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[2. marts 2004]
Interview
Tumi Magnússon i Paintbox
Interview med Tumi Magnússon
PAINTBOX extensions slog i fredags dørene
op til forårets 2. udstilling. Denne gang den islandske kunstner
Tumi Magnússon (f. 1957) hvis store fotostater har
indtaget lokalerne i Vognmagergade. Det var kun de allersidste finjusteringer
der manglede, da kopenhagen i fredags var forbi nogle få timer
inden ferniseringen, og derfor tog Tumi Magnússon sig tid
til en længere snak om kunst, repræsentation og virkelighed.
Store temaer der på forskellig vis slåes an i Tumi Magnússons
værker uden at give simple svar, men derimod inspirerer ved
at opstille paradokser og stille nye spørgsmål. Interview
og foto: Nina Poulsen
Tumi Magnússon
7. februar – 28. februar 2004
PAINTBOX extensions
Vognmagergade 2
1120 København K
www.paintbox.dk
Åbningstider:
Onsdag - fredag 12-17
Lørdag 12-15
Pressemeddelelse...
 
Tumi Magnússon: uden titel
Can you tell me something about the works - your exhibition
- here in Paintbox extensions?
The pictures we see here are photographs of a pencil and a pen.
I scanned them into the computer to be able to fit them to a certain
space. I enlarged the pencil so that it's now 5 meters high and
11.5 meters wide. That simple act transform the image so it becomes
difficult to recognize, and abstract in appearance. But it's still
a pencil, as you perhaps can see. The other one is a pen which is
simply enlarged to fit the screen of the television, or in this
case the projector, and then it runs through so that most of the
time you only see an almost monotone green painting. Then suddenly
you will see the end of the pen running through the screen, and
only then you realize that it's a pen. The objects that I’ve
chosen are ordinary objects that you use every day, and I’ve
transformed them and made them more or less into a colour field
painting. None of them is of course a painting, not in the sense
of using a brush but I think they are probably still in the painting
tradition.
What is the underlying concept of these "paintings"?
It's not so easy to say what I want to express with the painting
because it's not about saying one thing. I think there are so many
layers, so many aspects. For me, it's a part of what I have been
doing for the last 10 years or so. I began with painting the colours
of objects or materials. I think it’s got something to do
with not believing in that an object is an end, a complete form.
It's just that you have this material that it's made of, and for
a while it takes the form of this mixture or this object. But it's
just temporary and it can transform. In fact you can look at it
as fluid, but for a while it has this solid form. It can also spread
all over and be everywhere. Also you and me, we are just in this
form for a while
With this pencil, for instance, I ask myself, couldn’t it
just as well look like the wall. I guess I like to see how far you
can stretch an object, or a concept for that matter, and still keep
some of it’s identity. How solid is our world, can we really
take it for granted.
Tumi Magnússon: uden titel
But then at the same time you choose to express this point
- that everything is liquid or fluid - in a very static form. I
mean, other media are probably more fluent or at least moving, but
you have chosen a static form to express the idea about the fluidity
of all things...isn’t that a paradox?
Yes, of course it's a paradox. My work is full of paradoxes. I like
that. I believe in paradoxes. You can always say that the opposite
is also true.
But there is also another thing which is important here. I change
the form of the object in order to fit it into a certain space,
like a room for instance. That means the object takes the form of
a part of the room, so the space clearly affects it, but at the
same time the object also affects the space. Your experience of
the room totally changes. It can even make you dizzy. It is the
merging of the space and the object. Before I’ve always been
making the objects totally square so they totally fit the wall.
But in this case I’ve stretched them only one way. You are
more likely to see the form of a pencil. I stretch it only on the
width. I was interested to see what it would do to the perspective.
And it worked as I hoped. If you stand right in front of it, it
is huge and overwhelming, but if you walk to the side of it, the
perspective changes and it becomes more like a pencil. It changes
all the time when you walk around. The video is not static of course.
It's running through the whole time, only you don’t notice
it so easily except every three minutes when the ends run through.
Your work is printed on adhesive paper and put directly on the
wall. After 3 weeks you will pull it down and destroy it. So what
if you would like to show it somewhere else?
After the show the work only exists in the computer and if I want
to show it in another space it definitely wont have exactly the
same shape. It's made for this gallery because I thought it would
work very well on this big wall, but I can also install it in a
different way. I can install it on an even longer wall or into a
corner or something like that. It's definitely not going to look
exactly like this anywhere else and that's just the nature of the
work. It has a certain form in one space and it looks totally different
in another space. I like that.
