Interview with AUTOBODY autobody Gallery Founders on Risk-taking, Care, and the LA Art Scene

Name: AUTOBODY autobody

City: Los Angeles

Website: https://www.autobodyautobody.com/

Tell us who you are and what you do?

Joseph: My name is Joseph Santiago-Dieppa. I am a sculptural artist that dabbles in design and architecture. I see my role in AUTOBODY as thinking about architecture and exhibition design—how a body can move through a space, and how we can interrupt that flow with art objects, design, or interventions that add to the conversation and make someone stop, literally and emotionally or conceptually, and think about why this is being presented to them.

I often think about the nuances of materials and how they relate to one another, which connects back to my sculptural practice. Part of what I do is obsessing over tiny details that can engage with a viewer in a different way than thinking about the whole in broad strokes. That's why Eli handles some of the broader aspects that you just have to do in a gallery, which leaves me room to fixate on how bodies move through space.

Eli: My name is Eli Bucksbaum. I'm a facilitator, conceptual artist, and art dealer—chair dealer, to some degree. My role in AUTOBODY is Director of Sales/Artist Relations/PDF maker/handshaker/smiler. One of the big North Stars for me in the gallery, which connects to my work outside the gallery, is facilitating conversations in the arts. I co-founded a design conference in Aspen, and much of my work is about creating environments that people want to be in.

Like Joseph and his role in exhibition design, while my role is sometimes more on the business side of the gallery, I find that creating this world where we can challenge artists to work in design and designers to work in art is really evocative of the mission that Joseph and I want to see through in the gallery space. We want to have room for people to try new ideas out, or to have a reason to pursue an idea that's been sitting dormant in their sketchbooks.

We run on uncertainty and risk, which is difficult because there's a lot of uncertainty in the world. But we look at our practice mutually as gallerists or people running an art space—we're really just trying to help artists and designers see their ideas through, whether they're prototypes or completely fleshed out ideas. AUTOBODY is that platform for those people to say, "Hey, I tried this thing. Now here it is in the world." It doesn't have to be complete. It doesn't have to be worth $10,000. It doesn't have to be anything, really. It just has to be made with intention and desire. That's what we like to do.

Joseph: AUTOBODY is literally a workshop and a gallery, which relates to our name— AUTOBODY, between two auto body shops. That's our physical location, but it's also our manifesto for how we operate. We build like a shop. We build gallery shows where we're constructing all the designs, all the presentation pedestals, all the display systems in-house, welding a few days before the show opens, clearing out all the tools we used to build the show the night of and putting them away.

There's this idea of immediacy—bodies using physical labor and mental labor to do these things in a visceral way, and then workshopping with other artists to see, like, "Hey, you have this crazy idea—let's make it happen. We have the tools here. Let's go crazy."

How did you two first meet? And how did the idea of starting AUTOBODY begin?

Eli: I'll take the first bit. You can fill in what I miss. We met for the first time at this gallery—Courtni Poe runs this thing called Gasp Gallery. It used to pop up in LA once a year. I had probably lived in LA for four months and just started going to galleries. I saw this piece, went over, and started talking to the guy who made it, and it was Joseph. We were talking about the frame he made around this painting. I think we just started talking. It was one of those, "Oh, we should do a studio visit or something." Super casual.

Fast forward a bit—he curated me into one of his shows. Joseph was already doing shows at this space under a different moniker, No Signal, because there's no signal in here. It was like a good jammer was in here or something. He put me in one of his shows, and it was a big moment for me because I had just gotten here. That was fall 2023, I think—September or October.

The show was great. I remember coming back here maybe a couple weeks or months later, sitting right where you're sitting, and being like, "Joseph, we could do something awesome together. We could put on some shows together. I want to put on shows. You're already putting on shows. Let's do something together." That sort of snowballed.

Joseph: I remember that last conversation. The day of, you were just going on for an hour… like what is he talking about? I loved the energy, but I didn't know what he was saying.

