Art is the expression of one’s feelings and also of the subconscious. It can assume different shapes and colours but the most important thing is that there is “no single truth or a one and only reality”. This is what the artist wants to communicate through his artworks: everything can be transformed.
HOW WAS YOUR PASSION FOR ART BORN? WHAT HAS INSPIRED YOU OVER THE YEARS?
I grew up with vinyl record cover artwork that influenced me heavily (e.g. Dead Kennedys, Sonic Youth, Black Flag…) and most probably are still the subconscious reason all my works have a rectangular form. In general, I see collages not as an own discipline, but rather as paintings, just with different materials; like the sampling technique in music, transformation builds the core, existing material is used to create something completely different or at least a significant spin.
I get the inspiration for my works from all kinds of visual formats: be it art, movies,
advertisements, record and magazine cover, etc. In most of the cases I already have a
quite clear idea about the transformational direction before making the first cut.
Nevertheless, the actually resulting "look and feel" is always work in progress, a certain deviation from the original plan is an indispensable part of the program.
But of course there are also - consciously or unconsciously - influences from the field of classical art: referring to my "vinyl education" for sure Winston Smith, Mike Kelly, Raymond Pettibon and Gottfried Helnwein have to be mentioned. Accompanied by famous renaissance painters, such as Jan Van Eyck or Rogier van der Weyden; studying them shows you, that almost every relevant element of achieving an overwhelming composition has been brought to perfection already more than five centuries ago. And of course Francis Bacon, Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, Cindy Sherman, Mike Kelly, Gehard Demetz…
TELL US ABOUT THE “RADICAL CONSTRUCTIONISM” THEORY, WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR YOU?
This fundamental theory inspired me from my early beginnings of making art until today. It says, that reality is per se no given, binding and normed space, but an individual construction made by the human brain(s). Hence, there are billions of particular drafts of “reality” and the “real world”. And like fingerprints, you’ll not find two similar ones. On one side this is mankind’s huge strength, fostering creativity, progress & reflection; on the other side, it makes communication - between individuals as well as between systems or states - so difficult. So my transformations show in a very pointed way, how differently things can be seen. And that there are no single truth or the one and only reality.
TO CREATE YOUR ARTWORKS YOU ONLY USE “REAL” MATERIALS. WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO WORK IN AN ANALOG WAY? WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THE LATEST TECHNIQUES USED BY CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS?
I’m exclusively using elements from vintage magazines, their style and colours are superior to all modern stuff. And I’m solely using manual techniques and tools - cutter, ruler, glue - for transforming the pieces. The techniques themselves are just necessary mean to the end of producing a specific compositional effect. But in turn, the quality and persuasiveness of your works depends heavily on your ability to almost perfectly mastering the process of cutting and pasting. So balancing the technical and compositional dimension is in my eyes the best possible way, is the biggest challenge on the way to a - at least partially -