DITTE KNUS TØNNESEN

This interview focuses on the artistic process to the work seen in the Sculptural Landscapes show in Malmö, January 2021; we learn about Ditte Knus Tønnesen’s sculptural practice and how it relates to construction, deconstruction, or both.

Tell us about your process. What reference or influence (if any) do you take from other mediums? 

Being open for inspiration is a fulltime job. Sometimes it comes easy – as playing a game, other times it is like opening a heavy door to a safe-deposit without the combination code. Attention, as Julia Bell writes about in her new book Radical Attention, is key. Keeping a practice of reflective, embodied thinking, without expectations, but an openness to receive what may come. On that note my process is: From thought to action, shape to material, medium to reference, idea to execution, and vice versa. Chaos in between, is needed. A black hole, with a capturing never ending. Since else it is not a true chaos. One has to get lost for real.

Are these pictures concerned with exploring formal and aesthetical interests – studies of form, colour, movement, how things work together, or are they representational, metaphorical?

The work Life Cycle, Yeasts of the Wild, is inspired by how yeast has shaped our civilization - through alcohol, bread and medicine. The work stands as a poetic study of time, space and cell division. The triptych's boards constantly uncovers one side, to hide the other. In the same way, the artwork is reminiscent of the intangible in wanting to see the full picture at one and the same time.

Typically, are your works more about construction or deconstruction?

I believe that to construct something new one have to deconstruct ”something” old.

Are you interested in the notion of your pictures as objects? Do you think about how their physicality may endure as you are photographing them or is that an afterthought?

Yes, the objectivity and material has always gained a big part of my attention. Often the reference to “a photograph” is challenged to a philosophic level as it is in Life Cycle, Yeasts of the Wild. Here the work share the same desire as the photograph; to hunt and create a capturing of a truth by fixtating a moment. In this way, both are reminiscent of the intangible desire to create what is to be understood as seeing the full picture, the truth.

Often sculptural photographic works are concerned with elevating banal objects, situations or events to a status of ‘art’ – when does something become art for you?

The status as 'a work of art' is a human definition and statement. For me, a good piece of art moves me in new, forgotten or still in incomprehensive directions.

Life Cycle, Yeasts of the Wild (2020)

Acrylic and blackboard paint, calendar paper, beeswax, sourdough, bottles, balloons, mahogany, mdf, bamboo, found wood and wheels, shirt, 161 x 250 x 140 cm.

Ditte Knus Tønnesen (b. 1982) is a Danish artist and independent curator working with photography in a field between images and spatial constructions. She tests and investigates how different interpretations and world views becomes the accepted understanding of things – and how our understanding of 'reality' depends on our context, culture, religion and political standpoints. Working with photography in a much conceptual way, she questions and expands the medium with a great understanding of the qualities and histories of different materials.

Published 15 January 2021