Statement

My work oscillates between object and event, constantly striving to find a form in which this oscillation remains visible. I model with clay: a body emerges. I use bronze or stone: the body is there. I assert a strong presence of bodies because I believe in the subject, in its free will. At the same time, I must question this assertion from the perspective of scientific developments. I work with my body and voice, with figure, with digital media and with drawing as a process of condensation and dissolution, in order to reaffirm my connection to the world.

The sense of touch is just as important in my work as the material’s intrinsic significance. In drawing, my most tactile medium is usually the oil stick but I mostly work with mixed media. Drawing is simpler than sculpture, for its space is primarily defined by the paper format. My drawings are machines of perception, my primary form of thought, mental fragments of an external environment that I select with care and feeling. Although I believe that humans project their inner lives outward, where I am is not irrelevant. It is a feedback loop. Some places are magical sites of memory.  I want to take in the place where I am deep within myself and bear witness to it. In between, drawings emerge as signs and traces of an ever-precarious reality.

Belfagor is a hybrid of space shuttle and sarcophagus. The attempt to sculpturally capture the space around a figure, to give an outline not to matter but to nothingness. There are two versions of Belfagor. The first was hand-carved from shell limestone in 2013, while the second was computer-designed and milled from polyurethane in 2015. Although the forms are very similar, the feel is very different.

I like to use clay in my work, which, of course, is a product of the earth. When I first came to Luxor, the significance of the Nile altered my view of nature. Nature had never seemed so unique to me as it did in Egypt. I thought it had been invented there and that the rest of the world had received a pale imitation of it. I suppose this is because living in an industrialized environment has an impact on both nature and humans that I was not fully aware of before. Besides, the clay there is exceptional. So, what was I supposed to do? I started reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

The cyborg Hel in Metropolis, humanoid robots versus data driven AI, the idea that humans are being swallowed up by a data octopus—these themes have been meandering through my practice since the beginning. For me, the current era represents a paradigm shift. Could this be a repeat of the upheavals that preceded the First World War? I'm not sure, but I gain a lot of interesting insights from examining artists' work from that era. 


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Belfagor

Nature is a metaphor

Der Maschinenmensch