When you are brought up to believe that mastery is in the reaching and not in the arriving and sacrificing should only take place for your craft and not for your career, than it becomes difficult to admire expensive objects. They all seem to pay a high price for being so desirable, which is that they have to give up any form of being poetic. Instead they are cynical. The days when Lehmbruch or Giacometti could sculpt a form that expressed the human condition are long gone. Instead we draw pictures of and about society. We can only find the human aspects in details on the side or maybe in what we imagine in a playful, fearless way.
The objects I make are of such fearless, everyday material. They pretent not know the boundaries between 2 and 3 dimensional space when they blow up in the wind or fold together to sit on a head. They hang around on washing lines or dance on the beach. One day they are coat hangers thrown out by thousands on the road side of the NYC, the next moment they are the link between the real and the imagined world. Paintings become objects, resemble a stove, so you can warm your hands or they are offerings to people passing by. Like the painted handkerchiefs in Cadiz, or the leaf hanging on a spider web in the back waters of Kerala. They are on a journey from the existential to the immediate.
When you approach the large blue glass in a park by a lake in the North of Germany, you see no object but the nature around it. Your view is not drawn away from nature to culture but to nature again. Slightly transformed in blue and black because it frames the landscape but never the less not entirely an object in itself because you look through it. It is important what you see when you look, otherwise you could close your eyes and just imagine it. What you see gets transformed by art.
This is by no means new but known to everybody since Rene Margitte pointed it out. The more we frustrate ourselves in wanting something, the more we value our desire for it and in order to find a narrative in art you have to remove it. Just like the child becomes present to himself in the absence of something he needs.
Are objects a vehicle of communication and can it bind us in a mutual relationship?
If it were not for mutual relationships, how could works of art survive for 400 years. The painting has to be so strong that the next generation literally falls in love with it. Most large collections only stay together for one generation. As a vehicle of communication, paintings are underestimated. Look how Rembrandt’s “Man with the Golden Helmet” has evolved in recent years to become an iconic symbol that every Dutch person identifies it as a source of national pride. But often art historians are 25 years too late, otherwise they would teach us to communicate, or at least to have more conversations about art. It is mostly happening in artist run spaces of which there are more and more in Paris, Berlin, NYC. The danger of our time is that influential companies like Google, do not just answer our needs or questions, but want to phrases questions for us. My work tries to ask questions. Obvious questions like, why does a painting have to hang in a frame on a wall, or how can you lose yourself in a painting. Then there are more complex questions like the impossibility of a narrative.
Philip Guston said his first duty, as a painter is to be free. Would you agree? What does that mean to you?
Easier said than done. To be free is a complex philosophical term. It’s no coincidence that Guston calls it the first duty. My duty to be free is having a strong work ethic. In the end all you have as an artist is the work you made and you are making. Kids grow up, lovers leave you, friends die – art stays. We are privileged in that way.
Is there such a thing as being too free?
Trying to be free is our worldly struggle. I paint pits of heaven some times. Good art does that. We get a glimpse of a different order of things. A kind of world behind a world shines through the crack that is art. It does not happen very often but if you train yourself to see more closely and allow your senses to wonder maybe you see more cracks in the fabrics.
How would you describe bravery in approaching painting? In this contemporary moment of art making, do artists need to be braver?
It depends what kind of artist you want to be. If you just want to be famous and rich you better be strategic and clever rather than brave. Personally I feel that others before me fought hard for my freedom. It should not come without the obligation to maintain it but than again obligations and freedom of expression are not often easy to combine. The opposite of brave is cautious. Cautious in terms of poetic care is good, but cautious in terms of playing the system and its status quo a waste of time. Many people are afraid of movement and of colour and of art objects that are still there the morning after. Art is not an event, it stays around and asks questions. That mastery is in the reaching and not in the arriving is not just a philosophical statement . Quite practically my mark making is incredibly open so that it borders onto being nothing. There is, however, a clarity to them because it comes out of the moment. In the next steps the clarity is lost because it is too simplistic and appealing, to smooth or too easy to understand. Then I work to bring back a more refined clarity. Abundant time and energy goes into considering the next move. Adding more endangers the flow. Any encompassing gesture can risk all which was achieved; it can take the painting into its final form or ruin it. Everything is open right to the end.
The profound fascination for technology-smart phones and mobile devices- that keep people from looking up or out has generated a loss of spatial and visual awareness, as we once knew it. What are the consequence for painting?
Our perception changes all the time, due to technology, science, fashion, political circumstances, pollution or simply through conditioning. Would you fall in love with a man who speaks and smells and is dressed like in the Forties? You would - not because of his hair cut or his belief in nuclear power, but because of his character, or his aura and charisma. The attractiveness of pencil drawing has lost none of its sex appeal. Quite the opposite. It is not used in the same way anymore as we saw in Kircher’s wonderful drawings that tried so hard to get to the truth of what he saw. But why shouldn’t we aim to create or find the same charisma in other works of art. I refuse to be cynical. The more information there is, the more young people look for knowledge because information as such is readily available. The more they seem to be connected to lots of Facebook friend the more the cherish real friendships as a constant factor in an constantly moving world. The consequences for painting are not that we have to paint on a tablet or smart phone. The struggle to stay with a painting until it reaches a moment of truth is still the same. You aim for freedom and gain knowledge. Shortcuts to this have always been available in all kind of decorative forms but they do not last. Look how celebrates the very particular sound quality of vinyl records is today.
