I feel that it's really important to have confidence
in each stroke.
I don't see anything as making a mistake, really.
I guess it's in my personality to just create in this way,
not feel too concerned about whether it's perfect or not.
I feel that if you can see a brush stroke or you can see a
drip, I think that that's human.
My name is Romon Kimin Yang, AKA Rostarr.
I'm an artist from New York City.
Just here in Mexico City DF having my
solo show, Turbo Arena.
Ever since I was very young, I was always interested in
drawing and making art.
My brother and I used to draw a lot.
We were really into comic books and animation and
cartoons and stuff.
And that was like when I was three or four years old.
As I got older, I really loved drawing a lot.
I didn't really think about it as becoming an artist or
anything like that.
I wanted to just have fun with things.
Back in, I guess in the '80s, I got into breakdacing.
I wasn't really a graffiti artist.
I guess my brother was a graffiti artist.
So I didn't feel like I wanted to do that kind of thing.
Being expressive was very important for me.
Oddly enough, breakdancing is really my kind of entrance way
into being a creative being or a person, or having some sort
of a skill.
I want to create a sense of fluidity and rhythm in
whatever I'm showing.
And I guess breakdancing really had something to do
with that, I think.
It's really improvising to the music.
I studied graphic design in college in New York in '89.
I really fell in love with the ways that you can create
powerful imagery using color, and I guess taking elements
and either changing them or recycling images, like logo
biting, or taking things and changing them into your own.
Graphysics is pretty much what I came up with as my style,
the processes of graphic arts or graphic design and physics,
which is really more abstract in this way
where it's about energy.
I didn't really like doing graphic design for others.
So I started really pursuing my own personal
work back in '95.
And I realized that just making art was the way for me,
and not doing commercial stuff at all.
And I realized I needed to create something that was mine
and that was me.
I guess with graphic design, it's like the computer.
You can be perfect and have no mistakes.
But I guess with painting, there's always this leeway you
have to give to that.
Beautiful day.
And it's going to be a beautiful night, as well.
It's a very nice mezcal place.
I'm definitely bringing some of that back.
I've always been inspired by Aztec and Mayan art, the
totemic kind of characters they make and the
abstraction in that.
So I can spend some time here and make some good work.
Because it's in the vein of the things I like.
When it comes to doing installations, I have to see
the wall first and kind of feel out the space.
Then I get an idea of what I want to do.
Before I came down to Mexico, I had a general blueprint of
what the space was going to look like.
As soon as I came down, I knew what I wanted to do.
But it's really about being faced with the situation or
the challenge and seeing how I'm going
to solve that problem.
The calligraphy, I began doing it because I was really
influenced by the beauty of the lines.
And every stroke seems like poetry to me, whether I know
what it says or not.
Sometimes I make characters with my calligraphy.
A lot of times, it's really just
about feeling a situation.
Starting it, seeing how it builds.
I don't really sketch or try to emulate or copy anything.
It's really a building process.
The first few strokes are really dictating for me, like
what the rest of the piece is going to be.
I usually know when I'm done.
It's very natural.
It's very spontaneous.
And at the same time, it's surprising for me, too.
Because when I make works, then I'm totally surprised by
what I do or what the end result is.
I made this piece during Hurricane Sandy.
I wanted to show Sandy as like a dragon snake that's spinning
around in like a pretzel kind of way.
It's really raw energy, but seeing it more as a beast.
These kind of disasters really bring people together, which
is a nice thing.
But it's ironic.
Turbo Arena is Latin term, turbo meaning like a hurricane
or like a cyclone storm, based off of
Hurricane Sandy, in a way.
Watching all these events that were unfolding on TV, it's
like destruction cinema.
You're watching things happen.
You feel a little bit helpless.
But then at the same time, empowered in a way that it
gave me the fuel to create works like this based on
images that were stuck in my head.
Art is so much bigger than you.
I feel like it really kind of healed me in a lot of ways.
I guess I got to see who I really am.
It was like my mirror for me.
I really got to see these inner thoughts are coming out,
these abstract feelings.
They may not mean anything to you if you see it, but to me
it means so much.
It's really personal.