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Armory
2006
Plastic hardshellprotectors from various sport uniforms, sandblasted glass walls, light tubes
The work was installed in the facilities of a former Jewish steam bath in the city of Wiesbaden. The spaces (bath, massage and showercabines) have been contributed and used for artistic installation work by the Fluxus Friends Wiesbaden e. V.
The selection of protective shells were arranged and fixed on backside illuminated glass walls.
An Armory is a depot used for the storage of protective equipment and offensive weapons.
I transformed the space by the motto, “Put your gun down brother”, the ritual of laying down your protective shells and engaging naked and unprotective the unique atmosphere of the spa.
Wiesbaden is one of the foundation places of the Fluxus Movement and the nice people that run the place keep up the founding spirit and spreading the founder’s movement with lots of enthusiasm and charisma.
Ballroom
2007
Collection of balls (marbles to fist size ball specimens), steam bath with sandblasted Plexiglas membrane, light tubes, oversized glass test tubes with primal colored ball selection
In 2007 I had an exhibition in Wiesbaden in the Gallery of The Fluxus Freunde Wiesbaden e. V
in cooperation with the Finnish artists Sari Palosaari and Mia Rinne. The Exhibition was curated by artist group located in Frankfurt a M called 431 art and the show went under the name “Northbound-installations and media art from Finland”.
The exhibition spaces were located in a former Jewish bath and consisted of various shower and spa facilities that were provided to install spatial artworks. One of the cabins provided me with a stainless steel bath that I modified for the work “ Ballroom”.
Remembering the childhood pleasure of lying within a sea of balls I filled the bath with over thousand unique specimens of balls. These have been collected over the last five years and just were asking for to being presented in this particular way.
The work went together with the work “Pharma CV”, a color sorted selection of balls in oversized glass blown test tubes on the wall.
Eternal Erection
Rotating phallic sculpture sewed out of reflecting soccer-ball elements
2004
90-x18 cm, telescope stand
Ancient sculptures of Phallus symbols have been found in many parts of the world, notably among the vestiges of ancient Greece and Rome. Within many ancient cultures, phallic structures were symbolized with male fertility and the penises as well as the testicles were portrayed unrealistically huge and prominent. An erection is usually, though not exclusively, associated with sexual arousal, in many ancient cultures phallic structures centrally focus on adult male audience performances.
Sports like Soccer come often along with stereotypes of masculinity and Macho attitudes. It is considered and celebrated as a bulwark of men that we vigorously defend and in which context we celebrate our masculine gender role. In most parts of the world football evokes great passions and plays an important role in the life of individual fans, local communities, and even nations; it is therefore often claimed to be the most popular sport in the world and the only one that has its own worldwide understood idiosyncratic language. Millions undergo the strongest emotionally involvement during the games and the hype forces enormous pressure on the management, teams and individual players on high competitive level. The after mach of the world championship is often called “the big meat market”. A sell out of players that are both popular and skillful.
There are seventeen laws in the official Laws of the Game that were formulated by the International Football Association Board. Ironically this seems to match with the term “The ring of seventeen”, witch is a slang word for the steroidal substances and derives from its unique build up, -a ring of 17 molecules which functions as a magic key that through this unique build up can penetrate cell walls and fool around with the actual DNA. Even the schematic chemical drawing with its molecular structure of one five and three six edged polygons seems to resemble the classic soccer ball design.
Check out the image (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steroid)
Testosterone is a steroid hormone from the androgen group. It is the principal
Male sex hormone and an anabolic steroid used for phallic enlargement and its performance improving abilities are considered to be a form of doping in most sports, particularly given the lengths to which athletes and professional laboratories go to in trying to conceal such abuse from sports regulators. The uses for anabolic steroids in sports and bodybuilding are controversial, because of their adverse effects and the potential to gain unfair advantage.
The work” Eternal Erection” is a 90cm high Phallus made by dismantling and assembling a bigger amount of silver reflective technique Soccer balls size 5.
The sewed Sculpture in its enlarged and firm state is fixed on a slow rotating motor placed on an “erectable” Tripod. A halogen beam creates a nice disco effect that illuminates the work and high lightens the form in all its splendor and glamour.
