Interview
Jonas Baumann
Jonas Baumann is a Swiss born artist. He belongs to the first generation of artists who made their earliest steps on digital and analog playgrounds at the same time. With his work, he fathoms the gap between tactile, analog artwork and the disembodied techno-images behind the smooth glass of our computer screens.
Jonas graduated from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Illustration in Lucerne in 2010 with a Master of Arts in Design.
His work has been shown globally, such as at ArtMiami in 2020 and 2021 with Licht Feld Gallery, who displayed his oil paintings, as well as with elementum.art, the gallery that represent his NFT works. His video clip for Klaus Johann Grobe’s “Discogedanken”, released in August 2018, was selected for "Best Animated Music Videos" at the 26th Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film 2019.
His work was recently exhibited in group exhibitions such as “P2P” by Hermann Germann Conspirators (2018), “Die Form des Klangs” at HeK Basel (2018), and “OOO Object Oriented Ontology” at Kunsthalle Basel (2017).
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“I have been drawing my whole life - as a child I just drew all the time. Later in life, I did a masters degree in Illustration and became obsessed with oil paintings. Since then, my paintings have been displayed in several countries in Europe, USA and China.”
What inspires you most?
“I find inspiration in everyday life, as well as in art epochs such as German ‘new objectivity’ and ‘pintura metafisica’, and of course, surrealism in general.”
What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?
“My paintings are a mixture of sculptural figures and figurative sculptures. They are about balance, body tension of certain objects, and the subtle moment just before everything falls apart.”
“I try to create a kind of a ‘dissonant harmony’, meaning that my paintings should not ‘only’ be beautiful, but they should also represent a certain universal truth, while having at least a tiny bit of uncertainty and dissonance in it that may be sensible in the background.”
How would you describe your work?
“I would describe my work as honest but ambiguous.”
Which artists influence you most?
“Max Beckmann, Giorgio DeChirico and Saul Steinberg are some artists that I would say have had an influence on my art.”
What is your creative process like?
“I roam around in my studio, looking at things, thinking and daydreaming. As soon as I have charged my inspiration, I begin to paint - in best case - two or three paintings at the same time in very rough and fast strokes, sketching some rough ideas. The next day I pick one of my sketches that inspires me the most, and really dig in for hours until I am satisfied. Sometimes I need to repeat the process a few times more to achieve the desired result.”
What is an artist’s role in society and how do you see that evolving?
“An artist, in my opinion, should point the spotlight on things that happen ‘under the surface’ of normal, regular life, where tensions arise and on things that get overlooked in a fast and superficial world we made for ourselves. I think the more we get stressed and worked out from media, politics and work, the more important it is for artists to show people that there's beauty and interesting things everywhere around us.”
Have you had any noteworthy exhibitions you'd like to share?
“ArtMiami, Licht Feld Gallery, Kunsthalle Basel, Kunstmuseum Olten, Kunstmuseum Solothurn, HeK Basel, Gallery RedTown Shanghai, Löwenbräukunst Zürich and P100 Berlin.”
