Dodda Maggý’s exhibition Variations is on view at BERG Contemporary from August 18^th to October 21^st. The artist was recently awarded the ARoS – Aarhus Art Museum’s Young Talent Award. Using sound and music as departure points, the artist further compounds their intertwining by using rhythm and narrative to engage the senses. Her animated symmetrical compositions explore the experimental possibilities of translating sound into visual form with a technical mastery of the formalities of harmonics and how these form the basic formations of the universe. With a dynamic interplay between the parts and the whole in the image, the patterns appear as though in perpetual evolution, like a kaleidoscope. In an in-depth interview, the artist explains her complex working methods as we walked amongst her work.

Erin: Can you tell me about this piece (DeCore (etude))?

Dodda: So this is an ongoing series called DeCore that started in 2008. When it started as a video I was working with methods of applying field recordings and sounds to video. I basically went around with my video camera and filmed flowering plants and trees and then started to manipulate that material to create new organic forms. The first version, which was called DeCore (aurae), took me three years to figure out the right form. I was thinking a lot about visual music as well as synesthesia, the state of having your senses crossed that causes people to see music or experience forms as colors. I was applying these methods and sounds to video and also thinking about how to represent music. DeCore was then installed as a large silent installation, followed by another version, and now I’m showing two of the newest versions here, DeCore (etude), and DeCore (loom). It’s the same source material of trees and flowering plants, actually.

I’m continuing to resample in this exhibition. However, I’m not re-sampling the works themselves but going back into the source material and making new manipulations- almost a remix of the original recordings. With this piece, I actually wanted to take the source material and create print stills. It’s another thing to really create the image rather than take a still, so I created the video in order to take the still image.

There is a lot of crossing of mediums in the show. I wanted to create a technique in order to create prints as this is my first show exhibiting prints. Usually, I’m only working with video, music, and sounds so I had to create a technique that I could relate to in order to create still images. When you’re used to working with time-based art, which is always moving, you have to recalibrate how to translate this movement into a still image.

Erin: It’s going from 3D to 2D, so of course, it’s a huge recalibration.

Dodda: You have to think about it differently. So this is like the DeCore series but evolved. I’m still thinking about music here and I think music is still the understory of everything I do. I start with music before visual arts.

Erin: You studied both right visual art and composition, right?

Dodda: I studied both. Before I went to university I felt like I had to make a decision between going further into music or visual art and I chose visual art because I felt there was space for both. Later, I finished studies in composition as well. I think as a visual artist, I really connected with video and this time-based medium because I understand it as it relates to music.

Erin: It’s as though your process of making videos is an image of harmonics itself, so your work is both in the medium and the resulting image.

Dodda: That’s my aim, but we can debate whether it comes forth. In this piece with these small sorts of flowers, each flower is made out of many recordings of flowers, so there are many details combined. In just one little flower there are multiple processes happening at once. I like the size of it because you can see the details.

Erin: You’re making your own language, it seems, by working with each note in itself and making them work together to become its own vocabulary. What programs are you using?

Dodda: I use a lot of programs of all kinds and am mixing all of them. It’s my own method of layering that I developed with many variations.

Erin: The last exhibition here at BERG was of Steina and Woody Vasulka, the video art pioneers. They were some of the first to make tools that would manipulate audio into visual and vice versa.

Dodda: There is definitely this link. Steina actually was also trained as a violinist first. Having a background in music seems to be the case with a lot of video artists, especially in Iceland.

Erin: Narrative and rhythm seem to be two intertwining themes in the exhibition, each carrying the other forward.

Dodda: That is definitely the case with the videos, especially this one that I’m making to create prints from. I’m making the videos with this musical application and thinking about proportions. Just like with different chord combinations and sounds that make major and minor chords, we also have these proportions visually which create tension or harmony in the image so there is also geometry involved. I’m applying a set of movements to this, as well as colors obviously. This is much more monotone, I would say, but maybe baroque monotone. The first DeCore had each frame changing and was more chaotic but this is more still. It holds the shape but it still changes in color. This looks a lot like rhythms, almost like beats.

Erin: I was reading another an early article about your work about how your work engages the viewer visually but the rhythm engages your body, so it somehow traps you between these two states of being when you’re watching it. Perhaps this was more the DeCore installation when the viewer could be part of the projection and be very physical, but I think it still has a very mesmerizing effect on both body and mind.

Dodda: I’m very interested in these sensorial effects. My earlier work was more portraying these different states while now I’m more interested in creating this effect for the viewer. I know I can never estimate how the effect will be on the viewer, but I can stimulate some senses, definitely.

Erin: Where does the name DeCore come from?

Dodda: DeCore comes from something on the verge of being decorative, which is a total taboo. When I starting working on DeCore in 2008, to do something decorative or visually appealing was almost like porn. So I’m playing with crossing that line and questioning if it being visually appealing makes it less interesting. I’m playing with these aesthetics about how the proportions and harmonies bring affects. It’s also on a fine line to do something flowery so there is also a play on that. There is so much information in each frame, really, so I’m just pumping information out.

