AR: I enrolled in the interior architecture programme with a wish to portray something internal and emotional. I was given free space to do exactly what I wanted. The studies became an opportunity for understanding my own interiors and emotional landscape.

KS: Did you start working with marble while you were still attending your studies?

AR: Yes, I did. But back then, what I did was quite tacky. However, I've worked before with granite and limestone, but when I took the first dive with the chisel into marble, it was just amazing. A perfect match. Oh, that was such an incredible feeling! It was like a drug. And I still experience this sensation, when it's a good session; I can be working, until the middle of the night. I forget about everything else. Marble was really the material that made me confident in the ability that lies in my hands.

KS: What made you develop your practice you have today? Are there any specific moments you could pinpoint?

AR: There was this one very crucial moment that I remember. I had some leftover material, and it felt so natural to make something related to my body. I made a copy of my hand and carved the little finger tucked under the other ones. I did thus without realizing it, just as I did it when I was a child in class, because I was insecure of how it curved, different from all my classmates. I realized it was a subconscious decision I made, now and then, to try to hide something. With my practice I found a way to deal with these questions; ironically working in the material that has been used throughout history to idealize bodies for centuries.

KS: How does ancient Greek mythology tie into your practice?

AR: When I was a kid, I was incredibly interested in ancient mythology. I remember going to Athens with my mother, and having this clear idea of how sculptures of gods and muses should look like – seeing the Caryatides holding the Erechtheion, I was a bit shocked! It was so different from what I had in my imagination! I understand their value now, of course, and I love it.

It's impossible for me to imagine how these Greek sculptors made works without the tools we have. The tools I work with are similar, it's the same principles, but since we have electricity, I work with an air driven hammer and chisel. It makes a lot of noise and dust, of course,

KS: As I imagine carving marble isn’t taught at the department of interior architecture, I must ask, are you self-taught?

AR: No, I’m not – well, sort of. Just before the peak of COVID, I left for Italy to learn the technique of copying using pointing devices at Studio Antognazzi in the shade of the Carrara mountains. Everyone had left the place in a haste, therefore for 10 days or so, I was free to use the studio all by myself. This 89-year-old man was teaching me. He was a master of marble stone carving, trained since he was 10 years old. He saw me working, and just shook his head – this is not the way to do it! He showed me how to put my weight into the stone. It worked so much better and faster and helped me more than any other tool could. Afterwards I made my first proper sculpture which is a marble torso made from the most perfect marble I’ve ever worked with, brilliantly white.

KS: Working with always taking away, it seems you must be very sure in the ability that lies in your hand? Always making the right move and applying the right amount of pressure.

AR: At some stages, I do work with clay as well, to get to know the shape better. If there's something that I'm a bit insecure about, I do a sketch on paper. And if I need to understand the shape I just drew, I use clay very briefly. Although when you've been working for some years, it's in your hand. It's like an instrument.

KS: Regarding mistakes that happen in the process, if made by you, you are accepting of them, right?

AR: I’m fine with mistakes that are made by me. But it sucks if something chips off during transport! If it's just a stain from someone’s finger, that's completely fine.

KS: The fingerprints of people who touch your works –

AR: I love that because then the sculptures get a natural patina. I do not have this idea of marble as this pure perfect thing.

KS: Let’s discuss the recurring motifs in your works. On one hand we see the private parts with a soft demeanor, as well as belly buttons for instance and on the other, there are floral ornaments.

AR: It's a motif I'm very familiar with. The penis is THE masculine shape. Although, when it is flaccid, to me there is no masculinity portrayed in it, it’s just another bodily appendage. I grew up in a home with only women; my mom and my two older sisters. To me the different motifs of this non-masculine, flaccid appendage is some sort of a portrayal of my childhood and youth.

I started depicting parts of my body that I've been a bit ashamed of, for example my bent little fingers or my feet, or the belly button that goes outward a bit. Working with that has made me overcome these insecurities, which now feels very strange.

Recently I started working with incorporating frames as I feel that the borders give the depicted matter an immediate intimate sphere. The floral ornaments around I sometimes connect to pollination. I wanted to combine something beautiful with a thing that people maybe don’t find that beautiful. The flower I work most with is called ‘Firblad’ in Norwegian. I coincidentally stumbled upon a Firblad while walking in a forest with a friend, and I realized it was the exact like the flower I had depicted so many times before.

KS: Another approach we see in your works is the tainted, or stained marble, where you used a blue marker, right?

AR: My favorite work, that has been my favorite for a long time now, I stained, yes.

The work is called writing in blue permanent marker, and I made it back in 2020.

