Abstract Drawing: Interview
Lene Fjørtoft, Curator
At the core of Mette Stausland’s (b.1956) work is the conceptual element of the drawing’s permanence: once a line has been applied to the paper, its imprint remains indelible. It is the essence of the drawing’s character, its inherent honesty and revealing nature, which becomes the motif in Stausland’s work. There is no illusion or pretence; they present themselves immodestly as drawings on paper, in their purity and simplicity. The line appears as the definitive element in Stausland’s practice, and manifests itself in a number of ways: from thin and fragile to strong and clear, and even blurred out.
‘I worked with drawing because it was raw, direct, immediate and intimate.’
L.F. – You studied at the art academy and then traveled to southern Europe. Can you talk about how these experiences shaped your approach to art?
M.S. – Like many artists, much of the work I made as a student was derivative. When I left the art academy and moved to Southern Europe, I felt I had to go back to the basics, to find a more authentic voice. I worked with drawing because it was raw, direct, immediate and intimate. For me it was the perfect medium, it was a medium that addressed the essence of things, it was about discovery, seeing what you say before you know what you think, of thinking out loud or thinking freely.
L.F. – You spent over three decades in Switzerland and worked with various galleries there. How did this time affect your artistic practice?
M.S. – I originally left Norway to study abroad, but due to various circumstances I settled in Switzerland and started my career there. In a way this was ideal, it was a change of culture and with easier access to the rest of Europe. I mostly worked with various galleries in Switzerland and in other countries. It was a time characterised by great economic uncertainty, great highs, but also some lows.
L.F. – Your work has developed from a focus on patterns to more abstract forms. Can you elaborate on this development and what it represents for you?
M.S. – Previously, I worked with patterns in the form of grids and repeating shapes, to find out what fit together and what didn’t. We are hard-wired to make sense of the world by finding or recognising patterns, and for me it was a way to test what belonged and what didn’t. The grids and patterns often developed small errors or deviations that broke or challenged the overall order, until finally what was ’out of place’ obtained the same meaning as what was ‘in’ place.
Over time, the poles were reversed, and the order of the grid works gave way to large fields of seemingly random and chaotic, gestural marks ’patterned’ over the entire drawing surface. These works were more porous and open. Not just formally, but also in relation to possible interpretations and meaning, they were no longer self-referential.
I began to realise that they contained the beginnings of a language that could help me find and address some of the fundamental ideas about internal/external space, the body, movement in the landscape, and the landscape itself. These were the core feelings, senses, ideas and understandings I had been concerned with since I was first involved in dance at the beginning of my career.
L.F. – You decided to move back to Scandinavia after many years in Switzerland. How has this return affected your artistic practice?
M.S. – In 2015, I decided to move permanently back to Scandinavia after 30 years in central Europe. Working abroad challenged me and broadened my horizons. However, this eventually became subject to the same factors that caused me to move out, such as conformity and comfort. When I returned to Scandinavia and to my cultural and familial roots after such a long absence, it was not with a desire for the safety of the familiar. In many ways this is the opposite. It is an extraordinary experience to return to my homeland and origins, in many ways as a stranger, as a foreigner. I must re-explore what once shaped me and relate this to the conditions as they are now, through eyes that once sought relevance elsewhere.
L.F. – You talked about your interest in abstraction in art. Can you explain how you use abstraction in your work?
M.S. – I have always been interested in a way of working that evokes, rather than provokes, works that suggest rather than state clearly, where the meaning is implicit rather than explicit. In my own work, I have never been interested in a narrative approach to image production or in telling a story from A to B. I try to create works that are able to offer multiple interpretations, works that are open to different readings, works which balance ambiguities of form, space and meaning.
Paul Gauguin once wrote:
“Art is abstraction; draw art as you dream in the presence of nature, and think more about the act of creation than about the final result.”
For me, this statement contains several important points. The emphasis is on the process, a process of discovery; meaning emerges from the act of creation itself. That the act of creation is guided or influenced by the presence or feeling of some set of thoughts, circumstances or situations. That the act of creation somehow
contains an act of translation, finding form for an internal dialogue that changes and changes again in relation to what appears on the surface of the paper.
L.F. – How do you use drawing in your work?
