Brigitte Burgmer, Cologne, May 2017

EXPERIMENT CIVILIZATION

Faience heads with collages of color drawings
The heads with color drawings compositionally unite what was previously created separately: friezes with collages of color drawings and clay sculptures with faience painting. The decorated heads from different ethnicities correspond to ideal imaginations rather than real people. The independently created color drawings are arranged in relation to the head to form compositions of colors and shapes.

Faience series ANTHROPOZÄN
The aesthetic of this black series in faience painting, to unite a sculptural head with a flat panel of images, may recall memorial plaques or even photographs of hostages with a sign hung around them for the press. Each work addresses a technology that raises questions about the relationship between man and nature-technology by relating human experiments such as robotics, nuclear or genetic engineering to phenomena of evolution.
The image motifs are explained in a commentary; this is done in more detail in the essays. The printed documentation of the series was given the title ANTHROPOZÄN in 2014.

The two series show two facets of thinking and representing in different working methods, forms of expression and ideas.

The color drawings emerge from the phantasy by means of spontaneous brush writing and painterly experiments on color cardboard. Some representations are based on everyday experiences or medially mediated, others show in a grotesque way the fearfulness of a world that has come apart at the seams. These pictorial worlds contrast with the sculpturally depicted head above, with someone untouched by this world theater, who is supposed to embody a humane idea of man.

The concept of the ANTHROPOZÄN series with objects from nature and technology requires a precise, documentary representation, therefore the picture motives are painted after photos or microscope and scanning electron photographs. In the compositions, the various elements are interwoven in a relational way, regardless of the proportions. The heads are modeled realistically without a model to refer to the responsibility of people as inventors.