I had the honour to ask artist Kristian Evju some questions about his extremely intriguing work. Check out the interview below!

1. Tell us a bit about yourself…. What inspired you to become an artist?

I was born in a small mountain valley in Norway. My father decided to become a full time painter around the time I was born, so I grew up surrounded by craft, art and artists. We always drew at home, and drawing was always a vehicle for narratives in our family. We didn’t have a TV at home, so we would draw together in the evenings.

The fact that my father was an artist didn’t initially encourage me to pursue art. If anything, I had decided not to, as I had seen how much my father struggled to supply an income for the family. And life as an artist is introspective, perhaps even selfish to a certain extent.. so I studied psychology at the University of Oslo instead for a while, and played in a few bands in my early twenties. I thought music might be it for a couple of years.

However, I was always curious about what I could make. For me, art has always been about the works that aren’t made, so I inevitably applied to study art at college in 2003.

2. Did you study art or are you self taught? What are your thoughts on art education and do you think that art is a subject that can be taught effectively?

I did my BA in painting and drawing at Edinburgh College of Art, and later I completed an MA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art. I think it was incredibly important for me to go to college. Knowledge is never wasted – in fact it is the only way to give yourself real options. The more you learn, the more you realise that you know very little, and then it becomes easier to accept other opinions than your own. I think it’s possible to find good resources outside of an academic structure, but it might delay some parts of the journey unnecessarily, and for me, the critical forums were a good way to learn how to have a conversation about something very personal without becoming defensive or hurt. Most art colleges today won’t teach you any technical skills – it is all about critical thinking and learning how to unfold your own language within a context. Wether or not it is effective is always a matter of debate, but it’s a bit like democracy – it’s not perfect, but it’s the best we’ve got.

3. What is the most challenging part of being an artist and is there anything you don’t like about the practice?

I’ve been a full time artist now for 13 years, so I don’t really have any other life to compare it to. It can be lonely if you don’t make a conscious effort to reach out to colleagues, and it can be hard to structure your days properly the first few years.

It took me a long time to feel more secure economically. Everybody told me this would be the case when I started out, but I guess we always think our lives are unique. I feel fortunate to have reached a point where I am not as stressed about it, even when times are leaner. You don’t choose this job if you want to make lots of money – it’s possible, but there are easier ways. It is also a lot less romantic that you think – artists have to perform in the studio every day, so we have to eat well, sleep well and keep our bodies in shape to avoid injury.

If I had to pick something I don’t like about being an artist, it’s probably the uncertainty. You get sort of used to it over time, but there are a lot of different factors that affects how you feel – including the various gallery relations, collectors, shipping, sales, press, etc. But those things are what makes life as an artist exciting too.

4. You have an extremely intriguing body of work, which consists of mostly graphite drawings and paintings. Can you talk a bit about how you started working with graphite as a medium and at what point did you know that this was the right method of working for you?

Additionally, how do you know when an image will work better as a drawing or painting?

I don’t know when I started drawing exactly. It is something I never really stopped doing. I like it, because it’s very direct and simple. There are fewer variables to consider – but how you choose your pencils, and more importantly – what ground you draw on, becomes incredibly important, because your choices are so exposed.

You can’t really hide your skill levels with a pencil, but somehow it expresses your personality no matter how long you have been using it for.

Personally, I am very slow at introducing new techniques into my practice, and I think my pencil drawings are good examples of why this is; I always want to do better, and it’s taken me all this time to get where I am with it now.

I started painting much later in life, and I feel as if I’m still struggling to catch up to the same level, but as they are very different, it’s incredibly helpful to let the different techniques feed off each other. I have to think differently, which is good.

I think I choose one over the other simply because of physical limitations, and other times it’s just a gut feeling.

5. Do you think that once an artist has found their preferred method they should stick to it or should an artist’s work be constantly evolving? Looking back, would you say your work has evolved since you first started out, and if so, how?

