Latest Work

2024
Wiener Melange
Schau!Bilder: Just Because You Look at Me Doesn’t Mean You Can See Me

2023
Group Exhibition: VBKÖ, Selbstportrait
For Nan, 2023
anOther: Die Dialektik des Kennenlernens, 2022

2022
anOther: Die Dialektik des Kennenlernens
Polaroids
The Glow of Your Last Skin & Wiener Baustellen
Group Exhibition: Kombinage, Das Eigene im Bild
Solo Exhibition: 17., Vienna, Wiener Baustellen

Wiener Melange, 2024

Collage series in progress

A mixture of photography, analog and digital tools, text, and found objects.
The collage process is analog.
Inspired by the streets of Vienna.

Vis-à-vis am Himmelsrand, from Wiener Melange, collage, 2024

Found Object Specifications
Object: beer can, run over by cars
Location: Hernalser Gürtel, Vienna
Date: 2022/07/09

Fragile, from Wiener Melange, collage, 2024

Found Object Specifications
Object: bubble wrap
Location: Mariahilfer Straße, Vienna
Date: 2024/07/20

Die Blüten sind vormännlich, from Wiener Melange, collage, 2024

Found Object Specifications
Object: mycelis muralis
Location: Uhlplatz, Vienna
Date: 2024/07/21

Funny Noodles, from Wiener Melange, collage, 2024

Found Object Specifications
Object: tablet blister
Location: Laudongasse, Vienna
Date: 2024/07/17

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Schau!Bilder: “Just Because You Look at Me Doesn’t Mean You Can See Me”, 2024

It is a fundamental human need to feel seen. And yet, I can look at you day by day, but still never see you. Schau!bilder examines the difference between looking and seeing and how the way we look/see positions us, the observers, in the world.

Read more …

The Greek philosopher Democritus (460-370 B.C.) had an unusual theory to explain our vision. From all objects in the world small images are detached. He called these images ‘Eidola’. ‘Eidola’ fly through space and reach first our eye and then our soul. The latter is capable of recognizing the picture. ‘Eidolas’ can even be seen as small reflections of the object on the eye of the observer.

Plato believed that seeing is possible because our eyes send out a ray of vision that scans the world similar to a hand that scans a face with its fingers. With his Allegory of the Cave Plato also stated that nothing is as it seems at first site.

Following Plato and his concept of the cave, we can understand looking and seeing on two levels. We can mean either the sensual perception (= looking) or the mental awareness of a fact/a context of meaning (=seeing). Hence, both, looking and seeing are closely interwoven. If we reach a level of seeing (spoken with Plato, the world outside the cave in bright sunlight) a return into ignorance is no longer possible.

In other words, to see can also mean a loss of innocence.

Speaking with the Portuguese poet, writer and humanist Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935): “To see is to stand apart. To see clearly is to stand still. To analyze is to be a stranger.”

Schau!Bilder, frame object DIN A3, six color photographs

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Group Exhibition: Selbstportrait, 2023

Vereinigung bildender Künstlerinnen Österreichs (VBKÖ)

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anOther: Die Dialektik des Kennenlernens, 2022

Self-portrait

Each image comes with a personal text or image-text.

anOther, advertising poster
6c-print WhiteBack 59,4 x 84,1 cm

Hot Pasta, from anOther
installation with wooden chair
color photograph 30 x 30 cm

Paradise Found, from anOther
color photograph 30 x 30 cm

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Polaroids, 2022-x

Work in progress

Triptych 1981/82
Two rings

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The Glow of Your Last Skin &
Wiener Baustellen, 2022

Untitled, from The Glow of Your Last Skin, 2022

The Link of the Projects

How both projects The Glow of Your Last Skin & Wiener Baustellen are linked (trigger warning: illness, death):

The Glow of Your Last Skin: Photo Book

Photo Book, 2022
20 x 25 cm, 72 pages
37 photographs, color & b/w (2015-2021)
with text

Wiener Baustellen: Magazin/e & Posters

Magazin/e, 2022
20 x 25 cm, 28 pages
20 color photographs (2014-2021)

Posters, 6c-prints WhiteBack, DIN A2
Three photographs that are published in the magazine are also designed as advertising posters.

