streetscapes since 2012-

is a storytelling of a traveler about street life, street performances and street performers. The street life and the living on the street appears as a real environment of a fictional stage of everyday life, - for so many people the only place to live, to work and to survive. It’s about marginalized subcultures, about loneliness even if surrounded by people, displaying also the wish „being somebody else“, by wearing masks or being disguised, just for being seen, accepted and appreciated. It is an interactive talk of diversity, between art, artists and the public, between images within the images by discovering, realizing and recognizing our environment, the street, converted into everybody’s stage of life, wherever we are.

 

photo(-)graphic 2012-

mostly based on the concept of "zoom" I developed and started to work with a new technique I call „photo(-)graphic“ (in literally sense), which is a new kind of mixed media, using a mixture of digital and manual techniques. My own photographies are complemented with pencil drawings. The original digital picture will be dissolved in 20x20 cm printed blocks which contains 1000s of pixels in different size. Certain parts of the image will be drawn. Each of the 20x20 cm components is hand-hewn, afterwards digitalized (scanned) and the isolated blocks composed on monitor creating that way the whole picture again, displaying the different dimensions on one homogenous surface. The final large-size (one piece) picture will be printed on canvas or aluminium (limited edition of 3 prints).

 

My goal is: creating new, 'in-between' spaces within the same image. Spaces where any distinction between facts and fictions become blurred, challenging our perception of (sur)reality. During the process, it becomes clear that our conception of the world is composed of diverse structural, social, and cultural parameters. It simply cannot do without images which satisfy our intellectual and visual curiosity for the 'other'. We believe that we know those images.. do we?

 

 

zoom 2008/2011

Beate Sandor´s new concept is a differentiated interpretation of abstract realism in the era of modern art. Kick off: abstraction precedes realism, a degenerated paradoxon becomes the origin of the evoked metamorphosis. Abstracted, yet true-to-life depictions of a chosen topic, whose actual content consists of tiny pixels, which free themselves from their implied geometry to become "non" shapes, replicate through endless color prints to eventually transform into a realistic image. This is not an escape into reality, but emphasizes complex interconnections and their counteractions in a multiplied, picturesque, multi-layered, abstract-yet-realistic inner and outer world, from details to the whole, which in itself is yet another detail in a bigger whole.

Originating in the repeated zooming of a digital photograph, the image — facilitated by the mollification of technology — dissolves into hundreds to infinite of (only limited by the size of the painting) zoomed pixels, without loosing its meaning for even a second. One could be tempted to consider these pixels simply as squares and to think — did circles simply morph into squares? This has to be refuted unequivocally. In the previously concept the circle was completely closed in itself, which determinated the whole basic structure of a painting. Here the "square" only serves as a "non" shape for the visual representation. Yet no pixel is exact, the artist renounces perfection of the details for the sake of pictorial implementation, which, however carries over to the whole painting. The pixels are the secret to opening up "better seeing" and the key to the conscious awareness of the recurrent interplay: achieving closeness through distance, while at the same time keeping distance from closeness.

Observed up close, finest details dominate; details that force themselves upon the viewer, the secondary takes on primary function leading to the temporary loss of the original image, which blurs into the sub-consciousness of memory. Only tiny, zoomed macro sections remain, filling the area of the inner plane, pulsing in color and color gradients, and taking on a life of their own. To focus the perception, one has to back away from the painting. Since our eyes are demanding physical distance to be able to "see" the real image, these technique demands reality-based topics. The alienation of any depicted body is reversed through the repetition of "non" shapes and the allocation of carefully and deliberately chosen non-color or color value. The physical distance between painting and viewer is indispensable to create a mental closeness to the painting.

The original pencil drawings, portraits about Charmaine Neville yet from the series "re: New Orleans", and the first painted "zoom" series "one more rose" or "a rose 2 c" are only the beginning of this versatile, promising project.

circles 1997 -2007

Reduction to a single form – the circle – forms the basis of my conceptual art. This elementary shape underlies my strictly composed paintings. Uniform in a square format, irritating patterns result, series of patterns that have their origin in variations of interconnected circles, almost overboard the frame. I call the basic structure "circle-net” from which different forms of joined circle segments arise. Their white outlines invoke empty spaces as if pointing to a distance that constitutes a sign of individuality of the almost identical elements of a painting.

I also perceive the circle symbolically in the figurative sense of Plato’s mythical whole round people, that are cut in half by the gods and robbed of one half roam the earth looking for their loved counterparts. But also as a symbol of perfection that I keep fragmenting and reassembling.

Repeatedly reformatting and rethinking perfection inspired the development of a distinct system within dissected circles. The work process consists of the fragmentation of the circles followed by a two-dimensional visualization through metamorphosis of the original form. The basis structure of a painting is invariably the so-called circle net which is created through multiplying the original circle within a square. This multiplication process takes place on four levels. The propagation is variable and only restricted by the circumference of the square in which the circles are inscribed. (starting at 30x30cm up to 180x180cm).

