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You're Not Failing Long Enough To Be Successful With Artist Daniel Arsham · QUESTION EVERYTHING

0:03
Speaker 1: No one has all the answers, but when we ask
0:05
Speaker 1: the right questions, we get a little closer, closer to truths,
0:11
Speaker 1: closer to each other, even closer to ourselves. I'm journalist
0:16
Speaker 1: Danielle Robe, and each week, my guests and I come
0:19
Speaker 1: together to challenge the status quo and our own ways
0:22
Speaker 1: of thinking by daring to ask what if, why not?
0:28
Speaker 1: And who says? So? Come curious, dig deep, and join
0:33
Speaker 1: the conversation. It's time to question everything. Hello, my friends,
0:42
Speaker 1: Happy Thursday. I am just coming back from Denver. The
0:46
Speaker 1: last few days I was there for the NWSL, the
0:51
Speaker 1: National Women's Soccer League, and it was my first women's
0:55
Speaker 1: soccer game. I was telling everybody that my first football
0:58
Speaker 1: game was a super Bowl. I haven't been to a
1:01
Speaker 1: football game since, and I also don't even remember who played.
1:04
Speaker 1: It was the Lady Gaga Super Bowl, and I hadn't
1:07
Speaker 1: been to a women's soccer game, and I didn't know
1:10
Speaker 1: how I would feel. It was so fun. Wow, I'm
1:15
Speaker 1: going to go to an LA Galaxy game. Now that
1:18
Speaker 1: I'm back in LA and here for a little bit,
1:21
Speaker 1: I can't believe how interesting and fun it was. Like
1:24
Speaker 1: I feel like I'd been missing out on this amazing thing.
1:26
Speaker 1: And I was there with the NWSL. They're absolutely making history.
1:31
Speaker 1: The game I was at had sixty three thousand attendees,
1:34
Speaker 1: which is the most ever. And I was interviewing Melody Hobson,
1:39
Speaker 1: Malala and Ali Raceman while I was there. And Melody Hobson,
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Speaker 1: she's somebody I've wanted to talk to for a long time.
1:47
Speaker 1: I'm going to try and get her on the pod,
1:48
Speaker 1: but she said a few things that really stood out
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Speaker 1: to me that I just wanted to share before we
1:53
Speaker 1: get into today's episode because I think it'll resonate the
1:56
Speaker 1: way it did with me. So first of all, I
1:58
Speaker 1: was asking her why women's sports, because Melody has had
2:02
Speaker 1: one job since college. Okay, most people have an average
2:05
Speaker 1: of eleven jobs over their lifetime, Melody has had one.
2:09
Speaker 1: It's at Ariel Investments, which is an investment fund, and
2:12
Speaker 1: she raised a two hundred and fifty million dollar fund
2:15
Speaker 1: for women's sports. She owns the Denver Women's Soccer League
2:19
Speaker 1: along with a lot of other teams with her husband
2:21
Speaker 1: George Lucas, and this fund. The two hundred and fifty
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Speaker 1: million dollar fund will reach a billion soon and it
2:28
Speaker 1: will be the largest female investment fund around and I
2:32
Speaker 1: asked her aside from all the financials, which she explained,
2:35
Speaker 1: like why it makes sense? I asked her why and
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Speaker 1: she got quiet for a second and she said, because
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Speaker 1: we are giving women what they are doue. Women's sacrifice
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Speaker 1: and work and give and have for so long, and
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Speaker 1: we are giving women what they are due. And everybody
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Speaker 1: in the room got quiet, like you could just feel
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Speaker 1: the energy shift. And then she shared this story and
3:02
Speaker 1: this is what I want to share with you because
3:04
Speaker 1: I've actually been thinking about it since she said it.
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Speaker 1: She said, her husband George Lucas, who's a famous film director.
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Speaker 1: He did Star Wars, which you know, has really stood
3:14
Speaker 1: the test of time in the way most films just
3:17
Speaker 1: don't like it became a phenomenon. And he's friends with
3:21
Speaker 1: director Ghirmo del Toro and Guaramo recently did Frankenstein, which
3:26
Speaker 1: won an Oscar and Ghirrimo sent them the film to watch,
3:30
Speaker 1: and she texted him and she said, Geirmo, this was amazing.
3:34
Speaker 1: Congratulations and he said, thanks, Melody. I think everybody gets
3:38
Speaker 1: one song. This was my song. What's yours? And she
3:44
Speaker 1: paused and she was like, WHOA, what a question? And
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Speaker 1: she thought about it and she said, my song is inclusion,
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Speaker 1: and that's obviously part of the Women's Sports Fund. But
3:54
Speaker 1: you know, the rest of the week, in the weekend,
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Speaker 1: I was thinking, what is my song?
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Speaker 2: Is it?
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Speaker 1: Curiosity is a form of love. I don't know yet.
4:02
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think about it, but I would ask you,
4:04
Speaker 1: what is your song? It's interesting to think about. Okay,
4:08
Speaker 1: let's get into today's episode because it's quite special. Now.
4:14
Speaker 1: A lot of us move through the world on autopilot.
4:17
Speaker 1: We walk past the same street, same objects, same people,
4:21
Speaker 1: and we never stop to question what it is that
4:25
Speaker 1: we're actually looking at. But our guest today has become
4:28
Speaker 1: a phenomenon in the art world by doing the opposite.
4:32
Speaker 1: Daniel Arsham doesn't just create art. He reveals what's hiding
4:36
Speaker 1: just beneath reality. He takes objects you think you understand
4:40
Speaker 1: and then makes you question when they exist, what they mean,
4:44
Speaker 1: and whether you've really seen them at all. If you
4:47
Speaker 1: know art, or fashion or culture, you've most likely seen
4:50
Speaker 1: his work. The melting clocks, the eroded sculptures that look
4:54
Speaker 1: like they're simultaneously falling apart and crystallizing back together. He's
4:59
Speaker 1: had collaborations with dior Portia, Tiffany Pokemon.
5:03
Speaker 2: One of the magical things about being an artist is
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Speaker 2: you know when you make that thing that's the only
5:09
Speaker 2: one of those that exists in the world at that moment,
5:12
Speaker 2: and if you're very good at it, you can make
5:15
Speaker 2: these things that other people invest in not only with
5:19
Speaker 2: their money, but emotionally, conceptually, and that they think about
5:23
Speaker 2: over long periods of time.
5:25
Speaker 1: Daniel's built one of the most recognizable visual languages in
5:28
Speaker 1: modern art, a language about time, about decay, and about
5:32
Speaker 1: what survives. You could apply the same idea to his career.
5:36
Speaker 1: From the outside. A successful artist, his work has shown
5:40
Speaker 1: in museums and galleries around the world, and now a
5:43
Speaker 1: new memoir called Future Relic. But on his thirtieth birthday,
5:47
Speaker 1: Daniel Arsham was living in a ninety square foot box
5:50
Speaker 1: suspended from the ceiling of his own studio in Brooklyn,
5:53
Speaker 1: no kitchen, no shower, walking down the street to the
5:57
Speaker 1: YMCA to wash up, absolutely unknown and unproven. He took
6:01
Speaker 1: an enormous risk that changed the trajectory of his career
6:06
Speaker 1: and life.
6:07
Speaker 2: The most harsh truth is that most people are just
6:11
Speaker 2: not willing to fail for that long.
6:13
Speaker 1: Art historians will talk about a generation producing maybe a
6:17
Speaker 1: handful of artists, sometimes fewer than ten, people whose work
6:20
Speaker 1: genuinely enters the cultural conversation in a lasting way, the
6:24
Speaker 1: ones whose visual language becomes so distinctive that you recognize
6:28
Speaker 1: it without a label. Daniel Arsham is one of them. Now,
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Speaker 1: today's conversation is about art, but I think it's really
6:35
Speaker 1: about something much more useful than that. It's about what
6:37
Speaker 1: it actually takes to build something that lasts. The obsession,
6:42
Speaker 1: the sacrifice, the willingness to fail in public for years
6:46
Speaker 1: without any guarantee of what's on the other side. So
6:49
Speaker 1: here's the question we're circling today, and the one I
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Speaker 1: invite you to ask yourselves during or after you listen.
