QUESTION: The next series (th)underwear 2002 depicts underwear fetishists as ghost-like figures ? Are you one of them?

ANSWER: Yes indeed. But my personal desires are supposed to remain obscure. The first painting in the series (Th)underwear 2002 is 'Piss, homage'. I wanted to pay hommage to something and I chose to portray a toilet. I admire toilets because they tend to have life on the walls, graffiti, etc. I was looking for a new type of figure in my painting and it wasnít sure how to go about it. But then I came up with the idea to depict the human figure by only revealing their underwear. In some of these paintings I also use real pubic hair to depict chess hair, so it becomes a body that actually does not exist. It is a kind of imaginative body that does not exist.


Piss, homage
65x61cm, acrylics on canvas

QUESTION: And then you also paint a penis attached to the underwear.

ANSWER: The penis has a comforting function, as in the painting Untitled, where the two underwear figures are standing close to each other. The younger person wears a mask and is comforted by the older person. I invented this scene because I was interested in painting underwear from the 1970s, the kind of underwear that looks like wall-paper. I also like it if people read their own stories into it.


Untitled
65x61cm, acrylics and pubic hair on canvas

QUESTION: I see ghosts in these paintings, figures that exist around us and yet don't exist in reality even though we may sense them. It reminds me of the work of the Australian artists Francesa da Rimini, who makes web-based archives of her cyber relationships. She works with ghost-like personalities as well, figures that appear and disappear sporadically, and her work radiates a similar darkness and empathy.

ANSWER: A lot of my work is about maturing and getting older, about the different stages one has to go through. What does it mean to get older? On the one hand it means that you have to become more responsible, on the other hand you are swamped with possibilities and choices. My work is personal in that it shows how this process can be blocked.