Philipp Donald Göbel

Born in 1966 (D)
Lives and works in Wasungen OT Unterkatz

For Philipp Donald Göbel, just painting was no longer enough; he actually thinks other artists can paint better than him. Therefore, he destroys his own paintings by jumping on them or sawing into them. To destroy is to transform. With force, he breaks and bends the wood until it has become a spatial thing. Yet this does not make it a sculpture; it remains a painting.

Other artists like Lucio Fontana, who was interested in the space behind the canvas and therefore cut into it, and Steven Parrino, who violently pulled the canvas out of its frame, preceded him but Göbel is not about innovation. Breaking his paintings is just a way of completing the painting.

“My paintings have to touch me, and hopefully the viewer, in whatever way I can, but the most important thing for me is actually the composition: how I put a surface down, where a piece is cut out of the canvas, whether you can see the wall behind it, how the frame is broken, how the canvas warps and much more. These are all things that affect the composition and I have to react to them. Sometimes this happens very spontaneously, sometimes very consciously.”