Gabriel Karlsson - 2021

This year's fellow works mainly with sculpture that balances between the abstract and the concrete. The works are executed with enormous precision and feeling for the material's properties and composition. In his artistry, the fellow combines the slow and traditional craftsmanship with a conceptual thinking that challenges the viewer to reflect on the sculpture and the objects' ability to be between an inner and an outer space.

The 2021 scholarship is awarded to: Gabriel Karlsson, Malmö Academy of Arts.

IN CONVERSATION WITH GABRIEL KARLSSON

Iselin Page, Curator Artipelag:

Now I'm almost covered in snow in my apartment and switch between looking at your portfolio and looking out the window at the winter landscape. Everything suddenly feels white and quiet. Outside, the landscape opens up, the light penetrates the white sky and the snow pours down at a rate reminiscent of a steady but slow process. When I turn my gaze to the objects in the portfolio, my mind is calm. In your last email you briefly described how you work with slow thought processes and materials, how you use this as a method to slow yourself down. Would you like to tell us a little more about what the work process looks like and how the material and the idea intertwine, and how they influence each other?

Gabriel Karlsson:

I am also sitting covered in snow in the winter landscape. Working with material that requires time is for me a way to slow down thought, sometimes to the point that it ceases to exist or changes form. By blurring the boundaries between me and what is in front of me, a way of thinking is created that contrasts with a habitual view and idleness. In the studio I try to listen to the material and the object's own will rather than controlling it, and I often work on many projects at the same time to let them flow in and out of each other. Although I have power over what happens when I construct conditions and frameworks for projects, I rarely feel that I am the one who decides when something has actually taken shape. At that stage, I'm probably as much an observer of what's in front of me as anyone. Although the work process often seems slow in the studio, it also happens in parallel with a faster thought process that is outside the practical work. It is related to observations in everyday life that I want or need to bring into the studio. My interest in sculpture is very much based on how consciousness relates to the environment and how we create ghost images of what we see within us. These constructed images in the mind are actually at least as real as what exists outside of us. If one accepts a distinction between two different types of object, the actual and the imagined, then I think that sculpture has the ability to be in the middle between these two modes.

Iselin Page:

Thank you for sharing your reflections on the work process, it really gives a deeper understanding of your works. In addition to the slow work process in the studio, you mention a faster, parallel thought process that is perhaps more about life outside the studio. There are certainly many different periods and experiences here, but if we focus on the last year, you have devoted quite a lot of time to assistant work. I can imagine it has created many interesting ideas and dialogues. How would you yourself describe the work as an assistant to other artists and how has this colored your artistry?

Gabriel Karlsson:

Working as an assistant has given me experiences that probably cannot be gained in an art education. In recent years, I have been lucky enough to be involved in designing projects for a fantastic artist and thinker, which has given me many new perspectives on my own practice and on art in general. Although my practice is strongly linked to the workshop and the studio in a rather isolated process, I have a belief that art is primarily about an exchange between people in a kind of tacit knowledge. In this way, meeting other people and artistry is probably the most important catalyst for developing and moving ideas forward. One of my first projects that I did before I started art school was about the idea and the attempt to go outside of myself to produce work from someone else's or something's perspective other than my own. This idea has probably been present in all my projects in recent years, even if it is not directly stated.

Iselin Page:

You mentioned the sculpture's ability to exist between the imagined object (ghost image) and the actual object, which is completely in line with my experience of your works. As a viewer, I perceive it as if the works oscillate between an inner and outer space. I remember how this float, which can be difficult to place, immediately caught my interest. At first glance it was a sensual impression – the objects, the materiality and the precision – then I quickly became aware of the relationship between the art, the viewer and the environment. It was as if the inner space gradually opened up by seeing the whole. What does the environment mean in the encounter with your art and how do you work before an exhibition with installation and the spatial limitations of architecture?

Gabriel Karlsson:

When I install, I often start from the room in an attempt to understand how it can and actually meets what I want to exhibit. In exhibition situations, there is usually a rather special feeling that the room is in some way a little distant from the outside world. I think I have ended up in an imitation of that state in my art. Like every object is somehow the result of a "ghost room". In my graduation exhibition, I started the entire installation process by superimposing two floor plans of the exhibition space to turn one 159 degrees. After that, I looked for methods to install the exhibition according to the floor plan that was twisted. The result was that the imaginary room had to determine the placement of the objects in the real exhibition room. I have been interested in the very twisting of reality that art can actually bring about. Maybe not as distancing from the world, but instead as an opportunity to see the whole thing in a different way.

Iselin Page:

The creativity in the twisting of reality indeed opens up a different way of seeing. As a viewer of your works, I can experience it as both absurd and overwhelming. A concrete example is the work: 19.5 x 25.7 x 24.7, 2019 in ceramic. The work is a cast of a bag containing a lump of clay with the same outer dimensions as the artist's head as a rectangular block, 19.5 x 25.7 x 24.7 cm (pp. 84–85). By comparing your head, in terms of volume, to other nearby objects, you force the viewer to reverse their perspective. One of the things that stuck with me about this particular piece of art is how the craftsmanship is united with a conceptual thinking without them canceling each other out. A tendency in recent years has been that the arts and crafts have gained an increasingly relevant position in the art world. Do you feel that the art craft is entering a new phase and where does the road go next for you as an artist?

Gabriel Karlsson:

For me, the craft is an important part of the design of ideas. I almost feel that working with the hands and the material gives me the conceptual thinking. I think there is a very interesting point of intersection in this, that two very different ways of relating to something can also complement and support each other. The work with the title 19.5 x 25.7 x 24.7 is a result of such a process where the very procedure of casting also gave me an approach to the object itself. Even though casting, molding and imitation come from an old craft tradition, the process can be translated to a lot of other things that happen around us. I imagine that geometry is a kind of mold for thought, but more specifically is how the bread is shaped by its baking shape or how the footprint in the snow carries a lot of sculptural values. In a specific craft, one relates as much to what is not possible to do as to what is actually possible with the material. I feel a kind of security in this limitation. I think many people use craft today as a kind of conceptual orientation, and this I think is an interesting point of departure precisely because it somehow shifts the interest from the artist to the actual object.

For my own part, I will continue with my projects in the future and plan to build a work and workshop situation that can be used for both me and others. A fantasy has long been to join and start something collectively and let it develop into a place where art can be created, discussed and shown.