or what does it mean to make something which is made really crisp really cleanly and perfectly what does it mean we make something that seems really dashed off the dashed off and may actually not be dashed off at all it might take for ever to make that dashed off looking for and where is the pristine phone might've taken seconds so there's this funny thing that can happen and then if i'm paying

attention to what my values structure is do i value making the thing that takes forever or do i value the thing that comes quickly what does it mean to me to value something that comes quickly over something that takes forever what is that mean devalue the other way around because these value judgments that i make in our perceptual issues and if i'm choosing to say this thing is more important in that fine why am i choosing to do and what my losing or one of my game and benefit if i choose to take this peace and put it and that place and give the primacy that means i'm choosing not to give something else something prime and if i'm saying that i want no higher order anything i don't wanna have an arrangement in my work where one thing it becomes more important than another and that is one of them and that's a more sociologically based issue that i believe and i don't like is hierarchical arrangements within society no no i like them

and my part of these are the questions so you talked earlier about a lot of questions that the series of questions that you are in kind of going through during a process and there's no time so one question is to another question right and is an incident and so at the root of that although let's take the one about primacy that hierarchy right what it is that you do have an air surfer for ted or as to which one's more important or whether you want one to be more important and we're working on the material whether that pristine peace forces that so i guess she's one of the things that that one of the mandates and i think that that minimalism or syria audie brings to it is a formal repetition and so repeating a forum as an end to itself isn't much isn't very interesting but if you can figure out a way to arrange those repeating form so that they're not necessarily seen for what they are but they're seen for what they can be and then you steer them in a way so that you don't necessarily recognize that

formed immediately if i make a brand name in the bracket and i make hundreds of these brackets and these brackets are all the exact same shit and i take these brackets and i arranged them so that no one bracket has more importance in another and i put them together in a way so that you no longer see the original bracket you see this this repeating form that creates a different form that's unanticipated there's no hierarchy and so there is there's no one thing that becomes more important another the cumulative effect of them all becomes equally important and create something beyond the original unit is there something that you can point to a nature that me or viewers might recognize that gives us this idea that you talk about yeah grass graph you know when you see grass it's a blade it's a single factor and through the cumulative effect of grass we see a lot and lawns are very different than the single blade of

grass it's beautiful so we talked to before in that with this is going to last question but what i lived a question i can opposed to receiving the green was that the way that i know that possible that you know those questions that lead to an infinite amount of possibilities in front of you in front of your work is one motivating factor that can kind of pull an artist's toward creating more work on as more questions are when investigate i wanna find out when i find them behind you there's like you were saying before your history your experience in your body of work it's also propel it to mars and get up everyday create this work in the middle of that is you so what is your your fame that drives you to continue to create this work and people asked questions you know i'm a curious person does a tremendous amount to know in this world

and i feel like i know like next to nothing and that in itself propels they want to know more about what the world is and the more you know about what the world is the more i'm curious about what that means to me and that turns out a self and makes me than curious about what more there is to know about the world and what the effect is on me so it extends you know in all areas and all disciplines from math the physics to philosophy to aesthetic theory and all these different areas of life in and concerns you know we were talking about food and an n kinds of love things that we eat and if we

eat this than in were the sources of this coming from and what is that due to the environment that we live in an internal what what if that affects the environment doesn't that affect me and so if that's affecting me in my wanting to participate in that and so it's you know a continually loop so ronan itself until it becomes a soft perpetuating ms shane basically so you know i figured out a way to make a perpetual motion machine in my studio and i did show up to work and it does it tells me what to do i'm in service of yet it's not in service to making i like that i've never heard her say it's like at prairie but they're like but i feel the same way i feel like there are opponents didn't come without me so well i mean you know you get enough of an inertia going with and it leads you and we might try to steer it's not

very successful when i steered it when i have to sing all myself down and listen and it tells me what it wants it doesn't yell it's normally in a whisper and so i have to slow myself down enough that i can hear that whisper and in our modern culture slowing down like that is very very difficult when they dispose this end we talk a little bit about you talk about the level of about not knowing the effect of your art one the person who ends up living with it and you know after sept four other singer you can't perceive what's happening for another person but in a way in a way these questions are talking about about society about philosophy it voyager one now are too few of us if you could a few critics say would affect your heart hadn't people would you want art to have that affect me people asked questions about their

existence as people make people ask questions about there theology their theory of being their society the space around them with their leisure intended people asked those questions among themselves and all the timing if my work helps stimulate some of that and that's great and if it doesn't that's great and it's none of my business and it's amazing how many people have very specific opinions about the nature of the world that they live in or that we all live in together and have very specific belief systems about no i think that is so utterly absurd and it's just patent form that week we believe that the world exists in service to us this the very premise of that i think is really where us the

world actually exists and we happen to be here it would exist without us it will exist regardless it existed before us it'll exist after us and eye goes exactly which are theory of your work right like in service also work the work is not in service is the bank was alleged there thankyou to shave yes rap rap fb