November 2023, Daniel from the photo series and exhibition ALMOST ALIVE

With Rania, they had left a poor country and found a relative refuge in Rome. At the factory, he had obeyed for forty years, punctual, deceptively docile, always an Arab. Because he had quickly understood that the hierarchy at work depended on more than just skills, seniority or diplomas, there were three classes of labourer. The lowest was reserved for blacks, North Africans like himself. Above them were Poles, Yugoslavs, Italians and the least skilled Frenchmen. To reach the top jobs, you had to be born in France (hexagonal), that was the only way. And if, by way of exception, a foreigner became an Os (specialised worker) or reached the master's level, there was always an aura of suspicion around him, something that made him wrong in advance.
There was nothing innocent about the way the factory operated. At first sight, one might have thought that efficiency depended on the distribution of men, on the use of their Orce. That this logic, this brutality, that of production and forced marching, was enough. In reality, behind these totems, which would be brandished ever more self-consciously as the valley became less competitive, lay a whole imbroglio of tacit rules, erci-tive methods inherited from the colonies, seemingly natural classifications, and instituted violence which guaranteed discipline and the grading of the humiliated. And right at the bottom were Malek Bouali and his ilk, the curly-headed, bicots (big (cameleer),bougnoules (black African from the North), negros; these words were used loosely. Over time, the contempt for him and his kind became more concealed, but it never disappeared. It had even been promoted.

from
Nicolas Mathieu
Leurs enfants après eux (And Their Children After Them)
page 143
Acte Sud,France, 2018

In the roof top studio, autumn 2023

Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens is a film by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau and celebrates its this year 100th anniversary with an exhibition at the museum Sammlung Gerstenberg in Berlin, Germany.

Around Halloween season I did a small series of ink on paper and photographes collages inspired by this film. The portrait of Luzifer, RWV 10044-08 is part of a photo series that was created for the solo show Almost Alivea few years earlier. Luzifer also plays her part in the large installation Pie Jesu, RWV 542-01.

Lune de sang, RWV 632-02
Eclipse, RWV 623-03.
Nosferatu, RWV 631-04
und
Nosferatu, RWV 631-01

In the studio, July and Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris,France, 17 August 23

An inspiration for my work, a role model for a free, self-confident and self-chosen life. The inventor of cleverly "hidden" marketing. A part of Serge and Charlotte Gainsbourg. An Englishwoman who brought me closer to French life in a way that only Romy Schneider did as a non-Frenchie. I am sad that you have gone, and I am glad that you can now Rest In Peace.

The triptych was created on the two days immediately after Jane Birkin's death on 16 July 2023. I painted over two "Sommerabende / Summer Evenings" canvases from 2017 for this, the original paintings have been retained as background: Un Jardin pour JB et son Orang-Outan, RWV 468-02
and
Un Jardin pour JB et son Orang-Outan, RWV 468-01.

Already from 2020 is a sculpture to Jane Birkin's recent album "Oh ! Pardon tu dormais …" to the song Physique et sans issue, RWV 560-01.

Sticker series from 2013 until today

For a few years now, I have been "in-designing" beautiful stickers for myself and leave them here and there on my travels. The current version is not at all artsy, sexy but all the more commercial.

For the background I used a detail in turquoise and vermilion from the painting, Louis Vierne, Symphonie n°2, op 20.

The Christmas show from 11 November 2022 to 23 February 2023

Löwenpalais for the annual exhibition 2022/2023! I like the neo-baroque location in Berlin's upper middle-class Grunewald and the completely overcrowded openings just as much as the New Year's reception in January. After a 2-year break, everything as before: without mask, without distance, without Covid.

This time in line with the X-mas season with, Maria mit dem Jesuskind / Mary and the infant Jesus themselfi.

The year right before the Covid Lock-downs in the show and in line with the xmas season with Infant Jesus himself.

The year before I joined the show with one of the Schneelandschaften (Snowscapes).

The little work Märchenwald (Magic Forrest) was shown at the 2015's x-mas exhibition.

Cité Montmartre-aux-artistes, Paris, France, February 2023

To tell the truth, I was in the same situation, except that my workload was not excessive. The years of study are the only happy years, the only years when the future seems open, when everything seems possible, and then adult life, professional life, is just a slow and progressive stagnation, It is probably for this reason that the friendships of youth, those made during the student years and which are basically the only true friendships, never survive the entry into adult life; one avoids seeing one's friends of youth again to avoid being confronted with the demise of one's hopes, with the evidence of one's own crushing.

Michel Houellebecq, Sérotonine, page 149, Flammarion, Paris, France, 2019



À vrai dire j'étais dans la même situation, à cela près que ma charge de travail navait rien d'excessif, et au fond tout le monde était dans la même situation, les années d'études sont les seules années heureuses, les seules années où l'avenir paraît ouvert, où tout paraît possible, la vie d'adulte ensuite, la vie professionnelle n'est qu'un lent et progressif enlisement, c'est même sans doute pour cette raison que les amitiés de jeunesse, celles qu'on noue pendant ses années d'étudiant et qui sont au fond les seules amitiés véritables, ne survivent jamais à l'entrée dans la vie adulte, on évite de revoir ses amis de jeunesse pour éviter d'être confronté aux demoins de ses espérances déçues, à l'évidence de son propre écrasement.

Technikmuseum, Berlin, Germany, Feb 2023 Dolls installation

Cecile, herself at the time, was certainly not grunge, I saw her more as a Versailles girl, well a moderate Versailles girl, a bit of a traditionalist without being a fundamentalist, Aymeric had married into his milieu, which is what happens most often at the end of the day, and that's what gives the best results in principle, well that's what I'd heard, the problem in my case was that I didn't have a milieu, no precise milieu.

Michel Houellebecq, Sérotonine, page 148, Flammarion, Paris, France, 2019



Cécile, elle même à l'époque n'était certainement pas grunge, je la voyais plutôt comme une Versaillaise, enfin une Versaillaise modérée, un peu tradi sans être intégriste, Aymeric s'était marié dans son milieu, c'est ce qui se produit le plus souvent en fin de compte, et c'est ce qui donne en principe les meilleurs résultats, enfin c'est ce que j'avais entendu dire, le problème dans mon cas est que je n'avais pas de milieu, pas de milieu précis.

In the studio, January 2023

If you want to become a painter, you are first and foremost an admirer of paintings. That is adminring art that already exists. And in the end, if you want to become an artist and create something of your own, this is very much in your way. So you have no choice but to get into conflict with yourself and destroy this agreement with the past. This does not mean physically, but by establishing something new, by establishing your own signature, you have to erase something else. So this goes beyond the normal bad relationship between fathers and sons.
Interview with Georg Baselitz

Die Welt auf dem Kopf - Der Künstler Georg Maselitz
a feature by Astrid Mayerle
Mdr Kultur Radio,Germany, 21.1.2023

Daily dictatorship of just one single part of the body, January 2023

My life has become hours. I told Clara this morning that I had not been able to fill the space suddenly freed up by the end of appointments, that it seemed unthinkable, not to say impressive, that in the years before I had been able to fill the time of a day, from the morning or at least from midday, at the usual time when I open my eyes, to the evening. I used to live my days in a permanent countdown of hours, I thought More than five hours before the end of the day, more than three hours, I thought If I take a shower and stay there long enough, I'll save thirty minutes. If you don't brush your teeth in the shower but after the shower you'll lose another three minutes. When I got out of the shower and saw that I had been in there less than thirty minutes I bit my tongue to punish myself, pinched my forearm and thought again: If you go to the post office and come back at a reasonable pace you will save a good twenty minutes. Twenty good minutes, easy; I deployed subterfuges, strategies, tricks in which I tried to trap myself.

Édouard Louis, Historie de la violence, page 207, Edition du Seuil, Points, P4466, 2016

Ma vie est devenue des heures. J'ai dit à Clara ce matin que je n'avais pas su combler la place brutalement libérée par la fin des rendez-vous, qu'il me paraissait impensable pour ne pas dire impressionnant d'avoir pu pendant les années d'avant remplir le temps d'une journée, du matin ou du moins du midi, à l'heure habituelle à laquelle j'ouvre les yeux, jusqu'au soir. Je vivais mes journées dans le décompte permanent des heures, je pensais Plus que cing heures avant la fin de la journée, plus que trois heures, je pensais Si je prends une douche et que j'y reste assez longtemps, je gagnerai trente minutes. Si tu ne te brosses pas les dents dans la douche mais après la douche tu perdras trois minutes de plus. Quand je sortais de la douche et que je voyais que j'y étais resté moins de trente minutes je me mordais la langue pour me punir, je me pinçais l'avant-bras et je réfléchissais encore: Si tu vas jusqu'à la poste et que tu reviens à une allure raisonnable tu gagneras vingt bonnes minutes. Vingt bonnes minutes, facile; je déployais des subterfuges, des stratégies, des ruses dans lesquels j'essayais de me piéger.

The two works on back pain that lasted for months: "Mon dos m'explose à la figure"
and
"Mon dos m'explose à la figure 2".

In the Studio, Dec 2022 and detail photos Mitchell und Monet. FLV, Paris, Dec 22

An exhibition I have seen in December 2022 during my own work on various series on Joan Mitchell: Joan Mitchell and Claude Monet in Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, France.

See here all works from my dialogue with Joan Mitchell: "Un Jardin pour Joan Mitchell".

Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, Dec 22 and Sur les toits de Paris, 1st of 3

My paintings deal with a feeling that comes over me from outside, from the landscape. … I would rather leave nature to itself. Its beautiful enough the way it is. I don't want to improve it. ... I would certainly never be able to depict it. I prefer to paint what the nature leaves in me. It comes from the landscape and is about it - not about me.

Joan Mitchell in an interview
Source: https://www.fembio.org/biographie.php/frau/biographie/joan-mitchell/

In the studio, detail photos, le parc in the evening

En journée et en soirée. By day and in the evening. The Parc des Buttes Chaumont in Paris' 20th arrondissement is one of my favorite places in the capital to be outdoors. Lying on the lawn and reading, people-watching, having a picnic with friends, going for a walk and climbing up and down the impressively high hills, the so called Buttes.

Here are the 5 pieces of the evening series "en soirée" as video with music by Erik Satie, the Danse de la Porte tournante from his ballet music "Relâche".

Find here some paintings of the series "Parc des Buttes Chaumont , en soirée" decorating a room.

At the studio, Autumn 2022, detail photos and the Parc, April 22

En journée et en soirée. By day and in the evening. The Parc des Buttes Chaumont in Paris' 20th arrondissement is one of my favorite places in the capital to be outdoors. Lying on the lawn and reading, people-watching, having a picnic with friends, going for a walk and climbing up and down the impressively high hills, the so called Buttes.

Here are the 5 pieces of the daytime series "en journée" as video with music by Erik Satie from his ballet music "Parade".

Find here some paintings of the series "Parc des Buttes Chaumont" decorating a room.

Children loose their virtual sense when around 5 years or 6 years old. And painters are retarded, they captured virtual sense. We keep the world visual. You intelligent people have lost that. I can teach anybody, anybody, to paint. Or to draw. But to make feeling in our painting is something different.

Joan Mitchell in the documentary
"Joan Mitchell - une femme dans l'abstraction"
arte France Artline Films avec La Fondation Louis Vuitton Avrotos
Autum 2022

You ask me why I put white or red lines. Or you ask me why I paint. I don't know. The moment you put that blablabla on, it destroys everything. I do not have any theory. I paint. Fuck it.

Joan Mitchell in the documentary
"Joan Mitchell - une femme dans l'abstraction"
arte France Artline Films avec La Fondation Louis Vuitton Avrotos
Autum 2022

Here's the music you can see.

I first heard Louis Vierne's symphonies for organ in Saint-Eustache in Paris, Les Halles in France. After I translated the five movements of his Second into a five-part polyptych.

Here are the 5 paintings as a video with the scherzo from Vierne's 2nd symphony.
This is how the series looks like in a room .

With Olivier Messiaen it all started with his opera Francois d'Assisi and his Cataloque d'oiseaux has become my preferred music when home. Over the years I've "painted over" pretty much everything Messiaen composed. For this collection I chose his Quatre Ètudes.
This is how 3 of the 12 paintings hang in the room.

With Marie-Thérèse, studio, Dece 2020

This little gem purely made of glass and light amidst the heart of Paris, 1st arrondissement close to the cathedral Notre-Dame, I discovered quite late after countless stays at Paris.
I never saw such a light, such a floating elegance and I never saw colours like these.
I did the quatryptich in autumn 2020 right after I visited Saint-Chapelle first time.

The little girl on the 1st pic is Marie-Thérèse, rescued from the flea market at Quartier Latin.

Painting 1

Painting 2

Painting 3

Painting 4

See the fully collection of paintings about L'art gothique

The Sainte-Chapelle quatriptych in a video with heavenly music by Perotin

In the summer studio, August 2020

Inspired by Francis Bacon. His triptychs, his red-orange, his topic and the great show at Centre Pompidou, Paris, in 2019.

Studies of the Human Body

Studio, September 2020

L’église Saint-Etienne-du-Mont: This little gem in the heart of Quartier Latin, Paris, 5e Arrondissement, is my new love till Notre-Dame de Paris has recovered. I am very in love with the warm light, the sonor sound of the orgue and the finest handcrafted yellow-white Meulière stone of Paris. I did the triptych in summer 2020 right after I visited Saint-Etienne-du-Mont first time.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Studio, September 2020

4 paintings for the anniversary of the great fire of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

With Andrei, Katia, Sascha and Jesus at the Opening

Löwenpalais! I like the neo-baroque venue in that bourgeoise hood Berlin Grunewald and the crowded openings as well as the New Year's reception in January.

This time in the show and in line with the xmas season with Infant Jesus himself.

The year before I joined the show with one of the Schneelandschaften (Snowscapes).

The little work Märchenwald (Magic Forrest) was shown at the 2015's x-mas exhibition.

For me, the idea of artist life is not tied to the melancholy of a bohemian. It's all about profit, that's how the culture works. I understand that, and so I do not feel like a victim. Overriding the definition of success bears witness to the naivety reserved for people with inheritances.

