It all began in the autumn of 1996 — in an old workshop, once a backyard metalworking workshop on Stahlwerkstraße 32 in Dortmund.
[The backyard workshop — its meaning and history in German architecture →]
The very first project was to transform the workshop into an art studio.
The first paintings were created on huge canvases — already in winter, sometimes in freezing temperatures.
At the time, there was only one coal stove in the large room with its high walls. A stove that sometimes simply had enough and went out on its own.
And yet, there was something warm about watching small hand-drawn ideas grow into paintings on enormous canvases.
I would go deep down into the cellar to fetch coal.
And when I came back upstairs, I was holding a new definition of time in my hands.
Ever since, the hands have been trying to give that definition shape — in whatever form it chooses to take.
I have permission to watch them work.
Again and again, here and there, spheres appeared in the paintings, turning and moving around one another.
Sun.
Earth.
Moon.
Warmth.
Life.
Cold.
Giving.
Taking.
And once again: life.
You look up.
The warmth of the sun.
The light.
I take my light from the sun, too.
Am I cold?
Yes.
Very cold.
Pure white.
But you think I give nothing?
Without me, there would be no life on Earth.
No love?
And what about work?
Work for love.
The distance from my point A to your point B — my destination — should be as short as possible.
Work faster?
Then let point A and point B melt into one.
I would do anything for that one moment I had always longed for.
Yes.
To see you.
To smell you.
To hold you.
To touch you.
To hear you breathe.
A moment.
A brief pause — just long enough not to lose our grip.
But time keeps moving, without taking me with it.
Where does time actually go?
Why does it move so fast?
That was the moment when the spaces between things began to disappear from my drawings and dissolve into space itself.
And suddenly, even space began to lose its meaning.
Because without time, there is no waiting.
No expectation.
Lifeless beings begin to learn how to live.
And living beings slowly, very slowly, begin to stop living.
So what about hope?
Don’t panic.
It is still there.
Having and being are not opposites.
They are merely auxiliary verbs of language, carrying a whole labyrinth of paradoxes on their backs — without ever making life itself understandable.
Do.
Make.
Create.
Bring into existence.
But who?
Who is doing all this?
You mean me?
Really?
Now?
Today, I don’t feel like it.
The hands keep doing their job anyway.