I think there are no rules dictating what an artist should or should not do, but with all that freedom, I try to find a balance between chasing better ways of doing things, and honing my existing skills.

I remember looking at a drawing I had just finished when I was a student, and I honestly thought that I couldn’t see any way to improve it. Years later I looked at it again, and it had a few obvious shortcomings, so it’s not just the physical skills that improve over the years – it’s also the way we look at things. To improve, you have to invest the hours, which means not constantly changing. This is the balance between allowing enough time, and trying out enough new things to give yourself real options.

I think my work changes in the same way I as a person change over time. It’s difficult to pinpoint how, but sometimes I repeat myself, sometimes it is as if I’m a different person. I think time has given me more confidence in terms of knowing what I like, which might sound obvious, but properly figuring out your own taste is hard.

6. You have quite a number of different series of work, which are all equally intriguing. Can you talk a bit about each series and give us a small overview of what each one is about? Which is your favourite, and why?

The first conscious series of work I produced was a project called Dark Skies, a title appropriated from a newspaper article about light pollution and the Dark Skies Park in Galloway. The title intrigued me for various reasons, and a quick search dug up a rather unsuccessful TV series from the 90’s with that same title. I decided to appropriate the titles of its 20 episodes as a skeleton structure for a project. Then I made 20 small pencil drawings based on images I found online – using a word association game – with the episode titles as seeds. When I had finished the drawings, I distributed the titles randomly, and made another series of 20 more drawings to find out how my familiarity with the material would influence the way I drew the next series. I worked on Dark Skies from 2012, and the last drawings were finished in 2014.

While I was drawing Dark Skies, I also made a parallel series titled Memoirs of The Other, where I tried to imagine writing my memoirs without remembering any events – a kind of wishful recollection.

By working on a project like that, I realised that the way I collected imagery as references for my drawings felt very similar to how I gather random information in general, and how this forms my narration of reality and sense of self. So I made a brief series of drawings about streams of information that I titled Dark River. This was also where I realised for the first time that I treated my compositions like stages, and that I often thought of the content as theatre. There are strong vertical lines and partitions that could easily allude to the edges of the stage, windows, doorways, walls or curtains in most of my work. I don’t know why they started appearing, but it feels like a natural way for me to organise surfaces.

I think by this time, I had also realised that I never really work in singular, isolated pieces – I seem to gravitate towards the series because it feels more like a proper conversation – each painting a comment or an argument that can only be truly answered by another painting.

In 2013 I had promised Artist Magazine two in-depth articles about my process, and to this purpose I painted the painting that would inspire a large body of work with the working title Velvet Bloom. I wanted to make something quite pretty, equally staged, but maybe more light hearted than Dark Skies and Dark River, and also a bit more colourful. I was working towards a solo show in a museum in Norway at the time – located in a massive hall that used to accommodate whole train carriages – so I decided to paint a bit larger too, and ended up making more than 20 paintings over the next two years.

Punchcard was a natural antithesis to Velvet Bloom. I meant to make 4 small circular drawings, just to experiment with the format, but it ended up becoming a rather large investigation into punchcards and the rise and fall of languages, patterns and code. This investigation sent me down a rabbit hole of historical archives, schemes, plots and conspiracies – and I started using historical documentation as references for fictional paintings and drawings – almost as a way of rewriting history, but visually. Sometimes in an obvious way, at other times more subtle. I called this body of work Machinations, and all the projects since this series could be seen as subcategories.

More recently I have been working on two parallel projects – Incriminations, which is a series concerned with the particularly odd moment of the mugshot – and a series called Perfect Strangers which is playing with the idea of time, time travel, displacement, and historical falsification.

7. Following the last question, what is your creative process like when considering a new series?

Where do you find inspiration from and how do you know when an idea is good enough to turn into a body of work? How does the initial concept develop over the course of creating a series?

