Curatorial Text
Procedures of the trace. The picture emerges where control gives way.
Genesis · 2008 – present
Point of DepartureSince 2008 a body of work has developed that proceeds not from the picture but from the conditions under which it comes about.At its centre stands a shift: away from conscious composition, towards the construction of situations in which the picture occurs.The starting point is a simple observation: between intention and execution a disturbance appears. What was meant and what actually emerges do not coincide. This deviation is not corrected but systematically admitted and understood as a productive moment. The picture emerges where control gives way.From this follows a displacement of the artistic work. It consists not in designing forms but in setting up procedures. Rules, time limits, physical demands and spatial constraints create conditions under which part of the decision-making is withdrawn — from the painter as much as from the model. The pictures that result are not constructions in the classical sense but records.Across the entire body of work it remains a single movement: a responsive constellation without direction. It is not directed but chosen — first between gaze and mirror, then between painter and model. The painter is not an outside witness here but part of the same field of tension.
Self-Observation as the First ArrangementThe early works first turn the procedure against one’s own gaze. The daily work before the mirror does not aim at likeness; it holds on to whatever appears in the moment of observation. What becomes visible is not a face but the difference between what is seen and what is shown. The series ends not with a result but at a limit of what can be endured — a break-off that belongs to the procedure.
The Other BodyWith Portraits from the Model a second person enters the arrangement. With this the subject shifts: what is recorded is an encounter in which two observations meet. From here on, the work with the model forms the basis of all later groups of works. It supplies the material against which it can be tested what a body shows when it no longer represents.
The Procedure
Arrangements without DirectionIn the multi-figure works the composition is given out of the artist’s hands. Roles are not assigned, positions not arranged, but chosen by the participants themselves — one after another, without knowledge of what follows. The pictorial order is the record of a real constellation. What would be direction in history painting becomes observation here.
Loss of Autonomy and Minimal MovementAnother group of works operates with identical specifications for different bodies. What at first appears to be equal treatment turns out to be a withdrawal of freedom. Within the narrow, immovable frame it becomes visible how much effort is required to produce any movement at all. The exertion bears no relation to the visible result. Precisely this disproportion is the subject: an inner tension legible only in its minimal outward trace.
Drawing Cycles: The Body as Governing ElementWith the Drawing Cycles the procedure becomes transferable. A pose is chosen freely, with the instruction to find one that can be held as long as possible. What is chosen, however, is not what can be sustained but what can be shown — a position that soon hurts. The site of this pain determines the next pose. It is not failure that drives the cycle but the strain, which sets a direction. Over several stages a sequence of sheets emerges, out of which a painting proceeds.What becomes visible is not the chosen representation but its disintegration. The body takes over those decisions that are withdrawn from the will. The pictures show the models in the position that gave way — not in the one they intended to show.
References as a Diagnosis of the PresentSince 2018 references to the Old Masters have entered the work. They serve not the appropriation of a repertoire but the description of a present. The movement is neo-romantic: as Romanticism arose from disillusionment with reason and progress and rediscovered the Middle Ages not as an epoch but as an image of authenticity, so these references point to recurring structures — to relations of power that reproduce themselves under new orders, and to what disappears under increasing rationalization.The connection to the present runs through the body. In a world of information overload, of algorithmic order and an advancing disembodiment of communication, it becomes the last place where truth can still be examined. Every phase of heightened rationality produces its counter-image; the return to the physical is not a retreat but an act of restoration. What returns is not a style but a necessity.Precisely here lies the subject of the procedure. What is at stake is not a picture of the body but what a body gives away when control over representation fails. What it gives away cannot be renegotiated afterwards.
Present and Result
Construction as StabilizationThe engagement with art-historical models extends the procedure by structural components. Systems of measure, axes of movement and light-dark relations do not intervene in the result; they stabilize the condition. They are what make deviation legible in the first place. Without such a framework it could not be told apart from a mistake.The execution of the picture follows a different logic than its emergence. The picture does not reproduce the situation — it condenses it. What remains is not the event but its residue. The precision of the painting is not illustrative; it holds a state that would otherwise dissolve.
The Tipping PointIn more recent works the investigation shifts to the moment of reversal — the point at which a position is given up. It is too brief to be drawn and is therefore captured technically. Yet the recording is not the picture but material. The picture emerges in the transfer — in a decision that cannot be delegated. Selection is made not through control but through recognition.
HandsAlongside this the hand comes into focus as an independent carrier of meaning. It is the place where unconscious processes manifest themselves earliest. While the face is controlled, the hand often goes unwatched — and preserves what has already been corrected elsewhere.
What the Work Is NotThe arrangements described are not performances and the pictures are not documentation. What happens in these situations is not staged for an audience. Only what painting requires is retained. The result remains a painted picture that has to stand on its own. The procedure does not explain it — it ensures that something other than an intention stands within it.The work does not aim at developing an iconographic repertoire but at the precision of a procedure: the conditions under which a trace forms when control gives way. The pictures are not the aim of this work but its result.To hold a position until it gives way is an imposition today — and precisely for that reason the method.To the Genesis documentation →