Interview with Alfred Bow

A painting can look like a celebration and still hold a private storm. We meet Vienna-based visual artist Alfred Bow in his flat-studio, surrounded by huge canvases, tulle, and colour that refuses to behave. He tells us why he doesn’t identify as a “painter” and how moving between painting, sculpture, textile, performance art, and music helps him stay honest to the work.

We follow the thread of mythology and spiritual process: images that appear, creatures that feel like bridges to the more-than-human, and a canvas treated as a room of possibilities. Alfred talks about “masks”, about the ideas society builds and then mistakes for truth, and about using art to push back against fear of the unknown. If you care about contemporary art in Vienna, queer art, and what creativity looks like beyond theory, this conversation gets specific about how it’s made and why it matters.

Then we go straight into colour and costume. Think drag makeup on canvas, neon greens, cherry reds, pop culture sparks from The Matrix to Queen, and the carnivalesque freedom of dressing up. We also unpack a practical studio tactic with emotional weight: covering parts of a painting with fabric, turning errors into conscious layers, and letting the work carry both power and vulnerability. Finally, Alfred shares how he’s building performance and music videos as “soundscapes” of his paintings, translating visual density into collaged sound experience.

Transcript

Welcome To Vienna Time

Liudmila Kirsanova 0:02

Hi, it's Vienna Time with Ludmila Kirzanova. For my podcast, I interview artists who live and work in Vienna, a place both grandly old and vivaciously young. Whether my guests were born here, chose, or happen to be here, I'm keen on giving voices and sharing stories of very different artists belonging with different traditions and generations. I do gravitate towards profound interviews rather than sketches and brief questionnaires, and that's why you'll find here in-depth talks embracing both professional and personal insights. Considering my curatorial practice, I've been meeting extraordinary artists and witnessing wonderful art projects that no doubt will go down the history. And now I'm eager to share it with you to give an inside look at the local art scene, which is as vibrant and diverse as personalities creating it. Let's explore and celebrate it together. And today, my guest is Alfred Bow. Hello, Alfred.

Alfred Bow 1:18

Hi, nice to meet you.

Liudmila Kirsanova 1:20

So nice, so long-awaited interview. And finally, we are here. Yes. We are in a wonderful flat, which is also an artistic studio. And we're sitting on the floor on the nice cushions, and right behind him, I see a marvelous huge painting, which you are now being reworking on. And Alfred is a visual artist. I would love to introduce you as a painter, but just before the interview, you told me no, no, no, no, I'm not a painter. But that's how you you do lots of painting, but you also work with sculpture, with sculpture in different forms. It could be clay, it could be textile, it could be plastic, you also do performance and music. And why are you not a painter?

Alfred Bow 2:20

I don't know. It's more it's a little bit, you know, I was studying at painting class, and I actually actually I'm painting since I'm a little child, and this is actually what I'm doing. But I had during studying um painting, I had a little bit difficult because I didn't see myself like other painters painting. It is um I saw it it's a different process or something like that. I think I'm an artist and I'm doing some techniques or different mediums, but I don't identify myself actually as a painter. I'm doing it and I think I'm painting is like language, and sometimes I'm fluid, and sometimes I'm not.

Liudmila Kirsanova 3:05

And you graduated in 2022 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, and you started at the class of Professor Richter, a very well-known class for painting, although it's called Expanded Pictorial Studies.

Alfred Bow 3:22

It's very important and very deep and painting oil. And um I'm I I watched it, and other artists are making amazing paintings. This is very, yes, but I just recognized it. I'm not I don't identify myself with this specific thing, yes, but that's okay.

Mythology And A Spiritual Process

Liudmila Kirsanova 3:40

And uh let's talk about your paintings because that's a world of its own. And you know, when I was preparing myself for the interview, I was trying to for myself to describe your painting in several words that would really grasp the most of it, and you know, and then I was really looking, looking through your paintings and your sculptures, and there was one word that kept popping up in my mind, and this word was mythology. I was thinking about your art world as certain myths, certain stories, certain places inhabited with creatures and kind of certain mythological creatures, chimeras, unknown creatures, and then you know, like this complexity of mythological world. That's what I was thinking about.