Erin: Isn’t it like that with music? Why is music allowed to be harmonious but not visual art?

Dodda: It goes in circles. After the Second World War, Romantic music was just not allowed. So, really serious, atonal music came into fashion because this Romantic music was connected to nationalism and it was totally out. It really just goes in circles depending on what is accepted at the time, beautiful music or atonal music. I think there’s been a shift in the last ten years, although it’s almost hard to say this out loud. I feel a shift from a focus on very theoretical to a slightly more Romantic, or more spiritual aesthetic. I think the themes I have been flirting with are actually being more accepted whereas before they were a little bit ‘outsider’.

Erin: I think it is definitely a noticeable shift.

Dodda: I don’t know if it is a trend, but it is definitely more accepted. Even before, to talk about energy, was a bit out there. It wasn’t really what my teachers were going for when I was in school, either. I can’t generalize it but I can definitely feel a shift in the atmosphere of what is going on and what is accepted.

Erin: The new age needs a new age, it seems. Is all of the work in the exhibition a variation of DeCore?

Dodda: No, there are three variations. We have three main pieces: DeCore, C Series, and Étude. Moving from DeCore to C Series, I am really continuing to investigate this relationship between the visual and the aural. I was interested in making a technique of composing using video and music but here I am much more in composition mode. I’m studying the flute as an instrument. I picked fifteen notes to work with and composed them in this one composition that is part of the exhibition, a nearly 18-minute long piece.

I made these video forms, a circular form with different proportions, for each of the 15 musical notes. Then, I connected each note to this form and I created a video animation with the music corresponding to what is happening in the video. With each composition, I pair a note to a form, which creates the musical composition. Later, I decided to remove the video and compose on the base of sound. I have one video from this process, but I’m only going to show the notes. When I was making the composition, I made another video from the same source material which became Coil, a part of C Series.

C Series is the focal point for the composition and so the accompaniment for the music, but then in the working process, I realized I didn’t need it. I’m just showing the music, like a work in progress, that shows how I composed this piece. If we go into the purely musical side of it, it appears as though I’m working in music. However, I’m not that interested in just composing. I’m interested in detuning.

We have this modern way of tuning instruments at 440 hertz. All instruments are tuned after that, but there is an older tuning at 432 hertz. When we tune after that the harmonics are a little more balanced. There are a lot of different theories about why we changed it, mostly conspiracy theories, but no one is really sure. So the tuning today is a little bit harder. You can see in visuals of chords how the frequencies make different forms.

I was thinking about how interesting this conflict is and wanted to start to detune my notes. I’m working from the range of 440 down to 432 up to 448 hertz so my instrument is mistuned. What happens when you have these fine misattunements is you get these frequencies that meet and give off all these vibrations, overtones, and new frequencies that erupt. Even if it is fifty notes, and three octaves, they are all in a different tuning and when they meet they create this friction. I also took the notes I created and manipulated into each of these movable forms. I changed the speed of the vibration, so it was shaped by how quickly the note reverberated.

As you can see, I’m really going into the material and treating musical notes as material. Each note is carefully created and then manipulated. Afterwards, I layer them and compose them together. You can hear this piece on the record and you can also see these two projections in these two projections on the wall. They are still part of the piece and part of them will be in the daylight, so they kind of disappear into the light in a mystical way.

Erin: Can you explain this visual (the animated projection in C Series) a bit and how it correlates to your vertical investigations?

Dodda: So the music is a vertical investigation and that’s the translation from lyrical film where I’ve been working in video with this vertical investigation with video that I’ve been applying to music as well. This piece is the one I made after the composition was finished and is actually a result from starting DeCore and investigating proportions, going into geometry, and alchemist’s graphs. This is actually created from an alchemist’s graph and shows an Egyptian energy key. I don’t make my work after other images, though, I have three works where I’m working with alchemists’ graphs. Usually, I never use outside material but I was just interested in these geometric images that have this visual energy to them. There is some message being told and I’m not exactly interested in finding out what it is supposed to tell me but I’m interested in the energy of them. That is why I wanted to assimilate it into my own process.

Erin: The name of it even, ‘alchemist’s graph’, sounds like a parallel investigation to the work you’re doing. What an alchemist does is tries to transmute gold out of these chemical elements.

Dodda: But it’s all symbolic in the end. When they’re talking about gold they’re actually trying to find spiritual gold. It’s spiritual, not material. Alchemist’s search for gold was sacred knowledge.

Erin: Even that transition between material and spiritual knowledge and matter is like a parallel investigation to what you’re doing.

