Magnus Frederik Clausen (Denmark, 1981) lives and works in Copenhagen.

The artist's practice has questioned the medium of painting for several years. His work, sometimes hidden or covered, reconsiders the place of the commodity and its related display. More recently, he started delegating the making of his paintings.


"The group of work you refer to does not have a title, but we can call them clock paintings. It started around December 2020/January 2021 when I had to teach my oldest son to read the clock. I then drew a series of analogue and digital clocks in a sketchbook, and my son had to translate each clock to its adverse on the opposite page. So, if I wrote 20:11, he had to translate that to an analogue clock and the other way around. I’m a big fan of children’s creative output, and my son’s drawings are no exception. But what struck me beyond that, was that I realized I could orchestrate the making of an artwork within a simple system of translation. The following day, we continued the homework, but this time in my studio, with paint on canvas. Since then, I have hired several assistants to paint these works for me, and each of them contributes to the project with their gestures and temperament, just as different musicians would play the same song differently. Since I started this project, it has struck me that one of the reasons I paint is that I love to watch paintings, and with this project, I’m watching more paintings than ever before."

Read the full interview online at Weinspach