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Speaker 1: What are you willing to suffer for in order to
6:58
Speaker 1: attain it? And how do you care keep going when
7:00
Speaker 1: there's no proof yet that you should. It's time to
7:03
Speaker 1: question everything with Daniel Arsham. Daniel, congratulations, A career memoir
7:13
Speaker 1: is pretty exciting.
7:14
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you so much.
7:15
Speaker 1: I really wanted to start with the art of noticing,
7:18
Speaker 1: because I feel like so much of what you do
7:21
Speaker 1: begins there. What is something beautiful or strange or interesting
7:26
Speaker 1: that you've noticed today that made you pause.
7:28
Speaker 2: Well, I'm back in New York. I've been traveling very
7:31
Speaker 2: heavily for the last couple of months, and you know,
7:33
Speaker 2: there's a lot of snow last time I was here
7:35
Speaker 2: in New York and it's finally melted away, and a
7:39
Speaker 2: lot of traffic this morning, so it took the subway
7:41
Speaker 2: up to the studio for I did a session on
7:43
Speaker 2: New York Fox five Good Day New York, which is
7:46
Speaker 2: like a New York stable this morning. I don't know.
7:48
Speaker 2: Interesting to just be back, you know, back in the
7:50
Speaker 2: city after being away for so long.
7:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, lots of noise in New York. Every time I
7:55
Speaker 1: go there, I notice the noise.
7:57
Speaker 2: You might hear some sirens in the background.
7:59
Speaker 1: I know that one of your earliest projects was taking
8:02
Speaker 1: pictures of doors and R two D two from Star
8:05
Speaker 1: Wars was something that you felt compelled to draw. But
8:08
Speaker 1: do you remember the first moment when you realize you
8:11
Speaker 1: were paying attention to the world differently?
8:13
Speaker 2: I mean, I think you know, my early art career,
8:16
Speaker 2: as I talked about in the book, was really through photography.
8:20
Speaker 2: And this is something my grandfather told me at the
8:23
Speaker 2: time when he had given me the camera, which is
8:25
Speaker 2: that you know, anyone can take a photo, but not
8:27
Speaker 2: everyone can make a kind of interesting image, and the
8:30
Speaker 2: camera is really a way of looking, a way of
8:33
Speaker 2: framing your own viewpoint. I think I've carried a lot
8:36
Speaker 2: of that into the way that I treat my work
8:39
Speaker 2: as an artist. It's really about revealing things that are
8:42
Speaker 2: just below the surface of our reality, and yes, showing
8:46
Speaker 2: people things that they may already know, but they're being
8:49
Speaker 2: presented in a slightly altered way, something unusual and out
8:54
Speaker 2: of the ordinary.
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Speaker 1: I was reading the other day about a guy who
8:57
Speaker 1: said that if you meet a great photographer, know that
9:02
Speaker 1: they are probably in a lot of pain. The way
9:05
Speaker 1: they see the world is usually very sensitive. Would you
9:09
Speaker 1: agree with that. Was your grandfather a sensitive guy?
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Speaker 2: No? I mean, I think his way of using photos
9:15
Speaker 2: was just documenting his everyday, you know, experience and was
9:19
Speaker 2: much more about family and travel and that kind of universe.
9:24
Speaker 2: He probably never printed his photos larger than like a small,
9:27
Speaker 2: you know, four x five image. When we think about
9:30
Speaker 2: image making as artists, I think our perspective is quite different,
9:33
Speaker 2: and a lot of it has to do with editing. So,
9:36
Speaker 2: you know, we may take hundreds of thousands of images
9:39
Speaker 2: or when I'm preparing a painting, I may do a
9:42
Speaker 2: number of preparatory drawings and then select and kind of
9:45
Speaker 2: edit down from that. So a couple of those drawings
9:48
Speaker 2: can be failures or not work, and you know, the
9:51
Speaker 2: final ones make it to the next stage.
9:53
Speaker 1: I find that there are people who like to talk
9:57
Speaker 1: about their process and then people who like to talk
9:59
Speaker 1: about the outcomes. And in your book, I was really
10:02
Speaker 1: struck by how much you talk about the process, the failures.
10:07
Speaker 1: I mean even you know, one of the subtitles is
10:10
Speaker 1: like Failures and Detours, and I'm curious why.
10:14
Speaker 2: You know, just going with the idea of failure. I
10:16
Speaker 2: think as artists, when we make work, or this is
10:20
Speaker 2: true for any creative person, it's like we want to
10:23
Speaker 2: reach the outcome that feels complete and feels ready to
10:27
Speaker 2: kind of go out into the world. There was a realization,
10:30
Speaker 2: I think for me at some point that I'm allowed
10:32
Speaker 2: to fail so many times. I almost have to collect
10:35
Speaker 2: those failures as a way to get to this final product.
10:39
Speaker 2: And people look at my career today or even like
10:42
Speaker 2: a completed work, and they don't really see all of
10:45
Speaker 2: the steps that went into creating that I can make
10:49
Speaker 2: a drawing now in thirty minutes, let's say, right, But
10:53
Speaker 2: it took me twenty five years to be able to
10:56
Speaker 2: learn how to do that. So there's a lot of
10:58
Speaker 2: like trial and error and repetition and a willingness to
11:02
Speaker 2: fail without really knowing that there is success on the
11:05
Speaker 2: other side of that. I think the simple and the
11:08
Speaker 2: most harsh truth is that most people are just not
11:12
Speaker 2: willing to fail for that long, right, for that many
11:15
Speaker 2: years to get through to the other side of being successful.
11:18
Speaker 2: And today I've done a lot. But when I woke
11:22
Speaker 2: up on my thirtieth birthday, I lived in my studio
11:25
Speaker 2: in green Point, Brooklyn, which was one single room, very poor,
11:30
Speaker 2: no kitchen, no shower. I went down the street to
11:33
Speaker 2: the gym to shower, and that was only fifteen years ago.
11:36
Speaker 1: Why is it important for you to let people in
11:39
Speaker 1: on the process?
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Speaker 2: You know, when I studied in school, I went to
11:43
Speaker 2: school here in New York at Cooper Union, and I
11:45
Speaker 2: studied painting and sculpture and ideas, but I didn't study
11:50
Speaker 2: at all how to turn those into a career. And
11:54
Speaker 2: during the pandemic, you know, I was having a lot
11:57
Speaker 2: of like younger artists reach out to me, asking like
12:00
Speaker 2: how we were going to make it through this period
12:02
Speaker 2: and what was going to happen on the other side.
12:04
Speaker 2: And it sort of led to this realization that those
12:06
Speaker 2: stories aren't really told that much. Right. People see kind
12:09
Speaker 2: of the end result, but they don't really see the process.
12:12
Speaker 2: And the way that I wrote this book was really
12:16
Speaker 2: by speaking, so I didn't type it or you know,
12:19
Speaker 2: write it out physically. And I think that's part of
12:21
Speaker 2: the reason why I'd read so kind of conversationally. Is
12:25
Speaker 2: I set like a series of topics that I thought
12:27
Speaker 2: would be interesting, and then I just recorded them and
12:31
Speaker 2: kind of edited down from there.
12:33
Speaker 1: That's cool to know you just kind of recorded voice
12:36
Speaker 1: notes to yourself. Yeah, I loved reading that your fourth
12:38
Speaker 1: grade teacher, Miss Perry, was one of the first people
12:41
Speaker 1: to tell you that you might be really good at this.
12:43
Speaker 1: In hindsight, what do you think she saw that as
12:47
Speaker 1: a fourth grader you just could never recognize at the time.
