I think that people tend to look at the paintings as being resolved or finite. But, to me, a painting can be an index for all of the paintings I've done and all of the paintings I'm going to do. It's like if I'm doing a film of the Olympics, I'm not examining a specific sport; I'm interested in the overall context.

It's always an interesting thing that happens between an artist and their work. People collapse the two, and for any artist, there will be a long period of being considered one thing before being considered another - whether despicable, rhetorical, or poetic. But we all know that these things are made with a huge amount of will and intention. Yet ultimately they're out of our control.

Moving swiftly between different arenas like politics, architecture or commercial design is what I would consider defintive of my generation. I am looking at reality and playing fast and loose with it.

With the films, it starts off with certain coordinates in the world and seeing what happens. What happens if you place yourself at an oil refinery in the Middle East? What happens if you place yourself in the White House Cabinet Room? What happens if you place yourself with Brad Pitt on the set of a film? And so on. And no matter what I capture, there is a sense of déjà vu to it, like you might have come across this visual before.

I think that people tend to look at the paintings as being resolved or finite. But, to me, a painting can be an index for all of the paintings I've done and all of the paintings I'm going to do. It's like if I'm doing a film of the Olympics, I'm not examining a specific sport; I'm interested in the overall context.

I had a big fight about how to make something come into the real, to make it physical. It sounds really antique, but it's a question of, how do I make this idea happen? You can't just will it into existence. You have to educate, you have to persuade, you have to seduce, you have to do all this stuff to make something three-dimensional and happen. It's not just a concept. It's actually a reality.

The meaning of an artwork is changing depending on who's looking at it - depending on what culture, depending on what time, and so forth. It's alive.