CONTEMPORARY ARTIST RICCARDA RAABE
Antakly Projects · In Conversation
Riccarda Raabe
Painter · Berlin
Call and response, worked out on a very large canvas.
Why this conversation
I keep coming back to painters who treat the canvas as something to talk to rather than a surface to fill. Riccarda works big, on canvases that take up a whole studio wall in Berlin, and she builds a painting out of marks, linework and colour until it starts answering her back. What pulled me in was how openly she admits to not knowing where a painting is going, and how much she trusts it to tell her. There is a generosity in working that way, and a kind of risk most people are far too careful to take.
The work
She lives and paints in Berlin, mostly on large canvases, often setting bold brushstrokes against delicate marks and passages of collage. The paintings are visual explorations of the human experience, an attempt to put onto canvas what it actually feels like to be alive: to love, to struggle, and to be subject to the passing of time.
Painting is my way of answering back to what the world offers me.
The conversation
Your greatest inspirations or influences?
I draw inspiration from all aspects of life. A line in a poem, the pattern of a brick wall, the look on a stranger's face. Painting is my way of reacting and answering back to what the world offers me, an attempt at adding to the conversation going on around me. I am of course deeply influenced by other artists too. The list is endless, but the ones that come to mind quickly are Cy Twombly, Helen Frankenthaler, Joan Mitchell and Martha Jungwirth. I admire the way each of them developed such a strong and meaningful language.
Tell us a bit about your creative process, and what you are looking forward to this year?
My creative process is all about call and response. I always start with a playful stage, where I completely let loose and simply activate the canvas with marks, linework and colour. That gives me something to react to and lets my intuition lead the way into a dialogue with the canvas. At some point a possible path emerges and I have to decide whether I want to go down that road. That is when I switch from being completely intuitive to a more analysing mindset. I figure out what the painting might be about and try to carve that out, highlighting certain elements while getting rid of others. In the end a painting emerges that is full of history and turned corners. Throughout, my aim is to stay open to whatever might happen and let the painting develop organically. I believe a work can really connect with an audience when the viewer senses the artist poured raw, authentic emotion into it, loud or quiet. That is what I aim for. I take risks, I try things out, and I change my mind.
How has this year changed your creativity, or how you see the world moving forward?
This past year reminded all of us that nothing in life is certain. That can be unsettling, but it can also make us reconsider our habits and appreciate what we have. With lockdowns and small kids at home I had less time in the studio, but I tried to keep the creative juices flowing by being present and really soaking in all that I feel and experience. It reminded me that creativity is not only the productive side of actively making art, it is also about observing and taking in your surroundings, letting ideas stimulate your mind. When you realise that, time away from the studio can still be spent in a way that pushes the work forward.
Who do you consider to be an icon of our time?
I have to say I am slightly obsessed with Princess Diana, even though that is a bit retro.
Do you think the art world needs to change, and if so how?
Underrepresentation of minorities and of female artists is still a big issue in the contemporary art world, and it has been for a long time. It is obvious when you look at how few works by women and artists of colour sit in any major museum's permanent collection, in the galleries, or in the auction market. I wish I had an easy answer, but there are many factors at play: an often euro-centric lens in curation, decades and centuries of societal and historical baggage that shape an artist's working situation and a collector's access and interests. Still, I am hopeful that we keep moving towards a more diverse, and therefore richer and more exciting, art scene in the years and decades to come. Awareness keeps growing, and slowly the system will have to adapt. There is so much great art to be discovered.
I take risks, I try things out, and I change my mind.
In motion
