Quotes from Hans-Ulrich Obrist

At a certain moment, when I started doing my own shows, I felt it would be really interesting to know what is the history of my profession. I realized that there was no book, which was kind of a shock.

I started going to exhibitions in Switzerland when I was 10 or 11. As a schoolboy, I would go every afternoon to see the long, thin figures of Giacometti.

I still remember my first Giacometti exhibition, and going back to the museum every day, whenever I could, to look again and again at these long, thin stick figures, so beautiful, so graceful. That, I think, was the moment I became really obsessed by art.

Many artists have not been able to realise their fondest projects. My role is to help them.

I think the art fair is very much a form of urbanism. I think something really happens to the cities when such a fair happens. The city becomes an exhibition; it's amazing.

To be honest, I think, for me, the power is always with art. The art world clearly couldn't happen without art.

My job is art curator, not artist. All I have ever wanted to do is immerse myself in art, to enjoy it, to learn about it, to write about it, to talk to others about it.

Our economy's growth functions by inciting us to produce more and more with each passing year. In turn, we require cultural forms to enable us to sort through the glut, and our rituals are once again directed towards the immaterial, towards quality and not quantity.

From 1991 to 2000, I was totally nomadic. I was travelling 300 days a year and building out my research. These were a bit like my learning and migrating years, so to say.

Exhibitions are kind of ephemeral moments, sometimes magic moments, and when they're gone, they're gone.

I would go from one city to the next, inspired by the monks in the Middle Ages, who would carry knowledge from one monastery to the next monastery.

My most famous show is the 'Kitchen Show.' More famous than any gallery show or museum show I curated.

To keep art stimulating, it's important to open it up to new horizons, which includes showing it in unexpected contexts.

I'm trying to expand the notion of curating. Exhibitions need not only take place in galleries, need not only involve displaying objects. Art can appear where we expect it least.

It's quite an obscure notion for a kid, no? To want to be a curator. But even then, I knew that I would do this.

When I was a kid and started to be obsessed by art in the 1980s, the art world was in this polarity Warhol/Beuys, Beuys/Warhol. Both expended the notion of art extremely, but in very different ways.

I'm very interested in the idea of unusual museums, ones that are not necessarily contemporary art museums - more like historical collections or house museums.

I have many intense friendships with artists. I don't mean we have intense one-day conversations but ongoing conversations that last in some cases for years.

I read whenever possible, and I buy books all the time, sometimes online, but mostly from bookshops. I love literature. If you want to understand art, it's important to understand what is also happening in literature, in music, in science, in architecture.

I went to the studio of Fischli Weiss, and it was magical. I thought: 'This is what I want to do with my life; I want to work with artists and be useful to them.' I was magnetically attracted.

The non-utility of my kitchen could be transformed into its utility for art. To do a show there would mix art and life, naturally.

I really do think artists are the most important people on the planet, and if what I do is a utility and helps them, then that makes me happy. I want to be helpful.

My great inspiration has always been Studs Terkel, who is a wonderful American oral historian. He was a radio DJ at first, interviewed a lot of jazz musicians, and at some point started to interview Americans about work.

Everything I do is somehow connected to velocity.