Life For Nothing Or Die For Something: An Interview With Thomas Schostok

Art Nouveau: Some would consider your work raunchy. Is this in your face effect a plot to draw people in?

Thomas Schostok: No. People say I use nude images to get attention. Sure, it might be easier to get attention when you use nude images in paintings. But that is not the point, it never was.

I don’t want to show perfect and nice things. When a woman tells his husband how nice the painting fits to the colors of the couch – that’s not my world. Conformity equals crisis. Bring the streets to the living room. I consider what people call “raunchy” or “dirty” as something that “lives”. That what I’m doing over the years is just not a style, I can’t simply switch it on or off. No, it’s part of me. I tell you, I tried to make clean paintings, without any nude images, without all the trash or dirt or whatever. It’s not working. See it like an obsession not as a style.

I use that kind of material I’m working with, because all of it is dirty. Nothing of it can be perfect. I don’t like clean colors, sharp photos or whatever. I love “used” things. Everything in my work must have a used look. Used objects have many interesting stories to tell. If I’m working on an artwork, I want to have some sort of live in it. Dirt reminds me that something moved on, that something developed. I like those vividness in artworks and collage/hand writing is something that express that feeling very good.

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