M.S. – For me, drawing is about searching. About a journey. I start with a loose idea and then try to discover what unfolds on paper. What initiates the search is curiosity. Not a curiosity about something that already exists or has a name, but something that arises in a process of discovery. Something that ignites a kind of ’feedback loop’, which gives me the opportunity to find meaning in the ’sound’ of the experience, as well as in my imagination. In this way, the paper is for me a stage, more than just a sheet of paper. As with any dancer, actor or musician,
the work begins with set moves, which soon give way to improvisation and experimentation. As this dialogue continues, character and meaning emerge.
‘We are hard-wired to make sense of the world.’
There is a direct relationship between scale and time in the format of the drawings. A larger work insists on a longer, deeper and more complex journey for me. In such works, the paper is often worked to the limit before I arrive at a conclusion. Variations and attempts, mostly erased, are piled beneath the final drawing as an echo of past stories. Finally, the drawing is filtered and edited until a certain clarity is achieved. The resulting works have an intentional ambiguity and are therefore open to interpretation.
L.F. – What does drawing mean to you?
M.S. – For me, drawing is the most immediate form of expression. I do not collect sources for my work in any conventional sense. I have never done that. Nor do I have collections of preparatory drawings, photographs, random images or the like that I return to. It would be easier if I could draw a straight line from a source to finished work, but I can’t. For me, the process is messier, more complex and more unpredictable. It’s a search for something that triggers me: maybe it’s distant memories that contain both familiar things and surprises. There is something that occurs between a question and an answer. The subject in my practice is illusory , fleeting , something that easily escapes, or something that captures the imagination. Each finished work often contains traces of previous drawings – attempts
that have preceded the final image. There is almost a story about the process embedded in each individual drawing.
L.F. – Who or what has influenced and inspired your work as an artist?
M.S. – I have never been sure of specific influences. There are many artists I am interested in or admire for different reasons. There are artists who work in a similar way, artists I simply ’get’, because there is an immediate recognition and understanding of their vision and intention, and an appreciation of a similar view. Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Paul Klee and Raol De Kayser. There are artists who do the opposite, where there is no shared language, but there is joy in a radically different point of view and aesthetics. Like Phillip Guston, Bill Taylor, Joseph Cornell, Bridget Riley, Sol Le Witt, Donald Judd, Beuys, Goya, Munch and Matisse. I also have a special interest in ’outsider artists’, such as Joseph E. Yoakum, Carl Fredric Hill, Adolf W.lfli, Forrest Bess and Louis Soutter.
L.F. – How has your experience as a woman influenced your career as an artist?
M.S. – Thanks to where I grew up in this world, I always felt that I had the right to pursue what I wanted to do. I have been very fortunate in studying and working at institutions and at a time where I felt very supported as a young female art student without any significant form of discrimination. Finding my way as a young artist in Central Europe was a completely different matter, but somehow I’ve been lucky, I almost always worked with female gallerists. That doesn’t mean I haven’t seen how male-dominated the art world was, and still is. I’ve had my struggles, but I feel I stood on safe ground.
‘These faint fragments are the accumulated remnants of past ideas.’
I have also been very lucky to have some incredibly loyal collectors who supported me in times that were not so easy, I would especially like to mention Werner Abt from Basel and Christine and Hans Peter Tschan Hirt from Baden.
L.F. – Can you tell us more about one of your works ”Mårup Serien 1732”, and what it represents for you?
M.S. – In this work, Mårup Serien 1732, three pictures occupy the same frame. There is an initial expectation of some sort of progression, a movement through time or perhaps of finding a narrative to be found by ’reading’ the sequence of images from left to right. A point of passage where a ’figure’ and ’background’ is followed by an empty space, followed by another ’figure’ and ’background’. In this way, the second image in the sequence can be seen and experienced as a visual form of a quasura, a pause, an interruption, a moment of suspended time or perhaps where time stands still. Upon closer examination, it turns out that what at first glance seems like a blank panel or a void has edges, boundaries that define an area or a scene that contains a myriad of marks and unclear shapes. These faint fragments are the accumulated remnants of past ideas and drawings that have been processed, rejected, effaced and consigned to the distant past.
As the eye moves back and forth across the surface of the three drawings in search of connections, the idea of linear time disappears and gives way to a holistic appreciation of the triptych. In the centre is an atmospheric, shrouded, enigmatic image, a proscenium where events have taken place or are about to unfold. The marks and blurred shapes of this central image are reflected in the background of the drawings on each side. But in these drawings templates for new possibilities can be found among the ruins. New, provisional and shadowy figures emerge and collapse as markers or feelers in a cycle of memory and loss.