In Conversation: Broken Fingaz

The boundary between the figurative and the abstract is really what we’re exploring. The sketches constantly move between free passages of color and compositions built from patches or shapes, from which an image gradually emerges — something still connected to the real world, or in dialogue with its logic, with perspective and mass. Putting this process into words doesn’t come naturally to us. Painting is a language in itself. We are influenced by reality, by specific scenes, by stories we construct, but eventually all of this encounters the pictorial, abstract space.

If our earlier works were highly figurative and narrative-driven, today it feels as though such approaches sometimes sacrifice emotion, because the viewer’s mind is occupied with “reading” the story rather than forming an intuitive, instinctive, emotional response to the image, to the energy created by color relationships. At the same time, pure abstraction risks pushing away a broader audience. There still needs to be a sense that this isn’t an idiosyncratic language only accessible to insiders, so a certain narrative remains. We aim to create a scene that suggests a story — to capture a moment from a world larger than the one depicted within the painting.

The idea is to offer an entry point toward meaning without spelling everything out.

It feels as though we are continuing a tradition of painting while trying to create something new. The last two murals we made became a kind of turning point — they were just fun, and interesting things emerged — and now there’s a desire to bring that same energy onto canvas. It’s challenging.

Why is it challenging? Why does it feel easier on walls than on canvas?

With murals there’s a clear timeframe, and everything is calculated around it. In the studio, that framework disappears and the painting can be reworked endlessly. Maybe what’s needed is simply a stricter time limit.

Painting on canvas also means searching for the enigma that already exists in a wall — something outdoors, already embedded in context, with its own depth just by being in the street. On canvas, that mystery has to be constructed; maybe that’s what could be called “sensitivity.”

More attention to detail. Painting is elusive — it hides around corners. You think you’ve caught it, and then it slips away again. You are constantly chasing this fox. Every so often you catch it for a moment, and then it escapes again

The inherent impact of the wall is missing too — its scale, its presence in public space. The relationship becomes much more personal. Working on a mural means being outside, exposed, not inside a bubble. In the studio, the canvas almost becomes part of you. You treat it differently. You ask the canvas questions, and it asks questions back.

In general, we search for simplicity. With walls, posters, and other formats we’ve worked with, the process usually starts by throwing everything in — all the possibilities, all the combinations — and only later narrowing things down. That stage is necessary: flooding the field in order to reach simplicity. In that sense, the gap between walls and canvases feels mostly psychological. With murals, we’ve reached a point where we know almost instantly what the wall needs. But painting still carries a certain weight — maybe imaginary — that makes every move feel more deliberate.

Exactly. You might know what you want, but once it moves onto canvas it becomes a dialogue. With a mural there’s usually a clear idea from the start, and within that framework you can go wild. So maybe the solution is to establish a strong foundation — conceptual, chromatic, structural — and play from there.

Oil paint adds another layer. It still feels like an infinite world. With every painting I rediscover the material and how it can be used and controlled. That’s part of what makes it exciting: its openness. Sometimes the effect may resemble acrylic or spray paint, but the process is completely different and opens new possibilities.

Because being part of painting’s tradition matters to us, we have been digging deeper to understand how we arrived at the technique we focus on today. The modernist references in the new works raise a question that I keep returning to: how is this different from what artists we admire were doing in the 1930s? And is that even a problem?

It’s about balancing the references in your head with the present moment, with innovation. Modernism and classical art are strong influences, but our background also keeps other media present, like graphic design. If a painting looks entirely like it belongs to another period, maybe the connection to the present — or to yourself — isn’t fully there.

I would like to believe that when something is made with genuine honesty, people will feel that it belongs to this moment.

The key is returning to initial instincts — keeping the immediacy and energy of graffiti and street art, not taking things too seriously, and translating that onto canvas.