Siebenschläfer - detail

Acrylic and mixed media on corrugated cardboard, 24x40” (d) / table 71x41x31”, 2023

Siebenschläfer reflects on the chthonic concept of hiding, sheltering, and waiting. The half body cast is integrated in a cave like landscape formation that allows both views the upper and under world. The figure is painted in Magenta red and set up on a table in green and Magenta warning  stripes, a color combination referring to radiation hazards as well safety and first aid.

The sculptural installation is inspired by the story of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus waiting 300 hundred years in darkness, within rock until it is safe to emerge. Those stories not only reference to histories of persecution, displacement, and escape.

Those stories keep larger narratives of present and future concerns; about nuclear fear and encounter uncanny confrontation of realities. It deals with perspectives of forgetting as planned for the nuclear waste site of Olkiluotu in Finnland, or with future warnings with respect to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) 26 miles southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico. WIPP permanently isolates defense-generated transuranic (TRU) waste 2,150 feet underground in an ancient salt formation.

Siebenschläfer

Acrylic and mixed media on corrugated cardboard, 24x40” / table 71x41x31”, 2023

Siebenschläfer reflects on the chthonic concept of hiding, sheltering, and waiting. The half body cast is integrated in a cave like landscape formation that allows both views the upper and under world. The figure is painted in Magenta red and set up on a table in green and Magenta warning  stripes, a color combination referring to radiation hazards as well safety and first aid.

The sculptural installation is inspired by the story of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus waiting 300 hundred years in darkness, within rock until it is safe to emerge. Those stories not only reference to histories of persecution, displacement, and escape.

Those stories keep larger narratives of present and future concerns; about nuclear fear and encounter uncanny confrontation of realities. It deals with perspectives of forgetting as planned for the nuclear waste site of Olkiluotu in Finnland, or with future warnings with respect to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) 26 miles southeast of Carlsbad, New Mexico. WIPP permanently isolates defense-generated transuranic (TRU) waste 2,150 feet underground in an ancient salt formation.

Mnemosyne

Acrylic, graphite powder, and mixed media on corrugated cardboard, 34x44’ (d)/ wood bord b/w 48x 48”, 2023

Over time and histories bodies transformed into mythical figures embedded in mythical landscape of “Mnemosyne”, the Titan of memory and mother of the Nine Muses, that give art a voice. The hollow sculpture is kept minimal and discreet, just painted in black and dusted with graphite pigments set on a hazardous zone area marked in black and white. The simplicity of the setting referrers to the infinity of universal knowledge in the hollow space while memory (Mnemosyne) seems at risk with ephemeral matter of powder coated shiny surfaces in a hazardous environment.   

My new sculptures animated through performative bodywork recall those myths as updated versions of our current volatile and precarious conditions on Earth.

Mnemosyne

Acrylic, graphite powder, and mixed media on corrugated cardboard, 34x44’ (d)/ wood bord b/w 48x 48”, 2023

Over time and histories bodies transformed into mythical figures embedded in mythical landscape of “Mnemosyne”, the Titan of memory and mother of the Nine Muses, that give art a voice. The hollow sculpture is kept minimal and discreet, just painted in black and dusted with graphite pigments set on a hazardous zone area marked in black and white. The simplicity of the setting referrers to the infinity of universal knowledge in the hollow space while memory (Mnemosyne) seems at risk with ephemeral matter of powder coated shiny surfaces in a hazardous environment.   

My new sculptures animated through performative bodywork recall those myths as updated versions of our current volatile and precarious conditions on Earth.

Phlegethon - detail

Acrylic and mixed media on corrugated cardboard, 32x37 (d) / table 26,5x44” (d), 2023

Literally a "river of fire" (Aen. 6.550-1). In Greek mythology, Phlegethon was one of the five rivers in the infernal regions of the underworld, along with the rivers Styx, Lethe, Cocytus, and Acheron.  

Plato describes it as "a stream of fire, which coils round the earth and flows into the depths of Tartarus". The river is so hot that it's cold to the touch. It is said to appear like a torrent of burning gasoline that lights up everything red.

I seek to identify common undercurrents in the geo-terrestrial and political developments. Color, shape, and charcoal chips composition refer to the fiery appearance of the sculpture carried out by the human body. The sculpture is positioned on a cross shaped table with diagonally oriented black and red caution stripes usually referring to crime scenes. As caution tapes, the markers are used to mark off areas where a crime or accident has occurred and to warn people to stay away.

