I had been doing wall drawings, but they were always black and white. Then in 1993 I painted all the walls of a room to make an installation and as soon as I saw the colour on the walls, it changed my whole life.

As an artist you are free to use any image, any style, any idea from any culture and any period of history.

I've taken away everything I could think of, and yet what remains is enough. These days many more people come to my work, and once they see my work they will always recognize it.

The viewer brings all additional information to the image.

The complexity of the language of images is disguised by the ease and rapidity with which we read them. I've tried to make work that is as transparent and simple as possible. No matter how much I strip away the result is always more complex to me than I expect.

I think from an artist's point of view, everything in art, in fact everything in the world is available as material.

When I told people that I was going to paint the big room magenta, many people thought that I was crazy.