Heartbeat Painting

Simone Kaltenegger is a Berlin-based, self-taught abstract artist who felt and lived out her passion for art as a teenager. After many years in the fashion industry and owner of her own label, her desire to paint came back stronger than ever in 2021 and so Kaltenegger switched from her previous focus on figurative pencil drawings, to abstract painting. Kaltenegger works primarily with acrylics, incorporating spray paint, chalk and oil pastel. The focus is on the color black, but for the street notes series she also uses vibrant colors. Her paintings are dark but not gloomy, minimalist and mystical. In contrast to the very planned development process in fashion, she paints very intuitively and is guided by the painting process and existing emotions. She experiments with different techniques, plays with writing and graphic elements and often comes back to a very abstract representation of the figurative. Her intuitive process results in mystical artworks that invite various interpretations, often revealing figurative elements. Even as a child, her great imagination allowed her to discover figures and animals, for example, in the grain of the wooden floor or in clouds. Today, for her, a painting is finished when she is able to discover something figurative or a story there as well. She finds inspiration in the post-vandalism on Berlin's streets, on crumbling and tagged facades and in the club culture.