Barbara Kruger

Kunstzeitung, Germany, September 2019, page 15

At the large studio, August 2019, Installation: Pie Jesu

"Lili waited patiently in the Bluebird. She had used the time to paint her fingernails crimson." She asked no questions. What did Médine, Anna, have in mind? For her, it's just names, places like many others, forgotten, in a remote corner in the middle of the fields. Lili only knows the present, and that's why her owns everything. She can not lose anything, she does not need names to live, she just needs a roof, something to eat, and a little money to buy her nail polish and t-shirts."

from
La quarantaine by J.M.G. Le Clézio
Page 475, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne (Germany), 2010

Studio, summer 2019 (Musée Bourdelle, Paris, France)

Especially artists feel the wonder that we live. Everything we do comes from the deep desire to get out of isolation. We make suggestions to see if the other is reflected in it. For my work melancholia is an inner drive too. I know that a ship runs aground from time to time, and as many people I get less hopeful with age. At the rational level, I strongly oppose not putting my own inadequacy on the world.

Pipilotti Rist in an interview with ZEIT MAGAZINE, Germany, February 2017, page 54

Berlin, Germany, Summer 19

Life does not everyone invite to visit the place of his deepest and purest yearnings.

Berlin's magazine BLU, March/April 19

TALK OF THE TOWN
On the occasion of Gallery Weekend Berlin in April, Stephan Reichmann presents current works from his project "The Puppenhaus".

Stephan Reichmann:
"Yes, I play with dolls"

"Dolls are my favorite artistic source material, arranging, shunting, photographing, over-painting and alienating them, making them human or telling my stories of life," says the creative. I tell about birth, dying and death and the things in between like love and lust, pain, being quer and also about morality and sexism." He often comes to his dolls at his flea market raids. "Here I'm going to slander them, baby dolls from the 40s or 50s, but also Disney's Little Mermaid or Tarzan or Bob the Builder.
And what's up soon? "At the Gallery Weekend in Berlin Schoeneberg I have an exhibition with my partner Slawomir Cap, this is our second collaboration and this time it will be a mix of party and exhibition event.We show 30 portrait photos of dolls in double life size, plus installations, sound and video work as well as live performances. The exhibition is part of our large - scale project "The Puppenhaus", which means: 20 to 30 people - from the project manager, actor and interior designer to the barista and DJ will be involved in the complete 200 square meter exhibition space At the moment, we are mainly concerned with funding and talking to sponsors. Interested investors and other players are welcome to get in touch with us. "

Stephan Reichmann: "Almost Alive" - Photo Portraits, Video, Installation, Sound and Live Performance, Pre-Opening Thursday, April 25th 7pm, Official Opening with Playback on Stage, Friday, April 26th 7pm, www.stephanreichmann.com

Find the fully feature here

Februar 2019, painting in the background L'automne à Paris, pour Yesso

Does anything ever meet your expectations? I do not like the idea of meeting expectations. I love the anticipation, it is probably the most beautiful part of everything. But I do not think that certain things have to be checked off because otherwise the journey has failed. Anyway, everything is different than expected, and for me that's part of the discovery. Even if something less "good" than I imagined, I'm satisfied because I've discovered something new. Interview with Christopher Anderson

ZEIT MAGAZIN, (Germany), 26 April 2018, page 25

LVZ, Leipzig, Germany, front page & page 3, Aug 10 2018

LVZ Leipziger Volkszeitung (Germany)
Weekend issue
Saturday August 10 2018
Front page & page 3


DANCING WITH THE DOLLS – BÖHLITZER ART FASCINATES IN EUROPE

The artist Stephan Reichmann draws attention with extraordinary art throughout Europe. He associates puppets with painting and also addresses death and destruction in his works. For example in his picture "La Guerre", which is based on an original by Henri Rousseau
...

Read the fully text here

See here the fully article

Studio, August 2018, Susanne Gabler

In the seventies you did not have any exhibitions. It was said that you had stopped doing art for a while - is that true?
I always did art! But in order to make money, I had just taken a job as a teacher, in a primary school for boys in a socially troubled area. In the evening, when I had time for myself, I drew and slowly built up my own language. It's just not true that I stopped.

How long did you work as a teacher?
Altogether 26 years. I spent three years at elementary school and then art education teacher at a vocational college. When I turned 60, I immediately pulled the ripcord and applied for a pension.

Has love been a bit short in your life because of art?
It depends on what you mean by love. I had some nice relationships. But sure, the men kept going. They all had enough of me as an artist at some point. Most people want a woman who takes care of them. And I always said no as soon as I saw myself and my freedom threatened.


Interview with Chris Reinecke
ZEIT MAGAZIN (Germany), page 35, May 29 2018

Amsterdam, Netherlands, July 18, Shirt: René Lezard ca. 1989, Painting in the background

[...]
I have never been able to do much with the German way of making fashion. In Germany, everything is black and gray, and you think less is more. But I think that more is usually more. I like it gaudy and colorful.

If you keep thinking about what might hold you back, you'll never get around to trying something new. Someone once told me that he would like to become a illustrator, but unfortunately he has no money for all the equipment. I told him to go to Ikea, there are pencils for free.
[...]

Melissa Lee in ZEITMAGAZIN (Germany), Jan 23 2016

Amsterdam, Netherlands. Yeah!

Me here with two paintings in the White Cube (actually a black box) of the "Amsterdam Museum". The exhibition was part of the Global Village of the 22nd International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2018) with around 20,000 participants.

In line with the exhibition topic I combined the exclusively for this event created Les Fleurs du Mal together with Garden with Blue Terrace as a diptych.

The accompanying text English and Dutch

At my Studio, Leipzig (Germany), June 2018 Painting in the background

[...]

Starck: In my opinion, sitting will have been abolished in 15 or 20 years. From a medical point of view, it is a very bad position anyway.

ZEITmagazin: What will we do instead?

Starck: I do not know yet. We will either stand or lie down. It is certain that the sitting position will disappear. The table will disappear, the chair will disappear, all that is beyond question.

ZEITmagazin: Where will we eat if we no longer have a table? Where will we relax?

Starck: There may be a softer piece of furniture or something inflatable. The dormant position is not so easy to dematerialize. You can stretch out on the floor or into the lotus position. There are many other positions that are more natural to humans than sitting in a chair. No other animal needs an accessory to rest. Why do we?

ZEITmagazin: Maybe because we invented comfort?

Starck: On the contrary, I believe that man invented the monarchy. To demonstrate power, the king sits on a throne. His subjects kneel. Ninety percent of today's architecture and furniture are contaminated by religion, the idea of ​​a god or a king.

ZEITmagazin: Do you have any other example than the throne?

Starck: Today the houses are today built like small palaces. There is a beautiful entrance, a large hall, and all people dream of high ceilings. Why? High ceilings bring you nothing. They only provide for a higher energy consumption. But they are reminiscent of a palace. People walk through the Palace of Versailles with its high ceilings and say, "That's how I want to live!" Think of the horses and the modern car looks just like a carriage. Since King Louis XIV there have been no real novelties in the automotive industry, only technical improvements.

Excerpt of an interview with Phillippe Starck for ZEITMAGAZIN (Germany) No 15/2018 April 4 2018

Leipzig, Germany, May 18, THE PUPPENHAUS project, here: South Carolina Morning

"Beauty in art has become problematic"

Question: Even you have been accused of kitsch - because you paint beautifully in the classic way.

Triegel: And that's not easy to bear. Unfortunately, beauty in art has become something of a problem. But that is why it is perhaps the last taboo break of the modern age. What is the last provocation of the visual arts? Hermann Nitsch crucified pigs in the sixties. Jeff Koons can be nachkopitzen in Oberammergau copulating with Cicciolina. The papal portrait of condoms already exists. This is so banal, so boring! Because I am urged by such art as an audience in the role of Lieschen Müller, which should now be nicely provoked. I do not feel that seriously! That's kitsch for me.

Question: Why did the beauty come into disrepute?

Triegel: We only understand it as a surface. Advertising has also discredited beauty. We are always afraid that something should be sold to us. Only terror has value in art. When I represent the terrible, I am the true one as an artist, when I represent the good, it is kitsch. For me, however, the terrible and the beautiful are born in the same way.

Question: Does the kitsch reproach hurt you?

Triegel: Of course. As an artist, you give away all your interior. When an attack comes, you can not say, Well, they think your art is stupid. That questions you as a person right away.

Michael Triegel in an interview with Die Zeit, (Germany) December 21, 2017

Leipzig, Germany, May 18, Jacques, THE PUPPENHAUS project, painting behind him

For me, the difference between beauty and kitsch is that kitsch is not interpretable. Kitsch relies on a single emotion and uses this with the simplest possible means. Beauty is more ambivalent. It contains an irritation in itself.

Michael Triegel in an interview with Die Zeit, (Germany) December 21, 2017

Leipzig (Germany), Apr 2018, Painting: Garden with Blue Terrace

[...] It's not about luck. It's about understanding what grace has been given to me over the years. Whether my films are good or bad or no matter, time will tell, I'll never know. But having the opportunity to make them is a grace. A gift. Everyone carries cheerful and dark feelings in themselves. I do not know which of the two sides is ultimately more important to me to make my films. But what I know is that as humans we have to deal with our dark feelings. So again and again I go to the dark corners of my soul for my work. Sometimes I find back after that, sometimes not. When you ask for my luck, I say: There is nothing to complain about.

From an interview with Martin Scorsese
ZEITMAGAZIN (Germany) No. 12, APRIL 2017, page 26

Studio, Leipzig (Germany), April 2018 (THE PUPPENHAUS art project)

[...] Being a writer is a damn lonely job, and anyone who can not stand it is not made for it. Besides, I have learned not to compare myself to others. When running it only counts if I am at peace with my rhythm - not who is slower or faster. Many of my colleagues get unhappy when they compare themselves with others, who sell more books, get more prizes, or maybe get a better audience.

[...] Money was never particularly important to me. My grandfathers have lost almost everything. One of them just said: "Having nothing is a peaceful thing." Recently, someone asked me, "I am wondering, now you're in your fifties and you still do not have a condo?" When I replied that all life was just for rent, they did not get it. Whoever lives on writing, has to reckon with old-age poverty. But I can also cook something delicious just with carrots, shallots and celery. [...]

Eva Gesine Baur in an interview with ZEITMAGAZIN (Germany), June 2017, page 54

Making-of art project THE PUPPENHAUS, Leipzig (Germany), March 2018

Violence in the fairy tale

Even today, many fairy tale friends concider the fairy tales as the reflection of a beautiful, healing world. There are also some fairy tale opponents in this opinion, and for that very reason they want to deprive children of these fairy tales. Children should not be alienated by fairytale magic and fairytale idyll of reality.

But hardly anywhere else is so much beheaded, chopped, hanged or drowned and dragged to death in nail barrels as in a fairytale. There are no restrictions, practically everything is allowed. What one hardly dares to think about – the fairy tales present it unabashedly and with the utmost impartiality. In plastic and often drastic pictures and scenes they show the whole palette of human possibilities of violence, from indirect and subtle forms of violence to merciless brutal murders. The fairy tales do not care for morality, social norms, Christian maxims or the penal code. Violence is neither demonized nor praised, it only takes place. Thus, it is a home truth that violence constitutes an essential part of human existence.

from "Kopf ab! Über die Faszination der Gewalt im Märchen / Head off! About the fascination of violence in the fairy tale" by Carl-Heinz Mallet
dtv, Munich (Germany), 1990

Garden of Eden, Berlin (Germany), March 2018

I do not have to show anything.

I do not need to rated or to classified.

I don't ask for somebody's opinion.

I do not have to be new. Not surprisingly at all.

I must do what I want to do.

I want to do what I must do.

Leipzig (Germany), Februar 2018 - Painting: Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe

For the label Louis Vuitton, the artist Jeff Koons has now designed a bag collection whose design consists essentially in the fact that motifs of old masters were printed on the bags. The works are all familiar even to laymen and part of the iconic memory of society - like the colorful balloon sculptures by Jeff Koons himself. You could never have been barrier-free at the same time art friend and bag customer. One of the pictures that you can now hang over your shoulder is "The Breakfast" of Édouard Manet. It shows two couples camping on a clearing in the grass. Both men are fully clothed, in the background of the painting a woman with a gathered summer dress wades through a small stream, in the foreground a young woman crouches, who looks at the beholder - and is completely naked. Her clothes are lying next to her disorderly in the grass, the picnic basket is upset, fruits and bread rolls are scattered on the forest floor. At food, the sitter seems to think just as little as the viewer.

Manet had allegedly wanted to call the picture "La partie carrée", which can be translated as "Foursome". But even so, the scandal was perfect. When it was presented in 1863, it was promptly rejected for the exhibition of the Paris Salon, but instead at the instigation of Napoleon III. shown together with other works in a kind of curiosity exhibition. The nudity in the picture was as disturbing as it was fascinating for the people at the time. For if something is officially ostracized, it usually develops a wild life of its own in the imagination of people. As far as nudity is concerned, humanity has not progressed much. While a naked female body is considered harmful to minors in a movie, it is perfectly okay for someone to be shot in the same movie.

At the University of Göttingen, an art exhibition in the Studentenwerk had to be hung up after protests. It contained images of bared breasts and buttocks. So we're a long way from being so self-evident to the woman's naked body as he is now pictured on a Louis Vuitton bag. And it is still not clear who the female body belongs to. Are women who show themselves naked, self-confident, because they stand by their body, or do they humble themselves to pleasure objects of the man? This question is as unexplained today as it was a hundred years ago.

By the way, the lady who modeled for Manet left the moral of her time behind her during her lifetime: the artist Victorine Meurent later had a relationship with a woman.

"Nackte Wahrheit (The Bald Truth" by Tillmann Prüfer for Zeitmagazin (Germany) No. 48/2017 Nov 24 2017

THE PUPPENHAUS, Leipzig (Germany), Jan 18 - Painting: Die Toteninsel

[...] In the following, the director philosophized about the impossibility of understanding an actor in an interview: "Without a set, without light and scenery, an actor can not act." He can not speak, he has to say: Leave me alone." For the quality of an actor, it makes no difference whether he has spent a light-hearted or difficult childhood - only the love counts that he could trigger on the screen at the audience.