Dodda: Especially in this one because I’m working with the base material in C Series which is actually these 3D computer generated spheres. I basically took snapshots of 3d images and took them through a very 2d way of working, almost to this old school level of animation. So I’m working with this artificial form to create this alchemist’s key. To me, it feels like energy plugged into this loop. It also reminds me of the music symbol where you have an F key or G key and you ascribe a key to your composition.

I’m also breaking a lot of musicology rules here by playing with terminology and using it inaccurately on purpose. The tradition is such a long one and can be quite fixed, so it is perhaps good to playfully skew it a little. I also did this with Études by really playing with the terminology. We’ll be releasing a record on the opening, a limited edition vinyl of 30 editions that will also be on Spotify. I’ve been working with music for such a long time and it has been such a nice experience, materializing these prints, so releasing the prints and materials and music as materials is quite exciting.

Erin: You’re working in such an immaterial realm, so I can imagine it is exciting to have such a material outcome in an exhibition.

Dodda: It’s a new development in my work for sure. Here are the different forms of the notes for C Series, screened as just a small projection in the exhibition. I find the musical compositions much more interesting than the visuals actually. The original animation I made doesn’t add anything to the composition so when I’m working with video and music together there always has to be a purpose. If there is no reason I usually take it out as I would rather have silent videos or stand alone sound pieces. You can see this is just how a material note might materialize. I’m just opening up ideas of what music might be. This almost could be presented as a sound piece as I’m working with sound ideas even though it is silent.

Erin: This is a similar shape to the Mandelbrot set, a fractal named after the mathematician. Anytime you zoom in or out into one specific part you come out eventually into the same shape for infinity.

Dodda: You can find it in nature and in the cosmos. The environment is just the basic building block of everything around this fractal relationship. Even in these snapshots of planets of stars, it’s always fractals. Even the path Venus moves around the sun is a fractal. It makes one wonder how everything is connected to these forms.

Erin: You can look at your work very formally. You don’t have to go there, but it’s laid out for you if you want to, however you can also just recognize the mathematical and musical harmony in the formalities.

Dodda: If people are interested in certain subject matters they pick it up or they don’t. There are different perspectives of looking at my work- very formal, very sensorial, and sometimes working with more mystical ideas. I’m always questioning and never offering answers.

Erin: You’re still very technical in your mystical notions, which is a beautiful combination.

Dodda: The last part of the exhibition is called Étude for which the basic building blocks are these Opal forms. There are different investigations into visual music which started in the 1910s and 20s by visual artists trying to find ways of composing music visually. It’s hard to define as a genre because it crosses all these styles between animation and structural film, but the umbrella term is ‘visual music’ which began in Europe and was developed later in California. One experimental filmmaker, in particular, was intriguing for me, John Whitney. He regarded himself as a composer but his instrument was the camera. He spent his career trying to develop ways of translating visuals into music. So I was quite inspired by his technique and wanted to experiment with his technique to apply it to my own experimentation. So I’m not duplicating but I am interested in how he structures entities together in a visual. I think there is definitely a visual reference to his work in Étude. Étude pays a little bit of an homage to him in the name Étude, which is usually a musical composition that a skilled composer creates for his student to practice. I’m using it as an exercise for practicing visual music.

I want to make a visual music piece in this tradition and so I regard this as my practice piece in visual music with a certain methodology. I’m also making a wordplay between the use of “Opus” in music which stands for the “work number” and is written as Op. In Étude, Op. stands for the number of opal stones, so the first piece is actually 88 Op. I’m also examining the piano in particular by working with 88 stones which represent the 88 notes of the piano.

In the Étude series of prints, you can see the full 88 notes, as well as compositions with 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, and 77. So I’m making up these rules, imagining how to materialize chords into a visual. I created these seven structures that are in the composition and I these as my elements in the installation. So this is a very formal piece but the idea actually came from a dream. In the dream, somebody took me up to the cosmos into black space and showed me opals growing in the darkness. I was being told that they have energy and frequency. So I was quite intrigued by these stones mined from the earth that have a measurable frequency. So even if it was a dream, it is still quite formal, personal, yet very formal. I was also interested in working with the relationship between the visual and the sonic/aural/musical in this piece and exploring perceptual experiences involved in translating internal experiences into the external to represent different states of consciousness.

Erin: This cultural critic named Gene Youngblood wrote a book in the 70’s called Expanded Cinema about how all of these expansive techniques in film have been parallel with the expansion of consciousness.

Dodda: Compared to where video was in 2000, you had to have a video camera and know how to use it, but today it’s totally part of our daily life. It’s so interesting how video is the same material as our memory, like our current state of consciousness.

Erin Honecutt

More information about the artist:  www.doddamaggy.info

Ljósmyndir: Daníel Magnússon.