Alfred Bow 4:49

I was always uh also thinking about um Hilma of Clint and when and she said when she is going painting or into the studio, she's doing CRs. It's some kind of a spiritual experience, you know, and this is actually also some kind of my process. So, what is happening on the canvas or another mediums? It is a very spiritual process, and there are always plopping things up. I had also a painting, and the title of this painting was Empathic Mask. I think I was reading a text Roland Barth during I was studying I was also studying uh education in the arts at the academy, and I was reading a text of Roland Barth, and he was talking about cultural mask. I was thinking about it, and then I thought, ah yeah, empathic mask. It's it is something pure or some kind of a truth, it is some kind of something universal language, and but we people have our prefrontal cortex, so we create a world and ideas and put I don't know, something money, for example, is everything idea and constructed and gender and blah blah blah. So art is some kind of evolutional thing to destroy these ideas or questioning these ideas, and this is for me some kind of truth when I'm saying there's some kind of truth. I'm a human being and I'm creating art, and I'm some kind of a medium of art. So the universe is uh running through my body, and I'm creating something. And of course, it is about to question so that we can learn something to grow our minds, you know, grow our minds, um, open up, destroy all the constructs, blah blah blah, getting new ideas. There is this there is like a room of possibilities, which is the canvas, you know, it is opening, but human beings are very fast afraid of things they don't know, so they're plopping up some kind of things they picking up human beings, and this is maybe then something this creatures which is a little bit like human beings, but it is like a bow or a bridge to out of human yes, this more than human, more than human. So yes, so I think I'm an art advertising agent and I promote some kind of truth.

Liudmila Kirsanova 7:25

That's why you also took as your last name Bo.

Alfred Bow 7:31

Yeah, maybe it was also plopping up like um you thought you yeah, yeah. It is you know, sometimes it is just coming in, and then you have to do it. Yes. It's I think it's very interesting to create myself and also questioning it. Is changing your name is like losing your arm or something like that. It is but it is actually just a construct, and I think and for me is it very important, uh interesting to try this out and go into something I'm I have fear or something like that, you know.

Liudmila Kirsanova 8:05

More I look at your paintings, more I see how on the first glance this very festive colours, this very festive palette, this something very appealing to your eyes, this really brilliant sparkling colours. But the more you look, the more this unsettlement comes. You know, first you're very attracted to these canvases because they are so bright and appealing, but then while you're looking at them, you're discovering this conflicts within. You are discovering the dramas that you enclose in your canvas. Coming back to my uh this first idea of mythology, you know, like mermaids, for example, because they were so appealing and singing with beautiful voices, kind of come to me, look at me, listen to me, and then you drown.

Alfred Bow 9:06

The hell is opening.

Liudmila Kirsanova 9:08

You know, I mean it's there is also this real festive feeling to your colour palette, to your paintings, but then you see these dramas happening within.

Alfred Bow 9:22

Yeah, it's also it's about resilience to things you are maybe you have fear, you know, and it is just hey, it's okay, it's it's okay. But it is also, yes, with the colour to to have a fear, to be fear of something, yes, and maybe there is not something to to be feared, you know? Yes, and it is just maybe that's this is what you also see is um there are a lot of conflicts during the process because forms and colors are not fitting together. It's a little bit like bringing conflicts in a society together. So I just and where is the solution? So I have to find to find a solution for this conflict, and then there is coming this harmony. I'm just I'm I'm trying to get it together. I create a conflict, and then I have to find a solution. How can I get it together? And sometimes you have to do more layers, and there is going something into the back, but what's behind this layer is very important to get to this result, this aesthetically balance of result. So you have to make mistakes, and what you see in the end is this balance is actually this surface of experience. I'm just doing it, I'm not trying it, I'm doing it to find some kind of solution in paintings and art. There has always there can be this darkness, you know, this melancholical darkness, but with a solution, because it would be tunish, and then it's not about grow that your mind is growing, it is it stucks if it's tunical.

Liudmila Kirsanova 11:08

Let's also talk about your colour palette, because that's something very special, and uh you can see how meaningful it is for you, and how precisely and with big love you work, you treat your colours. And again, when I was thinking about it, this softness, this soft brush touch, uh, but at the same time very popping up festive colours. I thought about it as a drag queen makeup.

Alfred Bow 11:45

That's great. Yeah, because the process is a little bit like making makeup, actually. That's maybe I don't can't uh I can't identify myself as a painter because I'm actually have always the feeling when I'm painting I'm I'm making makeup on canvas or something like that. Yes. Yeah, it is also how I use the brush and everything, you know. I'm not spraying because a lot of people think that I'm spraying because there are a lot of elements they look like this, but it's actually with a lot of layers with um brush. Yes.

