On the occasion of Jonathan Lasker’s upcoming exhibition “Recent Paintings” at Galerie Thomas Schulte in Berlin, the gallery invited von Bergen – a former studio assistant of Lasker’s – to interview him at his New York studio. The conversation involved Lasker’s relationship to painting and his own experiences as a musician, his 1977 breakthrough painting “Illinois”, and the discursive moments that occur within his paintings as well as the references the works have with one another over time.