Page 12 - Oto Rimele | Singular

I DO NOT DEPICHT LIGHT, BUT CREATE IT

It is often mentioned alongside your work that you are
a painter of light. How has the treatment of light as a

distinctive theme in your practice changed over time
and how has it been incorporated into your paintings?*
I am a painter of light, but I do not depict light in my
luminary painterly objects. I create actual, present light
which, as a living, kinetic part of the artistic message,

has the function of addressing and communicating
with the viewer. I regard my painting compositions as
light generators and light catchers because they vividly

generate images, radiate colour, which is a kind of kinetic
presence of the sublime. They trigger the viewer’s ability
to expand sensory perception into a feeling and proclaim
a personal dimension of the spirit.
I am interested in the magic of the creation of light and its

active presence. I realised that light itself had become the
central motif of my interest and my work as a painter in
connection with the search for a new ontological definition

of painting. And I grasped that the light in a painting is
the light that I provide myself. And it is what shapes and
defines all the other existent axioms of my paintings. The
light became the doing of my paintings.

In the past tradition of painting, the face of the painting
has always been the bearer of content. You have done
away with this approach and focused on its back and
TOTO RIMELE | SINGUL AR VVIEW OF THE EXHIBITION: THE IMAGE OF LIGHTS AS THE LIGHT OF AN IMAGE (BAŽATO GALLERY, LJUBLJANA, 2025)
edges. What did you want to achieve with this radical
decision?

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