Judit Kristensen - 2022

In Judit Kristensen's paintings, it is hard not to think about the pandemic that we have just lived through in the last two years. But her paintings are not imbued with a sense of the desperate loneliness that characterized the spirit of the time. On the contrary, Judit Kristensen's paintings are characterized by a coldness that gives them an almost observational and analytical character. This does not appear to be particularly surprising given that Judit Kristensen trained as a psychologist at Umeå University before her artistic education. Her almost clinical approach to these emotional states testifies to a deep knowledge of the human psyche.

It is with great pleasure that we award Judit Kristensen the Fredrik Roos Scholarship and welcome her to Artipelag.

IN CONVERSATION WITH JUDIT KRISTENSEN

Iselin Page, Curator Artipelag:

Congratulations on the Fredrik Roos scholarship! It will be very exciting to work with you and get to know you and your artistry. One of the first things I wanted to ask about, which struck me when I saw your work, is your background in psychology. Before you started studying at the University of the Arts, you studied psychology for five years. What did you take with you from there to art school and how has your interest in psychology influenced your artistry?

Judit Kristensen:

Thank you very much for that, I am very happy and look forward to working with you! I come back to trying to depict some kind of psychological place, a mental space or condition, and there is probably always an existentialist core in the works I want to make, but I don't know if it is influenced by an interest in psychology or by my training. I actually don't think it is. I think it's a difficult question, hard to imagine how one's approach would be without a certain experience or knowledge. And both art and psychology are so abstract, it's hard to tell where one begins and the other ends.

Iselin Page:

It is perhaps understandable that the viewer draws parallels between your art and psychology. To understand an artistry, one often tries to place it in a context that makes sense. When I saw your works, I also thought a lot about the last few years that have been marked by the pandemic. The works appear to be very relevant in their time. Now the pandemic has moved into a new phase, but unfortunately we are experiencing a time in Europe marked by several disasters, most recently the terrible Russian invasion of Ukraine. A war that has shaken the entire European population. Now I'm not going to make this a political question, but I'm still curious if your artistic practice reflects a world-watching approach?

Judit Kristensen:

There is some kind of autobiographical root in the works I make, and I pick up aspects from my surrounding world and time that I think can help me towards something I'm looking for. Since a very young age, I have been interested in some kind of everyday existence that a corona existence has been favorable to. I have been interested both in depicting myself and in taking part in other people's depictions of more trivial aspects of life. When I was twelve I used to take the bus from the village to the city and go to the Gallerix to stand in front of a poster reproduction of Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, and I am very weak for the everyday scenes of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin or the entire artistic output of Matt Bollinger. I don't really know why I want to portray that kind of existence. I've thought about it and wondered if I wish I could connect the loneliest and dullest aspects of my existence to a collective story told through culture about what life is all about. In any case, a corona existence has been an inspiring existence, haha. I have also long been interested in some kind of mental space, trying to depict claustrophobic, ambiguously threatening private home environments or sleep problems and the experience of days and nights flowing together, which the corona era has also been favorable for. But apart from that, I don't know if I have a particularly world-watching approach, it's not something I'm looking for anyway.

Apart from the fact that there is of course an awareness that a work of art relates to an environment and is understood in a context, which I think all cultural practitioners have some sort of understanding of. I sometimes think that I might leave something that others understand based on their personal experiences and associations, and I think that's very nice, like that a special artistic communication can exist, and a social context or worldview is something you have to understand that a viewer will be influenced by in the perception of a work.

Iselin Page:

In addition to your motifs and themes, I also really like your style and have especially noticed the large open areas in the drawings and the color palette in the paintings. Looking at your older works, it still feels like you found your style quite early in your artistic career. I would like to know a little more about your interest and approach to painting and drawing. Have you always been interested in expressing yourself visually?

Judit Kristensen:

Thank you so much, how nice to read it. Yes, I have. My ten years older sister used to tell me that I drew so much as a baby that at ten she was afraid that her little sister had been born insane. Apparently I mostly lay on the floor manically producing drawings of horror vacui compositions of cephalopods, with a devotion and a pen grip that she used to say looked absurd for a baby who could barely walk, and she apparently tried, unbeknownst to my parents, to keep me away from pens and paper because she was so worried about my mental health, haha. As a child I also used to cut a lot from colored paper and make visual stories, and I always appreciated a pen and paper if language felt insufficient.

I have also long had a very great admiration and perhaps excessive romanticization of visual communication. Something that was significant for me was finding my first two favorite artists. I found the first one when I was twelve, browsing the backs of a record store. I had just discovered music and was pretty geeky, and I saw the artwork on the cover of Cherry Kicks by Caesars Palace. There was a girl in the background on the cover doing something I didn't understand but still felt a strong connection with, which opened the door for me to what frequencies something visual can communicate within. I bought the disc so I could keep watching it. When I got to the girls' room, I realized that the drawing was bad, according to the measuring instruments I was taught by my art teachers. The heads were too big, the feet too small, the girl in the background that I was enchanted with seemed to be sitting but had no chair. I was annoyed, because I remember having the feeling that the artist knew the hands were too small and had left it at that.

I kept looking at the cover I had spent my weekly money on, and after a while I got the feeling that I understood something my art teachers and maybe the whole adult world didn't. Something visual could offer a magic that was not equated with anatomical correctness, there was something else that was the goal, something else to chase, which I have no idea what it is, but I've probably been chasing it ever since, and I I hope I can do it for the rest of my life.

The second favorite artist I found was the illustrator of the children's books about Sailor and Pekka. I used to read them as a young teenager to my niece and was captivated by the cartoons, I think we both were. It made me make my own adventures also about me and her. One day it occurred to me that I had two favorite artists and was perhaps interested in art, and that I should learn their names, at least see who they were. I first looked at the children's book, it had been made by Jockum Nordström. Then I opened the CD and looked in the little booklet, and when I read the same name I couldn't believe it. It felt so absurd to have picked the same person out of the multitude of visual impressions the world offered. For you and me now it is of course logical to recognize an artist in different contexts, but for me as a twelve year old it felt like magic that my two favorite artists were the same person. It built some kind of alliance between me and something I thought I was alone in finding, a teenage self-confidence and protection against self-censorship, it was significant.

Iselin Page:

What a story and experience. It makes so much sense now that you watched Jockum Nordström when you were young. It's also great fun that you can trace your interest in art back to childhood. As a final question, I'm curious about where the road goes next for you. What does the future look like and are there any ideas or projects you would like to share?

Judit Kristensen:

How nice, thanks for that. Yes, teenage idols are important, I think. I'm glad for the ones I had. I've been living in Antwerp since October, I'm happy about that, I have a studio and an apartment that, apart from the occasional hour at a bar, I go between. It's been a pretty nice life. And the occasional trip to exhibitions. Antwerp has an exciting art scene. I was curious about it from Sweden and now I'm happy to be part of it. I will probably spend some time here before I come back to Sweden. Antwerp is also so nicely placed in Europe. Today I've been in a town called Aalst and left paintings to a private art gallery for a group exhibition that has a vernissage this weekend, which should be fun to be a part of, and the day after it opens I'm going to Sweden to hang an exhibition at Örnsköldsvik's art gallery, which I'm looking forward to. But unfortunately both of these exhibitions are probably old news by the time this publication is printed. A future plan that is planned for the week after the exhibition at Artipelag opens is an exhibition in London, with a group I am very happy to be a part of, but at the time of writing it has not been announced yet. And after that, most projects I look forward to are sadly "unannounced". But I hope that the future means that I get to continue working with art, and I am truly forever grateful for how the conditions for that have improved thanks to this scholarship.