[...] "What shall I say? I am a shy narcissist." The profession requires a permanent openness: "And I feel it is pleasant, not always to be open." His fine lispering voice: "I would like to do much more, but in between I have to retire again and again from all these terrible people."

Excerpts from an interview by Moritz von Uslar with Franz Rogowski
DIE ZEIT (Germany), page 40, 4 January 2018

Making-of art project THE PUPPENHAUS, Berlin (Germany), January 2018

I hereby commit myself very clear to active nihilism, to collages and ambivalence.

Making-of art project THE PUPPENHAUS, Berlin (Germany), Dec 17

ZEIT: Twitter - How much are you on there?

Böhmermann: Always. My TweetDeck is the big control center. The world machine. And I use Twitter as a diary. Including fallibility, including things I think about: OMG, you should not have done that. But that will remain there anyway. Emancipation from coolness [...]

Jan Böhmermann in an interview with the German magazine ZEIT, November 30, 2017, page 46

Löwenpalais! I like the neo-baroque venue in that bourgeoise hood Berlin Grunewald and the crowded openings as well as the New Year's reception in January.

This time with one of my Schneelandschaften / Snowscapes.

See here the Announcement of the X-mas Show 2017.

The little work Märchenwald (Magic Forrest) was shown at the 2015's x-mas exhibition.

Making-of art project THE PUPPENHAUS, Berlin (Germany), autumn 2017

" ... If people would but leave children to themselves; if teachers would cease to bully them; if parents would not insist upon directing their thoughts, and dominating their feelings—those feelings and thoughts which are a mystery to all (for how much do you and I know of each other, of our children, of our fathers, of our neighbour, and how far more beautiful and sacred are the thoughts of the poor lad or girl whom you govern likely to be, than those of the dull and world-corrupted person who rules him?)—if, I say, parents and masters would leave their children alone a little more, small harm would accrue, although a less quantity of as in praesenti might be acquired."

Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray / Chapter V, Dobbin of Ours

Studio, March 23, east-german poodle from flea market Paris Marais, France

Intellectual base yes, intellectual superstructure no.

Studio, October 2017

"Today, the type of the gendersensitive brown-nosingers dominates, who does not venture into real life because there are too many dangers lurking. And because you can do too much wrong in an attempt to align yourself with the opinions and attitudes of the inquisitorial environment sometimes that a guy like Arno Rink would go through art studios to encourage the young men that it is not a bad thing to feel inspired by female body forms. You do not just have to feel stimulated by seminars to the genealogical language usage. Life is beautiful, enjoy it, Arno Rink would have sait to the students. His work shows the way of the man who is able to enjoy the future far into the future.Today, minorities are stylized into majorities whose needs we have to face, unless we want to branded as sexist or chauvinistic. This is a state that is not is acceptable in the long run, and not at all for art."

Neo Rauch in DIE ZEIT (Germany) No.38, page 47, September 14, 2017

Studio, March 2023, The project „The Puppenhaus"

The war of all against all is the daily business of "billions" of people who are "trapped in a social Darwinian nightmare" (Pankaj Mishra).

Dieter Thomä, DIE ZEIT (Germany)no. 33, page 35, August 10, 2017

Luzifer from the project "The Puppenhaus", background: detail of Pompeji

[...] ZEITmagazin: The title naturally raises questions. Why Conquistador?

Wolfgang Tillmans: I could say again, this is irrelevant, but of course it is also a clear choice. I think about the titles very carefully.

ZEITmagazin: It is interesting, at any rate, that everything you know about a photo or what the artist says about it immediately affects the picture.

Tillmans: Yes, somehow. So, 18 years after I titled it, I do not diminish the effect of the work when I say it is actually the name of the hotel in Puerto Rico, where I shot it. I am only mentioning this to show how irrelevant the real information is.

[...]

ZEITmagazin: Tuber is exactly the word - already one is with the vegetables.

Tillmans: And that's the great thing about making pictures: it's always completed by the viewer. Without origin and recipient, pictures are unrelated, so completely meaningless. Only by triggering something do they get a meaning, which is not always to be named with words.

ZEITmagazin (Germany) No. 23/2017, June 2017, pages 40 & 41

Studio, March 2023, series „Biostunde / Biology class"

"Optimal performance is provided to people when they see a sense of purpose in their work, incentives can be useful for moving people to do boring routine work, but the more intellectually challenging the activity, the greater the success depends on individuals and organizations to be flexible and innovative, so that more and more people feel the need to find an intrinsic sense in their work. Pink calls three elements that underlie such an essential motivation: autonomy - the ability to decide which tasks to be done when and where how to be done, mastery - the process in which one becomes versed in an activity, and purpose - the desire to improve the world."

from "Drive - What you really motivates" by Daniel Pink, from DIE ZEIT (Germany), No. 2, June 22, 2017, page 50 about Peter Sloterdijk's 70th birthday

"I have wasted a great part of my life looking for money and trying to get along, trying to make my work from this very expensive paint box which is my movie. And I have spent too much energy on things that have nothing to do with making a movie. It's about 2 percent movie making and 98 percent hustling."

Orson Welles

Gretel (Hansel and Gretel), Hall of Fame, Projet The Puppenhaus (Working title)

"I want to insist that the critic is also a creator, criticism is the late-born twin of art, because art also deals with other art, namely, the previous ones, and criticizes it by making it different in new works. The critique, in turn, adds new ideas and connections to the artwork. It is not parasitic but primary. "

From a review der ZEIT LITERATUR, No. 12, March 2017, page 43 of Anthony O. Scott's "Kritik üben - die Kunst des feinen Unterschieds", Hanser Verlag, Munich (Germany), 2017

Studio, March 2023

"Martyrdom, Alvey thought, produces a kind of selfishness."

from Joan Aiken's "Du biste Ich (Deception)", Diogenes Verlag, Zurich, 1989, page 296

Studio, March 2023

"If you're young, you need older teachers, when you're older, young ones."

Evelyn Gleenie

Wearing dad's Panama hat and with Sommergarten in the background, in the studio, June 2017

Studio, countryside near Leipzig, Germany, Winter 2017

Art-making neither let free oneself from its own mediocrity nor is it therapy. And certainly the result of this deperate action is not art. And yet it is not the case that only artists can make art.

Studio, Summer 2017

"...You as a writer will be able to portray the differences so much better than I can. How I look forward to seeing it all through your eyes. And the members of our family ... I'm sure you'll portray them all? That sounds funny! Will you write stories about us?
"Certainly not." Alvey secretly smiled at the naivety. Ordinary people couldn't seem to understand. that writers don't peck at whatever lies around like magpies and incorporate it into a story as it is. How could she explain to Isa, without offending her, that the delightful, comical, romantic story that was already taking shape in her mind about the everyday (though no doubt utterly captivating to her) doings of the Winship clan had the least to do, was allowed to have to do?

from Joan Aikens "Deception", Diogenes Verlag, Zurich, 1989, page 34

The recent Álfeimur series, Studio, June 2017

Studio, countryside near Leipzig, Germany, Summer 2017

"It is impossible to know whether God exists, and the Pope does not know that eighter." Faith was a gift, he had learned from the Jesuits, a desiderium desiderii, a longing in man after longing to believe.
Susanne Mayer in conversation with Heiner Geißler
ZEIT MAGAZIN (Germany), February 2, 2017, page 18

Studio, march 2023, project „The Puppenhaus"

"We defend the freedom of expression by saying the same thing."
Harald Martenstein, ZEIT MAGAZIN (Germany), 23 February 2017, page 6

Studio, March 2023, the project „The Puppenhaus"

"The new can not be determined in advance by thinking, but the new can only be made."
Christoph Menke interviewed by Thomas Assheuer
DIE ZEIT (Germany), No. 20, May 11, 2017, page 44

Studio, March 2023

The fundamental right to freedom of expression guaranteed in democracies is always just as great as this expression does not touch on the foundations of the respective state or system. One would see how little tolerable the rulers (governings) would be, if this freedom of expression was crossed a certain red line.
So or similar said on 3Sat, May 2017

In the studio together with the so far largest Coral Reef, Spring 2017

Studio, March 2023

"Nothing is more vulgar than trying to be unique."

Andreas Spiegl, Vienna, Austria

Paint colour on latex gloves: the series of four "Lennox Berkeley, Concertino for Flute, Violin, Cello and Piano, Op. 49 (1955)", RWV 471-03 till 06 in process

Studio, March 2023

Bauman's keyword was adiaphorization. By this he meant that technology makes people morally indifferent, blunted and desensitized. As soon as reason is merely a technological one, a pure amoral self-purpose, there is no reason not to declare other people to valueless objects. When technologies become self-sufficient, they become agents of ethical neutrality. They conceal the face of human beings, they prevent the immediacy of experience and stun the "instinctive defense of groundless violence".
[...] The "new power" no longer confronts the individual as a bureaucratic apparatus, but grants him all imaginable liberties. The postmodern regime of the managers filled the vacant control rooms with spontaneity, and now everyone must be creative, flexible and cheerful in any case - the "one-man mini-panopicum", the smartphone, gives a helping hand to everybody. In an "experimental process of self-discovery" and with principled faithlessness, according to Bauman, the citizens would have to be self-governing and, as if by magic, always do what the market demands of them. Thus the external constraints are transformed into the inner, and the glorious history of emancipation reaches its end. "Obedience to prescribed standards is today achieved by temptation and seduction rather than by compulsion - and the whole appears in the garment of free will."

Certainly there are new freedoms, but for Bauman these freedoms were highly ambivalent. They create uncertainty, they awaken the nightmares of the "failure anxiety" and lead to an "agony of the undecided": the present is a container full of unused and, above all, inanimate possibilities."

From "Das Böse in der Moderne", an obituary to Zygmunt Bauman, DIE ZEIT (Germany), No.3, January 12, 2017, page 47

Studio, March 2023, Marie-Thérèse from the project „The Puppenhaus"

"When he realizes that he is concidered by others as a a part of them, he feels that he is far from being part of them. That has been always the same. But it is impossible to escape and distant oneself permanently."

From "Messmers Reisen" by Martin Walser, Suhrkamp Verlag (Germany), 2003, page 161

Studio, March 2023

"I believe the art world has sold out itself. It's hard, but art is completely corrupted by money and a purely capitalistic system. The artists who are considered as very famous are those who produce mass and a hundred times equal work to meet the demand. Like Damien Hirst or Jeff Koons. I work alone. I do not want to have so many assistants. I do not more than just to be able to satisfy my needs. Artists today are too much impressed by the money and seduced by fame."

Roni Horn, ZEIT MAGAZIN No. 49, November 24, 2016, page 74

February 2017, Preparations for FULL MOON PARTY, RWV 460-01 till 05

February 2017, Waste of Colour of FULL MOON PARTY, RWV 460-01 till 05

February 2017, Preparations for FULL MOON PARTY, RWV 460-01 till 05

February 2017, Preparations for FULL MOON PARTY, RWV 460-01 till 05

February 2017, Preparations for FULL MOON PARTY, RWV 460-01 till 05

Studio, Depot for works on paper and collages, March 2023

"As long as I do not have enough money, no one can say he already knows how I stick by him. If I had enough money, you would get to know me."

From "Messmers Reisen" by Martin Walser, Suhrkamp Verlag (Germany), 2003, page 72

Piled: The Series BANJAR, ANITA - PRINZESIN VON KARPUTHALA and TORU TAKEMITSU - IN AN AUTUMN GARDEN

Studio, March 2023, overpainted photograph „Deutsche Oper Berlin"

"Should a woman, even when she is not into the mood, pretend to try to seduce her husband for her own sake? Slave work, marriage as a monotonous brothel."

From "Messmers Reisen" by Martin Walser, Suhrkamp Verlag (Germany), 2003, page 27

First of all, you have to forget everything you know about abstract painting or the artist. Because the best access is based on archaic, early-stage imaginative processes. Personalizations, such as children Project onto toys, plants or the weather, also allow abstract colour forms to live a life of their own. The more it becomes lively, the deeper the world of images appears, the more one can enter the mind and find your favorite place in the painting for the observation. Suddenly, the world of images seems so close that you can explore every stroke and every dab like a mysterious shrubbery or an insect nest.

From: Wie lese ich ein abstraktes Bild? Abstrakte Kunst – eine Anleitung
by Larissa Kikol art-magazin.de, 1 February 2017

Studio, March 2023, series „Levant sur Le Havre"

"Some like my Music. Others do not like it, but it was so with Beethoven and even with the Beatles. Some say to me, 'I do not understand your music.' I always say, why do you not listen something else, something you like."

Philip Glass in the interview

Studio, March 2023

"I could not understand that the behavior of the trader was the one of most people who would keep away everything that they did not want and search by themselves through an evergreen hedge of refusing answers but would it go on what would be able to push through to their profit."

from the chapter "Das Flötenwunder" of "Der grüne Heinrich (The Green Henry)" by Gottfried Keller, Paul List Verlag Leipzig, Germany, 1966

Berlin (Germany), January 2017
Studio, March 2023, basic material for the Wool paintings

" 'When I describe the world on its surface, I use a very realistic style, but as soon as I go deeper when I descend into the underground, my writing becomes metaphorical and symbolic, perhaps poetic too, I use two different writing styles, a realistic one the upper world, a metaphorical one for the underworld.' One can say: the upper, lower and inner world communicate with the neo-romantic Murakami as flawlessly as the engine parts of a limping luxury limousine. Yet he doesn't care for the modern narrative techniques of the introspection. 'I have little understanding of psychology and of Freud, and I do not care about it, but psychologists are interested in my stories, but I do not care. If you try to construct a story analytically, your vitality gets lost. You have to dream when writing. I can very deliberately and intentionally dream. If I want to see a dream, I see it. I just have to concentrate, and the dreams appear to me and then I just have to write them down.'

Excerpt of an interview with Haruki Murakami, Die Zeit (Germany), November 17, 2016, page 49

Wassergalerie, Berlin (Germany), Oct 2016

So sad about the end of this exhibition. I have never felt more comfortable with any other solo show.

