About my Work
Surrounded by the buildings of a city a promenader can get overwhelmed by the architectural grandeur. The cultural achievements that the surrounding architecture breathes are telling stories from now and yesteryears.
A different face of a city is the uncanny, sinister or even menacing one that an urban environment can have.
These thoughts formed the starting point of a drawing research towards ambivalent circumstances in cities and agglomerations.
I use contrasts, conversions and very specific attributes of existing cities as a material to develop imaginary city landscapes.
Take Istanbul for instance, a city that thrives but is facing at the same time the permanent threat of a huge earthquake due to its location on a tectonic hotspot with the annihilation of large parts of the population as a consequence. In Tashkent in Uzbekistan there is looming a telecommunication tower that reminds one of soviet architecture. At the same time, just a few streets away there are handmade clay bricks lying to dry in the sun. Modern technique next to an archaic way of production is an example of the contrasts that are reoccuring in my work.
In Jodhpur in India a little mosquito colors a whole city in blue.
The houses there are painted blue to ward off the insects.
Or take Kowloon city in Hong Kong as another example. By now this autarkic agglomeration in Hong Kong is destroyed. After the city was abandoned, there was a caretaker who collected all the keys from the former inhabitants of all the appartments of the city. The collection of keys was put on the walls of the caretaker's office. So he had access to every appartment in case of an emergency in the deserted city.
On the island Montserrat in the Carribean sea a huge volcano outburst took place in 1995. The hastily abandoned capital Plymouth was covered with a layer of lava.
A strange uninhabitated landscape occured. Some parts of the buildings stick out of the lava layer and form the entrance to a buried underworld of collapsed edifices.
These are fragments of stories and actual places.
They were ingredients that I used while drawing a series of imaginary cities.
A different face of a city is the uncanny, sinister or even menacing one that an urban environment can have.
These thoughts formed the starting point of a drawing research towards ambivalent circumstances in cities and agglomerations.
I use contrasts, conversions and very specific attributes of existing cities as a material to develop imaginary city landscapes.
Take Istanbul for instance, a city that thrives but is facing at the same time the permanent threat of a huge earthquake due to its location on a tectonic hotspot with the annihilation of large parts of the population as a consequence. In Tashkent in Uzbekistan there is looming a telecommunication tower that reminds one of soviet architecture. At the same time, just a few streets away there are handmade clay bricks lying to dry in the sun. Modern technique next to an archaic way of production is an example of the contrasts that are reoccuring in my work.
In Jodhpur in India a little mosquito colors a whole city in blue.
The houses there are painted blue to ward off the insects.
Or take Kowloon city in Hong Kong as another example. By now this autarkic agglomeration in Hong Kong is destroyed. After the city was abandoned, there was a caretaker who collected all the keys from the former inhabitants of all the appartments of the city. The collection of keys was put on the walls of the caretaker's office. So he had access to every appartment in case of an emergency in the deserted city.
On the island Montserrat in the Carribean sea a huge volcano outburst took place in 1995. The hastily abandoned capital Plymouth was covered with a layer of lava.
A strange uninhabitated landscape occured. Some parts of the buildings stick out of the lava layer and form the entrance to a buried underworld of collapsed edifices.
These are fragments of stories and actual places.
They were ingredients that I used while drawing a series of imaginary cities.
Drawing is going to be my instrument during the residency. With this instrument I want to explore and fathom Tokyo.
I want to look in Tokyo for the places where products are made by hand in small numbers. I want to draw the places of craftsmen. In this way I want to find the encapsulated spots, the isolated cells in the body of the metropolis. In retrospect, while drawing, there can emerge new connections between these cells. In this way I hope to unveil unknown images of another Tokyo.
I want to look in Tokyo for the places where products are made by hand in small numbers. I want to draw the places of craftsmen. In this way I want to find the encapsulated spots, the isolated cells in the body of the metropolis. In retrospect, while drawing, there can emerge new connections between these cells. In this way I hope to unveil unknown images of another Tokyo.
