ARTIST STATEMENT

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My art, especially the themes of my works exhibited in the "ICONS" exhibition at the Redbud Arts Center Houston, are based on a variety of contemporary issues, but also take up historical events.​ Translated into large-format and strongly colored paintings, my focus is therefore on general processes and people who deal with constantly repeating events in the present and past in the sense of an ongoing continuity. Important cornerstones in terms of content are the themes of power and powerlessness, resistance and opportunism, in a very direct sense but also in the sense of a cosmic effect of conflicting forces.​ I am interested in these power relations, which can be found both in nature and in human society and are based on the same principles. This is why my works, which deal with nature in the sense of landscape painting, are symbolic of the collective mental processes of our contemporary society. I have dedicated extensive series to these landscape paintings: "Fire and Ice."

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In the exhibition at the Redbud Arts Center, pictures from both series are exhibited and placed in dialog with works from other series, thus creating a great arc of tension. Some of the works evoke themes of German and American history, which enter into a dialog due to their arrangement in the exhibition space. They are thus links between the works selected for the exhibition, which range from portraits to landscapes.​ The dialog between the works deals with phenomena of great symbolic significance that appear worldwide. All the works in the exhibition depict people, historical events and landscapes in their iconic power. With this approach, I incorporate approaches from mythology, literature and history and search for interactions of a homocentric world view transferred to the entire living space. My focus is on fluid transitions and the elimination of separations between culture and nature, humans and animals, as well as physical and imagined realities.

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The central works in the exhibition are landscape paintings, which form the framework for all the other themes addressed in the exhibition and are of great interest to me as images of the soul, such as the eternal ice as a symbol of a nature that is seen as unchangeable, which raises the question of an existing order against the backdrop of calving glaciers. In elementary contrast to this is fire, specifically that of a burning car, which refers to social tensions. I juxtapose this with a selection of delicate drawings from a series of wintry trees that illustrate the fragility of nature.

 

Another central work in the exhibition is the diptych Land Without Name, which refers to war. This painting is complemented by a life-size depiction of the historical figure General Custer. I am interested in man as a being who, in his actions, is caught up in psychological patterns that characterize him as an earthly being.

 

Other works shown in the exhibition have a reference to the German past and play with the aesthetics of totalitarian systems of the 20th century. A selection of works from the series "The Fate of The Orchids," portraits of film stars from the 1930s and 1940s and metaphors for seduction and transience, complete the dialog and pose the question of social values.​