And cos it was so special, here again all the chapters at a glance:
The Little Mermaid      Lily Pond      At the Pond      Mountain Stream      Snowscapes      Die Wunderkammer (The Cabinet of Curiosity)      Clouds      The Oversized Photo Album

More to see:
All about the show      The poster of the show      The flyer of the show

Gallerist for 4 weeks, Oct 2016

Deeply in love with a temporary job:
as an employee of my own exhibition at Berliner Wassergalerie

Dress pants: Sisley
Shirt: Uniqlo
Tie: Cos
Belt: Ben Sherman
Face: own
Autotimer: no name made in China

More about the show "KOMM BADEN! / LET'S HAVE A BATH"

Studio, March 2023, project „The Puppenhaus"

Not every lie is unloving (untrue). Not every truth is loving (true).

Day 12 of the show at Wassergalerie in Berlin (Germany), Sep/Oct 2016

In chapter 5 "Schneelandschaft/Snowscapes" of the show KOMM BADEN! / LET'S HAVE A BATH reveals the beauty of water in frozen condition. To the white, frosty, lonely snowscape Slawo has produced a highly complex, quadrophone   Sound Collage .

See here how the Snowscape was shown at the exhibition:
1      2      3      4      5     

Some more photos of the snowman:
1      2      3      4      5

Everything about the show

The poster of the show

The flyer of the show

More about the gallery and show

Studio, March 2023

" ... Was there a moment when she realized: I'm an artist? 'I can not say that to this day, I still feel embarrassed. (...) No, wait, embarrassed is not the right word, I'm more concerned with these stupid categorizations: you are this, you are that.' "

Taryn Simon, ZEIT MAGAZIN (Germany), No. 24, page 31, June 2016

Studio, March 2023, project „The Puppenhaus"

"You once said that everyone was looking for happiness and love.
Yes. But everything has its time. Love is a grace, and you get it, but it also goes. This is at least my experience. I certainly do not believe in the good in man. One can only believe in individual people."

Ulrich Seidl in ZEIT MAGAZIN (Germany), no. 24, page 46, June 2016

Workload for assembling and arranging: 1 whole Monday

For the WUNDERKAMMER (also known as cabinet of curiosities) I combined many smaller paintings, objects and overpainted photographs. This Wunderkammer can be seen more like an installation. Every piece was (more or less) a reference to the theme of the show: water and was exclusively created for that show in Berlin.
"Cabinets of curiosities (also known as Kunstkabinett, Kunstkammer, Wunderkammer, Cabinets of Wonder, and wonder-rooms) were encyclopedic collections of objects whose categorical boundaries were, in Renaissance Europe, yet to be defined. Modern terminology would categorize the objects included as belonging to natural history (sometimes faked), geology, ethnography, archaeology, religious or historical relics, works of art (including cabinet paintings), and antiquities. "The Kunstkammer was regarded as a microcosm or theater of the world, and a memory theater. The Kunstkammer conveyed symbolically the patron's control of the world through its indoor, microscopic reproduction." (Wikipedia, Oct 2016)

How the Wunderkammer has been shown:
1      2      3      4      5      6      7      8      9      10      11      12      13      14      15      16      17      18      19      20      21      22      23      24      25      26      27

Complete overview of the presented artworks

The poster of the show

The flyer of the show

More about the show and the gallery

Please wear gloves when page through

The photoalbum in an oversize of 50 x 50 cm with 200 pages and 275 color photographs from photo-editions from the years 2013 to 2016 has been created exclusively for the exhibition "Komm baden! / Let's Have a Bath" in the Berliner Wassergalerie.
It was made by a bookbinder from Berlin as a single piece. It is linen-bound, Hahnemühle paperboard was used for the inside and the typical Pergamin to separate the pages. The title of the show was hammered into the cover.

So wurde das Fotoalbum in der Ausstellung gezeigt:
1      2      3      4      5      6

Complete overview of all shown artwork

The poster of the show

The flyer of the show

More about the gallery and show

Studio, March 2023, depot for works on paper and collages

"When collectors buy art, often they want to buy a piece of the artist's image. The staging of the artist plays a major role in the art business, the buyer often desires the selected artists aura at the artwork and finally to transfer to oneself."
DIE ZEIT,(Germany), Nr. 37, September 1, 2016, Page 46

Sep 21, 2016

The chapter GEBIRGSBACH (SCHNEESCHMELZE) / Mountain Stream -Spring run-off the 4 paintings top left clockwise:
1      2      3      4

KOMM BADEN | LET'S HAVE A BATH
An exhibition in Berlin (Germany)
Sep 14 - Oct 7 2016

Together with a Wunderkammer, a cloud installation, an oversized photo album 5 chapters about the topic water are shown.

These art-works can be seen in the show

The poster of the show

More info about the show and the gallery

Sep 21, 2016

The chapter GEBIRGSBACH (SCHNEESCHMELZE) / Mountain Stream -Spring run-off the 4 paintings top left clockwise:
1      2      3      4

KOMM BADEN | LET'S HAVE A BATH
An exhibition in Berlin (Germany)
Sep 14 - Oct 7 2016

Together with a Wunderkammer, a cloud installation, an oversized photo album 5 chapters about the topic water are shown.

These art-works can be seen in the show

The poster of the show

More info about the show and the gallery

Opening, picture 2

KOMM BADEN | LET'S HAVE A BATH
An exhibition in Berlin (Germany)
Sep 14 - Oct 7 2016

Together with a Wunderkammer, a cloud installation, an oversized photo album 5 chapters about the topic water are shown.

These art-works can be seen in the show

The poster of the show

More info about the show and the gallery

Opening, picture 1

KOMM BADEN | LET'S HAVE A BATH
An exhibition in Berlin (Germany)
Sep 14 - Oct 7 2016

Together with a Wunderkammer, a cloud installation, an oversized photo album 5 chapters about the topic water are shown.

These art-works can be seen in the show

The poster of the show

More info about the show and the gallery

Making-of: The oversized photo album

KOMM BADEN | LET'S HAVE A BATH
An exhibition in Berlin (Germany)
Sep 14 - Oct 7 2016

Together with a Wunderkammer, a cloud installation, an oversized photo album 5 chapters about the topic water are shown. Here I fill the photo album with content.

Studio, March 2023

" ... und er hatte die Bildung und den Ton jener Tage in sich aufgenommen, insofern sie im verständlich und zugänglich waren; vorzüglich teilte er das offene und treuherzige Hoffen der guten Mittelklassen auf eine bessere, schönere Zeit der Wirklichkeit, ohne von den geistigen Überfeinerungen und Wunderseligkeiten etwas zu wissen, die in manchen Elementen dazumal durch die höhere Gesellschaft wucherten."

from the 2nd chapter of "Der grüne Heinrich (The Green Henry)" by Gottfried Keller, Paul List Verlag Leipzig, Germany, 1966

Preparation of the show Komm baden | Let's Have a Bath , Berlin, Autumn 2016

KOMM BADEN | LET'S HAVE A BATH
An exhibition in Berlin (Germany)
Sep 14 - Oct 7 2016

Together with a Wunderkammer, a cloud installation, an oversized photo album 5 chapters about the topic water are shown.

Here the object BLAUSTUECK / BLUE ITEM made of birch bark and oil for the WUNDERKAMMER

These art-works can be seen in the show

The poster of the show

More info about the show and the gallery

Studio, March 2023, depot for works on paper and collages

"Gordon Caters natural charm had been replaced by something much less attractive: (the) assurance that he would throughout his life among the winners, but not because of his character or other positive qualities, but solely because of its origin."

from "So soll er sterben / Fleshmarkt Close" by Ian Rankin, Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag Munich (Germany), 2007

Preparation of the Exibition Komm baden | Let's Have a Bath , Berlin, Autumn 2016

KOMM BADEN | LET'S HAVE A BATH
An exhibition in Berlin (Germany)
Sep 14 - Oct 7 2016

Together with a Wunderkammer, a cloud installation, an oversized photo album 5 chapters about the topic water are shown. Here the trial hang of the first model of WOLKEN INSTALLATION.

Studio, March 2023

"What ever the difficult question of how far the instrumental music could go in the representation of thoughts and events are concerned, as many are too scared here. You can be wrong certainly if one believes the composer would prepare pen and paper in the miserable intention to express this or that to paint or to say. But one does not propose random influences and impressions from the outside too low. Unconsciously next to the musical imagination often an idea plays a role, next to the ear, next to the eye, and this, the permanently working organ, then fixes certain outlines in the midst of the sounds and tones, which condense and form to significant figures with the progressing music ... "

Robert Schumann, Zeitschrift für Musik, (Germany) August 14, 1835

Preparation of the Exibition Komm baden | Let's Have a Bath , Berlin, Autumn 2016

KOMM BADEN | LET'S HAVE A BATH
An exhibition in Berlin (Germany)
Sep 14 - Oct 7 2016

Together with a Wunderkammer, a cloud installation, an oversized photo album 5 chapters about the topic water are shown. Here the trial hang of chapter 5 SNOWSCAPE. The 12 large paintings of the series RWV 143 and RWV 155 are accompanied by a sound collage by Slawomir Cap.

The paintings in detail:
down left      top left      2nd down left        2nd top left        centre down        centre top        2nd down right        2nd top right        down right      and   top right

Studio floor, Summer 2016, Ubud and Bauerngarten

Studio, March 2023

"... Security is a major issue in her live, especially in realation to money. In her home in Essex, where she lives with her husband and the three children, she let install a granny-flat to live of the rental income in case of need. 'I have made myself constantly worrying,' said Moyes. 'When a storm came, I thought that perhaps the fence is broken -.. and what it would cost probably to fix it so it went like this into my head.' ... "
Jojo Moyes in Welt am Sonntag, Germany, 19 June 2016, page 63

First layer for "La fauvette des jardins" and "Rainbow"

Tuesday July 5, 2016: Outcome of the "silent suffering" today is the large quadriptych "La fauvette des jardins" - an illustration of Olivier Messiaen's garden warbler from 1972 and the two large rainbow paintings.

The final paintings
Olivier Messiaen, La fauvette des jardins
RWV 415-01 bis 04
1      2      3    and   4

and

Regenbogen, RWV 415-05 & 06
1    and    2

Studio,spring2023, Sunrise in Le Havre, France

The effects I know for a long time, I have called it different but found out right now. So this is something I can start with. It is the "Silent suffering".

Midsummer 2016 with Ubud

Preparation of "Schneeweisschen und Rosenrot (Snow White and Rose Red)"

Studio, spring 2023, Sunrise in Le Havre

" ... Fox pretented he was admiring their works - the walls hung full of colorful paintings of fishing boats, harbors and coastal areas - and said goodbye, but not before she had slipped him a business card and told that they also took commissioned works."

aus "Die Sünden der Gerechten / The Impossible Dead" von Ian Rankin, Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag München,(Germany), 2013

Pictures of the exibition POP explosion ,Berlin (Germany),June 2 - August 28 2016

These works were shown:

SO EIN TAG AM MEER -
16 single paintings built as an mobile exclusively for this show and presented in the entrance hall
1      2      3      4      5      6      7      8      9      10      11      12      13      14      15      16

MUTTER UND KIND      GELBE SONNE      SCHWARZE SONNE      WEISSE SONNE      COMIC-BAUKASTEN     and    GEHWEGPLATTEN

7 FARBEN, 7 BILDER -
several single mixed media paintings built and shown as an mobile exclusively for this show
1      2      3      4      5      6      7     

6 BILDER FÜR ANDY WARHOL
1      2      3      4      5      6     

10 KREIDEBILDER
1      2      3      4      5      6      7      8      9      10     

ABEND   and    ABENDSONNE     

and last but not least

NACH DER ERNTE, ERSTER SCHNEE      EIN SECCO   and   NACH DER ERNTE

Click to enlarge: POP explosion

Preparation for POP explosion ,Berlin (Germany), June 2016

Studio, spring 2023 collage avec ink Bois de Vincennes

The ivory tower is not made of ivory. And on top all is occupied, just down in the basement, is some space available.

Berlin, Germany, spring 23, Object trové

Self-teached artists: Francis Bacon, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Robert Motherwell, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Adolph von Menzel, Carl Spitzweg, Henri Rousseau, William Turner, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Stephan Reichmann, Marcel Broodthaers,Nam June Paik, Paul Cezanne, Fritz Bleyl, Gustave Courbet, Yves Klein, Robert Delauney, Max Ernst, Dan Flavin, Vincent van Gogh, Erich Heckel, Piero Manzoni, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, A.R. Penck, Nicki de Saint-Phalle, Daniel Spoerri, Werner Tübke, Alberto Burri, Agostino Bonalumi, Turi Simeti, Rudolf Stingel, Emil Nolde

"... Macbeth's right, the human is a madman who scrapes on the big stage for a little hour, spreading, 'I am' roars and then was never seen again - but this one hour! That shows none to us like Shakespeare."

Peter Kümmel "Die Nussschalenkönige", DIE ZEIT,(Germany) page 40, April 21 2016

“It’s about the quality of the work, and it’s about, also, can you sell it?” he says. “Because believe me, that’s what artists want: They want their work to sell. It’s a big responsibility, because you’re their main source of income. So you’ve got to make sure you can do the job."

Larry Gagosian, The Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2016

"Mit flammendem Gefieder / With Flaming Feathers" RWV 403-01 till 05

"... Once my father organized a musical evening, to which he invited Wilhelm Backhaus and Moritz Rosenthal, who was a Beethoven and Brahms virtuoso, the other a gifted interpreter of Chopin. Father was excited to discuss about tricky piano runs with them. But they did not do him the favor. Once they had played, they put their heads together and palavered about the share prices at Buenos Aires Stock Exchange. They did not show any interest in music when were not playing. They talked all night long about the stock exchange. "
Sir Peter Ustinov, Achtung Vorurteile!, page 197, Hoffmann und Campe,Germany, 2003

Studio, April 2016

"... That this glorious hero of the seventies once crashes down into mush, and then he lies down and has his come back later with 'flaming plumage' that is indeed possible only when he was down before. Many writers ride through the deserts on drugs, to find the words that you cannot find into a store. "

Udo Lindenberg in DIE ZEIT (Germany), page 43, March 10, 2016

Studio, Spring 2016

"Believe me, not much is more oppressive than to reach the goal straightway."

