"All of my paintings are related to the world of media. The original pictures are taken from the Internet, TV, newspapers, or magazines. From these types of media we all know celebrities like politicians, actors, rock stars or even comic book characters. Their faces seem to be omnipresent and are part of our everyday life. Their images have been burnt into our collective archives. I’m not interested in this phenomenon as a sociologist or concept artist but as a painter. My work doesn’t mean copying and repeating media by simply depicting their pictures in paint. When painting I reflect on the translatability of well-known icons into painting. What do I need, what can I delete? It’s a process of abstraction consisting of layers and shapes that often lead to an unforeseen result. Therefore you wouldn’t be able to compare my approach with that of a portrayer. Not the personality of people and their individual or outstanding qualities are in my focus but simply their outer appearance and their recognition value."
"The person itself is not at all interesting to me; it’s rather finding a mode of painting, searching its practicability. In fact there are people that I’m not able to paint in my particular way, even though they might be very well known. If so, the outlines of the depicted person dissolve and change into somebody else. Then I repaint the canvas with the other celebrity. Neither politics, status, ethicality, nor personality influence my choice."
"I take each painting as an individual piece, thus decisions about painting technique and composition are always taken for each individual canvas and are never related to other works of art. Nevertheless I like exhibiting these portraits in blocks or lines. I have a lot of them and I paint a lot of them and presenting them in that way implies that they are all of equal value to me. Also in the media you find this way of presentation. Here you find a celebrity and there on the next page you are confronted with a comic book character. I pay equal attention to all of them: Miss Piggy gets as much attention as Mrs. Merkel does. Presenting them in abundance I can show that it’s not the individual portrait that is important to me. Personalities are secondary. As commodities of the mass media they are mere material for my painting."
"The person itself is not at all interesting to me; it’s rather finding a mode of painting, searching its practicability. In fact there are people that I’m not able to paint in my particular way, even though they might be very well known. If so, the outlines of the depicted person dissolve and change into somebody else. Then I repaint the canvas with the other celebrity. Neither politics, status, ethicality, nor personality influence my choice."
"I take each painting as an individual piece, thus decisions about painting technique and composition are always taken for each individual canvas and are never related to other works of art. Nevertheless I like exhibiting these portraits in blocks or lines. I have a lot of them and I paint a lot of them and presenting them in that way implies that they are all of equal value to me. Also in the media you find this way of presentation. Here you find a celebrity and there on the next page you are confronted with a comic book character. I pay equal attention to all of them: Miss Piggy gets as much attention as Mrs. Merkel does. Presenting them in abundance I can show that it’s not the individual portrait that is important to me. Personalities are secondary. As commodities of the mass media they are mere material for my painting."
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