Eli: I was just so excited by the possibility here. I saw something but didn't know how to make it make sense in words. Then we did two shows.

Joseph: Yeah, two shows—just feeling it out, trying to figure it out, making mistakes, seeing what we liked and didn't like.

Eli: After those shows, we were like, "Wait, we should come up with an actual name because we were doing it via our separate entities." You were doing it through No Signal, and I was doing it through Studio MAXIMA. We said, "I think this is a moment where we should start something together and see what happens." That's how AUTOBODY autobody materialized in the early stages.

We had a Notes app where we put all our names. We knew we wanted something to do with the auto body world, but they were all names like Collision or things that were too on the nose. But AUTOBODY autobody is so on the nose, yet it's comedic and funny—

Joseph: A chameleon that can mean tons of things. It also reads the environment we emerge from. We're located on La Brea Boulevard, right by the 10 freeway. Throughout Los Angeles history, this area has been known as this car corridor—chop shops, mechanic shops, paint shops, body shops, repair shops. If your car is broken, you come to La Brea. Being born and raised in this area, I wanted to recognize the area we're in and celebrate it, but also challenge it. The name can mean anything but also something very visceral and intense, which is also how we practice.

So far, things have developed naturally and organically. From here, do you still intend to operate this way and see what happens, or do you have more of a plan or vision now—like, "In five years, we want to be this kind of gallery"?

Joseph: Right now, we always joke that we do one show and then we're not sure what the next thing is. We're not sure if we can have another show after that, or how this evolves. That's part of it—we're light on our toes. This is a big experiment to us. It helps us learn individually as artists, how to grow and mature, how to communicate with others, and then also in thinking about institutions and having conversations with other institutions. It's just an experiment, flowing.

We have structure, and we're very intentional about every moment and how we craft our shows. We're hyper-fixated on that show and doing our absolute best on each show. After that, we regroup and ask, "Okay, what's next?" So we have a structure of intensity, regrouping, figuring out what's next.

Eli: Yeah, the exciting but also uncertain, risky part is that most galleries—I'm saying this from people I know who run similar galleries—they have their entire program planned out for the next year, maybe two years, maybe even three. I have a friend who's got every program set for the next five years. To me, that makes sense to have that plan. But we didn't even realize we were running a gallery until our second show.

After our second show, the Chair Show, it became clear that we were not just two guys who cared about art and design and wanted to elevate other artists. It was "You run a gallery. When's the next gallery show?" All of a sudden I put on the art dealer hat, and we were art dealers because we sold art. We were selling art and design. That's a cool thing to experience.

To your question about whether there's a plan—we have a compass pointed in a direction that we've naturally figured out together. We pick projects now, and projects are coming our way. We're having to say no to things now, which is a great problem to have. But back to the experimentation part—we really don't know what might happen. The gallery might cease to exist in a year. If so, it ceases to exist in a year. That's why each show we've approached like our next show is the last show.

Why is our next show in a 13,000 square foot office building next to LACMA? Because why not? And why isn't it here? Because we don't view this space we are in necessarily as AUTOBODY autobody. AUTOBODY autobody is an idea. It traverses into different territories. It's a spirit that we're manifesting, less so a brick-and-mortar organism that houses these ideas. It's something that can materialize in different ways, through osmosis. I like the idea that it's in motion, in flux, always. That gives us breathing room and––

Joseph: ––ways to play around with things…

Eli: On the less positive side, this risk and uncertainty—I'm not saying it's a bad thing; I like uncertainty—but it does push us to make decisions in a way that's different from someone who has a plan every week or month. We really have to be agile and quick on our feet, and that, to us, is more fun than having a plan.

I also sense you have an attitude towards bigger galleries or institutions. Want to elaborate on your thoughts about them, and how do you see yourself as different?

Joseph: I've always been a bit of a contrarian. If they did that, why should I do that? I want to go the other way. My attitude toward other galleries is playful. I see that they did something and killed it, amazing. How can I add to the conversation in a different way? I hate to repeat something that's already been done. I'll just do it worse than that, so let me try to do something different, just play around with it.

