Niklas considers the traditional, time consuming painting techniques he uses as a form of ritual. It’s a conversation with history but also a tool for carefully digging into the subconscious. Painting as a kind of excavation. His focus during the last few years has been studying different expressions from art history and using it in his work, examining how elements from the past are read today and how they can be used to forge new visual expressions in contemporary painting.
Niklas Asker was born 1979 in Nordingrå, Sweden. He has studied art at Konstskolan Kuben and Örebro Art School in Örebro where he graduated in 2001. After that he studied at Malmö Comics Art School and worked in the international comics industry for 9 years. In that time his own graphic novel Second Thoughts has been published in 6 different languages and he has done work for a number of different publishers,
including Random House Books in New York.
Instagram : niklasasker
website: niklasasker.se

**Niklas Asker's** work is featured on the back cover of **Issue 5** of Artsin Square magazine, and his interview is also included in this issue. **Learn more**

Hi Niklas, tell us about your background. How and when did you first start to paint?

I always drew a lot. I had that need for expressing myself, and words didn’t come as easy as images. I spent my first 12 years on a mountain in the middle of nowhere in northern Sweden, so as a child I had a lot of time playing alone in the woods. I think that sparked my imagination and fueled something that was already there inside me. It wasn’t until college that I actually started exploring paint, mostly fueled by artistic comic book covers, and considered a career as an artist. I didn’t start using oils until my late 20s.

How do you begin to work? What is your process like?
It can look very different depending on the work or exhibition. Typically, I get a vague idea, a strong feeling, and images pop into my head. They seem to appear out of nowhere but are, of course, the result of my life—the people I meet, the art I see, and the movies, music, and books I consume. Sometimes it’s an image I stumble across in a magazine, online, or something I see out in the world and try to catch with my camera—something that sparks my imagination and curiosity. I never have an outspoken concept or concrete idea. I need my works to be mysteries to me as well as to my audience. Something that fills me with wonder or awe and evokes questions. Then it’s my job to package that feeling into an artwork and send it on to the viewers.

Your artistic journey involved working in the comics scene for eight years before focusing on the blurry border between the figurative and the abstract. How did your background in comics influence your current exploration, and how do you navigate the intersection between the figurative and the abstract in your visual expressions?
Yes, when I graduated from college, everyone was applying for graduate programs in different art schools, and at first, I thought I should as well. But no one was doing figurative work at that time in the Swedish art scene, and I just figured I didn’t fit into the art world. So I turned to my other passion at the time—comics. I applied to and studied at the Malmö Comics Art School, which was just the kind of art school I needed. Free expression anchored in traditional knowledge of materials and techniques. I found my place in the international comics scene, published a couple of books, and countless short stories in different magazines. But after a few years, my need for a more purely emotional, non-narrative language grew, and I started to paint during evenings and weekends. I taught myself to paint with oils, and my expression as it is today slowly emerged over a 10-year period.

I know I’ve said that some of my work exists in the borderland between figuration and abstraction, but in reality, I think all of my work is figurative—it’s just that sometimes the things I paint are more about mood, color, and light than revealing an exact image. Some of my paintings might look abstract, but they are more inspired by corroded murals or old, worn-down reliefs than by ideas about abstract painting. In short, I like to show just enough of a motif to spark the viewer’s interest. The rest is up to them.

Your shift towards painting less literal images aims to move away from narrative and toward emotional essence. How do you balance the use of representational techniques with the goal of conveying emotional essence, and what challenges do you face in this transition?
I don’t find it all too difficult, actually. It took some time, but I feel like I’ve found my way of working. Basically, I’m not at all interested in realistically portraying real-life people or objects. Instead, I use these things—the cultural connotations, surfaces, colors, and shapes—as a palette to express something that goes beyond the object or the person portrayed. Something about existing here and now, and among these objects and their history. Our history.

