Thinking Hand

The same applies to the two works Wanderung von Grau [Walk from Grey] (2021) and Inside out (2022) from the series Digitale Schatten [Digital Shadows]. The paintings are both painted on the reverse of the frame’s glass, hence arranging two parallel pictorial planes one behind the other, which complement, but also disturb and counteract each other. The pictorial motifs are self-referential and echo earlier paintings of which details have been photographed, digitally edited and manipulated on the computer.

In this way, a connectedness of supposedly independent images is exposed, which points to the fact that even in the painting process there is no point from which the artist creates genuinely new things. Inside out, for instance, also forms the basis for two other works in an incessant cycle of accumulation and continuation.

This image circuit is equally a reference to the visual traffic we encounter every day in overwhelming abundance, whether on the Internet, social media, or on the streets as advertisements compete for the viewer’s attention: an escape from this flood of pictures never seems possible; new images are always derived from existing images, which stage themselves as new, but are actually a repetition of the same thing over and over.

Mata Pita (2022) and Der Verlust der Geschwister [Loss of the siblings] (2020) address the theme of simultaneous connection and separation. Mata Pita is composed of a series of large, separate canvases set in a divided angled frame. In the title, the work references familial structures: Mata (mother) and Pita (father), two individuals connected in their parenthood and procreation of an offspring. These bonds and kinship ties, however, are something that can be volatile. Relationships can change, be negated or lost as pointed to in Der Verlust der Geschwister, a single painting.

Benares (2019), on the other hand, takes an entirely different approach. Benares, another name for the city of Varanasi in India, refers to the artist’s Indian origins, his grandmother being from India: by recalling the colours and stylistic idiom of the city in the state of Uttar Pradesh, the artist intertwines this work with a geographical location in a very unique way.