Author name: Natalia Muntean

Estelle Graf on Art, Vulnerability and the Human Condition Written by Natalia Muntean Photo by Felicia Larsson In her exhibition “Dressed Up and Desperate” (Finklädd och Förtvivlad) at WAY Gallery in Stockholm, Swedish artist Estelle Graf delves into the complexities of the human condition through anthropomorphic figures. For the self-taught artist, these themes are not new obsessions but lifelong inquiries. “Everything I’ve painted… these are things I’ve been thinking about my whole life: what it means to be human, exist in this world, and hierarchies,” she explains. The exhibition brings into focus the fragile balance Graf depicts: the tension between the suit-clad personas we perform and the vulnerabilities we hide from others. “People usually try to hold up a picture of themselves being controlled,” she says, “and then underneath that, for everyone, there’s something unresolved or raw.” Through scenes with animal-headed figures, Graf uses humour and unease to strip away our social costumes, asking a question that fuels her entire practice: “We all seem to be struggling with the same things… and then when we go out in life, we’re still so conforming. We’re so tense, and we’re so scared. Why is that?” Natalia Muntean: “Dressed Up and Desperate” is an interesting title. What emotions or ideas did you want to capture through it?Estelle Graf: The title points to a tension I think many of us carry: the desire to present ourselves as composed, cultured, even elevated, while underneath there is something quite raw and unresolved. ”Dressed Up and Desperate” refers to that duality. We perform being human. We dress up, but the deeper emotional landscape is rarely neat. There is longing, confusion, insecurity, and hunger. The works move between the theatrical and the vulnerable, almost like characters caught mid-scene, mid-collapse. I wanted to hold both the absurdity and the sincerity of that state. NM: Was the title something you decided in the beginning, or did it come to you when you started working?EG: The theme it explains has been there. I’ve known what I’m trying to talk about all the time. But I think it always comes to me through the process – what could best describe what I’m thinking about right now, what I’m trying to communicate. So somewhere in the middle of the process, I think, “Okay, so this is it.” NM: How do you title your works?EG: When I’m finished, definitely. Sometimes I have a title in the beginning, and then it changes. I have an idea, “Okay, this is the story,” and I work with that as something to hold on to. Then, in the process, it changes and shifts and ends up as something else. I think the truth in the work often shows when I’m done. It’s similar to the way I work with myself as a human being. You have an idea of who you are, and then through the process of living your life, you realise stuff about yourself. You thought you were one way, and then three years later, you look back and realise something stood for something else. I think it’s the same when I create art. I start with one wish, one vision, one title, and then throughout the process, I realise, “Okay, this is probably more about this than that.” NM: Tell me a bit about your process – what does a day look like in your studio? Do you go in with a plan, or do you just let your intuition lead you?EG: To be creative and start my process, I need to be alone in a quiet space for quite some time. When I start the actual practical process, I can sit and just paint for eight hours straight. But before I do that, I have to sit in complete quiet. I can’t listen to anything, and I usually just stare at the wall, waiting for inspiration to kick in. NM: So you just need to be with yourself. And you don’t create from a place of chaos?EG: My work is about chaos in one way. It’s chaos to just be alive. And in order to be able to tell the story about chaos, I need to be in harmony. NM: I know you’ve written a book before as well, and have explored some of its themes through your art. How does storytelling differ between these two media? Obviously, painting and writing are quite different, but how does your approach shift depending on the medium?EG: When changing media, it’s also a way of getting a new outlook. If I have an idea and I’m writing about it, it will give me one conclusion. If I try to translate that into a painting, even directly, it will maybe give me a different conclusion. That’s something I think is really interesting. The medium can help you find new conclusions or discover things about a subject you thought you had turned upside down. You change medium and you’re like, “Oh, this is what it’s about.” NM: You are a self-taught painter – tell me about this journey.EG: Yes, I am self-taught. I’ve been painting all my life, but I was so scared of making that my work identity. NM: Why?EG: I think maybe because it’s vulnerable. If something really means something to you… I have a feeling, when I talk to friends and read about people’s lives, that a lot of people are doing their plan B because their plan A is vulnerable. It means something to you. So if you’re going to take it too seriously, that’s a risk. It’s the same with relationships. The more it means to you, the harder it is to get too close. That was the case for me. I wasn’t even trying to walk close to it until I actually studied form and learning design. It started with a book. I felt like, “Oh, so this story that I’m telling, or the thoughts that I’m having… people seem interested in this narrative.” That’s a nice feeling – to feel that

The relentless forms of Claudine Monchaussé Written by Natalia Muntean Photo by Isabelle Arthuis – Fondation d’entreprise Hermes For over six decades, driven by a “relentless necessity,” Claudine Monchaussé has spent her life getting closer to an image that has burned within her since she first touched clay. At 89, her first major exhibition outside France, “Sourdre,” at the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès’s La Verrière in Brussels, finally brings her work into the light. Curated by Joël Riff as an “augmented solo” show, the exhibition places her potent stoneware sculptures, born from the telluric force of the pottery village La Borne, into dialogue with artists across generations, including Germaine Richier and Marie Talbot, creating a conversation around universal symbols and the act of creation.  Natalia Muntean: Your work is described as being driven by an “inner pursuit” and a “relentless necessity.” Could you describe the sensation of that creative impulse and how it guides your hands when you begin a new piece?Claudine Monchaussé: I always had a fire burning inside me that I wanted to put to use with clay. In the first years, I didn’t quite understand what I was doing, but there was an image that stayed with me. I spent my entire life wanting to be as close to it as possible. It isn’t my hands that guide me, but rather, my intuition. NM: You have lived and worked in La Borne for over 65 years. How has the spirit and tradition of that place specifically shaped the energy and form of your sculptures?CM: I came to live here with a potter/ceramist who divided his time between Paris and La Borne. At the time, in 1959, there were still traditional potters. I loved their simple, functional work. La Borne has centuries of pottery tradition behind it; there is a telluric force here. I never wanted to make pots, nor did I ever try, but I always felt that clay would be my medium; it was essential to me, visceral. Some people paint. I work with clay.   Photo © Isabelle Arthuis – Fondation d’entreprise Hermes NM: After working in relative solitude for decades, how does it feel to see your life’s work being brought together for this major exhibition, your first outside of France?CM: I am very grateful to the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès and Joël Riff for inviting me to exhibit. The works come to life, and the exhibition reveals the connections not only between them but also with the visitors. I have always felt somewhat overwhelmed by my work, but seeing so many pieces together moves me and brings me a sense of serenity. NM: You have said you never had a choice but to make your work, that it is a “relentless necessity.” Does the act of shaping the clay feel more like a process of discovery, of uncovering a form that already exists, or one of creation from nothing?CM: In my studio, I meet people from all over the world, and every person has been able to relate to the forms and symbols in my work. No matter what language they speak, they are able to access the ideas that I have experimented with. It probably speaks to the fact that everything already exists somewhere. I’ve never left my studio and yet somehow, thanks to many encounters with people, it is as if I have travelled the entire world several times and am the bearer of many civilisations. NM: When you finish a sculpture, do you feel its journey is complete, or does it only truly begin once it leaves your studio and meets a viewer’s gaze?CM: I have always been very demanding with my sculptures. Until now, they have only been seen by a very small circle of people who have come to me to discover them. I always think of someone when I make them, someone I have seen and known for a long time, or even someone I have never met.