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Speaker 2: She probably saw like a persistence and an obsessive quality
12:53
Speaker 2: about wanting to be making art, because realistically, like every
12:57
Speaker 2: fourth grader is probably at the same level in making art,
13:01
Speaker 2: and in some ways, like every person is an artist
13:03
Speaker 2: when they're a child, Like we all have drawings that
13:05
Speaker 2: our mothers have kept, you know, from when we were
13:08
Speaker 2: five years old, and at some point we forget how
13:10
Speaker 2: to do that, we forget the interest in that creative
13:13
Speaker 2: aspect of our lives. And I think you recognize that
13:17
Speaker 2: I continue to have this obsessive quality about drawings, about painting,
13:22
Speaker 2: and you know, encourage my parents to let me follow
13:25
Speaker 2: that path.
13:26
Speaker 1: I really want to ask you about your parents, because
13:28
Speaker 1: I was laughing reading about how they really wanted something
13:31
Speaker 1: more stable for you. And I was laughing because up
13:35
Speaker 1: until about two years ago, I'm thirty five, my parents
13:38
Speaker 1: they would call me. They live in Chicago, and they
13:40
Speaker 1: would be like, are you sure you don't want to
13:41
Speaker 1: be an executive recruiter? And I had already found like
13:45
Speaker 1: enough success that should not have been a question. But
13:48
Speaker 1: I think parents they just want to know that their
13:50
Speaker 1: kids are okay. Have your parents, in so many words,
13:54
Speaker 1: said that they're proud and they're okay with your path?
13:57
Speaker 2: I mean, certainly they are now, and I think they're
13:59
Speaker 2: probably about how far I managed to take it. But
14:03
Speaker 2: my dad was a banker and my mom worked at
14:07
Speaker 2: a university, and so their perspective on me pursuing art
14:11
Speaker 2: was interesting you know, I grew up around culture from them,
14:15
Speaker 2: specifically my mom, But I think that they thought the
14:19
Speaker 2: end result of that would be a job like in
14:21
Speaker 2: graphic design or something that they could imagine could be
14:25
Speaker 2: applied to, you know, trade, and I really just kind
14:29
Speaker 2: of invented the career out of failure and trial and error.
14:33
Speaker 2: And you know, as I said, I didn't have an
14:35
Speaker 2: apartment when I finished school until I was thirty two.
14:39
Speaker 2: I put everything that I had back into the studio,
14:41
Speaker 2: and that was part of the intention. Was if I
14:43
Speaker 2: have to rent my studio and I have to pay
14:45
Speaker 2: for a separate apartment, I'm losing a couple thousand dollars
14:48
Speaker 2: a month that I could then apply to making my work,
14:51
Speaker 2: to traveling for exhibitions, whatever I needed.
14:54
Speaker 1: Did you feel like at that moment when you were
14:56
Speaker 1: living out of your studio and you weren't telling people, right,
14:59
Speaker 1: you just hide that part of the studio if you
15:01
Speaker 1: had people come in to visit.
15:02
Speaker 2: Actually, people totally knew. I had a loft in the
15:05
Speaker 2: studio and it was like a box almost hanging from
15:09
Speaker 2: the ceiling with a ladder that dropped down out of
15:11
Speaker 2: the bottom of it that I could kind of crawl
15:13
Speaker 2: up into and inside of it. It was probably ninety
15:18
Speaker 2: square feet and I built out the most luxury ninety
15:22
Speaker 2: square feet that I could make, right, So there was
15:25
Speaker 2: a bed in there, there was a television mounted to
15:28
Speaker 2: the wall. I put all this beautiful lighting in there,
15:31
Speaker 2: and it's what I could do. And then I you know,
15:34
Speaker 2: I had a gym membership at the YMCA and green Point,
15:37
Speaker 2: and so I would go there use the shower. That's
15:39
Speaker 2: all I needed.
15:40
Speaker 1: Is it hard that people look at your success now
15:43
Speaker 1: and like, don't quite realize what sacrifice it took. Did
15:47
Speaker 1: you have a lot of people willing to support you
15:50
Speaker 1: when you were living in your studio in Greenpoint?
15:53
Speaker 2: I got very lucky. But part of the idea is
15:56
Speaker 2: you got to be working when luck is floating around
15:58
Speaker 2: for it to find you. So when I finished college,
16:02
Speaker 2: I wanted nothing more in the world than to show
16:07
Speaker 2: with this French gallery. And the owner's name is Emmanuel Parton,
16:10
Speaker 2: and I had heard that he was going to be
16:12
Speaker 2: in town, and basically through an art collector that I know,
16:16
Speaker 2: managed to get him to come over for a visit.
16:18
Speaker 2: And in the weeks before that, I'm thinking to myself, like,
16:22
Speaker 2: how can I convince this guy who works with some
16:25
Speaker 2: of the most famous artists in the world to give
16:28
Speaker 2: me a show. I'm a nobody, right, nobody's seen my work.
16:31
Speaker 2: I haven't sold anything. I've just finished school. I'm twenty
16:35
Speaker 2: three years old. And I kept repeating, like, how can
16:37
Speaker 2: I show him that I want to exhibit in his gallery?
16:40
Speaker 2: And finally I'm like, I need to show him and
16:42
Speaker 2: exhibit in his gallery. And so I built a full
16:45
Speaker 2: scale replica of his gallery in my studio out of cardboard,
16:50
Speaker 2: like down to every detail, like the radiator, the benches,
16:54
Speaker 2: there was like a flower vase on the desk, and
16:57
Speaker 2: I built it all out of cardboard, and I hung
17:00
Speaker 2: an exhibition of my work in it. And he came
17:04
Speaker 2: over for the visit and as soon as he like
17:06
Speaker 2: walked through the door, you know, he recognized immediately that
17:09
Speaker 2: he was in that space and the question was in
17:13
Speaker 2: the room. I didn't even have to ask him. It
17:16
Speaker 2: was a proposal that he was able to see. And
17:18
Speaker 2: that kind of like crazy idea is something that I've
17:23
Speaker 2: tried to really dig down on, and there's been many
17:26
Speaker 2: instances of things that I've uncovered. You know, somehows you
17:30
Speaker 2: may have to make the crazy move to reach the
17:32
Speaker 2: crazy place you want to be.
17:34
Speaker 1: I think that's really inspiring to hear. And it was
17:37
Speaker 1: cool to find out that you recently found out that
17:39
Speaker 1: same guy, Emmanual Parentine, secretly bought every piece in your
17:44
Speaker 1: first show, your first solo show, to show you support.
17:48
Speaker 1: What does it feel like to discover that the foundation
17:51
Speaker 1: of your career was built on this act of love
17:53
Speaker 1: that you didn't even know about.
17:55
Speaker 2: So that same show, right, the one that I hung
17:58
Speaker 2: originally in the cardboard space, we mounted that show about
18:01
Speaker 2: a year later in Paris, and this was another one
18:04
Speaker 2: of these moments where I'm relatively unknown, you know. I
18:08
Speaker 2: go to Paris, I do the exhibition, and I wasn't
18:12
Speaker 2: even really thinking about the financial aspect of it at
18:14
Speaker 2: that time. I was just like, this is great. You
18:16
Speaker 2: feel like, oh, I've made it at this point. And
18:19
Speaker 2: the following day I go back to the gallery and
18:22
Speaker 2: one of the women who works there, Peggy, said, great news,
18:25
Speaker 2: the tire show sold.
18:26
Speaker 1: Which can you just explain to people who haven't heard
18:29
Speaker 1: of Parentied, like what that is like?
18:32
Speaker 2: So Emmanuel Parenton now is one of the most famous
18:37
Speaker 2: galleries in the world. Right, he has basically climbed through
18:41
Speaker 2: the ranks of the art world and now has exhibition
18:44
Speaker 2: spaces all over the world. So the original one in Paris,
18:47
Speaker 2: he's got an exhibition space here in New York that
18:49
Speaker 2: I actually have a show at now, Los Angeles, Tokyo,
18:53
Speaker 2: Hong Kong, Shanghai, London, Los Angeles, like everywhere. And he's
18:58
Speaker 2: worked with some of the most famous artists in the world,
19:00
Speaker 2: Takashi Murakami, Marizio Catalan, and so it was kind of
19:04
Speaker 2: an amazing thing for me to be able to do
19:06
Speaker 2: that exhibition in the first place. I was twenty three
19:09
Speaker 2: years old, kind of unknown, and then to have that
19:11
Speaker 2: exhibition sell out, you know, I was floored. So about
19:15
Speaker 2: twenty years later, I'm preparing for a big museum exhibition
19:19
Speaker 2: and this is like a major deal. It's kind of
19:20
Speaker 2: like a mid career thing for me, where I was
19:23
Speaker 2: invited to create a huge solo exhibition at a museum
19:26
Speaker 2: in California, and then that show traveled, It was in Korea,
19:29
Speaker 2: you know, kind of moved around the world. And as
19:31
Speaker 2: I'm preparing for it, I'm having dinner with Emmanuel and
19:34
Speaker 2: I said, one of the aspects of the exhibition that
19:37
Speaker 2: I want to show is some work from that earliest
19:39
Speaker 2: show that I did with you, which was twenty years ago.
19:42
Speaker 2: So I said, you know, can you ask your staff
19:45
Speaker 2: to help me locate a couple of the pieces, like
19:47
Speaker 2: from the collectors who bought them. And he looks at
19:49
Speaker 2: me and he says, oh, I know where everything is
19:51
Speaker 2: from that show. And I was like, what do you
19:53
Speaker 2: mean you know where everything is? You know? And he says, well,
19:56
Speaker 2: I bought that whole show. And you know, at the moment,
20:00
Speaker 2: it was like so hard to understand. Like clearly at
20:03
Speaker 2: the time he wanted to show me that success and
20:07
Speaker 2: kind of launched me with this feeling of like, oh,
20:10
Speaker 2: I've made it, and also give me some funds that
20:13
Speaker 2: I could use to you know, continue making my work.
20:16
Speaker 2: And you know, that's just kind of like the person
20:19
Speaker 2: that he is. You know, he still had all the work.
20:20
Speaker 2: I borrowed a bunch of it to put in the exhibition.
20:23
Speaker 2: And sometimes you find people who support you without even
20:27
Speaker 2: asking for anything.
20:28
Speaker 1: They're like angels. They just come in when you need
20:30
Speaker 1: it most. It's pretty remarkable.
20:32
Speaker 2: Well, you got to put that energy out into the world,
20:35
Speaker 2: and we you know, talked about before. It's like talent luck,
20:39
Speaker 2: like all of these kind of floating ideas, like they exist,
20:42
Speaker 2: but they have to find you working.
20:55
Speaker 1: Did you see this all, Daniel, like when you were
20:58
Speaker 1: in your bed at night? And that's studio because some
21:01
Speaker 1: people I interview, like Kevin Hart, was like, I had
21:03
Speaker 1: no idea, and I don't know that I.
21:05
Speaker 2: Believe him so, not to the degree that it's at
21:08
Speaker 2: right now, but I certainly feel like I kind of
21:10
Speaker 2: manifested things by imagining scenarios. And you know, not all
21:14
Speaker 2: of them are going to come true or not all
21:16
Speaker 2: of them are going to manifest in the way that
21:18
Speaker 2: you know sort of imagine them, But you have to
21:20
Speaker 2: visualize the thing that you want, number one. You have
21:22
Speaker 2: to imagine all of those scenarios and you have to
21:25
Speaker 2: be willing to fail.
21:27
Speaker 1: Right.
21:27
Speaker 2: It's like we can all accept failure, right, It's something
21:31
Speaker 2: that you do, but it's really difficult to accept or
21:34
Speaker 2: regret for not having tried the thing. So I gladly
21:38
Speaker 2: lean into failure.
21:39
Speaker 1: Is there a failure that sticks out in your mind?
21:42
Speaker 1: I know you've talked about how like your failures, I
21:44
Speaker 1: almost think of them as pivots the way you write
21:46
Speaker 1: about it, because you don't really consider them failures that
21:49
Speaker 1: you feel like they kind of bleed into other things
21:52
Speaker 1: and turn into other work. Is there one that stuck
21:54
Speaker 1: out in your mind that really hard at the time.
21:57
Speaker 2: Well, there's a really funny one which in twenty fifteen.
22:02
Speaker 2: I made a film and I became close with Jane Rosenthal,
22:06
Speaker 2: who was the head of Tribeca Films and the Tribeca
22:09
Speaker 2: Film Festival, so I told her about this idea. She
22:13
Speaker 2: helped me put together some finances for it. I made
22:15
Speaker 2: a film and it premiered at Tribeca Film Festival twenty fifteen,
22:19
Speaker 2: and the film was like, it was okay, but I
22:22
Speaker 2: kind of knew when I finished it, like it's a
22:24
Speaker 2: difficult film, like something easy to watch. It's very conceptual.
22:29
Speaker 2: The storyline was a little bit all over the place,
22:31
Speaker 2: and I got so obsessed with the visual quality of
22:34
Speaker 2: it that a little bit of the storyline got lost.
22:36
Speaker 2: So it was kind of a big deal this premiere.
22:39
Speaker 2: It was like on the Marquee and like they had
22:41
Speaker 2: a whole red carpet for it. I mean, I talk
22:43
Speaker 2: about this in the book, so I'm not really revealing anything.
22:46
Speaker 2: But one of my favorite film directors, Julian Schnabel, was
22:49
Speaker 2: at the film premiere, and the next day a friend
22:53
Speaker 2: of mine told me that he was at the bar
22:55
Speaker 2: after the thing talking to the director of the festival
22:58
Speaker 2: and he literally said, that was the fucking worst thing
23:01
Speaker 2: I've ever seen. And I kind of thought it was
23:04
Speaker 2: funny because I also sort of knew and that he
23:08
Speaker 2: had attended the premiere and paid attention to it. But
23:11
Speaker 2: that was kind of like the nail in the coffin
23:13
Speaker 2: for me of like, Okay, maybe, like film is not
23:16
Speaker 2: my medium. And you know, the other aspect of that
23:20
Speaker 2: is that nobody really remembers the failures, right. It's like,
23:24
Speaker 2: if you failed in the thing, you're probably not going
23:26
Speaker 2: to do it again. And you know, every actor, every musician,
23:31
Speaker 2: like they all have some either terrible role that they
23:34
Speaker 2: did or concert performance that was awful or something like that,
23:37
Speaker 2: and like people don't really remember those things, so it's
23:40
Speaker 2: kind of a license to try out and fail in
23:42
Speaker 2: that way.
23:43
Speaker 1: Are you a watch collector by any chance?
23:45
Speaker 2: Yep? And I've designed a number of watches as well.
23:47
Speaker 1: I know you have. I get the sense that you're
23:50
Speaker 1: obsessed with time. Is that accurate?
23:52
Speaker 2: It's like a medium in the work, So the works
23:55
Speaker 2: confuse people about when they were made, about when they exist,
23:58
Speaker 2: about where we are in relation to them, And that's
24:01
Speaker 2: kind of a big part of the overall work in general.
24:04
Speaker 1: I mean, even the title of your book, which is
24:06
Speaker 1: an ode to your work, Future Relic says a lot
24:09
Speaker 1: about time, in my opinion, and I think you figured
24:11
Speaker 1: out a way to take this object that everyone recognizes
24:14
Speaker 1: it and make you feel like you're observing its entire lifespan.
24:19
Speaker 1: And I think, unlike Mariah Carey, who doesn't feel like
24:21
Speaker 1: time is real, you almost use it as a material
24:25
Speaker 1: that you work with. Has your work been more about
24:29
Speaker 1: merging time periods, making time stop or making things feel timeless?
