"Gradually - layer by layer - the final picture develops. I often have an idea in advance of how the picture should look in the end, but the process always leads me to completely different results."

Interview by Richard Starbuck

Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background? Where did you study?

I was born and grew up in Berlin. My parents, Dorothea and Joachim Seifert, are also both painters, so exhibition openings, studio visits and studio work have been part of my life from an early age. We lived in a large two-storey apartment with an oven. The top floor - the attic - was my parents' studio. We spent New Year's Eve up there every year, painting. 

When I finished school, there was no real alternative to studying art. I applied to four art colleges and was initially rejected everywhere. In my second year, I was accepted at all the universities and was able to choose where I wanted to study. I then went to Dresden. Looking back, that was a good decision. Dresden University of the Arts is comparatively small and informal - everyone knows each other. This always results in great opportunities to realize joint projects. During my studies, I founded two project spaces in Dresden, which regularly hosted exhibitions with artists and art students from Dresden and beyond and still do today. I got to know countless other artists this way and many of these contacts still exist today.

Your works are described as dynamic interplays of light, color, and motion, creating illusions that evoke both the surreal and the deeply personal. How do you approach the canvas to ensure this fluidity and depth, and what techniques do you find most conducive to translating these atmospheric variations into visual form?

My brushstrokes are intuitive, brute and yet delicate - rich in contrast. I often rework existing rhythms and color constructs with glazes. Gradually - layer by layer - the final picture develops. I often have an idea in advance of how the picture should look in the end, but the process always leads me to completely different results. This is particularly interesting and, to be honest, I would be bored if I could predict what would ultimately develop on the canvas. If something roughly tangible emerges, a surface, a rhythm that evokes an idea of reality in me, I work with it. All the other parts of the picture are then based on this, but can nevertheless also determine the picture.

Dr. Maike Salazar Kämpf references the psychological aspect of your paintings, likening them to a Rorschach test. In what ways do you consciously incorporate aspects of psychology into your work, and how do you hope this influences the viewer's experience and self-reflection?

At the beginning of my studies, I painted figuratively until I realized that this level of content - the explicit and representational - not only had no meaning for me, but actually hindered me in the painting process. 

Since I find my way to the picture from nothing, so to speak, forms emerge that are completely free for interpretation. These interpretations are by no means the same for all viewers. Where I secretly recognize a wild boar, someone else clearly sees a ghost ship floating, and where for me floral elements are reflected in the water, for others a pig mourns at its mother's grave. I didn't consciously calculate this ambivalence, it grew gradually and at some point became an essential part of my painting. When I work on a picture, I often imagine that I am someone else and have never seen the picture before. It's important to be able to change your perspective. In the end, I'm not psychoanalyzing, but letting my own thoughts circle on the canvas. The titles give the viewer an idea of what might have been going on inside me when I painted the picture and what I ultimately recognize in the picture. These can be mathematical facts, as in "a²+b²=c²" or "Theorem of Thales", social conventions, as in "Rendezvous", or natural phenomena, as in "Haze". When I talk to friends, collectors and art historians about the pictures and everyone tells me what they see, it often provides information about the other person, about their inner self and how they see things in the world.

As a co-founder of Galerie Stephanie Kelly, your involvement extends beyond your own canvas to fostering a community of artists. Could you discuss how this dual role of artist and curator shapes your personal artistry and informs the way you engage with the broader artistic landscape?

I run the Stephanie Kelly Gallery with a team of other artists and art historians. First and foremost, our aim is to offer young Dresden graduates of the Dresden University of Fine Arts a platform on which they can present their artistic work to a broad public. For some years now, we have established a tandem program in which Dresden positions work together with supra-regional positions in thematically curated exhibitions.

Organizing the exhibitions and, last but not least, working with the artists and their works, thinking about the individual artistic approaches and under which aspects they can work together, is a great pleasure for the whole team. On the one hand I often take topics that are dealt with in the exhibitions back to the studio myself and further thoughts develop. On the other hand, concerns and thoughts that we ourselves have as artists naturally also find their way into the gallery's exhibition program. I think it's very important to seek a constant exchange of ideas and, especially as an artist, not just to deal with ourselves.

Tell us a bit about how you spend your day / studio routine? What is your studio like?

I have my studio in my apartment. I live in an unrenovated old building and I use the largest room for painting. Finished and unfinished canvases are in my bedroom, in the living room and in the hallway. So my normal everyday life as a mother of a nine-year-old son and working on my paintings merge. 

I never work on just one canvas, but always on several different formats at the same time. When I have an idea - a particular color combination, a special shape - I think about which format is the right one. Then, at some point in the picture, something surprising emerges that I hadn't expected. I like to continue working on such coincidences, which often have a decisive influence on the development of the picture.

What artwork have you seen recently that has resonated with you?

I am particularly impressed by works of art that are formally far removed from my own artistic practice, but which nevertheless relate to topics that concern me. Humor and ambiguity, even a certain sarcasm, appeal to me. You may remember Tino Sehgal's performance at the Venice Biennale in 2005, when the museum guards welcomed visitors with a sung and danced version of "This is so contemporary". I was almost moved to tears by a performance by Susanne Hopmann and Georg Lisek at the Galerie Stephanie Kelly in 2017: sports motorcycles and a 30-strong fanfare procession occupied the entire exhibition space. I also think the sculptural and digital works by Christian Holze and the sound and media works by Manuel Sékou are really great. In our current exhibition at Galerie Stephanie Kelly, the two artists really come together extremely well against the backdrop of Dresden's baroque architecture, which is also characterized by architectural elements from the GDR era. I organized the show because I really wanted to show these two in combination and because it opens up spaces of ideas that are vague and razor-sharp at the same time.

Is there anything new and exciting in the pipeline you would like to tell us about? 

Yes! I will be moving to Leipzig in the summer. I've been commuting between Dresden and Leipzig for seven years and now the time has simply come for me to make this move. I will, of course, remain loyal to my current adopted home and the Galerie Stephanie Kelly. In addition, my first institutional exhibition will take place next year as part of a residency.

All images courtesy of the artist
Interview publish date: 04/03/2024