Kim Reuter Stilles Licht

Kim Reuter in Conversation with Eckhard Hollmann
like listening to music while working; I can be
deeply moved by it. And I play the piano.
I’ve noticed that portraits play a particular role in
your work: you frequently paint your family, your
husband, and two children. Why are there no selfportraits
of Kim Reuter?
There is one, just one. I gave it to my father.
So you aren’t to be found in the “family pictures,”
but you’re part of it nonetheless?
Yes, of course. But the fact that I don’t paint
myself into the pictures is down to other reasons.
My pictures nearly always arise from
specific situations, and in those situations I’m
the observer! I also know the people around
me best and simply enjoy looking at them.
Before you began painting, you studied Art History, Musicology, and Philosophy.
Yes, that’s true, but painting and music were already my focus during my school years and they remained
so during my studies. Science was more of a byway, a meander if you like. I soon realized this
and applied to the academy in Düsseldorf.
Did your studies there meet your expectations?
Only partly. I wanted to learn lots of techniques. People asked, “Why are you still painting?” Portraits,
nudes, landscapes, interiors—you need to experiment a lot, find your own path, and accept that a lot
of stuff will end up in the rubbish. I find this process exciting, much more than its academic-scientific
rationale.
Does knowledge of art history not have a disruptive influence on the painting process? I can imagine that it
acts as a brake on spontaneity, knowing who has already done what, and with which materials. A form of
intellectual shackles?
I have to say that I’m not so interested in the academic approach to art. I discovered this fairly quickly.
Beyond painting, my interest lay more in musicology, with its analytical, mathematical investigations
of harmony and counterpoint. Music also plays a key role in my painting, on many different levels. I
Did this affinity to visual art and music also drive
you towards synaesthetic experiments, along the
lines of Wassily Kandinsky? He dealt closely with the
connections between visual art and music, also incorporating
facial expression and verbal sounds, for
example, in his stage composition The Yellow Sound.
No, that’s much too theoretical for me. I don’t
want to invent any notional superstructures
for my painting, I don’t need a construct for
this. That would seriously impede me in my
work. I can’t work to a “master plan,” nor do I
want to. It would restrict me far too much.
There can be no doubt that you have benefited from
the shift in the international art scene away from
abstraction towards various forms of representational
painting—a shift that has become increasingly
marked in recent years. Are you part of the so-called
New Realism?
As I said earlier (laughs), I don’t think much
of this kind of pigeonholing. However, maybe
people want to see a filtration of the excessive
flow of pictures now, filtered through the eye
of the artist. Or it’s simply an alternate world
to abstraction. I don’t know. For me, the attention
to objects in the picture, to bodies, faces,
hands, is important. And the space in which
all of these are contained, of course! It needs to
be harmonious. I have much greater freedom
of choice if I have truly run through all the
various solutions.
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