Timo Vogel's work resists easy categorisation from the very first encounter. At first glance, his practice appears to move across a wide range of visual registers: from pared-back silhouettes rendered in pencil or stencil, to drawings of almost surreal complexity, and paintings that evoke cinematic atmospheres charged with tension, humour and disquiet. Yet rather than presenting a mere diversity of formal approaches, the work reveals a coherent visual language shaped by contrast, displacement and ambiguity.
His scenes unfold less as self-contained narratives than as open fragments in which melancholy and irony intertwine, and sensuality emerges almost incidentally rather than as an explicit subject. The figures-often isolated and situated within spaces that resist precise definition-seem to inhabit their own temporality, suspended between intimacy and estrangement, the everyday and the symbolic. It is within this tension that Vogel's work derives its particular intensity: in what it suggests without ever fixing it in place, and in what it reveals without ever fully resolving it.
This interview grew out of a series of conversations between the artist's studio and the gallery. Rather than seeking definitive answers, it offers an opportunity to follow the movements of an artistic practice that consistently resists certainty. The recurring motifs, reflections on process, and moments of hesitation that emerge throughout the conversation are not intended to resolve the work into a fixed meaning, but instead illuminate the openness from which it continually evolves.
171 GALLERY: When did you first realise that you wanted to devote yourself to art? What experiences led you in that direction?
TIMO VOGEL: I don't know if there was ever a single moment when I consciously realised it. I've always drawn. At some point, I had to decide what I wanted to study and which direction I wanted to take. Art simply felt like the most obvious choice because I couldn't imagine doing anything else. It was an intuitive decision.
171: Your work seems to emerge from unexpected associations and subtle shifts in meaning, often prompted by complex inner connections. How does this flow of ideas develop? Is it the result of conscious decisions, or is it a process that can surprise even you?
TV: It's definitely a process that can surprise me. When you're drawing all the time, you're probably following certain themes on a subconscious level. I might move from one motif or figure to another, but there's almost always a common thread connecting them.
I'd describe my process as intuitive. At the same time, I often wonder what "intuitive" actually means. You don't simply lose all your thoughts overnight and wake up the next morning as a completely different person. Everything you've experienced and thought continues to shape what you do. A lot of it happens unconsciously.
You draw something, look at it again later, and only then realise that it resembles a work you made two years earlier.
171: Certain motifs keep recurring in your work: cowboys, urban building sites, landscapes, shoes, penises, fruit, cigarettes, folding rulers and, more recently, sharks. Do these elements form a growing visual vocabulary, constellations of meaning, or are they simply intuitive choices?
TV: Whenever I draw something, I need to feel a certain connection to it. Sometimes I become almost obsessed with a particular object. I'd almost describe it as an object of desire-not necessarily in a sexual sense, but in a visual one. A penis, for example, might interest me simply as a form. In the same way, I'd draw a mountain if, at that moment, I found its shape visually compelling.
Over time, these things do develop into a kind of visual vocabulary. But I wouldn't describe them as deliberate statements because, while I'm working, I usually don't yet know where a piece is heading. The word statement suggests that you're already working towards a finished conclusion. My process, by contrast, remains open.
171: I'd like to stay with the cowboy, a central figure in your work. What does the cowboy represent for you, and what accounts for his recurring presence?
TV: Whether the cowboy is really such a recurring presence also depends on how viewers perceive the work. Personally, I don't feel that I'm constantly painting or drawing cowboys. A motif gains prominence partly because viewers recognise it as recurring.
To me, the cowboy is an ambiguous figure. At first glance, he stands for America, the "New World", and perhaps also for an Americanised Europe. Of course, the figure also carries more problematic associations. But I'm less interested in the classic cowboy from comics or films-the one defined by guns and shoot-outs. When those elements appear in my work, they're usually treated with humour.
The cowboy can also be someone who dresses up, someone who's conscious
of style-a fashionable cowboy, if such a thing exists. It's a figure everyone recognises and can relate to in some way. I can probably identify more easily with a cowboy than with some completely arbitrary character. With a female figure, for example, my perspective would inevitably be different.
171: Your cowboy often appears beyond familiar stereotypes-demythologised and, at times, almost vulnerable. What interests you about this shift in such a heavily charged figure?
TV: To be honest, I wouldn't go that far. It's not my intention to demythologise the cowboy or to create a new myth around him. I simply painted him as I see him and imagine him. He's my cowboy, and that's the one I present to people. If they find him interesting, that's great. If they don't, they'll just have to live with it.
