SIMPLE THINGS

From 1998 to the present

Thinking about space and modest interventions in it

You grow up in a small town. There are very, ver y few alternatives here. And it's poor, poor, poor. There's never any money, there's still no internet, but information comes from somewhere. There's a TV and occasional magazines. You want more. Subcultures attract you. You do everything yourself, reworking clothes from the cheap Turkish or Chinese market, or you sew them yourself from cheap fabric on the family mechanical sewing machine. You dig through piles in the newly opened second-hand shop, hoping to find something similar to what you see in magazines, advertisements, or Western movies. You cut your own hair, do piercings, and tattoos—all with improvised materials. You look for ways to stand out. You draw on school desks the best you can at the time. You scratch bricks and charcoal from the fire on the walls of abandoned buildings, creating your own stylized logos, inscriptions, and drawings, inspired by cut-out pages from random magazines or a few seconds of advertising. You record TV shows about alternative movements on VHS, record Western music from FM radio onto cassettes, collect magazine clippings featuring graffiti, comics, or underground fashion. The only spray paint in your town is automotive paint, which comes in a few colors, but it's also very expensive.

You discovered that you can make sprays yourself using a plastic bottle, a nozzle from a deodorant, and a bicycle tire valve. You paint graffiti with homemade sprays from a one-and-a-half-liter plastic bottle that constantly needs to be pumped to maintain pressure. Your arms are always covered in enamel paint up to the elbows.

Oh, these strange things... What drives you, you ask yourself? I don't know... I'm just bored of seeing these boring people and not interested in talking to them. It seems that if they see what I do, they will split into those who prefer to remain unthinking and those who want to think, and that's already a small victory.

Friend, you need to be inventive. You find the answer in a naturally crystallized personal method. Your work should be minimally expensive, serious, and ironic at the same time. You think about the space you find yourself in and use the resources it gives you. Using minimal means and a cheap, romantically harsh style, you write the story of your own life as you feel it.