Triptychon

Just like the ‘Altar’ this too springs from my tendency to use a religious theme in most of my works. Don’t let if fool you though: I have never prayed in real live, and when I visit a church it is to admire the beauty of it.

Saint Stephan the Drunk – Triptychon (2010-2012)

He was robbed and died about a year after I made the photos this triptychon was based on. He has seen the first results of my work, but never the finished project. He is still on my facebook feed. If I send him my prayers in a direct message, will he pass them on to god for me? I’m not sure I want the winged guys on either side of him to be my messengers, but maybe that is just me.

I wrote the following about the piece in 2015 for an exhibition (translated in German):

“Der heilige Stefan der Besoffene (2012/2013) ist ein Porträt von einem der vielen die der Filmriss zum Lebensentwurf gemacht haben. Sind sie Kinder der Sechziger auf der Suche nach Selbstauflösung, sind sie kranke Süchtigen oder sind sie Schamanen/Propheten in ihrem Rausch? Ist diese Symbolik ein Gespenst unserer Vergangenheit oder zeigt es eine Zukunft? Oder was gewesen ist, ebendas wird sein, und was geschehen ist, ebendas wird geschehen, und es gibt gar nichts Neues unter der Sonne.”

Size: 80 x 60 cm @300dpi
Pixelsize: 9449 px * 7087 px
Origin: Composition made with photos, some 3D

New Saints Triptych (2003)

These three works are my first successful attempts to create digital art: A young woman smiling, destined to be a saint in a bleak world, a woman gave birth to her to-be saint son, destined to become a martyr in this dying world, a dying saint, a young man, a fish watching him from a polluted sea. The description for all three works in this series is the same:

In these series I tried to combine the idea of a religious painting with the way we have come to look at our future: dark, filled with industrial waste, or maybe we are living on other planets, who knows. What will our saints look like? Will there ever be new saints when we leave our solar system? Or is this an Earth-bound phenomenon?

The idea of having saints in the dark future that might lie ahead could be comforting one, we might really need them. Or maybe the idea is an impossible one, I don’t know.

Size: 47x67cm @300dpi
Pixelsize: 5551px*7915px
Origin: Composition made with photos, scans from books and magazines, some 3D.