My paintings are built around a central form whose paint has an apophenic structure. I more or less determine the contours of the form myself. Over this, I place colorful circles in a meaningful abstract pattern. This pattern, the color, and the size of the circles are connected to the underlying form. I discovered the paint of the central form a few years ago. I noticed that something interesting was happening and then investigated the proportions and composition of the chemicals I had used. This metal paint acquires a kind of random structure that speaks strongly to the imagination. The structure of the paint evokes an apophenic reaction in the viewer. This gives the viewer the opportunity to see their own meaning. Apophenia is a basis for associative thinking. Because humans are meaning-makers, they quickly see a pattern even in random information. It is better to have one strategy, even if it turns out to be incorrect, than to have no strategy at all. For example, it is safer to see a danger where there is none than to miss a possible danger. It is less detrimental to mistake an air mattress for a crocodile than to fail to see a crocodile. Conversely, this is why the wings of some butterflies resemble the eyes of snakes or birds of prey. Psychoanalysis uses apophenia to map the cognitive and emotional landscape, Rorschach inkblots for example. Thus, the apophenic pattern of the paint forms a mirror of the viewer’s subjectivity. The experience of the beauty of an artwork is only about the suspicion of meaning. In my opinion, beauty is the suspicion of a hidden system. You see something and feel that it is right, but you don’t know why. It is the promise that you can learn something from it. This is encouraged by the brain with a pleasant stimulus, so that attention is held. It is therefore about a suspicion. As soon as the reality of the system is known, the spell is broken. Therefore, it does not matter that the apophenic pattern of the paint is random, or whether our subjective meaning that we give to the artwork corresponds to the reality or the intention of the artist. With the pattern of colorful circles, I make the painting coherent and complete to myself. The circles comment on the underlying central form, in which I see a certain meaning. I need to have an idea about the content of the central form only to make the work coherent. The meaning structure of the abstract circle pattern is something I developed for myself earlier while making a series of black-and-white Mondrian-like paintings. I see this meaning structure as a kind of mathematics behind an aesthetics or image analysis. Although this all sounds very analytical, I still see myself as an intuitive artist. I always start a work or series without a pre-set plan or idea, just with the feeling of a color, form, or movement.
Stephan Konings lives and works in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In 1999, he graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, and has continuously worked on developing and expanding his painting practice over the following decades. His work now exhibited in the Netherlands at: Gallery238 Brouwersgracht 238 Amsterdam.