“Die tote Stadt” from 2019 - Prologue to the series:

The metropolis where I live is losing its identity and transforming into the future. With the end of mining and heavy industry, the society of the Ruhr region is dissolving. Tradition and social consensus are being shunted off to the world heritage site. What will the "service society" of the future look like? Which of the existing structures can be integrated into a new order to be created? My works from the 2019 cycle “Die tote Stadt" deal with the transformation of society, new order and cohesion, and with the work after the observation.

Twelve works are the basis for a spatial concept that questions perceptual experience, descriptive categories and cultural symbolism and addresses reception routines on a second level. What words will the viewer choose to report what he has seen? The materials concrete, glass powder, pigment and phosphor on canvas and handmade paper change their creative language when the last guest has left and the electric light has been extinguished.

The images become the source of seeing in the darkness, enter into a diffuse dialogue with themselves, with the space and the architecture. The dominance of form comes to the fore, the visual experience is taken ad absurdum, the point of view is lost: the distance blurs, the wall is no longer a wall, it is only an inkling. What is perceived is a reflection: sometimes explosive, sometimes geometric, sometimes organic. The formats of the canvases (1.40 x 1.50 m) and handmade papers (1.00 x 1.20 m) disappear into the darkness. It is not up to the artist to find an explanation for the mingling of the senses and the resonance to it. To fully perceive the space-form-light concept, one needs the interplay of several works to experience the levels of effect. The interaction of the images opens up an almost sacred space that enables a contemplative experience similar to a liturgy.

The human mind works symbolically," formulates the British philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead, "when some components of its experience give rise to consciousness, assumptions, emotions and usages concerning other components of its experience." These two components, symbols and the meaning of symbols, drive a game between light and dark in the dead city.