Jonas Ohlsson “Let’s gangbang death!”

Jonas Ohlsson
“Let’s gangbang death!”
By Pleunie Franke and her colleague (FW)
Jonas Ohlsson is a visual artist, musician, DJ (as Blodfet and DJ Lonely), party organiser,
teacher and all-round renaissance man. We meet Jonas bright and early on a Monday
morning at his two-floor, bright and tidy studio and apartment (including roof terrace!) in the
Amsterdam Bijlmer. We also meet his girlfriend Ilga Minjon who’s an art historian and critic.
Currently she works at IMPAKT festival. Jonas and Ilga just got back from ‘Future Everything’
in Manchester.
The Bijlmer, a Modernist attempt at new city building in Amsterdam’s south east, was in the
eighties a no-go area of junkies, crime and desolation, but has seen a steady effort by the
municipality to make it into something. Some of the huge flats have been torn down, others
renovated, new shops are opening, yuppies are moving in, the plinth of Jonas’ flat has been
turned into artists’ studios (check out Stichting FLAT). Still, the Bijlmer doesn’t exactly
scream ‘contemporary art scene’. People still like to pile their trash on the street and it’s all a
bit grim-looking. The Bijlmer is exactly where Jonas wants to be and he’s been here since
2003.
Jonas is a big, tall, bearded man who wears his hair in dreads. He is friendly, earnest and
soft spoken, and obligingly poses for pictures in front of a graffiti-style wall painting that says
‘FUCK’, the name of the artist collective he’s a member of. We speak in Dutch, despite
having promised ourselves before coming that we’d do the interview in English. Jonas and
Ilga serve chocolate cookies and coffee and we sit down to talk.
Art is a license to experiment with your own life
Jonas was born in 1967 in the Swedish town of Örebro. Jonas: “I would always be drawing as
a kid… My mother wanted to become an artist, but she couldn’t, because she had me and
my brother. She encouraged me. Later all I wanted to do was travel. I’d work six months, then
travel for eight. I’d work everywhere – at McDonalds, the gas station, whatever. The job that
impressed me most however was working in a centre for (very) autistic people. We tried to
make sure their lives were as normal as possible – we had some great days but the next day
might be a total disaster with panic and aggression. It was a really tough job, but also fun.
And I’m a big guy, that helps physically. Nobody lasted very long in that job so I could always
come back after traveling; I came back for nine years.”
And then there was art. “After a while this life became kind of empty. When I was 24 I
applied to the Stockholm academy. It’s different from academies here, for one it’s very
difficult to get in. First you do two preparatory years, then you are admitted. You get a
working stipend and a studio. At 28 or 29 I came to Amsterdam to go to the Rietveld. I’d been
to Amsterdam before, travelling. I wanted to surround myself with art, I had to, to be a good
artist. There isn’t enough to see in Sweden. I ended up being a bit older than my classmates,
but that was okay: I knew what I wanted, I had experienced something, I had something to
say. That’s also something I say to my students now: live a little! Take drugs, have weird sex,
go to strange festivals. I like what one of my teachers once said: ‘art is a license to
experiment with your own life’.”
“My grandfather was a fantastic storyteller. I wanted to be able to do that as well. But
somehow, when I had experienced something, I could never make it into a good or funny
story. It was always like “well, ahum, this thing happened”, people wouldn’t be entertained. I
admired the beat poets: Kerouac, Burroughs… I thought I’d live, travel, have adventures and
the writing (that’s what I thought then) would come by itself. But it’s not like that: you also
have to communicate and tell a story. I’m glad I figured that out pretty quickly.”
“After the Rietveld I studied at the Sandberg Institute. At that time it was all about video,
which is not something I did at all. But it was a pleasantly anarchistic place. Kind a third way,
next to the Rijksacademie with a lot of commercial pressure and the closed and protective
environment of the Ateliers. I made a lot of contacts at the Sandberg. And after, of course, I

had to draw my own conclusions. I said yes to every invitation, I think I did a hundred shows
in The Netherlands by now, maybe more, I also did a lot of residencies.”
I’m actually really serious
“I’m a real omnivore!” Jonas says. He grabs an armful of books from the shelves: Paul Thek,
Dieter Roth, Jason Rhoades, Mike Kelley, Øyvind Fahlström. We talk about Erik van Lieshout.
