The first exhibition that I used bright colours in painting the room was at a gallery in Paris, and there were seven rooms in the gallery. It was very nice gallery, not very big rooms, around the courtyard, it was a very French space. So I painted each room in different colour. When people came to the exhibition, I saw they came with a smile. Everybody smiles - this is something I never saw in my work before.

If you try to copy something exactly you won't get it correct, because you don't share the same tradition and context.

When I was a very young student I loved and admired the work of Sam Beckett, who is famously pessimistic, and whose writing is an extraordinary examination of emptiness. I wanted to be like Beckett. I don't have the same attitude toward the world, I'm naturally optimistic, and so of course I could never be like Beckett. You can't force yourself to become like someone you admire.

I am trying to present objects in the simplest way possible, and I don't want to supply too much context.

It's important for me to give each thing the possibility to speak and also to allow artworks speak to each other.

Often people do not properly value things that they are good at naturally because they find them too easy. That is very problematic.

Usually when I go to the Summer Exhibition, I think every room is too much the same, and I loose my capacity to look at individual works.