NICK GAZIN
Interview by Katya Guseva
The pictures that Nick Gazin draws make you want to look away, but then you can’t help but peek and stare. Kinda like a bad reality show or online porn, but with much more twisted humor and smart remarks. We’d censor the interview, but we wouldn’t want to deprive our audience of a great read.
What was the last creative act you were engaged in?
Making my Halloween costume thirty minutes before leaving the house. I was dressed as Rat Fucker. He’s a character I made up, who lives during the apocalypse and is a former white power police soldier, who went rogue and customized his uniform. It’s kinda like how Boba Fett has Mandalorian armor or John Wayne in the Searchers.
What’s the first thing you do every morning?
Panic and watch the Simpsons.
A lot of your art is based on dark humor, is that your way to provoke the audience or do you simply enjoy this kind of jokes?
The stuff I’ve done with an audience in mind is basically torture porn. People being forced to slice up their faces at gunpoint and stuff like that. Thinking about the viewer makes me make shit that is too awful to show folks.
I do like to antagonize people but it’s usually specific people. I made one thing where I made fun of a comic book publisher I think is corny and pretentious. I did another one called “Smoke Weed and Die/You Can Eat Shit and Live” because Victor Cayro was flipping his shit over some bitch stealing his catchprase “Smoke Weed and Die” and using it in a painting she sold. I put it in a little painting and sold it an hour after putting it on my blog. He has told me he’s going to kill the shit out of me and that the money I sold it for is rightfully his.
If you’d have to sum up the main message of your art in one sentence how would it sound?
Please buy me Star Wars dolls from Sideshow Collectibles.
What is your ultimate source of inspiration?
I want to show all those dumbass teachers, that they were stupid for trying to teach me useless bullshit. Public school’s main purpose is to make people comfortable with doing work that has no purpose. Fuck school, fuck books, fuck teachers, fuck sports, fuck nutrition. Eat garbage and hurt people, that’s my purpose.
Does music play any role in your art? And what is your all-time favorite album?
My favorite band is Livefastdie and my favorite record is “Bandana Thrash Record” by them. It’s got songs like “Bombed Over Sixpackistan” and “Art is Faggotry.” Fuck everybody who doesn’t think these guys are the greatest. They played a show at Don Pedro’s two weeks ago where the place was packed up until they went on and then everybody cleared out. Then King Khan and the Black Lips show up to see LFD play. I think that was God affirming my beliefs.
What would you do if you weren’t an artist?
I would probably go fuck myself. Alternatively, I would eat shit and die.