24:33
Speaker 2: I mean, I try to use materials in a way
24:36
Speaker 2: that they tell a story. So if we think about
24:39
Speaker 2: like what artists usually use for specifically sculpture, right, there's
24:44
Speaker 2: a lot of classical materials, wood and stone, marble, bronze,
24:49
Speaker 2: like these are historical materials. I often work with things
24:53
Speaker 2: that we wouldn't expect to be used for sculpture, volcanic ash,
24:57
Speaker 2: brushed crystal sand, Right, these are things that the material
25:04
Speaker 2: tells a story about the object in addition to the
25:07
Speaker 2: way that it looks, and in that way, the works
25:10
Speaker 2: become very I don't know, they just feel more real,
25:14
Speaker 2: right because the materials are telling a story to us
25:18
Speaker 2: as well.
25:19
Speaker 1: Like even your graffiti name as a teenager was when
25:22
Speaker 1: that signifies to me that you understood something about time
25:25
Speaker 1: as a teenager when no one's thinking about time.
25:28
Speaker 2: That part of it is like a miraculous coincidence that
25:32
Speaker 2: you know, I was obsessed with that as a teenager,
25:34
Speaker 2: and there's a whole chapter in the book about graffiti
25:38
Speaker 2: and interesting scenarios that I put myself in with that.
25:41
Speaker 1: Do you think that it really was a coincidence or
25:44
Speaker 1: do you think that there was something turning in you
25:46
Speaker 1: that manifested later.
25:48
Speaker 2: It's hard to say, like how closely was I paying
25:51
Speaker 2: attention to things like that at that time. It's the
25:53
Speaker 2: same way like when I get interviewed about the origin
25:56
Speaker 2: of an idea for a work, it's very hard for
25:59
Speaker 2: me to trace back because every work leads to the
26:02
Speaker 2: next work that leads to the next work, So it's
26:04
Speaker 2: just this thing that's skipping forward, and it's hard to
26:07
Speaker 2: trace back the origin of the original idea.
26:10
Speaker 1: What is something that people would be surprised that you
26:13
Speaker 1: spend your time doing or spend your time on.
26:16
Speaker 2: I am extremely good at golf, like way better than average.
26:22
Speaker 1: Really.
26:22
Speaker 2: Yes, I played when I was a child, but I've
26:24
Speaker 2: spent the last two years like really drilling down and
26:29
Speaker 2: for anyone who knows golf, like, I'm an eight handicap,
26:31
Speaker 2: which is pretty low.
26:33
Speaker 1: Did this spike during COVID and then take off or
26:36
Speaker 1: this is post COVID?
26:37
Speaker 2: It was actually later than that. I did a big
26:41
Speaker 2: project in Wisconsin at a very famous golf course there,
26:46
Speaker 2: which was a sculptural project placing these large bronze works
26:49
Speaker 2: among the holes at the course. And in preparation for that,
26:52
Speaker 2: I decided, like, you know what, I'm going to take
26:54
Speaker 2: a couple of lessons and like just get my game
26:56
Speaker 2: like slightly in order, because I hadn't played in a decade, right,
27:00
Speaker 2: And so I played a couple of rounds then, and
27:02
Speaker 2: then I started playing more, and then at some point
27:05
Speaker 2: I realized, like I kind of understand this game in
27:07
Speaker 2: a very different way now. I understand it sculpturally. It's
27:11
Speaker 2: about shaping things. And I love golf because it's really
27:15
Speaker 2: a competition against yourself. You're not really playing against anyone necessarily,
27:20
Speaker 2: You're playing against yourself and the designer of the course
27:23
Speaker 2: and the way that the ball moves, the way that
27:25
Speaker 2: you move through the course. There's a lot of artistic
27:28
Speaker 2: ideas within that.
27:29
Speaker 1: On the flip side, is there something you think is
27:31
Speaker 1: a complete waste.
27:32
Speaker 2: Of time just being on the internet. Probably it's like
27:35
Speaker 2: I hate social media so much.
27:37
Speaker 1: Wait what, Daniel, You're big on social.
27:40
Speaker 2: I mean I have to be, because I think it's
27:42
Speaker 2: a great way for me to communicate. So I like
27:45
Speaker 2: it in that way. I guess I hate it as
27:46
Speaker 2: a consumer. You know, you get on Instagram or TikTok
27:49
Speaker 2: and you just look at it and then like you know,
27:51
Speaker 2: thirty minutes go by and you're like, what the fuck
27:53
Speaker 2: am I doing? Like what did I just look at?
27:55
Speaker 2: But as an artist, I think it really has changed
27:59
Speaker 2: a lot because it allows me to have direct relationship
28:02
Speaker 2: with people that are interested in my work globally. Two
28:05
Speaker 2: days ago, I was in Macau in China unveiling a
28:08
Speaker 2: huge new work and you know, there's thousands of people
28:12
Speaker 2: that show up to this that I've never met, that
28:13
Speaker 2: I've never shown my work in Macau before, that know
28:16
Speaker 2: my work, that knows basically everything about my practice, and
28:20
Speaker 2: it's because of social media.
28:21
Speaker 1: I was going to say, for someone who likes to
28:23
Speaker 1: share process, you do that well on social It's a
28:26
Speaker 1: cool place to do that. Do you always run on time?
28:29
Speaker 2: Yes, usually early.
28:31
Speaker 1: I know that you said that you love painting because
28:33
Speaker 1: it conveys a sense of endlessness. Why does that endlessness
28:38
Speaker 1: and time feel so central to your work.
28:42
Speaker 2: I mean, my paintings look like a realistic setting often,
28:47
Speaker 2: but they depict things that are otherworldly, and so it
28:50
Speaker 2: allows me to create scenarios that I might never be
28:54
Speaker 2: able to achieve in real life. I studied painting in school,
28:57
Speaker 2: and that was kind of the first real part of
29:00
Speaker 2: my practice. Like when I did that show with Emmanuel
29:02
Speaker 2: there was I think fifteen works in that show, and
29:05
Speaker 2: the vast majority of them were paintings. Over the decade
29:09
Speaker 2: that followed, I just became so much more interested in
29:12
Speaker 2: sculpture that I literally stopped painting for probably close to
29:16
Speaker 2: ten years. I always made drawings and things like that,
29:19
Speaker 2: but it wasn't really until Pandemic that I went back
29:23
Speaker 2: to painting. You know, everything was closed in New York.
29:25
Speaker 2: I couldn't go to the studio, and so I ordered
29:28
Speaker 2: some paint and started painting in my office here and
29:31
Speaker 2: kind of went back to that universe.
29:33
Speaker 1: It also looked like you were working on your Japanese gardens.
29:36
Speaker 1: There was a lot of rakings. I was doing that
29:38
Speaker 1: as well, I can tell you. I think that one
29:40
Speaker 1: of the reasons I'm so interested in your work is
29:44
Speaker 1: you hold these two opposite truths at one time. And
29:47
Speaker 1: I actually think that's what my podcast or my questions
29:52
Speaker 1: try to do. I love the nuance, I love the
29:55
Speaker 1: gray area, and you both preserve and erode, and I'm
30:00
Speaker 1: I'm so curious when you are looking at a piece,
30:02
Speaker 1: any object, how do you decide what deserves to be
30:05
Speaker 1: preserved and what you are going to erode?
30:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the works imagine something like a historical piece
30:12
Speaker 2: of sculpture, right, a bust of a face. The works
30:15
Speaker 2: have these erosions on them, but the erosions are often
30:17
Speaker 2: made of a material like crystal, which is a material
30:21
Speaker 2: that we associate with growth, right, like something crystallizing and forming.
30:25
Speaker 2: So the works function in opposing directions. They look like
30:28
Speaker 2: they're falling apart, they look crumbling, right, they are pieces
30:32
Speaker 2: broken off of them, But those areas also look like
30:35
Speaker 2: they're growing. So the work could be falling apart or
30:38
Speaker 2: it could be growing together and that kind of like
30:40
Speaker 2: sliding of a dial, of something falling apart growing back together.
30:45
Speaker 2: Is this sort of trope that I've used a lot
30:47
Speaker 2: in my work over the years.
30:48
Speaker 1: And do you just decide where the erosion comes in
30:52
Speaker 1: by the actual image of what you're looking at or
30:55
Speaker 1: does it have a deeper meaning?
