I'm trying to deal with ideas about histories, fame, hearsay, and how public identities are constructed.

I try to deal with the complexities of power and social life, but as far as the visual presentation goes I purposely avoid a high degree of difficulty.

All the gossip and craziness becomes a kind of sustained narrative which, in turn, can become history. It's scary.

Listen: our culture is saturated with irony whether we know it or not.

Direct address has been a consistent tactic in my work, regardless of the medium that I'm working in.

I had to figure out how to bring the world into my work.

I always say that I'm an artist who works with pictures and words, so I think that the different aspects of my activity, whether it's writing criticism, or doing visual work that incorporates writing, or teaching, or curating, is all of a single cloth, and I don't make any separation in terms of those practices.

There's a moment of recognition. It's that white-light kind of stuff that just "works." I love that. And you know it when it happens, whether it's a movie, music, a building, a book.

I didn't finish college; my parents didn't graduate college - we didn't have a pot to piss in. I'm from Newark, New Jersey. I had to work. I didn't think it would be possible for me to be an artist without having a job.