Dead Father Cryogenic Institute in Chinese Landscape, 30×60 cm, oil on STYLEX prefabricated canvas&stretcher
This is another effort in a planned series of paintings in the classical Chinese style. Based on elements from Ming Dynasty landscape paintings, it features a Cryogenic Institute, a stylized 1920 Ford Runabout, a family of water buffalos, perhaps the C.O.D. – appointed custodians of the Dead Father Cryogenic Institute, a storage facility for the dead fathers of a past human civilization, first featured in a ca. 2003 airbrush painting as the “Wilhelm Reich Cryogenic Institute”. The narrative of legendary purport of the painting is however only a pretext for a kind of painterly exercise, in the style of what the civil servants in various Chinese dynasties turned to painting as a kind of unpaid profession (a very much glorified hobby), and their masterworks were often mere exercises in the style of a colleague in another part of the huge empire. These paintings were scrolls, and mostly stored in shelves, to be unrolled, like books, to be scrutinized, evaluated, perused, in solitude or together with esteemed guests. Eventually, they ended up in one of the Emperor’s huge art vaults, who had a strong believe that his empire was only as strong and long-living as the art works created under its auspices by its servants.
This painting is of course permanently unrolled, mounted on a mass produced stretcher, painted in contemporary oil colours. It is in this way only a nostalgic simulation, but also an exercise.
Antitransgressive prevent strategy has three specific objectives: (1) respond to the ideological challenge of deviancy and systemic transgression and the threat we face from those who promote it, (2) prevent people from being drawn into boundary challenging behaviour and ensure they are given appropriate advice and support, (3) work with sectors and institutions where there are risks of radicalisation (hot spots, suburban abandoned areas, et al.)
The Three Strategies of Huang Shigong (Pencil, crayon, pastel, acrylics on paper, 65 x 50 cm)
Look at a brutalist office edifice with sustainable, architecturally integrated cooling and climatization scheme, dedicated to the established best practice of social work and the prevention of social disintegration by all forms of deviancy, including chronic fatigue syndrome.
See how the sculptures of three modes of transportation – (steam powered, bodily propulsion by legs, petrol based motorized solution) are forming an allegory of adaptability and the value of “getting out of the comfort zone”, to achieve better social results which will all eventually end in failure due to entropy which besets the universe and is totally against all human endeavours to create stable (“sustainable”) solutions. See also that the tricycle of the Dion et Bouton type is meant to be an immovable sculpture, bolted to the pavement, just as the Greek Riace bronze warrior is only a mass-market die-cast full scale model of one of two actual sculptures, found in 1972 in the sea near Riace, Calabria, of an actual and organic bearded warrior, and the Engine on the roof is also just a light-weight, plastic replica in slightly reduced scale. This is all architectural art of the Kunst am Bau variety, later added to the stark and elegant brick edifice which in its purer form served purer functions, supposedly.
Please note that this drawing is not only in actual execution, but also in reproduction of only middling quality. This reflects a remark by an actual social worker “social work is always and in all forms dedicated to failure”. In fact, even though in rough form, the drawing includes and merges all sorts of painterly and graphic techniques. If the artist was a Norman Rockwell this should mean that the work was supposed to shine in photographic reproduction, but this was achieved in this case, due to inferior photographic equipment and lack of photographic expertise on the photographer’s side.
