My interest in sculpture was initiated by an exhibition on iron- and steel-sculptures in Stuttgart 1970. Since 1988 I form collages from pieces of used steel and sometimes other materials. I find the material everywhere from farms, harbor locations, in the street, in scrap yards (“a cosmos of forms”) and by the railway track, and in antiquities shops. The process of finding and the decision to take a piece with me is a creative act. Sometimes a long process of trial and error will follow to combine the appropriate pieces. Often it is not easy to find partners. I combine mostly 2 to 5 individual parts and I am astonished that some artists handle more. After weeks, if the loosely combined pieces satisfy my eyes, I join them by welding. Then, I work down the rusty surface layer with files, brushes and sandpaper until they look perfect to me. Thereafter, I fix the surface with a mixture of terpentine and lineseed oil. Besides a limitation in the number of joined pieces, very often I obey a certain size; pocket-format being optimal. The above sculptures are 13 – 28 cm high. The finished sculptures have to show both: harmony and secret. The viewer should not have a definite idea and imagination when he looks at them. The title of the objects are not essential for understanding; sometimes they point to a place where I have found a part. If a finished object does not fit my “visual imagination”, I take it apart and start with another combination.
The process of creation may be summarized as: Finding – combining – fixing – surface treatment. Positioning is also very important; the sculptures need an undisturbed background. My “teachers” in a theoretical sense were David Smith , Eduardo Chillida, Anthony Caro and especially Ettore Colla . I learnt a sensibility for surfaces by the prints of Armin Sandig . |