Kristoffer Nilson
Your way of working combines both drawing and painting.
How do you relate to the tradition of painting?
When I became interested in art in general it was painting and its tradition that were my main focus. I first started to study art at Pernby School of Painting, where a lot of messy work was being produced at that time. I felt I did not have total control over painting, not quite knowing what to do with it. When I later started to study at Konstfack, it was in the sculpture department, since I was frustrated with painting to the point where I stopped doing it altogether. I experimented with video and other media. It felt good to work in a more conceptually oriented way and, through that, to have more control over my ideas. In a way, it is through this detour that I came back to painting, from a different viewpoint and with a new way of working. This opened up new artistic possibilities for me.
The reason for using different official documents as motives was to make conceptually based illustrations of hidden structures, to find basic patterns from which to work. Preparing a surface with a ground is the starting point for most painters. As I do this in multiple layers, I reach a polished white surface with an almost snow-blinding effect. I strive after an industrial quality where gesture is absent. Using pencil lead is also a very primary way of drawing. I wanted to keep it that way and avoid to use colour so the work wouldn’t be read as a painting.
It was not that I did not want to make paintings - somehow they were just more interesting when I used pencil. I never thought of the System works as paintings – to me, they were drawings. But maybe it is not all up to me how they are read. For the exhibition in Gävle Konstcentrum, I have chosen to do works that are in colour, so, on one level, maybe they are closer to paintings.
But is the formal categorising of the works so interesting or important?
Some years ago, when I was a bit more uptight, I would have said yes, but now I do not care. It is interesting how I sometimes receive angry feedback from people when I talk about my work as painting. I guess painting still is a touchy subject in an art-world that wants to be perceived as a place without norms or categories.
So many put the emphasis of your work on the formal elements and not on the process, or even on the content.
Yes, people want to talk about technique. At a first glance, my works look like they have been printed, but that would be boring. This is an important limit. It is imperative for me that I have made them by hand and that they have taken their time to finish, even if it is long.
Time and process have an importance?
Yes, I want them to feel right. The often time-consuming process pays off with a sense of value when you look back at the amount of work you have finished.
The starting point of your works are different official documents used by different institutions, such as the tax office. You are also keen on investigating different form-worlds?
Earlier, I really did not care very much for abstract geometric art. My aim was to visualise very basic power structures, of course with a certain critical stance. Later on, I learned to appreciate formal qualities as well. I am very fascinated by aspects of human constructions – be they documents, architecture or morality.
Before I started to work with official documents, I was interested in charts and tables. They had an almost sculptural or architectural quality, but that was not only what drew them to me. More important was their aesthetically unplanned configurations and lay-outs. So when I researched patterns, which would be recognisable but still unusual, I chanced upon official documents, which I for some time now have been using as the formal basis of my work.
You don’t make sketches. How does the process begin?
Tax authorities have hundreds of different documents. I have been through most of them and, in my first exhibition with works of this kind, I used twelve examples which made a good whole. I always work site specifically, so for an exhibition in Italy, for example, I used local bank forms. The works that will be shown here in Gävle Konstcentrum are based on official endorsement forms for local societies and culture. I never alter the composition of the documents. I think it is quite a nice way of working when you don’t have a say in how the image will look, because the starting point is pre-made. I am interested in the things that are already there, they are like portraits.
What about seriality?
I started with one singular work and now I consider my production to be a growing whole. To emphasise this, they all carry the name System. When we talk about seriality versus singularity, it is fascinating how differences become so much more visible in the series. This makes me extra nervous every time I start a new body of work.
Artist’s role?
I don’t know. It depends on what kind of artist one is. Personally I don’t do art based on the question whether I have a role or not.
So why are you an artist?
Because I am very interested in art and how it can communicate. I also like the process in its
making.
What about producing new insights about the world, about the
way things are presented and how this affects our response
and perception of them?
Yes, that is something that I should like my work to reflect, even if I am not very consciously working towards these ends. I also like the way certain artworks function when they give you an opportunity to just stand there and marvel at them. It is also nice to enter artworks and fantasise, to make imaginative worlds inside them.
Kari Immonen
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