At the Toy Car Convention / Un re in ascolto, 2019, pencil and pastel pencil on tone paper, 22,9 x 31,8 cm / 9 x 12.9 inches
Certain display options do not work due to conversion to a block type page set-up model. A new template ought to be chosen. This drawing belongs to a group of smaller and well accomplished drawings made in 2019, which deal with the topic or the author’s personal endeavour of a return to the human figure (after several years or a decade of abstaining from the depiction of human figures). Note that the human figure is a very dangerous item to depict. While from an Islamist perspective, you defy God’s will, in Western society you make certain dangerous statements with each attribute you choose to endow that figure with for the sake of desired or presumed realism. Class, as demonstrated in dress, skin color, sex, all such things have become contentious due to identity politics. It is easy to hurt someone by callously laying open the fact that the author’s inner society might not contain certain sub-species, gender types etc. or might be in some other way testament to the power of categorization. This drawing features a dog-person (the inspector), an overweight person, an unclad youthful person. All, including the dog type seem to belong to the male category, all are united in reveration of a presumably newly released vintage car model (a 1:8 die-cast scale model of a 1910 Benz Limousine) – a fetish linked to a certain sub-type of masculine sexuality. Other interpretations or readings of this image are at the discretion of the observer. It ought to be noted that the dog type is a paraphrase of an original sketch by the author Wolfdietrich Schnurre, depicting an arrogant dog of breeding, featured in the 1962 novel “Die Aufzeichnungen des Pudels Ali”. In this scene, he might not partake in the reveration process, but acts as the inspector, the arrogant non-human agent, observing two employees of the model toy car company, who might be involved in a crime of sorts.
Woman’s Medical Centre with 1886 Benz Patent Motorcar (Oils on canvas on wood, 50,3 x 62,8cm)
Photographic reproduction of a painting which is positioned somewhere on the borderline demarcating the difference between the entirely satisfactory with added interest, and one of the lesser efforts in the field of true painting. Due to experiments with the preparation and priming of the canvas, the behavior of the paint was unexpected. Thus the execution lacks fluency. The technically inferior quality of the photographic reproduction adds to the impression of a very strange atmosphere permeating the picture, ambiguously oscillating between moodiness and objectivism. The symbolism; moon, spiral, car, and brick, is rather balanced, but with the addition of some sea shells, it is clearly shifted into the realm of female reproduction. (Of course, this is based on highly untrustworthy assessments of gender-classification of objects. Ed.)
The building does, or at least did, actually exist, somewhere on the British Islands. The photocopy of a photograph of the building from a book on Brutalist architecture garnered at the Düsseldorf Central Library some 25 years ago exists, yet, due to negligence, lacks any inscription for further contextual elucidation of the source. So neither information on the architect nor the actual location of this interestingly proportioned edifice can be provided, much to this author’s disgust.
Paul Gerhardt Church Gelsenkirchen-Ückendorf with 1903 Cadillac Model A Runabout (A3; 42×29,7cm)
Behold here a fine example of evangelical church design in the vein of tasteful international modernism, a sight, not altogether typical, but not unusual either in a time when there was still a lively interest in all church things, yet the decline of church business was already clearly visible on the horizon of time as men know it (not geological time). Witness the gleam of the main building’s big glass front – a huge abstract dyptich of biblical proportions – which is clearly an early Euro-continental reference to the big coloured front face tradition of modern American churches. This church, built many decades ago, at some not exactly verifiable point in the 1960s, still stands, yet is robbed of its dominant feature; the space around it. Today, it is sadly hidden behind parked cars and fences, and swallowed up by attached public service facilities: an old people’s home, a kindergarten.
Note how the nave is separated from the church tower in this design. A separation of things usually compacted into one edifice might be due to conscious conceptual considerations, or simply a sign of the times. What this separation signifies is the American-Fordian thought and practice pattern of division of labour – the tower; the reaching out facility, both reaching out for the congregation, reaching out for god (also a structure akin to a giant billboard/beacon with built in audio component) – the congregation and worship hall a place of production, production of faith, the plant proper.
Karl Band, Cologne St. John Baptist, with 1901 Oldsmobile Runabout (A3; 42×29,7cm)
This is a beautiful example of the art of repair and rebuilding, as practised widely in the middle of the former century, in this undisclosed place, which met with generous structural destruction in the second half of the Second Great War, and thus had a chance to develop a unique style of modernity in rebuilding, a style which flourished for only a little more than one decade, only to be replaced by a still unique, but aesthetically rather unsatisfactory industrialized construction process, using holistically questionable materials like Ytong, autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC), calcium silicate units, and mineral insulation board.