My creative process is as intuitive as I can manage. I allow anything I am interested in to enter my work, as I believe separating your life from your art just means limiting your sources of inspiration. Practically, this means that I paint first, and ask questions later. This is absolutely vital to my method – the visual has to trump the verbal or written, otherwise I’m limiting myself to illustrating my ideas rather than letting the paintings emerge organically. I find the idea of knowing in advance what I am going to do very uninspiring.

I begin with one painting or drawing, then I reply to it with another. I never really know where it will lead me. I often tie a series together by similar formats, but not always. Sometimes it can also be colour, like the more recent series in Sap Green. The main point is to make my time in the studio interesting. If it’s not, I might as well do something else.

8. Your images are often created with the use of photographs, especially historic or found imagery. What is it about such imagery that fascinates you and do you think that creating work using source material affects the way your images are viewed?

I think working with found imagery serves two purposes for me – one is a slight removal. I often work without any real knowledge about what I’m referencing, which allows me to really immerse myself without prejudice or the arrogance of perceived knowledge. I can play with it, and also know that the viewer will know as much, if not more, than me about the subject matter.

The second purpose is that I know that what I reference is not reality – it is a depiction of it – a stranger’s interpretation of a moment that belongs to a different age, and as people are terrible witnesses, it serves more as a question than a truth, a suggestion rather than evidence. We live in a time of disillusionment.

We mistrust information, and so I think there is a certain honesty to be found in fiction.

 

9. From what I’ve read about your work, you explore some exceptionally interesting themes such as our tendencies towards suspicion, information, the way we consider and engage with reality and narrative. Do you think that art should be challenging for the viewer and how do you make sure that the ideas and concepts you have translate clearly to those viewing your work?

There are no truths or messages in my work. I can try my hardest to communicate any sort of message, but ultimately I can only provide a sort of visual cue – a prop that triggers the viewer’s own memories, associations and understandings, and I can’t contradict what they see. That would be both futile and limiting. So my job is to make the cue engaging enough to trigger something. The rest is out of my control. The good thing about this, is that I am always enriched by other peoples interpretations, and I think that this is in many ways the point of art.

10. One thing that struck whilst I was browsing your website was the way you write about your work. You do a really good job of explaining what your work is about and it got me wondering, do you think that art needs to be explained and is it important for you to add an element of ambiguity for your viewers?

I think art can be explained, but the explanation will never really have anything to do with the art itself. Personally I get a bit annoyed by the placards hanging next to works in museums and galleries, and I never really read what’s written about them, at least not before I’ve had a proper look.

For me, a good painting is one that triggers a sense of possibility in you. You can write about it, and different people will write different things about it, and none of them are wrong. Or right. That’s not the point.

An artist is someone that like to share something. When I was a kid, I would bring rocks that I thought looked exceptional back from the mountains or the woods (much to my parents despair), but I wanted to share the feeling of significance of what I had found.

I think this is still the essence of what I’m doing now – I find subjects that I celebrate and investigate slowly through the act of remaking them; with the object of sharing their significance. In this there is no ownership or sense of jealousy – because the only claim I have on them is my enjoyment, and how this inexplainable appreciation made me select them.

11. Your series ‘Machinations’ is particularly fascinating to me. I particularly like the way in which you combine found imagery with your imagination to create images that, amongst other things, reflect our sense of self.

How much of the artist do you think is reflected through their art and why do you think that people enjoy looking at art? In a society where we are bombarded by images, is art important?

I think art is important because it is in many ways trying to talk about its own context – many times by challenging it – and therefore it is often a lot more precise than historical retellings. Maybe the only real claim to autonomy we have as individuals is the filters we build through living and exploring. The rest is not ours. I think this is a thought that can be a source of relief for many artists that struggle with self-made limitations and rules, because it makes everything in this world available to us. None of it is ours, and it will never be, but the way we look at our surrounding is unique, and this is expressed through what we do with it, including the making of art.

 

12. We often see images, especially online, without any context or text to accompany them, and it can often be hard to gauge artistic intention. Do you think that posting work online lessens its impact and do you think that social media has changed the way people view art?

