(NE) So, what are we looking at here, this Rite of Passage?

(SZ) Basically a transmission. Iʼm leaving the past behind me and Iʼm moving into something new, and not just me, I feel it as something collective, something weʼre all going through. Thereʼs a risk that this is all a shock psychosis, a result of the pandemic and in that case this is my accounting of it. I think it will be fun for the viewer to see either way.

(NE) Youʼve reached an important breakthrough, perhaps a turning point in your career, what is that about?

(SZ) Well, I quit the lease for my studio as one of other cut-downs I was doing to stop the financial bleeding. At the time it was hard to define how I actually felt about it, but this global change and new sort of existence that I thought would be a pause in my practice, led to a sort of new start. Some friends of mine lend me a space to work in, but nothing big and not a place where I could continue working in large scale and all messy, like I normally do, so I had to minimise, downsize. I had no expectations whatsoever and this made somehow every little drawing I did, every little event I manage to pull through, into something extremely precious. For example, if I did a gig in March or April this year where 30 people attended, it felt like it would be 300. Every single move became important.

(NE) In the sneak preview I got of the show I saw that youʼve dropped the grid and the sort of chainlike attributes that Iʼm used to seeing your works being held back by or constricted by. I think this is saying something about a new freedom in your artistry...

(SZ) I havenʼt considered that before, but maybe youʼre right! Iʼve been feeling a bit destructive and cornered. With the strapping and pressing things together I definitely wanted to tell something. It felt good to use my hands that way, as a performative act leading to physical works. Now, on the other hand, Iʼve never felt better and Iʼve never been this open in mind and in my relations before. As the whole world is closing the shop Iʼm opening up mine, so to say. My self-image has changed. I used to be pretty germaphobic, now Iʼm not. I used to avoid canvases, now I paint them.

(NE) As the world is burning, youʼre rising from the ashes and the burn marks in your paintings like a reborn Phoenix.

(SZ) I wouldnʼt really say that, but the circumstances made me go down in format and simplify my methods. When I went out to buy the smallest canvases I could find I already knew I would burn them. But on a deeper level, yeah, ashes, the purest thing there is... I started out in my parents basement as a little kid with paper and pen and thatʼs what Iʼm working with now. Even the motives I draw are the same as back then, it came naturally, from muscle memory. Iʼve done full circle and Iʼve come back to my truest form perhaps. When I started drawing with that ballpoint I just felt like - yes, Iʼm home now!

(NE) And how do the burn marks fit into these childhood memories?

(SZ) Every summer when school ended my parents used to bring me to Serbia and we stayed there until it was time to go back to Norrköping and back to school. I was always amazed by the graffiti in Serbia, mostly made with just simple lighters and whatever pens they could find. Spray cans were too expensive and the caps where fucked and didnʼt work right so they used the flame. The scribbles where underneath staircases, tables, in the ceilings of toilets - everywhere, and itʼs just such a nice aesthetics that fits so well with my state right now. Back to the roots.

(NE) In this roundtrip to the future and back, what did you learn?

(SZ) That the bigger necessarily doesnʼt have to mean better, micro can be just as persuasive and forceful. And when you go bigger the flaws also seem larger... I used to think that the larger it was, the more information you charged the works with, the more colours, the more tricks you used, would somehow safeguard the works from being a fiasco, that there would always be something in it for each and everyone in the mass to like. Iʼm happy to have found the courage to be small now and Iʼm believing in it even more when I feel a bit scared. If youʼre going to be small you have to be courageous.

(NE) The title promises a series, what more do we have to look forward to?

(SZ) There is more to come! This expressions, this medium and this technique is something I want to continue researching. Itʼs incredibly interesting to work with this dialed down, analogue method. In which direction itʼll go I guess Iʼll find out after this show.

(NE) What do you hope the viewers will bring home from the show, what is the most important thing for them to see?

(SZ) I hope they see my works as objects, to be looked at from all angles. That they discover that the edges have been breached and that Iʼm moving past canvases and terms like graffiti. I hope they find something they havenʼt seen yet. Most of all I hope they see the openness and honesty in these works, and that they realise that they are looking straight into my soul.