Davíð Örn Halldórsson’s exhibition River únd Bátur was recently on view at Hverfisgallerí. The artist’s gesture of using found objects such as desktops, tables, and shelves for his abstract paintings calls attention to the material’s inherent aesthetic, which is transcended by the artist’s imaginative and worldly expressiveness. The effect breaks down barriers between cultures as it focuses on expressiveness and symbolism. Placed amongst the colorful worlds of his paintings, the artist has spray-painted directly onto the gallery walls a looming gray outline against which a coffin shape rests- as though he is aware of the anguish and precariousness of living.

The artist faces the precipice, taking the human predicament as the focal point instead of adhering to any formalist structures but his own. In the artist’s numerous works on paper, a visual language is formed which can be read from one frame to the next. The meaningfulness of one symbol may be disregarded in the next frame, embracing the dichotomy of meaning and interpretation. In an interview with the artist, he explains in his own weaving narration that ties many points of reference together, how everything can be meaningless as well as meaningful.

Erin: Your work appears lofty at first glance, like a fantastical world in itself, but upon inspection, it is quite taxing and heavy. There is a refreshing breath of abstraction with no signs of conceptualism- it oozes feeling and vibrancy with nothing calculated. These are my initial reactions to the paintings in the exhibition.

Photo: Vigfús Birgisson

Davíð: Actually, I’ve been thinking a lot about calculation lately and how I can paint myself into a corner. There are these structures that I have a solution for, something that I think would look good but as soon as I do it I have to redo it many times more with different colors. There is a mindlessness to the work because a decision has been made already so there is this calculated system, which is a system that is very far away from the painting in the beginning. However, I’m stuck with it so I curse myself for a few minutes and then start to work at the system. The finished thing doesn’t maybe look like it is calculated, it looks more fluid than the rigorous task that it has been, so I’m glad that it is disguised but nobody knows about it. It’s interesting to always get this reaction that my work is so free flowing.

Erin: It appears that way, very much on the surface, but I think once you sit with it longer the painting gathers weightiness.

Photo: Vigfús Birgisson

Davíð: Also, some things aren’t very rewarding because I know from the way I work I have to work over them. So all of these stripes and color pairings, when I’m painting over the whole thing that I painted, is really not a system. It’s a repetitive gesture but the reward comes much later when I haven’t seen the painting for a long time.

Erin: Your work appears as though it could be visionary as though you are expressing a visionary experience. Do you approach it more as an inner vision that is already imagined or an abstraction of all of these elements around you?

Davíð: It is of course from my experience. It’s absolutely mine so if I come back to things that I’ve maybe done before it is still always some small twists to it that I travel along in this inner vision.

Erin: Maybe the question is more about vantage points- you said you work yourself into a corner and you brush over that corner with another layer and you lose yourself there. But do you work with space consciously?

Photo: Daníel Magnússon

Davíð: The paintings are fairly clear to me when they get started although there is a lot of work to be done. If you break that down in the project I know what needs to be done far ahead and I’m always trying to catch up. So I see it clearly after I am more preliminary. What I do is- I see it clearly and after every action, there is a small tilt to the vision. Jim Henson in Fraggle Rock had these small builders that were helping the Fraggles with these ramps all over and the Fraggles broke them and ate them and they had this symbiotic relationship. They start breaking them but they needed them to break them down so they could be prepared.

Erin: You might be laughing but I think that’s a great vision of this symbiotic relationship.

Davíð: So when I am working there come these shifts and these smaller experiments within each mission that changes everything. So I have to adjust according to whatever job that pops up. It’s like the first one is free flowing ideas and the main part is just to get things going, to work and maybe the muse will visit and the next part is doing all these little jobs like a Fraggle contract worker and the other part is just finishing up and maybe being like a head of a work crew or something.

Erin: So each action creates a whole new landscape from which to venture. Are you working from the outside or the inside?

Davíð: The answer is boring because I think it’s definitely both. There are some works based on events of daily life, a person processing the daily surroundings and carrying it out in visual language but I hate it because it’s so simple and obvious to put it that way because of course, I am doing just that. It’s just so boring to try to paint what influences you especially since you are mainly creating your own language. Sometimes I get concerned about repetition but that’s just a slow reaction. It rarely happens, but I get a bit miffed when someone points it out. For this reason, perhaps, one of the characters in the absurdist play in the exhibition text is talking about how it’s all the same- pointing out the repetition.

Erin: There is something about your repetition that brings the world together with the same motifs and symbols, which I think is more helpful than anything else. Who are the most influential painters for you? Hundertwasser comes to mind, of course.

Photo: Daníel Magnússon

Davíð: Hundertwasser comes up a lot. I’ve been on pilgrimages to Vienna a few times. But he’s not important in that sense- he’s more like a cousin. There’s also Joan Miró. When you are a teenager you jump onto things like Dali and the surrealist movement and then a little later it feels a bit vapid and not as interesting as you thought to begin with. I’m always rediscovering things just by going to exhibitions. I think I really need that- to see the paintings up close to create this big enthusiasm or to make an evaluation on where this artist is in my life. I saw an exhibition of de Chirico last year, which really changed my opinion on his work. I discover things but I don’t try to find out everything about them online or something, I want it to be a bigger moment, so if I see something interesting I just keep it in the back of my mind and maybe try to look it up when I’m traveling or something. It changes so much to see the real thing- it just has another glow.

