Now Featuring Andreas Meinich

Oslo-based artist Andreas Meinich combines cool, clinical images with playful situations, visual jokes and puns for a practice that is hard to pin down.  Willing to make work that is by turns awkward, then slick, he can also startle us with flashes of uncanny beauty.

Exclusive Print 1

Exclusive Print 2

Exclusive Print 3

Exclusive Print 4

Exclusive Print 5

MH: What’s your background?  You live and study in Oslo, and you have a practice that seems to play with design, publishing and more as well as making sculpture and images.

AM: I am finishing my BA in Visual Communication at the National Academy of Arts in Oslo, and I often collaborate with my girlfriend Natalie Rognsøy, who is studying Fine Arts at the same school.

Yard Sign

MH: What can you tell me about where you generate or find your images?  I am very interested in the the Untitled pieces from 2011 and where those images com from.  They seem both naturalistic and topographic and also like data readout or graphs.

AM: I am drawn to images that have something clinical about them. I tend to collect a lot of images and then let them marinate on my hard drive for some time, before I open them again.

MH: Tell me a bit about your Blanket and Untitled (Hidden Depths) pieces.  The presentation of the very cold images on machine-made but sensuous materials, the blanket and the poster, creates and interesting tension.

AM: The blanket is made thanks to print-on-demand services. I was wondering how I could publish my work, without relying on publishers, or making regular C-prints. I came upon Cafepress and I tried to print some shirts, then a yard-sign, the blanket and a yoga mat.You can call the Hidden Depths a ready-made, since it’s a poster from allposter.com that has been re-arranged.

Caps Lock

MH: What’s your relationship with jokes?  The pieces in your Selected Sculpture series, which I presume are sculptural scenarios you created for the camera (correct me if I’m wrong), are hilarious.  So are some of your book titles, like “It’s just a hobby that I picked up in the lobby.”

AM: Since the artwork is presented in on internet and not in a gallery, it don´t have the same status and is less formal, and leaves room for something quirky, like Caps Lock, Untitled (Chico), Purple Voss etc.

The Young Artists Society (in collaboration with Natalie Rognsøy)

Untitled (Chico)

MH: What role does collaboration have in your work?  I see that you collaborate with a number of people, including LPP’s next featured artist, Natalie Rognsøy.

AM: Collaboration is very important to me. I think I search for artists (to collaborate with) that have a quality that I think I need.

Andreas