Mappa Mundi
2003- ongoing
Collection of unfolded balls from the field of sport, 12 Glass Frames, 140x160x8cm
Along active games the most highly developed global ones - are played with balls. When I slowly started to collect those items it became aware of the multiplicity of ways in witch they were formed and shaped.
It all started with a “Hacky Sack”, a fist-sized ball that was made out of triangular patches and had a label saying, “Made in Guatemala!” Cutting it open I found that it had a filling of black granulate that I later identified as being of volcanic origin. Something struck me than. I bought a ball made in the opposite side of the world, that was filled with a substance taking from the very heart of this country. It was a fascinating poetic thought and I was hooked.
I have to confess that it became an obsession and I have gathered more than a thousand individual items. Mappa Mundi is a collection of these balls that I collected on many years and journeys all over the world. The collection Mappa mundi was a starting point for a series of works that inhabit the idea of being ongoing collections. In the processes of collecting, ones own taste and vision, forms the individual core of a distinctively collection policy. While selecting I define unique objects belonging to a certain category and quality and therefore they are accepted into my private collection. Each one of the balls must have been played and has to have an individual construction pattern. Having fulfilled this terms the items are cut and unfolded along its sewing lines. Alienated in this way and presented in glass displays, they more likely seem to remind of ritual objects than belongings of the field of play and sports.
With their fillings of volcanic granulate, rice, seed, bones, reindeer fur, sound mechanisms, liquid and handwritings, each ball seems to reveal a new secret. It helped me mapping some unknown territory- so also the name of the work is related to this. Mappa mundi means Map of the World.
In my working method I sympathize with a 17th century tradition of creating ones own “Wunderkammer”, a cabinet of wonder, or a wonder-room. In their historical definition these collections often contained a mix of fact and fiction, cabinets were filled with preserved animals, horns, tusks, skeletons, minerals, as well as other types of equally fascinating man-made objects: sculptures wondrously old, wondrously fine or wondrously small; clockwork automata; ethnographic specimens from exotic locations.
As a artist/ collector I am got a lot of inspiration from the publishing’s and writings by “The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge”, that was founded in 1660 and is known simply as the Royal Society. I understand this movement as a group of renaissance people that were collectors preserving the old and searching the new, traveling to foreign countries engaging with other cultures and were constantly generating knowledge through hands on experiments.
Mappa mundi- a ongoing collection in the sense of this world is a very inspiring but also difficult work to handle. Consisting of ten segments it is rather big and not suitable to be shown in many galleries spaces. Furthermore I would not consider about selling it in pieces because the single frames compliment each other and are a growing collection, unique in this sense.
It consists out of ten segments with three further in preparation. Nevertheless there has been an offspring of works originating from the main collection. The last one was a big size format 150x 300 cm that was put on display at the 3rd Beijing Art Biennale in Beijing 2008.
Greenaway dish
2003
Bouquet of color selected balls in glass bowls
The works name refers to the British film director Peter Greenaway.
The objects are displayed in an almost clinical style namely as specimen’s that grow in Petri dishes, nevertheless the balls colonies seem to overflow in their fruity and fresh appearance. The arrangement made me think of the beautiful food and flower displays as being seen in Peter Greenaway’s movie, The Cook The Thief His Wife & Her Lover.
The visual hallmark of Greenaway's cinema is the heavy influence of Renaissance painting, and Flemish painting in particular, notably in scenic composition and illumination and the concomitant contrasts of costume and nudity, nature and architecture, furniture and people, sexual pleasure and painful death.
Pharma CV
2006
Glass blown oversized test tubes, selection of ball specimens sorted by colors
I often feel a natural distrust towards competitive sport, and particularly against competitive sport at the international level. This is not an argumentation against individual, or collective achievement, player and teams trying their best to win, but the problem is if the method of achievement is competition at whatever cost. Western thinking and conception of life is highly dramatic. Everything hangs on the competition. Heaven or hell, win or fail.
Passion is the thing that the artist shares with the athlete, it keeps us going and at the same time to enjoy our profession. Art and sport on their best are and should be primary motivated.