Liudmila Kirsanova 12:17

Let's talk more about your colours because you have the colours. The colours. Yes. Because you also use this um neon greens, this cherry lips, reds. So it's drag. It's also has this a bit of fantasy, fantastic like touch, and together with your sometimes cartoon-like creatures, you're definitely inspired with drag culture, with pop culture, right? Where can we do this? Pop culture is a very inspiration because your colours they're really outstanding.

Pop Culture, Green Screens, Childhood

Alfred Bow 13:03

Because when I'm going to an exhibition or some uh you can see very often um beige or black things, you're more and then I'm going into the studio and think I also want to do something beige or black, and then I start and it ends in a yeah, firework. I can't just yeah, I can't, it's not possible. Yeah, what should I do? Okay, um something is saying pink, yellow, blue, a lot of blue, blue is very present, yes, and also this green, green, you know, green is also like this um Matrix movie. There's also this green this technology, yeah, yeah, yeah. Technology, but it's also like the painting with the textiles behind you is self-portrait, green screen, realness, cry, dry, baby. So, and the green screen is also like a room you can build other realities and you're in it, and it's you know, also this the thing I thought it's very funny, and you can change your body and everything, it's so much possible, it's just a room of possibilities. But um, the pop culture, when I was a child, one of my favorite movies of all time is First Wives Club, yes, and I was eight, and the only thing I wanted to do was um blowing up my lips because of Goldie Horn. You know, she was at the plastic thing, and um, she was getting her lips done, and it was just amazing. Oh my god, and I was always rubbing my lips that they swole, and my mother said to me, What's going on with your lips? I just what yes, yeah. No, no, pop culture is very important. Also, but it's not just pop culture, it's also fashing. So my mother had you know, which costume like skirts and something like that, and I was putting it on and um dancing with it. So this tul and everything is also actually coming from there. So my mother always created also costumes for fashing and for carnival. Yes, and a lot of tull and roughing, and it's very easy actually to do something which looks very pompeuse and big. So I'm doing it also all the time because it's part of my identity, it's a part of my layer, like painting layers, you know? Yeah.

Liudmila Kirsanova 15:28

So this carnival time was some kind of a liberating time when you could dress up as much wonderful as you really wanted, and try these different crazy pieces that would otherwise be scandalous in everyday life. But for carnival, it was all possible. It was okay. Right behind me, as Alfred already said, we have big oil paintings that are also covered with uh lots of tul, this festive uh dressy gowns in bright red with some plastic elements reminiscent of lizard of fish skin. So this carnival, it's this carnivalesque feeling, but it's also so much about identity and like this points of liberty, this points of freedom where we can very slim just one week in a month, but we can jump in and show our inner beasts and beauties, right?

Carnival Freedom And Queer Identity

Alfred Bow 16:34

In their new costumes and Queen, Queen, Freddie Mercury, also pop culture moment. So when you I always hear the music of it, you know, I'm going slightly mad, or Bohemian Rhapsody, and this this kind of music where Queen put everything in it opera, musical, rock, pop, putting everything together, and I think that's very, very fascinating.

Liudmila Kirsanova 16:59

It also now makes sense because when I s look at your paintings, they are very dense. You have lots in it. It's it's like you you also try to put it all together carnival, opera, yeah, identity, queer body, conflict, universe, energies of festival. So it's like really very, very dense. It's lots of going on, lots of happening, and we can look and see what is the relationship between all the protagonists, between all the colours.

Alfred Bow 17:35

That's also very interesting with this relationship of all the parts on the painting. You know, this is also questioning the linear way of thinking of human beings and of time, and there are a lot of elements, they stand maybe for themselves, but in the context of another part on the painting, it is changing, and it is also changing to another part, and then it's also again changing, and this is so I'm doing things and it makes absolutely no sense, and I don't know what it is, and there is coming something different, and this is also completely what what has it? I don't know, and then in the end, it's some like click in, and everything is coming together, and it makes total sense, but it is changing all the time. It's I think that's so so so interesting. That's I love it, you know, and just doing it and not so because there's always during the process also this this voice, can I do this? Is it not cheesy? Really? This color, this form, this element, I don't know. And then I have to say, no, be quiet. I'm doing it, not thinking, just doing, you know, and then there is a lot of during the process, a lot of this time this voice is there and very present, and I'm just putting it to the side and not listening to it.

Liudmila Kirsanova 19:07

And you think this voice was implanted during the education time, which was focused on art theory, art, philosophy, this question of cheesiness. You think it comes from this theoreticizing of art?

Alfred Bow 19:25

Yes, and no, not also, of course, the intellectual thing is a very, very loud voice, but also how should look like good painting?