Eli: I agree 100% with Joseph. I've taken on a more intense outlook on the gallery, the white cube, the institutional side of this industry. I believe you can do anything you want, but how it's received and digested is obviously not up to you. You can't force someone to feel a certain way, even if you're doing something so different from how the art world does it. It doesn't mean it's going to be received in any positive or particular way.

I believe you have to play the game to make your own game. We make decisions together that fall into that—"we have to do this as a gallery, we have to do this as players in this game.” But on the other side, our goal as a gallery is to share ideas with the world via artists and designers, and then help those artists and designers be successful in the world, get paid, maybe find other opportunities.

Something that's actually rare in the art world is that we don't believe in just the one revenue system. We don't think that a gallery is just there to sell art. If we can find one of our artists or designers an opportunity doing something they're skilled at in another arena—like fabricating a chair for an office building or doing graphic design for a friend's website—we want to facilitate that for them because we care about them and their ideas. Sometimes we won't see any of that money or profit, and sometimes it's hard to understand who gets what or how the connections work and who gets paid for what. That can be difficult and demands mutual respect and a lot of communication.

I just think that the art gallery world as it stands right now doesn't always have the artist or designer's best interest in mind, and that shows up in a lot of different ways. Galleries can do more. People who are on the business side—artists need these people to survive. They need dealers and people who will promote them. That's how it works. It's a conversation, it's collaboration. But there also needs to be a little bit more openness to different opportunities. It doesn't have to look a certain way always. You can help someone find an opportunity and maybe not benefit 50% from it. You do it because you want to, and if it helps them, you get to help them later create a bigger or better idea because you helped them then. It's having a little bit more long-term thinking versus short-term thinking.

There's a tension between the ideal vision you want and how, in reality or logistically, people start to conform into a certain way of operation because that's convenient and that works?

Eli: It's a slippery slope. When we first started AUTOBODY, we started at 35%, and then we're like, "Holy shit, that's not sustainable for us putting in all this work." We bumped it up to 40%, and then we're like, "That's still not enough. We should do 50%." Then all of a sudden, you're just another gallery who "takes." I use this word "takes" in quotations because there are galleries that take 50% and galleries that earn 50%. The difference lies in the amount of work, effort, promotion, love, joy, care—all the positives that someone would want from working with a gallery or partner. You earn that 50% versus take it.

But the sustainable part—yes, there needs to be mutual respect and also directive between the parties. Essentially, to make something sustainable, I really do think there are things in the gallery system that you have to follow—gallery tropes to survive. But at the same time, as a person working on the business side or gallery side, working with artists and going above and beyond in little ways travels so much further than these other things like, "Oh well, they could just do that, or they could just do this." Focusing on these little details goes a long way.

Joseph: If you invest in the artist and they invest in us—

Eli: And the ones that don't, we note that.

Joseph: But I think when people walk into our spaces and walk into our exhibitions, they see the care and craft in which we do things. Both Eli and I are usually very bleary-eyed during opening night because we've been up three or four days in a row, thinking and caring about every little element, building everything, going over every detail. When people walk into the space, they see that. The artists that choose to show with us—they see our care, they see our love, they see how much we put our time, our bodies, our sanity on the line for each and every show.

Eli: I'm not going to sugarcoat it this time. I don't think that running a gallery is sustainable in any way. I think running or being in the arts of any kind is going to be an unbalanced experience. My time and effort—none of that I will ever “get back” working in art, but I'm not looking to get it back. I don't think that any amount of money I make through the gallery will ever give me more than what I'm giving.

And I get that sounds optimistic, virtuous, but people who work in art are not working in art to—you shouldn't be working in art if you want to make money. That's the wrong business to be in if you're trying to make money and provide for your family. That is not the line of business you should be in. But it is a line of business you should be in if that is ultimately what you give a shit most about in the world—bringing really fucking cool people with incredible ideas to light. That's how I view it.

