Pencil Drawings

In my recent works I primarily focus on drawing and installation. I am interested in the conflict between order and disorder, between hold and abeyance, coincidence and planning.
One can understand chaos and order as opposites, consider the chaos as the cause of order, or assume them as interdependent correlating condition. In any case, chaos and order, by the virtue of their duality, possess a power that generates artistic and creative process.So which role does the tension or the balance between chaos and order play? By which degree of order our attention is inhibited? Are we attracted by symmetry or rather looking for imperfection, or something unexpected, moving?
Only the mutual view on both dimensions – the planned and the contingency, the directed and the undirected, the predictable and the unpredictable – makes it possible to analyze the relation between chaos and order in a comprehensive manner.

For me the appeal of drawing is in it´s reduction to black and white und in it´s directness and immediacy. Similar to a binary code drawing only accepts 1 or 0, say yes or no, do a stroke or don´t. On the contrary to painting, the conicidence in drawing is technically almost impossible. And yet I am seeking exactly this state of involuntary chaos, the unexpected and unsuspected.

My abstract pencil drawings, which also contain figurative fragments in some cases, are composed of multiple layers and therefore develop their collage-like aesthetics. By addition and substraction of numerous linear structures, signs, spots, marks and surfaces, new shapes emerge which convey the impression of a well-planned complexity.

Through overlays, shifts and fragmentation I create drawing structures that dynamically capture the (pictorial) space. Order and disorder encounter each other, mix and add up to one expressive composition. Sometimes richly nuanced and full of contrast, sometimes diffuse and washed-out.
The drawings accept and reflect on manipulation and metamorphosis at the same time. The groping, searching and additive approach in conjunction with the technique of erasing gives the work the character of a palimpsest.

The labor-intensive appropriation of space (the paper) is a gesture of localization or anchoring to the here and now, which is in contrast to the dynamic, floating appearing of the pictorial space.
Apparently spontaneous gestures, such as a stain of running paint, are constructed graphically in meticulous detail over days, which is to be understood as ironic commentary.

In the installations I work primarily with slide projectors. The work “Voyage Pittoresque” for example, shows a series of 80 abstract drawings of lines, textures and patterns that can be projected on an installation of various objects.
The drawings are rather scratches or etchings with fine scalpel on repro film. The films are framed into slides and projected on the installation.
Projection and installation affect each other: With each slide change the drawing changes the lighting situation of the arranged objects and therefore changes the overall impression steadily.
Through movement in the space, the viewer gets different visual axes.

A picture is always the search for reality. But reality is subjective and in constant change.