Ian Cheng on making ‘stupid’ art that speaks directly to the subconscious:

[After grad school] I was working for the artist Pierre Huyghe…He said this one thing to me once, that every artwork needs a coefficient of stupidity, and by that he didn’t mean that it had to be stupid, but that it had to speak plainly and directly to the unconscious.

It was important that art doesn’t present itself as smart, or trying to be smart, or make you smarter, it’s important that it gives you an image or an experience, and you break they image or experience with one gesture.

This coefficient of stupidity really stuck with me, that art really is powerful once you start talking to the subconscious.

From a 2021 episode of Art and Obsolescence: