It is essential for a living being to have a very personal place of power where they can recharge their strength and energy. This can be a mental, a physical or virtual spot and my work is to create such physical places.
These places, these allegories, platforms, anchors, object of meditation, islands of strength, mental relaxation rooms – whatever you like to call them, they all are at the same time portals that mark access to very own, very personal, very intimate, mental places of power.
Kim Okura (born 1973 in Klagenfurt, Carinthia, Austria) is an Austrian painter, graphic artist, sculptor and object artist.
Intimate power spot are the new roots. — Kim Okura
Okura’s artistic position reveals itself in her extensive and multi-layered work, which moves through a variety of approaches and forms and asserts the radical claim of pulsing through individual stagings of single works or cycles of work, rather than bowing to a contemporary decree of submitting work in a linear manner. Her artistic work includes drawings, paintings, graphics, canvas and paper works, performances, objects, sculptures, conceptual art, installations, and texts and poetry.
The meta theme of Okura’s artistic work stemmed from the question: Can Our World Survive, abbreviated by the acronym COWS. Whereby “our world” means the respective world of the individual. The realization was: It takes spirits to progress and to master life.
This in turn led to the following questions: What are the sources that motivate us in life? What are these spirits that give us vitality? Answers to these questions, which are constantly being asked, or as Kim Okura calls it, the “research results on the meta topic COWS”, are implemented in a variety of ways in Okura’s varied subcycles.
The (my) central topic is: C.O.W.S? CAN OUR WORLD SURVIVE?
SPIRITS OF LIFE AND THEIR SOURCES.The question (CAN OUR WORLD SURVIVE?) I am investigating.
The answers (spirits of life and their sources research results) I produce (paint, print, draw, objects, whatever …) So everything that strengthens the spirits of life (factual and / or conceptual energising powerful places and spaces).
“The works see themselves as anchors, islands of strength and mental relaxation rooms.” I wrote about my first “Joytrophie” cycle around 2016/17. Now these days I am no longer interested in the mental relaxation rooms in which you end up – but in the way to get there.
Or rather, the gates or portal that you use to get into this very own personal place of power. If you look at this process, then it is inevitable that the portal itself (sic!) – must radiate an immense power place mentality in order to take the spirit with you on the journey through the suction effect.
It’s the portals, you can also call them doors, thresholds, gates or crossings, which – as “transport aids” in themselves – are places of power. They transport people into a mental space of power where they can have their own individual, invigorating, calming, nourishing and possibly even numinous experiences.
As you see, the world of consciousness and thoughts and their interaction with the outside world this is what Okura is interested in. The practice of successive hunting down and observing. Also recognizing and acknowledging problem areas within as a segue-way to a continuous change process, which, when complete, will present itself to the outside world as a universal victory. Like the principle in the Kybalion “As above, so below; as within, so without,” Okura’s works are a persistent narrative search for the ideal solution to create a better, more humane, and more understanding world.
Kim Okura’s cycles of works often go through a polymorphic parkour of materials as she continues to penetrate deeper into her subject: from sketches to pencil, ink and charcoal drawings, from often complex preliminary studies painted with acrylic on Japanese paper to the ever-larger canvas works in oil. Sculptural chance acquaintances, as Okura calls her “Reborn Objects,” complete each cycle and add a third dimension.
The material itself is not important to Okura, but instead expression, beauty, quality, and a multifaceted representation of the core idea.
