Artist Statement

I do not make work in order to explain a closed story.

Much of my work develops while I am making it. A glance, a memory, a piece of material, a mistake or an accidental form may become more important than the original plan. I do not always try to correct that. Sometimes that is exactly the moment when the work starts to live.

This is why my images can appear raw, childlike, hard, erotic, absurd, tender or unfinished. These qualities do not cancel each other out. A figure can be frightened and threatening at the same time. A painting can be funny while something disturbing happens inside it. A detail can ultimately become stronger than the complete image.

I bring much of this work together under the title States. Not because every work means the same thing, but because each holds a moment, presence or tension without pretending it is definitive.

Panoptica is built more deliberately as a project. In it I investigate surveillance, AI, recognition, privacy and power. But even there, I am especially interested in the moment when a system makes a mistake, begins to doubt, or loses its own certainty.

I do not need to resolve everything.

The work has to live.