Is it sustainable? Yeah, probably not. I'm going to spend a lot of my time figuring out how to make it sustainable. But most galleries will end, and I'm okay with that. I'm okay with knowing that, because it doesn't matter as long as within that time span we're putting in every single ounce of our being into it. That's all that matters—that the people we work with feel good, are learning, are finding out things about themselves and their friends and their families, and progressing and moving forward versus staying in this limbo of uncertainty. As people are sharpening those tools, that's what I care about.

Joseph: That's also why I led at the beginning—this is an experiment to us beyond the gallery. It removes a little bit of that preciousness and that sustainability. We know this isn't going to last forever, but let's experiment. Let's do weird things. Let's have fun. Let's learn about ourselves, learn about us as artists, learn about other artists, and build the community here in Los Angeles. Let's do some weird and wild stuff while we can. Burn bright for a little bit. That's better than burning dimly for an extended amount of time.

Eli: Burn bright, crash hard? Hopefully not crash hard, but yeah. We care, and we want to show that we care in everything we do. I don't think we really have to try to show it. We have a mutual understanding of what this is, so we don't ever really discuss long term—"What if this happens?" or "What if this happens?" It's just now, and that's fine for us.

Do you think a lot of that care for other artists comes from yourselves also practicing as artists? You have dual roles. When you're not operating AUTOBODY or making shows, you have your own practice. How do you feel about these two roles, and when you switch between them?

Joseph: 100%. As an artist, I've felt—as every artist does—the frustration of not being seen enough, not being platformed enough, not given a voice to speak on a wider stage. To me, it's like, well, I'm going to give artists as much as possible a platform to be able to do something, to say something, with a wider reach of people. It's this idea of building together versus going alone. Opening my door and building with people has given so much more than I could have done alone.

As an artist, I look and think about that and apply those desires and wants into my role in the gallery. An artist wants to be seen, so how can I help this artist be seen? As a person, as an artist, I want the gallery to try their best to make my work look amazing, and as a gallery, I want to do that.

Eli: My art practice—I was trained as a painter in school and had my own painting practice for a while. I was successful in my own right. When I moved to LA and started doing this more business side of things, the painting practice deteriorated, and now I don't paint. I still have a conceptual practice, but it manifests itself in different ways.

I'd say that AUTOBODY, or even just my partnership with Joseph—we have our separate skill sets. By putting on shows via AUTOBODY, yes, I don't make art as much, but being able to create the infrastructure that then shows the art—like the shelves or the ingots or a lot of the designs and ideas that Joseph has and that I get to be a part of on the builds—I get to learn how to weld or how to cut metal, the different gauges of steel. These minute details I haven't really been a part of because I was working in painting and performance. Now I've found myself with just a vastly different curiosity for different materials, and I view the world in a totally different way than I had when I was painting.

No matter what avenue you choose—whether you're a gallerist or gallery assistant or performer or interviewing someone or writing—I've learned how to find these little nuggets of information. Yes, I'm not making art all the time anymore, but I get to take all these little things I'm learning in my life, and one day I know that will morph into something that will help inform my own art practice another time.

Can you use one recent exhibition as an example to walk us through how you come up with the idea of an exhibition, how you work with each other to materialize it, how you find artists—step by step, from idea to realization, and how you two work together throughout the process?

Joseph: It starts with a light-hearted approach, and then we dig deep into the things we love.

Eli: I think it really starts with us throwing spaghetti at the wall. We're just like, "Ah, what if we did this? What if we did that?"

Joseph: But I mean, yeah, but it's also like—we're surrounded by chairs in this room. Eli's Artist Assembly, Studio MAXIMA, you're surrounded by chairs. Hey, we both love chairs way too much. We should do something about that. Find other artists that love chairs way too much. It starts with that. We have an obsession. Let's dig deep into that.

Eli: Even when we don't have mutual agreement—for instance, the Small Object Show—I was never that big on it. To be honest, I was not ever super stoked on the idea of doing a small object show because I didn't really know anything about small objects. It didn't feel like I had much of an attraction to them or something.

