Interview
Natalie Price Hafslund

Live Drønen: Hey Natalie, what’s your favorite thing to eat for breakfast?

Natalie Price Hafslund: Chanel No. 5

Yum! Disclose a secret skill for us.

– I am incredibly fast at peeling prawns, due to anxious summers on the fjords as a young girl.

What are your best and worst memories from those fjord-summers?

– I remember a priest chucking water at me and there never being enough pølser.

How do you work when making your paintings?

– Firstly I should explain that I find the idea of paint itself hysterical. One color, two colors, three colors, four… Amused by this magisterial presence, I intimidate the infinite possibilities in rendering it good or well through a lifetime of pain and pleasure. Whilst enduring one another’s topographic confidence, I commit to destroying and exhausting any knowing system of painting whilst subsequently transmogrifying an installed conditioned notion of historically ‘masterful’ work. Over the course of its volatile coming to be, we live together. Listen to music, drink, I touch it, it gets worse, I touch it, it gets worse – the painting becomes so bad we are both freed from its expectations and its face can emerge. The physicality of the marks are an extension of dance. In some of the more graphic works I will care for it slightly by grouping segments and indulging time more decadently.

Sounds like an intense process. Is it?

– Yes, but intensely fun, a jubilant exorcism as opposed to a labor.

So the painting becomes criminally bad – what else becomes bad in your exhibition?

– Everything to different degrees. In order for something to be brought into a certain existence we pass through one another. Other than their histories, the objects and materials I appropriate now exist in my physical vocabulary and as tainted accomplices.

What was the latest movie you watched?

– Strange Days (1995).

Did it teach you anything?

– It was a little while ago but I remember my body did not want or need to feel that violence, that the camera work was exquisite, and wishing that 1999 had been as sexy as promised.

You invited the Queen of Norway to see your exhibition. Why?

– I was concerned that she could see the install process from her house and that she might not feel welcome.

That’s sympathetic! Queen of Norway versus Queen of England?

– All I can say is that I am a loyal Diana fan.

And lastly – send a picture of how your studio looks right now, with a caption.

– “all-rounder”

*More info and images: Natalie Price Hafslund: CLEAN CRIMINAL