Numbers - aquarell series - watercolor on paper, 50x40cm - since 2015

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Following the news, analysing it, comparing sources, researching information, and sifting through press photos is a large part of my artistic work. I run the risk of escaping my surroundings and losing the ground beneath my feet between self-doubt, disbelief and a guilty conscience. For months I sat in my studio doing nothing but clicking from one news website to the next. I felt numb. But what worried me the most was how insensitive I became to the most appalling news and photos involving unimaginable human suffering. It became irrelevant to me whether the number of people drowned in the Mediterranean, killed in a road accident or shot dead during a demonstration was 2, 16 or 300. They were merely numbers whose true significance remained abstract to me – and which disappeared with a click just as rapidly as they had appeared. The decision to start with -Numbers- was very important to me. Devoting more attention and more time in my life to the numbers became a kind of ritual. I began reproducing them, painting one number at a time in precise, concentrated, simple watercolours. Below each number, I recorded the date and place of each event in pencil. They are pictures in which I try to understand the unfathomable and not to let my own powerlessness take control.«

 

Installation view Kunsthalle/Kunstverein Göppingen, Germany

 

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