Interview
Stephanie Bing
Born in 1967 in Mannheim, Germany, Bing graduated with distinction from high school in Offenburg. Subsequently, she studied fine arts, painting, photography, art history, German, and literature at Johannes Gutenberg-University and the Academy of Fine Arts in Mainz, again graduating with distinction. Following her education, she worked as an associate professor for the Bavarian Ministry of Culture in cooperation with the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, and the Bavarian Chamber of Architects until 2002.
Bing focused on design, architecture, aesthetic perception and digital media to promote visual literacy. Stephanie Bing studied painting in the master class of internationally renowned art professor Klaus Jürgen-Fischer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Mainz and photography in the master class of Professor Dr. Vladimir Spacek from Prague. In 2022, she won the international art prize "AWARD VIBES" in Frankfurt with her painting "Prophetia” and got the IIA 2022 Award in Photography and Digital Art as Finalist at Camelback Gallery, Arizona, USA with her stunning photography. Since 1989 Bing's art has been presented in national and international exhibitions. Her paintings are listed on international art platform Arte Laguna World. In 2018, she formed her own company #ninibing34, presenting a unique collection of colorful accessories, fashion, and interior design products produced in London. Her stylish goods are shipped worldwide. She operates a gallery and showroom in Korbach, Germany. Bing is married to publisher and journalist Dr. Wilhelm Bing, a recipient of the first-class Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his commitment to private broadcasting and media. Today she lives in Germany and the Balearic Islands, or travels with her husband around the world to gather new inspiration.
Everything in her paintings is playful, ambiguous and multi-layered. She loves variations within a theme and image quotations, interiors with fish, leopards, Chinese porcelain, ceramics, baroque furniture and influences from retro styles. She composes bright, surprising settings like a luxury jewel-box, and assimilate her interiors to unknown sanctuaries with high vibes. Bing loves rhythmizations and uses complementary colors as challenging accents to make her pictorial themes exciting. Her artwork is much more than an assemblage of colors and patterns to please the eye. Stephanie builds a new environment, which relates to nothing seen before. Her pure aesthetic energy flows out of her pictures and brightens the viewer's mind with pure buzz and delightful excitement. She presents contrasts: organic and technical, black and white and brightly colored, large and small, geometric-perspective, freehand drawing, illusion, and collaged reality. From the basic idea of perspective, she develops the layout of the constructed space, which she is literally wallpapering. She over paints her interior compositions with an old master glaze technique, and a structure of shadows and complementary colors to increase the luminosity of her work. Photography: Stephanie Bing's photography is mysteriously enchanting. With her eye for every living object and spatial structure, she captures a detailed and precise picture that brings a fresh and intriguing perspective to the world's reality. As the viewer sees existence in a different light, context or resolution, familiar objects appear as something new. She presents her exciting work from all over the world in landscape, texture, nature close-ups, natural patterns and seaside impressions, which often evoke a vision of Van Gogh's brushwork. She lives half the year in Germany and the Balearic Islands, and travels worldwide to gather more brilliant inspiration. Since 1991 her work is shown in national and international art exhibitions.
Stephanie Bing studied photography with professor Vladimir Spacek from Prague at the Academy of Fine Arts in Mainz. Her photographic oeuvre is listed on #LensCulture, one of the most comprehensive and far-reaching resources for discovering contemporary photography talent around the world. Since 1991, her work is shown in national and international exhibitions. In 2022 her career pushed up and she won first prize of international Art Award VIBES in Frankfurt, worldwide. She became artist of the Month of Camelback Gallery, Arizona USA in October 2022, one of the most popular internationally working Galleries in USA. Then she was winning the first prize of the World Wide Galleries ART TOUR with her painting TRIO INFERNAL and is touring the world with this painting for a year to the top places international, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Swiss Art Expo . 2022 Stephanie is among the top finalists of the 10th KUNST-ONLINE Prize, Germany - Austria - Switzerland with her Interior Painting. Her paintings are meanwhile exhibited in Miami at Art Basel Miami, in Venice at Palazzo Pembo at VENICE INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR 2022 - 16th Edition and in London at the Contemporary ART LONDON CONTEMPORARY ART FAIR 2022, organized by ITSLIQUID Group. In Palma de Mallorca her art was shown in the Contemporary Art Gallery CASA DEL ARTE, in Netherlands in Lelij Gallery, Amsterdam. She was winning in 2022 lAA International Awards in Photography and Digital Art at Camelback Gallery, USA and she recently won the Artrepreneur Still Life Open Call international and Global with her Still Life painting „The big YELLOW. Still life with fruit and Arne Jakobsens Egg-Chair“. New jump in 2023 was winning the TALENT PRIZE AWARD ART (theme Water) of International Juried Art Competition of ART SHOW INTERNATIONAL GALLERY and participation as Finalist at 2023 Award Competition „Shades of Blue“, International Juried Visual Arts Competition, Camelback Gallery International Art Gallery, Arizona USA.