“He’s an old friend and personal hero. First, he was very political, but now he’s more
personal. I really appreciate that development. Jonathan Meese for instance – that’s too
obvious, too noisy.” And then there’s the Tom of Finland book. “I love those shiny nipples!”
Jonas points out. “I used them in my drawings. I love what this guy said about his work:
‘When I’m drawing, I know it’s good when I’ve got a hard-on!’”
We get to see a drawing featuring figures with, indeed, very shiny nipples and also bodysized
hard-ons that penetrate a skull’s empty eye sockets. The drawing started with anger
about the death of a loved one. “Let’s gangbang death!” he exclaims. When he says it, it
doesn’t sound like an adolescent joke but as if he wants to indicate some kind of lifeaffirming
energy.
“My work sometimes looks quickly done, but it isn’t. I go back and forth and work on it a lot. I
add layers and layers. And it takes a few months to figure out if something is good or not. You
know it’s good if after that time it’s still dynamic, not stuck, when it remains open. This
drawing for instance [shows us one]: it’s just a sum of elements. The message is too clear, I
understand everything in it, it’s boring. A good work shouldn’t be too finished – it is made
together with the public. They finish it in their minds.”
“I’ve been making a lot of music and radio recently. Last year I made a series for ‘De Stem
van West’ in Utrecht [a part of which we listen to during the interview, you can find it online].
It’s about the neighbourhood, about developments there. It’s kind of a ‘stream of
consciousness’, in which I’m deconstructing language and sound and constructing a new
language from the fragments. I like to lose myself in that process.”
“I like a kind of art that comes in many different forms, that doesn’t use a single ‘trick’ over
and over. That’s a kind of cheating, and not honest towards creativity. That’s not how
creativity works, not for me anyway. But sometimes I do wonder how all my work fits together.
Performances, sculpture, music, singing and mixing, texts, talking, drawing… And then
sometimes, it does all come together. I did this performance recently at Garage in Rotterdam
where that happened. When you do all these things at the same time, you can get lost, but
when it works out it’s really worth it. I can’t choose, I don’t want to choose. I don’t have the
patience for just one thing. Also, it’s not something I believe in. Creativity is restless too.”
“Minimal art used to make me so angry, it’s so ugly to me. But that anger also showed me
that I care about art, you know. And where is the humour in minimal art? Why does
everything have to be reduced to a so called essence? My work is about blood, sex and
love... What gets me about minimal art, is the presentation, in business districts or fancy
offices. That’s not how it was intended, it was supposed to be for the people. In Sweden
there’s this thing, Functionalism, it was called funkis. It’s top down planning, like, ‘we know
what you need’. That bothers me so much, and I don’t think people will accept it. Look at this
area here, the Bijlmer, and these other big projects that fail and waste millions. Still though,
modernism had an ideal. It fits my work better than the irony or cynicism of post-modernism.”
Jonas has a theory about creating art. “There are two ways. One way is, you start with a
feeling or story you want to pass on. For instance, I made a song about cycling a different
route to my work every day, a kind of everyday rebellion against boredom. It was a bit of an
underground hit in Sweden. Sometimes I knew exactly what to say. I would make exhibitions
about the Iraq war. Or my mother dying. I’d be angry. And then the other way is the opposite.
You start drawing, just from scratch, a line becomes a tree, a figure. You’re fantasising. You
start with something, but then the initial idea disappears, you listen to the material. It’s an
approach that’s about process and experiment, more than about having a goal. My best
drawings actually have a bit of both methods.”
“Art is not just fun, it’s a struggle sometimes. I’ve got periods when I’m kind of blocked. I
read a lot then. Next summer I have a big solo show in Diepenheim, and pretty soon a show
in Stockholm. I really have to start working, and these deadlines do help. When I was
younger, making was pretty care-free. Just make, make, make… This Cobra idea of naivety,
and the child-like state, you know… By now I guess I’ve lost my innocence. Back then it was
easy to find something to rebel against, an enemy. I was angry: about war, about Palestine.

