Interview med Mie Olise Kjærgaard

Mie Olise: Installationview, 2008.

You have just opened your first solo exhibition at Barbara Davis Gallery, in Houston, where you continue your ongoing project with abandoned places. The exhibition consists of paintings and different wooden structures made for the exhibition. What is so fascinating about these abandoned man-made places and constructions?

I have always been interested in huge man-made constructions like factories, plants and mines. I think with my background in Architecture (Mie Olise Kjærgaard has a MA in Architecture), I really enjoy the eccentric forms made by necessity. They can be really weird going straight out into the air or a window placed in a completely absurd place. Then when you analyze the building, it occurs to you that there is a justified reason for all the weirdness. Forces go into the ground, and have to be pulled up again by contra weight, a staircase for people to inspect it.

It’s very generous, on one hand it seems so alien – on the other it is completely logical.

Which makes it uncanny! As when you approach something, you find both fascinating and scary. It’s beautiful, but it’s dead, the ultimate end, yet something to start thinking about.

To me it is architectural ideas with a psychological level. Architecture with a stomach feeling.

In the abandoned structure the shell becomes a witness of an idea that fell to the ground. Something energetic that unfortunately didn’t last, but now with big structures still shouting the romantic idea out, not able to hide its failure. And what is failure? Possibility. New grounds? It’s brutal and romantic at the same time. That’s my fascination with abandoned man-made structures.

For the exhibition I have also made a mental map of coal, working with mass of buildings in the perspective of symmetric urban planning and utopian architecture. And I have built a wooden structure penetrating from the one room into the other, mostly because the space really asked for it. A connection, yet a third room, and another flow around the space. Making new rooms in the bigger ones.

The paintings are more playful than my latest paintings, I have allowed myself more liberty from my set rules. They are still dry in subject, but painterly in the texture and dripping.

Mie Olise: Blue Towards Wood, 2008. 185 x 153 cm. Akryl på lærred Mie Olise: Temporary On The Edge, 2008. 153 x 185 cm. Akryl på lærred

You work in a crossover sphere using different elements and techniques from different worlds. How has your work developed until now?

First I spent a lot of energy on separating it. I did architectural studies that was very conceptual, and art that was more emotional, and I could not see the connection. Then I did some projects combining architecture with everything else. Like fashion, design, poetry, sound - idea generating - and at one point my art cut its way into the conceptual ideas. And now I wonder why it should take me so long.

I made up a lot of rules regarding my paintings, and the architectural approach came naturally, as a consequence of everything I have been doing.

When I came to London, I did not see myself as conceptual, but at St. Martins people were asking questions about every little detail, and suddenly I realised, that there was a reason for everything I did, I was just not making sense out of it.

Mie Olise: Places To Sit, Directions To Go, II, 2008. 153 x 185 cm. Akryl på lærred Mie Olise: Places To Sit, Directions To Go, I, 2008. 153 x 185 cm. Akryl på lærred

I would like to talk more about your motives, because you depict ruins that are about to fall apart, but still you feel as a viewer that even though the buildings or constructions are at their end, it is not totally bleak because something new grows from them. Can you elaborate on that?

I am telling a story in a visual language that might be told in a lot of other visual languages. My approach to it, working with constructions and the abandoned settlements, is just my language, my visual components. I guess I am both the creator and the viewer of the constructions. I am the one returning to something abandoned – something made by a believer – possibly myself. Like a memory of something lost. The structure takes over, starting to think forward and in a way forgetting the past, building on top of what is there. It’s like using space and construction to tell a psychological story, to try to express a particular feeling. On the other hand it is building on top of my own process, my own practice. Relating to my former work. Architectural ideas, former paintings or last constructions.

I am combining my own ideas with Freud’s thoughts of the Uncanny, and writings like Calvino’s stories about the Invisible City and Bachelard’s Poetics of Space. I relate to Corbusier and Mies Van der Rohes ideas of modernism, e.g. their inventive ideas of building in concrete, and their thoughts about building societies and modern life.

Mie Olise: Pyramide, 2008. 2 x 1,7 x 0,1m mixed media Mie Olise: Vitamine Standing, 2008. 153 x 185 cm. akryl på lærred

You told me that you have a set of rules for your work/your painting, what kind of rules?

