Raphaela Simon’s phantoms of pain

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.”

‘Phantom’ takes a darker turn from Simon’s 2019 show at the gallery. Sky blues, candy pinks and plush dog sculptures have evolved into tarred canvasses, crimson reds and an almost eight-foot-tall figure, Haut (Skin), that looks to be stumbling through an episode of sleep paralysis. “These works are darker in both palette and tone,” Simon explains. “They are a bit more aggressive. Maybe only I see them that way. My aim for these works was to be more stark, more drastic.”

Simon’s paintings are strikingly bleak, ominous and on the verge of threatening. A series of heads, figures and inanimate objects such as Heizung (Heating) and Hoher Sessel (Tall Armchair) are enveloped in black backgrounds. They set the stage for some mysterious encounter, each scene offering a new, haunting clue. Walking through ’Phantom’ I’m reminded of Neverending Nightmares, a psychological horror game popular in 2014 that follows the story of a man exploring a house as he navigates different nightmares on loop. It’s starkly hand-drawn in black and white, with only the red of bloodied eyes and arterial spray colouring the game. While Simon’s work doesn’t share this same gorey imagery, it does possess a similar sense of foreboding, intrigue and claustrophobia, revealing the subtle and charming horrors of everyday life.

The exhibition’s titular work sees Simon’s habitual haunter come to life. The distorted face of a spirit nestles itself inside a body and takes control. Contours that resemble a studded jacket restrain the figure. It is unclear if these figures in Simon’s paintings submit to being restrained, or if they are plotting an escape. In Beton (Concrete), two heads poke out of a concrete slab, their bodies trapped underneath. Anpassung (Adjustment) pictures a withered figure sealed in a metal cage. This theme of concealment runs throughout the show, notably in the form of masks. They conceal emotion and connect Simon’s anonymous figures to the objects they are surrounded by, almost becoming part of the furniture themselves. “I came to the conclusion as I was painting that the heads in these works are actually masks. They’re hollow and you can see where the eyes and noses sit. The feeling of intensity I get when I paint them resonates with me. They’re not based on specific people; they are like caricatures,” Simon tells me. “The idea of the mask is continued in other forms like a physical block. I put different forms of masks over everything, including walls or stones, or other objects that hide things or block things from view.”

Beton (Concrete) and Müdigkeit (Fatigue), were two works that stood out. They share the same anguish as Philip Guston’s paintings of figures in bed, engulfed by their blankets, trying to shield themselves from the outside world. “I love Philip Guston and Francis Bacon. Guston is always the painter’s hero. I love how Bacon paints faces. They convey so much pain and torture. I’m also inspired by older artists like Goya: his Black Paintings and the caricature-like, darker images,” she says, adding references to Rembrandt and Bruegel.

In her recent work, Simon builds up layers of paint to create a black surface so viscous you might even catch your own reflection. But if you did, you’d be met with a hollow mask, a wall of steam or a metal barrier – physical shields trying to hide something. I wondered if this was reflective of Simon’s inner world. “If I’m being honest, yes. I have two souls, one is calm, and the other is very angry. I try to put that onto the canvas. I want to use it and say something with it. I also want to give a voice to these ‘bad’ feelings, because they can be ignored, and I think we should talk about them more.” It is no wonder then that Simon has chosen red as a dominant colour to express these feelings. “I really like painting with black and red,” she continues. “Painting with red allows me to communicate feelings of intensity.”

Simon also communicates something sculptural in her paintings. Hoher Sessel (Tall Armchair) and Tarnung (Camouflage) have a plush quality, tempting you to reach out and sink your hand into the canvas to feel the inflated fabric. The sculptures in ‘Phantom’ feel like tangible extensions of Simon’s paintings, and show that even across different mediums, there are crossovers. “I always wanted to work with fabrics. They have similar qualities to oil paint, like in the armchair painting, Hoher Sessel (Tall Armchair), where I’ve made this cosy form. The sculptures have very painterly elements. I sew them together and have to correct them and re-stitch certain areas to find the right forms. I add nuance as I go, like with painting and how you go over things on the canvas.”

I left the gallery with the sculpture Haut (Skin) still in my mind. It stood in the corner of the room next to where I spoke with Simon, its sinister presence filtering through the doorway at times. Taught tartan fabric covers the Slenderman-eque figure. With its bulging shoulders and long, limp arms, it seems ready to lurch forward at any moment. Mystery shrouds the figure. Who is it? What hides underneath the fabric? Its limbs draw you in, inviting you to interact somehow. It is exactly this tension between distress and comfort that Simon captures so well.