Nostalgia For Innocence Print

I paint two types of encounters. The first encounter is purely visual and takes place between discrepant painterly expressions. I am fascinated by paintings that contain a complex mix of styles and motifs. These forces me out in a mental quagmire where I constantly re-evaluate my previous impressions as the gaze moves on the surface. I try to subject the viewer of my paintings to the same sense of uncertainty. My motifs come from my photo albums, from the news media and from image searches on the internet. Absorbed into sketches and digital 3D models, I then transfer them to the paintings. The second encounter takes place between my understanding of the world and the world view I get from the media. I believe that all people create mental images to understand the world and themselves, and that these images are constantly being transformed by the encounter with new places, stories and people. New impressions are formed by the impressions already stored in the memory. I feel that my understanding of the world is wordless and impossible to verbalize. I feel frustrated when I'm confronted with the stories of the media because I want to react, but I don't believe in art as a means of doing so. I am the norm — I am the privileged white man. For me, it would feel like a disgrace to depict violations of the less privileged. I don't want to illustrate my political involvement. Instead, I depict the ambivalence I feel when confronted with the media flow of worrying testimonies. While I do this quasi-psychological analysis of the social group I belong to, I question and I justify the reason why I paint. For me, it's important that the paintings cannot be expressed in any other way than through painting. Their visual expression and the idea behind the paintings should be the same.