But then really what it was is that Joseph had this vision for what the display architecture would look like, what we would build. To me, that was far more interesting than the concept of the show. The concept was secondary to what makes Joseph so integral and special to the gallery—he's also a designer. This is his space. He built the space we're in from the inside out. His vision for how he wants to make the space to show artwork is so invaluable. I was like, "Oh, I really want to see this idea come to fruition," so I can get over the fact that I'm not so stoked on the objects. But then working with it and going through it, you end up caring so much about it, and all of a sudden, small objects becomes your next infatuation.

I think that happens—we'll propose something. Initially, Lamp Show, I was like, "We should do it in the desert, and it should just be a mile long of just lamp after lamp." I could tell he wasn't super stoked. But then he's like, "Oh, what if we did it where the luminance of each lamp determines the spacing?" We started riffing on stuff, and all of a sudden you find these little moments of like, "Oh, I could add this to that, and we can make this awesome." That's the fun part—we just flow with it, see what happens, let it materialize in a new way. Fuck it.

What is it about your energy, your approach, your attitude that sets the two of you apart? Do you see there are more people of your generation here in LA also trying to do something similar? Is there a scene going on, or are you very unique in this?

Joseph: It's hard to call yourself special. I like to let other people say that or not. I just think we're two passionate dudes that are stronger together than apart. We trust each other and trust each other's strengths. I think with trust, capabilities, and a work ethic, a lot of things can happen.

We both have a really strong work ethic and a desire to see things through. We speak it, and then we make it happen. I think that's our strong suit.

Eli: I second that, obviously. I don't want to say that there is or isn't more of us anywhere. I hope there is. People always ask, "How do you find a partner that balances the side of you that you don't have?" When I moved to LA, I was like, "I need to find someone who's good at numbers and all this other stuff." Yeah, Joseph and I are both—we're okay. We make it work, I think.

But the thing is, we found a balance, an equilibrium between us. I think a lot of the passion comes from the excitement and exuberance because we're constantly teaching each other how to do what we do really well. I'm still learning how to do certain things, and Joseph's still learning how to do certain things. But in these gray areas, these lapses of time when we're not necessarily in the studio grinding away at metal, I'm teaching Joseph how to approach a certain situation, like a conversation with someone from an institutional level. There are things you should say or shouldn't say.

On Joseph's side of things, I didn't know how to grind metal or use certain tools or think about certain things in a design way. I've learned so much from him. That mutual knowledge sharing is something I feel very fortunate for because not everyone has that person they can learn from. It's hard to learn from your friends. People get aggravated, or it's like when your mom tells you to do something and you're like, "Ah, I know what I'm doing. Don't patronize me." But it feels very natural with Joseph, and I think that's where the excitement comes from—it's just natural. Feels good.

What's the most surprising thing about running AUTOBODY so far that you didn't expect when you first started?

Joseph: This is a big improv gesture, this whole gallery system. I just didn't know exactly what to expect.

What did you learn?

Joseph: It feels like everything. It's hard to quantify just one thing. I learned how to engage with the public in a more meaningful way, how to explain at different levels what the show means to me—to someone from an institution, to a mom or dad. That's just one element. There are so many different things, and it's hard to grab just one thing.

It feels invaluable and enriching as a person, as an artist, as a curator. It makes me think about art in a broader sense and makes me think about and have more love for Los Angeles. It makes me want to represent Los Angeles and showcase the artists that orbit around us, to champion them and say, "Hey, we believe in you so much. We're going to put you in this thing. We're going to spend countless hours working and crafting things around your work."

Eli: The surprise—I'm surprised by how the risk has been received. The Chair Show was our second show, and I was shocked, to be honest, with just the way people reacted to it. It further solidified being confident in your decision making.

