|
»I see art as condensed or expanded feelings, as fragments of a story, a shout or a whisper about something that is present or is lacking and is thereby present. At its core art is a primeval language. It speaks all tongues to all ages; it is at once incomprehensible and comprehensible, gloomy and glad, powerful and gentle, humorous and scathing. It speaks and speaks and some of it you understand with your head, some of it with your skin, some of it with your heart; some of it you cannot understand at all but just perceive and hoard away in your inner pantry like a kind of stockpile that suddenly comes into its own when the time is ripe. For me, some art has beauty in its non-beautiful expression while other art is ugly in its beauty. And then there is the adventurous, which may be an enormous and uninhibited revelation that sticks in the back of your mind like a print and an enlightening explanation that unleashes energy. Art that means something to me is art that can transform a desert to life. When it can make the ignorant knowledgeable, when the invisible becomes visible, when it can explain the inexplicable. When it can get make what is rooted take flight – and can make something flighty take form. When it touches the untouchable. When it makes the world grow. There is also art that is in a place where there is wonder and yet resembles black chaos – and which keeps on teasing you with all its incomprehension. It contains a richness that always makes me reflect that incomprehension is one of life’s basic conditions and that we must all carry our own and each other’s chaos. I often try to define what art is. However, it is very difficult because I keep experiencing that art does not lend itself to definition, explanation, elucidation or clarification. It is dichotomous. When I say, for example, that art is something that is in motion, then a voice in my head tells that art is also the complete opposite, a moment frozen in time or something completely still. For me, art defines itself by always seeking its opposite. In this way it becomes so attractive, so alive, so challenging. Summing it up, I would say that for me art is that which moves me, touches me and ultimately even changes me.« |