ABOUT - OUBEY MINDKISS

THE DISCOVERY OF A HIDDEN ART TREASURE

Persistent and uncompromising, dedicated solely to his own artistic vision – this was how OUBEY, voluntarily isolated from the public, created an unmistakable, multifaceted and incomparable oeuvre over the course of 25 years. Uninfluenced by the art business, OUBEY created over 1000 pictures with an astonishing, creative force in the greatest possible inner and external freedom.

When OUBEY started thinking about an exhibition again for the first time in a long time, he lost his life in a traffic accident in August 2004 at the age of 46.

The project MINDKISS posthumously realizes his plan, now opening a door for the first time, five years after OUBEY’s early and untimely death, to the hidden treasure he created and left behind. The book MINDKISS, the experience film OUBEY, and the web site OUBEY.com are the first steps along the way to a long-term goal.

This goal consists of presenting the originals of OUBEY’s pictures permanently in an exhibition, in which the mental context in which this art was created can be understood and experienced at the same time.

Further publications and actions will follow continuously in the coming months and years. Visitors to the web site OUBEY.com will be regularly kept up to date about these, so that they will be able to experience the development of the project close up.

If you would like to participate in the MINDKISS Project, feel free to subscribe to the OUBEY Newsletter or visit the OUBEY Blog!

THE PEOPLE BEHIND

THE PROJECT MINDKISS DEMONSTRATES THAT WHAT AT FIRST APPEARS IMPOSSIBLE CAN BE DONE.

Dagmar Woyde-Koehler

Dagmar Woyde-Koehler lived and worked with OUBEY for over twenty years. Following his death in a car accident in 2004 she founded the OUBEY MINDKISS Project which she has run ever since.

She has been producer and director of the "Encounters with OUBEY" series of short videos which document the encounters of people from a wide range of backgrounds and cultures with a painting by OUBEY they have never seen before. With the Global Encounter Tour she created a wider-ranging resonance space for the direct and unfiltered encounter of a great many people with a larger number of OUBEYs paintings.

Since 2020 she also presents "The Art of Resonance Show", a unique blend of OUBEYs analogue paintings and their adaption into various interactive and immersive digital installations.

www.mindkiss.com

Stefan Sagmeister

One of the project partners from the beginning was Stefan Sagmeister, who is one of the most important designers of our time. He did design work for Lou Reed, Talking Heads, Rolling Stones, Brian Eno and David Byrne and received various renowned awards, among of them two Grammies and the “Lucky Strike Design Award 2009” for his life’s work. With the book MINDKISS that he designed together with his team colleagues Roy Rub and Seth Labenz, he created a congenial and spectacular framework for the first public look at OUBEYs multifaceted and complex work. The Book was awarded with "red dot", AIGA Design Award and the "Award of Excellence" of the "Communication Arts" magazine.

www.sagmeisterwalsh.com | TED

Bernd Mueller

Bernd Mueller (“asif:filmmatters”), and Lars Eberle (“lessrain”) from Berlin created an experience film with their teams, which opens up to the viewer an extraordinary and personal encounter with OUBEY, granting access not only to the person, but also to the mental sources, from which OUBEYs work arose. The sonic figures that imbue this film with a rhythm all its own are the result of the participation of the wellknown French composer and musician Kangding Ray.

The film had its premiere at the launch of the MINDKISS Project on 23 March 2010 at the Center for Art and Media Technology (ZKM) in Karlsruhe. It was exclusively presented at the stopovers of the OUBEY Global Encounter Tour and at the media center of ZKM in Karlsruhe during Project´s 5thAnniverary Happening on 5 May 2015.

www.asiffilmmatters.com | www.lessrain.com

Ole Leifels

Ole Leifels is a photographer and co-founder of Kubikfoto³ in Bremen, who developed a unique software that allows to realize interactive Flash worlds based on photos, called Kubikfoto³. Using this technique, he and his team designed a virtual 360° visit to OUBEYs studio for visitors to the website.

The possibility of being able to move almost completely freely enables visitors to authentically experience the dimensions and the atmosphere of this space, in which OUBEY worked. Interactive functions react to a mouse click, inviting visitors to come closer, discover and stay.

Based on five analogue paintings by OUBEY, Kubikfoto³ created in 2019 three mindblowing VR experiences: "Samurai", "Journey of the Monads" and "Cosmic Voyage". Download is free via steam

www.kubikfoto.de

Natalia Kiës

Composer Natalia Kiës created the impressive soundscape for Andrey Vradij´s immersive 360° installation about OUBEYs large painting GENESIS.

This painting also inspired her to create the very first musical encounter with a painting by OUBEY ever. It´s titled „Mówić przez sen“ (Speaking Through A Dream) and takes an associative journey across the ten pieces of this painting which has been visualized in a video by Christoph Harrer: Pictures, sounds and dreams emerge to a holistic experience of extraordinary class.

Born in Poland, grown up in Germany, Natalia Kiës lives and works today in Cologne and New York. For the lyrics of her resonance on OUBEYs GENESIS she chose Polish, the language of her early childhood.

nataliakies.com

Andrey Vradij

Russian-Ukrainian light- and media artist Andrey Vradij and his partner Juliana from Leipzig created the ai-based interactive installation Reflections of OUBEY. Specific emotions of people who look at OUBEYs pictures are related to colors and structures from OUBEYs original paintings and transformed to create unique pictures of their individual emotional resonance. Visitors of the Art of Resonance Show are very much in favor of this unusual way of art- and self-recognition.

Vradij also created an immersive 360° installation for OUBEYs largest painting GENESIS. Together with the impressive soundtrack, created by composer Natalia Kiés, it opens up an inspiring space of reflexion and selfreflexion. The installation will have its premiere in public 2023.

wrady.com

Christoph Brosius

If OUBEYs paintings where something to play with, how could someone interact with them in a playful way? Christoph Brosius of Circumradius found the answer to this unusual interesting question when working together with Jan Bubenik and Julian Adenauer to develop the interactive "Magic Bowl". Movement of this bowl changes the virtual light falling on OUBEYs paintings, revealing their inherent complexity and three dimensionality and spectacularly changing their colors and structures - an experience which could only be had with long hours of viewing under natural light conditions.

His more than fifteen years of experience in game developing, filmmaking and advertising were basic ingredients for the creative process of conceiving the "OUBEY Magic Bowl".

www.circumradius.de

Christoph Harrer

Christoph Harrer and his camera have accompanied Dagmar Woyde-Koehler on all the journeys she has undertaken with OUBEYs paintings on the Global Encounter Tour since 2009. All the documentaries about the Tour as well as nearly all the Encounter Videos were shot and cut by him - including the short film Complexity which in three and a half minutes gives an astonishingly vivid and lucid account of the complex nature of OUBEYs art.

As a freelance cameraman, editor, video journalist, director and teacher, Christoph Harrer is based in Munich yet travels the world for his work on documentary, image and advertising films. He shoots and edits clips and news slots for the German TV channels BR, WDR, SWR, ZDF and RTL, and directs music videos and commercials. At the same time he also teaches at the Akademie Deutsche Pop, the AFK, an education and training unit for radio and TV journalists, and the Münchner Filmwerkstatt.

info@christophharrer.de