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“I do believe in science and technology, and its ability to transform the world. But I'm hoping there is a limit that we can never reach, because it also strips away this fundamental idea of what it means to be human.” —Xin Liu via @art21

"Gunpowder. From its very essence, you can see so much of the power of the universe—how we came to be.  You can express these grand ideas about the cosmos. But, at the same time, it's used for such destruction." 

 —Cai Guo-Qiang 

For Phyllida Barlow, art and artists exist regardless of whether they are seen by an audience. “There are plenty of artists who don’t have exhibitions. There’s plenty of art that’s never seen,” says the artist in our “Extended Play” film. “There is this great, powerful desire to just create something.”

🔗 WATCH: “Phyllida Barlow: Homemade”

"These things that we imagine don't have value are things that we simply stop seeing as having had value--materials like the tar on top of your roof. It's about me figuring out ways of forcing it to be something in front of you." —Theaster Gates

In our “Chicago” episode, artist Theaster Gates creates sculptures out of clay, tar, and renovated buildings, transforming the raw material of the South Side into radically reimagined vessels of opportunity for the community.

WATCH: Theaster Gates in “Chicago”

IMAGES (ALL): Production stills from the Art in the Twenty First Century season 8 episode, “Chicago.” © Art21, 2016.

"I’m a human being and my life has value and I refuse to be erased. I have to tell my story because it hasn’t been told. My images can change that."

—LaToya Ruby Frazier in our "New York Close Up" film, “LaToya Ruby Frazier Makes Moving Pictures”

—Diane Severin Nguyen in our newest “New York Close Up” film.

“80% of what I make is kind of crap, but somehow I have to produce it to get to the 20%, which is successful. I call it the 80/20 ratio.” —Stephanie Syjuco 

Firelei Báez reframes the narrative of the ciguapa

“The normative tone of the story is these are wanton female creatures,” says the artist in our “New York Close Up” film. “The understory is they are highly independent, they're self-possessed, and they feel deeply. So who wouldn't want to be that?”

Firelei Báez (@firrebaee) evokes a misunderstood character from Dominican folklore, the ciguapa, an evasive and cunning female figure.

“She was meant to be something that made us so fearful that we could be quiet for long enough to be groomed into civility. What was exciting in using that image was to be able to incorporate all  those things that were labeled abject– that were seen as unwanted– and reframe them as something beautiful and with an eye of desire.”

"My work has a potential for evolution—for change and open-endedness—which to me feels resonant with what it is to live a life." —Martin Puryear

Martin Puryear's monumental public sculpture, Big Bling (2016)—currently on view in New York City's Madison Square Park—is the subject of a new episode from the ART21 "Exclusive" series.

WATCH: Martin Puryear: "Big Bling"

IMAGES: Production stills from the ART21 Exclusive episode, Martin Puryear: "Big Bling". © ART21, Inc. 2016.

Sarah Sze measures time and space with her sculpture Measuring Stick (2015)—featured in the latest ART21 Exclusive series episode.

"It has this quality of an experimental site," says the artist in the episode. "This idea of a model that's a scientific model—something that tries to actually measure a kind of behavior—is something that I try and do in the sculpture."

WATCH: Sarah Sze: "Measuring Stick"

IMAGES: Production stills from the ART21 Exclusive episode, Sarah Sze: "Measuring Stick". © ART21, Inc. 2016.

"Grad school put me upside down. It pushed me to find out what I really wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. Now I can say a lot more things through my own language." —Marela Zacarías

Artist Marela Zacarías integrates the past to create Mannahatta (2016)—a large-scale, Brooklyn-inspired work—in the latest film from the ART21 New York Close Up series.

WATCH: Marela Zacarías's Great Expectations

IMAGES: Artist Marela Zacarías and her team at work in her studio, Brooklyn, NY, 2015. Production stills from the ART21 New York Close Up film, Marela Zacarías's Great Expectations. © ART21, Inc. 2016.

"We have a distance from materials because we have so much time with images. You don't know the authorship of an image when it gets to you. You can manipulate it and you can send it. It's a kind of images-as-debris." —Sarah Sze

In a new episode from the ART21 Exclusive series, artist Sarah Sze expresses her desire to have a tactile relationship with materials in a world saturated with digital imagery.

WATCH: Sarah Sze: How We See the World

"I'm trying to understand this relationship of abstraction and the body." —Josiah McElheny

Josiah McElheny uses lost and abandoned Maya Deren footage to create Projection Painting 1 (2015) in the latest episode from the ART21 Exclusive series.

WATCH: Josiah McElheny: Making a Projection Painting

"I would spend most of my time looking for images. It's nice to look back. It's like bread crumbs. Reminds me of all the steps along the way." —Louise Despont

In the latest film from the ART21 New York Close Up series, artist Louise Despont (louisedespont) shares selections from her archive of collected images—a library which continues to serve as a source of inspiration for her drawings.

WATCH: Louise Despont According to the Universe

IMAGES (ROWS 1–3): Louise Despont in her Tribeca studio, New York, 2015.

IMAGES (ROWS 4–5): In-progess installation of Louise Despont's exhibition, The Six-Sided Force, at Pioneer Works, New York, 2014.

"What's so interesting about the creative act is that you can access something completely outside yourself. It's a communication with awareness rather than consciousness." —Louise Despont

In the latest film from the ART21 New York Close Up series, artist Louise Despont (louisedespont) traces sources of inspiration for her drawings, sharing selections from her library of collected images.

WATCH: Louise Despont According to the Universe

IMAGES (ROWS 1–2): Louise Despont burning photos in her Tribeca studio, New York, 2015.

IMAGES (ROWS 3–4): Louise Despont. The Sound Heard Around the World, detail, 2014. Installation view at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York, 2015.

IMAGES (ROW 5): Louise Despont. Installation view of Harmonic Tremor at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York, 2015.

"Abstraction, in its potential hopefulness for imagining a different world—or imagining a world that’s not absolutely apparent—can tie us together." —Josiah McElheny

Featured in a recent episode from the ART21 Exclusive series, artist Josiah McElheny makes paintings as "something to see through" in his Brooklyn studio.

WATCH: Josiah McElheny: Paintings

In a new ART21-produced special feature, artist Kimsooja collaborates with scientists and nanotechnologists at Cornell University to create an iridescent steel and polymer sculpture for the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, NY.

Developed in collaboration with architect Jaeho Chong and Cornell nano material engineer Ulirich Wiesner, Ph. D., the 46-foot-tall needle-shaped structure, A Needle Woman: Galaxy was a Memory, Earth is a Souvenir (2014), is the result of the artist's first-ever collaboration with scientists.

"We use iridescence as a principle in order to mimic the effect of the butterfly wing," says Ulrich Wiesner, Ph. D., professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell, describing the molecularly engineered nano polymer film applied to the plexi-glass panes of the artist's sculpture.

WATCH: Kimsooja: Collaboration on Campus—Nanotechnology & Contemporary Art