In Conversation with Rafael Duren: When Art Should Be Experienced, Not Owned
You've painted for decades, but almost none of it exists today. Was that a conscious decision?
Absolutely. It was never important to me that a work physically endures. What mattered was the moment of creation, the engagement with light, texture, abstraction—and then letting go. I never lived in one place for long, always moving on. And when I left, the paintings stayed behind. Some I gifted, others I deliberately destroyed. This wasn't an act of despair, but part of my conviction: art should not be owned—it should be experienced.
That sounds radical. Have you never regretted giving up a work?
No. Regret would mean I'm holding onto something. But that contradicts my artistic stance. Impermanence isn't just a theme in my work—it is the work itself. Every painting I left behind was a statement about temporality and non-attachment. The question is: why must we preserve everything? Is a work less valuable because it disappears?
But now you've digitized twelve of your works. Isn't that a contradiction?
On the surface, perhaps. But for me, it's an evolution of the same idea. These twelve works represent decades of artistic practice—they are distilled, condensed. Through digitization, I've freed them from their material weight. They now exist as an idea, as high-resolution fine art prints that can be reproduced without losing the original. This isn't preservation in the traditional sense—it's transformation.
Why exactly twelve works?
It wasn't an arbitrary number. I thought carefully about which works best capture the essence of my artistic journey. There shouldn't be too many—that would dilute the statement. And not too few—that would lack range. Twelve felt right. It's a number with symbolism, but that wasn't the deciding factor. It was about preserving what's essential.
You work exclusively digitally now. Don't you miss physical painting?
I miss the tactile sometimes—the texture of canvas, the smell of paint. But digital practice gives me something else: precision, flexibility, and above all—non-attachment. I can adjust a work infinitely without destroying the original. I can share it without losing it. That's philosophically very liberating.
Your art is often described as "quiet" and "analytical." Would you agree?
Yes, that fits well. I'm not an expressive artist. My work isn't an emotional explosion—it's a quiet investigation. I'm interested in perception, in memory, in the philosophical dimensions of human experience. That requires a certain distance, a clarity of thought. Sentimentality has no place in my work.
What do you want people to take away from your art?
I want them to pause. To question what it means to possess something, to hold onto something. My works are invitations to think about impermanence—not as loss, but as a natural state. We live in a world that constantly accumulates. My art asks: what if we let go?
How do you see your artistic legacy?
These twelve digital works are my legacy—not as a monument, but as a bridge. They connect the tangible with the conceptual, the past with the present. They exist purely digitally, but they carry decades of material practice within them. For me, that's not a contradiction. It's the logical continuation of a lifelong engagement with the question: what remains?