My artistic works are a reflection
on the nature of image, its structure, its material, its energetic quality.
As an artist, I'm less interested in the canon of art history, but in what
might be behind the horizon in my expeditions: the hybrid, the paradox, the
undefinable.
My artistic work is applied
systems theory. I am changing the parameters of a semi-open system,
balancing between autopoietic processes, arbitrary interventions and exactly
planned procedures. The study of nature as a complex system of physical and chemical processes
- infiltrating, cracking, tearing, folding, compressing, dissolving ... - forms
an important basis for most of my works. My special attention
is given to the tensions and the
undertow between the circular life cycles of nature (grow, proliferate,
transform, die off) on the one hand and
the linear time of cultural history and civilisation on the other hand: the
phenomenology of sociodynamic processes and obsolete artefacts and relics of
everyday culture (eg. diagrams, maps, geodata) are essential starting points, sources and inspirations
of my artistic work.
Fragments and relics have a special fascination: the deficit, the absence, the gaps; they give
the void a special presence, make it real. The void emerges as the vanished,
the lost, the forgotten, the destroyed and forms a no man's land, an intermediate world as an opponent of the
material, the visible, the audible, the experienceable.
My art is based on the the interplay
of fragmentation and synthesis, dematerialization
and re-materialization and the dualism of materiality and immateriality. My
main interest is to explore where the limits of coherence of autonomous images
lie and where their decomposition begins. How much heterogeneity does an image
tolerate in order to still be perceived as a unity? How much heterogeneity does
a picture need to develop a vital tension or an immersive atmosphere?
A basic compositional principle of The
Series is the fold or folding.
To fold over means to reverse front and back, to evert inside and out. The fold
is an infinite principle that leads all ideas of limitation to absurdity, an
all-over that is not bound to aggregate states and therefore can move beyond
the visible. It’s goal is not growth but differentiation. It is a kind of „living machine“ (as the philosopher
Gilles Deleuze says) that hinges together movement, space,
matter and time, interpreting the resistance of matter as texture, and that at
the same time splits and expands, reveals and conceals.
An important element of my artistic work is the time factor, which inscribes itself into the work in various ways.
The genesis of my works always takes place over very long periods of time,
interrupted by long breaks. These interruptions lead to new perspectives, considerations and
implementation concepts, but also to the use of new technologies.
The machines and apparatus
involved in the production of my images inscribe their own traces of time and
rhythms. Their
specific use shapes all image parameters and helps me to counteract the
vagueness of physical matter with the utmost precision.
Sound and image are
different states of aggregation. I try to shape the
picture elements as if they were sound - visual sound. Most of my sound art
works are studies for The Series. Sound can shake,
penetrate and overcome physical matter. What interests me most about sound is
the coincidence of radical expansion beyond the visual horizon of perception
and high volatility. Sound is the dark
matter of visual art.
The origin of my Series-Works takes place in
three phases - similar to the metamorphosis of a butterfly
(caterpillar-pup-insect):
In the Experimental
Phase I work with different types of paper, paper pulp, pigments and
dyes as well as chemical substances such as water, sodium silicate, acids,
salts and synthetic polymers. I consider my painting as
creating structures directly with matter, compressing and expanding, inserting
and dissolving, linking and positioning. After long lasting and often radical structuring
and processing operations (with a variety of tools and machines such as shredders,
centrifuges, syringes, pipettes, sometimes
even over many years) under often laboratory-like working conditions, usually
small-format intermediate results develop.
In the Numerical Phase,
these intermediate results are digitized, that is, dematerialized, transformed
into an aggregate state beyond physical materiality. Dust, particles,
detachments, kinks and cracks are also integrated as an autopoietic
(self-organizational) system component. In the numerical phase, the vagueness
of the impulsive and intuitive intermediate results is counteracted by
algorithmic accuracy. In the state of numerical liquefaction structures are
developed, details highlighted, nuances enhanced, redundancies and disturbances
removed, positionings corrected and finally the composition is fixed.
In the final Phase of Re-Materialization, the
finished image file is converted back to a physical image object. This is done
by using UV inkjet printers on aluminum dibond and with computer-controlled
milling.
