The work that I wanted to create wasn't being done then. I was too much concerned about fellow students, professors, institutional style [in Yale].

For me, I wanted to create something that's much more driven by a type of selfishness, a type of decadence.

I create something that means something to me, to the world, and try to do my best. I can't fix everything.

I grew up in South Central Los Angeles, where people are in cars.

I think one of the things that I took from Mel [Bochner] specifically was his ability to look at oneself and one's relationship to the history of art and the practice of art at arm's length, the ability to sort of clinically and coldly remove oneself from the picture and to see it simply as a set of rules, habits, systems, moving parts.

I think the world that I grew up in was like being in this sort of magical artistic garden.

What we have now is a communication ability. We have the ability to see working ideas that are going on in the great cities throughout the world and whether you live in Shanghai or you live in Sao Paulo, you have the ability of seeing and knowing the ideas of some of the greatest minds of our generation.