Günter Grass

Studio, April 2016
with
RWV 398-05
RWV 398-07
and
RWV 398-04

Being an artist means to be able to do everything and to endure anything in return.

In my studio (March 2016) with RWV 398-05 and RWV 398-07

Good Friday 2016, the very first 2 "Bandaged Paintings" were created:

RWV 398-06 und RWV 398-07

Day 2 of the show

Live-Painting during the opening of the show FRÜHLING / SPRING 2016

with the 2 paintings
RWV 398-01 and RWV 398-01

Was soll man zu den Dichtern sagen, die so gern ihren Flug weit über alle Fassung des größten Teiles ihrer Leser nehmen? Was sonst, als was die Nachtigall einst zu der Lerche sagte: "Schwingst du dich, Freundin, nur darum so hoch, um nicht gehört zu werden?"

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Die Nachtigall und die Lerche, aus Fabeln, Zweites Buch, Verlag Philipp Reclam Jun. Leipzig,1961

"Ich Unglücklicher!" klagte ein Geizhals seinem Nachbar. "Man hat mir den Schatz, den ich in meinem Garten vergraben hatte, diese Nacht entwendet und einen verdammten Stein an dessen Stelle gelegt."
"Du würdest", antwortete ihm der Nachbar, "deinen Schatz doch nicht genutzt haben. Bilde dir also ein, der Stein sei dein Schatz; und du bist nichts ärmer."
"Wäre ich schon nichts ärmer", erwiderte der Geizhals; "ist ein andrer nicht um so viel reicher? Ein andrer um so viel reicher! Ich möchte rasend werden."

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Der Geizige, aus Fabeln, Zweites Buch, Verlag Philipp Reclam Jun. Leipzig,1961

Die eherne Bildsäule eines vortrefflichen Künstlers schmolz durch die Hitze einer wütenden Feuersbrunst in einen Klumpen. Dieser Klumpen kam einem anderen Künstler in die Hände, und durch seine Geschicklichkeit verfertigte er eine neue Bildsäule daraus; von der ersterm in dem, was sie vorstellete, unterschieden, an Geschmack und Schönheit aber ihr gleich.
Der Neid sah es und knirschte. Endlich besann er sich auf einen armseligen Trost: "Der gute Mann würde dieses noch ganz erträgliche Stück auch nicht hervorgebracht haben, wenn ihm nicht die Materie der alten Bildsäule dabei zustatten gekommen wäre."

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing,Die eherne Bildsäule aus Fabeln, Zweites Buch, Verlag Philipp Reclam Jun. Leipzig,1961

From the time before it become to "taste of honey issue" RWV 237-01

These works were shown:

Spätwinter Diptych
RWV 20-01      RWV 20-02

Der Garten Eden
RWV 295-01      RWV 295-02      RWV 295-06      RWV 295-08      RWV 295-10      RWV 295-11      RWV 307-01      RWV 307-02      RWV 307-03      RWV 307-04      RWV 307-05      RWV 307-06      RWV 307-08

Gebirgsbach (Schneeschmelze)
RWV 263-01      RWV 263-02      RWV 263-03      RWV 263-04      RWV 263-05

Seerosen - Vier große Bilder für Claude Monet
RWV 168-04      RWV 168-03

Seerosenteich
RWV 263-06

"What have you done with you, Edward, since I saw you for the last time?
Nothing, Henrietta.
That sounds very peaceful.
I was never big in doing.
She gave him a quick look. A strange undertone had resonated in his voice. But he smiled at her quietly. (...)
Maybe that's very wise.
Why wisely?
That you do not want to achieve anything.
Strange that you think so Henrietta, you which has been so successful. But it's true Henrietta. You're an artist. You must be proud of yourself, you can not help.
Yes, people say that to me often. But they overlook the most essential. And you too, Edward. You can not just decide to be a sculptor and succeed. Rather, it is one thing that you pressed, preys on your mind, haunts you - until you, sooner or later, give in. And then you have a bit of peace until the whole story starts again.
Are you longing for peace?
Sometimes I think it would be the most beautiful in the world to have peace and quiet. "

Agatha Christie "The Hollow", page 55, Scherz Verlag in Bern and Munich, 1991

"Let's take the 'Raindrop Prelude' by Chopin ...
This name is nonsense!
The sick Chopin in Majorca, it's cold, the rain slaps against the windows ...?
What is important is not the rain, his fear is important. Chopin was scared to death. This of course was not selling so well. With Schubert there are similar examples arbitrariness of publishers. "
"How can agree an audience to Chopin's magic when it is impossible to talk about music?

One can talk about his personal feelings. Unfortunately, a lot of people do not dare. In art, everything is much more natural than you might think. It goes without saying. It exists. The art is a parallel universe of reality.
Accordingly, the two do not corespond?
Not directly, anyway. Just as an artwork can not be explained by biography or politics. Art is something free that is inside. "

To further complicate matters, when I listen to the same sonata played by Sviatoslav Richter. From a Western point of view were Gilels and him antipodes. Gilels was considered the Local Food, a brilliant artisans. In Richter, however one saw the eccentric and great subjectivity.
Wrong, absolutely wrong. What's subjectively what objective? Music is always subjective. Also, I think it is not a good idea to compare two great artists. Why these two? What about Vladimir Sofronitzki? He was on stage abroad ony twice, once in Poland, once in Paris. Is he therefore insignificant? No! One writes something other babble it for - and what comes out, is repeated nonsense. It is the same with both East and West. The magic of an artist comes neither from the east nor from the west, but only from himself "

Grigory Sokolov, DIE ZEIT, Germany, page 45, Januar 14 2016

"CV yes, but as a novel. Writing is a game of exposure and concealing."
"Now you're finite and you do not longer distract of your life by a book. You do not longer expect anything, you just exist. This is the highest form. I have always admired women who look out of the window of a train as if the life would play there. "

Martin Walser, Welt am Sonntag,Germany, page 52, Januar 10 2016

Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, Germany, 2015

"Look around: none of all those you see, is here of their own accord. Of course, what I have just said, is the most trivially truth. As trivial and so important that you don't see and hear no more. Everybody talks of human rights. What a joke! Your existence is founded on no right. Even to terminate your life of your own accord they do not allow, these knights of human rights. Look at them all! Look! At least half of those who you see is ugly. Belongs beeings ugly to the human rights also? And do you know what it means your life to bear in ugliness? Even your gender you have not selected. Not even the colour of your eyes. Your century either. Your home either. Your mother either. Nothing of what is important. The rights that a person can have concern only trivialities, to fight for or to write great declarations is no reason!"

Milan Kundera, Das Fest der Bedeutungslosigkeit (La fête de insignifiance), Carl Hanser Verlag Munic, Germany, 2015 pages 124 & 125

In my studio with RWV 372-06

2nd Skin

"But you're limping." "In the valley, perhaps", Egger said. "On the mountain I'm the only one who goes straight."

"There are no lies before God, he thought, before a host already."

Robert Seethaler, Ein ganzes Leben, pages 41 and 34, Hanser Berlin im Carl Hanser Verlag Munich, Germany, 2014

" ... After holding an iron for twenty years the hands are no longer so supple. I am disgusted with myself when I think of it. Bent over a hot iron all day long. Just the smell of it! Sometimes when I think about it I am getting sick. Is it all right that a man stands bent on a hot iron all day long ? Why God has given then the grass and the trees? Have'nt Max a right to enjoy it? Do we have to be a slave our whole life - just to earn money, money and more money?"

Henry Miller, „Menschenfresser“ from „Lachen, Liebe, Nächte“ („Nights of Love and Laugther“), Rowohlt Hamburg, Germany, 1959

Jean Cocteau & Jean Marais, Georg Reich.

„ … The new generation of collectors looks for art which adorns walls and fills them, they search for the original, for the unique and not for the graphic. These are unique moves.“

Ernst Nolte, Hauswedell & Nolte, DIE ZEIT,Germany, No. 50, page 65, 10 December 2015

"... But are they, as creatorors of their own, already an artist just because of not beeing adjusted? Rather yet an original subsociety of which hardly an outsider understands what it does. This in turn puts the bodybuilding nevertheless quite close to certain forms of contemporary art."

DIE ZEIT, Germany, No. 50, page 66, December 10 2015

" ... If I would work for three months on one page, then perhaps I would achieve something comparable good. But I wanted [...]to be free of stylistic expectations. No matter if something is written good or bad. It is more important what is said. So I try to write fast and below my own standards, but closer to life."

Karl Ove Knausgård, DIE ZEIT, Germany, October 29, 2015

"... Just because of it some drawings of old masters give the beauty of a landscape in all its whole profundity, because nothing is imitated directly but because they empathize with the invisible of nature. Can you reproduce the mystery of the forest with measure the height of its trees? Does not its unfathomable depth stimulate the formative imagination?"

From Claude Debussy, "Musik und Musiker" ("Monsieur Croche antidilletante"), Eduard Stichnote, Potsdam, Germany, 1949

Showroom and office in Berlin (Mitte), Brunnenstrasse

You want to see the recent artwork and want to meet the artist for a coffee or tea please call Tel: +49 30 58883538 or

More images:
Picture 1
Picture 2
Picture 3
Picture 4
Picture 5
Picture 6

Find here all images and cntact details at a glance

" ... But if he (the artist, sre)sees nothing inside himself, then he should'nt paint what he sees in front of him. [...]"

Caspar David Friedrich

Creation process of the Blackboard chalk paintings

Studio, 2015, "Kreidebilder

" ... if you want to know what is the meaning of life, you have to look at a cat. A cat sleeping all day long. Since we know that the meaning of life is to live your life."

Ruth Klüger in DIE ZEIT, 24th of September 2015, page 52, Iris Radisch "Die letzten Dinge", Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek, Germany, 2015

Studio, 2015

"The whole life is an empty talk, while the angels sing."

Ernst Fuchs

" ... The enthusiasm of the environmental spoils the artist, and I am afraid that he becomes then only the expression of his environment."

From Claude Debussy, "Musik und Musiker" ("Monsieur Croche antidilletante"), Eduard Stichnote, Potsdam, Germany, 1949

"Es geht ihnen schlecht, den Menschen. Riesenhaft steht ihr Weh vor ihnen, eine große Mauer. Eingesponnen sitzen sie in staubgrauen Sorgen und zappeln wie gefangene Fliegen. Dem fehlt es an Brot und jener isst es mit Bitterkeit. Der will satt sein und jener frei. Hier regt einer seine Arme und glaubt, es wären Flügel, und er würde sich im nächsten Augenblick, Monat, Jahr über die Niederung seiner Welt erheben.
Es geht ihnen schlecht, den Menschen. Das Schicksal bereiteten sie sich selbst und glaubten, es käme von Gott. Sie waren gefangen in Überlieferungen, ihr Herz hing an tausend Fäden und ihre Hände spannen sich selbst die Fäden. Auf allen Wegen ihres Lebens standen die Verbotstafeln ihres Gottes, ihrer Polizei, ihrer Könige, ihres Standes. Hier durften sie nicht weitergehen und dort nicht bleiben. Und nachdem sie so ein paar Jahrzehnte gezappelt, geirrt hatten und ratlos gewesen, starben sie im Bett und hinterließen ihr Elend ihren Nachkommen."

aus Joseph Roth "Hotel Savoy", Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Köln und Allert de Lange, Amsterdam, Niederlande, 1964

"What a like immediately, you forget quickly."

James Heeley

Berlin, Germany, November 2015

Stephan Reichmann ||| BERLIN IM HERBST - EINE AUSSTELLUNG AN EINEM ABEND / BERLIN IN AUTUMN - A ONE EVENING EXHIBITION

8th of October 2015 | at the new Germany's headquarters of Booking.com | Behrenstraße 19 | 10119 Berlin (Germany)

List of works that were shown:

Photo of the show 1

Photo of the show 2

Photo of the show 3

Photo of the show 4

Photo of the show 5

Photo of the show 6

Studio, October 2015

Studio, October 2015

See here two already finished stories:

Schneewittchen / Snow White, RWV 360-02 und

Die kleine Meerjungfrau / The Little Mermaid, RWV 360-01

"... A certain amount of stage fright is normal, but I had too much of it. There are people who are very self-confident, but they are probably not very creative. Artist dare to venture into unchartered territory. The possibility to fail is always there. That's why I believe that many of the best artists are insecure because they do not know whether they are still able to meet the highest demands tomorrow. Anyone who wants to reach for the stars, can also imagine that you will not to reach."

John Cleese, Zeit Magazin, page 54, 27th of August 2015

"I believe that art is always full of the images of others, and it is good that we reflect each other. Once an image is public, it belongs to everyone. No one can own an image. You are responsible for it is not yours.