30:57
Speaker 2: So some of it is accidental because I can't entirely
31:00
Speaker 2: control what the erosion is going to look like in
31:04
Speaker 2: the process. Those works are created inside of a mold,
31:07
Speaker 2: and I cannot see inside of the mold while I'm
31:09
Speaker 2: doing the work, so I have to pick the general
31:13
Speaker 2: area that I want the erosion. Yeah, it's basically a
31:15
Speaker 2: crapshoot the way that it comes out in the end.
31:18
Speaker 2: Sometimes there's too much and I have to remake it.
31:20
Speaker 2: And those are like the little failures that happen every
31:23
Speaker 2: day in the studio.
31:24
Speaker 1: That's cool. I have a question for you about taste.
31:38
Speaker 1: I saw this video speaking of the Internet. It's a
31:41
Speaker 1: video of a girl saying that if you feel like
31:44
Speaker 1: you don't have good taste, don't worry, you just actually
31:47
Speaker 1: haven't experienced enough things. That taste is sort of this
31:50
Speaker 1: combination of the things that your eyes have seen. So
31:54
Speaker 1: if you maybe had like a fashionable mom or father
31:57
Speaker 1: or grandfather or something, you're probably gonna have better taste
32:00
Speaker 1: because you've been around it. What do you think, do
32:03
Speaker 1: you feel like your taste has grown or have you
32:05
Speaker 1: always had this very precise idea of what you like?
32:09
Speaker 2: I mean, certainly my tastes, you know, shift I've traveled
32:13
Speaker 2: an unbelievable amount, Like when I got my two million
32:17
Speaker 2: mile thing from Delta, I was like, please take it back.
32:19
Speaker 2: I can't believe I've been on the plane that much.
32:21
Speaker 2: It's ridiculous. But spending so much time in different cultures,
32:25
Speaker 2: you know, I've spent a huge amount of time in Japan,
32:28
Speaker 2: which has influenced a lot of the way that I
32:30
Speaker 2: think about architecture and experience and nature and I mean
32:35
Speaker 2: just living life generally. And so I think I agree
32:38
Speaker 2: with that your acquire taste through Yeah, you're discerning palette,
32:42
Speaker 2: Like you've seen so many things, and you kind of
32:44
Speaker 2: understand what you like what you don't like. You'll clearly
32:47
Speaker 2: have more options, right when you've seen all these different possibilities.
32:51
Speaker 1: How do you think that art becomes timeless? Like when
32:55
Speaker 1: I think of obviously the mona Lisa or Starry Nights, Like,
32:59
Speaker 1: how is that aimed something great and timeless in the
33:03
Speaker 1: art world. What do you think makes something timeless?
33:06
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, I think it's impossible to set
33:09
Speaker 2: out as an artist to make something like that. You
33:12
Speaker 2: have to invest as much as you can in the
33:14
Speaker 2: actual object. And I talk a little bit about this
33:18
Speaker 2: in the book, that there's this kind of snowballing effect
33:21
Speaker 2: that happens as an artist where you have an idea
33:24
Speaker 2: and it starts rolling down the hill like in those
33:26
Speaker 2: old cartoons and gathering mass. And in the beginning, it
33:30
Speaker 2: feels so difficult to achieve anything as a creative or
33:34
Speaker 2: as an entrepreneur. Right, you have all these obstacles against you.
33:37
Speaker 2: But the more that you make, it's almost like you
33:40
Speaker 2: have this gravity of like mass of the things that
33:42
Speaker 2: you create. And eventually you've made so many things it's
33:46
Speaker 2: kind of undeniable, like that you are this force in
33:49
Speaker 2: the world. So it just makes those things you know
33:51
Speaker 2: so much easier.
33:52
Speaker 1: See I'm interested to hear that because when I look
33:54
Speaker 1: at your work, especially the collaborations you do, it seems
33:59
Speaker 1: to me like you're not thinking in news cycles or
34:02
Speaker 1: quick moments. I mean, I guess maybe the timeless relics
34:04
Speaker 1: speak to this, but like you're almost thinking in centuries instead,
34:08
Speaker 1: Is that true.
34:09
Speaker 2: I try to make work that does float in time
34:11
Speaker 2: a little bit. So you'll notice in my paintings, if
34:15
Speaker 2: there's figures, they're often in silhouette, like we can't tell
34:18
Speaker 2: what they look like, we can't tell how their hair
34:21
Speaker 2: is cut, so they feel like they could be a
34:23
Speaker 2: thousand years in the past or a thousand years in
34:25
Speaker 2: the future. Early on the paintings, you know, from twenty
34:28
Speaker 2: years ago. I never included figures at all because I
34:30
Speaker 2: thought it would link it to a specific time period.
34:33
Speaker 2: But I try to make work that in that way,
34:36
Speaker 2: we could say it's timeless because it's not linked to
34:40
Speaker 2: a particular moment in time.
34:43
Speaker 1: The first time I saw your work, it was the clock,
34:46
Speaker 1: the moving clock, the moving clock. Yeah, thank you. I
34:49
Speaker 1: didn't know how to describe it. And then I saw
34:51
Speaker 1: you do the poker set. And I'm a big poker
34:55
Speaker 1: player because my dad taught me, and we go on
34:59
Speaker 1: a trip together once year, and every time we go
35:01
Speaker 1: on a trip, we play poker, and I find myself
35:05
Speaker 1: learning a life lesson every time I play poker from him.
35:09
Speaker 1: And I don't go in thinking I'm going to learn something.
35:11
Speaker 1: I know that you play. Have you learned about life
35:14
Speaker 1: and when to take a bet and when to bet
35:16
Speaker 1: on yourself at all from the game or do you
35:19
Speaker 1: feel like I'm looking too deep into it.
35:21
Speaker 2: I mean, one of the interesting things is I did
35:23
Speaker 2: that poker event with World Series of Poker, which was
35:26
Speaker 2: actually a charity event that we did for Cooper Union.
35:28
Speaker 2: But generally I don't gamble at all. Like I go
35:32
Speaker 2: to Vegas for work all the time. I was just
35:35
Speaker 2: in Macau, and I like to watch other people gamble,
35:38
Speaker 2: but I feel like betting the only way you could
35:41
Speaker 2: say that I gamble is on myself. In things that
35:44
Speaker 2: I do in my life. I take big risks with
35:46
Speaker 2: my work and with you know, investing in my work.
35:49
Speaker 2: But poker I like because you're not really playing against
35:52
Speaker 2: the house, right, You're playing against other people, and so
35:54
Speaker 2: it's oftentimes about manipulation, and that part about it. There's
35:59
Speaker 2: some life lessons in that.
36:01
Speaker 1: That's funny, Daniel. I never thought about that. I really
36:05
Speaker 1: enjoy when you talk about inspiration because you said what
36:08
Speaker 1: you were younger, it was more about proximity, and you know,
36:12
Speaker 1: you're a professional artist. You go to work every single
36:14
Speaker 1: day that it's not really this lightning in a bottle
36:17
Speaker 1: the way people would think it would be foreign artist.
36:20
Speaker 1: It's not effortless, it's not mystical. Do you think that
36:24
Speaker 1: people romanticize creativity because it's easier than respecting it as
36:29
Speaker 1: a discipline.
36:30
Speaker 2: It's like when people say like, oh, you're so talented,
36:32
Speaker 2: and I'm like, no, it took me thirty years to
36:34
Speaker 2: learn how to do that. To give like a physical example,
36:37
Speaker 2: it would be like talent exists as this little ball
36:41
Speaker 2: inside of a huge rock that you literally have to
36:44
Speaker 2: chisel away at for thirty years to get there. And
36:47
Speaker 2: sometimes you know you're chiseling on the rock and then
36:49
Speaker 2: it falls on you. It's like that much of an effort.
36:53
Speaker 2: And I think people romanticize it because oftentimes in history
36:59
Speaker 2: we talk about these creative geniuses like Mozart or Da Vinci,
37:04
Speaker 2: their talent or that lightning was actually just an obsessive
37:08
Speaker 2: quality that they had to learn the thing that they
37:11
Speaker 2: wanted to do. So talent or you talk about that lightning,
37:16
Speaker 2: it's really just being obsessed with the thing that you're
37:18
Speaker 2: trying to create.