Inspired by the fascinating fact that the secret of the pictoral scripts of the Maya and Egyptians haven’t been deciphered completely till today, I decided to create my own form-based script, my own hieroglyphs where the content of the picture determines the pictures itself. When I projected the Latin alphabet into the circle net, I succeeded in transforming circle segments into letters, to move the individual letters along the lines of the net at a whim, to arrange them above, below and side by side, shift them symmetrically or asymmetrically, to mirrow them, cover them up or just let them complement each other. The visual expression of the text pictures evolved into a no longer readable texture und gained a curios dynamic within the system of chance. Picturing the written word determines the picture itself. Language is reduced to speechlessness at (un)known associative Elements. New signs emerge, indecipherable hieroglyphs, which seem ordered at first, whose reading is subjective and variable, since the shown balances between the attributes "recognizable”, "similar to”, "strange” and "undefineable”. The individual letters form random enclosed areas that remind of archaic signs, faintly resemble fishes, birds, flowers and different abstract formations. These forms not only provoke a memory of the present but also remind us that we are living in an era where the borders – at least in our mind – between organic and artistic, nature and technology, art and science, object and abstraction are blurred.

An essential part of the artistic process consists of dissecting words and word fragments, but also real texts in their entirety such as the Lotus Sutra on virtual levels and re-visualizing them in a geometrical structure. Each letter floats on its own level and is only an isolated detail of a pattern of contradictory and complementary elements. Let’s call it perception pattern. Individual letters are abstractions of finiteness, words, sentences, the flow of text an abstraction of infinity. All this is only possible because of the existence of different languages. In this case, the language is the system, the letters are the order, lined up beside each other and hence filled with empirical sense, defined by grammar and isolated from the system environment, the picture background and the circle net. The relationship between the individual letters is indefinitely variable and not foreseeable. The letters change the painting and at the same time the visual system by creating a subtext within the original text. The new signs are variations of the no longer as text defined words. They are stripped of their semantic meaning and become indecipherable. They are mutating into a new script. Just like compact beings and thing disintegrate into patterns under the high magnification of a microscope, language is observed under such an extreme close-up that only its physical texture is perceptible. But the destruction of the uppermost language layer bares a new, deeper meaning, which only reveals itself when the habitual attachment of common meaning is overcome.

The working process from start to finished product is complex and time consuming. It consist of different phases: computeranimation of the letters residing within the circle net; creation of a work surface consisting of several levels; the search for new connections, borders and patterns; destroying the language level in order to visualize the formerly invisible; step-wise reduction of the many levels to a two-dimensional result.

I have been working on the circle concept, which represents the basis of my conceptual paintings, since 1996. Not only am I trying to develop it thematically but I am also working on perfecting the virtual background technically. I spend two years searching for form within the circle. The alphabet was finally developed in 1998 and since then I "write” my pictures, examining different topics, designing and painting in parallel. In 2001 I finished the big project "the seven prayers”. It consists of 7 prayers to the elements for which I transformed a whole chapter of the Lotus Sutra into visualized text. In 2002 I returned to the circle as my basic form and extended it into the circle wave in numerous variations. 2003 I revisited the "shadow” topic and inscribed the shadow between circle segments as well as within two-two colors. The pictures are defined through the "writing” and carry the title of their text.
Apart from the "seven prayers” I don’t consider any of my thematic project finished, since every new emerging picture cries out for uncounted form variations. In addition to exploring a certain topic each series is characterized by a technical theme:

1997 circle in square – The beginning, pure search for form, circle segments within a square
1998-2001 the seven prayers – visualization of a text of the lotus sutra
1998 body in circle – human body, visualized through circles
1998 circle-in-scription – positive and negative forms of a text
1999 origami & signs – 9 sign (signs, hieroglyphs) divided into blocks
1999 in the black dimension – associations to a film negative
1999 4times mirror – 4fold mirrow image, the absolute symmetry
2000 virtual lovers – caleidoskop, the negative image (drawings)
2000/2004 twins – 2 variations with the same title, new forms through different use of the white border lines
2001-2003 shadows – 2fold mirrow images + reduction, visualisation of shadows within the context of 2 and 4 colors
2002 circle wave, like the first circle – the bisected circle (like yin and yang) transcending the single circle, creation of the circle wave
2005 between the lines – the symmetry of the painting is refracted through accentuating and separating the black-colored areas
2005-2006 point of view – four variations of the physical moved painting
2006-2007 "When The Saints.." – i.M. to my late blues musicians friends: Willie Kent, Bonnie Lee. Peace!
2007 re: New Orleans – overlapping of different levels, displayed through complementary colors and through visible traces of the structure

the circle concept is finished.