WACHA TOM
BIOGRAPHY


Tom

 

Biographical


Wacha Tom was born on September 22nd, 1970 in the small town of Braunau in Upper Austria (on the Bavarian border). He passed the exit exam in communications engineering in 1989.

He left his home town to pursue a course of study in mechanical engineering at the Technical University of Vienna, which he will bring to a close at the end of 1997.

The restrictive school environment came to an end in 1989. Painting as a consequence of his personality's visual stamp began to constitute a central purpose in his life and now represents an equivalent and simultaneous existence. The decision to attend a technical university, unconventional for an artist and at first glance antagonistic to the arts (a decision against attending an art academy), soon turned out to be very fruitful und satisfying.

Within technology they are out of place; within the arts they rank among the highest virtues: immunity, autonomy and boundlessness, qualities which he never surrendered and continues to nurture. A symbiosis evolved in the artist's disposition between technology's unrestricted formalism and the strong demand for subjectivity in the process of art creation.

His experience with painting, his experience of the magic arising from the process of painting, its power and the intensity of its themes and materials, have sparked a kind of positive obsession. Over the last five years he has created hundreds of paintings. And there is no end in sight.


 
Exhibitions and Projects


Due to his tight time budget the artist has been able to make his works accessible to a greater audience only very erratically - in exhibitions in Vienna, Braunau and in Mainz/Germany. His artistic work up till now has concentrated on the real essence: painting. This should always remain so.

Dialogue with the audience is without a doubt is very important to him, even if his painting is based on egocentric motives. The construct "painting-exhibition" needs time for its gradual, continuous growth.

The artist is now leaving his studio - at least for some time - to present his art work. This way one could interpret his work in a candid shot. Projects like his virtual gallery (since the end of '96) and the casual planning of exhibitions and similar projects in "real space" clearly point to this.


 
Art-specific


Artistically, Wacha Tom is happy to stay predominantly within two-dimensionality, i.e. in the plain. Viewed from subsystem theory, the space-component, the 3rd dimension in this central plain brings to bear ist role as a plastic and structural entity.

Apart from matter's physical qualities, no iron and inherent laws rule the creative process. Color is applied, in one or several layers, sometimes covering, sometimes transparent, now on a highly-structured foundation (multi-layered and pre-treated wood), now on very fine linen etc.. Color is necessarily only the transmitter of the optical spectral information, but it forms the expected plastic peculiarities and the spatial qualities by means of the layer's thickness and the surface structure.

Subsequently this effect is strongly influenced by the quality and direction of the entering light and thus its intensity vary greatly. The basis for these few art-technical comments is constituted by the actual emotional state and the correlating interpretation of one or more themes at the moment X (or period Y).

Subsequently this effect is strongly influenced by the quality and direction of the entering light and thus its intensity vary greatly. The basis for these few art-technical comments is constituted by the actual emotional state and the correlating interpretation of one or more themes at the moment X (or period Y).

The body of themes begins to take shape at the outset of the painting process or it crystallizes during it. The "act", on the other hand, designates a series of painting sessions with great variance. The period of time between the beginning and the completion of art works varies between several minutes and several years. Both numbers, therefore, are - statistically speaking - "runaways", and therefore exceptions.

Wacha Tom explicitly defines his own limitations and has been able to demystify his material due to his technological understanding of matter as the transmitter of painting, and of color as color dyes. This has served him during the creative process, leading him to respect inherent material restrictions and to bring across his information and content, and finally, to survive the "act". Themes and applied techniques depend on intra-individual tendencies and vary. Due to their diversity no generalization regarding the artist's treatment of themes is possible here.

He works predominantly with oil on linen, wood or cardboard and with watercolors, charcoal and chalks. The size of his paintings is typically around one square meter, with an upward tendency.

Confronted with the oft-discussed question, what is allowed to be called "art" and what is "good" or "bad" art, he fortunately (still) manages to smile, turn away and devote himself to painting.

Wacha Tom is open to any kind of creative and artistic form of expression, though with changing intensity of interest. He finds modern creations like the application of computers (CD-ROMs etc.) an enrichment and their use as a "more complex paintbrush", but as no more than a tool. His own main area of activity, however, is painting.

"To achieve my best art work - art with which I can be fully satisfied and on which I can expend all my energy - I have to create it MYSELF. Having reached this goal, I will lean back and put aside my brush. But I will never have painted my best work - I hope."


Tom