Martin Bigum

Photo Courtesy Of Martin Bigum

WHAT ARE THE BEST THINGS ABOUT THE PLACE WHERE YOU GREW UP?
The contrast between the houses by the beach, where I lived, and the 2,5 kilometre-long stretch of 1970’s concrete buildings that were built just behind them. An absurd vision, by some called a ghetto after just a few years. For me a place where a lot of nice people live, filled with dreams and fantasies, good and bad people, as everywhere and everyone else, but just behind grey concrete. It is therefore also the worst thing. As a child I thought, “When I grow up I want to do something that points in the completely opposite direction of grey concrete.”

AS A KID YOU WANTED TO BE?
Fireman. But then I found out I would rather set fantasies on fire.

WHY ARTIST?
There was no other way, it was sitting on my nose. I just had to grow up to a point where I could manage it. Put a form and a content to it. The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 ignited it. From childhood and forth I have been collecting “inspirations”: Phenomenon, observations, sensations, objects, and all the time with a sentence in the back of my mind, “I will be using this one day.”

But for what? Eventually it has come out in hundreds of artworks, paintings, drawings, videos, hooking up with other experiences of life, transformed into my expression.

WHO ARE THE ARTISTS YOU ADMIRE?
Artists that have their unique personal touch and poetic insight. From classic arthistory: Gustav Klimt, Edward Hopper, René Magritte. From contemporary art: Matthew Barney, Wim Delvoye and Jeff Koons.

WHAT’S YOUR BACKGROUND TRAINING?
I never got into the Academy of Fine Arts here in Copenhagen, but I have been hanging around a lot there because my girlfriend got in. Before going my own ways in the art world I was two and a half years at the Design School Denmark at the Graphics and Design. The knowledge of typography and fundamental composing has been of good use for me in relation to my paintings poster-like appearance and all my catalogues etc., which have always had a strong graphic identity.

WHAT KIND OF CREATIVE PATTERNS, ROUTINES OR RITUALS DO YOU HAVE?
Writing from 7.30-9.00 in the morning, then in the studio working 9-17 (9a.m -5 p.m.). No emails, no phone, no contact until noon, and from 12-13 (12 a.m. – 12p.m.) lunch with office-time (emails and such), then switch-off all equipment, and go to the canvas again. No music, but the sound of waves. Love it.

WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO COMMUNICATE THROUGH YOUR PAINTINGS?
To me paintings are visions. Caught visions.

WHAT INSPIRED YOUR PRESENT EXHIBITION AT ARKEN MUSEUM OF MODERN ART?
Arken contacted me in 2015 and asked, “Can you make us and our audience south of Copenhagen, a lecture where you in pictures describe what sort of art was south of Copenhagen in the 70’s, and what kind of art that was not there, for sure. It was a success because nothing was censored by me. In fact it was an inspiration in my childhood and youth. So it became a broadly very recognizable cultural historic flight into what symptoms were at given times. And which- when you are grown up and an artist like me - will generate artworks.

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE COLOUR?
Deep indigo blue with a murky hint of ocean green.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVOURITE PLACE TO SEE ART?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art i NYC. Because it is pretty good to stay clear of hype, and yet have the finger on the pulse. And the diversity of the whole collection there gives art and its history a kind of needed counterattack.

HOW DO YOU UNDWIND?
When I paint and I am absolutely absorbed in concentration and one brush stroke after another just succeeds. And leads way into the core of the painting. And when that core is reached the painting suddenly just unfolds like a huge jigsaw puzzle, assembled by me…