In this short blessed phase before the chemical industrial complex got on its feet again and took over the construction market, brick was the preferred building material; often recycled from the rubble which was lying around in great quantities to be collected and reused or heaped wholesale into artificial hills. Concrete, if it was used, remained mostly unadorned and unhidden, its surface showing the marks of the cast in which it was poured, a practice which developed, outside of its niche as a method of artistic repair for churches and damaged art museums, into a fashion, an alternative International Style utilizing less glass and steel, more brick and concrete, mostly employed in the construction of publically funded municipal buildings, police stations, universities, or social housing projects. This style, though, did not really take hold here, in this undisclosed place, but abroad, were minds were more open, less numbed.
This church, first recorded in the year 1090, suffered extensive damage during the war, and then became what was locally praised a jewel of modern reconstruction, a reconstruction which was realized by the architect/builder Karl Band, who could be considered the North Rhine Westphalian version of the Bavarian Hans Döllgast.
This church now serves as a combined worship and convention center for the CRUX youth movement, which aims to spiritually cleanse and refresh the world though collective missionary itineracy.
Karl Band, Köln Dellbrück St. Norbert, Ansicht von Nord 1940, mit 1910 Benz Limousine (A3; 42×29,7cm)
Atmospheric rendering of the Church of Fuzzy Wisdom, situated in a forgotten spot in a forgotten part of a half-forgotten City. Fuzziness is demonstrated by the singular double tower design feature. Entrance, and thus partaking of Fuzzy Wisdom, is facilitated by a special portal unit which leads through the gap between the two towers, into the actual congregation hall. Vehicles of all sorts as well as less ceremonial visitors and delivery personell can also find ingress through a comfortably sized side door which leads through the left (the rational) tower of Fuzzy Wisdom. This practical entrance is facing the north, thus no disturbing, directional sunlight will disturb the minds of the visitors or the architectural unity and dignity of the building. A rather beautiful, off-white, vintage Benz limousine is parked in front ot the north facade, forming a well calculated aesthetic unity with the less mechanical minded edifice.
Floating in the sky over roof of the congregation hall; a spiritual inseminator in the act of spiritualizing an inflatable effigy of an early space-craft design (for a deeper insight in the symbolism of this floating sculpture, see Tellurialism).
You are Beautiful, too – an Exhibition for Children, Humans, and Finite Automatons, (A5, 2015)
This invitation card is in fact a souvenir card. Due to recent admonishments by paperless office activists, art mongers are now discouraged from sending out printed invitation cards. Instead, electronic invitiations are send out, and only those who venture out and actually visit the space presenting the physical artworks are allowed to take one card per person with them, so that they can deposit it on their coffeetable, fasten it with a magnet on the refrigerator door, or maybe even pin it to a pinboard, if they have one. The card then serves as a potentially permanent reminder of the event and where, when, and why it was obtained. It is designed to survive hundreds or thousands of years, if preserved properly in a sealed, clear, archival plastic sleeve which must be purchased separately. The idea is, of course, to ensure the artist and his work a very effective, totally voluntary kind of publicity, a kind of private publicity, so to speak. Incidentally, this card is based on the drawing “Karl Band, Holy Trinity Church, Cologne Poll, with 1906 Compound Touring car”, and was supposed to feature a hallmark of cautiously modern church design by the prolific church architect Karl Friedrich Heinrich Band (1900-1995), in conjunction with a Vintage car of a slightly earlier date. In fact, the historical truth is complex and was not sufficiently explored nor documented by the artist. The church, as it is now standing looks totally unlike the depicted church, which very much resembles the original church from 1928, which burned out in the year 1943. It was built from 1950-1953 after plans by Karl Band, who, according to the spirit of that time, tried to use as many remaining parts of the original as possible. The semi-original tower by Karl Band had to be torn down in the year 1968 (a very symbolic date), and was replaced with a yet more modern one by Hans Schilling. The church, as it stands to this day, is an example of typical brick based mid-century church design which has little or no similarities to the depicted one.
You are Beautiful, too
a poem for an exhibition
on the theme of a flock of sparrows joined by one escaped canary
and the author feeding birds
Six times seven-teen
Have you seen?