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“I was born in 1967 in Germany, Mannheim. I had the privilege of growing up in a family in which art was considered a daily practice, my mother passionate about the art of ceramics and my father a painter, close to expressionism and cubism. I always looked for an expression that was my own and that could best express my extraordinary joie de vivre by highlighting my incessant search for beauty, studied and experimented with a language that could take expressionism the art form most suited to me, through a formal synthesis that belonged to an inner research, even before a formal one. My refined cultural preparation was nourished by important studies that saw me protagonist at the Offenburg Lyceum, at the Johannes Gutenberg University and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Mainz where I specialized in the languages of the arts, from painting to photography and art history. I studied painting in the master class of internationally renowned art professor Klaus Jürgen-Fischer at the Academy of Fine Arts in Mainz and photography in the master class of Professor Dr. Vladimir Spacek from Prague. Thanks to my cultural preparation and the ability to convey the passion for an increasingly marked artistic profession, took on a professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich thanks to the institutional collaboration with the Bavarian Ministry of Culture. The encounters with Professor Klaus Jürgen-Fischer and Professor D. Vladimir Spacek that took place during my formative years at academy were crucial to me developing an expressive, unique and authoritative character. They captured details that enabled me to go beyond the classical lessons that often stop young artists in their tracks. However, my story records a long break of ten years that begins in 2002. A period during which I travelled and collected emotions, sensations and colours in my sensitive soul, an authentic load of human and visual experiences which then authentically exploded as soon as I resumed my creative activity, after a dramatic event such as the loss of my mother. I have never stopped since then, I have painted, photographed and composed works which, definitively abandoning the creative experience of the early years, and worked on the creation of a unique and recognizable style.”
What does your work aim to say? Does it comment on any current social or political issues?
“In my interior art work, I leave behind the classically learned composition techniques of image design and work on multiple layers of a space on the two-dimensional canvas. I want to give the viewer the opportunity to look beyond the superficially familiar image sphere. The behind and in-between is important to me. Sometimes, I enlarge the interior space through classical perspective illusions, but my next step is always to deepen this spatial dimension in its significance by adding collage elements that I collect on every occasion as additional connotations. I love to break the traditional methods of spatial visualization and the physical three-dimensional illusions of space in order to absurdly lead the viewer's perception of reality. Only by breaking the classical perspective can I create new experiences for my audience to address them on a different emotional level. Everyday objects are detached from their original conceptual context, seemingly arbitrarily positioned in an unfamiliar environment. Rooms filled with furniture, surrounded by wild animals, birds, seagulls, horses, and fish, with porcelain in close proximity to seagulls, plants, carpets, and other objects. Actually, an illustration of interior, although not as we know interior painting as an independent genre since the 17th century.”
Do you plan your work in advance, or is it improvisation?
“I start painting without an outside trigger of inspiration. The painting’s process itself is of the utmost importance in my daily life. Painting is comparable to breathing for me. I like to plunge into my painting process like others plunge into a pool. I compose bright, surprising settings like a luxury jewel box and assimilate my interiors to unknown sanctuaries with high vibes by metabolizing my experiences, observations, and impressions into interior pictures. Everything in my paintings are playful, ambiguous, and multi-layered. I love variations within a theme and image quotations. My artwork is much more than an assemblage of colors and patterns to please the eye. I build new environments which relate to nothing seen before. I want my pure aesthetic energy to flow out of my artwork and brighten the viewer's mind with pure buzz and pleasant excitement. I love to break the traditional methods of spatial visualization and the three-dimensional physical illusions of a room to make the viewer's perception of reality absurd. I want to allow my audience to look behind the bare, well-known pictorial sphere by leaving behind the classically taught composition and inventing more layers within the two-dimensional canvas. Sometimes I enlarge the interior space through perspective illusions and add collage elements, which I collect every day, for additional connotation. By breaking the classical view, I can generate a new experience for my audience, pointing them to emotional reality. I turn my motives into bright, cheering works of art, like an explosion of colors and organic shapes. Everybody is welcome to participate.”
