Kiki Klimt

Lives and works in Slovenia

Artist statement

I am a conceptual painter, using painting as a medium to tell a story and investigate visual language. Through reading Wittgenstein's philosophy and my own observation, I realised that communication between humans is incredibly flawed, and now I am searching for a way to communicate my ideas more precisely. Visual language, like spoken language, has its own vocabulary, grammar, and logic — and I am learning to understand it through different theoretical and practical approaches. In the last 30 years, I have been researching contemporary visual theory and the Quadrivium, the four historical arts: numbers, geometry, colour, and the music of spheres. This year I have enrolled in PhD studies in Merleau-Ponty and Husserl’s phenomenology, as well as Goethe's theory of colours. In my practice, I explore the intersection of content, form, brushstrokes, and technique. I have developed a method called “painting with light,” inspired by the Renaissance sfumato technique. By applying dozens or even hundreds of transparent paint layers and managing to make pigment behave like light, I achieve luminosity and a feeling of inner space in the painting. To convey the content as objectively as possible, I meticulously choose materials for their symbolic value, construct geometric compositions, and select the right nuances and the number of layering glazes. Each piece is an experiment, merging intuition and structure, inviting viewers to sense the hidden logic and beauty in the world.

Artwork