Anna Fro Vodder
What is your relationship to the tradition of painting?
My first solo show, which I did in 'The Long Corridor'
in my high school, consisted of drawings that I had done
solely by looking at and copying Edouard Manet paintings
from a book. I think I have always looked at other artists'
works. No one can avoid addressing a tradition, or many
traditions. The question is rather how to use those traditions.
What are the possibilities of painting? Does painting
have some qualities that other media lack?
I have been painting all along, but I often question
whether a new painting is possible, and I often work with
doubt - on the other hand, the charm of painting is in
fact that it does lack a lot and does not have sufficient
means for communicating things. But that somehow goes
for all our languages.
Do you make sketches?
A work can begin with a drawing or from a single word,
from certain sentences, from indignation maybe, or by
accident, and when it comes to naming the works I use
the same method. Naming of the works sometimes comes after
the work is finished, sometimes I carry the titles around
with me for a long time. My works are basically about
painting - its process-like qualities and also about painting
in a broader context. Besides painting I also draw and
think that, for example, the telephone-doodles people
make are great. I like the colours to have a certain anti-aesthetic
quality to them, which can be very beautiful.
The exhibition situation?
Siting the works can be important in an exhibition situation,
since the setting has its own effect on the works' interpretation
and message as a whole. But it is important that the individual
work can stand on its own feet. I have done exhibitions
with other people where the focus was more on the whole
than on the individual artist. The last exhibition I was
involved in took place in a gallery. It was a show by
three artists and the ideas about collaboration became
quite visible.
Various publications and books also act as exhibitions.
I just did a drawing for a magazine, and I like seeing
how it functions differently from what I could predict
at my starting point. Getting somewhere else is basically
what drives me.
What do you think about the slowness of painting,
about painting's own temporality?
My relationship with painting is similar to that with
poetry. You can read the same line over and over again,
leave it and come back. It is not linear. I seldom read
a book from cover to cover - poetry suits my temperament.
The same applies to my working method: doing several works
at the same time.
What about the different pictorial elements in your
works? Is seriality important for you?
I use elements that come from the everyday and my surroundings.
They can be figurative or maybe look like so-called abstract
elements. I don't strive to achieve a style and the works
act more as a whole or as one long episode, rather than
as series.
What is the artist's role?
I don't like to think of being an artist as fulfilling
a certain role.
Kari Immonen |