Are there any art world trends you are following?
“I find inspiration in the works of the pioneering modernists, such as Paul Gauguin, André Derain, Maurice Vlaminck, and Henry Matisse. These artists broke away from the traditional academic art and explored new ways of representing the world through color and form. While I appreciate and respect contemporary art trends, I prefer to focus on the timeless beauty and innovation of these earlier artists. Their bold use of color and their ability to capture the essence of a scene or object in a subjective and emotional way resonates with me deeply. That being said, I do believe that art is a reflection of the world we live in, and it is important for artists to be aware of and engaged with the current social and political climate. However, I personally find my inspiration in the past, in the works of those who have paved the way for artistic exploration and expression. With my enchantingly bright tropical still lifes and interiors, I transport you to the southern hemisphere of this world. Carried by positive energy, your eye now travels on a beam of light, almost perpendicular to the objects, to distant idyllic places in the South Pacific or directly to enchanted turquoise islands in the Indian Ocean. My artistic statement arises from the harmony of individual areas of color. Characteristic of my new works from the southern hemisphere are the extremely vibrant colors, with the consideration of representing space repeatedly being an essential part of my composition. With a contemporary twist, I incorporate elements of poetic realism and juggle with additive color mixing: a phenomenon that describes the change in the perceived color impression by gradually adding a different color stimulus.
Fundamentally, our color vision is always an additive mixture with the help of color-sensitive sensors. When the three primary colors, red, green, and blue, are added in suitable brightness, we perceive the color as white. With this phenomenal trick, I succeed in generating the colorfulness and brightness of the painted pictures as a shimmering, dazzling substance. I detach color from the guardianship of a contour and place it flat next to the next, usually contrasting color. I paint with all senses, without thinking about a preconceived style. My color carpets consist of radiant, iridescent color stimuli that create that pure harmony on the surface of the canvas, which the revered Henri Matisse would call a "spiritual space." Instead of the space of light, a color space emerges from the artist's feeling, and instead of a pure reproduction of forms, what is referred to as the "noumenon of the images." The term "noumenon" comes from philosophy and refers to the thing in itself that exists beyond our sensory perception. In art history, the term "noumenon" is often used to refer to the idea behind a work of art or an artistic movement. Similar to the paintings of the Fauvists, I also focus on representing the emotional and subjective perception of the world, rather than achieving purely realistic depictions. Capturing the essence or essence of the depicted objects or scenes is far more important to me than focusing on the mere external appearance. I thus transport you into my own world full of fascination, radiant light, into my spaces filled with positive emotions, bright enthusiasm, and euphoria. "My artworks are much more than just a collection of colors and patterns that please the eye. I create new spaces that can be compared to very little seen before. I want my positive aesthetic energy to flow out of my paintings and fill you with enthusiasm and bright excitement.”
What process, materials and techniques do you use to create your artwork?
“My expressive lyric skillfully combines marked sensitivity with refined culture. I create art through an ancient contamination between what moves and strikes me every day, between small details and long journeys, between classical culture and contemporary expression linked to the world of art and design. Energy, rhythm and contrast, three elements that merge in each of my works, whose details belong to the world of symbolism, the use of which, in my works, is given a great deal of attention. It is here that my art expresses itself in its best form as I manage to show and demonstrate, to the more attentive viewer, that none of my works fall only within the graphic-aesthetic research but offer much more ideas and reflections, wide and deep. My artwork is much more than an assemblage of colors and patterns to please the eye. I build a new environment, which relates to nothing seen before. My pure aesthetic energy flows out of my pictures and brightens the viewer's mind with pure buzz and delightful excitement. Each work is a concentrate of emotions that belong to the depth of the my thought, each painting contains the story, the training and the desire to tell through the indisputable beauty of my personal artistic alphabet, an artist’s code which is worth exploring through the tools that each of us possesses in the depths of our sensitivity. The history of contemporary art teaches us every day that every work can be observed through different points of view, all of which are fascinating. My works have the ability to inspire interpretations that range from philosophy to art history, from psychology to poetry, thus opening up immense expressive panoramas within which the artist unravels with extraordinary mastery. Works in which the symbolic and material stratification express a research that amplifies the two-dimensional depth, typical of the canvas on which the painting generally rests. Time is a decisive element for reading my works, each of my creations undoubtedly requires particular attention, the period of observation of which can reveal the secrets of my language.”
