Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
Me name is elberto muller, i drink too much sometimes, other times not. I make things: messes, noises, mosaics, books and essays and paintings.

Is there a moment you look back on as being formative to the work you do?
I don’t know if i’ve ever written about this before, but i had this realization a few years ago. I was at the minnesota state fair, looking at the civilian art building – the minnesota state fair is one of the greatest annual events in the world, go if you have time – but there’s a big building where anyone can submit their art and maybe get it hung on the wall for 2 weeks.

Anyways i was looking at the art and remembered how 20 years before, when i was 19, i saw this little hanging frame on the wall, and in Olde English script, it said the word ‘SIMPLEXITY’ on white paper, and it blew my 19 year old mind, i went around telling people about simplexity and how genius it was-

Anyways, if i saw that piece now i would sort of cringe but i realize SIMPLEXITY is actually at the core of everything I do- can you draw a bull in 4 brush strokes? What is the least you can do to render something massive?

How were you introduced to the mediums you work with?
All at different times, sometimes i’d discover them on my own- one day when i was 20 i just started writing some travel stories- there was no reason, i wasn’t taking any classes for it, it was just a compulsion. The graffiti, i had a friend or two in highschool that told me about graffiti, i started painting it even though they had quit the year before, it just felt right. Mosaics- i’ve said it before, but the idea came gradually, after living in ukraine for 2 years, and seeing mosaics everywhere in public space, and in Mexico, some of the large mosaic murals they have in Mexico CIty- one day i just decided i needed to make one-  i went to home depot, bought some tile, smashed it and glued it to a train car with epoxy

Are there any influences that are core to your work?
For writing, the core influences are gaddis, brautigan, borges, and DFW. for paintings, maybe Mad magazine and Matisse. The mosaics and graffiti, I don’t know if there are any individuals, but i am influenced by tattooers, sign painters, and 3rd rate graphic designers that decorate the great American strip malls

Your paintings and mosaics can often be found outside in public. How does showing work in a gallery afford or limit how you conceive your work?
The biggest problem with pursuing the gallery is that it takes away time from street practice, which to me is essential- i feel only 1 in 3 things you make should be for sale, at very most- if everything you make has a price, it’s worth very little, spiritually speaking

I appreciate the opportunity and challenge of showing in galleries- it enables more complex work that for time/cost benefit i could not really do on the street because someone would just steal it right away. I can usually tell immediately if a piece makes more sense on the street or in a gallery- the street honestly deserves better work than i give her.

Really i have yet to find a space that makes sense in the gallery world- somehow the work i make seems anathema to theirs- i have been kicking around the idea, that in attempting to appear serious, the Art World has forsaken culture, and forced its own irrelevance- but really that’s the point, it’s just a money laundering op as we all know

Can you share a memory of someone interacting with your work that lingers with you?
i had a mosaic in a parking lot in Raleigh North Carolina, white tile on black grout background, it was a lyric from a song by the band X, “I must not think bad thoughts” with a little skull and flower decoration- i put up that mosaic, moved away from Raleigh, and then a year or two later got this message on instagram- “We found you! You are the artist who put up the mosaic in our parking lot! I teach yoga in Raleigh and we all go and stand by your mosaic before class to center our thoughts! But recently the business owner next door destroyed your piece- please come back and put another one up!” and i thought that was nice, you know, the random public interaction with non-graffiti people is very intriguing to me

Mosaics have been a popular medium for millennia. Do you feel like part of this history in its contemporary form? Do you ever refer back to this history?
To be honest i’d never much cared for classical mosaic- the subject matter is kinda whatever- like i said it was really the ukrainian wall mosaics that first knocked me out- but now that i’ve been working on them for a few years, it’s been helpful a lot to look back on classical mosaic work, Soviet and Greek, and even just looking at the lettering in the subway- just seeing how they break up large spaces using geometric patterns within color blocks, or adding complementary colors where they would not intuitively be placed- a lot of this stuff the Greeks were doing 2000 years ago, i’m sure they arrived at it over generations, through trial and error- you throw a blue tile in with a section of green or yellow and for some reason it looks better- oddly enough i had already figured this out in painting but it took a few years to put it into tile

I don’t really feel a part of that tradition, i don’t know why. My target is different maybe, maybe i am just the most hollow man alive, actually that’s it, i am a tube flowing with air, excuse me.

