interview and photography by OLIVIER ZAHM All artworks copyright George Condo, courtesy of Skarstedt, New York I came across George Condo’s oddly surreal paintings in the late ’80s, when I was writing about art for magazines like Artforum and hadn’t yet started Purple. What he calls here his “reconstructive paintings” and once described as “artificial realism” seemed to combine Picasso and Disney World, graffiti art, modern master paintings, and Pop Art. He spent many years living and painting in hotels, including in Paris, where he enjoyed the expansive life of an artist, as did his friends Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. He invited me to his uptown studio in New York to show me the very first stage of a new painting while he was working on the collages for his Purple Book. OLIVIER ZAHM — How did you meet the painter and poet Brion Gysin? GEORGE CONDO…