here now the last picture of my session series, which I somehow owe to the Corona Shutdown. At first, this measure opened up an unexpected time window, which I filled with a painting of a different kind. The long postponed partial renovation of our apartment was the first Corona effect. In addition, some everyday routines were shredded. There was no easy way to continue. The exhibition, which had been opened shortly before the shutdown, was resting behind closed doors and it was not foreseeable when it would continue. The exhibition in the water tower had just been closed, so the next one followed. I was in the lucky situation to be able to show about 50 % new pictures, but they were, with a few exceptions, pictures that had been taken in the same period of time as those already shown in the first exhibition. They represent a productive time, but I didn’t want to change into the “serial subject” by only making variations of what I had already created. The Record Shop People were my first session, which I had completed for myself with the collage that can be seen in the new exhibition, which brings together almost all the portraits from that period. The first phase of transformation followed, it still remains open, but it will only experience special additions, as I did with the painting “laughing fish” from my point of view, so I started to search for a new spirit, but at first I didn’t find a new approach. So then it was time to let go of everything. The idea of a session seemed to me to express this attempt appropriately.
When I speak of “sessions”, I want to emphasize the open character of the way of working. Nothing is planned in advance here, one wants to try things out, the results should only develop in the course of the work. There are no rigid expectations. Intermediate results are also a success, new ideas that lead to new motivation are hoped for, perhaps even a new step in one’s own artistic development is taken. All this, broken down to my own horizons and perspectives, has resulted for me. New techniques have begun to develop, new aesthetic stimuli have not least aroused my curiosity and amazed me, and I am sure that many productive weeks and months lie ahead. The most important innovation for me is the addition of acrylic colours to my design process. Even with this new medium I remain true to my preference for transformational design. This time I have almost exclusively used my own works as a basis and covered them with an acrylic skin. I did this with small spatulas or toothbrushes etc. always looking for unusual surface structures. At the same time I tried to regain access to the underlying layers of the painting by using spatulas or knives etc. to remove or break through the layer structure. It is a very tight time frame in which both have to happen, so formal considerations can be less important. What emerges so intuitively is in turn shifted into a digital image by photography with a mobile phone and then, through the choice of the respective cut-out, receives a formal “refinement”, a specific focus, the ingenuity of the challenged coincidence, which is further supported by the final colour accentuation and much more before printing. The decisions about all the above-mentioned steps and the choice and application of these tools are processes that are still in their infancy for me, and will remain open for a long time to come. At the moment I have almost only results in DIN A4 format (which would make a fine little exhibition…) But I am also striving for larger formats and have an incalculable field of experimentation ahead of me. It may be the unconventional solutions, which I hope to encounter soon.