Do you find yourself cycling through which creative outlets you work with, or does each outlet have a consistent presence in your daily life?
I am mostly a visual artist on any given day. I work on any medium that i have a project for- last week someone invited me to do a reading, so at the moment i am completing an essay about casinos that i have been kicking around in my notes app for 6 months -at this point i only write when i feel a book, or a story- – but my daily practice is drawing and journaling towards the general goal of visual art with the constant idea of some fiction on the horizon, when there’s time

Does your painting interact with your mosaic work, or do you view them independently of each other?
Graffiti is letters- i tend to avoid mosaic letters, though not always. The images i use in mosaics are not those i use in graffiti. A sketch can lead either way- if an idea is too complex, it’s simply impossible to render as a mosaic due to the limitations of the medium, so i might paint it or just leave it as a drawing. Sometimes i’ll see an old painting i did and realize it might be nice as a mosaic- usually not though

When needed, where do you look for inspiration?
Sometimes i’ll go to the museum, sometimes i’ll just walk around the industrial part of New Haven Connecticut, admiring tugboats and lift bridges- other times i’ll eavesdrop on some people at the bus stop, and a few of their words will make it into a book, the vernacular- if you make your entire life the process of collecting, listening and seeing- well, you’re going to be a very difficult person to be around, and you’ll probably never have stability or kids or whatever, but you might at least see and hear and taste a little life, and maybe a drop of that will make it into some art that is not so bad after all

How does your creative community now compare to your creative community when you were younger?
I’ve never felt much a part of a community, locally anyways- i’ve always had ok interactions with other local artists, but we don’t click- i usually have a few people nationally, or around the globe, maybe they’ve been dead for 100 years or haven’t been born yet, but these are the people i am looking up to, communing with, few and far between- there is some eternal through line of the art i make- stick to the classics, sex and death and confusion-

i like meeting college age kids, or people in their 20’s, whose frontal cortexes haven’t hardened, who still have a chance to escape the aesthetic traps and snares their well meaning but foolish elders have laid out for them, in hopes of maintaining relevance, which is to say to stop time

What’s your studio or workspace like? Do you have any rituals when you settle in there?
I am sort of living in my studio right now due to some unforeseen life circumstances, so it’s hard to use- when i get into full creative mode, like i have a lot of work for a show, i clear the table, sketch out a piece or two, or if it’s a sculpture draw out how it is going to be assembled, then get to work-  once i start, i work 8-10 hours a day on my days off, and also oftentimes before work, like i’ll come in early 9-noon, sometimes i’ll sleep at the studio, until the piece or pieces are complete. Before a big road trip ill make a dozen mosaics in a fury to bring in the car.

I stop to look at my phone, eat a candy bar, then get back to it- That’s what being excited is like, creating something never before seen on earth.

How do you manage tending to the variety of responsibilities in the work you do? How do you mitigate burnout or exhaustion?
I don’t –  i work myself to the bone until i can’t go on, then i go on a few weeks longer and start drinking more to cover the stress and then i snap, implode. Then i’ll find a way to run away for a few weeks to recharge (i never recharge) and start over again. It’s terrible and i treat people poorly when i’m breaking and i wish i could stop but then what?

How does your experience living in New York compare to the places you’ve lived in or travelled to in the past? Is there someplace else you envision yourself living in the future?
I am pretty tired of living full time in new york- it has become so expensive that you can’t really afford to leave- maybe this is part of the larger economic downward spiral the majority of Americans find themselves in- you can’t quit your shitty job because the one you get after will pay even less, so now the bosses can abuse you more

I have loved living here, mostly, when i used to have time to wander around- i love every place i’ve visited, from glasgow montana to odessa ukraine- they are all great as long as you can talk to some locals, but as far as living? There’s a challenging intellectual isolation to rural life- could be the seed to creation for some, but i am an intensely (though sporadically) social person- i need interaction and feedback- from auto mechanics and academics and tamale vendors- i don’t know if i can survive life in the provinces- i’ve become the effete city weakling i always clowned on in the past- i suppose i’ve gotten just what i deserve

I imagine retiring to the driftless area, in southwestern Wisconsin- they have a great community radio station among beautiful little hills- but who knows how to make money out there?

Do you have any travel experiences that are formative to the work you do or to you as an individual?
One time i listened to a peasant in the mountains of Honduras speak at a 7 am prayer group about how he was raised selling drugs and stealing, he had to steal shoes or go barefoot, and how his brother was killed in the big city by a gang member, and when he went to avenge his brother’s death he hid in an alleyway with a knife, waiting to kill his brother’s murderer, but when the murderer arrived late at night he was surrounded by friends, so the boy hid- later he told the murderer “i was going to kill you last week but your friends were around” and he said “i had no friends i was walking alone that night” and it turns out they were angels and that’s when the poor boy saw the true light of jesus christ- and i was reminded that i don’t know jack shit

What do you collect?
I try to collect interesting people and install them at chronological/geographic intervals to shake me up when I’m about to jump off a bridge  bric-a-brac: human teeth, novelty buttons, rosaries, vintage porn, colorful tile.

Interviewed by Luca Lotruglio.