You might remember Ragnar Persson as the guy who shot the cover of last year's Photo Issue. He doesn’t have a clue of how fucking great he is. He combines being a really laid back guy with utter hyperproductivity in a way that would make us totally hate him in jealousy if we hadn't already agreed to like him. Besides making hundreds and hundreds of drawings, he has published seven books and fanzines and is now preparing for his first solo exhibition called Ride The Lightning. We couldn’t wait for the opening night, which by the way is tonight, so we went down there, talked to Ragnar, and got a sneak peek of the show…VICE: Why'd you name your exhibition after Metallica?
Ragnar Persson: Ride the Lightning is my favourite album, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the exhibition really. I just happened to scribble it down when I was on the phone with a friend. It looked nice so I figured I’d use it in the exhibition, and then I thought it was a pretty good name for it too. I usually name stuff after bands or songs. I don’t really know why, I guess it just sounds good and I really like the bands. I should be careful with doing it too much though, don’t want it to turn into a gimmick.Do you listen to music when you're drawing?
Right now I listen a lot to Roky Erickson. Otherwise, everything between Roy Orbison and Sarcofago.Geez, there must be hundreds and hundreds of drawings here!
There are probably around 300 of them. Most are from the past two years
but I keep finding all these old drawings that are nice, like this one
of a bear in a dress.What’s your favourite color?
Pink. It’s ugly but still looks so good and it goes well with everything. I like black too, but that would be too obvious.I heard that you once built a house in your basement when you lived in Iceland.
We needed a place to live and the house was bigger than our student apartment. We also documented a lot of street art and tags and stuff. My friend Marten is a street artist. There was some really nice art there but mostly people just wrote stuff like “Fuck the Police”. The police was really crazy over there, like they even did a full body search on me once for no reason. We also found some satanic messages and pentagrams carved on the walls and floors close to where we lived.It's also not technically a color if we may so nerd out for a bit. Do you worship Satan?
No, but I admire him.* Ragnar Persson's solo exhibition Ride The Lightning will be shown at Galleri Jonas Kleerup on Tegnérgatan 18 in Stockholm between June 5 – July 7. For more information, go to www.galleri-kleerup.se.MILÈNE LARSSON
Annons
Ragnar Persson: Ride the Lightning is my favourite album, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the exhibition really. I just happened to scribble it down when I was on the phone with a friend. It looked nice so I figured I’d use it in the exhibition, and then I thought it was a pretty good name for it too. I usually name stuff after bands or songs. I don’t really know why, I guess it just sounds good and I really like the bands. I should be careful with doing it too much though, don’t want it to turn into a gimmick.Do you listen to music when you're drawing?
Right now I listen a lot to Roky Erickson. Otherwise, everything between Roy Orbison and Sarcofago.Geez, there must be hundreds and hundreds of drawings here!
There are probably around 300 of them. Most are from the past two years
but I keep finding all these old drawings that are nice, like this one
of a bear in a dress.What’s your favourite color?
Pink. It’s ugly but still looks so good and it goes well with everything. I like black too, but that would be too obvious.I heard that you once built a house in your basement when you lived in Iceland.
We needed a place to live and the house was bigger than our student apartment. We also documented a lot of street art and tags and stuff. My friend Marten is a street artist. There was some really nice art there but mostly people just wrote stuff like “Fuck the Police”. The police was really crazy over there, like they even did a full body search on me once for no reason. We also found some satanic messages and pentagrams carved on the walls and floors close to where we lived.It's also not technically a color if we may so nerd out for a bit. Do you worship Satan?
No, but I admire him.* Ragnar Persson's solo exhibition Ride The Lightning will be shown at Galleri Jonas Kleerup on Tegnérgatan 18 in Stockholm between June 5 – July 7. For more information, go to www.galleri-kleerup.se.MILÈNE LARSSON