 Erin: You often work with found materials like shelves and desktops. How did that process start?

Davíð: It started a bit more with me in school, not just me being broke. It started very environmentally friendly with the statement of not adding and just re-using material. I did this experiment when I was doing this movie in East Iceland on our days off where I decided to paint this mural under a bridge. I went around and asked people for leftover paint and materials. I thought it was a great concept for having their influence into the mutual paintings so it had some factor to begin with. Found materials can be so different from each other in shape and size and it keeps things interesting on some level. It also serves the purpose of not being delicate. The materials I use like spray-paint and different oils and industrials are not treated the same way inside the studio as they are when they get out. So that is just a method of working and being curious.

There is probably more outside rules to handle but with that comes also a lot of problems that I had to adjust to if there was old paint or varnish on them. The whole thing may come off when I take the paint off so I had to adjust my working methods to the materials so there is some sort of uniqueness to whatever I’m working on. There is a lot of that in this show from the same kitchen cupboards because a cousin of mine was redesigning his house and his mother had painted them all shiny white. I got them and felt bad about destroying their work but then I went to a children’s party and I saw one that had been left behind that they were still using which was big and beautiful and I just stood there stroking it during the party.

Erin: I can see how it keeps you having to continuously break out of this conventional frame. And then you have these black voids applied directly onto the walls of the exhibition. What would you call these black voids?

Photo: Vigfús Birgisson

Davíð: The found materials definitely keep things from getting monotonous in the beginning especially. Actually, I called the black voids milt myrkur or ‘mild darkness’. I do something on the walls usually but it is often more in the same vein of the paintings just on a larger scale with the same colors and maybe I’m trying to get them to speak a little bit to the paintings but I didn’t want to do that now. I wanted something to contrast the paintings.

Erin: They really balance out the other paintings.

Davíð: I wanted something to help me be expansive but still weighed down in this anchor, a druid headstone or something. I sort of worked towards it a little blindly. When I started making them in the gallery I did them first because of the fumes. I had to make a big decision about them. I didn’t get a chance to try them out because I wasn’t in my own studio, so I couldn’t do it on the wall there and it wouldn’t be the same if I did it on a plate so I just went for it in a sort of freestyle. I had this reference with the phrase milt myrkur (mild darkness) from an artist named Ernst J. Bachman who did the record sleeves for Mezzoforte in the early 80’s that are so weird. An album called Observations from my childhood was especially influential. It’s obviously just him doing experiments with airbrush and it has nothing to do with the music. The music is so upbeat, this jazz-fusion stuff and it was milt myrkur because of the music and the art. The album covers are more of an afterthought rather than being truly inspired, though.

Erin: This triangulation between the viewer, the color in your paintings, and the milt myrkur is very strong. I’m imagining a Hawkwind cover, although I’ve never seen these Mezzoforte covers. Do you listen to music while you work?

Davíð: I’m really inspired by music and have been my whole life. Music is very important but that has changed a little bit in the studio. In my old studio, I had my record player and all my music. I’ve been watching television now instead which is weird because I can’t really watch anything that is too challenging. It helps watching bad television when I am doing something monotonous like filling in color in repetitive lines. A friend gave me something when he was moving the other day, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Lots of people have been handing me their awful DVDs, which I tend to watch more than quality films. It gives me inspiration with weird phrasing of words for titles, so if I pick something up then I write it on the wall in the studio. If it is in front of me then it stares at me from the wall while I’m working. Sometimes I put the subtitles on while I’m working. Like here, for example, I wrote in my notebook… ‘Enemy of good’. I don’t remember where that came from.

Photo: Daníel Magnússon

Erin: I think there is something to that, though. There is a lot to be said for seemingly bad taste- it becomes part of a cult taste. We don’t know what compels us towards this. I had this vision in my mind that part of your work is processing the dregs of bad taste- some kind of sifting process. They still exist nonetheless- all of these cultural layers are all here. It’s so arbitrary what is considered to be good or bad. I think it’s really interesting to look at it all as one big image.

Davíð: I think for a period whenever I had an art show it was the same with every description of the art show dealing with the overflow of images. So I got very tired and bored of this quickly. Of course, it’s true like what you were saying earlier about everyone being confused about the influences of everything around them. It’s best to not complain but just to pick one thing. I pick Mezzoforte albums.

Erin: Maybe that’s the best method to get deeper into the matter.

