Rubica von Streng
- Anna Lilli Garai
- Aug 12
- 5 min read
Instagram: @rubica_von_streng
Rubica von Streng is a Berlin-based artist whose large-scale painting cycles explore transformation, perception, and environmental concerns. Her ongoing “PortLand” series, developed since 2018, reflects a deep engagement with landscape, time and change, unfolding across more than 150 works. Often working in cycles, she builds dense visual worlds where forms shift and dissolve, drawing attention to the instability of boundaries and the complexity of ecological systems. She combines gestural painting with layered compositions that grow over long periods, often in parallel with research and writing. Her work invites reflection rather than answers, and brings together personal observation with broader questions about the future.
Q: Your work often explores change – both personal and environmental. When did this theme first become central to your practice?
A: For me, it is crucial to capture the world in as many facets as possible. One cannot step into the same river twice, as the philosopher Heraclitus realized some 2,500 years ago. I see it in a similar way. Everything is constantly in motion. Everything that exists will eventually disappear. In my paintings, I can make transitions visible; I can highlight the beauty and diversity of change. This is one of the central themes I explore in my "PortLand" cycle. "PortLand", which I have been working on since 2018, is an acronym of portrait and landscape. In it, individuals merge with their surroundings. Entropy plays a central role in the works of the cycle—even at the atomic and subatomic level, nothing is in absolute standstill. Everything that exists is in a constant state of flux. This process is the subject of my work—personally, socially, ecologically, and ontologically.
Change was never something I searched for—but something I allowed to happen. I believe that as an artist, I have to remain open to new opportunities, to surprises.
My work has always evolved because I didn't want to commit to just one style. I wanted to let the picture breathe – and myself as well. Change is what keeps me alive. I was never interested in repetition, but rather in embracing something new. Because for me, that's the very essence of painting: in the living process – and in its result.
Q: The PortLand cycle spans several years and more than 150 works. What keeps drawing you back to this world?
A: The fascination of making our world visible in a different way in the world of "PortLand". I do this, on the one hand, through a deliberate absence—the absence of green. This color only appears in the paintings when blue and yellow overlay each other during the painting process. Being able to experience this crucial color of life in a different way suddenly makes what is otherwise always natural no longer a matter of course. One can see nature differently; it is not a given and is not always present. "PortLand" points to the future; the past and present are the cornerstones.
In addition, "PortLand" can be understood both inwardly and outwardly, because my painting technique makes the inside and outside visible—like in a CT scan. I'm applying the oil paint in very fine, translucent layers. I developed this technique myself and, drawing inspiration from music, called it Arpeggio Painting Technique. You hear the individual notes and know where they come from, but their overall sound creates a new picture.
"PortLand" is a world that never really lets me go—even if I occasionally need some distance. For me, painterly expression is not merely an art form, but a state in which I can think, feel, and exist. It offers something that no other activity can: a balance of control and devotion, of intuition and structure. I am always drawn back to the blank canvas: it gives me the opportunity to create something that wasn't there before. It's like a conversation with the unknown. In the painting process, there is a rare moment when I know for sure: now it's right. Now the picture is breathing. And that draws me back to the canvas. Again and again.
Q: Each chapter of PortLand seems to loosen its visual structure. How conscious is that shift as you move through the series?
A: I have based my formal language very much on the states of matter in physics: solid, liquid, gaseous. Plasma has been added as a fourth state of matter in my most recent works. The fusion continues, and in the fourth part, "Seasons of PortLand", which I am currently working on, the question of change over the course of the seasons is raised. Before I had finished "Beyond PortLand", lyrical phrases came to mind—sometimes they give rise to a picture title, and sometimes they also herald the next part of the work cycle. In this case, it was the words “eternity in transformation”—it suddenly became clear to me that I would be dealing with seasons in the next part. I have been working on this for two years now.
Q: Nature, landscape, and transformation play key roles in your compositions. What does painting offer you as a way to engage with these topics?
A: Painting allows me not simply to depict a landscape, but to feel it, to penetrate it—to reinvent it. My aim is to evoke a sense of vastness, of change, of the forces of nature—not to copy the view of the landscape. Painting gives me the freedom to make transformation visible—not as a sequence of events, but as a state of being. The paint flows, seeps, changes on the canvas. This physical process is a transformation. It reflects the way landscapes change – through light, weather, memory, time. I think what fascinates me is this transitional state: the moment when the image is still in the making, not fixed, not explainable—like a landscape that changes with every movement of the gaze. Painting gives me the space to appreciate this transience without having to hold on to it.
Q: You've shown widely—from Seoul to Stralsund. How does context or location influence how you think about your work?
A: Conversations with viewers vary greatly depending on the country and location. I have noticed that "PortLand" is understood and that it does not matter which country people come from. The concept of home is not decisive anyway, as I depict timelessness and placelessness in my works. In this respect, the works meet viewers exactly where they are at that moment.
In general, travel influences my artistic work because it gives me the opportunity to authentically connect with a place, absorb impressions, and process them. The context, the location—they always play a part, whether I want them to or not. But I don't think they change my work—rather, they open up new ways of seeing them.
Q: With upcoming exhibitions and new directions ahead, what questions are currently driving your studio practice?
A: In a time when everything is changing so quickly—whether due to technology, social upheaval, or the art world itself—I feel that my studio practice is like an anchor. The upcoming exhibitions are important, of course, but they don't dictate what I have to do. Rather, they inspire me to constantly question my work: What does painting mean today?
How can I integrate new materials and new processes without losing sight of what has always interested me?
Among the questions that currently drive me are: How can I make the mutability of color and form even more immediately tangible? How can memories, experiences of nature, and temporality be translated into an abstract visual language today?
And how can I preserve the depth and concentration that paintings need to breathe in a world full of distractions? On top of that, I am driven by the question: What happens when "PortLand" takes place in the landscape itself? Furthermore, for me it is about embracing the unknown—taking the risk of not knowing where it will lead. I don't see art as a finished project, but as a living process that continues in each subsequent work.
