Philipp Geist works worldwide as an artist using the media projection mapping/light installation, photography, fine art prints and painting. Geist's projects are primarily characterized by their complexity in the integration of space, sound and moving images. His works have a painterly, image-compositional approach of overlays, structures and graphic elements. He also combines his analog painting with generative elements. His video mapping installations transform a wide variety of architecture in urban spaces into moving, painterly light sculptures that challenge the viewer's perception of two- and three-dimensionality. Visitors are often integrated into the light projection in the form of large, walk-in projections. In 2013, Geist received the German Light Design Prize in the light art category.
How did you get into art?
I came to art through photography. I started taking photos as a teenager at the age of 13. In the works I made back then, the photos became more and more abstract and non-representational. I then came to painting through photography. Through music and working with different musicians, I came to moving images/live visual art. I have implemented many audio visual projects and light installations and exhibitions worldwide. I had my first exhibition in 1996 in a forest in Upper Bavaria. I exhibited large-format acrylic pictures in the middle of the forest.
How would you describe your style? What makes your work special?
For the most part I work abstractly and not objectively. I have always tried to transfer details, shades and structures, and color constellations into my picture worlds with my pictures. I have this in my abstract photographic works, in which I use movement, defocus, macro and detailed shots of structures, color rhythms, light and shadow as well as patterns. I would also describe myself as a painter who works with different media. In my projection mapping and light installations I use my analog images, generate completely digital images and also work analog. I find the interplay between analog and digital very exciting.
How do you go about developing your work?
I often work with different overlays, color rhythms and movement. In the paintings, the processes in the works on paper are sometimes short, intense, impulse-like processes. The paintings often involve longer work processes with repeated overpainting over a certain period of time. Always touching and thinking about the images. The drying process and the direct mixing on the canvas, on the paper, the paint, the flow of the different colors into one another, the gradient, the flow are important elements in telling color gradients and surprises. It is a form of dialogue with the image of the color and the material. The works on paper are often created in smaller series.
Who or what influences you?
Everything influences in a certain way. Music, light and shadow structures, the form and colors in nature, art. Everything that surrounds you influences you in a certain way and flows into your work.
Make us curious. What are you planning to do next?
I work on various light installations. Projects are planned in France, Bavaria, Mexico, India and Berlin. In addition, I work on various works on paper in smaller but also medium format as well as paintings on canvas. I work on generative digital works, fine art prints and prints on canvas are created from the still images of the generative moving image works. I also work on OverPaintings and lightboxes. In OverPaintings I bring digital works together with analogue painting. I work on large format paintings.
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