Karla Black on material, chaos and the function of art Written by Natalia Muntean Photo by Simon Vogel “For me, culture is no different from nature; there is no hierarchy,” says Glasgow-based artist Karla Black. Known for her fragile, pastel-coloured installations made from materials like plaster, cellophane and makeup, Black has long explored the physical and emotional charge of matter itself. A Turner Prize nominee and Scotland’s representative at the Venice Biennale in 2011, she continues with her current show at Belenius Gallery in Stockholm to blur the line between painting and sculpture, insisting, as she puts it, on “the difficult, messy, chaotic characteristic of human behaviour” that keeps art alive. Natalia Muntean: Your work often resists explanation in words. When you begin preparing for an exhibition, where do you start? With a material, a colour, or with the space itself?Karla Black: The first thing that happens is that a desire arises in me. Maybe I want to mix paint into a particular colour, or touch a certain material like polythene, or scrabble around with some powder. In this sense, I think that my work begins with an exercising of the unconscious, which is experimental.  La Biennale di Venezia NM: You have described your sculptures as having “functions” rather than “meanings.” In the context of the Belenius Gallery show, what kind of functions or consequences do you hope these works might have for visitors?KB: The ambition that I have for my work in general – to force the institution or the gallery to present what art really is – the difficult, messy, chaotic characteristic of human behaviour that is so necessary to allow and to preserve. I hope that my work practically accomplishes something – it forces what art really is into the arena of the gallery and of the historical canon, something that has been very much missing in recent times, as art fairs and commercial galleries and therefore, the prominence of the transferable object has so prevailed. I want to make the real thing, not just some sort of dead historical, immovable object. It should also be ‘difficult’ to move around the powder without damaging it, and to encounter the possible stickiness of the vaseline, etc, I hope people feel this. NM: Pastel colours play a central role in your installations. How do you think their softness shapes the atmosphere of this exhibition?KB: I use colour like I use form. In a way, colour is a material for me. It is really the tone of the colour that is important. Just like the sculptures are almost objects or only just objects, so the colour is only just colour. I never use primary colours because I am mostly trying to get as close to nothing as possible, or as close to white as possible. NM: Each of your exhibitions carries only your name as its title. What does it mean for you to strip away all other framing and let the work stand on its own?KB: It’s a feminist stance. It is also a statement about the importance of abstraction. The ‘great name’ of the artist, as used in museum shows and monographs, is traditionally of male artists. The name itself as title is a representation of the fact that the interaction of me and the space is all there really is.  NM: When you step into the finished space at Belenius, what do you feel the works are doing here?KB: Hopefully, they are embodying a ‘real’ creative moment in an increasingly hermetic, sealed-off, commercially driven art world that prizes the transferable object above all. Hopefully, they don’t appear too ‘finished’ or  ‘clean’  and they are therefore allowing space for the process, for the mess to be felt by people in the pristine gallery space itself. NM: What is the most recent material, colour, or gesture that truly surprised you in your own work?KB: The use of the mirrors is a surprise to me. I never really expected to work on a surface that is attached to a wall. There was always mark-making on my sculptures, and there was an aspect of the sculptures that kept getting thinner and thinner. Although it is a surprise, it also feels like a natural progression. I think I can only make works on 2-dimensional surfaces if those surfaces are either reflective or transparent because, somehow, the work still needs to involve space or the 3-dimensional. NM: Do you see your work as more about exploring the world, or about creating a space separate from it?KB: Both, I suppose. The world is the world. I think my work is part of nature. For me, culture is no different from nature; there is no hierarchy. NM: What do you hope people take away from your show? KB: An impetus towards physical response. Photo by Capitain Petzel

