In recent times, the German artist’s work has taken a darker turn, as she explains to Izzy Bilkus
A phantom can be many things: a ghost or an apparition, a foreboding presence, a sense that something unreal is present, the critical voice in your head. For German artist Raphaela Simon, it’s an elusive figure that weighs heavy on her mind. “There’s always a phantom in your head when you’re trying to make a great painting,” she tells me at Michael Werner gallery, where she is preparing to open her latest show. “It’s like a kind of spirit that appears when you ask yourself questions like ‘why are you painting this? Why are you doing certain things?’ The phantom is also something that a painter might want to capture on the canvas. It’s like a search for the perfect image.”
