M - Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

Which brings me back to what originally
attracted me to your art, which is this series of
paintings originally executed in Iceland.
The preliminary sketch-work and photography together
with all kinds of research connected to this landscape
was done in Iceland.
These works are very abstract but hinge on
representation as well. Their close-up details look
very abstract.
The closer you get to nature the more abstract it
becomes.
Are these very arid and barren landscapes
futurist or realist?
I see them as realist. The title of the exhibition was Rift.
Rift refers to a Rifting Zone, a geological term for a zone
where the landscape is breaking apart. In this case the
Rifting Zone goes from the southwest to the northeast
of Iceland and there is no sign of cultivation in this
specific area. It is a violent rough terrain, and it is reactive.
Quite volatile and animated as a landscape.
Physically it’s quite a dangerous place. It is very
humanized in the way it's shaped and it contains a
mysterious world of nature because it reflects our origin,
and nature is something we never will fully understand.
What do you think of this notion that nature is
something we have to save, that it is fragile, that
it cannot adapt, and that humans are destroying
nature. In a way doesn't nature adapt to
anything, because in fact everything is nature?
Given the state of the planet today it is obvious that
Western culture has failed in administering nature’s given
resources. Otherwise we would not have an
environmental problem. By saving nature we save
ourselves, and it may be that Western culture should
have a more open mind to other cultures for both
questions and answers. I believe there is no culture that
today can claim to have the answers for what we might
need in the future, which means that we have no
knowledge to lose.
In some of these paintings, there are these
beautiful patterns, nature in microcosm.
The paintings you refer to I consider as close ups and tell
how nature is built. You can say they describe the flow
or movement in nature. In nature everything is changing
while culture is preserving, which may be one of the
largest contradictions between culture and nature.
How do you perceive that contradiction?
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You can easily say that it is impossible to make art into
nature.
I think also there is this idea that nature is
almost an existential state for humans. Humans
who have a Romantic view of nature haven't
been in nature often, because wilderness is quite
exhausting and unforgiving.
I do not find nature romantic. A romantic approach to
nature represents a distanced view of nature.
After a few days in nature you will be obliged to
deal with that...! I am fascinated with the way
you work as an artist. You have made individual
choices as to how you exhibit your works and
where, and what subjects you choose to make
your art out of, and how you choose to make a
program for your art. The typical artist simply
stumbles along, makes the art, and then wonders
what to do next. Where do I find the show and
so on. You approach is quite unusual because not
only have you not been worried about the big
markets, but you have oriented your works
around the circumpolar countries and regions.
And there are similarities between these cultures:
the Inuit, the Saami and northern peoples - not
only climactic and geographic, but as it pertains
to bio-regional culture. It is an interesting way to
go about it.
I perceive a social role for art. That means, as an
example, I went to Devon Island to do some sketching
and photography as a background before different land
interpretations. As I remember from the Greenland
journey in 1982 it is very difficult to be in the Arctic
without being somehow socially or environmentally
involved. Because of this, the attention was pointed away
from Devon and directed towards Resolute / Qausuittuq
and the community there. Different landscapes created
different possibilities from resources and climate, which
then again created different cultures. This is important.
Out of diversity something develops, not out of similarity.
Doing research on these issues uncovers new
possibilities and there is knowledge of the land, of wayfinding,
of survival and it takes more than a lifetime to
understand if ever.
A great problem now is that as diversity is
reduced in a global culture, we are not
challenged by variation, by readability of specific
of culture, by memory of place, by questions of
identification with place. As a result we are
missing something.
In Western culture we live in a self-referring culture and
of course contemporary art will reflect this issue. The
scientists say that in the next 10 to 20 years we will
loose 2500 smaller languages. It may be possible to look
at the growing gap between Inuit and the land and the