A GREAT MYSTERY, AN ELEMENTARY IRRITATION

“I am in favour of explaining things as far as possible, exploring them with scientific means and methods to the greatest possible extent, because I believe that one should employ as much rational reasoning as one can, because that is always still so little, and behind it there is always still a great mystery. For this reason I am also in favour of spending billions for particle physics and basic research in physics to explore which building blocks our universe is made of. The more we know about such things, the greater and more elementary our irritation will be. Because behind this there is always still an even greater mystery. If Darwin´s theory means that we are connected with all forms of life; if the expanding universe means that we are connected with the entire cosmos; does it mean, as further conclusion, that the evolution of consciousness is connected with God or something comparable? This question cannot be answered, but it has to be explored.”

From OUBEY MINDKISS – STAR PIXELS: The Tie between Star and Human Opens Up True Worlds.

MORE AN IDEA, A PHILOSOPHY THAN A TECHNIQUE

“Due to the lightness of the material PhotonPainting creates a completely different airiness and transparency in the pictures, it finds the human range of perception in the electromagnetic frequency range, signifying both speed and the greatest possible precision or perfection at the same time. Every imprecision can now be a meticulously planned imprecision.

PhotonPainting is more an idea, a philosophy than a technique for realizing images. If ideas Are strong enough, they look for a corresponding form. In this case, the idea of painting with light led to PhotonPainting. It is perhaps also a reminiscence of the borderline character, the universal constant of the speed of light, which separates us human beings from physically experiencing the universe. This constant keeps us in a quarantine, whose boundaries we can only overcome with the help of our imagination.”

From OUBEY MINDKISS – PHOTON PAINTINGS: Taboo Zones Perform a Metamorphosis of the Real.

EMOTION IS LIKE A RUBBER BAND,

A SPRINGBOARD, A CATAPULT

“Immediacy is crucial for my pictures. Immediacy is something which can only be reached through feelings. Ideally the picture should go straight into the eye or into the heart like a sound or a ray of light. With all the intellectual considerations that may be behind it, ultimately the emotion is crucial. Because emotion is something that speaks to everyone, everyone! Feeling is thinking ahead and it is also thinking it over. Emotion is like a rubber band, a springboard, a catapult. The higher the space is, in which emotion can develop, the better. I hope my picture may fascinate an Australian aborigine just as much as an Eskimo or a guy from New York, Frankfurt or any other big city. For me, that too is an element of the universal.”

From OUBEY MINDKISS – DRAWINGS: Lines, Codes and Patterns Tap Into New Spaces Of Emotion.

FROM THE PRIVATE TO THE UNIVERSAL  -

EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED WITH EVERYTHING

“The link between the individual and the whole is one of the major themes permeating my painting. That is the arch. Art can connect huge arches, from the private to the universal. Where else does that work? Nowhere. That is why it is unique: to be able to go from the individual into the many, then from the many into what is wholly singular, isolated.

There is a famous poem by Gottfied Benn: Verlorenes Ich – Forsaken I. That plays an important role in my work. It is addressed to the many. To many single forsaken I´s. To I´s, that are so highly conscious of themselves, that they completely separate themselves from their own experience of the universe. We are many and yet we are alone. We are alone and yet we are facts of a many. A grand whole. Everything is connected with everything and my art is an optical expression of this insight. It simply reflects the joy of the insight, is in principle an ode to it, a poem.”

From OUBEY – MINDKISS: Material Aesthetics and Anythinks For Mental Use

LEAVING THE WORLD IN THE ENCHANTMENT OF ITS COMPLEXITY
“It is not the case that I want to implement the insights of natural science in painting and make them visible, not at all. Natural science plays the same role as poetry, as Rilke or Paul Celan, as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, as Boris Becker, Mozart or Ilya Prigogine.  It is one of many experiences that you have and which flow into art. I try to gather these experiences together and take them into my art, and not to categorize art as a further experience in this series. That is a huge difference.

The goal of my art is specifically not to reduce the complexity of reality to a hidden simplicity following a set pattern, but rather to leave the world in the enchantment of its complexity and uncontrollability, and to try to counter this with something that matches this enchantment. Because nature itself is an art work.”

From OUBEY MINDKISS – PAINTINGS: Cosmos in Mind as Primal Ground of Art