Cowboys with big Swedish logs: interview with Swedish artist John Rasimus

All photos courtesy of John Rasimus

Grimacing cowboy busts, posing muscle men, daydreaming women, colorful blobs and logs . . . lots of Swedish logs, are all things John Rasimus considers clichés and saturates his picture planes with. Most are crisp, roughly drawn, and created in almost every conceivable medium including public art, films/video, printmaking, painting, and drawing.

This type of low-fi, playful, and loose somewhat cartoon like approach can be seen in central Texas cites such as San Marcos ( comic/art publication Proper Gander), Austin (okay mountain) and San Antonio (Unit B), a sort of Raymond Pettibon/Mike Kelly quality rawness. Rasimus’s creations meet and exceed that psychic angst in their extremely subverted, edgy, weird and usually darkly humored tones. Dog Thoughts is a small pen and colored pencil drawing of a boxer dog clutched by a blonde woman while the dog daydreams of loving from a brunette. And included in the imagery used for a huge 6ft x 30ft scroll like piece shown during Open Art in Orebro Sweden (2008), is a small girl with head in hands and a disembodied hand pointing at the butt of a bent over and smiling man plopping out Swedish logs.

John is an internationally showing artist living in Falun, Sweden. In 2007 John received a two-year working grant from The Swedish Arts Grants Committee. allowing him the luxury of being paid by the Swedish government to work as a full time artist. Recently completed projects include large-scale public glass works at the entrance to Falu-Lasarett, a Swedish hospital (2009); he was recently a curator for the Konst Film Video Seminary, Falun, Sweden (2008); and shows include International Drawing Triennial Manu Propia (The Northern Wind), Tallin, Sweden (2009); Works on Paper, Flux Factory, New York (2007); Dialogues: Biennial of Modern Art, St. Petersburg, Russia (2006).

The below e-mail and Skype interview took place over the first weekend in August 2009.

Richie Budd:
Can he please tell us more about the subject matter of your work?

John Rasimus:
My work is about creativity. It’s the art of "making" and having "fun" (to a point).

An ordinary working day is depending on how much sleep I´ve had during the night . . . with three kids it’s sleeping in shifts . . . but this is usually how it looks:

I start working at 8:30 am with drawing a wood log. It’s an easy form and can be used for printing. Charcoal and a MDF board is used. After 2 cups of coffee and jig sawing the wood log is done at 10:00 am . . . and a new day starts . . . I continue to draw pictures from books or newspaper or on free hand. These drawings form the new ideas for huge print/paintings and new MDF clichés for printing. Lunch, if I’m not too much into drawings or re-making a old print . . . after lunch I start working on the canvases . . . printing the new thing I made earlier in the morning or the day’s work. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a wood log but usually it is. At the exhibitions I show the whole process: drawings/drafts, MDF boards I use for printing and the print/paintings. Sometimes I use the drawings for short animated loops. See the cowboy here. The day ends with painting the ongoing canvas using tempera emulsion (or priming a new canvas) so its dried ready for next day. It’s all an on going process. And the good in this way of working is that you never need to be "creative." If I’m too tired I just jig saw or use my wood carver or filling a drawing with my coloured pencils.

Can you tell us more about the Swedish art scene? How is the scene there connected with other Scandinavian countries? And how is it connected to the U.S.?

I think it´s kind of a closed circuit regarding other artists but then again other artists and critics might say I’m wrong and not the right man to answer that question. I think it’s rare to see any Norwegian/Danish/Finnish artists at the (United States) galleries.

How did you come into the art world? How did you begin?

It just happened . . . don’t know how . . . all of a sudden the time flew and its been 22 years since my first art school. I’m surprised myself and this is my job?!

What is the name of the gallery you are collaboratively running in Falun, Sweden?

Galleri Se Konst, our website is not nice or good . . . haven’t had time to make a great site . . but its a GREAT gallery. We just had a great show Multiples on Paper, a Global Prospective . . . an international printing show with 9 countries and 44 prints! We’re having big plans for collaborating with other countries like Texas for instance.
There is another organization in Falun called MAGASINET with a huge space used for music and arts event. We would like to collaborate with them on bigger events like a future workshop, etc . . .

Who is your hero?

The Danish film maker Lars Von Trier - his filming is art.

What’s your next step?

Can’t stop thinking of my idea of a life size up-side down mouse in aluminum. I made it as a public art piece . . . it was not selected for the public space I made it for . . . but still . . . I was working a lot with the drafts and solutions for casting it. So, it feels wrong just dropping it!

Knowing that you studied film it seems appropriate to ask the next question. Hans Ulrich Obrist once told me that Czeslaw Milosz told him that everyone in the 20th century was influenced by film. What are your film influences?

Reiner Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog films and of course our (Swedish) director Ingmar Bergman 2-3 films, Andrej Tarkovskij, and everything by Lars (Von Trier).