Shell Sculpture

BIO Born in Stockerau, a village located in the wonderfully unspectacular ”Weinviertel“ (Wine Quarter) in Lower Austria. Currently training as a photographer / photo shop assistant in Vienna/Austria. Various stop-overs in life: Prague, Berlin, Calcutta, Copenhagen, Lagos. “Dream is a sealed letter containing what you already know.“ This quotation by Gerhard Roth offers an apt approach to my work. By means of my tableaus I straighten out my emotional realms and at the same time aspire – in accordance with my basic attitudes - to point out that everything is connected to everything else, that everything determines everything else, and that synchronicity is happening. The conceptual continuity my work is grounded on is of definite meditative character. I say thousands of mantras while working, all intended to serve the benefit of all beings. The preliminaries to the first punch into the sheet metal often do take quite some time: I say many mantras pleading for succour, I have prolonged debates with myself, and I contemplate the I-Ching. Only then, the first breaches. All is brought on stream, destruction claims its space and grows manifest. Appreciation of evanescence, being my principal concern, is referenced to by the patina. Often, the patination goes hand in hand with the sketching, and not until I perceive them both as being in harmony I pierce the copper. I strive to enable the contemplators of my tableaus to take a time-out from this forever faster life and world in order to de-celerate, to un-bend, and to dare a journey into the inside, to persevere in the ”here and now“. Hence, I manufacture Mandalas as contribution to harmonising the world and society. It all began a long time ago with a dream. I dreamt of a canoe, decorated with Buddhist mantras and glowing from within. The entire boat was gleaming and left a lasting and most notably calming impression on me in my dream. Weeks later, when I discovered a sketch in my dream diary done that night, the long forgotten image resurfaced. Again, its peaceful emanation affected me deeply, and I instantly set off to transforming it into a project. During the final phase of the work, riveting the single parts which was conducted outdoors, dawn fell and soft rain set in. My hands, after having processed copper all day long, literally emitted a bluish green glow owing to the copper oxide.