37:20
Speaker 1: Are you a therapy person? Have you looked into where
37:22
Speaker 1: that obsession comes from for you?
37:24
Speaker 2: No, I mean it's a quality that repeats itself in
37:27
Speaker 2: multiple areas of my life. Like I talked about the
37:30
Speaker 2: golf thing, like, I've basically set my life up now
37:33
Speaker 2: where when I'm not in the city, I'm playing golf
37:36
Speaker 2: every single day, and i play the first tea time
37:39
Speaker 2: of the morning and I'm done at nine thirty and
37:42
Speaker 2: then I'm at the studio. You know, I was talking
37:43
Speaker 2: to my caddie a couple of weeks ago and I
37:46
Speaker 2: was like, oh, you know, I've played like five hundred
37:49
Speaker 2: rounds in the last two and a half years, and
37:51
Speaker 2: I'm like, I really should be better that I am
37:54
Speaker 2: by now, and he goes, You've played more golf in
37:56
Speaker 2: the last two years than most people play in their
37:58
Speaker 2: entire life terms of the number of rounds. And so
38:02
Speaker 2: I think that obsessive quality just applies to many different
38:06
Speaker 2: areas of things. I've become interested in something, I want
38:08
Speaker 2: to understand it and basically do it to the most
38:12
Speaker 2: possible excellent way that I can do it.
38:14
Speaker 1: I'm a sucker for a book dedication, And I really
38:18
Speaker 1: like your opening line you said, I make most of
38:20
Speaker 1: the things I make for the simple reason that I
38:23
Speaker 1: wish they existed. What did you feel like was missing
38:27
Speaker 1: that you wanted to create?
38:29
Speaker 2: I mean, this is one of the magical things about
38:31
Speaker 2: being an artist is you know, when you make that thing,
38:35
Speaker 2: that's the only one of those that exists in the
38:37
Speaker 2: world at that moment, and if you're very good at it,
38:41
Speaker 2: you can make these things that other people invest in
38:44
Speaker 2: not only with their money, right that they're collecting or
38:48
Speaker 2: buying work, but that they invest in emotionally, they invest
38:52
Speaker 2: in conceptually, and that they think about over long periods
38:55
Speaker 2: of time. So there are works that I've made which
38:59
Speaker 2: I know will ex exists in one hundred years, and
39:02
Speaker 2: the reason I know that is because they're made of
39:04
Speaker 2: materials that are very difficult to destroy, like bronze. So yeah,
39:08
Speaker 2: you have this magical possibility to create things with your hands.
39:13
Speaker 2: And as the world leans more and more into artificial
39:17
Speaker 2: intelligence and all of these kind of digital aspects of
39:20
Speaker 2: our life, I'm actually seeing this inverse quality where people
39:25
Speaker 2: are actually paying so much more attention to things that
39:27
Speaker 2: they know were made by hand. So people are interested
39:31
Speaker 2: in theater, people are interested in handcrafted clothing and objects,
39:35
Speaker 2: and like anything that you know, literally was physically made
39:38
Speaker 2: by a person. I think now and in the future
39:41
Speaker 2: is going to have so much more value.
39:42
Speaker 1: There's a luxury quality to it now more so, I
39:45
Speaker 1: would agree. You kind of strike me as somebody that's
39:48
Speaker 1: winning the imagination game. As a dad, I've seen these
39:52
Speaker 1: videos online like dads will create these insane pancakes for
39:55
Speaker 1: their kids and then the joke is who's eating them?
39:57
Speaker 1: What's one way that you like creating one for your kids.
40:01
Speaker 2: I mean, I've done so many like art projects with them.
40:05
Speaker 2: They are in some ways very different from me in
40:08
Speaker 2: that they're both obsessed with soccer, like to a level
40:12
Speaker 2: that you know, you talk about my obsession with art.
40:15
Speaker 2: My little son he fractured his ankle and I was
40:18
Speaker 2: talking to him last night, how's it feeling, Like, does
40:21
Speaker 2: it hurt whatever? And He's like, I don't care, I'm
40:23
Speaker 2: just mad that I can't play. And it's like that level.
40:26
Speaker 2: Their obsession with soccer is akin to my obsession with
40:30
Speaker 2: art when I was the same age.
40:31
Speaker 1: Has fatherhood changed the way that you imagine or create
40:35
Speaker 1: it all?
40:35
Speaker 2: Well, it gets you to relive a lot of that
40:38
Speaker 2: curiosity and you kind of resee it through their experience
40:43
Speaker 2: of it. You know, I love taking them to museums
40:47
Speaker 2: and seeing exhibitions. They misrecognize things, you know, they kind
40:50
Speaker 2: of understand them in this very innocent way that it's
40:53
Speaker 2: hard for us to go back to that sense, and
40:57
Speaker 2: so that's a beautiful experience to have with them.
40:59
Speaker 1: I think that so many of our lives can be
41:02
Speaker 1: broken down into these series of moments, some are memorable,
41:06
Speaker 1: some forgettable, some transformative, And you write your book like
41:10
Speaker 1: your memories have this domino effect. One thing leads into another.
41:14
Speaker 1: You even mentioned that in your work when you were
41:16
Speaker 1: talking about failure throughout the writing process, which moments sculpted
41:21
Speaker 1: you the most.
41:22
Speaker 2: So, you know, as I talked about the way that
41:25
Speaker 2: I wrote this book was through speaking, and I think
41:27
Speaker 2: that's part of the reason why the book reads so conversationally,
41:30
Speaker 2: is I literally just set aside a number of topics
41:33
Speaker 2: that I wanted to hit and then started recording those
41:36
Speaker 2: which were transcribed, and then I edited from there. And
41:39
Speaker 2: it was actually a friend of mine who's writer. When
41:42
Speaker 2: I had finished the book, it was entirely chronological like
41:45
Speaker 2: I wrote it, like I imagine any sort of you know,
41:48
Speaker 2: memoir would be written, and he read it and he
41:52
Speaker 2: kind of was like, listen, like there's a lot of
41:54
Speaker 2: good stuff in there, but it's really boring to read it,
41:56
Speaker 2: Like I did this and then I did that. The
41:58
Speaker 2: book really now, I think think it focuses on failure
42:02
Speaker 2: as a way of actually achieving things right, like building
42:06
Speaker 2: a bank of failures, and it really dives into this
42:10
Speaker 2: idea of mentorship and thinking about like what are the
42:13
Speaker 2: things that are going to carry me through to the
42:15
Speaker 2: next iteration of my life and my work. So I
42:18
Speaker 2: would say the book is more written now like for
42:21
Speaker 2: kind of any creative entrepreneur. It's not really just visual artists, right,
42:26
Speaker 2: could be somebody like you who's you know, in podcasting,
42:29
Speaker 2: could be an actor, or just you know, a regular
42:33
Speaker 2: entrepreneur that's figuring out, you know, how to build a
42:35
Speaker 2: career or build something successful.
42:37
Speaker 1: I agree with you. I think entrepreneurship in general is
42:40
Speaker 1: a creative space because you have to think outside the
42:43
Speaker 1: box no matter what lane you're in. I like that
42:46
Speaker 1: you consider yourself a student of life. What have you
42:49
Speaker 1: been devouring lately aside from golf?
42:52
Speaker 2: And I've been traveling so much lately for this book tour.
42:55
Speaker 2: It's a lot of work.
42:56
Speaker 1: What's it been like for people to ask you all
42:58
Speaker 1: these invasive questions.