I think the digital revolution has changed the way we look at everything, not just art. Social media has multiplied the amount of visual information we are processing every day. As a contemporary artist, this should be respected. Our audience is very highly trained in terms of filtering visual information and gauging quality in seconds. Just think about special effects in filmmaking – how quickly the films age, and how easy it is to spot for us whether something looks convincing or not.

I think posting works online makes art more accessible. You should still go to see the works in real life, because there is no way to replace the physical interaction with the actual work. Sometimes its much better in real life, but not always. Certain works photograph better, and I think we’ve seen a rapid rise in the kind of works that photograph easily and that are fairly quick to make. Especially paintings.

13. As well as having an extensive portfolio online, you have exhibited your work in a wide variety of places. Can you talk a bit hot you came to exhibit your work, and what the process of having a physical gallery show is like?

I remember my very first show well – I was invited to show in a charity show for Red Cross in Oslo. I was invited simply because I lived next door, and was spotted trying to photograph my painting in our backyard. I didn’t sell anything, but I was given a card by an American collector who told me to keep in touch. I didn’t. And lost the card, as I didn’t take myself very seriously back then. Art was just a hobby.

My next show was in a refurbished chicken coop that I rented for three weekends. I sold lots of paintings, helping me to pay some of the tuition fees when I started studying art in Edinburgh.

I have shown my work with quite a wide variety of spaces since the chicken coop. Anything from museums, art centres or societies, commercial galleries at various levels, palaces and castles, auctions or private showrooms for a closed audience. These places all have different ways of collaborating with me, which means that I have to be flexible. Some galleries, and especially the museums, plan their shows years in advance, and there are committees, proposals, studio visits, tours of spaces, budgets, partners, writers, curators, technicians and floor plans to deal with – long before you even get to produce the show itself. Then there are the galleries that give you the opening date a month before the show, then expect you to sort out the rest. I’ve dealt with a lot of different scenarios, but to be honest – my part of the job usually looks quite similar. The main part is producing an appropriate and hopefully good body of work. Once that is done, I need to document it well, and by that time I generally have a good idea about what I want to write or have written about the project, and what the key concepts are in terms of marketing. When everything is crated and shipped from my studio, my work is really done. I have to be at the opening if it’s a solo show or an important group show, but if it’s a smaller group show I can’t always prioritise it. Some galleries will arrange press days and events before the private view, and then artist talks during the show. Other than that, I like to return to the studio as soon as I can – to start working on the next project.

Additionally, what are the benefits of exhibiting your work offline and do you have any advice for artists who would like to exhibit their work, but don’t know where to start?

There is no substitute to seeing an exhibition in person. You need to experience the pieces in relation to your own body. Some works invite an incredible intimacy, whilst other pieces can completely overwhelm you with their tactility, size and power.

It’s not easy to get a show – and in a way it shouldn’t be. It’s easy to imagine shortcuts, privilege or connections to justify why other people have successful shows, but in reality there is a staggering amount of work and dedication that goes into building a career as an artist. There is a lot of information available about how you could go about it, but I think perhaps it comes down to a list of priorities in the end:

First – make good work, and work that you are actually interested in yourself. Nothing else will do, as you will get bored and disillusioned in the studio. Good energy translates into good work.

Second – make sure your work is seen. Apply for residencies, competitions, group shows (make sure you have a set budget so you don’t spend too much on fees), arrange pop-up shows with friends, and invite galleries you like to attend – not the big ones, but the ones that might actually like to show your work.

Thirdly – pick a handful of lower level galleries, and go to all their events and openings – not to present yourself, but to get to know their program and values. You will meet colleagues there, and this is your real goal. Make friends. Don’t be selfish – be there to celebrate the art, and don’t mention your own practice unless expressively asked. Then be prepared, and keep it as short and light as you can. Patience is key.

Fourth – document absolutely everything you do with a good camera. Installation shots are a much better representation of your work than just a cropped surface shot. This way no show is wasted, no matter how poorly attended it is.