Liudmila Kirsanova 19:38

Beige. Yes. Like well behaved beige paint, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah, you must have seen Alfred now. Um, Alfred is always also dressed absolutely wonderful, and you also create your own clothes, and it's uh like uh part of your creative process, and you also use tool and these plastic elements to create your garments. And I know that also you made an exchange semester in Central St. Martin's in London, and I was just thinking, does it come from their fashion department? This idea of kind of extending your pictorial spaces onto your body spaces.

London Stories, Cats, And Language

Alfred Bow 20:36

I actually the whole time at Central St. Martin's, I was just wearing my working web as a protest, as a protest, maybe. Yes, no sabotage of all the fashionists. Actually, my I was there in uh multimedia class and not the fashion department, and so my English is not the best, and I'm not drunk in the moment, so it's yeah. Sometimes I've I'm when I'm when I'm dreaming English, and then I wake up and then I think, oh wow, actually I can talk English. You don't so no, it was actually something you know. I want to go to London, I want to talk more English, and I had this fear of this big city and being there for the first time, and it was just hyper, hyper hyper, and it was a lovely time there. I lived in a house with Cassie. She was such a big heart. I think she was so middle eighty years old, Irish lady, drinking white wine, smoking a lot of cigarettes and eating a lot of meat. She was a sex therapist, I think so. And it was just and she had a cat. And I understand now also the musical cats, since I was in London, because there are so many cats, not just her, but in the gardens everywhere, and they had different characters, and I just Understand why Andrew Lot Weber was doing this or created this musical. I was just saying, yes, it is like us cats. Yes, really. Yes, there was Prada, and she had her Swarovsky, you know, and she was yeah, and she was very oh, she was a bitch. She was yeah, and there was this other black and white cat, he was very lazy, and yeah, it was very funny. Yes.

Liudmila Kirsanova 22:29

Since we also talked about costumes and your experience of dressing up for carnival in a small lower Austrian village, because you like to include different, I would say, dressing elements in your artworks. It's not only fabrics, it can be also chains. It looks sometimes that you're also not doing the makeup for the canvas, but you also dress up the canvas. So then the canvas appears like a body, like a body that you create this full attire, this total look for this body, which can be you do large canvases, you do smaller canvases, but now also while talking to you, while looking more at your paintings, at your objects, I feel this also kind of careful dressing up.

Alfred Bow 23:30

It is something also like more than human. It is also like something when humans are thinking their life actually boring, they have to create this fairies, you know what I mean? This more yes, it's some kind of dream or it's a it's actually a strategy what I'm doing with this clothes over the over the paint. Over the paintings, because when I'm thinking this painting is not good enough or fucked up or it is not going into a good direction, I'm just putting something on it or on a part of it to cover to cover something. But it is more a conscious layer because when you paint, there are more layers and you paint over things, you know, and this is then a conscious layer.

Liudmila Kirsanova 24:22

You conceal, you expand, you create something new, something different from it.

Alfred Bow 24:28

Yes, and it is like a little bit like maybe unicorns, you know, it is this more than or if a horse is not enough, we have to put this unicorn on it. This wish of some of something more, this wish of possibilities, because the reality is not good enough. You know, that there are a lot of a lot of layers they are going what I was saying with um different forms coming together, and they mean something else to each other all the time, and they're changing all the time. And this is also the to interpret it this thing. There this is shifting all the time, it is not clear and it is changing, and duh, and it means that, but then it means that. And it's I'm very skeptical and critical about unicorns because the reality is very beautiful, and and you just have to see it, you have to recognize it that this tree is beautiful, and we don't, or this horse is amazing, and we don't need a unicorn, for example, because the horse is actually very beautiful, and this is also it's with the painting, with the layer on it, with this conscious layer with the fabric on it to cover something. What I think maybe it's not good enough or something, it's it's always also something to do with my queer personality because people always questioning me or shouting to me on the street, and there's always this word, this voice, I'm not good enough because I'm gay, blah blah blah. All these things. It is just when I was a child, it started there. That's also a part of this strategy. What I'm doing.

Dressing Paintings, Hiding Flaws, Armour

Liudmila Kirsanova 26:04

At the same time, I can imagine that I mean, not only imagine, I know it myself, that dressing up, also being extravagantly dressed up, makes you very powerful and but at the same time vulnerable. Vulnerable, right? But that's how we can say about your your paintings, right? So this extravagance, you this artificially campy dress that you put on it, this drag queen makeup that you do. It's like this powerful dressing, which but at the same time this vulnerability, right? So it's kind of you know that is the right way to be, and it's very interesting how actually you transform this experience of yours, of your search of your identity, understanding your identity, how you then transform it to your canvases and how you tell us this story, and you know it's a very interesting process, I think. So it's this powerful dressing, even if you are not well in the moment enough, like like you said, like if the painting goes something not how it planned, I can still conceal power dress it.

