With this post, my self-imposed seclusion is coming to an end. I am back to writing my blog as part of my daily routine. I had a very, very strong urge to remain silent for a while. I was surprised though, how much I missed writing, even though I am only doing it for a bit over two months. The artworks I have created last week are as private as my thoughts and won’t make it onto the blog.
For a period I explored chess pieces to work through a very unpleasant experience in my younger years. Needless to say, the black king featured very strongly. I came across one of the prints recently and was looking through my files today to find the electronic version. But they seemed to have disappeared. I think it must be good on ten years, and a few computers ago when I worked on this…
This image here will have to do. It is from the same period. I used this one in a book before, therefore it survived and was easy to find.
When I went through my chess phase, I began to wonder: How come that the queen is realistically the strongest piece on the board and can do all the moves… While the king, on the other hand, needs protection from all his men and is effectively very weak. He can only move one square at the time. Now, how old is the game?
This character was originally called Vanity, but I have renamed her Socialite.
In conversation, she is the one constantly looking around to see whether there is a more important person in sight. If somebody shows up on the horizon, she drops you like a hot potato. On the other hand, she is very worried about what other people might think of her. As an indication of this trait the back of her head shows other people’s faces.
Working on this puppet, and of course thinking of the upcoming book launch, I had an epiphany about what irks me with “social networks”. It is the terminology… For me social networks it is a contradiction in terms.
Network has a very strong business connotation. This might be my second language interpretation here, but any marketing 101 book tells you, you must network to be successful. I went to a business network meeting once, to see what it is all about. In my opinion it was the saddest affair I have ever been to. The people had their intentions plastered all over their foreheads and yes, fair enough, that was the purpose of the meeting. But I found it tremendously off-putting.
Therefore I resist using the word “network” in relation to my friends. In my opinion it excludes altruism, which I consider necessary for relaxed interaction between people.
A good friend of mine gave me this minature bottle as a prop for the puppet show at the book launch. Pig likes it’s tipple – now that sounds like an old lady, I should say it like it is – Pig likes to booze!
It is quite funny, my friend is a New Zealander, but she bought this bottle a good thirty, fourty years ago on her OE. And it says on the side of the bottle Produce of Germany. She bought it at a time when I didn’t even know New Zealand existed. The alcohol has long evaporated out of the bottle through the unbroken seal. When we talked about the puppet show she immediately thought of the bottle as the right prop for Pig and digged it out. I wonder what kind of memories she has, when she looks at the bottle.
It is amazing what people keep as mementos. I have a box full “useless” stuff. I started to photograph the items, as each of them conjures up lost friends and time past. I am not lamenting the loss by any means, I just know that every person along my tracks has added to who I am now.
That is what I really wanted to say yesterday about the hammer: we look at the same thing, but we interpret it differently depending on our previous experiences. For me that is the reason why people can never see things quite the same way.
Art contemplation is a little bit like a hammer. We know what it is, but what we make of it depends on how we use it. Destroy or create!
Two people look at the same image and can have a totally different experience.
This is one of my favourites. For me, there is so much symbolism in it and of course I know the person depicted. Therefore I don’t think this work can ever have the same meaning for anybody else. I believe the viewer will find their own meaning in it, hence I don’t like to explain…
However, with this image I will describe how I technically put things together.
The original title of the work is: “Kaiser, König, Bettelmann” (engl. “Emperor, King, Pauper”). Broadly speaking, my intention is to show that any person can be (or should be allowed to be) any of these characters at times. Hopefully they will be well balanced. For a wider audience I would call it “Modern Man”. Now I really mean MAN, not mankind.
In all three parts of the triptych I used the same four photographs to create the background. Those four images are symbolic on their own
1) a close-up of stone wall and wooden door with flaky paint
2) a window looking from the inside out
3) a frayed lace curtain
4) an iron observation tower in the woods of on an Eastern German island.
The four images were combined to support the person’s poses (strong, balanced and weak).
It all developed from the balanced person’s photograph, which was a simple holiday snapshot and the other two people shots were taken to match what I had started.
My allegory for relationships
Between 2008 and 2009 I’ve had a project going, where I’ve sent my sister a postcard once a week for a year. She lives on the other side of the world. This postcard shown here was No 12.
For me railway tracks are a wonderful allegory for relationships: path crossing, joining, breaking off, running parallel or veering off.
dedepuppets 