Artist Statement

ExPics | Artist Statement


There are moments that decide our lives. These moments in which life takes a new turn, that are the existential pivotal points of our existence. They thrust us out from the auto-pilot of our superficial existence.

Luck, destiny, grief, joy are all crossroads on our lifes path, where we strike new directions. These are the moments that determine our life.

It is these life changing moments that I feel and speaks to me and expresses my art. I put myself in the picture. Existential images – ExPics – show the moment that decides the rest of life.
ExPics stand for life.
ExPics make the absent present.

They are not the expression of a fantasy or the artificiality so often felt today. They want to trace life and exceed the modest means of language.

My pictures are the expression of the force of existential experiences. When the narrative dies down, reality overtakes every metaphor and my art takes the floor.

It is also the task of my pictures to make the absent present.

I have experienced such moments over the twenty years on my travels to war and crisis zones. In these places I have seen the depths of humanity and found hope where you would think there could not be.

But it’s not for mypictures to empathise or comprehend. It’s about them to convey a sense that you grasp for yourself.

From the perspective of existentialism new aspects open up. The moment in all emotions, colors and feelings are everything and there are only a few moments in this life that count. The rest is like the system administration and sliding gate in the farce of our sham fictitious existence.

In this fast paced world that is accelerating towards madness and numbness, ExPics want to make life felt again. To make you feel your life again. Feel those pivotal moments.

I work in a large format. The pictures are expressed with the use of paints, natural oils, water, hands, spatulas, earth, sand, ashes. Sometimes they arise within a few days, sometimes they are months of struggle. Layer upon layer.
Often the work is accompanied with suffering but also blending the happiness of the moment and they are always physically demanding. It takes strength to remember. Each of us.

I am inspired by the colors, the dimension, the breaks in nature and life.
I was significantly influenced by the confrontation with the phenomenological image theory during my studies. She faces the difficult task of visualizing the absent.

In addition, it is the seductiveness of the present that shakes me, but artistically inspires me to bring people back into the existential feeling.
Ideally, the image is merely the trigger for a personal confrontation of the viewer with their own experience.

The image as a catalyst for one’s own existential feeling and empathy.

Currently, I am increasingly concerned with acceleration and the desperate attempt to catch up on time. The existence in the incidental takes its toll. Pictures as an attempt to stop time.
In addition, I deal with recurring topics, such as the horizon and of course life itself.