Tobias Kroeger

Some start small; Tobias Kroeger started rather large. Inspired by the New York City subway graffiti’s of the 1990’s, he sprayed his first works of art in his hometown of Bremen, Germany at the age of 12. Kroeger spent his youth exploring the boundaries of the genre. Out of the typical imagery of graffiti, he developed his own iconography and eventually transported this style on to classic canvas in 2013. His focus has been on using oil and acrylic paints. Kroeger has catapulted the classical portrait, in which he often inserts quotes, into the digital world of ones and zeros. When speaking about his works, Kroeger talks about data fragments and machine elements of heteronomy and life dreams that have little space under the conditions of mechanization and, therefore, get lost in standardized conditions.

He repeatedly plays with strong abstractions but inserts figurative elements and color schemes to guide the viewer. Unlike in previous phases of his work, he uses an impasto technique, incorporating intense yellow, orange, blue or pink, and then binds them together with various shades of grey. This mixing of traditional analogue techniques and bold colors creates a three-dimensional image that online appears to be two-dimensional. Also on this level Kroeger allows a more complex analogue artwork compared to its digital pendant. Through the filter of his early urban art influences, Kroeger takes the historically important theme of portraiture and combines it with a binary presence to create a contemporary portrait of man in the 21st century – both on large walls and on canvas, and by the standards of actual, artistic greatness.

I’m curious, where are you at this very moment while I’m interviewing you? This way, everyone reading along can imagine the setting and have a visual. I

just sat down, the brushes were washed out and I quickly took a photo of my daily work so I can better plan further steps on my picture. My studio is quite small, no bigger than the studio of Francis Bacon back then. But not so messy, I like to work tidy. The size of my studio is currently helping a lot. It prevents me from painting pictures that are so big they cannot pass through the doorframe anymore. That’s always very tempting to get that big, but I save myself for later.

We were taken aback with your current body of work – the colors, abstraction, figurative elements… will you tell us about it?

I try to paint contemporary, that’s my main concern. It is very important with clarity and the renunciation of a stroke. I do not want to emotionalize the viewer too much; I would rather create a cold world. My work is often about dystopias. I work on a process of figuration; cold mask-like structures that have evolved from something into a new form – shapeshifters.

How does your street mural work inform your studio practice or vice versa?

At the moment I do not paint murals. The hype is too big and murals do not help my work any further. The paintings painted on canvas are the results of a long process of working that were previously planned and designed very precisely on my iPad and then perfected on the canvas, in which I hold the intermediate steps and reworked again and again. All this is not possible on the walls in the city.

What kind of art do you like? Do you collect anything in particular?

I am very interested in contemporary painting from Germany. I like Thomas Scheibitz, Franz Ackermann, Tobias Rehberger and many more. Unfortunately, I cannot collect them because they are all very expensive.

Where can people check out more of your art?

In the US, I am currently being represented by the Mirus Gallery in San Francisco, CA and of course my Instagram, @tobiaskroeger.

Many thanks for taking the time to answer our questions, any last words for our readers?

The best is yet to come.

Interview // Liz Rice Mccray