But you will find out that reality is much more complex, everything becomes more
complicated when you’re no longer 20. It’s less easy to make a statement. I guess I’ve
become more humble. And, just being angry is also boring art… I used to make art for the
public, trying to convince or to change them. Nowadays, it’s more about talking to myself, in
a way.”
“I don’t know if art changes the world or is important to do, I’ve thought about that, and other
artists have. Right now I think ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’ – so yes, I do think it is
important. I’m actually really serious, and a lot of people seem to miss that. There is a lot of
humour in my work. That sometimes confuses people; they think I’m just making jokes or
playing around. But humour is not just for easy laughs.”
Ilga: “It’s like this: ‘Not all fun is frivolous.’” Jonas: “Yes! Hans Teeuwen [comedian], for
instance, says something like “Art has to disturb, it has to disorganize.” His humour is not
just fun, it points to real things and it tries to make people think. I really believe in his
statement.”
I take art way too seriously to be nice
Jonas teaches fulltime students in the fine art department at KABK. He also teaches in the
part-time program at Rietveld (Dogtime). We make the observation that he’s something of a
‘missionary of art’.
Jonas: “For sure. I think that if you go to an art academy, that already shows you have a
need to talk about big things. And I take teaching very, very seriously. In my work my ego is
present, but as a teacher I’m not like that at all. ‘Teaching is love’, says [Dutch author] Arnon
Grunberg. I agree with that.”
How do you teach art? “Well, it’s a lot of listening, some talking… You need to find out what
moves your students, what interests them. I want to take their love of art seriously. I was very
tough on three of my students the other day, and you know, it was totally justified. They didn’t
do what they said they would do, didn’t work hard enough, they’d been lazy. That’s something
I’m learning to be tougher about, when they’re just giving me words, just thin air with no
substance. And I get angry then, because I’ve worked really hard myself to understand art, to
see it, to learn it. I don’t have patience for slacking, I take art way too seriously to be nice if
you don’t give it your all.”
For a few years now, Jonas has given a motivational speech during the academy-wide week
for propaedeutic students. “An assignment that I like to give to first year students or to get
people going is to make a drawing that you’re ashamed of. Not everyone can do that straight
away, but then some people start sharing, and then others join… That assignment gets
people connected to a real feeling.”
“Art has a built-in tolerance. You can’t stick to your own ideas about the world. It challenges
you to look fresh, to look again. That’s also what teaching is about... You have to look, to
learn. To be challenged means you don’t understand something yet. In retrospect, some of
the art that impressed me most was art that at first I didn’t understand, or that angered me.
To look at art and to really get it, is a continuous learning process.
Looking is also a skill that you have to learn and that you get better at, the more art you see.
It’s criminal to live in Europe and not use all these opportunities! If I go to places like Brazil,
people want to make art so badly, but they can’t see all of this stuff. So you have to go! If you
love art, you have a responsibility to go see it all. Otherwise I can’t take your love seriously.
That’s the harshest critique I can give someone, that they’re not serious.”
“Art school is such a valuable period. Never again will you have such an environment, where
10, 20 interested people work with you and critique you every day. People that you wouldn’t
have met otherwise, would never seek out, who aren’t like you. You’ll have a really hard time
finding 20 people to come look at your work once you’ve finished school! And that also
means you have to keep going. Make, make and make. You can think later. If you’re stuck,
just sit down, do 50 drawings in a day, it can be done.”
“I used to have a love-hate relationship with art school. Do I really have to go, play by the
rules? I had friends back then, everyone was making art, and I had to explain myself to them:
why did I need to go to school to make art? If I look back now though, they’re still making
that same stuff they were making back then. You have to keep learning. And I couldn’t have
done that without art academies. It’s made me humble.”

“That idea of anarchy as being against everything – it’s a caricature, a punk cliché. You have
to take responsibility. I have discussions about that with some of my students, too. And
especially the ones who were like me back then, now living in squats, wearing doc martins,
questioning the value of art school… I tell them to take it seriously. Art is my life. It’s great
fun, but it’s also very important.”
* Note
A big thank you to Jonas and Ilga for their hospitality and energy.
You can find some of Jonas’ inspirational notes to students at 1000things.org
Jonas doesn’t have a website but he uses his Facebook as a kind of public blog.