Work Series:
Im Garten des Chán (West-östliche Bewegung), 2020/2021

The series Im Garten des Chán (West-östliche Bewegung) [In the Garden of Chán (West-Eastern Movement)], consisting of eight individual works, goes back to the drawing series Signature created in 2007, in which the artist dealt with the problem of the name and the signature as style and proof of authorship and authenticity. Elements from this series are cited again and again. Chán, the principle of Chán Buddhism, which originated in China in the 6th century, the earliest and most archaic form of Zen Buddhism, literally means “shelter” or “paradise surrounded by four walls”. Chán marks a place where one is only a temporary guest. The series Im Garten des Chán (West-östliche Bewegung) is based on the artist’s stay of several years in Ladakh, a region located in the High Himalayas, when he was faced with the decision and the irresolvable conflict between Buddhism and art. While the goal of Buddhism’s meditative practice is the suspension of subjectivity, in the classical understanding since modernism, a work of art is an expression of the artist’s subjectivity, whose authenticity and authorship is confirmed by the artist’s signature.

The works, the majority of which were created with acrylic and lacquer on Belgian linen and glass, pick up the color tones of the mountain landscape of Ladakh. The coordinates indicated in the title of the individual works geographically mark the exact places where the artist was during his stay. Thus Abendlicher Unterricht (Alchi) 34°13'24.0"N 77°10'29.0"E [Evening Lessons (Alchi) 34°13'24.0"N 77°10'29.0"E] refers to Alchi Monastery, the oldest Buddhist monastery in the Himalayas, where the artist received language lessons and whose frescoes show depictions of men wearing turbans and equestrian figures from pre-Buddhist times. Prä·zi·si·on (Vermessung der Seele) [Pre·ci·sion (Surveying the Soul)] formulates the claim to be precise in the title with a hint of phonetic language, while Sanskrit characters are hinted at in the picture, but they cannot be concretely interpreted and remain vague.

In Spangmik / rheinische Sandablagerung 33°56'03.9"N 78°27'10.3"E / 50°00'48.9"N 8°06'18.7"E [Spangmik / Rhenish Sand Deposit 33°56'03.9"N 78°27'10.3"E / 50°00'48.9"N 8°06'18.7"E] there are two different levels of memory that flow into each other: Spangmik, a place in the nomadic region, which connects with a place in Germany from the artist’s childhood. The different formats of the picture panels, which are mentally connected by a black painterly gesture, also refer to this. Panamic 34°46'50.3"N 77°32'32.6"E also has a similar point of departure, alluding to the similar-sounding Panasonic bar near Berlin’s Nordbahnhof, which the artist frequently visited and where, as is also customary in Ladakh, one had to fetch the water for flushing the toilet in a bucket at the counter.