I remember a quote from William Blake saying that ”we
are led to believe a lie, when we see not through the eye”,
meaning that we see with our minds and our knowledge and that's
what meet our eyes. I think that's an issue here as well...?
It is, yes. Things are not necessarily as you imagine in the beginning
or as you get use to seeing them.
When I was working on the colour paintings, the titles were very
important, because they were the names of the materials the colours
come from. When people came into the gallery they didn’t see
the titles right away, but walked around and experienced them as
abstract paintings. Then they came to the titles which were installed
all in one place and they would see what these colours come from.
They would therefore have to do another round and see them in a
different way. Two totally different ways of experiencing the paintings.
This could very well be scientific discussions. You touch upon
some very theoretical questions. But dealing with these questions
through art, you don’t have to come up with argumentations
or explanations, and much less end up with an answer. Do you consider
your work or your way of working scientific somehow?
Not at all. For me, what I like to do is rather to inspire people
to continue and make them curious. I go in a certain direction where
my thoughts and feelings are leading me, which I enjoy very much,
and I hope to inspire people to continue. My works are not an end
or an answer. Maybe you can consider it an answer in some way, but
not a final one, and I am not sure if there are any final answers
anyway.
If you would like, somehow scientifically, to represent something,
lets just say a simple object like a pencil. Then the connection
between the real object and the representation should be, of course,
as strong as possible. I think that through your work you do somehow
the opposite. You represent an object, but you do it in a way that
draws attention to the fact that this is not a one to one representation.
Maybe you could say something about your thoughts about art, reality
and representation.
When I am working with objects and their photographs , you always
come to the statement of Magritte ”this is not a pipe”.
That is an important work and I am very much aware of that but I
am not working with it. I choose to look at this as a representation
of an object but at the same time it’s something else. Of
course this is not a pencil but it refers to it and I can use it.
I prefer that you can see it as a pencil but also as something else.
As a wall for instance, or a moving abstract painting. In fact I
use only one aspect of a real pencil, it’s visual appearance
from one side, without smell, texture or weight, and I transfer
that to other things, for instance to walls, and give them some
of the aspects of a pencil.
When you talk about science you are perhaps referring to the logical
and experimental way I work. There is always logic in my work in
some way but it's kind of different from the everyday logic. I can
make the rules. And I make new rules for each exhibition. They are
not final. There is always, of course, a certain base which is simply
my attitude to life, I suppose
For me, the fantasy in using this kind of material is as real as
the pencil I hold here in my hand. And now that I have made it,
and it's here, it’s a part of the world, a part of the universe.
Is there a particular reason why you have left the traditional
painting, the brush and the canvas? You are now using a computer,
a scanner, and you have also used photographs.
It was not a big change for me to go from painting to the computer
because I was not really using the paint and canvas in a very traditionally
painterly way anyway. At least since 1993, when I started doing
these colour works, I was using basically only the colour itself,
and the brushstrokes and the painterly way of working was not something
that I used. I painted everything as flat as I could. I always used
painting as just one of the methods that you can use for art. The
traditional painting was not so important for me, just oil colour
as a tool.
More the underlying concept?
Yes, more the underlying concept, I suppose. So it was very logical
for me to start using a computer. It took a long time to paint these
very flat surfaces, and someone said to me, that the more I worked
on the painting, the less painting it became.
The painting for me was just a tool, like any other tool. And I
believe you can fit my work into a lot of different categories and
I like that. For instance this wall print, maybe you could also
call that a video, there is a movement in it, it changes, it is
totally different from here or to there. Or maybe it is a sculpture.
So I don’t really believe in this categorization based on
media. I can use every media. But maybe because of my background
as a painter it always comes out in a bit painterly way. But this
media based categorization does not fit to my work at all. So starting
to work with the computer was just continuing that work without
all the labour in it. And it was kind of strange in the beginning
because I like working with my hands, I like manual work. And in
the beginning when I was using the computer I felt a bit like I
was cheating because I didn’t get so physically tired. But
now I’m used to it. I can look at it as work.
Do these works have titles?
No, they don’t. If they should have a title it would just
be ”Pencil”, and ”Pen”
What do you think of this project, Paintbox extensions?
It's a very interesting and good project, and I like very much to
be a part of it. It is run by very good artists and they are doing
the whole thing very professionally. It's inspired only by their
interest in art and it’s a very good feeling to be a part
of it.
Mere…
CV,
værker og tekster
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