Alfred Bow 27:24

And it's funny, and it's you know that's this is what with track wins, it's funny, it's just funny to put and I'm I'm choking I'm loving about it. You know, it is just for me, it's a little joke, actually, also to cover this. And um, I put it on because I fucked up the feet of this figure and I don't want it to change it, so I covered it just with till. I think that's just a it's I think that's very funny. I'm not doing it always, but sometimes.

Performance, Music Videos, Sound Paintings

Liudmila Kirsanova 27:52

And your collectors, when they have it in their living room, they're like uh digging through this tool, looking what's wrong, yeah. What's wrong with this fee underneath? What's wrong with like uh like a secret mistakes or secret flaws that are covered with this dress? Like, what did he conceal? What did he cover this time? Yes, but also I must say, prove me right or wrong, but with this color palette, with these dressing up, it also has a feeling of a party. Do you also work with uh themes with feel like we told festivity, festivals, spectacle, but it also has a feeling of a party.

Alfred Bow 28:48

I'm also making performance music videos. I'm making right now a new one. It's uh with this very flat title, that's why I'm doing art, because it's that's the title. That's why I'm the title of this. Yeah, it's some kind of a commercial medium of for music to promote it. I I always wanted to be when I was a little child, a big Spice Girls fan. I always want to be on stage and something like that, and making music and singing, but I'm not a very good singer, so I'm trying to make it on my way, and to use this medium as an artistic medium, I think it's very interesting. It's very, very interesting and funny.

Liudmila Kirsanova 29:31

And it is also like being on stage creating a performance.

Alfred Bow 29:35

Um also did performances on stage, but not um not music. But maybe there is coming something because I was doing music. It's a it's a thing, and I think it's interesting. And to have this music, and it is a dancy thing, so it's also can be a sound in an exhibition. The aesthetic is also influenced by pop culture, the 80s, Queen, Lady Gaga, from movies. You can hear sounds from the never-ending story. You know, everything what influenced me as a child is coming also there together. It's like painting, actually. And I'm not a musician, so I have a friend, uh, Maximilian Atneda, and he's doing it with me. He has a studio, and and uh I have this idea, and and he's yes, let's do it. I'm I'm doing it with you. And then he's creating it with me. And I'm sitting there and I say, I hear this sound, and it is making but it is more like ba-ba-ba and things and da-da-da. And it's like, and he is trying to find what I want, you know, on the you know, and he is creating it, and then we come to this vision, and we are putting this vision together. And it's oh, it's so funny and so interesting, and I love it very much.

Liudmila Kirsanova 30:55

Like you're describing, it's like assembling a painting, assembling a collage, assembling an object, right? From all these references and influences and inspirations that come in your vision together in this.

Alfred Bow 31:09

And it is also how I hear my paintings. Painting is something visual, but I hear sound, and then it's possible to make how it sounds. So I don't know, I have an exhibition and I have the sound or this music video, and it is playing loud, and the people watch the paintings, or I'm watching my paintings. I just it is coming together. This is the sound of my paintings, this is the sound of the spaces, you know.

Liudmila Kirsanova 31:38

Bowtiful. And the and their final idea is to show them together your paintings.

Alfred Bow 31:44

Not always, but not always, but um, it is possible.

Liudmila Kirsanova 31:50

Alfred, thank you very much for the talk. Oh my god, that was so much fun, you know.

Alfred Bow 31:57

And thanks for inviting me.

Liudmila Kirsanova 31:59

Um today, when we talked, I also opened for myself personally this new layer, this new behind the scenes of your paintings, and you know, understanding your journey and the complexity. And now when you talk about all this multiple references coming, and I see this really, I mean, it's a very loud sound, right? Yeah, of your babies.

Alfred Bow 32:26

It's not a it's not something like but also quiet. No, it is also it's also quiet.

Liudmila Kirsanova 32:30

Oh my god, I hear it as a as a symphony, as a symphony full of lots of brass music. Different parts, different parts, yeah, but it's really this symphonic orchestra that is playing in this artistic studio. I'm very, very looking forward to your new sound project, and that was a marvelous time.

Alfred Bow 32:58

Thank you very much.