ARTIST MIC LINDER WILL BE JOINING ART EYE, UNDER THE
AE THE PROJECTROOM RESIDENCY FOR NOVEMBER 2017
 
Mic Linder is an artist living and working in Sweden, who uses geometric and simplified abstractions of the comic book
characters. His paintings are locked in a sort of surreal dance between violence and cooperation, between indivduality and uniformity. Art history in general and expressionism in particular works as a sounding board for the works of Linder which are balancing between the joyful and the
unpleasant.

“My painterly praxis is based on a kind of intentionlessness. I start out with a vaguely formulated idéa – or hunch is perhaps better… And no matter what kind of a picture it is it must contain music, or rythm, othervise it won’t work. If it works, as in with painting generally, it is because there is music/rythm, no matter how morally corrupt or othervise objectionable the content of the work may be.

I once read a book about childrens psychology in relation to creation, and a little girl said: “I just begin, and it gets good” and I thought that this is all you need as a work principle: just begin, and things will happen. So basically I begin with a hunch and I start adding layer after layer until I have overworked the picture, in which case I start subtracting or starting over completely. As i keep adding my choices become fever and I find myself getting more constricted. When the painting is done it is so because I am completely constricted and unable to do anything more.

But just to be clear: intentionlessness does not mean “anything goes”, and that there is no thought behind the work. Intentionlessness refers to the technical notion that there must be a physically spontaneous element in the act of painting that is guided by intuition and presence rather than by predetermined aims or ideas. What the picture demands, not what you intend. There is a dialogue there, something metaphysical.” Mic Linder

This i partly why I´ve tried to avoid developing a certain manner of painting, or “style”. I think Style becomes something you put between yourself and the world… If you want to be honest you can´t be thinking about being coherent at the same time, you just gotta be present in what is happening in the picture (or sculpture). Let it paint itself. Otherwise it´s easy to get trapped in a situation where the form becomes your subject, and that´s all backwards… The “form”, or “style” is something that´s supposed to be a channel to the outside real world, or the inside real world, not a dead end.