Title:
human vs media
Aims & Objectives
The soft-washed, (synchronized) picture of the media, the facade-world of
advertising shape our visual perception today.
beauty ideals get more and more surreal and unreachable, whilst always
more uniform. Trend magazines distort the photos of their models with
image-editing programs to the anatomical impossibility, and thereby create
unattainable ideal, which are converted after a short time in standards.
From giant billboards super models grin artificially-perfect, retouched bey-
ond recognition, worshiped as the golden calf, which laid out huge like on
the modern altar waiting for new followers.
who does not match is this picture, or may correspond, loses.
reality and authenticity are ignored, the one who does not fit into the pic-
ture (not young, dynamic, handsome and wealthy) is sidelined - new geeks
are generated. We are caricatures to our ideals of beauty that are predeter-
mined by media, but were created mostly digital.
faces are only a projection screen for the ideals of our time. But surgeons
today know, that exactly time records living in our faces, and chisel every
deluded media consumers the desired (or even the straight hip) visage into
the face.
I myself would like to occupy my time with just this very masked page in
my paintings, perhaps with excerpts of media celebrity‘s face or adverti-
sing world. I photograph scenes from the streets, mainly the people who
fill out these. these photos serve as a basis for my painting. In large-format
paintings I want to engage a world in different aspects, that has no space
in glossy magazines, and one happyhappyweareallbeautifulrichandyoung-
world, but is more present as big picture posters and all the celebrities of
the world could ever be. faces will play a superior role. portraits that are
responsive to those people that are easily overlooked, often deliberately, as
authenticity and erroneousness is deleted from our visual vocabulary. We
prefer the appearance to the being.
I will mainly work in black and white as I hope for a sensuous, more
critical, approach of the observer, who is reminded on newspaper printed
pictures of one color and authentically believable. By the abstinence of
colour my visual world is in contrast to the garish, cluttered world of ad-
vertising and media. It should be sober, real and gritty, and wants to force
the viewer to dialogue by direct eye contact.
(To painting - in the sense neo expressive painters such as Georg Baselitz,
an apparent insight revealed in the soul of the sitter.)
The violent, impetuous, perhaps aggressive painting style wants to
highlight the threats of the present, the hardness of our society, and the
inhuman lives that we humans have built us. I´m very interested in the di-
alogue between construction and deconstruction (which often comes in the
form of abstraction in a figurative painting). I want to find different ways
to combine these methods, and to find the border, where things are seen as
constructive, and things are seen as deconstructive in a painting. I want to
apply these two seemingly controversial themes as symbiosis, but also as
fighting each other in one picture.
the face can be a suitable object for this, because it can best convey subtle
the themes as the non-verbal communication center of people. feelings
and emotions are primarily administrated on the face of our counterparts,
and even a small change in the facial expression can convey a completely
different emotional state. the painting of portraits has therefore great influ-
ence on what is being communicated by the picture.
Context:
I see myself somewhere between realism and neo-expressionist painting.
The French painter Gustave Courbet interests me because of the fact, that
he was one of the first who painted the seemingly unimportant. Through
him, the way was paved for the representation of everyday scenes. Before
that paintings represented mainly idealized in the sense of religion / church
mainly historical / religious important scenes. Courbet sometimes presen-
ted everyday situations of monumental size (ex. Burial at Ornan), and also
considered banal simplicities worthy of portrayal. Already in the 1860s
, he advocated for an art that is composed from currently visible things
together, not an idea in the imagination.
Another, however, contemporary artists, who influenced me, is Antony
Micallef, who critically engaged with corporations and media consump-
tion in his painting. However, he does it so much more obvious than
I would, because I do not want to anticipate the interpretation of each
viewer too much.
Lucian Freud and Jenny Saville influenced me in their picturesque
representation of the human skin, in their rough duktus. The color plays
a significant role in the work of both, however, which I usually liberate
myself, as I mainly work in black and white.
I admire the German painter Gerhard Richter, how consistently he
manages to lift painting over the content communicated. And I envy the
freedom that he leaves for himself thereby.
Also, the photographer Richard Avedon has made a great contribution to
my chosen subject in his photo series „in the American West - 1979-1984“.
I´m very influenced by graffiti , especially in the form of vandalism, be-
cause I love the unexpected and uncontrollable nature of graffiti. Beautiful
Street art has extensively replaced graffiti, which already has been com-
mercialised by media and advertising and seems quite classified, or even
mainstream. But it has lost the noncompliant attitude graffiti once had. I´m
interested in adopting these charakteristics of graffiti in my work.
During my time in Camberwell, I would like to include with Guy Debord
- Society of the Spectacle, and Jean Baudrillard‘s theory of employ-stimu-
lation because these books were highly recommended to me, and I think
thus they can produce important links and awarenesses to my work.
Methodology:
I search for a picture that I want to paint - often I photograph people or
situations I encounter, which appeal to me visually. I‘m trying to get into
conversation with them and photograph them - if they comply - right on
the road. This creates references to the area where I am staying at a parti-
cular moment, and may be something like a visual diary of encounters.
The photo will (mostly) be reduced to black and white, behind a grid set,
which is used to transfer to the canvas, and printed as high resolution
and detail. Areas within the picture, which I see as non-relevant will be
deleted. Then the transmission starts on the canvas that usually begins first
formally-correct, often gets more free in the course of the painting process
and no longer sticks to the parameter of the photo. it may appear like the
partial destruction of the lead image.