In the concepts/projects “Landscapes” "Water" "Communication"  I focus fundamentally on the times we live in.

 

This work exists of photographic material. The pictures are not always sharp, have a strong roughness, and show brutality. Sometimes even the remains of the manipulation can be seen.

These raw externals of the pictures seamlessly fade into the raw, partially deconstructed society. This work is created in the context of a degenerative era.

The economic implosion, the multi-ethnic problems, and the sociological impact of changing life patterns.

Landscapes are stripped of their monotonous, predictable aesthetics and make place for different surprising aesthetics.

What remains fascinating is the creation of "the image" and its relation to reality.

How we react to images is mostly the result of automatisms (oh's and ah's), in other words: the image has become corrupted.

It is a very subjective process where I work associative: infectious associations that are not finite.

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About multilayeredness

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Multilayeredness is an essential condition.  Either way, a work must encourage reflection, thought, release, and experience of emotions.  It is the multilayeredness that keeps you attached to the work and makes you doubt whether you would leave the work or not

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About communication

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Does it matter

how the word expectation is pronounced?

Or that its sound pattern is different from that of the word desire?

 

And is desire a long-held expectation?

Or is it just the other way around?

 

This is why, I can never mean

what you mean

You can never say what I say:

 

my syntax has become abstract.

 

And maybe it is also why

my words crumble

before they even reach you.

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On boundaries and limitations

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We draw boundaries against what

we don't know.

We draw boundaries against emotions that

get too close.

We draw boundaries against what

we don't understand.

We draw boundaries when others behave differently.

We draw boundaries against things

we don't recognize.

 

By limiting ourselves, we

also, limit others.

By limiting others, we

also, limit ourselves.

From within such limitations

we communicate

in a predictable and therefore

automated way:

our vocabularies are uniform

 

I can counter your every word

 

My language, unrecognizable, becomes incomprehensible:

The unsayable

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About The Unsayable

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The Unsayable

 

Is where the black lines are.

They are where they are, immovable

and nobly beautiful.

But they are not sentences,

not words, not even letters and

certainly not sounds.

Language has been exchanged for lines,

black stripes.

The unsayable as such,

beautifully and carefully presented to you.

 

We just have to accept it.

You just have to accept it.

I,

I will just have to accept it

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About  the Beautiful Borders Series

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Boundaries are presented metaphorically.

There are also physical limitations such as curtains, doors, walls, windows and sometimes they have a strange beauty. It is the deceptive beauty that makes you focus on the boundary and while you do see the relative of such beauty.

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About  the Questions of Travel Series

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Traveling and especially mass tourism have become somewhat apocalyptic.

Long before the COVID-19 period, I saw the mercilessness of an increasingly surrealistic form of tourism: far, rare, original, expensive.  The actual intention of traveling, getting to know and respecting cultures, had become a factor that was completely neglected.

These photos are the opposite of the polished tourist photos.  The blurriness of the photos is a metaphor for non-viewing. The modern itinerant man is not able to look as he should.

At the same time, I discovered the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop.  Her poem “Questions of Travel” fitted in seamlessly with this.

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The commercialization of art, particularly Rothko

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The Commercialization of Rothko: Between Contemplation and Consumption

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Can we still view Rothko's work independently of its commercialization?

Mark Rothko dreamed of an art that would transform the viewer, offering spiritual experience in a world increasingly dominated by materialism. His monumental color fields were conceived as meditations, as spaces for inner contemplation. But nearly sixty years after his death, his work seems trapped in a paradox: how do you preserve the spiritual essence of art that is increasingly defined by its commercial value?

The Silence of Houston

In the Rothko Chapel in Houston, where fourteen monumental canvases envelop the visitor in an almost tangible silence, you still experience something of Rothko's original intention. Here, in contemplative solitude, the deep purples and blacks speak their own language. They demand time, patience, surrender. These are works that reveal their secrets only to those willing to slow down, to listen to what remains unspoken.

This experience – alone with the work, without crowds, without smartphone flashes – is becoming increasingly rare. In American museums, one can often still view Rothko's paintings in relative peace, but this privilege feels fragile, as though it could disappear at any moment under pressure from the art market and tourism.

The Circus of Paris

This rupture became painfully clear during the Rothko exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in 2024. Here, the artist was presented as a luxury brand, his work framed by Frank Gehry's architectural extravagance and LVMH's commercial power. The exhibition drew masses of visitors who consumed Rothko as a cultural product, an Instagram moment, a status symbol.

It was Rothko as circus: spectacular, accessible, but stripped of its essence. Where his work demands silence, it received spectacle. Where it yearns for contemplation, it got consumption. The irony was almost palpable: an artist who struggled throughout his life with the commercialization of art became posthumously the ultimate commercial product.

The Impossible Question

Can we still see Rothko independently of his commercial value? The answer is complex. The art market has transformed his work from spiritual objects into financial instruments. When a Rothko is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, it becomes nearly impossible to look at it purely. Every brushstroke carries the weight of speculation, every color transition is measured in market value.

Yet something untouchable remains in his finest works. Under the right circumstances – in the silence of a museum early in the morning, in the meditative space of the Chapel – his paintings can still exert their original power. They can still transform, move, compel contemplation.

The Paradox of Accessibility

Commercialization has paradoxically made Rothko both more accessible and less accessible. More people than ever know his name, his work hangs as posters in student rooms worldwide. But simultaneously, the commercial machinery has erected barriers between the public and the genuine experience of his art.

Rothko wanted his work to function as a drug – a means of consciousness transformation. Instead, it has often devolved into decoration, cultural capital, a marker of refined taste. The question is whether we, knowing what we know about the art market and its mechanisms, can still find the innocence to surrender ourselves to his work.

Conclusion: The Viewer's Responsibility

Perhaps the answer lies not with the art world, but with ourselves as viewers. In an age when everything becomes commercialized, experiencing art as it was intended becomes a conscious choice. It requires courage to slow down in a world that accelerates, to pause before what cannot be bought in works that seem to have everything for sale.

Rothko's legacy depends on our willingness to resist market logic, to see his paintings as more than investment or decoration. In every encounter with his work, we can choose: do we consume, or do we allow ourselves to be transformed? That choice, however small, determines whether Rothko's dream of spiritual art survives in our commercialized world.

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