Marlene Dumas, Zeit Magazin, page 20, 27th of August 2015

In my studio, September 2015

Samstag, 12. September 2015: Schwarz, Sprachlos, Schmerzhaft, Warten
Sonntag, 13. September 2015: Schwarz, Sprachlos, Schmerzhaft, Warten
Montag, 14. September 2015: Schwarz, Sprachlos, sehr schmerzhaft, Versuchen
Dienstag, 15. September 2015: Schwarz, Sprachlos, Versuchen, extrem schmerzhaft, sprechend - die Schönberg, Berg, Webern Serie entsteht
Mittwoch, 16. September 2015: Schwarz, Sprachlos, Sprechend, Sich selbst beantwortend,Zweifel, extrem schmerzhaft, Hilflos, die Serie Daphnis und Chloe entsteht
Donnerstag, 17. September 2015: Eine offene, blutende Wunde, weniger fragend, Entsetzen, große Trauer
Freitag, 18. September 2015: Dieser große Schmerz, nicht hinterfragend,fast hinnehmend, große Trauer, Betäubung durch Arbeit, die Serie 354-01 bis 06 (Igor Strawinskys Le sacre du printemps und Pétrouchka) entsteht
Samstag, 19. September 2015: Dieser große Schmerz,sprechend, große Trauer, die Serie Ein Sommernachtstraum nach Felix Mendelsohn Bartholdy entsteht
Sonntag, 20. September 2015: Dieser große Schmerz, nicht hinterfragend,fast hinnehmend, große Trauer, Betäubung durch Arbeit, die Serie L'Oiseau de feu von Igor Strawinsky entsteht
Montag, 21. September 2015: Keine Änderungen, gute Gespräche, diszipliniertes Programm
Dienstag, 22. September 2015: Unverändert, Serie L'Oiseau bekommt Ergänzung durch Hintergründe
Mittwoch, 23. September 2015: Jeden Tag bleibt die tiefe, reine Liebe neu, was ist das Penelope Syndrom, ist das das Penelope Syndrom?
Donnerstag, 24. September 2015: Unverändert
Freitag, 25. September 2015: Unverändert
Samstag, 26. September 2015: Die gruseligste Nacht seit diesen zwei Wochen,ich will mein Glück, meinen Frieden zurück, Arbeitstag, alle Mozart Klaviersonaten mit Arrau für etwas Licht, ich glaube leider an nichts so wirklich, aber für Löwe-Geborene muss man sehr viel Stärke haben
Sonntag, 27. September 2015: Kontaktscheu, zurückgezogen, Schuberts Musik für Klavier
Montag, 28. September 2015/Dienstag, 29. September 2015: Ich gebe es nicht auf, ich werfe es nicht weg
Mittwoch, 30. September 2015: Befreit
Donnerstag, 1. Oktober 2015: Ein Tag voller Licht
Freitag, 6. November 2015: Das Licht ist aus
Ein Flackern auf Sparflamme bis Donnerstag, 14. Juli 2016, das Lichtlein ist mir beim schmerzhaften Ausatmen ausgegangen.
14. Juli 2004 - 14. Juli 2016
Seit keine Ahnung wann bis fortlaufend: Penelope-Syndrom

Für dich:   Liebesbrief

29. November 2016
So weh tut Musik:    Ewigkeit

04. Februar 2017
Liebe ist nicht die Summe der Eigenschaften des Geliebten, Liebe ist die Geschichte, die mich mit dem einen geliebten Menschen verbindet.

24. und 25. und 26. Februar 2016
Du meldest dich. Verlässt Berlin. Ich habe meine Chance nicht wahrgenommen? Das kann doch so nicht stimmen. Alles tut wieder genauso weh wie vor 8 Monaten.
Und damit rühre ich mir unsere 11 Jahre jeden beschissenen Abend noch schmerzhafter rosarot und weine mir die Augen aus von 34' 30'' bis 36'25'':    Recondites Essential Mix

14. Oktober 2017:
"Er hat sich den Fuß gestoßen, als er sich - mit Leas Hilfe - auf den Beifahrersitz des Lieferwagens hievte. Er stöhnt auf, und es ist ein anderes Stöhnen, als er es aussoßen würde, wenn er allein wäre. Nicht, dass er den Schmerz dramatisieren möchte, nur, dass er diesen Laut wählte, um ihn seiner Frau zu beschreiben.
Oder ihn seiner Frau sogar darzubringen. Denn er weiß, er empfndet nicht ganz das, was er für den Fall, dass sie ihre Vitaität zurückgewinnt, von sich erwartet hat. Und es könnte sein, dass er dieses Geräusch von sich gibt, um den Mangel zu verdecken oder ihn zu entschuldigen. Allerdings ist es ganz natürlich, dass er ein wenig auf der Hut bleibt, da er nicht weiß, ob das nun von Dauer ist oder nur ein Strohfeuer.
Aber sogar wenn es von Dauer und alles wieder gut ist, bleibt etwas übrig. Ein Verlust, der diesen Gewinn trübt. Ein Verlust, den er, selbst wenn er die Kraft dazu hätte, sich nur ungern eingestehen würde."

aus "Holz", Erzählung aus "Zu viel Glück", Alice Munro, Seite 293, S.Fischer Verlag, 2013

22. Juni 2018
Kein Tag ohne dich. Träume von dir. Immer noch und hoffentlich für immer. Voller Liebe.

Berlin (Germany), Potsdamer Straße, 2015

Summer 2015

"Reality is a construction you can awaken from"

Peter Høeg

Not to work politically as a political man, is a profoundly political decision. I am a politically.

"Between the months of April and July [...] Dinah discovered why it was that Lousteau had not triumphed over poverty; he was idle and had no power of will. The brain, to be sure, must obey its own laws; it recognizes neither the exigencies of life nor the voice of honor; a man cannot write a great book because a woman is dying, or to pay a discreditable debt, or to bring up a family; at the same time, there is no great talent without a strong will. These twin forces are requisite for the erection of the vast edifice of personal glory. A distinguished genius keeps his brain in a productive condition, just as the knights of old kept their weapons always ready for battle. They conquer indolence, they deny themselves enervating pleasures, or indulge only to a fixed limit proportioned to their powers. This explains the life of such men as Walter Scott, Cuvier, Voltaire, Newton, Buffon, Bayle, Bossuet, Leibnitz, Lopez de Vega, Calderon, Boccacio, Aretino, Aristotle—in short, every man who delighted, governed, or led his contemporaries"

A man may and ought to pride himself more on his will than on his talent. Though Talent has its germ in a cultivated gift, Will means the incessant conquest of his instincts, of proclivities subdued and mortified, and difficulties of every kind heroically defeated. The abuse of smoking encouraged Lousteau's indolence. Tobacco, which can lull grief, inevitably numbs a man's energy.

Then, while the cigar deteriorated him physically, criticism as a profession morally stultified a man so easily tempted by pleasure. Criticism is as fatal to the critic as seeing two sides to a question is to a pleader. In these professions the judgment is undermined, the mind loses its lucid rectitude. The writer lives by taking sides. Thus, we may distinguish two kinds of criticism, as in painting we may distinguish art from practical dexterity. Criticism, after the pattern of most contemporary leader-writers, is the expression of judgments formed at random in a more or less witty way, just as an advocate pleads in court on the most contradictory briefs. The newspaper critic always finds a subject to work up in the book he is discussing. Done after this fashion, the business is well adapted to indolent brains, to men devoid of the sublime faculty of imagination, or, possessed of it indeed, but lacking courage to cultivate it. Every play, every book comes to their pen as a subject, making no demand on their imagination, and of which they simply write a report, seriously or in irony, according to the mood of the moment. As to an opinion, whatever it may be, French wit can always justify it, being admirably ready to defend either side of any case. And conscience counts for so little, these bravi have so little value for their own words, that they will loudly praise in the greenroom the work they tear to tatters in print.

Nay, men have been known to transfer their services from one paper to another without being at the pains to consider that the opinions of the new sheet must be diametrically antagonistic to those of the old. Madame de la Baudraye could smile to see Lousteau with one article on the Legitimist side and one on the side of the new dynasty, both on the same occasion. She admired the maxim he preached: "We are the attorneys of public opinion." The other kind of criticism is a science. It necessitates a thorough comprehension of each work, a lucid insight into the tendencies of the age, the adoption of a system, and faith in fixed principles—that is to say, a scheme of jurisprudence, a summing-up, and a verdict. The critic is then a magistrate of ideas, the censor of his time; he fulfils a sacred function; while in the former case he is but an acrobat who turns somersaults for a living so long as he had a leg to stand on. Between Claude Vignon and Lousteau lay the gulf that divides mere dexterity from art. "

"La Comédie Humaine - Scènes de la vie de province, La Muse du Département)The Muse of the Department)" by Honoré de Balzac

Post-extended defintion of art: Not everybody is an artist.

Done: In front of my new Schaudepot, Spring 2015

New home for 1.000+ paintings (canvas & wood) -
my new Schaudepot, Spring 2015

Done: Me and my new Schaudepot, Spring 2015

Under construction: My new Schaudepot, Spring 2015

Under construction: My new Schaudepot, Spring 2015

Under construction: My new Schaudepot, Spring 2015

Under construction: My new Schaudepot, Spring 2015

Photo: Stroke & Electric Artcube, Munich, Germany, Collage: Stephan Reichmann

At the STROKE Artfair 2015 with this 2 paintings:

Gletscher 1
See here the Gletscher 1 (RWV 53-01)

Gletscher 2
See here the Gletscher 2 (RWV 53-02)

More about the STROKE

High Tea at Old Cataract, Assuan, Upper Egypt, March 2015

If you are English speaking please copy and paste the text into an on-line translation tool of your choice.

"[...]Es mag stimmen, dass ich nicht im Nichtstun existiere, sondern erst im Tun. Ich muss etwas hervorbringen, komponieren, darum geht’s. Um schaffen zu dürfen, muss ich erst Zeit freischaufeln. Das heißt aber noch nicht, dass dann auch etwas entsteht. Das hängt vom Glück des Augenblicks ab, und sicherlich spielt innerphysische Chemie eine Rolle, das will ich gar nicht leugnen. Aber ich bin nicht der, der das in irgendeiner Weise provoziert durch Zutat, sondern einfach durch Sein und Warten und dann Handeln. Ich bin ein wunderbar ungeduldiger Geduldiger.

[...]Eigentlich bin ich ein pessimistischer Mensch, der seinen Optimismus daraus gewinnt, dass er eine Strategie braucht. Deswegen bin ich ja meistens auch heiter und ausgeglichen, weil eben am Grund eine melancholisch-pessimistische Gestalt sitzt, die mir immer wieder in verhüllter Form erscheint. Sie ist eine Glücksvoraussetzung, lähmt mich aber nicht, sondern evoziert mein Handeln, ruft hervor. Aber ich muss mit ihr nicht hausieren gehen.

[...]dass jeder sein Maß selber finden müsse, dass er aber das Maß nur erfahre, indem er es einmal überschreite. Das, auf die Kunst bezogen, ist ein goldener Weg.[...]

Zweifeln Sie je, ob Sie auf dem richtigen Weg sind?
Rihm: Ja, vor jeder Note. Verstehen Sie, das Ringen mit dem Engel, das ist es doch erst, was die Kunst hervorbringt. Beim Komponieren versuche ich schriftlich, Beschwörungsformeln zu fixieren, um eine Situation zu schaffen, in der Musik erscheinen kann. Der Zweifel ist also nicht nur eine homöopathische Zugabe zur Verfeinerung eines Gerichts, sondern der bittere Grundstoff.

[...]Ich kann nicht überall arbeiten, aber ich kann fast überall konzipieren. Ich kann auch in fast jeder Situation über Arbeit nachdenken. Ich wache morgens auf und gehe abends damit zu Bett. [...]

Wolfgang Rihm interviewed by Herline Koelbl for ZEIT Magazin, Germany, February 12, 2015

Schneelandschaft (2nd from left)

One of 23 paintings of the series Schneelandschaft shown at the show MONOCHROMOSOMEN in Munich, Germany, April 2015:

See here the painting Schneelandschaft (RWV 155-09)

More about the show MONOCHROMOSOMEN

Some people make children some art to stop the death.

With the Nubian, Upper Egypt, Spring 2015

"What were the efforts availed with whom he has rammed stakes into the ground for 40 years? All were rotten."

Patrick Modiano, Der Horizont (L'Horizon), page 141, Carl Hanser Verlag München, Germany, 2013

"[...] He had made it a rule never to respond to the aggression of others, not to insults or provocations. Except with a thoughtful smile. [...] And finally, people were not that bad."

Patrick Modiano, Der Horizont (L'Horizon), page 21, Carl Hanser Verlag München, Germany, 2013

Travelling through Upper Egypt, Spring 2015

"[...] Rather, they (the artists) have appropriated a 'promiscuity' of styles that is a matter of course in music and fashion as a culture of sampling, remix and mash-up. [...]"

Die Zeit, January 8, 2015, Page 53

"[...] Today, in art it is usual to mix formless everything with anything it looks quite historically. [...]"

Dieter Roth, Die Zeit, Germnany, January 29, 2015 Page 55

As you wrap all years and with so much effort in a web of commitments, relationships and neediness. Until you are so narrow and thick wrapped up that you can no longer get out easily. Only by a cut with a sharp blade. To be almost naked for just a little moment, to look around shivering and wondering, for beeing real a little. And just to look for a new net straight after and to beg for taking it piece by piece under great promises. To be wrapped in this coarse mesh stuff again. It remains always the same network in just different colours. Its tightness comes from the number of its layers only.

"Fortunately, there are enough people who understand what art means - as an asset rather than to exalt itself ... The scene treated their works as sanctuaries. They want to keep the circle of those who have access limited. The art world does not want democracy ".

What is the difference between design and art? "Design is the transition from the existing to the preferred state of art. Art helps people to understand what reality is. It is not the intention to show what something looks like but how it effects on your mind. Let say it this way: If it comes to your attention it is art. If not than it is no art. "

Milton Glaser

Welt am Sonntag, Germany, page 65 14th of December 2014

"... So you would like to live, sitting on a piece of sidewalk that you own once and for all time ... People would come to pass, come back at any time, but you would be in your 'place to stay'. You did not fear eighter sound nor looks, you would no longer look for something. You would be ensconced in your narrow, well-sealed hut, and you could without haste begin to enjoy the long drama that you can only see in our own."

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, Die Sintflut, page 135, Piper München Zürich, Germany, 2008

"When fellow art dealers and museums note the artist, buy and exhibit his works, then it is art."
Eva Presenhuber, galerist

Not really a drama, but there was already Yuri Korolev's "Kosmonauten" from the 1982nd.

"Here fine intimate fuss, behind the scenes roughly Darwinism."
from "Unschöne Künste", Welt am Sonntag, Seite 38, 26. Oktober 2014

If viewing art allows exegesis rather than just reading, it has achieved its highest possible sense.

Art is not free. It is a product that offers itself for money. Altough not in the red ligth distict. Near my studio, April 2015

"I have no bad conscience to leave the mysteriousness."

