"My interest in working with art comes from unnoticed disturbances where one's “silence” is another's “noise”, and how these oppositional ways of perception can merge into a temporary understanding of something unsaid."

Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background? Where did you study?

I grew up in a small town called Hønefoss outside Oslo in Norway. When I was 19 I moved to Copenhagen. I received my BA in Fine Art in Bergen, Norway in 2008 and did an exchange at the Royal Academy in Copenhagen where I studied under professor Tumi Magnusson. I then moved to Berlin where I lived & worked until 2011. At this time, I was accepted into Royal College of Art in London and received my MA in Painting in 2013. After this, I moved back to Berlin but have travelled quite a bit for shows that I have been included in. Most recently, I returned back to London where I have been living and working for almost a year now. My life is quite nomadic…

Your work is a pool of movement and expression that one could swim in, could you tell us a bit about your paintings and what influences you have?

For me, painting becomes a test of our own objectivity. It challenges what we regard and describe as “real” and shows it is a fundamentally uncertain thing. I don´t want my paintings to represent one thing too clearly, so I blur things to make everything equally important and equally unimportant. I blur things to make all the parts fit. My interest in working with art comes from unnoticed disturbances where one´s “silence” is another´s “noise”, and how these oppositional ways of perception can merge into a temporary understanding of something unsaid. Which for me is a force within art. How to direct focus by cancelling the meaning of something else? A clear interest for me comes from these spots, where things meet and in the meeting point equalise each other.

You currently have a solo show at The Sunday Painter titled "will always be the opposite". Could you tell us a bit about the show and the meaning behind the title?

I found this title during painting in the studio. I think that abstract painters can sometimes have a vison in their mind about what they believe the outcome of the painting will be, but almost in every instance the actual outcome of the painting ends up being something they did not imagine or expect, it’s a usually surprise and the `opposite´ of their expectations. But hopefully it´s a title that can accompany many things in life.. 

How do you go about naming your work?

I am always writing down short phrases or sentences from books, personal notes of what I see in daily life, or have heard or said in conversations with people. The sentences that I pick for titles are the ones that I believe gives a strong guidance to the work. I think literature and poetry can be a powerful tool to be used together with painting but, I enjoy to mix a slight dark humour into the titles to relax the viewer from the seriousness of abstract painting. To be an abstract painter today has such a heavy theoretical history and these titles embody the personal battle I have with the traditional meaning art history has forced into abstract painting. They essentially bring a human everyday link while looking at my painting.

Tell us a bit about how you spend your day / studio routine? What is your studio like?

My main base studio for the past 10 years has been located in Berlin in Uferhallen, which is around 70 sq. meters, but the past 1/2 year I have been located in a beautiful studio in the Old Biscuit Factory which is around 100 sq. meters. I specifically chose the Biscuit Factory studio in order to make large panoramic & portrait format works for the Sunday Painter space and their Frieze Art Fair solo presentation. I am working a lot with the architecture this time, so the scale of the canvases needed a lot of space.. I usually wake up around 7-8am to do my administration work at home so that I am not bothered by this in the studio space. I enter the studio around 12pm, have a coffee or tea, make phone calls and mentally prepare for painting. I contemplate the moves I made the day prior on the paintings, and what moves I would like to do that present day.

An hour or two later my studio manager comes in to start working with me. I chose to work with a studio manager recently so I could efficiently create the high amount of work that was needed for these 2 upcoming shows & fair. My studio manager & I have developed an efficient painting routine, where we start by either gathering supplies or mix oil / airbrush colours that will be used during the day and then spend the rest of the day carrying out painting and critiquing the work as it develops. My studio is split into 2 zones, one zone of the studio is where I choose & mix all the colours and where I sometimes paint smaller paintings on the wall. The other zone is mainly where I paint on the big canvas on self-made tables or on the walls. This zone is also used as a viewing space to properly look at the work.  I usually paint approximately 8 hrs a day, but obviously, my life and studio routine change when the exhibition tide comes and goes.

What artwork have you seen recently that has resonated with you?

I was recently in Basel, where I saw the Bruce Nauman retrospective called `The Disappearing Act´ at Schaulager. It was so touching to see most of his life´s work in one place. I believe he embodied everything emotional possible that one can achieve through their art. I also think the title of the show was brilliant for his retrospective.

Apart from your solo show at The Sunday Painter, Is there anything new and exciting in the pipeline you would like to tell us about?

I am very excited to have the opportunity of a solo presentation with my gallery The Sunday Painter at Frieze Art Fair at the beginning of May in New York, and then a very nice group exhibition at Kunstner Forbundet in Oslo the end of the same month.

Tingleff's show at The Sunday Painter will be on till 12th May.

Artist's website

The Sunday Painter

All images courtesy of the artist and The Sunday Painter
Publish date: 30/5/18