The knowledge you gain from painting comes in through a side door. I consider myself lucky to have the mandatory art history lessons at the Kunstakademie in Duesseldorf; we had lectures by a short gentleman who was kind enough to take the train from Paris every week, where he ran the Beaubourg, to teach us about his associative art history. He indirectly explained how important the detour is for an artist. Giacometti’s walking figures were analyzed by a poem on the same theme by Rilke placed next to it.
Today when I paint, I let the painting sit at least for a day before I scrutinize its existence. Rarely do I exhibit new paintings that have not withstood at least a couple of years time. But more importantly, in Werner Spies’s seminars, was the indirect, and not intended, hint to real life and the importance of living outside the box, whatever the box is. Those principals of education were quite different from today's, where students are told how to insure their place in the art market. We were told that it will take us ten years to forget everything we had learned, and another ten to do our own things.
I wish I could say my work is about forgetting, or better yet, even of letting go; not in terms of ignorance but more in terms of switching off the mind. Our mental abilities will be supersede by artificial intelligence. The tech giants started twenty five years ago to warehouse every image they could lay their hands on; the single purpose of giving the most accurate picture of a cat, or living creature, or any object. Everything is stored as there is no longer a need, or desire, to be part of the collection in the vault of MOMA. We have to develop other, more irrational skills for our survival.
You asked me why I like certain paintings of mine more than others. I cannot pretend not knowing; simply it is difficult to articulate in words.
The irrationality is one aspect. The contrast or challenge is another. The fact anybody can make a mark ,the fact that it is difficult to overcome the barrier to make a mark is another. The meaninglessness, the contradiction, their poetic de railing.
The way they bring something close that I can not touch most of the time. The way this desire is banal and existential at the same time.
Layering is connecting, and dripping is connecting the accidental with gravity. I like them when they hit a moment in space. I know I should say time, why did I say space? What I don’t like, is when these aspects do not connect, so the opposite is why I like a painting.
Every painting is such a struggle, the way you have to work against something. For years I painted in Ibiza thinking that the Mediterranean light inspired me. On the last day, after 12 years, I realized that the other reason for my productiveness was that I needed to react against the artificialness and pretentiousness on the holiday island. Every super yacht on the horizon, and there were many, subconsciously made me more determined to hold something meaningful against it. In a way it was easy. What was special, hipp and expensive was reliably not meaningful.
However what is meaningful is not established by the artist either but by the scholar. We all play our role. The artist makes, the patron buys and the scholar puts the meaning into words.
The objects I make are of such fearless, everyday material. They pretent not know the boundaries between 2 and 3 dimensional space when they blow up in the wind or fold together to sit on a head. They hang around on washing lines or dance on the beach. One day they are coat hangers thrown out by thousands on the road side of the NYC, the next moment they are the link between the real and the imagined world. Paintings become objects, resemble a stove, so you can warm your hands or they are offerings to people passing by. Like the painted handkerchiefs in Cadiz, or the leaf hanging on a spider web in the back waters of Kerala. They are on a journey from the existential to the immediate.
When you approach the large blue glass in a park by a lake in the North of Germany, you see no object but the nature around it. Your view is not drawn away from nature to culture but to nature again. Slightly transformed in blue and black because it frames the landscape but never the less not entirely an object in itself because you look through it. It is important what you see when you look, otherwise you could close your eyes and just imagine it. What you see gets transformed by art.
This is by no means new but known to everybody since Rene Margitte pointed it out. The more we frustrate ourselves in wanting something, the more we value our desire for it and in order to find a narrative in art you have to remove it. Just like the child becomes present to himself in the absence of something he needs.
Are objects a vehicle of communication and can it bind us in a mutual relationship?
If it were not for mutual relationships, how could works of art survive for 400 years. The painting has to be so strong that the next generation literally falls in love with it. Most large collections only stay together for one generation. As a vehicle of communication, paintings are underestimated. Look how Rembrandt’s “Man with the Golden Helmet” has evolved in recent years to become an iconic symbol that every Dutch person identifies it as a source of national pride. But often art historians are 25 years too late, otherwise they would teach us to communicate, or at least to have more conversations about art. It is mostly happening in artist run spaces of which there are more and more in Paris, Berlin, NYC. The danger of our time is that influential companies like Google, do not just answer our needs or questions, but want to phrases questions for us. My work tries to ask questions. Obvious questions like, why does a painting have to hang in a frame on a wall, or how can you lose yourself in a painting. Then there are more complex questions like the impossibility of a narrative.
Philip Guston said his first duty, as a painter is to be free. Would you agree? What does that mean to you?
Easier said than done. To be free is a complex philosophical term. It’s no coincidence that Guston calls it the first duty. My duty to be free is having a strong work ethic. In the end all you have as an artist is the work you made and you are making. Kids grow up, lovers leave you, friends die – art stays. We are privileged in that way.