Fifth- invite people to write about your work. It comes in really handy to present a text not written by you when you are proposing a project. And it can also fuel your own writing and even your work.

Sixth – treat yourself well. Eat well, sleep well, and keep up a good studio routine so that you are ready when you get opportunities. If you have nothing to show when people ask to visit your studio, you are not working hard enough, but don’t overdo it either. Sticking to your routines and showing up for work is enough.

14, Once you’ve finished an image, do you ever seek a second opinion or spend some time with the image or do you post the finished result immediately?

Also, do you often show your step by step process of an image and do you think showing this process can take the magic out of the final image?

I have a few people who’s opinions I trust when the work is in progress. Once they are finished, I’m ok, but I’m a bit careful about showing a painting before I have made the crucial decisions about content and composition. You have to trust yourself enough to sometimes ruin what looks like an amazing potential to follow your plan. This can be hard when people tell you to stop. The progress pictures are crucial in documenting those moments – some of which I am happy to share, others not so much. I think people get tired of an image more quickly now than before, so I try to be careful.

15. In your opinion, what makes a good piece of art? What was the last image/piece of media that captivated you and what was it about it that left an impression on you?

Good art could mean different things to different people, and at different times. For me – there are some pieces that have a certain energy – a certain potential. Sometimes this means that I desperately wished I had made them, but most often I come away feeling inspired and fortunate to have seen them.

I don’t believe there is any honesty or truth in art, but you can walk into a show and almost immediately know whether you want a closer look or not. I get to see a lot of art, as living in London gives me that opportunity, and I honestly think this is helpful in the studio. It gives me both context and real choice in terms of input.

A few weeks ago I saw a small group of oil paintings on copper plates by the wonderful Christiane Pooley, in a show called All the Days and Nights at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery. They were painted in an incredibly soft, yet tactile manner that reminded me of certain printmaking techniques – and they were all depicting the exact same subject matter, but with emphasis on different parts, as if you were seeing the same painting at different stages. There was just something about the particular sensibilities of her choices that struck a note with me, and they surprised me in a positive way.

16. How often do you consider the viewer when creating images? Do you create work for yourself or for others?

A bit of both – art is about context, and it’s made more subtle by the intricacies of our interactions with each other. Also – painting and drawing is about externalising, so you are also your own audience in the studio. I can sometimes discover surprising things about my own work whilst I’m working on them.

17. Copyright, especially in the technological age, is a huge problem. What actions do you take to ensure that your work is not being used without your permission, and have you had any experiences with plagiarism? Is this an issue that you think about and what are your thoughts about intellectual property rights for artists?

I don’t spend much time thinking about plagiarism or protecting myself from it to be honest.

I see some artists getting upset if people are getting too close to what they are making, but I try to avoid giving in to insecurities and jealous sentiments. It’s a waste of time. I don’t expect other artists to engage with what I do physically, but if they do, it would only help enrich the conversation.

As I work with archives and found imagery, I am also aware that little of what I paint originates solely from me. Even when painting from imagination, I utilise memories of things that weren’t owned or made by me in the first place. It’s important to avoid too much arrogance and ownership in art – just like in a normal conversation, ideas can pass back and forth, and it’s more about having a good conversation than keeping tabs on who owns the ideas.

19. What are you currently working on and where can people find more about you and your work?

At the moment I am part of three separate group shows – Over The Next Horizon, at the Iasi Museum of Art in Romania, All The Days and Nights at Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery in London, and The Seventh View at C24 Gallery in New York.

My works and information about them can also be found at Galleri Semmingsen in Oslo, Venet-Haus Galerie in Germany, Arthill Gallery in China, and Arusha Gallery in Edinburgh.

In the studio I am working towards a solo show with Venet-Haus Galerie in Germany for later this year, and another solo show in Hamar Kunstforening in Norway. I will keep you posted about future dates and projects on my social media sites:

(facebook/Instagram) @kristianevju and my website, www.kristianevju.com.