Kerstin Kuntze Kunst

„ … and most of all it’s about passion.“

I did not choose it. It has always been there.

I was the girl that coloured everything. The walls, the bike, the shoes, paper and the skin.
All the scholars were perfectly polar white, just a non – sprawling world, first drawn in pencil, then coloured in with Edding. Art was my most important subject and I was the little girl who knew that it would never stop.

Art is something deeply personal and always reflects the one who creates it.

I am a passionate designer – I shine for what I am doing.
Pictures are my language.

I wanted to study art or graphics. I was able to combine both at the renowned Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. To this day I am enormously grateful that I could learn there.
The great draftsman Professor Otto Näscher and the advertising icon Professor Vilim Vasata became my most important companion during this time. As a tutor, I had her very close to my side.

All the graphic artists had to learn the basics of photography. For me it was at that time a duty and a game – I was a draftswoman. Today, I am very happy to know the basics – from lectures on the history of photography to working in the darkroom.

However, a sentence by Otto Näscher has impressed me: “lustfully of the own development work.” That has always been mine. Lust and passion are the impetus for my art.

Because of my father’s death, I had to finance my studies myself.
In advertising, I worked as an illustrator and graphic assistant.
After graduation as a diploma designer with a predicate sex, I went this way first. In large advertising agencies, I worked as an art director. There I learned a lot about conception and could work with great colleagues. The often agonizing decision-making processes were frustrating during this time. Thus, a good idea has often been a soft-boiled campaign. At the time, I longed to finally decide autonomously on the idea and the implementation. Finally free again.

Fortunately, I was pregnant. Never again would I work in advertising. This chapter was finished. Everything else would be just a repetition.
I wanted to work at home. Mother and artist. Three wildgood children during the day and the art at night. Children and art have grown. To the nights, the days come to work on my art and assignments. A life I always wanted.

With the children also the digital photography came into my life. We got along very well. She reminded me of my father and his Polaroid camera. How often I have lent them to enjoy this instant feeling of the gesture. To take a picture of the world was very easy.

Digital images scream after editing, so that a picture can become something peculiar. Something touches the other, entrains and sometimes frightened.

As an artist you should master your design resources, so I learn every day. Programs like Photoshop & Lightroom offer infinite possibilities that you want to be conquered. Still I am a draftsman …. work with the pen on my tablet.
By the way, I paint analogously in sketchbooks.

I love the experiment, so I develop new ways of image design. Re-inventing, exploring new paths and experimenting with pleasure is what I want. Creation and destruction, pleasure and suffering, often lie very close together.
This is work and not always a pleasure. Not a day when I did not at least work on a picture. As I said before. You can not choose it, it is a constant urge and, of course, a great desire to create a new one.

Form and content are mutually dependent – just like artists and art, life and work. My theme is always humanity. The expression of life, lust, passion, longing and all emotions from bright red to deep black, should manifest itself in my art.

There are three major cycles I have been working on for a long time. These revolve around the topics:
Head – construction – water

 Even as a child, I liked to draw heads – at first headfoot, with head and belly one. Basically, I remained, showing the face as a concentrate of human being.
On the head are the organs of sense with which we perceive our world.
In the ministry we can read the reaction to the environment.
Expressionist is innate in us – the language of the face is immediate and is understood by all people. The face as an expressive mirror of human being.

My minds are always also a personal state description.
For a long time I have been working with self-portraits, which I am changing – with form and color to create something more general from the personal image. A picture of the world show that is reflected in the head. Recognize, remember and recognize emotions.
From classic black-and-white portrait to surreal exhortation, I try to experiment – to find the formally best expression for my pictorial ideas. Sometimes playful, until something develops, sometimes conceptually, driven by clear ideas.

Within this cycle are created own series – like “The Lust of the lips” in which I celebrate the mouth as the Lustsymbol. Lust, passion, longing, sex are often the content of my works. Partially hidden and sometimes quite open.
Just like the red. It is a symbol for the lust of life, filled with unbridled ardor and wild desire. Red is my color, even in black and white images. I glow for my art.

In series production, I deal with the relationship between man and architecture. Here I skeleton the found formally to rebuild it. Strong colors and forms strengthen the effect and help me to break design boundaries.
Here I love to give the building a rhythm. Often the images vibrate – from stare becomes the motive, the fleeting. … New levels of meaning emerge. A tribute to the times – in the future and transience equally.

For more than five years the theme of water has been very important to my work.
The series WASSERLUST ° / SWIMPOPLOVE ° announces the LUST TO LOSE.

As a passionate swimmer I am almost every day at least 3.000m in the water.
In the last three years, I have swam over 2,500 km.
So in 2012, my series ° Wasserlust ° was almost inevitable – here I connected my art with my lust for swimming.

I always swim outside, mostly in the open air pool, sometimes in rivers, lakes or in the sea. Last year I discovered my enthusiasm for the fresh water – now I can also swim in the North Sea at 3 ° C in January. A sensational feeling that makes you addictive and creates new images.

What I love about swimming is the power of water on my skin – a primal force that makes you feel life in all its weight.
There are images that reflect life – from “quietly tender” to “brutal“. They should seize, tear, touch – as well as the water touches me.

Often they are quite unspectacular subjects, like exhalation under water. By capturing only one moment, this act gets something sensational.
Perhaps it is just what I like so much – the magic of the little moment. The infinity, which can carry a moment within itself. Timelessness.

All my works combine the representation of the aggregate states of being.
Also in the future I am looking forward to recognize and recognize.
Will continue to rub my pleasure in your eyes.