A conversation between Gustav Jørgen Pedersen and Christer Karlstad

Gustav Jørgen Pedersen: We have just entered the month of June and are talking to each other from opposite parts of the country. Here in the north, the snow is still melting, and the rivers are full to overflowing. There are foxes, weasels, hares and moose right outside the door. Simultaneously, the rest of the world is being ravaged by a global pandemic which as we speak has taken more than 400 000 lives. The virus, having spread from animals to humans at a wet-market in China, is a not-so-subtle reminder that the border between the animal- and human kingdom is more fragile than many would like to believe. Furthermore, we humans have never been more isolated from one another than we have been in recent weeks. In other words, there is more than one way in which the crisis the whole world is facing resonates in your art. I can imagine that for you, things are being affected by all of this only to a small extent, whereas other things I know you care a great deal about, not least your exhibition opening, which you’ve been forced to postpone. Perhaps both you and everyone who’s going to read this are fed up with talk about the pandemic, but we’re standing in the middle of a situation which means that that the subject is practically unavoidable. What has working been like over the past few months?

Christer Karlstad: It’s been a combination of very different and the same as before. My day isn’t all that different from what it was before Covid-19, but it has impacted me because it’s also been a major digression. I’ve had to pull myself together. I’ve felt a sort of duty to keep myself updated, which has stolen a lot of time but at the same time also given me the opportunity to fully concentrate. Although I had started working on my paintings before Covid-19 was even on the horizon, it has affected the way in which I see my own work. They just fit in. There is an element of aloneness in nearly all my paintings, whether they are constellations of animals and people or feature several people - it’s as if each individual is completely on their own. My paintings are good at social distancing.

GJP: I find it slightly conspicuous how well your paintings resonate with today’s situation, although I know this was not your intention, but rather an imagined future, or a different time – depending on your viewpoint. One often gets the feeling of something post-apocalyptic, the time after the event - something along those lines. You also have paintings that seem to revolve around the post-post-apocalyptic - a new world long after the collapse, where things are starting to grow anew. One can sense a whole other reality.

CK: I think about the time aspect quite a bit. More precisely, I want to remove myself from time. Although I don’t see my paintings as a reflection of a reality, as predictions or anything like that, they may still harbour a poetic truth. But really, I don't believe everything I see in my paintings as such. I actually have a more pessimistic view of our existence than my paintings show. That being said, I still don’t let myself be consumed by darkness. I need hope, not just hopelessness. I don’t see a possibility of symbiosis between wild animals and humans - I'm not that naive. The wild animal is a representation of nature in it’s purest form.

GJP:  A recurring theme in your art is the problematization of the relationship between man, animal and nature. One can easily associate this with a post-humanist mindset, a current trying to precisely decentre the human perspective, recognize other life forms in a more including way, and question the alleged natural hierarchies between "us" and "them". This may become even more apparent, as the whole world is fighting a virus that, in all likelihood, was first transmitted between animals, then to humans (not that it would be the first time), uninterruptedly infecting more than six million people.

CK: Yes, and the virus may circulate forever for all we know. When it comes to pandemics and disasters, I've been thinking and reading about this for quite some time now and I have been expecting something like this to happen. We should perhaps be grateful for the wake-up call we have received because this, in many ways, is as gentle as we could dare hope for. We can at least take preventative measures against this pandemic.

GJP: True. If something can be called a “gentle” worldwide pandemic, maybe this is it? It spreads fairly quickly but has a fairly low mortality rate. But when you say you've been thinking and expecting: How is this reflected artistically?

CK: I said I need to have elements of hope in the hopelessness. Hopelessness to me is that I can't see that it will end well. I have an overwhelming feeling that all signs are pointing in the same direction - not a good direction. It feels like we're too late. All these thoughts I am referring to, about beginning to understand the relationship between nature, humans and animals and the dependency on each other for survival – I am happy about all of this despite everything. 

GJP: Hope has been important to me too, but I don't know if art can actually give hope or just temporarily suppress hopelessness. I gave this a lot of thought a few years ago, that hope is something you choose, but that hopelessness is something you give in to.

CK: I don't personally wish to impart anything destructive on the world, but I wish to do good through my art and be a decent human being. I am not afraid of anyone perceiving my paintings as emotional, sentimental or moving. I would be pleased if my paintings were comforting and calming as well. In my universe there should be room for all that I am and all that I represent. This goes against the rigid discipline with which one is taught at an art academy. After completing my education, I had to shake off many conventions applied to me from the outside and "truths" that didn’t really belong to me.

GJP: Yes, maybe it can be called heartiness. It's about wanting to be true to your own artistic idea. But this means working and balancing on a knife’s edge. It's easy to fall.

CK: That's pretty accurate. I’m not really interested in renewing myself per se, but I would like to discover something new in my form of expression. At the same time, I want to be in a place that is a bit painful. I'm pretty confident that I’m familiar with the demarcations. That I'm a person who pretty much manages to balance. In any case, I usually know what the reception will be among those who don’t like what I am doing. But I insist on my own. Where you come from and who you have become is a kind of mystery, but I know who I am. I have lots of ideas. Many bad and some good. And a whole bank of things waiting to be carried out. Some are being pushed ahead of me because they are too ambitious. Others are just waiting. But I "always" – in quotation marks – know if something "is something". I don’t start with a picture not being sure how it will end up. Yes, I can pursue a small and simple idea, but I’m extremely certain that I’m onto something at the time I get started.

GJP: But there is, for once, a pretty clear exception to this in the exhibition. I remember seeing an earlier version of the "Slide" painting. It's actually been re-painted quite a bit, something you pretty much never do, right?

CK: That was the very reason I had to say “always” in quotation marks. What shall I say? The painting was the result of a decision taken out of character. There was once a horse next to the woman looking down the steep cliff. I'm not sure what made me feel that an animal had to stand next to her, but I suspect it was because I had a thought that it was going to be a "Christer Karlstad painting". It went contrary to the original simple, visual idea. Even though the first version turned out ok as well, this is how it was always meant to be: A human figure, so that the landscape comes into its own. I am immensely concerned that paintings should "add up" - and that the spectator's gaze is manipulated exactly as I wish. That's what I'm working on. That's what's interesting when I'm standing and working. It's not these ideas we're talking about that make me get up in the morning to paint. I probably never completely forget about them, but it's building images that drives me. The making of pictures. I think a little, plan carefully and then I get it out. When I finally know what I want to achieve, I stand there and add layers, thinking in surfaces, contrasts, shapes and all those things. At this point, the idea is not in my conscious mind. Then I can come back a week later and wonder what I ever was doing.

Translated by Eirik Ørevik Aadland