Nor do I think my cowboy fundamentally contradicts the traditional image. He still has many of the characteristics people associate with a cowboy-often even a gun. He's simply not the classic Marlboro cowboy. After all, there are many different kinds of cowboy.
171: In your exhibition Coming Soon, installation elements take on a more prominent role: cigarettes, forms of smoke, clouds and, repeatedly, folding rulers. What role do these objects play in your work? What interests you about their symbolic charge? Are there any interpretations you'd like to offer your audience?
TV: I often incorporate things that naturally belong to the subject I'm working with. If the work revolves around cowboys or the aesthetics of a building site, certain objects almost inevitably become part of it. Cigarettes are something you encounter again and again in those
contexts, and you immediately associate them with that world. At a certain point, I almost feel compelled to bring those objects into the work.
The clouds are also highly symbolic. But I'm not interested in condemning cigarettes or making a point about smoking being unhealthy. There may be a connection to Pop Art and Andy Warhol, although in a completely different way. I almost treat them like characters.
171: In the same exhibition, you present an installation featuring stencil images of sharks. Does this mark the emergence of a new recurring motif? What is it about this symbol that interests you?
TV: The hammerhead shark is, first and foremost, an aesthetically fascinating animal to me. Its body has unusual curves and forms that recall other objects-a hammer, for example. You could even see it as a kind of hidden phallic symbol.
At the same time, sharks are something I have no personal experience of whatsoever. I don't live by the sea and I don't observe sharks. And yet everyone immediately knows what you're talking about. Many people are afraid of them, while others are fascinated by them. That's what makes the shark such a compelling vehicle for storytelling. For me, a painting is always a form of storytelling.
In the spray-painted works, I use the shark more as an object or a formal element within the composition. The stencil technique turns it into something almost pattern-like. I needed a form that would remain immediately recognisable while also allowing for a high degree of
abstraction. That's why I only show the silhouette, without fine lines, scars or skin texture.
171: Some of your works carry a palpable sexual tension-sometimes subtle, sometimes almost confrontational. The penis appears almost as an autonomous figure, at times seeming to take on a life of its own. What role does this motif play within your visual world?
TV: For me, the penis is, first and foremost, a piece of flesh with a very long history. It's closely associated with masculinity and appears throughout the history of art. I sometimes wonder whether artists in earlier centuries were asked the same question: does the mere presence of a penis automatically make an image homoerotic? Is it simply a way of indicating that a figure is male, or does it always carry additional meanings? Most of the time there are, of course, other layers, but I don't feel obliged to explain them all.
As a subject to draw, the penis possesses something that is both highly aesthetic and strangely dark. It's like a landscape just before sunset, when the last rays of light fall across the wall of a castle. I'm interested in the veins, the organic forms and its physicality. An erect penis is also about strength and mass-it rises, it asserts itself and has a particular presence. Of course, it can also be viewed from a homosexual perspective. At the same time, an erection is only a fleeting moment.The penis has a great deal to do with looking, and even today it's often associated with shame. Many people, for example, feel embarrassed watching pornography, especially in public. In a museum, however, looking is legitimised because what you're looking at is
considered art. You can stand in front of a painted penis and look at it for as long as you like. I'm interested in where that boundary lies. What happens when a penis is painted life-size and
photorealistically? How different is that experience from looking at pornography?
Perhaps engaging with this subject is also a kind of conversation with myself. Maybe I don't want to explain it conclusively. Perhaps the penis itself will evolve and look different five hundred years from now. For me, at this moment, it's simply a snapshot of skin and flesh-something that is part of many people's bodies.
171: Your practice moves between drawing, painting and installation. How do you decide what form an idea should take? And when does a work feel finished?
TV: As I've said, my process is very intuitive and open-ended. Most of the time I simply begin and see what happens. If I'm drawing a shark or a camel, I start with a line and follow where it leads. Of course, I'm aware of whether certain symbolic connections emerge and whether they interest me. But in the end, the composition also has to work.
Often it's simply a technical question. Is something still missing? Does a particular area need something more? At a certain point you just know that it's right-that the work contains exactly the right amount of information. A painting needs to hold a certain tension. Once that tension is there, I know it's finished.
171: Many of your scenes feel like suspended moments, as though they only hint at a story rather than telling it outright. What role do time and narrative play in your work?
TV: Narrative plays a major role. In one way or another, every work of art tells a story. I produce a great deal of work, but much of it doesn't succeed and ends up being discarded. That means an enormous amount of time goes into works that will never actually be seen. In the end, only the pieces I've chosen to keep-and perhaps to exhibit-remain.
The works themselves are often snapshots. They suggest a story without ever telling it in full. What happened beforehand, or what comes afterwards, remains open.
