Agenda

I do not depict actual spaces or possible architectures in which narrative situations take place. I develop abstract scenes that are both axiomatic and enigmatic, and in which different forms and elements meet.
All paintings in this series show two identical (mirrored) hands. While in all paintings these hands have the same actual size, the size of the canvas and thereby the detail and proportion of the hands varies in relation to the size of the painting.
To the superstructure of the hands, which remain identical except for the color of the nail polish, changing elements or motifs - pyramidal shapes, spheres, holes, transparent ribbons, door handles or bananas are added. In complex spatial situations, the manicured hands reach into cavities or protrude out of them and are combined with other systems of representation: pictogram-like elements, line drawings and geometrical shapes which sometimes create volumes, sometimes cavities, intersecting or nesting inside each other.
The pictorial space becomes a system in which forms and objects can be combined to different chains of meaning, like words can be combined to sentences. Depending on how structure and module relate to each other, the gestures embodied by the hands, and the linguistic access to them, change: access, intervene, reach into, grasp, let go, or hold on to.
While all the paintings of the series depict the same gesture which is open to interpretation, I try to avoid the "painterly gesture" - still an expression of (male) genius and spontaneity – not least through the use of modules and systems and a formalized and partly typographic painting style.