1. Where were you born and where are you from ?

Born and raised in a costal town on the Swedish west coast called Varberg where I am currently also based.

2. What is your first memory connected to the art world ?

At an age of 4 my parents decided to get married in the capital of our neighboring country Denmark. To the creation of their wedding bouquet they hired an incredible danish floral artist named Tage Andersen. Entering the studio of Tages prior to the wedding was probably the very first event in life that both evoke and sparked my interest in art. I can still remember the sounds of birds chirping and the enormous smell of fresh flowers that in a combination with Tages lighty avant-garde historical clothes and his grey bushy beard, welcomed me to a new place inside of me. Tages handmade metal objects adorned the magic jungle of pure vegetation that lead through the whole studio.

3. Have you always worked in the art/design field ?

More or less, yes. My whole upbringing was pretty much an introduction to the art/design field since both my parents always had a have a huge interest in aesthetics in many different formats which today is expressed in their running of an interior design office and store where I moreover started to work at an early stage in life. I remember from being very young that I was very curious and interested in what my parents were doing, often sitting on a stool next to my dad when he was drawing different shops or concepts. After graduating from high school I took a season off skiing in the French Alps followed by that I started to work full time with my parents in their interior design office and store. Alongside my artistry nowadays, I still work at their studio as an interior designer.

4. What led you to the design creation ?

It wasn’t from one day to another that I realized that I had creation within me. I believe different events during my life have had an impact and influenced me to get to the starting point. My journey there probably contained of the combination of growing up in a aesthetic minded family and the fact that I’ve shared my last 5 years with a women who constantly trigger my expression to take more space and time. There definitely was a ”first day” of sketching but I strongly believe that painting began a long time ahead in my unconsciousness. The actual event that really started the process was when me and my girlfriend Tyra moved back to Sweden from living in New York and I had to get a place to stay which I also had to furnish and style. Despite my work as an interior designer and the knowledge of the market that comes with that, I couldn’t find anything that matched both my aesthetic and budget. Out of that void and out of the fear of losing Tyra back to our favorite city, I started building my very own empire that I hoped could compensate the small-city-life for a time. I wanted to create something in the borderland between art and furniture that me and Tyra could interact with, both on a mentally and physical level.

5. How would you describe your creative process and it influences ?

All my works are based on an aesthetic expression and I don’t compromise on the forms to enable function. Implementing or expressing the vision behind an object (which can vary what that is) comes first along with the aesthetic and after that follows function and usage. Since thinking, questioning and exploring in a pure mind-fully way is a huge part of who I am it’s really hard not to implement some of this into my works. With the works, I don’t wish to give answers or learn people but rather raise questions or awake new thoughts and discussions within the observer. It’s really hard to describe exactly how the process goes from a thought pops until I have a finished object on the table — because sometimes it can also be vice versa. I honestly don’t know where my inspiration comes from always. Sometimes it can be very clear and thereby definitely visual but other times forms and perspectives can come to me often through different thoughts formulated within me. I don’t want to get stuck in specific structures or patterns when it comes to sources of inspiration which moreover triggers my tentacles to always look for new paths and angles.

6. Could you describe a typical day of your work ?

As mentioned previously, my family runs an interior design office/store where I got the chance to rope off a bit of warehouse with the help of a huge hand painted plastic drapery. Inside the imaginary ”walls”, I’ve got concrete floors, white walls, a workbench in black painted plywood and a general total mess of ongoing projects. A typical day of work consists of me running between the two workspaces, the atelier and my desktop, working on sketches, prototypes, orders and experiments. My artistic process looks different all the time and depends on what I do and what mood I am in. Since freedom is something I cherish for myself, setting templates or regulations about my work process could become something that suffocates me in the long run. The nights are often spent building something outdoors in the parking lot outside our warehouse. Where I live on the west coast in Sweden it’s mostly very windy and cold but in some strange way it has become a wonderful way to spend time outdoors and get time to breathe nature. The whole workspace is moreover located in the countryside which I would say is the place where I belong.

7. Why did you choose the specific materials you work with ?

Honestly, there isn’t any simple answer to this. There are numbers of different factors that have contributed to my use of strange and unpredictable materials in my work. One of them is certainly my curiosity about life in general and another one is the search for beauty in particular. This moreover in combination with a very creative and permissive/encouraging relationship to experiments from my parents side. I usually never start with a material without a thought/feeling about what I want to create as a form, then material comes relatively naturally during the journey. To answer this question more closely, I envy the contrast of combining natural organic materials such as wood and metal with more harsh and unnatural materials as plaster, concrete and fiberglass. I get a lot of satisfaction from getting to know new materials and combinations.

8. What are the technical particularities of your creations ?

I believe that my technical particularities are first of all my curiosity of seeking ways of expressing that I haven’t seen before. I’m not the best carpenter in the world or the most detailed sewer but I do think my hands have something to tell. The key in my artistry is not to seek perfection through the lens of a craftsman but from an artistional point of view. Who decided that an object needs to be perfectly made? And what is the difference between a finish mass produced by robots and an organic hand made pattern made in the seek of something else than pure perfection. People on the other hand tend to like old houses, objects or villages, that comes with a patina or defect. So why is than everything new ‘perfect’? With that said I think my particularities are that I’m not in the this game to create another perfectly made chair or lamp that can be reproduced by someone or something. I create thing with my bare hands that that I wish evokes real feelings and ideas that one haven’t felt or thought before. Something that makes the observer question themselves and their way of living and seeing the world.

9. What advices could you give to beginning artists who would like to create sculptural design works ?

There really are no shortcuts in life, so my advice is to start trying. You just need to throw yourself into the process of thinking and actual doing to reach progress. I see so many people talking and dreaming about things they want to create but that just never get started on. You need to spend time exploring and allow your hands to get really dirty.

10. If your works had to belong to a design movement, in which one would you define it ?

Avant Garde.

11. What designers have influenced you ?

This is a tricky question where a lot of characters should be mentioned but the first ones influencing me was Joseph Frank, Oliver Gustav, Isamu Noguchi, Gerrit Rietveld, Surli Recht, Rick Owens and Gaudi.

12. What contemporary designers do you appreciate ?

Christopher Delcourt, Jan Jensen, Draga Aurel, Vincenzo De Cotiis and Apparatus.

13. What contemporary artists (in any kind of art) have you been inspired by ?

Leonard Vandal, JR, Ivana Bašić, and Chrisitan Caroll Poel.

14. If you had to summarize your creations in one word or sentence, what would it be ?

Elegant and beautiful works that are hard to define.

Proust Questionnaire with very short answers (one or a few words) :
(The Proust Questionnaire is a set of questions answered by the French writer Marcel Proust. Other historical figures who have answered confession albums are Oscar Wilde, Karl Marx, Arthur Conan Doyle, Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Cézanne…)