Film, edit and text by Alex Schuchmann
We recently caught up with German painter Ruben Einsmann, just a few months after his ninety-day residency in Chile with OMA Gallery. During his time there, he produced an extensive new body of work right on the beachfront of Reñaca—canvases steeped in layered narratives, somewhere between memory and myth.
His practice blends parafictional storytelling with symbols and artifacts, creating works that look as though they’ve weathered centuries. Beige, faded, fragmented—his paintings resemble relics unearthed from a cave, yet they are firmly rooted in the present, born of ideas he believes art historians should be examining today. Originally from Hamburg, Ruben studied in Braunschweig before settling in Leipzig. But it’s his family’s house in Brittany, once his grandmother’s, that now doubles as a second studio, where we met him in mid-April 2025.
Getting there felt like a small journey of its own: after a flight to Paris and a long train ride west, I finally arrived in Quimper around midnight. The lone Uber driver in town agreed to take me further into the countryside, joking that I was lucky—otherwise, reaching Ruben’s remote home would have been near impossible. Just past 1 a.m., we pulled up to a field in pitch darkness. Ruben greeted me warmly at the door. He had cooked oven-roasted vegetables, which I gratefully tucked into, and opened a bottle of wine to share. Conversation flowed easily until it was time for bed, and by morning, we were ready to begin filming.
Over the next four days, with spring just starting to show itself, we followed an artist deeply attuned to the mystical. Set against the coastal and ancient landscapes of Brittany, our film captures Ruben’s central question: What could have happened here? His canvases probe the line between memory and imagination—are we recalling truth, or is the mind inventing stories of its own? The works carry the patina of time, a “faded truth” that feels both universal and deeply personal, familiar yet strange.
For Ruben, beauty alone isn’t enough; a painting that simply decorates is missing its purpose. Instead, he insists, art should unsettle and provoke: What is beauty, really? Why am I drawn to this? With our new film, we invite you to step into Ruben’s world—and perhaps answer those questions for yourself.
straight from Ruben Einsmanns studio:
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St. Magaret
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Source (Nestlé)
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Silent Hiss
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Serpent Classique
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