In my works this issues come often in disguise of happy colored and playful objects from the world of play and sports but they also point to a dark underlying current.
Curriculum stems from the Latin word for racecourse, referring to the course of deeds and experiences through which children grow and mature in becoming adults. Pharmacology
(From Greek, pharmakon,”drug”, and–logia.) is the study of drug action. The Pharma CV comes here in the color of a rainbow but the glass test tubes hint also to a hidden and more sinister aspect. One could not phrase a better example as a quotation from the article (The Convicts of the Road) by the French journalist Albert Londres.
Following the Tour de France in 1924 he recalled the following interview with the previous year's winner, Henri Pélissier, his brother Francis and a third rider, Maurice Ville -that all had pulled out after a row with the organizers. Henri explained the problem - whether or not he had the right to take off a jersey - and went on to talk of drugs.
"You have no idea what the Tour de France is," Henri said. "It's a Calvary. Worse than that, because the road to the Cross has only 14 stations and ours has 15.
We suffer from the start to the end. You want to know how we keep going?
Here..." He pulled a phial from his bag. "That's cocaine, for our eyes. This is chloroform, for our gums."
"This," Ville said, emptying his shoulder bag "is liniment to put warmth back into our knees."
"And pills. Do you want to see pills? Have a look, here are the pills." Each pulled out three boxes.
"At night, in our rooms, we can't sleep. We twitch and dance and jig about as though we were doing St Vitus's dance..." Henri spoke of being as white as shrouds once the dirt of the day had been washed off their bodies, then of being drained by diarrhea, before continuing:
"There's less flesh on our bodies than on a skeleton, Francis said,
“The truth is, that we keep going on dynamite!"
Collection
2004
Hard-shell protection parts originating from various sport uniforms, visual sorted
Collecting is considered to be very personal and in the process of selecting we also reveal a lot of our self. Rules or method are usually formulated during active search, some type of limitation is a natural part of an individual's selection process. Most artist are also collectors and it is not only about the possession of certain items but its always hints towards a work in progress. I have several such collecting projects; usually it takes me years before some actual work originates out of these. It is also acquired knowledge in this activity that I find valuable, one gets to know the whole lifecycle starting from the producers, facilitators, users and the final steps of disposing or recycling methods. I work a lot with items originating from the field of sports and have often hinted towards finding sponsors in the industry that could shortcut the collecting process but somehow I like the feel of an authentic find. I dig the authenticity of a well worn out soccer ball or a merciless battered protector plate having survived years of heavy impact by collision of players or other objects.
So this work consists of authentic wear gutted out of helmet, shoulder pads, elbow pads, mouth guard, protective gloves, heavily padded shorts, a 'jock' athletic protector, shin pads, chest protector, neck guards, face masks and specialized equipment designed to protect the player in action.
Cowboy manual
1998
Folding technique of Marlboro Cigarette package, folded package, drawing
Marlboro is a brand of cigarette famous for its billboard advertisements and magazine ads of the Marlboro Man.
In the early 1960s Philip Morris invented "Marlboro Country" and distilled their manly imagery into the rugged cowboys known as the "Marlboro Men." The image involves a rugged cowboy that pleasures himself with a cigarette in front of a grand nature setting.
The ads were originally conceived as a way to popularize filtered cigarettes, which at the time were considered feminine. It transformed a feminine campaign, with the slogan 'Mild as May', into one that was masculine, in a matter of months.
Although there were many Marlboro Men, the cowboy proved to be the most popular. This led to the 'Marlboro Cowboy' and 'Marlboro Country' campaigns.By accident I discovered this hidden secret behind the package design of this product. Feel free to play with it.
Skinned Polygons
2001-2004
60x70x6cm
Collection of unfolded bodies, Twelve out of eighteen pieces
Paper, Steel needles, Collagen, Ink, Graphite drawing on Aquarelle paper
Originally my interest in spherical geometry came from Cartography, the study and practice of making representations of the Globe on a flat surface. Quite soon I was fascinated by spherical geometry that deals with polygons (especially triangles) on the sphere and explains how to find relations between the involved angles. This is of great importance for calculations in astronomy and earth-surface and orbital/space navigation.
