Simon Kubik: “Painting with oil color is a long lasting and dynamically interferable process. It shaped the way I paint. Adding, sculpting, wiping out existing layers, using the possibilites that oil colors give me in a very intuitive yet and deconstructive way.”
How and why did you start your artistic career?
I would not say I‘ve started an artistic career, I was and am doing art.
The career as I would refer to is other people getting to know and worship the works and the process. That worshipping process or an interest somehow started right away while testing different mediums for the transportation of my topics and how I‘d like to express things in the most adequate way.
The career which most people would refer to is still in a fundamental phase and I think it won‘t be a linear process anyway. Once in a while good things happen and one get rewarded for it, but it‘s a necessity for building on an authentic body of work.
How did you discover your medium and why did you choose it?
I found out for myself, that at least I need to work on paintings as well as conceptual works in form of objects and installations. Painting helps me to explore my subconcious, while it puts me in a state of reflecting and reacting on it. Painting with oil color is a long lasting and dynamically interferable process. It shaped the way I paint. Adding, sculpting, wiping out existing layers. Using the possibilites that oil colors give me in a very intuitive yet and deconstructive way.
For certain topics, objects speak for themselves enough and I feel like the visualization of it works with the pure/reworked object or in form of an installative constellation the best. It can be a more direct route to the receiver.
Can you talk about your creative process? How is your work born?
I recently saw a meme graphic about the artistic process and the outcome comparing „creating when inspired“ versus „creating out of habit“. Let‘s just sum it up as the more you confront yourself with your work the more often you‘re in the situation of having to find a solution. In that process, one will come up with a bunch of new perspectives and ideas to treat those topics. That is how humans get inspired anyway, it applies to more things than just painting or art.
I could not describe any repetitive pattern in which I created my work.
It starts out of intuition, analysis, and intention, and is further processed, sometimes in my head detached from the canvas, sometimes while failing right on it, yet the most important part happens in front of it I would say. Sometimes I see certain real-life constellations of things that somehow speak to me, resembling something. Sometimes I start with certain stains on a canvas and they form a put-together image of different memories or perceived moments. Kind of using what is already there in my subconscious, recycling the stimuli my brain reacts on the actual stimuli of what I see in that moment.
How long does it take?
It can take hours, several days, several months. After all it can happen that I overpaint 80% of what I‘ve already painted, paint for a couple hours and realise its better than ever and indeed better over for now. One paintings takes some hours, others I need to date like 2019-2021 because I overpainted them so often, still preserved something from the first version, which is then part of the whole process.
When do you know it’s over?
Since my expectations of what a painting should be for me evolve and change over time, therefore I never can be completely satisfied, I just need to reach an acceptable version for now, so I can start a new one.
Who are your favorite artists? Which ones are you inspired by?
When it comes to figurative painters, I aspire when the gap between non-defined forms and natural studies like visualization is very large, yet combined and overlayed. When showing the necessary in an abstract manner and not over-constructing it. It shows a high level of visual understanding while it’s a very natural thing everyone of us has since our brains connect visual stimuli of an image in the same way. Hagler Joshua, Robert Lettner, Rae Klein are particularly appealing and visionary to me as painters.
Regarding concept Artists I admire Kris Martin or Jochen Mühlenbrick for example, the second one would describe himself as a painter but I feel like his approach is so focused on the concept of a painting or what a painting can be, it speaks most for the work, while the craft of painting is still good. Kris Martin‘s Altar is probably my all-over favorite sculptural work, which fully exists and defines itself through the background, which it let‘s you see through it.
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