Born Out of Stone — Anders Krisár's Works

Anders Krisár’s works often focus on the human body.  In his latest works, shown for the first time, Krisár has been working with a new material: Carrara marble. CFHILL interviewed the artist, who currently exhibits his works in one of our galleries at Västra Trädgårdsgatan.

How did you come to work with marble?
I like to work in different materials, and I wanted to try working in stone. For sculptors, marble is a very traditional material, like an element.

How did you find the artisans? Could you tell us a bit about them, both about their professional skills and–although I know it’s an ancient working practice–about your working relationship, particularly with regard to the fact that you leave the actual work to them.
I got in touch with the artisans after carrying out some rather meticulous research. I spent a lot of time Googling and looking at different stone sculptures, trying to figure out where they had been made. I work with a stonemasonry in Pietrasanta (Italy), where the profession has been passed down through generations. The artisans there are extremely knowledgeable. The fact that I don’t do the work personally seems irrelevant to me. The artisans and I work as a team. Sometimes, they consider a work to be finished when I think it’s only half-way done. In the process, I contribute vision and seeing, and my process begins in those details.

One of your works is abstract—at least it seems to be. Will you continue to explore the abstract from now on?
I don’t regard this work (Untitled #2, 2017) as abstract at all, it’s figurative just like all the others. But I do understand that the work might seem abstract if you’re not familiar with the story behind it.

Untitled #2 (2017) represents the negative mask of my mother, whittled out from a marble boulder, with the chiseled remains gathered into a pile of material and gravel inside the same boulder it was carved from.

You’ve focused on the human body for a long time, on an ideal body of sorts that has been cut in half. Could you describe the difference between the various materials you’ve used? Do they give rise to any differences in meaning?
I don’t know about an ideal body, but the human body, the physical existence, interests me a lot. In contrast to polyester, wax, or bronze, a work made of stone is created by reducing material to produce the motif (instead of the other way around). This is in itself interesting to me, and it gives rise to a certain significance. I am fascinated by the fact that marble comes from limestone, the same substance that our bones are made of, as well. In some works, the message and the material (marble for instance) go hand in hand, as in Untitled #1, 2017 and Untitled #2, 2017. This meaning would have been lost if I’d used some other material.