I had written a poem, and I had been working on the carving over and over, because I wanted to carve it perfectly into this square slab of marble I had, and then I suddenly realized; it’s not a very good poem. But in these endless trials I had written this in the margin next to one of these not-so-good poems:

MOM I ALSO

MADE A

POEM

You see, my mom used to write poems when I was a kid. And I just realized, that's the work. I used a cheap Pilot pen with a thick point and stained this found piece of marble. When it’s fresh it looks sort of like the Egyptian blue pigment.

KS: I was thinking about this piece, and it seems like it’s written with the elegance of a child; this very uncontrolled loose handwriting and this inelegant pen, staining the precious white marble. It seems pure and childishly impulsive. As if it just had to come out.

AR: That’s the state I'm in before I'm producing something, sometimes I feel like I must vomit, almost. It literally comes from within me.

KS: Moreover, you didn't write a poem. You made a poem. Literally.

AR: I think that's the only way I do stuff. I make it. Usually, an image just comes to mind, and I try to sketch it down or I try to write it. And it always changes, like, immediately when the pencil hits the paper. It doesn't become exactly as I imagined, but that's the main thing of the material and the idea. It's about the several ways of interpreting this meeting between different materials and the idea.

To get back to the stained marble, sometimes I feel like I'm getting under the skin of the material, you know. Otherwise with carving, I am always staying on the surface of the skin, if that makes sense. The fluid tainting the surface, the material essentially seeps in, and the marble becomes useless in any sculptural sense – but it becomes something new. I love this meeting between the marble and the almost toxic appearance of the blue ink.

KS: To further pursue the elements of your practice that might seem controversial for some; did you ever receive any negative critique about being nostalgic in your artistic expression?

AR: Not really, no. The only criticism I ever received was about the previously mentioned work, writing in blue permanent marker. This critic just slaughtered it in a Norwegian newspaper.

In general people are very divided about this work. Either they find it completely banal and stupid, or they are touched. I'm not sure if it has to do with their relationship with their own mother or being infuriated by tainting the purity of marble. What I do is not very intellectually demanding, it is more about feeling. For me these two radically different approaches aren’t clashing as they are two different ways towards the same ideas.

I would say for myself, I am a bit nostalgic. But I think dealing with these universal and timeless topics of the body can never be nostalgic, though. Although, I can be ‘backwards looking’ when it comes to ornaments.

KS: We see the cycles of classical style in art history, it keeps coming back – from ancient Greeks to Romans, Renaissance, neo-classicism, post-modernism…

AR: I see many artists going back to more traditional mediums such as oils, textile art, ceramics, etc. In the beginning, I felt outdated and ridiculous working with this material.

Although after I started working here in this studio, with other sculptors, it just felt very natural, doing what I do now. It has lifted the pressure I felt of being visually contemporary. Now I think that working with things that are connected to this history is completely fine. But 5 years ago, I saw myself as being very backwards looking.

KS: Going back to the androgynous character in your sculptures. Some resemble it and some don't. Could you elaborate on that?

AR: Way back I stumbled upon Plato’s Symposium and the story of the split human. According to the classic tale, the earliest forms of humans were spherical with two sets of genitals, creating mayhem for the Gods with their behavior. Zeus decided to split the human in half – leaving the navel as the mark of the split. This story has both the mention of the androgynous and the bellybutton. And to me, that couldn’t have been more perfect. The bellybutton represents one of the most intimate parts of the human body and the center of human connection. The works that will be showcased at the Enter Art Fair in Copenhagen are also tied to this.

KS: As this conversation draws to a close; being a young and successful artist, I am interested in knowing, what is next for you?

AR: I’m displaying one of the very first bellybuttons I ever made, from the series 198C, at the Scandinavian embassy in Berlin - it will be a group show in October that I was invited to participate in alongside some amazing nordic artists, among others Jeppe Hein, Ragnar Kjartansson as well as A K Dolven whom I also work for. I have been working for A K for the last five years and she’s been sort of a mentor to me. I have learned so much from her, and I’m forever grateful for all the wisdom she’s shared with me over the years.

Another group exhibition I will take part in this year is Høstutstillingen at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo.

In 2026 I'm planning a Solo exhibition at QB where I will show works that’s directly linked to my previous exhibitions himmelen og treet at Hulias, aftensangen in QB Gallery and No Music Left in Galeria Cavalo in Rio de Janeiro. All of these exhibitions came from a deeply emotional place within me and have been important for mer to look back upon in the time leading up to becoming a father. Now my only focus is this new life; taking care of the most wonderful little girl in the world, the love of my life.

Interview by Katarina Snoj

Photography by Kari Kjøsnes

August 2024, Oslo