Again, thank you all for being here
When Martin said to me:
"It's best if you organise something for the Midissage,
music or poetry or the like," at first I thought,
sure, I'll manage to organise something. But then I always find that I'm not such a great organiser
and at a certain point, a week before, I thought "Damn, I still have to prepare something."
And then I decided to simply do a short talk myself, about a topic that occupies my mind.
So I thought: "Yes, I'll do that." And then, the next day,
the 'monsters' appeared. One of them said:
"What do YOU have to say? What kind of nonsense is this?"
And the other one said "Yeah great, we can chat a bit, and just see what happens."
So I've decided to obey the second one.
I've written down some thoughts
and I'll try to form a coherent whole from that.
What I found beautiful about the previous talk was the mention of monsters
and that they live within us
And that is, I think, the main theme of my work
for me, it's about encountering the inner forces, and faces,
and they are not always joyful and happy.
But that is also important. I will now try to explain why.
What I just said about these two voices,
one wants to move forward, it wants the good,
when you have a project, you want to make something good out of it,
and the other part of us says:
"I am afraid, I don't want this, I feel unsure, I'll watch some more tv and eat some more."
I believe it's important to see both of these parts of us.
I also have a confession to make.
Since my vernissage I haven't painted anything, other than some sketching
I wasn't in my studio until yesterday, when I thought:
"I can't present myself at my midissage without having painted something."
I did sketch a bit, but my taxes for 2015 still needed to get done,
this voice that said "no, we won't do that yet" was very strong in that case.
I overcame that.
And in the meantime I wrestled with the question, Why would I actually make art?
Why is it important? Why…
Why would I devote my life to art? Or, what's the benefit, also for others?
And I've found some answers, some people who speak wisely about that.
And one of them is a psychologist in Toronto, his name is Jordan Peterson
and he explained it like this: We can divide the world into that which we know,
where we can say, "I'll do this and that", and it works out well when we do it that way.
It's where we know how the world works and where it's somewhat predictable.
And then there is the great unknown. Several people here I do not know yet,
There is a big unknown there, something - "I feel uncertain there"
and when I make some effort to greet them, it comes more into the domain of the known
or at least it enters the intermediary zone between what we know and don't know.
This intermediary zone, where we try to somehow find meaning or clarity in the world,
that's what art exists for. And dreaming also. when we dream at night,
we try to structure everything somehow and to find our way.
And when I paint or draw, in the back of my mind, a lot of my experiences from the past days
play in the background, and are processed without having to make an effort for that. And...
I believe that the images that emerge, also
serve to process these shadow sides and brighter sides of my experience,
Ich would like to read to you what I wrote for the announcement of this exhibition.
"I am fascinated by the daily experience of living as a sentient being of unfathomable origin,
in a body that is danced together by countless cells and particles, and is married to a whirling world globe.
You and I, we are dancing on our way to nowhere,
and through us, the universe cracks her mysterious jokes, and laughs heartily."
I feel like, when I'm working on my art, that I'm in this dream-like part of reality,
And that is why I'm not such a good organizer - I somehow of like it when everything is sort of vague.
I find exactness almost confusing.
What I also want to share, are two music pieces, about a minute each,
as examples of the shadow and light sides, in a way.
These are two musicians that I often listen to,
one is quite dark, and also nihilistic, and the other is very bright, but with a similar power.
So first, I'll give you the bad news.
The band is called 'Nine Inch Nails', and the song is 'Head Like a Hole'
and the painting back there was inspired by this song.
There. Haha.
That sort of shows it… It's quite dark and heavy, he goes in there and somehow retrieves art from it
and I wrestle with myself when I hear that,
somehow it attracts me very much because it resonates with something in me,
on the other hand I ask myself, "Do I want that in my life, this nihilism?"
I have a choice there. And…
Yeah, I find that an important question, that occupied me lately.
I now want to play another song by the other artist… Oops...
He makes music with a similar power, but he's taken it into the positive somehow.
I found that interesting.
That illustrates to me these polarites that I also see in my art.
On the one hand there is a lot of power, I cannot paint just a peaceful, pretty, wholesome image,
some kind of explosion has to happen for me, and that can go in these different directions.
And when I considered this question of good and evil, I found that this theme goes pretty deep.
I'm reading 'the Gulag Archipelago' by Alexandr Solshenitzyn about the labor camps in the Soviet Union,
where about 90 million people were killed [correction: estimates range from 10 to 60 million].
Why do I say this, in relation to my art, why is that important?
I believe that when we face these 'good' and 'evil' parts of ourselves, inside of us,
and say: "Evil is not just out there in the world, it's also within me
and with every decision I make during my day, I move either towards or away from it."
And when we get to know this within us, and I believe that art helps us by showing us...
these parts of us on the wall, and we can feel, "how does it resonate with me?
Do I want to move away from it? How do I relate to this?"
I believe that when we get to know this better, within ourselves, and
So that when it emerges in our lives, and we are faced with a choice, for instance,
the political situation changes, and you have to decide as a police officer for instance,
will you arrest people that have expressed certain subversive ideas?
I think it's quite important that one is familiar with what is good and evil in oneself.
That is perhaps a bit far fetched, but I think it's important.
As humans we have created very bad systems in the past, and tyranny,
and it's never really far away, it's always possible that we create it again,
so I think it's important that we can make these decisions inside of us, and get to know
the dark and the light within us,
and that we learn to orient ourselves by that somehow.
And I hope that making art makes sense for that reason,
and that it justifies being in my studio for hours, and to put it up on the wall.
Thank you very much.
Video: Barbara Ebner
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