Sketches and drawings are tried and tested means of organising thoughts, concretising ideas and approaching their realisation. In contrast to the analogue drawings from the 1970s and 1980s, which served as preparatory work for sculptures and site-specific arrangements, the sketchbooks are created purely digitally. They tie in with the series of images from Behavior Patterns (2022) and the first volume of the trilogy Tell me Nothing (Claimed image, 2023) and take them further.
Between March and September 2024, seventeen sketchbooks with fifteen sheets each will be created. The pictorial ideas explore how three-dimensional illusions can help to free photographic motifs from their ties to concrete places and moments. The often fragmentary image quotations have a high degree of abstraction – they originate from museum interiors, exhibitions, collections or show details of works of art. The narrative always remains discreet, almost incidental: the picture becomes a stage that thematises the construction of perception itself.
Each sketchbook bears the title of a musical movement from the compositional theory of New Music – from aleatoric to punctual. The formal language varies playfully, but is always structured and thoroughly composed. The sketches form the creative foundation for the two subsequent volumes of the trilogy: Temporary reality and Lost truth.
On this website, four sheets from each sketchbook are shown as examples – they provide an insight into the visual diversity and conceptual systematics of the series.
Sketchbooks I – Foldings and Reflections
In the first five blocks, a digitally created image is printed on paper, folded into a flat tub and photographed again. A mirrored version is added, separated by a striped ornament. This principle finds its way into Temporary Reality – both as a real paper relief and in digital realisation as a flat image with an ornamental structure.
Sketchbook 1 – aleatoric
Sketchbook 2 – microtonal
Sketchbook 3 – polyrhythmic
Sketchbook 4 – flexible
Sketchbook 5 – structured
Sketchbooks II
Block six extends the mirroring by a third form that appears above and below. The classical picture frame is dissolved; free geometric forms interweave with each other. The original image is first distorted by scored glass and then digitally mirrored.
In block seven, the image fragments are integrated into two closely interwoven surfaces. The ornamental rigour is contrasted by spontaneous gouache painting.
Block eight uses superimposed circles as containers: stripes separate and connect the pictorial elements. The smallest circle shows a photograph taken through a crystal ball or strongly curved lens.
Sketchbook 6 – atonal
Sketchbook 7 – dissonant
Sketchbook 8 – concrete
Sketchbooks III
Blocks nine to eleven work with bodies drawn in perspective. The inserted images are distorted so that they fit exactly into the perspective surfaces.
Block nine shows stage boxes, block ten hollow cubes, block eleven superimposed presentation surfaces – all three create spatial illusions and emphasise the plasticity of the pictorial space.
Sketchbook 9 – modular
Sketchbook 10 – serial
Sketchbook 11 – dynamic
Sketchbooks IV
In blocks twelve to fourteen, circular openings penetrate the presentation areas. Before being inserted, the image fragments are photographically alienated:
Block twelve with glass marbles, block thirteen with glass lenses, block fourteen with rhinestones and diamonds. The refractions of light create dazzling disturbances that alienate the motif and at the same time visually intensify it.
Sketchbook 12 – processual
Sketchbook 13 – resonant
Sketchbook 14 – hybrid
Sketchbooks V – filter and doubling
The last three blocks take up the principle of folded prints again. This time, narrow gutters divide the doubly superimposed image fragments.
Block fifteen is photographed under cellophane, block sixteen under a gauze moth, block seventeen under a cellophane film with a printed dot grid. The filters irritate the legibility, overlap forms and intensify the moment of image construction.
Sketchbook 15 – fragmentary
Sketchbook 16 – simultaneous
Sketchbook 17 – punctual
