Swedish artist Anna Pajak was born in 1992 in Stockholm. She is currently studying at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm while she already held many group exhibitions through Stockholm and Berlin.
We felt driven by her work for its architectural aspects combined with irrational and vivid elements. As follows, she tells us more about her working process and what actually brought her to adopt this peculiar style.
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Hello Anna. Can you briefly describe to us what you do?
Lately, I have been working with architectural elements such as surfaces, patterns, and depths where the logic does not always match reality. Here I can play with dimensions, perspectives, and shadows that disorient the viewer from the rational seeing.
What drives you to make work?
I have always been interested in moods where there is a thrill. On the basis of, for example, portraying a falling state, or an overwhelming feeling. Bodily experiences that surround you. My starting point is often the sensation translated into the visual. Color permeates mainly on how I perceive my surroundings and what interests me in painting. This is what sticks with me as a memory of a room or a situation. It is as if a certain experience or color vibrates and attracts me, and I have to work it through painting. My interest is located in the borderland where figurative meets the abstract, the smudged, the corporeal, and the spatial.
Can you tell us something about your day-to-day working process?
I’m ending my master’s degree at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm. When I paint I work my way forward and the painting develops itself. It’s an intuitive process and I seldom work from a sketch or clear idea. In the second part of the process, I’m more theoretical and think of it in a bigger context. Writing sometimes helps me to understand what I’m really doing.
How long have you been working in this field?
I have painted as long as I can remember. Like many children, I was painting at home and never really stopped. Then I lost a very close person when I was 14 years old, and then the painting was the only thing that was clear and obvious to me. It then became a safe space. As a child or teenager, I suddenly became aware of our perishability and time. Somewhere around then, I decided to become an artist. Painting is another time span. It’s like considering something so much that you almost feel the feeling of it in your hand. It’s about training sight. Painting is my way to capture phenomena, situations, or sensations.
What, outside visual arts, inspires your practice?
I’ve always watched a lot of movies, it’s close to painting but at the same time painting contains something completely different. I read a lot and find inspiration in moods created through literature. Painting is some kind of a parallel universe. I compare myself to Alice in Wonderland as a starting point when entering the painting world. She falls down through a hole, there is no logic or a completely new logic. This is a good space to work in.
How would you like people to engage with your work?
Painting is about sight, I would say it’s a visual language that is so important because it exists outside the rational and logical thinking and seeing. There is no time chronology that forces you into the now. You don’t have to understand the content or story to experience painting.
Do you have anything exciting on the horizon?
I’m holding a solo show from August the 27th at Stene Projects Gallery.
Where do you see yourself in the future?
I see myself in a studio surrounded by books. In a place together with other artists where we can exchange thoughts. I have lived in Berlin for some years before and during my studies. It’s a place where I will return to now and then.
