[June 14th 2003]
Interviews

Puzzle Parade: Nils Erik Gjerdevik, Malene Bach, Bodil Nielsen, Milena Bonifacini, Malene Landgren and a couple of kids we don’t know the names of.

Group Dynamic and Mural Painting
At this moment, five Danish artists are in the process of creating a gigantic mural that will cover all the walls of the White Box gallery in New York. The artists are Malene Bach (Mba), Milena Bonifacini (Mbo), Nils Erik Gjerdevik (NEG), Malene Landgreen (ML) and Bodil Nielsen (BN). All five work with formal painting and all are interested in their own way with investigating the properties and possibilities of painting. The New York gallery is very raw with uneven lines and odd angles; protruding brickwork and plywood planks mark the walls. For this project, the relationship between painting and sculpture will come into focus. The five artists haven’t made sketches of what they were going to attempt, and have no idea of what the final product will be. While working together, they’ve discussed various strategies for their collaboration, and have decided to give themselves free hands to do what they want. Kopenhagen visited them in Copenhagen where they were creating a test piece at Gammel Dok for a conversation about process and group dynamic after two days with five paintbrushes and one wall. The New York mural painting commenced on May 26, and was opened on May 29. For each of the days the work was in creation, images were recorded for this website. Interview: Pernille Albrethsen. Photo: Laura Stamer. Translation: David Duchin.

Puzzle Parade
Malene Bach, Milena Bonifacini, Nils Erik Gjerdevik, Malene Landgreen, Bodil Nielsen
29 May – 28 June
White Box
525 W 26th Street
New York
www.whiteboxny.org
Curator: Maria Gadegaard.

Bodil Nielsen, Pernille Albretsen, Nils Erik Gjerdevik, Malene Bach, Malene Landgren and Milena Bonifacini at Gammel Dok.

How do you prepare for making a collaborative mural?
ML: We talked so much about this project, and agreed that there are limits to how far we can go with words. We just have to do it, because that’s the only way we can end up with something visual and functional. So, we started with a mock-up of the gallery and experimented with coloured cardboard and paper. We each had our own ideas of how we wanted to approach the product, and we presented examples. After that we had free hands to do what we wanted. We talked, pasted, sat around and discussed. We agreed that we could create a work structure, but only for the sake of breaking it down again. It’s more about crossing into each other’s territories in order to create a truly collaborative artwork.

What about the mural you’ve created here today – what was your approach? Did you make a system first – did one person paint with the red brush and another with the green?
ML: No, we didn’t have any system. We just started at the same time. Because even though we didn’t know what it would look like when we were finished, we knew that something interesting would happen in the collision of the different disciplines. So when Nils Erik started making a checked semi circle, he’s more or less inviting us to enter into a dialogue with him.

Puzzle Parade

But it can’t do you any good if you all storm the wall at the same time and each do your own piece?
ML: No, it’s very important that the work is done in a different way – into the surface. That way there is a background, and things created on top of it, and that background at first would seem more gesticulated than articulated. You can’t avoid working in opposition to each other. But luckily that’s something that all of us have experience with, and because of that we won’t end up colliding on the surface.

Is that because you work in similar ways regarding your relationship with figure and composition?
ML: We talked about that today, about how we’re often grouped together – like a kind of movement in Danish painting. And that irritates us, even though we do have similar interests. We feel like we can move freely with this kind of project, but we have one fundamental thing in common and that is that we know something about how colours work together.

Puzzle Parade

Your individual effort is visible in the mural. Was that the point – that each of you should have a distinct voice in the painting?
ML: No, not the point – more as an assumption. It’s fun that we all have distinct styles which each have something to offer. While at the same time we can be open and relate to each other and to the architecture of the space.
MBo: There’s been a little talk along the lines of ‘no, that colour is a little too strong’ or ‘maybe something should be happening over here – and over here it should be a little more airy’. We’ve discussed things a bit. And we’ve tried to be democratic and say things like ‘have you tried painting over here?’ I could easily have spread out, but we’re trying to make sure that everyone is equally involved. You asked before whether there was anything we had in common. In one way or another, everything is there on the surface – and there aren’t any figurative elements anywhere.
I think that we all used our own style, but we also tried to use our intuitive side and compliment each other at the same time. We couldn’t avoid trying to create some kind of harmony – but we try to keep it from being too much, or too nice.

You’re all used to painting alone in your studios. There must be something a little special about this group method?
MBo: There is. It’s a bit of a social experiment.
NEG: But it’s been fun and problem free. We get a feeling for each others methods, and for how the painting functions – structure, texture and transparency – all these things that you always have in your head but which we all expressed in our own way. Malene Landgreen’s long stripes for example, they’re painted with a roller. They become transparent and have a completely different, watercolour-like surface, as opposed to Malene Bach’s large green felt, which is about a form of insistence and massiveness. It’s been painted over many times and has a whole different solidity. These are examples of transitory and weighty insistence. That kind of opposition is very interesting.

