Abstract Object Nr. 1 or Mary Heilmann revisited, 1998 Collage

Lives in Switzerland and abroad, mainly Spain or France. All his works - paintings, drawings, sculptures, mixed media - can be characterized by a strong implicit or explicit relation to art history of the 20th century, mainly the transformation of familiar signs or materials into pictorial parts of highly abstract value. His radical abstract paintings are answers to the question about the meaning of "Leerstellen" (the void between signs) or the meaning of void as a sign itself (e.g. abstract painting Nr. 3). If figurativ forms are used, they are taken out of their usual context and defamiliarized (eg. a sculpture with the title "attempted drawing of a cube). Therefore figurations turn out to be not only entities for themselves but parts of wider spatial or imaginary contexts. His structural experiments with any kind of material – given objects or even artworks – lead to results of a high creative security paired with dreamlike qualities, like poems without words. A.T.-B.