Rubica von Streng graduated from Berlin’s University of Arts UdK as a masterclass student in 2018. Her works, such as the paintings of the monumental “PortLand” cycle, have found a place in highly recognized art collections in Germany and abroad. They often deal with the beauty of nature, biodiversity and the future of civilization.
Abstract portrait and landscape painting enter an exciting liaison in her oeuvre. Her multi-layered, aesthetically composed oil paintings appear watercolor-like and radiate an unexpected lightness, however heavy and complex the subjects. The artist achieves this balancing act by means of her self-developed so-called arpeggio painting technique: wafer-thin layers of highly diluted oil paint are applied one after the other, creating a powerful ensemble of overlapping color spaces and forms that interact with fragments of varying shapes. “Von Streng’s works are profoundly intelligent, well-founded and responsible,” says René Spiegelberger, CEO of Hamburg-based Spiegelberger Foundation. “They open a new chapter in abstraction. Her way of dealing with highly topical themes manifests itself in an impressively stringent manner”.

Dance of the Dead
Anyone who deals artistically with subjects such as life and death, eros and asceticism, occasionally tends to simplify them due to their complexity. Exploring such themes, working on them and making the possibly invisible context visible is like a Sisyphean task – as is the case with the topos of “Dance of the Dead” which originated in medieval times. The Berlin-based artist Rubica von Streng has taken up the challenge and transported the subject to the present day.
In mysteriously moving color spaces without depth, without horizon, without prospects – interior and exterior in one, as it were – symbolic and essential contours of bodies are dominant in the paintings of her cycle “Dance of the Dead”. They stand out against the backgrounds in rich bone black. Occasionally, red, white, gray and yellow contours are added. Sometimes these lines are reminiscent of human bodies in their former richness. Often, however, they obscure the human figure, unbalancing it to the point of expressive deformation, creating a vibration and pulsation – like a final impulse in which devotion and rejection come together.
Rubica von Streng‘s paintings use her formal language to reconstruct the fleeting character of the moment – between having just been and already gone. They offer Dionysian resistance. This requires the work of focused perception: those who work less diligently may hope for post-mortem redemption after passing through the purgatory; others, like Rubica von Streng and Friedrich Nietzsche, know that redemption can only be experienced in aesthetic illusion.
Despite thinking and feeling her way into what is to come, what could be in store for us, the artist has not lost touch with the past. On the contrary: “It is important to know where everything comes from in order to better understand and classify current and future events,” she says. “After all, the future has a past. I am primarily looking for universally valid laws that go beyond subjective experiences. For me, topics are important that have interested people living centuries before us and that will continue to affect our lives in the future. One of them is death and how we deal with it – individually, but also as a society.”
However, the Grim Reaper rarely appears as a figure in von Streng‘s “Dance of the Dead” – unlike in many paintings of other artists who have worked on the subject. And for good reason: “Death does not kill. People kill. Not only each other, but also millions and millions of other living beings that inhabit this planet with us. That‘s why death usually only appears as a figure in the pictures of the cycle when humans bring it about,” explains the artist. “But I don‘t actually depict death figuratively. Because dying is a disappearance from the here into the there. And unlike the here, the there has no form.”
In this respect, a special form of entropy is at work in von Streng‘s pictures: the basically unfortunate physical-chemical condition that is responsible for the fact that everything, meaning, everything universally, strives for the greatest possible disorder, however much we may long for orderly conditions. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
“Viewed on a cosmic scale, we have no chance to stop this trend towards chaos,” she states with reference to physical certainties. Such findings and the scientific discourse that led to them have long occupied von Streng; her home library on these topics measures several meters of shelves.
“To understand what makes the world tick,” she says, “it is helpful to understand its mechanisms as precisely as possible. I prefer to look deeper into the subject matter instead of being satisfied with the superficial.”
“Dance of the Dead” was shown from May 19 – October 25, 2023, at Kulturkirche Stralsund, Germany, and attracted almost 20,000 visitors.