Edgardo Osorio

I have so much fun because I love to meet the women who wear my shoes and meet the clients. That, to me, is the best part - getting to know the faces of the people who actually wear my shoes and getting to have a conversation with them.

The thrill of a photo-realist painter is if you get really close to the painting, it looks just like a photograph. Whereas in my case, if you get close to my paintings, they totally fall apart - so I'm about as far from a photo-realist as it gets.

What I look for when I see a piece of art for the first time is some kind of emotional, intellectual experience, that's a combination of both of those things and is informed by my knowledge and something new that I see the artist doing.

Being a good Hans Haacke student, part of his influence on me is that there's no difference between a gallery show and a film - or even an ad and a T-shirt-in terms of cultural legitimacy. They're just different contexts in which to have some sort of communication.