The thing I've learned most through AUTOBODY is making a decision, sticking to it, and then executing over and over again. Sometimes you execute well, but it didn't work out or something like that. But the biggest learning for me was understanding and realizing what care looks like and how that shows up in different ways in the rooms and the people you meet through it. A simple message can turn into a friendship or partnership where this artist is now included in every idea you have because you know they have a skill set or an idea that is meaningful to you and whatever's at hand. It's this Pandora's box.

There are so many things that have happened because of it, and I just feel fortunate to be in the midst of that—to get to talk about art all day, meet people, go to studio visits, go to your studio and talk about what we're doing. I feel comfortable telling you that because we've worked with you and we've had this shared experience of inviting you into our space and you trusting us to have your work in our care, to show it and try to sell it. I think there's a beauty in that relationship that doesn't necessarily exist, at least to me, in the corporate world or the non-art world.

What do you think is special about LA artists and the audience here?

Eli: I'm not from Los Angeles, and a lot of us aren't. Joseph is. Even before I met Joseph, I always thought it was strange that there were so many—it's not a bad thing. I think it's good to bring in artists and ideas from everywhere. That's what culture is—ideas from all these different upbringings and traditions that form what we call culture.

You learn about this in art history books, studying different art movements—LA has always been looked at as this place of risk, where people usually try things in a different way than they are in New York because New York is the epicenter of the art world. There is a certain feel for what art looks like, and LA is looked at as this place where you can slow down. You've got the beach, it's a little bit more lax, but it does produce really experimental art. People have more room to breathe in that capacity.

I think LA is still that. The sprawl and the disjointedness of it both inhibit LA's art scene and also produce a lot of good because you have to pick and choose what you care about, what you want to go to.

I haven't—I've only experienced the Chicago art scene and maybe the Denver art scene, two other places I've lived. But I think that people here are hungry, and they're hungry like they are in New York. It just looks different and feels different. I think that people in LA care a lot about—I actually don't know what people in LA care about. But with AUTOBODY, at least, the scene doesn't get to decide itself here. The scene decides itself. It always decides itself.

Joseph: For me, being born and raised here—because it's been so close to me, it's also hard to fully identify all of its parts. But I know there's a broadness and breadth to the space and the work here, and that lends itself because of the space and geographical expanse that is Los Angeles.

I think that's one of its strengths—it's not defined by just one element but by all these different moving parts. Our job is to bring these vast moving parts together and make sense of it all. There's a certain wildness and undefinable quality that is Los Angeles and that is the art scene that is really exciting to me. It almost makes—it's funny. I'm from here, but it's hard for me to describe it, and I think that's its beauty.

Eli: Someone said in the Post-Show—our friends take a group of artists to a show in the morning, then they produce a body of work, and then they have a show that night. The last one they did, they went to Made in LA. I think Made in LA is a good example of this because I don't know what Made in LA is. It's supposedly all work that's made in LA by LA artists, whatever that means.

Two years ago when I went, I had just moved here, but I was still like, "What is this? Does this look like it was made in—" They looked like artifacts. None of it looked new. It was just from the past. That confused me. This year, someone wrote a piece—they did a piece where they wrote, "Living in LA is impeccably boring. The weather doesn't change. Everything's the same all the time." And that's what makes it such an interesting place to live, because your environment, more or less, is always the same. So when things do change, it's this ridiculous phenomenon.

It's in that—what's the word when things are the same all the time?—

Joseph: consistency, routine--

Eli: ––monotony. In that monotony, LA can find its pulse a little bit, when people start to do things that change up the environment we're all in.

I think it's on galleries or art scenes or people to continue to try and—you're not going to change everyone's world, but in LA, we get to slow down. We get to be a little slow. We can stir things up, make someone feel something they haven't felt in a while. Versus in other places that are all go, go, go—you're just a blip everywhere because everyone's got somewhere to be, drinks to go to, people, trains to catch. Here you can think about things, flush them out a little bit more, and then execute them. Hopefully it has some teeth. It has some teeth and has some ripples. Feels like you can do that here more than other places.

Joseph: There's also just more shops and more manufacturing and less outsourcing. You can build it here in LA.

