the repertoire of classical fine arts offers endless resources to me: recognizing them as exemplary, I do work within the prevailing rules, do move however freed therefrom on this terrain so multiply used by thousands of forerunners: so it should not make you wonder when behind the tabs oil/polimer/project/object again and again overlappings and  cross-junctures occur. If it is not by naming the so-called mixed technique in the work description, then otherwise maybe achieved by means of my analysis of the classical portrait in various techniques.

the self-portrait

the self-portrait represents the most intimate reference of the artist and his obvious appearance per se, not only vis-a-vis himself but also vis-a-vis the viewer.

early in 2010 I went that far, that way out in secluded nature I made imprints of my face into snow-tongues and took a series of photographs thereof.

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with these temporary „self-portraits“ I intended to remove my own face completely from the mirror of vanity and egocentrics and instead exposed my own appearance to the will of nature, to the changing and forming power of wind and snow; as an artist, however, I was not entirely able to refrain from the ever so human wish of longing for documenting, wanting to catch the very moment. Because hereby I had discovered a connection between my own longings for perpetuate pictoresque drawing, the naturally formed sculpture of my own profile and last but not least photography.

the unknown face

The so called face (here pronounced and addressed as the face & the one who looks back at yourself from it) has not only disappeared from our linguistic usage but drowned in a flood of medial images;  in accordance with this fact also the portrait (the drawn image of a face) loses importance, gives way to the snapshot, is degraded to a passport photograph or for the coverpage blown up and embellished by computer animation.

Difficult times for a painter like Lucien Freud whose sensitive and gloomy portrait of the British Queen Elisabeth caused protests when unveiling it. Drawing picturesque personified portraits of God’s face, of his angels, prophets, saints & profane servants I learned being Christian, as a birth of catholicism, was astonished then that Allah & his prophets appeared as white lightspots on the body of ornamentics, incubated only by writing & signs &and even more astonished that Buddha always unchanged, competes by the smile in his face with the gleam of his round belly.

In the end it was very much though the differential repertoire of the Christians which awakened my interest as a confirmed, urged me to inhale artistically treated attempts of physiognomical comprehension of the archangels, from Albrecht Dürer’s Michael to Jonathan Meeses‘ state-grimace: the hermeneutics „try“  to act on not rationally seizable grounds, in artistically not evident space.

HENCE SUCH A SUPRASPACIAL FACE CAN EITHER BE MERELY IDEALIZED OR JUST ENTIRELY BROUGHT TO VANISHING.

In a series of portraits (see artport zero – grafic) in 2004 I took so-called search-photographs vulgo phantom-drawings from classified daily newspapers, modified these supported by computer and had them printed by means of a plotter on canvas. I tried then to bring these phantoms to life with different painting and drawing techniques, the results showed varied effects on the viewer, the identifications brought about a diversity which extended from nomintions like „Jörg Haider“ to „Rex Gildo“. Whereby I was confirmed again: Where lies art reality, if not with the recipient?

„man can be charged with the truth“ said Ingeborg Bachmann.

vespers- Berlin 1984

"abendmal" 1984, öl auf molino, holzrahmen in bahrenform, 12 x 4 meter

october 1984– Berlin West, Kreuzberg, Pfuhlstrasse, former granary on the banks of river Spree, near Schlesisches Tor – a snapshot:

On the river Spree right in front of my atelier window  „Vopos“  (People’s Police) of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) are moving up and down the river rather excitedly, one of them holds binocculars in front of his face: My neighbour from the floor below my rented atelier room, an actionist from Munich with logo CWA (CityWallArt) and just like me in Berlin for a short period of time only, has thrown dried ice into the water which until as close as the wall of our building is East Berlin territory, noise of champagne cork from the direction of the wall: „The West is shooting back!“

The politically separating „Wall“ continues behind the water along the banks. The river Spree beneath our feet is boiling but not only because of the dried ice.

Already as a child fascinated by Van Gogh’s painting ,“Sternennacht” I work in bright moonlight on a painting consisting of 12 parts,  canvas on frames in form of a stretcher of 1 x 4 m each, insert the reflections of the light of the wall searchlights in the crimped Spree water surface, the illuminated wall dragged right through the painting. I form and shape a gipsum doll, paint the features in the same brush-technique as in Vinzent’s “Selbstbildnis” aon its head, dress it in a white work-overall with Van-Gogh written in Coca-Cola calligraphy on its back, and put it seated in front of the last part: Vinzent writes END on it with a calligraphy brush.

During the housewarming party of the atelier, a group of fuddled punks hit the puppy to fall with iron sticks and  mistreat it.

The artists group endart runs a gallery around the corner in Oranienstrasse. The plan to show the wall-painting in a performance and sound-collage in the kunstraum München and to have VOPOS carry the stretchers, does not materialize.

In the subsequent year Philipp Schönborn photographs the painting in a courtyard in Munich-Nymphenburg for the magazine ART.

On the lawn to the right beneath the middle of the painting appears a 13th head, in the art magazine,  however, other paintings of mine like Hesperidenessig & German Bus Stop are shown.

1989 I moved to a farmhouse at the Hungarian border in Wulkaprodersdorf. The painting is folded and stored on a loft. The real political Berlin Wall is by now just before its fall, the first East Berlin citizens come across the green border via Hungary to Austria, just around the corner near St. Margarethen, in order to continue their move to the Federal Republic of Germany.

2009 the painting is still stored on the loft, at the border the highest political representatives of Germany, Austria, and Hungary are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall & of the Paneuropean Picnic.