Last month, Norwegian artist Margrethe Aanestad spoke with fellow artist Franklin Evans about his artistic practice and an upcoming exhibition he is organizing for the Prosjektrom Normanns in Stavanger.
Below, Aanestad talks with Evans about his past projects, current work, and plans for coming to Stavanger. Two parallel shows! We also talked a bit about your practice in general and about your exhibition at Prosjektrom Normanns next year. To being, can you tell us a little bit about your work β your references to painting and art history, the artist's studio, the materials you use What is it about this material that inspires you? I expose many of the conceptual and material processes in creating paintings as objects.
I use both the objects and the explorations as collages in space, which become experiential environments for the viewer. The exposing of my thinking in the installations unveils my interests biography, time, culture, contemporary art and art history. Much of my work is driven by an obsession that I have not clearly defined, and frequently it has a link to past art. For example, I have used lots of tape in my installations.
I had initially used tape as a painting tool to create crisp edges. The residue of paint on the tape interested me and became one of the elements around the studio I would observe to paint into the paintings. These relationship offered paths that could expand in my studio as I engage in a cross-temporal relationship of Mondrian and Newman to my New York studio. Paint interests me, and material tape, transparency, etc.
I was so amazed by it. And also your show at Ameringer McEnery Yohe this summer; it was huge and overwhelming. How do you approach such an expansive space and develop the structures within it?