Arnulf Rainer

"It's impossible to create the same thing twice"

Elaine Sturtevant

List of works, Chapter 4
4 of my paintings and I on penultimate day of the show Kunst Pur III, Galerie Wedding, Berlin, Germany, Autumn 2014
25 Years: The Fall of the Berlin Wall – A Peaceful Revolution Seen from the Inside

[…]The Fall of the Berlin Wall changed the world. With an exhibition from the Berlin artist Stephan Reichmann to mark the 25th anniversary, the Atlantic Grand Hotel recalls week-long high tension, which, when released, resulted in historic ecstasy.

In 1989, Stephan Reichmann was twenty years old. His youth, spent in Leipzig, chronicles the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Up close, he witnessed how the colourless No- vember gloom of the GDR slowly started to crack, letting through a firework of colour and joy. He experienced how the world stood still for days and, as if spellbound, followed how the colours interplayed – before they finally merged to become Black-Red-Gold and plunged into the multi-coloured glare of the Western world. Stephan Reichmann deeply absorbed all the nuances of colour of the “Peaceful Revolution” – from the first protests up to German reunification. With the distance achieved on becoming an adult and artist, he now tells the whole story of the peaceful revolution. His abstract paintings in oil neither clarify nor modify anything. Rather, they document chronologically the effect of external events on his inner self. Whether they have the same effect on the visitor too, remains to be seen. Reichmann does not want to give a new spin to the story of the Fall of the Berlin Wall – he wants to give it a soul.

“Novelty is not a criterion,” declares the painter and photographer. “Exaggeration is not a criterion. Kindness is not a criterion. Comprehension is not a criterion. Only emotion and excitement are criteria.” For “were abstract art just for self-satisfaction and afterwards ornamentation for some public or private space or other, it would be a pity.” Reichmann’s art wants to be a signpost to the viewer’s inner self – by means of the very personal history book of his exhibition in the Atlantic Grand Hotel.

In Berlin, Stephan Reichmann has long been rated among the artists considered “hip”. He does not need a paint brush for his works. On canvas, wood, cardboard or paper, they come into being solely through applying and removing oil paints – and through pure chance, which he deliberately stages in his country house studio. He draws his inspiration from everything: nature, everyday life, his surroundings. Any little incident can lead to a great story.

Stephan Reichmann has created the exhibition “25 Years: the Fall of the Berlin Wall – a peaceful revolution seen from the inside” specially for the Atlantic Grand Hotel. His abstract paintings are the latest in the exhibition series “Art as our Guest”. The Atlantic Grand Hotel would like to offer selected up-and-coming artists the opportunity of presenting the work to a wider audience. Two exhibitions a year are planned. […] The Reichmann exhibition then follows, opening (almost) on the anniversary of the wall coming down. […]

Published in the magazin Regards, page 6 & 7, October 2014

25 Years: The Fall of the Berlin Wall – A Peaceful Revolution Seen from the Inside

Introduction to the exhibition by Dr Katia David, art historian and curator, Berlin on the evening of 10 November 2014 in Bremen

. Ladies and gentlemen, dear Ms Carl, dear Mr Füchtner ,

Stephan Reichmann's Inside Views of a Peaceful Revolution is a personal statement on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Wall. Carriers of moods that find their expression in what is so wonderfully suited to it: in the form of non-objective painting. So before we get to the artist himself, I'd like to take a little excursion into abstract art, which quite a few people find a bit difficult to deal with. After all, people with a strong visual orientation are always looking for concrete images, symbols and motifs that they can connect with what they have already experienced. Non-objective painting does not serve this search, there is not really anything to "hold on to": Colours, contrasts, lines and shapes are mostly found without conscious depiction of objects and figures. This leaves some viewers somewhat perplexed, for they have to engage with the picture far more than superficially, which challenges them, invites them to let go a little, and not just follow the usual, the "picture", but rather are required to consciously reflect themselves or get to the bottom of a mood.

Abstract painting, as you may remember, entered the history of art about 100 years ago. Even at that time, a distinction was made between various sub-types: There was Neo-Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism and Cubism, whereby the whole could be non-objective in very different ways, from gradually dissolving forms that could still have a strong reference to the figurative or the geometrically oriented works of a Kandinsky or Mondrian to the famous black square by Kasimir Malevich from 1915, which was probably the most consistently conceived in its kind. Picasso and Matisse are two other well-known representatives.

Constructivism and Suprematism were based on the human need for further structuring and systematics and the individual naming of different approaches. In the end, however, the real achievement of the avant-garde was not that they "invented" abstraction in a wide variety of forms, but more to do with society, which now seemed ready to accept this kind of expression as a work of art. A development that also paved the way for works like Duchamp's Pissoir from 1917 and Beuys' Fat in the Corner to enter museums and art history. And yet: among the masses, there have always been reservations and fears of contact with abstract art. If a monkey could paint abstract pictures, such as the chimpanzee Congo, whose works were declared art and shown in an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London at the end of the 1950s, then, a few clever minds concluded, this was partly due to the fact that neither artistic talent nor craftsmanship were necessary to create them.

But that's probably not true either. Originally, art is a noun abstract of the verb "to be able" with the meaning "that which one masters; knowledge, knowledge, mastery". The expression "art comes from skill" is therefore correct according to the origin of the word. Art, of course, has something to do with skill, but the ordinary citizen often finds it difficult enough to distinguish a good technique from a bad one, even in the case of representational art. Almost comparable to the "experts" who are often no longer able to distinguish an original from a well-made copy. And it is this uncertainty that ultimately determines our art market today, which is gigantic and confusing. An amateur with passion may have a better eye, a better sense and a better technique than a trained artist, who may presume to pass judgement on that? One might just as well ask whether socialist standard painting is "good" painting because it is representational?

Thus, it remains the case that abstract art that touches us, that carries emotions, provokes, or stages a play of colours, is "good" art according to the result, because it communicates, lets us participate, brings us closer to the artist. And then it doesn't matter whether one feels reminded of this or that art movement, whether one thinks of Jackson Pollock and his "dropping and pouring" or not, what matters is that the art demonstrates political and artistic progress and freedom, in a now actually united Germany of democracy and the common colour flow of red-black-yellow. Stephan Reichmann's application of paint is correspondingly impulsive, although he does not so much drip and flow as work in pasty layers of paint with a palette knife. This results in layers and flows of colour, which he often finishes off with a thick layer of paint. This gives the works another very individual radiance.

In its origin, the whole thing is very traditional, namely classical oil painting on canvas, which attracted the artist because of its manageability, longevity and storability, but also because of its smell and feel. Series, such as the ones exhibited here in the house, are created within a few days by spackling on unmixed, so-called primary colours, and subsequently printing several times with changes of direction between the pictures. This often results in intermediate colours. All in all, it is a partially controlled random product into which the artist's handwriting flows through the consistency and selection of the colours, the sequence and strength of the application of the paint, and the total or partial removal of all or individual layers of paint. There is no drying in the painting process and if a convincing picture or series does not emerge within this time, a new start follows with the initial attempts as a basis. The decision as to when a picture, a series, is ready is made after days or weeks, as the case may be.. Only those works leave the studio of which the artist is convinced that they convey the mood he wants.
Overall, this is more reminiscent of the non-objective art of the 19th century. In many drawings, and also to some extent in larger works by William Turner or the symbolist Gustave Moreau, the otherwise very realistic representationalism dissolves in favour of moods that manifest themselves in diffuse colour fields that blur into one another. These works can probably best be compared to those of Stephan Reichmann, for they are less concerned with pure colour, a specific technique or geometric forms, but rather convey an emotional state, an aesthetic sensation. The picture becomes the transmitter of a feeling ...

Stephan Reichmann was not interested in documentation; he deliberately excluded photos, of which he has quite a few - painted-over photos of Mauerpark or Palazzo Prozzo, the former Palace of the Republic. For him, the series shown here are a journey back, into a feeling, into an experience that Stephan Reichmann expressed on behalf of many other East and West Germans. The 25th anniversary of the fall of the Wall marks a decisive turning point in his biography, for Stephan Reichmann was born in Leipzig and grew up on the eastern side of the Wall. He divides his story into four chapters with a total of 36 pictures, beginning with 13 pictures in black, grey and white that recall what he calls "tristesse", a life that had only small dots of colour that one only discovered after a longer and closer look. For Stephan Reichmann, the lack of colour, the grey and the few colours "in between" were characteristic of O-Germany. From his perspective as an Ossi in retrospect and in the view and effect of and on West Germans when visiting the GDR.

Almost parallel to this is the series "October and Autumn" with nine pictures, as colourful as autumn with a play of colours with which Stephan as a boy imagined the unattainable and yet so close West Germany. The overpowering, loud, noisy colourfulness of West Germany from the perspective of the East German - as an idea of the unseen "golden West" but also as he actually experienced it for the first time in the West after the fall of the Wall. This was followed, as we all know, by the fall of the Wall in 1989. Stephan Reichmann was just 19 years old. He experienced 9 November as a fireworks display and captured it in 10 pictures. Fireworks as an expression of the greatest joy and festive mood after the peaceful revolution and the fall of the Wall. Not fireworks in the usual sense - for the artist it was rather a night full of spotlights, full of flashes of light, a firework of media. All this is followed by the reunification with Berlin as the capital - in four paintings by Stephan Reichmann, of course in black-red-gold.

What particularly stuck in my mind was a term Stephan introduced at our second meeting: intercultural. You have to know that I worked for many years as a curator at Galerie Wedding, a municipal gallery in Mitte, which has "interculture" as its main focus. For me, interculture was always related to all kinds of countries: Peru, Finland, China or Portugal. It would never have occurred to me to apply it as a term to East and West Germany. But the more I thought about it, the more natural it seemed to me, and it's probably true that 30 years have left their mark and have been enough to develop distinctly different characteristics and mentalities. Whether the same language and the same nationality are enough to call the relationship intercultural is something everyone has to decide for themselves. In any case, the fact is that Stephan was born in Leipzig and I was born in West Berlin. So each of us grew up on one side of the Wall and thus more or less represents a part of Germany. Let's just see if we are really so different - I'll just ask Stephan a few questions about him and his work.

Kannst Du Dich noch erinnern, was Du am 9. November 1989 in der Nacht gemacht hast? Was waren das für Gefühle?
Stephan Reichmann (SR): Ich habe es erst am nächsten Morgen erfahren. Also heute auf den Tag genau vor 25 Jahren. Es war ja vor 25 Jahren nicht so - weder bei mir im Osten, noch bei dir im Westen – dass wir unsere News quasi in Echtzeit getwittert oder gefacebooked oder per Whats-up oder SMS bekommen hätten. Ich weiß noch sehr genau, dass ich die Nachricht gar nicht begriffen habe. Geglaubt schon, es gab ja gerade in Leipzig in den Monaten und Wochen zuvor schon eine Protestbewegung von Hunderttausenden Menschen, tausende sind über Ungarn und Prag nach Österreich und die Bundesrepublik geflohen. Nur war die Mauer in meinem Kopf immer eine so unverrückbare und unverschämte Tatsache, dass ich nicht verstehen konnte, wie dieses „Jahrhundertbauwerk“, diese lebenslängliche „Unfreiheit“ plötzlich „gefallen“ sein sollte für alle und eben auch für mich.

Why is the colorful series, as you imagined West Germany, called "October" and not, for example, Spring? I always associate autumn with something like "the end", "last chapter" just before the freezing cold of winter.
SR: The colorful series, Chapter 2 of the exhibition, shows so much color and images in these colors for a special reason. You interpreted it correctly at the beginning, it is this excessive colourfulness of the West that has always made East Germans like me so impressed and full of longing. A color that I not only knew from Bravo posters, Persil boxes or plastic bags from Hertie and Kaufhof, but also saw, smelled and felt exactly the same when I was with you in your part of Berlin for the first time. And so, for me, autumn 89 not only symbolizes the season just before winter, the end and transience as it does for you, but the rich yellow, green and, above all, red tones stand for an autumn that I like just as intensively and colorfully experienced and remembered.

Did you then discover the colorful things from the “October” series in the west? When did you first come to West Germany and what was the first thing you did?
SR: Yes, that's how I experienced it too. Just as colourful, just as bright, just as fragrant and just as full of promise. Anyway, I never believed in this cliché of “everything is great in the west and made of gold and in the east everything is just grey”. However, I felt that it was my natural right to be part of the other Germany, and it felt right from the very first moment to drive from Leipzig to Berlin and dive under the Wall at Friedrichstrasse station and get away from it all to let the U6 go to West Berlin. I came for the first time on the weekend after the Wall came down, first of all I had my West Berlin family chauffeur me across the Kudamm at night, I ate a huge bowl of mussels with lots of garlic and white wine at the Portuguese and I bought fluffy at Bolle -soft toilet paper, a bright red coffee maker and a red rose for my host mom. Roses in the middle of November, there was simply nothing like that in the east, and suddenly I could get them in every flower shop on every corner - unbelievable.

What bothered you the most in the East and what was the greatest hope for you when you set off?
SR: What I liked least about East Germany was this lack of freedom in the literal sense. Even as a child, I couldn't accept that freedom of expression and personal initiative should be something reprehensible. I also couldn't understand why my urge for change, improvement and self-realization was equated with system criticism and revolutionary thinking. I didn't know at that age that a regime is fundamentally based on this kind of paternalism and restriction. I didn't have any hopes for "Aufsetz" and "Fall of the Wall". At the age of 19, I took it for granted what happened to me and I was just happy that I was allowed to create my life the way I always thought I was entitled to. It has always wanted to be responsible for my own successes and my failures.

What did reunification bring you personally? Are you disappointed, satisfied? There are always two sides of the same coin and there is certainly a lot that could be improved in West Germany too. Looking back, is there anything that you are missing from the old system and from which everyone could have benefited positively?
SR: I'm definitely still a critic of the systems today. Both the past communist and our democratic-liberal-capitalist system. Today I'm almost happy to know both sides and thus have a greater sensitivity to the sensitivities in both East and West.

If a collector is a mediocre one when he collects art that exists already, then logically would be an artist who makes art that exist already, be a mediocre artist?

The opposite of not have to go on is not a standstill. I make use of what is available to me. This is neither copy nor quote.

based on "Er hatte alle Kostüme im Schrank", Welt am Sonntag, Aug 17 2014, page 45

" ... It is remarkable that the letters of lively Salomé were much longer and more verbose than mine, perhaps here and there a little pedantic. She was predisposed educational, I was not, she wanted to act and teach, and so commendable this is, came, I believe, my unintentionally written letters were more amusing ..."

