ARTIST STATEMENT
How to best visualize the questions that arise whilst searching for a meaning in life? Thus enabling others as well as myself to actually envision them. Which techniques and areas of projection are suitable to convey those questions that are of lasting importance to me — and possibly to others? Which paths of exploration and decoding could I chose in my search for answers – and which paths of decryption do I offer the viewers of my works?
Anyone who is grappling with current events as a subject in their art has to find his or her own answers to those questions. And as our modern world has become ever more complex, there is a tendency to simplify, as it would result in a whac-a-mole, if we attempted to understand and explain all its details. Nonetheless, I am trying to bear that challenge every day. Luckily, the effort is not in vain, for it yields inspiration and fresh ideas that sublimate and take shape in my paintings.
In preliminary studies and during the actual process of painting, those sublimates are first bopping up as fragments, which can be very heterogeneous. At first glance, they might not even fit together. This contradiction, however, slowly but surely disappears. Gradually, the boundaries between the fragments are beginning to blur. And what initially appeared to be incongruous either becomes harmonious – or the independent fragments are strong enough to assert their position alongside each other, thus forming subtle structures of communication.
All these fragments are hints. Viewers can use those messages and try to find answers in themselves to questions that may come up while they are viewing the works. The fragments — information bits of low complexity — are transmitted to the recipients through the painting as a medium, with me, the artist, being the originator.
Fundamental issues, such as life and death, eros and austerity, love and hate, are important subjects in my works. To fathom them and to use them in order to create a visual room that serves as a place of experience, strongly fascinates me. Albeit, the creative process turns out to be a struggle that serves the purpose to find out which assumptions and claims that were initially made, will persist or disappear – or if any of these could possibly be combined, and how that combination could take place. The painting, in any case, is only completed when this struggle is over.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2023 | Totentanz | Kulturkirche St. Jakobi Stralsund | more
2022/2023 | außer sich - inner ich II | Inselgalerie Berlin | more
2022 | Online Exhibition | Limits of PortLand | Musee Dezentral | more
2022 | Offshore Show | Cloud | Haus der Kunst München | more
2022 | Limits of PortLand | Berlitt Castle, Open Ateliers Brandenburg
2021 | An End to Jealousy | Berlitt Castle, Open Ateliers Brandenburg
2020 | A Room Of Her Own II | Anahita Contemporary | more
2020 | A Matter Of Touch | Kunst- und Projekthaus Torstrasse 111 | more
2020 | PArt | Online Exhibition | Producers Art Platform | more
2020 | Online Exhibition May 2020 | Galerie U 108
2019/2020 | Taking Root | KIT Kunst im Tunnel | Kunsthalle Düsseldorf | more
2018 | Meisterschüler Ausstellung | Universität der Künste Berlin UDK
2017 | Inside Out | Universität der Künste Berlin UDK
2017 | Blick hinter die Kulissen | Rathausgalerie am Schloss Brühl | Max-Ernst-Stipendium
2016 | Inner Vision | Universität der Künste Berlin UDK
2015 | Young Positions | Galerie Pankow | more
PUBLICATIONS
2023
Interview | „Totentanz“ in Stralsund |
Ostsee-Zeitung
Portrait | „Jenseits aller
Kategorien“ | ARTMAPP
magazine
2022
Interview
|
Kunstleben Berlin
Article | „Rubica von Streng porträtiert
Landschaften“ | Märkische Allgemeine
Zeitung
Interview |
„Die Stimmungen der Zeit festhalten“ | Art in Berlin
Article
| „Limits of PortLand im Musee
Dezentral“ | Art in
Berlin
2020
Article | „Über Rubica von Streng“ | Tagesspiegel
Article | „Wie Farbe berührt“ | taz
2019
Article | „Natur verschlingt Mensch“ | Rheinische
Post
Article | „Wenn der Mensch aus der Platane
schlüpft“ | Düsseldorfer Kultur
2018
Cover Story | „Totentanz“ | Totentanz-Aktuell-Magazin 233 | Europäische Totentanzvereinigung
CATALOGUES
2023
Catalogue | Totentanz | Kulturkirche St. Jakobi Stralsund | Isensee
Verlag
2019
Catalogue | Taking Root | KIT - Kunst im Tunnel und Kunsthalle Düsseldorf
BOOKS
2022
Limits of PortLand | First Edition
2020
Towards PortLand | Second Edition
2019
Towards PortLand | First Edition
Totentanz – Dance of the Dead – Danse Macabre | First Edition
WORKS IN COLLECTIONS
Reproduction photography of paintings and portrait: Efacts Photography