Eli: Fashion—you can just go to Long Beach or to the port and just pick it up, drive it back over, and you have a car.

Given how spread out LA is, how do you discover what's happening, and how do you let other people discover what you're doing? Is it through social media or just friends, word of mouth?

Joseph: Everything. I think it's just word of mouth and people seeing what we're doing, and then investing in those people, and then they can communicate that to their circles and it further bleeds out.

Eli: It's like when you make a piece of art—once you make it, it's no longer yours. Same thing with the way the ideas of our gallery travel to other people. Yeah, we post stuff on Instagram, but I don't know how much of that really communicates anything. It's visual—you get to see what aesthetic we have, what subject matter we cover. But even then, some people look at that and go, "Oh, I'm going to send my paintings because I'm an artist who makes paintings." Well, did you actually look? People don't actually see—I don't think the imagery actually translates.

But I think where my art practice shines through is the videos we post, the accent or whatever, the way it hits people. It's just enough to get someone to come. And once you come, that's when you feel whatever it is you need to feel.

In LA, you have to decide—you have to make the conscious decision, "I'm going to drive 30 minutes across town to go to this thing between two auto body shops, usually below a Syphilis is curable ad." Now it's a Hulu thing.

That's the part where the strength shines through—someone has decided to come 30 minutes across town. They come, they stay, they enjoy, they talk. And then two months later, you're at a party in Joshua Tree, and they're like, "Oh, you're AUTOBODY! I met someone there that I talked to and had a great time." Those are the things that get me, even though it's not necessarily about the art. It's about the culture, it's about the scene, it's about the idea that we're able to provide that environment for those people.

Joseph: Eli has inspired me a lot from his performance and performative approach, the way he improvises and loves The Happening and The Occurrence. Bringing those ideas into what we do here—not just crafting a show but crafting the crowd engagement, the orbiting things around it. How to bring in the community, how to make it a special moment in time. You're here or you're not.

Eli is really good at thinking about The Happening. How do we make this special? How do we make this engaging? How do we have room for people to conversate, to talk? Where is the call to action for the participant?

Is there anything I haven't asked you want to talk about?

Joseph: Yeah, the Lamp Show.

Eli: We're doing a Lamp Show November 7 through the 14th, and we're doing it in an old office building that is currently in flux to become another office building, once more. We're doing what we always do—fielding submissions from artists and designers, some of which we've told about today. We need the work in less than a month.

Again, it's this not a lot of runway, not a lot of preparation, but fully committed and inspired and excited by the idea. Not a lot of runway gives a lot of room for an artist to say, "Fuck it. I'm going to do this idea I've had." Or, "It's okay that this lamp isn't perfect, maybe not up to quite my standard, but let's see it." It may not be exactly what they wanted it to be, but maybe it's something we wanted it to be, or it is exciting or exhilarating. We're now in that exhilarating phase—we're waiting for the art to come in, but we're full believers in it being a jam-packed show of light.

Joseph: This office building is a good analogy about the show. It's an office building that's in between, going back into an office building. That blur in between—seeing that blur in between is like the artists we select. It's blurred between art and design, this "I don't know what's going to happen." Leaving that room for interpretation, leaving that room for play, and selecting work and having this back and forth—

Eli: Also––the show will end two days before we will have been running AUTOBODY for a year. So this interview comes at a timely moment. It's already been a year, and it's like, wow. Are we going to bang our head against the wall for another year? But I don't feel like I've been banging my head against a wall. This has truly been—I recently lost a friend, and I was thinking about the fragility of life. Anything can happen, anywhere, anytime. A bad decision, poor judgment, a bad call can lead to the end of something, the end of life, perhaps. AUTOBODY has been this pillar of strength and ideas and passion.

It's strange to think this has been going on for a whole year. It reminds you that a year is really no time at all. We're going all in. That's why it feels like it's felt like six months or something like that, because every day is all in. That's what AUTOBODY is. It's all in, all in or bust.

Interviewed on October 7, 2025 by Zou Chen, Los Angeles.