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Exhibitions

Atelier Kombinage, Group Exhibition:
Das Eigene im Bild, 2022

Wiener Baustellen
Posters, 6c-prints WhiteBack, DIN A2
Magazin/e, 20 color photographs, 20 x 25 cm, 28 pages

The Glow of Your Last Skin
Photo book, 20 x 25 cm, 72 pages
37 photographs and images in b/w and color, with text

Photo #3: © Max Doemer

17., Vienna, Open Air Solo Exhibition:
Wiener Baustellen, 2022

Posters, 6c-prints WhiteBack, DIN A2

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Series 2015—2017 . Austria Eu

The Oh Vienna! Project is a kaleidoscopic homage to my chosen home and its lovable grumpy locals. It’s influenced by the ‘city symphony’, a non-fictional avant-garde film genre of the 1920s and 1930s.

The city symphonies Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis (1927) by Walter Ruttmann and Rain (1929) by Joris Ivens have impacted my photographic approach heavily.

I photographed two years and made one picture every day. The images in the gallery below are a selection out of several hundred photographs.

The project title refers to a line in the song Vienna, released 1981 by the British new wave band Ultravox. Consider it the soundtrack of this body of work.

series . Vienna 2016 . Austria EU

In A Faulmann File I explore the tension fonts create in urban habitats, the space where past, present, and future occur simultaneously. And yet this simultaneity is a hazy notion.

We are spoiled with fonts and yet we tend to overlook them. We rarely think of their creators or how outstanding the evolution of writing systems are: The ability to store and transfer information across generations is crucial to the maintenance of our culture. 

History proves how letters often stand the test of time, whereas we as individuals fade into oblivion. Our stories may outlive us, our bodily presence remains ephemeral.

The name of the project refers to Carl Faulmann and his legacy. The German-born typographer, shorthand writer, inventor and professor came to Vienna in 1854 where he worked at the State Printing House. His book* contained the back then known writing systems from around the world–a remarkably complete collection.

The blurry parts in each image aren’t added in post, this effect is achieved ‘in camera’ using the free lensing technique.

Also, an alley in Vienna is named after Mr. Carl Faulmann: Faulmanngasse.

* Carl Faulmann, Das Buch der Alphabete aller Zeiten und aller Schrift enthaltend die Schriftzeichen und Völker des Erdkreises, Wien 1880 [Reprint: Olms, Hildesheim 1986]

Run Free Exhibition, 2015

series . Vienna 2015–2016 . Austria EU

In the 19th century paranormal investigators would photograph ghosts of ancestors and loved ones. We think we know better today, but a camera can indeed see more than our eyes. 

Fast movement like the flapping of a hummingbird’s wings for instance, can be frozen by a camera. Or a long exposure of the starry sky at night shows time in the shape of lines the stars leave behind.

How can we know what is real if there are things we can only see with a tool? What more is there in our world to reveal when even time, a fairly abstract value, can become visible by photographing it?

I reflect on these questions as well as on memory and even more so on our (in)ability to remember. Both are in flux like the urban environments we live in and our random encounters:

I photograph into and out of public transportation with little control over who is being framed. This replicates the paradox that the harder we try to rebuild a face of a passed away loved one in our memory, the less we succeed and in order to recall their face, to follow their unspoken request “remember me!”, we have to let go — we have to forget to remember.

Remember Me, digital print, DIN A1 (59,4 x 84,1 cm)

Exhibition: Stadtbahnbögen Gürtellinie Wien, 2015

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Insidexit OR Behind Kafka’s Door

Photo book 2016

“Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.” This is how Franz Kafka ends his story ‘Before the Law’. Insidexit Or Behind Kafka’s Door rewrites the narrative entering the room behind the door.

PHOTO BOOK, 2016
15 x 23 cm
11 color photographs
31 b/w photographs
66 pages

Before the Law (read)
Vor dem Gesetz (hören und lesen)

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