Interview with Mark Frygell
Mark Frygell
Mark Frygell’s works depart from the history of painting, sub-cultural images and cartoons. He repeatedly manipulates and reworks gestures, references and materials, inspired by different methodologies of painting. His interest lies in concepts such as caricature, the grotesque and the comic.
His most recent works explore his own relationship to the figurative painting, the still-life and landscape painting as carriers of collective consciousness, moral symbols and identity. In line with these interests, his reuse of forms, colours, compositions, themes and expressions of acertain painterly language form an important part of Mark Frygell’s method. Starting with quick drawings made directly on the pages in books that he reads, or on different found materials, he then refines and process the motives, shifting materials and formats before working with oil on canvas. Through these different stages, he explores the motives and finds new shapes and forms.
Mark Frygell (b. 1985 in Umeå), lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden) has studied at The Royal Academy in Umeå, Sweden and Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna, Austria. His work has been shown in the Moderna Exhibition at Moderna Museet in Stockholm and recently the public space Härnösand Art Gallery presented a solo exhibition with his work.
INTERVIEW WITH MARK FRYGELL BY LAURA DAY WEBB
Growing up with an artist mother, art has surrounded you since birth. However, was there a particular catalyst that spurred you to pursue a career as an artist?
It’s a hard question. As you say, art was all around, but more importantly any kind of creative interest was always encouraged. My mom is the kind of woman that does not question if you get into black metal, she wants you to make a mixtape.
I remember growing up and right across from the place in the hallway where you put on your shoes was a postcard on the wall of “Dance of life” by Munch and these kinds of things were just part of your day to day. Growing up with a parent working as an artist, and a single mother at that, there were a lot of things that made me not want to be an artist. It seemed very economically tough and even if we didn't starve you lived in a different world of access compared to many kids. Mom did good though, working with what we had, to make a good upbringing but I never thought I would choose something like that for me.
I was always enchanted by images, imagination and the unknown. A curious kid I guess. And for whatever reason I never was content just observing, I always wanted to interact, or build, on things I saw. Drawing and painting came later, even if I would spend some time in my mothers studio playing around with that. But my early creative love was writing stories and in high school music and for a long time I was dead set on becoming a writer but that kind of disappeared after I studied literature for my upper secondary high school year. I just got bored of it.
Instead I was way into the punk scene at the time. Making posters, fanzines and different designs for my own and my friends' bands. A little bit later, based on all the older punks having so many tattoos, I decided to try my hand at tattooing and began an apprenticeship at a studio that I eventually got kicked out of based on my poor drawing skills. I started a basic art education to learn it better and during this time I completely fell in love with painting. Both looking and making.
I remember going on a study trip with my school to Berlin. At Kupferstichkabinett they were showing a red Rothko next to a Raphael and it just blew my mind at the time. It was something inside me that just clicked and even if I couldn’t formulate it I just felt I kind of understood what it was all about. Since then I think my love for both Rafael and Rothko have faded and many events like that have taken place that have continued to feed my curiosity and fascination with creativity and expression.
Music has played an integral role in your life. Can you share a bit more about how it interplays and informs your artistic practice?
I think it plays into a part of me that wants to be creative somehow in a time based medium. A painting is fixed. It is all there in front of you. Sound is always in relationship to time. You can never see the full picture at once, similar to moving images. They are also somewhat mediums that are distinctly tied to one sense each and at the same time they benefit from the ambiguity of these senses. It's very hard to explain what makes a certain painting great with words in the same way as an experience of sound. In that sense they are bodily experiences mainly and intellectually secondary. In my studio I usually work a bit with music parallel to working with my paintings, they complement each other very well in my practice. I can also never really listen to music while painting, and if I do it is very abstract stuff. There is something with a catchy tune that just disturbs my flow working. It becomes too much a part of the work and makes painting too jolly. Not that it is depressing to paint but I feel that they have their own soundscape, only it is not audible. Sometimes I tried painting to my own strange sound experiments but so far I prefer to have it quiet, or have the radio/tv on in the background to just create some kind of ambiance.
Your practice is multidisciplinary in nature from sculpture to digital media yet painting has continued to play a central role. What is it about the act of painting and the medium itself that continues to draw you back?
It might make me sound lazy or like I am patting myself on the back but it is the easiest way for me to express myself. I feel like it is the medium where I can do whatever I want. Tieing into the previous question I am a shit musician compared to my understanding of the painterly medium. It is a medium both with strict limitations and endless possibilities and eventually, after painting your way past the first hurdles of the medium, it becomes a window into a world you can’t access any other way. Today I feel that painting is like exploring. It is a bit of a silly allegory but sometimes I can relate to the kids in Narnia that enter the wardrobe and end up in this other space. Painting is like that to me, even when I was painting purely abstract. I can look back at what I have made and be taken aback that all of that is from a world inside me that I never really designed but more something I found. It makes it very addictive to see what is around the next corner.
Are there any mediums you have yet to touch on and are keen to explore?
I played around a little bit with ceramics which I would like to do more. It's a fantastic material with a lineage as long as painting almost. It feels raw in the same way but the material in itself is as eternal as the earth and rocks around us. But working with three dimensions is soo hard! Instead of looking into something, as with painting, you are taking something out. It's very hard to make something feel alive and as an entity in itself in the world. I think a very good sculpture has that connotation to the Golem, an animated object, but very few can do that. I think Huma Bhaba is one of those people that inspire me a lot to do sculpture today as well as Sterling Ruby and for example Brancusi of the past. Of course there are many more but these are some big names where I totally feel they have managed to manifest something in the physical world that has its own agency.
Other than that I would love to make a comic book one day. I grew up reading comics from a very young age and to some extent I think comics have shaped my creativity almost as much as the high art history for that reason. I am very scared to do it though, partially because I have such respect for the medium but also because the linear format is very intimidating to me. As I mentioned before with painting and music, a painting exists all at the same time. A comic book stretches over time like music. It is a grotesque medium , in the original sense of the word, in so far that it mergest different fields into a new mutation. It feels like an awful lot to consider when making a comic compared to a painting from a painterly perspective. But I am sure I will work up the guts to do it sooner or later.
Do you have any upcoming projects or shows you would like to tell us more about?
I have some different things happening at the moment that are keeping my already scattered brain occupied. I just finished a public art mural on glass in the south of Sweden and a show at Room 57 in New York is still open. I’m also working on a small print run 12” vinyl with label Republiken Bergslagen that will come out later in the summer and a collaboration making clothes for the brand A days march that exists in New York and Stockholm. And the usual painting process of course. Slow running in the background is some experimentation with 3d printing and game design but I think that these things will take some time before they see the light of the day.
Finally, if you could study with an artist past or present, who would it be?
Good question. Seems so hard to hang out too much with the best artists, especially if you are an artist yourself. I think that as an artist you are on your path and you know the way you are walking. Most of my favorite artists seem to personally have been total oddballs that do not learn things the conventional way. When you read their biographies they seem to have been at conflict with most artists they try to work with. Of course Giorgio De Chirico and Piero Della Francesca would be fantastic to meet but as far as study go I guess my dream class mate would probably be sitting with some neanderthal figuring out fire, painting some deer on a cave wall and trying to figure out what the hell is going on at a
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