This way the human-made landscape is elevated on a marked zone as a significant endangered area. The cloudlike sculptural formation veil and hide, spreads fear and danger that man must have from himself- an aesthetic visualization becomes self-encountering.

Phlegethon

Acrylic and mixed media on corrugated cardboard, 32x37 (d) / table 26,5x44” (d), 2023

Literally a "river of fire" (Aen. 6.550-1) In Greek mythology, Phlegethon was one of the five rivers in the infernal regions of the underworld, along with the rivers Styx, Lethe, Cocytus, and Acheron.  

Plato describes it as "a stream of fire, which coils round the earth and flows into the depths of Tartarus". The river is so hot that it's cold to the touch. It is said to appear like a torrent of burning gasoline that lights up everything red.

I seek to identify common undercurrents in the geo-terrestrial and political developments. Color, shape, and charcoal chips composition refer to the fiery appearance of the sculpture carried out by the human body. The sculpture is positioned on a cross shaped table with diagonally oriented black and red caution stripes usually referring to crime scenes. As caution tapes, the markers are used to mark off areas where a crime or accident has occurred and to warn people to stay away.

This way the human-made landscape is elevated on a marked zone as a significant endangered area. The cloud-like sculptural formation veil and hide, spreads fear and danger that man must have from himself - an aesthetic visualization becomes self-encountering.

Starless Rivers, Acrylic and mixed-media on corrugated cardboard, wooden boards, 84 x 44 x 30 inches, 2023

Inspired by Robert Macfarlane deep time journey of “Underland” (2019) ancient starless rivers flow from the upper world into the under land. “The reason that classical literature runs with rivers dipping into darkness is geological: so much of the landscape in which that literature was lived and written is karstic in nature.” However, it also  borrows histories that flow from conflict zones of Roman’s antiquity Mithraism towards the economic underworld, the basement in London’s Bloomberg building, crossing European war zones into the 20th century.

“Rivers disappear and so do stories, only to rise again in unexpected ways.”

Robert Macfarlane

Starless Rivers, Acrylic and mixed-media on corrugated cardboard, wooden boards, 84 x 44 x 30 inches, 2023

Inspired by Robert Macfarlane deep time journey of “Underland” (2019) ancient starless rivers flow from the upper world into the under land. “The reason that classical literature runs with rivers dipping into darkness is geological: so much of the landscape in which that literature was lived and written is karstic in nature.” However, it also  borrows histories that flow from conflict zones of Roman’s antiquity Mithraism towards the economic underworld, the basement in London’s Bloomberg building, crossing European war zones into the 20th century.

“Rivers disappear and so do stories, only to rise again in unexpected ways.”

Robert Macfarlane

Starless Rivers, Acrylic and mixed-media on corrugated cardboard, wooden boards, 84 x 44 x 30 inches, 2023

Inspired by Robert Macfarlane deep time journey of “Underland” (2019) ancient starless rivers flow from the upper world into the under land. “The reason that classical literature runs with rivers dipping into darkness is geological: so much of the landscape in which that literature was lived and written is karstic in nature.” However, it also  borrows histories that flow from conflict zones of Roman’s antiquity Mithraism towards the economic underworld, the basement in London’s Bloomberg building, crossing European war zones into the 20th century.

“Rivers disappear and so do stories, only to rise again in unexpected ways.”

Robert Macfarlane

In the development of new sculptures I collaborate with Cynthia Word of Word Dance Theater through experimental performative explorations with corrugated cardboard.  The performance activates the sculptural form in the most subjective way by shaping an object from the inside out. There’s no difference between object and subject, or object and maker.

The body and movements give the sculpture transformative and final shapes. Using corrugated cardboard serves a sturdy cover that once left behind leaves an empty shell of memory from previous actions.

Scattered scraps falling apart and disintegration of the material in consequence of the performance reflect on the temporalities relating to the disappearance of our surroundings. Working with landscape images, I try to eliminate the old and creating new ones. The cliché of passed down landscape scenery and images include an overcome concept of nature that carries the notion of the beautiful view and nature as something elevated or to protect. At the same time, we observe overwhelming evidence of the destruction of nature, a dying world of multi-species, and atmospheric imbalances effecting our biosphere.

The collaboration between dance and the visual art promotes hybrid prefigurations to understand precarious condition between human and nature, between intervention and their consequences. It is important now and for the future to understand landscapes in a new way, to see them differently, not just from what we know. I reflect on man as a producer and destroyer of land as a contemporary landscape, as something that speaks for our current time and the future. What is left are traces of memory, fragmented, and fragile in their existence.