Modern abstract art starts in Russia in about 1915 with Malevich, and then the Russian Revolution happens, and eventually all that experimental art gets squashed and social realism comes back into play. All of a sudden, Malevich is no longer painting black squares; he's painting peasants in colorful schmattas.

I made a body of work, which was like trying to make movies on a wall and was made up of all different images and materials. I had the aspiration to make movies because I thought that was the cycle. I had this insane egomaniac idea that I could make movies because I made these gigantic art projects.

I think the pursuit of trying to understand things is really a critical issue. I see the issue of life and death in everything I do. I'm trying to find answers. It can be quite frustrating.

If you're fortunate enough with your history, like with Men in the Cities, your work becomes so absorbed in culture that the authorship of it doesn't exist anymore.

I'm trying to find answers. It can be quite frustrating, but at the same time, I'm never quite satisfied with what I'm doing, so I'm always looking for the next thing.

As an artist - I'm sure like most creative people - you have a kind of board of directors that you make your work for. It's a group of people that you have, these friends, and you want to know what they think. In a weird way, you're making the work for them.

And I'm sort of deconstructing the process of what marks came first, what came later. Every aspect of the image is interesting to me to dissect and understand.