“I want to give my audience the opportunity to look behind the basic, well known pictorial sphere by leaving behind the classically taught composition and inventing more layers within the two-dimensional canvas.”
What does your art mean to you?
“My art is a means of self-expression and a way for me to communicate my emotions, thoughts, and perspectives with the world. It is a form of personal exploration and a reflection of my inner world. Through my painting, I strive to create a visual language that resonates with others and evokes a sense of joy, beauty, and inspiration. It is a way to connect with others on a deeper level and share my worldview. Ultimately, my art is a part of me and a way to leave a personal, positive, unadulterated footprint, an image, on this world. Of course, my art also offers me the fascinating opportunity to engage with the history of art and draw inspiration from the great masters of the past. I study their works and techniques with dedication and am inspired by their creativity and spirit of innovation. At the same time, however, I strive to find my own voice, my individual poetry, my own style, and break free from traditions and conventions. I also believe that art is a universal language that can connect people of different cultures and backgrounds. Through my paintings, I can offer to bridge the gap between people and cultures, create shared experiences that may transcend language and cultural barriers. Through my paintings, I can also encourage people to reflect on their own perspectives and establish a deeper connection with their world. My painting is a constant process of discovery and manual and intellectual growth, where I have the opportunity to explore new avenues of artistic expression. Visual art, music, and literature offer unique peaceful opportunities to explore complex themes and provoke thought.”
What’s your favorite artwork and why?
“Still life with tropical Birds fish and cactus. In this exquisite still life, consisting of two lovebirds, tropical birds, fish, cacti, and Chinese vases, a captivating scene unfolds. The Old Master technique of the Baroque is interpreted here in a modern way to give the recipient an extremely captivating expression. The lovebirds, with their vibrant plumage and expressive eyes, perch gracefully amidst the lush vegetation. Their presence is depicted with remarkable realism, capturing their playful nature and intricate details. Their gaze seems to invite the viewer into their world, creating a sense of intimacy. Surrounding the lovebirds are tropical fish swimming in a vibrant painted surrounding. The shimmering scales and delicate fins are meticulously painted, bringing everything to life. Amidst the vibrant flora, cacti stand between, their prickly spines contrasting with the soft feathers of the birds. The intricate patterns and textures of the cacti are rendered with great precision, adding depth and visual interest to the scene. Chinese vases, adorned with intricate patterns and delicate motifs, add an element of elegance and cultural richness to the still life. Their presence hints at a fusion of different artistic traditions, creating a harmonious blend of styles. The lighting in this masterpiece is carefully orchestrated, casting a warm glow on the lovebirds, fish, and surrounding elements. The interplay of light and shadow adds depth and hints of summer to the composition, enhancing the overall visual impact. In my still life exudes a sense of exotic beauty and cultural richness. It transports the viewer into a world where nature and art intertwine, inviting them to appreciate the intricate details and captivating expressions of the lovebirds and their surroundings.”
Have you had any noteworthy exhibitions you'd like to share?
“Over the past three years, my exhibition activity has increased tremendously on an international level. Almost continuously, my paintings have been traveling around the world, and my diligent gallery owner is always at the forefront, taking my art to the most exciting art fairs and galleries worldwide. My recent exhibitions include: Affordable Art Fair - Hamburg, Germany; Parcus Gallery Exhibition Paris + Art Basel Week, Switzerland (2023); group exhibition Andakulova Gallery Dubai, Vereinigte Arabische Emirate (2023); Exclusive solo Exposition d’art Stephanie Bing Parcus Gallery „The Blue Gorilla“ Paris, France (2023); Still Life selected Artists groups exhibition and publication Biafarin, Vancouver, Canada (2023); groups exhibition Andie Art Gallery Athens, Greece (2023); SWISSARTEXPO Art Fair Zurich, Switzerland (2023); “Paint Your Heart Out” groups exhibition KBM Art Gallery, Riverside, California, USA (2023); groups exhibition Nicoleta Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2023); London Art Biennale 2023, Art Fair, United Kingdom; NYC ARTEXPO, Manhattan, New York, groups exhibition USA; ROME INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR 2023 - 6th edition, Italy; VENICE INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR 2022 – 16TH EDITION Palazzo Bembo, Italy; among others.”
