A coffee cup is many things. It deals with the laws of physics, as it smashes when dropping it to the floor. It is also design. But mostly we tend to think of it as a utility we drink coffee from. With art it is different: “The strength of an artwork is that it doesn’t have a use. It allows us to access these questions of why is it there, why is it the way it is, what does it mean, and these are questions about ourselves, of what is means to exist in the world.”

Keith Tyson sees his works as unimportant, they don’t have to be there, and yet they are, and that is what makes them important for interpretation and understanding of the interconnectedness of our own existence.

Keith Tyson (b.1969) is a British artist, who won the Turner Prize in 2002. His work revolves around the complexity of the universe in many different shapes such as generating systems for his art, creating motherboard sculptures, showing associative objects – such as in the exhibition ‘Large Field Array’ – and trying to understand the self and how everything is connected in the end.

Keith Tyson was interviewed at the David Risley Gallery in Copenhagen, Denmark by Kasper Bech Dyg.

Camera: Nikolaj Jungersen
Edited & produced by: Kasper Bech Dyg
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2014

Supported by Nordea-Fonden