Davíð: It’s hard to not follow trends, like mainstream advertising culture or something. A few years back I was traveling through Europe and I was also very active making art here in Iceland. Everywhere I went galleries and museums were putting up saunas like some freakish collective. Picking up your influence is sort of, talking generally, pointing out the obvious. Maybe you should just choose something; just accept it that everything is influential.

Erin: How do these black voids relate to the title of the show, River únd bátur. There was something I read about you relating the title to the notion of sinking or swimming.

Davíð: That was something I mentioned in passing, almost as a joke, in the gallery. It was quite a dark joke. The story behind it is much more me giggling with myself, just me depicting laughing at my own jokes in the studio. I’m alone in this self-made world and I’m collecting tiny objects and symbols into titles that don’t explain anything really. They are things I think are supposed to go hand in hand, although it’s not obvious on the surface. I went to the theater and saw this play and the actress was supposed to say the name of the character and I just kept hearing River únd bátur. So I was giggling in the theater at this and it just stuck. I’ve been carrying this with me for some time.

Erin: I saw some of these black voids as acting like some kind of black hole, a gateway where you could fall into or keep paddling and swimming, or, in your case, painting. The void is a source that can consume everything if you’re not continuing your action to paint. Is that far off?

Davíð: Maybe they are there in that sense. I don’t know whether I should be afraid of it or what. There is a lot of meditation and this, of course, happens so many times that you connect things with just a fragment of an idea and you are trying to grasp a work but it comes to you fairly easy without pushing it. That happens a lot and why not embrace it instead of being shy to talk about it. Maybe it’s a coincidence but it doesn’t have to be a crazy coincidence if you have all the elements and it comes together at the end. I get a little bit lost inside the studio because I have paintings all around me and titles on the walls and all these colors that you can’t see through unless you take it out of this context and let it breathe a little bit in a gallery or another place. Absolutely, it happens a lot but that is also the reason for the title. There is a vague point to be made with connecting it together and then maybe everything else sees the connection when it is given space to breathe.

Erin: The ambiguous imagery challenges how the viewer approaches a painting and in how we process visual imagery. Is it all at once in a huge impression or in these minor details? Your work seems to contain both perceptions.

Photo: Daníel Magnússon

Davíð: I’m trying to confuse with information but not let it be uncomfortable. People tend to read and write a book left to right, jumping at one symbol and then going out from there. At first glance, it probably doesn’t seem palatable, but I want it to be. I want them to make sense but that is another conflict. There can be a sensory overload in an exhibition but when you take one out of the whole thing and then put it in your living room or isolate one then it is completely different to look at it. Maybe it stands better or is easier to view, but that is sort of the struggle and that is why I wanted to make this experiment with the way I hung them. I wanted it to be a like a salon style, close together in one amorphous form. I was thinking about the colors and how to connect them all but it was too difficult to do it salon style. I decided having them down the line would be better in this context.

I used to be such an arrogant little shit. I thought you could only show a painting once- that it could only be in an exhibition once. I adjusted this thought into making every exhibition into a different book instead. The context they are in is only limited and some of them may be shown together but it’s going to be completely different. I’m so non-scientific that it’s almost ridiculous to talk about. It’s all about my aesthetic, my intuition. As for the pictures themselves, I’ve often said that the right settings about figuration give you the feeling that something just happened or something is about to happen. It gives a bit of tension that lasts like someone is about to walk into the setting or just walked out of it. The thing is that there is a teasing element because all my life I’ve gotten responses from different people that always go “it reminds me of this…” or “it looks like this…” I guess people are just trying to observe things and know how the mind works. It’s such a childish thing to observe and to talk about. The response is always a simple yes because I can’t say no. This reminds me of a snake- sure! I can’t disagree.

There is also this ethnic trend people are always comparing my work with. I don’t argue with it. It’s interesting to hear two people approach the same painting and place it on very different sides of the world- someone is talking about South America and the other one is Africa. I’m really intrigued by Aboriginal or decorative work all over the world but I haven’t really studied it in a way that I would use it, although I love it. When I recognize it, I am very intrigued by it. I was reading about Aboriginal art in Australia and I was kind of let down because that had only started in the 1960’s as a social and political expression so I had this completely different thought about how that had been perceived. I know how they use it in their religion and everything, but not how these people used it in ritual. That aspect is just weird- to hold up just one thing as art that is leftover from the religion when you are actually ignoring the way of life. So I like this decorative comparison but there is no real foundation for it and it is not delivered intentionally from me.

Erin: I think the whole notion of something native is something that is coming from an inherent-ness that has not been influenced by a wider sphere but contained in its own world. Maybe you’re native- Davíð, native painter. That’s not what I was expecting to come out, but maybe it’s not so off. You’re native to yourself, a native westerner. You’re not appropriating anything.

Davíð: It’s definitely difficult to pinpoint one thing, like naming an artist or theory or movement. Get rid of that; I’m just a native.

Erin Honeycutt

Photos: Daníel Magnússon and Vigfús Birgisson (courtesy of Hverfisgalleri).
Featured image: Daníel Magnússon.

