If you are an artist, everything is a possible influence. The world is full of strange and fascinating things — these create disappearing images, and art is trying to keep some of those images for the future.
I keep emphasising that so-called namedropping is nothing. But role models are important in the way of creating an example — how to attain certain things within your art — delivering a constant demand towards yourself and your work. Because the biggest critic is the artist herself or himself.
What are those images — which patterns appear? What are the ongoing issues in global society? What is this collective consciousness in the time of social distance?
Important for me is questioning the inner self, while trying to analyse the outcome.
It is difficult to talk about your own work. It is like being a bird and an ornithologist at the same time.
My focus has always been to observe socially relevant flows, currents, tensions, and other issues — in order to transform them into art. In short, to map and depict global social events. My image formats usually inevitably confront. I want the viewer to feel, due to the scale, that they want closeness — it almost forces it.
For the figures in my pictures, this also means that their disguises no longer offer protection. In recent works, the figures with their semi-transparent bodies turn their backs on the viewer. You can recognise a certain refusal, a turning away — perhaps the ultimate retreat. A persistent, circular border around the protagonists separates them with thick lines of coal. Their territory is staked out. You have been delivered. Only the white space around the canvas still offers some freedom.
