feature KARIN MAMMA ANDERSSON
Gone for Good, 2006, acrylic and oil on panel, 122 x 160 cm. Courtesy David Zwirner, New York
KMA: That painting is about mortality. The ruin repeats itself. Mortality Do you feel as if you need to ‘do’ less to a picture for it to carry
is also something comforting. a message or impart a mood? That the audience has in some
way grown with you?
AR: Those first paintings that came to a wider audience certainly
had a huge impact – paintings like Modern Dance. How did it KMA: The audience is never there when I am working. And everyone
feel to be ‘discovered’? Was it freeing – a relief – or did it bring may feel free to see and understand the paintings as they
about different kinds of pressures and problems? want to.
KMA: A combination of the two. It is like getting drunk; the hangover AR: I think your most successful paintings are the ones that seem
is not as pleasant as the day before. The pressure to create most detached, because there’s both humour and despair
something good has always been there, and it has not become in what isn’t said. Is this sense of detachment increasingly
greater with being discovered. important to you? Does it amplify the sense of tragedy that’s
been there all along?
AR: Were you concerned about being defined by a certain type of
work, or even a handful of motifs – birch trees, children, etc? KMA: It is always more interesting when things cannot be said,
only felt.
KMA: Yes, the motifs are exact – not when they are being worked on
but when they are done. Of course I choose motifs that I can AR: How do you see the work changing?
stand behind. You have to choose which path to walk.
KMA: Every day.
AR: I sense that in the more recent work – I’m thinking particularly
of Backbiter – visual ‘richness’, with all that that implies, has Mamma Andersson is on show at Camden Arts Centre, London, from 28
given way to an extent to something tougher, cooler, if you like. September to 25 November
ARtReview 68
Mamma Andersson.indd 6 3/8/07 12:56:23
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