Gavin Gleeson’s Partial Parade Offers a Playful Pause Written by Natalia Muntean “Too far Jacob” Gavin Gleeson found painting at twenty-seven. Or perhaps, painting found him. “I was in Paris, working a remote job, and I had taken a few drawing classes, but I just decided to pick up some paint for the first time and did a little watercolour. That was really the first time I painted,” he says. Born to Irish parents and raised in Kentucky, Gleeson grew up between worlds. “Growing up as a first-generation Irish American definitely gave me a sense of feeling a little bit abnormal,” he says. What began as a peek into painting became a path of its own, leading him away from business and into an intuitive studio practice where, he explains, “I like coming into the studio as if it’s an improvisation session.”  He never imagined it would carry him as far as a master’s degree at the Royal College of Art. Now presenting his first solo exhibition, Partial Parade, at Saskia Neuman Gallery in Stockholm, Gleeson translates how he experiences the world into canvases, inviting the viewer to join him in a “playful pause.”  Muntean Natalia: You picked up a brush at 27, and at 30, you have your first exhibition?Gavin Gleeson: I’m pinching myself, definitely! Growing up, my next-door neighbour was a lawyer by day but painted in his spare time. I would see him paint or make sculptures, so I was aware of it, but I didn’t think anybody painted full-time.  NM: But was there something that made you pick up the brush?GG: Honestly, boredom. I wouldn’t start work until the afternoon and just wanted something to do, so I signed up for a class. Later, back in Ireland, I reached out to a second cousin who’s a painter. He told me what to buy, a few basic colours, and I started painting in my Nana’s garage, using old bottles and family photos as references.Eventually, I found a one-year course at the Burren College of Art, a tiny village on Ireland’s West Coast. When 250 Ukrainian refugees moved in during the war, the population doubled overnight. I would drive past the playground, the kids playing, the women smoking, against this bleak, windy landscape. That contrast between playfulness and heaviness really stuck with me. There was also a Ukrainian artist at the school, in his seventies. We would talk through Google Translate. His work filled whole walls – huge pieces. Even without understanding the words, I could feel the weight of them. It taught me that emotion can be grasped through marks and strokes alone. Portrait by Pelle Nisbel Fjäll NM: Let’s talk about your show, Partial Parade – what does this moment mean for you? And how did you land on that title?GG: It’s very exciting because I waited so long to get started. The show came together at a good time because it can be tough when you’re coming out of your master’s degree, a bit aimless, and you’re just making work to have a portfolio and get by. When it comes to the title, it came from its dual meaning – partial as in incomplete, and partial as in biased. It felt cheeky. Is it a parade or a protest? I like that ambiguity. Humour is a big part of my Irish culture. It’s an invitation to improvise, to question. I ask myself, where am I being partial? Coming from business, from a place of privilege, there are a lot of questions we’re all facing. NM: And does painting give you the answers?GG: Maybe just better questions. A place of refuge and questioning. I think art’s inherently political. I think it’s a really important time for art and painting. For me, it’s a reflection of what’s going on. I feel proud to be a painter right now. I very much feel like a member of a choir more than someone trying to prove a point. And I think that’s really important to me: one of many. NM: Do you have a routine? Is it like a nine-to-five for you?GG: I wish. That’s the goal. It’s a balancing act in London. Initially, it was part-time jobs, jumping in the studio when I could. Now I work full-time and come in on weekends or an evening. I have the attention span of a puppy in the studio, which is good and bad. But with that excitement of, “Oh my god, there’s so much to paint,” it feels like I could keep going, which is a nice feeling. I’m quite a prolific painter. When I go to the studio, I get my painting clothes on and listen to music very loudly. There’s a getting stoked aspect, like getting psyched up for a game. It becomes like a spiritual practice, searching for truth from the unknown. My mantra is “trust the hands.” They’ll lead you where you need to go. “Timorous Machination” “Red Rover” NM: What role does playfulness have in your process?GG: Coming into the art world, I found it overwhelming with all the rules. Then you see a kid with a sketchpad just doing their own thing. My cousin, for example, has autism and is an amazing artist with no agenda. We had this moment of communication through art when we drew one of his cartoon characters. That was right before art school, and that started from play, as so many ideas do. Things get legs on their own.  NM: Who or what influences you the most?GG: Music. My brother’s a musician, my dad works in music now, and my best friend back home is one too. When we were younger, he’d be looping tracks in one room while I drew in another; we would feed off each other’s energy. That rhythm and spontaneity are what I try to capture when I paint. Growing up in Kentucky also shaped me. There’s a strong punk and DIY culture there – that “just make it” attitude. It taught me not to