Alicja Kwade’s exhibition, ‘A Trillionth of a Second,’ is on display at i8 Gallery from June 22nd to August 12th, 2017.

In glass cases sit what appears to be vase-like structures of an undeterminable age, while the titles of the works suggest wholly different objects altogether. The vase titled Lampe, for example, is composed of ground lamp, epoxy resin, glass, and brass, likewise with Kaminuhr (Table Clock), Computer (PowerMac), and iPhone. Compass needles in A trillionth of a second (I) and clock arms in Ein Monat (November 2017) form wave compositions in flat wall pieces, while a third wall piece in the form of a found abacus, Linienland III, reminds the viewer of the basics. The wall pieces seemingly ground the material processes that have occurred within the objects in glass cases with their structured systems of measurement.

Alicja Kwade asks big questions about how language shapes perception and what the consequences are for visual proof of the existence of gravitational waves. I spoke with the artist in a winding conversation to try to get a better understanding of her inspiration and process.

Erin: When I first looked at your exhibition, I was reminded of the show in Vienna from a few years ago, ‘Rare Earth’ at Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21). The curators were exploring this idea that our technology is continuing geological processes happening inside the earth’s layers on the outside surface.

Alicja: Yeah, I missed the show but it would be very interesting for me. It’s actually what I play with because you have this geological layer that is used to place things in time. It’s not just time but it’s how we figure out about time, what it is, and where these measurements come from. In this case, it’s coming from all these elements and measurements of elements, which are in this planet, somewhat like a… bowl of elements.

So that is a good starting point to think about my work. But for me, is not just about time. I think people sometimes simplify my work a little and just think of this poetic use of time because it is understandable for everybody. For me, time is just one template, one thing we invented to create reality. I try more to question all facts of reality- what that could be, what it is, where it comes from, what language is also doing to that, what we name things. We feel things or experience things because we have names for them. I try to see all these facets about matter, and with matter, what reality is, and what we are to that, and what we are to matter as well.

Erin: And how our perception is really what shapes that…

Alicja: Yes, our perception is really very much ‘man is the center of the universe,’ but it is that way because we can’t do differently since we are the only recipients of our world. So even if we, with all the technology and knowledge, think we know more and more, it’s still from our point of view and therefore still very little.

Erin: Because all we know about the world comes from our senses or the extensions we make of them through instruments…

Alicja: Yes, and they are kind of primitive. Of course, we are able to over-jump our senses in a certain way because that’s the tragedy and the great thing about human beings, I think. But on the other hand, it’s still very limited. So it is still our imagination and our perception of our reality that is just based on us which is quite a simple thing and everybody knows that. However, to just question it with simple facts in daily life is quite interesting because we forget about that. We probably even question the biggest things but we forget that the table is probably not a table but a piece of wood- so it’s a tree, and the tree is a bunch of atoms and those atoms are coming from the universe, and so you know… All these layers.

Erin: It is so beautiful just to think in this way. It has a bit of this vanitas theme to it, like a still life, in a way.

Alicja: Yeah, that helps, but also they’re just objects. Vanitas is just a term, but of course, I crush these things to dust and I recreate other things and they are forms of time made of other forms. It’s time as a fact of just destroying the fact and then recreating a fact. I mean vanitas is not always just vanitas, because vanitas also means a new thing. It’s kind of just destructive and productive processes.

For me, the term time is so difficult because it’s something we have a very fixed imagination about what it could be. We don’t know… that’s the big problem, but we have something we feel. I mean we are getting older so we have a very personal relationship to time but I think there is a bigger thing. I think it’s something much bigger than this little slice that we can feel and try to experience and think about but for me, all the world’s reality is just like a ‘happening’ in time. It is just like an extended meeting of matter and not just an object but subjects also.

Erin: … just a coordinate on the space-time continuum.

Alicja: I love the idea also that matter is never getting lost- even each dramatic way in which every atom of your body will still be there even if you are not there anymore. It is like my objects, in a way- a permanent recycling of eternal recurrence. It’s the very beginning of whatever it was giving itself back to us.

Erin: You recreate the big bang on a small scale.

Alicja: Not really at the moment, but I try to think how it could have been, or what that is, and what the big bang created and what this matter is and how it is shaped and who is naming it, and who is doing something to it and why it is what it is.

Erin: These tools in the exhibition such as compass points and clock hands- they speak to me of direction.

Alicja: It’s both direction as well as a tool of measurement. It’s basically measuring things and what we do to this reality is try to measure things to cut it into slices to create this system out of it to build onto the system. We need the system, but those two works are very much connected. However, the clock arms are just a pattern that already exists. I just took the clock arms out from the position it usually is not shown in because it’s just the position of the clock- the letters we use to count and describe time. I just moved them, not only in positions seen from a zero point as in our clock but I also moved them so I created a measurement system with time. This pattern then appeared which I discovered by chance and loved very much because it both behaves like light waves in this waveform which is kind of the essence of the universe, right? And that is kind of appearing in what we invented, but probably didn’t, so… we don’t know really.