You can paint everything. You can paint real life, you can make everything up, nothing has to be true and there are no rules, you can go everywhere – every day! That is really scary. So I think all painters, one way or another, start to play around with rules, like dogmas. To set up a playground, and also to be able to break your rules!

I have some firm rules, that is: no people, only constructions, no backgrounds, no ground, the way I use the brush and some colors that have to be there, the amount of black etc. Then I also have some more vague rules about scale, perspective and contrast, that is more intuition, but it always appears. I have rules about what I can paint, and what I have to photograph/film. It is a way to narrow down what it is about. For this exhibition one rule has been to break one rule in each painting.

Mie Olise: On Sticks With Pineapples, 2008. 230 x 240 cm. Akryl på lærred Mie Olise: Additive Together, 2008. 100 x 100 cm. Akryl på lærred

You have had your base in London and New York for some years now - what does it mean to you to live and work in these urban settings?

Well, all I make out of urban context is that I perhaps long for the countryside or for childhood. I like to be in these cities because of the intellectual space and the easy access to everything. You can go see the best opera singer on Tuesday and your favorite artist showing at a gallery the day after. You don’t have to wait around for it to come to you, you just walk down the street. Whenever you want it, it’s there. I like to remember; I don’t think I would like to live permanently next to my subjects (objects), I am remembering them. And then they become something completely different, I have never painted a place, I have actually been to.

Mie Olise: Flying Trawler, 2008. 305 x 185 cm. Akryl på lærred Mie Olise: Growing Corner, 2008. 230 x 215 cm. Akryl på lærred

One of your ongoing projects is the abandoned city Pyramide close to the North Pole. It gathers several central elements from your paintings and structures. What does this city offer that you can use in you work, and why do you visit it again this year with the film photographer Simon Ladefoged?

When I found out it was there, I was already far into all the abandoned settlement investigations. And with something like The Pyramid City actually existing, I found it completely impossible to ignore. I went weeks after I found out about it. And it turned out to be like getting into my own mind. Thank God nobody was there already! I went and basically I saw all the things I had already painted and imagined. The weird thing was that it was THERE. So I could not paint it, that was too easy. You can make everything up in painting. I had to capture it. When I came back I started working with it, and I realised that I had to go back, because I would like to do some works up there, not just capture it, but take it in and make my own creations, like sound on site and things I had to do while being there.

So this summer I will go again with film photographer Simon Ladefoged and make a film. I just got permission from The Russian Company that owns the town. We need a rifleman with keys to all the abandoned buildings.

Mie Olise: Leaning On A Stick, 2008. Akryl på lærred

Last year you were chosen to participate in The Saatchi Gallery/Channel 4 competition: 4 NEW SENSATIONS, and you were among the last 4. This year you have been nominated by Saatchi to The Sovereign Art Prize. What does this mean to you?

Becoming one of the 4 New Sensations was a pleasant surprise for me, I was new in London. I had recently started my education in art, and suddenly to be chosen by those judges that I admire so myself, just the fact that they knew my work. It was overwhelming. So when I was nominated for the Sovereign Art Prize this year and got into John Moore's Painting Prize, I felt it was stating that maybe I am not an illegal intruder.

Mie Olise: Installationsview, 2008. Wooden construction Mie Olise: Installationsview, 2008. Wooden construction

You’ll spend some time next year in NYC where you have been given a residency at ISCP. How will you use it?

I am doing different residencies in 2009, hopefully Berlin, Iceland and LA. Later I have been accepted into the ISCP in New York, which I am really excited about. I will come back to NYC for the residency at the end of the year. I am looking forward to meet a group of devoted international artists and curators, and to be a part of a group relating to each others practices, and to discuss projects and ideas. A lot of people come in from abroad, curators and guest-critics, and I will make sure to be able to study while being there, not having too many obligations, but actually having time and energy to be there. It's a great opportunity. Not just the studios, but especially what goes on in between the studios. Having been in New York this summer, I can see that this residency is a fantastic way to get into the city.

Mie Olise: Installationsview, 2008. Wooden construction Mie Olise: Installationsview, 2008. Wooden construction