Thoughts & Insights

Ever since she first started the MINDKISS Project, Dagmar Woyde-Koehler has been collecting resonance about OUBEYs paintings from a wide range of people in a broad spectrum of different viewing contexts across the whole world.

Ever since I first met him, considering our present situation as humans here on Planet Earth through the lens of evolutionary theory was for OUBEY one of the fixed poles of his thinking, feeling and creative life.

Four months ago the OUBEY Digital Discovery Show had its brilliant world premiere at the 5thAnniversary Happening of OUBEY MINDKISS at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe. Now it will be featuring at the prestigious Leonardo Awards on 14 September in Bonn.

One and a half years ago I tried to find a suitable partner for a stopover of the OUBEY Global Tour in Africa – all in vain. At the beginning of this year I put this idea on the back burner. I hadn’t completely abandoned it; I simply didn´t pursue it actively anymore.

“Seeing OUBEYs paintings today for the first time in the original was an experience of incomparable intensity for me. Even though they’re fascinating to look at on the internet and in the MINDKISS Book– when I am actually standing in front of them, they draw me in so deeply, I can hardly bear to tear myself away.”

Dagmar Woyde-Koehler has suceeded in transfering OUBEYs pictures from the old analog world to the new digital world.

Since the OUBEY MINDKISS 5th Anniversary Happening we’ve had a lot of interesting resonance, especially from those who were there on 5 May at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe and so had the opportunity to see some of OUBEYs original works for the first time.

On June 1st Professor Peter Kruse died, a man well known in Germany for his research into the workings of complex dynamic systems. Intelligence, collective intelligence and the dynamics of social systems, in particular those of the internet , were the main themes of several decades of intensive research which are now more acutely topical than ever.

The 5th anniversary of the OUBEY MINDKISS Project was a time to honor its work publically and put it in perspective.

Unfortunately Professor Peter Kruse wasn’t able to personally attend the MINDKISS Project´s 5thAnniversary in the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe. But his video statement was very much present. Played on the evening of 5th May at the Special Happening, it provided plenty of inspiration for lively talks and discussions throughout the evening.

Two years ago during the Encounter between OUBEYs painting Nullfeld (Zero Field) and the whale filmmaker Daniel Opitz on Maui/Hawaii, something happened that we hadn’t reckoned with. In the course of the Encounter the painting – which had been properly lit for the video recording – gradually slipped under the sway of an illumination factor which makes all the spotlights of this world pale by comparison – the sun.

One day when I asked OUBEY just what “27 Cube Memory System” – the title of the only triptych he ever painted – actually meant, he gave me a very special kind of look and shot back, “You’d better ask Fritz Haller about that”. And that was the end of that until 2005, one year after OUBEYs untimely death, when I drove to Bern with the original triptych packed in the boot of my car to see Fritz Haller and ask him this question.