Jørund Aase

Jørund Aase

Work from his World and Garden.

"I have been trying out different kinds of medias. I usually don´t work within one specific media but uses those which fit my ideas. It can be painting, sculpture, installation, photo, video, sound, etc. I think art has the potential to stimulate people to experience the world in new and deeper ways than is normally done in ordinary life. I don´t think art is interesting in itself. What really is interesting is life itself and the strange world we live in. Everything that exists is a mystery because we can not really understand what it is. This makes everything beautiful and interesting in themselves.

I have had two main problems with making art. They may seem very banal. The first problem is a problem of choice: How can we, when making art, make choices? For instance, how can we use a particular colour while painting, or choose one idea out of the endless other possibilities? It seems so meaningless to make art if everything is relative and there is no actual deep reason for doing it. I guess the question is actually: Can art be meaningful? And more fundamental: Is there any meaning in life at all? I really belive there is, but it has been difficult to find a logical solution to this problem.

The other problem is: If the world is fantastic and interesting in itself. Then, how can an artist make something that can be interesting compared to this? I don´t like making images because images makes one forget about the mystical aspects of the world. The image become an reduction and a distraction from the real. You see the image, and both forget about yourself and the world. As I said it can seem very banal, but it has actually been something that has made it difficult for me to make art works.

 In the last exhibition I had in the student gallery called 21:25, I found the only logical thing to do was working with the mentioned problems. What became the solution and preparation for the show, was emptying the gallery and be in a process of randomly making dots with a pencil on the biggest wall. It was absolutely beautiful to come to the gallery the first day and start making dots on the blank wall. For three days I was doing this. The feeling about it went in cycles. Sometimes it felt meaningful making dots. Other times it seemed meaningless and boring. The end result became very beautiful, I think. When entering the gallery space, people couldn´t see anything exept the room itself. But when getting closer to the dotted wall I found it having a surprising effect. It was not possible to have full overview of all the dots. When moving along the wall, some came into view while others slipped away. It reminded me of looking at the sky full of stars, or other organic structures that is rich and complex, without any readable signs. I found it very interesting also because the dots were real and existing in themselves as just dots. There was no illusion. You could see the whole process. It was simple and clear. Solid ground." - Jørund Aase

via Culturehall