This interview was initially published by ARTALPHA. I'll tell you part one and part two. This time we will bring you the first part.

When a painting no longer insists on telling you “who this is” or “what this is,” what can it still leave behind? From July 25 to August 29, 2026, Whitestone Gallery Beijing presents What Remains, a two-person exhibition by German artist Rebecca Bernau and French artist Clément Denis. Through 28 paintings, the exhibition responds to this question about the nature of painting.

Both artists begin with recognizable images—there are always people in Bernau’s paintings, and landscapes in Denis’s. Yet these images are precisely what they seek to move beyond.

Bernau combines digital technology and the paintbrush in her process. Her figures resemble afterimages repeatedly washed over by memory: bodies are covered, erased, disrupted, and reassembled, while their contours shift back and forth between layers of color. The bright, vivid palette can sometimes recall Cubism’s dismantling of form—except that what she dismantles is not geometric structure, but identity itself. The figure is no longer a specific portrait, but a field in which relationships between color and space can unfold.

Denis, meanwhile, allows landscape to cease referring to any real location. Forests, rivers, and roads are broken apart by color and reorganized into another spatial order. Light is not a natural phenomenon but a method of constructing the image; depth no longer depends on perspective, but is continually generated through the advance and retreat of color. The landscape gradually detaches itself from place, just as Bernau’s figures gradually detach themselves from identity.

The two artists take different paths but arrive at a similar point: the subject has not disappeared, yet it is no longer the endpoint of viewing. Instead, it acts more like a medium, guiding the viewer toward sensations that cannot be put into words—the tension between colors, the hesitation held in a brushstroke, and the traces of time left on the surface. In What Remains, what is presented is painting itself as an experience that continues to exist.

The exhibition opened on July 25. On this occasion, we spoke separately with Bernau and Denis about their respective creative paths and, in their view, what painting ultimately leaves behind once the subject recedes.

ArtAlpha: Your work brings together digital technology, graphic design, studies of classical painting, and traditional painting materials. As an artist who grew up in the digital age, how do you understand the relationship between technology and handcraft, the virtual and bodily experience?

I think my relationship to both worlds is closely connected to my generation.

I was born in 1982 and grew up in an almost entirely analogue environment. Drawing and painting were physical activities for me from the very beginning. Art was connected to paper, material, and the movement of the hand.

I only came into contact with digital techniques during my studies. At first, I had to learn how to work with them. Over time, however, I became fascinated by the freedom they offered. I could test ideas, explore compositions, change colors, and try different directions without being limited by material, scale or money.

I think my generation experienced a unique transition. We remember a world before digital technology became part of everyday life, but we were also young enough to fully participate in this transformation.

My work reflects this experience. I do not see technology and handcraft as opposites. The digital process allows me to think, experiment, and organize complex visual ideas. Painting brings materiality, physical presence, and unpredictability.

Rebecca Bernau, Becoming Light, 180.0 × 140.0 cm, oil on canvas, 2026

ArtAlpha: You once described the digital painting stage in your process as “fast, intuitive, almost like thinking itself,” while the transition to canvas brings “resistance” and “friction.” How do these two materials connect and transform into one another? Do you intentionally preserve a certain sense of “incompletion” from the digital stage?

The digital composition becomes the starting point of the painting, but not its final destination.

Once it is printed onto the canvas, it works as my foundation for the analogue process. I begin to work against it, with it, and sometimes beyond it. The material introduces a different kind of thinking. Paint has texture, weight, and its own behavior. Unexpected things happen.

Some areas remain close to the original composition, while others change completely during the painting process.

I am not interested in creating a fully resolved image. Many of the subjects I explore, memory, identity, inherited experiences, cannot be fully explained. I want certain areas of the painting to remain open, allowing space for uncertainty.

For me, the most interesting things often exist between what is visible and what remains undefined.

Rebecca Bernau, Metamorphosis, 160.0 × 120.0 cm, oil on canvas, 2026

ArtAlpha: During the digital painting stage, how do color, form, and composition take shape?

I think of composition as the underlying structure of the painting. It holds everything together.

Once the structure feels right, forms begin to emerge and relationships between different elements become visible.

The colors are actually much more consistent than people might expect. I work with a palette that has developed over many years, and I know these colors very well. What interests me is how they change through layering and how they influence one another.

I am less interested in describing reality than in creating a space where different experiences, memories, and emotions can coexist.

Rebecca Bernau, Maryam, 130.0 × 100.0 cm, oil on canvas, 2026

Detail of Maryam

ArtAlpha: Your practice has long revolved around the theme of “Root,” exploring how past experiences shape present identity. In your understanding, does “Root” refer more to personal memory and family experience, or to a broader sense of collective memory and cultural experience?

It began with personal questions, but over time it became much broader.

Of course, family history and personal experiences shape who we are. But I am equally interested in the larger historical and cultural forces that continue to influence us long after the original events have passed.

Wars, migration, political change, collective experiences, and cultural traditions do not simply disappear. They leave traces that continue to move through generations.

What fascinates me is that many of these influences remain invisible. We often carry them without being fully aware of them. They shape how we perceive the world, how we relate to others, and how we understand ourselves.

The idea of Root is therefore not only about memory. It is about the visible and invisible histories that continue to resonate within us and leave their marks across generations.