171: Humour and a certain sense of gravity or melancholy often coexist in your work. Is that tension something you consciously construct, or does it emerge through the process?
TV: Sometimes I have sudden ideas that I sketch out and then realise quite closely to my original vision. At other times I approach the paper or canvas without any plan at all. In those cases, the story only begins to emerge through the process itself.
That story is made up of everything I've experienced-impressions, memories, thoughts, and even things I once discarded. In that sense, it's both conscious and unconscious. The tension between humour and melancholy often only reveals itself while I'm working.
171: Your pictorial spaces often remain open or fragmentary. What role does this sense of indeterminacy play for you, and how does it shape the way viewers perceive the figures?
TV: I'm not sure I'd describe my pictorial spaces as open or fragmentary myself. That's already a particular way of looking at them. To me, the works are actually quite clear. I need that clarity myself; otherwise I wouldn't be able to work.
Visually, too, they're built from very clear structures. If I paint a garden hose, for example, it's up to the viewer to decide what associations it evokes. One person might be afraid of it, while another would simply pick it up without a second thought. I can't determine those associations in advance. If I explained the work completely, I'd effectively be imposing my own interpretation on people.
So any sense of indeterminacy lies less in the pictorial space itself than in the different experiences viewers bring to it.
Sometimes I even feel that my work is almost too clear.
171: Are there artistic, cinematic or literary references that shape your thinking, even if they aren't immediately visible in the work?
TV: I wouldn't say that the works on view are directly influenced by particular books or films. If there's any influence at all, it comes from a mixture of different media. I don't want to list a whole series of references, because people are quick to claim that a work was inspired directly by one source or another.
I've often worked with magazines and, occasionally, with film stills, mainly as visual references. Some of the oil paintings came together almost like collages. I might take a car from an image I found online, or borrow the trousers and pose of a cowboy, and then translate those elements into painting. It wasn't about illustrating a literary text. I was interested in formal questions: Is the posture convincing? How do the mood, the light and the shadows work? In that sense, my approach is sometimes surprisingly straightforward.
171: Your motifs seem to exist somewhere between personal familiarity and a sense of estrangement. What role do biographical experience and fiction play in your work? How much of yourself finds its way into it?
TV: A great deal of my inner world finds its way into the work. But it's transformed because I'm usually not depicting myself. The darkness and melancholy probably come from that inner world. There are autobiographical elements in the work as well, but I don't consciously set out to include them. They simply emerge.
When something stays with you, it can almost feel as though you're under a spell. Whether you want it to or not, it finds its way into the work. You can't simply push it aside. It stays with you. Sometimes that also creates a kind of love-hate relationship with painting-or even with a particular work. Certain elements keep resurfacing, even when you haven't planned them, perhaps only in a colour or a single detail.
171: How do you respond to interpretations of your work? Are you interested in the viewer's perspective, or is it more important to you that the work remains open to interpretation?
TV: Of course I'm interested in the viewer's perspective. But when someone writes about my work, I usually say: Write whatever you want-just don't ask me after every sentence whether you've got it right.
I'm interested in interpretation, but it should genuinely be the writer's own. After all, once a text is published, the author's name appears beneath it. Readers know that it reflects one person's perspective rather than a definitive interpretation of the work.
At the same time, I do think a certain symbolism remains embedded in the work itself. A strong work can accommodate many different readings while still retaining something that belongs to it alone-something that can't be fully explained or reduced to a single interpretation. That symbolism belongs to the work.
171: Looking back at your work so far, do you recognise shifts or developments in your visual thinking?
TV: Absolutely. At the moment, I even feel as though I'm experimenting almost too much-if that's even possible. I'm preoccupied with questions of style. Which direction is the work moving in? Is colour becoming more important, or is it line that carries the work? What role does perspective play? Depending on the answers, the entire visual language can change.
Over the past six years I've been deeply engaged with particular motifs and ways of working. Now I find myself in a completely different mode. I'm not entirely comfortable there yet, and I'm still trying to find my bearings.
171: Are there any motifs or questions that currently occupy you and that might become more prominent in your work in the future?
TV: For a long time now, I've been interested in the question of how something can be translated into another medium or another form. How can the work become larger? How can a drawing-which usually consists of countless lines-be translated into painting? Drawing and painting
are completely different ways of working. When you paint, you're in a different frame of mind, and you're usually working on a much larger scale.
At the moment, those are the kinds of technical questions I'm exploring. I don't think too far ahead about the motifs themselves, because for me they emerge through the process. Before I sit down to work, I don't need to think about them very much. Once I begin, something entirely different often develops anyway.