A Quote by Trevor Paglen

I don't put work in an art gallery because the next day I want people to march in the streets. — © Trevor Paglen
I don't put work in an art gallery because the next day I want people to march in the streets.
One of the crucial underpinnings of New York as a culture capital is that there are multiple markets. There is not just one art gallery district, there are several art gallery districts. I feel that there should be art galleries and art studios in every neighborhood without exception. They should be integrated into the social and physical fabric of the streets. If we want a lively city, we can't just have high towers and dense constructions, we have to have living organisms of streets and neighborhoods. And the arts are a crucial part of that.
Public art is a unique type of art. It's very different to gallery art because it is something that we pass by every day and it inevitably creates a lot of discussion in a way that gallery art does not.
The next time The Oregonian runs a misleading headline saying that it's because of bike lanes that people aren't having their streets paved, I want all of you to march down Broadway and occupy The Oregonian!
Duchamp's urinal was art once he put it in a gallery. In fact, one working definition of art is anything that is in a gallery.
The city's the best gallery I could imagine. I would never have to make a book and then present it to a gallery and let them decide if my work was nice enough to show it to people. I would control it directly with the public in the streets.
I've been collecting photos for a long time, I mean since I started making money. But what you have had to go through to find a good photo is like a needle in the haystack sometimes. You'll drive from one gallery to the next gallery to the next gallery. It's not an easy process. It's a very ancient model that just hasn't caught up with the times.
Most poor people are not on welfare. . . I know they work. I'm a witness. They catch the early bus. They work every day. They raise other people's children. They work every day. They clean the streets. They work every day. They drive vans with cabs. They work every day. They change beds you slept in these hotels last night and can't get a union contract. They work every day . . .
When I stepped back from the gallery I was in a phase where I thought I wasn't going to be making work for a gallery context for a while. People were like, "You should never leave a gallery if you didn't have somewhere else to go," but I wasn't trying to disrespect the gallerists in that way.
I have a very strong distinction between work and my life. They are not the same and I don't want to ever feel that on a day to day basis that I have to live up to people's expectations, because you never can do that so I don't want to put that pressure on myself.
I think a lot of people are involved in art because of the fashion of art and the conversation. It gives them a certain sophistication, something to speak about. But art is, if it's conceptual, really about understanding the concept. And if it's beautiful, it's about seeing the beauty. It's gone much further than that now. There's too much commercialism attached to art. If the market cracks one day big-time, you'll frighten so many people away who will never come back. Because they don't really feel for art. People who buy art should want it because they love it, they want to enjoy it.
I have an exclusive gallery that takes care of the all of my artworks. I want to stay focused on the art and of creating and let my gallery take care of the more commercial aspects.
With acting, I'm taking somebody else's work and interpreting it. Whereas with music, it's organic. It's completely myself. Nobody else is really involved with the beginning stages of it. Art is something that I haven't really put out to the public. There's a couple pictures on MySpace, but I haven't done a gallery opening or anything like that. Art is very personal to me. I haven't really shared it with too many people.
I liked working in advertising, but don't believe my taste in art, such as it is, was entirely formed by TV commercials. And I don't feel especially conflicted enjoying a Mantegna one day, a Carl Andre the next day and a brash student work the next.
The definition of public art to me means everything and means nothing because for me, all art is public. Art has to be public by definition and in a way It has to be accessible to any audience not just a work in a museum or an art gallery.
We have so much work to do to meet the challenges of people living on our streets. But every day we are out there doing the work, finding solutions not only to help those living on our streets, but to prevent more people from ending up there in the future.
I enjoyed cross-country road trips. And I found the work challenging because it was art that existed on the land rather than mere concepts in a gallery or photographic documentation, or any of the paraphernalia that can be used to indicate that. The art was on the land.
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