Is there such a thing as being too free?
Trying to be free is our worldly struggle. I paint pits of heaven some times. Good art does that. We get a glimpse of a different order of things. A kind of world behind a world shines through the crack that is art. It does not happen very often but if you train yourself to see more closely and allow your senses to wonder maybe you see more cracks in the fabrics.
How would you describe bravery in approaching painting? In this contemporary moment of art making, do artists need to be braver?
It depends what kind of artist you want to be. If you just want to be famous and rich you better be strategic and clever rather than brave. Personally I feel that others before me fought hard for my freedom. It should not come without the obligation to maintain it but than again obligations and freedom of expression are not often easy to combine. The opposite of brave is cautious. Cautious in terms of poetic care is good, but cautious in terms of playing the system and its status quo a waste of time. Many people are afraid of movement and of colour and of art objects that are still there the morning after. Art is not an event, it stays around and asks questions. That mastery is in the reaching and not in the arriving is not just a philosophical statement . Quite practically my mark making is incredibly open so that it borders onto being nothing. There is, however, a clarity to them because it comes out of the moment. In the next steps the clarity is lost because it is too simplistic and appealing, to smooth or too easy to understand. Then I work to bring back a more refined clarity. Abundant time and energy goes into considering the next move. Adding more endangers the flow. Any encompassing gesture can risk all which was achieved; it can take the painting into its final form or ruin it. Everything is open right to the end.
The profound fascination for technology-smart phones and mobile devices- that keep people from looking up or out has generated a loss of spatial and visual awareness, as we once knew it. What are the consequence for painting?
Our perception changes all the time, due to technology, science, fashion, political circumstances, pollution or simply through conditioning. Would you fall in love with a man who speaks and smells and is dressed like in the Forties? You would - not because of his hair cut or his belief in nuclear power, but because of his character, or his aura and charisma. The attractiveness of pencil drawing has lost none of its sex appeal. Quite the opposite. It is not used in the same way anymore as we saw in Kircher’s wonderful drawings that tried so hard to get to the truth of what he saw. But why shouldn’t we aim to create or find the same charisma in other works of art. I refuse to be cynical. The more information there is, the more young people look for knowledge because information as such is readily available. The more they seem to be connected to lots of Facebook friend the more the cherish real friendships as a constant factor in an constantly moving world. The consequences for painting are not that we have to paint on a tablet or smart phone. The struggle to stay with a painting until it reaches a moment of truth is still the same. You aim for freedom and gain knowledge. Shortcuts to this have always been available in all kind of decorative forms but they do not last. Look how celebrates the very particular sound quality of vinyl records is today.
The knowledge you gain from painting comes in through a side door. I consider myself lucky to have the mandatory art history lessons at the Kunstakademie in Duesseldorf; we had lectures by a short gentleman who was kind enough to take the train from Paris every week, where he ran the Beaubourg, to teach us about his associative art history. He indirectly explained how important the detour is for an artist. Giacometti’s walking figures were analyzed by a poem on the same theme by Rilke placed next to it.
Today when I paint, I let the painting sit at least for a day before I scrutinize its existence. Rarely do I exhibit new paintings that have not withstood at least a couple of years time. But more importantly, in Werner Spies’s seminars, was the indirect, and not intended, hint to real life and the importance of living outside the box, whatever the box is. Those principals of education were quite different from today's, where students are told how to insure their place in the art market. We were told that it will take us ten years to forget everything we had learned, and another ten to do our own things.
I wish I could say my work is about forgetting, or better yet, even of letting go; not in terms of ignorance but more in terms of switching off the mind. Our mental abilities will be supersede by artificial intelligence. The tech giants started twenty five years ago to warehouse every image they could lay their hands on; the single purpose of giving the most accurate picture of a cat, or living creature, or any object. Everything is stored as there is no longer a need, or desire, to be part of the collection in the vault of MOMA. We have to develop other, more irrational skills for our survival.
You asked me why I like certain paintings of mine more than others. I cannot pretend not knowing; simply it is difficult to articulate in words.
The irrationality is one aspect. The contrast or challenge is another. The fact anybody can make a mark ,the fact that it is difficult to overcome the barrier to make a mark is another. The meaninglessness, the contradiction, their poetic de railing.
The way they bring something close that I can not touch most of the time. The way this desire is banal and existential at the same time.
Layering is connecting, and dripping is connecting the accidental with gravity. I like them when they hit a moment in space. I know I should say time, why did I say space? What I don’t like, is when these aspects do not connect, so the opposite is why I like a painting.
Every painting is such a struggle, the way you have to work against something. For years I painted in Ibiza thinking that the Mediterranean light inspired me. On the last day, after 12 years, I realized that the other reason for my productiveness was that I needed to react against the artificialness and pretentiousness on the holiday island. Every super yacht on the horizon, and there were many, subconsciously made me more determined to hold something meaningful against it. In a way it was easy. What was special, hipp and expensive was reliably not meaningful.
However what is meaningful is not established by the artist either but by the scholar. We all play our role. The artist makes, the patron buys and the scholar puts the meaning into words.