| Background |
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My
"wall paintings" intend to express permanent change. An
old wall, e.g., tells its history, is subject to continuous renewal.
When I touch the wall I feel connected with the past, and with
people who left their traces there. In
the
beginning of the 1990s I got interested in inscriptions on walls (graffiti)
and I started to use calligraphic elements in my paintings, i.e.,
characters, symbols, and numbers. For my paintings I use tempera or
acryl on paper, fixed on cardboard or wood, sometimes structured
with gypsum. In
many of my paintings I use Arabic characters and sequences of
numerals. I was inspired by old temple inscriptions with numbers
that represent coded text. The coding had magic meaning and hardly
anyone could decode it. The calligraphic elements resemble the
symbols in old Babylonian or Egyptian temple inscriptions. I am
particularly interested in the relationship between the individual
characters and feel a magic force originating from these
inscriptions. The
characters in my paintings have no concrete meaning. The occupation
with the characters and numbers, however, is of great importance to
me; it influences my awareness of life and my attitude towards my
inner and outer life. To
me, an old wall expresses decay and growth, death and renascense,
destruction and reconstruction, war and peace. As the wall is
painted and re-painted, the layers become documents of the past. In
a weathered wall the different layers emerge and reveal its history. |