43:00
Speaker 2: It's definitely a new experience. Yeah, I mean I knew
43:03
Speaker 2: that when I was writing this book that I was
43:05
Speaker 2: kind of putting some of my personal life out there, right, Like,
43:09
Speaker 2: these are the ways that I think. And some artists
43:12
Speaker 2: make work that's really just about themselves and about the
43:16
Speaker 2: experience of them making it, and some kind of like
43:18
Speaker 2: Catharsis of doing that, and then other artists make the
43:21
Speaker 2: work to kind of have a dialogue with people. And
43:24
Speaker 2: I think my work leans into the second. It's like,
43:27
Speaker 2: this is a conversation that we're having, and the book
43:29
Speaker 2: kind of adds to that understanding. People only see me
43:33
Speaker 2: in the state that I'm in currently. I'm successful. I've
43:36
Speaker 2: built this whole career. I built a visual language that
43:40
Speaker 2: people know and understand, but they didn't see like all
43:44
Speaker 2: of those failures and the difficulties that went into that.
43:47
Speaker 2: So it's revealing a little bit of that, and somebody
43:49
Speaker 2: else who's going through that currently will be like, oh, well,
43:52
Speaker 2: I'm there.
43:53
Speaker 1: When did it get easier? Like you talk about that
43:56
Speaker 1: guy that was living in his studio. I know it's
43:59
Speaker 1: still hard.
44:00
Speaker 2: It never gets easier. I was complaining yesterday to Jacqueline
44:03
Speaker 2: because I was in Los Angeles on Sunday. Then I
44:07
Speaker 2: flew to China on Sunday night. I was there for
44:11
Speaker 2: thirty six hours, and I came back here and then
44:13
Speaker 2: I'm like literally on TV this morning and I was like,
44:16
Speaker 2: this is driving me crazy, like I put myself through
44:18
Speaker 2: so much. And she goes, well, number one, you set
44:20
Speaker 2: yourself up for that, like you chose to do these things.
44:23
Speaker 2: And number two, like have some gratitude that you literally
44:26
Speaker 2: just went across the world to exhibit this massive, you know,
44:30
Speaker 2: twenty five foot tall sculpture that thousands of people came
44:34
Speaker 2: to the opening for and so you know, it's a
44:36
Speaker 2: lot of that perspective. It's like I created all of
44:40
Speaker 2: these scenarios for myself.
44:42
Speaker 1: These collaborations you do, I've always wondered how you figure
44:46
Speaker 1: this out because you've collaborated. I'm just going to name
44:49
Speaker 1: a few, but there are so many more brands. There's Pokemon,
44:52
Speaker 1: Tiffany's Porsche. You've done so many collaborations and yet they
44:58
Speaker 1: don't dilute your brand, and you also reveal something new
45:01
Speaker 1: about yourself as an artist through these collaborations, but I
45:05
Speaker 1: never feel like it's sucking the blood from who you are.
45:08
Speaker 1: And I know, working with brands it's not easy to
45:11
Speaker 1: do because there are some stipulations, especially when it's a
45:14
Speaker 1: big collab.
45:15
Speaker 2: I mean, this is something that I go into in
45:18
Speaker 2: detail in the book, But the overwhelming feeling for me
45:22
Speaker 2: is that I've always worked with brands where I felt
45:26
Speaker 2: some connection either to the brand in the first place.
45:29
Speaker 2: So that's something like Porsche was, like I was obsessed
45:32
Speaker 2: with those cars when I was sixteen, and dere where
45:37
Speaker 2: I knew Kim Jones, who was the designer at the time,
45:39
Speaker 2: like I knew him as a friend, and so I
45:42
Speaker 2: knew that I was not going to have to deal
45:44
Speaker 2: with some of the difficulties of having a brand tell
45:48
Speaker 2: me what to do. And I can say that I've
45:51
Speaker 2: fortunately reached a point in my career where I can
45:55
Speaker 2: relatively say, guys, this is the limit of what I'm
45:58
Speaker 2: going to do. We are in some ways like the
46:02
Speaker 2: same right, We're on the same level, so they typically
46:05
Speaker 2: won't ask me to do the types of things that
46:07
Speaker 2: would become challenging.
46:09
Speaker 1: But when you were coming up, they must have.
46:11
Speaker 2: Honestly, the first major project that I did was with
46:14
Speaker 2: Adidas and this was twenty thirteen, and they came to
46:20
Speaker 2: me and asked me to propose a project, which I did,
46:23
Speaker 2: which was this, you know, series of three different sneaker silhouettes.
46:27
Speaker 2: And so there wasn't a lot of like, we want
46:29
Speaker 2: you to do this thing because I had already told
46:31
Speaker 2: them what I wanted to do. And this is another
46:33
Speaker 2: thing I talked about in the book. I've worked with
46:35
Speaker 2: the same attorney for the last twenty years. And if
46:39
Speaker 2: you're clear out of the gate about what you are
46:41
Speaker 2: willing and not willing to do, and you're willing to
46:44
Speaker 2: walk away which I've had to do on numerous instances
46:47
Speaker 2: and leave significant finances on the table, at some point
46:52
Speaker 2: people kind of understand and you have precedent to say like, well,
46:55
Speaker 2: Deorden asked me to do that. Tiffany didn't ask me
46:58
Speaker 2: to do that. Ramoa goes on like I achieved all
47:01
Speaker 2: of these things within this framework. It's how I work
47:04
Speaker 2: and that's the way that we need to work together.
47:06
Speaker 1: Okay, I have some rapid fire questions for you, Daniel,
47:09
Speaker 1: and then I promise you could go to bed. You're
47:11
Speaker 1: done with me. What is your favorite brand?
47:16
Speaker 2: Of watch well cublow because I designed.
47:18
Speaker 1: It outside of creating. What's the number one way you
47:20
Speaker 1: lose track of time?
47:22
Speaker 2: Golf?
47:22
Speaker 1: The most underrated material that you make art with.
47:25
Speaker 2: The most underrated material probably just a pencil and paper.
47:29
Speaker 1: The number one way you feel inspired every day travel,
47:32
Speaker 1: probably besides your actual art. What is the most artistic
47:36
Speaker 1: thing about you?
47:37
Speaker 2: Probably the gardens at my house.
47:39
Speaker 1: Who is a lesser known artist that you want to
47:41
Speaker 1: call out?
47:41
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know if I would say lesser
47:43
Speaker 2: known artist because he's quite well known. But the first
47:46
Speaker 2: person I came to mind is Samuel Ross.
47:48
Speaker 1: The pop culture category behind your next creation, it's.
47:51
Speaker 2: Not really a pop culture category. Ancient Greece. Cool?
47:55
Speaker 1: Do you get to go live in Greece to create it?
47:58
Speaker 2: No, don't have time for that.
48:00
Speaker 1: And what's the last thing you took a picture of?
48:02
Speaker 2: Oh, it's the sculpture that I just unveiled in Macau.
48:04
Speaker 1: The art piece you want to be known.
48:06
Speaker 2: For probably one of the large bronze works that I've
48:09
Speaker 2: installed outdoors.
48:11
Speaker 1: This song that makes you want to create.
48:13
Speaker 2: Maybe like something by giv On. I love giving On.
48:16
Speaker 1: I love that answer. The artist, actor, athlete that you'd.
48:20
Speaker 2: Love to collab with probably Lebron James.
48:22
Speaker 1: The identity of Banksy.
48:24
Speaker 2: Is Damien Hurst.
48:25
Speaker 1: My last question is out of this card game because
48:29
Speaker 1: we're virtual. Just tell me when to stop.
48:31
Speaker 2: Okay stop?
48:32
Speaker 1: Oh, this is funny. Which personality trait has gotten you
48:35
Speaker 1: in the most trouble?
48:36
Speaker 2: Like OCD and Daniel?
48:38
Speaker 1: What is something that every person should try once?
48:41
Speaker 2: Rally car driving?
48:42
Speaker 1: Unexpected? Answered? I love it, Daniel. I usually don't say
48:45
Speaker 1: this to people because I think it's a little trite,
48:47
Speaker 1: but I'm going to say it to you. Thank you
48:49
Speaker 1: for your time.
48:50
Speaker 2: My pleasure. Thank you.
48:56
Speaker 1: Okay, you know what time it is. Today's a good day,
48:59
Speaker 1: to have a good day. I'll see you next week.