A conversation with the canvas
An interview with Hans Ringleb, written by Lara Bruno
One day, while walking through the streets of a grey and wintry Berlin, my eyes were caught by a colourful fragment of reality, a vibrant painting screaming out from a big squared window.
As I learned later, the painting belonged to Hans Ringleb, a local artist who owns a little atelier in Wilmersdorf. Although the atelier was closed that day, I could hear the artist’s call loud and clear through his “window to the world”.
When I returned to his place a few weeks later, I saw him fully absorbed in working on a big canvas. I knocked the door timidly and he welcomed me with a big smile. In those few square metres of the atelier, I discovered hundreds of great artworks and a whole new world. From that moment on, Hans and I have started meeting regularly to talk about art and its meaning, over a cup of tea or while playing Chinese chess. During our meetings, we have engaged in fascinating discussions about various aspects of art, painting and life, which have led to several insightful questions. What follows is my re-elaboration of our meetings and the artist’s considerations, which left a lasting impression on me both as a curator and as a person.
At what point did you begin creating art?
It happened when I was fifteen, quite naturally. I discovered an oil painting set that belonged to my father and I started experimenting.
I decided to begin with a portrait of a Native American, as I believed them to be good and honest people. I then painted over it with the modern and shining New York skyline, and subsequently created a surrealistic piece featuring an atomic mushroom cloud, a burning candle, and a skull with a rose in its mouth. On the other side of the canvas I panted a hand reaching towards the light of a candle. At the age of 15, thoughts of life, death, and the looming threat of the atomic bomb were frequently on my mind, as well as this tension towards light, which represents knowledge.
Could you tell me more about your painting process and how it evolved from this very first moment to now?
When I paint, I often envision a vast space, an horizon or maybe the infinity. Everything I paint on the canvas is an attempt to get closer to this vision. Of course, I also envision people within this vast space that slowly takes shape as I incorporate and create various forms, structures, and elements. Painting for me has always been an evolutionary process, a conversation between myself and the canvas.
Where is this conversation leading you?
Sometimes, it is just a matter of imagination or projections. I am constantly seeking the unpredictable, looking for unexpected occurrences to emerge from the materials I work with. I strive to observe and listen rather than control, I let events and transformations occur during the painting process. I do not want to repeat myself; I have to find a way to get surprised, to make something happen differently.
Throughout your productions, from the series Figures and Spaces to Border Crossings and your most recent works, we can observe a mixture of descriptive elements, abstract forms, and surreal characters and landscapes. Where do you find inspiration for your creations?
My art comes from my attempt to simplify the complexity of the world around me as I observe the rhythmic impact of colours on canvas. If this rhythmical dance is successful, I receive a lot of feedback from the canvas. However, it takes a long time to find subjects that I agree with, as I said, it is an evolutionary process. My senses are my guiding principle, harmony is my testing ground.
What do simplicity and complexity mean to you?
Simplicity is not only the result of resolved complexity, it is a clear and effective way of transmitting information. In my work I strive to understand and simplify complexity into a harmonious composition that, while returning an information, allows the viewer to construct their own meaning.
How would you define your painting style?
I would say that it has something to do with Surrealism and Art Informel. It is a figurative interpretation of my Informel style. I strive to create visionary artworks that surprise even myself, and I enjoy when the subject matter is realistic yet also imaginative. The intersection of representation and abstraction intrigues me. As a result, my artworks often oscillate between the figurative and the abstract.
Sometimes it’s just the expression of my unconscious working on the relations between lines and composition. By drawing lines, I let my associative power generate closed shapes and in this way, I create.
What inspires you to incorporate architectural forms in your paintings?
We could say they are illusionary architectural forms, but they actually come from impressions I got from reality. Certainly, the space in our reality isn’t free and open. It is occupied by institutions and buildings, symbols of religion, politics, and ideology. In both concrete and figurative terms, it is a structured space. It looks like there are no alternatives here: you have to believe in money, otherwise you cannot go and buy bread. These structures are ideologically rooted in our social system, but in between, there are people. Indeed human figures are often present in my paintings. The question is: how to interact with people? How to look at them? Do we have to walk into life together, or is everybody on their own trip? Can we observe and change this system together?
How do you determine when an artwork is complete?
If it is harmonious, then it is done.
I don’t really have to understand it. I do not aim for my paintings to be perfectly defined, just as the world isn’t. I aim to create a space within my work that allows viewers to bring their own perspectives and visions, thus completing the artwork. Painting is about freedom and freedom starts when you can decide for yourself. I don’t want to impose my vision of the world but give people the chance to find their own questions out of the theme I am proposing. We live in a world built on fixed opinions and ideologies and I think it is extremely important in our time, particularly for the advent of artificial intelligence, to push the audience to find his own judgement, to be able to trust his own subjectivity. That is the reason why as a painter, I try to maintain a certain level of “ambiguity” in my artworks. After all, life is a mixture of light and darkness.
What is the objective or purpose of painting, according to your perspective?
First of all, painting is a way to find an excuse not to work, you know? (laughs).
Honestly, it is also very fun and, after a while, it becomes necessary. You cannot do otherwise, you get stuck in art and suddenly realise there are no other ways for you to do something meaningful. The mission is to make yourself and other people aware I guess, it is consciousness. Art is a way to get free from constraints and make them visible, by engaging in a dialogue with other human beings.
What is the converging point of art and reality?
The mind, the spirit. According to Schopenhauer, the world is will and representation; thus our world and the painting realm come together in the same reality. As humans, we inevitably interpret the world and its structures through our cognitive processes. Painting and reality intersect as they are both products of the human experience. Moreover, as a product of its time, art must reflect and respond to the reality of its era. Art is reality.