We’re looking forward to introducing you to Richard Garet. Check out our conversation below.
Hi Richard, thank you for taking the time to reflect back on your journey with us. I think our readers are in for a real treat. There is so much we can all learn from each other and so thank you again for opening up with us. Let’s get into it: What do the first 90 minutes of your day look like?
The first ninety minutes of my day are about setting rhythm and presence. I start with coffee, which gives me a quiet moment to gather myself. Then I go for a one-hour walk by the beach—being near the ocean grounds me and clears my head. If the conditions allow, I finish with a swim, either in the ocean or the pool. That combination of movement, fresh air, and water resets me and leaves me energized for the day ahead.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m Richard Garet, a multimedia artist born in Montevideo, Uruguay, and an American citizen based in South Florida after twenty-five years in New York. My practice bridges painting, sound, moving image, and installation, with a focus on transforming sonic, luminous, and invisible data into immersive perceptual experiences. What makes my work distinctive is how I collapse boundaries between mediums—sound generates image, image becomes painting, objects resonate as sound—revealing how energy and perception can be translated across forms.
Over the years, my work has been exhibited internationally, including at The Museum of Modern Art in New York in Soundings: A Contemporary Score, and my pieces are held in major institutional collections such as MoMA, Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), the Museum of Latin American Art in Los Angeles, the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO), and the SPACE Collection in California.
I’ve been fortunate to receive recognition from organizations worldwide, including the South Florida Cultural Consortium, Prix Ars Electronica in Austria, CIFO’s Grants & Commissions Program, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York State Council of the Arts, Taliesin West at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, and the Ministry of Education and Culture of Uruguay. My compositions and works have also been published by international sound art labels, extending my practice into experimental music and recorded media.
Currently, I’m preparing new works for the International Art Biennial of Antioquia & Medellín, alongside projects in Miami and abroad that continue expanding my research into Material Sound and algorithmic painting. Ultimately, what drives me is creating environments where audiences encounter perception itself—as something alive, unstable, and transformative.
Great, so let’s dive into your journey a bit more. Who taught you the most about work?
The people who have taught me the most about work are not just teachers in the conventional sense, but role figures I’ve encountered throughout life. From an early age, I learned about discipline, control, and rigor through mentors and personal experiences. At the same time, I’ve also had to understand the importance of letting go—of trusting intuition, embracing failure, and allowing things to unfold in their own time. These lessons have come in many forms: through reading, conversations, observing others, and, most importantly, through lived situations that tested my focus and resilience.
Recently, I found a strong resonance in Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act. What I appreciate in Rubin’s perspective is how he frames discipline and openness as inseparable—creativity thrives on both structure and surrender. That balance mirrors much of what I’ve learned: work isn’t just about control or productivity, it’s about cultivating awareness, being present, and giving space for the unexpected to emerge.
Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
Yes — many times.
There have been moments when the logistics, the rejections, the money problems, and the relentless grind made quitting feel like the sanest option. But making art for me isn’t a job I choose so much as a force I live inside. It’s almost pathological: an impulse that pulls me back to the studio the way gravity pulls everything down. You can try to step away, but the work — the questions, the materials, the stubborn need to translate what I feel into sound, image, and object — keeps tugging until you return.
That doesn’t romanticize struggle. It means I’ve learned to tolerate uncertainty, to accept failure as a form of research, and to keep the rituals and small disciplines that let me show up again and again. What keeps me moving is not only compulsion but also curiosity and the belief that a single experiment, a tiny failure, or an unexpected accident can change the course of a body of work. Community matters too — colleagues, students, and the rare conversation that reframes a problem — but mostly it’s that internal pull: stubborn, stubborn, unavoidable. If quitting was ever an option, I found that returning was inevitable. The practice is the gravity; I only orbit around it.
So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. Whom do you admire for their character, not their power?
Maryanne Amacher is someone I deeply admire for her character, not her power. She was one of my mentors during my time at Bard, and from the moment I met her I knew I was in the presence of someone extraordinary. What struck me most was not her reputation, but her intuition, her commitment, and her uncompromising integrity. She embodied a zero-compromise approach to artmaking—completely devoted to the work itself, rather than to recognition or validation.
Her practice was both mystical and empirical, exploratory and groundbreaking each time. She had this ability to open perception in ways that felt almost otherworldly, yet rooted in rigorous inquiry. In many ways, I often think of my conversations with Maryanne as encounters with an oracle—moments that offered guidance, clarity, and a deeper way of seeing. What I carry from her is not only the memory of her radical practice, but the example of how to live as an artist with honesty, courage, and absolute dedication to one’s vision.
Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. What do you understand deeply that most people don’t?
What I understand deeply, and what I think many people don’t, is how to align making art with the same immediacy that the body has when it responds to its own urges, sensations, or feelings. Just as the body recognizes hunger, fatigue, or desire without hesitation, I’ve learned to recognize the subtle signals around me—things barely perceptible, almost invisible—and bring them forward into the work.
It’s about trusting perception at its most fragile and fleeting level. Paying attention to the flicker, the hum, the noise in the background. Allowing intuition to register those shifts and turning them into material. For me, keeping it personal and real is not just a choice, it’s the only way I know how to work.
Most people are trained to filter these things out, to dismiss what feels peripheral or insignificant. But I’ve learned that the margins, the unnoticed, and the barely audible often carry the richest potential. My practice is simply a matter of giving form to what’s already there but overlooked—letting perception itself be the material, and trusting that if I can feel it, it’s worth bringing into the world.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.richardgaret.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/garet_ny
- Other: https://vimeo.com/richardgaret
https://richardgaret.bandcamp.com
https://superrare.com/richard_garet
Image Credits
Portrait by @loganfazio at @locustprojects @The Dill
Art Photographs Courtesy of Richard Garet