For me, it’s a measurement system, something you try to orient yourself to that points to our position that is placed on the very first image. It’s not an image but a first illustration we are having of our universe. In 2015, they proved that gravitational waves exist by making the first observation of them. That is the first thing we know about this universe and a thousand of these measurements are creating this movement so you can see through this illustration and it is through this calculation and this illustration that it was moving. It was expanding and I recreated exactly this movement of what they illustrate as the first image of the universe with these compass needles.

Erin: Isn’t it weird that it was only now that they discovered a visual for this?

Alicja: But it’s just so abstract, right? I also think it’s a strange thing that even in science we always have this deep wish to illustrate things. We have to illustrate the image to create an image of what it could be so we always try to create pictures and that is for me, a very emotional picture because we don’t know exactly. But definitely it is existing and we can measure it and it’s very close together with the object pieces because that is the first idea of matter. Something started, like gravity started and then measuring appeared in space; that is kind of the breeze of creation.

Erin: Do you think about using the other senses to perceive time? The way that we measure the world, like the ways that you have shown, are all so visual. Do you ever think about other senses?

Alicja: I use quite a lot of sound elements also. Of course, I still think that we are very much visual. It’s probably our most important sense. It’s a very visual thing, science, so for me, it’s the most direct thing to use. But it’s of course not the only thing and, of course, I’m interested in other things. You know the first sound of the universe they discovered in 1974, all this background noise. I did a lot of pieces where I tried to catch the sound of energy; the sound of light, which is not light. You don’t catch the sound of light, but you can catch the vibration of the waves. I also try to use that. Also, very simply I sometimes try to include just counting sound in my exhibitions, which is not necessarily a clock like we think of a clock ticking. It’s something further that goes counting and that is creating a very emotional kind of feeling because it is like reacting.

Erin: Someone earlier was telling me about your exhibition at Whitechapel and how you have a mobile of mobile phones. I feel like you’re really good at just pulling from everyday life and then pulling at these huge questions and making them very palatable.

Alicja: It’s true, but it’s just things I’m using. I was always using lamps and clocks in my previous work and at some point, I started to destroy them and then with the phones it’s kind of the same habit. Then, I started using this app called SkyGuide where you use GPS systems to map the stars. When I think about that for a moment it’s kind of crazy- I mean Swedish satellites point you out and they create a picture and you are having that in your hand, in your palm, but that‘s a picture made by so many pictures from so many satellites. But then these things are not existing anymore and we just create a picture again and we try to figure out our position towards this picture and so it’s just things that are confusing, yet normal. When you think about these satellites that take care to correct your measurements towards because time is expanding so when you think about all this… everything gets really crazy.

Erin: Have you ever read about ‘Deep Time’? It is mostly used in geological terms, as in the deep time of the earth- putting things that are happening on the earth on the largest scale possible and just considering things from that point of view.

Alicja: That is a little bit of what I try to do with these objects. They’re coming from a much older stretch of what we have, which is elements.

 Erin: Do you find it important that our sense of linear time is distorted?

Alicja: I don’t believe in linear time at all. I think it’s still a very human thing to try to get a system out of that- to divide it with poise and distance and make it livable. We are animals, so we need a system, something to be able to connect with each other and to make things happen. Of course, I think it’s interesting because it’s such a deep, philosophical question. I mean that is a question like ‘Is reality existing at all?’ or ‘Do systems really exist?’ These are questions that really drive me because I don’t know and we don’t know, but I’m very interested because that is the biggest question of our existence: how and why.

Erin: Any last words on the exhibition?

Alicja: To kind of sum it up, for me, it’s something else about language, which is not visible so much in the first moment. You see this object and it’s obviously a vase but it is called lamp. It’s kind of a Magritte thing, a trick, let’s say. It’s very much about that because language is so deep in our sense of reality also, so it creates strange shifts. But it is still a lamp, but can it also be a vase? It’s a simple thing- very relatable. The exhibition has so much to do for me with language and the expression of things.

There’s this whole theory that is deeply true that is that we don’t even develop feelings that we don’t have the term for. I had a funny experience when I was a kid when we went from Poland to Germany. I went with the German kids to a camp and they were super sad and saying they were homesick in German. We don’t have this term in Polish; it’s just simply not existing. I was not understanding what was wrong with them. It was a totally foreign feeling to me. So when you don’t have the term for it, you kind of just don’t have it at all because we create our world around these expressions.

Erin: It’s like, you know what you know, but you don’t know what you don’t know.

Alicja: And you can’t feel what you can’t express- what you can’t tell somebody about.

Erin Honeycutt

Photographs: artzine