Rhymes make happy times
The sparrows look at me and beg
While I stand solemnly
on just one leg
With tiny beaks they eat and tweet
And stand on tiny sparrow’s feet
“You are not dressed in colours gay
But you prefer plain brown and grey!”
“You dance and frolic so around
I see the birds, but not the ground”
Then the crumbs are eaten all
And I stand lean, and stiff, and tall
The sparrows have eaten and flown away
And left me feathers, brown and grey
(Oh you creatures of the sky!
Will ever we see from eye to eye?)
Only a yellow canary
Is left behind, and looks at me
I wonder, when the sparrows look at you
What do they think? You’re beautiful, too?
St. Paul’s Church, Schwenningen, with early BMW Motorbike (42×29,7cm, pencil and coloured pencil on paper, 2015)
The image above depicts a worship centre of the heliocentric kind, devoted to adoring the heavens and everything above. An art work was commissioned to make a visual statement about the function of the building. The artist decided to create a holographic projection of unclear direction—a wavelike pattern is discernible, one assumes that there is some kind of dynamic involved, but it is not clear whether the waves are undulating in a downward direction, sent from some heavenly entity, or whether they are going up, towards said entity. Also, the waves are banded in a multicoloured fashion, but clearly not following the known order of wavelengths in the visible electromagnetic spectrum. The colours in which they present themselves (or, are presented) seem to follow an unfathomable (artistic?) taste pattern, which however might hypothetically be based on some scientific principle on the level of quantum mechanics. (Theologians across the world are very enamored with quantum theory, as quanta are known to behave erratically, contrary, obstinate, and wayward, when observed by a merely human observer. They do that on a basis of knowing things before they occur, communicating (?) with each other on a pre-emptive timeline, in short, displaying many characteristics of Godly perfection. Thus, in an ontogenetic system of proof, they are showing exactly that which God must possess, which shows that he, she, it, must exist.)
As an afterthought, the artist added a floating three-dimensional optical illusion to remind human observers of the futility of observation, of the necessity to stop observing and start worshipping. The progressive parson to whom this church was assigned parks his vintage BMW motorbike in front of the church to remind his parish of the parallel nature of worldliness and spirituality, the necessity to practice parallel thinking.
* * *
“I remember […] reading an agreeable tale about a species of highly intelligent giraffes who travelled by spaceship from their solar system to ours, to ask if our sun was behaving cruelly to us, as theirs had recently taken to doing to them.”
(Doris Lessing)
“Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là.”
(Pierre-Simon Laplace)
House for Successful Magician’s Third Spouse (with Benz Motorbike) [42×29,7cm, 2013]
The story behind this picture is not entirely satisfactory and has a few ethical issues. Possible implications concerning the Successful Magician’s domestic situation are based on one specific, questionable kind of speculation. The contained symbolism is subject to internal debate. Success is oftentimes but the wealth and authority associated with successful mendacity, hypocrisy, manipulation. This is the Successful Magician’s kind of success. He still finds enough traditionally minded potential spouses of petit-bourgeois origin to have his pick. His first chosen partner was maybe a mistake, the second one not mistaken enough, the third spouse-partner-wife seems by virtue of her young age and natural breeding suitable to give rise to his long wished for successor (to make success complete), and also take care of his finances. The story could be so changed that all protagonists are of the opposite (or same) sex. All gender and age combinations are possible and would produce stories of a similarly or differently perceived character. In the above described form, it is also a story which will soon be outmoded, or, if it occurs, will be rightfully seen as highly unusual and freakish, hinting at possible abuse.
Women’s Medical Centre with 1886 Benz Patent-Motorwagen by Rheinische Gasmotorenfabrik Benz & Cie. (Pencil, coloured pencil, acrylics, shellack. A3, 2013)
Depicted is a medical centre exclusively for women, offering medical treatment for diseases of the female genital apparatus and applications of advanced pro-choice technology. The Benz three-wheeler parked in front of the clinic is a permanent installation reminding of a period where men were still relatively unchallenged in their claim over the field of artificial invention, as opposed to “natural” creation, the female secret, Bachofen’s swampland of unlimited fertility.
GPTU - 33 / IPP World Wide 