The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal is an American business-focused, English-language international daily newspaper based in New York City.

Kelly Crow is a staff reporter covering the art market for The Wall Street Journal.

To read the accompanying article, please click here.

(0:04) My name is Grimanesa Amorós. When I was a younger artist, I was a painter because I couldn’t, you know, afford to have a very bigger studio. And then I started working with sculpture, with handmade paper, and then from there I started working with light and, you know, it’s a progression.

(0:23) For me it’s very important, my viewer, and I don’t want to control the way you’re going to look at my work. I want you to have your own opinion. I want you to make you think.

(0:34) I want the person, the piece, and the structure become one. So I want the piece to belong to the structure, and I want the individual to be part of it. If somebody’s going to see a work of mine now, and then maybe 50 years afterwards, you have this element of timeless.

(0:56) I’m always, always, very much aware that I want to achieve that, because the timeless is what is going to make that work also, in a way, ephemeral. It comes and goes and it changes. You want to catch the moment of that light when you see it, because that might be your favorite, but you can’t, so you have to let it go.

(1:25) I never went to school. I don’t have a degree in art. I learned a lot of the composition from going to the Met.

(1:37) It was a particular piece. When I was passing by, it attracted me because it reminded me an image of my mother. So I went in, and then I said, oh, wow, this painting is so perfect.

(1:50) Then I realized why I feel so comfortable with this piece. Being that I was away from my family, it brought a sense of, how would I say, familiarity. This piece taught me how to look deeper, not only into paintings, but in everything, everyday life.

(2:11) What is she trying, really, to communicate? What is she trying to say? Is she sad? Is she just looking to you? You don’t know. And that sense of magic is what made me realize that if you have that element in any type of artwork, then it becomes very, very universal. No matter when you see it, the piece is going to be always fresh.

(2:32) I wanted to achieve that with my work that I make at the present moment. I’m looking for perfection. And not that I want to achieve perfection, because really, what it is, right? But I like to leave the work at a certain point that you say, OK, it’s done.

(2:51) It’s nothing anymore, right? To be done with it. And to me, that piece was perfection.