Puzzle Parade

What about the group dynamic? Often in group work there’s one person that takes over and heads the charge. Some think that it’s actually important that that happens, otherwise chaos enters the work.
BN: There hasn’t been one specific person that’s taken over yet, but maybe when we get to New York and it all gets serious… Up till now it’s been surprisingly easy.
MBo: But to go back to the question about how we worked out our relationship to each others autonomy in this group work – we haven’t decided to avoid any of our individual tendencies in order to be more of a unit. I don’t think anyone has been interested in that. We could have done that, but then we would have been tying our hands and following a specific strategy. I think that would be boring.
MBa: When we started it was actually total anarchy – we just started. After a while it started to collect itself. When we’d all made some definite figures we were able to start working on the things that would bind the different pieces together.

Puzzle Parade

But you all have experience with painting and different ideas of how things should be bound together, and when?
BN: Actually, we’re pretty much in agreement about that.
MBo: Most of the time one of us suggests a point where we can tie things together, or tighten up the composition – and the rest of us had been thinking the same thing.
BN: But it’s also because a kind of built in logic emerged, and we let it work. So we reacted to things with more or less the same solutions.

If you were to, for example, compare Malene Landgreens more airy and transparent expression with Nils Erik Gjerdevik’s more compressed style – you might think that these things were difficult to combine. It doesn’t seem very logical that you had the same ideas about how to approach the work.
BN: I think you can have more than one language of expression in you. You choose the one that seems closest to you – but you understand completely the others and you accept them. That’s why we chose to work together. We accept and admire each other’s language.
MBa: And we’re always open to whatever way one of us wants to play it – especially regarding being able to let go of our own ideas of how things are done. We’re not strict.
BN: It’s actually been great. There’s a good atmosphere and you feel like trying different things. It’s an experiment, and it’s open.
MBa: It’s a dialogue – where you have to be able to see your own plans in relation to what’s being put on the wall. I think that’s why it works. It’s because we don’t kill. Everything was allowed to live in relationship to the other elements of the mural. And that’s what can be difficult about these group paintings – they get clumped together because people are always trying to break each other’s work down. Maybe people are afraid to give each other space, I don’t know… But here we’re all involved together.
MBo: That actually reminds me of when I was at the Academy and we had to make a huge group painting with Svend Wiig Hansen. He came and he was a real dynamo, and that was great. But what happened was that everyone started painting on top of each other and the whole thing turned in to a thick brown soup. It was awful, because it was ‘overkill’. This was a good example of artists not respecting each other and making room for each other.

Puzzle Parade

Have you found things that just didn’t work? That Milena just couldn’t approach Bodil’s brush or something like that?
ML: No – and even though it’s not a principle of the work, we have a feeling that the work is so open, that all our individual work combines well with each other. But as you can see here we had a group decision that some black and white Nils Erik stripes should be behind this. So, in that way there is a little strategy. We all had imagined a Nils Erik stripe there.
BN: I don’t really think of what we’re doing as something made by many different artists – I think of it as a group effort. For example I painted an area where I actually tried to paint just like the others (she laughs). That’s also a tactic. I think that I try to live in the situation. I painted the red area in the right corner in a way that could have been any of us. So I think that what I create here is a group expression. But I did contribute my balloon flowers where I could see that they would function. That’s the way I do it, I think.

How do you ensure that it doesn’t turn into a politically correct catalogue of each individual artist’s style and expression?
MBo: It’s all about letting go of your own plans and patterns.
BN: Yes, and at the same time retaining them. Because some of the things Malene Bach is interested in, for example how you create space on the surface, expands the room in a beautiful way. Luckily this is something that interests all of us. So we just have to be even more precise with our work than usual, and develop new ways of doing things. I think that you can hold on to your own intentions at the same time as working in the group dynamic.
MBa: But I can also see that in relation to what I usually make, there are some things that I just couldn’t do here. That’s because someone else was doing it. Spreading yourself across the surface like Milena does – I don’t do that here. Milena takes care of that part of the image. So instead I do something like a bass rhythm – create a kind of spaciousness that stretches all the way through the mural to create a feeling of horizon. So I create a dominant structure.

Puzzle Parade

What are your expectations of the New York mural?
NEG: What we’ve made here has nothing to do with installation – it’s a painting. When we start painting at the White Box there will be a lot of noise in the space – so many crooked forms and eroded bricks that have been painted over many times, and in some places with plywood on top. It looks pretty awful. There it will begin to be about architecture much more than here where it’s an illustration of spaciousness. It will be very physical there – so in this way it’s an exercise that’s about something social.
And if the mural is looked at as various representations of rustic, then Milena’s work with organic flow and drawing will seem rustic. As will mine. My work is a little clumsy and clumpy, spreading out over itself, lines made without a ruler. It works fine with the more precise contributions to the piece. It’s something that can probably be analysed, but standing in front of it, it seems to be a form of excitement.