Go forward. Move ahead.

If you’re familiar with Mark Mothersbaugh, it’s probably from his day job. In the early 70s, Mothersbaugh–along with fellow Kent State art students Gerald Casale and Bob Lewis–founded DEVO, and began their four-plus-decade broadcast of uncategorizable, avant-garde sound and vision, of hazmat-besuited robot Jaggers singing songs of dark futures and opt-in de-evolution. “Freedom of choice/Is what you got/Freedom from choice/Is what you want.

As it turns out, DEVO was only one facet of a complex project. Before music, Mothersbaugh occupied his time and indulged his obsessions as a visual artist, creating a huge collection of paintings, photographs, and prints–including over 30,000 postcards–that represent an often surreal, sometimes disturbing, and always fascinating take on modern existence.

Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art has amassed many of these pieces–curated by Adam Lerner–for Mothersbaugh’s first comprehensive exhibition. If you can’t make it to Colorado or any of the five other cities currently scheduled to host the collection, Princeton Architectural Press has published Mark Mothersbaugh: Myopia as a companion volume, with a set of postcards (Collected Facts and Lies) coming December 2. With the show’s opening set for October 30, we asked Mothersbaugh a few questions about his influences as a visual artist, his work, and its relationship to DEVO’s music. The publisher has also offered several images from the book.

Untitled postcard

Most people know you for your music than for your visual art, but which came first, and when? Is one the natural extension of the other? Has your art influenced your music or vice versa? Is it all part of the same project?

I first dreamt I would be an artist when I was seven years old. I took keyboard lessons when I was seven, but didn’t want to write and perform music until I was twelve. Early on I was impressed with sound and vision artists and mixed media artists. Then in college cross-platform artists like Andy Warhol, Dadaists and the Futurists inspired me. All the different artists who believed that the idea came first, and then the technique followed. With DEVO, Jerry Casale, Bob #1 and Bob #2 and I thought we were sound and vision artists. We designed costumes, stage shows and choreography, films, all related artwork besides the music. We created interstitial music for our films and live shows.

Mark Mothersbaugh, Untitled (Bury Me…), February 21, 2013

Three artists or works—in any medium– that influence your current work the most. Or a lot.

I could list a lot of people, but Chester Gould, Beto Gomez and Alan Vega are the first three I thought of. I also am especially interested in artists who channel other dimensions, gods, spirits, ghosts, energy, or whatever is out there to interact with. Maybe I’m mostly inspired by the “other 90%” of our brains… not just the 10% that has to babysit the rest of our meat computer, but the part we know very little about.

You’ve created over 30,000 postcards, which implies a kind of compulsion or commitment. What urges you to create art? What’s your routine?

The content and goal of my drawing has changed and goes in and out of specific thoughts, stream of consciousness and anger venting, positing questions and just illuminating a thought or feeling. The content has changed since I acquired two children and started showing the newer drawings to others. Thirty years ago, I was the only viewer, and I made them exclusively for me, occasionally picking select images for use with DEVO or to just print them larger for art shows. I draw every day between sun up and sun up. It is kind of compulsive at this point, there is a relief in just finishing at least one drawing, poem, whatever in every 24 hour cycle. I am an insomniac, and drawing gives me something to do during those hours.

Mark Mothersbaugh, Untitled, February 7, 1984

You’ve never exhibited your visual work before the Denver exhibit, at least in a large scale. Did you ever intend to? How does this feel?

I have had smaller shows in museums and colleges before, but the bulk of my public viewing over the last 15 years has been in smaller indie galleries. In that arena, I have done upwards of 125 gallery shows around the world in a 13 year period. The Denver show is by far and away the largest museum-size show I have ever put together. Jeffrey Deitch got me interested in bigger, more center-stage art exhibits, but Adam Lerner is my intellectual saint. Not one to shy away from controversy, he both suggested and has co-created this project. I feel pretty darn good about the whole thing.

Has the acceleration of technology and its pervasiveness—especially communications technology—influenced your work and themes? Is it insidious or liberating?

This is the best time in the history of man to be an artist of any stripe. Technology has made so many disciplines transparent and available to young artists these days. It has democratized previously out-priced art mediums including music and video, to name just a few. I think technology gives us so many more options and is very inclusive. I only wish I had the energy of an eighteen year old.

Roli polis

There are so many conflicts inherent in your work: man/ machine, thinker/consumer, high-brow/low-brow (maybe what Adam Lerner has called the “DEVO aesthetic”). Do you start with these ideas, or do they naturally emerge as a project develops? Are you delivering messages or observations?

I think in some ways I’m doing the same thing I did when Jerry and Bob and I started DEVO. Delivering observations regarding the condition of man in the world these days.