In researching early Christian oil paintings, you mention being interested in how artists translated the godly into image form. How does this historical exploration inform your contemporary practice, and what aspects of early Christian portrayals do you find particularly influential in your current body of work?
This is a hard one. First of all, I’m in no way an expert on early Christian art. I’ve mostly just examined what I’ve come across in museums and books, and a sort of interest grew over time. I’ve always had a fascination for religion (I’m not a believer myself, at least not in that specific sense) and how people of all times—me included—have felt a need for an explanation, a sort of blueprint for the meaning of life. I think that encompasses the whole mystery of us humans, our flesh and our spirits (whatever that is). Faith maybe tries to handle the same basic human questions as I try to in my art, and for me, there’s a clear connection between the two. Also, purely visually, I’m drawn to a lot of the imagery, and I like the idea of all these images being about a god that is (almost) never in any of them—something missing but still extremely present. I find that fascinating and use it in my work as well.

The process of transforming two-dimensional drawings and paintings into reliefs, and vice versa, seems integral to your practice. How does this back-and-forth process contribute to the examination of emotional core elements in your images, and what does this iterative approach reveal about the nature of the images you work with?
I don’t make any actual reliefs, just paintings that look like them. I think it began when I was thinking of ways to break down the figurative image that wasn’t just smearing paint over certain areas of the canvas (which I did earlier). I was in New York a couple of times and always ended up in the basement of the Met, with all the old and worn-down artifacts from churches and temples around the world. That sparked something. That, together with inspiration from Rodin’s super rough sculpture studies, gave me a kind of language—a way to work fully figuratively (i.e., light and shadow, cold and warm, etc.) but with motifs that could be both beautiful and strangely enigmatic.

Inspired by artists like Anish Kapoor and Auguste Rodin, you aim to convey spirituality without overtly religious themes. How do these influences manifest in your work, and what aspects of their practices do you find particularly resonant in your exploration of spirituality through art?
Another very hard question. I think something Anish Kapoor said describes it best: he said something like, “When an artwork is well executed and works, it becomes more than just its physical form.” The work has a non-physical counterpart, and that’s where the art lives. You could say the work has a soul—or a spirit. That thought gets me going.

Your focus has been on examining the blurry border between the figurative and the abstract. How do you see this exploration contributing to the evolution of visual expressions, and what possibilities do you find in the merging of these two realms in your artworks?
These terms are tricky. It’s like borders between countries—something we invented to try to create order in nature, which is impossible. In reality, there are a million different expressions and ideas about art. My approach to figurative and abstract is to ignore the terms as much as possible and just go where the work takes me. People may call some of my paintings abstract and others figurative, but they’re all about the same thing for me. If there’s an evolution in painting today, it’s that everything is permitted (as it should be). It doesn’t matter how you paint as long as it gets the job done.

How does this technique contribute to the ambiguity and abstraction in your works, and what do you hope viewers will perceive in the vague hints at your original references?
I think ambiguity and abstraction share the same possibility in painting: to give freedom to the viewer. The receiver of the art has to be part of the process; otherwise, there’s no point. I’m drawn to images that have the quality of a beautifully intriguing question mark. The references I use are there to infuse the work with that quality—nothing else. Sometimes there are cultural connotations, too, but mostly the history of the objects and people doesn’t matter—just the impression they make.

How has the city you live and work in influenced you and the art you create?
A lot, and not at all. Malmö is a great city to be an artist in—if you can also show your work elsewhere. There aren’t many good galleries, but the city has everything I need in terms of art supplies, relatively cheap studio rent, creative colleagues, and culture. It’s not a metropolis, but a good base of operations. I’ve spent quite some time in New York and for a long time thought I’d eventually live there. Now I know I never could—there’s too much going on. I need the stillness of my city and my studio to make room for my creative chaos. I can get to my studio in 10 minutes by bike and walk through beautiful parks and cemeteries on my way home when I need a breather.
When it comes to inspiration, my head has always been far away—looking at images from exhibitions across the world or watching inspiring documentaries. There’s good art in Malmö, but I get just as much inspiration and thoughtful conversations through Instagram.

Describe a real-life situation that inspired you.
That doesn’t have to do with looking at art, I presume? I’m trying to think of an exciting encounter with a stranger or something cool, but the only thing that comes to mind is a gravestone, haha! I was walking through one of the cemeteries I mentioned, reading the names on the gravestones, and came across one that was so old and worn the only words you could still read were “Here lies.” It got to me somehow—you know, all the clichés about time, memory, and existence—but also just the sheer beauty of the raw stone, sculpted by time. I’m still trying to figure out a way to paint that one.

Niklas Asker

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