Books

I create books... page by page. In this manner, I archive all my stencils. Once the book is finished, I film it from a bird's eye view, slowly flipping through its pages. These videos are then projected in large format during exhibitions. The first book I ever made was somewhat on the edge, as I painted it for days in my living room. I use acrylic paint, spray paint, and directly cut into the book to create templates. Despite keeping the space ventilated the whole time, it wasn't sufficient for such an endeavor. The starting point of the book was my templates, which were inspired by group portraits of people either at work or family gatherings. When cutting the templates, I slice out thousands of shape fragments that eventually form the entire image. I decided to standardize these cut-out shape fragments by drawing them all in the same size, A3 format, and centering them. For each shape fragment, I write a piece of information relating to the group situation. I find these group pictures at flea markets, where the identities of the people are often unknown. However, that doesn't concern me because my focus is on using the images as representations of group gatherings. Now, I gather information on the topic of family. Strangely enough, crime series have been particularly helpful to me in this regard. Especially cases that unfold within an intact family fascinate me the most. In these shows, a picture-perfect family is initially portrayed. Expressions that describe this are noted down - "daddy's little girl," "black sheep," "wedding ring," and so forth. All these expressions relate to family dynamics. A second group pertains to corporate group pictures. Here, I delve into business jargon to attribute information to each individual shape fragment. These shape fragments with accompanying information serve as modern hieroglyphs to me.