The most familiar spherical polyhedron is the football (soccer ball), thought of as a spherical truncated icosahedron. Many of the cutting forms used for the work were found in contemporary ball design and went along with the collection Mappa Mundi that I was building up parallel to this work. Contrary to the unfolded balls- that were supposed to alienate in their unfolded stage- I wanted to give the skinned polygons some hint to their former spherical shape, a visual code so to speak. I especially liked the unfolded cutting form of a classical Mercator style globe were one can fit the parts together by aligning the continental shapes to each other. North and South Pole give a clear
sense of up and down and North America is to the left and East Asia to the right. I was searching for an equivalent image that would work in a more abstract but basically similar way.I found it in the simple image of text and its simple classifications of linearity. Linear writing systems are those in which the characters are composed of lines, such as the Latin alphabet.
Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols, within our understanding of text it comes in the Latin alphabetic form. It is cultural as well as cognitive anchored and understood as a- left to right pattern and going from the top to the bottom of the page. The text images that I used were unique for each polyhedral design and based on a written text that I manipulated with a set of Photoshop filters to a point that they were unreadable but still recognized as an continuing text face.
I was building spatial paper models of the polygons and marked the direction of the text direction as if it would run around a balloon shape, spiraling from up to down. When these models were back in a flat unfolded shape the text image was of course aligned along the curves of its former spatial form. Through this visual presentation the observer gets a clue how the fragments are connected to each other. The text was applied to the material collagen by using mirrored ink jet prints in the stage when the material has been moisturized and can be imprinted. Through its special structure it will suck in the ink without that it would further spread into a fuzzy blur.
Likewise the skin is the bodies most outer boarder, the material of the skinned polygons is a fragile layer tissue called collagen.
Collagen is the main protein of connective tissue in animals and the most abundant protein in mammals, making up about 25% to 35% of the whole-body protein content. Collagen is one of the long, fibrous structural proteins it is responsible for skin strength.
From the Greek for glue, kolla, the word collagen means, "glue producer" and refers to the early process of boiling the skin and sinews of animals to obtain glue. Egyptians already used the Collagen adhesive about 2000 BC, and Native Americans used it in bows about 1500 years ago.
The collagen that I used was medical collagen that derived from young beef.
I obtained a great amount of it during a job doing nightshifts in a pharmaceutical company that were making anti wrinkle masks. Like most artist I do get exited discovering transitory materials used in industrial processes, there is so much material that we never get to see. Collagen was right away a big brainstormer. The material comes in 1-3 mm A3 sheets and is white, foam like and odorless. Similar to wood it seems to have an internal pointed structure, meaning one direction that one can easily rip. Moisturized it becomes flexible and can be stretched.
The polyhedral cutting forms that I used, started as construction drawings on paper and remains as underlying image. (I always liked to keep the process visible.)The wet collagen was fixed with needles to the joints of the construction drawing, Within a several day long drying process the material started to shrink. This way all the straight lines turn into curves as the tension forces start to work within the construction.
I especially like this point of the creation. From here an uncontrollable random element takes over the mathematic and geometrical concept. It’s out of my hands and I enjoy becoming the exited and surprised observer.
Spheres
2002
90x70x10cm, six objects
Frottage on semitransparent folio, foam object underneath
The Spheres are graphite rubbings of surfaces from various unfolded sport balls. A halo, nimbus like ring of light surrounds the outlines of the objects shape. The fuzzy aura that illuminates the frottage is emerging from a massive foam shape inside the frame.
In art, frottage (from French frotter, "to rub") is a surrealist and "automatic" method of creative production mostly known by the works of Max Ernst.
In frottage the artist takes a pencil or other drawing tool and makes a "rubbing" over a textured surface. I have experimented a lot with this technique in the past and it periodically comes back in my work.
For a genealogist as well as Archeologists the frottage or rubbing has often become the last record of grave monuments and engraved records that rapidly deteriorating.
The works seem to reefer to archeological finds and reveal their inner life best while being past.
