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.

Shoes are very emotional. For women, they carry the message that you want to give to the world. One day you want to be sexy, or super powerful at your job - you wear a great pump. If you want to be on-the-go and running after your kids - you wear a great flat.

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.

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.

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.