RvG: There is the element of fun, a comic resonance, even slapstick in your work, especially in the One-Minute-Sculptures or the 59 Positions which makes your work accessible to a very wide public. Is this something you endorse?
EW: It happened. I can’t say I was looking for it. Sometimes I use the language of science fiction and the language of comic strips and I mix it up and it seems to be easily accessible. Everybody sees a fat car. Easy to understand people think, that’s it and then they walk away. If you don’t walk away, if you stay, and you look at it more closely, then you see different layers, different perspectives, an existential philosophy, a psychology behind it. To begin with, as an artist, I yearned for my teachers to accept my art, or for other colleagues, big curators, museum directors or galleries to recognise my work. But I soon realised that the first standard in judging my own work was myself, I have to be satisfied.
RvG: Are you satisfied with your work?
EW: I’m mostly not satisfied with my work. I mean I’ve done some pieces of which I think they are ok and I like them. But then with the next pieces you want to be at least as good as with the previous one, or better.
RvG: Is there a piece of art of yours you would never sell?
EW: Yes, I destroy them.
RvG: I mean never sell it because it’s so close to your heart.
EW: No.
RvG: You would sell anything, everything?
EW: Yes. I sell them because I want them to be out in the world for other people to see them, it’s much more important.
RvG: You come across very much as a child of our times, reflecting the zeitgeist, in touch with the media and famously the Red Hot Chili Peppers cited you as their inspiration for their music video Can’t Stop in 2002. You have also crossed the borders to other artistic domains. You collaborated with Hermès, you made a style shoot with Claudia Schiffer reliving the One-Minute-Sculptures for Vogue. How would you define your relationship with the media?
EW: I find that the contemporary public space for art is the media. I accepted invitations from magazines, television, pop groups to connect my work with these things. When I created the One-Minute-Sculptures, I doubted whether they were good or not. Then all of a sudden I got this feed-back from all over the world from fashion photographers and designers who said: “Your work is very influential in this field and many people know your work and use it.” I realised all of a sudden that many advertisements based themselves on my ideas. I also realised many people misused the work, and for a moment I thought maybe I should do advertisements myself in order not to end up being the follower of my own work! With Hermès I said yes because I am interested in working on the themes of our time: the beauty cult, the youth cult, the question of being fat or not: socially relevant questions which touch many people; and finally the subject of icons, an invention of the 20th century. And Hermès is a fashion icon. They didn’t ask me to make an advert, they invited me to reflect through my work about Le Monde Hermès, and that’s what I did.