Interview: Anja Schwörer

Anja Schwörer at Andersen_s Contemporary Art

You were invited for the group exhibition Boisterous last summer as well in Andersen_s, but it is your first solo show in Denmark. Can you tell a little bit about the concept and exhibition ideas?

Well, it’s the attempt to evoke spiritual components not through, dematerialization, but through intensifying the material. The colours and the dying, as well as the photograms, cause an inter-play of construction and deconstruction. A kind of force field is visible in each painting. Spatial powers spread out, a certain spatial illusion will be induced on the viewer and the view will drag you in the deepness and darkness. So in the exhibition room you will find my dark paintings, which is one side of my work, side by side with my photos that represent another area of my works.

Anja Schwörer: Untitled, 200 x 150 cm. Acrylic, batik		Anja Schwörer: Untitled, 200 x 150 cm. Acrylic, batik

At first your work seems to be in some way minimalist, but understanding the process of your work and your intense focus and interest in the darkness, it gives another perception to the viewer. Can you comment on the process of your work?

Basically, when I work with my paintings, I start by bleaching the canvas, dying it in different colours, and then choose some kind of geometric composition. Each time I choose a different figuration that contrasts the batik. The pattern always emerges from the batik. It, so to say, happens with the concept of automatic coincidences, helped a little bit by my choices of colours etc. I sort of force it in the right way.

In some way I want the paintings to remind and refer to some kind of morphed structure, a psychedelic or hallucinated space. The batik bonds to some kind of neo-hippie movement, or hippie fashion code. I would say that my works associate with the hippies’ interest in reaching a new state of awareness; their experimentation with drugs (to reach a new state of awareness) to see novel truth and have freaky perceptions; their interest in the psychedelic and excursions in cosmic dimensions.

Looking at the process formally, the bleach is for me an on going experiment. It has its own rules, and the material becomes casting for the visual result. That always configures to the texture in the textile structure. So in a way the material always plays an important part for the finish in my work.

I like this batik very much, as well because it is considered a “do not”, like a taboo in art. It’s more in the context of handicraft stuff.

Anja Schwörer: Untitled, 200 x 150 cm. Acrylic, batik		Anja Schwörer: Untitled, 200 x 150 cm. Acrylic, batik

Speaking about this luring evil, beneath the surface of your paintings, so to say, lays an energetic- and cosmos-like darkness, and this darkness is a repeated theme in your work?

Actually I like the forceful and strong colours the most, and think that they are at their best when standing in contrast to black. A specific mood, a temper will be transported. There is a rise of different associations. The black is not-subsumable, endless, force of evil, all these mystical occult things, and on the scientific side, the total absorption of all light rays.

Like music has its tones that one relates to; I use the colours, as well, to build up and construct the painting’s universe.

Music is an inspiration source to your work as well. Do you listen a lot to the heavy metal and rock genre?

Yes, I hear music all of the time when I am in my studio, so I know that music mediates particular feelings and moods, colours as well. It is this kind of synaesthesia. Tones and colours have mental, psychic power to invoke soul vibrations. I mostly listen to rock, but it could be interesting to see what would happen to my works if I heard Britney Spears instead.

Anja Schwörer: Untitled, 280 x 200 cm. batik

Some of the motives in your works seem taken from geometry or architectural ornaments. Can you tell about your choice of motif and composition?

I am aware of this use of a geometrically stylized language that I introduce in my work. These figurations are not my creation, but I have acquired this abstract, geometry-style language. The abstraction is for me an adequate and fitting possibility of expression. The forms and their lines are essential to my compositions. I use the lines as crossing, combining and compressing the motif, to shape the dimensions of the painting, so this certain spatial illusion will be induced.

In this force field there seems to be an intense exchange between constructivism and deconstructivism. This scenario appears often in your works, do you see it as being a conflict or a balance for these two things to be together?

It is definitely a balance for me to have these two things working together in harmony. I work with this theme consequently as a dualism in my works, the paintings adherence to a complete duality of thinking. All things are developing from dialectic polarities, male-female, light-darkness, spiritual-material - the yin/yang style. This antithetic principle is seen in many mystical worldviews.

Anja Schwörer: u.t., Fotogram		Anja Schwörer: u.t., Fotogram		Anja Schwörer: u.t., Fotogram		Anja Schwörer: u.t., Fotogram

In your photos you work consequently with the light, using only one concrete light source?

The light is the basic and designing power. There are light compositions in the cosmic darkness.

It’s an extension of the natural perception of the form-space-light relation. Shapes arising which the eyes cannot naturally see. There occurs a novel visual space. And well, also like the batik paintings, the result is more or less a controlled handling, with an optical/chemical process. Also the production process is dead easy. It has an educational effort and is often used for didactic purposes to awake a person’s sensitive skills. Moholy-Nagy, the pioneer in making photograms, saw the curative purposes in it. He set up “light labs” for his students. The education should train the eye for a new visual manner, should activate your fantasy. In my photograms I use every day objects and expose them to a strong spotlight. The objects thus get a new formal and visual identity.

Anja Schwörer: Untitled, 133 x 103 cm. Batik on velvet Anja Schwörer: Untitled, 160 x 120 cm. Acryl, batik

Sol Lewitt has said that conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists, while they leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach. Do you find your works as being logical or as being irrational thoughts?

That is a duality. I mean both things are in my works, as a duality. The logical is the constructive, the lines and the concept. The irrational is in my works as well, in my amorphous figurations. So, for example, when you look upon my paintings they look rational, but the working process is the opposite.

I do not consider myself as being a dogmatic artist, while a big part of my praxis is based on my intuition. •