Could you tell us a bit more about your body of work titled “Grid Works”? Works on paper and wood are what I view to be my main line of work. I call these works the “ Grid Works ” because they are all based on a grid, mostly drawn in pencil. The grids vary in size according to the overall dimensions of the picture plane. Then each section of the grid is filled with various materials such as oil-based industrial paint, paper and dust to name a few, depending on what I want to achieve. In the past few months, I have been working mostly with thread and beads sewn into paper. Almost all of the grid works can be interpreted in a number of ways, but I try to refrain from suggesting any single interpretation. Perhaps the most apparent element is repetition, both in the finished work and the working process. The repetitive action can be interpreted as a strive towards perfection, the wanting to achieve a sense of order in a chaotic outer world. I like the comparison of my working process to human labour which is ultimately done to sustain
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life. I think there is something noble in that. However, I am also very aware that all this labouring away is futile because once a work is finished, it starts all over again with the next piece. Despite knowing that perfection is impossible and order needs to be continuously maintained, I feel there is this need in labouring away. These are all immense subjects and not easy to tackle. The “ Grid Works ” confine me to the studio and the working process is a very lonely endeavour. So I occasionally work on projects which are offshoots from my main line of work such as site-specific installations. Are the beads a metaphor for something in your life? The beads are just a material like any other for me. I select the materials on the basis of their properties be it their thickness, how they reflect light and how they behave in relation to other materials. I see the ‘material ness’ of the materials as sufficient reason to use them. And when the work is put together, its meaning overall at least for me does not go beyond this ‘material ness’.