Rebecca Bernau, Traces of Light, 160.0 × 120.0 cm, acrylic on canvas, 2023

Detail of Traces of Light

ArtAlpha: In your work, you use both mineral pigments and oil pastel. What different expressive qualities do their distinct textures bring to the image?

I am interested in the different states these materials can create.

Mineral pigments allow me to build subtle layers that feel atmospheric and almost immaterial. They create depth and a certain sense of openness.

Oil pastel has a very different quality. It is direct, physical, and records the movement of the hand very clearly.

The combination allows me to move between presence and dissolution. Some parts of the painting appear solid and tangible, while others seem to fade into something less defined.

This tension reflects many of the themes within my work. Some experiences leave very concrete traces, while others remain difficult to grasp.

Rebecca Bernau, Farewell, 80.0 × 113.0 cm, acrylic and oil pastel on canvas, 2024

Detail of Farewell

ArtAlpha: Your works often exist in a state “between presence and disappearance,” such as faceless figures and blurred forests or spaces. Why do you choose to weaken specific identity and narrative?

I am not interested in portraying a specific individual.

What interests me is the space beyond a clearly defined identity. Once a figure becomes too specific, the painting often becomes tied to a particular story. I prefer to leave room for something more open.

Many of the things that shape us cannot be represented directly. They exist beneath the surface, like in memory, relationships, inherited experiences, and things we sense rather than fully understand.

The figures remain present, but they are never entirely fixed. They move between appearance and disappearance, between familiarity and uncertainty.

I think this reflects something fundamental about human experience. We never fully understand another person, and perhaps we never fully understand ourselves.

Rebecca Bernau, Butterfly and Hurricane, 30.0 × 30.0 cm, acrylic and oil pastel on canvas, 2024

Rebecca Bernau, Porcelain, 80.0 × 120.0 cm, oil paint and mineral pigment on paper, 2025

ArtAlpha: There is rarely a clearly defined light source in your works, yet the colors often reveal a kind of “inner luminosity.” Does this sense of light describe a certain emotional or psychological state?

Yes, I think it does.

The light in my paintings rarely comes from a visible source. It seems to emerge from within the painting itself.

Part of this luminosity comes from my process. The combination of digital color spaces, printed layers, mineral pigments, oil pastel, and transparent paint creates a quality of light that I could not achieve through either digital or traditional painting alone.

But for me, this light is not only a visual phenomenon.

It is connected to a particular emotional state. I am interested in creating spaces that feel deeply familiar and comforting, yet remain slightly transcendent and beyond reach.

The colors often create the feeling of a place that exists somewhere between memory, perception, and imagination, a place that feels real, but cannot be fully entered or explained.

The light suggests a presence without fully revealing it. It allows something to be felt before it can be understood.

Rebecca Bernau, Soul Mate, 90.0 × 107.0 × 4.0 cm, acrylic on canvas, 2024

Rebecca Bernau, Dance Till Morning, 70.0 × 70.0 cm, acrylic on aluminum, 2023

ArtAlpha: How do the works in this new exhibition differ from your previous works?

In the newer works, the relationship between figure and space has changed significantly.

Earlier works often maintained a clearer distinction between body and environment. In the recent paintings, these boundaries have become increasingly unstable.

The figures dissolve into structures, surfaces, fragments, and spaces that are difficult to define. At the same time, traces of the body remain present.

I have become increasingly interested in what remains when clear definitions begin to disappear. What remains of a person, a memory, or an experience when it can no longer be described directly?

The works in this exhibition are less concerned with describing something and more concerned with exploring these questions. They move between presence and absence, between memory and perception, between what can be named and what continues to exist beyond language.

Over the years, I have realized that art is not about providing answers. What remains is a space for many many questions….

Rebecca Bernau at the exhibition

About the Artist

Rebecca Bernau (b. 1982)

Rebecca Bernau (b. 1982, Aachen, Germany) is a Munich-based painter working at the intersection of digital image construction and painting. Her practice investigates the human body as a layered site of memory, perception, and transformation. Through transparency, fragmentation, and overlapping forms, she creates compositions in which figures appear to shift, dissolve, and reassemble across multiple temporal states.

Bernau studied Art Education, Design Technology, and Media Design at the University of Wuppertal, developing a strong conceptual and technical foundation that continues to inform her practice. Her process combines digital composition with traditional painterly methods: beginning with photographs, video stills, screenshots, found imagery, and personal images, she constructs digital collages that are later printed onto canvas or paper and further developed with oil paint, oil pastel, and pigments. In the resulting works, underlying structures remain visible beneath later layers, allowing different states of the body to coexist within a single image.

Rather than depicting fixed identities, Bernau presents the body as an evolving presence shaped by memory, emotional experience, and perception. Her paintings engage with psychological and philosophical questions surrounding the unconscious, particularly the concept of the “unthought known,” forms of emotional knowledge that exist beneath conscious awareness. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Germany, Austria, Belgium, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Indonesia, China, and Japan, and is held in private and public collections worldwide. She lives and works near Munich and is the mother of four children.

The part 2 is comversation with Clément Denis, please continue to read. At the same time, you are enjoy the exhibition featuring the evolving works of Rebecca Bernau & Clément Denis.

View Part Two

What Remains: REBECCA BERNAU, CLEMENT DENIS