Ricarda Huch, Frühling in der Schweiz

September 2014: After Seerosen/Water Lilies, RWV 168-03 and 168-04, series of paintings i.e. RWV 243, 244, 245, 247, 248, 249 and 250 and even the former Plus and Minus paintings (RWV 154-01 and 02) I proudly announce herewith my patent for the pure wool paintings to the art world.

I could be Robert Janitz.

Me in my studio, Summer 2014

Emotional states can only be expressed artistically, if they were once felt and entirely accepted.

Renewal needs the recourse.

Me in my studio, Summer 2014

The art-making does'nt makes me automatically humiliating, but enables me.

To engage in art through non-knowledge is very souvereign and paradoxically requires knowledge.

Ten gray and blue six notebooks. A several volumes diary and conglomeration of the last two decades of life of Richard Strauss quoted in the style of stream of consciousness from 1929 till 1949.

In the studio, July 2014

Me in the studio, July 2014

Summer 2014

Heiligendamm, Ostsee, Germany, July 2014. One of the very little longings for a place to be.

"The outside world is not really focused on the art and on what is important to it ... The last thing I want is to surround myself with works that I have already done. In the studio I see them every day ... I'm get up at seven [...] I have breakfast, then I'm here in the studio from 9 till 5 or 6. Then I go back home."

Jeff Koons, Die Zeit, No. 27 , page 45, June 26 2014

"Genius and idiocy are close together", Sean Scully.

The two most surprising coincidences in just three weeks. First, Wald und Berge, a series of 17 small-format paintings with disorderly changes of direction in the processing of the subject. Second, when "discarded" the unloved acrylic after displeasure I was thereby gifted with the currently only satisfying way of doing Römische Bilder.

In the studio, May 2014

In the studio, May 2014

Full of tears more then I can manage. Partly compensated by Nocturnes Op. 9, 1-3 and Dämmerung. The peace in between consumed by Große Bilder einer Landschaft 1-4, An einem Tag im zeitigen Sommer sitze ich unter einem Baum und schaue auf einen kleinen Teich 1-3 and Große Bilder einer Landschaft Diptych.

"The Eau Parfumee au thé vert by Bulgari contains no tea, Un Jardin sur le Nil by Hermès no mangoes and Terre d'Hermès no Silex, and yet the audience has all this 'perceived'." - "Der geträumte Duft" ("Journal d'un parfumeur") by Jean-Claude Ellena, Insel Verlag Berlin, Germany, 2012

The ascents and declines are mediocre and more tolerable. Time and power are still not enough for so many things. The more creates, the more remains to do. This book is over and over again supplemented by another and another one side and probably not finished before it is shut one day. After all, the situation creates some space for Level two. Such a brittle term suits the nature of brusque puffery, which is probably more heard than sun-flowery Salon-talk. Happy additions would be so much nicer than strategic business that make me just shame.

What seems so tempting for outsiders and can transfigure wonderful with the necessary distance is in the real reality often close to the limit of endurance. And the choice is not a choice.

VatVatican City (Venturino Venturi), April 2014

3rd Show in Berlin, Series "Seasons", with Vernissage for Kids

Art comes from art. And not out of nowhere. Appropriation Art is art. And indeed art is a desire more than just fun. Abstraction is as truthful and objective as poetry in comparison to the novel.

I used to buy records, when CDs were very common. I do not want to sterilize anything between Aludibond and acrylic glass and make it fake brilliant this way.

Anselm Reyle, you are doing it as well, only in reverse. Very strong impression.

"The poor have a day trip to oblivion occasionally, but only the rich can afford their own villa there." Will Self, Dorian, Viking a division of Penguin Group, London, 2002

Whenever the philosophical gyroscopes around my biotope and myself has reached the appropriate spin speed, I collect what is pressed from the drum of my washing machine with a always kept ready floor cloth (canvas, etc.). For my brain washes I do not use softener. Also, I use to wash by myself and am completely without distractions. I use to wash often and thoroughly. Some things will be unfortunately never really clean again. But I hardly do not throw away anything. Even discarded I collect somewhere. My washing machine I constructed myself and for that I looked at a wide variety of devices over the years. Industrial espionage, I would still not call it. Even for irons and sewing machines I was interested in doing, without which I could really use this, however, but I like what you can do with it.An addendum (2 weeks later, 3rd of February 2014 at 3:30 in the morning) I think I've realized that there is a "washing" mania. A daunting realization if and because this acts on the basis of the inclusion of the facing my 25 years of life before. So at least the producer understands the third season after a few episodes, what it "with everything" is all about. For the following episodes he no longer needs to ask why and why that way.

dOCUMENTA 13, Karlsaue, Kassel, Germany, summer 2013

My sketchbook for the upcoming documenta 14 in Kassel, Germany, in summer 2017 First note: January 8, 2014 +++

for more info click on "deutsch" top rigth on this website, scroll to this entry and copy and paste the text into a translation tool of your choice.

Finishing of the cycle Schneelandschaft, years 2013 and 2014, here detail of Schneelandschaft 150 x 100 cm, RWV 156-04

Studio 2

Studio 1

Contemporary art is not necessarily the same as art for the market. But if, there are various reasons. Anyway, there are also in the art, the art industry and the art market hardly something to which the defintion of prostitution could not work.

"Although I know that the camera lies, I think to the idea of a photographic truth", Wolfgang Tillmans, Kunstzeitung, page 11, March 2013

"What chance is there that any book will make its way among this multitude? And the successful books are but the successes of a season. Heaven knows what pains the author has been at, what bitter experiences he has endured and what heartache suffered, to give some chance reader a few hours' relaxation or to while away the tedium of a journey. And if I may judge from the reviews, many of these books are well and carefully written; much thought has gone to their composition; to some even has been given the anxious labour of a lifetime. The moral I draw is that the writer should seek his reward in the pleasure of his work and in release from the burden of his thougth; and, indifferent to augth else, care nothing for praise or censure, failure or success", W.S. Maugham, "The Moon and Sixpence", Penguin Books, 1952

"Climbing to the heights of abstract art ... weary and full of agony ... but exhilarating. The familiar is getting further and further back ... deeper and deeper sink the contours of the objective, and so it goes step by step, until finally the world of representational terms - 'everything we had loved - and of what we used to lived' is going invisible", Kazimir Malevich "The Non-representational World", page 66, Bauhausbuch 11, published by Hans M. Wingler, Mainz/Berlin 1980

"With this fear of failure I have battled during my whole career. It is not fun at all even it makes you extremely focussed" ,Christoph Metzelder, Die Zeit N°47, 14th of November 2013

Preparation for Kinderspielplatz 2

"They call it art afterwards, you know", Philip Guston

So often was something I was afraid of afterwards nothing I needed to be afraid of. And often it was even my salvation.

Renoir, Twombly, Turner, Rebecca Horn, Arnulf Rainer, Joan Mitchell - you all knocking on my door. You all are very welcome. You all are my dearest guests.

With the collages, studio, October 2013

If abstraction only self-sufficiency and later then decoration for any public or private spaces, it would be a shame . It wants to be Slow Food as children use to dream a story, and a guide into the viewer's mind.

Rome, October 2013

"Some days I cannot paint since the lack of inspiration. I tidy up then or work on my picture frames. Its that kind of work you do not need much creativity but has to do somehow", Claus Hipp, Welt am Sonntag No. 39, 29 September 2013

"Some people like my art. And some hate it. This doesn't mean nothing to me. I do what I do", Fernando Botero. A statement with no rough edges like his art.

Rome, October 2013

Human behaviour is very similar to that of animals. It must be so since human being are no more or less than animals.

My technical understanding is on the level of a wagtail. That part of my brain does eigther not exist or not activatable. (Noticed during working on my very first screen-print edition and pre-press of a accompanying flyer for my first show)

New is not an assumption. Exaggeration resp. supercharching is not an assumption. To like is not an assumption. Consinstency is not an assumption. The ability to classify and the inability to classify are nor assumptions. To reflexive or the refusing of reflection are not assumptions. Not to understand it not an assumption. Emotion and excitment are assumptions.

Badende Triptych, 2007, Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 cm

"To understand the work of an artist biographical details can contribute only to a limited ..." interview with DER SPIEGEL August 15 2005, No. 33/2005 http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-41429248.html

Figurative painting 2006 till 2012 - See all works here

I am no longer too young to be allowed to find peace and not so old to be able to find her.

If I could make visible what Striggio has made ​​audible in his music. I want to show the invisible.

All grows in an environment of exact otherness. The proximity to my peers would be intellectual incest. But where would I be without my peers?

Wide, so wide the beginning is behind me and yet always starts everything at the beginning.

My pictures are suited to hide behind them, but they leave me standing there completely naked.

Così fan tutte - from this knowledge initially justified my speechlessness and following the storytelling with the ability of my own visual language.

I am as much as a man as Meret Oppenheim was a woman.

To impute to me, my work was economically motivated, is absolutely justified. However, this economic motivation is only enough to nourish me and my art work the next 5 to 50 years well and easily rest.

For me every day without art is a day of highest happiness. A day of spiritual grounding and refreshment. I don't give up hope on such a day.

A festival service: The Making of Art (Schirn Kunsthalle, FFM 2009) - With small, greasy cherry on the cake of Christian Jankowski's Art Market TV in 2008 and William Powhidas Studio Calendar of 2006.

In 2063 I will be as old as Maria Lassnig is today.

Max Ernst, what a Ausprobierer (try and error) on all fields!

My work and I don't need artistic bloating - neither with any senseless add of anything nor a too much motivated omission of whatever.

In strong moments, I am my harshest critic, in weak full of admiration and praise.

In the know instead of in the show. No signature on my work. Who knows ...

Eloquence, wordplay, great commonality in thinking of feeling, feeling thinking: Friedrich Nietzsche

When my head blows up, I produce.

Yves Klein and his Blue? Splendid. His stories crafted in gold? Wonderful. My first conscious encounter with Gerhard Richter? His Eight Grey at German Guggenheim in Berlin. The colors of the Renaissance? So beautiful!

"The art awakens a sense of the beauty of things." from Dans la Maison by François Ozon

The application of oil on canvas, wood or paperboard is satisfying like plastering a wall or painting a garden bench. I can remember far in my childhood, it has never been different. The feeling of happiness at work and right after it is done, is the Most.

Favorite colors: White, Red, Black, Green, Blue, Orange, Yellow, Brown, Purple, and everything in between.

"If you are going to decide to be a painter, you have to decide that you are not going to be afraid of making a fool of yourself" Francis Bacon (Master of Triptychs that have made mainly because only a maximum size of canvasas did fit through the staircase of his little house. I also have a small staircase. Therefore canvasas of a maximum size of 150 x 100 cm my narrow stairs up and down. 2 Diptychs of this size I already have.

Flat goods. My work is not that flat and they are not goods before they are displayed here or somewhere else for meat inspection. How I wanted to work so very different primarily, less conventional. Where are the altars and wild material battles, the scents, the show, champagne and fireworks. Hey! I just do the things I need to do. Today, flat, tomorrow cheeky and tomorrow even flatter, maybe. Maybe also different.

I love my urban & countryside rotation. In my studio, I produce, in the city I do all the other necessary stuff to run my business.

"Is it art or is it for the bin?" A running gag, and yet will not be dead

"So you want to be an artists, want you? Then first of all beautiful make a nice portrait of grandma!" It was not like this in my case, but it shows so perfectly, what requirements you first of all have to achieve if you want to make proper art afterwards.

Smell at the pictures, touching them, even what they're made. If they are locked behind glass and decorated frames around them, they would just be visible.

Indeed it is hard work - physically and mentally - so it evolved by itself and coincidences are possible.

The inner "go" for Sommerbild 2, studio, March 2013

2 "Sommerbilder / Summerscapes", the very first time big canvasses

Heroes? Gunter Sachs. Marcel Reich-Ranicki. Yves Saint-Laurant. Rosa Luxemburg. David Bowie. Irm Hermann. William Shakespeare. Christoph Schlingensief. Wolfgang Beltracchi. Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Hildegard Knef. Vicco von Bülow. Diana Frances Spencer. Joseph Cornell. Walt Disney. Charles Aznavour. Michael Ballhaus. Udo Lindenberg. Muhammad Ali. Udo Jürgens. Henry Miller. Roger Ballen. Jordan. Sebastian Guggolz. Dame Vivienne Isabel Westwood. Venezuela's Green Cross. Orson Welles. Prof. Gerhard Trabert. Marcus Imhoof. Libby Schaaf. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. Agnès Varda. Uta Ranke-Heinemann. Mikhail Gorbachev. Hanna Schygulla. Gerhart Baum.

" ... Maupassant prevents his portrait appears in a series about famous writers ,The private life of a man and his face does not belong to the public.' Hermann Broch about himself , about Musil, Kafka: ,The three of us have no actual biography.' this does not mean that their lives would not run eventful , but that was not intended to be highlighted to be public, to be bio-graphy. Karel Capek is asked why he does not write poetry. His answer: 'Because I so terribly reluctant to speak about myself.' The mark of the true novelist: He does not like to speak about himself. 'I hate to stick my nose in the precious lives of great writers, and never a biographer will lift the veil over my private life', says Nabokov. Italo Calvino warns: He would never say something about his own life. And Faulkner wishes, 'redeemed as a human being, to be passed over by history and to leave no trace in it, except the printed books'. (Mind you printed books , so no unfinished manuscripts, no letters, no diaries). According one famous metaphor the novelist destroys the house of his life to build another with the stones: the house of his novel. It follows that the biographer of novelist tear down what the novelist has built up, they restore what he has eliminated. From their point of view of art completely negative work can be seen neither the value nor the sense of a novel. In the moment when Kafka attracts more attention as Joseph K., starts the process of Kafka's posthumous death." The Art of the Novel(L'art du Roman),(1986), this part translated by myself based on Milan Kundera, Die Kunst des Romans, pages 181 and 182, Fischer Taschenbuchverlag, Frankfurt, Germany, March 2010