Emily Rauh Pulitzer: Well I'm glad you had a chance to look at the installation yesterday. Were there parts of it that were particularly meaningful to you?

Gedi Sibony: I was so happy to come in yesterday and enter the space. It was an overwhelming feeling from the start. The whole process of traveling through the show was breathtaking and I found it effortless to not be pinned down by any thoughts. I really felt so taken away. Specifically, in the first room I felt the physicality...from the open sky to a small dark introduction room, and the paintings having such texture and being so fleshy. The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian with the arrows. It's the darkness of churches. The obscurity and puzzlement as your eye adjusts, is part of the corporeality. And then the show opens up the way that cathedral ceilings open up. And then to the space of the picture plane, the stacking and tumbling of figures across the surface. I felt very conscious of them as a device to keep motion in the directionality of looking at paintings, and then picking out symbols that bring vignettes or stories. Maybe this is the process of coming into a space, and looking, gradually picking up meaning here and there. And then there is the fork in the road—to the Cube Gallery and the virgin Mary bathed in light, that was such a perfect collective decision. Or downstairs to the Lower Corridor with the skull and the rock. Very earthy and subterranean. The show is very well staged. My attention was being directed sequentially in an unquestionable way.

Emily Rauh Pulitzer: Do you look at Old Master paintings in other museums?

Gedi Sibony: Well I did a lot as a teenager, going to the Metropolitan Museum. I love being in a public space without having to interact with other people but having other people sort of sharing or joining or being part of this group. So I would wander through and look at everything. Not really focusing on specific things. I suppose I did but I would really travel the museum and pick up bits and pieces that way.

Emily Rauh Pulitzer: Another aspect in the way the paintings are hung is that they are tilted, which makes them much more like objects and not just a flat plain in front of the wall. Does that appeal to you? Do you react to that, in that your work is very much about objects and the objectness of material?

Gedi Sibony: Yes I did. I found it striking that perhaps these are hung this way to avoid glare so that the light would bounce well, which is a particular interest of mine, figuring out ways that things can look their best with light. As soon as I started to walk around I didn't think of them as objects. But I did appreciate looking at them with that tilt.

Emily Rauh Pulitzer: You opened up some of the windows in the Contemporary Art Museum building. How do you find that natural light working with your work?

Gedi Sibony: The last two shows before this show that I did had only natural light also. They were both when the days were longer. I suppose the days are shorter now.

Emily Rauh Pulitzer: Greene Naftali's space (Sibony's New York gallery) has wonderful natural light.

Gedi Sibony: I liked the evenness of the natural light and that it came from somewhere else. Like wind, it doesn't actually blow, it's pulled.

Emily Rauh Pulitzer: And it's always changing.

Gedi Sibony: That's true. Even that it kind of spreads around, it spreads around in its way. I love that it's always changing. It's always changing its colors from the buildings or sky that it's bouncing off. At the Contemporary we realized that the opening was at night and we needed some light. The artificial light in there does work with the natural light. That's what we've been playing with for a couple of days. How much to let in and what it looks like. How it changes the colors on the walls. How it creates depth. I found that at the Contemporary, too much light makes everything looks like itself again. There's a certain darkness that is very nice in terms of making everything look like it is in a special space.

Emily Rauh Pulitzer: You used color light for one of the works.

Gedi Sibony: That's true. That's a little bit of a scary room. I go through there quickly now.

Emily Rauh Pulitzer: When that work is sold does it go with the colors? Do you make objects separate from the space?

Gedi Sibony: I like to try all the possibilities. For that one yes. It's almost a film. And sometimes the objects are connected to the city. In St. Louis the architecture seems very broad and very majestic but not majestic with height, majestic with mass. I haven't been in the cathedral yet but...

Emily Rauh Pulitzer: It's a solid city.

Gedi Sibony: It is solid.

Emily Rauh Pulitzer: There's the Masonic Temple behind our building, which is the temple in the sky.

Gedi Sibony: It's such a mass. It's this mass that has been lifted straight up into the air. It's really great. All of the views from the museum, all of the different buildings around here are all great pieces of this puzzle, of this city.

Emily Rauh Pulitzer: Would you ever think it would be interesting to do an interaction with the installation that is here? In other words, with the Old Masters installation as it exists...can you think of doing some interaction with it?

Gedi Sibony: Yes, I could...let me think about it. I would love to think about something that could be possible like that. I really love the show.

Emily Rauh Pulitzer: Well that's great! Thank you very much.

Gedi Sibony: Thank you. It has been such a pleasure talking to you.