IF YOU KNOW - ARCHIVES No 7

A "This Is Not Art" Lookback As Told by Kai

When we delivered Love Holds Us Together to Robbi and Bruce Toll, I found myself thinking about the person I was before any of this existed.

Before the monumental sculptures. Before the studio and the team. Before an idea in my head could become something that took a crane to move.

The person who walked through galleries and museums, looked up at enormous sculptures, and wondered how anyone could possibly make something like that.

And what gave them the courage to try.

I wanted to create something that made people feel the way those works made me feel.

But wanting it came with a question.

Who are you to think you can do this?

Maybe you know that voice.

The one that shows up when something matters to you. When you can picture what you want to do, but you can’t yet explain how you’re going to do it.

I wish I could tell you that I found my confidence and then got to work.

It happened the other way around.

In 2017, I made my first sculpture, Love vs Money.

Fifteen feet tall. Fiberglass over a metal structure, with a cement base.

My first sculpture. Ever.

People would say, “For your first sculpture, you’re really going big.”

They had a point.

I had never done this before. I was putting all my savings into it. And I didn’t know if anyone would want it.

But I had an idea I couldn’t leave alone, and I remember thinking:

If I’m going to put everything I have into this, I might as well go all the way.

There were people I needed to find. Processes I needed to understand. Questions I didn’t know enough to ask yet.

Eventually, something I had only imagined was standing fifteen feet tall in front of me.

The first went to collectors in Florida. Another went to the Gateway Foundation in St. Louis, joining a collection that includes Fernando Botero’s Man on Horse, Tom Friedman’s Looking Up, and Keith Haring’s Untitled (Ringed Figure).

Artists I had looked up to.

Now my work was part of the same collection.

The person who had walked through museums wondering whether he belonged was beginning to believe that maybe he could.

That didn’t make the doubt disappear.

But it gave me a reason to question it.

More sculptures followed. Knowledge Is Power, then smaller works: Peace, I’m Happy, The Struggle, and a smaller Love vs Money.

Some stood taller than me. Most could fit comfortably in someone’s home.

We went big. We went smaller. We kept experimenting.

Every piece added to what we learned.

Then Rolling Loud asked me to create three monumental sculptures that would travel with the festival.

They had seen Love vs Money and assumed I knew what I was doing.

I knew more than I had before.

I also knew how much I still had to learn.

But I said yes.

I’ve always believed that if Gd gives you an opportunity, you take it.

These sculptures had to be transported, installed, taken apart, and moved again. Different locations. Different conditions. Thousands of people interacting with them.

Little by little, I began to trust that when a problem appeared, we could find a way through it. I had people around me whose experience I could lean on, who helped me see solutions I couldn’t yet see myself.

That trust helped me take on the next project.

It also made me overestimate how ready I was.

Puebla.

A towering sculpture called Pillar of Love that would become part of a building and help support the ceiling.

I had more than two years to complete the commission.

On paper, that sounded like enough time.

But by the time it traveled from Los Angeles to Mexico, we were in the middle of COVID.

Forty-five days in transit.

Shipping was fast. Customs wasn’t.

When it finally arrived, we had four days to install it.

Then we discovered it was too tall.

Adjustments had to happen on-site. Problems kept appearing. We worked days and nights, trying to make everything come together.

I had accepted the opportunity.

Now people were counting on me to deliver.

There is a very different weight to that.

I remember sanding and applying the final finish, completely exhausted, while we were still making adjustments.

You picture the finished sculpture when you imagine doing something like this.

You don’t picture how tired you’ll be. How many decisions will still need you. How badly you’ll wish, for a moment, that someone else had the answer.

And there was that question again.

Who are you to think you can do this?

But there was work in front of us.

One adjustment at a time. One conversation at a time. One problem at a time.

Together, we kept finding a way forward.

And eventually, there it was.

Standing.

Finished.

I had gone there hoping my experience would be enough. I left understanding how much I still needed other people.

Watch what those four days actually looked like

Puebla closed my fiberglass chapter.

Then came bronze.

Early conversations with New York gallerist Todd Kramer and music manager Moe Shalizi encouraged me to explore it. The possibility of working together gave me another reason to believe this could become something.

Those collaborations never materialized.

But the encouragement stayed with me.

My first bronze sculpture was Love Holds Us Together.

The same work whose monumental version would eventually become part of Robbi and Bruce’s collection.

But that was still years away.

At the time, it was a tabletop sculpture.

A smaller work. An enormous undertaking.

After everything I had learned, here was a different material. A different process. So much I didn’t know.

I was excited.

I was also a beginner again.

That sculpture opened up a whole new world for me. It changed what I believed I could make, and how collectors saw my work.

Then came Now What?

My second bronze sculpture. This time, I combined bronze with US currency, exploring what the two materials could say together.

I was starting to feel confident.

And for my third, naturally, I went monumental.

Endless Possibilities at Wynwood Walls, in collaboration with Odell Beckham Jr.

Eight feet tall. Twenty-two feet wide. Thirty-eight hundred pounds.

During COVID, I was flying between Los Angeles and Florida every week, discovering just how much changed when bronze became monumental.

The scale brought another set of challenges. We learned and solved problems as they came.

Once again, I had committed to something bigger than my experience.

But by then, I was beginning to understand something.

When something feels too big, it doesn’t always mean you should walk away. Sometimes it means you’re about to grow.

The years between those moments were filled with work.

More sculptures. New finishes. Different materials. Ideas explored on a tabletop before finding their way into something larger.

There were mistakes, corrections, and people helping us figure things out.

Then Bel-Air Fine Art approached me about a solo exhibition in Saint-Tropez, along with five monumental sculptures installed throughout the city.

Less than six months to make it all happen.

Five monumental works. An entire solo show. One deadline.

By then, “yes” meant something different to me.

I understood more of what came after it.

The team. The fabricators. The engineering. The production, shipping, and installation.

The responsibility of making a promise and carrying it through.

We pushed. We adjusted. We delivered.

And afterward, the paintings, smaller sculptures, and monumental works began finding homes.

Switzerland. Germany. Las Vegas. Arizona. Philadelphia.

Places I had never imagined my work would reach.

Somewhere along the way, my imagination had started arriving in places I hadn’t visited yet.

My dad has a way of explaining growth that I keep coming back to.

If you want a tree to grow, put it in a bigger pot.

Give the roots somewhere to go.

A bigger pot doesn’t make the tree grow overnight. You still have to care for it.

But it gives growth somewhere to happen.

Looking back, each of these opportunities gave me that space.

And the people around me helped me grow into it.

My dad. Our team. The craftspeople, fabricators, and engineers. The collectors who believed in a work before it existed.

When I look at a finished sculpture now, I see all of them in it.

Delivering Love Holds Us Together to Robbi and Bruce brought that journey full circle.

The sculpture that had introduced me to bronze was now monumental.

I thought about the young artist looking up at sculptures in museums.

I used to think the distance between him and the artists he admired was confidence.

They must know something I didn’t. They must feel ready in a way I didn’t.

Now I know how much can happen while you’re still uncertain.

You can learn. You can ask for help. You can become someone other people can count on.

You can make something that once intimidated you, then stand in front of the next thing feeling small all over again.

Feeling small doesn’t mean you have nothing to give. It means there is room to grow.

Maybe there’s something in your life that makes you feel that way.

Something you care about enough to be afraid of getting it wrong.

I can’t promise it will work out the way you picture it. Mine rarely has.

But I hope you give yourself a chance to discover what you could grow into.

You don’t have to carry the whole thing alone.

I certainly haven’t.

To Robbi and Bruce, and to everyone who has trusted me with an opportunity before I felt ready, thank you.

You have given me room to grow.

Because of you, something that began in my imagination gets to become part of someone else’s life.

And now, after all these years of making work, a museum in Le Touquet-Paris-Plage is giving us an opportunity to bring these chapters together.

I keep thinking about the person I was, walking through museums, wondering whether I could ever make something that belonged in one.

Now we’re preparing for an exhibition.

That little voice still asks:

Who are you to think you can?

But these days, I have years of work, people I trust, and a little more faith to answer with.

I look forward to sharing this next chapter with you.

Stay up,
Kai

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